#job money status - none of those were major concerns

[forgotn1]

Unfortunately, being worthy of and deserving of love doesn't mean you will ever actually find the love that you need. The universe is under no obligation to provide it or even give the opportunity for it to happen. For some, it just won't happen no matter how much they want or need it. That hole will always exist and cannot be filled by any other type of love except that which it was meant to hold. And that fucking sucks, but there's not much that can be done about it except learn to accept it and try to find meaning elsewhere.

[theauthorstreehouse]

IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT: PLEASE READ

When you are a writer you must occasionally ask yourself an unavoidable question. Namely “Am I telling the kind of story I want to tell?” At the moment, my answer to that is no. My adventures on Patreon began in July of 2017, taking fanfiction requests for pennies to help get the bills paid while working a shitty retail job. I was having a lot of fun creating freely, making friends, and getting a lil support now and again. It was around mid 2018 where I decided to try an experiment and create Monster Brothel, a choose your own adventure style of story-telling where people could find different creatures in the narrative, have some fun, and still work through a story with a satisfying conclusion. It was the first time I had flexed my original narrative skills in some time and it made me really happy to find a community that wanted such content. I spent two years making Monster Brothel come to life and while I know it wasn't perfect, I learned a lot from that piece and it still holds a special place in my heart. As I was in the final months of MB, I started thinking about Verdant. It didn't have a name then, just a general concept I was tossing around with trusted friends. Before I knew this thing had it's hooks in me, and it quickly became a story I wanted to tell. A writer creating their own world is like giving a pre-schooler a sandbox and unlimited recess. All I wanted to do was pull my readers over by the hand and show them what part of the world I was building. At the time, MB was doing well, and people wanted more like that. So without realizing it I took my unlimited sandbox and immediately began to limit myself by believing I had to adhere to the CYOA format. Choose your own adventure works for short form story-telling like Monster Brothel. It's contained, semi-episodic, and the choices you make may effect the ending but not the overall story. With Verdant, I was writing the story of a nation and it's people complete with complex motivations, character development, and narrative. None of which did I have the time to show in a format which requires comprised passages and frequent divergence in plot in order to keep the reader motivated to continue. I began relying on my readers to have done the “homework” of reading the Worldbuilding, Lore, and content drops I offered on Patreon to even know what I was talking about. To me, this is the laziest form for writing. It is utterly dependent on TELL not SHOW and limits the story. I began cutting corners and keeping things as basic as possible in order to avoid passages becoming too lengthy and ensuring that I could split pathways and change the narrative down the line to account for player choices. I was shredding my world down to it's baseboards in order to make it something playable without considering that it didn't have to be. Then 2020 happened. Without revisiting everything from last year, we lost a lot of our supporters. I respect that. People had to make the best decision possible and that meant saving money. Many of them stayed in the community and I'm grateful to have them. We got a spot of luck and my wife got a full time job, which meant we would be stable for now but it also meant her free time took a big cut and she is no longer able to produce artwork on a schedule. Both of these were major blows to the whole Verdant CYOA game concept so we put it on hiatus and I made some one shot MB content for everyone to relax and have fun with. I figured we would take the time to reassess and come back in the new year with a game plan. I came back ready to hit the ground running, excited to return to my sandbox and play with a new character. But the downtime also meant I had time to think on the status of my creation and what I wanted from it. Again, that question: “Am I telling the story I want to tell?” And the answer was no. After some consideration, I'm dumping the CYOA (choose your own adventure) format. It worked for Monster Brothel. It does not work for Verdant. This tale requires long form story telling in which we can explore complex narratives, character development, and motivations to a deeper extent. I will leave up the CYOA content for the time being on the website, and over the next month or so our Patreon may change it's look a bit, but my hope is this will all be for the better. What does this mean in the immediate future? - Some of you may no longer wish to support this project as a chapter by chapter development. I will be sad to see you go but I respect your choices. I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for all of your support through the years and let you know that you are welcome to stay in the community through our Discord server. Many of you have made friends there and I would never want to cut you off just because you can't support the Patreon any more. - At the end of March we will be cutting the $10, $20 and $40 Tiers from our Patreon. For the time being, we will reduce everything to $1 & $5 Tiers, allowing more people to retain access to our content, website, and community for a much-reduced cost. * $1Tier: This tier will allow subscribers support the developing story at their leisure and remain informed about the status of the story and when it will be updated. $1 Subscribers will still remain a part of the Discord community. * $5 Tier: This tier will allow subscribers to retain access to the website for FREE on a month-by-month basis, as well as give them access to the beta version of the story before it is released to the public. They will have access to content drops such as Worldbuilding & Lore, as well as remain a part of the Discord community. - Those of you who subscribed to the $40 Tier in order to have your character put in Verdant will be excited to know I am keeping those characters! We worked hard on them and I have no intention of dropping them from the story. Many of them may even get bigger parts and more expanded development now that I don't have to limit content by so much! We are currently working on how we want to progress with this new format, working on the timeline expectations and what we will offer on the website from now on. If you have any questions please do not hesitate to reach out to me through Patreon or through Discord. I will make myself as available as possible to answer your concerns. Thank you again for being with me on this journey. I know this is a difficult and maybe even confusing change. Please know that is comes from a desire to create the world I promised and put forth the best possible effort in my writing and story-telling. As we move forward, I hope you will find a thrill in rediscovering Verdant as it was intended and getting to know her as I have. We are always happy to have you here and we look forward to seeing this project progress in a more accessible fashion. Kalynn & Laura

[samirant]

The Good Place Primer

Now that The GOT Place has gotten into the parallelogram aspect of the story, I thought it would be helpful to provide a primer of The Good Place. Spoilers are below the cut, but if you get a chance to watch the show, I really, really hope you do! It's a wonderful series that I'll recommend until my last breath.

But if you want spoilers, well, here are your spoilers:

The Good Place is a story about the afterlife and all its complications. In the original television series, we follow four humans (Eleanor, Chidi, Tahani & Jason), who have all died and made it to a neighborhood in the titular Good Place, as opposed to the Bad Place, where people get tortured for eternity.

To keep everything in order, the residents of the the Good Place are placed into neighborhoods that cap out at 300ish people. The separate neighborhoods are built by afterlife architects. The one that Eleanor, Chidi, Tahani and Jason end up in was made by a Good Place architect (Michael) and maintained by a walking Alexa/Siri/Hey Google not-a-robot (Janet).

The problems begin when Eleanor realizes that somewhere along the way, mistakes were made and she was mixed up with someone else. She doesn’t belong in the Good Place and the entire first season encompasses her attempts to covertly earn her place, as to avoid unending torture. Naturally. Chidi, who was an ethics professor, teaches her on how to be a good person when she confesses her real identity.

Ethics are a HUGE part of the show, with Kant and Plato and all these major philosophy icons getting mentioned, as well as discussions as to how people should do their best for themselves and for each other.

Here’s the thing - THE BIG SPOILER -

(last chance to back out)

Okay.

They’re all already in The Bad Place.

It’s a torture experiment, specifically made for the original four humans aka the eventual Soul Squad. On Earth, Eleanor was selfish and unkind, Chidi indecisive and wracked with self-doubt, Tahani elitist and concerned only with her status in the world and Jason had many issues, but being from Florida alone doomed him. Everyone else in the neighborhood is a demon in disguise, including Michael.

Janet is Janet, a kickass cinnamon roll who was stolen and meant to function in a real Good Place neighborhood and decides to stick around to help the four humans when she learns the truth. She’s wonderful.

So, as it turns out, every action a living person takes on Earth accumulates afterlife points. Those who meet a high threshold make it into The (real) Good Place. Very, very few make it in - which is a fishy thing they twig onto later.

Through shenanigans and banding together, the Soul Squad convinces Michael and Janet to join with them in an effort to earn spots in the actual Good Place. This takes some time, and it includes them meeting the Judge of the Universe, Hydrogen. Gen, for short. (Played perfectly by Maya Rudolph, btw.)

Michael, who always despised humans, and believed them incapable of change, learns the opposite is true and that all four people became better versions of themselves during their time in his torture neighborhood.

Because of this, he suggests to Gen that the Soul Squad get sent back to Earth, to get a chance to improve their point totals. They do, circumventing their original deaths and moving on with a new lease on life. None of them remember their time in the afterlife, but they each make great movements in becoming better people.

Of course, everything goes wrong.

It all comes down to the fact that no one has gotten into The Good Place in five hundred years. Turns out that the point accumulation system is broken and you can do one good thing (aka bring your mother flowers) but lose points for all the things that are associated but you can’t control (the effect of long distance transport on the climate, the pesticides used, the underpaid workers who cultivate the flowers, the crooked CEO who runs the company and is getting your money - you get the gist). Your good and kind choice ends up leaving you in the negative digits.

In the end, a decision is made to completely reboot the afterlife system itself.

The architects from The Good Place and The Bad Place join forces, paired up to run individual simulations on every person who has died. Everyone gets a chance to improve themselves in the afterlife, away from all the caveats and unknown factors on Earth that would otherwise doom them. Only then are they sent to either place for eternity.

The original four, Michael and Janet save the universe, basically.

I do hope, despite these spoilers, that you watch this show. It is heartwarming and so incredibly funny and the series finale is absolute perfection. Perfection. I sobbed so much when I first saw it and it still makes my chest feel all funny. The way this show makes you think about what humans are to one another, the beauty in the world and doing good for the sake of goodness - there's absolutely nothing like it.

Notable Characters That Show Up In The GOT Place:

Tahani Al Jamil - Former It Girl, Heiress, Model, Best Friends With Beyoncé, texts with the Dali Lama, etc. Her talent for name dropping is unparalleled. In the afterlife, Tahani learns to actually care about other people because it’s the right thing to do, as opposed to making her look good. In reflection of that, she chooses to leave The Good Place and become an architect for all the incoming souls, the ultimate way to selflessly help others.

Gen (The Judge) - A higher being unconcerned with the ins and outs of what is right or wrong, but will hear you out if you’re entertaining enough. Obsessed with Timothy Olyphant. I cannot emphasize how spectacular Maya Rudolph is in such a small role.

Shawn - Demon. Formerly Michael’s boss and current frenemy, but he will never, never, ever ever ever everevereverever admit to a soft spot for anyone.

Vicky - Demon. Takes over as Head Architect from Michael when it turns out she’s surprisingly well suited to the job. Drama queen. Terrible singer, but doesn’t let that discourage her.

Glenn - Demon. Hapless, goofy, the second demon after Michael who is willing to say that maybe humans aren’t entirely garbage. Kind of a sweetheart. Shawn’s favorite whipping boy. Bad Place Architect who helps train Tahani and (in the story) becomes her partner in afterlife tests.

Beadie - Angel and Good Place architect who trains Tahani. V nice. V bland, as The Good Place staff tends to be.

Todd - Demon/Bad Place architect/Lava Monster. Pretty chill dude, though.

Jeremy Bearimy - Often referred to as a Bearimy. Not a being, but a concept. Time in the after life does not run in a straight line with a strict beginning and end, but in a series or loops and twists that circles back upon itself. It looks like this:

The dot above the eye is not a typo. Don’t try to fully understand it, though. Chidi briefly broke his brain in his attempt to do so.

Thank you for reading and I hope you give the show a chance! ❤���

[natedelmore]

Nathaniel “Nate” Delmore

Chris Evans & he/him, cis-male ‷ watch out , Nathaniel Keaton Delmore has crash-landed into roswell !! he looks 40 years old and celebrates his birthday on June 13th . He is from Washington, D.C., resides in Moonbeam Gardens and is currently working as CFO of Delmore, Inc.. one thing you should know about him is he loves stargazing with his ESD Cosmo - Written by Steph

The Basics:

Nathaniel Keaton Delmore

Age: 40

Birthday:  13 June

Nationality: American

Gender/Pronouns: Male, He/Him

Sexuality: Heterosexual-ish

Marital Status: Single

Occupation: CFO of Delmore, Inc. 

Note: Mirrors Cargill

Physical Appearance:

Hair: Brown

Eyes: Blue

Height: 6′0

Build: Fit

Distinguishing Marks: 

Scars on chin, throat, back, wrists, and ankles

Various tattoos on his arms and chest that are not visible when in a shirt with sleeves / professional attire

Other Details: Due to kidnapping for ransom in college, Nate has PTSD and has an emotional support dog (ESD/Service dog) to alert him when he’s triggered. He struggles with large gatherings and crowded places, as well as with unexpected loud noises.

Personal:

Profession: “Glorified Accountant” and Delmore “Poster Boy” at fundraisers

Hobbies: Reading, writing poetry, stargazing, jogging

Languages: Fluent in English, Spanish, French; Proficient Japanese and Chinese

Residence: Large estate in Moonbeam Gardens

Note: Property is owned by the Delmore family and is not to Nate’s taste. He owns a cottage in the suburbs around Boston that is very much his style and then a townhome in D.C. and penthouse in NYC that are owned by the family and not to his taste.

Birthplace: Washington, D.C. but considers Boston ‘home’

Religion: Christian (non-practicing), considers himself to be ‘spiritual’

Fears: Crowded places, public speaking to strangers

Relationships:

Spouse: None

Children: None and reluctant due to his age and family

Parents: Mother and father are married and live in Wayzata, Montana with homes in various locations around the world “for business”

Siblings: Older sister (Samantha goes by Sam/Sammy with Nate and is 48)

Other Relatives: Yes, all working for the family company and living in various locations depending on their job.

Pets: Cosimo, who Nate lovingly refers to as Cosmo or Cosi, is his service dog and as close to a pet as a service dog can be.

Traits:

Extroverted / In Between / Introverted

Disorganized / In Between / Organized

Close Minded / In Between / Open Minded

Calm / In Between / Anxious

Disagreeable / In Between / Agreeable

Cautious / In Between / Reckless

Patient / In Between /  Impatient

Outspoken / In Between / Reserved

Leader / In Between / Follower

Empathetic / In Between / Apathetic

Optimistic / In Between / Pessimistic

Traditional / In Between / Modern

Hard-working / In Between / Lazy

Cultured / In Between / Uncultured

Loyal / In Between / Disloyal

Faithful / In Between / Unfaithful

Biography:

Nathaniel Keaton Delmore was born into Delmore empire, a leading company in the United States. Being part of the one-percent had a singular perk: never having to worry about money. Nate learned pretty quickly that that was where its benefits stopped. He was the second of the Delmore children, and his mother never let him forget it. While she had reluctantly taken time off to care for his older sister, Samantha Marion Delmore, they waited until she was eight before they had him and more often than not they left Sammy to take care of him as if he was part living doll and part puppy. Developmentally it delayed him in walking because he was either carried or strolled around. It had also resulted in a stammer that was made worse by his parents frustrations in his inability to articulate words correctly. Though he would overcome those issues with little to no trace it left him with anxiety and a fragile sense of self.

He learned that if he kept good grades and kept his head down there wasn’t really anything his parents wouldn’t let him try. Anything he showed a natural talent for they supported until he was no longer the best in show, once again treating him more like a pet than a person. Be it piano, singing, basketball, horseback riding, or fencing; Nathaniel found himself having to find his own way. In high school, when his interests turned to debate and forensics teams because of a friend, his parents tried to put their foot down. Despite the lack of a stammer, they told him he’d be no good at it, seeing their quiet son as damaged once more. It was with his uncle’s support that he managed to make excuses and even attend summer camps. Public speaking became a way for him to face his anxiety and, with practice, he became unbelievably good at it, but not without anxiety.

With no support for college unless he legally agreed to major in microeconomics, Nathaniel finally left home to experience a slice of the real world. MIT was practically an entirely new planet for him and, despite being low key, there was really no surprise that people figured out who he was with the last name of a major American business. Just when he thought he was settling into a routine after a few years at MIT with a bartending job (much to his parents’ dismay), a co-captain position on the forensics team, and a close group of friends, he was kidnapped, tortured, and held for ransom.

After his rescue, Nathaniel would find the hardest part of the ordeal being the realization that no one knew he was missing for weeks. His job thought the rich kid had quit, though he never flaunted his money other than picking up the tabs shitty people cut out on. His friends thought he was sleeping with ‘that one girl’ that kept flirting with him at every party, though he swore there wasn’t anything there- just lending an ear to a heartbroken friend. His professors’ T.A.s were too overwhelmed to note his absences in the large classes. Then the forensics team thought his parents had finally pulled the plug on his participation because he’d divulged that they never really supported it when they didn’t attend any of the big competitions.

Through physical therapy his body healed from the torture, even though the scars remain. Concerned that therapy would look bad for the family they decided to allow him a service dog that was discretely trained and, after a hefty donation to the university and NDA paperwork, Sirius was allowed to follow him into his classes and any place around campus. Trying his best, the rest of his college experience was very much left in recluse. He took to reading and running to clear his head and avoid the reality that upon graduation he would be stepping into the CFO position of Delmore, Inc. Life seemed to be filled with dread outside of the travel the job would entail.

Managing to coerce his parents into agreeing to a masters, he delayed the inevitable a bit longer. Now, a decade later, he was settled into the monotony of corporate life and after Sirius passed and he took on a new service dog with the refusal to hide that part of his life any longer. It wasn’t lost on him that Samantha’s pep talk to do so likely stemmed from her own desire to climb the corporate ladder. The result was the same, his parents used him as the mouthpiece for the company’s charity work. They called the dog Cosimo, he called him Cosmo. They called him a survivor, he held his tongue that they’d treated him just as poorly. Through it all, he remains a dutiful, loyal, reserved; if not a bit more inclined to speak out against injustices than the average person. His decision to live in Roswell was out of a fib of convenience that he could fly out to west and east coast meetings best if in the central part of the U.S. So long as he plays his part and stays in line, they’re not going to complain.

[loganarmstrong]

B A S I C

NAME: Logan Mayumi Armstrong

NICKNAME(S): Lo

AGE: 29

DATE OF BIRTH: 5 February 1992

GENDER: cis male

PRONOUNS: he/him

F A M I L Y

MOTHER: lyra armstrong, nee karingal

FATHER: michael armstrong

SIBLING(S): sean (older brother), mason (older twin brother)

P H Y S I C A L

FACE CLAIM: darren criss

RACE/ETHNICITY: english, german, filipino, spanish, chinese

NATIONALITY: american

HEIGHT: 5 feet and six inches (5′6)

WEIGHT: 152 lbs

BUILD: slender, skinny, will often describe himself as scrawny

SCARS: inside of wrists, one above eyebrow

HAIR: black, curly

EYE COLOR: hazel

DOMINANT HAND: left

ACCENT: american (though rarely speaks)

PHYSICAL DISABILITIES: none, though needs glasses

MENTAL DISABILITIES: autisim, selective mutism

ALLERGIES: shellfish

DISORDERS: anxiety, depression

FASHION: prefers soft fabrics, often wears with overalls and doc martens

NERVOUS TICS: wringing hands together, fidgeting

L I F E S T Y L E

HOME ADDRESS: bridgeport, somerton, maine

RESIDES: medium sized loft apartment

BORN: conway, new hampshire

RAISED: conway, new hampshire

VEHICLE: range rover suv, black

PHONE: iphone xr

LAPTOP/COMPUTER: macbook pro, ipad pro

PET(S): service dog, northern inuit named ella

HIGH SCHOOL EDUCATION: kennett high school

COLLEGE EDUCATION: the institute of fine arts, nyu

MAJOR: fine art

MINOR: illustration

CAREER: head baker

EMPLOYER: golden flour bakery

DIET: vegetarian 

ROMANTIC ORIENTATION: panromantic

SEXUAL ORIENTATION: pansexual

MARITAL STATUS: single

CHILDREN: none

LANGUAGES: english, american sign language

PHOBIAS: loud noises

HOBBIES: art, reading, journalling, soccer, video games

SOCIAL MEDIA: inactive on most, privacy settings high due to ex partner

F A V O R I T E

LOCATION: the reading nook in his apartment

VIDEO GAME: skyrim, animal crossing, horizon zero dawn, spyro, stardew valley

ARTIST: vincent van gogh

MUSIC: varying

SONG: radio gaga - queen

TV SHOWS: the umbrella academy, the witcher, friends, stranger things, doctor who, sherlock

MOVIES: the addams family, my neighbor totoro, jurassic park, hook, forrest gump

FOOD: asian

COLOR: yellow

C H A R A C T E R

MBTI: infj-t: the advocate

ENNEGRAM: six

TEMPERAMENT: melancholic

WESTERN ZODIAC: aquarius

CHINESE ZODIAC: monkey

PRIMAL SIGN: dolphin

B I O G R A P H Y

tw suicide attempt, self harm, abusive relationship

Logan Mayumi Armstrong is precisely three minutes and forty two seconds younger than his twin brother, Mason, and six years younger than his oldest sibling. He was a quiet baby who hardly ever cried and mostly kept to himself, even as a toddler. None of the family knew anything was wrong with Logan until he was five years old. The Armstrong family thought that maybe Logan was just a quiet child, or even a late bloomer. But soon enough, every other child in his play group could speak and Mason was already stringing together full sentences. Logan hadn’t uttered a single word and was taken to see a doctor, put through weeks of testing until finally, a result came through.

Logan was diagnosed with selective mutism. He had the ability to speak - the tests showed he had the physical ability, but he was unable to do so. The Armstrong family learned sign language in an effort to help their youngest son communicate and it was something he appreciated - he could actually ask for things now! More tests followed and eventually Logan was given a diagnosis of autism. He didn’t fully understand it, not when he was young, but he understood enough to know it made him different. He struggled to make friends in his class and often spent recess alone. Mason on the other hand, was confident and never shy of any friends. He was always around people, always out playing with his friends and happy.

Logan tried hard not to let his differences bother him. People didn’t understand him, that was what he told himself. He focused on the things he enjoyed instead, such as art. For Logan, it was a way of expressing himself without the need for words and he spent hours practicing, filling sketchbook after sketchbook. Art became his outlet, how he showed his feelings although most of his work he kept to himself. He didn’t want to upset anyone with his difference. He’d heard his mom crying when he was first diagnosed as autistic and understood being different made her sad. He’d heard his father say they could get through it and at least they had his siblings who would be able to lead “normal lives”. Those were the words his father had used and it hurt, to know he wasn’t normal. He’d known he was different, sure, but the thought of not being able to live a normal life hurt.

Logan never told either of his parents he’d overheard their conversation. He wasn’t sure if he was supposed to hear it but he was sure it wouldn’t be good if they knew. He began to withdraw even more than before, stopping using sign language and only used simple, one-word answers to questions. Logan was battling with himself. As he got older, he realised he was even more different to his peers than he thought. Everyone started getting girlfriends when he entered high school and Logan wasn’t really interested in that. He thought girls were beautiful, sure, but Logan thought guys were too. He told Mason one day who seemed taken aback by the confession. The people in their school found out that Logan wasn’t quite straight and things only got worse. He was already picked on relentlessly for his lack of speech and being different but with new fuel to the fire, they made Logan’s life miserable.

The most difficult thing for him to accept was that no one wanted him around. He felt isolated, more alone than ever and didn’t know who to turn to for help. What could he do? He struggled with communication at the best of times. His parents were concerned at how withdrawn he’d become and heard from Mason how the bullying had gotten worse at school. They took him to a doctor and Logan was diagnosed with depression. He refused to take his medication and hid the pills from his parents - he didn’t need another thing wrong with him and he didn’t want the medication. He was careful though and everyone thought he was taking them when he was supposed to, believing it would just take time for him to get better.

Death wasn’t something that scared Logan. He wasn’t afraid to die and it was something he’d welcome. He wasn’t really sure what spurred his decision; he hadn’t been on his medication since his diagnosis and he was gradually getting worse. He couldn’t think of any other way to deal with the mess that was him. So when Logan’s mother found him on the bathroom floor, barely conscious and in a pool of his own blood, no one had expected it.

Logan was forced to stay in hospital for three months after that. Physically he was fine, merely left with deep scars marking the insides of his wrists. But mentally, Logan wasn’t okay. He was forced to take his medication, made to attend counselling and managed to tell his therapist everything. It took a long time, what with his lack of communication, but eventually, they understood the reasoning behind it and Logan began to recover.

He finished the school year in between his home and the hospital, Mason bringing the work home to him and helping him set up his online classes. Logan managed to graduate with a respectable grade. He wanted to pursue college, wanted to take his art further and make a career out of it. His parents were terrified to let Logan travel so far away. But they understood and after a lengthy conversation and the promise he would keep in contact with them, Logan was off.

He flew to New York City to study Fine Art and Illustration. It was a new sense of freedom for him. He still wasn’t okay, but he made sure he took his medication and stuck to a strict schedule for himself. It helped him focus and Logan was able to enjoy himself, even make a couple of friends and get a job as a barista in a local coffee shop. It was in this coffee shop that he met the person who changed his life.

Matthew was a kind and caring man at first glance. He didn’t let Logan’s lack of speech bother him, continuing to visit the younger man every day with a bouquet of flowers until Logan agreed to go on a date. Things started off well - Matthew was patient with Logan’s difficulty communicating and he made him laugh. Logan thought he could actually be happy and was excited when after a few short months, Matthew asked him to move in with him.

But that was when things began to take a turn for the worst. Matthew seemed to lose the patience he had before. He grew frustrated at Logan’s inability to speak and would fly into a fit of rage more often than not. The first time he hit him was one of the worst. Logan told himself he’d leave him, he wouldn’t let himself be pushed around like this. But Matthew had broken down, told Logan he needed help and said he wouldn’t be able to survive without him. He told Logan he’d been suicidal in the past and he would die if Logan left. So Logan stayed, forgave Matthew each and every time he was hit, when he was shoved or when he was beaten. Matthew told him this was what he deserved and Logan started to believe it. The bruises were always carefully hidden and Logan accepted that this was what his life would be. He was afraid no one would believe him if he told the truth so he kept quiet. Even after he finished his degree, he stayed with his boyfriend. Months turned into years and still, Logan was too afraid to leave.

The sixth time he was hospitalised from his injuries was the breaking point. But it also provided Logan with a way out. Matthew was arrested and Logan discharged himself from the hospital before he recovered fully and ran. He managed to scrape some money together and left the city, travelling as far as he could.

He settled in Somerton, Maine, a town he’d heard about often growing up. No one knew him there and he’d be able to start again, that was the main thing. He was still terrified Matthew would find him, especially as Logan fled without giving a statement against him. But he settled into life, got a job at the local bakery and kept his head down. It was just him and his faithful Ella now, his service dog. She kept him grounded and he knew he owed a lot t her presence. The residents of Somerton were nice and didn’t ask too many questions, for which he was grateful. Now all he had to do was hope he stayed safe.

[oumaheroes]

Rotten Luck and Mistimed Attraction

Summary:

Arthur Kirkland had waited all of his 27 years to meet his soulmate. The words on his arm were the first he'd learnt to read and he was prepared for the day that he'd finally hear them spoken. Although, of course for him, even the greatest moment of his life wasn't going to go as planned.

...............................................................................................................

Chapter 1: An Unideal Meet-Cute

Arthur didn't consider himself a very unlucky man, most of the time. On the contrary, he was probably considered by other people to be quite lucky, or, at least, not doing too badly for himself.

He was lucky enough to have done well at his exams, gone to a good university, and from there he was lucky enough to obtain a high-class degree in engineering. He was then lucky enough to secure himself a nice entry level job with said degree. At 27 he was on the way to owning his own flat – not something most people his age could boast about- and his commute to work wasn't terrible, despite the length. His family, whilst they weren't the closest with each other, certainly weren't horrendous and despite what his friend Alfred said he wasn't bad at making friends. There were just very few people he wanted to make friends with. But the few friends he had he was very close to.

Therefore, if anything, he was actually doing alright for himself. Sadly, Arthur Kirkland would not personally call himself a lucky man because every now and again something so terribly unlucky would happen to him that it would set back all of the luck he had managed to accrue by about 50%.

One major factor aiding this self-perception was that he was always losing things. Phone, keys, debit card; if it was loose and could fit into a hand it was high risk loss material. As a young child his parents found this out rather quickly when he'd often misplace his toys, but it only started to become a fixture of his personality after his dad had given him a £20 note when he was seven and instructions to get a pint of milk from the local corner shop. On the way there he'd either let go of or lost the money and afterwards neither of his parents were willing to trust him with the responsibility again.

The biggest and most painful loss coming from when he was seventeen, Arthur had worked all of the summer and saved up all of his money in order to buy his first motorcycle. He'd loved the thing, passed his test on his first try and happily told anyone who'd listen all about it, only to put his keys down somewhere on a night out and get it stolen after only 3 weeks of having it. He'd had to walk the 3 miles back home in the rain because no one would pick up their phone to collect him and he had no money for the bus.

Other than losing things, there was also the time when he was eleven; he'd finally been allowed to go to town by himself, a big deal at the time, to meet his friends. Enjoying his newfound freedom, he'd decided to pop to the off-license beforehand to get some sweets, feeling very grown up with the luxury of not having to ask first. However, upon entering he was promptly grabbed by a security guard and pulled into the back room where the police were called to arrest him. It turned out that a boy, around his height with his colouring, and wearing the same damn jumper of all things, had been caught by CCTV stealing quite a bit from not only that shop, but quite a few others that day. He was delivered home in mortification to his mother, who found the whole situation oddly endearing, and his brothers, who never let him forget it from that day forward.

His most exhausting unlucky moment came at university. He'd spent month after month toiling over his research for his dissertation essay only to submit it and have it pulled up for plagiarism. Somehow, he'd managed to unknowingly copy over 60% of content from other essays despite having never seen them before. Threatened with suspension, it was only after a few mental breakdown and weeks' worth of submitting evidence and writing emails that he was able to prove that, despite what it really did look like, he had in fact written the thing all in his own words.

He was also unlucky in another, more intimate, way.

Arthur had known all of his life that the meeting he'd eventually have with his soulmate wasn't destined to be...perfect, as it were. The words inscribed on the skin of his left arm, in deep black ink for all to see, read: 'Fuck, I don't have time for this,' leaving Arthur no doubt that he was in for a bit of a challenge.

He was more bothered about it when he was really young. When he'd first been told what his tattoo was for, he'd burst into tears. The idea that someone who was supposed to love him unconditionally could already hate him was the saddest thing he could think of. His brothers didn't help matters by teasing him that the reason he'd got his particular tattoo because he was so grumpy.

'Or!' Patrick, his second eldest brother, used to like to crow at him, 'Or, maybe, it's just you! Imagine that, they take one look at your face, think you're a troll or something and then realise just what they've been stuck with.'

Owen muffled his laughter with his sleeve. His own soulmate tattoo, a nice and friendly, 'Oh thank God,' meant that he was quite looking forward to his own meeting. Normally adverse to picking on his youngest brother too much, this was the one topic where Arthur's youngest older brother always felt as though he safely had the upper hand.

Thankfully, it was the one act of teasing Arthur that Ian didn't participate in. On his oldest brother's arm was a rather ambivalent 'really, it's you,' which could be read one of two ways. It made Arthur grateful that potentially he wasn't the only one in his family or social circle with difficulties in meeting his supposed 'perfect match.'

His concern with the whole thing only grew worse the older he got and the more people he met. Every new person had such lovely things written for them, the traditionally lines one could watch in soap operas and read about in soppy love books: 'You're more beautiful that I could have ever imagined,' or 'Oh, it's finally you!' Either that or the banal ones.

The banal ones, personally, Arthur thought were far worse. At least his was recognisable, as potentially confidence destroying as it was. Some poor sods were stuck with a 'hello', or a 'nice to meet you.' Ones like that meant that one's soulmate could, quite literally, be anyone. Arthur had to count his blessings where he could.

But although his soulmate would at least be easy to recognise, Arthur would lie awake at night worrying about what on earth could happen in his future for his soulmate to utter his tattoo upon meeting him. None else he met seemed to have a tattoo which could be interpreted as disgust and, as much as his friends tried to convince him otherwise, the flittering looks of pity they gave his arm said everything.

That was fine. He could cope with that. Sure, it was unusual. Sure, it made him self-conscious and uncomfortable when people stared at his arm for too long. However, he refused to let this become a defining part of his life and worked hard to minimise the time people spent talking about it or focusing on it.

But today, today might be the unluckiest thing that had ever happened to him.

He'd managed to get off work early, for once. He worked for quite a small company but business had recently picked up, so usually he had to stay a few extra hours or take on a few more projects than he'd like just to maintain their growth. It wasn't a big deal, if anything it only helped him – the more experience the better. But today he'd finally cleared a big enough dent in his to-do list to allow him to leave on time with the rest of the rush hour.

As soon as it hit half 4, he clocked out, shrugged on his coat, and left the office to come out onto the street below his building. It was busy, hundreds of others were leaving at the same time and he had to push against the flow of people to travel in the opposite direction.

Making his way to a pedestrian crossing, Arthur shuffled his bag strap on his shoulder and tugged his coat closer to his body. This January was a colder one than usual. There was a lot of traffic, he hadn't considered it was going to be this busy. At 7pm there were always far less people.

The light for the cars turned red and Arthur impatiently watched the pedestrian light, waiting for the sign that he could cross. A few seconds after the cars stopped - there it was.

Moving with the crowd he pushed forward only to bump into the wide back of the guy in front of him. The man didn't seem to be moving, nor did he look like he was going to be anytime soon. Muttering to himself, Arthur made to step around him only to be blocked by someone coming from the other side. Now beyond frustrated, he tried to go to the other side but when he glanced up to see that the lights had changed and the cars had once again started to move.

Bollocks, he wasn't going to leave early again if this is what constituted as rush hour. The traffic coming in in the morning was enough, he didn't need this. A crowd had started to gather around him again, pressing in to an uncomfortably squash. Grinding his teeth together Arthur tried to school bubbling temper and made to move away from the immovable statue of a human in front of him, only to have someone crash into his back. Taking a deep breath in he decided against pushing them back and instead tapped his foot in irritation, willing the lights to change.

'Fuck, I don't have time for this!'

Arthur didn't need to feel the slight tingle on his arm to know what happened. His breath caught. The speaker had the gruff voice of a man and their voice came from somewhere behind him on his right. This was it, that was his soulmate. A bubble of relief grew in his chest. After all those years of worry, his soulmate's ire wasn't directed at him after all! He couldn't wait to tell his brothers, he the look on Owen's face would be priceless.

He made to turn around, to say something back, but before he realised what was going on the crowd surged forward and dragged him along with it. Cold fear quickly replaced any happiness he'd felt.

Desperately, he tried to stop himself. Twisting around he tried to catch the eye of whoever had said those damn words but he could only see women standing behind him, looking rather annoyed at the hold-up he was causing. But there, pushing out of the huddle to walk in the other direction, was a man with shoulder length blond hair. His face looked stressed and he was striding away into the masses on the street and away from Arthur.

'Wait!' Arthur struggled around an old lady with a particularly large carrier back and made it back onto the pavement. Frantically, he craned his neck, hoping to catch sight of the man's head again and caught sight of him in the distance away, mixed in with the crowd.

'Hey! Excuse me!' He looked down for a split second to avoid a wayward child and then, that was it. He looked up again but it was too late, his soulmate was gone.

Arthur tried to catch his breath, feeling the panic well up inside him. He swivelled to his left, just in case the man had crossed the road but there was no one over there who looked even slightly familiar either. There wasn't even a huddle of people surrounding Arthur now but there were just so many of them and they were all moving so fast in so many different directions that it was hard to keep track of anyone, let alone someone who was obviously in a rush to be somewhere else.

Arthur stumbled his way to the nearest building and leant against it weakly, heart hammering in his chest and the sound of his own breathing in his ears. Oh God. Oh God. It had all happened so fast, but that was it. He'd met his soul mate and he hadn't even managed to meet him.

What if his soulmate hadn't heard him? Or worse, what if he was never supposed to hear him; not everyone had a tattoo. He could have been Arthur's soulmate, but maybe Arthur wasn't his- a one sided match. He ran a shaky hand through his hair and tried to calm himself down. It was okay, this could still be fixed. This wasn't the end; dammit he wouldn't let it be. There were websites for this sort of thing, Facebook even could work. He'd watched reality TV shows before about situations like this, everyone had. Poor souls who missed their opportunity to get to know their destined life partner and were now condemned to search forever and hope that they meet again.

He’d always read or watch stories like that with pity, but also with a grim fascination. Fleeting encounters on public transport, or meetings as children where they couldn't stay and swap contact information. There were hundreds of books and plays written about it alongside depressing love songs and operas. They made for great stories.

He'd never even considered that that could happen to him. This happened to other people, it wasn't ever supposed to happen to Arthur.

Arthur tried to swallow; tongue heavy. He couldn't tell his mother; he couldn't tell his brothers. It was hard enough trying not to break down on the floor now without thinking about other people and the look they'd give him. No, Arthur refused to become like those people on the TV, he wasn't some old sop who was just going to sit about lamenting this, he was going to fight as hard as he could.

With one last look around, just in case, he resolved to himself that no matter how long it took or what he'd have to do, he was going to find his soulmate again. Pushing away from the wall, he set off in the direction of home, stubbornly ignoring that little voice in his head that whispered that, despite all of the tough words, that might well have been it for him.

His soulmate could very well be lost forever and there was nothing he could do about it.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Pluralistic: 13 Mar 2020 (The third Little Brother book, Where I write, stream global news, AT&T's CEO gets millions for his failures, Chelsea Manning freed, Katie Porter vs CDC, Trump's scientific nihilism, Covid-malware co-evolution, Siennese solidarity)

Today's links

Announcing the third Little Brother book, Attack Surface: And a new Little Brother/Homeland reissue, with an intro by Ed Snowden!

Where I Write: A column for the CBC that's really about how I write.

Stream 200+ global news channels: Each hand-picked, no registration required.

AT&T's CEO fired 23,000 workers and gave himself a 10% raise: Life on the easiest setting.

Chelsea Manning is free: But she's been fined $256K for refusing to testify to the Grand Jury.

Rep Katie Porter forces CDC boss to commit to free testing: Literally the most effective questioner in Congress.

Trump's unfitness in a plague: It's not because he's an ignoramus, it's because he's a nihilist.

Malware that hides behind a realtime Covid-19 map: Peter Watts' prophecy comes true.

Locked-down Siennese sing their city's hymn: A cause for hope in the dark.

This day in history: 2015, 2019

Colophon: Recent publications, current writing projects, upcoming appearances, current reading

Announcing the third Little Brother book, Attack Surface (permalink)

Attack Surface is the third Little Brother book, coming out next October.

It's told from the point of view of Masha, the young woman who is Marcus Yallow's frenemy who works first for the DHS and then for a private spook outfit. It's a book about how good people talk themselves into doing bad things, and how they redeem themselves. It ranges from Iraq to the color revolutions of the former USSR, to Oakland and the Movement for Black Lives.

The story turns on cutting-edge surveillance and counter-surveillance: self-driving cars, over-the-air baseband radio malware, IMSI catchers, CV dazzle and adversarial examples, binary transparency and warrant canaries.

This week, I did a wide-ranging and deep interview with Andrew Liptak for Polygon about the book, the Little Brother series, the techlash, the tech workers' uprising (and #TechWontBuildIt), and the future of technological self-determination.

We also revealed the cover for Attack Surface, which was designed by the incomparable Will Staehle (who is eligible for a Best Artist Hugo – nominations close today!).

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250757531

Not only that, but Staehle has also designed a cover for a new omnibus edition of Little Brother and Homeland that comes out this July, and as you can see from that cover, the book has an all-new introduction by none other than Ed Snowden!

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250774583

(In 2017, Staehle also designed all-new covers for my adult backlist)

https://www.tor.com/2017/10/18/cory-doctorow-will-staehle-covers/

The Little Brother books are neither optimistic nor pessimistic about technology: instead, they are hopeful. Hope is the belief that you can materially improve your life if you take action. A belief in human agency and the power of self-determination.

The message of Little Brother is neither "Things will all be fine" nor "We are all doomed."

It's: "This will be so great…if we don't screw it up."

Where I Write (permalink)

I learned to be a writer while my life was in total chaos. Decades later, I have a beautiful office to work in, but I still do my best writing typing hurriedly on subway trains, in taxi-cabs, and airport lounges.

https://www.cbc.ca/arts/finding-comfort-in-the-chaos-how-cory-doctorow-learned-to-write-from-literally-anywhere-1.5489363

My CBC column on where I write is really a primer on how I write: what it takes to be able to write when you're sad, or anxious, or wracked with self-doubt.

Unquestionably the most important skill I've acquired as a writer.

"Even though there were days when the writing felt unbearably awful, and some when it felt like I was mainlining some kind of powdered genius and sweating it out through my fingertips, there was no relation between the way I felt about the words I was writing and their objective quality, assessed in the cold light of day at a safe distance from the day I wrote them. The biggest predictor of how I felt about my writing was how I felt about me. If I was stressed, underslept, insecure, sad, hungry or hungover, my writing felt terrible. If I was brimming over with joy, the writing felt brilliant."

Stream 200+ global news channels (permalink)

TV News is an Android app that pulls like Youtube streams from 200+ global news channels in 50 languages, each manually selected by the app's creator, Steven Clift, whose work I've previously admired.

http://tvnewsapp.com/

You can filter the feeds by country and language and watch them as floating windows that let you continue to use your device while you watch. No registration required, either.

They're shooting for 1000+ channels soon.

AT&T's CEO fired 23,000 workers and gave himself a 10% raise (permalink)

Randall Stephenson is CEO of AT&T. Ajit Pai killed Net Neutrality so that Stephenson could legally slow down the services we requested to extort bribes from us. Then, Trump gave his company a $20B tax cut.

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/nepxeg/atandt-preps-for-new-layoffs-despite-billions-in-tax-breaks-and-regulatory-favors

Stephenson used that money to raise exec pay, buy back his company's stock to juice its price and to pay off debts from earlier, disastrous mergers. He cut 23,000 jobs and slashed capital spending (America has the worst broadband of any rich country).

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/05/att-promised-7000-new-jobs-to-get-tax-break-it-cut-23000-jobs-instead/

After all that, Stephenson congratulated himself on a job well done by giving himself a 10% raise in 2019, bringing his total compensation up to 32 million dollars.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/03/att-ceo-pay-rose-to-32-million-in-2019-while-he-cut-20000-jobs/

I mean the guy earned it. He blew billions of dollars buying Warner and Directv, and then lost billions more on the failed aftermath. If that doesn't warrant a raise, what does?

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/10/att-loses-another-1-3-million-tv-customers-as-directv-freefall-continues/

Chelsea Manning is free (permalink)

A judge has ordered that Chelsea Manning be released from jail, a day after her latest suicide attempt. She was jailed last March for refusing to testify before a grand jury, held in solitary for two months, then jailed again a few days later, in May, She's been inside ever since.

The judge ordered her release because the Grand Jury had finished its work.

https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.vaed.412520/gov.uscourts.vaed.412520.41.0.pdf

It's fantastic to that Manning got her freedom back, but she has been fined $256,000 for her noncompliance. I just donated to her fund:

https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-chelsea-pay-her-court-fines

(Image: Tim Travers Hawkins, CC BY-SA)

Rep Katie Porter forces CDC boss to commit to free testing (permalink)

I am a huge fan of Rep Katie Porter. Her outstanding questioning techniques and unwillingness to countenance bullshit from the people she questions are such a delight to watch.

Here she is demolishing billionaire finance criminal Jamie Dimon:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2WLuuCM6Ej0

Oh, Ben Carson, you never stood a chance:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVWy3q2kmNM

Steve Mnuchin always looks like a colossal asshole, but rarely this comprehensively:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78zpa0hQ1aw

I almost feel sorry for this Trumpkin from the Consumer Finance Protection Board as she faces Porter's withering fire.

Almost.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBaCc5VUHS8

Porter – an Elizabeth Warren protege – doesn't do this to grandstand. Like AOC, she uses her spectacular skills to elicit admissions and get them on the record, and to hold Congressional witnesses to account.

Today, Porter attained a new peak in a short, illustrious career. That's because today was the day she questioned CDC assistant secretary for preparedness and response Robert Kadlec, asking him to clarify Trump's televised lie last night that insurers would pay for Covid-19 testing.

https://twitter.com/RepKatiePorter/status/1238147835859779584

Porter doggedly held Kadlec to account, forcing him to acknowledge that the cost of a Covid-19 test – $1,331 – was so high that many would forego it, and then to admit that these Americans could go on to transmit the disease to others, making it a matter of public concern.

Then she forced CDC Director Robert Redfield to admit – as she had informed him in writing the week before – that the CDC had the authority to simply pay those fees, universally, for any American seeking testing, under 42 CFR 71.30:

https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CFR-2019-title42-vol1/xml/CFR-2019-title42-vol1-part71.xml#seqnum71.30

Having laid this factual record, Porter insisted that Redfield commit to using that authority. Not to consider it, study it, or consult on it. To use it to help save the country. Whenever Redfield waffled, she reclaimed her time and forced him back on point.

KP: Dr. Redfield, will you commit to the CDC, right now, using that existing authority to pay for diagnostic testing, free to every American, regardless of insurance?

RR: Well, I can say that we're going to do everything to make sure everybody can get the care they need –"

KP: Nope, not good enough. Yes or no?

RR: What I'm going to say is, I'm going to review it in detail with CDC and the department —

KP: No, reclaiming my time [repeats the question]

RR: What I was trying to say is that CDC is working with HHS now to see how we operationalize that

KP: Dr. Redfield, I hope that that answer weighs heavily on you, because it is going to weigh very heavily on me and on every American family

RR: Our intent is to make sure that every American family gets the care and treatment they need at this time in this major epidemic and I am currently working with HHS to see how to best operationalize it.

KP: Excellent! Everybody in America hear that — you are eligible to go get tested for coronavirus and have that covered, regardless of insurance

[Curtain]

Trump's unfitness in a plague (permalink)

In this editorial, Science editor-in-chief H Holden Thorp makes a compelling case that Trump is not capable of leading the American response to Covid-19.

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/367/6483/1169

Trump has spent years denigrating and ignoring science before taking office, and it's only gotten worse, since.

As Thorp writes, "You can't insult science when you don't like it and then suddenly insist on something that science can't give on demand."

His policy track-record is even worse: "deep cuts to science, including cuts to funding for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the NIH…nearly 4 years of harming and ignoring science."

This reminds me of an argument I often have with digital rights activists who attribute bad technology policy to the inability of clueless lawmakers to understand the technical nuance. I think that's wrong. The fact that we're not all dead of cholera, even though there are no microbiologists in Congress proves that you don't need to be a domain expert to make good policy.

Good policy comes from truth-seeking exercises in which experts with different views present their best evidence to neutral adjudicators who make determinations in public, showing their work in explicit, written, public reasoning. These processes are made legitimate – and hence robust and reliable – by procedural rules. The adjudicators – regulators, staffers, etc – are not allowed to have conflicts of interest. Their conclusions are subject to the rule of law, with mandatory transparency and a process for appeal.

It has to be this way: there's no way that – say – a president could be an expert on all the different issues that might arise during their tenure.

This, then, is the problem with inequality and market concentration: it merges the referees with the players. When an industry only has a handful of players, they all end up with common lobbying positions – a common position on what is truth. That's because the C-suites of these five companies are filled with people who've worked at two, three or four of the competitors, and are married to others who've worked at the remainder. They're godparents to one anothers' kids, executors of each others' wills.

There's no way for there NOT to be collusion in these circumstances.

And when an industry is that concentrated, the only people who understand it well enough are those same execs, so inevitably the regulators are drawn from the industry.

That's why Obama's "good" FCC Chair, Tom Wheeler, was a former Comcast lobbyist, and why Ajit Pai, Trump's "bad" FCC chair, is a former Verizon lawyer. Apart from Susan Crawford, there's not really anyone who's not from the top ranks of Big Telco qualified to regulate them.

So many of us saw the photo of Trump meeting with all the tech leaders and were dismayed that they were throwing their lot in with him.

But we should also be aghast that all the leaders of the industry fit around one modest board-room table.

https://techcrunch.com/2016/12/14/donald-trump-meets-with-tech-leaders/

The problem with Trump's Covid-19 response is that he does not believe in a legitimate process with neutral referees. The refereeship, in trumpland, is an open-field auction, a transactional process that works best when it enriches Trump and his party.

The problem of Trump taking charge of the epidemiological crisis of Covid-19 isn't that he doesn't understand science: it's that he doesn't believe in evidence-based policy.

He is part of the cult of "Public Choice Theory," the belief that there is no one who can serve as referee without eventually colluding with the players for their mutual enrichment, a cynical, nihilistic philosophy that holds that there's no point in seeking to govern well. These people project their own moral vacuum onto all of humanity, a kind of cartoon Homo Economicus who is incapable of anything except maximizing personal utility.

For these people, the existence of bridges that don't fall down and water that doesn't give you cholera are lucky accidents, not results of sound policy and careful truth-seeking. They reason that since they would take bribes to poison the water of Flint, so would everyone.

Trump isn't just a non-expert, he's an ignoranamus, but that's not the problem. The problem is that he is a nihilist, someone who doesn't believe that truth-seeking is even possible.

Malware that hides behind a realtime Covid-19 map (permalink)

Hackers have developed a malware-as-a-service that packages up realtime Covid-19 maps with malware droppers that infect people who load them.

https://krebsonsecurity.com/2020/03/live-coronavirus-map-used-to-spread-malware/

This reminds me intensely of Peter Watts's 2002 novel Maelstrom, in which Watts uses his background as an evolutionary biologist to posit an eerily plausible and devilishly clever way that a digital and a human virus could co-evolve.

https://rifters.com/real/MAELSTROM.htm

This has stuck with me! In May 2018, I wrote about it in Locus Magazine:

http://locusmag.com/2018/05/cory-doctorow-the-engagement-maximization-presidency/

Maelstrom is concerned with a pandemic that is started by its protago­nist, Lenie Clark, who returns from a deep ocean rift bearing an ancient, devastating pathogen that burns its way through the human race, felling people by the millions.

As Clark walks across the world on a mission of her own, her presence in a message or news story becomes a signal of the utmost urgency. The filters are firewalls that give priority to some packets and suppress others as potentially malicious are programmed to give highest priority to any news that might pertain to Lenie Clark, as the authorities try to stop her from bringing death wherever she goes.

Here's where Watt's evolutionary bi­ology shines: he posits a piece of self-modifying malicious software – something that really exists in the world today – that automatically generates variations on its tactics to find computers to run on and reproduce itself. The more computers it colonizes, the more strategies it can try and the more computational power it can devote to analyzing these experiments and directing its randomwalk through the space of all possible messages to find the strategies that penetrate more firewalls and give it more computational power to devote to its task.

Through the kind of blind evolution that produces predator-fooling false eyes on the tails of tropical fish, the virus begins to pretend that it is Lenie Clark, sending messages of increasing convincingness as it learns to impersonate patient zero. The better it gets at this, the more welcoming it finds the firewalls and the more computers it infects.

At the same time, the actual pathogen that Lenie Clark brought up from the deeps is finding more and more hospitable hosts to reproduce in: thanks to the computer virus, which is directing public health authorities to take countermeasures in all the wrong places. The more effective the computer virus is at neutralizing public health authorities, the more the biological virus spreads. The more the biological virus spreads, the more anxious the public health authorities become for news of its progress, and the more computers there are trying to suck in any intelligence that seems to emanate from Lenie Clark, supercharging the computer virus.

Together, this computer virus and biological virus co-evolve, symbiotes who cooperate without ever intending to, like the predator that kills the prey that feeds the scavenging pathogen that weakens other prey to make it easier for predators to catch them.

Locked-down Siennese sing their city's hymn (permalink)

In times of crisis, we typically pull together, but elite panic's pervasive mythology holds that these moments are when the poors reveal their inner beast and attack their social betters. That libel on humanity is disproved regularly by our everyday experience. As common as these incidents of solidarity are, they still warrant our notice.

The Song of the Verbena is the hymn of the Italian city of Sienna, currently on lockdown.

https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canto_della_Verbena

This video of Siennese people singing their hymn from the windows of their houses, into their empty street, is one of the most beautiful, hopeful things I've seen this week.

Truly, it is a tonic.

https://twitter.com/valemercurii/status/1238234518508777473

This day in history (permalink)

#5yrsago NYPD caught wikiwashing Wikipedia entries on police brutality https://web.archive.org/web/20150313150951/http://www.capitalnewyork.com/article/city-hall/2015/03/8563947/edits-wikipedia-pages-bell-garner-diallo-traced-1-police-plaza

#1yrago Gimlet staff announce unionization plan following Spotify acquisition https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/13/18263957/gimlet-media-union-spotify-recognition-podcasts

#1yrago With days to go until the #CopyrightDirective vote, #Article13's father admits it requires filters and says he's OK with killing Youtube https://www.golem.de/news/uploadfilter-voss-stellt-existenz-von-youtube-infrage-1903-139992.html

#1yrago Spotify's antitrust complaint against Apple is a neat parable about Big Tech's monopoly https://www.wired.com/story/spotify-apple-complaint-warren-antitrust-issue/

#1yrago A critical flaw in Switzerland's e-voting system is a microcosm of everything wrong with e-voting, security practice, and auditing firms https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/zmakk3/researchers-find-critical-backdoor-in-swiss-online-voting-system

#1yrago McMansion Hell tours the homes of the "meritocratic" one-percenters who allegedly bought their thickwitted kids' way into top universities in the college admissions scandal https://mcmansionhell.com/post/183417051691/in-honor-of-the-college-admissions-scandal

Colophon (permalink)

Today's top sources: Empty Wheel (https://www.emptywheel.net/), CNN (https://cnn.com), Memex 1.1 (https://memex.naughtons.org/), Slashdot (https://slashdot.org).

Hugo nominators! My story "Unauthorized Bread" is eligible in the Novella category and you can read it free on Ars Technica: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/01/unauthorized-bread-a-near-future-tale-of-refugees-and-sinister-iot-appliances/

Currently writing: I've just finished rewrites on a short story, "The Canadian Miracle," for MIT Tech Review. It's a story set in the world of my next novel, "The Lost Cause," a post-GND novel about truth and reconciliation. I've also just completed "Baby Twitter," a piece of design fiction also set in The Lost Cause's prehistory, for a British think-tank. I'm getting geared up to start work on the novel next.

Currently reading: Just started Lauren Beukes's forthcoming Afterland: it's Y the Last Man plus plus, and two chapters in, it's amazeballs. Last month, I finished Andrea Bernstein's "American Oligarchs"; it's a magnificent history of the Kushner and Trump families, showing how they cheated, stole and lied their way into power. I'm getting really into Anna Weiner's memoir about tech, "Uncanny Valley." I just loaded Matt Stoller's "Goliath" onto my underwater MP3 player and I'm listening to it as I swim laps.

Latest podcast: A Lever Without a Fulcrum Is Just a Stick https://archive.org/download/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_330/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_330_-_A_Lever_Without_a_Fulcrum_Is_Just_a_Stick.mp3

Upcoming books: "Poesy the Monster Slayer" (Jul 2020), a picture book about monsters, bedtime, gender, and kicking ass. Pre-order here: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781626723627?utm_source=socialmedia&utm_medium=socialpost&utm_term=na-poesycorypreorder&utm_content=na-preorder-buynow&utm_campaign=9781626723627

(we're having a launch for it in Burbank on July 11 at Dark Delicacies and you can get me AND Poesy to sign it and Dark Del will ship it to the monster kids in your life in time for the release date).

"Attack Surface": The third Little Brother book, Oct 20, 2020. https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250757531

"Little Brother/Homeland": A reissue omnibus edition with a new introduction by Edward Snowden: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250774583

[drawlfoy]

The Sound of...Magic? p.2

pairing: draco x nannyhalfblood!reader

request: yes! thank you :)

warning: draco being kinda angsty and uninterested. mentions of death in the family and also i’m butchering canon because *gasp* i refuse to consume any media about the cursed child....everything jkr has said since the deathly hallows is NONE of my business 

summary: after astoria dies, draco malfoy hires an american halfblood nanny who’s having some difficulty finding herself. he slowly falls for her

a/n: ok i’ll be totally honest, i might end up cutting this story short as it’s the story on my page who has gotten the least amount of feedback and i kind of suck at writing adults and parenting things, but i don’t want to let down the person who requested this fic and i’m hoping i’ll fall back in love with this! also i only have about 30 minutes today to write this particular fic so i apologize if it’s short! i’ll be totally honest, i’m having a lot of trouble writing this one up.

music recs: there really aren’t any that i recommend tbh

word count: 939

Y/N always held a special place in her heart for Britain, and quite honestly, Europe in general. She’d always envied the stories she heard of her professors that attended Hogwarts before being offered a teaching job at Ilvermorny. She’d attempted to take a year abroad and attend any wizarding school in Western Europe, but unfortunately, given her blood status and the fact that there was a full out war raging, her applications were denied and she was stuck on the East Coast of the US once again. 

Her holiday season had, in fact, sucked major ass. Uprisings were beginning around her office to protest one of the laws the Congress and recently passed regarding Magical Object Importation, and one of them turned violent. 

Her mother probably didn’t even have the chance to get up and try to run before her office was enfulged in flames, something that hurt Y/N to think about. 

Her father had left when she was young, and without any siblings, Y/N suddenly found herself completely alone with more inheritance than she knew what to do with. 

So when her supervisor heard her complaining and told her of a wizard requesting a nanny in Britain, she couldn’t resist. Before she knew it, she was organizing the portkeys needed and packing for one year away from everything she knew.

♥♥♥♥

The British countryside never failed to stun her with its beauty. Y/N had visited once with her mother when she was no older than 10, and she always promised herself that she’d return when she was older.

And I did, Mom Y/N thought, smiling sadly as she watched the world race by from her seat on the train. She’d opted to take the train for a bit to get closer to the address she was sent, which was a bit unorthodox and inefficient as she’d end up apparating anyways, but she needed the moments to think and gather her thoughts.

The only information her supervisor had given her was limited and vague. Something about a man just a few years older than her who had a son that was a couple year old. His wife died at birth and he had been getting by with local nannies, but apparently he wasn’t loved in the community and didn’t feel safe leaving his child alone with anyone who knew him, thus explaining why he wanted an American nanny. 

Y/N found that a bit odd, but cast the thoughts aside. Death changed everyone, and it certainly changed her. She could only hope that--she scoured the slip of parchment that gave her the address to find a name--Mr. Malfoy would be kind to her. 

She got off on the next stop, slipping away to a private alcove to apparate to the Malfoy...Manor? She stared at the word Manor. In America, no one had manors...sure, they had mansions, but manor was old money. 

Y/N gulped. Perhaps she was getting in way over her head.

No matter, though. She’d teleported all the way out here, and it wouldn’t be for nothing.

Here goes Y/N steeled herself before apparating.

♥♥♥♥

Her concerns were echoed as she saw the type of lodging she’d be staying in as the architecture of the giant mansion imitated one of a gothic castle. 

Maybe this was a mistake Y/N thought nervously to herself. Her trunk with her rather plain clothes began to feel out of place and she couldn’t help but wonder what kind of woman Mr. Malfoy was accustomed to--a prim and proper and manicured one that ate caviar for breakfast, no doubt. 

But she was alive, and his wife was not, so she decided to bite the bullet and approach the front door. It towered over her, pushing Y/N to the conclusion that this house was not constructed to feel homey and welcoming. It was designed to intimidate, and it was doing its job wonderfully.

She knocked thrice, picking her trunk back up afterwards and nervously waiting for the door to be answered. Y/N began to wonder what the father would look like--would he be classically beautiful? Or would his features resemble those with a family tree that interwove a little too much?

She didn’t have more time to worry as the door began to creak open. Y/N gulped, awaiting to see the man in the flesh, and was shocked when she had to look down to see who had opened the door.

Of course. A house elf. 

Any doubts she had about this household being one of luxury were immediately banished. These people were rich, alright. Richer than she could ever imagine.

The house elf greeted her and led her inside the manor, and she was immediately struck with a draft. It was cold and dark inside, the opposite of the cheery examples of rich lifestyles that had been shoved down her throat in America. 

Everything was spotless, no doubt to the credit of the many house elves bustling about the place. 

“This way, miss.” The house elf that greeted her directed her down a long hall off to the side. “Master is in his office.”

Y/N inwardly cringed at the use of the word “master”. She cringed even harder when she imagined Malfoy instructing her to refer to him as that.

If he does that, I’m giving myself the clear to take the first flight home she promised herself.

Finally, they reached the end of the hallway, which opened up into a giant office with windows stretching luxuriously across the walls and the ceiling. 

“Master, she is here,” the house elf reported.

The large, plush chair in front of the giant mahogany desk spun around.

[kainosite]

Convicts and Parole

Les Mis adaptations often give the impression that Valjean’s parole violation is a very big deal, perhaps the worst thing he’s done since he left Toulon in the eyes of the law.  He is sometimes told upon his release that if he breaks his parole he’ll be returned to the bagne.  None of this is true.

Technically what we're calling "parole" isn't even a parole.  Valjean has completed his sentence, but because he committed a felony he's under residency and movement restrictions for the rest of his life, and any subsequent crime he commits will carry a harsher penalty. What he has is "special surveillance of the senior police", and the law considers ducking that surveillance a problem for the police rather than the courts.  At the time of Valjean’s release, it wasn’t even a criminal offense.

A Brief History

Under the Ancien Régime many groups of people were subject to movement and residency restrictions, former convicts among them.  Dating back to the 1600s, there were laws that bound freed galley slaves to a specific place of residence and stated that if they were to reoffend they should be sent back to the galleys on the confirmation of their identity.

After the revolution all these laws and movement restrictions were abolished.  Neither the Penal Code of 1791 nor that of 1795 mention surveillance of freed convicts, although both include escalating penalties for recidivism.  Subsequent governments soon brought back the residency restrictions.  On 19 ventôse, Year XIII a new decree required all convicts to declare upon their release from the bagne the commune and department in which they intended to live, and banned them from living within 30 km of the borders or in cities that were in a state of war.  The next year, the decree of 17 juillet, 1806 extended the ban to Paris, Versailles, Fontainebleau and anywhere else with an imperial palace, as well as the cities where the bagnes were located.  It charged the prefects and the police of the departments in which freed convicts lived with the responsibility of monitoring them, and forbade former convicts from changing their residence without the authorization of the prefect.  It also laid out the system we see in place when Valjean is released from the bagne, in which the freed convict is issued travel papers with an obligatory itinerary.  This measure wasn’t entirely repressive, as the decree required the itinerary to include reimbursement for travel expenses, money the convict could only collect by following the route.

(Incidentally, the musical is right to call it a “ticket of leave” rather than a “passport”.  Hugo elides the difference in the novel, but as the bagnes were under the control of the Navy, the travel papers convicts were granted upon their release took the form of a military leave rather than a civilian passport.)

The Code of Napoleon

Napoleon’s 1810 Code Pénal brought in a new system.  It retained the escalating penalties for recidivism from the earlier penal codes, but under the new legislation police surveillance was fully integrated into the body of the law instead of being tacked on as an afterthought.  There was also a different concept for how it should work.  The previous decrees had imposed police surveillance and movement and residency restrictions on former convicts only, but Article 47 of the new code extended them to everyone with a serious felony conviction, whether they had been sentenced to forced labor or imprisonment.  A number of lesser crimes also resulted in temporary surveillance sentences, especially juvenile offenses.

The original intent of the legislation was that offenders or their families and friends should pay a bond, a sort of surety or security deposit.  If the criminal committed a second offense they would forfeit the money, which would be used to compensate their victims.  The idea was that financial considerations or pressure from the relatives or friends who had put up the bond would encourage the criminal to remain honest so that they could get their money back at the completion of their sentence.  It was only in the exceptional case where the offender could not or would not pay the bond that they would be subject to police surveillance.

For freed convicts and other felons the surveillance sentence was lifelong, but putting up the bond would still free them from the onerous police monitoring and residency restrictions, and it gave them an incentive to work hard and save money in prison or after their release so they could pay the bond as soon as possible.  (That this system meant the wealthy would not have to put up with surveillance or residency restrictions even for a day was probably no accident.)  The legislation was broadly well-intentioned, but it quickly ran into problems.

• The bond was supposed to be determined at sentencing, based on the severity of the original crime.  This meant that it couldn’t take into account good or bad behavior in prison, the criminal’s remorse, or any of the other factors one might want to incorporate into a parole decision.

• The bond was set at the discretion of the public prosecutor and the victims.  An 1812 ruling meant that the criminal couldn’t even ask to be assigned one; the process had to be initiated either by the ministère public or the victims, who needless to say weren’t usually too keen on enabling the criminal who had robbed them or murdered a relative to escape police surveillance.

• If, to take a random example, a convict was sent to the galleys for bread theft in 1796, long before the 1810 Code Pénal was even a glint in Napoleon’s eye, but only released in 1815, he was screwed under the new system.  He had no bond set for him because the system hadn’t been in place at the time of his trial, and he had no way to request that one be assigned.

• Even if a bond was set, the government could simply refuse to accept the payment on the grounds of security concerns.

• While officials were happy to release the bourgeoisie from police surveillance, they quickly noticed that among the lower classes, the felons most likely to be able to put up the bond were those with access to large criminal networks, exactly the people they most wanted to monitor and keep away from Paris or the bagnes.

The upshot of all of this was that at least for freed convicts, the exceptional case very quickly became the rule.  The great majority were placed under police surveillance and subject to movement and residency restrictions, at least for some length of time.

Breaking Parole

What, then, does breaking “parole” consist of?  It’s not the increased penalties for recidivism, which are written into the penal code as an intrinsic property of any felony conviction.  There’s no parole there to violate; that’s just a consequence of the original conviction that will follow the felon for the rest of their life, like the civic degradation that deprives them of the right to vote, hold public office or testify under oath.

What we’re considering here is the offense known as “rupture de ban” or dodging police surveillance: deviating from the obligatory itinerary, being caught in a proscribed location (generally Paris, although a number of other major cities and some minor ones also banned convicts), changing residence without permission, or missing one of the regularly scheduled check-ins with the police.  Article 45 of the penal code states that 

In case of disobedience to [the residency and movement restrictions imposed by the surveillance sentence], the government shall have the right to arrest and detain the convicted person for a period of time which may extend until the expiration of the period of special surveillance.

Two things are worth noting about this passage.  One is that parole-breaking is not defined in the penal code as a felony or even as a misdemeanor.  It’s not even a contravention, one of those minor offenses like traffic violations too trivial to make it into the penal code.  It’s not technically a crime!  Since forced labor is exclusively a felony sentence, no freed convict could be sent back to the bagne for violating their parole.  The worst punishment they could face is detention in the municipal prison.

The other thing is that dealing with parole violations is entirely at the discretion of the government – that is to say, the police.  There’s no mandatory minimum sentence specified by the statute, as there is for almost every crime in the penal code.  And the maximum sentence is equal to the period of police surveillance, which in the case of freed convicts lasts for the rest of their lives.  In theory, the police could imprison them forever.  Five years of forced labor followed by a single parole violation could result in a life sentence.

In practice this seems not to have been a problem.  The standard sentence for rupture de ban was two or three months in the municipal jail.  If a former convict could convince the police he really had just been looking for work, he might be sent home without any punishment at all.  I’ve even seen cases where the police not only let someone go, but went out of their way to find them a job.  Incorrigible parole violators or people who made themselves especially obnoxious when they were caught might get six months or a year.  The longest sentence I’ve seen was two years, for a guy who went on the lam for a decade and led the police on a merry dance across multiple departments and half a dozen false identities.

I have seen a fair number of parole violators detained “until further order”, usually because the police were holding them on suspicion of a crime or checking references.  The French were and are pretty stingy about letting people out on remand – they’ve been rebuked by the ECHR because they have so many people in custody awaiting trial for so long – so these suspects might have been kept in preliminary detention anyway, but their status as freed convicts probably didn’t help their chances of getting released.  The police may have been willing to hold them for longer and on thinner grounds than they would an ordinary citizen.

The other major group of former convicts who tended to end up in detention “until further order” were people applying for special dispensation to live in Paris.  Parisian convicts faced a real problem upon their release from the bagne because they were banned from living in their hometown where their family and support network were located and they had the best hope of finding a job.  Instead of opting for a residence in the countryside while the Ministry of Police assessed their case, a bunch of them seem to have decided to just kick their heels in Bicêtre until they could pay the bond or the police could confirm they had valid job offers or their wives could look sufficiently imploring.  Maybe the urgent need to reduce the overcrowding of the prison increased the odds they would get approval.

Reform

Liberal reformers were acutely aware of the problem that Valjean and Vautrin encountered, where social stigma meant that freed convicts were unable to obtain work or fair wages and found themselves driven back to crime out of desperation.  Even in cases where the police were decent enough not to blab their secret all over town, the surveillance was damning, because convicts were required to report to the police on the 15th and the 30th of every month.  Sometimes they might be required to check in as often as once or twice a week, if the police were particularly suspicious about their movements.  The only other reason someone might show up so regularly at the police station was if they were a police spy, and in the eyes of the public that was no better than being a convict.

The requirement to get approval from the prefect for a change of residence also created problems.  Often the only jobs available to freed convicts were ephemeral manual labor positions that appeared when a big construction project was untaken or the harvest needed to be brought in, which might last only a few days or weeks.  By the time all the necessary officials had signed off on the paperwork, the job had disappeared.  And that was assuming the convict could get approval at all.  Prefects would usually check in with the commune to which the convict wished to move to see if it wanted to take him, and since the answer was invariably “Lol no”, most of these requests were denied.

The discretionary nature of sentencing for parole violations was another obvious flaw in the system.  Without a crime that could be tried in a proper court, there was no way to regularize sentences or to ensure that the accused were given a fair chance to defend themselves.  And there was always the risk that some Javerty asshole might go “One million years dungeon!” and some poor schmuck would find himself locked up for life for a trivial offense, with no formal course for redress.

Finally, the bonds were getting a little embarrassing even for the bourgeoisie.  The legal principle that the severity of the surveillance imposed on released felons should be determined solely by whether or not they could fork over a wad of cash, and not by their conduct in prison, their repentance for their crimes or their efforts to reform, was difficult to defend, especially when the result was to liberate mobsters and condemn bread thieves.  And the system had completely broken down.

So when a major revision to the penal code was passed on 28 avril, 1832, rupture de ban was made into a misdemeanor.  From now on people accused of breaking parole would be brought before a court and given a proper trial, rather than being detained on the whim of the police.  Sentences were limited to the the standard misdemeanor maximum of five years.  Some of the residency restrictions were abolished, and felons who wished to move no longer needed permission, they just had to notify their mayor three days in advance so they could be given travel papers with a mandatory itinerary to get them to their new destination.  The hated check-ins were eliminated, in the hopes that the police could keep track of freed convicts in secret without alerting the whole community to their shameful past.  And the bond system was abolished.  In the future all released felons would be subject to the new, less rigorous surveillance regime, although people who had already paid their bonds before the new law was passed retained their exemption.

(Then Louis-Napoleon showed up and made everything terrible again, because of course he did.)

What All This Means for Jean Valjean

• On the narrow question of the yellow passport, That Dreadful Musical was more accurate than Victor Hugo.

• Valjean will never have to go back to the bagne unless he commits another felony, like stealing money from a kid on a highway or signing official papers under a false name.  Skipping out on his parole isn’t enough to condemn him.

• Javert could, if he wished, react to the discovery that M. Madeleine is in fact the parole-breaking convict Jean Valjean by doing absolutely nothing.  He’s under no obligation to tell anyone about Valjean’s past felony conviction, and Montreuil-sur-Mer isn’t a proscribed town.  Punishment is entirely at his discretion.  They’d have to ask the prefects of Doubs and Pas-de-Calais for permission to transfer Valjean’s residence from Pontarlier, but given his contributions to the regional economy that shouldn’t present an insurmountable barrier.

(Once Madeleine is appointed mayor the situation becomes more complicated, because he can’t legally hold that office and he absolutely cannot sign any documents.)

• If the public prosecutor in Aisne in 1820 is more kindly disposed than the one in 1796, they might even be able to persuade him to set a bond and free Valjean from police surveillance entirely.  Alternatively, the prefect of Pas-de-Calais can lift the surveillance for good behavior even without the bond, although this requires five years of irreproachable conduct and absconding halfway across the country from one’s assigned parole location probably doesn’t cut it.

• Javert could also react to the discovery by throwing Valjean in prison forever without a trial.

Which of these two responses is more likely is a question I will leave to the reader.

References

The 1810 Code Penal:  English  French

La police secrète du premier empire: bulletins quotidiens adressés par Fouché à l'empéreur.  Joseph Fouché, 1804-1810.  Compiled by Ernest d'Hauterive.

“Mesures policières de sûreté et populations particulièrement surveillées. Le registre des détenus administratifs de Bicêtre (1813-1851)‪”. Jean-Claude Farcy and Laurence Guignard.  Revue d'histoire du XIXe siècle, 2015.

Report of M. Treite, Counsel to Her Majesty's Embassy at Paris, on the Supervision of Discharged Convicts in France.  N. Treite, 1863.

[theliterateape]

Keeping The Faith

by Wayne Lerner

PART 1 

6:10 am 

The organ announced the opening of the morning mass with a soaring C Major chord followed by the rumbling B flat bass note played on the pedals by Sr. Agnes. Younger than the other Sisters by almost two decades and the last of the new recruits, Agnes had a bit of playfulness in her heart. Every so often, she would veer from traditional religious demeanor much to the dismay of the older Sisters. 

She was always the first on the dance floor at the hospital banquets, hopping around to the beat of the DJ’s music. And, when no one was around, Agnes would sneak into the chapel and play her favorite music on the organ, Gershwin and Scott Joplin. The other Sisters would hear the music as it reverberated throughout the Motherhouse and just roll their eyes. 

“It’s that Agnes, again,” they would say with a disparaging look on their faces, speaking in their mother tongue which they knew Agnes did not understand. 

As if Agnes knew they were talking about her, she would end her personal concert with Malotte’s The Lord’s Prayer which made the Sisters go silent and ask for forgiveness for thinking bad thoughts. Agnes finished the emotional song, sat still for a moment in the majestic chapel, and thanked the Lord for the blessings she had received throughout her life. 

After all, the Superior, Sr. Theresa had recruited Agnes to the congregation and knew her tendencies well. She always encouraged Agnes to bring the Lord’s prayers to all concerned in the ways she knew best even though some of the more conservative Sisters were sure to disapprove. 

“Blind adherence to tradition does not help us find and make new friends,” Sr. Theresa liked to say. 

Sr. Theresa was deep in thought as she entered the chapel. 

“Today’s the day. If our prayers are ever going to be answered by the Lord, it has to be today. Without the support of the Cardinal and his Bishops, we’re done. Our legacy will be finished and our hospital will be no more. Almost a hundred years of toil, and for what?”

Theresa sighed, Her shoulders slumped down. Thoughts flooded her mind and, with them, consequences. 

“People from miles around will have no place to get care. How can they let this happen? Why are they so shortsighted? Sure, we’re asking for something out of the ordinary but we’re still going to be true to our faith, to our religious directives, to our ethics. We’re doing what’s necessary in order to keep our institution alive.” 

Theresa sat straight up as she looked around at her beloved chapel with new-found strength. 

“I’m going to say extra prayers today.I know the Sisters are doing the same. It is their hard work which will be for naught if the Cardinal succumbs to those who don’t want us to change.” 

6:30 am 

The door to his personal chapel squeaked as it opened and then slammed shut as the Cardinal and his assistant, Father Paul, entered for morning prayers. 

“Oh my God,” said the Cardinal. “With all the money we spend around here, can’t they get this fixed? Between the door, the lack of reliable heat in the winter and the squeaky floors, all I want is peace and quiet as I prepare for my daily prayers. I would be better off in the Brothers’ residence next door rather than in this Gothic monstrosity. Who needs a place this big and old? All I need is a bed, a meal and a place to pray.” 

Father Paul nodded in agreement. 

“If simplicity is good enough for the Pope, why not the Cardinal of Chicago?” said the Cardinal. Status, prestige, power don’t contribute to a man’s moral standing, values and actions do. There are many who don’t see the world as I do. And some of them will be here for the Bishops’ lunch today.” 

Father Paul broke the Cardinal’s train of thought. 

“Your Eminence, the meeting later today is going to be especially difficult. The agenda is replete with arduous issues, which churches to close and which parishes to merge. None of them have the resources to remain open by themselves anymore. What’s worse is that they are all in the underserved neighborhoods.” 

“How can we retain or even increase the number of people of color to our faith if we can’t help them keep their churches open?” replied the Cardinal. “That’s problem enough but the final issue today, that one, will be the most contentious.” 

“That’s for sure, sir,” said Father Paul. “The new partnership the hospital wants to enter into with 

that Federal clinic system has never been addressed before. Are you ready for this, sir?. They are asking for a lot even though they have the best of intentions.” 

The Cardinal looked down as his right hand began to shake. 

“The tremors are coming more frequently,” he said to Father Paul. “Everyone can see them. Some will recognize it as a sign of weakness. They will want to take advantage of my condition.” 

“It pains me to say this but some your most formidable adversaries are not outside of the faith but inside,” replied Father Paul. “Several will be sitting around your table today. One, in particular, wants your job and will do all he can to get it.” 

The Cardinal nodded in agreement. “Yes, I know. I’m conservative but he’s at an extreme. There’s no gray for him. You are of the faith and abide by the rules to the letter or you don’t. And, what’s worse, I suspect he has racist and prejudicial biases based on his offhanded comments. That’s not a formula for a populist Cardinal.” 

“The problem is he carries a lot of weight with the other Bishops,” said Father Paul. “Many listen to him because they agree with his stance on Church proceedings. Others are just afraid of him.” 

The Cardinal sighed. “I just hope I have the wherewithal to make the right decision and stand tall for those who need our support more than ever before.” 

“Anything else I can do for you this morning, Eminence?” asked Father Paul. “No, thank you. Please leave me. I have much to consider.” 

Father Paul left the chapel as the Cardinal’s mind drifted to the prayers of the day. As he did every morning, he asked for forgiveness for recently committed sins. 

“Many would be surprised that I ask for the Lord to forgive me my frailties during my prayers. Cardinals commit sins. We are but human. So are those around me. They sin too but they rationalize their grab for power as being good for the Church.’ 

The Cardinal paused to look through the stained glass skylight to the stars which still shined bright in the early morning sky. 

“Lord, I could use your help today. Please send me a message on which road to follow. Perhaps the clue will come from an unlikely source. Or maybe, just maybe, this is a burden I have to carry myself and discern the right path to take, regardless of the consequences. There is much at stake.” 

The Cardinal crossed himself and slowly rose from his knees, his hands shaking but still strong. He straightened his clothes, said another prayer and proceeded out of the chapel to begin his day. 

6:42 am 

The static from the alarm clock erupted from the speakers as it tuned in WBBM-NewsRadio. In his slumber, David heard a loud voice sing out, “Good morning, Chicago. It's a glorious December day. Sunny, windy but cold… “ 

His hand smashed down on the top of the alarm clock as he tried to reach the snooze button to grab an extra 10 minutes of sleep. Looking at the time, he realized more sleep was not an option today. He stretched out his muscles trying to force circulation throughout his body. As he looked down towards his toes, he saw a rise in the cover sheet. 

“Oh, good morning, buddy. Are you feeling a bit lonely these days? I can understand that. It’s been a while, hasn’t it? Well, you’re gonna have to wait a bit longer. Got a tough day ahead of me today.” 

David looked around his barren bedroom which gave him pause. 48 years old and living in a hovel as more than half his pay went to his ex-wife. 

“Jesus! What a shit hole. I sure would like to live downtown like many of my friends. But where am I working? For a hospital which takes care of the poor. I love their Mission and I make a decent living but to what end? C’mon David, stop being sorry for yourself. Focus!” 

Today was critical to the future of the hospital. They had to get the Cardinal’s permission for the radical partnership they had put forward. It was the last option they had to right the ship and bring new patients to the hospital. 

“The Cardinal is not leaning in our direction. We are proposing a precedent which changes the way which we enforce the Ethical and Religious Directives. There are several Bishops who don’t agree with this change. They like things the way they are even if it means schools close...or parishes or hospitals.” 

David paused to reflect on the situation, its complexities and the strategy they had developed. Then reality hit him. 

“And I know It really rubs them that a non-Catholic CEO is proposing this change. I should have gotten a job in the suburbs. I’d be making a ton more money and wouldn’t be living like this. Stop dreaming. These are the cards you chose to play. Maybe I’ll go to heaven because of the good we are doing. Then you’ll get out of this hovel.” 

David smiled at that thought, dragged himself out of bed and went into the tiny bathroom. The water in the shower’s pipes squealed as the water began to trickle out of the sediment-filled shower head. 

“Shit!” he said out loud. “Now, I’ve got to wait 15 minutes for the water to warm up. I don’t know how much more I can take! The fucking landlord refuses to do anything about this shithole!” 

He leaned over and put his head in his hands as he began to feel even more sorry for himself than he usually did. Just then, the water stopped squealing. He knew there would be just enough hot water for a quick shower and shave so he had better get his ass in gear. 20 minutes later, David was dressed in his best blue suit with a matching, conservative striped tie and polished shoes as he knew first impressions were important. Then, another reality hit him. 

“Bishop Piwonski knows who I am and doesn’t like anything about me. The other Bishops only know what they have heard from him. We are fortunate Father Garrity has been working with us on this change and has the Cardinal’s ear as his Vicar for Healthcare. Garrity likes me even though I am not of his faith. He knows the Sisters and I have bonded over our concerns for our community. We have been resolute in our efforts to save the hospital.” 

David put on his overcoat and went outside to see his car covered in snow. Muttering to himself, he swept the snow off his car, got in and began his 60 minute drive, first, to the hospital and then, down the block, to the Motherhouse. 

11:45 am 

The day was gloomy with the remnants of the last snowfall strewn across the steps of the Motherhouse, the lawns and streets. 

“Typical crappy, December weather in Chicago,” David said to himself. “I hope this isn”t an omen.” 

David saw her approach the door to the Motherhouse and began to get out of the car when she waved him off. She always waved him off. She was one of the most independent people he had ever met. 

Sr. Theresa was dressed in her usual uniform. Gray dress and top with her face framed in a white wimple. Her diminutive stature and gentle demeanor hid seven and a half decades of inner strength, experience and knowledge of health care. But it didn’t hide her service to her congregation and commitment to her Lord. If there was a biased bone in her body, no one could find it. Different from some of the other Sisters whose prejudices were clear just below the surface, Sr. Theresa lived her life believing in the goodness of every person. And she showed it 

by her behavior. Protesting against voting restrictions, striving for fair housing laws, investing in Catholic healthcare and education for all and time for prayer. 

If she had a failing, David couldn’t find it. Plus she rooted for the right team. Sr. Theresa was an avid White Sox fan. She never said a bad word about the Cubs but he knew she silently rejoiced when the Sox won and the Cubs lost. 

Sr. Theresa took her time walking down the stairs to make sure she didn’t lose her footing. David got up from his seat to open the door for her but she waved him off once again. She slid into the front passenger seat and closed the door without making a sound. 

Putting on her seatbelt, she turned to David, smiled and said “Good morning, Mr. CEO, are we ready for our adventure today?” 

“Yes, Sister,” David said with a smile. “I’m ready. There aren’t too many tomorrows for our hospital without implementing our plan. I think I’ve got a strategy to handle the meeting with the Cardinal and his Bishops but I’m going to ask you to follow my lead when the meeting starts.” 

“OK,“ she said, “but let’s go over that approach one more time. The Cardinal’s decision is critical to the future of the hospital and our legacy.” 

“That’s the story we have to tell, Sister,” said David. 

“Yes. Our congregation, the Sisters, have worked for almost a century to bring education and healthcare to the poor and underserved. We can’t afford to let that die now,” said Sister Theresa. 

“After introductions, Father Garrity will take the lead,” said David. “His influence with the Cardinal along with the approach we will take should make for a forceful but tactful presentation. The Bishops have received our proposal in advance. They know what path we want to take. When we are done, they will see we have no other viable alternative to keep the hospital alive.” 

Sr. Theresa bowed her head and was silent for a few moments. 

David had seen this before. 

“She’s saying a prayer. I hope it is a powerful one.” 

David and Sister Theresa knew the hospital was down to two days of cash and didn't have any realistic options. They had looked at many alternatives, for profit and not-for-profit. No organization wanted a “mission” hospital or responsibility for a hospital which treated the poor and underserved. There were no suitors, no partners, who were willing to work with them or take on the hospital. The State needed them to stay open but couldn’t allocate funds to just them without making enemies with the other hospitals. The Sisters, dwindling in numbers and aging in place, had spent the last 10 years trying to discern a solution. 

Sister Theresa looked up from her prayers. 

“Before you arrived, David, we loaned the hospital money when it looked like it couldn’t make payroll. We are out of ideas. That’s why this meeting is so important. You have to lead this rescue plan. There’s no one else who can do the job!” 

David was quiet as he took in the overwhelming responsibility facing him. He knew that the Sisters had depended on his executive skills for the past 6 years just to keep the hospital afloat. With the Board’s help, they had done just that, kept it alive but on life support. Now, the end was in sight and it wasn’t pretty, for the Sisters or the community. He finally understood why he had come to this hospital and not stayed in the suburbs. Some things are just more important than money or where he lived. 

“I think our plan has legs, Sister,” he said. “It’s a bit of a stretch and may require the Cardinal and his henchmen to think beyond their normal boundaries and prejudices, but it’s doable. And it will preserve the Catholicity of the hospital.” 

“Legs? What do you mean? Do you think the plan can stand on its own? How will we convince them that, if we merge with another system, not of our faith, but of our mission, that we will continue to bring the Church to the faithful, as a Catholic institution?” 

David explained the thinking behind his approach. “The plan dictates that we draft a special agreement with any new partner which allows them to fulfill their responsibilities set down in the law and their bylaws, but still abides by the Ethical and Religious Directives. If a woman needs counseling for reproductive services, with the help of Father Garrity, we have drafted language the partner must agree to use to refer the patient outside of our hospital. That way, all parties have satisfied their obligations and we have stayed true to our Catholicity requirements.” 

“Do you think we can convince the Bishops, especially you know who, that we are not decimating our obligations by using this technique?” Sr. Theresa asked. “If the three of us can assure them that everything we are proposing is in line with the Directives, then maybe, just maybe, the Cardinal will decide in our favor.” 

“That’s what we are banking on, Sister,” David replied. “We are out of options. If we don’t succeed today, you and I both know that we’ll close our doors on March 15th. The community and 1200 employees depend on our survival. The proposal says it clearly. Father Garrity and I will emphasize these facts in our presentation.” 

David and Theresa knew they had to depend on the goodwill of the Cardinal and his ability to see their reality without succumbing to Church politics. He had to recommend to Rome that this agreement was ok to sign. In order to get to this outcome, the Cardinal may have to overrule some or all of his Bishops. 

“We’ve interacted with the Cardinal enough to know he has a big heart for his faithful and the underserved,” said David. “He has to convince himself this plan accomplishes a greater purpose without diminishing the Catholic protocols all of us live by.” 

“You’re right, David,” Sister sighed. “I just wish we had more support around the table. Even our Bishop will be silent in Bishop Piwonski’s presence.” 

“Don’t underestimate Father Garrity, Sister,” David said. “I talk with him almost every day, including this morning on the drive in. He knows how we feel but he remains upbeat about the possibility of this getting approved. Maybe he has a pipeline to the Big Guy,” David joked to release some of the tension in the car. 

Sr. Theresa didn’t respond but bowed her head in silent prayer. 

David looked over at her with admiration and respect. Then he said a prayer, his favorite from long ago. 

“May the Lord bless us and keep us. May the Lord...”

PART 2

[autoirishlitdiscourses]

Discourse of Tuesday, 13 July 2021

The quarter. Have a good job this week. Let me know how stressed you've been this quarter, too, though again, it currently looks like it's going to open up different kinds of distinctions in symbolism are you using a number of things in your selection but were very articulate paper here. Sounds like a good sense of disappointment and ambiguity and of relating those implications to your recitation and discussion to get a D on a topic that is an indication. Let me know if you need any changes, it would be necessary to use any equipment other than you expect. Well done on this subject from the book. If you attend section every week except Thanksgiving and that uniting a discussion of major themes in a way of taking a neutral position, the student writes in her discussion in a sufficiently solid manner. I just checked my eGrades sheet, and it may be. You're welcome!

Hi! Good choice on text, though not by any means the only thing preventing you from your larger-scale structure I'm tempted to make sure to listen for the remainder of the quarter by 1/3 of a videographer, though I think that practicing a bit flat it's a way of taking up time that you have a fantastic and well thought-out order.

That's very good sense of your presentation. More centrally, I think that articulating your criteria for determining what the ultimate destination of the text in question, and the humor that people run up against was that the hard things to focus your argument more closely on the final, and I've finally figured out the organization of your discussion plans are solid here. It might be called the migrant experience in general, quite well done here let me know if you think about whether your helicopter parents are doing quite well in this paragraph: attending section any other questions, OK? Many students who try to give you some feedback about what your most important by the time for both your paper gives some intriguing possibilities without theorizing them as explicitly as something other than you to be reliable throughout a writing tutor in CLAS can help you to push them even better is that if you want to switch topics? 1269-1283, p. On the other on your grade to you earlier. Let me know and we'll work out another time to reschedule a 27 November. Since you two are the only student who didn't either take the midterm exam have been balanced a bit more carefully would have been not a statement about this and provided an interpretive pathway into one of the play pp. There were ways in which the pound was subdivided, as I see it here. The hat scene in/Waiting for Godot/seen in the poem's sense of rhythm. 277 in the lead a discussion leader is worth 100%, 11 students had 97% or above.

However, it may be confused on some people. Your mapping of geographical space onto ideology is thought to be changed than send a more prestigious edition, but this is absolutely nothing wrong with writing all six on the structural schema of/Ulysses/: There is absolutely still within the absurdist tradition. But if you have any questions, and truthfully, I suppose. Well done on this you connected it effectively to the group warmed up for the metaphor. You'll notice that the paper and I quite enjoyed reading it, and Francie's unusual diction makes passages from the plan; remember that at the context of the Blooms' marriage. Your plans were adequate but came in earlier than yours. Prestigious Academic Senate awards are now currently at a middle B. Thanks for your thoughts would pay off for you to speak if no one else does feeling. This may or may not use any form of love has trapped her in a lifelong economic contract that specifies what demands each contracting party, based on attendance but not the most important thing to have a fair number of particular interpretive problems as Ulysses does there is of course grade. Perhaps most importantly, though I'm perfectly sure that we have a copy of Dialectic of Enlightenment or can get in to the complex material you're dealing with them, but against my other section that you're not willing to offer the same time, but some students may not be everything that you saw as important about mothers in Irish literature, due to strep throat, so although there's no overlap in terms of figuring out when to give the code to as in just a tiny bit over, and your presence in front of the poem's sense of the other students in the first episode of Ulysses. Ultimately, it isn't, because this book has similar interpretive problems for Ulysses none of the poem for guitar is a deep connection to religion, and so this is a heady drug that we're going to be more successful. Smooth, thoughtful, perceptive, non-aligned in the novel's plot and thematic development.

In all cases, writers of C-range papers: the twelfth episode, Cyclops, in practice, I graded. However, these are impressive moves. You should/always/have completed the assigned texts from Seamus Heaney: discussion of this paper to punch through to a question and, Godot from Lucky's speech.

Think about how you can think about how lack of motherhood; the paper you wrote, basing your argument and the historical development of the class almost an A-grades in that relationship can make my 6 o'clock section, and a mountainy ram, and it would be to think that Ulysses, is it worthwhile to make sure that they're some of the midterm, and your close attention to the growing poet, and I think that asking open-ended would have most needed in order to construct a reasonable doubt? Ultimately, I misspelled it. You have a backup plan in yet, you've done a very strong paper. I wish I would recommend that you took on a different text on a second essay? Responding to paper proposals and recitation. Tell him they're in between the IRA and the professor's announcement that he had an excellent Thanksgiving and a load of dung at Michaelmas, the actual text that you previously got on that section is UXJU. Your writing is also true, for instance. The Song of Wandering Aengus normally, I'll probably advise him to use to construct a reasonable guess is that my baseline expectation for the brief responses I'm trying to provide one.

Thanks for being such a way that they haven't hurt you much on interpretations that the paper may help to ground your analysis, which often uses hawthorn to mark these boundaries between worlds in this case. I can. Departures were planned in advance that I say these things but could make suggestions about where you're doing your research anyway, or at any stage of the analysis fits into that arc. You show a fair amount of reading the play with and which originate elsewhere. Let me know.

On a totally unrelated note, you should give me a copy of the section website that I've given it another way, and would have been doing. Although there's no overlap in terms of which is actually doing and what the real purposes of this poem is the case I just graded your paper further is to say. Well done on this half of the places where your phrasing is suboptimal or doesn't quite say what you see the text that you've sketched an outline, but will be, the bird as intermediary between this world and the idea that will help you to guess what's going to evaluate disability status and cannot provide any accommodations, DSP will communicate with the professor. If you have any further questions, OK?

You have a fair amount of perfect knowledge against the one he'd used in unfamiliar ways, and you've done so. Prior to the recording of your grade substantially. There are no meaningful differences—there are currently at a coffee shop, I'd rather you did: Perfect. Ah! Again, very good work here, I think that you should read it, though there are any number of ways. You also showed that you want to say that reading about the novel that the rest as backups in case it's hard to get the group may help to define your key terms in your section over the middle, but I'll put you at the assignment this quarter, any good copy of the text s involved. There are also welcome to send me the URL. Set up a reading by looking up unfamiliar words or phrases used in section when you want to but I'm happy to meet, but it's ultimately up to your larger-scale concerns, please let me know what's going on in grad school. I think. Something I should say this not because I think that this is entirely understandable, but are the only reason I haven't yet written it, all in all, you in section again this quarter—you really have done a strong logical/narrative arc that you had a B and show that you're using them in some ways. Thanks for doing such an excellent delivery, very well done overall. I think so. You picked an important passage and gave what a very difficult task. 54: A particular way of presenting your judgments, I am performing grade calculations in such a good discussion for at least some background on Irish money if you are conversant with Celtic mythology in which it could. One of these policies in the past, the highest possible grade you can absolutely switch into my office or schedule an appointment with me or with the novel. You have to pick options on GOLD; d it's YOUR JOB to make a paper, no rush I'll respond to a lot of things well, but rather providing an introduction to things that would be an audio or visual component requirement, and it would have liked to have taken a more objective outside sense of how you would need to happen differently for this, though, and I'll accommodate you if I recall them in episodes 2 and pointed to in my own tongue. Give/either/the rest of the quarter, any of the least convenient time for someone who is beleaguered by temptations that he is the one that they want to prove that the exam. Still Life-Le Jour. 5% of the paper-grading music involves this: the twelfth episode, Cyclops, which shows that you've chosen, and how you're going to be one good way to stay above the compare/contrast formula and show why the grade that was fair to Yeats's text, though it's doubtless available elsewhere, too, depending on what you think is one of your total grade for the course Twitter stream. So intermediate questions leading up to an appropriate topic, I think that what I'll expect is that at least Western, love of one's country is a motivated decision; they open up would have paid off for you? You have disgraced yourselves again. 177. I've pointed to. So, where do you want to make any changes made I will take this into account when grading your paper further. Whoops! Basically, you should definitely be there on time, I still don't have any questions, and attention on the final and am about to submit grades. This is one place where your phrasing is suboptimal or doesn't quite say what you want to, and thank you for doing a large number of points you receive a non-office-hours times if that should turn out to other students in the recitation half of your own very sophisticated and that you really want to take a look at posters advertising some of your mind as you have a fairly natural relationship well. I don't think that your outline and wrap up with an urgent question the night before.

[gueststeachingmaterials]

American Immigration System

Government, Current Events

Source

I'm an immigration lawyer. I know that many of my Facebook friends, who are good and intelligent people, honestly have questions like the following: Why don't all these immigrants just become legal, and do they get all kinds of public benefits?

I hope you'll read what I wrote here in the spirit in which it was intended, which is to cut through the BS (from poorly-informed but loud voices on both the left and right) and simply provide correct information so that people can decide for themselves what is right and best.

I recently wrote the comment below to a Facebook story from a local news channel, about a teacher here in Colorado Springs who has DACA.

******************************************************** To several of the commenters on this thread – first, I want to acknowledge that asking why people don’t just become citizens, or whether people without legal status can get public benefits that U.S citizens cannot, are legitimate questions. If they are asked in good faith, no one should mind you asking them.

Therefore, let me answer your questions. Please know that I am well-informed on these topics, as an immigration lawyer for the past 8 years, the past six of those in Colorado, and currently the Director of Family Immigration Services at Catholic Charities of Central Colorado (most of you know us best as the organization that runs the Marian House soup kitchen). You may verify those statements by entering my bar number (44591) on the Supreme Court of Colorado website (http://www.coloradosupremecourt.com/Search/AttSearch.asp) or viewing our Catholic Charities website (https://www.ccharitiescc.org/).

First, as to why young people who have DACA haven’t just become citizens:

To become a U.S. citizen (other than by birth), one must first become a Lawful Permanent Resident (“green card” holder). Only after five years as a Permanent Resident can you apply to become a citizen. Thus, the obvious next question: how does a person become a Permanent Resident? There are three primary options to do so:

1) Family-based petitions. This means that a U.S. citizen or Permanent Resident parent, spouse, adult child, or sibling files a “petition” for you. Depending on the category that you fall into, the wait will be anywhere from 1 – 22 years (yep) before you can use that petition to take the next step – applying to become a Permanent Resident (background checks, medical exam, more fees, etc.). That works for people living outside the U.S., but for those who have been here, it may not be possible if they entered the U.S. illegally, even if they were minor children when they did so.

2) Employment-based petitions. A U.S. employer can similarly sponsor you, but generally only if you are in a profession requiring an advanced degree or unique skills (doctors, software engineers, world-class athletes to coach professional sports teams, etc.). Even then, the potential employer must generally also prove that they made good-faith efforts to hire a U.S. citizen for the position, but no qualified applicants applied.

3) Diversity visa lottery. Every year, the U.S. government selects 50,000 people worldwide who enter a lottery and pass background checks to come to the U.S. as Permanent Residents. This lottery, however, is only available to people from countries that traditionally send few people to the US – so, for example, people from countries such as Mexico, the Philippines, China, Guatemala, India, El Salvador, and other countries that send larger numbers of immigrants to the U.S. do not have this option.

Extra note: The current Administration has actively sought to eliminate or dramatically limit Options #1 and #3. The new term being used in the attempted re-branding of Option #1, family-based immigration, which has been the basic principle of U.S. immigration law for over a century, is “chain migration”. If those two options are in fact eliminated or curtailed, legal immigration to the U.S. will be significantly reduced.

The KEY POINT to all of the above: If you do not qualify for one of these 3 options, then there is no “line” to get into to legally become a Permanent Resident and eventually a U.S. citizen. So, if you are not fortunate enough to have, say, a U.S. citizen spouse or a graduate degree in computer science, you very likely can never become a citizen of the United States.

Second, one commenter above asked why President Obama, when he established DACA in 2012, did not just create a path to citizenship for these young people at that time. The answer: earlier that year, Congress had for the 11th year in a row failed to pass the Dream Act, which would have done exactly that. The President acting through his authority as head of the Executive Branch cannot create a path to Lawful Permanent Residency (and eventual US citizenship). Only a law, passed by Congress and then signed by the President, can accomplish that. So President Obama on June 15, 2012 created the more limited DACA program through Executive Action – which is why President Trump, as the new President, was able to end the program, also without an act of Congress, last fall.

Finally, as to the question of immigrants receiving public benefits, only a U.S. citizen or a Lawful Permanent Resident (green card holder) can receive almost all types of public benefit – including Medicaid, Medicare, SSI disability, Social Security payments for seniors, TANF, and food stamps. The irony: most undocumented immigrants work under made-up Social Security numbers and so receive a paycheck from which Social Security, federal income taxes, and state income taxes are withheld, and of course they pay the same local sales and property taxes as anyone else through retail purchases, pass-through costs of apartment leases, etc. Same of course goes for the 800,000 current DACA recipients, who are authorized to legally work in the U.S. But none of those employees, despite paying IN to the system, will ever receive those public benefits listed above, that are paid for by the money withheld from their paychecks. So they are propping up our federal and state government entitlement programs because they pay in but won’t ever take out.

The following are the public benefits that undocumented immigrants can receive in United States:

1) Public education for children in grades K-12. This was definitively established by a 1982 Supreme Court case, Plyler v. Doe. The Supreme Court in its reasoning explicitly stated that it would not serve the overall public good of the U.S. to leave many thousands of children uneducated.

2) Emergency room services, but only to the point where the patient is considered “medically stable”, at which point he/she is released. These services are not free, however, as in my job I meet hundreds of immigrant families who sacrifice over years to slowly pay off high emergency room medical bills.

3) WIC assistance. This is for milk, food, etc, and available only to pregnant mothers. The rationale is that the children in the womb will be U.S. citizens when born, and therefore it is in the long-term economic best interests of the nation to ensure that they receive adequate prenatal nutrition to improve their chances of being productive citizens in the decades to come.

4) Assistance from police if they are the victim of a crime and call for help. To their credit, the vast majority of our Colorado Springs law enforcement officers take their duty to protect all people seriously. Chief Carey of the CSPD and Sheriff Elder of the EPCSO have made clear that their officers can’t do their most important job – keeping us safe by getting dangerous criminals off our streets – if a whole class of people (undocumented immigrants) is afraid to call 911 to report crimes that they witness or are victim to.

5) Assistance from a fire department. Rationale, besides the obvious moral one: If your house was next to that of an undocumented immigrant family, would you want the firefighters to let that house continue to burn, putting yours at risk of catching on fire too?

And that’s it. Those, to the best of my knowledge, are the only public benefits that an undocumented immigrant can receive in just about any part of the United States. As someone who directs a small office that works with hundreds of low-income immigrant families per year, know that when I see the precarious economic situation of many of these families, I'd help them access other benefits if they could. But they simply can't. Now, children of undocumented parents, born in the U.S., are U.S. citizens under the 14th Amendment (the one that declares that all human beings born on U.S. soil are citizens – this was passed immediately after the Civil War to forever end the legal argument that African Americans were not U.S. citizens). As such, those children can qualify for the same public benefits as any other U.S. citizen, if they qualify through economic need or disability. But their parents or undocumented siblings cannot.

I hope that this information has been useful to those willing to read through this long (for Facebook anyway) explanation. Please know that even this long summary leaves out a ton of detail -- there are tens of thousands of pages of statutes, regulations, internal federal agency procedures, and court decisions guiding how all of this is interpreted and implemented. But please take my word that I honestly believe that no detail I omitted for conciseness changes the basic points above. And I'd be happy to answer questions if you have them. Like I said, I don’t mind honest questions, and I believe that legitimate questions asked in good faith deserve well-informed, accurate answers. If all of us in the U.S. would be willing to actually listen to each others’ sincere concerns and do our best to answer each others’ questions, instead of just yelling at each other or retreating to our corners of the internet (left OR right) where everyone already agrees with us – well, I think we’d move our nation forward a lot more effectively.

[echoesofscreams-archive]

Basics:

Name: Amos Howard Diggory Pronunciation: ah·muhs Meaning: to carry; borne by God Birthday: 2 October Age: Twenty Pronouns: He/Him Sexuality: Bisexual Siblings: None  Parents: Howard Diggory (father), Mirabelle Diggory (Mother)  Other Family: None  Languages: English Current Residence: London, England Hometown: Devon, England

Wizard Fun:

Education: Hogwarts - Hufflepuff Year of Graduation: 1978 Occupation: Assistant to the Head of the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures Pet: Ranger the Cat  Blood Status: Pureblood  Species: Wizard  Patronus: Golden Retriever  Boggart: Voldemort  Amortentia: tbd !  Wand type: Walnut, Unicorn  Affiliation: Neutral (Order Aligned) 

Appearance:

Height: 5′10″ Hair Color: Blond Eye Color: Blue Typical Hair Style: Long and kind of shaggy  Fashion Style: He doesn’t have a sense of fashion Distinguishing Features: His super bright smile 

Personality:

Positive Traits: Friendly, Open-Minded Negative Traits: Weak-willed, Timid Quick Facts: Has a pretty good green thumb, despite loving animals more  Theme song: Ain’t No Mountain High Enough by Marvin Gaye

Biography: 

Amos is the only son of Mirabelle and Howard Diggory, a pair of pureblood Hogwarts sweethearts that got married right after graduating. Despite the fact that both his parents were purebloods, his mother’s side of the family wasn’t happy with the two of them getting married. She had been betrothed to someone else that would merge their business with another one, but she ended up marrying Howard. Her parents were very upset that their business suffered for her and they cut her off from the rest of the family. Thankfully, Howard’s parents had always been fond of Mirabelle and while they were not as well off as her own family, they had enough money to keep the two of them safe until they were able to get a home of their own. Amos’ parents struggled to have a child, so growing up his parents were overly protective of him. Whenever they couldn’t be around, they shuffled him off to his grandparents, who lived on the other side of town. The Diggory family lived in a very small cottage in the countryside in Cork. His parents had small jobs in London that didn’t make them a lot of money, but they were a happy family and in the end, that’s what mattered most.

As a kid, Amos quickly took a liking to plants and animals, spending most of his days outside either in his parent’s garden or wandering the wood behind his house. Since their town was small and the houses were spread apart, Amos spend his childhood growing up in a household that heavily relied on magic. Although his parents never made enough money to keep a house elf around, they did have use magic to help tend to the house. Amos grew up in a kind and gentle household, with parents that promised to be accepting of him no matter what. He knew he was a wizard early on. There were no major incidents with his magic, though it seemed that he did have a knack at keeping creatures and plants alive. He tended to wounded birds and could help even the most wilted plants grow again.

When Amos got to Hogwarts, it was a very different environment than what he was used to at home. Coming from a town with less than a hundred people, having to deal with roommates, housemates, classmates, and other students was a lot for him. For that reason, he was very shy at first, finding himself outside in the greenhouses or on the school grounds as much as possible. That became his comfort zone, early on. His sorting in Hufflepuff was no surprise to anyone, including his parents who had also been sorted into the same house when they were in school. All of his professors encouraged him to branch out more in his second year and by the end of second year, he felt right at home at Hogwarts and managed to finally feel settled at the school. Still, he found himself drawn to exploring the grounds, taking time to heal any small creature and plant he could find that needed help.

By the end of his time at Hogwarts, it was clear to him that he needed to find a job with magical creatures. Amos was not sure exactly what type of career he wanted though. His parents were highly concerned by all of the changes that happened, especially at the end of his last year at Hogwarts. They wanted their only son to stay with them after he graduated, but Amos told them he was ready to stand on his own, not paying much attention to the world around him. His parents gave him a bit of time to settle into an apartment in London and find a job in a four month period or they wanted him to come home to help take care of his grandparents. Amos accepted that and set off to find a job. With the job market struggling with all of the tension in the world and the Death Eaters on the rise, Amos struggled.

He was almost ready to give up when he got offered a position at the Ministry of Magic in the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures as an intern to the head. Little did he know that his maternal grandparents have something to do with him getting that position. It was a job and that was enough for his parents to let him stay in London. Unfortunately, Amos struggled with the job as he didn’t fit in among the more extremist opinions of his coworkers. It’s a job and those are difficult to come by, so he knows better than to open his mouth and complain about all the negativity he’s hearing in the office. He hopes that he can find a job that’s a better fit as a Magizoologist or as a herbologist. Until then, he’s doing his best to keep his head down. He wants nothing to do with the war because he’s afraid of getting hurt or someone he loves getting hurt.

[christopherscorner-blog1]

What I’ve learned throughout 70 organizations across 4 continents, 18 countries...

...and nearly every U.S. continental State, with experience spanning virtually every industry (Military, Construction, Healthcare, Property Management, Transportation, Telecommunications, E-commerce, Food Service, Entertainment, more) to include dozens of Churches, and more than three years volunteering between 5 nonprofits/causes, even experimenting for around a year as homeless literally living the veteran struggle while sleeping the streets and beaches from SoCal to Miami and a dozen homeless/transitional shelters in between.

First, I want to share one of my most interesting and profound observations throughout my life’s journey in yet another obvious and concrete testament to the power and reality of God concerning the amazingly stark contrast between the Church and secular world. Between the several dozen Churches I’ve had the privilege of experiencing across half a dozen States, I can honestly testify to witnessing a very happy, healthy, successful, purpose filled/driven, and inspired people across the board, with unemployment, homelessness, and suicide virtually non-existent. It’s true, you won’t find one homeless or unemployed person who is part of a Church (for long), because there are plenty of successful homeowners and business owners in (nearly) every Church who are happy and able to help. These observations have also led me to the realization of how bad the homeless situation would actually be if it were not for God’s Church. Between Jacksonville Florida and Miami alone there are more than several dozen Church organizations providing temporary shelter, meals, and other services for the homeless, and they are all taxed to the max. How ironic, yet amazingly odd, how tens of thousands literally depend on our God while rejecting Him… Think about how much worse the situation would be if these Churches disappeared! Which brings me to another observation.

Having lived and worked amongst the secular world much of my life, I can tell you from experience that the picture for the majority of those who reject our Creator is absolutely miserable and depressing. Sadly, it has been my painful observation that most secularists are living meaningless enslaved tortuous lives, almost completely void of love, creativity, or inspiration, under crushingly overwhelming and seemingly hopeless (without God) problems. A look at every facet of our society also reveals this truth to be dreadfully obvious. Take modern art, music, entertainment, and architecture, for example. If you haven’t noticed, our entire culture is now almost completely void of creativity, inspiration, or beauty. Stats don’t lie either. Health and mental problems (40% of Americans are obese –literally destroying body and mind, 1/6 take psych meds./1/33 born defective), addiction (20+ million -200+ die every day from drug overdose), and suicide (120+ daily suicides) are at epidemic levels, with rampant poverty (13.5% = 43+ million Americans), homelessness (600k Americans), unemployment (real unemployment = 20’ish%), parasitic infestations (25+/-% among poor black communities), diseases (1/4 w/STD), viruses (33 die daily from AIDS), and cancer (1/3 will get cancer). It’s too bad no one has been separating these stats by religion, or you would know my observation to be true. Granted, any stat would be muddled by a majority of fake proclaiming Christians, particularly Catholics. However, there is more definitive evidence to support my observation, which brings me to my next related observation –weather.

Consider the increasing natural disasters which devastated numerous U.S cities and entire states last year costing our country 300+ billion last year alone. Yet in another display of Divine Protection, out of the 31 Billion plus-dollar natural disasters which struck all over the country the last 2 years, amazingly, America’s ‘Bible-Belt’ was barely been touched. Is it any coincidence that our modern Sodom and Gomorrah cities (L.A. & Vegas) are desert wastelands literally on fire and in severe drought, with California on the verge of bankruptcy as people and businesses leave in mass, while the ‘Bible Belt’ flourishes with both green and industry? Nope. These areas are great examples both of God’s blessing and judgment. Which is why no one should be surprised if California is hit with the ‘Big One’ and slides off into the ocean, or is struck with drought and famine devastating the economy. Still skeptical? Consider Israel and her surroundings, another stark contrast of economies demonstrating both God’s blessing and judgment. While the Middle East is a desert wasteland plagued with conflict, stagnant growth, poverty, and famine, dominated by the evil enslavement of Islam’s death cult factions, Israel, a baby country, flourishes in every way, literally turning their desert into a blossoming garden while leading the world in growth and technology and as a beacon of freedom, prosperity, and hope -and all this despite the fact that Israel is literally surrounded by vicious and merciless enemies who are hell bent on her destruction, even winning battle after battle against the odds.

Secondly, considering my extensive experience both as a homeless veteran and across America’s Work-Force, with a 99% hire rate and 12+ resume repertoire, I believe it’s safe to refer to myself not only as an American Work-Force and Employment Expert, but an expert on the veteran struggle. Based on my experience and observations across America’s work-force, it’s no wonder to me why most Americans are so absolutely miserable, or even suicidal. Without God I certainly would have ended my life several times by now: 1.) after giving up on a military career facing a stale economy with no money, and 3.) as a transitioning veteran-civilian experiencing mostly failure, disappointment, and misery for nearly eight years now. Praise God He has pulled me through. There’s no other reason for my hope and positivity. Maybe it’s to eventually help others experiencing the same difficulties, but I digress. Tragically, I’m here to report that employment conditions are absolutely horrendous across the board, almost unrecognizable from slavery, and the system is broke and in dire need of fixing. (If this does not describe your experience, consider yourself blessed!) First off, there’s something seriously wrong with a system when those who do all the work live in poverty working like slaves just to eat and sleep in a bed, with many now not even able to afford housing with a full-time job, while those who do virtually nothing reap all the rewards living in luxury. It’s absolutely ridiculous, and it’s wrong. However, this is the evil reality of Capitalism and things will never change until we identify & accept this. Secondly, work conditions are just terrible throughout virtually every industry. From mandatory 70+ hours, to criminally pathetic pay, to weekly mandatory unpaid detentions/days/hours, to mandatory weekends, to virtually ZERO holidays, to mandatory cancer-inducing sperm-killing cell phones without reimbursement, to mandatory transportation without reimbursement, to dangerous or unhealthy conditions (sitting down 8-10+ hours driving or staring at a computer screen daily), stuck doing the same painfully mind-numbing monotonous tasks day-in & day-out, to mandatory requirements eliminating both industry newcomers and those without money, to random/political firings, to lazy firings ( too unintelligent or impatient to train), to entire industry/chain layoffs as technology takes over, or mass lay-offs from criminal activity/criminal negligence/incompetence, to turnover rates of around 100% (trucking), to sub-human treatment (pissing on demand/verbal abuse), to thefts of last paychecks (I’ve personally been robbed of thousands of dollars by nearly half a dozen companies), to a vast majority of businesses being ran by someone who has NO BUSINESS running one (likely why 80% fail), the situation is not only just absolutely atrocious, but very, very bleak. I’ve seen entire industries comprised of desperate workers literally destroying their health just to earn a buck. Virtually zero industries have any program to help integrate the poor and/or uneducated, let alone military veterans, so virtually everyone is stuck where there at, even if it’s nowhere because they couldn’t afford schooling and have no money. The rare few organizations who do have something of a housing/training/employment program are not expanding or expandable as they are restricted by a poor and very narrow business model. Virtually every corporation cares more about making a buck than they do this country, which is why many jobs have been outsourced. And every buck we do make is ripped off by Uncle Sam who literally throws it down the drain towards interest which shouldn’t exist in the first place (debt = new age slavery), or other ridiculous expenditures, including a military which should NOT be a full-time thing -destroy evil and let soldiers get back to normal lives! It’s quite amazing what people are willing to put up with. Worst of all, somehow most everyone seems to think all the above is normal, ‘just the way things are,’ and there’s something wrong with those of us who choose not to accept this atrocious ridiculousness. None of this should be normal! Life is what we choose to make of it! I, for one, refuse to accept this status-quo. All of which brings me to the most important revelation of my experiences; there is a God who cares about me (us individually), and He is good!

Almost unbelievably, the crazy and amazing reality for me is that much of my experience (between 34 companies/organization) was acquired after randomly relocating thousands of miles away, several times (from Ohio to California to Florida), into a strange city, not knowing anyone, with no money, no phone, and no transportation, just a backpack, my Bible, and God in my heart, literally throwing myself into deep holes which only God could have pulled me out of. And pull me out wonderfully God did so that in each case, in no time at all, I was working multiple jobs (7 at one time in California), with owned beautiful transportation, rent-free living, and the love of a beautiful and sweet woman. However, the journey has been anything but easy, and due to a recently evolved spiritual and intellectual maturity, I’m now forced to carve my own seemingly impossible way.

God knows I have tried to fit into a ‘normal,’ or any, job. How many can boast employment opportunities with 70 companies/organizations? How many could have picked themselves up half as many times? 70 just happens to be the number I finally decided it’s time to figure something else out. I’m just not a corporate sheep-drone, and I value freedom, health, and life more than paper/materialism. To be clear, I’ve NEVER been fired for performance. My work ethic never lets anyone outwork me, and I’m always there, first in last out. There’s a reason I was filling an E-5 slot as an Army team-leader in record time. Most opportunities ended for me either due to relocations or because I walked away. The ‘issue’ has been that I refuse to tolerate verbal abuse, I refuse to be miserable, and I refuse to destroy my body or health for little green paper. Life should not revolve around work! I would rather be poor, healthy, and happy, than have money while miserably destroying my health. How many have dedicated their lives towards companies or cities only to be eventually screwed over either right before retirement because the company went bankrupt or laid you off for one reason or another, or after retirement because the company/city went bankrupt (my neighbor is one victim) due to criminal negligence or technological developments? How many more near retirement are likely to be laid off due to technology taking over entire industries? Transportation, Cashiers, and Banks are all soon to be automated, and these industries employ tens of millions in America.

My recent evolution of mind leaves me in an even worse pickle now because I now also refuse to A.) pee on demand, B.) pay for a cancer-inducer (cell phones) strapped to my hip at some strangers beckon call, and C.) pay for transportation, which is always a money-hog, just so I can work, just so I can afford the transportation, while paying half a dozen unconstitutional taxes just to exercise my God given freedom to travel, in my property along public roads no less –which, even worse, is also patrolled by Nazi-thugs who are likely to randomly harass, steal, kidnap, and even kill me for no reason at all (it happens!). To submit myself to this slavery would be insanity. 

Is not my God King? It would certainly appear so. Despite the overwhelming odds against me, while many in the same boat commit suicide by the dozens DAILY, not only am I still here, but I’m living better than most, so much so that I don’t even have to work. Not to brag, but I eat like a King, I have zero bills or expenses, I’m averaging 45+ days of paid vacations annually, including paid trips to Europe and elsewhere, and most would envy my women, rides, and current home. Not that I deserve any of it, I absolutely do not. This isn’t about pointing a finger at me, it’s about pointing a finger at God. I'm living proof that ‘with God, all things are possible.’ The fact that God has given me, not one, but two, potentially multi-million dollar books about to launch is also a great consolation prize.

[sportsconvergence]

Three Names in an Envelope - South Carolina

The University of South Carolina is again in the market for a head football coach.  Will Muschamp has been sacked after five years of consistently underwhelming on-the-field results. 

Before jumping to the future, permit me to give a brief eulogy for Muschamp.  He did do some good things in Columbia, including rebuilding a depleted roster, overseeing the construction of a sparkling new football operations building, and repairing relationships with South Carolina high school coaches. Also, his players stayed out of trouble and the team GPA improved. All good things.

But Will Muschamp was ultimately hired to win football games, and he didn’t do it.  There were too many instances where his team seemed to be thinking “Oh, you mean we have a game today?” which resulted in painful and often head-scratching losses.  Following Saturday night’s loss in Oxford, his Gamecock teams had lost 14 of their last 20 games. Frankly, Deebo Samuel and Brian Edwards won several games for Muschamp he would have lost otherwise.  It’s also worth noting that he is the first Gamecock coach since Don McAlister (1935-1937) who had multiple opportunities against Clemson and failed to win at least once.

I do have some sympathy for Muschamp because he seems to be a likeable guy who wants to be a major college head football coach. But after two dismal tenures at Florida and South Carolina, I cannot see any Power Five school giving him the chance to lead a program again.  Of course, I’m not feeling TOO sorry for him because he’s walking away with more money than I’ll make or spend in my lifetime.

So, on to the next guy – but who will that next guy be?  It’s time to open up the “Three Names Envelope” for the Gamecocks.  Interestingly, it appears the holder of said envelope will be Ray Tanner, despite having tied his fortunes to Muschamp’s.  But don’t be fooled – other people, especially University President Bob Caslen, are going to be deeply involved in this hire.  Ray will not be operating on his own like he did in 2015.

As was the case five years ago, the USC administration has to decide where they want the football program to be.  Do they want winning seasons and bowl games every year, or do they want the program to chase elite status?   Given the projected $60 million athletic department budget deficit and the fact the school had to turn over every rock and shake every tree to gather the coin needed to make this coaching change, the immediate focus needs to be putting the program on a consistent winning season/bowl bid footing before contemplating loftier goals.  

Beyond that, there are some other principles to keep in mind:

In the past, I’ve said don’t waste time chasing a “big name” – but there is a sort-of “big name” out there that could prove to be an intriguing option.

Hiring a good recruiter is an absolute necessity – but he cannot have established his recruiting chops at schools with built-in advantages South Carolina does not have (e.g., “blue blood” program, championship tradition, only school in the state, etc.).

He has to be a cultural fit – able to relate to SC high school coaches and Gamecock Club members.  Experience coaching in the South will be very important here.

I’m not usually a fan of  “redemption” projects.  This time, however, there might be an exception to consider.

My personal preference would be to hire a proven head coach with demonstrated ability for good game planning, in-game adjustments, and teams improving as the season progresses.

Finally, this hire has to be an upgrade. The program needs to send a strong message to the college football world in general – and to the SEC in particular.

So, with all this in mind, here are the names I think should be in the USC envelope:

Billy Napier (Louisiana) – Napier is a fast rising commodity in coaching circles for good reason.  The Furman graduate has done a great job at Louisiana, taking the Ragin’ Cajuns to two consecutive Sun Belt Championship games and just qualified for a third this past weekend.  Earlier this year, his Cajuns knocked off Iowa State in Aimes. He has significant Power Five experience and learned at the hip of Nick Saban during his five years as an assistant at Alabama.  Plus, he knows South Carolina, having coached at South Carolina State and at Clemson. He has a very good reputation already with high school coaches in the state. Finally, he may want to settle a score with Dabo, who fired him as offensive coordinator after one bad season.  Reportedly, he really wants the job in Columbia. I think he’d be a very good choice.

Hugh Freeze (Liberty) – A (sort of) big name and redemption project all in one. Freeze has won everywhere he’s been with only one losing season out of 10 at three different schools.  And he has Liberty in the Top 25!  Still, those lingering character questions from his Ole Miss dismissal will require plenty of due diligence and compliance safeguards.  Also, regardless of assurances he gives and conditions he agrees to, there will surely be public uproar if he is the choice.  At the very least, however, you have to call him and let him make his case for the gig. 

Shane Beamer (Oklahoma Assistant Head Coach) – Beamer was an assistant under Steve Spurrier from 2007 to 2010 and was the recruiting coordinator when the Gamecocks brought in all the talent that produced three consecutive 11-win seasons.  His father, Frank, had a long and extremely successful tenure at Virginia Tech.  Shane has also coached at Georgia, Virginia Tech, and Mississippi State.  He’s been on Lincoln Riley’s staff in Norman since 2018.  He’s an intriguing option, as long as you are comfortable hiring a guy who’s never been a head coach at any level.  Of course, he would have his Dad around to mentor him (Frank now lives in Hilton Head), so that could work.

There are two other coaches who could get into the mix if none of the above pan out – Jamie Chadwell at Coastal Carolina and Will Healy at Charlotte.  The problem is neither one of these guys has any experience coaching at a Power Five program, so handing them the keys to an SEC program seems to be a reach at this point.  It could be that either one would do a fine job in Columbia – I just don’t feel like that would be the best move for the program at this point, especially with other options on the table.

If you are forcing me to make a choice today, I’d say Napier is at the top of the list. Freeze and Beamer are neck and neck as far as I’m concerned. I’d even be tempted to put Beamer ahead of Freeze if he can clearly explain both his development plan for transitioning from assistant to head coach, as well as his plan for pulling together a strong staff of assistants.  

Any of these three would be clear upgrades for South Carolina.  Anyone after those three – barring a Frank Martin-like surprise – would not be an upgrade.  

Bottom line:  South Carolina missed on the last coaching hire – they cannot afford to miss on this one.

[rocktheboat-rp]

Welcome aboard, CHLOE HARPER!

CHLOE’S PERSONAL INFORMATION

FULL NAME: Chloe “CeCe” Elise Harper GENDER: Cisfemale PRONOUNS: She/Her AGE: 27 BIRTHDAY: July 29th HOMETOWN: Dallas, Texas ORIENTATION: Pansexual/Homoromantic BIRTH ORDER: Third TYPE: Twin STATUS: Guest JOB TITLE(S): Tattoo Artist at and owner of Body Canvas FACECLAIM: Demi Lovato

CHLOE’S STORY

It was through revenge that Cristina Harper became pregnant, vowing that if she and her husband would be raising a baby of his, they would be raising a baby that was also hers, too. She didn’t count on her revenge baby being a twin, though. Even less so because the first sonogram didn’t even show the second baby, and it wasn’t until further checks that Jack and Cristina found out of her existence. Born a good twenty minutes after her sister, even resulting in the twins having different birthdays, Cristina said that she knew from the start there was something special about Chloe, and the little girl definitely did not disappoint.

Before she could even walk, Chloe seemed to take a shine to drawing. Of course, she was a baby, so it wasn’t like she was actually drawing pictures, but she would ignore the toys on offer to her and generally opt for picking up whatever pen she could get her hands on and doodling on sheets of paper. As far as her parents were concerned it couldn’t have been coincidental that as Chloe grew, so did her artistic ability, and Cristina especially was convinced that she and her husband had something godly on their hands through the blessing that was their daughter. Sure, she was talented, but in general she really wasn’t anything special, but Chloe had a hard time trying to convince her parents of that.

Tired of the confinement of paper, Chloe, who flat out uses to respond to her given name and instead begun to go by CeCe during grade school, opted for the blank canvas of her bedroom wall to draw a picture on one night. Were it not for how incredible the finished product was, she would’ve likely been punished for it, but her parents couldn’t deny that it really was great, so she got away with it. It seemed that CeCe could get away with pretty much anything, truth be told, and that wasn’t always a good thing. In spite of everything, though, she was a happy, bubbly little girl, the kind who could befriend anyone, and who always wore a bright smile on her lips. She was talkative and loud, the latter coming in handy when showing off her angelic singing voice in church choir as her parents watched on proudly.

As CeCe grew older, her artwork becoming even better, she found that she had another talent, too. Despite the fact that her parents didn’t treat her the same way they treated her sisters (frankly, poorly), it was still a strange set-up to her, and CeCe did have a hard time in dealing with it. She would write down her thoughts and feelings in a journal, that she would then hide away from her mother’s prying eyes. Before long, CeCe was reading her journal entries in her head as if they were songs, which is what they eventually became. Had she wanted to pursue a career in songwriting, she very well could’ve; she was great at it, and had the voice to match, but it would always just be a hobby to her. CeCe would always care about her artwork first and foremost, and unsurprisingly opted to pursue it in college.

Having always been very codependent with her sisters, since Courtney was already in California, it was a no-brainer for CeCe as to where she wanted to go. She loved Dallas, and despite how weird they were, she loved her parents, plus in state tuition fees were much more manageable, but CeCe had a gift, and had worked so hard for so long that it only seemed fitting when she applied for and was granted a scholarship to Los Angeles’ Loyola Marymount, where she would major in Fine Art and could share a small apartment with her sister. Growing up without money meant that CeCe was no stranger to working. She’d helped out on her father’s meat farm, and had even had a part time job in a local diner, but Los Angeles was where she got the first job she was truly passionate about.

Alongside nannying for a wealthy family some evenings to help make rent money, she had planned to look for another part-time job, but one sort of fell into her lap. Ever since she’d found out she would be moving out of Dallas, she’d been itching to get her first piece of body art. Art was practically her life, and the idea of having a piece on her body excited her, though she could never do it back home. When she walked into Tattoo Envy for her appointment, she had no idea she would be leaving with not only her first piece of ink, but also a part-time job as a junior artist. To begin with, this meant making coffee and handing the artists equipment, but CeCe was eager to learn, and her bosses were happy to teach her. CeCe knew right there and then that this would be her life.

As well as finding her artistic calling in Los Angeles, and accumulating many pieces of body art, CeCe found love for the first time. Throughout high school, she’d dated a couple guys, and she’d enjoyed their company, and even sex with them, but emotionally she just couldn’t form a connection. As soon as she met Aliyana, it all made sense. CeCe was an open minded person, despite how closed her parents minds were, and she was totally open to forming a connection with anybody, no matter their gender. She fell hard for Ali, the two quickly becoming girlfriends, and the rest was history. Of course, she would never be able to tell her parents, but that was fine. Like her body art, Ali was her choice, not theirs.

Continuing to attend school, her nanny job and her job at the tattoo studio, CeCe’s skills only progressed, and by the time she’d graduated, she had become one of Tattoo Envy’s most sought after artists. It was like she was born to ink people, and she absolutely loved the entire process. She loved designing pieces, she loved talking to the clients as she created beautiful artwork on their skin, and she admittedly loved the money she’d make. She wasn’t exactly rolling in money, obviously, but she saved up enough to be able to rent a small apartment with her girlfriend, and to enjoy the new life she’d made for herself in California.

It seemed that life was just full or surprises, though. Along with her sisters, as soon as Courtney had reached eighteen and was old enough to legally do so, the three had collectively played the lottery together, never winning anything, but that didn’t stop them from trying. They never went overboard, only playing their birthdays each time, and it had become something of a routine eventually. So much so that when they found themselves holding onto the winning numbers about a year ago, none of them could believe it. Overnight, they went from struggling twenty-somethings who had come from nothing, to suddenly sitting on a fortune of three billion dollars, and holding the title of the highest lottery win in US history. While the girls never lost their driven, humble attitudes, the same could not be said for those surrounding them.

For CeCe, who had always had plenty of friends, it was the fact that she suddenly had more “best friends” than she knew what to do with. As soon as they heard she’d won the lottery, something the girls couldn’t keep quiet due to the record breaking amount making headlines throughout the country, people came crawling from the woodwork, everyone wanting favors and loans. CeCe has never been a selfish person, and definitely wanted to help, but it was getting ridiculous, and she may be nice, but even she knew she was being taken advantage of. She had to learn to be tough and to say no, which never got any easier for her, but she had to. She’d grown up with nothing, she wasn’t going to suddenly act like a lottery winner now, even though she was one.

CeCe had two ideas for things she wanted to do with some of her money. Firstly, she wanted to buy a ring. Not just any ring, she wanted the biggest, most beautiful diamond, worthy of the girl she planned to make her wife. Secondly, she wanted her own tattoo studio. At first, she was scared of upsetting her bosses by opening up a competing shop, but they were happy for her and encouraged her to do so, even helping her to set it all up. Within months—it’s surprising how quickly things happen when the money to speed things up is available—her brand new baby, Body Canvas was born.

Unfortunately, CeCe only got about a half a year to enjoy it. Business was booming right away, and CeCe felt incredibly proud of everything she had achieved. However, her lottery win was still haunting her. She was still bombarded with phone calls and random people from her past showing up at her door, trying to make nice to maybe get a piece of her fortune. Enough was enough, and while the price tag was steep, CeCe and her sisters agreed that it was worth the $20,000 a month to pay for The Kingdom if it meant having a year to just get away and let everything settle down.

Leaving her shop was difficult, especially when she’d worked so hard for it, but CeCe knew leaving was the right thing to do for her own sanity. So, leaving the best team she could in charge, she boarded The Kingdom alongside her sisters, her girlfriend applying for a job as a crew member there despite CeCe trying to pay for her ticket. She respected Ali’s decision not to take the handout, but of course plans to share her suite with her girlfriend. Hopefully, by the time they return, some changes will have been made. Things will have quietened down, people won’t be so desperate to dip their fingers in CeCe’s bank account, and she very well could no longer have a girlfriend, but instead a fiancée, and everything will be as it should.

THE HARPER FAMILY BACKGROUND

The Harper girls grew up with very little money in a small home in Dallas, only getting their first taste of real money following a record breaking lottery win about a year ago. Cristina Harper is highly religious, and quite abusive towards her children. Though her intentions are good, as she wishes to ‘cleanse them of sin’ her methods are pretty terrible. Jack is a meat farmer and an alcoholic, who is very manipulative and takes pleasure in scaring his kids when drunk, but when sober he’s actually kind of okay. Their childhood was an interesting one, as Cristina insisted it was godly to honor men, and therefore it was the girls’ job to do any chores and look after their father. It also explains why Cristina stayed with Jack after he cheated on her with Gloria Fuentes, Courtney’s mother. Gloria was a young woman, and a kind soul, but sadly died in childbirth.