#online medical supplies for animals

[johncory9mm]

Open criticism of Hamas has been growing in Gaza, both on the streets and online. Some have publicly criticised Hamas for hiding the hostages in apartments near a busy marketplace, or for firing rockets from civilian areas. Residents have told the BBC that swearing and cursing against the Hamas leadership is now common in the markets, and that some drivers of donkey carts have even nicknamed their animals after the Hamas leader in Gaza - Yahya Sinwar - urging the donkeys forward with shouts of "Yallah, Sinwar!" “People say things like, ‘Hamas has destroyed us’ or even call on God to take their lives,” one man said.

One senior Hamas government employee told the BBC that the Hamas attacks were “a crazy, uncalculated leap”. He asked that we concealed his identity. “I know from my work with the Hamas government that it prepared well for the attack militarily, but it neglected the home front,” he said. “They did not build any safe shelters for people, they did not reserve enough food, fuel and medical supplies. If my family and I survive this war, I will leave Gaza, the first chance I get.”

Hamas should do the right thing for the people of Gaza. Hamas should immediately surrender and release the hostages, this would end this war today.

[crash-bump-bring-the-whump]

Whumptober 2024 - Day 2

Fion belongs to my beloved @whumpr!!

TWs: None! Someone gets tattooed but there are no details about needles

Trust Issues | Amusement Park | Role Reversal | “You got away with the crime while the knife’s in my back.”

I need a private room, if at all possible. I will pay extra if needed.

Bastian read over the note again, checking over the supplies in the scar cover-up room. Everything was freshly wrapped, he had his sterile packages nearby, his gloves were waiting to be grabbed and put on, and the client was supposed to be showing up soon.

The bell ringing caught Bastian's attention, and their receptionist greeted whoever it was.

"Fion, right? Yeah, just sign right here."

Bastian stepped out to see a person, completely covered head to toe in black layers. A white mask covered his face, just like Fion had said he would be wearing. He looked over, his covered gaze Bastian's grin. "Hey! Come on back, I have the room all ready for you."

Fion nodded, turning sharply to follow Bastian through the door. Bastian shut the door and locked it, waving Fion to take a seat after he spread a medical drape down over the plastic wrap.

"Alright, all I need is your bicep. We'll place the stencil and go from there."

Fion nodded, gloved hands hesitating at the zipper of his hoodie. "Do...do I need to take off everything? Or can I just...take off the sleeve?"

Bastian sat down on his stool, rolling closer. "Just the sleeve is all I need. Don't worry, I promise, whatever I see in this room stays in this room. This is where I do sensitive stuff like scar cover-ups. No one else is gonna come in, and I'll only see what you want me to."

That didn't seem to fully put Fion at ease, but people generally didn't ask for privacy like this if they were easy to soothe. Bastian turned away as Fion adjusted his clothes, just to give him the extra privacy. "There's a medical drape there, in case you want more coverage. Just say when I can look, and we'll get the stencil on."

"I'm ready."

When Bastian turned around Fion was sitting in the chair, the medical drape carefully positioned so that only the area he wanted tattooed was visible. The stencil went on, Fion gave it a thumbs up, and then Bastian set to work.

The room was quiet, with Fion's music playing quietly from his phone as he scrolled casually. He was calmer than Bastian expected, no wincing, no complaining. He was rock-steady as Bastian began lining the D20 he'd wanted for his Dungeons and Dragons character.

"You play?" Bastian asked, voice low and casual, beneath the music. "I've always wanted to. Never been good at math, though."

"...You don't have to be anymore." Fion's voice was quiet, matching Bastian's volume. "There are lots of online sheets and calculators to do the hard parts now."

Bastian hummed. "The rules aren't too hard?"

"Not if you ask questions and have a good DM. It's a lot on paper, but not in practice." Fion said. "And druid is my favorite class."

"What do you like about it?" Bastian began lining the hare--not a rabbit, Fion had been adamant that this was to be a hare--sprinting from behind the die, eyes determined and uncanny as the real thing.

Fion hummed, glancing to watch Bastian work. "I like the flexibility. There's an ability that lets you shapeshift into animals, and that gives me a lot of room to problem solve."

"What's your favorite animal to be?"

Fion lowered his phone, mask tipping up towards the ceiling in thought. "It depends." He was quiet for a moment, seemingly in thought. Bastian began lining the bear exploding out from behind the other side of the die. It was all claws and power and fur, its weight visible in how it rose up onto two legs, mouth open to bite. "I like bear when it comes to combat."

"I can see the appeal, hard to go wrong when you can bring a bear to a sword fight."

That earned a little ghost of a laugh. "I like crows, too, if we need aerial support. Or spiders, if we need someone to be a spy."

Bastian whistled, low and impressed. Those were the other two animals in the tattoo. "I wouldn't have thought about spiders to gather information, that's a good one."

They lapsed into silence as Bastian kept lining. The tension seemed to leave Fion the longer he sat, able to just be on his phone. The two hours ticked by as Bastian worked, not asking for more conversation than Fion was willing to give.

Not everyone was talkative, and that was fine. Fion did wind up starting the first episode of a series that Bastian recommended, though. It was a cartoon about adventurers who have to learn to eat whatever they can on a long journey through a dungeon--one of the kids at Mariano's work had told him about it, and they'd enjoyed it.

"I'll check it out." Fion said, typing the title into a notes app while Bastian wrapped the tattoo. "And I'll let you know what I think at our next appointment."

Bastian couldn't help noticing how much more steady Fion's voice was, or how much easier his gait was as he left. He couldn't wait to hear what Fion thought.

@whump-captain @whumpr @whumperofworlds @lektricwhump @cyberwhumper

@bxtterflystxtches @inscrutable-shadow @whumpbees

[yourheartonfire]

The civilian eased the trapdoor open with a slowness that made the muscles in their shoulders and arm burn. As if this wasn't stressful enough, trying to enter the belltower loft at the exact right speed and volume. Not too fast and loud to startle... to startle them. But not too soft and slow to seem like they were sneaking up.

They'd left food here before, some blankets, a camp lantern and batteries, but always during the day. Never at night. Never when the... when the creature was in residence.

The civilian didn't like thinking about them as the creature, but they weren't sure what other term to use. The newspapers called them some kind of heroic mutant humanoid, the tv reporters wailed about a mad scientist's escaped experiment run amuck. As for the theories people passed about online... The civilian wasn't very religious, but they were pretty sure an angel wouldn't be so very physical.

The creature huddled in the southwest corner of the loft, where the light was weakest. All the protagonist could see was a massive heap of wings, the feathers twitching in the moonlight as they heaved up and down in slow breaths. There was a trail of feathers across the floor and a pinion the size of the civilian's arm stuck to the balcony ledge in a smear of red.

"Hi," the civilian whispered, wondering if they were about to die of unbelievable stupidity. "Hey there. I - I'm the one whose been leaving you things. I work here in the building, I'm..."

The feathers parted. A hawk eye, golden hued, gleamed in the darkness, fixed on the civilian. The civilian froze in place, hands up. "I saw the news footage today. You looked... I brought medical supplies." Slowly they pulled things out of their bag for the creature to see. Gauze. Disinfectant. Tape. "I can leave these here for you but, um. I actually have some first aid training. I can help you?"

It came out an awkward squeak. For a moment there was no other noise but the strained wheeze of the creature's breath. And then they let out a sigh, and let down their wings.

The civilian grabbed their gear and picked their way over the knobbled wooden planks as the creature grunted and shuffled around to turn their back. The civilian's breath caught at the red pock marks down the left shoulder from the joint of the wing down to the mid spine.

"Okay," they said out loud, as they pulled on the latex gloves. "I'm uh, going to have to clean this. It was a shotgun blast, wasn't it?"

The dark head - not feathered, it was hair, black hair - nodded. The muscles in their back jumped as civilian dabbed dry gauze over the skin, carefully brushing the smears of dirt and oil away from the edges of the wounds. Even through the fabric, through the gloves, they could feel heat radiating off the... the creature.

"Are you always this hot?" the civilian asked absently, then almost dropped the gauze in horror. "I mean, for temperature! Hot like, should we worry about infection or are you just..."

Below them there was a boom of a distant door opening.

The wings turned into a blizzard of motion. The civilian was blinded in a flurry of feathers, knocked to the floor and grabbed -

Everything went still again. The civilian was flat on their back and the creature... the creature was on top of them, pinning them at the hips and the shoulders; head up, wings flared, and eyes narrowed as they listened for any other sign of life.

"I came here alone," the civilian whispered. "There's no one else-"

The creature raised a clawed finger to their lips, still listening. But they eased off, their stance shifting from predatory to watchful. Their arm was trembling just with the strain of holding themselves up.

The civilian breathed and waited. The smell was overwhelming: a warm animal scent tinged with a gingery spiciness - but cut through with a metallic tang. All at once, the creature folded back their wings, fell back into a seated position beside the civilian, slumped in apin.

"There now, hang in there," the civilian said quietly, scrambling for their scattered medical supplies. "We can clean this tonight, maybe get some antibiotics for tomorrow..."

"Run hot," the creature said softly, in a voice that chimed like music.

The civilian jumped. "You speak?" they managed to gasp.

The creature shrugged, then winced as that moved their back muscles. They turned their face away, this time pointedly spreading those wings across the floor to reveal their bare back fully. "Help," they whispered. "Clean."

The civilian took a breath and grabbed the bottle of hydrogen peroxide. "Okay. Here we go," they whispered and went to it.

[battleangel]

AI & Palestine

Only mass movements and violence -- throughout all of human history -- have ever resulted in change.

People in power who have power giving up some or all of that power -- CEOs, politicians, the 1%, millionaires & billionaires, world leaders, generals, owners, commissioners, founders, investors, dictators -- to the people they are oppressing -- workers, proletariat, minorities, people of color, black & brown people, LGBTQ people, poor people.

Revolutions, rebellions, insurrections, civil unrest, Montgomery boycott, sit-ins, marches, rallies, protests, hunger fasts, strikes, kidnappings, hostages, threats, demands, terrorism, bombings, bioterrorism, EMP attacks, hacking, picket lines.

On campus, at work, on the White House lawn, state capital, factory floor, Trump Plaza, at the polls, during Presidential and papal visits, during elections.

The only thing that does and has work throughout all of recorded human history is mass movements in the hundreds of thousands and millions and violence.

What doesnt actually work, what doesnt cause change, what has never resulted in people with power giving up some or all of that power in any way, shape or form in any situation is petitions, online signatures, phone calls, emails, tweets, hashtags, "raising awareness", debates, talks, "negotiations", "agreements", "bilateral" talks, treaties.

The above so-called "peaceful measures" only lead to more oppression, exploitation, violence, civilian slaughter, dehumanization, propaganda, hate campaigns, colonizing, empire building, endless wars, genocides, ethnic cleansings, mass graves, rape squads, tortures, atrocities, war crimes, crimes against humanity, mass arrests, cutting off humanitarian aid, massacres, concentration camps, apartheid, mass unemployment, unlawful curfews, overextracting earths resources, forced relocations, mass starvation, engineered famines, childhood suicides, loss of sewage and filtration systems, loss of medicine and medical supplies, schools hospitals and residential areas being carpet bombed, grandmothers being raped on Facebook Live, children being killed on TikTok, genocides streaming live to your phone in real time on Twitter alongside the Met Gala, tens of thousands murdered and buried under rubble that will take decades to unearth, banned biological warfare including phosphorous burning literal holes through civilians skin, 24/7 traumatization as the US funds genocide that is being recorded and streamed in social media in real time against the will of nearly 70% of the tax-paying populace, children eating animal feed because they are being starved on a mass scale, boys and men being stripped naked beaten tortured and exposed to the elements then murdered, pamphlets warning millions of civilians to evacuate before the attack begins when their only escape route into Egypt has already been blocked, an entire generation of children lost traumatized orphaned starved injured hurt oppressed radicalized hated murdered tortured suicide'd . . .

What gets promoted?

The stuff that doesnt work.

Whats legal?

The stuff that doesnt work.

What doesnt get promoted?

Yes there have been marches in Washington for Palestine but true watershed moments are made difficult by the fact that in a capitalist society during the week everyone is at work.

If its on the weekend, Western capitalist societies especially AmeriKKKa are obsessed with competition, organized sports, being busy for the sake of being busy, mindlessness, socializing and errands so if the march is on the weekend, most people will be grocery shopping, clothes shopping, at the mall, at the movies, at a restaurant, at a hair or nail salon, getting a massage, attending kids sports games or dance recitals or plays or martial arts competitions, at the library, at a museum, at an amusement park, at a park, at the beach, at a bar, at a nightclub, at a friends house, at a party, watching a sports game, streaming a show or movie, gaming, scrolling social media, messaging on discord or Whatsapp, going to a play, mowing the lawn, doing the laundry, planning meals for the week, raking leaves, going to church -- endless mindless distractions and busying of the self so who is really traveling to Washington DC for a march for Palestine?

Yes, thousands show up but it isnt enough to disrupt the matrix.

It has to be a mass movement of the people -- hundreds of thousands, not tens, or millions -- for a protest, boycott, strike, march, rally to actually work.

A few thousand people boycotting McDonalds, Starbucks and Disney for Palestine isnt even a rounding error.

Neither is a few people of conscience quitting Google over the cloud AI technology being used to track and surveil Palestinian civilans for Israel.

A few million, however, would impact the bottom line.

Biden was asked if the student protests had made him reconsider his position on Palestine and his immediate, emphatic answer was an unqualified and unmitigated no.

Why do you think that is? Students have been and will continue to be arrested.

Protest encampments will be ripped up and taken down.

Graduations will happen.

Classes will resume.

Netanyahu said "hostilities" (its a genocide, you Hitlerian fuck) will continue for at least six months, suspiciously close to the US election in October.

Why do you think that is?

Does that sound like someone who is sincerely considering a "permanent ceasefire" to you?

Its almost like Biden and Netanyahu have already planned this genocide out regardless of student protests, nearly 70% of Americans wanting a permanent ceasefire and over 3 million calls to Congressmembers by American citizens demanding a permanent ceasefire.

42k dead Palestinian civilians, 4k dead Israeli civilians.

That is a genocide by any definition yet Netanyahu isnt budging and despite Biden using supposedly "tougher language", he hasnt stopped shipping weapons to Israel or sending funding to Israel.

So, ofcourse Rafah got invaded and ofcourse Israel continues to commit genocide against the Palestinians with total and complete impunity.

Israel is already displacing and forcibly relocating Palestinians, forcibly establishing Israeli settlements and building oil wells on the Gaza Strip.

The Gaza Strip has more oil per square kilometer than any place on earth.

Do you think its possible that all this death and destruction is about what its always been about -- money?

Specifically in this instance, oil.

This is a very, very old story that we have seen time and time again with US military involvement in the Middle East.

The Gulf War was not about liberating anyone from Saddam Hussein.

The Iraq War had nothing to do with 9/11, which was an inside job.

Israel is committing a US-funded genocide against Palestine for the same reasons the Gulf War and Iraq Wars were fought -- money (oil), colonial ideology, Western supremacy, military might and expansionism.

As Biden said in the 80s, if Israel didnt exist, "we would have had to invent her."

Ask yourself who "we" is.

So, whats the answer?

The answer is there is no easy answer because a patriarchal, misogynistic, hegemonic, militaristic, colonialist, white supremacist, capitalist state is going to be inherently set up by design to oppress, annihilate, expolit, dehumanize, suppress, repress, colonize, enslave, conquer, slaughter, murder and self propagate its own myth.

Its set up that only a few people hold and can gain access to the levers of power.

Why wont you see Cornel West or Claudia and Karina on the debate stage this fall?

Why are the choices Biden, Trump and Bernie again?

Why have all U.S. Presidents -- hundreds of them -- all descended from the same UK royal bloodline?

Do you know who the Reptilians are?

It doesnt mean give up.

It means realizing resistance and struggle are lifelong endeavors. Muhammad Ali and Malcolm X were in Palestine protesting in solidarity with their brown oppressed brothers in the 1970s -- whats changed?

Layoffs are cyclical, on purpose and follow a predictable pattern meant to disrupt, unnerve and keep workers in control, desperate, afraid, off-kilter and on the corporate hamster wheel.

Wars are cyclical and on purpose just like mass layoffs are.

Layoffs have nothing to do with the economy and wars have nothing to do with freedom.

Its about exploitation, wealth hoarding, empire building, fear, control, manipulating, amassing and mainting power, hegemony, patriarchy, militarism, white supremacy, police state, fascism, unregulated free markets and exploitative capitalism, monopolies, monoliths, kingdoms, Western Civilization, the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution, The Age of AI, robotics . . .

They are really gearing up with AI and robotics.

Studies have demonstrated that 80% of current jobs will be replaced within the next five years with advances in AI & robotics.

So, what happens to people that were doing those jobs?

I believe the relentless endless obnoxious and fucking nauseating push for all things AI & robotics is leading to the following scenario in the next five years:

Once 80% of current jobs have been replaced with AI and robotics, people will be offered jobs to do what they are already doing -- use social media, online gaming and Metaverse (which will be rolled out already) -- and they will be paid as "User Researchers", to fill out surveys and give feedback on their daily experiences using social media, online gaming and the Metaverse and to test out functionality and usability of new features.

What UBI (Universal Basic Income) should have been for all adult US citizens will instead go to these User Researchers. I predict they will borrow from proposed UBI models and pay these User Researches a $1k a month and provide them with healthcare.

The real purpose of these jobs will be to make people even more obsessed and dependent upon social media, online gaming and the coming Metaverse than they already are. Instead of breaking to go to work, now this is their work so there is no break from it Monday through Friday -- they will be addicted.

They will be so addicted that even on the weekends, they will choose to stay inside online -- social media, gaming and Metaverse -- instead of going out and about, socializing, exercising, going for a walk, shopping, movies, going to eat, sports, plays, etc.

VR will be huge at this point and all of the above can be experienced virtually so why leave your house or apartment.

Naturally, there will be people who occupied the 80% of jobs that were eliminated by AI and robotics that wont have an interest in being User Researchers for social media, online gaming or the Metaverse.

I predict they will get the equivalent of retirement packages since their actual functional roles no longer exist and have been replaced with AI and robotics and then I envision they will allow these people to access their 401k and social security early.

I believe User Researcher will be offered as a major in colleges and online academies. I also believe influencers will tout it as the thing to do post high school and post college. I also predict that degrees will be optional for the position and not required.

Naturally, given that these User Researchers will literally be paid for their addictions to social media, gaming and the Metaverse, as one might suspect, they will not be getting up very much from their respective couches, gaming chairs, bean bags, beds and Lay-Z boy reclining chairs and thus, by design, obesity, Type II diabetes, hypertension, atherosclerosis, heart disease and all manners of diseases caused by sedentary lifestyles will skyrocket.

A less healthy, more sedentary, more addicted to tech society than we even have know that are dependent on big tech to fund their existence.

What could possibly go wrong?

Covid was the soft reset for the Age of AI & robotics.

They got rid of countless jobs and small businesses and financially ruined many entrepreneurs and 9 to 5'ers.

Paradoxically, at the same time we were being told that we couldnt go into the office because Covid, yet somehow fast food and big box retail were deemed "emergency services" (like hospitals and pharmacies???) so that mostly black and brown impoverished people who statistically are more immunocompromised and less healthy were constantly exposed to the dangers of Covid as many customers refused to mask up.

Soft reset. Control, fear campaigns, paradoxes, paradigms, millions dead, percentage wise mostly black brown impoverished, elderly and immunocompromised.

Exactly who costs the government the most with Medicare, Medicaid, SNAP & EBT and exactly who they wanted to get rid of.

TikTok was a catalyst for this.

Peoples attention span on average is 3 seconds now -- 3!

That is unprecedented in all of human history.

We were not designed to constantly process 1 to 5 second videos.

They overloaded us by design to shortcircuit our attention spans and shorten our minds.

The average song now is 2 to 3 minutes long.

Ten years ago, the average song was 4 minutes long.

Do you see whats happening?

Do you see what they've done on purpose?

Does anyone remember the Super Bowl shooting at the Chiefs parade earlier this year?

If you noticed, there was an extremely short news cycle regarding the Super Bowl parade shooting. Much shorter than other shootings. And it was the Chiefs, the NFL's reigning Super Bowl champions.

Even five years ago, that would have been news for a week.

It was literally reported on for a day or two and then dropped and never reported on again.

Why do you think that is?

This years Super Bowl had 150 ads. Think about that. In about 3.5 hours.

Five years ago, the Super Bowl had 100 ads.

Why do you think that is?

Who are the Reptilians?

[quirkwizard]

Hello Quirkwizard. This question popped up in my head after seeing for the 5th time your post of quirks that would help with survival in the wilderness. Now what original quirks of yours would be great for the exact same scenario ? I don't know when this will arrive and when it will catch your attention so happy Christmas holidays Quirkwizard and be well.

Once again, I'm going to avoid anything that would let the user straight up escape the scenario since that defeats the purpose of it.

Cubism: Given the variety of ways the user can shape the cubes, it can work in a lot of ways, from providing shelter to using them as weapons and the like.

Fallout: This doesn't excel at any one part of survival, but it's a good as a general tool, working to reduce the need for food and medical attention. All thanks to all natural sunlight.

Grow Up: This is going to be a case by case choice, but there's probably going to be some foliage around. If there is, the options are limitless, including food, shelter, defenses and all kinds of stuff from plant life.

Adaptation: The elements are going to be one of the hardest aspects of survival to work around, especially if you aren't prepared. So just building your own body to fit whatever biome your dealing with would be helpful.

Hazmat: If there's one thing I've learned about survival is that infection can demolish you. So having something that can clean whatever you want, such as your food, your wounds, or yourself, it is going to be good physically and mentally.

Self Help: While this could have some help with survival, pulling out certain versions as needed, it mostly helps with psychological issues. Being out on your own can do a lot to you mentally, so might as well get use to talking to yourself.

Cornucopia: Well, this would certainly solve the food and water issue. All the user would need to do is find some of each and their entire supply multiples without much threat to effort on the user's part. And hey, it can be used as a weapon.

Makeshift: This may seem like an odd choice, but I do think that a user of this could still try to engineer something out of the various objects around them to help them survive. Think some of those crazy survival primal tech videos online.

Swiss Hand: A swiss army knife is already going to be a super useful given how many tools you'll have access to. Having a suped up version of that would cover a lot of the hassle of survival, like starting a fire and defending yourself.

Greenery: This may just be the best option, at least in how much it can cover. It can help heal the user, can promote plantlife, makes you more resistant to natural hazards, keep animals from attacking, and promotes the best plan for survival: staying put.

[zhooniyaa-waagosh]

With very few exceptions, constant handling of zoo animals posted online is stressful for the animals AT BEST and actively harmful in many cases. There are very few animals in zoos that have regular physical contact with handlers outside of medical care and training (to make it easier to give them medical care). Even fewer animals interact directly or closely to the guests.

A baby animal that is being messed with frequently and handled roughly by keepers for videos to post online is a GIANT red flag regardless of where the zoo is. Hippos especially are delicate and EXTREMELY dangerous animals that should be handled with care.

And that's not even getting into the dangers of the zoo posting that sort of content when it's a known fact that social media contributes strongly to exotic animal trafficking to supply the illegal pet trade and "cute" versions of highly dangerous wild animals, like pygmy hippos, are a common target of that.

I'm just so sick of the way animal abuse is normalized online.

[butts-bouncing-on-the-beltway]

Your tags re: the Woolman article are making me think about some things... No need to respond to this--I'm just sending it over in case you have some insight, as someone who's constantly living and breathing and thinking about these things.

I've often considered my comfort a matter of physical safety. I have multiple compounding disabilities (a lot of them undiagnosed, not a lot of access to competent medical practitioners in my life) which generally directly translate mental stress & physical exertion into negative health outcomes. Insomnia, inability to process nutrients and resulting significant weight loss, joint pain and instability, constant swelling of my lymphs and tonsils, autonomic dysregulation, fatigue and muscle weakness, decreased immune function, and more. When I was working outside of the house regularly, my health was incredibly poor; when the new coronavirus hit and I was forced onto SSI, I was able to move in with a caretaker/partner and my required activity level has gone significantly down. I gained over 30 pounds, started sleeping regularly, stopped subluxing, no longer experience sensory meltdown, and went from getting contagiously sick once or twice a month to once or twice a year.

But my activity level is now only possible because I rely on the structures I think are abysmally unethical. My daily routine involves very light housework, emotional care and trauma work for my partner, and sedentary hobbies like writing poetry. I can't even do useful hobbies that require fine motor skills (i.e. sewing), because of my sustained tremors and dyspraxia. I don't cook, and I rely almost entirely on prepackaged foods and delivery services. We have a small garden, and I work in it occasionally, but nowhere near enough to grow our own food, apart from some tomatoes (very easy plant to care for where I am, but does not a divestment from industrial agriculture make). We've chosen not to care for animals because I don't think I could comfortably manage them. In fact, I do not do much of anything that involves exiting my front or back door, as my sensory overload is strongly triggered by direct sunlight and causes genuine physical pain--something that has become much more difficult to deal with ever since I stopped subjecting myself to it daily.

Frequently, I feel hypocritical for, for example, having a principled and genuinely *angry* opposition to the global supply chain and my principles being in favor of divesting from it and hoping it breaks down entirely--and yet, I myself won't divest from it, because of my own comfort. Because at the end of the day, I certainly wasn't dying before. Perhaps I could re-train myself to not feel the sensory overload I am now so sensitive to--when I was used to experiencing it every day, I barely even noticed it, and things like sunglasses do take the edge off. I was not *dangerously* underweight, just enough to make my life slightly more difficult. Getting sick so frequently was frustrating, but I could significantly up my activity level without upping my socializing or generally being around others, which would make it less likely I reach the level of contagious sicknesses that I was at pre-coronavirus.

The point of all of that being, I have been mulling over this for quite some time, and now I'm considering the matter even more intensely. I have been primarily socializing in online disability support groups for a very long time now, and this kind of talk is always met with the assertion that my comfort is more important than my principles above all else. That I should care for myself, make my life as comfortable as possible, because disabled people deserve to be happy. I agree with that. But simultaneously, my happiness should not come at the expense of others' *lives,* and while I cannot actually stop those people from being exploited and dying, individually, I still resonate with your statements... that my principles are important to live by, and even moreso, that we *must* make the decision to be comfortable with discomfort to destroy these systems to begin with--all of us, individually. I wonder where the threshold is for "comfort" vs "safety" when you are someone whose discomfort can be physically dangerous. How does one assess that danger? Where does one draw the line? I am in the process of feeling out that line... but where are the rules for how to draw it, where are the guidelines... Has anyone even written any?

I appreciate you sharing your insights with the Internet as a whole, allowing me access to them and expanding my worldview. Once again, certainly no pressure to offer any on this ridiculous essay of an ask specifically. This is a matter I will surely be journaling about!

Honestly Anon? I love you for this. You've given me the space to say out loud things I very rarely acknowledge to anyone other than my wife and my therapist. Not because it's private or shameful, but because it's just....so goddamn hard???? To figure this shit out.

Simple answer Anon: we all have to make that judgement call for ourselves based on our values, our needs, and our circumstances. We cannot, and should not, prescribe judgement calls to others, because we can never fully know what their relationship with those factors is like. I meant what I said about needing to refuse to share your power with a system that wields violence in a SUSTAINABLE way, maybe even your whole life. That doesn't mean "strip every connection out and then deal with the consequences until you find a new normal" though. It means "for every place you don't HAVE TO utilize a connection, don't, and be REALLY honest about what "have to" means to you."

Long answer: I have lived a "homesteader" life for poverty and access reasons during my childhod. And now, as an adult, I am returning to it after the sweet joys and freedoms of modern infrastructure, NOT because of poverty, but because of being middle class with an autoimmune disorder that nearly killed me at least twice in the past 5 years. In both cases, there were parts of life that absolutely still relied on systems of power (as a kid, for example, my mom bought me all my clothes through thrift shops for as long as she could, but my body type has always been a bit unusual and by the time I was 10 we had to buy clothes from your standard department store - usually a sears or every once in a while a kohls, and it's not like we weren't aware of the clothing industry's impact on the environment and human life globally. As an adult, I currently depend HEAVILY on technology, and for all that I am a huge advocate against the ongoing atrocities in Sudan and DRC in part due to their geographical role in tech, research, and development from rare earth mining, I also literally cannot survive in the world right now without semi-current tech due to communication needs, work needs, healthcare beeds, etc.)

This is not to say "if I can do it, so can everyone else!!1!" (Obvious bullshit I have no interest in selling yall). But it IS to say that there are so many different reasons and ways that people withdraw their power from systems of violence. For example, people who undergo the process of removing themselves from the public workforce and accessing state or federal financial aid are absolutely withdrawing their (e.g.: labor) power from systems of violence. The fact that your (e.g.: finanancial) power may be placed in various access points, resource pots, etc., really isn't a BAD thing, it's just the reality of being human.

To one extent, this is why I talk about (and try to engage as much as possible in) mutual aid the way I do. It would be literally an impossible demand to tell someone they have to completely withdraw their contributions to and from society in order to have opinions about systems within that society being abusive or unacceptable. The idea that you (or you, or him, or her, or them, or me, or it, or ANYONE) should need to be completely self-sufficient as an individual or a household in order to demand change from resource systems is ultimately one that opressive systems themselves put forward in this twisted all-or-nothing portrayal of autonomy. To buy into that framework is to accept their claim that there is no other way to do things besides theirs or Alone and Unsupported. And we all need to work REALLY hard to remember what utter fucking horseshit that is.

So instead of shaming yourself for being a human being with survival needs you don't want other people to have to die for, focus on asking yourself what you ACTUALLY need, at the literal survival level. Then take the time to think of as many different ways you could meet those needs as possible, even the obviously unreasonable ones. Think about WHAT MAKES THEM unreasonable. Is it an intersection with another need? A societal construct (money, respect, family structure, etc)? A logistical/environmental issue? What would it look like to problem solve for any of those? What is EFFECTIVE at addressing the barriers and what is ACCESSIBLE at addressing the barriers? Figure out, realistically, what it would mean to take the autonomy and choice of each factor FULLY into your hands.

So that way, when you make a decision, you know you've made one based on what is as in line with your values as possible, while taking into account your needs and your circumstances, on a case by case basis. A conscious, thoughtful level. Whatever the outcome is, that's ultimately less important than the fact that you really took the time to observe, understand, and actively participate in the process of impact on the world living your life will inevitably have.

"There is no ethical consumption under capitalism" doesn't mean, as some allege it is understood or used as, "ethical consumption is impossible therefore do whatever you want," it means "your existence and its interaction with the existences of others, whether direct or indirect, WILL have an impact, and not all of that will be good, or within your control, so don't waste time trying to be perfect when what you need to be is respectfully and compassionately INTENTFUL."

So what does that look like for me?

Well, I have an autoimmune disorder, intermittent chronic organ failure, constant pain and frequent limited or restricted mobility, and can't let anything touch a mucus membrane that I don't know the EXACT ingredients of.

So long before a return to homesteading, or COVID, or anything else that's happened in the last 5yrs, I had already been put in the position of needing to be EXTREMELY aware of the origins and distribution chains of everything I came in contact with. I had to start making my foods, drinks, hair and skin care products, hygeine products, hell my own fucking PET FOOD sometimes to cut out potentially lethal exposures to substances I could no longer interact with. And while that list STARTED at 3, it has only grown since, and I now maintain strict isolation from. Well. Basically everything and everyone. It. It sucks, Anon, gonna be honest. I genuinely don't want to do most of it, and between the constant pain, the brain fog, the ADHD, the intermittent flareups that leave me bedridden, etc, my life has basically been nothing more than an endless game of catch-up since I was about 23.

I *am* catching up tho.

Like, one of the things that's really stuck out to me through the near-decade long process is how the every step more distant you take from these systems makes the next step easier.

My first step was removing gluten and corn from my diet, and boy howdy let me tell you, there is NOTHING left for you that you don't make from scratch if you need to avoid both. Your life as "normal" kinda just. Ends there. You know?

Like, I'm about 9yrs into this change in particular, and once or twice a month I STILL manage to bring home something from the market that ends up having a gluten ingredient that got missed in the first scan because I got careless because why the FUCK do egg salad and hair shampoo have wheat flour in it STEVE??????

So the idea of buying any ingredient or food item that has been processed in any way beyond basic cleaning and transport just comes with this inherent thrill of terror every time. And god, the THINGS that I have to CARE about???? Literally, it depends on severities and who you ask, but there are real conversations being had in celiac circles about having to raise their own chickens because COMMERCIAL EGG LAYING CHICKEN FEED HAS WHEAT IN IT AND SO THEY REACT TO THE EGGS???? Nightmares, I'm telling you.

All this to say, the more often the stuff you bring home from the outside world inches you closer to death, the more motivated you are to have a complete understanding of the entire lifespan of anything you come in contact with. The easier it is to just. Do it all your damn self. Not because it's ACTUALLY easy mind you, but because you just don't have the emotional strength to keep pushing back on the sneaky, magical thinking based idea that if you just do it all yourself maybe being alive will hurt a little less. So it's probably not a surprise to anyone that my end goal here is to retreat to about 100+ acres of conservational land that I can slowly restore with edible, astringent, and fiber plants indigenous to the land's ecosystem and then just spend my days puttering around eating nuts and berries and amaranth and spinning thread or weaving cloth for bandages and blankets.

But I can DO that in part because I'm NOT doing it alone, or even just with my own household. I work with friends, colleagues, community resource programs, and everything else to make this stuff happen. I do everything I reasonably can to sustain my life as it needs living in ways that allow me to only depend on infrastructures of systemic violence as a conscious concession that I lack other survivable long term options. And I keep my evolving needs and circumstances in mind in case that ever changes in a way I can take advantage of.

I dunno, I guess....I've lived life a lot of different ways now, and I've come to understand the world really differently. One of the most meaningful frameworks for change I use now isn't eliminating or stopping something, but just. Lessening it.

When we were homeless for a while, we lost basically everything we owned. I think we had a handful of blankets, clothes, the pets, the car, a couple of personal treasures we managed to keep on us, and that was it. And we've stabilized now, but that doesn't mean we can afford things like furniture or dishes or clothes or whatever. Not unless we need them. So we make do with thrifted whenever we can and we also just. Make do without. We haven't had a couch in about 3-4 yrs now. It just wasn't a priority. Same with a dining table or chairs or the like. We have a bed! For a long time it was just a mattress from a lady selling them out of her garage and then we got some box springs, and now we have an actual bedframe! We each have a work desk and chair that's really it tho. A whole house now, and maybe 7 pieces of furniture in the whole place.

It's kinda similar with dishes and clothes. If you have to handwash all your dishes with special hypoallergenic soap that costs. Just so much more. Than normal dishsoap would. You're gonna start being really inventive about your dishes. My wife and I have what I like to call "service for 4" meaning we have 4 plates, 2 bowls and two tupperwares, two pans (1 cast iron, 1 ceramic, same size different functions), two pots (a 4cup stock pot and a 3gal stock pot), a full sheet baking tray, 3 mugs and a few washed jam jars, four of each sppon/knife/fork, and 2 nice butchering knives. Basically all of them are thrifted or gifts. And I could fit almost the whole lot piled together in the 3gallon stock pot for washing as needed. If you have to wash all your clothes in a basin while you shower, and hang them out to dry, you benefit from having only about 2-3 outfits worth of clothes that you can spice up with accessories instead of new combos, that way someone can do a basin full of washing each day and you'll more or less keep up with the pace of laundry. Missing days will happen, but they won't pile up as badly, are easier to recover from, and can - in a pinch - just be taken to a laundromat and dealt with for less than $10.

My floors are all (as much as possible) hardwood, because it's much easier to just put on my dusting or mopping slippers and "skate" around for a while to clean the floors than it is to lug around a vacuum I can't carry or use without pain.

I'm lucky enough to live on land with a creek, a well, and henhouse, so I thatch the henhouse floor with $5/bale clover hay from a local farmer once a week, and keep enough chickens on a rotation to cut down our protein costs and eliminate our egg costs. We're (wifey and me) building a fenced in run this weekend around the hen house so the hens can start foraging for food daily and we can cut back on feed (the area is already planted with lots of lovely chicken safe plants and I figure I'll keep cultivating that for them with replantings as necessary. That way, we can just let them out in the morning and close them back in (if we bother) at night, and top up a 25lb feeder once a week when we change the hay over again. The hay we clear out goes into the garden for mulch and fertilizer, and in turn the chickens get bundles or herbs and veggies and other snacks to supplement their forage and feed. It's an involved first year or so, but once the system is set up it's actually remarkably self-perpetuating.

And a lot of the ways I've changed my life are like that. Intensive to set up right, but shockingly low impact on day to day life once established. And sure it adds up, but like. So do the benefits.

I'm the healthiest I've been in years.

That doesn't always FEEL like much because things do still very badly wrong for me about once a month.

But it used to be daily. I used to push myself through a system of functioning that DID depend largely on these external hierarchical systems, and STILL come up short of resources in the end while experiencing daily symptoms. The more I've removed myself from those systems, the more I've removed their IMPACT on me, both positive and negative. And. At least in my case. It turns out there was always a LOT more negative than positive. I just. Didn't get to see and assess my alternatives, so it was harder to notice. Depending more on subsistence and community systems has turned out to be REALLY healthy for me.

I think part of that has also been learning how to create alternatives out of spaces that feel like voids. It's made it easier for me to cultivate a life of intentional accommodation by familiarizing myself with the process of initializing them.

And I think if that's NOT how you're experiencing your withdrawal of power from systems of violence, then you're not ACTUALLY meeting the needs you are trying to find replacements for OUTSIDE of that system. Maybe you can right then or maybe you can't! But either way it's worth asking why hurting yourself helps anyone else.

Praxis is uncomfortably complex in its simplicity: bring as much safety and compassion and collaboration to your world as you can.

It does include safety, compassion, and collaboration towards OURSELVES as well, after all.

[sanguinosa-blog]

Israel-Gaza war: Death and Israel’s search for ‘total victory’

11 February By Jeremy Bowen BBC international editor, Jerusalem

I'd rather be writing this story in the Gaza Strip, not Jerusalem. After many years of covering wars, since El Salvador in 1989, I'm convinced that nothing beats first-hand reporting.

Unfortunately, in this terrible war, international journalists can't do that. Israel and Egypt, the two countries that control Gaza's borders, do not want us in there, reporting freely. Israel allows some closely supervised visits with its army. I have been on only one, back in November.

Since we cannot get in, we rely on Palestinian journalists who can't get out. I have huge admiration for their courage and dedication to truthful reporting.

Fortunately, in the modern world it is impossible to seal a war off. That is because ordinary people can film with a phone - and with a few clicks, post their pictures online. We can talk to them too, if communications haven't been cut. Israel and Hamas upload their own videos. Everything must be verified and checked, especially now that artificial intelligence is much easier to use.

With all those constraints in mind, this is how the war looks on a February day from Jerusalem.

The humanitarian crisis

Just after Hamas attacked Israel on 7 October, Yoav Gallant, Israel's defence minister, announced: "We are putting a complete siege on Gaza. No electricity, no food, no water, no gas - it's all closed."

"We are fighting human animals," he added, "and we are acting accordingly."

Under pressure from US President Joe Biden, Israel now allows limited supplies of food, water and medicine into Gaza. Aid agencies and the UN cite considerable evidence that Israeli security checks slow the supply of relief into Gaza, and that Israel restricts the movement of relief convoys inside the Strip. Very little medical and food aid has reached northern Gaza this year.

In response to this article, the Israeli embassy in London said claims by UN agencies about the food situation in Gaza were inaccurate and "constitute support of Hamas propaganda". Israel says that if aid is not getting through, it's because of the UN and aid agencies on the ground. The statement added that "Hamas steals aid from the residents of Gaza".

After four months of war, law and order in Gaza is in fragments. Aid convoys are looted every day. Sunday 11 February was the worse day of looting so far in the south, according to the UN. It said what's left of the local police force stopped protecting convoys after eight of their men were killed in Israeli raids.

Because we are not permitted to enter Gaza, we cannot check Israel's claims that Hamas is stealing the food.

The UN's prime suspects are criminal gangs who sell it on. Judging by the few videos of looting that have emerged, desperate individuals are doing it too.

"I don't know who they are," Jamie McGoldrick, the UN's humanitarian coordinator told me. "They're young guys, not in uniforms. They just come here and they stop us and take stuff off the back. And it turns up in the market sometimes. I wouldn't mind if desperate people got to use it but you see some stuff in the market which has been taken off our trucks." Mr McGoldrick said it was getting impossible to operate in such a lawless environment.

Israel is increasingly sensitive about accusations that it is responsible for the suffering of civilians in Gaza, because of pressure from its allies, especially the US, and the genocide case it is facing at the International Court of Justice in The Hague. Later this month, it has to show the court that it has improved conditions for non-combatants in Gaza.

International aid groups say on top of the fact that innocent civilians in Gaza are being killed and wounded, they are also being starved and deprived of medical treatment. The Geneva Convention says that punishing civilians for crimes they did not commit amounts to collective punishment, which is a war crime. ......

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-68255843

[wizardsjournal]

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[coyote-kiddo]

30 Days of Agere (all at once because I can)

I found it initially on Tumblr via the aesthetic "babycore", and I assumed it wasn't for me so I tried pet regression (to cope with a situation I was in at the time) and then slowly got more into agere :)

Usually 1-8

No, I'm fairly independent when I regress

Home alone, able to watch cartoons and use little gear as I please around my house, decorating my headphones and a long nap in the middle of the day,,, food prepared beforehand by big me so little me doesn't have to :)

I have loads of stuffies, toys and coloring supplies from when I was a kid, and some sippy cups (also from when I was a kid), but I'm hoping to get a paci and some other things soon :))

Yes !! I petre to multiple animals, usually ragdoll kitty or fox but also puppy, bunny, and I'm thinking of trying goat, lamb and/or wolf !!

Big me wears lossa eyeliner, big clothes and is very very irritable, little me is super sleepy all the time and only wears pjs

Both !! I don't do much when I regress but sometimes I color or draw :)

(will tag when I remember their users)

Both. I usually voluntarily age dream/fully regress and involuntarily half-regress when I'm anxious (and I have halfway kitty regressed during panic attacks before??)

Yes ! I often do it to help me slip, but also just to calm down even if I don't regress

I would say so, I have also seen and used pacis in dreams before

Banana milkshakes, Cheerios and goldfish :)

Yes of course, I have over 100 of them

My stepmom knows and she's very supportive, my dad also knows but he just kinda gives it the side eye

Prince/Princett, Kiddo, Nugget, Pup, and Angel :)

Nothing really makes me "instantly regress", but SFW little content, blanket burritos, my little playlist, and my little gear help quite a lot

No, my living situation kinda sucks right now and I have chronic (medically diagnosed) anxiety that makes it hard to stay regressed.

Sometimes kinda sucks (as it is plagued with discourse, people claiming to be "nsfw agere", literal gr00mers and people who make fun of other regressors for not fitting into the stereotype of "physically small, a girl, feminine, pretty, pastels, etc.") but I stay mostly to the safe side of the community

No

Yes and I hate being tickled with a passion :(

Alphys and/or Mettaton from Undertale :)

Mostly dark colors for the walls, carpet floor, a tent, fairly small, places to organize my toys and craft supplies, a tv, lots of blankets and pillows, and dim fairy lights for lighting :)

Not really, as an autistic regressor I find it hard

Mostly to take my mind off of things, but also to cope with severe anxiety and (as a transmasc regressor) to relive my childhood :)

Yes !! I can't regress without it, I have a playlist on Spotify with some songs that help me regress

Since I don't have or want a cg, not really, but big me has some rules for little me, i.e. no hurting myself, be safe online, be ready for bed by 10, etc.

Sleepy and "soft" I guess ?? I'm kinda fuzzy brained and can't do much

No, I don't think I could be a cg

I have a document in my phone (Notes) about my regression that I like to add to, I find it very helpful and fun :)

[ghostofacrow]

Decided to rewatch Psycho-Pass (season 1) because I didn't remember the ending entirely and got worried it pulled a Makoto Persona 5 at the end and decided that being a cop is based actually, which made me hesistant about recommending it to people anymore. But surprisingly I came away from it liking the ending more.

Spoilers under the cut, this is mostly ending discussion so it's also not going to make sense if you haven't seen it - if you want a recommendation, I think it's definitively worth the time, especially if you like cyberpunk dystopias and/or thrillers. Be warned that there is a lot of graphic violence so you might want to look up content warnings

"Being a cop is good actually" is technically what happens, Akane does stay with the CID by the end, but it's also a lot bleaker and conflicted then I remembered. In one of the conversations with Sybil she does outright say "I'm not interested in dying needlessly", making it clear she's going along with their bargain because refusing would be pointless, and from the scene where the chief tries to kill Kougami in the parking garage all of her interactions with Sybil are Akane trying to push against the rules to get consessions from Sybil and it doesn't even work. She doesn't manage to save Kougami and when she gives her final speech to Sybil ("One day, someone is going to come down here and turn the power off"), Sybil just laughs at her and taunts her to keep struggling because it will make them stronger. And then it ends with a repeat of the first episode except several of the characters are dead now and Ginoza got demoted to enforcer, just like his father and Kougami before. (sidenote: that they decide to portray this visually by removing his glasses is hilarious)

Akane definitively comes down on the "no violent revolution I will work within the system" side of things but I'm not sure the anime does and even if it does, the ending is bleak enough that I can respect that it's aware that that decision isn't neutral and has a heavy price tag on it.

There is something to be said about how the main agent of change is a dangerous serial killer, and the non-serial killer outcasts are generally glossed over in favor of the crazy schoolgirl using bodies as an art supply store, but I do think they're generally framed as sympathetic. Maybe ineffective or terminally online but not misguided? It rings very true that Sybil is so ingrained that it seems impossible to change.

There is a more complicated discussion about how much the series buys into true crime ideas about profiling and how sociopathy works (Sybil is clearly flawed, that's what the whole story is about, but the behavioral science unit profiling shit Kougami does is real and works within the fiction of the story and there sure are a lot of weird quirky serial killers around in this one city) but I would be lying if I said I didn't enjoy serial killer fiction and this is a much bigger discussion then this one ten year old series. It's kinda problematic but it's not more problematic in this regard then any other thriller and it at least does something interesting with it. Same with how easily the people in the helmet episodes are pushed towards heinously violent crimes just because they can get away with it, but it's also maybe kinda implied that this is Sybil's fault because everyone is really bad at managing their impulses and dark thoughts now? And it's not really remarked upon but the first guy was trying to steal psych medicine first so it's also plausible he was trying to self medicate to avoid getting flagged. Not sure if that read is intended but I appreciate that it's open to interpretation like this - the same thing I liked about the ending. Akane does come to a decision by the end but it feels more like a tentative answer then a final conclusion.

There's a scene where the criminal psychology professor guy gives a definition of anarchism and it's very brief and glossed over but it does correctly point out that it's about rejection of hierarchies, not about having no rules whatsoever. So that's nice considering how often media gets this wrong and it makes me like Akane's monologue about laws a lot more because it seeds the idea that "law" is supposed to mean any kind of socially agreed upon rule here, not necessarily one dictated by the ruling class.

Finally though the show does have an issue with using women as the default victims for a lot of its graphic violence, the first episode has a rape scene, the murder sculptures are made up of school girls, Boogie Woogie getting strangled while the male V-tubers die offscreen, the person getting slowly beaten to death by the masked guy is a woman, the chief (woman status debatable due to dude brain cyborg bullshit but definitively a female body) has one of the most graphic deaths (death status debatable due to cyborg hivemind brain room bullshit) of any named character. I don't have a problem with these scenes individually, at least not conceptually - with some of them I do have some notes on the execution - but all of them taken together it's a lot. Obviously the show is really dark and violent overall but it does sure feel like there is a disproportionate amount of screentime and detail allocated to women being brutalised while men get comparatively quick or offscreen deaths and I don't think the show is aware of this. The longest discussion of gender is around the sculptor girls fixation on killing schoolgirls, who Makishima later calls shallow and uninteresting (before killing her brutally too I forgot her in the list actually) but the show also does this - focusing on despoiling women because they're supposedly more pure. Again individually I don't have a huge issue with any of these scenes, but when you take it as a whole it becomes uncomfortably even.

Really enjoyed the rewatch overall, I didn't think the show would hold up to my memory of it because of the serial killer bs and the ending but I think I actually came out of it liking it more. Let's see if this holds if i watch season 2 lol I remember approximately two scenes and a feeling of boredom from it

[i-am-beckyu]

yeah you've got fake fic prompts of mine still in the works, yeah you're still working on important things, but have more questions

deserted island edition ✨ food and water are all squared away

what book are you taking with you?

you can only watch one show on loop (on your own time), what is it?

you can only watch one movie on loop (on your own time), take your pick

five songs, go!

you can get a free dessert that you can have once a month. what is it?

your captor(s) let you have fast food once. what's your pick?

you find materials to make a structure. are you making a shelter or something else?

before you leave, you get your person pick of six items. what are they?

you're given paper and pencil, are you writing or drawing? you can not do both.

you get an animal to accompany you! what is it? :D

you get internet for six hours. what're you wasting your time on the most?

are you fishing in the water or hunting on land? doing none of that and growing a garden?

are you sending an sos secretly or just waiting to see where this all takes you?

what's the first thing you're doing when you get off of the island?

would you rather be alone the entire time or only have the annoying company of your captor(s)?

���🕺

answer whenever you have the time btw !! get caught up with real life before you go cracking into the online stuff <3<3

Yes!! Hello Brick!

I am so sorry the prompts are taking so long to finish. Work is being extremely difficult atm and draining a lot of my energy and motivation to do anything but sleep so trying to prioritise has been rough writing wise especially with finishing my secret santa prompt on time! When its done, I should get out the fake fic titles next.

As for this, this I have some energy for!

what book are you taking with you? Since I assume ao3 doesn't count, Knife by R.J Anderson (will forever be my favourite written book)

you can only watch one show on loop (on your own time), what is it? mmmmm probably Friends because that's long and hilarious.

you can only watch one movie on loop (on your own time), take your pick Mmmmmmm either Pixars Luca or Newsies the broadway musical (I watch those soooooo often)

five songs, go! Have the links too: Figure it out , New Zealand, Get used to it, Calm and I can talk

you can get a free dessert that you can have once a month. what is it? double scoop coffee and pistachio icecream (I love that combo and I call it Cappacio)

your captor(s) let you have fast food once. what's your pick? KFC

you find materials to make a structure. are you making a shelter or something else? Shelter

before you leave, you get your person pick of six items. what are they? well if I'm on an island, medical kit, book on survival, warm and rain proof jacket, a metal water bottle, lighter, knife. (ironically I have all these things in my room so this would be possible if I was taken lol)

you're given paper and pencil, are you writing or drawing? you can not do both. Probably write.

you get an animal to accompany you! what is it? :D if we're talking domestic, dog. But if I could train one that wasn't gonna eat me, tiger :3

you get internet for six hours. what're you wasting your time on the most? ao3. A girls gotta read fics.

are you fishing in the water or hunting on land? doing none of that and growing a garden? mmm probably all 3. I'd have nothing better to do and all 3 would be beneficial for survival. Fishing would be safer than hunting tho I would think.

are you sending an sos secretly or just waiting to see where this all takes you? if the opportunity supplied itself and I was smart about it, send an sos secretly.

what's the first thing you're doing when you get off of the island? Get a hug from my Dad. I like his hugs.

would you rather be alone the entire time or only have the annoying company of your captor(s)? Company. I think I'd go insane on my own. I'm a people person

Thank you for the questions Brick! I'm sorry I'm not able to be as active as usual, but thank you for being understanding of that lovely thing we call ✨L I F E✨

[lovemesomesurveys]

[chasingghosts @ bzoink]

What can you smell right now?   I smell my coffee energy drink that I just took a sip of.

What was the last thing you bought online?   It’s been awhile since I’ve done any online shopping since I just haven’t been in a shopping mood. It’s not fun when you spend all day at home in bed to go shopping for new clothes or accessories. I want to be able to wear them out somewhere, ya know?

If you drink coffee, when was the last time you went a day without having one?   I drink coffee daily, which for the past several months I’ve just been having a Starbucks Doubleshot energy drink. While I was in the hospital last year for 3 months I couldn’t eat or drink anything due to a breathing tube, later on trachea tube, so those definitely felt like the longest 3 months of my life.

Do you have any appointments coming up?   Not this month. 

Do you put appointments in your phone's calendar app to remember them?   Sometimes, but for the past several months my mom has just been writing them on the marker board calendar we have hung up in my room. She’s the one who typically keeps track of that stuff for me right now.

Will you be visiting anyone's house in the next week or so?   No. I won’t be going anywhere. 

Have you ever been to a petting zoo? What animals did you pet?   Yeah, as a kid. I remember there always be goats. 

What was the last movie you saw in theatres?   Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness last year. I didn’t know not long after I’d be admitted into the hospital. 

Do you know anyone who has done a PhD?   No. My brother recently decided to go back to school for his master’s and just got accepted into the program, which is amazing.

How many unread emails are in your inbox right now?   Omg, like well over 1,000. I used be on top of my emails and kept my inbox clean, but I got lazy with it for some reason. The notification used to bother me and help me stay on track; I don’t know what happened.

What four apps do you keep on the home bar on your iPhone? (Sorry, I'm not sure if Android has an equivalent!) Contacts, call, messages, emails.  

Have you ever used Tumblr? Do you still use it today?   Nope, what’s that?

Are you tired right now?   Very. One of the things about the edibles I found that seems to be helping my anxiety also makes me extremely tired. So, I’m napping more but whatever. What else am I doing?

What's your favourite day of the week and why?   I don’t have one.

How far away is the nearest major city?   A few hours.

Do you own an electric kettle?   Nope.

Are your eyebrows wispy or bushy?   Bushy.

Have you ever lost your wallet or purse? Did you have to replace a bunch of things?   No, thankfully. 

Where are you right now? Describe the room or place to me.   I’m in bed in my room. It’s a small room with a closet, dresser, tv, window, canvas art and posters hung up, marker boards, bulletin board, a side table, an office chair, and a shit ton of medical supplies. My room is small and cluttered and I hate it. 

Do you prefer big dogs or small dogs?   As someone in a wheelchair, I personally feel most comfortable around medium sized dogs.

Are you good at understanding heavy accents? Which accents would you say you're the best at understanding?   I admittedly have a hard time sometimes, it just really depends.

Have you ever played on a real life pinball machine, or just on the computer?   A real one, yeah. 

Do you have a lot of word documents or notes on your computer?   No.

What's your favourite Ben & Jerry's flavour?   I don’t really have a particular favorite. When I was younger I loved the Phish food one.

Have you ever been to a school reunion? How was it?   No, and I have no interest in going to one.

How many nights a week do you generally cook at home?   I personally don’t cook at all.

What colour are the street signs in your neighbourhood? Are they the same all over town or do they vary?   They’re green.

Do you have good grammar and punctuation skills?   I believe so.

Have you ever tried vegan chicken? Did you like it? No, and I gotta say... it doesn’t sound appealing to me.

[waywayoutzp]

An old news article about the creator of Zula Patrol from 2009 providing some background on the show.

Will port the news article in a read more.

The gig: Creator of “The Zula Patrol,” a Saturday morning cartoon watched by 2 million children a week on NBC and public television stations, and Zula World, an online hangout for kids built by IBM Corp. In Los Angeles, the show airs Saturday mornings on NBC and Monday mornings on KCLS public television.

First career: Manchester, 52, was an audiologist in Ohio for 15 years.

Eureka moment No. 1: In 1994, she sold her audiology practice and enrolled in a two-year animation program at Ohio State University. “I always told myself that if I stopped having fun with my job, I’d become an animator.” It took 11 years after making the career switch until her first show aired.

How she came up with Zula: While in animation school, Manchester tore her left Achilles tendon and was in a cast for six months. She tried to find a cover for her cast that would keep her exposed toes warm in the winter. Finding none, she decided to design and sell one. She contracted with a textile manufacturer to produce the covers, which she sold to pharmacies and medical supply shops. The covers for kids sported friendly alien creatures she had designed.

She wrote a children’s book to go with the covers. In 1999, she took it to a book fair in Los Angeles, where she met three television producers scouting for new properties. One hooked her up with Phil Roman, executive producer of “The Simpsons” and “King of the Hill.” Roman encouraged her to create a demo. She made two, each 15 minutes long, which she pitched to network executives for the next two years.

The low point: All the networks rejected her. “The early rejections were heavy blows. But honestly, they just made me dig in deeper and work harder. A lot of times, people look at a roadblock and think it’s the end of the road when it’s not.”

How she dug out: Between 2000 and the fall of 2005, when her show debuted on public television, she visited more than 100 schools to get feedback from students and educators. She also pitched her show to science museums. Two of them, the Adler Planetarium in Chicago and the Center of Science and Industry in Columbus, Ohio, used her cartoons in their children’s programs.

To scrape by, she made money designing websites and working as a part-time audiologist.

The big break: In 2002, American Public Television said it would distribute her show if she could get the funding needed to make the episodes.

Manchester landed a fellowship in 2003 with Springboard Enterprises, a nonprofit group that helps female entrepreneurs connect with investors.

After spending six months developing a business plan and fine-tuning her pitch, she made a 10-minute presentation at a Springboard event in Chicago that caught the eye of the proverbial “someone who knew someone.”

Her benefactor, who wishes to remain anonymous, was also a supporter of the Adler Planetarium.

“Usually children’s shows are funded by numerous entities. It makes producing the show difficult from a creative standpoint. By the time your show gets done, it’s a watered-down version of what your vision was.”

Her benefactor took the opposite tack.

“He left me with complete creative control. He told me, ‘If you succeed, it will be your success. If you fail, it will be your failure.’ That’s been incredibly helpful.”

What next: Manchester anticipates that her company will be profitable this year for the first time. She’s teaming with IBM for this month’s launch of Zula World, a subscription website where children will be able to explore and learn about science topics as diverse as tide pools and tundras, atoms and asteroids.

[boneappletits]

Can you tell me a bit more about commune i still don't understand...

i’m so happy you asked !! i’ve been researching communes since i was about 14-15. so, i’m very much so passionate about it !

at its core a commune is a group of people who live together and share possessions, but it’s much more complicated than that. communes vary greatly per-community. for example, there’s quite a few communes here in america but one of the largest and well-known ones is Twin Oaks in west virginia, and they have many sister-communes -as they call them- that are ran differently. they organize their commune much like a business; each commune member has a job assignment -ie. gardening, cooking, cleaning, land management, etc- and they work approximately 42 hours each on the commune alone. personally, i do not agree with their system because it still heavily incorporates capitalism into their every day way of living. however, in america-and many other capitalistic countries- you need a source of income, so, Twin Oaks is ran like a business and one of their main job positions on their commune is making tofu and homemade hammocks which are the supplies they sell on their website -aka their online business- as a method of income. i have discussed a commune plan with close friends for about two years, unfortunately those plans will not be carried out with them due to not staying in contact. however, that plan remains to someday be put to use !! i would love to find like-minded souls to co-buy a bunch of land with (ideally not in america), so we can build our little homes of our dreams on each part of the land and decorate our land together. as well as build a main building with a kitchen and dining room to eat together if we do so wish, a living room to spend quality time together as a family (because family is what you make it), a bathroom of substantial size that’s an indoor-outdoor restroom (picture a room that opens up to a secluded outdoor bath surrounded with vines and flowers with showers next to it and plants surrounding the outside for privacy) with a sauna (but each members’ home would have their own personal bathroom as well), a library, and whatever else the other family members wish to include. we would build everything out of all natural + recycled materials. we’d grow a garden with plants, fruits, and vegetables that can grow in that particular area -we can also do seasonal fruits n veggies-. i would love to do research on canning and other forms of food preservation in order to not waste food. additionally, we would have a compost.

our personal spaces would contain our belongings and no other member may enter your home or borrow any of your belongings without permission. we’d each have our own jobs / methods of income and share what we feel comfy sharing with the commune. everything in shared spaces such as the main house, outside spaces, etc + items are for everyone. we can alternate and do what we’re passionate about on the commune, for example if you adore plants you can tend to the garden; if you love cooking you can help cook group meals; if you are a rather mechanical human you could assist with the solar panels, fixing appliances, other devices, and our shared vessels of transportation such as bicycles and vehicles (we would each have our own vehicles n have one shared van or bus so we could all commute / travel together); if you are particularly fond of cleaning you could clean designated shared spaces/clothing/dishes, etc; if you are crafty you could decorate the shared spaces and organize events and holidays for the family; if you love animals you could tend to the animals (feed them, take care of them, love them); if you have medical knowledge of any kind, whether that be animal medical knowledge or human you could tend to the health of the family; if you’re finance-savvy (lol) you could manage and organize methods of making money for the commune; etc. nobody is required to only do one category, we can contribute in any and every way we feel capable and willing, and alternating is also something we would engage in. there would not be a set amount of weekly work hours, and everybody would contribute because they genuinely love each other and their home. ideally everything is natural, sustainable and eco-friendly. consequently, instead of washing machines we would have manual washing stations and wire hangers outside to dry our clothing, and we would try to not use electric appliances as much as humanly possible.

eventually we would hopefully have financial freedom due to living off the land and only directing the commune funds toward the land taxes, and other related expenses (ie. if there’s an emergency, etc). our finances would each be separate to the individual, and then there would be a shared financial account just for the commune.

unlike Twin Oaks there are no rules, if the commune consists of kindred spirits as commune members we will all acknowledge and respect our boundaries. an idea to keep everyone accountable for liability and legal reasons so we all feel safe is for all members to sign a contract when they join promising to never invade someone’s space, steal from the commune or any of the other members, assault anyone, to try to always be open-minded and respectful (yk just don’t be shitty lmfao which i don’t think we’d have an issue with if we all we love n trust each other deeply), etc. if you want to leave you can leave at any time but you may only leave with your belongings.

essentially it’s a family that lives naturally, uniquely, and together in their own ways. that’s one concept of a commune in a nutshell, but so much goes into it !!

[feathersoft-info]

Revolutionizing Businesses with Generative AI Development Services

Generative AI is transforming the business landscape by enabling groundbreaking innovations across industries. From crafting realistic images and generating human-like conversations to personalizing customer experiences, this powerful branch of artificial intelligence has proven its versatility and potential. For businesses looking to stay ahead in the competitive digital age, investing in generative AI development services is no longer optional—it’s essential.

In this comprehensive blog, we’ll explore the concept of generative AI, its core technologies, real-world applications, and the benefits of partnering with a professional generative AI development company to bring your vision to life.

What is Generative AI?

Generative AI refers to artificial intelligence systems capable of creating new content or data based on existing datasets. Unlike traditional AI, which primarily analyzes and processes information, generative AI uses sophisticated algorithms to produce unique outputs, including:

Text (e.g., blog posts, emails, code)

Images (e.g., artwork, designs)

Videos (e.g., animations, simulations)

Audio (e.g., music, voice synthesis)

Synthetic data for training models

Generative models such as Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) and transformer-based architectures like GPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformer) form the backbone of this technology.

The Core Technologies Behind Generative AI

Generative AI relies on two foundational technologies:

1. Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs)

GANs consist of two neural networks—the generator and the discriminator—that work together to create realistic outputs.

Generator: Creates synthetic data.

Discriminator: Evaluates the authenticity of the generated data and provides feedback to improve it.

This adversarial approach ensures increasingly refined and realistic results.

2. Transformer Models

Transformer architectures like OpenAI’s GPT and Google’s BERT are designed for understanding and generating natural language. They leverage large-scale pre-training to process and produce coherent text outputs, mimicking human-like understanding and communication.

Applications of Generative AI Development Services

Generative AI has found applications across various industries, revolutionizing how businesses operate and innovate.

1. Media and Entertainment

Content Creation: Generate scripts, captions, and headlines.

Visual Effects: Produce realistic animations and special effects for movies or games.

Game Design: Create characters, environments, and storylines dynamically.

2. Healthcare

Drug Discovery: AI models generate potential drug formulations and simulate their effects.

Medical Imaging: Enhance diagnostic imaging through AI-generated analysis.

Virtual Health Assistants: Develop conversational AI for personalized patient care.

3. E-commerce and Retail

Product Descriptions: Automatically generate accurate and appealing descriptions for online stores.

Personalized Recommendations: Provide tailored product suggestions using AI-generated insights.

Visual Content: Design banners, ads, and promotional graphics.

4. Finance

Fraud Detection: Generate algorithms to identify anomalies and prevent fraud.

Market Predictions: AI models simulate scenarios to optimize investment strategies.

Customer Support: Implement chatbots for seamless interactions with customers.

5. Manufacturing

Prototyping: Use generative AI to design prototypes and optimize production processes.

Supply Chain Management: Automate demand forecasting and inventory planning.

6. Education

Content Generation: Produce lesson plans, quizzes, and summaries for educators.

Personalized Learning: Generate adaptive learning paths tailored to students’ needs.

Benefits of Generative AI Development Services

Generative AI offers several advantages for businesses aiming to innovate and streamline operations:

1. Enhanced Creativity

AI augments creative processes by generating fresh ideas, designs, and solutions, empowering teams to focus on strategic tasks.

2. Cost Efficiency

By automating content creation, data analysis, and repetitive tasks, generative AI reduces operational costs significantly.

3. Personalized Experiences

Generative AI enables businesses to offer highly personalized customer experiences, boosting engagement and loyalty.

4. Improved Productivity

Tasks that once required manual effort, such as data entry or report generation, are expedited, freeing up resources for core activities.

5. Scalability

AI models can handle growing workloads without compromising quality, making them ideal for businesses planning expansion.

6. Competitive Advantage

Early adoption of generative AI positions businesses as industry leaders, setting them apart from competitors.

Why Partner with a Generative AI Development Company?

To leverage the full potential of generative AI, businesses must collaborate with experts who can develop customized solutions tailored to their unique needs. Here’s why hiring a professional generative AI development company is crucial:

1. Expertise and Experience

AI development companies bring a wealth of technical knowledge and industry experience, ensuring that your AI solution is robust and effective.

2. Tailored Solutions

Professional developers can fine-tune generative AI models to align with your business goals and requirements.

3. End-to-End Services

From consultation and development to deployment and maintenance, AI development companies offer comprehensive services, ensuring seamless implementation.

4. Access to Advanced Tools

AI specialists have access to cutting-edge technologies and tools, enabling them to create high-quality solutions efficiently.

5. Ongoing Support

Generative AI systems require regular updates and optimizations. A reliable development partner provides continuous support to keep your AI system up to date.

Choosing the Right Generative AI Development Partner

When selecting a generative AI development company, consider the following factors:

Technical Expertise: Ensure the team has experience with GANs, transformers, and other relevant technologies.

Proven Track Record: Look for case studies or testimonials demonstrating successful AI implementations.

Customization: Opt for a company that understands your specific business needs and offers tailored solutions.

Data Security: Verify their compliance with data protection and privacy standards.

Scalability: Ensure the solutions can grow with your business.

The Future of Generative AI

Generative AI is at the forefront of digital transformation. As the technology evolves, it will unlock even more opportunities, such as:

Real-Time Personalization: Enhanced customer experiences driven by real-time data analysis.

Advanced Simulations: Improved accuracy in modeling complex scenarios.

Cross-Industry Collaboration: Broader adoption across diverse sectors like agriculture, transportation, and space exploration.

Conclusion

Generative AI is not just a technological advancement; it’s a catalyst for innovation and efficiency across industries. By integrating generative AI development services into your business, you can unlock new possibilities, enhance productivity, and deliver exceptional customer experiences.

Whether you’re looking to automate processes, create compelling content, or personalize your offerings, generative AI offers endless opportunities. Collaborate with a trusted generative AI development company to harness its full potential and propel your business into the future.

Ready to transform your business with generative AI? Let us help you shape a smarter, more innovative future.