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sataniccapitalist · 11 months ago

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#thewaronyou

Another winter of death is now unfolding in the United States and across the Northern Hemisphere as the JN.1 variant of the coronavirus continues to surge globally. Wastewater data from the United States released Tuesday indicate that upwards of 2 million people are now being infected with COVID-19 each day, amid the second-biggest wave of mass infection since the pandemic began, eclipsed only by the initial wave of the Omicron variant during the winter of 2021-22.

There are now reports on social media of hospitals being slammed with COVID patients across the US, Canada and Europe. At a growing number of hospitals, waiting rooms are overflowing, emergency rooms and ICUs are at or near capacity, and ambulances are being turned away or forced to wait for hours to drop off their patients.

According to official figures, COVID-19 hospitalizations in Charlotte, North Carolina are now at their highest levels of the entire pandemic. In Toronto, Dr. Michael Howlett, president of the Canadian Association of Emergency Physicians, told City News, “I’ve worked in emergency departments since 1987, and it’s by far the worst it’s ever been. It’s not even close.” He added, “We’ve got people dying in waiting rooms because we don’t have a place to put them. People being resuscitated on an ambulance stretcher or a floor.”

Dr. Joseph Khabbaza, a pulmonary and critical care specialist at the Cleveland Clinic, told the Today Show website: “The current strain right now seems to be packing a meaner punch than the prior strains. Some features of the current circulating strain probably (make it) a little bit more virulent and pathogenic, making people sicker than prior (variants).”

Indeed, two recent studies indicate that JN.1 more efficiently infects cells in the lower lung, a trait that existed in pre-Omicron strains which were considered more deadly. One study from researchers in Germany and France noted that BA.2.86, the variant nicknamed “Pirola” from which JN.1 evolved, “has regained a trait characteristic of early SARS-CoV-2 lineages: robust lung cell entry. The variant might constitute an elevated health threat as compared to previous Omicron sublineages.”https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/1MGIQxPf0Ig?rel=0An appeal from David North: Donate to the WSWS todayWatch the video message from WSWS International Editorial Board Chairman David North.DONATE TODAY

The toll on human life from the ongoing wave of mass infection is enormous. It is estimated that one-third of the American population, or over 100 million human beings, will contract COVID-19 during just the current wave. This will likely result in tens of thousands of deaths, many of which will not be properly logged due to the dismantling of COVID-19 testing and data reporting systems in the US. When The Economist last updated its tracker of excess deaths on November 18—before the JN.1 wave began—the cumulative death toll stood at 27.4 million, and nearly 5,000 people were continuing to die each day worldwide.

The current wave will also induce further mass suffering from Long COVID, which has been well known since 2020 to cause a multitude of lingering and often debilitating effects. Just last week, a pre-print study was published in Nature Portfolio showing that COVID-19 infection can cause brain damage akin to aging 20 years. The consequences are mental deficits that induce depression, reduced ability to handle intense emotions, lowered attention span, and impaired ability to retain information.

Other research indicates that the virus can attack the heart, the immune system, digestion and essentially every other critical bodily function. The initial symptoms of COVID-19 might resemble those of the flu, but the reality is that the virus can affect nearly every organ in the body and can do so for years after the initial infection. While vaccination slightly reduces the risks of Long COVID, the full impact of the virus will be felt for generations.

The latest winter wave of infections and hospitalizations takes place just eight months after the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Biden administration ended their COVID-19 public health emergency (PHE) declarations without any scientific justification. This initiated the wholesale scrapping of all official response to the pandemic, giving the virus free rein to infect the entire global population ad infinitum.

A virtual blackout of any mention of the coronavirus in the corporate media accompanied the swan song of official reporting. From then on, if illnesses at hospitals or among public figures were referenced at all, it was always with the euphemism “respiratory illness.” The words COVID, coronavirus and pandemic have been all but blacklisted, and the facts about the dangers of the disease have been actively suppressed.

Summarizing the cumulative results of this global assault on public health, the WSWS International Editorial Board wrote in its New Year 2024 statement:

All facts and data surrounding the present state of the pandemic are concealed from the global population, which has instead been subjected to unending lies, gaslighting and propaganda, now shrouded in a veil of silence. There is a systematic cover-up of the real gravity of the crisis, enforced by the government, the corporations, the media and the trade union bureaucracies. Official policy has devolved into simply ignoring, denying and falsifying the reality of the pandemic, no matter what the consequences, as millions are sickened and thousands die globally every day.

In response to the latest wastewater data, there have only been a handful of news articles, most of which have sought to downplay the severity of the current wave and largely ignored the deepening crisis in hospitals.

The official blackout has given rise to an extraordinary contradiction in social life. The reality of mass infection means that everyone knows a friend, neighbor, family member or coworker who is currently or was recently sick, or even hospitalized or killed, by COVID-19. Yet the unrelenting pressure to dismiss the danger of the pandemic means that shopping centers, supermarkets, workplaces and even doctor’s offices and hospitals are full of people not taking the basic and simple precaution of masking to protect themselves. Every visit outside one’s home carries the risk of being infected, with unknown long-term consequences.

As the pandemic enters its fifth year, it is critical to draw the lessons of this world historical experience. The past four years have demonstrated unequivocally that capitalist governments are both unwilling and incapable of fighting this disease. Their primary concern has always been to ensure the unabated accumulation of profits by corporations, no matter the cost in human lives and health.

The real solution to the coronavirus is not to ignore it, but to develop a campaign of elimination and eradication of the virus worldwide. To do so requires the implementation of mask mandates, mass testing and contact tracing, as well as the installation of updated ventilation systems and the safe deployment of Far-UVC technology to halt the spread of the virus. The resources for this global public health program must be expropriated from the banks and financial institutions, which are responsible for the mass suffering wrought by the pandemic.

All of these measures cut directly across the profit motive and the real disease of society: capitalism. As such, the struggle against the coronavirus is not primarily medical or scientific, but political and social. The international working class must be educated on the real dangers of the pandemic and mobilized to simultaneously stop the spread of the disease and put an end to the underlying social order that propagates mass death. This must be developed as a revolutionary struggle to establish world socialism.

#the enemy is strong #protect yourself #protect your family

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ubeerosophy · 1 year ago

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So Many Roads

At the height of COVID, I drove a gentleman from a nearby university to the Indianapolis airport. Many of my most interesting rides have happened this way. The trip takes roughly an hour, so when they are willing to talk, I get to hear from some of the most fascinating people I’ve ever knowingly crossed paths with. It’s like a free course or a private lecture given by the brightest minds on a myriad of topics.

This particular man had been visiting a relative, and was on his way back home, which happen to be on the East Coast. As we began conversing, it came out that he had recently returned from or was about to leave for an overseas speaking engagement. Intrigued, I began asking questions regarding the kind of work he did. The man explained to me that he was an economist, as well as an author. At some point he had relayed to me the title of his most recent book, so when he got out of my car, I was able to google him thoroughly. His resume was far more impressive than he let on. Not only had he penned many books, but he was also a world-leading expert in his field, frequently traveling the globe to give lectures. He had served as a speechwriter to multiple US presidents and was affiliated as a fellow with an Ivy League school. His accomplishments and activities went on and on, but I considered those the highlights. Except for one other…

Not long after he got in my car, the man asked about good places to go for a run in the area. As we discussed my preferred locations, and running as an activity in general, he threw out what I considered to be an impressive amount of mileage that he regularly logged. That might not sound like anything out of the ordinary or some major accomplishment, but did I mention he was in his 80’s?

As I spend a ton of time in my car each day, one of the most common things I see is people running, jogging or walking. They are my heroes. Few other things make me smile like that does, especially when I’m fighting what feels like the worst of humanity on the road. We all know how hard it is to run. It sucks. In the end it may benefit us mentally and physically, but in the meantime it hurts. It’s also time-consuming. Especially if you travel to different locations because you don’t want to stare at the same scenery every time. Psychologically that matters. Just to set aside the time, get yourself prepared and then take that first step towards hundreds more is a major accomplishment. It really is. I’m proud of every one of those people I see doing it every day, and I wish I could tell each of them. I do in my head as I drive by.

I try to run every other day, but just like everyone else, it’s a struggle. When I do, I refuse to listen to music or podcasts because I consider that time alone with myself imperative. There are always going to be distractions and noise, so why not take the time to acknowledge your thoughts when you have an opportunity to do so? Often, for me, those thoughts revolve around how much running hurts. Whether it’s the limitations my aging body is imposing on me or the elements I’m fighting at that moment, it’s hard not to dwell on them when they are staring you in the face. Generally, however, those thoughts prove to be beneficial.

Aside from time, one of my greatest adversaries when I run is the wind. This happens about a quarter of the time, and inevitably will play out the same. About a mile into my run, once the initial adrenaline has worn off, I’ll realize how much harder I’m working when I go in a certain direction. I’ll acknowledge that it’s the wind and then fight myself on seeking a route that spares me the struggle. After convincing myself that the extra difficulty will benefit me in the long run, I embrace it and hunker down. Then, either because I have too much time to think or because I’m looking for something to distract me from the wind’s brutal attack, I find myself revisiting the situation as a metaphor. I say revisiting because it’s the same thought every time.

Running itself is perhaps the most apt metaphor I’ve found for life in general. It sounds cliché, I know, but it’s true. As you take your first steps, you start off slow until you can build speed and momentum. Once you’ve found a comfortable pace, you settle in and maintain it with a specific goal or goals in mind. You’re going to face challenges along the way. Plenty of times I’ve finished what were supposed to be otherwise uneventful and routine runs bloody, bruised, overheated, frozen or before my intended destination. I never foresaw or expected any of those outcomes. As you get near the end of the run, you are infinitely more tired than you were when you started. You then finish either by attaining your objective, or by being forced out prematurely. Pretty emblematic of life if you ask me.

I get almost angry at first when I realize I’m running into the wind. It feels like I’m wasting energy and that my progress is stalling, but when I allow myself to stop and think about it, I become almost grateful. I will come out of it stronger. I’m still getting my mileage in, but my muscles are being given an extra challenge that will result in greater strength going forward. My mind is also being trained. Trained to face adversity with the knowledge that it’s ultimately beneficial and that I can accomplish more than I intend or hope by braving the storm. The same can be said for running uphill or in the rain. Some of the best races of my youth came in such conditions. Were it not for the wind, rain or elevation and the prior experience I had with them, I would not have performed as well as I did, advancing to the next course in the process. And the next course is important to me. The next course is where we get new scenery. The next course is where we learn new things about ourselves and our abilities.

So if you run. Or jog. Or walk. I’m proud of you. I know it isn’t easy. But it’s more than just whatever your initial goal was, and I hope that not only do you achieve that goal, but that you make it to the next course as well.

The UBeerOsopher

And now…a haiku:

All of your steps count

and if you listen to them

their math is profound

“The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart.” ~ Alber Camus

#lyft #uber #philosophy #beer #indiana #liberal arts #rideshare #psychology #university #lafayette #running #jogging #walking #professor #economics #course

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colsonlin · 2 years ago

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“Alibi” (2010) — a dark comedy inspired by “Heathers” and “Mean Girls”

This massive space reeks of white privilege. The interior designer—an up-and-coming celebrity who had logged ten appearances on the final hour of the Today show before he was convicted last year of drugging a teenage boy—had called the color scheme “Immaculate Frost.” Immaculate, indeed. The family room, predominantly white with hints of silver and cappuccino, is anchored by a window wall adorned by sheer white curtains. It is afternoon. Wintry sunlight streams in through the window, sheathing in bright light a mahogany coffee table at the center of the room. Magazines line the bottom shelf—Harper’s, Lapham’s Quarterly, The Paris Review, Yale Alumni Magazine. The owners of this home are exquisitely educated—they will deign to read The New Yorker or The Economist only if they are at the dentist’s, and there is nothing but Highlights to flip through in the waiting room. Everything about this living room is “tasteful”—even the bright pink throw pillows on the two white sofas and two white armchairs flanking the coffee table, which have no right to be tasteful, are tasteful. A white stuffed lamb above a row of Christmas stockings hanging from the fireplace watches over the living room—the Christmas lights are up. A Christmas tree in the corner of the room is ornamented by angels.

Mahler plays from the surround-sound speakers.

Lying on the floor and tucked between the white sofa and the mahogany coffee table is Alyssa White.

You know Alyssa already, and not just because she has cappuccino tresses and a waist the size of a curling iron. Alyssa was the girl in middle school who while her friends dated high school boys, herself would date a college freshman, and while her friends dated college freshmen, herself would date a six-foot-two Ecuadorian skier with emerald-green eyes who in some other century might have washed Alyssa’s clothes—it’s a good thing the wealth of the Global North liquidated across the equator. Alyssa makes Heather No. 1 look like a Girl Scout. She makes Regina George look like Shirley Temple. She wears pink lip gloss and white cowboy boots and, as the century draws to a close, she’s lying in a fresh pool of blood.

It's December 25, 1999.

Alyssa’s hands, arms, chest, back, stomach, and hair—yes, even her hair—are covered in raw blood.

“Moral violence.”

Not that it ever went away, but for a century that represses so much envy, it’s now back with a vengeance.

Alyssa reaches out her right hand and places it weakly on the white sofa. Her left hand tries to grab the side of the coffee table, but she loses her balance—a stack of Lapham’s Quarterly tips over, hitting her on the head. She tries to lift herself off the floor again—this time, her left hand strikes a silver tea tray on the mahogany coffee table, sending three teacups crashing into the floor. “Come back,” she croaks hoarsely. “Please. I’m a person. I’m a person. I’m a person.” As she says this, she begins to weep, until her weeping turns into labored gasps of air.

Until finally—

silence.

“G! I! L-T-Y—you ain’t got no a-li-bi, you guilty! Yeah, yeah—you guilty!” the white stuffed lamb begins to hum, as the playful gold bars of Mahler No. 3 sprinkle across the room.

II.

You should know right away that Asians own this home—Asian-Americans, the father is a philosopher and the mother is a therapist. When the lights come back on, it is evening, and Alyssa’s body is still on the floor. The red and blue swirl of police lights entangle the room. For all their tasteful accoutrements, the Yangs must be new money—the walls of their home are gaunt enough that we can hear the crackle of police transmissions outside, and the busybody neighbors who have crowded onto the Yangs’ front lawn.

A murderer is in the room.

On the blood-stained sofa, three lanky girls—Jamie Donahue (17), Madison Yang (17), and Abby Liddell (18)—sit with their arms folded and their legs crossed at the knees.

They look like a macabre spread in Vogue France.

To see these three girls together is to see the undoing of any arrogance you might have once had about your own appearance. Do teenage girls really look like this—their arms and legs thinned to such nuance Kate Moss would beam green with envy? Jamie, Madison, Abby, and Alyssa formed the in-crowd within the in-crowd at the School of Ethical Culture (tuition in 1999: $21,342). Jamie is thin and African-American. Madison is thin and Asian-American.

Abby is thin and white.

“You forget how much blood there is in the human body,” Jamie muses out loud to nobody in particular. “I mean it’s just not something you really think about, I guess—you know?”

“Six quarts,” Madison says.

Jamie turns to Madison. “What?”

“Six quarts. Our biology teacher in seventh grade showed us using pig’s blood and empty bottles of Pennzoil—it was so disgusting. He gave us all a turn dumping out six quarts of blood into the sink—he said it was so if we were ever canceled, we would know exactly how much blood we could lose before we exsanguinate. So that’s how I know—six quarts.”

“And how many quarts can you lose before you exsanguinate?”

Madison shrugs. “Two, I think?”

Jamie studies the pool of blood on the floor. “That looks like a lot more than two quarts of blood,” she says awkwardly. “I mean right?” She laughs. “That looks more like eight!”

“It reminds me of the time my cousin miscarried on the freeway,” Madison continues.

“Oh my god—for real?”

“For real—she lost so much blood, like it was all over her seat and stuff and then it started dripping onto the floor. I was sitting next to her—my shoes were moist.”

“Oh my god—stop.”

“Like when I stepped out of the car, I had footprints.”

“Oh my god—stop. You know what would be so fucked up? If we like, stained our shoes with Ally’s blood and we like, walked around all over the house and we like, made the detectives,” Jamie bursts out laughing, “follow our footprints.”

Madison laughs too. “Oh my god—what if we like, walked into my parents’ room and tracked her footprints to their bed?”

“That would be so ridiculous.”

“I know, right?”

“Oh, man—the pigs would never buy it though,” Jamie smiles, turning to look at Abby. “Sorry, Abby.”

Abby, who has been staring into the floor this whole time, turns to Madison and Jamie.

“The blood just means we’re human.”

“What?” Jamie says.

Abby continues softly: “The blood. All it means is it came from a person. We’re all people. It’s the same blood in Ally as it is in you, as it is in me—you see a pool of blood on the floor and you don’t know if it came from a black person or a white person, or a gay person or a straight person, or a fat person or a skinny person. You just know it came from a person. It came from a person.” Her voice begins to break. “And so you cry.”

A pause.

“You cry. Because it came from a person.”

“Abby?” Jamie says, repressing a giggle. “Animals bleed.”

“Not like people they don’t,” Abby says, shaking her head. “Anyway, it’s not like we’re Rebecca on Sunnybrook Farm and surrounded by animals all the time—all I’m trying to say is when you see a pool of blood on the floor, like in the hallway at Ethical Culture, you know it didn’t come from an animal—you know it didn’t come from a cow or a horse or a pigeon. You know somebody was canceled that day.”

Jamie turns to Madison. “I think she’s losing it.”

“But Jamie! It came from a person! A per-son!”

Jamie and Madison burst out laughing, while Abby rises from the sofa. “Go to hell. Both of you.”

“Abby,” Madison says. “we’re not the ones who cut Ally up like a chopped salad.”

“Careful, Madison—we still don’t know where she hid the knife.”

“Maybe it’s with Rebecca on Sunnybrook Farm,” Madison says with a high-pitched squeal, and they both laugh.

“I didn’t do this.”

Jamie gasps. “You know what I just remembered?”

“What?” Madison says, still laughing.

“Remember that time in seventh grade when Alyssa told Andrew that Abby was a hermaphrodite, and Abby told Alyssa that the only way she would ever forgive her was if Alyssa gave her a mea culpa?”

“Oh my god—I do remember, that was so weird.”

“And everyone was like, Abby, what the fuck is a mea culpa? And Abby started talking about—” Jamie can’t stop laughing now, “thetooth fairy—and black people?”

“Oh my god—shut up!”

“And like how her grandfather died in the Holocaust even though he wasn’t Jewish?”

“Oh my god—stop,” Madison gasps, keeled over in laughter now. After a few seconds they both settle down, and Jamie looks at Madison with a serious face. “Madison,” she whispers. “I think somebody owes Alyssa—a mea culpa.”

Jamie and Madison both burst out laughing.

Abby, who has been silently crying to herself, wipes her eyes dry and turns to go upstairs. A gust of wind from the furnace vent ruffles her airy sundress almost to her waist. Her strawberry blonde hair and bright white sundress bounce in the air as she saunters up the stairs.

III.

Abby is alone in the upstairs bathroom now, running the faucet—behind her in the mirror is a rainforest shower made of black granite. “The most important thing you learn about as a kid isn’t where babies come from,” she whispers into the mirror. “Or that the tooth fairy was just your dad slipping a quarter under your pillow while you were asleep. It’s that slavery happened. And the Holocaust happened. It’s that cruelty exists in this world.”

Abby opens a drawer in the sink and takes out a silver nail file. “The first cruel person I ever learned about was Hitler—Hitler is who most people lose their cruelty virginity to, I think.” She begins filing her nails over the sink. “And then you learn about how they treated black people in the ’60s, and that in the 1800s, black people were enslaved—like cattle. So by the time some fact-box in your eighth-grade world history textbook tries to tell you that Stalin actually ged twice as many people as Hitler did, you’re already numb. It’s like—what the fuck is wrong with people? You know?”

Abby hums a few bars of Mahler No. 3 to herself.

“But the thing is, you don’t have to go all the way back to Siberia or Nazi Germany or even the Confederacy to understand what cruelty is. As Mahler himself once said: ‘Cruelty is a certain look on a man’s face when he looks down on another man.’ This? This right here—is cruelty,” she says, pointing to the Yangs’ rainforest shower. “Really, it doesn’t even matter if I canceled Alyssa or not—and I didn’t. But it doesn’t matter. Because moral superiority—can be every bit as cruel, every bit as despicable, and every bit as barbaric as moral evil.” Abby finishes filing her nails and turns off the faucet.

She opens the same drawer from before and plucks out a bottle of blue nail polish. “But I didn’t cancel Alyssa,” she continues, applying the nail polish to her nails. “Okay, it’s true—we did have a falling-out over Thanksgiving. We haven’t spoken to each other in almost a month. But Alyssa and I have been best friends since middle school. We love each other. She was like my sister. Ow!” Some blue nail polish has seeped into an open cut on Abby’s finger, next to a nail bed. Abby blows her finger dry and then runs some water over it.

She turns off the faucet and shakes her fingers twice.

“Last night,” Abby continues, grabbing a hand towel, “Madison invited me to spend the night at her house—her parents are still in Taiwan, I think? She invited Alyssa over this afternoon without telling her I was here too. The plan was for me to stay upstairs until Madison came up to get me, and then we’d be forced into the same room together to work things out. So that’s what I did. I stayed in Madison’s room all afternoon after Madison let Alyssa in downstairs. All I could hear from the living room—was Christmas music.”

A closeup of the Yangs’ rainforest shower dissolves into the Yangs’ living room—it is now 3:14 in the afternoon. Sunlight streams in from the ivy-covered windows. Mahler No. 3 is still playing from the surround-sound speakers.

The front door opens.

“Ally? Look who I found outside.”

Two pairs of Jimmy Choos step into the front foyer as the front door closes. “Ally, are you in here?” Madison says, carrying a box of donuts into the living room. “Oh my god.”

“Holy shit,” Jamie, coming in after her, gasps.

Alyssa White is lying in a pool of blood in between the white sofa and the black mahogany coffee table.

“Abby?”

“Oh my god.”

“Where’s Abby?”

“Holy shit!”

“Abby?”

“See if she’s still breathing.”

“Abby? Abby!”

“Maddie—let’s get out of here.”

“Abby! Abby! Where the fuck is Abby?”

A door opens upstairs. “Maddie—is everything okay?”

“Abby, what the fuck did you do?”

“What?” a girlish voice calls from the second floor.

Abby’s feet appear on the stairs, just below the living room ceiling—her nails are painted cobalt blue. When she sees Alyssa’s body she gasps, covering her mouth.

She emits a single syllable: “—no!”

“Abby—what happened?”

A pause. Abby lowers her hand from her face and blinks twice. “I just woke up.”

“We have to get out of here,” Jamie whispers.

“Right, and Alyssa just decided to stab herself fifty times over my coffee table—that makes sense; maybe she read something really menacing in ‘Harper’s Index’!”

“I had nothing to do with this.”

“How the fuck am I supposed to explain this to my parents?”

“I’m calling my dad,” Jamie says.

Abby begins to cry. “I just woke up—Jamie, say something. You believe me, don’t you? I was upstairs this whole time!”

“Ally—there is something really, really wrong with you,” Jamie says. “You don’t want to know how I feel about you right now. Let’s just put it this way. I see angels near your soul. ”

IV.

Alibis are either/or—you can’t be in two places at once, emotionally maybe, but not spatially. Abby’s sobs are clearly audible from the bathroom upstairs. In the front yard, a detective is interviewing a next-door neighbor.

“There goes the waterworks again,” Jamie says.

“I know, right?” Madison says. “It reminds me of the time Abby wore all-black to school for a month after her brother was hit by that wrong-way driver.”

“It’s an Anglican tradition,” Abby says from the top of the stairs. “Andy spent four days in a coma before my parents decided to pull the plug. It was the worst day of my life.”

Jamie whispers to Madison: “Won’t be for long.”

“Are you guys really going to go through with this? Are you guys really going to tell everyone I canceled Alyssa?”

“Why Abby, what in the world would ever possess you to say such a thing? We’re not going to keep our mouths shut for you,” Jamie says. “We owe it to justice.”

“The future is fear,” Abby whispers.

“Abby,” Madison says gently. “I want you to take a really good look at what you did to Alyssa. I mean, whatever happens to you—you kinda deserve it, don’t you think?”

“It doesn’t bother you? After everything we’ve been through together, Madison—it doesn’t bother you that I’m about to be canceled? Not even a little bit?”

“Of course it bothers me,” Jamie says. “Abby, we love you. You, Ally, and Maddie are like the sisters I never had. Ally loved you so much—you were always her favorite.”

“When was the last time somebody was canceled at our school?” Madison asks.

“Aidan Doberman, in August.”

“You’re right—oh I forgot about Aidan. Poor Aidan.”

“Poor Aidan? He beat up his girlfriend.”

“Don’t tell you me actually believe Angie.”

“Angel.”

“It’s so Aidan to hook up with a freshman.”

“Oh my god—you totally had the hots for Aidan!”

“Did not.”

“You totally did!” Jamie snorts out a laugh. “He didn’t look so good cut up into four pieces, did he?”

“Jamie, I did not have the hots for Aidan. I just think Angie Montez is a lying hoebag—she clearly said what she said because she wanted the attention. And now she’s the only sophomore on the varsity soccer team—what a coincidence.”

“Did you go to Aidan’s disembowelment?”

“No, only the bonfire.”

“Oh really, I was there for all of it—the kidnapping, the decapitation, the disembowelment, the quartering.”

Abby quickly descends down the stairs. Her face looks sickly and pale. “I have to go now,” she says.

“What’s the matter, Abby?” Jamie calls out.

“Go fuck yourself.”

“Oh, wow—you see, Madison? This is the type of poor impulse control that gets people canceled.”

“Abby, don’t go,” Madison says.

Abby looks at Madison quizzically. “I have to tell my parents what happened. I have to—say goodbye.”

“Look, you might not be canceled after all—I mean, a lot of people did hate Ally.”

“Madison!” Jamie says.

“What? I’m just being honest. This might not be able to attract enough—popular outrage.”

“What Madison’s trying to say is we’re going to be there for every part of your cancelation—I’ll even bring home one of your bones to have it embossed, how does that sound?”

“Jamie,” Abby says, staring into Jamie’s eyes. “Someday, everyone will see you for the evil little witch you are. And when that day comes?” Abby opens the front door. “I wouldn’t be shy about withdrawing from my 401(k) if I were you.”

In the doorway, Abby takes one last look at Jamie, then at Madison, and then closes the door. Madison watches as Abby waves goodbye to a police officer and enters her car. She turns to Jamie. “I can’t believe we pulled this off,” she whispers.

“Did you see her face?”

“She’s totally clueless!”

“This is so sane.”

“I’m so glad this is over.”

“I know—what a relief.”

“I can’t wait for January.”

“But Maddie—I just thought of something.”

“What?”

“I don’t think it’s a good idea for us to wait until January anymore.”

“Why not?”

“Well, remember what you said about Abby’s brother being dead? Abby’s an only child now. Her parents will do anything to protect her—even if it means moving her out of the country. She might not even be here in January.”

“I don’t think we need to worry about that.”

“Why not?”

“What are her parents going to do—send her to Malta? They’re white trash. They don’t have the resources to send her out of town that quickly. As soon as everyone finds out what Abby did, they’ll show up to her apartment with pitchforks—I’ll make sure of it.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, Jamie. There’s no way they’re moving Abby out of town in a week—don’t be ridiculous.”

“Your parents on the other hand.”

“Oh my god—I’d be on a plane to Fiji this evening,” Madison says, plopping down on the sofa.

She looks at Jamie and smiles. “So can I ask you something?”

“Oh for Christ’s sake, here we go.”

“I’m just curious—what were her last words?”

“That’s the thing, she didn’t really have any last words. It was a total surprise—she just said, ‘Jamie, what are you doing?’ She didn’t see it coming at all.”

“Did she say anything else?”

“Well, you’re not going to believe this, but when I was stabbing her, she kept saying, ‘I’m a person, I’m a per-son.’”

“No way.”

“Over and over again. Isn’t that weird? Are you sure Abby couldn’t have woken up somehow?”

“I’m sure—you know how Abby is, she’s always so dramatic and over-the-top. I’m sure it was just a coincidence.”

“I hope so.”

“Look, Jamie—you’ve had a stressful day.”

“I don’t want to be canceled for this.”

“You won’t be. We’re in this together, okay? Trust me.”

“Okay.”

“Do you trust me?”

Jamie looks at Madison. “Of course I do, bee-otch.”

“Good. Now let’s get the fuck out of here—I’m going to let the police inside to clean up the mess.”

Jamie stands up and walks over to look at Alyssa’s body. “She’s so bloated,” she says, crinkling her nose.

“That’s what happens to people when they die. The bacteria in Ally’s body is breaking down her tissue and releasing hydrogen and nitrogen into her epidermis, the space between her fat cells and her skin. All the while, the cells in her body are decomposing and literally eating themselves. It’s called autolysis. It’s disgusting, but without it, the Romans would have never invented wine.”

“You’re going to be such amazing doctor someday.”

“And you’re going to be the perfect lawyer.”

Jamie stands up from the couch, grabs her purse, and begins walking to the front door. “I’ll call you tomorrow, okay?”

“Okay, my love. See you tomorrow.”

“Merry Christmas.”

Alone in the living room now, Madison Yang turns to the window and watches as Jamie’s silhouette recedes into the police lights. She loosens her scrunchie and then fixes her hair back into a ponytail. “Jamie and I—we’ve been through a lot over the years. She lives three blocks away—we practically grew up together. My dad’s a professor and her dad’s a state senator—they were in the same graduating class at Yale Law. When we were little, we used to sneak into the Voglers’ backyard, whenever their gate was unlocked, and swim naked in their swimming pool. Jamie’s bulimic, of course—you probably can’t tell since we’re all so skinny, or you probably just thought we all had eating disorders, but no.”

She shakes her head.

“Just Jamie.”

Madison rises from the sofa and walks over to a mirror above the fireplace. “Her breath always smells like Listerine. I love Jamie, and I’m totally not proud of what I’m about to do to her—but she’s become such an angry person lately. All she ever talks about anymore is the next person she wants to see canceled. I mean, you can’t really blame her—appearances can be deceiving, you know. She’s had a rough life. Her mom was canceled three years ago, in the parking lot of Whole Foods, two days after arguing with this guy over some minor road-rage incident. It changed Jamie forever. I mean, her dad had the guy canceled of course—and the guy’s two accomplices, and their wives and children. You don’t fuck with the family of a state senator. Which is why I had to be very, very careful.”

Madison picks up the stuffed lamb.

“But all the evidence is here,” Madison continues. “I mean, how was I supposed to know that this stuffed lamb was actually a camera? Remember when I said appearances can be deceiving?” She giggles. “My parents come home on Monday. They’re going to find the video of Jamie stabbing Alyssa, they’re going to turn it over to Alyssa’s parents, and I’m going to show Andrew the photographs. Jamie will be cancelled by Wednesday. I mean it's Alyssa for God’s sake—people aren’t going to wait to ask any questions. People don’t want answers—they want solutions. You know, if Abby were smart, she’d be telling the world about Alyssa’s cancelation as we speak—she’s the only one out of all three of us who actually has an alibi. She had an admissions interview with a guy from Brown at Starbucks at 2. Alyssa was killed at 2:15.”

Madison sets down the stuffed lamb.

“I told Jamie I had crushed two Ambiens into Abby’s hibiscus tea. If Jamie had only thought about it some more, she would have remembered: white trash doesn’t drink tea. Oh well. The thing is, Alyssa and Jamie are legitimately garbage people—they have no sense of compassion or empathy for anything that happens to anyone they’ve dehumanized. Abby’s a good girl. We all make fun of her, but I’m the only one who sees her for who she really is. She’s someone—just like me.”

“’scuse me miss?” a voice from the front door knocks twice and interrupts.

Madison turns around and smiles.

“You can come in now, officer,” Madison says sweetly. “Everything’s finally under control now.”

VII.

“…Baby One More Time” by Britney Spears is playing from the surround-sound speakers. Abby and Madison are in the living room—sunlight streams in through the ivy-covered windows. Alyssa’s body is gone—her bloodstains are gone too. The black mahogany coffee table is once again immaculately arranged—not a teacup is out of place. The Christmas lights, however, are no longer up. Maddie and Abigail are sitting on the floor, decorating a Christmas tree in the center of the room. “Where’d you get this one?” Abby says, giggling as she pulls out a resin ornament from the cardboard box.

“I have no idea,” Madison says.

“Why’s she naked?”

“Because she’s an angel.”

“Are all your angels naked?”

“Abby, I would appreciate it if you didn’t make fun of my Christmas iconography, thank you very much,” Madison says, snatching the ornament from Abby’s hand. “I don’t make fun of your dreidels.”

“I don’t have any dreidels.”

“Dreidel, dreidel, dreidel—I made it out of clay. The first boy who it lands on—is the first boy I shall lay.”

“That’s not funny.”

“Okay, don’t be mad—I have something to tell you.”

“What.”

“I was talking to Jamie the other day—”

“About what, money?”

“—and Jamie was telling me how she had this crazy idea to cancel Alyssa—”

Abby’s eyes widen.

“—and frame you for it.”

Abby gasps. “What!”

“I know—can you believe it? And I was like, okay, Jamie, keep talking. And Jamie was like, I’m only telling you this because we grew up together and you’re my best friend in the whole entire world and if I can’t swim naked with you, I can’t swim naked with anyone, and I was like, oh my god Jamie, you’re my sister, I love you, you can tell me anything—and basically we just like crawled up each other’s assholes for a few minutes before she finally spat out the point. She goes, remember when Aidan Doberman was canceled this summer for beating up his girlfriend, and like, the entire baseball team was in on it—Andrew, Addison, Lance—which is the great thing about our school, everybody roots for the underdog? And I was like, yeah? And she basically told me that if we worked together, we could cancel Alyssa and frame you for it.”

“Oh my god. Have you told Alyssa yet?”

“Of course not.”

“What? Why the hell not—what if Jamie goes through with it?”

“Will you let me finish?”

“What’s there to finish?”

“Look, Abby—I’m doing you a huge favor here. I mean, now that you and Ally are fighting, you do have a motive for canceling her—everyone at Ethical Culture knows that.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying, let me finish.”

Abby stares at Madison uneasily. “Okay. Finish.”

“I told Jamie, I’ll do it.”

“Okay.”

“And, so—we came up with a plan to cancel Alyssa this weekend and frame you for it.”

Abby nods slowly—she’s visibly shaken. She puts the angel ornament she’s holding back into the box.

“Okay. I think I should go home now.”

“Abby, wait a minute—do you really think that if I was going to go through with Jamie’s plan, I would have you over today and tell you about it?”

“I don’t know, Maddie. You know how powerful Jamie is, how her father had those four kids canceled.”

“I know,” Madison says as she rises from the floor.

“Maddie, I’m scared,” Abby says. “I don’t want you to do anything stupid—I don’t want you to hurt anyone.”

“Abby, will you shut the fuck up and listen to me?” Madison says, approaching the fireplace. “I have an idea.”

“What? What is it, Maddie—what’s your brilliant idea?”

“Jamie is going to cancel Alyssa—right in this room. And I’m going to help her. But she doesn’t know one thing. There’s a camera in here,” Madison says, tossing the white stuffed lamb to Abby. Abby catches the stuffed lamb and looks at it.

“In Biryani?”

“Look, you said your interview with that guy from Brown’s this Friday, right? Is there any chance you can get it pushed back to Saturday?”

“But Saturday’s Christmas.”

“I know. Jesus riseth!” Madison squeals.

“We’re going to have to talk about this.”

“We will—we’ll talk about it. But Abby, don’t you get it yet? It could be just you and me. Instead of playing third and fourth fiddle to Alyssa and Jamie, we could rule the School of Ethical Culture. And I know for a fact that the only person who hates Alyssa and Jamie more than I do—is you.”

Abby nods.

“Okay? Abby, you can trust me.”

“I know.”

“I promise.”

“I know.”

“I’m going to go make us a drink. I’m thinking—bloody marys?”

“Funny.”

“Be right back, bee-otch.”

Madison walks over to Abby on the floor, grabs the stuffed lamb from her hands, squeezes her shoulder twice, and then goes into the kitchen.

The sunlight begins to fade.

Abby is alone in the living room now. She stands up and walks over to the surround sound. She turns off “…Baby One More Time” and switches the C.D. to Gustav Mahler.

“We called our plan ‘lick its toes,’” she says. “Madison came up with the codename—it’s just each word in ‘kill the sluts’ spelled out backwards: Llik eht stuls. Clever, right? Madison Yang is nothing if not a very clever girl. She already got into Harvard early. She’ll probably graduate summa cum laude, get a 40 on her MCATs, go to Harvard Med, and become a brain surgeon or something—you know, whatever the highest-paying specialty is. She’ll spend the rest of her life saving lives—isn’t it ironic? Do you have any idea how many girls she’s stepped on to get where she is; how many people she’s pushed off the totem pole? The thing is, nobody really likes Madison Yang except for the only two people more popular and powerful than she is—that’s right. Jamie Donahue and Alyssa White. They love Madison, because having someone like Madison as a friend makes them look inclusive or something. The truth is, I think they actually admire Madison. Madison’s everything they are—plus brains. It’s just too bad they’re stupid enough to trust her—I’m not. I wouldn’t trust Madison to pick me up from the airport. Oh, don’t get me wrong—I am going to go through with it. Alyssa’s going to be canceled, and Jamie’s going to take the fall for it.”

Abby giggles.

“The problem is—I’m going to be the only one with an alibi.” Abby pulls out a recording device from her pocket and presses play. “Madison, I’m scared. I don’t want you to do anything stupid. I don’t want you to hurt anyone.”

“Abby, will you shut the fuck up and listen to me? I have an idea.”

“What? What is it, Maddie? What’s your brilliant idea?”

“Jamie is going to cancel Alyssa. Right in this room. And I’m going to help her. But she doesn’t know one thing. There’s a camera in here.”

“In Biryani?”

“Look, you said your interview with that guy from Brown’s this Friday, right? Is there any chance you can get it pushed back to Saturday?”

“But Saturday’s Christmas.”

“I know. Jesus Riseth!”

Abby presses the stop button. “Starbucks isn’t even open on Christmas,” she smiles, and then giggles.

2010

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manymorewords-blog · 1 year ago

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After logging out and not returning to Tumblr for over a decade, I'm amused by how quickly I gave up on Tumblr so long ago. I made two posts, the second was about running. I suppose I did run off to live and am just now returning after my time away. This third post is of a picture I took of mural in Raleigh, NC showing a toddler whose picture went social media viral after the Women's March in Washington, DC. I took this picture a little over three years ago during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic that in many ways brought many worlds to a stop. As of two days ago, the World Health Organization reports nearly 7 million deaths attributable to COVID-19, meanwhile The Economist estimates that worldwide excess deaths are closer to 26.1 million.

Back in the early 2010's, there was no way we collectively could have imagined what was to come. Here, many years and protests and movements later, I've been living in Boston. Far from family. Meeting new and different and interesting people. It's drizzly out, and there are videos circulating on social media about flash floods in NYC that left water spouting out of subway station walls, water rushing into buses. A small whirlpool in a street with cars up to their doorhandles in water. Canadian wildfires kicked off summer, leaving an umber and orange sun familiar to me as the sun of many Santa Barbara fires. My apartment smelled like a carne asada without the carne. It was just smoky all across the Northeast. My cousin in New Jersey and I remarked that at least it wasn't raining ash here, though we could imagine and empathize with those closer to the fires dealing with more smoke and all the ash. As the impacts of global climate change set in, politicians in Boston and other cities are making moves to criminalize homelessness by banning tents.

In the U.S., many benefits were expanded and child poverty was cut in half during the COVID-19 pandemic. Experts attribute this to government programs enacted to alleviate the economic impacts of COVID-19 on families. Three years later, those programs have ended. The government called an end to the public health state of emergency, which means many resources are no longer available. Child poverty has risen back to pre-pandemic levels.

I'm missing a lot, I haven't even talked about the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement, how the Dream Act didn't get passed, how the far right is on the rise and reconfiguring. The tech world has, unsurprisingly, not been the balm it sold itself as being. Recently a tech company used decades of work by various authors to train a machine learning algorithm without consent from the authors. Sounds a lot like stealing.

There's still time, though, for people to make different choices, for little pockets of community to imagine something better.

If anything feels like the opening lines of the Aeneid, it is maybe anyone allowing themselves to take in this moment. We are very much in the middle of things, we have been for some time. I guess I'm calling on the muses, artists, creative people who came before me to help me find the words to describe what it is like to be living through this time and moving forward in a time of significant change. I'm thinking I'll end this account here. If I start a new one, my username will be limpingwolf. I opened a blue sky account, though, much like this Tumblr a decade ago, I struggle with different platforms and the craft of writing effectively for each. Here's to hoping I find my voice and a way forward with other people who want a more decent life for their loved ones, and even for people we don't know.

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hakesbros · 2 years ago

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New Development Homes For Sale

The National Association of Realtors stated Wednesday that existing home sales fell 7.7% final month from October to a seasonally adjusted annual price of 4.09 million. That’s decrease than what economists have been anticipating, based new homes albuquerque on FactSet. Despite the slowdown, home prices continued to rise. The nationwide median home sales price rose three.5% in November from a 12 months earlier to $370,seven hundred. In LA or San Francisco, that’s sufficient for a cramped rental.

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Also seeing some sold for low costs off market. Only one mentioned it was part of a multi property sale, however I suppose a quantity of of them might need been. So potential buyers usually are not only very picky, but if they can't get a agency insurance coverage quote prior to purchasing new home builders in albuquerque, then no sale. As a outcome there could be many many more listings, but can’t till repairs are complete, inspections completed, insurance coverage claims carried out. Location has alot of snow birds who personal for the cool 6 months. Ian did significant harm, but nothing like fort Myers and different surrounding areas.

Yet prices in Fresno shot up easily 100k in a yr on homes that had been solely going up 10k a yr. It’s absolutely not the time to purchase something in Fresno. With tech layoffs and the entire Bay Area transplant wfh folks… perhaps homes for sale in albuquerque nm you’ll find a deal here. As someone born and raised in Fresno who follows the housing market right here on regular basis, there aren't any offers to be discovered currently in Fresno.

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OK, so heres your dose of deluded optimism then. I can’t assist but wonder if higher mortgage charges and still-too-high prices will present help for much cheaper markets as investor exercise shifts away from wildly overpriced markets . Maybe work-from-home is right here to stay if only as a outcome of nobody can afford the Bay Area anymore. Are you looking homes for sale albuquerque for a model new home for the model new year? Check out this week's roundup of homes for sale within the Albuquerque area, including a few three-bedroom, one-bathroom houses, and a four-bedroom, two-bathroom home. Want to face out among the many sea of average actual estate agents?

#real estate

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extreme-investor-network · 2 years ago

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Stock market live news updates: Stocks sink after more bad news on the US economy

Stocks sank Friday, pacing toward a second-straight weekly loss, as more downbeat news on the U.S. economy accelerated a move lower. Near 12:45 p.m. ET, the S&P 500 and Dow were off around 1.5%, while the Nasdaq fell 1.3%. Earlier in the session, the Nasdaq had moved into positive territory. The latest leg lower for stocks followed preliminary readings on economic activity in the U.S. this month from S&P Global, which showed a further deterioration in activity to start December. S&P Global's services PMI fell to a four-month low, while its manufacturing index hit a 31-month low in December. "Business conditions are worsening as 2022 draws to a close, with a steep fall in the PMI indicative of GDP contracting in the fourth quarter at an annualized rate of around 1.5%," said Chris Williamson, chief business economist at S&P Global Market Intelligence. "Jobs growth has meanwhile slowed to a crawl as firms across both manufacturing and services take a much more cautious approach to hiring amid the slump in customer demand." On Thursday, the November retail sales report was unexpectedly weak, prompting concern over the health of the U.S. consumer, which has been the driver of a better-than-expected economy this year. After rebounding earlier this week, U.S. stocks are again on pace to log weekly losses again after last week saw the S&P 500 suffer its worst weekly loss since late September. Investors also had an eye on crude oil early Friday, with WTI futures down over 3% to trade near $73.70 a barrel. Early this week, oil hit a new 2022 low. Friday's trading comes after Thursday's deep sell-off that saw the Nasdaq fall more than 3%, as the Federal Reserve's interest-rate increase on Wednesday was followed by matching moves Thursday morning from the Bank of England and the European Central Bank. Federal Reserve Board Chairman Jerome Powell leaves after a news conference following the announcement that the Federal Reserve raised interest rates by half a percentage point, at the Federal Reserve Building in Washington, U.S., December 14, 2022. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY On the the earnings calendar, news is light, with Darden Restaurants (DRI) and Winnebago Industries (WGO) both rising after their latest reports. In crypto markets, bitcoin (BTC-USD) and other major cryptocurrencies were under selling pressure early Friday, with bitcoin dropping below $17,000 in early trading. Earlier this week, bitcoin had risen above $18,000 for the first time since the collapse of FTX in early November. News accounting firm Mazars had paused its work with Binance and all other crypto firms weighed on the space early Friday. Original Article Here: Read the full article

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homoose · 4 years ago

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Weird is Good

Summary: A story about two people tryna make it through the age of COVID-19 in a country where people are fucking dumb lmao. My hc is that Spencer would be like wtf at all these science-denying anti-maskers. Also, two teachers just tryna make it through quarantine and remote teaching in a one bedroom apartment (this is taking place during a mandatory leave/lecture cycle).

Pairing: Spencer Reid x fem!reader

Category: fluff

Warnings/Includes: no warnings. reader is both a kindergarten teacher and a bruh girl with a pirate’s mouth. lots of Spencer x factz.

Word count: 3.1k

———

“We’re home for the next two weeks. ”

Spencer looked up from his desk to see Y/N kicking off her shoes, dropping her bag, and walking directly to the sink. “Starting when?”

“We get to go in on Monday to say goodbye to the kids and get any materials we might need. Then we’re home for two weeks. They’re calling it an early, extended spring break.” Y/N began her hand washing routine. As a kindergarten teacher, she’d always been a strict hand-washer. In the time of COVID, she had only become more zealous. She looked at Spencer. “Have you heard anything?”

“Since we’re so close to the end of the semester, the department head thinks they’ll try to finish out the year as normal.” He set down his pen. “I honestly don’t know. It will all depend on whether people follow the CDC guidelines. The spread of any virus is deducible mathematically, and SARS-COV2 is no different. Based on the outbreak in Italy prior to their lockdown, we can accurately describe its reproductive number, or Rt, to between 2.43 – 3.10.”

Y/N shut off the water and dried her hands on a paper towel. “In layman's terms, Dr. Reid.”

“The Rt tells how many people are infected by the contagious host,” he explained. “In the case of this strain, each infected person is infecting between two and three others. For comparison, the standard seasonal flu has an average Rt between 1.4 and 1.7.”

“So in other words, fucking yikes,” Y/N groaned. She moved to perch on the edge of Spencer’s desk.

“Indeed,” Spencer agreed. “We know how fast the flu can travel through an office or a classroom, so imagine if it was two times as transmissible. But it's also really important to understand that this number changes depending on the mitigations in place. Even prior to full lockdown, mask wearing and social distancing was somewhat common in Italy, so it’s likely the uncontrolled Rt is higher.”

“Jesus Christ.” Y/N scrubbed a hand over her face. “We’ll probably never go back.”

Spencer rubbed his hand up from her ankle to the inside of her knee. “The good news is there’s nothing special about this virus compared to others in terms of how it spreads— it’s just aerosols. So if everyone wears their mask, we’ll be able to keep the spread low.”

⧭⧭⧭

“It’s safe to say that everyone did not wear their fucking masks,” Y/N snapped. She watched from the couch as Mayor Bowser delivered the news that DC Public Schools would remain closed for the remainder of the year. “This is crazy. I mean, I knew it was coming because people in this country are absolute buffoons.” She looked at Spencer, fingers pressed to her temple. “But holy shit, are we ever going to be able to go outside again?”

“With schools and universities closed, people working remotely, and lockdown orders in place, the Rt in the US could stay low. But masks have to be worn at all times, and social distancing has to be strictly followed.” Spencer pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “I just— I can’t believe people are refusing to wear masks. The empirical, peer-reviewed data clearly shows—”

“This is ‘Murica, boy.” Y/N mocked. “Ain’t no tyrannical government gonna tell me what to do!” She rolled her eyes. “Trust me, your choice to abstain from social media is paying dividends to your sanity right now.”

Spencer looked truly dumbfounded, setting his newspaper down in his lap. “But that’s just it. It’s not just in social media circles.” He gestured to the article in front of him. “This economist just argued for ‘reopening’ the economy using the justification of herd immunity. Herd immunity can be a plausible option for less lethal diseases. But this virus is not like varicella—the chickenpox,” he clarified at Y/N’s raised eyebrow. He waved his hands around in exasperation. “Putting aside the fact that one facet of herd immunity is vaccinating as many people as possible, its success completely hinges on the Rt of a disease. If you model a population based on an Rt of 2.5, herd immunity wouldn’t be achieved until approximately sixty percent of the population has been infected. Consider that the US population is currently 328 million, and sixty percent of that is 196.8 million. The current mortality rate for SARS-COV2 is 3.06 percent. 196,800,000 multiplied by 0.0306 is 6,022,080. Over six million people would die. It's simple mathematics.”

Y/N let out an exasperated breath. “It used to be that simple math and facts were enough. Now you’ve got basement scientists who think they know better than actual, literal scientists who’ve spent their entire lives studying these things.” She ran a hand over her face and gestured at the news conference still playing. “How long do you think it’ll be before we’re both trying to teach from this tiny ass living room?”

⧭⧭⧭

“Goooooooood morning, kindergarten! It’s Friday, and no Friday is a bad Friday!” Spencer smiled. As he poured his first cup of coffee, he hummed along with Y/N and 23 six-year-olds as they sang their morning song. Observing fourteen days of remote kindergarten from across the living room had given Spencer a new appreciation for elementary school teachers, particularly Y/N. She sang, danced, conducted science experiments, held puppet shows, read stories, led art projects, and fielded questions for four hours a day— three hours less than when they were in the school building. He was exhausted by proxy.

But he was also grateful for the opportunity to watch Y/N in her element. Even though they were at home, she still got dressed every day in bright, patterned sweaters and dresses— her Ms. Frizzle attire, she’d told him once. She was able to channel her personality into a kid-friendly version that her students clearly adored, never afraid to be silly or strange to get their attention and keep them engaged during the long days. He worked from home whenever possible, strangely happy to have the background noise of kindergarten over his quiet university office.

...

“Okay, but where do I put the biiiiiiiiiiiig number?” Y/N made a wide gesture with her arms. “Ariah, where should I put it? In the big box, yes! But oh no, my small number needs a friend. My three is soooooo lonely!” Y/N drew her mouth into a pout. “DJ, how can I help my three not be so sad? You’re absolutely right, let’s put that two right next to him in our number bond.”

…

“I’ve been waitin’ for a girl to mute,” Y/N sang into the gold karaoke mic. “I said, muuuuuuuuuute, I’m blinded by loud sounds. No, I can’t hear the friend who’s tryin’ to talk.”

…

“Oh boy. Kev, honey, we can— we can see you. Kevin, Kevin, Kevin. We can see all of you. I can’t turn your camera off, buddy. You gotta— there we go.”

…

“Mute please, I need— I need everybody to mute, please. Oh my goodness where is that music coming from?” Y/N frantically searched for her index card with the picture of the mute icon, as the sounds of a highly inappropriate song blared through the computer speaker. “I know it’s so loud, guys. Why is my mute power gone?! This is why we need to make sure we keep our mute button on, kindergarten.”

…

“No sweetie, it’s not time to log off yet. I’m sorry, I know it’s such a long day. We have about an hour left. Do you guys wanna do a countdown? It’s the fin-al count-down! Do-do doo dooooo. Do-do-d-do-dooo…”

…

“Annnnnd, I should see all my friends on mute. William, hang on just a second. All my friends need to look at my picture, it’s an oval with a line through it… Okay, William, what did you bring to show us?” Y/N leaned toward the computer screen. “Grandma Kathy? O-oh, she’s— she’s in the—“ Y/N’s eyes widened. “Is that— is that an urn? Oh wow. Um, well, wow. It’s beautiful. Thank you so much for sharing that with us, William. Grandma Kathy, may she rest in peace.”

⧭⧭⧭

A week into Y/N teaching kindergarten from their living room, the university had announced its transition to online coursework for the remainder of the academic year. Spencer had to host his first zoom lecture, and he was absolutely dreading it.

“Spence, it’s going to be fine. It’s not like you’ve never been on a video conference,” Y/N assured him. She sat cross-legged on the couch, waiting for him to let her in to his practice zoom.

“Yeah, but I wasn’t running those meetings. I just showed up.” He squinted at the computer screen. “Are you in?”

Y/N barely resisted the urge to make a joke, knowing that Spencer probably wouldn’t appreciate the innuendo. “No, you have to admit me.”

“What do you mean? How do I do that?”

“There should be a box with a button that says admit.”

Spencer gestured at the computer. “Well there’s a bunch of boxes— which one should I be looking at?”

Y/N sighed and got up from the couch. “IQ of 187 and can’t find the box.”

Spencer dragged a hand through his hair. “I know I shouldn’t find this so difficult. I’m sorry you have to waste your time on this.”

“Hey, it was a joke.” Y/N grabbed his hand from where he was frustratedly pulling on his frazzled curls. “I’m sorry. That was mean and you’re already stressed enough.” She used her free hand to smooth his hair back into place. She scrunched her nose. “I love you and your limited technology skills. And honestly it’s kind of nice to have one thing I can actually teach you about.” She squeezed his hand, leaning over him to peer at his computer screen. “All right, let’s find that elusive admit button.”

When the day of his lecture rolled around, Spencer thanked all the atoms in the observable universe that Y/N had a break during his class. Within the first ten minutes, he’d managed to accidentally kick himself out of his own meeting and then somehow lose track of the screenshare button.

“No one can see me and I don’t know what happened to the screenshare option. It was there and now it’s just… gone,” he told Y/N.

She leaned over his desk, eyes tracking over the screen and mouse clicking around the desktop. “How in the world did you manage to block your camera?”

“I don’t know! I didn’t even touch it!” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “I don’t understand how it’s even possible to be this bad at this.”

Y/N bumped his knee with her own, pulling up his camera settings and preferences. “Relax. You can’t be good at everything. It’s a refreshing reminder that you’re a mere mortal like the rest of us.” With a few rapid clicks, Y/N unblocked his camera and located the screenshare bar. “There. Crisis averted. I’m just going to share your whole screen in case you want to toggle between application windows. So just be aware that they’ll be able to see everything. And then you just click here when you’re ready to stop sharing.”

When Y/N turned her head toward him to check that he understood, Spencer grabbed the side of her face and caught her lips in a kiss. Y/N smiled against his mouth, heart speeding up as he traced the seam of her mouth with his tongue.

“Um, Dr. Reid? Your um— your camera’s working now.”

Spencer nearly fell out of his chair, his cheeks about the color of the Leave Meeting icon. Y/N dropped her head, debating whether she wanted to laugh or let the earth open up and swallow her whole. She ultimately decided to compose herself, stepping back and giving a little wave to the sea of tiny, grinning zoom faces before slinking out of frame, miming sorry to one very mortified professor.

⧭⧭⧭

“Would you want to be our mystery reader next week?” Y/N asked, bookmarking the page of her novel and reclining back in bed. “You just have to pick a story to read. Oh, and think of four clues about your identity to give the kiddos.”

Spencer raised his eyebrow, continuing to read. “Any story?”

Y/N laughed. “Well they’re six, so maybe hold off on the Chaucer and Bradbury for now. A picture book would be preferable.”

“Did you know that the first picture book, Orbis Sensualium Pictus, or Visible World in Pictures, was published in 1658?” He looked up from his own book. “Czech educator John Amos Comenius wanted to create a book that would be accessible to children of all levels of ability. The educational theories he explored are actually still in practice in the field of early childhood education.” He turned toward her from his spot under the covers. “For example, when you have your students make a hissing sound and slither their arms when they produce the sound represented by the letter s? Comenius included an alphabet chart with various animal and human sounds representing each letter. He wanted to demonstrate that the incorporation of multiple senses could help increase learning.”

“I guess you don’t fix what isn’t broken,” Y/N mused. “300 years later, and we’re still using the same methods.”

“362, actually,” Spencer corrected.

She gave him a look. “Maybe we can save the Comenius for another time.”

“The genre of children’s literature encompasses some of the most profound and philosophical story telling of all time.” Spencer returned his attention to his reading.

“...So is that a yes?”

Spencer smiled. “I’ve got a book in mind.”

“And clues,” Y/N reminded him, snuggling down under the covers and reopening her book. “We need some fun clues, mystery reader.”

…

“Kindergarten, we have a very special mystery reader this week. Oh man, are you ready for the first clue? The mystery reader loves jell-o! Raise your little hand if you love jell-o, too. Okay, kindergarten, I see you! Lots of jell-o lovers in the house.”

…

“Okay, clue number two! Our mystery reader works as a community helper— remember we learned about all different kinds of community helpers; firefighters, nurses, police officers. But if the mystery reader could be anything, they’d want to be a cowboy! How cool is that?”

...

“Clue number three for our mystery reader!” Y/N sucked in a gasp. “You guys. The mystery reader can do magic. Oh my goodness, I am so excited for Friday,” she sing-songed. “Will they show us a trick? Hmmm, I don’t know. Maybe if you ask nicely.”

…

“Okay, my friends, the last clue. The mystery reader loves reading. They read every day, and they’ve been reading since 1983! Yes, that was a very long time ago.”

⧭⧭⧭

“Okay, any last guesses about who our mystery reader might be?” Y/N questioned.

“I think it’s your dad,” a little voice called out.

Spencer made a choking noise from where he sat, slightly off camera. Y/N laughed. “The mystery reader is decidedly not my dad, Keyshon. Remember I showed you guys the picture of him— my dad’s a farmer, so he’s kind of already a cowboy.” She clapped her hands together. “Okay, without further ado, drumroll please... Our mystery reader is…” Y/N pushed her desk chair out of frame to allow Spencer to roll in, holding her hands out. “Spencer!”

He gave a little wave, smoothing his hair, suddenly painfully self-aware and nervous about the opinions of two dozen six-year-olds. “Hi guys.”

“You’re the boy on Ms. Y/L/N’s phone.”

“Your hair is so fluffy!”

“Do you have a cowboy hat?”

“I like your sweater.”

“Can you really do magic?”

“What’s your favorite jell-o?”

“Whoa, okay, let’s remember our mute button,” Y/N, holding up her index card. “I promise you’ll get to ask Spencer all your questions after he reads the story.”

Spencer smiled at the excited faces beaming through the screen. “Yes, I’m on Ms. Y/L/N’s phone; I don’t own a cowboy hat, yet; yes, I really can do magic; and the red jell-o is my favorite.”

Y/N watched with interest as Spencer pulled out his book. He’d been secretive about his choice, so she was as curious as her students.

“This is one of my favorite stories. It’s written by Munro Leaf, and illustrated by Robert Lawson. It’s The Story of Ferdinand.” Spencer held the cover up to the camera. “Ferdinand is the bull here on the cover. This story was written in 1935, which was a long time ago! Okay are you ready?” Spencer looked out on a sea of thumbs up, turning the page to the beginning of the story. “Once upon a time in Spain, there was a bull, and his name was Ferdinand.”

Y/N smiled as she listened to Spencer read each page, recounting the story of the peaceful bull. He was an excellent storyteller, changing the inflection and expression of his voice to match each sentence. He held each page up for just the right amount of time, panning it so her students could see each detail of the black and white pictures. He added his own wonderings and exclamations here and there, and her students were decidedly enthralled. Her heart ached at how comfortable he was, how natural this was for him. She rested her chin in her hand, trying to keep her mind in the present— ignoring the persistent little mental image of Spencer as a dad.

“So they had to take Ferdinand home. And for all I know, he is sitting there still, under his favorite cork tree, smelling the flowers just quietly. He is very happy… And that’s The Story of Ferdinand.” Spencer closed the book with a soft smile. “I love this story. Ferdinand is a very special bull. What do you think makes him so special?”

“Ferdinand didn’t fight,” a little voice piped up.

“Yes!” Spencer agreed. “He practiced pacifism in the face of the persistent, ingrained militarism of his country’s culture.”

Y/N placed a hand on Spencer’s knee and gave a quick squeeze. “Right, Ferdinand chose not to fight, even though everybody else he knew wanted to.” Y/N winked at him before turning back to the screen full of kids. “All his friends thought he was kind of weird, but he just really wanted to hang out in the shade and smell the flowers, huh? Sounds pretty good to me.”

“He wasn’t bothered that the other bulls thought he was strange for wanting to be peaceful,” Spencer added. “Sometimes being different can be a good thing. The Story of Ferdinand reminds me that it’s okay to be yourself, even if other people think you’re weird.” His eyes met Y/N’s. “Because there will always be people who love and appreciate you for who you are.”

#spencer reid #spencer reid x reader #spencer reid x y/n #spencer reid imagine #spencer reid x you #criminal minds fanfiction #criminal minds imagine #spencer reid fanfiction #criminals minds self insert #dr spencer reid #professor spencer reid #spencer reid fanfic #criminal minds #homoose writes

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fishmech · 3 years ago

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on the myopia of people who have barely been online reminiscing on bullshit that never happened

Recently found the corresponding website for the short-lived print magazine "Internet Underground" - a magazine that had been founded by a major publisher in 1995 to capitalize on the previous year's opening of the internet beyond (generally) educational/research institutions, the government, the military, and related contractor corporations. Essentially the way it was founded is that they just hired a bunch of college students and people freshly out of college on journalism and design majors because they knew that a) they could pay them like shit in exchange for giving them Real Publishing Jobs to put on a resume and b) the colleges they were hiring out of had established internet usage.

This essay complaining about how the author believed the internet and web in particular of early 1997 was so fallen from the glory days of 1995 accompanied the 4th to last published issue of the magazine - the whole publication went bust with the "July/August 1997" issue of the magazine. What I find absolutely hilarious about it that by his own admission on his user profile elsewhere on the site is that at this point he hadn't even spent a full 2 years online - and for that matter I, personally, had been first online as a small child by late 1994!

So I can say unequivocally that this guy was kinda full of shit. Because by the time this dude, by his admission, first started using the web there were already thousands of commercial websites and ads and all that nonsense happening. And the internet was very small then, so the fact that it was thousands was very notable.

Let's put this in perspective: by the end of 1994 the web had hit approximately 10,000 distinct websites. Among the very very commercial website already existing by the end of 1994 was Bloomberg, MTV, Wired Magazine (who pioneered banner ads in 1994), the BBC (operating restricted commerical projects for funding related reasons), Cybersell (a site that was an open seller of spamming services, the worst form of ads), The Economist, First Virtual (something of a predecessor to paypal), Pizza Hut (which started online pizza ordering, albeit with the 1994 offerings being restricted to Santa Cruz, California deliveries), Powells Books, and VirtuMall (a service that provided ecommerce functions for a bunch of big name businesses). And that's not even counting all the piles of military contractors, computer/software companies, and all the rest that had already been online sometimes as far back as the 60s, and had had long established marketing presences as that started to become allowed in the late 80s! Yes, we're talking shit from IBM to Raytheon.

And sure, there were a lot of "amateur" and "hobbyist" sites. But there's a very key thing to keep in mind here - the vast majority of that was on university/corporate servers with space provided for hosting to students/faculty/employees and thus already under the thumb of some pretty big institutions - and if you crossed arbitrary lines you could get your access pulled pretty quickly. A lot of others were of course paid hosting at already established multimillion dollar companies, and people being given favors of free subhosting (one of the sites the guy mentions in the article is one of the cases, and the moaning over how the site had to hop providers is very funny). And then of course, if you basically had a pretty decent source of income, you could pay substantial amounts of money to host for yourself. This was not really a world where just anyone could hop in and be able to show off what they were doing!

Why's this all important? Basically we still see the same shit happening today but people tell the myth of the "non-corporate internet" about increasingly more ridiculous times to do so, like the 2000s, or even the early 2010s! And usually what it ends up being is that x time they think is non-corporate is around about the time that the person started first actively using the internet, when they were typically much more impressed by using it vs able to accurately notice who was controlling shit. And this guy is the same way, he gets online in fuckin May 1995 and he hasn't yet started paying attention to the full scope of the internet yet, so he remembers that time as just the cool weird sites he saw without giving it much thought. But we cut to March 1997 and he's already been working on a whole ass magazine about the internet, both as writer and webmaster, and so now he can really notice trends that were already very in place when he started.

But he doesn't bother to put it together, he just lets his vague memories of "22 months ago was great!" be his guidepost. E-commerce and advertising and all the rest was already responsible for many many millions of dollars spent and invested before he ever logged on, but he interprets it as a development that happened after he started using the internet. It's very reminiscent of the people today who choose to believe that there's only X evil corporate sites around anymore, and this article shows the same frankly blinkered and myopic view of the internet has been repeatedly popping up for a solid 24 years lol.

#old internet #old computer #tumblr #text post #internet underground

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allthebrazilianpolitics · 3 years ago

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The Economist Special Report - Brazil On The Brink: Money Trees

[Image description: gold mining in an area in the Amazon Rainforest.]

THE INDIGENOUS territory Sete de Setembro draws its name from the “first contact” with the Paiter Suruí tribe: September 7th 1969. At the time, tribe members thought white men, with their pale skin and strange beards, were a sort of monster, whereas the indigenous were “real people”, or paiterey in their tongue.

Cousins Almir and Henrique Suruí were born in the following decade. As boys they saw the arrival of thousands of settlers, the conversion of tracts of forest to farmland and the death of hundreds of Suruí from disease and violence. As men they became caciques. But their paths diverged in the mid-2000s. Almir tried to protect the forest and find a sustainable income for his village, Lapetanha, home to 115 of the tribe’s 1,500 members. Henrique got involved in illegal logging and mining, which led to his expulsion. He founded a village elsewhere in the territory, which spans nearly a thousand square miles in Rondônia and Mato Grosso.

Such rivalries reflect a double failure on the part of the government: to keep invaders off indigenous lands and to reduce the poverty driving people in the Amazon into illicit activities. Since 1969 the region’s population has quadrupled to nearly 25m. It comprises 60% of Brazil’s territory and 13% of its population but just 8% of GDP. The area richest in biodiversity and natural resources is among the least developed and most destitute.

The consensus is that environmental enforcement must go hand-in-hand with sustainable development. What that looks like is debated. Last year Mr Bolsonaro submitted a bill to legalise mining on indigenous land. “Every day the Indian is more of a human being,” he said. Many suspect the Indians are not his chief concern. His vision of big projects like highways and dams to serve farms and cities does not include them. His father was a miner. He has said it is “abusive” to non-indigenous Brazilians that less than 1% of Brazil’s population occupies 14% of its territory.

Mr Bolsonaro has squelched any initiatives that tried. In 2019 the environment minister, Ricardo Salles, launched a crusade against the Amazon Fund, through which Germany and Norway donated $1.2bn to projects that employ locals to protect the forest. Mr Salles accused NGOs of committing fraud, even though most of the money went to the ministry. He abolished two committees that oversaw funding and suggested using it to pay squatters who were kicked off conservation units. In the face of rising deforestation and fires, Germany and Norway withdrew their donations.

In a secret meeting in April 2020, video of which was released by the supreme court, Mr Salles urged cabinet members to “push through all kinds of deregulation” while the press was distracted by covid-19. A day after telling President Joe Biden and other leaders at this year’s Earth Day summit that Brazil would double spending on environmental enforcement, Mr Bolsonaro signed a budget that cut it by 24%. When a police superintendent accused Mr Salles of obstructing a probe into illegal logging, he was fired. Brazil will have no problem meeting its goal of ending illegal deforestation by 2030, the former chief tweeted, “Because there will be no forest left.” Mr Salles is under investigation for corruption.

#brazil #brazilian politics #politics #environmentalism #environmental justice #jair bolsonaro #ricardo salles #indigenous rights #mod nise da silveira

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writingonjorvik · 4 years ago

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Can We Discuss the Crafting System?

First of all, I want to give a big shoutout to @sorceressferaly on this system. We talked about in back in February for our interview how she wanted to make this system happen and I am so happy that she got this opportunity and how it turned out. I promise this won’t all be gushing, but I am so happy to got to have this project.

Second, it’s release week for the Jorvik Divined deck. Go follow @jorvegiancollective everywhere. The deck reveal is today. Go check it out!

Ok, let’s another disclaimer out of the way. After about my first 5-ish hours of playing the update, my game bugged out and I haven’t really been able to collect more materials for two-ish days now. This seems to be happening a number of folks. I have at least been chatting with Leila on feedback and bugs already, and I’m sure the team is otherwise aware, so I imagine it will be fixed by next Wednesday once they pinpoint the issue. But this means my experience with the crafting system is only from about a day or so of playing and relying on my stash of materials to get me through until the nodes’ spawn rates are fixed.

That out of the way, let’s dive into the positive. I love the simplicity of this system. It’s easy to get into and I think the tutorialization of the system was handled really well. I personally think the level requirement is a little high (even if level 10 isn’t too hard to get to), I think it would have been better to have this first onboarding crafting system open at level 5 if you’re a Star Rider after you do Farah’s quest so new crafting recipes and methods can be unlocked as level rewards at better intervals, but overall I think it’s fine. I also think that there should be material nodes in Moorland. I imagine it’s to limit free players from clogging up their inventories with supplies, but there are already nodes in Fort Pinta, so that’ll happen anyway. I think the same should be true for higher level areas, as a reward for unlocking more places, having more nodes (where it fits) so higher level players can gather supplies more effectively.

I had three nitpicks about interface though. One, is that I think a grid crafting list more like the shops would be better for recipes, particularly for the “items” crafting where the list is pretty long (and easy to expand on). The font can be kind small and having pictures would help with folks with reading impairments. Two, there needs to be a crafting in bulk option, particularly for the “items” crafting. I know Leila mentioned looking at AC:NH for inspiration on crafting for this, and the biggest complaint on that system is no crafting in bulk. Particularly as I’m unlocking higher level recipes and the number of cloths I need is going up (RIP my flax supply), I see this being a huge quality of life ask, particularly when you have to use separate benches for different recipes. I don’t have an issue with having separate crafting benches (this actually sets up the system for other “disciplines” of crafting really well) but it should streamline the process between those benches as much as possible. Which leads to three, the cutscene should only play the initial time you craft an item and it shouldn’t kick you out of the work bench. These really go into the streamlining note of have to wait and then reopen the menu each time you want to craft something instead of simplifying the process for the player.

That said, I do think this is a really strong system. I played for about 5 hours straight until I got hit with the spawn bugs and didn’t get bored until the latter end of it (which was mostly just from “I’ve been trying to grind flax for the past 3 hours”). It was a pretty chill relaxing time and I see this as a great addition to training loops and stream activities. I have concerns on the longevity of it, particularly when we start looking at people and their frustrations with Soul Riding three months out, so I hope this system gets continued support with new recipes, particularly over these next couple of months to avoid burnout like with Soul Riding. It really needs continuous support to make sure it remains a staple in the gameplay loop until there’s a wide enough catalog and that having new recipes tied with map unlocks would be a big deal.

It also has me waiting for my current ticket to clear with SSO so I can submit my Pi upgrade idea and the Hidden Star wishing well idea because this system makes those seem a little more possible. There’s a catalog now of my posts if you want to read those.

But I think the thing I’m most excited about is how this system could expand and how it could provide really good level rewards in unlocking other crafting “disciplines” when unlocking new areas or levels. Think of unlocking tailoring from Daxton in Silverglade to get classic riding equipment or blacksmithing from Conrad to learn metalworking or cooking from Olivia in New Hill. All of these could have their own recipes and ingredients that would probably need an inventory overhaul to avoid item clog, but it would add so much to do in every part of the map. Not to mention a huge variety of options for recipes and dailies.

And I don’t think it just needs to be directly crafting that this system can support. One of the big changes this system did was adding items you can collect and keep even when you log off. We’ve seen that before with the original Kalter quests and with archeology, which says to me that those systems could be seeing updates. But also, it could mean expansions to dailies. I’ve suggested before expanding the Rescue Ranch with tonics and medicines. Now you can go out and actually make those. What about going and repairing trail markers for the Rangers or bringing them supplies for the animals they’re nursing to return to the wild? My entire Pi idea is viable now without needing to pick up dailies directly.

The point is, this system is bigger than just crafting directly because of how it changes item collection. Now collections can be open-ended. It reminds me of Leila’s suggestions in our interview on how she would redo fishing, by setting up points where you can just fish and collect all kinds of things to turn in for certain rewards on certain days. With this kind of system in the game, dailies as a whole can be a lot more living world and a lot less “click the icon for money.” And I know there are bugs right now and it’s so early stage, but this is an amazing tool that I think will be the foundation of a much more immersive design philosophy with SSO.

And don’t get me starting on how this finally makes trading player viable, but we’ll get the SSO economist a break before we add that in.

#sso #star stable #starstable #star stable online #starstableonline #woj analysis

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titoist · 4 years ago

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big brain coming thru. moneys value is directly correlated to the value that WE as a society assign them so if we all banded together we could just make it so every dollar bill was one billion dollars....economists log off

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jyndor · 4 years ago

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paul krugman and the art of doubling down on shitty takes

so on september 11th, famed nyt editorial writer, keynesian economist and fave of your racist liberal uncle, paul krugman, wrote one of the shittiest takes I have ever seen on twitter, which is SAYING SOMETHING.

krugman famously tweeted this:

and got a million virtual shoes thrown at him for being so ignorant, because anti-muslim hate crimes did actually escalate after 9/11, and the bush administration eagerly fanned the flames of islamophobia in order to make their illegal wars in afghanistan and iraq popular with the public. muslims, sikhs, indians, literally anyone vaguely brown, and lots of black ppl too, were terrorized by their neighbors, (former) friends, classmates, coworkers, etc. and anyone with a muslim friend knows this happened because they've told us about it. and these attacks were reported on. they were, I remember reading about them when I was a kid.

(paul krugman works for the new york fucking times, and while I think the nyt is warmongering centrist garbage, they do actually report on things that happen in the world. he writes editorials for them, surely he reads the damn paper once in a while).

so today, I log on to twitter and see he has decided not to apologize, but rather do the ol' double down, which always works out well.

here are some highlights:

okay so first thing's first, no apology (obviously) since this is a double down. but we got a chart, and liberals do love a good chart when they are being racist and ahistorical.

he admits that the chart is actually inaccurate because it excludes all the other victims of anti-muslim hate crimes who weren't actually muslim (read: the innocents). okay. so already he is losing credibility because he is using an inaccurate chart as the basis of his double down, and really, we love to see it.

after this there's some shit about how he didn't say there wasn't an outbreak of white americans attacking muslims and people mistaken for muslims, but rather that it could have been worse. lol well anything can be worse than it was, as 2020 has taught us. it’s a pedantic mess and I didn’t feel like that was the meat of the double down.

so first off, the iraq war was definitely started for many reasons, but islamophobia was part of it. the bush administration wanted to invade iraq and depose saddam hussein, and steal iraq’s oil for multinational oil companies lbr, and so they exploited americans’ fears about muslims by propagandizing about how it was important for us to attack them over there before they attacked us over here with their weapons of mass destruction, and of course they would attack us over here if given the chance. why? because they hate our way of life here, our freedom. those things were LITERALLY said by bush people and also by their stans at fox news and the wsj, and yes, in the editorial pages at the nyt.

so to someone like paul krugman, who knows lots of conservatives who don’t seem racist, or are educated and distinguished and just... like war? idk but to him, he sees people like them and says, well... they’re not like uneducated filthy poors in west virginia, not that kind of racist.

but what he doesn’t get, or he is being deliberately obtuse about, is that in order for the bush people to dehumanize muslims the way they did, they had to personally place less value on the lives of iraqis than on the value of that sweet crude oil. they were willing to go to war, sacrifice hundreds of thousands of civilians in the process (as well as thousands of american soldiers, but this isn’t about them) because they didn’t see them as anything but collateral damage. and that is fucking racist.

and while I have no interest in playing the “which racist is worse” game, when the west virginia uneducated racist endangers those around them, the politician rich harvard educated racist writes policy and lies us into illegal wars that endanger millions. both are bad, both are racist.

and by the way, him “sticking his neck out” to speak up against going to iraq was brave and necessary, especially because the nyt was pushing the invasion. but when you put it like that... you just sound like a tool. like it was a burden to call out the liars and imperialists. bitch, you’re paul krugman, a nobel laureate and renowned economist. I do not want to discount the IMMENSE pressure and blacklisting that opponents of the bush administration experienced, because showing any opposition to the wars at the time was risky. but idk the way he put that just irked me, especially since he didn’t even lose his job like many in the media did when they spoke up.

usually what liberals do when they fuck up publically is a fake ass apology and a few hail marys, and I assumed he would be on twitter begging for forgiveness on this one since his garbage take went so viral and pissed off so many people. and of course was wrong.

but then he does this:

yeah. your eyes are not deceiving you. that chart is measuring anti-black, anti-lgbtq and anti-”islamic” (lmao who says that bro just say anti-muslim or islamophobic) hate crimes. shut up leftist twitter, black people have it worse than muslims according to my inaccurate chart. so stop attacking me, a rich white man who doesn’t really care about anything other than my reputation.

there is a lot to unpack here, namely that paul krugman is using faux concern for black people as a way to deflect from his shitty ahistorical take about how much restraint white americans showed after 9/11 towards muslims. maybe krugman doesn’t know any black muslims, but they exist. also oppression olympics is stupid even when used by well meaning essentialists, let alone by milquetoast academics.

not to mention that he has already discounted his own shitty chart by saying it doesn’t show the full picture of what happened in these anti-muslim attacks. but even if we take this chart seriously, it actually does not really support his point. look at how many more hate crimes there were against muslims in 2001 than there were in 2000. there are significantly more black people than muslims in the united states. I am not good at math, and surely I am no nobel laureate, but it seems to me that hate crimes against black people increased a little, and hate crimes against muslims increased a lot. and this chart only takes into account three years, and only two of which are post-9/11. so... idk man maybe we should look at what happened in, say, 2003? 2004? how about all of the 2000s?

(source: https://www.pri.org/stories/2016-09-12/data-hate-crimes-against-muslims-increased-after-911)

oh, that is actually pretty consistently bad! yes, there was one spike in 2001/2002, but it isn’t like we went back down to pre-9/11 numbers afterwards. and I am not sure if this information includes non-muslims targeted for “looking muslim” but I would say it is unlikely, since the data seem pretty similar to krugman’s olympic shit.

I am not writing this because paul krugman is particularly shit-for-brains, or because I hate him more than like... idk any other moron on twitter. there were plenty of anti-muslim takes on twitter friday like there are every 9/11, and every day. but krugman is actually someone liberals respect. he is, after all, a nobel laureate and a keynesian economist, and fairly mild mannered. when people in the media like krugman write these ahistorical shitty takes they are, as chomsky wrote, MANUFACTURING CONSENT. it is a deliberate tactic, and it works. and if you want to learn more about this theory, check out this short clip by al jazeera narrated by amy goodman (of democracy now). the media manufactured american consent when they pushed the wars. they continue to do so when they try to rewrite george bush’s history by making trump seem uniquely terrible to muslims.

elites in the press and in government have been trying to whitewash and rehabilitate george bush’s reputation for YEARS, and they are succeeding. and why would they want to do that? well, there are a lot of reasons. one, a lot of people in washington are complicit in bush’s crimes. two, democrats think they need to appeal to moderate republicans (lol) in order to win elections, and I guess they think there are moderate republicans left (lol!), and that those moderate republicans like george bush (LOLLL). three, they want to make trump look uniquely terrible. if they do that, then no one but trump needs to be held to account for his government’s failings. but these are just my speculation.

do not let them rehabilitate george bush any further than they have. it is a fucking shame he will never be held to account for war crimes, but an extra slap in the face to all of his victims when we act like he didn’t do things he did. like stoke anti-muslim hate. he invaded muslim countries with a smile on his face, and that is pretty fucking hateful.

paul krugman doubled down and tried to use Black Lives Matter like a human fucking shield. seems a bit racist imo.

#paul krugman #islamophobia #racism #war #imperialism #anti-blackness #fuck this guy i stg

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seat-safety-switch · 4 years ago

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A friend who won't lend you one of his hoard of eBay turbochargers is not really a friend at all. Things are a little different for me, however. You see, I need each and every 0.63 A/R turbine with axial play so broad that you could throw a medium-sized piglet through it. Even if they're not currently in cars, they could be with a few weekends of work. We must maintain the strategic turbocharger gap over my neighbour.

Now, you might think that it is rude of me to deny my friends turbochargers. It is taking a long time to get packages from China now, after all, and my small hoard of them is basically the only way that you can keep your piece of shit 80s Ford competitive with all of the base-model crossovers that are coming out these days. This ignores my own needs.

In an ideal universe, at any given time I should be able to go into my basement and look at a wall of semi-rusted v-banded snails representing thousands of potential wheel horsepower waiting to be unlocked as soon as I get off my ass and learn how to tig-weld three junkyarded log manifolds together. It has been a long time since college, but I’m pretty sure Camus did a whole writeup on this one.

More importantly, there is an economic reason behind all this. If you ask any beater economist such as myself, the presence of turbocharger demand drives shitbox supply. Yes, this ‘79 Monte Carlo is an incredibly slow metric-chassis piece of shit with the very wheeziest fuel-crisis V6 you could get in it, but that just means it has low compression - primed for boost. It’d be a waste not to get it. And it has a manual transmission, which ensures that I’ll be able to limp it home after third gear explodes trying to shut down the merge of a stripper-package Honda Fit.

In the end, though, everyone has their price. Any of my real friends know that if they swing by with a vehicle that features a built-in refrigerator, swivelling captains’ chairs, a dashboard humidor, or just one of those little compass globes that sit in front of the driver to tell him or her what direction they are currently pointed, then they can have whatever they want out of my pile while I’m distracted.

#chevrolet #chevrolet monte carlo #honda #honda fit

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newstfionline · 4 years ago

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Monday, November 30, 2020

Turns out working from home means more work (LinkedIn) Employees around the world put in on average half an hour more each day while working from home during lockdowns, workplace software developer Atlassian says in a report. Out of the 65 countries studied, only Brazil and China logged shorter hours during the crisis. Based on when employees interacted with Atlassian’s software, the study also found that people started to shift their workload from the afternoons to mornings and evenings—suggesting greater flexibility, but also a trend of work intruding on what is typically considered downtime.

A professor offered to deliver Thanksgiving meals to all her students (Washington Post) When the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued recommendations against traveling or gathering for Thanksgiving, Liz Pearce, a longtime lecturer at the University of Iowa, was worried for her students. “I was afraid many of them might be spending the holiday alone, without a proper Thanksgiving meal,” said Pearce, 61. “I’m a mom and wouldn’t want anybody to feel alone and sad.” Plus, she added, “a lot of local businesses are closing down, and many students work part time in the restaurants and bars, so their sources of income have dried up.” The communication studies professor and mother of four swiftly drafted an email to her 130 students on Thursday, spontaneously offering to hand-deliver a warm, traditional Thanksgiving meal. Finally, Pearce offered to provide additional portions for roommates or significant others. Then, she hit send, having no idea her thoughtful gesture would soon go viral. Within hours, the post amassed close to 1 million likes, over 70,000 retweets, and thousands of comments. For Pearce, the offer to cook for her students was “no big deal,” she said. “I just wanted everyone to know that there was room at my virtual table.” Pearce’s children are especially excited about cooking for students this Thanksgiving, she said. In fact, her 10-year-old son asked to make it an annual tradition. Given the outpouring of support, Pearce decided to pass along the same email to the whole undergraduate class of more than 600 people. She wants to ensure that anyone staying behind in Iowa City is well taken care of. “I don’t want any one student to feel like they are alone,” said Pearce.

Pandemic calls off Christmas markets in Europe (AP) The European plazas where people would usually gather at crowded stalls to partake in hot mulled wine, gingerbread, sausages and other delicacies are just empty squares. Christmas markets, a cherished tradition in Germany and neighboring countries, have joined the long list of annual traditions that were canceled or diminished this year because of the coronavirus pandemic. November saw many European countries impose partial or tougher lockdowns as new virus cases soared. The restrictions are either being retained or only partially loosened as Advent begins Sunday. Nuremberg’s sprawling, bustling Christkindlesmarkt, one of Germany’s best known holiday markets and traditionally a big tourist draw, was called off a month ago. Markets across the country—including in Frankfurt, Dortmund and many in Berlin—have suffered the same fate, with authorities canceling the events or organizers concluding that it didn’t make sense to push ahead with their plans. Over the border in France, the roughly 300 stalls of Strasbourg’s popular Christmas market won’t go up this year. And it’s the same story in the Belgian capital, Brussels.

French protesters clash with police over new security law (AFP) Violent clashes erupted in Paris Saturday as tens of thousands took to the streets to protest against new security legislation, with tensions intensified by the police beating and racial abuse of a black man that shocked France. Several fires were started in Paris, sending acrid smoke into the air, as protesters vented their anger against the security law which would restrict the publication of police officers’ faces. Some 46,000 people marched in Paris and 133,000 in total nationwide, the interior ministry said. Protest organisers said some 500,000 joined nationwide, including 200,000 in the capital. President Emmanuel Macron said late Friday that the images of the beating of black music producer Michel Zecler by police officers in Paris last weekend “shame us”. The incident had magnified concerns about alleged systemic racism in the police force.

Pope urges finding good even from pandemic (AP) Pope Francis is encouraging people to try to take away something good “even from the difficult situation that the pandemic forces on us.” Addressing faithful gathered a safe distance apart in vast St. Peter’s Square on Sunday, Francis offered these suggestions: “greater sobriety, discrete and respectful attention to neighbors who might be in need, some moments of prayer in the family with simplicity.” Francis said that “these three things will help us a lot.”

Turkey’s new virus figures confirm experts’ worst fears (AP) When Turkey changed the way it reports daily COVID-19 infections, it confirmed what medical groups and opposition parties have long suspected—that the country is faced with an alarming surge of cases that is fast exhausting the Turkish health system. In an about-face, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government this week resumed reporting all positive coronavirus tests—not just the number of patients being treated for symptoms—pushing the number of daily cases to above 30,000. With the new data, the country jumped from being one of the least-affected countries in Europe to one of the worst-hit. That came as no surprise to the Turkish Medical Association, which has been warning for months that the government’s previous figures were concealing the graveness of the spread and that the lack of transparency was contributing to the surge. The group maintains, however, that the ministry’s figures are still low compared with its estimate of at least 50,000 new infections per day. The country’s hospitals are overstretched, medical staff are burned out and contract tracers, who were once credited for keeping the outbreak under check, are struggling to track transmissions, Sebnem Korur Fincanci, who heads the association, told The Associated Press. “It’s the perfect storm,” said Fincanci, whose group has come under attack from Erdogan and his nationalist allies for questioning the government’s figures and its response to the outbreak.

South Korea bans year-end parties, some music lessons, as virus spikes again (Reuters) South Korean authorities announced a ban on year-end parties and some music lessons on Sunday and said public saunas and some cafes must also close after coronavirus infections surged at their fastest pace since the early days of the pandemic. South Korea has been one of the world’s coronavirus mitigation success stories but spikes in infections have reappeared relentlessly, triggering alarm in Asia’s fourth-largest economy. Prime Minister Chung Sye-kyun said restrictions would be tightened on gatherings and activities seen as prone to virus transmission, especially in the capital Seoul and surrounding urban areas.

Severe fire danger for Australia as temperatures smash records (Reuters) Parts of Australia, including Sydney, sweltered through the hottest November night on record with temperatures likely to stay high on Sunday, prompting authorities to issue a total fire ban. Sydney CBD surpassed 40 degrees Celsius (104 F) on Saturday while swathes of western New South Wales, South Australia and northern Victoria baked through even higher temperatures nearing 45 degrees. Temperatures are expected to cross 40 degrees for a second straight day on Sunday while the Bureau of Meteorology has predicted a five or six-day heatwave for parts of northern New South Wales and southeast Queensland.

Attack on Afghan army base with car bomb kills at least 30 (Washington Post) A Humvee laden with explosives backed by gunmen struck an Afghan army base in central Afghanistan Sunday, killing at least 30 people and wounding 16, according to local officials. Local media is reporting that most of the casualties were members of the security forces. The bombing is one of the single deadliest attacks to strike Afghanistan in recent months, where violence has been on the rise nationwide despite ongoing peace talks between the Taliban and Afghan government in Doha. Ghazni, seated along a key highway that connects the Afghan capital to the country’s south, is one of the least stable provinces in Afghanistan, with roughly two-thirds of its districts controlled or contested by Taliban fighters.

Sudan inflation soars, raising spectre of hyperinflation (Reuters) Inflation in Sudan has risen to one of the highest levels in the world, and the country risks slipping into hyperinflation unless it gets its budget deficit and money supply under control, economists say. The government has run up enormous budget deficits by subsidising the cost of fuel, then financed the deficits by printing money. This has debased the currency, weakening it against other currencies and driving inflation up to annual 230% in October, according to the state statistics bureau. The skyrocketing prices have led many consumers to spend their salaries quickly, particularly on durable items that hold their value. Idrees Abdelmoniem, who works in marketing at an engineering company in Khartoum, said he had snapped up car spare parts and furniture, but was not as quick with food and drink, whose prices were not increasing as fast. “If I have something I want to buy outside of the monthly house supplies, I buy it as soon as I get money, and I won’t even try to haggle because tomorrow it could be double the price,” he said.

Ethiopia says military operation in Tigray region is over (Reuters) The Ethiopian government launched a manhunt on Sunday for leaders of a rebellious faction in the northern region of Tigray after announcing federal troops had taken over the regional capital and military operations were complete. Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed government has been trying to quell a rebellion by the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), a powerful ethnically-based party that dominated the central government from 1991 until Abiy came to power in 2018. He said on Saturday evening federal troops had taken control of the Tigrayan capital Mekelle within hours of launching an offensive there, laying to rest fears of protracted fighting in the city of 500,000 people. The prime minister, who refers to the three-week-old conflict as an internal law and order matter and has rebuffed international offers of mediation, said federal police will try to arrest TPLF “criminals” and bring them to court. However, TPLF leader Debretsion Gebremichael told Reuters in a text message on Saturday evening that TPLF forces would fight on, raising the prospect that the conflict could drag on.

#headlines #news

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