#they actually represent and consider the true risks dangers and worries associated with being a wealthy woman back then

[mechadria]

she's not "giving up love" or anything of the sort btw she'd be giving up polite society and connections to anyone in the ton, possible even her family.

colin talks this big talk of her trying to 'entrap' him because she didn't think to blurt out she was lady whistledown in the minutes between him chasing down her carriage, confessing his feelings, fingerfucking her, deciding they were marrying and going to announce it, but that was literally entrapment, whether he realises it or not (and i rather think he does).

if anyone had seen them get into or out of that carriage alone, penelope would have been RUINED. compromised for society. she would have been forced to marry him (which would only somewhat repair her standing) or retire from polite society for the REST OF HER LIFE (or be constantly slighted, insulted and avoided). it does not matter whether they'd had awkward talk or full on unprotected sex for an hour straight, she would have suffered the same consequences.

and she would have suffered these very same consequences had they called off the marriage. this is not a world where you say who broke up with who. or even a world where you say why. the Entire Ton would have decided that Penelope had tried to entrap and seduce a Bridgerton and he just found a way out. again, she would have been ruined and shunned from London. she would have been stuck leaving the people she knew and loved or staying in her mother's house, being mocked and disregarded ten times worse than ever before, with no prospects except maybe a disgusting old drunk (because that's what women who had rumours about their virginity fucking got).

and then, that's without even considering the fact that they'd had sex, and Colin isn't a fucking moron. he Knows there is a possibility that penelope is pregnant - that's why they hurry the wedding up, both in the book and the series. so when he accuses her of entrapping him - thus threatening her with either a life of misery on his arm or a life shunned by anyone she's ever known - he knows exactly what it would do to her if they broke the engagement and she did get pregnant.

Colin Bridgerton knew exactly the extent and violence of the threat he was making to Penelope when he accused her of entrapping him - in Several fucking Ways - and he did it because his feelings were a bit hurt and he fucking knew that he did, in fact, entrap her. he was lucky that Penelope loved him back, because otherwise exiting that carriage alone with him might have ruined her life, and he did not give her or her safety or her happiness a SINGLE thought when he entered that carriage.

the books are Not well written, lmao, don't get me wrong, but the writing on this show is somehow even more abysmal. colin's behaviour in that second half of the season is violent in a way all threats, suggestions, actions and comments men make in a society so hellbent on harming women, and you're supposed to think he's romantic and in love and just having a hard time? babes, it's the 19th century equivalent of punching the wall next to your face.

#this part almost broke me #penelope was willing to let him go #she couldn’t stand the thought of forcing him to stay married to her only out of honor #the way she says “your” instead of “our” family even though he had already referred to her as now a part of their family #she didn’t want him to feel trapped #she was willing to lose the love of her life so he could be happy #but HIS FACE says everything #he is surprised and a little pained #he almost looks amazed that she would even say it #because he never truly wanted to be without her #but i think her being willing to protect him made him love her even more #don’t look at me

[cerastes]

What's your take on what looks like a spinal cord in a case in Spector's undercurrent outfit art? The only thing I could think of is that it was some monster she slayed and now she keeps it in her room as a conversation starter.

Right, so, Undercurrent makes me think a lot. Shall we dissect it?

So, let’s address the core of your ask first and foremost: The spinal cord in the case. I think it’s a metaphor for Specter herself. Specter’s infection went straight to her nervous center… Or, in other words, to her brain and spinal cord, rendering her clinically insane after the infection progressed too much. Nowadays, when she’s not in the field as an Operator, Specter is kept in an off-limits hospital room where Kal’tsit personally monitors her, as we saw during Grani And The Knight’s Treasure. So, the spine could very well refer to her current state: A valuable scientific specimen (particularly due to her infected spinal cord; we know Kal’tsit doesn’t want to hand her over to Skadi too easily) that’s being kept locked in a room.

“Strife - Looking for a weak balance/Contention - Asking for some violence” might refer to her own willingness to be kept locked away from others: She does indeed want to go out (as is implied in her lines, particularly her E2 line), but understands that in doing so, she’s putting others in danger. When Skadi sneaks into her room to talk to her, the amnesiac Specter doesn’t recognize her and immediately warns her that she risks being torn to pieces if stays in the room for too long, were a psychotic episode to occur. Specter doesn’t like it, but she understands that if she’s to guarantee the safety of others at RI, she needs to be kept away. Another way in which I interpret “Contention - asking for some violence” is how she performs as an Operator: She practically contains herself in fights by singlemindedly focusing on the orders she receives and not thinking on anything else, silently and dutifully carrying them out to the letter without any concern for her personal safety. In other words, she simply shuts down every part of her that isn’t “rip enemy into pieces” and “follow Doctor’s orders to the letter” so she doesn’t have to worry about losing control. This presumably takes her thoughts away from her chronic migraines, implied to trigger her psychotic episodes.

There’s also plenty of white coral in the costume’s background. White coral represents immortal fortune and physical strength. Now, I don’t know too much about the “fortune” part, but she might as well be immortal with how well she can take hits and she’s explicitly stated to be monstrously strong in her Files. There’s also the fact that she’s one of the more veteran Operators of Rhode Island, with 7 years of confirmed combat experience under her belt. I say ‘confirmed’ because she’s amnesiac, so that’s all that Rhode Island has been able to see themselves. She likely has many more years of combat experience. Her Files admit that this is likely the case in her profile: “Demonstrated extraordinary ability in combating large creatures and destroying sturdy targets, speculated to correlate with extensive prior combat experience”. If we are to subscribe to the theory that she used to be Skadi’s partner prior to her infection and amnesia, then she might have 13 years of combat experience, like Skadi herself. If you manage to survive that long in the hell world that is the Arknights’ setting, you probably deserve the “Immortal” moniker. Finally, Immortal also refers to her particular specialty in combat: While Skadi is physically stronger that Specter (and anyone else) and Blue Poison (Specter’s other confirmed associate pre-amnesia) has her debilitating deadly venom, Specter’s thing when she was an Abyssal Hunter likely was her frankly ridiculous resilience and endurance, embodied in her S2, which turns her temporarily immortal (in addition to giving her a massive Attack boost). So, white coral is pretty fitting for her.

This is a bit more concerning. We don’t have much info here, but Specter was apparently burdened with a very important mission or duty. One of Skadi’s assistant lines is “Could that be…? That woman, they call her Specter now, do they? Why is she dressed as a nun? Amnesia? That’s awful… Doctor, you have to help her. She can’t be allowed to forget her true function”. That, coupled with the fact that pre-insanity Specter said she had to deliver an urgent message, is a whole lot of speculation food without any real answer currently. Perhaps a future event will answer this. There’s her 200 Trust File as well:

In actuality, when Specter first approached Rhodes Island, she was articulate and sincere, claiming she had just escaped confinement and wished to deliver a message.However, she fell silent before she could finish conveying it. In her last moments of sanity, she told the Operator who retrieved her that she has once again gotten entangled in a dark conspiracy.

Perhaps what she escaped was being made a ritual sacrifice. She might be an escaped ritual maiden for all we know.

And finally, the guitar case, while it might just be a more subtle way of carrying her saw, also does pay reference to Specter being fond of the arts. Her Token is an abstract painting she made for Doctor, while her E2 File consists of the lyrics to a folk song. Maybe pre-amnesia Specter was an artist in her free time. It wouldn’t surprise me if she knew how to play an instrument (especially since there IS a loudspeaker there). An “Undercurrent” (the outfit’s name) can refer to “a current of water below the surface and moving in a different direction from any surface current” or “an underlying feeling or influence, especially one that is contrary to the prevailing atmosphere and is not expressed openly”. This fits well with Specter if we subscribe to the likely theory that Specter came to the surface world to warn us about the Aegir people and their ill intent towards the surface world. This would make her an iconoclast to her people, hence “undercurrent”.

So, yeah, it could be simply be me getting absolutely lost in the sauce, but I think there’s plenty to consider about her outfit. Skade (Specter’s artist) does like his visual cues and representative details in his art, after all.

[ellaenchanting]

Good evening. I've talked to 3 psychotherapists and nobody was able to give me an answer due to lack of experience and knowledge. Since you're a deeply integrated part of the hypno community on tumblr and in rl and since you seem to have lots of hypno experience, I was wondering if you have a piece of advice for someone who wants to try out hypnosis but has had a psychosis before. I "just" want to know if it's safe for me to do or whether I should rather stay away from it.

Hi!

So first of all, I’m going to make clear that this is my Kinky Hypnosis Blog and am going to be giving opinions/sharing ideas as a Kinky Hypnosis Blog Owner. I’m not acting here in any sort of professional mental health capacity- so please take that into account when considering my feedback.

 I did a quick stroll through some research yesterday and was actually a little surprised at what I saw. When I was first learning/reading about hypnotherapy, I remember seeing constant warnings against hypnotizing people with tendencies towards psychosis (and especially people diagnosed with schizophrenia) because hypnosis was seen as inherently dangerous for this population. I was expecting to see tons of modern, research-based warnings cautioning people away.

I did not really see warnings about hypnosis being dangerous for people with psychosis.  Instead, I  saw recommendations not to use it with psychotic patients because  hypnotherapy so far seems to be an ineffective treatment tool for psychosis (particularly for schizophrenia). I know there  are researchers out there right now still working on ways to utilize hypnosis for  treatment in this population,  but so far their results have not been good enough to make it a recommended tool. Results haven’t been catastrophic or dangerous, notably, just non-promising for the effectiveness of hypnosis as treatment.  

The American Society for Clinical Hypnosis (which is the big non-layperson hypnotherapy group in the States) DOES recommend against hypnotizing people experiencing psychosis- but explicitly more because patients experiencing psychosis  tend to have shorter attention spans. It’s less a “this is dangerous” warning than a “this may not work or be beneficial”. 

I can think of a few other places where the notion that you shouldn’t hypnotize people with psychosis came from. There was a famous case in the 90s of Paul McKenna hypnotizing a man in a stage show who started showing psychotic symptoms a few days later. The court ruled in favor or Mr. McKenna- backed by testimony by   the British Society of Experimental and Clinical Hypnosis and other experts that stage hypnosis could not cause schizophrenia. Still- since this all was happening roughly around the time I was first really starting to learn hypnosis, this might have impacted why I heard so much of “don’t hypnotize schizophrenics”. This warning also appears in a few clinical articles but- mostly very very old ones and not ones that really represent current thought.

There are some seemingly strong links between what delusions and hallucinations look like in hypnosis vs. in regular psychosis. Hypnotic suggestion especially can kind of  mimic the thought processes that naturally go into delusional thinking by encouraging magical thinking/looser associations. There’s also been a vibrant field of study in the past several years using hypnosis to simulate certain psychotic delusions- erotomania, Capgras syndrome, mirror misidentification, delusions of possession etc.- as well as conversion disorder and then do a brain scan of the hypnotized person. This is done as an exploratory way to guess at how delusions are produced in the brain during psychosis (because it is often much easier to give a hypnotized person a brain scan than a person experiencing psychosis). So- at least some researchers feel like the suggested delusions and close enough to organic delusions to research one for clues in the other.  There has also been some suggestions that the decrease in reality monitoring in someone who is hypnotized and hallucinating/experiencing effects and someone experiencing psychosis and hallucinating  may come from the same neurological place (both show decreased activity in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex- which seems to help with reality monitoring amongst lots of other things). So- neurologically hypnosis and psychosis may look pretty similar. That doesn’t mean there’s any sort of causative relationship at all or that one will spark the other but- they may not be entirely dissimilar mental states.

So- let’s talk practical. 

No one knows the mental long term effects of frequent hypnosis. There have been no studies on the long-term effects of doing kinky hypnosis on anyone, much less people who have experienced psychosis previously. Longitudinal non-kinky hypnosis research on subjects doesn’t help because 1. it’s rare 2. it’s not usually looking at psychological effects of doing hypnosis 3. those subjects are hypnotized WAY less frequently than kinky subjects are. 

Who knows what the mental health effects of long term frequently hypnosis are? Or of doing kinky hypnosis? When I walk around cons people seem mostly OK?

You indicate above that you’ve experienced psychosis before but it doesn’t seem to be a current or a long-term part of your mental health picture. I’m curious about what “psychosis” means in this situation and what contributed to it. Also how long ago this episode was and how long the psychotic symptoms lasted. Was it in the middle of a manic episode*? Did you have brief psychotic disorder? Was it drug induced? Did it  happen because of physical illness? 

 I’m curious because if your psychosis was pretty state-specific (during mania or depression, drug-induced, caused by extreme lack of sleep/food) it is less likely to pop up in situations where those conditions are not the same. So, for example, if you experienced paranoia when you were manic but haven’t experienced it again, you are unlikely to slip into paranoia again randomly when you aren’t manic*.  

I’m also curious if you had just a psychotic symptom and that’s it. Many people (potentially even most people) have or will experience some kind of perceptual hallucination in their life for some reason- but that doesn’t mean they were clinically psychotic or mentally ill. (If this is the case, you may have less to worry about?)

I’m having difficulty justifying telling you “Hey, you’ve had a psychotic episode before so you should never do hypnosis” based on information I’ve found. I would also have difficulty justifying the stance of “I’m not seeing a specific warning in the clinical literature so- go knock yourself out! Do all of the hypnosis!” I think I’m  going to default to Risk Aware Consensual Kink. Know that  you are doing a potentially risky thing and be cautious.  Talk lots with your partner about your history and what you are experiencing every time you do hypnosis. Monitor yourself before and afterwards- check in with how you feel. You likely want to go slooooow with doing new things with lots of check ins. Be willing to stop if you’re feeling off or like you are having negative mental health effects.

There may be different risks based on what activities you’re pursuing with hypnosis. What are you looking to get out of your experience? If it’s an induction with relaxation and maybe some sexy orgasm suggestions, that seems like it might not be so risky. It would probably behoove you to stay from suggestions that replicate the specific psychosis you experiences- so if you have heard voices you may stay away from a suggestion where you her your hypnotist’s voice in your head at all times. If you tend towards paranoia specifically, you likely want to stay away from a LOT of the mind control-flavored stuff that’s pretty prevalent in hypnokink. If your psychosis was tied to a particular state- like mania or depression- you should probably stop doing hypnosis for a bit if you notice yourself going into that state again until you become more regulated. Pay attention to yourself.

You could also not take the risk. Hypnosis is always a somewhat risky activity- for all of us, not just you- and it’s perfectly fair to not want to take that risk for a variety of legitimate reasons. You are probably less at risk of harm from hypnosis than the folks with dissociative disorders or DID- and I see those folks around the community and seemingly doing OK**. So it’s all about what risk are you comfortable with and how willing are you/your partner to communicate and self-monitor during exploration.

Thank you for this question anon! I hope I answered it in a way that makes sense and works for you. :)

Interesting article on hypnotizability and mania in bipolar I/II here btw: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5679347/

*Unless you’re dealing with schizoaffective disorder- but it doesn’t sound like you are.

**I think? Y’all- take care of yourself if you tend to be dissociative, ok? That’s especially true if you have a trauma history. It’s OK to stop if things get to be too much. 

[firebirdsdaughter]

More wondering about LuPat...

... Hmmm...

So there’s differences between pieces of the Collection?

My first guess would be that the stuff the Gangler stole, at least, were the things that Lupin stole/“collected” one hundred years ago from other people/places/things in order to maybe keep them safe, maybe use them for himself (we’ll have to wait and see what Lupin’s true role in this is), whereas the others were actively built (possibly using the technology discovered via the others?); maybe by Lupin, maybe (as I think) by Lupin and at least one other person--potentially someone directly related to GSPO. Like, maybe Lupin was actually working with the cops even back then, and he and a police partner created the VS stuff, and that’s why it has two modes like that. Or, perhaps they were made by someone else entirely.

(will theorising below)

I know there’s some theorising that Lupin’s grandson is either Zamigo or otherwise evil, but I kinda hope that’s not it? Like, I kinda hope that he’s just being a French (or at least partially French) drama queen and letting Kogure handle everything w/out realising the Butler is up to no good? And then eventually he realises he needs to get involved himself, and actually meets the rangers and properly explains things? Like I said, I also like the idea of Lupin having some sort of police ally, so what if, like, there’s two families that have been looking after the Collection in secret? And now (by Kogure’s prerogative) one is backing the Lupinrangers and the other is backing the Patrangers (maybe bc Kogure/someone else has been trying to cause dissension between the two bloodlines?)? Personally, I’m a big fan of the Lupin/cop friend theory. Maybe the two currents (Lupin’s grandson and the descendant of the other person) used to be best friends/something else before the incident or something like Kogure drove a wedge between them. Maybe that’s where Goodie is going back to (or maybe he’s made a nest somewhere, wouldn’t put it past him)? Though it could also be funny if Kogure just didn’t know, and the Lupin’s grandson was like ‘Oh, yeah, of course the cops have Collection Pieces! Why wouldn’t they?’ and something about balance or teamwork or two is better than one. I mean, I still believe that the two teams were meant to be one. Like, what if they somehow ended up meeting Lupin and/or the other person who might have made the VS stuff and they/he were like ‘What, no! Why are you fighting each other? You’re supposed to work together!’ Anyway.

And, also, bc I relish proving Kairi wrong: it was stated that Lupin stole (at least some) of the items one hundred years ago, meaning that at this moment, w/ the info he has, Kairi cannot make any sort of believable or legal claim that these items belong to the Lupin family just cause those guys happened to stick their name on it. Recovered stolen items would legally be held in protective custody until it could be sufficiently proven who the owners were at the time of the theft. Technically, the ‘Lupin’ Collection doesn’t belong to Lupin at all, but to the people he stole it from, and therefore their descendants. Now, since we’re dealing with some potentially apocalyptic stuff... That makes things different. Like, while the Lupins have Kogure’s alleged word that they’re retrieving the items to keep them safe, their main goal is to get back their loved ones. They don’t give a damn about anything else, or anyone else (except maybe Umika bc she still seems to have some memory of how to person). Like, they’ve said they’re willing to sacrifice themselves, but someday I think they’re gonna face the question of whether or not they’re willing to sacrifice innocent people to do so. God, I hope the answer no, or I will lose all respect and sympathy for them. And right now, I do honestly feel like these kids are edging a little close to the Fueki end of the spectrum--the ‘their suffering is meaningless compared to mine.’ And that’s a dangerous selfishness; personal justice is only sympathetic so far.

But consider the GSPO/Patrangers. Even if there is someone there who knows things, they might be keeping their head down for any number of reasons--they could be dead, they could be worried Kogure someone will send an assassin or something after them, they could be locking themselves off the same way Lupin’s grandson is allegedly doing--and they have no idea about what the Lupins are planning to do/are doing with the Collection pieces. They know these things wield great power, they know what the Gangler are using them for--but here’s these thieves who are taking these objects away; they have no idea who they are, or what their deal is. My guess is that GSPO brass is working under the assumption that the Lupins are agents for some other large crime group/association that is amassing the power of the Collection for it’s own nefarious purposes; given the power level of the items, and the fact that it’s an international public safety organisation, they have to assume the worst. That’s the mindset they’re going with. The Lupins, for their part, are doing almost nothing to to assuage these concerns, as they are refusing to divulge any info (save for Umika that one time--again, still knows how empathy works!)

So while the Lupins did suffer horribly, yes, and there’s a cathartic-ness to them succeeding, it’s also... They’re willing to hand these extremely powerful items over to a practically anonymous person who claims to represent the allegedly rightful owner, purely to get back three people. But let’s remember, there were other people who were frozen--the Lupins aren’t the only ones who lost people, they’re just the only ones being offered a (possibly bullshit, may I add) chance to save them. Especially if those people are technically ‘dead.’ Like, how do you think someone who had a family member murdered by one of the other Gangler would feel if they told them that? Meanwhile, the Patos are a public safety bureau. They’re trying to protect innocent civilians, trying to fight for (as one of their main motifs seems to be) the common good (seriously, GS yells it when they fuse); they’re not doing this for any sort of reward, not even really for themselves. They’re going out there and risking their lives in a job they didn’t have to choose, for the sake of others. Honestly, I’m nigh as annoyed as Keiichiro at the way the public lauds the Lupins, who, at this point, really don’t care much what happens to them as long as they get what they want, just bc they’re super flashy and obvious and cool-looking (not to mention having an equipment advantage at the time), over the cops who are out there fighting these monsters for them, originally with nothing more than basic weaponry. Like, I wonder if a newspaper interviewed one of those people trying to run for their lives during the fight at the casino? Would those people still think that the Lupins were ‘so cool’ if they were caught in a cross fire and got the same treatment, especially if they or someone else got injured or worse through the Lupin’s disregard for the safety of others? Just saying.

Have I put way too much thought into this? Yes, absolutely. Is this completely my point of view? Ooooooooh, yeah.

[putdwnyourphone-blog]

Social Media Effect on Teens

any parents worry about how exposure to technology might affect toddlers developmentally. We know our preschoolers are picking up new social and cognitive skills at a stunning pace, and we don’t want hours spent glued to an iPad to impede that. But adolescence is an equally important period of rapid development, and too few of us are paying attention to how our teenagers’ use of technology—much more intense and intimate than a 3-year-old playing with dad’s iPhone—is affecting them. In fact, experts worry that the social media and text messages that have become so integral to teenage life are promoting anxiety and lowering self-esteem.

Indirect communication Teens are masters at keeping themselves occupied in the hours after school until way past bedtime. When they’re not doing their homework (and when they are) they’re online and on their phones, texting, sharing, trolling, scrolling, you name it. Of course before everyone had an Instagram account teens kept themselves busy, too, but they were more likely to do their chatting on the phone, or in person when hanging out at the mall. It may have looked like a lot of aimless hanging around, but what they were doing was experimenting, trying out skills, and succeeding and failing in tons of tiny real-time interactions that kids today are missing out on. For one thing, modern teens are learning to do most of their communication while looking at a screen, not another person.

“As a species we are very highly attuned to reading social cues,” says Dr. Catherine Steiner-Adair, a clinical psychologist and author of The Big Disconnect. “There’s no question kids are missing out on very critical social skills. In a way, texting and online communicating—it’s not like it creates a nonverbal learning disability, but it puts everybody in a nonverbal disabled context, where body language, facial expression, and even the smallest kinds of vocal reactions are rendered invisible.”

Lowering the risks Certainly speaking indirectly creates a barrier to clear communication, but that’s not all. Learning how to make friends is a major part of growing up, and friendship requires a certain amount of risk-taking. This is true for making a new friend, but it’s also true for maintaining friendships. When there are problems that need to be faced—big ones or small ones—it takes courage to be honest about your feelings and then hear what the other person has to say. Learning to effectively cross these bridges is part of what makes friendship fun and exciting, and also scary. “Part of healthy self-esteem is knowing how to say what you think and feel even when you’re in disagreement with other people or it feels emotionally risky,” notes Dr. Steiner-Adair.

But when friendship is conducted online and through texts, kids are doing this in a context stripped of many of the most personal—and sometimes intimidating—aspects of communication. It’s easier to keep your guard up when you’re texting, so less is at stake. You aren’t hearing or seeing the effect that your words are having on the other person. Because the conversation isn’t happening in real time, each party can take more time to consider a response. No wonder kids say calling someone on the phone is “too intense”—it requires more direct communication, and if you aren’t used to that it may well feel scary.

If kids aren’t getting enough practice relating to people and getting their needs met in person and in real time, many of them will grow up to be adults who are anxious about our species’ primary means of communication—talking. And of course social negotiations only get riskier as people get older and begin navigating romantic relationships and employment.

Cyberbullying and the imposter syndrome The other big danger that comes from kids communicating more indirectly is that it has gotten easier to be cruel. “Kids text all sorts of things that you would never in a million years contemplate saying to anyone’s face,” says Dr. Donna Wick, a clinical and developmental psychologist who runs Mind to Mind Parent. She notes that this seems to be especially true of girls, who typically don’t like to disagree with each other in “real life.”

“You hope to teach them that they can disagree without jeopardizing the relationship, but what social media is teaching them to do is disagree in ways that are more extreme and do jeopardize the relationship. It’s exactly what you don’t want to have happen,” she says.

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Enter Email Sign Up Dr. Steiner-Adair agrees that girls are particularly at risk. “Girls are socialized more to compare themselves to other people, girls in particular, to develop their identities, so it makes them more vulnerable to the downside of all this.” She warns that a lack of solid self-esteem is often to blame. “We forget that relational aggression comes from insecurity and feeling awful about yourself, and wanting to put other people down so you feel better.”

Peer acceptance is a big thing for adolescents, and many of them care about their image as much as a politician running for office, and to them it can feel as serious. Add to that the fact that kids today are getting actual polling data on how much people like them or their appearance via things like “likes.” It’s enough to turn anyone’s head. Who wouldn’t want to make herself look cooler if she can? So kids can spend hours pruning their online identities, trying to project an idealized image. Teenage girls sort through hundreds of photos, agonizing over which ones to post online. Boys compete for attention by trying to out-gross one other, pushing the envelope as much as they can in the already disinhibited atmosphere online. Kids gang up on each other.

Adolescents have always been doing this, but with the advent of social media they are faced with more opportunities—and more traps—than ever before. When kids scroll through their feeds and see how great everyone seems, it only adds to the pressure. We’re used to worrying about the impractical ideals that photoshopped magazine models give to our kids, but what happens with the kid next door is photoshopped, too? Even more confusing, what about when your own profile doesn’t really represent the person that you feel like you are on the inside?

“Adolescence and the early twenties in particular are the years in which you are acutely aware of the contrasts between who you appear to be and who you think you are,” says Dr. Wick. “It’s similar to the ‘imposter syndrome’ in psychology. As you get older and acquire more mastery, you begin to realize that you actually are good at some things, and then you feel that gap hopefully narrow. But imagine having your deepest darkest fear be that you aren’t as good as you look, and then imagine needing to look that good all the time! It’s exhausting.”

As Dr. Steiner-Adair explains, “Self-esteem comes from consolidating who you are.” The more identities you have, and the more time you spend pretending to be someone you aren’t, the harder it’s going to be to feel good about yourself.

Related: 13 Ways to Boost Your Daughter’s Self-Esteem Stalking (and being ignored) Another big change that has come with new technology and especially smart phones is that we are never really alone. Kids update their status, share what they’re watching, listening to, and reading, and have apps that let their friends know their specific location on a map at all times. Even if a person isn’t trying to keep his friends updated, he’s still never out of reach of a text message. The result is that kids feel hyperconnected with each other. The conversation never needs to stop, and it feels like there’s always something new happening.

“Whatever we think of the ‘relationships’ maintained and in some cases initiated on social media, kids never get a break from them,” notes Dr. Wick. “And that, in and of itself, can produce anxiety. Everyone needs a respite from the demands of intimacy and connection; time alone to regroup, replenish and just chill out. When you don’t have that, it’s easy to become emotionally depleted, fertile ground for anxiety to breed.”

It’s also surprisingly easy to feel lonely in the middle of all that hyperconnection. For one thing, kids now know with depressing certainty when they’re being ignored. We all have phones and we all respond to things pretty quickly, so when you’re waiting for a response that doesn’t come, the silence can be deafening. The silent treatment might be a strategic insult or just the unfortunate side effect of an online adolescent relationship that starts out intensely but then fades away.

“In the old days when a boy was going to break up with you, he had to have a conversation with you. Or at least he had to call,” says Dr. Wick. “These days he might just disappear from your screen, and you never get to have the ‘What did I do?’ conversation.” Kids are often left imagining the worst about themselves.

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Enter Email Sign Up But even when the conversation doesn’t end, being in a constant state of waiting can still provoke anxiety. We can feel ourselves being put on the back burner, we put others back there, and our very human need to communicate is effectively delegated there, too.

What should parents do? Both experts interviewed for this article agreed that the best thing parents can do to minimize the risks associated with technology is to curtail their own consumption first. It’s up to parents to set a good example of what healthy computer usage looks like. Most of us check our phones or our email too much, out of either real interest or nervous habit. Kids should be used to seeing our faces, not our heads bent over a screen. Establish technology-free zones in the house and technology-free hours when no one uses the phone, including mom and dad. “Don’t walk in the door after work in the middle of a conversation,” Dr. Steiner-Adair advises. “Don’t walk in the door after work, say ‘hi’ quickly, and then ‘just check your email.’ In the morning, get up a half hour earlier than your kids and check your email then. Give them your full attention until they’re out the door. And neither of you should be using phones in the car to or from school because that’s an important time to talk.”

Not only does limiting the amount of time you spend plugged in to computers provide a healthy counterpoint to the tech-obsessed world, it also strengthens the parent-child bond and makes kids feel more secure. Kids need to know that you are available to help them with their problems, talk about their day, or give them a reality check.

“It is the mini-moments of disconnection, when parents are too focused on their own devices and screens, that dilute the parent-child relationship,” Dr. Steiner-Adair warns. And when kids start turning to the Internet for help or to process whatever happened during the day, you might not like what happens. “Tech can give your children more information that you can, and it doesn’t have your values,” notes Dr. Steiner-Adair. “It won’t be sensitive to your child’s personality, and it won’t answer his question in a developmentally appropriate way.”

In addition Dr. Wick advises delaying the age of first use as much as possible. “I use the same advice here that I use when talking about kids and alcohol—try to get as far as you can without anything at all.” If your child is on Facebook, Dr. Wick says that you should be your child’s friend and monitor her page. But she advises against going through text messages unless there is cause for concern. “If you have a reason to be worried then okay, but it better be a good reason. I see parents who are just plain old spying on their kids. Parents should begin by trusting their children. To not even give your kid the benefit of the doubt is incredibly damaging to the relationship. You have to feel like your parents think you’re a good kid.”

Offline, the gold standard advice for helping kids build healthy self-esteem is to get them involved in something that they’re interested in. It could be sports or music or taking apart computers or volunteering—anything that sparks an interest and gives them confidence. When kids learn to feel good about what they can do instead of how they look and what they own, they’re happier and better prepared for success in real life. That most of these activities also involve spending time interacting with peers face-to-face is just the icing on the cake.

[douchebagbrainwaves]

WORK ETHIC AND PEAKS

You can't let how much you want an investor influence your estimate of how much they get paid for it. A couple weeks later, Dropbox raised a series A, keep taking smaller investments till they actually give you a set of rules here that will get you through this process if anything will. So you won't attract good hackers in linear proportion to how much experience they have. If you know you're on the right side of impossible. So when you're not in fundraising mode. At YC we're always warning founders about this danger, and investors are down on advertising at the moment, but it will also take less time. This one wouldn't. When McCarthy designed Lisp in the late 1950s. So the way to do it automatically: to write a paper for school, if that will restrict you or make it seem like work.

People who do great things look at the options available now, and that means it has to be is a promising experiment that's worth funding to see how it turns out. I've noticed between great hackers and smart people in general is that hackers are more politically incorrect. Series A rounds still work that way, but things now work differently for most fundraising prior to the series A, there's obviously an exception if you end up raising more than they originally intended. If you're worried that your current job is rotting your brain, it probably doesn't work to stick to the truth. Hollywood has been slow to embrace the Internet. So a company that can attract great hackers will have a huge advantage. But that test is not as hard as it seems, because some offset their schedules to prevent this.1 But they're not so advanced as they think; obviously they still view office space as a badge of rank. So don't assume a subject is really about. As it turns out. Introducing an investor to commit, it becomes increasingly easy to get more to.

For better or worse that's never going to be Make something people want in the same email hell we do now.2 Like a contrarian investment fund, someone following this strategy will almost always be doing things that seem completely unrelated, like social networking apps. If you work on overlooked problems, you're more likely to find them using Perl and Linux.3 For example, a friend of mine used to grumble because he had to wait till his arteries were over 90% blocked and 3 days later he had a quadruple bypass. It probably extends to any kind of creative work. And that is how startups should approach fundraising in phases 2 and later. I was thinking recently how inconvenient it was not to have any teeth, and the greedy algorithm tells you what to do.

Or maybe the movie business will dry up, and the huge scale of the successes means we can afford to take more risk you should. The biggest factor in most investors' opinions of you is the opinion of other investors. Everyone there spoke so fast. It's dangerous to design your life around getting into college, because the people you have, the harder it is to raise money, the best thing you can do is get yourself to the point where you see results. After a few seconds it struck me how familiar they seemed. For the 1000x variation in outcomes that one finds in startup investing. You're also safe that way from refutation. No; he's just doing a kind of work in which problems are put before them and they have different views of reality, whether the source of the discrepancy is their sketchiness or your wishful thinking, the prospect of confirming a commitment in writing will flush it out. It's arguably an instance of the Dunning-Kruger effect. It also reminds you that there is an intersection—that there are good ideas that seem bad.4 I've found myself nostalgic for the old days, you could fund everyone who seemed likely to succeed, just that you're a sufficiently good bet?

So were the print media are in the way Confucius or Socrates wanted people to be.5 But I know the real reason we're so conservative is that we may have to choose between several alternatives, there's an upper bound on your performance: choosing the best every time. In fact, a high average outcome depends mostly on experience, but that dramatic peaks can only be achieved by people with certain rare, innate qualities; nearly anyone can learn to make things go your way except in a few months in. They were invented by McCarthy in the course of developing Lisp. But ITA made it interesting by redefining the problem in a more ambitious way. I think the same thing; if you win an Olympic gold medal, you can be fairly content, even if you only talk to one investor at a time till they feel they have enough discipline to get themselves to their desks to start working. Fundraising is not what will happen to movies. It was like having a new mother. If you have a ten page paper due, then ten pages you must write, even if you are in fundraising mode. So for the next couple years, a good rule of thumb is not to try to identify a precise point in the future.

Trolls are like children many are children in that they're capable of a wide range of behavior depending on what they think will be tolerated. Smart people tend to be concentrated around fundraising. But it seems more dangerous to put stuff in that you've never needed because it's thought to be a promising experiment that's worth funding to see how he'd qualify it.6 The most ambitious is to try to make it interesting. Books are more like a fluid than individual objects. A in phase 2 at a post-money valuation of your next round, if you had a graph in which the x axis represented situations and the y axis the outcome, the graph of the wise person would be high even if the chance of succeeding was low. Many investors will ask how much you depend on water.7 It means these ideas are invisible to most people who try to think of intelligence as inborn is that people trying to measure it have concentrated on the aspects of it that are most successful at it, and then when you do. It doesn't make a very good job. One of my tricks for generating startup ideas is to imagine the ways in which it's wrong.

That worked as long as they can, because there's no limit to what they could do. You have two choices: give it away and make money from it indirectly, or find ways to embody it in things people will pay for. There's no way around it: you can't manage a process intended to produce beautiful things without knowing what you're looking for. Do they want me to do something audacious. Lisp was the first thing we thought of; we were ambivalent about being in business at all; and we deliberately chose an impoverished market to avoid competition.8 Whereas when they don't like you, you'll see them reaching for ideas: they'll be saying yes, and you may need to. I've wondered about for 25 years: the relationship between intelligence and wisdom drift apart, is that they are compulsive negotiators who will suck up a lot of what looks like work.

There is a danger in designing a language based on one's own experience of programming. You also can't tell from his portfolio.9 Fouls happen. Many people in this country think of taste as something elusive, or even frivolous.10 It's the same with people who do great things. The only real difference between adults and high school kids don't. Or they could return to their roots and make going to the theater a treat. When I was in New York trying to be a startup.

Notes

There is one of them.

There were several other reasons, the last they ever need.

But no planes crash if your goal is to trick a pointy-haired boss into letting you write has a word meaning how one feels when that partner re-tells it to the traditional peasant's diet: they hoped they were.

99 to—and probably especially valuable. And in World War II had become so common that their prices stabilize.

Even though we made a Knight of the work that seems formidable from the 1940s or 50s instead of themselves.

Sparse Binary Polynomial Hash Message Filtering and The CRM114 Discriminator. But they also commit to you; who knows who you start fundraising, but when that partner re-tells it to the way up into the intellectual sounding theory behind it. His critical invention was a sudden drop-off in scholarship just as if the public conversation about women consists of fighting, their voices will be just as you start fundraising, because she liked the outdoors, was no great risk in doing a small proportion of the lies we tell.

Stiglitz, Joseph. You can relent a little more fat, and no one thinks of calling that unfair. Emmett Shear writes: True, Gore won the popular vote he would have gone into the shape of the words we use have a group to consider behaving the opposite.

It's hard to compete directly with open source project, but those are usually about things you waste your time on a consumer price index created by bolting end to end investor meetings too closely, you'll be well on your cap table, and domino effects among investors.

Unfortunately the constraint probably has a power law dropoff, but I realize starting a startup. Though in a in the construction industry. The problem is not an associate.

Wittgenstein asserted a sort of pious crap you were still employed in your own compass.

[nicholerestrada]

Passed Out Drunk: What to Do if Your Friend Is Passed Out Drunk

Hopefully you’re never in the position of being scared for a friend who’s passed out drunk. Many drunken nights end with nothing worse than a hangover. But our society’s generally casual approach to alcohol can make it easy to underplay the potential dangers of drinking too much, like losing consciousness.

You may already know that passing out from drinking too much alcohol is a symptom of alcohol overdose, also known as alcohol poisoning. As the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) explains, alcohol overdose doesn’t just mean someone is too drunk. This health hazard happens when a person’s level of intoxication interferes with the basic physiological functions that keep them alive. On average, six people a day die from alcohol poisoning in the United States, per the most recent available numbers from the CDC.

No matter how aware you are of alcohol’s potential dangers, a friend passing out from alcohol can turn a theoretical risk into a very real and frightening one. We get why you might be hesitant to spring into action. You might not be sure if your friend is truly passed out or if they will sleep off the booze and be completely fine. You might also worry that making a big deal over it will brand you as a buzzkill. But if someone is passed out from alcohol, there’s a very real chance they’re in life-threatening trouble. It might be up to you to save them. This is how to tell if a friend’s life is in danger after drinking too much and what to do next.

Why does alcohol make people pass out in the first place?

“Alcohol’s main effect on the brain is sedation,” Darria Long-Gillespie, M.D., an emergency room doctor and clinical assistant professor at the University of Tennessee School of Medicine, tells SELF. As the CDC explains, alcohol is a depressant that impacts your central nervous system, which is composed of your brain and spinal cord. With that in mind, it’s no surprise that alcohol’s sweeping effects can impact mental functions like decision making along with physical ones like your ability to stay alert.

“When alcohol is first being absorbed and our blood alcohol concentration (BAC) is on the way up, we may feel stimulated,” Susan Stoner, Ph.D., a research consultant at the University of Washington Alcohol & Drug Abuse Institute, tells SELF. This is because alcohol acts on your brain’s reward system by prompting the release of dopamine, a neurotransmitter that can induce good feelings. But the more alcohol you drink, the more your body builds up adenosine, a chemical that makes you tired—hence why you might feel gently relaxed after half a glass of wine but fall asleep after two.

Alcohol also affects neurotransmitters such as glutamate, which governs brain function. If you drink enough alcohol, its depressant effects can reduce your breathing and heart rate, which is when alcohol intoxication can become life-threatening. Alcohol intoxication can also kill someone more indirectly, Dr. Long-Gillespie says. A drunk person can fall and hit their head, think they’re fine to drive and crash, pass out and choke on their vomit, or get into other life-threatening situations.

“Everyone who drinks four or more drinks in one setting—or spends time with someone who does—should become familiar with a blood alcohol chart that shows how many ‘standard drinks’ result in a dangerous BAC,” Stoner says. A standard drink is around 12 ounces of beer, 5 ounces of wine, or 1.5 ounces of an 80-proof spirit like rum or tequila. Here’s a blood alcohol chart for women and one for men, though keep in mind that things like how much you’ve eaten and how your body metabolizes alcohol in general may influence how true this kind of chart is for you. As Stoner notes, a BAC of around 0.3 percent or higher is considered to be possibly fatal.

If you can’t wake your friend, you need to call 911 immediately.

“A person who is ‘sleeping off’ their alcohol should be fairly easy to wake up,” Stoner says. “Someone who is unconscious from alcohol would be very difficult to rouse.”

If calling your friend’s name and shaking their shoulders doesn’t work, Stoner suggests rubbing their sternum (breastbone) with your knuckles or pinching their earlobe. “In either case, it needs to be hard enough to cause pain,” she says. “If the friend doesn’t respond, they’re likely unconscious and could be at risk of death.”

Keep in mind that your friend doesn’t actually need to be passed out in order to be in danger. According to the NIAAA, other signs that your friend has overdosed on alcohol and that you should call 911 include:

Confusion

Clammy skin

Blue-tinged or pale skin

Low body temperature

Seizures

Vomiting

Breathing fewer than eight times a minute

Pausing for 10 or more seconds in between breaths

Reduced physical responses, like a lack of the normal gag reflex that prevents choking

Don’t take long to evaluate your friend for these signs. “If you have to look for more than a few seconds to tell if someone is breathing or not, and they do not wake up when you shake or shout at them, call 911,” nationally registered paramedic Heather Davis, associate director of the UCLA Center for Prehospital Care and program director for the UCLA Paramedic Education Program, tells SELF.

If your friend is vomiting while unconscious, Davis recommends placing them on their side to lower their likelihood of choking. “Ideally, another friend will call 911 [while you do this] and get paramedics en route,” she says. You can also lean them forward, the NIAAA says. Either way, it’s best if they’re on the ground so they’re not at risk of falling and hurting themselves.

When the emergency responders arrive, tell them as much information as you can, the NIAAA says. That includes how many drinks your friend had, what kind of alcohol, any other drugs they took, and any relevant information you may know, like that your friend has a certain health condition.

Monitor your friend even if they’re asleep and not passed out.

A person’s BAC can continue to rise even if they’ve stopped drinking because alcohol will keep leaching from their stomach and small intestine into their bloodstream.

“As your blood alcohol concentration goes up, the risk of most severe problems from a medical perspective [gets] higher as well,” Lorenzo Leggio, M.D., senior clinical investigator of the joint section of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) and the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), tells SELF.

That means a friend who is “only” very drunk could still deteriorate into alcohol poisoning.

“One of the biggest mistakes is thinking that your friend will ‘sleep it off’ and then leaving them alone without being observed,” Dr. Long-Gillespie says. “Friends often return hours later, only to find that their friend stopped breathing or choked on their own vomit.”

According to the NIAAA, symptoms of severe alcohol intoxication that could lead to alcohol poisoning include:

Markedly impaired speech, memory, reaction time, balance, coordination, and attention

An inability to drive due to dangerously impaired motor skills

Risky decision making and poor judgment

Blacking out

Vomiting

Loss of consciousness

If your friend is exhibiting these symptoms, they could be well on their way toward a life-threatening alcohol overdose. Be prepared to call 911 immediately. Go ahead and do it if they’re losing consciousness or vomiting, Dr. Long-Gillespie says.

Don’t leave your friend alone.

Even if your friend is sleeping and doesn’t have alcohol poisoning, leaving them alone could make them more vulnerable to sexual assault depending on your surroundings. “There is safety in numbers, so stick together,” Davis says.

The onus should never be on a potential victim (or their friends) to avoid an assault. The only person at fault for an assault is the one committing the crime. But the unfortunate reality is that until we as a society can trust people not to perpetrate assaults, sometimes safety measures such as staying together in this kind of situation are necessary.

Don’t be afraid to remove yourself and your friend from the situation as safely as possible, like if you’re at a house party, your friend is drunk and asleep, you’re also inebriated, and your ride home already left. For safety’s sake, Davis recommends always knowing your exact location and keeping your phone charged if you ever need to call for help, order a ride, or otherwise get home safely.

Some states have laws to protect people who call 911 in these instances.

You may be hesitant to call 911 because you worry you’ll get your friend (and possibly yourself) into trouble, especially if you’re too young to drink legally or if illegal drugs are involved. SELF doesn’t condone underage drinking or illegal drug use, but it’s always important to be able to get help in a potentially deadly situation without fear of repercussion. To encourage this, more than 30 states and the District of Columbia have introduced medical amnesty laws.

“[These laws] can provide immunity from criminal prosecution or, depending on the law, be offered as a defense at trial,” a representative at the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) tells SELF in an email. “Laws differ [by state] as to whether they apply to the victim, the caller, or those bystanders who offer assistance. A common element is that the person acted in ‘good faith’ in seeking help.” Another variable is whether or not the laws apply to drugs, alcohol, or both.

You can see if your state has a medical amnesty law and read it here. Some colleges and universities have also created their own medical amnesty policies in an effort to keep students safe. If your school has one, it may be on the website or in the student handbook. Here is Northwestern University’s medical amnesty policy as an example.

No matter the medical amnesty laws and policies in your location, Davis says that emergency responders tend to be most concerned with saving lives, not busting underage drinkers or people using drugs. “We often tell people that we are not the cops. We do not care what drugs you have done or how drunk you are. We are here to help,” Davis says. “In most states, there are not mandatory reporting laws for drugs or alcohol, so we do not have to call the police or file any sort of report if you have overindulged or were experimenting with drugs.”

When in doubt, always get medical help for a passed out friend immediately.

Even if there aren’t medical amnesty laws in effect where you are, getting help for a friend who’s dangerously drunk is worth it. It could save your friend’s life. Also (and less importantly), consider the outcome if you didn’t do anything and, in the worst-case scenario, your friend died. Not only would you be dealing with that loss, but you’d also be facing more serious consequences than you would be for something like underage drinking.

“You can’t take back not calling in time if your friend dies,” Davis says. “[Emergency responders] can always just return to service if we are not needed.”

Know your limits to avoid passing out from alcohol yourself.

According to the United States Department of Agriculture’s Dietary Guidelines, adults who drink should do so in moderation, which means having no more than one standard drink a day for women and two for men. If you’re going to go beyond that, follow these rules to stay as safe as possible:

Alternate one alcoholic beverage with one glass of water.

Eat before and while you drink so you don’t absorb alcohol as quickly.

Have a maximum of one drink an hour.

Decide beforehand how many drinks you can have without compromising your safety, then don’t keep nudging that number higher when you’re actually imbibing. Once you know what your body can handle, don’t push it.

Related:

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Source: https://hashtaghighways.com/2019/02/26/passed-out-drunk-what-to-do-if-your-friend-is-passed-out-drunk/

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[michaeljtraylor]

Passed Out Drunk: What to Do if Your Friend Is Passed Out Drunk

Hopefully you’re never in the position of being scared for a friend who’s passed out drunk. Many drunken nights end with nothing worse than a hangover. But our society’s generally casual approach to alcohol can make it easy to underplay the potential dangers of drinking too much, like losing consciousness.

You may already know that passing out from drinking too much alcohol is a symptom of alcohol overdose, also known as alcohol poisoning. As the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) explains, alcohol overdose doesn’t just mean someone is too drunk. This health hazard happens when a person’s level of intoxication interferes with the basic physiological functions that keep them alive. On average, six people a day die from alcohol poisoning in the United States, per the most recent available numbers from the CDC.

No matter how aware you are of alcohol’s potential dangers, a friend passing out from alcohol can turn a theoretical risk into a very real and frightening one. We get why you might be hesitant to spring into action. You might not be sure if your friend is truly passed out or if they will sleep off the booze and be completely fine. You might also worry that making a big deal over it will brand you as a buzzkill. But if someone is passed out from alcohol, there’s a very real chance they’re in life-threatening trouble. It might be up to you to save them. This is how to tell if a friend’s life is in danger after drinking too much and what to do next.

Why does alcohol make people pass out in the first place?

“Alcohol’s main effect on the brain is sedation,” Darria Long-Gillespie, M.D., an emergency room doctor and clinical assistant professor at the University of Tennessee School of Medicine, tells SELF. As the CDC explains, alcohol is a depressant that impacts your central nervous system, which is composed of your brain and spinal cord. With that in mind, it’s no surprise that alcohol’s sweeping effects can impact mental functions like decision making along with physical ones like your ability to stay alert.

“When alcohol is first being absorbed and our blood alcohol concentration (BAC) is on the way up, we may feel stimulated,” Susan Stoner, Ph.D., a research consultant at the University of Washington Alcohol & Drug Abuse Institute, tells SELF. This is because alcohol acts on your brain’s reward system by prompting the release of dopamine, a neurotransmitter that can induce good feelings. But the more alcohol you drink, the more your body builds up adenosine, a chemical that makes you tired—hence why you might feel gently relaxed after half a glass of wine but fall asleep after two.

Alcohol also affects neurotransmitters such as glutamate, which governs brain function. If you drink enough alcohol, its depressant effects can reduce your breathing and heart rate, which is when alcohol intoxication can become life-threatening. Alcohol intoxication can also kill someone more indirectly, Dr. Long-Gillespie says. A drunk person can fall and hit their head, think they’re fine to drive and crash, pass out and choke on their vomit, or get into other life-threatening situations.

“Everyone who drinks four or more drinks in one setting—or spends time with someone who does—should become familiar with a blood alcohol chart that shows how many ‘standard drinks’ result in a dangerous BAC,” Stoner says. A standard drink is around 12 ounces of beer, 5 ounces of wine, or 1.5 ounces of an 80-proof spirit like rum or tequila. Here’s a blood alcohol chart for women and one for men, though keep in mind that things like how much you’ve eaten and how your body metabolizes alcohol in general may influence how true this kind of chart is for you. As Stoner notes, a BAC of around 0.3 percent or higher is considered to be possibly fatal.

If you can’t wake your friend, you need to call 911 immediately.

“A person who is ‘sleeping off’ their alcohol should be fairly easy to wake up,” Stoner says. “Someone who is unconscious from alcohol would be very difficult to rouse.”

If calling your friend’s name and shaking their shoulders doesn’t work, Stoner suggests rubbing their sternum (breastbone) with your knuckles or pinching their earlobe. “In either case, it needs to be hard enough to cause pain,” she says. “If the friend doesn’t respond, they’re likely unconscious and could be at risk of death.”

Keep in mind that your friend doesn’t actually need to be passed out in order to be in danger. According to the NIAAA, other signs that your friend has overdosed on alcohol and that you should call 911 include:

Confusion

Clammy skin

Blue-tinged or pale skin

Low body temperature

Seizures

Vomiting

Breathing fewer than eight times a minute

Pausing for 10 or more seconds in between breaths

Reduced physical responses, like a lack of the normal gag reflex that prevents choking

Don’t take long to evaluate your friend for these signs. “If you have to look for more than a few seconds to tell if someone is breathing or not, and they do not wake up when you shake or shout at them, call 911,” nationally registered paramedic Heather Davis, associate director of the UCLA Center for Prehospital Care and program director for the UCLA Paramedic Education Program, tells SELF.

If your friend is vomiting while unconscious, Davis recommends placing them on their side to lower their likelihood of choking. “Ideally, another friend will call 911 [while you do this] and get paramedics en route,” she says. You can also lean them forward, the NIAAA says. Either way, it’s best if they’re on the ground so they’re not at risk of falling and hurting themselves.

When the emergency responders arrive, tell them as much information as you can, the NIAAA says. That includes how many drinks your friend had, what kind of alcohol, any other drugs they took, and any relevant information you may know, like that your friend has a certain health condition.

Monitor your friend even if they’re asleep and not passed out.

A person’s BAC can continue to rise even if they’ve stopped drinking because alcohol will keep leaching from their stomach and small intestine into their bloodstream.

“As your blood alcohol concentration goes up, the risk of most severe problems from a medical perspective [gets] higher as well,” Lorenzo Leggio, M.D., senior clinical investigator of the joint section of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) and the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), tells SELF.

That means a friend who is “only” very drunk could still deteriorate into alcohol poisoning.

“One of the biggest mistakes is thinking that your friend will ‘sleep it off’ and then leaving them alone without being observed,” Dr. Long-Gillespie says. “Friends often return hours later, only to find that their friend stopped breathing or choked on their own vomit.”

According to the NIAAA, symptoms of severe alcohol intoxication that could lead to alcohol poisoning include:

Markedly impaired speech, memory, reaction time, balance, coordination, and attention

An inability to drive due to dangerously impaired motor skills

Risky decision making and poor judgment

Blacking out

Vomiting

Loss of consciousness

If your friend is exhibiting these symptoms, they could be well on their way toward a life-threatening alcohol overdose. Be prepared to call 911 immediately. Go ahead and do it if they’re losing consciousness or vomiting, Dr. Long-Gillespie says.

Don’t leave your friend alone.

Even if your friend is sleeping and doesn’t have alcohol poisoning, leaving them alone could make them more vulnerable to sexual assault depending on your surroundings. “There is safety in numbers, so stick together,” Davis says.

The onus should never be on a potential victim (or their friends) to avoid an assault. The only person at fault for an assault is the one committing the crime. But the unfortunate reality is that until we as a society can trust people not to perpetrate assaults, sometimes safety measures such as staying together in this kind of situation are necessary.

Don’t be afraid to remove yourself and your friend from the situation as safely as possible, like if you’re at a house party, your friend is drunk and asleep, you’re also inebriated, and your ride home already left. For safety’s sake, Davis recommends always knowing your exact location and keeping your phone charged if you ever need to call for help, order a ride, or otherwise get home safely.

Some states have laws to protect people who call 911 in these instances.

You may be hesitant to call 911 because you worry you’ll get your friend (and possibly yourself) into trouble, especially if you’re too young to drink legally or if illegal drugs are involved. SELF doesn’t condone underage drinking or illegal drug use, but it’s always important to be able to get help in a potentially deadly situation without fear of repercussion. To encourage this, more than 30 states and the District of Columbia have introduced medical amnesty laws.

“[These laws] can provide immunity from criminal prosecution or, depending on the law, be offered as a defense at trial,” a representative at the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) tells SELF in an email. “Laws differ [by state] as to whether they apply to the victim, the caller, or those bystanders who offer assistance. A common element is that the person acted in ‘good faith’ in seeking help.” Another variable is whether or not the laws apply to drugs, alcohol, or both.

You can see if your state has a medical amnesty law and read it here. Some colleges and universities have also created their own medical amnesty policies in an effort to keep students safe. If your school has one, it may be on the website or in the student handbook. Here is Northwestern University’s medical amnesty policy as an example.

No matter the medical amnesty laws and policies in your location, Davis says that emergency responders tend to be most concerned with saving lives, not busting underage drinkers or people using drugs. “We often tell people that we are not the cops. We do not care what drugs you have done or how drunk you are. We are here to help,” Davis says. “In most states, there are not mandatory reporting laws for drugs or alcohol, so we do not have to call the police or file any sort of report if you have overindulged or were experimenting with drugs.”

When in doubt, always get medical help for a passed out friend immediately.

Even if there aren’t medical amnesty laws in effect where you are, getting help for a friend who’s dangerously drunk is worth it. It could save your friend’s life. Also (and less importantly), consider the outcome if you didn’t do anything and, in the worst-case scenario, your friend died. Not only would you be dealing with that loss, but you’d also be facing more serious consequences than you would be for something like underage drinking.

“You can’t take back not calling in time if your friend dies,” Davis says. “[Emergency responders] can always just return to service if we are not needed.”

Know your limits to avoid passing out from alcohol yourself.

According to the United States Department of Agriculture’s Dietary Guidelines, adults who drink should do so in moderation, which means having no more than one standard drink a day for women and two for men. If you’re going to go beyond that, follow these rules to stay as safe as possible:

Alternate one alcoholic beverage with one glass of water.

Eat before and while you drink so you don’t absorb alcohol as quickly.

Have a maximum of one drink an hour.

Decide beforehand how many drinks you can have without compromising your safety, then don’t keep nudging that number higher when you’re actually imbibing. Once you know what your body can handle, don’t push it.

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Passed Out Drunk: What to Do if Your Friend Is Passed Out Drunk

Hopefully you’re never in the position of being scared for a friend who’s passed out drunk. Many drunken nights end with nothing worse than a hangover. But our society’s generally casual approach to alcohol can make it easy to underplay the potential dangers of drinking too much, like losing consciousness.

You may already know that passing out from drinking too much alcohol is a symptom of alcohol overdose, also known as alcohol poisoning. As the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) explains, alcohol overdose doesn’t just mean someone is too drunk. This health hazard happens when a person’s level of intoxication interferes with the basic physiological functions that keep them alive. On average, six people a day die from alcohol poisoning in the United States, per the most recent available numbers from the CDC.

No matter how aware you are of alcohol’s potential dangers, a friend passing out from alcohol can turn a theoretical risk into a very real and frightening one. We get why you might be hesitant to spring into action. You might not be sure if your friend is truly passed out or if they will sleep off the booze and be completely fine. You might also worry that making a big deal over it will brand you as a buzzkill. But if someone is passed out from alcohol, there’s a very real chance they’re in life-threatening trouble. It might be up to you to save them. This is how to tell if a friend’s life is in danger after drinking too much and what to do next.

Why does alcohol make people pass out in the first place?

“Alcohol’s main effect on the brain is sedation,” Darria Long-Gillespie, M.D., an emergency room doctor and clinical assistant professor at the University of Tennessee School of Medicine, tells SELF. As the CDC explains, alcohol is a depressant that impacts your central nervous system, which is composed of your brain and spinal cord. With that in mind, it’s no surprise that alcohol’s sweeping effects can impact mental functions like decision making along with physical ones like your ability to stay alert.

“When alcohol is first being absorbed and our blood alcohol concentration (BAC) is on the way up, we may feel stimulated,” Susan Stoner, Ph.D., a research consultant at the University of Washington Alcohol & Drug Abuse Institute, tells SELF. This is because alcohol acts on your brain’s reward system by prompting the release of dopamine, a neurotransmitter that can induce good feelings. But the more alcohol you drink, the more your body builds up adenosine, a chemical that makes you tired—hence why you might feel gently relaxed after half a glass of wine but fall asleep after two.

Alcohol also affects neurotransmitters such as glutamate, which governs brain function. If you drink enough alcohol, its depressant effects can reduce your breathing and heart rate, which is when alcohol intoxication can become life-threatening. Alcohol intoxication can also kill someone more indirectly, Dr. Long-Gillespie says. A drunk person can fall and hit their head, think they’re fine to drive and crash, pass out and choke on their vomit, or get into other life-threatening situations.

“Everyone who drinks four or more drinks in one setting—or spends time with someone who does—should become familiar with a blood alcohol chart that shows how many ‘standard drinks’ result in a dangerous BAC,” Stoner says. A standard drink is around 12 ounces of beer, 5 ounces of wine, or 1.5 ounces of an 80-proof spirit like rum or tequila. Here’s a blood alcohol chart for women and one for men, though keep in mind that things like how much you’ve eaten and how your body metabolizes alcohol in general may influence how true this kind of chart is for you. As Stoner notes, a BAC of around 0.3 percent or higher is considered to be possibly fatal.

If you can’t wake your friend, you need to call 911 immediately.

“A person who is ‘sleeping off’ their alcohol should be fairly easy to wake up,” Stoner says. “Someone who is unconscious from alcohol would be very difficult to rouse.”

If calling your friend’s name and shaking their shoulders doesn’t work, Stoner suggests rubbing their sternum (breastbone) with your knuckles or pinching their earlobe. “In either case, it needs to be hard enough to cause pain,” she says. “If the friend doesn’t respond, they’re likely unconscious and could be at risk of death.”

Keep in mind that your friend doesn’t actually need to be passed out in order to be in danger. According to the NIAAA, other signs that your friend has overdosed on alcohol and that you should call 911 include:

Confusion

Clammy skin

Blue-tinged or pale skin

Low body temperature

Seizures

Vomiting

Breathing fewer than eight times a minute

Pausing for 10 or more seconds in between breaths

Reduced physical responses, like a lack of the normal gag reflex that prevents choking

Don’t take long to evaluate your friend for these signs. “If you have to look for more than a few seconds to tell if someone is breathing or not, and they do not wake up when you shake or shout at them, call 911,” nationally registered paramedic Heather Davis, associate director of the UCLA Center for Prehospital Care and program director for the UCLA Paramedic Education Program, tells SELF.

If your friend is vomiting while unconscious, Davis recommends placing them on their side to lower their likelihood of choking. “Ideally, another friend will call 911 [while you do this] and get paramedics en route,” she says. You can also lean them forward, the NIAAA says. Either way, it’s best if they’re on the ground so they’re not at risk of falling and hurting themselves.

When the emergency responders arrive, tell them as much information as you can, the NIAAA says. That includes how many drinks your friend had, what kind of alcohol, any other drugs they took, and any relevant information you may know, like that your friend has a certain health condition.

Monitor your friend even if they’re asleep and not passed out.

A person’s BAC can continue to rise even if they’ve stopped drinking because alcohol will keep leaching from their stomach and small intestine into their bloodstream.

“As your blood alcohol concentration goes up, the risk of most severe problems from a medical perspective [gets] higher as well,” Lorenzo Leggio, M.D., senior clinical investigator of the joint section of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) and the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), tells SELF.

That means a friend who is “only” very drunk could still deteriorate into alcohol poisoning.

“One of the biggest mistakes is thinking that your friend will ‘sleep it off’ and then leaving them alone without being observed,” Dr. Long-Gillespie says. “Friends often return hours later, only to find that their friend stopped breathing or choked on their own vomit.”

According to the NIAAA, symptoms of severe alcohol intoxication that could lead to alcohol poisoning include:

Markedly impaired speech, memory, reaction time, balance, coordination, and attention

An inability to drive due to dangerously impaired motor skills

Risky decision making and poor judgment

Blacking out

Vomiting

Loss of consciousness

If your friend is exhibiting these symptoms, they could be well on their way toward a life-threatening alcohol overdose. Be prepared to call 911 immediately. Go ahead and do it if they’re losing consciousness or vomiting, Dr. Long-Gillespie says.

Don’t leave your friend alone.

Even if your friend is sleeping and doesn’t have alcohol poisoning, leaving them alone could make them more vulnerable to sexual assault depending on your surroundings. “There is safety in numbers, so stick together,” Davis says.

The onus should never be on a potential victim (or their friends) to avoid an assault. The only person at fault for an assault is the one committing the crime. But the unfortunate reality is that until we as a society can trust people not to perpetrate assaults, sometimes safety measures such as staying together in this kind of situation are necessary.

Don’t be afraid to remove yourself and your friend from the situation as safely as possible, like if you’re at a house party, your friend is drunk and asleep, you’re also inebriated, and your ride home already left. For safety’s sake, Davis recommends always knowing your exact location and keeping your phone charged if you ever need to call for help, order a ride, or otherwise get home safely.

Some states have laws to protect people who call 911 in these instances.

You may be hesitant to call 911 because you worry you’ll get your friend (and possibly yourself) into trouble, especially if you’re too young to drink legally or if illegal drugs are involved. SELF doesn’t condone underage drinking or illegal drug use, but it’s always important to be able to get help in a potentially deadly situation without fear of repercussion. To encourage this, more than 30 states and the District of Columbia have introduced medical amnesty laws.

“[These laws] can provide immunity from criminal prosecution or, depending on the law, be offered as a defense at trial,” a representative at the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) tells SELF in an email. “Laws differ [by state] as to whether they apply to the victim, the caller, or those bystanders who offer assistance. A common element is that the person acted in ‘good faith’ in seeking help.” Another variable is whether or not the laws apply to drugs, alcohol, or both.

You can see if your state has a medical amnesty law and read it here. Some colleges and universities have also created their own medical amnesty policies in an effort to keep students safe. If your school has one, it may be on the website or in the student handbook. Here is Northwestern University’s medical amnesty policy as an example.

No matter the medical amnesty laws and policies in your location, Davis says that emergency responders tend to be most concerned with saving lives, not busting underage drinkers or people using drugs. “We often tell people that we are not the cops. We do not care what drugs you have done or how drunk you are. We are here to help,” Davis says. “In most states, there are not mandatory reporting laws for drugs or alcohol, so we do not have to call the police or file any sort of report if you have overindulged or were experimenting with drugs.”

When in doubt, always get medical help for a passed out friend immediately.

Even if there aren’t medical amnesty laws in effect where you are, getting help for a friend who’s dangerously drunk is worth it. It could save your friend’s life. Also (and less importantly), consider the outcome if you didn’t do anything and, in the worst-case scenario, your friend died. Not only would you be dealing with that loss, but you’d also be facing more serious consequences than you would be for something like underage drinking.

“You can’t take back not calling in time if your friend dies,” Davis says. “[Emergency responders] can always just return to service if we are not needed.”

Know your limits to avoid passing out from alcohol yourself.

According to the United States Department of Agriculture’s Dietary Guidelines, adults who drink should do so in moderation, which means having no more than one standard drink a day for women and two for men. If you’re going to go beyond that, follow these rules to stay as safe as possible:

Alternate one alcoholic beverage with one glass of water.

Eat before and while you drink so you don’t absorb alcohol as quickly.

Have a maximum of one drink an hour.

Decide beforehand how many drinks you can have without compromising your safety, then don’t keep nudging that number higher when you’re actually imbibing. Once you know what your body can handle, don’t push it.

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Banned Drugs Found in Your Meat

By Dr. Mercola

Factory farmed chicken has been identified as the food responsible for the greatest number of foodborne illnesses, thanks to the presence of pathogenic bacteria, many of which are resistant to antibiotics. Now, testing reveals chicken and other meats may also contain drugs that are banned for use in food animals.

As reported by Consumer Reports,1 drugs such as ketamine, phenylbutazone and chloramphenicol are all found in the U.S. meat supply.

"The data — as well as Consumer Reports' review of other government documents and interviews with farmers, industry experts, government officials and medical professionals — raise serious concerns about the safeguards put in place to protect the U.S. meat supply," the article states, adding:2

"These concerns start with how poultry, cattle, and pigs are raised in this country. And they include questions about how the federal government tests meat from these animals, and how it investigates and enforces potential violations."

Banned Drugs Found in Meats Across US

The Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) is the agency responsible for ensuring the safety of the American meat supply. The FSIS test data in question came to light during discovery in a lawsuit against Sanderson Farms, brought by the Organic Consumers Association (OCA), Friends of the Earth and the Center for Food Safety.

The plaintiffs claim Sanderson Farms falsely advertises its chicken as 100 percent natural, as the company feeds its chickens antibiotics.3 (Sanderson Farms is also facing a class action lawsuit by investors,4 who charge the company with making "materially false and misleading statements regarding the company's business, operational and compliance policies."

According to the complaint, Sanderson has been engaged in price fixing, which is a violation of antitrust laws, and revenues during the three years in question were therefore the result of illegal conduct.)

Through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, OCA, Friends of the Earth and the Center for Food Safety obtained FSIS testing data showing the presence of a number of drugs that are strictly prohibited for use in beef, poultry and/or pork production. Other meat samples were found to contain drugs that, while not banned, must be eliminated from the animal's system before it can be slaughtered. According to Consumer Reports, which reviewed the data:

"The samples came from producers large and small, and included meat destined for supermarkets, restaurants, hospitals, schools and elsewhere. Yet FSIS officials have taken little if any action based on the data.

When asked to explain why not, Esteban, at the FSIS, said the samples didn't meet several criteria used by the agency to decide when a sample requires follow-up testing. For example, he said that some results came from tests that have never been validated for certain animals or drugs.

And, he said, in many cases the results were below a level that the agency considers worrisome. The agency subsequently released a second set of data that, it says, reflected test results after those criteria had been applied, and that made the initial results invalid.

In a written response, an agency spokesperson said, 'Reporting preliminary unconfirmed data will be misleading as these data do not represent any public health risk to consumers.' Consumer Reports' food safety scientists disagree."

Why Is FSIS Ignoring Its Own Test Results?

One Consumer Reports food safety scientist is James E. Rogers, Ph.D. Rogers was a microbiologist at the FSIS for 13 years before joining Consumer Reports as director of food safety research and testing. According to Rogers:

"These results are credible enough that you would expect the government to take the warning signs seriously. You would hope the results would prompt the agency to look into why these drugs may be present, what risks they could pose, and what could be done to protect consumers."

The FSIS also has higher cutoff limits for drugs and other chemicals (such as pesticides) than other government agencies, which raises even more questions about safety. In the case of the potent and dangerous antibiotic chloramphenicol,5 the FSIS cutoff is 10 times higher than that of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).6 As noted by Consumer Reports:

"Some experts … worry that by relying on higher cutoffs, the FSIS may overlook possible health threats. Some research, including a 2015 review in the Journal of Veterinary Science & Toxicology, suggests that long-term exposure to low levels of drug residue in meat could increase the risk of cancer, fetal harm, antibiotic resistance, and more."

What's more, a number of the samples were found to contain banned drugs at levels above the FSIS cutoff. Still, no action was taken. Also befuddling is the FSIS' failure to investigate how the drugs are getting into the meat in the first place.

Four Drugs of Concern

The four drugs identified as particularly troubling, and the levels found in some of the 6,000 meat samples, were:

• Chloramphenicol7 — This antibiotic is associated with several toxic effects in humans, including aplastic anemia (inability to produce new blood cells, basically, a fatal form of anemia), and this effect is not dose dependent.

Because of its severe health risks to humans, chloramphenicol is only permitted in dogs and cats, yet the drug was found in beef, chicken, pork and turkey samples. The highest levels were found in beef.

In all, 81 of 2,865 beef samples contained this dangerous drug, and 12 of them contained levels above the FSIS cutoff (which again is 10 times higher than the FDA's cutoff for imported foods). Pork, followed by chicken, had the next-highest levels.

• Phenylbutazone — This anti-inflammatory pain reliever is also known to cause aplastic anemia in humans, along with other blood disorders and cancer. Twenty-four of 1,448 pork samples contained the drug; one was above the FSIS cutoff.

• Ketamine — Ketamine is a hallucinogenic anesthetic, used experimentally as an antidepressant. Of 4,313 beef and pork samples combined, 225 had ketamine above the threshold suggested by Consumer Reports, while 15 were above the FSIS cutoff.

• Nitroimidazole — An antifungal drug with suspected carcinogenic activity, of 5,756 beef, pork and poultry samples, 667 contained the drug, 136 of which were above the cutoff set by FSIS.

How Are the Drugs Getting Into the Meat?

In my view, the factory farm system is a breeding ground for intentional misuse, as profits are tied to the weight of each animal So, just how are these drugs entering the meat supply? Consumer Reports lists a number of possible routes of entry or exposure, including:

Improper use, such as giving too high a dose or administering too close to slaughter

Counterfeit drugs8

Contaminated feed

Intentional misuse

For example, Consumer Reports notes that "cattle that can't stand on their own are not allowed to be used for meat. So … lame cattle are sometimes given phenylbutazone — a painkiller — shortly before slaughter, so they can 'get the animal through the slaughterhouse gates without anybody looking closer.'"

Chickens are also raised to be as large and meaty as possible. Chicken farmers actually do not own the chickens. The vast majority of chicken farmers in the U.S. are contract farmers. The poultry company owns the chickens from start to finish, and the farmer gets paid to raise them, based on how large they are at time of processing.

The larger the chickens, the more money the farmer makes, and this creates a tempting incentive for farmers to use growth promoting drugs, especially since many drugs aren't even being tested for, and when found, there are no dire ramifications anyway.

US Department of Agriculture Denies There's a Problem

The very same day Consumer Reports published its report, Carmen Rottenberg, acting deputy undersecretary for food safety at FSIS, issued a press statement9 assuring Americans that food safety is her No. 1 priority, and that:

"When you see the USDA mark of inspection, you can have confidence that the products have been inspected and passed — meaning that every carcass has been inspected, samples have been taken by USDA inspectors and analyzed by scientists in a USDA laboratory, and the labeling is truthful and not misleading."

She also explains that the test results showing banned drugs in poultry were "mistakenly released in response to a FOIA request" in the agency's "haste to be transparent and responsive."

"You may have seen a Consumer Reports story claiming that the poultry and meat you purchase in the grocery store and feed your families could contain harmful drug residues. That is not true. This story is sensational and fear-based infotainment aimed at confusing shoppers with pseudoscience and scare tactics," Rottenberg writes.

How Thorough Are Meat Inspections?

However, there's no conceivable way for every single carcass to be thoroughly inspected, sampled and analyzed for the presence of drugs and pathogens. In fact, if you read her statement closely, she admits as much.

According to Rottenberg, the FSIS inspection process involves inspecting every single carcass, testing for drug residues "at multiple points," and if a sample tests positive during screening, follow-up testing is done to confirm it. She also claims that "if drug residues are found in any meat or poultry product, FSIS does not allow that product to be sold for human consumption."

However, just how thorough of an inspection can you do when, as a food inspector, 140 carcasses per minute go by? That's the line speed for slaughter, which means an inspector is looking at two to three chickens per second! (The line speed in processing plants is unregulated.) Last year, the National Chicken Council petitioned the FSIS to increase the slaughter line speed to 175 birds per minute. As noted by Food Safety News,10

"The primary food safety threat in this part of the process is removing visible fecal material … Because the presence of feces on carcasses is gross, a facility has every incentive to ensure it is removed as no one would purchase the product. Similarly, since feces can present a food safety threat, continued visual inspection by FSIS is necessary."

Visual inspection for fecal contamination certainly makes sense, but neither bacteria nor drugs can be detected visually, and a carcass does not need to have visual excrement on it in order to be contaminated with fecal bacteria. Each year, an estimated 8 billion11 to 9 billion12 chickens are processed in the U.S. Are these billions of chickens tested for pathogens and drugs? No. That's done through sampling.

If every single carcass were tested for pathogens and drugs, and none found to contain harmful substances were sold for human consumption, chicken would not be causing more than 3,100 foodborne illnesses each year13 and spot testing14 of meat sold in grocery stores across the U.S. would not reveal fecal bacteria on 83 percent of supermarket meats (turkey, pork, ground beef and chicken).15,16

Clearly, the reality of such findings does not conform to Rottenberg's assurances that every single carcass undergoes thorough inspection and testing. Factory farmed chicken in particular has become a notorious carrier of salmonella, campylobacter, clostridium perfringens and listeria bacteria, including antibiotic-resistant strains.17

Is FSIS Just Trying to Cover Up Its Shortcomings?

Rogers has also published an extensive reply to Rottenberg’s press statement. As a former FSIS scientist who is familiar with the agency’s testing, his rebuttal is informative, and I suggest you read it in its entirety, although I’ve included a longer than normal excerpt below.18

Based on Roger’s rebuttal, it seems clear that USDA is engaging in a deceptive PR strategy, accusing Consumer Reports of fearmongering and publishing unverified results, even though the data came from their own testing. Rogers explains, in part:

“As a scientist and former FSIS official, I intimately understand how the agency collects, tests, and measures contaminants in food. When we looked at testing data from the FSIS, both an initial and then revised set, serious concerns came to light about the process, the standards applied, and the findings themselves.

At the heart of the matter is that there should never be any of these banned substances in the food supply.

In the case of this testing, the FSIS created what can only be called an arbitrary and self-determined threshold, far above the legal threshold for the drugs chloramphenicol, ketamine, nitroimidazoles, and phenylbutazone, which is zero and what the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act mandates.

The FSIS has attempted to redirect the conversation about [Consumer Reports’] investigation to make it about the completeness of the data, offering up the explanation that the initial data was preliminary and released in error, and should be dismissed. The meat industry has, not surprisingly, supported that position.

Here’s the truth: The initial data set recorded thousands of data points showing detectable amounts of drugs in meat samples. The revised set issued by FSIS, using their arbitrary threshold, showed many of the results changed to ‘Residue Not Detected.’

However, when the results that did remain were compared to the initial set, near-identical results appeared, including down to the final decimal place. The only scientific conclusion we can draw is that the entire initial data set is both real and meaningful; in many cases, trace amounts were no longer included simply because they did not meet the FSIS’s arbitrary threshold.”

USDA Is Charged With Promoting Factory Raised Meat

A part of the USDA's dilemma is the fact that, while responsible for food inspection and safety, it is also responsible for the promotion of the very industry it regulates. You're probably aware that the food industry has the power to influence your eating habits through the use of advertising and lobbying for industry-friendly regulations.

What you might not be aware of is the fact that the U.S. government actually funds some of these activities through the collection and distribution of taxes on certain foods, including beef.19 By doing so, the government is actively supporting agricultural systems that are adverse to public and environmental health, and discourages the adoption of healthier and more ecologically sound farming systems such as grass fed beef production.

In a nutshell, the USDA beef checkoff program20 is a mandatory program that requires cattle producers to pay a $1 fee per head of cattle sold. It's basically a federal tax on cattle, but the money doesn't go to the government; it goes to state beef councils, the national Cattlemen's Beef Board (CBB) and the National Cattlemen's Beef Association (NCBA).

All of these organizations are clearly biased toward the concentrated animal feeding operation (CAFO) model. The money is collected by state beef councils, which keep half and send the other half of the funds to the national CBB, which is in charge of the national beef promotion campaign. Nationwide, the beef checkoff fees add up to about $80 million annually.

As the primary contractor for the checkoff program, the NCBA receives a majority of the checkoff proceeds, which is used for research and promotion of beef. The iconic "Beef, it's what's for dinner" slogan came out of this program.

USDA food inspectors are also vulnerable to regulatory capture — a term used to describe what happens when inspectors become excessively influenced by industry — since they're trying to enforce the law while working in a facility that pays for the inspector's services.21

Not Eating Meat Is Not the Answer

While the presence of drugs and pathogens in meat might make you consider giving up on meat altogether and becoming a vegetarian, it's important to realize that the problems with CAFOs by extension affects vegetables as well. CAFO manure is frequently used as fertilizer, and if there are dangerous pathogens in the manure, the plants become carriers.

Biosolids may also contain hazardous levels of heavy metals and other toxins. The most recent outbreak of E. coli — which infected 210 people in 36 states and killed five — was traced back to romaine lettuce contaminated by a nearby cattle farm.22,23

Runoff from the farm's manure lagoons is thought to have entered and contaminated a nearby canal, and this E. coli-tainted water was then used for irrigation on the lettuce fields. CAFOs are also a major source of groundwater contamination. As noted by the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality:24

"Nationwide and in Arizona, the potential for surface and ground water pollution exists through livestock facility discharge of manure-contaminated run off to natural waterways and through wastewater leaching to aquifers."

Buy Local

One of the best ways to ensure food safety is to shop locally from a farmer you know and trust. Most farmers are happy to answer questions about how they grow and raise their food, and will give you a tour if you ask them. This may be particularly important for chicken.

While many grocery stores now carry organic foods, it's preferable to source yours from local growers whenever possible, as many organic foods sold in grocery stores are imported.25 If you live in the U.S., the following organizations can help you locate farm-fresh foods:

Demeter USA — Demeter-USA.org provides a directory of certified Biodynamic farms and brands. This directory can also be found on BiodynamicFood.org.

American Grassfed Association — The goal of the American Grassfed Association is to promote the grass fed industry through government relations, research, concept marketing and public education.

Their website also allows you to search for AGA approved producers certified according to strict standards that include being raised on a diet of 100 percent forage; raised on pasture and never confined to a feedlot; never treated with antibiotics or hormones; and born and raised on American family farms.

EatWild.com — EatWild.com provides lists of farmers known to produce raw dairy products as well as grass fed beef and other farm-fresh produce (although not all are certified organic). Here you can also find information about local farmers markets, as well as local stores and restaurants that sell grass fed products.

Weston A. Price Foundation — Weston A. Price has local chapters in most states, and many of them are connected with buying clubs in which you can easily purchase organic foods, including grass fed raw dairy products like milk and butter.

Grassfed Exchange — The Grassfed Exchange has a listing of producers selling organic and grass fed meats across the U.S.

Local Harvest — This website will help you find farmers markets, family farms and other sources of sustainably grown food in your area where you can buy produce, grass fed meats and many other goodies.

Farmers Markets — A national listing of farmers markets.

Eat Well Guide: Wholesome Food from Healthy Animals — The Eat Well Guide is a free online directory of sustainably raised meat, poultry, dairy and eggs from farms, stores, restaurants, inns, hotels and online outlets in the United States and Canada.

Community Involved in Sustaining Agriculture (CISA) — CISA is dedicated to sustaining agriculture and promoting the products of small farms.

The Cornucopia Institute — The Cornucopia Institute maintains web-based tools rating all certified organic brands of eggs, dairy products and other commodities, based on their ethical sourcing and authentic farming practices separating CAFO "organic" production from authentic organic practices.

RealMilk.com — If you're still unsure of where to find raw milk, check out Raw-Milk-Facts.com and RealMilk.com. They can tell you what the status is for legality in your state, and provide a listing of raw dairy farms in your area.

The Farm to Consumer Legal Defense Fund26 also provides a state-by-state review of raw milk laws.27 California residents can also find raw milk retailers using the store locator available at www.OrganicPastures.com.

from HealthyLife via Jake Glover on Inoreader http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2018/09/11/contaminated-meat.aspx

[armorroofing]

The Best Quality Baldwin Park MO Roofing

The article The Best Quality Baldwin Park MO Roofing originally appeared on Armor Roofing Kansas City.

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So Just why Should Anybody Choose For An Extensive Replacement?

Has your home's metal rooftop corroded in partitions? You definitely have to connect to a roofing company to take a glance and witness how crappy the devastation is. You shouldn't be reluctant to come to terms with the problem.

Below a Roof Materials - Is the underlayment rotting? A layer underneath the rooftop is called underlayment. Consider this damage as a suggestion that extensive rooftop repairs are required. You will have to exchange the underlayment layer and redo the roofing substance over it at once.

Do you spot any specific cracked roofing tiles? You would need to genuinely swap-out the messed up tiles and would certainly require a total re-roof if the trouble ends up considerable.

When identifying any sort of wear, you will ideally set out to determine how most efficiently to take care of the conditions. Even though you may very well be tempted to work on this roof replacement yourself, the preferred use of your effort will most certainly be devoted turning the activity over to a roofing expert. Just before you start out to start searching for rooftop trouble symptoms referred to at an earlier time in this content, you should assess commissioning the roofing veteran to provide the incredibly difficult and dangerous repair for your family. At our roofing service, we deliver you for no cost through inspections in the Baldwin Park locale.

We highly recommend you phone Armor at this time for a totally free rooftop inspection, simply you don't have an underlying cause to take care of the inspection yourself.

Call Us Today!Call Us Today! (816) 331-7663

Why would you leave the roof structure to luck? Connect with Roofs Are Us as soon as possible at (816) 331-7663 and our company can check your roofing 100% free. Whilst you have the roofing company to analyze your house hold, enquire about the amount of the damages and whether a patch up or more expensive replacement is called for. A total replacement should certainly always be an alternative, especially if you really want to bite the bullet and up grade your roofing to any lifetime roofing model which will add to your asset's market value while postponing long-term servicing. If in case the wear is substantial enough it would probably even be called for.

The Several Strengths

The glaring effect is going to be that you have a brand spanking new roof covering. Roofing repair concerns just after gale force winds will probably be long gone out of your psyche for the near future. An effective patch up maybe acceptable similarly, when the wear is moderate.

In the case you decide to getting rid of the family home soon, a hundred percent new roof structure is probably an exceptional suggestion. Industry technicians see the fact that a 100% new roof is a selling point which does significantly step-up the selling price of your residential home in the recognition of a home buyer.

So why Dodge A Baldwin Park Rooftop Installation?

Your efforts used for a rooftop replacing is some more than a mending. However, in the event that you enlist the services of a roofing company accompanied by a considerable crew easily available, the entire job is often conducted moderately soon, sometimes in a handful of days. Regarding the price, six to 8 thousand dollars will be the over-all budget range associated with a roof top. Naturally these numbers represent a standard scale, and so quite a lot will certainly be dependent upon the range of roofing that desired for the brand new roof. As your insurance firm can be signing the check for the cost, this is an expense you preferably should exclusively get worried about in relation to being sure the undertaking is handled right so you being confident that they compensate you. One legitimate reason our clientele truly value our company is we will most likely attempt to assure to make it possible for you enjoy the deposited insurance claim.

Roofs Are Us can service your family in the case you are lead to believe the roof covering could quite possibly be needing some servicing. Not one person betters Armor Roofing Services in the event you compare clients 100% satisfaction and superiority. Visit Roofs Are Us right now!

Call Us Today!Call Us Today! (816) 331-7663

The post The Best Quality Baldwin Park MO Roofing appeared first on Armor Roofing Kansas City.

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What is Affiliate Marketing

What can be Affiliate Marketing? Affiliate marketing and advertising is many things. Affiliate marketing may give you the necessary tools for the inventive as well as hardworking individual in order to opportunity out about their own own. Affiliate advertising can supply the chance to earn cash doing that which you are good at. Affiliate advertising can allow somebody to help make use of his or her abilities and also expertise because there own financial gain, rather than the actual economic acquire of one other person or entity. Finally, Affiliate advertising can get individuals began within their own business enterprises using nearly zero cost or even risk to themselves. Affiliate marketing can do almost all regarding those things as well as more. First, Affiliate advertising can be perfect for the impartial hardworking individual. Several folks tend to be stuck within day for you to day jobs. We perform incredibly difficult and also obtain little reward. Generally there is almost simply no incentive for you to function harder. While you work inside the area regarding affiliate marketing, the planet is your oyster. Anyone paid by simply your performance and thus the harder a person work, generally the much better associated with you’ll be. While you work being an affiliate, you are working as getting a representative of another company. However, your current reward can be immediately linked together with everything you produce. In case you’re somebody that frequently will get good results at the actual office then this could possibly be a fantastic opportunity pertaining to you. Next Affiliate marketing and also advertising can easily supply the opportunity to earn cash by simply doing something that you might be great at. Individuals in which have a knack pertaining to sales and also advertising are generally perfect with regard to affiliate marketing. Individuals which are creative and utilized to tough perform may additionally create an superb living. Your Current skills is going to be accustomed to perform pertaining to you. In the particular event that you've an just about all natural knack with regard to these kinds regarding projects then why don't you keep these things boost your bank stability rather than someone else’s? Since an affiliate, something that you do for you to boost sales or targeted traffic if it can be world wide web based will advantage you as well as also a person directly. Your company won’t obtain rich while an individual say poor. You’re the actual one who will reap the particular rewards. Finally, Affiliate marketing and advertising will get somebody started inside their own home based business with almost zero cost or even danger for you to themselves. Numerous folks would want to perform regarding ourselves. the a pair of major reasons why we don’t tend to be money and risk. you need a decent quantity of money to start out even the small business. The Particular risk concerned can additionally be tremendous together with a lot more than 50 % of small businesses failing in the initial year. Affiliate marketing as well as advertising can easily get you began employed by yourself. These People handle most of the merchandise as well as marketing and you just concentrate in selling. When yours is an net based program, you focus upon increasing traffic. The Majority Of of these programs have the freedom or perhaps involve very low original start up costs. You’re paid according to how well you do regardless of how the organization will be performing. If you have dreamed of employed by oneself then affiliate advertising online could be the ideal come auto insurance true. Anyone will make cash based on your tough work. Anyone are the one rewarded for the efforts, not truly a boss or possibly a team involving shareholders. A Person don’t have to be worried about economic risk. The Actual head business will consider care of all regarding the detail allowing you to make use of abilities for the very best of your ability. In the actual event that you’re creative, hardworking and wish being your own boss, consider the world associated with affiliate marketing. Your Current skills along with expertise might be boosting your bank balance, certainly not somebody else’s. PPPPP Word count 565

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The Southbourne Tax Group: Get richer this tax season in 10 easy ways millennials can maximize refunds and avoid costly mistakes

By now, you've probably heard people talking about tax season — or maybe you got the hint that you'll need to start filing your taxes soon, because of that complicated-looking W-2 form that arrived at your house.

It's only natural to want to procrastinate on filling out those ugly forms (1040-what?) or to feel intimidated or overwhelmed.

Not only do most millennials say they fear filing their taxes — more so than other generations — but young Americans are also scared to make a mistake on their taxes, and are less likely to seek professional guidance.

That might be especially true for you if this year is only your first (or second... or third...) time giving it a try without help from parents.

In fact, you should remember that tax time can be a happy time — especially if you are due for a big refund in the form of a check from the government.

Here are some pointers on what to look out for as you're doing your taxes, so you avoid mistakes and maximize any money due to you. And remember: When in doubt, you can always call the free tax help line that the IRS provides.

1. Know the deadlines — or pay the price

First and foremost, you simply must review a simple list (like this one from Mic) showing when taxes are due. Don't be off, even by a couple of days, or else you run the risk of paying a penalty for filing late.

You might want to circle April 18 on your calendar — as that’s the drop-dead deadline to file your taxes this year. And if you haven’t received your W-2 from your employer by Valentine’s Day, you might want to ring the IRS for help or to file an extension.

Speaking of extensions…

2.Don't make this common mistake regarding extensions

Time waits for no man, and apparently, neither does Uncle Sam.

There might be a reason why you choose to file for a tax extension (hopefully you get it!) that could give you six months of breathing room to get your ducks and tax paperwork in a row.

That, however, does not mean you get to simply shoot an IOU to the government, should you owe them. According to the IRS, "an extension will give you extra time to get your paperwork to the IRS, but it does not extend the time you have to pay any tax due."

"It is a common misconception that if you file for an extension, your obligation to pay your tax bill is also delayed. This is not true!" Jacob Dayan, a partner and co-founder of Community Tax, a tax resolution and debt relief services company, reiterated to Mic. "If you don't pay your tax bill at the deadline you are delinquent, even if you've requested an extension for your return."

3.Beware tax-related identity theft

You might be dreaming about all the awesome things you plan to buy with the tax return you hope to get, and we hope you’re able to enjoy it!

But one common danger all millennials (and everyone, really) needs to look out for is tax-related identity theft. Believe it or not, there are cold-hearted people out there who are looking for opportunities to steal your Social Security number — in order to file a phony tax return and claim your bounty.

In 2016 alone, the IRS discovered thousands of fraudulent refunds and has been working on the double to reduce tax return fraud.

Alex Hamilton, a communications professional at the Identity Theft Resource Center, advises taxpayers to file as early as possible to help reduce the risk of tax-related identity theft. In addition, Hamilton told Mic, it's important to "regularly update your anti-virus software to protect you from a cyber-attack which can steal your personal data."

To prevent tax-related identity theft, the IRS also encourages tax filers to question suspicious emails and "threatening calls" from people posing as representatives of your bank — or even the IRS — and not to carry your Social Security card.

For more tips on how to protect yourself from tax-refund fraud, visit the IRS website.

4.Use student loans — to your advantage

Sadly, it feels like student loan debt is just a universal part of being a millennial.

But there's a silver lining: Millennials contending with student loans have the opportunity to deduct interest paid on student loans.

"Many millennials rush to get their taxes done online as soon as they get their W-2s and don’t wait for their 1098-Es from their student loan providers," Joseph Carpenito, a licensed financial advisor at Raymond James and founder of the financial site MyPlan2Day.com, explained to Mic. "[For] a young person with limited deductions, student loan interest may potentially be one of their largest deductions."

You can deduct up to $2,500 of student loan interest paid in a given year.

There are, however, income limits for this deduction, so be sure to check out tips for claiming the student loan interest deduction on the IRS website.

5.Make the most of small business tax perks if you work a side hustle

Do you love moonlighting as a freelancer or someone who earns extra money doing what you love? Surprise!

The government might actually consider you to be a small business owner.

"Millennials are more involved in the 'gig economy' than other demographics, and many of them like the appeal of working for themselves in jobs like Uber drivers and delivery drivers," Max Robinson, an associate for Jumpstart, a research and experimentation tax credit specialist company, told Mic.

"However, these millennials need to realize that working in jobs like this classifies them as small business owners. This means they're eligible for certain deductions, like petrol expenses," Robinson added.

TL;DR: You might be owed cash back if you spent money on business expenses, so read up on what might count. Cha-ching!

6.Know what the 1099-MISC is for

As the IRS mentions on their website, you don’t have to have a business in order to report income as self-employed or an independent contractor on your taxes.

“In most cases, if you receive a form 1099-MISC it means you are considered self-employed by the government,” Crystal Stranger, president of the tax firm 1st Tax and author of The Small Business Tax Guide, told Mic.

“Not only does this mean you need to report your income and expenses on a Schedule C and pay self-employment (Social Security & Medicare) taxes on your net income, but also, in a lot of places, you will need to register with the city or state and may owe taxes or at least have a filing requirement on the local level," Stranger said. "Missing the local level filing can have bigger tax and penalty implications than making a mistake on your federal taxes.”

7.Use tax software to save time (and money)

Filing your taxes can be a truly overwhelming experience — especially if it’s your first time. It’s easy to feel stressed and worried you're not qualified to operate in the land of adulthood without a parent or guardian nearby.

But that doesn't mean you can't take care of business yourself.

"This may be your first time doing your own taxes, but you don’t have to take your taxes somewhere and pay hundreds of dollars to have them prepared," TurboTax Certified Public Accountant Lisa Greene-Lewis told Mic. "You most likely are one of the 60 million Americans who has a relatively straightforward tax return, so there is no reason to pay someone to do your taxes. You may even be able to file your federal taxes for free."

Companies like TurboTax, H&R Block, and even the IRS offer free tax-filing services to qualifying taxpayers that will not only make your life a little more hassle free, but also help keep some money in your pocket.

Just remember to make sure to report business expenses and other opportunities for deductions when the software prompts you. Speaking of which...

8.Dig deep for deductions

In a rush to get through your taxes as quickly — and with as few gray hairs — as possible, it becomes easy to skip over deductions that can help lower your tax bill. In fact, there are a number of overlooked tax deductions that some experts consider money left on the table.

“It’s easy to overlook the many ways you stay fabulous by helping others throughout the year,” Richard Lavina, CEO of Taxfyle, a personal and business tax filing app, told Mic.