#major missing happening

[halorvic]

The danger is clear and present: COVID isn’t merely a respiratory illness; it’s a multi-dimensional threat impacting brain function, attacking almost all of the body’s organs, producing elevated risks of all kinds, and weakening our ability to fight off other diseases. Reinfections are thought to produce cumulative risks, and Long COVID is on the rise. Unfortunately, Long COVID is now being considered a long-term chronic illness — something many people will never fully recover from. Dr. Phillip Alvelda, a former program manager in DARPA’s Biological Technologies Office that pioneered the synthetic biology industry and the development of mRNA vaccine technology, is the founder of Medio Labs, a COVID diagnostic testing company. He has stepped forward as a strong critic of government COVID management, accusing health agencies of inadequacy and even deception. Alvelda is pushing for accountability and immediate action to tackle Long COVID and fend off future pandemics with stronger public health strategies. Contrary to public belief, he warns, COVID is not like the flu. New variants evolve much faster, making annual shots inadequate. He believes that if things continue as they are, with new COVID variants emerging and reinfections happening rapidly, the majority of Americans may eventually grapple with some form of Long COVID. Let’s repeat that: At the current rate of infection, most Americans may get Long COVID.

[...]

LP: A recent JAMA study found that US adults with Long COVID are more prone to depression and anxiety – and they’re struggling to afford treatment. Given the virus’s impact on the brain, I guess the link to mental health issues isn’t surprising. PA: There are all kinds of weird things going on that could be related to COVID’s cognitive effects. I’ll give you an example. We’ve noticed since the start of the pandemic that accidents are increasing. A report published by TRIP, a transportation research nonprofit, found that traffic fatalities in California increased by 22% from 2019 to 2022. They also found the likelihood of being killed in a traffic crash increased by 28% over that period. Other data, like studies from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, came to similar conclusions, reporting that traffic fatalities hit a 16-year high across the country in 2021. The TRIP report also looked at traffic fatalities on a national level and found that traffic fatalities increased by 19%. LP: What role might COVID play? PA: Research points to the various ways COVID attacks the brain. Some people who have been infected have suffered motor control damage, and that could be a factor in car crashes. News is beginning to emerge about other ways COVID impacts driving. For example, in Ireland, a driver’s COVID-related brain fog was linked to a crash that killed an elderly couple. Damage from COVID could be affecting people who are flying our planes, too. We’ve had pilots that had to quit because they couldn’t control the airplanes anymore. We know that medical events among U.S. military pilots were shown to have risen over 1,700% from 2019 to 2022, which the Pentagon attributes to the virus.

[...]

LP: You’ve criticized the track record of the CDC and the WHO – particularly their stubborn denial that COVID is airborne. PA: They knew the dangers of airborne transmission but refused to admit it for too long. They were warned repeatedly by scientists who studied aerosols. They instituted protections for themselves and for their kids against airborne transmission, but they didn’t tell the rest of us to do that.

[...]

LP: How would you grade Biden on how he’s handled the pandemic? PA: I’d give him an F. In some ways, he fails worse than Trump because more people have actually died from COVID on his watch than on Trump’s, though blame has to be shared with Republican governors and legislators who picked ideological fights opposing things like responsible masking, testing, vaccination, and ventilation improvements for partisan reasons. Biden’s administration has continued to promote the false idea that the vaccine is all that is needed, perpetuating the notion that the pandemic is over and you don’t need to do anything about it. Biden stopped the funding for surveillance and he stopped the funding for renewing vaccine advancement research. Trump allowed 400,000 people to die unnecessarily. The Biden administration policies have allowed more than 800,000 to 900,000 and counting.

[...]

LP: The situation with bird flu is certainly getting more concerning with the CDC confirming that a third person in the U.S. has tested positive after being exposed to infected cows. PA: Unfortunately, we’re repeating many of the same mistakes because we now know that the bird flu has made the jump to several species. The most important one now, of course, is the dairy cows. The dairy farmers have been refusing to let the government come in and inspect and test the cows. A team from Ohio State tested milk from a supermarket and found that 50% of the milk they tested was positive for bird flu viral particles.

[...]

PA: There’s a serious risk now in allowing the virus to freely evolve within the cow population. Each cow acts as a breeding ground for countless genetic mutations, potentially leading to strains capable of jumping to other species. If any of those countless genetic experiments within each cow prove successful in developing a strain transmissible to humans, we could face another pandemic – only this one could have a 58% death rate. Did you see the movie “Contagion?” It was remarkably accurate in its apocalyptic nature. And that virus only had a 20% death rate. If the bird flu makes the jump to human-to-human transition with even half of its current lethality, that would be disastrous.

[inamindfarfaraway]

The Exorcists’ Masks of Virtue

The vast majority of Exorcists in Hazbin Hotel have a notable design element that other angels don’t: their masks are missing an eye. Specifically, the right eye.

I believe this is a reference to the Bible, Matthew 5:29. Jesus says, “If your right eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell.”

He’s being hyperbolic. Mr Free Healthcare was not pro-mutilation. What he means is that you have to be willing to make sacrifices to prevent sin. The context of the eye metaphor is him condemning adultery and warning that even something as easy, casual and small as a look full of lustful intent can lead to further, worse sin if you don’t notice your sin, hold yourself accountable for it and do the work to not let it influence your decisions. This will probably be hard. It could be very, very painful. Changing your perspective can feel as horrible as plucking out your eye, so many people can’t bring themselves to do it. But although it won’t feel that way in the moment, it’s healthier for our general wellbeing in the long run to abandon traits and behaviours that damage ourselves and/or others.

(You may notice that Jesus’s teaching that you can have sinned, redeem yourself by giving up sin and thus escape damnation is the founding principle of the Hazbin Hotel. You may also notice that it contradicts everything the Exorcists believe.)

The Exorcists seem to follow this idea of painfully excising badness for the sake of the greater good devoutly to the point of placing it above teachings like ‘Thou shalt not kill’, with their job being to remove sin, in the form of sinners, to protect Heaven. Hence the missing right eyes. They’re a declaration of moral righteousness and inability to stumble.

But the truth is that the Exorcists all have their right eyes. Their flawlessness is a facade. Underneath, they are untouched, think themselves morally untouchable and, as shown by their horror and outrage when even one of them is killed, would much rather be physically untouchable too. This perfectly represents their complete unwillingness to acknowledge their own faults, let alone improve. They are never the ones who sacrifice. They force the sinners to sacrifice and don’t compensate it with any salvation. They metaphorically rip out the sinners’ eyes, but still condemn their entire bodies as inherently, permanently sinful. So they’ll just have to do another Extermination to get the other eyes! And another one to cut off their right hands! And so on until there’s nothing left.

The only exception to the rule is Vaggie, both in appearance and character. Her mask has the left eye crossed out instead. Even before her expulsion, she’s set apart to the audience as an Exorcist who has the capacity to, shall we say, see a different side of things. Her mask having its ‘sinful’ right eye reflects her understanding that the Exorcist worldview is wrong.

When she almost kills a demon child, her hateful vision clears. She discards the part of herself that’s an unquestioning, merciless agent of death, terror and grief… and as punishment for what Lute perceives as treacherous weakness, gets her eye plucked out.

Of course Lute leaves her with only the ‘sinful’ eye. It brands Vaggie forever as the inversion, a perversion, of what the Exorcists are meant to be.

You know, all this talk of eye removal in the Bible reminds me of another line - ‘an eye for an eye’. Adam directly quotes it in “Hell is Forever”. He uses it to frame the Exterminations as Old Testament-style punitive justice; the sinners did harm and so they receive it. But putting aside the debate about how ethical the concept of revenge is, the entire point of taking an eye for an eye is that it’s proportional. The punishment fits the crime. If someone cuts your eye out, you shouldn’t murder their whole family in front of them and then slowly disembowel them to death. That would be the sin of wrath. You should just make them pay without excessive pain or collateral damage. This is the fairest form of revenge.

The Exorcists don’t do that! The Exterminations aren’t proportional to the wrongs of all they hurt, nor was Vaggie’s brutal punishment equivalent to her extremely mild insubordination. Lute literally takes Vaggie’s eye, and more, after Vaggie does nothing to her! That’s the opposite of the phrase! Adam and his soldiers are wrathful and cruel, deriving satisfaction from others’ suffering. But they just can’t stop going on and on about how disgustingly evil the sinners are, in total hypocrisy… despite some of the sinners being far better people than the genocidal Exorcists are… it’s like they’re obsessed with specks of dust in the sinners’ eyes when they have massive logs stuck in their own. Oh hey, that’s in the Bible too!

[merverelli]

dec 2023 - jan 2019 - sept 2017

its a redraw of a redraw!

(psst: here's a speedpaint if you're interested! https://youtu.be/9nn73oxU7eg)

[alaskan-wallflower]

don’t hate on my girl cherry she ain’t done shit

[royalarchivist]

Richarlyson: [ What happened? ]

Roier: Richarlyson, I'll tell you what happened, ok? I'll tell you what happened. What happened is... Quackity was murdered, he was murdered by Maximus and Badboy because they thought it was the best decision, but...

Son, sincerely, I don't think it was, because Quackity is now very angry, and we know that Quackity is– well, I know at least, that this Quackity is not my carnal, he's not the friend I know. Everything is very strange.

Richarlyson: [ Is pa Quacks dangerous? ]

Roier: I think that right now he is, that's why I was going along with him, because... I had this feeling that maybe it was actually him. You know? But now, with the way everything has happened…

Richarlyson: [ Like a friendly feeling? ]

Roier: Yes. It kind of felt like it was him and everything was fine, and we were friends– and we are! But now he's mad, and I don't know what he's planning to do. I'm afraid for your life, and everyone else's, because everything is surely going to go to hell. I'm sorry Richarlyson. It's hard.

Richarlyson: [ I'll be fine, pa. I have you and my other papas on my side. ]

[dykedvonte]

I think the most baffling thing about the Tulpar as a vessel to me is the fact that the ship really did only have a one way communication system.

I know it was cheap but even the most basic of vessels regarding major transport would have some way, shape or form for outside communication. Not only that but there was absolutely no form of innate emergency signal to show they may have been offline or in trouble despite clearly having a system to dock credits if they went off course. It's another factor that really shows that bad situations are made to get worse by design. One person who is required to relay all information to the crew and make all the choices without feedback. No way to update or call for help in case of a dire situation. No way to inform of inner personal conflicts and acquire procedures accordingly.

It really is like they are all in some sort of fucked up solitary confinement. They have their own world with strict roles that are meaningless in the end, as long as the cargo makes it, it doesn't matter what happens on that ship to the company. They don't want to hear anything and will come to conclusions on what happened based on how much pay they can withhold from the workers. Even what they do send is short, sterile and corporate to the extent it was likely written and sent out with a command by some random unmanned computer in an office.

There's something to be said about how unfair it is to force absolute power and control onto one person when you as an entity could do so much more to offload it but I've said it many times before so I won't again.

[iridescentoracle]

so like, what if harrow hadn’t lied to mercy about her age?

like. i’ve assumed (and seen other people assuming) mercy was asking bc she thought harrow might be gideon (i.e. the result of dios apate major), but alecto told harrow to lie about her age, and she did, and mercy left, disgusted by the idea of a baby lyctor but believing harrow really was just harrow

…but (aside from the fact that gideon is older than harrow and so the timing shouldn’t quite work out, bc i can imagine mercy having potential explanations for that) what was mercy asking for? was it just curiosity/a hope of getting answers? or did she have an actual plan (or at least the beginning of one) for the moments when she wondered if dios apate major hadn't quite completely failed yet after all? in either case, why would alecto want mercy convinced it wasn't true?

or, on the other hand, something i honestly hadn't thought about until i started writing this post and had to stop and check myself: is that even why mercy asked? was that what she thought, or did she have some completely different reason to want to know harrow's age, with a correspondingly completely different reason alecto thought harrow needed to lie?

[valkyurii]

so apparently radahn has to be dead before you can access the dlc. wow i wonder why that is /s

[noahfromjungle]

But honestly like if contestants were going to drop out in protest then obviously it would be just before the final

[loadsofcats]

I missed them

[simphic]

literally me rn....

[8bits-of-wingdings]

Deltarune AND Undertale trending!?

[orcelito]

Hey I'm graduating college in may and I just kinda realized that I'll be Done Done with school after that. Not fake-done like I was graduating high school, where I'd have to go to college at the start of the fall. And not fake-done like I was in any of my semesters I took off.

Done Done. As in I accomplished my degree, and I won't ever have to go back to school if I don't want to. What a beautiful, beautiful thought.

[call-me-oracle]

barbara gordon in batgirl #1

bonus:

[bookwyrminspiration]

every single volume of death note I go "how can there possibly be more volumes after this...??" and then I learn

[sluttyhenley]

I held off on saying any of this before, because I figured scolding and shaming doesn't actually get anyone to the polls but apparently neither does anything else and I am so angry. Angry and grieving, because the majority of voters have said this country hates black women more than the promise of fascism. To everyone who couldn't bear to sacrifice their so called moral purity and fucking vote, all I say is it is so disrespectful. It is disrespectful to all of the people who fucking died to get this right expanded to all adult citizens and to have those rights enshrined in the constitution. It is so disrespectful to everyone who fucking died to actually make those constitutionally enshrined rights accessible. And that's not hyperbole. That's historical fact. People who chose not to vote, who looked at these two candidates and said well I just can't do it because of a conflict happening on the other side of the world, a conflict that will be so much worse when one of those candidates wants to wipe the very people you claim to care about out of fucking existence. And I haven't posted anything about that conflict because I have literally studied it academically. It was a large part of my academic focus. And like it or not it is complicated and long-standing and literally any sort of international pact/truce/treaty takes so much negotiating and so much framework. Policy is work. You can't just wish it done and make it so.

And literally all you had to do was vote. The easiest fucking way to make your voice heard. Especially in states with early voting and mail-in ballots. You just have to show up. But voting isn't as important as getting your internet moral purity points. And now here we are staring down the barrel of another trump presidency because you can donate your money to fundraisers that may or may not be supporting real families in Gaza but you can't take some time to fill in a box and now the single issue you purportedly care so much about is going to be a casualty of that moral failing.

Because that's what it is. It's a moral failing. And I think with the loud anti-semitism heard in all of these protests and the fact that apparently you hate fascism less than black women. And a well-educated black woman with an astounding political background and policy that would have been good internationally and domestically. Maybe we should call it what it is. Sugar-coated white supremacy.

I don't know. I am so fucking angry and I am so fucking tired. I was there in 2016. I’ve been here living with the fallout. I know what it is to be directly affected by the Trump presidency. I haven't forgotten.

All you had to do was vote.