#td said I should put this in main tags

[secondhello-moved]

-> -_-

[seblaine-rph]

Speaking as someone who has autism and has been in DK for a while.. I've got some tea. And the tea is that the admins have been nothing but kind and welcoming, even more so than other rps I have been in throughout the years of roleplaying. You will most likely not post this, but hey, it needs to be said.

That’s the thing here, you’re all so ready to invalidate the experiences of multiple other people, simply because you had a better experience? I think in the political climate we’re in, we should all know better than to assume that just because you have been somewhere and felt safe, that doesn’t mean that everyone that has been there has been safe. And it’s this very reaction that is why people wouldn’t feel safe talking about why they don’t feel safe in that group. Why would anyone want to speak up about their struggles if all they’re going to be met with is:

Well I’m having a great time so clearly you can’t be having a bad one.

Here are all the ways that you having a problem has ruined everything and should make you feel guilty.

Here are all the ways that you are wrong in your feelings, and in the wrong for stating that there is a problem.

In fact I’m going to kick out the people that stood up for you and list it as “complaining and making an outburst” as the reason for being kicked out.

And because they dared to take one for the team and speak to me about the triggers other people brought to their attention, I’m going to suddenly decide that everything they do in the whole grpc is just to attack me. Now they’re a bad person, because someone asked for help and you’re a bad person for asking for help.

I’m going to kick them out and make sure everyone in the group knows they’re a piece of shit and also shit talk everything else that they do in the grpc-- because despite having my own glee rp, it’s decided that any glee rp they make is obviously an attack against me. 

Clearly, nobody has a problem because I said so and amidst all this, nobody else has complained so.... 

The clear truth is, these two weren’t vilified and kicked out of DK until they started to get an influx of apps on their own roleplay group and the admins made it very clear that they were unhappy that there was another D/s group in the tags. 

I read things myself that were very obvious examples of bullying autistic people for showing autistic traits. I ran these screencaps by people in the community that are also autistic or have learning disabilities and what I was told hurts me to my core. The same things I saw happening in DK happen to them all of the time in roleplays. Maybe people don’t realize it, but it has happened in that group. Maybe you’ll get a better understanding of it all after @disabilityrph comes out with her guide, explaining all of the ways (subtle too) that she and other people with learning disabilities have been bullied in the community. I think you’re forgetting that bulling isn’t just pushing people down physically or being obvious with insults, it’s microaggressions too. It’s having an attitude with autistic players that you don’t have with other people. Bullying can be subtle. You may have been bullied and you didn’t even realize it.

The fact of the matter is, what happened in DevilsKey was M/s activity. It was non con. What would you do if someone raped you and then was like, “Well it only happened once, so why are you calling me a rapist?” The fact of the matter is, it happened, and that makes it an M/s rp. If that is allowed to continue to be part of the plots that people are playing with in their server (aka they are playing out the trauma caused by it), if they are going to allow non con punishments of that nature to happen in the future, then they are an M/s rp and need to be labeled appropriate so that nobody is triggered. If you can’t figure out how to dole out punishments in a way that does not break the rules of D/s by forcing kink and traumatizing people in and out of character, then you don’t belong running a D/s rp. 

Because another fact of the matter is that D/s is used by survivors of trauma as a means to overcome their past. There is no reason at all that anyone should expect non con in a D/s setting. To find it would be triggering to a lot of people. Maybe not you, but that just makes you privileged. We’re not in an era where flaunting your privilege (like you did with this anon) is cute anymore. It’s ugly. 

Another fact of the matter is that people were made to feel upset by one of the admins, and both admins allowed the roleplayers as a group to talk shit about the people who were triggered in the ooc chat. The immediate response should have been to step in and tell them that they needed to stop. There is no reason for someone to point out that people are hurt and then allow a mass attack on those people in the ooc. You were already told that the people that were triggered were feeling too anxious to come forward, so you allowed them to be attacked and proved to all of them why they should never speak to you about anything. Who would want to speak up about being triggered in a group where doing so will only end in them feeling like the whole roleplay is going to hate them by the time they wake up? Look at what you guys did to the two people that did take credit for wanting to make things right. And now me.

All of the stuff that I have seen has happened through my research indicates that there are a lot of things that need to be exposed. There needs to be accountability taken instead of trying to launch a smear campaign against people that did the right thing and stood up to bullies. 

I’m still laughing at that GLEE IS OVER, WHY ARE YOU HERE bullshit. Are you kidding me? Why are you here? It still baffles me that you guys are so privileged and so entitled that you think that you’re the only people that can be honestly and genuinely interested in the glee rp community. Which is why, after seeing your group try to shift the blame on these two people over and over and over again in different ways every time they’re proven to be baseless, I’ve just come to the conclusion that there never was an issue on your side and everything that is being done just proves the absolute lack of maturity that’s going on from your side of things. 

What do I mean by that? Well here’s the timeline of excuses, so far:

They stole DK when they made TDS.

Oh wait, TDS was made in 2017 so they’re just stealing ideas.

Oh wait, TDS has a completely different plot and CAN’T use ideas... they stole our NPCs.

Oh wait, they don’t have NPCs? They stole our OC.

Oh wait, the player created her own OC and you can’t be mad at people for writing their own muses? They made up drama in the ooc then.

That one player that wrote a Dom character was “too much like a Dom ooc” (which proves you know nothing about D/s if you think that’s an scary offense?)

You mean you have screenshots of people saying they were triggered so we can’t say that didn’t happen? Well they said this was an M/s rp and we’re upset about it.

You mean this is an M/s rp because we have M/s content so it can’t be called D/s without being triggering? Then they made people uncomfortable, we won’t explain how or why because there is none. I’ve read the entire three server’s worth of information through screenshots, I’ve seen these two interacting with people IC and I’ve seen them plotting and joking OOC right up until the point they were kicked out though.

Why would they open a Glee rp anyway? What even is Glee? Who has a Glee rp? Clearly, we’re the only ones that made our own groups innocently. These people purposefully joined our group so that they could make theirs and ruin us! (Nevermind that they have other Glee rps, and those were started months and years ago)

This is what the timeline should have looked like:

Oh, you’re telling me that I have triggered people by not labeling my roleplay group properly? People didn’t feel like they were warned about the content that was going to be in place and taking over all three servers? 

Please, explain that to me because I don’t know if I understand it correctly because I disagree with you-- but you just said people are upset and triggered, so I would like to fully understand with no malice intended, in order to better take care of my roleplay group and the people in it. 

Oh, maybe I don’t want to label it an M/s rp and maybe I personally think you can traumatize people with D/s and have it still be real D/s, but I’m going to stop the plot, take some time to research, and better understand this situation. 

Maybe I still don’t want to label it an M/s rp after doing research on D/s and trauma, because I don’t like the stigma in the glee rp community about it, but what I will do is I will put a more clear label on the main and in the server channels somewhere. That way nobody is surprised by this again, and everyone joining knows what they are getting into. None of the admins wants anyone to be triggered because they don’t expect non con. 

Then a simple addressing the issue post in the announcements channel where they explain that new information has come to your attention that has made you reconsider a few things; that things will be a little different moving forward (either you will do zero non con and never use D/s to traumatize characters or you will put a label that says that excessive force and non con can be used in this group, so it’s not traditional safe, sane, and consensual D/s) but that you know everyone will help you keep things going.

Never out that someone was upset. Never out that you don’t personally agree in the ooc chat, because you don’t want them to feel alienated or as if you didn’t listen to their concern. Don’t allow players to argue the new way of things in the ooc, let players know if they do say anything negative about it that they need to be mindful of other players in the group as well, because everyone has thoughts and feelings. With your secret knowledge that people were triggered, you should have known better than to let people shit talk like that. Your first concern should not have been your plot or your pride, it should have been to focus on the fact that someone was upset and you should have wanted to clearly understand why so that you could fix it. And you definitely shouldn’t have guilted and attacked your players for not being comfortable coming to you ooc. Yeah, that would be the goal and hope, but it’s not their fault that you make them uncomfortable. Trying to make it out to be their fault and attacking them for it is only going to make people even more uncomfortable with you. 

And the “outbursts” from those two players? I read it. They screencapped it when it happened, because they had been warned that they might be removed for speaking up about their friends being triggered. They said nothing wrong. Everything they said was right. One of them very politely said what I just said the admin should have, which was that nobody should be trying to make anyone else feel invalidated by hopping into the group chat to talk about how they didn’t feel uncomfortable so it was preposterous that anyone else might be. She asked people to use more inclusive language, to remember that whatever they feel... it was obvious that other people felt differently. It was obvious that people were hurting. And the other player explained how it was traumatic to people to mislabel something as D/s and when your main says “safe, sane, and consensual” but you allow NON CONSENSUAL, that it’s triggering because that makes non con unexpected. Which it is. Very much so. I think the reaction from everyone outside of Devils Key should prove that. Non con should not have to be on the banned kink list in a D/s rp because non con is already banned by the basic rules of RACK and the very phrase they put on their main. 

You can’t say a person will have a “safe, sane, and consensual” experience and then attach electrical currents to their genitals while you rape them anally for hours and damage their physical health by pouring something that’s very nearly poisonous down their throat for hours while they’re naked in the middle of town square, with a bunch of other people who are also getting non consensually abused for a full week. 

I don’t know how much clearer I can be on that. I don’t know why it wasn’t clear in the first place. The fact that bringing this up to the admins is what started this all is mind blowing. How are you going to kick people out of your roleplay for letting you know that people were triggered? How are you going to kick people out of your roleplay because they have their own group that was made in 2017? Admins are allowed to remove people at their own discretion, but this isn’t just kicking people out. This is purposefully slandering and bullying people because they dared to tell you that you had hurt people and because they dared to love the same glee rp community that we are all still trying to thrive in and THAT is DISGUSTING. 

The fact that YOU have a good time there, does not negate all of the negative experiences of other people. 

[clubnail]

The Secret to a Good Anti-Aging Face Cream? Your Own Blood Cells.

Why I Flew to Munich to Meet Dr. Barbara Sturm

In January, I set aside time to meet with Dr. Barbara Sturm. Since I was moving to Switzerland, I thought I should get to know my beauty neighbors. It was actually my third trip to visit a woman pioneering the beauty space. My first trip was to interview Susanne Kaufmann at her detox clinic in Austria. The second was to meet with Sophie Guillon, of Valmont. And last week I hopped on a 45-minute flight headed from Zurich to Munich.

It was my first time in Munich and my first impressions of Germany’s capital city were charming. All of the buildings are painted different colors which lends to a very quaint look. Before my meeting, I only had time for a quick beetroot latte (think matcha latte but with beets instead) and a matcha bowl at Bite Delite – you must go. After my power lunch, a few selfies and a super fast shopping spree at Theresa, I hopped in a cab headed for Dr. Barbara Sturm.

Her main clinic is in Duesseldorf, Germany and in Munich she runs a small office right inside her home. I showed up promptly at 4 o’clock for my appointment, (not a minute too early or too late, in typical Swiss fashion), and her longtime Practice Manager Uli kindly let me in. I was also greeted by Pepper, her 2-year-old daughter. I was led inside her apartment into a tiny and very sterol medical office. I had barely sat down before out popped Dr. Sturm. Dressed in skinny jeans, chic black ballet flats in a thin white tee, she looked more like a friend than a doctor. Her hair is one of those short manageable looks that one could only dream of pulling off, and bright blond. I knew this was going to be good.

Dr. Sturm’s Story

“I’m not a beauty junkie. I grew up in the forest, climbing trees. I had never seen eyeliner until I was 24 probably. I didn’t have highlights. I was wearing jeans and t-shirt and guys’ shoes probably. I was 24 and a designer friend at my ex-husband’s company said, ‘We need to go shopping.’ I got a manicure and pedicure and my first blond highlights. I bought short leather skirts and heels. And all of the sudden, I mean I was 24 and all of the men were paying attention to me.”

Sturm began in pediatric medicine and then transitioned into sports medicine and orthopedics. In 2000, she helped develop a procedure called Orthokine with a team of researchers. Also known as the Kobe Procedure, named for the former Lakers basketball player Kobe Bryant (who needed it for his problematic knees), the surgery involves using the patient’s own blood cells to produce proteins that help reduce inflammation and stimulate the healing process.

She didn’t get into the world of beauty until years later when a friend invited her to Bavaria to learn about aesthetic injections and wrinkles. With her scientific background, she didn’t like the concept of constantly injecting someones face again and again. This led her to her own idea. “It didn’t make much sense. I wanted to do something on the cellular level so I transferred the knowledge of my study in orthopedics to the skin and that’s how I started. This worked really well. I did loads of reports and case studies.”

Around the same time, she was experiencing major issues within her own skin. She was seeing a facialist every 3 weeks for a cleaning. “My facialist who was working out of the little drugstore was giving me La Prairie and all these super expensive products to use and nothing was working.”

“And so I said to Uli, who was already working for me, we need to come up with our own cream. And I said that I want to do a gene cream or something. My Grandmother was a Pharmacist and she had told me what used to be in the creams. I took that knowledge to my own pharmacist and we created a base cream and added cells from my blood. And ever since then I never even need to go and see a facialist. All my skin issues stopped. It’s really the only thing I use morning and night and on my eyes. I am also very lazy, I just want to have something that works. Most people have all these allergies and skin conditions, redness, this is all from over using products that are overly aggressive. A lot of people are super sensitive so they just need something simple that works. Their skin can’t handle the multi-step skincare routine.”

“I’m very proud of what I developed. The cream worked for me, so I started giving this to all my patients. I was already working with all these Hollywood people, but they were already used to a whole regime of stuff. They’d ask what cleansers would work for this and that, but I couldn’t really recommend anything. Whatever I tried, I never really liked it. So I decided to make a couple of products in addition to the MC1 cream.”

Dr. Sturm’s Favorite Products

“I always wanted to have a hyaluronic serum in my products, because I was injecting this in the wrinkles already with my patients. And at the time, nobody had it. The company I worked with (and still do) have the highest technological standards, so we use the highest concentration of hyaluronic acid possible. It has the short chain and the long chain molecules. The short chain molecules really go deep and the long chain molecules they stay on the skin and they give instant hydration and glow.”

“So I just started with a few products… The cream, the hyaluronic acid serum, a cleanser and a scrub.This was my little routine that I recommended to all my patients.” Now we have added more products. We have this anti-aging primer with no silicones and these really cool sun drops, have you tried the sun drops? You have to.

She also told me about her eye cream and calming serum… “Try this eye cream, put it on your eyes now, even over your makeup. Cher says it’s the best stuff she has put on in her life. I also have a calming serum. I have patients who come to me and they have red faces and roscea and whatever is going on with their skin, they put on the calming serum on and I tell you 10 seconds later you can see the redness come and you can see this huge difference in their face. It’s crazy.”

MC1

And then out of nowhere, those magical words, “SO. Should we take your blood? For the blood cream?” Well she did and we kept talking. I met her older daughter too, Charlie who is 21 and we all chatted. By the end of the convo, I left like I was in Munich to visit an old friend.

It only took a few days before a tiny package arrived from Munich. It was my very own blood cell cream. In the meantime, I successfully stopped using all of my other products so that I could experiment with her line only. While I know that I will always be someone who uses all different kinds of products from a variety of lines, I wanted to test this out Dr. Sturm’s line to really see the effects.

Dr. Sturm’s Motto

Dr. Sturm’s motto is “less is more, but from the less, the very best.”

Her line is perfect for the modern day girl because each product is concentrated with high-performing, high-quality products that will keep your skin plump and youthful. She believes in letting the skin heal, free from peels, glycolic acid and lasers.The whole idea behind MC1 and the rest of the line was to replicate naturally, the effect of fillers and cosmetic procedures. So, the goal is anti-aging, longterm healthy skin and to put it bluntly, less fillers. This isn’t to say that her line is only for 30-somethings and up. In fact, it’s for everyone. It’s even safe to use when pregnant and I watched her as she used the face cream on her 2-year-old.

Her skin philosophy regarding anti-aging is using products that take care of the cells. She believes in the power of reducing inflammation to prevent cells from naturally occurring cell death. She warned against using to much retinol and suggested using it only in the winter just for 3 or 4 weeks, but very carefully and never too often.

My Takeaway

With or without the MC1 Cream, Sturm’s line is worth the investment. Each product is filled to the brim with really good, clean ingredients that are all free from fragrance, parabens and mineral oils. Within days of using her Hyaluronic Serum and her Face Cream, my skin is smoother and visibly more hydrated. I swapped her face cream for my very own MC1 and I hate to say (because of the massive price tag) that love it. Like the rest of her products, the cream is oderless. The color is bright white and the texture is rich and creamy. It reminds me a bit of the texture of the SkinCeuticals Triple Lipid that I love so much. It goes on smooth and it absorbs right away. And all her products are really good for pre-makeup application! Her Hyaluronic Serum is one of the lightest serums I’ve ever used. It glides on like silk. The Eye Cream is part cream, part serum and it too is incredible. Next to the MC1 cream, it’s my favorite products from the line. You can apply makeup immediately after and there is no flaking or balling up. I also need to mention how much I love her Anti-Aging Primer.Think makeup and skincare in one. It’s has the pearlized effect (made with pearl pigments) and Hyaluronic Acid, so that makeup looks way better. Also, her Sun Drops are super cool. The idea here is to mix 2 to 3 drops with your moisturizer, serums or foundation for a super potent anti-aging shield of protection.

Have you tried her line and what are you favs?

The Secret to a Good Anti-Aging Face Cream? Your Own Blood Cells. syndicated from http://ift.tt/2kHgYTQ

[omcik-blog]

New Post has been published on OmCik

New Post has been published on http://omcik.com/wall-street-to-trump-read-our-lips-just-fix-taxes/

Wall Street to Trump: Read our lips. Just fix taxes

To paraphrase former President George H.W. Bush, Wall Street has a message for President Trump.

Read our lips. Just focus on taxes.

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Yes, the stock market has enjoyed a solid rally during the first 100 days of Trump’s term in the White House. The Dow is up more than 6% and not far from an all-time high.

Some of that has to do with strong earnings from Corporate America, continued signs of a resilient (if not necessarily robust) jobs market and optimism about economic rebound in Europe and renewed momentum in China.

But several investing experts say that the main reason for the rally is the continued hope that Trump will be able to come up with a plan (that Congress will approve) to lower taxes — particularly for large businesses.

Wall Street is willing to let Trump’s failure to quickly repeal and replace Obamacare slide.

Many strategists and portfolio managers aren’t too concerned that Trump will prioritize building a wall on the border with Mexico and crack down further on immigration.

Related: Trump’s 15% business tax is lowest for a big economy

And ironically enough, investors don’t even seem to think that undoing the Dodd-Frank financial reform laws from the Obama administration should be a big priority either.

They want to see movement on the tax front. In particular, Wall Street is hoping that any tax changes will allow for big companies with cash sitting overseas to be able to bring back, or repatriate, the money to the United States at a one-time lower rate.

Tech giants Apple (AAPL, Tech30), Microsoft (MSFT, Tech30), Google parent Alphabet (GOOGL, Tech30), Cisco (CSCO, Tech30) and Oracle (ORCL, Tech30) are sitting on more than half a trillion dollars in cash — with a big chunk of that sitting in overseas bank accounts.

Other big companies, like industrial conglomerate GE (GE), also has a significant amount of cash abroad.

Related: Trump’s tax plan could cost an estimated $5.5 trillion

With the Federal Reserve now looking to keep raising short-term interest rates, Wall Street is turning to Trump to help stimulate the economy. Corporate tax reform could be the answer.

And while some fear companies will just increase dividends and buy back stock with the cash — moves that would help shareholders but not average Americans with little invested in stocks — some think Trump could force companies to do more.

“The repatriation of taxes could help the most,” said TD Ameritrade chief market strategist JJ Kinahan. “But companies would have to reinvest a certain percentage of that in infrastructure. Trump has to make companies put their cash to work.”

Related: How Trump’s tax plan would help the wealthy (and Trump)

A.B. Mendez, a portfolio manager with Frost Investment Advisors added that Trump could take it a step further and require that companies use some of the cash to explicitly hire more workers and build new plants in the United States.

“Repatriation is an opportunity for Trump to create jobs. He can leverage his business background when he has more meetings with CEOs,” Mendez said.

“A meaningful part of repatriated cash should be used for capital expenditures, jobs and retraining — and not just for financial engineering,” he added.

Investors around the world share that assessment.

Luca Paolini, chief strategist with Pictet Asset Management in London, said that global investors think tax reform should be the number one priority for Trump.

Infrastructure spending/stimulus and deregulation of the health care and financial industries should take a backseat to taxes.

Paolini added that even though getting any significant changes to tax laws will not be easy, he thinks it’s a mistake to assume that Trump’s inability to kill the Affordable Care Act is a sign that he and Congress can’t come to an agreement on taxes.

But Wall Street is hoping that Trump will be able to help the little guy as well.

Related: Here’s Trump’s record on the middle class

Dave Haviland, managing partner at Beaumont Capital Management, said it will be equally important for Trump to try and simplify the tax code.

“If people in the financial industry are having difficulty filling out their tax returns, then the process is way too complicated,” he said.

So the message from investors seems to be pretty clear. Dear Mr. President. Stop tweeting. Put down the phone. Forget about the wall and attacks on the media. Head over to Capitol Hill and get something done on taxes.

“If Trump can get changes in only one area, the hope is that will be tax reform. That would be doable,” said Dan Miller, director of equities at GW&K Investment Management. “Tax reform can drive earnings to an even higher level.”

CNNMoney (New York) First published April 27, 2017: 12:50 PM ET

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