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[mostlysignssomeportents]

How finfluencers destroyed the housing and lives of thousands of people

For the rest of May, my bestselling solarpunk utopian novel THE LOST CAUSE (2023) is available as a $2.99, DRM-free ebook!

The crash of 2008 imparted many lessons to those of us who were only dimly aware of finance, especially the problems of complexity as a way of disguising fraud and recklessness. That was really the first lesson of 2008: "financial engineering" is mostly a way of obscuring crime behind a screen of technical jargon.

This is a vital principle to keep in mind, because obscenely well-resourced "financial engineers" are on a tireless, perennial search for opportunities to disguise fraud as innovation. As Riley Quinn says, "Any time you hear 'fintech,' substitute 'unlicensed bank'":

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/01/usury/#tech-exceptionalism

But there's another important lesson to learn from the 2008 disaster, a lesson that's as old as the South Seas Bubble: "leverage" (that is, debt) is a force multiplier for fraud. Easy credit for financial speculation turns local scams into regional crime waves; it turns regional crime into national crises; it turns national crises into destabilizing global meltdowns.

When financial speculators have easy access to credit, they "lever up" their wagers. A speculator buys your house and uses it for collateral for a loan to buy another house, then they make a bet using that house as collateral and buy a third house, and so on. This is an obviously terrible practice and lenders who extend credit on this basis end up riddling the real economy with rot – a single default in the chain can ripple up and down it and take down a whole neighborhood, town or city. Any time you see this behavior in debt markets, you should batten your hatches for the coming collapse. Unsurprisingly, this is very common in crypto speculation, where it's obscured behind the bland, unpronounceable euphemism of "re-hypothecation":

https://www.coindesk.com/consensus-magazine/2023/05/10/rehypothecation-may-be-common-in-traditional-finance-but-it-will-never-work-with-bitcoin/

Loose credit markets often originate with central banks. The dogma that holds that the only role the government has to play in tuning the economy is in setting interest rates at the Fed means the answer to a cooling economy is cranking down the prime rate, meaning that everyone earns less money on their savings and are therefore incentivized to go and risk their retirement playing at Wall Street's casino.

The "zero interest rate policy" shows what happens when this tactic is carried out for long enough. When the economy is built upon mountains of low-interest debt, when every business, every stick of physical plant, every car and every home is leveraged to the brim and cross-collateralized with one another, central bankers have to keep interest rates low. Raising them, even a little, could trigger waves of defaults and blow up the whole economy.

Holding interest rates at zero – or even flipping them to negative, so that your savings lose value every day you refuse to flush them into the finance casino – results in still more reckless betting, and that results in even more risk, which makes it even harder to put interest rates back up again.

This is a morally and economically complicated phenomenon. On the one hand, when the government provides risk-free bonds to investors (that is, when the Fed rate is over 0%), they're providing "universal basic income for people with money." If you have money, you can park it in T-Bills (Treasury bonds) and the US government will give you more money:

https://realprogressives.org/mmp-blog-34-responses/

On the other hand, while T-Bills exist and are foundational to the borrowing picture for speculators, ZIRP creates free debt for people with money – it allows for ever-greater, ever-deadlier forms of leverage, with ever-worsening consequences for turning off the tap. As 2008 forcibly reminded us, the vast mountains of complex derivatives and other forms of exotic debt only seems like an abstraction. In reality, these exotic financial instruments are directly tethered to real things in the real economy, and when the faery gold disappears, it takes down your home, your job, your community center, your schools, and your whole country's access to cancer medication:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/jun/08/greek-drug-shortage-worsens

Being a billionaire automatically lowers your IQ by 30 points, as you are insulated from the consequences of your follies, lapses, prejudices and superstitions. As @pixelpusher220@dmv.community says, Elon Musk is what Howard Hughes would have turned into if he hadn't been a recluse:

https://mamot.fr/@pixelpusher220@dmv.community/112457199729198644

The same goes for financiers during periods of loose credit. Loose Fed money created an "everything bubble" that saw the prices of every asset explode, from housing to stocks, from wine to baseball cards. When every bet pays off, you win the game by betting on everything:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everything_bubble

That meant that the ZIRPocene was an era in which ever-stupider people were given ever-larger sums of money to gamble with. This was the golden age of the "finfluencer" – a Tiktok dolt with a surefire way for you to get rich by making reckless bets that endanger the livelihoods, homes and wellbeing of your neighbors.

Finfluencers are dolts, but they're also dangerous. Writing for The American Prospect, the always-amazing Maureen Tkacik describes how a small clutch of passive-income-brainworm gurus created a financial weapon of mass destruction, buying swathes of apartment buildings and then destroying them, ruining the lives of their tenants, and their investors:

https://prospect.org/infrastructure/housing/2024-05-22-hell-underwater-landlord/

Tcacik's main characters are Matt Picheny, Brent Ritchie and Koteswar “Jay” Gajavelli, who ran a scheme to flip apartment buildings, primarily in Houston, America's fastest growing metro, which also boasts some of America's weakest protections for tenants. These finance bros worked through Gajavelli's company Applesway Investment Group, which levered up his investors' money with massive loans from Arbor Realty Trust, who also originated loans to many other speculators and flippers.

For investors, the scheme was a classic heads-I-win/tails-you-lose: Gajavelli paid himself a percentage of the price of every building he bought, a percentage of monthly rental income, and a percentage of the resale price. This is typical of the "syndicating" sector, which raised $111 billion on this basis:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-housing-bust-comes-for-thousands-of-small-time-investors-3934beb3

Gajavelli and co bought up whole swathes of Houston and other cities, apartment blocks both modest and luxurious, including buildings that had already been looted by previous speculators. As interest rates crept up and the payments for the adjustable-rate loans supporting these investments exploded, Gajavell's Applesway and its subsidiary LLCs started to stiff their suppliers. Garbage collection dwindled, then ceased. Water outages became common – first weekly, then daily. Community rooms and pools shuttered. Lawns grew to waist-high gardens of weeds, fouled with mounds of fossil dogshit. Crime ran rampant, including murders. Buildings filled with rats and bedbugs. Ceilings caved in. Toilets backed up. Hallways filled with raw sewage:

https://pluralistic.net/timberridge

Meanwhile, the value of these buildings was plummeting, and not just because of their terrible condition – the whole market was cooling off, in part thanks to those same interest-rate hikes. Because the loans were daisy-chained, problems with a single building threatened every building in the portfolio – and there were problems with a lot more than one building.

This ruination wasn't limited to Gajavelli's holdings. Arbor lent to multiple finfluencer grifters, providing the leverage for every Tiktok dolt to ruin a neighborhood of their choosing. Arbor's founder, the "flamboyant" Ivan Kaufman, is associated with a long list of bizarre pop-culture and financial freak incidents. These have somehow eclipsed his scandals, involving – you guessed it – buying up apartment buildings and turning them into dangerous slums. Two of his buildings in Hyattsville, MD accumulated 2,162 violations in less than three years.

Arbor graduated from owning slums to creating them, lending out money to grifters via a "crowdfunding" platform that rooked retail investors into the scam, taking advantage of Obama-era deregulation of "qualified investor" restrictions to sucker unsophisticated savers into handing over money that was funneled to dolts like Gajavelli. Arbor ran the loosest book in town, originating mortgages that wouldn't pass the (relatively lax) criteria of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. This created an ever-enlarging pool of apartments run by dolts, without the benefit of federal insurance. As one short-seller's report on Arbor put it, they were the origin of an epidemic of "Slumlord Millionaires":

https://viceroyresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Arbor-Slumlord-Millionaires-Jan-8-2023.pdf

The private equity grift is hard to understand from the outside, because it appears that a bunch of sober-sided, responsible institutions lose out big when PE firms default on their loans. But the story of the Slumlord Millionaires shows how such a scam could be durable over such long timescales: remember that the "syndicating" sector pays itself giant amounts of money whether it wins or loses. The consider that they finance this with investor capital from "crowdfunding" platforms that rope in naive investors. The owners of these crowdfunding platforms are conduits for the money to make the loans to make the bets – but it's not their money. Quite the contrary: they get a fee on every loan they originate, and a share of the interest payments, but they're not on the hook for loans that default. Heads they win, tails we lose.

In other words, these crooks are intermediaries – they're platforms. When you're on the customer side of the platform, it's easy to think that your misery benefits the sellers on the platform's other side. For example, it's easy to believe that as your Facebook feed becomes enshittified with ads, that advertisers are the beneficiaries of this enshittification.

But the reason you're seeing so many ads in your feed is that Facebook is also ripping off advertisers: charging them more, spending less to police ad-fraud, being sloppier with ad-targeting. If you're not paying for the product, you're the product. But if you are paying for the product? You're still the product:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/01/04/how-to-truth/#adfraud

In the same way: the private equity slumlord who raises your rent, loads up on junk fees, and lets your building disintegrate into a crime-riddled, sewage-tainted, rat-infested literal pile of garbage is absolutely fucking you over. But they're also fucking over their investors. They didn't buy the building with their own money, so they're not on the hook when it's condemned or when there's a forced sale. They got a share of the initial sale price, they get a percentage of your rental payments, so any upside they miss out on from a successful sale is just a little extra they're not getting. If they squeeze you hard enough, they can probably make up the difference.

The fact that this criminal playbook has wormed its way into every corner of the housing market makes it especially urgent and visible. Housing – shelter – is a human right, and no person can thrive without a stable home. The conversion of housing, from human right to speculative asset, has been a catastrophe:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/06/the-rents-too-damned-high/

Of course, that's not the only "asset class" that has been enshittified by private equity looters. They love any kind of business that you must patronize. Capitalists hate capitalism, so they love a captive audience, which is why PE took over your local nursing home and murdered your gran:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/23/acceptable-losses/#disposable-olds

Homes are the last asset of the middle class, and the grifter class know it, so they're coming for your house. Willie Sutton robbed banks because "that's where the money is" and We Buy Ugly Houses defrauds your parents out of their family home because that's where their money is:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/11/ugly-houses-ugly-truth/#homevestor

The plague of housing speculation isn't a US-only phenomenon. We have allies in Spain who are fighting our Wall Street landlords:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/11/24/no-puedo-pagar-no-pagara/#fuckin-aardvarks

Also in Berlin:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/08/16/die-miete-ist-zu-hoch/#assets-v-human-rights

The fight for decent housing is the fight for a decent world. That's why unions have joined the fight for better, de-financialized housing. When a union member spends two hours commuting every day from a black-mold-filled apartment that costs 50% of their paycheck, they suffer just as surely as if their boss cut their wage:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/13/i-want-a-roof-over-my-head/#and-bread-on-the-table

The solutions to our housing crises aren't all that complicated – they just run counter to the interests of speculators and the ruling class. Rent control, which neoliberal economists have long dismissed as an impossible, inevitable disaster, actually works very well:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/16/mortgages-are-rent-control/#housing-is-a-human-right-not-an-asset

As does public housing:

https://jacobin.com/2023/10/red-vienna-public-affordable-housing-homelessness-matthew-yglesias

There are ways to have a decent home and a decent life without being burdened with debt, and without being a pawn in someone else's highly leveraged casino bet.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/22/koteswar-jay-gajavelli/#if-you-ever-go-to-houston

Image: Boy G/Google Maps (modified) https://pluralistic.net/timberridge

[hidden-poet]

President Snow part 3

Previous chapters; 1 and 2

Summary; After Lucy-Grey there was you.

warnings; slavery, Uncon, angst, dark!Coriolanus snow.

3/3

"Did you hear? Y/n L/n was sold into maids standing by her father last year". Festus creed plopped another Hors d'oeuvre into his mouthlike he was talking about the weather.

Coriolanus feels his body still at his words. The drink he pushed to his lips couldn't make its way into his mouth. He had looked for you at every social function. Even called upon where you once lived, only to be turned away by a new family living there.

He had assumed you had married and your family followed to where your new husband lived. If he was a manufacture he properly lived closer to the districts. The thought made him sick.

But no. You had been waiting for him. Training for him for the past year in maid training.

"I was thinking of adding her to my collection of the fallen"

Coriolanus's blood boils at the thought.

"Who?" Clemensia asks matching the almost bored expression of Festus.

"You know Arthur's daughter. The Banker who was stealing from the Pamen National bank. His daughter was a few years below us. Used to play on the volley ball team".

"When does she go to auction?" Clemensia warms at his words. She remembered her after all.

"Why so you can steal her from me?"

"What use would we have for a girl trained in fine arts and history? it won't make her a better floor scrubber. Right, Coriolanus?"

"i am still not sure who you are talking about" Coriolanus lied.

----------

Coriolanus returns home later then usual. He had gone to a party but normally he only made a quick appearance for an hour or two before returning. But this time he returned well into the night.

You wouldn't have minded if it hadn't of got so late. You were tired and he hated to come home to find you asleep. When you heard the door unlock you knew you would only have to stay up for an hour more.

As he entered the room to find you laying on the bed watching TV, he doesn't crawl over to you or demand you help him undress.

Instead he takes a dress out of your closet, that was mostly filled with his extra clothes, and tosses it to you.

"I have a surprise for you. Get dressed".

You do as your told taking off your nightdress in front of him and putting on the dark blue sun dress.

He eyes you slowly before taking your hand and leading you down the hall to the living room.

You wondered about the surprise and the need to dress for it. Normally his surprises entailed the exact opposite.

It made sense when you turned the corner and saw an elderly man sitting on the large white couch.

You heart leaps at the sight of your father sitting in the living room.

"dad" you cry tearing your hand from Coriolanus . He gets up upon seeing you and you both throw your arms around each other.

"Oh my baby". His arms felt safe and secure.

Coriolanus is quick to breck up the scene, taking you back into his grasp with a tight hold on your wrist. He brings you to the other side of the couch, away from your father.

"given your rise i thought you might like the opportunity to buy back your daughter" Coriolanus spoke with a cold hard tone.

Your toes curled in excitement. You were going home and you were going home a lady.

Your father straightened his back and shook off imaginary weight from his shoulders.

"I sure would. How much did you pay?"

"Less then what she is worth and less then what she is currently worth after my teachings".

You shudder. He was going to make this more difficult then it had to be.

"Lets start at a thousand panars".

"Let me show you the door at a thousand panars. My shoes cost more".

You wrap your hand around Coriolanus's wrist as he held yours. That was a good offer he spat at.

"Please Coriolanus" you beg.

-------

Coriolanus had a private showing at the slave quater the very next morning.

It was the earliest he could convince the owner of the house to have a showing. Which still wasn't early enough for him.

He paced through lines of young girls trying to find you. He remembered what you liked like at the Academy but people had a awful habit of changing.

He stopped in front of one girl who could have been you. Roughly the same height as he remembered. Same color eyes, although he never saw them up close so he couldn't be certain. Her hair seemed a lighter shade of Y/H/C and her nose seemed larger.

He continued satisficed that she most likely was not the girl he was looking for. He continues through the line of girls all dressed neatly in simple white dresses. They were more like potato sacks with arm holes.

They were organized according to training and skill. The girls who had been with the house the longest and received the most training were shown first.

He skipped the queue, you wouldn't be amongst them. He started in the middle and grew more frustrated as he neared the end. He knew once he spotted you he would know.

He scanned ahead looking for your hair color and height.

He saw a possibility far off and bee lined for it, ignoring the words of the owner as he took off.

Once he stood in front of you, he knew without a doubt that you were her. His Y/N.

You had barely changed from his memory. You had lost a little bit of weight no doubt from the stress of it all. Your eyes had dulled over a tad and your hair was less shiny and neat, but all the same you were as he remembered.

"President Snow, she is only trained as a house maid. She wouldn't be trained adequately for you", the owner of the house explained.

"Good then I don't have to train her out of annoying habits".

You looked worried, and he wondered if it was at the thought of being chosen or at not being chosen.

"Open your mouth" His first command to you.

You do and he pretends to check your teeth. Not an unordinary practice for a buyer but not of interest for Coriolanus.

He had longed to exert control over you.

Walking to school he would day dream to make the trek bearable in his tight shoes.

He dray dreamed he would find you at school and pluck the flowers out of your hair. "Don't wear these. They make you look childish" he would say.

At lunch time he would take the liberty of filling both your plates with food of his choice while you trailed close behind him.

You would wait for him after each class at his place of choosing. sometimes waiting just outside the door while he astonishes the classroom with his hard learned knowledge. He was sure he was going to get the Plinth prize and go off to university. There would be no need for you to do the same.

But his poverty kept him shackled and your money (however so dwindling) kept you safe.

Before if he told you to open your mouth for inspection you would laugh at him, now if he told you to hop on the spot, you would hop.

"how much?" he asked the sweaty little owner.

They agreed and you were tossed in the sold cage while Coriolanus filled out paperwork. He tired not to seem egger to collet you.

He had never personally brought a maid and had no idea it involved this much paper. He only glanced at whatever he was signing, trusting the person who explained each document to him.

When he was finally allowed to go collect you, he found himself stuck at the door.

How would he approach this? should he call you by your name to show he knew you or place the burden on you to make the connection.

You never even talked to him in school but perhaps you shared the same quiet fascination with him.

If not, he was still President Snow, and you were a loyal subject. He could image you would be awe-struck at the opportunity to serve him.

He yanked open the door and walked with powerful strides. You were sitting in the holding cell, curled into a ball on the floor.

You got up upon seeing him, and came closer to the bars.

"Here" he held out a cold water bottle that he got from the owners assistant. He wished he drank some of it. He would have spat in it if he had registered that he was going to give it to you.

his action took you both by surprise. But you take it.

"Thank you, President Snow".

He gained no sense of familiarity with your words.

He waited for a 'we went to school together' or a 'I always knew you were going to be President of Panem'.

But nothing came. You drank your water and even separated yourself from the bars.

You gave no sign you recognized him from the Academy days. You gave no plea to his sense of fellowship, or tried to give yourself false standing upon your upbringing.

When he had asked about your standing you had told him you were born into your situation. A bold move to someone who held your paperwork in his hand. The entire history of you, as well as your in and outs.

Still he didn't correct you. Perhaps you were waiting to pull the secret past card for a rainy day.

"Your name is Y/N? is that correct"

two could play the i don't remember game.

You nod.

"Well Y/N, in about 10 minutes two peacekeepers will come and take you to a van where you will be escorted to the Presidential estate. From there the Headmistress will make you presentable and begin your training as my servant".

His hands curl around the bars and he pushes himself closer to you.

"I have high expectations of you. Don't disappoint me".

-----------

'Coriolanus please. I'll come back any time you want me to. Do anything for you. But please let me return home".

Your words took his mind breifly to imagining a different life with you. They never caught him for cheating and with the Plinth prize under him, he took your hand in marriage.

And yet still, in his imagation you stood in the living room, perhaps better dressed, and said the same words.

He really did just want to own you.

Coriolanus said nothing and turned his eyes back to your father.

"You made a deal with Mr Grenge for 300 million panams. So my price for Y/N is 300 million panams"

"that's everything" he father mutters.

'She is everything". You didn't believe it. Not to him.

"I-I Can't. I'd be ruined again".

"You could always sell her back. At a discount of course".

'Please" you try again.

"It would be a fun 18 hours for you" Coriolanus taunts.

"we could pay in instalments" you father tries.

"Do i seem like a patient man?"

"Patient enough to wait for your time to strike" Your father is seething, "It wasn't surprise I felt about her being here, only dread".

Coriolanus smirks trying to hide it by rubbing his forefinger across his bottom lip.

" I saw you every time I picked her up from school. Lingering in the background like a parasite. Coriolanus Snow's got eyes for my daughter, I thought to myself, how harmful could he truly be".

He dad crosses the boundary of the living room table. His face contorted with anger.

"Then I saw you dangle that poor district 12 girl in the Hunger games. You were no harmless school boy, I realized, you were your fathers son. And that is a very dangerous thing to be".

"Careful. You don't speak to that school boy now. President Snow is who you address, and you've said enough to get yourself hanged".

You place a hand on Coriolanus shoulder as if to keep him pinned to the chair.

"Y/N I am so sorry. He was gone when I sold you. I thought you'd be house maid to one of the lady's. I never thought he'd get his hands on you".

The old man takes you into his arms. His baby daughter who he threw directly into the mouth of the wolf.

"No sale has been made yet" Coriolanus reminds him, "Do we have a deal of 300 million panems or are you touching some one else's property?".

--------

The first few months in the presidential estate were terrible and Coriolanus saw to it.

You were beaten for everything for quick training. Even things you were sure you did right were wrong.

He had to give it to you, despite your privileged up bringing, you were a hard worker. Every time he checked on you, which was often, you were never found sitting down. Always on the move scrubbing something, dusting something, organizing lien cupboards.

He only caught you once reading a passage from a poetry book kept in the library. Old habits die hard, he supposed. He remembered you loved to read.

You would often read stretched out in the sun during lunch time at the academy garden. Coriolanus would watch from the schools library window, when he should have been studying. You again were interfering with him being the best he could be.

He called upon you during your dinner time. Requesting your presence in his office.

When you entered you saw your headmistress standing on the opposite side of the desk.

Coriolanus sat in his chair, looking bored. His head resting in his hand, not looking at the headmistress or you. Just staring blankly at his desk.

As you enter you can see the wooden Cain and the poetry book laying flat on the desk. Your legs turn to jelly the closer you got.

"President Snow. Headmistress" you greet.

"Which poem was it that caught your eye?" The old women grumbled.

You bring your hands to your chest and wring them together. You were still sore from your beating last night. You weren't sure you could take another one.

"i was only checking the book. The pages seemed loosed".

"Are you suggesting that the presidential estate would house such a book?"

You try and back track on your lie. Blaming lack of sleep and food for your mistake of the falling pages.

Coriolanus reaches for the book, flipping it to a random page and placing it back on the desk.

"Place your hands on the desk and read it" The headmistress demands, picking up the cain.

You face Coriolanus who watches you from his seat. You eyes swell with tears that spilled on it the page. He would keep the book in his draw rather than the library.

''My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk''

The headmistress brings the cain down upon your back, and your sentence comes out as a yelp.

"Or, or, or emptied some dull-ll opiate to the drains One minute past, and Lethe-wards had-saH-Sunk!".

It strikes after each pause. Your hands curl into fists upon the page.

"Tis,not,through,envy,of, thy,happy,lot" You rush and two strikes come down upon your back.

"Cheeky girl!" your headmistress reprimanded.

"But being too happy in thine happines" you slow.

He closes his eyes to the sound of the Cain coming down and images the school garden. Both school children again in the red uniforms. You lay in the sun together. Coriolanus rested his head on your lap as you read out your poem. You stroke his hair and he feels the warm sun on his face.

Your desperate act pulls him from his day dream. He looks at the women before him. A women he owed.

No school children in sight; the President of Panem and a slave take their place.

You finish your poem looking up to him for salvation. You do not receive it.

"Again" he demanded.

He wouldn't leave during your nightly flogging. He would lock the door and free his cock from his trousers. He loved the thought of you so vunruable, so brusied and battered at his command.

He would image you with your dress down, tied to the whipping post as he brought the whip down on you. He imaged your squirming and crying for him. God, there was nothing he loved more than control.

He would wait until the flogging was announced to be over before he would return home.

He was always so sure that you would come to him the very next morning and beg for him to save you from the whipping post. Exchanging anything in return.

-----------

"I am so sorry. I have your mother to look after. She's not been well Y/N"

"Dad you can't leave me here"

"We'll visit" He insisted.

"No you won't"

You both turn to Coriolanus in his chair, half forgotten he was there.

"We'll write to you"

"It won't be delivered"

"I am sorry" your father finally accepted, 'Maybe once I make more money".

"Daddy please" you whine. He won't be given another chance, you know it. You weren't sure this chance was entirely truthful.

"I am so sorry" he repeats pulling away from you. He rushes to collet his things. You aim to go to him, to hold him one last time but Coriolanus rises from his chair.

He takes your hand in a tight grip.

"You'll find a maid downstairs. She'll help you to the door".

Your father looks at Coriolanus with hate filled eyes, but nodded his head in understanding. President Snow held all the cards, you both were nothing but pawns for him to entertain himself with.

'So sorry we could not do business together".

Your father doesn't answer too overcome with emotion of selling his daughter for a second time. He rushes away in shame and you fall to your knees.

Coriolanus lets go of your hand so you could curl yourself into a ball on the floor.

He lets you sob and heave on the floor by his feet. He knew telling you to stop would be a waste of breath.

He waits until you can control your breath again before he crouches down next to you.

He snakes a arm under your side to pull you to his chest. His arm curls around your shoulders to keep you there, while his hand cradles the back of your head. He rests his cheek against the top of your head while you sob. Loudly and painfully, you sob into his chest.

You can hear footsteps pounding down the hall way and you knew it was Clemessia.

"Get her to stop or I'll hang her by her feet in my study. She'll wake the children".

Coriolanus raises his eyebrows at her but does not uncurl his body from you to follow her command.

You quieten anyway. It's fine, you tell yourself, you've lost nothing.

You hold your breath counting to a slow ten and then release it a couple of times. It helped regain your composure.

Coriolanus unhooks himself from you and reaches into his breast pocket to pull out his handkerchief. He wipes your face clean from snot and tears with an emotionless expression.

You weren't sure you could walk so when he picked you up and took you back to the bedroom you were thankful to not have to find out.

----------

Coriolanus spits his tea back into the cup.

There was nothing wrong with it. But he loved how panicked you got.

Your lips would part, your eyes fell wide, your chest would puff up.

How could there be something wrong with the tea again.

'i am so sorry, President Snow. I'll make another" You go to take the cup back.

'What's the point? You disturb me every time you come with another pot".

"I'll try not to in the future, Sir".

"what good are your efforts. I've watched you try for the past six months. You only slightly improved".

'i can do better. I will do better".

He loved the grovel.

"maybe the night without supper would help to refocus your mind?"

Your body tensed, and he could feel the anger radiating off you, even if he couldn't see it upon your face.

'Is that a good idea?" he teased.

"Yes, Sir" You tried not to spit the words.

"Good. Then it's settled. Go about your chores".

The next day he offered you a biscuit from his tray, and said nothing about his tea. Even through this one was too sweet for his liking.

It was the first time your hunger overtook your pride. You took it with a small thanks, excusing yourself at the first opportunity.

he watched the camera link. You had gobbled the biscuit down as soon as the door closed behind you.

Once a lady now a beggar.

-------

He took you to the bedroom and laid you down.

You didn't move. You couldn't move.

He talked as he undressed you.

"I know that was painful for you but you needed to see it".

He yanked your dress over your hand, leaving you in only your panties.

You turn from him to your side but he flips you back.

tears still run down your face but you make no noise.

"Why. So you could see it?" you bit.

"At some point you have accept your life here".

He slides your panties down your legs, leaving them on the floor.

"was it true?" you ask, "that we both went to the Academy".

"yes. I had a terrible crush on you for many years". Crush he called it but it couldn't be further from the truth.

"i never even noticed you all those years". The sentence stung him a bit.

He places his lips on your neck and bites down. You wiggle under him, pushing on his shoulders.

"You are making me suffer because you had a school boy crush?"

He rises up and undresses himself from his many layers.

"i am making you suffer because I can". He makes haste with the many buttons on his vest.

His sentence quietens you. He could make you suffer just because he wanted to. he could make your family suffer just because he wanted to.

He rips the clothes from his body, leaving them a messy pile on the floor.

He drags you to the center of the bed and crawls on top.

"In any case who would you rather, me, President of Panem, or some old business man, bored with his wife. That's who you would have gone to".

You try and turn to your side again but his hands catch your shoulders and bring them flat on the mattress again.

"You should really say thank you". He pumps himself over you.

You don't say anything, and your ungratefulness resulted in a harsh hold on your chin.

"Say it. Say thank you" he demands.

"Thank you" You spit hard and fast.

"Thank you, President snow". He nudges your legs further apart and lines himself up to your entrance.

"Thank you, President SNow" he enters you without warning and starts a steady thrust.

It had been years with him. Sex with him wasn't something you even blinked at. On occasion you could have even been called a participant.

But not tonight. You couldn't even rock your hips for your own feeling. You just lay there and take it.

Something about night had made Coriolanus feel like a school boy again, and he took it out in his hard and rough thrusts. He was President Snow and you would remember it.

He begins to sing the national anthem of Panem.

"Oh, Horn of Plenty One Horn of Plenty for us all! And when you raise-ah- the cry The brave shall heed the call And we shall never falter, hmm"

He grunts in your ear. He pushes himself upright where with his new position he places both his hands on your hips and pulls you closer so your legs were hooked over his hips.

"And when we raise the cry-y the brave shall heed", he huffs, "the call and we shall never fall"

He new position gave him deeper thrusts. As the song ends his hips loose their rhythm.

"Oh, Capitol Your glorious diamond shine A tribute to' The darkest days behind Oh! One Horn of Plenty for us all"

He bucks his hips as he leans back over you on the bed, a hand resting by the side of your head to keep his weight off you and the other used to keep your leg over his hip.

He never fully leaves you before he slams back in.

He groans as he cums, letting you milk him of anything he had left. Even after that he remains in you.

Coriolanus lets out a short breathy laugh, dropping your leg and pushing his body down on you. You huff in protest but he doesn't care. Placing small kisses and bites along your skin.

You remain still. Numb from the events of the night. You didn't even say goodbye to your father. You knew you would never see him again.

Coriolanus spent by using you, rests his head on your chest.

"Someday some one will kill you for your wrong doings, Coriolanus". You warn.

He chuckles in response. It won't be by his doll.

----

Years later you stand in the crowd watching Katniss Everdeen raise her bow and arrow at Coriolanus.

You smile waiting for her to let go. You could see Coriolanus's eyes searching for you in the crown, unable to find you as hide amongst the people, before his settles on the eyes of his executer.

"MockingJay, may your aim be as true as your heart is pure".

The arrow flies but enters the heart of the Coin.

Coriolanus begins to laugh, blood spilling from his mouth as he does.

As the blood coats his shirt it is a reminder of his misdeeds. Against his people, his family, and importantly you.

You charge taking along a crowd of people with you.

[trashcanwithsprinkles]

You ever wonder why only sheznaya seems to have any kind of diplomatic core? Like we rarely see or hear of any of the other governments interacting in any official capacity. At least that I've heard of.

that is a good question actually

from a lore presepective? i think this stems mostly from the fact all nations have wildly different types of governance. snezhnaya seems to run under the different fatui harbingers, who all answer to the tsaritsa. they have bankers and mayors in their group, and they live in a difficult environment (plus they have traditional non-morally-white organization Goals, and so need to have Reach on all nations), so it would make sense for them to reach out and seek cooperation. assuming you want to buy the idea that they have intentions beyond Fatui Plans for having diplomats, of course. it's also perfectly likely for it all to be a poorly-disguised cover for the gnosis hunt lore-wise as well.

liyue is the closest to them i think, in that it runs under the qixing which used to run under (or parallel to?) rex lapis. now that it's just the qixing, and they're the trade center for teyvat, it makes sense why you'd see relatively prosperous diplomatic relationships with snezhnaya there - but also since they're a bountiful land, they've no need to send out diplomats. besides, there's the fact that the only seemingly functional land trading road in the game is between liyue and mondstadt, who,

are currently without their de jure leader, and jean is mostly just holding the fort till vakra returns. the knights can barely keep monstadt in check so it wouldn't make sense for them to need foreign relations when all they probably need can be obtained from World Trade Hub next door (liyue). this might change with dornman port tho

fontaine also seems to funcition like a more recognizable government, but they also seem so self-suficient (and self-absorbed) to have any need for diplomats. again, they also have a very clear trade route with sumeru in place (speaking of, who the fuck runs sumeru? the akademiya?) sumeru also has clearly established trade routes, and if they are run by the akademiya, are probably too absorbed with research to bother with foreign relationships. everyone comes to study there anyway, diplomats or no, and they send their researchers out to all nations.

inazuma was literally closed until less than a year ago. allegedly. inazuma is, also, the only other one you'll see trying for foreign relationships and diplomatic plays. that's the whole reason why ayaka and ayato were there on the fontinalia festival. so i guess, at the end of the day, the only reason why inazuma doesn't have a diplomatic core the same way snezhnaya does is bc they were literally closed until very recently.

and natlan seems to be closed as well, so we'll have to see.

also, were there any fatui diplomats in fontaine and sumeru? as in, under that pretense? bc we know the ones in mondstadt were there to sus out barbatos, the ones in liyue were there to sus out morax, and the ones in inazuma (which i wouldn't even know if they counted as diplomats) were there to give watatsumi delusions (and yoink the gnosis. i can't remember how signora came into all of this tbh). as far as i recall, there were no 'diplomats' in sumeru, i don't think dottore arrived under that pretense. if he did, we know it was to get scara. and in fontaine- all fatui in fontaine were just house of the hearth members, whom i don't think qualify as diplomats. there might've been 'diplomats' in other world quests, but i can't remember right now. i also can't remember why tf childe was in fontaine to begin with ngl

TL;DR: from a lore perspective, i don't have an answer and it's an interesting question and whatever ideas i have are long as fuck. from a non-lore perspective, this is probably just bc the fatui are the scheeming antagonists out on a hunt for one specific gizmo present in each nation, and so they need spies and information networks and subterfuge n shit. like i'm fairly certain that's the only reason why they seem to be the only ones with a diplomatic core.

[apples-stables]

FUN RANDOM HORSE BREED TIME

Super small lil horse breed known as the Banker Horse is a semi-feral/feral horse breed that lives on the barrier islands off the coast of North Carolina!

They're not considered to be indigenous but are protected and managed by the National Park Service and currently the estimated population of these horses is 400.

They share ancestry with other Colonial Spanish horse breeds, and genetic markers indicate the share a common ancestory with both the Paso Fino and the Pryor Mountain Mustang.

While there isn't a specific source of these horses, the biggest theories is that they swam to shore when ships wrecked in the nearby shoals, in a region known as the "Graveyard of the Atlantic" due to how many ships its claimed.

The Foundation for Shackleford Horses has set up a studbook for establishing the Banker horse as its own horse breed. It is registered as a critically endangered breed with the American Livestock Breeds Conversancy.

If you wanna help with the conservation of these cool guys, feel free to check out the link below!

[communist-manifesto-daily]

Socialism: Utopian and Scientific - Part 18

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This historical situation also dominated the founders of Socialism. To the crude conditions of capitalistic production and the crude class conditions correspond crude theories. The solution of the social problems, which as yet lay hidden in undeveloped economic conditions, the Utopians attempted to evolve out of the human brain. Society presented nothing but wrongs; to remove these was the task of reason. It was necessary, then, to discover a new and more perfect system of social order and to impose this upon society from without by propaganda, and, wherever it was possible, by the example of model experiments. These new social systems were foredoomed as Utopian; the more completely they were worked out in detail, the more they could not avoid drifting off into pure phantasies.

These facts once established, we need not dwell a moment longer upon this side of the question, now wholly belonging to the past. We can leave it to the literary small fry to solemnly quibble over these phantasies, which today only make us smile, and to crow over the superiority of their own bald reasoning, as compared with such “insanity”. For ourselves, we delight in the stupendously grand thoughts and germs of thought that everywhere break out through their phantastic covering, and to which these Philistines are blind.

Saint-Simon was a son of the great French Revolution, at the outbreak of which he was not yet 30. The Revolution was the victory of the 3rd estate – i.e., of the great masses of the nation, working in production and in trade, over the privileged idle classes, the nobles and the priests. But the victory of the 3rd estate soon revealed itself as exclusively the victory of a smaller part of this “estate”, as the conquest of political power by the socially privileged section of it – i.e., the propertied bourgeoisie. And the bourgeoisie had certainly developed rapidly during the Revolution, partly by speculation in the lands of the nobility and of the Church, confiscated and afterwards put up for sale, and partly by frauds upon the nation by means of army contracts. It was the domination of these swindlers that, under the Directorate, brought France to the verge of ruin, and thus gave Napoleon the pretext for his coup d’état.

Hence, to Saint-Simon the antagonism between the 3rd Estate and the privileged classes took the form of an antagonism between “workers” and “idlers”. The idlers were not merely the old privileged classes, but also all who, without taking any part in production or distribution, lived on their incomes. And the workers were not only the wage-workers, but also the manufacturers, the merchants, the bankers. That the idlers had lost the capacity for intellectual leadership and political supremacy had been proved, and was by the Revolution finally settled. That the non-possessing classes had not this capacity seemed to Saint-Simon proved by the experiences of the Reign of Terror. Then, who was to lead and command? According to Saint-Simon, science and industry, both united by a new religious bond, destined to restore that unity of religious ideas which had been lost since the time of the Reformation – a necessarily mystic and rigidly hierarchic “new Christianity”. But science, that was the scholars; and industry, that was, in the first place, the working bourgeois, manufacturers, merchants, bankers. These bourgeois were, certainly, intended by Saint-Simon to transform themselves into a kind of public officials, of social trustees; but they were still to hold, vis-à-vis of the workers, a commanding and economically privileged position. The bankers especially were to be called upon to direct the whole of social production by the regulation of credit. This conception was in exact keeping with a time in which Modern Industry in France and, with it, the chasm between bourgeoisie and proletariat was only just coming into existence. But what Saint-Simon especially lays stress upon is this: what interests him first, and above all other things, is the lot of the class that is the most numerous and the most poor (“la classe la plus nombreuse et la plus pauvre”).

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[hero-israel]

In keeping with the whole idea of double standards for Israel, I have no idea how it is possible that Israel can be an apartheid state and yet Jordan isn’t? In either case I don’t think apartheid is the right word but if anything there seems to be a better argument for Jordan having apartheid against their Palestinian population then Israel does (seeing as Gaza and West Bank are not actually part of Israel and Arab citizens in Israel have equal rights)

Discussing how arbitrarily Jordan treats Palestinians just forces one to confront how embarrassingly, transparently fake a country Jordan is. I don't like to "go there" because it's pointless, obsolete politics - Jordan should have been Palestine but it isn't, and we have to move on. But since you asked:

If you met them on the street in 1946, could anyone identify differences between Palestinians and Jordanians that would even rise to the level of importance as those between Vermonters and New Hampshirites? Or would it have been even more meaningless and made-up than that? There are something like 1.5 million Palestinians with full Jordanian citizenship today - but some of those with full citizenship have to live in refugee camps depending on when they moved in and where they came from. Jordan never gave citizenship to Gaza Palestinians, only ex-West-Bankers, so there are like 600,000 Palestinians in Jordan who are treated as second-class compared to others of the exact same national identity. And of course, in 1988 Jordan agreed with Arafat that the best way to handle the Palestinian issue was to maximize their isolation, desperation, and dependency, so it rug-pulled its citizenship from all the Palestinians in the West Bank itself - thus de-naturalizing 20% of all Jordanian citizens overnight, due to nothing those people had ever done and with nothing having changed in the Israeli administration of the West Bank.

And I believe we've already hit the centenary of Jordan's laws forbidding Jews from ever living there or having citizenship.

It's the fakest country in the world not located on an abandoned ocean military platform and it would absolutely be a perfect candidate for an "apartheid" investigation if anyone tossing that term around was actually serious about it.

[reality-detective]

QFS 👉 · There were reports that because of activation of the QFS, the Federal Reserve Board would be shut down in March 2024. This would also eliminate the IRS. Those tax monies would be replaced by a 14% sales tax on new items only, with no tax on food or medicine – taxes that would be shared with both the federal and state governments.

· The IRS and Federal Reserve were not government agencies. They were privately owned by the Deep State Cabal and Rothschild Bankers. There was no act of Congress, nor any Executive Order giving the IRS jurisdiction to act in any of the 50 states. So why was Ken Cromar sitting in jail awaiting trial on charges that he had the audacity to live in his own home that he fully owned after the privately owned by the Cabal IRS unlawfully used SWAT Teams to take possession of that home and threw away all of his possessions and after he proved in a Federal Tax Court that he owed no money to the IRS? Was the IRS making an example of Ken and his wife Barbara to prove what they will do to you if you dare question their unlawful authority? See #I below.

· On Mon. 5 Feb. the United Kingdom plugged in their new gold-backed Sterling Token to the new Quantum Financial System and went live, joining the other BRICS nations which now included Saudi Arabia and Argentina among other countries. …

-David Wilcock

[passionateseadruid]

broken beyond repair?

Summary:

It had been 65 years since you died and six months earlier you'd killed your husband. About 67 years ago you'd married the man who'd come to be known as Vox.

Notes:

Okay a few things: It has a slow intro but I promise it get's good. Not historically accurate also it takes place 2022 (Hazbin Hotel I'll say takes place 2024)

Cw: Abusive relationships, older man/younger woman, misogyny (well, it is from the 50s), pre canon, Vox’s (theorized) human name, also Valentino is mentioned.

Your parents smile at you as you look over the ticket to the set of JacxBox News. JaxcBox has several different television/radio shows but your favorite by far was the news channel. Now, don't get it twisted, the news is boring as hell (even back then (Back now?)); But the host has a sexy voice and the pictures of him in the newspaper made him look like an Adonis.

"Thank you Mama! Thank you Daddy!" You hug you parents (specifically your father).

"Molly Mayberry's parents had the idea to send you two girls to the see the live show." Your mother explains to you. Molly Mayberry; heiress to the Mayberry country club. She's been your best friend since you were five.

Your parents both worked to be able to afford the private school you went to, raising scorn and mockery from the rest of the community. See, you weren't rich but you were determined to change that. Someday you were going to marry a banker or a stock broker and you'd be able to set your parents up in a nice home maybe somewhere on the coast, and when they'd grow old you'd get them the nicest nurse your future husband's money could pay for.

"You mind if I call Molls? She's gonna be so jazzed." They nod and you flop down into the couch. You dial her number on the rotary, and hear it ring. "Hey! My parents just told me! So what are we gonna wear? Are we gonna match?" 

"Who cares about that! My daddy says we can use his new blue fliptop! Hummy and Angie are going to be so jealous when we see them at tennis." Angie "Hummy" Drew and Eliana Pheen make up the rest of your little clique. Hummy is a sweet girl but she isn't very bright (at least that's what everyone else says); she's often humming to herself as a way to calm herself or focus her mind on the task at hand. Her parents have tried everything they can to "fix" her, with no shortage of funds coming from her fathers jewelry company. Eliana on the other hand is the strongest and tallest girl in the graduating class of '53; her dad was a world-famous tennis player for the national Spain tennis team in his youth and won gold for them in the 1936 Olympics. Her dad had to take her mom’s last name when he came over to live here.

"Sounds like a jam."

"I know! I'm gonna meet Vincent Audire! Now don't be jealous when he absolutely falls for me." Molly giggles. She was the leader of your guys little clique and if she liked a boy the other girls weren't allowed to pursue him. Your pretty sure that every time you liked a guy she tried to snatch him away. Your not sure why you were friends. 

"He'll just adore you." You say supportively, despite the fact that it breaks your heart.

"Duh! Who wouldn't."

////////////////////////////////////////

It was a few days later and You and Molly sit in the audience and watch as the news is being recorded both on film and over the radio.

Vincent was a handsome man with dark, almost jet black, hair. He had there piercing blue eyes and a stunningly white smile. Your heart skips a beat every time he looks over at you two. Before the show he even winked in your direction. Of course Molly's sure it's for her. Why wouldn't it be. She's the one dressed to the nines in jewelry and a nice cherry red wiggle dress. She lent you some accessories to go with the dress you'd converted from an old poodle skirt Molly gave you into a petticoat. 

After the show was over Molly sent you away to "get her something from the snack table in the lounge" so she could go cozy up to Vincent.

It didn't work apparently because he shows up in the lounge 50 seconds after you finish scooping something up for Molly. 

"Hello sir." You smile at him.

"Hey doll. You come with that lady in the slim red dress? You two are rather young aren't you?"

"I don't s'pose so sir. We graduated just last week. Neither of us really fancy College. Molly's father prolly' gonna make her go to Radcliffe to meet one of those Harvard men. She's far more interested in you though sir."

"Oh really? What about you doll?"

"Me?" You ask surprised. "Well I s'pose I won't gonna go to college. I'll just marry one of Molly's father's friend's sons. Be a cute lil housewife, for a handsome rich man." You bat your lashes at him.

"Well that's probable for the best. Being a trophy wife suits someone of your skillset better than a housewife."

"And what do you mean by that sir?" You hesitate to ask. Oh if Molly saw you now she'd rip your head off.

"No one's being fooled by the botch job done on your dress. An old poodle skirt to a petticoat? You'd be better off using that pretty face of yours to please your husband." He ran one of his warm pale hands against your cheek. His knuckle feels alien yet comforting against you. "Doll. You wouldn't happen to be free tomorrow night would you?"

"I am."

"Would you want to go to my favorite restaurant with me? We could meet earlier and go get you something presentable."

"I'd love that, sir."

"Please Doll. Call me Vincent." He kisses your knuckles and walks off. "I'll meet you on boardwalk by the pier at noon." he says looking back. You nod and rush back to Molly with her snack.

////////////////////////////////////////

The next day he brought you around to a few fancy shops and bought you a tiki dress for dinner. He brought you out to this cute little Hawaiian Restaurant.  

Later that night as he was walking you back to your front door he leaned down and kissed you straight on the lips.

"How forward of you Vincent!" You blush. He chuckles and hands you the bags from the shopping trip.

"Here's my number. Call me tomorrow to set up our next date doll." He kisses your cheek and walks back to his car.

"Okay. Have a good night Vincent."

After your second date he asked you to go steady. He takes you out every weekend. This went on for a while and your friend noticed.

"Alright, what's going on?" Molly asks almost annoyed.

"I'm going steady with a boy." You smiled dreamily.

"Hm? What's he like?" Hummy bounces her leg as she asks interested.

"Get your head out of la la land and focus on the game!" Eliana shouts from across the court.

"Don't see why you're upset. You two are winning." Molly snarks. "She's right though. I wanna win this game."

"Molly, no one's ever won against Eliana." You point out.

"Papa has!" Eliana exclaims.

"Oh thank you Eliana, for correcting me that the only person who's ever beaten you is the world famous tennis champion who taught you." You roll your eyes.

////////////////////////////////////////

It had been about six months of going steady and no one has been aware of it. But one day he went on the news channel, his smile slightly forced as he announced that in about two months he'd be taking two weeks off to go on his honeymoon. He called you onto the set with him and introduced you to the world.

You don't fail to notice the tight grip he kept around your shoulder. You don't think that he's all to pleased about what you told him just the night before.

Neither was Molly when she saw you on the news channel that evening. She was screaming, throwing things around her room, and according to Hummy she even assaulted one of the help. 

You haven't seen Molly since you went on TV, but that wouldn't last long. She found you when you were out one day with Vincent.

"HOW COULD YOU!!" She charges at you and your Fiancé's bodyguard, Parker, steps in to protect you.

"Go back to the car Vincent I'll be there in a moment." He rolls his eyes but does as you say.

"You tramp! You knew how much I loved him!" Molly cries as tears stream down her face.

"I'm sorry Molly, but Vincent wants me."

"You... you really are dense! He doesn't want you! He wants an easy girl. He'll have his fun with you but in the end rich men will marry the daughters of other rich men."

"That's where you're wrong. I'm having his baby, that's why he put this rock on my hand."

She screams. She goes to pull on your hair but Parker steps up and in between the two of you. He escorts you back to the unpleased man in the black car.

////////////////////////////////////////

A year later you were living with a baby boy who absolutely adores you; and a husband how tosses you around like a used sock.

So here you sit. In the kitchen of your husband's mansion, feeding your beautiful baby; seeing as the help having the day off. 

Your husband Vincent isn't exactly the nicest man. You have no idea what happened to him. The day before you told him you were pregnant he was buying you flowers and dresses, taking you out for dinner and spoon feeding you 100 dollar parfaits. then the second you told him his mood shifted.

Molly was right, you know that now. Vincent wasn't the marrying type. However, if you'd gone public with the news of your pregnancy his carrier would be over. He had no choice but the marry you.

"Hello Junior, how's my big man today?" Vincent asks, ruffling the boys black locks. As much as he now hates you you're glad to see he holds no resentment towards his son. It almost made up for the times he'd get drunk and throw things, complaining how you'd ruined his life (though thankfully there were no mentions of his son in those arguments), or all the nights he'd leave you cold and alone in bed, coming home with tacky shades of lipstick all over him. Yes he loves his son, but his wife on the other hand...

"Doll. Where's my drink? I told you I wanted one an hour ago." His demanding voice cut you out of your thoughts.

"You're not getting a drink. I'm done being your servant." You mumble, gritting your teeth.

He rolls his eyes and snorts, "Okay. Doll get me my-" He cut himself off as he felt a searing blinding pain in his side. He looks back at you, the silver knife in your hands now stained with crimson. He pushed you to the floor and headed into the living room. He tripped as you locked the door to the patio and closed the blinds.

"Honey... let's..." he pants, "lets talk about this, okay? You don't have to do this. I'm... I'm so sorry. Look love, you don't have to worry... I won't tell anyone. We'll say a tripped and fell onto a blade in the garage. I still love you, doll."

You grab the whisky from the drink you were supposed to fix him and splash it all over him.

"For what it's worth, I'll always love you Vincent." You tip the TV over on him and watch as it shorted out and caught fire. You quickly grabbed your son and the two emergency bags you'd packed the night before for the two of you and snag the keys to the car. You'll get the hell out of dodge, wait for the fire to spread and come back to put on the helpless wife routine.

////////////////////////////////////////

You s'pose karma has a was of coming back to bite you in in the ass.

Only six month after you'd killed your husband your old friend Molly broke in and stabs you. Luckily Junior was away with your parents for the weekend.

////////////////////////////////////////

When you awoke in hell you woke up to simple jabbing pain in your arm. "Ow." You see a few kids poking at you with forks. they had gray skin and black eyes.

Instinctually you pulled a needle out of your hair and pointed it at them. You hit it straight into the ground which caught the attention of some adults. 

Some of them came up to you and you grab one and held the needle to their neck. "Everyone stay back, or the creepo gets it!" About five minutes later of you holding this man hostage and demanding safe passage to a safe haven a tall woman popped through the small crowd that formed. 

"What's going on here?" She asks clearly unpleased.

"Where am I? Who are you? What's going on?" You ask voice breaking as you speak, from fear or frustrated tears you're not sure. 

"Shouldn't I be the one asking that? You come to my town and start making demands like this, threatening my people."

"I don't want to! Those kids were poking me with a fork! I just... fear and adrenaline overtook me and now we're here. I just want to go home! I just want to see my baby boy again." Tears flowed from your eyes. 

"Tina, Tommy! We do not play with or pick at our food. And we also do not eat living people. 'Kay darlin', just let Frankie go and we can talk." You did as the taller woman asks. 

You still held the needle out just in case. "Darlin' I'm an overlord. A measly needle won't do you much good. The names Rosie. From what my people told me you got fast reflexes, and an itchin' to stab. We could use someone like that here." She wraps her arm around you. "You poor, poor thing. It's gonna be okay. Let Aunty Rosie take care of this mess. I'll explain everything to you but you gotta come with me. There are eyes and ears everywhere."

"You can say that again." She giggles at your little comment.

"Alastor will just adored you."

////////////////////////////////////////

It had been 65 years since you died and you'd been working for Rosie every day. You'd met Alastor on a handful of occasions and only briefly had conversations with him when you saw him. He was a nice enough fellow, albeit a bit spooky. Anyway back to your job for Rosie. You'd get requests from the cannibals and you'd go out and get them the meats they requested. Your Demonic power allowed you enhanced battle reflexes and speed as well as seeing where to get tools for different modes of murder and the steps to kill in different ways. Yes it was morbid but it kept a roof over your head and the sinners always grew back so it's not like it was really hurting anyone. While you hadn't sold your soul to her she basically owned you and protected you. It was nice to have someone who actually cared for you.

But that all came to a stop when you saw an add one day while walking back with your freshest orders. VoxTek with their signature slogan "Trust us... with your safety." The man on the screen, the voice telling you to trust him...

"Oh Vincent, what happened to you?" You stood there almost entranced as a voice called out form behind you.

"You happened to me." He placed his hands on your shoulders and you spun around and elbowed him in the stomach. "Oof! Okay doll, I see you wanna play rough." He hoisted you over his shoulder and Teleported you both through a street camera to a nice looking building.

"Valentino and Velvette are gonna kill me. Val especially."

"Let go of me!" You squirm and tried to hit him with your needles in your hair but neither make a dent.

He threw you onto a bed and paced back and forth in the room. The bed itself was nice. Prussian blue silk sheets and rose red and royal blue comforters sat on top of the bed. 

"This is bad." Vincent, no, Vox paces back and forth. "This is really bad."

'You can say that again.' You think as you look around the room to see if anything can help you escape. You could take the comforters and sheets and wrap them around his head or his neck. You could...

"This is all your fault!" He shouted at you.

"My fault?! How is this my fault?!"

"You just had to stab me and end up down here didn't you!"

"Are you seriously going to blame me? Firstly We got together when I was 18 and you were 33 the blame should not be on me in that situation, and secondly You were the one who plopped down and took me back here!"

"You could have refused!" He defended. 

"I did! I said I didn’t want to go with you when you kidnapped me!" You retorted.

"I meant every time we had sex! Every time we kissed! You weren’t complaining when you got a nice dress out of it! What, you think I wanted you to stab me? I begged you not to, I said we could talk, I told you I still loved you and would forgive you!" He grabbed your arm.

"Oh you loved me? Did you love me when you hit me? Did you think of me when you were fucking those prostitutes with that tacky orange lipstick? Were you jumping for joy on the inside while scowling at me when I told you I was pregnant? Did you ever love me or did you just love my holes? Huh? Did you?" You push and hit his chest. 

He grasps both of your hands. "Of course I did! But you just made it so hard!"

"Oh did I?" You asked sarcastically.

"Yes, you did! If you hated it so much why didn’t you leave?"

"It was the 50's Vox! If I asked you for a divorce I'd never be able to see my son again, I wasn't willing to lose him!" Tears form in your eyes.

"But you were willing to loose me?"

"I really don't believe you were ever mine." Tears fully streamed down your cheeks.

"Oh and you're such a saint? The woman who said she'd always love me turned her back on me and tried to flee to live with the best friend of my greatest enemy."

"I said that I'd always love Vincent, not Vox."

"Are you Fucking kidding me? We're literally the same person!"

"Oh really? Vincent wouldn't hurt others to get what he wants."

"It's Hell babe." He rolls his eyes.

"Vincent wouldn't have kidnapped me." You point out.

"Vincent also wouldn't want his ex-wife to be able to spread rumors about him and ruin his image. Neither does Vox."

"I had a good thing going "Vox"! I had a job and I haven't thought of you once!" You screamed at him.

"Yeah well I'm more well off than you could ever imagine. I have a wonderful Boyfriend and we have a wonderful platonic friend who lives with us!"

" Okay, we worked out our problems, I won't spread any rumors about you and your harem or whatever. Can you please let me go now? I really don't care who you're fucking. It was till death do us part remember?"

"I can't let you go. What if you tell someone. I'll need some insurance."

"What do you want then?"

"I want your soul." He grins sinisterly.

"What...?"

"Think about it. You could continue to hunt people. Do whatever you want. Go wherever you want. Fuck whoever you want. Of course you wouldn't be allowed to live with any other Overlord especially not one that's so close to Alastor, but I'd let you live as far away from me as possible (I'd probably prefer that in all honesty). You could even continue to work for your little girlfriend. I'll get you all set up on the other side of Pentagram City and protect you should anything bad happen. After all, I am far more powerful than your little girlfriend. All this and all you have to do is keep your mouth shut and give me your pretty little soul." He circles you like a shark looking to attack it's prey. "And should you refuse. I'll throw you from the balcony and have someone pick up your splattered remains off of the ground to do it over and over again."

"I can have freedom and ALL you ask is to have me soul in you possession and for me to never speak of you again?"

"Correct... Doll." He chuckles darkly, holding out his hand.

"Deal."

Notes:

I left it open ended in case I ever feel like making a part 2 I also am looking into getting a banner.

[theblackarthistoryhottie]

Black and Biblical: Supper at Emmaus (c.1530-40)

Supper at Emmaus is an oil on panel painting, created by an unknown painter from 1530 to 1540 of the Italian Renaissance, and is currently on display at the Walters Art Museum located in Baltimore, Maryland. This painting depicts Jesus Christ as the central subject, in an outdoor setting, being surrounded by four men at a table as they are "breaking bread" with Christ with the nourishments present on the table. Supper at Emmaus is a visual depiction of the biblical testament of Luke 24:36-39, which describes the aftermath of Christ's resurrection as two disciples (in this case four disciples), are in the presence of the Christ who proves to them that he is a living being of flesh and bones, and not a spirit, and that they are witnesses of him being risen from the dead in order to preserve the souls of all people so they will not be condemned for their sins and the disciples must fulfill everything he has established in the Laws of Moses and the Prophet of Psalms. 

The Supper at Emmaus of 1530-1540 is one of many versions, but this is the only version that features a Black/African subject being featured in religious context and in close proximity to Christ. The Black figure presented in the painting is wearing a tall red wool material hat and Black clothes which is the typical attire of an Egyptian soldier of this time. In the painting, the Egyptian soldier also passes the dish (the broiled fish) to Christ as he is breaking bread. The act of breaking bread is a communal effort of harmony and expression of affirming love, trust, and connection with one another. The Black Egyptian diaspora has an expansive influence in Italy dating back to 2nd century BC. During this time in Venice, Italy, the presence of Egyptians was significant as they came and established numerous professions for themselves such as soldiers, bankers, surgeons, actors, servants, and etc.

The Supper at Emmaus is one of the earliest artworks ever made that featured a Black subject being presented in biblical context and as an associate to Christ. A Black figure being featured in this event demonstrates the testimonial integrity that was established through the act of Jesus dying for the redemption of everyone’s souls. It also expresses how much of an influence the Egyptians have in Italy at this time, to be incorporated in such an honorable and sacred event. The incorporation of the Egyptian soldier is a reflection of the inclusion of anyone no matter what race and ethnicity, they are redeemed by God through Christ’s honor. Although no other associates were featured in Luke 24: 36-49, the inclusion of two additional figures, especially of African identity,  promotes the inclusivity of Christ’s salvation that was granted to all nations and races.

[davidson-eric]

· The IRS and Federal Reserve were not government agencies. They were privately owned by the Deep State Cabal and Rothschild Bankers. There was no act of Congress, nor any Executive Order giving the IRS jurisdiction to act in any of the 50 states. So why was Ken Cromar sitting in jail awaiting trial on charges that he had the audacity to live in his own home that he fully owned after the privately owned by the Cabal IRS unlawfully used SWAT Teams to take possession of that home and threw away all of his possessions and after he proved in a Federal Tax Court that he owed no money to the IRS? Was the IRS making an example of Ken and his wife Barbara to prove what they will do to you if you dare question their unlawful authority? See #I below

· On Mon. 5 Feb. the United Kingdom plugged in their new gold-backed Sterling Token to the new Quantum Financial System and went live, joining the other BRICS nations which now included Saudi Arabia and Argentina among other countries.

#EyesOpenAmerica

[mycryptosuite]

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[mostlysignssomeportents]

Biden should support the UAW

On September 22, I'm (virtually) presenting at the DIG Festival in Modena, Italy. That night, I'll be in person at LA's Book Soup for the launch of Justin C Key's "The World Wasn’t Ready for You." On September 27, I'll be at Chevalier's Books in Los Angeles with Brian Merchant for a joint launch for my new book The Internet Con and his new book, Blood in the Machine.

The UAW are on strike against the Big Three automakers. Biden should be roaring his full-throated support for the strike. Doing so would be both just and shrewd. But instead, the White House is waffling…and if recent history is any indication, they might actually come out against the strike.

The Biden administration is a mix of appointees from the party's left Sanders/Warren wing, and the corporatist, "Third Way" wing associated with Clinton and Obama, which has been ascendant since the Reagan years. The neoliberal wing presided over NAFTA, the foreclosure crisis, charter schools and the bailout for the bankers – but not the people. They voted for the war in Iraq, supported NSA mass-surveillance, failed to use their majorities to codify abortion rights, and waved through mega-merger after mega-merger.

By contrast, the left wing of the party has consistently fought monopoly, war, spying, privatized education and elite impunity – but forever in the shadow of the triangulation wing, who hate the left far more than they hate Republicans. But with the Sanders campaign, the party's left became a force that the party could no longer ignore.

That led to the Biden administration's chimeric approach to key personnel. On the one hand, you have key positions being filled by ghouls who cheered on mass foreclosures under Obama:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/06/personnel-are-policy/#janice-eberly

And on the other, you have shrewd tacticians who are revolutionizing labor law enforcement in America, delivering real, material benefits for American workers:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/06/goons-ginks-and-company-finks/#if-blood-be-the-price-of-your-cursed-wealth

Progressives in the Biden administration have often delivered the goods, but they're all-too-often hamstrung by the corporate cheerleaders the party's right wing secured – think of Lina Khan losing her bid to block the Microsoft/Activision merger thanks to a Biden-appointed, big-money-loving judge:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/14/making-good-trouble/#the-peoples-champion

These self-immolating own-goals are especially visible when it comes to strikes. The Biden admin intervened to clobber railway workers, who were fighting some of the country's cruelest, most reckless monopolists, whose greed threatens the nation:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/11/dinah-wont-you-blow/#ecp

The White House didn't have the power to block the Teamsters threat of an historic strike against UPS, but it publicly sided with UPS bosses, fretting about "the economy" while the workers were trying to win a living wage and air conditioning for the roasting ovens they spend all day in.

Now, with the UAW on strike against the monopolistic auto-makers – who received repeated billions in public funds, gave their top execs massive raises, shipped jobs offshore, and used public money to lobby against transit and decarbonization – Biden is sitting on the sidelines, failing to champion the workers' cause.

Writing in his newsletter, labor reporter Hamilton Nolan makes the case that the White House should – must! – stand behind the autoworkers:

https://www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/whose-fault-is-it?

Nolan points out that workers who strike without the support of the government have historically lost their battles. When workers win labor fights, it's typically by first winning political ones, dragging the government to the table to back them. Biden's failure to support workers isn't "neutral" – it's siding with the bosses.

Today, union support is at historic highs not seen in generations. The hot labor summer wasn't a moment, it was a turning point. Backing labor isn't just the moral thing to do, it's also the right political move:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/14/prop-22-never-again/#norms-code-laws-markets

Biden is already partway there. He rejected the Clinton/Obama position that workers would have to vote for Democrats because "we are your only choice." Maybe he did that out of personal conviction, but it's also no longer politically possible for Democrats to turn out worker votes while screwing over workers.

The faux-populism of the Republicans' Trump wing has killed that strategy. As Naomi Klein writes in her new book Doppelganger, Steve Bannon's tactical genius is to zero in on the areas where Democrats have failed key blocks and offer faux-populist promises to deliver for those voters:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/05/not-that-naomi/#if-the-naomi-be-klein-youre-doing-just-fine

When Democrats fail to bat for workers, they don't just lose worker votes – they send voters to the Republicans. As Nolan writes, "working people know that the class war is real. They are living it. Make the Democratic Party the party that is theirs! Stop equivocating! Draw a line in the sand and stand on the right side of it and make that your message!"

The GOP and Democrats are "sorting themselves around the issue of inequality, because inequality is the issue that defines our time, and that fuels all the other issues that people perceive as a decline in the quality of their own lives." If the Democrats have a future, they need to be on the right side of that issue.

Biden should have allowed a railroad strike. He should have cheered the Teamsters. He should be on the side of the autoworkers. These aren't "isolated squabbles," they're "critical battles in the larger class war." Every union victory transfers funds from the ruling class to the working class, and erodes the power of the wealthy to corrupt our politics.

When Democrats have held legislative majorities, they've refused to use them to strengthen labor law to address inequality and the corruption it engenders. Striking workers are achieving the gains that Democrats couldn't or wouldn't take for themselves. As Nolan writes:

Democratic politicians should be sending the unions thank you notes when they undertake these hard strikes, because the unions are doing the work that the Democrats have failed to accomplish with legislation for the past half fucking century. Say thank you! Say you support the workers! They are striking because the one party that was responsible for ensuring that the rich didn’t take all the money away from the middle class has thoroughly and completely failed to do so.

Republican's can't win elections by fighting on the class war. Democrats should acknowledge that this is the defining issue of our day and lean into it.

Whose fault is a strike at the railroads, or at UPS, or in Hollywood, or at the auto companies? It is the fault of the greedy fuckers who took all the workers’ money for years and years. It is the fault of the executives and investors and corporate boards that treated the people who do the work like shit. When the workers, at great personal risk, strike to take back a measure of what is theirs, they are the right side. There is no winning the class war without accepting this premise.

Autoworkers' strikes have been rare for a half-century, but in their heyday, they Got Shit Done. Writing in The American Prospect, Harold Meyerson tells the tale of the 1945/46 GM strike:

https://prospect.org/labor/2023-09-18-uaw-strikes-built-american-middle-class/

In that strike, the UAW made history: they didn't just demand higher wages for workers, but they also demanded that GM finance these wages with lower profits, not higher prices. This demand was so popular that Harry Truman – hardly a socialist! – stepped in and demanded that GM turn over its books so he could determine whether they could afford to pay a living wage without hiking prices.

Truman released the figures proving that higher wages didn't have to come with higher prices. GM caved. Workers got their raise. Truman touched the "third rail of American capitalism" – co-determination, the idea that workers should have a say in how their employers ran their businesses.

Co-determination is common in other countries – notably Germany – but American capitalists are violently allergic to the idea. The GM strike of 45/6 didn't lead to co-determination, but it did effectively create the American middle-class. The UAW's contract included cost-of-living allowances, wage hikes that tracked gains in national productivity, health care and a defined-benefits pension.

These provisions were quickly replicated in contracts with other automakers, and then across the entire manufacturing sector. Non-union employers were pressured to match them in order to attract talent. The UAW strike of 45/6 set in motion the entire period of postwar prosperity.

As Meyerson points out, today's press coverage of the UAW strike of 2023 is full of hand-wringing about what a work-stoppage will do to the economy. This is short-sighted indeed: when the UAW prevails against the automakers, they will rescue both the economy and the Democratic party from the neo-feudal Gilded Age the country's ultrawealthy are creating around us:

https://doctorow.medium.com/the-end-of-the-road-to-serfdom-bfad6f3b35a9?sk=207d6afdb89b0351b92233cc3318ab94

There's a name for a political strategy that seeks to win votes by making voters' lives better – it's called "deliverism." It's the one thing the Trump Republican's won't and can't do – they can talk about bringing back jobs or making life better for American workers, but all they can deliver is cruelty to disfavored minorities and tax-breaks for the ultra-rich:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/10/thanks-obama/#triangulation

Deliverism is how the Democrats can win the commanding majorities to deliver the major transformations America and the world need to address the climate emergency and dismantle our new oligarchy. Letting the party's right wing dominate turns the Democrats into caffeine-free Republicans.

When the Dems allowed the Child Tax Credit to lapse – because Joe Manchin insisted that poor people would spend the money on drugs – they killed a program that had done more to lift Americans out of poverty than anything else. Today, American poverty is skyrocketing:

https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/4206837-poverty-made-an-alarming-jump-congress-could-have-stopped-it/

Four million children have fallen back into poverty since the Dems allowed the Child Tax Credit to lapse. The rate of child poverty in America has doubled over the past year.

The triangulators on the party's right insist that they are the adults in the room, realists who don't let sentiment interfere with good politics. They're lying. You don't get working parents to vote Democrat by letting their children starve.

America's workers can defeat its oligarchs. They did it before. Biden says he's a union man. It's time for him to prove it. He should be on TV every night, pounding a podium and demanding that the Big Three give in to their workers. If he doesn't, he's handing the country to Trump.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/18/co-determination/#now-make-me-do-it

[sgiandubh]

National personification

The UK has Britannia. France has Marianne. The US have Uncle Sam. National personifications, summing up supposed collective qualities and passing on a message, both to citizens and foreigners alike. Instantly recognizable by just about anyone. To be found everywhere, from city halls (busts, frescoes, tapestries) to subway walls (Army conscription posters - of course it rings a bell!).

Romania has this:

This is Revolutionary Romania, as seen by C.D. Rosenthal, an Austrian painter who found both friendship and an avid clientele among the Romanian young rebels who tried and failed to overthrow the corrupted Ottoman rule, in 1848. Following them in exile and probably also spying on their behalf, Rosenthal was finally arrested in Budapest and tortured to death by the Imperial authorities: a normal occurrence in troubled times. His memory went on and on and on, because the same friends were soon to come back home and become ministers, bankers, newspaper owners: a modern democracy slowly emerged.

This is his most famous portrait and it quickly became our Britannia of sorts. Ceaușescu had it placed in his office, for inspiration - it did not help much, though.

The woman painted by Rosenthal holds the red, yellow and blue flag and is dressed in a Southern peasant costume, as it was worn at the time. She gazes with strength, determination and confidence towards a future that spells free press, parliamentary elections, industrialization and capitalist speculation. In real life, she is Maria Rosetti, a personal friend and sponsor of his. The wife of C.A. Rosetti, an authentic Prince of Genoese and Greek stock, one of the leaders of both the rebellion and the future Liberal Party. Also a many times removed relative of this blogger - but let's not insist. 😉

There is a catch, however, in all this fine and dandy story. Our national personification, the woman I just mentioned, is Scottish. Her life begins in Guernsey in 1819, as Marie Grant, the daughter of Captain Edward Grant, a ship-owner businessman and member of the Clan Grant of Carron and Spey and Marie La Lacheur, a French Huguenot woman.

These people, who fought as Jacobites at Prestonpans and Culloden and whose motto was 'Stand Fast':

Marie came to Wallachia, or what is now the Southern part of Romania, around 1837, following her younger brother, Effingham Grant, who just managed to find a lucrative job as the private secretary of another Scot (Glaswegian, even), Robert Gilmour Colquhoun, the newly appointed British Consul-General. At the time, these were long term postings, not unlike a long sojourn on a space station of sorts: Colquhoun remained in Bucharest from 1835 to 1854, when he eventually was posted to Bosnia.

Because she needed to support herself, Marie found a well paid live-in job as a governess for the family of Ion Odobescu, a high ranking Police honcho (also a far removed relative, this time on my maternal grandmother's side - the world is really, really small). The rest was easy enough: having met Rosetti through her brother, they fell in love, eloped to Plymouth and got married there, for what was to become a life long equal political and business partnership. Because they owned several newspapers, she is our first female journalist. A truly remarkable woman, a philanthropist and an indispensable voice advocating for the dispossessed. Effingham went on to establish the biggest foundry in the country, along with a real estate company, a tobacco manufacture, an orchid greenhouse and a bread factory - all prospered beyond any expectations. A heavy traffic steel bridge in Bucharest still bears his name. Enduring legacies.

For those brave enough or bored enough to look for more, here is the best detailed account on her I could find, based on Guernsey sources (but not only): https://www.priaulxlibrary.co.uk/node/386 .

[wishingforatypewriter]

⇆ SLIDING DOORS: pick a character from one fic to drop into another!

Please drop Jargala into The Weight of Empire. I know she was around and impacted.

Thanks for the ask! I think in the timeline of The Weight of Empire, this would take place some time before Chapter 16: Empire Falls, when Kuvira was giving speeches in the northeastern parts of the Earth Kingdom.

Jargala was sitting in her parents’ living room, working Padma’s hair into two neat braids while she colored, when Neena strolled down the stairs wearing a child sized version of the United Earth Army uniform and a look of utter satisfaction. 

The sight was more than disquieting, but Jargala did all she could to keep her apprehension off her face. “Neena, why are you dressed as a soldier?”

“You really think I look like a soldier?” the ten year old asked with a grin. “Do you think General Kuvira would let me join the army?”

“Maybe someday, honey,” Jargala’s cousin Poonam—the girls’ mother—said as she padded out of the kitchen with a tray of steamed custard buns. “After you graduate.” 

“Or you could do something else,” Jargala told the child. “Literally anything else. Didn’t you want to be a dancer last year?”

Neena scrunched up her face in disgust. “How could I just be some stupid dancer when the Earth Kingdom needs me? My teacher at the bending school says it’s up to all of us to help General Kuvira make us the strongest nation in the world.”

Jargala turned to her cousin. “Did you know her teacher was a military propagandist?” 

“There’s nothing wrong with a little civics education. Spirits know there wasn’t enough of it back when we were in school,” Poonam said as she handed a bun to her eldest daughter. “Besides, who else was going to teach her earthbending for free?”

“Nothing is free, Poonam.” 

“No, not to a…a banker,” her cousin replied, one eyebrow raised in defiance. “But there are people who love this country and care enough to stay and make it better.” 

“It isn’t them.” 

“Do you honestly think the monarchy was any better?”

“Enough politics, girls,” Jargala’s mother, Jamila Omo, said as she emerged from the kitchen. “If you keep wasting time bickering, you’ll make Neena late for school.”

At this, Poonam quickly ferried her eldest out the front door, leaving Jargala under the appraising stare of her mother. 

She ignored it for a moment, focusing on tying hot pink ribbons at the end of Padma’s braids, but the look persisted. 

“Yes, mom?” she finally asked with a huff. 

“You were calmer last year, when you brought Amaruq with you.”

“Correlation, not causation.” 

“So you say, dear.” Her mom took a seat on the couch and sipped her tea. “Remind me again why you didn’t bring him this time?”

Jargala gave a noncommittal wave. “He couldn’t get away from work, but he sent green envelopes for the kids.” 

“You did say that.” 

“It doesn’t sound like you believe me.” 

“Why should I?” her mother asked with a chuckle. “It doesn’t even sound like you believe yourself. If nothing else, I know I raised a better liar than that, so you may as well go on and tell me what really happened.”

“Well, if you really want the truth of it, he wanted to come. I just didn’t think it was the best idea to bring a waterbender here in this climate.”

Her mother waved off her concern. “Oh, Jara, it would have been fine.”

“People are disappearing.” 

“Only criminals and foreign agents.” 

Jargala rolled her eyes. “Is that all they have to say to make you alright with it—the camps, the work crews, this entire police state?”

“I’d say the general deserves a little more credit than that. Things haven’t been easy here, you know. She’s created real opportunity for people—the kind it’s easy to take for granted when you’ve made it big in Republic City.”   

“You think I’m being elitist because I don’t want you all living under a military dictatorship?” Jargala crossed her arms over her chest. 

“I think it can sometimes come off that way,” she said, “especially with your cousins. The general’s making a speech in Shan Feng at the end of the week. I think you should go and see her for yourself. You might change your mind.” 

Fic Ask Game

[justforbooks]

Dr Michael Mosley

Popular celebrity medic who offered health advice to millions through his TV and radio roles, most notably on fasting

Dr Michael Mosley, who has died aged 67 on the Greek island of Symi, explored health and fitness issues of interest to big audiences. He was a versatile communicator, whether as a television diet guru, newspaper columnist or podcaster.

He became a household name for diet books promoting calorie reduction and fasting, including The Fast Diet (2013), written with the journalist Mimi Spencer. His work gained in popularity from his self-experimentation, which included swallowing tapeworms, magic mushrooms, internal cameras and – most famously – fasting to cure his own type 2 diabetes, diagnosed in 2012. He became a well known TV and radio celebrity medic, regularly appearing on The One Show for the BBC and This Morning for ITV. On BBC Radio 4’s Just One Thing podcast he offered health tips to the nation, from the benefits of daily spoonfuls of olive oil to the usefulness of the plank position.

Yet his own medical career was brief. Mosley, who studied philosophy, politics and economics (PPE) at New College, Oxford, trained in medicine at the Royal Free hospital, north London, after two years of working as a banker. He wanted to become a psychiatrist, saying that he found people more interesting than finance, but was disappointed to find that “there were severe limitations to what you could do”, he told the British Medical Journal in 2004.

He opted instead to exert influence through the medium of television, joining the BBC training scheme as an assistant producer in 1985, and going on to produce documentaries based mostly in science, mathematics and history.

His most glorious moment arguably came with the Horizon programme Ulcer Wars, which he made in 1994 about the work of Barry Marshall of the University of Western Australia, who was convinced that the bacteria he had identified called Helicobacter pylori was responsible for most gastric cancers and ulcers.

The story appealed to Mosley and inspired his own self-experimentation: Marshall had drunk a solution of H pylori from a beaker in the 1980s and his stomach had been colonised by the bacteria, which disappeared when he took antibiotics.

Marshall was right and later, with his colleague Robin Warren, won a Nobel prize. Mosley received more than 20,000 letters from people cured of their ulcer pain by antibiotics. The film brought him awards. “I probably did, in a funny way, more good with that one programme than if I had stayed in medicine for 30 years,” said Mosley in the BMJ.

In 2002, Mosley was nominated for an Emmy as executive producer on the documentary featuring John Cleese, The Human Face. In 2013, he began to host the series Trust Me, I’m a Doctor for the BBC. His most recent TV series were for Channel 4: Who Made Britain Fat? (2022) and Secrets of Your Big Shop (2024).

The Fast Diet book, which launched the 5:2 diet, also came out of a Horizon documentary. Eat, Fast and Live Longer (2012) was inspired by Mosley’s own diagnosis of type 2 diabetes, which is linked to excess weight. The disease ran in the family. His father, Bill, had died of the complications at the age of 74. Mosley came across the American neuroscientist Mark Mattson’s work on intermittent fasting, and adopted the pattern he advocated of normal eating for five days and consumption of just 500-600 calories on the other two.

He claimed to have lost 20lbs and reversed his own type 2 diabetes. Mattson appeared in the documentary, which is credited with popularising the 5:2 diet. In 2021, Mosley published The Fast 800 Keto, which combines fasting with a ketogenic diet, high in fat and low in carbohydrates, but in its later stages allows carbohydrates back in.

Mosley’s diet work was controversial because of its focus on calorie reduction to lose weight. In 2021, the eating disorder charity Beat said of his Channel 4 series Lose a Stone in 21 Days that “the programme caused enough stress and anxiety to our beneficiaries that we extended our helpline hours to support anyone affected and received 51% more contact during that time”.

He said he had suffered from chronic insomnia from his late 30s. That became the subject of another BBC documentary and also a book published in 2019, called Fast Asleep.

Born in Calcutta (Kolkata), India, Michael was the son of a banker, Bill Mosley, and his wife, Joan. At the age of seven he was sent to boarding school in Britain. Mosley said in an interview with the Sydney Morning Herald that his mother was heartbroken to send him away to school, but that his father worked in Hong Kong and the Philippines, wanted Michael and his other son, John, to become bankers as he had, and that sending children to boarding school back in Britain was part of the culture of that time.

His maternal grandfather was an Anglican bishop. Mosley said he came from a long line of missionaries, but “the closest I get to religion is incorporating fasting in my diet”.

Mosley met Clare Bailey at the Royal Free hospital medical school, now part of UCL medical school, and they married in 1987. Bailey, who became a GP, was an active partner in Mosley’s dietary work and wrote recipe books for people embarking on the Fast 800 diet as well as newspaper columns in her own right. She told interviewers that she did not fast, because she had never needed to lose weight, and that she would hide chocolate from Mosley, who had a sweet tooth.

She survives him, along with their three sons, Alex, Jack and Daniel, and a daughter, Kate.

🔔 Michael Mosley, doctor, writer and broadcaster, born 22 March 1957; found dead 9 June 2024

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