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girlactionfigure · 2 years

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Her father had hoped to bring his family to America.

He wrote to a friend, “I am forced to look out for emigration and as far as I can see USA is the only country we could go to. Perhaps you remember that we have two girls. It is for the sake of the children mainly that we have to care for. Our own fate is of less importance."

Unfortunately, America’s restrictive immigration policy prevented that from happening, according to the Associated Press.

She and her family were trying to flee oppression in her country and the persecution of "undesirables (minorities, immigrants, homosexuals, the disabled, and the elderly). Racism ran rampant in this society, and opposition, any opposing opinion that spoke out for equality and for the lives of others was destroyed. Also, women were second-class citizens, forbidden to work, forbidden to receive an education, forbidden to speak out regarding their own lives and bodies. Patriotism was demanded for all, other religions were not tolerated. Teachers and civil servants were fired from their jobs.

This was why she and her family wanted to go to America.

But, that never happened.

She was born on June 12. She was the second and youngest child of her family. On her 13th birthday, her mother made cookies for the young girl to share with her friends at school. She enjoyed a party with a strawberry pie and a room decorated with flowers. One of her prized gifts she named "Kitty". It would be her last birthday before the family was forced into hiding.

On Tuesday, June 6, 1944, Allied forces would land on Normandy.

The young girl wrote in her white and red autograph book, “Is this really the beginning of the long-awaited liberation?”

But, it wasn't soon enough.

Two months after the Allied landings in Normandy, the police discovered the family's hiding place on August 4, 1944.

The young girl, Anneliese Marie, wrote in her book which she had named "Kitty" and had become her cherished diary:

"It’s difficult in times like these: ideals, dreams and cherished hopes rise within us, only to be crushed by grim reality. It's a wonder I haven’t abandoned all my ideals, they seem so absurd and impractical. Yet I cling to them because I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart."

Sadly, despite the young girl's hopes, the family had been betrayed by someone who knew of their plight. The son of one of the family's friends who had been helping them now believes it may have been his aunt, who believed she was only trying to protect her family and her country from "the undesirable" elements of society. The son, in a recent book, reveals a conversation in which his mother and aunt were arguing, divided over the future of the country and its leader, Adolf Hitler. The encounter ended with his aunt shouting, “Just go to your Jews!”

The young girl, Anneliese Marie Frank (known as Anne to her friends and family) and her sister were sent to the concentration Auschwitz-Birkenau, a death camp where more people were murdered than at any other camp – at least 1.1 million men, women and children, 90 per cent of them Jews.

The sisters somehow survived Auschwitz, only to be sent to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where the two girls died of typhus (just a few days apart from one another) shortly before the camp was liberated by the British Army. The exact date of their deaths is unknown. Anne was 15, and her sister, Margot was 19 years old. Their mother Edith was also killed.

Documents that the Franks did try to get to America were discovered recently, according to research conducted jointly by the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington.

Unfortunately, “all their attempts failed, so going into hiding was their last attempt trying to get out of the hands of the Nazis,” said Annemarie Bekker from the Anne Frank House.

At that time American anxieties over foreigners were high, according to Richard Breitman, a professor emeritus at American University who wrote about the family’s attempts to immigrate to the United States. "Otto Frank’s efforts to get his family to the United States ran afoul of restrictive American immigration policies designed to protect national security and guard against an influx of foreigners during time of war," Breitman wrote.

The president of the United States at the time stated that “national security took precedence over humanitarian concerns.”

After attempts at immigration had failed, the Franks hid for more than two years during the war and it was then that Anne wrote her famous diary.

The first entries in her diary describe how her family were segregated and discriminated against. She wrote, "I live in a crazy time."

Miep Gies and Bep Voskuijl - two of Otto's friends who had helped the family while they were in hiding - had found Anne's writing and held on to it, in case she ever came back. Her father, Otto, was the only member of the family to survive the Holocaust. Miep and Bep passed Anne's writing on to him.

After reading the diary and seeing how much writing meant to his daughter and how she wanted "to go on living even after [her] death", Otto Frank decided to have her diary published.

“She has allowed millions of people, maybe hundreds of millions of people, to identify with persecution at the worst level,” said Breitman.

"The Diary of a Young Girl", also known as "The Diary of Anne Frank" has become a symbol of hope and resilience that has been translated into dozens of languages.

The Jon S. Randal Peace Page

#WW2 #Shoah #Anne Frank

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rabbitcruiser · 10 months

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World Toilet Day

World Toilet Day…at first glance, this seems like an unlikely candidate for a holiday and more like some sort of joke, but the day is nowhere as trivial or humorous as it may seem. All in all, it strives to draw attention to various sanitation issues around the world and work towards resolving them.

Despite access to proper sanitation being declared a basic human right, one in three people across the globe, so some 2.5 billion people in total, do not have regular access to a toilet. Additionally, even amongst those who do have such access, unclean and unsafe toilets pose problems of their own, including contributing towards the spread of diseases like cholera, typhoid and hepatitis—in some parts of Africa, diarrhea is one of the main child-killers.

Open defecation is also responsible for increasing the number of sexual assaults perpetrated on women and children. Furthermore, when young girls begin menstruating, the lack of privacy forces them to stay home from school, thus limiting their chances of getting a basic education and, what comes after that, a decent job in the future. World Toilet Day’s ultimate goal is to allow everyone on the planet to take care of their most basic needs without having to fear for their safety.

History of World Toilet Day

World Toilet Day was created by the World Toilet Organization in 2001. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon of the United Nations said: “We have a moral imperative to end open defecation and a duty to ensure women and girls are not at risk of assault and rape simply because they lack a sanitation facility.”

He went on to talk about how having to defecate openly infringes on human safety and dignity, and how women and girls risk rape and abuse as they wait until night falls to relieve themselves because they lack of access to a toilet that offers privacy. Another issue is that toilets generally remain inadequate for populations with special needs, such as the disabled and elderly.

Since its inception, World Toilet Day has played a vital role in challenging governments, businesses and other groups to make changes. It has also worked towards breaking various taboos surrounding the topic, in order to facilitate discussion and lead to the creation of better, safer solutions.

World Toilet Day Timeline

3000 BC Pipes carry waste

Even a few thousand years ago various people groups (in Scotland, India, Mesopotamia and more) would use pipe systems to carry waste out of their houses and into rivers or streams.

100-200 AD Group toilets for soldiers

Remains of Housesteads Roman Fort at Hadrian’s Wall in the UK reveals that perhaps 20 or more soldiers would all use a common ‘toilet’ (essentially these were long benches with holes in them) at the same time.

Middle Ages (500-1500 AD) Garderobes are used

Predating the toilet, “garderobes” were little rooms that hung over the sides of the castle. This little closet had a bench with a hole in it where the waste would drop into a moat or pit below.

During this time, many people would also use chamber pots, which would be kept in bedrooms or ‘chambers’ and then emptied (sometimes simply thrown out the window) when full. This function carried on for quite some time.

1596 Flushing toilet is invented

Although its widespread use did not arrive until a couple of centuries later, the first flushing toilet was described by Sir John Harington, an English courtier. This toilet was a pot that used gravity to feed water through it from a cistern that sat upstairs.

1775 First toilet patent issued

Scottish Inventor Alexander Cummings was the creator of the important pipe that ran in an S-shape below the bowl. This ingenious design used the water in the bowl to seal off the sewer gas from below and eventually led the way to mass production of the toilet.

1829 First toilets in a hotel

The Tremont Hotel in Boston, USA installed eight indoor water closets for its guests.

1866 World’s first bathroom showroom

Marlboro Works showroom is opened by English sanitary engineer Thomas Crapper (yes, that’s his real name). At a time when people didn’t speak much about their bodily functions, this public display of toilets was revolutionary.

1880s Thomas Crapper invents the ballcock

Toilets that have this invention, the “ballcock”, are less likely to overflow. Crapper created the floating valve as well as eight other patented improvements for plumbing and sewage. He also did a lot of plumbing for British royalty around this time.

1910 Elevated water tank

A similar design to today’s toilets, the closed water tank and bowl moves into common use.

1986 Sensor flushes introduced

In Japan, the first toilets with sensors that would flush on their own were used.

2001 World Toilet Organization is created

The World Toilet Organization moves to educate people about the sanitation crisis. Even in today’s modern times, more than 2 billion people across the world still do not have access to a toilet.

2013 World Toilet Day made official by the UN

In an effort to raise awareness and support for places where people don’t have proper access to sanitation, the first UN World Toilet Day is celebrated on November 19, 2013.

How to celebrate World Toilet Day

I think by now it’s been made abundantly clear that World Toilet Day is far from being a joke, dealing instead with the protection of one of humanity’s most basic rights. So how can you help? There are a number of things you could do. For starters, why not visit the World Toilet Day website, Facebook page or Twitter account and share the message across social media platforms?

This may seem like a tiny, unimportant gesture, but raising awareness about serious problems is one of the things social media does best, aside from bombarding you with pictures of babies and kittens. The more people know about a problem, the more money can be raised to fight it, as the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge so perfectly demonstrated. So don’t think your clicking “share” means anything. It doesn’t.

Another thing you could do as a way of observing World Toilet Day Would be of course to make a donation, so if you have the means, know that every dollar helps.

Source

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aeoki · 7 months

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SS Finals - Crown: Chapter 18

Location: ES Dome Red Team Waiting Room Characters: Souma, Keito & Kurou

Keito: Hmph. Either way, the outcome of the Finals rests on the result of the fourth round.

No. If anything were to happen, it would be now.

We were able to win against our arch-enemy, “UNDEAD”, with our ingenious strategies and the errors of our opponent.

I’m sure Oogami is howling over the defeat, but it was a just victory.

Souma: Indeed. I think we were equal in strength, but it seemed as though “UNDEAD” was in somewhat low spirits.

I heard this from Adonis-dono, but it seems something happened during the Qualifying Rounds. Something that made them think about their future – in other words, something that made them anxious.

Kurou: Yeah. Flinging some dirt onto opponents who’re staggering ain’t a hard thing to do.

We knew “UNDEAD” would appear because of the “oracle”, and we took on the challenge after taking our time to come up with the best strategy against them.

Keito: Indeed. We sang a cover song of old tunes from each era for the viewers at home watching the programme. With the appropriate permission and in our own style, of course.

Now that citizens are able to vote in this year’s “SS” Finals, those sorts of tricks can work better than expected.

Perhaps that would make me look far too abashed. We performed what everyone wanted to see and hear – it was what majority of the people wanted. We simply performed it in a way a normal idol would.

On the other hand, “UNDEAD” clung to their successful experiences in order to help themselves back up. Most likely unconsciously, of course.

They prioritised performing music fitting of themselves and couldn’t see their surroundings, unlike us.

They had their hands full wrapping their arms around themselves in an embrace that they didn’t have the time to make others happy.

That was the turning point of the battle. The truth is self-evident.

Kurou: Haha. Can’t you just be happy ‘cause we won? What aren’t you happy with? You just keep listing “reasons for winning”.

Was there something you regret, Hasumi?

Souma: Hehe. There were a lot of times where they beat us at Yumenosaki, so even I think it is quite odd that we were able to win so easily.

Keito: Yeah… The types of people watching our performances are far too different, so maybe that’s why it didn’t feel so difficult.

It felt as though the crowd in front of us very much preferred “UNDEAD” over us, so seeing us win doesn’t exactly feel real.

Kurou: They’re great at hyping up the crowd in front of them with call and response songs.

They’ve always been good at that sorta thing. I mean, that’s what rock’n’roll’s all about, right?

It ain’t something the elderly or kids would wanna see normally. It’s too “radical and wicked”.

Keito: That’s true. Sorry, we should be happy with our victory.

We’ve gained the strength necessary to defeat a strong opponent after going through hardships and lying low.

It was our righteous victory. At the end of the day, the victor is always the one who has accumulated more righteous things. Isn’t that right, Kanzaki, Kiryuu?

Kurou: Yeah. Let’s stand proud, Danna.

Souma: Indeed. Just as “UNDEAD” stuck with their own principles, we, too, shall stand tall with dignity.

Keito: (...But as long as the intimidator – “Gatekeeper” – is still in the picture, then even winning such a difficult battle would be meaningless.)

(I feel so empty because I know that fact.)

(We won against the irritating “UNDEAD” – The normal me would have jumped up and down in joy.)

(Everything that we have gained would be forcibly taken away through blackmail.)

(Right now, each unit leader is keeping the damage to a minimum, but it won’t be strange if the other members also fall into evil clutches in the future.)

(The final winners of “SS” won’t be the “Red Team" or the “White Team” – it won’t even be the idols. The winner would be an invader from outside the ocean.)

(I don’t want them to know that and see their faces pale. It’s not every day that they get to be happy like innocent children.)

(What should I do? How can I escape this predicament? Should I pray to God or Buddha? At this point in time?)

(They can only bless us after death. What can we do when we’re suffering right now?)

Kurou: …Hey, what’s wrong?

Keito: O–Oh, sorry. Perhaps it’s because we just finished a hard-fought battle, but it seems exhaustion has caught up to me.

Kurou: No, you were looking pretty glum too, so I was worried. There’s something strange about Kanzaki – He suddenly looked like he was seething with anger and his eyes were elsewhere…

Souma: …………

Keito: What are you looking at, Kanzaki? Do you see a ghost or something?

Souma: I am not a cat.

…Look, Hasumi-dono.

I was curious about how things will turn out, so I was watching the show on my “sumaatofon”.

Keito: Oh, that’s essential. Our turn is over but we cannot let our guard down yet.

Kurou: What happened on stage, Kanzaki?

Souma: I do not know. But it seems there has been an accident. The fourth round did not seem to start anytime soon, so I had my suspicions…

It seems someone has come up on stage before the battle between “RYUUSEITAI” and “Daburu Feisu”.

Keito: Is it “Trickstar” again!?

Souma: No, it is not them. I do not think it is right to always assume they would be the ones to do that sort of thing, Hasumi-dono.

Kurou: Pass me your phone.

…Oh, I see. It’s them.

Of course. There ain’t no way you’d sit there and do nothing all the way to the end, right, “Crazy”B”?

ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ← Previous Chapter ᠂ ⚘ ˚⊹˚ ⚘ ᠂ Next Chapter →

#ss finals

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yourreddancer · 2 years

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HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

November 2, 2022 (Wednesday)

“Anecdotal data point,” conservative commentator Tom Nichols tweeted this afternoon, “Had lunch with an old friend, a fellow former [Republican] (but not in politics or media or anything) and he said that things feel different after the Pelosi attack. Not sure why. I feel the same thing; not sure that it'll matter, but have that same sense.”

Perhaps it is the echoes of lawyer Joseph Nye Welch, who in 1954 on television confronted Joseph McCarthy as the Wisconsin senator shredded people’s lives by accusing them of being communists: "Until this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness…. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?"

Perhaps it is the many observers pointing out that in a time when more than half the Republicans running for office have refused to acknowledge that Democratic President Joe Biden won the 2020 election, and when Republican legislatures are claiming the right to choose presidential electors without the input of voters, “American democracy is on the line.”

Or perhaps it is the sheer horror of Republican politicians joking about a brutal attack on the Speaker of the House, the second in line for the presidency, an attack that left her elderly husband with a fractured skull, but Nichols is right: something feels different.

Tonight, President Joe Biden gave a speech on democracy. He began by describing the attack on Paul Pelosi, then noting that the attacker’s demand, “Where’s Nancy?”, echoed the words “used by the mob when they stormed the United States Capitol on January the 6th, when they broke windows, kicked in the doors, brutally attacked law enforcement, roamed the corridors hunting for officials and erected gallows to hang the former vice president, Mike Pence.”

That enraged mob had been whipped into a frenzy by former president Trump’s repeating the Big Lie that the 2020 election had been stolen. That lie, Biden said, has “fueled the dangerous rise in political violence and voter intimidation over the past two years.”

Biden urged us to “confront those lies with the truth,” for “the very future of our nation depends on it.” “We must with one overwhelming unified voice speak as a country and say there’s no place, no place for voter intimidation or political violence in America. Whether it’s directed at Democrats or Republicans. No place, period. No place ever.”

“Democracy itself” is at stake in the upcoming election, Biden said. He appealed “to all Americans, regardless of party, to meet this moment of national and generational importance.” Nothing is guaranteed about democracy in America, he said, “Every generation has had to defend it, protect it, preserve it, choose it. For that’s what democracy is. It’s a choice, a decision of the people, by the people, and for the people.”

“We the people must decide whether we will have fair and free elections and every vote counts. We the people must decide whether we’re going to sustain a republic, where reality’s accepted, the law is obeyed, and your vote is truly sacred. We the people must decide whether the rule of law will prevail or whether we will allow the dark forces and thirst for power put ahead of the principles that have long guided us.”

Biden warned that the same forces that challenged the 2020 election, despite all the confirmations of its results, are setting out to question the legitimacy of the 2022 election. MAGA Republicans are “trying to succeed where they failed in 2020, to suppress the right of voters and subvert the electoral system itself. That means denying your right to vote and deciding whether your vote even counts.” They’ve encouraged violence and intimidation of voters and election workers, Biden said. “It’s damaging, it’s corrosive, and it’s destructive.”

“And I want to be very clear,” Biden said, “this is not about me, it’s about all of us. It’s about what makes America America. It’s about the durability of our democracy. For democracies are more than a form of government. They’re a way of being, a way of seeing the world, a way that defines who we are, what we believe, why we do what we do.”

Biden warned that “we can’t take democracy for granted any longer.”

“Democracy means the rule of the people, not the rule of monarchs or the moneyed, but the rule of the people. Autocracy is the opposite of democracy. It means the rule of one, one person, one interest, one ideology, one party…. [T]he lives of billions of people, from antiquity till now, have been shaped by the battle between these competing forces, between the aspirations of the many and the greed and power of the few, between the people’s right for self-determination and the self-seeking autocrat, between the dreams of a democracy and the appetites of an autocracy.”

“What we’re doing now is going to determine whether democracy will long endure and…whether the American system that prizes the individual bends toward justice and depends on the rule of law, whether that system will prevail. This is the struggle we’re now in, a struggle for democracy, a struggle for decency and dignity, a struggle for prosperity and progress, a struggle for the very soul of America itself.”

Biden listed the “fundamental values and beliefs that unite us as Americans.” First, “we believe the vote in America’s sacred, to be honored, not denied; respected, not dismissed; counted, not ignored. A vote is not a partisan tool, to be counted when it helps your candidates and tossed aside when it doesn’t.” “Second,” he said, “we…stand against political violence and voter intimidation.” “We don’t settle our differences…with a riot, a mob, or a bullet, or a hammer. We settle them peacefully at the ballot box.” Third, he said, “we believe in democracy…. History and common sense tell us that liberty, opportunity, and justice thrive in a democracy, not in an autocracy.”

“At our best,” the president said, “America is not a zero-sum society where for you to succeed, someone else has to fail. A promise in America is big enough…for everyone to succeed…. Individual dignity, individual worth, individual determination, that’s America, that’s democracy and that’s what we have to defend.”

He urged voters to judge the candidates by whether they would accept the legitimate will of the American people. “Will that person accept the outcome of the election, win or lose?” The answer to that question should be decisive. “Too many people have sacrificed too much for too many years for us to walk away from the American project and democracy…. It’s within our power, each and every one of us, to preserve our democracy.”

“You have the power, it’s your choice, it’s your decision, the fate of the nation, the fate of the soul of America lies where it always does, with the people, in your hands, in your heart, in your ballot.”

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mrselnox · 4 months

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Exploring the Green Frontier: Inside Baltimore's Marijuana Dispensary Scene

In recent years, Baltimore, like many cities across the United States, has seen a significant shift in its attitudes towards marijuana. Once relegated to the fringes of society, cannabis has now found its place in the mainstream, with increasing acceptance both medicinally and recreationally. This cultural shift has given rise to a burgeoning industry of marijuana dispensaries Baltimore, where enthusiasts and patients alike can explore a vast array of products in a safe and regulated environment.

As I stepped into one of Baltimore's premier dispensaries, I was struck by the professionalism and ambiance that greeted me. Gone were the stereotypes of dark alleyway transactions; instead, I found myself in a modern, well-lit space staffed by knowledgeable professionals eager to assist me on my journey into the world of cannabis.

The first thing that caught my eye was the variety of products on offer. From traditional dried flower to edibles, tinctures, and concentrates, the options seemed endless. Each product was carefully curated, with detailed information provided on its potency, effects, and recommended usage. It was clear that these dispensaries took their role as educators seriously, ensuring that customers were equipped with the knowledge they needed to make informed decisions.

But perhaps what impressed me most was the emphasis on quality and safety. Every product on the shelves had undergone rigorous testing to ensure that it met the highest standards for purity and potency. This commitment to quality not only gave me peace of mind as a consumer but also spoke to the legitimacy of the industry as a whole.

As I browsed the shelves, I couldn't help but marvel at the diversity of the clientele. Gone were the stereotypes of the stoner subculture; instead, I encountered people from all walks of life – from young professionals seeking stress relief to elderly patients seeking relief from chronic pain. It was a testament to the broad appeal of cannabis and its potential to improve the lives of people from all backgrounds.

But beyond the products themselves, what struck me most was the sense of community that permeated the dispensary. Here, I found more than just a place to purchase cannabis; I found a gathering place where like-minded individuals could come together to share their experiences, knowledge, and passion for this remarkable plant. Whether it was swapping stories about favorite strains or offering advice to newcomers, there was a sense of camaraderie that was truly special to behold.

Of course, it's important to acknowledge that the legalization of marijuana is not without its challenges. Regulatory hurdles, stigma, and ongoing debates about its potential risks and benefits continue to shape the landscape. But as I left the dispensary, I couldn't help but feel hopeful about the future of cannabis in Baltimore and beyond. Here was an industry that was not only providing access to a previously prohibited substance but also fostering a culture of responsibility, education, and community.

In the end, my visit to the marijuana dispensary Baltimore left me with a newfound appreciation for the complex and multifaceted world of cannabis. What was once a taboo topic is now a subject of open dialogue and exploration, and I, for one, am excited to see where this green frontier takes us next.

Also Look The Business Details

Name - Mr. Nice Guys Bmore Weed Dispensary

Address - 1100 Light St suite a, Baltimore, MD 21230

Phone no - 6673033176

#recreational marijuana #marijuana dispensary #cannabis dispensary #recreational dispensary #marijuana strains #weed stores

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troughtonmedia · 11 months

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Script #75

You think this is a script mother fucker or actual reality? We are on the precipitous of World War III and your life is in jeopardy! It started with a touch of Islamic terrorism but the Muslims will tell you it is all the Jews fault! The Jews will tell you they don't want any trouble but the conspiracy theorists would argue the Jews are behind every major financial decision on Planet Earth. There is one more part of Abrahamic religion that we can't forget about! The Christians! They are the middlemen of this battle and believe some crazy shit is gonna happen according to biblical prophecy.

Now the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001 really did happen but that is old news! Houston we have a problem! Islamic terrorists invaded Israel less than a week ago by air, land, and sea! They tortured, raped, and murdered Jewish people; their primary target but also folks from around the world as well at an electronic music festival. Babies were supposedly beheaded and the elderly were set on fire! Nations like Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, and Iran cheered with glee while other nations like America, the UK, France, Canada, and others watched in horror as hostages were executed on camera.

So where was all this headed? Maybe the Bible was right! Biblical end times are really a thing! Is this more evidence there is a heaven and a hell or more evidence that is what we desire? Christians and Muslims both believe Jesus Christ will return to defeat the Devil! The Devil may take form in the Antichrist who will create world peace for 7 years! The Antichrist will create miracles! Why then will he be executed by Jesus the peacemaker? I don't have a good answer I'm just a scribe of the Holy!

Perhaps the 7 headed dragon is every continent on this cursed Earth. A place of hunger and starvation but also a place of gluttony and confusion. Why must people die for biblical prophecy? Why do we even have biblical prophecy? It must be man's way of proving the existence of God, Allah, Jehovah. Could be Lucifer too!

The nation of Israel actually has its own belief here. They believe some day the tribes will be united by the messiah! The messiah is shrouded in mystery but apparently he will be a pretty radical dude. Is the future dark or bright? That is actually up to you! Yes, you, the person reading this Script #75 Good Luck!

THE END

#Scripts #Stories #Relgion

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robert-sims · 1 year

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Avantree Aria Me Bluetooth Headphones Review

The Avantree Aria Me are a pair of over-ear Bluetooth headphones with a unique feature – tunable audio that allows you to separately adjust the left and right ear sound. I tested out these headphones to see how well the tunable audio works.

Key Features

[Optimize the Audio] Create your personalized audio profile and calibrate your Aria Me headphones through the Avantree Audio app. Once the profile is activated, All bluetooth audio received will be adjusted to fit your profile no matter what devices you connect.

[High-Definition Sound] Use the Aria Me with an aptX-HD certified Bluetooth device and experience HD studio level audio at 24-bits, you can pick up on every details and nuances in your favorite soundtracks.

[Active Noise Cancellation] This advanced built-in Active Noise Cancellation technology filters out low frequency ambient noises from outside and make sure they are not there to disturbe you to enjoy your immersive personally tuned audio.

[Low Latency] Aria Me’s Qualcomm chipset enables the ultra low latency. When you pair your Aria Me with other aptX-Low Latency products you will experience perfect audio-visual synchronization zero lip-sync delay.

[Converse with Clarity] Level up your call quality with the detachable mic. Strategically designed to be close to your mouth and catch your voice crystal clear. It also features the instant mute switch and allows you to mute yourself secretly in your zoom meetings.

Design and Comfort

The Aria Me have an over-ear closed back design with plush leatherette ear pads and headband that provide a comfortable fit. The folding hinges allow the headphones to fold up for travel. On-ear controls give convenient access to volume, tracks, and calls.

At just 8.8 oz, the headphones feel lightweight enough for prolonged wear. Noise isolation from the closed-back design helps block ambient noise even without ANC turned on.

Sound Quality and ANC

Sound quality from the 40mm drivers is very good with punchy bass, clear mids and smooth treble. Activating ANC helps further immerse you in your music by reducing ambient noise.

The standout is the tunable audio feature in the mobile app. You can separately control the left and right EQ to adjust the sound profile based on your hearing needs.

Tunable Audio App

Connecting to the Avantree app unlocks full controls for the tunable audio feature. Inside the app you can:

Activate an audio test to determine your hearing profile.

Select preset left/right EQ settings like Classical or Podcast.

Manually adjust the separate left/right EQ bands.

Having independent EQ control over each ear allows you to tailor the sound perfectly based on your hearing needs or preferences.

Customer review

So, let me start with the fact that our family has now bought 4 Avantree Aria headsets. (2 Aria Me and 2 Aria Podio) The products work great for my teenage son with his computer and my elderly mother-in-law when she is up late watching TV/movies. However, since 2021, we have had to buy replacement headsets for each of our initial purchases (hence the four units bought). My son’s (Aria Podio) lasted one year before breaking, my mother-in-law’s (Aria Me) lasted 2 years. In both circumstances the headset broke (unrepairable) at the swivel joint of one ear. I wish Avantree would make a “non-collapsible” version of these headsets, since that collapsible (travel friendly) point is the literally the “weak link” in the deisgn. Since the device is charged via the hanging tree, we do not need the headphones to collapse, and we do not travel with them. Avantree should consider a stronger structured version for people that use the product daily and perhaps offer a “travel collapsible version” for users that need that feature. I likely will look for a different solution in the future if these break again within a year or two. Paying a premium for bluetooth headphones should last longer than 1-2 years in my opinion.

Customer questions & answers

Q: can avantree aria work with kindle fire and or alexa.

A: Yes, our Aria Me can work with kindle fire or alexa.

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Q: What is the California proposition 65 warning for?

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Q: does the microphone work in wired mode?

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Factor in the quality ANC and sound, good comfort and solid connectivity, and the Aria Me are compelling wireless headphones with unique tuning capability.

#bluetooth

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lauribrubakergb · 1 year

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Kane faces two problems leaving the team

England captain Harry Kane is bound to become one of the big names in this summer's transfer window. At present, there are three roads before Kane, go to Real Madrid, go to Manchester United, and stay in Tottenham. However, there are two major problems with Kane leaving the team, which will make Real Madrid more hesitant, and Manchester United may not be willing to take risks.

Every time the season ends, people will find that Kane's honor book is still blank, and at the same time, there will often be players who leave Tottenham and win the glory of the championship. No matter what happens outside, Kane, who has always stayed at Tottenham, makes people wonder, is it loyalty or helplessness?

The contract between Kane and Tottenham will end next summer, so many media believe that this summer is a good time for Kane to leave Tottenham. However, the striker's transfer needs to solve two thorny issues.

First, how much is the transfer fee? As we all know, Levy, the owner of Tottenham, has a lot of experience in player transfers and can always send them away at a high price. According to 캡포탈 analysis, Kane's transfer fee may be as high as 100 million pounds. This figure needs to be carefully considered no matter which team it is for.

Second, they are too old. In more than a month, Kane will be 30 years old. Although from the perspective of competitive status, Kane still does not have too many problems.

Last season, Kane overwhelmed the top scorers in the four major leagues, only less than Haaland, who also came from the Premier League, and was the second most player in Europe. However, the risk of a sharp decline in players after the age of 30 may appear at any time.

Therefore, for Real Madrid, it is a matter of hesitation. After spending a lot to bring Bellingham just now, how much more can be invested is always a question mark. In particular, the issue of age is a factor that has to be considered.

At present, Real Madrid's midfielders, Bellingham, Vinicius, Rodrigo, Joan Armeni, Camavinga and others are all young players.

And just sent away Benzema, Hazard and Mariano, all over 30 years old. It can be seen that Real Madrid hopes to rebuild the team and face the future with a youth storm, so Kane does not seem to be in line with this route.

For Manchester United, they also face similar problems. In recent years, the performance of players brought in by high transfer fees has often been unsatisfactory.

Elderly players such as Ibrahimovic and Van Persie cannot stay in the team for too long. If Kane joins, there may be obvious effects in a short period of time, but two years later it will enter a rather embarrassing period. Will Ten Hag's Manchester United be willing to take such a risk?

Of course, Kane's own wishes are very important. This is an important choice for the England captain in his career. Leaving Tottenham, you can have the opportunity to chase the championship, go to Real Madrid, and if you perform well, you can even compete for the Ballon d'Or. If you go to Manchester United, it will be very difficult to win the Premier League championship, but there are still certain opportunities for other champions, and at the same time, you can also strive to become the player with the most goals in the history of the Premier League.

More fans are convinced that perhaps the biggest problem in Kane's transfer is that there is only one person, and the name need not be mentioned, right?

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eduminatti · 2 years

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Ancient Indian Education System Vs. Modern Indian Education System

India has ancient roots when it comes to education. India's ancient education heritage is the largest globally, with a history of over 4500 years.

As per research conducted by schools in Mumbai it was impossible to set up formal institutions for learning in ancient times, considering the limitations of a lack of roads and mass migration of peoples from one region to another. Instead, education in India was a domestic affair in families that moved from one place to another.

By reading this article, you will know a lot of facts about the Education System In Ancient India, education in our time, and how we can improve the education system.

Ancient Indian Education System

The ancient Indian education system was based on the 4 Cs (Cadiz, Culture, Care of the Elderly, and Charity). A student's performance in different fields was taken into account before awarding them a degree or certificate. There were no institutions for the advancement of professional studies.

Another survey done by schools in Pune shows that the present Indian education system is based on examination. It is not based on the reward of effort and skill development. Hence only the educational institutions are growing, not the educated faculty.

The education system in ancient India was ever so famous for its comparatively low fees, relatively low parental involvement, no school uniforms, no school bags, comprehensive sex education, spiritual orientation, flexibility (no age limit), co-education (boys and girls sat together), no prerequisites…etc.

The children of ancient India had straightforward yet natural learning methods. They had the liberty to use their imagination to learn the lessons of life. Education in India is perhaps one of the oldest continuing traditions on Earth. Some historians even speculate that it dates back before recorded history began 50000 years ago.

The ancient Indian Education System had a good quality of teachers. Critical discipline was given to the students, which is very useful for their future lives.

Modern Education System In India

The modern Indian educational system is the one that came into existence in its current form in the mid 19th Century. The early efforts to build a modern school system for India began during the British East India Company's rule in the latter part of the 18th Century. It was formalized under British Raj in the early 19th Century.

The education system that we see today is a product of manifold efforts and contributions from various people and institutions both nationally and internationally.

While aspects like gender equality, technology integration, and community participation could still use some improvement, people mostly agree that the Indian educational system is one of the best.

The Modern Indian Education System has to change with time and become more beneficial for the future. We suggest that the curriculum should be based on real-life situations and skills.

Schools should be set to make children happy and free from tensions, and schools should be such as to develop students as well as individuals who can achieve success in whatever field they choose.

Ancient VS Modern Education System In India

There are many differences between the ancient Indian education system and the modern Indian education system. Sikhism is a major world religion, virtually unknown to the Western world until the October 1983 pageant of the Golden Temple at Amritsar. Sikhism was founded by Guru Nanak, born in Hindu stock but disillusioned with Hinduism.

The Gurus preached against ritual purity, idol worship, caste distinctions, the sacrifice of animals, fasting, pilgrimages, asceticism, and celibacy. Sikhism evolved into a progressive force that successfully united Hindus and Muslims against Mughal rule. It accepted Muslims as well as Hindus into it.

India has had a rich history of education right from ancient times. The modern educational system of India evolved from the old Indian education system. The traditional Indian education system did not have much scope for further studies after the school level.

Now the present-day higher education has come to India with a completely new structure, curriculum, method of learning, and more.

Conclusion

Today both the modern and ancient educational systems are at extremes. While one is swinging towards total commercialization, the other is still depending on morality.

The current system has failed to fulfill its purpose of providing knowledge, and it fails to answer the questions like 'how I should be?' When does it make sense to improve something which is already perfect?

#education #parents #study #student #schools

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septembriseur · 3 years

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pt 2 I’m still p young but that stupid “the arch of humanity bends towards justice” line. sometimes it really seems that it does not!! entropy seems more consistent. no amount of donating or signing petitions is gonna help anyone in the middle of a war! I suppose I should research refugee orgs is what I should be doing.

Well, I can recommend a reputable fund drive that is currently having a real material effect on the massive amount of displaced people who are living in public parks in Kabul, having fled the advance of the Taliban sometimes without even their ID cards, much less any real material possessions.

Refugee organizations are doing tremendously important work and I strongly recommend that people consider giving their time and money to them. However, the reality is that refugee organizations help people who are actually successful at becoming asylum-seekers/refugees, which is to say people who have succeeded at the unbelievably scary, difficult, fraught, expensive task of getting to a country where they can apply for refugee status/claim asylum. What happens to the people who cannot do this because they literally cannot get out of their country— because borders are closed, because their passport is toxic, because a visa to the only country issuing visas costs $400 and they have about $15 and there are six people in their family, because the airport has shut down and trucks are getting blown up on the road? Or because they are now a citizen of a Global North country, but they have tried for three years to get their elderly parents visas to the same country, without any luck, and now they can either abandon their parents or potentially die? I cannot emphasize enough that this is the desired and intended result of our global immigration system— what’s happening in Afghanistan is the system working exactly as it was designed to, which is to prevent poor endangered people from escaping the circumstances that impoverish and endanger them.

What is needed is massive, radical reform at every level of the system, but that is not going to ever occur. Indeed, the opposite is currently occurring in almost every Western country due to the increased surveillance, legislation, and capitalization of life over the past hundred years.

I strongly support the work of tireless advocates who lobby for immigration reform, but I also think they know that if there is any kind of trajectory to our world, they are fighting against the forces that compel it. They are trying to prevent the eternally oncoming turn.

It is sometimes hard not to look back to Walter Benjamin, who seems to appear awfully frequently in my world these days. In perhaps his most famous passage, he wrote: “A Klee painting named ‘Angelus Novus’ shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing in from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such a violence that the angel can no longer close them. The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress.”

Benjamin, who was Jewish, famously killed himself after being refused entry to Spain while trying to flee Nazi Germany for the United States. He knew he faced deportation, arrest, and death.

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toloveawarlord · 3 years

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Ch. 1

Arc 1: The First Time Leap

♥ Pairing: Mikuru Baji x Hajime Kokonoi (Eventually)

♥ Summary: Baji's twin sister, Mikuru, is thrown back in time, given a chance to stop all the death that led to future where her brother is dead and Toman is gone. A rewrite of Tokyo Revengers.

♥ Ages for reference: Mikuru is 24 and when she time leaps she jumps 12 years into the past (2 full years before Takemitchy takes his first leap.) In the past, she and Baji are 12.

♥ wc: 1.4k

♥ a.n: I have big plans for this story. It's probably one of the biggest projects I've taken on. Takemitchy's time leap still occurs, but Mikuru's time leap takes place two years before his.

Everyone is in position. Move in.

A raid on a Bonten owned warehouse. Word was circling around that a large shipment of illegal firearms was being held inside. If they flooded the streets, innocent people would die, and tracing ghost weapons made the job near impossible. But they had to be careful confronting Bonten, because the higher ups wanted bigger fish, executives, for example.

Or even Manjiro Sano himself.

Mikuru worked on the special task force, one that didn’t exist on paper. For a while, for years, she’d been in denial. Mikey wasn’t the kind of person who’d do these horrible things, drug running, murder for hire, sex trafficking. Not the Mikey that she’d known.

Even after she’d lost contact with most of the old Toman members when her brother died, Mikuru couldn’t bring herself to believe it was that Mikey. She joined the government force to learn the truth.

The painful truth.

Mikuru saw the disgusting, heartless... inhuman actions that Mikey and the Bonten gang were capable of. Using women, torturing them and selling them. Children, mothers, the elderly killed for nothing, for amusement. It was brutal, stomach churning.

She hated that Mikey had turned into this person, purely because of the love that her brother had for him before his death. She’d gladly put a bullet between his eyes if given the opportunity.

“Oi! Mikuru! What’s with that sour expression? We made a killer bust. This is a huge win.” Kuragi slapped her on the shoulder as he passed by. Everything had gone exactly as they’d planned. The weapons were in sight, some decently high-level members were now in custody. “I’m buying drinks tonight!”

Too fucking easy.

Bonten didn’t make mistakes. Not billions of yen worth of weapons.

Deep amber irises swept over the room. On entry, the criminals were unloading one box. It was still open. Various guns were splayed on the table. Not a single shot was fired from either side. Nothing had gone wrong. But it didn’t feel right.

Her colleagues were chatting away, in a joyous mood, while they lingered around for the techs and forensics units. Mikuru couldn’t shake the bad feeling. An infrared scan had told them that there was nothing on the upper floor, but she wanted to check.

The temperature was chilly, windows busted out and allowing in the frigid spring air. Her boots echoed across the open space. It was quiet, dark, void of any movement or life. Perhaps it was her imagination...

A sound caught her attention, a creaking.

Mikuru found the door to the outside stairs pried open, shook by the unforgiving wind. With practiced hands, she drew her gun. Moving out, the woman swept the area, catching a glimpse of a familiar figure rounding the corner of the alley below. Her body made chase without thinking. “Manjiro Sano.”

Mikey stopped at her call; hands stuffed into the pockets of his jacket. “Baji would be proud of you.” He’d kept tabs on her over the years. It was the least he could do for his old friends. An absent thought came to mind. Did she know how many times he’d spared her? Not likely.

“You don’t get to talk about him. Not after all the shit you’ve done. He would hate you-”

“He probably would. Baji was always a better person than me.”

The melancholy in his voice might have affected her a few years ago, but Mikuru wanted nothing more than to empty her magazine into him. Her fingers tightened around the weapon, wanting to move to the trigger but she had orders. Manjiro Sano was to be taken alive. The sheer fact that he knew that, shown by his unbothered stance with her gun aimed at him, only pissed her off more. “Why are you here?

Enough about her brother. He shouldn’t be here. There was absolutely no reason for the head of the gang to be present tonight.

Mikey sighed, gaze lifting to the cloudless night sky. He almost looked like his old self. “I owed him. But after tonight, that debt is paid, and you are no one to me.” It was becoming harder to justify leaving her alive. She’d excelled to a status that was too troublesome to ignore. “You should pick a new career path, Ru. I don’t want to hurt you.”

Conflicting words.

But Mikuru didn’t have a chance to question him. The blast from the explosion in the warehouse hit her, bringing rubble and debris. Mikuru slammed against the ground, ears ringing. Her last thought before she blacked out...

He lured her out, away from certain death.

>> >> >> >>

The only survivor.

Taking a leave of absence.

So many people come in and out of her hospital room. Doctors, nurses, colleagues, bureaucratic assholes wanting answers she couldn’t give. If her body moved the way she wanted it to, she’d be out of this place already. But her injuries weren’t minor.

“Is it safe to come in?”

Mikuru tore her gaze away from the rainy window to find Kazutora in the doorway, a bag of takeaway in his hands. The peace offering acceptable. “You don’t have to ask. As long as you aren’t going to ask me what happened or how I feel.” Sinking into the uncomfortable hospital bed, she winced. The whole of her body was sore.

He silently disagreed. She’d been snapping at anyone who entered, the poor nurses were terrified to come in when she was awake. “I won’t ask, but you have to tell someone. I overhead some suits discussing taking some kind of action.” He plopped into the seat next to the bed. It was nice of Chifuyu to give him a longer break to come visit her, even if the two of them weren’t on friendly terms.

Her suspicions were correct, then. It would be blamed on her. Mikuru would be the scapegoat for the whole mess of an operation. She stuffed a piece of sushi in her mouth. “Mikey was there.” Of her friends, only Kazutora would be able to understand the magnitude of those three words.

After all, he was the only person she’d admitted her overwhelming desire to kill him to.

She’d known Kazutora since she was a child. They shared a bond that most couldn’t comprehend.

“And?” He prompted her to continue with whatever suited her. But, Kazutora couldn’t say that he was surprised. From his own digging, he’d noted the pattern. Some part of his old friend was protecting his friends, in his own twisted way.

Mikuru squeezed the chopsticks in her fist. “I could have easily shot him, but my superiors want him alive. As if that’s even a possibility.”

“We both know that’s not why.”

Narrowed amber irises met soft golden ones in a moment of silence.

“I hate him.”

“Not enough to kill him.”

Not her. Kazutora couldn’t imagine her doing the things that he’d done. She didn’t have a twisted soul, no matter how much anger and hate that she held towards Mikey for the death of her brother. Even though it was his fault. “Ouch-” Kazutora caught the pillow tossed at his head as it fell.

“Stop that. We’re past that.” It was easy to see when his guilt surfaced. He got this mopey expression that only he could make. Mikuru might have blamed him in the past, but they’d long since made amends. He was the only person in her life that she considered family.

“I forgot you can read minds.”

“Only yours.”

Kazutora leaned forward, resting his arms on the side of her bed. “Do you think if Baji was still here that Mikey wouldn’t be like this?”

“Honestly, I’m not sure.” His quizzical expression made her shrug. “It’s not like my brother was a saint either. And Mikey has this darkness, an all-consuming darkness that can’t simply be from his death. It’s probably been there all his life.” Perhaps Mikey had been fighting it until he succumbed.

Sure, the death of his brother, and the death of hers had an effect. The catalyst to his defeat of that inner darkness.

If neither of them had died, would Mikey be the monster he was today?

And on that note, would Kazutora have suffered so much if he’d had someone at his side?

Mikuru reached out to lace her fingers in his. Both quietly imaging a present much different to the one that they inhabited.

The hospital room was filled with a loud beeping. Kazutora had panicked features. Mikuru wanted to open her mouth, to assure him that she was alright. But her body wouldn’t comply, instead going slump on the bed. Black filled her vision.

And then a spark.

#tokyo revengers #tokyo rev #tokyo revengers time leap #tokyo revengers rewrite #kazutora hanemiya #manjiro sano #baji has a twin sister #mikuru baji #time leap #long fic

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blaydiud · 3 years

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[ 𝖑𝖔𝖌 ] - 07. 𝖕𝖑𝖆𝖌𝖚𝖊.

Although it still ran rampant, oftentimes it seemed like the plague had reached a more manageable point- at least within what Faerghus considered manageable. The country had always struggled with diseases and outbreaks- its bustling capital, Fhirdiad, was nothing more than a dirty nest of rats and illness with raw filth in its streets before Cornelia was admitted as the new court mage and began aiding King Lambert in improving the city’s sanitary problems. Yet this one felt different than the ailments that disturbed the north country of Fódlan, it felt like a product of magic rather than nature’s punishment for living in filth. One much similar to the country’s last documented plague that killed its queen.

Needless to say, the air was one of pure grief and fear. Entire families wiped, widows and orphans raising in numbers, homeless searching for shelter after theirs were destroyed, the injured and elderly on the brink of death from the shortage of available healers.

It was “manageable”, but the prince couldn’t help but feel like he failed spectacularly at his own job. Helping and aiding his people, ensuring their safety and wellbeing- no matter what he did, nothing worked. He didn’t want to kill those infected in hopes that there may be a way to save them, yet he didn’t want to leave the healthy and innocent to perish. All in all, he felt like he disappointed much more than just his friends or family- rather, he disappointed his country. He wouldn’t be surprised if his own friends and allies began to turn their backs on him after witnessing such poor performance as a ruler-to-be. Such failure from a prince and house leader.

He wanted to be left alone for a bit. It wasn’t the best action, he was well aware- being alone with nothing but his own thoughts was an invitation to unwelcome ideas and voices, but at the same time he felt too ashamed to face others. Icy eyes that usually scouted the area from above were now directed to the found, instead. The blue cape that often blazed brightly under the sunlight was droopy and hidden in the shadows, close to the walls. The confident and mildly fast pace of his boots were now quiet and slow.

The blond hair that was compared to the sun’s mighty rays was obscured by clouds, his posture akin to a withering flower.

Fate had it out for him however, when one of the monastery’s messengers approached. Someone came to visit.

At first Dimitri frowned in confusion, after all who would want to visit him like that? Perhaps Rodrigue, to check in on him? Margrave Gautier? But the plague hadn’t reached the north. Count Galatea? Maybe to report losses and request aid. Maybe Cornelia, to give a detailed report of the disease and discuss what could be done to avoid this type of thing from happening in the future. Of course, all diplomatic matters- although usually directed to the Regent King rather than to him.

What he wasn’t expecting however, was to be sitting inside his room, a tray with boiling hot chamomile tea on the wooden table, two cups, right in front of his uncle- who eyed the room with an arched brow.

He hadn’t seen any signs in the monastery that would suggest the arrival of his uncle. No trumpets, no kingdom soldiers roaming the area, not even the flying units that always accompanied the royal carriages. It was quiet and simple, almost as if his uncle himself didn’t want it to be known that he was here. Maybe that was done on purpose- Rufus was unpredictable as ever. Sometimes he wanted to be received with parties and glamour, other times he’d much rather sneak around the halls like a weasel. He ever chose to meet Dimitri in the prince’s own quarters, rather than reserve a proper meeting room.

“Not bad. Nice non-existent decoration, by the way. Heheh.” A joke that didn’t land, received with silence. Dimitri’s gaze never really met his uncle’s eyes, instead focusing on his cravat, his beard, the teacups or his own hands sitting atop his lap, fiddling nervously with the hem of his jacket.

Dimitri wasn’t sure what to expect from this- it was the first time Rufus had visited him in the monastery ever since the prince left Faerghus for his studies. Did the man come here to scold him? Lecture him? Just hang out? It was hard to tell. Shouldn’t Rufus be at Fhirdiad, acting on his duties and helping to make sure the city was still safe? The prince’s memories went to the response letter Rufus sent after the Church’s complaints about Dimitri’s behaviour in the ball- and the Regent King actively supported his nephew. But now, looking at the older man’s face, Dimitri wasn’t so sure if he came here to support and comfort him...or to yell at him for his incompetence. Or both, or neither.

Another moment of silence, nothing but their quiet breaths and idle noise from outside the room to fill up the void. Old blues lines the details on the room’s stone and wood walls, before stopping at the sight of Dimitri’s form.

“So? How are you holding up?” Rufus tried to strike conversation again, still not touching the steaming cup of tea, nor the sweet buns on a nearby plate. They were all brought from the Kingdom, all things done exactly the way Dimitri would like. The chamomile tea from the palace’s storehouse- the same kind that Lambert would drink in his afternoons, the buns prepared by the royal bakery- with marshmallow fillings, chewy and soft. Their smell was familiar enough for the prince’s own poor nose to catch on their scents, the smell of nostalgia dulled but present.

The intention behind these was still gray to the prince, however.. He reached out for his teacup, gauntlets long discarded, sitting atop his bed. “I feel well.”

The regent’s expression was neutral, unconvinced. With slow blinks, one would think he’s much older than his early fifties. His long blond mane was clearly messier than usual, some white hairs poking out. The blue of his eyes was lined by dark circles, his posture looked both at ease and crumbling down. Stress, perhaps. Exhaustion, unhappiness. Things that seemed alien for the king that would throw feasts and extravagant parties nearly every month- at least from others’ point of view. The Rufus people saw occupying the throne, the Rufus people used to suspect had a hand in the late king’s murder, the Rufus called sleazy and useless.

Dimitri’s silly, rebel uncle and his only family. Two completely different people.

“I…” The prince started again, unsure. “...I feel like I did a poor job.”

“Poor job at what?” The older man’s brows furrowed slightly, confused. “Got bad grades?”

“No, my grades are fine.” At least for now, they looked good enough. “I performed poorly in aiding the people in the Kingdom. So much was happening, there was so much to be done and I could not-”

“You’re not a mage, boy. Not a healer, either.” And you’re not king yet. “There was nothing for you to do there.” Rufus’ words were quick and sharp, spoken seemingly without a care.

As if they didn’t hurt at all, a simple fact. Dimitri deflated, visibly. Noticing that his words were perhaps too harsh, Rufus scratched his bearded cheek, suddenly uncomfortable. “You- train to be a knight, don’t you? So. Unless you walked out there to kill those diseased people, then there wasn’t anything you could do. Maybe stand there and grant the people comfort, but just that.” The more the regent king tried to do damage control, the more salt was added to the prince’s wounds.

Rufus frowned, huffing. Uncle was always horrible at this, Dimitri thought. After a pause that seemed infinite, the older man tried to speak once more.

“What I mean is that-...ugh, sorry boy but there’s no other way to put it. I’d much rather have you doing nothing and being healthy than you running around the diseased and ending up like one too.” Typical of the older Blaiddyd. Dance around the issue in hopes of sugarcoating or changing the subject, only to drop a bucket of cold water- of truth, unceremoniously like that. Dimitri, unamused, finally met Rufus’ own.

“You want me to just stand aside and watch them fall one by one? You want me to watch them die and do nothing about it? What kind of ruler does that to his people?” Icy eyes grew a flame of their own.

“That’s not it at all- listen to my words, Dimitri. It is dangerous out there, even now. As much as I hate this damned building it’ll be better for literally everyone if you stay here.” Both voices were quickly rising in volume- once a quiet and controlled argument, now a potential shouting match.

The prince’s hands were flat against the table, as if he were close to abruptly standing up- to prove a point. Or to just leave the room and be by himself, even though he knew well that Rufus would follow. “I will not sit on my hands and watch the people of Faerghus sink in a sea of torment! Even if I cannot perform healing spells, I wish to at the very least be there for them! So that they know they have someone to rely on!”

“You’ll die out there if you do that! Leave that task to me-”

“-You’re doing nothing about it! Nothing!”

Although slightly taken aback by the shout, it was unclear if the prince’s words hurt Rufus. “Dimitri, think. I’m not telling you to sit and eat imported steak from Almyra next to a dying villager, what I’m saying is that there’s no use for you to roam around in a situation that’s unsafe and that you cannot directly interfere in! Lances and swords can only do so much, you know that better than me!” Rufus’ voice wasn’t a shout of anger, but rather a steady- and loud, command. He was defining an ultimatum for Dimitri to back down and obey. “It’s unfortunate that you had no means or ways to have a say in what happened but there’s no use in moping about it all day.”

The prince seemed to be stuck between curling in on himself and glaring back at his uncle with defiance.

Rufus glared back with a similar fire in his eyes. “Don’t make that face at me.” The regent leaned in the chair, sighing. He finally reached for the tea- still warm, but not as much as before. Dimitri was still silent, immobile in the opposing chair. His emotions were a swirl of anger, grief, outrage and sadness- he felt justified in his points, yet felt that his outburst was horribly childish. Also unfit for a prince, as well as for someone his age.

Old, greyed azures roamed the room once more before focusing on one of the lances leaning against the wall. The lance Dimitri took with him when he left for Garreg Mach, a steel so smooth and clear that the lance was almost white in color with a charming blue decorating its hilt and the middle of its blade.

His vision wasn’t great as it used to be, but he could make out stains around its blade. Blood was a stubborn little thing, sometimes. The hilt was straight and seemed intact, save for subtle indents from what could only be Dimitri’s hands grasping it. Rufus had always supported having the prince learn how to fight, but he couldn’t help but get a grim feeling from seeing the weapon. From knowing that Dimitri was training to kill. It was all expected, but never easy to swallow.

“Fhirdiad was a little nightmare. No disease, but the people were scared. Panicking.” The regent started casually, slightly tired. He took a sip of the tea, then finally grabbed one of the buns and took a bite.

“Did you do something about it, at least? Did you talk to them?” With words sharper than a knife, Dimitri reached out for his own teacup but stopped midway. Depending on Rufus’ answer, the cup could shatter in his hold- which would be quite unfortunate.

“Me? Dimitri, they hate me. If I stepped out of that balcony to say a ‘good morning’ Goddess knows what they’d throw at me in rage.” The older man stated with similar, ominous indifference. It filled the prince with a dull anger, but not enough to justify another fit.

Always avoiding anything that could prove to be inconvenient to you, uncle. The prince wanted to find it disgusting, outrageous, but his heart didn’t allow it. This was family.

Dimitri decided to fully reach for his cup, despite unfavorable feelings brewing in his chest. “I could have gone to Fhirdiad and offered moral support to its citizens, in that case. The lack of my presence is unforgivable. I will be perceived as unreliable-”

Rufus’ hand came down on the chair’s wooden handle, not hard enough to shatter it but enough for the furniture to audibly creak. “The roads to Fhirdiad were crawling with the diseased! Our pegasus and wyvern knights were tasked with transporting medical equipment and food, and the mages skilled enough to cast a Warp spell were too busy trying to find a cure! Even that pink haired witch was too busy! There was no safe way for you to return, Dimitri!” The regent’s gaze was piercing, making full contact with Dimitri’s icy blues- which still burned in defiance, but the flame was weak. “Can’t you see that as much as the people need their ruler, no level headed person in Faerghus wants another royal funeral? You doing nothing and staying alive- nobody will hold this against you, dammit! Nobody here wants you dead!”

Rufus ran his hands through his hair, an ashy golden mane naturally messy that went past his shoulders. “Me included. So stop having those stupid ideas already.” The outburst from before was reduced to a meek, shaky mumble. With his face obscured from view, it was hard to make out his gaze- if it was one of anger, of exhaustion, or one of tears.

It tore a shuddered breath out of the prince. “...my apologies.” If this answer was genuine or performative, it was unclear. “But I...have to disagree with you.”

The regent simply shook his head and leaned back on the chair again, frowning at how one of the wooden handles was now slightly crooked from his fit. It seemed like another moment of silence, except Rufus knew that any time now Dimitri would say something. From the trembling of his lips and how his gaze zipped around aimlessly. Working up the courage to speak, rehearsing words in his brain.

It came out with an audible sob and a wobbly voice that the regent was most definitely not expecting.

“I just don’t want to be like this…” Helpless, useless. “To stand there...with nothing to do- while people-” Die around me. “I-”

“I don’t want it again.” The sentence was slightly mangled. “To have no control on the- the situation and-”

“Dimitri.”

“People keep dying around me and I can’t do anything about it!”

“Dimitri-”

“I’m ne- ever enough to make it stop! It's unfair! Unfair that I get to breathe all day doing nothing and they-”

“Silence!” The prince yielded, but his sorrow blazed on.

“...Sometimes it happens. And there’s nothing you can do about it. Call it fate or the Goddess throwing a fit or whatever, but there’s...there are things we can’t stop.” At first unsure, Rufus reached for the prince’s forearm, rubbing it gently.

“Being royalty, having a crest- none of these things matter sometimes. You’re just a person. And some things are just out of your power for...being a person like any other. Doesn’t make you weak, but...well, it happens. You’re helpless as I am.”

Dimitri replied with silence.

“And if any of your friends give you crap for it, then guess what? They’re not friends.” Rufus still didn’t know who Dimitri was friends with- except from the ones he’d spot on the palace sometimes. The youngest boy from Duke Fraldarius, the one from Margrave Gautier, and one of Count Galatea’s little girls. They seemed like good kids, at least. “And if that happens then- whatever! I’m here! It’s not much but I’m here!”

What could only be interpreted as a meek chuckle was all Dimitri reacted with. A funny thing for Rufus to say, considering how sometimes he didn’t bother to read his letters and never came to visit. He was too tired to confront the man about it however- so he let it pass. Rufus would probably forget about it later, anyway.

“Also can you- ugh, wait.” The regent produced a handkerchief and handed it out. “I know it’s rough and you’re sad but wipe your face? It’s three quarters water at this point. Gross as hell.” The Blaiddyds never looked pretty while crying. Always a red-faced wet mess, yet the redness and the tears made the blue of their eyes jump out exponentially.

“Language, uncle.” Dimitri grabbed the offered handkerchief- it held the emblem of Itha, not of the Royal banner- and pressed it against his face. He didn’t care, blew his nose on it despite an audible sound of disgust from the regent and handed it back.

“...you can keep it.” Rufus’ grimace was enough to finally make the prince laugh softly. A real laugh.

Dimitri sighed, feeling a headache coming in- one of exhaustion, the typical ones after a cry. Instead of looking down, however, he stared at the now cold cup of tea and the mostly untouched buns. “I just do not wish for my people, allies and friends to perceive me as… weak and unreliable. That is all.” I don’t want to be abandoned again.

The older man chuckled. “It’s funny to hear you speaking all fancy after all of that.” Dimitri simply huffed.

“Prince or not, you’re still a kid. Kids aren’t perfect, I bet that princess from Adrestia also has her slip ups as well as the little guy from Leicester you threw hands with. If people cast you aside for a mistake out of your power, then they’re the ones in the wrong for putting on impossible expectations.” Dimitri noddled idly, although he didn’t seem to be fully on board. Stubborn little thing, just like his dad, Rufus thought.

“...I wish to support Faerghus still, however. Even if I could not do much when the disease was out of control...now that everything has reached a more stable point, I would like to help the people in every way I can.”

“And that’s alright. Just don’t skip school and be a good boy.”

“Uncle.”

“What? You can’t be in two places at the same time, Mitya.” That baby nickname was enough to calm the prince down slightly. It was only ever used by his family nowadays- as his friends have all but stopped calling him anything other than Your Highness. It felt a bit embarrassing at times, as if Rufus were babying him, but it also brought comfort.

“I- okay, I yield!” The prince crossed his arms, huffing out. “You are impossible, truly. Quite frustrating, at times.”

“Yadda yadda.” Rufus smirked, sipping on the now cold tea. ”Sheesh, this thing tastes like leaf water when it’s cold. Bad leaf water.”

“That is more or less what tea is composed of.” Dimitri grabbed one of the sweet buns, taking a bit and munching with visible glee once he noticed that the pastries were bakes to fit his preferences.

“Finally, dammit! I thought you wouldn’t eat any of these! Well, you could at least spare one to give to a pretty girl you like.” Rufus winked and grabbed another pastry, powdered sugar lining his golden beard.

Dimitri made noises of disapproval, but preferred to just continue eating. Although his heart was still heavy with uncertainty and disappointment in himself, he felt that at least at that very moment, he could afford to occupy himself with something- or someone else. Other than death and suffering, other than despair.

He’d brace himself for a difficult path, now. One of painful recovery and unfortunate difficulties.

#[ ah this takes me back… ] (drabbles)#[[ yo this got LONG ]]#[[ but now that the month's ending have a lil drabble for dimitri @ the plague in faerghus ]]#[[ and uncle hours? uncle hours ]]

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rabbitcruiser · 2 years

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World Toilet Day

History of World Toilet Day

World Toilet Day Timeline

3000 BC Pipes carry waste

Even a few thousand years ago various people groups (in Scotland, India, Mesopotamia and more) would use pipe systems to carry waste out of their houses and into rivers or streams.

100-200 AD Group toilets for soldiers

Middle Ages (500-1500 AD) Garderobes are used

Predating the toilet, “garderobes” were little rooms that hung over the sides of the castle. This little closet had a bench with a hole in it where the waste would drop into a moat or pit below.

1596 Flushing toilet is invented

1775 First toilet patent issued

1829 First toilets in a hotel

The Tremont Hotel in Boston, USA installed eight indoor water closets for its guests.

1866 World’s first bathroom showroom

1880s Thomas Crapper invents the ballcock

Toilets that have this invention, the “ballcock��, are less likely to overflow. Crapper created the floating valve as well as eight other patented improvements for plumbing and sewage. He also did a lot of plumbing for British royalty around this time.

1910 Elevated water tank

A similar design to today’s toilets, the closed water tank and bowl moves into common use.

1986 Sensor flushes introduced

In Japan, the first toilets with sensors that would flush on their own were used.

2001 World Toilet Organization is created

The World Toilet Organization moves to educate people about the sanitation crisis. Even in today’s modern times, more than 2 billion people across the world still do not have access to a toilet.

2013 World Toilet Day made official by the UN

In an effort to raise awareness and support for places where people don’t have proper access to sanitation, the first UN World Toilet Day is celebrated on November 19, 2013.

How to celebrate World Toilet Day

Another thing you could do as a way of observing World Toilet Day Would be of course to make a donation, so if you have the means, know that every dollar helps.

Source

#Cold Springs Pony Express Station Ruins #Marstrand #Coney Island #travel #New York City #Folsom State Prison Museum #Gettysburg National Military Park #Kings Landing Historical Settlement #Canada #original photography #cityscape #architecture #landscape #rest area #Calico Ghost Town #World Toilet Day #19 November #WorldToiletDay #outhouse

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dwellordream · 3 years

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“...Because if we want to ask “What was life as a woman like in Sparta?” we really need to ask “What was life like as a helot woman?” because they represent c. 85% of all of our women and c. 42.5% of all of our humans. And I want to stress the importance of this question, because there are more helot women in Sparta than there are free humans in Sparta (as from last time, around 15% of Sparta is free – men and women both included – but 42.5% of Sparta consists of enslaved helot women). If we want to say absolutely anything about the condition of life in Sparta, we simply cannot ignore such a large group of human beings living in Sparta.

...The primary economic occupation of helot women was probably in food preparation and textile production. And if I know my students, I know that the moment I start talking about the economic role of women in ancient households, a very specific half of the class dozes off. Wake Up. There is an awful tendency to see this ‘women’s work’ as somehow lesser or optional. These tasks I just listed are not economically marginal, they are not unimportant. Yes, our ancient sources devalue them, but we should not.

First: let’s be clear – women in ancient households (or early modern households, or modern households) were not idle. They had important jobs every bit as important as the farming, which had to get done for the family to survive. I’ve estimated elsewhere that it probably takes a minimum of something like 2,220 hours per year to produce the minimum necessary textile goods for a household of five (that’s 42 hours a week spinning and weaving, every week). Most of that time is spent spinning raw fibers (either plant fibers from flax to make linen, or animal fibers from sheep to make wool). The next step after that is weaving those threads into fabric. Both weaving and spinning are slow, careful and painstaking exercises.

Food preparation is similarly essential, as you might imagine. As late as 1900, food preparation and cleanup consumed some 44 hours per week on average in American households, plus another 14 hours dedicated to laundry and cleaning (Lebergott, Pursuing Happiness (1993)). So even without child rearing – and ask any parent, there is a TON of work in that – a small peasant household (again, five members) is going to require something like 100 hours per week of ‘woman’s work’ merely to sustain itself.

Now, in a normal peasant household, that work will get split up between the women of the house at all ages. Girls will typically learn to spin and weave at very young ages, at first helping out with the simpler tasks before becoming fully proficient (but of course, now add ‘training time’ as a job requirement for their mothers). But at the same time (see Erdkamp, The Grain Market in the Roman Empire (2005) on this) women often also had to engage in agricultural labor during peak demand – sowing, harvesting, etc. That’s a lot of work to go around. Remember, we’re positing a roughly 5 individual household, so those 100 hours may well be split between only two people (one of whom may be either quite old or quite young and thus not as productive).

...Let’s start textiles. Spartiate women do not engage in textile manufacture (Xen. Lac. 1.4) as noted previously, nor do they seem (though the evidence here is weaker) to engage in food preparation. In the syssitia, at least, the meals are cooked and catered by helot slaves (Plut. Lyc. 12.5, 12.7). In the former case, we are told explicitly by Xenophon that it is slave labor (he uses the word doule, “female slave,” which clearly here must mean helot women) which does this.

So helot women now have an additional demand on their time and energy: not only the 2,200 hours for clothing their own household, but even more clothing the spartiate household they are forced to serve. If we want to throw numbers at this, we might idly suppose something like five helot households serving one spartiate household, suggesting something like a 20% increase in the amount of textile work. We are not told, but it seems a safe bet that they were also forced to serve as ‘domestics’ in spartiate households. That’s actually a fairly heavy and onerous imposition of additional labor on these helot women who already have their hands full.

We also know – as discussed last time – that helot households were forced to turn over a significant portion of their produce, perhaps as high as half. I won’t drag you all through the details now – I love agricultural modeling precisely because it lets us peak into the lives of folks who don’t make it into our sources – but I know of no model of ancient agriculture which can tolerate that kind of extraction without bad consequences. And I hear the retort already coming: well, of course it couldn’t have been that bad, because there were still helots, right? Not quite, because that’s not how poor farming populations work. It can be very bad and still leave you with a stable – but miserable – population.

Let’s talk about seasonal mortality. As the primary food-preparers in the helot household, helot women are going to have the job of managing a constrained but variable flow of food through an extended family that may include their husband, children, older relatives, etc. Given the low productivity of ancient farming, this is a tricky operation in systems where rents are extracting 10% or 20% of the farming yield every year, but given the demands of supporting an entirely unproductive class of elites, it becomes even harder. The key task here is stretching one harvest through the next planting to the next harvest, every year. That means carefully measuring out the food consumption of the household against the available reserves, making sure there is enough to last over the winter. If too much food is extracted by the elites, or the harvest fails or (likely) some combination, the family will run into shortage.

Now, the clever helot woman knows this – peasants, male and female, are canny survivors, not idiots, and they plan for these things (seriously, far too many of my students seem to instinctively fall into the trap of assuming serfs, peasants, etc. are idiots who don’t know what they are doing. These people have survived for generations with very few resources, often in situations of significant volatility and violence; they’re not stupid, they’re poor, and there is a difference!) – so she will have strategies to stretch out that food to try to keep herself and her family alive.

But that in turn often means inflicting a degree of malnutrition on the family unit, in order to avoid outright starvation – stretching the food out. It also probably means a lot of related strategies too: keeping up horizontal ties with other farming households so that there is someone to help you out in a shortage, for instance. Canny survivors. That said – especially in a situation where shortages hit everyone at once – a shortfall in food is often unavoidable.

But, we need to note two things here: first: humans of different ages and conditions react to malnutrition differently. Robust adults can tolerate and recover from periods of malnutrition relatively easily. For pregnant women, malnutrition increases all sorts of bad complications which will probably kill the child and may kill the mother. For the elderly and very young children, malnutrition dramatically increases mortality (read: lots of dead children and grandparents), as compromised immune systems (weakened by malnutrition) lead to diseases that the less robust old and young cannot fight off.

Second – and this is the sad and brutal part – feeding the agricultural workers, meaning the adult males (and to a lesser extent, adult females), has to come first, because they need to make it to the planting with sufficient strength to manage the backbreaking labor of the next crop. If it’s a choice between the survival of the family unit, and taking a chance that you lose Tiny Tim, our helot mother knows she has to risk Tiny Tim.

So in a good year, there is food enough for the entire household. Families expand, children grow up, the elderly part of the family makes it through another winter, imparting wisdom and comfort. But the bad years carry off the very young and the very old (and the as-yet unborn). For children who make it out of infancy, a series of bad years in early childhood – quite a common thing – are likely to leave them physically stunted. It was very likely that most helots were actually physically smaller and weaker than their better nourished spartiate masters for this reason (this is a pattern visible archaeologically over a wide range of pre-modern societies).

The population doesn’t contract, because the mortality isn’t hitting adults of child-bearing age nearly as hard, meaning that in future good years, there will be new children. In fact, societies stuck in this sad equilibrium tend to ‘bounce back’ demographically fairly quickly, because massive external mortality (say from war or plague) frees up land and agricultural surplus which leads to better nutrition which leads to less infant mortality which leads to rapid recovery.

...And so helot women must have spent a lot of time worrying about food scarcity, worrying if their sick and malnourished children or parents would make it through winter. Grieving for the lost child, the lost pregnancy, the parent taken too quickly. Probably all while being forced to do domestic labor for the spartiates, who were both the cause of her misery and at the same time did no labor at all themselves and yet were better fed than her family would ever be. Because peasant labor of any kind is so precariously balanced, we can really say that every garment woven for the spartiates, every bushel turned over, represented in some real sense an increase in that grief. Subsistence farming is always hard – but the Spartan system seems tailor made to push these subsistence farmers deeper and deeper into misery.

The instances of brutality against the helots – the murders and humiliations – which our sources preserve are directed at helot men, but it seems an unavoidable assumption that helot women were also treated poorly. Spartiate women were, after all, products of the same society which trained young men to ambush and murder helot men at night for no reason at all – it strikes me as an enormous and unsubstantiated leap to assume they were, for some reason, kind to their own female domestic servants.

In fact, the one thing we do know about spartiates – men and women alike – is that they seem to have held all manual laborers in contempt, regarding farming, weaving and crafting as tasks unbefitting of free people. I keep returning to it, but I want to again mention the spartiate woman who attempts to shame an Ionian woman because the latter is good at weaving, which in the mind of the spartiate, was labor unbecoming of a free person (Plut. Mor. 241d, note Xen. Lac. 1.4). The same attitude comes out of a spartiate man who, on seeing an Athenian convicted for idleness in court, praised the man, saying he had only been convicted of being free (Plut. Mor. 221c). This is a society that actively despises anyone who has to work for a living – even free people. Why wouldn’t that extend to its treatment of helot women?

To this, of course, we must add now the krypteia and incidents like the 2,000 murdered helots recounted by Thucydides (Thuc. 4.80). While the murdered are men, we need to also think of the survivors: the widowed wives, orphaned daughters, grieving mothers. This must have been part of the pattern of life for helot women as well – the husband or brother or cousin or father or son who went out to the fields one day and didn’t come back. The beautiful boy who was too beautiful and was thus murdered by the spartiates because – as we are told – they expressly targeted the fittest seeming helots in an effort at reverse-eugenics (Plut. Lyc. 28.3).

Finally, we need to talk about the rape. We are not told that spartiate men rape helot women, but it takes wilful ignorance to deny that this happened. First of all, this is a society which sends armed men at night into the unarmed and defenseless countryside (Hdt. 4.146.2; Plut. Lyc. 28.2; Plato, Laws 633). These young men were almost certainly under the normal age of marriage and even if they weren’t, their sexual access to their actual spouse was restricted.

Moreover (as we’ll see in a moment) there were clearly no rules against the sexual exploitation of helot women, just like there were no laws of any kind against the murder of helot men. To believe that these young men – under no direction, constrained by no military law, facing no social censure – did not engage in sexual violence requires disbelieving functionally the entire body of evidence about sexual violence in combat zones from all of human history. Anthropologically speaking, we can be absolutely sure this happened and we can be quite confident (and ought to be more than quite horrified) that it happened frequently.

But we don’t need to guess or rely on comparative evidence, because this rape was happening frequently enough that it produced an identifiable social class. The one secure passage we have to this effect is from Xenophon, who notes that the Spartan army marching to war included a group he calls the nothoi – the bastards (Xen. Hell. 5.3.9). The phrase typically means – and here clearly means – boys born to slave mothers. There is a strong reason to believe that these are the same as the mothakes or mothones which begin appearing with greater frequently in our sources. Several of these mothakes end up being fairly significant figures, most notably Lysander (note Plut. Lys. 2.1-4, where Plutarch politely sidesteps the question of why Lysander was raised in poverty and seemed unusually subservient and also the question of who his mother was).”

- Bret Devereaux, “This. Isn’t. Sparta. Part III: Spartan Women.”

#spartan #greek #ancient #bret devereaux #history #cw: rape #weaving

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psychologyofsex · 3 years

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What Will Sex and Relationships Look Like After COVID-19?

One of the questions I’m asked most often by journalists these days is what sex and relationships will look like after the pandemic. As a result, I’ve spent quite a bit of time thinking about this. The truth, of course, is that there’s just so much we don’t yet know, so it’s hard to make concrete predictions. However, I’ve identified a few key areas we should keep our eyes on, which is what I’m going to explore in this post.

The Future of Relationships and Marriage

The number of American adults living single has been on the rise for decades. In fact, since the 1970s, it has increased by more than two-thirds, with about 27% living single today.

Something I wonder about is whether we’re going to see a reversal in this trend in the aftermath of COVID-19. While the rise of adults living single was long celebrated by many as a sign of independence, what we saw during the pandemic is that people living alone struggled more than those living with a partner. So will we see fewer people living single in the future? Has living with a partner become more important?

Likewise, the U.S. marriage rate was at a record low prior to the pandemic, with the average age of first marriage steadily increasing. In fact, it is nearing age 30. However, recent data points to a rise in people seeking committed over casual relationships, so an important question to ask is whether we’re going to see a rise in the marriage rate—and also whether people will decide to get hitched at younger ages again.

The Future of Sex

Condom use has been on the decline, with rates of usage among teens and men who have sex with men dropping the most over the last decade. However, people are now reporting more interest in using condoms as we emerge from the pandemic. So will COVID-19 be the thing that potentially blunts or reverses the trend toward lower condom use?

Also, while much has been said and written about college hook-up culture over the last two decades, rates of sexlessness among college-age adults (especially men) have been on the rise. In fact, before the pandemic, one in three 18-24-year-old men reported no sex in the past year.

We know that, during the pandemic, rates of sexlessness increased overall and that there’s more hesitancy around sex (especially casual sex) right now. So what does this mean for the sexuality of younger adults? Will rates of sexlessness rise even more? If so, what are the psychological implications of this? And if we have a generation of folks for whom sexual development is stunted, what will this mean going forward for their emotional development and the way that they approach romantic relationships?

The Future of Fertility

It is estimated that there will be 300,000-500,000 fewer births in 2021 in the U.S. alone. This is on top of a substantial drop in births over the past decade. It’s possible that some of these births are just being delayed or postponed, but it’s also possible that many of them will never happen at all.

This raises some important social, economic, and political questions. For example, what will it mean to have smaller cohorts of children? Will those children thrive in the presence of more individualized attention, or will they experience more loneliness? Also, while being part of a smaller generational cohort may make it easier to get jobs later on due to a smaller workforce, this will also result in less tax revenue and collection for social security.

This raises the question of whether government intervention is on the horizon to promote more births in the United States. In other countries with declining birth rates and growing elderly populations (e.g., Japan, South Korea), we’ve seen governments getting involved in an effort to increase the birth rate, albeit with quite limited success.

Beyond this, there are also questions to be raised about how COVID-19 itself affects reproductive health. For example, some studies point to impaired sperm counts in men infected with COVID-19, perhaps due to an elevated immune response in the testes. Other studies suggest that COVID-19 may have negative effects on reproductive processes in women. We don’t know whether these effects are temporary or permanent because we don’t have long-term data yet. However, this had led some scientists to wonder whether the pandemic will create another kind of fertility crisis—one that heightens the need for assisted reproduction.

The Future of STIs

Although rates of sexual activity dropped during the pandemic, sexually transmitted infection (STI) testing and surveillance dropped at the same time. Thus, the full picture of what happened with STIs during the past year is unclear.

Several STDs were at a record high before COVID-19—but since the pandemic began, people with asymptomatic infections haven’t been getting tested. For example, some research has shown that while cases of gonorrhea dropped overall during the pandemic, this was primarily due to a decrease in asymptomatic cases showing up for testing. There was no change in number of symptomatic people who came in. In other words, people who were infected but didn’t have symptoms didn’t show up for routine testing, which raises the possibility of a hidden STI epidemic.

This is particularly concerning when you consider other research showing a decline in condom use during the pandemic, particularly among single adults.

This raises some important questions for sexual health experts, including how we get people back in the habit of regular STI testing. It also raises additional questions about the future of condom use because, while some data suggest that people say they are more likely to use condoms going forward (as I mentioned above), this obviously seems at odds with the finding that condom use dropped last year—so what accounts for this discrepancy? What’s really going to happen with condom use?

Conclusions

The COVID-19 pandemic has the potential to substantially alter the future of sex, relationships, fertility, and sexual health. We don’t know how all of this is going to play out—and we won’t know for quite some time. However, it’s important for us to keep an eye on these key areas so that we can be prepared for what’s ahead.

Want to learn more about Sex and Psychology? Click here for more from the blog or here to listen to the podcast. Follow Sex and Psychology on Facebook, Twitter (@JustinLehmiller), or Reddit to receive updates. You can also follow Dr. Lehmiller on YouTube and Instagram.

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