#fuck you the cdc for this one specific thing

[rat-hand]

The modern day equivalent of vampirism is tick born ilness.

For example: some little bastard tried to drain you dry so now you’ve got light sensitivity and doctors don’t believe your condition is real.

[anxietycroissant]

So I’m doing something fun with @turbulenthandholding , per usual. We are exchanging prompts for sydcarmy stories. I’m going to post a bit from two. Please vote for the one you want to keep reading, and that will be my next story on AO3. Scroll down below the poll to read the stories before you vote!

Prompt 1: Syd finds out Mikey’s grave is near her mom’s. (I actually came up with this one for @turbulenthandholding but accidentally started writing it before I realized what was happening.

The Cemetery Story

Every year leading up to April 8th, she forgave herself in advance for not finding the time to come and visit her mom’s grave on the anniversary of her death. But like always, she somehow found herself here. She brought the same last minute bouquet of white flowers from Whole Foods to lay on her mother’s grave. She knew both that the bones of her mother rested quite literally six feet under where she stood, and that she wouldn’t feel her mother’s spirit. It couldn’t be found on top of or underneath this quiet stretch of grass. She didn’t know where else to go, though, so she came to this place, where she could rub her fingers across the carved letters of her mother’s name.

She allowed her eyes to look anywhere they liked, anywhere except at the dates of her mother’s life etched into her headstone. She had died so young. It was too sad. She sighed loudly, biting her lip. “Love you, mom,” she murmured under her breath. “My life is just as fucked up as when I stopped by last year. I own a restaurant now. Well, co-own, I guess?” she amended. What more was there to say, when you had so many things to say that nothing would come out?

She crouched, letting her fingertips brush the buttery flower buds nestled in the bouquet she’d brought. She tapped one finger to her lips, and then gently touched the headstone. It would have to be enough. Pushing off the wet grass with her finger tips, she stood up quickly at the sound of crunching gravel nearby.

She glanced into and through a large bush, and could just make out someone on the other side of it. She didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but then the guy started to speak. She knew the voice, had memorized every variation in tone and pitch that it could produce. She knew its whispers, and lately she had become very familiar with what it sounded like screaming in her kitchen. The voice now sounded soft, bereft. She couldn’t hear any specific words he said, which assuaged her guilt over being nosy. She turned around slowly to begin walking away, and then he spoke her name.

“Syd, um. Remember how I told you I was so afraid she’d leave The Bear?” She couldn’t see his face but she could hear him practically sucking on a cigarette. Their location was so quiet that she felt trapped now. She couldn’t leave without revealing herself. The most she could do was turn her face further away.

He cleared his throat. “She um. She didn’t… leave? Exactly? But she told me, that, you know… this real fucking prick, Shapiro- we worked together a long time ago. He’s not that bad I guess? Uh anyway, he offered her CDC at his new spot. She said she really thought about taking it but ultimately just couldn’t.”

He sat in silence for a minute, moving the gravel in front of his foot back and forth in the silence. When he continued, it was almost a whisper. “I fucking know it’s my fault, too,” he admitted. It was strange. She didn’t feel Mikey’s presence exactly, but the air felt thicker. “How do I tell her? That I have no- fucking idea how… to do any of it? Mikey, if you could meet her, you’d get it. She’s so, so good. She doesn’t need me. I have no idea why she’s staying. I’ve been such an asshole. To everyone, to her,” He sighed.

she heard rustling. “I never told you, but when she started at The Beef? I was so fucked up, and she- she, right away, I could see it. I knew her. I knew she was brilliant, to good for that place. Too good for me. Too good for anywhere. But I just wanted to keep her,” he scoffed. “Mike,” he whispered, sounding spooked. “She made this risotto. You would have died. It just… it just needed, like, the tiniest tweak. But, anyway I was a dick about it. But I could taste her future. Her talent is so much bigger than like, I can even comprehend.”

He was silent for so long that she had to peek to see if he was still there. He was. Elegant fingers messing up his own tangled curls, he was biting his lip with red eyes. “I wish I could tell her, Bear,” he said, his voice raspy. “I want to give her everything she wants. Everything. Probably too much. Even if I don’t know how,” he added, that last sentence slipping out in a rush.

She heard his jacket rustle as he shifted. She could hear him humming, almost as if he was reacting to something another person said. And who was she to judge? Maybe he was.

He was quiet for a long moment, his hand worrying over his chin. Syd stared openly at Carmy as he marinated. She watched his face as different emotions danced across his finely carved features. She was pretty sure she saw sadness, frustration, humor, and maybe even a smidge of hope. Or maybe she was just a stalker.

“What would I say if she were here now? I- I don’t know, Mikey,” he admitted, choking out a meager laugh. “What am I supposed to say? ‘Hey, Syd, I’m sorry I’ve been such an unbelievable asshole to the one person I want to be better for? Oh, and yeah. I know you wanted to work together but I apparently never learned? And you should be the one teaching me?” He laughed bitterly, on a roll now.

“Or how about this? I tell her, “Oh and Syd, the thought of you working with Shapiro - that fucking prick, Jesus, Mikey, if she had actually said yes to that asshole I’d have never forgiven myself- anyway, the thought of you rather working with him than with me… learning that broke me.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “I’m so sorry, Syd. How do I tell you? How do I show you? How important you are? How do I do that without making you feel less than?” He had tears in his eyes.

The weak sunlight cast his hair in a golden glow. In that moment, he looked like an angel who would never be so cunty in the kitchen. She almost admonished herself for using that label. But, she reasoned, men could be cunty too. She almost laughed out loud, but slapped a hand over her mouth.

The gentle slap of her fingers over her open mouth was not what she’d describe as gentle or silent. It was, in fact, audible in the empty cemetery. The smile disappeared from her face as Carmy whipped his head around, his eyes finding hers. They widened first in recognition, then disbelief.

“Syd?” he breathed. “Is that you? What… what the fuck are you doing… here?” he asked quietly, gesturing between them to the bush. Having lost the ability to speak, Syd pointed at her mom’s grave. Carmy took that as an invitation to walk over to her. He stood next to her, and then kneeled down to read her mother’s name.

He smoothed his forefinger over the inscription reverently, just as she had done. He was silent for a long moment before doing something that surprised her. “Hi, Mrs. Adamu,” he whispered. “I’m Carmy. It’s nice to finally meet you,” he said awkwardly. Syd’s heart swelled. “Your daughter… I know you’re really proud already, but… I wish you could see her now. She’s really something special,” he muttered, looking down at his feet.

“Carmy,” Syd said hesitantly after making sure he was finished speaking. “Can you look at me, please?” she asked softly.

He looked at her then, his piercing blue eyes meeting her own. She couldn’t swear on it, but she thought she could see his pulse making the skin of his rose flushed neck stutter. He rubbed the back of his neck with one hand. “How much.. um, of that did you- did you hear?” His voice shook slightly.

Syd winced. “Once I figured out it was you, I tried to tune you out but I couldn’t. And I didn’t mean to eavesdrop but like, there’s no way I have left without announcing I was here,” she said simply. “So I stayed.” She twisted a ring around her finger over and over, smiling nervously. She took a shaky breath.

“I believe you, Syd. But uh, how much? Were you here the… the… all that time?” His eyes searched hers.

She nodded, unsure what to say. She moved closer to him. He startled, eyebrows raised. She curled her fingers into the soft cotton covering his shoulder. “Carmy,” she breathed. She nodded. “I heard it,” she confirmed. Carmy closed his eyes, nodding once. He opened his eyes again and held her gaze. “Is there, um. Anything else you… you wanna say?” They were so close now they were almost touching.

His answering nod was so small that she almost didn’t see it. “Yeah,” he replied, his lips all but disappearing into a thin line. “I wanted to say some of this… you know, at the funeral. But then the guy that made me this way was there. And I had to confront him. You know, he’s why, Syd. He’s why New York was so shitty, why I have panic attacks. Why I… why I can’t just be-“ he broke off, his eyes shiny.

“Anyway, it doesn’t matter. I confronted him. He’s still a piece of shit. He will- never change. But then, later, you were gone. And I, I realized. I’m putting all of this shit on you. My shit. Ruining this for you, taking away all the good parts. The things about it you love. I made it all about me, like you said. Syd,” he gasped. “I’m sorry, for all of it.”

Syd wiped at her wet cheeks, taking deep breaths. Looking down, she saw that she had moved even closer to Carmy. She was holding onto the tips of two of his fingers.

Prompt 2: Syd and Carmy are catering a party for Jimmy, post -season 3, in a fancy high rise apartment. Maybe the review came out and it's not bad but it's not stellar and Jimmy is trying to figure it out, so he asks them to do this. Syd and Carmy get trapped in the service elevator with trays as they are cleaning up afterwards

The Elevator Story

The service version of anything was always- by design- less than. Service entrances were often discreetly located on the side or around the back. Service staircases were simply adorned, with no frills. Who would they be for, after all? Utilitarian double doors, forlorn potted plants, and overstuffed cigarette receptacles were some of the glamor one could expect to grace a service entrance. Likewise, service elevators didn’t claim to be anything they weren’t. They were just to get from point A to point B.

Syd, however, would argue that it was more like rising from point A to B on the Y axis. There was not a cute way mathematically to say that she was ascending vertically in a shitty service elevator in a fancy high-rise building in a gentrified, annoying little bubble of Chicago with her business “partner”. They had been down and up a few times, sullenly taking their gear back to the van. But anyway, if the Y-axis was this shitty elevator, shooting straight up toward this building’s event space, then the X-axis was the things left unsaid between herself and Carmy. Things on the x-axis weren’t great. They hadn’t been for a while.

She noticed him looking at her. He had a little smirk on his stupid face. His strong cheekbones and soulful eyes fucking pissed her off. With all of the bullshit he’d put her through, he deserved to have an actual asshole instead of a mouth. Finally, she couldn’t take it anymore. “What?” she asked aggressively, unintentionally flaring her nostrils. His eyes widened in surprise. He seemed to be in a perpetual state of surprise these days. How he could ever be surprised by the situation he found himself in, despite being responsible for it, blew her mind daily.

“Nothing,” he said in a low voice, sighing. “You were mumbling something about math. It was…” he stopped talking, catching sight of her expression. It was their day off, and she was in no mood for his shit. She had ultimately decided to reject Shapiro’s offer, but that didn’t mean much had changed. The big review that came out on the night of the funeral at Ever had been just decent enough escape the total wrath of Cicero. He still threatened them with data from Computer regularly. Hence the catering side job they had both agreed to do tonight. Everyone else had begged off, probably because the tension between Carmy and Syd was thicker than cold veal fat on a chilled plate.

“It was what?” Syd asked neutrally, daring him to say anything. “Nerdy?” She scoffed. She had heard that one before, although Carmy would never insult her in such an obvious way. He would insult her by excluding her. It was much more insidious, eating away at her one small bite at a time.

“It was fucking cute,” he muttered loud enough for her to hear. She could tell he didn’t mean to say it because his eyes grew impossibly wider. He cleared his throat. “Last trip back up there, I think,” he said quickly, clearly keen to change the subject. Syd was glad for the stainless steel utility cart in between the two of them. She’d take any distance she could get.

Syd rolled her eyes inwardly. Outwardly, she tried to keep a neutral expression. But had he truly called her cute? She was torn between smiling and being (even more) annoyed. She felt crabby, and he was picking at her. “You know what would have been cute?” she asked in a neutral tone. Carmy raised his eyebrows, looking earnest. He reminded her of one of those sad old men she saw who sat waiting for their wives on benches in the mall outside department stores. “It would have been a lot cuter and more cost-effective if we hadn’t done that fucking caviar station. But as usual, you didn’t listen to me. I don’t know why I’m even here anymore.”

Carmy had the nerve to look wounded. “Syd, where is this coming from? I agree with you completely! The fucking caviar thing was Cicero’s idea. You believe me, right?” he pleaded with her. She glared at him, one side of her mouth puckered.

“Forgive me for finding that hard to believe,” she said tonelessly. “You know what? Forget it,” she said, waving her hand. She wanted to avoid whatever arguments he desperately wanted to hold onto. “I don’t know why I bother anyway. Let’s just get this over with so we can get the fuck out of here.” At that moment, she noticed that they had been ascending very slowly for quite some time. How long had this little exchange been going on, anyway? They should have made it to the top by now. And she certainly hadn’t heard that whining mechanical noise during their last ascent.

“Carmy, shouldn’t we be there by now? This is taking for-” she broke off as the elevator slowed to a halt. They looked at each other. They heard and felt a grinding shudder below their feet before the elevator was finally silenced. “Fuck my life,” Syd uttered, sliding down to sit on the floor of the elevator. She just wanted to go home and mindlessly disassociate like a normal person. She couldn’t even look at her phone in this elevator; there was no signal.

Carmy held the call button for a long time until someone came on the line. He tried explaining their situation to the operator, but she could not have been less interested. “Sir, let me stop you there. This is a modern elevator. I can see your location in my system. I can also see the error code on the elevator. The motor has overheated. But the ventilation system appears to be in order. I’ll put in a work order for this elevator and call someone out to your location,” she recited robotically.

Syd huffed, sharing an incredulous glance with Carmy. “Um, sorry, but how long will that take?” she asked. Carmy’s brow was furrowed as he stared holes into the speaker.

The lady’s tinny voice responded almost at once. “Oh, no idea. I’ve called them out, but it’s late. I’m sending them to you, but the elevator will probably cool down before they get here. I’ll also alert the building’s management, but they’re not the most-” she stopped talking suddenly. Syd suddenly understood that this probably wasn’t the first issue this lady had logged with this particular building. She sighed.

“How long do you think it will take? Until either the elevator cools down enough, or the technician gets here?” Syd asked, her voice calmer now.

The lady’s tinny voice sounded once more from the speaker. “Thirty minutes to an hour is my best guess,” she said. “Just sit tight. Like I said, ventilation is working properly and this is a really minor issue. There’s nothing wrong with the motor or any other systems. You’re safe,” she assured them.

Seeing Syd’s dubious look, Carmy grimaced.

Ok I am tagging the blog names I can remember off the top of my head but I know I’ll forget some geniuses so please add them if you feel like it’s worth their time! ❤️

@turbulenthandholding @currymanganese @unbeweavvveable @moodyeucalyptus @bioloyg @sashafiercest @fpink202 @thoughtfulchaos773 @sydneys-adamu @purposechef @ciaomarie @amieraisposting @ambeauty @houseofevangelista @devisrina @angelica4equity @imliterallyjustablackgirl @inalltheirgorgeouscolors @laviejaguardia @kdbleu @mitocamdria @sydcarmy @sillygoose375

[mswyrr]

more on michelin stars

I genuinely think it's going to be an important plot point in s3 re: why exactly Sydney wants a star and why *one* specifically. I went and researched and discovered something I used in my fic, which is that one Michelin star restaurants are excellent cuisine that normal people can still afford. And that connected, for me, to what Sydney had told Marcus about how going out was so special when she was a kid and she wanted to share that kind of amazing thing with people:

We didn't really like eat out a lot growing up, so when we did, it felt special even if it wasn't.... I wanna cook for people and make them happy and give them the best bacon on Earth (1x08)

I'm so hopeful/convinced that the research they have with, like, Matty (the chef who plays Fak) right there on set, means the writers know that about what one star places can be like. And that it's meant to be part of this - more humane vision of excellence for Sydney, where their spot is AMAZING, but it's not a cruel kitchen culture, it's not only for the rich.

For her, it’s *part* of her vision, where she says: 

“I think this place could be so different from all the other places we've been at. But, in order for that to be true, we need to run things different.“ (1x03)

But Carmy sees a star and all it means (all he’s ever known it to mean) as a repudiation of that kind of humanity. You say the word "star" and immediately Carmy goes "fuck stars" (2x01) as pure self-defense - because stars are just pain and suffering to him. They're NYC chef and everything that mess became.

He's so traumatized by the whole thing he doesn't think to ask the right questions: why do you want one? What is your vision for it? Why do you specifically want *one* instead of two or three? What timeline do you have in mind for getting there and how can we strategize on this together?

Instead, because he wants so desperately to please her, despite that instinctive, self-defensive "fuck stars" he relents and asks - okay, are you sure? Are you positive this is what you want? Really?? It's terrible. It's just dread and fear and throwing up every day before work. You really want me to give you this?

(I’ll give you anything you want)

He never asks the right questions. Just assuming the level of pain which is his only experience of this is what the thing IS--playing into that theme about how people only know what they're taught, only know what they are given, and if we are given pain and patterns of it it is so hard to even imagine things can be different and, when you can imagine it, still so hard to actually get there.

(It’s not a coincidence that the ASL sign is one of the few positive, healthy examples of kitchen culture Carmy witnessed - we only know what we’re taught, and it can be hard work to even figure out what “not shitty” IS let alone doing it)

So he's assuming all of that and it's like - if she's his CDC, does she want him to push her as hard as he was pushed? Push himself that hard again? He doesn't want to do either of those things. But that's all he knows. And she keeps saying this is what she wants. And he wants to give her everything she wants.

(In the same conversation she kept saying yes, this is what I want, she expressed admiration for the designer chef outfit he later buys her as a gift - he wants to give her everything she wants, even when it seems like a terrible idea he’s torn about)

I think this misunderstanding is intentional and it’s going to come out in S3. A one star restaurant fits so perfectly with what we know of Sydney’s goals and love for her work! And Carmy not able to even conceive of something better because of the patterns he’s stuck in and finding his way to her vision makes sense for him.

I think Carmy figuring out how this work can be joyful and humane is going to be a huge part of S3. Sydney not becoming lost in the high stress environment, not following in younger!Carmy's footsteps living a life of pure drive and dread, and Carmy finding that for the first time.

I do think that, given where they both end in 2x10, there’s going to be a period of conflict and a real bunch of issues for both of them - but with themes and ideas like this seeded into the story there’s so many ways to make s3 start out in a bad way and then really end in joy in a beautiful way?

[littlegreenwyvy]

Will never not be pissed off about how we apparently can't agree as a society to do even a little bit to stop or slow down covid at this point. Like yeah people got/get vaccinated, but like what else? It's still Extremely Bad, and literally gets worse and worse every year, and I can't stand it. It's dangerous to go out at all, for any reason right now, and pretty much hasn't stopped being that way since 2020...! There's a new major variant or a few every year that turns out to evade the previous vax or whatever novel treatment we come up with within months, and we're doing NOTHING about it? Not only that but specifically, actively ENCOURAGING it??? I can't even ask my fucking PHYSICIAN to wear a mask in the fucking DOCTOR'S OFFICE without catching shit about 'CDC Guidelines' and 'I don't feel ill so I don't think it's necessary'. Even with the hundreds of thousands of DAILY new cases (estimated, because we can't even properly TRACK thungs anymore) JUST in the United States alone?? It's at the point where chances are this is GOING to kill me at some point; like I can't just literally never lave the house and also force my housemates ro never leave, I'll be forced to go out at some point (for a doctor appointment, or job if I can ever get one, or SOMETHING), or even just a sibling could being somethung hime and I could just get unlucky. My body can scarcely handle a regular old winter cold, let alone a flu let alone another bout of covid. But what the hell am I supposed to do otherwise?

I'm gonna start killing the next time I hear any variation of 'I respect your choice to wear a mask, and I ask you to respect my choice not to' because that IS essentially a direct threat on my life...! Or the timeless 'if things get bad then I'll wear a mask', like how about you wear it NOW and prevent thungs from getting even worse in the first place? Because it IS ALREADY bad!!!!!!!!!! I'm gonna start killing!!!!!!

[redditreceipts]

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10508-023-02717-0

In an online survey of 1124 heterosexual British men using a modified CDC National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey, 71% of men experienced some form of sexual victimization by a woman at least once during their lifetime.

Trigger warning: rape

so I went through the study, and these are the results:

(note that these results are the numbers for sexual victimisation perpetrated by women against men)

So 71 percent of men have been sexually harassed by a woman in their lifetime.

I personally am not an expert on the topic of sexual assault, but these are quite staggering numbers. Of course it's not comparable to the number of women being raped, but it's still too many men who are victims to this kind of behaviour by women.

This is data from the CDC (it's from the United States, where the numbers are probably a bit different, but still comparable as they used the same questionnaire)

but, to be honest, I am not too interested in comparing experiences between victim populations - in the end, victims of sexual assault should not be pitched against each other, but they should both be given the opportunity to heal and be safe. I completely support men who have been assaulted by a woman and now want an all-men's shelter where there are no women present, or who don't want to be touched by a woman ever again or who want to have a community all for themselves where they can talk about their unique experiences.

I personally don't speak a lot about male survivors of rape because this is not really my expertise, but if there are men who are vocal about their experiences who want to find community and educate people, I'm all for that :) and I'm interested in their experiences

However, it's also important to stress the fact that most rapes against men are perpetrated by other men, and most rapes against women are also perpetrated by men.

So while women can pose a genuine threat to men in matters of assault, it's still important to see that most of sexual coercion against men is perpetrated by men.

It's interesting to see that this report by the CDC included "being made to penetrate" as one of their categories of sexual assault, of which a large percentage of men have been a victim to. I find it still important to stress the fact that being forced to penetrate a person and being penetrated against one's will are (while both being incredibly traumatic) very different experiences:

But yeah, this is in no way to say that it's therefore okay to force someone to penetrate you or to sexually assault a man as a woman. if you disagree and think that any of the aforementioned acts are excuseable, you can genuinely go fuck yourself.

another thing that sprung to mind constantly while reading these reports was how important sex-specific language is to accurately access how victimisation affects different sexes differently. Kinda interesting how the category of "being forced to penetrate" is only applicable to men, while the category "becoming pregnant as a result of rape" is only applicable to women, right? 🙃 imagine how this survey had went if neither sex had the language to correctly describe how they experienced sexual coercion

[the-final-sif]

Thank you for answering, do you think this will be a similar thing to covid? Now I don't have facts or sources other than one disabled advocate on social media but I heard something about one of covids less popularized effects being something about brain degeneration? Or something loosely connected to that. And because of how poorly covid was handled in the US it ended up affecting a lot of people including the children. Or maybe it was something about how the pandemic never truly ended over there and people stopped wearing their masks too soon. I can't remember, but if you know more of it or have any idea what I'm talking about, how comparable do you consider the two situations? Thanks in advance

So I haven't really seen anything about brain degradation, but there is current research into acute covid-19 infections disrupting the blood brain barrier.

It does appear to happen in severe cases, but it's specifically severe cases as far as all of the research I've seen. It's also not really unique to covid-19. To my knowledge, there's a lot of viruses that can trigger a similar response, like Influenza or West Nile. This is generally what causes the most severe forms of these diseases, the BBB gets disturbed, and this triggers inflammation in the brain which fucks with a lot of shit.

This topic is really complicated, and again, research is still ongoing. Part of the current issue with active neurological studies for COVID-19 is kinda similar to CTE research, you can only really tell how bad the neurological damage was after someone's died and you can yoink their brain out to have an in depth look. This means a almost all of the more indepth studies on COVID-19 in brain tissue are from people who are dead. Usually from COVID. So there's a strong bias towards the most severe cases.

That being said, I actually don't think this is particularly comparable to the severity of lead poisoning on people through the 1950s-1980s. Part of which is that children, while they did catch COVID-19, didn't usually get severely sick. They also didn't tend to catch COVID-19 as often in the first place. That's not to say neither happened ever, just that it's comparatively quite rare.

Meanwhile, effectively 100% of children had lead blood poisoning at a level of clinical significance for most of the 1950s-1980s.

Literally, I am not even kidding, this research is from 2015 but it's still extremely informative,

Like, their graphing of blood levels displays this really well,

I apologize, you may have to click on it to see, but this is graphing out our entire population in the US and led blood levels in early childhood (note, while people who are old enough to not have been born or been children in the 1950s would not have had CHILDHOOD lead poisoning, they still would've been at high risk for exposure to adult lead poisoning which can still fuck you up). S

For quick reference on blood lead poisoning btw, the CDC level used to be 10 μg/dL (light blue and above), but as since been lowed to 5 and then 3.5 μg/dL as a reference level. This is part of no amount of lead being safe, but above 10 μg/dL is bad. Above 20 μg/dL for children is "hey so we need to do a full medical exam of this child, do an environmental hazard investigation of your home and get a hazard team response specifically to help you get lead of your house". Meanwhile above 45 is "we may need to hospitalize this child".

That's the scale I'm talking about when I say everyone in the 1950s-1980s had childhood lead poisoning. It was everyone. COVID-19, while bad, isn't everyone. It isn't even close. BBB disruption, according to the research I could find, only occurs in some acute illness of infections that happen. This is still bad, but nowhere near the scale of lead poisoning.

[odinsblog]

are you disappointed that bree newsome wants trump reclected?

Bree Newsome is a prolific tweeter and I’ve looked, but I haven’t seen anywhere where she said that she wants Trump to be re-elected. Please send me the link to the specific tweet if I’m wrong.

I understand and agree with much of what Bree has been saying on Twitter though. I mean, I dO get it. I think her major concern is that 1) in some important ways, the difference between Trump’s policies and some of Biden’s policies has not been all that great, and 2) if Biden should win (definitely not a guarantee) liberals will go right back to brunch and act as if the problem is gone and everything is “okay” again.

As far as the first point goes, you don’t need to look any further than Biden’s Title 42; or how the Biden administration literally sued to keep using Trump’s previous racist immigration policies. Not a good look. And now, you’ve got Democrats trying to out-Republican Republicans by showing how tough cruel they can be to refugees who are legally seeking asylum at the Southern border. Bottom line, the immigration policies are white supremacy-lite, and some of the changes Biden is proposing—like forcing asylum seekers to wait in another country while the government takes its sweet time with endless immigration red tape—these changes will fundamentally change America’s immigration system, for the worse.

And that’s without me even touching on how badly Biden is fucking up with Palestine.

And as for the second point, conservative Democrats have gone back to brunch once orange man gone. Remember how hard Democrats came down on the Trump administration for their poor Coronavirus response? Yet now we have the CDC basically telling people to stay their asses at work even if they’ve tested positive for COVID. WTF?? Did I mention that measles are making a comeback?? And Biden isn’t saying anything, and neither are his surrogates. And so it is perhaps this tendency towards inaction(?) that is the most significantly damaging and damning aspect that creates disaffected voters who should be motivated to get rid of Trump and Republicans writ large —in a lot of ways that matter, disaffected voters don’t see any significant differences. Sure, the stock market is doing great, but people are getting their asses kicked on a lot of day-to-day, kitchen table issues. Unemployment is down, but a lot of people still have to work multiple jobs to make ends meet.

So yeah, I won’t be dismissive or derisive about Bree Newsome. She’s making some really valid points for anyone who is willing to actually listen.

Now that all said, I think that there is something fundamentally wrong that people are missing when they say misguided things like, “We survived one Trump administration, and we can survive another one.” A lot of marginalized groups and oppressed people won’t survive a second Trump administration. They just won’t.

Because if you thought it was bad the last time, I promise you the next Trump administration won’t be anything like the last one. Last time Trump was unprepared and didn’t even expect to win, so they made rookie mistakes. That won’t happen next time. The next Trump administration will be stacked from top to bottom with diehard Trump loyalists who will ruthlessly execute his most racist policies, foreign and domestic. (See also: Project 2025).

And yes, Biden is 100% for shit on his policy of standing by Israel no matter what. People who agree with Bree think that we will, more or less, have the same kind of problems under Trump that we’re having under Biden now. Those people are what I like to call deadass wrong.

Literally EVERYTHING will become exponentially worse in a second Trump term. For everyone who isn’t a wealthy, cisgender heterosexual white male.

Just imagine America with a Republican controlled House and Senate. Goodbye Medicare and Social Security. Goodbye labor laws. So long minimum wages. See ya, state local and federal courts not totally stacked with Federalist Society judges. It was nice knowing you, “shithole” countries full of people who I love and care about.

Look, I finally figured out something that used to bother me when I first became politically aware: it bugged tf out of me whenever I heard someone say, “THIS is the most important election everrrr!! Because THIS time, democracy itself is on the line!” Pfft. I was like a lot of people I see now, saying “But that’s what you said about the last election.” The truth is, every election is pretty much life or death. Every single one. Because elections aren’t like something you do once, and then afterwards everything is all good forever and ever. Maybe it should be, but you got assholes like Mitch McConnell and Ron DeSantis and Trump and whoever comes after them, you got people who will always be trying their hardest to constantly make shit worse for everyone who isn’t wealthy and white. They aren’t going away. So we can’t go away either. Because the moment we checkout and go back to brunch, they get right back to working on their usual transphobic, homophobic, misogynistic, racist, bullshit culture wars.

So as long as Republicans, Libertarians and conservative “Democrats” keep punching in, we gotta punch in too.

I wanna be really clear about something here: Joe Biden has done some very good things (like capping the cost of insulin), but he has also been, in many ways (not all), a terrible “Democratic” president. Biden is far too enamored of “bipartisanship,” and reaching across the aisle (to people who do not want to compromise), and Biden is far far too enamored of the non-existent good old days™ when Republicans weren’t the evil pieces of shit that they are now, and he takes far too long to change his position on important issues. Like Palestine.

But yeah, (can’t believe I’M saying this) he’s definitely better than a second Trump term will be. And even if he’s slow to change positions, at least he can be persuaded. Trump can’t.

I’m not white and I’m not rich. I am terrified of a second Trump term. I’m basically a single issue voter now, and my issue is keeping Trump out of office and HOPEFULLY making him pay for every single law he’s broken.

[oopsallfictives]

I saw a post that annoyed me, so here we go

The idea that individual actions aren't effective or a good way to solve a societal problem comes from environmentalism. Specifically, it's a response to propaganda by industry titans that attempts to convince people that the best way to solve climate change is through individual actions like recycling, in order to distract from the fact that the best way to combat climate change is to fundamentally restructure (or even eliminate) the industries they make their money off of. It cautions against burning yourself out by focusing on individual actions, which are unlikely to help much. The point of saying "individual actions aren't effective" is to convince people to redirect their energy to other actions that have a much better chance of leading to real, impactful change. You're not going to be out there blocking the construction of an oil pipeline if you're too burnt out from convincing people to recycle. In that context, it's an important concept, even if some people take it as an excuse to do nothing at all

However, it doesn't map very well onto covid and masking. For one thing, wearing a mask to prevent the spread of an airborne virus is much more effective than trying to recycle your way out of climate change. It's true that individuals choosing to wear a mask isn't the only thing that needs to happen to combat the spread of covid, but it's one of the best and most effective prevention methods we've got. Another reason this is different is that the institutions attempting to abdicate responsibility through propaganda aren't doing that by telling people to wear a mask. At least here in the US, institutions like the CDC are attempting to steer the conversation away from their culpability by saying "covid is over! Go back to normal! No stop looking at the data, stop caring, covid is definitely over". They're not saying "just wear a mask and stop pestering us about vaccine availability/patents, paid sick leave, and subsidies to upgrade ventilation systems", so convincing people that wearing a mask is still important actually does counteract their "everything is fine, now shut the fuck up" messaging

If your argument is "stop trying to convince other people to mask and spend your energy convincing the government to do those other things you mentioned above", that's at the very least an argument I'm willing to entertain, though I have no faith in government to save us (admittedly I'm not sure exactly what OP of that post was arguing for, that's part of why I made my own post). However, there's a pretty big issue with that argument. Most of the people still pushing for masking are immunocompromised and/or chronically ill, which makes a lot of forms of activism inaccessible, especially if the other people you're organizing with aren't masking. If you're organizing an in-person protest or other action and you're letting people show up unmasked, you're forcing out some of the people most affected by the lack of covid protections. And if you'd rather shut us out than the people who are unwilling to mask, your movement is doomed

The fact is, most of the vulnerable people being abandoned to die by large institutions are deeply harmed by your unwillingness to mask. Even if you aren't directly giving us an illness that kills or further disables us, you're shutting us out of public places by making them unsafe and inaccessible. The fact is, masking is an individual action you can take that has a huge potential to massively improve, and even save, other people's lives. And that's fucking amazing. We should be fucking celebrating that

Wear a mask. Advocate for others to join you if you safely can. And at the very least stop trying to convince people that encouraging others to mask is a pointless endeavor

[lehhoh7822]

I posted 3,855 times in 2022

That's 3,609 more posts than 2021!

648 posts created (17%)

3,207 posts reblogged (83%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@proudfreakmetarusonniku

@ruffboijuliaburnsides

@phantoids

@journal-number-3

@las-nevadas-corporate

I tagged 1,355 of my posts in 2022

#lr likes your art - 182 posts

#dsmp - 75 posts

#ua reblogs - 47 posts

#lehhohgoeszoom - 34 posts

#cdc reblogs - 29 posts

#cw food - 29 posts

#haha - 27 posts

#yeah - 27 posts

#passing ships - 27 posts

#creb - 26 posts

Longest Tag: 137 characters

#you know i don’t remember what an ost is but there are many people who go by ranboo and followers knowing your music taste isn’t atypical

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

@americans how many blazes are you getting???

i see a lot of post complaining about blazed posts but im in australia so ive gotten literally like none

15 notes - Posted September 26, 2022

#4

you know i rewatched the whole minecraft bu the sky is eating the world thing where mr soot kept saying that he was being an iron slut

i am beign a whore for copper. i need more fucking copper. 64 of those only translate to 7 blocks (and there should be an extra one but there isn;t because... maht?)

listen I have this massive room and it’s made of snow. and copper. 

16 notes - Posted August 31, 2022

#3

“At this rate I see literally no difference between kicking your ass out of the balcony and not.” oh my god.

this is the bullshit that keeps my love of centricide going

how would one describe centricide, genuinely? EDIT: oh my god I am so sorry I forgot to mention this is a quote from the politi-girl fanfic series on ao3 sorry for forgetting to give credit to @politigirls on ao3

19 notes - Posted July 7, 2022

#2

you know, with all this reboot stuff, i just want to say that the ccs... idk, i feel like they dont completely get how funky the fans are. they’ll be real upset that you tore away the plot and characters and storylines they drew to love with a potential of everything failing more, and many will pull away

but even more so, i think many will stay.

im not sure if they realise that dsmp is really important to a lot of people, and how upsetting it would be to have it torn away after waiting and being paitient, endless fan content and community based around a plot that essentially got “Abandoned Work: Unfinished or Discontinued” slapped on it, but its important enough that even when you mock your fans for being there, even when you fuck them over, etc, etc, they will still watch because it was so good and they care enough and hope enough that theyll keep going until you reach really really shit

yeah lol. idk man

25 notes - Posted July 10, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

for me specifically as a teenager who has asthma, i just. maybe its just me, but i swear it can’t be. asthma is this frustrating creature who you get very sick of very quickly. when i have an asthma attack, i might be experiencing like. physcial struggle to breathe but cognitively im just annoyed and tired, and the most emotional reaction you’ll probably get out of me is just frustration or a little bit of fear if it goes on a little bit too long.

everyone is prickish about it, when i was younger i could never participate in sport and people thought i was so lucky when everything just hurt and my head was always light and the office ladies fucking despised me. no one wants to call it a real disability (what else is it? I dare you, tell me what a disability is), it makes you scared to do things, you dont want to run that race or try that sport because you know you won’t be able to do it. you need breaks while running. inhalers are more expensive the price stacks up over time 

like when i have an asthma attack, i literally cannot just breathe. that is the entire problem. i cannot do breathing exercises, it does not matter whehter or not i look you in the eyes, i need the medication for my chronic illness. 

i had this whole thing where a bunch of student in primary school like year 5-6 made videos about me, mocking me and calling me asthma attack girl, and pretending to have asthma attacks to be like look at (name) and how much shes faking!! and putting them online and they got a lot of shares. 

“stop doing that stupid wheezing thing and just breathe” “why are you coughing like that? don’t you want to breathe?” “look at me, no, NO, HEY, HEY, look at me and breathe in- NO NO, BREATHE in and hey no-” “you just lost control of yourself, you need to stay in control and not give in to the asthma”

like. fuck you. treat us with respect. also because your ableism is easy to clown on. 

91 notes - Posted October 16, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

[the-river-sage]

even prior to the debate, some people had hang ups about voting for Biden for one reason or another. since the debate, there have been a lot of Dems trying to focus the narrative on "just look at the record". i think maybe we can go one step further. forget how you feel about Biden specifically, hell, forget how you feel about Trump specifically. what are some clear differences you can expect from a Dem administration vs a MAGA Republican administration?

the Supreme Court. we have seen numerous terrible decisions come out of our highest court in recent years, some of which overturned and spat in the face of several decades of precedent for no real reason other than to say "I DISAGREE!" the 3 Trump Justices (Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett) have played no small part in this. the next administration may not get to put any new Justices on the bench, but they may get to nominate 2 or even 3, and you can bet that a Dem-appointed judge isn't gonna be keen on throwing abortion rights in the trash or expanding the reach of the court or literally allowing for homelessness to be criminalized.

federal agencies. since the current administration took office, we have seen a plethora of actions that various federal agencies have taken on behalf of the people. the EPA, FDA, FTC, etc. - all the acronyms. meanwhile in the previous administration, the CDC had to fight just to provide some soft-spoken facts in the face of a torrent of politically motivated misinformation and disinformation regarding the deadly pandemic terrorizing the globe. MAGA Republicans do not want safety regulations or consumer protections in any way, shape, or form. if you want these large government apparatuses to at least try to do things that benefit the American people, then you need to vote for the party that isn't going to intentionally declaw and suppress them.

look to the states. what have Republican-run states been doing the past several years? you don't need to read up on Project 2025 or anything else to draw a direct comparison of Republican governance at a state-level to likely Republican governance at a federal-level. as bad as you may think things currently are for queer folks, POC, disabled individuals, etc. etc. under a Dem administration; you need to look at states like Florida and Texas and understand that it will 100% be worse, possibly drastically significantly worse, under a MAGA Republican. they will cut taxes for the ultra wealthy, they will strip away civil rights for as many people as they can, they will put profits over people and make the country (and the world) a more dangerous place at every turn. these people's solution to rising costs is to weaken labor laws so that teenagers can drop out of school and starting working minimum wage jobs to help support their families. like come the fuck on, what are we doing?

i don't care if you don't like Biden. you don't have to tell yourself you're voting for him, vote for everything that he and his party represents. are the Dems perfect? no, i'm not fucking saying that. but if you spend your life only willing to accept perfection then you'll die waiting. and to be quite direct about it: you'll probably die quicker the more Republicans that get elected in the meantime. so don't vote "for Biden". vote for the Dem at the top of the ticket (and all the way down please) who would appoint judges that actually believe in the rule of law and not legislating from the bench. vote for the Dem at the top of the ticket who would rather empower government agencies to do their jobs rather than use them as a scapegoat for the country's financial woes. vote for the Dem at the top of the ticket who is at the very least well meaning with their policy and not the R on the other side who, for their own benefit, actively wants to kill you.

[johnandrasjaqobis]

A, B, M 😘

A: Of the fanfic you’ve written, which is your favorite and why? the fallout 4 series as a whole tbh (though I say series, it will be, just so far it's only two fully connected stories), I am genuinely so proud of. a lot of things about that one -- how long I've stuck with it (even with the very long gaps between chapters) and how much it manages to flesh out the setting and the Emotions I have managed to inflict on my beloved readers. Specifically I do genuinely think the little one-off of Carly's courser encounter is some of the best writing I've done as a whole. I love how that one turned out.

B:  What was the first fandom you read fic in?  Which was the first you wrote fic for? Wrote for I know it was Warriors, on our little typing practice keyboards after we all figured out how to mess with the settings and not actually do the typing lessons. Those are of course long lost to the void, but I think the very first fic on my ff.n is still a Warriors one. (double checked, it is) Reading is a little harder to remember, my best guess is either Warriors or maybe Harry Potter?

M: What’s the weirdest AU scenario you’ve ever come up with?  Did it turn into a story? all of my efforts of shoving my current faves into either Helix or Killjoys aus turn out pretty wild. I do come up with a lot of au ideas but if they don't get written Somewhere they are not remembered much. Thinking about it though...the high school au for Helix, of all shows, is so weird, and while not one I have any plans on going back to, was a lot of fun to work with. how do you put these very professional CDC doctors and really fucked up immortals into. a high school setting. (I did it, it's very stupid and very funny)

[grison-in-space]

Hey, it's cool that you live in the Global South! You therefore have vastly reduced power to influence US policy decisions, and therefore you ain't my audience. It's also cool that you've declared that the people in your nation-state matter more than the people in mine, uniformly and across the board and regardless of class, ethnicity, background and all those little granular intersectional effects that marginalize other people. Love that for you. Great belief for you! Not my problem, though, because I actually don't accept your premise that the only people who matter are people who live in countries that aren't mine when I talk about voting as a form of harm reduction.

First: I do in fact think that harm done to vulnerable people globally matters—which includes vulnerable people who live in the US. Are you shitting me? Do you sincerely believe that domestic policy in the third-largest country in the world, a country with massive income equality, doesn't meaningfully contribute to global welfare? You genuinely believe that global nationality is more meaningful to outcomes and vulnerability? You are going to sit here and tell me as if butter wouldn't melt in your goddamn mouth that poor working folks in my regional South don't matter to you, that you think it's fine if poor working women of color die of lack of access to reproductive care? You think it doesn't matter if bad things happen to marginalized people if it happens within the borders of an entire fucking continent—because Mexico is part of the Global South and let me tell you our domestic decisions sure affect them—and you think I am misunderstanding the importance of my ability to guide the decisions of the nation I have some control over?

Go fuck yourself. People who aren't far away from me matter, too, and they are absolutely part of my calculus about whose harm matters.

Second: take foreign aid. You do know that the foreign policies of the United States are also shaped by the makeup of our political leadership, right? For example, the United States contributes the most absolute money to foreign aid of any nation on the planet. Do you sincerely think that the quantity of that aid and the direction it is sent are equivalent between political parties? Consider Ukraine: do you know how hard Republicans are trying to throttle the military aid and assistance the US has contributed to that situation? Do you genuinely think that American political parties are the same when it comes to foreign intervention and support?

For fuck's sake, you absolute imbecile, the last time Trump specifically was in office he cut the CDC's infectious disease response team's funding. That meant that when China's own infectious disease team shat the bed because officials were afraid to report the reality of the situation up the chain, there was no one to intervene and help contain the situation as happened with SARS a decade earlier.

Do you sincerely think that COVID is helping anyone in the Global South? Do you think that a new endemic disease notorious for leaving long term disability and morbidity in its wake is helpful to anyone? Even speaking globally, voting and making sure that the government of a truly massive and wealthy state is not asleep at the fucking wheel is a huge factor when it comes to steering the way that that government behaves in foreign affairs, even if the same fucking government is complicit in other interventions that are decidedly less positive.

from the number of asinine complaints about how "voting is NOT a form of harm reduction" because harm reduction is for ADDICTS! ONLY! I'm seeing around... all coming from OP blogs I don't recognize and which otherwise don't have much presence... well, that coordination alongside the timing of US politics sure feels like the Russian troll bots agitating again. (Yes, they absolutely infested Tumblr; I think @ms-demeanor had a great post about what the bots looked and felt like somewhere that I will have to try and track down tomorrow.)

The thing is, if you actually do know harm reduction well, the complaint makes no sense. It's not as if the origin of harm reduction is a secret or especially hard to find out more about. I am not exactly an expert in the field: I have a educated layperson's interest in public health and infectious disease, I'm a queer feminist of a certain age and therefore have a certain degree of familiarity with AIDS-driven safer sex campaigns, and I'm interested in disability history and self advocacy (and I would in fact clarify harm reduction as a philosophy under this umbrella). So I have about twenty years of experience with harm reduction as a philosophy basically by existing in communities whose history is intertwined with harm reduction, which means I know it well from many different angles, and I know how the story of the philosophy is generally taught.

See, this is a story that starts, as so many stories do, in the 1980s with something monstrous President Reagan was doing. In this case, it was the AIDS epidemic, and Reagan refusing to devote any money or time to what eventually became called AIDS (rather than the original GRIDS, which came with its own baked in homophobia). Knowing themselves abandoned by society in this as in all things, and watching as friends and loved ones died in droves, queers and addicts are two communities who see that they are the only resources that they collectively have to save each other's lives. Queers know that sex, even casual sex, is an important part of people's lives and culture... and people aren't going to stop doing it even if there's a disease, so how can it happen safely? Condoms. Condoms every time, freely available, easy and shameless, shower them on people in the street if you have to. (And other things: this is the origin of the concept of "fluid bonding", for example... both of which were concepts that were immediately adopted in response to COVID, like outdoor socially distsnced greetings and masks and "bubbles." That wasn't an accident. Normalizing sexual health tests and seeing hard results on paper before sex was a thing, too.)

Addicts, too, knew that using was going to happen no matter how earnestly people tried to stop. If it was that easy, addiction wouldn't exist. So: how do you make using safer for longer? If you could stop someone getting HIV before they could bring themselves to get clean, that's a whole life right there. If you could stop someone overdosing once, twice, a dozen times, that's more time you're buying them to claw themselves out of addiction and into a better place. Addicts see, right, needle sharing is getting the diseases spread, so cut down on needle sharing. Well, needles aren't easy to get hold of. Their supply is controlled because people who aren't prescribed needles are theoretically junkies, so taking the needles away makes it harder to use, right— and no one is complicit, and also you see fewer discarded needles lying around where they're unsanitary and unsafe, right? Except that people want to do a buddy a good turn, so they share if there's no other option, and they'll keep a needle going until it's literally too blunt to keep using if need be. So fighting needle sharing means making it easier to get needles to shoot up with: finding a place to discard used ones and get as many fresh ones as you need to use safely!

Making free needles available to junkies and free condoms for the bathhouses was not a popular solution with politicians, for perhaps obvious reasons. Nor was routine testing of the blood supply, because that cost money too. But these things work to stop the spread of disease. Thus the principle of harm reduction: policy interventions in response to communities that frequently engage in risky behavior should focus on whatever reduces aggregate harm by reducing the risk rather than by trying to reduce the behavior. The homos and junkies say look, all your societal judgement in the world hasn't stopped us being homos and junkies yet. You ain't going to look after us? We'll look after our own. And this is the form that takes. Not increasing the pressure to act like people who aren't is, but making it safer to be the people we are while we try to be the happiest versions of ourselves. Even if that means being morally complicit in a whole lot of casual sex and drug abuse.

The thing is, harm reduction is a philosophy rooted in the defiance of people who knew that their society thought they deserved to die painfully, young, invisible and alone. This is not the kind of thing that people come up with and get mad if you adapt it and share it, especially if you tell the story of where it came from. And importantly, harm reduction is not purely the child of addiction: that philosophy, from the get go, was cooked up to apply both to substance abuse and casual sex. It didn't just spread from addiction care; it was born straddling addiction care and queer & feminist health care.

So it doesn't make sense to see actual activists who know harm reduction well complaining that this is a term exhibiting semantic drift when we talk about voting as harm reduction. It's actually a good metaphor: you're reducing the overall risk of the worst case scenario metaphors by voting Democrat, at least until future votes can install a system where multiple parties can flourish on the political scheme. (Democrats and Republicans are essentially coalitions of a pack of arguing factions anyway, and those factions are essentially what would be classed elsewhere as a party in its own right; the US essentially just lumps political granularity rather than splitting it in our political system.) And anyone who understands harm reduction itself knows that.

So it's this wildly inorganic complaint being voiced repeatedly by different sources. Sounds like a pretty good flag for a potential psyop to me.

If you want to learn more about harm reduction and its history, especially from an addiction perspective, I cannot recommend Maia Szalavitz's Undoing Drugs: How Harm Reduction is Changing the Future of Drugs and Addiction (2022) highly enough. Szalavitz has a history of addiction of her own as well as being a clear and accessible writer with an excellent grasp of neuroscience and history. I have a lot of respect for her work.

[eldritch-elrics]

memes of 2021

[memes of 2020]

almost forgot! here is my casual list of memes i saw crop up on tumblr (and sometimes twitter) in 2021. it’s more a measure of what memes are floating around in my sphere of the internet than anything else, but it’s fun to compile!

bean dad

“my child is fine” your child x

grubhub ad

opening heart locket gif

eminem penis rap

damn shawty

bernie sanders sitting on inauguration day

“sometimes i can still hear his voice” “gay gay homosexual gay”

shrimp colors/shrimp x

the return of morshu

gaslight gatekeep girlboss

eeby deeby

so true bestie

your x looks gnc af / YOURE INSANE

overly specific dnis

lawyer with cat filter on zoom

tally hall ruler of everything

seeing lil among us dudes in everything

what is x if not y preserving?

american boy by estelle / fortnite parody

ever given getting stuck in the suez canal

lil nas x pole dancing into hell

to the joker, [“crazy” thing] is just normal

yahoo answers being shut down

trade offer

tramp stamps

josh fight

i could fix him

kinda gay to x. what are you doing, doing y to other men?

cognitive restructuring textbook example

miitopia customization

diversity win!

gotta be one of my favorite genders

the cdc just announced

hannibal fanart in the us capitol

spike traps on the dashboard

leaked powerpuff girls script

dalmatians killed cruella’s mother

lady dimitrescu on the phone

bts meal

mmmm no very unwise / catboy confucius

count dracula haha jonathan

anakin and padme talking

the highest honor i can bestow upon you

batman pussy eating

submissive and breedable

why as a man are you x

ao3 title lyrics videos

mushroom wojak

hersheychocolateworld manhunt

saw traps

mordecai and twilight

girl looking at guy with huge tits

15 signs you’re a x male (SUPER RARE)

by talos this can’t be happening

how to decorate a children’s hospital

did it hurt? when x?

there are many benefits to being a marine biologist

nonbinary people have to eat oysters

wow, okay, unfollowing now

post-sniffing rats

kris get the banana

excuse me mommy, sorry, mommy,

where the fuck are we kris

finding classical art pieces in halloween candy

creepy or wet

evil x be like

robert downey junior looking surprised

neuralblender

wizard with orb

the feminine/masculine urge

the queen transforming into her final form

couple texting in bed

happy and sad guy on a bus

you want me to x? the thing that killed y?

little german boy

nancy reagan throat goat

jorts the cat

the gavle goat burning

the war on #girl

squid games!!

horse plinko

[dr-spencer-reids-queen]

Poison: Part One

Pairing: Spencer Reid x Reader

Word Count: ~1.8k

Warnings: canon violence, canon language, canon talk of death, methods of kill, fluff and angst

Author’s Note: I do not own anything from Criminal Minds. All credit goes to their respective owners. If there is any warnings that exceed the normal death/kills from the show, I will list them. If you’ve seen the show, then it’s the same level of angst unless otherwise stated.

Feedback is gold, and it’s the only currency I take

"What is food to one is to others bitter poison." - Lucretius

Cases involving children are never your strong suit. The last one with Billie Copeland was just so hard, you’re not sure if you can be involved in another one--that is until you learned what this case is really all about. Yes, there is a child involved, but the bigger picture has a much larger scale than children.

You have to remind yourself that you need to focus on the case and not on Spencer. It shouldn’t even be a hard thing to do, but something happened between you two when you took him to the bookstore right next to your apartment. After checking out a couple of books, and after Spencer had read virtually all of them, you decided it was kind of late and that you needed to get home. The store was closing very soon anyway, so Spencer opted to walk you home.

When you got to your door, he decided to give you a kiss on your cheek, but you moved your head at the last minute. He accidentally got the corner of your mouth, and that messed up his whole thing. Based on his reaction to your mouths almost touching, you know he can’t be that interested in you. If he were, then he would have just kissed you right there and then. Instead, he stuttered a goodbye and left.

You haven’t been able to stop thinking about him since. Does he like you? If so, then why won’t he just kiss you? If he doesn’t, then why does he agree to go on these dates with you. Whenever you two go out, you clearly state that this is a date, and he doesn’t say anything that dismisses that idea. Sometimes, you just wish you knew what was going on inside that big brain of his so you can dejumble it and tell him what the fuck is going on. You’d do it now, but you have a case that needs your full attention.

Apparently, a man and his son were driving down the road one night when the father pulled to the side of the road and got out. He walked into the woods, the son followed after him, and the father beat him almost to death. The son is in the hospital undergoing critical care while the father is in the psych ward. You’re not sure how it happened or why, but you know that it did. Hotch and Gideon got hold of the interrogation video sent over by the New Jersey Police Department.

Detective Hanover is the person who is going to be in charge and is also the person who you will be working with the entire time you’re in Jersey.

“State trooper took this before the paramedics showed up,” the detective says and shows Jack Fisher, the father of Eric Fisher, a picture of his unconscious body. “He's unconscious and has four broken bones. He's gonna be in the hospital for a month.”

“I didn't hurt my son,” Jack sighs.

“Do you remember removing the tire iron from the trunk?”

What, he used a tire iron? You gasp softly and put your hand to your mouth as you continue to watch.

“No! No!”

“What's the last thing you remember?”

“I picked Eric up from school on Friday, for the weekend. Who would do this?” he cries softly.

Hotch ends the video there and addresses the entire briefing room.

“This happened two days ago in Beechwood, New Jersey. Mr. Fisher had ingested LSD one afternoon and didn't come down until eighteen hours later.”

“The hospital reported six other patients who ingested LSD in the last twenty-four hours. The hospital called the CDC, then the CDC called us,” JJ finishes.

“So, a bunch of people got spiked. What makes it a BAU case?” Derek wonders.

“They each received ten to twenty times the normal dose.”

“That’s enough to kill a small child,” Spencer informs.

“Or cause a grown man to try and kill him with a tire iron apparently,” you sigh.

“Of the seven victims, there was one death and one coma. This is from the hospital's security footage the same night Fisher lost it,” JJ explains and uses the remote to put a different video on the screen.

It’s of the hospital that is in complete chaos. People are shouting, pushing, yelling, and apparently, having seizures. One man is on a stretcher, and he’s clearly on something. The doctors around him try to push past the madness of people to get him to a room while the nurses have their hands full of scared and angry patients. This wasn’t a spike or an overdose…

“These people didn’t get spiked. They were poisoned,” you reveal.

“Of the seven victims, Gail Norman was the only death. She was seventy-eight. She ran out into the middle of the road, and she was hit by a car. She was DOA,” JJ reveals on the plane ride over to New Jersey.

You’re sitting next to Spencer in one of the seats that are super cramped so that they can fit four of them in on either side of a small table. You’re sitting by the window, so essentially, Spencer is blocking you in. He’s not a big person, but because you have romantic feelings for him, it feels like a fucking trap.

“The other potentially fatal case is nine-year-old Brittany Canon. She fell out of a treehouse and fractured her skull. She's in a coma, but the doctors don't know if she's going to come out of it,” Hotch says.

“How do you wanna handle the press?” Gideon asks the liaison.

“We still don't know how these people even got dosed. I think it would be irresponsible to issue a warning without specifics. It'll just cause panic. I did notify the local PD, though, to be discreet.”

“How is it possible that none of these people knew how they got poisoned?” Derek wonders.

“None of them remembers anything about the day it happened,” you say and gesture, but your hand brushes up against Spencer’s leg.

You blush and mutter an apology, but he doesn’t say anything about it. He looks at you and blushes as well, but he is better at hiding it than you are.

“These people were so messed up; it's made it difficult for local PD to retrace the victim's steps.”

“So, we need to go on precedent. We know there are four types of poisoners who target multiple victims,” Gideon starts.

“There's the true believer--the political terrorist/religious cult. There's the extortionist--the product tamperer that holds the business hostage in exchange for money. The prankster--it’s usually a younger offender who doesn't mean any harm, and it's basically just a big practical joke to them. Then we have the avenger--someone with a personal vendetta who chooses poison as their weapon,” you explain the different types of offenders.

“We need to find out as quickly as possible which type he is. Because with the exception of the prankster, all these types commonly test their poison on a small scale before appearing at a larger attack.”

“Then, let's hope this one was just a prank,” Derek scoffs.

"I suggest we split up the victims and see if there's a pattern to the victimology,” Gideon suggests.

“Most of them are still in the hospital. I'll call local PD to meet us there,” Hotch confirms.

“I'll check the lab reports. Maybe there's a clue to the unsub's motive in the specific nature of the poison he used,” Spencer calls dibs.

“I can't imagine anybody could want this to happen.”

“If you don’t mind, I’ll head to the hospital with you. The kid may not be able to tell the doctor anything, but I certainly can. I’ll be able to see what really happened if his mother allows it.”

“Good,” Gideon nods once. “We need all the answers we can get.”

The hospital is buzzing with panic, fear, sadness, and grief. Many people are dying in this hospital, and to someone like you, you’re not sure you can be here for much longer. Hotch, Gideon, and the rest of the team don’t really understand how this all affects you. Normal people like the ones on your team see this hospital for what it is. They see people grieving and people crying, but they allow themselves to be separated from their emotions. They can walk into a loud crowd and tune out all the conversations and emotions without even thinking about it.

Not you. You’re completely different.

You walk into a crowd, and you’re overwhelmed by not only the physical sensation of people all around you, but your mind is also crowded. Your mind goes into overdrive as it inspects each person to make sure they are not a threat. To make sure that they are who they say they are. A normal person can see a kid walking down the street and not know they are kidnapped while you are able to determine that.

You walk into this hospital, and every single emotion of every single nurse, doctor, patient, and family member immediately go to your shoulders. Someone can be dying on the very top floor, and you’d feel how sad their family members are as they watch their beloved ones slip away. There could be someone in the next room receiving bad news, and it’ll be like you’re receiving the same news. It’s not fun living with your abilities, and you’ve caught yourself wishing it would all just end. However, you think about everyone you’ve saved, and it somehow all makes it okay.

“Detective Hanover, Beechwood PD,” the detective that was on the surveillance tape introduces himself to you, Gideon, and Hotch.

“Agent Hotchner, this is Agent Gideon and Agent Y/L/N.”

“Thanks for coming down on such short notice. The doctor said he may have permanent brain damage. I've never seen anything like this,” he sighs and looks at Eric, the little boy who was beaten by his own father.

“Well, let's hope we can help him.”

“Have you had a chance to review the victim's files?”

“We're especially interested in talking to the boy's father,” Gideon says.

“We'd like to get a sense of why he turned violent while the lab analyzes the specific nature of the LSD he was dosed with. we'd like to get our own sense: was it the drug itself or was there something else going on? Hopefully, that can give us a little bit of a window into the motive of the offender,” Hotch explains.

“He's in the psych ward.”

“Well, we'll keep it short,” Gideon replies.

“If you don’t mind, I’ll meet up with you two. I’m going to talk to the mother,” you offer, and Hotch just nods.

wanna be tagged? add yourself to this document! if your tag doesn’t work, find out why!

@averyhotchner @lets-be-gay-for-the-angel @fan-girl-97 @paulaern @inkstainedwritergirl @estrela-rogers @abitchforjay @kwbaby24 @redsalv20 @joonie-centric @spencerreid-mgg @sixpencespencee @boygenius-reid @reidemandweep @prophecyflame @happynekochan1​

[beaniebaneenie]

If you live in the US, the water thing absolutely violates labor laws.

OSHA requires employers to provide potable water to employees in the workplace. This water must be accessible to all employees and can be used for drinking, washing, and other personal needs.

Water quantity: The amount of water provided must be enough to meet the needs of all employees, taking into account the air temperature, humidity, and the type of work being done.

Water access: The water must be readily accessible to employees.

The lack of chairs is an OSHA violation too.

The approved code of practice on the regulations requires employers to provide suitable seats for workers who have to stand to carry out their work, if the type of work gives them an opportunity to sit from time to time and provide suitable seats for workers to use during breaks.

Yes, violations often happen without consequences. But remember, not keeping the poster with all your rights as a worker visible? Is a violation too.

Document it. Photos, screenshots, save your emails, record conversations if you're in a one-party consent state. Then?

Report their asses.

If nothing happens, report them again. And again and again, until someone pays attention.

Here's the link with info and how to file a complaint:

You can also call them: 1-800-321-OSHA

Keep in mind: complaints signed and submitted to local OSHA offices are more likely to result in OSHA inspections. Therefore, sending your complaints to OSHA's national headquarters may not be the fastest or most efficient method.

If you file online, it's automatically routed to the appropriate local office.

Even if there is not a specific guideline for the thing you want to report, all employers must adhere to the "general duty" clause... and you'd be surprised about all the things that fall under that.

For example, refusal to provide chairs anywhere in the building (in addition to being illegal and discriminatory anyway) also comes under the "fall protection" hazard. The CDC recommends that standing any longer than 15-30 minutes per hour can become a serious health hazard.

Yes- companies will always try to get away with breaking the law and fucking you over. That's how they've made their money.

But having a defeatist attitude and believing there is nothing you can do, and they'll never experience a consequence, so why bother reporting, is exactly how a lot of them keep getting away with it.

There are more of us workers than there are bosses. Solidarity- stand together, know your rights, and fight for them like hell. That is how we affect change.

I know a company that does both these things and no surprise, when you shop there, the employees are always miserable and agitated.You should kill your managers in such situations imo. The only reason I receive treatment slightly above this is i'm lucky enough to have managers who are also bothered by these business practices. The water one is especially bad if you have heat intolerance, I was so sick regularly before I switched to a department with more leniency regarding water.

Depending on where you live these things may violate labor laws though so if you're in the same situation look into it. However in my experience any labor law violations happen without consequence regardless

[ananapanini]

Harold, They’re Lesbians (LGBTQ+ states hc list)

Will be adding to this throughout pride month till we’ve got everyone on it

FTM trans + Bi CDC

He has the vibes

I want the science boy to deck someone who says gender identities aren’t real

He would’ve only gotten top surgery because he’s Busy and doesn’t care enough to fully transition

But all trans people don’t have to get all their surgeries, he’s happy where he is and that’s all that matters

Genderfluid + Gay Wisconsin

Poor cheesehead has no idea what’s happening

They’ll think they’ve figured out what they’re identifying as but then-

ope no never mind, she feels better at a girl

Fuck- wait no he’s a dude

Someone help the boi, he’s Midwestern with limited knowledge on this, he doesn’t understand-

Florida.

He (they? She? Xe?) doesn’t know what his gender is and he doesn’t care

All he knows is that he’s not cis but? Kinda still fine with he/him?

He’s attracted to,, humans? But specific? But not?

He likes People and has a Body, and isn’t gonna bother looking into it further

Is he bi? Pan? Omni? Trans? Genderfluid? Enby? W h o knows? Definitely not him, and he won’t know any time soon because he doesn’t care to find out

And that’s okay

Florida doesn’t have to know, he’s happy where he is

Was this projection? Mayhaps but I’m a rare actually-born-here Floridian so it’s practically canon

Demiboy + Ace Biromantic California

Because he has the vibes

You can’t tell me he doesn’t

Agender + Demi DC

Xe/xem specifically because @s-e-v-e-n-24 has spoiled me

Xe just need to have a good sturdy connection and then maybe xe’ll do somthing

But that would require the person to take the time to build a relationship with DC

So xyr alone

For now

CisF + Aromantic Pansexual IDC

She would like to pass on the romance thing

It’s a vibe tho

The non-ace aro representation that we need ™

Watch her have a QPR and it be so wholesome

Best friends

I vote Canada

Nonbianary + Gay Wyoming

They/them

But they’re closeted because they don’t like the others all in their business

They might tell One important person to them (best friend? A love interest? Who knows)

Genderflux + Pan New Hampshire

They are here to do whatever the hell they feel like

And you can’t stop them