#top medical colleges in america

[nikkiadderley88]

Discover the top universities after 12th grade, explore the best options for your future. Secure your career path with the finest education opportunities globally.

[woso-dreamzzz]

Blood Sugar

England Lionesses x Teen!Reader

Summary: You have a hypo during a match

Your sugar levels were fine at the start of the match.

You'd checked them before you went out. They were fine and it's not like your diabetes were a new thing. You knew how to control them.

"Looking good?" Alessia asks as you press your monitor against the patch attached to your arm.

It takes a few seconds for it to flash up but you nod.

"Good."

She grins, throwing an arm around your shoulders. "Excellent. Can't have one of our midfielders out of it. Who else will feed me balls?"

You roll your eyes. "Don't act like I'm the only one doing my job."

Lessi pinches your cheek. "But you're my favourite! Look at you! All cute and tiny!"

"Leave me alone!"

You try to shove her away but she just holds onto you firmer.

You'd known Alessia for years. You used to live next door to each other before she went to college in America and she'd been obsessed with you ever since you got placed into her arms as a baby.

She'd been overjoyed to see you on the team sheet for the Euro's and then now for the Finalissima. It helped, of course, that you and Alessia had racked up the most assist to goal pairings on the entire team.

"Leave her alone, Less," Leah says with an eye roll," We need her in tip-top shape, not looking like a tomato."

Alessia huffs as you put away your glucose monitor and dart around her, taking refuge with Keira and Lucy. You stick your tongue out at her as you pass.

You feel good during the first half, feeding the ball to Tooney, who scores. You feel good during halftime too, though you forget to check your glucose monitor.

You'd had it in your hand ready and waiting but Mary had caught you in conversation for the entirety of the break and it had completely slipped your mind.

Things took a turn for the worst about halfway through the second half. Your arms suddenly felt too heavy for your body and your mouth had gotten very dry, very quickly.

You sway on your feet and just manage to get the ball out from under your feet and to Keira to run up to Brazil's half. You stumble a little bit.

You're sweating now too, badly. You're sweating too much even for someone who has been on the pitch for nearly ninety minutes. You can feel your legs shaking too and you have to back up to keep your footing.

"Hey, what's going on? Is something wrong?"

The thick scouse accent from behind you means you've bumped into Alex and you practically go limp against her. She notices that too and immediately makes sure you stay upright.

Your head flops back like your neck can no longer support it. It's probably for the best because your vision has gone blurry and your head is swimming.

It takes all your concentration to move your lips in some semblance of words even though it comes out all garbled and slurred.

"'m goin' to pass out soon," You manage to say," Low sugar, I thin'." You draw in a ragged breath. "Meds have got...got..."

"Hey!" Alex shakes you. "The medics have got a...?"

"Gotta gluca...a gluca-"

You don't get to finish your sentence because you got fully limp now. Alex lays you on the ground, gesturing wildly to the medics and to the ref and to everyone who will see.

Leah's the first person to come skidding in, her hand immediately going to your pulse.

"What happened?!"

"I dont know!" Alex replies," She suddenly went all funny. She's sweating buckets! Er..." She shakes her head as she tries to clear her thoughts. "She said something about the medics having a...a gluca-something? I don't know. She passed out before she could finish."

"A glucagon injection," Alessia says as she comes running in as well," Fuck, her sugar levels must have tanked."

"She's right," The first medic says, shoving a glucose monitor onto your sensor," These are low. It's a wonder she didn't pass out earlier."

No one's really listening to him, least of all Alessia, who's rummaging through the first aid kit in search of something. Another medic is waving for a stretcher and a third one is pulling up the bottom of your shorts and cleaning off the top of your thigh with a cotton swab doused in alcohol.

"And she didn't hit her head?" The fourth medic is asking Alex, who shakes her head.

"No. She stumbled a bit but I caught her. She didn't hit anything. Just passed straight out in my arms."

Leah doesn't really know what else to do but stare. The whole team has joined them, forming a huddle around your unconscious body to block the cameras from seeing.

It's a pretty severe thing happening because the officials have even let Sarina on the pitch and she has joined the huddle with the rest of the staff to keep your privacy.

When Leah manages to tear her gaze from you, it lands on Alessia. She's at your other side, ripping open a small plastic box in a hurry. She uncaps a small glass bottle of powder and stabs a syringe into it, pushing all of the liquid into it.

She shakes the bottle a few times before turning it upside down and drawing it all back into the syringe.

"You need to roll her over once it's in," She says and Leah and a few of the medics immediately grab parts of you to pull on.

"Alessia," The first medic says," Do you need me to do this?"

"I've done it before!" Alessia snaps," As soon as I take the needle out, roll her in case she throws up. Okay? One. Two. Three!"

The needle finds a home in the top of your thigh, the area that had been disinfected. Alessia jabs the needle in and pushes down. As soon as she takes it out, Leah tugs on your shoulder to get you on your side.

"I need to come off," Alessia says to Sarina as you're carefully loaded onto a stretcher," I have to be with her. She'll be disorientated when she wakes up."

"Go," Sarina says," Be with her."

The match ends in a penalty shootout but everyone seems to be in the same mind because the medal ceremony is delayed until after you've been checked.

You're looking a lot better when Leah and the others burst into the physio's room. You're sitting upright with Alessia by your side, forcing a sugary drink down your throat.

It's clear that this has been going on for a while because there's another empty can of your favourite nearby and a packet of haribos in your hand.

"You scared us," Leah says.

"Did we win?"

"No talking!" Alessia snaps," Drink! All of it!"

You flash an amused smile at Leah but do as you're told.

"We won," Mary confirms," Penalty shootout but we did it. Could have done without the scare though."

"Sorry," You say with a wince," If it helps, I didn't plan it."

"Thank god for that," Alex mutters," Because that wasn't fun, kid. I thought you were dying."

"Just a bad hypo," You say and Lessi swats you.

"Stop making fun of dangerous situations," She scolds," I don't like having to give you injections so often."

You roll your eyes. "You've done it twice in my entire life!"

"Three times now! You're going to give me a heart attack one day."

"Well, can you have that heart attack later? We've got medals to collect."

[ww2yaoi]

Yesterday was quite a day, I mused as I hurried back from the medics: I caught diarrhea and voted for Roosevelt. Now I was bound for the barn on the west side of Uden where we had moved from an outpost in the north several days after returning from Best. The ballot had gone on its way to the States, but I still had the diarrhea; it made me hurry faster. The first platoon had taken over a large barn and made itself at home in the hay. Supposed to be on the M.L.R., we had posted a couple of men on 24-hour guard in the field behind us while we slept on soft hay in thin, one-man sleeping bags which had caught up with us with the last of the regiment’s rear echelon. It was our most comfortable position in Holland. But I couldn't enjoy it, because I had the worst diarrhea I had ever caught in the Army; I couldn't lie still for more than twenty minutes. Cramped and irritable, I had spent most of the day and night running back and forth to the slit-trench latrine behind the barn, with time out for a mile walk to the medics and a dose of sulfa pills. It was all the cooks’ fault, I mused as I came in sight of our quarters. Bastards always were dirty. They kill a cow and butcher it and boil it hard in pasty gravy and call it beef stew. It almost broke my teeth, but the stew wasn't to blame—it was the wash water afterward. Vile as the British seamen on the Samaria, who had set out cold pans of salt water for us to wash our mess kits in, they gave us a single garbage can of soapy water as a battalion rinse. By the time I got to the can, the scum was an inch thick on top. The grease clung to my pan, breeding germs, and gave me diarrhea at the next meal. I had spent last night on the run, unable to enjoy the comforts of my sleeping bag. Well, anyway I had voted. That made me happy. I had to walk almost two miles to cast my ballot, but I would have walked ten, if necessary, because this was my first vote—I was 22 in June—and I had always wanted to cast it for Roosevelt, the greatest President we had ever had and the only one who ever gave the working man a break. Roosevelt had faced and overcome the two great crises America had ever suffered: the worst depression in history and the world’s biggest war. He was a politician, as crafty and conniving as any, for politics is a cesspool of lying lawyers, but his work was greater than the man, and the country was better for it. The rich Republicans hated Roosevelt for helping the working man, for encouraging the labor unions to wring a fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work out of employers who had never heard of such a thing before and for putting into effect fair-employment practices that they considered outrageously Socialistic. Roosevelt helped the unemployed when Herbert Hoover, the last Republican, an engineer who never quite understood humanity, had said, “Let every man help his brother,” when he knew perfectly well that the rich weren't about to help the poor, never had and never would. I had grown up with Republicans and gone to school and college with them, and sickened by their selfishness, their cold avarice and lofty contempt for the common people, had early sworn to vote for the Democrats, who, for all their rotten political faults, were more concerned with the welfare of the country as a whole. Delighted that I had at last fulfilled that ambition, I snapped back to the present when I saw a dozen people standing in front of our barn. A wild-eyed crone was shrieking and cackling at some soldiers while several Dutch children looked on.

David Kenyon Webster, Parachute Infantry, pg. 142-144.

Happy election day, USAmericans! If David Webster can walk two miles with bad diarrhea in an active war zone to vote, so can you!

[grantmentis]

2024 Ice Hockey Women's World Championship: A Primer

When: April 3rd to April 14th. The schedule here will tell you when games are taking place both in your local time and venue time.

Where is it taking place?: Utica, New York

Where to watch:

For the first time, we will have ALL games broadcasted in USA and Canada. I am not sure how many games are going to be broadcasted outside North America, but we can reasonably assume they will at least carry their home country games

TSN will carry all games in canada

NHL Network and ESPN+ will carry a mix of the games together. See The Ice Garden's Michelle Jay's tweet for the schedule of which games are where.

SVT (Sweden)

Discovery (Finland)

Czech TV (Czechia)

Magenta (Germany)

TBS (Japan)

Swiss TV (Switzerland)

If you are not in any of these countries, or you are but are struggling to find a way to watch, please feel free to DM me and I will do my best to find you something

What is the tournament format?:

There are two divisions, Division A with the five ranked teams going into the tournament and Division B with the next five. Each division plays a round robin style ranking round, and at the conclusion the bottom two teams in Division B will be relegated, while the rest automatically make the quarterfinals. Quarterfinals will go A1-B3, A2-B2, A3-B1, A4-A5. In addition to the finals for gold that will take place, there will be a bronze medal game and a fifth place game for ranking. Standings will use a three point systems.

Who is in each division?:

Division A: USA, Canada, Czechia, Switzerland, Finland

Division B: Sweden, Japan, Germany, China, Denmark

Who are each teams?

Here is where it gets long. Below the cut I will tell you each teams roster, how they did last year, their reasonable goals, notable roster changes, and three players to watch. I will do my best to keep this informative, but brief.

USA

Roster:

(Text version available here)

2023 Result: Won Gold

2024 goals: Win gold again

Notable roster changes: This team continues to go very very young. Abby Roque is the most notable roster omission here. Top defender Lee Stecklein is also not on this roster, due to her taking a break from the National Team. Amanda Kessel was also left off, but she has not been active within the last year as a player, so not entirely surprising.

Three players to watch: Grace Zumwinkle has been one of the stars of the PWHL so far, and is likely to get more responsibility on the national team than ever before, so keep an eye on her and how she may translate her successful season to the tournament. Rory Guilday may only be 21, but she is heading to her third senior world championships, a long time favorite of the team USA coaching staff with her shutdown defensive skills who they'll hope can take another step this tournament with Lee Stecklein absent. Joy Dunne is the youngest player on this roster, just 18 years old coming off a 24-18-42 season in Ohio and a national championship. This will be her first senior level tournament, and I'd expect her to get ample offensive opportunities.

Canada

Roster

(text version available here)

2023 result: Silver

2024 goals: Gold

Notable roster changes: Micah Zandee-Hart is the most surprising one after being on the roster for a few years. Claire Thompson is absent as is Rebecca Johnston, but that is more expected while Thompson is finishing medical school and Johnston has not played in the past calendar year. Cousins Nicole and Julia Gosling join the team after strong rivalry series showings.

Three players to watch: Natalie Spooner is the front runner for PWHL MVP, so everyone will be watching to see if she continues to score at the rate she has been. Expected number one overall pick in the upcoming PWHL draft, Sarah Fillier, will be playing in her last showing before the draft happens as she finished out her college season. Nicole Gosling was the highest scoring defender in the NCAA this year at Clarkson, going 14-25-39 in 40 regular season games, so seeing how she impacts this blue line is a must watch.

Czechia

Roster

(Text version available here)

2023 result: Bronze

2024 goal: upset their opponent in the semifinals and make the finals

Roster changes: The bad news is top defender Dominika Lásková is out with injury. The good news is star goaltender Klára Peslarová is healthy unlike last year, as is blueline mainstay Tereza Radová. Alena Mills retired from the national team. Kristýna Pátková did not make the team this year, in her place comes Boston University commit Anežka Čabelová who had a stellar U18 worlds. Karolína Kosinová did not make the team, in her place is HV71 assistant captain Klara Seroiszková.

Three players to watch: 17 year old Adéla Šapovalivová was the highest scoring u18 player in the SDHL (Sweden's highest level league) this year and one of their top scorers in general going 11-18-29 in 32 regular season games. She was also a key part of the U18 team that upset Canada in the semifinals to advance to Czechia's first ever u18 final. With Mills retired, she will get more minutes at her third (!!!!) senior worlds. Next up is Klára Peslarová, and if you're not familiar with her game, she is straight up a top five goaltender in the world. She just came off a stellar season with Brynäs IF in Sweden where she had a .935 save percentage in 20 games, and has been consistently stellar on the international stage as well like when she had 55 saves against the united states at the olympics. Kateřina Mrázová is a fantastic playmaker has been a bright spot on a Ottawa tam that has struggled to find itself, and is also one of the most veteran members of this squad. If they win, she'll have to lead the way.

Finland

Roster

Text version available here

2023 finish: Fifth Place

2024 goals: Bronze

Roster changes: Two of their key offensive pieces Elisa Holopainen and Michelle Karvinen, are back and healthy this year! Susanna Tapani is also back on this team. Those are three absolute big pieces that completely change this roster for the better. A few depth roster forwards were left off in their place, most notably Kiira Yrjänen. Defense has more shakeups. Sini Karjalainen is a notable omission and long time defender Rosa Lindstedt retired. Eve Savander, Oona Koukkula, and Siiri Yrjölä slot in.

Three players to watch: I've consistently been a very big Elisa Holopainen fan and I think she's one of the best players in the world and not talked about nearly enough. Just as she began to really shine in the international stage, she got hit with injury, but as she's come back with year she dominated Finland's league going 32-25-57 in 19 games. I think I've put her as a player to watch like every year I've done a preview and I'm going to keep going it. Finland has faced a lot of questions about their goaltending following Räty and the team going their separate ways, but right now, it is Sanni Ahola's crease to lose. She was stellar in the three games she started last year for Finland in the world championship and was solid for st cloud state with a .935 save percentage in 17 starts this year. With Lindstedt's retirement, Krista Parkkonen will see more minutes, coming off a breakout sophomore year in a university of vermont program that's developed a decent amount of international blueliners.

Switzerland

Roster

(Text version here)

2023 result; 4th place

2024 goals: bronze

Roster changes: quite a lot of shake up. no Caroline spies as their mainstay backup, Alexandra Lehmann takes her place. No Sarah Forster, who wore an A and led their defense last time around. She only played 7 games in SWHL this year, so likely injury is at play.

Players to watch: it is, of course, the Alina Müller and Lara Stalder show until it isn’t. So, besides them, the players to watch are Andrea Brändli is another “top five goaltender in the world” to know, sporting a .937 in her first year playing in Sweden post a stellar college career. 18 year old Ivana Marie Wey just had a great year playing pro as Stalder’s teammate and will be important for the next Swiss wave. With no Forster, Lara Christen will take on a lot of the top defensive minutes most likely.

Sweden

Roster

(Text version available here)

2023 results: sixth

2024 hopes: return to group A

Roster changes: no Sarah Grahn which isn’t entirely expected but still a big change, in response Ida Boman gets the call. No Fanny Rask or Olivia Carlsson, who retired.

Three players to know: Ebba Hedqvist is a 17 year old elite center coming off a great performance at worlds and has an eye for playmaking that will be critical for Sweden. Maja Nylén Persson is the #1 defender of team Sweden that has consistently been the top defender by points in the SDHL and won defender of the year in 2022-2023, and she is only 23 years old. Another part of Sweden’s insane center depth is Lina Ljungblom, who will likely play in Montreal next year and had 46 points in 36 regular season games. In the various tournaments/friendlies that Sweden has played leading up to this (ie five nations cup), she has 10 goals in 15 games. These three players are truly some of my favorite in hockey right now

Japan

Roster

(Text version available here)

2023 result: 7th

2024 hopes: return to group A

Roster changes: honestly we mostly running this back. One or two u18 add ins but overall the same as 2023

Players to watch: stop me if you heard this before but Akane Shiga is very good. The PWHL Ottawa player is the only player from Japan to score against the USA, and will continue to be japans biggest threat. Another big player is Haruka Toko, one of the SDHL’s top scorers this year who had established herself as a top talent in the last two years. This year, the 27 year old had 13 goals and 30 assists in 36 games in Sweden this year. She was one of seven players in Japan to play in Sweden this year, a year that saw a new high in Japanese players going overseas to play. That also includes my last player to watch, Yoshino Enomoto, who played in switzerland and still put up around a point per game on a team that struggled (they folded in the offseason then came back and built their roster late and were ultimately relegated, but she was a bright spot in her first season there)

Fun fact: did you know three pairs of sisters play on this team? Akane and Aoi Shiga, Haruka toko and Ayaka Hitosato, and Rio and Riri Noro

Germany

Roster

(text version available here)

2023 Results: Eighth

2024 Goal: Make quarterfinals and avoid relegation

Roster changes: Both goalies behind Abstreiter last year, Chiara Schultes and Johanna May, did not make this roster with Hemmerle and Loist taking their place. The d core remains the same besides Daria Gleissner taking Heidi Strompf's place. National team vet Marie Delarbre is absent with injury, Sonja Weidenfelder did not play hockey this year and her status is uncertain, and Anne Bartsch did not make the roster. In their place we have Emily Nix, Lilli Welcke, and Lucia Schmitz.

Three players to watch: Luisa Welcke was with Germany last year, but has a second season in the NCAA under her belt and a nice depth player performance at Boston University. She will have more chances to show off her offense this tournament than in the NCAA, and I'm excited to see what she can show. Jule Schiefer had a revelation this year in the German league. From last year where she only scored 4 goals in 20 games, this year she scored 22 in 24. Let's see if she can continue this at worlds. Nina Jobst-Smith will play big defensive minutes for Germany after finishing her fourth season at Minnesota Duluth, this time serving as an assistant captain, and was nominated for 2023-24 All-WCHA Third Team. She's a two way defender who will be taking on big responsibility for Germany as she has in the past.

China

Roster

(Text Version available here)

2023 result: Promotion from Division I

2024 goal: Make quarterfinals and avoid relegation

Roster changes: Oh boy. So, like, a lot of people, and here is why: up until this tournament, China allowed dual citizens not born in China to play for them. This includes some players you may know from PWHL/NCAA like Leah Lum, Hannah Miller, Rachel Llanes, and Tia Chan. Going into this tournament, they changed the rules and those players will not be eligible, so it is a significant roster shakeup.

Three player to watch; This team is very young. Yifan Wang is 16 years old, and in her international debut scored 10 goals in 5 games in the WJC-D2A U18. This is obviously a gigantic step up in competition and very hard for a 16 year old to be playing against adults on the highest level stage of women's hockey, so I don't imagine she'll get a TON of ice time, but she is worth looking out for. Xin Fang is the veteran and star of this roster, who had 2 goal and 2 assists in the teams D1A tournament that earned them their promotion. 17 year old Dartmouth commit Grace Zhan is who I expect to be their starting goaltender. Born in Beijing, she spent the past year playing Minnesota High School Hockey and put up top numbers in a league that sees a lot of NCAA recruits.

Denmark

Roster

(Text version here)

2023 Results: Promotion from Division I

2024 hope: Make Quarterfinals and avoid relegation

Roster changes: Long time national team star and centerpiece of the team Josefine Jakobsen will no longer play for Denmark, though she will continue her club career.) Otherwise, despite some depth changes, it is mostly the same lineup.

Three players to watch: Frederikke Foss had a great year at Shattuck St Mary's u19 program and has committed to UMaine, and may be able to spark some offense Denmark will desperately need without Jakobsen. Silke Lave Glud will also be expected to carry the offense after her stellar year in the Tier 2 league in Sweden, and lead the way for younger players as one of the most experienced members of the team. Goaltender Emma-Sofie Nordström's performance at the D1A worlds was a big reason for their promotion, and she is coming off a great sophmore year at st. lawrence university where she had a .931 save percentage in 36 games and 7 shutouts. If Denmark wants to stay in the top division, she will need to steal a game for them.

[ceasarslegion]

Do you think visiting America changed your political views?

Honestly no, my political views are a bit too weathered to be too rocked by a week in a country I have been to before (been to NYC once before, plus Montana, Seattle, Oklahoma, and Texas before, I was just either a kid or a dumb college student for all of them so those trips were very much led by either the adults around me or my terminal disease of being 20 years old and in the same room as my dorm buddies at the time. What made this trip different was that it was entirely sponsored by me as an independent adult who pays his own bills, so I could really stop and take in the americanness of it all)

What it did do was give me some more depth regarding my political views around the US. Of course you're going to think easy access to killing machines is cool and progressive when there's guns on display for sale in Walmart. Of course you're going to act like the way they do about strategic voting when you've been entrenched in the sheer individualism in every mundane little facet of life that they are. Everything about that country screams "im special" rather than "im one part of a global community."

My doctor told me he couldn't let me in good conscious go to the US without travel insurance because if I got sick or injured I'd be in medical debt to a foreign country for the rest of my life. And I saw military discount stickers on street food carts and hometown heroes banners in every hovel we drove through because their military gobbles up every red cent of their tax dollars instead of a functioning healthcare system. It's so isolated and bubbled away it reminds me a bit of those bubble wrap kids but if it could be a country, and if those bubble wrap kids wrapped themselves up and then watched the rest of us playing and cried that we were doing it wrong

Idk man, ive always kinda suspected the whole "you only think the US is right wing because of gerrymandering without it we'd out-progress the whole world!!" thing that gets touted every US election season was hot horseshit. Like don't get me wrong gerrymandering does skew results in favour of Republicans but I don't think that person I saw with the trailer car that just said "LAW + ORDER" on it with a bunch of guns hanging off it and a dummy in a maga hat sitting up top would be a shining communist leader if there wasn't any gerrymandering. I think a lot of Americans are just organically fucked up as a result of the self-isolation and I don't think a lot of them even realize that. Even the ones who say they do

[theeonlyroman]

@lovelyladyabsinthewrites: This is inspired by her hcs and story on Homelander being obsessed with his sister. Everyone go check her work out! It’s great! 😊

Homelander’s Odd Obsession I HCs

You were born a decade after HL, only meant to be his younger sister and primarily as a way to ease his already budding psychotic behavior.

It failed, when they introduced you both and made the mistake of “rejecting him” which made HL attempt to kill you when you were born merely children. But he failed to do so primarily because your body was indestructible so Vought had no choice but to send you away on an alternate path.

Stan Edgar being one of the few people to save you from ending up as “bad product” decided to have you raised under a more controlled environment where the outcome is for you to become the “All-American, Feminist Hero” as a way to show the public that they can come up with the times and that even corporate America believes in the feminist movement.

In regards to your power there was two distinct things about you that separated you from HL, your body is high in zinc and essentially given the “cheat code” to already have the knowledge and fighting capabilities in martial arts this being implemented in your brain as a fetus. Two primary factors that makes HL weaker compared to you that will play a major role in your relationship to The Boys.

You grew up as an “All American Girl in middle class suburbia”; your “parents” (Vought) gave you the perfect life, you had excelled in pretty much everything, joined school events, participated in school sports, had great friends (employees of Vought) yada yada yada every aspect of your life was carefully cultivated to “perfection” for the benefit of Vought.

But what made this “unique” was Stan Edgar who had taken an interest in your growth who had acted as your school guidance counselor, who in a odd way reminded you of the Cheshire Cat.

You graduated from your high school as valedictorian at the top of your class and was “tearfully” sent off to college by Stan Edgar himself who promised that he’d be there with you every step of the way. Interesting right?.

You were soon accepted into Godolkin University with a full ride scholarship with your major being supe medical sciences.

It was then you were spotted by none other than HL himself, what had peeked his interest about you was that you had shared the same shocking blue eyes as he did and he couldn’t easily spot you because of the high amounts of zinc in your body.

But your fatal mistake is that much like the others you idolized Homelander, you aspired to be just like him and your goal was to fight crime alongside him as a member of The Seven.

So HL being well HL decided to introduce himself to you under the guise of being a mentor to which you had eagerly taken too and because of this HL was charmed by you.

He loved that you had practically worshipped the ground he walked on and listened to his every word, you were an eager protege that looked at him as though he hung the moon and stars but most importantly you were able to keep up with him in terms of power which made him even more eager to be around you.

But there was two things he couldn’t shake and that was your eye color and the high amount of zinc in your body that only a select few knew that he couldn’t see.

So he decided to “investigate” but that really meant terrorizing Ashley into giving him information and making The Deep his dumbass lap dog.

It was then he discovered that your carefully hidden file, he learned that you are his sister by blood and the purpose of your creation was that you were meant for him but had been sent off because he had tried to kill you and rather than Vought “putting you down” (which would’ve been virtually impossible) they had sent you away on a much different path.

But HL didn’t read your file as the truth he read it as Vought cruelly depriving him of the one thing he desperately wanted and that was a family so he responded in his usual fashion and imposed his will on Vought and purposing the idea of the “Superhero and spunky sidekick trope”. HL cleverly stated that by him being the strongest and choosing you as his protege will benefit Vought in two ways; 1. Your a woman and 2. He will eventually name you as leader to The Seven. Which will benefit Vought in terms of popularity polls for a multitude of reasons i.e. feminism, corporate America, yada yada yada

Stan had no choice but to not only agree with this but to finally allow you and HL to officially become apart of each other lives.

So what that means for you is that not only are you a college student but you will now also be an official member of The Seven as HL’s esteemed protege, your supe name being

“Rosa, The All American Beauty, the girl boss that can do it all!”

So once HL was able to achieve in getting what he wants, he goes to you with “grim news” but really he’s there to tell you that you will officially be a member of The Seven as his protege.

Upon hearing this news you cry happy tears thanking him for this amazing opportunity and give him a genuine hug throwing nothing but genuine praises at him.

He tries to refrain from breaking character but it’s really difficult for him at the time but after sometime he left you (regretfully) to your own devices and he totally started crying happy tears that he’s finally got what he so desperately wanted and when you had hugged him for the first time in a long time it felt like it was genuine and the affection was real and not out of fear.

God that man is touch deprived.

Even though…your entire life was built out of lies but shhhh you don’t know that YET.

[dragoneyes618]

The major lesson that reviewer Christine Rosen extracts from Rob Henderson’s new memoir, Troubled: A Memoir of Foster Care, Family, and Social Class, is: “The people who control a great deal of our cultural and political conversations are a rarified elite with little understanding of how most people live their lives.” (I have not yet read Troubled, though I’m eager to do so. What follows draws primarily on Rosen’s review in the Free Beacon and on Henderson’s op-ed in the Wall Street Journal.)

To comprehend the gap between those elites and the vast majority of Americans, consider a recent Rasmussen survey of what the authors call “elites” — more than one post-graduate degree, an annual income of $150,000 — and a subset of those “elites,” who attended an Ivy League school, or another elite private school, such as Stanford or University of Chicago, whom Rasmussen dubs “super-elites.”

Three-quarters of the elites and nearly 90 percent of the super elites describe their personal incomes as on the upswing, while almost none describe their incomes as on the decline. For all Americans, however, nearly twice as many view their income as worsening as view their financial situation as improving — 40 percent to 20 percent.

Despite having eventually made it to Yale as an undergraduate in his mid-twenties and later earning a PhD in psychology at Cambridge University, Henderson most certainly did not stem from the elite class from which so many of his classmates came. Students at Yale from families in the upper 1 percent of wealth are more numerous than those from the bottom 60 percent.

One of Henderson’s Yale classmates, who had attended Phillips Exeter Academy, America’s top prep school, once lectured Henderson on his white privilege — even though he is actually half Asian and half Hispanic. Yet it would take a certain obliviousness to label Henderson a child of privilege. One of his earliest memories is of his drug-addict mother being pulled away from him in handcuffs and hauled off to jail, when he was three. He never knew his father.

After that, he was shuttled between various foster homes, none of them stable, until he joined the US Air Force after high school. The discipline of the military helped him overcome some of the chaos that had characterized his life until then. But many of the old demons remained, including his penchant for self-medicating with alcohol, and he ended up in a detox program, where a talented therapist helped him work through some of those demons.

One of the central messages of Henderson’s memoir is that a non-stable childhood family life is not just bad because it hurts your chances of getting into an elite college or attaining a high-paying job later in life, but also because those raised in such an environment experience “pain that etches itself into their bodies and brains and propels them to do things in the pursuit of relief that often inflict even more harm.”

Given their difference in backgrounds, Henderson found many of the social rituals of his classmates incomprehensible. One example was when the Yale campus erupted in hysteria over an email from Erika Christakis to the students of Silliman residential college, of which she served as co-master with her husband Nicholas, suggesting that they were old enough to work out themselves which Halloween costumes to wear, without asking the administration to issue an elaborate set of rules to avoid “microaggressions” or “cultural appropriation” — e.g., a white student wearing a sombrero. After the childhood and teenage years he experienced, a fellow student in a sombrero did not seem like such a big deal to Henderson.

Erika was eventually force to resign her position in Silliman and on the Yale faculty, much to Henderson’s disappointment, as he had been eager to take her course on early childhood development. Meanwhile, the black undergraduate who confronted Nicholas Christakis in the Silliman courtyard, in an expletive-laden tirade, in front of a group of students cheering her on, was given an award for extracurricular excellence at the next Yale graduation.

Henderson offers an invaluable term to describe the opinions expressed so fiercely and with no tolerance of opposing views by his fellow undergrads: “luxury beliefs.” Luxury beliefs, as Henderson defines them, “confer status on the upper class at little cost, while often inflicting costs on the lower classes.” The conspicuous displays of wealth and leisure activities that broadcast elite status in Thorstein Veblen’s time have been replaced by opinions and beliefs that give proof of one’s elite education. After all, Henderson notes ironically, how many non-Ivy-League-educated Americans can easily toss off terms like “cisgender” or “heteronormative”?

Mantras such as “defund the police” are luxury beliefs because their impact on those living in gated communities or the most affluent neighborhoods is likely to be negligible. Henderson comments about the policies implemented to combat white privilege, “It won’t be Yale graduates who are harmed. Poor white people will bear the brunt.”

He recounts the story of a refugee from the North Korean police state, attending Columbia University, who raised concerns about the anti-free speech movement on campus, only to be taunted with “Go back to Pyongyang” on a social media site for Ivy League students. Normally, nothing will earn faster exile to social media purgatory than telling an immigrant, “Go back to where you came from,” but this particular refugee was deemed deserving of insult, writes Henderson, because she “undermined these people’s view of themselves as morally righteous.”

Incidentally, I would rank as near the top of “luxury beliefs” the familiar chants about Israeli genocide and apartheid. They cost their proponents nothing, yet effectively broadcast one’s moral righteousness and humanity, not to mention elite education, especially when terms like settler-colonialism and intersectionality are thrown into the mix.

Henderson is primarily concerned with the way that bad ideas — e.g., dismissal of matrimony and monogamy as passé, decriminalization of drugs — filter downstream in the culture, where they wreak havoc. As Charles Murray thoroughly documents in Breaking Apart, rates of marriage, children living in two-parent homes, and attendance at religious services have remained more or less constant in the most affluent quintile of the population, while plummeting in the lower quintiles. But on elite campuses, marriage is more likely to be portrayed as a prison for women, just as the same students for whom the words “capitalist oppression” roll trippingly off their tongues can be found the same day lining up for interviews with Goldman Sachs.

But the danger posed by the holders of luxury beliefs lies not only in their pernicious cultural influence. Holders of those views are quite comfortable with the use of coercion to advance their beliefs. Four-fifths of the super elites, interviewed in the Rasmussen poll cited above, would ban gas-powered cars. Just under 90 percent support strict rationing of meat, gas, and electricity, and 70 percent would ban all nonessential air travel.

The impact of these restrictions on the most affluent would likely be relatively small. They can afford electric cars, and would buy carbon offsets to circumvent some of the most onerous rationing or purchase them on the black market. And dollars to donuts that their air travel would be deemed necessary. The impact of such policies on the less affluent doesn’t figure into their calculations.

Elite campuses have been focal points for the limitations on free speech, and over half of the super elites educated on those campuses describe Americans as possessing too much freedom. That goes with a general contempt for markets, which allocate equal weight to the choices of the unenlightened and the enlightened.

That concern with “too much” freedom goes together with a remarkable trust in government among 70 percent of the elites and 90 percent of the super elites. Government is beneficent, in their eyes, because it can force people to do what the enlightened have determined is good. The elites know that their hands will be on the levers of coercion, particularly administrative agencies. (I would wager that the majority of those lower-level staffers staging mini-rebellions in the White House and the State Department over American support for Israel’s war on Hamas are holders of elite credentials.) Ronald Reagan’s quip, “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, ‘I’m from the government, and I’m here to help,’ ” does not resonate with the elites.

Sixty years before Rob Henderson first stepped onto the Yale campus, another man already in his mid-twenties entered Harvard as an undergraduate. Like Henderson, Thomas Sowell came from a deprived background and served in the military before entering college. He was born in the Jim-Crow-era South, in a home without electricity, and served in the Marines during the Korean War, after dropping out of high school.

The 1969 black student riots at Cornell, where Sowell was an economics professor, and subsequent pressure at UCLA to lower his standards for students, soured Sowell on academia, which he left for a position as senior fellow at the Hoover Institution almost half a century ago.

Over 50 years and almost 40 books, most still in print and many of them standard texts in economics, and ten volumes of collected columns, Sowell has leveled a sustained critique at the dominant intellectual doctrines of our day, in particular those of his fellow black intellectuals, whom he views as having spectacularly failed the black masses by advocating for policies that may serve their interests but not those of the large majority of American blacks. (Only about one-third of his writing concerns issues of race, and he has penned classic works in intellectual, social, and economic history.) Jason Riley’s intellectual biography of Sowell is appropriately titled Maverick.

In a short new work, Social Justice Fallacies, which I would commend to every college student and social justice warrior, Sowell fleshes out many of Henderson’s observations, including the detachment of elite theorists from the lives of those whom they purport to advocate, and their sometimes subtle, sometimes not, contempt for those whom they view as their inferiors.

The second chapter compares the Progressive movement of the early decades of the 20th century to present-day progressives. At first glance, it would appear that little connects the two groups, apart from their position on the political left of their day. A strong streak of racial determinism characterized the early progressives, and many of their leading lights fretted about the disastrous impact of an influx of people of inferior races to America. By contrast, today’s progressives start from the premise that there are no differences between races and that all differential outcomes are a result of systemic racism.

In the earlier period, Professor Edward Ross, the chairman of the American Sociological Society, warned that America was headed toward “race suicide” by virtue of being inundated by people of “inferior types.” American universities and colleges taught hundreds of courses in eugenics, defined as the reduction or prevention of the survival of people considered genetically inferior. The most famous economist of the 20th century, John Maynard Keynes, was founder of the Eugenics Society at Cambridge.

Irving Fisher of Yale, the leading monetary economist of the period, advocated for the isolation or sterilization of those inferior types. Or as Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes put it, “Three generations of idiots are enough.” Sowell remarks upon how casually Fisher spoke of imprisonment of those who had committed no crime and the denial of normal life to all regarded as inferior. Not by accident did Hitler yemach shemo term a work on eugenics by Madison Grant, a leading conservationist and advocate for national parks and the protection of endangered species, his Bible.

At first glance, today’s progressives could not seem further removed from their namesakes. They are the opposite of racial determinists. In the modern progressive creed, all differences in outcomes between people of different races can have one and only one explanation: discrimination by the majority group.

Despite the opposite views on race, Sowell finds important continuities between the progressive movement of the early 20th century and that of today. Today’s progressives share, according to Sowell, their predecessors’ aversion to confronting empirical evidence that challenges their fixed verities, and a similar inclination to respond to empirical challenges with ad hominem insults — racist being the most powerful — rather than with counter-arguments and evidence.

And they are similarly inclined to use government power to coerce the less enlightened to behave in accord with their “expert” opinions, and too frequently oblivious to or unconcerned with the impact of their policy prescriptions on those constituting the “lower orders,” in their minds.

Woodrow Wilson, perhaps the leading figure of the Progressive era, served as president of Princeton before being elected president. Like many of his fellow progressives, he was an unabashed racist who insisted that black employees in government offices be physically segregated.

But what joins him to present-day progressives is his enormous confidence in government by experts. He presided over a massive expansion of the federal government and the creation of many of the largest administrative agencies, run by “experts.” He viewed the Constitution as outmoded for a modern age. But not to worry, government agencies headed by experts would usher in a “new freedom,” albeit not quite the freedom of a constitution limiting the power of government and enshrining individual rights.

Today, DEI bureaucracies on almost every campus seek to enforce right-thinking and enter into every aspect of university governance, including faculty hiring. Those mushrooming bureaucracies account for a large part in the explosion in higher education costs.

Sowell takes aim at the racial theories of the early progressives and contemporary ones alike. He seeks to empirically refute the claim that each race has a different “ceiling” for intelligence. (If anecdotes were data, his own genius would serve as refutation.) He met with and debated Professor Albert Jensen, one of the leading modern proponents of that view.

Sowell argues that environment, not inherent ceilings, underlies much of the difference in IQ between races. For instance, those raised in the Hebrides Isles and the hill country of Kentucky, though of pure Anglo-Saxon stock, have IQs comparable to American blacks. And like American blacks, their IQs tend to decline from childhood to adulthood. Social isolation appears to be the key. Sowell cites another study that blacks raised by white adoptive parents had IQs six points above the national average.

As an amusing example of the fallibility of IQ tests as measures of inherent capabilities, Sowell quotes Carl Brigham, who developed the SAT test. Brigham claimed on the basis of army mental tests administered in World War I that the myth that Jews are on average highly intelligent had been refuted. At least he had the good grace to admit by 1930, as Jews excelled on standardized tests, that his earlier conclusions had been without merit, and had failed to take into account that most immigrant children were raised in non-English-speaking homes.

Sowell is equally effective skewering the present-day progressive belief that all differences in outcomes are explained as products of racial discrimination. He chafes at the resultant cult of victimization that stands in the way of examination of cultural behavioral factors that prevent black advancement.

He insists that behaviors count and explain a great deal of the differences in income levels between different racial groups. For instance, black married couples have experienced poverty rates of less than 10 percent for decades, which is less than the national poverty rate for all families. And black married couples have higher income levels than white single-parent families. The problem is that black marriage rates overall are lower.

It is often said that the high illegitimacy rate in the black community is attributable to the “legacy of slavery.” But for nearly a century after slavery, the rates were relatively low. In 1940, they were one-quarter of what they are today. Sowell suggests that the rapid expansion of the welfare state in the 1960s explains much of that rise, as births to single mothers have also risen rapidly in Sweden, the welfare paradise, where there is no legacy of slavery.

Evidence cited to show discrimination against black children by “white supremacists” — e.g., discipline rates two and a half times those of white students — proves the opposite, Sowell suggests. For white students are themselves twice as likely to be disciplined as Asian students. Perhaps, then, disruptive behavior, rather than discrimination, explains differential rates of discipline. To get rid of school discipline in the name of equity leads to schools in which it is impossible to learn, and ends up harming black students, he argues. Attacks on discriminatory school discipline is thus another one of those “luxury beliefs,” like defunding the police.

One of the major causes of the burst housing bubble of 2007, which Sowell predicted, was government pressure on lenders to greatly reduce credit requirements for mortgages. The regulators’ theory was that blacks were being discriminated against in the mortgage market, as evidenced by the higher rate of rejection for black mortgage applicants. The only problem with the discrimination hypothesis, Sowell shows, was that black-owned banks rejected black mortgage applicants at even higher rates.

The hypothesis that different income levels are exclusively a function of discrimination founders on the fact that other minority groups — e.g., Asians — have, on average, incomes well above the medium national income, and dark-skinned Asian Indians earn on average $39,000 more per annum than full-time, year-round white workers.

The victimization narrative, in Sowell’s eyes, is not only unhelpful but damaging to blacks, as it shifts the focus from one of encouraging the types of behaviors that are associated with success. In the immediate wake of slavery, and for nearly a century afterwards, almost all graduates of all-black Dunbar High in Washington, D.C., went on to college. Black and Hispanic kids in New York City charter schools are six times as likely to pass city math proficiency exams as their counterparts in the regular public schools. Why? Sowell wants to know.

Focusing on the behaviors that foster success rather than wallowing in a narrative of discrimination — which he personally experienced in his younger years and does not deny still exists today — is for Sowell the key to black advancement. And that requires more empirical study and less airy theorizing.

Many of the panaceas that derive from au courant theories have been conclusively refuted on the ground. Black political power in most of America’s largest cities, for instance, has done little to change the lives of the vast majority of black citizens. And affirmative action has, in Sowell’s view, reinforced stereotypes of black inferiority, among whites and, even worse, among blacks themselves, while doing little to help inner city blacks.

Without a clear-eyed attention to empirical evidence and an openness to debate based on facts and logic, in Sowell’s terminology, we are forever consigned to the realm of “luxury beliefs.”

[alltimefail-sims]

I present to you all... Wren's family!

Are you reading The Familiar by @mangosimoothie? You should be reading The Familiar by mangosimoothie and rooting for my baby Wren. (I'm mostly kidding - rooting for Wren is optional, but reading the Familiar is not 😉.)

This was probably self indulgent, and I definitely spent way too much time making them, but even if no one else cares... I'm pleased! I've been wanting to do this for way too long! First we have Wren's father, Dr. Abdou Opara and Wren's mother, Dr. Latita Opara (née Wiley). Then we have Wren's siblings Kingston and Angelique.

Want more info on them or to see their full-body outfits? Fear not...

Many details below the cut! ↓

If you read Wren's original post you already know that Abdou, Wren's father, is a retired engineer and tech investor while his wife, Latita, is the current and very popular mayor of San Myshuno. But I didn't really get to go into detail about Wren's siblings so I'm gonna do that real quick!!

Wren's oldest sibling, Kinston (30 y.o.), has a doctorate from Foxbury in biology, but he was also the captain of the robotics team and has a passion for engineering just like his father. After graduation he combined his two passions and created a bio-tech company that focuses on creating innovations and improvements in the medical field, particularly for surgical procedures and daily disability maneuverability and pain management. Wren thinks he's an absolutely insufferable ego-maniac, but they're not a completely reliable narrator because Kingston's just kind of a nerd with a little bit of a superiority complex (oldest child syndrome), but Wren's parents have always lifted up Kingston as the example and that's annoying as fuck! Oh and if Latita has a favorite child, it's Kingston (she's never proclaimed a favorite out loud but like... it's pretty clear).

Then there's the Opara's middle child, Angelique (27 y.o.), who I promise does not just walk around in pageant crowns and evening gowns (although that would be iconic imo). Although a middle child, Angelique has never had to fight for attention and is Abdou's clear favorite (again he's never said it out loud but like... he's even more obvious). She has a distinguished psychology degree with honors from Foxbury Institute and graduated at the top of her class. The reason she's dressed in pageant-wear is because she recently won the title of Miss America (whatever the sims equivalent is called). She'll be competing for Miss Universe next because she's a bad bitch ig? Lmao. She just is very competitive. Wren thinks Angelique is generally less insufferable than Kingston, but the two of them in a room together is like nails on a chalkboard to Wren. Wren and Angelique are a little closer, but "close" as in like... they get along okay, they'll pick up *if* the other calls, and she nags Wren the least of any of their family members (but that's just because she "has better things to do"). That being said, she does call Wren "baby Wren" which drives them nuts (but she's being affectionate in her own way).

*Fun fact: all of the Oparas are Foxbury alum except for our dear Wren and they never hear the end of it!

*Also a fun fact but, needless to say, Wren's mom doesn't want to end her political career as a mayor: she's working her way up the political ladder to the presidential candidacy, babyyyyy!!! On the flip-side, Abdou has always been a strict parent who cares about "legacy" and that's why they're so anal about protecting the family's public image and why they're especially hard on Wren who thinks all of those things are kind of bullshit.

FINALLY, I do want to note that I didn't include one *technical* family member, Kingston's college sweetheart and fiancé Kasi who Wren actually enjoys being around and thinks is way out of their brother's league.

Anyway okay I'm done now here they are side-by-side as promised:

Irl I imagine their heights to vary (with Wren being taller than their mom but shorter than everyone else) but I was too lazy to use a height slider.

Okay NOW I'm done for real lmao byeeeeeeee

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Christ Britt

* * * *

Robert B. Hubbell Newsletter

September 17, 2024

I am not going to take the bait dangled by JD Vance about the lack of assassination attempts on Kamala Harris. Trump and Vance have leaned into their anti-immigrant and “blame the liberals” for the assassination attempts and have succeeded in diverting the conversation from the fascistic threat posed to America by Project 2025. Every day that Project 2025 is not at the top of the news cycle is a day that the media has failed democracy.

To recap, Trump and Vance plan to do the following using the blueprint of Project 2025 (per Democracy Forward)

·      Impose a national abortion ban.

·      Restrict access to contraception

·      Remove medical privacy protections for people seeking reproductive healthcare

·      Engage in mass deportations of 20 million immigrants

·      Roll back protection for same sex marriage and LGBTQ rights

·      Remove prohibitions on discrimination on the basis of race or sex

·      Allow the president to use the DOJ to target political enemies

·      Cut funding to the FBI

·      Eliminate the Department of Education

·      Eliminate the Department of Homeland Security

·      Disband the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)

·      Fire thousands of civil servants whose expertise keeps the wheels of government turning

·      Slash corporate income taxes

·      Eliminate the ability of the federal government to drive down drug costs by negotiating prices of Medicare drugs

·      Restrict access to food assistance by imposing work requirements on disabled and single parents

·      Eliminate Project Head Start

·      Cut funding for green energy and encourage reliance on fossil fuels

·      Expand offshore drilling and drilling on public lands

·      Eliminate funding for public transportation projects

·      Grant parents control over school curricula

The above list does not include Trump's economy-killing a 10% tariff on all imported goods and a 60% tariff on goods imported from China (which provides 16% of all goods imported into the US).

Nor does Project 2025 account for the impact of anti-vaxxer RFK Jr. controlling federal healthcare policy, Aileen Cannon being appointed to the Supreme Court, or Elon Musk overseeing an “efficiency commission” to cut alleged government “waste” (read: programs that help people). Finally, Project 2025 does not account for the compounding effect of the Supreme Court’s grant of prospective criminal immunity to the president.

Many of the issues above—standing alone—should be cause for Americans to rise up and vote en masse to defeat Trump. Taken together, they should drive Americans to the polls to deliver a historic defeat to Trump. And yet, the election remains close.

Part of the reason the election remains close is because Trump and Vance have been able to divert attention from Project 2025 by making evermore outrageous and dangerous statements.

I do not mean to diminish the hateful attacks on immigrants by referring to them as “cat memes.” I use that term because JD Vance over the weekend said that it was the plan of Trump and Vance to “create stories” (“memes”) to focus the media’s attention on immigration—one of the few subjects on which Trump has a polling advantage over Kamala Harris.

Indeed, JD Vance’s deliberate use of “cat memes” to incite anti-immigrant animus is resulting in real-life harassment and intimidation of Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio—including numerous bomb threats that have shut down city hall, primary schools, and a college. NBC News, Baseless rumors about Haitian immigrants threaten to unravel Springfield, Ohio.

Trump and Vance plan to ratchet the racial tension in Springfield by holding a “town hall meeting,”—which will undoubtedly feature hand-picked frustrated white residents and exclude Haitian immigrants who are helping to revive Springfield. See Vanity Fair, Trump Reportedly Has Super-Helpful Plans to Visit Springfield, Ohio, the City He and JD Vance Continue to Spread Baseless Lies About Re: Haitian Migrants Eating Pets.

JD Vance is also pushing the right-wing claim that the two assassination attempts on Trump are the result of allegedly irresponsible Democratic rhetoric about Trump—like saying that he is an existential threat to democracy and a wannabe dictator (his words, not mine).

The hypocrisy is so thick it is viscous. Hours before the assassination attempt, Trump blasted a Truth Social post saying, “I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT.” He regularly refers to Kamala Harris and Joe Biden as “enemies” of the state and describes them as “fascist Marxists” and “extreme leftists” who are intent on “destroying our country.”

Neither Kamala Harris, Joe Biden, nor Tim Walz has used such extreme language to describe Trump. Rather, it is Trump and Vance who are using the violent rhetoric that is resonating with sick and impressionable males with access to weapons of war. See Josh Marshall, Talking Points Memo, Yes. Trump Started The Fire. And Everyone Knows It.

Per Marshall,

Republicans are now predictably demanding that Democrats in essence stop campaigning against Trump because they’re inciting their supporters to try to assassinate Trump. That’s absurd. Neither of these men is in any sense a supporter of Democrats or even of more marginal groups that could in any sense be identified with “the left.” But on a broader level, Donald Trump is simply himself a source of unrest and conflagration. [¶¶] He’s a vortex of violence. His rhetoric is violent. He has friendly paramilitaries like the Proud Boys that he encourages to come to his aid. He was the one who incited a violent mob to storm the U.S. Capitol. He’s provoked numerous supporters to acts of mass violence, from Pittsburgh to El Paso. The mix of bomb threats and marches in Springfield over the last week are only the latest example.

JD Vance took the violent rhetoric to another level on Monday evening by stating

the big difference between conservatives and liberals is that no one has tried to kill Kamala Harris in the last couple of months, and two people now have tried to kill Donald Trump . . . .

JD Vance’s statement is reprehensible on many levels. The two would-be assassins were both mentally ill men who supported Trump and had access to weapons of war. The notion that they were “liberals” is the false; the opposite is true.

Second, JD Vance’s ambiguous statement suggests that Kamala Harris is overdue for an assassination attempt—much like Elon Musk’s statement on Monday that “And no one is even trying to assassinate Biden/Kamala.” Musk deleted that comment by Tuesday morning, claiming that it was a joke. He wrote,

Turns out that jokes are WAY less funny if people don’t know the context and the delivery is plain text. Well, one lesson I’ve learned is that just because I say something to a group and they laugh doesn’t mean it’s going to be all that hilarious as a post on [Twitter].

On Tuesday, the Secret Service said it was “aware” of Musk’s tweet after the White House issued a statement saying that the tweet was “irresponsible.” BBC, Secret Service 'aware' of Elon Musk post about Harris and Biden.”

The shocking difference between Elon Musk and JD Vance is that Musk has a few shreds of self-awareness and capacity to be shamed such that he removed the tweet while JD Vance will simply double down on his grossly irresponsible comment. Every major media outlet should condemn JD Vance on Tuesday.

Michelle Obama reminded us at the convention that it would get ugly. Wow! Was she ever right!

We need to stick with the issues that will help Democrats persuade the few remaining persuadable voters that they need to vote for Kamala Harris. While we should condemn Trump and Vance with every ounce of our being, we must also speak to voters about the issues that affect them in the coming election. Framing Trump and Vance as the proponents of the dangerous Project 2024 is a strong, winning message.

[grits-galraisedinthesouth]

The Biden's & The Meghans=Same

Much like MEgain Markle, Jill Biden thinks her honorary title transformed her into Beyonce!

I'll admit to viewing Jill Biden's fishnet stockings as tacky and inappropriate. I also feel she has deep seated insecurities requiring everyone to address her as "Doctor." In America, it is our custom to ONLY address Medical Doctors as "Doctor...." in ALL settings for PRACTICAL reasons: in the event of a MEDICAL emergency it's good to know there's a "doctor in the house."

Honorary doctorates and/or doctorates in education are relativelyeasy to achieve. Jill Biden's (community college) Ed.D is NOT recognized outside of her community college academic settings.

Not to be outdone by her husband, the POTUS. Mrs. Biden ordered the Marine Corps Band to compose theme music solely to accompany her honorary FLOTUS position.

Hail to the Chief is dedicated to our American POTUS, but Jill felt she also deserved an entrance song, and Fanfare for the First Lady was born.

"Those in the Marine Corps Band said they'd never been asked to do an exclusive First Lady entrance theme before. "Someone in the White House apparently 'had the bright idea, ‘Oh, tell the band that we want music for Jill,'' a source said. 'The band had to provide music,'" Adams reported."

Jill Biden apparently has her own ‘Hail to the Chief’-style entrance theme, courtesy of the Marine Corps band Becket Adams January 4, 2022

Jill Biden apparently has her own walk-up music now.

The Marine Corps band was instructed last fall to come up with an entrance theme for the first lady, a source told the Washington Examiner. The band now has in its repertoire an original composition titled “Fanfare for the First Lady.” The song, the source said, is essentially Jill Biden’s personal “Hail to the Chief,” in that it is to be performed and repeated at official White House functions, from her first appearance until she is ready to speak.

“Fanfare for the First Lady” has created both amusement and confusion within the band, with some remarking that in the many years they’ve played in the group, this is the first time the group has had to provide the first lady with an exclusive entrance theme.

Someone in the White House apparently “had the bright idea, ‘Oh, tell the band that we want music for Jill,'” a source said. “The band had to provide music.”

The band was “rushed” to provide the entrance song for the first lady, the source said, adding the Marine Corps band submitted a few options for the White House’s consideration. The first lady’s handlers settled eventually on the original piece “Fanfare to the First Lady.”

Michael LaRosa, Jill Biden’s press secretary, says the entire story is bunkum.

“The first lady does not have a song anybody has written for her specifically. She has no ‘Hail to the Chief’ song. She has no song,” he told the Washington Examiner. “She never asked anyone to create a song.”

“The White House asked nobody, not one person, to compose an exclusive entry song, or any song, for the first lady,” LaRosa added. “None of that is accurate.”

In fact, he said, “Fanfare for the First Lady” was the band’s idea. He said the band approached the White House with a proposal for new music. “Fanfare for the First Lady” wasn’t even initially written for Jill Biden, he continued, adding it’s simply a finalized version of a piece of music that was already nearly completed when the band first broached the topic with the White House.

“We didn’t ask for it,” LaRosa said. “They came and presented us the option. We had no idea it would even be used again.”

The Marine Corps band has made a recording of “Fanfare for the First Lady” to be played in its absence.

Though it’s not unusual for the group’s arrangers to be asked to compose music at a moment’s notice, a source told the Washington Examiner, it is unusual for the first lady to have her own entrance theme. The cherry on top giving the first lady the “Hail to the Chief” treatment, the source said, is this: “The music is just awful.”

“The song is terrible,” the source said, adding it’s ironic a “completely bogus premise” should result in such an “awful” final product.

The Marine Corps band, which did not respond to the Washington Examiner’s request for comment, has performed “Fanfare for the First Lady” at least twice already, including in October of last year for a Teacher of the Year event held at the White House:

It would be “highly unusual” if the White House instructed the Marine Corps band to compose an entrance song exclusively for the first lady, White House historian Tevi Troy told the Washington Examiner.

However, he added, it wouldn’t be the first time something like this has happened.

In the 1980s, Troy said, then-President Ronald Reagan’s onetime chief of staff Donald Regan similarly demanded the band compose an entrance song just for him, much to the chagrin of then-White House deputy chief of staff Michael Deaver and then-U.S. Secretary of the Treasury James Baker.

Regan, Troy writes, was “imperious, insisting on all kinds of pomp and circumstance. When traveling with the president, Regan demanded that he get his own introduction, as White House chief of staff. [Baker and Deaver] were mortified when they found out — a bad sign for Regan.”

He adds, “A joke went around the White House about the possibility of Regan becoming a Catholic cardinal and why that would be an improvement: ‘That’s good, now,’ the joke went, ‘we’ll only have to kiss his ring.’”

Regan, by the way, didn’t last long as Reagan’s chief of staff. He was booted from the role after a little more than two years on the job.

Dr. Mrs. the first lady, on the other hand, is here for the entirety of her husband’s presidency, so expect to hear “Fanfare for the First Lady” for the next couple of years.

No word yet on whether we should expect an entrance song for second gentleman Doug Emhoff.

This story has been updated with a comment from the White House.

Further Update: April 13, 2022.

The U.S. Marine Band has retired “Fanfare for the First Lady” from its repertoire, the Washington Examiner has learned. The song was removed quietly following the publication of this article, a source said. One source attributed the decision to pull the composition from rotation to “negative” news coverage. We hope the first lady can forgive us for killing her entrance theme.

[desperatelyseekingcannibals]

Good Deed (Markus/Kurt/Freddie) - Shortfic

Explicit // M/M // Markus (Riders of Justice)/Kurt (Black Hawk Down)/Freddie Lounds // Tagged: Post canon Markus, Post canon Kurt, when is this set? Who knows. Don't question it,  bar hook-up, manipulative Freddie Lounds, flirting, kissing, spanking, vaginal fingering, finger fucking, threesome, M/M/F, dry humping, anal fingering, where did the lube come from? Who knows, Freddie is resourceful, anal sex, multiple orgasms, masturbation, voyeurism, happy ending. Prompt Fill. 

Latest installment on my @hannibalbingo card: Free Space Note: this is the result of the polls I ran to decide on which bingo prompts to use for my free space. The ones decided were spanking and threesome. The final poll (choosing the characters) was a tie, so I went with Markus/Kurt/Freddie as I was hit by an idea! Enjoy! 

Markus is the officer assigned to Kurt Schmid during a press tour the higher ups have sent some of the returning soldiers on.

Good Deed (3.6k):

“You don’t have to do this.” Markus told the young man sitting next to him. They were in a small conference room specifically set up for this stupid fucking debacle. 

Hadn’t these men been through enough without the military parading them out to journalists?

They’d each been assigned to a more experienced officer, someone to go with them to these stupid things, and for Markus, he got Kurt Schmid. 

He was a quiet lad, but he came to life when talking about medicine and saving people. When he trained as a doctor he could have done anything, worked in any kind of medical care, but instead he’d signed up. He joined the forces because he wanted to save lives, not end them. And honestly, that was fucking refreshing given the amount of assholes Markus had encountered over the years. Meatheads who just wanted to play with guns and have an excuse to shoot at brown people. Kurt was so far from that and Markus admired him. He was glad, after what had happened on his deployment in Somalia, that he hadn’t become jaded or changed his mind about his career. He still wanted to do good deeds.

In the quiet room, he felt - rather than saw - Kurt glance across at him, and a small smile of gratitude greeted him when he did turn to look. 

“I know, it’s okay.” 

Kurt had a soft accent from somewhere in America that Markus couldn’t name. He liked it though, liked Kurt’s smile and his eyes. His fucking eyes were beautiful. 

Markus swallowed down that thought and looked away, back to the door. 

~*~

The hotel bar was loud and Markus was glad. It was loud enough to drown out the thoughts in his head after the shit show of a day. 

The press had been pretty good with Kurt, respectful. Except Freddie Lounds, one of those vulture-like journos who wrote for tabloids. Markus would admit there was a good point to some of her questions - around the operation, the loss of lives, especially of the Somali civilians. But that wasn’t for Kurt or any of the men to answer, those questions were for the top brass. And when he interjected to tell her so, Kurt had tensed and she’d smirked at him as her eyes had flicked between him and Kurt. 

A fucking bloodhound.

He hadn’t been laid in forever. He’d joined the UN taskforce once Mathilde had gone off to college, and hoped that would bring back some of the life he’d had before his wife died. But there’s no such thing as a magic fix and it’s no good trying to run from things you don’t want to address. 

He could fucking try though. 

He’d never given a shit about being attracted to men when he was married - it was something he knew about himself but never had to deal with. But since he’d become unexpectedly single again it seemed like every guy he met held some sort of appeal. He’d looked it up - bisexual. And he found via various internet forums that he wasn’t the only person to fixate on his sexuality after a change of circumstances. 

It was all normal. But that didn’t mean he wanted to, or could, act on it. 

Because if he could…

Markus let out a sigh and then downed the rest of his beer, thoughts of Kurt Schmid running rampant in his mind. What it would be like to have those beautiful eyes look at him with longing, feel those soft lips, those steady hands--

Markus slammed his empty glass down onto the bar. 

“Hey there soldier, something wrong?”

Markus recognised the voice of Freddie Lounds and didn’t feel the need to turn and respond. So instead she took the seat beside him and sat much closer than necessary. He should have found a local bar to drink at instead.

“Nice to see you again,” She offered cordially, at which Markus responded with only a grunt. 

That pulled a chuckle from her and she signalled the server, ordering a drink for herself and the same again for Markus. 

“I should go,” he finally responded, turning to her. 

She had a quirked brow and an expression that dared him to stay. He huffed and relaxed back on his stool when the drink was placed in front of him. 

“Not sure I want to socialise with you, Miss Lounds. You were pretty tough on that kid.”

She smirked and shrugged, “He’s a big boy, he can take it. What about you?”

Continue on AO3

[pansyboybloom]

Real Queer America: LGBT Stories from Red States, by Samantha Allen - A Review (8 out of 10)

"That's precisely the question we asked ourselves on November 9th. To stay, or not to stay? I found my answer at the top of the pride flag: there's no way of course that the color of its first stripe was a commentary on our geographically divided political climate. Red didn't mean Republican and blue didn't mean Democrat until the year 2000 anyway. Red is simply the first color in the rainbow, not a sign from the cosmos for me personally. But back when Gilbert Baker first designed that now ubiquitous emblem of LGBT rights in 1978 he did want that red stripe to signify life."

Samantha Allen, a reporter, wife, and transgender woman who was raised in Utah amidst the heart of the Mormon Church and left the South and its redness behind after beginning her transition, asked herself the questions that many Americans, especially queer ones, asked themselves after Donald Trump's win in the United States Presidential race in 2016. But, instead of moving out to Canada, Samantha decided to move down. Down to Utah, Texas, Indiana, and other red states that had seemingly made it clear that she and people like her weren't wanted, to answer a question that she couldn't shake:

Why weren't the Southern queers leaving?

"What makes an oasis, an oasis?"

In Real Queer America, Allen snakes through the south to pockets of queer safe havens ranging from queer bars in small rural towns, to LGBT shelters across from Mormon temples, to protests in Austin, TX, and places of safety throughout all of red America, no matter how small

As a Southerner, this book called to me. It was written with love, with the respect that only a Southern queer can give to other Southern queers. Allen examines the parts of the queer South that those outside its borders might struggle to understand, like LGBT youth political groups that work with the Mormon church to secure transgender rights in Utah. The chapter on Utah struck me in particular. I won't pretend to have any good opinions of the Mormon establishment, but the fondness Allen has for the community who raised her, even after it hurt her, is mind-blowing. Hearing from people like an ex-Mormon radical who works hand in hand with the church to secure LGBT safety, a mother who is deeply supportive of her transgender son because of her Mormoness, not despite it, a gay youth rights advocate who stated in the heart of Mormonism out of an unshakable faith in the goodness in the people of Utah, and, most remarkable, a trans man who has been told by the church that, should he continue his medical transition, he would be excommunicated, but chooses to love God anyways.

Of course, another favorite chapter was that on Texas. As a Texan, I am all too familiar with names like Paxton and Abbott, but also Wendy Davis and the Briggle family. Allen shows the Briggle family as human, and continues that humanity into her trek into the Rio Grande Valley, an often forgotten part of the state, demonized by both the North for its poverty and the South for its tie to immigration from Mexico. Allen approaches the complexities of race interacting with queerness with attempted grace, but her analysis seems to fall flat-- something she acknowledges later on, in Indiana, in which she has in-depth conversations with a black trans woman on how while Allen may feel safe holding hands with her wife here, her blackness will forever keep the 'queer eutopia' she lives in from truly being safe.

She tells Allen: "There is a difference, it seems, between an oasis and a eutopia. When you're in a desert, an oasis can be a single well of water in the sand, or in this case, one college town with an incredible queer bar. A watering hole doesn't make the desert safe, it just makes it habitable. Even then, when you arrive at the refuge that is Bloomington, so much of your experience here depends on the identities you bring with you. And eutopias? Well, eutopias don't exist. If they did, every LGBT person in the country would move there, and queer making would end."

Allen also carries some of the uncomfortable, if not plain disheartening, pro-veteran beliefs quintessential to the South, spending a long time speaking in depth with veterans surrounding Trump's trans military ban. She repeatedly references a shirt she saw while at an Austin rally: I fought for your right to hate me. The reverence she holds and the anger she feels for veterans was upsetting at times and showed further Allen's privilege.

Still, Allen's beliefs need not be perfect in a book about how the Northern need for perfection leads to the Southern LGBT community being abandoned. This abandonment is mentioned in the Indiana chapter when discussing Mike Pence and his 'return to religious freedom' act, which lead to North wide economic protests and boycotts-- that affected the queers of Indiana far more economically than it did Pence. It was grassroots organizations and local state fighters that pushed back the collection of bills, and many, like the ones Allen interviewed, felt abandoned by blue states that seemed to care more about protesting through inaction than action.

Grassroots education, safety, activism, and community are a recurring theme in Real Queer America, unsurprising to any rural or Southern queer. One such example is the Back Door, a queer bar-- not gay, but specifically queer, an active choice maybe by the "dyke daddy" of the club-- that serves as a bastion of fun and sex in a rural town, but also as a place to come together and practice activism.

"The 'Back Door' is a perfect example of the red state queer ethos-- that being politically active is a responsibility, not a choice."

Allen stresses one thing above all: community. The queer chosen family, and the queering of friendships, she argues, are just as threatening to the average bigot as her sex life or her gender identity, if not more. Together, Southern queers thrive-- something many Northerns don't see. Allen critiques Northern journalism from her own writing background, citing that Northerners only care about Southern queer lives when a politician is passing a bathroom bill, a gunman is shooting up a night club, or a high school has their first trans homecoming king, not out of a desire to share his joy, but to further stress how backward the South is. Amidst the shared meals with bisexuals in Tennessee, watching the dancing queers of the Back Door, the support groups across from Mormon temples, the protests in Austin, and more, Allen asks the reader, is the most radical thing to do as a queer person to simply live and love? Is living, thriving, fighting together, arm in arm-- is all of this what being queer in the South means? She finds answers in each place she goes, and while I will leave her answer up to the reader, I find her comment when meeting with the trans cafe owner of Allen's college youth to shine clear:

"Watching Rachel run her own small business in south central Indiana was my first vision of a future where I turn out okay."

Please, check to see if your local library or bookstores have Real Queer America before buying on Amazon! Let's support local reading!

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Azeen Ghorayshi

Published: May 13, 2024

After 30 years as one of England’s top pediatricians, Dr. Hilary Cass was hoping to begin her retirement by learning to play the saxophone.

Instead, she took on a project that would throw her into an international fire: reviewing England’s treatment guidelines for the rapidly rising number of children with gender distress, known as dysphoria.

At the time, in 2020, England’s sole youth gender clinic was in disarray. The waiting list had swelled, leaving many young patients waiting years for an appointment. Staff members who said they felt pressure to approve children for puberty-blocking drugs had filed whistle-blower complaints that had spilled into public view. And a former patient had sued the clinic, claiming that she had transitioned as a teenager “after a series of superficial conversations with social workers.”

The National Health Service asked Dr. Cass, who had never treated children with gender dysphoria but had served as the president of the Royal College of Pediatrics and Child Health, to independently evaluate how the agency should proceed.

Over the next four years, Dr. Cass commissioned systematic reviews of scientific studies on youth gender treatments and international guidelines of care. She also met with young patients and their families, transgender adults, people who had detransitioned, advocacy groups and clinicians.

Her final report, published last month, concluded that the evidence supporting the use of puberty-blocking drugs and other hormonal medications in adolescents was “remarkably weak.” On her recommendation, the N.H.S. will no longer prescribe puberty blockers outside of clinical trials. Dr. Cass also recommended that testosterone and estrogen, which allow young people to develop the physical characteristics of the opposite sex, be prescribed with “extreme caution.”

Dr. Cass’s findings are in line with several European countries that have limited the treatments after scientific reviews. But in America, where nearly two dozen states have banned the care outright, medical groups have endorsed the treatments as evidence-based and necessary.

The American Academy of Pediatrics declined to comment on Dr. Cass’s specific findings, and condemned the state bans. “Politicians have inserted themselves into the exam room, which is dangerous for both physicians and for families,” Dr. Ben Hoffman, the organization’s president, said.

The Endocrine Society told The New York Times that Dr. Cass’s review “does not contain any new research” that would contradict its guidelines. The federal health department did not respond to requests for comment.

Dr. Cass spoke to The Times about her report and the response from the United States. This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.

What are your top takeaways from the report?

The most important concern for me is just how poor the evidence base is in this area. Some people have questioned, “Did we set a higher bar for this group of young people?” We absolutely didn’t. The real problem is that the evidence is very weak compared to many other areas of pediatric practice.

The second big takeaway for me is that we have to stop just seeing these young people through the lens of their gender and see them as whole people, and address the much broader range of challenges that they have, sometimes with their mental health, sometimes with undiagnosed neurodiversity. It’s really about helping them to thrive, not just saying “How do we address the gender?” in isolation.

You found that the quality of evidence in this space is “remarkably weak.” Can you explain what that means?

The assessment of studies looks at things like, do they follow up for long enough? Do they lose a lot of patients during the follow-up period? Do they have good comparison groups? All of those assessments are really objective. The reason the studies are weak is because they failed on one or more of those areas.

The most common criticism directed at your review is that it was in some way rigged because of the lack of randomized controlled trials, which compare two treatments or a treatment and a placebo, in this field. That, from the get-go, you knew you would find that there was low-quality evidence.

People were worried that we threw out anything that wasn’t a randomized controlled trial, which is the gold standard for study design. We didn’t, actually.

There weren’t any randomized controlled trials, but we still included about 58 percent of the studies that were identified, the ones that were high quality or moderate quality. The kinds of studies that aren’t R.C.T.s can give us some really good information, but they have to be well-conducted. The weakness was many were very poorly conducted.

There’s something I would like to say about the perception that this was rigged, as you say. We were really clear that this review was not about defining what trans means, negating anybody’s experiences or rolling back health care.

There are young people who absolutely benefit from a medical pathway, and we need to make sure that those young people have access — under a research protocol, because we need to improve the research — but not assume that that’s the right pathway for everyone.

[ The Tavistock Gender Identity Development Service in London, which until recently was the National Health Service’s sole youth gender clinic in England. ]

Another criticism is that this field is being held to a higher standard than others, or being exceptionalized in some way. There are other areas of medicine, particularly in pediatrics, where doctors practice without high-quality evidence.

The University of York, which is kind of the home of systematic reviews, one of the key organizations that does them in this country, found that evidence in this field was strikingly lower than other areas — even in pediatrics.

I can’t think of any other situation where we give life-altering treatments and don’t have enough understanding about what’s happening to those young people in adulthood. I’ve spoken to young adults who are clearly thriving — a medical pathway has been the right thing for them. I’ve also spoken to young adults where it was the wrong decision, where they have regret, where they’ve detransitioned. The critical issue is trying to work out how we can best predict who’s going to thrive and who’s not going to do well.

In your report, you are also concerned about the rapid increase in numbers of teens who have sought out gender care over the last 10 years, most of whom were female at birth. I often hear two different explanations. On the one hand, there’s a positive story about social acceptance: that there have always been this many trans people, and kids today just feel freer to express who they are. The other story is a more fearful one: that this is a ‘contagion’ driven in large part by social media. How do you think about it?

There’s always two views because it’s never a simple answer. And probably elements of both of those things apply.

It doesn’t really make sense to have such a dramatic increase in numbers that has been exponential. This has happened in a really narrow time frame across the world. Social acceptance just doesn’t happen that way, so dramatically. So that doesn’t make sense as the full answer.

But equally, those who say this is just social contagion are also not taking account of how complex and nuanced this is.

Young people growing up now have a much more flexible view about gender — they’re not locked into gender stereotypes in the way my generation was. And that flexibility and fluidity are potentially beneficial because they break down barriers, combat misogyny, and so on. It only becomes a challenge if we’re medicalizing it, giving an irreversible treatment, for what might be just a normal range of gender expression.

What has the response to your report been like in Britain?

Both of our main parties have been supportive of the report, which has been great.

We have had a longstanding relationship with support and advocacy groups in the U.K. That’s not to say that they necessarily agree with all that we say. There’s much that they are less happy about. But we have had an open dialogue with them and have tried to address their questions throughout.

I think there is an appreciation that we are not about closing down health care for children. But there is fearfulness — about health care being shut down, and also about the report being weaponized to suggest that trans people don’t exist. And that’s really disappointing to me that that happens, because that’s absolutely not what we’re saying.

I’ve reached out to major medical groups in the United States about your findings. The American Academy of Pediatrics declined to comment on your report, citing its own research review that is underway. It said that its guidance, which it reaffirmed last year, was “grounded in evidence and science.”

The Endocrine Society said “we stand firm in our support of gender-affirming care,” which is “needed and often lifesaving.”

I think for a lot of people, this is kind of dizzying. We have medical groups in the United States and Britain looking at the same facts, the same scientific literature, and coming to very different conclusions. What do you make of those responses?

When I was president of the Royal College of Pediatrics and Child Health, we did some great work with the A.A.P. They are an organization that I have enormous respect for. But I respectfully disagree with them on holding on to a position that is now demonstrated to be out of date by multiple systematic reviews.

It wouldn’t be too much of a problem if people were saying “This is clinical consensus and we’re not sure.” But what some organizations are doing is doubling down on saying the evidence is good. And I think that’s where you’re misleading the public. You need to be honest about the strength of the evidence and say what you’re going to do to improve it.

I suspect that the A.A.P., which is an organization that does massive good for children worldwide, and I see as a fairly left-leaning organization, is fearful of making any moves that might jeopardize trans health care right now. And I wonder whether, if they weren’t feeling under such political duress, they would be able to be more nuanced, to say that multiple truths exist in this space — that there are children who are going to need medical treatment, and that there are other children who are going to resolve their distress in different ways.

Have you heard from the A.A.P. since your report was published?

They haven’t contacted us directly — no.

Have you heard from any other U.S. health bodies, like the Department of Health and Human Services, for example?

No.

Have you heard from any U.S. lawmakers?

No. Not at all.

Pediatricians in the United States are in an incredibly tough position because of the political situation here. It affects what doctors feel comfortable saying publicly. Your report is now part of that evidence that they may fear will be weaponized. What would you say to American pediatricians about how to move forward?

Do what you’ve been trained to do. So that means that you approach any one of these young people as you would any other adolescent, taking a proper history, doing a proper assessment and maintaining a curiosity about what’s driving their distress. It may be about diagnosing autism, it may be about treating depression, it might be about treating an eating disorder.

What really worries me is that people just think: This is somebody who is trans, and the medical pathway is the right thing for them. They get put on a medical pathway, and then the problems that they think were going to be solved just don’t go away. And it’s because there’s this overshadowing of all the other problems.

So, yes, you can put someone on a medical pathway, but if at the end of it they can’t get out of their bedroom, they don’t have relationships, they’re not in school or ultimately in work, you haven’t done the right thing by them. So it really is about treating them as a whole person, taking a holistic approach, managing all of those things and not assuming they’ve all come about as a result of the gender distress.

I think some people get frustrated about the conclusion being, well, what these kids need is more holistic care and mental health support, when that system doesn’t exist. What do you say to that?

We’re failing these kids and we’re failing other kids in terms of the amount of mental health support we have available. That is a huge problem — not just for gender-questioning young people. And I think that’s partly a reflection of the fact that the system’s been caught out by a growth of demand that is completely outstripping the ability to provide it.

We don’t have a nationalized health care system here in the United States. We have a sprawling and fragmented system. Some people have reached the conclusion that, because of the realities of the American health care system, the only way forward is through political bans. What do you make of that argument?

Medicine should never be politically driven. It should be driven by evidence and ethics and shared decision-making with patients and listening to patients’ voices. Once it becomes politicized, then that’s seriously concerning, as you know well from the abortion situation in the United States.

So, what can I say, except that I’m glad that the U.K. system doesn’t work in the same way.

-

When asked after this interview about Dr. Cass’s comments, Dr. Hoffman, the A.A.P.’s president, said that the group had carefully reviewed her report and “added it to the evidence base undergoing a systematic review.” He also said that “Any suggestion the American Academy of Pediatrics is misleading families is false.”

--

[metalheadsforblacklivesmatter]

Things about America that would give Europeans a heart attack.

Many Americans are expected to drive AN HOUR to work every day. Europeans don't even visit their mom regularly if she lives 30 minutes away.

We measure distance traveled in time. Because sometimes driving 15 miles can take as long as driving 45 miles. How long you'll be in a vehicle is most important.

Zoning laws. Many of us actually do like to walk. Our major cities were designed by automotive lobbyists to force us to buy cars.

Food deserts. There's some places in America with literally zero grocery stores within 5 miles of your home.

Hospital bills. 1 emergency room visit can cost tens of thousands of dollars. Not to mention the $15,000 of you need an ambulance.

Mental health. You can be forced into grippy sock jail against your will. Then stuck with a bill that costs tens of thousands of dollars when you get out.

Speaking of medical bills. Credit reports. Remember that medical bill that costs tens of thousands of dollars? That goes on your credit report if you can't pay it. Which makes it harder to rent, buy a house, buy a car, or get a credit card.

Retirement. You can't get social security until you're 62 and social security isn't enough to live on. You're supposed to be saving money to retire on, on top of that. And based on your family's health history and cost of living. It's not unusual to need $1-2 million to retire. And it's not unusual for people to have to work into their 80s.

College. A hundred thousand dollars in student loan debt isn't unheard of and many Americans are never able to pay it off in their lifetime because interest is like 5-8%. Also. That goes on your credit report.

Minimum wage. I don't necessarily believe that Europeans would be shocked that minimum wage doesn't cover the cost of living here. But there's people that live here that are suprised to find out our minimum wage is $7.20. I've gotten into arguments over this, several times. If Americans don't believe it, how can I expect a European to?

Lack of public transit. Only like, major cities have public transit, and only a few of them have reliable public transit.

Lack of labor unions and union busting. Many European countries like France will go on nation wide strikes if an oligarch sneezes wrong. Companies in America will shut down business in entire states if the unions are getting too strong. Honestly I'm kinda surprised that we don't strike more.

Lack of paid vacation time. In a lot of countries 6 weeks is like normal. My last job I got none. And people legitimately didn't believe me when I said I had to work on Christmas or not get paid (yeah, it was a desk job). Again. If Americans can't believe it. Why would I expect Europeans to? Also I feel like Europeans would just die from the burnout because it's not uncommon for Americans to literally work themselves to death.

No. For real. I have people mad at me because I couldn't go to a family friend's wedding because they didn't believe I didn't have labor day off.

-fae

[xoxiu]

my house of stone, your ivy grows - yoongi x reader

chapter nine table of contents masterlist

taglist

discord

summary: yoongi carried himself with a sense of pride within himself and his belongings. he worked hard to get to where he was- ethically or not, it made him the man he is today. his latest toy, a young college girl from america, will become his magnum opus. he just needs to work out the kinks.

tags/warnings: mafia au, kidnapping, daddy dom!yoongi, smut, autistic!reader, spanking, stockholm syndrome, little!jimin, vminhope, drug mention, namjin, fluff, domestic discipline

taglist: @allamericanuniverse @llallaaa

Kiwo sat in the center of the bed staring down at the Nintendo Switch in her lap. It was one of the gifts from Yoongi, and one of the things she wanted the most. It felt weird, however, to get one under these circumstances. 

She had rules with it- no playing it without permission, no internet, and no more than two hours on it. Yoongi had gotten so many things to play with, and he didn’t want her to rot her brain on video games all day. They were all in a box under the bed- some yarn for Kiwo to crochet with, slime, board games, books, and other little things she had little to no interest in just yet. 

Yoongi had gone all out during his shopping trip. A large dog kennel sat in the corner of the bedroom close to the bed, with a large fluffy dog bed inside. There were pink blankets and stuffed animals in there as well, and fairy lights decorated the outside. Some of the bigger stuffed animals sat on top of the kennel. Kiwo looked away with disgust, only for her eyes to fall on the bedside table. 

There sat three pacifiers in pink, blue, and white. Kiwo wanted to be disgusted by them, but with her need for oral stimulation, she secretly wanted them. She would never give in, though, especially if it meant satisfaction for Yoongi.

Kiwo hissed as her headache throbbed harder, and laid down on the bed, Switch abandoned next to her body. She was now face-to-face with the pacifiers. The familiar flips in her stomach only broke her gaze, and she rushed for the en suite bathroom.

“For a research university, I expected Yonsei to have higher web security,” Hoseok remarked from the couch behind Yoongi. The office was currently inhabited by the hacker, Hoseok, and Taehyung. Yoongi ignored the younger’s voice and continued to view the files in front of him. 

As an international student, Kiwo had to send over various medical records to the university for insurance reasons. Since she was still deathly ill, Yoongi figured he could check her medical records to see if there were any pre-existing conditions. Hoseok and Taehyung, however, visited only in the hope of meeting Kiwo. 

A file marked ‘outpatient psychiatric services’ caught Yoongi’s eye, and he quickly downloaded the record.

”Kiwo Louise is a 17-year-old female with a history of Autism Spectrum Disorder, social anxiety, depression, and a panic disorder.” Yoongi’s eyes widened at the opening statement. He was completely unaware that Kiwo was autistic. He browsed the document for any other information.

”The patient was diagnosed with autism around the age of 6 or 7. She has a history of self-harm but currently shows no intent to harm herself. She has a history of sexually acting out.

“She has a history of social awkwardness, emotional outbursts, and infantile behaviors. Her emotional state appears to be delayed, placing her near a 7-year-old’s milestones for emotional intelligence.

”She has a slight speech delay with the /r/ sound in all forms, as well as consonant digraphs. Ms. Louise has attended speech therapy since Kindergarten.”

All Yoongi could do was stare at the screen. All this information was considered vital to Kiwo’s health and well-being, and Yoongi felt inadequate in his handling of it. 

“That’s quite the cocktail of drugs, hyung,” Taehyung said as he leaned against the back of Yoongi’s chair. He read the files over the elder’s shoulder much to Yoongi’s dismay.

”Probably sick from withdrawal, poor thing.” Hoseok got up from the chair to look at the files as well. The three silently stared at the computer screen until Taehyung finally spoke up. 

“I could easily get you the medications- it’s not like antidepressants are illegal.”

“Can I come with you?” Hoseok asked. Taehyung simply shook his head no, but Hoseok’s smile never faltered. 

“Hoseok,” Yoongi said, “Watch my email to see if anything work-related pops up. I’m going to check on Kiwo for a bit.” 

Yoongi stood up and left the two other men in the office. They stared at each other with concern over Yoongi in their eyes. 

“He’s been fidgety since Kiwo arrived,” Hoseok took a seat in the desk chair, and took one quick spin on it. “And I’m sure her getting sick suddenly isn’t helping.”

Taehyung agreed and politely dismissed himself to get what Yoongi needed of him. Hoseok whistled out of boredom at the computer desk, refreshing the email client every few minutes. 

He wished he could see Kiwo- Yoongi has been very secretive over her and rarely let any of them see her. From what Seokjin had said, she’s a shy but polite young girl, with a very cute round face. Hoseok wished he could go into Yoongi’s room to see for himself, but had no reason to do so. 

An email came through. It was a video conference reminder for Yoongi. Hoseok finally had his chance to see Kiwo. He quickly got up and headed for Yoongi's bedroom only to find Taehyung exiting the room. The younger man gave him a huge smile before speaking. 

"She's asleep right now, but you should see her. It's just the cutest sight."

Taehyung patted his back as he passed him. Hoseok stood in front of the door for a moment, reveling in his excitement before finally opening up the door slowly. The room was dark sans the light from a bedside lamp illuminating Yoongi's face. The elder sat with his back against the headboard, scrolling aimlessly on his phone. Kiwo was splayed across the bed horizontally, with her body all sorts of twisted up while her head lay on Yoongi's lap. Hoseok's smile widened at the cozy sight. His eyes eventually fell upon something blue sticking out of Kiwo's mouth. 

A pacifier.

Hoseok almost felt his heart leap out of his chest. The sight of her small face, flushed cheeks, and a pale blue pacifier was almost too much to take in at once. 

"What's up?" Yoongi asked, putting his phone on the bedside table next to him. 

"This cannot be the Kiwo you've been telling us about," Hoseok shook his head in disbelief, "she could never hit you upside the head with an encyclopedia."

Yoongi chuckled at the memory and gently moved Kiwo's head and arm from his thighs so he could get up. When he arose, he gave a big stretch before looking back over at Hoseok. The man finally came back to his senses to inform Yoongi of the upcoming meeting. The elder closed his eyes with an exhausted sigh before speaking up.

"Can you wait here in case Kiwo wakes up? Maybe try to give her the medication when she does?" Yoongi walked over to his closer and attempted to look nice and presentable by throwing on a blazer over his dress shirt. Hoseok nodded and sat on the chair in the corner of the bedroom.

He was so excited for Kiwo to wake up.

The sun was setting and Hoseok was growing tired, yawning and closing his eyes every few seconds. Kiwo had yet to wake up, and Hoseok doubted she would before Yoongi's meeting ended. 

Hoseok watched the pacifier fall out of Kiwo's pouted lips and gently land on the blanket next to her. She stirred slightly and slowly began opening her eyes when the bedroom door suddenly opened. 

"That was the most bullshit meeting ever," Yoongi stated, throwing his blazer to the side. "Did you know the company president was acquiring another hotel chain? We can't possibly afford that!"

Yoongi suddenly remembered that Kiwo was sleeping, and his raised voice most likely woke her up. He peered over towards the bed only to see half-opened eyes peeking out at him and puffy pouted lips. 

“Hi, sleepy girl. Did I wake you?” He asked walking over to the bed and running a hand through her tangled bed hair. There was no response other than Kiwo gently closing her eyes and sighing. 

“Have you said hi to Hoseok oppa yet?” 

Kiwo turned away with a whine, her perky butt now facing Yoongi. The blond sat on the bed and lightly tapped her bottom twice, just hard enough to get her attention. Kiwo once again let out a whine before saying a sharp ‘hi’. 

Yoongi clicked his tongue and shook his head.

”So disrespectful, you brat,” Yoongi said. “Need to teach you some respect and manners.” 

Hoseok let out a small laugh before talking to Kiwo in a baby voice, “Hi Kiwoie! Can Hobi oppa see your pretty face?” 

Small feet kicked out in response, but Kiwo did sit up. She hid her flushed face in her hands. 

“Can you be a big girl and take your meds for me?” Hoseok continued to talk to her as if she were a child, and it appeared to be working somewhat. 

“We got your medication for you to help you feel better,” Yoongi said as he picked up the bag full of bottles. “Just so you can trust us, you can take them yourself. There’s water on the table.”

Kiwo removed her hands from her face but kept her head down. She grabbed the bag from Yoongi’s hand and grabbed one of the bottles. It was, in fact, one of her psychiatric medications, so she felt no fear in taking them. 

It was even the name brand of them. 

“Taehyungie oppa brought them for you,” Hoseok said, doubting that Taehyung got to meet Kiwo. She most likely was still asleep then.

Feeling uncomfortable with the stranger near her, Kiwo just fiddled with the plastic bag anxiously. Finally, she felt somewhat comfortable with Yoongi- he wasn’t that bad of a guy, he didn’t hurt her and was very accommodating. This Hoseok, however, Kiwo felt unnerved by. He smiled and was a bit too cheerful, and it almost felt like he was hiding something malicious from Kiwo. 

Yoongi must have picked up on Kiwo’s nerves, and sent a look toward Hoseok. The younger man understood and stood up to take his leave. 

“I better get going now, have a good night Kiwo and Yoongi hyung!”

Kiwo looked up to watch Hoseok leave. Then she took her meds, one by one, with big drinks of water to wash them down. 

Yoongi smiled. He slowly was beginning to understand Kiwo better. Even though it may be different than he initially planned, he was determined to know Kiwo inside and out. 

[mariacallous]

A doctors’ organization at the center of the ongoing legal fight over the abortion drug mifepristone has suffered a significant data breach. A link to an unsecured Google Drive published on the group’s website pointed users last week to a large cache of sensitive documents, including financial and tax records, membership rolls, and email exchanges spanning over a decade. The more than 10,000 documents lay bare the outsize influence of a small conservative organization working to lend a veneer of medical science to evangelical beliefs on parenting, sex, procreation, and gender.

The American College of Pediatricians, which has fought to deprive gay couples of their parental rights and encouraged public schools to treat LGBTQ youth as if they were mentally ill, is one of a handful of conservative think tanks leading the charge against abortion in the United States. A federal lawsuit filed by the College and its partners against the US Food and Drug Administration seeks to limit nationwide access to what is now the most common form of abortion. The case is now on a trajectory for the US Supreme Court, which not even a year ago declared abortion the purview of America’s elected state representatives. 

The leaked records, first reported by WIRED, offer an unprecedented look at the groups and personnel central to that campaign. They also describe an organization that has benefited greatly by exaggerating its own power, even as it has struggled quietly for two decades to grow in size and gain respect. The records show how the College, which the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) describes as a hate group, managed to introduce fringe beliefs into the mainstream simply by being, as the founder of Fox News once put it, “the loudest voice in the room.” 

The Leak

A WIRED review of the exposed data found that the unsecured Google Drive stored nearly 10,000 files, some of which are compressed zip files containing additional documents. These records detail highly sensitive internal information about the College’s donors and taxes, social security numbers of board members, staff resignation letters, budgetary and fundraising concerns, and the usernames and passwords of more than 100 online accounts. The files include Powerpoint presentations, Quickbooks accounting documents, and at least 388 spreadsheets. 

One spreadsheet appears to be an export of an internal database containing information on 1,200 past and current members. It contains intimate personal information about each member, including various contact details, as well as where they were educated, how they heard of the group, and when membership dues were paid. The records show past and current members are mostly male and, on average, over 50 years old. As of spring 2022, the College counted slightly more than 700 members, according to another document reviewed by WIRED. 

The breach exposes some material dating back to the group’s origin. It includes mailing lists gathered by the group of thousands of “conservative physicians” across the country. (One document outlining recruitment efforts states in bold, red letters: “TARGET CHRISTIAN MDs.”) The ongoing recruitment of doctors and medical school students seen as holding Christian views has long been its top priority. The leaked records indicate that more than 10,000 mailers were sent to physicians between 2013 and 2017 alone. 

While the group’s membership rolls are not public, the leak has outed most if not all of its members. A cursory review of the member lists surfaced one name of note: a recent commissioner of the Texas Department of State Health Services, who after joining in 2019 asked that his membership with the group remain a secret. (WIRED was unable to reach the official for comment in time for publication.)

The SPLC’s “hate group” designation, which the College forcefully disputes, haunted its fundraising efforts, records reveal. A barrage of emails in 2014 show that the label cost the group the chance to benefit from an Amazon program that would eventually distribute $450 million to charities across the globe. Amazon would deny the College’s application, stating that it relied on the SPLC to determine which charities fall into certain ineligible categories.

A strategy document would later refer to a “unified plan” among the College and its allies to “continue discrediting the SPLC,” which included a campaign aimed at lowering its rating at Charity Navigator, one of the web’s most influential nonprofit evaluators. One of the group’s admins noted that despite SPLC’s label, another charity monitor, GuideStar, listed the College as being in “good standing.”

The College’s GuideStar page no longer says this and appears to have been defaced. It now reads, “AMERICAN COLLEGE OF doodoo fartheads,” with a mission statement saying: “we are evil and hate gays :(((”

The Google Drive containing the documents was taken offline soon after WIRED contacted the American College of Pediatricians. The College did not respond to a request for comment.

The Talk

Leaked communications between members of the group and minutes taken at board meetings over the course of several years speak loudly about the challenges the group faced in pursuing its deeply unpopular agenda: returning America to a time when the laws and social mores around family squared neatly with evangelical Christian beliefs.

Many of the College’s most radical views target transgender people, and in particular, transgender youth. The leak, which had been indexed by Google, includes volumes of literature crafted specifically to influence relationships between practicing pediatricians, parents, and their children. It includes reams of marketing material the College aims to distribute widely among public school officials. This includes pushing schools to adopt junk science painting transgender youth as carriers of a pathological disorder, one that’s capable of spontaneously causing others–à la the dancing plague–to adopt similar thoughts and behaviors.

This is one of the group’s most dubious claims. While unsupported by medical science, it is routinely and incuriously propagated through literature targeted at schools and medical offices around the US. The primary source for this claim is a research paper drafted in 2017 by Lisa Littman, a Brown University scholar who, while a medical doctor, had not specialized in mental health. The goal of the paper was to introduce, conceptually, “rapid onset gender dysphoria”—a hypothetical disorder, as was later clarified by the journal that published it. Littman would also clarify personally that her research “does not validate the phenomenon” she’d hypothesized, since no clinicians, nor individuals identifying as trans, had participated in the study.  

The paper explains that its subjects were instead all parents who had been recruited from a handful of websites known for opposing gender-affirmative care and “telling parents not to believe their child is transgender.” A review of one of the sites from the period shows parents congregating to foster paranoia about whether there’s a “conspiracy of silence” around “anime culture” that was brainwashing boys into behaving like girls; insights plucked in some cases straight from another, more notorious forum (widely known for reveling in the suicides of the people it has bullied).

A 2021 prospectus describing the group’s focus, ideology, and lobbying efforts encapsulates a wide range of “educational resources” destined for the inboxes of physicians and medical school students. The materials include links to a website instructing doctors on how to speak to children in a variety of scenarios about a multitude of topics surrounding sex, including in the absence of their parents. Practice scripts of conversations between doctors and patients advise, among other things, ways to elicit a child’s thoughts on sex with the help of an imaginative metaphor. 

While the material is not expressly religious, it is clearly aimed at painting same-sex marriage as aberrant and immoral behavior. Physicians lobbied by the group are also told to urge patients to purchase Christian-based parenting guides, including one designed to help parents broach the topic of sex with their 11- and 12-year-old kids. The College suggests telling parents to plan a “special overnight trip,” a pretext for instilling in their children sexual norms in line with evangelical practice. The group suggests telling parents to buy a tool called a “getaway kit,” a series of workbooks that run around $54 online. The workbooks methodically walk the parents through the process of springing the topic, but only after a day-long charade of impromptu gift-giving and play. 

These books are full of games and puzzles for the parent and child to cooperatively take on. Throughout the process, the child slowly digests a concept of “sexual purity,” lessons aided by oversimplified scripture and well-trodden Bible school parables. 

Another document the group shared with its members contains a script for appointments with pregnant minors. Its purpose is made evidently clear: The advice is engineered specifically to reduce the odds of minors coming into contact with medical professionals not strictly opposed to abortion. A practice script recommends the doctor inform the minor that they “strongly recommend against” abortion, adding “the procedure not only kills the infant you carry, but is also a danger to you.” (Medically, the term “fetus” and “infant” are not interchangeable, the latter referring to a newborn baby less than one year old.)

The doctors are urged to recommend that the minor visit a website that, like the aforementioned website, is not expressly religious but will only direct visitors to Catholic-run “crisis pregnancy centers,” which strictly reject abortion. The same site is widely promoted by anti-abortion groups such as National Right to Life, which last year held that it should be illegal to terminate the pregnancy of a 10-year-old rape victim.

The Professionals

The effort to ban mifepristone, legislation the Supreme Court paused last month pending further review, faces significant legal hurdles but could ultimately benefit from the appellate court’s disproportionately conservative makeup. Most of the legal power in the fight was supplied by a much older and better funded group, the Alliance Defending Freedom, which has established ties with some of the country’s most elite political figures—former vice president Mike Pence and Supreme Court justice Amy Coney Barrett among them.

A contract in the leaked documents dated April 2021 shows the ADF agreeing to legally represent the College free of charge. It stipulates that ADF’s ability to subsidize expenses incurred during lawsuits would be limited by ethical guidelines; however, it could still forgive any lingering costs simply by declaring the College “indigent.”

In contrast to the College’s some 700 members, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP)–the organization from which the College’s founders split 20 years ago–has roughly 67,000. The rupture between the two groups was a direct result of a statement issued by the AAP in 2002. Modern research, the AAP said, had conclusively shown that the sexual orientation of parents had an imperceptible impact on the well-being of children, so long as they were raised in caring, supportive families.

The College would gain notoriety early on by assailing the positions of the AAP. In 2005, a Boston Globe reporter noted how common it had become for the American College of Pediatricians “to be quoted as a counterpoint” to anything said by the AAP. The institution, he wrote, had a rather “august-sounding name” for being run by a “single employee.” 

Internal documents show that the group’s directors quickly encountered hurdles operating on the fringe of accepted science. Some claimed to be oppressed. Most of the College’s research had been “written by one person,” according to minutes from a 2006 meeting, which were included in the leak. The College was failing to make a splash. In the future, one director suggested, papers rejected by medical journals “should be published on the web.” The vote to do so was unanimous (though the board decided the term “not published” was nicer than “rejected”). 

A second director put forth a motion to create a separate “scientific section” on the group’s website, strictly for linking to articles published in medical journals. The motion was quashed after it dawned on the board that they didn’t “have enough articles” to make the page “look professional.” 

The College struggled to identify the root cause of its runtedness. “To get enough clout,” one director said, “it would take substantial numbers, maybe 10,000.” (The College’s recruitment efforts would yield fewer than 7 percent of this goal in the following 17 years.) Yet another said the marketing department advised that “the College needs to pick a fight with the AAP and get on Larry King Live.” Another, the notes say, felt the organization was too busy trying to “walk the fence” by neglecting to acknowledge that “we are conservative and religious.”