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chagasdiseaseday · 1 year

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Events in the month of World Chagas Disease Day 2023.

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It is estimated that, in Latin America alone, between 6 and 8 million people are infected with the parasite, and 99% of these are not receiving treatment, either because they are unaware of their infection or because they do not know that treatment exists. The potential spread of the disease is also a cause for considerable concern: 65 million people live in areas of exposure and are at risk of contracting Chagas disease, and 28,000 new cases occur every year.

While significant progress has been made in the Americas on controlling vector-borne transmission, disease prevalence remains high in endemic areas due to a lack of sustained control. At the same time, the movement of affected populations to urban areas and other countries has led to the spread of the disease. As a result of these migratory flows, Chagas disease is now also a public health problem in countries where vector-borne transmission has never been documented.

Diverse and complex political, social and economic factors have favoured these migratory flows, with the search for higher-paying jobs and a better quality of life playing a decisive role in the spread of the infection. Chagas disease is now found in areas receiving migrant populations where no vector-borne transmission occurs. Nonetheless, even there, the infection continues to be transmitted in other ways. The disease is an emerging health problem in the United States, Canada and Spain as well as in other countries in Europe and the Western Pacific.

CONTEXT

Chagas disease is caused by infection with the protozoan Trypanosoma cruzi, a parasite that nests in various tissues, causing irreversible cardiac damage in 30% of patients with chronic disease and neurological or digestive lesions in 10%. Social and environmental factors are important in the areas where the disease is endemic and there is evidence of vector-borne transmission. Living in poor quality housing, in close proximity to animals and in rural or suburban areas, especially those affected by poverty and marginalisation, are all factors that increase the risk of infection. The disease particularly targets the poorest and most vulnerable populations because the principal insect vector is a bloodsucking bug that lives in the adobe walls and thatched roofs typical of poor dwellings in rural areas and it feeds on people living in such houses. The deplorable consequence of the current situation is that, according to data published by the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), Chagas disease still causes some 12,000 deaths annually worldwide. A recent study by the Brazilian Ministry of Health estimated that, in Brazil alone, 6,000 people die every year from Chagas disease.

WHAT IS THE COST?

The real economic burden of Chagas disease can be hidden for years because many of those infected remain asymptomatic for over a decade. Since diagnostic tests are rarely used, many people are unaware of their infection because it has never been diagnosed. However, once the patient starts to have clinical signs—including cardiomyopathy, heart failure or dilation of the oesophagus or colon—the costs of health care, disability support and death are high.

Moreover, since these medical problems are chronic and progressive, the cost accumulates over many years. On average, the annual cost of health care per infected person is US$474, and the cumulative lifetime cost is US$3,456. This figure represents the average cost taking into account both the patients who develop complications that require complex and expensive interventions (approximately 30% to 35% of cases) and those living with the infection who never develop symptoms (65% to 70%). It does not, therefore, reflect the great range between the two extremes. Moreover, this figure only reflects the direct cost of health care. Low productivity, permanent disability, loss of income due to work absenteeism and other associated social costs amount to an average annual cost of US$4,660 per year per infected person and an accumulated average lifetime cost of US$27,770.

HOW IS CHAGAS DISEASE TREATED?

Chagas disease can be treated with the antiparasitic drugs benznidazole and nifurtimox. Both drugs are almost 100% effective in infected newborn babies and highly effective in the treatment of patients in the acute stage of the disease. However, the efficacy of both drugs decreases the longer a person has been infected. Patients with chronic disease may also require treatment for cardiac or gastrointestinal manifestations. Aetiological treatment should be offered to infected adults, especially those who have no symptoms. In addition to the social and medical benefits of controlling Chagas disease, the economic benefits are also important. The cost of aetiological treatment is equivalent to less than 1% of the social cost associated with the disease. This means that every dollar invested in such treatment can yield a savings of up to US$830 per patient who develops the disease.

WHY IS IT IMPORTANT TO ACT NOW?

Immediate action to combat Chagas disease is important because people are still dying as a result of this parasitic infection without ever being diagnosed or receiving treatment. Moreover, the scientific challenges that need to be addressed if we are to reduce the burden of Chagas disease do not receive sufficient global funding and the problem continues to suffer from a lack of visibility. Funding for research and development (R&D) in Chagas disease represents only 0.5% of the global budget for neglected diseases. National programmes in endemic countries have typically focused more on vector control and less on the diagnosis and treatment of patients. However, it has now been shown that treatment can effectively control the disease in most settings. Technical limitations no longer seem to be an obstacle to improving the treatment of those affected. Rather than being a due to technical constraints, the current lack of adequate treatment appears to be due to insufficient capacity for action on the part of the stakeholders and institutions responsible. At the same time, it is essential to continue researching and developing new tools. The available drugs are not very effective in the chronic phase of the disease and involve lengthy treatment cycles (two months). Furthermore, treatment must be supervised by medical personnel because of the possibility of adverse effects. The development of new tools for diagnosing the disease and monitoring treatment remains crucial; we need to identify biomarkers of disease progression and cure that can be used to monitor the effectiveness of therapy in patients with chronic disease.

WHAT IS NEEDED?

What is urgently needed today is an integrated approach to the disease comprising three main lines of action:

1. Prevention of new cases

A multifaceted strategy is needed to interrupt the transmission of Chagas disease, including vector control, blood screening to prevent infection through transfusion and organ transplantation, and control of vertical transmission from mother to child. Vector control, which is the most effective method of preventing vector-borne transmission in Latin America, involves three types of interventions: spraying houses with insecticides to eliminate the vector, improving housing to prevent reinfestation, and improving food hygiene standards. Blood and organs donated by individuals at risk of exposure should be screened for the parasite to prevent the transmission of infection. Congenital transmission is managed by screening pregnant women and monitoring both mother and child after delivery.

2. Aetiological treatment

The infection can be cured, but patients cannot be treated until they have been diagnosed. An active search programme is required to identify infected people who should be treated, but this is a strategy rarely implemented in the affected countries. Once a patient has been diagnosed, aetiological treatment should be started immediately regardless of whether the disease is in the acute or chronic stage. To continue the process of diagnosis and treatment, the next step is to screen family members and the local population who may be at risk.

3. Coordination of R&D

To coordinate R&D it is essential to gather information on the areas already covered, to identify potential gaps, and to draw up an R&D agenda defining the priorities that respond to the needs of the affected countries. Coordination is also required to ensure that experiences are exchanged and that intervention programmes are implemented to evaluate the new tools that have been developed.

#DiaMundialChagas #Chagas #BeatNTDs #100percentCommitted #Agenda2023 #NTDroadmap #Chagascoalition #14 april #worldchagasdiseaseday #Youtube

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justanotherlifeff · 4 years

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Scarred beauty

Warning: Matured content, mentions of sex

Looking back, you regretted nothing. Last year, if someone told you that you would end up becoming a mass murderer, you would’ve laughed at their face. Of course, you could never kill someone. Hell, you wouldn’t even hurt a fly. However, deep down, maybe, just maybe, you could’ve seen the possibility of something like that happening. You were just the average college kid, the one with a bland life. You weren’t exactly the most social person and tended to just stay as a background character. While everyone talked about their random useless life dilemmas, you were always there in the background judging them. “No wonder I never had friends...” you thought.

In this world, the quirk you manifest decides your entire life. In your case, it made your life an utter hell. Your quirk allowed you to read minds. Honestly, it was out of your control. You could hear what everyone was thinking at all times. Your head was always full of chaos due to being exposed to the internal thoughts of everyone around you. Sometimes, you wondered if being quirkless was a better option. Thanks to your quirk, you realised early on that the world was an unfair place to live in. Everyone had their dirty secrets and everyone would put themselves over others. In this hero society, one would assume that there were people who put others over themselves. However, the truth was far from that. Heroes were just as deplorable. It seemed as if all they cared about was their ranking and popularity. The child in you wanted to change this. The child in you wanted to become a hero.

You didn’t get into UA thanks to their botched up grading system and ended up graduating from a regular hero school. The child in you grew up and realised how hopeless the entire situation was. You were always a top student since you were able to predict anyone’s attack and act accordingly. Hence, you easily became a victim to your classmates jealousy. Years of knowing everyone’s negative thoughts on you took a toll on you. After the incident with Stain, the thin thread holding you together snapped and you found yourself in a room full of your dead classmates.

You did the only thing that seemed like the best possible option after murdering your entire class. You joined the league of villains. Slowly, but surely, with time, you understood that Stain's ideology was flawed as well. After all, everyone liked eliminating whatever they didn’t like. Stain hated the hero society while your new boss, Shigaraki Tomura hated the world. You realised that even you were no different. You hated being stuck in this never-ending cycle of hate. You wanted to be free of the unfairness of society. And to be free, one must first destroy the society and hence the world.

To no one’s surprise, you bonded with your boss over this ideology. After all, you knew him better than anyone else since you could hear everything in his mind. Everyone else in your team failed to realise the flaws in Stain's methods and Shigaraki found potential in you since you were the only one beside him who understood. It all started with having a drink with him at the bar and before you knew it, you found yourself playing his RPG games with him in his room.

Shigaraki Tomura needed someone who could keep him grounded. Thanks to all the trauma he went through in his early life, he was prone to having panic attacks whenever something went slightly wrong. He needed someone who made him feel safe, someone who could handle him. It turned out that the “someone” ended up becoming you. It would be a lie if you said that you didn’t feel the same way. You could hear the way he appreciated your existence in his life, exactly how much he cared about you and even the sudden dirty thoughts that crossed his mind on you. You would be lying if you said that you didn’t think of the exact same things.

However, neither of you acted on your feelings, both knowing that something so delicate shouldn’t exist in this cruel world. Everything was okay the way it was. Both of you were content with the friendship you had. That was until All For One was defeated. That day, the both of you realised that what you had wasn’t enough. You both wanted, no, needed more. There was no guarantee that the both of you would live your whole lives from this point and you had to make the most of whatever time you had left together. It was funny how the quirk that made you regret living was the one that made you kiss him when he was too afraid to make the first move.

Ever since the hideout was overrun by heroes, the League ended up moving to random abandoned buildings. It happened right after the League settled in the first abandoned house they could find. Shigaraki was clearly shaken by the loss of his “master” and no one wanted to deal with him at the moment. Hence, the two of you were sitting on the roof of the building, looking at the star filled sky when you suddenly heard his mind wonder, “Her lips look soft... I kinda wanna kiss her...”

And thus, you made his wish come true. Both of you were young adults with raging hormones and hence, the kiss extended to gentle touches and much more. Soon, your clothes were off and so were his. His touches were careful as if one wrong move would make him lose you, even if he was wearing a pair of artist’s gloves. His mind was an insecure mess when you kissed his scars and the scabs on his neck from obsessive scratching. Yet, you held him, whispering sweet nothings into his ears, making the insecurities go away.

You loved him for too long. He, unlike the rest of the world never lied. He spoke his mind, he did whatever he thought was right. He saw the world as it is, just a fucked up game and you admired him for it. He influenced you more than any hero ever could and you needed him. He made your opinions feel valid, he made you have faith in a better future, the one where the world would be free of all societal beliefs. A world where everyone will be free. Which is why, when he worshipped your body, taking your virginity from you under the starry skies with the amount of gentleness unexpected from someone who could kill without remorse, you found yourself falling for him even further. After all, it couldn’t be helped. Looking up at him as the two of you cuddled together, you saw beauty in his scarred face and cruelty in the starry skies.

#shigaraki tomura #boku no hero academia shigaraki #shigaraki × reader #my hero academia shigaraki #shigaraki fluff #shigaraki smut #bnha shigaraki #tomura × reader #boku no hero academia tomura #tomura shigaraki #tomura smut

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femalechibiblogger · 4 years

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Top 5 Police/Detective Anime

1. Death Note

A shinigami, as a god of death, can kill any person—provided they see their victim's face and write their victim's name in a notebook called a Death Note. One day, Ryuk, bored by the shinigami lifestyle and interested in seeing how a human would use a Death Note, drops one into the human realm. High school student and prodigy Light Yagami stumbles upon the Death Note and—since he deplores the state of the world—tests the deadly notebook by writing a criminal's name in it. When the criminal dies immediately following his experiment with the Death Note, Light is greatly surprised and quickly recognizes how devastating the power that has fallen into his hands could be. With this divine capability, Light decides to extinguish all criminals in order to build a new world where crime does not exist and people worship him as a god. Police, however, quickly discover that a serial killer is targeting criminals and, consequently, try to apprehend the culprit. To do this, the Japanese investigators count on the assistance of the best detective in the world: a young and eccentric man known only by the name of L.

2. Paranoia Agent

The infamous Shounen Bat (Lil' Slugger) is terrorizing the residents of Musashino City. Flying around on his rollerblades and beating people down with a golden baseball bat, the assailant seems impossible to catch—much less understand. His first victim, the well-known yet timid character designer Tsukiko Sagi, is suspected of orchestrating the attacks. Believed only by her anthropomorphic pink stuffed animal, Maromi, Tsukiko is just one of Shounen Bat's many victims. As Shounen Bat continues his relentless assault on the town, detectives Keiichi Ikari and Mitsuhiro Maniwa begin to investigate the identity of the attacker. However, more and more people fall victim to the notorious golden bat, and news of the assailant begins circulating around the town. Paranoia starts to set in as chilling rumors spread amongst adults and children alike. Will the two detectives be able to unravel the truth behind Shounen Bat, or will the paranoia get to them first?

3. B: The Beginning

On the islands of Cremona, a vigilante runs amok. Celebrated by some and hunted by others, the notorious "Killer B" takes justice into his own hands, armed with a sharp blade and superhuman abilities. Unable to apprehend this renegade, the Royal Investigation Service (RIS) calls upon the expertise of Keith Flick, a seasoned, yet eccentric detective who was relegated to the Archives Department following a personal loss. As crimes in Cremona begin to escalate, from stealthy executions of wrongdoers to sophisticated strikes on public figures, it soon becomes clear that there is more than one person responsible. With the help of his impulsive sidekick Lily Hoshina, and unexpected aid from the elusive Killer B himself, Keith begins to unravel plots involving secret organizations, domestic terrorism, and human experiments. When the involvement of the RIS extends beyond the scope of justice, the extent of the government's corruption—as well as the trustworthiness of close allies—are thrown into question.

4. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney

Since he was a child, Ryuuichi Naruhodou's dream was to become a defense attorney, protecting the innocent when no one else would. However, when the rookie lawyer finally takes on his first case under the guidance of his mentor Chihiro Ayasato, he realizes that the courtroom is a battlefield. In these fast paced trials, Ryuuichi is forced to think outside the box to uncover the truth of the crimes that have taken place in order to prove the innocence of his clients. Gyakuten Saiban: Sono "Shinjitsu", Igi Ari! follows Ryuuichi as he tackles cases to absolve the falsely accused of the charges they face. It will not be easy—standing in his path is the ruthless Reiji Mitsurugi, a prosecutor who will stop at nothing to hand out guilty verdicts. With his back against the wall, the defense attorney must carefully examine both evidence and witness testimony, sifting through lies to solve the mystery behind each case. With a shout of "objection!," the battle in the courtroom begins!

5. You’re Under Arrest

Tokyo Highway Patrolwomen Natsumi and Miyuki get off to a bad start when Miyuki busts Natsumi for reckless moped driving on her way to work. Things get worse when they find out they're going to be partners! A continuation of the OVA series, the adventures of Tokyo policewomen Natsumi and Miyuki continue in the You're Under Arrest TV series. It's back to Bokuto Precinct, where demented felons and bashful (but hunky) policemen abound, and where the cutest girl in the office... isn't a girl.

#anime #top 5 list #death note #paranoia agent #b: the beginning #phoenix wright #you're under arrest #police #detective #Top List

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destinychose · 4 years

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What’s something that absolutely disgusts Kyojuro ( can be a person, place, thing, etc )?

Nothing disgusts or angers Kyojuro more than the complete disregard for human life that appears to be rampant within demons ( and in some humans too ). They readily put an end to innocent lives without a second thought or ounce of respect and express little to no remorse about it. Kyojuro’s entire philosophy and motivation for being a Demon Slayer are centred around the protection of these innocent, weaker people who may fall prey to a demon’s gluttonous appetite.

How passionate is Kyojuro about the things he loves most?

Kyojuro exudes passion and enthusiasm in every little thing he does, from training and cooking to even the simplest of things like eating and basic conversation. From a very young age, he became aware of how his expression and general demeanour can affect the mood of those around him, even in the most subtle of ways, and decided to use it to his advantage in his ultimate goal ( as a person of strength ) to protect those weaker than himself. Even in the face of danger, he swore to himself that he would always wear a smile to lessen the burden of those afraid or in peril.

However, when it comes to things he is truly, privately passionate about, Kyojuro can be surprisingly quiet — such as his fondness for calligraphy and cooking. He holds a bright passion for his swordsmanship, having taught himself how to properly utilise Breath of Flames more or less of his own volition. He takes great pride in his abilities and is confident about how he utilises them, though not to the point of boasting.

How much does it take for Kyojuro to hate someone?

Typically, it takes a lot for Kyojuro to feel true hatred for someone. Insults, harsh words, raised voices and dismissal of his presence are all things that leave him unfazed ( a lot of this due to the fact that he had to deal with many of these things after his mother died and his father fell into depression, lashing out at those around him ). Kyojuro is patient and kind, perhaps to a fault, willing to look past the bad and believe in the good of others. He seeks to teach, nurture, aid and support those around him, and once he has made it his mission to help someone, he is relentless. No matter the difficulties, he won’t stop until he’s seen things through.

The only thing that is likely to spark negative feelings within him is the mistreatment of people unable to stand up for themselves or those he considers close friends or family. He is fiercely protective of people as a whole, but especially so in regards to those he cares for. Disregarding their autonomy, disrespecting their strength, sullying their honour or badmouthing their personality are all things that will garner an intense negative response from Kyojuro. Continued and repetitive disrespect of such things will certainly earn his hatred.

However, when demons are involved, it’s an entirely different story — years of fighting against them, bearing witness to the atrocities they’ve committed and the innocent lives they’ve stolen away has conditioned his response to their existence to be immediate disgust and dislike ( in Akaza’s case, outright hatred due to his deplorable worldview and clear disregard for those weaker than him that clashed with his own ). His reaction to Nezuko’s existence and Tanjiro’s protection of her is evidence of this, however, once he witnessed Nezuko’s determination to protect humans despite her demonic status, Kyojuro realised his views could no longer officially apply to every demon and willingly accepted her and Tanjiro as true members of the Demon Slayer Corps.

What sorts of things might remind Kyojuro of those close to him? Any scents, objects, sounds?

The scent of fresh linen and sweet, floral perfume offers Kyojuro an instant reminder of his mother, Ruka. His memories of her are amongst his most precious, as her words of encouragement helped to mould his worldview and set him on his path towards becoming a Pillar. Similarly, whenever he encounters those “weaker” than himself, he’s reminded of his mother’s words and the importance of his status as Pillar.

There are too many things to list in regards to what reminds Kyojuro of his younger brother, Senjuro, as he thinks of him often and fondly. Even the smallest of things can spark a sudden reminder, especially if it’s something he thinks Senjuro would like or enjoy. He’s immensely proud of his younger brother and wants nothing more than to support him in his every endeavour, as well as offer comfort as any older brother would.

Over the years since his mother’s death, alcohol ( the smell of, the sight of ) has come to serve as a reminder of his father, Shinjuro. While he still loves and respects his father a great deal, understanding the root of his anger and hopelessness, he finds it difficult to forgive his father’s habit of drowning himself in his loss and finding comfort at the bottom of the bottle, leaving his younger brother to care for the estate while he’s away on missions or attending to his duties as a Pillar. His attempts to garner praise and make his father proud have often fallen short, but it does little to dampen his passion.

#* muse. rengoku kyojuro ／ headcanon #alcoholism tw /

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migleefulmoments · 4 years

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how entertainment media works

People Magazine exists to make money. Period. They make money by selling ads. In the print magazine that means literal print ads. They sell subscriptions because each subscription is a guarantee to their advertisers that X number of people will see their ad. The more people subscribed -the more money they can charge. With the website, the ads are clickable links but even if you don’t click the ad, they want to keep you clicking on People stories as long as possible because you see more ads.

Ok, so now we know what motivates them when they are writing stories-MONEY. They need to produce content to make money and they need to produce content that people are interested in aka the hottest stars and hottest shows, stars and their families, the most screwed up stars and reality stars, murder, death, and feel good stories compromise People’s formula.

Hollywood is a no-brainer for them to cover because Patti LuPone, Ryan Murphy, Jeremy Jordan, Darren Criss, Rob Reiner, and lots of beautiful people. So they do a cute story with Darren. The world is in quarantine so shows aren’t being made and nobody is walking red carpets or attending galas and celebs are staying home. They can’t do photoshoots and they aren’t hearing about big breakups because people aren’t out and about. They have very little to cover right now and everyone is looking for feel good stories. Darren’s first anniversary just passed, everything Darren has said publicly since his wedding has been about how happy he is being married and how much he loved the wedding. IDK whether it came up in the conversation or Darren was asked about his marriage, but they got some good quotes that make a great happy story and they got another page of content during the Covid shutdown. Most fans love seeing stories about celeb’s personal lives (even if their significant other has “No claim to fame”) so the story will be popular which all together make the story a no-brainer.

The clickable links to old stories are to keep you clicking. The more Darren stories they can put in front of your eyes the longer they may keep you on People’s website looking at those ads.

Darren’s team isn’t planting the Mia stories and the old recommended stories- anyone suggesting that sounds like a complete loon- in fact, they sound like the “‘Merica Freedom” people protesting the lockdown by congregating at the state Capitol- INSANE. The crisscolfer storyline is not backed up by any credible evidence- not one shred of evidence just like the protesters who scream “This is a hoax” or better yet “the Democrats did this”. If you are going to stand up and be an asshole over something you now nothing about, at least try to sound educated. Understand of what you speak instead of making it up in your head to be whatever it is you need it to be. ”It will miraculously go away” “I hear that bleach kills the virus, are we looking into that as a treatment? You can look into that?” Just like Donald, your sycophants will never tell you how crazy you sound but you both sound like fools.

BTW- Darren and Chris are Also listed as “audience members” on IMBD for Dancing with the Stars so please let that go.

Anonymous asked: Well she hijacked his H/wood press. His dad’s death. And got her fake wedding published in a major magazine along with an article about her fake life. Life goal achieved. Can he be free now? It boggles the brain that his team was able to get an absolute nobody so much attention and steal his moment. Again. I challenge her fans to ask themselves why this was published. She’s a nobody and not interesting. I was feeling so positive about his press. And then his team attacked.

Cassie Nonnie, it disgusts me on SO many levels. But hey, she got what she ultimately wanted. The same magazine as LM, only 14 months too late. Even if those articles were scheduled to print, when his dad passed, they should have been postponed. Instead, one was literally linked to the article that said he was mourning the loss of his father. Why the hell did they think anyone wanted to read about a person that has no claim to fame outside being a beard for a celebrity?

The article about her fabulous made up career is just sad. How is anyone supposed to take you seriously when you quit every job you’ve ever had handed to you, or they simply take it from you because you suck so much at it? Or when you have an IMBD page that lists you as an audience member for a reality dance competition show? Her whole existence is a bad joke. Which would be fine, if she was even a halfway decent person. She’s not. She’s like a negative postal worker. Nothing stops them, not snow, not wind, nor sleet, nor hail, nor a deadly virus. In her case, nothing stops her narcissism, not a fake resume, not a “husband” that refuses to willingly touch her, or makes his feelings of disgust clear, not a “mother in law” that expresses a desire to attend an awards show with her famous son, not even the death of her “father in law.” Her complete lack of compassion is incomprehensible. Even most of her paid friends posted messages of love and respect for his dad. What did she do? Made sure, once again, that it’s all about HER. She couldn’t have HER red carpet moments to be an utter embarrassment for HW, so she settled for pap walks and making his father dying about her and her awful party, finding a way to make herself the victim that sacrificed everything to stand by D’s side when he was chasing his dream and ignoring her, oh, and as an added bonus, they changed the fucking timeline AGAIN.

Was this harsh? Yes. Do I give a fuck? No. It’s inconceivable to me that you could take one of the worst things to happen to someone and make it about you.

chrisdarebashfulsmiles If a pandemic is not enough to make us think we are in a very absurd time, we have p/eople, in the most wrong time publishing articles ( work ethic for the love of God...it's possible to postpone something if the time is wrong) that instead of talking about works, makes the wedding like a life goal more important than everything else. I saw a scanned page, I refuse to give a visit to them.

I would like to say to team shit that this is the wrong way to work on the reputation of a client. Because, D is your client, not the wife.

Technically speaking, about her they are doing good, if we put aside the timeline. We are the problem, because we care only about him.

Source: chrisdarebashfulsmiles

Anonymous asked: But honestly it's been a year! A YEAR! How many more times are they gona mention he's married.. they even went back to the en/cagement thays was two years ago! This is the entertainment news .. this sorta news becomes old within a month.. I would this is ridiculous but it's been ridiculous for some time now

Cassie: Nonnie, technically, it’s been a little more than 14 months, and as it’s the only thing she has right now, that’s why we’re seeing this push. She wanted her pictures in that particular magazine and she finally made it happen. Congratulations PBB, you win the most pathetic existence award.

Anonymous asked: I find it appalling that some news articles acknowledging the passing of Bill Criss, a respected family man, devote so much space to promote the marriage and career of his daughter in law. A shameful grab for publicity at such a sad time

Cassie: Nonnie, it’s deplorable. Anything written right now should be about his new project dropping tomorrow or a condolence piece about his dad, who accomplished so much and no one has a single thing to say about the man that isn’t a glowing endorsement of how wonderful he was. Yet we get article after article, no doubt approved and encouraged by his shit team, about a lazy nobody with a work ethic that can only be measured in negative numbers. This is not the time.

#crisscolfer #darren criss #People magazine #cc #ccer

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destinychose-a · 5 years

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What’s something that absolutely disgusts Kyojuro ( can be a person, place, thing, etc )?

How passionate is Kyojuro about the things he loves most?

How much does it take for Kyojuro to hate someone?

What sorts of things might remind Kyojuro of those close to him? Any scents, objects, sounds?

There are too many things to list in regards to what reminds Kyojuro of his younger brother,Senjuro, as he thinks of him often and fondly. Even the smallest of things can spark a sudden reminder, especially if it’s something he thinks Senjuro would like or enjoy. He’s immensely proud of his younger brother and wants nothing more than to support him in his every endeavour, as well as offer comfort as any older brother would.

#* ✦ . KYOJURO / HEADCANON.#long post /#( reposting a bunch of headcanons from @wieldbrave uwu )

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isaacgadflee · 6 years

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Liberalism and Free Speech

They say the left stiffles speech because they silence facts that are offensive. Ignoring the fact that it is many of the leftists in the universities uncovering this putatively dangerous knowledge.

Yet, they don’t care that the right doesn’t allow for the criticism of America and it’s history. The right doesn’t allow criticism of Christianity. The right doesn’t allow for criticism of the second amendment. The right doesn’t allow for criticism of the pledge or the national anthem. The right doesn’t allow for criticism of capitalism. The right doesn’t allow for criticism of the military and soldiers. Most certainly, the right doesn’t allow for discussion of late term abortions and using stem cells for scientific research, some on the right have even gone as far as to make fake videos to slander Planned Parenthood.

Now if you’re thinking, “I’ve seen people on the right entertain these types of conversations,” then I agree. But, does the vast majority of the right clutch their pearls and disparage people for sharing views hostile towards their position on these topics? They most certainly do. Discussing these things brings with it social consequences from people who identify as being on the right. When people criticize the left for interfering with speech they’re not saying every left wing individual wants to silence them, they’re saying there exists a significant portion that tries to silence them with social consequences. The right does this all the time!

The right wing right now is trying to use abortion legislation to attack the left. The right wing is attempting to create a narrative around healthcare as the government take over and the loss of freedom to attack the left. The right wing in constantly creating a narrative that the left wing wants to take away all their guns to attack the left — to silence people who want to have a real debate about gun rights. Does anyone remember the claim that “black lives matter” is a racist slogan and the subsequent burning of Nike shoes? These are efforts to discourage people from speaking out against those things which the right wing values.

The only real difference so far as I can tell is that there’s more of us on the left, so our voice is louder and more powerful. And, I honestly think that that is why they are so up in arms about “free speech.” I say it all the time, and I’ll say it again, they don’t really care about free speech, they want to speak free of criticism.

If they cared about free speech, why don’t they ever bring up the cases of left wingers being silenced? Because they don’t care. They only care about free speech issues in so much as it impacts them, and I would argue that they’re waving the flag of free speech when what they’re really discussing is criticism and protests, which are in fact exercizes of free speech.

Furthermore, consider this, who on the left is advocating the banning of speech? Where are they? What’s their movement? Who is leading them?

It’s just not a real issue. The left isn’t trying to use government to silence anyone’s speech. They are exercizing their own speech through protest. If that offends you or makes you afraid to speak, let’s be honest, you’re the one who wants to silence them. This is a classic case of Nietzsche’s ressentiment. You’re mad that they have the power to achieve their goals, and you don’t have the power to retaliate effectively.

The etymology of liberal is it is derived from the word liberty — freedom. I would argue that anyone who truly wants to silence other people and take away their right to speak freely is not a liberal. The constitution was written by James Madison who was inspired by the work of John Locke, the father of liberalism.

There certainly exist individuals who want to end people’s right to speak about certain things, but they exist on the left and the right. However, there cannot be anyone who is a liberal that also wishes to end a person’s ability to express any idea they wish because that isn’t liberalism. Yet, if a person wants to express that they find someone else’s views deplorable that is well within their freedom of speech to do so, and if you really believe in the freedom of speech you must believe in it even for your detractors.

#conservatives #politics #government #liberals #free speech warrior #free speech #first amendment #usa #usg #us constitution #philosophy #fsw #sjw #social justice warrior #snowflakes #pc #pc culture #cultural marxism

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cumhellorhighwater · 3 years

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"What is this 'I'? If you analyse it closely you will, I think, find that it is just a little bit more than a collection of single data (experiences and memories), namely the canvas upon which they are collected. And you will, on close introspection, find that what you really mean by 'I' is that ground-stuff upon which they are collected. You may come to a distant country, lose sight of all your friends, may all but forget them; you acquire new friends, you share life with them as intensely as you ever did with your old ones. Less and less important will become the fact that, while living your new life, you still recollect the old one. 'The youth that was I', you may come to speak of him in the third person, indeed the protagonist of the novel you are reading is probably nearer to your heart, certainly more intensely alive and better known to you. Yet there has been no intermediate break, no death. And even if a skilled hypnotist succeeded in blotting out entirely all your earlier reminiscences, you would not find that he had killed you. In no case is there a loss of personal existence to deplore. Nor will there ever be."

- Erwin Schrödinger

#quotes

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argyrocratie · 6 years

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Malatesta on Regicide

Translated from “La tragedia di Monza,” Cause ed Effetti, 1898–1900 (London), September 1900. This was a one-off publication that meant to provide an anarchist perspective on the killing of King Humbert I by the anarchist Gaetano Bresci, which occurred in Monza on 29 July 1900. The title translates as “causes and effects,” and the date range that follows provides the key to the title: 1898 was the year of the bread riots that tragically ended in May with the cannon shots by which the troops of general Bava Beccaris killed hundreds of workers in Milan. A few weeks later, King Humbert conferred a decoration to the general for his services rendered “to the institutions and to civilization.” That was the cause. Bresci’ s bullets, by which he avowedly intended to avenge theMilan bloodshed, were the effect.

Another act of bloodshed has come along to cast a pall over sensitive souls... andto remind the mighty that placing oneself above the people and riding roughshodover the great precept of equality and human solidarity is not without its risks.

Gaetano Bresci, worker and anarchist, has killed Humbert the king. Two men: one prematurely dead, the other condemned to a life of torments a thousand times worse than death! Two families plunged into grief!

Where does the blame lie?

Whenever we criticize established institutions and point out the unspeakable pain and countless deaths they cause, we never fail to caution that such institutions are harmful, not just to the broad proletarian masses thrust into poverty , ignorance, and all the other woes that spring of them, but also to the very privileged minority that suffers,physically and morally , from the tainted environment that it conjures up and that lives in constant fear of the people’ s wrath making it pay a high price for itsprivileges.

Whenever we look forward to redemptive revolution, we are always talking about the benefits for all men without distinction; and we mean that, regardlessof the competing interests and party loyalties by which they are divided today ,they should all set aside hatred and resentments and join as brothers in sharedstriving for the well-being of all.

And every time that capitalists and governments perpetrate some extraordinarily criminal act, every time that innocents are tortured, every timethe savagery of the powerful erupts into bloodshed, we deplore that fact, notmerely because of the pain it directly generates and for the trespass against our sense of fairness and mercy , but also on account of the legacy of hatred it leaves in its wake and the seed of vengeance it plants in the minds of the oppressed.

But our warnings go unheeded; on the contrary , they are used as a pretext for persecution.

And then, when the pent-up anger of protracted tortures bursts into a storm, when a man driven to despair or a generous soul moved by the suffering of his brethren and impatient for sluggish justice to arrive, raises an avenging arm and strikes at what he reckons is the cause of the woe, then the guilty parties, the ones responsible… are us.

It is always the lamb that gets the blame!

Nonsensical conspiracies are concocted, we are fingered as a threat to society; they pretend to believe—and maybe some actually do believe—that we are bloodthirsty criminals whose only choice should be between the penitentiary andthe criminal asylum...

Besides, it is only natural that things should be so. In a land where the likes ofCrispi, Rudinì, Pelloux, and all those who have slaughtered and starved thepeople can live free, are powerful and are feted, there can be no place for the likes of us who protest and rebel against massacre and famishment!

But let us leave the incorrigible police personnel to one side; let us leave to one side the interested parties who lie in the full knowledge that they are lying; let us leave aside the cowards who turn on us in order to ward off any blows that might land also upon them—and let us reason for a moment with people of goodfaith and common sense.

***

For a start, let us bring things back into proportion.

A king has been killed; and since a king is, for all that, still a man, that fact is to be deplored. A queen has been made a widow; and since a queen is, for allthat, still a woman, she has our sympathy in her loss.

But why all the brouhaha over the death of one man and over the tears of one woman when the fact that so many men are being killed on a daily basis and so many women left to weep because of wars, accidents at work, revolts crushed bygunshots, and thousands of crimes spawned by poverty , spirit of vengefulness,fanaticism, and alcoholism is accepted as natural?

Why such an outpouring of sentimentality over one particular misfortune when thousands and millions of human beings are perishing of starvation and malaria, to the indifference of those who might have the wherewithal to stop this?

Perhaps it is because, this time, the victims are not vulgar workers, not some nondescript man and woman, but a king and a queen? …

Actually , we take a greater interest in the case and our grief is more poignant, livelier , more authentic, when we are dealing with a miner crushed by a landslide while working and a widow left behind to perish of hunger with her little children!

Nevertheless, the sufferings of royals are human suffering too and are to be deplored. But lamentations are pointless if one does not look into the root causesand try to eliminate them.

***

Who is it that provokes the violence? Who is it that makes it necessary and inescapable?

The entire established social order is founded upon brute force harnessed for the purposes of a tiny minority that exploits and oppresses the vast majority; all of the education delivered to children boils down to an unrelenting paean to brute force; the whole atmosphere in which we live is an unbroken parade of violence, a continual incitement to violence.

The soldier , which is to say the murderer-by-profession, is revered. And most revered of all is the king, whose most distinguishing feature, historically has been that he commands soldiers.

By brute force, the laborer is obliged to suffer the theft of the product of his labors; by brute force, weaker nations are robbed of their independence. The kaiser of Germany urges his troops to give the Chinese no quarter; the British government treats Boers who refuse to bow to the foreign bully as rebels and puts their farms to the torch, hunts down housewives and even pursues noncombatants and re-enacts Spain’ s ghastly feats in Cuba; the Sultan has the Armenians slaughtered by the hundreds of thousands; and the American government massacres the Filipinos, having first cravenly betrayed them. Capitalists send workers to their deaths in the mines, on the railways, in the paddy fields by refusing to make the necessary expenditure on safety at work. They summon in soldiers to intimidate and, if need be, gun down workers calling for better conditions.

Again we ask: from whom, therefore, comes the incitement, the provocation to violence? Who is it that makes violence look like the only way out of the existing state of affairs, the only means whereby one may not be eternally subjected to the violence of others?

And in Italy , things are worse than elsewhere. The people are perennially hungry; our lordlings are more cavalier than during the Middle Ages; the government competes with the property owners, bleeding the people in order to line the pockets of its favorites and squandering the rest on dynastic ventures; the police have the power of yea or nay over citizens’ freedom, and every cry of protest, every stifled lament is strangled by gaolers and smothered in blood by soldiers.

The list of massacres here is a lengthy one: ranging from Pietrarsa to Conselice, Caltabiano, Sicily , etc.

The king’ s troops massacred the defenseless people just about two years ago; just days ago the king’ s troops afforded the landowners of Molinella the support of their bayonets and their conscript labor against famished, desperate workers.

Who is to blame for the rebellion, who is to blame for the revenge that erupts from time to time: the provocateur , the offender , or the man who denounces the offence and seeks to banish its cause?

But the king is not responsible, they say!

We certainly do not take the farce of constitutional shadow play seriously . The“liberal” newspapers, which now contend that the king is not accountable, were well aware, when it came to themselves, that above parliament and ministers there was a powerful influence, a “higher echelon,” that the king’ s prosecutors would not countenance to be alluded to too bluntly . And the conservatives currently looking forward to a vigorous “new age” from the new king, indicate that they know that—in Italy at any rate—when it comes to identifying responsibility , the king is not the puppet they would have us believe. And besides, even if he does not do the harm directly , any man who fails to prevent it, though is able to do so, is still answerable for it—and the soldier commanding king can always, at the least, stop his soldiers from opening fire on the defenseless populace. And is still responsible if, unable to prevent evils being done, he allows it to be done in his name rather than abjure the benefits of his office.

True, if factors such as heredity , education, ethos are taken into account, the personal responsibility of the mighty is greatly attenuated and may well evaporate altogether . But then, if the king is not answerable for his actions and his omissions—for the people’ s being massacred in his name—and allegedly had to remain in the highest office in the land, why on earth should Bresci be held to account? Why on earth must Bresci pay with a lifetime of unspeakable suffering for one deed that, no matter how wrong-headed one might like to think it, no onecan deny was prompted by altruistic intentions?

But this business of tracing responsibility is of mediocre interest to us.

We are not believers in the right to punish, we repudiate revenge as a barbaric notion; we do not mean to be either executioners or avengers. The calling of liberators and peacemakers strikes us as a holier , nobler , more productive calling.

We would gladly reach out our hand to kings, oppressors, and exploiters just as soon as they made up their minds to be again men like any others, equals surrounded by equals. But for as long as they persist in revelling in the existing order of things and defending it by the use of force, thereby leading to torment, brutalization, and death from exhaustion for millions of human creatures, we need and are obliged to meet force with force.

***

Meet force with force!

Does that mean that we revel in melodramatic conspiracies and are always in the throes of or bent on stabbing some oppressor?

Nothing like that. As a matter of sentiment and principle, we abhor violence and always do whatever we can to avoid it; only the necessity of resisting evil through suitably effective means could induce us to have recourse to violence. We know that such singular acts of violence, in the absence of sufficient preparation by the people, remain futile and indeed, by triggering backlashes against which one cannot stand, they generate incalculable injury to the very cause they were intended to serve.

We know that the essential, incontrovertibly purposeful act lies not in the physical killing of a king but in killing all kings—from courts, parliaments and factories—in the hearts and minds of people; meaning the eradication of belief in the authority principle worshipped by so many of the people.

W e know that the less ripe revolution is, the bloodier and more uncertain it proves to be.

We know that, violence being the font of authority—indeed, at its core, one and the same as the authority principle—the more violent the revolution turns out to be, the greater the risk that it may spawn fresh forms of authority. And so, before deploying the ultimate arguments of the oppressed, we strive to acquire that moral and material strength that is needed to minimize the violence needed to bring down the system of violence to which humanity is presently subjected.

Will we be left in peace to get on with our propaganda work and our organizing and preparations for revolution?

In Italy , they prevent us from speaking, writing, and associating. They ban workers from joining together to struggle peaceably , not just for emancipation but also for the slightest improvement in their uncivilized and inhumane living conditions. Prisons, domicilio coatto, and bloody repressions are the means deployed not just against us anarchists, but against anyone who dares to contemplate a more civilized state of affairs.

Is it any wonder if, having lost all hope of fighting successfully in their own cause, ardent spirits let themselves be swept up into acts of vengeful justice?

***

The police measures that always victimize the least dangerous; the zealous search for non-existing instigators, which looks grotesque to anyone with the slightest grasp of the spirit that prevails among anarchists; and the thousands of farcical extermination schemes advanced by dabblers in police work, all of these serve only to highlight the savagery lurking inside the heads of the ruling classes.

If a bloody revolt by the victims is to be utterly ruled out, there is no course of action except the abolition of oppression by means of social justice.

If eruptions are to be reduced and disarmed, there is no recourse other than to allow everybody freedom to propagandize and organize; for the disinherited, the oppressed, and the discontented to be left the option of civilized campaigning; for them to be afforded the hope that, albeit piecemeal, they might secure their own emancipation by bloodless methods.

The government of Italy will have none of this; it will carry on with its repression... and it will carry on reaping what it sows.

While we deplore the short-sightedness of rulers who make the contest unnecessarily harsh, we shall carry on fighting for a society without violence, in which all will have bread, freedom, and science, and where love is the supreme law of existence.

#Errico Malatesta #anarchism #regicide #Italia #violence #good read

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ailelie · 4 years

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How does it do that?

Poetry uses devices to create effects. “Evolution” by Linda Bierds slays me each time I read it, so let’s look through and see what she’s doing that leads to that effect.

First, right off the bat, we have a lot of assonance and consonance.

How, Alan Turing thought, does the soft-walled, jellied, symmetrical cell become the asymmetrical horse? It was just before dusk, the sun’s last shafts doubling the fence posts, all the dark mares on their dark shadows.

jEllied, symmEtrical, cEll

jUst, dUsk, sUn’s, dOUbling

And look at all those soft Ss: soft, symmetrical, cell, asymmetrical, horse, just, dusk, sun’s, last, shafts, fence, posts, shadows

(The Sh will also continue)

So what does this do?

The repetitious sounds pull a reader in. They create a subtle rhythm.

She also repeats the phrase “It was just”

become the asymmetrical horse? It was just before dusk, the sun’s last shafts doubling the fence posts, all the dark mares on their dark shadows. It was just after Schrodinger’s What is Life, not long before Watson, Franklin, Crick, not long before supper.

Staring these sentences the same way, one before and one after, sets them up as two parts of a whole. The phrases collapse daily and historical time. This creates a very fuzzy sense of time with the only certainty being that we are between moments.

(Note also the repeated image of horse/mare).

supper. How does a chemical soup, he asked, give rise to a biological pattern? And how does a pattern shift, an outer ear Gradually slough its fur, or a shorebird’s stubby beak sharpen toward the trout?

Notice how the S and Sh sounds have been continuing along?

super/soup/asked/slough/stubby shift/shorebird’s/sharpen

We also get the repeated ‘how’ questions.

At this point, it is also important to point out the subject of the poem: Alan Turing. Turing who broke codes and was invested in patterns. Turing who was chemically castrated for being gay. Turing who died of cyanide poisoning and a half-eaten apple. These are all relevant for this poem.

So far, we are focusing on patterns and the question raised via Schrodinger “What is life?”

How do all these cells create life?

Anyway, the next lines go:

He was halfway between the War’s last engimas and the cyanide apple—two bites— that would kill him. Halfway along the taut wires that hummed between crime and pardon, indecency and privacy. How do solutions, chemical, personal, stable, unstable harden into shapes? And how do shapes break?

Again, we have that fuzzy sense of time where we are between moments, just as earlier we were placed between hours and philosophies.

This section alludes to his life and is the first moment I break each time. I think the fuzziness is what does it. She mentions all these landmarks in his life and places him among them so that you know what is coming, but Turing doesn’t. She has created a bit of dramatic irony for us and it hurts to know what he’s survived and what he won’t.

How do solutions, chemical, personal, stable, unstable harden into shapes? And how do shapes break?

Then we get these lines which, when juxtaposed with the allusions to his life, feel like they’re also about his life. (The “personal” suggests this as well). So it feels to me like the question really being asked here is what will break him.

What slips a micro-fissure across a lightless cell, until time and matter double their easy bickering? God? Chance? A chemical shudder? He was happy and not, tired and not, humming a bit with the fence wires. How does a germ split to a self? And what is a—We are not our acts and rememberances, Schrodinger wrote, Should something— God, chance, a chemical shudder?— sever us from all we have been, still it would not kill us.

Those first four lines, until “He was,” go back to the beginning of the poem and question of what life is and how it came to be.

And then the interruption. “And what is a--We are not our acts” and that repeated “God, chance, a chemical shudder.” In the first instance, g/c/cs refers to life beginning. In the second, to life ending.

This is also a key allusion to Turing’s life as he was chemically castrated. A chemical shudder did sever him from what he had been.

It was just before dusk, his segment of earth slowly ticking toward night. Like time, he thought, we are almost erased by rotation, as the dark, symmetrical planet lifts its asymmetrical cargo up to the sunset: horses, ryegrass— In no case, then, is there a loss of personal existence to deplore— marten, whitethroat, blackbird, lark—nor will there ever be.

We’re given a time this time, but without any “after” so we’re no longer between, we’re right before something. Before implies start, but this is before dusk, so we’re starting as the day is ending.

Sunset and night could be death (the erasure by rotation), but nothing he lists has ceased to exist. So it isn’t quite death.

The cell becomes the horse, but the cell isn’t destroyed. It just is now the horse.

“In no case, then, is there a loss of personal existence to deplore [...] nor will there ever be.”

Evolution, as the poem is called, is not loss, only change.

This poem feels like someone trying to comfort themselves into believing that change is not loss.

What do you think?

The repetition keeps the poem moving while each allusion to Turing’s life punches hard. The sudden interruption at one point comes across as desperate and certain to me.

I love this poem.

#poetry

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hillaryisaboss · 7 years

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I hope Hillary includes these key points in her book "What Happened": Hillary Rodman Clinton already made it to the White House twice with her husband, President William Jefferson Clinton. The Clintons don't have anything left to prove. The Clintons left us a surplus and a booming economy (23 million new jobs, 7 million fewer living in poverty, minimum wage up 20%). President Bill Clinton balanced the budget 4-times because he was a great negotiator and a true pragmatist. These days, both the far-left and the far-right hate pragmatists. During the '90s, Hillary helped create the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP -- 8.9 million children insured) and was instrumental in all of Bill’s policy decisions. Many said Hillary was the one who ran the White House during the prosperous 1990s. The Clintons will always be political icons and legends. Two-time winners that won the popular vote for a 3rd straight time. Thanks for leaving our country in such great shape! The 1990s were great. Wish we could have continued our progress with Vice President Al Gore. Unfortunately, in America, we usually switch parties every 8 years no matter what. But just think where we would be on global warming if Vice President Al Gore had won after President Bill Clinton. Sadly, I guess progressives always love screwing us after two-terms of a Democrat -- cue Ralph Nader and Bernie Sanders (spoilers). Obama is lucky he didn't face a far-left opponent, which would have diminished his support among millennials -- a core part of the Democratic coalition missing in 2016. It's as if we don't understand the word "pragmatism" after we've had a Democrat in the White House for 8 years. Remember: Hillary had the most progressive platform of all-time. She would have built on President Obama's progress. Just like Gore would have done in 2000 after Clinton. When will progressives remember history? "Those who don't learn history are doomed to repeat it." ~George Santayana Y'all could have voted for the most progressive platform of all time -- a platform Hillary worked on directly with Bernie Sanders. Yet many of you ultimately voted for Donald Trump. Sexism? Oh and nothing Hillary did with her e-mail server was illegal. Republicans have been manufacturing fake Clinton scandals for decades, even creating a small cottage industry for "Clinton Hate" ($$$). That is why so many Americans chanted "Lock Her Up" at Trump rallies. They have bought into decades of Clinton smears. It’s a clever tactic. Yet Hillary was triumphant and destroyed the false Benghazi witch-hunt during her brilliant 11-hour testimony. No one puts on a show better than a Clinton. Sorry Trump. '90s Bill was awesome. In addition -- the Clinton Foundation provides HIV/AIDS medicine to 11.5 million people, none of the “pay-to-play” accusations has ever been proven (it’s all speculation), and the Uranium Deal is correlated with donations to the Clinton Foundation but not proven to be the causation of the donations. Correlation doesn't equal causation. Again – pay-to-play has never been proven (unlike the Trump Foundation which is, in-fact, guilty of pay-to play in the state of Florida). Meanwhile, the Clinton Foundation has a higher charity rating than the Red Cross. So let us never forget: the Clinton Foundation provides 11.5 million people with HIV/AIDS medication. That amounts to supporting half of all adults and 75% of all children affected by the virus worldwide. Also -- none of Hillary's e-mails were correctly marked as classified at the time they were sent and none were directly sent by Hillary herself (that’s why the FBI ultimately dropped the case). The few e-mails that were classified didn't have the proper markings and were only found in long e-mail chains, never sent by Hillary herself. Having a private server was a mistake, though not illegal. Remember -- it was originally set up for President Clinton. It was never sinisterly set up after Hillary got the job as Secretary of State. It was a pre-existing server that has been proven to be safer than the already hacked government servers. Remember -- Hillary's server was set up for a former President. Talk about a mountain being made out of a mole hill. Ultimately, though, Hillary still beat Trump by 3 million votes and beat Bernie by 4 million votes. 7 million more total votes for Hillary Rodham Clinton. The last two Republican Presidents lost the popular vote – Bush and Trump. Democrats are the majority. Have been since 1992, especially if you consider voter suppression of minorities in red states. Trump was right, however – the electoral college *IS* a rigged system. Republicans can never win both the electoral college *AND* the popular vote. On the contrary, President Bill Clinton and President Obama won both the popular vote *AND* the electoral college. Did I mention Bernie lost the popular vote by 4 million votes? The DNC "corruption" charges don't change the fact that Bernie lost the popular vote by 4 million. 4 million! Maybe his support of the NRA hurt him at the polls? Also -- Bernie half-heartedly campaigned for Hillary and by that point, his most ardent supporters thought Hillary was vile scum. Nothing even Bernie said could change their minds. Some even called Bernie a "sell-out." Unfortunately, Bernie ran a horribly negative campaign towards the end and stayed in the primary for far too long. This delayed Hillary being able to morph into general election mode, and required Hillary to do a ton of repair work. I guess I'll never understand why Bernie supporters couldn't just vote for the platform -- for a chance to finally have two consecutive Democratic Administrations. Naive? Oh and can you imagine the field day Fox News would have had with Socialist Sanders, his rape essay's, and the fact he wanted to raise taxes on everyone to pay for moochers to go to college? Middle America never would have gone for that, either. Interestingly, the Clintons pay a higher tax-rate than Bernie -- 35.% vs. 13%. Who truly is the corrupt one? Plus -- Bernie couldn't show us how he was going to pay for any of his plans (as Bill used to say -- we need some "arithmetic!"). Oh and good luck getting a GOP Congress to pass his Socialist budget. A real revolution is 60 Democratic votes in Congress. But Bernie spends all his time demonizing us and our party. Who let him in...? Yet despite Bernie-mania demonizing Hillary for playing the game and winning (Nader 2.0), suffering highly personal attacks from Trump (bringing Bill's accusers to the 2nd debate -- though Bill has never faced a conviction/affairs are different than rape), blatant sexism from everyone (even subconscious), fake Benghazi and e-mail “scandals,” the racist Obama backlash ("deplorables" -- Hillary was right!), the trend of one party only staying in power for a max of two-terms (8 years), Brexit (making Trump a very strong candidate contrary to popular brief -- exploiting racism/propaganda/nationalism), the media claiming a false equivalence between Hillary's negatives and Trump's negatives for ratings, and Russia targeting Middle America with “fake news,” Hillary was *STILL* riding high in the polling after her 3 debate dominations. Then... Comey re-opened the Clinton e-mail case right at the very last minute. I remember looking at the photo of Hillary receiving the news on her plane. I thought -- is this the moment Hillary lost the election? It was. So I guess I don't understand why people don't just come out and say the 2016 election was stolen from Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton. Are people afraid to? Because I'm not. Ironically, the official reason Trump gave for firing James Comey was his malpractice in regards to the Clinton e-mail case -- the very thing that won Trump the election. The re-opening of the e-mail case came after the Trump Access Hollywood tape, switching the headlines from negative Trump headlines to negative Clinton headlines. The re-opening of the e-mail case caused many voters that were inclined to vote for Hillary to just stay home on Election Day. It depressed Hillary's turnout. So did the fact that everyone thought Hillary was going to win. Many assumed Hillary would win and therefore didn’t vote. Were they totally wrong in their assumption? No. Why? Because Hillary won the popular vote by 3 million (and no, it wasn't because of illegals voting, you right-wing conspiracy theory nuts). Despite literally *EVERYTHING* thrown at her, Hillary was still polling high at the very end due to her 3 debate dominations. But Comey screwed her at the very last minute -- the ultimate "October Surprise." Oh and remember: Comey was already in the midst of the Trump-Russia investigation, but chose not to publicly comment on that investigation. Yet he publicly commented on the re-opening of the Clinton e-mail investigation? Double standard? Malpractice? Trump seems to think so based on the fact that he fired Comey over his handling of the Clinton e-mail case. However, Hillary truly is forever the "People's President" -- 3 million more total votes. Never forget: Trump deeply resents and hates that he lost the popular vote. It delegitimizes him. He's a big numbers guy. So always bring up his popular vote loss. It infuriates him. It also appears Hillary's themes of "Love Trumps Hate" and "Stronger Together" actually made for a brilliant strategy that received more total votes. By the millions. I don't buy the argument that her political framing was off. In fact -- I think her slogans were right-on the money. Perfect in an election facing a propaganda artist and ultimate con-man like Donald J. Trump. A man who relied on hate, fear, division, scapegoating, nationalism, and propaganda to win the electoral college (ie: Middle America). Furthermore, Hillary was the first person to correctly point out Trump's reckless temperament, something we are currently suffering from right now in regards to North Korea. "A man you can bait with a tweet is not a man we can trust with nuclear weapons." ~Hillary Rodham Clinton Unfit. Unqualified. I also loved the fact that Hillary called out his dog-whistling to racists. She was the first high-profile person to do so in no uncertain terms. Trump not only loves the support of white racists, he emboldens them. Maybe that's why he was sued by the Justice Department in the 1970s for housing discrimination against African American. He's a racist. Sadly, everything Hillary predicted and warned us about Trump is coming to fruition. Is it still "too negative" for you if everything Hillary said about Trump comes true within his first 6 months? Though I still fundamentally believe that "Love Trumps Hate" and that we are, in-fact, "Stronger Together." I think those slogans are why people felt so awful on Election Day -- *HATE* won based on an outdated election system. Oh and the fact that lots of people that should have voted stayed home. Guilt is a very powerful emotion (Bernie-Bro's, I'm looking at you!) Get rid of the electoral college. It has cost us 2 elections in 20 years. Gore received 500,000 more votes than Bush. Hillary received 3 million more votes than Trump. (Oh, and it would have come down to more than just Michigan and Wisconsin -- another state would still be needed) Hillary also doesn't get the credit she rightfully deserves: Youngest lawyer ever appointed to an impeachment trial -- 27-year-old Yale Law graduate Hillary Rodham. Watergate. Children's Defense Fund: Investigated African American juveniles being placed in South Carolina adult prisons, and posed as a racist housewife to expose segregation throughout schools in the South. First Lady of Arkansas: Hillary successfully reformed the entire K-12 Arkansas educational system, expanded healthcare for those in rural Arkansas, worked at the Arkansas Children's Hospital Legal Services, and co-founded the Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families. First female partner of the Rose Law Firm. The joke in Arkansas was that they "hired the wrong Clinton." First Lady of the United States: Hillary spearheaded the Adoption and Safe Families Act, the Foster Care Independence Act, Office on Violence Against Women, the Campaign Against Teenage Pregnancy (lowering abortion and teenage pregnancy rates), and the Children's Health Insurance Program -- providing 8.9 million low-income children with healthcare access. In 1994, Hillary proclaimed on the world stage in Beijing, China: "If there is one message that echoes forth from this conference, let it be that human rights are women's rights and women's rights are human rights once and for all." Two-time New York Senator: Hillary secured 20 billion in federal funds to rebuild downtown New York City after 9/11. She also secured healthcare for 9/11 First Responders and expanded access to care for the National Guard, Reservists, and their families. U.S. Secretary of State: Passed the first-ever U.N Resolution on gay rights (proclaiming "human rights are gay rights and gay rights are human rights" on the world stage) and made it so trans Americans could legally change their gender on their passport. Hillary also rebuilt relations with every nation after the disastrous Bush Administration, traveling to 112 countries -- more than any other Secretary of State. Our worldwide favorability rose 20% during Hillary's tenure. Her primary focus was on women's rights, bringing up issues such as forced abortion and maternal mortality rates. Hillary re-opened relations with Burma, enacted a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, and killed Osama Bin Laden. She also was instrumental in putting together the Paris Climate Agreement, something Trump has since removed us from. Inspirational Hillary quotes: “I’m not going to mislead anybody. Politics is really hard. And it is harder for women. There’s a double standard, and you can’t complain about it. You just have to accept it, and be smart enough to navigate it. And you have to have a pretty tough skin. To paraphrase a favorite quote from Eleanor Roosevelt: If a woman wants to be in politics, she has to have the skin of a rhinoceros. So occasionally I’ll be sitting somewhere and I’ll be listening to someone perhaps not saying the kindest things about me. And I’ll look down at my hand and I’ll sort of pinch my skin to make sure it still has the requisite thickness I know Eleanor Roosevelt expects me to have.” ~Hillary Rodham Clinton "When you stumble, keep faith. And when you're knocked down, get right back up, and never listen to anyone who says you can't or shouldn't go on." ~Hillary Rodham Clinton "I really don't spend a lot of time worrying about what people think about me...I would be totally paralyzed. How could you get up in the morning if you worried about some poll or what somebody said about you? That's giving up power over your life to somebody else, and I don't intend to do that." ~Hillary Rodham Clinton "Every moment wasted looking back keeps us from moving forward. Life is too short, time is too precious, and the stakes are too high to dwell on what might have been." ~Hillary Rodham Clinton Never Forget: The Clintons are 2-time winners and 3-time popular vote victors. Thanks for the surplus! 3 million more votes! Love Trumps Hate! Stronger Together! Currently ordering 50 copies of Hillary's book, "What Happened." #imSTILLwithher

#Hillary Clinton #Bill Clinton #Bernie sanders #what happened #Donald trump

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random-notes-and-jottings · 4 years

Text

How Capitalism Drives Cancel Culture

Beware splashy corporate gestures when they leave existing power structures intact.

The delete button over a tumbrel

Story by Helen Lewis

JULY 14, 2020

GLOBAL

Tumbrels are rattling through the streets of the internet. Over the past few years, online-led social movements have deposed gropers, exposed bullies—and, sometimes, ruined the lives of the innocent. Commentators warn of “mob justice,” while activists exult in their newfound power to change the world.

Both groups are right, and wrong. Because the best way to see the firings, outings, and online denunciations grouped together as “cancel culture,” is not through a social lens, but an economic one.

Take the fall of the film producer Harvey Weinstein, which seems inevitable in hindsight—everyone knew he was a sex pest! There were even jokes about it on 30 Rock! But it took The New York Times months of reporting to ready its first story for publishing; the newspaper was taking on someone with deep pockets and a history of intimidating critics into silence. Then the story went off like a hand grenade. Suddenly, the mood—and the economic incentives—shifted. People who had been afraid of Weinstein were instead afraid of being taken down alongside him.

The removal of Weinstein from his company, and his subsequent conviction for rape, is a good outcome. But the mechanism it revealed is more morally ambiguous: The court of public opinion was the only forum left after workplace protections and the judicial system had failed. The writer Jon Schwarz once described the “iron law of institutions,” under which people with seniority inside an institution care more about preserving their power within the institution than they do about the power of the institution as a whole. That self-preservation instinct also operates when private companies—institutions built on maximizing shareholder value, or other capitalist principles—struggle to acclimatize to life in a world where many consumers vocally support social-justice causes. Progressive values are now a powerful branding tool.

But that is, by and large, all they are. And that leads to what I call the “iron law of woke capitalism”: Brands will gravitate toward low-cost, high-noise signals as a substitute for genuine reform, to ensure their survival. (I’m not using the word woke here in a sneering, pejorative sense, but to highlight that the original definition of wokeness is incompatible with capitalism. Also, I’m not taking credit for the coinage: The writer Ross Douthat got there first.) In fact, let’s go further: Those with power inside institutions love splashy progressive gestures—solemn, monochrome social media posts deploring racism; appointing their first woman to the board; firing low-level employees who attract online fury—because they help preserve their power. Those at the top—who are disproportionately white, male, wealthy and highly educated—are not being asked to give up anything themselves.

Perhaps the most egregious example of this is the random firings of individuals, some of whose infractions are minor, and some of whom are entirely innocent of any bad behavior. In the first group goes the graphic designer Sue Schafer, outed by The Washington Post for attending a party in ironic blackface—a tone-deaf attempt to mock Megyn Kelly for not seeing what was wrong with blackface. Schafer, a private individual, was confronted at the party over the costume, went home in tears, and apologized to the hosts the next day. When the Post ran a story naming her, she was fired. New York magazine found numerous Post reporters unwilling to defend the decision to run the story—and plenty of unease that the article seemed more interested in exonerating the Post than fighting racism. Even less understandable is the case of Niel Golightly, communications chief at the aircraft company Boeing, who stepped down over a 33-year-old article arguing that women should not serve in the military. When Barack Obama, a notably progressive president, only changed his mind on gay marriage in the 2010s, how many Americans’ views from 1987 would hold up to scrutiny by today’s standards? This mechanism is not, as it is sometimes presented, a long-overdue settling of scores by underrepresented voices. It is a reflexive jerk of the knee by the powerful; a demonstration of institutions’ unwillingness to tolerate any controversy, whether those complaining are liberal or conservative. Another case where the punishment does not fit the offense is that of the police detective Florissa Fuentes, who reposted a picture from her niece taken at a Black Lives Matter protest. One of those pictured held a sign reading who do we call when the murderer wear the badge. Another sign, according to the Times, “implied that people should shoot back at the police.” Fuentes, a 30-year-old single mother to three children, deleted the post and apologized, but was fired nonetheless.

In the second group, the blameless, lies Emmanuel Cafferty, a truck driver who appears to have been tricked into making an “okay” symbol by a driver he cut off at a traffic light. The inevitable viral video claimed that this was a deliberate use of the symbol as a white-power gesture, and he was promptly fired. Cafferty is a working-class man in his 40s from San Diego. The loss of his job hit him hard enough that he saw a counselor. “A man can learn from making a mistake,” he told my colleague Yascha Mounk. “But what am I supposed to learn from this? It’s like I was struck by lightning.”

The phrase is haunting—not being racist is not going to save you if the lightning strikes. Nor is the fact that your comments lie decades in the past, or that they have been misinterpreted by bad-faith actors, or that you didn’t make them. The ground—your life—is scorched just the same.

It is strange that “cancel culture” has become a project of the left, which spent the 20th century fighting against capricious firings of “troublesome” employees. A lack of due process does not become a moral good just because you sometimes agree with its targets. We all, I hope, want to see sexism, racism, and other forms of discrimination decrease. But we should be aware of the economic incentives here, particularly given the speed of social media, which can send a video viral, and see onlookers demand a response, before the basic facts have been established. Afraid of the reputational damage that can be incurred in minutes, companies are behaving in ways that range from thoughtless and uncaring to sadistic. For Cafferty’s employer, what’s one random truck driver versus the PR bump of being able to cut off a bad news cycle by saying you’ve fired your “white-supremacist employee”?

Let’s look at another example of how woke capitalism operates. In the aftermath of George Floyd’s death, and the protests that followed, White Fragility, a 2018 book by Robin DiAngelo, returned to the top of The New York Times’s paperback-nonfiction chart. The author is white, and her book is for white people, encouraging them to think about what it’s like to be white. So the American book-buying public’s single biggest response to the Black Lives Matter movement was … to buy a book about whiteness written by a white person.

This is worse than mere navel-gazing; it’s synthetic activism. It risks making readers feel full of piety and righteousness without having actually done anything. Buying a book on white fragility improves the lives of the most marginalized far less than, say, donating to a voting-rights charity or volunteering at a food bank. It’s pure hobbyism.

Why is DiAngelo’s book so popular? Again, look at economics. White Fragility is a staple of formal diversity training, in universities from London to Iowa, and at publications including Britain’s right-wing Telegraph newspaper, as well as The Atlantic. The client list on DiAngelo’s website includes giant corporations such as Amazon and Unilever; nonprofits such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Hollywood Writers Guild, and the YMCA; as well as institutions and governmental bodies such as Seattle Public Schools, the City of Oakland, and the Metropolitan Council of Minneapolis.

In the United States, diversity training is worth $8 billion a year, according to Iris Bohnet, a public-policy professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School. And yet, after studying programs in both the U.S. and post-conflict countries such as Rwanda, she concluded, “sadly enough, I did not find a single study that found that diversity training in fact leads to more diversity.” Part of the problem is that although those delivering them are undoubtedly well-meaning, the training programs are typically no more scientifically grounded than previous management-course favorites, such as Myers-Briggs personality classifications. “Implicit-bias tests” are controversial, and the claim that they can predict real-world behavior, never mind reduce bias, is shaky. A large-scale analysis of research in the sector found that “changes in implicit measures are possible, but those changes do not necessarily translate into changes in explicit measures or behavior.” Yet metrics-obsessed companies love these forms of training. When the British Labour leader, Keir Starmer, caused offense by referring to Black Lives Matter as a “moment” rather than a movement, he announced that he would undergo implicit-bias training. It is an approach that sees bias as a moral flaw among individuals, rather than a product of systems. It encourages personal repentance, rather than institutional reform. Bohnet suggested other methods to increase diversity, such as removing ages and photographs from job applications, and reviewing the language used for advertisements. (Men are more likely to see themselves as “assertive,” she argued.) Here is another option for big companies: Put your money into paying all junior staff enough for them to live in the big city where the company is based, without needing help from their parents. That would increase the company’s diversity. Hell, get your staff to read White Fragility on their own time and give your office cleaners a pay raise.

This, however, would break the iron law of woke capitalism—better to have something you can point to and say “Aren’t we progressive?” than to think about the real problem. Diversity training offers the minimum possible disruption to your power structures: Don’t change the board; just get your existing employees to sit through a seminar.

If this is a moment for power structures to be challenged, and old orthodoxies to be overturned, then understanding the difference between economic radicalism and social radicalism is vital. These could also be described as the difference between identity and class. That is not to dismiss the former: Many groups face discrimination on both measures. Women might not be hired because “Math isn’t for girls” or because an employer doesn’t want to pay for maternity leave. An employer may not see the worth of a minority applicant, because they don’t speak the way the interviewer expects, or that applicant might be a second-generation immigrant whose parents can’t subsidize them through several years of earning less than a living wage.

All this I’ve learned from feminism, where the contrast between economic and social radicalism is very apparent. Equal pay is economically radical. Hiring a female or minority CEO for the first time is socially radical. Diversity training is socially radical, at best. Providing social-housing tenants with homes not covered in flammable cladding is economically radical. Changing the name of a building at a university is socially radical; improving on its 5 percent enrollment rate for Black students—perhaps by smashing up the crazy system of legacy admissions—would be economically radical.

In my book Difficult Women, I wrote that the only question I want to ask big companies who claim to be “empowering the female leaders of the future” is this one: Do you have on-site child care? You can have all the summits and power breakfasts that you want, but unless you address the real problems holding working parents back, then it’s all window dressing.

Along with anti-racism and anti-sexism efforts, LGBTQ politics suffers a similar confusion between economic and social radicalism. The arrival of Pride month brings the annual argument about how it should be a “protest, not a parade.” The violence and victimization of the Stonewall-riot era risk being forgotten in today’s “branded holiday,” where big banks and clothing manufacturers fly the rainbow flag to boost their corporate image. In Britain and the U.S., these corporate sponsors want a depoliticized party—a generic celebration of love and acceptance—without tough questions about their views on particular domestic laws and policies, or their involvement in countries with poor records on LGBTQ rights. Some activists in Britain have tried to get Pride marches to stop allowing the arms company BAE to be a sponsor, given its arms sales to Saudi Arabia, an explicitly homophobic and sexist state. When Amazon sponsored last year’s PinkNews Awards, the former Doctor Who screenwriter Russell T. Davies used his lifetime-achievement-award acceptance speech to tell the retailer to “pay your fucking taxes.” That’s economic radicalism.

Activists regularly challenge criticisms of “cancel culture” by saying: “Come on, we’re just some people with Twitter accounts, up against governments and corporate behemoths.” But when you look at the economic incentives, almost always, the capitalist imperative is to yield to activist pressure. Just a bit. Enough to get them off your back. Companies caught in the scorching light of a social-media outcry are ike politicians caught lying or cheating, who promise a “judge-led inquiry”: They want to do something, anything, to appear as if they are taking the problem seriously—until the spotlight moves on.

Some defenestrations are brilliant, and long overdue. Weinstein’s removal from a position of power was undoubtedly a good thing. But the firing of Emmanuel Cafferty was not. For activists, the danger lies in the cheap sugar rush of tokenistic cancellations. Real institutional change is hard; like politics, it is the “slow boring of hard boards.” Persuading a company to toss someone overboard for PR points risks a victory that is no victory at all. The pitchforks go down, but the corporate culture remains the same. The survivors sigh in relief. The institution goes on.

If you care about progressive causes, then woke capitalism is not your friend. It is actively impeding the cause, siphoning off energy, and deluding us into thinking that change is happening faster and deeper than it really is. When people talk about the “excesses of the left”—a phenomenon that blights the electoral prospects of progressive parties by alienating swing voters—in many cases they’re talking about the jumpy overreactions of corporations that aren’t left-wing at all.

Remember the iron law of woke institutions: For those looking to preserve their power, it makes sense to do the minimum amount of social radicalism necessary to survive … and no economic radicalism at all. The latter is where activists need to apply their pressure.

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buckyismyaesthetic · 7 years

Text

Punk (Chap. 7)

Summary: You’re head over heels for your best friend Bucky and hate the nickname he gave you as it doesn’t exactly scream romance.

Word count: 2510

Warnings: Same as always

A/N: Thank you for all of the feedback again I’m completely blown away. Sorry that tags have been finicky, not sure what tumblr’s deal is lately. I hope you like this chapter, thanks for sticking around!

The crisp, cold air outside the club was a welcoming relief but did little to halt the burning tears cascading down your cheeks or the hot waves of mortification and shame radiating out from deep within your very being. The cold air bit at your nose and throat as you allowed yourself to suck in great gulps in attempts to keep the impending panic attack at bay.

This can’t be happening, this wasn’t supposed to happen. Ethan stood at the curb, attempting to hail a cab while you toiled over your interaction with Bucky. This wasn’t like how it was in the movies. Wasn’t Bucky supposed to be completely awestruck with your transformation? Shouldn’t he have been at a loss for words? Instead he was completely taken aback for all the wrong reasons. He’d looked at you with utter confusion, probably wondering what the hell you were doing in a dress, wearing makeup, sporting heels, like he couldn't believe what he was seeing…and he didn’t like it at all.

Frantic waving pulled you back to reality and you angrily wiped the tears from your face. Ethan managed to nab a taxi and was holding the door for you. You slid all the way over, waiting for Ethan to join you, but he closed the door and leaned in through the open window to ask, “Where you headed?”

“Stark Tower,” you mumbled in confusion….Isn’t he supposed to be coming with me? Isn’t that what this is?

Ethan nodded and relayed the directions to the driver. He then handed the man a crisp twenty dollar bill, telling him to get you there safely. Your stomach dropped. Ethan wasn’t coming with you. He was rejecting you, sending you on your way. You’d misinterpreted everything. The pain from another male dismissal pulled a sob from you.

“Hey, please don’t cry, Y/N,” Ethan said, elbows on the window ledge. “It’ll be okay. This guy’s gonna get you home and you’ll be alright.”

You sniffed and nodded mumbling a thank you for the cab fare. He waved it off. “The least I can do. Feel better.” And then it hit you: he thinks you’re sick or drunk or something.

“Thank you, Ethan.” And you gave him a watery smile. He really was a nice guy; sending you home so you would feel better.

He laughed and extended his hand through the window. When his fingers wrapped around yours he tugged your hand to his lips and gave it a quick kiss. “Take care and be safe.” He waved you off and you called out a goodbye as the cab pulled away.

***

Even though Ethan had been wonderfully sweet in getting you home, all you could focus on was the disaster of a night as the cabbie weaved in and out of traffic. Tears fell unimpeded leaving tracks through your makeup and landing in your lap. Bucky’s face swam up in your mind’s eye and his words chanted through your head, “What’s with the getup?” No, ‘you look nice’ or ‘wow’ or anything that sounded remotely like a compliment. Just bewilderment as to why you were wearing something girlie, something that any other woman could wear and look amazing in, and therefore something so completely un-you.

…Why is he even friends with me anyway? That wasn’t the first time the thought had crossed your mind since you’d met James Buchanan Barnes. And the more you dwelled on it over the years, the more concrete your theory became: you just happened to be there when Bucky first became an Avenger. Really. It was that simple.

You weren’t some great beauty or astonishingly proficient spy. Your bank account was downright dismal, the only ‘connection’ you had was that Kenny from Mario’s Pizzeria on 35th and Broadway recognized your voice when you called, and you weren’t even the overall top field agent of your class. Becoming an Avenger had been an accident. They needed a sniper, a long-distance agent, after Clint had been sent on an eight month mission to who-the-hell-knows-where and you were a perfect marksman, they just over looked the fact that your hand-to-hand record was deplorable and if you ever had to run for your life you’d die. When Clint returned you thought you’d get the old-heave-ho to the curb but that never came, they kept you around and you and Clint backed up the rest of the gang, playing games of who could hit the furthest target and running kill tallies, something of which Captain America did NOT approve.

And then Bucky, fresh outta cyro, came and ruined everything. Not really. He just ruined you…with his stupid, perfect face and annoyingly stunning smile, and just being the most amazing person to ever exist on the planet. And he had been an amazing soldier. His record in the Howling Commandos made you drool. In fact, upon finding out that he had been a sniper during the war, on top of his kill record as the Winter Soldier, had you packing you bags before he’d even set foot in the tower. There was no way in hell you could beat that guy in a battle for a spot on the Avengers! It was like challenging Wayne Gretzky to a hockey match or going up against Michael Jordan in a dunking competition! But Bucky didn’t want to be an Avenger. That much was evident when Steve practically dragged him through the tower and introduced him.

As the neon light of New York City flew past the cab’s window in a rainbow blur, you mulled over memories of Bucky…

Steve, like the golden retriever that he was, was bounding with excitement as he introduced his best friend to his team. His smile spread from ear to ear as he babbled on and on about Bucky Barnes, international man of broodiness. Because that’s what Bucky did when he first arrived. He brooded. Grimaced. Glared. Grunted. And sat out of missions and closed himself off from everybody but Steve, who was gradually losing his puppy-like glee, until you finally decided you’d had enough and barged into his room sans invitation, through a rife scope in his lap, and said, “Get your gigantic, melancholic ass outta this room an’ down ta the range this instant or so help me I will put more holes in ya than a slice’a figgin’ Swiss cheese. I am sick and tired of waitin’ around ta get the boot outta here and I’m not leavin’ ‘til I know my replacement is up to scuff.”

And that’s really how it all started. Bucky had seemed taken aback by both your abruptness and confession that you had thought he was there to take your place. But finding out that you were a sniper had given him a reason to talk to someone other than Steve about something other than his feelings or his arm or how weird the world was now. He could talk to you about weapons. So he did. He could debate with you over the best perches, stances, sighting scopes, bullets, and rifles. So he did. And as it normally seems to go, things got easier and a friendship blossomed and eventually you and Bucky could talk about everything and nothing at all.

But, and you often reflected on it sadly, if you hadn’t just happened to be around, to be in his vicinity, and have crippling anxiety that was slowly making you insane with worry as to when you’d be served your termination papers, you probably never would’ve met Bucky. And you didn’t know what would be worse: never having met such a remarkable person? Or going through life knowing that if not for extraordinary circumstances, he wouldn’t be your friend at all…

Your phone jingled and Steve’s name flashed across the screen, pulling you out of your head and back to the world. Saw you leave with some guy…be safe… :) You cringed with embarrassment. Steve actually thought you were gonna get some but that was far from the truth. And you didn’t want to admit it…because you had actually thought the same thing, that you’d successfully gotten a guy to like you, but that wasn’t the case at all. All you'd stirred up in Ethan was pity. Your cheeks burned with humiliation and a heavy weight settled in the middle of your chest, pressing harder and harder against the muscles and bones with each passing moment.

All good. Don’t wait up. ;) God, you felt so fake sending that back. It wasn’t a downright lie but it insinuated that something was going to happen with Ethan when in reality you were going to go back to the tower and ugly cry on the shower floor. It was so deceitful, playing yourself up. And for what purpose? To save face? For who? Nobody but you cared about what did or didn’t happen tonight. You could’ve told Steve the truth, why didn’t you? Why lie? Because I’m a piece of shit and I can’t do anything right.

***

It was just after midnight when the elevator opened. Cinderella’s back. Just as ugly and lame as ever. The ball was awful. The prince didn’t fall for the spell. She still has her shoes; he won’t be forced to come find her. Thankfully, no one else was hanging around the living room. Tony was probably tinkering around upstairs in the lab like he did most nights since Pepper left. The others were asleep, no doubt, in anticipation of their upcoming desert mission. You were all alone to wallow and stew over what had happened in the club.

Taking in a wracking breath you allowed the tears to fall openly as you trudged towards your room with your shoes dangling from your fingers. Loud, hiccoughing sobs escaped into the once silent room as the bedroom door clicked shut behind you. It was all too much. Too humiliating. You’d allowed your hopes to get too high for this little scheme; as if it could really work and Bucky would actually fall for it.

You sunk back against the wall and slid to the floor, wrapping your arms around your knees. Ferdinand chirruped from his nest of blankets and you heard his soft landing as he leapt from the bed and onto the floor to investigate. His whiskers tickled your leg as his cold nose sniffed all of the weird outside smells: perfume, booze, cigarettes, and crisp night air. He eventually squiggled his way to sit in your lap allowing you to wrap your arms tightly around him, wailing into his fur and lamenting about your failed endeavour to be a proper girl.

The worst part was that you naively thought that it would work. That it would be like those movies. Get some new clothes, get a makeover, act like a girl is supposed to act and you’d get the guy. Where had you gone wrong? An entire month’s paycheck had been blown on an overpriced, and frankly uncomfortable, wardrobe and you’d gone and put yourself out there only for it to be dismissed in less than ten seconds. Why didn’t it work?

You banged your head back softly against the wall as you cried. Why? Why? Why? The vibrations must’ve been too intense because suddenly your head was throbbing in pain because all one thousand leather-bound pages of The Chronicles of Narnia had dislodged from the shelf and come tumbling down.

“OW!” you yelped, rubbing your head and sending Ferd scrambling for cover far away from anymore raining literature. “Motherfucker…” you mumbled. And as you looked up at the shelf, seeing all of the fantasy books surrounded by Funko Pop! figures and faded movie posters, it dawned on you: this was the problem. All of this. You had changed everything on the outside but you didn’t change you. You’d only created a façade and , clearly, a poor one at that.

All of this crap. This wasn’t normal. Not for normal girls, anyway. You were too weird, too masculine, too enthusiastic with your interests. Too big. Too ugly. Too odd. Always ‘too much’ in every way…

The makeover and flirting didn’t work because you were still you. …can take the girl outta the fandoms but can’t take the fandoms outta the girl… Of course Bucky wouldn’t be fooled by such a sorry excuse for a transformation! He knew what was underneath it all. He knew about your fandoms, about your day dreams of fictional characters in made up worlds, about your childhood dreams of being a fierce warrior and a swashbuckling pirate off hunting for treasure (no princess fantasies for you!), about your obsessive need to surround yourself with toys and memorabilia from the plethora of films, television shows, comics, and books you drowned yourself in. It was so obvious now how stupid you'd been. For Christ’s sake, you lived with spies! They could see a lie a mile away and yours had been so terribly obvious and poorly constructed that it might as well as had a blinking neon sign point right to it yelling, ‘Fake! Fake! All Fake!’

Wiping at the snot from your nose, you stood up and walked to the bed where you had shed your clothes while getting ready with Wanda earlier in the evening. And there it was, thrown haphazardly on your blanket looking as worn and frayed as always: “Talk Wookie to Me”.

Your lip curled as you looked at it. This. This was the problem! All of this! All of this shit had to go. Bucky didn’t want you and it was all because of this. In that moment that stupid shirt represented everything you despised about yourself. You spun around, glaring at your possessions; they spoiled everything. Things that once brought you comfort in a world that felt alien now made your insides churn with loathing. You couldn't stand the sight of them.

Quickly shedding the dress and the spanx you’d stuffed yourself into underneath, you flung the fabrics against the closet wall and changed into a rarely used over-sized black t-shirt and some sweats. Plain. No graphics or logos. Nothing on them. Nothing. Nothing that could in anyway embarrass you. Tonight, you were convinced, you’d failed at being a real girl. And if that meant you'd be stuck like this. As this—this fat, disgusting—thing—well, that wasn’t acceptable. You wouldn’t be this anymore. You’d be blank. Like the shirt you were wearing. Empty. Void. At least then I won’t be a shameful, ugly, pathetic, lovesick, reject, PUNK! anymore. I’ll just be nothing. Get rid of everything. Hot tears poured down your face. Starting with this.

Snatching up the “Talk Wookie to Me” t-shirt, you marched out of your room with Ferdinand hot on your trail, and out into the kitchen. Balling up the offending fabric between your fists you ripped open the trash can and stuffed the shirt down on top of a day’s worth of discarded food ignoring the cold pang in your chest as you walked away and heard the lid fall shut behind you.

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queensofmystery · 7 years

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Joanlock on their days off

Just a small piece, but not something I would be opposed to continuing

Thank you so much @beanarie for the prompt <3

Joan and Sherlock watching Ladyhawke (because I’m currently watching it to help me calm down—it’s a comfort movie for me)

Having been in his tumultuous teenage years during the 1980s, Sherlock has a soft spot for the movies from that era, unlike the deplorable action movies Joan insists on showing him during those slow afternoons and late nights when neither of them can concentrate enough on other projects.

Ladyhawke however, denotes a special occasion for both of them. Each of them love 80s movies in their own way. Joan, far more informed on pop culture, loves to educate Sherlock where she can. They are also each familiar with the culture of the 80s, though Sherlock’s familiarity is far more shallow and has more to do with political and socioeconomics than celebrities and music artists. Sherlock loves to ruminate on the themes of the films, how they relate to how Western society functioned at the time, their attitudes not only toward crime, but delinquency, rebellion, even love, an emotion he used to abhor but now is learning to understand, if not fully accept as something of value (notably admit that it is of value, he can only deny on the surface that he believes its existence has merit).

Joan also had (has) a shameless crush (legit gay crush) on young Michelle Pfieffer. Sherlock can tell immediately when the actress first comes on screen, by the way Joan’s eyes light up (and pupils dilate) and her hands rest differently in her lap and her cheeks grow slightly (only slightly) pink.

Sherlock’s favorite character is Phillip the Mouse. He admires the young man’s approach to his thievery, even though it involves reliance on speaking to a deity. (Religion is a sore subject for Sherlock, though not for the same reasons as love.)

At the end, Sherlock asks Joan if she would’ve rather been the wolf by night or the hawk by day. Joan answers his question with a question—would he have killed his lover to save them from a cursed life?

Sherlock is silent for a long time, looking at Joan with unnerving scrutiny—for anyone else but Joan that is. She simply waits, munching popcorn and smiling to herself over Isabeau’s final scene with the evil priest—her favorite moment.

“I believe the Captain Navarre had already spoken with his Lady about the matter,” Sherlock says finally.

Joan gives him a sidelong glance. “What do you mean?” Only mild curiosity in her tone.

“It’s obvious he would have confirmed with her that it was better for them both to die rather than continue living under the curse. They must have corresponded with each other. But they would have destroyed the letters, for fear of them being discovered by the priest’s underlings,” he explains, grabbing a large handful of popcorn and shoving most of it in his mouth. Joan rolls her eyes indulgently.

“So are you saying you would’ve killed your love if she asked it of you?” Joan asks, looking at the rolling credits rather than Sherlock.

She almost feels his conceding nod to the side, just before he speaks.

“At the loss of all hope, as Navarre was feeling, maybe I would have. Death is the ultimate freedom for many.”

She glances at him. He’s looking very intently at the TV screen as well. There’s a small sheen of popcorn butter on his upper lip. She can’t suppress her smile.

“I would have rather been the wolf by night,” she says. After a couple seconds, Sherlock turns to look at her, his expression serious, intent. It is as if he is on a case, not enjoying a casual night off watching an 80s film.

She knows he waits for an explanation. She gives a half shrug. “The night is too isolating for a person. I would want to still be able to help others, and that’s better done during the day. And you? What would you rather be?”

“The hawk by day of course,” Sherlock answers, grabbing another handful of popcorn from the bowl sitting between them. “I would rather catch criminals by night, much easier to catch them unawares.”

Joan laughs softly, noticing peripherally Sherlock’s quick glance at her. He’s not displeased.

“Also,” he adds, “I wouldn’t be opposed to being your lookout by day. And the black steed would very much suit you.”

Joan laughs aloud this time, then picks up a napkin to wipe Sherlock’s mouth for him. He submits under her ministrations without another word. There’s the smallest of smiles on his mouth when she leans away.

(If you dislike Ladyhawke in any way/have negative opinions about it please refrain from interacting with this post.)

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duaneodavila · 6 years

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When The Revolution Comes, I Hope It Starts In Florida

(LOUISA GOULIAMAKI/AFP/Getty Images)

There will come a time when black people no longer look to the white justice system or the white political system for redress of our grievances. There will be a future where the open contempt white Americans brandish towards the African-American community is met with something more than prayers for relief and some marching. Even Machiavelli teaches us that when the supreme authority sheds the mere appearance of treating his subjects with dignity, a return to the state of nature is imminent.

White people, generally, and #MAGA people, specifically, think this is all some sort of a game. They think it’s political theater. We take Roseanne, you come for Samantha Bee. You take Kanye, we deploy Kim. Black queen to E,4. white king to Pennsylvania, 1700. “But hey, why can’t we still be friends on Facebook?”

It’s not a game. White people are sending their armed agents into our communities, into our very homes, to murder us. That work done, then white people engage in “theater.” They engage in the elaborate show of a trial that legitimizes their ethnic massacres, then congratulate themselves on their process. Whites who disagree with the results of the show they themselves are complicit in then turn around and encourage those who have had their homes invaded and their communities humiliated and their children murdered to… vote. Usually for some other white person. As if mere participation in the system designed to destroy us is the cure and not part of the disease.

The reckoning has not yet come because most black people, most of the time, are inured to the reality of white supremacy. The videos of police shootings have been a wake-up call to white America, not black America. I’m a 40-year-old black man, this is how your police have always looked to me. One cannot survive in a society as racist as this one without being willing to overlook most of the racism. I know most white people don’t get that. But I don’t comment on the vast majority of the racism that is out there, the same way you aren’t always talking about the quality of the air you breathe. You only say something if that air is particularly foul, otherwise it’s just the milieu in which your life exists. So it is with me: white supremacy is the medium my life is dissolved into.

But Florida is particularly foul. Somehow that state’s mix of a large black population dissolved into a bunch of old, unreconstructed white people makes for a disgusting brew. When the glorious reckoning comes, it won’t be because your white supremacist president uses genocidal language to describe immigrants. It’ll be because of the casual racism and humiliation produced in places like Florida. From CNN:

A Florida family is “heartbroken” after a jury awarded $4 in damages for funeral expenses and pain and suffering in a case in which a St. Lucie County deputy fatally shot a father of three through his garage door, the family’s attorney said Thursday…

No charges were filed against Newman, who said he shot Hill because he brandished a handgun. Hill’s mother, Viola Bryant, filed a lawsuit against Newman and Sheriff Ken Mascara, alleging wrongful death, negligence, excessive force and violations of Hill’s 14th and 15th Amendment rights…

In deciding damages in the case, the jury awarded Bryant $1 for funeral expenses, and $1 for each child’s “loss of parental companionship, instruction, and guidance and … mental pain and suffering,” verdict forms show. Hill’s children are 7, 10 and 13.

The family’s attorney surmised that the jurors were trying to “punish” the family for bringing the suit in the first place. I’m forced to agree, as this is the kind of humiliation of black people that Deplorables go in for.

This story has all the hallmarks of white supremacy. A neighbor called the cops on Hill because of a “noise” complaint. The noise? He was playing Drake in his own garage. Two officers showed up and knocked on Hill’s front door and garage door. Hill opened the garage door, and then immediately closed it. The officers claim that Hill “brandished” a handgun. (I’ll note here that no NRA spokespeople have defended Hill’s right to have a gun in his home, because of course they haven’t.) Whether Hill actually flashed a piece is disputed by eyewitnesses, but what is undisputed is that the garage door was closed when the officer opened fire, shooting Hill four times, including once in the head, THROUGH THE CLOSED DOOR.

Of course, the officer was not charged, which is what led to the civil suit, which in turn gave a Florida jury this opportunity to further piss upon a grieving black family.

I cannot hold the jurors accountable for their racism. I cannot hold the cop accountable for his murder. Nobody will. Batman doesn’t give a f**k about black people either. Whites win, again.

Whites will keep winning. Until they don’t. Whites will keep their hands around the throats of African-Americans, pushing our children’s faces into the mud. Until they lose their grip.

But they will lose their grip, eventually. And on that day, you better hope black people act better than white people. You better hope African-Americans have not fully “assimilated” to white culture. You better hope there’s merely reckoning, and not retribution.

‘Black lives don’t matter,’ lawyer says after jury awards $4 in police killing [CNN]

Elie Mystal is the Executive Editor of Above the Law and the Legal Editor for More Perfect. He can be reached @ElieNYC on Twitter, or at [email protected]. He will resist.

When The Revolution Comes, I Hope It Starts In Florida republished via Above the Law

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