#my response was “oy vey”

[sorrymyrabbisaidno]

Y'all the christian landlord I have who keeps trying to proselytize to me wanted me to watch a "Jewish Christian" on youtube😭😭

[covid-safer-hotties]

Also preserved on our archive

There could be a lot more here about non-pharmaceutical interventions like masking, but some pretty good analysis of the climate of vaccine "skepticism" and disease minimizing we live in.

By David Quammen

Health officials would like to remind you that we are entering that time of the year still quaintly known as flu season. That means autumn to spring. Kids go to school, adults spend more time gathered indoors, people breathe and speak and sneeze and cough at one another, and the latest influenza virus spreads widely.

The reason flu season seems a quaint idea is that we now hear about and maybe worry about so many viruses all year. And well we should.

What if there’s a simultaneous surge of Covid and seasonal flu this autumn? What if infections of respiratory syncytial virus, known as R.S.V., peak at unusual levels, as they did in the 2022-23 season? What if the new strain of mpox, which is especially virulent, continues spreading in Africa and beyond? What if this year’s flu combines with the dreaded H5N1 bird flu and emerges as a nightmare flu? What if a novel virus destined to be called SARS-CoV-3 emerges from a horseshoe bat in a rural village somewhere, gains a few key mutations and comes barreling through the world’s airports?

Oy vey and déjà vu. It’s always virus season now. Maybe none of those worst-case scenarios will happen, but to assume so is to count on fool’s luck.

The notion of flu season is a relic of times when one virus could transfix our response efforts and dominate our collective consciousness. Influenza in 1918. H.I.V. in 1980s and ’90s. Ebola in 2014. We can no longer afford to react on a case-by-case basis. Today we need a broader vision. We need personal, governmental and technological responses that address the full spectrum of viruses that disrupt our lives.

Because they will continue to disrupt our lives. We live amid viruses. We eat them. We breathe them. We touch them on doorknobs and cafeteria trays. All the wild and domestic animals with which we interact, from mosquitoes to mice to the sparrows on the bird feeder and the monkeys in the temple gardens, carry their own freights of them in wondrous variety. Most of these viruses have no chance of infecting a human, but many do. The best way to protect yourself and your family is just what health agencies recommend: Get the vaccines if reputable ones exist.

The best way to help protect your community, your country and the rest of humanity is a more complex proposition. The answers range from public health measures such as better virus surveillance to ending our bone-headed science denialism and finally supporting pandemic preparedness. But it’s not my purpose to unpack those big topics in this small spurt of words.

My purpose is more modest: to refresh your awareness of something you can’t see, not without the help of an electron microscope. Even the human genome contains a sizable portion — roughly 8 percent of it — that was once the genomes of ancient retroviruses, acquired and internalized by our ancestors in the course of infections.

Viruses of concern to humans come and go on various schedules. American dairy cows began their flu season this year around March 25, when the first infections with bird flu were reported in herds in Kansas and Texas. Measles outbreaks tend to be seasonal but more complex. In the tropics they may peak in the dry season, while in temperate climates measles correlates more with school schedules. And now that warmer temperatures are welcoming tropical mosquitoes farther north and south — including ones that transmit viral diseases like yellow fever and dengue — people in Florida and Italy may find that their worst virus season is summer. Climate change is the new force applied to the viral calendar.

Each year another seasonal vaccine is offered because influenza viruses evolve and mix continuously; their genomes entangle like shape-shifting snakes. The most concerning threat is different each year. This year’s flu vaccine in the United States is what’s called trivalent, or three-powered, meaning it contains elements from three different influenza viruses, all of which are circulating and any of which may prove most pervasive and problematic. Manufacturing flu vaccines takes months, so calculated decisions, mixing science and foresight, must be made long before autumn. Increasing efforts to produce even more kinds of vaccines, including some that target multiple virus strains, signal scientific awareness of the point I’m trying to make: We know a virus might get us, tomorrow or next season, but we can’t say which.

Hence the need for a universal flu vaccine, such as one that’s now in clinical trials at the National Institutes of Health. Hence the need for a universal coronavirus vaccine, toward which scientists at the California Institute of Technology, among other places, are working. Hence the need to create combination vaccines that protect against Covid-19 and influenza in one shot, which are also under development in the United States, China and elsewhere. Hence the need to improve ventilation systems for public and private buildings, which can significantly reduce the spread of respiratory viruses.

These are urgent challenges, at which laboratories and public health authorities all over the world are laboring busily. Science takes time; applying its findings takes patience. Persuading the public to adopt behavioral changes — some of which involve a prick in the arm, some of which require placing community welfare on a level with individual independence — is a task that may seem almost Sisyphean, but it remains crucial and doable.

Flu season in America is no illusory concept, and I don’t mean to deride it, merely to expand it. Get the jab if you’re not disqualified by special health conditions. Don’t disqualify yourself by indifference or groundless suspicions. But bear in mind that virus season doesn’t end with the first swallows of spring. We’re in it for the duration.

[king-mera]

what are your thoughts on frozen empire? What are its failures?

Oy Vey…

I've already ranted my thoughts both in posts and in private, so what can I say that hasn't already been said? I'll just try to summarize my main gripes.

The cast is bloated with too many characters and none of them have enough screentime to properly showcase or develop their personalities. It's honestly a shame too, because Afterlife set up Phoebe, Trevor, Lucky, and Podcast as the new main four Ghostbusters to parallel to the OGs, who could be their mentors. Instead we got the Spengler family, along with Nadim, and lars. It's not as tight and focus as it should be, in my opinion. I don't hate Lars, but his inclusion bothers me in particular because his role could easily be filled by other characters. I don't know why he's being pushed as "the new Egon" either when Phoebe was already shown to have so much in common with him.

Speaking of Phoebe, what the Hell were the writers trying to do with her? In her first appearance she was funny, clever, and brave. She had a temper sure, but only when she was pushed to her breaking point. She also knew how to be a team player, working with her friends and family to prevent the apocalypse. In just her second appearance, suddenly she's snapping at her parents, recklessly causing damage, arrogantly taking all credit for saving the world, and preferring the company of a ghostly stranger over people. Disturbingly enough, she develops a morbid fascination with becoming a ghost herself. Where did this come from? She behaves more like Rowan North from the 2016 film. What happened to the determined young girl who stood up to the god of destruction and refused to die? Now she's locking herself into a metal box and painfully electrocuting herself in a scene that resembles self-harm or suicide. All this to separate her soul from her body just to be closer to this girl she's hinted to have a crush on.

Phoebe never needed a love interest of any gender, explicit or implied. It doesn't serve her story when there were so many other interesting things about her that could've been explored instead. How does she live up to the legacy of her grandfather? Is she worried about repeating his mistakes? Does she struggle to be taken seriously as a child doing an adult's job? There were already two other romantic subplots that deserved focus anyway: Callie with Gary and Trevor with Lucky. Adding a third one at this point just comes out of nowhere. Not to mention all the other elements of Phoebe and Melody's relationship that make it weird, like the age gap between the actors or the fact that melody is DEAD. Even if you ignore the flirty undertones and interpret their interactions as platonic, it's still a toxic situation because Melody is only manipulating Phoebe to release the real villain Garakka.

Garakka fails to impress me, too. He has little in the way of personality or motive. His visual design has a striking silhouette at first glance, but it's rather plain compared to other ghosts in the series. There’s nothing about him that suggests the culture he’s from (what was a frost giant/lich doing in India?). I don't understand why they make such a big deal out of his horns either, they're the source of his power yet he's able to do things without them. The horns are also conveniently locked in the same room as his orb, so he's able to quickly retrieve them. They might as well have stayed stuck on his head the whole time! What's so scary about this guy anyway? He's cold, naked, and skinny. That's not scary, it's just me stepping out of the shower.

Well, I guess Garakka deserves some credit for killing that random store clerk. The only on-screen kill in GB film besides Shandor in the last movie, and it’s some poor innocent bystander. Normally I wouldn’t mind such a thing, but it sucks that Phoebe and Nadim are indirectly responsible for this dude’s death through their irresponsibility. All the characters seem incompetent here. The Firehouse and the new lab don’t have adequate safety measures, and apparently Egon never thought to plan ahead for if the containment unit got full. That last point is a non-issue that just wastes time since the lab has backup units and Garakka breaks the main one from the outside anyway.

There are several moments that come across as mean-spirited and cynical, from Podcast crushing the old lady’s watch (that belonged to her late husband) to Lucky and Trevor cracking sex jokes about Nadim’s dead Grandmother. I complain about Phoebe’s attitude, but it’s not like she has a good support network. Her parents are dismissive of her and Ray doesn’t ask her what’s wrong when she asks if he ever wondered what it’s like to be a ghost.

We get a happy ending when Garakka is trapped and Melody crosses over, but it rings hollow when nobody acted as they should. They only acted how the convoluted plot demanded them to.

Oh and those mini-pufts, how I despise them. They were fine in Afterlife but now they’ve overstayed their welcome and become the new minions.

This whole movie feels like a bad dream and as far as I'm concerned, it's not canon.

[khaopybara]

Started off the episode with mays terrible parents 😠 (I’m smad at the mom. Mad that she won’t defend May or stand up to her husband and sad because she is probably scared af of him. Divorce that man asap!)

Young May: How can someone be hurt emotionally?

Mays dad: hold my beer 😈

Hate that man with a burning passion!

Thankfully we quickly moved past that and onto the oonmay camping date. May struggling to remember that she’s supposed to be completely blind, the pluto necklace 😭, SEX IN THE CAMPER VAN 🫦🫦🫦. Oom’s twin senses were tingling so hard during that scene that she ended up waking up from her coma AND IMMEDIATELY LOOKING FOR MAY BECAUSE SHE ONLY REMEMBERS HER AND NOT PAUL!?!? Oy vey 😵‍💫😵‍💫😵‍💫

Ai seemed completely heartbroken right after she spoke with her grandma but it doesn’t seem to be stopping her since we see her texting May about cashing in for her reward while her sister IS RIGHT BEHIND HER. Bold Ai, very bold. and then AND THEN… the back to back reveals had me BOUNCING ON MY BED!!! Ai finding out may was the attorney who defended the guy who caused Ben to be paralyzed AND THEN IMMEDIATELY FINDING OUT THAT KOSAL WAS THE ONE WHO CAUSED MAY TO GO BLIND ALL BECAUSE Ai MADE SOME OFFHANDED THREAT OUT OF ANGER!!!!!

The repeated “i love her”s while breaking down had me breaking down 😭😭😭😭.

PinPangJan…

I totally understand that pim needs time after her breakup before she can jump into a new relationship but GODFUCKINGDAMMIT part of me wishes she moved on as quickly as pang! You and i seem to be switching stances on the whole throuple thing. I was initially hoping for a love triangle in which each person’s feelings went both directions(the ever rare true triangle!). Here we have Pang likes Jan. Jan likes Pim. Pim is still pining for Pang. Does Jan even like Pang? Doesn’t seem like Pang ever really loved Pim. I need someone who has read the books to tell me if pim ends up happy. That’s all I need to know!!!

Some last random thoughts…

-is ton breaking HIPPA every time he gives May an update on oom?

- i find it interesting that Jan basically knew everything about May from the start but didn’t say anything!!!!

-I’m curious as to how much oom remembers. She called May her gf but also remembered that May was the attorney. I wonder if she remembers the moments after that when she realized May met and fell in love with Ai that day way back when.

I’m am so sorry about this insane amount of word vomit of all my thoughts and feelings.

-🤫

i've said this before and i'll say it again, i hope the dad dies. he's probably going to get arrested or have a quick redemption arc and ask for forgiveness for being a despicable human being, but in a perfect world, he'd end up dead in a ditch. "bibi that's so revengeful", i couldn't care less. he's abusive to his child, he's abusive to his nephew and given the mom's response to all of that, he is most definitely abusive towards her (and he know it's not only mentally, given that he didn't think twice before slapping may across the face after very reasonably questioning him). so anyway, hope he dies.

i spent my free evening playing baldur's gate 3 and when i tell you i would regularly remember the way may would sneak glances at oon… *sighs* is it yearning when they are already dating? anyway, i didn't go into the tags and none of my moots reblogged anything like it (i think), but i'm so on my way to make a gifset about that because it made me feel things.

the sex scene was so beautifully shot, too. the light and the mood and the way oon had her hair to the side and looked quite dishevelled, it was better than i could have hopped (also, here i am, yet again, even more excited about girl rules bc yes, beautiful sex scenes with feelings are always great, but i'm so ready for the messy and angry that i know all three couples will serve).

LISTEN. amnesia plots are so cliche and used to be so overly used, and it's also one of my favorite tropes for some types of fanfics, SO HOW DID I NOT THINK THAT WOULD BE A THING? OOM HIT HER HEAD FOR GOD'S SAKE. honestly, that's on me, i didn't even think of the possibility like a fool. but i was so heartbroken for oom, too, bc imagine you go through the heartbreak of finding out your gf is in love with your sister actually, and then you marry a dude you don't care about, and now you forget him, and think you're in love with your ex again! when she finds out, it'll be heartbreaking. namtan will make me cry again.

the thing about ai and oom tho, they aren't telling her about paul and may right away just to avoid her going through more traumatic stuff after surviving an i-don't-know-how-many-months coma. at least the impression i got was that they were going to tell her once she got stronger, but then, BUT THEN! the revelations about batman, and ben, and kosol come to light and i wanted to die right then and there. you can see oon's face dropping and her heart breaking with each new piece of information she gets. i wanna commend namtan again bc man, how can she cry so prettily and make me feel all of these sad things? she did so great, i love her acting. i love the way she plays oom and say "pls forgive may, for me". i love how in love she looks whenever she's with may. how fond of her sister and her grandma she looks. i love this woman.

YOU SUMMED UP THE PIMPANGJAN THING PERFECTLY (for me). here's the thing, and i think i've said this last week, too. if pang demonstrated she has ever liked pim romantically (bc even when they were together, i feel like pang was just keeping pim to fill in space), i would be fine with a possible throuple. but pang has no interest whatsoever in pim, while pim can't forget pang, and poor jan is in this crossfire, bc she's respecting pim's decision to not get involved with her, but i don't think she's romantically into pang, either. it'll be great if they all kiss. i can't wait to finally add earn to the girl kissers list i have, and add two names to her tab, BUT STILL!!

to be fair, ton has been lying left and right to cover may, so i don't think he's too worried about patient confidentiality. he's an ally helping out his poor lesbian cousin get the girl, we can forgive him.

i was already suspicious that jan knew everything. watching back, it's so clear that oom was trying to set oon and may up, and bc jan is oom's best friend, i can only imagine all the things they've talked about and how much jan must have comforted her friend after the revelation about may's true affections.

i think oom has a selective memory loss thing going on. as in she forgot all the most traumatic things that have happened in the past year and regressed. even tho i wish oom would make things messier, i think she'll get her memories back on her own soon-ish. i do wonder what type of ending she'll get bc i must say, i'm an oom apologist, and i need her to somehow get a cute girlfriend who loves her for her too.

[mylight-png]

My partner is not Jewish, but looks more stereotypically Jewish than I do. She’s picked up a lot of my yiddish, and ‘oy vey’ has become part of both our vocab. When we’re together though - something makes us LOOK like a jewish couple. In the past few weeks, she’s received a crash course in practical antisemitism 101, and it feels like everyone is actively trying to identify jews. She’s half Irish (first gen born outside Ireland) and she’s been iced out of local expat groups and feels unwelcome at community events. She’s also Indigenous to the country we’re in - but still has been called a coloniser in public because they think she’s Jewish and/or Israeli? I feel responsible in many ways - that because of me, she’s had to shoulder the burden of more vitriol, had to be even more hyper vigilant. I worry so much that she’ll shoulder so much burden she’ll drown.

This honestly seems like something you should have a conversation about with your partner. Check in about how your partner feels about what's going on. I cannot speak for her, and I think that it is definitely something to have clear communication about.

Also, it isn't your fault. It isn't fair to blame yourself for the ignorance and hate of others. Their actions are their responsibility, not yours.

I wish for safety for both of you. Stay strong, don't let the antisemites get in your head. You are a part of a wonderful and resilient community. Be proud of it, embrace it, even if the world tells you otherwise.

[baelpenrose]

Project Praetorian 41: New Arrivals Part III: Commonality

Micah talks religion with Mark and Molly, and Mia works on language barrier issues. As I do not speak spanish (though ironically @writing-with-olive does) we wound up telling the sequence from Mia's perspective, with the note that everyone else speaking "broken" English from Mia's PoV is a translation convention.

Beta read by @canyouhearthelight and @writing-with-olive TW For kidnapping in flashbacks. Historical note for anyone who doesn't get the in-joke in Mia's flashback: the US Government has a long and sordid history of using Central American and specifically El Salvadorian cartels as mercenaries to do the CIA's bidding.

Micah

Getting off the VTOL was a relief - his dad had been an engineer, even if the obvious accent made it hard for him to get work at any of the really big firms, and Micah had had to hear about the dangers of that kind of air transport more than once when his dad had held up a newspaper and talked about the Osprey. “Another crash! Rotary blades on the top and a jet engine! How did any company allow this out of R&D?”

He hadn’t been riding in one of those - thus why it had landed instead of crashing - but his father’s general distrust of VTOL craft in general had left an impression. And that Nazi asshole who wouldn’t shut the fuck up about his panic attack the whole trip hadn’t helped, even as he’d tried to stay calm by counting the stitches on the seatbelts.

At least Jared hadn’t found out he was the product of a mixed-faith marriage. He’d suffered racial slurs, he’d suffered Islamophobic ones, and he shuddered to imagine how much worse it would have been had Jared known he was half-Jewish. 

Then he was introduced to the people he’d be joining, heard the last name of the leader of the kids, and realized he was going to find out any minute - hopefully with violent consequences for Jared. 

The group of new arrivals was split up, and Micah found himself being pulled aside by the boy introduced as Mark Ascher, along with a redheaded girl introduced as Molly Harper. 

“Hey. So, welcome to Palatine base. You’ve probably been stuck at Aventine for a minute, and…actually, before we start, did they do any testing on any of you there? I know they have facilities there, Echo’s testing started there.”

Micah felt a surge of fear. “Testing? What…what are they testing for?”

Mark blinked. “Okay, that’s a no. They did not. We’ll cover that later - oy vey, at this point I’m gonna buy a camera on my next leave - make an orientation film.”

Micah looked between them and Molly glared. “I think that’d be…kind of a dick move. I don’t think I’d have adjusted as fast if Vergil hadn’t given me the tour.”

“Fair enough, but I never know where to start with this…”

Something clicked for Micah. “You’re not a New Yorker, right?”

“Bite your tongue. I’m from Boston.” 

“That’s what I thought, but you cursed in Yiddish, so I thought I’d check. Salaam.”

Recognition flashed in the other boy’s eyes, changing him all at once from a young man trying to be older and harder than he was to match responsibilities he never wanted to the kind of boy Micah wished he’d known more of in school - clever, quick to laugh, and easy to talk to. “Muslim?”

Micah nodded. 

Mark gave Micah a fast hug. “A relief to have someone else here who gets that at least. Now, I know that Kosher and Halaal are not exactly the same thing, and I have been working to keep kosher on military rations, but you came at a good time - we just got a lot more freedom to operate on our own, so you’re not dealing with the crap I was where it was something I more or less only kept on holidays because I didn’t have a guarantee of eating if I stuck to it consistently.”

“Holidays?”

“Oh, right. Uh. We don’t get them. Not just us, though, for once, I’ve been here for almost three years now and we didn’t get Christmas off from everything sucking. It’s a very nondenominational suck. Oh, talk to Leon, she’ll help you find some ways to keep your traditions while surviving here. All in it together and we do mean ‘all’ in it together. Which means you’re probably going to be asked to explain Eid, both of them, I had to explain Purim and Rosh Hashanna. The results of the whole detachment trying to celebrate each other’s holidays is…I mean it’s often hilariously bad but it winds up giving it more of a home feel than not bothering. And don’t expect help from the higher ups.”

Micah felt a strange mix of warmth and horror at the casual description of a lack of recognition of holidays of any kind. 

Molly suddenly asked a question. “Hey, actually, I have a question since I know Muslims have a holiday where they fast for a month and Lent is coming up…”

Micah spoke first. “My faith acknowledges exceptions for health reasons, I don’t know about yours…”

Molly shook her head. “I don’t have to give up all food, just meat from animals on land, and something else. Also from blood in general. The church used to enforce a ban on carrying arms during Lent.”

Mark took a breath. “I…I want, so badly, to not immediately reverse myself, but I am going to strongly suggest that our job itself is a health reason to not fast - I don’t think you can do a month only eating at the beginning and end of each night. I mean, I barely make it through training on Yom Kippur each year and that’s one day without food or water. I’m not saying you can’t, I am saying, before you decide, train with us, then decide if you can do that while fasting. And remember that combat is much, much worse.” 

He turned to Molly. “And…yeah, sorry. No. There’s no holiday any of us can skip a mission for. If it happens during Lent, or Yom Kippur, or Ramadan, or the High Holidays, or any other day when we are absolutely not supposed to be spilling blood, then…taboos get broken because we are keeping each other alive, and we’re too short on hands to have anyone sit out. I’m sorry.”

Micah felt a thrill of fear. “So. You keep saying ‘combat’ - what are we fighting? I saw a bunch of UN flags at Aventine. Are we going to be turned into supersoldiers to deal with terrorists or lock down nukes, or..?”

Mark looked at him, then doubled over laughing. Micah felt hurt, and Mark kept going, slowly taking a breath, then spoke. “Okay, okay, sorry, sorry, just…that’s what we thought for the longest time, just. Okay. no. The actual answer is so much dumber. No, see, we actually straight up get super powers, and we’re fighting aliens. Yeah, really.” 

Micah started laughing. It was a joke, it had to be a joke - but Molly’s face was deadly serious, and he slowly stopped laughing. “You’re for real. This is…”

“Yeah. Go figure.”

Micah sat down. “Alright, so…” 

“They’re real. I got scooped after an alien scouting party attacked Tanglewood music camp and wiped out my family and killed my best friend. I was the only survivor.”

“That was a fire, wasn’t…” Micah trailed off as he realized how stupid he sounded. No, obviously not. Obviously that would be the cover up. “Ya Allah.” 

Echo was calling to Molly, and Molly ran over to them, Micah noticing the tears in her eyes. 

“She lost everyone she loved in her first contact. We had another battle we were ready for and we beat them, pretty soundly but we’re…” Mark leaned back on the bench, tossing chicken and beans onto Micah’s plate. “It’s terrifying.”

“What’s the testing?”

“I’m going to explain and you are going to leave the swearing or the appeals to HaShem to the end because if you do it every time I say something awful we’re gonna be here a while.”  

Micah nodded, the ghost of a joke failing to cover the menace implied by Mark’s story.

“So. We get injected by some vile chemical that causes mutations. Before it can give us turbo-cancer or whatever, we strip down to underwear or completely, depending on how much of this we’ve already done, climb into machines that look like sealed MRI machines but are not, which then proceed to blast us with radiation from all over the spectrum. This breaks down the mutagen while also mutating you harder and in a more useful way. The reason you don’t get clothing later, we figured out, isn’t that it gives Koleth a clearer read, or that it blocks too much of the radiation, and I can’t believe we ever believed that, no. It’s actually that once you’re far enough along, they have to hit you with enough radiation at a weird enough frequency that clothing will catch fire. By then you’re changed enough that it doesn’t do anything but change you. They did not tell us this, by the way, Echo found out while poking around the scientists’ computers while she was breaking a captured alien machine. I do not know what this says about our ability to survive nuclear fallout so do not ask. I am terrified we will have the opportunity to find out.”

“Allah yahmina, what is this place?”

“Official answer: Imperator’s Palatine Base. Unofficial answer: The best argument I’ve yet encountered that my people are wrong and that hell is in fact a thing.” 

“How are you this calm about it?” Micah felt vaguely faint.

“You get used to it.” 

Mia

She hadn’t slept properly since those mercenary assholes had gotten a bag over her head and taken her north. She still wasn’t sure how or why they’d picked her, but from what she’d gotten out of the mercenaries - who were locals, when she’d screamed at them - they’d told her that the blood tests she’d gotten in the hospital had showed she could be helpful.

She didn’t know what the hell that meant, but she knew she had to get home, back to her mother, back to her brothers. She’d struggled to try to escape, but been told if she kept going she’d be knocked unconscious.

She remembered the mercenaries taking her to someone they clearly answered to, asking him if he wanted to keep her for other sale for a few days, and him shaking his head. “No. Some rich white American asshole already paid us a hundred thousand for her - with another hundred thousand promised if she’s undamaged. Apparently she’s got some rare gene that some fucked up American research firm wants to experiment on and they’re paying top dollar for test subjects.”

She had been kept in a dark room - though fed surprisingly well, apparently the cartel was interested in getting paid for the ‘undamaged’ part - and once she’d realized she wasn’t going to be sold to a brothel, assaulted, or shot because she was apparently already paid for by people who were capable of paying the cartel too much to throw her away, she started using it. 

By swearing up a storm at her captors and spitting on them every chance she got. 

Thus by the time she was dragged out of a warehouse, she had been gagged, and two white assholes were talking to her captor, offering him a suitcase - and shoving her onto a boat, which went a certain ways off the coast before she was put on a helicopter.

She remembered seeing her city - her country - fade away in the distance.

She’d been surrounded by assholes who refused to speak her language, except the man who had apparently commissioned her kidnapping by the cartel, who introduced himself as August Gideon, who spoke it fluently and kept up an eerily polite tone.

“Ms. Orellana, I apologize for the roughness of your arrival. As you know, your country has a history of being a bit politically unstable due to a criminal element who are easily made into efficient proxies for outside actors. Our organization is funded by the UN security council, and we have access to most of the UN data bases, even the ones they swear are strictly confidential. You see - that hospital you went to a few months ago, to get your tonsils out? They tested you, like most patients, with a gauntlet of basic blood work - and one of those samples, as of eight months ago, is determining if someone is a Praetorian candidate. Among other things, I no longer have to collaborate with Stricken about the most effective ways to bribe blood samples out of donation or hospitals.” He gave a wan smile. “You came back with a positive test. Which is when we engaged the mercenaries who picked you up and turned you over to us.”

“What did you want from me? What the hell is a Praetorian candidate?”

“Project Praetorian…you’re now in the custody of an organization called Imperator. You’ll find out the rest from your compatriots, day after tomorrow - you were the last to arrive of this wave, and you’re all being transported together to the other facility. I have a plane to catch back there tonight, I’m afraid.”

“Why not ride back with the rest of us?”

“I have business I have to attend, and an important briefing to provide.” 

***

The four she’d been stuck with at the base were incapable of speaking to her, so she’d been stuck gesturing at herself and saying “Mia,” asking for their names and getting “Kimmy,” from a girl in a wheelchair, “Micah,” from a quiet, nervous looking boy with Gideon’s complexion but the gentle presence of one of her brothers, and “Jared,” from a boy who looked at her like something to scrape off his boot.

The ride on the chopper had mostly consisted of Jared apparently antagonizing Micah - Mia didn’t understand what was being said but she understood the tone - and Kimmy taunting him back. Rapid-fire English that she couldn’t follow but that she knew was probably important to understand.

When they landed and people were presumably introduced, she stood there, asking if anyone spoke any Spanish - and got a response from one dark, gorgeous girl who pulled her aside and spoke, haltingly but with some degree of fluency. 

“My name is Echo and yours…”

“My name’s Mia, it's really good to meet you. I’ve been stuck with no one to talk to because no one understood what I was saying for ages and I don’t actually speak English. So, what is this, what’s going on? What is a Praetorian candidate? Who are these people?”

Echo blinked, slowly, and then said. “I am not that strong in Spanish now. Praetorian is a thing where they do crazy science to us - it hurts. Gives us weird powers, like a comic book.” 

Mia unwrapped that in her head - Echo wasn’t totally fluent in Spanish yet, or spoke a different kind, but she was trying. Praetorian was a program of some kind where they were having experiments done on them, which gave them…superpowers? Echo had to be saying that wrong, Echo seemed smart.

“What do you do here, Echo?”

“I work with computers - hack into them. Jonathan is…” She shouted for Jonathan to do something in English and Jonathan casually lifted an unused table. “Strong. Like a comic book. The crazy science changes us. They teach us to fight too. We’re supposed to be…” Echo broke off and said something that was obviously a chain of curse words in English.

“Supposed to be fighting aliens. One minute.” She shouted for someone and a girl came over, the same age as Mia and red-headed. Echo chatted with her fast, and the redhead looked between them, then said something in Spanish back, also a dialect that was more formal than Mia really spoke but was something her churchgoing aunt would have gotten much more easily. Molly had a rosary, a simple one, but it reminded Mia of her grandmother’s.

“I’m Molly,” she started, “And…I only really know Church Spanish,” she said, waving the rosary. “So I do not know how much I can say about our lives here - beyond that we may have been kidnaped by the devil. But if you want to talk about your family, I can understand that - we had a few Latin families at our church, we were supposed to be able to talk with each other, all of us, about important things.”

Mia nodded. “I have brothers back in El Salvador. And parents. They have no idea where I am.” That started hitting her for the first time. “God, I’m never going to see them again, am I?”

Molly lunged forward and hugged her. “I’m sorry. My parents are dead, died when the aliens first appeared. The others talk a big game about being a new family and hopefully the ones with living parents see their families again, and…I don’t know, Leon and Curtis are talking about ideas for the rest of us if the war ends before we’re adults.”

Mia nodded. “So, Echo - and Molly. What’s the deal with the kids who introduced us?”

“Mark - the skinny one? He’s kinda in charge, and the guy who spoke is Xavier.” 

“Xavier spoken for?”

“Not officially,” Echo replied, glancing at Shiloh in the distance. 

Molly followed her gaze. “I wouldn’t recommend it.” 

Mia let the other two girls guide her to a table and sit her down, shoveling food on her plate and eating with them, slowly fumbling through Spanish with them and starting to get through a smattering of English, some of which she’d gotten in school before she’d had to stop going to start working. Picking it back up with them was helping, a bit, but suddenly Molly started. “Right. She needs ASL too.”

Echo cursed in not only English, but Spanish, and her phone let out a series of beeps that might have been her using powers to curse in morse code. 

“Right - actually, might be easier, different grammar.”

Mia looked between them, and then Molly stood up in shock.

Molly

The conversation had been going well with Mia - honestly the new girl was really pretty and Molly was glad she spoke enough Spanish to make her feel welcome, but then something insane happened.

Shiloh had been over by Kimmy, and was putting hands on Kimmy’s back. The paralyzed girl started screaming, then bit down on her shirt, before Shiloh stepped away for a second, leaving Casey holding Kimmy’s hand as Kimmy writhed in pain, then Shiloh had come back, and begun doing - whatever they were doing again.

And it hit Molly what she was witnessing. Shiloh was trying to repair Kimmy’s spine. 

Shiloh. A person that, as much as she hadn’t admitted it, she hadn’t talked to much, been alone with the least of the Praetorians - by design. Their anger, their weird gender stuff, had always made Molly nervous, went against what she’d been taught.

Shiloh had given someone back his eyes during the battle, healed burns, restored wounds. Molly had seen that, but that had been rational, Molly had thought, or at least, as rational as anything could be in a world where aliens had come down from the sky, gunned down her parents, and she was now a superhero-supersoldier supposed to be fighting them.

But this.

Kimmy stood up, leaning on Casey, as Shiloh slumped, taking deep breaths and huge bites. 

Kimmy took a few steps forward, eyes filling with tears, and laughed maniacally.

Shiloh had just performed a straight up miracle. It wasn’t just healing a broken bone or restoring a wound, Shiloh had just made a cripple walk.

She heard Mia gasp behind her as she crossed herself.

“Even here, that’s…that’s crazy. That’s…”

Molly’s world spun as she saw Kimmy take slow steps and turn around of her own accord. 

“Holy shit.”

“Welcome to Praetorian. That’s our healer, Shiloh. Going completely beyond the impossible.” 

Beyond the impossible. 

That was one way to put it. 

Molly picked up a huge platter of food and carried it over to Shiloh in absolute silence then set it down in front of the deaf healer, signing for them to eat as she did so.

Shiloh gave her a quiet nod, and continued to watch Kimmy, a smile of satisfaction and quiet pride on their face.

[hexsreality]

@mehrcedita inquired: this happened once before.

BARBIE (2023) PROMPTS ⤷ Accepting!

"This has happened once before?" Wanda parroted back incredulously at Mercy as she turned to look at the other woman with an eyebrow raised. That response wasn't something that Wanda wanted to hear at all. She didn't like these events happening once, let alone twice. "Oy Vey," Wanda muttered under her breath, she needed to smoke a cigarette or an entire pack. Mercy didn't need to use her mutation to take Wanda's injury. The mutant sorceress didn't want that at all, as she was used to treating her injuries and even altering the probability of being injured in the first place. "You needn't do this on account of me. I could've taken care of myself just fine, my dear."

[supremenetherunderlord]

~ Bitten Blue - Chapter 1 ~

☆ (Disney) Hades x Reader

★ CW: just some good flirting.

☆ Reader's Perspective !!

As time ticks on by, Hades' days are spent either sulking in sorrow over his awful loneliness as he gazes upon the River Styx and all the poor unfortunate souls within it or plotting to overthrow Zeus and rule Mount Olympus himself.

This time, as he's in the midst of plotting (as per usual), he happens to catch a flash of light in his peripheral vision. As if it couldn't be guessed, that flash of light sent your own self—unknowingly—into the Underworld. Yet, as you gaze down at the flesh of your hands, you find that you're...still alive?

"Hey; kid," I hear a voice call out to me. "Wha'dya doin' 'ere, eh?" He doesn't seem too happy about my presence. His hair is flaring up pretty wildy, too. "You tryna botha me er what? I got things to do, I got a whole PLACE to run, ya got all that? Whatever it is, make it snappy; I don't have all day." He is DEFinitely pissed, and dealing with a gods temper is NOT what I signed up for or planned on getting myself into.

"Ironically, I'm...not dead? Aren't souls supPOSED to not be alive when they come here?" He definitely didn't take that lightly. Not in a good way, at least. His fiery hair and face shift to a deep orange with frustration. His fist slams onto the table, causing the energy to travel through its legs and make the ground quake for a good moment.

"Just what kinda joke are ya tryna play around here, huh?! I am HADES! LORD of the DEAD! If you're not DEAD, then what in the underworld are you doin' 'ere?" As if I'm even close to capable of having the answer to such a question.

"Don't ask ME, fireball, I just appeared here from thin air!" I snap. Hades crosses his arms, glaring at me as though I'm suspicious of something. His anger slowly settles down, all the while still simmering beneath the surface.

"Oy vey." He facepalms, brows furrowing in minor distress. "I got no one else to blame but myself for hiring Pain and Panic rather than investing in a halfway decent security system." He pinches at the bridge of his nose in agitation, his flames burning a shallow yellow.

"Hey, it's not like I asked to be here in the first place." I walk at a rhythmic pace, approaching Hades—still remaining at a reasonable distance from him. He conjures a skull in the palm of his hand and studies it for a moment.

"Well, since you're here, do me a favor and make yourself useful. Better yet: enlighten me, would ya?" I take note of a smirk crept upon his face and raise a brow in suspicion at his words.

"Just what are you implying?" I narrow my gaze at his own, crossing my arms and tapping my fingers against my upper arm.

"Oh—I don't know—that I could use some company? Even if it's a mere mortal like yourself, I mean. It's not like you can die twice, anyway..." He chuckles at his own words, as if I came here dead to begin with.

"Not like I could—oh, I don't know—chain your arms to your sides and torture you myself, either." I shrug, mockingly.

"Looks like I mighta met my match after all, eh?"

"Yeah? And in what way?"

"Well, I'm not entirely sure how to react to someone, or a mortal for that matter, who can match my wit and humor... and isn't afraid of a bit of torture." He smirks deviously.

"I, myself, could torture you in the best ways possible—don't you worry your pretty little flaming head about it." I wink, schmoozing my way somewhere I know I shouldn't, for my own best interests.

"Hm... Perhaps we could strike a deal. You entertain me and make this place a little less dreary, and I might just let you live long enough to see the light of day again."

"Remind me why I would ever even wish to see the light of day when I would have you around to quite physically and fiery light up the entire world that surrounds me?"

Hades tilts his head, studying me. "Well now, aren't you a smooth talker? I gotta admit, I didn't expect this kind of a response from someone who just appeared out of thin air."

"More than that can happen from thin air, sweetcheeks, just you wait and see." I give Hades another wink, taking note that he seems to be enjoying it.

He chuckles, a smirk forming on his lips. "I gotta say, it has been ages since anyone's managed to ruffle my feathers in such a delightful manner. And I do love a good challenge."

"Well, you could return the favor." I shrug, making a mere suggestion.

"And just what kind of favor do you have in mind?"

"Ruffling said feathers, perchance?"

"I think I could handle that, my little firecracker." With a smirk, he steps closer to me, his expression flashing with mischief. In one swift motion, he reaches out and playfully ruffles my hair.

"I will be sure to crackle your fire, don't you worry."

"Just remember, I might be the Lord of the Dead, but I can still feel a spark or two when they're thrown my way."

"Whatever you need, and no matter the extent, I'll be here for you. Physically, for the most part, if you catch my drift."

"Oh really?" There's a hint of lust in his voice as he makes his way closer to me. "And just how far are you willing to go for me?"

"How far do you want me to go?" I lift my chin to try to regain a little more confidence.

"Why don't you show me?" He places his hand upon my chest, pretty much all of him burning with desire, flames even flaring up across his shoulders—though still blue.

I keep my composure. "Or...you could take the initiative in that matter." Feeling the warmth of his flames, my face can't help but flush in response (it's totally a blood thing).

With a smirk, he steps back and spreads his black robe wide open, revealing the flames that dance beneath it. "Consider this your invitation," he says with a sultry tone.

[songforten]

[image id: goon who will play Ball (see the Ukraine) [begin highlight] and notta one of these goblins is angry about any of that. [end highlight] Not a one is this upset about the [text cuts off.] end image id.]

harry potter fans are fucking insane. i say not to interact with me if they like harry potter and they respond by a.) bringing up global politics and placing individual responsibility on my shoulders about them in order to dismiss my point and b.) calling me a fucking goblin!!

oy vey, they're not even pretending anymore, are they?

[brickellbabe]

Is it better to have loved and lost than have never loved at all? Let’s discuss.

Disclaimer - I have nothing to lose as I am speaking from the heart. My intention is to live my truth. I am telling it like it is without fear and judgment in hopes that my writing sheds light on life circumstances that we all face as some point.

Here we go...

First and foremost, heartbreak sucks. Getting emotionally hurt is painful. Feeling sadness and remorse can be downright crippling. If you don’t drown your sorrows with a bottle of champaign, binge watching crime documentaries, and having crying episodes throughout the day then you are superhuman or have completely lost the ability to feel (God bless). Not sure if that’s a good or a bad thing, but probably not healthy as we are supposed to feel all the things - good and bad. Also, losing someone that you had a strong mental and physical connection with can be damaging which changes who you are if you allow it.

There’s a good reason why more and more people are not getting into full blown relationships these days and having meaningless hook ups instead. It’s so they don’t catch “FEELINGS”. Catching feelings can lead to obsession, toxic behaviors, confusion, and relationship sabotage (just to name a few negative side effects that I don’t know too much about). I think at this point, throughout my past experiences, I have come to realize that chances are, someone will get hurt when you fall in love. It’s inevitable, hence why I am still single at the age of 39… HOW FUN!

So, is keeping things casual the safe bet so that you don’t get hurt?

Sure, some of us do play it safe - knowing that everything is temporary and to not invest the time and effort to strengthen a potential life-long twin-flame experience because it doesn’t exist. OOOF, savage. Jumping from one “fun” pit stop along our journey to the next until we decide we can’t journey anymore. But is that really the play? To save yourself from feeling pain at the cost of giving yourself an immense feeling of joy, happiness, and pleasure?

Hmmm, makes me think (maybe I should stop doing that) …

How emotionally strong are those people that they can find someone they like, spend copious amount of time with them, but not get attached and just live in the moment? Talk about a powerful skill that I do not possess (womp womp). I mean, yeah, there have been times I met someone, had “fun”, and never wanted to see them again (bad vibes). Never was there a moment where I had an ongoing hookup with someone I really liked without getting into a relationship with them at some point. There was no “roster”, although the thought of that does sound cool but my mental and emotional capacity only limits me to have one love interest at a time (really living to the fullest here). Most of the time it’s head over heals followed by a catastrophic bomb leading to a quiet somber aftermath of guilt, shame, and devastation which I must say, is always caused by me.

As Taylor Swift recently sang…

“It’s me, hi, I’m the problem it’s me”.

Now, if I am the problem, I am also my own solution. Yeah… I’ve identified that, thank you.

I have acknowledged that I have a fight or flight response and have difficulty communicating my emotions in a an effective (positive) way. That’s why all of my interactions with various chosen male characters continue to go in circles just with evolved patterns and cycles that lead to nowhere. OY VEY, all this internal work is exhausting, and I feel like I’m getting further away from the light. Beem me up Jesus, I’m waiving the white flag and ready to depart all the suffering that I continue to bestow upon thyself.

Anyway, enough of that and back to the question at hand…

Is it better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all?

YES - it is better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all.

True love is rare and having a deep emotional as well as physical connection with someone is a gift and RARE these days. Feeling secure, safe, comfortably vulnerable, and unapologetically yourself with someone is freeing. Enjoy it when you have it. And when you find it, don’t play it safe, go all in! Do your best to hold on to it as long as you can as it doesn’t happen often. Feel all the joy, happiness, and pleasure that comes with love and be prepared to lose it at any given moment.

Remember, nothing is permanent, and everything is temporary.

XOXO

Mariana

[hopeymchope]

But are you against the HP game in the end or getting annoyed with people arguing over it? People are only pleading that they boycott the game because jkr holds so much influence because of HP and is happily promoting a game that helps support her own bigotry. She herself is not a neutral figure on her stances her media she puts out takes, it banks on the hatred for several groups of people and funds the means to continuously endorse that hate to keep that ideology in power. There is no neutral side on this really. There are so many posts here that at the bare minimum to boycott the game altogether because in the end that's all those against her can do. And loudly being against it is to spread the word in refusal of being passively accepting of it. It's horrible feeling helpless against her so it's literally all that's being asked here and not to push the idea away that buying and 'just enjoying a game' is harmless thing to do.

Note: This is a response to this previous post.

Oy vey. I’m literally afraid to answer this ask, because if I say the wrong thing there’s a good chance people will label me an awful person. I’m gonna lose respect, care, and followers if I choose my words poorly. It is DANGEROUS to have an opinion on this shit right now. 

What I dislike is not only the pervasiveness of the intense arguing everywhere on the Internet, but also the extremism of the arguments. The calls of "you can't be trusted ever again/aren't my friend/aren't an ally if you don't share my position on this video game" is what I’m most particularly opposed to.��

When I made my attempt to summarize the argument, I didn’t want to take a side. But I do think that, at the very LEAST, we should be capable of saying “I can comprehend that other people interpret this situation differently than I do, and that doesn’t automatically make them a bad person and/or unworthy of my care.” ........... Weeellll, unless the other person’s argument is that they simply don’t care about trans people or how any of their actions may affect them. Or if their argument is that they actively want to support the game because they want to support hatred and TERFism. If that’s the argument, then obviously GTFO and do not pass ‘Go’ on your way. 

But I’m sure you can grok the gist of what I’m saying here — as long as you’re putting thought and good intentions into your stance, nobody should have to be instantly vilified or cut off because of said stance. Making such a declaration is a very extreme one. ... And yet it’s a declaration that seems to be weirdly common on this subject.

Furethermore, I also have to wonder: Why is THIS GAME the biggest, loudest hot-button issue on trans rights? SURE, I’ve seen some people say “Never buy anything Potter-related ever again and also trash everything based on HP that you currently own” in the past few years, but that’s been nowhere near as many people as I’ve seen calling to boycott this one game specifically. You don’t see this level of passion over every other piece of merch being shat out. Where’s the calls to make sure you avoid every year’s HP Hallmark ornaments or something... ? Why didn’t we hear this much uproar over skipping the movies when the last “Fantastic Beasts” came out? Though maybe the answer to that last one is obvious: Not that many people give a shit about “Fantastic Beasts” anymore. :P

Actually, a much bigger question: Why haven’t I ever seen or heard anyone say “Boycott all the Universal parks and resorts” given that Rowling is getting a percentage of every single goddamn ticket sold... ? That’s a HUGE influx of income for her. HUGE! It doesn’t matter if you don’t go to the Wizarding World section or don’t buy any of the related merch: Just going to Universal and buying a ticket to ride the Velocicoaster or whatever AUTOMATICALLY puts money in Rowling’s pocket. So where’s my editorials about that?

.......I swear, if we could mobilize even two-thirds as much rage and fury when parts of the country/world introduce new legislation to criminalize and/or forcibly detransition trans people, the trans community and its allies would become a force IMPOSSIBLE for any politician to ignore.

[alyosiuscreightonward]

Dear Diary. I’ve not been here for a moment because I’m going through some shit. I love and I hate my new job. I don’t like getting up at 530am but I do like having a few hours before 6pm. Good, bad, etc. Sigh. I’m thinking about looking for a new job.

Then there’s the idea of having to go back to the place where I scattered my late husband’s ashes. It was a glorious day. I did my duty. Then I had to think about my ex boyfriend’s passing and how he would have been 73 if he didn’t blame me for his illnesses but I didn’t become a hoarder and have just an aisle width to navigate the way to the bathroom. But I’m sure I caused his atrial fibrillation. I caused his sleep apnea. I caused his weight gain. Oh. The. List. Is. Long. Like I’m surprised that he didn’t blame me for 9/11 while I was in Boynton Beach, FL. Though he was known for saying, “I’ve been disappointed twice a year for the past 73 years of my life on my birthday and on Christmas. I’ve never gotten exactly what I wanted.” 🤦‍♀️

Bitch! I can’t afford a new fucking Cadillac!!

I know all about your Champagne taste and my Beer Bottle pocket. We all have pipe dreams.

Then there’s this. I wrote to a long time friend and this is the response I got back.

“I am happy to read that you have been feeling better recently and I am so sorry to hear that you have been having a tough time of late. If the meds are helping, then more power to them. And no, you have not offended me, so please don’t apologise – for what I have no idea. We are two people who hung out and shared a few laughs decades ago in another time and another place. If not for your efforts over the years, that would have been the end of it, as it has been with so many of the people I have rubbed alongside over the course of these past 63 years. I am now at the stage in my life where I know more dead people than living ones - oy vey - And naturally one’s – ahem – priorities start to shift and evolve. Which is a fancy way of saying that as we get older we inevitably get more ornery and ill-tempered. Misanthropic too in my case. But not for you dear “Blank”; for you I have fond memories and an enduring appreciation for your dedicated efforts at maintaining contact with the likes of me, as I slip into my dotage and hermit’s lifestyle.

Enjoy the better place you now inhabit and make it your sanctuary.”

In the immortal words of Michael McDonald, “We’re talking divorce and we weren’t even married.”

After much contemplation with my navel, my only response is, “Regardless, I will be your lighthouse keeper.”

[verdemusgo]

IDs in order of appearance (with brief references to how op introduces them for better following)

the meme op saw someone reblog: large text that reads "every day i notice patterns. and then i go to bed" over ASCII art depicting a top view of a cute cat laying in bed, face up and eyes open. there's a window to the left and a bedside table to the right

the Urban Dictionary definition for "The Noticing":

The Noticing, also spelled Noseticing, is a movement. It is the awakening to the truth. It is the ultimate red pill. The bottom of the rabbit hole. The unplugging from the matrix. The realization, the revelation, the noticing that every single time, that it is those who cannot be named that are responsible or behind every bad company, movement and organization. The Noticing is when you have special pattern recognition aka "noticing" abilities. When you can spot the common denominator in all world events and agendas. The Noticing has been largely spurred on by the Streisand Effect. And when you become aware of The Noticing, share your finding with the #thenociting so others can see the truth and help to notice even further. [in italics] Gary: Oi Tone, ever notice when you see someone or a company pushing the degeneracy. agendas and you go smash their wiki early life, that there is always a certain similarity/pattern? Tone: yeah bro, every single time. [hashtag] TheNoticing [capitalization added for accessibility] Gary: oy vey, The Noticing.

the most obviously antisemitic meme op has found: bold, uppercase text accompanying a drawing of a blue-eyed, bearded blond man with furrowed eyebrows and thumb and index finger resting on his chin. text reads:

THE CHAD NOTICER • NOTICES THINGS AND USES PATTERN RECOGNITION TO CREATE AN ACCURATE WORLDVIEW • ASTUTELY OBSERVES ANTI- EUROPEAN SENTIMENT ORIGINATING FROM SAME GROUP OVER AND OVER AGAIN. • ABILITY TO RECOGNIZE WHO 40% OF BILLIONAIRES ARE DESPITE BEING 2% OF THE POPULATION. • INCREASING HIS NOTICING ACTIVITY RESULTS IN EVEN MORE THINGS TO NOTICE

the twitter acount with alt-right terms: google search result with profile pic showing pepe the frog in a smoking suit, smiling and touching its bow tie, in front of a chess board against a nebula background. preview reads:

NatsocD - Pattern Noticer Pattern Noticer. [at] NatsocD. friendly neighborhood national socialist redpill deale Proud white man, ethno-nationalist, won't check my privilege, …

the other pages, both google search results followed by previews:

patternnoticer[dot]com Always Object: Pattern Noticer Everything is an offer, no one forced you to do anything, 13 outa 52, 109countries, noticer of patterns…

and

Chronic Pattern Noticer ([at] NoticeUrPatern) / Twitter I have never been more convinced there is a global sterilization effort to reduce fertility Both in reduction of sperm count and convincing women their …

the examples from tumblr:

"mike is beating the useless allegations in s5" mike has spent 4 entire seasons Noticing Patterns & Making Connections. if you think he's useless that's on YOU actually

tagged as "he's a certified Pattern Noticer (some might call it neurodivergence)"

and

they call me pattern noticer on account of all of the patterns i notice

tagged as "AutismCore" [capitalization added for accessibility]

Hello friends, there's a dogwhistle I've seen used a couple times on tumblr that I want to discuss.

Fellow neurodivergents especially, please listen-- towards the end of this post I describe how some in our community have been using it without knowing what it means.

A fairly common antisemitic dogwhistle used amongst alt-right circles on the internet is being a "noticer," "noticing patterns," "pattern noticer," etc. I've seen this from a couple Tumblr blogs I follow reblogging memes and such that use this term but don't provide any context about what sorts of "things" they may be noticing.

Here's the meme that I saw a blog I'm following reblog last night.

Seems pretty harmless, right? It's a meme with a cute cat.

In alt-right circles, what they are referring to "noticing" is the conspiracy theory that Jews control the world/"noticing" evidence of an imagined globalist (read: Jewish) world order/etc. If you see a meme that uses terms like "noticing patterns" that doesn't elaborate what those supposed patterns are-- just leaves you to fill in the blank yourself-- take a look at the types of things OP might be posting. The alt-right has an idea that it's forbidden to talk about who might be behind the "conspiracies" they talk about (again, the target is frequently Jewish people) so lack of context is often a red flag.

I sent the blog who reblogged this an ask informing them that the meme was a dogwhistle. If you see someone reblog something like this, check what they've been posting. If this seems like an isolated incident, the person probably reblogged it not knowing what the term actually meant. That's why dogwhistles are so effective-- to the average person they look harmless if you don't know what to watch out for!

Let's take a look at how alt-righters use this term.

Here's an alt-right definition of it from Urban Dictionary.

Oh boy, this one gets a bigotry bingo for all the dogwhistles used here. If I miss any, feel free to comment. Here are the ones I found:

-Noseticing: Noticing plus nose, based on the stereotype for Jewish people to have large noses.

-"those who cannot be named"/skirting around saying Jew: again the idea that it's forbidden to talk about who they think is behind their conspiracy theories.

-"world events and agendas": idea that Jewish people have a Globalist agenda etc etc

-Degeneracy: Nazi term to describe the behaviors/people they find undesirable.

-Early life: refers to the section in a person's Wikipedia page. If a person was brought up Jewish, it'll usually say so there.

-Oy vey: a Jewish exclamation of exasperation that Nazis have unfortunately co-opted when talking about Jewish people.

Here's probably the most obviously antisemitic meme I found.

The title and first bullet point include the "noticer" term. This meme also talks about a "group" who controls wealth. Who might the poster be referring to here?

Here's a Twitter account with many similar alt-right terms. Explicitly identifies as a Nazi and ethno-nationalist, etc etc.

A couple other pages. I clicked on them to see if I could find any more examples but the first seemed pretty blank and the second... Well, I don't have a twitter so I couldn't view.

Let's unpack these a little. The first one has "13 outta 52," a statistic used among white supremacists to depict Black people (especially African-Americans) as "savage": 13 referring to the percentage of America that is Black and 52 referring to the alleged percentage of murders in the U.S. that are committed by Black people. "109 countries" refers to the idea that Jewish people have been expelled from 109 countries during history. (Which isn't entirely true. Some "countries" in this count are actually cities, regions, etc.) Some white supremacists may use the number 110 instead to suggest that it should happen again.

The second one has a blurb alleging a global sterilization effort and concerns of fertility. This is likely in connection to pro-natalism for white people. If Nazis want a so-called "Aryan nation," they're going to want white people to populate it, and so they encourage white people to have babies for their cause. Nazi Germany employed this tactic as well, even awarding "Aryan" German women who had four or more children for their contributions to the Nazi cause.

The reason why I'm emphasizing that context matters is that some neurodivergent people have seen this and co-opted it into neurodivergent circles. As a person who is Jewish and autistic, this is pretty alarming to me. I'll show a couple examples from Tumblr:

And

I've left out the URLs of the OPs because I want to give the benefit of the doubt-- they both explicitly refer to being a "pattern noticer" in terms of neurodivergence. And it's easy to see why introducing this term to ND folks would be an easy way to get a dogwhistle passed off as harmless! Since autistic people often have analytical minds, we often make connections that others might not be able to see. But unfortunately, using terms like this only makes it much easier for antisemites to fly under the radar.

Stay safe and let's keep Tumblr free of this shit.

[downtherabbitholewithauntieblegh]

This is in response to someone’s comment underneath my article about Emily Armstrong and Linkin Park….

I never ONCE gave my own opinion. The opinion that I opened up with belongs to AJ Channer of Fire From the Gods. Look I get that this is a sensitive subject for a lot folks, but please don’t come on here and chastise me for giving out information like a proper journalist would do! Oy vey….

[writer59january13]

Defecation accidentally clogged...

for the umpteenth time during spate to sit scrawny buttucks on porcelain throne id est videre licet toilet bowl... with toxic water brew threatening

to overflow onto the floor, and hence found yours truly (me) immersing himself in the holistic experience for the pure love of bucket flushing since applying plunger to no avail

found me able, eager, ready and willing

to whoosh upon a star to enlist the entrepreneurial daring doo doo of eldest offspring to design a *corkerasp,

and found (me) zee papa frankly zapped, pooped, fatigued, et cetera out,

thus daring poster boy afflicted by recurrent bouts of constipation

to share embarrassing communiqué I post,

a reasonably rhyming poetic shout out

to air flatulent grievances

concerning outsize bowel movement hoping (fat/slim shady chance)

Mike Rowe happens tubby about,

though shadow of a doubt,

he will avail himself

anal eyes zing thee nightly dump for yesterday

September 2nd, 2024 - whereby

plying plunger in vain, cuz suction

barely helped obstruction give way,

I nearly lost me life and limb oy vey

oh my dog, the same asinine outcome

which spurred poet to get underway

matter of fact, a replay

of excretion almost occurred earlier today,

and thus an attempt to describe

a tragicomic scenario

regarding bowel movement

the size of subway tram,

an urgent message to maintenance person, yours truly must relay

overflowing potty nearly

found yours truly quay

king, yet impossible mission

arises to portray

with unsightly turgid prose and cons of situation,

the juvenile elements of harried style

swiftly tailored, I hate to overplay

odoriferous subject matter

nsync with constipation

since laxative delineates,

expedites, facilitates,... née

posits heavy load emanating out rectum

quite amazing what smelly waste exits out me

necessitating able linkedin line

O Captain! My Captain!

I signal emergency mayday

posterior end, a dime size orifice,

which malfunctioning sphincter muscles

one moost never be lackaday sic cull

though kids and adults laughed back in the day,

if and/or when Danny Kaye

tactfully poked fun including that girl at such critical bodily phenomenon

equally important as a jackstay

to keep afloat body electric

accursed with rectum ammunition auxiliary accouterments interplay

analogously precise as Swiss made timepiece

said system responsible to expel bodily toxins

upon which sitting on porcelain throne

one can softly utter hooray

thankful to experience relative pleasure

until one becomes feeble minded,

whereat sixty plus shades of gray

matter allows, enables, and

provides enjoyably foray

into the bathroom, which entranceway

hoop fully not barred nor off limits

cuz that primitive urge one best not delay

lest one requires lower

gastrointestinal intervention

especially if blocked up

fecal matter which turns to clay

unless of course one doth

cause damage and betray

respect toward well oiled human machine

exercising and eating healthy

avoiding backside skeleton musculature issues,

yes... I reckon during twilight years

control over bowels doth slip away.

*The Essence Of A Corkerasp.

(which fictitious object contrived by my then twenty plus year old third year college student, (who will turn twenty eight on December twenty second),, but SHE would never admit to birthing such an offal bit of drek. The essential name arose from preschool, predicated, precocious person, and the words....?

Whenever constipation a pain in the ass

just maneuver this lightweight metal contrivance made of brass

no matter if anybody considers this action crass

apply corkscrew motion

up the alimentary canal to remove human waste,

which most likely will be thick like petrified paste

stuck deep inside bowels of sphincter muscles

and solidly encased

causing severe cramps within lower gastrointestinal tract

inducing one to wince nonstop from being fecal matter packed

and no amount of primal groaning doth loose this hard fact,

nor does imagery of freed turd

ease formidable anal plight, no laughing matter despite how absurd

squeezing does nothing even applying all inner might,

thus necessary to incorporate

un-natural intervention to un-clog

rectal blockage + uncomfortable bloating

swelling anus the size of a hog

disabling bare derriere

ease to stand let alone jog,

yet tis essential per extricating what feels

like one swallowed a log,

which could presage demise of sufferer, whereby epitaph

twill induce impossible eulogy spoken language

where tongues wag in Prague

every ounce of effort required to bend

over gingerly affixing plunger end of device

to business of rear end

best accompanied in tandem with close companion or friend

this dirty deed done dirt-cheap trick will ideally rend

rock solid excrement to roll and crash

(on par traversing highway to hell) soundcloud, I

without fail regularly out the tushy send

upon bathroom floor

possibly inducing tsunami seismic waves less or more,

whereby toilet bowl water will pour

over the sides akin to white caps near sea shore

without doubt making gluteus maximums extremely sore.

[postmoderntongues]

LMFAO I showed my editor “one man one jar” because he’s never seen it and his response was “oy vey. No you know what? OY GEVALT!” He was so horrified by it I’m laughing my tits off