#recent job news 2022

[ms-demeanor]

Friends, I think we need to talk about Covid.

I want to get a few caveats out there before I start:

I am aware that there are people who need to exercise extreme caution about Covid; I live with someone who has two solid organ transplants and who is at the most immune compromised level of immune compromised. *I* have to be extremely cautious about covid.

Masking does prevent a certain level of transmission, and people who think they may have covid should mask and people who are concerned that they may be at high risk for covid should mask.

You should be vaccinated and boosted with the most recent vaccines that are available to you; covid is highly transmissible and very serious, you do not want to get covid and if you do get covid you don't want it to be severe and if you do get covid you don't want to give someone else covid and up-to-date vaccinations are the best way to reduce transmission and help to prevent severe cases of Covid.

We should be testing before going to any gatherings, and informing people if we test positive after gatherings, and testing if we suspect we have been exposed.

It is bullshit that there aren't good protections for workers who have covid; you should not be expected to go to work when you are testing positive

It is bullshit that people who are testing positive are not isolating for other reasons; if you have Covid you should not be going out and exposing other people to it even if you are experiencing mild symptoms or no symptoms.

We do need better ventilation systems for many kinds of spaces. Schools need better ventilation, restaurants need better ventilation, doctor's offices and hospitals and office buildings need better ventilation and better ventilation can reduce covid transmission.

I want to make it clear that Covid is real and there are real steps that individuals and systems can take to prevent transmission, and that there are systems that are exerting pressures that needlessly expose people to covid (the fact that you can lose your job if you don't come in when you're testing positive, mainly; also the fact that covid rapid tests should be ubiquitous and cheap/free and are not).

All of that being said: I'm seeing some posts circulating about how we're at an extremely high level of transmission and the REAL pandemic is being hidden from us and, friends, I'm pretty sure that is just incorrect and we're spreading misinformation.

I'm thinking of this video in particular, in which the claim is made that "your mystery illness is covid" in spite of negative tests. The guy in the video says that there's nothing else that millions of people could be getting a day, and that he predicted this because a wastewater spike in December meant that there was a huge spike in cases.

I've also seen people saying that deaths are where they were in 2021-2022, and that we're still at "a 9/11 a week" of excess deaths and friends, I'm not seeing great evidence for any of these claims.

I know that we (in the US, which is where the numbers I'm going to be citing are from) feel abandoned by the CDC and the fact that tracking cut off in May of 2023. But that only cut off for the federal tracking.

I live in LA county and LA county sure as shit is still tracking Covid.

If you want a clearer picture, you can see the daily case count over time compared to the daily death count:

Okay, you might say, but that's just LA.

Alright, so here's Detroit:

Right, but maybe that's CDC data and you don't trust the CDC at this point.

Okay, here's fatalities in New York tracked through New York's state data collection:

It's harder to toggle around the site for South Dakota, but you can compare their cases and hospitalizations and deaths for early 2022

To cases and hospitalizations and deaths from early 2024

And see that there's really no comparison.

Okay, you might say, but people are testing less. If they're testing less of course we're not seeing spikes, and they're testing less because fewer tests are available.

Alright, people are definitely testing less than they were in 2021 and 2022. Hospitalization for Covid is probably the most clear metric because you know those people have covid for sure, the couldn't not test for it.

Here are hospitalizations over time for LA:

Here are hospitalizations over time for New York:

As vaccination rates have gone up, cases, deaths, and hospitalizations have gone down. It IS clear that there are case spikes in the winter, when it is cold and people are indoors in poorly ventilated spaces and people are more susceptible to respiratory infections as a result of cold air weakening the protection offered by our mucous membranes, and that is something that we will have to take precautions about for the forseeable future, just as we should have always been taking similar precautions during flu season.

So I want to go point-by-point through some of the arguments made in that video because I'm seeing a bunch of people talking about how "THEY" don't want you to know about the virus surge and buds that is just straight up conspiracism.

So okay, first off, most of what that video is based on is spikes in wastewater data, not spikes in cases. This is because people don't trust CDC data on cases, but I'd say to maybe check out your regional data on cases. I don't actually trust the CDC that much, but I know people who do tracking of hospitalizations in LA county, I trust them a lot more. Wastewater data does correlate with increases in cases, but this "second largest spike of the entire pandemic" thing is misleading; wastewater reporting is pretty highly variable and you can't just accept that a large spike in covid in wastewater means that we're in just as bad a place in the pandemic as we were in 2022. We simply have not seen the surge of hospitalizations and deaths that we would expect to see in the weeks following that spike in wastewater data if wastewater data was reflective of community transmission.

The next claim is that "there is nothing else that is infecting millions of people a day" and covid isn't doing that either. The highest daily case rates were in January of 2021 and they were in the 865k a day range, which is ridiculously high but isn't millions of cases a day.

But what we can see is that when people are tested by their doctors for Covid, RSV, and the Flu, more tests are coming back positive for the Flu. Covid causes more hospitalizations than the other two illnesses, but to be honest what the people in the video are describing - lightheadedness, dizziness, exhaustion - just sound like pretty standard symptoms of everything from covid to the cold to allergies. There are lots of things your mystery illness could be.

The video goes on to talk about the fact that people aren't testing, and why their tests may be coming back negative and I'd like to point out that the same things are all true of Flu or RSV tests. People might be getting tested too early or too late; getting a negative test for the flu isn't a good reason to assume you've got covid, getting a negative test for covid isn't a good reason to assume you've got the flu, and testing for viruses as a whole is imperfect. There are hundreds of viruses that could be the common cold; there are multiple viruses that can cause bronchitis; there are multiple viruses that can cause pneumonia, and you're not going to test for all of these things the moment you start feeling sick.

He then recommends testing for multiple days if you have symptoms and haven't had a positive test (fine) and talks about the location of the tests (less fine). Don't use your rapid tests to swab your throat or cheek unless it specifically says that they are designed to do so. Test based on the instructions in the packet.

He points out that the tests probably still pick up on the virus because they're not testing for the spike protein, they're testing for the RNA (good info!)

The video then discusses something that I think is really key to this paranoia about the "mystery illnesses" - he talks about how covid changes and weakens your immune system (a statement that should come with many caveats about severity and vulnerability and that we are still researching that) and then says that it makes you more susceptible to strep or mono and that "things that used to clear in a day or two now hit you really hard."

And that's where I think this anxiety is coming from.

Strep throat lasts anywhere from three days to a week. A cold takes about a week to clear. The flu lasts about a week and can knock you on your ass with exhaustion for weeks depending on how bad you get it. Did you get a cough with your cold? Expect that to take anywhere from three to eight weeks to clear up.

I think that people are thinking "i got a bad virus and felt really sick for a week and haven't gotten my energy back" but that just sounds like a bad cold. That sounds like a potent allergy attack. That doesn't even sound like a bad flu (I got a bad flu in 2009 and thought i was going to straight-up die I had a fever of 103+ for three days and felt like shit for three days on either side of that and took six weeks to feel more like myself again).

Getting sick sucks. It really, really sucks. But if you're getting sick and you're testing for covid and it's coming back negative after you tested a few times, it's almost certainly not covid.

The video then says "until someone provides evidence that it's not covid, it should be assumed to be covid because we have record levels of covid it's that simple" but that's not simple. We don't have record levels of covid and he hasn't proved it. We have record high levels of wastewater reports of covid, which correlates with covid cases but the spike in wastewater noted in december didn't see a spike with a corresponding magnitude of cases in terms of either hospitalizations or deaths, which is what we'd have seen if we had actual record numbers of covid.

He says that if you want to ignore this, you'll get sick with covid, and that about 30-40% of the US just got sick with covid in the last four months (which is a RIDICULOUSLY unevidenced claim).

He says that we need to create a new normal that takes covid into account, which means masking more often and testing more often and making choices about risk-avoidant behaviors.

Now, I don't disagree with that last statement, but he prefaces the statement with "it doesn't necessarily mean lockdown" and that's where I think the alarmism and paranoia is really visible here. We are so, so far away from "lockdown" type levels that it's absurd to discuss lockdown here.

What I'm seeing right now is people who are chronically ill, people who are immune compromised, and people who are experiencing long covid (which may not be distinct from other post-viral syndromes from severe cases of flu, etc, but which may be more severe or more notable because of the prevalence of covid) are talking about feeling abandoned and attacked and left behind by society because covid is still out there, and still at extremely high levels.

I am seeing people who feel abandoned and attacked because the lgbtq+ events they are attending don't require masking. I am seeing people who are claiming that it is eugenicist that their schools don't have a negative test policy anymore.

And this comes together into two really disconcerting trends that I've been observing online for a while.

The claim that the pandemic is still as bad as it's ever been and in fact may be worse but we can't know that because "they" (the CDC, the government, capitalist institutions that want you back in the office, the university industrial complex that wants your dorm room dollars) are covering up the numbers and

Significant grievance at the fact that people are acting like number one is not true and are putting you at risk either out of thoughtlessness (because they don't realize they're putting you at risk) or malice (because they don't care if the sick die).

And those things are a recipe for disaster.

I think I've pretty robustly addressed point one; I don't think that there's good evidence that there's a secretly awful surge of covid that nobody is talking about. I think that there are some people who are being alarmist about covid who are basing all of their concern on wastewater numbers that have not held up as the harbinger of a massive wave of infections.

So let's talk about point number two and JK Rowling.

Barnes and Noble is not attacking you when it puts up a Hogwarts Castle display in the lobby. Your favorite youtuber isn't trying to hurt you when they offhandedly mention Harry Potter.

If you let every mention of Harry Potter or every person who enjoys that media franchise wound you, you are going to spend a lot of your time wounded.

People are not liking Harry Potter at you.

Okay.

People are also not not wearing masks at you.

You may be part of a minority group that experiences the potential for outsized harm as a result of majority groups engaging in perfectly reasonable behaviors.

There are kind, well-meaning, sensible people who go out every day and do something that may cause you harm and it's not because they want to hurt you or they don't care about whether you live or die, it is because they are making their own risk assessments based on their own lives and making the very reasonable assumption that people who are more concerned about covid than they are will take precautions to keep themselves safe.

We are not at a place in the pandemic where it is sensible to expect people with no symptoms of illness to mask in public as a matter of course or to present evidence of a recent negative test when entering a public building in their day-to-day life.

I think now is a really good time to sit down and ask yourself how you expect things to be with covid as an endemic part of our viral ecosystem. I think now is a good time to ask yourself what risk realistically looks like for you and for people who are unlike you. I think now is a good time to consider what would feel "safe" for you and how you could accomplish feeling safe as you navigate the world.

I'm probably going to continue masking in most indoor spaces for years. Maybe forever. There are accommodations that SHOULD be afforded to people who have to take more precautions than others (remote learning, remote visits, remote work, etc.), and we should demand those kinds of accommodations.

But it is going to poison you from the inside out if you are perpetually angry that people who don't have the same medical limitations as you are happy that they get to go shopping with their faces uncovered.

So now I want to talk to you about my father in law.

My father in law had a bone marrow transplant in 2015. That's the most immune compromised you can get without having your organs swapped out.

The care sheet for him after the transplant was a little overwhelming. The list of foods he couldn't eat was intimidating and the limitations on where he could go was depressing. It cautioned against going to large events, it recommended outdoor gatherings where possible but only if he could avoid sunlight and was somewhere with no history of valley fever. It said that he should wear masks indoors any time he was someplace with poor ventilation and that he should avoid contact with anyone who had an illness of any kind, taking special note to avoid children and anyone recently vaccinated for measles.

It was, in short, pretty much what someone immune compromised would need to do to try to avoid a viral infection. Sensible. Reasonable. Wash your hands and social distance; wear masks in sensitive contexts and don't spend time in enclosed places with people who have a communicable illness.

This is what life was always going to be like for people who are severely immune compromised, and it was always going to be incumbent upon the person with the illness to figure out how to operate in a society that is not built with them in mind.

It is not the job of every parent I encounter to tell me whether their child has been vaccinated against measles or chicken pox in the last three months. That isn't something that people need to do as part of their everyday life. However it IS my responsibility to check with the parents I'm hanging out with whether their children have been vaccinated against measles or chicken pox in the last three months so I know if it's safe for my immune compromised spouse to be around them.

If you want an environment in which you feel safe from covid, at this point in the pandemic (when the virus is endemic and not spreading rapidly as far as we can see from case counts) it is your responsibility to take the steps necessary to make you feel safe. Some of those steps will involve advocating for safety improvements in public spaces (again, indoor ventilation needs to be better and I'm personally pretty extreme about vaccination requirements; these are things we should be discussing in our school board meetings and at our workplaces), some of those steps will involve advocating for worker protections, guaranteed sick time, and the right to healthcare. But some of the things you're going to need to do to feel safe are going to come down to you.

If you are concerned about communicable diseases you have to be realistic about the fact that our society doesn't go out of its way to prevent communicable diseases - norovirus among food service workers pre-pandemic is pretty clear evidence of that. You are going to have to be proactive about your safety rather than expecting the world to act like Covid is at 2021-2022 levels when it is measurably not.

[opencommunion]

"The story of  'John Doe 1' of the Democratic Republic of the Congo is tucked in a lawsuit filed five years ago against several U.S. tech companies, including Tesla, the world’s largest electric vehicle producer. In a country where the earth hides its treasures beneath its surface, those who chip away at its bounty pay an unfair price. As a pre-teen, his family could no longer afford to pay his $6 monthly school fee, leaving him with one option: a life working underground in a tunnel, digging for cobalt rocks.  But soon after he began working for roughly two U.S. dollars per day, the child was buried alive under the rubble of a collapsed mine tunnel. His body was never recovered. 

The nation, fractured by war, disease, and famine, has seen more than 6 million people die since the mid-1990s, making the conflict the deadliest since World War II. But, in recent years, the death and destruction have been aided by the growing number of electric vehicles humming down American streets. In 2022, the U.S., the world’s third-largest importer of cobalt, spent nearly $525 million on the mineral, much of which came from the Congo.

As America’s dependence on the Congo has grown, Black-led labor and environmental organizers here in the U.S. have worked to build a transnational solidarity movement. Activists also say that the inequities faced in the Congo relate to those that Black Americans experience. And thanks in part to social media, the desire to better understand what’s happening in the Congo has grown in the past 10 years. In some ways, the Black Lives Matter movement first took root in the Congo after the uprising in Ferguson in 2014, advocates say. And since the murder of George Floyd and the outrage over the Gaza war, there has been an uptick in Congolese and Black American groups working on solidarity campaigns.

Throughout it all, the inequities faced by Congolese people and Black Americans show how the supply chain highlights similar patterns of exploitation and disenfranchisement. ... While the American South has picked up about two-thirds of the electric vehicle production jobs, Black workers there are more likely to work in non-unionized warehouses, receiving less pay and protections. The White House has also failed to share data that definitively proves whether Black workers are receiving these jobs, rather than them just being placed near Black communities. 'Automakers are moving their EV manufacturing and operations to the South in hopes of exploiting low labor costs and making higher profits,' explained Yterenickia Bell, an at-large council member in Clarkston, Georgia, last year. While Georgia has been targeted for investment by the Biden administration, workers are 'refusing to stand idly by and let them repeat a cycle that harms Black communities and working families.'

... Of the 255,000 Congolese mining for cobalt, 40,000 are children. They are not only exposed to physical threats but environmental ones. Cobalt mining pollutes critical water sources, plus the air and land. It is linked to respiratory illnesses, food insecurity, and violence. Still, in March, a U.S. court ruled on the case, finding that American companies could not be held liable for child labor in the Congo, even as they helped intensify the prevalence. ... Recently, the push for mining in the Congo has reached new heights because of a rift in China-U.S. relations regarding EV production. Earlier this month, the Biden administration issued a 100% tariff on Chinese-produced EVs to deter their purchase in the U.S. Currently, China owns about 80% of the legal mines in the Congo, but tens of thousands of Congolese work in 'artisanal' mines outside these facilities, where there are no rules or regulations, and where the U.S. gets much of its cobalt imports.  'Cobalt mining is the slave farm perfected,' wrote Siddharth Kara last year in the award-winning investigative book Cobalt Red: How The Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives. 'It is a system of absolute exploitation for absolute profit.' While it is the world’s richest country in terms of wealth from natural resources, Congo is among the poorest in terms of life outcomes. Of the 201 countries recognized by the World Bank Group, it has the 191st lowest life expectancy."

[reasonsforhope]

Holy crap, I didn't think Biden would be able to get the Climate Corps established without Congress. This is SUCH fantastic news.

--

"After being thwarted by Congress, President Joe Biden will use his executive authority to create a New Deal-style American Climate Corps that will serve as a major green jobs training program.

In an announcement Wednesday, the White House said the program will employ more than 20,000 young adults who will build trails, plant trees, help install solar panels and do other work to boost conservation and help prevent catastrophic wildfires.

The climate corps had been proposed in early versions of the sweeping climate law approved last year but was jettisoned amid strong opposition from Republicans and concerns about cost.

Democrats and environmental advocacy groups never gave up on the plan and pushed Biden in recent weeks to issue an executive order authorizing what the White House now calls the American Climate Corps.

“After years of demonstrating and fighting for a Climate Corps, we turned a generational rallying cry into a real jobs program that will put a new generation to work stopping the climate crisis,” said Varshini Prakash, executive director of the Sunrise Movement, an environmental group that has led the push for a climate corps.

With the new corps “and the historic climate investments won by our broader movement, the path towards a Green New Deal is beginning to become visible,” Prakash said...

...Environmental activists hailed the new jobs program, which is modeled after the Civilian Conservation Corps, created in the 1930s by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, a Democrat, as part of the New Deal...

Lawmakers Weigh In

More than 50 Democratic lawmakers, including Massachusetts Sen. Ed Markey and New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, had also encouraged Biden to create a climate corps, saying in a letter on Monday that “the climate crisis demands a whole-of-government response at an unprecedented scale.”

The lawmakers cited deadly heat waves in the Southwest and across the nation, as well as dangerous floods in New England and devastating wildfires on the Hawaiian island of Maui, among recent examples of climate-related disasters.

Democrats called creation of the climate corps “historic” and the first step toward fulfilling the vision of the Green New Deal.

“Today President Biden listened to the (environmental) movement, and he delivered with an American Climate Corps,” a beaming Markey said at a celebratory news conference outside the Capitol.

“We are starting to turn the green dream into a green reality,” added Ocasio-Cortez, who co-sponsored the Green New Deal legislation with Markey four years ago.

“You all are changing the world,” she told young activists.

Program Details and Grant Deadlines

The initiative will provide job training and service opportunities to work on a wide range of projects, including restoring coastal wetlands to protect communities from storm surges and flooding; clean energy projects such as wind and solar power; managing forests to prevent catastrophic wildfires; and energy efficient solutions to cut energy bills for consumers, the White House said.

Creation of the climate corps comes as the Environmental Protection Agency launches a $4.6 billion grant competition for states, municipalities and tribes to cut climate pollution and advance environmental justice. The Climate Pollution Reduction Grants are funded by the 2022 climate law and are intended to drive community-driven solutions to slow climate change.

EPA Administrator Michael Regan said the grants will help “communities so they can chart their own paths toward the clean energy future.”

The deadline for states and municipalities to apply is April 1, with grants expected in late 2024. Tribes and territories must apply by May 1, with grants expected by early 2025."

-via Boston.com, September 21, 2023

[batboyblog]

Things the Biden-Harris Administration Did This Week #35

Sep 20-27 2024

President Biden and Vice-President Harris announced new actions to curb gun violence at the one year anniversary of the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention. The Office is the first ever White House office to deal with the issue of guns and has been overseen by the Vice-President. President Biden signed a new Executive Order aimed at combatting the emerging threat of machinegun conversion devices. These devices allow the conversion of semi-automatic firearms to a rate of fire that can match military machineguns, up to 20 bullets in one second. The EO also targets the threat of 3-D printed guns. The EO also addresses active schooler drills at schools. While almost every school conducts them there is little uniformity in how they are carried out, and no consensus on the most effective version of a drill. President Biden's EO directions the development of a research based active shooter drills, which maximize both student physical and mental safety.

President Biden celebrated the one year anniversary of the American Climate Corps and announced new Climate Corp programs. The Climate Corps has seen 15,000 young people connected to well paid jobs in clean energy and climate resilience jobs across America. The EPA and AmeriCorps announced a new Environmental Justice Climate Corps program which will connect 250 American Climate Corps members with local communities and over the next 3 help them achieve environmental justice projects. In addition HUD announced it will be the 8th federal agency to partner with the Climate Corp, opening the door to its involvement in Housing. Since its launch the American Climate Corp has inspired 14 states to launch their own state level version of the program, most recently just this week the New Jersey Climate Corps.

The Biden-Harris Administration announced that 4.2 million small business owners and self-employed people get their health insurance through the ACA marketplace. Up from 1.4 million ten years ago when President Obama and then Vice-President Biden rolled out the marketplaces. The self-employed are 3 times as likely as other Americans to use the marketplaces for their insurance, one out of every 5 getting coverage there. The ACA passed by President Obama, defended and expanded by President Biden, has freed millions of Americans to start their own businesses without fear of losing health coverage for them and their families.

The Departments of Transportation and Labor pressed freight railroad companies to close the gap and offer paid sick time to all their employees. Since 2022 under President Biden's leadership the number of Class I freight railroad employees who have access to paid sick days increased from 5% to 90%. Now the Biden-Harris Administration is pushing to finish the job and get coverage to the last 10%.

The EPA announced $965 million to help school districts buy clean energy buses. This comes on top of the 3 billion the EPA has already spent to bring clean energy buses to America's schools. So far the EPA has helped replace 8,700 school buses, across 1,300 school districts in all 50 states, DC, tribal nations, and US Territories. 95% of these buses are zero-emission, battery-electric. The clean bus program is responsible for over 2/3rds of the electric school buses on the road today.

The Biden-Harris Administration took another step forward in its historic efforts to protect the Colorado River System by signing 5 water conservation agreements with local water authorities in California and Arizona. The two short term agreements will conserve over 717,000 acre-feet of water by 2026. Collectively adding 10 feet to Lake Mead’s elevation by 2026. The Colorado River Basin provides water for more than 40 million people and fuels hydropower resources in seven U.S. states.

The Department of The Interior announced $254 million to help support local parks, the largest such investment in history. The money will go to 54 projects across 24 states hoping to redevelopment or create new parks.

HHS announced $1.5 billion to help combat opioid addiction and prevent opioid overdose deaths. The money will support state and tribal governments and help pay for mobile clinics, naloxone kits, and treatment centers. This comes as nationwide overdose rates drop for the first time since 2020, thanks to strong investment in harm reduction efforts by the Biden-Harris team.

The Department of Agriculture announced it'll spend $466.5 million in food assistance and development worldwide this year. Through its McGovern-Dole Program, the United States is the largest donor to global school feeding programs. The USDA will help feed 1.2 million children in Angola, Bangladesh, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Guatemala, Guinea-Bissau, Laos, Malawi and Rwanda. Through its Food for Progress the USDA will help support 200,000 farmers in Benin, Cambodia, Madagascar, Rwanda, Sri Lanka, Tanzania and Tunisia shift to climate-smart agriculture boosting food security in those nations and the wider region.

At a meeting at the UN First Lady Jill Biden announced a partnership between USAID and UNICEF to end childhood exposer to lead worldwide. Lead exposure kills 1.5 million people each year, mostly in the developing world.

The Senate approved the appointment of Byron Conway to a federal judgeship in Wisconsin. This makes the 213th federal judge that President Biden has appointed.

[absolutebl]

Of My 50+ Favorite BLs these are the 10 I rewatch the most

So you could call these my favorite comfort foods. Everything on this list got a rating of 10/10 or 9/10 from me.

10 Most Comforting BLs

(for me, in order of most recently rewatched at the top)

Our Dating Sim

Korea 2023 Viki (watch the series not the movie)

This is a perfect short form KBL, an office set reunion romance featuring geeks that really suits 8 eps with no fluff and no chaff. Just comforting and yummy. I adored every aspect from the casting to the pristinely simple premise to the quietly smooth execution. Sure it’s low stakes, but that makes it high domesticity and extremely warm and gentle. This is a fuzzy blanket of a story - a cozy BL. It lives in my rewatch pile and you know what’s best about it? Every single episode is in that pile. There’s no skipping with this one, it might be good natured and calmly sweet but it’s tight and the pacing is excellent.

Cosmetic Playlover

Japan 2024 Gaga

The most recent release on this list, it came out this year and I've already rewatched it 5x. I love this little show. It's a classic office BL about the older workaholic who loves his job and the younger upstart who unexpectedly loves his boss. It’s a hyung romance where everybody is extremely earnest and sweet and pretty about everything. Except our seme, who is slightly unhinged and a little obsessed in all the ways one likes best from Japan (if one is me). Plus the kisses are good! Utterly charming unexpected gem of a show. What fun!

Jun and Jun

Korea 2023 Viki

A delightful office romance about an ex-idol who joins cubical life only to find his new boss is his first love. Other boys are sniffing around too. Operative word being "sniffing" as much of this romance involves smell. With a snappy (sometimes even raunchy) script, enjoyable sides, a pretty as peaches cast, and decent chemistry this show made up for in style what it lacked in substance. I like fluff. I loved this. I smiled every moment I was watching. My only caution is this is for fans of the BL genre only, I don’t think it’ll work for anyone else.

My Personal Weatherman

AKA Taikan Yoho

Japan 2023 Gaga

This style of live action yaoi really only works from Japan. Basically: boys who fell in love in college end up living together but are so repressed they don't realize they're in love. It's higher heat than we usually get from Japan's HEA stuff, and that aspect is also very well done, but it leaned into the "why don't they just talk for fuck's sake?" trope which is only exacerbated into undiluted frustration by the fact that they're already fucking. It's great, but watching requires more patience than usual, even for Japan. That said it's also bruisingly romantic. Emphasis on bruise.

Unintentional Love Story

Korea 2023 iQIYI

OMG the plot! Uke forced into a totally understandable betrayal, falling in love despite himself, put into a corner he can't get out of, the AGONY, the PAIN in those gorgeous eyes. Gah. Okay, so: A boy loses his job due to trumped-up corruption charges accidentally discovers his ex-boss's favorite artist, now a recluse. Evil manager offers him his job back, if he can convince the artist to rejoin society. Instead, they fall in love. I found the artist a bit stiff and reserved but Gongchan (maknae of B1A4) is a fucking GIFT - he carried this show (which I do not expect from the idol element). He was luminous with extraordinarily expressive eyes, just drown in the emoting abyss. The external conflict, social tension and pressure is complex and beautifully executed, plus Korea gave us legit side dishes (NOT a love triangle, hally-fucking-luya). All that said, when I rewatch this it's usually just the second half, but WHAT a ride.

Semantic Error

Korea 2022 Viki

Sexy older boy discovers pouty younger boy has outed him as a slacker, starts out bullying him, accidentally falls madly in love instead. Korea hits it entirely out of the Parks by doing a university BL with everything we expect from BL just done exactly right. Korea's signature quality executed perfectly with added bonus good story, great pacing, stunning visuals, and fantastic chemistry. You cannot ask for more from a BL, let alone a KBL. Another one where the rewatch is mostly just the second half.

Old Fashion Cupcake

Japan 2022

This show had me from the moment they broke the egg yolk with the chopsticks in the opening credits. It’s about a younger man with a long cherished crush on his boss (ten years older and going through a mid life crisis) who decides to save and seduce said boss with pancakes. It’s wholesome, comforting, sexy, and a very necessary narrative about still having hope, interests, and openness to affection at any age. It’s a stunningly filmed late-in-life comg of age/queerness story packaged in a subtle critique of expectations around masculinity, love, and loneliness… and it’s beautiful.

Yes yes. But the bit you know you want to rewatch is that long shot with the bite kiss. YOU KNOW you wanna.

Seven Days

Japan 2015

Ha! I faked you out 'cause this wasn't at the top but of course it's on the list! One of the best live action yaois ever made, with perfectly structured angst, fantastic characters and acting, and no problematic tropes (rare in Japanese BL). Older boy dares the hot af younger one to date him for a week. Turns out they both like it... A lot. The leads have excellent chemistry although it’s low heat there’s still some really cute mutual kisses.

Takara & Amagi

Japan 2022

I gnawed on my knuckles and squealed a lot with this show, but a rewatch is way less tense. Reserved cool kid must learn to communicate to keep the tiny disaster nugget he’s madly in love with. It is beyond charming: soft and gentle, packed with cuteness and high school angst, thirst, & yearning.

We Best Love

Taiwan 2021 WeTV

WBL successfully managed to pick up and combine the best features of Korean, Thai, and Japanese BL as it exists right now. Couple that to the insane chemistry from the leads, and we have one of the greatest BLs of all time, cooking to a recipe I doubt anyone else will ever be able to replicate since only Taiwan is this flexible. It's basically every classic BL trope bombarded at us in two parts, rapid fire, one after another. Rewatching this show reminds me of everything I love about this genre. It is the genre in pure concentrated form.

The End!

I think it's no accident that none of these are Thai, part of a rewatch for me is the brevity of the show, longer stuff does get rewatched, but not as frequently.

(source)

[evansbby]

an update from me :)

hey everyone, i know i haven’t been very active on here lately. and the reason is because a lot of things in my life have changed. i’ve been debating even sharing this but i feel like i’m in a good enough position to be okay with sharing it.

so these past two years, i had been super active on here (late 2022- early 24) and that was because, well, I didn’t really have anything else. that’s because I had graduated in 2022 and then i just couldn’t find a job in my field. like so many other recent graduates, it was just so hard and tough and it really made me lose all faith in myself.

i found myself to be in the worst mental state i had ever been. I cut myself off from my friends, felt like a burden towards my family, was having meltdowns and panic attacks almost daily, even started eating unhealthily and was just overall in a very bad place.

HOWEVER, i always felt like I could come on tumblr and that’s why i was so active and writing all these stories because honestly, they were almost like a crutch to me. like the ONE thing i had to look forward to in life during those times was the feedback I’d get when i posted a fic, and honestly it’s what kept me going. like i swear to god, on some days this blog and community was the only thing that i had to look forward to and keep me going, and writing felt like such a huge escape.

because i felt so USELESS. like i was wasting my life and not making any money or being able to kickstart my career after uni, and that it would be like this forever, so when I was writing it actually felt like I was doing something with a purpose. honestly on some days I would literally wake up early and go sit in Starbucks all day just writing my fics like i was cosplaying working or something just so I’d have a purpose. (I don’t go to Starbucks anymore lol boycott)

anyways, i never shared this on tumblr these past few years bc you guys don’t understand what a failure i felt like. i would sometimes get asks on here asking what i did for a job and I’d feel so embarrassed of my current state of being unable to find a job when it felt like everyone else who had graduated with me had one and obtained one so easily. like i felt ASHAMED.

i remember once i got an ask asking what my job was and I just said “fashion marketing” bc that was one of the things i wanted to do and id done an internship in that field so i just put that but it was a LIE i was unemployed and the most depressed ive been in my whole life but I thought maybe i could manifest it.

ANYWAYS, and you’ve probably already guessed it, but the reason I’m not so active anymore is because I did eventually find a job. a really good one that I’m enjoying so much and I’m so happy at. Finally, I’m feeling like myself again, like I’m living that life in London as a twenty something that I’d see everyone on tiktok living!! Like I’m finally just having fun, going out with friends, being active, having money to spend on fun things etc.

and it feels so surreal and crazy because when i was depressed and jobless, it made me doubt myself so much. Like the constant rejections and failed interviews made me doubt myself and lowered my self esteem so much and I thought I’d NEVER achieve this life that i have now! And I don’t want to jinx it but I literally thank God every day for finally granting me this because I really feel like I would’ve gotten worse and worse and IDEK.

But back to the main point, and so because of my new job I just don’t have that much time for tumblr anymore. But this isn’t a goodbye post… not at all! I find that when I’m super busy in life is also when I get the most motivated to write! Like for example in summer 2022 I was on here so much and that was the summer I had the most fun, was the most busy. I think when I’m busy in life, I get motivated to write.

Which I believe is the case right now, because I’m SO motivated to complete all my stories, I keep thinking about them and writing them slowly, so please don’t think anything is abandoned! I just wanted to make this post to be more transparent about what’s been going on in my life and what had been going on these past two years. That maybe someone else going through something similar can see that eventually, everything does work out.

Anddd I don’t really know how to end this. I just want to say, yall don’t understand just how thankful I am for having this blog, this platform, to write my stories. For having you guys. Because who knows how much worse my mental state would’ve been these past two years when I didn’t have ANYTHING else going for me, if I hadn’t had this blog it would’ve been so much worse.

Thank you so much for believing in me and enjoying my stories and always always letting me know how much you enjoy them. And I’ll say the truth; I know everyone says that engagement on tumblr has been bad lately but I can say that bc of you guys I have literally never EVER had this issue. And that’s not me being big headed, that’s just the truth and it makes me so happy and grateful. Yall always came through for me and still do now! Every time I think my fic is going to flop, you guys come through for me. I appreciate it so much. You guys have no idea how much you helped me when I was at my lowest. And continue to.

Many thanks

Me 🩷🩷🫶🏼🫶🏼

[immortalmrwavell]

Blake’s Billion Dollar Opportunity

(Original story posted April 7th 2022) This story has been Updated!

Blake was stunned when he found out he’d actually been accepted by Mr Henry Anders to be the new gardener for his mansion. He’d heard the rich older man was very strict and particular when it came to his staff. But when Blake saw a vacancy open up at the mansion for a new gardener on the team, he decided to throw his hat in the ring. After all, the pay was nearly ten times what he’d been earning up until now as a freelancer plus he’d get to keep doing what he loved. It’d be a win-win!

That in mind Blake never expected to actually get in! Applying to a job like that felt like buying a scratch card and hoping for a jackpot. You never think you’ll actually win the big prize. So when he saw the email confirming his acceptance to the job, Blake was ecstatic! He hadn’t even done an interview but they already wanted him to start the following Monday. It was a dream come true.

On the very first day he was greeted at the front gate by Mr Anders himself along with some other staff members. Blake was understandably taken aback by this. After all, he was just the gardener. If anything he’d expected maybe one member of staff to greet him and get him straight to work. Yet instead he was guided inside the mansion and sat down for a free lunch with the rich billionaire himself.

Mr Anders seemed to ask question after question as they ate. Blake figured they would be his skills and what his job would be like working here but most of the questions didn’t even pertain to the job. He asked about Blake’s family and life first before moving onto his upbringing and friends. Diving into all sorts of strangely personal questions for an employer to ask a new employee. Of course Blake thought it odd but went along with it just to make sure his new high paying job would be secured. Almost started to feel like a date until Anders stood at last and offered Blake a firm handshake while officially welcoming him to staff.

Not too long afterwards he was put straight to work. Another staff member briefed him on what needed doing as he was taken to pick up where the previous gardener had left off.

Scoping out the area, it looked as though the last guy had been half-way through a job when he left. It was fairly obvious with one part of the garden looking elegant and recently pampered while the bit right next to it was… not so much. Blake heard that the previous gardener quit very suddenly with zero notice. Some said he even left the country but nobody knew why. Well whatever the reason it had opened one hell of an opportunity for Blake.

The first week at the mansion seemed to go perfectly overall. That said, there were a couple weird things he’d noticed. For example Mr Anders would frequently come outside to see how Blake was getting on with the gardening. He’d always be so kind and humble, even having someone bring refreshments out for the two of them. He’d even bring a garden chair with him most of the time so he could sit and watch Blake work as they chatted. At first he just assumed Mr Anders was just a really nice person that liked to take care of his employees. However it didn’t take long for him to realise that nobody else seemed to be receiving this kind of special treatment.

Blake couldn’t quite figure out why this was happening for that whole first week. That was until the following Tuesday when it was particularly hot outside. He’d been sweating through his shirt so much that he eventually decided to take it off in order to cool down. Leaving it to one side as he continued with his work in all his shirtless glory. His muscles glistening under the summer rays.

Not long after Mr Anders came out to chat like he had almost everyday so far with a refreshing beverage. This time however he couldn’t help but notice the older man glancing at his hairy torso. Was his boss checking him out? Surely not right? That’s when Blake glanced down at Anders crotch and his suspicion was all but confirmed. There was a very clear outline of an erect cock pressing against his suit pants, getting harder by the second!? To say he felt uncomfortable would be an understatement. Sure Blake was gay as well but this was his Boss! It was completely inappropriate. Anders might’ve been pretty handsome for his age but the man was almost 30 years older than him!

Had this been any other job he would’ve wanted to quit right then and there. Truth is he had a relationship with an employer in the past and let’s just say it didn’t end well. Crashed and burned would be an accurate description. But this job was a once in a lifetime opportunity. It was far too good of an opportunity to lose. He was being paid more than he ever had been in his life! He’d be a fool to mess this up. And so… he stayed.

After that Blake’s second week certainly had a different feel to it. Mr Anders would still come out to chat or even just to watch him work from across the garden but now it didn’t just feel kind like before. Rather it felt as though he was being objectified. Watched constantly like he was a piece of meat. Eye candy for the rich billionaire to settle his eyes on whenever he pleased. As uncomfortable as it made him though, Blake just tried to focus his mind on the pay he was getting. As long as Anders didn’t try to make some kind of move on him then he could live with it.

Finally Sunday came again and it was a scorcher just like last week. Blake was a little more reluctant to take his shirt off this time but in the end he was sweating so profusely that he had no choice. Then, not to the young gardener’s surprise, Anders came strolling out of the mansion a mere 10 minutes later heading straight towards him. Blake assumed he was just gonna get eye fucked for the next hour or so like usual. Instead he was surprised when Mr Anders offered him to come inside the mansion. The older man said he was impressed with the work he’d seen so far and was thinking of rewarding his newest staff member. Blake was reluctant to follow the man for a moment but in the end didn’t think he had much of a choice. Besides, it sounded like he was about to get a bonus.

Upon following Mr Anders through the mansion and into a large ornate office, Blake immediately felt safer when he saw two guards standing by the door. At least that meant Anders wasn’t gonna try anything… right?

The billionaire turned and leaned against his desk, very clearly eying up Blake’s body. It was as though Anders was sizing up the man before him for reasons still unknown. Eyes wandering across Blake’s pecs and biceps before scanning over his bulge and legs. His gaze then returned to Blake’s face as their eyes met briefly only for a devilish grin formed across his face. The oblivious gardener was none the wiser to what was about to happen as Anders made some sort of signal to the guards. Upon seeing it, the two large men grabbed hold of Blake, restraining him completely.

“H-HEY! WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING!? GET THE FUCK OFF ME!” Blake bellowed, attempting to break free but to no avail.

Mr Anders simply stared at him with a hunger in his eyes, shamelessly rubbing his bulge while doing so. “Oh I can’t even put into words how excited I am for this Blake…” He murmured while stepping closer to inspect his shirtless employee. “You know I was gonna wait another week or so for this but after seeing you today I just can’t resist any longer… I must say those shorts are very well fitted aren’t they.” He licked his lips while unzipping his pants and allowing his cock to flop out.

Blake’s eyes widened at the sight. “THE FUCK ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?! PUT YOUR DICK AWAY!” The younger man screamed before threatening to get the police involved for sexual harassment if they didn’t let him go. Though it seemed his words fell upon deaf ears as Anders started pumping his cock before reaching forwards to feel Blake’s chest. “DON’T FUCKIN TOUCH ME YOU CREEP!”

“Oooooh nice and hairy… much hairier than I’ve ever been. And all this muscle too…” Anders murmured with a smile. His hands felt around Blake’s fuzzy pecs before giving his biceps a gentle squeeze despite the man’s constant protest. “Oh yeah. This’ll do just perfectly.” He bit his lip lustfully before stepping a little closer and taking a deep breath. The billionaire's cock couldn’t help but jump at the sweaty aroma protruding from Blake’s body. “And I can’t wait to smell that scent on my *new* body everyday…” He pumped his cock a few more times before glancing over at one of the body guards and giving him a nod. Next thing Blake knew, he had a needle plunged into his neck. Before long he was out cold.

———

Blake later awoke groggily only to find himself restrained and unable to move. He was bound to a chair in a strange room he didn’t recognise. All sorts of machines and equipment surrounded him but most notably was whatever weird device was sat atop his head. It was like some sort of metal helmet. He was quickly starting to panic when he saw none other than Mr Anders walk into his field of vision.

“P-p-please let me go… I-I don’t… I’ll give y-you whatever you want!” Blake pleaded desperately.

“Oh don’t worry. I’m gonna have exactly what I want from you when this is over.” Anders smirked while licking his lips. The cryptic response sent chills through Blake’s body. Anders massaged his bulge again while inspecting every little detail of Blake’s body. He was basically drooling at the sight before proceeding to sit himself down in another chair adjacent to Blake.

Anders let out a sigh of relief. “You know my original plan was to do this with my previous Gardener. Unfortunately he must’ve found out about my plan somehow. It’s the only way to explain why he left so suddenly… But I think I prefer you over him anyway…”

Another man dressed in a lab coat came over to help strap down Mr Anders into his chair. He then grabbed another helmet identical to what Blake had on his head and placed it on Anders. It and the helmet Blake was wearing both seemed to be linked up with some massive machine that sat idle behind both men.

“Alright let’s do this!” Anders announced with glee. “I don’t wanna wait another second!”

Of course Blake could only scream in protest until he heard the machine buzzing to life. Electricity began shooting through it and into the devices on their heads causing both men to shake and convulse violently. A small team of scientists watched on as the men’s brains were stimulated in all kinds of strange ways. Naturally this included the pleasure centre. The last thing Blake felt was getting a massive erection before having multiple intense orgasms. His cock erupting load after load and soaking the front of his shorts. After that, he completely blacked out.

———

The two were out cold for an hour. The scientists who’d been operating the machine kept a close eye on the two men and their vitals as they slept. Eventually however, Mr Henry Anders himself was the first to awaken.

The second he gained consciousness, his eyes shot open wide with excitement. With a grin he looked down at his body with sheer lust and joy. “HAHAAA!! YES IT WORKED!” He beamed! The sound of his deeper rougher voice was like music to his ears.

Looking down Mr Anders no longer saw the suit he’d been wearing but rather the very same tight shorts his sexy fucking gardener had been wearing. Only now with a huge cumstain covering the crotch area. But that was the least of his concern. His body… No longer did it look thin and aged. He was young! And he was buff too! He’d never imagined he’d have proper pecs but here he was looking down at a hairy pair sitting on his chest. He just wanted to grope them so badly!!

“Quick! Undo these restraints so I can feel my new body!” Anders urged.

One of the scientists rushed over to free Mr Anders upon his request. They undid the straps around his wrists and ankles before unlocking the belt around his torso that’d kept him pinned to the chair.

“Fuuuuuuuck this feels incredible…” he groaned as he slowly stood from the chair and stretched out his new limbs. “No more aches or pains… and I feel so much stronger…” Anders flexed a bicep before running a hand across the forest of chest hair covering his pecs. He wasn’t able to help pinching one of his nipples in the process, allowing a soft satisfied grunt to escape his lips.

“Would you like a mirror sir?” One of the scientists asked with a half smile.

“Yes! Yes of course!” Anders responded with joy.

Within moments a pair of assistants had a full body mirror wheeled into the room with a sheet covering it. They warned Anders that it may take some time for his mind to adjust to his new reflection and that seeing a new face may be disorienting at first. Anders gave an understanding nod before reaching out and uncovering the mirror.

”Ooooohh fuuuuck… This is…” He could hardly form the words as he stared into his new reflection. Looking back at him wasn’t an older man with silver hair. Rather it was the young and strong man he’d hired to be his new gardener. Blake. The man he’d been having wet dreams about ever since he saw the hairy hunk’s application to work at the mansion. Dreams about this very moment where he’d get to look in a mirror and see that handsome face as his own. “Astounding.”

His fingers began to curiously poke and prod at his younger facial features. The scientists were right, it was certainly disorienting. It almost felt like an illusion. But the rush he got from running his hands through his new much thicker beard easily proved otherwise along with every other inch of his new body. “My hair is so dark. Barely a single grey hair in sight… and I could never grow a beard that was naturally this rich before.” Each and every new sensation felt like its own rush. Every single one making him more and more excited to explore his new form further.

“I take it Mr Blake Johnson’s body is to your liking then sir?” Asked another of the scientists.

“Mmmmm yes. Absolutely. This body is perfect!” Anders exclaimed as he began to flex his biceps to the mirror. Loving how his younger and larger muscles bulged with so much strength and vigor. “Now leave me. I want to explore myself with a bit more privacy.”

“Are you sure? What if he wakes up?” Another of the scientists chimed in, referring to the other body that was still unconscious in one of the chairs. Mr Anders original body.

Anders turned to look at the sleeping body he once inhabited. “If he does, I’ll deal with him. Now I’ll call you back when I’m ready, thank you.” He said, still commanding the same level of authority as ever despite his new form.

And with that all the scientists and their assistants vacated the room, leaving only Anders and his former body.

The second the door shut he began groping at his hairy youthful body like a lust crazed animal. Starting with his pecs as he kneaded the thick hairy barrels of muscle on his chest. “Fuck! I just love all this hair! Feels so fucking manly!…” He groaned to himself as he continued to worship his furry torso.

Through all the roughing and squeezing, Anders started to get a whiff of that familiar scent he’d grown so attracted to over these last couple weeks. That sweaty scent that Blake always seemed to brandish on hot days no matter how much deodorant he wore. Only now it was coming directly from his body! It wasn’t long before It wasn’t long before he lifted up both arms in front of the mirror to expose his furry pits and the mere sight was breathtaking. Almost as breathtaking as the scent that emanated from them. Anders just couldn’t stop himself from stuffing his new nose into each of them and inhaling his new sweaty aroma deeply, allowing it to flood his senses in a purely euphoric way.

Of course his cock was already jumping to life at all the excitement and there was no way he was gonna ignore that calling for any longer. Anders reached down and grabbed his damp, sticky bulge. He kneaded at his dick through the shorts Blake had been wearing until he couldn’t take it any longer. He basically ripped the shorts off in a horny frenzy before grabbing hold of his new member, still slick and wet with all the cum Blake shot during the switching process.

“Now THIS is a cock befitting of a billionaire!” He announced proudly, noting it’s superior length and girth while smacking the pulsing member against his hand. He looked back towards the mirror, getting incredibly turned on at the sight of the man he’d been lusting for. Even more so as he turned his backside to the reflection. “And a billion dollar ass to boot!” He added, grasping both of his bubbly new asscheeks in all their hefty hairy glory.

Of course Anders wasn’t able to resist slipping a finger into his new hole and was pleasantly surprised at how welcoming and relaxed it felt. He knew Blake was gay of course but he hadn’t anticipated his new ass having already been trained incredibly well for taking dick. Anders would’ve considered himself a top before since bottoming never felt that great in his old body. But now? He was actually craving for some dick to fill him up as he fingered himself some more. Now going as far as to stuff three meaty fingers inside his needy hole. He figured he’d have to become more versatile from now on considering his new ass was essentially crafted for cock. But he still planned on doing his fair share of dominating in bed.

Anders must’ve been pumping his fingers in and out of his hairy hole for another solid ten minutes before he finally pulled them out with a grunt. He’d supposed he’d have to buy himself a few sex toys to help satisfy his hole when he was alone from now on. Perhaps a few dildos or buttplugs. He was getting excited just thinking about it.

Once he’d turned back around to face the mirror properly, He resumed pumping his cum covered cock while relishing in every sense his new body experienced. “Damn… my old cock hadn’t felt this hard and virile in years…” He mumbled to himself, having forgotten until now what it was like to be in the prime of his life.

He licked the cum off his hand before striking a couple poses in the mirror to see his new self from every possible angle. With every pose making him hornier, making his cock twitch to the point where it was already beginning to leak pre-cum again. Anders just couldn’t wait to shoot his load. Though just as he was about to start vigorously jerking off to his reflection, he heard a low grumble come from behind…

Blake was finally starting to come around. Right off the bat he felt woozy but more importantly his body just felt… off. He blinked his eyes open slowly only to come face to face with none other than a very familiar ass. It almost looked like his own ass?… And It seemed as though the nude man standing in front of him was flexing and posing into a mirror or something? What the hell was going on?!

Glancing down, Blake was even more confused to see that he was now wearing a suit yet he was still strapped down to a chair. The last thing he remembered was his eyes rolling back as he was cumming uncontrollably. Looking down he saw and felt that there was indeed a wet patch… but he was wearing his shorts when that happened right? How could he have soaked these suit pants?

He must’ve been making some noise though as he quickly caught the attention of the naked man before home. When he turned around however, Blake’s eyes widened in both shock and horror.

It was… himself!?!?

His face?! His body!? Even down the birthmark on his hip… BUT HOW!!!? He had all these questions swirling in his mind and yet his mouth ran dry. He was left simply staring agape at his doppelgänger, not knowing how even to begin processing what the hell was going on.

“Well well well. Look who’s finally with us.” Anders gave Blake the smuggest grin imaginable. He was so damn happy that the other man could be awake to see this now. “Enjoying the view?” He taunted, bobbing his cock up and down a little.

“B-but you…you l-look like…” Blake noticed the difference in his voice as he spoke. Older? Raspier? And somewhat familiar yet he couldn’t place why?

“You?” Anders finished Blake’s sentence. “Well it’s not really you anymore. It’s me.” He chuckled. “You see that machine that I had us hooked up to is a very special device. I’ve had a team working on it for years. It was made with the capability of transferring brainwaves and memories between two human brains. So put simply, it’s a body swapping machine.” Getting to see the further look of shock and terror on his former face was even more satisfying than Anders had hoped.

Blake couldn’t believe what he’d just heard… but it was starting to make sense. He was wearing a suit that was identical to the one Mr Anders had been wearing that day. His voice sounded different and older. His body felt strange and weak. And most of all he was sitting in front of what would’ve been his twin!! Yet despite all that, he still didn’t want to believe it.

“NO! That’s not possible! Y-you’re lying!!” Blake shouted in denial, his voice hoarse.

“Am I?” With that Anders moved to the left, no longer blocking the mirror. What Blake saw was none other than the face and body of the old Mr Anders mimicking his every move and expression. Still strapped into the chair as he was. He wanted to scream or shout or do anything!… but he was frozen. Unable to do anything but stare at the reflection until his own naked body stepped back in front of him again.

“Hey. Don’t look so down old man.” Anders placed his hands on his hips as he looked down at Blake with a tiny glimpse of pity in his eyes. “Trust me when I say this could’ve been way worse for you. I had to go through a lot of tedious legal trouble to get all my money and possessions transferred over to this new identity. I could’ve just put your name in a will and had that old body killed off after the swap. Would’ve been a lot less trouble for me on that front.”

At this point Blake was on the verge of tears. He’d just had his body and a huge portion of his youth stolen by his rich boss and there nothing he could do about it! He wanted to believe this was a dream. That none of it was real. Yet somehow it was. The unfortunate reality was that the thick cock he used to own was now being smacked against his now much older face

“You know I could just have you thrown out onto the streets with no money or home…” Anders began with a sinister leer. “But there might be a way you can convince me to offer you another job here at the mansion.” Anders rubbed his pulsing member across Blake’s face and through his silver beard before positioning the tip right in front of Blake’s lips. “You know I was just about to bust my first load in this body when you woke up. Jerking a big cock like this feels fucking incredible… but now I’m starting to think a good face fucking wouldn’t be so bad either. After all, your new face is still pretty handsome for a 59 year old.” He squeezed his cock, forcing precum to drool onto Blake’s lips.

Blake looked at the cock he used to own and then up at his former face as Anders grinning down at him manically. What was he supposed to do? He’d already lost his body and youth. Now if he didn’t do this he’d be homeless as well! He felt completely defeated. But at the same time, as much as he hated it, he was sort of aroused…

Anders let out a wicked laugh as he watched former body open its mouth, ready to be used. “Good fucking choice!” He announced before shoving his cock down Blake’s throat with no hesitation.

After that Anders wasted no time jackhammering his thick rod into the restrained man’s mouth over and over. He figured he’d have to put most of the effort into face fucking his former body which he did at first. But after a good few minutes of having cock stuffed down his throat, Blake seemed to put a bit of effort into sucking as well. Somewhat surprised by this, Anders began to slow down the pace and to his amusement, Blake was actually starting to give him a proper blowjob! Even pulling off for a moment to spit on his cock before wrapping his lips back around it. Anders couldn't help but laugh as he watched the tent rising in Blake’s suit pants. “Fuuuck I didn’t think you’d be so horny for your old cock. Not that I blame you.”

Blake had no idea what had come over him. He hated what he was doing! He was sucking off the man that’d stolen his body but at the same time he was just so damn horny. The very same dick that used to swing between his legs just looked so tasty. Not to mention that coating of cum that made it even more delicious to suck on. He could feel it drooling even more pre-cum into his mouth and the taste was nothing if not divine. One side of his brain was telling him to stop giving Anders this level of satisfaction after what he did but the other side so badly wanted to swallow his old body’s load.

“Yeeahhh that’s it. Worship my cock…” The billionaire cooed, feeling himself getting closer. He couldn’t help grabbing the back of Blake’s head and holding him all the way down until he was shoving the other man’s nose into his bush. “Aww fuucck! You like the smell of my crotch huh?” He already knew the answer via the deep inhales Blake was taking of it. All the while trying his best to continue sucking and working his tongue around the huge leaking member.

After that Anders had finally reached his breaking point. He let out a powerful roar as his balls tensed. Blake knew exactly what was coming because he used to make the very same roar and hated himself even more for getting excited over. Surprisingly though, Anders pulled out just at the last second before a wave of thick virile man seed exploded from his cock, completely drenching Blake’s middle aged face.

Anders continued to grunt and groan as his dick spurted shot after shot until at last he was empty. “Wow!… I don’t think my old balls were ever capable of producing that much cum. These things are really something.” He noted while fondling his crown jewels. He couldn’t help but smirk yet again as he noticed Blake trying to lap up some of the dripping cum from his face. “Here, suck whatever’s left out of that.” He offered before putting his cock back in the other man’s mouth.

“OKAY! YOU LOT CAN COME BACK IN NOW! I HOPE YOU HAVE THAT NEW SUIT READY!” Anders shouted, knowing that his scientists would still be right outside waiting.

The scientists scurried back in only to be slightly taken aback to see that their boss had nutted all over his previous body’s face. And was still getting sucked! Yet they tried to remain somewhat composed despite that. One of the scientists ordered a pair of assistants to go fetch their boss his new clothes. They nodded and came back moments later carrying a brand new suit that was tailored almost perfectly to the size of Anders' new body.

“Right, I think that’s enough for you” Anders said while pulling out of Blake’s mouth. He left the man panting in his restraints as he marched towards the assistants in all his naked glory before kindly taking the suit from them.

He proceeded to dress himself right then and there just so he could do it in front of Blake. He yanked on the briefs and dress socks before pulling up the fitted suit pants that did well to show off his new ass and bulge. He was impressed that he people had been able to get Blake’s sizes so accurate. Next was the crisp white button down finished with a dark blue tie.

Of course Anders then couldn’t help but give himself a once over in the mirror again. “God damn I look sexy” He complimented himself before looking back at Blake who was still glaring at him with a mix of lustful hunger and complete disgust. “Okay everyone! I’m going to get busy reintroducing myself to the world. I want you to free our friend here and help him get cleaned up. After that, find him some new work clothes so he can get back to doing my garden work.” Anders waved a hand dismissively as he strode towards the laboratory exit, his polished shoes clicking against the floor.

Blake was powerless. Unable to do anything but watch as his former 31 year old body walked away in that expensive suit looking as hot as ever. This was his life now. He was a 59 year old man past his prime and still working for the man that stole everything from him…

———

Two Months Later

Mr Blake Johnson was now known around the world as the mystery billionaire that, for some unknown reason, Henry Anders had signed his entire fortune and property over too. What confused the public even more was why Henry Anders was now working for Mr Johnson instead!? There were tons of rumours and theories circulating around what might’ve happened but nobody would ever know the real truth.

By now the new Henry had gotten used to his name and tried his best to accept it. He was still working as a Gardener for ‘Blake’ after all this time. Truth is he could’ve quit by now and tried to find a new job but he just couldn’t bring himself to do it. He’d developed such a hate/love relationship for his body snatcher. Of course he wanted his body back but at the same time whenever he saw Mr Johnson strutting around the grounds in another one of his fancy suits, he couldn’t help but feel so hot and turned on by the way he carried his stolen body. Like it’d always belonged to him.

Mr Johnson still frequently visited Henry while he was working in the gardens. Just like he had before all this. Though now it just felt like he did it to taunt the man he stole his new body from.

Every now and then however, Mr Johnson would invite Henry inside the mansion and into his office for a little ‘assistance’ while he worked on his business. Of course on most occasions this would end with Henry under the desk sucking away at his former cock and swallowing its load eagerly. Other days would be Henry offering up his silver fox ass to be a cock warmer for his boss as he worked. Before eventually getting pounded and creamed inside of course. It wasn’t easy considering Henry’s new older ass didn’t seem to take dick nearly as smoothly as his old ass did but he wasn’t given much choice.

The billionaire always made sure that Henry groaned “Blake! Blake!” over and over again as he was dominated by his former body just to drive home the idea that if wasn’t his name anymore. However, on days when Mr Johnson was in a particularly generous mood, he’d even let Henry fuck his furry ass of his over the desk. But that was rare. Usually Mr Johnson just shoved a vibrating butt plug up his hole and let it do its magic. Unless he had a hot hookup of course.

By this point Henry was a slave to his former self. He’d already admitted weeks ago. He’d obviously do anything to get his body back but at this point he knew that was impossible. The best he could do was stay as close to it as possible and let it inside him whenever Mr Johnson felt like it. Though recently Henry had noticed more and more younger hairy men being invited to the mansion. He can only hope that Mr Johnson isn’t getting bored of him in favour of these younger men. Maybe he should start training his ass some more to be a better bottom. Sure he was coming up on 60 years old in a couple months but it’s never too late to try right?

Anything to keep Mr Johnson interested in him.

[sterredem]

Appearances

Jenson Button x singer!reader

Face claim Taylor Swift

Warning fluff, not proofread, spelling mistakes

Summary a few of the times where world star Y/n, and Jenson make appearances at each other jobs

A/N I love this. A bit short (for my doing) but still.

Twitter

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Instagram

298.754 likes

F1wags.updates Y/n Y/l/n spotted entering the paddock! Who is she here to support? Where is Jenson? A lot of questions, but one things we do know is that she is here and she is here in style!

View all 6.735 comments

User1 She looks so good!

User2 Je Son is prolly working cause he works for sky

User3 wait I’m slow, why is she here on this account?

User4 Y/n and Jenson are dating so she is a wag and f2 related

User5 how does she have the time to do all this during her tour? She does so many stuff

User6 like what? (Not being rude or anything I’m new to Y/n’ fandom cause I got into it though f1 so I’m genuinely asking what she does besides her tour)

User5 she has said that she writes (books and music), she goes to events, and now she also rehearses her new part of the show (she confirmed that via insta and TikTok)

User6 wait what new part?

User5 she recently released an album about past relationships and now people suspect that she will add this to her tour

User6 Oh thanks!

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Instagram

323.132 likes

Y/nNation Jenson button spotted!! y/n’ husband was seen on the TV presenting Sky Sports, Y/n was also seen in the paddock today! Now it is confirmed that she is there to be a supportive wife to insupportable her husband in his job, car. (Y’all get the reference?)

View all 7.134 comments

User7 We love supportive couple!

User8 Wait who is that?? I thought this was an Y/n account??

User9 it is! Jenson is Y/n’ Husband! They got married in 2022 and now they go to each other things (he to her shows and events and she at his events and races and now also when she is free and he is working for sky)

User8 Thank you!!

User10 he looks so good… liked by Y/nNation

User11 I think one of the greatest thing that Y/n has done (besides her charity worth and music) is introducing us to Jenson

User12 Not half of the comment section sumping over Jenson

User13 they really are Brabie and Ken liked by Y/nNation

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Instagram

Liked by Y/nY/l/n and 1.865.797 others

Jenson button My love, I am so incredibly proud of you and all you have achieved. It has been an honour getting to watch you train and perform for one of the most memorable things in music history. I am honoured that you chose me as your husband and that you have accepted me into your life. And with that life comes the public bit, and there is this post for. While I have said on many occasions how mutch I love you (both privately and publicly) I feel like your fans have been a big part of our love, with their support and even them introducing us (kind of). And I know I can never give you nor your fans anything close to what they have given me, but to come closer with one of them; here are some behind the scenes of The Eras Tour. Thank you all for supporting my wife in her dream, and thank you for telling her that I exist. To many more good years and your to come. (I got permission from tree and Y/n to post this)

View all 245.221 comments

Y/nY/l/n I’m crying😭😭

Y/nY/l/n This is so sweet😢

Y/nY/l/n I love you🫶

JensonButton I love you more❤️

OliviaRodrigo Mother and Father

SabrinaCarpenter I’m crying and this isn’t even about me… this is what I want @Keaghan92

Keaghan92 Yes ma’am

Conangray if my future partner isn’t like this I don’t want them

Laufey this is so sweet… but can we talk about how good she looks??

GracieAbrams And it’s an honour to have seen this (the training, the shows and this amazing couple)

User1 I’m crying actually

User2 wow… just… wow

User3 I’m speechless… this is so sweet

User4 all Y/n’ and Jenson’s children in the comments😭😂

User5 guys… this is for us… just let that sinc in…

User6 This is all I have ever wanted to see…

User7 ‘To come closer to one of them’ This is so sweet😭

User8 the dream couple

User9 THE CLEENINH CARD!!

User10 Could this be an Easter egg to a documentary???

User11 I HOPE SOO!!

User12 so what I’m heating is; he’s a simp for his wife, AND WE INTRODUCED THEM?!?!

User13 I love this allllll

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Twitter

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[autisticempathydaemon]

Hello... again! Are you hyperfixated on RedactedAudio?

Do you want (need) to know who to follow to cultivate your dashboard and feed your gremlin brain good, good boyfriend roleplay content and my first recommendation post of magnificent fan-artists and fan-writers wasn't enough dopamine for you?

Cool, I’ve got you, and I’ve got even more hyperlinks. Buckle up.

(Note: This is by no means a comprehensive, objective, or complete list, as I have biases and favorites and limited time. If you feel I've missed someone, please feel free to reblog with your additions! I just would have loved a guide like this when I got into the fandom back in August 2022 and wanted to spread some positivity~!)

Fanfiction:

@agentplutonium: they/them

Pluto is just one of the many gorgeous people who've migrated to Tumblr now that Twitter is, ya know, on fire. I've been following them on Tiktok for ages, and I'm so pleased they joined us on tumblr now! Highlights: "Constant" and "Inconvenience" mean the world to me, because there are just not enough aspec headcanons in the fandom, we could always have more.

@angelicaether: they/them

Aether is a fucking gem unto this fandom- not only do they run Sky Side, a friendly, closeknit (hehe) server for 21+ Redacted fans but they also were who we have to thank for Redacted Kinktober 2023, bless them~ Highlights: New Job Posting is magnificent if you’re in the mood for some David/Angel smut today and this cute couple crossover fic if you’re feeling more SFW!

@caelumsnuff: they/them

Phoenix is magnificent, creative, and endlessly sweet. I also respect the hell out of anyone that can take the anon hate that they get with as much grace and attitude as they do /gen /pos Highlights: I love this gift for the Quinn-fuckers they wrote, I do, but I have to admit I'm partial to the Imperium!Vincent/Imperium!Asher piece they did, because their tension and hatred was just too palpable to deny, I needed it.

@empydoc: any pronouns

Empy's Soul Eater AU has not only taken over my life but has also got me deeply wanted a Soul Eater rewatch. God forbid xe succeed because this post has already been delayed enough /j Highlights: I love the Marcus/Asset post, because that's my favorite pairing but also because Asset as both an android and a weapon is so, so interesting. Blake/Bestie's is also a particular gem, because being a meister just gives him a new dimension to his manipulation and I love it.

@floofdeloop: she/her

Not only is Floof a beloved fic writer but she's also one of the adored DJs of the fandom. Are you really a fan if you haven't looked up Redacted on Spotify and saved all her playlists? /j Highlights: Her whole playlist page is literally so good, but I love the cute, domestic vibes of this Geordi one or the tragic, angsty, Britrock vibes of this Porter playlist~!

@joshusten: they/them

Sten is one of if not the writer that comes to mind when you're looking for amazing Guy/Honey content! Highlights: Bitter Melon is my personal favorite of their work; what can I say? I'm a sucker for a little jealousy in my fics. You also can't miss Honeysuckle, their most recent piece which gets into Guy's canonically less-than-pure mind~

@pinksparkl: she/her

Gosh, where would we be without her? Pink never has a bad word or thought for anyone and just persists in being a delightful, sweet presence in the fandom. Highlight: I can't decide what I'm more obsessed with- their Adam-centric fic exploring the Progeny/Maker bond or their nsfw Gavin-centric with his tail exploring Freelancer nudge nudge wink wink

@redlikeredacted: they/them

Just as their blog says, they are the CEO of Dasher. In my head, they are the president of both the David/Asher and the Autistic!David fan clubs, and I'd vote for them a second and third term okay I love Red Highlights: Their "David bottoming for the first time" fic is everything to me okay I am here for nothing but this except maybe this Milo fic where he gets Aggro~

@teafairywithabook: she/they

A lovely writer, voice actor, and person, Cheri does it all! With a whole 34 Redacted works on AO3, they are a must-follow. Highlights: I'll provide the masterlist of previously mentioned works, but I must recommend her nsfw Avior/Starlight fic keeping us sated until we finally get an Avior BA and their fic of Alexis's POV of Sam's turning I couldn't not okay I'm just a person I have biases

@tepid-judas: he/they/it

My favorite Adam stan, my friend, and the person who converted me into an Adam/Brighteyes shipper, I thank Judas every day for that. Highlights: I love their series of epistolary fics, because who doesn’t love a good letter, but I would be remiss if I didn’t rec his DAMN polycule plus Xavier fic cause fuck canon let's add frosty the snowman to the orgy /lh

@themonotonysyndrome: she/her

Lady, my dearest friend and greatest foe~ How else do I describe the gorgeous, sociable, friendly person who bought Alexis/Christian into the world and ruined my life? (affectionate) Highlights: Let these two assholes in love take you on a ride, fall in love with them too. If that's not your vibe, I cannot recommend enough her insane, gen z Bright Eyes being an absolute fucking terror /pos

Fanart:

@androgynouspenguinexpert

Can YOU believe Penguin's only been posting art since, like, December? I certainly can't, because it's like they've drawn every boy at this point and each is as smoochable and adorable as the last. Highlights: Their Porter is one of my favorites; what can I say? Who can resist this high ponytail and cape combo? I also love their Hush, cause look at him~! He's adorable! Penguin gives all these boys such luscious, floofable hair; I love them!

@cute-brainz: she/they/it

Kindly, lovingly, respectfully, Cute's listeners designs reduce me to a sniveling, simpering puddle of a simp. I become nothing but a humble, simple straight man, and none of you came blame me good god their listeners are hotter than all the redacted men- Highlights: Like, look at their Lovely: the hair, the singlet, the VIBES? Fuckin irresistible; like Vincent, I'd give them anything their heart desires. And their ANGEL? The MINUTE David Shaw fumbles that bag, I'm on my knees with a ring hello earth angel will you be mine

@darling-solaire

Darl has been posting art for only a month and a half at the writing of the post, and yet I feel like I've loved their Solaires for forever. They, as a unit, are hot and tragic as fuck, and I love them. Highlights: I am obsessed, particularly, with the Solaire family portraits, but maybe that's because my girl Alexis is up there, and I love her. There's also this bust compilation of more Redacted boys in case you didn't find your favorite in the Solaires~!

@free-boundsoul: she/her

Okay so, like, vibe with me did you ever love Lisa Frank products with the bright, saturated colors and sparkling eyes but wish instead of cuddly animals that there were really hot men? Then Savvie is the artist for you~ Highlights: One, it's fun to see a Regulus that's not blue, okay? It's thinkin outside the box. Two, the CRACKS? WITH THE GOLD PEEKING THROUGH? I'm inconsolable my god. Speaking of daemons, Fool!Gavin is sort of everything to me. He's just really rocking that sweater vest!

@hotmcrodz: he/they

I know for a fact that I'm not the only one obsessed with the way Jai draws human anatomy. I have unironically seen a Jai piece in the tag and gone "WOWZA" like I'm Jim Carrey in The Mask; that's what they do to me. Highlights: This Milo was one of the pieces that made my eyes pop out my head like a cartoon wolf; I think it's the shirtlessness plus the muscle pose. I just couldn't handle it. I also reacted like that to their Babe because I am an equal opportunity pervert /hj

@izzuku: he/they

Izzuku designs characters with the most realistic and gorgeous body types; like, I love the soft jawlines and how warm and touchable they draw skin. Every Izzuku design is kissable as hell. Highlights: I have to recommend his Regulus and Hush designs, obviously, they're my favorite men. However, I can't let the world go by another rotation without recommending this special Halloween version of Vincent~!

@kilarthmac: she/they

In case we needed another reason to love and appreciate the iconic timestamping account we all recognize from the Redacted comments, we cannot neglect their fanart! Highlights: Like, look at this brought-back-wrong Vega! This Hush with his cute face and off-putting air! He's so cute and so weird! I also love this piece they've done for one of my favorite rarepairs, Imperium!Lasko/Adam~

@latenightsleeper: he/they/it/she

My kinfolk and my beloved, one of the few people who understand me and the vision that is beautiful, blonde, dumb and lovable Christian. They will give you so many feelings about Darlin and Christian, and they will cause you agony /pos Highlights: Obviously, I'm obsessed with the Tank/Christian art like this one (Christian is just so cuuute), but we're all obsessed with this Sam/Darlin animatic set to Eat Your Young.

@maxpaulll

An amazing artist that I'm so glad we managed to get to migrate to Tumblr from Twitter so I could put them on this list~ Highlights: I am obsessed always with their Indigenous character designs, especially David. Like, look at him, he's indescribably beautiful, outshone by no one except maybe Max's Imp!Vega, because oh my god look at him~

@nortyourself: she/her

I don't think there's anyone who's not obsessed with at least one of Rachel's pieces; like, I believe she'll get to every Redacted man with the speed and beauty she works. Even Reticuli has gotten the Rachel treatment and been made hot af. Highlights: Technically, this Imperium!Damien just takes me breath away; like, it would be blown up and framed in his palace (for all of his short and tempestuous reign). Personally, her Hush has a dear and special place in my heart. He's just my favorite~!

@penncilkid: any pronouns

One of the most gorgeous and darling and non-stop creators in the space! They're a true triple threat, kicking our hearts in the butt with their art, their writing, and their audio roleplay series~ Highlights: With so many mediums under their belt, it's so hard to choose. If you're looking for purely Redacted content, their art is prolific and so creative, I've got to share the whole gallery. If you're in the market for a new VA to fall in love with, you've got to check out their youtube channel~!

@pycth: any pronouns

I dont have anything creative or profound to say here- all of pycth's designs are smoking hot and would render me selectively mute with a glance, 'nuff said. Highlights: How can I PICK? Ugh, hottest of the hot that comes to mind has got to be their President Moore art; like, this pose isn't FAIR. On the other end of the spectrum, if you want your heart kicked in the butt, I don't think any of us are over this Sam piece or ever will be.

@rainingcatsandjune: any pronouns

Another new artist who's only been here since April, and yet- I would die for his and his fine-ass, touchable Sam. Like, hell, render any man pretty like that, and I'll die for him. That's how pretty this art is. Highlights: Like, look at him. How does one do anything but look at him, especially in this pose? Again, look at him! Look at the hands. The soft, touchable glow and how it lights and shades his and Darlin's skin. The broad shoulders good god~

@sainthowlzon: they/he

You can't turn a corner on tumblr without seeing some of Howl's adorable Scribble Dolls or Icons! (Or any other social media actually. I feel like I've deffo seem some of Howl's icons on Tiktok too.) They're cute, they're iconic, and there's one for almost everyone! Highlights: Here's that full set of icons for your perusal; my personal favorite is Asset's. And here's the full set of Redacted Scribble Dolls; my favorite is Regulus, I think, because of his freaky vibes, but it's so hard to pick!

@sincerelywhistler: any pronouns

Like everyone with a working set of eyes and a beating heart, I am obsessed with all of Wes's designs; like, who wouldn't fall in love at first sight with all those beautiful and often shirtless people? Highlights: There's honestly too many to pick from, but I'll TRY. Their Gavin is an absolute must, I share it with the Discord on sight, he's that it girl if you will. Oh, and one cannot neglect Avior's HBS piece; I'm not even an Avior girlie, and I was like daaaaaamnnnnnnn~

@slushiepizza: they/them

Where would all the guy-lovers be without Slushie and their absolute cornucopia of Guy and Honey delights? Like, where else would we get our homemade, MacGyver'd serotonin? Highlights: The "Everyday" series is everything to me, and I mean everything; Guy has become too relatable and has struck me right in the heart. If you're not in a Guy mood, I'm also in love with their older, cozy Anton~!

@s0lairee: she/they

Jo's style is just so clean, so cute, and I really love it when they play with lighting in their pieces. Like, we are almost, almost there to making me stan Vincent if you're gonna drape him in moonlight like that... Highlights: ...thought, if I had to pick, I'd probably lean more towards Vincent's partner. They're rocking the red eyes, I love them! I'm also obsessed with their freckle-y, sweet Lasko, because who isn't?

@strawberrybouvine: he/they

The artistic equivalent of gourmet candy, I am absolutely obsessed with the gorgeous colors of Jasper's art and cannot get enough of the sweetness! Is this sugar running through my veins or unparalleled cuteness? Highlights: I'm not even a David stan but, like, jesus christ, the long hair and hairy chest makes me want to go feral. Don't even get me started on the cuteness of his chibi art, I really will start foaming at the mouth.

@theflowersaremine

I don't know exactly what medium Haylin uses or what colors or effects they use, but goddamn it makes those men so dreamy. I'm not even a Sam stan, but that's a smoochable man right out of Gilmore Girls /pos Highlights: Like, are you seeing the Gilmore Girls vision? That's a handsome man from a wholesome show geared for women- almost as handsome as this art of David. I see this smile in my dreams; it's so beautiful.

@venuslove-28: any pronouns

Venus's art is strawberry and vanilla soft serve injected straight into my heart; it's so familiar and cute, so charming, and I want to stim and bounce in excitement when I see it. Does that make sense? It'll make sense when you see it. Highlights: Personally, I have never and I will never stop thinking about this Huxley, I am simply not capable. Their Avior is also cuter than all get-out, I must admit.

@wingless-cupid

I don't think anyone does cute and colorful and pastel and kawaii quite like Cupid. You can't help but look and admire all the eye-catching colors and then want to hug their cheery, dynamic characters! Highlights: I'm highkey obsessed with their Freelancer and DAMNily and all their d(a)emons in general. Like, look at this! Minh is such a cutie and a simp, I love them! I'm also constantly thinking about this art in particular, because look at all these PRICELESS EXPRESSIONS!

@yoteako: he/it

Would you like stunning, high quality art and tragic, old man yaoi on your dash? That's a silly question; of course you do which is why we're going to follow and love on Yote. Highlights: See how beautiful, doomed, and intimate this multi-page comic is about two characters who've never canonically spoken? That's devotion. On the less forsaken side of the narrative, their Gavin/Lasko ship art is embedded into my heart.

If you’re reading all the way here, I hope you found the post helpful and smiled while making your way through it! Or both! The RedactedAudio fandom is truly one of my favorite spaces on the internet; it’s so intimate and creative, and I’ve found some amazing, perfect friends here, so I hope you will too 💖

[truth-has-a-liberal-bias]

But once the babies are here, the state provides little help.

When she got pregnant, Mayron Michelle Hollis was clinging to stability.

At 31, she was three years sober, after first getting introduced to drugs at 12. She had just had a baby three months earlier and was working to repair the damage that her addiction had caused her family.

The state of Tennessee had taken away three of her children, and she was fighting to keep her infant daughter, Zooey. Department of Children’s Services investigators had accused Mayron of endangering Zooey when she visited a vape store and left the baby in a car.

Her husband, Chris Hollis, was also in recovery.

The two worked in physically demanding jobs that paid just enough to cover rent, food and lawyers’ fees to fight the state for custody of Mayron’s children.

In the midst of the turmoil in July 2022, they learned Mayron was pregnant again. But this time, doctors warned she and her fetus might not survive.

The embryo had been implanted in scar tissue from her recent cesarean section. There was a high chance that the embryo could rupture, blowing open her uterus and killing her, or that she could bleed to death during delivery. The baby could come months early and face serious medical risks, or even die.

But the Supreme Court had just overturned Roe v. Wade, which guaranteed the right to abortion across the United States. By the time Mayron decided to end her pregnancy, Tennessee’s abortion ban — one of the nation’s strictest — had gone into effect.

The total ban made no explicit exceptions — not even to save the life of a pregnant patient. Any doctor who violated the ban could be charged with a felony.

Women with means could leave the state. But those like Mayron, with limited resources or lives entangled with the child welfare and criminal justice systems, would be the most likely to face caring for a child they weren’t prepared for.

And so, the same state that questioned Mayron’s fitness to care for her four children forced her to continue a pregnancy that risked her life to have a fifth, one that would require more intensive care than any of the others.

Tennessee already had some of the worst outcomes in the nation when measuring maternal health, infant mortality and child poverty. Lawmakers who paved the way for a new generation of post-Roe births did little to bolster the state’s meager safety net to support these babies and their families.

In December 2022, when Mayron was 26 weeks and two days pregnant, she was rushed to the hospital after she began bleeding so heavily that her husband slipped in her blood. An emergency surgery saved her life. Her daughter, Elayna, was born three months early.

Afterward, photographer Stacy Kranitz and reporter Kavitha Surana followed Mayron and her family for a year to chronicle what life truly looked like in a state whose political leaders say they are pro-life. [...]

[afeelgoodblog]

The Best News of Last Week - August 21, 2023

🌊 - Discover the Ocean's Hidden Gem Deep down in the Pacific

1. Massachusetts passed a millionaire's tax. Now, the revenue is paying for free public school lunches.

Every kid in Massachusetts will get a free lunch, paid for by proceeds from a new state tax on millionaires.

A new 4% tax on the state's wealthiest residents will account for $1 billion of the state's $56 billion fiscal budget for 2024, according to state documents. A portion of those funds will be used to provide all public-school students with free weekday meals, according to State House News Service.

2. Plant-based filter removes up to 99.9% of microplastics from water

Researchers may have found an effective, green way to remove microplastics from our water using readily available plant materials. Their device was found to capture up to 99.9% of a wide variety of microplastics known to pose a health risk to humans.

3. Scientists Find A Whole New Ecosystem Hiding Beneath Earth's Seafloor

Most recently, aquanauts on board a vessel from the Schmidt Ocean Institute used an underwater robot to turn over slabs of volcanic crust in the deep, dark Pacific. Underneath the seafloor of this well-studied site, the international team of researchers found veins of subsurface fluids swimming with life that has never been seen before.

It's a whole new world we didn't know existed.

4. How solar has exploded in the US in just a year

Solar and storage companies have announced over $100 billion in private sector investments in the US since the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) a year ago, according to a new analysis released today by the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA).

Since President Joe Biden signed the IRA in August 2022, 51 solar factories have been announced or expanded in the US.

5. Researchers have identified a new pack of endangered gray wolves in California

A new pack of gray wolves has shown up in California’s Sierra Nevada, several hundred miles away from any other known population of the endangered species, wildlife officials announced Friday.

It’s a discovery to make researchers howl with delight, given that the native species was hunted to extinction in California in the 1920s. Only in the past decade or so have a few gray wolves wandered back into the state from out-of-state packs.

6. Record-Breaking Cleanup: 25,000 Pounds of Trash Removed from Pacific Garbage Patch

Ocean cleanup crews have fished out the most trash ever taken from one of the largest garbage patches in the world.

The Ocean Cleanup, a nonprofit environmental engineering organization, saw its largest extraction earlier this month by removing about 25,000 pounds of trash from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, Alex Tobin, head of public relations and media for the organization

7. The Inflation Reduction Act Took U.S. Climate Action Global

The U.S. Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) aimed to promote clean energy investments in the U.S. and globally. In its first year, the IRA successfully spurred other nations to develop competitive climate plans.

Clean energy projects in 44 U.S. states driven by the IRA have generated over 170,600 jobs and $278 billion in investments, aligning with Paris Agreement goals.

---

That's it for this week :)

This newsletter will always be free. If you liked this post you can support me with a small kofi donation here:

Buy me a coffee ❤️

Also don’t forget to reblog this post with your friends.

[judeslove]

the girl behind the camera - 1.

pairing - jude bellingham x fem!reader genre - fluff, slight suggestive content warnings - none summary - flying to qatar to be a camera person for the 2022 world cup was exciting by itself, but who knew you’d also find the person you will fall inlove with.

series masterlist

"girl leave, you're gonna be late!" your bestfriend, nella, shouted through your phone. it was true, if you wouldn't leave now, you would be late since your uber had been waiting outside for 5 minutes already.

you were flying to qatar for the 2022 world cup as a camera person, and the staff helping to host the world cup were kind enough to get you a hotel room that you didn't have to pay for at all.

originally you applied as a joke, but then you actually ended up getting hired for the job. the salary was unsurprisingly high, paying up to a thousand per match.

you entered the uber and immedeatly apologised for being extremely late, having to make the driver wait for 10 extra minutes. the driver said you would have to pay an extra fifty dollars, which you first frowned at, but then didn't really think much of since you were going to be earning a lot for the next few months anyways. you opened up instagram and the first person on your feed was an account named "judebellingham". you rolled your eyes at the posts comments. they were full of teenager girl drooling over his looks, calling him bae or claiming him as their man. recently there were rumours that he was dating someone eitherway, so do they think they even have a chance with him, you thought. but deep inside your heart you couldn't deny it. you also had a little liking for him, but you were still constantly reminding yourself that you have no chance with him. sooner or later you fell out of your thoughts and payed the money and thanked the driver.

the airport you were at was huge, like insanely huge. shops everywhere, full of people and life. the excitement started bubbling inside of you again. you just couldn't believe it. a free flight to qatar to watch the world cup right infront of your eyes? yes ma'am.

after getting through the security, even though they were suspicious of your loose setting powder, mistaking it for something else, you now had free time for an hour to go around the airport and go shopping. you needed new makeup and fragrances either way.

time went by extremely quick, as you hadn't even noticed that the hour had almost passed already. it was 10.23, and your flight left at 10.50. a call for your flight was made to announce that boarding had started. you quickly fleed to your gate and took your seat on the plane. putting your headphones on, you immedeatly got comfortable after the plane had already flown off the ground. you ended up dozing off.

prev. <- -> next.

note - so so sorry for the inactivity and the short chapter </3

💌 judeslove on tumblr.

[reasonsforhope]

Article | Paywall Free

"Maryland Gov. Wes Moore issued a mass pardon of more than 175,000 marijuana convictions Monday morning [June 17, 2024], one of the nation’s most sweeping acts of clemency involving a drug now in widespread recreational use.

The pardons forgive low-level marijuana possession charges for an estimated 100,000 people in what the Democratic governor said is a step to heal decades of social and economic injustice that disproportionately harms Black and Brown people. Moore noted criminal records have been used to deny housing, employment and education, holding people and their families back long after their sentences have been served.

[Note: If you're wondering how 175,000 convictions were pardoned but only 100,000 people are benefiting, it's because there are often multiple convictions per person.]

A Sweeping Act

“We aren’t nibbling around the edges. We are taking actions that are intentional, that are sweeping and unapologetic,” Moore said at an Annapolis event interrupted three times by standing ovations. “Policymaking is powerful. And if you look at the past, you see how policies have been intentionally deployed to hold back entire communities.”

Moore called the scope of his pardons “the most far-reaching and aggressive” executive action among officials nationwide who have sought to unwind criminal justice inequities with the growing legalization of marijuana. Nine other states and multiple cities have pardoned hundreds of thousands of old marijuana convictions in recent years, according to the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. Legalized marijuana markets reap billions in revenue for state governments each year, and polls show public sentiment on the drug has also turned — with more people both embracing cannabis use and repudiating racial disparities exacerbated by the War on Drugs.

The pardons, timed to coincide with Wednesday’s Juneteenth holiday, a day that has come to symbolize the end of slavery in the United States, come from a rising star in the Democratic Party and the lone Black governor of a U.S. state whose ascent is built on the promise to “leave no one behind.”

The Pardons and Demographics

Derek Liggins, 57, will be among those pardoned Monday, more than 16 years after his last day in prison for possessing and dealing marijuana in the late 1990s. Despite working hard to build a new life after serving time, Liggins said he still loses out on job opportunities and potential income.

“You can’t hold people accountable for possession of marijuana when you’ve got a dispensary on almost every corner,” he said.

Nationwide, according to the ACLU, Black people were more than three times more likely than White people to be arrested for marijuana possession. President Biden in 2022 issued a mass pardon of federal marijuana convictions — a reprieve for roughly 6,500 people — and urged governors to follow suit in states, where the vast majority of marijuana prosecutions take place.

Maryland’s pardon action rivals only Massachusetts, where the governor and an executive council together issued a blanket pardon in March expected to affect hundreds of thousands of people.

But Moore’s pardons appear to stand alone in the impact to communities of color in a state known for having one of the nation’s worst records for disproportionately incarcerating Black people for any crimes. More than 70 percent of the state’s male incarcerated population is Black, according to state data, more than double their proportion in society.

In announcing the pardons, he directly addressed how policies in Maryland and nationwide have systematically held back people of color — through incarceration and restricted access to jobs and housing...

Maryland, the most diverse state on the East Coast, has a dramatically higher concentration of Black people compared with other states that have issued broad pardons for marijuana: 33 percent of Maryland’s population is Black, while the next highest is Illinois, with 15 percent...

Reducing the state’s mass incarceration disparity has been a chief goal of Moore, Brown and Maryland Public Defender Natasha Dartigue, who are all the first Black people to hold their offices in the state. Brown and Dartigue have launched a prosecutor-defender partnership to study the “the entire continuum of the criminal system,” from stops with law enforcement to reentry, trying to detect all junctures where discretion or bias could influence how justice is applied, and ultimately reform it.

How It Will Work

Maryland officials said the pardons, which would also apply to people who are dead, will not result in releasing anyone from incarceration because none are imprisoned. Misdemeanor cannabis charges yield short sentences and prosecutions for misdemeanor criminal possession have stopped, as possessing small amounts of the drug is legal statewide.

Moore’s pardon action will automatically forgive every misdemeanor marijuana possession charge the Maryland judiciary could locate in the state’s electronic court records system, along with every misdemeanor paraphernalia charge tied to use or possession of marijuana. Maryland is the only state to pardon such paraphernalia charges, state officials said...

People who benefit from the mass pardon will see the charges marked in state court records within two weeks, and they will be eliminated from criminal background check databases within 10 months."

-via The Washington Post, June 17, 2024. Headings added by me.

[phantomrose96]

Hey not to go all "tumblr is a professional networking site" on you, but how did you get to work for Microsoft??? I'm a recent grad and I'm being eviscerated out here trying to apply for industry jobs & your liveblogging about your job sounds so much less evil than Data Entry IT Job #43461

This place is basically LinkedIn to me.

I'm gonna start by saying I am so so very sorry you're a recent grad in the year 2024... Tech job market is complete ass right now and it is not just you. I started fulltime in 2018, and for 2018-2022 it was completely normal to see a yearly outflow of people hopping to new jobs and a yearly inflow of new hires. Then sometime around late-spring/early-summer of 2022 Wallstreet sneezed the word "recession" and every tech company simultaneously shit themselves.

Tons of layoffs happened, meaning you're competing not just with new grads but with thousands of experienced workers who got shafted by their company. My org squeaked by with a small amount of layoffs (3 people among ~100), but it also means we have not hired anyone new since mid-2022. And where I used to see maybe 4-8 people yearly leave in order to hop to a new job, I think I've seen 1 person do that in the whole last year and a half.

All this to say it's rough and I can't just say "send applications and believe in yourself :)".

I have done interviews though. (I'm not involved in resume screening though, just the interviews of candidates who made it past the screening phase.) So I have at least some relevant advice, as well as second-hand knowledge from other people I know who've had to hop jobs or get hired recently.

If you have friends already in industry who you feel comfortable asking, reach out to them. Most companies have a recommendation process where a current employee fills out a little form that says "yeah I'd recommend such-and-such for this job." These do seem to carry weight, since it's coming from a trusted internal person and isn't just one of the hundreds of cold-call applications they've received.

A lot of tech companies--whether for truly well-intentioned reasons or to just check a checkbox--are on the lookout for increasing employee diversity. If you happen to have anything like, for example, "member of my college Latino society", it's worth including on your resume among your technical skills and technical projects.

I would add "you're probably gonna have to send a lot of applications" as a bullet point but I'm sure you're already doing that. But here it is as a bullet point anyway.

(This is kind of a guess, since it's part of the resume screening) but if you can dedicate some time to getting at least passingly familiar with popular tech/stacks for the positions you're looking into, try doing that in your free time so you can list it on your resume. Even better if you make a project you can point to. Like if you're aiming for webdev, get familiar with React and probably NodeJS. On top of being comfortable in one of the all-purpose languages like C(++) or Java or Python.

If you get to the interview phase - a company that is good to work for WILL care that you're someone who's good to work with. A tech-genius who's a coworker-hating egotistical snob is a nuisance at best and a liability at worst for companies with even a half-decent culture. When I do interviews, "Is this someone who's a good culture fit?" is as important as the technical skills. You'll want to show you'll be a perfectly pleasant, helpful, collaborative coworker. If the company DOESN'T care about that... bullet dodged.

For the technical questions, I care more about the thought process than I do the right answer, especially for entry-level. If you show a capacity for asking good, insightful clarifying questions, an ability to break down the problem, explain your thought process, and backtrack&alter your approach upon realizing something won't work, that's all more important than just being able to spit out a memorized leetcode answer. (I kinda hate leetcode for this reason, and therefore I only ask homebrewed questions, because I don't want the technical portion to hinge at all on whether someone managed to memorize the first 47 pages of leetcode problems). For a new hire, the most important impression you can give me is that you have a technical grasp and that you're capable of learning. Because a new hire isn't going to be an expert in anything, but they're someone who's capable of learning the ropes.

That's everything I have off the top of my head. Good luck anon. I'm very sorry you were born during a specific range of years that made you a new grad in 2024 and I hope it gets better.

[caassette]

been on tumblr less than a week and already Trans Discourse is on my timeline front page dash...

idk i kind of just feel like...there are actual real threats right now in the world to all trans people, and like. trying to create in-groups and out-groups within the community is the most braindead thing you can do

they are killing us. they want us dead. any time you try to segregate one fraction of the queer community from another, their job gets a little easier. let me give you an example that happened recently in Texas while I was living there:

June 2022: Log Cabin Republican Praises Trump, "Don't Say Gay", Trans Hate

Also June 2022: Texas GOP's New Platform calls gay people "abnormal"

Log Cabin Republicans are essentially gay conservatives. And as part of trying to be accepted, under Trump, they decided trans people were the out-group and that gay people (specifically, white cisgender gay men) were the in-group.

If I had to guess, they probably figured so long as they also pointed the finger at us and called us groomers and said we were fetishists, they would be more accepted in the republican party.

Guess what happened? Not that! Instead, the Texas GOP, in 2022 (Two Thousand And Twenty Two) decided that being gay was once again Not Okay!

This is what I'm getting at: in queer spaces, always, always, there must be solidarity. There is no such thing as someone who is "not gay enough", or "not really trans", or "just looking for attention."

I, myself, am a binary trans woman. My current partner is a genderfluid transmasculine nonbinary person. Do I spend hours talking with them about how they do or don't face certain forms of oppression, or about how their identity is less valid than mine?

Of course not! We kiss and hold hands and fuck and have empathy for each other.

As a queer person it is YOUR RESPONSIBILITY to be one hundred percent accepting, validating, and encouraging of ALL QUEERNESS, because the second you decide to draw the line, the oppressor wins.

Maybe you're not a Log Cabin Republican. Maybe you're not advocating for trans genocide while being in a same-sex relationship. Maybe you just, idk, use the word "theyfab." Or you think pansexuals should "just call themselves bi."

It doesn't matter that the line you've drawn is farther left, or smaller, or excludes less of the community.

What matters is that you've drawn it at all.

[felassan]

compilation of dev reactions to the recent news like the trailer, gameplay reveal, etc. ◕‿◕

Sweet Justice Sound Group: "We've been hard at working helping out the amazing team at BioWare with cinematic and ingame sound design for Dragon Age The Veilguard. You can check out a chunk of gameplay and Cinematics now!" [source] Kat Barkwell: "Everyone can finally see my son ;__; (I'm an RPG programmer at BioWare)" [source] Varric's Bianca: "SURPRISE!! I’m so wired right now!! This is what I’ve been working on for the past few years!!" [source] Crystal McCord: "I'm so emotional right now! So proud of our team and how hard they are working to bring you this incredible game!! Glad we can finally give you a glimpse into these beautiful characters!" [source] Camille Marjoux: "Give a warm welcome to the #Veilguard family ! We’re so proud and excited to reveal the new #DragonAge cast" [source] ikhandle: "Honored to work on my first BioWare as a Creature Cinematic Animator!! Check it out here! Congrats to the wonderful team!" [source] Steve: "Companion reveal!! I'm the gameplay designer for them" [source] Siggi Sigmond: "This game was such a ride. It's exciting to see some of the work that was done all the way back in 2022 come to life! Congrats to all my fellow Bioware animators for their hard work and perseverance." [source] Melissa Janowicz: "Oh hey, it's the game I worked on for a few years before I went to Respawn. Shout out especially to the gameplay and combat folks on the Dragon Age team who brought this to life, much love." [source] Crystal McCord: "It was a busy day at the office, and I'm just catching up on all the things! What's everyone most excited about?" [source] John Epler: "we've got ourselves a trailer folks holy cannoli" / "y'all i cannot describe how happy i am with the reaction. so much of us has gone into this game. could not be more thrilled. thank you all" / "the team has done an amazing job on this game and I'm so, so excited to get to start sharing their hard work with all of you. lots more to come." [source, two, three] Trick Weekes: "Happy trailer day!" [source] Nick Thornborrow: "Did not think I'd feel emotional seeing this game trickle out into the wild'' [source] Jay Ingram: "I'm so happy for BioWare and all the Dragon Age fans who are loving what they see ;; <3" [source] Karin West-Weekes: "So here’s what I’ve been working on for the last while. 🙂" / I’m so glad! ♥️ It’s nice to finally be able to share a little bit. :)" [source, two]