#prompt: covid-19

[fish-closet]

Anyone have any quirks they developed during the lock downs?

I developed the quirk of using "Howdy" as a greeting.

I graduated college and started a job in the Summer of 2021. So most people had two shots and things were starting to open up again.

I had this coworker I'll call August that every so often would greet a full room of people by saying "Howdy-doody!" which I thought was hilarious. I decided I also wanted to have a humorous greeting for my coworkers, but I did not have the enthusiasm to say "Howdy-doody." So I settled on "Howdy."

This then evolved into a genuine greeting.

Now that I am interacting with more people, I am being confronted with the fact that this is not a normal fucking greeting (except in Texas).

Most of the time people just go with it. No one laughs because I'm not intending to be funny. I've had a few people become genuinely confused what the joke is.

But oh boy, guys, I have recently discovered me saying "Howdy" has been causing psychic damage to my coworkers.

I was once walking with one of my coworkers on the way out of work. I said "Howdy" to people passing by and he asked me almost confrontational:

"Have you even been to Texas?"

I asked what he was talking about and he said he was just really caught up how casual I was saying Howdy.

I told him about how August would say "Howdy-doody" and how I wanted to emulate him. My coworker seemed to get it.

In the last couple of months, a new coworker started, and he wears a cowboy hat. Apparently, when I first met him, I greeted him, saying, "Howdy."

He told me this created a brain-worm in his head because he could not tell if this was something I said every day to him genuinely or if it was because he was wearing a cowboy hat.

I told him that it was just something I said, and that seemed to make him feel better.

But guys, I -

I was just saying "Howdy."

[kharmii]

I don't know. Sometimes it really, really feels like you're trying too hard to be the smartest person in the room without any substance, like... The whole energy is someone being disinvited from the Cool Kids in Academia club because of their whinging bullshit. Like, write a paper, write a book, do literally anything, and boom, if you can prove it, prove it, but this is...sad! It's sad. It's really sad to know that you're alive and talking, and I wish this pity wasn't genuine, but seriously, what the fuck, man.

I was never invited, sillypants. A person doesn't need a high opinion of themselves to write dissenting opinions on the internet. Just type some sheeit and put it out there. Anybody can do it.

I get what's being hinted here, like the 'Appeal to Authority' scam the left always pulls. Isn't consensus always a bunch of radical leftists agreeing with each other? IE: They'll go into a global warming study with a desired conclusion, and then they'll pat each other on the back when the evidence they've tweaked supports the conclusion they manipulated it to. Then the rest of us get fed more fake and gay statistics, and the oligarchy gets to run 'clean energy' scams.

Sometimes I get so fed up I want to be an asshole about it when I'm right about something. Hey, remember back in 2020 when I was surrounded by sniveling rat coworkers cackling around me like hyenas and calling me crazy and making cuckoo noises when I said Covid-19 was fake? -When I said it was a scam to steal the election through the mail or make a ton of money for political cronies selling vaccines? Remember how people called me a terrible human being and tried to ruin my life? Remember that?

Remember when people called me a racist and white supremacist around the same time period when I called Ibram X Kendi a nasty, semi-retarded hate-filled whackadoodle Twitter personality who isn't an authority on shit, and then years later, he was caught scamming millions of dollars? Remember that?

Every one of those suckers (who harass and doxx people over political opinions) should get put into medieval stocks and get rotten fruit and pig crap thrown in their faces for a few days. I should get to guzzle down a Sam's Club economy sized can of baked beans until I'm loaded with farts and then I should get to blast farts in their faces all while saying, "Covid was fake and gay and everybody knows it now you dumb biiiiiiiitch!!!"

[athoughtfullyautomaticcollection]

Change

I wish I could take the proverbial “Hall Pass” on the effects of COVID-19. But I can’t, and to be clear, I’m not one of those who spent time in ICUs or had incapacitating secondary infections. However, there was the long six months of debilitating arthritis – one flare after the other. I also seemed to be mentally functioning, but there were the months of bad financial decisions, as witnessed by…

[reasonsforhope]

"In a first-ever human clinical trial, an mRNA cancer vaccine developed at the University of Florida successfully reprogrammed patients’ immune systems to fiercely attack glioblastoma, the most aggressive and lethal brain tumor.

The results in four adult patients mirrored those in 10 pet dog patients suffering from brain tumors whose owners approved of their participation.

The discovery represents a potential new way to recruit the immune system to fight treatment-resistant cancers using an iteration of mRNA technology and lipid nanoparticles, similar to COVID-19 vaccines, but with two key differences: use of a patient’s own tumor cells to create a personalized vaccine, and a newly engineered complex delivery mechanism within the vaccine.

“Instead of us injecting single particles, we’re injecting clusters of particles that are wrapping around each other like onions,” said senior author Elias Sayour, M.D., Ph.D., a UF Health pediatric oncologist who pioneered the new vaccine, which like other immunotherapies attempts to “educate” the immune system that a tumor is foreign.

“These clusters alert the immune system in a much more profound way than single particles would.”

Among the most impressive findings was how quickly the new method spurred a vigorous immune-system response to reject the tumor, said Sayour, principal investigator at the University’s RNA Engineering Laboratory and McKnight Brain Institute investigator who led the multi-institution research team.

“In less than 48 hours, we could see these tumors shifting from what we refer to as ‘cold’—very few immune cells, very silenced immune response—to ‘hot,’ very active immune response,” he said.

“That was very surprising given how quick this happened, and what that told us is we were able to activate the early part of the immune system very rapidly against these cancers, and that’s critical to unlock the later effects of the immune response,” he explained in a video (below).

Glioblastoma is among the most devastating diagnoses, with median survival around 15 months. Current standard of care involves surgery, radiation and some combination of chemotherapy.

The new report, published May 1 in the journal Cell, is the culmination of seven years of promising studies, starting in preclinical mouse models.

In the cohort of four patients, genetic material called RNA was extracted from each patient’s own surgically removed tumor, and then messenger RNA (mRNA)—the blueprint of what is inside every cell, including tumor cells—was amplified and wrapped in the newly designed high-tech packaging of biocompatible lipid nanoparticles, to make tumor cells “look” like a dangerous virus when reinjected into the bloodstream to prompt an immune-system response.

The vaccine was personalized to each patient with a goal of getting the most out of their unique immune system...

While too early in the trial to assess the clinical effects of the vaccine, the patients either lived disease-free longer than expected or survived longer than expected. The 10 pet dogs lived a median of 4.5 months, compared with a median survival of 30-60 days typical for dogs with the condition.

The next step, with support from the Food and Drug Administration and the CureSearch for Children’s Cancer foundation, will be an expanded Phase I clinical trial to include up to 24 adult and pediatric patients to validate the findings. Once an optimal and safe dose is confirmed, an estimated 25 children would participate in Phase 2."

-via Good News Network, May 11, 2024

-video via University of Florida Health, May 1, 2024

[staytiny-dreams]

dating streamer! beomgyu (c.bg x reader)

pairing: choi beomgyu x gn! reader

genre: streamer! au, fluff, tiny bit of angst but not really

warnings: some parts focus on covid-19 pandemic if that's a trigger for you, i think that's all but lemme know if you think i missed anything

wc: 3.4k

note: so tired at 3am i accidentally hit the post button when it wasn't ready so if you've already seen this, no you haven't. i'm unsure how it turned out so let me know, i've also never formatted it like this before so any feedback on that lemme know too, and... look forward to the other members versions <33

squeals leave beomgyu as the tension rises, the anticipation of the jumpscare he knows is coming getting the better of him

the chat speeds by

“i thought you were supposed to be good at horror games”

“what happened to beomgyu has no fear”

“we told you you should play fnaf beomie!”

“took you this long to play fnaf?”

beomgyu whines at all the ‘i told you so’ comments

“come on guyssss im so late to this how am i supposed to know you’d be interest-” he cuts himself off with a guttural scream as freddy finally makes his long awaited appearance

seeing the bamtoris laughing at him in the comments he pouts at them

“chat you distracted me okay, i let my guard down because of you!”

his pc pings with a notification and the text to speech reads out “themarcotoyourpolo says ‘HAH you are such a liar beom you would’ve screamed either way’”

when beomgyu was seventeen, he spent his time like every other teenage boy did

playing video games

but sometimes his best friend would come over and he’d pull himself away for a few hours

only to sit with you and watch streamers play other games

honestly you didn't mind when beomgyu played games when you were over

he was entertaining to watch

really entertaining actually

“hey gyu, don't you think you’d be a good streamer?” you suggested one day jokingly.

you both giggled at the little game of ‘yes and’ that followed, planning out an entire future together where beomgyu was rich and famous, and you lived in a mansion together that was just a haven for video games and your friends, but after your little tangent, the thought was dismissed as quickly as it came.

or so you had thought.

a week later, sitting across from each other at the cheapest your favourite restaurant in town, beomgyu brought it back up again.

“do you really think i’d make a good streamer?”

“why are you actually thinking about it?” you snorted, taking a sip of your water thinking he was joking again, but when beomgyu didn't say anything you tilted your head up at him.

“oh shit are you actually thinking about it?” beomgyu gave a noncommittal shrug and picked at his food, staring down at his plate. he refused to look at you until you knocked the table in front of his plate lightly.

“beomie,” you started as he stared at you with wide eyes, “i could watch you play for hours.” you don't think you could ever forget the way his smile took over his face at your words.

and that led to the next few months spent with you and beomgyu on call for hours a day

playing mostly minecraft together although occasionally he’d branch out to other games

you hit all his milestones together

he still remembers the day you first got a double digit view count

excitement flooded through the both of you as the kind soul who raided you spams your comment section

the same day, beomgyu also hit ten followers, prompting you two to make his discord server

whenever you were too busy to join him on stream beomgyu would whine and complain like his life depended on it

more often than not he’d actually end up cancelling the stream for that day

one day you didn't feel well but you decided to sit on call with beomgyu while he streams so that he wouldn't cancel

beomgyu chattered on as he normally does, yelling about how, “beomgyu never dies,” but he noticed that today you were not reciprocating that same energy.

in fact you had been so quiet that he wasn't even sure you were still alive on the other side.

“(y/n)ie are you alive over there? (y/n)? marco?” he asked and ever so faintly he heard a weak ‘polo’ sound throughout his headphones.

“one moment, chat,” he said to his 20 something viewers before deafening on discord and muting his mic.

he wriggled his phone out from where it hid in his pocket, opened your contact and called you. it dialled almost four times before you picked up.

“i’m so sorry, beomie i fell asleep. i really didn't mean to but i-” he cut you off before you could go on.

“are you okay (y/n)ie?”

“to be honest beom, i don't feel very well i-” cutting you off again, beomgyu announced that he would be coming over to cure you before promptly hanging up and ending stream leaving both you and his chatters confused.

turns out, curing you meant bringing you his mothers soup and watching youtube in bed with you until you fell asleep. your burning forehead left patches of sweat on his chest, but he couldn't find it in him to care.

from then on you had a system in place where you would check if the other was still there by calling out “marco”

and if the other person was okay they’d call back “polo”

sometimes you regretted this system on days beomgyu decided you were too quiet and abused the marco-polo system by continually calling out marco like a broken record

a little while after beomgyu turned eighteen, the pandemic started and so followed lockdown

it was a really hard time for beomgyu

you were supposed to be starting college together that year, along with your close friends from high school soobin and taehyun

but now all classes were online and he wasn't allowed to see any of his friends

going from seeing you everyday to never took a toll on beomgyu that he didn't expect

he just hated knowing you were only a few streets away and he couldn't just walk over to you whenever he felt like it

beomie :>: are you looking at the moon rn and wondering if i’m also looking at the moon rn?

ynnie <3: beom we called for six hours today

beomie :>: i know right, i miss you too :((

ynnie <3: omg fine get back on disc lets watch a movie

but with his ray of sunshine by his side, he eventually found his footing in this apocalypse

a lot of his time was spent on call with you

working on your respective assignments

watching your online lectures on 2x speed

any other free time was spent streaming

since everyone was stuck at home, due to his frequent streaming schedule

and infectious energy

beomgyu’s audience quickly grew

going from 1000 followers when lockdown had started to hitting 3000 followers within a few months

taking your advice, he also became more active on his other social medias

even posting clips of his streams on tiktok

a few of which went viral causing his channel to grow substantially again

he also started a youtube channel for those shorter games

or ideas that required more editing to execute than a stream would allow

one day, while checking his twitter dms his eyes almost fell out of his skull

he dialled you immediately

“(y/n) (y/n) (y/n) (y/n) (y/n) (y/n)!”

you took a deep breath in, prepared to repeat his name back to him in the same tone, but you didn't get the chance.

“do not copy me, we do not have time for that, this is a code blue, (y/n), code blue!”

“what on earth is a code blue?”

“big creator dmed me (y/n), come on, we’ve discussed this!”

“we’ve never discussed a code system in our entire life.”

“what that is such a lie, you just never listen to a word i say!”

“well sorry beomgyu if you talk so much nonsense that it's hard to keep up,”

“nonsense? you take that back!” he screeched, but you could only giggle at him.

“i will literally never do that. come on gyu, what’s the code blue?”

“oh, yeah! j-hope messaged me (y/n). he asked if i wanted to join his friends' discord and play among us with them.” you squealed for him, excitement rushing through you.

“oh my god, oh my god, oh my god! beomgyu, what did you say?” suddenly beomgyu felt sheepish, realising he’d just been sitting there with the message open, too busy bickering with you to have responded.

“oh um… well, nothing yet i called you first…” now this time you screeched.

“you left 20 million youtube subscribers, 1.5 million twitch followers jung ho-seok on seen? beomgyu!” you scolded. beomgyu didn't know whether to be afraid or laugh, but his endearment got the better of him and he burst into giggles at your tone.

“don't laugh at me mister, text him back right now and tell him you’d be honoured to play with them!” and as he began to type out a reply to his senior, all beomgyu could think about was how he couldn't wait to have you in his arms again.

joining such big creators in playing among us put beomgyu in contact with even more big creators and had his channel blowing up

he met many new friends including someone who would become one of his closest friends

huening kai

as covid restrictions were eased and tightened again, beomgyu made sure to see you any time he could

but due to social distancing laws, he wasn't able to tackle you in his affection the way he wished

at the end of 2020 the second wave of covid set in

your anxious mother decided that you were not allowed to leave the house until the pandemic was over

beomgyu struggled with this news

his weekly outings walking six feet away from you - but still with you - were helping him hold on to his ray of sunshine

but with your assurance that you'd spend even more time on call with him and watch all his streams, he was able to keep his mood-maker demeanour in front of his fans

“so what are your plans for valentine’s day, (y/n)?” beomgyu asked, already knowing your answer.

with february 14th approaching, beomgyu was kicking himself for not having said anything sooner because your mother still wasn't letting you out of the house and beomgyu wanted to say what he had to say in person

“what do you mean gyu? you know i’ll still be stuck at home.”

“hm… well, maybe we could do a minecraft date, like a valentine's day special.” he suggested tentatively.

“like for your stream?” you asked and he shrugged.

“we don't have to stream.”

“but beom, aren't our friends all having dinner at soobin’s that day? don't you want to join them?” you reminded him and he simply shrugged again.

“don’t want to leave you all alone on valentines day (y/n)ie.” your face felt hot. you loved your mother to pieces, but sometimes her self imposed covid restrictions really got on your nerves.

and then march came, and for the first time in twelve years you feared you wouldn't be able to spend beomgyu’s birthday with him

“mum please, i’ll do anything,” you begged, “legally four people are allowed at an indoor private gathering.”

“and what if someone there has covid (y/n)? you have asthma it could really affect you!”

“it’s only going to be gyu, soobin and taehyun. you know all of them, you trust them! plus we’re all going to test before we go!”

“and what about transport, (y/n), what if you catch it on the bus?”

“i’ll take a taxi.”

“and what if the taxi driver has it? or what if you get in the car with a bad driver or a kidnapper?”

“mum! where is all this coming from? please. it’s beomgyu’s birthday, i can't miss beomgyu’s birthday. i swear i will never ask to go out again. just please let me go see him tomorrow.” tears welled up in your eyes. you hated fighting with your mother, but you couldn't let beomgyu down like that.

but the fight was all worth it when you knocked on soobin’s door the next night and beomgyu opened it.

he pulled you inside and slammed the door shut before squeezing you tight to his chest.

“you're here?” he asked, voice muffled as it was buried in your shoulder.

“happy birthday beom,” you smiled, arms tight around his stomach.

he pulled away from your hug and before you could joke about how your mother would never let you see the light of day again, beomgyu pulled down your mask and pressed his lips to yours.

two seconds passed where you stood still, wide eyed in shock before you registered what was happening and jumped into action.

one of his hands still held your mask, and the other came down to your cheek which you’re sure must’ve been burning him from how hot your face felt. you followed his lead, grabbing his shoulder with one hand and pushing your other through the hair at the bottom of his neck.

too soon, beomgyu pulled away, resting his forehead against yours.

“i’m sorry (y/n). i wanted to wait, until after lockdown, i wanted to talk to you first but i saw you and i just-”

“i love you beomgyu.” you cut off his rambling and he let out a flustered laugh.

“i love you too (y/n), i love you so much.”

due to covid still ongoing and your mother’s strict rules, you and beomgyu decided to take things slow after that night

there were no more meetings in person as you kept your promise to your mother

nothing much in your relationship with beomgyu changed due to your agreement to take things slow

he flirted a little here and there but there were no new pet names or anything of the sort

beomgyu continued to focus his energy on streaming and you continued to focus on your studies

beomgyu’s streams always providing the perfect background noise

but don't tell him that you don't devote a thousand percent of your attention to him at all times

luckily as 2022 approached, your mother began to let beomgyu visit your home provided he wore a mask in common places and if he had any symptoms he did not come over

and in april 2022 most legal restrictions were lifted

with your second booster vaccination, your mother lifted your house arrest

it had been over a year since you confessed your feelings to each other and your 20th birthday approached

you both had a big discussion about giving your relationship a real try

beomgyu now had almost half a million followers on twitch

after grinding for two years, he now had a rather large fan base

you expressed that you were a bit worried about having your relationship public to them

beomgyu didn't quite understand your concern as you had been participating in his streams and been a prevalent figure on his social media since the beginning

however, respecting your wishes, you both worked to keep the romantic nature of your relationship between yourselves and your close friends.

while beomgyu seemed to have found his schtick after 3 years of streaming

playing horror games on stream and co-op games with you for his youtube channel

and the occasional vlog

the friends he had made playing among us, huening kai, ho-seok and jungkook had begged him to join a minecraft server and stream with them

so with your encouragement

and his conditions that his partner and best friends also join the server

beomgyu joined the bighit smp started by kim namjoon

it was only a few months after you officially started dating

just before his 21st birthday and both of your fourth and final years in college

when beomgyu came to you with his proposition

“move in together?”

“is it too soon? i know we've only technically been dating a few months, but-” you cut beomgyu off with a hand on his mouth.

he stared at you wide eyed for a split second before his expression changed. luckily, you recognised the suspicious sparkle in his eye and removed your hand from his face before he could lick it, leaving him pouting at you.

“don’t look at me like that,” you giggled but his pout only deepened and he reached over to grab the hand that was previously on his face.

“so? what do you think? you wanna live with me?”

“hmm… i think…”

“(y/n)…” he whined, dragging out your name.

“i think we’ll need to find a place with an extra bedroom, so you can stream in there and not in our room.”

living with a horror streamer

most days of the week it's fun

a substantial income

your boyfriend’s always home

your boyfriend is practically fearless… in theory

okay maybe he’s only fearless when it’s fictional media

even a little bit of clout, not that it matters to you

as you always have, you tend to join beomgyu and your other friends when they play minecraft in the bighit smp

as well as being in all of beomgyu’s vlogs

since you moved in together, you decided it was best to come clean to bamtoris (his fans) about your relationship

they were very supportive

due to your presence in his channel from the beginning, there were some long time shippers who were more than pleased to hear this news

and maybe a little cocky, plastering ‘i told you’ so posts all over their socials

yes, the beomy/n truthers were very pleased

of course there were those who were convinced he was dating other streamers

or those who shipped him with his other friends, soobin and taehyun

and just general psychos who simply hated you because he wasn't dating them

nevertheless you both saw the relationship reveal as a success

so sometimes you go and sit with beomgyu while he streams, just as you used to sit on call with him

but this particular wednesday night was a tough one

you’d been up late the night before working on your final project for college

then worked from 7 to 5 even though you were originally rostered for only 7 to 12

your head was pounding

and tonight, despite the soundproofing you had installed on the walls of the office

his shouts still reached your tired ears and made your head ache

you tossed and turned for a while, not wanting to ask beomgyu to quiet down as he was clearly having fun

but, after an hour of not being able to sleep you decided you were being stupid

beomgyu would never be upset with you for not feeling well

so you rolled out of bed, padded over to his door and knocked lightly, then cracked the door open

the light from the hall spilled into the room and caused beomgyu to look over at you with a smile

his hair was fluffy and his face was lit up by his screen and his purple leds and he just looked so soft

and before you could say anything, your face crumpled

and a few tears slipped down your cheeks

immediately muting his mic, beomgyu threw his headphones off and ran over to you at the door.

“baby, what’s wrong?” he asked, pulling you into his arms and you laughed at yourself.

“sorry, this is so stupid, i dont even know why im crying.” you mumble into his chest.

that night beomgyu ended his stream early and laid in bed with his arms wrapped tightly around you, whispering how much he loves you

and how whenever you wanted him to be quiet or even end stream he’d do it in a heartbeat

but, if you're not sick, busy or streaming with beomgyu, you're still watching his streams

and sending silly comments

you are simultaneously his favourite and least favourite chatter

your comments always make him laugh but are often at his expense

“themarcotoyourpolo says ‘poor baby, so scared of a big teddy bear’”

“you know what (y/n), get your ass in here, we'll put the headphones on you and see how confident you are then!”

but knowing you're in his chat has always given him comfort

and made him a smidge happier to be there

if beomgyu ever had zero viewers it'd be because you died and he knew that

even then if you ever wanted him to turn his computer off and hang out with you, he’d come running

at the end of the day, whether beomgyu’s screaming at his computer screen or peacefully cooking dinner with you, he is the love of your life and you wouldnt change a thing

[bebethsas]

@hangon-silvergirl​

I am begging you, please write this fic before I do

for the au ask game: a roommates or housemates au??

So I've had this rough idea in my head for a while:

It's December 2019 and Eddie Munson's roommate, Gareth, announces that he's going to be moving out of the two bedroom apartment they've been sharing for the last few years, come February (to move in with his girlfriend). Eddie's happy for his friend, obviously, but is annoyed by the now tedious task facing him: He can't afford this place by himself, and none of his friends need somewhere to live, so he needs to find a new roommate.

Technologically impaired Eddie rebuffs all offers to post on sites like Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace on his behalf; instead he posts an ad in the newspaper, and sticks fliers up in his neighborhood, and around the local college campus.

Chrissy Cunningham has a massive falling out with her family over Christmas. She breaks up with her long-term boyfriend, gets cut off financially, and gets kicked out of her house with nothing but a backpack full of clothes, another full of her school things, and her car. She sleeps in her car for a few nights before her friends figure out what's up, and then she starts couch-surfing. She gets a job at a café on campus (this girl is just a barista in my brain, idk); her next semester of school is already paid for, but she needs somewhere to live, and to figure out loans for the rest of her degree, and how to pay for food and books and car insurance and etc.

She sees Eddie's flier on the community board in the café, re-reads it a lot, but doesn't know how she feels about living with a man. She keeps seeing the fliers EVERYWHERE though; gas station and library and the campus pub, and even one day tucked under the windshield wiper of her car (Eddie's getting desperate). Eventually one day in late January when cleaning up a combed through newspaper off of a table at work, she sees the published ad and thinks, that's it's, gotta listen to the universe, so she finally takes the plunge and texts him.

They meet and hit it off alright and agree that she'll move in. Things go a-okay for the first little while; they're living separate lives after all, so really only see each other in passing, and for the occasional shared meal. A little flirty, there's potential there obviously, but they've both got enough going on and this friendship is new, so... foundations first, ya know?

Then... Then the pandemic hits, and into lockdown mode they go. They have to navigate the trials and tribulations of learning to live with someone you do not know, spending 100% of their time together, in the midst of the world falling apart; remote school, remote work, government payouts, making bread, etc. The whole nine yards.

Naturally the stress of it all plus all the teeny, little annoyances stack up and up and up until they culminate in a massive, yelling argument over... idk toaster and jam crumbs in the margarine container or something otherwise equally stupid, and that ends in them kissing each other aggressively to shut each other up, and thus begins a very passionate and distracting way to pass the time.

Thanks for the ask, @hellcheerocracy!

Request comes from this post: Send Me an AU & I'll Give You 5+ Headcanons About It.

[whokilledjared]

the sluttiest thing a man can do is be himself. (& takes on social media)

Hi.

I'm lonely.

The moment I got "two weeks off school" in sophomore year, life went to 4x speed & I can't turn it off no matter how hard I try.

Maybe COVID-19 adolescence did numbers on me. Somewhere between the iPhone 5c and ChatGPT, 14-hour screen times have live-streamed to me a steady, homogenous death of culture.

Nothing is cool anymore. Nothing is sacred. Every movement is a trend, and every cult classic a sequel.

The value we place on things being beautiful, on being "cool," and our gatekept appreciation of how hard these things were to find: it's been co-opted, or perhaps stolen. It's been stolen by the new merchant class. "Disruptors" and "innovators" turning our lives into a burgeoning black mirror prequel. Soon, we'll graduate too, and we'll wring every morsel of value in each others' lives dry for cash.

Plain and simple, I think we're being manipulated.

Your dates are an algorithm. Your music is a social signal. And Zuck knows when you sleep.*

God. What the fuck are we doing???

“Individuation is becoming the thing which is not the ego, and that is very strange.” — Carl Jung

Recently, I deleted Instagram. My first impulse was to post a story or something, announcing my departure. But then, I thought that would be lame.

I got rid of my account, too. Kinda. Over 1 year, over 800 followers removed, and what remains of me is a little grey icon, and "JM_0000000010" where my name and face used to be.

yay.

There were many people I wish I could have been friends with, but I wonder, too, why I find myself so drawn to the validation of others. Does social media affect me worse, or do we all just choose to ignore it, languishing in private?

At any rate, this last year has almost felt like re-learning how to be a human being.

Personally, I think one of the biggest markers for maturity is when you become willing to disappoint the people you know in favor of what feels right to you, when you start to unravel the stories you’ve told yourself (or been told) about who you are and what you should be. In short, the sluttiest thing a man can do is be himself.

And sometimes, I think about every college student that has ever lived. My grandmother, my dad, and so on. Just consider for a moment all kids who graduated before 2010:

What was it like for the ones in 1940? To walk around, before a campus had computers? In 2006: To meet someone pretty, but forget their number? In 1999: To cram into dorms, and watch Seinfeld live on-air?

Would I, like my dad in 1988, have braved cold night, brisk wind, & landline phone-call just to knock and see if my friends were too busy to hang?

What stories could I tell if there was even the slightest chance of getting lost on the way home from a party?

Humans are social creatures. We crave our friends like water. To me, the clearest difference between Dasani and Instagram is that one of them comes in a bottle.

Yet despite these distractions and comforts we have in 2024, somehow, we still have engineering students. People who carve out time in their day to sit down, look at paper, and solve differential equations. But then, that's not so hard, is it? It just takes time. Precious, fucking, time.

At Meta, leagues and leagues of these engineers power behavioral scientists, who are competing for the highest salary. Their benchmarks? Your FOMO. Guilt. Anxiety. Obsession. The worse you feel, the more you engage with their content. The more you engage with their content, well, you're starting to get the point.

Try something for me: Open up Instagram, but don't tap anything. What happens? How many little animations? How many tiny nudges prompting you to get lost? Our home-pages are billion-dollar diving boards, hoisting us over engineered catacombs of subconscious quicksand.

My homepage is my FOMO, my envy, and my crushes. The pain and struggle of trying to be someone who I am not. My little existential crises, bundled-up, packaged, and shipped with a like button.

To abandon your social networks entirely, however, requires a safety net of close friends. After all, your friends are online, and you'd be miserable without them.

This is the problem with our monkey brains. Millennia of sociological natural-selection have made us quite great at feeling terrible. We're damn good at making tribal status games to play with, too.

Seeking refuge in quirked up septum piercings and boygenius listeners, my time in counter-cultural, alternative "scenes" between St. Louis and Tampa has shown me that even the weirdest of folks and the most removed can accidentally find themselves reduced to nothing more than high-school popularity contests. Even if I love them. Even if they're amazing people. We're human.

We can't "quit social media" as much as we can't "quit bottled water" Sure, we can, but it's inconvenient. And even without a bottle, we're still drinking water.

So I lost touch with my friends. I got no new updates on their lives. I forced myself into the inconvenience of not having a phone to reach for in fleeting moments of boredom. Suddenly, I was out of the loop. Suddenly, I was bored. And suddenly, nobody missed me. My only friends were the ones I had the time to text. Everyone else ... does not exist.

Weekends have become more valuable than ever. Without the empty social calories of seeing my friends' pictures, I find myself planning hangouts as often as my schedule allows. I have more lunches, more study sessions, and more is done in the company of less.

And I have the time to breathe.

And in this calm, I think I found my answer: it's my misplaced ambition. These fears of anxiety and people I thought I would miss, they seem represent something I want to see more of within myself. Something I want to develop, lean into more deeply, as an individual. And I think that's quite normal; to look out into the world and feel attracted to things we want to see more of. This is, I think, how everyone develops their own definition of beauty — and of coolness. It's largely the intersection of what we find most interesting, and what we want to see more of in the world. Because beauty and coolness, by definition, are rare and hard to find. If they were everywhere, nothing be beautiful, nor would anything be cool.

When we all turn into wrinkles and cataracts, bad backs and heart attacks, for a brief, glorious moment, our lives are going to flash before our eyes. In this moment, you'll see your story. The ultimate progression of you.

How much of that will be skibidi toilet and reaction clips? How much of that will be arguing on the internet? Can you tell me, just how much of your life will you have skipped over to pacify your intentionally-lowered attention span?

That girl whose number you couldn't find Those passing questions over coffee that you couldn't search on Google The boredom of a subway ride

Those are not inconveniences, they're what the older generations refer to as "life."

* (oh, but if you can't sleep, consider this aside: Google knows the angle you walk at, how fast you're walking, and they've got crowdsourced pictures of everywhere around you at all times of the day. fun bedtime thoughts <3)

[covid-safer-hotties]

NYT: Cuomo Personally Altered Report Which Understated Nursing Home COVID Deaths by Over 50%, Emails Reveal - Published Sept 19, 2024

By Joseph Feldman

NEW YORk – Former Governor Andrew Cuomo personally altered a state report that significantly underreported the number of nursing home deaths from COVID-19 by over 50%, according to emails cited in a new report.

The New York Times revealed that emails and congressional documents challenge Cuomo’s claim, made during a congressional hearing, that he had no recollection of seeing or reviewing the state Health Department’s report.

In June 2020, Cuomo’s assistant reportedly sent an email to his senior staff with the message, “Governor’s edits are attached for your review,” according to the Times.

Cuomo, who recently testified before the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, was not under oath during his testimony but was warned he could face criminal charges for knowingly making false statements.

The former governor’s actions during the early stages of the pandemic have drawn criticism, particularly an order to send elderly COVID-19 patients back to nursing homes, which may have led to as many as 9,000 additional deaths. Cuomo acknowledged he referred to this March directive as “the great debacle” in an email sent to his inner circle.

A July 2020 state Department of Health report downplayed the number of nursing home deaths, a move that a U.S. House committee described as part of a “cover-up.” The House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic alleged Cuomo’s office had altered the report, but the emails suggest Cuomo was directly involved.

The Times report indicates Cuomo personally added language to the report that placed blame on nursing home staff, visitors, and family members for spreading the virus. During his June questioning by House members, Cuomo claimed he had no recollection of reviewing or editing the report before its release on July 7, 2020.

Although Cuomo is known for avoiding the use of email, the Times noted that none of the emails in question were sent by him.

During a Capitol Hill hearing on September 10, Cuomo’s repeated denials prompted Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY) to label him a “lying sack of s—t.”

Vivian Zayas, co-founder of Voice for Seniors, whose mother died in a Long Island nursing home after contracting COVID-19, attended the hearing. She accused Cuomo of lying, stating, “If he lied to Congress, he committed a crime. He should definitely be investigated.”

Cuomo’s spokesperson, Rich Azzopardi, responded to the email revelations by insisting that nursing home staff spread the virus, aligning with the findings of the original report. Azzopardi also emphasized that Cuomo cooperated fully with the congressional inquiry and argued that the findings align with CDC guidelines in place at the time.

Cuomo, who stepped down in August 2021 amid sexual misconduct allegations, has been rumored to be considering a run for New York City mayor as current Mayor Eric Adams faces growing scandals.

[yridenergyridenergy]

The wholesome-ish friendship between Shinya and Kyo

Their latest playful Q&A in Haiiro no Ginka vol. 100 has prompted me to compile examples of this weird but overall wholesome relationship that Kyo and Shinya have and which is not obvious at first.

Situation #1

In October 2017, Kyo gifted Shinya with a custom white version of a MadaraNingen one-piece. As far as I remember, that article of clothing was not available for purchase in white at all, to the public. And of course, we all know that Shinya prefers to wear white.

Situation #2

I think that in response to Shinya sharing a video of him briefly playing with the minicars that were sold as tour goods in This Way to Self-Destruction, Kyo posted a story on Instagram of him revving up a bunch of mini-cars and persistently making them hit his phone propped up on a counter and displaying a picture of Shinya. At age 43. To which Shinya made an Instagram post vaguely hinting that: "Good children should not play with the mini-cars to hit someone's picture!"

Kyo's Instagram Story "The proper way to use mini-cars" video

Shinya's translated response

Situation #3

In late 2022-early 2023, Shinya publicly celebrated his bandmates' birthdays via emojis on Twitter, and Kyo was the only one to respond, in kind.

Situation #4

Kyo posted a cryptic picture of Shinya's video meeting with Mana in an Instagram Story and he has mentioned on Twitter at least once that he was watching Shinya Channel (the making of the FaFa onigiri).

In the same vein, Shinya took his failed attempt at needle-felting a pink bunny in March 2022 and turned it into a miniature hammer-wielding bunny in October 2022, in response to sukekiyo unveiling their Mosaic Shoujo PV which featured Kyo in the killer bunny suit.

Situation #5

This very old video of Kyo teasing Shinya by pinching the side of his dress, Shinya reacting by pushing Kyo a bit and Kyo falling into a robot dance in response.

Situation #6

The coffee maker. In one of the live talks held during the COVID-19 pandemic at concert venues, Shinya mentioned having a coffee maker which was of no use to him, and Kyo expressed interest in taking it from him. Later, in the Galacaa livestream talk between the two, it was revealed that Shinya had promised to give Kyo his coffee maker, but he never pulled through on that offer. Kyo, sporting a doodled face to hide his own, insistently questioned Shinya on this unreliability when the topic was brought up by fans in the comments. Shinya kind of struggled but ended up explaning that the coffee maker was really useless because of a defect, that it would not have been an appropriate gift anymore. But he forgot to update Kyo about it after he tried to contact the manufacturer. Kyo replied like: "Oh, alright then."

At some point, Kyo took the matter to Twitter, confronting Shinya about it with their respective member photos to illustrate the dialogue, and Shinya replied the same way.

Situation #7

In that same livestream, Shinya is so used to Kyo's bullshit by now that he completely ignores Kyo's doodle face sheet and casually leans forward to look past him and at the interviewer, sat on Kyo's right. After a while of this, the interviewer points out to Shinya that Kyo is insistently staring at him with this disturbing face, which is when Shinya becomes startled and nervously laughs upon realizing that, also making Kyo chuckle.

Situation #8

More often than others, Shinya and Kyo are documented chatting on the chairs backstage while they wait for everyone to be ready to start the show. Maybe there's something to be said of how they are the two members of the band to leave the stage the quickest, while Kaoru, Toshiya and Die stay for a while to throw picks.

Situation #9

Miscellaneous pictures of the two:

Situation #10

Apparently it was Shinya's earbuds that Kyo used to play with the cat (also Shinya's?) in this famous old video.

Situation #11

Other interactions on Twitter include commentary regarding the song battles that fans were voting on via that same website, during live broadcasts from their manager Fujieda on Galacaa. Kyo and Shinya were the only two members reacting to the songs that were pulled out of the box, Kyo sometimes replying to Shinya's own tweets wondering what he meant or outright questioning his preference.

Another interaction consisted in Kyo copying Shinya's tweets regarding the release of their Phalaris album and twisting Shinya's cute comments into hellish versions.

Situation #12

Probably a bunch of elusive comments throughout the years, but here's an example of something that Shinya said about Kyo in a magazine interview.

Situation #13

In Haiiro no Ginka vol. 100, the members were asked to send each other member five questions. Some chose to personalize them based on what they actually wanted to ask of the others, while a couple decided to send the same questions to all, but members were not told who the questions came from. Kyo picked up on that anonymous part of the game and when answering Shinya's set of questions, he ended each of his short answers with a second sentence that can either just be the Kansai dialect for: "Aren't you Shinya!", or in other dialects, translates more to: "Shinya, you bastard!" hahah. From what I saw, nobody else hinted at who they thought the questions came from in their answers. In reverse, Kyo took up two of his five alloted questions for Shinya with the simple statement: "You don't know you're dead yet!", a quote from Fist of the North Star which is highly intimidating as it hints that someone has defeated the character so easily and lightning-fast that they are a dead man standing, their body having trouble catching up with the reality that they were slaughtered. Shinya, in response to that repeated tease, stubbornly replies in his polite and formal Japanese that: "No, I'm not dead." Their Q&A with the other members were not nearly that quirky.

Situation #14

At his SERAPH birthday concert in 2023, Shinya said that his three treasures in life are:

DIR EN GREY

SERAPH

sukekiyo

Situation #15

Kyo replying to Shinya's post featuring a very old picture of Kyo (which was however respectfully hidden by Phalarisu-kun) by pulling out the oldest/youngest postcards of Shinya he could find, also commenting to paraphrase Shinya: "Postcards that probably no one has anymore." His own postcard depicting him peeks from underneath.

Shinya replied to that with: "I tried to look for it but couldn't find it 🥺"

Situation #16

On Twitter, Shinya posted a photo with other artists which he explained as: "Yesterday, we had a birthday celebration for everyone born in February and March 🎂 Happy birthday everyone 🎉🎉🎉"

To which Kyo directly replied: "I wasn't invited." (born February 16th)

And Shinya responded with: "The DIR EN GREY guys are a bit mean 🥺"

Kyo never replied to that.

Situation #17

Going to combine two things considering how long ago they were.

Shinya and Kyo were the first members of Dir en grey to meet, and the day right after I posted this compilation happened to be the 28th anniversary of when they first performed together.

There's also an anecdote that, way back then, no one in the band knew how to contact Kyo because none of them had his phone number, but eventually Shinya just casually revealed that he had it all along and said: "Oh I'll just call him"

Situation #18

Shinya and Kyo are the only members who are clearly dog lovers in the band, while Die and Toshiya are part of the cat team. Shinya used to have a dog (chihuahua?) and Kyo now has Pun-cha. Shinya recently wore a sweater with a dog on it.

Situation #19

In a tweet that Kyo has since deleted, he wrote that if there was one grudge he still held, it was that he never appeared on the cover of a Rockin'f magazine. Shinya also wasn't featured, so he added that while he doesn't have a grudge against them, he has declined interviews and comments for a certain magazine after that.

Situation #20

During their European tour 2024, Kyo and Shinya embarked in a playful spat on Twitter, seemingly out of boredom while traveling on the tour bus. It was funny the way it culminated in both of them forcing the other to subscribe to their fan clubs to find out more. On Kyo's side at least, I didn't see anything related to that on kyo-online for real hah.

Situation #21

Shinya took the time to snap a picture of Petit Brabançon playing on the Yunika Vision screens while he was out solving a game, then posting that on Twitter and promoting Petit Brabancon. " I heard Kyo sing while solving a mystery in Shinjuku"

He also made numerous mentions of the Petit Brabancon posters around Gorilla Hall in his video touring that venue:

... Did I miss any? And there will undoubtedly be more to come!

Thank you very much to shinyaburashka, mementoboni, lamenty45 and degtau for your help!

[allthecanadianpolitics]

A new COVID-19 subvariant, known as JN.1, has emerged and is now the prevailing strain across Canada, prompting health experts to caution that it may be more infectious and could even have extra symptoms. Currently, the subvariant makes up the highest proportion of all COVID-19 variants, accounting for more than half (51. 9 per cent) of all infections in Canada, according to the latest data from the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC). JN.1 was first detected in Canada on Oct. 9, and since then has rapidly increased.

Continue Reading

Tagging @politicsofcanada

[reality-detective]

The only positive outcome of the Covid ‘vaccines’ is that it has made people question the safety of ALL vaccines.

“The introduction of bacterial childhood vaccinations, not only caused the targeted infections to become more widespread, but other bacterial infections also emerged and evolved into more dangerous strains. This new reality prompted the creation of more vaccines, which in turn has accelerated this “downward spiral” and boosted “Big Pharma profits.” 🤔

Full article: 👇

Just a reminder for people 🤔

[sansculottides]

𝗛𝗼𝗹𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗨𝗦 𝗔𝗰𝗰𝗼𝘂𝗻𝘁𝗮𝗯𝗹𝗲 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗜𝘁𝘀 𝗖𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘁 𝗙𝗮𝗸𝗲 𝗡𝗲𝘄𝘀 𝗢𝗽𝗲𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗶𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗣𝗵𝗶𝗹𝗶𝗽𝗽𝗶𝗻𝗲𝘀

On June 14, 2024, international news agency Reuters exposed a secret disinformation campaign by the US Department of State meant to discredit Chinese-manufactured COVID-19 vaccines amongst Filipinos. The US anti-vax fake news campaign ran from 2020 to 2021, and involved the use of dummy social media accounts posting false and unscientific information about the efficacy of Chinese vaccines, as well as weaponizing pervasive racist conspiracy theories that the COVID-19 pandemic was created and spread by the Chinese government.

We demand an immediate investigation by the Philippine government on the matter, and for decisive action to be taken by the government to hold the US accountable for its deception campaign against the Filipino people. The Reuters exposé has uncovered a clear national security threat to the Filipino people. The US carried out its fake news campaign at a time when the COVID-19 pandemic was ravaging the Filipino people, and worsened already widespread anti-vaccination beliefs amongst the public.

We are appalled by the glaring lack of Philippine media coverage on the Reuters exposé. An international scandal has just been uncovered. How can truth be spoken to power, and how can political action be taken by citizens, if the media does not play its part? Silence is silence, whether due to the threat of repression or the suffocating consensus by media capitalists that unsavory things be left unsaid. We call on all media workers, whether working at mainstream media organizations, independent media, social media, or campus media, to take the lead themselves and focus public attention on this issue.

The year-long campaign clearly demonstrates the untrustworthiness of the US as a strategic diplomatic and military partner of the Philippines and of all Global South countries. The campaign was initiated by the Trump administration and was first focused on the Philippines. Later on, the project was expanded further into Central Asia and the Middle East. It took the Biden administration three full months to end the globalized and state-sponsored mass disinformation project.

This issue is not just a problem of specific administrations. The year-long campaign should remind the workers and the masses of the Philippines and the world that the US remains the world’s foremost imperialist power. Its overriding foreign policy concern is the maintenance of its dominant global military and economic position, and its means are deception and force.

The US’ covert effort to corrupt public discourse in the Philippines should prompt the Marcos administration to question the intentions of its close diplomatic and military ally. The disinformation campaign was motivated primarily by the US’ geopolitical rivalry with China, which has, since the former’s Pivot to Asia in 2012, increasingly taken on a more militarized and antagonistic form. US military and intelligence agencies are manufacturing consent in the Philippines to win the hearts and minds of the Filipino masses in its effort to overpower China through military means. This is its real goal, and not to aid the Filipino people to address Chinese maritime aggression.

The US has no legitimacy to pose as a champion of international laws and norms and as a partner to secure the Philippines’ national sovereignty. It conducted its campaign to serve its own geopolitical interests with no regard for the immense need of the Philippines to vaccinate its citizens against the pandemic. Once again, Washington D.C. has Filipino blood on its hands.

US interference in Philippine public life cannot be left without consequences. Philippine foreign policy should pivot away from its longstanding reliance on the US and towards ASEAN, and away from addressing Chinese aggression through militarized means and towards regional multilateral diplomacy. 𝙏𝙝𝙚 𝙥𝙚𝙖𝙘𝙚 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙨𝙤𝙫𝙚𝙧𝙚𝙞𝙜𝙣𝙩𝙮 ���𝙛 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙋𝙝𝙞𝙡𝙞𝙥𝙥𝙞𝙣𝙚𝙨 𝙘𝙖𝙣 𝙤𝙣𝙡𝙮 𝙗𝙚 𝙜𝙪𝙖𝙧𝙖𝙣𝙩𝙚𝙚𝙙 𝙗𝙮 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙁𝙞𝙡𝙞𝙥𝙞𝙣𝙤 𝙢𝙖𝙨𝙨𝙚𝙨. 𝙄𝙢𝙥𝙚𝙧𝙞𝙖𝙡𝙞𝙨𝙩𝙨 𝙖𝙧𝙚 𝙣𝙤 𝙛𝙧𝙞𝙚𝙣𝙙𝙨 𝙤𝙛 𝙤𝙪𝙧𝙨!

📷 AP

Reposted from SPARK - Samahan ng Progresibong Kabataan (Union of Progressive Youth), a socialist youth organization in the Philippines.

[athoughtfullyautomaticcollection]

Junk Mail

All flyers and email notices from tool companies, even my favorite, go to the Junk Mail folder. They get arbitrarily trashed. Why am I not allowing my favorite form of tool porn into my life? Covid. No, I don’t have COVID-19 again, but a few weeks ago, I was looking in the basement shop I rarely use and noting the unused tools I purchased when I had my about with long COVID-19. It was a bit more…

[carmyberzattosjournal]

Entry 13: Grand Canyons of Scars

GIF by @mithrandirl

Bearblr Promptober Day 13: Hot Cocoa + Baking

Summary: In which Carmen has the worst panic attack of his life.

Warnings: Panic attack, swearing, trouble breathing, vomiting, pain, Carmy feels like he's dying, The Devil (Chef David) makes an appearance, written with fem reader who is a trauma surgeon in mind, she/her pronouns.

Notes: All journal entries will be titled as such and tagged with #cb journal.

This is a two-parter. Second part here.

Reblogs and comments appreciated. Thank you to @carmenberzattosgf for putting together this prompt list.

13 Oct 2024

I’m glad I had the panic attack in the park before the one I had at home. Because if I had the one at home first, I’m fairly certain Darling wouldn’t’ve looked at me the same again.

The Devil was a food critic now. Should’ve been a downgrade from being one of the best chefs in the world, but jokes on all of us miserable fucks, he was making a fuckton of money without having to step foot in another sweltering, loud, stressful kitchen again. Not that he felt stress. He didn’t feel anything.

He wasn’t a fucking human.

You know how if there is a God, he’s out for my blood, right? Well, I have proof of that now. Exhibit A: I find out this information while chopping chocolate for hot cocoa at my apartment—aside: fuck landlords, it took him a month to fix my range, and the radiator in the bedroom still won’t fucking work—and what comes on during the ad break of the baking show I have running in the background so the place isn’t painfully quiet while I’m waiting on Darling to come up from the parking lot after a long shift?

Aside 2: She was at the hospital for 19 fucking hours, you piece of shit. You fucking deadbeat. That’s the day you did this to her.

“Part of the reason we’re seeing so many restaurants close down, especially after the COVID-19 pandemic, is because of the social culture around dining out changing,” Chef David said.

If I had any control of my body, I would’ve kept my eyes off the T.V., ran over to the remote, and changed the channel or turned it off. That’s it. It sounds so fucking simple when I write this down, but that’s not how it went. It’s not how it’s ever going to go because The Devil left gouges, chasms in my psyche, Grand Canyons of scars that I put shitty fucking rope bridges over and that I could never—and I can never, I know this—fill in. No, I froze. I froze like The Devil’s breath was fanning out over the back of my neck, and the plates were moving too slowly, and I repeated ingredients again, and I should’ve been dead I should’ve been dead I should’ve—

One of the weirdest consequences of working for The Devil was that I could remember every single word he said to me. It was paramount that I did. He spat venom at me if I missed anything he said the first time. Every little thing—down to his fucking hatred of fucking black pepper—I memorized it. I knew that tilt of his head when he sensed an excuse, that eyebrow twitch when he expected a verbal answer, the furrow that formed and dissipated in the blink of an eye when he decided something had too much in it and needed to be stripped further. He walked differently when he was going to berate me. His cadence was different when I fucked up versus when I insulted humanity for existing.

So, as I stood, a marble carving in the kitchen, knife hovering over a chunk of Valrhona 55% dark chocolate already half-shredded into flakes, all I could do was watch the white reflection coming off the blade tremble more and more, all I could do was absorb every. Single. Word. The Devil said, as the voice in my head screamed at my body to move. To do something. To make the voice stop. As I tried to fight through the noise to tell myself it wasn’t real and that it was a dream, and I couldn’t be back in New York, Darling wasn’t in New York, and I couldn’t’ve imagined her this vividly.

“… with the rise… like Uber Eats and Doordash, people are just not finding it necessary to go out to dining halls and enjoy meals. They can get a lot of the food they tend to want to eat at home on their own time without having to brace the discomforts of social expectations. This has, obviously, caused problems in the mid-to-fine dining world, where that social expectation of a dining experience is primarily what drives people in the door rather than the food itself being of some specific quality.”

Like a bolt of lightning, a searing pain erupted in my chest. The knife clattered and slid off the cutting board, off the counter, and rang as it bounced off the tile floor. I grabbed at my chest, at the thing causing the pain, as if to remove it, as if I’d find a knife there butchering me as I stood, but all I grasped was the front of my apron.

“So do you think this will change how restaurants are being run?”

“Absolutely,” The Devil said. “I think in order to survive this change in society, restaurants need to adapt to the social changes we’re seeing.”

The pain worsened and deepened and sunk into the pit of my stomach. And I tore my apron off and clawed at my shirt, trying to chase down the hands under it, under my skin, under my ribs, the ones twisting my insides around their fists.

“I don’t know if you’ve heard, but Noma has announced that it will be closing its dining hall after the service season in 2024 and opening an option more catered to people who want to be able to take the food to-go. There needs to be a shift in the industry that corresponds to the shift in the culture.”

My knees buckled, pain exploded elsewhere—I couldn’t even tell where, it all hurt. Everything hurt. World dimmed. Noise of some kind? Was that a voice? Was that The Devil’s voice?

“Carmy? Carmy!”

I couldn’t breathe. A roaring sound. Lights in my view.

Dark again. Cold. Cold on my face. Something jostled me.

“CARMEN, BREATHE!”

I can’t, sweetheart.

The Devil finally killed me.

Tell Sugar I’m sorry.

Tell ma I love her.

Piercing cold on my chest. Light. Dark. Light. Bile. I coughed and spluttered, gasped in air.

“There you go. Cough. Keep coughing.”

Pressure on my back. Light. It kept moving.

“Breathe... Breathe.” Darling sniffled, drew in a shaking breath. “In and out, slowly, all the way... You’re okay... It’s gonna be okay.”

Kitchen floor, on my side, knife and pool of vomit in view. And the stench of bile and random noise from the T.V. and freezing cold on my chest. A hand rubbing up and down my spine. Darling sniffled again. Took a deep breath.

“Sweetheart, can you hear me?”

I could. Fuck if I could respond, though.

“Carmy, baby, are you here?” something touched my hand. “Can you squeeze if you can hear me? I’m gonna have to call for an ambulance if you’re not—”

I crushed her fingers in my grip. Fuck no. No hospitals.

“Okay.” The cold sensation on my chest left, and in its wake was numbness and, weirdly, burning. The kind that made my face hurt when walking to the restaurant in the winter.

I’d just had the most brutal panic attack of my life. And this poor fucking woman—she got back from 19 fucking hours at the hospital and had to clean up that mess and me and the cut on my arm from falling on the knife. I kept wanting to help—I knew it was my fucking mess—but I couldn’t tell which way was up or down or if I was awake or asleep or what day or year it was. And I hadn’t been properly sick in a long time, but I remembered what a high fever felt like—and this felt like the highest fever of my pathetic existence. I don’t know when the T.V. turned off, but at some point, I noticed how quiet it was.

How did I end up on the couch wrapped in a blanket?

She joined me there. In her pajamas, hair up. Brought two mugs and set them on the coffee table.

“Hi, baby,” she whispered. Pulled her sleeve over her hand and patted my cheek—since when do I cry? “Do you know where you are? What happened?”

It took me a thousand years to respond.

“Panic attack?” I didn’t mean for it to come out as a strangled whisper, but I could’ve swallowed glass, my throat hurt so bad.

Oh.

That roaring sound I heard was my own screaming.

She nodded. Her eyeliner was smudged into a haze around her eyes. “Yeah. Panic attack. But it’s over now. We’re gonna try to recover, but then we need to talk about this, okay?”

I squeezed my eyes shut. I can recall now what she said, but at the time, I couldn’t understand her. The words came to me jumbled.

“Is it okay if I hold you?”

I saw that she was holding an arm out for me. I scooted towards her and hid my face in the crook of her neck. Collapsed into her scent, her softness, her warmth. I crushed a fistful of her pajama top in my hand and squeezed her like she’d disappear if I let go. She peppered kisses all over my forehead and my hairline while she sipped her hot chocolate. Murmured little comforting things to me. She kept feeling the temperature of the second mug, and, after a while, brought it first to her lips to test the temperature, then to mine for me to taste. It had coffee notes, curtesy of the type of chocolate I used, and was rich and velvety without being overly sweet.

“That feel doable, sweetheart?”

Not exactly, but I’d troubled her so much by freaking the fuck out that I sat up and took the mug. Kept sipping it. Let it wash down the pain in my throat.

“’m sorry,” I mumbled.

“Panic attacks are not your fault, baby.”

“No, but I… I should’ve…” heat in my face. “I should’ve gotten help f-for them—”

She placed a hand on my leg. “Sweetheart, I want you to try to stay calm, okay? Just let yourself recover. I promise, we’ll talk about this and figure it out, but right this moment, you need to let yourself calm back down.”

I nodded.

(To Be Continued)

[lurkingteapot]

when we wonder how political shows wíll get, folks tend to think along the lines of, like, are they gonna tackle freedom of the press? defamation laws? equal marriage? corruption? gender equality? and then here's only friends ep 1, and Cheuam comes in with this absolutely sick burn--

pm 2.5? yeah, air pollution, it was really bad this year, people sued the then-PM over it.

covid? We know. We know. (killed ~35000 people in Thailand directly according to WHO stats and ruined millions of lives because of the economic dip due to the tourism slump, and fuck knows how many more severely impaired by long covid or other covid-related issues)

But radioactive cesium?? surely … oh.

have some international headlines:

nyt - bloomberg - abc.net.au - cnn.com

and here's the whole sordid saga in Bangkok Post Headlines

Radioactive caesium missing from power plant (2023-03-14) Missing radioactive tube sparks concern (2023-03-15) Search yields no sign of radioactive hazard tube (2023-03-16) No tube in truck, guard tells cops (2023-03-19) Steel melting plant closed, hazardous isotope detected (2023-03-20) Caesium-contaminated factory dust now safely contained (2023-03-20) Toxic dust contained at steel plant (2023-03-21) Caesium concerns remain, says Greenpeace (2023-03-21) Prayut says no risk from furnace dust (2023-03-22) Radiation 'poses no threat' to local food produce (2023-03-23) Prachin Buri people demand probe into caesium disappearance (2023-03-23) Sick kids prompt 'urgent' tube probe (2023-03-25) Locals urge action over caesium saga (2023-03-28) Lack of plan for radioactive dust worries experts (2023-04-05)

so I think if we want to speculate just how political Jojo's gonna get with this? the answer is "yes, and"

[callsign-joyride]

For some reason the link to request won’t work on my phone :( . Can I please request a Fall Fluff for Jake for prompt 15 where the reader is the one who is sick ?

Chicken Noodle Soup | Jake "Hangman" Seresin

Summary: Jake worries that you're having second thoughts about the relationship, only to find that the reason you haven't been responding is because you've been sick all day.

Content warnings: Fanboy being a menace, mentions of an illness/virus (NOT COVID-19), fluff

Prompt: 15. Sender lies next to the receiver (who is recovering from injuries or illness) and spoons them while staying awake to make sure their health doesn’t deteriorate overnight.

This was written for my Fluffy Fall Fantasy event. Feel free to send in requests!

Jake was stressed. You hadn’t been dating for very long, and you weren’t technically official, but it was Hard Deck night and you hadn’t responded to his text messages since last night. He was tempted to call you to check in and see if everything was okay, but he didn’t want to seem clingy and obsessive while it was totally possible that you forgot to plug your phone in the night before, or that you left it at home while you were getting ready for work.

“Honestly, man, I was thinking she’d ghost you a lot sooner than this,” Fanboy said as they were getting their things to leave. Jake didn’t even have the energy to react.

“You’re good at relationships, Rooster. Would it be weird if I drove by her house on my way home?”

“I don’t know, man. None of us have ever met her but maybe she’d be okay with it based on what you’ve said about her in passing.”

“Or maybe she doesn’t exist and he wanted to hide the fact that he’s not getting laid.”

“Dude, too far,” Payback said to Fanboy. Jake just shrugged it off and grabbed his bag before heading out to his truck and finding your address in his phone. You lived pretty close to base so it wasn’t a very bad drive at all. Right as he turned down your street, his phone started ringing and your name was on the screen.

“Oh my God, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to ignore you but I think I’ve got the flu or a common cold or something.”

“Do you want me to bring you medicine? I’m like five minutes from a CVS.”

“No, it’s okay. It’s Hard Deck night. You should be out with your friends. I can go another time. I think I’ll make some soup and go back to sleep.”

“Hard Deck night is a weekly thing and Coyote’s deployed so I kind of don’t want to go anyways. I’d have more fun staying in with you. Plus I’ve got a family recipe of chicken noodle soup and it’ll probably be the best chicken noodle soup you’ll ever have.”

After a moment, you sniffled and said that he could come over and that you’d leave your door unlocked. He walked into your house about an hour after he got off the phone with you with reusable bags on his arms. You were laying on the couch under a blanket while an 80’s movie played on the TV. 

“I brought medicine,” he said as he unloaded everything in the kitchen. You peered over the couch and smiled before taking a sip of your Gatorade that was on the coffee table. He came over to sit next to you after getting everything put away. It was almost unbelievable how sick you were, considering that you felt completely fine the day before. Your fever broke earlier in the day but you had been sleeping for most of it, living off of Gatorade and nearly stale crackers that you found in the back of your pantry. You changed the channel to something that you knew he’d like before nuzzling into the pillow that you brought from your bedroom.

“Poor thing. I’m gonna get your soup started. It should take about half an hour, okay? Let me know if you need anything.”

You nodded your head and scrolled through social media before going back to sleep for a little bit. The smell of the soup was what woke you up a little bit later, as Jake walked over and placed your bowl on the table in front of you. He made enough to last you a whole week, and he even offered to send you the recipe if you liked it. He was right, it was the best chicken noodle soup you’d ever had. Ten o’clock rolled around and even though it was considered early for you, you grabbed your pillow and blanket and started heading up the stairs. You were surprised when Jake followed you, considering that you had spent the few hours since you ate barely talking to each other. 

“I need to shower,” you said as you got your pajamas out.

“Okay. I’ll wait here.”

He had sent a few texts to the Dagger Squad group chat while you were in the shower, saying that he’d see everyone in the morning but that he had to take care of you. You took a big sip of water before crawling under the covers, Jake following suit.

“What are you doing?” You asked as he wrapped an arm around your middle.

“Staying with you, if that’s okay.”

“What if I get you sick?”

“I’ll take time off. Mav loves me so it’ll be fine. I don’t want anything to happen to you through the night.”

“Oh. Okay. Then yeah, you can stay. But don’t come crying to me if you get the man flu.”

“Trust me, I won’t. My dad taught me and my brothers better than to be dramatic so that a woman will take care of us.”

“That’s good,” you said with a chuckle.

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