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workersolidarity · 10 months ago

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[ 📹 Scenes of chaos and destruction following the bombing of the Israeli occupation forces across the Gaza Strip on Saturday, resulting in dozens of civilians killed, and scores of others wounded, including women and children. ]

🇮🇱⚔️🇵🇸 🚀🏘️💥🚑 🚨

WAR OF EXTERMINATION DAY 260: HEALTHCARE WORKERS CONTINUE TO BE TARGETED BY OCCUPATION ARMY, NEW MASSACRES KILL DOZENS AS MASS SLAUGHTER INTENSIFIES ONCE AGAIN

On 260th day of the Israeli occupation's ongoing special genocide operation in the Gaza Strip, the Israeli occupation forces (IOF) committed a total of 3 new massacres of Palestinian families, resulting in the deaths of no less than 101 Palestinian civilians, mostly women and children, while another 169 others were wounded over the previous 24-hours.

It should be noted that as a result of the constant Israeli bombardment of Gaza's healthcare system, infrastructure, residential and commercial buildings, local paramedic and civil defense crews are unable to recover countless hundreds, even thousands, of victims who remain trapped under the rubble, or who's bodies remain strewn across the streets of Gaza.

This leaves the official death toll vastly undercounted as Gaza's healthcare officials are unable to accurately tally those killed and maimed in this genocide, which must be kept in mind when considering the scale of the mass murder.

Speaking with the local Palestinian media, the Director General of the Ministry of Health in the Gaza Strip, Munir Al-Bursh, said that the Israeli occupation continues to be intent on murdering healthcare personnel and still targets Gaza's healthcare system.

The Director General also called for an international investigation and asked that the international community intervene to protect medical personnel in the Palestinian enclave.

Further, Al-Bursh called for the investigation to be conducted, including an autopsy on the bodies of those killed by the Israeli occupation, and for the release of all detained medical personnel from the Gaza Strip.

Meanwhile, the Zionist occupation army continues mass murdering Palestinian civilians, even as the occupation army admits it is unlikely Hamas will be defeated in the way the occupation's politicians believe the resistance group can be.

A recent statement by occupation army spokesperson, Daniel Hagari, noted that “saying that we will destroy Hamas and make it disappear is just a speck of dust in the eyes of the Israelis,” adding that “Hamas is an idea, and whoever thinks that we can make it disappear is mistaken.”

At the same time, the Israeli occupation's leadership continues pushing for war with Lebanon, while the head of Israeli energy company Noga recently warned that "the country is not ready for a real war" with Hezbollah.

Netanyahu, for his part, refuses to acknowledge the realities on the ground, insisting this week that the war will not end until Hamas is eliminated and the hostages freed, adding angrily that "This is my position, and whoever opposes that, let him oppose it publicly."

Meanwhile, Palestinian civilians in Gaza continue to be mass slaughtered as the genocide continues unabated.

In just the latest example, the Zionist occupation army committed two new massacres overnight in the Al-Tuffah neighborhood, northeast of Gaza City, as well as in the Al-Shati (Beach) Camp, west of the city, resulting in the deaths of more than 42 Palestinian civilians.

Speaking of the massacres at a press conference on Saturday, director of the government media office in Gaza, Ismail Al-Thawabta, confirmed the slaughter, telling Al-Jazeera News “24 Palestinians were martyred as a result of the targeting of 7 homes in the Beach Camp, and 18 Palestinians were martyred as a result of the Israeli bombing in the Al-Tuffah neighborhood.”

According to local sources, the Israeli occupation forces bombed 3 residential buildings in the vicinity of the Sousi Mosque in the Al-Shati Refugee Camp, west of Gaza City, killing several civilians and wounding a number of others.

In a previous assault, on Friday, occupation fighter jets bombed two residential apartments in the central areas of Gaza City, killing at least 5 Palestinians and wounding several others.

According to the Palestinian media, local civil defense crews managed to recover the bodies of 5 Palestinians and a number of wounded after Zionist warplanes bombed two residential apartments belonging to the Mushtaha and Abu Al-Atta families, behind the Deir al-Latin School in the Old City area of central Gaza City.

Israeli fighter jets also bombed a residential house belonging to the Salah family in the Al-Shati Camp, killing upwards of 10 civilians and wounding at least 17 others.

The wounded were immediately transferred to Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital, while the occupation's artillery shelling continued hammering the Al-Zaytoun neighborhood, southeast of Gaza City.

In another bombing, the Israeli occupation forces targeted a gathering of civilians in the Al-Zaytoun neighborhood, while several others were wounded as a result of an occupation air raid near Wadi Gaza in central Gaza.

South of Gaza, Israeli aircraft bombed the Khirbet al-Adas area, north of Rafah, killing two Palestinians and wounding several others.

The genocide continued with the Zionist army's artillery shelling, which targeted the tents of displaced Palestinian families in the Al-Mawasi area, northwest of Rafah, an area the occupation army previously told civilians would be a "safe" zone, killing upwards of 25 civilians, and wounding a number of others.

According to reporters with the Palestinian news agency WAFA, Israeli aircraft broke the sound barrier in two locations, after which, local residents and displaced civilians gathered and were immediately targeted by an Israeli missile, resulting in the massacre of 25 civilians and wounding many others.

The Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS) also reported that its personnel were dealing with large numbers of casualties after the Israeli occupation forces bombed the tents of displaced families.

The Zionist army also bombed a house belonging to the Al-Sharif family, east of Al-Nuseirat, in the central Gaza Strip, murdering a number of Palestinians, and wounding others, including children, who were transported to Al-Awda Hospital, where an infant girl who was wounded in the strike was said to be in critical condition.

Similarly, the Israeli occupation forces stationed tanks and troops along the so-called Netzarim Corridor, an Israeli-built infrastructure dividing the Gaza Strip into its northern and southern constituent halves, firing shells towards the Al-Zaytoun, Tal al-Hawa, Sheikh Ajlin, and Al-Sabra neighborhoods, resulting in a number of casualties, including women and children, who were also taken to Al-Awda Hospital, while simultaneously, Occupation Apache helicopters fired on civilian homes in the Al-Zaytoun neighborhood.

The slaughter continued with the occupation bombing of a home in the Al-Zaytoun neighborhood that resulted in the deaths of two young men who were quickly taken to Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital in Gaza City.

Another civilian was killed, and others wounded, when Zionist artillery shelling targeted the power station north of the Nuseirat Camp, in the central Gaza Strip.

As a result of the Israeli occupation's ongoing war of extermination in the Gaza Strip, the infinitely rising death toll now exceeds 37'551 Palestinians killed, including upwards of 10'000 women and over 15'000 children, while another 85'911 others have been wounded since the start of the current round of Zionist aggression, beginning with the events of October 7th, 2023.

June 22nd, 2024.

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@WorkerSolidarityNews

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notinmyvocab · 2 years ago

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Conference Call

Summary: It's VECNA week: the Vermont Educational Conference for the Northeast Area, and Larissa is bored and lonely. A few clicks online and she hires a... friend for a few hours.

Warnings: Smut, smut, smut g!p, dirty talk, mommy kink, teacher/student roleplaying, swearing, unedited

Author's Note: Ummm so this kind of got away from me. Sorry not sorry.

P.S: Caiohme is an Irish name pronounced "Kwee-va"

It was that time of year again: VECNA week: the Vermont Educational Conference for the Northeast Area. If it weren’t for the fact that she was out of town at the most boring conference ever, she never would have considered even looking up the company. But the Vermont Educational Conference for the Northeast Area didn’t exactly inspire.

It had been a week, and she was homesick, and lonely, and sad, and perhaps a bit drunker than she’d care to admit.

And this hadn’t been the first time she considered doing something like this. It was just the first time she actually went through with it. And it made her feel sick, if she were being perfectly honest. Technically it was legal, but Larissa couldn’t help but let shame weigh down on her shoulders. Was she really so undesirable that she needed to buy someone else’s company?

That was all it was, she assured herself as she sipped her cocktail of Jim Beam and diet Coke. She was paying someone to come and be her friend for a night because no one at this conference was worth her time. And no one seemed particularly interested in interacting with an Outcast from Nevermore Academy. At least this way, she was guaranteeing conversation; guaranteeing companionship, if for only an evening.

Larissa sat on the edge of the hotel bed, which she had remade, and then remade again so that the corners were tighter and the sheets appeared crisper. Not that it mattered. It was a hotel, not her home. And this person was probably not going to be judging her bed. Still, Larissa had a reputation she liked to uphold, even with strangers.

She was starting to grow anxious as the minutes ticked by. She already put through her credit card information, so surely there would be no issue? Unless it was a scam. Oh dear, had she fallen for a ploy?

There came a sharp knock at her hotel door, the sound so sudden that Larissa nearly jumped out of her skin. Was that…? Larissa took another sip of her cocktail and set aside the glass before standing up and smoothing out the skirt of her dress. Her heart thudded uneasily in her chest. Maybe if she pretended she wasn’t there, then she could forget about the whole thing?

Larissa went over the door and opened it.

Before her stood a young woman with hair that she clearly attempted to straightened, but still tried resisting, certain sections insisting on creating a wave. It was a slightly imperfect detail that actually made Larissa relax. The woman in the doorway wasn’t perfect. She was a dream, but she wasn’t perfect, and that helped put Larissa at ease.

It wasn’t until she met the woman’s eyes that Larissa realized she probably should’ve shifted her appearance; kept this more anonymous. But it was too late now.

“Larissa?”

A fake name also might’ve been a better choice.

“Yes. Um, come in.” Larissa stepped aside and watched the young woman marvel at the hotel room as if she had never seen anything so nice. It had to be part of an act. Someone who did this line of work surely saw a lot of hotel rooms in her lifetime.

“So um, how has your day been?” Larissa asked, immediately cursing herself for sounding like an idiot.

The woman turned and smiled at Larissa, apparently finding her endearing. “Long. VECNA tends to get busy for me.”

“Is that so? Why?”

The woman raised her eyebrows, wondering if Larissa really wanted her to answer that. She gave the nicer. vague answer. “Lot of lonely teachers in an unfamiliar place.”

“And um… what shall I call you?” The website Larissa found didn’t actually give names, just pictures.

“What do you want to call me?” the young woman implored, and it suddenly became clear why the website didn’t have names. She saw Larissa’s uneasiness and gave a warm smile. “I answer to a lot of things. But tonight you can call me Kitty.”

“Kitty…” Larissa said slowly, tasting the name; testing the name. “Is that your real name?”

“Is Larissa yours?” Touche. It was, but Larissa did not do anything to confirm this. Kitty went on, “It’s short for Caiomhe.”

Larissa frowned faintly, not following the explanation. “I don’t quite see how Kitty is short for Caiomhe.”

Kitty grinned, giving a soft, embarrassed laugh. “It’s not. But you can’t go through middle school with the name Caiomhe.”

“Of course. Students can be cruel.” Larissa certainly knew about that. She also didn’t doubt that customers liked such a soft sounding name. “Would you like something to drink?” Words came a little easier to her now; knowing Kitty’s name certainly helped to soothe the nerves.

“No, thank you. I don’t drink on the job.”

Job. Right. Because that was what this was. She needed to remember that.

Kitty sat on the edge of the bed and crossed her legs. She was so simple in her plain black cocktail dress, yet exuded elegance.

“So, what did you want to do tonight?” Kitty asked, her eyes imploring yet mischievous, head tilted to the side.

“Oh, I’m… I’m not really sure,” Larissa replied sheepishly. That was a lie. She knew exactly what she wanted to do, but now, suddenly faced with the question, she couldn’t bring herself to answer. How could she possibly voice to this stranger what she wanted?

Kitty saw the struggle in Larissa’s eyes, and gave a small, sympathetic smile. “Most people just want to talk,” she said.

“Really?”

“I mean sure, I get some people who want to take me out to dinner; pretend I’m their girlfriend. But most just… want someone to listen.” That was what made it legal. If sex happened, then it happened. But as far as the records were concerned, she was paid to hang out.

Kitty narrowed her eyes slightly as she studied Larissa, trying to guess what her mental roadblocks were. The woman just seemed so tense. “What brings you to VECNA?” she asked. Maybe conversation was the key.

“I’m a principal,” Larissa answered. “I run a boarding school… for Outcasts.”

Kitty perked up in recognition. “Nevermore?”

“So you’ve heard of it.”

“I used to be obsessed with it when I was younger,” Kitty confessed. “A boarding school for the strange and unusual; I wanted to go so badly.”

Larissa blushed, pleased and flattered that someone actually said a kind word about her dear academy. She sat on the bed next to Kitty, one hand holding her drink and the other hand resting on the bed.

“Okay, so you’re the headmistress of an elite boarding school…”

“Principal,” Larissa corrected.

“I think, tonight, you should be Headmistress.”

And like magic, Larissa’s shoulders relaxed. She downed the rest of her drink and set the now empty glass aside. She stood up and smoothed out her skirt. “And do you know why you’ve been sent to my office?”

Kitty immediately fell into her role. She sat on her hands, knees together. “Because I got caught touching myself in class.”

“Because you can’t help being a little slut, isn’t that so?” Larissa folded her arms across her chest.

She didn’t think she would slip into the fantasy so easily. She thought she would be trembling with unsteady nerves. Instead, Larissa slipped into the role as if she were slipping on her favorite heels.

Kitty pouted. “I’m sorry Headmistress. I couldn’t help it!”

“You never can. Tell me: did you slip your fingers in and out? Taste yourself when the teacher wasn’t looking?” When Kitty nodded, playing along, Larissa gave a wolfish grin. “And who were you thinking about when you were toying with your sweet little pussy?”

Kitty looked down, as if ashamed though Larissa saw no blush upon her cheeks. In fact, the corners of her mouth were curled upward; she was enjoying the game. Good.

Larissa tucked a finger under Kitty’s chin and forced her to look up. “Be a good girl, and tell me: who’s tongue were you imagining?”

“Yours, Headmistress.”

“Oh? Well, I suppose that puts us in a bit of a conundrum.” Larissa dropped her hand and stepped away from Kitty. She folded her arms across her chest and tilted her head to the side, as if she hadn’t already decided her next move. “See, you ought to be punished. Yet…”

“Yet?”

“I find myself at a crossroads. You should be bent over my desk; you should get a lashing for being so crude. But I think spanking you would just turn you on even more. Is that true?” Larissa leaned down over Kitty, hands planted on either side of the woman. “Maybe you’d like it a little too much.”

Kitty’s perfume was hypnotizing; she smelled like an azalea. Kitty could smell the Jim Beam on Larissa’s breath and she couldn’t help herself; she leaned forward and gently pressed her lips against Larissa’s. It wasn’t like she never kissed clients, but it was the first time she actually enjoyed it.

Larissa broke character, stunned by the small, affectionate gesture. She stared at Kitty, lips parted as if to ask why. Instead, she placed her hand on the back of Kitty’s head and pulled her in for a languid kiss, every movement of her tongue deliberate and precise.

And oh how Kitty relished in the attention. The kissing became hungry as Kitty craved more, needed more. She had never felt so… wanted.

Other clients pretended to want her. She knew the drill and it never bothered her. This was her life, and it paid damn well. But when they kissed her, if they kissed her, she could tell that they were imagining someone else, or just glad to have a warm body. It had never been about her.

This was about her. Larissa was kissing her.

Kitty pulled back from Larissa, and whispered, “Let me take care of you.”

“No,” Larissa said. For a brief moment, Kitty’s brow furrowed and she looked confused and even partially worried. Larissa pressed a kiss against the younger woman’s forehead, soothing her worries. “I’m going to take care of you.”

She put a hand against Kitty’s chest, guiding her to lay down on the bed. She wasted no time in getting on her knees.

Kitty’s heart fluttered, both with anticipation and adoration. She gasped softly when she felt Larissa press a kiss against her bare calf, then her knee, then her inner thigh. God it took so much strength for Larissa to go even this speed.

Larissa tucked her fingers into the waistband of Kitty’s black thong, taking a second to admire them.

“Adore Me,” Kitty said, propping herself up on her forearms.

“Pardon?”

“The panties. I get my lingerie from Adore Me. They have like a monthly subscription where they send you stuff. That’s probably my absolute favorite thing I got from them. Though I gotta say, I like it a lot better in your hands.”

“Is that so? Because I think it looks best on the floor.” Larissa tossed aside the thong and placed her hands on Kitty’s thighs, digging her nails in slightly. “Tell me what you like.”

“I’ll like whatever you do to me.”

That answer apparently wasn’t good enough. Kitty jolted as she felt a sudden, sharp slap against her cunt though she was immediately soothed by long strokes of skilled fingers. “Be a good girl, and tell me what you like.”

“That,” Kitty gasped. “I like… I like it when you call me a good girl.”

“I see. That’s unfortunate because you haven’t been a very good girl, have you? Touching yourself in class isn’t something good girls do.” Larissa slipped back into the roleplay, finding she did quite enjoy it and while she did ask Kitty what she wanted, Larissa was the one paying for the night. Give and take.

“I’m sorry, Headmistress,” Kitty whined. “I couldn’t help myself.”

“Because you’re a little slut.”

“Because I’m your little slut,” Kitty corrected, daring to hold Larissa’s gaze. “I just kept imagining your fingers inside of me, making me so, so wet.”

“Oh darling, you don’t need my help making you wet.” Larissa lowered herself back down between Kitty’s legs. She inhaled deeply, basking in the woman’s arousal. She couldn’t stand it any longer. Larissa dragged her tongue along the woman’s glistening slit, tasting Kitty’s desire.

Kitty gasped at the contact, swallowing her moan. She didn’t want to admit how good Larissa made her feel with only one swipe of her tongue; she wasn’t used to this. Some clients were clumsy. Some were terribly sweet and affection. But Larissa was something else entirely.

Larissa nipped at Kitty’s clit, making the younger woman yelp. “Don’t you dare keep quiet.” She returned to devouring Kitty’s pussy, and Kitty certainly did not hold back. She let herself moan and whine and beg for more.

“Please, god… fuck, it feels so good.” The feeling of Larissa lapping at her clit was divine; Kitty wrapped her legs around Larissa, holding her close, needing more. “F-fingers. Please, fingers.”

At Kitty’s request, Larissa pulled away, chin glistening. “Do you think you deserve my fingers?”

Kitty only managed a whine. God she needed Larissa so badly. Her lack of words earned her another sharp slap on her pussy, and a commanding, “Answer me,” from Larissa. “N-no,” she choked out. “No, I don’t. But I need them. I need you. Please.”

Larissa paused, pursing her lips.

Immediately sensing Larissa’s hesitancy, Kitty sat up. “Is everything okay?”

“Can we… do you mind if we try something?”

Normally she was uneasy when a client said something like that. But Larissa was… different. Even though it sounded corny as fuck, Larissa was special. So Kitty said, “Anything you want. Name it.” For a moment, Kitty worried that she sounded too overeager. That fear was allayed when she saw Larissa relax a little.

“I’m… I’m a shapeshifter. It’s what makes me an Outcast.” That obviously wasn’t what Larissa was worried about. Kitty could see in her blue, blue eyes that there was something more; something deeper. “And… well, I’ve never actually tried it before. But I… I find myself wanting to have you be my first. If you’ll have me.”

Kitty tilted her head to the side, not quite following what Larissa meant. Her first? The woman was clearly no stranger to sex; what was there possibly to take?

Then she added it all up, and when the sum made itself apparent, Kitty inhaled sharply. Not in disgust, or even shock, but in pure desire. She nodded, eyes practically glowing in excitement.

Larissa stepped away from the bed and turned her back to Kitty. She breathed deeply as her fingers fumbled with her dress, feeling Kitty’s eyes on her.

The moments passed agonizingly slow; Kitty had sat up at this point, rubbing her thighs together to feel some sweet friction without pushing herself over the edge. And as much of a cliche as it was, her jaw did indeed drop when Larissa turned around.

Every inch of her was perfect: the swell of her breast, the curve of her waist, the place where her thighs met. And right there among it all…

Larissa stepped closer, her cock hard with desire. Kitty didn’t even hesitate to get off the bed and down onto her knees. She took hold of the throbbing member, her touch curious yet gentle. She lips ghosted along the shaft, and Larissa swallowed a moan, the sensation more intense than she ever imagined.

“Can I?” Kitty whispered against Larissa’s tip, and when she saw Larissa nod, she immediately took the cock into her mouth.

And oh god what a sensation it was. Larissa immediately threaded her fingers through Kitty’s hair, making sure she kept her pace slow and steady. This was completely new to her and it was almost overwhelming. She already wanted to cum, wanted to see thick rivulets of white spill down the side of Kitty’s perfect hot mouth. Just imagining such a sight nearly sent her over the edge, but Larissa held back.

Then Kitty dared to take Larissa’s cock all the way down her throat and made a gagging noise. Was it real or just part of the show? Larissa didn’t care, she loved it all the same.

“Good girl,” she cooed. “Take all of me; choke on Mummy’s cock.”

Larissa’s voice faded as Kitty continued to take all of her, slurping and slobbering. Finally, right when Larissa was certain she would lose control, Kitty pulled away, spit dribbling down her chin. She planted one more kiss against Larissa’s cock before getting up and bending over the bed.

For just a moment, Larissa relished in the sight of this young woman spread and dripping for her.

She slid her cock into Kitty’s wet pussy and both women groaned in pleasure.

“Fuck,” Kitty hissed as Larissa started moving in and out. She reached down between her own legs to rub her clit as Larissa kept thrusting. “Fuck, Mommy, your cock is s-so good.”

Larissa thrust harder, feeling bliss in a way she had never felt before. She could barely hear Kitty’s whines, so consumed with her own pleasure. “That’s it, take Mummy’s cock,” she growled, hand finding Kitty’s hair and pulling.

She wasn’t going to last long like this. The dirty talk thrilled her, and Kitty too.

“Please make me cum, Mommy,” Kitty begged as Larissa’s thrusting picked up speed and she kept furiously rubbing at her clit. Her legs were shaking as an orgasm unexpectedly rocked through her body.

The sight of Kitty’s quivering form and the feeling of her orgasm tearing through her sent Larissa over the edge. She gave one final thrust and held herself inside of Kitty, filling her up.

Both women breathed heavily as they slowly came down from their high. With great reluctance, Larissa pulled out of Kitty and cum dripped out of Kitty’s sopping cunt, trickling down her inner thigh.

Unable to resist, Larissa lowered herself and dragged her tongue along Kitty’s slit, tasting their mingled cum. It was divine.

Neither of them said a word for a few minutes, hearts hammering too loudly to hear one another.

Larissa lay down on the bed, feeling her lower half shift back to her usual form. She watched Kitty slip into the bathroom to clean up. She closed her eyes, her mind completely blank for once. No worries, no cares, just darkness. How wonderful.

The sound of a lock grabbed her attention and she sat up to see Kitty about to slip out the door.

“Wait,” Larissa said without thinking. But then she remembered what this all was: a business transaction. The fantasy melted away.

But to her surprise, Kitty did indeed hesitate at the door. The young woman turned. She’d been booked for the night, and sleeping over wasn’t part of the deal. But maybe… maybe an exception could be made. Just this once.

“Will you stay?” Larissa asked softly.

“If you’ll have me.”

Larissa nodded, and Kitty relocked the door. She shed her dress and slipped into the bed beside Larissa. And as Larissa pressed a kiss to her temple, Kitty wondered if she had allowed herself to cross over into forbidden territory: falling in love with a client.

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#my writing #larissa weems #fanfiction #wednesday #gwendoline christie

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unsoundedcomic · 6 months ago

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Whumptober 2024 - 19 - "Blood Trail"

I do not celebrate my Aldish heritage. Ere my father bedded my mother, no form came to me by post polling me on the country in which I would prefer she push me out. Men who make over that accident have little else to make over, I have found. They would march for their aorta or their opposable thumb, if either were assigned a flag. Offer a plaque and a slap on the ass for the act of filling a commode, and they would demand both.

I cannot deny my Aldish boyhood left me with thick blood and hot lungs, however. Like the woolly snakes and the unnros, I can bear the cold.

Knowing this, you cannot dismiss me when I stress to you, reader, that Anchert island causes even this son of Alderode to shiver. Surrounded by icebergs, this frozen slice of risen Hell lurks at the far northeast of the world, cut off from the khert and overrun by savage Mmatont. The only way to tell it is land and not another berg is the darkness of its spruce-covered single mountain, and the few specks of firelight that burn therein.

There is only one way to reach the detestable place: a small craft on a moonless midnight, under the care of a pilot that knows the patrol patterns of the local police skiffs. I have never liked giving up coin - nor control - to these green-stinking hoods. There is no alternative. The khert-lines do not extend past the Tainish shore of the mainland. I cannot offset there.

I had never visited Anchert with Rahm, and he'd never been at all. As our boat docked inconspicuously on the great island's least populated shore, I watched him closely. I had chosen a smart, double-breasted wool coat, warm pymaric boots with a three week charge, blood red swineletskin gloves, a cosy muffler of feathers and fur.

Rahm was wholly quilted. Like a bedspread. I think Iori had dressed him.

"Man should not be here," he muttered, rasping his hands together and stomping his feet, "We were not designed to be here. The makers set aside the north for white bears and fat waterbitches; and Alderode stole it from them."

"Watch yourself," I whispered, crushing close to confer a bit of warmth, "They do not like the A-word here. The Mmatont would have every Ald out of Tain, had they their way."

"Well, I can see how they've so far managed it with this island. No sane person would want to live here. Is that why Alderode has let them be?"

I suppose that could be the case. The Mmatont - that is, the modern Tains who occupy Anchert - have long foolishly demanded that Alderode return their ancestral valley to them, and in fact, all of pymary. I will spare you the uninteresting history of it all, but they only agreed to meet Rahm and myself tonight because he is Crescian and I am a stateless fiend and we both are Black Tongues. Alderode happily hates the two of us as much as they hate the Mmatont, and the Mmatont hate them.

It was a few hours tedium disembarking. We hired servants to haul our trunks to our arranged lodgings inside of the mountain, and paid the stinking pilot a criminal amount of money. He promised to be back the next evening. Soon enough but not as soon as I'd have liked, Rahm and I were following a swarthy towhead deep underground.

The pissmop was dressed all in natty furs, and carried an open flame torch like some manner of primitive. What a hoot! What a safari. Rahm raised an eyebrow, pulled a pymaric light from his pocket. I shook my head. These freaks thought pymary should have remained with their ancestors. If he or I were going to cast or use any of our modern devices, it might raise the curtain on inconvenient drama.

"I suppose I can understand why the formulas have remained hidden here," whispered Rahm in Continental. Why was he whispering? I doubt the pissmop could understand. "It's wholly counterintuitive that something so helpful to burgeoning technology might be found in this backwards mountain."

Rahm tucked the little pymaric away, looking about at the living stone walls and the evidence of the painstakingly slow and primitive pymary that had formed them thousands of years ago. It must have been all State change and Heat siphoning to create the Contour, then Mass displacement to crack the block from the root; finally a reversal to haul each slab outside. I could still see the corrugations in sections of the wall; time had worn the floor smooth as a mill pond.

"They weren't always backwards," I pointed out.

"Even when Tainish civilisation was at its high peak, they knew nothing of Sounding. How-"

"The Tains didn't write these formulas, Raptor. The agib did."

My Crescian friend shook his head ruefully. "Do they even know what they have? They wouldn't need to live like this if they'd sell some of their secrets."

"Nationalism," I explained at his temple, and my breath made his wee feather earring dance, "Too many fools live and die unable to see beyond the colour of the dirt their mother shit them into. Oh, to beat your chest in the mud."

"But they're letting us in. Surely the fools understand we won't be keeping this to ourselves."

I nodded. "They do, but small men are weak to that other great psychological bugbear: you see, their god has TOLD them they must-"

The toe of my boot caught on an uneven seam in the floor, and only grasping Rahm's elbow kept me upright. I looked down.

"Rahm!" I called reflexively, "Rahm. Blood."

He clawed the clasp of his quilted coat open, then hiked up its long skirts to keep them from the gore. It was still red and tacky - sticky - and ran in a trail ahead of us down the black corridor.

"Just where are you leading us!" he demanded of the pissmop.

Our guide seemed confused at first, then saw the shock on our faces, saw the blood, and laughed. "You're not in danger, Black Tongues." His features were sharp in the firelight. His teeth too white, too sharp. I did not care for the effect at all.

"I know we're not," answered Rahm haughtily, seguing smoothly to only slightly accented Tainish, "But you are. If you plan to ambush us, do it now. Here. There's already a mess to be cleaned, and I can end your life with a minimum of additional blood spilled. I'd hate to put out our hosts any more than we have."

Very sexy, Raptor.

The pissmop smirked. He raised a mollifying hand and said again: "You are not in danger, Black Tongues. If you want your poxy numbers, follow me."

"Bastion," Rahm breathed, "Going any further seems stupid even for you."

"I know," I sighed in return, "But I want the poxy numbers."

In the end, Rahm had promised me. And I knew there was something here that he wanted too. With the trail of blood between us, we hurried to catch up with the Soud.

((Second part here))

#whumptober #unsounded #it goes whumpy next part :)

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trans-axolotl · 6 months ago

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I’m done with the anarchist health conference :(

Met so many cool people, @bioethicists and my presentation went REALLY well and we’re trying to plan to do it again sometime on zoom for all of you, and learned about so many cool projects happening all around the northeast! miss being in a space with other psych abolitionists already :(

#personal #will make a post with a link to the proton drive I created in a sec

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barbariankingdom · 10 months ago

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Palmyra - Syria Ancient city in south-central Syria, 130 miles northeast of Damascus. The name Palmyra, meaning “city of palm trees,” was conferred upon the city by its Roman rulers in the 1st Century CE; Tadmur, Tadmor, or Tudmur, the pre-Semitic name of the site, is also still in use.

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bongaboi · 1 year ago

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Wagner: 2023-24 Northeast Men's Basketball Champions

NORTH ANDOVER, Mass. (AP) — Tahron Allen scored 22 points and No. 6 seed Wagner allowed only four points in the final eight minutes of a 54-47 victory over top-seeded Merrimack on Tuesday night in the championship game of the Northeast Conference Tournament.

The Seahawks advance to the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2003.

After losing four of five to finish the regular season, Wagner defeated Central Connecticut in the semifinals and Merrimack in the championship game. The Blue Devils and Warriors tied for first place in the conference, with Merrimack landing the top seed in the tournament.

After winning last season's conference tournament in their last season of transition to Division I, the Warriors were looking to repeat and advance to the NCAA Tournament for the first time. Still, they trailed by 11 points on their home floor after Allen hit a 3-pointer for a 41-30 lead with less than 13 minutes remaining.

The Warriors responded with 13 consecutive points, Bryan Etumnu's 3-pointer giving them a 43-41 lead with about eight minutes left in the game.

Three minutes later, Javier Ezquerra and Melvin Council Jr. hit back-to-back jumpers and Wagner led 46-43. Allen scored to give the Seahawks a five-point lead and he added two free throws with 70 seconds left to make it 51-45.

The Warriors launched three 3-pointers on their next possession and missed them all, before Jordan McKoy was fouled and made both free throws with 25 seconds left. Merrimack fouled Javier Ezquerra and he made two free throws for a 53-47 lead at 21 seconds. Devon Savage missed another 3-pointer for Merrimack and the game was out of reach.

Savage had 16 points and McKoy 11 for Merrimack (21-12).

Council had 12 points and Keyontae Lewis grabbed 12 rebounds for Wagner (16-15).

Wagner, eighth nationally allowing 62.6 points per game, shut down Merrimack on the perimeter. The Warriors made only 10 of 38 3-pointers and shot 30% overall. The Seahawks hit 45% of their shots.

Wagner matched the Mount St. Mary's Mountaineers of 1999 as the only teams seeded sixth or worse to win the NEC Tournament.

#2024 #wagner seahawks #northeast conference #college basketball #march madness

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gatheringbones · 1 year ago

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[“It can be difficult for people raised as girls to express rage when we’ve been taught from very early on that it is in our best interest to suppress our anger. It is culturally acceptable for women to be sad, not angry. In one study on gender, anger, and the workplace, the participants conferred higher status to sad female employees than to angry ones. For men the opposite was true. Men, particularly white men, are rewarded and forgiven for their anger, while women are penalized and blamed.

Ceci, the mestiza paralegal, now lives in Los Angeles with her husband, five-year-old son, and twenty-two-year-old stepdaughter. She described herself using the exact language of a woman who was taught by the culture not to value or express her anger: “I’m a people pleaser. I don’t rock the boat. I go along with everything, do what people tell me.” This is the path of being a good girl, a good woman, and eventually a good mother. Lifelong gendered learning teaches people raised to be women to push down anger and any feelings in the “sub-anger” ballpark, such as annoyance, irritation, and frustration. I imagine this emotional push-down like the carnival game whack-a-mole. Each time an uncomfortable or unpleasant anger-related feeling pops up—whack!—women automatically bang it with a big-headed mallet, sending it back beneath the surface.

Like the rage itself, this game of anger whack-a-mole is an international phenomenon for women. In Korea, there is a culture-related anger syndrome called hwa-byung. It translates literally to “illness of fire” and mostly affects working-class middle-aged housewives, who have chronically suppressed anger stemming from strict gender roles, gender-based inequality, and patriarchal family structures. In traditional Latin American folk medicine, it is believed that holding onto certain emotions can cause physical illness. In Northeast Brazil, the term engolir sapos translates to “swallowing frogs,” and is mostly used by women to refer to the suppression of anger and irritation, and the pressure to tolerate unfair treatment without complaint.

Cheryl, the Black civil rights lawyer who internalizes her mom rage, is practiced at playing whack-a-mole with her anger: “I’m good at repressing things. So, a little problem, I repress it, and it gets packed on top of all the other things that make me mad, until there’s no way to untangle it. It’s just this huge tangle of anger that I’m trying to disassociate from all the time.” In our present-day culture of busy, intensive motherhood, stuffing down unpleasant emotions can be a matter of practicality. Minutes are a precious resource, and airing every frustration is a time expense that modern mothers cannot afford. Emails must be sent, dinner needs to get into bellies, and bodies need to snuggle under covers. But the perceived time-saver of the Emotional Whack-a-Mole phase is a mirage. Every time a mom suppresses her angry feelings, as she’s been taught to do her entire life, she is pushing them onto an ever-growing pile of anger inside her. Eventually, the pile will topple.”]

minna dubin, from mom rage: the everyday crisis of modern motherhood, 2023

#minna dubin #bi literature #gender stuff #currently reading #brainspace

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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 5 months ago

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Mike Luckovich

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

November 15, 2024

Heather Cox Richardson

Nov 16, 2024

Three years ago today, President Joe Biden signed into law the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, more popularly known as the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act. That law called for approximately $1.2 trillion in spending, about $550 billion newly authorized spending on top of regular expenditures. As Biden noted today, it was “the largest investment in our nation’s infrastructure in a generation.”

In the past three years, the Biden administration launched more than 66,000 projects across the country, repairing 196,000 miles of roads and 11,400 bridges, as well as replacing 367,000 lead pipes and modernizing ports and airports. Today the administration announced an additional $1.5 billion in funding for railroads along the Northeast Corridor, which carries five times more passengers a day than all the flights between Washington, D.C., and New York City.

In his first term, Trump had promised a bill to address the country’s long-neglected infrastructure, but his inability to get that done made “infrastructure week” a joke. Biden got a major bill passed, but while the administration nicknamed the law the “Big Deal,” Biden got very little credit for it politically. Republicans who had voted against the measure took credit for the projects it funded, and voters seemed not to factor in the jobs and improvements it brought when they went to the polls last week.

This lack of credit has implications beyond the Biden administration. As economist Mark Zandi told Joel Rose of NPR, “We need better infrastructure. We should continue to invest. But that's going to be hard to do politically because lawmakers are seeing what's happening here and they’re not getting credit for it.”

Meanwhile, President-elect Trump has been rapidly naming people he intends to nominate for his cabinet, and it is not going well. As Brian Tyler Cohen wrote on Bluesky: “The same people who’ve spent the last several years decrying ‘unqualified DEI hires’ are now shoehorning through Cabinet nominations who can’t even pass a basic background test.”

Cohen was not joking; Evan Perez, Zachary Cohen, Holmes Lybrand, and Kristen Holmes of CNN reported today that Trump’s transition team is skipping background checks by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, claiming that they are slow and intrusive.

But that lack of background checks has already mired Trump’s picks in controversy.

Trump has said he would nominate Pete Hegseth, an Army National Guard veteran and co-host on the weekend edition of Fox & Friends, to become the secretary of defense. Since that announcement, news has broken that a fellow service member who was the unit’s security guard and on an anti-terrorism team flagged Hegseth to their unit’s leadership because one of his tattoos is used by white supremacists. Extremist tattoos are prohibited by army regulations.

News broke today that a woman accused Hegseth of sexually assaulting her after a Republican conference in Monterey, California, in 2017. According to Michael Kranish, Josh Dawsey, Jonathan O’Connell, Dan Lamothe, and John Hudson of the Washington Post, the woman who made the allegation said the alleged victim had signed a nondisclosure agreement with Hegseth.

Now the transition team fears more revelations. “There’s a lot of frustration around this,” a member of the transition team told the Washington Post reporters. “He hadn’t been properly vetted.”

Causing even more headaches today for the transition team was Trump’s appointment of former Florida representative Matt Gaetz to become the United States attorney general. Immediately after Trump said he would nominate Gaetz, the representative resigned his congressional seat, forestalling the release of a House Ethics Committee report concerning allegations of drug use and that Gaetz had taken a minor across state lines for sex.

It is reported that the victim, who was a seventeen-year-old high-schooler at the time, testified before the committee.

After spending an evening with Trump at Mar-a-Lago, House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) said that publishing the report would be “terrible” and that he would “strongly request that the Ethics Committee not issue the report because that’s not the way we do things in the House.”

This, despite the fact that, as historian Kevin Kruse noted, “[f]or years now, the right has been accusing Democrats of running a shadowy conspiracy to protect politicians who are sex predators.” And, in fact, the House Ethics Committee did release a report on Representative William Boner (D-TN) in 1987 for allegations of corruption after he had already resigned the office to become mayor of Nashville.

And then there is Trump’s tapping of former Hawaii representative Tulsi Gabbard to be director of national intelligence (DNI). Gabbard’s ties to America’s adversaries, including Russia’s president Vladimir Putin and Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, have raised serious questions about her loyalty. Making her the country’s DNI would almost certainly collapse ongoing U.S. participation in the Five Eyes intelligence alliance in which the U.S., the U.K., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand have shared intelligence since World War II.

As former Illinois representative Joe Walsh wrote: “Donald Trump just picked someone to oversee our intelligence who, herself, couldn’t pass a security clearance check. She couldn’t get security clearance. She couldn’t get a job in our intelligence community. Because she’s too compromised by Russia. Yet Trump picked her to run the whole thing.”

Trump appears eager to demonstrate his control of Republicans in the Senate by ramming through appointments that will collapse the rule of law at home (Gaetz) and the international rules-based order globally (Hegseth and Gabbard). When Texas senator John Cornyn said he would like to see the Gaetz report, Trump loyalist Steve Bannon said: “You either get with the program, brother, or you're going to finish third in your primary.” A member of Trump’s transition team said that Trump wants to bend Republican senators to his will “until they snap in half.”

Despite the fact the Republicans will hold a majority in the Senate when Trump takes office, Trump’s picks are so deeply flawed and dangerous that Trump and his team knew they would not get confirmed. So they demanded that Republicans in the Senate give up their constitutional power of advising the president on high-level appointments and consenting to his picks: the “advice and consent” requirement of the Constitution.

Trump demanded that the Senate recess in order for him to push through his choices as recess appointments. Even the right-wing Wall Street Journal editorial board came out against this scheme, calling it “anti-constitutional” and noting that it would “eliminate one of the basic checks on power that the Founders built into the American system of government.”

Now, in order to bring senators to heel, the Trump team is threatening to start its own super PAC to undermine the existing Senate Leadership Fund, whose leaders they insist are not loyal enough to Trump. A person close to Trump said that Senate Republican leaders “should reflect current leadership and the future, not the past.” “It doesn’t make sense,” one Republican operative told Politico’s Natalie Allison, Ally Mutnick, and Adam Wren. “Trump just had this massive win and now they are bringing in this Never Trumper.”

But for all the spin, the political calculation for Republican senators is not as clear as the Trump team is trying to project. At 78, Trump is not exactly the face of the party’s future. Nor did he deliver a “massive win.” He won less than 50% of the popular vote with many voters apparently unaware of his policies, and while the Republicans did retake the Senate majority, they did so with very little help—financial or otherwise—from him. Republicans will have as bad a map in the 2026 midterm elections as the Democrats had in 2024, and Trump’s voters tend to be loyal to him and no one else, generally not turning out in midterms.

It is also possible that, aside from political calculations, enough Senate Republicans take seriously their oaths to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States” as well as the Senate’s role in the constitutional system of checks and balances that they will judge Trump’s antics with that in mind.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

#Heather Cox Richardson #Letters from An american #cabinet choices #Mike Luckovich #Senate Majority

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girldragongizzard · 7 months ago

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Chapter 17: It heal

I constantly have a growing number of questions for Chapman.

I finally remember one I want to ask, which I do so silently, by showing hir the screen of my tablet instead of hitting talk, “Why no human talk?”

We’re in the very back of a bar named Pooty’s. It’s on the same block as my building, right on the northeast corner, nearer to the Courthouse than the coffee shop is. The staff often go there after closing, but we’re here for dinner with those who are off. And the others aren’t sitting with us. Rhoda’s entertaining them at a table nearby, and we’re all watching the pool players.

Rhoda, Chapman, and Nathan, with the help of Seagull, have worked together to set something up for me that could seriously leverage any possible goodwill toward dragons that City Council might have.

County Council is going to have to come second.

Anyway, in preparation, Chapman has told the others that sie wants to confer with me alone for a bit and to make sure my tablet is in the best working order. Because I’m going to be relying on it.

Rhoda’s working with them to plan something else.

Chapman turns the tablet so it’s right side up for hir and considers my question.

When sie types something out and pushes it back, it says, “I cut corners for my prototype.”

We keep doing this for our whole conversation while drinking our own beers and eating a huge platter of fries that we’re sharing.

“Who for?” I ask. “Who people like me?”

“Trans people, like us,” Chapman replies.

“Prototype you? Or you prototype?” I hope that makes sense.

Chapman takes a little extra time, “I make prototype based on me. That way, spare clothes fit when someone tries it. Then we talk customizations.”

So, sie did make the prototype based on hir own body, but hir current body isn’t based on the prototype. That’s what I was curious about, briefly. Now I have another question.

“You make more?”

“Not yet.”

“Get easier with each?”

“A bit.”

I nod and ask, “Other dragons?”

“Can have. Not soon.” Chapman looks at me and says out loud, “We know we need to coordinate with them and prove that you can learn to be civil with each other. And we need to do it fast. And your discord server is a really good idea. So that’s what Rhoda’s talking about with the others. To figure out how to get their contact information so you can personally send invites. Our strategy, as you know, is two pronged. It has to be.”

I nod some more, like the human I resemble. This puts my bosom more into my lower peripheral vision and I see the second-hand Torrid dress I’m wearing. I am distracted by the novelty of this, but not necessarily in a good feeling way. I focus on the novelty and on Chapman’s words as best I can.

The TARDIS dress was destroyed in my demonstration to Seagull.

Chapman continues, “Your meeting with the Mayor, facilitated by the weekly, will help counter the alarmist propaganda the daily is publishing. The true locals are tuned to the weekly, even though it’s not on paper anymore. But the daily’s stories go right to the radio, as we’ve been hearing today. And that goes to the broader internet. And, on top of that, the local political establishment is currently behind the idea of running you all out of town.”

I nod once.

“The Mayor’s daughter is a dragon, though,” Chapman says. “Which is why we’ve got this interview. But we also absolutely need to rally the local dragons to cooperate. As quickly as possible. The Mayor’s daughter joining your discord might accelerate that. I feel it.” Sie considers me carefully for a moment, and then says, “Can I ask you a question this time? It’s really personal. I’ll keep it on the Tablet.”

I point at the tablet and nod.

“Can I scan your body when a dragon?” sie asks, then pushes the tablet toward me, initiating our ongoing silent exchange. The silence is for the wizardry stuff.

“Why?”

“Biology. Mating season. Important to know.”

That does make me feel a little weird in a mostly fun way. But, regardless, I answer, “Yes.” Because I want to learn what sie learns from that.

“See if you lay eggs,” Chapman says. “But also deeper.”

Ooh, “Yes.”

“I have theory.”

“What?”

“OK, so,” Chapman says out loud again. “There’s this idea, and I think it might be true, that dragons all work similarly to a set of salamanders when it comes to mating. Y - er, they might all be physiologically females. But these salamanders are really cool!” Sie pulls the tablet over to hirself and starts searching Wikipedia to bring up the relevant article. “They aren’t really a species. Scientists are calling them a bioform. Because what they do is they harvest DNA from a variety of other completely different salamanders. Each member of this bioform can collect spermatozoa from other salamanders and harvest just part of the DNA and store it for later. They can mix and match from all their off-species mates, and then have a clutch based on that.”

Sie looks at me to see if I’m understanding that. I hesitantly nod after a moment. More hesitant from the scrutiny than anything. What sie is saying makes a lot of sense and sounds really cool. I had no idea anything could do that, but why not, though?

“It’s not conscious, of course, and no one knows if there’s any logic to it, any rules or laws or if it’s random,” sie explains. “But, it happens and can be studied. And it results in a group of amphibians that are chimerical in a way that is only rivaled by one other set of bioforms on the planet now, that we know of. Dragons.”

“Beyond rad,” I reply with the tablet.

Chapman nods now, “Some people think that dragons can do this with a wider range of species, and that’s why y - they’re all so different. Of course, the sudden appearance of dragons seems to prove the presence of some kind of divine or magical power in the world, and a lot of people think dragons embody that power and use it to do otherwise biologically impossible things, too. And, I’m not exactly skeptical.”

“What do with Mayor and discord?” I ask.

Chapman glances at my question and tightens hir lips. “People who are aware of this theory, or who have the time to consider it – people who are not necessarily politicians – are concerned that this could make mating season, this Spring, particularly fraught. Of course, we may get our answers sooner, since mating season is just starting for the Southern hemisphere.”

“We fix before,” I say out loud, hitting talk.

“That’s what everyone hopes, yes. But if we can find out we can make better plans, and it behooves everyone to take the future into account while addressing the present. Fortunately, a lot of the people I know are very good at doing that.”

While I’m thinking about that and formulating a response or a question that could provoke more interesting revelations, we’re approached by a couple of men with pool cues in hand.

This is not a college pickup bar. Back in 2005 it was a bit of a music venue, but when stricter noise ordinances (which I do violate) got passed, Pooty’s stopped hosting shows. Now it’s what locals call an industry bar. A place where other food service workers collect to relax and commiserate with the staff. But we’re both vaguely feminine looking people who appear to be in our 30s, and I guess we’re cute? But cute to straight men? Really?

“Would either of you ladies like to join us in a game? We could play partners?” one of the men asks.

Oh, that’s easy. We could have fun playing, and we have a bunch of our friends here to watch out for us. So we could risk saying, “Yes.” But they’re not my type, and…

“Thank you, boys,” Chapman says in a lower register than I typically hear, dropping hir voice from a maple syrup tenor into a molasses and bourbon baritone. “She’s the only lady here. And while I’d normally take you up on it – I love pool – we’re here on business and have kind of a time crunch. You understand.”

I nod in Chapman’s direction when sie says, “business”.

“Ah, of course. Sorry to interrupt,” says the other guy, who then elbows his friend and gestures back at their table with his head.

Nice. No scene.

“You use magic?” I ask Chapman silently.

Sie takes the tablet and responds, “You didn’t feel it?”

“Not when human,” I reply. “I don’t think.”

I’d been paying attention for the day, as we did things, and looking out for times I thought Chapman would be using magic. And I have yet to have felt a shift while wearing the pendant.

“Oh, really?” Chapman asks. “I will update notes. And we should test it for real. Didn’t use magic.”

“Nice guys.”

“Eh.”

We hear them laughing with each other, and both glance their direction to see them glancing back out of the corners of their eyes and elbowing each other.

OK. Maybe not.

The Pacific Northwest (or Seattle) Freeze, a standard of regional conduct, can really cut down on a lot of surface impoliteness when people are talking face to face. But the moment you turn your backs to each other, the knives do get sharpened sometimes.

I grew up here and never really noticed it before until Rhoda pointed it out one day. She’d been really frustrated by it, being a transplant from New York, herself.

Now I feel like I’m seeing it in action in stark relief to what I’m used to. But I wonder if it’s some kind of bias introduced by my new position in life.

I have a growing group of people who care about and support me, and I’m also hyperaware of my differences with humans, and how humans act around me. Especially since being targeted by the police.

On the other hand, I haven’t had much time to practice pretending to be human today. I’ve been so busy, and it’s my first day with the pendant.

I bet my mannerisms look really weird. Maybe cute, but really weird to those guys. It’s probably what got their attention. Maybe they mistook us for sisters. And then, based on our reaction, now I bet they think we’re queer, which would be right. And my weirdness becomes the subject of laughter.

Great.

“Let’s rejoin the others,” Chapman says.

Good idea, but I have one more question for hir.

“What your full name?” I ask.

Chapman smiles and almost breaks out in giggles, and then types it into the tablet, “Chap Man.” Then sie says, “In a phone book, I’d be listed as Man Chap. Which I think is funny. Chap is my first name and Man is my last. Legally. But I wanted a single word name, and that’s the easiest way to do it so that it still works with most databases. It’s really just Chapman.”

“Why Chapman?” I ask.

Sie shrugs, “I just really like the sound of it. It kind of subtly counteracts how femme I like to dress sometimes.” The sie asks, “Why’d you pick Meghan?”

“Not brave warrior. Though am,” I reply. “Real reason. Rhymes with dragon.”

“God, you’re such a trans girl.”

“Also. Meg short for Megabyte. Or Megalodon. Or Megnificent.”

“More damning evidence! Come on.”

—

Alone again with Chapman, it’s 2 AM and we’re back on the roof of my building.

I’m wondering once more where that first helicopter came from. None of us have found the answers to that. It wasn’t mentioned in any of the brief press releases the police chief issued earlier in the day. And I think we’re all hoping it will be made known by Monday night, just for curiosity’s sake. But maybe for legal reasons, too.

That said, my own reason for worrying about it is that it had directly targeted me. And now I’m standing on the place where it had done that, and I’m taking off my disguise.

Chapman got us up here through the lobby, the elevator, and the roof access, all without consulting property management. Of course.

Only Rhoda knows we’re up here, but she went to bed a while ago.

Since Chapman has obviously seen my naked human form, as sie had designed it based on what sie saw in the mirror before top surgery and hir queer makeover, I just take off my clothes and carefully fold them near the access hatch. And then I slip off the pendant, dropping it onto the roof in the process.

And stretch.

“Meg,” I say, like a cute cartoon animal voiced by an Angelina Joli impersonator.

“Oh, that’s a good thing to know how to say!” Chapman exclaims. “Your own name is important. OK.” Sie takes a gunfighter stance, with finger guns at hips, “You ready to be scanned?”

Sie had already just scanned me while I was disguised, and I didn’t feel a thing. This time I definitely feel the shift.

My sense of it is so discerning, I can pinpoint it to just behind Chapman’s sternum, right next to hir heart.

I’ve heard that people don’t perceive their center of consciousness to be in their head. They perceive it to be in or near their heart, and I wonder if Chapman’s one of them. But it’s not like I can scan hir.

“Theory supported!” Chapman declares. “You lay eggs, Meg. And you share that reproductive trait of those salamanders I was telling you about. It just remains to be seen what other dragons are like. Dammit, I love it when we all guess right, though.”

I lay eggs.

Yes!

Chapman walks around to face me more directly from my front, which isn’t ever strictly necessary for me, since I can look anywhere, and then says, “Thank you for consenting to that. It was a really invasive procedure. That’s intimate personal knowledge, and I swear I’ll keep your personal information secret. When it comes to body and mind, as opposed to actions and situations, I like to keep my scans based on full informed consent, if I can.”

I cat smile and say, “Yes.”

“In an emergency, though, I will probably do what I need to do to keep everyone safe,” sie adds. “That’s also something you should be fully aware of.”

“Okay,” I say.

That was a complex one to learn. My first two syllable word. But it seemed important and really useful. It does sound a little less human when I say it, though. What would be the velar plosive in a human, the “k” sound, has an extra kind of record scratch noise to it when I render it.

“Oh, you know just enough words now you could make a simple sentence. Have you tried that yet?” Chapman asks.

“No,” I say. Then I select a couple other words to try to say in succession, and manage, “Now. Yes.”

It doesn’t sound like a sentence to my ears, but I know it can be one.

My verbal vocabulary is at eleven words, and I’m thinking of more I wish I could say right now. But I’ve got my AAC, which is fine for longer conversations. And, once I have that keyboard and computer set up, I’m going to write so much. The words I chose to learn are the ones I thought would be most useful to say quickly in critical moments. Words that might bring another dragon up short, so that I can take the time to pull out my tablet.

I huff.

I’m starting to realize just how much of my time is spent communicating.

I mean, it’s mostly what humans do most of the time anyway. But when you’re used to doing that so easily that you take it for granted, it can be a shock to lose most of that ability all of a sudden. And, by the third day, just before Rhoda had pointed me toward that app, the novelty of playing charades as a dragon was wearing off and I was so ready for something more.

I mean, I was mostly used to sitting around my apartment or my old corner of the coffee shop without anyone talking to me, before. But I still talked way more easily than I do now.

And then, after Rhoda gave me that app, things just got so intense so quickly.

But the only way to get a handle on it all without getting more seriously hurt or captured was to talk. And, sometimes to talk as fast as possible while being so impaired.

I think I’ve been doing pretty well, but I’m tired.

And it’s been a long day of talking, too. And I spent so much of it disguised as human and uncomfortable about it.

I go back to my purse, which I took off with my clothes, and hold it up and look at Chapman. I probably should have tried leaving it around my neck, but I didn’t want to risk hurting it.

Chapman obliges and comes over to help me put it back on.

Then, I pull out my tablet and put it on the roof, then curl up with it in front of me and hit, “Thank you.”

“Past my bedtime too. You’re very welcome, of course,” Chapman says. Sie looks up at the stars for a while, then says, “Don’t change anything. Do your thing in the morning, when you normally would. Keep the routine. Let’s see how the city responds. And… dammit. We didn’t do anything about that gash! We just hid it under my magic.”

Through the dull ache and occasional sting of my wound, I am amused that Chapman finally referred to hir art as “magic”. Sie will never do that with humans around.

For some reason, though, I’m not really worried about it.

“It heal,” I say.

“Uh-uh,” Chapman says. “I’m going to work with Rhoda to come back with a vet for you. We should at least suture it. I’ll do it myself if I have to.”

“Okay,” I reply. Then lie my head down on my wing claws, loafing with my other four limbs, and say, “Go.”

“Have a good night,” Chapman says and heads for the hatch.

I smile.

Sie pauses before opening up the access, and turns and says, “I wanted to be funny and hit you with some song lyrics, but I can’t think of any.”

I lift my head.

I haven’t listened to music for the past seven days. I’ve heard music at the shop and Pooty’s, but I wasn’t listening. And I used to wear headphones all the time.

What changed?

#writeblr #dragon #original fiction #serial fiction #transformation #transgender

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rjzimmerman · 10 months ago

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Excerpt from this story from Inside Climate News:

Many existing marine protected areas might be something like screen doors on a submarine, at least as far as their impact on ocean conservation.

A new study finds that only a third of the world’s largest marine protected areas (MPAs) currently implement meaningful conservation measures.

Increasingly, marine conservation is the art of separating humans from parts of the ocean. More often than not, marine protected areas, swaths of the sea that are set aside and managed to preserve sea life and its habitats, are the flagship models for government efforts to accomplish this.

However, a recent analysis published in Conservation Letters revealed alarming inadequacies in the effectiveness of the world’s largest MPAs. The study, conducted by an international group of researchers spearheaded by the Marine Conservation Institute in Seattle, Washington, focused on the largest 100 MPAs in the world, which together encompass over 7 percent of the world’s ocean area.

“There are 18,000 MPAs, but a hundred of them make up 90 percent of the area,” said Beth Pike, director of the Marine Protection Atlas and the study’s lead author. “These are the big needle movers.”

Pike and her colleagues found only a third of these MPAs’ total expanse to be under high or full protection—just 2.6 percent of the global ocean footprint. They found another third of these MPAs’ territories allowed for destructive activities, such as mining and industrial fishing, making them inherently incompatible with conservation. Additionally, another quarter of the protected area they analyzed were deemed “paper parks,” meaning that while these ocean spaces had been officially proposed or designated as MPAs, they had yet to implement any subsequent conservation measures. For example, over 60 percent of the OSPAR MPA network, which jointly covers roughly 7 percent of the Northeast Atlantic Ocean, appears to have benefited from no protection activities aside from its listing as a protected area.

These findings stand in stark contrast with the agreement by 188 governments to protect 30 percent of the world’s lands and waters by 2030—the 30×30 initiative—in the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework adopted during the United Nations Biodiversity Conference (COP15), in December 2022.

#marine protected areas #oceans #marine ecology

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honoringthor · 6 months ago

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Updated.. 1/11/2025

I’m taking the time to learn more about where I live outside of the local flours and fauna. I’m starting with

The Eries . 🍒

Their were a lot of Confederacies in the Northeast US

Chautauqua County, was once home to a people called the Erie who were nearly wiped out by the Haudenosaunee in the Beaver war. (Kind of had to drag myself out of a rabbit hole writing this)

They’re the people that Lake Erie, Erie County, and Erie, Pennsylvania are named after.

🐱The Erie were also called the Eriez, Nation du Chat, (Nation of the Cat) Yenresh, Eriechronen, and Riquérohon among other names. A lot of their various names are said to reference long tail or cat. However it more likely means people of the Cherry. 🍒 🐈‍⬛🦝. The Black Cherry (I’ll probably profile it soon) is native to the area and it was most definitely used by the people living in Chautauqua county.

They were Iroquoian* like most of the people living in the Northeast US. The Erie appear to have lived in a similar way to their neighbors. They lived in long houses arranged in palisaded villages because like everyone else they often got into skirmishes with neighbors. They farmed using the 3 sisters method🌽🫛🎃 The Erie are said to have used poison arrows and some wore puma or raccoon tails, hence their French name. They traded with the Sesquehannok and others. The Haudenosaunee say they came from the St. Laurence river valley and took over from a mound building society.

This information was gleaned from second hand accounts told by other indigenous peoples, especially the Huron, to Jesuit priests and trappers. Despite not really interacting with Europeans as far as we know, The Eries demise was indirectly caused by them. This was through a combination of European disease (entire communities were wiped out)and the and the demand for beaver pelts which lead to the Beaver Wars.

🦫The disagreements escalated when the Erie overhunted the beavers they used to trade for European goods. They would give the pelts to other tribes who would pay them with European stuff, except guns, no one wanted them to have guns. Because of this they encroached on other peoples territory more than usual. During this time The Haudenosaunee League were also fighting with the Huron ( and pretty much everyone else) to gain a monopoly on beaver. (The Beaver war)The Huron were loosing, badly. The Erie took in some of the Huron refugees and refused to turn them over to the Haudenosaunee,specifically the Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga. The Haudenosaunee were made up of 5 other tribes at the time, now it’s 6 and they’re a confederacy now. Erie also killed a Seneca sachem, Annencraos, during a raid into Seneca territory.

The Erie weren’t immediately attacked though. The Haudenosaunee and Erie had a peace conference to avoid a war. For some reason, possibly after losing multiple sporting events, the Erie leader started killing the delegates. They then went on to launch an assault on the Seneca. This is despite their biggest allies, the Sesquehannok, being unable to help them because they were actively being attacked by the Mohawk Oneida branch of the Haudenosaunee. This isolated the Erie. The Haudenosaunee also had guns and knew how to use them.

This started a war between the Haudenosaunee League and the Erie. The Erie held their own for the first year but In the end they were defeated, dispersed and absorbed. Some Eries went to Ohio and joined the Seneca and Cayuga there,( they ended up in Oklahoma) others may have went to Virginia and became the Rochahecrian, and South Carolina where they became the Westro.

Sources

Avon history OH

Eries

*Iroquoian refers to the ethnolingustic group the Eries, Huron Wyandot , Haudenosaunee Confederacy, Petun,Sesquehannok, and Cherokee among others belong to.

Probably going to write about the beavers wars and the Seneca later. May also post about the ill fated peace conference/sporting event too.

If anyone has anything to contribute feel free, I’d like to learn more.

#genus loci #lake erie #erie pa #Erie #Eries #local history #I’m not a historian #Haudenosaunee #Chautauqua #native american #beaver war #colonialism #wyandotte #huron #updated

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coochiequeens · 4 months ago

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The dude was competing on the women's fencing team one month after competing on the men's team.

By Amy Hamm December 10, 2024

A trans-identified male college athlete has been quietly moved onto the women’s fencing team at Wagner College, and may now be collecting a women’s scholarship. Redmond Sullivan, who had previously competed on both the male and female teams simultaneously, seized gold in the women’s category at the Connecticut Division Junior Olympic Qualifier last week.

Sullivan first began competing in female sports while attending Daniel Hand High School in Connecticut, where he won a state championship in girls track and field for shot put during a Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference (CIAC) competition

According to the results of the CIAC meet, Daniel Hand High School would have placed fourth had it not been for Sullivan’s dominating performance in the girls category, during which he threw the shot put nearly four feet farther than his second-place female competitor. Sullivan was the only student athlete to make it in the CIAC championship Top 10 during their first year of competition.

That same year, while competing in girls shot put and discus, he earned first, second, or third place in 14 separate competitions. Bizarrely, Sullivan was allowed to compete in girls track and field while he was also competing in boys fencing at the same school.

After graduation, Sullivan began attending Wagner College in Staten Island, New York. He joined the men’s fencing team, and participated in the New England Division USFA Pomme De Terre on June 17, 2023, during which he placed 29th out of 58 male competitors. As late as October of 2023, Sullivan was still classified as a fencer on the men’s team. But just one month later, he began competing in women’s fencing.

His transfer to the women’s team was unannounced by Wagner, and Sullivan enjoyed a significant improvement in his performance after beginning to compete against females.

At the Northeast Fencing Conference Varsity Meet in November, Sullivan won 3-0 in all of his matchups. Then, at the December 1 Seahawks Invitational, a fencing competition for Wagner College, Sullivan won two out of three fencing sets in the female category.

On Sunday, Sullivan won gold at the Connecticut Division Junior Olympic Qualifier in the Junior Women’s Foil.

Wagner College has not responded to a request for comment. On their website, the school claims to be “committed to stopping sex discrimination” in compliance with U.S. Title IX, a 1972 law that is supposed to guarantee equal opportunities for female students, including athletes.

In 2021, the Biden administration extended Title IX protections to transgender individuals, preventing the ability for colleges to keep males out of female sports. Several Republican states have sued over the federal changes to Title IX, arguing that it is unsafe and unfair for female athletes. President Elect Donald Trump has claimed he will, once in office, make changes to “keep men out of women’s sports.”

Wagner College also touts its “inclusive and supportive environments for LGBTQIA+ students.” They have published a list of “gender inclusive bathrooms” across the campus, and also instruct students to “honor the personal pronouns [of others] even when the person is not present” and to “not disclose a person’s gender identity unless you have obtained their consent.”

Marshi Smith, co-founder of the Independent Council on Women’s Sport (ICONS), condemned Wagner College for allowing Sullivan to compete against females, and added that National Collegiate Athletics Association policies have emboldened colleges to protect trans-identified male athletes.

“The NCAA is repeatedly rewarding the replacement of women in order to champion men in women’s sports. This ongoing pattern of discrimination is why we are supporting a female athlete’s lawsuit against the organization. Legal action is necessary to hold the NCAA accountable for its repeated failures to uphold fairness and equality in women’s sports, with fencing being a particularly troubling example,” she says.

In March, ICONS filed a lawsuit against the NCAA on behalf of over one dozen female athletes for letting transgender athletes compete in women’s sports and use female locker rooms.

At the center of the class-action suit is Lia Thomas, a trans-identified male who dominated the 2022 NCAA Swimming Championships while a student at the University of Pennsylvania. Thomas fared poorly while participating in male sport, but began racking up medals after transferring to the women’s team.

#USA #Connecticut #Wagner College #Connecticut Division Junior Olympic Qualifier #Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference (CIAC)#New England Division USFA Pomme De Terre #SaveWomensSportsSaturday #Title IX

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