#whether they own property in the uk

[maybeamiles]

You know your system is fucked when even MY DAD, who is very much a "look at both sides" kinda guy, agrees that it's discriminatory

Anyways the Uk's Guarantor system can go fuck itself, preferably at the bottom of a well.

[waves-against-a-cliff]

After the end - Post-apocalypse Omegaverse AU

Summary - You won't be cornered in your territory and that's final. You begin to make little presents for your trespassers should they dare to enter your woods. Meanwhile, the four alphas find something very interesting...

Tags - Omegaverse (duh), alpha/beta/omega dynamics, non traditional dynamics, all of the 141 are alphas, you're an omega. Eventual smut, dub-con, knotting, mating press, polyamory, alphas love alphas. 141 x reader. The reader is officially a bad ass

Prologue

You stared down at the nest you had created and suddenly felt disgusted and angry. These alphas have stepped onto your territory and made you react like this. Three years of near bliss, despite the struggles, gone. The anger rolled over you in waves, it boiled your blood to the point you felt hot all over your body.

No. You weren't about to cower in your cabin and let some stupid alphas wander all over your territory. You were going to do something about it. You marched back towards your living room and opened one of the closets on the side of the hallway. You grabbed the bag full of supplies and swung it over your shoulder then looked at the shotgun leaned against the wall.

You hesitated only for a moment before you grabbed it too. Even in the times before the world ended you hadn't been one for conventionality. You preferred to be alone on your own property living your own life. And no alpha or beta, whether back then or now, was going to take this from you. You shoved the extra ammunition into your pockets and unbarred your door.

The cold winter air nipped at your skin and distantly you could still smell their combined scents. You pulled stuffing from a torn apart pillow and stuffed it up your nose. Happy hunting indeed, you thought as you stepped off into your piece heaven that would become their hell.

"Hey captain," Gaz said as they wandered through the very small town. It had likely been abandoned for ages. The first thing Gaz had noticed was that the windows were smashed in but the doors boarded up. Then he noticed the marks, spray paint in different symbols meaning something or another. "I think this place has been completely stripped bare."

Price hummed thoughtfully and turned to look around at the other buildings. All of them in similar states of disrepair but all with symbols sprayed onto them. He turned to his team, and contemplated their next steps. "Do you think they might still be around?" Ghost spoke up finally.

Price glanced at his lieutenant. They had stuck together when the entire world had completely gone down. First the electricity and then a disease. It apparently didn't take much else to throw the world into chaos. People killed people all the time before but not even Ghost had been prepared for the level of depravity some people dove to. Kidnapping local omegas, killing betas or hunting alphas for sport. Blowing up buildings and ransacking stores.

They had all stuck together as a pack since that was what they had always done. They wandered from place to place and it had taken them a little over a year to make it back to the UK. Bonds grew stronger and their ruts continued. They were all each other's support. Price considered the facts in front of them.

"Negative. I don't think whoever did this is still around," Price said as he eyed the pharmacy. The only building not having been closed off or marked with an 'x'. "Soap, Gaz, go investigate the pharmacy, me and Ghost will try to find any other buildings not marked."

They wandered around the town for a bit with Gaz and Soap meeting back up not long after they had departed. "Over tae counter medicine like Advil but nae much else," Soap tossed Ghost the bottle who looked over it.

"Not expired yet. Good find."

"Wait," Gaz suddenly said and sniffed the air. Everyone paused, Gaz had the best nose of them all. Able to sniff out any scents even days old. He walked over to a telephone pole that had a red smear on it and sniffed with his nose almost on the old blood.

He felt his cock chub up his pants immediately at the scent. At first it smelled like sweat and dirt but underneath that was a tangy, sour then sweet like a granny smith apple or a green grape, scent. An unmistakable smell of omega.

Gaz turned to the three other alphas, "There's an omega around." He grinned.

Hehe I'm gonna have fun writing this

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[f1byjessie]

HE LIKES MY AMERICAN SMILE ━━ OP81. [REWRITE]

he may not be a london boy, but you love him all the same, and you’re about to learn the hard way that loving someone can be a wild ride.

( oscar piastri x sargeant!reader )

━━ part one.

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yourusername me and london boy have made so many memories here together and i’ll cherish them forever ❤️. i love this sport and i love the people i've met in this sport. i'll always love it and them, but sometimes you have to take a step back and set your sights on new horizons. that said, neither of us will be competing in any events this year— endurance or otherwise. london boy will stay in richmond and continue to receive the best care possible from people who have grown to love him as much as i do, and in the meantime, i'll start looking to those other horizons.

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user wishing you the best of luck!! we’ll miss seeing you and london boy, but we know this decision wasn’t made lightly and we hope whatever you do will make you just as happy as riding does!!

user london boy lives a more luxurious life than i could ever hope 

↳ user real like why am i jealous of a horse 😭😭

↳ user knowing how well these horses are treated? we should all be jealous

↳ user some of these horses have rain coats that cost more than my entire wardrobe combined… the day i learned that was not a fun day… 😔

user honestly only ever tuned in to watch you both

user the events won’t be the same without you!!!

user I’LL MISS YOU LONDON BOY

user take all the time you need to explore other options! you can love something and still get burnt out on it. sometimes taking that step away can be the decision that allows us to continue loving something instead of growing resentful towards it. do what you need to do to be happy! 🫶

↳ user this is such a good way to put it!!

↳ user THIS. i did competitive jumping for ten years and towards the end of that time i started seeing it more as a chore than the sport i used to be so passionate about. you absolutely CAN love something and still get burnt out on it. taking breaks is so important.

user i’m sure london boy will miss you but you do you girliepop! take a trip or go on an adventure!

user oh to be a girl riding her horse across the beach at sunrise 🥲

↳ user IKR?!? talk about dream life, she’s literally living out scenes that i’ve only ever seen in movies

↳ user it’s london boy’s world and we’re all just living in it

user wait does this mean no more horse content???

↳ user i mean she’s not getting rid of her horse or even outright retiring, she just won’t be riding competitively for 2023

user is she leaving the uk or smth?? bc she said other ppl will be looking after london boy?? i know nothing about horses guys i’m sorry

↳ user london boy will be staying at the stables as per her caption! he will be looked after by many trained professionals who will ensure he is properly fed, watered, exercised, and groomed each day! it’s actually very common for people to board their horses at a stable since horses often need large fields to graze and exercise in, and not a lot of people have big enough backyards or own property to be able to provide that themselves. whether she’s leaving the uk or not, we don’t know, but it definitely sounds like her training with london boy will be put on hold for the time being!

user miss girl we’ll always remember you and london boy as the greatest duo in endurance racing history

↳ user REAL REAL REAL

user does this have to do with her falling off a few months back??

↳ user it could, she did mention the encounter leaving her pretty shaken

↳ user yeah but the possibility of something like this happening is so high that a lot of riders have accepted it as an inevitable occurrence in their career

↳ user even still, that doesn’t change the fact that she could very well be traumatized or experiencing lingering side effects

↳ user guys!! speculation will do us no good!! if she wants to tell us, she will!!

user YOU KNOW I LOVE A LONDON BOY 🗣🗣🗣

logansargeant wanna trade one paddock for another?

There’s a sort of terrifying uncertainty that comes with breaking a long-standing routine.

It’s like a fucked-up sort of package deal— you stop following the methodized schedule you’ve meticulously upheld for years, and in exchange, you receive more time than you know what to do with and an overwhelming responsibility to fill it.

The only question is: with what?

The muscle memory lingers, and you suspect that it’ll take some time for your body to un-familiarize itself with a sleep schedule that you’ve religiously held on to for years, but there’s no demands to maintain any of it and that makes any sort of attempt at continuing to run through the motions feel entirely obsolete. You may instinctively wake up at the ass crack of dawn, but without the necessity of a horse relying on your punctuality to get him fed, watered, and turned out to the paddock, there’s nothing you can do beyond filling the morning with something until your internal clock catches the memo and decides to let you sleep in for once.

“You know, when I invited you to tag along with me,” Logan begins in lieu of a greeting when he opens the front door and sees you standing on the stoep of his apartment, clad in athletic wear and a pair of well-worn running shoes, “I was under the impression that we both understood that to mean the traveling to races part and not necessarily the pre-season training.”

“‘My dearest sister,’” you sarcastically quip back in a mockingly deep voice, feigning heartfelt sincerity and pressing your hand melodramatically to your chest. “‘How good it is to see you after so long! I would be absolutely delighted if you joined me on my morning run today.’”

Your twin brother shakes his head in exasperation, but through the facade of annoyance, you can recognize the hint of a smile tugging at the corners of his lips.

“Honestly, Logie,” You pretend to wipe a tear from the corner of your eye and add in a sniffle for extra flair, “you're too sweet. What would I ever do without you?”

“We saw each other a week ago at brunch,” he grumbles, reluctantly taking a step back from the door and allowing you to pass over the threshold into the warmth of the apartment and out of the winter’s frigid morning air.

“When?”

“Last Wednesday—”

“—did I ask? Oh! Boom! Gotcha!” You whoop out an exclamation of victory as you continue down the hall. “Gosh, I am four for four now. You gotta step up your game, Logie-bear, or this is gonna end in a miserable shut out for you.”

He heaves out a heavy sigh that carries with it twenty-two years of suppressed brotherly rage and the exhaustion that can only come from being reminded at every chance that he is, and always will be, a minute younger than you. “You're the bane of my existence, and I do sincerely hope you know this.”

“Aw, I love you too!”

You step into the small kitchen at the end of the hall. With the exception of a little potted cactus sitting on the windowsill— a housewarming gift from you— it looks nearly identical to how it was the last time you visited.

A month ago.

When he moved in.

There's a woven mat on the floor in front of the sink, an ashy green that contrasts nicely with the off-white cream color of the cabinets and laminate countertops. You can't really tell if Logan actually bought the mat, or if it came with the place, but it's cute nonetheless and serves as one of the few pops of color in the otherwise monochromatically beige apartment.

“I see that my cactus continues to reign supreme as the only individuality in this place,” you comment, glancing over your shoulder in time to see him appear in the doorway.

He shrugs at your words. “Yeah, well, you'd be surprised how busy you can get when you're preparing for everything you've ever dreamed about. No biggie.”

“Logan,” you turn to face him, “you'll do great. There are two other rookies on the grid—”

“And I'll be in the worst car out of all of them.”

“You don't know that,” you chide gently.

This side of Logan isn't unfamiliar to you— the anxiety and fear of failure. It's always existed, and you've known about it since the morning of his first kart race when he confided in you that he was so nervous he felt like he was going to be sick.

The insecurities surrounding his own skills have persisted and thrived with every new track, every new team, and every new series, and as you've grown alongside him you've found ways to challenge his self-doubt, but you've also learned to accept that there's only so much you alone can do.

You can debate it and challenge the self-deprecating thoughts all you want, but the voice in his head will always be there, no matter how quiet it occasionally becomes.

So you choose to drop the topic for now.

It's too early in the morning for an impromptu therapy session anyway.

You turn back around and scan the countertops until your eyes latch onto the container of pre-workout tucked away in the corner, nearly hidden amidst the mountain of vitamin and nutrient supplements.

“I thought it was part of Benny’s job to make sure you didn't have to use all this shit,” you comment, picking through the jars and eyeing them each with unapologetic distaste.

Logan reaches over your shoulder and plucks a packet of vitamin C tablets from your hand, “Sometimes these just work better.”

“Yeah, maybe if you don’t have a nutritionist being paid to quite literally curate a diet specifically to ensure that you don’t need to use these,” you gesture widely to the assembled mass of supplements. “But, last I checked, dear brother of mine, you do have a nutritionist— and a very good one at that— who would be horrified to learn you’re substituting real fruit for…” you squint down at the nutritional label of another one of the jars, but there’s very little that you recognize amidst the scientific jargon and long, five-syllable words, “little gummies that taste like fruit.”

He huffs, “Get your pre-workout or I'm leaving without you.”

“You wouldn't dare leave without me,” you grumble.

“I've done it before and I'll do it again,” he snipes, giving a brief yank on your ponytail and cackling when you swat behind yourself in futility.

There’s more he isn’t saying— there always is, nowadays— but you recognize the deflection for what it is. You want to claw him apart with questions and demand answers that bare every inch of his soul so you understand what he isn’t telling you and why he feels the need to keep it locked away even from you, but you know better than to keep pushing at something Logan clearly doesn’t want to talk about.

It makes you nostalgic for a time in your life when he’d sneak down from the top of the bunk bed after your parents had tucked you away for the night and slip under the covers with you, a well-loved stuffed bear hugged to his chest. He’d curl up beside you and you’d pull the blankets up to your chin and watch him with big, curious eyes until he’d whisper out into the darkness of your shared bedroom what he was worrying about.

More often than not it was a byproduct of a hyperactive imagination still plagued by the fears of childhood. Something about the space beneath your bed and— “What if there’s something down there? And the only way you can see it is by its glowing eyes? But what if it knows when someone is gonna look under the bed, so it closes its eyes so you can’t see the glow?” Or the curtains and— “You have to make sure they cover the whole window because what if you don’t and then something looks inside and it knows I’m not asleep and then it comes inside? I always hold really still and pretend to be asleep even when I’m not if the curtains aren’t closed.”

But sometimes it was about anything and everything else like the fox sitting in the bushes by the bus stop on the way home from school and whether or not it had water to keep it cool in the Florida heat, or the purple glitter pen Mrs. Moore used to grade his spelling test and how the girl sitting next to him had gotten her test graded with the green glitter pen, or— “I forgot my coat in Mr. Garrison’s class yesterday, and you went and got it for me and brought it to the car with you, and I didn’t say thank you, but I always feel bad when I leave my coat behind because what if it has feelings and felt really bad because it thought I was abandoning it, so thank you for getting my coat so it didn’t feel abandoned.”

But that was then and this is now.

You’re both adults, and you live in different apartments on different ends of the city, and you work different jobs that separate you by half the globe at times. There’s no more talk of foxes by bus stops or glitter pens, and certainly no more sentient coats with fears of abandonment.

When you look at Logan now, he isn’t wasting away, and really you owe it to him after you announced out of the blue a week ago that you weren’t just taking a break from competitive riding, but rather taking a break from riding as a whole. He didn’t press you on it then— still hasn’t pressed you on it despite having every right to do so. The least you can do now in return is respect the boundary he’s trying to set.

You mutter a few curses beneath your breath— words your mother would throw a fit over if she could hear you— and feign a scowl, but some of the tension in Logan’s shoulders has released and that's all you can ask for.

“If you leave me behind, I’ll leak a picture of your pathetic kitchen to the tabloids and let everyone tear apart your design choices,” you threaten, digging your knuckles into the tender spot of his arm where bicep meets shoulder and taking pride when he squirms away and beyond reach.

He flips you off. “You’re just jealous I have a cool cactus and you don’t.”

“Hey!” You give a lazy kick in his direction, but he sidesteps it easily with a laugh. “I gave you that cactus!”

“Tomato, tom-ah-to.” He flippantly waves his hand in your direction, laughing again at the indignant squawk you make. “Just hurry up and make your damn drink.”

As he makes his way out of the kitchen, presumably to grab his shoes, you unscrew the lid from the container and reach for the scoop.

Only to find it entirely empty.

“You asshole! There's nothing in here!”

Logan’s cackle echoes from another room.

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yourusername day 14 without london boy and i have officially succumbed to the boredom and willingly subjected myself to the presence of my arch nemesis (love you logie 🫶)

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logansargeant in my defense, you just showed up

user you could not PAY me to go out in this weather

user as a florida girlie myself, this is my nightmare

↳ user REAL

↳ user genuinely seeing this makes me so glad i live in a place where there’s no snow cuz yea, the view is pretty and all, but not even a gorgeous sunrise would make up for me freezing my ass off and having to wear seven layers just to keep the feeling in my fingers and toes

user i wish the most stressful part of my day was going for a morning run 😔

user calling logan her nemesis is so real i just know that man is a menace

↳ user the f2 clips of him and liam are proof enough

↳ user logan sargeant was a menace back in f3 💀 have you SEEN the prema videos with oscar and fred? bro is diabolical when he wants to be

↳ user i'm so excited for the chaos he'll bring to the grid this year

user the snow man is so cute!!

user “14 days without london boy” OH I AM ILL 😭😭😭

user ok but that view is gorgeousness

↳ user ikr?! winter sunrises are genuinely so pretty

user i’m still so confused as to why she isn’t riding anymore?? can someone pls explain

↳ user to be entirely honest, i’m not sure really what there is to explain. first and foremost, we aren’t owed any sort of explanation as to why she’s decided to take a step back from riding. it could be a personal decision, a career decision, or something else, but whatever it is we aren’t automatically entitled to it just because y/n has previously been very open and vocal about her and london boy’s training. second, she never actually said that she isn’t riding anymore. she said she’s taking a step back from competitive riding to focus on other things, and the “without london boy” part of her caption implies that she hasn’t seen him, but she could just be taking a prolonged break, or she could be focusing on something else that has prevented her from going to see him. but again, none of it is our business and she doesn’t owe us any further explanation to what she meant.

↳ user THIS THIS THIS!! as sad as i am to not have london boy on my feed, y/n is a grown adult with her own private life and we have to respect her decisions!! if or when she chooses to come forward about the specifics of her future plans and goals, then that’s great and i’ll continue to support her endeavors, but for the time being we all just have to be patient

user the selfie logan posted with you on his story was so cute!! 🥰

user she’s a runner she’s a track star

user i’ve missed the twin content!

↳ user me too!! i really hope that her taking a break from competitions (as much as i love london boy) will mean we get to see her actually going to more of logan’s races, especially now that he’ll be in formula 1!!

oscarpiastri if the rumours are to be believed, i look forward to getting to catch up at the races this year

━━ tags: @urfavnoirette @casperlikej @awritingtree @f1-is-lovely-33 @chasing-liberosis @405rry @aquangxl @bellezaycafe @peqch-pie @formulaal @chonkybonky @mess-is-my-aesthetic @flippingmyshit @peachiicherries @spacegirlstuff @myxticmoon @landosgirlxoxo @k-pevensie28 @moonypixel @lewisvinga @81vas @maih23 @thatoneembarrasingmoment @elz-xo @the-navistar-carol

━━ a/n: surprise! i've been working on this for a little while now (i got my wisdom teeth removed yesterday, so the time i've spent recovering has been spent polishing up the last few details for this first part) but here she is! as promised, the newly rewritten and revamped 'he likes my american smile'! i feel like i always say it, but the original genuinely holds such a special place in my heart because it was the first work i ever posted here on tumblr, so i'm really happy to take all that i've learned since then and apply it where i can in this new version. i really hope the changes and development is as loved by you all as it is by me, and that you all enjoy!

[onbearfeet]

Bloodstone Manor Location Masterpost

Okay, since the next bit of Monster Mash is gonna have to happen at/near Bloodstone Manor and Ted needs to go for a walk in the woods nearby, where do we think it is? The US and UK are the leading candidates in the fandom, but I need to pick a spot so my characters can get the fuck out of Ohio. My money is on the US, but I'm open to counterpoints.

Things to bear in mind:

1. Ulysses had a British accent. Elsa's accent is posh British. Verussa had an American accent, with some Broadway Mid-Atlantic that could suggest fancy New England OR just putting on airs. It's entirely possible one of the couple moved to be with the other, but that doesn’t settle which side of the ocean it happened on. Elsa's accent could be from a UK childhood OR a UK boarding school OR a choice to emulate her mother and annoy Verussa.

2. The house is old--or at least full of old stuff--but there's something of a history of Europeans bringing their weird-ass shit across the Atlantic and building absolutely batshit mansions in the US. Probably because there's more open space for it here.

3. The establishing shot of the rotunda shows it in hilly or mountainous terrain, with what looks like pine forest around it, and it sits on a parcel that is either big enough or far enough from neighbors that no one expects any outside response to roars, screams, explosions, etc. Either there's no one around to hear it or people REALLY mind their own business.

4. Of the hunters who make it to the funeral, one has a Scottish accent, two have American or Canadian accents, and one has what sounds like a South Korean accent (although apparently the actor was born in Argentina and moved to the US in the 90s, and I'm going off the many Korean-American voices I've heard at work, so "Korean-American" might be a better descriptor). Those are the people with connections to Ulysses and the time, resources, and motivation to show up to wherever this is. That suggests the location is most accessible to these people and not others. (Yes, I know, I've left out Jack's accent, but he was going to travel to wherever Ted was anyway; he had enough motivation that distance alone wasn't going to stop him.) North America has the numbers here; it's more likely that one Scot got on an international flight than that two North Americans did.

5. The guards are wearing "tacticool" BDUs and carrying some kind of zappy sticks or stun batons. The lack of guns is interesting and may indicate a location with stricter gun laws than the US ... or just that Verussa didn't want to accidentally kill her captive and that a lot of monsters are bulletproof anyway. The guards look and move a hell of a lot like an American tactical team and sound vaguely American when they're screaming. Would Verussa import guards, or hire local muscle? My money is on the latter.

6. Ulysses was old as balls. In the comics, he was positively ancient, and the opening narration implies he was old enough to be wearing pre-20th-century clothes in a flashback. He's definitely old enough to have gotten his hands on a nice piece of property in the UK, but also rich enough to have just bought a mountain in the US. He was also around for the last century-plus of history, and that may have affected his choice of headquarters. If the original Bloodstone Manor got bombed out during World War 2, for example, he might have moved to a less bomb-filled location.

7. Corpse Muppet! Verussa found somebody willing to turn her husband's remains into a Cryptkeeper animatronic. I have no idea whether that's a thing in the UK, but there are definitely enough weirdo taxidermists, puppeteers, and general pieces of work here that someone would take Verussa's money to do it. There are even subcultures here that traditionally sit the corpse up at the table for the wake, so it might not even be that weird to the right professional.

8. Flaming Tuba Guy is available for the funeral. Real Flaming Tuba Guy is American and takes his flaming tuba to Burning Man. I have no idea whether the UK is also a likely place to find a dude with a flaming tuba, but I have difficulty imagining a smooth process for getting a combination brass instrument/flamethrower through customs. I don't think there's a lot of international Flaming Tuba action unless private jets get involved. Wherever Flaming Tuba is from, I'm betting that's the jurisdiction where Bloodstone Manor is.

9. Jack makes it to Bloodstone Manor. Now, I've talked before about his being highly motivated and distance not being an obstacle for him, but if we assume he didn't use a magic portal or something (big if, I know), he had to go by land, sea, or air, and that takes time, no matter how motivated he is. Jack is centuries old, has a history of involvement with violence, and speaks with a Mexican accent. Wherever the Manor is, a dude matching that description was able to get there in time without setting off a ton of international alerts. The fact that Jack is as old as he is AND unknown to the hunters despite being a werewolf suggests that he prefers to keep a low profile, and by now he's practiced at it. He wouldn't want to leave a paper trail, especially when he's on a rescue mission that he knows will likely involve killing people. (I know he doesn't WANT to kill anybody, but the odds of him and Ted getting out of there with a zero body count were always slim. And he brought a bomb in his pocket.) Between his money and his accent, Jack would have an easier time moving around undetected in North America; he could reach a North American Manor by car rather than having to smuggle himself on a boat, charter a private plane (with a flight plan!), or go through customs at Heathrow or wherever. Not that he wouldn't risk getting on SHIELD's radar to save Ted, but if the hunt happened soon after Ted's capture, Jack would be more likely to physically reach the Manor in time if it were in North America.

10. Ted! Ted is at the funeral, obviously. In the comics, Ted canonically lives in the Everglades and honestly that's the best place for him. Verussa would have to have Ted transported from Florida to wherever the Manor is. All the logistical problems of moving Jack across an ocean are magnified in moving TED across an ocean. Again, it's much easier to move him within North America, which I'd consider a point in favor of a North American Manor. If the Manor were in the UK, wouldn't Verussa have gone for a victim based closer to home?

11. Sushi. "Let's do sushi; I owe you that." Apparently Jack and Ted have a history with sushi. I have absolutely no idea how common sushi restaurants are in the UK, but on the west coast of North America, you can pretty much throw a stick and hit one. (I know this because I moved last fall, and one of my first priorities in the new place was Find The Good Local Restaurants. Google was like OH, YOU WANT SUSHI?! HERE ARE TWENTY PLACES. Seriously, it's almost as common as pizza, at least in California.) I assume the boys aren't heading into a major urban center for food after their escape, so wherever Bloodstone Manor is, Jack thinks he can find a rural, exurban, or suburban sushi restaurant within a couple hours' travel (close enough that he can go, pick up their order, and make it back to Ted before raw fish goes funky). Sushi restaurants, at least in the western US, tend to be run by East Asian immigrants--part of the larger culture of immigrants starting restaurants within the first or second generation of arriving here. For stupid racist reasons, most East Asian immigration to the US took place after 1965, so there are a lot of sushi restaurants here that were established in or after the 1980s. Sushi restaurants also tend to be more common in coastal regions here, presumably because REALLY fresh ocean fish get more expensive and harder to acquire farther inland. Jack proposing sushi, if he and Ted are sitting on a log in the US, suggests they're somewhere near a coast, in a region with a sizable post-1965 East Asian immigrant population. (BTW, the reason I keep saying "East Asian" instead of "Japanese" is because a LOT of these restaurants in my area are run by Korean families, more rarely Chinese or Vietnamese ones. I've been in exactly one sushi restaurant here that was run by a Japanese family, and it was 40 years old.) Of course, I don't know shit about the takeout culture of the UK; maybe Yorkshire is full of sushi restaurants or something.

Conclusions.

Between the geography, the accents, the material culture, and the logistics, I think the balance of probability suggests that Bloodstone Manor is in North America, most likely the United States. There are multiple hilly or mountainous regions with pine forests near coasts, close enough to centers of East Asian immigration that the boys can reliably get their sushi.

So with all that in mind ...

[supremechancellorrex]

Far right rioters honestly think they can justify attacking and assaulting random POC citizens across the UK. They think they have a right to set fire to streets, cafes, shops, hotels and libraries all over the country. That they have the right to hurt people who had nothing to do with crime at Southport just because of their religion and/or skin colour. Apparently we all know each other in their view, apparently all brown people are guilty for the actions of a murderer 99.9 percent of us didn't know existed until just more than a week ago when the Southport murders happened. So now the far right block traffic in places like Hull and Middlesborough and demand to know whether drivers are "White and English", and drag random POC people out of their cars to beat them bloody. Far right thugs stab an Asian man at a train station in Liverpool, disfigure a POC boy's face as well as hospitalised a middle-aged man in Belfast, beat up random black men just going about their daily business, do arson attacks against buildings full of people, yes, human beings who feel pain, have lives and are each individuals.

These far right riots are just full of Nazis and even more pathetic a lot of them are too cowardly to admit it.

Oh, and to top it off, they further traumatised the classmates of the poor girls murdered in Southport by bringing further violence outside their windows. The murderer was of Christian origin, but that didn't stop them from blaming all Muslims, setting fire to streets, attacking mosques, throwing bricks at police and running rampant with property damage that effected everyone there. One wonders where this fire was when a white immigrant killed a black boy in Hainault, or when that white crossbow killer killed 5, including a toddler, in Plymouth. People will riot in Plymouth over the terrible actions of a black murderer in another town, but not a white one in their own. Sums up how it's not about justice or children or even really immigration with the far right, just skin colour.

[darkmaga-returns]

By now, we are all aware of the plans of the mad scientists and billionaires to cover (CO2 absorbing) pasture and crop land with onshore wind turbines and solar plants. We are also aware of the intent to remove livestock – cattle, sheep, pigs and chickens – so that we ear bugs and ay land not polluted with solar panels and wind turbines is returned to nature for “rewilding”. We have seen how, in the UK, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds is a huge sponsor of wind turbines that kill birds.

Here is an article that highlights the continuing war on farmers in the UK – via the inheritance tax that taxes unrealised capital gains – forcing the farms to be sold if there is insufficient cash to pay the inheritance tax calculated by bureaucrats.

Pay particular attention to the verbiage here:

“Inheritors will have to pay 20% of the value of the agricultural and business property above £1million. Having tax exemptions currently costs "about £1bn a year for taxpayers", according to Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Darren Jones.”

“Taxation exemption costs…”!!! Hey Mr Jones, it’s not your effing money! What you are doing is not “closing an exemption”, it is imposing a tax that did not previously exist! The argument here s that “society” is being cheated by people who have accumulated wealth in the value of farms – regardless of the ups and downs of the land owned by the farm or whether the value is in livestock or solar panels/wind turbines!

All taxation is theft. No money paid to the State is the State’s by right – it is a privilege granted by voters.

In my view, VAT is a tax imposed on the country in order for it to join the EU. The UK is no longer in the EU, ergo, VAT should be abolished. It acts as a trade tariff for imports and has increased the cost of living by its percentage rate.

Mind you, it is also my view that government spending, especially on health, needs to be reduced by at least half and that taxation should be simplified to abolish ALL customs and excise duties, tobacco or alcohol taxes, or road taxes, TV license fees and there should be a flat corporate and income tax rate of 15% with NO ALLOWANCES. Vote for me!

[theholmwoodfoundation]

THE HOLMWOOD FOUNDATION PILOT EPISODE CAST/CREW - PART THREE

GEORGIA COOK - CO-WRITER AND CO-PRODUCER

Georgia Cook is an illustrator and scribe-award nominated writer from London. She has written for publications such as Baffling, Vastarien Lit, and Flame Tree press, as well as the Doctor Who range with Big Finish. Her Doctor Who Novel, Ruby Red, is currently available from Penguin books. She frequently writes and narrates for various horror anthology podcasts such as 'Creepy', 'The Other Stories', and 'The Night's End'. She can be found on twitter at @georgiacooked and on her website at https://www.georgiacookwriter.com/

FIO TRETHEWEY - CO-WRITER AND CO-PRODUCER

Fio Trethewey is a writer and artist known for their love of Doctor Who, Arthurian Legend and 80s cult classics. Alongside working for the Lancet as a Deputy Operations Manager he has written a variety of audio dramas and short stories for Big Finish Productions for their Doctor Who box sets, most recently writing for the Gallifrey War Room Series both ‘The Last Days of Phaidon” (2022), “Transference” (2023) and The Twelfth Doctor Chronicles finale "You Only Die Twice.' Fio has also contributed their prose work to various anthologies including Overdue: Mystery, Adventure, and the World’s Lost Books, Shadows Over Avalon Volume 2 and Sockhops and Seances for 18thWall Productions. Lastly, as a writer and artist to charity anthologies and raised money on a charity drawing stream for FareShare UK back in October 2020 raising $4,762.

KATHARINE ARMITAGE - SCRIPT EDITOR

Katharine is a writer, script editor and director in drama and comedy. Most recently she directed new Radio 4 sitcom 'Tom and Lauren Are Going OOT!' and wrote scripts including 'The Beautiful Game' and 'Nowhere, Never' for Big Finish's Doctor Who audio dramas.  She also wrote and directed an adaptation of 'Dracula', back in 2017, so was delighted to return to the Count's world in working on 'The Holmwood Foundation'.

BENJI CLIFFORD - SOUND DESIGNER/ ENGINEER

Benji is a sound designer, musician, and presenter from the UK who specialises in post-production audio design. Whether creating cinematic multi-cast productions or intimate storytelling through audiobooks, Benji ensures that you get the highest quality, professional-sounding production. Throughout his time as a sound designer, Benji has worked on many famous properties such as BBC's Doctor Who and Torchwood, ITV's iconic Thunderbirds, Captain Scarlet and Stingray, as well as cult tv revivals such as Terry Nation's Survivors, Space 1999, Adam Adamant Lives and Blake's 7, to name a few. Using the latest industry-standard equipment, software, and a fully loaded sound effects library consisting of thousands of recordings, Benji delivers a clean and contemporary sound regardless of your budgetary requirements. In addition to working in his own studio, Benji has extensive experience engineering in some of London's busiest recording studios. He has also helped many companies and productions continue working during remote working restrictions, ensuring high quality can be achieved even in less-than-ideal environments. Since 2017, Benji has co-hosted the weekly Big Finish Podcast alongside Nicholas Briggs. This podcast has a worldwide reach with thousands of listeners, and he has also performed it live across the UK and in the USA.

PART ONE: HERE

PART TWO: HERE

[duchessofostergotlands]

Hi, I have some hypothetical questions… I have a fictional royal family that I made up and like to write for, I also like to base things as close to reality as possible, so in regards to this questions I would like someone’s opinion (and just to mention here, Iovee the podcast, is my favorite thing to listen to when I’m at my lunch break, I’m excited for the nexts episodes!!!)

1) Do you think is possible for a foreign monarch (just for exemple: Denmark, Sweden or any other monarchy) to inherit a propriety in the UK?

(for context: my monarch great-grandmother was a British aristocrat and she married into my royal family, but she was the only surviving daughter, so she inherited the property and all, but not the title, that became extinct after her fathers death (still trying to figure it out if it’s possible for a woman to inherit the propriety in the 1920s). But let’s say she inherited Chatsworth house, do you think it’s possible for a foreign royal to keep the estate and use as a form of income?

And 2) some monarchies, like the Swedish Royals keep their jewelry in a foundation, if hypothetically, the monarchy was abolished who would keep the jewelry?

Hello :) Thank you for your lovely feedback on the podcast. So nice to hear that people are enjoying it!

So to answer the first question, I can't see why not. Carl Gustaf inherited Bertil and Lilian's home in France which isn't exactly the same but it's a monarch inheriting overseas property. Some countries might require you to tell the government but that would be the case any time anyone inherits something or generates income from something. As for the situation in the 20s, women were inheriting property long before the 1920s. I'm reading a book about women in the 17th century and there are references to them inheriting property in that! It was legally more complex and less likely for all sorts of reasons I won't get into, but it happened.

In terms of the second question, theoretically you can dissolve a Foundation. You'd have to check the governance documents and the laws in different countries but I'd guess the pieces go back into private ownership by the royals. However, I don't think the royals could dissolve the Foundation themselves, it would have to be the board of directors. But to be honest I don't think it really matters whether it's a Foundation or not. Let's look at Greece for a moment. The Greeks were somehow able to get their jewels out of Greece when they were deposed but I'm actually going to side step over to property. Constantine had personal ownership of a place called Tatoi Palace. The Greeks fled in 1967 and then in 1973 the government officially confiscated Tatoi and other properties (and all moveable properties so that would have included any jewels left behind). A lot of other stuff happened and the status of the properties changed but in the 90s they confirmed their stance that the property no longer belonged to Constantine. He eventually took the Greek government to the European Court of Human Rights to contest this. They ruled the property had belonged to the royal family privately but that the government's decision to seize it had been within Greek law - in most countries governments can seize property under certain circumstances - and that actually with one exception every new Republic had confiscated the private property of their deposed monarchs because it was seen to be in the public interest to do so. In the end the Greeks got a financial settlement but it was a fraction of what they wanted. I know it's not exactly related to your question but what I'm trying to show is that if a royal family has reached a point where they are losing their throne, the country is upending their entire system of governance, all bets are off. There's every possibility that their privately owned assets would be seized and legal grounds would be found to make that possible. So it would really be a case of negotiation and whether they can get direct access to the jewels quickly enough.

[pfhwrittes]

Bless you for offering to help us non-uk people if I could manifest a plate of cookies on your nearest flat surface I would. (But I'll settle for sending you something over Kofi)

Anyways, 2 probably dumb questions but. How frequent are fences around like manor or older houses is it even a thing? Does Waterstones have really tall bookcases where they might store overstock on an upper shelf?

Ok love you bye enjoy the sun, I'll be hiding from the deadly laser as I burn like the cave dwelling bog hag I am.

hi friend! it's my pleasure to help you. it really is! (also i just found your other ask from a few days ago buried at the bottom of my askbox and i am cringing at myself for forgetting to reply.)

(also ahhhhhhhh! thank you, that is very kind of you!)

there are NO dumb questions, i promise. you don't know what you don't know. and hopefully i can fix that for you.

so firstly, it depends on the era of the house, who owned it, whether or not the land around the house is still owned by the same family, and the condition of the house. i recognise this is probably a DEEPLY unhelpful answer BUT you can assume that in most cases, yes there will be some kind of fence/hedge to mark the boundary of property. you're waaaay less likely to see a huge well maintained wall around older manor houses because of the laws we have regarding the preservation and protection of historical houses and lands. that's more of a nouveau-riche thing to have giant walls and obvious signage to say "TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED". (in my experience it's very easy to causally wander onto the grounds of the local gentry's property and get yelled at by a man wearing tweed and walking a brace of labradors. oxfordshire is a special place.)

also, in most cases, manor houses have a vast amount of land attached to them. and i mean vast. for each manor house you can safely assume that the family that was "gifted" the house by whichever reigning monarch at the time has or had control of the local village, at least two farms, and a church.

secondly, my ex-stockroom person eyeball just twitched violently at the thought of unsafe stock practices. in practice, the answer should be a categorical no. books (as in, in their multiples) are heavy as fuck and should never be stocked/overstocked at height. ever.

in reality, i'm sure that somewhere out there, there are unsafe stock practices happening and it's making my palms itch at the thought. honestly, it depends on the size of the store, the stockroom, the diligence of management and of staff members to ensure safe working practices. health and safety laws were written in the blood spilled of our not so distant ancestors and you will learn that when a book avalanche lands on your head and causes a concussion. or when a customer gets bonked on the head and complains to management so you have to fill out waaaaay too much paperwork.

(to the man in B&Q who got doused in forest green fence paint, i'm sorry that happened to you but in my defence, i wasn't the one to stock that shelf. i was trying to fix the issue, i promise.)

[ingek73]

Courtier demanded assurance king could not be prosecuted under new Welsh law

Palace official secured assurance under archaic custom that requires UK parliaments to get consent of monarch to draft bills

Rob Evans, Severin Carrell and David Pegg

Thu 11 Apr 2024 06.00 CESTShare

Royal courtiers privately put pressure on the Welsh government to ensure that King Charles could not be prosecuted for rural crimes under a new law that ministers had drawn up, documents reveal.

The elected minister in the Welsh government who is its chief legal adviser was “not happy” that the king was to be given the special exemption from prosecution but agreed to it last year.

A Buckingham Palace official phoned the Welsh government to secure the assurance under an archaic custom that requires UK parliaments to obtain the consent of the monarch to draft bills before they can be implemented.

Under the mechanism, ministers notify the royal family of specific clauses in draft laws that may affect their personal wealth, their private property or their public functions. The ministers ask the monarch to approve the laws before they can be passed.

Investigations by the Guardian have shown that the late queen used her privileged access to draft legislation to secure changes that protected her private interests or reflected her opinions. In one recent example, her lawyers lobbied Scottish ministers in 2021 to change a draft law to exempt her private land from a major initiative to cut carbon emissions.

The use of the consent mechanism has been criticised as “undemocratic”. It has been in force in Westminster since the 1700s and has been extended to the Scottish and Welsh parliaments.

During the queen’s 70-year reign, she vetted more than 1,000 draft laws before they were approved by elected politicians. Those included bills that affected the her personal property such as her privately owned estates in Balmoral and Sandringham.

The mechanism has continued seamlessly into the reign of Charles. Ministers in Westminster, Scotland and Wales have been required to obtain his consent to 20 laws since he came to the throne in September 2022.

Buckingham Palace refused to say whether the king had asked for any changes to these laws before approving them. One was a bill that was formulated by the Welsh government to reform agricultural practices.

On 1 June last year, the Welsh government noted in an internal memo that its lawyers “had been contacted by Buckingham Palace officials who have sought an assurance that Welsh ministers will take into account conventions regarding prosecuting the crown when making regulations under this bill”.

In an email the following day, Welsh officials noted that Mick Antoniw, the Welsh government’s counsel general – the equivalent of the attorney general in Westminster – was “not happy with the exclusion”. However, he “recognises the ongoing convention and therefore” agreed to it.

This was a reference to an ill-defined convention under which criminal and civil proceedings cannot be brought against the monarch as head of state. The monarch has been given personal immunity from swathes of British law, ranging from animal welfare to workers’ rights.

However, an investigation by the Guardian has previously highlighted the extent to which this practice gives the monarch immunity for his conduct as a private citizen, affording protection to the king’s privately owned assets and estates.

More than 30 laws stipulate, for example, that police are barred from entering the privately owned Balmoral and Sandringham estates without the king’s permission to investigate possible crimes, including wildlife offences and environmental pollution. No other private landowner in the country is given such legal immunity.

In the case of last year’s Agriculture (Wales) Act, the monarch was exempted from regulations relating to the marketing of agricultural products, the disposal of carcasses and the disclosure of information to the Welsh state. Police are also unable to gain automatic entry to the king’s private property portfolio under that part of the act.skip past newsletter promotion

Do you have information about this story? Email rob.evans@theguardian.com, or (using a non-work phone) use Signal or WhatsApp to message +44 7721 857348.

According to Buckingham Palace, the royal household rang the Welsh government to ensure that “as a matter of legal correctness” the monarch could not be prosecuted under the act.

A palace spokesperson said the convention had to be maintained as the draft act contained a particular type of legislation that would not rule out the possibility of a prosecution.

The spokesperson added: “At no point were any objections raised by the Welsh government, either formally or informally.”

A Welsh government spokesperson said: “The immunity of the monarch from prosecution is a long-established principle.” They declined to comment further.

Charles approved the bill on 20 June 2023, according to the documents released under the Freedom of Information Act. The documents do not specify which of his properties would be affected by this act.

Other laws which have been screened by Charles under the consent mechanism include legislation relating to the rents that UK landowners can charge mobile phone companies for putting up masts on their land and the management of Scottish private trusts. Trusts are widely used by the Windsors and can help the rich to shield their assets from public scrutiny or tax.

Charles gave his permission to a Scottish act that froze the rents for tenants in private properties and a Westminster act that required landlords to produce an electrical certificate in their rented homes. Charles rents out more than 300 homes across his Balmoral and Sandringham estates.

The palace spokesperson said: “King’s consent is a parliamentary process and His Majesty has granted consent on each occasion it has been requested by government.”

[voidami]

Palestine History and resources.

I didn't add absolutely everything I could have because it would of been too much, just a generalization and resources to help anyone needing to learn or give resources to. feel free to discus, critique or add anything you find relevant.

Prior to the 19th century the region of Palestine experienced 401 years of relative peace from 1517-1917. And everything prior to that is largely irrelevant to the modern issue.

Late 19th Century:

In the 1880s, the community of Palestinian Jews, known as the Yishuv, amounted to three percent of the total population. In contrast to the Zionist Jews who would arrive in Palestine later, the original Yishuv did not aspire to build a modern Jewish state in Palestine.

From 1882 onward, thousands of Eastern European and Russian Jews began settling in Palestine; pushed by the anti-Semitic persecution and pogroms they were facing in the Russian Empire, and the appeal of Zionism.

After the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire (1517-1914), the British occupied Palestine as part of the secret Sykes-Picot treaty of 1916 between Britain and France to divvy up the Middle East for imperial interests.

1895-onward- Theodor Herzl: Herzl, an Austrian journalist, is considered the father of modern Zionism. He advocated for the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Argentina, Uganda or ultimately Palestine, with what he called transfer (ethnic displacement). On the surface he was doing this to address rising anti-Semitism in Europe but with further reading of his intentions it was more a selfish power grab through a colonial settler project with little concern for "the Jewish question" other than what it could do for him. E.G." I could accept a mass request from the little Jews to lead them out only if all the governments concerned asked me to, promised me their sympathetic cooperation, and gave me guarantees for the peaceful completion of the enormous task, just as I would give them guarantees for an exodus without economic ill-effects. (I don’t know whether I should have this printed in Roman type)." -One such example among many.

In his Diary everything is painted out in detail of his attempts to get huge loans and what he plans to do with the power he gains.

Theodor Herzl, wrote: "We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it any employment in our own country. The property-owners will come over to our side. Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly. June 12th 1895 Diary Entry"

Herzl was suggesting that two possible Zionist solutions to the problem of a Palestinian majority living in Palestine — separation and transfer — were not necessarily alternatives but rather could be mutually reinforcing. Not only that: he believed, if they were used together, the process of ethnic cleansing could be made to appear voluntary, the choice of the victims. It may be that this was both his most enduring legacy and his major innovation to settler colonialism.

The Complete Diaries Of Theodor Herzl - https://archive.org/stream/TheCompleteDiariesOfTheodorHerzl_201606/TheCompleteDiariesOfTheodorHerzlEngVolume1_OCR_djvu.txt

Early 20th Century: Balfour Declaration (1917): Written in 1917 by then UK foreign secretary, Lord Arthur Balfour, the Declaration signed away the land of Palestine to the Zionist colonial project. By giving their support to Zionist goals in Palestine, the British hoped they could shore up support among the significant Jewish populations in the US and Russia for the Allied effort during WWI. They also believed the Balfour Declaration would secure their control over Palestine after the war.

Between 1922 and 1935, the Jewish population rose from nine percent to nearly 27 percent of the total population, displacing tens of thousands of Palestinian tenants from their lands as Zionists bought land from absentee landlords. Leading Arab and Palestinian intellectuals openly warned against the motifs of the Zionist movement in the press as early as 1908. With the Nazi seizure of power in Germany between 1933 and 1936, 30,000 to 60,000 European Jews arrived on the shores of Palestine.

In 1936, Palestinian Arabs launched a large-scale uprising against the British and their support for Zionist settler-colonialism, known as the Arab Revolt. The British authorities crushed the revolt, which lasted until 1939, violently; they destroyed at least 2,000 Palestinian homes, put 9,000 Palestinians in concentration camps and subjected them to violent interrogation, including torture, and deported 200 Palestinian nationalist leaders. In 1944, several Zionist armed groups declared war on Britain for trying to put limits on Jewish immigration to Palestine at a time when Jews were fleeing the Holocaust. The Zionist paramilitary organizations launched a number of attacks against the British – the most notable of which was the King David Hotel bombing in 1946 where the British administrative headquarters were housed; 91 people were killed in the attack.

In early 1947, the British government announced it would be handing over the disaster it had created in Palestine to the United Nations and ending its colonial project there. On November 29, 1947, the UN adopted Resolution 181, recommending the partition of Palestine into Jewish and Arab states.

Quotes: Before May 15, some of the most infamous massacres had already been committed; the Baldat al-Sheikh massacre on December 31, 1947, killing up to 70 Palestinians; the Sa’sa’ massacre on February 14, 1948, when 16 houses were blown up and 60 people lost their lives; and the Deir Yassin massacre on April 9, 1948, when about 110 Palestinian men, women and children were slaughtered.

August 1937, "transfer" was a major subject of discussion at the Twentieth Zionist Congress in Zurich, Switzerland. Alluding to the systematic dispossession of Palestinian peasants (fellahin) that Zionist organizations had been engaged in for years, David Ben-Gurion, who would become Israel's first prime minister in 1948, stated: " You are no doubt aware of the [Jewish National Fund's] activity in this respect. Now a transfer of a completely different scope will have to be carried out. In many parts of the country new settlement will not be possible without transferring the Arab fellahin." He concluded: "Jewish power [in Palestine], which grows steadily, will also increase our possibilities to carry out this transfer on a large scale."

In June 1938, Ben-Gurion told a meeting of the Jewish Agency: "I support compulsory transfer. I don't see anything immoral in it."

In December 1940, Joseph Weitz, director of the Jewish National Fund's Lands Department, which was tasked with acquiring land for the Zionist enterprise in Palestine, wrote in his diary: There is no way besides transferring the Arabs from here to the neighboring countries, and to transfer all of them, save perhaps for [the Arabs of] Bethlehem, Nazareth and Old Jerusalem. Not one village must be left, not one [bedouin] tribe. And only after this transfer will the country be able to absorb millions of our brothers and the Jewish problem will cease to exist. There is no other solution.

1948 Arab-Israeli War (Plan Dalet & Nakba (Catastrophe) ):Creation of Israel: Israel declared independence, leading to a war with surrounding Arab states. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were expelled, leading to mass displacement and refugee crisis.

Details of Plan Dalet On March 10, 1948, Zionist political and military leaders, including Ben-Gurion, met in Tel Aviv and formally adopted Plan Dalet (or Plan D). The operational military orders specified which Palestinian population centers should be targeted and laid out in detail a blueprint for their forcible depopulation and destruction. It called for: Mounting operations against enemy population centers located inside or near our defensive system in order to prevent them from being used as bases by an active armed force. These operations can be divided into the following categories: Destruction of villages (setting fire to, blowing up, and planting mines in the debris), especially those population centers which are difficult to control continuously Mounting search and control operations according to the following guidelines: encirclement of the village and conducting a search inside it. In the event of resistance, the armed force must be destroyed and the population must be expelled outside the borders of the state. The Haganah (soon to be Israeli army) launched military operations under Plan Dalet at the beginning of April 1948. Although attacks by Zionist forces against Palestinian population centers actually began a few days after the UN Partition Plan was passed on November 29, 1947, with the adoption of Plan Dalet expulsions accelerated and became systematic, marking a new phase in the conflict in which Zionist and then Israeli forces went on "the offensive," in the words of Israeli historian Benny Morris. Following Israel's establishment on May 14, 1948, the new Israeli government set up an unofficial body, the "Transfer Committee," to oversee the destruction of Palestinian towns and villages or their re-population with Jews, and to prevent displaced Palestinians from returning to their homes. In a report presented to Ben-Gurion in June 1948, the three-man committee, which included the JNF's Weitz, called for the "destruction of villages as much as possible during military operations."

Further reading: https://imeu.org/article/plan-dalet

Results-

By the time the state of Israel was declared on May 14, 1948, more than 200 Palestinian villages had already been emptied as people fled in fear or were forcibly expelled by Zionist forces, and approximately 175,000 Palestinians had been made refugees. By 1949, at least 750,000 Palestinians had been made refugees, losing their land, homes and other belongings in what became known as the "Nakba" ("catastrophe"). Their flight was accelerated by massacres such as the one that took place on April 9, 1948, at Deir Yassin near Jerusalem, where approximately 100 Palestinian men, women, and children were murdered by Zionist paramilitaries. Today, refugees displaced during Israel's creation and their descendants number approximately 7.1 million people. Some 400 Palestinian towns and villages, including vibrant urban centers, were systematically destroyed or taken over by Israeli. Most of them were demolished to prevent the return of their Palestinian residents, now refugees outside of what would become Israel's internationally recognized borders, or internally displaced inside of them.

Further reading: https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2017/5/23/the-nakba-did-not-start-or-end-in-1948 https://www.aljazeera.com/program/featured-documentaries/2013/5/29/al-nakba/ https://imeu.org/article/the-nakba-and-palestine-refugees-imeu-questions-and-answers https://www.vox.com/videos/2023/5/15/23723947/palestine-nakba-may-15-protests-israel

Post-1948 Period:

Quotes:

“If I were an Arab leader, I would never sign an agreement with Israel. It is normal; we have taken their country. It is true God promised it to us, but how could that interest them? Our God is not theirs. There has been Anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They see but one thing: we have come and we have stolen their country. Why would they accept that?” David Ben-Gurion (the first Israeli Prime Minister): Quoted by Nahum Goldmann in Le Paraddoxe Juif (The Jewish Paradox), pp99

1967- Israel occupied the West Bank, Gaza Strip, East Jerusalem, and Golan Heights after the 1967 Six-Day War. Jewish settlements were established in these territories, leading to ongoing tensions and disputes.

1973- Yom Kippur War

1987- Hamas formed.

Peace Process and Oslo Accords (1990s):Peace Attempts: Several peace negotiations took place between Israel and Palestine, leading to the Oslo Accords in 1993, which established limited Palestinian self-rule in parts of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Early 21st Century: Second Intifada (2000-2005): A period of intensified Israeli-Palestinian violence and unrest, leading to significant loss of life on both sides.

In 2004, Giaora Eiland, who still is, incidentally, in the inner circle of Benjamin Netanyahu right now as I speak. He described Gaza as, quote, “a huge concentration camp.” That's Gaza.

September 2005- Israel completed implementation of its Disengagement Plan from the Gaza Strip, which included dismantling all the settlements there, evacuating the settlers to Israel and withdrawing the military. After the plan was fully implemented, Israel issued an order declaring the end of its military rule in the Gaza Strip, indicating it was no longer responsible for the safety and well-being of the population in Gaza. But the territory remained under blockade, leading to economic hardship and conflict.

2006-

Here was an election in the West Bank in Gaza, parliamentary elections. Those elections were urged on the Palestinian people by the US administration was that now forgotten moment in the Bush administration called “democracy promotion.” And part of this package called “democracy promotion” was the Palestinians were supposed to participate in those wonderful democratic experiences. And Hamas was urged to participate in those elections, and it reversed itself. Hitherto, it opposed participating in any elections in the occupied territories, because those elections were a consequence of the Oslo Accord. And since Hamas opposed the Oslo Accord, it opposed participating in the elections. But it reversed itself. It ran in a civilian political party. And, much to the surprise of Hamas and everybody else, it won the election. Those were, according to former US President Jimmy Carter, “completely fair and honest elections,” and Hamas won. What did the US and Israel do? It immediately imposed a brutal blockade on Gaza, which brought economic life in Gaza to a standstill. - Norman Finkelstein

*When Hamas was elected, it repeatedly sent out peace feelers to try and resolve the conflict with Israel. It presented on its own, or as speaking for itself, the terms of the international consensus for resolving a conflict, namely two states on the June 1967 border.

June 2007- After Hamas seized control of the Gaza Strip, Israel further tightened its control of the crossings and rarely allowed Palestinians to enter or leave Gaza, or to import or export goods. Three months after the Hamas takeover, in response to the continued firing of Qassam rockets at Israel, Israel’s security cabinet declared the Gaza Strip a hostile entity and adopted collective punitive measures, including cutting back electricity and fuel supply to Gaza

2008-

June 2008 there was a ceasefire arranged between Israel and Hamas. The ceasefire held, it held in June, it held in July, it held in August, it held in September, it held in October, and it held the first four days in November. And then November 4th came along, that was election day. when everybody's attention was riveted on the presidential election and the first black president being elected in our country's history. And Israel used that moment -- when all the cameras were diverted from it -- it used that moment to attack Hamas in Gaza and broke the ceasefire. Go and read what Amnesty International said.

Operation Cast Lead- Dec 27, 2008 – Jan 18, 2009 https://imeu.org/article/operation-cast-lead

2012-

Operation Pillar of Defense- Nov 13, 2012 – Nov 21, 2012

After Operation Cast Lead, there was a slight relaxing of the brutal blockade of Gaza. The Gaza economy did show some signs of recovery. And there was also money starting to pour in from Qatar. The head of state of Turkey, Erdoğan, was planning on a visit to Gaza. And this annoyed Israel because Gaza was not supposed to prosper. So what did they do? The record is clear. They assassinated a senior Hamas official Ahmad Jabari and six others. Shortly afterwards, Israel pounded the Gaza Strip with another 20 air strikes, killing five more people, two of them children, Hamas health minister Mufid Mukhalalati said in a televised press conference at Gaza City’s Shifa hospital.

2014-

Operation Protective Edge-

2,200 Palestinians killed, of whom 550 were children. They demolished 18,000 homes.

2018- Gaza March to return Massacre May 14th

On May 14th 2018 The Palestinian people of Gaza were in continuing peaceful marches Up to the walls imprisoning them with hopes that the apartheid regime of Israel would have some humanity and hear their plea with a right to return, to be given basic human rights as they had been doing since March 30th 2018. Instead of being shown humanity IDF soldiers began an especially discriminatory attack on the peaceful protestors. The causalities for that day alone stood at 2700 injured, including 1,359 from live ammunition and 235 Children. The dead included six children under the age of 18, among them a 15-year-old girl, and a medic and at least 52 adults. The toll increased exponentially through the course of the multiple week protest with numbers in 12,000 plus victims range 1000 of which children and hundreds of medics and journalists in appropriate identifying garb.

Many IDF soldiers have gone on record to brag about their statistics in competition with each other It is callous and bitter but I'll provide a link to some accounts of this .

Further, Shireen Abu Akleh an American-Palestinian journalist was wearing full reporter protective gear and was intentionally sniped in the neck killing her, they then lied about it and admitted to it a significant amount of time later. At her funeral the procession was subject to pogroms by Israeli police not even giving her peace in death.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/gaza-protests-take-off-ahead-of-new-us-embassy-inauguration-in-jerusalem/2018/05/14/eb6396ae-56e4-11e8-9889-07bcc1327f4b_story.html

https://www.unrwa.org/campaign/gaza-great-march-returnhttps://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/5/16/palestinians-great-march-of-return-the-human-costhttps://www.newarab.com/news/israeli-snipers-brag-about-deliberately-crippling-gaza-protestershttps://www.cnn.com/2022/09/05/middleeast/idf-shireen-abu-akleh-investigation-intl/index.htmlhttps://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/5/14/israeli-police-attack-on-shireen-abu-akleh-mourners-sparks-outcry

Recent Events:

The amount of atrocities are too numerous to list them all here but i would like to list some from September of 2023 at least.

September 2023-

September 5th- Israeli forces killed two Palestinians, including one child, in two operations that involved the exchange of fire in Tulkarm and Jericho. September 9th-Israeli forces killed a Palestinian child in Hebron. September 13th- Five Palestinian were killed in the Gaza Strip as an explosive device went off near Israel’s perimeter fence. On 16 and 17 September, large groups of Israelis, including settlers, entered the Old City of Jerusalem during the Jewish New Year. Israeli authorities deployed police officers and restricted Palestinian movement in and out of the Old City, during which they physically assaulted and injured an elderly Palestinian man and arrested at least two others. On 17 September, Israeli forces restricted Palestinian access to the Al Aqsa Mosque in the Old City of Jerusalem, allowing entry only to those over the age of 50 for the dawn prayers. That morning, about 400 Israelis, including settlers, accessed the compound accompanied by Israeli police, who evacuated Palestinian worshipers to secure the entry of Israelis. On 16 September, settlers stabbed a Palestinian man in the back and threw stones and bottles at Palestinian houses in Tel Rumeida neighborhood of Hebron city, in the Israeli-controlled H2 area.

Prior to October for 2023 Israeli forces killed 181 Palestinians in the West Bank or Israel, exceeding the yearly death toll by Israeli forces in the West Bank since 2005. During the reporting period in September, 173 Palestinians, including at least 58 children, were injured by Israeli forces across the West Bank, including 11 who were hit by live ammunition. Since the beginning of the year, 769 Palestinians have been injured by live ammunition by Israeli forces in the West Bank, nearing the double of the number in the equivalent period in 2022 (460). Over 1,100 Palestinian herders from 28 communities have been displaced since 2022, citing settler violence and shrinking access to grazing land.

More here: https://www.ochaopt.org/poc/5-18-september-2023

October 2023-

October 1st- injury of several Palestinians in a number of attacks by Israeli occupation forces and settlers across the occupied West Bank.

October 4th- Israeli troops killed three Palestinian in West Bank. One of which the IDF said it opened fire at a man who threw a block at an Israeli vehicle. Palestinian health officials said a 19 year old Palestinian man was shot in the chest and killed. The army said Israeli settlers also vandalized Palestinian property. No further details were immediately released. October 5th- Israeli forces killed two Palestinians and wounded dozens more while suffering five injuries as they raided several areas in the occupied West Bank October 6th- Labib Dumaidi, 19, was shot in the heart by an Israeli settler in west bank. October 7th- Hamas launches an attack 1,400 Israelis were killed in the assault, and more than 240 were taken hostage. Israel's immediate response before even tending to the attack is to start bombing Gaza indiscriminately. Multiple survivors and hostage testimony tell Israeli solders opened fire on Israeli citizens and Hamas in hannibal directive. Israel claims 40 babies beheaded and the claim gets parroted all the way up to the president of the united states without a substantiated evidence, another addition in an ocean of lies. Due to the fog of war I'm only writing about statistics here on out.

After math.

Week one- 7,473 U.S. bombs were dropped on Afghanistan in 2019. 6,000 Israeli bombs have been dropped on Gaza in 6 days. 2,383 Palestinians killed half children 9,714 wounded, while in the West Bank, 54 were recorded dead and 1,100 wounded 1.1 Million Displaced.

One Month-

10,000 Palestinians killed 70% children. 25,000 injuries. 1.5 Million Displaced.

War Crimes- Numerous including Genocide, collective punishment, Use of white phosphorus during the offensive and many more…

The UN Genocide Convention lists five acts that fall under the definition of Genocide. Israel is currently perpetrating three of these in Gaza: “1. Killing members of the group. 2. Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group. 3. Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated with intent to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.”

Recent Quotes-

Israeli Minister of Defense Yoav “We are imposing a complete siege on Gaza. No electricity, no food, no water, no fuel. Everything is closed. We are fighting human animals, and we will act accordingly.” Isaac Herzog - "It is an entire nation out there that is responsible. This rhetoric about civilians supposedly not being involved is absolutely untrue" Benjamin Natanyahu - "We will turn Gaza into an island of ruins." Daniel Hagari - "We are dropping hundreds of tons of bombs on Gaza. The focus is on destruction, not accuracy." Ariel Kallner - "Now there is only one goal: Nakba. A Nakba in Gaza that will dwarf the Nakba of 1948." Benjamin Nantanyahu - “They are committed to completely eliminating this evil from the world,” Netanyahu said in Hebrew. He then added: “You must remember what Amalek has done to you, says our Holy Bible. And we do remember.” In the Hebrew Bible, particularly in the Book of 1 Samuel, there is a command attributed to God that King Saul is supposed to destroy the Amalekites entirely, sparing nothing and no one. The exact verse, from 1 Samuel 15:3 (New International Version), states:

"Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys."

This command, often referred to as the "ban" or "herem" in biblical studies, was a severe form of religious sanction where everything associated with the enemy was devoted to destruction.

Further reading:

The Gun And The Olive Branch- David Hirst https://archive.org/stream/in.ernet.dli.2015.131536/2015.131536.The-Gun-And-The-Olive-Branch_djvu.txt The Question of Palestine-Edward Said https://archive.org/details/questionofpalest0000said Ten Myths About Israel By Ilan Pappe https://archive.org/details/ten-myths-about-israel-by-ilan-pappe-2017

Documentaries, Films, and Video Essays:

Jenin, Jenin (2002) https://vimeo.com/499672067 Born in Gaza https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZpp8JLkwBw Edward Said - Reflections on Exile and Other Essays https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8EvoZ7vgu0A Norman Finkelstein on Israel's BRUTAL Assault On Gaza https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m36CUGA1Ucw&list=PLG9vw8QqgiV86CdFlCcHiSmfKwDytOATJ&index=10 Jews Against Zionism: Rabbi Speaking the Truth About Palestine & Israel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSEtuckDbpk&list=PLG9vw8QqgiV86CdFlCcHiSmfKwDytOATJ&index=16 Norman Finkelstein RESPONDS to Bernie Sanders statement OPPOSING GAZA CEASEFIRE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9R49v3K29mM&list=FLUORSml2RTXRf2S9zsXpbOw

[sprites4ever]

OC BIO - Taylor Eleanor Koning II

I have done good things and bad things. Things I well and truly regret. But now is not the time to be discussing that. Now is the time when you tell me whether or not you would like to stand in my way.

She/Her

19 Years old

British-Dutch

1,60 m

British Ex-Spy, fancy Wardrobe Enthusiast, Fugitive charged with High Treason/Murder/Espionage/Conspiracy/MASSIVE Property Damage

Theme Song: Henry Jackman - Manners Maketh Man

Lost everything, gained so much more in her love for Alex

Voice Claim: Cara Theobold

Backstory

Taylor was the only child of the extremely rich Koning family, a family of Dutch entrepreneurs living in the UK. During her childhood and teenage years, Taylor was denied any and all individuality by her extremely narcissistic mother Eleanor Koning (who is the reason Taylor has the title of ‘the Second’), and who, due to her family’s distant blood relation to Dutch royalty, saw them as such, and forced Taylor into a role she never wanted for herself.

Ultimately, after a fateful event involving Taylor and a group of kidnappers, the family’s longtime personal tailor revealed himself to Taylor as being an MI-E Spy who had been tasked with observing and forging relationships with the Koning family.

He recruited Taylor, who gladly accepted the opportunity to escape this forced lifestyle, and made her into a Secret Agent.

Only after multiple years of big missions for the agency did Taylor learn the truth about her recruitment, however.

The MI-E leaders, now convinced of Taylor’s full loyalty, sent her on the mission which she’d always been recruited for, to assassinate her own mother. Eleanor Koning had been a huge threat to them for a long time, and managed to guard herself so well that the MI-E had figured they would need Eleanor’s own child to infiltrate her.

At this point, Taylor ran away, now condemned by all her family, and wanted by her employer.

She tried learning what she could about the agency and found out that the Military Intelligence Elite (MI-E) wasn’t just an intelligence agency, but a shadowy organization of British Intelligence that even the government knows too little about. It’d been founded after WWII by SOE veterans, including Martina Gunn.

Researching Martina, Taylor found out about her granddaughter, Alex Martinez, and made off to find her.

[stargazer-sims]

Sebastian Fujikawa

Sebastian's just here looking like, "Ask me about my trust fund."

Actually, Sebastian feels as if people often misjudge who he is as a person simply because he seems to be a stereotypical rich kid. People are quick to assume that he’s lazy, entitled, high-maintenance, and emotionally detached from those around him.

He can concede that he’s high-maintenance and that he’s indulged by his father a bit too much, but he doesn’t think he’s entitled and he knows he’s definitely not lazy or emotionally unavailable. He feels very connected to his father and adopted sister and especially to his figure skating coach who is more of a mom to him than his own mother is. His coach would never let him be lazy, and she’d scold him if she ever caught him behaving like a brat.

Although he realizes it’s not at all funny, Sebastian often jokes that anyone looking at his life from the outside would say that it's like the script of a soap opera. When he was six, his parents went through a very messy and very public divorce. He featured heavily in the media coverage, due to the fact that custody was a hotly-contested issue. His father, a former competitive skier and current ridiculously wealthy executive of a sports equipment company, was granted sole custody of him.

Sebastian doesn't know the details of his parents' split, and he really doesn't want to know, but from what he's been led to believe, his father ended up with him because his father's lawyer was able to convince the court that his mother's lifestyle wasn't conducive to stable, healthy child-rearing. His mother works in the entertainment industry. He's always had contact with her, but it's never been on a regular schedule, and he really doesn't know her all that well.

After the divorce, Sebastian's father decided that it'd be better for Sebastian not to be an only child. He opted for adoption of an older child, so the process was accomplished far more quickly than if he'd wanted to arrange the adoption of a baby. By the time Sebastian's seventh birthday came around, he was welcoming his new sister, who's nearly the same age as him. She told her new father and brother that she wanted a name like Sebastian's instead of her Japanese birth name. Together, they came up with Sofia, and their father did the paperwork to have it legally changed. The siblings became best friends almost immediately, and took to calling themselves "adopted twins", which everyone in their circle thought was adorable.

When Sebastian and Sofia were twelve, their father sent them to boarding school in the UK, so that they could learn English in an immersive environment. Sebastian didn't see his mother for two whole years while he was away at school, but he really wasn't worried about it. In the UK is where he met his current coach, Vivienne Holmes (a.k.a. Ginger). He'd had a different coach prior to that, but because he'd started competing seriously, his father arranged for him to continue training and competing while he was away. Ginger came back to Japan with him when he was 14, and they've been together ever since.

Ginger technically lives with Sebastian, Sofia and their dad. She has her own little house on Mr. Fujikawa's property, but she's up at the main house a lot, which makes Sebastian happy.

Sebastian feels that Ginger has raised him just as much as his father has. He credits her for teaching him how to not behave like a spoiled trust fund baby. Ginger has taught him the value of working for the things he wants in life, and she's taught him how to play by the rules, respect others and to be compassionate whether he thinks people deserve it or not.

He has trouble making friends because people tend to believe he's unapproachable, and at this point he's almost given up trying. He'd like to have friends, but he's not unhappy with his life despite not really having any. As long as he's got Ginger, Sofia and his dad, he's never without love and support.

[forcesmajor]

Kit Knox

Biographical Data Form

Name: Kit Knox

Age: 47

Gender: Male

Date of Birth: January 1st 1976

Place of Birth: London, UK

Nationality: English

Physical Appearance: Kit has a distinctive appearance with tousled hair and a contemplative expression. His blue eyes hold a mixture of brilliance and turbulence, reflecting the complexity of his thoughts.

Background and History

Before we burn

The Knox family gained renown owning numerous mental health facilities across America, beginning in 1985 with the establishment of New York’s Succlife Sanatorium. This spearheaded further East Coast expansions in 1990—including Lunnox, Youthful and Lazure Sanatoriums. Jerome Knox’s vision and pioneering treatment approaches attracted wealthy investors, fueling rapid construction.

Jerome demonstrated relentless drive building a prestigious chain of lavish establishments over decades. Though many bid to transform his sanatoriums into detainment facilities for criminals and extreme incurables, he firmly refused. His focus stayed on serving non-criminal patients and preserving harmony across all Knox properties.

By 1998, aging founder Jerome Knox risked losing control to outside interests aiming to rewrite his family’s legacy. Thus his only child Kit Knox assumed leadership, protecting his father’s principles from corruption. He would oversee continuity of quality care along with modernization while avoiding predatory ventures.

Under Kit’s guardianship, the Knox brand continues standing for dignity and compassion tailored to the mental health spectrum. His stewardship defends both patient autonomy and his family’s defining ideals across ever-more profitable sanatoriums. Investors may clamor but the virtue Jerome built into the brick and mortar remains steadfast.

Today the Knox Sanatorium Group boasts cutting-edge facilities paired with wholesome community enrichment. And Kit ensures every decision honors both his father’s humanism and his duty to guide a new era for the properties Jerome made timeless.

After we burn

Kit Knox's era

In his first year leading, Kit Knox faced shareholders doubtful of his readiness. Many questioned whether the 22-year old college senior grasped necessary nuance. But inheriting his father’s relentless drive and intellect, Kit slowly overcame doubts through tenacity, scientific acumen, and public communications savvy.

Kit pioneered innovations like evidence-based therapies, medications, and holistic wellness supports. But his true vision involved advancing experimental methods below Succlife’s bunker walls - including radical brain surgeries for patients not stabilized through conventional means.

Though psychosurgery remained deeply controversial and risky, Kit relentlessly pursued its development, sinking massive funding into related research despite lacking willing participants. Some viewed his methods overzealous, unable to distinguish between ethical and unethical “cures.”

Desperate to prevent investment flight, Kit increasingly took liberties - not just custom tailoring pharmaceutical mixes but concocting extreme chemical solutions he daringly tested on vulnerable subjects. Then a Malaysian doctor named Dr. A██ arrived, introducing underground compounds and Eastern healing wisdom that renewed Kit’s inspiration.

Beyond promising new remedies, Dr. A██ offered connections to his original teachers—shadowy Middle Eastern Therapeutae elders whose resources could fuel Kit’s unconventional programs. Lured by the prospect, Kit met with the secretive cabal, hoping this “Elderly” order might help him manifest explosive innovations in healing the mind. But in allying with such occult forces, was he preparing to cross the final line between visionary and madman?

Madness era

Kit Knox’s once-wholesome facilities quietly morphed into bunkers where The Elderly cabal now ruled half-owners. Dozens of militants from the Middle East and Southeast Asia secretly traveled through seeking experimental neural procedures and stimulant cocktails banned on American soil. But shrewd Knox leveraged powerful allies to evade government detection, his charity campaigns concealing the man’s true ambition.

To surrounding communities, Knox adopted the persona of a generous philanthropist frequently sponsoring fundraising galas in major cities. Yet behind this illusion of selfless benevolence drove a relentless scientist dangerously unchecked by ethical constraints. Only his inner circle witnessed the intravenous alchemy and psychosurgery trials that granted militarized subjects amplified pain tolerance or subdued empathy at the expense of their psyche’s stability.

Knox ensured no average citizen detected his well-masked dual life. If his medical innovations meant ravaging minds, if the Elderly’s geopolitical agenda meant sheltering wanted extremists, the profits justified the means. His New York glitterati supporters had no complaints, dazzled by his generous donations and family’s sterling reputation. But intelligence agencies eyeing Knox’s empire sensed darker truths lurking below all that unblemished white marble.

Post Dr A██

Tensions erupted when Knox uncovered The Elderly’s true jihadist agenda for Dr. A██ and other extremist assets like Imam Ocean, Khamrozi, and Lai Amiron. Though obsessed with unlocking the brain’s mysteries without ethical constraints, Knox recoiled at directly enabling religious terrorism overseas no matter the profits. His hospitals would empower fanatics no more, regardless of shared sympathies against certain Southeast Asian regimes.

When Dr. A██ returned from a clandestine Middle East training camp clearly further radicalized for impending strikes on civilian targets, Knox revoked his access credentials citing security risks. Then Imam Ocean and his two henchmen arrived unannounced to forcibly retrieve sensitive operational documents only for Knox’s private military contractors to forcibly deport them.

These assertive actions constituted an unmistakable purge dissociating Knox from the Elders’ planned attacks. He would stretch medical ethics but not outright enable extremist mayhem through his facilities. Severing those treasonous ties also served self-interest, as discovery of such collusion would thoroughly undermine his public repute as philanthropist should scandals erupt on foreign shores. Knox’s ambitions pushed boundaries but even he recoiled at the greatest moral crossing lines. For the Elders, his defiance jeopardized major operations. And the shadowy coalition was not one to tolerate disloyalty from once-useful assets.

Personality:

Even in his early 20s with limited experience, Kit exuded relentless confidence and ambition to expand his family’s mental health facilities despite initial pushback. Where others saw merely his youth, Kit saw dramatic developments propelled by his extraordinary abilities. He held little regard for naysayers, consumed by his grand scientific visions and generational duty to advance his father’s life work through boundary-pushing innovation. Though morally flexible when needed to protect his autonomy, Kit’s primary motivations were furthering knowledge and cementing his legacy. This drive suggests strong achievement orientation tendencies. While outwardly seeking financing to sponsor research with clear goals, Kit privately had an obsessive interest in dubious approaches such as surgical neuroprogramming. To deflect suspicion, he presented an image of altruistic altruism through campaigns, galas, and public appearances, utilizing his enormous interpersonal attractiveness. This deliberate veneer allowed him to shield the most unconventional and ethically questionable studies from external scrutiny. But internally, Kit remains convinced that his creative genius and intimate understanding of the brain justify moving beyond constraints. He believes that no one else lacks the intelligence and vision required to implement his discoveries, which have the potential to change mental healthcare. His ego appears to inspire ideological fervor. Kit fulfills the paradigm of a visionary scientist in many ways: he is extremely clever, insatiably curious, and committed to pushing the boundaries of knowledge forward. Kit is aims, along with his unwavering belief in his own power to transform fields and a flexible morality that emphasizes patient well-being over findings, raise serious issues. For, in his desire to uncover the secrets of the mind by whatever means necessary, Kit brings civilization closer to unsettling and deadly applications at the intersection of sickness cures and human breakdown engineering. His unregulated experiments thus threaten to destabilize the same institutions that his family labored to establish. Kit's grounded humanism serves as a balanced counterbalance, but it is constantly jeopardized by surrounding extreme sympathizers who want to use his abilities for harmful ideological objectives.

It's just something I threw on for the essential of Josiah and I's connection.

Everything will be refurbished when necessary throughout the existence of our connection.

[fireangelsstuff]

Random ramblings:

Its the 3rd of November where I am right now, and I'm sitting in my living eating homemade Fajitas listening the fireworks going off outside

Having previously been a British colony we do of course celebrate what we here in New Zealand call "Guy Fawkes" - more commonly known as Bonfire night in the UK - a commemoration of the date of the infamous Gunpowder Plot to blow up the British Parliament and kill the King

It got me thinking about the ways in which public memory and the original meaning of things can change over time depending on who is in control of the information

I have watched over the past couple of years during this Chris Evans PR debacle, having directly interacted with ai chatbots on social media and forum platforms designed to direct the conversation (More commonly recognised as what fonts on LSA would call "Cleaners") it makes me wonder just how long this has actually been happening since the inception of social media, for example, you have to remember the 3D printer while commonly available these days was actually invented in the 70's but never made widely available for use until it was more affordable for the public and the patent holder able to make a decent profit

This type of AI function with fake accounts has been occurring and in use by anyone who has had the money to pay for it

It's the entire basis of how Trump won the election, misinformation and direction of the narrative

With the advent of the likes of ChatGPT we are now seeing it introduced into mainstream media

AI has been effectively and silently taking over the 5th estate for some time now, largely thanks to a lack of laws governing the way things like Facebook/Twitter etc operate mining data from its users to improve algorithms that basically addict it's user to continue to interact and influencing both their opinions, behaviour, and even alter their personal psychologies

Governments are yet again having to play catch up with getting laws through to govern the use of AI, whether it be the use someone's likeness, voice, artwork/literature, it covers intellectual property of original works at the very least

It's also part of what the Amptp and Sag Aftra have been arguing over for the last couple of weeks

I am relieved however at the decision that AI works are not protected under IP laws, it should at the very least stem the use of AI in Journalism/Media as the original publisher would at least in theory not be able to legally prevent other people from republishing or reusing the content made using this technology on their own sites, and the ability of those who use the original works to produce a product they then use to make a profit from

All that's really left to address in that regard is the fact checking required to publish articles and getting rid of the terms like "sources say" from tabloids

No offense to the "Journalistic" media but if something like Wikipedia has better fact checking than the content you are putting out, then what you are writing is essentially paid for fanfic

No offense, actual fanfic writes do it better and they aren't getting paid to make stuff up.....

Anyway I'm off to finish my fajitas

Night all 🌌

🤍🪽✨

[adarede]

Houses in usa and uk

Saw a post that started by showing what comes up when you google "average american neighborhood". i had some agreements and some disagreements with that post but what i wanted to do here was just post some pictures of houses

average uk house price is £288,000 (https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/inflationandpriceindices/bulletins/housepriceindex/latest) average usa house price is $349,770 (£282,000) (https://www.zillow.com/home-values/102001/united-states/) so sounds pretty similar

USA: (searched houses on zillow in ohio; state chosen randomly)

UK (searched houses in lincolnshire; county chosen due to my belief it has similar vibes to ohio despite having been to lincolnshire once and the usa 0 times)

observations:

uk houses are almost always brick, usa seems majority are wood? this makes me think i need to check the insulation sitch in each country

you can get 2 bedrooms for a lot cheaper in the usa. first house in usa is 960sqft; 1st uk house is about 750sqft (rightmove doesn't say directly so i added up sizes of rooms). so both are pretty small.

average uk house is 818 sqft. average usa house is 2467 sqft. average usa lot size is 13,000 sqft. average uk garden size is 2,000 sqft.

semi detached houses are not so much of a thing in america. in the uk they are the most common house type, making up a third of houses. they are considered slightly better than terraced houses for no obvious reason.

exact average house price gets you an extra bedroom & bathroom in the usa

final uk house has approx 3,300 sqft; chosen to be comparable to final usa house

i wonder which houses an american would choose as "typical" or "representative" from the ones that come up on property search websites; i'm attempting to choose based on what seems typical out of the results but i don't have the broader cultural context.

average uk salary for someone in their 20s is £26,000 (https://uk.indeed.com/career-advice/pay-salary/average-uk-salary). this is £21,700 after tax in england.

average us salary for someone in their 20s is $45,600 (£36,800) (https://www.forbes.com/advisor/business/average-salary-by-age/). this is $36,800 (£29,700) after tax in toledo, ohio.

uk annual post tax salary is 7.5% of a house. us annual post tax salary is 10.5% of a house. broadly similar.

for a mortgage you can usually borrow 4x your salary (combined if buying as a couple). single british person in their 20s can borrow £104,000. this could buy a small terraced house in a downmarket town. Here's one:

conclusions:

It is still possible to buy a house in your 20s for the average person. If you are significantly below average on these metrics you probably won't be able to buy a house on your own.

you can get more house for your money in the usa but it's the same order of magnitude - american houses at each price point seem to have 1 more bedroom than british houses.

a large house is way more expensive in the uk though. about double the price. smaller country, more densely populated, etc.

it's interesting to me to observe how what counts as middle class differs between the two countries. One thing I've observed is that americans consider frozen food to be lower class. They also sometimes mention not having fresh food in their shops. It would make sense for fresh food to be a stronger status signal in america if this is the case then. so for houses, a 900sqft semi-detached house is perfectly middle class in the uk. I wonder if it would be considered lower class in the usa, or whether land would be less of a status signal in usa since there's more of it so living in a large house would signal less about you...

i now feel like i have an accurate idea of what the average american house looks like. now, what to do with this information...