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disorganizedkitten · 10 months ago

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This Is The Road To Ruin Chapter One

Harry Potter | 2022 | 6,362 | Ao3 | Masterlist | Next

And We're Starting At The End Magic is real. That's probably supposed to be the most important bit, here, but to Eden's kids that doesn't mean much. There are a lot of magical children without families, just as there are even more nonmagical children without them. Eden's takes them both and tells them to get along, it's probably just genetics. The actual important bit is this: Harry Doe gets his Hogwarts letter on July 24th, 1991. For someone who's birthday is November 11th, 1980, that's a touch odd, but whatever. For someone whose magic doesn't work quite right, that's more odd, but he knows better than to look a gift horse in the mouth. Adapting to a largely new culture, making friends, and spontaneously bleeding whenever he's around a specific professor? Yeah, so there's a Reason Florine didn't think he'd make it to Hogwarts. Still, he's gonna make the best of it; even if that means ignoring That Weird Potter Kid, befriending the Obviously Raised By A Serial Killer Dormmate, and joining a conspiracy labelled 'blue and yellow make green for a reason, children'.

24/7/91

Harry got his Hogwarts letter today! He was so happy about it. I am too. We haven’t been able to tell Clemencia yet, but everyone else knows. Aletris is already teasing him about his future house, although Hana’s reactions make me think he’s not remembering them right. Or maybe she’s just teasing; I don’t remember them either. They’re not important, so long as he makes friends and feels comfortable.

Ravenclaw is the perfect place for the girls, so I can only hope Harry goes to one perfect for him.

... don’t tell Harry, but I was a little worried he wouldn’t get one. And it’s a year early, that worries me. We’re not going to edit the birth certificate, but if magic reads his birthday as before September first, that opens a whole new set of opportunities for his birth family. I don’t want them to find him, but we’ve had this conversation before.

I was worried that his shapeshifting was going to be like Tansy’s smoke, a sign that something was supremely wrong and the wizarding world didn’t want him either.

I might be jealous, but only a little bit. I don’t want to know what would’ve happened if they were successful.

Anyway, we’re picking up Clem first thing tomorrow morning, and heading off to Diagon Alley! Hana says that she has most of the third year booklist too, so we can get their supplies all at once, and send someone for the final things in August. Aletris-

***

Minerva McGonagall, Transfiguration Professor at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, hummed as she looked at the unfortunately familiar building. Eden’s was painted on the little picket sign in the front yard, with a tree curving up over the word and an apple leaf instead of an apostrophe. Despite the sadness implicit in this place, she forced her thoughts to warm, considering the letter in her pocket.

It was a familiar name, which made the trek to this place simultaneously more and less depressing.

She entered the gate, looking warmly over the well-used yard. There were kids playing in a sprinkler on one side, and she waved when one of them caught her eye. That set off a chain reaction of kids waving, which made Minerva smile. How cute.

She rapped sharply on the door, as was her custom, and was let in by the Matron of this not-orphanage. Minerva had called it an orphanage once and was promptly treated to a lecture about how orphanages were dead.

“Hey,” she said with an easy smile. Mrs. Konstantina Calmiris was also a widow, and Minerva was relatively sure they had almost been in the same year, or would have been had Konstantina had magic. She was stout and kind, with graying blonde hair and blue/hazel heterochromia. As Minerva had heard it, Mrs. Calmiris had started the group home out of a severe case of empty-nester’s syndrome after her child had run off to the circus with her full approval.

She also, oddly enough, had quite the knowledge of magic. Minerva had considered sending an Obliviator after her, but decided that it was justified as Mrs. Calmiris was essentially the single parent of fifteen kids. And with the number of muggleborns Minerva had delivered letters to either in this building or who had come back to this building at some point in summer, obliviating her would have been more work than it was worth anyway.

“Good Morning, Mrs. Calmiris,” Minerva returned, just as warmly.

“Is that Professor McGonagall?”

Mrs. Calmiris grinned impishly and shouted down the hallway. “Yes, actually!”

There was an excited yell, and one of her sixth-year lions came scrambling out of the drawing room. Jeanette Scott. “Awesome! Professor, I had a question about the Fawcett principle; it said in chapter seven that all transfigurations are finite and will fade, depending on the amount of magic put into it, right? But then what about magically transfigured houses? By all accounts they should fall, making it a completely illegal and unsafe building practice!”

“The key to that, Miss Scott, is the materials. If you transfigured the shape of wood, but not the amount, the transfiguration doesn’t fade because there’s no extra energy there. The same cannot be said of turning your teacup into a kitten; not only do you change the mass, you change the properties.”

“Huh,” Scott said. “Thanks, Professor. Are you here for Harry?”

“Likely,” Minerva hummed. “Harry Doe?”

“That’s the one. I’ll go get him.” Jeanette ducked outside.

Mrs. Calmiris led her to the same office she had used every other time – Konstantina didn’t allow strangers, especially adults, into her children’s rooms, ever. It had been a fight the first time Minerva came to Eden’s, nine years ago.

Minerva took her seat with grace. They existed in silence, Konstantina digging through her papers from behind her desk. “July thirty-first,” she murmured, nose in her pocket calendar.

Minerva hummed inquiringly.

Konstantina glanced up and shot her a tight smile, before putting a note in one of her many, many files. “You deliver letters exactly a week before birthdays, correct?”

“Yes,” Minerva agreed.

There was a knock on the door, and then a child popped their head in. “Jeanie said I was needed, Tanti?”

“Yeah, come on in, Hawthorne.”

Hadn’t they said Harry?

He came in all the way and closed the door; after a quick glance at the other chair in the office, he hopped onto a clear corner of the desk instead. Minerva tried in vain to smother her smile as he looked at her, feet kicking. He was surprisingly pale for a child so late in summer, with just the touches of a sunburn across his nose and arms, wet, dark hair plastered to his forehead, and slightly disturbing eyes. They were bright green, as though someone had caught the killing curse in marbles and stuck them in. There was a pang of sadness as she pushed away a niggling sense of recognition; there had been too many orphans made of the last war, orphans whose parents she’d taught or fought with personally.

“Are you Mr. H. Doe, of the Mint Room?”

“Yep. Hawthorne Doe, nice to meet you.”

“You as well,” she said warmly. As likely as it was that he already knew of magic, she still looked forward to explaining. “I’m Professor McGonagall, of Hogwarts school of Witchcraft and Wizardry.”

As she spoke, a look of excited awe dawned over Doe’s face. “Is this- do you- I thought not until next year?”

And oh, Minerva realized with a pang. The poor child didn’t even know his own birthday. “No, Mr. Doe. We’d love to see you on September first.” She offered the letter, green ink glimmering in the office’s light.

He took it reverently, smoothing out the folds gently. “You’re sure I’m supposed to go?"

“The magic is never wrong, Mr. Doe. You’re part of the 1991 intake.”

She watched happily as a smile slid over his face, and he turned to look at Mrs. Calmiris. “Can I go tell the others?”

“Pack your bag for the weekend, and I’ll take you over.”

His smile managed to get brighter. “Thank you! And you, Professor!” he added, turning to her. “Do I need to pen a formal acceptance?”

“Merely say you’ll be there on September first, Mr. Doe, and it’ll be official.”

He nodded. “I’m absolutely going to be at Hogwarts September first.”

“Good, now, before I let you go-“ she made sure to stress the statute of secrecy, knowing it would likely be ignored anyway and not caring as much as she likely should, and also handed him a card for the Hogwarts Stipend. “Present this to the Goblins at Gringotts, and it should cover most if not all of your supplies.”

Mrs. Calmiris didn’t even try to argue this time; the first few, she had, because apparently the muggle government gave her a stipend per child that she would gladly use to cover the expenses, but Minerva had talked her into it the second summer, after Konstantina had met her fuming about the home that one of her kids had been in for the first half of the summer. Minerva convinced her that even if she covered their expenses while she watched them, the money could be put into savings accounts and be there for an emergency, or, if all went well, be used to buy friends Christmas presents.

***

Tanti, as Mrs. Calmiris preferred her kids to call her (because it sounded like tante and Mrs. Calmiris was nothing if not in love with languages) was the best, for a multitude of reasons, but the most common one was that she got it. She’d had many kids throughout her years, and she understood and noticed that some of them got more attached than others did. She put in the work to make sure that they stayed in contact, if not outright together, which had been Harry’s saving grace when he was seven. Jacinta had moved out as soon as she was eighteen, moving in with Aletris and Florine instead. As she’d raised him up until that point, it was a big change. He shuddered to think of how bad his abandonment issues would be if he hadn’t been allowed to visit.

Tanti made him promise to have one of them call her if he wasn’t coming home tomorrow night (he kindly didn’t tell her that this apartment was more home than Eden’s nowadays) before leaving him at the bottom of their building, secure in the knowledge that he’d be okay.

With his siblings, what else could he be? He made his way upstairs to their apartment, and opened the door with a grin, catching sight of his favorite sister right away.

“Jacinta! Guys, guess what?”

“Celosia’s food arrived?” Jacinta asked, only half serious. Or so Harry hoped. She was reading A Dramatic Retelling Of The Midnight Ride , the cover done mostly in bright blues and yellows reminiscent of a Van Gogh painting.

"Not yet," Harry said, kicking the door closed and dropping his suitcase in the tiny entryway. "Are you running low?"

He hoped not, but he couldn't remember the last time they had gotten food. He could talk them into swinging by the pet store when they go to Diagon Alley, though.

"No," Jacinta said. "He's just whiny."

Harry ducked his head, hiding a fond smile she wouldn’t see anyway, and darted into the little living room.

The Garden Apartment was small, with only two bedrooms, one bath, and a kitchen-dining-living room that bled together. It could, generously, be called an open floor plan, with the kitchen and dining room each taking up a quarter of the floor, separated by a counter, while the other half had stained beige carpet and was their living room, denoted by the blue tie-dye sofa and large, glass windows. And the snake cage, with a heavy heat lamp and brightly colored serpent inside. "Celosia!"

"Two-leaf!" The snake said, rearing up happily. "Smoke-nestmate is a wonderful hunter, you should let her teach you!"

"She is," Harry agreed, a little uncomfortable. Florine's 'hunting' was… not something they talked about. "How are you?" He reached down, and Celosia wrapped around his wrist.

Celosia began to regale him with tales of sneaking around the kitchen to try and eat a raw egg without Aletris catching him.

Celosia was a blue coral snake, scales done primarily in dark blue, but with a pillar box red head and tail, and two light blue stripes connecting them.

Harry carried Celosia over and leaned on Jacinta's back. "You didn't guess my news."

Jacinta went stiff for half a second. Harry pressed harder into her side. Jacinta took a deep breath, and when she spoke next it was a little warmer, a little more excited. "Are you going to Hogwarts?"

"I'm going to Hogwarts!" Harry agreed, vibrating.

She leaned back into him, catching his head in a one-armed hug. "I'm proud of you."

"Thank you," Harry said softly. "Do you know where the others are?"

She nodded, twisting off her chair. "Aletris and Tansy are shopping, Clem's at work, and Hana's been practicing for her marathon. Clemsr's still with the Gibsons, so she won't be here for dinner but I'll get Hana."

Jacinta Pérez was an odd woman, but Harry wouldn't trade her for the world. Aside from her latent ability to locate her family, she was also an absolute flower nerd - specifically, their meanings. Thus, everyone but Harry had a matching nickname, and his wasn't flower related only because Jacinta had been able to give him a flower as his legal name.

Hawthorns were a flower of love and protection. Tansys were violent, a declaration of war . Edelweiss was for courage, devotion and loyalty. Salvia for connections, thinking of you. Heliotrope for ambition, Cornflower a good luck charm.

(Harry meant ruler. Florine meant flower. Aletris meant corn grinder. Jacinta for beautiful, drawn from the Greek Hyacinth. Hana meant happiness, drawn from another flower. Clemencia meant merciful.)

"Well," Jacinta said, letting him bring her to the living room. "Tell me all about it!"

He grinned, sat down beside her, and started talking.

***

"Florine!"

"Why is there screaming?" His eldest sister asked, half-materializing in the kitchen. The smoke of her form moved back and forth over brown skin, solidifying into groceries every time more wrapped around her hand. Florine Dupont and Jacinta Peréz could easily be mistaken for biological siblings, something they’d taken advantage of many times; both had brown skin and dark hair; black in Florine’s case, and brown in Jacinta’s. Florine’s eyes were hazel, when they weren’t a surprisingly demonic white.

"Harry reached a milestone ," Jacinta sung proudly, leisurely following his mad dash to the kitchen.

Harry slammed into her middle, not minding the freezing mist that danced around them both. "I'm going to Hogwarts!"

"You're- Harry that's great!" There was a clatter as she dropped the rest of the groceries and scooped him up. There was the vicious feeling of too-hot too-cold not-there and then they were in the living room and she was cupping his face, brown eyes jubilant. Harry grinned back at her.

"I know!"

There were things they didn't talk about with the other witches in the family, like the fact that neither of their magic worked quite right. Harry hadn't expected a letter, even though Jacinta told him to keep his hopes up. (He told himself he would be okay if it never came, but he'd been dreading next summer - dreading the confirmation he was a freak, even among magicals.)

Hot-cold fingers brushed away the tears he hadn't noticed were welling up. "You're going to be amazing," she murmured softly.

"They're going to think I'm weird," he whispered back.

"Pity them," Florine said seriously. "If they're so closed minded to care, they're not worth it anyway."

He nodded, and dangit, he wasn't supposed to cry, this is a good thing, it's just-

It's just-

(Jacinta never said she was magical, but Harry will eat his own hand if Seeing isn't a magical gift. Florine has always been magical but people are scared of her, call her a monster, a killer, and they're not wrong. Harry was magical from the moment they met him, a screaming child who couldn't stop changing his face, his limbs, who made Jacinta taste blood the first time she held him.)

(Hana and Clemencia never talk about that, never get odd, awed or disgusted looks just from using their magic.)

It's just a lot.

Florine kept brushing away his tears as they came faster, to the background noise of Jacinta putting away groceries.

He's going to Hogwarts.

He's going to Hogwarts!

It feels surreal.

***

Aletris didn't trip on the bags at the door only due to his wonderful ability to walk blind. He stepped over and took in the scene in moments. Jacinta was putting away groceries, singing louder than usual. Florine was in the living room, for a given value of in, considering the amount of smoke bleeding off her into the air, wrapped around with Hawthorne.

He left them to it, instead helping Jacinta. She didn't look at him for long, but she greeted him by bumping into him. He bumped back, and when her singing stuttered a few minutes later, started a new beat.

She sang along.

***

Clemencia grabbed for the nearest hand, looking in horror at the crowded interior of the Leaky Cauldron. How the heck did it manage to get more crowded than when booklists came?

"Looks like we're aiming to be done before lunch," Aletris said, on the other side of Harry. Florine was after him, fingers curled into his sleeve, with Jacinta looped tightly at the elbow and keeping up a running commentary in Sign Language. Hana brought up the rear, wand in her teeth. She wasn't hanging on yet.

Clemencia groaned.

Hana shook her head. "Just- let's do this fast."

Clemencia took off through the crowd to the back alley. The tavern was hidden with repelling charms, strong enough that Aletris always closed his eyes and let them guide him in to avoid a debilitating headache. Once inside, the entrance to the actual shopping district was down a dingy hallway, back outside to a group of rubbish bins and a blank brick wall. She wasn't sure why there were so many layers of concealment on the shopping district, but it did give her a chance to stop and look back at her littlest brother. "Ready for this, Haz?"

Harry nodded at her.

She slipped her wand out of the pocket she'd sewn into her sleeve, and reached up to tap the proper brick. Edge of the gray rubbish bin, five up, seven left, and a double tap.

***

Harry gasped. It wasn't… it wasn't a new sight, not really, but somehow it felt like one.

Maybe because this was the first time he was going as a student.

Usually by now one of them had pushed forward, but it seemed everyone was waiting for Harry to lead the way. He didn’t move. The alley was bright and casually magical, with storefronts whose letters moved and displays that flickered with enchantments to mimic screens; the people were a hodgepodge of not-quite-Victorian dress and robes, with various headwear that Harry found himself cooing over and side-eyeing in turns.

And yet, despite the familiar sight, despite the support at his back, he wasn’t moving. Someone slipped their hand back into his, squeezing. Harry closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He squeezed Florine’s hand in return, and then glanced up at her. “Can we skip the threshold?”

“Sure.”

There was the uncomfortable feeling of his skin ripping apart, the rush of tripping into snow or a cold river, of standing too close to a fire, frostbite and freezer burn, and then he inhaled sharply as his lungs reformed. Florine had reformed them in the same positions, so Harry tugged her arm up so he could spin in and curl up; Aletris' swing dancing lessons had been passed on and reappropriated. She moved with him, pressing him to her side.

"Come on," Jacinta said from behind, skittering her fingers up his shoulder blade. "Your friends are waiting."

And, like he always had and always would, Harry believed her.

He shifted so he wasn't leaning quite so much weight onto Florine's side, and as a unit, they stepped forward.

***

"It wasn't this crowded last time," Harry said, looking at the lines inside the bank apprehensively. Jacinta had linked elbows with him as they climbed the stairs, and was now building a twelve string leaf pattern bookmark.

"No, it wasn't," Clemencia agreed, eyeing the crowds both inside and out with distaste. “We usually come early so we avoid the letters crowd, I wonder what’s going on?”

“I haven’t seen signs for any sales or book signings,” Hana said. “Maybe it’s a holiday?”

“I don’t remember any holidays in July, but I guess it’s possible.”

“Wasn’t there something about celebrating some famous kid’s birthday last year?” Aletris asked.

Hana hummed. “That’s possible, if ridiculous.” She leaned forward and hugged Aletris, before opening one of the large doors for her family. Florine didn’t try to enter this time, just squeezed Harry’s hand before stepping back, fully solid. Aletris stayed out with her. Harry watched as the Goblin Guard’s dark eyes followed Florine until she was off their property, which began at the large marble steps.

Jacinta led them to a line, still focusing on her bookmark.

Harry leaned into her side and looked around. This wasn’t the first time he’d visited Gringotts Wizarding Bank (and every time he wondered at the name; the bank was run by Goblins, so why was it called the wizarding bank? Is there another branch for Centaurs and Werewolves? He’d been trying to find Gringotts Muggling Bank for three years and thus far had failed miserably) but Harry still found the architecture awe-inspiring. It felt like stepping into an ancient cathedral, the ones that featured in books on Renaissance art and stained glass history, if cathedrals were done out of brilliant white stone instead of deep wood.

There were golden arches and inlays, patterned in such a way that Harry was sure they were some sort of hieroglyph, a tall domed ceiling, and no visible light fixtures. The desks lined the walls closest to the door, leaving the open floor for wizards to stand in twisty lines and walk around each other.

Sadly, there weren’t any stained glass inlays. Harry didn’t know much about wizarding history, but he’s sure that anything important enough to become a stained glass window would be fascinating.

Hana and Clem had moved on in conversation, talking about book lists and wondering if this year would be the year they’d get a decent Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher. Harry enjoyed people watching instead.

Some of the wixen were polite to the Goblins, some were sneering, some looked annoyed, and then there were the ones that looked scared. Harry couldn’t blame them that much; Goblins had little, dark eyes like guinea pigs, shark sharp teeth, and leathery, komodo dragon skin; if komodo dragons came in brown and gold. All in all, they were intimidating when you first met them, but it hadn’t taken Harry long to realize they were pretty chill. Loved money, loved weapons, loved to see who could make more interesting threats (Harry had gotten a lot of points for ‘by the time I’m done you won’t have enough soul to reincarnate into a flobberworm’, which he was quite proud of. Even if he hadn’t known until then that souls were real, and could be affected by magic), didn’t like people, and didn’t like threats to their safety.

Hence why Florine had a permanent ban, despite never even misting inside the building. Apparently they could recognize what she was, and didn’t want to risk that in their tunnels.

And even then, they hadn’t been horrible, once they got past the whole ‘ax at her throat bit’. (The ax did not survive the encounter. Florine did.)

Aletris called it Orange-Blue Morality. Florine said Black-White Morality was boring anyway.

“But are you sure he’ll still be using Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them?” Hana said. “The upper years keep expecting him to die over the summer, we might not even get Kettleburn.”

Textbook lists often didn't go out until August, or at the very least later in July, which led to a mob nearly as bad as Boxing Day sales caused. The Ravenclaws had teamed up to ensure they could go shopping whenever (not very many of them liked crowds, which Hawthorne could understand) by talking to upper years and the teachers. Except for Defense Against the Dark Arts, they had a margin of 89% success for getting the right books by passing down old booklists, and that was just because no DADA teacher seemed capable of staying more than a year.

“That one’s on my list,” Harry said.

His sisters turned to look at him, then shot each other questioning looks. “Really?” Clem said. “I wonder who’d be using it.”

“Isn’t DADA supposed to cover creatures at some point?” Hana asked.

“Oh thank goodness, we will have a good teacher this year.”

Harry stifled his giggles, glancing at them in open adoration.

Clemencia Doe was a thirteen year old witch, with white skin and Robin's-egg-blue tips dyed through her short black hair. Her eyes were also blue, although they were river-dark and could easily be mistaken for hazel. She was older of the 'twins', and had a tendency to force situations to work out in her favor, no matter how unusual or unlikely.

Hana Griffiths was younger by four months and not afraid to start a fight. Her best friend outside of the Garden was a Hufflepuff, which explained a lot. She too was white, with dark brown hair she kept longer than her sister's, at mid-bicep. Currently it was loose, brushing her shoulder blades. Hana's eyes were also blue, but a much brighter, clearer shade.

Jacinta, turning twenty-one in two months, was eight years older, with fathomless black eyes that would glow blue when Something Was Happening, brown skin, and darker brown hair, cut to her elbows. Playing with it was another of her coping methods, as was letting her siblings do the same.

Then of course, there was Harry himself. He could whine about how there were no mirrors in Gringotts, but he didn’t need a mirror to know exactly what he looked like at any given point. Harry’s… abnormality was that he could shapeshift. He had a form for each of his siblings, whenever he wanted to feel biologically theirs, and he had his own face. Black hair that curled, pale skin, and bright green eyes. Long fingers, a flat nose, none of Aletris’ freckles or Jacinta’s moles. Although he’d dimmed his eyes today, from smooth greensnake to a muted swamp that made him look more like Clemencia.

Clemencia and he still looked like biological siblings when he was himself, and sometimes he imagined they’d have been cousins had their parents not died.

They were still debating whether or not it was worth it to go off last year’s third-year booklist when they reached a teller. Like most tellers at Gringotts, he was a Goblin. It was a Goblin run bank, so it made sense that Human employees were few and far between.

"We have three for the Hogwarts vault," Hana said, looking up. Despite Goblins being short, they set up their desks tall enough they could look down on most, if not all wizards. The teller sneered down at her.

"Keys?"

They handed their key cards over together, and after a moment of silent inspection, were told everything was 'in order'. The teller called over another Goblin, ("Griphook!") and Jacinta unhooked her elbows and waved them off with a kiss each.

"And you?" The Goblin asked.

Harry didn’t hear Jacinta’s response, but having stayed with her the last two years he knew she had just silently offered up her own key.

“Boneclaw! Take Ms. Rosier to her vault.”

He pretended the tick in his jaw was because he was going into the tunnel system for the first time. Which, to be fair, he was a little nervous. Aletris had gladly stayed out with Florine after saying the carts put him off rollercoasters forever.

On the other hand, Clemencia said it was the most fun of any Diagon trip.

They ended up piling into a minecart, of all things, and setting off down a set of dark railroad tracks.

It was terrifying, and fun. Harry was absolutely joining Clemencia's camp.

Unlike the glowing marble in the main room, the tunnels were lit with lanterns that became orange blurs as the cart picked up speed, pointing downhill. Harry forced himself to look as well as he could, keeping track of their turns just because he could. Many of the turns were jerky, or fake-outs, which were terrifying, and he wasn’t sure if Hana would be able to hear when they finished.

The tunnels, too, were rough-hewn and in some places it looked more like they were going through wide, dark caverns, full of stalagmites and stalactites and some things that looked like actual jewels. Did the goblins use these tunnels as a proper mine? Did they have canaries?

…was there a spell to use so they wouldn’t need a canary to ensure the mine was safe?

Harry was still wondering about that when they reached the Hogwarts Vault. Harry had to lean on his sister because his legs were shaky, which was ridiculous because he hadn’t even used them!

Bodies are weird.

“How do you remember which is a stalactite versus a stalagmite?” He asked, watching Griphook stroke a finger down the side of the vault door frame.

It was Hana who answered. “There’s a rhyme. I think it’s… the ones on the ceiling have to hold tight so they don’t touch the floor, and the ones on the ground might reach the ceiling?"

“That sounds right,” Clemencia agreed. “I learned it as stalactites have a C for ceiling, and Stalagmites have a G for ground.”

The door shuddered, and then melted away. That looked so cool. Harry wondered if they taught that to the other bankers, because he definitely wanted to learn.

“Come on,” Clem said, leading the way. “I want to stay for dinner.”

Harry frowned, but stood up and followed. Clemencia’s current foster family had a curfew, which was fine, and logical, except it was eight in the evening and meant Clemencia barely got to spend time with them.

The vault was tidy, a room carved from stone with layers and layers of little bags hanging from hooks along the walls. They looked like red velvet, with little golden drawstrings. Hana grabbed one for both of them before dropping cross-legged on the floor to ‘key’ it.

Harry fiddled with his, watching as she used her wand to make her finger bleed, before smearing it down the drawstring. The rope didn’t glow, as he half-expected it to; instead, Hana’s blood flashed spring green before vanishing.

“Do you want help with yours?” Hana asked. Harry caught a flash of blue out of the corner of his eye and knew Clemencia had done the same thing.

“What does it do?” He asked, even as he held out his hand for her to poke.

“It’s a blood based enchantment, makes it so no one else can open it.”

Harry paused. “Maybe I shouldn’t.”

Hana opened her mouth, but something in his face made her think twice. She murmured a quick spell to heal both their fingers, and handed him hers. “Here, shift and see if you can get in.”

Two years ago, Jacinta had taken a pre-med class and part of it was learning how to test blood types. Harry’s had changed based on how deeply he shifted into someone else - and, once he’d learned how to do it to just his blood, as he chose.

He didn’t normally think too deeply about it, just accepted that it took more work to shift into a deep copy of Aletris than it did any of his sisters. He wasn’t sure why, considering it took more shifting of organs to truly copy any of them, but more often coloring was enough so it wasn’t like it bothered him.

Harry closed his eyes, felt the change wash over him like a wave of warmth, settling into the feel of Hana Griffiths. Hana felt like sunburns, like standing in a windy meadow and knowing it won’t last. She smelled like vanilla flowers and heliotrope, the same thing Jacinta Saw but could never explain. He felt his hair lengthen and smooth, the weight falling differently. He felt his organs rearrange, his limbs grow. When he pulled, the bag opened halfway before stopping.

He handed it back to her. Clem stopped beside them, looking down in concern. “Everything okay?”

“I’m scared it’ll lock on me,” Harry admitted, falling into his ‘default’ skin in a rush of relaxing muscles and cracking bones. He didn’t like growing his limbs, it always left him awkward and uncoordinated,

The vaguely painful heat on his skin faded, the damp smell of the cavern replacing immaterial winds and flowers.

“Just do it as yourself,” Clem said warmly. “You’re you, Harry, no matter what your face looks like or your blood reads. And if it does mess with it, just use your own face.” Clemencia wasn’t a seer, but sometimes it seemed like the universe answered to her, instead of the other way around. Thus, he believed her.

He grinned up at Clemencia, and closed his eyes, making sure he was himself, completely comfortable in his skin. It felt like flopping into bed, comfortable and safe, warm and unequivocally his.

Hawthorne Doe was a ten year old with glowing eyes and skin that didn’t break, he could talk to snakes and steal faces like a fae left behind. He was young and hopeful and loved with his whole soul, he had nightmares that felt more like memories and he was raised by traumatized pre-teens. He was an orphan and despite that fact had a family he would fight for. His magic smelled like lightning and cold metal, felt like granite and silk.

When he opened his eyes, they were glowing bright enough he could see light reflected on the backs of his hands.

He reached out, let Hana cut his finger and keyed himself into the bag before shifting his skin back over the cut, healing it prematurely. Clemencia helped them both up, before leading them out and to the minecart.

The ride back up was just as fast, even without gravity adding momentum. Harry hid his face in Hana’s back because the air was cold, and he wanted to.

They quite literally stumbled back into the light, not taking nearly enough time to readjust their eyes, and ducked outside to wait on the steps for Jacinta. The sunlight on the marble hurt, especially since they’d just been underground instead of in the equally-bright lobby.

Jacinta was already outside, sitting a few stairs below the Goblin guards and drawing, singing under her breath. Harry flopped down beside her, leaned into her side as he absently shifted. His second favorite form was the one that looked like her biological brother, with brown skin and shorter, fluffier hair, although he never tried to match her eyes. His own were plenty unusual, thank you.

“Just a second,” she hummed, leaning back into him. “Where to first?”

Clemencia grimaced, looking out at the crowds that had not lightened in the slightest. Harry had never seen the alley this crowded. “It looks like there’s less people around the offshoots, maybe it’d be best to duck to Knockturn first.”

“You just want your books,” Hana accused lightheartedly.

Her sister stuck her tongue out, leaning heavily on her. “Or maybe I want to convert Harry to the side of antique books.”

“I’d read them if I weren’t afraid of them falling apart in my hands!”

“Sure.”

“What’s on your list, Hawthorne?” Jacinta asked softly. Harry pulled it out of his bag, and spread it on his knee.

The supply list was separated into three easy sections; Uniform, Books, and Other Supplies.

“Three ‘plain work robes’ in black, a black hat, probably the cliche one some of them-” he gestured to the throng below, “-are wearing. Protective gloves?”

“For herbology,” Clemencia said. “Lots of magical plants are worse than poison ivy and stinging nettles. And that’s without touching anything with thorns or teeth.”

Harry stared. “The plants have teeth?”

“Sometimes.”

How had he not heard of this yet? Were they going to get a biting plant for the apartment? …actually, that didn’t sound like such a terrible idea.

“Anything else?” Jacinta asked distractedly. She was hunched over her drawing, adding more details to someone’s hair.

“A winter cloak. And nametags, but I’m not sure if those’ll be here.”

She hummed.

“Then there’s books, a wand, a pewter cauldron, glass phials, an 'astronomy starter's set', brass scales, and a pet. Cat, toad, or owl.”

“You can probably sneak Celosia in,” Clemencia said. “One of my yearmates said he was gonna get a tarantula this year, and I know an upper year with a pet rat, plus the four prefects with ferrets. I’m sure nobody will care so long as he behaves himself.”

“Celosia always behaves himself,” Harry said, mock-indignantly. “Do we need our own Potions ingredients?”

“If you want to practice outside of class, yes, but wait till we get there. If you decide extra practice is good we’ll hook you up with the smugglers,” Hana said.

“They’re almost here,” Jacinta said.

“It might be worth getting your wand first,” Clemencia offered, leaning bracingly on his shoulder. “That’s- that’s a pretty great feeling.”

Harry’s answer was cut off by a familiar voice shouting. “Harry! Heliotrope! Salvia! Cornflower!”

“Over here!” Clem called back, jumping up to wave like a maniac.

Harry didn’t look up, but he wondered if Florine had dissolved. She could carry most of them when she discorporated to travel, but Aletris always had bad reactions. She’d have to either leave him behind or run loops, if she did.

Jacinta was drawing what looked like a framed photograph, one of the ones with an ornate, oddly shaped frame. It almost looked like a Victorian standing mirror, with the sheen over some of the faces and the curls and spires at the top.

He finally looked up when Hana yelled too.

“Tansy!”

Florine did flicker then, just dust for the last few steps. “Ready to go?”

Harry smiled widely up at her, ignoring that they hadn’t actually picked a destination. “Absolutely! Where are we going?”

She and Aletris shared a look that screamed conspirator, and she offered him her hand, palm up. Celosia, curled around her wrist, looked up and scented him. “Want to go and see the magic snakes?”

The answer was, obviously, absolutely.

#Harry Potter #Hawthorne Doe #Jaymeow Writes #Crossposting Spam #TRTR #This Is The Road To Ruin #Hyacinth Au #Saturday Updates #Florine Dupont #Jacinta Perez #Clemencia Doe #Clemencia Riddle #Hana Griffiths #Aletris Carson #Wbwl #Harry Potter fic

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jikookuntold · 3 years ago

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I Can’t Believe We Are Still Talking About This!

Disclaimer: The post you are going to read here, is my personal opinions, plus some evidence. A part of the incidents I mention in this post, is my own observation and the rest came from some trustable sources but yet I don’t claim to be 100% true because first, the sources can be wrong, second, the human mind is tricky and a long time has passed so I can’t claim everything I remember is true. Some of the incidents could get fact-checked, but some couldn’t because the receipts are gone.

First, I had no intention to write about this controversial subject because many people don’t like to bring this up, and I was with them, but it seems people have many questions about it, and they don’t know the details of the incidents. So, I concluded that maybe it’s not bad if we open up a little bit and discuss this subject from different points of view with more details.

But again, I have to clarify this post is not factual, it’s just the things I remember about the subject in a ranting way. This incident had and still has so many unclear aspects, and everything we say or claim is just a theory. I’m not intended to shade or hate anyone, therefore I’m not going to mention any full names here.

TW: Rumor, Suicide, Scandal, Conspiracy Theory

The Break

You all might know about the break the members had in summer 2019. When their Japan tour ended, and they did some shooting and interviews (like Summer Package), the LDF concert on August 11th was their last schedule and based on BH statement, they were free for 30 to 35 days.

At this time, the members posted updates about being on vacation, but there was not much coming from JK and JM, except JK posting on weverse about staying awake and eating ramen and JM thanking him for eating ramen because of him (it was interesting that JM answered JK’s post about ramen at the same week we had the run episode moment where JK told JM “This is my heart” while putting ramen in his plate). After that, JM posted the videos of Run bottle cap challenge on August 26th.

Anyways, it was pretty clear that JM and JK were together on their days off for at least two weeks since JK mentioned in Bon Voyage 4 (their first schedule after the break) that he didn’t meet any of the members except JM and JH in his days off and since JH was the resident of the same complex, this kinda approved the theory of living with JM. JM also approved this theory, but we will go on that later.

The Rumors

In late August (27th or later) JM’s photos in Paris leaked, and JK was seen in Seoul eating churros, and a photo of his knuckle tattoos started to spread. Everyone was confused, and it was too soon to believe anything. After JM coming back from Paris for JK’s birthday, and leaving for Hawaii the next morning (as he explained in his 12th October Vlive, that year) things started to get weird. I know I didn’t bring up the Paris incidents, and I don’t want to, because it has nothing to do with the subject.

I still haven’t mentioned the subject directly, but I think most of you have guessed it right. In early September 2019, the rumors of JK going to a tattoo shop in Seoul started to spread. At first, the majority of the fandom didn’t take it seriously since the tattoo shop denied the rumors of JK being there, and even the photo of someone backhugging a short-haired girl claiming to be JK got mostly ignored because the photo was low quality and the man in it didn’t look like him that much. This was the time we heard the news about JK going to Geoje Island for vacation, alone, after visiting his family in Busan.

The real deal started when he appeared at the airport on September 16th (the day they were leaving for filming Bon Voyage4 in New Zealand) when we saw his knuckle tattoos, and the rumors turned out to be true. At first, we were excited about him getting tattoos without even knowing if they are permanent or not. But on the same day, the storm came. A photo of JK (this one was clearly him) sitting with that short-haired girl, (LM) eating lunch broke the internet.

The photo was taken from an angle to make it look like they were together alone, but at least two other people (later we found out they were more) were already there, and it was nothing like the date the person behind the camera was trying to make it look. The hugging photo which was taken from the CCTV of a karaoke room resurfaced along with the restaurant photo, and at this time, almost everyone in the fandom started to believe that they are dating.

The Statements

The mess on social media was getting bigger, and everyone was waiting for an official statement from both sides. BH released the statement a few hours later, denying the rumors and no further explanation. Almost one day passed, and there was nothing from LM, not even a single word. Finally, she posted a statement on her Instagram account (which gained a crazy amount of followers, and she didn’t even go on private the whole time).

The statement was extremely shady and been deleted a few hours later. LM claimed that she wasn’t ignoring the situation, and she was afraid to say anything because she knew we won’t believe her. “I am not dating JK” she used this sentence twice in her statement, and at the end, she said “his “J M” tattoos are not our initials!” and made the situation way worse. But the funny thing is, this wasn’t even the shadiest thing she did.

As I said, she got lots of followers (nearly 100k) and interactions on her account and started to delete the negative comments as she should, but she liked multiple comments congratulating her, saying she and JK look good together and things like that. I heard she even liked a fan-art post, but it didn’t end here. When the member came back from New Zealand she posted a selfie with the caption “I have missed you”. At this point, it was clear that she was enjoying the situation and acting shady to make it worse and fuel the rumors and stay on top of the news. But this wasn’t limited to herself because her colleagues at the tattoo shop weren’t any better.

In those days, one of the close friends of LM at the tattoo shop told an ARMY that LM has a boyfriend and there is nothing other than friendship between her and JK. And guess what? The Tattoo shop manager fired him the next day. What was the reason? Were those rumors a booster for their business, and they didn’t want them to die down? The number of followers and attention they gained at that time can approve my point. They were getting the best free promotion, any business could ever have.

Don’t Forget Me!

A few days later, when the public, started to forget the rumors, someone from the tattoo shop (I don’t remember if it was LM herself or her friend) talked to the media about the harassment they were getting from the ARMY to play the victim role. This again fueled everything and made us think over the situation. Was it all a frame for JK? The evidence suggests that it could.

Let’s go back a few days in the timeline of the events. Why JK chose that tattoo shop? Because his 97liner friends recommended him to go there (apparently this line of friends, have matching tattoos either) LM herself is a 97liner, and she is friends with plenty of idols, male and female, so they sounded pretty trustworthy. At the tattoo shop, they (LM and her tattoo shop colleagues) recommended JK to spend his days off at a guesthouse in Geoje Island, and based on LM’s Instagram posts, they were there days before JK, waiting for him, to make it look like they run into him accidentally? I don’t know, but this is a stalker's behavior

After having lunch with LM and her friends at the restaurant (where Sasaeng were there, ready to take photos), they went to a karaoke room and JK, who was pretty drunk (based on what the karaoke manager said later) backhugged LM. But the Sasaengs couldn’t be there to take photos, so they (allegedly) bribed the karaoke employee to show them the CCTV footage and took a low-quality picture of it.

The biggest question is, if the Sasaengs weren’t there, how did they know there is something worthy in the CCTV to check? The answer is they weren’t the main culprit, and karaoke or tattoo shop employees or both were cooperating with them. I mean karaoke employees definitely cooperated with Sasaengs, but the tattoo shop benefited the most. So why not? Anyways, that photo and that moment was the most “intimate” thing they could capture to use against JK.

JK went on that trip with his manager (The guesthouse manager gave out this information later, the part that was lacking in BH statement which could close the speculations way easier and earlier) and stayed at that guesthouse for two days to rest, but everything went wrong from there. This incident has three sides, LM and tattoo shop, the Sasaengs, who were following JK as their full-time job, and the media/industry which was trying to ruin JK’s image. I’m going to talk about all these three but let’s continue with the first one, LM and the tattoo shop.

Almost one month after the incident, LM’s friend interviewed with Korean media and claimed that ARMYs keep harassing her to the point that she wants to commit suicide. This was another attempt to bring everything back on top, but this time, it was disgusting because she did this interview right after one of the famous faces of Kpop committed suicide (October 14th, 2019). She used the situation and the public’s emotions to play the victim role on a higher level. Before this, many believed that she was a victim of some crazy Sasaengs, and she had nothing to do with the incident (I’m clearly talking about the people who didn’t think the rumors are true) but after that, it was clear that she is an attention seeker.

But I think she wasn’t just an attention seeker. She benefitted a lot from the situation. Her business blew up, she became one of the most famous non-celebrities in Korea (if not in the world), and she was literally shipping with one of the most popular men on the planet, who doesn’t like that? Anyways, LM had several friends, foreign older friends who were interacting with I-ARMYs for some unknown reasons, and one of them exposed something very interesting. She said she feels sorry for LM because she thought she had a chance with JK and that chance is long gone. Besides, people saw some conversations between LM and her friends on her Instagram comments about finding an idol boyfriend for her. These conversations happened before the incidents but it’s interesting since LM has several idol friends.

LM had another comeback to the media at the end of October and the next and the last update about the situation, happened in early December when BH stated that they (BH and LM!) are suing karaoke for leaking the photo. But after almost two years, we don’t know how this ended up. The last and probably the worst thing happened in the final episode of Bon Voyage when JK unnecessarily apologized for his behavior. I know JK himself, wanted to do this apology but he didn’t have done anything wrong and didn’t owe any apology to ARMY or anyone else, even if the rumors were true.

A New Ship on the Shore

After that, LM did nothing shady except posting photos of JK’s arm tattoos or someone with similar tattoos in December 2020 explaining their meanings, which was a weird action. After the rumors, JK didn’t visit that tattoo shop ever, and now, an artist who works with BH does his tattoos (the same artist who has done JM’s tattoos). LM announced on April 2021, that she has a boyfriend and some of JK/LM shippers, quitted their beloved ship after that. But not all of them.

We believed that the rumors weren’t true from the day JK and BH denied them, but many people didn’t. They were strongly believing that BH is hiding the truth because it’s Kpop and in this industry, idols are not allowed to date openly, so they had no choice but to deny any dating rumors. But this wasn’t their only reason for their denial. The main reason was the way JK was misunderstood and misrepresented by this fandom (I have a post about it, you can check it here).

At this point, there are people out there, shipping JK and LM. They bring several “proofs” for them being real such as:

1. Having similar tattoos: LM had designed and done JK’s tattoos, so it’s pretty normal for them to have the same style, especially the hand tattoos since he hasn’t changed or added anything on that part. But his arm tattoos have changed a lot, and you can’t see a similarity in them. Besides, knuckle tattoos are very common among tattoo lovers.

2. Having eyebrow piercing: This is another common trend. JK loves piercings and tattoos, and it means nothing, literally.

3. Similar drawings: This one is a little bit tricky and it needs a back story and a conspiracy theory. On 13th May 2020, BH released a Bangtan bomb from MAMA 2019 backstage, where JK drew a sketch of the moon and stars on a whiteboard. On the same day, people started to make a fuss, because LM had a design on her Instagram, very similar to JK’s improvised sketch. The date of her post was 11th December 2019, but the day JK drew that sketch, was December 4th (MAMA ceremony), and this means LM posted her design one week later. So who copied who? Does JK saw that design somewhere in that tattoo shop and had it in his mind, and drew it subconsciously? I don’t think so. Because JK improvised it in front of the camera, and it was originally his idea. Do I think BH has some insiders who took the photo of that sketch and showed it to LM, and she took the idea and made it hers? This is exactly what I think because I trust JK, not LM, nor BH. And the timing of the posts and Bangtan bomb is on my side. Preach!

That’s it. These are the only proofs people bring to say something is going on between them, and the funny thing is, this hasn’t ended even after April when LM announced that she is dating (apparently she had broken up with the last boyfriend right after the rumors started, definitely not sus, lol) The only reason people made a huge deal of those two photos, was one word: Heteronormativity. If LM were a man, none of this would have ever happened. But since this fandom is obsessed with the idea of het-JK, they bought these rumors eagerly. Back to the subject, as I said earlier, the other sides benefitted from this situation. I mean Sasaengs and the media/companies who had a part in the incidents.

Sasaengs always follow their targets and collect photos and videos of them, but they barely share anything publicly because they are criminals, and if they get busted they will be punished by the law. They have their isolated communities and share their information inside those communities. Of course, there are many accounts on social media that claim to be Sasaengs and gain lots of followers, but most of them are fake, and the real ones don’t share information for free, they sell them for high prices. So, there are two possibilities, in this case, someone bought JK’s photos from Sasaengs and published them, or Sasaengs did it themselves because someone asked/ordered them. I can’t see any other possibilities. Sasaengs wouldn’t gain anything from publishing these photos, but other people would, and they are the ones who made this happen.

Who were they? LM herself and tattoo shop? The fansite who wanted to destroy JK’s career? Or BH, who wanted to punish JK for his boldness about getting tattoos and make him more obedient? Or the media and rival companies, who wanted a scandal for their enemy? Or the people who wanted to revive the idea of het-JK? All of these are plausible and I can’t prove or disprove anything, but you can read more about this in the post I linked before.

Did This Affect Them?

Here comes the most interesting part; how did this affect Jikook? Did it affect them at all? Let’s review the timeline of the events again, from this point of view. As I mentioned earlier, we believe Jikook were together until 27th August and then JM went to Paris without any plans and came back for JK’s birthday. On the selfie, he posted that night he had written: “I’m glad to see you after not seeing you for a few days” which confirms that they were together before JM’s unplanned trip. At this point, JK had started getting tattoos and had most parts of his knuckle tattoos done.

When JM left Seoul for Hawaii the next day, JK went to Geoje, and the incidents happened, but nothing was public yet. Then he got arm tattoos and added some new parts to his hand tattoos including J which makes an obvious JM on his ring finger (The part LM claimed that is “not” their initials lol). JK’s completed hand tattoos were not exposed until September 16th when they were at the airport to leave for New Zealand. It was the day all the theories and rumors started. But in Jikook’s point of view, it happened on the second day of their trip.

Now we can start to analyze their moments on Bon Voyage 4. Of course, this series doesn’t show everything, but it gives us some clues about the dynamic of their relationship on those days. The first day of the trip when they were at the airport and Thailand (?) was pretty normal, but after that, at some moments I felt a strange atmosphere between them which I decided to not read too much on. But I found out I wasn’t wrong when in the last episode, JK talked about the awkwardness he felt about the issue with the members.

Jikook had many cute and domestic moments in the first two episodes but the grand gesture happened on the third one when JK climbed a hill without telling anyone, to bring a chunk of snow for JM as a gift, and we all know how much JM loves snow. This was an undeniable romantic act, but do I think this had anything to do with the situation? I believe Jikook was unbothered by those rumors because they completely trust each other, but the image you make for the others is different from the things you know and believe. Maybe this was a grand gesture not just for JM, but for us either.

After coming back to Seoul, there was no news from them for more than two weeks, and then they left Korea for Riyadh. The remarkable moment in the Riyadh concert was related to JM’s birthday. The members had planned a surprise for JM on the stage (The concert was on October 11th one day before his official birthday in Korea) and when it happened, JM said that he was happy because he saw JK happy and JK played a big role in that surprise. Honestly, you have to be deep in love to be happy just because your significant other is happy, even if it’s your own birthday. Let’s not forget the vlive JM did the next morning, and some pretty obvious moments happened that I can’t discuss here, but I bet you already know what I’m talking about. And also JM exposed the things he did for JK’s birthday that year.

A few hours later, on 18:22 (1+8+2+2=13) on local time and 00:22 on Korean time (only 22 minutes after JM’s official birthday in Korea started), JK tweeted one of the most amazing birthday tweets of all time which is comparable to a love letter. I’m sure you know everything about these tweets, so I’m not going too deep on this, I’m only saying that this tweet also was a grand gesture. And let me make another conspiracy theory here. After the rumors started, every time we had a big Jikook moment, something was coming from LM the next day. For example, when JK made this historic tweet, the next day LM's friend was interviewed about committing suicide. Or when SYS Seoul concerts happened (one of the biggest Jikook feasts of all time) and LM herself was at the VIP seats with her friends, the next day she did another comeback to the media. These can be just coincidences, but… never mind.

I Never Thought I Would Fall for a Man

Let’s not forget about the most obvious statements JK made on his first public appearance after the rumors. On JH’s vlive on 24th September, JK said: “I never thought I would fall for a man”. He said these words about JH dancing at CNS music video, and it clearly had nothing to do with Jikook, but it had a deep meaning. We know JK is not a shallow person, and lately, he stated that he thinks a lot before doing anything. So this didn't come out of nowhere, he didn't spit this out without thinking, in THAT situation. You never say such a thing when the internet is exploding with your dating rumors with a girl, do you?

His words can translate to “Do you ever consider the possibility of me not being straight?” This is what I read from his words and his facial expression. Maybe you think I say this because I’m a shipper, and I have this shipping goggle that makes me see everyone gay and debunk any girlfriend rumors. Some people even ask childish questions like “if they are dating why they didn’t travel together?” There are 100 explanations for that, and any couple who have been together for more than two years can answer you. When you date someone, you don’t stick together 24/7. Everyone in a healthy relationship has individuality, and sometimes they want to spend time with friends or alone, especially when they already had a world tour together lol.

Anyways, maybe I have a different point of view as a shipper, but this is not the problem. I never have a problem with my ship not being real (which they have shown enough to know they are). In fact, I will be delighted if any of them announce their relationship freely and publicly, but they haven’t done it yet. JK denied the rumors and gave us lots of hints about the truth, and I’m not delulu for believing him. But if you think he has to be het for backhugging a girl or having an eyebrow piercing, you are the one who is delusional because you are living in a heteronormative world where boys and girls can’t be friends and everyone is straight unless they come out in public.

I really can’t believe this post turning to be this long, and I thank you for reading it all. You might ask why I cared enough to write +4000 words about some stupid rumors that happened two years ago. This is the main question. This had to be ended in September 2019, but many people didn’t want it to end, because they loved it, they enjoyed it, they gained from it, so they protracted it as much as they could, and heteronormative people supported it blindly because of their homophobia or Y/N fantasies or whatever reason they had. I can’t believe we are still talking about this!

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carmen-sandie-go · 4 years ago

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COVID-19 : The past, the present and the future

11th of march 2020 - a day that will go down in history books marking the start of one of the deadliest pandemics in the history of mankind. COVID-19 : CO for corona, VI for virus, D for disease and 19 for when the outbreak was first identified. December 2019, Wuhan saw the occurrence of the first case of a highly infectious, often fatal respiratory virus. It proliferated faster, killing thousands and spreading all over the world.As of present day more than 168 million cases have been recorded along with about 3.51 million people losing their life to this disease.

WHAT IS COVID-19 ?

Contrary to popular opinion, coronavirus is not a new type of virus. Coronaviruses are a category of closely related RNA viruses that infect birds and mammals. In humans and birds, they cause upper-respiratory tract infections which may be of varying degree from minor to fatal. The earliest case of coronavirus infection dates back to North America in the late 1920s.

When an acute respiratory infection of domestic chickens emerged.This infection was characterised by breathlessness and gasping and high mortality rates. Human corona viruses were first identified in the 1940s and new coronaviruses have been discovered since then which includes the SARS-CoV-2 (virus that causes Covid-19) in 2019. Most human coronaviruses originate from bats. There are seven known human coronaviruses that cause respiratory illnesses. But COVID-19 is caused by a new virus that has not been observed in humans before.

BACKGROUND :

The exact origin of the virus to this day remains unknown. The first outbreak is believed to be in Wuhan, Hubei , China in late 2019. Most early cases are related to the people who consumed meat in the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan. However it's possible that the spread had been going on long before this incident.

A lot of conspiracies surround this topic from people believing that this is a man made virus and leaked from a laboratory. However nothing concrete can be said as of now. America’s top infectious disease expert Dr.Anthony Fauci says that he is not convinced that the virus is natural. Many scientists have again called for an in depth investigation. American Intelligence agency has reasons to believe that The Wuhan Institute Of Virology, Chinese Academy of Sciences has some relations to the virus although there is no concrete proof as of present time.

HOW DOES THE VIRUS SPREAD : TRANSMISSION

Covid-19 is an air-borne, droplet infection that enters the body from the respiratory tract. While speaking, breathing, talking the infected person may release droplets that enter the atmosphere and can be breathed in by a non-infected person resulting in a successful transmission of the virus. The probability of transmission depends on the time of interaction, their relative proximity although researchers prove that infection can occur over long distances particularly indoors. Small airborne particles tend to stay in the environment for longer periods of time while larger droplets either fall on surfaces or stay suspended for a while. In poorly ventilated areas, the droplets stay in the sir for minutes or hours. In september 2020, it was established that on an average an infected person spreads the disease to one to three people. Covid-19 spreads in clusters hence “ super-spreader events” have a huge role in the transmission.

Surface transmission i.e. spread through touching contaminated surfaces is also a likely yet rare possibility. The virus is not known to spread from animal carriers, faeces, urine, breast milk, water etc.

ASYMPTOMATIC CARRIERS

In medicine, any person who tests positive for the disease but fails to show any symptoms is termed as an asymptomatic carrier. When someone gets infected with the virus, it takes about five days to even two weeks to produce symptoms varying from mild to dangerous ones.

Current research suggests that most of the transmission occurs from symptomatic people and not from asymptomatic people. However a vast majority of people are asymptomatic. The reason is yet unknown

WHAT ARE THE WAYS TO END THE PANDEMIC

The WHO is likely to declare the pandemic as over when the infection is contained and the transmission rates drop around the world.

The governments around have 3 main options : Race through it, Delay and vaccinate, or coordinate and crush.

Race through it : In this the global governments do little to nothing to contain the spread of the infection therefore exposing people to the virus.The results of this would be ghastly; millions of people with compromised immune systems will die around the world, health care systems will collapse. In a couple of months most of the people would have been infected and either survived or died. Around this point herd immunity will kick in resulting in the virus to fizzle out as it can no longer find new host bodies.

Delay and Vaccinate: In this the global governments give researchers time to study the virus to produce vaccines and effective ways of treating the infected. They employ methods like masking, planned lockdowns and contact tracing to reduce the spread of the virus. However the virus will spread slowly leading to hundreds of thousands of deaths. And in about a year or so many vaccines would have been developed and after vaccinating about 50-90% of the population the pandemic will end.

Coordinate and crush : The principle here is to starve the virus around the world but instead of each leader acting according to their own jurisdiction, everyone will coordinate and work together treating the world as a huge family. With a combination of social distancing, restricted travels, social distancing the pandemic could be ended with minimum life loss and in a considerably small amount of time.

The best way is to delay and vaccinate with as much global cooperation as possible. It is a tried and tested winner amongst the methods. It's slow, steady and reliable. Even if the herd immunity kicks in before the vaccination is done and the pandemic starts to fizzle away. It may resurface later and vaccination will protect people and from the situation ever escalating further.

WHAT IS A VACCINE ?

Vaccine is a biologically prepared typically containing an agent that resembles the pathogen.

The antigen is prepared from the weakened or the dead form of the disease-causing microorganism or its toxins or the surface proteins. The basic principle of it is that the vaccine works as an antigen stimulating an immune response leading to the formation of antibodies.

The body recognises the agent as a threat, destroys it and further recognises the agent and destroys any microorganism that associates with it in future.

HOW WILL THE VACCINE HELP END THE PANDEMIC ?

Vaccination is critical for reaching the herd immunity threshold which will help us go back to normal life.

Herd immunity or mass immunity is an indirect form of protection from an infectious disease produced when enough people become immune to the disease either through the mode of vaccinations or through getting infected.

This helps us disrupt the chain of transmission since the people who are immune to the disease are unlikely to transmit it further.Some of its effects are that it helps us protect those who can't get vaccinated due to underlying medical conditions or are unable to develop immunity.

Even help us protect our young ones who can't be administered a lot of vaccines.

Herd immunity acts as a method of creating evolutionary pressure and encourages viral evolution. If herd immunity is reached and can be retained for a long period of time, it would eventually lead to the eradication of the disease as a whole. For example- smallpox etc.

Keep hope all this shall pass too.

@influencedgenetics

#random post #ignore

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perfectlymarilynmonroe · 4 years ago

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Marilyn Monroe and Peter Lawford at the Cal-Neva Lodge in Lake Tahoe during the last weekend of July in 1962. This is the last known photograph taken of her. 💔 Photographs from this weekend were recovered after the Twin Towers fell on September 11th, 2001, they were kept in a vault by Buddy Greco (second photo). Only six of thirty six photographs survived.

Much has been said about this weekend, and truly little is known about the intimate details. She stayed at the Lawford’s guest home, and both Frank Sinatra and Buddy Greco performed that weekend. She chatted with Dean Martin and thanked him for his support after Fox fired her from Something’s Got to Give. They even discussed a new movie project, a comedy entitled I Love Louisa.

While some like her masseur and friend, Ralph Roberts, say she asked Joe DiMaggio to meet her there and that they kept a low profile, others say Sinatra forbade him to come at all.

There are stories that she was unbearably depressed, causing her to overdose on pills, but there is virtually no proof to support this. When she returned home, she focused her career, did some preliminary work for I Love Louisa, which was to start in early 1963, was excited about an upcoming trip to the east coast in the fall, and signed a $1m two-picture contract deal with Twentieth Century Fox on August 1st. She didn’t make an emergency session with her psychiatrist, whom she called in times of major depression. She saw him for their regular appointment the day after she returned.

Others claim that she slept with members of the Mob – Johnny Roselli, Bugsy Seigel, and Sam Giancana— but these began with unreputable people, like Jeanne Carmen, Anthony Summers, and Donald H. Wolfe, who try and tarnish her name and legacy to fit a conspiracy agenda.

Alex D’Arcy, a close friend of Roselli��s, and who starred in How to Marry a Millionaire with her, told Donald Spoto, “There was absolutely never any affair between Marilyn and any of these men...She was in Lake Tahoe to be with Joe!”

Betsy Hammes, who also knew Roselli and Sinatra, concurred: “I was in Lake Tahoe that weekend, and I saw Marilyn eating dinner. Giancana and his crowd weren’t there, and I would have known if they were.”

Unfortunately, so much has spiraled out of control in regards to her last weekend. She once said those who know her better, know better.

And, Mama, we know better. 💕🤱🏼

#marilyn monroe #vintage #1960s #1962 #Peter Lawford #*myths/inaccuracies #celebs #icons #old hollywood

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why-ask-why · 5 years ago

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September 11th, 2019

Today the event that defined the United States’ foreign policy in the 21st century, and heralded the destruction of whole countries, turns 18.

The events of September 11, 2001 remains etched into the memories of Americans and many others, as a collective tragedy that brought Americans together and brought as well a general resolve among them that those responsible be brought to justice.

While the events of that day did unite Americans in these ways for a time, the different trajectories of the official relative to the independent investigations into the September 11 attacks have often led to division in the years since 2001, with vicious attacks or outright dismissal being levied against the latter.

Yet, with 18 years having come and gone — and with the tireless efforts from victims’ families, first responders, scientists and engineers — the tide appears to be turning, as new evidence continues to emerge and calls for new investigations are made.

However, American corporate media has remained largely silent, preferring to ignore new developments that could derail the “official story” of one of the most iconic and devastating attacks to ever occur on American soil.

For instance, in late July, commissioners for a New York-area Fire Department, which responded to the attacks and lost one of their own that day, called for a new investigation into the events of September 11.

On July 24, the board of commissioners for the Franklin Square and Munson Fire District, which serves a population of around 30,000 near Queens, voted unanimously in their call for a new investigation into the attacks.

While the call for a new investigation from a NY Fire Department involved in the rescue effort would normally seem newsworthy to the media outlets who often rally Americans to “never forget”, the commissioners’ call for a new investigation was met with total silence from the mainstream media.

The likely reason for the dearth of coverage on an otherwise newsworthy vote was likely due to the fact that the resolution that called for the new investigation contained the following clause:

Whereas, the overwhelming evidence presented in said petition demonstrates beyond any doubt that pre-planted explosives and/or incendiaries — not just airplanes and the ensuing fires — caused the destruction of the three World Trade Center buildings, killing the vast majority of the victims who perished that day;”

In the post-9/11 world, those who have made such claims, no matter how well-grounded their claims may be, have often been derided and attacked as “conspiracy theorists” for questioning the official claims that the three World Trade Center buildings that collapsed on September 11 did so for any reason other than being struck by planes and from the resulting fires.

Yet, it is much more difficult to launch these same attacks against members of a fire department that lost a fireman on September 11 and many of whose members were involved with the rescue efforts of that day, some of whom still suffer from chronic illnesses as a result.

Rescue workers climb on piles of rubble at the World Trade Center in New York, Sept. 13, 2001. Beth A. Keiser | AP

Another likely reason that the media monolithically avoided coverage of the vote was out of concern that it would lead more fire departments to pass similar resolutions, which would make it more difficult for such news to avoid gaining national coverage.

Yet, Commissioner Christopher Gioia, who drafted and introduced the resolution, told those present at the meeting’s conclusion that getting all of the New York fire districts onboard was their plan anyway.

“We’re a tight-knit community and we never forget our fallen brothers and sisters. You better believe that when the entire fire service of New York State is on board, we will be an unstoppable force,” Gioia said.

“We were the first fire district to pass this resolution. We won’t be the last,” he added.

While questioning the official conclusions of the first federal investigation into 9/11 has been treated as taboo in the American media landscape for years, it is worth noting that even those who led the commission have said that the investigation was “set up to fail” from the start and that they were repeatedly misled and lied to by federal officials in relation to the events of that day.

For instance, the chair and vice-chair of the 9/11 Commission, Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton, wrote in their book Without Precedent that not only was the commission starved of funds and its powers of investigation oddly limited, but that they were obstructed and outright lied to by top Pentagon officials and officials with the Federal Aviation Authority (FAA).

They and other commissioners have outright said that the “official” report on the attacks is incomplete, flawed and unable to answer key questions about the terror attacks.

Despite the failure of American corporate media to report these facts, local legislative bodies in New York, beginning with the fire districts that lost loved ones and friends that day, are leading the way in the search for real answers that even those that wrote the “official story” say were deliberately kept from them.

Persuasive scientific evidence continues to roll in

Not long after the Franklin Square and Munson Fire District called for a new 9/11 investigation, a groundbreaking university study added even more weight to the commissioners’ call for a new look at the evidence regarding the collapse of three buildings at the World Trade Center complex.

While most Americans know full well that the twin towers collapsed on September 11, fewer are aware that a third building — World Trade Center Building 7 — also collapsed.

That collapse occurred seven hours after the twin towers came down, even though WTC 7, or “Building 7,” was never struck by a plane.

It was not until nearly two months after its collapse that reports revealed that the CIA had a “secret office” in WTC 7 and that, after the building’s destruction, “a special CIA team scoured the rubble in search of secret documents and intelligence reports stored in the station, either on paper or in computers.”

WTC 7 also housed offices for the Department of Defense, the Secret Service, the New York Mayor’s Office of Emergency Management and the bank Salomon Brothers.

Though the official story regarding the collapse of WTC 7 cites “uncontrolled building fires” as leading to the building’s destruction, a majority of Americans who have seen the footage of the 47-story tower come down from four different angles overwhelmingly reject the official story, based on a new poll conducted by YouGov on behalf of Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth and released on Monday.

Source | Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth

That poll found that 52 percent of those who saw the footage were either sure or suspected that the building’s fall was due to explosives and was a controlled demolition, with 27 percent saying they didn’t know what to make of the footage.

Only 21 percent of those polled agreed with the official story that the building collapsed due to fires alone.

Prior to seeing the footage, 36 percent of respondents said that they were unaware that a third building collapsed on September 11 and more than 67 percent were unable to name the building that had collapsed.

Ted Walter, Director of Strategy and Development for Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth, told MintPress that the lack of awareness about WTC 7 among the general public “goes to show that the mainstream media has completely failed to inform the American people about even the most basic facts related to 9/11.

On any other day in history, if a 47-story skyscraper fell into its footprint due to ‘office fires,’ everyone in the country would have heard about it.”

The fact that the media chose not to cover this, Walter asserted, shows that “the mainstream media and the political establishment live in an alternative universe and the rest of the American public is living in a different universe and responding to what they see in front of them,” as reflected by the results of the recent YouGov poll.

Another significant finding of the YouGov poll was that 48 percent of respondents supported, while only 15 percent opposed, a new investigation into the events of September 11.

This shows that not only was the Franklin Square Fire District’s recent call for a new investigation in line with American public opinion, but that viewing the footage of WTC 7’s collapse raises more questions than answers for many Americans, questions that were not adequately addressed by the official investigation of the 9/11 Commission.

The Americans who felt that the video footage of WTC 7’s collapse did not fit with the official narrative and appeared to show a controlled demolition now have more scientific evidence to fall back on after the release of a new university study found that the building came down not due to fire but from “the near-simultaneous failure of every column in the building.”

The extensive four-year study was conducted by the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Alaska and used complex computer models to determine if the building really was the first steel-framed high-rise ever to have collapsed solely due to office fires.

The study, currently available as a draft, concluded that “uncontrolled building fires” did not lead the building to fall into its footprint — tumbling more than 100 feet at the rate of gravity free-fall for 2.5 seconds of its seven-second collapse — as has officially been claimed.

Instead, the study — authored by Dr. J. Leroy Hulsey, Dr. Feng Xiao and Dr. Zhili Quan — found that “fire did not cause the collapse of WTC 7 on 9/11, contrary to the conclusions of NIST [National Institute of Standards and Technology] and private engineering firms that studied the collapse,” while also concluding “that the collapse of WTC 7 was a global [i.e., comprehensive] failure involving the near-simultaneous failure of every column in the building.”

This “near-simultaneous failure of every column” in WTC 7 strongly suggests that explosives were involved in its collapse, which is further supported by the statements made by Barry Jennings, the then-Deputy Director of Emergency Services Department for the New York City Housing Authority.

Jennings told a reporter the day of the attack that he and Michael Hess, then-Corporation Counsel for New York City, had heard and seen explosions in WTC 7 several hours prior to its collapse and later repeated those claims to filmmaker Dylan Avery.

The first responders who helped rescue Jennings and Hess also claimed to have heard explosions in WTC 7.

Jennings died in 2008, two days prior the release of the official NIST report blaming WTC 7’s collapse on fires.

To date, no official cause of death for Jennings has been given.

Still “crazy” after all these years?

Eighteen years after the September 11 attacks, questioning the official government narrative of the events of those days still remains taboo for many, as merely asking questions or calling for a new investigation into one of the most important events in recent American history frequently results in derision and dismissal.

Yet, this 9/11 anniversary — with a new study demolishing the official narrative on WTC 7, with a new poll showing that more than half of Americans doubt the government narrative on WTC 7, and with firefighters who responded to 9/11 calling for a new investigation — is it still “crazy” to be skeptical of the official story?

Firefighters hose down the smoldering remains of 7 World Trade Center Tuesday, Sept. 18, 2001, in New York. Ryan Remiorz | AP

Even in years past, when asking difficult questions about September 11 was even more “off limits,” it was often first responders, survivors and victims’ families who had asked the most questions about what had really transpired that day and who have led the search for truth for nearly two decades — not wild-eyed “conspiracy theorists,” as many have claimed.

The only reason it remains taboo to ask questions about the official narrative, whose own authors admit that it is both flawed and incomplete, is that the dominant forces in the American media and the U.S. government have successfully convinced many Americans that doing so is not only dangerous but irrational and un-American.

However, as evidence continues to mount that the official narrative itself is the irrational narrative, it becomes ever more clear that the reason for this media campaign is to prevent legitimate questions about that day from receiving the scrutiny they deserve, even smearing victims’ families and ailing first responders to do so.

For too long, “Never Forget” has been nearly synonymous with “Never Question.”

Yet, failing to ask those questions — even when more Americans than ever now favor a new investigation and discount the official explanation for WTC 7’s collapse — is the ultimate injustice, not only to those who died in New York City on September 11, but those who have been killed in their names in the years that have followed.

#911 was an inside job #911 truth #bush did 9/11 #neverforget911 #question authority

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tce070 · 4 years ago

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Mental Illness Today

If you have zero pre-conceived notions about me that would be ideal because then I can tell you about my story of mental illness that can potentially change the world! It all started with me back in 2009; I was a junior in college and for the first time in my life I had begun to think about what I was actually gonna do after graduating. Like really started digging deep into my soul and saw this divide between what I was learning about with the stories that are told in a typical day. Someone died in a car crash, a hurricane is on the way, the stock market went up, someone famous just got married.

I just started to see this picture in my mind what life was gonna be like and it didn’t make any sense to me. I had studied modern religions and basically when you boil them down to their core the message is this: Someone is coming that will have all the answers! Jesus, the messiah, maybe even the Antichrist. I tried to explain this to people but this is where the disconnect with me and society really began. I was repeating things I had learned online and it didn’t take long for me to wind up in a mental institution.

My first go in a mental hospital took me to a clinic in Oakland known as Telecare Heritage. I was admitted after a very long day of getting the shit kicked out of me after fighting my dad and then saved by police officers who were able to take me down into an ambulance. It doesn’t matter what I was thinking at the time but I’m not sure I could really tell you. It was like all these alarm clocks going off in my head and I experienced a meltdown. I also tried escaping the hospital and regrettably punched a doctor in the face and then got tackled by nurses and hit with a horse tranquilizer that knocked me out until my arrival to Telecare Heritage.

I was fed 3 meals a day and participated in group (playing games, talking, making art, singing, watching tv) wore a uniform, slept on a dull bed, got to walk outside in a courtyard and also play basketball. I did this long enough for the doctors to decide I could enter an outpatient home so that’s where I went to a place called Casa Vallejo. It was a nice home that housed 4-5 patients at a time. I remember baking banana bread one time and back to the mental illness part this is when Jared Loughner tried assassinating Gabby Giffords the politician in Arizona. The news is always present I mean we had physical newspapers and also watched the news daily. I strongly believe these outlets are poisoning the youth with terrible happenings around the globe and making people sick. Might even be causing demonic possession! I have also been heavily medicated since all this started going on.

I eventually earned my freedom in 2011 and was sent right back in 2012 but seriously that was supposed to be the end of the world as predicted by the Mayans. Mental illness unfortunately wrecked havoc a couple of times specifically in Aurora, Colorado and Sandy Hook elementary. Yes, young white males can do harmful things and as a white male that survived his youth I can tell you where you are going right and where you are going wrong! Unfortunately it starts with politics and religion; the two most divisive subjects of our era. Once we get that right I strongly believe many many people will be cured of mental illness. Until then however, I am very afraid for my country. Half of us want the other half dead or in jail and many cities are being protested and rioted on nationwide.

Like I mentioned earlier, I believe my story might help a lot of people and it might anger some too. Back in 2013 I emailed 1000 journalists saying I casted Lucifer into the pits of Hell for 1000 years and the next day the pope resigned! When the answers aren’t what you want or expect you seek out new ones! That is exactly what I am doing writing this story. The Ameba Virus is shapeless, formless, invisible and everywhere. September 11th and the Boston Marathon bombings are just as much a conspiracy as Christmas and Easter. These are my words, what say you?

#mental illness #politics #religioso

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thisyearingaming · 4 years ago

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2011 - This Year in Gaming

Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective - Nintendo DS, January 11th

A quirky adventure game where you are fucking dead, and you gotta work out who killed you. Ghost Trick is like Ace Attorney at first glance - it looks similar, and is made by effectively the same development team. Give it a shot on iOS.

Dead Space 2 - Multiplatform, January 25th

Dead Space 2 was the undisputed king of alien horror until Alien: Isolation released. Yeah, you battle massive acid-spitting aliens, but it’s the necromorph babies you’re gonna be shit-scared of. It isn’t quite as unique as it’s predecessor, but it’s definitely much better to play. Bring your brown pants.

The Nintendo 3DS Releases - March 27th

The 3DS was like magic when you first fired the 3D slider all the way up - then it became a gimmick you never used again. Releasing with a few decent launch titles and being able to boast Street Fighter IV as playable, the 3DS arguably didn’t really pick up much steam until a few months after launch. While more powerful than the original DS which was six years old at the time, I can’t remember being particularly interested in it at the time.

Portal 2 - Multiplatform, April 19th

Valve’s final single player experience until their jump into VR was a bloody good one - very funny and amusingly written with the best Steve Merchant performance since The Ricky Gervais Show, Portal 2′s puzzle solving adventure is rarely a chore to play through, and has thousands of custom maps courtesy of the Steam community.

L.A. Noire - Multiplatform, May 17th

Rockstar’s foray into adventure games has stood the test of time as an enjoyable and often startling journey nto the seedy underbelly of 1947 Los Angeles - as Cole Phelps you’ll threaten a Jewish man with the gas chamber, arrest a paedophile instead of a clearly guilty father, quote Hamlet to a prop skull at the scene of a car crash, destroy thousands of dollars of property, and yell at a child whose mother’s just been murdered. Great fun!

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The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings - Windows

CDPR hit it out of the park with a fantastically improved sequel to 2007′s Eurojank diamond in the rough The Witcher, and really introduce Geralt of Rivia to more people for the first time with this game. A branching story that sees Geralt hunting Letho, the killer of King Foltest, and allying either with smelly hippy elven leader Iorveth and his terrorists who don’t appear in the sequel or the very cool but quite racist Vernon Roche and his special forces group, who are supporting characters in the sequel.

Alice: Madness Returns - Multiplatform, June 14th

A surprisingly charming, unsettling dive into the fractured psyche of the Victorian equivalent of an actual goth gf, Alice is a sequel to American McGee’s Alice from 2000. Surreal as fuck and absolutely drowning in atmosphere. Just don’t look at any of the YouTube comments on videos of the soundtrack. Rather bizarre show...

Duke Nukem Forever - Multiplatform, June 14th

Sometimes it’s best NOT to bet on the Duke. I bought this game to kick ass and chew bubblegum, and I did neither - DNF is fucking boring, and I blame it ALL on Randy Pitchford’s devotion to ruining things I like. DNF could’ve been brilliant - either embrace your heritage like Doom Eternal would eventually do, or make it into a “last hurrah” kind of thing where Duke realises he’s getting old and can’t kick ass forever. The greatest disappointment of the 2010s so far - but worse would follow with it. The King is dead - hail to the King, baby.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution - Multiplatform, August 23rd

The piss-tinted prequel to 2000′s excellent conspiracy RPG Deus Ex, Human Revolution is like smashing Robo-Cop into a world where Detroit is not a humanitarian disaster zone. Adam Jensen, the gravelly-voiced biomechanically enhanced security chief of David Sarif, is dragged into a world of American conspiracies involving FEMA death camps, the government enforcing martial law in US cities and massive Chinese conglomerates plotting to control the world. Just like real life! DXHR is my favourite in the series for its design, atmosphere and narrative.

Dead Island - Multiplatform, September 6th

Eh. Wasn’t that good. Notable for having the most misleading fucking trailer since Metal Gear Solid 2, but nowhere near as fulfilling upon release. An open world zombie survival game with a focus on melee weapons more fragile than your granny’s second hip. Oh great, now there’s a dead kid on my page. Thanks, Techland!

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Driver: San Francisco - Multiplatform, September 6th

A game you literally can’t buy anymore, DSF was incredible to play when it came out and has only really gotten better with time. It’s still so unique for a driving game that I’m surprised Ubisoft have had the good sense to just leave it and not go pants-on-head retarded with the franchise since. Nick Robinson had to buy Subway gift cards just to purchase this game.

Batman: Arkham City - Multiplatform, October 18th

Arkham City was so cool at launch and it still is today. A proper Batman epic with twists, turns, and the most addictive combat arena for years. This whole thing is gold from start to finish, except for the Harley Quinn DLC. I can’t even go into detail about it here, but I fucking LOVE this game.

Sonic Generations - Multiplatform, November 1st

Sonic Generations is the best Sonic game since 3 & Knuckles, but has now unfortunately convinced Sega that not only do people despise the Adventure games, they also really want to see Classic Sonic and Green Hill EVERY GODDAMN DAY. Generations is like a proper celebration of Sonic’s history, even including stuff from every reviewer’s favourite punching bag Sonic 2006 - I really like Generations and it has a stellar modding scene on PC.

Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception - Sony PlayStation 3, November 1st

The “finale” of the Uncharted series until Naughty Dog decided it wasn’t. Uncharted 3 may not be as tight as Among Thieves, but it’s just as enjoyable. As quipping invincible action hero Nathan Drake, you’ll ruin historical artifacts and “incapacitate” about 4000 guys in your quest to find Iram of the Pillars, chased by Cruella de Ville and her mercenary squad of a million faceless Englishmen.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 - Multiplatform, November 8th

God I was so excited for this. World War 3 never looked cooler, and then it came out - and it wasn’t that good. It didn’t feel as epic as MW2, not as well-written as MW, and not as interesting as World at War and Black Ops. Multiplayer was... fine? I think this is the point where most people realised that Call of Duty was basically downhill from here.

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim - Multiplatform, November 11th

See this paragraph? You can read it. Another installment in Bethesda’s cross-franchise “Little Lies” series, Skyrim has been released more times than China’s created a pandemic. But it’s still really good and when you rub it the right way it comes all over your screen like a particularly excited storyteller, ready to point in the direction of adventure.

Super Mario 3D Land - Nintendo 3DS, November 13th

Yeah this was the point I decided I wanted a 3DS. It looked incredible and so fluid, and it really was! Playing this was great fun. That’s really all there is - I can’t be funny about it, nor overly critical. What do you want from me?

Assassin’s Creed: Revelations - Multiplatform, November 15th

I didn’t like this when it came out - I thought the new graphic style was bad, Constantinople was dull, and the music was too different. Ezio was angrier, older, and the complete lack of any supporting cast from Brotherhood had me thinking this was a game that nobody wanted to work on - but now that I’m older, I can see this for how good it really was. Revelations blends the Ezio and Altair stories together, culminating in a satisfying emotional climax.

Saints Row: The Third - Multiplatform, November 15

This video speaks for itself.

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Minecraft - Windows, November 18th

There’s something beautiful about those early builds of Minecraft. Quiet, unassuming, and riddled with potential for exploration. I could talk for hours about the first time I was thrown into Mojang’s survival experience, about how I still get a bit weepy hearing Wet Hands by C418, about how shit-scared I still am of the mines and caves. Minecraft is immortal, and always will be.

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longwindedbore · 5 years ago

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Today’s Friendly Reminder that one or two or ten times in our history we believed War Profiteers. Only to later discover “Attacks” by “bad guys” turned out out to be - oops - by Us. Or we needn’t have been so concerned or whatever.

Too bad so many innocent victims “had”to die

There is a LOT of money to be made in War.

US Wars instigated by Profiteers:

1755 - French & Indian War

1801 - Barbary War

1812 - Invasion of Canada

1848 - Invasion of Mexico

1861 - Firing on Fort Sumter (600,000 US dead)

1898 - Remember the Maine

1917 - The US enters WW1 (112,000 US dead)

1965 - Gulf of Tonkin Incident and subsequent land war in Asia (50,000 US dead)

2001 - Following terror attack by Saudi nationals including aid from Saudi embassy staff, US invades...Afghanistan. (See link below)

2004- searching for non-existent WMDs the US invaded oil rich Iraq. (200,000 deaths)

Thus Leaving only Iran and Venezuela as oil producing...competitors... “undefended” by the absence of US military bases on their soil.

==============================

History without Boosterism:

#1. 1755. 22 yo Geo. Washington involved in 3rd Colonists landgrab invasion of French Canadian territory. Inadvertently starts French and Indian War here and Seven Years War in Europe. (Cue song writers “Yankee Doodle came to town...”)

#2. 1801-1805. We and the other neutral profiteer, Sweden, blockade and invade North Africa (cue songsters “.. to the shores of Tripoli”) so that we can continue to supply both sides in the Napoleonic War through the Straits of Gibraltar.

#3. 1812. With the French Navy kaput after Trafalgar, and the Pennisular War going Britain’s way, the British begin interdicting US ships attempting to supply France. We engage in war - not just for war profiteering - but back to land grabbing. Attempted invasion of Canada #5 (3 French & Indian + 1 during Revolution) with, by then, predictable results. In 1814 with Napoleon on Elba the Brits send the fleet. For the first time, but not the last time, we’re caught by a surprise attack with our pants down. The Brits burn Washington and loot Arlington. Would have burned Baltimore but couldn’t get past Fort McHenry which gets a hell of a shellacking (“...rockets red glare, bombs bursting in air...”)

#4. 1848. Landgrab invasion Mexico. Famously Abe Lincoln did not believe that [a]Mexico had invaded Texas (Mexico hadn’t) and [b] that the Republic of Texas was part of the USA (it wasn’t). The newspapers decided that they could sell a LOT of advertising with war news, so “From the Halls of Montezuma...”

#5. 1861. Fort Sumter. “I shall await the first shot, and if you do not batter us to pieces, we shall be starved out in a few days,” Maj. Summers had informed the Confederates. Later telling them he was abandoning the post. Alas, abandoning a position because of a lack of supplies is NOT surrendering. No victory? What will the Newspapers and Clergy say? So South Carolina feels it must fire on a fort whose guns are all pointed the other way out to sea. 600,000 dead bodies later... But BIG money for the profiteers, the newspapers, and the clergy discover the money to be gathered during wartime. (“Mine eyes have seen the glory...”)

#6. Remember the Maine. A war solely for the purpose of selling advertising space. A landgrab thrown in. Over too quickly to make a war profit.

#7. 1917. The US profiteers, news papers, and presumably clergy have all made BIG money off the war that had raged for 2-1/2 years. So long that the Profiteers have had to accept credit instead of cash. Then Russia collapses. The Central Powers might win. Who will pay back the French and British war loans?!!!! One month thereafter on the laughable pretext of the Zimmerman Telegram the US joins the allies (Cue Broadway: “Johnny get your gun... Make your daddy glad To have had such a lad...So Johnny, show the "Hun"you're a son-of-a-gun. Hoist the flag and let her fly, Yankee Doodle do or die...” from Over There” by Geo. M Cohen; referenced in the anti-war novel “Johnny Got His Gun” by Dalton Trumbo).

#8. Gulf of Tonkin Incident. Fabricated incident. Lots of money in fighting WW2 style war with BIG bases and BIG harbors - why the concrete alone... As long as the enemy wants to fight like that loser Nazi Germany. Unfortunately US WW2 ally and Thomas Jefferson admirer Ho Chi Minh ALSO studied - extensively - the strategic thinking of the War-Time-Leader-Without-Honor-in-his-own-Country: George Washington. Turns out “lead ‘em around by their noses till they are exhausted” was effective not just against the Japanese and the French Foreign Legion but the nation that developed atomic weapons and landed men on the moon. (Cue “Fighting men drop from the sky...”) Despite Ho’s unwillingness to fight like it was 1944 in Northern Europe, we continued to spendlike we were fighting in 1944 in Northern Europe. When I say “spend” you understand that I am saying give blood-stained money to a few profiteers.?

9. 9/11. Redacted by Bush Administration until 2016 was the 28 page FBI report indicating EXTENSIVE Saudi government participation including Saudi intelligent agents dry run forcing entry into cockpit - PRIOR to 9/11/01. Most of the terrorists were Saudi nationals.

Subsequent Bush Administration investigation into the selling of stocks of companies soon to be devastated as well as purchases of stocks in companies soon to profit. Recall that the Bush Adminstration - and ONLY the Bush Administration - said Osama Bin Laden and the Taliban were involved. (“Huh?” said the accused) So any accusation of having prior knowledge by stock speculators PRESUMED innocence absent a connection to those terrorists ONLY accused by the Bush Administration.

The link below names suspects

“Although the connections to al Qaeda in three of these cases (Walker, the Viisage trader, and Wellington Management) can be seen as circumstantial, the amount of such evidence is considerable. The quality of the FBI investigations, considering the suspects were not even interviewed, was therefore much less than “exhaustive”, as the 9/11 Commission characterized it.”

The third jet terrorist jet on 9/11 ignores targets like the White House, the Congress, the FBI, the CIA, Annapolis, the State Department, the Treasury, the Washington Monument, and the four sides of the Pentagon with military personnel. Instead the pilot selects an unoccupied side. Unoccupied EXCEPT for 125 civilian accountants engaged in an extensive investigation of weapon system contractors.

Could be coincidence. Every debunker of the conspiracy theorists discusses “missing” money. Discusses, somehow, without considering that the accountants were looking for Trillions in overbilling by a few BIG corporations or surprisingly large Swiss bank accounts of some Officers in Purchasing. the records incinerated.

#10. If by this time you think ANYONE in the Bush Administration thought there were Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq, then you are as ignorant as I was in 2004. I know that I was very ignorant.

PARTING THOUGHT: As a nation and people we are soaked in the blood of unnecessary victims. Many/most of our own soldiers died in the wars listed so a privileged few could have a war in order to overcharge for war materials. Or grab some land and resources.

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dark-and-twisty-01 · 7 years ago

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Sharee Miller - Instant messaging murder

Jerry Cassaday spent nine years of his short life as a sheriff’s deputy in Cass County, Missouri. For a time he did quite well. His skills and qualities were recognized and he became a lieutenant.

However, by 1994 the job had begun to sour so Jerry resigned from the force. Life, it seemed, was on a downward spiral. His marriage broke up and he was abusing drugs and alcohol. Several years passed before Kerry finally managed to grab the reins and begin turning his life around. Then in 1998 he got a job working in security at Harrah’s North Kansas City Casino and Hotel. The following July found the former police officer working at the chain’s casino in Reno, Nevada.

It was there that he met a vivacious blonde named Sharee Miller. She was married, but that did not seem to be much of an obstacle. Sharee had not been Mrs Miller for very long - just a few months, in fact. Her husband, Bruce, 20 years her senior, was a worker at General Motors. On the side, he owned an auto salvage business. Though she was just 27 years old, Sharee’s marriage to Bruce was not her first, nor was it her second - Bruce was her third husband. They lived in Flint, Michigan, together with three children from Sharee’s previous marriages.

After years of hardship, the new bride was now living in the sort of comfortable lifestyle that had previously eluded her. The home Sharee shared with her new husband, while not luxurious, was a far cry from the trailer in which she had grown up. However, she showed she had a reckless streak by obtaining a number of credit cards and running each of them up to their limits.

Adult chat room

Bruce was a hard worker, a trait that Sharee seemed to have picked up. She became a Mary Kay beauty consultant. Hours were spent on the computer each day, supposedly in an effort to grow her business. Trips down to Reno became a frequent thing. In reality, though, Sharee’s computer time was devoted to corresponding with Jerry.

The pair had met though an adult chat room - Sharee went by the name of ‘Iwanttobelaid’.

The business trips were nothing more than clandestine meetings with her lover. Despite the distance, the relationship between the pair moved at a rapid pace. They began to talk of marriage and starting a new family together. In September, two months after their first meeting, Sharee told Jerry that she was pregnant with his child. It was only a matter of time before they would be starting a new life together. The only obstacle, it seemed, was Bruce.

On 23rd September 1999, Sharee transformed the hard-working auto worker into a fictional character that either he nor anyone else would of recognized. Corresponding through AOL Instant messages, Sharee informed her boyfriend that she had suffered a miscarriage.

‘This next part will be hard - I lost my baby, Jerry.’

‘No.’

‘I never thought I would ever tell you that he [Bruce] hits. I got in trouble because I was with you.’

Over the course of the messaging, Jerry asked where Bruce had hit her. At first Sharee appeared reluctant to share the information, but eventually she relented.

‘He didn’t hit me, Jerry; he raped me - I lost the baby because of the force.’

For Jerry, the news was devastating - almost too much to bear. On the following day he told Sharee how bad he felt.

‘No one, I mean no one, is going to get away with the things he has done to you.’

When he told Sharee to leave her husband and go live with him, she responded that Bruce would never let it happen. He was, she claimed, a powerful person in the world of organized crime. According to Sharee, her husband was involved in drug trafficking and money laundering. As if it needed saying, she added that he was a man capable of violence.

Incredibly, the very next month, Sharee announced that she was again pregnant. Jerry, it seemed, would be the father of twins. She sent her lover sonograms of their two babies over the internet. Jerry was ecstatic. However, on 5th November, within days of the happy news, Jerry’s mood underwent another dramatic shift when he received an email that was addressed from Bruce’s account. It began:

‘Sharee is growing fat with two bastards in her. She has decided she doesn’t like the excess weight and is going to get an abortion.’

Frantic with grief, Jerry made a desperate attempt to contact his lover, but he only met with failure. More than a day passed before he heard from Sharee. There was no telephone call, just a brief email.

‘This is Sharee. I am going away for a few days, I will contact you next week sometime.’

Another day passed. Then Jerry received a second email from Bruce’s account.

‘Well, Jerry, she told me to let you know she would be home soon. I think the abortion went fine. She sounded like she felt better knowing she wasn’t having the kids... Thank you for making my relationship with my wife better.’

Hours later, Jerry received an email from Sharee. She had sent him several disturbing photographs of herself. It appeared that she had been beaten. He knew that Bruce had to die. In the early hours of 8th November, the former sheriff’s deputy and his girlfriend used instant messaging to plan the murder.

Sharee: ‘Jerry, Don’t look at him, don’t talk to him.’

Jerry: ‘Don’t worry.’

Sharee: ‘You yourself said to me.’

Jerry: ‘I know.’

Jerry: ‘That if I looked at him, or talked then I couldn’t do it.’

Sharee: ‘He will beg.’

Jerry: ‘But that is different, I don’t know him.’

Sharee: ‘And you know it. Just do it and get the hell out of there.’

Jerry: ‘I want him to know who I am.’

Sharee: ‘Jerry, please’

Jerry: ‘He will not know for long.’

A few hours later, Jerry got into his car and drove the 11 hours from his home in Odessa, Missouri to Bruce’s auto salvage yard. It was a trip that made easier ny Sharee, who provided directions. She had even told him which roads to take in order to avoid encountering the police. After making good time he arrived at about 6:30 pm. As it happened, Bruce was still in his office. This fitted in well with Sharee’s plans. She had told Jerry that it was better to kill her husband indoors because the sound would carry less. The auto worker was on the phone to Sharee, talking about getting a takeaway pizza. He hung up as Jerry made his way into the office.

The one-time sheriff’s deputy aimed his .22 calibre shotgun at Bruce and said, ‘Hi, I’m Jerry.’ With that Sharee’s lover pulled the trigger, killing Bruce instantly. He then got into his car and drove home. But it was almost as if the shotgun blast had also killed the stream of electronic correspondence between Sharee and Jerry. The smitten casino worker continued to write, but more often than not he was met by silence.

After a couple of weeks, Sharee told him that their relationship was over. This was true enough - two weeks after Bruce had been killed, she had moved in with another man.

The body

Bruce’s body was discovered by his brother and his sister-in-law. Sharee had called them after her husband had failed to return home from work. Initially, the police believed that the whole thing was a robbery gone wrong. After all, the assailant appeared too have taken the dead man’s wallet and Bruce was known to carry very sizeable amounts of cash around. The authorities zeroed in on John Hutchinson, a former employee who had been in trouble with the police on several occasions. He also owed Bruce several thousand dollars. Hutchinson had no alibi for the evening - surely, he must have done it.

Yet the police also kept an eye on the widow. Upon being told of her husband’s murder, Sharee had demonstrated understandable shock and grief. However, two days later, she had been spotted dancing and simulating sex at a bar in Otisville, about 18 miles outside Flint. Even so, the investigation was progressing rather slowly - but it would soon get a shot of adrenalin.

Suicide notes

On 11th February 2000 Jerry sat in his recliner. It overlooked the small lake bordered his nondescript Odessa apartment building. With an open Bible on his lap, he pushed the muzzle of a .22 calibre rifle into his mouth and pulled the trigger. He left behind a number of suicide notes, including one addressed to his parents that read:

I was so blind and so stupid and so much in love. She just wanted all her money and no husband... I know it was all just more lies and games from Sharee. She didn’t care what it took or who it hurt to get what she wanted.

Jerry’s next note was directed towards his brother. The dead Jerry asked his brother to retrieve a briefcase that was located under his bed. He was to take it to John P O’Connor, a Kansas City lawyer Jerry once had.

When O’Connor opened the case, he found that it contained transcripts of the electronic correspondence between Sharee and Jerry. The police were to uncover an even more evidence on the hard drive of Jerry’s computer. It was clear to the police that Sharee had plotted her husband’s murder. On 22nd February 2000 she was arrested and charged with conspiracy ad murder in the first degree.

Sharee’s trail began on 13th December 2000. From the start, the prosecution was able to demonstrate the subtle ways in which Sharee manipulated Jerry. The lovelorn casino worker had been led to believe that she was married to a dangerous, abusive man. Not only that, Sharee had also managed to convince him that she was carrying his babies. In fact, it would not have been possible. Sharee had opted for a tubal legation after the birth of her third child. The procedure had taken place before she met Bruce, never mind Jerry. The sonogram pictures were not hers at all. If Jerry had only studied them carefully, he would have seen that they dated from 1994.

The defence argued that the police came to the right conclusion at the very start of their investigation. Bruce had been murdered by his former employee John Hutchinson. They also suggested that Sharee’s lies had been aimed at scaring Jerry off, leaving her free to work on her marriage with Bruce. However, there was too much evidence stacked up against her.

On 23rd December 2000, after two days of deliberation, the jury found Sheree Miller guilty of conspiracy and second degree murder. A month later she was sentenced to life imprisonment. She will not be eligible for parole until 2055, at which point she will be 84 years old.

In april of 2008, Sharee married husband number four, a 56-year-old man named Michael Denoyer who had contacted her after watching a report on her case on television.

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yes-bernie-stuff · 4 years ago

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Antisemites of the Week:

Antisemites of the Week: The 9/11 Antisemitic Conspiracy Peddlers: https://conta.cc/35yz4B2

As Americans and allies around the world continue to mourn the loss of nearly 3,000 innocent people murdered in the 9/11 terrorist attacks, a fringe movement is busy spreading more hatred.

Radicals within our borders are exploiting our national pain to further their antisemitic aims, blaming Jews and the State of Israel for the 9/11 attacks.

Many antisemites are responsible for these repulsive and dangerous claims, and we’ll alert you of a few. However, we must be ready to combat these antisemitic conspiracy theories wherever they rear their ugly head.

Christopher Bollyn

is one of the first promoters of the antisemitic 9/11 conspiracy theories. He began writing about the attacks soon after they occurred as a reporter for American Free Press, an antisemitic conspiracy-oriented newspaper. On his website,

Bollyn

asserts, "The terror attacks of 9/11 were an Israeli false-flag operation that was designed to be blamed on Arab Muslims for the sake of kick-starting the long-planned Zionist strategy known as the 'War on Terror,' which is really an Israeli war agenda to be fought by the U.S."

Ken O'Keefe

, whose real name is Kenneth Roy Nichols, is an ex-Marine and antisemitic conspiracy theorist who often peddles in horrific lies about the Jewish people. For example, he claims:

Jewish bankers being "corrupt, immoral" who "bought everything and everyone that can be bought"

Jews control the media and Hollywood

Israel operates within “Talmudic dictates” that allows Jews to rape non-Jewish three-year-old girls

O'Keefe has traveled the country to promote vile antisemitism, including his favorite topic of blaming Israel and the Mossad for the 9/11 attacks.

In 2001, he set fire to his United States passport and later was a passenger on the Mavi Marmara flotilla to Gaza, where he claims he attacked two of the Israeli soldiers who boarded the ship, initiating a confrontation in which ten terror affiliated activists were killed.

Kevin Barrett

is a

former Professor at the University of Wisconsin Madison

that promotes Holocaust-denial and radical antisemitic conspiracy theories online and in the media. He’s presented on Press TV, Iran’s English language news network and propaganda machine, and is a writer for Veterans Today, an antisemitic news website.

In a Veterans Today article, Barrett wrote - "The same forces that orchestrated 9/11 – namely, Operation Gladio B [refers to a supposed secret operation to carry out false flag acts and blame them on Muslim extremists] which is essentially a joint NATO-Israeli project – continue to inflict trauma on the American people with their ongoing false flag operations." These conspiracy theories can also be readily found throughout the world of radical Islam.

Despite the fact that all the terrorists behind the 9/11 attacks were radical Muslims and the operation was organized by Osama Bin Laden, these outlandish antisemitic claims have also reached many areas of the Muslim world.

Chairman of the Somali Islamic Courts Union,

Sheik Sherif Sheik Ahmed, told the Somaliland Times

- the "real facts are not available to explain what really happened on September 11th but besides Al Qaeda, it is possible Jews were behind it."

In March 2019,

Congresswoman Ilhan Omar (D-MN)

, who was born in Somalia, stated at a benefit dinner of the

Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR)

, which is an affiliate of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Hamas Terror group, that "some people did something" when speaking about the 9/11 attacks. Many believe the Jew-hating Congresswoman was invoking the same antisemitic trope shared by her native country's Islamic Sheik over a decade earlier.

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mhsn033 · 4 years ago

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Southampton 3-1 Sheffield United: Saints end season with comeback victory

Danny Ings scored his 22nd Premier League aim of the season

Southampton overturned a half-time deficit for many efficient the second time this season to full their Premier League marketing campaign with victory over Sheffield United.

Che Adams scored twice and Danny Ings netted from the penalty residing as Saints claimed most productive their sixth dwelling take of the season at St Mary’s.

Ings began the game in the hunt for the Premier League golden boot, and with 5 minutes remaining, he moved to inner one aim (22) of Leicester City’s Jamie Vardy (23).

The Southampton striker had his opportunities to plot level with compatriot Vardy in the second half, but his selfless manner created larger probabilities for his crew-mates.

John Lundstram had opened the scoring from cease range because the visiting Blades managed the first half.

Victory for Saints sees them discontinue the season in 11th converse, while Sheffield United drop to ninth in the table – composed their highest discontinue in the Premier League generation.

Word stay textual bellow commentary of Southampton v Sheff Utd, plus the remainder of the remaining day of the Premier League

Lawro’s predictions v singer and Newcastle fan James Bay

What’s at stake on the remaining day?

Saints’ recovery papers over dejected dwelling legend

Southampton possess enjoyed an dazzling discontinue to the season since Mission Restart, shedding appealing once in 9 matches, but there had been signs in the first half to counsel why their dwelling blueprint has been so disappointing.

Easiest bottom membership Norwich possess picked up fewer aspects and scored fewer targets (19) at dwelling than Saints (21), and the hosts came at some level of it complicated to penetrate their successfully-organised opponents early on.

Nonetheless with contributors take care of Danny Ings, who has performed joint second with Arsenal’s Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang in the speed for the golden boot, Ralph Hasenhuttl has an staunch threat in his aspect.

Chasing the accolade for the pause goalscorer in the nation, Ings put the crew earlier than his personal ambitions, and it changed into the bettering Adams who benefited after scoring his third aim in the closing two matches.

Adams has had a advanced start up to life in the Premier League after transferring to Saints from Championship aspect Birmingham City closing summer season – scoring appealing two targets in his first 29 appearances – but he confirmed predatory instincts to latch onto the free ball and slot past Henderson for the equaliser.

The 24-yr-feeble demonstrated the same composure with the second as he took a intelligent contact at some stage in the penalty residing earlier than firing the ball into the nook.

Ings got his aim from the residing as he fell appealing short in his pursuit of the golden boot, but along with Adams next season, Saints possess an attack that is able to creating St Mary’s extra of a fortress.

Disappointing discontinue to dazzling Premier League return

For 45 minutes, Sheffield United had been dominant and can simply possess put the game past their hosts.

Lundstram marked his return to the aspect with a successfully-taken discontinue after Jannik Vestergaard failed to decided the ball, and the Blades midfielder can also possess scored yet again later in the first half but he changed into denied by an dazzling Alex McCarthy put.

Billy Racy additionally had a mountainous probability early on having got some distance from his marker, but McCarthy unfold himself successfully and done a neat put along with his ft.

Finally, the Blades season would possibly per chance no longer be outlined by this remaining day defeat, and a ninth converse discontinue in their first prime flight season since 2007 is fulfillment.

Chris Wilder will be in line for the manager of the season award but a sixth away game with out victory will be a topic, and he’ll want to make stronger his squad over the coming weeks if his aspect’s second time length in the Premier League is to be as successful.

Man of the match – Che Adams (Southampton)

Che Adams scored two targets from his three photographs at aim against worn membership Sheffield United

‘Southampton had been ruthless in our field’ – what they acknowledged

Southampton manager Ralph Hasenhuttl told BBC Sport: “I saw a crew in the second half that is de facto showing how every section of their game is constructing. We had accurate offensive moments, and alternatives against these teams is never any longer straight forward, but we deserved this take.

“It’s vital for him [Che Adams] and for us. I changed into very overjoyed for all the fellows playing up front. Danny [Ings] changed into seeking to procure the hump and changed into no longer egotistical and Che is the one who has scored.

“We now possess a temporary pre-season after which optimistically we can invent on the performances now we possess made in these old few games.”

Sheffield United manager Chris Wilder told BBC Sport: “We will need to possess been conveniently up in the game but now we possess missed some golden probabilities. They had been ruthless in our field and we weren’t in theirs. Within the closing 25 minutes, they had been conveniently the larger aspect but the game will need to possess been out of glimpse.

“We now possess lost a game of football and that’s the feeling I in fact possess. It looked take care of a second half too some distance for the gamers. We now possess performed ninth against some in fact excellent teams which we can overjoyed with but we wished to full on a excessive.

“We now want to recruit excellent and now we want to make investments. First season back in the Premier League for a extraordinarily lengthy time and our lengthy-suffering supporters would possess enjoyed it. Southampton possess performed underneath us and they’ve some improbable footballers which reveals how vital a topic it’s.”

Saints’ bustle continues – the stats

Southampton possess long gone unbeaten in seven consecutive Premier League games (W4 D3) inner the the same season for the first time since November 2013 (eight).

Sheffield United discontinue the 2019-20 season having lost three straight Premier League games for the first time since April 2007.

This changed into the third time Southampton obtained a Premier League game in which they conceded the first aim this season (additionally v Watford in Nov 2019 and Leicester in Jan 2020); they most productive did so twice in 2017-18 and 2018-19 blended earlier than this marketing campaign.

John Lundstram has scored his first away aim in the Premier League, and his second on the aspect road in all league competitions for Sheffield United after September 2017 against Nottingham Forest in the Championship.

Easiest strikers Oli McBurnie and Lys Mousset (each and each six) possess scored extra Premier League targets this season for Sheffield United than midfielder John Lundstram (5).

Che Adams has scored in back-to-back Premier League games having most productive scored in one of his first 28 appearances in the opponents for Southampton earlier than this. Indeed, he netted his first league brace since February 2019 for Birmingham against Blackburn.

Danny Ings scored his 22nd Premier League aim of the season, to full second in the back of Jamie Vardy (23); most productive Matt Le Tissier (25 in 1993-94) and James Beattie (23 in 2002-03) possess ever scored extra in a marketing campaign in the opponents for Southampton.

His Shaded Presents 2 is coming: See the parable fresh trailer now

‘I lost my boyfriend to most cancers conspiracy theories’: Are alternative therapies false hope?

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whyspeakin · 5 years ago

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Short Note on APJ Abdul Kalam

Short note on APJ Abdul Kalam. Loved by youngsters. What shall I call Him Chacha Kalam or Avul Pakir Jainulabdeen Abdul Kalam. APJ Abdul Kalam full name Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam. The Missile Man of India. The People’s President is Kalam and no doubt about it.

APJ Abdul Kalam: Scientist

Actually he was an incredible scientist who invented many new innovations. He was the previous President of India who born on 15th of October in 1931 (in Rameswaram, Tamil Nadu) nevertheless died on 27th of July in 2015 (in Shillong, Meghalaya, India) he had studied physics and aerospace engineering. Short Note on APJ Abdul Kalam His father was Jainulabdeen and mom was Ashiamma. His full name was Avul Pakir Jainulabdeen Abdul Kalam. He lived a bachelors life. He was actually a real legend for the kids of the nation. He impressed the brand new era of the nation by his complete life, profession, workings and writings. He was a scientist and an aerospace engineer who carefully linked to India’s missile programme. The 11th President of India from 2002 to 2007.

Honours and Awards

He has been honored with the honorary doctorates by not less than 30 universities in addition to three highest civilian awards of the nation (Padma Bhushan 1981, Padma Vibhushan 1990 and Bharat Ratna 1997). He was an amazing persona and inspiration to the children of nation who took his final breath at IIM, Meghalaya on 27th of July in 2015 due to the sudden cardiac arrest. He was an amazing persona and inspiration to the children of nation. Kalam took his final breath at IIM, Meghalaya on 27th of July in 2015 He died of sudden cardiac arrest. He is among us because of his great works His contributions are endlessly. His dream of constructing India a developed nation in his guide “India 2020-A vision for the New Millennium”.

Days in DRDO and ISRO

He spent 4 years as a scientist and science administrator, primarily on the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO). Know about Kalpana Chawla, Space Astronaut.

Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and was intimately concerned in India's civilian space programme and army missile growth efforts. Often known as the Missile Man of India for his work on architect of ballistic missile and launch know-how. He additionally performed a pivotal organisational, technical, and political function in India's Pokhran-II nuclear assessments in 1998, the primary reason that authentic nuclear take a look at India in 1974. Kalam was elected because the 11th President of India in 2002 with the assist of each the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party and the then-opposition Indian National Congress.

Short note on APJ Abdul kalam

Known as the "People's President", he returned to his civilian life of schooling. Writing and public service after a single time period. Kalam filed his nomination papers on 18th June within the Indian Parliament, accompanied by Vajpayee and his senior Cabinet colleagues. The polling for the presidential election started on 15 July 2002 in Parliament. Media claiming that the election was a one-sided affair and Kalam's victory, was a foregone conclusion; the depend was held on 18 July. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=isttQwy-5XA Kalam turned the 11th president of the Republic of India in a simple victory, He moved into the Rashtrapati Bhavan after he was sworn in on 25 July. Kalam was the third President of India to have been honoured with a Bharat Ratna. India's highest civilian honour, earlier than changing into the President. Dr Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1954) and Dr Zakir Hussain(1963) Had been the recipients of Bharat Ratna who later turned the President of India. He was additionally the primary scientist and the primary bachelor to occupy Rashtrapati Bhawan. During his time period as president, he was affectionately often known as the People's President. Signing the Office of Profit Bill was the hardest resolution he had taken throughout his tenure. Kalam was criticised for his inaction. In deciding the destiny of 20 out of the 21 mercy petitions submitted to him throughout his tenure. Article 72 of the Constitution of India empowers the President of India to grant pardons. Droop or commute the demise sentence of convicts on demise row. Kalam acted on just one mercy plea in his five-year tenure as president. Rejecting the plea of rapist Dhananjoy Chatterjee, who was later hanged. Perhaps probably the most notable plea was from Afzal Guru. A Kashmiri terrorist who was convicted of conspiracy within the December 2001. Assault on the Indian Parliament and was sentenced to demise by the Supreme Court of India in 2004. While the sentence was scheduled to be carried out on 20 October 2006. The pending motion on his mercy plea resulted in him remaining on demise row. He additionally took the controversial resolution to impose President's Rule in Bihar in 2005. In September 2003, in an interactive session in PGI Chandigarh. Kalam supported the necessity of Uniform Civil Code in India, retaining in view the inhabitants of the nation. At the top of his time period, on 20 June 2007. Kalam expressed his willingness to think about a second time period. In workplace supplied there was certainty about his victory within the 2007 presidential election. Determined to not contest the Presidential election. Once more stating that he needed to keep away from involving Rashtrapati Bhavan from any political processes. He didn't have the assist of the left events, Shiv Senaand UPA constituents, to obtain a renewed mandate. Nearing the expiry of the time period of the 12th President Pratibha Patil on 24 July 2012. Media studies in April claimed that Kalam was prone to be nominated for his second time period. After the studies, social networking websites witnessed plenty of folks supporting his candidature. Short Note on APJ Abdul Kalam The BJP probably backed his nomination, saying that the celebration would lend their help and support. If the Trinamool Congress, Samajwadi Party and Indian National Congress proposed him for the 2012 presidential election. A month forward of the election, Mulayam Singh Yadavand Mamata Banerjee additionally expressed their assist for Kalam. Days afterwards, Mulayam Singh Yadav backed out, leaving Mamata Banerjee because the solitary supporter. On 18 June 2012, Kalam declined to contest the 2012 presidential ballot. The Gaurdian pays homage to Kalam He stated of his resolution not to take action. Read the full article

#ShortnoteonAPJAbdulkalam

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blindnegation · 5 years ago

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Anti-indifferentism

The Iowa Caucus of the US Democratic Party is currently embroiled in a shambolic situation. One of the candidates, whose name shall not degrade this page, invested in the company who provided the software used to compile the votes. Conspiracy is rife as the software ran into trouble at the 11th hour, delaying the release of the final results. As of the time of writing 71% of precinct results have been released,[1] though with the almost comical incompetence displayed it remains to be seen whether they’ll be accepted by the electorate. Within this context appears Marx's old tract, “Political Indifferentism”, which is being used polemically against those who would not vote, even if they did live in Iowa; and, not so subtly, is deployed in favour of Bernie Sanders, who may be a strong contender in the Democratic National Convention later in the year. The reasons for Bernie's popularity among 'socialists' and 'communists' are somewhat understandable, but more curious is the sight of the aforementioned juxtaposing votes for a 'progressive' candidate to the 'indifferentism' of those who would not vote.

The very first line of Marx's article, castigating "the apostles of political indifferentism", reads:

The working class must not constitute itself as a political party; it must not, under any pretext, engage in political action, for to combat the State is to recognize the State: and this is contrary to eternal principles… If in the political struggle against the bourgeois State the workers succeed only in extracting concessions, then they are guilty of compromise; and this is contrary to eternal principles.[2]

The inference from this tract being used to buttress Bernie's campaign is to suggest that to vote for him, whether in Iowa or later on in the general election should he emerge triumphant from the DNC, is to engage in political struggle, and that his campaign represents, in some limited way, the working class constituting itself as a political party. An unkinder, and not inaccurate, interpretation is that any abstinence from elections itself is in violation of certain eternal principles: that to abstain is to succumb to a kind of political indifferentism, if not anarchism.

It is most amusing to learn that one joins the ranks of Proudhon and the Utopian Socialists for not joining fellow ‘comrades’ in voting for a social democrat, which ensures he will be neither socialist nor democratic; for not falling in line behind the legions of other 'progressives', from liberals to swing voters; and, for refusing to be browbeaten over the promises of a bourgeois politician who represents himself as proletarian. To use another line from Marx: "In all the memory of the proletariat there is no record of a bourgeois who has hesitated to sacrifice his workers to save his interests." Most certainly, should Bernie become the Commander in Chief his first duty will not be to his workers, or his promises, but to the republic and its interests alone, for they will be his interests. Thousands of politicians over centuries of elections have not produced a democracy worthy of the name, nor a bourgeois politician who did not betray the workers for the republic

It should be obvious amongst self-described 'socialists' and 'communists' that in Bernie's campaign – and the Democratic Party more generally – whatever working class presence manifests itself in votes is wholly subsumed to its representation in the US political system. This is not the self-constitution of the working class as a political party, and its political struggle is purely the struggle to elect a Democratic candidate to the White House. The argument that Bernie might improve certain functions of the US government for workers, in the event that he wins the general election, is predicated on the amenable functioning of the Senate and Congress: hardly the most socialist of institutions, even when they are not dominated by the Republicans. In all probability, Bernie will govern not all that dissimilarly from Obama before him: exercising his power through executive orders, which are limited in what they can accomplish. More importantly, no matter how long Bernie governs, his executive orders can be reviewed and overturned by any future President.

The above does not constitute the basis for a stable advance of proletarian interests, let alone the meeting of their needs. Only a party constituted by the working class can hope to politically act in its interests; only a political struggle against the bourgeois state can hope to extract lasting concessions, and this will not be limited to voting. Such a party does not (yet) exist. Those who advocate for Bernie choose for themselves the banality of something over nothing, and encourage others to devote their efforts to his campaign for the merest chance at reform. But Bernie will never be able to deliver on the hopes invested in him; he will necessarily disappoint, as Obama did before him. Perhaps after that disappointment efforts could be devoted towards building an actual proletarian party but even this is a bare hope. Nothing can be done until Bernie's inevitable success or failure for, seemingly, he has ideologically captured the backing of 'socialists' and 'communists' everywhere in the US.

The likely counter-argument to the above is that concessions must be grasped, whatever the source, and to suggest otherwise is to condemn proletarians to a worse state of affairs than what may have been. What does not exist cannot be chosen. Proletarians thus become a mercenary voting bloc to be bought by any who appeal to their class interests. But is this not what lead to the election of Trump? Indeed, some ‘communists’ ask the question: why not Trump?[3] Žižek famously stated his preferences for him.[4] When proletarians are reduced to voting on interest, arguments can be made for either party. To suggest otherwise is to choose the candidate over the party. But if Bernie was strong enough to run under his own name he would not have nailed his colours to the Democrats. It is not even a given that Bernie will overcome Biden as the Democratic frontrunner: will ‘communists’ and ‘socialists’ then insist upon Biden? Will there be a re-run of 2016 with Biden being upheld as the ‘lesser evil’? What if proletarians re-elect Trump? Such possibilities give lie to the easy choices presented by Bernie’s advocates.

How long must proletarians continue to vote for whoever appeals to them, while political activity is limited to the bourgeois campaign season or else activism short of politics? If Lenin’s claim that politics starts in the millions is taken seriously then all the aforementioned falls short, especially in the US. What is ironic about the charge of anarchism is that it is deployed in favour of a bourgeois party – in the end, any bourgeois party. The impetus to vote is reduced to a sad acknowledgement that there is nothing else to be done. Of course, it is easy to say the real alternative is a party of the proletariat. Detractors laugh it off as utopianism, which says a lot about their communism. The immediacy of appearances takes precedent, the reality of bourgeois governance be damned. The myopia of arguing over which bourgeois party to back is thus endless, and does nothing to mitigate why Trump ended up in the White House in the first place. That fraction of the American population which does vote will do just as ‘communists’ and ‘socialists’ insist: they will choose on appearances alone. And is that not the problem?

There is nothing anarchistic about recognizing when votes will be wasted: political intransigence during such times is advisable. For those who are justifiably sceptical of Bernie – both his chances and his promises – such intransigence is a reasonable answer. Let the democratic socialist wave pass before fellow ‘comrades’ regain their senses, though it must be said that some will continue to vote for whatever a social democrat promises. What must be made clear is: intransigence is not indifferentism, for the former has no stake in eternal principles. Contrarily, insisting that the working class should vote for whatever 'progressive' candidate is trotted out by major parties or vomited into the mainstream by force of vitriol, is its own political indifferentism. Any candidate who represents working class interests is worth chancing, provided they offer the fig leaf of reform and the promise of various services (or even better: jobs!). Voting is thus turned into an eternal principle, for there will always be those who make a career representing those interests to the powerful, and for those who insist upon the ballot box, taking the ‘principled’ stance on such issues is what truly matters, regardless of efficacy.

[1] Live: Iowa Caucus Results 2020, The New York Times, 05 February 2020. Accessed at: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/02/04/us/elections/results-iowa-caucus.html

[2] Karl Marx, “Political Indifferentism”, Marxists Internet Archive, 1873. Accessed at: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1873/01/indifferentism.htm

[3] Chris Cutrone, “Why not Trump?”, Platypus Review, n89, 06 September 2016. Accessed at https://platypus1917.org/2016/09/06/why-not-trump/; Chris Cutrone, “Why not Trump again?”, Platypus Review, n123, 01 February 2020. Accessed at: https://platypus1917.org/2020/02/01/why-not-trump-again/

[4] Not only does Žižek stand by his choice, he asserts that the current imbroglio in the Democratic Party is class struggle itself.

Slavoj Žižek, “Was I right to back Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton? Absolutely”, Independent, 26 June 2019. Accessed at: https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/trump-hillary-clinton-populist-right-left-democratic-party-civil-war-a8975121.html

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