#Direct Mail Statistics

[senddirectmail]

Address Verification Solutions

Whether it's to increase customer satisfaction by reducing shipping errors or to meet regulatory requirements by ensuring address accuracy, there are a variety of reasons why organizations need a reliable Proof of Address solution. With many options available, each with its own cost, accuracy, availability and user-friendliness, stakeholders need to understand what address verification tools best meet their specific use case.

To verify an address, an address validation service compares inputted data against a database of valid street addresses, postal codes, and other geographic information. This information is maintained on a regular basis to ensure it remains up to date. In addition to the ability to run a single check, address verification software often offers advanced functionality such as parsing and standardization (formatting addresses into their correct order) to reduce error rates.

Some solutions also support predictive type ahead, suggesting addresses as people are typing, making the form easier to complete and improving user experience. Others use device fingerprinting or geolocation to make the most relevant suggestions, minimizing the number of keystrokes users need to enter and making it more convenient for mobile devices. Some providers even have a spelled-out option for incomplete or incorrectly entered addresses, helping to avoid costly mistakes.

For companies that operate internationally, choosing an address verification tool with the right coverage is important. For example, a peer-to-peer marketplace might need to ensure the addresses of new sellers match their passports for logistical and safety reasons, while a vacation rental app might need to verify the address of guests for compliance purposes. In such cases, a solution that includes document verification to analyze age and identity plus geolocation could provide the most comprehensive address validation solution

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Send Direct Mail – Wix

[bulkmailstatistics]

Direct Mail Statistics 2022 UK

Direct mail refers to promotional materials that are sent through the post to customers’ physical addresses. It can be sent in various forms, including letters, brochures, postcards, catalogs, and coupons. It is a form of marketing that can be highly effective when done right. It is important to understand direct mail statistics 2022 uk in order to make the most out of it. This article will discuss some of the most interesting direct mail statistics that are available to help marketers better leverage this marketing channel.

Direct Mail Is the Most Trusted Type of Advertising, Despite the Increasing Amount of Fake News and Cybersecurity Threats

In an era when the credibility of online content has been called into question, it’s easy to see why consumers would choose to trust print over other types of media. Moreover, direct mail is also a very effective way to generate sales and conversions. In fact, a recent study found that 49% of people who received mail made commercial actions, with the majority of them being purchases.

Another reason why direct mail is so effective is because it can be easily absorbed by the brain. In contrast to the countless junk emails that fill our digital inboxes, mail requires 21% less cognitive effort to process. It also triggers a 20% higher motivation response than email does. As a result, it can be an ideal tool for brand loyalty programs and building customer relationships.

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Bulk Mail Statistics - BLogger

[peppyhubblog]

This guide highlights landing page statistics that will help you to improve conversions on your landing page, and achieve your business goals.

[ambernotember]

Bobby’s kids, part 3

(part 1 / part 2)

now on ao3

“What are the trees for, again?” Buck asked as he followed the directions Harry had given him.

“It’s something my dad and my grandpa used to do together, then my dad and I did. Bobby came with us one year. There was a big forest fire here a long time ago and my dad and grandpa would plant a tree every year to help the forest regrow.” Harry told him.

“How come we brought two trees this year?” Buck asked. “You said it was a tree a year.”

Harry hesitated for a second. “I thought maybe you’d want to plant one for Bobby. I know Mom wanted him to be with his family but it’s been kind of… tough, not having him here. I thought we could have a reminder of him closer to home.”

“That’s — that’s really nice of you, Harry.”

“I mean, it’s a little selfish. I wanted to do it too.”

“Yeah, but you could have come up here by yourself, or brought May. Thanks for bringing me.”

“You’re driving, technically you’re bringing me.” Harry paused. “It was just… a father-son thing. I could have brought May, or Mom, but I figured two sons were just as good.”

“You and May are really pushing the family agenda, huh?”

“I don’t know if Bobby ever told you, but he and May had a talk after the lightning about how Mom brought two kids into the marriage and he brought one — you.”

“Huh,” Buck shifted in the driver’s seat but didn’t say anything else.

“He left you money in his will,” Harry reminded him.

“Yeah.”

Harry let it go then, figuring they could revisit the subject later.

Harry insisted on setting up the campsite first, then going out to find a good place to plant the trees.

Buck was surprisingly helpful in setting up the tent, though Harry’s food storage rules were a little stricter than his and he made Buck redo it before he’d agree to leave the campsite.

“Bears, Bucks,” Harry stressed. “Just because you've ever seen them doesn’t mean they aren’t here. They’re literally on the state flag!”

“Yeah, but the statistics say they’re rare here,” Buck said.

“Doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be careful.” Harry made a mental note to make sure Buck knew where the bear spray was before they went to sleep that night.

“Okay, okay, you are the expert out here,” Buck conceded.

Harry consulted the old map his dad had mailed to him, looking at where they’d been before and where they should head next for new trees.

“We haven’t been south in a while,” Harry said. Buck checked their location with his GPS before they headed out, making sure they’d been able to find their way back.

They headed out, walking for about forty five minutes before finding a nice sparse area that could do with a couple more trees.

“What do you think?” Harry asked.

Buck walked around a little bit, checking the area out. “I think this is a good spot,” he agreed.

Harry planted the flag he’d brought with him to make it easier for them to find the spot again the next day. Buck added the latitude and longitude to his GPS, in case they wandered off track when they came back.

“What now?”

“Dinner over the fire and drinks,” Harry declared.

Buck looked at him.

“I meant pop,” Harry rolled his eyes.

“Good, cause I’m not explaining that one to your mother,” Buck said. “I will not be responsible for corrupting you.”

“Oh don’t worry, May took care of that ages ago.”

Harry took care of dinner, getting a fire started quickly, and setting himself and Buck up with hot dogs to roast over the fire.

“Dad would usually do one dinner than was fancier, but I always loved when we would just roast hot dogs,” Harry told Buck as they waited for the dinner to cook. “It just feels like the quintessential camping experience, you know?”

“Not s’mores?” Buck raised an eyebrow.

“Those too,” Harry agreed.

“Quintessential?”

“SAT word of the day,” Harry said, determining his hot dog was cooked through and dumping it into the bun he’d loaded up with cheese and ketchup.

Buck followed his lead, adding mustard as well as the cheese and ketchup.

“You ever have the spider hot dogs when you were little?” Harry asked when they had both finished.

“No, and I’m afraid to ask what they are,” Buck laughed.

“I’ll show you,” Harry cut into the ends of the next two hot dogs. “You’ll see when they start cooking,” he said as he handed Buck back the roasting stick.

Buck looked at it sceptically but held it over the embers to cook. Harry watched him out of the corner of his eye, waiting.

“Oh!” Buck exclaimed when the edges started to curl out. “Okay, that’s why they’re called spider hot dogs.”

Harry snickered. “Don’t worry, they taste the same.”

Buck balled up his napkin and threw it in Harry’s direction. “Only one of us has car keys,” he threatened.

Harry dodged the napkin and threw it back at him. “Don’t litter!”

Harry had gotten up early to go get the food barrel they’d strung up away from the camp, and Buck has woken up to the smell of coffee and the sound of sizzling bacon.

While Buck poured his coffee, Harry finished assembling the breakfast sandwiches that had quickly become his preferred breakfast at Buck’s place — egg, bacon, and cheese on slices of sourdough.

“Thanks Harry,” Buck said, sitting in one of the camp chairs. “Can I get used to this at home?” he teased.

Harry snorted. “Maybe on the weekends if you’re nice to me.”

Buck’s jaw dropped. “If I’m nice? When am I not nice to you?”

“You threw a napkin at last me night!”

Buck threw another napkin at him in retaliation.

Each of them had a backpack with a tree sapling in it and a shovel hanging off the back for their hike back to the spot they’d chosen. They’d taken down their camp before heading out, planning to head back to the city when they were done, and they’d loaded everything back into the Jeep. Harry made sure they had water and snacks with them as well, and checked the bottom of his bag surreptitiously before they headed out.

The location wasn’t too far out, and they made good time on the hike. Harry carefully measured out the distance between their trees, and then they started digging down into the soft soil to make a space for their saplings. It didn’t take long before they were ready to plant the saplings, and they both tamped the dirt back down around the new trees.

Buck wiped his hands on his jeans, looking at the two new trees. “Back to the city then?”

“One more thing,” Harry said, carefully getting the item he’d hidden at the bottom of his bag. He handed it to Buck. “This goes by your tree.”

Buck looked at it, seeing that it was an engraved plaque with a little spike to help it stay in the ground.

“You did this?” Buck asked, pressing it carefully into the soil in front of the tree.

“It was May’s idea,” Harry said, looking down at the plaque. It read simply Bobby Nash, beloved dad.

Buck swallowed around the lump in his throat. “We should take a photo of it for her,” he said, pretending his rapid blinking was because of the sun shining overhead.

They quickly figured out that the only way to get both of them and the plaque into the photo and be able to read the plaque was to lay down on either side of it. Buck angled his phone camera so it caught the bottom of the sapling too.

He sent the photo of them to May — they looked a little dirty and a little tired, but happy — with a simple caption.

Thanks sis ❤️

tag list: @chimneyz @desert--moonchild @bandluvr97 @fuselsstuff @a-simple-space-bi @setmeatopthepyre @owlgirl495 @styxhuntress @adhd-dean @bybobbysbeard @fan-of-a-lot @racerchix21 @geekwarrior107 @swagmaster9k @trombonechurchill

[shiningjustforreid]

go easy (on me baby)

bau!fem!reader faces immense grief and the aftermath. Spencer attempts to be supportive. sometimes it backfires.

a/n: grief is cruel. and sometimes, even the most caring people don’t know what to say or do.

word count: 4k

warnings/tags: 18+ for content, reader goes through it, funeral, season 11ish boyfriend!Spencer, mental health crises, Spencer is trying his best, grief, reader is fem but only physical descriptions are long hair(?), no use of y/n, church is mentioned for the funeral, mild religious themes

Crisp July wind, warm and suffocating, leeches into the bullpen, somehow, through the windows. Spencer’s flipping through files at his desk, glasses falling down the bridge of his nose; you’d both been in a rush this morning - your hair in a barely holding on pony tail and his lack of contacts proves that. Across the room, he hardly glances your direction as your phone buzzes and a frown paints your face when you answer. The gentle hum of other people and their computers drown out whatever conversation you have with whoever, but he does look up when you’re suddenly at his side.

All the life and color has been washed away from your face, smoothing your hands over your slacks, eyes unseeing, as you look down at the dingy carpet.

“That was my mom.”

You breathe out, voice catching, creaking. It doesn’t go unnoticed, certainly not by your behaviorally tuned boyfriend. He stands, his hands taking your forearms, sliding down until he can hold both your hands. HR and ‘PDA’ and fraternization be damned; you look like you’re about to tip over, and he’s not going to let that happen.

Strangely, though, you don’t look close to tears, as empty as your tone is. Thumbs soothe over your knuckles, as he watches your face, voice low enough that it gets lost in the nine fifteen hustle and bustle.

“What’d your mom say, Angel?”

Faintly, you realize he’s talking to you like he would a victim, or a victim’s family. You’re too stunned to be bothered by it.

“My grandma. She’s gone. Stroke.”

Several thoughts fly through Spencer’s brain. Your grandma, who practically raised you, while your parents were working. Who calls you at least once a week to check in, and sends small trinkets she thinks you’ll like in the mail. Gone. With absolutely no warning.

Quickly, he goes through what he knows about grief. What does he know about grief? Statistics, and informational articles about the five stages (or more) fly through his brain, but he comes up empty with what he should say. So instead, a simple phrase falls out.

“Oh, baby, I’m so sorry.”

Wrong response. Was it? He’s starting to freak out internally when all you do is raise your shoulders up, and down, a lethargic movement, as your eyes stay low.

“I suppose I should tell Hotch. My mom will want help. Planning the viewing. The funeral.”

Numbly, you turn, before he squeezes your hands tight, to keep you in place.

“Hey. Woah. Um, maybe you should just take a second and—“

“Spence. It’s fine. I’m fine. This— I’m just going to be very busy for a few days.”

You’ve got your ‘please-just-let-me-avoid-thinking-about-this’ face on, but to be honest, he’s considering having you go sit right back down and telling Hotch himself. Frozen to the spot, he watches you head up the stairs, how your fingers brush along the handrail.

As you initially described it, the next few days are a blur. Hotch gives you time off, and you spend it at your mother’s or the funeral home or your grandma’s house. The first night you come home after spending the day with family, Spencer’s already on the couch, book in lap, when you open the front door. He’s over at your side in a flash, too-quick hands shutting the door behind you and taking your freezing ones in his.

“Hey. You, uh, okay?”

You shrug, a half-hearted movement as your hands sit limply in his.

“I guess. I— maybe it hasn’t hit yet. I haven’t cried yet. My mom was crying, and my cousins, but I couldn’t. Think something might be wrong with me?”

Spencer’s face falls, and he’s quick to busy himself by smoothing through your hair, over the high plane of your cheek bone with his thumb; worrying with his hands so he maybe won’t say the wrong thing.

“Lovely, no. Nothing’s wrong. Grief, it, uh, comes in all types of patterns and forms, and maybe you’re still in denial?”

Still locked away somewhere in your mind, you shrug again, rubbing your hands over your arms. You might as well be underneath layers of ice, underwater, watching everyone up on the shore.

“That’s the first stage right? Makes sense. It’s cold in here, don’t you think?”

Frowning, he watches you head over the thermostat, and then to the kitchen.

Like nothing’s amiss. Like you didn’t just lose someone irreplaceable.

And yet—clearly, something’s very, very wrong.

“Angel…”

You don’t look up as you get out a pot, pan, a colander. Must be making pasta.

“Mm?”

“You can just go relax, okay, I’ll— let me get dinner tonight.”

Now it’s your turn to frown. He swallows, watching your face stay perfectly devoid of any real emotion, just carefully placed confusion as you turn his direction.

“Spence, why wouldn’t I make dinner? I usually do.”

“But I want to. Can you just let me? Please?”

He watches the indecision flicker through your eyes at his plea, and then you nod, slowly.

“Yeah. I’ll go— sit. For a bit. I’m really hungry anyways. Long day.”

Talking in cliches never good, especially when it’s you. Spencer watches you head to the couch, your eyes landing on a shelf — and he winces as you look dully at a frame.

He knows which picture rests behind the glass.

Staring for a moment, your muscles tense, and then you whisper, hoarse, like you’re talking to yourself more than him.

“It’s funny. How time works. Maybe ‘funny’ is the wrong word, but— how someone can be alive in a picture and you don’t think about it until they’re gone, it’s jarring. Wrong. That the picture is all you have.”

To your credit, you don’t choke, there’s no lump in your throat. But you sound so distant, and it absolutely crushes him.

“Baby, you—“

You head down the hall, before he can finish, and the soft click of the bedroom door is all he hears. Sighing, he turns back to dinner, anxiety bubbling in his chest. He knows you need a moment, to gather yourself back into something vaguely presentable, even for him.

How can he fix this? Can he? He can’t just apply his knowledge to his girlfriend like she’s a part of a case.

But he doesn’t know. And that terrifies him the most, that there’s something he can’t learn, can’t prepare for, because grief is different for everyone and God knows it’s going to be unique for you.

When the morning of the funeral dawns, you’re up before he is, taming your hair in the bathroom, already dressed — black skirt and a rather nice matching blouse that he’s never seen before. He comes up behind you, as you run the straightener down your hair, and you meet his eyes in the mirror. What he sees in your eyes is a whole lot of nothing. Emptiness. It’s deeply concerning.

“Hey. Morning, lovely.”

His lips find the side of your face, feather light, and then the column of your throat, but your face stays blank. Nodding your acknowledgment of his presence, your voice comes out dangerously close to emotionless. As if you’re discussing the schedule for a normal day.

“We need to leave by eleven. The funeral’s at 2, but the roads might be busy, there’s a lunch for us before, and a private last chance to—“

You stop. Compose yourself into something steel and put together, and continue.

“To see. Her. Before they close the-her- it. The casket.”

Spencer lets his hand come to rest against your hip, gentle, grounding.

“And then, there’s the funeral, and the burial, and—“

The recitation of the agenda halts as you finish your hair and set the straighter down with a clack against the laminate top. Hands falling against your un-made up face, as though you can hide yourself from the inevitable of today. As though you’re young again, believing that if something is not seen, it simply doesn’t exist.

And God, he wishes it could be done that way.

“Spencer, I don’t want to do this. I can’t, do this.”

A beat. He sighs, his other hand reaching to click the power button and unplug your tool.

“Baby, you have to.”

Perhaps, softer reassurances could have been spoken, but his gentle ones, firm in their candor, have you nodding, measured as you reach for your makeup bag. He can almost hear you repeating his reminder to yourself in your mind - an affirmation, that some things in this world are agonizing beyond human comprehension, because of how they remind us of our mortality. How small we are under the stars, but that we must use their light to keep going anyways.

Morning rushes into noon, and Spencer is dually impressed and unnerved as you stay polite but quiet through tearful family interactions and casserole. Right before the service, he pulls you to the side, some small room in the church, clicking the wood paneled door closed behind the two of you.

When he runs his hands over your arms, he winces at the chill he feels through your sleeves. Your eyes stay low, on the mulberry colored thinning carpet, avoiding his gaze, because you know — meeting his eyes and seeing the pain there will break you more than anything else.

“Angel girl. Hey. Listen. If you don’t feel these emotions, this grief, now, I’m afraid you’re going to regret it.”

Shaking your head, you look off to the side, voice hoarse.

“I can’t. I can’t fall apart in front of all these people, my mom, Spencer. I have to push it down, squash it so far into my heart that I can pretend it’s not even really happening to me.”

But it is happening to you.

Neither of you say it, but both of you feel it. Your mother weeps during the service, during the burial, until she’s all cried out and sort of just stands there and trembles. You? Stone. Several times, the urge to let out some sort of bitter little whimper crawls up your throat, but you shove it down.

You’re a gargoyle, watching the people you love and grew up with weep over the casket as it’s lowered into the dirt, your face impassive. Spencer’s fingers find yours when someone hands you a rose to toss in the grave, and on wobbling legs you move, tugging him with you, the breath in your lungs kept there only by the physical contact.

It’s not until you’re both back in the apartment, and you stand there, purse in when hand, dangling to the carpet, in the entryway, until Spencer turns to you, voice so soft you barely hear it.

“Baby? I can help with your shoes if you want, or—“

“I don’t need help with my fucking shoes.”

Immediately, the guilt replaces the anger, but not by much. Swallowing hard, you set your bag down on the counter with a little more force than necessary, and sigh, a quick, short burst of air.

“God, Spence, I’m sorry. You didn’t deserve that.”

Pressing your fingers against your eyes, you vaguely realize that you’ll smudge your makeup. As if that matters. He’s silent, as you stand there, his hands darting over his slacks a few times, uneasy, before they’re shoved in his pockets.

“You didn’t mean it. I know. It’s okay.”

Is it? Does grief give you the right to respond in any way that rolls off your tongue? Looking away, out the living room window, you shake your head.

“No. It’s not okay. I’m sorry. None of this is okay. None of it. I shouldn’t have spoken to you like that. I just can’t believe we just put her in the dirt like that in her dress; she doesn’t have her rose sweater, she’s going to get cold—“

During your ramble, your voice has gotten high, crackly, almost unintelligible, as you turn back to meet his eyes. The expression on his face borders on pity.

“Hey, come here. Let’s just sit for a bit, I can make tea.”

You can’t bear it.

“Don’t look at me like that!”

Spencer sighs, steps closer, lets his hand rest tentatively on your waist. Tensing, you turn, barely, out of his touch.

“Spencer, she can’t be gone, she— she didn’t even look like herself! Didn’t you see it? In the casket? That wasn’t her, they made her all up to look like her but it wasn’t, I swear to God, it wasn’t. How could my mom not tell? It couldn’t be, my grandma can’t be dead, she can’t, Spencer— she is.”

There’s the tears.

He folds you into his chest, feels your tears against his shirt for a moment, arms around your waist. In a desperate attempt to ground yourself, yours wind around his neck, lifting your head to rest on his shoulder so you can speak.

“I want it all to be some lie. That I’ll wake up tomorrow and call her again and she’ll tell me about the new cookies she baked for her neighbor and I would call every day, I would.”

What can he say? He’s never been well-versed in words when they matter, so he lets you get it out. His thumb drifts up and down the fabric covering your ribs as you hiccup another sob.

“It almost makes me sick. I can’t think about the fact that I didn’t return her calls, or that they all got together last Thanksgiving and we didn’t go, I can’t go back to see her, I can’t go back and fix it, I can’t—“

Breathless nearly, he shushes, gentle, one calloused hand coming to rest on your scalp, smoothing down the hair there.

“Breathe, angel. You will make yourself sick if you don’t stop hyperventilating. Just— let me help. Tonight. Okay?”

Somehow, the minutes tick by, and he’s managed to get you showered, in pajamas you love with tea in your hand, and he’s combing through your hair. Sitting, half nothing, half human, in front of him, you let him slide the plastic teeth through your damp locks.

“I was horrid today. You were nothing but supportive and helpful and I was terrible. I’m sorry.”

“You’re grieving. I can take it, okay? The anger. The pain, it’s all a part of this, and I want to be able to handle it with you. That’s— sort of my job, isn’t it? To help you. When you need it.”

Sighing, you turn to face him. He takes your hand, threading your fingers together and letting his thumb ghost over the side of your hand.

“I mean it, sweet girl. Grief is ugly. Horrid, as you say. I definitely can’t expect you to just act as though you’re fine when you’re not.”

“But you also don’t want it to consume me.”

You lean forward and press a kiss to his cheek, and he grins softly through the light pink that stains his face. Somewhere inside your heart, something glows— still, your affection overwhelms him, just a little.

“And I’ll be damned if I let it.”

“Spencer.”

There’s a warning in your voice, gentle, sad.

“There are some things you just can’t control. No amount of knowledge of statistics or information can fix my heart. This just hurts.”

He blinks. Something flickers in his eyes — upset, raw fear, then, that he won’t be able to drag you out of the pit that you’re slowly sinking into.

“Okay, but I can still apply what I know. How to alleviate some stress, please, just let me.”

Your heart twists. The way his shoulders won’t relax, how tense he is as he tries to hold your eyes despite how you try to avoid avoid avoid.

“We’ll see.” You concede, before you let yourself be tugged under the quilt of your bed and into Spencer’s grasp and the warmth that seems to seep from him. Mentally, you promise to try to let him help. However he can.

God, you try, you do. At first, it’s easy, faking cohesiveness, and you begin to wonder if you’ll really need external assistance at all. Too much blush and caffeine. A tight grin when needed. Barely collected and rationed laughs that the entire team pretends aren’t flimsy like ash.

Until you take the first sick day. Spencer isn’t thrilled about leaving you home alone, but you tell him that you’re just sort of blech, and a day is all you need to recover, and tidy up around the apartment.

What you don’t mention to him is how you spend the entire day in bed. Nothing gets cleaned. The lights stay off all day, curtains drawn tight, your home a dim shadow of what it normally is. Normally? It’s a sanctuary. It’s starting to feel more like a crypt. Coffee cups pile up on your nightstand, on the end table, and the more you stay home, the harder it is to leave. At all.

Because there isn’t just one sick day. There’s another, a week later, after a night spent in tears. And another two days later, when you feel so nauseous and tense at dawn that you feign a stomach bug. Despite the guilt the first few times, each time, it becomes easier to text Garcia that you won’t be in, with excuses that begin to sound poorly crafted even to you. And you want to believe them more than anyone.

You stop looking in the mirror, because all you see is her, and your mom’s soft reminders from childhood turned haunting whispers of ‘you look so much like her.’

In some back corner of your mind, you begin to wonder how long you can wallow before the water fills your lungs and you drown off shore, a corpse waterlogged with muddy memories. The sea salt in your wounds is when you see a picture, hear a song she loved, or smell her perfume in public, and your lashes catch droplets you try to hide from Spencer. Before you know it, you stay home from a case. One in Florida, that you probably would’ve been helpful on.

You don’t care. Every time you close your eyes now, you see her body, fragile and made up to look less gray than she really was, cushioned by pale pink satin. Hotch calls early, to say there’s a case, and you refuse to go, numbly, dully.

Spencer is shocked; no matter the amount of recent absences you’ve had at work, he still can’t believe the development of your depression.

“Baby, you love cases. Please, come along. You can’t just keep taking sick days and not getting out of bed and—“

“Watch me. I’ll do whatever the hell I like.”

The words are empty, despite their vitriol quality, and he frowns. You’re sat on the edge of the bed, hugging your knees to your chest, cheek laid upon them.

“Easy. I didn’t say you couldn’t stay home, but you already took Monday off, and last Thursday, and—“

“Damn it, Spence, I know! I know. I just can’t. Okay? I can’t. I don’t want to. Let it fucking go.”

Now his face goes dangerously blank. You two rarely fight, but your tone is starting to border on hostile. Guilt creeps up your throat.

“Sorry. God, you didn’t deserve that.”

He glides his hands over his suit jacket, voice clipped as he looks down at his shoes.

“I’m not able to support you if you don’t want it. I’ll see you when we get back, then, I guess.”

Panic claws at your chest, sinks its teeth in and has you flying from your spot, voice shrill.

“Spencer, hey, stop, I’m sorry, please, I know—“

He turns, and the anguish in his eyes is intense.

“Baby, I don’t know. Okay? It is excruciating to watch you collapse in on yourself. I want to apply some study I’ve read or even just cheer you up and I’m beginning to think you don’t even want to be helped.”

Taking in a uneasy breath, you nod, color drained away from your face. Spencer’s fingers itch to comfort you. He doesn’t. There’s so much defeat in his eyes, unbound desperation to fix and heal.

“If I stop being sad, if I just keep going on with cases and life, it’s like she’s not even gone. It’s like she didn’t even die, Spencer! And she did! She’s gone, I can’t do anything to bring her back, please, just let me—“

The tears fall now, clumping on your lashes and dribbling down your cheeks, and the pit in Spencer’s chest gets bigger. Sometimes it feels like all time is anymore is minutes spent weeping or not. He steps forward to bring you against his suit coat, trembling hands smoothing over the linen of your pajama top as you heave silent sobs.

“I’m here. You’re not going to make me leave. Because the one thing I do know, Angel? Deep down, you want life to go back to normal. And it will. The grief won’t get smaller, but you’ll grow around it. Okay? I love you. So much.”

Tender hands trace up and down your spine, one eventually coming to tangle in your hair.

“Tell you what. We take this case, and then come home, and take some time off. Together. I’ll help you clean, and maybe—“

Is he pressing too much?

“Maybe we could go see her. It’s been a few months.”

Immediately, your brain lights up with a oh no please don’t I can’t-

“Sure. Yeah. When we get back.”

Florida is what it is — hot and humid and you manage to stay in the field office the entire time. Vaguely, you wonder if Spencer spoke to Hotch. Eventually, you decide it was probably for the best.

True to his word, the apartment is cleaned when you both return home, and two days plus the weekend is granted to the both of you. During the drive there, your heart twists and you’re pretty sure no interrogation has ever made your stomach turn like it does when Spencer slides the car into park, and his hand squeezes yours to help you out of the vehicle and onto sun starched grass.

A quick glance your way tells him you’re apprehensive to the extreme, and he stops halfway there, turning to face you.

“We uh, don’t have to do this. If you don’t think you’re ready.”

You shake your head, one quick movement.

“No. I need to do this.”

He looks relieved, his small smile growing after you try to smile too.

“A lot of people say that it can provide a lot of closure, and be cathartic. It might also… not be easy. Might be jarring, but really, the potential benefits of this outweigh the possibility that—“

You stop, pulling him to a halt with you. Fresh stone, neatly carved letters, her name, followed by years, followed by some lovely sentiment you can’t read because your eyes are clouded.

“They did a good job. With it.”

He says softly, and suddenly, the adrenaline kicks in, and you’re shaking so hard you might just collapse right there.

“We need to go. I’ll come back another, we’ll come back, but right now I need to go.”

Typically, he’d suggest that studies show facing fears can help with said fears, but one look at your terrified, gutted expression and he’s leading you back to his car, hands on shoulders, voice in your ear.

“You’re okay. Breathe baby. In, two three four, out, two, three, four. I’m not going anywhere.”

Once back at the car, you sink down, your back against the cold metal of the car, to land on the ground underneath. He follows suit, and your glossy eyes find the sky, a crisp, autumn cerulean that you just stare at.

“Think she’s watching? Like people say?”

He stares too, and takes your hand. He hears the guilt, the loss in your tone, and knows you’re afraid she wouldn’t be proud.

“That’s one thing I’m not sure about. Religion is, I think, at its core, a response to what people see in the world. A solution to the agony and problems we face down here. I can’t comment on whether or not she’s watching, but if she was, she’d still love you. Still be proud. Just like me.”

“Really? Proud? Of me? When I’ve spiraled into a caffeine and depressive lump that barely gets to work, let alone gets anything productive done?”

“Always. If there’s one thing I know, it’s that, well, I love you. Adore you, really, and you’re still in there, even if it feels like it’s all too foggy to see. I still see you.”

He presses a kiss to your cheek, and then pulls back, flushed, and looks away.

“Sorry, that was probably cheesy. But I do. Love you. A lot, and it’s okay if you can’t do this yet, and I—“

You silence him gently with your own mouth, a lingering kiss before you stand.

“We should go. C’mon. Thanks for driving me all the way here. Even if I couldn’t do what I wanted to yet.”

“Good clarifier, ‘yet.’ You will. Eventually. And I’ll be here for each attempt. And, when you finally talk to her.”

In that, in him, you have no doubt.

[pathetic-gamer]

random, deeply unscientific poll time because I'm curious how well this website reflects the overall labor force lol

before you mark "unemployed," READ THE EXPLANATION AND INSTRUCTIONS

DETAILS AND INSTRUCTIONS:

*The number listed beside each category is the number of job positions available to the total workforce, not necessarily the number of people who are actually employed.

*Not having a job does not automatically make you "unemployed." Unemployed means you are a participating member of the workforce but don't have a job currently. To be consider part of the active workforce as defined by the BLS, you MUST be ALL of the following:

16 years of age or older

residing in the 50 states or DC

available for work

actively seeking employment in the last 4 weeks

not on active duty in the military

DO NOT select unemployed unless you meet ALL of the criteria above.

Examples of not having a job but not counting as unemployed: stay-at-home parent (I know this one is a bad reflection of reality, i know i know pls dont yell at me), a full-time student not currently working, a 25 year old who hasn't applied for any jobs in over a few months, someone with a permanent or temporary disability who is either not working/seeking employment or on FMLA.

Other notes and explanation:

This is a list of all non-agriculture industries that employ 10 million or more people, based on the most recent data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. The math might be way off bc I wasn't very careful lmao. If you have more than one job across more than one industry, pick the one that makes up the majority of your income.

A handful of familiar sub-industries that make up a portion of a larger industry but are less than 8 million people are listed in the "Other" category so that the much larger sub-industry can have its own line.

For example, healthcare belongs to "healthcare and public services," which is around 22M and includes childcare and social support services. Because direct healthcare delivery makes up such an enormous portion, I separated it out. The rest is fewer than 5M and thus does not get its own line, so they're included in "Other." (Insurance specifically is included in finance.)

More things included in "other":

Construction

Mining, quarrying, and oil and gas extraction

Utilities

Real-estate

[supernatural-bias]

𝐁𝐞𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐅𝐢𝐟𝐭𝐡 𝐆𝐡𝐨𝐬𝐭𝐛𝐮𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐖𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝 𝐈𝐧𝐜𝐥𝐮𝐝𝐞

↳ warnings: none

↳ notes: forgot how good this movie series was. going to be thinking about it quite a bit these few coming days. especially egon! favorite character by far, with winston in next place

↳ song: main title theme (ghostbusters)—elmer bernstein

masterlist | commisions | carrd

• When a flyer for a job downtown mysteriously appeared in your mailbox slot, your first thought was to throw it away

• It looked scrappy. Par on course with the rest of the junk mail companies normally delt out to catch your eye

• Still. Three days later you were standing outside a mildly reevaluated looking firehouse with the paper clutched loosely in your hand, and your best clothes on

• As you’d walked towards the doors, a man came up from behind you, uttering an apology as he nearly bumped into you

• “Hey,” He had paused, allowing you to catch a glance of his tan suit and kinky black hair. “You here for an interview, too?” He asked, walking through the large off-green door as you held it open for him

• “Sure am.”

• “Well, may the best one win. Or get the job, I suppose.” He chuckled with a lopsided grin

• "I dont think they’ll mind hiring the both of us." You eventually responded, looking up at the way the ceiling sagged with old age

• Following your line of sight, the man beside you nodded deeply, and the both of you made your way up to a reception desk with a very annoyed looking lady behind it

• That was the day both you, and who you later learned to be Winston, got the job as the newest pair of Ghostbusters

• “Meet back here tomorrow at noon.” The snappy lady with glasses had said monotonly as she thrust a set of papers at you. You were still looking in the direction that two yelping men in jumpsuits had just gone holding a machine, that it took you a second to notice

• “With the way this job is looking? No way I’m missing tomorrow.”

• Meeting your employers slash coworkers for the first time— technically second if you counted the way two of them crashed your interview mid hiring —was certainly an experience

• Only one had been prepared for both you and Winston’s first days with a handshake and slightly unbuttoned lab coat

• He had introduced himself as doctor Egon Spengler, and shook your hand with a certain rigidness to it. Still, you caught him looking at the both of you with curiosity, so you tossed him an easy upward twitch of you lips. He seemed to relax a little after that

• The other two, however, had proved to be more difficult upon meeting

• Ray Stanz and Peter Venkman were certainly a pair, with the latter sure to be the cause of later headaches, but seemed friendly anyways—if the way they slapped you on the back said anything

• “Welcome to the nerd squad.” Peter has smiled teasingly at you, immediately wrapping an arm around your shoulders and bringing you close as if he was about to tell you a secret. “Stick with me, and you’ll be kicking it with the cool kids!”

• “Is he always like this?” You asked while pushing him away

• “Regrettably.” Egon responded in a flat tone as he moved back to statistics on a chart. “Try being roommates with him in college for six years.”

• “No thanks. I think I’d rather get possessed by one of those ghosts you guys hunt.”

• “Hey, still here!”

• You fell right into place with them pretty quickly after that. Something about getting slimed by a poltergeist in Central Park really brings a group of people together. Especially if they happen to get a really good meal of Thai right after

• In the days weeks and months following your hiring, you get to learn a lot about the little team you’d been squished into

• Winston was probably the first one you befriended. Maybe because the both of you had showed up around the same time, but you found him one of the easiest to just sit down and talk to after a mission without being interrupted every two sentences. The other guys were great, but he seemed to appreciate a little peace and quiet more than what you got in the headquarters

• “Seriously— do we have to call it the headquarters?” You interrupted Peter in the middle of his rant. Sipping on a cup of coffee, you took a moment before speaking more. It really was too early for this. “I mean, come on. It makes us sound like bizzaro superhero’s. More than we already do, anyway.”

• “Personally I wouldn’t mind playing a little Bruce Wayne every now and then.” Peter grinned back suggestively. From beside you, Ego let out his equivalent of an annoyed sigh as he tinkered with stray machinery. Apparently someone else felt it was too early for Peters antics, too

• “Gag me with a spoon.” You deadpanned while swirling your mug around moodily

• “Fine fine. We can call it home base. Happy, sunshine?”

• You grumbled at his sickeningly sweet tone before delving back into your coffee, missing the way Ray and Winston shared slight smiles at the exchange

• “Now that you four are done, mind helping me with our actual jobs?”

• “Oops. Yeah. Sorry Egon.”

• “Sigh.”

[under-lore]

Toby Fox once made a post saying that he didn't want to sell merch of Chara because it would trivialize what they meant in game and the message they carry, do you have any idea what he could have meant by this?

Well, obviously this topic is inherently speculative so take it with a grain of salt, but there still exists some room to try and analyse it nonetheless.

Here is the post in question :

First, he uses "i" in the first sentence, and then "Because".

This immediately tells us that Toby Fox personally is the one that is opposing merchandise of Chara being made, and that all the things which will come afterwards are about what he was intending to do with them as a character in Undertale and why that makes the idea of Chara merch bothersome to him.

This isn't the only time Toby has shown to be picky about Chara-related content. For example, he has only openly promoted fan content containing Chara once since the game was released (and they were not the main focus of it) whilst the rest of the cast is seen quite often.

In general, Toby is quite dodgy when it comes to the first fallen human as a character. Sometimes even acting as if they didn't exist.

But as the mail also repeats, that isn't because Toby doesn't care about Chara, but rather because he does care about their character. Like how Toby actually went ahead and personally intervened to change Chara's Tarot card (Along with removing the Gaster one entirely), even if those weren't even official merch anyways. He does care about how they're being portrayed at least.

Okay, so next is our main puzzle piece.

The reason why he doesn't want Chara merch is because Toby considers that merchandise of Chara would have to portray them in a way that does not allow to properly represent what Chara stands for in-game, and thus fail to convey the message that they were intended to carry.

To rephrase this, he considers that if he were to make Chara merch, then "merch Chara" would be incapable of portraying correctly what he actually intended "in-game Chara" to be, and thus miss out on a significant portion of their character & what could be taken from it.

So he would rather not have merch at all rather than to have merch that misses the point of who "in-game" Chara was intended to be.

Since the only direct hint we have about this is that what Toby meant couldn't have been portrayed with merch properly, then the only way to obtain more insight into what he meant exactly is to go about it the other way and to ask which pieces of Chara's character merch could have portrayed and work backwards.

A prime example of what could have been done for Chara merch would be content similar to the Tarot card mentioned earlier.

As that card shows, it is far from difficult to make designs that capture most of the concepts and themes that are explicit-genocide-route-dialogue-specific & are said by or associated to the character.

To cite only a few that can be seen from this card, life & death & killing, power, demonic parallels, the number 9, the absolute, statistics, consequences, souls, knives, nothingness,...

(Side note : The person who made the Tarot card actually did not even know about the name "Chara" at the time, they weren't really a fan of the game and mostly went along with their first impression of the genocide route & the fanon of the time.)

Aside from perhaps their relationship with the player, there is frankly nothing about the direct Chara appearance at the end of genocide & the heavily Chara influenced flavor text of the end of the route that cannot be easily shown through merch. (Just look at all the fan content over the years)

And considering the way Toby acts merch-wise with Frisk and with Kris respectively, we can be pretty confident that their relationship with the player is not the reason that Chara merch is being blocked either.

So with that, we can be pretty much sure that what he meant wasn't about the explicit-genocide-route-only parts of in-game Chara.

Aside from the genocide route, the only other direct appearances of Chara are that of pre-death Chara. Between their fall into the underground and their death after the failure of the plan.

While we don't have clear cut examples like the Tarot card here, we do still run into the same problems.

The game implies a lot of things about pre-death Chara in many different ways. But all of those details or personality traits are either not much of a problem to portray or are also shared with other characters who do have merch made of them, meaning they can't be it either. (Its usually Undyne)

Not to mention that, when it comes to pre-death Chara, the game itself does show us some sepia artworks of Chara & The Dreemurrs. Like this one for example :

If properly representing those character traits of pre-death Chara was truly what this was all about, then why not simply make merch out of a colored version of that image if nothing else ?

It's in the game, right ? So surely it can't possibly be misrepresenting the game...

A trivialisation means to downplay something or to reduce it to something simpler.

If both pre-death Chara and genocide route-Chara & what the game shows about them could be represented with merch like any other character, but that Toby considers that doing so would still be missing out on an important part of Chara's character & their message, then the only conclusion would seem to be that Toby is not refering to any of the direct appearances of Chara in the game at all, but rather to another seemingly very important side of Chara that isn't shown directly in-game, and couldn't be through merch either.

While those could still be accurate in theory by themselves, making merch of Chara like this sepia art or the Tarot card would still be trivializing them in Toby's mind in the sense that it would be limiting Chara to only those things, and thus exclude that core part of their character from "merch Chara". Something that Toby refuses to do.

So our situation would seem to be : There is more to Chara than just what we are told about pre-death Chara and genocide route Chara. However, this part of Chara's character cannot be properly shown with merch yet is too important to ignore in Toby's mind.

There is one last thing we can say about what this part might be, though.

Toby seems quite insistant on the fact that this particular part of them was absolutely key to understanding what was Chara's role as a character in the game, and to understanding the message that he was trying to convey through this character.

A character's role & message can be conveyed through their story, through their actions, and through their mentality.

As we've seen earlier that this part of Chara was not an explicit appearance, the "actions" part is either minor enough to miss, or absent.

So it would seem we can be somewhat confident that this piece of Chara's character that Toby is worried about also either adds more implicit parts to Chara's story or gives important insight on their mentality (or both).

That would make Toby's core reason for not wanting to make merch of Chara be less about Chara's character itself and more about what the player is to understand from the way he constructed their character, which would match up with his words about it being "something that cannot be bought in a store", too.

Anddd... As far as purely impartial analysis goes, i think that's pretty much all that you can deduce, unless i've forgotten about something.

If you want my personal opinion on it, though, i would have to say that using NarraChara theory would be a really elegant way to fill up all those blanks.

Considering that the theory, if true, would constitute 90% of Chara's character & be absolutely crucial to understanding the character's mentality and the way they think or behave in different situations or routes, that would certainly make it key to understanding Toby's intent with the character relative to their message or what they would stand for.

I can also hardly see plausible alternatives. Considering that pre-fall Chara and post-game Chara are pretty dry wells in that regard and genocide Chara's words about when they were "brought back to life", the only moments left timeline-wise for this key part of Chara's character to happen would be during neutral/pacifist routes or during the part of the genocide route that weren't already brought up earlier. That would make it seem like a pretty natural answer.

But more importantly, anything to do with the NarraChara part of their character (if the theory was intended) literally couldn't be properly represented through merch.

Because, unlike the common fanon portrayal of it which exists for that same reason, NarraChara according to in-game flavor text wouldn't be a ghostly figure floating around Frisk, but rather a foreign entity sharing their body and their mind. Which is a crucial part to both how NarraChara would work in-world and to the morality-wise implications of it.

Of course, that didn't prevent some fans from sweeping that under the rug anyways, even though it misses one of the most important points of the character they're trying to represent.

That might just be why Toby would rather just not.

How would you make merch of that ? You would just be making merch of Frisk instead... Let alone portraying correctly such a complex character. It just wouldn't work. This is a pretty common problem for media with bodysharing characters, those mechanics and all the implications that follow genuinely just cannot be "sold in stores."

They are a purely psychological experience.

[discount-cowboy]

I need people to understand systematic voter suppression in America.

I've seen a lot of posts about America asking for what we got, and it's made me realize that a lot of people, both inside and outside the United States, don't seem to realize the level of voter suppression faced by the American people.

To start, yes a scary number of people did vote for him, and yes we are in a bad way with fascism at our doorstep if not already in our homes.

Voting in America is not a right, it is a privilege, and voting suppression comes about in many different forms such as our prisons, poverty, capitalism and voting locations. One of the biggest is through our prison system. In America, if you are incarcerated for a felony. There are only 2 states that allow felons to vote while in prison custody, Maine and Vermont. In all other states, you are prohibited from voting in elections while in prison for a felony. Even if it is legal for you to vote, many people in jail or prison are not given the opportunity. There were 1,230,100 individuals in prison at yearend 2022, and the number has steadily been increasing over the years. On top of that, there are an estimated 19 million individuals who have been convicted of a felony.

There are only 15 states that restore voting rights after you finish your prison sentence. In 5 states, you have to have completed your prison sentence and your parole, which can last upwards of 5 additional years. In 20, you can vote when you complete your sentence, parole, and any probation you have to complete. In the remaining states, you either have to hope a judge allows you to regain the rights based on the type of conviction or voting rights can only be restored through an individual petition or application to the government.

This matters because our country systematically targets minorities, specifically black and brown men and those facing poverty.

Beyond the systematic targeting by our for-profit prison systems, those experiencing poverty and homelessness are likely unable to vote if they do not have their identification up to date and readily available. To hold a government ID you have to have a listed residence, if you do not have an address to put then you will not be issued one. Shelters often do not let you use their address as a placeholder and on top of that if you have lost your identification such as birth certificate and social security card, there are many hoops you have to jump through, all of which cost money to get new forms of ID. It depends on the state, but when I had to replace my birth certificate in 2020 if cost me about $30, and I had to drive over 30 minutes one way to my counties vital statistics office during business hours. This meant I had to take time off work to complete this. To get a new state ID you have to go through your bureau of motor vehicles (BMV). The BMV is so slow that it is often made out to be a joke in movies and shows, but this is not an exaggeration. I once had to renew a vehicle registration and waited over 45 minutes to just speak with someone. It all costs money and takes time that not everyone has.

Voting locations has changed a bit now that voting by mail is more readily available, but it is not as simple as that. To vote by mail opens the voting up to more issues. To vote by mail, people either mail it back, or drop it off into unsupervised metal boxes. There were a few instances of these boxes being targets of attacks, and there have been an increase of mail carriers being targeted by attacks. While this is a step into the right direction, many are uncomfortable, or unaware of how to navigate this option since you have to plan over a month ahead to receive a mail-in ballot and this information is not always readily available.

But why not just go in person? Some counties only have one voting place for the whole county. This can mean long drives, long waits, and many do not get the day off work to vote. I personally live right near my board of elections in a major city and went to an early voting day and the computer systems went down. They said they didn't know how long it would be, and many of us had to leave to return to work or our children. If this happened on the actual voting day, many would be forced to withhold their vote because they cannot afford to miss work or leave their children unattended any longer.

This is just a really long-winded way to say that many who want to vote cannot, and when we say a majority of Americans did not want him in power, we mean it. Look at how messed up our government was before this even occurred and try to say there were equal voting rights and opportunities. Our voices are being suppressed, we are protesting, building mutual aid groups, fighting for our rights and freedoms with our blood, sweat, tears, and for some of us with our lives. Those in office are no longer a representative of the people, they are those who bought their way into power. Media and misinformation spreading amongst the people has led to so much fear amongst conservatives that they would rather risk a fascist dictator than the outcomes said fascists have told them would occur if he didn't win. They truly have been brainwashed to believe that it is either them or the rest of us and are willing to kill us to protect themselves.

Please understand all of this before you make jokes about American's who are stating their fears, desire to leave, or those asking for help. Please understand that we are being serious when we say a majority did not want this. Would you look at those targeted under Hitlers reign asking for help and laugh because Germany voted for him?

[a-weeping-angel-just]

Safety Driving Tips for New Drivers

Driving in San Jose can be exciting, especially for beginner drivers. However, safety should always come first. With San Jose auto transport guide, you will find useful driving tips, especially to new drivers to help them navigate the roads with confidence.

Learn about safe driving practices, common road signs, and how to handle different traffic situations. Get ready to hit the road safely and enjoy the journey ahead.

Key Adjustments for Different Conditions:

Reduce Speed in Wet or Foggy Conditions

Double Stopping Distance on Wet Pavement

Use Low Beam Headlights to See Better

Watch Road Surface Changes Carefully

Safe driving practices is the lifeline of road safety. Statistics reveal that all but one of these five drivers admit to falling asleep while driving, and 82% experience road rage. These numbers show why defensive techniques make such a difference. Drivers should spot potential hazards early and stay aware of vehicles around them.

City driving creates its own set of challenges. Drivers should watch for water pools that could cause hydroplaning in heavy traffic. Low beams or fog lights work better than high beams when visibility drops, since bright lights reflect off rain and make it harder to see.

Safe city navigation requires drivers to look at least 20 seconds ahead. This gives enough time to spot dangers and react properly. Proper lane position becomes crucial in busy traffic areas. The left lane helps passing vehicles, while the right lane suits entering or leaving traffic best.

Understanding Local Driving Laws in San Jose

The California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) manages driving regulations that create a safe framework for road usage and vehicle operation. These rules apply to everyone who drives in San Jose and across the state.

Driver's License Requirements

A California driver's license gives you official permission to operate a motor vehicle. The license must show:

True Full Name and Birth-date

Current Mailing Address

Signature and Photograph

Physical Description

Real Id Compliance (for Domestic Flights and Federal Facilities)

Class C stands out as the most common non-commercial license type that the DMV provides. Drivers can operate these vehicles with this license:

Two-axle vehicles weighing 26,000 pounds or less

Three-axle vehicles weighing 6,000 pounds or less

California's vehicle registration follows clear guidelines and timelines. The process needs:

Proof of Car Ownership

Current Insurance Documentation

Smog Inspection Certificate

Payment of Registration Fees

San Jose residents start their registration by booking a DMV appointment. First-time vehicle owners need these items:

Identification Documents

Proof of California Residency

Completed Application Form

Processing Fee Payment

The DMV mandates insurance coverage for all vehicles on California roads. This rule protects the vehicle owner and other road users. Vehicle owners must keep their registration current, and the DMV sends renewal notices before expiration dates.

Special Considerations: People moving to California must register their vehicles within 20 days of becoming residents. They need to verify their Vehicle Identification Number (VIN) and pay required fees.

Common Road Signs Every Beginners Driver Should Know

Traffic signs act as a universal road language that communicates vital information through specific shapes and colors. The Federal Highway Administration creates these standards to keep signs consistent on all roads.

Sign Categories by Color:

Red: Stop, Yield, or Prohibited Actions

Green: Directional Guidance and Distance Information

Blue: Traveler Services and Evacuation Routes

Yellow: General Warnings

White: Regulatory Information

Orange: Construction and Maintenance Warnings

Brown: Recreational and Cultural Sites

Regulatory signs are the backbone of traffic control. The octagonal stop sign requires drivers to halt completely, and the triangular yield sign tells them to slow down and let others pass. Speed limit signs show black numbers on white backgrounds to indicate maximum safe speeds during ideal conditions.

Yellow diamond-shaped warning signs help drivers prepare for upcoming hazards like curves, merges, or pedestrian crossings. School zones get extra attention through pentagon-shaped signs with fluorescent yellow-green colors.

Using a reliable car transport guide and common road sign information make travel easier for everyone. Blue signs point to essential services such as hospitals and rest areas, while brown ones lead to recreational spots. Most of these signs include distances and arrows that help drivers find their way.

[mariacallous]

In the first two years after the Supreme Court eliminated the constitutional right to abortion, the number of abortions performed annually in the United States went up. On the face of it, this might seem perplexing. After all, many states seized the opportunity presented by the Court’s 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization to enact daunting new restrictions on abortion: twelve adopted near-total bans, and four more imposed gestational limits of six weeks, a point at which many people may not yet realize they are pregnant. Yet, suddenly, the U.S. was seeing an increase in abortions—from about nine hundred and thirty thousand in 2020 to more than a million in 2023. The best explanation for this apparent paradox was that providers and activists in states where abortion was still accessible devoted considerable energy and resources into making it more so. This was especially true for medication abortions provided via telehealth. In December, 2021, the F.D.A. had lifted its requirement that mifepristone be prescribed in person; the number of virtual clinics, which assess a patient’s eligibility online or by phone, and mail out the medications, proliferated.

The post-Dobbs restrictions plainly had an effect. Some states reported that they had reduced the number of abortions to virtually zero, and they made already hard circumstances harder for patients who have to travel from, say, Texas or Kentucky to North Carolina or Illinois, in many cases pushing abortions later into desperately unwanted pregnancies. Draconian new laws compounded the risks to patients carrying pregnancies that threatened their lives or health. And the over-all number of abortions in the U.S. may eventually decrease as a result of Dobbs. (The latest annual statistics available are from 2023.) Still, it seems safe to say that an immediate rise in the number of abortions was not what activists were looking for when they campaigned to overturn Roe v. Wade.

Given that abortion has not even come close to going away, it makes sense that the anti-abortion movement hasn’t, either. Dobbs was the first-round bell in a much bigger fight, for which the movement is in some ways more pumped up than ever. Donald Trump’s return to the White House is certainly invigorating. It’s true that, in his most recent campaign, Trump was canny on the subject of abortion, reminding his evangelical supporters that it was his Supreme Court appointments who had given them Dobbs, while stressing, for the benefit of the majority of Americans who disapprove of the ruling, that abortion policy was now up to the states. Amid the chaotic pileup of executive orders and agency demolitions in the first months of Trump 2.0, abortion politics has not loomed especially large. Trump has not yet, for instance, instructed the Department of Justice, per Project 2025, to ban the mailing of abortion pills by enforcing the 1873 Comstock Act. Still, he hasn’t exactly neglected the issue: among other things, he pardoned twenty-three people who had been arrested for blockading abortion clinics, while directing the Department of Justice to minimize the enforcement of a 1994 law prohibiting violent or intimidating clinic protests. And, of course, these are early days.

But overturning Roe was never the ultimate goal of the anti-abortion movement, as Mary Ziegler, a law professor at the University of California at Davis, argues in her cogent book “Personhood: The New Civil War Over Reproduction.” Rather, she observes, it has “always been a fetal-personhood movement,” premised on the idea that the fetus is a “separate, unique human individual from the moment of fertilization,” and that because of this status “the Constitution gives (or at least should give) that individual rights.” Movement leaders have disagreed on how best to enforce fetal personhood—through a constitutional amendment or a federal statute that would ban abortion nationwide, for instance, or through the courts. They have differed, too, on how forcefully to push a proposition with some deeply unpopular possible ramifications: the limiting or outlawing of I.V.F. and some forms of contraception, say, or homicide prosecutions for women who choose to terminate their pregnancies. Many in the movement have opted for more incremental, and less punitive, strategies—suggesting, for instance, that women are innocent victims of abortion providers, and scarcely understand what it means to terminate a pregnancy. This was the reasoning behind so-called informed-consent laws, which compel people seeking abortions to undergo ultrasounds, so they might view the fetus, or to be presented with (often misleading) information about the physical and psychological risks of the procedure.

Yet the goal of recognizing fetal personhood, Ziegler writes, has, for more than half a century, been a “singular point of agreement in a fractious movement.”

Ziegler uses the term “fetal personhood,” but “embryonic personhood” might be more accurate: for many in the anti-abortion movement, a fertilized egg, and certainly a cluster of four or eight or sixteen cells, is already a human being, and therefore, within U.S. jurisdiction, is entitled to equal protection under the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution. (Strange in this context to contemplate how many of those rights-bearing fertilized eggs—as many as forty per cent—fail, through natural causes, even to implant in the uterine lining.)

It has long been a problem for both sides of the abortion debate that the Constitution does not mention the subject. Justice Harry Blackmun, in his majority opinion in Roe, attempted to solve that conundrum by expounding an unenumerated right implied by the Constitution, specifically the due-process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment—a right to privacy, protecting people’s decision-making in intimate matters such as reproduction and sexuality. Some people, even in the pro-choice camp, were not particularly taken by this line of reasoning; Ruth Bader Ginsburg, for one, made it clear that she would have preferred Roe to be grounded in an argument about gender equality under the law. But the Constitution’s silence on abortion was trickier for jurists inclined to rule against reproductive rights—they were more likely to be originalists, and therefore to rely on justification in history and tradition, and in the specific text of the Constitution.

Justice Samuel Alito, in his majority opinion in Dobbs, had to concede that, at the founding of the United States, abortion was allowed everywhere in the new country until the stage of quickening, when a pregnant person can detect fetal movement (usually at about sixteen to eighteen weeks). But Alito asserted that “the most important historical fact” was that at the time of the Fourteenth Amendment—which, in 1868, granted due process and equal protection of the law to all persons born or naturalized in the United States—many states had enacted laws that made abortion a crime even before quickening. The very existence of such laws, he reasoned, meant that a right to abortion could not be justified with reference to the Constitution.

Advocates of fetal personhood, meanwhile, argued that, far from protecting the right to abortion, the Fourteenth Amendment protected the right to life of the fetus, from the very moment of conception. In National Review in June of 2023, a group of anti-abortion leaders and legal scholars, including Kristan Hawkins, the president of Students for Life of America, and Robert P. George, a legal scholar at Princeton, published what became known as the “new North Star letter,” setting a post-Dobbs goal of recognizing fetal personhood. “The 14th amendment expressly forbids the states from denying to ‘any person within [their] jurisdictions the equal protection of the laws,’ ” they wrote. “No exceptions to the equal protection principle are stated, implied, or even contemplated. The principle, on its very face, extends to everyone without distinction of race, ethnicity, sex, age, size, location, stage of development, or condition of dependency.” This meant that fetal-homicide and child-endangerment laws for the “preborn” must be enforced; that “children in the womb” must be “afforded due process and legal representation,” along with child tax credits; and that frozen embryos could not be “discarded and destroyed.” In Roe, the Court had briefly considered whether the word “person” in the Fourteenth Amendment (and elsewhere in the Constitution) applied to fetuses, but decided that it almost always applied “post-natally.” Surely, this would be the most commonsense reading, not least because the amendment’s purpose was to extend civil and legal rights to formerly enslaved people in the aftermath of the Civil War.

There was a drive to restrict abortion in late-nineteenth-century America, but, as Ziegler points out, it did not have much to do with the Constitution or the rights of the fertilized human egg. Horatio Storer, a doctor allied with the newly formed American Medical Association, saw the regulation of abortion as a way to burnish the professional reputations of his fellow-doctors, distinguishing them from midwives and other irregular practitioners who offered medicaments and procedures to end unwanted pregnancies. (“Restoring the menses” was the euphemism.) Storer also fretted that abortion was “infinitely more frequent among Protestant women than among Catholic,” and that the new Western territories would be populated by the wrong sort. And he considered the existence of marriages in which “conception or the birth of children is intentionally prevented” to be shameful advertisements of lust. Lust, along with the urgent need to police it, was the overriding preoccupation of the anti-vice crusader Anthony Comstock when he took up the campaign against abortion, in the eighteen-sixties. In these arguments, the fetus was a recessive, even shadowy figure.

It wasn’t until the nineteen-sixties, and the birth of the modern anti-abortion movement, that fetal personhood became a central, animating doctrine for crusaders against legalization. Abortion itself had never gone away. Starting in the nineteen-forties, a woman with the means and the determination to do so could have her case pondered by a committee of doctors with the authority to grant her a so-called therapeutic abortion in a hospital. (The committee might conclude, for example, that her reproductive organs would be damaged by childbirth or that she would be suicidal if forced to carry the pregnancy to term.) If her circumstances were rougher—if she were younger, poorer, or unmarried, for instance—she could risk going to an illegal practitioner who might or might not treat her with anything like the appropriate care. By the early sixties, Ziegler observes, nearly half the maternal deaths in New York City were the result of botched abortion. “Abortion opponents saw figures like these as further reason to suppress the procedure,” she writes, “but they struck other doctors and advocates quite differently: if the procedure could be performed safely”—and there was by then plenty of evidence that it could be—“every death due to illegal abortions was a scandal and a tragedy.” The campaign to legalize abortion was initially led by doctors who saw a chance to save lives, but they were soon joined by birth-control advocates concerned about population growth and later by feminists and sexual revolutionaries. And, as these advocates began to rack up successes, measured in new state laws and changes in public opinion, a countermovement took shape. In this movement—it would eventually call itself “pro-life”—Catholic theologians at first dominated, and the unborn took center stage.

Eugene Quay, the man Ziegler calls “the most prominent antiabortion advocate of the time,” was a well-known figure in Catholic and legal circles in Chicago. He took an extreme stance on abortion but was at pains to connect it to American morality rather than to Catholic doctrine, an association that he felt might limit its appeal. “If there could be any authority to destroy an innocent life for social considerations,” he wrote in the early nineteen-sixties, “it would still be in the interests of society to sacrifice such a mother rather than the child who might otherwise prove to be normal and decent.” In 1962, another Chicagoan, the theologian Father Francis Filas, told a newspaper reporter that “every unborn child must be regarded as a human person with all the rights of a human person from the moment of conception.”

A few years later, Robert Byrn, a law professor at Fordham University, took the argument in an au-courant direction, framing abortion in terms of discrimination against the unborn. His emphasis on due process for the unborn and his flair for the dramatic gesture—he once petitioned a court to be named the legal guardian of all the fetuses scheduled for abortion in New York City—helped set the tone for the anti-abortion movement of the future: socially conservative, and combative. As the movement grew, folding in more Protestant evangelicals—and turning, at the grassroots, to clinic blockades and, at the margins, to violence against abortion providers—it retained its focus on the rights of the fetus.

Hawkins, the thirty-nine-year-old leader of the increasingly high-profile Students for Life of America, embodies the totalizing ambitions of the post-Dobbs anti-abortion movement: its rightward shift and its revived North Star. She talks a lot about fetal personhood and opposes certain contraceptives, including the Pill. (The Pill mainly works by preventing ovulation, but it can also make the uterine lining less hospitable for a fertilized egg.) Her aims for the movement are one more piece of evidence giving the lie to the old argument—trotted out by Alito and Brett Kavanaugh for Dobbs—that overturning Roe would somehow cool the abortion debate by returning the matter to the states. In a 2023 profile on the BBC website, Hawkins described a new momentum: “Like, O.K., all of America is watching, push the gas pedal down on everything right now. More, more, more, more, more.” (In a detail that stuck with me from that profile, Hawkins, whose husband homeschools their four children, and who has been an anti-abortion activist since her teens, said that she didn’t have friends “in the traditional sense,” explaining, “Like, I don’t have girlfriends I go for brunch with. . . . What would I talk about besides ending abortion?”) Ziegler writes, “For half a century, she and her allies have seen themselves as fighting an era-defining human rights battle. It might take another generation or more to secure judicial recognition of fetal personhood, but that does not trouble the activists who had successfully destroyed Roe v. Wade. They have played the long game before.”

Ziegler makes the point more than once that the belief in fetal personhood is, for its proponents, sincere and fundamental, and surely it is for many in the movement. But it is striking to read how malleable this particular argument has been, in some ways—how strategically responsive to the times. In the early sixties, when activists worried that faith-based arguments might doom them politically, and when the courts had begun recognizing the civil rights of Black Americans, Byrn and others made the argument that, as Ziegler puts it, “classifying someone on the basis of residence in the womb was analogous to racial discrimination.” In the nineteen-eighties, during the tough-on-crime Reagan era, the fetus reëmerged in some anti-abortion rhetoric as the ultimate crime victim. Toward the end of the decade, as the movement grew closer to conservative legal circles, including the Federalist Society, it drew more on constitutional-originalist arguments. And when the Supreme Court recognized corporations as persons, or uncannily personlike entities, with respect to free-speech rights exercised through campaign donations and religious-conscience exemptions, people like the influential conservative lawyer James Bopp “hoped that justices willing at times to treat businesses as persons might be willing to do the same for the unborn child,” Ziegler writes. Her “Personhood” is a field guide to the seemingly boundless tactical resourcefulness of the anti-abortion movement.

Ziegler is one of the leading historians of reproductive politics, a generous and frequent commentator in the press, and the author of several previous books that deal to a greater or lesser extent with the anti-abortion movement. The focus of this book is important, but perhaps leads her to overestimate the power of the fetal-personhood argument in a society where some of that doctrine’s logical conclusions would be profoundly objectionable to many, many Americans. I.V.F. offers a prime example. In February of 2024, the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that embryos created through in-vitro fertilization were to be considered children. Fearing legal action, some fertility clinics in the state promptly paused their operations. In March, the G.O.P.-led Alabama state legislature rushed to pass a bill granting civil and criminal immunity to I.V.F. providers and receivers. (Forty-two per cent of American adults say that they have availed themselves of fertility treatment or personally know someone who has, according to the Pew Research Center.) Trump was nervous enough about the fallout that he called himself, weirdly, “the father of I.V.F.” on the campaign trail, and in February he signed an executive order promising to make fertility treatment more accessible.

One snag Ziegler does not deal with here is birthright citizenship—presumably because the book was completed before Trump signed an executive order revoking it. In the Trump world view, a baby born in the United States can be a citizen only if one or both of its parents are U.S. citizens or legal permanent residents. (The executive order contradicts how citizenship is defined in the Constitution, and several federal courts have blocked enforcement of it.) But for fetal-personhood advocates an embryo is already under U.S. jurisdiction and specifically entitled to the protections of its Constitution by dint of its location in a womb on U.S. soil. For those occupying the overlapping category of Trump supporter and fetal-personhood booster, this would seem to present, at the least, a rhetorical problem.

Legislators in some states have been emboldened to push fetal-personhood bills, politically viable or not, marking a split from the mainstream anti-abortion movement’s focus on punishing providers of abortion or, lately, people who assist others in obtaining one, rather than punishing the abortion patients themselves. (For a long time, movement leaders urged a “Love the sinner, hate the sin” approach.) As of March, 2025, bills redefining abortion as homicide had been introduced in at least ten states. These do not always get very far. In Iowa, for instance, G.O.P. legislators blocked a bill that would have made it a felony to “cause the death” of an “unborn person,” worried, apparently, that it would generate trouble for I.V.F. But the bills have changed the rhetorical landscape.

Perhaps the biggest shot in the arm for the fetal-personhood movement came in the form of an executive order ostensibly unrelated to abortion, one with an especially unwieldy and Orwellian name: Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government. The order proclaims, with unwarranted confidence, that “ ‘Female’ means a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the large reproductive cell. ‘Male’ means a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the small reproductive cell.”

The implications were not lost on anti-abortion advocates, and it wasn’t paranoia that made those on the other side sit up and take notice. At this year’s March for Life rally, on a cold January day in Washington, D.C., the mood and the language were uncompromising—every abortion facility in the country had to be shut down, and abortion had to become, as one student activist put it, “unthinkable.” When Mike Johnson, the Speaker of the House, took to the stage, he brought up Trump’s executive order early in his speech: “I don’t know if you saw his executive order on gender, but it defines life as beginning at conception, rather than birth.” Johnson put invisible air quotes around “gender,” but he came down hard on the word “conception,” jabbing one finger in the air as he said it. The crowd cheered. Ideas have consequences. 

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[coochiequeens]

He added that people should be free to describe themselves however they like, but went on: 'In cases of serious sexual offending when public protection is at stake the vast majority of people will rightly expect the criminal justice system to deal in facts and nothing more." In other words law enforcement and new media should respect that gender is a feeling but sex is real.

Crime tsar says his own force is 'clearly wrong' for calling trans sex crime suspect a woman - and sends 'male' 51-year-old to a men's prison

By MARTIN BECKFORD POLICY EDITOR FOR THE DAILY MAIL

PUBLISHED: 20:55 EST, 11 February 2024 

A crime tsar has become involved in a row with his own force after issuing a rare rebuke over its gendering of a trans sex crime suspect.

Police and Crime Commissioner Matthew Barber said Thames Valley Police was 'clearly wrong' when it relied on gender self-ID to call Osareen Omoruyi, charged with two counts of sexual assault against a child, a woman in a press release.

In a highly unusual intervention in a live criminal case, the elected Police and Crime Commissioner said the 51-year-old 'is male' and has been remanded to a male prison.

He wrote in a lengthy statement on his website on Sunday: 'Thames Valley Police have, mistakenly in my view, relied on the 'self-described gender' in publishing a press release that incorrectly states that a woman has been charged with these offences.'

He said it was important that the public and potential victims understand the facts and that statistics about sexual offences are accurate.

'The police and other criminal justice agencies must deal in facts, as best evidenced to them at the time. Any failure to do so risks damaging public confidence and overshadowing excellent policing in the interests of public safety,' Mr Barber wrote.

He added that people should be free to describe themselves however they like, but went on: 'In cases of serious sexual offending when public protection is at stake the vast majority of people will rightly expect the criminal justice system to deal in facts and nothing more.

'The accused in this case, Osareen Omoruyi, is a 51 year old male.'

However he added that the operational response by the force had been 'exemplary'.

The incident in Witney town centre, Oxfordshire, on Wednesday evening was spotted by CCTV operators, directing officers immediately to 'safeguard the child and arrest the suspect'.

Mr Barber spoke out after the force he scrutinises issued a statement titled: 'Woman charged in connection with sexual offences.'

The short press release published on Friday, which was condemned by women's rights campaigners, stated: 'Following a Thames Valley Police investigation, a woman has been charged in connection with sexual offences in Witney.'

The force said that Omoruyi, of Witney, had been charged 'with two counts each of sexual assault by penetration and causing/ inciting a child to engage in sexual activity'.

Last night the force hit back, saying claimed it had been following the law and police guidelines by treating the suspect according to their self-described gender.

It said: 'Thames Valley Police is aware some public concern has been shared on social media following the publication of our charge release on Friday in relation to a sexual offences investigation in Witney.

'Thames Valley Police adheres to the law and the codes of practice, including the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 (PACE) Code C, when establishing the gender of a person in our custody.

'The individual identified as a female and the officers treated them as such in accordance with College of Policing Authorised Professional Practice which outlines that officers should treat the person according to their stated preference. Consequently, our charge press release that was published reflected this position.'

The force added: 'The Police and Crime Commissioner Matthew Barber has raised concerns about the press release and his comments are being carefully considered and reviewed by the force.'

[dooxliss]

hi. i would like to learn more about your ocs :-)

omg hi silas :^)

taking the opportunity to talk about my jjk oc that i haven’t drawn in forever (that i’ll hopefully draw for funguary), kei takeuchi

kei is a grade 2 sorcerer, goes to the kyoto school, and is in their fourth year, so did not participate in the goodwill event.

they did go, though, bc they had heard about yuuji and wanted to meet this statistical miracle (since what are the chances that the person that eats one of sukuna’s fingers has the capacity to be his vessel 💀)

they did hear that yuuji died so did not bring any talismans (but came for the chance to go into inner city tokyo) so when yuuji turned out to be alive they didn’t have anything to give 🫠 yuuji later received a ‘mysterious’ gift in the mail from them

kei’s cursed technique is called inky cap! they have alcoholic blood, which is the fuel for the mushrooms they conjure. they work similarly to real life inky cap mushrooms/tippler’s bane, but can be more potent, especially if they drink alcohol. overuse of the technique causes an inky like substance to ooze out of the eyes, and contributes to the stress indicated in their hair. in the takeuchi family, the color of the hair is an indicator of their health. lighter is better, and fully dark hair is an omen for incoming death. kei’s technique advances the dark color of their hair upwards, as does any excessive straining or traumatic event. as a result, they don’t know if they could develop a domain expansion and don’t want to try (if they did have one tho it would be called extant form of life /ref)

in contrast, their older sister nao was born sickly with dark hair, but her hair has gotten lighter and she has gotten stronger as she got older, especially once her cursed technique manifested. kei believes that nao is the favorite (not wrong)

because of everything related to kei’s technique and likely early death (as a sorcerer as well), they are extremely superstitious person, keeping as many auspicious items as possible, keeping a compass so they never sleep facing north, avoiding the numbers 4 and 9, and religiously keeping track of new years dreams.

while mechamaru did not want anyone from kyoto to come to shibuya aside from todo, kei and nao were already there for a halloween party, so they both responded to the same call and jumped in to help, separating somewhat early on. nao was unfortunately in the direction of sukuna’s cleave and kei pushed themselves so post shibuya, kei uses a cane and nao is missing. (they find each other in time for the killing game :^) )