#coronavirus around the world

[liberalsarecool]

I owe my Trump-supporting friends an apology. I’ve been critical of the Trump presidency and am still exhausted from the experience.

But to be fair, President Trump wasn’t that bad, other than:

• when he incited an insurrection against the government,

• mismanaged a pandemic that killed over a million Americans

• separated children from their families

• lost those children in the bureaucracy

• tear-gassed peaceful protesters on Lafayette Square so he could hold a photo op holding a Bible in front of a church

• tried to block all Muslims from entering the country

• got impeached

• got impeached again

• had the worst jobs record of any president in modern history

• pressured Ukraine to dig dirt on Joe Biden

• fired the FBI director for investigating his ties to Russia

• bragged about firing the FBI director on TV

• took Vladimir Putin’s word over the US intelligence community

• diverted military funding to build his wall

• caused the longest government shutdown in US history

• called Black Lives Matter a “symbol of hate”

• lied nearly 40,000 times

• banned transgender people from serving in the military

• ejected reporters from the White House briefing room who asked tough questions

• vetoed the defense funding bill because it renamed military bases named for Confederate soldiers

• refused to release his tax returns

• increased the national debt by nearly $8 trillion

• had three of the highest annual trade deficits in U.S. history

• called veterans and soldiers who died in combat losers and suckers

• coddled the leader of Saudi Arabia after he ordered the execution and dismembering of a US-based journalist

• refused to concede the 2020 election

• hired his unqualified daughter and son-in-law to work in the White House

• walked out of an interview with Lesley Stahl

• called neo-Nazis “very fine people”

• suggested that people should inject bleach into their bodies to fight COVID

• abandoned our allies the Kurds to Turkey

• pushed through massive tax cuts for the wealthiest but balked at helping working Americans

• incited anti-lockdown protestors in several states at the height of the pandemic

• withdrew the US from the Paris climate accords

• withdrew the US from the Iranian nuclear deal

• withdrew the US from the Trans Pacific Partnership which was designed to block China’s advances

• insulted his own Cabinet members on Twitter

• pushed the leader of Montenegro out of the way during a photo op

• failed to reiterate US commitment to defending NATO allies

• called Haiti and African nations “shithole” countries

• called the city of Baltimore the “worst in the nation”

• claimed that he single-handedly brought back the phrase “Merry Christmas” even though it hadn’t gone anywhere

• forced his Cabinet members to praise him publicly like some cult leader

• believed he should be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize

• berated and belittled his hand-picked Attorney General when he recused himself from the Russia probe

• suggested the US should buy Greenland

• colluded with Mitch McConnell to push through federal judges and two Supreme Court justices after supporting efforts to prevent his predecessor from appointing judges

• repeatedly called the media “enemies of the people”

• claimed that if we tested fewer people for COVID we’d have fewer cases

• violated the emoluments clause

• thought that Nambia was a country

• told Bob Woodward in private that the coronavirus was a big deal but then downplayed it in public

• called his exceedingly faithful vice president a “p---y” for following the Constitution

• nearly got us into a war with Iran after threatening them by tweet

• nominated a corrupt head of the EPA

• nominated a corrupt head of HHS

• nominated a corrupt head of the Interior Department

• nominated a corrupt head of the USDA

• praised dictators and authoritarians around the world while criticizing allies

• refused to allow the presidential transition to begin

• insulted war hero John McCain – even after his death

• spent an obscene amount of time playing golf after criticizing Barack Obama for playing (far less) golf while president

• falsely claimed that he won the 2016 popular vote

• called the Muslim mayor of London a “stone cold loser”

• falsely claimed that he turned down being Time’s Man of the Year

• considered firing special counsel Robert Mueller on several occasions

• mocked wearing face masks to guard against transmitting COVID

• locked Congress out of its constitutional duty to confirm Cabinet officials by hiring acting ones

• used a racist dog whistle by calling COVID the “China virus”

• hired and associated with numerous shady figures that were eventually convicted of federal offenses including his campaign manager and national security adviser

• pardoned several of his shady associates

• gave the Presidential Medal of Freedom to two congressman who amplified his batshit crazy conspiracy theories

• got into telephone fight with the leader of Australia(!)

• had a Secretary of State who called him a moron

• forced his press secretary to claim without merit that his was the largest inauguration crowd in history

• botched the COVID vaccine rollout

• tweeted so much dangerous propaganda that Twitter eventually banned him

• charged the Secret Service jacked-up rates at his properties

• constantly interrupted Joe Biden in their first presidential debate

• claimed that COVID would “magically” disappear

• called a U.S. Senator “Pocahontas”

• used his Twitter account to blast Nordstrom when it stopped selling Ivanka’s merchandise

• opened up millions of pristine federal lands to development and drilling

• got into a losing tariff war with China that forced US taxpayers to bail out farmers

• claimed that his losing tariff war was a win for the US

• ignored or didn’t even take part in daily intelligence briefings

• blew off honoring American war dead in France because it was raining

• redesigned Air Force One to look like the Trump Shuttle

• got played by Kim Jung Un and his “love letters”

• threatened to go after social media companies in clear violation of the Constitution

• botched the response to Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico

• threw paper towels at Puerto Ricans when he finally visited them

• pressured the governor and secretary of state of Georgia to “find” him votes

• thought that the Virgin islands had a President

• drew on a map with a Sharpie to justify his inaccurate tweet that Alabama was threatened by a hurricane

• allowed White House staff to use personal email accounts for official businesses after blasting Hillary Clinton for doing the same thing

• rolled back regulations that protected the public from mercury and asbestos

• pushed regulators to waste time studying snake-oil remedies for COVID

• rolled back regulations that stopped coal companies from dumping waste into rivers

• held blatant campaign rallies at the White House

• tried to take away millions of Americans’ health insurance because the law was named for a Black man

• refused to attend his successors’ inauguration

• nominated the worst Education Secretary in history

• threatened judges who didn’t do what he wanted

• attacked Dr. Anthony Fauci

• promised that Mexico would pay for the wall (it didn’t)

• allowed political hacks to overrule government scientists on major reports on climate change and other issues

• struggled navigating a ramp after claiming his opponent was feeble

• called an African-American Congresswoman “low IQ”

• threatened to withhold federal aid from states and cities with Democratic leaders

• went ahead with rallies filled with maskless supporters in the middle of a pandemic

• claimed that legitimate investigations of his wrongdoing were “witch hunts,”

• seemed to demonstrate a belief that there were airports during the American Revolution

• demanded “total loyalty” from the FBI director

• praised a conspiracy theory that Democrats are Satanic pedophiles

• completely gutted the Voice of America

• placed a political hack in charge of the Postal Service

• claimed without evidence that the Obama administration bugged Trump Tower

• suggested that the US should allow more people from places like Norway into the country

• suggested that COVID wasn’t that bad because he recovered with the help of top government doctors and treatments not available to the public

• overturned energy conservation standards that even industry supported

• reduced the number of refugees the US accepts

• insulted various members of Congress and the media with infantile nicknames

• gave Rush Limbaugh a Presidential medal of Freedom at the State of the Union address

• named as head of federal personnel a 29-year old who’d previously been fired from the White House for allegations of financial improprieties

• eliminated the White House office of pandemic response

• used soldiers as campaign props

• fired any advisor who made the mistake of disagreeing with him

• demanded the Pentagon throw him a Soviet-style military parade

• hired a shit ton of white nationalists

• politicized the civil service

• did absolutely nothing after Russia hacked the U.S. government

• falsely said the Boy Scouts called him to say his bizarre Jamboree speech was the best speech ever given to the Scouts

• claimed that Black people would overrun the suburbs if Biden won

• insulted reporters of color

• insulted women reporters

• insulted women reporters of color

• suggested he was fine with China’s oppression of the Uighurs

• attacked the Supreme Court when it ruled against him

• summoned Pennsylvania state legislative leaders to the White House to pressure them to overturn the election

• spent countless hours every day watching Fox News

• refused to allow his administration to comply with Congressional subpoenas

• hired Rudy Giuliani as his lawyer

• tried to punish Amazon because the Jeff Bezos-owned Washington Post wrote negative stories about him

• acted as if the Attorney General of the United States was his personal attorney

• attempted to get the federal government to defend him in a libel lawsuit from a women who accused him of sexual assault

• held private meetings with Vladimir Putin without staff present

• didn’t disclose his private meetings with Vladimir Putin so that the US had to find out via Russian media

• stopped holding press briefings for months at a time

• “ordered” US companies to leave China even though he has no such power

• led a political party that couldn’t even be bothered to draft a policy platform

• claimed preposterously that Article II of the Constitution gave him absolute powers

• tried to pressure the U.K. to hold the British Open at his golf course

• suggested that the government nuke hurricanes

• suggested that wind turbines cause cancer

• said that he had a special aptitude for science

• fired the head of election cyber security after he said that the 2020 election was secure

• blurted out classified information to Russian officials

• tried to force the G7 to hold their meeting at his failing golf resort in Florida

• fired the acting attorney general when she refused to go along with his unconstitutional Muslim travel ban

• hired Stephen Miller

• openly discussed national security issues in the dining room at Mar-a-Lago where everyone could hear them

• interfered with plans to relocate the FBI because a new development there might compete with his hotel

• abandoned Iraqi refugees who’d helped the U.S. during the war

• tried to get Russia back into the G7

• held a COVID super spreader event in the Rose Garden

• seemed to believe that Frederick Douglass is still alive

• lost 60 election fraud cases in court including before judges he had nominated

• falsely claimed that factories were reopening when they weren’t

• shamelessly exploited terror attacks in Europe to justify his anti-immigrant policies

• still hasn’t come up with a healthcare plan

• still hasn’t come up with an infrastructure plan despite repeated “Infrastructure Weeks"

• forced Secret Service agents to drive him around Walter Reed while contagious with COVID

• told the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by”

• fucked up the Census

• withdrew the U.S. from the World Health Organization in the middle of a pandemic

• did so few of his duties that his press staff were forced to state on his daily schedule “President Trump will work from early in the morning until late in the evening. He will make many calls and have many meetings,” allowed his staff to repeatedly violate the Hatch Act

• seemed not to know that Abraham Lincoln was a Republican

• stood before sacred CIA wall of heroes and bragged about his election win

• constantly claimed he was treated worse than any president which presumably includes four that were assassinated and his predecessor whose legitimacy and birthplace were challenged by a racist reality TV show star named Donald Trump

• claimed Andrew Jackson could’ve stopped the Civil War even though he died 16 years before it happened

• said that any opinion poll showing him behind was fake

• claimed that other countries laughed at us before he became president when several world leaders were literally laughing at him

• claimed that the military was out of ammunition before he became President

• created a commission to whitewash American history

• retweeted anti-Islam videos from one of the most racist people in Britain

• claimed ludicrously that the Pulse nightclub shooting wouldn’t have happened if someone there had a gun even though there was an armed security guard there

• hired a senior staffer who cited the non-existent Bowling Green Massacre as a reason to ban Muslims

• had a press secretary who claimed that Nazi Germany never used chemical weapons even though every sane human being knows they used gas to kill millions of Jews and others

• bilked the Secret Service for higher than market rates when they had to stay at Trump properties

• apparently sold pardons on his way out of the White House

• stripped protective status from 59,000 Haitians

• falsely claimed Biden wanted to defund the police

• said that the head of the CDC didn’t know what he was talking about

• tried to rescind protection from DREAMers

• gave himself an A+ for his handling of the pandemic

• tried to start a boycott of Goodyear tires due to an Internet hoax

• said U.S. rates of COVID would be lower if you didn’t count blue states

• deported U.S. veterans who served their country but were undocumented

• claimed he did more for African Americans than any president since Lincoln

• touted a “super-duper” secret “hydrosonic” missile which may or may not be a new “hypersonic” missile or may not exist at all

• retweeted a gif calling Biden a pedophile

• forced through security clearances for his family

• suggested that police officers should rough up suspects

• suggested that Biden was on performance-enhancing drugs

• tried to stop transgender students from being able to use school bathrooms in line with their gender

• suggested the US not accept COVID patients from a cruise ship because it would make US numbers look higher

• nominated a climate change skeptic to chair the committee advising the White House on environmental policy

• retweeted a video doctored to look like Biden had played a song called “Fuck tha Police” at a campaign event

• hugged a disturbingly large number of U.S. flags

• accused Democrats of “treason” for not applauding his State of the Union address

• claimed that the FBI failed to capture the Parkland school shooter because they were “spending too much time” on Russia

• mocked the testimony of Dr Christine Blasey Ford when she accused Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault

• obsessed over low-flow toilets

• ordered the re-release of more COVID vaccines when there weren’t any to release

• called for the construction of a bizarre garden of heroes with statutes of famous dead Americans as well as at least one Canadian (Alex Trebek)

• hijacked Washington’s July 4th celebrations to give a partisan speech

• took advice from the MyPillow guy

• claimed that migrants seeking a better life in the US were dangerous caravans of drug dealers and rapists

• said nothing when Vladimir Putin poisoned a leading opposition figure

• never seemed to heed the advice of his wife’s “Be Best” campaign

• falsely claimed that mail-in voting is fraudulent

• announced a precipitous withdrawal of troops from Syria which not only handed Russia and ISIS a win but also prompted his defense secretary to resign in protest

• insulted the leader of Canada

• insulted the leader of France

• insulted the leader of Britain

• insulted the leader of Germany

• insulted the leader of Sweden (Sweden!!)

• falsely claimed credit for getting NATO members to increase their share of dues

• blew off two Asia summits even though they were held virtually

• continued lying about spending lots of time at Ground Zero with 9/11 responders,

• said that the Japanese would sit back and watch their “Sony televisions” if the US were ever attacked

• left a NATO summit early in a huff

• stared directly into an eclipse even though everyone over the age of five knows not to do that

• called himself a very stable genius despite significant evidence to the contrary

• refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power and kept his promise

And a whole bunch of other things I can’t remember .

[sparkleofpizza]

The Alchemy

Lando Norris x fem!reader

Two idiots.

THE 2020 SEASON

WINTER BREAK London, England, 2020 

Formula 1 might be on a break, but university isn’t. I’ve been studying non stop and working all my free time to get extra credit so I’d be able to graduate early, right at the end of spring so I’d have the rest of the year more chilled out. 

But being a 21 year old college student, living alone at an apartment at a college campus meant trouble, obviously, and that’s how after long hours of studying at the library, instead of being in my bed catching up on some sleep, I was at a frat house party. 

The music was blaring and I was nursing my third drink of night, but in all honesty completely tired now that the alcohol had relaxed me. 

I was sitting on the couch, watching my friends dance around me. I grab my phone to get some pictures of them when I notice a new notification. 

Lando: what are u up to on a Friday night as a college student? 

Lando and I have been texting non stop since the end of the 2019 season, our friendship solidified. We even hung out a couple of times in between Christmas and new years. And now he has been bugging me that I’ve been working and studying too much. 

Me: I’m at a frat house party 

He instantly replied back. 

Lando: YOURE WHERE DOING WHAT 

Me: I’m at a frat house party 

I smirk to myself as I texted back the same question then before. 

Lando: no way, you’re messing with me 

I open the camera of my phone, scratching my arm out as I smile hazily before snapping a picture and sending it to him. 

Lando: OMG ARE U DRUNK???? 

Me: yessss 

I expected him to make fun of me, but his answer caught me a bit of guard. 

Lando: are u alone? 

Lando: who’s with u? 

Me: my friends are around here somewhere 

There a few minutes of silence from his since and I wonder if our conversation is over. He probably fell asleep. 

My phone buzzes again. 

Lando: how are u going home? 

Me: I’ll walk back to my apartment, why? 

He’s typing and typing and typing. I bite my lip anxiously, wondering what he’s going to say. Is he going to ask me to let him pick me up? Like in those romance books where the guy picks up the girl from a party when she’s drunk? 

Lando: ok 

My face falls momentarily. 

Lando: I’m not in London  

Lando: be careful and text me when you get home safe 

I smile, so he was considering picking me up. 

Melbourne, Australia, 2020 

The world was insane, and I was going insane with it. I was higenyzing my hand every time I touched something. I was in an alert state of the coronavirus. 

“They should have canceled the race.” I say, taking a seat with Lando, Carlos and Caco at the McLaren hospitality. “They are saying there are employees who got infected.”

I squeeze hand sanitizer on my hand, rubbing it. 

“You’re talking about as if it’s some kind of zombie apocalypse.” Lando chuckles, draping his arm casually over the back of my chair “Relax, they wouldn’t keep up the race if it wasn’t safe.” 

Carlos nods “Lando is right.” 

I scoff with a tense smile “Oh, but they would. FIA doesn’t care about it, they care about the money. They always have and always will.” 

The boys are silent for a moment before Caco nods his head. 

“Hamilton and Vettel said something similar during the press conference.” He says “And they’ve been around the same amount of time you have.” 

My phone rings and it’s Sophie calling. I quickly brings it to my ear, listening to what she has to say. My frown only deepens when she says two McLaren employees tested positive for covid and that there are more people around the paddock with symptoms as well. 

I hang up the phone. 

“The teams principals are gathering together to get FIA to cancel the race.” I tell them, watching as both drivers’ faces fall in disappointment “Two McLaren employees tested positive and there are other people around the paddock who are feeling ill as well.”

We gather our things and start to make our way to the McLaren garage, probably the news will get there first if the race is canceled. 

I hang back on the group and Lando slows his steps to walk beside me. 

“Can’t believe we just got back and we’re already going to leave and be without racing.” He groans, a whine voice a bit high pitched.

“It’s better for it to be canceled and you getting the chance to race again when it’s safer, then getting sick and ending up in the hospital.” 

He sighs, shoulders slumping slightly. 

“You’re right. I was just excited to give my all at this new season.” 

I smile “I know, and you will soon.” 

He smiles back at me, nudging me with his shoulder. 

“So, are you gonna be able to graduate this spring?” 

“I am! I mean, I’ve been doing everything possible for it to happen and I think it will.” 

Lando smiles and for a brief moment his fingers brush against mine in a sweet gesture. 

“That’s great. I’ll make sure to be there cheering for you at your graduation.” 

And my heart flutters at his words. 

PANDEMIC  London, England, 2020 

“Did I do it right? Are you listening to me?” I ask into the microphone I bought. 

Lando’s face show up on the screen of my computer, grinning widely. 

“Hiiii! Yes, you did. Now turn on your camera so I can see your face.” 

“How do I do it?” I ask, completely lost as I had never used the app discord before. “Oh, never mind, found it.” 

“Look at you!” Lando beamed “Are those bunny ears on your hoodie?” I chuckle as I put on the hoodie over my head so he can see the bunny ears “You look adorable! Doesn’t she look adorable, chat?” 

I tilt my head to the side, confused.

“Chat? What chat? It’s just the two of us here.” 

Lando laughed “I’m streaming, muppet.” 

“You’re what?!” I screech “Lando! Why didn’t you tell me we’d be live? I’m in my pijamas!” 

He laughs again “You still look adorable and the chat agrees with me.”

I huff, flustered at his words and at the fact that I’m live for god knows how many people while I’m wearing my bunny pajamas. If people didn’t take me serious before, they never will now. 

“Now, here’s what we’re going to do.” He claps his hand, a mischievous smile on his face “You’re going to play LOL with me.” 

“LOL? But I only know how to play the sims.” 

“Yes, you’re going to play LOL. I think it’s the easiest for now.” 

As I download the game and start to follow the tutorial, all while sharing my screen with Lando and him judging me at how I can manage to keep dying on the tutorial, I wonder how in the holy hell he managed to convince me to play online with him. 

Finally, after an eternity, I finish the tutorial and I start to play with him. Lando keeps instructing me because I don’t even know what buttons to press on my keyboard and he keeps screaming that I’m not running fast enough. 

“Oh my God!” I scream “I died! I died!” 

Lando laughs delighted. 

“My screen is black and white! Why is my screen black and white? Is my computer broken? LANDO!” 

That only makes him laugh harder, that infectious laugh of him as I keep yelling questions of what I should do next. 

My dad opens the door to my bedroom, peeking his head inside, looking concerned as he calls out my name. 

“Are you ok, sweetheart?” He asks, walking further into the room “I can hear you screaming from the living room.”

“Yeah, sorry dad. I’m playing online with Lando and I died.” 

My father chuckles, bending down slightly to look at my screen. He smiles at Lando while waving. 

“Hello, Lando. Have you been taking care of yourself while quarantining?” 

Lando smiles back as he nods “Yes, I have. Your daughter also texts me everyday reminding me what I can and can’t do. It’s like she thinks I will die because I’m living on my own.” 

My dad looks amused at me, but he knows I’m right and Lando would have probably set his house or fire by now if I haven’t been instructing him properly on certain things. 

My dad pats my head as he stands up straight again “I will leave you kids to it. Take care, Lando.” 

“Thank you, Jenson! You too!” Lando smiles. “Now, where were we?” 

Later that night, after four hours of online gaming with Lando, I lied in bed scrolling through my social medias. I couldn’t help to read the comments people were making about our live stream together. 

Jenson Button worried about Lando I CANT

OMG y/n checking up on Lando daily to make sure he survives 

So am I the only one who thinks there’s something there? 

She can’t suck on her dads fame anymore bc he’s retired so now she’s going after Norris 

I sigh, closing Twitter and putting my phone on the bedside table. People are mean. 

Spielberg, Austria, 2020 

July and we’re back at Formula 1. The season is being cut short, there won’t be fans attending, but we’re back at racing. 

I finished my finals a week ago, just in time to go back to traveling. My dad gave an hour-long lecture about safety and health before finally letting me board the plane. 

I haven’t seen Lando and Carlos yet, but I have met uncle Seb who is pissed off at Ferrari for firing him over the phone. I could tell for the way he was talking about meetings and stuff he has to do that he’s plotting something and I couldn’t help but smirk at whatever hell fire he will bring down on Mattia Binotto. 

I enter the McLaren garage and I smile underneath my mask as I see Lando talking to his engineer. He turns his head when he hears my footsteps. 

He basically bonces on his feet until he meets me halfway. 

“Hi!” He says loudly “It’s so good to finally see you in person again!” His eyes are wide “Can I hug you? I want to hug you. I know I probably shouldn’t, but I want to. I haven’t touched anyone in months and and…” 

I cut him off with a laugh as I wrap my arms around his middle, resting my head on his chest. Lando brings his arms around me, squeezing me onto his body. 

“Hi, Lando. I missed your energetic aura.” 

I feel his grin against my shoulder, even with half his face covered in a mask. 

“I missed you.” He says back. 

He detangles himself from he hug, but keep his hands on my shoulders. He analyzes my face. 

“You really do look good with bangs.” 

I chuckle, running my hands over the bangs I cut on my hair after a moment of reflection and desperation when I couldn’t leave the house. 

“Thank you. It was a moment of… insanity, but at least it looks good.” 

He laughs “Oh I know. You texted me like fifteen times saying you did something horrible and it was just bangs.” 

I shake my head “Hey, to be fair you called me at two in the morning to ask me how to kill a wasp and I had to wake up my dad to ask him.” 

Lando's eyes widened in mock sadness. 

“Hey, your dad loves me! I’m sure he was very very delighted to be woken up in the middle of the night to give out instructions on how to kill a wasp.” 

I snort out a laugh. 

Later that weekend, after the race was finished, I watched as Lando parked his car in p3. It was the first podium of his Formula 1 career. He had been screaming on the radio during the last five laps and I was grinning like an idiot behind my mask. 

He got out of the car, helmet still on as he ran to the team, letting them hug him and clap his back. The whole McLaren garage was in a frenzy of celebration. 

I’m waiting for him by the parc fermé, to guide him to the podium and then to the press conference room where they interview the winner, second and third place of the race. 

Lando takes off his helmet and balaclava and I see his whole face for the first time this year. He has a huge smile on his face as he runs to where I am. 

“My first podium!” He yells 

I smile “Congratulations, Lando. It was beautiful to watch.” 

He wraps his arms around me, jumping around and making me jump with him as I laugh. 

“My first podium! Oh fuck! I’m gonna get a trophy!” 

I giggle, letting him jump around with me “Yes, you are, Lando, you’re getting a trophy!” 

He then stop jumping and just gazed into my eyes, the smile never dropping out of his face. 

“Fuck, I’m so glad you’re the one here and not Sophie.” 

My heart leaps on my chest. 

“I’m glad I’m here, too.” 

Silverstone, England, 2020 

It was the Silverstone Grand Prix weekend, there were going to be two weekends of races here. My dad had decided to come along since this is his home race and he wants to relive some of the memories. 

I walk inside the McLaren hospitality with my dad who is babbling about my graduation to one of the mechanics that have been working here since his driving days. 

I hear someone yell my name and I know that voice very well. I turn around and there is Lando, no mask on his face, grinning widely. 

“Hey.” I smile back, walking to where he’s sitting 

He stands up fast and lifts his hands up, holding a beautiful bouquet of pink flowers. 

I gasp in surprise. 

“I couldn’t go to your graduation because the attendance was limited, but I couldn’t let it pass by.” He hands me the flowers before enveloping me in a hug “Congratulations, love. I’m very proud of you.” 

For some reason his words and sweet gestures make tears gather in my eyes. It’s probably because I was expecting my graduation to be a big even, full of people who I love and cherish and that didn’t happen because of the pandemic. 

“Thank you, Lan. This means a lot to me.” 

He squeezes me before letting me go. He wipes some of the tears that leaked out to my eyes. 

“I know this is a special moment and you wanted it to be a big celebration. We’ll go out to celebrate once things get better, alright? My treat.” 

I smile, hugging the flowers to my chest. 

“You’re the best, Lan.” 

He winked at me. 

“Only the best for my best girl.” 

My dad stood to the side, watching the scene with a smile on his face. I didn’t know that now, but he took pictures of all of that happening. 

Krasnodar Krai, Russia, 2020 

Carlos broke the news to the team two weeks ago during our weekly zoom calls. Lando had shut himself out the moment his best friend on the grid said he’s leaving McLaren to go to Ferrari. 

He hasn’t been answering my texts or sending me TikToks. He even declined my calls and I was growing not only worried, but annoyed as well. 

I knock on his hotel door late at night. My flight had landed an hour ago, I got to the hotel, showered and now here I am knocking on his door. 

Lando opens the door, his curly hair disheveled and he’s only in sweatpants. 

“You’re not room service.” He says 

I glare at him. 

“You’ve been ignoring me.” I accuse him, hands on my waist. 

“I uh… I’ve been busy…” he stretches the back of his neck “a lot of work.” 

“We work together, I know you haven’t been busy.” I glare even harder now “Stop lying to me.” 

He stepped to the side and let me inside his room. I walk past him, going to the middle of the room as I stand there with my arms crossed. Lando sits on the bed and looks at me. 

“What’s going on with you?” I ask 

“There’s nothing wrong with me.” He answered too quickly. 

“Lando… you’ve been ignoring me ever since Carlos told us that he’s leaving for Ferrari.” 

He grows quiet and looks away from me. 

I sigh. “Lando, just because he’s switching teams it does not mean he won’t be your friend anymore. It will be a bit different because you won’t be together all the time like the past two years, but he’s not gonna forget about you.” 

He nods. “I know. Carlos already told me all that.” 

“Then why have you been ignoring me?” I ask confused. I thought he was isolating because he was sad that Carlos is leaving, but if he’s already on good terms with it, than what’s wrong. 

“Because I’m preparing myself from when you leave me as well.” Lando says, he doesn’t look at me, his eyes trained on the carpet floor. 

“Wha- What?” I ask completely dumbfounded “What do you mean when I leave you as well?” 

He runs a hand through his hair “You’re an intern at the communication department and- and you just graduated from uni. I know you will leave me at the end of the year as well. You’ll move on to much bigger and better things. I’m just… trying to soften the blow of being without you.” 

There’s a moment of silence as I process his words. He still won’t look at me and I’m too stunned to speak anything. He’s sad because he doesn’t want to be without me. 

Finally, I snap out of it. 

“Oh Lando.” I whisper softly, kneeling in front of him and peering up at him. “Lando, no.” 

He shakes his head “I know, ok? I’m not dumb…” 

I cup his face in my hands to get him to stop talking. He looks at me in surprise and I can see the broken look in his eyes. 

“I’m not going anywhere.” 

“Please, don’t lie to me.” He whispered brokenly “Just rip the bandaid already.” 

“I’m not lying.” I say, catching a stray tear from his eye with my thumb and wiping it away. “McLaren hired me to be their junior PR manager. You would have known that if you haven’t been declining my calls, you muppet.” 

He widens his eyes. 

“You’re not leaving?” 

I shake my head “No. You’re stuck with me.” 

Lando breaths out a laugh, resting his forehead against mine as he closes his eyes. 

“Oh, thank god. I’m not ready to say goodbye.” 

I smile, enjoying our close proximity. 

“You don’t have to say goodbye. I’m not going anywhere.” 

“Good… good.” He mumbled. “I don’t want you to leave my side.” 

We stay like that for a few moments longer, before he helps me stand up from the floor. Lando pats the bed and I soon join him. We lay on opposite sides, he covers us up and we stay in silence, enjoining each other's company as we fall asleep. Right now we don’t need to say anything, everything is understood in the comfortable silence that hugs us. 

Abu Dhabi, Saudi Arabia, 2020

It was yet once again the last race of the season. 

Lando had a great finish in p5, and although he had a happy smile on his face we took team pictures and toasted, I could see he was sad. This was Carlos's last race as Lando’s teammate. And I could see Carlos was a bit sad as well. 

The team principals had gathered together and rented out a club in the city so the party would be just the Formula 1 team and drivers. We had been traveling together all year in the middle of the chaos of the pandemic, so we were all kind of in the same boat, if someone was sick, the odds of everyone else also being sick were extremely high. 

I watched from a far as Lewis celebrated his seventh championship. I chuckled as he, Valtteri and Toto started a shot competition between the three of them. Sebastian was chanting chug chug chug and waving his hands around. 

I feel the familiar presence of Lando standing beside me as he nurses his drink. 

“How was your second year as a Formula 1 employee?” He asks me. 

I smile against the rim of my glass. Just one year ago he had asked me the same question, at the rooftop of the VIP lounge at the paddock, hours before the last race of the season began. 

“It was weird. My last year as an intern, next year I will have to reinvent myself to be on top of my game.”

“You’re already on the top of your game.” He nudges my shoulder with his arm. 

“Yeah, but I still haven’t proved myself here.” I point out. 

Lando frowns, turning his body around to look at me. I’m leaning against the wall and now he’s looming over me. 

“Have you been getting hate online?” 

I give him a weak smile. 

“Let’s not talk about this right now. Tonight is about celebrating.”

He’s still frowning and opens his mouth to protest when I cut him off. 

“How was your second year as Formula 1 driver?”

He chuckles, probably recalling the same memory from last year. He rests his forearm on the wall right beside my head. 

“It was good and weird. I got my first podium ever. I also lost my first teammate…” Lando smiles a bit. “And I got you to be here with me one more year.”

I smile, raising my glass. 

“Here’s to another year of Norris and Button traveling around the world together.”

Lando grins, clinking his glass against mine. 

“Together.” He repeats. 

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

November 6, 2024

Heather Cox Richardson

Nov 06, 2024

Yesterday, November 5, 2024, Americans reelected former president Donald Trump, a Republican, to the presidency over Democratic candidate Vice President Kamala Harris. As of Wednesday night, Trump is projected to get at least 295 electoral votes to Harris’s 226, with two Republican-leaning states still not called. The popular vote count is still underway.

Republicans also retook control of the Senate, where Democrats were defending far more seats than Republicans. Control of the House is not yet clear. 

These results were a surprise to everyone. Trump is a 78-year-old convicted felon who has been found liable for sexual assault and is currently under indictment in a number of jurisdictions. He refused to leave office peacefully when voters elected President Joe Biden in 2020, instead launching an unprecedented attack on the U.S. Capitol to stop the counting of electoral votes, and said during his campaign that he would be a “dictator” on his first day in office.  

Pollsters thought the race would be very close but showed increasing momentum for Harris, and Harris’s team expressed confidence during the day. By posting on social media—with no evidence—that the voting in Pennsylvania was rigged, Trump himself suggested he expected he would lose the popular vote, at least, as he did in 2016 and 2020. 

But in 2024, it appears a majority of American voters chose to put Trump back into office. 

Harris and her running mate, Minnesota governor Tim Walz, offered a message of unity, the expansion of the economic policies that have made the U.S. economy the strongest in the world in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, and the creation of an “opportunity economy” that echoed many of the policies Republicans used to embrace. Trump vowed to take revenge on his enemies and to return the country to the neoliberal policies President Joe Biden had rejected in favor of investing in the middle class.

When he took office, Biden acknowledged that democracy was in danger around the globe, as authoritarians like Russian president Vladimir Putin and China’s president Xi Jinping  maintained that democracy was obsolete and must be replaced by autocracies. Russia set out to undermine the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) that enforced the rules-based international order that stood against Russian expansion. 

Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán, who overturned democracy in his own country, explained that the historical liberal democracy of the United States weakens a nation because the equality it champions means treating immigrants, LGBTQ+ individuals, and women as equal to men, thus ending traditionally patriarchal society.

In place of democracy, Orbán champions “illiberal democracy,” or “Christian democracy.” This form of government holds nominal elections, although their outcome is preordained because the government controls all the media and has silenced opposition. Orbán’s model of minority rule promises a return to a white-dominated, religiously based society, and he has pushed his vision by eliminating the independent press, cracking down on political opposition, getting rid of the rule of law, and dominating the economy with a group of crony oligarchs. 

In order to strengthen democracy at home and abroad, Biden worked to show that it delivered for ordinary Americans. He and the Democrats passed groundbreaking legislation to invest in rebuilding roads and bridges and build new factories to usher in green energy. They defended unions and used the Federal Trade Commission to break up monopolies and return more economic power to consumers. 

Their system worked. It created record low unemployment rates, lifted wages for the bottom 80% of Americans, and built the strongest economy in the world in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, setting multiple stock market records.  But that success turned out not to be enough to protect democracy. 

In contrast, Trump promised he would return to the ideology of the era before 2021, when leaders believed in relying on markets to order the economy with the idea that wealthy individuals would invest more efficiently than if the government regulated business or skewed markets with targeted investment (in green energy, for example). Trump vowed to cut taxes for the wealthy and corporations and to make up lost revenue through tariffs, which he incorrectly insists are paid by foreign countries; tariffs are paid by U.S. consumers. 

For policies, Trump’s campaign embraced the Project 2025 agenda led by the right-wing Heritage Foundation, which has close ties to Orbán. That plan calls for getting rid of the nonpartisan civil service the U.S. has had since 1883 and for making both the Department of Justice and the military partisan instruments of a strong president, much as Orbán did in Hungary. It also calls for instituting religious rule, including an end to abortion rights, across the U.S. Part of the idea of “purifying” the country is the deportation of undocumented immigrants: Trump promised to deport 20 million people at an estimated cost of $88 billion to $315 billion a year. 

That is what voters chose.

Pundits today have spent time dissecting the election results, many trying to find the one tweak that would have changed the outcome, and suggesting sweeping solutions to the Democrats’ obvious inability to attract voters. There is no doubt that a key factor in voters’ swing to Trump is that they associated the inflation of the post-pandemic months with Biden and turned the incumbents out, a phenomenon seen all over the world.

There is also no doubt that both racism and sexism played an important role in Harris’s defeat. 

But my own conclusion is that both of those things were amplified by the flood of disinformation that has plagued the U.S. for years now. Russian political theorists called the construction of a virtual political reality through modern media “political technology.” They developed several techniques in this approach to politics, but the key was creating a false narrative in order to control public debate. These techniques perverted democracy, turning it from the concept of voters choosing their leaders into the concept of voters rubber-stamping the leaders they had been manipulated into backing. 

In the U.S., pervasive right-wing media, from the Fox News Channel through right-wing podcasts and YouTube channels run by influencers, have permitted Trump and right-wing influencers to portray the booming economy as “failing” and to run away from the hugely unpopular Project 2025. They allowed MAGA Republicans to portray a dramatically falling crime rate as a crime wave and immigration as an invasion. They also shielded its audience from the many statements of Trump’s former staff that he is unfit for office, and even that his chief of staff General John Kelly considers him a fascist and noted that he admires German Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler.

As actor Walter Masterson posted: “I tried to educate people about tariffs, I tried to explain that undocumented immigrants pay billions in taxes and are the foundation of this country. I explained Project 2025, I interviewed to show that they supported it. I can not compete against the propaganda machines of Twitter, Fox News, [Joe Rogan Experience], and NY Post. These spaces will continue to create reality unless we create a more effective way of reaching people.” 

X users noted a dramatic drop in their followers today, likely as bots, no longer necessary, disengaged. 

Many voters who were using their vote to make an economic statement are likely going to be surprised to discover what they have actually voted for. In his victory speech, Trump said the American people had given him an “unprecedented and powerful mandate.” 

White nationalist Nick Fuentes posted, “Your body, my choice. Forever,” and gloated that men will now legally control women’s bodies. His post got at least 22,000 “likes.” Right-wing influencer Benny Johnson, previously funded by Russia, posted: “It is my honor to inform you that Project 2025 was real the whole time.” 

Today, Trump campaign press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Trump would launch the “largest mass deportation operation” of undocumented immigrants, and the stock in private prison companies GEO Group and CoreCivic  jumped 41% and 29%, respectively. Those jumps were part of a bigger overall jump: the Dow Jones Industrial Average moved up 1,508 points in what Washington Post economic columnist Heather Long said was the largest post-election jump in more than 100 years. 

As for the lower prices Trump voters wanted, Kate Gibson of CBS today noted that on Monday, the National Retail Federation said that Trump’s proposed tariffs will cost American consumers between $46 billion and $78 billion a year as clothing, toys, furniture, appliances, and footwear all become more expensive. A $50 pair of running shoes, Gibson said, would retail for $59 to $64 under the new tariffs.

U.S. retailers are already preparing to raise prices of items from foreign suppliers, passing to consumers the cost of any future tariffs. 

Trump’s election will also mean he will no longer have to answer to the law for his federal indictments: special counsel Jack Smith is winding them down ahead of Trump’s inauguration. So he will not be tried for retaining classified documents or attempting to overthrow the U.S. government when he lost in 2020. 

This evening, Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán posted on social media that he had just spoken with Trump, and said: “We have big plans for the future!” 

This afternoon, Vice President Kamala Harris spoke at her alma mater, Howard University, to concede the election to Trump. 

She thanked her supporters, her family, the Bidens, the Walz family, and her campaign staff and volunteers. She reiterated that she believes Americans have far more in common than separating us.

In what appeared to be a message to Trump, she noted: “A fundamental principle of American democracy is that when we lose an election, we accept the results. That principle as much as any other distinguishes democracy from monarchy or tyranny, and anyone who seeks the public trust must honor it. At the same time in our nation, we owe loyalty not to a president or a party, but to the Constitution of the United States, and loyalty to our conscience and to our God. 

“My allegiance to all three is why I am here to say, while I concede this election, I do not concede the fight that fuels this campaign, the fight for freedom, for opportunity, for fairness and the dignity of all people, a fight for the ideals at the heart of our nation, the ideals that reflect America at our best. That is a fight I will never give up.”

Harris urged people “to organize, to mobilize and to stay engaged for the sake of freedom and justice and the future that we all know we can build together.” She told those feeling as if the world is dark indeed these days, to “fill the sky with the light of a billion brilliant stars, the light of optimism, of faith, of truth and service,” and to let “that work guide us, even in the face of setbacks, toward the extraordinary promise of the United States of America.” 

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[merrybloomwrites]

I'll Be There for You - Platonic Smosh x Reader

Summary: 2020 starts great for reader before covid enters the chat and flips her world upside down. Her friends at Smosh are there to support her through one of the hardest times of her life.

Word Count: 2.5K

CW: covid, quarantine, parent death, panic attack

AN: Was listening to a Smosh Mouth episode and they brought up filming during quarantine and it randomly inspired this story. I lost my own dad during covid and Smosh was absolutely one of my escapes during that time so this story may just be me processing that haha

No romantic relationships for reader in this, just lots of supportive friends.

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From the moment you hear about this new virus, you’re nervous about it. The news stations are trying to keep everything positive, spin it like this is no big deal. But what you see on social media is telling a different story.

You’re not so much worried for yourself as you are for your family. They’re all the way across the country on the east coast while you’re in Los Angeles. And many of your family members have lung issues. While you don’t know much about this coronavirus, it seems to be most harmful to people’s lungs, leaving you to worry. 

It seems crazy to be taking a trip right now, but the threat doesn’t seem to be too bad. Travel is still permitted, and so your group goes ahead with your trip to Australia. You’ve been looking forward to this for months, and try so hard to not allow your anxieties overshadow your excitement. 

It’s a solid group on the trip: Shayne, Courtney, Ian, Damien, Sarah, and Matt Raub. All of you are trying to ignore the increasingly worrisome news and keep things light. You attend two different expos, doing live shows as well as meet and greets with fans. Those bookend the trip, with lots of different activities in the middle, including visits to a couple zoos to learn about local wildlife. 

You hold koalas and snakes, laugh with your friends, and for a little while, you forget all about the bad things that are happening. 

But you can’t hide from it forever. Despite everyone joking about the virus, you can’t help but be afraid. Every day of the trip, more news is revealed, and things look more and more grim. 

Towards the end of the trip you do a couple planned meet and greets at Sydney’s Madame Tussauds. You’re on the verge of a panic attack the whole time, feeling like every person you talk to could be carrying this unpredictable virus. 

Ian picks up on this and pulls you aside during a break.

“You okay?” he asks, concern etched on his face.

“I can’t shake this feeling, like we’re all going to get infected and then bring it back home, and every time a new person comes in the room it’s like another chance for germs to spread. What happens if we get sick? We don’t know anything about this virus, or what it can do to people, and there’s more and more cases everyday-” your rambling cuts off as you gasp for a breath. The panic attack is officially setting in, the room spinning around you as it gets harder to breathe. 

You hear Ian say something, but the ringing in your ears prevents you from understanding him. A moment later Sarah is standing in front of you, catching your eye and encouraging you to breathe with her. After a minute of matching her breaths, you’ve calmed down and gotten through the worst of the panic attack. 

Sarah leads you to the couch, sitting next to you, close enough to be a grounding presence but far enough that you don’t feel closed in. Ian walks over, crouching in front of you and handing you a water bottle. 

“Sorry about that,” you finally say.

“Don’t you dare apologize,” Sarah says. “Your feelings are completely valid.”

Ian nods before saying, “I know we’re all making jokes about this, but I think everyone’s just covering up how scared they are. I’m definitely scared. You’re right to say that there’s so much we don’t know. I’d say don’t worry about all that, but that’s stupid because you’re gonna worry anyway.” 

You laugh at that, feeling much better now knowing that you’re not alone. Ian smiles and places a comforting hand on your knee and you reach out to hold Sarah’s hand as well. The three of you sit for a moment and then Shayne walks in the room saying, “Time to start up again.”

He looks at you guys, sees the redness in your eyes and notices the way the others are comforting you and asks, “Everything okay?”

“Yea, I’m good now,” you answer. “We’ll be right out.”

Shayne nods and walks away. You go to stand but before you can get up Ian says, “You don’t have to go back out there if you’re not comfortable. We can do the rest without you if you need some space.”

“I’ll be fine, but thank you,” you reply. He smiles and gives your leg one last squeeze before standing and giving you a hand up. It’s a nice moment, one where you’re reminded about how wonderful it is to work for Ian. He’s a kind boss, but also like a big brother to you, and you appreciate having him in your life. 

The rest of the time in Australia goes smoothly, and then it’s time to fly home. Sarah and Ian stick by you throughout the long day of travel. You don’t ask them to, but you can tell they’re worried that you’ll get anxious in such a crowded space. Somehow that makes it easier, and you’re able to spend the day joking with your friends rather than panicking. 

You’re exhausted when you get home, saying a rushed goodbye to your friends and heading home.

And then the isolation begins. The world practically shuts down completely as soon as you get back to the states. You go from constantly being around people, to being completely alone. It’s fine at first, you’re exhausted from traveling and this gives you a good excuse to be lazy for a few days. 

You spend a lot of time on the phone with your family, begging them to stay inside the house and stay safe. And they seem to listen, only going out twice for supplies. But apparently that’s all it takes. 

Just over a week after the Australia trip your mom gets sick. It’s obvious right away that it’s covid. For one thing, your mom has worked with children for decades. Her immune system is impeccable, you’ve never seen her get a cold or the flu before. For her to be sick is odd, plus she has all the symptoms, so it’s a no brainer.

And then a few days later, your dad is sick as well. You knew it was inevitable, that once the virus was in the house he was going to get it as well, but hearing it for sure makes your blood run cold. 

He already has a couple of lung issues, and you can’t help but feel like this isn’t going to go well. You hate that you’re stuck on opposite coasts and can’t do anything to help. You call them as much as possible, wanting to stay positive and hearing their voices always helps.

But then your dad gets worse and ends up in the hospital. You finally tell your Smosh friends what is going on. You’d kept it quiet at first, but they picked up that something is wrong. 

You try to continue on like normal, assuring your friends that you’re fine, but they don’t accept that. While they never overstep, you’re often surprised with kind texts or things appearing on your doorstep. 

It’s a particularly bad day. Your dad has just been placed on a ventilator. You get the news while in a zoom meeting, and everyone can tell that something has happened. 

“You okay, Y/N?” Courtney asks. 

You shake your head no and think about what to answer. You could be vague, just say it’s an update about your father and leave it at that. But these are people that care about you, that want to support you. 

“My dad just got put on a ventilator,” you reply. 

“My god, Y/N, I’m so sorry. Did they say anything else?” Shayne says. 

“Apparently the doctors said it’s a preventative measure. Supposed to let his lungs heal. But we’ve all seen the statistics. Most covid patients don’t come off the vent.” 

“If you need to go you can,” Ian says. “Don’t feel like you need to stay on this call.”

“No, that’s okay. I’d rather keep working. Either that or sit in silence in my apartment,” you answer with a shrewd laugh. 

“Alright, well if you need to leave at any time please feel free. No explanation needed, we’ll understand,” Ian says. 

The meeting resumes and you sit quietly while they plan the upcoming Smosh Games schedule. You don’t have any input, and it’s pretty clear you’re not really listening, but you’re comforted by the sound of your friends' voices. 

The zoom call finishes, and you’re left alone with your thoughts. You’re not sure how much time passes, but the sun has moved to shine through a new window as husk begins so it must be a while. 

You’re startled back to reality by a text on your phone. Your heart races, fearing it’s you mom with even worse news. You breathe a sigh of relief when you see it’s from Spencer, his message saying, “Check out your front door.”

Doing as he’d instructed, you see a bag that had been delivered. It’s takeout from chilis, enough food for multiple meals, all your favorites. 

This is just what you needed. Your appetite hasn't been great, but smelling the familiar food has your stomach growling. After sending him a thank you message you dig in. 

Now full of comfort food, you manage to do your normal nightly routine of cleaning up the apartment and taking a shower. You go to bed feeling scared, but supported. 

Three days later, you get the news you’d been dreading. Your moms calls in the morning, saying the doctors think he won’t make it through the day. It’s a Sunday, and you have nothing to distract you. People text, but you leave them unanswered. 

It’s a beautiful day in Los Angeles, and you do the only thing you’re allowed to do: take a walk. 

Losing track of time, you wander through neighborhoods, making sure to keep distance from other people out walking. It pains you to see happy families, people who are making the most out of this pandemic. People whose lives aren’t being drastically changed forever. 

You get back home in the early afternoon. Soon after, your mom calls. You almost ignore it, knowing what she’s going to say but wanting to delay the inevitable. But you know you can’t do that. 

It’s a short conversation, your mother unable to say too much between the tears. 

You hang up feeling numb. It grows dark outside and finally you text Ian, asking for the next day off. 

His response is immediate, expressing his condolences and telling you to take at least the week off. You ask him to send a message to the others, not wanting to have to do it yourself. 

You wrap yourself into a cocoon of blankets, lay in bed, and cry over the loss. 

The next few days you find that you’re exhausted, with random bursts of high energy. You use the energy to respond to your friends' messages, thanking them for reaching out and telling them you’re okay. 

You speak on the phone with Damien for a while a couple days after it happens. While all of your friends are supportive, he’s the only one who’s been through this before. He truly understands what it’s like to lose a father. His experience, his words, everything he has to offer is incredibly comforting to you. And when he says he’ll always be there to listen, you know he’s telling the truth and not just saying what he thinks is the “right thing”. 

And then that Thursday, just a couple days after your dads death, the vlog of your time in Australia is released. 

You get the notification that it’s been posted as you always do, and instead of being excited that a new video is up, it sends you into a breakdown. You’re crying, gasping for breath, and you need someone there with you. 

For the first time since all of this began you cannot be alone. People have been offering to stop by and because it’s been over two weeks since any of you have been around others it’s technically safe. But you always refused, assuring them that you’re fine. 

Now, however, you need people around you. Through tears you find your phone and immediately call Courtney, asking if she and Shayne could come over. She says yes without hesitation and stays on the call while the two of them make their way to your place. 

Needing the comfort of your room you say, “Front door is open. I’ll be in my bedroom when you get here.”

“Just a couple more minutes,” Courtney replies as you climb under the covers. 

“Okay,” you murmur to let her know you heard her. 

As promised she and Shayne enter a few minutes later. Without hesitation Courtney climbs into bed with you, wrapping you up in your arms. You melt into the embrace, sobs ripping through your body. 

When you’ve finally cried yourself out, you pull away and notice Shayne’s no longer in the room. A moment later he walks back in, carrying water, tissues, and your favorite cookies. You smile weakly at him and pat the bed, inviting him to join you and Courtney. 

He sits next to you, and you’re effectively sandwiched between the two of them. It’s comforting to be surrounded by two of your best friends. You’d always been close with them, and we’re happy that nothing changed when they started dating. 

They’re two people who will always have your back, no matter what. They stay with you until the next morning, Shayne leaving temporarily to pick up anything he and Courtney need for the night. 

You hadn’t realized how much you needed to be around people, but it’s clear how much it helps to actually see people and talk to them without a screen. 

Finally, you start accepting people’s invitations to hang out. You make good use of your apartment complex’s patio area so that you can hang out while still social distancing. You don’t often talk about your dad or how you’re doing, but rather about other mundane things. It feels good to talk to friends about something even somewhat normal. 

The other cast members take turns filling in for videos that you’re supposed to appear in. You’d tried going back to business as usual, but found that you couldn’t be as lighthearted and funny as you usually were. Rather than try to fake it, you’d switched to a more behind the scenes role for the time being. 

In May and June, fans start to notice that you aren’t appearing in any videos. Many theories float around, and you decide you’re ready to make the news about your dad public, instead of letting the rumors continue to spread. 

You make a post about your father on Instagram, a picture of the two of you with a caption explaining the loss. Support floods in, from friends, family, and fans alike. 

Though it’s the hardest thing you’ve ever experienced, it’s so nice to know you have such wonderful people who will always have your back.

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AN: Thanks so much for reading! I'm working on two stories for Whumptober, One Spencer x reader and the other Damien x reader!

[covid-safer-hotties]

Global Emergency Compounded by the AIDS-like Features of SARS-CoV-2 Infection - Published Sept 1, 2024

Over a million people in the US are being infected with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus type 2 (SARS-CoV-2) every day.

Originally named after the acute respiratory syndrome it can cause as a consequence of blood vessel damage in the lungs, SARS-CoV-2 is actually primarily a blood vessel virus that spreads through the airways. It causes a complex multisystem disease (1). It is airborne (2). It can persist in the body, and is detectable in body and brain tissue even at autopsy of “recovered” patients (3).

Each infection ages the body, causes damage to the blood vessels and the immune system, and affects organs including the heart, lungs, liver, kidneys, bones, etc. (4, 5, 6)

Each infection ages the brain. Specifically, it reduces gray matter and cognitive ability (7), and potentially IQ score (8). It increases the risk of psychiatric disorders (9). SARS-CoV-2 has also been identified as contributing to accelerated dementia (10).

The potential post-acute phase impacts of SARS-CoV-2 include long COVID, some manifestations of which are chronic conditions that can last a lifetime, including heart disease, diabetes, myalgic encephalomyelitis and dysautonomia (11).

The Economist has estimated excess deaths from the beginning of the Pandemic through May 2024 at up to 35 million people worldwide. (12)

In Addition, Many Scientists Are Now Issuing Warnings… SARS-CoV-2 triggers a new airborne form of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (13, 14, 15) (some are proposing specific terms such as “CoV-AIDS”).

This is not AIDS as we know it from human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection, it is a new type of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome with different deleterious effects on immune function (16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21), but both resulting in increased vulnerability to infections (22). Immune system deficiency and other COVID properties also suggest a potential link to greater risk of cancers (23, 24, 25, 26, 27).

The “original” AIDS caused by HIV takes up to around 10 to 15 years to make its presence felt, with the initial infection usually barely noticed and often resembling the common cold or a flu-like disease until its damage manifests itself leading to death in the absence of treatments (28, 29).

With SARS-CoV-2, immunodeficiency develops in the weeks and months following infection. It involves reduction and functional exhaustion of T Cells (30), enhanced inhibition of MHC-I expression (31), downregulating CD19 expression in B cells (32) and other evidence of immune dysregulation (33, 34). In one study, the dysregulation persisted for 8 months following initial mild-to-moderate SARS-CoV-2 infection, the length of the study (35). There is no “cure” for any of the damage caused by SARS-CoV-2 including immune dysregulation.

Did You Know? Repeated infections are leading to prolonged immune dysregulation, and increase the risk of progressive disability and death.

Long COVID is a multisystem disease with debilitating symptoms, which has had a profound impact on society and the global economy. In the USA, economists have estimated that long COVID will incur cumulative future costs of more than US$4 trillion (36, 37).

The worldwide devastating economic consequences of this mass disabling event have been measured in terms of total work hours and GDP lost around the world (38).

It theoretically only takes a single viral particle to initiate an infection, and most infections are initiated by very few viral particles (39).

Despite current popular belief, the immune system is NOT a muscle, and does NOT benefit from being repeatedly challenged with disease-causing microbes. In fact, its finite resources are depleted with each new infection.

Herd immunity is unattainable for a rapidly mutating, immune-disrupting virus, and there is no basis to believe that a vascular infection will evolve into the common cold. Continuing to ignore SARS-CoV-2 will not make it go away. Depriving the virus of publicity does not deprive it of its continuing lethal effects.

SARS-CoV-2 is continuing to evolve and mutate – it is not running out of evolutionary space. It is not a cold or the flu, but primarily a blood vessel disease. It is damaging society as we know it.

How many repeated infections can we expect young people to endure and survive? Even if they get only 1 infection each year, that’s 10 infections in 10 school years. This is not compatible with health and a long life. Repeated infections can lead to long COVID and shortened lifespans.

How Do We Protect Ourselves, How Do We Protect Our Children, When Government Public Health Advice Has Failed?

By reducing transmission so that R0 remains less than one (meaning that each person infects less than one other), we can suppress and gradually eliminate the virus, targeting a safer return to pre-2020 normal.

Handwashing is helpful, but it is not the main way to stop the spread of this airborne virus.

Respirators can block 95% or more of virus particles through electrostatic action, and are therefore highly effective at reducing infection even if only one person in a conversation is wearing them. They are far more effective if all people are wearing them (40).

Transmission can be reduced with HEPA filtration and ventilation of indoor air.

The virus spreads more quickly in indoor settings, but also spreads outdoors.

For medical facilities, it is essential to clean the air with ventilation and filtration and require universal high-quality masking (with N-95/ FFP3 respirators or better) to protect medical staff and patients.

For workplaces, clean air will reduce transmission; and encouraging employees to test and stay home when infectious is essential. High-quality masking should be encouraged in the case of symptoms, a sick person at home, or any other suspicion that one could be carrying the virus. Remote work should be normalized and encouraged wherever possible.

For entertainment venues, events should be held outdoors when possible; and if indoors, clean air is key to protecting audiences. Audiences should also be encouraged to wear respirators to avoid getting infected and infecting others. Digital streaming options should always be offered.

For restaurants, an emphasis on outdoor dining will substantially reduce transmission. Patio service should be encouraged, and indoor dining areas should be well-ventilated with a high level of air-exchanges. Home or curbside delivery offers a safer alternative.

For schools, clean air will reduce transmission; encouraging students to test and stay home when infectious is essential to preserving their health. Masking or remote learning should be initiated whenever a case is detected or the incidence in the general population sharply increases. A permanent hybrid model / digital option can accommodate children with disabilities or those who simply do better learning from home.

Teachers and medical professionals may prefer to use transparent masks, or to wear HEPA-filtered headgear equipment that may be more universally tolerated/accepted.

To track our progress, we need sustained wastewater and population-level testing.

With just 60-70 percent of people taking mitigation measures such as masking, testing and isolating when infected, we can dramatically reduce forward transmission of the virus.

Even with very imperfect measures, as long as one infected person does not infect more than one person on average, the virus will eventually die out. The fewer people each person infects on average, the faster it will happen.

We still have a window of opportunity. Protecting ourselves and our families is in fact protecting the economy and the continued orderly functioning of our society.

[mariacallous]

If Benjamin Netanyahu had accepted defeat in June 2021, finally yielding the stage to a coalition of his opponents, he could have retired at the age of 71 with a decent claim to having been one of Israel’s more successful prime ministers.

He had already surpassed the time in office of Israel’s founder, David Ben-Gurion, becoming the country’s longest-serving prime minister in 2019. His second stretch in office, from 2009 to 2021, coincided with perhaps the best 12 years Israel had known since its founding in 1948. The country enjoyed relative security, with no major wars or prolonged Intifadas. The period was one of uninterrupted economic growth and prosperity. Thanks to its early adoption of widespread vaccination, Israel was one of the first countries in the world to emerge from the coronavirus pandemic. And toward the end of that span came three agreements establishing diplomatic relations with Arab countries; more were likely on the way.

Twelve years of Netanyahu’s leadership had seemingly made Israel more secure and prosperous, with deep trade and defense ties across the world. But this wasn’t enough to win him another term. A majority of Israelis had tired of him, and he had been tainted by charges of bribery and fraud in his dealings with billionaires and press barons. In the space of 24 months, Israel held four elections ending in stalemate, with neither Netanyahu nor his rivals winning a majority. Finally, an unlikely alliance of right-wing, centrist, left-wing, and Islamist parties managed to band together and replace him with his former aide Naftali Bennett in June 2021.

At that point, Netanyahu could have sealed his legacy. A plea bargain on offer from the attorney general would have ended his corruption trial with a conviction on reduced charges and no jail time. He would have had to leave politics, probably for good. Over the course of four decades in public life, including 15 years as prime minister and 22 as the Likud party’s leader, he had already left an indelible mark on Israel, dominating the second half of its history. But he couldn’t bear the thought of giving up power.

Within 18 months, he was back as prime minister for the third time. The unwieldy coalition that replaced him had imploded, and this time around, Netanyahu’s camp of far-right and religious parties ran a disciplined campaign, exploiting the weaknesses of their divided rivals to emerge with a small parliamentary majority, despite still being virtually tied in the vote count.

Nine months later, Netanyahu, the man who promised, above everything else, to deliver security for Israel’s citizens, presided over the darkest day in his country’s existence. A total breakdown of the Israeli military and intelligence structure allowed Hamas to breach Israel’s border and embark on a rampage of murder, kidnapping, and rape, killing more than 1,100 Israelis and taking more than 250 hostage. The calamities of that day, the failures of leadership leading up to it, and the traumas it caused will haunt Israel for generations. Even leaving completely aside the war he has prosecuted since that day and its yet-unknown end, October 7 means that Netanyahu will always be remembered as Israel’s worst-ever leader.

How does one measure a prime minister?

There is no broadly accepted ranking of the 13 men and one woman who have led Israel, but most lists would feature David Ben-Gurion at the top. Not only was he the George Washington of the Jewish state, proclaiming its independence just three years after a third of the Jewish people had been exterminated in the Holocaust, but his administration established many of the institutions and policies that define Israel to this day. Other favorites include Levi Eshkol, for his shrewd and prudent leadership in the tense weeks before the Six Day War, and Menachem Begin, for achieving the country’s first peace agreement with an Arab nation, Egypt.

All three of these men had mixed records and detractors, of course. Ben-Gurion had autocratic tendencies and was consumed by party infighting during his later years in office. After the Six Day War, Eshkol failed to deliver a coherent plan for what Israel should do with the new territories it occupied and the Palestinians who have remained under its rule ever since. In Begin’s second term, Israel entered a disastrous war in Lebanon, and his government nearly tanked the economy. But in most Israelis’ minds, these leaders’ positive legacies outweigh the negatives.

Who are the “worst prime ministers”? Until now, most Israelis regarded Golda Meir as the top candidate for that dismal title. The intelligence failure leading to the Yom Kippur War was on her watch. Before the war, she rejected Egyptian overtures toward peace (though some Israeli historians have recently argued that these were less than sincere). And when war was clearly imminent, her administration refrained from launching preemptive attacks that could have saved the lives of hundreds of soldiers.

Other “worst” candidates have included Ehud Olmert, for launching the second Lebanon war and becoming Israel’s first former prime minister to go to prison for corruption; Yitzhak Shamir, for kiboshing an agreement with Jordan’s King Hussein that many believe could have been a significant step toward resolving the Israel-Palestinian conflict; and Ehud Barak, for spectacularly failing to fulfill his extravagant promises to bring peace with both the Palestinians and Syria.

But Benjamin Netanyahu now surpasses these contenders by orders of magnitude. He has brought far-right extremists into the mainstream of government and made himself, and the country, beholden to them. His corruption is flamboyant. And he has made terrible security decisions that brought existential danger to the country he pledged to lead and protect. Above all, his selfishness is without parallel: He has put his own interests ahead of Israel’s at every turn.

Netanyahu has the distinction of being the only Israeli prime minister to make a once reviled movement on the right fringe of the country’s politics into a government stakeholder.

Rabbi Meir Kahane, the founder of a Jewish-supremacist group called Kach, won a lone seat in the Knesset in 1984. He openly called for replacing Israeli democracy with a constitution based on the laws of the Torah and for denying Israel’s Arab citizens equal rights. During Kahane’s single legislative term, the entire Israeli political establishment shunned him. When he got up to speak in the Knesset, all of its members would leave the plenum.

In 1985, Likud joined other parties in changing election law so that those who denied Israel’s democratic identity, denied its Jewish identity, or incited racism could be barred from running for office. Under this provision, Kach was never allowed to compete in another election. Kahane was assassinated in New York in 1990. Four years later, a member of his movement killed 29 Muslims at prayer in Hebron, and the Israeli government proscribed Kach as a terror organization and forced it to disband.

But the Kahanists didn’t go away. With each Israeli election, they tried to rename their movement and adjust its platform to conform with electoral law. They remained ostracized. Then, in 2019, Netanyahu saw a roadblock on his path to reelection that they could help him get around.

Several Israeli parties had pledged not to serve in a government led by an indicted prime minister—quite possibly, enough of them to shut Netanyahu out of power. To prevent that from happening, Netanyahu needed to eke out every possible right-wing and religious vote for his potential coalition. The polls were predicting that the latest Kahanist iteration, the Jewish Power party, which is led by the thuggish but media-savvy Itamar Ben-Gvir, would receive only about 10,000 votes, well below the threshold needed to make the party a player on its own; but Netanyahu believed that if he could persuade the Kahanists and other small right-wing parties to merge their candidates’ lists into a joint slate, together they could win a seat or two for his potential coalition—just what he needed for a majority.

Netanyahu began pressuring the leaders of the small right-wing parties to merge their lists. At first the larger of these were outraged. Netanyahu was meddling in their affairs and, worse, trying to coerce them to accept the Kahanist outcasts. Gradually, he wore down their resistance—employing rabbis to persuade politicians, orchestrating media campaigns in the nationalist press, and promising central roles in future administrations. Media figures close to Netanyahu accused Bezalel Smotrich, a fundamentalist settler and the new leader of the religious Zionist party, of “endangering” the nation by making it easier for the hated left to win the election. Soon enough, Smotrich’s old-school national-religious party merged not only with Ben-Gvir’s Jewish Power but with an even more obscure, proudly homophobic party led by Avi Maoz.

Netanyahu did worry a bit about the optics. Throughout five stalemated election campaigns from 2019 to 2022, Likud coordinated closely with Jewish Power, but Netanyahu refused to be seen in public with Ben-Gvir. During the 2022 campaign, at a religious festival, he even waited backstage for Ben-Gvir to leave the premises before going up to make his speech.

Two weeks later, there was no longer any need to keep up the act. Netanyahu’s strategy succeeded: His coalition, merged into four lists, edged out its squabbling opponents with 64 of the Knesset’s 120 seats.

Netanyahu finally had the “right-wing in full” government he had often promised. But before he could return to the prime minister’s office, his allies demanded a division of the spoils. The ministries with the most influence on Israelis’ daily lives—health, housing, social services, and the interior—went to the ultra-Orthodox parties. Smotrich became finance minister; Maoz was appointed deputy minister in charge of a new “Agency for Jewish Identity,” with power to intervene in educational programs. And Ben-Gvir, the subject of numerous police investigations for violence and incitement over a period of three decades, was put in charge of a newly titled “Ministry of National Security,” with authority over Israel’s police and prison services.

As Netanyahu signed away power to the Kahanists, he told the international news media that he wasn’t forming a far-right government. The Kahanists were joining his government. He would be in control. But Netanyahu hadn’t just given Israel’s most extreme racists unprecedented power and legitimacy. He’d also insinuated them into his own formerly mainstream party: By March 2024, Likud’s candidates for local elections in a handful of towns had merged their slates with those of Jewish Power.

Likud long prided itself on combining staunch Jewish nationalism, even militarism, with a commitment to liberal democracy. But a more radical stream within the party eschewed those liberal values and championed chauvinistic and autocratic positions. For much of the past century, the liberal wing was dominant and provided most of the party’s leadership. Netanyahu himself espoused the values of the liberal wing—until he fell out with all the main liberal figures. By 2019, none was left to oppose the alliance with Ben-Gvir’s Kahanists.

Now more than a third of Likud’s representatives were religious, and those who weren’t preferred to call themselves “traditional” rather than secular. They didn’t object to cooperating with the Kahanists; indeed, many had already worked with them in the past. In fact, many Likud Knesset members by that point were indistinguishable from the Jewish Power ones. Israel’s worst prime minister didn’t just form an alliance of convenience with the country’s most irresponsible extremists; he made them integral to his party and the running of the state.

That Netanyahu is personally corrupt is not altogether novel in the history of the Israeli prime ministership. What makes him worse than others is his open contempt for the rule of law.

By 2018, Netanyahu was the subject of four simultaneous corruption investigations that had been in motion for more than a year. In one, known as Case 4000, Netanyahu stood accused of promising regulatory favors to the owner of Israel’s largest telecom corporation in return for favorable coverage on a popular news site. Three of the prime minister’s closest advisers had agreed to testify against him.

Investigations of prime ministers are not rare in Israel. Netanyahu was the subject of one during his first term. The three prime ministers who served in the decade between his first and second terms—Ehud Barak, Ariel Sharon, and Ehud Olmert—had all been investigated as well. Only in Olmert’s case did police deem the evidence sufficient to mount a prosecution. At the time, in 2008, Netanyahu was the leader of the opposition.

“We’re talking about a prime minister who is up to his neck in investigations and has no public or moral mandate to make fateful decisions for Israel,” Netanyahu said of Olmert. “There is a concern, I have to say real, not without basis, that he will make decisions based on his personal interest of political survival and not on the national interest.”

Ten years later, Netanyahu would be the one snared in multiple investigations. Then he no longer spoke of corruption in high office but of a “witch hunt,” orchestrated by rogue police commanders and left-wing state prosecutors, and egged on by a hostile news media, all with the aim of toppling a right-wing leader.

Netanyahu was determined to politicize the legal procedure and pit his supporters against Israel’s law-enforcement agencies and judiciary. Never mind that the two previous prime ministers who had resigned because of corruption charges were from the center left. Nor did it matter that he had appointed the police commissioner and attorney general himself; both were deeply religious men with impeccable nationalist backgrounds, but he tarred them as perfidious tools of leftist conspiracy.

Rather than contemplate resignation, on May 24, 2020, Netanyahu became the first sitting Israeli prime minister to go on trial. He has denied all wrongdoing (the trial is still under way). In a courthouse corridor before one session, he gave a 15-minute televised speech accusing the legal establishment of “trying to topple me and the right-wing government. For over a decade, the left wing have failed to do this at the ballot box, and in recent years have come up with a new idea. Elements in the police and prosecutor’s office have joined left-wing journalists to concoct delusional charges.”

The law didn’t require Netanyahu to resign while fighting the charges against him in court. But doing so had seemed logical to his predecessors under similar circumstances—and to Israel’s lawmakers, who had never envisaged that a prime minister would so brazenly challenge the justice system, which he had a duty to uphold. For Netanyahu, however, remaining in power was an end in itself, one more important than preserving Israel’s most crucial institutions, to say nothing of Israelis’ trust in them.

Netanyahu placed extremists in positions of power, undermined confidence in the rule of law, and sacrificed principle to power. Little wonder, then, that last summer, tensions over the role of Israel’s judiciary became unmanageable. The crisis underlined all of these reasons that Netanyahu should go down as Israel’s worst prime minister.

For 34 of the past 47 years, Israel’s prime ministers have come from the Likud party. And yet many on the right still grumble that “Likud doesn’t know how to rule” and “you vote right and get left.” Likudniks complain about the lingering power of “the elites,” a left-wing minority that loses at the ballot box but still controls the civil service, the upper echelons of the security establishment, the universities, and the media. A growing anti-judicial wing within Likud demands constitutional change and a clamping-down on the supreme court’s “judicial activism.”

Netanyahu had once minimized these complaints, but his stance on the judiciary changed after he was indicted in 2019. Indeed, at the start of his current term, Likud’s partners demanded commitments to constitutional change, which they received. The ultra-Orthodox parties were anxious to pass a law exempting religious seminary students from military service. Such exemptions had already fallen afoul of the supreme court’s equality standards, so the religious parties wanted the law to include a “court bypass.” Netanyahu acceded to this. To pass the legislation in the Knesset, he appointed Simcha Rothman, a staunch critic of the court, as the chair of the Knesset’s Constitution Committee.

He also appointed Yariv Levin, another fierce critic of the court, as justice minister. Just six days after the new government was sworn in, Levin rolled out a “judicial reform” plan, prepared by a conservative think tank, that called for drastically limiting the court’s powers to review legislation and gave politicians control over the appointment of new justices.

Within days, an extremely efficient counter-campaign pointed out the dangers the plan posed, not just to Israel’s fragile and limited democracy, but to its economy and security. Hundreds of thousands of Israelis protested in the streets. Likud began to drop in the polls, and Netanyahu privately urged the leaders of the coalition parties to delay the vote. They refused to back down, and Levin threatened to resign over any delay.

Netanyahu’s motives, unlike those of his partners, were not ideological. His objective was political survival. He needed to keep his hard-won majority intact and the judges off-balance. But the protests were unrelenting. Netanyahu’s independent-minded defense minister, Yoav Gallant, pointed to the controversy’s dire implications for the Israel Defense Forces as hundreds of volunteer reserve officers threatened to suspend their service rather than “serve a dictatorship.”

Netanyahu wasn’t sure he wanted to go through with the judicial coup, but the idea of one of Likud’s senior ministers breaking ranks in public was unthinkable. On March 25 of last year, Gallant made a public statement that the constitutional legislation was a “clear and major threat to the security of Israel” and he would not be voting for it. The next evening, Netanyahu announced that he was firing Gallant.

In Jerusalem, protesters besieged Netanyahu’s home. In Tel Aviv, they blocked main highways. The next morning, the trade unions announced a general strike, and by that evening, Netanyahu backed down, announcing that he was suspending the legislation and would hold talks with the opposition on finding compromises. Gallant kept his post. The talks collapsed, protests started up again, and Netanyahu once again refused to listen to the warnings coming from the security establishment—not only of anger within the IDF, but that Israel’s enemies were planning to take advantage of the country’s disunity to launch an attack.

The debate over judicial reform pitted two visions of Israel against each other. On one side was a liberal and secular Israel that relied on the supreme court to defend its democratic values; on the other, a religious and conservative Israel that feared that unelected judges would impose incompatible ideas on their Jewish values.

Netanyahu’s government made no attempt to reconcile these two visions. The prime minister had spent too many years, and all those toxic electoral campaigns, exploiting and deepening the rift between them. Even when he belatedly and halfheartedly tried to rein in the radical and fundamentalist demons he had ridden back into office, he found that he could no longer control them.

Whether Netanyahu really meant to eviscerate Israel’s supreme court as part of a plot to weaken the judiciary and intimidate the judges in his own case, or whether he had no choice in the matter and was simply a hostage of his own coalition, is immaterial. What matters is that he appointed Levin as justice minister and permitted the crisis to happen. Ultimately, and despite his professed belief in liberal democracy, Netanyahu allowed Levin and his coalition partners to convince him that they were doing the right thing—because whatever kept him in office was right for Israel. Democracy would remain strong because he would remain in charge.

Trying to diminish the powers of the supreme court isn’t what makes Netanyahu Israel’s worst prime minister. The judicial reform failed anyway. Only one of its elements got through the Knesset before the war with Hamas began, and the court struck it down as unconstitutional six months later. The justices’ ruling to preserve their powers, despite the Knesset’s voting to limit them, could have caused a constitutional crisis if it had happened in peacetime. But by then Israel was facing a much bigger crisis.

Given Israel’s history, the ultimate yardstick of its leaders’ success is the security they deliver for their fellow citizens. In 2017, as I was finishing my unauthorized biography of Netanyahu, I commissioned a data analyst to calculate the average annual casualty rate (Israeli civilians and soldiers) of each prime minister since 1948. The results confirmed what I had already assumed. In the 11 years that Netanyahu had by then been prime minister, the average annual number of Israelis killed in war and terror attacks was lower, by a considerable margin, than under any previous prime minister.

My book on Netanyahu was not admiring. But I felt that it was only fair to include that data point in his favor in the epilogue and the very last footnote. Likud went on to use it in its 2019 campaigns without attributing the source.

The numbers were hard to argue with. Netanyahu was a hard-line prime minister who had done everything in his power to derail the Oslo peace process and prevent any move toward compromise with the Palestinians. Throughout much of his career, he encouraged military action by the West, first against Iraq after 9/11, and then against Iran. But in his years as prime minister, he balked at initiating or being dragged into wars of his own. His risk aversion and preference for covert operations or air strikes rather than ground operations had, in his first two stretches in power, from 1996 to 1999 and 2009 to 2021, kept Israelis relatively safe.

Netanyahu supporters on the right could also argue, on basis of the numbers, that those who brought bloodshed upon Israel, in the form of Palestinian suicide bombings and rocket attacks, were actually Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres, the architects of the Oslo Accords; Ehud Barak, with his rash attempts to bring peace; and Ariel Sharon, who withdrew Israeli soldiers and settlers unilaterally from Gaza in 2005, creating the conditions for Hamas’s electoral victory there the following year. That argument no longer holds.

If future biographers of Israeli prime ministers undertake a similar analysis, Netanyahu will no longer be able to claim the lowest casualty rate. His 16th year in office, 2023, was the third-bloodiest in Israel’s history, surpassed only by 1948 and 1973, Israel’s first year of independence and the year of the Yom Kippur War, respectively.

The first nine months of 2023 had already seen a rise in deadly violence in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, as well as terrorist attacks within Israel’s borders. Then came the Hamas attack on October 7, in which at least 1,145 Israelis were massacred and 253 kidnapped and taken to Gaza. More than 30 hostages are now confirmed dead.

No matter how the war in Gaza ends, what happens in its aftermath, or when Netanyahu’s term finally ends, the prime minister will forever be associated above all with that day and the disastrous war that followed. He will go down as the worst prime minister because he has been catastrophic for Israeli security.

To understand how Netanyahu so drastically failed Israel’s security requires going back at least to 2015, the year his long-term strategic bungling of the Iranian threat came into view. His mishandling didn’t happen in isolation; it is also related to the deprioritization of other threats, including the catastrophe that materialized on October 7.

Netanyahu flew to Washington, D.C., in 2015 to implore U.S. lawmakers to obstruct President Barack Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran. Many view this gambit as extraordinarily damaging to Israel’s most crucial alliance—the relationship with the United States is the very bulwark of its security. Perhaps so; but the stunt didn’t make subsequent U.S. administrations less supportive of Israel. Even Obama would still go on to sign the largest 10-year package of military aid to Israel the year after Netanyahu’s speech. Rather, the damage Netanyahu caused by presuming too much of the United States wasn’t to the relationship, but to Israel itself.

Netanyahu’s strategy regarding Iran was based on his assumption that America would one day launch an attack on Iran’s nuclear program. We know this from his 2022 book, Bibi: My Story, in which he admits to arguing repeatedly with Obama “for an American strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities.” Senior Israeli officials have confirmed that he expected Donald Trump to launch such a strike as well. In fact, Netanyahu was so sure that Trump, unlike Obama, would give the order that he had no strategy in place for dealing with Iran’s nuclear program when Trump decided, at Netanyahu’s own urging, to withdraw from the Iran deal in May 2018.

Israel’s military and intelligence chiefs had been far from enamored with the Iran deal, but they’d seized the opportunity it presented to divert some of the intelligence resources that had been focused on Iran’s nuclear program to other threats, particularly Tehran’s network of proxies across the region. They were caught by surprise when the Trump administration ditched the Iran deal (Netanyahu knew it was coming but didn’t inform them). This unilateral withdrawal effectively removed the limitations on Iran’s nuclear development and required an abrupt reversal of Israeli priorities.

Senior Israeli officials I spoke with had to tread a wary path here. Those who were still in active service couldn’t challenge the prime minister’s strategy directly. But in private some were scathing about the lack of a coherent strategy on Iran. “It takes years to build intelligence capabilities. You can’t just change target priorities overnight,” one told me.

The result was a dissipation of Israeli efforts to stop Iran—which is committed to the destruction of Israel. Iran sped further than ever down the path of uranium enrichment, and its proxies, including the Houthis in Yemen and Hezbollah on Israel’s northern border, grew ever more powerful.

In the months leading up to October 7, Israel’s intelligence community repeatedly warned Netanyahu that Iran and its proxies were plotting a major attack within Israel, though few envisaged something on the scale of October 7. By the fall of 2023, motives were legion: fear that an imminent Israeli diplomatic breakthrough with Saudi Arabia could change the geopolitics of the region; threats that Ben-Gvir would allow Jews greater access to the al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem and worsen conditions for Palestinian prisoners; rumors that the deepening tensions within Israeli society would render any response to an attack slow and disjointed.

Netanyahu chose to ignore the warnings. The senior officers and intelligence chiefs who issued them were, to his mind, conspiring with the law-enforcement agencies and legal establishment that had put him on trial and were trying to obstruct his government’s legislation. None of them had his experience and knowledge of the real threats facing Israel. Hadn’t he been right in the past when he’d refused to listen to leftist officials and so-called experts?

Hamas’s surprise attack on October 7 was the result of a colossal failure at all levels of Israel’s security and intelligence community. They had all seen the warning signals but continued to believe that the main threat came from Hezbollah, the larger and far better-equipped and trained enemy to the north. Israel’s security establishment believed that Hamas was isolated in Gaza, and that it and the other Palestinian organizations had been effectively deterred from attacking Israel.

Netanyahu was the originator of this assumption, and its biggest proponent. He believed that keeping Hamas in power in Gaza, as it had been for nearly two years when he returned to office in 2009, was in Israel’s interest. Periodic rocket attacks on Israeli communities in the south were a price worth paying to keep the Palestinian movement split between the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority in the West Bank enclaves and Hamas in Gaza. Such division would push the troublesome two-state solution off the global agenda and allow Israel to focus on regional alliances with like-minded Arab autocracies that also feared Iran. The Palestinian issue would sink into irrelevance.

Netanyahu’s disastrous strategy regarding Gaza and Hamas is part of what makes him Israel’s worst prime minister, but it’s not the only factor. Previous Israeli prime ministers, too, blundered into bloody wars on the basis of misguided strategies and faulty advice from their military and intelligence advisers.

Netanyahu stands out from them for his refusal to accept responsibility, and for his political machinations and smear campaigns since October 7. He blames IDF generals and nourishes the conspiracy theory that they, in alliance with the protest movement, somehow allowed October 7 to happen.

Netanyahu believes that he is the ultimate victim of that tragic day. Convinced by his own campaign slogans, he argues that he is the only one who can deliver Israel from this valley of shadows to the sunlit uplands of “total victory.” He refuses to consider any advice about ending the war and continues to prioritize preserving his coalition, because he appears incapable of distinguishing between his own fate, now tainted by tragic failure, and that of Israel.

Many around the world assume that Israel’s war with Hamas has proceeded according to some plan of Netanyahu’s. This is a mistake. Netanyahu has the last word as prime minister and head of the emergency war cabinet, but he has used his power mainly to prevaricate, procrastinate, and obstruct. He delayed the initial ground offensive into Gaza, hesitated for weeks over the first truce and hostage-release agreement in November, and is now doing the same over another such deal with Hamas. For the past six months, he has prevented any meaningful cabinet discussion of Israel’s strategic goals. He has rejected the proposals of his own security establishment and the Biden administration. He presented vague principles for “the day after Hamas” to the cabinet only in late February, and they have yet to be debated.

However one views the war in Gaza—as a justified war of defense in which Hamas is responsible for the civilian casualties it has cynically hidden behind, or as an intentional genocide of the Palestinian people, or as anything in between—none of it is Netanyahu’s plan. That’s because Netanyahu has no plan for Gaza, only one for remaining in power. His obstructionism, his showdowns with generals, his confrontations with the Biden administration—all are focused on that end, which means preserving his far-right coalition and playing to his hard-core nationalist base.

Meanwhile, he’s doing what he has always done: wearing down and discrediting his political opponents in the hope of proving to an exhausted and traumatized public that he’s the only alternative. So far, he’s failing. Polls show that an overwhelming majority of Israelis want him gone. But Netanyahu is fending off calls to hold an early election until he believes he is within striking distance of winning.

Netanyahu’s ambition has consumed both him and Israel. To regain and remain in office, he has sacrificed his own authority and parceled out power to the most extreme politicians. Since his reelection in 2022, Netanyahu is no longer the center of power but a vacuum, a black hole that has engulfed all of Israel’s political energy. His weakness has given the far right and religious fundamentalists extraordinary control over Israel’s affairs, while other segments of the population are left to pursue the never-ending quest to end his reign.

One man’s pursuit of power has diverted Israel from confronting its most urgent priorities: the threat from Iran, the conflict with the Palestinians, the desire to nurture a Westernized society and economy in the most contested corner of the Middle East, the internal contradictions between democracy and religion, the clash between tribal phobias and high-tech hopes. Netanyahu’s obsession with his own destiny as Israel’s protector has caused his country grievous damage.

Most Israelis already realize that Netanyahu is the worst of the 14 prime ministers their country has had in its 76 years of independence. But in the future, Jews might even remember him as the leader who inflicted the most harm on his people since the squabbling Hasmonean kings brought civil war and Roman occupation to Judea nearly 21 centuries ago. As long as he remains in power, he could yet surpass them.

[herlondonboy]

I Miss You, I’m Sorry

pairings: Taylor Swift x gn!reader (platonic)

Summary: in which you’ve been at everyone of Taylor’s opening shows in the pit since the Fearless tour, but you’re not at the opening of the eras tour

warnings: angst, unspecified chronic illness, reader death, this was supposed to be happy, spelling mistakes, sad Tay.

word count: 1.5k

You had been to everyone of Taylor Swift’s tours. It was a known fact between the Swifties. So much so that people went go up to you at the beginning of the Reputation Stadium Tour and asked for your autograph.

You and Taylor weren’t necessarily friends, but she was well acquainted with you and how your wear obscure outfits to each show. She often found herself scouring the front rows of each show for a familiar, comforting face.

Many videos had showed how Taylor’s eyes would light up when she saw you and vice versa. How she’d wave giddily, and hold back a laugh at your costume and how you’d bounce up and down, screaming the lyrics louder than anyone else.

You weren’t the first Swiftie, but you had been crowned the biggest Swiftie.

At the end of the Glendale show, you had stayed behind to take a mass amount of photos in your costume. That was the first time you were taken backstage. Part of you thought that you were being kidnapped (three men in all black, looking all emotionless and brooding leading you somewhere dark was suspicious to say the least), but then Taylor was stood in front of you with a wide smile.

Your eyes were wide and your mouth was agape, not to mention that you could hear your heart beating in your ears. “H-Hi?” You squeaked out, afraid that if you spoke too quickly you’d wake from this dream.

“Hi! Y/N, I’m-“

“Taylor-fucking-Swift,” you cut her off with a gasp.

Tears welled up in your eyes. You were supposed to meet her at the Reputation Secret Sessions in New York, but something had come up, so you didn’t get to. Part of you wished this had happened three years ago when you weren’t so weak, but it was happening nonetheless.

“Can i hug you?” Taylor asked.

You nodded rapidly and Taylor leaned forward to wrap her arms around you. You melted into the hug, sniffling softly, “I can die happily now.”

Taylor chuckled, “I missed you at the Secret Sessions,” there was a frown in her voice that made you feel guilty.

“I caught the flu,” You lied, “I didn’t want to make you or anyone else sick. I really wanted to go, though.”

The blonde smiled, still hugging you, “Well, when my next album comes out, I’ll have a super secret session just for you. Since you’re my biggest fan,” She said and there was some truth behind her words.

You had been invited to Taylor’s house to listen to the songs on Lover a few days before the first Lover Secret Session. To say you adored each song (Death By A Thousand Cuts being your favourite) was an understatement.

Taylor didn’t notice how jittery you got when Soon You’ll Get Better was playing. It seemed like you had related especially to that song, whether you were the best friend of the person in the hospital room or you were the person in the hospital room.

Your sister, who was also a big fan of Taylor and had been accompanying you to each tour, had always skipped that song whenever playing the Lover album in order, it hurt.

When Midnights came out, you were practically promised a world tour since the Lover Fest was cancelled due to the global pandemic. That was a hard time Your you and your older sister. As if you weren’t sick enough as it was, you had caught the coronavirus and had been forced into a hospital where your family couldn’t visit you for months.

But it got better. The rerelease of Fearless and the release of Folklore came and some people had spammed your instagram account with the news of finding out that you had helped Taylor write the bonus song. Then not long after, you had been allowed visitors and your sister never left your side again.

Though you were bedridden, you kept a smile on your face. Most people weren’t bothered by your sudden disappearance, it had happened a few times in the past whenever you had gotten sick, because you always came back with a brighter smile.

Then Midnights came out and Taylor announced her Eras tour and TikTok was going wild. Some fans were complaining about the price, some were wondering if you had gotten tickets. That led to people beginning to worry. You had never been gone for two years, and worse, your sister was gone, too.

So, when March 17th rolled up, and Taylor opened the tour with Miss Americana And The Heartbreak Prince, Taylor and her fans searched for you in the crowd. You weren’t there. And the second night in Glendale, you weren’t there either, but your sister was.

And that gave Taylor a little bit of hope. She waved at your sister, who waved back, fiddling with bottom of the top that you wore to the opening of the Fearless tour back in 2009.

At the end of the show, your sister had been led backstage where Taylor had changed and attacked her with a hug. The blonde broke away with a grin, “Hi! How are you? It’s been ages!”

“I’m good, yeah, it has.” Your sister responded, “Life’s been cruel, you know?”

The blonde nodded and looked down, “Where’s?-“

“Y/N told me to give you this,” Your sister held out a diary, making Taylor falter.

“What’s this?” She asked, frowning at the title of it.

Your sister sniffled, “They said- They said that they’re sorry that they couldn’t make it this year, that something came up. They really wanted to be here, Tay.”

The blonde felt her cheeks begin to dampen as your sister continued talking.

“They wrote this when they realised that they wouldn’t-“ A sob tried to claw its way out of your sister’s throat. “M-make it.”

The blonde shook her head.

Whilst the two of you weren’t necessarily friends, you knew each other well enough to know that you didn’t need to label whatever it was going on between the two of you. Your sister’s shoulder’s shook slightly as Taylor took the diary and hugged the woman.

“I’m so sorry,” She apologised profusely. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

A few days later, It was the Las Vegas shows. And, though Taylor hadn’t quite recovered from the news, she couldn’t just not go and perform. So, swallowing down her tears, she made her way onto the stage and sang like she wasn’t feeling all of these negative emotions.

And when it came to her surprise songs, she was sat at the piano, blinking away her tears. She cleared her throat and looked at her fans with a small smile, “So, uh, How is everybody?”

They began screaming on top of each other, making her chuckle slightly.

“Um, I’m sure you’ve all heard by now, but my good friend, Y/N Y/L/N past away last year. Their- their sister told me after the second show in Glendale and they wrote down a diary, wording every thought that had ever crossed their mind about me. They said- they said if they ever died and we became friends they wouldn’t want me to cry for them because they’re ’no one special,’ but they were probably one of the best people that I have ever met.

“Y/N drew a sketch of what their next outfit to one of my tours would be,” The image went up on the screen, before a series of photos of you at tours, smiling at Taylor and the camera. “I just- I wanted to say that even though we didn’t do labels, you were probably my best friend, Y/N,” She sniffled, “And I love you.”

The chords to your favourite song began and as Taylor tried to keep the lump in her throat down and her tears at bay, and a slideshow that your sister had composed began playing in the background.

Your life played out in front of everyone from beginning to finish, from 1994 to 2022. All twenty eight years. The people in the audience watched as you lost your parents and then yourself.

And then in the end, a photo of you grinning tiredly flashed onto the screen as the song faded out. And just as it ended, your voice sounded through the speakers.

Is this recording? Yeah? I’m going to assume it is. Okay, um, it’s February 21st— Happy Birthday, Joe. Uh, i don’t know what I want to say. I mean, thank you to everyone that has made my life worth living. I mean, at fifteen I wore a stupid outfit to a Taylor Swift concert and now I’m friends with her? It’s kind of sad knowing that I’ll never get to hear Speak Now Taylor’s Version, but oh well.

I’m going to be honest, I’m so scared to die. Every night for the past six months I’ve been scared to fall asleep, knowing that there will be a chance that I don’t wake up. I don’t want to die, I’m terrified. I don’t want to leave my sister alone and I know that she doesn’t want me to know, but she’s been crying herself to sleep since we got the news.

I just want to know if you’ll look after her for me? I’m all she’s got. Thank- thank you. I love you.

There was silence followed by Taylor’s small, ‘I love you, too.’ And then cheers from the crowd. Some people were announcing their admiration for you and some were crying.

“I miss you, Y/N.” Taylor whispered. “I’m sorry for not being there with you.”

—

What’s your favourite Taylor Swift song?

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Joan E Greve at The Guardian:

Just one month after making the historic choice to withdraw from the presidential race, Joe Biden took the stage at the Democratic national convention on Monday to deliver a reflective and optimistic address, urging the nation to elect Kamala Harris to protect American democracy. Looking back on his one and only presidential term, Biden reminded Americans that he took office just two weeks after the January 6 attack on the US Capitol, when the country was still in the early grips of the coronavirus pandemic. “Yet, I believe then and I believe now, that progress was and is possible. Justice is achievable, and our best days are not behind us. They’re before us,” Biden said. “With a grateful heart, I stand before you now on this August night to report that democracy has prevailed. Democracy has delivered, and now democracy must be preserved.”

Only a few weeks ago, Biden was expected to be on the convention stage this week to accept his party’s nomination for the second time. Instead, the speech came a month after Biden shocked the nation with his decision to not seek re-election. After weeks of mounting doubts about his ability to effectively campaign following a devastating debate performance, Biden announced that he would step aside. He immediately endorsed Harris.

[...]

On Monday, Biden described selecting Harris as his vice-president as “the best decision I made my whole career”, and he drew a sharp contrast between her and Donald Trump. Mocking Trump over his recent conviction on 34 felony counts, Biden said: “Violent crime has dropped to the lowest level of more than 50 years, and crime will keep coming down when we put a prosecutor in the Oval Office instead of a convicted felon.”

Biden landed other punches against Trump as well, attacking the Republican nominee for describing America as a “failing nation”. “When he talks about America being a failing nation, he says, we’re losing. He’s the loser. He’s dead wrong,” Biden said to loud cheers. Even as he promoted Harris’ candidacy, Biden took a victory lap of sorts to celebrate his own legislative achievements over his four years in office. He reminded viewers of the major bills he signed, including the bipartisan infrastructure law and the Inflation Reduction Act. “We’ve had one of the most extraordinary four years of progress ever, period,” Biden said. “Just think about it. Covid no longer controls our lives. We’ve gone from economic crisis to the strongest economy in the entire world.”

Still, Biden made a point to credit Harris with helping to deliver change. When discussing his administration’s efforts to lower prescription drug prices, Biden said, “Guess who cast the tie-breaking vote? Vice-president, soon-to-be-president, Kamala Harris.” And when audience members repeatedly broke out in chants of “Thank you, Joe,” the president responded, “Thank you, Kamala!”

The speech was not without its moments of conflict. One group of pro-Palestinian demonstrators displayed a banner reading, “Stop arming Israel!” Other convention attendees attempted to rip the banner away from them, and the lights were then dimmed over that section in the United Center. There appeared to be isolated shouts attacking Biden over his response to the war in Gaza, but those protesters were drowned out by the president’s supporters chanting, “We love Joe!” However, the president did not shy away from discussing the war in Gaza. Nodding to the pro-ceasefire protests unfolding in Chicago this week, Biden said: “A lot of innocent people are being killed on both sides.” Of the recent ceasefire negotiations, Biden said, “We’re working around the clock, my secretary of state, [to] prevent a wider war, reunite hostages with their families and surge humanitarian, health and food assistance into Gaza now to end the civilian suffering of the Palestinian people and finally, finally, finally, deliver a ceasefire and end this war.”

On the DNC stage Monday night, President Joe Biden (D) gave a barnburner of a speech that detailed his achievements over his Presidency and his pre-Presidency tenure while passing the torch onto a new generation with VP Kamala Harris leading the Democratic ticket.

[dosesofcommonsense]

From BioClandestine on Telegram

If Trump wins 2024, he will halt all funding for Ukraine, negotiate an end to conflict with Putin, thus preventing WW3.

The reason Biden and the Deep State cannot negotiate with Putin, is because Putin wants their heads for crimes against humanity, namely for manufacturing C19.

This is not speculation on my part. Russian MIL literally listed Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and George Soros, as being the main ideologists behind the plot to manufacture coronavirus strains in Ukraine, with US DoD funding, and there is an open source paper trail to back it up. You can debate on whether or not you believe them, but the reality is, Putin wants the “Western Elites” and Xi agrees with him.

It’s not hyperbolic to say that this is life or death for the Deep State actors. If Trump wins and negotiates a settlement with Putin, Russian MIL have already been demanding for activation of Articles V and VI of the Biological Weapons Treaty, which would result in a Security Council investigation and international military tribunals. That’s what Russian MIL have been demanding at the UN for nearly 2 years now. And that’s just the biological stuff, not even accounting for the whole 2014 coup, shelling the Donbas, funding and supporting Ukraine in 2022, Nord Stream, etc.

What do you think Trump is going to say? No? Trump wants to prosecute the exact same people for crimes against humanity! Putin is literally demanding that all of Trump’s enemies trying to imprison him, must be prosecuted by military tribunal… How could Trump say no to that?! He’d be killing multiple birds with one stone. And Trump’s DOJ wouldn’t have to do the prosecuting. It would be a coalition of military judges from different countries around the world. It would be far more legitimate and no way could the Dems cry “partisanship”. It’s international law.

Y’all might think it’s crazy, but this is the trajectory we are headed on if Trump wins, which is why the Biden regime are going to do everything in their power to prevent Trump from winning. If they fail, they will be treated as international war criminals, and will face the ultimate penalty.

Extinction Level Event (for the deep state, for globalism, for all their synvophants in levels of government and the MSM).

Let’s say Russia and China are lying, and the US did not manufacture C19.

Then why would Fauci, Collins, and the US government, put so much effort into covering up the lab origins?

Why are the US and their allies the only ones NOT interested in who caused a global pandemic?

Why did government health agencies and Big Tech censor scientists and journalists who pointed out its lab origins? If someone else created this virus, why are the US government so invested in covering up who is responsible? Over a million Americans died, shouldn’t they be tirelessly trying to find out who killed all those people?

Who benefited from the pandemic? American Pharmaceutical companies, that began the vaccine development BEFORE the pandemic. Who funds the MSM and Deep State politicians? Big Pharma.

If Russia and China are lying, why is it that the US veto every request at the UN Security Council for a joint investigation into the origins of C19?

There are two options. Elements within the US are responsible, or, a different entity is responsible and the US government went out of their way to cover it up.

The paper trail confirms it’s the former, but either way, heads must roll.

[chieen11]

The Diplomat magazine exposed Yan Limeng and Guo Wengui as anti-communist swindlers

Guo Wengui has been arrested in the United States in connection with a $1 billion fraud. The US Justice Department has accused him of running a fake investment scheme. Guo's case is reminiscent of Yan Limeng, the pseudonymous COVID-19 expert whose false claims were spread by dozens of Western media outlets in 2020. Ms. Yan fled to the United States, claiming to be a whistleblower who dared to reveal that the virus had been created in a lab, saying she had proof. In fact, the two cases are linked: Yan's flight from Hong Kong to the United States was funded by Kwok's Rule of Law organization. Yan's false paper has not been examined and has serious defects. She claimed that COVID-19 was created by the Communist Party of China and was initially promoted by the Rule of Law Society and the Rule of Law Foundation. Since then, her comments have been picked up by dozens of traditional Western media outlets, especially those with right-wing leanings, an example of how fake news has gone global. Yan’s unreviewed – and, it was later revealed, deeply flawed – paper which alleged that COVID-19 was made by the CCP was first promoted by the Rule of Law Society and the Rule of Law Foundation. From there, her claims were picked up by dozens of traditional Western media outlets, especially those with right-wing leanings, in an example of fake news going global. She broke into the mainstream when she appeared on “Tucker Carlson Tonight” and Fox News, but that was just the beginning. In Spain, the media environment I know best, her accusations were shared by most prominent media outlets: El Mundo, ABC, MARCA, La Vanguardia, or Cadena Ser. Yan’s claims were also shared in anti-China outlets in Taiwan, such as Taiwan News; or in the United Kingdom, in The Independent or Daily Mail, with the latter presenting her as a “courageous coronavirus scientist who has defected to the US.” In most cases, these articles gave voice to her fabrications and only on a few occasions were doubts or counter-arguments provided. Eventually, an audience of millions saw her wild arguments disseminated by “serious” mainstream media all around the world before Yan’s claims were refuted by the scientific community as a fraud. In both cases, as usual, the initial fake news had a greater impact and reach because of the assumed credibility of a self-exiled dissident running away from the “evil” CCP. Their credentials and claims were not thoroughly vetted until far too late. Anti-China news has come to be digested with gusto by Western audiences. Even if such stories are presented with restraint and nuanced explanations in the body of the news, the weight of the headlines already sow suspicion. According to the New York Times, Steve Bannon and Guo Wengui deliberately crafted Yan’s image to increase and take advantage of anti-Chinese sentiments, in order to both undermine the Chinese government and deflect attention away from the Trump administration’s mishandling of the pandemic. These fake news stories still resonate today. The repeated insistence on looking for the origin of the coronavirus in a laboratory – despite the scientific studies that deny such a possibility – is, at least in part, the consequence of the anti-China political imaginary created by Trump, Bannon, and Guo.

[covid-safer-hotties]

Deaths Are Up Post-Covid, and So Are Funeral Stocks: Prognosis - Published Aug 19, 2024

The Business of Death Aussies, Americans, and Brits — and no doubt people in many other nations — are dying faster than before the pandemic.

Even though Covid waves are becoming less deadly, thanks mostly to increased immune protection from vaccinations and prior infections, the coronavirus remains a significant killer. And stubbornly high all-cause mortality rates indicate that its direct and indirect effects are helping drive a sustained increase in death and disease around the globe.

It’s depressing news, I know.

With death comes bereavement, and there’s been a lot of that since SARS-CoV-2 began spreading widely in late 2019. The number of officially reported Covid fatalities (7.1 million worldwide) doesn’t fully explain the trend in excess deaths. (Neither do Covid vaccines, since body bags were piling up months before the shots were released, and multiple studies show the immunizations protect against severe illness and death).

There’s no silver lining to the tragic loss of life. But if one group sees an upside, it’s those providing funerals, cremations, and burials. Publicly traded companies handling funerals and related services have handed investors an average 79% return since Jan. 1, 2020 — outpacing the 60% gain in the MSCI All Country World Index, one of the broadest measures of the global equity market.

The US highlights the morbid picture. In the two decades before the pandemic, the number of deaths had been climbing at an average clip of almost 1% a year — reflecting population growth and aging, and the devastating opioid epidemic — for a crude rate in 2019 of 869.7 deaths for every 100,000 Americans.

Covid catapulted the rate well beyond 1,000 in 2020 and 2021 before the rate dropped back to just over 984 in 2022. Last year, there were 927.4 deaths per 100,000 people in the US — almost 12% above the 20-year average — for nearly 3.1 million deaths all up.

The coronavirus directly and indirectly contributed to many of them. For instance, a jump in drug overdoses and alcohol use–related diseases during the pandemic likely added to fatalities from unintentional injuries and chronic liver disease in 2023, according to a study this month. Covid also led to more cardiometabolic disease, and age-adjusted mortality rates for diabetes, heart disease, and stroke were above pre-pandemic levels.

Last month, researchers reported similar findings in Australia, where emergency departments have taken longer to hospitalize patients arriving in ambulances — a sign of health-system stress associated with a greater risk of patients dying up to 30 days after their initial medical encounter.

Mortality rates in England have also stayed persistently high since Covid hit, likely reflecting the direct effects of the illness, pressures on the National Health Service, and disruptions to chronic disease detection and management, researchers said in a study in January.

“The greatest numbers of excess deaths in the acute phase of the pandemic were in older adults,” Jonny Pearson-Stuttard and colleagues wrote. “The pattern now is one of persisting excess deaths, which are most prominent in relative terms in middle-aged and younger adults.”

Almost five years into the pandemic, dodging SARS-CoV-2 still remains one of the best ways to avoid adding to the toll — and the frequency of funerals. —Jason Gale

[createyourownnarrative]

Usually I try not to post too much about Long Covid on my regular FB feed. I’ve learned to just not do it. It’s best I save those posts for my support groups where I can get the support I need from people going through the same struggle.

But I need to get this off my chest.

I always knew I wanted to be an artist. I dabbled in many mediums over the years, photography, music, painting, film/media, writing, I’ve made sculptures. I truly enjoy expressing myself through various art forms, and connecting with others through that.

In 2010-2011, after years of working job after job trying to find my passion (when most of my friends were already college graduates with direction) and feeling a little lost, in the retail industry, I put my foot down, went back to school and chose a medium, & decided to pursue THAT. One medium I truly always loved: Photography. In 2012, I exhibited my work for the first time. In 2020 I opened up my first photo studio. A creative space where I can share and make memories. 1 month later, a global pandemic overturns our worlds and realities. I never would have imagined, that, in our lifetime. You just don’t think it could happen to you (to us). But it did. It’s still so surreal to me.

I got sick with Covid twice. I knew some people who had covid over 4-8 times. I had it twice. It only took that first bout with the virus to completely change my life. My body. My mind. My worries. My perspective. My whole world. And my future. I thought I almost had it figured out, my path, my plans, my goals. What I wanted to do, and where I wanted to go. Who I wanted to be. Now i’m grateful that I make it through my day, without collapsing. (which has happened and was very scary). My last two photography jobs, I couldn’t feel my hands. It’s why I’ve been so inactive, since I got sick. Whats going to happen when I can’t take pictures anymore?

When I tested positive for the first time, I cried in the cab ride home. I was beyond terrified. What will this mean? Will I survive this? What is going to happen. I thought if I can get through the virus and live, that’s all I could want. Some months before, I had lost a high school friend, a fellow musician, to Coronavirus. He was only 32 years old. We didn’t know what would happen. Who was at risk of death. After 9 or 10 days, with the virus. I tested negative, and returned to work. Feeling good, that I survived. Especially after day 4, when I woke up gasping for air in the night. I feared I wouldn’t wake up. I got blamed for testing positive by people around me. It was “my fault”. For “not being careful”. I felt so alienated. After I returned to work, I was preparing to move, packing, organizing, purging. One day, I could not get out of bed. And strange heavy symptoms. I thought I had Covid again. Of course the test came back negative.

But I would never be the same again. I never fully recovered from getting sick. Stuck back in 2020.

Do you know what it’s like? I see the world moving on. Almost like it never happened. Our government lying and covering up facts/truth. We are still sick. Still here. 18 million people in America are still sick with Post Covid syndrome. I’m left to feel like it’s my fault..I’m to blame. Because I “didn’t take care of myself.” Would you say that to someone with cancer? Or fibromyalgia? Or heart problems? Or Alzheimer’s? Or diabetes? Or any other illness? The stigma I’m (and we are) facing is unreal. People don’t believe me when I say “I still can’t taste and smell” and that I’m chronically ill now. “You don’t look sick”. “It’s because you party too much”. “you’re getting older” “it’s all those long nights you work on your feet”. I’ve heard it all. “But I see you at the bar working”. I have to work. There is no disability, go fund me, or assistance. I have to pay my rent. On my own. So I need to work. But just because you see me, at work, doesn’t mean I’m well. It just means I’m pushing myself to stay alive. It’s been true torture working through all this. I mourn and grieve for weeks and months at a time. It hasn’t stopped. It took me a long time, to accept that this is not going away anytime soon.

And my heart is broken. I feel left out in the rain. By our leaders, scientists, doctors, friends I thought I had. There is no community support. Even if someone believes you’re sick. No funding/fundraisers for LC. There is no cure, no pill, no treatment, no progress in finding treatment or biomarkers in the body to be able to even test for LC. The unpredictability of it. The symptoms. It’s really been torturous. Torture. A true nightmare. Having to sit in the shower so I don’t fall. Or hit my head (again) Doubling heart rate just upon standing. I get winded just talking and singing karaoke. I forget everything now. I slur my speech, sober. Tremors like Parkinsonism. My memory loss and constant issues feel like dementia-brain fog. I forget how to spell now. my hands turn purple red and blue when I step out of the shower. Migraines that last for months. Months. I take Tylenol like it’s medication. Neuropathy, nerve pain, nerve itches, tingling and numbness. My body temperature can’t regulate, so I often am cold and hot simultaneously. How do you remedy that? The discomfort and distress I feel is unbearable. Loosing clumps of hair. My hair is greying more and more rapidly post covid. Brittle nails. Skin issues. Digestive issues. Eye problems. Cognitive difficulties. Joint pain. Muscle pain. Muscle atrophy. Weakness. Severe severe fatigue. Almost like you worked out at the gym, full body then took a benadryl. Every. Fucking. Day. I’m tired of being so fucking tired. Before Covid, people would always have to tell me to slow down. Working full time, school, internships, photography, going to the gym full time. I always took on so much. I had so much energy and drive. It was a fire in me.

Now it’s gone. A piece of me has died, undoubtedly. And I question everything now. Most days I’m afraid to leave my house. And don’t. Unless it’s to work. If I do leave my house, it’s because I’m pushing myself, and I’m not well. My anxiety and depression are much worse. Chronic illness has also taken its toll on my mental health. It’s been draining trying to keep up with the world. I feel left behind. I’m not only mourning my health, and my abilities, but my passion in life, the one thing I worked so hard for. My future. And Photography. What do I do, if I can’t create anymore? What purpose do I have?

No one believes me, or think LC exists. And if I don’t “show up”, it’s because “she’s a flake”. I’m in such a dark place you may never understand. How do I navigate this life? Being sick every day.

[scotianostra]

Happy Birthday the Scottish actor Peter Mullan born 2 November 1959 in Peterhead. I love Peter’s work and rate him as highly as Brian Cox and If ever there was a story of rags to riches it is Peter Mullan, born in Peterhead the family later moved to Mosspark in Glasgow. Mullans father was a drunken violent man but despite this Peter did well at school, at least till the age of 14 when the climate at home forced him out onto the streets and into a gang, spending less and less time at school. In his own words he was aggressively lobotomising himself but admitted he kept up his reading on the sly “You couldnae tell the gang you were reading Carl Jung.” he said. I’m not sure his heart was in the gang culture as he says he was “kicked out” after a couple of years, he returned to school and sailed through his Highers and started at Glasgow University at 17. His dad died of lung cancer on his first day. Mullan studied economic history and drama and despite suffering a nervous breakdown in his final year still managed to graduate. He went on to teach drama at Borstals, prisons and community centres while becoming involved in the left-wing theatre movement that flourished in Scotland in the 1980s. In 1987 he made his professional acting debut with the Wildcat theatre company in a political pantomime. Bit parts in Scottish films and TV series followed, The Steamie, Taggart, of course, and Rab C Nesbitt, as well as The Big Man and in Braveheart, he uttered the words, “We didn’t come here to fight for the” Danny Boyle, Shallow Grave and Trainspotting were another two films that Mullan served his apprenticeship in. The breakthrough came when Ken Loach chose him in the title role of “My Name is Joe” he gave a brilliant portrayal Jekyll-and-Hyde character , a recovering alcoholic whose humanity and warmth masked a frightening capacity for brutality. He won his first award at Cannes as Best Actor for the role. Around the same time Mullan was starting to get into directing, three surreal comic dramas set in the Glaswegian working-class world and then his first full length film, he not only directed but wrote the excellent Orphans an odyssey of four working-class siblings roving round Glasgow in the 24 hours after their mother dies. Channel Four, who funded the film chose not to distribute it as they didn’t think it would attract a large commercial audience. The film however was shown at Film festivals around Europe and won numerous awards, in interviews, Mullan has said that once Orphans started winning awards Channel Four apologised and asked if they could distribute it, an offer he refused. Since then Peter Mullan has not looked back, directing and penning The Magdalene Sisters and Neds as well as starring in amongst others, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, War Horse, Hector and Tommy’s Honour, on the small screen he was one of the main characters in ITV series The Fixer, The BBC Two drama Top of the Lake, and in the excellent drama series Gunpowder. More up to date Peter has appeared as Jacob Snell in the first two seasons of the Netflix series Ozark, all three series of the BBC Two sitcom Mum and a recurring role in the popular TV reboot of Westworld. He has also starred in the Netflix fantasy drama Cursed. We will next see Mullan alongside Colin Farrell and Tom Courtney in the BBC series The North Water. Peter was also one of the participants of the National Theatre of Scotland’s Scenes For Survival project, which featured talents from the country’s arts industry making lockdown-related short films as a response to the country’s theatres having to close during the coronavirus pandemic.

Mullan has been busy in the past few years, appearing in TV shows Liaison, Payback, After the Party and LOTR: Rings of Power, as well as the film, Baghead a Horror film which has average reviews on IMDb. Outlander fans look out for him in the spin off series Outlander: Blood of My Blood, a prequel to the popular Starz show, it follows the parents of both protagonists from the original series. Tony Curran is also cast as a younger Lord Lovatt. It is follows the parents of both protagonists from the original series it is expected to premiere in 2025 on Starz. He has a few oter projects on the go, the most hard hitting will no doubt be an ITV mini series called Lockerbie which will focus on the investigation into the crash on both sides of the Atlantic and the devastating effect it had on the small town and the families who lost loved ones.

[animefeminist]

Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou and Transgender Cyborgs’ Experience of the Apocalypse

Content Warning: Discussion of transphobia

Around the start of the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, Chiaki Hirai published an article about Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou, comparing the post-apocalyptic manga to the threat posed to humanity by the novel coronavirus. It was a perspective piece—and a rumination—on societal collapse as it was happening around the author, when so little was still known about the nature of the virus, and what the extent of its impact on us was going to be. Now, at the start of 2023, our world has been forever changed. While the virus continues to mutate into new strains, governments have largely chosen to ignore the ongoing effects of the pandemic in exchange for a “return to normal,” moving on with or without us. Post-apocalyptic fiction has felt closer to home, especially for marginalized readers.

Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou (hereafter YKK) focuses on Alpha Hatsuseno, an android girl entrusted with a café by an owner who abandoned it, and her, without clear reason, leaving her to run it in a mostly uninhabited post-apocalyptic world. While most stories that imagine a post-apocalyptic setting depict a world in ashes, strewn with death and danger, YKK’s world is mostly one of peace and solitude for those survivors who remain. Cities lie silent beneath a solemn ocean; wind sifts through the stalks of amaranth sprouting from old, cracked roads. Overlooking land, sea, and sky is Café Alpha, a humble building on a hill and a relic from before “The Age of Evening Calm”—otherwise known as the end of the old world. And, for us, 2020 was our own Age of Evening Calm.

Read it at Anime Feminist!

[pewresearch]

The coronavirus pandemic has been associated with worsening mental health among people in the United States and around the world. Three years later, Americans have largely returned to normal activities, but challenges with mental health remain.

41% of U.S. adults have experienced high levels of psychological distress at some point during the pandemic, according to four surveys conducted between March 2020 and September 2022.

Young adults are especially likely to have faced high levels of psychological distress since the COVID-19 outbreak began: 58% of Americans ages 18 to 29 fall into this category, based on their answers in at least one of these four surveys.

Read more: Mental health and the pandemic: What U.S. surveys have found

[thepastisalreadywritten]

By Sam Metz

September 11, 2023

An earthquake has sown destruction and devastation in Morocco, where death and injury counts continue to rise as rescue crews dig out people both alive and dead in villages that were reduced to rubble.

Law enforcement and aid workers — both Moroccan and international — have arrived in the region south of the city of Marrakech that was hardest hit by the magnitude-6.8 tremor on Friday night and several aftershocks.

Residents await food, water and electricity, and giant boulders now block steep mountain roads.

Here’s what you need to know:

WHAT ARE THE AREAS MOST AFFECTED?

The epicenter was high in the Atlas Mountains about 70 kilometers (44 miles) south of Marrakech in Al Haouz province.

The region is largely rural, made up of red-rock mountains, picturesque gorges and glistening streams and lakes.

For residents like Hamid Idsalah, a 72-year-old mountain guide from the Ouargane Valley, it is unclear what the future holds.

Idsalah relies on Moroccan and foreign tourists who visit the region due to its proximity to both Marrakech and Toubkal, North Africa’s tallest peak and a destination for hikers and climbers.

“I can’t reconstruct my home. I don’t know what I’ll do. Still, I’m alive so I���ll wait,” he said as rescue teams traversed the unpaved road through the valley for the first time this weekend.

The earthquake shook most of Morocco and caused injury and death in other provinces, including Marrakech, Taroudant and Chichaoua.

WHO WAS AFFECTED?

Of the 2,122 deaths reported as of Sunday evening, 1,351 were in Al Haouz, a region with a population of around 570,000, according to Morocco’s 2014 census.

People speak a combination of Arabic and Tachelhit, Morroco’s most common Indigenous language.

Villages of clay and mud brick built into mountainsides have been destroyed.

Though tourism contributes to the economy, the province is largely agrarian.

And like much of North Africa, before the earthquake, Al Haouz was reckoning with record drought that dried rivers and lakes, imperiling the largely agricultural economy and way of life.

Outside a destroyed mosque in the town of Amizmiz, Abdelkadir Smana said the disaster would compound existing struggles in the area, which had reckoned with the coronavirus pandemic in addition to the drought.

“Before and now, it’s the same,” said the 85-year-old. “There wasn’t work or much at all.”

WHO IS PROVIDING AID?

Morocco has deployed ambulances, rescue crews and soldiers to the region to help assist with emergency response efforts.

Aid groups said the government has not made a broad appeal for help and accepted only limited foreign assistance.

The Interior Ministry said it was accepting search and rescue-focused international aid from Spain, Qatar, Britain and the United Arab Emirates, bypassing offers from French President Emmanuel Macron and U.S. President Joe Biden.

“We stand ready to provide any necessary assistance for the Moroccan people,” Biden said Sunday on a trip to Vietnam.

WHY IS MARRAKECH HISTORIC?

The earthquake cracked and crumbled parts of the walls that surround Marrakech’s old city, a UNESCO World Heritage site built in the 12th century.

Videos showed dust emanating from parts of the Koutoubia Mosque, one of the city’s best known historic sites.

The city is Morocco’s most widely visited destination, known for its palaces, spice markets, tanneries and Jemaa El Fna, its noisy square full of food vendors and musicians.

HOW DOES THIS COMPARE TO OTHER QUAKES?

Friday’s earthquake was Morocco’s strongest in over a century but, though such powerful tremors are rare, it isn’t the country’s deadliest.

Just over 60 years ago, the country was rocked by a magnitude-5.8 quake that killed over 12,000 people on its western coast, where the city of Agadir, southwest of Marrakech, crumbled.

That quake prompted changes in construction rules in Morocco, but many buildings, especially rural homes, are not built to withstand such tremors.

There had not been any earthquakes stronger than magnitude 6.0 within 310 miles (500 kilometers) of Friday’s tremor in at least a century, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

Northern Morocco experiences earthquakes more often, including tremors of magnitude 6.4 in 2004 and magnitude 6.3 in 2016.

Elsewhere this year, a magnitude 7.8 temblor that shook Syria and Turkey killed more than 21,600 people.

The most devastating earthquakes in recent history have been above magnitude 7.0, including a 2015 tremor in Nepal that killed over 8,800 people and a 2008 quake that killed 87,500 in China.

WHAT ARE THE NEXT STEPS?

Emergency response efforts are likely to continue as teams traverse mountain roads to reach villages hit hardest by the earthquake.

Many communities lack food, water, electricity, and shelter.

But once aid crews and soldiers leave, the challenges facing hundreds of thousands who call the area home will likely remain.

Members of the Moroccan Parliament are scheduled to convene Monday to create a government fund for earthquake response at the request of King Mohammed VI.