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mariacallous · 2 years ago

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A revolution in weight loss is apparently underway. It started in 2021, when the FDA approved the diabetes drug semaglutide for weight loss. The weekly injectable—sold under the brand name Wegovy—can help users lose 5 to 10 percent of their body weight, leading commentators to describe the drug as both a “medical breakthrough” and a “silver bullet” for obesity. Elon Musk says he’s taking it, Kim Kardashian is rumored to be using it, and everyone from Hollywood to the Hamptons reportedly wants a prescription.

Soon, there will be a new weight loss medication on the block—and it’s even more potent than its peers. Last fall, the FDA fast-tracked the review process for using tirzepatide as a weight loss drug after a clinical trial showed that people with BMIs labeled “overweight” or “obese” lost a staggering 22.5 percent of their body weight on the highest dose. If all goes according to plan, that will make Mounjaro the latest in a fast-growing biomedical sector—spanning everything from bariatric surgery to deep brain stimulation for binge-eating—that aims to combat, if not cure, the problem of “excess” weight.

For pharmaceutical companies, the race to market is financially motivated: Wegovy and Mounjaro cost more than $1,000 a month. Weight loss drugs are rarely covered by insurance, but people who can afford them have proven they’re willing to pay. And the market seems effectively limitless: Despite an ongoing “war on obesity,” more than 1.9 billion adults globally are considered overweight or obese, and the number of prospective users is growing every year. Now doctors—desperate to treat what is widely seen as an “obesity epidemic��—are coming on board. In January, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommended such medications for kids as young as 12.

The victorious narratives gilding drugs like Mounjaro are already being positioned as a direct challenge to fat activism. For decades, the movement has pushed for social and economic opportunity for people of all sizes through civil rights, fat pride and liberation, and biomedical evidence itself. Thanks to prominent voices like Audrey Gordon and Michael Hobbes, many people now know that “lifestyle changes” like calorie restriction and exercise fail to produce sustained weight loss for 97 percent of people and that many dieters end up gaining back more weight than they lost. But what happens to the strength of these arguments when a weight loss drug seems to work?

Like other purported weight loss solutions, Mounjaro promises “to fix weight stigma by making you thinner, instead of removing the stigma,” says Susanne Johnson, a fat activist and family nurse practitioner in Pennsylvania. In so doing, these drugs and surgeries further exacerbate anti-fat discrimination. Instead of criticizing people in larger bodies for their perceived lack of willpower—that old “calories in, calories out” adage—people can now blame those in bigger bodies for something more akin to a techno-pessimist, or even anti-science, stance: “Just take the miracle cure!”

The history of the weight loss industry is more akin to prospecting for gold or investing in crypto than transplanting organs and developing antibiotics; less a story of scientific progress than an endless cycle of wild speculation, where boom inevitably gives way to bust. Fen-Phen was a miracle until it was linked to heart valve damage. Intermittent fasting was going to fix what caloric restriction couldn’t until researchers showed the two produce exactly the same results. And then there’s the complicated case of bariatric surgery.

From their inception in the 1950s, operations like gastric bypass (which reroutes food away from the stomach, inducing malabsorption) and gastric sleeve (which involves partially amputating the stomach so it holds less food and produces fewer hunger hormones) have been sold as a potential panacea, says Lisa Du Breuil, a clinical social worker at Massachusetts General Hospital. While fewer than 1 percent of people who qualify actually undergo bariatric surgery, those who do can lose up to 70 percent of their “excess” weight (or the weight above a BMI of 24.9).

But Du Breuil, who specializes in eating disorders and substance abuse disorders, has seen some of the worst of bariatric’s side effects. People can develop dumping syndrome—wherein sugar-rich meals leave the stomach too quickly, causing sweating, dizziness, rapid heart rate, and vomiting. Gastric bypass in particular raises the risk of postoperative alcohol abuse. Rates of suicide and self-harming behaviors also rise in the years after bariatric surgery. And even when people follow strict post-operative diets, malnutrition, tooth loss, gout, and new or resurging eating disorders are possible. “It can be really challenging to get a full picture,” Du Breuil says. She learns about new side effects all the time.

Semaglutide and tirzepatide—both part of a larger family of GLP-1 receptor agonists—were developed for diabetes management at lower doses. When pharmaceutical companies noticed their trial participants were also losing weight, they realized “if we can turn the volume up to 11, we can really enhance this side effect,” says Johnson, the nurse. “That means you’re also turning up the other side effects.”

The primary complaints from users of Ozempic, Wegovy, and Mounjaro sound like the kind of thing you can fix with a bottle (or three) of Pepto Bismol: nausea, upset stomach, diarrhea, and what one patient called “power vomiting.” But these might be less like classic “side effects” of a drug than a mechanism of weight loss itself, as The Guardian recently reported. By making the feeling of eating (and, in some cases, even hydrating) actively disgusting to the user, the drug curbs their consumption—similar to the experience of bariatric patients, who can only fit a few ounces of food in their stomachs at a time.

The list of complications doesn’t end there. For example, both GLP-1 receptor agonists may increase the risk of thyroid cancer—one of the many BMI-linked diseases that supposedly makes weight loss absolutely imperative for people in larger bodies. And there’s good reason to believe that other side effects will reveal themselves in years to come, as the number of long-term users grows.

The biggest surprise for many prospective patients is that long-term weight loss isn’t guaranteed—a reflection, perhaps, of the faulty assumption that people are obese because they overeat. Current estimates suggest that the average bariatric surgery patient regains 30 percent of the weight they lost in the 10 years after surgery. One in four regain all of their weight in that time. And 20 percent of people don’t respond to surgery in the first place.

The same is true for GLP-1 receptor agonists: If you stop injecting, the weight returns.

In case it wasn’t clear by now, biomedical weight loss interventions often mimic the deadly logic of anorexia, bulimia, or other forms of disordered eating, says Erin Harrop, a clinical social worker and researcher. Harrop would know. At the height of their own eating disorder, Harrop wished they could fill their stomach with air instead of food, or cut their stomach out, or wire their jaw shut. Later, they learned these things exist—in the form of gastric balloons, gastric sleeves, and even a magnetic jaw trap.

It’s no surprise, then, that some people who undergo bariatric surgery experience a resurgence of a preexisting eating disorder, or develop a new one. Frequent vomiting, never knowing what foods will upset your stomach, and feeling pressure to maintain a post-surgical weight—“you can create an eating disorder that way,” Du Briel says.

But semaglutide and tirzepatide promise to fulfill an even stranger fantasy: eliminating appetite itself. While a drug like Mounjaro works on numerous fronts—including preventing the body from storing fat and “browning” existing adipose tissue—it’s the feeling of being untethered from desire that seems to fascinate patients and physicians alike. People for whom the drug works often say, “I forget to eat,” says Fatima Cody Stanford, an obesity medicine specialist at Massachusetts General Hospital’s Weight Center.

If doctors really believe that obesity is the greater of any two evils, then this approach makes sense. When it comes to bariatric surgery, for example, a review of the medical literature suggests it is, on balance, associated with a reduction in all-cause mortality—or death of any cause*—*compared to patients with high BMIs who don’t go under the knife (though such studies are profoundly limited, as they often do not control for social factors, like income or education). Many hope that semaglutide and tirzepatide will one day prove just as vitalizing.

But eating disorders kill too. In many contexts, sustained hunger is considered a travesty. And desire—for food, or anything else—is a great way to know you’re alive. “It’s wild to me that we see no appetite as a positive thing,” says Shira Rosenbluth, an eating disorder therapist who works with people of all sizes. Anna Toonk agrees: “I realized that there are worse things than being fat,” she told The Cut last fall. “The worst thing you can be is wanting to barf all the time.”

Ultimately, the proliferation of drugs like Mounjaro means medicine is not only in the business of dictating “normal” weights (a thing it still hasn’t quite figured out), but “normal” appetites. What was once an intuitive process, in which your body tells you what it needs, became a dictate under diet culture: You tell your body what it can have. Now medicine promises a radical reset: With the right drug, your body will hunger for nothing at all.

Weight loss technology can’t be stopped entirely—nor should it be. Everyone has the right to choose what they want to do with their bodies. But informed consent is built on information, and we may not have enough. Mounjaro was fast-tracked by the FDA based on studies designed to observe weight loss over just 72 weeks, a small fraction of the time real patients will be on the drug. At the very least, patients should be informed that in the��first years after a drug hits the market, they are participants in an ongoing experiment.

As biomedicine’s war on obesity continues, people must work harder to combat anti-fat bias—not on a technicality, but as part of the expansive vision of justice fat activists began articulating more than 50 years ago. For semaglutide, tirzepatide, bariatric surgery, and their ilk are neither miracles nor cures. There have always been fat people, and there always will be, whether they’re “non-responders” to treatment, refuseniks, or languishing on the waitlist. Notably, even those who experience dramatic weight loss after surgery or on injectables may still be overweight or obese, depending where they started.

Perhaps most importantly, the American weight loss discourse must move away from a reflexive scientism, which has enabled biomedicine to subject the entirety of human experience to its single-minded scrutiny. Weight, like almost every aspect of embodiment, is not an exclusively biological phenomenon or a clear-cut medical “problem” to solve. It is shaped by countless factors, like power distribution in society, personal psychology, and that most frightening of forces: the desire for more.

If you or a loved one is struggling with an eating disorder, the National Eating Disorders Association Helpline is available at (800) 931-2237.

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saintmeghanmarkle · 1 year ago

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Harry and Meghan are stuck between a wall and a hard place w/ the Israel Apartheid and genocide in Palestine. by u/puffielle

Harry and Meghan are stuck between a wall and a hard place w/ the Israel Apartheid and genocide in Palestine. I’m just the messenger, so please no debates on the politics, but this is what I’m hearing. On the one hand, they won lots of brownie points with liberal and leftist poc because they implied they were against English colonialism — I’m a Latina gen z, and I constantly see gen z praising them for leaving that “toxic” family and being against colonialism. Well, now that same demographic is learning a ton about the Israeli apartheid in Palestine, and in particular, they’re learning that Zionism was primarily a colonial project. So they’re heavily denouncing that colonialism right now, and they’re connecting it to racism in the US. Who is supposedly against colonialism and racism? Meghan and Harry, so that’s why some sugars are pissed. Their silence will be noted. They’re going to experience a Lizzo if they don’t speak up against Israel — doing something that completely goes against the image you built (like Lizzo being fat phobia despite supposedly caring about body positivity.) Lizzo is truly cancelled now and her social media engagement dropped like crazy. On the other hand, if they speak up against Israel to maintain their anti-colonialism image, they’re going to truly lose all hope of future political aspirations and corporate projects — Disney just donated 2 million (only) to Israeli citizens despite the genocide in Gaza, and Biden is absolutely still backing Israel. Most of the corporate and government world is heavily pro Zionism/Israel, and they conflate any comments against Zionism as antisemitism.They’re royally fucked. That’s what they get for thinking they have a better strategy that the queen’s “never complain, never explain.”P.S. , fuck Harry, he’s a legit antisemite, IMO. post link: https://ift.tt/kVux5GM author: puffielle submitted: October 18, 2023 at 03:12AM via SaintMeghanMarkle on Reddit

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trashytummiez · 3 years ago

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I don't know if I've ever asked you, and if you're not interested just ignore me, but would you maybe write some stuffing content for Giriko? ;w;

It took you a while but you eventually made it back to your apartment and his hideout with his order. The murderous chainsaw now had before him what had to be enough fast food to feed about a dozen people by the time you laid out the meal. Yet here Giriko was about to cram it all down his gullet like always.

And you couldn't be more into it.

"Fuckin' finally. I'm starvin' here!" Giriko complained and rubbed his stomach as it growled impatiently.

"Party-sized orders take a while for greedy chainsaws," you teased and sat down besides the villain.

Giriko scoffed and unwrapped his first burger. He licked his chops eagerly and opened wide giving you a nice peak at his pearly white fangs which he used to chomp down onto his burger. That had to be a solid half of his burger munched in one go. He chewed down on that very sizable portion of burger making his cheeks bulge out. Then he clenched his eyes shut and swallowed hard. You watched a thick lump press out of his throat and vanish past his broad chest. The way his throat squelched made your cheeks heat up.

The chainsaw smacked his lips and downed the rest of his burger in no time. He got to work chomping away at his next. Like a greedy pig Giriko had no pause between burgers. He was just chomping away and downing it in about as short an interval of time as his last burger.

This steadily became a pattern for the gluttonous maniac. He was practically shoving burger after burger right down his gob and demolishing it in just a few bites. Those incredibly attractive and perfectly sharp fangs Giriko had allowed him to get food down in a very quick pace.

With so many burgers getting scarfed down all at once the impact it had on Giriko's tummy was pretty blatant. His usually lean stomach was starting to press out against his sleeveless whitish tan shirt. It very quickly started getting rounder the more he ate. So much so that Giriko's shirt barely managed to contain his tummy after a while.

Your eyes struggled to pull away from Giriko's growing belly. Especially when you heard it begin noisily churning to get to work digesting so much food in one sitting.

On top of all of his burgers Giriko had a six-pack besides him to help wash all that fast food down. After swallowing such an insurmountable amount of food in one go the chainsaw cracked a beer can open and guzzled its contents like a pro. You watched his throat throb with each hefty gulp he took. Beer was rushing down his throat so fast you guaranteed he could school anyone in a drinking contest if he wanted.

It wasn't even a full forty seconds until that can was drained. Giriko crushed the can against his forehead and lazily tossed it aside while also gulping down the last of its contents. About a second later Giriko burped so hard the couch quivered.

BRRUUUUOOOOOOORRRRRUUUUURHP!!!!!!

"Excuse you," you uttered with an intense blush on your cheeks.

Giriko lazily smacked his lips and grinned cockily. "Y'know ya LOOOOOVE...it...ahhh..."

It wasn't immediately clear to you if he meant to burp the word 'love' in your face but the way he sighed after suggested he certainly wasn't embarrassed by it. And the way your blush grew worse suggested you weren't especially bothered either.

He quickly went back to stuffing himself with more burgers. His pace had slowed down a little bit clearly he was starting to get full. But even in an overstuffed state the vile chainsaw was still munching down fast food faster than anyone you'd ever seen eat so much junkfood at once.

The swell in Giriko's belly only continued grow rounder and heavier. His shirt started riding up and revealing his bare tummy. Giriko was stuffing himself so fast that it rode up enough to start peaking at his belly button. Not that such a thing bothered Giriko. And it damn sure didn't bother you either.

Giriko paused to take another beer break. He cracked another can open and chugged its contents down. Even with how much fuller he was getting Giriko never flagged in the beer chugging department. Like before he sucked that can dry in under a minute crushing it against his forehead and lazily chucking it next to the other can.

"You know there's a bin right there," you said pointing to an annoyingly unused trash bin not too far away from Giriko.

Giriko's only response was a heavy burp.

BWOOOOOOOOORRRRRP!!!!

He grunted but shook his head dissatisfied. The chainsaw thumped his chest a few times until he made himself burp again. This one was a lot louder than the last one and gave him the relief he wanted. He sighed afterwards and slumped back.

"Fuck..." Giriko moaned rubbing the incredible swell in his tummy. He was looking really bloated but nonetheless shrugged and continued.

You watched Giriko's belly grow bigger and heavier. It was getting so bloated that it was really weighing down on his jeans. His shirt rode up completely to reveal the entirety of his enormous round tummy. The deep acidic noises you could hear bubbling from its depths were a clear sign that Giriko was well past his limits if his tummy was digesting that heavily.

It was so big and inviting from all the burgers and beer cans that you couldn't help rubbing it while Giriko finished the rest of his meal. Your hand rubbed circles all across that vast bubbling tummy. The roundness of it was absolutely perfect with a considerable heft in Giriko's lower stomach where everything was being digested. His tummy felt so warm from the intense digestive process which gave his normally tight flesh a much softer texture. It meant every time you patted his tummy there was a ripple in his flesh.

He cracked another can open and guzzled it down. But Giriko was so full that he actually had to stop halfway into chugging just so he could burp and make more room before chugging some more. You heard him burp again into his can as he chugged the rest of it. When he hiccuped loudly his big round belly jumped a little with a thick slosh that left him groaning and left you blushing.

It was clear that he was a little drunk despite having anything but an empty stomach.

You kept rubbing his belly to soothe how upset it was from his gorging and to help ease his stomachache enough to let him eat the rest of his food. His belly was getting so heavy that you worried his pants would burst at the seams if you didn't help him. So you fumbled with the waist of his pants and undid both his belt buckle and pants button. Giriko's big fat stomach spilled out freely from the space you'd provided it which made it bounce heavily between his legs. Girikko moaned in euphoria at how liberated he felt while you thought your eyes would bug out of your skull.

That certainly helped give him the second wind he desperately needed.

By the time Giriko was finished he almost looked like he was pregnant just with a deepened but shallow belly button and some intense sloshing erupting from his enormous tummy. With a lifeless groan Giriko slumped into his seat and held his hugely stuffed belly with both hands to unleash a massive burp.

BRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAUUUUUUUUUURRRRRAAAAAAAAAAHPP!!!!!!!!!!

You blushed even harder both from Giriko's burp and the way you felt his tummy ripple with the gas.

"Good one," you praised and patted the side of his giant tummy. It jiggled with each pat you gave.

Giriko hiccuped loudly from the pat then again. His tummy jiggled heavily with each hiccup he gave. He moaned and wearily nursed his aching tummy with both hands rubbing up and down his thick rounded sides.

"Unnnnngh...Hic! Woof...m'so FUUUUUUUUUULL!!!!!" Giriko moaned hiccuping again and eventually burping the last word of his sentence out.

You gave his tummy a light squeeze and caused another huge burp to blare out of Giriko's mouth.

"Unf...shit..." he moaned after. "Feels like I'mma fuckin' puke..."

"You won't," you said confidently and kneaded your fingers into the middle of his massive belly pushing into Giriko's belly button. You knew the way Giriko's tummy operated after watching him stuff his face just a few times. You were trying to push some gas out of his belly and resorted to pushing hand against Giriko's belly button deeply.

Giriko winced but then unleashed a huge deafening burp that easily dwarfed any he'd let out yet.

BWWWRRAAAAAAAAAAAAUUUUUUUURRRHHHOOOOOOOOOOOORRRRRRAAAAAAAHHHAAAAAAAAAAAHP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Your face couldn't get any redder when you felt his tummy ripple violently with that massive expulsion of gas. It ripped out of Giriko so long it could've been ten seconds for all you knew! You could pick up the scent of beer and digested burgers which wasn't the most pleasant scent in the world but it was worth it to hear a burp like that.

Giriko's eyes glazed over as his head rolled back with a moan of utter relief. "Fuckin' shit I needed that...whew..." Giriko moaned and slapped his belly with really boastful relief. His big fat tummy rippled heavily at the slap and made himself hiccup again. He was too full to care.

You just continued rubbing his massive tummy and occasionally kissed at it.

"I can't believe how much this thing can pack away," you praised getting a hold of his tummy and giving it a light jostle to hear it gurgle and slosh heavily.

The sloshing upset some of the pressure still brewing in Giriko's stomach. But the chainsaw grinned wickedly. When he felt the gas rushing up his throat he held you by the chin and made you look up at him just in time for Giriko to unleash a throaty burp right in your face.

HHUUUUUOOOOOOORRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAHHPP!!!!!

Your eyes widened as the warm gas pelted your face stinking of beer and digesting burgers. If you had any snide remarks they quickly left your blank mind as you sat there red as a ripe tomato.

Giriko shamelessly smacked his lips and grinned. "Never underestimate how much this bad boy can pack away," he said patting his glutted out tummy for emphasis while you savored the sounds emanating from his belly with his pats. "Now keep rubbin'. I didn't eat half yer fuckin' body weight in all this greasy shit fer nothin'."

You very happily complied, rubbing that massive belly well into the night and savoring every rich sound that tummy made from the deepest blorps to more of Giriko's burps.

He wasn't right in the head but then again neither were you so it ended up being a match made in hell that you wouldn't trade for anything in the world.

#kink fic #giriko #soul eater #giriko x reader #ship #belly kink #stuffing #post stuffing #weight gain #belly play #tummy ache #stomach noises #burping #burp kink #kink teasing #hiccups #getting drunk #overstuffed #drunk

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tech-bites · 4 years ago

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The best gaming headsets in 2020

The distinction the best gaming headsets can make to gaming is staggering. Completely clear sound can assist you with getting the sound and course of adversary gunfire should you wind up encompassed in Call of Duty: Warzone. Or on the other hand maybe you like to hear the bone-crunching guitar riffs as you tear and tear through devils in Doom Eternal. Regardless of whether you're hoping to increase a serious edge in a first-individual shooter or simply need to improve your general gaming experience, stowing a quality gaming headset ought to be high up on your daily agenda.

There are a couple of focuses that you'll need to consider while picking a gaming headset. Cost and sound quality are ostensibly the two most significant factors, and we've considered both of these when picking our top choices for this rundown. Solace is something else you'll need to consider as even the best solid quality won't help you very much on the off chance that you generally need to change your headset—or eliminate it inside and out—during longer gaming meetings. In conclusion, most of the headsets we've recorded here gloat implicit clamor dropping mics which are urgent for talking with your partners. read more

Including extraordinary compared to other gaming headsets of 2020 to your set-up shouldn't cost the earth either. You can get our top pick, the HyperX Cloud Alpha, for under $100, giving you a solid headset with great sound quality. On the other hand, in the event that you have the cash to extra and need to go with a remote choice, you could do a great deal more awful than the Razer Thresher Ultimate.

Our rundown of the best gaming headsets has something for everybody paying little mind to spending plan. Then again, in case you're resolved to eliminate string mess, our manual for simply the best remote gaming headsets might be more as you would prefer.

Best gaming headsets

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(Picture credit: HyperX)

1. HyperX Cloud Alpha

A balanced, even headset for game sound.

Remote: No | Drivers: 50mm double chamber neodymium | Connectivity: 3.5mm simple | Frequency reaction: 13Hz-27,000Hz | Features: Detachable commotion dropping mic, in-line link controls

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Ground-breaking yet clear soundExceptional manufacture quality

Bearing the products of HyperX Cloud's long tradition of greatness, the Cloud Alpha presents brilliant sound and construct quality with the basic highlights progressed admirably, and no element fat swelling the cost. The sound system soundscape in this shut back structure is punchier in the low end than we'd as a rule go for, yet the additional bass doesn't meddle with by and large lucidity—and honestly, in games and music conditions, it sounds incredible. Each 50mm driver's double chamber configuration is expected to give low, medium, and high frequencies space to resound without meddling with one another, and you do get a feeling of that while tuning in to them.

Somewhere else it's the typical great form quality, liberal cushioning, clear mic and high solace levels over longer play meetings that the Cloud configuration has consistently advertised. The inline controls are the main special case to that standard—they feel wobbly by correlation with the remainder of the bundle. We suggest the Alpha over the Cloud II (just barely) in light of the better recurrence reaction range and generally stable quality, however there's next to no isolating the two models.

Peruse our HyperX Cloud Alpha survey

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(Picture credit: Steelseries)

2. Steelseries Arctis Pro + GameDAC

The very good quality gaming headset that does everything.

Remote: No | Drivers: 40mm neodymium | Connectivity: USB, optical, 3.5mm simple | Frequency reaction: 10Hz-40,000Hz | Features: Retractable clamor dropping mic, DTS Headphone:X 2.0, RGB

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Classy RGB lightingHandy GameDAC controls

High-res sound is on the up gratitude to lossless spilling from Tidal et al, and games, for example, Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus offering full help. The Arctis Pro GameDAC utilizes that glasslike high-res sound with a 10Hz-40KHz recurrence reaction go—a spec that additionally makes the drivers sound extraordinary for ordinary sound use, however you will begin seeing the distinction in truly packed documents. However, in case you're intending to utilize a gaming headset for watching recordings and TV on your PC, or music, this is an extraordinary decision.

The GameDAC itself is a blend of a computerized to-simple converter that removes the strain from your CPU, a preamp, and a control place. With a press of its catch and a move of the dial, DTS Headphone-X encompass can be empowered or impaired, talk/game blend changed, and EQ settings consummated. The unobtrusive ring around each earcup on these jars ticks the RGB box without demolishing the general stylish. Our lone reservations with the GameDAC model are that it requires a connector for cell phone utilization, and that its links feel less expensive than a $250 headset should.

Peruse our SteelSeries Arctis Pro + GameDAC audit

Best gaming console | Best gaming mouse | Best gaming seat

Best VR headset | Best remote gaming mouse | Best designs cards

Razer Thresher Ultimate(Image credit: Razer)

3. Razer Thresher Ultimate

The best Razer headset available.

Remote: Yes | Drivers: 50mm neodymium | Connectivity: USB remote, 3.5mm simple | Frequency reaction: 12Hz-28,000Hz | Features: Retractable unidirectional mic, RGB, 7.1 Dolby Surround

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Point by point audioComfortableQuality remote association

The later Nari Ultimate may snatch the features with its troublesome haptic criticism include, however while it looks a similar it has apparently more vulnerable sound than the great Thresher Ultimate. For our cash, that is the best gaming headset Razer has made, and it's one we despite everything use today.

I'd much rather have the nitty gritty, strong sound of the Thresher's more aurally intense drivers than something that feels like you're being nudged in the side of the head each time a blast goes off in-game.

The remote association is strong, the fit agreeable, the battery life tolerable—however not class-driving at around ten hours—and on the off chance that you snatch a couple of the discretionary pink feline ears off the Razer store you can make them look simply spectacular.

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(Picture credit: HyperX)

4. HyperX Cloud Orbit S

Comfortable, premium headset with spotless and clear encompass sound.

Remote: No | Drivers: Planar transducer, 100 mm | Connectivity: 3.5mm, USB Type A, USB Type C | Frequency reaction: 10Hz–50,000Hz | Features: Detachable clamor abrogation mic with pop channel, Waves Nx completely vivid 3D sound

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Staggeringly clear sound3D head following Nice, agreeable form

HyperX figures out how to convey one of the comfiest, most solid headsets available while as yet having perfectly clear sound. The Cloud Orbit S utilizes audiophile-level planar attractive drivers, which peruses as cool as they sound. Basically a rebadged Audeze Mobius headset, the Orbit S looks super-smooth and its goliath adaptable padding ear pads are incredibly agreeable to wear for extended lengths of utilization with out overloading your head.

The heavenly solid quality alone merits the venture. You can undoubtedly utilize this as your beginning and end headset for versatile, comfort, and PC play. Utilizing Audeze' Waves NX 3D sound tech, it tracks your head development to reproduce 7.1 encompass sound and the outcomes are noteworthy. However, the product could be somewhat overpowering. It despite everything doesn't change the reality this is an extraordinary sounding headset with a solid sounding separable mouthpiece.

Peruse our HyperX Cloud Orbit S audit

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(Picture credit: SteelSeries)

5. Steelseries Arctis 7

The best remote gaming headset for most clients.

Remote: Yes | Drivers: 40mm neodymium drivers | Connectivity: Wireless by means of USB, 3.5mm wired | Frequency reaction: 20Hz-20,000Hz | Features: Retractable clamor dropping mic, DTS Headphone:X, 7.1 encompass

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Extraordinary battery lifeComfortable 'ski goggle' headband

What we like best about the Arctis 7 is that you can undoubtedly overlook it's a remote model while you're utilizing it. There's none of the sloppiness or sound curios that have generally destroyed the gathering for remote headsets—it sounds similarly tantamount to the best wired models we've tried at this equivalent $150 value go. The exceptional battery life times in at more than 20 hours out of the case, and after close to 12 months of weighty utilize that figure's barely dropped off. You can continue playing while you charge, as well, basically by associating the headset to your PC with a USB link.

The Arctis range's particular ski goggle headband is truly powerful at getting the heaviness of the headset far from your head, and even in the wake of playing for quite a long time we've never felt it diving in. Following a time of day by day utilization, the headband loosens which makes for a looser and somewhat less agreeable fit, yet the groups themselves are replaceable and sold for under $15 on the Steelseries online store. A useful yet marginally peaceful and stifled mic is the main chink in its generally imposing covering. read more

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butchharrydalton · 6 years ago

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How to Include Autistic Women in Your Feminism

Hey, given that this is an activist post, I might be mentioning certain issues that might be triggering to some. Check the tags and stay safe. Ily. ❤️

Ever since activist and feminist Audre Lorde devised intersectionality as a way of describing the experience of multiply-marginalized women, feminism has adapted to include women of color, trans women, queer women, disabled women and religious minority women. Although white, non-intersectional feminism is still pervasive and is the dominant ideology carried on by cishet white women, a significant portion of the feminist movement has embraced the identities and diversity among various groups of women.

Intersectionality allows for us to look at the various ways womanhood affects those experiencing it, instead of just slapping one catch all experience of femininity onto all women. It lets us understand that a woman of color, for example, has less amounts of racial privilege than a white woman and must deal with the burden of specific stereotypes around being a woman of color. Intersectional feminism centers the women with multiple identities, or “intersections,” that society considers unfavorable or marginalized.

However, with all the strides intersectional theory has made in social justice circles, the plight of Autistic women is largely ignored by even the most inclusive feminist circles.

Disabled women as a broader group are often lumped together, even though cognitively disabled, intellectually disabled and physically disabled women contend with incredibly different forms of ableism. Alternatively, the feminist movement also tends to cater to physically disabled women who often have more visibility (which, granted, isn’t a lot) and acceptance than those whose minds are thought to be lesser.

It’s common in the disabled community for people to justify their humanity by asserting their neurotypicality, while erasing and oppressing non-neurotypicals. The pro-Autistic movement itself is mostly made up of women, queer individuals and people of color, and yet somehow it always ends up headed by cis white men. In both feminism and Autistic advocacy, women (especially ones with multiple intersections) are ignored and pushed to the sidelines despite typically facing greater oppression than cis autistic men.

Thus, it’s important to make sure to be inclusive towards autistic women and GNC individuals in both feminism and disabled activism. Here are some ways that I’ve compiled on how to make your feminism both inclusive and accepting as a queer, Autistic feminist.

1. Mention Autistic Women and Bodily Autonomy

Women’s rights to their bodies are an important topic to discuss in feminism, but Autistic women deal with specific challenges in regard to consent and access to care and their bodies, so it’s important to bring up these issues in your discussions.

For starters, the court case Buck v. Bell still stands to this day. The case itself took place in the early 20th century during the eugenicist movement, and the court’s ruling allowed the forced sterilization of anyone labeled feebleminded. It’s legal for parents and guardians of the disabled to sign paper and sterilize anyone under their control regardless of whether the person in question consent to it even now. This is especially unsettling for women of color, who have historically been abused by eugenicist doctors. (See The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks and the book Imbeciles for more information on these topics).

In the medical industry, there are also barriers Autistic women must deal with. Today, there are still ableist debates about whether Autistic and other disabled people deserve emergency medical treatment and organ transplants. Once again, this is especially bad for women of color who deal with medical abuse and malpractice committed against them in modern times.

The gist is, the most vulnerable Autistic women often don’t have the ability to consent to harmful and damaging procedures.

For transgender Autistic women, the burden is tenfold. Many Autistic trans people on social media have shared their stories about how people struggled to believe that they were trans because of their neurological difference. This makes transitional care and access much harder for GNC Autistic people and trans people, as their gender identity is viewed as a symptom.

2. Talk About Consent

Along with consent to medical procedures, there’s also the fact that Autistic women are particularly vulnerable to the whims of violence against women. Here are some ideas to mention when talking about consent.

First off, many Autistic women use alternative methods of communication. Neurotypical women can usually say an explicit ‘yes’ or ‘no,’ though they still face violence. For Autistic women who are nonverbal and communicate through AAC, in a victim blaming culture such as ours their hindered ability to consent can be used against them.

Through ABA therapy, Autistic women are also further taught that their ‘no’ doesn’t matter. True ABA therapy, created by Ivar Lovaas, is essentially legal conditioning. The aim of this psychological form of abuse is to train Autistic children into seeming more Neurotypical instead of embracing their unique neurology and changing their environment to fit their needs. These kids are taught to obey authority at all times, or else they’ll deal with the use of an aversiv e. This of course, discourages their active consent to a situation and puts Autistic women in a dangerous position.

If they are physically as well as cognitively disabled, they may not physically be able to resist or run from an attacker. In many cases, an incidence of assault is justified by the perpetrator claiming that the victim wouldn’t have had a consensual encounter otherwise because they are “ugly” or unworthy of a healthy relationship. Autistic women are often considered to be such..

Trans women and women of color, who are often assaulted more frequently than cis white, women are of course very vulnerable when it comes to this issue. As such, it’s vital to mention this at any discussion of consent.

3. Know that Toxic Femininity Affects Us More than Neurotypical Women

To preface this, I want to say that there’s nothing wrong with being feminine. I myself identify as a femme woman, out of my own personal fashion sense and aesthetic. I like being a feminine woman and wearing dresses and having long hair, though these also aren’t the only ways to be feminine, of course. Embracing femmeness does not mean that someone is servicing the patriarchy, and embracing androgyny and/or butchness also doesn’t mean said person has internalized misogyny. Everyone is entitled to the way they want to present, and feminism should be about uplifting how people choose to present themselves instead of putting down women they don’t think look ��liberated” or “feminist” enough.

That being said, the patriarchy tends to enforce feminine roles on cis women and police the feminine expression of transwomen to make them “prove” they’re really trans and “sure” about being women. I like to call this “Toxic Femininity,” the way that women are pressured to conform to Eurocentric femininity regardless of how they actually want to present, but then oppressed for both their femmeness or their alternate presentation if they disregard the aforementioned. Either way, women can’t win.

Abiding by gender roles is exhausting for anyone, but for Autistic women who have limited energy to go into their daily activities and deal with sensory issues and neurotypicals. As such, gender presentation is often pretty low on our list of priorities. Autistic women are often unable to conform to society as our hindered social skills prevent us from perceiving these norms. It’s hard for us to fully conceptualize what’s acceptable and what’s not. As such, it takes extra effort for us to live up to Toxic Femininity.

With our sensory perception, certain clothes are uncomfortable for us and it’s sometimes a necessity to wear certain textures. Men’s clothing or androgynous clothing are often more comfortable, so it’s not uncommon to find us wearing those. As such, we are often labeled butch or non-femme regardless of how we actually identify our presentation. We are cast aside by Toxic Femininity.

This is of course, even more true for fat women, trans women, and physically disabled Autistic women, who’s bodies already don’t abide by the unattainability that Toxic Femininity forces us to live up to.

4. Downplay the Voice of Neurotypicals in Autistic Women’s Issues

Despite their position of being privileged oppressors of the Autistic community, most of our advocacy is done by parents and relatives of Autistic people who believe that they are more entitled to our community and voices. They are the “Autism moms” and those with blue puzzle piece signs in their backyards, constantly yelling over us.

Most of the Autism organizations are run by these people, who often don’t consult with Autistic people about the needs of our community. Even though most of them don’t think they hate Autistic people and may even share common goals with the community, they still oppress us because they’re centering the voices of the privileges instead of the voices that are affected no matter how supportive they are.

An Autistic inclusive feminist space means downplaying Neurotypical rhetoric, meaning stopping the use of hate symbols like puzzle pieces and functioning labels. Cut out the influence of ableist organizations and monitor the use of words like “retarded” in your space. This will be difficult in a pervasively ableist society, but it will be worth it in making a more united social justice movement.

It also means allowing Autistic people to have input in their own issues, and allowing them to reclaim their agency. Know that no matter how many Autistic people you know, if you’re Neurotypical, you will never truly experience being Autistic even if you know more about the condition.

5. Autistic Women Can Still be Racist, Homophobic, or Transphobic – Don’t Be Afraid to Let Them Know

There are usually 2 stereotypes Neurotypicals believe about us, and strangely enough, they’re complete opposites. We’re either hyperviolent, unfeeling school shooters to them or perfect innocent angels who never do anything wrong. Obviously, these are ableist because they assume that all Autistic people are the same, but most people tend to look at us as the latter stereotype because it’s more “politically correct” even though both viewpoints are hurtful in different ways.

As such, when Autistic people are genuinely oppressive, they aren’t held accountable. I’ve had interactions with homophobic Autistic people who accepted me for my Autism but not the fact that I was a girl who loved girls. I’ve met misogynist Autistic men who viewed me as an object and wouldn’t respect my boundaries and right to say ‘no’ to a relationship. As an Autistic white person, I myself hold institutional power over Autistic people of color and as such, am able to be racist.

Autistic people shouldn’t be given a free pass for their bigotry, and assuming that they should denies them their agency and oppresses others in that space.

Autistic women have a lot to contribute to feminism, and neurotypical women should allow them the opportunity to rise against their own oppression. Thanks for reading and for making your feminism inclusive –

Trust me, it means the world to us.

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yeltsinsstar · 5 years ago

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Some of the US interventions in the Middle-East since 1945

1949: Syria:

The democratically elected government of Shukri al-Quwatli was overthrown by a junta led by the Syrian Army chief of staff at the time, Husni al-Za'im, who became President of Syria on April 11, 1949. Za'im had extensive connections to CIA operatives.

1952: Egypt

Project FF or Fat Fucker was a Central Intelligence Agency project in Egypt, aimed at pressuring King Farouk into political reforms. The project was masterminded by CIA Director Allen Dulles, Secretary of State Dean Acheson, CIA operative Kermit "Kim" Roosevelt Jr., and CIA Station Chief in Cairo Miles Copeland, Jr. However, due to the unwillingness of Farouk to change, the project moved to support his overthrow, and Roosevelt secretly met with the Free Officers Movement, which overthrew Farouk in a coup d'état led by General Mohammed Naguib and Colonel Gamal Abdel Nasser on 23 July 1952.

1953: Iran

The 1953 Iranian coup d'état, (known in Iran as the "28 Mordad coup") was the overthrow of the democratically elected government of Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh on August 19, 1953, orchestrated by the intelligence agencies of the United Kingdom (under the name "Operation Boot") and the United States (under the name "TPAJAX Project").

1956–1957: Syria

In 1956 Operation Straggle was a coup plot against Syria. The CIA made plans for a coup for late October 1956 to topple the Syrian government. The plan entailed takeover by the Syrian military of key cities and border crossings. The plan was postponed when Israel invaded Egypt in October 1956 and US planners thought their operation would be unsuccessful at a time when the Arab world is fighting "Israeli aggression." The operation was uncovered and American plotters had to flee the country.

In 1957 Operation Wappen was a coup plan against Syria. A second coup attempt the following year called for assassination of key senior Syrian officials, staged military incidents on the Syrian border to be blamed on Syria and then to be used as pretext for invasion by Iraqi and Jordanian troops, an intense US propaganda campaign targeting the Syrian population, and "sabotage, national conspiracies and various strong-arm activities" to be blamed on Damascus. This operation failed when Syrian military officers paid off with millions of dollars in bribes to carry out the coup revealed the plot to Syrian intelligence. The U.S. Department of State denied accusation of a coup attempt and along with US media accused Syria of being a "satellite" of the USSR.

There was also an assassination plot later, called "The Preffered Plan", in 1957 against many leaders in Syria. There would be a Free Syria committee set up and outside invasion would be encouraged. However this plan was never put through

1958: Lebanon

The U.S. launched Operation Blue Bat in July 1958 to intervene in the 1958 Lebanon crisis. This was the first application of the Eisenhower Doctrine, according to which the U.S. was to intervene to protect regimes it considered threatened by international communism. The goal of the operation was to bolster the pro-Western Lebanese government of President Camille Chamoun against internal opposition and threats from Syria and Egypt.

1959: Iraq

The October 1959 assassination attempt on Iraqi Prime Minister Abd al-Karim Qasim involving a young Saddam Hussein and other Ba'athist conspirators may have been a collaboration between the CIA and Egyptian intelligence. (There are conflicting reports on this one.)

1963: Iraq

Similar conflicting reports over US involvement in the February 1963 Iraqi coup.

1972–1975: Iraq

The U.S. secretly provided millions of dollars for the Kurdish insurgency supported by Iran against the Iraqi government. The U.S. role was so secret even the US State Department and the U.S. "40 Committee," created to oversee covert operations, were not informed. The troops of the Kurdish Democratic Party were led by Mustafa Barzani. Notably, unbeknownst to the Kurds, this was a covert regime change action the US wanted to fail, intended only to drain the resources of the country. The U.S. abruptly ceased support for the Kurds in 1975 and, despite Kurdish pleas for help, refused to extend even humanitarian aid to the thousands of Kurdish refugees created as a result of the collapse of the insurgency.

(Note that Trump’s betrayal of the Kurds is not the first time the US has done so).

1977–1988: Pakistan

Operation Fair Play was the code name for the 5 July 1977 coup by Pakistan Chief of Army Staff General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq, overthrowing the government of Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. The coup itself was bloodless, and was preceded by social unrest and political conflict between the ruling leftist Pakistan Peoples Party government of Bhutto, and the right-wing Islamist opposition Pakistan National Alliance which accused Bhutto of rigging the 1977 general elections. In announcing the coup, Zia promised "free and fair elections" within 90 days, but these were repeatedly postponed on the excuse of accountability and it was not until 1985 that ("party-less") general elections were held. Zia himself stayed in power for eleven years until his death in a plane crash.

The coup was a watershed event in the Cold War and in the history of the country. The coup took place nearly six years after the 1971 war with India which ended with the secession of East Pakistan as Bangladesh. The period following the coup saw the "Islamisation of Pakistan" and Pakistan's involvement with the Afghan Mujahideen (funded by US and Saudi Arabia) in the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan.

1979–1989: Afghanistan

In what was known as "Operation Cyclone," the U.S. government secretly provided weapons and funding for a collection of warlords and several factions of Jihadi guerrillas known as the Mujahideen of Afghanistan fighting to overthrow the Afghan government and the Soviet military forces that supported it. Although Operation Cyclone officially ended in 1989 with the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan, U.S. government funding for the Mujahideen continued through 1992, when the Mujahideen overran the Afghan government in Kabul.

1994–2000: Iraq (post Gulf War)

The CIA launched DBACHILLES, a coup d'état operation against the Iraqi government, recruiting Ayad Allawi, who headed the Iraqi National Accord, a network of Iraqis who opposed the Saddam Hussein government, as part of the operation. The network included Iraqi military and intelligence officers but was penetrated by people loyal to the Iraqi government. Also using Ayad Allawi and his network, the CIA directed a government sabotage and bombing campaign in Baghdad between 1992 and 1995, against targets that—according to the Iraqi government at the time—killed many civilians including people in a crowded movie theater. The CIA bombing campaign may have been merely a test of the operational capacity of the CIA's network of assets on the ground and not intended to be the launch of the coup strike itself. The coup was unsuccessful, but Ayad Allawi was later installed as prime minister of Iraq by the Iraq Interim Governing Council, which had been created by the U.S.-led coalition following the March 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq. As a non-covert measure, the U.S. in 1998 enacted the "Iraq Liberation Act," which states, in part, that "It should be the policy of the United States to support efforts to remove the regime headed by Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq," and appropriated funds for U.S. aid "to the Iraqi democratic opposition organizations."

2003 to present: Iraq

The USA invades Iraq after falsely claiming Iraqi involvement in 9-11 and that they possessed weapons of mass destruction. See: Iraq War

2006–07: Palestinian territories

The U.S. government pressured the Fatah faction of the Palestinian leadership to topple the Hamas government of Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh. The Bush Administration was displeased with the government that the majority of the Palestinian people elected in the January Palestinian legislative election of 2006. The U.S. government set up a secret training and armaments program that received tens of millions of dollars in Congressional funding, but also, like in the Iran-contra scandal, a more secret Congress-circumventing source of funding for Fatah to launch a bloody war against the Haniyeh government. The war was brutal, with many casualties and with Fatah kidnapping and torturing civilian leaders of Hamas, sometimes in front of their own families, and setting fire to a university in Gaza. When the government of Saudi Arabia attempted to negotiate a truce between the sides so as to avoid a wide-scale Palestinian civil war, the U.S. government pressured Fatah to reject the Saudi plan and to continue the effort to topple the Haniyeh government. Ultimately, the Haniyeh government was prevented from ruling over all of the Palestinian territories, with Hamas retreating to the Gaza strip and Fatah retreating to the West Bank.

2006–present: Syria

Since 2006, the State Department has funneled at least $6 million to the anti-government satellite channel Barada TV, associated with the exile group Movement for Justice and Development in Syria. This secret backing continued under the Obama administration, even as the US publicly rebuilt relations with Bashar Al-Assad.

This was followed by intervention in the Syrian Civil War, in part to combat ISIS/ISIL, with the USA supporting Syrian & Iraqi Kurdish forces. The US, under the Trump administration then abandoned the Syria Kurds to a Turkish intervention in 2019.

2007: Iran

In 2007, the Bush administration requested and received funding from Congress for covert actions in Iran that, according to a presidential finding that Bush signed, had the goal of undermining Iran's religious leadership.

2011: Libya

The United States has been active in post-2011 Libya with the military carrying out sporadic airstrikes and raids in the country, predominantly against Islamist groups.

2015–present: Yemen

The U.S. has been supporting the intervention by Saudi Arabia in the Yemeni Civil War. The Yemeni Civil War began in 2015 between two sides, each claiming at that time to support the legitimate government of Yemen.

The U.S. military provides targeting assistance and intelligence and logistical support for the Saudi-led bombing campaign, including aerial refueling. The US also provides weapons and bombs, including, according to a Human Rights Watch (HRW) report, cluster bombs outlawed in much of the world and used by Saudi Arabia in the conflict. The United States also supports the war effort on the ground with Green Berets on the Yemen border with Saudi Arabia tasked initially to help the Saudis secure the border and later expanded to help locate and destroy Houthi ballistic missile caches and launch sites in what Senator Tim Kaine called a “purposeful blurring of lines between train and equip missions and combat.” The US has been criticized for providing weapons and bombs knowing that Saudi bombing has been indiscriminately targeting civilians and violating the laws of war.

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arcticdementor · 5 years ago

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Over recent weeks, political turmoil raged in the form of mass demonstrations that saw 1 in 7 Hong Kong residents take to the streets to protest an extradition bill that would have allowed alleged suspects to be deported to stand trial in Mainland China, where the legal system is subject to the arbitrariness and discretion of the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The fear that any dissident could be targeted isn’t unfounded as stories about billionaires and booksellers being kidnapped by Beijing operatives, only to be prosecuted in show trials on the Mainland and in some cases even tortured in jail, are well known. The extradition bill left almost no room for doubt about China’s ambitions to further override the civil rights guaranteed to the people of Hong Kong by the Sino-British Joint Declaration and renege on the agreed-upon “One Country, Two Systems” framework.

…

For those who embrace the ideological frameworks of various forms of “Social Justice” Theory including postcolonialism, decolonialism, critical race theory and intersectional feminism, seeing the Asian inhabitants of a former colony raise its colonial flag simply does not compute. Within this ideological conception of the world there is a very simple understanding of power dynamics in which oppression must always come from people seen as having dominant identities – white, male, western, heterosexual, cisgender, ablebodied and thin – and be inflicted upon those seen as having marginalized identities – people of color, colonized or indigenous people, women, LGBT, disabled and fat people. When all of these elements are considered together, we get the framework of ‘intersectionality’ and it is through the language and activism of intersectional scholars and activists that most people encounter these ideas.

Eastern people who complicate the narrative of Western oppressor and Eastern Oppressed are understood to be speaking into and perpetuating oppressive discourses of colonial power which apply much more broadly than their own situation. From this perspective, by aligning themselves symbolically with the flag or philosophically with the ideas wrought by colonial legacy, the protesters were understood to completely invalidate the legitimacy of their liberation movement. Other criticisms reserved for the protesters include rebukes for lacking sensitivity and solidarity toward other countries with victims of colonialism. The journalist Ben Norton went so far as to say that the British flag was a symbol of “genocide, murder, racism, oppression and robbery,” and that the “pro-democracy” activists in Hong Kong were in effect, pro-colonialist groups, funded and backed by the “Western NGO-Industrial Complex.”

This argument perfectly exemplifies how one’s basic reasoning and moral calculus can get muddled when steeped too heavily in this kind of postcolonial theory. To deride the fight against one of the most repressive and autocratic regimes is to completely undermine and disparage Hong Kong’s struggle for democracy and freedom. Semantically equating being “pro-democracy” to being “pro-colonialist”, where the latter is essentialized to “pro-evil,” Norton instantly reveals the moral incongruence of embracing the actual oppressor (China) at the expense of the oppressed (Hong Kong), all in the name of opposing an institution which has become a bogeyman used by progressives to blame only the West for all of the world’s ills. Does it ever occur to him and other like-minded critics that perhaps the vast majority of the protesters simply do not want to live under the tyranny of a surveillance state that censors dissidents and implements dystopian social credit score systems?

…

The entire historical trajectory of our species and the geopolitics of our world are grafted upon a map drawn by colonial violence. Colonialism has existed in nearly all states and civilizations and has been the norm, not the exception, for the better part of human history. Since the ancestors of modern humans set out of Southeastern Africa around 70,000 years ago, despite the clear record of intermixing, people have been conquering territory, sometimes by way of committing genocide. Proto-Indo-European Yamnaya people spread from the Pontic steppe and ended up settling from the Tarim basin to Ireland millennia ago. The Thule displaced the Dorset in Canada’s Arctic less than a thousand years ago, the latter being almost wiped off from the face of the earth. Our own DNA bears testimony to this tyrannical tendency embedded in us: 1 in 200 men on Earth can trace their ancestry from Ghengis Khan. The status of conqueror and the conquered has changed hands repeatedly throughout history. These and countless other examples, such as the expansion of the Umayyad Caliphate into the Iberian Peninsula and the occupation of Eastern European states by the Ottoman empire, should shatter the myth that colonialism was a uniquely Western transgression. With the moral arc slowly bending toward justice, post-colonial guilt has taken a stranglehold on Western thought, manifesting itself in two forms: one constructive and the other, destructive.

Constructive guilt allows us to critically evaluate various historical injustices and current inequalities that were shaped by European colonialism. Destructive guilt leads to the moral myopia exemplified by some progressive reactions to the plight of the Hong Kong people, which disturbingly echo that of Chinese-run state media. For one, the sight of the British flag among the Hong Kong protests has united intersectional progressives and CCP apologists in calling the massive demonstration a Western-backed uprising and accusing them of, ironically, “internalized colonialism.” This particular criticism is both condescending and patronizing as it alludes to the lack of self-agency among Hong Kong protesters, who must be so mentally weak as to become unwitting shills and puppets for the Western agenda. This epitomizes the postmodern notion of colonialism stretching beyond just physical land occupations to include a sort of cultural or ideological transformation of the mind. This is, indeed, exactly how postcolonial scholars from Frantz Fanon to Edward Said to Gayatri Spivak have seen it. If there is any merit to this idea, then why isn’t what China is doing considered a form of colonization of the Hong Kong mindset? Do we only care about the injustice of colonialism when the respective groups, defined as the “colonizer” versus the “colonized,” harbor differential levels of melanin? This logic not only provides the license to discount instances of colonialism between ethnically homogenous groups, it also allows progressive elites who rail against the lack of civil liberties, the imprisonment of dissidents, the mistreatment of minorities, abuses in detention centers and police brutality back home in the West, to be willfully blind to the hypocrisy of somehow supporting some of the very same things for the people of Hong Kong.

#areo magazine #melissa chen #hong kong #china

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bisansastarks · 6 years ago

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Sansa hadn’t known who Jon was- expect that he was apparently her boss. He was apparently everyone’s boss to be fair. He was Daenery’s main campaign manager but for some reason chose to spend his time in this small little town of 5000 nicknamed The Wall, choosing to give his orders to all other districts over the phone. That had made Sansa pause- why was the Targaryen’s campaign manager in such a small district? Surely, he should be in King’s Landing where most of the population resided?

Sansa

Sansa isn’t nervous, per se.

She’s been around politicians her whole life- they don’t scare her. You don’t grow up the daughter of Ned Stark, beloved Senator from Wisconsin, and not understand how politicians are. She’s been shaking hands with the wealthy elite since she was four

“your daughter is such a proper lady Eddard, just like her beautiful Mother….Of course, we’d be happy to make a donation!”

she’s seen them at their best ( the 2010 Elections when Tywin Lannister funneled cash into the opposing side, a little known republican and Lannister, to take her father out of the race so they would have less opposition to a pipeline the Lannister dynasty had millions tied up into- and Democrat after Democrat had flown to their sleepy area of Winterfell to make stump speeches on Ned Stark’s behalf) and of course she’s seen the seedy underbelly of politics: the games, the manipulation, the backstabbing. None of this happened while watching her father though. Ned Stark was known across the country as one of the last honest politicians in the US. He never went negative no matter how hard the opposition tried to smear him and he made good on his promises. Throughout his twenty years he had worked tirelessly to support issues such as education, the environment, and progressive social issues.

No, Sansa knew the dark side of politics from her four years at Georgetown and her political internship after political internship. First there was her internship with the Baratheon’s- this was of course pre the divorce of Cersei Lannister and Senator Robert Baratheon, when Tywin Lannister still pretended to be a democrat and helped his son-in-law win elections by covert blackmailing and piles of money that just so happened to end up in helping hands bank accounts. Her father- bless him- had been shocked and told her to quit just in time for Robert Baratheon to figuratively lose his head. That is, when a demure Cersei Lannister with crocodile tears had appeared on CNN- detailing every single sexual liaison her husband had kept over the past 20 years. He of course hadn’t been re-elected and Cersei Lannister had pulled a The Good Wife going on to win a race in Florida of all places, promising to be stricter on immigration and laughingly calling herself pro-life. Sansa wouldn’t be surprised if Cersei drank the blood of babies- so that was a hard one for her to grasp.

Then there was the Tyrells- oh the Tyrells. Sansa had been politically smitten- her own version of 2008 and Hope. Olenna was of course ancient- but she had been a progressive for over 50 years and was priming her grandchildren from the game. A young and beautiful Margaery Tyrell- champion of women’s rights, openly bisexual, and with a keen eye for laws. And her grandson Loras, who had seemed an enigma to Sansa but had the perfect politician look and said yes to every liberal issue his grandmother fought for. Sansa had thought she had found it- the politicians she truly believed in. Of course then Olenna had made friends with the Lannisters, and suddenly it didn’t seem to matter that Cersei Lannister was openly trying to destroy protections for oppressed classes and drill, baby,drill- not when the money was pouring in and the Lannister’s were so popular. Olenna Tyrell called it working across the aisle- Sansa Stark called it bullshit and greed.

And then there was of course her last internship. This politician hadn’t been running for federal office but a local campaign in the county across from Winterfell. Sansa was tired of the work in D.C, she had just graduated and wanted something different. In her previous internships she had been paraded around like a model- Look we have Ned Stark’s daughter working for us! Ned Stark is with us!- of course she had done nothing more than fetch coffees and act as therapist most days- but she was a symbol. It had been exhausting. This local election was supposed to be different, she was supposed to have a real role. Truth be told the politician hadn’t been happy she was related to Ned Stark, for reasons she hadn’t understood at the time, but he had taken a long look at her and told her she could start on Monday. She was excited to take all she had learned at Georgetown, all she had learned watching powerful men doing powerful things, and help elect someone.

Of course,…. that’s not how it turned out, a little voice whispered in her head.

That was four years ago and she was not thinking of it. Even if she was making a decision that seemed to bring it all back with sharp clarity. She had a goal this time however- and it had nothing to do with believing in the politician. She didn’t care if Daenerys Targaryen blackmailed or funneled money or even drank babies blood (okay maybe she cared if the silver haired woman did that) Sansa knew she had to do everything to get the Targaryen to win. She just had to.

So despite spending the last three years out of politics and helping her mother with her charity work- she had sent in her resume. She had met with a rather fat but sweet man who had stuttered at her when asking: well, why should we hire you? And she had said because if you do, you’ll win.

And okay, maybe she had thrown around the Stark name a little- Sansa thought her insides squirming with guilt. She hadn’t wanted to- but she had needed to be here. She needed to help Daenerys Targaryen win.

And here Sansa was. It was a Monday morning, five months before November fifth and she stood in front of what appeared to be an old post office. The windows were covered in yard signs that if she were being honest- Sansa found tacky. They were red and black with the words Vote Targareyn- She will Fight for You, but it seemed a bit overbearing, all that black and red lettering. There was a note on the door telling visitors to please ring the bell so Sansa did- and she waited.

It was 8’am. She’s not sure why the stuttering man, Sam, had told her to come at 8 am. Campaigns were notorious late starters- people worked enough as it was, they didn’t need to be in the office if there was no chance for voter contact and you simply didn’t call people at 8 frigging AM. But he had insisted and here she was.

Sansa shifted her foot- she was wearing sneakers. At her internships she had always worn heels, small ones due to her height, but heels nonetheless. That was when she was a pretty little bird for them- a token of Ned’s Stark’s legacy. Here she was Sansa, she was going to be the campaign manager for this district and she was going to wear sneakers because no one walked doors in heels.

She wasn’t nervous she told herself again, only that wasn’t exactly true. Sansa was nervous. Not about this Targaryen woman although there were some rumors that made her pause (the woman never canvassed, her husband drank, she appeared out of touch with reality, Sansa had even heard a rumor she spoke regularly with a psychic for godsakes) but in truth that didn’t bother her. Most politicians were a touch odd and almost all had a complete break with reality- especially considering the Targaryen history, Sansa wasn’t surprised. She did actually like this woman from what she knew about her: Daenerys ran on a pledge of fixing the education system, working for the disabled, and had a special interest in ending the rape epidemic that was occurring across college campuses. Sansa wanted to see this woman succeed and not just for her own ulterior motives.

So no she wasn’t nervous about her candidate- Sansa was nervous about herself. She had spent her entire life watching politics unfold, but now she would be part of doing it. This woman’s campaign could soar or crash and burn at Sansa’s feet. It was a lot of pressure. She had tried to press Sam about her office and the people there and Sam had babbled on about an intern by the name of Gilly and when she had asked him about others, he had paused and screwed up his face in a frown “Jon’s great! He’s one of my best friends…he’s a little cranky though. Just ignore him.”

She was still thinking about it when the door finally opened. The brittle light of a hallway shone out and there was a man in front of her. Truly he wasn’t very tall- probably about Sansa’s height. He had black curly hair tied up, and a rather impressive beard- clearly campaign life had already killed any desire he had for grooming. He squinted at her and Sansa found that a shame because before he had, she had been noticing his eyes: a warm steely grey that had seemed rather inviting despite the circles under his eyes.

“Hello” He muttered in a raspy voice. Sansa suspected he had been sleeping and her ringing the door bell had awoken him. She tried not to think about the jolt of heat she felt at the sound of his voice. It was early and she was nervous- that was all.

“Hi, I’m Sansa Stark. I’ll be working here.” She reached out for his hand, ever the politicians daughter. He stared at her again with those grey eyes. Then he turned around, and called out as walking:

“Your desk is this way, Sansa Stark.”

Jon was contemplating the cigarette on his desk.

In truth he had been sleeping before Sansa Stark had rang the doorbell. He hadn’t even made it to his air mattress last night after entering in canvassers contact data- instead he had fallen asleep in his chair, bent over his laptop, with a half of bottle of IPA on his desk.

Jon could still taste the sour beer in his mouth and there was a headache forming behind his eyes. His back was aching too- he wasn’t the same 21 year old kid on his first campaign, sleeping on the floor and drinking all night. Now he was 29, this was his 10th campaign, and he threw his back out entering in numbers and got a headache from two beers. Pathetic. And he was hungrily eying one of Val’s cigarettes she had left him. He didn’t even smoke- but it was the 276th day of Daenerys Targaryen’s campaign and everyone smoked ten months into a campaign.

That might have been why he had been so……Rude a voice that sounded like Sam said, to Sansa. His stomach squirmed a little- he hadn’t meant to be so stand offish. In truth, he had become the office grump a long time ago. According to Sam half the volunteers were afraid of him and according to Val he was a bitter old grandpa who needed a vacation for fuck sakes. A vacation wasn’t going to happen in the next five months however: not with Petyr Baelish ahead in the polls by three, not with half his Campaign Managers running around districts of New York calling him in a panic whenever a new soundbite came out, not when his entire political future demanded that he win this race.

Okay maybe that last thought was a big dramatic- Jon was sure there was another disgraced politician in Washington who needed his help. He forgot sometimes- but he was good at this. He had elected every politician but one…and it was only three points in the polls. That was within the margin of error.

If everything did turn to ash Jon supposes he could always return Lyanna Mormont’s calls. She had been requesting his aid for the 2018 elections for months now- said she trusted him and he was the only who could help her win. He laughed quietly to himself thinking of the 19-year-old—graduating college early so she could run for the Wisconsin House. Brash, cocky, and entirely too young- but at least she didn’t consult psychics weekly.

Fucking psychics Jon thought. Next race he was taking a hard stance against them- he’d do a full background check. Any candidate who so much as burned incense would not be his candidate. His thoughts turned back to Sansa however, as he started finishing inputting the data before the Campaign Managers noticed it wasn’t updated- he’d never get any of them to enter data on time again if they caught that. Even Missandei in King’s Landing who Jon was sure could easily do his job (probably better if he was being honest)- would protest that shit.

Sansa Stark. Of course he knew who she was- everyone knew the Starks. Jon had always considered Ned Stark one of his personal political heroes. Ned Stark worked tirelessly to fight for the underdog…before everything that happened with Stannis Baratheon, Jon had hoped to one day work on his campaign. And growing up in D.C and having an interest in politics, Jon had seen her picture a thousand times. Beautiful Sansa Stark with her long legs and perfect smile and flowing red hair- at Governor’s Balls and helping her mother organize charity drives, marching in the Women’s March: Sansa Stark was the perfect politicians daughter.

And more beautiful in person, Jon thought. Jon had been half asleep when he opened the door to her and had to swallow a breath. Standing in front of him was one of the most beautiful women Jon had ever seen. Her hair had caught the sun light and the clear blue of her eyes…well definitely more beautiful in person than on a page of the Washington Post Jon reasoned. Of course then his brain had caught up and he remembered oh yes, this was Sansa Stark. Daughter of a politician who had made that very clear to Sam in her interview…and who would now be running one of his most important districts when all her experience was tied up in fetching the Tyrell’s coffee.

Jon wasn’t naïve no matter what every woman he had ever dated said: he knew how D.C. worked. A big name meant everything. And there was no reason to believe Sansa wouldn’t try now that she had the experience. At the very least, if Dany kept sliding in the polls, maybe she could bring in her Father’s endorsement. But it still nettled Jon, how people got by here. He had worked tirelessly since he was 19 to get where he was and in walked Sansa Stark with a good last name and a charming smile.

It reeked of entitlement and set Jon’s teeth on edge. But also, how did you get here Jon Snow?

Jon sighed as he finished entering his data. He wondered how much he’d unnerve his new Campaign Manager if he walked out of his office with another beer at 9 AM. I do need a vacation he thinks morosely. Still: he had avoided it long enough. His data was entered. It was time to face his new beautiful campaign manager at the desk he placed her at. He stopped to brush his teeth through first…he wasn’t quite at that level of campaign depravity.

He had placed Sansa in the corner next to the yard signs. She had her own desk however- so Jon figured he wasn’t being the absolute worst boss by putting her there. Sure, she’d have to assemble a lot of yard signs for crotchety old people but she was less likely to throw them at the person than Jon was, so really he was only being productive.

“Hey Sansa- how are you settling in?” Jon brought over a chair to sit next to her and she spun around to face him.

“Pretty good…I’ve downloaded all the drives you said and I’ve been looking through them. I’ve been reading the canvassing script too.” She pointed to some paper she had been flipping through on her desk.

“Actually…. there is parts of it I think should be changed” Sansa ascertains and focuses those big blue eyes right at Jon. He huffs.

“You do?”

“Yes, some of the language is very awkward. We should make it friendlier so people feel more comfortable.” Jon decides that Sansa must have been killer at staring contests in schools- she hasn’t blinked once and Jon finds himself distracted by that damning shade of blue. Reel it in Snow, your CM is challenging you. Who cares about her eyes?

“The script is just an outline. People can put it in their own words Sansa.”

“Yes, but it’s not a very good outline, is it?” Sansa remarks, rather loftily Jon thinks.

He should have brought the beer. He also shouldn’t have been a dick.

“You’re right Sansa. You can look it over and make edits and give it back to me. And you know what? I think you’re ready.” Jon smiles at her, all teeth, and this time Sansa blinks.

“Ready for what?”

“Ready to meet the Queen.”

Sansa looks confused. Jon thinks there might be a forty percent she runs away screaming when she meets Drogon. He really can’t afford to get a new Campaign Manager so quickly but that damn entitlement. Politics have ruined me Jon thinks ruefully.

Politics ruin everyone. They’ll ruin her too.

Sansa

Jon Snow, she decides is an asshole. She decides this when he doesn’t tell her what the Queen is. Just walks away laughing darkly, after telling her he expects her edits on the script by the end of the day. Okay, she realizes with a sigh, challenging her new boss wasn’t the best idea. But Jon had all but ignored her, hadn’t even introduced himself, and sat her next to a bile of those ugly yard signs.

He’s written me off before I’ve said a sentence, Sansa thinks. And that, her wounded pride, she can’t ignore.

She knows why-it’s why she had been nervous this morning. He heard Stark and thought she was an airhead politicians daughter who walked right in. He probably thinks she’ll quit as soon as he asks her to work a weekend. Or stay past nine. But Sansa isn’t dumb- she’s knows what she’s getting into, she’s worked her father’s campaigns growing up. She knows she won’t have a day off the next five months, knows she’ll get screamed at, need coffee like an IV: she knows hard work damn it.

How dare Jon Snow write her off. She wants to get angry but she needs to figure out what he meant first. A girl is sitting a few desks away entering in numbers so she walks over to her, tapping her shoulder.

The girl jumps in her seat, her headphones sliding off her ears. Sansa hears what she think might be a British boy band but the girl quickly shuts off her phone. She’s pretty with dark brown hair and dark eyes, and she smiles instantly when she calms down a little. It’s nice to be smiled at, Sansa thinks wryly.

“Uh hi- I’m Sansa I’m the new campaign manager.”

“Sansa! Oh Sam told me all about you I’m Gilly! Nice to meet ya! Has anyone shown you around?”

“Oh..no” Sansa feels a bit awkward, she doesn’t want to bad mouth everyone’s boss but Gilly smiles like she knows.

“Oh yeah, that’s Jon. He’s a bit cranky. He’s a super great guy, he actually helped get me this job! but to be honest every time he reads a new poll I think he ages about five years.” Gilly stands up and Sansa is caught in her frenzy of excitement. She talks non-stop about Sam and Jon and a tracker named Val, shows her where the coffee maker is (a very expensive gift from Daenery Targaryen’s husband. In truth the one her parents have isn’t half as nice- but that is Lannister money, Sansa thinks) and chats all about where to get the best food and who the craziest volunteers are.

This would have been nice if Jon her actual boss had bothered to do any of this, Sansa thinks. She stops Gilly mid-sentence on a conversation about Sam and how he’s saved their life a million times as Finance Director, to ask what Jon meant about “Meeting the Queen.”

Gilly gets suddenly shy and smiles. “Oh, that’s Mrs. Targaryen. Everyone just calls her the Queen around here. You’ll see why.”

Sansa felt a sudden sense of foreboding. She’s heard the nightmare stories about unpleasant candidates and she needs to get this woman to like her- especially if her Campaign Manager has already written her off. Sansa shakes it off- Gilly is still talking and wants to bring her over to where Sam is sitting, so she follows the girl.

It’s 10 am now- Jon said she’d meet the Queen around noon.

Coffee, Sansa decides, I need coffee. It just so happens that the coffee machine Mr. Lannister gifted the office makes espresso and she’ll take any small gift at the moment, while her stomach is in knots and she feels cold sweat on her back.

The Queen is beautiful, Sansa notes. She’s had this shade of blonde hair that couldn’t be natural but must be expensive and bright blue eyes. She’s a tiny woman but Sansa realizes instantly why everyone calls her the Queen: she stands regally as if the whole world was meant to bend to her rule. Sansa isn’t sure if that comes from her own experiences or being a Targaryen, but she thinks it might be both.

Targaryen’s ruled politics in America for over a hundred years. At one point, people joked: you’d have a Targaryen representing you in the local House, the federal Senate, a Targaryen as your judge, and one ruling the executive branch of America. They flipped back and forth between running as republicans and running as democrats, it made no matter, you weren’t voting for a party you were voting for a Targaryen. They had done a lot of good Sansa mused, many Targaryen politicians had worked hard to protect the country, push civil rights forward, and make everyone a little richer. But the Targaryen star had crashed and burned in the seventies and 80’s when controversy after controversy had come out. There was the Targaryen in the Senate of Alabama who had been rumored to have fathered his sister’s children. Targaryens kicked out of office for accepting bribes and blackmailing their opponents. And then there was President Aerys Targaryen who had been forced out of Office for lying under oath, and committing war crimes. After that it was dangerous to run for Office with the last name Targaryen. The last who had been left in office was his son Rhaeger, a senator from Texas who had lost re-election after a very public sex scandal involving the birth of a child. Sansa hadn’t been alive for any of this so she had never seen the Targaryen’s in their full regality.

Here stood Daenerys Targaryen in front of her: five feet tall and imposing. The daughter and sister of two disgraced politicians who wanted to run to restore her families name…and to help people, she claimed. She did look the part Sansa mused, in her button down and blazer that could have cost thousands or merely hundreds. Daenerys Targaryen looked both approachable and admirable something every politician hoped they could be.

This moment Sansa decided later, was ruined when a gigantic beast ran right towards her and she screamed. Jon saved her- grabbing the beast by his…collar? Sansa realizes the thing is a very large dog, with black fur and red snarling lips. “Drogon!” Daenerys Targaryen calls happily, as if the dog in question was trying to lick Sansa’s face rather than bite it off. The Queen walks over briskly and takes the snarling dog from Jon and Drogon instantly relaxes around her ankle.

“You must be Sansa” Daenerys affirms, reaching over to shake her hand. Sansa isn’t sure if her politician or her boss has worse manners- at least this woman shakes her hand. “I’m Daenerys Targaryen. You’ll be working to elect me.”

“Dany-“Jon breaks in, and Sansa has not heard one single person refer to her that way. He’s angry however. “I’ve told you not to bring Drogon in anymore, he could have mauled my campaign manager- your campaign manager!”

Daenerys doesn’t seem to notice or mind the informality which surprises Sansa, she only shakes her head in equal exasperation. “Oh Jon- it’s fine! He’d never truly hurt her.”

Jon mutters quietly as she turns around, and Sansa thinks it might be directed at her “He bit a child four months ago….”

Psychics and Psychotic dogs Sansa thinks, this will be fun.

She looks over at Jon who still looks angry and realizes that this would be a great way to make amends. Sam and Gilly swear Jon is a great guy and he did just save her from needing reconstructive surgery on her face- she could at least thank him. Sansa reaches over and grabs his arm,

“Thank you” She tells him quietly while Daenerys putters around making herself coffee before their meeting. He smiles at her, just the littlest bit and nods. He seems to be deciding something.

“Don’t question anything she says. Not at first, okay?” Sansa nods.

They sit down for their meeting with the Queen.

Over the course of their meeting Sansa questions many things, for instance

1. Why is Daenerys refusing to canvass because a woman named Melisandre has told her it’s not necessary?

2. Why do they spend ten minutes discussing the fireworks at her next fundraiser

3. Why is she bringing Drogon to meet and greets with her

4. Is she aware that she’s down in the polls?

5. Why did she choose her colors to be red and black because they were “imposing”

6. Why does she want her disgraced Father who just got out of prison to make stump speeches for her?

Sansa kept these questions to herself however. And if she kept shooting Jon looks over the meeting- well Daenerys didn’t seem to notice. Jon however- seems to know when to pick his battles because he only flags the Aerys stuff.

“Dany,” Jon begins slowly and Sansa doesn’t know this woman but his tone of voice would rile her up- so she’s wondering if she should start hiding in case the dogs leash slip, “You cannot have Aerys Targaryen making speeches for you. Your entire campaign has to be about how you’re not him!”

The Queen stands to her full height and her dog gets up as well, Jon seems rather unconcerned. Sansa isn’t sure if that makes him brave or an idiot. “He is my father, Jon Snow.”

“He was forcibly removed from the White House, by his own Secret Service.” Daenerys Targaryen, Sansa decides, is a beautiful woman even when her nostrils flare in anger and she looks rather petulant. She swallows audibly and Sansa swears that even Gilly in the back of the room shuts up.

“Just because you have no good will towards Targaryens does not mean—Fine. But my brother Rhaeger, will.” She smiles sweetly at Jon then and Sansa swears she’s missing something very important- because if possible, Jon looks even more frustrated.

He leaves- telling Daenerys to go over numbers with Sansa and get to know her new Campaign Manager for the Wall. And then Sansa is left alone with her new Queen.

#here is 5k of a jonsa political au?#jonsa #actualjonsa #my writing #jonsa fic

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llotwor · 3 years ago

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fierytwins · 3 years ago

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One slight difference in my version of the story has to do with the Meta Liberation Army.

The battle of Deika City between the LOV and the MLA went mostly the same, but with the Pros helping the League. This doesn't affect the fights Shiggy, Dabi, and Toga have in major ways, but Spinner, Mr. Compress, Twice, and Magne(who is alive in my version as I felt Overhaul just attempting to kill her would be enough to get the League to hate the guy) have an easier time of things. The battle also takes place a few weeks after the School Festival. Jai takes part in the battle, under the supervision of Fat Gum and Eraserhead, with the latter giving him permission to use lethal force if absolutely necessary.

Now as I said, Toga's fight with Curious is mostly unchanged in how it plays out. Only difference is, Jai swoops in to give her support during the critical moment where her quirk evolves to allow her to use the quirks of those she's turned into. Seeing his girlfriend being battered to death by essentially a journalist and her entourage, obviously sends Jai over the edge. In a bestial rage, Jai kills a dozen of Curious's lackeys.

He protects her and assists her in using Ochaco's quirk to drop Curious and her remaining lackeys to their deaths. After which, Jai carries Toga to Twice, planning to have a copy made of her so that it can be used to distract the MLA while he takes the real one to the medical team. Despite knowing he didn't have any other options in the moment, Jai does have lingering regrets of the deaths he caused.

#My Canon

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gxpready956 · 5 years ago

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aleatoryalarmalligator · 7 years ago

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Life Story - Part 24

Ava joined our group of friends in the winter of 02′ and for some part of my life, she became my best friend. She had spent the last year since she had moved from Moscow being a part of the popular group of girls in our class and i had never said anything to her at all. She was bored of those girls I think, or had gone through them all one at a time till they were done with her. She never fit in with them, since she was heavy. We were all amused as she told us all about how strange and insecure the popular girls actually were when they were home. It made me feel normal. Ava was incredibly funny and energetic, almost too much. She was an addictive character you don’t meet everyday and could really throw you off course – in a good way most of the time, but if you were around her too long, your identity would begin to disappear. She could break people's resolve very easily, which is why I became friends with her so quickly, when ordinarily I am the sort of person who takes a lot of time to make new friends. She would give you that feeling you might get when you have been laughing hysterically for hours with people, and everything seems funny to you and you have kind of lost grip of yourself and something feels wrong but your brain is filled with happy dope.

It had it's pros and cons. We ended up getting along great since we were both very strange. I would come up with some insane comedy routine and ideas - i would make up characters and scenarios, and Ava would just pull out this insane impromptu reactions and additions i would never think of or would not imagine being acted out in such a way to what I had said, and people legitimately thought we were both completely insane. Something was always greedy and gleeful in her eyes - a little crazy. She had a way of demanding attention. I remember I was quite nervous to reach out and try to befriend her, but I called her and she instantly took well to it. I don’t think i had ever gotten so close to another person that fast.

Ava lived in the hills above Kendrick, miles away from civilization, close enough to where she could have gone to the Moscow high school instead. For whatever reason she decided to attend Kendrick's school. Her father was a well known geologist. He worked at the University of Idaho, and the other half the time he was down in Brazil or Argentina or someplace doing rock stuff. The house they owned was pretty nice. It was old like my house was. But it was in the middle of a field that stretched as far as the eye could see. Going off the highway. You would drive onto one gravel road, that was really more of a farmer's road. You would drive for ten miles out into this field, and then you would take yet another more gravelly gravel road and drive another two miles, and you would be at her place. The surroundings were bleak. The home was well furnished. She had one older sister named Ana, but she was in college. A few dogs.

Her mom was kind of distant and moody. I never really did understand that lady. She never seemed to leave the house, instead she would sit outside and look out at the fields listening to NPR until the sun went down. She was a retired social worker and she was unprofessional in that she told people her client’s secrets because she was kind of judgy that way.. In her youth, she had partied with Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix. Then she had moved to England for ten years, and eventually came back and settled in Moscow, before retiring to look out over the barren wheat fields. It didn't seem like she had any visitors. Once every couple of years she would travel to France or Italy. And maybe once every three months, she would attend another rich person's party. Ava always bragged that her mom was friends with Steve Miller. Yet, as much as I don't understand why she was here of all places, I suppose it really was a good thing elite liberal families to move to rural places like this. It fights back the culture of red solo cups, conservative values, and Kid Rock and the like.

Their home had two living rooms, and a sitting room. And all these other rooms. It was really a nice place. Ava had a lot of Italian and Greek in her blood, and their kitchen had a lot of Toulouse-Lautrec paintings and the like. There was also a smaller home off the property, a barn for her two horses, and this other little building that looked like a tattered barn, but inside it was actually an opulent mini mansion that was her father's study. It had bookshelves up to the ceiling, classy lighting. Years later I was watching the television show Hannibal, and it looked a little like Hannibal's office. And past that, there was this pond that was actually slimy and disgusting but I ended up swimming in it anyway that summer. It was filled to the brim with bold catfish who would try to eat you if you stayed still for too long. One of Ava's horses was named Molly. She was old, and pretty nice. The other one was this Arabian horse named Chimo. Chimo was the fucking devil. When Ava was showing me her barn one time, he galloped up to me, and he tried to bite my face with his big awful teeth. Ava always had to shove him away roughly for him to not try to hurt people. And then she would always tell you that he didn't mean it, and he would never hurt anyone – but yes, yes he would. He was the devil.

Despite Ava's nice house, I always grew bored and weary up there. For one thing, it was far out of the way of anything remotely fun. The store was twenty five miles back into Kendrick. There were no trees. The nearest neighbors were three miles away, and they were old farmers. Ava and her mom had a strange relationship. I didn't get it at all. Ava's mom might come up and ask Ava if she wanted some ice cream, in a very calm voice. Ava would fly off the handle FUCK YOU MOM! And then her mom would calmly walk away and say Okay Avaaaaah. She always said Ava's name really long. Then, Ava would make a small mistake like accidentally rip a page in a book, and her mom would freak out at her, call her a fat cow and fly into this rage over something that seemed to me as incredibly petty. But then, if Ava accidentally burned down a barn – she didn't do this, but she was very unruly and did a lot of things like this – her mom would just sigh and would not reprimand her in any way. I didn't get it. I think it made Ava a little crazy. On one hand, she was spoiled rotten, and on the other, her mom was at random intervals, verbally abusive.

Ava's dad was nice when he was around – which was infrequently, but very loopy to me. I had heard that he had some kind of mental disorder that had made him dangerous, but was now treated so long as he took his medication. He always seemed a bit off, but I understand it's the price you pay when you have a mental illness sometimes. He had had a rough life. He had been disowned by his family. They had made all their money on illegal cheating on horse racing back in the early 20th century, and had sided with Hitler in Nazi Germany, and were a part of the Nazi party themselves when WW2 happened. His mother had been a Nazi youth who had met Hitler. And they still agreed with the Nazis to this day. Ava's dad had tried to become a painter, and they had scoffed at him and took his funding away. He hated his family, understandably and never spoke to them again. I think he probably had Bipolar. I can't say for certain, but he seemed to be that way. Ava was larger like him, she had his dark hair, and his thicker build.

I would get uncomfortable at Ava's house because she would ask you what you wanted to do, and then when you said something she didn't want to hear she started getting aggravated and upset and before you know it she would start calling herself a stupid bitch over and over. So, you would feel nervous, stuck up in the hills, not being able to casually go home, with Ava, her mother and father all in their strange modes. Ava was also OBSESSED with Orlando Bloom. Ava jumped from crush to crush pretty frequently, but Orlando Bloom was god to her. She had posters of him all over her wall, some as Legolas and others not, as well as one of Heath Ledger in A Knight's Tale. She went to see Lord of the Rings herself probably forty times. And she wrote Orlando Bloom about three times a week. He never wrote her back. Over the course of that winter, she was becoming more and more depressed, as though he were her husband and he was willfully ignoring her. In her mind, she was meant to be with Orlando Bloom. There could be no other way. When Ava didn't get her way, or felt bad about herself at all, this dark cloud would descend and she would begin accusing everyone of hating her. It was strange to be accused of hating her because Orlando Bloom was not writing her back.

As it happened, there was this senior in the school named Brandon who looked like Orlando Bloom in the vaguest of ways. He was probably the coolest kid to have gone to Kendrick high school. He ended up meeting an Irish girl and moving to Ireland. Ava liked him also, but it was really just a surrogate kind of deal. His mother had a party one time, and she and her mother had been invited. At this party, she met this guy who knew some of the people who had worked on set with the LOTR cast, and he himself had auditioned for the role of Legolas. He had seen Orlando come on set. She was absolutely crazy about this connection and was dearly hoping it would bring her closer to Orlando Bloom.

She ate a lot. She actually ate more than me. She would eat three bowls of cereal, an omelet, two sandwiches, a wheel of cheese, three large cups of milk, ten cookies, and a gallon of ice cream in one go. I felt awkward and tried to eat all this with her but despite the fact that I had a large appetite myself, I was floored at the end of the omelet. But if you stopped eating, she would start calling herself fat and being really awkward and start saying you were calling her fat, so you had to eat. And sometimes at school, she would get really upset about how heavy she was. She would throw tantrums at Sarah and Katie because they were tiny and didn't understand what it meant to be fat. Eventually, I remember in an attempt to even things out, I was like 'Ava, I am fat too. I think if I was going to lose weight I would probably need to go on a diet. We aren't born with the same bodies'. This was the first time I had ever suggested to myself that I needed a diet, and it also made Ava furious at me for a short time.

She also had a few ingrown hairs (often happens to girls with course dark hair) on her legs, and she would pick at these ingrown hairs till they were scabs. Any blemish that was on her body, besides her face she would pick at till they bled. So for a time, she was covered in scabs. And she thought she had a disease. But we all watched her pick at them. I think Ava was suffering from a personality disorder at the time. And she would call herself ugly, and she wasn't ugly in the least. She had a gorgeous face, and in a certain angle she could look like Gwen Stephani a little bit. It really was hard to be her friend sometimes. I really liked her because she was very fun, and dynamic and interesting. She was probably the most likeable person I had ever met up to that point. Adults hated her because she was unruly and she would always accidentally break things. She got complained about for yelling. But it was so funny you really could not tell her to stop.

Ava first befriended Katie, and this was the beginning of the eventual undoing of Katie. Katie was gullible. Ava and Katie hung out a bunch together. There was one time where Katie chewed Ava out, when Ava foolishly grabbed Katie's rifle and began pointing it at everyone. Katie took the rifle away and was very angry. To Katie's credit, she was and probably still is as responsible as a person can be with a deadly weapon. But other than that, she sort of singled Katie out, and befriended her for about a month. They ran around learning Middle Earth language. When she got Katie alone and in a trusting situation, she started telling Katie that Samantha and Sarah were against her, and probably me too, but honestly nobody ever went against me because perhaps I was too small a fish. Nothing was actually going on of course. Nobody hated Katie. Ava was taking small things and making them huge and embellishing on them to turn Katie against us and make her act out. Ava was in her own way, intentionally wrecking the group so she could dominate it. Katie was a gullible trusting person and she believed every word of this nonsense. So there was this bizarre weekend where Katie and Ava were together and sending angry emails to Sarah and Samantha. I sat drawing at the table, not really sure what the hell everyone was so mad about.

When Ava had Katie good and upset, she then turned on Katie and came back to Sarah's side. I really didn't see it like this then. It took me a few years later to track all of Ava's moves and fully realize the game. This left Katie feeling mistrustful and permanently alone. Poor Katie stopped smiling and would sometimes walk away from us upset. I tried to talk to her, but she would just say she was depressed. I don't think she even understood what had happened, or ever questioned Ava's intent or that she might have been lying.

Katie also started getting mad because she felt that Ava and Sarah had both at times drawn realistic art, and Katie felt that realism was hers. This only made her seem more ridiculous to Sarah, who wasn't really interested in realistic art at the time. We couldn't help but make jokes when we turned on Public Television and Bob Ross would be painting something realistic. 'Oh look, he's stealing from Katie. He can't do that!' Katie's mom also didn't want me to come over to visit ever again when I accidentally tracked mud on their carpet. So it was hard for me at least, to get Katie alone so I could ask what was wrong. Ava in the mean time was now going to befriend Sarah. Samantha wasn't really buying any of this. She didn't think Ava was as funny as we thought she was, and Sam at this time was starting to care more about boys (will get into this later). So now Ava was kind of the dominant leader of Sarah and me. Not completely, but kind of.

Honestly, sometimes I just kind of wanted it to just be Sarah and I again. Neither one of us really started problems that bad. Since Sarah had stopped insulting me, we got along great. We would spend hours playing Final Fantasy 9 or Zelda for 64, eating popcorn and chocolate covered raisins or draw and talk about our comics. We would stay up late and ask each other questions about the boys we liked. There was never any conflict. It wasn't easy, but I would generally try to tell her if I was upset with her. And we both pondered about life just a little more thoughtfully, and had the same strange experiences. One time, Sarah and I were talking on the phone and someone in her basement picked up the basement phone and said something to us. It was a man's voice. We could tell it was her phone because there was this certain way that it clicked when it came on that was distinct. But there was nobody downstairs. The doors were all locked, and you could look and see the doors from the upstairs. Things like that always happened to Sarah and I.

Samantha had become very infatuated with some guy named Samuel who lived in Texas. She had met him on a chatroom. She was intent on marrying him. Andy no longer meant much to her. Around this same time, there was an assembly, because we had this guest theater group from Lewiston come to do a show. Basically, it was like, three stories of twenty-odd year old actors and actresses acting like they were teenagers in 'teen' situations. One took drugs, one drove drunk and the other got pregnant. They were these highly emotional, highly charged scenes of fighting and internal dialogue until the worst of the worst was upon them. And the actors would scream and cry. In the end, the druggy one overdosed and almost died, the drunk driving teen accidentally got into an accident and killed someone, and the pregnant teenager was all well, pregnant. And in the end, the actors/actresses would cry out THIS IS REAL! This Is Real Life, and they would convince you for a few moments that they were just acting out what had actually happened. We were all blown away at the time, but it was actually rather corny.

Anyway, after this, they basically said at one point that teenagers were not capable of being in love. Which is bullshit. But that was their argument for abstinence. So, Samantha did something I did not expect. She stood up and boldly argued that they were wrong before the whole school. It really became a debate that the actors and actresses lost. Sam really broke it down. At first, I had just kind of assumed the actors were right, and then she addressed it by breaking it down to what they meant, and in a way that made me realize that I had been wrong. It was really an interesting moment for me, and I really admired her bravery. So I called Sam after school to tell her what a great job I had thought she had done, and also that I really believed in her relationship with this Samuel fellow. We got to talking, and we had not been that close since kindergarten, honestly. She started complaining about Sarah though. And once she started, she could not stop. It was really strange. All these years, Sam had disliked me, and liked Sarah. Now, she was fond of me and she hated Sarah secretly. It was all very strange to me. She complained about some really small stuff. There was one time where Sarah's breath had smelled, and she had told Sarah, and Sarah had said she had eaten garlic that morning. Sam was adamant that Sarah had been lying, and had in fact, not brushed her teeth. She was REALLY mad because she felt that Sarah had scratched her Eminem Show cd. After awhile, she was starting to sound obsessed with bashing on Sarah. And of course, I was told not to tell anyone

I kind of broke down and told Sarah. I felt like it was only fair for Sarah to address herself to Samantha. It didn't seem healthy for Sam to vent at me, and I didn't want to hate Sarah. So I told Sarah, who would talk to Sam about it, and I knew that Sam would be furious at me for having told Sarah what she had said (that might be the most 8th gradery sentence I have written in awhile). And so for that very brief time, Sam and I were friends again, but it was over before it ever really began, and we went back to mild tolerance for the rest of the time I knew her. I probably did the right thing, but heck, it doesn't matter anymore. And who but I would hold onto such pointless information?

School dragged along. There was a Drug Free after school club that was started for the seventh, eighth, and ninth grade. Kyle joined, my friends did, and so I did too. We had to take a pee test to prove we were drug free. The class was mostly an excuse for all of us to get together and cook up fried Twinkies and snicker bars every two weeks. Mrs. Kerrick had started it. I liked Mrs. Kerrick, though we were never really all that close. She taught both my math and earth science classes. She was pretty competent when it came to teaching. But people laughed at her because she was very heavy, and she dressed somewhat provocatively. I never really cared, but she also flirted with the teenage boys. It got to be pretty carried away. She would insinuate things. Anyway, I eventually got kicked out of the Drug Free thing.

The reason for that was, that in earth science we were all supposed to group up with the person sitting nearest to us and take chemicals and make them crystallize. It had something to do with learning about the earths molten rocks that dried. Everyone was kind of rowdy. I ended up with Karlie (as you will remember her as the unwell girl from 7th who used to talk to me). Karlie and I paired up, and Mrs. Kerrick told us all very seriously that we were not for any reason at all, to drink or eat any of the chemicals in the box. But as we all worked on making our crystal things, I looked over, and there was Zack, taking spoonfuls of this stuff and drinking it in the hopes I imagine of getting high. I thought that was pretty funny, so for shock value, I pretended to Karlie that I had drank the poison as well. Obviously it wasn't poisonous else Zack would have keeled over, and I just was making a joke. I hadn't taken any of it in, I just moved the spoon away from my mouth to make it seem as though I had taken a bite.

Karlie said OH MY GOD! YOU DRANK IT! And I hadn't. I assured her I was joking, but she ran up to the desk and pointed at me and told Mrs. Kerrick something, and then Mrs. Kerrick looked fatigued and panicked and she ran me into the hallway and said we were going to have to call some poison control people and take me to the emergency room. It took everything I had just to convince her that I had been joking. She barely believed me, but gave in due to it being her worst nightmare. It really gave her a fright, and I felt very embarrassed. She gave me a detention anyway – which I took, because it would at least be a new packet other than Ten O'clock Tim or whatever, and told me not to come to the next Drug Free party. I suppose I could have gone anyway, and she would not have kicked me out. I could have gone to the one after that, but I just decided to quit. I wasn't mad at her at all. She was just honestly panicked, quite understandably. The joke was harmless, but it was dumb. And as far as I know, Zack never died, despite eating the stuff like pudding. I never knew if he got high off it though.

I asked Karlie why she hadn't told on Zack. She didn't say much. I think it was probably because she had a crush on him. Rumor has it, she had written this twelve page fan fiction of Zack having bizarre standing up sex on the beach with her. Someone had stolen it from Karlie and gave it to Zack. I could tell that she was sort of crazy about him by the way that she looked at him all the time.

If you would like to read my whole life story so far, here are all the parts i have written

PART 23 - http://tinyurl.com/yac6sk3g

PART 22 - http://tinyurl.com/yat6cfnw

PART 21 - http://tinyurl.com/y783egno

PART 20 - http://tinyurl.com/y8jskymt

PART 19 - http://tinyurl.com/rfhbms8

PART 18 - http://tinyurl.com/ycrznrwk

PART 17 - http://tinyurl.com/y77unlng

PART 16 - http://tinyurl.com/yadpsv8c

PART 15 - http://tinyurl.com/yb3lt6k5

PART 14 - http://tinyurl.com/yb4cfedq

PART 13 - http://tinyurl.com/yalanq9s

PART 12 - http://tinyurl.com/yc79mw94

PART 11 - http://tinyurl.com/yc9qhj84

PART 10 - http://tinyurl.com/yb734w24

PART 9 - http://tinyurl.com/yc2t6vfw

PART 8 - http://tinyurl.com/ybl37utq

PART 7 - http://tinyurl.com/ybvo283g

PART 6 - http://tinyurl.com/kbc9dwu

PART 5 - http://tinyurl.com/msnz4am

PART 4 - http://tinyurl.com/k9x8esg

PART 3 - http://tinyurl.com/mwp9atx

PART 2 - http://tinyurl.com/lbt6xq2

PART 1 - http://tinyurl.com/l8xbvg8

#text

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wolfandpravato · 8 years ago

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We’re 15

Our first day blogging (as the Volokh Brothers, and with a format borrowed from InstaPundit, who inspired us to blog) was Wednesday, April 10, 2002. Here are a few posts from the first week:

[Sasha:] PINKOS AND PISTOLS: The article about my gun club has indeed appeared in The Economist. The story mentions the Pink Pistols (a gay pro-gun group — motto: ‘Armed gays don’t get bashed’), Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership, the Tenth Cavalry Gun Club (not in the article, but check out Kenneth V.F. Blanchard’s main web site, blackmanwithagun.net!), the Mt. Holyoke Second Amendment Sisters, the Maryland Institute College of Art Gun Club, the Armed Pagans, and, of course, my own Harvard Law School Target Shooting Club. The piece is ‘premium content’ on the Economist web site, so you have to pay the big bucks to read it online, so you’d better buy it in print. (It’s the best news source there is, so it’ll be worth all 450 pennies.) But here’s a short (fair-use!) excerpt:

The Harvard Law School is arguably the command centre of American liberalism. But the school’s gun club boasts some 120 members, 5% of the student body. Alexander Volokh, who founded the club late last year, takes members shooting on a range in New Hampshire. Guns are banned on the Harvard campus; the New Hampshire range displays a sign saying ‘Children under 13 shoot for free.’ Mr Volokh plans to hold a wide range of gun-themed events on campus, including screenings of films which feature ‘regular people using guns as a force for good.’ Another student wrote an article in the Harvard Law Record entitled ‘Discovering the Joy of a Semi-Automatic’….

Mr Volokh points out that enthusiasm for guns is a form of counter-cultural rebellion, rather like smoking cigars.

A hugely sympathetic article, despite The Economist‘s pro-gun control editorial position.

* * *

[Eugene:] TAKE A FRIEND TARGET-SHOOTING DAY: I took some students to the shooting range Tuesday, and everyone seemed to much enjoy it. (The Public Interest Law Foundation here at UCLA Law puts on an auction each year to raise funds for scholarships; they usually auction off items or events contributed by professors, and each year I contribute pizza, safety training, and target-shooting for four.) The students were one man, who had shot before, and three women, who had virtually no shooting experience. Oddly, the gender balance was exactly the same as in the preceding two or three years that I’d done this.

I like to do this sort of thing for a variety of reasons (among other things, I have fun and so do most of the people I take), but here are three in particular: First, all people, regardless of their views on gun control, should know how to shoot a gun, and of course how to handle one safely. I hope I’ll never have to use a gun outside a shooting range — but who knows? And it’s better to know and not need to use the knowledge, than to need to use the knowledge and not know.

Second, guns, like other deadly devices (such as cars) arouse both rational concern and irrational concern. I’m generally skeptical about gun control proposals — “if guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns” is an oversimplification, but there’s a lot of truth it — but I’ve certainly heard lots of thoughtful, sensible arguments against private gun ownership. Unfortunately, I think that at least some anti-gun sentiment comes not from rational analysis, but from visceral hostility, and unfamiliarity is a great source of visceral hostility. Personal experience with a gun — seeing it as a tool, albeit one that when misused can cause grave harm — can help focus people on the substance, rather than the fear or the symbolism.

Third, sometimes (not always, but sometimes) hostility to guns also comes from hostility to gun owners. I remember seeing a photo posted on a colleague’s door, showing a fat guy shooting a rifle; the colleague had written over the man’s T-shirt, “No gun control or belly control.” There was no rational political argument here — just contempt for “rednecks,” “gun freaks,” “those people.” (The colleague, incidentally, was otherwise a very pleasant, affable, thoughtful fellow.)

The gay rights movement was, I think, quite right to urge gays to come out of the closet and thus show people that gays aren’t just “those weirdos in San Francisco” — they can be your coworkers, friends, even family members, normal, decent people. It’s likewise helpful to communicate, though politely and with a smile, “We’re here, we’re gun owners, get used to it.”

So a suggestion: If you know something about guns, and live in a non-gun-culture environment (like mine here on the Westside of L.A.), ask some friends to the range. If you’re a woman, all the more reason to do that. (On the other hand, if you have a reputation, however unfairly earned, as someone who’s, er, a bit odd, maybe you’d better not.) You’ll have fun. They’ll have fun. And as with all new experiences, people might subtly and indirectly learn something valuable.

* * *

[Eugene:] IS BUYING A BOOK MORE PROTECTED THAN MAKING A STATEMENT? Early this week, the Colorado Supreme Court held that the government generally may not search a bookseller’s customer records. Such a search would still be theoretically possible, but only if the government “demonstrate[s] a compelling governmental need for the specific customer purchase records that they seek” — a standard borrowed from “strict scrutiny,” pretty much the most demanding test in constitutional law.

The Colorado Supreme Court’s justification made a lot of sense, at one level:

When a person buys a book at a bookstore, he engages in activity protected by the First Amendment because he is exercising his right to read and receive ideas and information. Any governmental action that interferes with the willingness of customers to purchase books, or booksellers to sell books, thus implicates First Amendment concerns. Anonymity is often essential to the successful and uninhibited exercise of First Amendment rights, precisely because of the chilling effects that can result from disclosure of identity.

Indeed, the risk that the government will find out what you’re reading may well deter you from reading controversial things.

But while this sounds fairly appealing (I’m generally quite a free speech maximalist), I wonder how booksellers’ records about who bought which books differs from any witness’s testimony about who said certain things to him. Say that the government (or a private plaintiff) is investigating whether a defendant had a certain motive — for instance, hatred of a defendant, racial animus, loathing of abortion providers, a desire to aid the enemy in time of war, and so on; and say that this investigation leads to a witness being asked, under oath, “Did the defendant ever talked to you about how he thought [the victim / blacks / abortion providers / Allied soldiers] deserved to die?”

Under the Colorado Supreme Court’s reasoning, a defendant could demand that this evidence be excluded — at least unless strict scrutiny were passed — using the following argument:

When a person [talks to a friend or acquaintance], he engages in activity protected by the First Amendment because he is exercising his right to [communicate] and receive ideas and information. Any governmental action that interferes with the willingness of [people] to [talk freedly with other people] thus implicates First Amendment concerns. [Confidentiality] is often essential to the successful and uninhibited exercise of First Amendment rights, precisely because of the chilling effects that can result from disclosure of [discussions].

This argument, it seems to me, is exactly analogous to what the Colorado Supreme Court said as to bookstores (and surely my right to speak is just as protected as my right to buy books). But I’m quite sure that the Colorado Supreme Court isn’t prepared to accept it. And it’s easy to anticipate the court’s explanation for why people can be required to testify about what a defendant told them: There’s no doubt that the risk of one’s statements being disclosed does in some situations deter people from speaking — but for good reason, we take the view that the legal system is entitled to gather evidence, both about what people do and say. Such coercive evidence-gathering is something of an indirect burden on free speech (and on other activity), but one that seems to be justified, though regrettable. Why isn’t the same logic equally applicable to bookstore records?

What’s really going on here, I fear, is a replay of the argument that some businesses or professions are entitled to special First Amendment privileges: that reporters are entitled to a special “reporter’s privilege” that others don’t deserve, that the media is entitled to spend money endorsing candidates while others can be denied this right, and now that bookstores can protect their records but ordinary people must turn over the information that they possess. The U.S. Supreme Court has generally rejected the notion that the First Amendment provides such preferential treatment for some speakers over others — and I think it has been right to do so.

* * *

[Eugene:] ETYMOLOGY. Little-known fact: The word “politics” comes from the prefix “poly-,” meaning “many,” and the root “ticks,” meaning “bloodsucking insects.”

* * *

[Eugene:] LETTING IN IMMIGRANTS = LETTING IN YOUR FUTURE RULERS.

I just ran across a Conrad editorial cartoon from the L.A. Times: An American Indian is carrying a sign that says “Deport Illegal Immigrants.” This, I assume, is meant to suggest that it’s hypocritical for white Americans to oppose illegal immigration since America was, well, stolen from the Indians.

I think, though, that the cartoon illustrates the exact opposite. The whites immigrated to America — and took over the place. (I’m glad they did, but I can surely understand why the Indians might disagree.) Likewise, Jews immigrated to Palestine — and eventually there were more Jews in some parts than Arabs, so Jews started running the place. Now Israelis are sensibly objecting to Palestinians’ asserted “right of return” to their and their parents’ homes, because if enough Palestinians are allowed to immigrate into Israel, they’ll start running the place.

The bottom line is that for all the good that immigration can do (and I’m a first-generation immigration to the U.S., who is very glad that America let me in, and who generally supports immigration), unregulated immigration can dramatically change the nature of the target society. It makes a lot of sense for those who live there to think hard about how those changes can be managed, and in some situations to restrict the flow of immigrants — who, after all, will soon be entitled to affect their new countrymen’s rights and lives, through the vote if not through force.

I sometimes pose for my liberal friends a stylized thought experiment. Say that they live in a country of 3 million people (the size of New Zealand) where 55% of the citizens are pro-choice and 45% are pro-life (1.65 million vs. 1.35 million). Now the country is facing an influx of 1 million devoutly Catholic immigrants, who are 90% pro-life. If these immigrants are let in and become citizens, the balance will flip to 2.25 million pro-life to 1.75 million pro-choice (56% to 44% pro-choice); and what my friends might see as their fundamental human right to abortion may well vanish, in a perfectly peaceful, democratic way. It’s unlikely that any constitutional protection will stand in the way: Even constitutions can be amended, and new judges can be appointed. Nor can one rely on “education” or “assimilation” — what if the immigrants simply conclude that their views on abortion are just better than the domestic majority’s? I think many of the current residents may rightly say “We have nothing against Catholics; but we don’t want our rights changed by the arrival of people who have a different perspective on the world than we do.”

Letting in immigrants means letting in your future rulers. It may be selfish to worry about that, but it’s foolish not to. For America today, that’s actually not that much of a concern, because we’re a huge nation whose culture is already so mixed (for which I’m grateful) that even millions of immigrants won’t affect it all that greatly, at least for quite a while. But for many smaller and more homogeneous countries, extra immigration means a fundamental change in what the country is all about, and perhaps what the citizens’ lives and liberties will be like. It’s neither racist nor hypocritical to worry about that.

* * *

[Eugene:] SONG LYRIC FOR THE DAY. “You told me again you preferred handsome men / But for me you would make an exception.” Leonard Cohen, “Chelsea Hotel, No. 2.” * * *

WORSE THAN INTERNET ADDICTION. The latest cyber-op-ed from yours truly. Trust me, this thing is very dangerous.

Originally Found On: http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2017/04/10/were-15/

#Law #Lawyer

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jimdroberts · 5 years ago

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Britain, Brexit, and Zugzwang

There’s a saying in chess that describes a position whereby the player whose turn it is

Zugzwang should be Batman’s nemesis.

can’t make a move that won’t lose him the game, such a position is called, zugzwang. In British politics similar situations are called Brexit.

How did we get here?

Google images with a search for, “Brexit Timeline.” It results in an array of graphical representations and psychedelic colours of confusion illustrating just how the UK will negotiate their way through the eight levels of hell. Each timeline is different and every timeline is about as accurate as a bumblebee with a machine gun, leaving me to deduce that nobody has the faintest idea what is going on.

Just look at the timelines, it’s madness I tell you!

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

The Brexit Timeline – How Did We Get Here?

2010, Conservatives win a general election without a clear majority. The Conservatives form a coalition with the Liberal Democrats.

2015, In an attempt to win an outright majority, David Cameron pledges a referendum on Britain’s membership of the European Union (EU), despite the fact that he was pro-Europe. The Conservatives win an outright majority.

June 2016, Britain holds a referendum to decide whether it’s to remain a part of the (EU). Despite all media predictions, a majority of 51.9% of people vote to leave the EU. Within 24 hours David Cameron resigns as prime minister and like a leader of a banana republic, goes into exile on the French Riviera, where he settles down to write his memoir, also known as his excuse, the memoir fails to mention performing any sexual acts on the severed heads of pigs.

“David Cameron announced he is stepping down in the wake of a vote, which should make me happy, but it doesn’t. It’s like catching an ice cream cone out of the air, because a child has been hit by a car. I’ll eat it! But it’s tainted somehow.” – John Oliver

June 2017, riding Following the departure of David Cameron, Theresa May mistakes a wave of national euphoria for what is actually a burgeoning sense of scorn, ridicule and contempt towards her. Failing to recognise this

Ever wondered what a person looks like having just been given £1 billion?

she calls a general election, not an easy thing to do given the Fixed Term Parliament Act requiring five years between elections. Conservatives win the election, but take control of a hung parliament. To have a majority they form a coalition government with the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), a sort of stone-age sect of religous zealots whom Theresa May gives £1 billion. Some called it a bribe, while others wanted to know where the magic money tree’s hidden. Despite the £1 billion pay off, the DUP consistently fail to support the prime minister on most Brexit votes. Still, whats £1 billion to a government preaching austerity?

March 2019, the Conservative Party tire of Theresa’s inability to make progress on brexit.

July 2019, members of the Conservative Party elect Boris Johnson as their leader and next prime minister.

Despite promising the nation that, he’d rather die in a ditch than fail to leave the EU on

Brexit’s been one disappointment after another.

October 31st, 2019, Boris Johnson delivers on neither Brexit, nor corpse in a ditch materialise. I wasn’t fussy, I’d have settled for a drain, trench, even a gutter. But no, the fat, flatulent, shaggy haired mop head lives on, and after what must have taken minutes of thought, decided to throw the decision back to the public in the form of a general election. Appealing to the same electorate, who in recent times has shown a proclivity to vote for the most chaotic scenario possible. I ask myself, why’s that trend going to stop? Leadership isn’t delegating the problem to everyone else, that’s scapegoating.

Boris hopes the ball lands on, erection.

Following the roulette disappointment, Boris disposes of his blond wig and thinks really hard about holding his erection.what to o next. fear of overheating his brain, Boris takes of his blond wig and decides whether or not to call an election.

Clowns to the Left of me, Jokers to the Right

So, come December 12th, who do you vote for. American cultural anthropologist, Margaret Mead famously said:

If you went to a restaurant, and the only choice you had was between a turd sandwiches or Jellied moose tongue, it wouldn’t be unreasonable for you to go looking for somewhere else to eat. Elections in the UK are like this, they offer no choice that you can enthusiastically endorse, just a choice of the lesser evil.

Apathy is a rational reaction to a system that no longer represents, hears or addresses the vast majority of people. A system that is apathetic, in fact, to the needs of the people it was designed to serve. …’

Russell Brand – Guardian

It’s at this stage that people can get angry with the abstaining from voting argument, they remind you of how lucky we are to have a democracy. They’re quick to inform us that voting is the only time the poor have as much say as the wealthy. And if they’ve still failed to convince they’re likely to trundle out, the very old and very tired, it’s a civic duty; which it’s not. Jury service is the only the only civic responsibility in the U.K. No, democracy isn’t being asked to choose between two groups of equally incompetent people who will inevitably balls things up, just in slightly different ways.

Perhaps journalist, Heydon Prowse most accurately explains the trend in the results of recent elections and referenda in the west”

…vote, revolt, “turn voting into a protest too”

Heydon Prowse

We live in a system where only one of two political choices ends up running the country, but people now understand that neither does anything to make their lives any better. The underprivileged will remain underprivileged, the under paid won’t become better off, in fact relatively wages have stagnated for twenty years, and the uneducated, and unemployed will continue to seek solace by watching reality television.

In reality there’s only two choices:

Don’t vote, because none of the candidates are capable of doing the job; or

Go all in with Margaret Mead and choose the lesser of two evils in the hope that the one you pick might be capable screwing things up marginally less than the other choice.

The exhilaration what western democracies promise us.

So Who is the lesser of Two Evils?

It’s an interesting question, it comes down to choosing between an egotistical, nefarious, dishonest, man who can’t keep track of how many children he might have fathered, and a man who looks like he’s just crawled out from beneath your compost heap at the

Jeremy Corbyn whispers Karl Marx, and promises his turnips that the means of production will be shared between all the vegetables.

bottom of your garden, and then preaches anachronistic left wing dogma to your vegetable patch. For years I’ve given Corbyn the benefit of the doubt, thinking that he can’t possibly prescribe to the tenets of Marxism the media claim he does, but he’s never clarified just how far his socialist beliefs go. Might he turn into an English Pol Pot, force everyone to work in allotments as he engineers his agrarian utopia? It sounds stupid, but then again, nearly everything that’s come out of Westminster for the past five years has been stupid. But the peculiarities of the Labour party don’t stop with Corbyn, in fact it’s only the beginning. Corbyn’s shadow home secretary is Diane Abbott, a woman so spectacularly incompetent that she takes a calculator to bed so she can count the sheep. To appreciate how dimwitted Diane Abbot is, the video below shows the most spectacularly embarrassing interview by a senior politician that I’ve ever witnessed:

youtube

So with Boris Johnson’s only opponent, resembling a cross between Lenin and Worzel Gummidge, and seemingly focused on winning the allotment vote of the UK, and with his sidekick displaying the mental faculties of sub-optimal kindergarten student, you would think that all Boris needs to do to win this election is stay alive until the morning of December 13th. If only it were that simple.

Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson

Yes, that really is his name, dePfeffel. If it’s not right to judge a book by its cover, then it must be an even greater superficial objectification to judge a person by their name, but what the hell is a de Pfeffel? Sounds like a catastrophe in a patisserie in which the pretzel dough and the waffle batter got mixed together and spawned the Antichrist of pastries, a de Pfeffel. No, it’s actually something far more sinister. The von Pfeffel family, after narrowly missing out on starring in, The Sound of Music, is a German, Bavarian, family of considerable historical wealth and influence. Finding out any more about them is difficult, but doubtlessly you have a neurotic, conspiracy theorist friend who’ll soon get you up to speed.

If only Boris’ problems stopped at de Pfeffel. He’s a renowned Islamaphobe, homophobe, adulterer, racist, and outright liar. In fact, he is quintessentially the British Donald Trump. The more ridiculous he behaves, the more support he gets. Johnson appeals to a disenfranchised electorate, as he appears to them to be a break from the norm. Let’s look at some of the most infamous dePfeffel moments.

In August 2018, Boris remarked that Muslim women who wear burkas resemble letter boxes. Note, that at the time he was Britain’s Foreign Secretary, a role requiring awareness of cultural nuances. Look I’m all for a joke, but… What kind of mind could consider that an appropriate thing to say?

Whilst in his position of Foreign Secretary, Boris intervened in the delicate situation of British-Iranian woman, Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe who was being held captive on charges of espionage. Boris stated that she wasn’t a spy, but teaching journalism, something which she also wasn’t doing. During Boris’ time as Foreign Secretary, the conditions of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe worsened, with her no longer being allowed to make telephone calls to her husband, and there now being great concern for her mental well-being.

In his column for the Daily Telegraph in 2002, Johnson described people from African Commonwealth countries in the following way, “It is said that the Queen has come to love the Commonwealth, partly because it supplies her with regular cheering crowds of flag-waving piccaninnies,” later he added to this mentioning, African people as having “watermelon smiles.” As I said, I like a joke, but racial slurs, well they’re just not funny.

Homophobia, in the past Johnson referred to gay marriage as being akin to humans marrying dogs. And infamously referred to gay men as tank-topped bumboys.

Boris Johnson is a survivor, he’ll say whatever it takes to climb the greasy pole, irregardless of what he says being true or not. You can’t get a more blatant example of his lies than the time he wrote one on the side of a bus. He was right in saying that the UK pays the EU 350 million pounds a week, but it takes into no account how much money the EU sends the UK per week, and how much money the UK saves with free trade with the EU.

Vote for Me – Righting the Wrongs

It’s a face of honesty, trust, sound judgment and leadership.

My manifesto is somewhat limited but at its core is righting wrongs through revenge. Essentially I would achieve this by displaying David Cameron’s head on a spike after it had been inserted into his own bottom. Whilst I freely admit that this does little to resolve the Brexit issue, I do believe it would give the country a much needed boost to morale.

The End Is Not Nigh

As an expat who’s lived outside the UK for almost twenty years, personally, I don’t care who wins the election and goes on to form a Rabelaisian government of idiots; I learnt the word Rabelaisian recently and I’m rather fond of it. I just hope that there’s something positive in this for everyone, which of course is impossible. I still firmly believe what I thought the morning after the referendum; that Britain will never leave the EU. If the powers that be wanted to leave, then Britain would have left by now. Whomever wins this election is unlikely to win a majority, leaving the UK with a fragile coalition goverment once again. One thing I’m certain of, we can’t keep standing in the middle of the road, because when you do that you get hit by traffic from both directions, or worse, you could fall off your horse and cart.

In conclusion, this election will conclude nothing.

Explaining Brexit in five seconds, be like…

Come December: Clowns to the left of me, Jokers to the right Here I am, stuck in a polling booth Without a clue what to do. Britain, Brexit, and Zugzwang There's a saying in chess that describes a position whereby the player whose turn it is…

#Boris Johnson #Brexit #Jeremy Corbyn #Opinion

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dwestfieldblog · 5 years ago

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IT SEEMS TO BE NOW OR FOREVER/ A NEW DISORDER OF THE AGES

(Or is it only ancient and unjustified?) Hail Eris...I escaped England on the day Boris Johnson became the newest puppet of masters, vested interests, donors and manipulators. The evil of of two lessers. 23rd of July, Sirius day (The sun behind the sun). British people prefer characters these days more than actual character. Put it down to the Reality TV facebook twitter lifestyle. A loveable eccentric eh? Blonde and bumbling, good for a laugh huh? Despite the fact that he is a serial barefaced liar, was a very dubious lord mayor of London with highly expensive/ridiculous ideas and utter bollocks at being Foreign Secretary. Boris wrote in 1999 'I am a raving Euro federalist...a pro European of the most violent, dyspeptic and incurable disposition'. (That was until he saw 52 percent of Brits wanted to leave the EU and thought AHA! I smell a way to power.) We all forgive a rogue with boyish charm don't we? Let's see how long the United Kingdom survives. On the day I flew back The New York Times front page had a column: 'Is Johnson how Britain will end?'

Depressing advert seen on the side of of red London bus...'Bucket Life (KFC) delivered'. Buckets of antibiotic pumped peculiar half 'chicken' type chemicals straight to your door. Good to have the empty bucket handy after one has consumed a feast fit for vomiting straight out again. Obesity well on the rise over there, he says, wolfing an entire packet of chocolate waffles with half a litre of cold milk.

Religion/politics...Nice quoted headline from a Taliban spokesman last month: 'We will not bomb schools or hospitals'. How very decent and noble of them after all these years, perhaps there aren't enough left to bother with. Today on the BBC news their spokesman said they 'never targeted civilians'. Well quite a lot seem to have been accidentally blown up by roadside and suicide bombs...Hard to imagine a decent future for the non fanatical people of Afghanistan, especially the females and shameful that the west is withdrawing because 'peace' is so near. Fnord. Perhaps they will get a cut in the opium profits/prophets. 'Mission accomplished'. Really? Saudi Arabia will now allow women to go out without permission or a guardian. In '2019'? Surely they will microchip them under the veil and have them followed by drones. How long did it take the sheiks just to accept female drivers? Nice folk who agreed to release a woman's rights activist only IF she said she hadn't been tortured. Swine.

'Can Christians in the US survive without bibles? The answer is probably not'. Thus spake the Global Times newspaper, run by the allegedly communist party of China. This, in response to hearing of new US tariffs on Chinese goods...guess where their bibles are made? That's right. 'The spiritual world of most American people is based on China's industrial capability'. Fascinating sentence on many levels. Take five seconds and think on the implications of that, if you will...

I watched several Trump debacles on CNN this summer. As usual, the 'fake news/liberal media' (etc etc) doesn't actually need to make any stories up, he provides a limitless supply of verbatim goodies with which to play. And then tries to deny he ever said them by using outright lies and obfustication (exactly the same as Boris's 'dead cat on the table' idea.) The four congresswomen of colour Trump ranted about...the chanting crowd 'Send her back'....'I didn't like that they did that and I started speaking very quickly'....Live TV coverage showed it took him 13 seconds before he spoke over them, while he turned left and right...and just for a second got that look of shiny eyed pride. His sentence that he had been 'down there' with the first responders on Nine Eleven. Surely his supporters (apart from QAnon who is either a moron, brilliant comedian or Kremlin sock puppet) must know he is lying in their faces..perhaps they really don't care. Like Melania's coat.

One of the congresswomen (Born in Somalia and a naturalised citizen) had made a non racist comment that some congressmen appear to have received money from Israeli businesses to promote their interests. Well..seems likely and fair enough, that is how it usually works everywhere. Those with money pay politicians to dance and the dosh is gleefully accepted. Not just Israel. It looks as if Trump seized on this as a useful way of stirring up manure. Criticising the state of Israel and her government is not racist just because they are Jewish. Corruption is corruption, whatever the colour or creed. And a prostitute is a prostitute. How many of Trump's KKK followers and Republican Christian haters of abortion actually support Israel? Take a calm guess on the percentages of probability. How many 'acting' people has he around him now? (One way of keeping them on their toes...) 'Fat tangerine racist with the brains of a McNugget' indeed. Hopefully he will continue to take no unhealthy exercise and maintain his cheeseburger diet.

And Yet Another mass slaughter by a man/boy with a gun. In protest at the 'Hispanic invasion'. In Texas. That's right Texas, which used to belong to the Mexicans before the old land grab in the name of oil. Trump rambling that bigotry, racism and white supremacy have no place in America. Well apparently they do and are not diminished by your former and continuing outright lack of total condemnation over the last few years. Although they have been strengthened by your petulant little blonde boy Hitler youth type attitudes towards blacks, Moslems, Native Americans and Mexicans. Germophobia because of colour? (unless the showers are golden) Does darker skin seem dirty to you? You approach black sportsmen and musicians with a type of benevolent fascination rather than actual friendship.

Extinction Rebellion...Hmm..'And yes, some of us may die in the process', as one of the English leaders of the movement said. Unlikely the 52 year old with a PhD meant himself. However, a placard I saw held aloft by a young protester read; 'WHY AM I BEING EDUCATED IF YOU DON'T LISTEN TO THE EDUCATED' was a highly salient point (albeit without a question mark at the end.) Scientists amass careful evidence of global warming and the politicians, being paid regular large sums by oil, gas, precious metal companies etc, ignore long term survival for the sake of all following generations. Leave it for the kids to inherit a wasteland. However, in the XR handbook, it mentions the protests causing the 'necessary material disruption and economic cost'. Costs which will be mostly paid by those on average to minimum incomes...doesn't really square with XR also seeking the 'redistribution of wealth'. Marxist twats masturbating their egos. Personally, I am far more on the side of the rebellious, always have been and will be, just seems a shame XR seem so full of smugness, radical unbalanced vegans and hatred. (and I would like to know exactly where their funding comes from) Not possible to be a quiet, determined but peaceful fanatic. I have always liked Jaz Coleman's old quote that 'Fanaticism is the only way of dealing with a situation of overwhelming odds.' At last reason makes perfect sense! And speaking of those who love Mother Earth...

Who didn't love Putin's wonderful speech to a manufacturing and industrial forum in Yekaterinburg?....Hilarious stand up comedy as he asked 'How many birds are dying?' (By flying into wind farm turbines.) And followed that heartfelt classic up with 'This is no joke, the worms crawl right out of the ground' (due to the shaking...) 'This is the consequence of these modern forms of energy production'. In other words, keep buying oil and gas and sod clean solar and wind power because some worms and birds have a problem with it. How does the universe not laugh him into a Siberian gulag? Trump had said that wind turbines 'are killing all the eagles'. He didn't mention the worms. Don't mention the worms! It is lovely to know Mr Putin cares so much about our feathered and slimy friends. (Good to see Russia welcomed back into the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe after 5 years out in the howling wilderness for its invasion of Crimea. Well, the PCE were running very low on funding and Russia owed them a lot of well needed roubles. These assemblies cost money...and souls for Yog Sothoth)

Many hundreds of protesters have been arrested in Moscow over the last couple of weeks. They had been asking a fair question of where all the opposition parties and leaders had gone for the local elections. And the main opposition leader was moved from prison to hospital (and then back again) due to having had 'an allergic reaction'. Well, poison can do that to a man. Especially when he thwarts the Kremlin in any way. Whoever described Russia as a democracy? Not Solzhenitsyn. 11th August, one week after it told America that it is watching its missile programme VERY closely and will 'match every step with one of our own', Russia tells Google to stop advertising 'illegal demonstrations' or it will take action against it. Lovely news.

Meanwhile in Hong Kong...How long before the veritable Mrs Lam 'invites' the tanks in to help? Good luck with freedom people, be careful. At least Li Pcheng is dead. (one of the minds behind the June 1989 massacre of students in Peking) As one newspaper over here said 'One butcher is gone, others remain.' Detention Centres/'Vocational Schools' have been set up in Tibet where lucky students 10-20 years old can 'learn law (!) language and employable skills' and renounce the Dalai Lama. The latter is non optional. And the former. China has said the camps are 'all expenses paid humane boarding schools'. Humane is not a word for semantic realists to associate with their regime. One more time, Tibet is NOT China in any way whatsoever and certainly not spiritually. A fair number of Huawei workers were educated at and worked with and for China's varied military agencies. Enough to be worrying that Britain has yet to refuse them contracts involved in building the 5G mobile network. Smart phones for foolish people. Are these really the folk to have linked up to a telecommunications network in a democratic country?

Speaking of which...Seems that most folk in Britain have not got the smallest idea how much they have been manipulated. Direct links between Boris, (still in close touch with Steve Bannon) Farage and Trump. The well interwoven threads of populists pandering to the lowest common denominator in the name of self gain. The democracies of the western world are being turned against themselves in the name of foul hearted demagogues. Lack of balanced education has made a deep mass unawareness of actual facts. Human emotions are being weaponised to make choices based on wrong information. It has always been so but it is far easier now due to false twitter accounts/facebook et al. Trump's entire vision is based exactly on genuine false news and what he and the other similar familiars are promoting is a virus of illusion and outright lies.

Psyops..(psychological operations) have been used for centuries. There is much wrong with the EU, but they are way closer to us (Britain) in spirit and democratic culture than Russia and China. Those voting for more control of borders will eventually be gifted with less and less freedom but at least it will have been their democratic choice. Arf. The majority of Britons believe they are making patriotic choices. They are not. They are assisting in the break up and destabilising of friendships based on level headed, pragmatical agreements. And into this weakness will move those whose only interest is mass control. We are serving our enemies.

But that said, it is good to be aware that 'Opinions result from perceptions and perceptions reinforce opinions which then further control perceptions, in a repeating loop that logic can never penetrate.' Stasis and decay result unless a little shock of the new is introduced one way or the other to 'startle the brain enough to re-frame its experiences'. So there you have it. Or as Buddha said, 'We are the result of everything we have thought.' Makes you think, doesn't it? Ha. How do you know you are thinking? So...You knew that would happen but you did it anyway...

Back to normality....

While in London, I played with my band and after we had played a fast song called Natural Chaos, (a classic) the bass player told me I had shape shifted and looked like a reptile. No drugs involved. Very disturbing to be told this as I have various theories about those who look reptilian. Oh well, perhaps cold rage and evil are still within. Shame. I spent three and a half hours one afternoon freeing a bumble bee from a large black spider's web in the garden. Got it out, gave it a couple of flowers to suck from and get energy, some rain drops of water to help clean itself, tiny tiny bits of hedge twig to gently attempt to get the web off like a careful brain surgeon. Got two legs free, very gently helped clean one half of the head (it didn't fight or try to sting me) Put it in sunshine for some seconds to power it up, then back into cooler shade and back to work. Absolute focus of three hours. Web is VERY difficult to get off. I left it alone with some more rain drops from a flower tray to drink from. Went back, tried again until darkness fell. Had to leave it by side of flower bed, still half covered by binding web. In the morning found the bee was dead but had managed to remove the rest of the web itself and die clean. The energy it must have spent would have been massive. Wondered about attempting to mess with nature and whether it is justified but I could not have left it wrapped up and trapped. So, I am a hippy reptile. And according to someone in my family I am also a Socialist and cynical. Cynical I can live with (having checked the exact meaning and origin) but bollocks to Socialism. Labels are truly ridiculous...Libertarian anarchist is closer to a useful definition. Or failed mystic. Arf arf arf. The wizard without any whizz. Maybe.

'Whatever is done for love is beyond good and evil.' Hmmm...First, try define Love. What do you seek? Happiness and learning, Freedom and magick...Balance? Between the I and the AM, there sparks the relay of Will and vision and so, creation. 'Not until the male become female and the female becomes male shall ye enter the kingdom of Heaven, Jesus (Yeshua ben Yosif) in the Gospel of Thomas....So, All together now..Yod-He-Vau-He...(To couples too withdrawn to truly open their hearts, fearing pain or too guilty to express their inner nature to their partner or themselves.) Sex without true passion leads to orgasm but without connection by those who have been taught or who have learned to be afraid of love. Chasing orgasms is a fraction of the colossal energy and brain change possible. When Earth blends with Heaven, the astral is born and all take on aspects of the other, empowering all. Merge the fields, unify the forces and don't rush before the fields are charged. Open and focus.

I read in the New York Times today about various problems with tumblr...would be a pity if it vanished. All I have seen in the years I have been on, has been of far more heart and good spirited humour and care than other sources of individual expression on line for free. All the best back to school...All Hail Discordia and see you with Love at Halloween. Keep expanding your reality labyrinths until now or forever....

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