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feralphoenix · 4 years ago

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BUT THAT DOESN’T MEAN YOU’RE NOT PREPARED TO TRY

if you’re following my blog or if you read my fanfiction, you may have seen me talking in tags or comments about how the radiance hollowknight was a pacifist. “feral, wtf?” you may have thought. “she’s the freaking final boss and tries really, really hard to kill you and all her attacks do 2 entire masks damage. where on earth do you get pacifism out of that???”

to you specifically i say, that’s an understandable reaction! the short version of how i got here was that i started thinking about the story implications of radi not inflicting contact damage and took a deep dive into game mechanics and lore. when i came up for air i had made myself Very Sad.

if this intrigues you and you would like to know more, come along with me, i am happy to point out the things i noticed and share the Big Sad around.

this essay is also available on dreamwidth for accessibility purposes, since my layout’s text may be too small for folks on pc with high-res screens.

CONTENT WARNING: This essay discusses pseudo-zombie plagues and associated body horror, colonialism and genocide, horrible things that happened in real life Australian history... you know, the usual topics that come up when I’m talking about Hollow Knight.

ADDITIONAL NOTICE: TPK fans of the “TPK meant well/was working for the greater good”/“TPK and Radi are equally bad”/“TPK is bad but Radi is worse” variety please give this one a pass, it ain’t for you.

finally if youre from a christian cultural upbringing (whether currently practicing, agnostic/secular, or atheist now), understand that some of what i’m discussing here may challenge you. if thinking thru the implications of this particular part of hollow knight worldbuilding/lore is distressing for you, PLEASE only approach this essay when youre in a safe mindset & open to listening, and ask the help of a therapist or anti-racism teacher/mentor to help you process your thoughts & feelings. just like keep in mind that youre listening to an ethnoreligiously marginalized person and please be respectful here or wherever else youre discussing this dang essay

BUT THAT DOESN’T MEAN YOU’RE NOT PREPARED TO TRY: The Radiance Doesn’t Deal Contact Damage And That’s Kind Of Fucked Up And Sad

The vast majority of hostile creatures in Hollow Knight deal contact damage: This is to say, if the Wandering Knight (who I’ll probably spend most of this essay calling by their affectionate fan name Ghost) touches a hostile creature, this harms them.

There are exceptions to this rule. The most notable and most oft-memed example is the game’s literal actual true final boss, the Radiance. Not only will Ghost not be harmed by running into any part of her body, but during her stagger animation, where she drops to the boss arena floor on her front with her whole body splayed out, Ghost still isn’t harmed if she lands on top of them! What’s more, this holds true for her full-power form Absolute Radiance, the secret final boss of the Godmaster quest/endings.

A lot of people find this amusing, because it’s a little absurd that a game’s final boss is an exception to such a consistent element of gameplay! Hence all the “haha moth too soft and fluffy for contact damage” jokes. It is objective facts that Radi is very soft and very fluffy, so it’s very easy to understand why people don’t overthink this too much.

Thinking about things I like in gross detail is unfortunately my hobby. When it comes to Hollow Knight this usually leads to me making myself really sad. I’d like to share the fruits of my theorizing with the class, so other people can be sad with me.

Now, from a game design perspective I can think of a lot of reasons why Team Cherry chose for Radiance not to inflict contact damage. Her hitbox only covers the central part of her body. Her limbs are large, so because of the way she floats, if she did contact damage she would be protected from nail strikes from below and to either side. This would give a player who prefers nail combat a punishingly small margin through which they could inflict damage without also taking a hit, potentially forcing them to adapt to a new and unfamiliar play style at the very end of the game. That’s not fun for anybody and tends to make players feel very frustrated.

In addition to this, Radiance’s attacks are all bullet hell-style spells. All of them except the floor hazards inflict two masks of damage, meaning if you want to stay alive and identify points where it’s possible to heal, you need to learn the spell patterns and dodge a lot. Radi is a large boss. If running into her hurt you this would make the bullet hell elements of her fight extra punishing.

So, I think the purely game mechanics reason for Moth Too Soft And Fluffy is in interest of keeping her boss fight fair, and helping players feel like they have a chance of actually defeating her.

Part of why we all love Hollow Knight, though, is that there’s not much in the game that only exists for purely mechanical reasons. There’s always some form of story or lore integration.

So what on earth is the story reason behind why Radiance doesn’t deal contact damage?

OTHER ENEMIES THAT DON’T DEAL CONTACT DAMAGE

Radi isn’t the only enemy (here defined as fightable/killable creature) in Hollow Knight who doesn't inflict contact damage, so let’s take a look at her fellow exceptions to the rule to see what we can learn.

Broadly speaking there are two categories of Enemies That Don’t Deal Contact Damage. The first is enemies or bosses who used to be hostile, but have become friendly to the player. For instance, when characters like Ogrim and Hornet are not being fought in boss battles, touching them won’t cause damage to Ghost. These story characters who Ghost has more or less reconciled with can’t be damaged by the player out of combat either.

In terms of generic enemies who used to be hostile but have become friendly to the player, we have the mantises of the Fungal Wastes and the Siblings/Ghost’s Shade. We learn from the game’s lore that the mantises Did Not Like The Pale King and were hostile to Hallownest, but that they established a ceasefire conditional on their keeping the people of Deepnest (who were also hostile to Hallownest) from leaving through the area’s main entrance/exit in the Fungal Wastes - essentially the two native kingdoms were pitted against one another by the Pale King.

Now, just because there was a ceasefire, that doesn’t mean the mantises take kindly to Hallownest bugs brazenly trespassing into their dang house; they will get in your face and try to kill you unless you have permission to be there. But once you’ve defeated the Mantis Lords in combat and proven yourself worthy of the mantises’ respect, they’ll let you pass through their turf unmolested. They are no longer actively hostile and don't deal contact damage.

(You're still able to attack them, though - maybe because you’d be locked out of receiving the Hunter’s Mark if you complete the Respect quest/achievement before you’ve successfully killed enough mantises? - and if you attack them, or if your pet charm familiars attack them, any mantises you aggroed will fight back and deal contact damage again.)

The Siblings, as well as Ghost’s Shade, are initially indiscriminately hostile. Our window into Shade psychology is limited, but we know that the Shade died violently and the Siblings probably did too; they may be lashing out. They’re also Void creatures, and Ghost looks a lot like the Pale King, whom we can guess from context clues pissed the Void off significantly by using it as his personal play-doh to make tools and toys with and also using its house as his personal garbage dump for baby corpses.

However, once Ghost recalls their past and breaks the mask of the Kingsoul charm to reveal the Void Heart at its core, the Void recognizes them as a part of it, and Ghost becomes able to direct/lead the Void to some extent. As an extension of this, the Siblings and Ghost’s shade become docile and can now be killed by any weapon in one hit instead of just the Dream Nail (which is made of Radiance’s Light and is the Void’s natural weakness). They don’t deal contact damage anymore either.

That’s it for “enemies that inflict contact damage at one point, but stop inflicting it after becoming friendly or neutral to Ghost”.

The generic enemies which don't inflict contact damage include shrumelings, maggots, maskflies, and lightseeds/lifeseeds. These enemies are incapable of inflicting any damage on Ghost whatsoever, because by themselves they are completely helpless entities with no natural defenses.

Shrumelings are infant members of the mushroom clan who are usually protected by adult fungi like shrumal warriors and ogres. Lightseeds and lifeseeds are harmless single-celled organisms. Maskflies are similarly harmless. Maggots, we glean from the Hunter’s Journal and dialogue from False Knight/Failed Champion, are the bottom rung of Hallownest’s society because they are weak and helpless, and are forced into menial and slave labor by other Hallownest bugs because they cannot defend themselves. The maggots’ plight is the whole reason why False Knight/Failed Champion stole Hegemol's armor in the first place, as he wanted to protect his people.

All of these enemies flee when Ghost approaches them. (Some maskfly groups’ flight triggers are set to specific areas on a map and won’t flee if you can avoid stepping on/passing through those areas, but this is clearly due to a programming oversight because their whole Thing is running away.)

But, there’s something interesting to be observed in the case of lightseeds and maggots: They can fight back against and harm Ghost if they use tools. The little flock of lightseeds you chase around the Ancient Basin eventually get sick of Ghost’s shit and take over Broken Vessel/Lost Kin’s corpse, which they puppet around to try to murder you. By doing so they gain access to Broken Vessel/Lost Kin’s considerable combat prowess and become very dangerous, contact damage included in the bargain. (The lightseeds’ doing this seems to evoke the vessel’s spirit, since they reach for Ghost when defeated. That’s not a gesture the lightseeds have any reason to make. The Lost Kin fight, by which the spirit seems to gain some form of closure, becomes available here too.)

False Knight/Failed Champion’s fights work on the same general principle. Now that he has a weapon he can attack Ghost, and his armor deals contact damage. The maggot inside the armor does not inflict contact damage; essentially both his boss fights consist of your whacking the armor until he’s stunned and pops out of the armor for a moment so you can hit his vulnerable real body, which is the only part of him that yields Soul when you smack him. In fact, his boss fights will last forever if you let him recover from being stunned on his own.

Between these two groups, Radiance very obviously doesn’t fit in the first, as she’s the final boss and is very vigorously trying to kill Ghost with various magic spells. You can tell from her Dream Nail dialogue that she’s furious about what the Pale King did to her and her people, and is afraid for her life. She is willing to use everything at her disposal to try to destroy Ghost so she can survive, go free, and get revenge for the Pale King’s crimes. If she could do contact damage to Ghost she would.

So, the only logical conclusion to make is that Radi falls into the second group of enemies that don’t inflict contact damage. She is physically incapable of causing any harm to anyone with only her body. Her magic is deadly as all get out and the 2 masks damage explosion noise probably haunts the nightmares of anyone who’s struggled fighting her, but without it she is helpless.

WHY CAN’T RADIANCE DO CONTACT DAMAGE?

It might be pretty hard to reconcile the fact that a character with Audre Lorde energy as potent as Radi Hollowknight’s is has a whopping 0 ATK. The biggest clues we get in terms of story context for her inability to inflict physical harm of any kind can be found within the culture of the moth tribe, who were her people.

Thistlewind, the backer-designed moth ghost who can be found in the Resting Grounds, tells you that the majority of moths were pacifists, and that individuals like them and like Markoth who learned to wield a nail were in the minority. Thistlewind appears to have learned to fight as a means of self-defense while they explored the crater area, and describes Markoth as having done so in order to “[brave] the edges of this world, hoping to uncover a truth long forgotten”. It sounds to me like Markoth was trying to recover parts of moth culture that were lost when their tribe was assimilated into Hallownest, or maybe even searching for Radiance or trying to learn what happened to her. (Judging that his corpse is hidden behind one of the Pale King’s shade gates it seems this didn’t go well. Thanks TPK.)

As far as fighting moths go there’s Marmu too, but she seems to be a special case, possibly raised in Hallownest's culture instead of with her tribe. We don’t actually get any sort of canon explanation for how a baby moth wound up as a child soldier who died defending the Queen’s Gardens, but given the overall tone of Hollow Knight as a game and all the colonization/Australian history parallel subtext, some horrifying possibilities come to mind.

So, if Thistlewind, Markoth, and Marmu are Outliers Lepidoptera and should not be counted, how did the majority of moths spend their time? According to Seer, who knows more about the tribe’s history than most (and to Quirrel, who points you to her if you defeat Uumuu before picking up the Dream Nail), the moths’ main prerogative was cultivating and developing dream magic. From the way the Seer describes dreams as a living history as you collect Essence, dream magic seems to be a parallel to the Dreaming (or Dreamtime), a spiritual concept in Indigenous Australian religion related to both history and myth.

To translate this into simple terms, the moths were by and large pacifists whose culture celebrated art, history, and spirituality.

Team Cherry tends to adapt at least some aspects of real-life bug behavior and biology into their sad cartoon bugs, so moths-as-pacifists tracks: Real moths do not really have any way to fight. They defend themselves from predators via their mobility and their markings, which tend towards either camouflage that helps them hide or bright markings intended to scare predators off by indicating they’re poisonous (therefore not good to eat) or look like the face of something much bigger and more dangerous than they are.

There's not that much we can glean about the moths in pre-Hallownest society aside from Seer’s dialogue, because Hallownest destroyed their civilization so thoroughly: Except in the Dream Realm (which is filled with Essence spirographs and the wisteria charms that decorate Seer’s room), their architecture can only be found anymore in hidden parts of the Resting Grounds and at the very top of the Crystal Peak where Radi’s statue and a fuckton of lore tablets Ghost doesn’t know how to read are located.

But, we know that the crater pre-Hallownest was home to a ton of diverse bug nations - the mosskin, the mushroom tribe, the mantises, Deepnest, the Hive, the flukes - and every SINGLE one of those had some kind of warrior tradition, as well as their own unique cultures. In the midst of all that it was only the moths who were pacifists, so from there we can tentatively assume that they were on good enough terms with their neighbors for there not to be any fighting. The mosskin in particular also had and still have a Higher Being on their side, though in the modern day Unn seems to be rather conflict avoidant to say the least.

And we know from Hallownest’s past dealings with the mantises and Deepnest that even having Two (2) Higher Beings isn’t enough to keep rival civilizations off your nuts if they hate you, so it’s improbable that Radiance just did all the moths’ fighting for them.

The only hint that the moths ever had beef with anyone at all is one of Radiance’s Dream Nail lines, “ancient enemy” - this is popularly theorized to refer to the Void and might be corroborated by the Void’s willingness to follow Ghost into Radi’s boss fights and fight alongside them. As the Void seems to be some sort of Higher Being/god of darkness and nothingness, and the Dream Nail’s only offensive ability is to kill Void creatures, the Void and creatures of Light appear to be in a position of mutual vulnerability. Some of the Pale King’s writings in his workshop, which identify the Void as a power in direct opposition to his, support this too.

It’s unclear whether the Void civilization and Radiance ever directly came to blows or whether they were just giving each other the stink eye over being natural enemies - personally I think the latter is more likely because the two civilizations existed on opposite sides of the crater*, and again, the moths were pacifists; plus when Ghost brings the Void along to Radi’s boss fight she is quickly and gruesomely overwhelmed by it.

What I am saying here is that if pacifism was such an integral aspect of moth culture, and Radiance epitomized her people’s culture, and she is 100% incapable of inflicting physical harm, she was probably a pacifist too.

DEEP DOWN YOU KNOW YOU WEREN'T BUILT FOR FIGHTING

Hallownest flourished for a long, long time between the Pale King and White Lady first establishing it and the initial outbreak of the Infection.

There’s no conclusive information in-game as to why this is. We can only guess: Maybe Radiance was so badly hurt or weakened by the moths’ assimilation that it simply took her That Long to become capable of the mass dream broadcast to Literally Everyone In Hallownest that would eventually become the Infection when Hallownest’s people tried to suppress it. Or, maybe it just took a long time for her to come up with a way to fight back. It’s possible that it took her a while to find the resolve to actually fight back, too, with her principles of pacifism in conflict with the necessity of defending herself and taking her people back. Maybe there was a change in the moths’ situation in Hallownest somewhere down the line that compelled her to step in - all the moths are super extremely dead at the time Hollow Knight starts, after all. Even Seer is eventually revealed to be a revenant like Ze’mer the Grey Mourner, only lingering in the world to pass on the Dream Nail and tell Radiance’s story. Maybe it was a combination of all those factors. Barring Team Cherry dropping in to explain this bit of Sekret Deep Lore, we are never going to know.

All we DO know for sure is that when we mosey into Hollow’s brain (and/or Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny our way to the top of Hallownest’s Pantheon) and challenge the literal actual sun to a fight, Radi takes the challenge with extreme prejudice and comes in swinging.

Something interesting I noticed while comparing the Radiance boss fights with the Pure Vessel fight is that some of their attacks are vaguely similar. Where warrior-mage characters like Xero and Markoth have physical weapons that they summon and manipulate with magic, Radiance and Pure Vessel both create nails and daggers out of Essence and Soul respectively. Both characters’ magical weapon attacks are similar in nature too: Some are used to create hazards that must be dodged or avoided, and some are fired directly at Ghost in radial patterns.

This begs a very sad chicken-and-egg question. Did Radi and Hollow develop these battle techniques independently of each other, has Hollow in their prime form somehow absorbed similar techniques to Radi through osmosis since they’re currently chained together by the brain... or is Radi mimicking and innovating on these attacks she knows Hollow can do?

All her other attacks seem very obvious for a light-themed character, after all: Beam attacks and blobs of light. A flash of bright light is also how she shakes off the Void the first time it tries to grab her, too, making for a strong argument that that’s the original natural defense she possessed, and that’s what she based most of her attack magic off of.

Making sword’s and knive’s from Essence when most of her people didn’t even handle these sorts of tools even at the height of her power and influence, though... that seems less like something that would come naturally to her. i don’t really know i don’t have a definitive answer or theory for this one it just Seems Possible and it’s fucking me up guys

Even the Infection - which began life as Radiance’s attempt to communicate, let’s remember, before it progressed to “The End Of Eva Disease Will Continue Until Someone Actually Listens To Me” and then finally Radi screaming “FUCK U LET ME OUT, GET THAT NEW SUNNY D BOTTLE THE FUCK AWAY FROM ME, HALLOWNEST EAT SHIT” during canon - does not appear to be fatal to living bugs until the tumorous growths grow so large they impede bodily functions, like real cancer. We can observe this phenomenon via a number of NPCs and enemies that are rediscovered as tumorous corpses after the whole Crossroads area becomes infected.

At least to me, all of this points to Radiance being a character to whom violence and causing harm doesn't come naturally, and who has resorted to these methods in desperation.

It actually reminds me a lot of False Knight/Failed Champion. It’s a very common theory among fans that when he stole Hegemol’s armor he killed Hegemol - this is a reasonable thing to believe, since Hegemol is the only one of the Five Great Knights of Hallownest who never appears at all in-game, not even as a corpse like Dryya and Isma. Like Radi, False Knight/Failed Champion is a character who rose up and turned to violence in order to protect his people, despite the maggots not being a belligerent species.

False Knight is one of the game’s first major bosses, sometimes the first boss that players encounter at all. And so Hollow Knight’s story bookends with two separate victims of a predatory system, one who lived within and was cannibalized by it, one outside of it who was deliberately targeted by the Pale King. Neither of them started out as a fighter, but both of them still adopted violence as a tool to protect themselves and their people. Radiance is as doomed as False Knight by the Pale King’s genocide, but just like False Knight, she has no intention of going quietly, and will rage against the dying of the light as only the literal actual sun can.

Cue Deedee Magno Hall voice clip. You all know the one.

*A footnote: There’s no conclusive evidence to tell us whether the Void civilization was contemporaneous with the other pre-Hallownest indigenous bug nations or whether it predated them. Mask Maker has a line suggesting that the Void civilization tried to expand throughout the crater in its heyday and that maybe this was linked to its collapse, but in general the Void lore is just too darn thin to draw firm conclusions - it’s like trying to speculate on the ancient stone age cultures of the Americas that came before pre-settler Indigenous countries when the only sources you can easily access are elementary school level US history textbooks. (To non-Americans: We mostly teach kids propaganda until they hit college-level courses and it sucks so much ass.) This is very realistic worldbuilding, but also please Team Cherry I want to know more about these ancient bugs who apparently got lost in the sauce

#hollow knight #hollow knight spoilers #hollow knight meta #the radiance #hk radiance #essay #long post under cut -#bad and naughty catholics go in the catholic wiggler

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weerd1 · 5 years ago

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Star Trek DS9 Rewatch Log, Stardate 1909.22, Supplemental: Missions Reviewed, “Treachery, Faith, and the Great River,” “Once More Unto the Breach,” “The Siege of AR-558,” “Covenant,” and “It’s Only Paper Moon.” (For Aron.)

“Treachery, Faith, and the Great River” begins with Odo receiving word from a Cardassian informant he thought was executed that they need to meet. He informs Kira (while massaging out her sore muscles after spingball, godamighty) that he’s going alone, and take a Runabout to see if he can find the man. Meanwhile repairs are behind on the station and the Defiant, and Sisko demands O’Brien have them all completed when he gets back from a conference on Bajor. O’Brien is stymied, not having the parts he needs, when Nog offers to get them.

He just needs Chief’s access codes to make the right trades to make it happen. Odo arrives at the rendezvous to find Weyoun, who wants to defect. While they are heading back to DS9, they are hailed from Cardassia by…Weyoun and Damar. Turns out the Weyoun of the last couple of years died in an transporter accident. The Weyoun 6 clone is the defector, and Weyoun 7 wants him hunted down. Damar says they must destroy the ship, but Weyoung 7 knows the Jem’Hadar will never fire on Odo. Damar mentions they don’t have to know he’s on board. Kira calls on O’Brien to explain why the Captain’s desk is missing, and Worf and Martok want to know why their bloodwine is gone. Confronting Nog, the Ferengi explains that the universe is governed by the Great Material Continuum, running like a river from places with too much of a thing to places with not enough of a thing. He is counting on the river to get them their parts, with a little help from Ferengi trade practices. After one Jem’Hadar ship is defeated with Weyoun 6’s command, the Female Changeling confronts Weyoun 7 and Damar about what’s going on. Damar notices that the Changeling doesn’t look right, she looks dried out. As soon as he mentions it, she changes and demands they get Weyoun 6. Six meanwhile, with Odo and cornered by Jem’Hadar reveals that the Founders are sick, all of them. He defected to make sure Odo was ok, and tell him that HE will be the last Founder, and de facto leader of the Dominion if the other die; and opportunity to reconstruct the Dominion as an organization of cooperation and peace. To Weyoun 7 to call off the attack, Six activates a built in suicide pill, and Seven is true to his word. Six asks Odo for his blessing as he dies, and indeed the clone dies in the arms of his God, his faith rewarded.

On DS9, O’Brien expects to be derided when called to Sisko’s office, but Nog is there, as is the captain’s desk, and the repair parts are in the hanger. As they leave ops Worf and Martok appear. Somehow Nog as replaced their bloodwine with vintage 2309, far better quality than what they had before. O’Brien is amazed, but Nog cites the Great Material River, HIS faith rewarded.

The A and B stories here almost get equal time, but there are a lot of great reveals here. The fact the Founders basically uplifted a group of timid tree apes to create the Vorta; the Vorta’s cloning practices; the fact the Founders are ill (there will be some more dire revelations about this later). All those heavy moments balance well with the Nog/O’Brien storyline. Now, I have to tell you. This episode as a toy and nerd collector affected me deeply, and to this day, it is my policy that if someone really takes a shine to something in my collection, I pass it on to them. I like to call it, “casting it into the great material river.” Whenever there is a hole on my shelf, something show up to take its place. I have faith my toys end up in the hands they should.

Kor comes to DS9 to ask Worf to help him go “Once More Unto the Breach.” Kor has been marginalized in the war, and has not been able to seek glorious combat. Worf asks Martok if there is place for Kor, but Martok is incensed. Years before, Martok’s career was almost derailed before it could begin by Kor because the House of Kor was a great one, noble, and Martok was little more than a farm boy. Worf convinces him to allow Kor on as Third Officer in a mission to raid a Cardassian base.

When Martok describes the plan, Kor states it was the same one he and Kang (last seen with Kor in “Blood Oath” way back in season 2, and before that on TOS) against the Federation in the previous century. The crew is overly respectful of Kor, D’Har Master, much to Martok’s chagrin. When the actual fight happens though, Martok and Worf are incapacitated, and Kor takes over, losing himself and thinking he is back in battle against the Federation and Kang is on his way to help. When Worf and Martok retake control, Kor is shamed and abashed, but their small fleet is also being pursued by ten Jem’Hadar ships. Worf devises a plan to stop them, but it will cost a ship. If that ship can stop even a few of the enemy ships, the others might escape. Worf plans to take command, but Kor knocks him out with a hypo, beaming to the bird of prey that will face the Jem’Hadar. Martok monitors the battle, amazed at Worf’s bravery, but Worf appears on the bridge, informing him it is Kor in battle.

They watch amazed, waiting for whatever ships Kor cannot stop to pursue them. None do. Though it cost his life, Kor destroys all ten Jem’Hadar vessels, leaving Martok’s crew—and Martok himself—to drink and sing songs of Kor’s victory, knowing they will see him in Sto-Vo-Kor.

Another great Klingon episode, and a great end for the always entertaining, and slightly mad, Kor. This it turns out was also John Colicos’ final acting role, and what a note to go out on. The heroic battle is pure Klingon here too. The tension between noble houses and minor houses on Qo’noS is interesting, as it will also factor heavily into “Discovery” in its first season, specifically with the House of Kor dealing with Voq, son of none. There are also a few nice moments between Kor and Ezri, who seems to immediately accept Dax as Dax. Perhaps he adapted better having already dealt with the change from Curzon to Jadzia, however even then he was rather quick to accept her. An interesting quirk for someone so adherent to Klingon noble traditions.

“The Siege of AR-558” has the Defiant bringing supplies to a Starfleet outpost in the Chin’Toka system, which has not been easily held. The outpost has captured a Dominion communications array, and hope to crack it, but have been too busy defending it against repeated attacks. On the mission is Quark at the behest of the Nagus who wants a report on the state of the war. It isn’t good. These people have been defending this outpost for five months; two months longer than a tour is supposed to be. They were 150 people, they are now down to about 40. They are constantly falling victim to “Houdini mines,” small floating explosives that hang in subspace and randomly appear and explode, perhaps somewhere you’ve walked a hundred times.

Nog is impressed by the battle hardened humans here, but Quark warns him these are not the cuddly Earthers he knows. “…take away their creature comforts… deprive them of food, sleep, sonic showers… put their lives in jeopardy over an extended period of time… and those same friendly, intelligent, wonderful people will become as nasty and violent as the most bloodthirsty Klingon. You don't believe me? Look at those faces, look at their eyes…" When the Dominion attacks the Defiant, Worf pulls back, leaving Sisko, Bashir, Nog, Dax, and Quark on the surface to help defend the base. Ezri befriends Kellin (played by Lost in Space and Babylon Five’s Bill Mumy) who is trying to crack the mine problem, and they start to work. Sisko sends Nog out on a scouting mission with two of the Soldiers here, and though they get a good look at the Jem’Hadar base, one is killed and Nog loses his leg. Bashir plays Vic Fontaine music as they await the attack, but when Ezri and Kellin get control of the mines, Sisko uses them on the Jem’Hadar, thinning their numbers before the attack. One of the Jem’Hadar makes it to where Nog lies wounded, Quark himself shoots him down.

When all is said and done, Kellin is dead, but reinforcements and engineers arrive, allowing the one survivor of the original group to leave with the Defiant.

A grim and powerful episode that aims to look war right in the face. Quark’s speech I quote here is really fantastic, but comes back to haunt him when he too, put in the corner, is willing to shoot to kill, to protect. Ezri questioning Sisko’s decision to turn the mines they were just condemning on the enemy calls into question what is fair in war, but also leaves you as a viewer to decide if it was the right decision or not. The Starfleet trooper with Jem’Hadar Ketracel White bottles, ripped from his enemies’ bodies, brings to mind the Klingon was saw in “Soldiers of the Empire” with Cardassian neck bones as a necklace. At least it isn’t body parts, but DS9 does not flinch here, and it is a better story for it. Nog losing his leg will come into play again very soon as well. Back on TOS, Kirk would occasionally refer to himself and other Starfleet members as “Soldiers.” Here we see that’s true; makes you wonder if they plan to bring back the Marines we saw in STVI: The Undiscovered Country (the Colonel of course was played by Rene Auberjonois!).

Kira is visited by an old friend, Vedek Fala, in “Convenant.” He gives her a gift which turns out to be a transponder that allows her transport across the sector to the previously abandoned sister station to DS9, Empok Nor. There she finds her Vedek is actually part if the cult of the Pah-Wraits, who feel the Prophets turned their back on Bajor. In charge of the cult, she finds Dukat, who feels since he once housed Kost Amojan that he now has been touched by the Pah-Wraiths, and chosen to lead their people.

Fala shows her the Bajorans here are completely under Dukat’s sway. Indeed there is one pregnant woman, who with her husband have only been allowed to have kids because Dukat has allowed it. Kira is less than convinced, but Fala persists telling her the Prophets have lied about the Pah-Wraits and they are peaceful. Dukat meanwhile tells Kira he has changed, and he loves his people. She points out he has set up some weird simulation of what he lost, commanding a station like Terok Nor, with a horde of Bajorans who love him. This proves startlingly true when the pregnant mother gives birth to a half-Cardassian baby. Dukat claims it is a miracle and a sign, but there are some doubters. He meets with the woman, apologizing for the “weakness” that allowed him to father her child, but when she says no one else knows, he tries to flush her out an airlock.

Kira and Fala come along and save her, but now Dukat must act. He locks Kira in her room and is going to take poison with all of his followers so they can “shed their bodies” to help the Pah-Wraiths enter the Celestial Temple. Kira breaks out and tackles Dukat just as he was going to take the first pill, knocking his from his hand. When Fala hands him just another one out of the box, Dukat won’t take it, and they all realize he was going to let them die and go on. He tells them it was what the Pah-Wraiths wanted, but they aren’t having it, and he has to beam away. Fala meanwhile takes his pill and dies in Kira’s arms, telling her it was because of “faith.”

Dukat going full blown cult-leader is right in line with his arrogance and his ego. It’s just another example to me though that one of the bets DS9 misses is having Kira kill Dukat at the end of the series. Yes, this sets him to as a vessel of the Pah-Wraiths, an Anti-Emissary, but I thing all the personal grudges with Kira deserve a better resolution. And for those who freak out over Scotty building an interplanetary transporter in the Kelvin Timeline, here’s one at work with Dominion tech in 2374, 13 years BEFORE Spock will go back in time and teach KY Scotty how to finish his. For that matter, before the Voyager will show up in just a couple of years with Borg Transwarp tech too. The Kelvin Timeline works if you just look at the details.

Finally, fandom tonight watched “It’s Only a Paper Moon” as a tribute to Aron Eisenberg’s passing, so I made sure I got this far. Nog returns to the station with his new bio-synthetic leg, but it hurts him and he must walk with a cane. All his medical checks show fine though, and he is interested in doing nothing but lying in bed and listening to Vic Fontaine sing “I’ll Be Seeing You,” the song Bashir played in “The Siege of AR-558.” When Jake can’t take more than three days of that song on repeat he confronts Nog, who leaves and goes to the Holosuite to hear Vic sing it. Nog decides to stay and live in the holosuite for a while. Ezri is skeptical, but Vic mentions he will take care of the kid. Indeed, Vic helps wean him off his cane, and gives him something to do by letting him do the casino’s “books.” Nog though seems so comfortable he won’t come out. Ezri asks Vic when he’s going to be done with him, and Vic seems to realize he too has become dependent on Nog; usually, he’s only on for a few hours at a time, but with Nog there 26 hours a day, he is now constant.

Realizing he’s putting his own needs first, Vic shuts down the program himself. Nog tries to get it running again, but can’t, but Vic appears to ask him about it. Nog says he doesn’t want to go back to the real world because he’s afraid, as anything could happen. Vic tells him that’s life, and why you have to seize it when you can, and indeed why he was happy to have Nog there. It’s time though, time for Nog to seize it for real. Nog leaves without his cane, and reunites with his family. Later, back in uniform Nog visits and tells Vic he has a present for him. Nog has made a deal with Quark, and this holosuite will continue to run full time, allowing Vic a life. Nog knows it’s the least he can do since Vic helped him get his own life back.

Bittersweet to watch tonight, but a great episode that takes a long look at the trauma of war and the mental scars that can be far worse than the physical ones. The continued development of Vic Fontaine as a sentient lifeform is interesting, able to control who does and does not use his program. Still self aware though that there are times he is “off.” Aron Eisenberg is of course terrific and this is an important episode for Nog, demonstrating why this was the episode his friends, fans, and family chose to commemorate him.

NEXT VOYAGE: The Orion Syndicate has come back for O’Brien, and somehow the Tigan family is involved. The Tigans are Ezri’s family before she was joined; she comes home in “Prodigal Daughter.”

#Star Trek #Star Trek: Deep Space Nine #DS9 Rewatch #aron eisenberg

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thepartyresponsible · 6 years ago

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another champagne fill! i wrote 90% of this last night and then wandered off to play Stardew Valley. so what we have here is a champagne-written, coffee-edited fic about coulson and jason meeting in the post-apocalypse.

this is for the anon who asked for jason rescuing coulson. thanks for the prompt!

The pharmacy is a bad idea. Coulson knows that before he starts its direction. But the rattling cough has made a home in Clint’s chest, and he’s been in bed for days, trying to hide how much weight he’s lost by staying burrowed under blankets.

Clint is the only reason they’ve made it through the winter. He turned up sick after trekking out into the snow to bring back food. He’s been teaching them, showing them how to fish, how to set snares, how to butcher the game he brings in, but Phil’s childhood was bloodless, spent on books and Boy Scout trips, and the only game Natasha ever hunted, pre-collapse, was human-shaped.

“Should’ve had shittier parents, Phil,” Clint said, that first time he went into the woods with his bow and came back with dead rabbits, set off with nothing and came back with dinner. “Your problem is you always had food.”

“Yeah,” Phil said, and didn’t think about his parents. Didn’t think about Boston at all. “That’s the real tragedy of my life.”

But now it’s early March, and the meat is gone, the canned goods are low, and Barton keeps sketching out garden plots with too many notes in the margins, like he thinks he won’t be around to explain.

“I’ll go,” Natasha said, when Phil told her his plan.

“No.” Natasha is faster and meaner, a better scout on almost every level. But she has a tendency to catch attention, and attention is a thing they can’t afford with Barton halfway to dead and their supplies running near to nothing.

And, despite the collapse of SHIELD, despite the failure of every kind of organization, he’s still their handler. He’s not going to send them blind into a threat he should face himself.

But the pharmacy is a bad idea.

It’s partially collapsed, which goes a long way to hiding the traps around the perimeter. Phil picks his way through them, slow and careful, forcing himself to focus past the hunger and the cold that make him inclined to shake.

Once inside, he fills his bag with everything they might need. He thinks wistfully of SHIELD medical while he collects armfuls of pills. He daydreams about clean exam rooms and linoleum, IV drips and fluorescent lighting. He doesn’t let himself remember faces, chase names, estimate likelihood of survival.

All of Medical, he assumes, is dead. They would’ve gone to the quarantine zones. They would’ve felt called to help, the way Phil felt called to help, before Nick handed him the projections, explained that the most conservative estimates put the mortality rate at 45%.

Phil thinks the reality was something like 65%, but it’s hard to know what the sickness would’ve done on its own, without the riots, and the famines, and the failed attempt at martial law.

He’s out of the pharmacy and halfway out of the town when they catch up to him.

“Hey,” the biggest one says, “you stealing from us?”

“Well,” Phil says, “it’s possible.”

There are six of them, and they’re all holding melee weapons. Phil sees a bat, a pipe, three knives, and an especially filthy machete. The one with the pipe has a rifle on his back, but Phil figures he’s too low on ammo to justify using it.

“Drop the bag,” the big one says. “And all that other shit. Your gun, everything you’ve got.”

Phil shakes his head. He has more than enough bullets for the six of them. “Not worth your trouble.”

He doesn’t blame them for this. He doesn’t like to think about what he’d do to strangers if it meant saving Clint or Natasha.

“Won’t be any trouble.” The big one tips his head up and to the left, and, when Phil looks, he sees another man, another rifle, on the rooftop across the street.

He swallows, recalculates.

“People are expecting me,” he says.

“Sick people?” The smile that flicks across the man’s face is ugly and mean. “Yeah, I’m not worried about whoever’s gonna come looking for you.”

Two years ago, Phil and his team could’ve taken out the sniper on the roof and dropped all six of them before they could make it to him. Two years ago, even if they had made it to him, he would’ve had Medical to patch him up, clean out the infection, give him fluids and antibiotics.

Now it’s just Phil. No Medical, no team.

If he drops the bag on his back, they’re just going to kill him anyway.

Natasha will come looking soon enough. The fewer threats she faces, the more likely it is that she’ll make it back to Clint.

His hand curls around his gun.

Before he can draw it, there’s a scream and then a crunch, and Phil realizes someone just pitched the sniper off the roof. A second later, the biggest man drops, bullet punched straight through his skull.

Phil picks off four of the others. The fifth makes it thirty yards up the street before a shot in the back brings him down.

When Phil looks to the rooftop, a man is standing, rifle in hand, waving lazily. He has a red hoodie and a grin like something feral.

“Hey,” he calls down. “You’re a fucking lunatic, you know that?” He smiles like it’s meant to be a compliment.

“I’ve been told,” Phil calls back, although it’s been years since anyone noticed.

The man steps closer to the edge, surveying Phil with an interest that’s maybe a touch manic. “You grab any antibiotics? I’ve got a friend who did something stupid.”

Phil cannot imagine what qualifies as stupid for a man who climbs buildings to interfere in other people’s muggings. But he appreciates that he asked with the rifle aimed carefully away, like he wanted to be clear that it was a request, not a threat.

“I might,” he says.

“Great.” The man gestures over his shoulder. “I’m gonna come down. If you shoot me, I’m gonna take it real fucking personal.”

“Sure,” Phil says. A second later, when the man turns, showing his back like he’s not the least bit worried about taking a bullet, Phil yells a quick, somewhat muddled, “Thanks.”

The man waves again, almost dismissive, and then disappears.

Phil stays where he is, gun still drawn, free hand curled protectively around the strap of his backpack. He wonders at the symbol he’d seen, painted in black on the back of that hoodie.

It looked, he thinks, like a bird. Or maybe a bat.

#writing #fic #fill #post-apocalyptic verse

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hanzi83 · 6 years ago

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Clearing the Clutter from My Brain

Before I begin, I have to clarify that anything that I put out there is not 100 percent true when it comes to what I assume is happening behind the scenes. I am mentally ill and while different communities will accuse me of using it as a crutch, I retort with this, since I am accused of saying the same shit, and maybe by saying the same shit I will eventually just turn into dust and disappear in mediocrity, but if these people at the top and their minions love to put it out there I am mentally ill and I am a piece of shit to dismiss any of my thoughts, then why can’t I use it back to my advantage since no matter what I say will not be taken seriously. I am not to be taken seriously they will fuck with my connection when I go on my platforms, so I cannot have a clear message, not like the actual speech from it is clear enough with my constant stammering, but at least with a blog I can at least intellectualize it a little better, even though it probably reads as someone in third grade and then throw in the mix of it being on tumblr with an outdated layout and format that I am too dumb to change, and even at the risk of it not being read by many, at least it is out there just like everything I have been transparent with in my life since everything WE all do is always monitored, and when the system decides it is convenient they will then expose whoever and whatever and create an elaborate reason why it has come to fruition.

So since I and others who choose to express themselves online get accused of being attention seekers etc, it normally comes from people who uphold the status quo and keep a limited narrative, even if they seem “woke” about certain things. I know anything I have said in my life and on all my platforms will come back to haunt me and the ones who perpetuate it are paid to bring it out because there is a system in play but since I already am blackballed from the rest of society and their secret rules that they swear does not exist, I have nothing to lose. They will either keep me this tortured and no one will pay attention to my delusional cries or eventually these people will push me to just fucking end it or maybe better they will actually decide to kill me. Since my computer has been hacked multiple times, I would not be shocked if they frame me for something since people in my life and the people they take orders from will fucking end me but not just destroy me, make sure I am here to endure the nonstop mental torture that no one will acknowledge and when it is too late they will then pat themselves on the back for pretending they care about something kind of like their soulless existence has to put on their best acting but since their act is so mediocre they don’t come off well but they sure do commit to the role of making it seem they are just like regular fucking people. I rather express my thoughts, as stupid as they may come across then have to hide who the fuck I am and how irrational I am because I am still recuperating from being dumbed down for the majority of my life but it is clear I am not witty or smart enough to be a part of this world.

It stems from the fact that I think I figured out me and a select few are chosen targets to exploit and there are underground ways to exploit someone since they can organize your appearances without knowing you are making one because they organize in group chats and pass around information and will use it on someone who they can blackmail, hence why so many lowly type of individuals are always recruited to be trolled. That is why people react to these trolls because they are not regular people, they are government agents. I think there is a contingent of people who have cliques to fight back and that I can understand but the overall existence of this type of digital gang warfare is on some next level, and so much so they dumb it down by giving limited solutions like “Why don’t you just log off” not disclosing that even if you log off these people can harass you and invade your privacy, especially if you are outspoken about the system. They have censored and killed off so many leftists who have tried to expose the system but all you ever hear is about some fucking nazi not being able to get a rise out of the “SJWS” being censored while the internet organizes and makes you believe these fucking nazi supporters are the ones who are the victims.

I could have sold my soul many times, but I did not want to partake in paid propaganda. I know being on my own mentally might not be the best because I entertain so much shit that I might be spreading propaganda without even realizing it but I always put the disclaimer not to take my word seriously because it is clear I have no fucking idea of what I am talking about since the people at the top or people in my life have made it clear how mentally ill I am, so much so they will never take accountability for what they did and are essentially gangsters behind the scenes, and since they are sensitive as I am, they collectively can fuck my life up or others if I don’t comply with them. Even with me wanting to die, they will approach me privately and politic, if it is not trying to be my fucking manager, or telling me that I am needed here so that is why I can’t die. If I die, their connection to the system goes away so they rather make it seem they are inviting me places, which are limited, and people giving me attitude if I ask any questions about anything, but they do that so if anything good happens to me they can say they did this for me. These people plan this shit out and organize within group chats. I seriously think people from my past at the behest of the system will end up harming me and maybe even killing me when they don’t actually need me. It would not be obvious, it could be a simple heart attack and you would not even blink because “HELLO… HE SMOKES CIGARETTES AND EATS LIKE SHIT” Maybe they have instilled so much paranoia into my fucked up brain by bringing up that my family and friends hate me and that they are partaking in torturing me, but even if that is the case is that not evident enough that I don’t belong on this planet? This is not some cry for help but sometimes I need to get this shit off my chest.

Not only do I have to deal with racist Stern fans who despise me and constantly remind me that Howard is paying them to watch me and fuck with me and if I dare take it seriously then it is that Howard does not know who I am, so you cause a shit storm of rage from me which I happened to manage well at times, even though I have my manic meltdowns and now lately since I have been vocal about the WWE’s corruption, I have certain cliques of the wrestling community to come after me because I dare think Roman Reigns’ cancer may have been exaggerated and any questioning in it has lead to these people who seem to be so caring and outraged of the idea that it could be fake they want to come across and seem like they are the ones who are thinking clearly while they still support a racist company tied to a racist president and has so many past scandals that have been thrown under the rug from paying people off or having people sign non disclosures. The worst part about it is how WWE have branded with certain minority groups be their employed shills who call out certain racism like a Lars Sullivan or Hulk Hogan and maybe a little performative outrage about the Saudi deal, but then ignore the hidden system shit that exists. It drives me crazy when it is people from a marginalized group because even though people got to make their money and this is the game, but the hypocrisy drives me nuts. I am not totally against the stuff the views they have because maybe while they shill out for WWE they do call out other racist elements in the industry, like Sinclair broadcasting or how AEW has ties to Trump as well since the owners donated too but it just seems they do it while protecting themselves in this neoliberalism, and whenever I call them out for being employed, the same ones will show up with the same insults, which then I use the same insults as well then they call me out for using the same insults. It is funny because initially when I did a stream the night Reigns came back and made the announcement, and after these supposed shills shut down some of these people who were questioning it and I happened to stick to my guns on it, these same caring people have no problem not showing remorse when I put it out there I am “feeling kind of suicidal” and then they tell me to go do it, and that is fine. I am not here to cry about people being mean on the internet in this instance, maybe in other instances but that is a different story, but to show these people are actually soulless.

It is going to be hilarious when at some point the scandals of this company eventually do catch up with them and there is an actual revolution into the business but so many people have upheld the status quo because they want to be included, and while I wanted to be included in general, not WWE in particular, I have become such an outspoken enemy to people in the industry, with government connection they would put the word out that someone like me will be coming to the States and they will use it as an excuse to detail in, so they will limit the moves I make while solely blaming it on me and making it seem like it is all on me, and I will take responsibility for the blame I share but the key word is SHARE, because I am not the sole owner of this fucking entire fucking dilemma. It makes me sick that even loved ones I have known my entire life can so easily master this effort that has been taught to them and they constantly lie to me and hold me in a position while they make the connections that exist because of me being a fucking prostitute on the fucking Stern Show, which bullies you to call back in and stay reliant on him, and the genius is the employed fan boys there can make it seem like it is on the whack packers for calling in and no one is forcing them.

No media outlet will ever look into it because Howard is powerful while still coming off as irrelevant into today’s culture. I see people who often talk about injustice anywhere is injustice everywhere and while I am not on the list of insanely even more important shit but since the media can focus on a celebrity using the N word and have nonstop performative conversations about it like it is the be all end all of all discussion on racial inequality, I am sure you could go for someone who has pimped out people mentally and maybe sexually under the guise of entertainment while creating chaos in these people’s lives. I relate to others in these institutions mentally even though I have not gone through what they have physically, but that is why is makes me upset that no one will ever take a stand against these bullies.

I wonder if I am supposed to call it out and these people at the top are now playing roles of the villains when they were once revered in a positive light and they have to make it real thus making us really want to rise up and maybe because other people who are not as big but still have prominence are kind of woke but still have to kiss the elites ass help normalize these people and sometimes they are misunderstood it makes you have a case of constant cognitive dissonance and because I am already dumbed down, it makes me not being sure and I just want to be left alone forever and never be seen because no matter what people will eventually become the bad guy. I am already seen in such a fucking negative light and will always be a fucking joke who is probably one of the most pathetic and ugly people on the planet, why should I be here? And no this is not me feeling sorry for myself or asking for your pity, just like I don’t need your retweets, likes, internet points etc I do this because this is what I am feeling and if you feel it then good, if not then fuck you.

Look at how this generation gets put down for being “entitled” when the same public figures and their sycophants don’t acknowledge the tantrums they have had or the amount of shit hey had to do to get their spot because they were not strong enough to say no and you have that fucking audacity to fuck with people who know their value and won’t let these corporations pimp them out and use them until they are nothing. You have the audacity to blame us for people being outraged and being about free speech but you never acknowledge the right wing who become outraged about shit. And it is like these employed fan boys of these public figures are being so transparently defensive of their every fucking move, and as someone who used to be dumbed down and buy into that, I have now seen it for what it is, and even though not everything warrants a complaint, the utter hatred for the people rather than the system organizing this reaction really shows why nothing will ever fucking change.

If I end up being right and Vince McMahon has to answer for past scandals like all these other public figures, who were in prominent positions, but have to answer for it and now have to be the heels, then I wonder what scary shit these trolls will do because it seems they are sending more recently towards me. They will either have to retreat or finally admit they are part of that establishment clique and basically run good PR for them. The entire AEW thing too has become annoying because it seems like there are insufferable people shilling out for them too but I guess they are lesser of the evils, but I await when the day they become the established enemy since we all go in cycles.

I have not called into other wrestling radio shows because certain ones I helped prop up have fucked me over and have become more like Stern Show with their tactics, and always wanting me to kind of snap if they keep me on hold until the end so if I say anything they will ban me, and they were already limiting my topics when I would call in like bringing up the Reigns cancer being fake, and since I did not get to be part of their 10 year anniversary I decided not to even give that show any of my time, even if they don’t want to admit that I had more to do with the success, because you can’t have me buying into my own fucking hype. They have to keep me at a level, so I got sick of it and now I can see they will probably organize my platforms to fuck up so I won’t have a voice to speak on shit about the industry, especially if I don’t keep it within the parameters they would like me to.

At least the old youtuber that harassed me for the last year or so is paying the price by being exposed by his new reddit community that he used to clean up his image and do videos reading stories and since he could not help himself in not politicking to destroy someone with a bigger audience his community put two and two together that he was actually someone who was banned from youtube before. It was probably the funniest thing that I have laughed at since the remainder of shit in my life is completely sad. I wish it was Stern being exposed even though they have trained you to start thinking Howard was evil, by focusing on him in the Lorena Bobbitt documentary on Amazon but painting him as the main guy to build up John Wayne as this ultimate victim, like it was meant to take attention away from raping and beating her and Howard being one of the main voices to say she was too ugly to rape, and it is so funny that it fooled me because all these liberals etc who are against that type of insults would pal around with Stern. See I am such a fucking dumbed down person that never could think for himself and just see what would be around me, in my house, school, television, movies, radio etc and just change my attitude according to whatever I felt kind of made sense, even if it was intellectualizing ignorance. I have to live with it every day but Stern and Vince McMahon are 2 of the people who helped poison the water supply into this culture. Would it be fair not to mention the good things they have done? Sure, but we blindly have given them credit for decades, and now it is time to point out there is more to this.

I will always be a fucking target and the best part is no one will care because literally everyone behind the scenes who knows of me, and even the people in my life probably have such a disdain for me and it is probably likewise since they could be protecting me but since they have inside information on my path, and not disclosing me it makes me envision the worst and it makes me think they will fucking end up harming me after a while or maybe it is just in my head. I feel like the more I look forward to these people go down from their throne, these people know any vindication will not be good for them because they won’t be able to control me like they have and tested my patience and mental health in the previous years while pretending they care about my mental health. I will pay for writing this blog and they will ensure that people continue to fuck me over.

I will never forgive any of these people who are supposed to be progressive not even bringing attention to what evil Howard Stern is, maybe because the last person who hinted Howard bought a car for someone who was not his girlfriend that reporter ended up being dead within a year so maybe people have learned to stay in their lane. Hopefully Stern and someone like Vince plot to kill me and they can get away with it. Don’t worry ITS MY MENTAL ILLNESS SINCE YOU GUYS WILL BE SAYING I AM MENTALLY ILL WHO NEEDS HELP AND IT IS NOT HELPING MY CASE BY TYPING IN ALL CAPS LIKE A FUCKING MANIAC AND IT HURTS SO MUCH I BEAT YOU TO THE PUNCH BECAUSE YOUR JOKES AND INSULTS ARE SO PREDICTIVE, and also the fact you think because you pitch these jokes in your shitty group chats that they are funny, because you have other people starving to be funny telling you that it is good so you laugh at their jokes in return like it is some kind of quid pro quo deal, so now you think putting those insults online toward me will actually mean anything. Okay and even if you are funny then who gives a shit I am a mediocre irrelevant Pakistani in his mom’s basement who has no value but for some reason a bunch of trolls have to show up to tell me that when the irrelevancy should speak for itself correct? And if it does speak for itself then I can just type my opinions out without anyone making a fuss, until it is convenient since most of you are given permission when to be outraged about limited issues that does not give you the full view.

I hope you read this entire grammatical and spelling mess and it gives you a headache but most likely you will convince yourself to say you did not read it, even though you hang on to every fucking word like the doggies you are.

I was not going to post this shit but now the employed WWE stans are all in my facebook page leaving comments and I will repeat a line I said before, and I will repeat it over and over until WWE changes their creative since they give you the same shit all the time but calling me Mr. Potato Head is not really creative but since you are employed WWE stans, it tells you probably have some kind of say in the fucking creative. Keep spreading rumors of others being shady in the business while completely ignoring the systemic shit the company you stan for does. You better hope the Reigns shit is not a façade because I am fine looking stupid, I have looked stupid since the birth in this shit world, but are you prepared to look stupid and is it supposed to be this transparent that you are projecting onto others?

#WWE Hanzi Illuminati Howard Stern Vince McMahon corrupt shady trolls fan boys shills 2019 Mental Illness crutch retort harassment weak mind #Roman Reigns Cancer

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embassy-m · 5 years ago

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Air pollution affecting the children  What kind of work does The Children’s Embassy do? The First Children's Embassy in the World MEGJASHI is the oldest civic organization in the Republic of Macedonia to protect the rights of the child, established on 29 April, 1992 by Gordana Pirkovska Zmijanac and Dragi Zmijanac. Megjashi advocates and protects children's rights, stands for responsible parenthood and respect for the child's personality. Megjashi continuously works on the strengthening of the civil movement for children’s rights and functionality of the institutions in the best interests of the child. Embassy promotes peace activism and volunteerism, developing active citizenship based on the principle of nonviolence. With its activities Megjashi has contributed to the development and strengthening of the civic awareness for the children's rights. It has broken the silence of children's suffering, especially physical, sexual and economic abuse of the children, revealing many cases of abuse to the public and directly engaging in establishing effective mechanisms to protect the children. As a result of the extremely dedicated and hard work during its 27 years of existence, Megjashi has grown into a worldwide known and recognized organization for children’s protection and children's rights in general. In the previous period (1992-2019) the Embassy pursues its activity acting in the following areas: psycho-social, legal and other kinds of assistance to children who need help with a particular emphasis on the marginalized groups of children; monitoring of the children's rights and promotion of the rights of the child in the Republic of Macedonia and abroad; taking initiatives to promote the legislation to protect children in the Republic of Macedonia and its implementation, as well as activities for peace building and nonviolent conflict resolution. These domains remain of primary interest in the following period. [http://www.childrensembassy.org.mk/home.nspx]  What is your work concerning the topic of pollution? One of the first activities that First Children’s Embassy in the World Megjashi took concerning the pollution were urgent measures for air pollution legislative changes to reduce pollution. Since 2016 Megjashi took actions regarding this issue. It is crucial for Megjashi that the Members of the Parliament vote the legislative changes and reduce the permissible threshold of air pollution with dangerous particles. The Children's Embassy Megjashi requires the permissible limits of PM 10 and PM 2.5 to not exceed more than 75 micrograms per cubic meter and not as now when the limit is up to 200 and the government takes emergency measures when the situation is alarming. In the video below, you can see some of the demands that Megjashi was working on and asking for the government to took urgent measures regarding the air pollution. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ri54veT3wo0&t=27s&fbclid=IwAR0-d7kuuFxt4BSxDToQRqCb1xtBpplpjlmZ4T8JFuAEsp2maoy-Bi7btpw] Another work that Megjashi was actively working on was with teachers from elementary and high schools in order to raise the awareness about the issue of air pollution in the schools. Most importantly, during work with the professors, our goal is to coach the professors to take activities in the schools regarding the air pollution. Together with Eco Guerilla in Tetovo and the organization Majka I Dete, Megjashi participated in taking actions against the air pollution. Through many Facebook groups we were able to observe the work of the teachers and encourage each other on the network by sharing pictures or videos. Many activities in the schools appeared after the seminars that Megjashi organized. For example, in Debar the children together with the professor were asking for stations in order to measure the pollution since they were not able to check how much their city is polluted. And many more other activities like dance theaters, campaigns concerning the air pollution, march and boycotts. In the link below you can see some of the activities that Megjashi actively took. Another campaign that we made was together with Dvizenje za cist vozduh to raise awareness about the air pollution. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMXJqaKUSZw&feature=youtu.be&fbclid=IwAR3XtTqZeCUBQFpFcsDwbNzJ0UveLA9P_x5tOH58bs-4jl108tQVlMKNBG4] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKLu18udnmk&fbclid=IwAR2hGAkCmh4CL6VUfzw19Sc-0jhksmB_H7u2dZpotoO6ZhzRVGrayxpP-XE]  How is the pollution affecting the children of Skopje and Macedonia? Every second child is treated for respiratory diseases that are usually a direct consequence of polluted air. Air pollution, environment and nature pollution is a crime and for the consequences for the health of children should be responsible by all those who have directly contributed and are responsible for the situation. Children are most affected, especially in winter when the concentration of PM 2.5 and 10 particles is increased. Children are more sensitive than adults to indoor and outdoor air pollution because their lungs, brain and immune system are still developing, and their respiratory tract is more porous. Children in early childhood development are powerless to change anything. The Republic of Macedonia, as a signatory to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, is obliged to enable children to live and develop. Children have right to clean air. Children have right to a healthy environment. Air pollution is one of the major causes of child mortality. Allergies, asthma, bronchitis and many other respiratory diseases, these are just a few of the health consequences of children as a result of enormously polluted air. Air pollution is one of the major causes of child mortality. With pollution, children are deprived of their most basic right to life. The state should undertake something to protect the most vulnerable, children in the Republic of Macedonia. What is worrying, there is no safe level of pollution. Respectively, a high concentration of PM 10 and PM 2.5 micrograms per cubic meter is permitted. Air pollution affects not only children but also adults, about 3,500 people die every year in Macedonia due to diseases caused by polluted air, big industrial polluters should be detected and to be sanctioned. https://www.facebook.com/detskaambasadamegjashi/videos/275666143133383/  How is the organization helping these children? Despite the actions that we mentioned in the previous questions, we also urged the international community to help the struggle for life and solve the pollution problem. We also addressed to all members of the Committee on the Rights of the Child at the UN in Geneva and asked for help in resolving this situation of violation of the elementary rights of the child protected by both the Constitution of our country and the Convention on the Rights of the Child - the right to life. Unfortunately, the child's health is not a priority in Macedonia. When in conditions of high concentration of carcinogenic particles PM 10 and 2.5 micrograms per cubic meter and last all winter above the permitted 40 mg / m3 limit value according to European standards, what can you conclude? When the measuring stations show high thresholds of 200, 300, 400, 500 and more mg / m3 PM10 and 2.5 and last for the whole winter, we can conclude that the right to life of children is questioned! “We are here to raise our voice and say that we cannot do it any more like this,” Dragi Zmijanac, a representative of a children’s rights organization Megjashi, told a local television station covering the protest. Some studies have suggested that Macedonia’s reliance on coal power in particular is shaving years off of residents’ lives. “The seriousness of the number of sick children,” he added, “is too high, and not only the central government, but also the local self-government must take urgent measures — short-term and long-term — to save the children.” https://pulitzercenter.org/reporting/ancient-valleys-macedonia-pall-air-pollution  What are the typical consequences from pollution? While the report from the European Environment Agency shows that the number of people who die in Macedonia from the polluted air is 3500 people per year. As a direct consequence of the high doses of carcinogenic particles in the air in Macedonia, we have over 3 000 premature deaths. Polluted air is one of the biggest factors for child mortality and must be prevented immediately. Children are the most sensitive group because they have an organism in development and faster breathing, and thus faster introduction of contaminated substances in the body. Children are more vulnerable than adults of internal and external air pollution because their lungs, brain and immune system are still developing, and their respiratory tract is more dangerous. Every child has the right to life. The state must keep an eye on how children and young people can develop well. https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=72&v=FnFPviKuyFE&feature=emb_title  Do you see any benefits from joining the European Union regarding solving the pollution issue? What needs to be urgently done is legal changes to reduce the alarm threshold and activate emergency measures to save the lives of children in Macedonia. I think MPs must be mobile, require legal changes to reduce the high threshold of 200 mg / m3 to 40 mg / m3 permitted limit value, according to European standards. Lawmakers should require the threshold of information for PM10 particles to be 50 micrograms per cubic meter, and no higher than 75 micrograms per microgram per cubic meter, two days consecutively. The alert threshold should be set at 50 micrograms per cubic meter. The limit values that are the most stringent rules in the European Union legislation for air pollution levels define that the daily limit of the presence of PM 10 particles must not exceed 40 micrograms per cubic meter. There is no safe level of pollution in Macedonia.  Do you see any benefits from joining the European Union regarding children rights in Macedonia? Every child has right to life. The state must keep an eye on how children and young people can develop well. That is why, a one year ago, we formed a parliamentary lobby group composed of MPs from the Commissions for Labor and Social Policy and Education and Science, in order that Parliament as a central institution that can shape and implement laws that promote the rights of children, to actualize problems in the Parliament which are of vital importance to children, which are important for children, to urge the government and relevant segments of society to report of what is done first for the health of children and their rights and to advocate the interest and voice of the children. We set up a parliamentary lobby group for children's rights in order to facilitate the implementation processes of the Convention on the Rights of the Child in Macedonia, as well as to legally improve and implement the rights of children in practice. We are calling upon The Committee on the Rights of the Child to closely monitors implementation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child in the Republic of Macedonia and to urge the government to protect children life’s by overtaking measures for reduction of pollution and creation of enabling environment for realization of the children rights and potentials. The Republic of Macedonia, as a signatory of all international human rights protection documents, has an obligation to respect, protect and fulfil the human rights. This obligation requires the state to undertake appropriate legal, administrative, budgetary, judicial and other measures in the direction of the full realization of human rights. In that direction, we call upon the state to fulfill the obligations regarding respecting the fundamental right, THE RIGHT OF LIFE, introducing measures for the reduction of pollution that directly affect the health of people and their lives. Macedonia has perfect conditions for using renewable energy sources. It is necessary to accelerate with gasification, to abolish VAT for central heating, pellet stoves, to completely replace the buses with new electric vehicles or gas, free public transport in winter using an environmentally friendly bus and definitely stricter inspection of industry (A & B permits) and investment in filters.

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megjashi · 5 years ago

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pink-history · 8 years ago

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Happy 6th Birthday Willow!

Towards the end of 2010, there were many rumours going around the social media world that Pink and Carey were expecting their first child. Pink fans around the world were waiting on news to confirm the rumours as true or false and on 17th November 2010, Pink confirmed the news that she was expecting her first child on The Ellen DeGeneres Show.

I’m eating for two these days

I’m terrified because she [doctor] thinks its a girl… my mom has always wished me a daughter just like me, I’m terrifed, one of us will go to jail.

Willow Sage Hart was born on 2nd June 2011. Pink took to Twitter to announce the news:

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Three weeks after Willow’s birth, Pink posted a note on her website…

To whomever cares:

We are absolutely blissed out in love over here! To our fans and friends all over the world, thank you for all of the prayers and well wishes throughout this time in our life! Carey is a natural, (I knew he would be) and I finally found out what love really means. Don’t worry, I’m not writing an album full of sappy lullabies. Not yet, anyways?

In the interest of full disclosure: (AND BECAUSE I TELL IT LIKE I SEE IT)

Due to the unsettling, surprisingly aggressive and unsafe measures that the paparazzi seem to be willing to go to in order to secure that “first shot” of our daughter–stalking us, chasing us in cars and sitting outside of our home all day and all night, as new parents Carey and I decided that we would release personal photos of our Willow, and donate all of the money to charity.

We will be donating the money to children’s’ charities, among them one of our favorites, the Ronald McDonald House, an organization that houses and cares for the families of sick children so they can be together during treatment, as well as Autism Speaks.

Like any parents, we believe our little girl deserves the right to have privacy and be protected, but unfortunately, this media climate doesn’t seem to provide for that. I feel so grateful that after many years of hard work, music and motorcycles have elevated both Carey and me to such a place that the public has supported us in building our life and lifestyle together. We recognize that celebrity has its upsides and downsides and do our best to manage just being people without hiring stylists and bodyguards before one of us goes to the store to buy some milk. I’ve seen some photos of myself that make me smile and some that make me less smiley. But you see, it’s one thing to harass and stalk us, the adults, the celebrity that signed up for this life, but children should be protected and safe. There should be a clear distinction between us.

In EVERY other country that I recall, children’s faces are blurred out in magazine photos. Why is USA the only country that continues to financially incentivize intrusive paparazzi behavior to capitalize on photos of babies, infants and children? Why is this acceptable to any of us? Why is this even legal? These are questions I ask myself as a new parent. Why are celebrities/public figures having to seek restraining orders to keep strange grown men with still and video cameras from sitting perched outside of their children’s pre-schools and elementary schools, preying on little innocent kids? After all, if a stranger was sitting outside of a school taking photographs of random little girls and boys, wouldn’t he be arrested? Or, at least in Philadelphia, he would have to face a more primal sort of recourse. But because it’s the child of a celebrity, somehow it’s okay? I’m just not sure what is wrong with us as a society, that we do more than tolerate this, but our appetite for it seems insatiable. We buy these pictures. We buy these magazines that publish these paparazzi pictures. WHERE DOES IT STOP?

Here’s the bottom line: we don’t want you to take our little girl’s picture. We don’t want you to one day follow our little girl home from school. We don’t want our little girl’s picture in a magazine or on a blog. If you take or publish her picture, it is against our wishes, and without our consent as parents, as people.

Carey and I are new parents. We know we have so much to learn in our new role and are thankful for the family and friends around us. Not a day goes by that we are not grateful to the universe and to our fans and friends who believe in us–and to our foes, too (our best teachers)–for the incredibly interesting privileged lives we get to live each day. But this is about our daughter who just got here. In the face of camera lenses as long as my arm and flashbulbs as bright as the sun, Willow is powerless. All she has to protect her is us. But that’s not all she has; she has you.

To anyone out there that buys a magazine, or goes onto a website to look at pictures of other people’s children, may you at least think for a second about what you may inadvertently be supporting. We are so appreciative that people are interested in seeing our daughter. We WANT to share our joys with you, but as parents (and new parents), we should be able to govern these decisions, shouldn’t we? And to be clear, I’m speaking directly to these “stolen” photographs–paparazzi photos.

So when you see our middle fingers up in all of our pictures, now you know the motivation. It’s all we can do to stop images of a newborn baby from being printed without our consent. Can you imagine a world where they would blur out our middle finger to protect a “consumer” over blurring out an innocent child to protect their integrity and privacy?

Thank you for letting me say my piece. Do I expect this letter to change the world? No. But if it plants a seed of awareness, if a politician or an activist or a legislator or a teacher or police officer is prompted to even think about it–let alone engage, I have done my part on behalf of my daughter. Not surprising that lesson one from me to my daughter is to let one’s voice be heard.

I’ve never shied away from a controversial opinion because of the fear of bad press. My music and my fans and I connect year after year because I talk TO them and, man, do they so beautifully talk TO me. This is such a meaningful dialogue in my life. To all of my friends out there, I love you and I appreciate your help with this, and this happy little family cannot wait to visit your countries again and play music and rejoice in all the beauty that we share and have shared together all over the world.

We’ll call it a playdate!!!!! Xoxoxoxoxooxoxox

Love, the new parents–learning as we go. ? kisses, besos.

P.S. baby poop really isn’t as bad as all the guys out there think. Careys’ already been pooed on, and he’s still breathing. Ahhhhh, ain’t love grand?

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Happy 6th Birthday Willow! Happy 6th Birthday Willow! Towards the end of 2010, there were many rumours going around the social media world that Pink and Carey were expecting their first child.

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iasshikshalove · 5 years ago

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Daily Current Affairs 08th April 2020

Today’s Important Topic’s For UPSC Preparation

1. INDIA LIFTS BAN ON EXPORT OF HYDROXYCLOROQUINE.2. OPPOSITION SLAMS DRUG EXPORT.3. KERALA-KARNATAKA BORDER ROW SORTED OUT, CENTRE INFORMS SC.4. LOSS OF SMELL MAY BE LINKED TO CELLS: STUDY. 5. SBI CUTS MCLR BY 35BPS. 6. ECONOMY TO CONTRACT 4.5% IN FOURTH QUARTER, SAYS ICRA.

INDIA LIFTS BAN ON EXPORT OF HYDROXYCLOROQUINEWhat is hydroxychloroquine and what is it used for?

It is an antimalarial drug option, considered less toxic than chloroquine, and prescribed in certain cases.

Doctors also prescribe hydroxychloroquine for patients of rheumatoid arthritis and lupus.

Who makes this drug in India?

Hydroxychloroquine had a market size of only around Rs 152.80 crore in the 12 months ended February 2020, according to pharmaceutical market research firm AIOCD Awacs PharmaTrac.

However, several countries source the drug from India.

Mumbai-headquartered Ipca Laboratories had nearly 82% of the market, with its brands HCQS and HYQ.

Around 80% of the volumes produced by Ipca are exported.

Ahmedabad-headquartered Cadila Healthcare (Zydus Cadila) prepares the brand Zy Q, with 8% of the market.

Wallace Pharmaceuticals (OXCQ), Torrent Pharmaceuticals (HQTOR) and Overseas Healthcare Pvt Ltd (CARTIQUIN) have smaller shares.

Why has the COVID-19 outbreak spotlighted hydroxychloroquine?

In a study last month in the International Journal of Antimicrobial Agents (IJAA), French scientists reported: Twenty cases were treated and showed a significant reduction of the viral carriage.

Compared to controls, and much lower average carrying duration than reported of untreated patients in the literature.

Azithromycin (an antibiotic) added to hydroxychloroquine was significantly more efficient for virus elimination.

The study was flagged as being too small to draw a definitive conclusion.

However, by March 21, Trump had begun to call the drug a “game changer”, and has since been pushing it.

At the end of last month, the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) issued an advisory recommending the use of hydroxychloroquine in asymptomatic healthcare workers treating COVID-19 patients.

And also allowed doctors to prescribe it for household contacts of confirmed COVID-19 patients.

However, the government has stressed that the drug can only be used in COVID-19 treatment on prescription, and that it should not instill a sense of “false security”.

Since when has India stopped exporting the drug?

The US has been looking to procure the drug for emergency use.

On March 21, Ipca told stock exchanges here that the US Food and Drug Administration had “made exception” to its import alert against the company so that it could get stocks.

India decided to ban exports of the drug on April 4. On Tuesday, the government decided to ease the ban.

Is hydroxychloroquine actually effective?

Two large trials are under way on the effectiveness of hydroxychloroquine, and even chloroquine, in COVID-19 treatment.

In the World Health Organization (WHO) solidarity trial, of which India is a part, clinicians worldwide are to follow a common protocol to treat patients with hydroxychloroquine.

The second is the chloroquine accelerator trial, largely funded by the Wellcome Trust and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

As of now, the jury is still out on how effective these drugs can be against the virus, according to virologist and CEO of the Wellcome Trust/DBT India Alliance Dr Shahid Jameel.

Both of these are testing very large numbers of patients according to the random testing protocol used to test medicines.

The results of those trials are not available yet.

If people in high exposure situations such as health workers are taking hydroxychloroquine/chloroquine as a preventive measure in limited ways, it may be fine.

But, it is not all right for the general public to go around popping these drugs hoping that they will be protected.

They may not be protected, but they will definitely cause themselves some harm.

Why in News?

India on Tuesday announced that it had rescinded its earlier ban on the export of malaria drug hydroxychloroquine (HCQ).

In view of the humanitarian aspects of the pandemic, it has been decided that India would licence paracetamol and HCQ in appropriate quantities to all our neighbouring countries who are dependent on our capabilities.

We will also be supplying these essential drugs to some nations that have been particularly badly affected by the pandemic.

The MEA announcement came hours after U.S. President Donald Trump said that India could invite “retaliation” if it withheld supplies of HCQ, for which the U.S., Brazil and other countries have already placed advance orders.

OPPOSITION SLAMS DRUG EXPORT

The Opposition criticised the Union government for the quick capitulation in the face of a veiled threat by U.S. President Donald Trump on the ban on export of anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine.

The government lifted the ban within hours of Mr. Trump’s comments.

Former Congress president Rahul Gandhi took to Twitter to argue that Indians have the first right over life-saving medicines during the coronavirus pandemic.

Congress chief spokesperson Randeep Surjewala said that though the Congress valued and cherished India’s friendship with the U.S., it saw Mr. Trump’s language as ‘unwarranted’.

Allowing the export of hydroxychloroquine by bowing down before a foreign power cannot be in national interest, he said.

The government should think deeply about the export of essential medicines as our citizens have the first right over them.

Let down India: Yechury

CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury said the statement by the U.S. President was completely unacceptable.

But Modi govt has succumbed to the threat by allowing the export.

That this happened after an expensive gala was organised for him by Modi, instead of preparing to contain Covid-19, shows how this govt has let down India.

Senior TMC leader and Lok Sabha member Saugata Roy said that while the humanitarian gesture made by the Indian government was welcome, it should have raised concern over the language used by Mr. Trump.

KERALA-KARNATAKA BORDER ROW SORTED OUT, CENTRE INFORMS SC

The Supreme Court on Tuesday disposed of a bunch of petitions concerning the Kerala-Karnataka border sealing case after the Union government informed that a consensus had been worked out to allow patients requiring urgent medical treatment to cross the Talapadi border and access hospitals in Mangaluru.

Appearing before a Bench led by Chief Justice of India Sharad A. Bobde, Solicitor General Tushar Mehta said a meeting was held among the Union Home Secretary and the Chief Secretaries of the States to amicably resolve the crisis.

An agreement had been reached on the parameters and protocol for allowing patients into Karnataka.

On April 3, the court ordered the Centre, Kerala and Karnataka to confer immediately and “formulate parameters for passage of patients for urgent medical treatment at the border at Talapadi”.

The court then listed the case on April 7.

The April 3 order was based on petitions highlighting how Karnataka had enforced a blockade which, the court was informed, had resulted in deaths as ambulances bound for Mangaluru were not being permitted to cross the border.

The petitions asked the court to intervene to facilitate free movement of vehicles carrying persons who need urgent medical treatment across the border.

Karnataka argued that the blockade was put in place in the interest of public health.

The situation regarding COVID-19 was “really dire”.

Kerala was the “worst-affected” State in the country, with nearly 194 cases.

In this, Kasaragod, adjoining Karnataka, was the “worst-affected” district of Kerala with over 100 positive cases, it said.

LOSS OF SMELL MAY BE LINKED TO CELLS: STUDY

Multiple reports have surfaced, primarily from Europe and the United States, from physicians and ear, nose and throat specialists, of COVID-19 patients complaining of an inability to smell — or anosmia.

However, it is not clear whether neurons in the brain that are responsible for recognising various odours are damaged, or whether other cells may be involved.

Researchers at Delhi’s Indrapastha Institute of Information Technology report in the study that is still being peer-reviewed but available as a public preprint.

It is not neurons but a class of cells in the upper regions of the nasal cavity that may be involved: these are called sustentacular cells and horizontal basal cells.

Crucially, both are not directly involved in helping us smell, but nourish and support the cells that help us do, and so the virus may be inflicting an indirect attack on the olfactory sensory cells.

While research on this aspect of the disease is emerging, studies say the loss of smell is different from diminished smell or a lack of perceiving flavour in food when one is afflicted with a cold or stuffy nose.

The coronavirus has spike proteins that bind to ACE 2 receptors on human cells and the enzyme’s presence is a proxy to revealing the signature of the virus in the body’s cells.

Clinical Symptoms:

Research so far suggests that it take between 5-14 days for clinical symptoms of the virus — dry cough, laboured breathing and fever — to show and unless this manifested, those infected are likely to continue socialising and spreading the virus.

Because the loss of smell surfaces much earlier, anyone who does not feel sick but registers a significant inability to smell could self-isolate.

A questionnaire could be used via an app, for users to check or report these systems to a doctor.

An analysis by a team at King’s College London showed that 59% of COVID-19 positive patients reported a loss of smell and taste, compared with only 18% of those who tested negative for the disease.

These results were much stronger in predicting a positive COVID-19 diagnosis than self-reported fever.

SBI CUTS MCLR BY 35BPSWhat is marginal cost of funds-based lending rate or MCLR?

The RBI introduced the MCLR methodology for fixing interest rates from 1 April 2016.

It replaced the base rate structure, which had been in place since July 2010.

The marginal cost of funds-based lending rate (MCLR) is the minimum interest rate that a bank can lend at.

MCLR is a tenor-linked internal benchmark, which means the rate is determined internally by the bank depending on the period left for the repayment of a loan.

MCLR is closely linked to the actual deposit rates and is calculated based on four components:

(a) The marginal cost of funds,

(b) Negative carry on account of cash reserve ratio,

(d) Tenor premium.

Under the MCLR regime, banks are free to offer all categories of loans on fixed or floating interest rates.

The actual lending rates for loans of different categories and tenors are determined by adding the components of spread to MCLR.

Therefore, the bank cannot lend at a rate lower than MCLR of a particular maturity, for all loans linked to that benchmark.

Fixed-rate loans with tenors of up to three years are also priced according to MCLR.

Banks review and publish MCLR of different maturities, every month.

Certain loan rates, like that of fixed-rate loans with tenors above three years and special loan schemes offered by the government, are not linked to MCLR. Read more..

#ias #upsc #coronavirus #covid 19 #IAS Exam #upsc exam #civil service exam #civil servants #Current Affairs #Daily Current Affairs

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adstellam · 5 years ago

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A love note to readers, customers, and friends

February 24, 2020

Dear friends of ADSTELLAM (formerly Limeadestand Works),

Spring is a time of renewal and new beginning. In the Pacific Northwest, it also means a literal return of sunlight and green earth. As someone who has long experienced seasonal affective disorder, this is no small matter.

Twenty-nine years ago, in the early spring of 1991, the teenager me was studying the Bible and fundamentals of theology with my then-pastor in preparation for baptism, which was to take place on March 24 of that year, the Sunday before Easter. I made a promise to God and to myself that I will be a proclaimer of the truth. Although I had a vaguest idea how that might be, and my theology had greatly evolved since then (I was a Fundamental Baptist then, I am not now), I have not forgotten that commitment -- despite three decades of trials, errors, sidetracking, backsliding, and doing just about everything else.

Of course, this explains why, in 1997 I abruptly abandoned my college journalism major, relocated to Oregon, and attended a Bible college for some time -- a decision that made no sense to most people and made no sense to me shortly thereafter (considering I had already lost my faith in Evangelical Christianity shortly after I started at that school, and spent much of the subsequent 20 years between paganism and agnosticism).

A series of events that took place over the past several years and rethinking my core values and mission, I have began a process of realigning my activities this past year to do the right thing in God's eyes.

I give lots of thoughts on ethics and moral integrity (or lack thereof) in contemporary society and culture. Not necessarily in the way how some hateful Bible-thumpers twist the ideas of "morality," but rather, in a way how so much of what goes on in current politics, media, entertainment, commerce, and culture are there to leverage and weaponize privilege and reinforcing oppressive constructs that do injustice to marginalized humans, who are just as much of expressions of God's image as those privileged people for which our culture is geared towards.

When I first discovered Internet in 1995, I saw its potential as a tool of liberation: liberating knowledge and learning, giving voice and power of self-expression to the voiceless, and spreading the Gospel around the world, around-the-clock. But now, a quarter-century later, Internet and social media are cesspool of hatred, deceit, trolls, gossips, propaganda, and polarization on the one hand, and an orgy of "lifestyle businesses" and consumerism on the other hand. I no longer think the world is now a better place because we have Facebook, nor is social media a panacea for every ill of society.

First, Since 2016, I ran a small digital marketing and brand management company called Limeadestand Works, which was renamed last year mostly to avoid getting sued by a similarly-named entity but also because I felt that I wasn't taken seriously.

The truth be told, I was the one who really couldn't take it seriously any more. During the course of three and a half years in this industry, I saw good, bad, and ugly. I witnessed a proliferation of self-appointed "gurus", unqualified "coaches" and other charlatans teaching others how to run unethical and morally questionable businesses with a dubious promise of a six-figure income (if you've heard such buzzwords as "launch," "pain island to pleasure island," you know what I am talking about -- Jeff Walker's formula has become foundations of countless charlatans who exploit people's insecurity while positioning themselves as a cult-like authority by leveraging privilege and by shaming and gaslighting victims.). I became increasingly critical of this type of marketing practices over time.

I am here to lift up all people, especially the ones on the margins of society, who are discarded and failed by society--in particular in this age of Trumpism. At its onset, Limeadestand Works began in line with that value. But it got lost somewhere and I became, unwittingly or not, part of that evil.

I cannot continue this with good conscience.

Second, the industry landscape in brand communication and digital marketing has changed quite a bit over the last three years.

The Cambridge Analytica scandal shed light on deceptive and manipulative business practices of social media giants, leading politicians and governments to institute new regulations such as European Union General Data Protection Rule and California Consumer Privacy Act. Compliance with these new and emerging rules complicate my work as I do not have satisfactory resources to safeguard personal data of consumers around-the-clock nor do I have means to compel my clients to comply with these regulations. This means potential legal liability exposures for me, a risk I cannot afford to take. In addition, other emerging legal and regulatory changes on the horizon, such as a stricter enforcement of Americans with Disabilities Act on digital platforms (e.g., web site accessibility requirements), possible changes to copyright and IP laws, and potential watering down of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, present me with further complications when working with businesses.

The regulatory changes aside, the world of digital marketing is changing fast. Blog-centric content marketing, once the "king of traffic," has already lost its strength as people spend more time on social media on their smartphones and their attention span get shorter and shorter. These days more people go to a social media site before a search engine site. Most traffic now begins and ends at major social media platforms as most users go mobile and their online experiences are becoming confined to the "walled gardens" of social media apps. On the social media marketing front, the situation is less comforting. It is now almost entirely pay-to-play. Organic reach no longer has much power in attracting customers, so I cannot offer my clients any false hope about that; social media is not a substitute for a strategically placed paid advertisements.

The only exceptions to this trend are podcasts (such as Anchor, Soundcloud, and Spotify) and videos (such as YouTube and Vimeo), as they are still powerful and growing as people like passive media consumption that is entertaining and informative.

And most importantly, and something not many people are talking about now, is the overall loss of credibility in digital media -- mainly social media but also blogs, web sites, and online advertising. People are bombarded with online contents, misleading information, and disguised-as-native-content advertisements to the point where they are seeing them but not paying attention to them. And people are rightfully skeptical of online ads. After all, anyone can buy ads on Facebook or Google rather inexpensively, and these ads are neither memorable nor look authoritative. Lately, I began advising people to invest in traditional media such as print advertising and radio advertising because of this reason. Since the number of junk mailers have decreased overall, even bulk-mailed postcards get more attention than your next Facebook ad buy (especially if your business is hyperlocal). Ads on monthly magazines and local alternative weeklies have a far longer lifespan than your Twitter ad exposure, too. Even more importantly, print ads and radio ads look just more authoritative and credible -- you can differentiate yourself by making your business look more established and legitimate than every yahoo with a computer. I think traditional media will be here to stay and because of their inherent social function as curators of news and contents they will make a strong comeback when we are all sick and tired of this 24/7 information overload. (And yes, please buy newspaper subscriptions to support your local newsroom!)

Third, since the spring of 2019, I have contemplated of returning to ministry. After all, I did not decide to move to Oregon if not for attending a Bible college (and I also felt, at the time, Portland was more of a center of Christianity in the Pacific Northwest as it was home of Evangelist Luis Palau, Multnomah University, Western Seminary, George Fox University, the University of Portland, Concordia University, Warner Pacific University, Marylhurst University, and the Pamplin conglomerate that used to own a big Christian bookstore chain, two Christian music labels, and a Christian music radio station). And I had a brief and short-lived experience back in the mid-2000s as a church-planter.

If I had not lost faith (a long story) while in school, most likely I would have been in some kind of Christian media ministries either in a media production capacity or in a teaching capacity.

Over the past 10 months I have discerned my vision and learned various ways in which it could manifest itself.

The Spirit of God has impressed upon me numerous times that, as an autistic person (I have not been open about this, and "masking" has taken a significant toll on my mental health), I ought to go find a community there.

As I looked at a search engine looking for "autism +church" "autistic +religion" and so on, I noted the lack of resources except for a few geared toward church leadership on how to tolerate autistic children in their churches. Then there are pervasive stereotypes that all autistics are atheists, overlooking the fact that there are many who are highly religious (though may not necessarily be "spiritual" in a sense neurotypicals may think) and find comfort in the structures offered by faith communities and traditions. I learned more about this community through more recent scientific papers as well as interactions with autistic community online, and I also learned how much of anti-autistic misconceptions and ableist hate I had internalized over time.

This has become a large undertaking, a vision for one-of-its-kind ministries with global impact and potentials for evolving into something far bigger (and overwhelming!) than I had originally imagined. And this will take front and center of what I do, as it requires a lot of work, time, and more learning, as well as supporters both within and outside the autistic community.

I will share more about this if you are interested in this kind of thing, but for the sake of others who aren't, I will not bore you with further details.

This means I am making, effective immediately, following changes to ADSTELLAM's products and services:

As I had announced on Dec. 31, 2019, I am no longer taking business/corporate clients. This is also because of the aforementioned liability concerns.

Furthermore, I am no longer directly managing client brands or work as a digital marketing contractor for any client. In any case, I can only do so much and even the best of my advice can be disregarded as irrelevant to some clients as they unconsciously sabotage and undermine their own brands (sadly, there is no cure for stupidity).

My roles and service level will be limited to that of consulting on brands, with an emphasis on visual designs and consistent brand presentations, subconscious and implicit messaging, as well as ethical values and social impact associated with brands. Over time, this will shift toward educating individuals on branding and related topics. It is my goal to empower individuals and offer my insights as to current best practice and industry trends, in addition to creating and running an ethical, value-driven brand that makes positive impacts in the world.

As time and workload permit, I will continue to take copywriting and editing projects.

In the near future I may repurpose the ADSTELLAM brand for other activities, or as an "umbrella" brand, while rebranding this aspect of my business.

I will be more likely to recommend and refer people to other resources, books, videos, etc., by other brand experts.

A plan in the making is a new free podcast and subscribers-only educational contents, which will be priced affordably.

I know this may cause some alarm and discomfort with many of the people that I came in contact with and befriended in recent years. To some it may come as a surprise. They had met me when I was not particularly religious or spiritual, and when I was better known as a community activist.

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firstumcschenectady · 5 years ago

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Two years ago, our niece got a new game for Christmas: Harry Potter, Hogwarts Battle. We usually spend New Years together, and it is a great 4 person game, so Kevin and I got to break into the game with our niece and her mother. It is now fair to say that this is our favorite game, and the four us clocked A LOT of hours playing it.

Beyond the really fun Harry Potter connections, and the truly excellent game design, I think we all love it so much because it is a collaborative game. The players are all working together towards a goal, so in the end either everyone wins or everyone loses. Which also means that no one of us ends up as the winner while the rest of us have lost. Truthfully, I really like board games, and most of the ones I play have winners and losers, and I'm generally OK with that, but there is something really great about a collaborative game. It is especially engaging because each choice we make impacts each other player, so we have to pay attention to what each person needs and what each person's strengths are, and how each person can make the best use of their strengths.

The game is hard, and we lose sometimes. Really, we lose about half of the games we play, and we sometimes give up a game before playing just because the starting conditions are too difficult. But the collaboration makes it interesting enough that even losing isn't THAT bad. (Most of the time.)

I find it interesting that the collaborative game is so much fun. When I was growing up our church had a copy “The Ungame” which was mean to be a fun game that was collaborative rather than competitive, and while I fully support the creators and their intentions it was the least fun game imaginable. Yet, there is so much already in our capitalistic society that is inherently about winners and losers, and zero sum games, and competing against each other – and I'm really, really glad that there are now super fun games that don't buy into that model.

Collaborative games seem more like the model of working for the common good. Maybe it is just because I was born and raised in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, but the moment when I finally actually noticed the word “commonwealth” and thought about what it meant was eye-opening for me. I think of the common good and commonwealths as other ways of speaking about the kindom.

Over the past 3+ years we've talked about Intersectional Justice and Intersectionality a lot, but just in case the ideas are still fuzzy for you, here is MFSA's definition of its “intersectional organizing principal.”

All experiences of marginalization and injustice are interconnected because the struggle for justice is tied to concepts of power and privilege. Intersectional organizing recognizes that injustice works on multiple and simultaneous levels. Because experiences of injustice do not happen in a vacuum, it is imperative to: develop the most effective strategies to create space for understanding privilege; organize in an intersectional framework led by marginalized communities; and build effective systems of resistance and cooperation to take action for justice. Practical intersectional organizing always focuses on collaboration and relationship building.

To bring that a little bit more into reality, intersectionality means acknowledging that working on ONE issue and making as small as possible so you can make some gains really doesn't help that much. For example, it is said that 101 years ago women gained the right to vote in NY state, that misses that it only applied to white women. That came from a choice to empower white women at the expense of women of color and was NOT intersectional organizing. There have been a LOT of times organizing has worked this way, most of the time it has worked this way, and it has done a lot of harm.

During an anti-white supremacy training, I was taught to think holistically about power. That is, we all know what traits are most associated with power in our society: white, male, rich, straight, English speaking, cisgender, citizen, with a full range of ableness, educated, tall... etc, right? In each case, there is an opposite to the description that is disempowered. I'm expecting you are following thus far. Well, because the people who have the traits connected to power control the resources, they use most of them! And then, it turns out, the people who are DISCONNECTED from power end up fighting to get access to the scraps of resources that the powerful are willing to share. There are two REALLY bad parts of this – first of all, to get access to those resources usually means playing by the rules of the ones who have power, and secondly, those without power are usually set up to fight AGAINST EACH OTHER for access to those scraps.

That is, when white women decided to try to get the vote for themselves, and not seek voting rights for all women, they made a decision to play by the rules of how power already worked, and to distance themselves from people of color to try to get what they wanted and needed. And, this happens time and time again.

Intersectionality is about seeing the wholeness of the power dynamics, and the complicated realities of people – who all have power in some ways and lack power in others – and holding the whole together while working for good. It is really, really hard.

It is probably also why I teared up when reading Isaiah this week. The passage quotes God as saying, “It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the survivors of Israel; I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth." The way I heard that was, don't just work for the benefit of a few, even if they are the ones you identify with – work for the well being of ALL. And all, in all places, including enemy nations!!

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is best known for his transformational work on racial justice, work that make our country noticeably better. Yet, at the end of his life, he had broadened his work, and was organizing around poverty. As several of the past year's Intersectional Justice Book Club books have pointed out, the powers that exist in the United States have VERY INTENTIONALLY used race to divide people, in large part so that impoverished white people and impoverished people of color wouldn't start working together against their common oppressor. Dr. King's Poor People's Campaign was designed to bring people together for their common good, and truly for every's good. As King once said, “In your struggle for justice, let your oppressor know that you are not attempting to defeat or humiliate him, or even to pay him back for injustices that he has heaped upon you. Let him know that you are merely seeking justice for him as well as yourself.” Because, truly, oppressing anyone harms both the oppressed AND inherently, the oppressor.

Today, other's have picked up Dr. King's mantle, and there is an active Poor People's Campaign underway. While their “Fundamental Principals” are expansive – there are 12 – they are a coherent whole and I couldn't edit them down. I want you hear, and be filled with hope, and maybe even be motivated to work with this campaign, so here they are:

We are rooted in a moral analysis based on our deepest religious and constitutional values that demand justice for all. Moral revival is necessary to save the heart and soul of our democracy.

We are committed to lifting up and deepening the leadership of those most affected by systemic racism, poverty, the war economy, and ecological devastation and to building unity across lines of division.

We believe in the dismantling of unjust criminalization systems that exploit poor communities and communities of color and the transformation of the “War Economy” into a “Peace Economy” that values all humanity.

We believe that equal protection under the law is non-negotiable.

We believe that people should not live in or die from poverty in the richest nation ever to exist. Blaming the poor and claiming that the United States does not have an abundance of resources to overcome poverty are false narratives used to perpetuate economic exploitation, exclusion, and deep inequality.

We recognize the centrality of systemic racism in maintaining economic oppression must be named, detailed and exposed empirically, morally and spiritually. Poverty and economic inequality cannot be understood apart from a society built on white supremacy.

We aim to shift the distorted moral narrative often promoted by religious extremists in the nation from issues like prayer in school, abortion, and gun rights to one that is concerned with how our society treats the poor, those on the margins, the least of these, women, LGBTQIA folks, workers, immigrants, the disabled and the sick; equality and representation under the law; and the desire for peace, love and harmony within and among nations.

We will build up the power of people and state-based movements to serve as a vehicle for a powerful moral movement in the country and to transform the political, economic and moral structures of our society.

We recognize the need to organize at the state and local level—many of the most regressive policies are being passed at the state level, and these policies will have long and lasting effect, past even executive orders. The movement is not from above but below.

We will do our work in a non-partisan way—no elected officials or candidates get the stage or serve on the State Organizing Committee of the Campaign. This is not about left and right, Democrat or Republican but about right and wrong.

We uphold the need to do a season of sustained moral direct action as a way to break through the tweets and shift the moral narrative. We are demonstrating the power of people coming together across issues and geography and putting our bodies on the line to the issues that are affecting us all.

The Campaign and all its Participants and Endorsers embrace nonviolence. Violent tactics or actions will not be tolerated.

This campaign is DEEPLY good news. I encourage you to look them up, their demands are even better (but ever longer) and well worth the read. There are a lot of opportunities to volunteer with and support the Poor People's Campaign, and I'd be happy to connect to to those who are organizing – as would your Intersectional Justice chairs.

Working towards justice for all is really, really hard work. It can even be overwhelming, but as Isaiah says, God is out for the well-being of the whole world. Before you get overwhelmed though, let me remind you that God has a LOT of partners in this work and no ONE of us is called to do all the work. In fact, we're called to trust each other and each other's work, and to carefully discern what our work is to do. Love exists, its power can spread, justice is possible, and good people are at work. We are meant to be a light to ALL the nations, and with God at our backs, we can and we will. And it is possible because of collaboration. Thanks be to God. Amen

Rev. Sara E. Baron First United Methodist Church of Schenectady 603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305 Pronouns: she/her/hers http://fumcschenectady.org/  https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

January 19, 2019

#FUMCSchenectady #UMC #Schenectady #Sorry about the UMC #Thinking Church #Progressive Christianity #MLK #Rev Dr Martin Luther King Jr #Poor Peoples Campaign #Nonviolent Organizing #MFSAVoices #Rev Sara E Baron #Intersectionality #collaborate #Harry Potter

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tuesday5econlive · 6 years ago

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10 Principles of Economics

How People Make Decisions

Principle 1: People Face Tradeoffs

Society faces trade-offs between equity and efficiency. Efficiency is defined by society getting the most from its scarce resources. Equity is defined as distributing economic prosperity fairly among the individuals in society. Students face making decisions all the time. A student faces a tradeoff between studying for an exam or to watch a newly released movie that they have been dying to watch.

Principle 2: The Cost of Something Is What You Give Up to Get It

When making decisions, you have to weigh the costs and benefits of the alternative choice. Opportunity Cost is a core term which means whatever must be given up to obtain some item. In the cartoon show above, it can demonstrate how students such as myself or anyone with a job can contemplate calling in sick on days of work in order to sleep in or reserve the day for something much more enjoyable. Although, if you do go into work and avoid calling in sick, your check will come out much more bigger which is also very desirable. You must give up one to obtain the other. I’ve called in sick, in the past, in order to sleep in, it was worth it.

Principle 3: Rational People Think at the Margin

A rational decision maker takes action if and only if the marginal benefit of the action exceeds the marginal cost. The marginal changes in costs or benefits motivate people to respond. When a student considers whether to go to college for an additional four years, they compare the fees and foregone wages to the extra income they could earn with the extra four years of education.

Principle 4: People Respond to Incentives

An initiative is something that induces a person to act. In this case, as shown above, a student found out that economics majors have better chances of getting well-paid jobs after graduation. This cause the student to act on the information, and then became an economics major for the future benefits that it can have in terms of salary. I actually am going to declare in economics, and this is a partial reason I acted on going to the major.

How people Interact

Principle 5: Trade Can Make Everyone Better Off

Trade allows each person to specialize in the activities he or she does best. By trading with others, people can buy a greater variety of goods and services. My roommate is a better cook than I am, and I clean more quickly than my roomate can. Therefore, we divide each task based on the task we specialize in. By doing so, I reduce the total amount of time spent on chores.

Principle 6: Markets are Usually a Good Way to Organize Economic Activity

The Market Economy is an economy that allocates resources through the decentralized decisions of many firms and households as they interact in markets for goods and services. In the picture above, it can be seen how each household and firms think. Such as the household being able to decide on which firms to work for and what to buy with their income. As I would spend my entire check in Sephora. Similarly, firms decide what they want to produce and who to hire. Such as last summer when Ross decided to choose and hire me. The last one shows the end-goal of overall economic well being which can be directed by the “invisible hand” whom leads to desirable market outcomes.

Principle 7: Governments Can Sometimes Improve Market Outcomes

When a market fails to allocate resources efficiently, the government can change the outcome through public policy such as setting regulations against monopolies and pollution. A dry cleaning factory pollutes water when they dispose of the chemically polluted water. The government has the task of regulating and auditing the activities of the market. Hence, the government can implement regulating policies to protect the environment.

How the Economy as a Whole Works

Principle 8: A Country’s Standard of Living Depends on its Ability to Produce Goods and Services

Around the world there is staggering differences in the standards of living which is solely based on the country’s production levels. Production is the quantity of goods and services produced from each unit of labor input. Therefore, the higher the level of production, the better the standard of living is for the country as a whole. My picture can depict a person, in this case me, starting to work a minimum wage job here in the United States, and because of the good amount of pay in comparison to other counties, I was able to put a down payment on a car in a timespan of a couple months. But in the last picture, it can depict a boy who cannot afford food. We can predict that this country has very low levels of production which cause this low standard of living.

Principle 9: Prices Rise When the Government Prints too Much Money

When a government creates large quantities of money within the nation, the value of the money falls resulting in the increase of prices, requiring more of the same money to buy the goods and services. The faster the government creates money, the greater the inflation rate. One example of the effects of inflation can be seen by comparing the prices of gas 30 years ago and now. 30 years ago, the cost of a gallon of gas used to be $1.28. Now, the cost of a gallon of gas is $3.87.

Principle 10: Society Faces a Short-Run Tradeoff between Inflation and Unemployment

As a society we try to avoid both inflation and unemployment but that isn’t possible. But what does a short-run tradeoff mean? Well it’s means that over a course of a year or two, many economic policies push inflation and unemployment in opposite directions. Therefore, we are stuck with trade offs between the two. As depicted in the first square, these two problems are on a teeter totter. The but following square shows policymakers trying to come up with solutions to this problem. An example can be when Obama set in policies that reduced taxes and increasing government spending to pick up the economy from the economic turndown in the housing markets. Personally, this did affect me and my family by not being able to obtain a house as easy due to the exceeding high prices in the market, these high numbers can also be seen in rent today, such as the monthly pay for housing here on campus.

Krystal Chavez (ID# 67208797)

Jessica Pineda (ID# 89151998)

#econrocks

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endenogatai · 6 years ago

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Google gobbling DeepMind’s health app might be the trust shock we need

DeepMind’s health app being gobbled by parent Google is both unsurprising and deeply shocking.

First thoughts should not be allowed to gloss over what is really a gut punch.

It’s unsurprising because the AI galaxy brains at DeepMind always looked like unlikely candidates for the quotidian, margins-focused business of selling and scaling software as a service. The app in question, a clinical task management and alerts app called Streams, does not involve any AI.

The algorithm it uses was developed by the UK’s own National Health Service, a branch of which DeepMind partnered with to co-develop Streams.

In a blog post announcing the hand-off yesterday, “scaling” was the precise word the DeepMind founders chose to explain passing their baby to Google . And if you want to scale apps Google does have the well oiled machinery to do it.

At the same time Google has just hired Dr. David Feinberg, from US health service organization Geisinger, to a new leadership role which CNBC reports as being intended to tie together multiple, fragmented health initiatives and coordinate its moves into the $3TR healthcare sector.

The company’s stated mission of ‘organizing the world’s information and making it universally accessible and useful’ is now seemingly being applied to its own rather messy corporate structure — to try to capitalize on growing opportunities for selling software to clinicians.

That health tech opportunities are growing is clear.

In the UK, where Streams and DeepMind Health operates, the minister for health, Matt Hancock, a recent transplant to the portfolio from the digital brief, brought his love of apps with him — and almost immediately made technology one of his stated priorities for the NHS.

Last month he fleshed his thinking out further, publishing a future of healthcare policy document containing a vision for transforming how the NHS operates — to plug in what he called “healthtech” apps and services, to support tech-enabled “preventative, predictive and personalised care”.

Which really is a clarion call to software makers to clap fresh eyes on the sector.

In the UK the legwork that DeepMind has done on the ‘apps for clinicians’ front — finding a willing NHS Trust to partner with; getting access to patient data, with the Royal Free passing over the medical records of some 1.6 million people as Streams was being developed in the autumn of 2015; inking a bunch more Streams deals with other NHS Trusts — is now being folded right back into Google.

And this is where things get shocking.

Trust demolition

Shocking because DeepMind handing the app to Google — and therefore all the patient data that sits behind it — goes against explicit reassurances made by DeepMind’s founders that there was a firewall sitting between its health experiments and its ad tech parent, Google.

“In this work, we know that we’re held to the highest level of scrutiny,” wrote DeepMind co-founder Mustafa Suleyman in a blog post in July 2016 as controversy swirled over the scope and terms of the patient data-sharing arrangement it had inked with the Royal Free. “DeepMind operates autonomously from Google, and we’ve been clear from the outset that at no stage will patient data ever be linked or associated with Google accounts, products or services.”

As law and technology academic Julia Powles, who co-wrote a research paper on DeepMind’s health foray with the New Scientist journalist, Hal Hodson, who obtained and published the original (now defunct) patient data-sharing agreement, noted via Twitter: “This isn’t transparency, it’s trust demolition.”

This is TOTALLY unacceptable. DeepMind repeatedly, unconditionally promised to *never* connect people's intimate, identifiable health data to Google. Now it's announced…exactly that. This isn't transparency, it's trust demolition https://t.co/EWM7lxKSET (grabs: Powles & Hodson) pic.twitter.com/3BLQvH3dg1

— Julia Powles (@juliapowles) November 13, 2018

Turns out DeepMind’s patient data firewall was nothing more than a verbal assurance — and two years later those words have been steamrollered by corporate reconfiguration, as Google and Alphabet elbow DeepMind’s team aside and prepare to latch onto a burgeoning new market opportunity.

Any fresh assurances that people’s sensitive medical records will never be used for ad targeting will now have to come direct from Google. And they’ll just be words too. So put that in your patient trust pipe and smoke it.

The Streams app data is also — to be clear — personal data that the individuals concerned never consented to being passed to DeepMind. Let alone to Google.

Patients weren’t asked for their consent nor even consulted by the Royal Free when it quietly inked a partnership with DeepMind three years ago. It was only months later that the initiative was even made public, although the full scope and terms only emerged thanks to investigative journalism.

Transparency was lacking from the start.

This is why, after a lengthy investigation, the UK’s data protection watchdog ruled last year that the Trust had breached UK law — saying people would not have reasonably expected their information to be used in such a way.

Nor should they. If you ended up in hospital with a broken leg you’d expect the hospital to have your data. But wouldn’t you be rather shocked to learn — shortly afterwards or indeed years and years later — that your medical records are now sitting on a Google server because Alphabet’s corporate leaders want to scale a fat healthtech profit?

In the same 2016 blog post, entitled “DeepMind Health: our commitment to the NHS”, Suleyman made a point of noting how it had asked “a group of respected public figures to act as Independent Reviewers, to examine our work and publish their findings”, further emphasizing: “We want to earn public trust for this work, and we don’t take that for granted.”

Fine words indeed. And the panel of independent reviewers that DeepMind assembled to act as an informal watchdog in patients’ and consumers’ interests did indeed contain well respected public figures, chaired by former Liberal Democrat MP Julian Huppert.

The panel was provided with a budget by DeepMind to carry out investigations of the reviewers’ choosing. It went on to produce two annual reports — flagging a number of issues of concern, including, most recently, warning that Google might be able to exert monopoly power as a result of the fact Streams is being contractually bundled with streaming and data access infrastructure.

The reviewers also worried whether DeepMind Health would be able to insulate itself from Alphabet’s influence and commercial priorities — urging DeepMind Health to “look at ways of entrenching its separation from Alphabet and DeepMind more robustly, so that it can have enduring force to the commitments it makes”.

It turns out that was a very prescient concern since Alphabet/Google has now essentially dissolved the bits of DeepMind that were sticking in its way.

Including — it seems — the entire external reviewer structure…

"We encourage DeepMind Health to look at ways of entrenching its separation from Alphabet and DeepMind more robustly, so that it can have enduring force to the commitments it makes." !

— Eerke Boiten (@EerkeBoiten) November 13, 2018

A DeepMind spokesperson told us that the panel’s governance structure was created for DeepMind Health “as a UK entity”, adding: “Now Streams is going to be part of a global effort this is unlikely to be the right structure in the future.”

It turns out — yet again — that tech industry DIY ‘guardrails’ and self-styled accountability are about as reliable as verbal assurances. Which is to say, not at all.

This is also both deeply unsurprisingly and horribly shocking. The shock is really that big tech keeps getting away with this.

None of the self-generated ‘trust and accountability’ structures that tech giants are now routinely popping up with entrepreneurial speed — to act as public curios and talking shops to draw questions away from what’s they’re actually doing as people’s data gets sucked up for commercial gain — can in fact be trusted.

They are a shiny distraction from due process. Or to put it more succinctly: It’s PR.

There is no accountability if rules are self-styled and therefore cannot be enforced because they can just get overwritten and goalposts moved at corporate will.

Nor can there be trust in any commercial arrangement unless it has adequately bounded — and legal — terms.

This stuff isn’t rocket science nor even medical science. So it’s quite the pantomime dance that DeepMind and Google have been merrily leading everyone on.

It’s almost as if they were trying to cause a massive distraction — by sicking up faux discussions of trust, fairness and privacy — to waste good people’s time while they got on with the lucrative business of mining everyone’s data.

from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8204425 https://ift.tt/2DkT23T via IFTTT

#IFTTT #RSSMix.com Mix ID 8204425

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theinvinciblenoob · 6 years ago

Link

DeepMind’s health app being gobbled by parent Google is both unsurprising and deeply shocking.

First thoughts should not be allowed to gloss over what is really a gut punch.

The algorithm it uses was developed by the UK’s own National Health Service, a branch of which DeepMind partnered with to co-develop Streams.

That health tech opportunities are growing is clear.

Which really is a clarion call to software makers to clap fresh eyes on the sector.

And this is where things get shocking.

Trust demolition

— Julia Powles (@juliapowles) November 13, 2018

The Streams app data is also — to be clear — personal data that the individuals concerned never consented to being passed to DeepMind. Let alone to Google.

Transparency was lacking from the start.

It turns out that was a very prescient concern since Alphabet/Google has now essentially dissolved the bits of DeepMind that were sticking in its way.

Including — it seems — the entire external reviewer structure…

"We encourage DeepMind Health to look at ways of entrenching its separation from Alphabet and DeepMind more robustly, so that it can have enduring force to the commitments it makes." !

— Eerke Boiten (@EerkeBoiten) November 13, 2018

It turns out — yet again — that tech industry DIY ‘guardrails’ and self-styled accountability are about as reliable as verbal assurances. Which is to say, not at all.

This is also both deeply unsurprisingly and horribly shocking. The shock is really that big tech keeps getting away with this.

They are a shiny distraction from due process. Or to put it more succinctly: It’s PR.

There is no accountability if rules are self-styled and therefore cannot be enforced because they can just get overwritten and goalposts moved at corporate will.

Nor can there be trust in any commercial arrangement unless it has adequately bounded — and legal — terms.

This stuff isn’t rocket science nor even medical science. So it’s quite the pantomime dance that DeepMind and Google have been merrily leading everyone on.

via TechCrunch

#IFTTT #TechCrunch

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ascendingmatrix · 7 years ago

Text

ARE WE READY FOR TRUTH AND RECONCILIATION AROUND SEXUAL VIOLENCE? #METOO

WAKE UP WORLD

December 18th, 2017

By Lissa Rankin

Guest writer for Wake Up World

A teenage Icelandic woman is raped by her Australian boyfriend after she’s had too much to drink. In his own immature, conditioned teenage mind, he doesn’t call it rape. Because the media and pornography and the way fathers raise sons and bro’s egg on bro’s, he convinces himself that he was justified in taking what was rightfully his — her body, her vulnerability, her sexuality, maybe even her physical and mental health. She is traumatized by the experience, and in his own way, he is too. Her life unravels, and so does his.

We know the story. Almost every woman I’m close to has been raped, molested, or sexually harassed. (You can read my #MeToo story here.) But the horrific story of this young woman and the man who raped her has a different ending, mostly because these two refused to simplify their story into a cut and dried duality of victim/monster. They were brave enough to see the humanity in each other and then to write a book about it and give a TED talk together.

What touches me most in this TED talk by Thordis Elva and Tom Stranger is at about the 13-minute mark, when Thordis Elva points out that whenever someone accuses another of a sexual crime, words inevitably get in the way.

She says:

“Given the nature of our story, I know the words that inevitably accompany it — victim, rapist — and labels are a way to organize concepts. But they can also be dehumanizing in their connotations. Once someone has been deemed a victim, it’s that much easier to file them away as someone damaged, dishonored, less than. And likewise, once someone has been branded a rapist, it’s that much easier to call him a monster, inhuman. But how we will understand what it is in human societies that produces violence if we refuse to recognize the humanity of those who commit it? And how can we empower survivors if we’re making them feel less than? How can we discuss solutions to one of the biggest threats to women and children around the world if the very words we use are part of the problem?”

This TED talk touched me deeply. THIS. We are desperate for truth and reconciliation. Women are finally activating their power and using their voices to speak from the heart and use the fire in their bellies to call out this ragged edge of the human experience. But if we use our power and our voices without engaging our hearts, we are at risk of becoming the next perpetrators, dehumanizing the very people who dehumanized us.

OUR CULTURE HAS BRUTALIZED OUR MEN. THESE MEN THEN BRUTALIZE OUR WOMEN.

In a Facebook post speaking out against critics who were objectifying and criticizing her daughter Willow’s new haircut, Jada Pinkett-Smith eloquently described “the war on men through the degradation of women,” expressing better than I ever could what has been crying out in my own heart.

“How is man to recognize his full self, his full power through the eye’s of an incomplete woman? The woman who has been stripped of Goddess recognition and diminished to a big ass and full breast for physical comfort only. The woman who has been silenced so she may forget her spiritual essence because her words stir too much thought outside of the pleasure space. The woman who has been diminished to covering all that rots inside of her with weaves and red bottom shoes. I am sure the men, who restructured our societies from cultures that honored woman, had no idea of the outcome. They had no idea that eventually, even men would render themselves empty and longing for meaning, depth and connection.

“There is a deep sadness when I witness a man that can’t recognize the emptiness he feels when he objectifies himself as a bank and truly believes he can buy love with things and status. It is painful to witness the betrayal when a woman takes him up on that offer. He doesn’t recognize that the [creation] of a half woman has contributed to his repressed anger and frustration of feeling he is not enough. He then may love no woman or keep many half women as his prize. He doesn’t recognize that it’s his submersion in the imbalanced warrior culture, where violence is the means of getting respect and power, as the reason he can break the face of the woman who bore him 4 four children. When woman is lost, so is man. The truth is, woman is the window to a man’s heart and a man’s heart is the gateway to his soul.

“Power and control will NEVER out weigh love. May we all find our way.”

Holy Goddess. Preach it, sister.

IS IT TOO SOON TO CARE ABOUT HOW OUR MEN ARE HURTING?

I don’t think it’s too soon to care about and listen to our men. I think nobody rises until we all rise, and we need our men right next to us as women stand up and say ENOUGH ALREADY. We can still undo the damage that has been done if we’re willing to do what Thordis and Tom dared to do together. We can all start listening to one another, rather than letting our righteous anger cause more harm through shaming, blaming, and demonizing, which separates rather than uniting the genders.

We must, instead, invite men back into the fold, invite them to join us in their Sacred Masculine strength, to pave the way with the power of the Divine Feminine like Thordis and Jada are doing, using their powerful voices and their open, compassionate hearts to stand for peace between the genders. If we can’t have truth and reconciliation — men listening to what hurts in women and women listening to what hurts in men, giving each other a chance to speak and be heard with our hearts wide-open — we will NEVER have peace on earth.

As the feminine rises, we cannot simply demonize and marginalize our men. Nobody rises unless we all rise together.

WE ARE ALL IN THIS TOGETHER.

We are in the midst of a massive collective transformation right now. It is a confronting and exciting time to be human, but this time demands us to open our hearts bigger than we ever have. We need a miracle, but I for one believe in miracles.

Now is the time when men need to listen to how much pain and trauma and devastation women feel when you objectify and abuse us. Women need to understand that our sick culture is at the root of this problem — that men are not inherently brutal, as this NY Times article The Unmistaken Brutality of the Male Libido mistakenly suggests.

I get that the man who wrote this NY Times article is trying to say, “WAKE UP! We need to talk about redefining healthy masculinity!” But it also disturbs me to suggest that male sexuality is inherently aggressive, violating, and brutal and that the male libido is something to contain, even fear. Many men are already threatened by men and prefer the company of women, and of course, women are violated by men all the time. The truth is that, with few exceptions, men are doing most of the killing and raping on the planet. So what is a kind-hearted, strong, ethical, conscious man to do? Become a woman?

WE NEED MEN IN THEIR DIVINE POWER AS ALLIES.

Men are afraid of their power because power leads to violence, and men are afraid of their desire because their libido leads to rape. But we don’t want men stripped of their power and their desire! Such men are impotent. How can the healthy masculine activate the compassionate protector archetype that will look out for the vulnerable if they are feminized men out of touch with their power and their desire?

We don’t need men to be women, but we do need men brave enough and strong enough in their power to stand up to brutalizing men and say THIS STOPS NOW. We need men who marry their power with their hearts and their integrity. We need those men to stand with the women and the female and male children who are sick and tired of being violated. We need men to call each other out, to refuse to buy into the program, to speak up when men get together and start objectifying women as if it’s some badge of masculinity to talk about someone’s nice rack or grab-able pussy.

For that matter, we need men to stop calling each other pussies, as if a woman’s genitalia is a sign of her inferiority and therefore an insult to a man’s masculinity. We need men to reckon with their own feminine energy, to honor their own compassion, nurturing, vulnerability, tribe-mentality, collaboration, and tenderness, right alongside the masculine qualities of strength, power, stillness, focus, desire, competition, and drive. Only when we heal the trust rift between the masculine and the feminine — in ourselves, in partnerships, in corporations, and in nations — will we come together in the power of our open hearts.

WE NEED TRUTH AND RECONCILIATION.

Guys, if you’ve hurt a woman because of how our culture conditioned you, please reach out and say you’re sorry. Do what it takes to make apologies and make amends, even if it’s really, really hard and requires seemingly impossible courage. Women, if someone has hurt you, try to ask yourself, “What had to happen to you to make you someone who could commit this horrific act? What’s it like to be you?” Don’t just assume the person is a monster. Protect yourself from sociopaths, of course. Speak up and demand consequences, of course. Don’t do the “spiritual bypass” and fall into blind compassion and neurotic tolerance, using your compassion as a way to avoid conflict or establish consequences. That just makes you vulnerable to more abuse. But don’t dehumanize your abuser either. Get really curious.

Imagine if our President actually apologized to the women he groped the way Tom Stranger bore witness to the pain he caused Thordis. It touched me that he lived in Australia. She lived in Iceland. To reconcile, they chose to meet in South Africa, where horrors occurred and truth and reconciliation were at least attempted.

What if those who are being accused of #MeToo violations were brave enough to sit down with the survivors like this man did, to sit with their pain, to hear their humanity, to feel their own pain and speak to what eats at them, to express what led them to behave that way in the first place? What if, instead of survivors and perpetrators, we could gather as humans who have all been tormented by a sick culture that dehumanizes women and presents them as something for a man’s pleasure, something he can just grope if he feels like it without regard for her humanity? What if we can actually cure the culture, rather than pointing fingers — blaming and shaming — which only makes people contract and perpetuates more abuse?

A CALL TO ACTION — TO THE DIVINE FEMININE AND SACRED MASCULINE IN US ALL…

Yes, women need to have a voice and speak their truth, but what if women could use our voices the way Thordis did here—as voices of fierce love, forgiveness, and reconciliation, not just showing compassion for herself, but compassion for the man at the mercy of a sick culture who — possessed by his conditioning — hurt her? What if men could stand up to protect the #MeToo women, to be compassionate protectors of the vulnerable? What if we could actually heal?

We are all in this together. We can do hard things with great love. Let’s do this, beloveds.

About the author:

Lissa Rankin, MD is a mind-body medicine physician on a grass roots mission to heal healthcare, while empowering you to heal yourself. She is the founder of the Whole Health Medicine Institute training program for physicians and healthcare providers, and the New York Times bestselling author of the books Mind Over Medicine: Scientific Proof That You Can Heal Yourself (2013), The Fear Cure (2014), and The Anatomy of a Calling(2015).

Lissa blogs at LissaRankin.com and created the online community HealHealthCareNow.com. She is also the author of several other books, a speaker, a professional artist, an amateur ski bum, and an avid hiker. She lives in the San Francisco Bay area.

Connect with Lissa on Facebook and Twitter, or visit LissaRankin.com.

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megjashi · 5 years ago

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Air pollution affecting the children

 What kind of work does The Children’s Embassy do? The First Children's Embassy in the World MEGJASHI is the oldest civic organization in the Republic of Macedonia to protect the rights of the child, established on 29 April, 1992 by Gordana Pirkovska Zmijanac and Dragi Zmijanac. Megjashi advocates and protects children's rights, stands for responsible parenthood and respect for the child's personality. Megjashi continuously works on the strengthening of the civil movement for children’s rights and functionality of the institutions in the best interests of the child. Embassy promotes peace activism and volunteerism, developing active citizenship based on the principle of nonviolence. With its activities Megjashi has contributed to the development and strengthening of the civic awareness for the children's rights. It has broken the silence of children's suffering, especially physical, sexual and economic abuse of the children, revealing many cases of abuse to the public and directly engaging in establishing effective mechanisms to protect the children. As a result of the extremely dedicated and hard work during its 27 years of existence, Megjashi has grown into a worldwide known and recognized organization for children’s protection and children's rights in general. In the previous period (1992-2019) the Embassy pursues its activity acting in the following areas: psycho-social, legal and other kinds of assistance to children who need help with a particular emphasis on the marginalized groups of children; monitoring of the children's rights and promotion of the rights of the child in the Republic of Macedonia and abroad; taking initiatives to promote the legislation to protect children in the Republic of Macedonia and its implementation, as well as activities for peace building and nonviolent conflict resolution. These domains remain of primary interest in the following period. [http://www.childrensembassy.org.mk/home.nspx]  What is your work concerning the topic of pollution? One of the first activities that First Children’s Embassy in the World Megjashi took concerning the pollution were urgent measures for air pollution legislative changes to reduce pollution. Since 2016 Megjashi took actions regarding this issue. It is crucial for Megjashi that the Members of the Parliament vote the legislative changes and reduce the permissible threshold of air pollution with dangerous particles. The Children's Embassy Megjashi requires the permissible limits of PM 10 and PM 2.5 to not exceed more than 75 micrograms per cubic meter and not as now when the limit is up to 200 and the government takes emergency measures when the situation is alarming. In the video below, you can see some of the demands that Megjashi was working on and asking for the government to took urgent measures regarding the air pollution. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ri54veT3wo0&t=27s&fbclid=IwAR0-d7kuuFxt4BSxDToQRqCb1xtBpplpjlmZ4T8JFuAEsp2maoy-Bi7btpw] Another work that Megjashi was actively working on was with teachers from elementary and high schools in order to raise the awareness about the issue of air pollution in the schools. Most importantly, during work with the professors, our goal is to coach the professors to take activities in the schools regarding the air pollution. Together with Eco Guerilla in Tetovo and the organization Majka I Dete, Megjashi participated in taking actions against the air pollution. Through many Facebook groups we were able to observe the work of the teachers and encourage each other on the network by sharing pictures or videos. Many activities in the schools appeared after the seminars that Megjashi organized. For example, in Debar the children together with the professor were asking for stations in order to measure the pollution since they were not able to check how much their city is polluted. And many more other activities like dance theaters, campaigns concerning the air pollution, march and boycotts. In the link below you can see some of the activities that Megjashi actively took. Another campaign that we made was together with Dvizenje za cist vozduh to raise awareness about the air pollution. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMXJqaKUSZw&feature=youtu.be&fbclid=IwAR3XtTqZeCUBQFpFcsDwbNzJ0UveLA9P_x5tOH58bs-4jl108tQVlMKNBG4] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKLu18udnmk&fbclid=IwAR2hGAkCmh4CL6VUfzw19Sc-0jhksmB_H7u2dZpotoO6ZhzRVGrayxpP-XE]  How is the pollution affecting the children of Skopje and Macedonia? Every second child is treated for respiratory diseases that are usually a direct consequence of polluted air. Air pollution, environment and nature pollution is a crime and for the consequences for the health of children should be responsible by all those who have directly contributed and are responsible for the situation. Children are most affected, especially in winter when the concentration of PM 2.5 and 10 particles is increased. Children are more sensitive than adults to indoor and outdoor air pollution because their lungs, brain and immune system are still developing, and their respiratory tract is more porous. Children in early childhood development are powerless to change anything. The Republic of Macedonia, as a signatory to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, is obliged to enable children to live and develop. Children have right to clean air. Children have right to a healthy environment. Air pollution is one of the major causes of child mortality. Allergies, asthma, bronchitis and many other respiratory diseases, these are just a few of the health consequences of children as a result of enormously polluted air. Air pollution is one of the major causes of child mortality. With pollution, children are deprived of their most basic right to life. The state should undertake something to protect the most vulnerable, children in the Republic of Macedonia. What is worrying, there is no safe level of pollution. Respectively, a high concentration of PM 10 and PM 2.5 micrograms per cubic meter is permitted. Air pollution affects not only children but also adults, about 3,500 people die every year in Macedonia due to diseases caused by polluted air, big industrial polluters should be detected and to be sanctioned. https://www.facebook.com/detskaambasadamegjashi/videos/275666143133383/  How is the organization helping these children? Despite the actions that we mentioned in the previous questions, we also urged the international community to help the struggle for life and solve the pollution problem. We also addressed to all members of the Committee on the Rights of the Child at the UN in Geneva and asked for help in resolving this situation of violation of the elementary rights of the child protected by both the Constitution of our country and the Convention on the Rights of the Child - the right to life. Unfortunately, the child's health is not a priority in Macedonia. When in conditions of high concentration of carcinogenic particles PM 10 and 2.5 micrograms per cubic meter and last all winter above the permitted 40 mg / m3 limit value according to European standards, what can you conclude? When the measuring stations show high thresholds of 200, 300, 400, 500 and more mg / m3 PM10 and 2.5 and last for the whole winter, we can conclude that the right to life of children is questioned! “We are here to raise our voice and say that we cannot do it any more like this,” Dragi Zmijanac, a representative of a children’s rights organization Megjashi, told a local television station covering the protest. Some studies have suggested that Macedonia’s reliance on coal power in particular is shaving years off of residents’ lives. “The seriousness of the number of sick children,” he added, “is too high, and not only the central government, but also the local self-government must take urgent measures — short-term and long-term — to save the children.” https://pulitzercenter.org/reporting/ancient-valleys-macedonia-pall-air-pollution  What are the typical consequences from pollution? While the report from the European Environment Agency shows that the number of people who die in Macedonia from the polluted air is 3500 people per year. As a direct consequence of the high doses of carcinogenic particles in the air in Macedonia, we have over 3 000 premature deaths. Polluted air is one of the biggest factors for child mortality and must be prevented immediately. Children are the most sensitive group because they have an organism in development and faster breathing, and thus faster introduction of contaminated substances in the body. Children are more vulnerable than adults of internal and external air pollution because their lungs, brain and immune system are still developing, and their respiratory tract is more dangerous. Every child has the right to life. The state must keep an eye on how children and young people can develop well. https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=72&v=FnFPviKuyFE&feature=emb_title  Do you see any benefits from joining the European Union regarding solving the pollution issue? What needs to be urgently done is legal changes to reduce the alarm threshold and activate emergency measures to save the lives of children in Macedonia. I think MPs must be mobile, require legal changes to reduce the high threshold of 200 mg / m3 to 40 mg / m3 permitted limit value, according to European standards. Lawmakers should require the threshold of information for PM10 particles to be 50 micrograms per cubic meter, and no higher than 75 micrograms per microgram per cubic meter, two days consecutively. The alert threshold should be set at 50 micrograms per cubic meter. The limit values that are the most stringent rules in the European Union legislation for air pollution levels define that the daily limit of the presence of PM 10 particles must not exceed 40 micrograms per cubic meter. There is no safe level of pollution in Macedonia.  Do you see any benefits from joining the European Union regarding children rights in Macedonia? Every child has right to life. The state must keep an eye on how children and young people can develop well. That is why, a one year ago, we formed a parliamentary lobby group composed of MPs from the Commissions for Labor and Social Policy and Education and Science, in order that Parliament as a central institution that can shape and implement laws that promote the rights of children, to actualize problems in the Parliament which are of vital importance to children, which are important for children, to urge the government and relevant segments of society to report of what is done first for the health of children and their rights and to advocate the interest and voice of the children. We set up a parliamentary lobby group for children's rights in order to facilitate the implementation processes of the Convention on the Rights of the Child in Macedonia, as well as to legally improve and implement the rights of children in practice. We are calling upon The Committee on the Rights of the Child to closely monitors implementation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child in the Republic of Macedonia and to urge the government to protect children life’s by overtaking measures for reduction of pollution and creation of enabling environment for realization of the children rights and potentials. The Republic of Macedonia, as a signatory of all international human rights protection documents, has an obligation to respect, protect and fulfil the human rights. This obligation requires the state to undertake appropriate legal, administrative, budgetary, judicial and other measures in the direction of the full realization of human rights. In that direction, we call upon the state to fulfill the obligations regarding respecting the fundamental right, THE RIGHT OF LIFE, introducing measures for the reduction of pollution that directly affect the health of people and their lives. Macedonia has perfect conditions for using renewable energy sources. It is necessary to accelerate with gasification, to abolish VAT for central heating, pellet stoves, to completely replace the buses with new electric vehicles or gas, free public transport in winter using an environmentally friendly bus and definitely stricter inspection of industry (A & B permits) and investment in filters.

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