#tasteless and useless humans everywhere

[suedemotion]

WHOLE WORLD of music out there and you CHOOSE modern pop?? music from THIS ERA? when EVERYTHING is derivative and made for commercial appeal?? makes me fuckin sick man

[balkanradfem]

I've never had a lot of money, and I remember feeling uncomfortable and unwelcome at places that expect you, by default, to have money. There was this mall in particular that was very fancy, being inside was like being in the different, rich-people world and I felt as if I shouldn’t exist inside. I would go hungry in there because there was no reasonably priced food items; you could buy overpriced ice cream on the first floor, price was because of the convenience of having ice cream available in such a huge, store-infested building. Eventually even looking at the stuff with my friends made me feel bored and annoyed. It was all not for me.

Even though it was in the big city, I knew there was a lot of poor people living there. I felt the mall was tasteless for spreading that aura of luxury when there were homeless people just meters away. I remember one day I found a little bakery and got a small bagel for a tiny bit of money; it was good. I was standing in front of the mall with my bagel when I realized that entire mall failed to provide as much as a tiny bagel. The bakery did more good to me than that entire useless building. It didn’t provide anything to anyone but the wealthy; it blocked my view of the sky, prevented trees from growing there. It was a nuisance to me.

I was fooled into thinking I was the nuisance; human beings existing without money aren’t an issue, why are there spaces built that aren’t useful to us, and are designed to make us feel uncomfortable inside? Like the world doesn’t belong to us and we should make way for those with money? It isn’t right.

And that is only a small bit of the world that isn’t built for people, and isn’t built with humanity and well-being of the people in mind. Illusion of grandeur set among people in poverty isn’t inspiring; it’s an insult. The male designed, capitalistic-oriented world does this on purpose, it’s designed to make us feel unwelcome and cast out. There are so many ways to build that makes everyone feel welcome; think of libraries or old temples, any architecture that follows human form will feel like it’s made for us! But thats no longer what we build. We build shit that claims the land so that only a few could walk there.

Understanding this made me feel angry, but also inspired to build places that are meant for humans to enjoy. Places that don’t interfere with nature or environment, that don’t feel like they’re meant for only those who can verify their worth in coins. I believe thats what a female-built world would reflect everywhere. Because we don’t need to build out superiority complex into nuisance buildings, and we don’t need to prove our supremacy with piling up tall walls. We don’t need our world to be designed for the economy. Health and accessibility, enjoyment and humanity, those should be the foundations of the world we build.

[bansept]

Ichihime - Samurai AU

Couldn’t do a fanart so i write this instead haha. I like this AU a lot, hopefully you guys too!

A bit of a disclaimer : I have less than basic knowledge on how the Japanese society worked in the Edo period, so I might mess the titles, names, foods and cultures, and many other things. Please forgive me if I ever mistake anything, my only help is Google :’(

Gashadokuro (yokai) : from what I gathered, it is a gigantic skeleton that chases of the living and kills them in a rather horrible way.

Return

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As long as he could remember, Ichigo had felt void in a tasteless and colorless world. Everything around him was empty of emotion, of warmth and of care. The only thing that was taught to him was the way with a sword, how to celebrate a victory with sake, or how to kill your body rather than your honor if a battle was lost.

The day he had worn his red and black armor on for the very first time, the Samurai Lord had finally felt emotions, fire burning his body, from his heart to his fingers. Hatred, disgust and madness grew on him like wildflowers on forgotten temples, but they were poisonous. No one could sprout them out, no one could soothe their bright crimson burn, and the young Lord was soon called The Human Gashadokuro, his fury unstoppable as he massacred any enemy forces by stepping on their bones and cutting off their heads.

Reminding himself those times was painful.

He knew the past couldn’t be changed, that all those deaths could never be reverted. When Ichigo wasn’t fighting, he would order all his people to remain away from him, to leave him alone… In peace. Even if peace was a pathetic term that hid his despair and pain.

Many years, from the age of 16 to the age of 23, he sat in his Samurai seat, thinking only of battle and how to atone his sins.

And, like an unexpected rainbow after a rainstorm, Lady Inoue was introduced to him.

Ichigo could not even pretend she was like the other noble ladies he had met and almost married off to. Inoue Orihime was beautiful, inside and out, warm and calm, her smile as incredible as her will to remain joyful. She was the only human being that made the mad feeling of hatred fade from his cloudy mind.

Of course they got along. Who would resist the charms of such a woman? Who could tell her “no” when she walked up to you with those clear and big grey eyes, imploring to learn how to cook from the servants, even if she was noble? Who could whisk their hand away when she took it and shyly leaned her face in the palm of it?

Not him. His only weakness was her, and all of the things coming from her.

.

.

.

The wars didn’t end. His armor was as if sewed on his back for a solid year, with no chance of returning home to his new wife anytime soon. The phantom of the blood thirsty Gashadokuro was hovering his brain, trying to take control several times. Make him forget the other feelings he had learnt with his Orihime. But it never succeeded, the monster pushed away as the horses galloped home.

He came back on a rainy day. The blooming flowers had retreated back inside their green shelters, the rain pouring hard on them without causing any damage, and the sky’s tears washed away the blood that had somehow remained on his armor. The horses were tired, and the men exhausted after running for so long.

Stepping foot on the muddy ground, Ichigo took off his helmet and gave it to the servant beside him, giving him a pat as he stared at the gates, the gardens, everywhere.

Before he could wonder where she would be, a female servant came to him, bowed profoundly and muttered the lady was asleep.

“Why would she be sleeping at such a time?” He wondered out loud, feeling his eyebrows return to their original form. “Is my wife unwell?”

“My lord, it seems she was having trouble eating and resting for the past few days. She has finally fallen asleep after waiting for your return day and night.”

Ichigo gave a sharp nod and a quick sigh, rushing as fast as his heavy armor could go inside, opening the wooden panels to reach his private quarters. Worry was evident on his face, and no one dared wishing him congratulations for his victories.

Seeing her laying on her own bedding, on her back and one hand extended to his own futon, Ichigo kneeled next to her sleeping form, silently taking off his armor piece by piece.

“You worried me, my love. I thought… That someone had attacked you. That you were sick. That you would be far away from me, even though our bodies are close… I am happy those were merely nightmares.”

He told her, tone calm and gentle, whispering to not wake her. It took a few more moments until he was in a human state again, bare as the day he was born, and sliding in his futon, gathering his wife close to his chest.

“You should have woke me up! Ah, I feel so bad for not welcoming you…”

“Don’t… I couldn’t dare wake up my tired wife… You looked as exhausted as my men. But not as muddy, which I’m grateful for.”

She gave him a pout, stopping her hand from hitting his tempting chest, turning around and huffing. Ichigo chuckled, sticking his front to her back and his hands imprisoning themselves around her waist.

“I missed you.”

Three simple words, not as powerful as the other ones he enjoyed proclaiming to her, and it was enough to calm his sweet lady, her head shifting to look at him.

Months. 10 months. That was how long they had been apart. For so many days and nights, forced to live in the dream of holding each other soon, of seeing their faces contort in happiness and mischief. Her big eyes were calling on him, begging him to forgive her, and he pulled her against his lips, easily forgiving her.

“Will… You go again?” She asked, hands toying with the sheets around them, a few hours later.

Her fear was evident, the anxious and atrocious feeling of yearning prepared to come back. But he smiled, soothing her by playing with her long hair.

“No. All the threats are gone now. No war should explode anytime soon. And if it did, I wouldn’t go for long.”

“That means… You’ll stay?”

.

.

.

He did stay. For days and days, until they turned into months and they forgot about a war. The demon was still in his mind, taking over his body to kill the ones responsible for her body ache, the poison useless against her. She had tamed the Human Gashadokuro, and in return, he protected her.

Ichigo Kurosaki didn’t know all the emotions. His life had been dull, then violently sharp, red and black the only things he could feel. But with one woman and her will to warm him, wait for him, and love him, he could finally feel human, by her side.

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I love this AU because I can be gory and fluffy at the same time.

Here, it was merely just one idea, I’ll write more!

[a-rat-and-a-blob]

The Sewer King’s Carol: The Second Ghost

The Sewer King’s Carol Drabbles Arch: link

Previous Drabble (First Ghost Part 2): link

As we continue on in this trek through the blizzard of soot, leaving the empty lair of the past behind, I feel the grip of the ghost slowly disappear as I found another bright light in front of me. It seems similar to the one I saw at the commercia, and I wondered what it would entail. What scene would the ghost pick this time? Can't be good if they wish to torture me. I hear the rat's scream again. Oh how he screamed. "What did you give me sprit?" I ask. "What did you give me that I should be thankful for.. Should I be thankful for the surface dwellers' meddling in my plans? Should I be thankful for my lair being destroyed!? Tell me, what!?"

               There was no verbal response. The light in the distance seemed to be fading. "Hey! Answer me, spirit! Answer the sewer king's question!" My pace quickens as I catch up. The light approaches closer and closer in the pit of darkness. I could even here the faint sound of music. Violins and the vocals of humans. Accordions and percussion. I run and run and run until the soot was all behind me and I can make out shapes. The shadows of trash cans, the smell of tasteless surface food, and the source of the light, a single lamppost at the end of a dark alley. I look up at its glare in confusion as I approach it, keeping my figure hidden from the chance of a nearby human noticing me.

               "Spirit! Ghost! Where am I?" I ask. I look back, but all I see is a dead end where the homeless slept and the cracks infested the pavement. I slowly camouflage my fur into my surroundings and begin my search for a possible manhole. How dare the spirit abandon me at such a dangerous place! He wanted me dead; there was no question. At least his folly was over. Now, I could go to more important matters: finding my only friend.

               As I walk around, the surface becomes less and less appealing. I was never fan of the surface's obsession with light as if they needed it everywhere. On Snowdown day, they seem to embed every streetlight, every building, every home with bright decorations and inanimate poro statues. Not to mention that the music grows grating with the humans singing the same song. Snowdown day.. Snowdown day.. Snowdown day.. and I'm tired of it! Tired of the voices. Tired of the strings and instrumentals, yet it somehow gets louder and louder in this wretched surface dweller city the more I walk forward. How could anyone stand this? I tried to plug my ears. I tried to use those ear plugs that seem to drone out fireworks, but they were all useless. It kept echoing in my brain. Even after I found a manhole, I could still hear the music from the pavement above.

               Eventually, I made my way to the next location: the Goopy One's previous home. As I move closer, the music slowly fades away, giving in to uncomfortable, inconsistent silence. The houses around me were all dark and, unlike the other sectors that I've passed, there was no lights or decorations or statues. I could hear the silent winds around me making the buildings groan and weep as they attack at their hastily mended wounds. They may look the same, but the doors weren't, the windows had no glass, and the familiar skittering of insects grow more apparent the deeper I went.

               I went into the Goopy One's home to see all of the wallpaper drying up and all of the furniture taken away. I look at the fireplace where we once sat where it was all covered in soot. He took me here after he found out that I tried to ruin Snowdown last year. The Goopy One and I sat around here all night as his creators merely watched from a distance. I remember their cautious eyes petrifying me behind my back. I remember the male creator having a gun right next to his side and his hand sitting comfortably at the trigger every time I looked back. Every second I always sworn I heard it clicked. "Don't worry," the Goopy One would tell me as I jerk my head back. "He won't hurt you. As long as I'm here. He never seen you before.. He kinda reminds me of you sometimes honestly."

               "Really..?" I murmur to myself in the darkness, sitting in the same exact spot and looked above where the pictures used to hang.

               "Cares too much, honestly. I'm just glad he let me do this."

               I look back and the chair wasn't there. He no longer lived. The illusion was gone. Where I once saw pictures of a happy family and the disgusting dead tree that stood tall, there's nothing now. It reminded me of the sewers with the house's loneliness except the screams that happened occurred years past. I look to the hallway and see a faint light in the distance, coming from a hatch that seemed to be blown open. I tip toe slowly down the stairs to not make a sound.

               "Goopy One?" I ask as I trudge slowly. There was no response, but as I look into the hidden basement, I saw a small lantern with a certain blob building materials close to the wall to my left where his bed once stood. He was meticulously designing something with his heated hands. His products seemed oddly misshapen yet familiar like a human child's drawing. I approach closer and closer to see what he was planning. Was it against me? Was it against the surface dwellers? I see metal planes.. metal UFOs.. metal steam golems... these have to be weapons! Maybe he can control them with his mind.. I immediately try to grab for one, but my arms phase through. I look at my hand in disbelief before doing it again and again and again to no avail. "What.. what is this!?"

               Then, the Goopy One finished the last weapon and placed it in the bag. He held it still before he looks down with a doubtful look. He finished all of the materials, but that wasn't the task he had. Could he even do it? Suddenly, I hear a faint sound of music behind me with a familiar tune. I mouth the lyrics.

               "Snowdown day.."

               The Goopy One looks up at the wall and grip the bag with purpose. “I can do this..” he says happily. “Yeah.. I can do this! Hope you guys are ready!” He hoisted the bag over his shoulder and ran through me. I step back in surprise, closing my eyes waiting to be hit by weight of an elephant, but I felt only a breeze. I opened to see the sole lantern sitting on the floor and the quiet music still playing. I turn around to the door and I only saw a woman. A woman floating in the air with her blue-yellow hair and her bright red dress floating about. Around her was a golden instrument with a holiday wreath and some stockings as if it's a surface dweller fireplace. With her delicate fingernails, the maven carefully strums the strings to finish out the snowdown's carol.

               I point my crossbow at her. "Who are you?" I ask.

               "I am the second of spirits. The one Snowdown's present. One that results from the past." she speaks in clean clarity within my head. She never moved her lips.

               "What..." I said. "What did you do with your music..?"

               "If we talk further, your friend would go further. I suggest we follow him. You don't expect to run after him.. don't you?"

               I take the hand reluctantly, knowing I had no choice. She was responsible for this state, and this ghost.. there was no use arguing against them.

               I jump from house to house. Going from pipe to pipe to leave my gifts for the children of the sector. In this day of Snowdown, most people were either sleeping or partying with alcohol and shimmer in their hands. It's perfect for me. I had no one stopping me at that point. For every house I went, I leave the hastily wrapped gift below the tree or in the stocking and slowly made my way out. As I skipped over the numerous gaps between the houses jubilantly, I always imagine each kid's reaction as I place them down. The child happily flying the plane as he makes engine noises. The thrill of imitating Blitzcrank's grab at random family members through his figurine. Maybe even some sword play-fighting, and I plan to witness each and every kid's reaction as much as possible. Imagining that happiness... it just brings back old memories. Always such a warm feeling.

               As I approach the last house, I wrap the last gift up quickly, a metal gun with some soft paper balls inside for ammo. The house loomed over the neighborhood as it stood on the edge of the sector away from others. I remember in my weekly visits to the sector I used to live, there was a family that decided to move away from the vibrant community. I always remember my mom and dad always talking about the people around us and telling great stories. Why would anyone leave that behind?

               I slowly sneak into the house with the wrapped toy gun. I went through the chimney and saw what seemed to be a stereotypical room with some lights, king poro statues, and a grand Snowdown tree. I look behind and see the stockings each labeled with a name. "Dad", "Mom", and "Michael". Guess I was right with the kid being an only child. I put the gun into his stocking and checked to see if the gift had the classic "From: Santa" on it.

               Creak...

               My eyes widen. I look back and see him. A middle aged man looking at me with a gun with a frightful and worried look. I raise my hands to show no harm and stepped back to the chimney. "Hey pal.." I said. "I didn't mean any harm.. I just wanted to give your son a gift. Just.. playing Santa."

               "Santa doesn't exist.." he growls aggressively. "..and I know you're definitely not him." He fires the gun, scattering parts of my body on the floor. I hear everyone wake up.

               "What's going on!?" the wife screams.

               "Dad!?" the son shouts.

               "Some... something's in our house! Don't know what he wants.. but he wants something! It’s Zaun! He has to want something!"

               The second shots fires as I climb to the rooftop through the chimney. I felt the shot almost hitting my face. I climbed and climbed. The third shot fired and I felt it pierce my back. Everything below me was spiraling into chaos as they scream and shout for my demise until.. I saw the sky. I felt the freedom of the air. I grab the ground below me and stretched my arms back. I release my legs and when the family finally got out, all they saw was a  green comet flying away.

               Smack!

               I feel the pavement hit my face. I look up and saw the abandoned homes of my childhood. All abandoned because of me.. My hand dove into my body as I slowly grab the bullet within me and observed it. It was a large bullet. Something meant for, at the very least, fatal injury. I throw the bullet on the pavement and run back to the safety of my once living house. To them, I wasn't playing Santa; I was playing a criminal.. Thankfully no one saw me. Thankfully I didn't see their reactions.

               I watch in horror through the window as the man tries to shoot the Goopy One in smithereens. I can hear their incessant shouting as they try to murder my once loyal subject. When he tried to jump out, I hear the door next to me unlock. A large male, a large female, and a small male come out, watching as he flew to his home. The male still had his gun cocked in the sky as if he could shoot from so far away.

               "What was that, dad?" the small child asks.

               "Check the kitchen! Martha check the safe! Now!"

               The door slams and I was merely alone with the spirit..

               "What was he doing spirit!? What was he doing.. This is exactly what I thought would happen!!" She simply pointed to the window. As I walk towards it, she begins to play another song. Through the glass, I see the human boy look into a sock hanging from the fireplace, only finding the gun that the Goopy One made. He smiles with happiness until looking away from the sock to the kitchen, most likely in response to the other humans' stupid screaming. He hides the gift in his pouch and goes to my window and looks up at the sky with eyes full of happiness and hope, mouthing the words "Thank you".

               I look back at the spirit. "That doesn't change anything.." I growl. "So he made a person happy.. He gets shot! But that's fine because his stupid surface dwellers are happy!!" She didn't even look up. She was just playing the music as the boy looks up trying to see the Goopy One again.

               "You.. What are you doing with your stupid music!!" I shout aiming my crossbow for her. "The kid's house is happy that his house was invaded.. You make the Goopy One give stupid small weapons to everyone at the risk of his own life.. He gotten shot! How.. how are you making them do this.. this.. nonsense? Brainwashing them... Is Snowdown just about this? Stupidity?"

               "My music lives in everyone Twitch.. This is just a day when my music is the loudest. The music exists outside of Snowdown." the maven slowly floats towards me. Her skin turned green and her feet began to touch the floor. The dress got ripped away as I saw the Goopy One appear right before my eyes. "It even exists within you.."

               I step back. My hands shake. The music grows louder and louder... I couldn't hear anything! "No.. No! You're not the Goopy One! Stop this.. Stop this now! Get out of my head.. GET OUT!"

               "Come on pal.." she imitates. "I'm your friend after all."

               "No.. No! Get out.. Get out! Stop it!"

               "Hey.. is something wrong? I just wanted people to be happy."

               "Stop it! STOP IT WITH THIS MADNESS!" I life the crossbow. "HAUNT ME NO LONGER!" The trigger was fired. The arrow pierced the spirit's chest. Crack begin to form on his skin.

               "And here I thought.. you could change buddy," she said in the voice of my best friend. She suddenly dissipates into snow and the music goes silent. The lights of the house grow dim, and I was left alone.

[micolashsucks]

HEY, so a really cool person submitted this to me, but they didn’t want their url to be shown so I have to post it like this. Holy shit this is really cool and the writing is so good!! Thank you so much for sharing this! @ everybody please read the whole thing if you can, it’s A+

So here is what I came up with at 3am while having to finish an essay that I forgot about (Keep in mind that I am German and my English is self-taught):

The soviets might have done a cloning project with Ocelot as well except they figured out some stuff about direct replication of genes to make exact clones. Which is possible. You can make an exact copy of someone, the only thing you absolutely can’t clone is the mind because experiences aren’t stored in DNA. Logically.

~~~~~~

Ocelot was very capable at a pretty early age, so the soviets decided to clone him once he turned about 19 from DNA samples they had taken earlier on. Since they weren’t exactly sure how he would react though, they never told him, making it a secret underground project beneath the Verkhoyansk Range, far off from anyone who could notice, below the mountains, safe from all attacks.

Their plans were to make the perfect soldier and they got help from former Nazi doctors who were interested in testing certain theories about DNA and superiority of certain genes. Later on, the project kept going under Russian, Chinese and Korean scientists that were eager to see how close they could get to making the perfect human machine.

The first tests were not going as planned, with lots of still-born children and even some creatures that could barely be described as human, ranging from unlivable clots of flesh and bone to abominations closer to invertebrates than mammals.

In the end, laser technology brought a major breakthrough as the scientists began to understand just how well certain frequencies and brightness values could influence DNA.

With the nearby areas of Russia and China being sparsely populated, it was more than easy for the scientists to kidnap women, bring them to the labs for artificial impregnation or even just ovum removal. Those who survived the process were released again, threatened so they would keep quiet.

The first children were all useless to the scientists though, with the young boys developing tumors and unhealthily thin bones, but within a few months, those imperfections were cancelled out of the used DNA strands and the children were disposed of.

After every series of tests, they allowed one specimen to live to see how he would develop, but never letting more than five live at once. After all they had to see long term results. There was no way a toddler could win a war by himself.

~~~~~~

Seven years after the first living specimen came out of the project, they finally got what they wanted; A child, physically healthy and intelligent, ready to be molded into the perfect soldier.

A41-5920

He quickly adapted to the changes in his life once they took him out of the lab and brought him even further downstairs into their research facility. He never once complained about his room being cold and small or his meals being dry and tasteless.

Once the boy had turned 4, they had begun to teach him in what they considered essential: Russian, Chinese, English, Spanish, Math, Biology, Anatomy, Psychology, Technology.

At age 8 he was deemed ready to learn about more complex topics, his usual reading material ranging from Tolstoi’s War and Peace to advanced medical books.

While he did have some physical activity in his schedule, his training was not meant to begin until much later, out of fear that he might get hurt badly early on and would not grow up healthy enough. That left the boy skinny, with wiry arms and legs, knees not touching even if he stood with his feet closed and elbows sharp enough to cut someone.

~~~~~~

As much as they wished for the boy to be obedient, they were fully aware that children grew more and more curious over time, trying to understand things that were none of their concern.

What nobody expected though, was that A41-5920 was clever enough to outsmart them once he reached age 11, avoiding cameras and sneaking to the upper levels of the giant concrete complex, eager to explore the world out there and to finally see the sky and clouds for himself.

Whenever they did catch him, he would cleverly conduct some lies, trying to convince them that he only got lost due to unfortunate circumstances.

Punishment for disobedience was hard and he knew as much, having endured it enough times already, so he did everything he could to not be detected in the first place.

Every now and then, he heard the military guards talk about how cold it was outside, about the snow and rain making them feel depressed, but he didn’t understand how they must have felt. All his life he had been down in the dark concrete bunker, deemed unable to see the outside world just yet.

But then, one day, during an accident in the labs upstairs, people were just distracted enough for the boy to slip out between the heavy steel doors.

The cold wind on his face hit him with immediate regret, his bare feet burning and stinging in the snow. Part of him just wanted to run back inside and never leave again, but now that he had made it this far, he couldn’t just give up.

The next gust of wind made his nose feel so cold, he was sure it would fall off at any second and his fingers were already getting numb while his legs seemed to turn extremely pale, almost a little blue from what he could see.

And so his first impression of the outside world was a bad one, making him question why anyone would ever want to leave in the first place.

He turned as quickly as he could, his feet feeling too heavy to lift properly, kicking the snow around.

It took his entire weight and some of the harsh wind to help him open the doors back up and as soon as the light fell inside, he knew he was in serious trouble. Familiar and unfamiliar faces of scientists and guards stared at him, most of them very clearly twisted in anger and disappointment, some even looked disgusted.

~~~~~~

A month later he still got lectured every now and then, just to remind him of how stupid he had been. He almost lost a toe as well, making the scientists whisper about him being a “failure” as well.

A41-5920 couldn’t help but feel like they were right. He had been stupid, had risked his life being reckless and they put so much time and effort into making sure he was fine, so he definitely had no right of disobeying and ruining everything like this.

So after everything that happened, he was surprised that Professor Zima and Professor Volkov offered him to travel for the very first time in his life, telling him that he had to know what the world was like in order to fight for a better one.

As he began to pack his few clothes into the box they gave him though, he heard the guards outside talk about some president talking about attacking the country during some sports event and how they had to leave until they could be sure they were safe.

In a way he was glad to know that Professor Volkov wanted him safe. Even after he tried to escape. Professor Zima didn’t seem to trust him anymore, though, so maybe he could try to take this as a chance to prove himself worthy of the support and cultivation.

~~~~~~

They escorted him out of his room in the early morning, a soldier carrying his small box of clothes while two others made sure he didn’t run off as they made their way into a part of the complex he hadn’t been in yet.

Giant machines seemed to loom over him once he stepped through the door and one of the soldiers pushed him towards the biggest one. He had seen something like this before, but it took him a while to remember.

“Helicopters…”, he finally mumbled, just to be shushed by one of the scientists, followed by the soldier grabbing him by his bony hips and lifting him into the chopper.

He quickly sat down, making sure that he looked as proper as he could to show himself ready for his first adventure in the real world and to prove to Zima just how perfect he was for the project.

His composure quickly faded away though as the pilot entered and started the whole thing up, making the chopper shake and vibrate. It felt strange and scary, and he dug his nails deep into his skinny legs, trying not to freak himself out even more.

Then he was thrown to the side. Everything had shifted very quickly and his stomach turned and twisted and knotted, making him dizzy and his spit sour.

It dawned on him once things straightened again that they had simply taken off. His books had told him that helicopters would dip their noses down for starting and landing if they had to go straight up or down.

~~~~~~

His excitement quickly returned as they made their way southwest. Volkov allowed him to get up carefully to take a look out of the window, letting him see how close they were to the sky and how soft and vaguely tasty the clouds looked.

Rays of sunlight danced through the chopper every time they turned and the boy was sure that this would be the most beautiful thing he would ever see.

If it was up to him, they could keep on flying forever.

~~~~~~

His excitement had settled down a little by the time they began to sink over what looked like a light brown ocean. Only when they touched the ground and the doors were opened, he realized that they were in fact in some sort of desert, the ripples in the brown water were actually small lines in the sand.

Once the chopper took back off and they could look on without squinting, they began to guide him towards a camp a little up a small hill.

The buildings looked like they had seen much better days and there was still sand everywhere, but the sky was so blue and the sand so lovely and warm that he was happy to be there. Everything felt like a different world. This was nothing like the first time he went outside.

His room was much nicer as well, it looked warm and a little bigger than the room in the research facility, and his bed had this soft, colorful blanket on it.

As soon as they dismissed him, he threw himself onto the bed, curling up in the soft blanket and grinning to himself. This had to be the best day anyone ever had. First he got to be between the clouds all the way up in the sky and now he had this amazing room with this great bed.

And before he knew it, he was deep asleep.

~~~~~~

The next A41-5920 knew was that everything was foggy and that there was a deafening noise somewhere around him. He tried to comprehend the situation, but there were too many unknown elements to it.

Sneaking towards the door, he carefully and quietly opened it just a crack, peaking outside.

The first thing he saw was Zima, face down on the ground in a shimmery, dark puddle. Then, suddenly, a dark figure stood right in front of him as the door was thrown open, knocking him backwards.

Blinking rapidly, he got up and into fighting stance, or what he assumed was a fighting stance from the drawings he had seen.

The man was a lot larger than he was, in every way. His hair was ruffled, there was blood on his face and dark shards sticking out of his head. He looked dangerous and possibly murderous, but he had a strange look on his face, as though he had no idea what to do now.

“Kaz, this is strange…” The man mumbled, followed by muffled sounds coming from what A41-5920 assumed was some sort of headset.

Then, suddenly, the man moved towards him again, a lot more careful this time, like he tried to not scare him off.

Should he fight back? Should he just go with the man and hope that he wouldn’t get hurt that way?

It very quickly turned out that he had no choice as the man picked him up, holding his wrists together with just one hand and still reaching perfectly around both of them. Fighting was no option, he would only hurt himself.

“No, it’s not just you….I see it, too.” The man mumbled again, staring directly at A41-5920 with his one eye, the other being hid behind an eyepatch of sorts.

He was lifted up by his wrists, struggling a little against the other’s grip, before he was simply thrown over the man’s shoulder.

Everything around him moved so quickly and was shaking with every step the man took. It was close to impossible to see where they were going, especially in his current position, but they definitely went on for quite a bit before the man set him down on the warm sand.

“Look. I’m not going to hurt you. Just stay calm.” The man’s voice was soft and he spoke slowly, accentuating his words with gestures.

He wanted to tell the man that he understood him, that they spoke the same language, but his body wouldn’t let him respond. Despite the warm sand he shivered over and over and as he finally remembered how to properly open his mouth, the only thing escaping him was a soft whine.

~~~~~~

After they sat in the sand for a while, A41 not being able to speak properly, like he wasn’t in control over his body, and the man smoking something, he spotted another helicopter at the horizon.

The thought of flying again almost made him excited, but he also didn’t know what to think about some stranger taking him anywhere like this.

Volkov would be angry if he found out that he left just like that.

As soon as the chopper was close enough to the ground, the man lifted him up again and carried him over, almost throwing him into the cold metal machine before climbing in himself.

The pilot threw them a quick glance, then another and another, looking confused, but then he pulled them up again and took off.

Why did everyone look at him like this? Was something wrong with him? Did he know those people and just forgot about them? He was not someone to forget stuff like that, and if he did he would remember after a couple of minutes.

~~~~~~

The flight in itself was mostly silent, almost awkwardly so as the man seemed to stare right into his soul while quietly typing on some strange device.

They seemed to go further south from what he could tell and then almost seemed to plummet into the ocean, except the did land on something he simply didn’t see from his position on the ground.

The man pushed the door open and he was greeted by bright lights and the clicking of guns.

Sitting up carefully, his eyes followed the man leaving the chopper until he saw a group of men, some with black masks on, some without, all clearly soldiers.

Then there were two others, one walked a little weirdly, he didn’t know why, but the man seemed to have a strange way of walking, the other immediately began arguing as soon as he reached the man who brought A41 here.

He carefully sat on the edge of the chopper, then jumped out and landed carefully on the ground.

The chopper took off immediately after that and left them all in a strange silence. The man who had been arguing slowly took a few step towards him. His shoes made strange jingly sounds whenever he took a step. Everyone’s eyes were on him now.

“Who are you, boy?”

~~to be continued~~

[frogsandfries]

I was finally forced to watch the newest King Kong movie

It was not great. It was not memorable. The soundtrack was very in your face.

I hated the design they used for Kong. It was like they (I don't know the exact terminology or techniques) literally rotoscoped over a mo-cap of a human in a gorilla suit, just enough that I guess you were supposed to suspend reality (anatomy) for a moment and believe this was a real gorilla, not a new age human-in-a-gorilla-suit. Wait. I think the original King Kong was stop-mo.

So yes. A poor depiction of the character I was under the impression was the titular character basically ruined the movie for me. Although I appreciated the symbolism. Here's my take on the symbolism:

Sam L's character was the US, bellicose, self-indulgent, lying to itself, seeing enemies everywhere.

The woman Kong took to was youth and innocence and the characteristic desire of youth for justice and the truth.

The crazy coot who got stuck on the island might have been the conscience whispering in every human's ear, you're just an animal, you don't own this planet, this planet owns you, you're a part of the food chain.

The tribe was history, ancestry, remembering where we come from: A time before words, a time before we cut ourselves off from nature. A little blunt. Kind of tasteless, in your face for the audience who doesn't watch movies with a critical eye or mind.

That guy who plays Loki in the Marvel movies was a throwaway, a useless character designed to draw his fans into theaters. Everyone else was pretty much pointless excess. The movie literally could've had half the cast to start out and been no worse off.

Apparently I laughed at inappropriate points, but that's not unusual. My mind leaps readily to connect something that might not be funny to something that is. It's also not unusual for my normal behavior since college to grate on my dad for whatever reason, worth mentioning since I watched the movie with him. I learned best from all my visits to the cinema that I have a humor that is all my own. A lot of things I find funny in movies that aren't overly funny tend to be bad effects or poor dialogue.

[bountyofbeads]

OUR PLAGUE YEAR.... We must heed the logic of rationality and science—but also the logic captured by artists, poets, and storytellers.

By Eliot A. Cohen | Published February 29, 2020 8:00 AM ET | The Atlantic | Posted February 29, 2020 |

“Everybody knows that pestilences have a way of recurring in the world; yet somehow we find it hard to believe in ones that crash down on our heads from a blue sky. There have been as many plagues as wars in history; yet always plagues and wars take people equally by surprise.”

Thus Albert Camus in The Plague. We, too, now find ourselves surprised by pestilence, dancing a dance that feels both strange and familiar—the early disquieting cases; the assurances by authority that the initial outbreak has been contained; the spread by individuals who can, however, be tracked and isolated; the imposition of quarantines; the realization that some of the initial statistics were too low because of flawed counting rules; the realization that the ailment may not, in fact, be containable; and the first tremors of public apprehension turning to fear, and in some cases panic.

Anyone in a position of authority—running a school, a business, or an organization—turns to experts at moments like this. We attempt to absorb the information from epidemiologists who know what they are talking about. They speak of morbidity and mortality rates, of R naught (the basic reproduction number, or how many individuals a victim may infect), of the little-known mortality of the annual flu season, and of the futility of face masks as a means of avoiding COVID-19, which is the correct and emotionally neutral term for the disease caused by the virus. The scientists build tracking maps and model future spread; they announce trials of vaccines and make rational recommendations for social distancing and, of course, hand-washing.

Their cool balance, which must inform any decision making, rests on a logic of rationality and science. And one must heed it. Yet one must also heed a very different logic, the one captured by artists, poets, and storytellers.

In “The Masque of the Red Death,” Edgar Allan Poe tells the tale of Prince Prospero, “happy and dauntless and sagacious,” who, as the Red Death sweeps his dominions, gathers his closest friends into his magnificent castle, which he then seals off from the outside world. All manner of supplies have been stockpiled, all manner of entertainments prepared, and, for a time, all is well. The prince stages a masked ball in his eccentrically designed palace; the partying is exuberant, until the guests note that one of their members has made a tasteless joke. “Shrouded from head to foot in the habiliments of the grave,” his mask that of a corpse dabbled with blood, he has appeared as the Red Death. The crowd, now a mob, turns on and pursues the figure, who vanishes, leaving only the shroud—as the revelers, Prince Prospero first among them, fall to the plague. “And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all.”

The coronavirus will not be as bad as that, we can be quite sure, but what Poe—and, in a different way, Camus and many others—captured is the logic of fear and dread that is also part of an epidemic. And that logic is ignored at our peril too. Walk through crowded airports, and you will see useless masks adorning the faces of people who are undoubtedly quite well. Talk to chief executives, and they will tell you of stockpiling vitamin C and canceling all foreign travel. Meet a cosmopolitan friend, and he will embarrassedly refuse to shake hands, preferring to wa, Thai style (a palm-to-palm salute), or put his right hand to his heart (Arabic style), or simply bump elbows (an American innovation).

The statistics about the relatively low mortality rates of the coronavirus, the more ominous term that normal people use, and the unquestionably more deadly toll to date of the common flu are undoubtedly true, and in some measure beside the point. The technocratic impulse is to damp down unreasoning fear with an antiseptic spray of statistics, or if that fails, simply to shrug one’s shoulders and dismiss the foolish anxieties of ignorant people. Neither will quite do the job.

Why do we fear the coronavirus more than the common flu? Perhaps because even if we fail to get our annual flu shot, we know that such a thing exists. And even if one side of our brain knows that the cocktail that goes into this year’s vaccine is a gamble on the part of the pharmaceutical companies, which may be more or less effective, the other side is saying: The threat is, if not under control, controllable. The coronavirus, like the plague of old, does not feel that way. It does not feel controllable, because it is not. Indeed, the main resort seems to be a centuries-, perhaps millennia-old response: quarantine. And even that proves leaky in an age of ever-expanding travel and human contact.

We live in an era when the masters of Big Data, be they in corporations or political campaigns, know an appallingly large amount about each and every one of us: our tastes, our prejudices, our aversions, our vulnerable points. They spend a great deal of effort on manipulating us, apparently with success. There are social scientists who believe that this data can and indeed should be used to nudge us into healthy or commendable forms of behavior. And in an era of ubiquitous facial-recognition software, we are all, in some measure, perpetually under surveillance.

But somehow, the plague creeps in behind the precisely targeted Facebook ads, and human beings must confront the limits of their ability to control events, and the primordial fear that a friend—or worse, a loved one—could, in an invisible and wholly unintended way, cause our deaths. Governments and businesses that pride themselves on their ability to exert control are at the mercy of individuals who have incentives to misrepresent the truth or temporarily suppress it. Face a population fearful of epidemic, and you face, potentially, an angry and uncontrollable mob.

The coronavirus can bring ugly deaths, and has done so to some of the doctors and nurses attempting to contain it. It is nothing like the real plague, with blackened buboes and excruciating death agonies. But it is scary enough, and if its true that the mortality rate is 2 percent, or even half that, and if the hasty quarantines being thrown up everywhere fail to work, the chances are that many of us will know someone who dies from it.

In our rational, technocratic way, we will of course find countermeasures and even celebrate them as accelerators of progress. Schools and businesses are learning how to exploit teleconferencing in ways that will improve our ability to teach and work together in cyberspace, which is a good thing. We are all learning (the hard way, admittedly) about the vulnerability of global supply chains, and will make them more resilient in the coming months and years. And there is nothing like a good scare to improve one’s institutional contingency planning for the next time, as the British government discovered after the Munich crisis of 1938.

All true, and all necessary. But as we react to this problem with the tools of medical science and dispassionate thought, we should periodically check ourselves—not so much for fever, but for the arrogance of Prince Prospero, and for the illusion of control that set him and his guests up for a ghastly end. The truth is, we live in the midst of multiple plagues—after all, it is considered a good thing when your tweet “goes viral.” We would be wisest if we could react to all those plagues with the unillusioned heroic calm of Camus’ hero Dr. Rieux, who has “no idea what’s awaiting me, or what will happen when all this ends,” and who will simply go about his business of curing those he can, and comforting those he cannot.

_____

ELIOT A. COHEN is a contributing writer at The Atlantic and dean of The Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. From 2007 to 2009, he was the Counselor of the Department of State. He is the author most recently of The Big Stick: The Limits of Soft Power and the Necessity of Military Force.

*********

THE PROBLEM WITH TELLING SICK WORKERS TO STAY HOME .... Even with the coronavirus spreading, lax labor laws and little sick leave mean that many people can’t afford to skip work.

By Amanda Mull | Published February 28, 2020 | The Atlantic Magazine | Posted February 29, 2020 |

AS THE CORONAVIRUS that has sickened tens of thousands in China spreads worldwide, it now seems like a virtual inevitability that millions of Americans are going to be infected with the flu-like illness known as COVID-19. Public-health officials in the United States have started preparing for what the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is calling a “significant disruption” to daily life. Because more than 80 percent of cases are mild and many will show no symptoms at all, limiting the disease’s spread rests on the basics of prevention: Wash your hands well and frequently, cover your mouth when you cough, and stay home if you feel ill. But that last thing might prove to be among the biggest Achilles’ heels in efforts to stymie the spread of COVID-19. The culture of the American workplace puts everyone’s health at unnecessary risk.

For all but the independently wealthy in America, the best-case scenario for getting sick is being a person with good health insurance, paid time off, and a reasonable boss who won’t penalize you for taking a few sick days or working from home. For millions of the country’s workers, such a scenario is a nearly inconceivable luxury. “With more than a third of Americans in jobs that offer no sick leave at all, many unfortunately cannot afford to take any days off when they are feeling sick,” Robyn Gershon, an epidemiology professor at the NYU School of Global Public Health, wrote in an email. “People who do not (or cannot) stay home when ill do present a risk to others.” On this count, the United States is a global anomaly, one of only a handful of countries that doesn’t guarantee its workers paid leave of any kind. These jobs are also the kind least likely to supply workers with health insurance, making it difficult for millions of people to get medical proof that they can’t go to work.

They’re also concentrated in the service industry or gig economy, in which workers have contact, directly or indirectly, with large numbers of people. These are the workers who are stocking the shelves of America’s stores, preparing and serving food in its restaurants, driving its Ubers, and manning its checkout counters. Their jobs tend to fall outside the bounds of paid-leave laws, even in states or cities that have them. Gershon emphasizes that having what feels like a head cold or mild flu—which COVID-19 will feel like to most healthy people—often isn’t considered a good reason to miss a shift by those who hold these workers’ livelihood in their hands.

Even if a person in one of these jobs is severely ill—coughing, sneezing, blowing her nose, and propelling droplets of virus-containing bodily fluids into the air and onto the surfaces around her—asking for time off means missing an hourly wage that might be necessary to pay rent or buy groceries. And even asking can be a risk in jobs with few labor protections, because in many states, there’s nothing to stop a company from firing you for being too much trouble. So workers with no good options end up going into work, interacting with customers, swiping the debit cards that go back into their wallets, making the sandwiches they eat for lunch, unpacking the boxes of cereal they take home for their kids, or driving them home from happy hour.

Even for people who have paid sick leave, Gershon noted, the choices are often only marginally better; seven days of sick leave is the American average, but many people get as few as three or four. “Many are hesitant to use [sick days] for something they think is minor just in case they need the days later for something serious,” she wrote. “Parents or other caregivers are also hesitant to use them because their loved ones might need them to stay home and care for them if they become ill.”

For workers with ample sick leave, getting it approved may still be difficult. America’s office culture often rewards those who appear to go above and beyond, even if that requires coughing on an endless stream of people. Some managers believe leadership means forcing their employees into the office at all costs, or at least making it clear that taking a sick day or working from home will be met with suspicion or contempt. In other places, employees bring their bug to work of their own volition, brown-nosing at the expense of their co-workers’ health.

[ Read: The gig economy has never been tested by a pandemic SEE BELOW]

Either way, the result is the same, especially in businesses that serve the public or offices with open plans and lots of communal spaces, which combine to form the majority of American workplaces. Even if your server at dinner isn’t sick, she might share a touch-screen workstation with a server who is. Everyone on your side of the office might be hale and healthy, but you might use a tiny phone booth to take a call right after someone whose throat is starting to feel a little sore. “Doorknobs, coffee makers, toilets, common-use refrigerators, sinks, phones, keyboards [can all] be a source of transmission if contaminated with the agent,” Gershon wrote. She advised that workers stay at least three to six feet away from anyone coughing or sneezing, but in office layouts that put desks directly next to one another with no partition in between—often to save money by giving workers less personal space—that can be impossible. No one knows how long COVID-19 can live on a dry surface, but in the case of SARS, another novel coronavirus, Gershon said it was found to survive for up to a week on inanimate objects.

Work culture isn’t the only structure of American life that might make a COVID-19 outbreak worse than it has to be—the inaccessible, precarious, unpredictable nature of the country’s health-care system could also play an important role. But tasking the workers who make up so much of the infrastructure of daily American life, often for low wages and with few resources, with the lion’s share of prevention in an effort to save thousands of lives is bound to fail, maybe spectacularly. It will certainly exact a cost on them, both mentally and physically, that the country has given them no way to bear.

*********

The Gig Economy Has Never Been Tested by a Pandemic

Companies such as Uber and Instacart have transformed the urban experience, but would they hold up if the coronavirus spread across America?

By Alexis C. Madrigal | Published February 28, 2020 | The Atlantic | Posted February 29, 2020 |

THE SHADOW OF THE new coronavirus finally reached American shores this week, as markets jittered downward and new cases crept up. The scope of any outbreak here is not clear, but experts suspect that the virus will become widespread. While the disease, known as COVID-19, is a global phenomenon, the response to it is necessarily local, and divvied up among more than 2,600 local health departments in the U.S.

Municipal governments have prepared plans and local officials are on high alert, but they have little experience dealing with a new infrastructural fact in a major disease outbreak: the gig economy. In Wuhan, China, where the COVID-19 outbreak originated, delivery drivers have played a major role in keeping the city going during containment efforts. In San Francisco, say, if people begin to shelter in place—or even simply shy away from heading out—it would seem likely that more people would order groceries or dinner rather than put themselves at risk.

Gig-economy companies such as Uber, Lyft, and Instacart have two distinct features. One, they are particularly popular in large urban centers, where they play a now-crucial role in transportation and the delivery of local goods. Two, California’s recent legislation notwithstanding, the labor platforms don’t have employees as they have traditionally been understood. Uber drivers and Instacart delivery people receive financial incentives to work, but they are not compelled by a set work schedule.

These two factors make for all sorts of possible disruptions to normal life if a large-scale disease outbreak were to strike an American city. What will people who have grown used to DoorDash delivery and Lyft rides do? How will the gig workers respond? What will the labor platforms do? What will local governments allow or attempt to compel?

People’s actions will influence how the outbreak plays out, and these questions have never been answered in practice. There’s no this-worked-last-time playbook to run. The new coronavirus is novel not only in its biological configuration, but in how it will be linked to these new technological systems.

County health officers do have experience preparing for disease outbreaks, with the closest analogue being the variant of H1N1 that arose in the spring of 2009. But back then, the whole set of technologies that underpin the gig economy was not around, Jennifer Vines, the health officer for Multnomah County, Oregon, told me. “We’re having to think differently,” she said. Her county is “just starting to map out a regional summit around these exact questions that would include transportation workers. We’re not going with doomsday, but what are the cascading effects?”

For now, Vines and her team have  issued basic guidance with fairly standard advice about washing hands, considering future child-care plans, and lightly stocking up on food. They’ve worked with schools, businesses, and some health clinics. Next will come guidance for cities, correctional institutions, long-term care facilities, and homeless shelters. Then they’ll try to convene other companies, including gig-economy outfits, though precisely what will come out of that meeting is unclear. 

Another thing that’s not clear: the extent to which the companies themselves have considered the issues of the disease outbreak deeply. I asked America’s most prominent delivery and ride-hailing services—Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, Postmates, Instacart, and Amazon—for comment about their disease-outbreak preparedness planning. Only Postmates and Instacart responded to me.

“Community health and safety is paramount at Postmates, and we have shared precautionary [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] guidance with those carrying out deliveries so that they are aware,” Postmates told me in a statement. “We will continue to encourage employees, merchants, consumers, and everyone to follow preventative measures such as washing hands and staying in if you are sick.”

“We’re actively working with local and national authorities to monitor the situation as it unfolds,” Instacart said in a statement. “We’re adhering to recommendations from public-health officials to ensure we’re operating safely with minimal disruption to our service, while also taking the appropriate precautionary measures to keep teams, shoppers, and customers safe.”

It’s possible to think through some of the basic scenarios that people will face if an outbreak becomes severe. The dilemmas are, in fact, all too easy to imagine in the absence of clear plans. Consider ride-hailing. If public transit comes to be seen as too risky because it’s so filled with people, Ubers and Lyfts could be considered the least risky option. Demand would surge.

[ Read: The servant economy]

In many wealthy urban cores, Uber and Lyft drivers actually come from far outside the center of the metro area. If those drivers decide to quarantine themselves at home as demand goes up, the price of a ride could shoot very high. Conversely, if drivers flood into metro centers from outlying regions, they could become vectors spreading COVID-19 within cities and bringing it to outlying areas.

Conflicting situations such as this pose hard choices for cities and companies alike. Uber and Lyft could limit price increases, or prevent drivers from entering certain areas. Or local public-health officers could determine that ride-hail drivers are a risk to public safety and tell the companies to stop operation within their jurisdictions. Would Uber and Lyft accept an exclusion zone? Would drivers and riders? Such restrictions could leave drivers with precarious finances unable to pay their bills.

One silver lining could be that the tracking the companies do of their drivers and riders can make the work of epidemiologists easier, Vines noted. In recent years, during a measles outbreak, health officials were able to contact drivers who had been exposed to the disease by their riders. Still, it’s hard to find this comforting.

Imagine another not-far-fetched scenario. If people see a public-health crisis unfolding, they might begin to make large orders on Amazon to stock up. But Amazon itself could easily suffer during an outbreak. Given the demanding labor policies of the retail behemoth and its subcontracted delivery companies, workers might be unlikely to want to miss shifts if they’re feeling a little under the weather. It could just be sniffles—but what if it’s COVID-19? An outbreak at one or more key facilities could cause the infrastructure that provides delivery services to falter just as demand surges. Suddenly, the convenience of having all the supplies you need to weather an outbreak arrive at your doorstep would disappear.

For every little thing in modern life, a “servant economy” app exists. If schools are out, will demand at Care.com surge? If people don’t want to run out for dog food, will they turn to Chewy and Pet Plate? The dark side of hitting buttons on a phone and having things happen out there in the world is that other people—humans susceptible to viral infection—have to make all those things happen.

No one knows yet how serious a COVID-19 outbreak will be in America, nor how disruptive it will prove for everyday life in any given place. But even if the virological properties of the disease are less nasty than early reporting implies, some Americans may witness a grim technological future that few imagined. Crossbreeding this disease with the nation’s platform economy might mean that the rich will shelter in place, safe and sound, while the poor troll through the streets, taking their chances for a necessary payday.

*********

WHAT THE DUBIOUS CORONA POLL REVEALS

Americans are desperate to believe the worst about one another.

By Yascha Mounk | Published February 28, 2020 | The Atlantic | Posted February 29, 2020 |

HAVE YOU HEARD that 38 percent of Americans won’t drink Corona beer, because they are afraid of contracting the coronavirus?

For the past hours, this finding has spread across the internet like wildfire (or, more apt, a dangerous disease). CNN, the New York Post, and Vice all wrote up the poll.

On Twitter, where “38% of Americans” was the top national trend for parts of the day, many writers with large followings used it as an occasion to condemn their fellow citizens as idiots. “38% of Americans shouldn’t be allowed to roam free,” Benjamin Dreyer, an author, wrote.

The problem here is that the poll, published by the PR agency 5WPR, absolutely did not find what the wags on Twitter say it did. Its dissemination, however, does tell us an awful lot about a screwed-up media system that allows unscrupulous companies and individuals to spread misinformation.

The original press release from 5WPR notes that in a survey of 737 beer-drinking Americans, 38 percent said they “would not buy Corona under any circumstances now.” By presenting this finding in the context of other questions that are explicitly about the coronavirus, the press release creates the impression that Americans’ reluctance to drink the beer is due to the coronavirus. “There is no question that Corona beer is suffering because of the coronavirus,” Ronn Torossian, the CEO of 5WPR, says in the press release. “Could one imagine walking into a bar and saying ‘Hey, can I have a Corona?’ or ‘Pass me a Corona.’”

But this connection is manufactured, and Torossian is ignoring far more mundane reasons Americans might not buy a Corona, including that they don’t like the taste. Of those Americans who did report regularly drinking Corona, only 4 percent said they would now stop drinking the beer.

A number of major news outlets appear to have walked right into the trap. Because they did not understand that the original press release was walking a fine line between deeply misleading claims and outright lies, their articles have inadvertently fallen on the side of the lie. As a viral tweet by CNN put it, the survey supposedly found that 38 percent of Americans would not drink Corona, “because of the coronavirus.”

It is one thing for unscrupulous PR agencies to get their name out by trying to mislead the public in a shameless manner. It is quite another for some of the country’s most prestigious and well-known media outlets to let themselves be played.

After repeated phone calls, emails, and tweets to 5WPR and its chief executive, I was finally able to get access to the full questions asked in the poll. These make clear that the survey was a fishing expedition designed to elicit viral stats. The questions asked in the poll include “Is Corona related to the coronavirus?” and “In light of the coronavirus, do you plan to stop drinking Corona?” But my requests for the results to these questions have so far gone unheeded. Maybe, just maybe, that’s because the results show that most Americans get the difference between a disease and a beer.

Ariel Edwards-Levy, the polling editor for HuffPost and one of the first journalists to register skepticism about the poll on Twitter, has also been unable to get access to the actual data. As she told me, “One of the best things a media outlet can do when reporting on polls is to insist on transparency about exactly what questions were asked and whom they were asked of. It’s also important that reporters treat polling as critically as they would any other source—for instance, being wary of ‘shock’ findings, contextualizing results with other available data, and avoiding the tendency to overstate or overinterpret results.”

By all appearances, journalists working for outlets from CNN to the New York Post have failed this test. As a result, they have made themselves unwitting tools of a clever misinformation campaign. (Journalists for CNN, Vice, and the New York Post have not yet responded to messages asking for comment.)

The strange virality of the Corona poll demonstrates that there are ruthless PR flacks who are willing to play fast and loose with the truth. It also shows that there are many journalists at supposedly trustworthy news outlets who are so desperate to rush to publication that they can wind up misinforming their public. (What else is new?)

The real question is why this obscure poll would, even if it had been true, be able to capture the imagination of so many people. And the answer is as obvious as it is saddening: Clearly, a lot of Americans already think that their fellow citizens are stupid. The real reason a fake finding could have spread so far so quickly is that it confirmed prejudices about the world that many have held all along.

_____

YASCHA MOUNK is a contributing writer at The Atlantic, an associate professor at Johns Hopkins University, a senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund, and a senior adviser at Protect Democracy. He is the author of The People vs. Democracy.

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How to Think About the Plummeting Stock Market

No one knows exactly how much damage the coronavirus will do to the global economy, but investors have to guess.

By JOE PINSKER | Published February 28, 2020 | The Atlantic | Posted February 29, 2020 |

OVER THE PAST WEEK, stock markets around the world plunged as distressing news about the spread of the novel coronavirus continued to accumulate. In the United States, the three major stock indexes—the Dow Jones Industrial Average, the Nasdaq Composite, and the S&P 500—fell more than 10 percent below their recent peaks, a sharp decline that qualifies in Wall Street terminology as a market “correction.” One investor quoted in The Wall Street Journal called it a “bloodbath.”

The global stock market is, theoretically, the distillation of how investors think everything that happens in the world will play out in the economy. Right now, judging by these drops, investors are much less optimistic than they were a week ago. But what they’re predicting is not only how bad the outbreak could be in terms of workers staying home sick, drops in consumer spending, or supply-chain disruptions; it’s also how bad people  think it could be. Those might turn out to be two very different things.

Public perception of a crisis can be extremely consequential in financial markets. “The notion of a pandemic is pretty scary to people, and they’re going to hunker down and be careful about how they live their lives” if bleak news continues to roll in, says Richard Sylla, a former professor at NYU’s Stern School of Business. They may, for instance, start to skip vacations or dine out less. Airlines and restaurants, in turn, might lose revenue or even limit service because of what they think their customers will do. All of this combined would carry negative consequences for the economy, regardless of how catastrophic the direct impact of the disease actually turns out to be. “What people are thinking, even if it’s wrong, maybe matters more on a day-to-day basis [in the stock market] than what the truth is,” Sylla said.

What investors think the public is thinking is therefore crucial. Whether the costs of the outbreak turn out to be historically large or not, there is a risk that investors’ worries will snowball during this period of uncertainty, leading them to panic-sell and exacerbate any financial damage. “If in the next 20 years [the economy is] only going to be disrupted for three months, that suggests a very small impact on the market,” says Robert J. Shiller, a Nobel Prize–winning economist and the author of Narrative Economics: How Stories Go Viral and Drive Major Economic Events. But the situation could be much worse, and when investors think in “grandiose terms,” Shiller told me, that could “trigger other worrying.”

Predicting the emotional reactions of the entire world population to coronavirus would be a bit easier if investors could turn to the market effects of previous pandemics for guidance. But history provides few indications of what might happen to the economy if the coronavirus and COVID-19, the disease it causes, continue to spread. “This is kind of a new thing,” Shiller said. “It’s too much to ask for the market to get it right.”

The closest analogue is the global influenza outbreak of 1918 and ’19, which killed tens of millions of people. In 1918, the stock market actually did fine—the Dow rose a little. In the years after that, Sylla noted, “the stock market didn’t do much, and while its trend was flat, there were fluctuations within that—some ups and downs, just like we see now.”

But drawing any conclusions from 100 years ago is difficult because, among other reasons, a lot of other stuff was happening then—namely, World War I. Because of that, says John Wald, a professor at the University of Texas at San Antonio’s College of Business, “it’s really hard to say whether [the 1918 pandemic] was priced correctly or not correctly” by the market.

Perhaps a better parallel is the flu pandemic of 1957 and ’58, which originated in East Asia and killed at least 1 million people, including an estimated 116,000 in the U.S. In the second half of 1957, the Dow fell about 15 percent. “Other things happened over that time period” too, Wald notes, but “at least there was no world war.” More recent outbreaks, such as SARS and MERS, were more contained and didn’t wreak as much global economic havoc.

Although the annual flu season is quite different from a pandemic, it does provide a good amount of data for economists to analyze. When Wald, along with the researchers Brian McTier and Yiuman Tse, examined trading records from 1998 to 2006, they found that in weeks when the flu was more widespread, stock-market returns were lower. They also found that when there was a higher incidence of the flu in the greater New York City area in particular, trading volume decreased, which is usually bad for the market. Here, the idea is that more professional investors might have gotten sick and executed fewer trades—which would not bode well if COVID-19 were to make its way to New York City.

Sylla’s view of all this as a financial historian is pretty zen. “I wouldn’t pay much attention to the day-to-day reports of the newspapers—‘Here’s a good sign,’ ‘Here’s a bad sign,’” he said. In the short run, the stock market isn’t necessarily a good predictor of how bad the pandemic will get, in part because investors are working off the same scant information as everyone else. “What I would say history shows you is that a problem like this takes many months and maybe even a couple of years to play itself out,” he said. But, he went on, “Wall Street’s idea of history is the last 10 minutes.”

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[sarcasmgalaxy]

Clichés

It is in sadness that I found myself. The everlasting existential questions that bombarded my mind one after the other, never stopping, always demanding answers I could never provide. I felt nothing but the harsh bursts of anxiety, the provoked flaming anger or the random crippling sadness. I know, cliché. You must be thinking that this is just another whatever about the misery of being sad. Maybe it is, in some places. I have been struggling with myself for quite sometimes, complaining about being numb, complaining about feeling nothing, complaining, complaining, complaining... Always complaining, I'm bored of myself, my useless existence. I'm bored of most of the people around me. I'm bored of the forced, meaningless conversations that we have. I'm bored of all the pretending that goes on, everywhere. The epidemic of stupid it's endless, yet unlike usual epidemics, this one doesn't kill humans, in fact it reproduces them at a rather alarming rate...What do you call it when you hate your entire species?

The only thing that has constantly been there my entire life is this one feeling. I've felt this way since I first learned to identify emotion. I've been trapped, suffocated, yearning to run away, to break away, to belong. I'm terrified now. I don't think I belong anywhere. I definitely do not belong here. Am I destined to always feel like an outcast without a home?

I think, therefore I exist. But I think too much and I wish it would stop. Does that mean I exist too much? I'm trapped inside a cell I built for myself in my own head. I locked the door and hung the key around my neck. Here I am, actively denying myself freedom from my own mind. Are we prisoners in our heads? What is freedom of mind? How do I escape the thoughts that beat me up every night? I try to reach out every night, it's gotten worse but I'm always alone. In other cases I'm disregarded because I guess everyone's problems are more important or more relevant. I have learned how to put my own misery aside to help you through your own, never expecting it in return. But always hoping for it, continously disappointed until both you and I have disappointed me to numbness.

Everything is tasteless, pointless, relentless. How do I make it end?