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indirecticn · 7 months

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i watched thor again... bro so many thoughts???

firstly, my GOD they were young.

secondly... ok just a recap on observations about loki.

lets assume thor was never banished. i truly don't think he believed odin would do that. i think this wasn't just a prank either, obviously. it was a real attempt to be like, "SEE??? SEE???!!?" and it feels VERY hormonal teenage angst.

ok so then how old is loki in mortal years? i know people did the math and said 16, some said 21. i guess assume 5k is the length of their lifespan, that is a third of his life. but is their maturity biologically speaking easily sliced into equal parts? i don't think so.

i think their physiology has them physically maturing quickly, the physiology it's self a result of celestial genes??? where beings of that sort of energy and existence are meant to mature quickly but then these beings replicate or take on a more base lifeform to interact with other similar base lifeforms and so you have like the blood of celestials now slightly diluted among various alien species?

ok so assuming that then now we have the children of the children of the children of the children and what have you so various species across the universe can probably atest some of their own powers and shit to the same thing.

ANYWAY MY POINT IS now they still mature physically but mentally they aren't this omnipresence but they still call themselves as much when realizing other creatures of the universe don't have the same power.

so loki looks like he's early twenties at this point but is technically much older and with a perception of time so different when you know you live 5k your years as a youth are extended compared to that of beings. especially when you consider the fact that some animals do have varying lengths to the stages of their life. some stay in the juvenile stage for hundreds of years (ex: greenland shark), but then it also depends on how you want to define what makes a being move on to the next life stage.

SO THAT is a good question but anyway.....

say thor is not banished, loki gets what he wants: a brief stay to the coronation. i 1000 percent believe his wanting to sabotage isn't just to be a jerk ass, but a true concern for what thor's actual ruling style would be. i think he just sees thor as also too immature and lacking in true political prowess.

but under that is a true issue he hasn't yet fully faced which is how much he wishes to be taken more serious. it's like... you are the little brother of a kid who does everything right, even when it's wrong. first you like to imitate but you keep getting caught and your brother is never held to the same standard for some reason. you don't get it so you just think well fine ill do the one thing better than him: not get caught.

and so you develop your gift and you find really the deeper issue is your father seems more and more distant to you as you grow up, and you can't figure it out. it's not like he completely dismisses you but he definitely spends more energy on thor, right? so you spend your time with your mom and learn even more things, maybe stuff considered by the wider culture to be sneaky and shit, so also conflated with being a woman's thing (very outdated, you know, but people on asgard are surprisingly behind with the times cosmically in certain social ideals...) and this is how things go for a thousand years.

until you really cant take it and while... if this had been just another simple feast, or something like that, thor would have been pissed and you wouldn't have gone to the extreme just to get his goat, so to speak. he'd be mad and you would fight but like you always do.

buuuut yeah, its more serious, so you choose to do a more serious thing and the result is you know why your father has been distant, what thing he was thinking about when choosing to spend time and energy on thor instead of you, and you also get why both parents seemed more harsh on you, or at least you think you do. you assume its because they were worried your monster would show, would grow.

but you think that because you're still relatively young and you are hurt as fuck by all this shit, even if the revelation came about because you fucked up and took something to an extreme it shouldn't have been taken to.

anyway so now im watching avengers and i 1000000 percent am on board with the idea that loki was tortured into submission to thanos. by the time we see him there he is literally looking like absolute shit and we know that isn't because of the portal travel through the tesseract. that thing allowed plenty of people to safely travel in the what if series.

its because he has been freshly let go and given a chance to fuck shit up. and his hatred and pain has been nourished and you are under the minor influence of the mind stone that is just an echo chamber for your pain, a feedback loop that keeps you unhinged far longer than you would have been without it.

so yeah come dark world.. you are scarred from that torture, you are angry at yourself as much as everyone else and you haven't worked through your issues at all. going to a dungeon cell for over a year just makes you sit and stew. maybe if it were five years later he would have come to better terms, allowed his mother to finally talk to him, but that doesn't happen.

and instead what does happen is dark world shit, and he realizes he can get what he wants, odin is tired and thor clearly doesnt want the throne right now so why not do everyone a fucking favor?

and then it's four years later... five since you were put in the dungeon, six since you fell from the bifrost, and maybe... just maybe... its easy to mask your pain literally, by being someone else in front of everyone else and you think haha im proving to everyone that i am capable and a better ruler, but deep down:

bitch, no, you are just fooling yourself.

so this is where MY loki comes into play, ragnarok happens and he sticks with thor because both men seem to have hit a new stage in their life cycles, and loki is still coming to terms with his entire youth and beginnings when he helps the avengers save the world (after being blipped ofc). new asgard is a new beginning, and king val is also a huge step up from odin and thor, honestly. he can support her and feel GOOD about it.

thanks for coming to my ted talk.

#ooc #headcanon #woof

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blueiscoool · 2 years

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A 2,200-year-old Silver Coin Hoard Found at Desert Cave in Israel

Hidden under a swatch of purple, coins found in a Dead Sea cave weren’t from the Bar Kochba period but from Hasmonean era centuries earlier.

Roughly 2,200 years ago, somebody hid a wooden box with 15 silver coins in a cave in the Judaea Desert. The box would lie moldering in the crack into which it had been shoved until earlier this year, when it was found by archaeologists with the Israel Antiquities Authority carrying out surveys.

The find was made in Muraba’at Cave, now part of the Nahal Darga Nature Reserve by the Dead Sea (some call it the Wadi Darageh). The cave had famously sheltered Jews fleeing the Romans at the end of the ill-fated Bar Kochba revolt that began in 132 C.E. But these newly unearthed coins are the first solid evidence of people using the cave to hide centuries earlier, at the end of the Hasmonean period, the Israel Antiquities Authority says.

This season’s excavations in the cave, in the framework of the Judean Desert Excavation and Survey Project, began last March. The cave is a big one, about 100 meters (nearly 330 feet) deep, and archaeology is a painstaking profession, so the team “had been digging for almost two months when we found the treasure in May,” says the IAA’s Eitan Klein.

The excavation process involves gingerly and meticulously removing layers while keeping a sharp eye out for finds, he explains – and one can’t think of the cave like a room, with smooth walls and corners. It’s a convoluted, craggy, jagged place and at some point, excavating a previously unexplored spot, as they removed dirt from a crack – there it was, he says.

A moment of purple

The container was made of wood turned on a lathe, and though rare – if only because most wooden boxes from that period would long have returned to dust – such items aren’t unknown, Klein says. “A box like this was found in Ein Gedi, for instance, but it wasn’t as beautifully finished. Here and there, they do show up. But because they’re organic, only ones left in the deserts have survived.”

Okay. Having extracted the ancient box from the dirt filling the crack, the archaeologists prised off its lid – and were greeted by the sight of more dirt, with some small pebbles. So far, not the stuff of thrillers.

But below the dirt was a piece of woolen cloth dyed purple. Was it – could it have been – dyed with the royal purple, the precious dye extracted from the shell of the unfortunate Murex snail? Samples of textiles dyed with real purple, which is associated with the 1 percenters of biblical times, have been found in Timna (the ancient copper mine in the Negev anecdotally associated with King Solomon), from a thousand years before this box entered the world.

However, it cannot be said that this textile in the lathe-carved wooden container was that same precious royal purple because it remains to be analyzed, Klein says.

Anyway, below it, nestled lovingly in a clump of sheep’s wool, were the 15 coins. Before analysis, the coins had to be cleaned: they corrode after 2,200 years in a box, Klein notes. The coins were analyzed by Klein together with numismatist Gabriela Bijovsky.

As said, Muraba’at was known to have sheltered Jews fleeing from the Romans when the Bar Kochba revolt failed in 136 C.E. But once the coins were restored to their shiny original condition, the team was in for a shock. “Often, ancient coins bear inscriptions and symbols that help date them,” Klein says. These did – and, lo, they predated Bar Kochba by centuries.

All were silver tetradrachma minted by Ptolemy VI, king of Egypt. Three had been manufactured in 176-175 B.C.E., and the latest one was dated to 171-170 B.C.E., which is associated with the onset of the Maccabean Revolt following anti-Jewish decrees issued by the Seleucid emperor Antiochus IV Epiphanes.

Egypt had ruled Judea for a time many centuries earlier, but certainly not when these coins were minted. When Ptolemy VI reigned over Egypt, the Seleucid kingdom, including Judea, was under the scepter of his uncle Antiochus IV Epiphanes (aka “the Wicked”).

The name “Shalmai” in Aramaic script was found secondarily incised on one of the coins, the IAA says.

And thus, we have actual evidence of rebels fleeing to the Negev as the struggle between the Hellenistic regime and the Hasmoneans wound down. No evidence of that whatsoever has been found until now, Klein spells out, so the discovery was quite the surprise. “I was sure they’d be Bar Kochba coins,” he says.

Apropos, the contents of the box may seem bewildering: precious silver coins wrapped in wool, covered by purple textile no less, then dirt. Klein is not bewildered. For one thing, all that padding – which is what it boils down to – would protect the coins. Chiefly, though, Klein surmises that the owner was in flight and didn’t want his stash to rattle in the box.

That theory would also fit with the manner in which the treasure was hidden, and we can even speculate as to the fate of its owner – because they were still there after 2,200 years.

“It says in the Book of Maccabees that Jews fled to the desert, and now we have proven it true,” says Klein. “This is an absolutely unique find.”

Maybe that is why the coins were still there, found with other stuff from times of yore – including fragments of rope and textiles, other coins that may be from the Bar Kochba period and even tiny fragments of scrolls, Klein reveals.

When the dig of the cave resumes later this month, they hope to find even more. However, it will be hard to beat some of the other artifacts found during the surveys in the desert. These include a large basket gorgeously weaved over 10,000 years ago, which, like the wooden box, survived thanks to having been abandoned in one of the drier places on Earth.

By Ruth Schuster.

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ausetkmt · 2 years

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Across the country hundreds of thousands of Americans with serious mental illnesses, such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, have been consigned to lives of profound instability. Instead of therapists to help them manage their illnesses or doctors to oversee their medication regimens or evidence-based treatment for their substance use disorders, they cycle through homeless shelters and the jails and prisons that have become the nation’s largest mental health providers. Or they make their homes on the streets. They are victims of a mental health system that is not designed to meet their needs — and of a society that has proved mostly indifferent to their plight.

Few Americans are receiving adequate psychiatric care or psychological support these days — either because their health insurance doesn’t cover it, or because they don’t have insurance to begin with, or because wait lists run far too long. But even amid such pervasive insufficiency, society’s neglect of the most severely mentally ill stands out. Of the 14 million or so people who experience the most debilitating mental health conditions, roughly one-third don’t receive treatment. The reasons are manifold — some forgo that treatment by choice — but far too many simply cannot connect with the services they want and need.

The most obvious reason is money. Community-based mental health clinics serve the vast majority of Americans with serious mental illnesses. These patients tend to be low-income, to be disabled and to rely on Medicaid, whose reimbursement rates are so abysmal that clinics lose money on nearly every service their doctors provide. “They get 60 to 70 cents on the dollar,” says Chuck Ingoglia, president of the National Council for Mental Wellbeing, a nonprofit representing thousands of U.S. community mental health centers. “I don’t know any other part of health care where your physician is your loss leader.” As a result, staff vacancies can run upward of 30 percent in public mental health clinics and waiting lists can stretch for months, even for people in crisis.

In many ways, the criminal justice system has become the only reprieve: Because court-ordered patients are granted priority, pressing charges against loved ones is a common way to get them psychiatric attention in a crisis. Jails and prisons also serve as final landings for those who fall through the cracks: They make up the three largest psychiatric facilities in the country, and more than 40 percent of the nation’s inmates have been diagnosed with mental disorders.

Americans have long accepted that, tragic though it may be, there are no other options. That apathy is easy to understand. When it comes to caring for the mentally ill, the arc of American history has nearly always bent toward failure. But the policies and programs that could undo this crisis have existed for decades.

In 1963, in what would turn out to be the last bill he signed into law, President John F. Kennedy laid out his vision for “a wholly new emphasis and approach to care for the mentally ill.” It involved closing the nation’s state psychiatric hospitals — which had become dens of neglect and abuse — and replacing them with a national network of community mental health centers. The centers, unlike the hospitals, would support and treat the formerly institutionalized so that they could live freely in their communities, with as much dignity as possible.

Lawmakers and health officials executed the first half of that vision with alacrity. Thanks to a roster of forces — Kennedy’s bill, new and effective antipsychotic drugs and a rising tide of activism for patients’ rights — the number of people housed in large psychiatric hospitals fell by 95 percent between the 1950s and the 1990s. But nearly 60 years after Kennedy’s bill became law, health officials and lawmakers have yet to realize the second half: There is still no community mental health system in America, but it is possible to start building one now.

Dr. Steven Sharfstein remembers the Boston State Hospital in Mattapan, a creaking 19th-century building where he and his fellow psychiatry residents were forced to send their most intractable patients.

“It was a terrible place,” says Dr. Sharfstein, who served as president of the American Psychiatric Association. “The lights didn’t always work, the patients wandered around like zombies. Nobody got better.”

Eventually, he and his fellow residents banded together and refused to go. Move the patients back to central Boston, they insisted, and treat them at the community mental health center. Their small protest was part of a growing movement to close state psychiatric hospitals across the nation and replace them with community-based care.

Those hospitals had also arisen from a movement: In the mid-1800s, after visiting hundreds of almshouses, jails and hospitals and seeing the horrid conditions that most people with mental illnesses lived in, the reformer Dorothea Dix begged health officials to create asylums where those patients could be treated more humanely. The first such facilities were small, designed for short-term, therapeutic care, and functioned more or less as Dix had hoped they would. But as local officials began foisting more of their indigent populations onto the states, they morphed into human warehouses. By the time Dr. Sharfstein started his career, most of them held upward of 3,000 patients, often for years at a time.

Advocates of a community-based approach argued that even the sickest psychiatric patients deserved to live in or near their own communities, that they should be cared for in the least restrictive settings possible and that with the right treatment (humane, respectful, evidence-based) the vast majority of them could recover and even thrive.

Kennedy’s bill was meant to enshrine these principles. The plan was to build some 1,500 community mental health centers across the country, each of which would provide five essential services: community education, inpatient and outpatient facilities, emergency response and partial hospitalization programs. Ultimately, the centers would serve as a single point of contact for patients in a given catchment area who needed not just access to psychiatric care but also help navigating the outside world.

Part III

Power, Politics and Feelings

The law did not provide long-term funding to sustain these new clinics — just seed grants for planning, construction and initial staffing. The hope was that once those grants expired, states would step in with their own resources. But this thinking proved overly optimistic. Rather than invest the money saved through asylum closures on mental health clinics, most states spent it on other priorities, such as cutting taxes or shoring up pensions.

As the initial grants ran out, programs that had been designed specifically for people with serious mental illnesses shifted focus, Dr. Sharfstein says. Some turned their attention to patients with better health insurance than the indigent had. Others tried tackling an array of nonpsychiatric crises. Alleviate homelessness and food insecurity, the thinking went, and even the most seemingly intractable mental illnesses would all but disappear. “Obviously, there is inherent value in addressing social ills,” says Dr. Paul Appelbaum, a Columbia University psychiatrist and an expert on the intersection of mental illness and law. “But the concept of community mental health became diluted to the point that it neglected psychiatric treatment.”

Congress tried to revive the flailing community mental health initiative in 1980, with a bill that would have more than doubled the federal government’s investment in Kennedy’s original plan. President Jimmy Carter signed that bill into law, but President Ronald Reagan repealed it the following year. He replaced it with a block grant program that gave state leaders broad discretion in how they spent federal mental health dollars. “It was more or less the death knell for a national community mental health system,” Dr. Appelbaum says. “They spent the money on all sorts of things, including things that we already knew were not working.”

In the end, less than half of the centers that Kennedy had envisioned were ever built. Marginalized people continued to spill out of state psychiatric institutions but found no meaningful safety net. By the 1990s, they were turning up in prisons and homeless shelters once again.

What stands out about this history now is not how disastrously wrong it all went but how close officials came to getting it right. The catchment area model laid out in the Kennedy bill would enable people in psychiatric distress to remain anchored in their communities. And single-point-of-access clinics would help families in crisis avoid the desperate gambit of seeking care through courts and judges. “The community mental health model was the right one,” says Dr. Appelbaum. “I talk to so many families who are in crisis today, and they have no idea where to turn.”

Congress could correct course now by writing a new bill that pulls the best of these past attempts together and builds on them.

Federal officials took a promising step in that direction in 2014, when they created a new community mental health demonstration project that enables Medicaid to pay mental health clinics based on what it actually costs to care for patients. “There are so many things you do to support a person with a serious mental illness that you cannot get reimbursed for,” says Mr. Ingoglia, of the National Council for Mental Wellbeing. “Sending case managers to jails and prisons and state hospitals to help clients transition into outpatient care. Working with police to screen the people that they encounter in their work.” The pilot program factors these essentials into the cost of care and reimburses centers accordingly.

So far, the resulting initiatives have proved more sustainable and more effective. In Missouri, behavioral health clinics are serving nearly 30 percent more patients by switching to the new model and have been able to provide same-day service to many clients. In Oklahoma, mental health clinics have effectively “put a therapist in every police car,” officials say, by outfitting cars with an iPad that contains a specially designed app. The program has helped reduce adult psychiatric emergency room visits by more than 90 percent and is now being implemented in homeless shelters and other contact points throughout the community.

Congress has already expanded this demonstration project, and scores of states are experimenting with the new model or planning to. But it will take more than pilot programs for these new centers to succeed where the early community mental health movement failed. Individual projects will have to be evaluated rigorously so that the most effective ones can be scaled. Hospitals, police departments, homeless shelters and other institutions will have to be brought along at every step so that mental health is neither siloed nor forgotten but instead becomes a fully embedded part of the wider community.

Education and outreach will also be essential. People with serious mental illnesses are far more likely to be victims of violent crime than perpetrators. But in an age where mass shootings and random street attacks have become commonplace, that fact has been buried in stigma. And a truly robust mental health system will have to include a range of services — not only outpatient clinics but also short-term care facilities for people facing acute crises, and some congregate institutions for the small portion of people who can’t live safely in the community. To prevent abuse, these facilities will need to be well funded, well monitored and held to a high standard.

None of this will be cheap. By most estimates, it would cost several billion dollars to fully fund and carry out the original community mental health vision today. But those costs would be partly offset by what police departments, jails and hospitals could save. The $193 billion in lost earnings that results from untreated mental illnesses should also be an incentive, and an eventual source of savings.

Americans have accepted the mistreatment and neglect of people with serious mental illnesses for far too long. It’s within our power to break that cycle now, and to change the way that the most vulnerable among us live for generations to come.

#Opinion | The Failed Quest for Community Mental Health Centers in the U.S.#us mental health crisis

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therapeutic-dose · 2 months

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Tagged by @wildelydawn! Thanks friend!

Do you make your bed?

No, but tbh I wish I did. It makes it looks so much nicer in my room? Mr. Pete (cat) also enjoys sleeping on it more when it's made...

What’s your favourite number?

21, probably, but that's likely because I make a lot of 1:20 dilutions for a dilution factor of 21 haha

What’s your job?

I run tests on blood and pee and evaluate the results for any pre-analytical/analytical/post-analytical errors and anything else that could be affecting the accuracy of the test results. I also maintain and troubleshoot problems with the machines that perform testing. No one knows I exist lmao.

If you could go back to school would you?

Yes, but there are a thousand things stopping me, on being my mortgage lmao.

Can you parallel park?

Yep!

A job that would surprise people?

I'm... not a million percent sure what this question means, but if it was with regards to something that I did that surprised people whether real job or imagined, then it would be something heavy in math.

Do you think aliens are real?

There's no way they aren't!

Can you drive a manual car?

Probably not at this point, though I drove a few in my teens

What’s your guilty pressure?

General comeuppances for people who have desperately needed them lol.

Tattoos?

Two! One a symbol I designed myself with the message "I will survive to live again" located on my left inner forearm, and another that is similar to Changkyun of Monsta X's smiley tattoo, which is very simple and looks like this : ) : located on my right wrist over my radial artery (where arterial blood gas samples are drawn)

Favourite colour?

I love color so much, it's honestly hard to pick. I think these days it's in the scope of light aqua all the way down to ultramarine.

Favourite type of music?

Kpop and myriad sub-genres (Monsta X and OnlyOneOf are my ult groups), pop punk, atlernative, southern rock, rock

Do you like puzzles?

LOVE Puzzles. All kinds of puzzles. You need a puzzle beaten for your game? GIVE ME.

Still terrible at sudoku though. Probably related to fear of Math.

Any phobias?

Long squiggly bugs and the slimey no-bones one that live in the soil that I legit cannot even say the word without feeling ill. Anything that doesn't have bones and is slimy.

Favourite childhood sport?

Karate.

Do you talk to yourself?

I worked night shifts alone in the lab and it was just me and the ghost. I didn't not want to talk to the ghost. That habit has carried over lol.

Coffee or tea?

Coffee, for now!

First thing you wanted to be growing up?

My memory is trash but probably doctor? Who knows.

Tbh I don't know or follow many people on here, so I'll leave this jut for folks that might want to do it! Please tag me if you do, I'd love to chat with people more!

#wildelydawn #tag games

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torc87 · 5 months

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Ok, I'm reaching the point of being pissed.

I started out going 'Palestine is a tragedy,people are suffering, children are traumatized,vits awful'

And you frankly stupid lot are pushing me to a position where I have to compare what is happening and defend it as not that bad.

Why?

Bc STOP FUCKING USING THE WORD HOLOCAUST TO DESCRIBE IT!!!

Do you know what Babiy Yar is? It's a ravine in Ukraine where more than THIRTY THOUSAND Jews were shot and thrown into in THREE DAYS. The entire amount of casualties in Palestine. The location was then later used AGAIN, until the sum total of people murdered and tossed in is 100,000-150,000.

This is a small drop of people murdered in the Holocaust.

The Holocaust lasted a decade or so.

Germany killed it's own Jews, Austria's, Ukraine's, 90 percent of Polish Jews were murdered - a large population, and demanded allied countries - such as the Arab ones, Italy, Japan, etc- hand over their Jews.

Those people were then separated. The ones capable of work were forcibly tattooed and sent to work camps. The others, the children, the babies, the ill, the old, the disabled, etc - were murdered.

( I am not including the non Jewish victims which were A LOT or the civilian casualties of fighting which were also A Lot bc people using this comparison are focusing on the Jewish persecution part so I'm responding based on that)

So in order for Palestine current events to be a Holocaust,

First off : everyone would need to be systematically gathered, separated into useful and not, forcibly tattooed/marked/numbered as animals so their names are meaningless and they are dehumanized, and any children, elderly, ill, disobedient would just be shot out of hand.

The survivors would be imprisoned, starved, abused, and put to work.

Then there would be the demand that surrounding countries hand over their Palestinian refugees. Germany demanded countries hand over full citizens. Egypt, Jordan, Syria haven't given the refugees citizenship status I believe.

The numbers each day would be horrific - 10,000 or more daily.

Hammas would not be able to bomb Israel - after all, in the Holocaust the Jewish people had no organized defense. They resisted - w rifles stolen and captured. They hadn't had time to prepare tunnels to hide in, stores off food in those tunnels, ammunition, bombs, training to use weaponry. Resistance would be former civilians.

It would be a nine year old managing to get in and out of a ghetto bc he had light colored hair and could sneak through to help. And get hit over the head w a riffle butt. My grandfather by the way.

It would not be citizens in other countries protesting and sending money. It would be those same citizens handing their own Palestinians over like Ukrainian and Polish handed their Jews over. It would be Americans refusing to take in any refugees and sending ships back to Germany. It would be people caring only when their own borders were breached.

That would be what a Holocaust would be like.

6 million people. A decade of systematic enslavement and murder.

That is what you are comparing it to.

That is the memory you are stealing and appropriating for emotion points.

How flaming DARE you!

Use the atrocities the US commuted in Iraq while you and your parents waffled on who to support. Use similar situations if you wish.

But don't bloody well put me in the position of having to explain that Palestine is nowhere near as bad as the Holocaust bc there should be Zero comparison needed to justify the fact that people suffer is bad.

You are basically saying that hey, remember when those ten people got enslaved, tortured, and murdered? This person that got stabbed in the leg today is Exactly like that! We are going to call the situation today by the name the families of the victims gave to losing their loved ones!

Oh, and if you start saying the relatives are involved in the stabbing? Do recall that Palestinian arabs were on the German side of things and cooperated w the Nazis.

Which, again, for those w low reading comprehension and zero empathy, does Not mean that Palestinians suffering today is ok. I don't bloody care what their great grandparents did. Well, ok, I care bc chances are great they were helping murder my great aunts and uncles , but the reality is, past is past. The people alive today need to be safe, healthy, and able to live normal lives. The Palestinian children need to live free of the trauma of war, screw what their parents did or did not do w Hammas. Why? Bc they are children and deserve to be taken care of. Not bc what is happening is anywhere on the level of the Holocaust but bc it shouldn't HAVE TO be for people to care and help.

Bc using an tragedy that rings through our communities, touches us personally still four generations in, appropriating it for emotion points and trying to use it Against us, is....

Are you trying to turn potential supporters away?

Trying to convince us that our greatest most recent pain and suffering will never matter to non Jews? That all we have is each other? Bc that is how you convince people to turn clanish and inwards.

I'm a Russian born Jew. Didn't grow up w the religion. An not a part of the Jewish community in the US. Don't celebrate holidays unless my mother wants to have a family dinner. I've been Pagan since I was 16.

And the antisemitism I see, the use of my grandfather pain and suffering as a 9 year old child, the use of his enslavement , his families enslavement, for a gotcha is pushing me far closer to my Jewish identity than I have ever been in my life.

You succeeded. Succeeded in making me feel other. Succeeded in making me feel like growing up in the US wasn't enough. Succeeded in making me feel unsafe. Succeeded in making me consider what I would do if things got worse, where I would flee - my mother has talked about it since I was little and I never understood. US was safe, we were accepted here, citizens like anyone else. Right?

What your disrespect of an atrocity that didn't touch you personally tells me is that my safety, my families safety, our heritage, our pain and sorrow - they are Nothing to you.

You don't know or care or possibly even think it justified.

And if it isn't personal to you? If you don't grieve? If you can't name your three year old grand cousin ( my great grandfather's sisters child) who was ripped out of her mother's arms by Nazis and dashed by her feet onto a tree? Fucking well keep the word Holocaust out of your mouth.

#israel/palestine

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jcmarchi · 7 months

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Using AI to Predict the Spread of Lung Cancer - Technology Org

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/using-ai-to-predict-the-spread-of-lung-cancer-technology-org/

Using AI to Predict the Spread of Lung Cancer - Technology Org

For decades, scientists and pathologists have tried, without much success, to come up with a way to determine which individual lung cancer patients are at greatest risk of having their illness spread, or metastasize, to other parts of the body. Now a team of scientists from Caltech and Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis has fed that problem to artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms, asking computers to predict which cancer cases are likely to metastasize. In a novel pilot study of non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients, AI outperformed expert pathologists in making such predictions.

These predictions about the progression of lung cancer have important implications in terms of an individual patient’s life. Physicians treating early-stage NSCLC patients face the extremely difficult decision of whether to intervene with expensive, toxic treatments, such as chemotherapy or radiation, after a patient undergoes lung surgery. In some ways, this is the more cautious path because more than half of stage I–III NSCLC patients eventually experience metastasis to the brain. But that means many others do not. For those patients, such difficult treatments are wholly unnecessary.

In the new study, published in the Journal of Pathology, the collaborators show that AI holds promise as a tool that could one day aid physicians in this decision-making.

“Overtreatment of cancer patients is a big problem,” says Changhuei Yang, the Thomas G. Myers Professor of Electrical Engineering, Bioengineering, and Medical Engineering at Caltech and an investigator with the Heritage Medical Research Institute. “Our pilot study indicates that AI may be very good at telling us in particular which patients are very unlikely to develop brain cancer metastasis.”

Yang cautions that the work is only a first step and that a larger study is needed to validate the findings.

The team worked with data and biopsy images collected from 118 NSCLC patients at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. Typically, a pathologist reviews such images, scouring them for abnormalities within the cells that might suggest the cancer is progressing.

Caltech electrical engineers led by Yang used hundreds of thousands of image tiles pulled from those 118 original biopsy images to train a type of AI program called a deep-learning network. They also provided follow-up data about which patients went on to develop brain metastases within five years of diagnosis and which did not.

“We essentially asked the network to learn from all these images, to pick out some features from the contextual information that could indicate something about a patient’s outcome,” says graduate student Haowen Zhou, first author of the new paper. Then the network was given 40 additional biopsy images and asked to determine whether the patients had gone on to experience brain metastases.

The AI network was able to correctly predict whether an individual NSCLC patient had experienced brain metastasis 87 percent of the time. In contrast, four expert pathologists who reviewed the same biopsy images were able to make the correct predictions only 57 percent of the time.

“Our study is an indication that AI methods may be able to make meaningful predictions that are specific and sensitive enough to impact patient management,” says Richard Cote, head of the Department of Pathology & Immunology at Washington University School of Medicine and co-principal investigator of the new study. He notes that for the earliest-stage NSCLC patients (those classified as stage I), the AI results were even better than those for the whole study and that these predictions were based solely on basic, routinely processed microscopic slides. By giving the AI information on additional factors such as the severity of the disease and any additional biomarkers, the researchers expect that they will be able to improve the predictive powers of the AI program going forward.

Interestingly, the AI program does not indicate exactly what factors cause it to make certain predictions. So, the team is also working to uncover the subtle and complex features of tumor cells and their surroundings that the AI program might be homing in on.

“It’s looking at what we would look at as a pathologist,” Cote says. “But it’s seeing more than we can see.” Perhaps, he says, once scientists learn exactly what AI is focusing on, they will be able to develop new therapeutics to address those indicators.

Also looking forward, Yang’s group at Caltech is interested in developing instrumentation and processes that would help scientists and clinicians collect more uniform and higher-quality biopsy images to boost the accuracy of AI predictions. “Once we can see what the AI is doing, we can start to think about how to design imaging and microscopy instruments to more optimally get the data that the AI wants,” Yang says. “We can move away from imaging instruments designed for human use and move toward making instruments that are optimized for machine use.”

Written by Kimm Fesenmaier

Source: Caltech

You can offer your link to a page which is relevant to the topic of this post.

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keywestlou · 2 years

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MIXED EMOTIONS

MIXED EMOTIONS - https://keywestlou.com/mixed-emotions/I have been a Syracuse fan since the first day I entered law school at Syracuse University in 1957. Not true blue, true orange. It has been 65 years. I have supported every football coach, and Jim Boeheim of course, through thick and thin. Good and bad. More bad than good. Never even thought a coach should be fired. Now for the first time, I do. Dino Babers as the football coach. Even when Babers went 1-10, I did not speak ill of him. My school, my team, my coach. This season began a great one 6-0. Clemson last week the first loss. Could have been a Syracuse victory. Babers screwed up a few times. I called him on it. No one is perfect, however. Syracuse should have beat the pants off Notre Dame yesterday. Instead, Notre Dame took Syracuse to the cleaners 41-24. Against Clemson, Babers ran Tucker 5 times. Yesterday, he began the game by running Tucker multiple times. Even forgot to let Schrader pass after his first one that was intercepted. The Syracuse defense has been stellar all season. Not yesterday. Notre Dame is known for its running game. Straight up the middle. Our defensive line could not stop them. Did not make sense. Syracuse should have been prepared for them. Why wasn't it? Schrader passing was off in the first half. Because of the injury which kept him out of the game in the second half? I don't know. I do know there is one major passing problem. Schrader likes to pass to one person.....Gadsden. Opposing teams know it. Double and triple team Gadsden as he runs to catch the ball. Babers should have Schrader throwing the ball to other receivers. Syracuse looked like the Babers team that lost 10 games in one season. The announcers were attributing Syracuse's poor play to the Clemson game. Thought it was a tough one. The guys were tired and beat up. No excuse. The freshman Carlos Del Rio-Wilson distinguished himself in the second half when he replaced Schrader. Syracuse will not fire Babers. They will not want to pay him the millions to buy his contract out and have to pay a new coach at the same time. The firing issue is all about money. The last 2 home games have been sell outs. Fifty thousand fans. One more game like Notre Dame and the Dome will not be sold out. Fans are money conscious also. They want to see a winner play! Otherwise, they can sit at home and watch the game for free on TV. Money an issue in home purchases, also. Home buyers are having a "come to Jesus" moment. Mortgage rates now top 7 percent. Recently topped 7 percent for the first time in 20 years. The 30 year fixed rate has gone to 7.08 percent. One year ago, it was 3.14 percent. Home purchasers are dropping in numbers. Sellers are trying to unload. In September, sellers dropped asking prices an average of 20 percent. Many withdrew their listings. Items associated with home ownership have also risen. Home insurance policies for example. Forty percent higher than 12 years ago. Steve Thompson continues writing about Key West in the 1970's. The Boat Bar on Duval was well known in the seventies. The Taco stand had to deal with their hookers and junkies. The Key West topless bar was on our other side. They all used our restrooms when they wanted to hide. Syringes and paper towels all over the place. The clean up crew said it was difficult to face. There were fights almost every night. Everyone came to the taco stand for a bite. We had a good crew and they handled it just fine. It was by far the best store of mine. The New York Times ran a different and interesting article on 10/17 written by Rachel E. Gross. For some reason, it took till today to receive some prominence. The article's title: Half The World Has A Clitoris. Why Don't Doctors Study It? The organ is "completely ignored by pretty much everyone" medical experts say, and that omission can be devastating to women's sexual health. The article identifies how little time is spent in medical school on the subject and how doctors are ignorant of its problems. The article is shocking. Worth reading, especially by women. Paul Pelosi fortunately is reported to be on the mend. Many have offered their condolences and wishes for a speedy recovery to Nancy and the Pelosi family. Even Republicans. Except for Donald Trump who has not been heard from. Be well.

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tastydregs · 2 years

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The era of fast, cheap genome sequencing is here

Enlarge / Illumina says its NovaSeq X machine will get the price of sequencing down to $200 per human genome.

Illumina

The human genome is made of more than 6 billion letters, and each person has a unique configuration of As, Cs, Gs, and Ts—the molecular building blocks that make up DNA. Determining the sequence of all those letters used to take vast amounts of money, time, and effort. The Human Genome Project took 13 years and thousands of researchers. The final cost: $2.7 billion.

That 1990 project kicked off the age of genomics, helping scientists unravel genetic drivers of cancer and many inherited diseases while spurring the development of at-home DNA tests, among other advances. Next, researchers started sequencing more genomes: from animals, plants, bacteria, and viruses. Ten years ago, it cost about $10,000 for researchers to sequence a human genome. A few years ago, that fell to $1,000. Today, it’s about $600.

Now, sequencing is about to get even cheaper. At an industry event in San Diego today, genomics behemoth Illumina unveiled what it calls its fastest, most cost-efficient sequencing machines yet, the NovaSeq X series. The company, which controls around 80 percent of the DNA sequencing market globally, believes its new technology will slash the cost to just $200 per human genome while providing a readout at twice the speed. Francis deSouza, Illumina’s CEO, says the more powerful model will be able to sequence 20,000 genomes per year; its current machines can do about 7,500. Illumina will start selling the new machines today and ship them next year.

“As we look to the next decade, we believe we’re entering the era of genomic medicine going mainstream. To do that requires the next generation of sequencers,” deSouza says. “We need price points to keep coming down to make genomic medicine and genomic tests available much more broadly.”

Enlarge / Reagents and buffer cartridges.

Illumina

Sequencing has led to genetically targeted drugs, blood tests that can detect cancer early, and diagnoses for people with rare diseases who have long sought answers. We can also thank sequencing for the COVID-19 vaccines, which scientists started developing in January 2020 as soon as the first blueprint of the virus's genome was produced. In research labs, the technology has become essential for better understanding pathogens and human evolution. But it still isn’t ubiquitous in medicine. That’s in part because of the price tag. While it costs around $600 for scientists to perform sequencing, clinical interpretation and genetic counseling can drive the price to a few thousand dollars for patients—and insurance doesn’t always cover it.

Another reason is that for healthy people, there’s not yet enough evidence of benefits to prove that genome sequencing will be worth the cost. Currently, the test is mostly limited to people with certain cancers or undiagnosed illnesses—although in two recent studies, around 12 to 15 percent of healthy people whose genomes were sequenced ended up having a genetic variation that showed they had an elevated risk of a treatable or preventable disease, indicating that sequencing may provide an early warning.

For now, researchers—not patients—will likely benefit most from cheap sequencing. “We’ve been waiting for this for a long time,” says Stacey Gabriel, chief genomics officer at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, of the new improvements. “With greatly reduced costs and greatly increased speed of sequencing, we can sequence way more samples.” Gabriel is not affiliated with Illumina, but the Broad Institute is something of an Illumina power user. The institute has 32 of the company’s existing machines and has sequenced more than 486,000 genomes since it was established in 2004.

Gabriel says there are a number of ways that researchers will be able to apply added sequencing power. One is to increase the diversity of genomic datasets, given that the vast majority of DNA data has come from people of European descent. That’s a problem for medicine, because different populations might have different disease-causing genetic variations that are more or less prevalent. “There’s really an incomplete picture and a hampered ability to translate and apply those learnings to the full population diversity in the world,” Gabriel says.

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fuckmymunson · 2 years

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𝐂𝐨𝐦𝐩𝐚𝐬𝐬 [𝐌𝐚𝐟𝐢𝐚!𝐒.𝐎.𝐁]

A/n: Small drabble cuz I'm sleepy but wanted to pin this for later<3

─── ･｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

Sirius was much more than a simple 'gangster'. He owned many, many things, he was creepily rich, he was intimidating, and besides that and so much more; He was fucking handsome. He was a true Adonis.

He knew who he worked with and why. He knew how useful any certain friendship with others like him was for him and his self-built empire. A certain friendship, one who was side by side with him since the very first day, sadly had to leave the business for good. A chronic illness and an old body didn't go along well. Sirius knew his acquaintance had a child, although the topic always intrigued him.

He never knew who this child was.

This associate was very, very careful with sharing any personal information, to the point that Sirius even wondered if that was his real name. So when his partner announced that he was ready to retire and live the remaining years of his life with his loved ones, Sirius expected his firstborn to be the one who step in and take charge of what seemed a familiar business now. A business that circulated around drugs, guns, illegal and prohibited cargo, and so, so much more. With this in mind, Sirius expected (probably without even giving it a second thought), that it was a man. A grown man, probably one or two years younger than him. A grown man that was in fully understanding of his surroundings, of the role he was about to play, and who was he working with.

The moment he opened the doors of the old meeting room, which was being hosted at his former partner's mansion, he stumbled across a young lady, standing up in front the fireplace. The flames danced on top of the old oak wood, bathing her figure with bright reds, yellows and oranges. She was gorgeous. Wearing a deep, red wine dress with a deep slit in the center of her chest, exposing enough to tease but not enough to satisfy. Sirius drank her figure without any hint of shame. A part of him, the one who (wrongfully) liked to assume things, thought you were just the new secretary. It made total sense. If an old one was making place for a new one, it was expected that everything else was also new. Just to make things even.

The moment you turned around, facing him. Sirius Orion Black was one hundred percent sure, you were the most beautiful woman he had ever seen in his life. And believe me, he had seen a lot before...

"You must be Mr. Black." Your voice was like a melody, the way his last name rolled off your lips made him wonder how pretty his last name will sound on a pleased cry.

"A pleasure, darling." He nodded and walked closer, to reach his usual seat and also to get a better look to you.

"Please take a seat, the meeting will start once everyone else arrives." You smiled, and that damn smile made the whole room a thousand shades brighter.

"I'll wait here, doll." Sirius said while throwing a playful wink at you. "Although, if your boss wants to keep me waiting a bit more, I wouldn't mind with you here."

"My boss?" You asked with a small frown. "I don't know what you are talking about, Mr. Black."

In that very moment, Sirius's former partner walked into the room, being helped with his cane. For a man his age and with the life he had been through, he still had his head up as proud as the day Sirius met him.

"Oh my boy! Sirius." Your Father greeted him with a handshake. Placing a hand around your shoulders at the same time. "I see you already had the pleasure to met my beautiful daughter!"

His daughter.

Needless to say, Sirius was dumbfounded. A daughter. A daughter his partner never talked about. Never mentioned before. A daughter he thought and assumed was a son.

"I know it's quite shocking, a beautiful and young woman like my lovebug, getting involved in such an awful and bad business." Shaking his head, your Father smiled proudly. "But she has prepared herself for this for years. And believe me when I tell you she's the smartest one around here!" He laughed loudly. "She's more than just a gorgeous lady, Sirius. Remember the catwalk operation we did six months ago?"

"How could I forget it." Sirius smirked at the memory. "Our profit was three times more than the average. And we didn't ran into any problems with cops, customs, or noisy people. I could argue with anyone that, by far, catwalk was our most successful operation."

"Well, guess who was the one who designed it." Your Father laughed again, his words making you blush. "My daughter has been helping me all this years undercover. Our work is not a safe one, and I'm truly sorry for keeping her locked in so many years, but she is my precious little flower. I needed to protect her one way or another."

Sirius locked eyes with you once again. This time in a whole different way. Drinking your image once more, now it felt even better. He felt ashamed of his early actions, it had been completely unacceptable from his part to just assume you were the secretary. But even though your Father talked wonders about you... He still had his concerns. Could a woman so young and well, inexperienced like you step in this world? A world ruled by wealthy and dangerous men.

"Mr. Black." As if you were reading his mind, you spoke, gaining his attention. "I know this change will be though, I don't expect everyone to welcome me with open arms. But I can assure you one thing." Your eyes were penetrating, analyzing him, testing him. For any words, any actions, any false movement. "I will not give up. That's not in my blood. I will make sure to bring this last name and this work to even higher steps." You took a step forward, your hand in the middle of your bodies, reaching for him. "And if you please, we will do it together, just like my Father and you had been doing for this years."

Sirius grabbed your hand unhesitatingly. Shaking it, sealing the deal. Partnering with you.

"I know you won't disappoint me, doll."

─── ･｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

Sorry for any mistakes! English is not my first language. I appreciate any feedback!˚ ༘♡ ⋆｡˚

#sirius x reader #sirius orion black #sirius black #mafia!sirius #modern marauders #marauder x reader #mafia!marauders #omenhel's love letters #omenhel's little drabbles!

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cuubism · 2 years

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inspired by beautiful art by @dr-lemurr (here! and here! and above!) I now have this for you

all of it is linked below. also on ao3 chapter-by-chapter

This fic was created for the Shadowhunters Reverse Bang 2022: Presented by the @malecdiscordserver

Flight

35k. Rated T, Malec. Angels, religion, wingfic, canon divergence, Clave politics.

All Magnus wanted was to make an ornament to carry one of Alec's feathers around with him. He hadn't intended it to awaken long-dormant powers in Alec's wings--or to bring down the angels, either.

Chapter 1 is below. You can find the other chapters here:

Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8

~~~~~~

Magnus was good at many things. Destroying demons with a wave of his hand. Inventing never-before-seen potions and spells. Irritating Shadowhunters. Flirting with Shadowhunters—well, one in particular.

Arts and crafts, on the other hand, had never been one of Magnus’s strong suits. And yet here he was, attempting glassblowing in his apartment.

“Shit!” Magnus hurried to blow out the flame licking up his sleeve. The burn mark on his wrist lingered, evidence of his incompetence. In retrospect, he should have known better than to put a thousand-degree kiln in the middle of his apothecary. But knowing better had never stopped Magnus from engaging in all manner of ill-advised activities.

The fact that, more often than not, he managed to find his way out of those predicaments intact didn’t help discourage him from doing it again, either.

“Magnus, what the hell are you doing?”

Ah. One of said ill-advised endeavors was standing in his doorway, squinting at the molten glass dripping from Magnus’s tongs. Magnus magicked some sunglasses on him before he hurt his eyes from the glow.

“I’m experiencing the consequences of my hubris,” Magnus told him, putting the dripping glass back in its stone bowl before it spilled all over the rug and wore a hole through the floor. “I’d suggest you stand back.”

Alec’s eyebrows furrowed. “What?”

“Arts and crafts,” Magnus explained. “I am attempting to blow glass.”

Alec was silent for a long moment. “I appreciate that you didn’t try to make an innuendo out of that.”

“Well, I could—”

“Please don’t. Why are you doing this, anyway?” Alec had crept closer, and peered at the bright, molten glass in its bowl. Magnus had to admit it was mesmerizing to look at, blisteringly orange and soupy, like a lava flow.

“I wanted to make something,” Magnus said. He avoided saying what, since he wasn’t one hundred percent sure how Alec would feel about it yet.

“You couldn’t magic it?”

Magnus pouted. “I wanted to make it with my hands.”

This ornament was supposed to be special, was the thing. It wasn’t an idle trinket.

Alec shook his head. “Sorry, I shouldn’t poke at you over something so small. Just, uh—” his eyes caught on Magnus’s crispy-looking shirt. “Shit, did you burn yourself?”

“Eh,” Magnus said, “minorly.”

Alec crouched by his side, carefully peeling back his sleeve. Magnus had to admit the burn looked slightly worse than he’d thought.

Alec bit his lip at the sight. “It’s just like you to make arts and crafts dangerous,” he muttered. “Hang on.”

Magnus hanged-on as Alec fetched some burn ointment from the other side of the apothecary and bent again by the arm of his chair, smearing it over his skin with careful hands.

It was very affecting, his gentle touch, the harsh light of the kiln illuminating the cut of his cheekbone, his strong neck, the curve of his shoulder. Magnus had several impure thoughts about it, and considered acting on them before realizing that the only thing stupider than having a kiln in his apothecary in the first place was leaving one ablaze while he went to have sex with his boyfriend.

“Thank you, darling,” he said when Alec finished wrapping a bandage around his arm. He batted his eyelashes at him, not that Alec could see it behind the protective glasses Magnus was wearing. “Will you kiss it better?”

Alec sighed like Magnus was an endless nuisance to him, but his smile betrayed his real feelings. He bent to kiss Magnus’s arm.

“Ah, I’m healed already!” Magnus declared, and tipped up his chin when Alec leaned in to peck him on the lips, too.

“Back to blowing glass, then,” Alec said, standing back to his full height.

“Well, later on I can blow—”

“Okay!” Alec rubbed his forehead tiredly. “I guess I did set that one up.” He turned towards the door. “So long as you aren’t going to burn down the house, I’m gonna head to work.”

“I resent that. I’ll have you know I’ve only burned down my house twice in my long life.”

Alec hummed in thought. “That’s more times than I was hoping for, but fewer than I was expecting.”

“Hey!”

“Kidding, honey.” Alec leaned in to kiss him on the cheek one last time. “I’m sure there’ll only be a minor amount of property damage.”

“Don’t worry,” Magnus assured him, “I moved all the flammable potions ingredients out of the apothecary before I started. And besides, I think I’m getting the hang of the glass.” Said glass hissed and spit with heat, as if to undermine Magnus’s words.

“I’m sure you are,” said Alec. “I look forward to seeing the ‘arts and craft project’ later.”

Magnus beamed at him, but as soon as Alec had slipped out of the room, he couldn’t help his smile slipping. He still wasn’t sure exactly how Alec would feel about this whole idea. Nephilim could be touchy about their wings.

But first Magnus had to figure out if he could even do it.

Magnus had half-expected the Nephilim feather to come in contact with the hot glass and just… explode.

Nephilim wings had… overly-enthusiastic self-defense instincts, which Magnus had found out the hard way when he gave his half-asleep boyfriend a kiss between the shoulder blades and got smacked in the face by a bunch of feathers for his trouble.

Poor Alec had felt so guilty about it, and brought Magnus breakfast in bed as if Magnus had nearly had his head taken off in battle instead of simply having to pluck a few feathers out of his teeth.

So, Magnus hadn’t been sure how the feather would take to being encased in glass, even if it had already fallen from Alec’s wing. Would it still have… lingering rune energy? Magnus hadn’t been sure.

But now, he gazed at his prize with satisfaction.

The blown glass feather ornament was exquisite—if Magnus did say so. He was rather proud of his handiwork—especially considering he had learned glass blowing in about three hours—but he had to admit that the real star of the piece was the feather itself.

Alec’s usually white feather had taken on a prismatic quality in the glass, catching fragments of light and refracting them in dozens of hues. Once again, Magnus couldn’t help but wonder if it was magical in some way. Alec kept telling him his feathers didn’t have supernatural properties, but there was surely something magical about them in Magnus’s opinion.

Or maybe that was just because they were attached to his boyfriend.

He was still idly admiring the ornament, which he’d hung on a lamp on his desk so he could observe it while he worked, when Alec came home late that night.

“Magnus?” he called. “It’s 3:30am, why are you still awake?”

“Is it so late?” Magnus asked, tipping back in his chair with his hands behind his head as Alec leaned in the apothecary doorway. “Time simply slips by when I’m thinking about you.”

Alec rolled his eyes, but came over and kissed the top of Magnus’s head. “Seriously, what have you been working on?”

“Oh, just a trinket. But first I want to talk about you.” He spun around in his chair to face his boyfriend.

Alec looked, predictably, tired. His gear was scratched and torn in several places, rumpled from its usual carefully ordered layers. Magnus ran his hands over each of the blemishes, looking for cuts that went past the layers of gear.

“Are you alright?” he asked, turning Alec’s hands over to look at his palms, then taking his face and tipping it this way and that. Alec submitted to this dutifully, having learned by now that it was easier to let Magnus run through his whole rigamarole without protest. Magnus found a cut on Alec’s temple, and smoothed his thumb over it to heal it. It did not heal—he’d have to try a potion later—and Magnus pouted. “Wings?”

Alec drew his wings out from whatever magical place they hid in—Magnus had never been able to figure out quite where that was—and stretched them out.

Magnus was stunned to see them, as always. The first time Alec had shown them to him, outside of a battle context, Magnus could barely believe his eyes. The wings were exquisite, strong and solid as the hilt of a seraph blade, yet delicate as spider silk in their plumage. As was typical, Alec didn’t appreciate their beauty, viewing them as utilitarian objects like he did the rest of his body. Magnus had decided he would just have to do all the appreciating for the both of them.

Now, the wings looked battered, feathers bent out of shape here and there, ichor stuck between them. The right looked the worst, with blood crusted along the radius bone. Magnus hoped it wasn’t broken. Alec would be so annoyed if he had to rest it for any amount of time.

Magnus stood so he could see it better. “Let me see that?”

“It’s not broken,” said Alec, lowering the wing so Magnus could see. “It’d hurt a lot more if it was.”

He looked pretty annoyed about it nevertheless. Magnus kissed his shoulder. “Always so pouty and grim when you come back from patrol.”

This drew out a tiny smile from his boyfriend. “Well, how else am I supposed to cope with being away from you for so long?”

“Aw, sweet.” Magnus kissed along the top of his wing, surreptitiously feeling out the severity of the injuries as he did. Thankfully, they seemed superficial. “You want to hear a secret? I actually find the pouty, grim, Shadowhunter thing quite affecting.”

“That’s not a secret. You’ve been really obvious about it.”

“Have I?” Magnus healed his wing. This injury, at least, was responsive to his magic. “I can’t recall. I think I’ll have to lay it on stronger.”

Alec smiled wider. “I guess you’ll have to. And I see you healing that wing, by the way. You’re not sneaky.”

“Oh, but isn’t it nice to be distracted by kisses?”

Alec disentangled them to find his lips again, and kissed him. “Yes.”

“But I have to admit,” Magnus added, wrapping his hands around Alec’s jaw to hold him close, “I feel I’m getting the short end of this bargain. I have to do all the healing and all the distracting?”

“Really? You get to make me do stuff and feel me up with abandon and you’re getting the short end of the bargain?”

“Okay, point,” Magnus admitted, and Alec grinned.

“But if you require additional recompense,” Alec added, “I suppose it can be arranged.”

He leaned in to suck a kiss under Magnus’s jaw, hands falling to his hips and pulling him closer. He smelled like night air and sweat and sharp angelic magic. Magnus sighed into the feeling of him.

But soon enough he had to tap Alec’s chest to push him back. “Hey, lover. Now you’re being distracting. I was trying to look at your wings.”

Alec huffed, but he did shift away. “They’re fine. You know they heal on their own.”

“Yes, unless they’re poisoned.”

“They aren’t poisoned.”

“I will take your word for it,” Magnus said, “this time. Don’t let me down.”

“Never,” Alec promised. “Are you going to show me what you were working on now?”

With some hesitation, Magnus unstrung his ornament from the lamp and handed it to Alec.

Alec turned it over in his hands, feeling along the smooth edge of the glass. “Is that one of my feathers?”

“No,” Magnus joked nervously, “I got it from a seagull.”

Alec gave him a look. “Did you think I would be mad? Is that why you’re being weird about it?”

“I’m not being weird about it,” Magnus huffed. Alec just kept looking at him. “Okay, fine. I didn’t think you’d be mad, I just know the wings can be a bit of a… touchy subject. You all are quite possessive about them.”

Alec sighed. “Magnus, it’s fine. It’s pretty, actually.” He turned it over in his hand again, and the glass caught the light of the lamp, reflecting it in fragments of red, yellow, and green. “I just don’t know if I understand the point. You’re aware there’s nothing really special about these, right? They’re just feathers. You wouldn’t pick up a pigeon feather off the street and immortalize it, would you?”

“That is absolutely blasphemous, Alexander,” Magnus exclaimed. “These are not just feathers. They’re your feathers.”

A smile tugged at Alec’s lips and caught in his eyes. “Alright, if you insist.” He handed the ornament back to Magnus, and leveled him with a half-teasing, half-warning look. “Just don’t go sharing these around with everyone. You’re the only one who gets to have them.”

Magnus held the ornament to his chest and beamed. “I only love it more now.”

Alec kissed him again, lingering this time. “You’re ridiculous,” he murmured against Magnus’s lips. “I love you.”

Magnus leaned into his space. “I love you.” Between them, his magic swirled through the ornament, lighting the feather from within with a blue glow.

Magnus poked at Alec’s wing. “You should go shower.”

“You going to follow me?”

“As soon as I get rid of the kiln.”

Alec laughed, leaning into Magnus’s shoulder. “Alright, well, don’t be too long.”

“Never.”

When he’d gone, Magnus observed Alec’s feather once again, running his finger along the smooth glass. It was warm to the touch now, perhaps from Magnus’s magic, or the pressure of their bodies. That Alec didn’t appreciate these continued to astound Magnus. They were so beautiful—and even more beautiful on his wings.

But Magnus had spent a lot of time getting Alec to better appreciate his appearance, and he didn’t mind putting more effort in. It was such an enjoyable endeavor, after all.

He hung his ornament back on the lamp, and went to do just that.

“Thanks so much for coming out, Magnus, especially on short notice. This rift is looking really bad.”

“Of course, my dear.” Magnus patted Izzy on the shoulder. “How could I miss a chance to help out my favorite Shadowhunters?”

“That’s sweet, but you should know that Alec insisted on the Institute paying you.” Izzy paged through the various screens on the Institute’s holographic monitor until it showed a monochrome graphic of Rockefeller Center. “He increased the rate, too. I think he felt bad about having to be in Alicante.”

“Isn’t that a fixed rate?” Magnus asked, and Izzy nodded. Magnus sighed dreamily, laying a hand over his heart. “Defrauding the Clave? That’s the most romantic thing anyone’s ever done for me.”

Izzy grinned. “He really is smitten with you. Alec doesn’t play around with Clave rules for just anyone.”

Magnus was smiling so hard he didn’t manage to find an answer, and then Izzy had already zoomed the screen in on NBC Studios, where a red spiral was swirling dizzily by the front door. “Hm,” Magnus quipped. “I guess demons aren’t SNL fans.”

Izzy chuckled. “It’s a pretty inconvenient place for a rift. Even mundanes have to be noticing something.”

“We’ll have to solve it quickly, then. Can’t risk interrupting the critical filming of the nightly news.”

“Can’t risk being on the nightly news,” Izzy added. “Are you able to put up a glamour to keep people away while we deal with this?”

“Yes, my powers are limitless,” said Magnus. “It would be my pleasure to protect us from being broadcast to millions of people. Even though we would look really hot.”

“We would, wouldn’t we?” Izzy smiled to herself. “But back to the matter at hand, do you think you can handle this rift?”

Magnus scoffed. “Oh, darling. Consider it already handled.”

“Wait, what are you wearing?”

The rift was surprisingly quiet, only a few stray demons flying around the plaza, so Magnus was taking his sweet time in closing it. Overusing his magic, and winding up passed out on the ground, was always embarrassing, and to be avoided whenever possible.

He fingered the pendant hanging against his chest as Izzy observed it. He’d shrunk his ornament down to jewelry size to carry it with him. “Oh, just something I made.”

“That’s one of Alec’s feathers, isn’t it?” Izzy shook her head with a grin, as if to say, you’re just too much. “You know, I’m really glad Alec has you to get him to do these things.”

“To get him to make his feathers into ornaments?”

Izzy knocked her shoulder into his. “To get him to be vulnerable. He lets you just walk around showing everyone how much you love him. And he even let you take the feather in the first place.”

Magnus’s heart squeezed. It was true, wasn’t it? Alec had become so much softer in the years they’d been together. Or, at least, he had let that softness be seen. “Perhaps I’ll make more,” he joked, because it was too hard to articulate all that feeling, “a whole skirt of Nephilim feathers.”

Izzy laughed. “That’ll make some kind of statement.”

The rift pulsed before them, so even though Magnus would have much preferred to keep gossiping about his boyfriend, he was forced to turn back to the matter at hand. He raised his hands over it, pushing out magic to stabilize its fraying edges.

It was a strange rift. Unlike the graphic back at the Institute, which had glowed a typical red, the actual rift beamed with white energy. Blue and yellow sparks, like embers off a bonfire, flickered up off its edges, which crackled with a heat Magnus could feel even standing two dozen feet away. It hummed, too, this rift—like somewhere within it, a great beast was starting to growl.

Magnus kept finding himself tempted to step closer, to peer into the chasm and see what bright, strange place might be down there. He couldn’t tell if this was a real thought, or the power of the rift drawing him in.

Perhaps it was time to close this thing for good, risk of passing out or not.

Magnus swirled his magic around it, caught its power like he was lassoing a wild horse, and tugged until the rope snapped shut.

And the rift howled.

Or, rather, something within the rift howled.

Magnus barely had a second to think, oh, it did not like that, before the chasm burst upwards in a spray of dirt and asphalt. Magnus was thrown off his feet, and when he looked up the rift was three times its previous size and oozing with liquid light.

Magnus was reminded of the dripping glass from his ornament-making endeavor, but didn’t have time to focus on it. A great crack! echoed through the plaza, and the earth split right under where he was still lying.

He tried to move, but couldn’t, frozen in place by a foreign magic that sat heavy on his chest. It felt like he’d breathed in molten glass directly from his kiln—it stuck his lungs together, closed up his throat, dripped from his hands to stick him to the ground. Whatever this was, it was no ordinary rift. Magnus cursed himself for his complacency.

A… beast emerged from the ground. That seemed such a primitive word, but Magnus could think of no other way to describe it. Its corporeal form shifted from bear-like to boar-like to bird-like, around and around and mixing forms like it was trying to settle in Magnus’s brain the only way it knew how.

Like its true form was something he was unable to perceive with normal eyes.

It lumbered toward him, claws dragging on the ground. Magnus tried to scramble away, but his limbs were stuck. He tried to use his magic, but every burst he sent the creature’s way seemed to do nothing. Distantly, he could hear Izzy and the other Shadowhunters yelling, but it seemed they could no more get closer than Magnus could get away.

The beast’s eyes glowed pure white. Magnus… it rumbled from deep in Magnus’s subconscious. If Magnus hadn’t already been petrified by magic, he would have frozen in fear at the very sound of it. It sounded, somehow, antithetical to his very being, like it could unravel him. His bones strained as he pushed against the magic; gravel cut into his palms. But he still couldn’t move.

The beast hovered over him, dwarfing him with its massive, boundless form. Magnus couldn’t breathe. His blood slowed in his veins under the gravitational pull of the creature before him. It reached out one long, hooked claw towards his chest—

White light exploded in Magnus’s face. A horrific screeeeeeeech!! screamed around him, like glaciers skidding past each other, and a dozen tiny barbs cut into his throat. For a moment he thought he was dead, but no, the beast was stumbling back, eyes flaring in anger. Blasphemous, it growled, still in Magnus’s head. Its uncanny gaze locked on his chest.

Magnus looked down to find his precious ornament shattered. Jagged glass pieces littered his shirt, and it was these that he’d felt cut him—one was still stuck in the skin of his neck. Alec’s feather, now returned to full size, was glowing blue and white, so bright that Magnus had to squint to look at it.

The beast was looking at it, too, and Magnus leapt onto a hunch, seizing the broken ornament in his hand and thrusting it forward.

The creature cringed back. Magnus ignored the glass cutting into his palm and staggered to his feet, pushing it back with whatever strange power he now held. He desperately wanted to ask what the creature was, where it had come from, but didn’t dare test his luck. He had no idea how long the feather’s power would hold.

The creature retreated to the rift at Magnus’s pressing. But before it crept back underground, it turned to look at him. Its expression was not one of fear. It was one of warning, and premonition, and hate.

Do not test the heavenly laws, warlock, it warned in Magnus’s mind. Its voice clanged inside Magnus’s skull like the clashing of blades. Magnus wanted to cover his ears, but it would have done no good.

Then the beast vanished, and the rift with it.

“Magnus!”

Four hundred years of life experience meant that usually, Magnus knew what to do. Usually, he was the one others came to for help with their problems. Usually, he was not rendered helpless by magic beyond his reckoning, saved only by luck and well-timed sentimentality.

Magnus hated feeling shaken.

“Magnus!”

Magnus blinked back to awareness to find Alec crouched in front of him, patting him on the knee. The TV droned on behind him. Magnus was, ostensibly, watching the nightly news, where the NBC anchors were reporting on a bizarre sinkhole that had opened in front of their building that day, swallowing three cars and a mailbox. In reality, Magnus was just letting it play in the background while he sunk into the depths of his own mind.

“Oh,” he said now, finding a smile because Alexander’s face was always a beloved sight, “you’re back.”

“I should have been back sooner.” Alec cradled his face in one hand, the other falling to Magnus’s lap where he was clutching Alec’s feather—what remained of it, as it had charred itself nearly to ash as soon as the creature had vanished—in white-knuckled hands. “I’m so sorry for the communications blackout in Idris, I would have come immediately.”

“I know.” Magnus finally managed to let the feather fall to his lap because he’d rather take Alec’s actual hands, which he did. “I suppose Izzy told you what happened?”

“Yeah.” Alec let Magnus squeeze his hands for a moment while he scanned him all over for lingering damage, before disentangling them to pull Magnus into his arms. “I should have been there. I’m sorry I wasn’t.”

“In your defense, it’s not like we expected an unkillable eldritch beast from another dimension to materialize in Midtown.”

Truthfully, Magnus wished that Alec had been there, at least for the aftermath. The aftermath when Magnus had fallen to his knees at the edge of the disappearing rift, hands bloody, breath rattling in his chest. Normally Magnus could handle himself quite well, could pick himself right up after all manner of strange and disturbing occurrences.

But in that moment, faced with near destruction by a force he felt completely powerless against, Magnus had really wanted his boyfriend. He pressed his face into Alec’s shoulder, and it was almost enough.

“How was Alicante?” he asked, desperate for a momentary distraction.

Alec sat back to meet his eyes, rubbing his hands up and down Magnus’s shoulders. “Pretty useless, to be honest. We’ve been at a stalemate over this law for weeks and I still don’t know when it’s going to end. We just keep arguing in circles; I haven’t figured out the angle yet to convince more people to come to our side.”

“How many votes do you need to pass it, again?”

“Two-thirds majority. And right now, we’re at, like, fifty-one/forty-nine.”

Magnus swept a hand over his cheek, giving him a soft smile. “You’ll figure it out. You’re very clever.”

Alec turned to kiss his palm. “I hope so. At least a stalemate means we aren’t going backwards. I just—I really want this. For you.”

“Oh? Just for me?” Magnus teased. “You know, you talk a big game about marriage equality for a man who hasn’t even proposed.”

Alec gave him a look. “I’ve told you before, it has to be right, and it won’t be right until you know you can have exactly what you want.”

Magnus sagged against the back of the couch with a dramatic sigh. “Fine. I’ll continue to languish in waiting, then.”

Alec kissed the back of his hand, right on his ring finger, then stood. “While you languish, I’m going to order dinner. I know you haven’t eaten. And then I want to hear about this ‘eldritch beast from another dimension’—in your words, though, not Izzy’s.”

“Your wish is my command, oh Shadowhunter!” Magnus said, swirling some sparkles around Alec as he headed for the kitchen. When he was gone, Magnus summoned his notebook and several ancient, threadbare tomes to the coffee table. He’d be damned if he didn’t figure out what had attacked him, and why Alec’s feather had been able to repel it.

In his journal, he scribbled down what he remembered.

Portal ~ few demons. Strange. Glowing white light. Seductive. Reacted poorly to being closed.

Beast ~ indefinite physical form. Held things in place via… gravity? Shadowhunters couldn’t get close. Communicates telepathically? Knew my name. ‘Heavenly laws’?

Feather ~ Alec swears his feathers aren’t magical. Perhaps beast is vulnerable to angelic energy? But it repelled the Shadowhunters…

He flipped through his old books, looking for references to either the strange creature, or the effects of Nephilim feathers. He doubted he would find the latter. The Nephilim were very secretive about their magic; any copies of books that discussed it would either be sequestered within the Institutes, or simply burned.

Magnus was still reading through a thick book on lesser-known demons when Alec dropped a bag of Chinese food in front of him. Evidently, Magnus had been buried in his research for so long that Alec had had time to order, wait for the food to be delivered, and go downstairs to get it without Magnus being any the wiser.

Magnus abandoned his research to pull out a container of fried rice and start scarfing it down. Lilith, he was ravenous—fighting eldritch creatures took a lot out of a man.

Alec thumbed at Magnus’s journal, looking up at Magnus for permission. Magnus gestured for him to take a look. Alec read his notes and frowned.

Between bites of rice, Magnus relayed what had occurred, filling in the gaps between his bullet points. Alec seemed troubled all the while, and Magnus could see his clever brain working behind his eyes, trying to piece things together. When Magnus explained how the thing had almost killed him, that expression slipped from Alec’s face, replaced by pain.

“I should have been there,” he murmured to himself.

“It isn’t your fault, darling,” Magnus told him. “And I can handle myself. Well. Usually. But your lovely little feather protected me, anyway.”

That brought Alec back into focus. “Can I see it?”

Magnus pulled the charred, bent feather from his breast pocket and handed it to him. Alec cradled it in his hands with far more reverence than he’d ever shown any of the feathers on his body.

“You should make another ornament,” he said.

“Well, I was planning to. I’m rather peeved this one was broken, even if it did save my life.”

“For protection,” Alec elaborated.

“We don’t know it would work again,” Magnus countered. “We don’t even know why it worked this time.”

“We’ll experiment, then. You’re good at that.”

“You’re very passionate about this,” Magnus observed.

“About protecting you? Yeah.” Alec drew out his wings and pulled a feather from one; Magnus winced. Alec handed it to him. “Here.”

Magnus took it, but said, “Please don’t pluck yourself like a chicken, I have plenty of your feathers that have fallen off naturally.”

Alec gave him a bashful smile. “Sorry. But I guess I’m also invested in learning what sort of magic the feather was able to manifest in the first place. I don’t like the idea of having magical objects on my body that I don’t know about.”

“Only you would consider magical feathers a nuisance instead of a wonder,” Magnus said, both amused and exasperated.

“Maybe I can consider them a wonder once we understand them,” Alec retorted. “For now, they’re a wild card, and that makes them a hindrance in a fight, not an asset.”

“Oh so practical and serious,” Magnus chided, tickling the underside of Alec’s chin with the tip of the feather. He expected Alec to lurch away, but his boyfriend just smiled. “I will try to learn more once I make my new protection charm.”

“Good. Now, do you have any idea what that thing was that attacked you? What realm was it from?”

“Not any of the more common demonic realms, of that I am certain.” Magnus would know, he had been to them all. “Perhaps you can check the Institute’s library for me? Or lend me the books, whichever the almighty Clave will allow.”

“You can come to the Institute whenever you want,” said Alec. “If the Clave has a problem, they can learn to deal with it.”

“I do so love when you tell them to shove it,” Magnus sighed. “I’ll come by tomorrow. I’m exhausted right now; as soon as dinner’s over I’m heading to bed.”

Alec came to sit beside him, leaning into his side, their shoulders, hips, and thighs pressed together. He seemed to have sensed Magnus’s need for steadiness in the aftermath of the bizarre attack. But he didn’t make Magnus say it, just silently offered his support. “That sounds like a plan,” he said, and picked up his own food.

Magnus was able to find some peace that night, lying at Alec’s side. But when sleep finally claimed him, the beast’s thrumming voice echoed again through his mind, like a warning of worse times to come.

Magnus…

#malec #my writing #shrb2022 #dr-lemurr #magnus bane #alec lightwood #shadowhunters #i'm obsessed with this art btw #Flight fic

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puttingherinhistory · 3 years

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“Covid has unleashed the most severe setback to women’s liberation in my lifetime. While watching this happen, I have started to think we are witnessing an outbreak of disaster patriarchy.

Naomi Klein was the first to identify “disaster capitalism”, when capitalists use a disaster to impose measures they couldn’t possibly get away with in normal times, generating more profit for themselves. Disaster patriarchy is a parallel and complementary process, where men exploit a crisis to reassert control and dominance, and rapidly erase hard-earned women’s rights. (The term “racialized disaster patriarchy” was used by Rachel E Luft in writing about an intersectional model for understanding disaster 10 years after Hurricane Katrina.) All over the world, patriarchy has taken full advantage of the virus to reclaim power – on the one hand, escalating the danger and violence to women, and on the other, stepping in as their supposed controller and protector.

I have spent months interviewing activists and grassroots leaders around the world, from Kenya to France to India, to find out how this process is affecting them, and how they are fighting back. In very different contexts, five key factors come up again and again. In disaster patriarchy, women lose their safety, their economic power, their autonomy, their education, and they are pushed on to the frontlines, unprotected, to be sacrificed.

Part of me hesitates to use the word “patriarchy”, because some people feel confused by it, and others feel it’s archaic. I have tried to imagine a newer, more contemporary phrase for it, but I have watched how we keep changing language, updating and modernising our descriptions in an attempt to meet the horror of the moment. I think, for example, of all the names we have given to the act of women being beaten by their partner. First, it was battery, then domestic violence, then intimate partner violence, and most recently intimate terrorism. We are forever doing the painstaking work of refining and illuminating, rather than insisting the patriarchs work harder to deepen their understanding of a system that is eviscerating the planet. So, I’m sticking with the word.

In this devastating time of Covid we have seen an explosion of violence towards women, whether they are cisgender or gender-diverse. Intimate terrorism in lockdown has turned the home into a kind of torture chamber for millions of women. We have seen the spread of revenge porn as lockdown has pushed the world online; such digital sexual abuse is now central to domestic violence as intimate partners threaten to share sexually explicit images without victims’ consent.

The conditions of lockdown – confinement, economic insecurity, fear of illness, excess of alcohol – were a perfect storm for abuse. It is hard to determine what is more disturbing: the fact that in 2021 thousands of men still feel willing and entitled to control, torture and beat their wives, girlfriends and children, or that no government appears to have thought about this in their planning for lockdown.

In Peru, hundreds of women and girls have gone missing since lockdown was imposed, and are feared dead. According to official figures reported by Al Jazeera, 606 girls and 309 women went missing between 16 March and 30 June last year. Worldwide, the closure of schools has increased the likelihood of various forms of violence. The US Rape Abuse and Incest National Network says its helpline for survivors of sexual assault has never been in such demand in its 26-year history, as children are locked in with abusers with no ability to alert their teachers or friends. In Italy, calls to the national anti-violence toll-free number increased by 73% between 1 March and 16 April 2020, according to the activist Luisa Rizzitelli. In Mexico, emergency call handlers received the highest number of calls in the country’s history, and the number of women who sought domestic violence shelters quadrupled.

To add outrage to outrage, many governments reduced funding for these shelters at the exact moment they were most needed. This seems to be true throughout Europe. In the UK, providers told Human Rights Watch that the Covid-19 crisis has exacerbated a lack of access to services for migrant and Black, Asian and minority ethnic women. The organisations working with these communities say that persistent inequality leads to additional difficulties in accessing services such as education, healthcare and disaster relief remotely.

In the US, more than 5 million women’s jobs were lost between the start of the pandemic and November 2020. Because much of women’s work requires physical contact with the public – restaurants, stores, childcare, healthcare settings – theirs were some of the first to go. Those who were able to keep their jobs were often frontline workers whose positions have put them in great danger; some 77% of hospital workers and 74% percent of school staff are women. Even then, the lack of childcare options left many women unable to return to their jobs. Having children does not have this effect for men. The rate of unemployment for Black and Latina women was higher before the virus, and now it is even worse.

The situation is more severe for women in other parts of the world. Shabnam Hashmi, a leading women’s activist from India, tells me that by April 2020 a staggering 39.5% of women there had lost their jobs. “Work from home is very taxing on women as their personal space has disappeared, and workload increased threefold,” Hashmi says. In Italy, existing inequalities have been amplified by the health emergency. Rizzitelli points out that women already face lower employment, poorer salaries and more precarious contracts, and are rarely employed in “safe” corporate roles; they have been the first to suffer the effects of the crisis. “Pre-existing economic, social, racial and gender inequalities have been accentuated, and all of this risks having longer-term consequences than the virus itself,” Rizzitelli says.

When women are put under greater financial pressure, their rights rapidly erode. With the economic crisis created by Covid, sex- and labour-trafficking are again on the rise. Young women who struggle to pay their rent are being preyed on by landlords, in a process known as “sextortion”.

I don’t think we can overstate the level of exhaustion, anxiety and fear that women are suffering from taking care of families, with no break or time for themselves. It’s a subtle form of madness. As women take care of the sick, the needy and the dying, who takes care of them? Colani Hlatjwako, an activist leader from the Kingdom of Eswatini, sums it up: “Social norms that put a heavy caregiving burden on women and girls remain likely to make their physical and mental health suffer.” These structures also impede access to education, damage livelihoods, and strip away sources of support.

Unesco estimates that upward of 11 million girls may not return to school once the Covid pandemic subsides. The Malala Fund estimates an even bigger number: 20 million. Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, from UN Women, says her organisation has been fighting for girls’ education since the Beijing UN women’s summit in 1995. “Girls make up the majority of the schoolchildren who are not going back,” she says. “We had been making progress – not perfect, but we were keeping them at school for longer. And now, to have these girls just dropping out in one year, is quite devastating.”

Of all these setbacks, this will be the most significant. When girls are educated, they know their rights, and what to demand. They have the possibility of getting jobs and taking care of their families. When they can’t access education, they become a financial strain to their families and are often forced into early marriages.

This has particular implications for female genital mutilation (FGM). Often, fathers will accept not subjecting their daughters to this process because their daughters can become breadwinners through being educated. If there is no education, then the traditional practices resume, so that daughters can be sold for dowries. As Agnes Pareyio, chairwoman of the Kenyan Anti-Female Genital Mutilation Board, tells me: “Covid closed our schools and brought our girls back home. No one knew what was going on in the houses. We know that if you educate a girl, FGM will not happen. And now, sadly the reverse is true.”

In the early months of the pandemic, I had a front-row seat to the situation of nurses in the US, most of whom are women. I worked with National Nurses United, the biggest and most radical nurses’ union, and interviewed many nurses working on the frontline. I watched as for months they worked gruelling 12-hour shifts filled with agonising choices and trauma, acting as midwives to death. On their short lunch breaks, they had to protest over their own lack of personal protective equipment, which put them in even greater danger. In the same way that no one thought what it would mean to lock women and children in houses with abusers, no one thought what it would be like to send nurses into an extremely contagious pandemic without proper PPE. In some US hospitals, nurses were wearing garbage bags instead of gowns, and reusing single-use masks many times. They were being forced to stay on the job even if they had fevers.

The treatment of nurses who were risking their lives to save ours was a shocking kind of violence and disrespect. But there are many other areas of work where women have been left unprotected, from the warehouse workers who are packing and shipping our goods, to women who work in poultry and meat plants who are crammed together in dangerous proximity and forced to stay on the job even when they are sick. One of the more stunning developments has been with “tipped” restaurant workers in the US, already allowed to be paid the shockingly low wage of $2.13 (£1.50) an hour, which has remained the same for the past 22 years. Not only has work declined, tips have also declined greatly for those women, and now a new degradation called “maskular harassment” has emerged, where male customers insist waitresses take off their masks so they can determine if and how much to tip them based on their looks.

Women farm workers in the US have seen their protections diminished while no one was looking. Mily Treviño-Sauceda, executive director of Alianza Nacional de Campesinas, tells me how pressures have increased on campesinas, or female farm workers: “There have been more incidents of pesticides poisonings, sexual abuse and heat stress issues, and there is less monitoring from governmental agencies or law enforcement due to Covid-19.”

Covid has revealed the fact that we live with two incompatible ideas when it comes to women. The first is that women are essential to every aspect of life and our survival as a species. The second is that women can easily be violated, sacrificed and erased. This is the duality that patriarchy has slashed into the fabric of existence, and that Covid has laid bare. If we are to continue as a species, this contradiction needs to be healed and made whole.

To be clear, the problem is not the lockdowns, but what the lockdowns, and the pandemic that required them, have made clear. Covid has revealed that patriarchy is alive and well; that it will reassert itself in times of crisis because it has never been truly deconstructed, and like an untreated virus it will return with a vengeance when the conditions are ripe.

The truth is that unless the culture changes, unless patriarchy is dismantled, we will forever be spinning our wheels. Coming out of Covid, we need to be bold, daring, outrageous and to imagine a more radical way of existing on the Earth. We need to continue to build and spread activist movements. We need progressive grassroots women and women of colour in positions of power. We need a global initiative on the scale of a Marshall Plan or larger, to deconstruct and exorcise patriarchy – which is the root of so many other forms of oppression, from imperialism to racism, from transphobia to the denigration of the Earth.

There would first be a public acknowledgment, and education, about the nature of patriarchy and an understanding that it is driving us to our end. There would be ongoing education, public forums and processes studying how patriarchy leads to various forms of oppression. Art would help expunge trauma, grief, aggression, sorrow and anger in the culture and help heal and make people whole. We would understand that a culture that has diabolical amnesia and refuses to address its past can only repeat its misfortunes and abuses. Community and religious centres would help members deal with trauma. We would study the high arts of listening and empathy. Reparations and apologies would be done in public forums and in private meetings. Learning the art of apology would be as important as prayer.

The feminist author Gerda Lerner wrote in 1986: “The system of patriarchy in a historic construct has a beginning and it will have an end. Its time seems to have nearly run its course. It no longer serves the needs of men and women, and its intractable linkage to militarism, hierarchy and racism has threatened the very existence of life on Earth.”

As powerful as patriarchy is, it’s just a story. As the post-pandemic era unfolds, can we imagine another system, one that is not based on hierarchy, violence, domination, colonialisation and occupation? Do we see the connection between the devaluing, harming and oppression of all women and the destruction of the Earth itself? What if we lived as if we were kin? What if we treated each person as sacred and essential to the unfolding story of humanity?

What if rather than exploiting, dominating and hurting women and girls during a crisis, we designed a world that valued them, educated them, paid them, listened to them, cared for them and centred them?“

#women #coronavirus #life and style #world news #inequality #Covid 19 #COVID-19 #feminism #womanism #gender inequality #gender equality #corona virus

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