#i lived through one recession and jobs crisis i do not want another one

[lazyyogi]

Spiritual Fitness, Physical Alchemy

When I was growing up, I loved to play. I would run around outside, pretending I was some hero, wizard, or secret agent. I would climb trees, leap from rock to rock across small creeks, and just generally scamper about. In my room, I would put on music and dance all over the place.

Using my body didn't feel like work; it felt like celebration. It was the kind of joyfulness taken entirely for granted, as I had known no alternative at that age.

The Fall

I remember being in elementary school and looking at the middle schoolers who no longer played or enacted pretend games and it made me sad. Their world seemed so boring and I didn't want to join it. But alas, eventually I did.

When I grew older, my recess games were replaced with mandatory sports. The other kids started competing, weight lifting, and finding identities in the teams they had joined. I wanted no part of it.

I attended an all boys private school from kindergarten through high school graduation. While it was a fantastic school, there were plenty of problems inherent in its structure. My experience of athletics and fitness at that time was off-putting and, in a word, toxic. Although 'toxic masculinity' wasn't in the common lexicon at that time, it was that precisely.

It didn't help that I was a terribly sore loser and therefore loathed competition sports. I didn't like how they made me feel; I had no chill about any of it--curse of being the youngest child, I'm told.

I've always been underweight. It's something about which my family never missed an opportunity to tease me. It made me feel bad about myself and influenced my self-image. Nonetheless I was required to partake in 3 sports per year, one for each season. By the time I graduated high school, I was in excellent physical condition even if still underweight.

Yet the depressing impact left upon me by the transition from childhood play to teenage athletics never left me. Having outgrown childish games but without finding a place in athletics, I simply abandoned the matter. And so, in a way, I had also abandoned my body.

When I attended college, I stopped all physical fitness and sports. And that's how it was for the next 10 years of my life.

Crisis Averted

For those of you who have yet to discover this firsthand, once you get past the age of 25ish, your body doesn't feel as happy. Especially if you work a desk job after college. It's around the age of 25 that you first begin to feel the weight of your lifestyle choices.

When I began medical school at the age of 28, my body was unbalanced and unhappy. Spending hours sitting and studying over the previous 3 years during my post-baccalaureate premedical program really fucked me up. I barely ate, barely slept, and was living with chronic musculoskeletal and nerve pain. I was suffering and I wasn't happy with my appearance. That's another story in itself.

Things gradually improved over the next 4 years in medical school. They had free yoga classes, the cafeteria food was palatable, and I enforced a regular sleep schedule. My body started to normalize.

It was my transition to residency in 2020 when I actually started to thrive.

As a resident physician, I never know when I will have a chance to eat. So I learned to pay attention to how my body feels in order to determine if I need to eat rather than relying on the hunger sensation to prompt meals. I started doing elliptical cardio regularly and yoga occasionally. And, after a heart-rending breakup in 2021, I began using free weights.

Reanimation

A major turning point was early Spring 2022 when a friend introduced me to something called the X3 Home Gym. It heralded my moment of reckoning with strength training.

At the time I would do cardio 3-5 days per week, strength training 1-3 days per week, and some yoga on my off days. All at home or in my building's gym.

The X3 system brings the entirety of a weight lifting gym setup into your home. It is convenient, effective, and time-efficient. I could go on and on about it. The website looks like something out of an infomercial and if it weren't for the fact that my friend is incredibly muscular and swears by it, I wouldn't have tried it. But I did and it works really, really well.

Plus there is no toxic masculinity involved (unless you join their facebook group, which I did for the lolz and workout tips).

Adding essential amino acid protein pills was the finishing touch. I started to gain weight and muscle!

Now I do strength training 5-6 days per week, I do cardio 1-3 days per week, and I do yoga 1-3 days per week. This will fluctuate depending on my work schedule and level of exhaustion. If necessary, I cut out yoga and cardio while trying to preserve my days of strength training. Here's why.

I love cardio. It makes me feel physically happy. It boosts my overall mood and it has a legitimate cleansing effect. I love yoga. It works out the kinks in my body and repairs the idiosyncrasies of my postures and habits of movement. I love these practices so much that they are easy to pick up again after stopping.

But something I learned from yoga is that it's often the poses you avoid that are the ones you really need. For me, that was strength training.

As you might have surmised, strength training doesn't come naturally to me. It doesn't feel good to do it; it is painful. But I've come to recognize that for my body type, strength training is what balances my physicality most.

Self-Healing

I mentioned before that I have always been underweight and it's true. I have a body type that, if I'm not careful, I can easily start shedding pounds.

When I'm stressed, I lose my appetite. If I'm engaged in something, I wont notice when I'm hungry. And even if I eat a ton of crappy food, I won't put on weight if I'm not doing some form of exercise to signal my body to do so. I have often struggled with and resented these aspects of my human form.

Similar to how women face societal expectations to be a certain weight and shape, men aren't supposed to be skinny. Overweight is okay; it can still be manly. But underweight men will be teased, feminized, and often deemed unattractive or sickly-appearing. I know this from experience.

Combining that with the aversions from my school days and it is safe to say I had a fair bit of baggage lodged in my mind and body. I recognized this and learned to work through it with meditation, somatic spiritual practices, and other therapeutic methods. Exercise helped significantly in that process.

I now continue my exercise practice for two reasons:

I want my body to feel happy, healthy, and capable. My job literally depends on it.

I want to live a long enough life to make the most of my spiritual practice and ideally realize enlightenment.

There are two large purchases I've made during residency that truly revolutionized my lifestyle. They are the X3 and the Theragun massage gun. I can confidently say that my body is happier and healthier than it has been since graduating high school.

Side note: I fucking love massages. My first treat-yo-self splurge after I finish residency will be buying a balls-to-the-wall tricked out massage chair.

Somaticism

There is a secret third reason behind my fitness journey: somatic spiritual practice.

The first ever lifestyle habit that I made for myself was daily meditation. Spirituality, to me, is a matter of life and death. There is nothing else about which I am more sincere and concerned. So when something connects with that, I find it easier to make it a part of my daily life. Physical exercise has grown to be a part of my spiritual practice.

Similar to how sitting meditation focuses the mind's attention, somatic spirituality focuses the physical feeling of the body. And just as sitting meditation frees you from the mind, somatic practice frees you from the body.

Freedom from the body does not happen by rejecting or in some sense leaving the body. It happens by completely inhabiting the body, releasing traumas, relaxing tensions, stretching out contractions, breathing strength into numb and abandoned areas, and then letting go of the body from within.

It's not about transcending the body so much as it is an integration and liberation.

When it comes to inhabiting, releasing, relaxing, stretching, and strengthening, physical exercise when combined with somatic methods has been an effective means. Its effects go beyond the physical body to intimately involve the subtle energy body as well.

So, if there is a single takeaway from this story, it would be this:

When paired with spiritual practice, physical exercise may become an alchemical process.

My own story is an example of how one may transform their relationship with their body and gender, as well as their overall health.

Meditation doesn't make you into a different person, it helps you to discover and be as you are with exquisite and divine ease. Physical exercise, when approached as part of the spiritual path, does exactly the same.

I hope that one day I will be in a position to teach this to others.

LY

[acetechne]

hi i was informed that some of you guys wanted to know more about DM so i made a VERY BRIEF history of their relationship (half of which is completely ignoring each other because they live in completely different worlds but occasionally have mirrored experiences).

if you’re curious about the history, @quatschmachen tends to cover the NL side and I tend to cover the AB side and we don’t mind trying to answer or speculate about it. You can also check out the (rough!) timelines i drew up for procan for bert and ben. again want to stress that this isn’t a one true canonical reading, we just think it’s neat.

I’ll transcribe my messy writing and have some additional notes below.

---

1940s: [AB] just barely got provincial rights after 3 decades and is now about to strike oil. [NL] forced to give up independent nationhood and join Canada. [Didn’t notice each other at all].

- I think this is interesting to note because they have sort of reverse, mirror images of each other. Ben lost nation status after the war (after being ignored for literal centuries and getting the barest acknowledgement of responsible government from England in the 1850s) because Britain was concerned that NL would have another economic and political crisis as they did between the world wars where Britain had to step in and govern, even though NL was so economically profitable during and after the war that they were lending money to Britain rather than the other way around. Britain and Canada worked together to confuse and persuade NL to give up independence.

- Bertie meanwhile (and the other prairie provinces) actually had fewer provincial rights of control than all other provinces that had already joined confederation. Getting control of resources between the world wars was just in time for the major oil strike at Leduc in 1947. This combination of being perceived as a “lesser” province and sudden economic weight to throw around is still part of this chronic struggle AB has had (which has now manifested into AlBerTa SoVerEigNtY!!11)

---

1970s-1980s:

[AB] record profits during oil crisis, record losses when made to subsidize Canada] [National Energy Policy] [NL] losing out hydro profits to QC, struggling to benefit from offshore oil exploration. Catching record amounts of fish...

- Bert’s rich bitch phase really took off in the 70s, which is the era that people today still look back on with nostalgia and no small amount of bitterness. Because oil was so expensive around the world at this time, Canada essentially interfered in the industry, made Alberta sell oil at a discount to the eastern part of the country and taxed sales to the US, something they did not do with hydroelectricity exported from BC or Quebec. Alberta still felt like a colony of Canada rather than an equal partner in confederation for this reason.

- Likewise, NL was having its own battles with confederation during this period. Churchill Falls was a hydro-electric dam built in the 50s in Labrador, one of the largest in the world at the time. Electricity would be transmitted through Quebec and sold from Quebec to New York - but Quebec had little desire to share the windfall profits with Newfoundland. (This isn’t even touching on how the dam affected the people of Labrador, particularly the Innu). Likewise, the federal government had control of offshore resources, again cutting NL out of profit from oil exploration; equally urgently, the other offshore resource that had supported NL for the past 500 years, the fishery, was under federal control as well. The 70s saw the number of fishermen double and the (overestimated) stocks of fish rapidly decline...

---

1990s:

[AB] major recession and cuts, leaving farms for the oil patch. [NL] moratorium on cod fishing forced him to move west for work.

[opinions of each other] [AB as] “humourless tight-fisted entitled brat”, [NL as] “lazy, uneducated job stealer who won’t shut up”

- In 1992, Canada declared a moratorium on the cod fishery which immediately led to a mass out-migration of young people from NL and Atlantic Canada and leaving behind an aging population dependent on federal support. Meanwhile, a series of cuts and privatizations at the provincial level in Alberta and a pronounced lack of interest in diversifying the economy away from oil and gas (thanks Ralph Klein :/ ) meant leaving the farm for the oil patch was (and is) a more viable (though short term) lucrative option for both Albertans and other provinces looking for work.

- So they meet at last. And they absolutely despise each other.

---

2020s:

((what on EARTH is going on))

AB: please don’t leave me

[NL] thinks this is the funniest little meow meow on earth

- I don’t know exactly when the relationship between these two mellowed out. It was pretty tense still when I was growing up, and I wouldn’t say there was really a mutual appreciation between the two until maybe after the 2008 crash or so? But that’s me trying to apply arbitrary dates. There’s obviously still some tension today, and there’s also tension between those who stayed and those who went back home etc etc. It’s Complicated.

- but it’s interesting so i like to write them complaining and fighting over dumb things because it makes me laugh :) but I do think they would have reached some point where they started looking at each other’s histories and going “hey wait same hat”. Okay different hat... but you know what I mean. But I think they see pieces of themselves in each other and vice versa and it makes for an interesting dynamic (regardless of platonic or romantic interpretations).

- but yeah basically bert was socialized by bible thumping evangelists and then by coke dealing oil cowboys so you can understand why he has this weird complex about relating to other people in healthy ways, he’s just lucky that ben is old enough to find his quarter life crisis absolutely hilarious and actually somewhat sympathetic given that he understands what independence and interdependence actually mean from his lived experience. so yeah.

[chadspence-cv]

CONTENT WRITING Brief Blog post highlighting affordable cities in the US for millennials

Tone Informal and humorous

Audience Age 25-40, young urbanites starting their careers

Destination Website similar to Buzzfeed

Cool cities that won’t break the (piggy)bank

“Wondering why you’ve stumbled onto yet another list of affordable places to live in the United States…? Perhaps because there’s a nasty affordability crisis going on and its hitting millennials, hard. If you don’t know what that means — it’s probably because you were born before hip-hop and reality tv. But just to avoid any confusion and an overuse of meaningless jargon, let’s just say we’re in trouble. It’s becoming increasingly difficult for young people to find ways to survive in the country’s best cities — you know the ones with the gorgeous beaches, booty-shaking nightlife, exhilarating art scenes, open-minded civic culture, a smorgasbord of food choices and a plethora of jobs in fields we tend to excel in, i.e., everything from cutting-edge technology to instagram stories. 

There are many possible reasons for this. And in true human fashion, some older people would like to place blame at the feet of the victims. According to some of them, we can’t afford to survive because we’re just plain lazy. Or because we want everything instantaneously. The first explanation accusation I will treat with the contempt it deserves. As for the second, well it’s rather difficult to argue with. Although I will add that it’s not exactly our fault. We didn’t invent the internet and instant messaging after all. I think much more relevant to the questions of affordability are the following: the rise in college debt (not our fault), the above-inflation rise in home prices (not our fault), the Great Recession (definitely not our fault) and the rise of neoliberal polices (I’m looking at you Reagan).

Chances are you already know all this. But I come with good tidings: Fear not; all is not doom and gloom! While some of us sit in our parent’s basements conspiring the coming revolution (where I imagine the guillotine being replaced with a twitch-hunt), I have compiled a list of some of the more affordable places in the country for young people to begin building alternatives to one day eclipse the mess we grew up in — or where we can just Netflix and chill. These places may not have everything their older, richer cousins do, but they are bringing sexy back in their own way. Who needs a subway and $12 beer anyway?

MEMPHIS, TENNESSEE

Named after the Ancient Egypt metropolis and bordered on one side by the majestic Mississippi, this city has a music history as diverse as this great nation and a fantastic location at the heart of the South. Granted it does have a little dark history being the site of MLK Jr’s assassination and all but which city doesn’t have a few skeletons in its closet. Otherwise it’s booming with cultural offerings such as Sun Studio which is linked to Johnny Cash and Elvis; the National Civil Rights Museum; Presley’s home, Graceland; a drive-in cinema; as well as many blues clubs and Memphis barbecues. For the outdoor lovers there are five state parks within a two-hour drive. And did I mention it’s fantastically affordable?! The average median home cost is well below the national average and renting a one-bedroom will run you below $800 on average. All-in-all, Memphis is a good choice for those of us looking for affordable rents, real music and ribs. 

 NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA

It’s a warm summer’s night in the French Quarter. An obscure figure crosses the narrow street to stand illuminated under a street lamp. He sets down the heavy black object he is carrying. Opening it gently, he carefully removes the instrument hiding inside. Bringing the shiny metal to his pursed lips, he exhales smoothly into the mouthpiece, his life force flowing through the tubes to produce a melody carried off into the night. After a few more lines, another lone figure appears under the street lamp and joins in the nocturnal serenade. The duet attracts a few more musicians, one at a time, until the sounds of a full, impromptu jazz concert resound between the centuries old walls. Couples start to dance along, spurred on by the sweetness in the night air. This is New Orleans folks — filled with music and magic. This three-hundred-year-old port city was founded by the French, built by their slaves, bought by America and immortalised by jazz. Famous for creole cuisine, voodoo and Mardi Gras, people in this fascinating city know how to eat, drink and be merry. Despite ongoing racial tensions, this a multicultural city home to the histories and living cultural traditions of many different groups who continue to celebrate them. The city is also home to a burgeoning film industry and generally has a lot to offer creatives. Though it has gained in popularity in recent years, and has therefore become more expensive than it once was, New Orleans is still affordable for those of us looking for history, culture and a stiff drink.

DETROIT, MICHIGAN

From industrial powerhouse to borderline bankruptcy, this midwestern town has seen its fortunes rise and fall substantially over the years. It gave us the automobile, white flight, Motown and techno. It also gave us Madonna. Following years of depopulation, financial mismanagement and the effects of that pesky Great Recession, Detroit has started to turn itself around and has begun attracting many young people back into city limits. While it still faces many challenges, notably related to unequal access to the fruits of the new boom, many residents hope that the current changes will continue to bring good fortune and spread it around. Attractions in or near the city include the Detroit Institute of Arts — an impressive art museum with one of the largest collections in the country — and the Great Lakes, some of which feature such spectacular white sand beaches you can almost believe you’re in Miami. While it does require a lot of imagination and even more hard work, this flowering city is perfect for those pioneers who aren’t afraid of a challenge, or 7-month-long winters.

SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH

Mormons wishing to escape persecution for their beliefs — especially those related to the practice of polygamy — fled to the Salt Lake valley and founded this city in the 1800s. Though the Church of Latter-day Saints officially abandoned polygamy at the turn of the 20th century, this did not stop the fantastic run of Sister Wives on TLC. Salt Lake City, however, is more than just Mormon history. Being surrounded on three sides by sister-mountains and by the famous salt lake on the fourth (the original rocky mountain gangbang), it’s a nature lover’s dream. The city has also grown to include large Latino and LGBTQ+ communities. A thriving food, craft brewery and ‘artisanal' wine scene will be sure to please the inner hipster that lives in almost every one born after 1985. Then there’s also skiing, hiking, water sports on the salt lake, botanical gardens and many other outdoor actives for both winter and summer. And Utah itself is drop-dead gorgeous, serving as the backdrop for many Western film shoots. Salt Lake City also boasts one of the country’s remaining drive-in movie theatres (maybe this should be a criterion to make this list). Over all, Salt Lake City is a great option for those who like wide spaces, outdoor adventures and the Wild West.

ATLANTA, GEORGIA

Home to the world’s busiest airport and some of our favourite hip-hop hits from the naughties, Hotlanta is a magnet for contemporary culture. From theater and street art to music and festivals, this thriving Southern city has something for all the art lovers. It has so many trees it is considered “a city in a forest”. Despite a strong reliance on cars, it has good transport infrastructure for a city of its size and scale. From that airport we mentioned earlier you can find good deals to get you to Europe or South America, and beyond, in the blink of an eye. And while it’s not directly on the coast, the closest beaches are less than a five-hour drive away. Because of its combination of good job opportunities, green spaces, infrastructure, moderate rents and a lively art and music scene, Atlanta is a good choice for those of us looking for an interesting larger city.

LAS VEGAS, NEVADA

Looking for Parisian sophistication, Venetian romance and Florentine art? Then you definitely won’t like this neon-flooded shrine to mass culture and overindulgence. Located in a desert that is so hot it may as well be the seventh circle of hell, Las Vegas is known mainly as a mecca for hedonistic tourism. While all they say about Sin City may be true, it is also one of the more affordable places to live in the western half of the country. Besides affordability, Las Vegas also offers an excess of entertainment activities, for all tastes, countless restaurants and buffets and hiking hotspots only a short drive away. Los Angeles and the coast will you take four hours driving, for those who crave big city trappings and lazy beach days. If you feel like living the college life till kingdom come, this one’s for you.

AUSTIN, TEXAS

Austin has risen in ranks the last few years to reach its place in the Holy Hipster Trinity, along with Williamsburg and Portland. While the Texan capital has gained massively in popularity (and price), it still remains relatively affordable while offering lots to see, do and eat. Plus everything is supposedly bigger in Texas. With its myriad bars, pubs, cafés, food trucks, and breweries (in case you thought I was joking about the hipster thing), it offers almost never-ending opportunities to eat and drink. But lest you think this is where its charm ends, Austin also boasts many theaters, music venues and events, including the SXSW Festival — making it a cultural capital in its own right. It has so many music venues, it claims to be the ‘Live Music Capital of the World’ — it seems hyperbole is certainly bigger in Texas. In what may be Austin’s offering on the altar of Hipsterdom, some residents have adopted the mantra “Keep Austin Weird” to protect its intangible cultural heritage of people doing whatever the hell they want. Unfortunately, a company managed to trademark the slogan and is trying to prevent people from making unlicensed t-shirts. Will the madness of late capitalism ever end?!?! To say the least, Austin is an interesting place with a warm climate, surrounded by nature and filled to the brim with weirdos, perfect for those looking for adventures of all sorts.

SAVANNAH, GEORGIA

For those of us who absolutely cannot live without the beach, here is one coastal city that won’t steal your money and give you nightmares just for the privilege of sleeping there. Quite literally oozing with history and Southern charm, Savannah plays host to some of the most beautiful colonial architecture on the East coast. Containing 22 park-like squares and mansions that will have you saying “oh my" in a leisurely Southern drawl, it really is dripping with beauty. For those interested in the history of the city, there are countless museums and monuments, including tours depicting slave life as it was hundreds of years ago. While not as strong on its nightlife offerings as other places on this list, Savannah makes up for it with gorgeous beaches including the beautiful Tybee Island. If the coastal life is what you’re looking for, Savannah might be the one.

[fiddleabout]

are you for or against private health insurance?

i am for fully affordable, fully accessible coverage for every person residing in the united states.  full stop.

but let’s talk for a hot sec about why you felt the need to pose this question the way you did, because it indicates a fundamental misunderstanding of the way the health care system is structured in the united states and what it takes to fix it:

like it or not, the system we have now isn’t going to just go away.  do you remember the aca?  that was the most monumental systemic overhaul of the health care system in united states history, and it didn’t even try to get rid of private insurance in favor of a single-payer system as a way to create universal coverage.  it was designed to create universal coverage via medicaid expansion and individual mandate, and it was gutted from the start by the nascent tea party in 2009.  it was still passed and showed marked improvement in providing health care for people in the us over time, and then 2016 happened and now you have trump’s administration and seema varma, the cms administrator, doing their level fucking best to shit all over it every day until it falls apart the rest of the way.

now. let’s say your best case scenario happens.  bernie wins! (i’m going out on a limb to guess you’re a bernie sanders fan.  no idea why.)  we get a democratic senate and house!  medicare is expanded to cover every person in the united states!  private insurance is eliminated! yay!

this is probably just a weirdly technical hangup but roll with me for a minute: what happens to said insurance companies?  bcbsa has something like 35 companies within it but if they’re all suddenly kaput, where does their capital go?  is the government seizing their liquidity?  what about their debt?  united health group is one of the largest insurers in the united states, yeah, but they also have a bunch of data analytics subsidiaries and clinical consulting arms, not all of which are located in the united states and some of which are heavily intertwined with the insurance branch.  how do you split that up?  what about employees that have been investing their bonuses in stock options?  what about the stock exchange in general if you eliminate an entire multi-billion dollar industry?  does the government cover all of that?

but: now a lot of people are now unemployed.  and i’m not talking about insurance company executives, i’m talking about the hundreds of thousands of admin-level employees.  i used to be one of them and i made barely above minimum wage.  those people don’t have a golden parachute or cushy savings account to fall back on, and now there’s a heavily crowded employers’ market picking and choosing overqualified, nearly retirement-age people who are all looking for jobs.  idk if you remember what the job market was like post-recession in 2009/2010 or.  like.  if you were even out of the sixth grade at that point.  but i was fresh out of undergrad and interviewing for minimum wage jobs against people with 20+ years experience, and basically none of us were getting jobs no matter how much experience we had because there would be sixty people, applying for one minimum-wage no-benefits receptionist job that required you to have a bachelor’s degree and minimum three years experience in an office just to be a mail clerk.  the economy would be crippled.

but let’s say that white jesus has decided that everyone who was working at a private insurance company will be guaranteed a government job of some kind, or like.  just.  any job.  idk.  i’d hope anyone that proposes eliminating an entire industry that employs over two million people would have a contingency plan in place to help them find employment.  but let’s say he does!  now we have a true single payer system, where everyone is covered, and private insurance is illegal, and everyone has a job.  things are GREAT.

okay.  awesome.  but now you have to integrate everything into one system.  there are a handful of major electronic medical record systems– epic, cerner, allscripts, etc.– in the country.  most hospital and provider systems have invested millions of dollars in custom-designed systems that integrate across multiple sites and interface directly into their major insuring partners’ systems. billing is based on icd-10 codes but aside from that unified– and, importantly, clinical, not specifically billing– coding system, billing requirements are wholly different.  do you push everyone onto one system?  will there be subsidies to provider systems who, in good faith to maintain compliance with the government’s ongoing meaningful use requirements to date, have invested millions of dollars in functional ehr systems that they’ll have to potentially completely overhaul now that the billing approach is completely different?  

but let’s say that they figure THAT out.  everything is great.  medicare for all!  no private insurance!  the private companies were broken up completely and amicably and no national, state, municipal, or county economy was crippled!  all of the millions of people who lost their jobs immediately found new ones!  the billing system was perfectly designed and implemented and everything is beautiful smooth sailing!  this is good shit, yo.

not to be a wrench or anything, but: remember that bit up there about the aca being gutted even more once the administration changed?  yeah.  so.  this administration that’s done all of these nigh-miraculous things?  ends in eight years.  then what?  it’s been less than one term since obama was out of office and the system has been put into a steeper nosedive than ever as the shit trifecta of trump/varma/azar pulled back on patient protections and price regulation, started pushing for medicaid work requirements and block grant funding, and generally are doing their damndest to just fuck everyone who isn’t them over.  so what happens when we hit that term limit in eight years after whomever it is–sanders, warren, literally anyone– leaves office?

the backlash against obama came in a myriad of ways– racism and islamaphobia, sure, but also very deeply rooted in values-based (and let’s be clear because i’m sure someone is going to warp this: i don’t agree with those values that say that all-for-me-bootstrap-your-own-way-up, but the fact remains that they are, in fact, value judgments in a value system) policy objections, and the aca was the thing that was most cited against him by rival politicians.  do you really think that an even larger, more drastic overhaul of the system won’t account for more egregious backlash?  i’m all for the importance of ideals and values, but i’m also a fan of things working and surviving.  i’m not even confident we’re going to make it out of this administration with medicaid intact, to say nothing of the way that social security–y’know, medicare– is going to be insolvent by like 2030.  our best case scenario won’t be starting on the foot we’re on now, it’ll be starting five steps back in the midst of a pending economic downturn.

it’d be great if we could get rid of private insurance.  honestly.  like, full stop, no sarcasm.  i have existed in this health care system in so many ways– as a patient when i was fortunate enough to have great coverage; as a patient when i had terrible coverage; as a patient when i had no coverage; as a minimum-wage analyst at an insurance company who had to come into work deathly sick for a month straight just so i could almost make rent; as a consultant working with a bunch of other people who’re doing their actual fucking best to try and make a broken system work in a way that makes it affordable and accessible to everyone. i’m fully away of the problems caused, iterated, and perpetuated by private insurance– and i am painfully, brutally aware of how extraordinarily broken it is.  i’ve had to choose between paying medical bills before they go to collection and paying for rent or food.  i’ve stayed above water solely because of luck and privilege.  my entire career is tied to trying to find a way to fix some of these problems in a way that lasts.

but i also know that the wholesale removal of the private insurance industry is hamstrung by the way the country’s government is set up and that as nice as it is to talk about living in a world where this system– this capitalist, racist, sexist, homophobic, cruel, vindictive system–  the fact remains that this is where we are.  this is what we have, and we have to live with it, and i’d rather fix it right than keep going forward one step and then back two, like what happened with the aca and like i very much believe would happen with a medicare for all implementation.  i’d love to be proven wrong, truly; i just don’t think that i will be.  

so let’s go back to your original question.  maybe you want me to say that i support private health insurance so that you can call me a dirty capitalist who’s been fooled into hating on medicare for all by lobbyists and propaganda.  but let’s go with a few nice and concise tl;dr bullet points:

i think accessible, affordable healthcare is a fundamental human right

i think the united states needs to have universally available, universally accessible, universally affordable healthcare coverage for every person living in the country

“are you for or against private insurance” is a grossly reductive question that presumes that the existence of private insurance is the one fundamental deciding factor regarding the health care debate, and it’s not

so if you’re looking for a simple answer, let’s go with this: universal, affordable, accessible coverage.  that’s what i’m for.  

[mvnvgedmischief]

unremarkable days. 

summary: sirius black is trying to be a good man, a good brother, a good person. Sirius has a steady job designing book covers for a publishing house, a flat he never leaves, and a traumatized brother who was just removed from the custody of his parents. All in all, it's wildly unremarkable.

characters: sirius black, regulus black, background wolfstar

tags: tw: canon compliant abuse, child abuse, social services

words: 3.1k

read it on ao3 here

When Sirius wakes up, he feels like he doesn’t know where he is. It’s all too much, as usual. Just another completely  unremarkable day. He wishes he could say he didn’t feel like this all the time, he wishes he could say that waking up didn’t feel like the ultimate betrayal– a way that his body continued to force itself not to submit to his will. But he couldn’t say that when his day and his routine always felt like a chore. Not when he was tired, and so fucking bored of this life he kept waking up into. So he mindlessly rolls out of bed, thin hands already wrapped around his body in a self soothing posture. He didn’t remember the last time he had a good night’s rest. He finds himself stepping on the hardwood floor, all of his bones cracking into place, and wonders what the day will bring him.  

The way he trudged over to the coffee machine was mechanical. It was always just a short twenty steps, and yet each  stride felt like an eternity. He knew that nothing would get better without his normal too sweet cup of coffee, his eyes would not click into focus, the buzzing in his brain would  not slow down, the way his stomach lurched with every step, none of it would end until he had his  usual cup. So he made his way through the desolate flat, eyes unseeing, and before he knew it, his hands were wrapped around the shocking cold of a glass brimming with ice and espresso. He knew this isn’t the most productive part of his morning routine, but he doesn’t have the energy to care. A quick glance towards the clock told him he was running late, and it takes a moment for his brain to register the fact that he needs to care about that. He needed to do something about that. So he returns to his room, coffee in hand, and methodically picks out an outfit. When he was younger, his mother had impressed upon him the importance of a uniform. Every outfit should have at least three pieces, and uniforms were an excellent way to maintain looking put together. It was one of the only things Walburga had ever truly taught him, and it was all thanks to the high society life he left behind. 

But that life was gone now, it only lived in the recesses of his mind, and the periphery of his vision. He trudges back out of his room once more, this time towards his computer. He was far too busy to be behaving in this manner. He didn’t have the time to lose his mind, there were deadlines approaching. He logged on to his computer, into his first meeting of the day, and was met with a new project. He wished he could say he paid enough attention to know what the pitch was, but he figured he’d read the  summary  of the work in the brief James was kind enough to send over, as well as the client notes. It pays to work with your best friend. Sirius found himself chuckling humorlessly at that statement, and wondered how long it had been since he actually laughed.

He threw himself into the project, illustrating for a book cover he has yet to actually consider the content for. He knew it was a personal work, a series of poems that are no doubt about depression and trauma, given the brief, but there was no way he would actually be reading the poems. Not when he was already dealing with his own chaos. He was so busy grappling with being spurned by  his family, by his younger brother, that he didn’t really have the energy for someone else’s trauma. Instead, he was too busy trying to figure out how to deal with the resentment from his younger brother, a brother who had been placed in his care by the government. He was trying to figure out  how to budget for two, how to make this all work. The hearings and the documents and the lawyers and the awarding of custodial custody had all been incredibly intense, and he still didn’t know how to explain to Reggie why he left him behind, or how to ask what kind of support he needed. 

He heard the door click closed, which is a sound Sirius is not yet accustomed to.  He felt the hair stand up on the back of his throat, and his fingernails have torn into the soft flesh on the inside of his arm before he remembers that two people live here now and he is no longer living with his parents in Islington. Regulus had the courtesy to not say anything to him, instead locking himself in his room. For a moment, Sirius considered just leaving his brother alone, but something struck him as wrong. While they might not know how to interact the way they used to, Sirius would be damned if he couldn’t find a way to support his brother through this transition. It takes him a moment to remember that it was two pm on a Wednesday, which means Regulus just returned from court ordered counseling, no doubt to deal with the trauma his parents put him through. So Sirius pulled himself out of his chair, and shuffled over to Regulus’s door hesitantly. His thin fingers curled into a fist, but before he can even knock Regulus’s quiet sobbing met his ears. 

Sirius moved much faster after that, spurred on by his brother’s clear distress. He barely registered Regulus’s quiet “come in” before he’s bounding through the door. 

In times like these, Sirius is confronted with the fact that Regulus is only fifteen, and that  this whole thing must be weighing heavily upon him. It reminded Sirius a lot of himself, because Sirius wasn’t much older when he was kicked out of their childhood home. But still, Regulus seemed so much less prepared than Sirius had been. Sirius was again confronted by just how young they were, only fifteen and twenty-one, and far too young to be dealing with these calamities. Sirius only hoped that he could prevent Regulus from making the same mistakes he had, trusting the wrong people, only to be spurned by them. 

He sat cross legged on the floor beside Regulus, unsure of what to do. He wants to pull his brother into a fierce hug, and tell him that he’s safe here. But instead, he did the thing he always craved others would have, when he was a scared kid falling apart at the seams because of his parents and their torments. 

“Reg, can I touch you?” He asked, arms limply at his sides. He wondered if it was weird to ask, even though if Regulus said yes it wouldn’t matter whether or not it had been weird. 

The younger boy let out a heavy sigh and nodded, and their identical silver eyes meet in a look of anguish and understanding. 

Sirius pulled his younger brother into his arms, his embrace gentle, and found himself tutting as though he were a parent. He was trying to be comforting, he really was. Reg was so small, and Sirius remembers what that was like too. He remembers being that young, and that alone. He knew how badly they must have hurt Reg, for him to have reacted like this. Regulus was always much more prone to passivity, to giving in and staying quiet. He had always tried to blend into the background, and Sirius, in return, had always made much  more noise to keep their attention. It was only when he took it too far, that all attention was on Regulus. Regulus had simply cracked under their pressure, which was why Child Protective Services had gotten involved. He couldn’t hide anymore,  he had been noticed, and it wasn’t long before they got more vindictive. Regulus was lucky someone had called for a constable when the screaming in their old home was so loud the neighbors could hear, because he had been in such a state when the ambulance arrived. 

The crying only subsided when Regulus collapsed of exhaustion in Sirius’s thin arms. For as much as Sirius wanted to just let the boy sleep in the safety of an embrace from the closest thing he’d ever have to a paternal figure, he needed to go back to work if they wanted to maintain their flat. So he settled his brother into bed and made his way back to his desk. His email had popped off for lack of a better term, and the client wanted to schedule a preliminary ideation meeting. So he added Remus Lupin to his calendar and went back to his sketches. 

He heard the familiar ping of his alarm, and compiled his sketches into a PDF to prepare for his meeting. He grabbed his pen, his notebook, and titled his page for his notes. Remus Lupin: Pre-Lim/Brief. This would  hopefully be quick, and he could log off for the rest of the day. Something was nagging at him, like he knew things were about to go incredibly wrong. It felt like a thrumming in his chest, and a constant need to look over his shoulder. But he ignored it, in favor of popping on his headphones, and opening the Webex meeting. Before him was a man that looked almost as young as himself, with caramel colored hair and eyes to match. This was decidedly not good. Sirius didn’t have the time to develop a crush, and it seemed unethical to crush on the authors of the books he designed cover art for. But he doubted that would stop him, when he tended to be romantic by nature. 

“I’m Sirius, I’m the designer spearheading this project. Sorry we couldn’t do this in the office, I’m currently working remote.”

“Hi!” The other man greeted, “i’m Remus! Do you know when you’ll be back in the office? We could  reschedule and do this meeting over coffee?” Sirius could tell this was Remus’s first publication, either he had previously self published  or he had simply never worked with a company before, because he seemed eager to have his hands in design in the way that only green authors want to. 

“I don’t really know, I’m currently dealing with a family crisis. But if I do come in, I’ll be sure to Teams you.”

“Oh, okay. I just wanted to get a sense for what direction you’re taking the cover art in.”  

Sirius nodded, eyes trained on the screen, “I read over the brief you and James wrote up, and did some precursory sketches. I sent them over in an email, but I could also share my screen.”

They talked about the logistics of the art, what Remus was trying to convey in his poetry. It wasn’t until they were talking about the subject matter of the book that Sirius felt his teeth set on edge once more.

“The book covers a lot of abuse and processing trauma in a tongue in cheek way, so I think it’s important that the cover art conveys that while also not being too serious. I don’t want people to look at the book and go ‘oh that book is about when your ex boyfriend beats you’ but I don’t want it to catch them off guard –” 

Remus’s explanation was interrupted on Sirius’s end, by Regulus stumbling out of his room, eyes wide with fear. It was clear Sirius was no longer paying attention, and Sirius was sure that his client could hear the frightened way he called out “Siri–” on the other line. 

“Listen Remus, I have to call you back. Thanks so much for meeting with me, but I need to take care of something. My number’s on the emails if you want to discuss the book further.”

Sirius is quick to hang up the phone, and even quicker to move from the chair at his desk and meet his brother in the middle of the room. His silver eyes were trained on Regulus’s shaking hands and the blood dripping from fingers. He wondered what happened, but he wasn’t about to press the young boy. Not when he looked so thoroughly terrified. So instead, Sirius gently guides him over to the sink in the kitchen, rinses his hands under the water, and bandages up his hands. 

“Siri I swear, I didn’t mean to break it. It just happened, I’m sorry I really didn’t mean it–” Regulus was rattling off apologies and all Sirius wanted was to make him feel safe. He wanted to remind him that he wasn’t in Islington, that Sirius wouldn’t be mad about whatever he broke. But he doesn’t know what to say, other than “don’t worry about it, Reg.”  In that moment, Sirius practically swears that his chest aches with a heartache he forgot he could feel. 

When Reg finally settled down again, back to callously ignoring Sirius because of the resentment he had built up, Sirius found himself letting out a sigh he didn’t know he had been holding in. He had wondered how long their actual talking would last, but Sirius would take a sporadic two hours over two consistent minutes any day. 

He settled onto his couch, telly on for background noise, when he noticed a text from James. 

James: i’m coming over in 15. Bringing friends. Be cool. 

Sirius wanted to bang his head against the wall, because he couldn’t have friends over right now.  Not when Regulus was in such a precarious position. But given how long it had been since James had texted him,  there was no stopping him now. So instead Sirius knocks on Regulus’s door, only to find him in bed and half asleep. Sirius wondered if it was normal for a traumatized fifteen year old to sleep this much. But still, he explains to Regulus what was happening, in case the young man wanted him to divert to going out. When offered the out, away from constant vigilance, Regulus didn’t take it, which was, in some way, comforting to Sirius. Instead he told Sirius to try to be quiet, and not let anyone in his room, which Sirius happily obliges. In no time James was telling hiim they were on their way up, and that he was bringing the girl he had a crush on and her roommate. 

Sirius felt like a slob, looking around his home, but he didn’t have the energy to clean it up. So instead, he just unlocked the door, and told them to come in when they arrived. When they did finally make it, Sirius was shocked to be met with the author he had spoken to only a few short hours earlier, as well as his friends, and the girl James was apparently  smitten with. It was clear that Sirius was caught off guard evidently, because James was shouting “Surprise!” from behind him. 

Sirius met that excitement with a cold “Be quiet, Jamie.” It was clear that the group was drunk, which also didn’t bode well for Sirius. Because as soon as they were all settled on the couch, James is airing Sirius’s current chaos. 

“Remus, now that you’re our new best friend,” the man slurred, “you can peer pressure Siri into coming out with us. That bitch never comes out anymore because he’s a responsible parent.” 

Sirius, still nursing a cup of coffee, mumbled, “I resent that” into his cup. 

However, Remus must not have noticed, because he was too busy laughing. Part of Sirius was jealous at that, and he knew it. “I’m sure Sirius will come out when he has the time.” Sirius’s silver eyes met caramel brown and he wondered why Remus was sticking up for him. He finds his calloused hand brushing Remus’s thigh just briefly, and he wondered if he truly wants to flirt in front of his friends, people he’s never had the courage to come out to. 

The rest of their time in his apartment is a blur to Sirius, a blur of getting to know Remus a little better, and trying to  keep  James in line, but a blur nonetheless. But apparently whatever little flirting he had done had been enough for Remus to get the hint, because before Sirius can even blink it feels like, James is shouting for everyone to follow him to a bar, only for Remus to stay behind. 

When the others are out the door, Remus decided he’d make a move, and make a move he did. He got completely in the other man’s space and begins making demands. “If you’re gonna think about me that much, you could at least have the  decency to kiss me.” 

In an instant, Sirius was acting on it, and for a moment it feels like all of his troubles melted away. All he could focus on for a split second was the pillowy softness of Remus’s lips. And just as quickly  as he came, Remus is bounding out the door to follow behind the group. 

This was a day Sirius would remember for a long time. 

The next morning was Regulus’s first day back to school after all of the proceedings, and Sirius was excited to have the house to himself. So excited, in fact, that he sent off a text stating that he dropped Reg off to school, and that he hoped he could actually get some work done that day. That text had been intended for James, but Sirius clearly hadn’t been focused enough to make sure James was the recipient, because he quickly realized that it went to Remus instead. 

Remus, however, responds with excitement and asks if they could finish their conversation of his book over coffee, and Sirius simply didn’t have the heart to say no. That was how Remus ended up in Sirius’s apartment. However, what that didn’t explain were the events that followed. 

When Remus arrived, Sirius felt like shit. He felt shaky and like his vision was clouded and exhausted. He hadn’t intended to fall asleep while Remus was in his home, and he definitely didn’t expect Remus's legs as his pillow, and a pale hand combing through his unruly hair mindlessly. 

He really didn’t expect the way Remus kissed him again, with much more passion and fervor than he had the night before. And maybe it was Sirius’s lack of expectations and predictions that would be his downfall, because it was definitely how he ended up pulling his clothes back on while Remus slept off his afterglow in Sirius’s bed, and how Sirius ended up agreeing to a date with Remus later in the week, despite the fact that Sirius didn’t have the time. 

[doomedandstoned]

Devilish Acid Doomers LáGoon Reveal The “Father of Death”

~Doomed & Stoned Debuts~

Review by Billy Goate, with Stephanie Savenkoff

Some days you just need a good swift kick in the pants to get the week going. Portland acid doomers LAGOON got you covered with 'Father of Death' (2020). It's the band's second album so far this year, marking an especially prolific period for the Portland band. Hell, we just got through reviewing and debuting 'Maa Kali Trip' (2020) back in March. Indeed, the band reminds us, "There aren’t rules to this shit, despite what anyone may tell you. We figure, release the music as you make it. Two full lengths in 3 months, why not?" You won't hear any objections coming from this end, fellas.

The new spin also witnesses LáGoon’s core transformation from duo to trio, something which has obvious ramifications for their sound. Featured on this effort is bassest Ignacio De Tommaso of Luciferica, and Argentinian band we heaved profuse praise upon during a recent episode of The Doomed & Stoned Show. "Same skate rat doom sound," LaGoon assures fans, "just in louder form."

The bass is the first thing that hits us with a wallop straight away in the title track. When I learned that Doomed & Stoned's tireless Portland photographer Stephanie Savenkoff was likewise immersing herself in the new LáGoon album, I asked if I could share her notes. "Great fuzzy beginning," she observes. "Repetitive and trancey." The song appears to be about a godlike figure who holds the power of death in his long, boney hands. Singer Anthony Gaglia personifies him with appropriate dramatics. "Love that sneer!" Stephanie adds "Reminds me of Billy Corgan."

"Resuscitation" by contrast is "stripped down" with a "peaceful opening. Simple but moving." Were I to match the music with a narrative, it would be of someone awakening from a near-death experience -- or simply from blacking out, as I once did in a local grocery store (took down a whole shelf of Gatorade with me, too). Waking up from that otherwise peaceful step out of consciousness was a blurry, surreal ordeal. Soon, the unreality of it all came flooding back and I struggled to make sense of the events leading up to it. I imagine this is doubly so in the case of an NDE. Thus, we move from the serene to the stormy as the patient is resuscitated. Stephanie notes its "surfy center, energizing," and hints at Spanish rhythms with one final word: "Bandito!"

A "simple, mellow riff" begins "Bloodied Mouth," then "builds and intensifies," Stephanie suggests, offering us a "cool spark at the end." I can't help loving that Brady Maurer rhythm. His drumming makes this fundamental rock 'n' roll, the kind you wanna really twist to -- LaGoon's trademark menacing twist, that is.

Speaking of all things sinister, "Broken Oath," is "creepy and funereal" Stephanie says, an atmosphere conjured in no small part by guest keyboardist Adam Scott of Thunderbird Divine, who makes effective use of the Mellotron. We also hear, I believe, two sets of vocals, which I'm fairly certain is Ignacio De Tommaso's or one of his compadres.

"Soft, sweet, gentle, intense, beautiful, dark." Those were the words that converged with Stephanie's stream of consciousness for "Stab & Cut." Lyrically, it feels full of alienation and the need to protect oneself from the many enemies of happiness, some of which are more insistent than others in taking away our roadmap. Thankfully, there's still that trusty van to get us over the winds and dips of the road ahead.

As we might expect from an album conceived in quarantine, parts were recorded separately by various members of the band during lockdown, then mixed and mastered by Anthony himself. I'd say he did a damn fine job of it, with the usual low-fi ethic in play.

And now, Doomed & Stoned is pleased to bring you the title track from Father of Death, which emerges June 19th and can be pre-ordered here.

Give ear...

An Interview with LáGoon Frontman Anthony Gaglia

By Billy Goate

LáGoon is now, what, four, five years old?

Just approaching 4 years!

Hellll yeah.

It’s been a good run!

What was the last show you played before the Great Lockdown of 2020?

Took me a second to remember it’s been so long! Our last gig was March 6th alongside fellow PNWers Grim Earth, Sorcia, and Ravine!

Right on. I think Stephanie Savenkoff may have been there to snap some pics that night.

She was, indeed; always great to see her at our shows!

You've got some big things happening this month, right?

We do! Our last album, MAA KALI TRIP, has finally made its way out of the record plant (pusher back due to Covid) so this Friday it will be available for purchase, and then the Friday after that we’ll be releasing our new album Father of Death!

Listening to that opening track on ‘Father of Death’ (2020) you can tell something is different. The bass just jumps out at you with bold ferocity! You’ve got a new member? Please introduce us.

Hell yeah! The man behind that thunderous tone on the record is Ignacio De Tommaso of the band Luciferica. Ignacio and I have been collaborating on some music for the past few months, so when it came time to lay down bass on the record he was the perfect man for the job!

What was it like to jam with a third person after being a duo for so long?

Refreshing! At first being in a two piece was great because I had just left a 5 piece band, and that was a headache. But after being the two of us for a while, it feels great to have someone else on board so I can play some solos and overall broaden what I can get away with playing!

Do you feel any urgency to expand your number in real life when the bars and concert halls open up again along the West Coast?

Definitely. I want to start playing these new songs in their entirety as soon as things open up. I really feel like this album is the new sound of LáGoon, and I’d hate to step backwards for live shows.

How would you describe LaGoon’s core sound and approach to heavy music?

It’s hard for me to describe, but I think the most important piece of LáGoon’s sound is that we’re really not concerned with fitting under one particular label. We all listen to a variety of music, and I think that comes through in the music. Our biggest concern is keeping things fun and fresh for us, and we’ve just been blessed that some people seem to really dig it!

What styles of music would you say you draw the most inspiration from?

Those are constantly changing, but going into this album I was listening to a lot of 90s bands like Sonic Youth, The Pixies, The Melvins, and The Butthole Surfers. Which are bands I come back to time and time again. There’s something about the music that was made in the late '80s to early '90s that has a ‘I don’t give a fuck’ rawness to it. Anything that sounds like it was labored over isn’t the vibe for me.

Is it just me or do I feel a kind of chill surfer vibe thing going on, too? It's probably just me.

You’re not wrong! I think that comes from the type of people we are, or the amount of weed I consume haha. It’s pretty hard to get any of us upset, and so I think that there’s definitely elements of that in our music.

Right on. How have the last 3-4 months of shutdown and lockdown affected you and the people around you?

It was pretty hectic at first. I haven’t been working since the shutdown, so financially it’s definitely been a struggle. My mom and sister are both nurses as well so it’s been pretty scary to hear about all the madness in their hospitals. Overall, I’m happy to be living in the city and state I’m living in. Everyone I know has taken it seriously and that’s refreshing!

That's awesome to hear. Well, on a positive note, maybe take a few moments to tell us about the new album and walk us through all five tracks?

Would love to! This album largely came about because of all the free time I’ve had over the quarantine. As we mentioned before this is our first album as a three piece. I made that decision going into the album, so most of the tracks feature guitar solos and other elements we couldn’t pull off as a two piece.

FATHER OF DEATH

"Father of Death" is the first track on the record and the title track for the album. It sets the pace for the album with a driving tempo and the introduction of the bass as part of our sound. The song is about the grim reaper, a character that regularly surfaced in LáGoon songs.

RESUSCITATION

"Resuscitation" is the song that is just that for this band. It’s the first song of ours that couldn’t be played without the bass, and brings a new life and sound to the band. It’s also one of our longest songs and has multiple tempo changes.

BROKEN OATH

"Broken Oath" features another friend and label mate of ours Adam Scott of the band Thunderbird Divine on keys and melotron. This is one of the heavier songs on the album, and tells the story of a man cheating on his wife with a prostitute.

BLOODIED MOUTH

"Bloodied Mouth" is the most danceable of the album. This song was written at the beginning of the COVID crisis when everything first shut down. I felt a little beat down, and this song is what came out.

STAB & CUT

"Stab & Cut" is probably the furthest from any of the other songs we’ve written. I wrote it as an acoustic guitar song years ago and had forgotten about it. For some reason I played it on my electric guitar one day while I was recording other songs for the album and it brought new life to it.

That’s all of 'em!

Cool, thanks for sharing that! What instruments and gear are you working with these days?

I’ve had the same Orange CR120 head and Marshall 4x12 since the formation of the band! For a short period I was playing split through that and a bass amp, but now that we’re a three piece I’m back down to the Orange through the 4x12 and I have one distortion pedal that I more or less just use as boost. We’re lucky enough to have a deal with Baxter guitars so that’s all I play and we’re hoping to get a Baxter bass on stage soon!

First Coronavirus, then Lockdown, Recession, and Social Unrest. Any predictions on what the second half of 2020 holds in store?

I have no idea, but what I hope for is serious social reform at the federal level, a new fuckin’ president, and the return of live music. I may be asking for too much though. (laughs)

Sounds like you're just itching to get back on stage again and belt out these new tunes for a real live audience!

Absolutely! My wife is getting sick of hearing me play by myself! (laughs)

Right on, man. Well we hope to see you soon, so we'll keep our fingers crossed for a bright close to the year. Thanks so much for chatting with Doomed & Stoned!

Hell yeah, man! We appreciate your continued support. See ya out there. Stay healthy, and stay heavy!

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[endangered-justice-seeker]

'I Work 3 Jobs And Donate Blood Plasma to Pay the Bills.' This Is What It’s Like to Be a Teacher in America

Hope Brown can make $60 donating plasma from her blood cells twice in one week, and a little more if she sells some of her clothes at a consignment store. It’s usually just enough to cover an electric bill or a car payment. This financial juggling is now a part of her everyday life—something she never expected almost two decades ago when she earned a master’s degree in secondary education and became a high school history teacher. Brown often works from 5 a.m. to 4 p.m. at her school in Versailles, Ky., then goes to a second job manning the metal detectors and wrangling rowdy guests at Lexington’s Rupp Arena. With her husband, she also runs a historical tour company for extra money.

“I truly love teaching,” says the 52-year-old. “But we are not paid for the work that we do.”

That has become the rallying cry of many of America’s public-school teachers, who have staged walkouts and marches on six state capitols this year. From Arizona to Oklahoma, in states blue, red and purple, teachers have risen up to demand increases in salaries, benefits and funding for public education. Their outrage has struck a chord, reviving a national debate over the role and value of teachers and the future of public education.

For many teachers, this year’s uprising is decades in the making. The country’s roughly 3.2 million full-time public-school teachers (kindergarten through high school) are experiencing some of the worst wage stagnation of any profession, earning less on average, in inflation-­adjusted dollars, than they did in 1990, according to Department of Education (DOE) data.

Meanwhile, the pay gap between teachers and other comparably educated professionals is now the largest on record. In 1994, public-school teachers in the U.S. earned 1.8% less per week than comparable workers, according to the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), a left-leaning think tank. By last year, they made 18.7% less. The situation is particularly grim in states such as Oklahoma, where teachers’ inflation-adjusted salaries actually decreased by about $8,000 in the last decade, to an average of $45,245 in 2016, according to DOE data. In Arizona, teachers’ average inflation-adjusted annual wages are down $5,000.

The decline in education funding is not limited to salaries. Twenty-nine states were still spending less per student in 2015, adjusted for inflation, than they did before the Great Recession, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, leaving many public schools dilapidated, overcrowded and reliant on outdated textbooks and threadbare supplies.

To many teachers, these trends are a result of a decades-long and bipartisan war on public education, born of frustration with teachers’ unions, a desire to standardize curricula and a professed commitment to fiscal austerity. This has led to a widespread expansion of charter schools, which are publicly funded but privately operated, and actions such as a move in the Wisconsin legislature in 2011 to strip teachers’ pensions and roll back collective bargaining rights. This year, Colorado lawmakers voted to raise teachers’ retirement age and cut benefits.

As states tightened the reins on teacher benefits, many also enacted new benchmarks for student achievement, with corresponding standardized tests, curricula changes and evaluations of teacher performance. The loss of control over their classrooms combined with the direct hit to their pocketbooks was too much for many teachers to bear.

The wave began in West Virginia, where in February and March some 20,000 teachers walked out across the state. Educators there—who made an average of $45,701 in 2016, according to the DOE­—refused to enter their classrooms until the state met their demands to fully fund insurance benefits and increase salaries. Instead, they marched on the capitol, passed out bag lunches for low-income students who normally rely on free school meals and watched as public support flooded their way. After nine school days, lawmakers caved and approved a 5% wage increase. Weeks later, the specter of a similar strike led Oklahoma lawmakers to pass the state’s first major tax increase in nearly 30 years to fund raises for teachers who still walked out for more funding. Teachers in Kentucky and Arizona—both GOP-leaning states—followed their lead.

But teachers faced opposition at times from state and federal leaders. In April, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos criticized striking teachers, suggesting they were failing to serve their students and urging them to “keep adult disagreements” out of the classroom.

And when school was out for the summer, the teachers’ momentum was blunted. In June, the Supreme Court ruled that public­-sector unions can’t mandate fees from nonmembers—a decision that experts estimate could cost influential teachers’ unions money and clout. And in August, the Arizona supreme court blocked a ballot initiative that would have added $690 million annually to state education funding.

Teachers are out to regain the upper hand. Some have already gone on strike in Washington State, and others are threatening to do so in Los Angeles and Virginia. And they promise to turn out in force for November’s midterm elections, where hundreds of teachers are running for office on platforms that promise more support for public schools. They have also sought to remind the public that they are on the front lines of America’s frayed social safety net, dealing with children affected by the opioid crisis, living in poverty and fearful of the next school shooting.

Read more about what it’s like to survive on a teacher’s salary

Recent polling suggests teachers have the public on their side. Nearly 60% of people in a Ipsos/USA Today survey released Sept. 12 think teachers are underpaid, while a majority of both Republicans and Democrats believe they have the right to strike.

“We have to organize even harder and even broader,” says Los Angeles teacher Rosa Jimenez. “People are fired up.”

When Elaine Hutchison’s mother started teaching in Oklahoma in 1970, she made about $7,000 a year. In 2018 dollars, that’s roughly $45,000—nearly the same salary Hutchison, Oklahoma’s 2013 Teacher of the Year, now makes after a quarter-century on the job. Hutchison, 48, is a fourth-generation educator whose daughter also plans to become a teacher. She says she never got into teaching for the money, but, “I do want to be paid what I’m worth.”

Since the first U.S. public-school system was established in Massachusetts in 1647, many localities have struggled to pay teachers and searched for people willing to do the job for less. In the mid-1800s, California superintendent of public instruction John Swett lamented that the work of teachers was not “as well-paid as the brain labor of the lawyer, the physician, the clergyman, the editor.”

“They ought not to be expected to break mental bread to the children of others and feed their own with stones,” Swett wrote in 1865, foreshadowing arguments still made by teachers today.

Teaching has long been dominated by women, and experts say the roots of its relatively low pay lie in sexism. “The ‘hidden subsidy of public education’ is the fact that teachers for many years were necessarily working at suppressed wage levels because they really had no options other than teaching,” says Susan Moore Johnson, a professor of education at Harvard and an expert in teacher policy.

In 1960, teaching was more lucrative than other comparable careers for women, according to the EPI, but that was because of limited opportunity, not high pay. As women were admitted to other professions in wider numbers, choosing teaching carried a cost. For example registered nurses—another career historically dominated by women—make far more than teachers today, earning an average annual wage of $73,550 in 2017, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Nursing shortages in some parts of the U.S. have led to signing bonuses, free housing, tuition reimbursement and other perks, while teacher shortages have contributed to some states increasing class sizes, shortening school weeks and enacting emergency certification for people who aren’t trained as educators.

Nationwide, the estimated average public-school teacher’s salary is now $58,950, according to the National Center for Education Statistics—a respectable income in many locales, but actual wages vary widely by state, and often do not track with costs of living. When compared to professions with similar education levels, teacher pay tends to pale. In 2016, for instance, the average teacher’s starting salary was $38,617—20% lower than that of other professions requiring a college degree.

The public response to the teachers’ protests shows signs of a shift in the perception of the profession. Even in conservative states, many voters backed tax increases to support public education, and called on lawmakers to stop cutting school budgets. State funding for public schools fell off a cliff 10 years ago, when recession-­wracked states slashed education budgets and cut taxes. The uprising in West Virginia seemed to mark a turning point in public support for refilling the coffers.

But like most stories, the fight over teacher pay has many shades of gray. Generous retirement and health-benefits packages negotiated by teachers’ unions in flusher times are a drain on many states. Those who believe most teachers are fairly paid point to those benefits, along with their summer break, to make their case.

Teachers, however, say those apparent perks often disappear upon inspection. Many regularly work over the summer, planning curricula, taking continuing education and professional development courses, and running summer programs at their schools, making it a year-round job. Indeed, teachers—about 40% of whom are not covered by Social Security because of states’ reliance on pension plans—must stay in the same state to collect their pensions. Studies have shown that the majority of new teachers don’t stay in the same district long enough to qualify for pensions. Even for those who do stand to gain, it can be hard to find reassurance in distant retirement benefits when salaries haven’t kept pace with the cost of living.

“Utility companies do not care that you had a great day with one of your students. They don’t care that you’re coaching the soccer team. They want you to pay for the services that they provide you,” says NaShonda Cooke, a teacher and single mother of two in Raleigh, N.C. “I can’t tell you how many letters I got this summer that said final notice.” Cooke, who makes about $69,000, often skips doctor’s appointments to save the co-pay and worries about paying for her eldest daughter’s college education. “It’s not about wanting a pay raise or extra income,” she says. “It’s just about wanting a livable wage.”

Stagnant wages are one reason teachers believe school districts across the country are facing hiring crises. This year in Oklahoma, a record number of teachers were given emergency teaching certifications, despite no traditional training. In Arizona, school districts began recruiting overseas to fill their shortfall. Last year, U.S. public schools hired 2,800 foreign teachers on special visas, up from 1,500 in 2012, according to federal data.

The pipeline, meanwhile, is drying up. Between 2008 and 2016, the number of new educators completing preparatory programs fell by 23%, according to the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education. And once ­teachers make it to the classroom, attrition is high: at least 17% leave the profession within the first five years, a 2015 study found.

Hutchison says her daughter has plans to continue the family teaching tradition, but it’s becoming a harder path for a middle-­class kid. Hutchison’s sibling—an attorney, engineer and physical therapist—all earned graduate degrees, but now she makes half of what they do. “My younger brother who’s an engineer—his bonus is more than my salary,” she says.

As the new school year gets under way, many are picking up where the spring protests left off. In L.A., teachers voted in August to authorize a strike if negotiations continue to stall over issues including teacher pay and class sizes. In Washington, teachers in several districts are already on strike, calling for pay raises to come out of newly allocated education funding. In Virginia, teachers are floating the possibility of a statewide walkout.

Brown, the Kentucky teacher, says the fight needs to happen now or never. If budget cuts and school privatization efforts continue, she warns, teaching will cease to be a viable career for educated, engaged and ambitious people. She talks about what she does not as a job but as a calling. “I’m not necessarily a religious person, but I do believe I was put here to be a teacher,” she says. “I just want to be able to financially do that.”

But to Brown, it’s not only about what she and her fellow teachers are worth, because they’re not in the classroom alone. If the public is on their side, they say, it’s ultimately because of the kids.

—With reporting by Haley Sweetland Edwards/New York

EVERY CANDIDATE running for office should be forced to address this issue. And we need to stop have these sorry ass folks moderating candidate debates who refuse to ask about this and other education issues. Why don’t they? Their kids are in private school with well paid teachers.

[my-random-domme-thoughts]

Will Session Prices Go Down?

I felt compelled to write a post today because of a link that has been forwarded to me, of a forum discussion on MaxFisch, and I was asked for my opinion. Since I am not a member on that forum, I will make a post here. The topic of this discussion was whether the BDSM session prices will go down after the quarantine. The link to the discussion forum is below:

http://www.maxfisch.com/thehang/ubbthreads.php/topics/1751558

Here are my 2p about that: 

Whenever I am asked about pricing and pricing strategies, I always make an example of a Prada bag:

Will Prada bags be 50% cheaper after this lockdown? Because, you know, Prada needs to make money... And pay store rents...And, you know, new bag makers are entering the market every day... And, you know, because there will be a recession? Will they be 40% cheaper? 30% cheaper? 

Or will they remain roughly the same price they’ve been for last 50 years, inflation adjusted, and leave the localised market if it becomes not cost-effective? 

Now, my personal prediction is that Prada bags will cost the same they have always cost. But you’d be able to score a bag, capable of carrying things just as much as a Prada bag, in Primark for £1. 

Did the ‘invention’ of Primark make Prada drop their bag prices? Did Primark make Prada go out of business? Lose business? Did Primark steal Prada’s core client base through poaching and undercutting? I think we all know the answer to those questions...

There are Ladies who charge north of £1K per session, and did, are doing, and will do splendidly well while running a waiting list, and there are those who couldn’t find a client for £50 even before SESTA/FOSTA, COVID-19 and the Incoming Recession were in existence. That has always been the case, that will always be the case. There is no judgement being passed about it, this is just the reality of things.

Many answers in the thread seem to have their expectations and estimates based on the perception that all Dommes have just one source of income, are chained to a radiator within their post code, and only ever do RL sessions. Out of the top Dommes that I know, not one has only one stream of income. Most of us have diversified if not into other businesses and investments then within the s3x industry itself, through clips, online sessions or fan sites years and years ago. 

Yes, Domme Business is different to Bag Business. But as it is a BUSINESS there are more similarities than there are differences. And those Dommes who were good at Business and Marketing before quarantine are good at it during and will continue being good at it after quarantine, during recession, after recession and up until their eventual early retirement.

There is also some hope noticeable in the posts that there will be a huge influx of “new dommes” on the market because of unemployment as apparently there is no entry barrier to the industry. I hate to burst the bubble, both for the prospective dommes, and for their prospective clients, but Domination is not the first port of call for the unskilled and the unemployed. Far from it. There was a mention of a surge after 50 Shades of Grey as an example. What the kind gentleman who mentioned it has forgotten is that it was BEFORE SESTA/FOSTA. I myself have started when the only entry requirement for a Pro Domme were 5 pictures and an ability to string three sentences on a BackPage ad. That time, and that site, have long gone the way of the dodo. Seen Bonding? I am still waiting for the “tens of thousands of new dommes” to materialise after that...

To enter the profession now, you need solid knowledge of Business Admin and Marketing, hefty skill set of creating, curating and maintaining a website and all the costs involved in that should own skills be insufficient, heavy advertising costs to place that website on the advertising sites, creating and maintaining highly marketable online content, both free and for paid platforms, maintaining half a dozen of social media profiles on various platforms while constantly dodging censure, shadow banning and downright deletion of accounts, not to mention looking good and well-presented, being confident, and having the necessary toys and/or access to dungeons. And A LOT of hard work. Which, in the time of a recession, will not bear much fruit at all. And no, you do not get a business loan from a bank for this line of work. Most of those who are forced into s3x work by circumstances do not venture into Domination, now even more than before, but stick to traditional fields, where a pink thong and some baby oil will often do the trick.

But what about the Recession, then, and the “shrinking of client base”? Now, that is clearly written by someone who is expecting the middle class to literally die out. I can explain this with a simple chart:

This is how I see the distribution of wealth and income now, and after the Great Quarantine of 2020. The world will indeed become poorer, much like during the Financial Crisis of 2008, through lower middle class and working class sliding down the income ladder.

Those who are wealthy and affluent now are not going to wake up in two weeks and find themselves on the dole, or looking for a job at McDonalds. Why? Because they are usually very highly skilled, high earning individuals and have diversified income, investments, savings, pension funds et al. Yes, their stock portfolio might (and I say might!) take a hit. But it will not suddenly make them destitute. It just means that, for 2020, they might make a bit less money. But, 80% of a million is still 800K, and 80% of a thousand is 800. See the difference?

Now, let’s talk about me, for a minute, and my own business model, pricing strategy, cost control and target market/client base: 

I chose to move to a low income, low cost of living, high quality of life country. By choice, and for those very reasons. But I neither work on the “local market” nor for it! I charge five times what the average price per session is here, and my daily rate is higher than an average national monthly income. Exactly one of my current clients lives in the same country, and he pays me my rate. The rest of my clients are foreign, and either fly in to see me, or fly me out to join them in their endeavors elsewhere, and yes, they all know they can find someone much cheaper. 

But “cheaper” is not what they are after. Those buying Bentleys don’t price in a Seat Leon, just in case. ALL of my current clients are my regular clients, and they bring me much joy even in these dark times! If they enjoy being my subjects even half as much as I enjoy being their Mistress they will remain my clients for years to come. And those who couldn’t afford my rates before the pandemic won’t be able to afford them after. 

But how will the Great Quarantine of 2020 and the Incoming Economic Depression affect me and my business? Let’s see! 

I personally do not know  whether I will be able to see my clients this year, because even if the isolation orders are lifted, no one has cancelled the disease itself. I might get ill. They might get ill. Up until a vaccine or an easy treatment is invented all travel is in a precarious state, as are all sessions. At your own risk, as they say! I’d risk it for my regulars to a degree, but there are limits to everything, and I certainly wouldn’t want them to risk their lives and health for a session.

That said, we do not know what travelling post-quarantine will even look like. If I am required to spend 2 weeks in a lock down every time I have to take an international flight -- I am unlikely to be flying anywhere at all. If it goes back to pre-quarantine simplicity then it is a different story and I will be back to posting my Michelin starred client dinners from different cities in no time. But what if not?

Well, here comes the trick: remember I was talking about the diversified streams of income? While most people were busy with Netflix, I have used my quarantine time in to push for passive income, offering a product that is significantly cheaper than my RL sessions and client fees, but aimed at a much wider target market segment. 

I am proud to say that currently my cost of living gets covered by pure passive income in 20 calendar days. That is, I can fall into a coma for a month, and on day 20 of me being in a coma, all my bills and expenses will be covered, and I will wake up to 10 days of profit to get me to a SPA and treat me to some nice meals and still have some left over. And this is passive income. Online sessions are an entirely different thing, in addition to passive income.

What does that mean? It means that I do not NEED to have another RL session at all, EVER, even at my rate, if I do not wish to. I can retire. And if I cannot travel, I will happily spend my time developing and scaling up my online and passive income sides of business further, while sipping cocktails by the sea, in the safety of my own terrace and avocado tree. 

So when people ask whether sessions will become cheaper after this Quarantine, I just smile. Thing is, you WILL be able get cheaper sessions after this. But you could get them before this, too! There are, there have been, and there will always be cheap providers. Of everything. And if you are into “cheap cheap” you will always be spoiled for choice.

But it won’t come from established and business savvy dominatrices. Top ranks can afford to step away from the RL sessions altogether, for the risks involved, or only see their regular and trusted clients, at same rate or higher. Mid-range and upcoming will be likely to raise rates while diversifying to compensate for potential loss of foot traffic. And the cheaper ones will join the newcomers in the race to the bottom.

You know that saying, if you have to ask how much something costs -- you cannot afford it? :) Still goes! 

[johnheintz]

Winners and Losers in the Coronavirus Stimulus

I have a group chat I share with three friends. We are old friends with wildly different life paths. I’m a teacher, lawyer, writer in Chicago, and Jim in an entrepreneur in Chicago.  Steve is a hospital administrator in New York. Pete is a scientist in Vermont. 

Early in January, Pete heard the news of this new virus from a Wuhan, China, wet market. Pete researches disease and drugs for a living, and since he’s talking with friends, he occasionally lets himself be wrong for dramatic effect. 

Coronavirus was big. His posts were dramatic, and when the rest of us teased him, he pushed back, explaining how “we’re screwed.” Over the next month, Pete would be proven entirely correct. By mid-March no one on earth hadn’t heard of Covid-19 and its cause, the novel coronavirus. Even Congress was listening. 

Two disasters loomed. The millions likely to die would only be outweighed by the total failure of the global economy that could impoverish the world in a way never seen in modern times. No reasonable person disagreed with either disaster. 

For the first time in a decade, Democrats and Republicans in Congress started talking. The health crisis required instantaneous action mostly already within the statutory authority of the Executive branch. The economic crisis needed legislative action. People needed to stop moving around and spreading the virus, and it had to happen immediately. This meant no one who couldn’t work from home could work at all. No work meant no money. No money meant no food and no home. People with no money in the bank, which meant most Americans, needed money immediately or they would go to work and spread the virus because they would have no other choice. 

I need to defend Congress here. The President dithered, but the Majority and Minority leaders in the House and Senate moved quickly to act. 

Quick action reveals instincts. When you’re in a crisis, you respond using the reasoning capacities you’ve built up prior to the crisis. When in the crisis itself, you react. Congress reacted, and the subsequent bill tells us a lot about the default positions of the Democratic and Republican parties. 

What is the Act?

It’s called the CARES Act, the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act. You’ve already heard it’s $2 trillion. The government is spending money, so that’s why it’s being called a “stimulus.” There are good reasons not to call it a stimulus, since governments take stimulus actions to encourage economic growth. This bill is doing the opposite. It’s encouraging people to stop economic activity, or at least to stop economic activity that is not essential. The goal of the bill? ”Freezing the economy in amber“ or ”putting the economy into an induced coma” are two metaphors explaining the goal of the stimulus, but for those of us who live in a partisan world, a world where government is either spending or not spending money, this is massive government spending that can comfortably be called a stimulus.   

Who are the winners?

There are three big winners in the bill. Individuals get 30% of the stimulus. Big corporations get 25%. And small business, state and local governments and public services share the remaining 45%. Democrats insisted on the direct payments and the unemployment increases, and Republicans insisted on saving big businesses, especially the airlines. 

The remaining 45% breaks down with 19% for small businesses, 17% for state and local governments and 9% for public services, mostly hospitals.  

It’s already clear the next bill will help states and local governments. Lobbying is happening at a furious, socially distant pace, but state and local governments cannot run deficits like the federal government. That is, states and localities cannot simply print money, like the The feds will have to provide them support or the downstream effects will create an economic tsunami as great as the coming federal one.   

It may seem like Congress acted quickly, but plenty of horse trading went into the preparation of this bill. Only the cruelest free marketeers can stand up and say government should stay out of this crisis. Those people exist, and they seem to want a certain number of dead bodies before they act. Luckily, enough Americans understand the gravity of the crisis and drown out partisan drum beating in the name of saving our loved ones’ lives. 

Who are the losers?

The worst losers are people on fixed incomes and future debt payers, like today’s college and younger kids. No matter what the feds call it, the US is taking on debt. Since Donald Trump arrived in office, the debt went up $3 trillion bringing the pre-coronavirus stimulus to $23.5 trillion or $70,000 for every person living in the US. Now that debt will be $25.5 trillion. Future generations have to pay. 

A quick side note, this stimulus is a necessary and good kind of debt. As Harvard economist Kenneth Rogoff has said, "The whole point of not relying on debt excessively in normal times is precisely to be able to use debt massively and without hesitation in situations like this." Borrowing costs money, but saving lives at this scale is worth it. 

The primary losers, then, are future generations. But that’s a generic reality for government debt. The primary losers that could have been named in this bill but weren’t are more interesting. 

Small businesses are definitely losers. Unlike the checks written to individuals, small businesses has strings attached to most of the money in the stimulus. Small businesses are asking right now whether they are able to keep everyone on their payroll, which is the stated purpose of the stimulus loans. The primary question is whether, if they are already heavily leveraged, they will be able to take on this additional debt. The stimulus provides that any small business that keeps paying its workers will receive forgivable loans, but small businesses aren’t sure how or if that will really work. Small businesses face this uncertainty despite the desire of Congress to pass a decisive bill that would remove uncertainty in the economy. Why? 

At least a sectional of the Democratic Party does not like business. They are still reeling from the Great Recession when, according to the left, bailouts should have gone to individual homeowners and not big banks. Democrats make little distinction between big business and small business. Terms like “profiteers” and “capitalists” don’t allow for subtle distinctions like separating Boeing from your corner mom and pop coffeeshop. Blue Chip Republicans don’t care about small companies much either. They want to ensure companies already running and already providing big products and big services to big quantities of people keep running. That’s why the second biggest winner of the stimulus are large corporations. 

Small business is a blend of Democrat and Republican, so when the crisis arrived and wish lists were created, small business took a back seat to the Democrats’ individual payments and the Republicans’ corporate payments. 

Losers in the stimulus are the environment, education, youth, poor, infrastructure and essential workers. 

Carbon offsets and clean energy incentives like solar, wind and nuclear never made it into the bill. The impact of climate change like mass migrations, regional armed conflicts, ecosystems failed and lives lost will make this pandemic’s worst death toll estimates of 2-5% of those infected truly seem like the seasonal flu. 

Education got money in the stimulus, but it’s not what you think. States run education, not the feds, and federal involvement in education is, compared to the big money spent by states and local governments, miniscule. Schools that are keeping staff won’t be doing it for long. Tax revenues will be small as the effects of shelter-in-place kick in. Schools will be the hardest hit since in most states schools are the largest recipient of state and local revenue that will disappear. Schools will likely hold onto all their workers, even if they know they’ll have to borrow to pay them. States and local governments assume federal help is coming, and Speaker Pelosi has already said the next legislation will help state and local governments, which is code for schools and other less expensive essential services like police and fire. But it’s notable that education didn’t make it into the first stimulus bill. It signals, however slightly, that neither the Dems nor the Republicans care to prop up the existing school system exactly the way it exists today. 

Youth are a big loser in the stimulus. College kids dependent on their parents will not get a check, which should draw the attention of college kids who are going to join the workforce in what’s shaping out to be another Great Recession. Bigger is the future bill youth will have to pay for the excesses of this generation. 

Are you under 30? If so, consider that you will live in a world your parents and grandparents created that benefitted them enormously but that you will never enjoy. China will be the world’s biggest economy soon, and just as the US set the rules when it was the biggest economy, you can be sure China will set the rules when it’s number one. You will be working in a smaller economy and paying bills your parents ran up today based on poor planning. 

Another loser in the stimulus is the poor. Cataloging the ways the stimulus fails the poor require too much space, so let’s focus on the big, obvious ways. First, poverty means people are less likely to file taxes, which means they won’t get a check. Second, poverty means jobs are more precarious, low wage workers were the first to be let go, and they will be the first to run through the additional unemployment benefits in the stimulus, if they can get through to their state’s unemployment agency before they are evicted, have the internet turned off at home or don’t have time to file because they are homeschooling their children since the schools are closed. If the poor have jobs, they will likely need to go and have fewer protections to avoid catching the virus. Mobile phone location data is already coming out showing poor neighborhoods are staying-at-home far less than wealthier areas. But most of all, the stimulus targets the economy as a whole. The American economy as a whole never did much for the poor. They still don’t have quality health care or any health care. They still have worse schools. They still have worse food. This stimulus improves nothing for the poor. 

Buzz in Washington is that another $2 trillion bill for infrastructure is being negotiated. If the feds want to inject a big stimulus in the economy, it should have passed that infrastructure bill in the first bill. We have all heard the list of infrastructure needs, but each is essential. First, the US needs national broadband. Second, the US needs a web of connected transportation options, from transit and air to railways, roads, and waterways, as a means to reduce congestion, protect the environment, and stimulate economic development. Third, the US needs a massive workforce development program to transform workers for the digital economy. Fourth, the US needs to up its funding of Pre-K-12 and higher education to ensure every child is ready for the new economy. Fifth, the US needs a far better public safety program including offering federal leadership for technical assistance that helps all levels of government develop evidence-based community policing programs that build trust, improve community relations and reduce racial tensions and crime rates. 

Essential workers were losers in this stimulus bill, too. The stimulus provides big money for Covid-19 responses that should include making sure essential workers are well protected and well paid. Other countries like the UK and Germany have provided additional benefits to essential workers, identifying them by name and marshaling national resources to ensure they have protective gear and abundant equipment. The stimulus echoes the current US response. It’s vague and indirect. Chicago where I live keeps sending emergency  notifications to all cell phones even while almost every health care worker I know on the front line is telling me they want to quit. Spain is the worst example of endangered essential workers. Garbage bags, old shirts and duct tape do not provide the kind of protection they need, and the US isn’t doing much better. 

Why should we care?

Crises come suddenly, and they reveal core priorities and levels of preparedness. How prepared the US was for this crisis will be readily apparent in the next 6-12 months. What core priorities the US holds is already apparent. We should care about the apparent core priorities of our elected leaders because, if they don’t match our priorities, they need to be held accountable at election time. 

That Republicans support big business and the Democrats support individual workers is no surprise. This is the first crisis felt by all Americans with such far reaching effects. Being optimistic, let’s say a vaccine is developed quickly and life returns quickly to close to its pre-pandemic rhythm. No one will ever forget that when a crisis hit, government was called on to solve it. No matter whether you have a righty Republican’s healthy mistrust of government or a lefty Democrat’s exuberant trust of government, responding to catastrophes is what governments need to be prepared to do. To the extent we are not prepared, it’s time to make a mental note for the future.  

We need to care about the winners and losers of the first stimulus for two major reasons. First, the first time a big bill is passed, it sets the cap on what will be passed in future legislation. The stimulus was the bigest gun Congress could fire in defense of the US. Future legislation could go bigger, but if the infection rate doesn’t decline, and if a vaccine isn’t discovered quickly, the gun wasn’t big enough. Once the infection rate declines a bit, we can expect more politics, more friction, slower decision-making and less powerful effects from the next rounds of legislation.  

Second, when in crisis and you have to negotiate, you resort to your biggest wants. We need to work to ensure the environment, education, youth, poor, infrastructure and essential workers are front of mind, as we continue responding to this crisis and for the next one.  

 The macroeconomic effects of this global shock will almost certainly be felt for decades. China’s claim of a V-shaped recovery seems overblown for China, so the odds of that happening in the US are slim. A big drop is rarely followed by an equally big increase. Make a gun with your left hand. A gun-shaped recovery seems more optimistically realistic. The thumb is the drop, and the pointer finger is the recovery. In other words,  return to normalcy will likely come slowly as winners build their strength and losers lose even more. 

Pete my friend’s worst fear seems right now to be untrue. It’s still early days understanding this virus, but if it mutates, come back annually in winter or never leaves and keeps mutating, the harm to lives and economies will return annually as well. The Spanish Flu came back a second time and killed more people in the second wave than the first. Right now, rumblings from scientists are that this virus isn’t mutating. If it’s not, that means that once there is a vaccine, it will stop the virus completely and allow us to rebuild our economies before they impoverish too many people. 

The question we should be asking ourselves in the moments we can see beyond the immediate crisis is this. Are we happy with the winners and losers Congress chose to create with the largest economic stimulus bill in the history of the world? 

John Heintz is based in Chicago.

[creativity-is-rebellion]

Top 10 Favourite Movies I Have Seen (So Far)

How to Make an American Quilt (1994)

I’m not sure exactly why, but I have always had a thing for intergenerational movies that go back and forth in time, which I think that this movie does superbly. You get to know each of the character’s backstories, and it is also a coming-of-age film where the main protagonist must choose a path and be happy with the one she goes down. This was a film I would watch again and again as a teenager when I was sad (movie marathons were always the cure for my blues back then). More recently, there are other reasons why this movie appeals to me; I can relate to Finn’s thesis-writing (I know it’s frustrating and easy to distract yourself from), and I can also relate with her dilemma in choosing what kind of future she will have. Also, Winona Ryder can do no wrong. Winona forever.

The Joy Luck Club (1993)

Another intergenerational film, I think it does a great job of juxtaposing the difference between parents who immigrate to another country and their children who do not really understand the sacrifices they have made to actually get there, which can cause rifts and divides. It does this specifically with the Chinese culture in mind, which is fascinating in its own right, and quite different to the US, which is where they immigrate to. The daughters who try to understand their mothers are able to bridge the divide when they are able to empathise with where their parents are coming from, by the parents telling them tales of their origins. My favourite character is hands-down Ying-Ying St. Clair, whose backstory is definitely the most tragic. In China, Ying-Ying was happily married to Lin-Xiao (Russell Wong) with a baby boy in China until Lin-Xiao abuses her and abandons her for an opera singer. Overwhelmed by her depression, Ying-Ying begins to dissociate and accidentally drowns their baby son in the bathtub during one of these episodes, which haunts her ever afterwards. Years later, she has emigrated to America and suffers from trauma of her past, worrying her new family, including her daughter Lena. When she is able to get Lena find her voice and to leave her own abusive husband, Harold. I have nothing but love for this film, which breathes life into Amy Tan’s equally beautiful novel. This film adaptation does the novel proud; It’s well-acted, well-told, and simply just heart-warming.

Sinister (2008)

I love myself a good horror movie, and Sinister flips the script by starting out as a crime mystery before going bananas and introducing Mr. Boogie (or Bughuul), a pagan demon who manipulates the lives of children, having them kill their families, until he can consume the child's soul. Ethan Hawke, who both directs and stars in this film, does a phenomenal acting job as washed-up crime author Ellison Oswalt, who moves his family into one of the homes which was the scene of one of the ‘crimes’, where a whole family has been massacred and one child is missing. It isn’t long until he finds a bunch of 8mm tapes in the attic, which represent the equivalent of snuff films, detailing previous family massacres occurring elsewhere. Seriously, some of these 8mm tapes are both difficult but strangely thrilling to watch, due to their haunting quality. It takes him a while before he becomes aware of Bughuul, who he discovers hiding in the corner of one of the tapes, and who he is able to get to know about with the help of a rookie cop and a professor. The ending is also a delicious twist, and indicates the inevitability of not being able to escape evil. Seriously, it’s a must-watch, as it breathes rare new life into the tired horror genre.

Insidious, Chapter One (2010)

Another worthy 21st century horror addition, the Insidious franchise (especially the first film) delivers some great twists, and creates a rich universe way beyond any ordinary haunted house or child-plagued-by-demon trope, by introducing some genuinely scary characters (The Lipstick Demon, Doll Girl, and the Bride in Black, anyone?!), and also introducing The Further, a dark and timeless astral world filled with tortured dead souls and nightmarish spirits. I love the twist that the end of this movie delivers, and also the appropriate jump-scares throughout. It is yet another horror movie that breathes life into a somewhat tired genre. 10/10, I highly recommend this movie, even if The Lipstick Demon looks kinda like Darth Maul, lol.

Reality Bites (1994)

Although it’s kind of aged badly, due to advancing technology, this movie was one of the first to introduce the idea of reality television, whilst also capturing the zeitgeist of Generation X, with it’s rather nihilist message about life after college, and the trials and tribulations of growing up. Some of the characters (especially Lelaina and Troy) are self-indulgent, immature, intellectually snobby and navel-gazing, but you root for Lelaina to succeed because she is played with enough sympathy by the amazing and incomparable Winona Ryder that we believe she deserves better. This is one of the reasons I hate that she ends up with Troy, even if he is the broody bad boy we are all expected to swoon over. Seriously, he treats Lelaina so badly that I just want to punch him in the face. It also has some great side characters, like Vicky, who works at The Gap, but is scared to find a real job, and Sammy, who is gay and afraid that he may have HIV. It is also relatable for me as a Millenial who graduated from university when the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) hit, making it complicated to find a good job, mirroring the recession that these characters graduated into. I love that it talks about pivotal Generation X issues, as well as universal issues that encompass growing up and moving into adulthood. Also, again, Winona forever.

Candyman (1992)

Candyman is a horror film that subverts horror movie expectations whilst still managing to deliver some great scares. Being set in the long-gone notorious Chicago housing projects Cabrini Green, a name synonymous with vice, violence and murder, and a place which instils non-supernatural horror in an individual all on its own, tells the story of thesis student Helen, who is researching urban legends, and through her participants, she learns the story of Candyman, a vengeful rendition of the classic Bloody Mary, who will split you from groin to gullet with his hook for a hand if you say his name five times in the mirror. 

The people who recount this legend go on to recount a notorious murder that has taken place recently in Cabrini Green which has been attributed to Candyman, and Helen chooses to investigate the claim. Helen rationalises that the residents of Cabrini Green use the legend of Candy Man to cope with their stressful daily lives. Before visiting Cabrini Green, Helen and her research associate decide to test the theory by saying ‘Candy Man’ five times in a mirror, but nothing happens, at least not yet. In real life, the murder rate in Cabrini Green peaked in 1992, the same year that Candy Man was made. Candy Man himself (played with great aplomb by the legendary Tony Todd) doesn’t show up until around 44 minutes into the movie, but when he does, he steals the show with his dangerous charisma. 

In total, Candy Man subverts 3 horror rules: Number one, that you need to have a high body count to keep audiences engaged. By doing so, it stretches out the tension for as long as it can. Number two, there is a Black antagonist. There were some issues addressed by Black critics that this depiction played into some racist stereotypes, such as the idea that Black people need a White saviour, that Black people are especially superstitious, and that Black men prefer to pursue White women. But one could say that Candy Man is more a depiction of the White fears associated with Black poverty, and specifically, White Liberal fears that Black poverty can’t be helped, despite their best efforts. Helen doesn’t mean any harm (some may even call her an ally), yet she dies anyway. 

By making the antagonist Black, the film becomes about so much more than just visceral horror, it is about societal, racial and historical horror as well, albeit told from a White perspective. It also plays into the fear that Black people, through no fault of their own, could be killed for no reason at all but panicky neighbours. Finally, number three, this film is more sad than scary; sadness tends to be the most common negative emotion that I experience, so I am drawn to movies that have something to say about it. The only reason Candy Man gives for wanting to kill Helen is that she demystified him, which seems pretty petty and vindictive. She is also supposed to resemble his long-lost love that got him killed in the first place. When Candy Man kills the psychiatrist in the movie, it is literally the only on-screen proof we have that Candy Man isn’t just a figment of Helen’s imagination. Candy Man, like my most favourite horror film, The Shining, begs the question: Are there really supernatural elements at play here, or is the main character simply going insane? Phew, this was more than I planned to write, but I guess this film is complex enough to warrant it. See it for yourself.

Final Destination (2000)

As time wore on, the Final Destination franchise became more well-known for its gruesome deaths (and tired plot) than anything else, but the first addition was a fresh take on the inescapability of death, and the vengance Death Itself may take if you screw with his Design. The first 15 minutes of the film are truly thrilling through the main character Alex’s premonition, and the wait after the gang have been kicked off the airline for the plane to blow up without them on board. Seriously, that scene gave me aerophobia more than any Air Crash Investigation episode. What follows are some truly twisted, macabre domino-like deaths that prove that Death has a wicked, dark sense of humour. That every character in this franchise dies eventually is kind of disappointing, and definitely places Death in this franchise as possibly the most diabolical villain in all of the horror genre (move over, Jason and Michael and Freddy). The mysterious undertaker played with delightful maliciousness again by Tony Todd adds to the mystery of understanding Death’s Design. and the reality that no matter what the survivors do, Death will eventually come for them, really adds to the overall hopelessness and nihilism of the whole situation. The way that the last film of the Final Destination franchise, which is really a prequel to the first film, rounded out the franchise really well, and provided a twist as good as the original film was epic. If you are going to watch any of the films in this franchise, I cannot recommend the first and last film enough.

Now and Then (1996)

I love this film more for the cheesy, feel-good memories of my childhood it gives me. Christina Ricci is also one of my all-time favourite actresses (I absolutely loved her as Wednesday Addams), which just bolsters this movie in my eyes. Thora Birch does a good job as well. But seriously, I can pop this movie on any time and it’ll just make me instantly happy for a simpler era. Even if I wasn’t born in the 60′s or 70′s, there is a lot to relate to about bridging the gaps between childhood and the inevitable teen cross-over. I mean, who didn’t have seances in graveyards with their friends as a 12-year-old girl? No-one?! Just me then. OK. Ahem. I think my favourite character was hands-down Gabby Hoffman’s Sam, who is trying to cope with her parent’s divorce in a town and time when divorce is unheard of. I like that her grown-up character played by Demi Moore is a successful writer, and is also the narrator of the entire movie. If you want to watch a truly feel-good movie that promotes feminist ideals, this movie is for you.

IT: Chapter One (2017)

Since I watched the 1990 TV miniseries in 1992 at the tender age of 7 (my parents never monitored what I watched - which sometimes led to some gnarly nightmares), I have been waiting for a worthy remake. I, like most of the aficionados that watched the miniseries, loved Tim Curry’s rendition of the demonic entity of IT, but weren’t quite happy about the spider ending. If you’ve seen it, you know what I mean. You may be asking why I haven’t included Chapter Two that came out this year (2019), and the reason is, despite Bill Hader’s wonderful performance as the grown-up Ritchie, a cameo by Stephen King himself, and more screen-time for Bill Skarsgaard’s scary clown, the ending here was also disappointing. IT’s true form just doesn’t seem to translate well onto screen. It was adequate. Meh. Anywho.

IT Chapter One, however, is awesome. Instead of jumping back-and-forth in time like both the mini-series and the book did, it focuses on the well-acted ‘Loser’s Club’ as kids, and is truly scary like this story should be. The bully Henry Bowers is truly sociopathic, and Bill Skarsgaard as IT truly nails the fact that IT is so much more than just a killer clown. The death scene with Georgie at the beginning of the film is quite subversive and daring, as it actually shows you the death of a child in all its gory detail. My verdict? Watch the first with gusto, but do not expect anything great from Part Two. Part Two has to exist for continuity, but the first film outshines the second installment in every way possible.

Lady Bird (2017)

For an Indie sleeper film, this story is fantastic as both a coming-of-age film and a depiction of separating from your parents and becoming your own person. Ladybird’s mum is overprotective, and Ladybird needs to break free, whilst also trying not to cause a permanent rift. She’s a different kind of gal, sensitive, intelligent, artistic, and so not meant for a dead-end small town. Her transition toward independence is extremely relatable to me, as I grew up with an over-bearing, interfering mother myself. Also, it’s set in 2002, the year I graduated, with adds to my feelings of nostalgia. It’s the relatablity of Ladybird that makes it so re-watchable to me. I grew up in a dead-end town, was creative and different to my peers, and went to a fancy private school that I didn’t fit into as well. So Ladybird is a cinematic delight as you see her progress to something more hopeful in the future. A must-watch.

[allbeendonebefore]

ahhh I love the OC ask thing!! Would you mind doing 9, 15, 17, 26, and 34?

9. Do you have a faceclaim / voiceclaim for your OC?

Not at all (beyond me creating them in a time I was voice acting for IAMP and I vowed I could not be the one to voice them because I was already using up all my voices for other characters lmao)

and no calvin doesn’t have the Rural AB High School Boy voice EVEN THOUGH he was inspired by rural ab high school boys i knew. maybe mac does

and i don’t have face claims but sometimes I randomly encounter people that look like my ocs like that time it was a hot summer day and I was walking home from the grocery store unintentionally following this guy like ‘is that ed’ (AND SOMETIMES they interact with me and I die like that time i accidentally met IRL calvin on a plane)

15. If your OC could have any pet, what would they choose? Why?

Edward has been a dog person since birth. Aside from the passage in Cecil E. Denny’s memoir that I based this comic off, I was recently reading a passage from Alexander Ross’ accounts that was basically like “the wife doesn’t need her blanket but GOD FORBID the husband doesn’t have his dogs and the dogs don’t have their ribbons and bells” and thats ed lmao. However, he doesn’t have dogs at the moment because he no longer has the excuse that dog sledding is a Necessary and Important activity, so in his quest for Necessary and Important tasks he’s currently looking into urban chicken keeping (which is a legal loophole he has been flouting since the 1920s that livestock aren’t supposed to ‘run amok in the streets of edmonton’... which they won’t do if they’re in his backyard...

Calvin has owned animals of many kinds since he was a sprout as well and while he loves them all and has said goodbye to many, his current lifestyle of penthouse living and travelling often isn’t super conducive to having a pet (his ideal would obviously be sugarfoot from heartland lmao). However, he does have at least one horse, possibly dogs and a barn cat here or there (which Caroline keeps track of) and though cattle aren’t pets Calvin will still act like his are (which Bert takes care of) 

17. How do they make a living? What kind of job do they want / not want? What is their dream job? What do they think of their current job?

This is a good question because there’s not really any hard and fast rule about how an avatar Has to make a living. Edward currently is working in some capacity for the City (as mentioned in chapter 1) because for him it’s a form of self care (even though it also stresses him out). It’s something he had been avoiding for a long time because he doesn’t perceive himself as a “responsible” person. I like to think that he’s an anonymous person on the 311 line every so often, but he might be doing other stuff like the odd temp work or bus driving. Ed also sells produce at local markets (but he usually gets his sister to do that for him... or she takes the initiative without telling him maybe). 

Of course, both of them have had jobs in O&G (usually Ed being the O and Cal being the G, one blue collar and one white). Ed was on the rigs for a couple seasons during a recent economic boom slash depressive episode and has been many times before - while he won’t disparage the work or the pay he certainly doesn’t enjoy it. Calvin has always been more in the business of speculation and administration and it’s assumed that he gets the vast majority of his income through this and related sources, he also loves to talk and present and to build relationships with people so he really likes his cushy office job. Somewhat ironically he doesn’t always bring that aspect into his municipal/government work because he’s too busy with his “real job”, and when his “real job” falls through in a recession he can either be everyone’s worst nightmare or he can finally redirect all his positive energy towards them (sometimes those overlap) (it depends on the weather).   

26. Who is the most important person in their life? Why? Who is the least important to them (that still has an impact and why?

For Ed and Cal the most important people are always each other. I tend to find it weird when they’re not portrayed/perceived as interdependent to the point of being inextricable from each other’s identities. Sure they ignore each other a lot and step over or on each other depending on the situation, but if one ceased to exist the other would probably be thrown into an absolute identity crisis. 

Least important is harder, not sure if it’s intended in more of a “couldn’t care less maybe” or “hate this person so much i wish they’d get out of my way”. I’d have to think about that a lot more before I could come up with a good answer, because even people they rarely see they might still care about in one way or another. 

34. What social groups and activities does your character attend? What role do they like to play? What role do they actually play, usually?

Just from skimming Calgary histories, marching bands come up a lot so I always laugh at the idea of him in one of those (I always think of that time that Nenshi literally called in the Stampede marching band in to help him sing Let it Go when he lost a hockey bet with the mayor of Anaheim). Calvin would have played every possible role at one point or another in that so I’m not sure what his usual would be. But he likes pomp, circumstance, instruments, uniforms, marching, all that stuff. And then there’s rodeo on top of that too which is a whole other can of worms. 

Ed tends to be more anti-social than Calvin and has tried to avoid a lot of things, but he still has his own interests and groups I’m sure. The ski club for instance has been a big deal and I think he’s definitely the sort of person who does guided walks in the river valley or trips out to Elk Island etc. He also gets roped into Fringe and other arts events on occasion by his sister, or he’ll do some volunteering at festivals such as Heritage Days (and performing at them if you’re very very lucky). 

[fauvester]

more modern au... the spirit moved me.....

This state ball really brought him back to the mid-recession crisis.  There wasn’t anything like 1990 Chateau de Mere and political company in the East Parlor to turn his thoughts to the good old days, or the end of the bad old days, maybe, when he got to watch Van Buren’s economy tilt and rip itself apart like a badly balanced centrifuge.  There were remnants of it all over the place if you had a keen eye for evaluating antiques, and he most certainly did.

Biddle blinked quickly in the dry air and looked over Maggie Bayard’s shoulder across the East Parlor entrance to where he last saw Thomas, circulating around with some of the First Husband’s old comrades.  It was awfully funny, in an awful way, that they were letting the nullies into the White House after everything they’d done.  John Calhoun got a grudging pass because he’d caught himself the leader of the free world, but that far and no further, by Biddle’s personal moral estimation.

Maggie looked back at him, her highball glass of seltzer hanging loosely from her fingers.  “He had a teaching job back in Philadelphia, didn’t he?”

“Ah, you have a good memory, don’t you. Penn State.  He’s on leave right now – I hope they let him stay off for another semester so he can stay down here. I guess I’ve gotten sort of fond of him. It’s very strange.”

“Husbands are like that, right? They just show up one day and hang around and you can’t get rid of them.”

“I know, who gives them the right.”  They smiled. He took another sip of wine. Thomas was still out of sight, probably in the next room somewhere, where the muted music from the string quartet rolled out from.  It was hardly an event that could be called a gala – he still remembered the parties of the Adams years, and even a few of the early Jackson affairs – but there were still enough people to lose someone in.  He licked his lips.  “So, who’d you think he’s going to pick for AG?”

“Oh, Stephens, definitely,” Maggie said quickly.

“Really!”

“That’s who he’s going to pick, at least.  I don’t think he’ll accept. Between you and me, he’s a real brass-tacks lifer.  It’ll be hard to get him out of the House.”

“Stephens, that’s the wiry little one with the overbite? Southern?”

“Georgia.”  She drank.  “An Old Fashioned Whig.  Seersucker, confederate flags.  He’s been in the House for, I think, two sessions?  Needs some southerners in the administration, you know. Not even Mr. John can hide the fact that his cabinet’s too top-heavy.”

Biddle got the sense that Maggie had had this conversation many times before, but didn’t mind having it again.  He’d had just gotten to DC that week to take his perfectly lovely new seat as the Secretary of the Treasury and had presently made up his mind to have as little to do with politics otherwise as possible, but the atmosphere made it hard to avoid it.  Clay had taken office a month ago and Van Buren’s attorney general had retired shortly thereafter.  Apparently he’d needed no strong urging – or if he did, the blackmail was handled masterfully.  He suspected Corwin and Hayne. The two of them working together, well!

“He’s got the great gift of post-nuptual goodwill from the media, I think he can stuff his cabinet with whatever he wants.  Stephens, I’m sure he’ll find a way to corner him into accepting.  He’s good at cowing people with his superior… his..?”

“Who’s what?”  Hayne interrupted, coming up behind the two of them to interrupt merrily.  He was smiling boyishly and holding a salmon roulette in each hand.

“President Clay’s je ne sais qouis,” Biddle said, smiling back at him and rolling his wine glass in his hand.

“Is he all we ever talk about here?  My god! Get some new material, darlings.”

“We’re in his house,” Maggie added. “Eating his canapés.”

Hayne wrinkled his nose in that charming little moue and ate them both in one go.

“Besides, compared to him, and you, Nick, we don’t lead very interesting lives,” she chuckled.  “Empty nester here.”

“Speak for yourself.  Besides, award-winning White House Press Secretary there,” Biddle added, and she smiled.  At least some of them were still in the honeymoon phase of it all.  He almost envied them their enjoyment of it. Some cruel new part of him hated them for it, too.

“Stop it, Nick, I have a husband to go back to,”

“Oh, he was asking where you were, by the way, your husband,” Hayne said, covering his mouth as he chewed.  “Something about the German Minister?  He’s in the State room last time I saw him.”

“Oh!  Thanks, Roby. I’m going to go find him.  Nice chatting with you,” She said as she brushed Hayne’s black-tie-tuxedo shoulder and gave Biddle a friendly nod.

“I’ll be seeing you soon,” he responded gamely as she left.  The two of them watched her shoulder through the crowd with the soft but stern direction of someone used to wrangling junior reporters for a living.

“You scared her off.”

“I’ve seen enough of her for right now,” Hayne responded, rubbing his fingers clean of crumbs.  “You know, you don’t just marry a person, you marry their family, and also their admin team, I swear to god.  We’ve been butting shoulders with Clay’s folks for weeks.”

“Trouble in paradise.  Young lovers...”

“Oh, /they’re/ fine.  Biting each other’s heads off all the time.  Sweet enough to give you cavities, ugh.” Hayne’s tone was tired but light.

“Where are they now?”

“Front parlor. Clay’s entertaining the Chinese ambassador with magic tricks.”

“Oh.”  Biddle shuddered.

Hayne reached over and took his mostly-empty wine glass and finished it off, placing it back in Biddle’s hand.  “Tastes like wine!”  He exclaimed brightly.

“I despair of you, Roby.  That was a good vintage.”

“Go get some more, hon, we’ve got plenty.”

“I might collect Mr. Cadwalader and head home, actually.  We spent all day unpacking and I think I’m ready to hibernate.”

“Hah!  Like you were doing any lifting.”  Hayne responded, giving Biddle a once-over.  Biddle sighed imperiously.  Since he had the disposable income to hire movers he didn’t see anything wrong with doing so. Stimulating the economy.  Besides, sorting through his books and paperwork /had/ been hard work, even though there wasn’t much actual legwork involved.

“Thomas couldn’t do much of that. His arm, of course, so I did most of the cleaning after the movers left.  John - my brother John - and his kids are coming over this weekend to finish unpacking.”

“Housewarming party?”

“Naturally. If you’re nice to me, I’ll even invite you.”

“That’s a steep price. We’ll have to see.”

Biddle spotted a familiar flash of sandy grey hair across the room and took Roby’s elbow.  Ooh, cashmere blend.  “I’m off.  Come over on Sunday dinner if Mr. and Mr. President don’t keep you, Thomas’s cooking.”

“He agreed to do Sunday dinner?”

“He will when I ask him,” Biddle responded, nodding across the room to his husband.  “Bring your Thomas too and we’ll make a night of it.”

“Oh, alright.  Send me an Outlook invite so I don’t forget.”

Roby waved his fingertips at him as he left.  A few years ago he would have stayed for the whole party, luxuriated in the glamour of good company and food, but now?  He looked up and around as he made his way to the other side of the parlor, to the wallpaper that was yellowed at the baseboard, the upholstery that was fading at the center, the whole subdued aura of the assembly, he felt a sick pain in the back of his throat.  The lingering taste of wine, sour, on his palette.   Four years, a whole incumbency, in the ignominious position of the most hated man in America.

I would take a thousand dinners with then-president Martin Van Buren, desperation leaking out from behind his polite façade, asking for help, to wash the taste form his mouth.  Nothing could make up for those years he lost, he thought, suddenly fierce and angry at a world that was trying to buy him off with a quiet comeback story.  He didn’t want vindication; he wanted nothing to have happened in the first place.

He met Thomas’ eyes as he brushed through two other cabinet ministers.  He didn’t smile, he rarely did, but he gave Biddle a slow catlike blink.  I know, he was saying.  Me too.

He didn’t have to say anything, just looped his arm under Thomas’ good one and patted the crook of his elbow with a thin, ‘well, that’s it then,’ smile.  Thomas looked up and out, past the stairwell where the sound of raucous conversation suggested the President was holding court, and then scanning over the crowd back to his husband with a nod of finality.  That’s it, then.  He squeezed Biddle’s hand against his side.

Together for a second, divorced from the warmth and excitement around them, and with the bittersweet air of pallbearers, the two left. 

[bountyofbeads]

Live Updates: Mass Protest Paralyzes Puerto Rico’s Capital https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/22/us/puerto-rico-protests-updates.html

Puerto Rico Protests: Live Updates on March Against Governor

Hundreds of thousands of people have joined the protests to push for the ouster of Gov. Ricardo A. Rosselló.

By Frances Robles, Alejandra Rosa and  Patricia Mazzei | Published July 22, 2019 | New York Times | Posted July 22, 2019

Protesters filled a highway, demanding the governor’s resignation.

SAN JUAN, P.R. — Hundreds of thousands of Puerto Ricans filled miles of a major highway in San Juan on Monday in protest against Gov. Ricardo A. Rosselló, who has resisted persistent calls for his resignation, in what appeared to be one of the largest demonstrations the island has seen.

The highway, Expreso Las Américas, teemed with people who carried Puerto Rican flags, waved protest signs and chanted to demand the removal of Mr. Rosselló, who said on Sunday that he would not seek re-election in 2020 but would stay in office through his current term — and face possible impeachment.

Monday’s protest paralyzed San Juan, although it was not clear if organizers had reached their goal of drawing a million people — about a third of the island’s population — to the highway.

As the crowd on the highway thinned in the afternoon, people once again packed the street in front of the governor’s mansion, amassing in front of the same barricade where they have gathered for more than a week.

[We want to hear from those living in Puerto Rico on how corruption and cutbacks in public services have affected you or your family. Tell us here.]

A series of scandalous text messages touched off the demonstrations.

Protests against Mr. Rosselló began more than a week ago, after the publication of 889 pages of a leaked group chat between the governor and his closest aides. Besides being offensive, the messages revealed a cozy relationship between the governor and former staff members who now represent special interests.

The crude messages were the final straw for Puerto Ricans who have suffered for years because of economic austerity measures and the devastation of Hurricane Maria.

President Trump called the governor ‘terrible.’

“The people of Puerto Rico like me, but the leadership is corrupt and incompetent,” Mr. Trump said during an appearance at the White House with the prime minister of Pakistan on Monday.

The president warned that leaders in Washington were wary of sending aid to Mr. Rosselló’s administration — a reason some members of the governor’s own party have cited to demand his resignation.

“The senators are not happy about it, and Congress is not happy about it,” Mr. Trump said.

Even though many Puerto Ricans agree that their government is flawed, they tend to consider Mr. Trump’s criticism offensive.

The president cited his experience holding the Miss Universe pageant twice on the island as evidence that he has “many Puerto Rican friends.”

“I have a real understanding of Puerto Rico,” he said. “I’m the best thing that ever happened to Puerto Rico.”

Mr. Rosselló continued to defend himself in a tough interview.

Perhaps in an attempt to speak directly to Mr. Trump, the governor appeared on Fox News on Monday afternoon, where the anchor Shepard Smith pressed him on his lost support: “You’re a man on an island by yourself. How long can you stay there?”

“My commitment is to follow through on some of the efforts that I established for the people of Puerto Rico,” Mr. Rosselló said in his first one-on-one interview since the political crisis began.

Asked to list the people who still back him, the governor mentioned only the mayor of rural San Sebastián, Javier Jiménez — who later said Mr. Rosselló was mistaken. Mr. Jiménez wrote on Facebook that he has not asked for the governor’s resignation only because he backs the Legislature’s taking steps toward impeachment.

Mr. Rosselló, who was freshly shaven for the appearance after months of having a beard, argued that his administration has already taken steps to combat corruption.

“We need to fix the system,” he said.

[Read more about Governor Rosselló’s refusal to resign here.]

Rain showers did not deter the crowds.

Julianna Pérez and her sister, Manuela Hernández, were soaked from the rain that fell on protesters, but they said they felt invigorated by the demonstration.

“This is a new generation,” said Ms. Pérez, 24. “We are showing them that we want things done differently. We are going to eliminate partisan politics.”

She said the governor had to answer for a series of debacles, including the number of people who died after the hurricane, education funds that were steered toward favorite contractors and storm aid that went to waste.

The sisters woke up at 4 a.m. to hit the road from Ponce, in the southern part of Puerto Rico. Ms. Pérez and Ms. Hernández are convinced their journey was worth it.

“This is going to be marked in history,” Ms. Pérez said. Her sister finished her sentence: “In the history of Puerto Rico, there will be a before and after: before and after this moment.”

Estefany Bermúdez, a student, said she had never attended a protest before. She was struck by the sea of people that stretched across the highway, even in the pouring rain. People danced and sang under the downpour.

“We have to defend our rights,” Ms. Bermúdez said. “We voted for him, and he didn’t do his job well, so now he has to hear us. Now they have to hear us all over the world.”

Music stars, truckers and students — the protests are drawing people from all walks of life.

Attending the march on Monday were Puerto Ricans not only from municipalities across the island but also from the vast Puerto Rican diaspora, returning to the island to join the protests.

There were retirees, college students, waiters, electricians, truckers — groups that sometimes protest separately but rarely, if ever, together. Some marchers shared sandwiches to keep their energy up under the blazing sun. The heat index was forecast to exceed 100 degrees.

Ruth Vélez, a 62-year-old retiree, said that Hurricane Maria destroyed her house in the municipality of Bayamón, and that the government’s reconstruction program turned her down for help.

“I lived in that house for 30 years,” she said. “Now I’m on the street.”

The artists Bad Bunny, Ricky Martin, Ednita Nazario, Residente and Olga Tañón joined the crowd. Under a banner reading “#RickyGameOver, “Ms. Tañón belted out a rendition of “Preciosa,” a well-known patriotic Puerto Rican song. A moment of silence was held for the hurricane victims.

Near the front of the march, protesters held a white banner with black letters that spelled out a message for the governor, “#RickyRenuncia” and “#NiCorruptosNiCobardes” — Neither the corrupt nor the cowardly.

Marchers yelled, “Ricky, ¡renuncia, el pueblo te repudia!” — Ricky, resign, the people reject you.

Mismanagement, a recession and a botched response to Hurricane Maria are at the heart of the crisis.

The protests amount to a rejection of decades of mismanagement by leaders who always seemed to benefit while ordinary Puerto Ricans suffered. Grievances have been building up over 12 years of economic recession, a debt crisis that has prompted layoffs and cutbacks in public services and the botched response to Hurricane Maria.

The chat messages and the arrests this month of six people with ties to the Rosselló government were too much for many Puerto Ricans, who said they could no longer tolerate mocking, profanity and corruption, real or perceived, by leaders who were supposed to be fighting on their behalf in Washington and San Juan.

The capital’s biggest mall didn’t open and cruise ships turned away.

Mr. Rosselló’s defiance and decision to remain in office has only fueled protesters to stay in the streets longer. Late on Sunday, demonstrators trapped a group of mayors and lawmakers who had met with the governor, blocking them from leaving until the police intervened. The spontaneous protest took place in the upscale municipality of Guaynabo, a place typically supportive of the governor, signaling that he has few places on the island left on his side.

Ahead of Monday’s march, the biggest shopping mall in San Juan, Plaza Las Américas, announced that it would not open for the day. Some banks also were closed, and university classes were canceled.

And cruise ships were again diverted from calling at the port on Monday, keeping thousands of tourists away from small businesses in Old San Juan that depend on them.

On Monday morning, El Nuevo Día, Puerto Rico’s largest newspaper,  published a rare front-page editorial. “Governor, it’s time to listen to the people,” read the above-the-fold headline. “You must resign.”

What do the protesters want?

They want to be rid of both Mr. Rosselló and another target of their ire, the unelected oversight board created by Congress to manage the finances of the island’s government, which owes far more than it can pay to its creditors. Thousands of government workers have been laid off, services have been cut, tuition raised and schools closed as Puerto Rico has struggled to resolve the debt crisis; none of that has been popular.

Mr. Rosselló has tried at times to push back against “la junta,” as the board is known. But many Puerto Ricans lump the two together in their frustration and fury. The protesters have taken to chanting “Ricky, renuncia, y llévate a la junta” — Ricky, resign, and take the board with you.

The governor has said he will serve out his term.

Mr. Rosselló, whose term runs through 2020, said on Sunday that he would not seek re-election, but also that did not intend to resign. But some politicians have spoken of impeaching him, and legislative leaders have asked a panel of jurists to issue a recommendation on whether to pursue impeachment charges.

One complication is that Puerto Rico has no lieutenant governor to take his place. The island’s secretary of state is supposed to step in as acting governor when needed, but that post is currently vacant — and the power to fill it belongs to Mr. Rosselló, though his nominee would have to be approved by the island’s legislature. Leaders of the governing New Progressive Party are scrambling to find a candidate.

If there is no secretary of state, the governorship would go next to the secretary of justice, Wanda Vázquez Garced, but powerful legislative leaders from her party do not seem interested in having that happen.

Frances Robles and Alejandra Rosa reported from San Juan, and Patricia Mazzei from Miami.

[zombiesbecrazy]

Will Protect You From All Around You

Summary:  Bruce has always expected that one day he'll wake up and feel like a Real Adult, but it hasn't happened yet. Why had he thought that this parenting thing would be easy?

AO3

“Something on your mind, chum?”

Dick normally threw himself into their after school training sessions at top speed. He was eager to run and jump and fly after hours of being cooped up in class all day and from the moment they entered the Cave he was excited and ready to do anything Bruce threw at him.

Today was different. He was going through the motions, but his mind and heart were clearly elsewhere as they went through their usual warm up. In an attempt to cheer him up, Bruce had forgone the scheduled weapons training and switched to gymnastics instead because Dick always smiled brighter on those days, but today it hadn’t changed the gloomy mood in the room. Dick was distracted as he went through a routine on the beam and after the third stumble on the same basic landing that Bruce knew he could land injured and blindfolded, Bruce stopped him and patted the beam. Dick plopped down and Bruce pulled himself up to sit side by side with him.

Dick looked down at his feet, watching them swing under the bar for a minute and Bruce waited for him to share his thoughts. “It’s just…” Dick paused and stilled his legs, “Are we… are Batman and Robin…” He raised his head and locked eyes with Bruce and the words tumbled out of his mouth. “Are we bad guys?”

That was not a question that Bruce had been anticipating.

Bringing Dick home and taking on a parental role had been a steep learning curve and one that Bruce still struggled with. Sure, he was an adult, but at 24 he still didn’t consider himself to be an Adult yet. Not one with a capital letter, anyway. He was still waiting to wake up one morning and be That Person; a Real Grown Up who had everything figured out. Someone responsible enough to pay taxes, raise a child and make responsible life decisions. He had people hired to do his taxes for him, but no one could really raise this nine year old for him and Proper Adults didn’t dress up as a giant bat and punch their way across the city every night.

Why had he thought that this parenting thing would be easy? Or having a protégé?

He had never been a great conversationalist either, but he did have to admit to himself that talking with kids was easier. Or at least it made more sense to him than talking to Adults because talking with kids seemed to be a lot like detective work. Sometimes it was better to ask a child for more information before answering to get a better idea of the bigger picture. Kids answered while Adults avoided. Talking this out with Dick was something that he could do. He could work this problem. Maybe. Hopefully.

“Why do you ask that?”

Dick bit his lower lip and thought about the question, his fingers moving in slow patterns beside him on the beam. “Sometimes we play Batman and Robin at recess.”

“Oh?”

Nodding enthusiastically, Dick grinned up a Bruce, his sadness momentarily forgotten. “Yeah. The other kids take turns with who gets to be Batman and Robin and whoever the main villain is. I am usually a civilian. Sometimes a cop or a thug.”

If he hadn’t been smiling in that moment, Bruce would have thought that that was the problem. That the other kids wouldn’t let him be one of the main characters in their game, but that clearly wasn’t it from the look on Dick’s face. No, the game was a fun thing that Dick enjoyed. “You don’t want to be Batman or Robin at school?” He still had to ask. Real Adults probably checked to make sure their children weren’t being bullied or left out at school.

Dick shook his head with a lopsided grin. “Nah. I get to do that all the time. Other people can have a turn when we’re playing. It makes them happy, so I don’t mind.”

Bruce smiled, because of course that was Dick’s answer. “Sounds like fun.” To be honest, it did sound like fun. Good imaginative, interactive play stimulating the mind and the body. Perfect for growing children. It could also be seen as an informal training exercise for Dick; remembering to see things from other perspectives. “What happened today? To make you ask if we’re bad guys?”

Looking away from Bruce again, Dick stared at the floor in front of them. “After Batman and Robin worked with the cops to stop Two Face and his thugs from robbing a bank, one of the kids playing a cop tried to arrest Batman and Robin.”

This wasn’t new to Bruce, especially with the way that he knew Bullock and some of the of the other GCPD officers felt about Batman, but Dick hadn’t come across such obstacles in his duties as Robin yet. The only officer that he really had interaction with so far had been Gordon and while he clearly didn’t approve of a child in the field, having given Batman some pointed comments about child welfare and endangerment laws, he seemed pacified by the limits and rules that Batman had been putting on Robin to date. “Did he say why?”

“Because Batman and Robin weren’t police officers. Because they snuck into the warehouse, which is breaking and entering.” Dick bit his lower lip in thought for a few seconds. “Because they beat up the thugs and Two Face, which is assault. They broke the law.”

“Then what happened?”

“One of the other kids who was a civilian stood up and told the cop that Batman and Robin had saved their lives and didn’t deserve to be arrested. Then the bell rang and recess was over so we stopped playing.” Dick looked across the cave in the direction of the change rooms, where their uniforms were waiting and sighed before he turned back to Bruce, eyes looking a little wetter than they had before. “Was he right? Are we bad guys?”

Oh, kiddo. It was something that Bruce had struggled with himself when he had first started out, but had pushed aside for the thought of the greater good. What was he going to tell Dick? How do you walk a nine year old through an existential crisis? “What do you think?”

“I don’t know. I’ve been wondering about it since.” He kicked his feet under the beam a couple times. “He wasn’t wrong. We do all those things. We do break the law sometimes.”

“You’re right. We do.”

“Bad guys break the law.” His voice was low, like he had already made his decision. Like he thought that they were criminals and didn’t know what to do about it.

“Batman and Robin only break the law to help people, Dick.”

“My mom always said that two wrongs don’t make a right.” It wasn’t often that Dick brought up one of his parents in this particular way. It was common for him to talk about his former life in the circus and about his parents in general, but not like this. Not in a way that felt to Bruce almost like he was comparing the way his parents had raised him to what Bruce’s choices were. Bruce didn’t think that he was being necessarily judged when this happened; Dick was just questioning the different things that he was being taught from the Adults in his life, especially if they contradicted, and trying to build his own opinions. Bruce reached down and gave Dick’s hand a small squeeze.

“Mine said that too. And they were both very smart women.” What would his own mother have said if he was having a conversation with her? Or his father? It was hard to even imagine what that would have been like. He was on his own here, fumbling through parenthood without a road map. Clearing his throat, he decided to ask Dick another question. “What are Batman and Robin? If you could use one word to describe them, what would it be?”

The answer was immediate and very clear. “We’re heroes. We help people. We help Gotham.”

“We do try to help people and Gotham, but the more accurate term for what we are is ‘vigilante’. Do you know what that means?”

“Not really.”

“It means that we take it upon ourselves to enforce the law unofficially. And sometimes in order to do that we have to do what others would consider to be wrong.” Dick’s brow furrowed in thought and all Bruce could do was hope that he wasn’t messing this up. They had a variation of this talk when Dick first decided to become Robin and go after Zucco, but he was older now even if it was just by eight months. He had grown in leaps and bounds in that time and Bruce could see how smart he was for his age. “Most heroes who you know are actually vigilantes by definition.”

“Superman?”

“Yes, however most people wouldn’t call him that. The perception of Superman is different than Batman that way.”

“Flash?”

“He works with the police as his day job, but when he’s out as The Flash…”

“Green Lantern?”

“Space cop. Not a vigilante when he’s in his sector on a planet that recognizes Oa’s authority.���

“Does that mean he’s a hero sometimes and a vigilante other times? Depending on where he is?”

Bruce sighed and decided to shut down on the direction this conversation was going. It was his job to help Dick, but he didn’t have to go through a list of every member of the League or defend Hal Jordan to do so. “What makes someone a hero, Dick?”

The small boy thought about it for a couple of seconds. “When they try to help someone regardless of the cost to themselves?”

“I like your explanation.”

“But that does mean that someone could be both a hero and a vigilante, right? I mean, if Batman broke into a building to get someone out before it exploded and tied up the Riddler in the process for the cops at the same time, I think that’s both.”

“I think so too.” Looking towards the cave at the computer, Bruce thought about all the articles he had read. All the news pundits debates. Things he heard at work or at various social gatherings. “Some people think vigilantes are bad and others good. And both can be true. But we do our best to only help where we can. We are lucky that Commissioner Gordon thinks that we are helping and lets us work with the GCPD to help make Gotham better the best way that we can.” He knew that might not always be the case. Gordon could be replaced or transferred or simply change his opinion at any time and that slight safety net could go away. Not that that would stop Batman, but the cooperative nature of the relationship had its benefits.

“That’s true.”

“What have you done on patrol this week as Robin?” Since Robin had started joining him out in the field, Batman had started making two rounds of patrols three days a week. He still did his normal work late into the night, but he had added an earlier one for Robin to help with smaller tasks from six until eight. A perfect way to have him out and still back home for a snack and a story and a fairly appropriate bedtime. Alfred had told him that routine was important with kids and something that Adults definitely enforced.

“Stopped two muggings. Got a cat out of tree for a lady. Dropped off food at one of the shelters. Worked with you to stop that truck full of drugs from getting where it was going.” Most of what Robin had done so far in the field had very much geared towards ‘good samaritan’ rather than ‘vigilante’ but the line sometimes got blurry in the moment and Bruce knew that it was only a matter of time until that label changed permanently, even if it was just by association to Batman.

That week, Batman had assured that Robin had been safe at all times. The potential muggers had been disarmed before he let Robin jump in, and there had been nothing at all dangerous with the cat or the food delivery. He would have avoided the truck situation if at all possible but they had stumbled across it and he couldn’t just let it happen. Batman had stopped the truck and knocked out the two delivery men, and then let Robin zip tie them. Robin hadn’t been in any real danger, but Bruce knew that Good Parents didn’t let their kids get involved with drug shipments. Or run around in a cape and mask fighting crime at all in the first place.

“Were those bad things?”

“No. We did good work. We helped people.”

“Sometimes, people are going to say that it’s something that you shouldn’t be doing. That there shouldn’t be a Batman or a Robin. Even if they help people, they shouldn’t be breaking the law to do so.”

“Could we be arrested? Or go to jail?” Dick’s fingers were moving on the beam again, making the number eight pattern over and over again. His voice dropped. “Or could they take me to live with someone else?” Dick already wasn’t a fan of his social worker and their unannounced visits to check up on them.

Gripping the beam beneath his hands a little tighter, Bruce struggled to maintain a neutral expression. The thought of Dick being removed from his care, possibly going back to the detention center, because of his actions as Batman kept him up more nights than not, staring at the ceiling. Real Adults surely didn’t have these concerns because they had their lives in order. “That is always going to be a possibility.” It was hard to keep his voice steady to not worry Dick more than he already was, and he was pretty sure he didn’t succeed, but he owed it to him tell the truth. Bruce cleared his throat, trying to make the mysterious lump that had appeared go away. “My question for you is, are you alright with that? As Robin, you are sometimes going to have to cross lines in order to help people.” Bruce turned his head back to look at Dick and their eyes locked. “You have to decide if making that choice is worth it.”

Not blinking, Dick’s face was set in a determined way. “That’s easy. Helping people is always worth it. If we help people, maybe less people will suffer like me. Like us.” He blinked and a little of the strength left his eyes, but Bruce watched him give himself a shake and grind his teeth. “I would be okay with going to jail or… having to go away if I was able to stop someone else from hurting like that first. That’s my choice.”

“So you’ll still be Robin.”

“If you’ll still be Batman.” Dick held out his fist and Bruce bumped it with his own, making Dick smile.

“It’s a deal.” He ruffled Dick’s hair, making Dick giggle and try to move out of his reach, but failed, and his hair stood up in all directions. “So, training? Or skip it for tonight and eat cookies and watch a movie instead?”

“Can’t we do both?”

“If that’s what you want to do.”

After finishing up their beam work, Bruce and Dick headed upstairs to watch a movie before dinner, sneaking into the kitchen first for Dick to steal some cookies from under Alfred’s watchful gaze as Bruce acted as a distraction, chatting away about his morning at the office. As a Real Adult who cared about nutrition and balanced meals, Alfred clearly noticed but chose to say nothing when Bruce raised his finger to his lips. Once in the living room, Dick chose his movie and then laid down on the couch, using Bruce’s thigh as a headrest and curling up in a ball under a blanket. The beginning of Disney’s Tarzan started playing on the screen and Bruce immediately started running his fingers through Dick’s hair with a small frown on his face. He had learned in the past year that this was Dick’s default movie for when he was missing his parents and feeling blue, which meant that despite Dick’s change in mood in the cave and cookies in his belly he was obviously still a little down. Bruce silently offered Dick his remaining cookie, which was taken and eaten without a word.

“Bruce?”

The voice was so quiet, muffled by his position against him, that Bruce almost hadn’t heard it. “Hmm?”

“You’re doing a good job.”

“I’m sorry?” Bruce was confused, because he really wasn’t doing anything, and being used as a pillow didn’t count as a job.

“You are doing a good job looking after me.”

His hand stopped moving through Dick’s hair, pausing with his fingers tangled in the strands. “What do you mean?”

Small shoulders shrugged and Dick kept watching the screen where Kala had just tried to put Tarzan on her back like any other baby gorilla, and he slipped, just for her to catch him in time. “You’re like Kala. I’m not yours, but you are taking care of me anyway. Sometimes, you look nervous. Not when we are Batman and Robin, but when we are Bruce and Dick. But you don’t have to.” Another shrug. “You’re doing good. I just thought you should know.”

This. This was one of those moments that made all the doubting and fear worth it. They had watched this movie at least thirty times since Dick had come to the manor and while he obviously related to Tarzan, this was the first time that he had mentioned noticing a parallel between Bruce and Kala. Bruce lifted his hand to squeeze Dick’s shoulder, he saw that his hand was trembling.

“Thanks, chum. That means a lot.”

Dick thought he was doing a good job. Dick thought he was a Real Adult and that he was doing okay at this Parenting thing.

It was the only opinion that really mattered.

[newstfionline]

The Homeless Crisis Is Getting Worse in America’s Richest Cities

Bloomberg, November 20, 2018

It was just after 10 p.m. on an overcast September night in Los Angeles, and L. was tired from a long day of class prep, teaching, and grading papers. So the 57-year-old anthropology professor fed her Chihuahua-dachshund mix a freeze-dried chicken strip, swapped her cigarette trousers for stretchy black yoga pants, and began to unfold a set of white sheets and a beige cotton blanket to make up her bed.

But first she had to recline the passenger seat of her 2015 Nissan Leaf as far as it would go--that being her bed in the parking lot she’d called home for almost three months. The Late Show with Stephen Colbert was playing on her iPad as she drifted off for another night. “Like sleeping on an airplane--but not in first class,” she said. That was in part by design. “I don’t want to get more comfortable. I want to get out of here.”

L., who asked to go by her middle initial for fear of losing her job, couldn’t afford her apartment earlier this year after failing to cobble together enough teaching assignments at two community colleges. By July she’d exhausted her savings and turned to a local nonprofit called Safe Parking L.A., which outfits a handful of lots around the city with security guards, port-a-potties, Wi-Fi, and solar-powered electrical chargers. Sleeping in her car would allow her to save for a deposit on an apartment. On that night in late September, under basketball hoops owned by an Episcopal church in Koreatown, she was one of 16 people in 12 vehicles. Ten of them were female, two were children, and half were employed.

The headline of the press release announcing the results of the county’s latest homeless census strikes a note of progress: “2018 Homeless Count Shows First Decrease in Four Years.” In some ways that’s true. The figure for people experiencing homelessness dropped 4 percent, a record number got placed in housing, and chronic and veteran homelessness fell by double digits. But troubling figures lurk. The homeless population is still high, at 52,765--up 47 percent from 2012. Those who’d become homeless for the first time jumped 16 percent from last year, to 9,322 people, and the county provided shelter for roughly 5,000 fewer people than in 2011.

All this in a year when the economy in L.A., as in the rest of California and the U.S., is booming. That’s part of the problem. Federal statistics show homelessness overall has been trending down over the past decade as the U.S. climbed back from the Great Recession, the stock market reached all-time highs, and unemployment sank to a generational low. Yet in many cities, homelessness has spiked.

It’s most stark and visible out West, where shortages of shelter beds force people to sleep in their vehicles or on the street. In Seattle, the number of “unsheltered” homeless counted on a single night in January jumped 15 percent this year from 2017--a period when the value of Amazon.com Inc., one of the city’s dominant employers, rose 68 percent, to $675 billion. In California, home to Apple, Facebook, and Google, some 134,000 people were homeless during the annual census for the Department of Housing and Urban Development in January last year, a 14 percent jump from 2016. About two-thirds of them were unsheltered, the highest rate in the nation.

At least 10 cities on the West Coast have declared states of emergency in recent years. San Diego and Tacoma, Wash., recently responded by erecting tents fit for disaster relief areas to provide shelter for their homeless. Seattle and Sacramento may be next.

The reason the situation has gotten worse is simple enough to understand, even if it defies easy solution: A toxic combo of slow wage growth and skyrocketing rents has put housing out of reach for a greater number of people. According to Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored housing giant, the portion of rental units affordable to low earners plummeted 62 percent from 2010 to 2016.

Rising housing costs don’t predestine people to homelessness. But without the right interventions, the connection can become malignant. Research by Zillow Group Inc. last year found that a 5 percent increase in rents in L.A. translates into about 2,000 more homeless people, among the highest correlations in the U.S. The median rent for a one-bedroom in the city was $2,371 in September, up 43 percent from 2010. Similarly, consultant McKinsey & Co. recently concluded that the runup in housing costs was 96 percent correlated with Seattle’s soaring homeless population. Even skeptics have come around to accepting the relationship. “I argued for a long time that the homelessness issue wasn’t due to rents,” says Joel Singer, chief executive officer of the California Association of Realtors. “I can’t argue that anymore.”

Homelessness first gained national attention in the 1980s, when declining incomes, cutbacks to social safety net programs, and a shrinking pool of affordable housing began tipping people into crisis. President Ronald Reagan dubiously argued that homelessness was a lifestyle choice. By the mid-2000s, though, the federal government was taking a more productive approach. George W. Bush’s administration pushed for a “housing first” model that prioritized getting people permanent shelter before helping them with drug addiction or mental illness. Barack Obama furthered the effort in his first term and, in 2010, vowed to end chronic and veteran homelessness in five years and child and family homelessness by 2020.

Rising housing costs are part of the reason some of those deadlines were missed. The Trump administration’s proposal to hike rents on people receiving federal housing vouchers, and require they work, would only make the goals more elusive. Demand for rental assistance has long outstripped supply, leading to yearslong waits for people who want help. But even folks who are lucky enough to have vouchers are increasingly struggling to use them in hot housing markets. A survey by the Urban Institute this year found that more than three-quarters of L.A. landlords rejected tenants receiving rental assistance.

It’s not bad everywhere. Houston, the fourth-most-populous city in the nation, has cut its homeless population in half since 2011, in part by creating more housing for them. That’s dampened the effect of rising rents, Zillow found. Meanwhile, the nonprofit Community Solutions has worked with Chicago, Phoenix, and other cities to gather quality, real-time data about their homeless populations so they can better coordinate their interventions and prioritize spending. The approach has effectively ended veterans’ homelessness in eight communities, including Riverside County in California.

Efficiency can go only so far. More resources are needed in the places struggling the most with homelessness. McKinsey calculated that to shelter people adequately, Seattle would have to increase its outlay to as much as $410 million a year, double what it spends now. Still, that’s less than the $1.1 billion the consultants estimate it costs “as a result of extra policing, lost tourism and business, and the frequent hospitalization of those living on the streets.” Study after study, from California to New York, has drawn similar conclusions. “Doing nothing isn’t doing nothing,” says Sara Rankin, a professor at Seattle University’s School of Law and the director of the Homeless Rights Advocacy Project. “Doing nothing costs more money.”

Then there’s the moral argument for action. “It’s outrageous to me that in a country with so much wealth--and certainly enough for everybody--that there are people who lack even the basics for survival,” says Maria Foscarinis, founder and executive director of the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty. Appeals to humanity were part of the strategy in the 1980s, when she and other activists helped push through the first major federal legislation to fight homelessness. Her organization has led a charge against laws that make it a crime to sleep outside in public places, one of the more insidious ways politicians have addressed the crisis. In July the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed the unconstitutionality of such bans in a case that Foscarinis’s group--along with Idaho Legal Aid Services and Latham & Watkins--brought against two such ordinances in Boise. “As long as there is no option of sleeping indoors, the government cannot criminalize indigent, homeless people for sleeping outdoors, on public property, on the false premise they had a choice in the matter,” the court wrote. The ruling has led cities, including Portland, Ore., and Berkeley, Calif., to change their policies.

To placate angry constituents, officials too often settle for temporary solutions, such as sweeps of tent encampments and street cleaning. San Francisco Mayor London Breed recently scored some publicity, carrying a broom out to the “dirtiest” block in the city for a photo op with the New York Times. In other places, there’s simply a vacuum of leadership coordinating the patchwork of agencies, nonprofits, and religious organizations trying to help. After reporting intensively for a year on homelessness in the Puget Sound region, the Seattle Times put it bluntly: “No one is in charge.”

Meanwhile, the businesses responsible for much of the area’s economic fortunes, as well as rising housing costs, have been slow to throw their weight behind solutions. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos recently earmarked a portion of his $2 billion philanthropic pledge for homeless services--only months after his company fought aggressively to beat back a modest tax on large employers in Seattle that would have raised less than $50 million a year for the same.

Blaming people who are trying to get back on their feet is probably the least productive way to solve the crisis. Consider Mindy Woods, a single mother and U.S. Navy veteran who lives in a Seattle suburb. In 2010 she developed autoimmune diseases that made her chronically tired and caused so much pain she struggled to work at the insurance company where she’d been selling disability policies. “I was just a mess,” she says. “I had to quit my job.” To help pay rent for the apartment where she lived with her son, she babysat, watched neighbors’ pets, and led a Camp Fire youth group. Still, she and her son ended up having to leave the apartment because of a serious mold infestation, kicking off an eight-month period when they couch-surfed and spent time in a motel and shelter. It was a challenge just to refrigerate her son’s diabetes medicine.

They eventually were accepted into a transitional apartment, where they stayed for 3½ years. But in 2015 her landlord stopped accepting vouchers. Woods had to race to find another apartment owner who’d take her voucher before it lapsed. Application after application got rejected. “The discrimination was alive and well,” she says. Another eight months passed. When she finally found an apartment, there wasn’t room for her son. They had no choice but to separate, and he now lives nearby. Woods bristles when people blame the homeless for their predicament. “This is not about drugs, this is not about mental illness, this is not about lazy people,” she says. “We were doing everything we could to stay in houses.”

[freewheelen]

Harley-Davidson vs. Millennials (from the POV of a Millennial)

As of late, there's been a lot of talk about the scourge of Millennials and how they're ruining everything from bars of soap to lotto scratchers.

"Millennials aren't buying diamonds." 

"They don't eat Big Macs."

"No of them watch cable."

And my favorite: "Millennials are killing Harley-Davidson."

As a Harley rider born between the years of 1981 and 1997, I feel obligated, no entitled, to lavish the internet with my opinion on the topic. Oh, coveted opinion, the most valid of all arguments.

I'm a new rider and when my bike search began, the choice was clear from the beginning: Harley-Davidson. I don't know if that decision is attributed to my obsession with Orange County Cycles when I was 13 or if I watched Terminator 2: Judgement Day one too many times as a kid, but nothing said motorcycle to me like a chopper. Long, relaxed, powerful. You had the perfect DNA for a mile-eater. A highway hauler. You had an American classic. 

It was that image - that mysticism of the open road, that promise of freedom - that pushed me toward my nearest Harley-Davidson dealership. And that's when reality sunk in. For those that don't know, Harley-Davidson is the antithesis of cheap. Don't get me wrong, they're amazing, reliable machines, but when an Ultra Limited costs more than a new Camaro, you need a large quantity of disposable income to justify the purchase. Definitely not a comfort I can claim, so I relegated my options to the smaller models and stayed away from the more 'luxury' cruisers.

And when you come to think of it, every item listed at the beginning of the post is considered just that, a luxury. Diamonds, Big Macs, shit, even cable isn't really considered a necessity for survival - and motorcycles are no exception. 

As a Millennial, I'm a big proponent of minimalism. Belonging to the generation that popularized tiny houses, it's probably no surprise that I live in a 300 sq ft studio apartment with my girlfriend and our dog. For context, that's like fitting your kitchen, closet, bath, living room and bed into a master suite. Far from palatial. Along those same lines, I only own a small selection of consumer goods. You can't own much when you don't have a place to put it. Due to the fact that I'm limited on quantity, I emphasize quality in the things I choose to buy, which are predominately American-made (Wolverine Boots, Gustin Denim, etc.).  

I grew up in a blue-collar family. My grandfather was a baker, my uncles moved furniture, and my grandmother delivered party supplies for a living. While I've only held white collar jobs (film industry), I want to do my part to support that dwindling workforce in this country, to support the communities I came from. I guess my allegiance to the MoCo [1] is based less on nationalism and more on classism. All that to say, when I saw H-D's prices, I figured, "you’re paying for quality labor," but that type of purchasing pattern and reasoning isn't shared among my cost-driven, globally-minded peers. Couple that fact with the influx of urban dwelling in the past decade and you have a perfect storm for Harley sales.

Due to the elevated level of congestion in major cities, Millennials have taken to more nimble, handling-oriented motorcycles that can slither through stagnant streets. In LA traffic, it's practically impossible to squeeze a big bike between lanes. The other day, I knocked a lady's side mirror off with my Sportster, and my bars measure 24 inches in width! If I had a Softail, I would have been the meat in a vehicle sandwich. Because of these close quarters, this environment makes perfect sense for an FZ-09 or KTM Duke 690. They're perfectly suited to the urban landscape with their sleek design, technological controls, and standard ABS, which explains the recent shift toward that streetfighter style.

In the time of the Boomers, the motorcycle field in America was much more limited. Not only were the options minimal, but America was the land of highways, stretching over 2,600 miles, coast-to-coast. With hundreds of miles between cities, choppers were the perfect tool for the job, not to mention the ultimate self-expression on two wheels. 

Nowadays, there are hundreds of brands to choose from and even more classes of motorcycles: Sport, Touring, Electric, Adventure, Scrambler, Literbike, Naked...GROM (just kidding). Back in the day, more people could also afford to live in the suburbs, allowing you to safely store your bike in a covered garage. But in the city, you have to worry about parallel parkers, drunk drivers, and thieves (I've seen 3 Softail theft ads in the past month in LA). You almost don't want to buy anything "too nice", including large $15,000 motorcycles. 

At the end of the day, it all comes down to price. That's something on which Millennials, Boomers, and even Gen-Xers can agree. With the death of the Dyna (RIP), Harley has essentially erased the only Big Twin [2] attainable by blue-collared folk, while the new Softail pricing only appeals to those with six-figure jobs without six-figure student loan debt. 

2018 Softail Fat Bob, courtesy of Harley-Davidson

On top of that, I have numerous friends that are entering the most terrifying and financially taxing stage of lives: parenthood. When all is said and done, motorcycles aren't even the main mode of transport for most people, especially if you have a kid on the way (that’d be something). I know a lot of buddies/peers that expressed wanting a motorcycle after I purchased my Sporty, but unlike me, they don't lead a careless, Peter Pan-esque lifestyles. Some things in life you just don't get to plan, certain stages have to take priority over others, and if that means waiting until your midlife crisis to buy that new Road King Special, then the MoCo will have to wait.

All this to say, Harley-Davidson bikes are luxury items. They are, as Blockhead [3] recently referred to them, the Apple of motorcycles. They utilize classic design, adopt technologies later than most, deliver less capable specs than competitors, and upcharge the consumer. They're a luxury brand selling a lifestyle, a culture, an image. They cram nostalgia into new packages and sell it by the thousands. They charge $40 bucks for a t-shirt, $400 for a quarter fairing, and $600 for a 10K service. They're as boujee as they come, they just happen to dress up in a greasy mechanic's shirt.

But with all that off my chest - and damn, it felt good - as long as Harley's providing blue-collared American jobs, I'm buying. If my peers understood that it's not just the bike you're purchasing, it's the intangibles that come with it, would they do the same? If they realized that there's an entire community that comes with the motorcycle, would they want one? If they could comprehend the fact that every time I've pulled to the side of the road another Harley rider has made sure I don't need any help with repairing the bike, would they throw a leg over?

I guess, only time will tell, and over the next 10 years, H-D plans to release 100 new models. That means a drastic overhaul of their entire lineup, and if the new Softails are any indication of what's to come, they're headed in the right direction. For evidence of that, we need to look no further than the American auto market. In the early 2000s, Chevy, Ford, and Dodge delivered muscle car essence in a modernized package. The fervor around those heritage pieces helped the auto companies recover from the recession and stabilize. 

If the MoCo can cater to the tastes of new riders while developing new technologies, there should be a healthy forecast for their future. With a new electric bike arriving in 2019 and models like the Bronx and Pan-America on the horizon, it feels as if Harley is listening to their fan-base and diversifying their portfolio. 

Project LiveWire, courtesy of the Los Angeles Times

America is a large land full of people that buy diamonds or sapphires, that eat Big Macs or arugula, that watch cable or Netflix, and the more Harley branches out, the more people will be able to enjoy it.

[1] Nickname for the Harley-Davidson Motor Company

[2] Nickname for the larger engine bikes in the Harley-Davidson catalog

[3] Motovlogger that owns numerous Harley-Davidsons