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baeddel · 4 years ago

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discussion on this post, @horatiovonbecker asks @otatma their opinion about extended families as an alternative to the nuclear family. @otatma replies that it is “a good thing to strive for” but “depends hugely on the family being nontoxic.” true enough!

as it’s my activity feed and they can’t stop me i’ll butt into the conversation. i grew up in an extended family. i lived with my mother and my maternal grandparents, and my aunt would live with us some days out of the week. all of this was accomplished in a 2-bedroom bungalow. i had very little privacy and i hated it; when i was 15 i ran away. my mother pleaded with the council and we managed to secure a terraced house in a socialized housing estate with a bedroom for each of us, plus a spare room (almost unthinkable today). we live near our grandparents and they visit every day.

when i was 16 i met my absentee father. he had been homeless in England and imprisoned in Scotland and when he returned to Ireland that year i found him living in a rhizomatic extended family scenario spanning four generations and three households. they were always being chased out by landlords or paramilitaries and relocating and, in any case, one could never predict who would be living in which house at any time; children would live with grandparents one month, parents the next, aunts and uncles the next, and so on. even husbands and wives did not always share a home.

[long post: 3k words, on the historical development of family structure in Ireland and England and what it means for monogamy, the family and anarchy]

based on this i believed the extended family to be an Irish institution. this is an assumption i shared with most sociologists and historians until about the 1990s (Seward et. al., 2005, pg. 2). the standard narrative was that, world-over, families historically lived in large, three-generation households and that thanks to the industrial revolution this was deteriorating. “Max Weber himself implies in his magisterial way that the rise of capitalist organisation was associated with 'the household community shrinking' ” (Laslett, 1974, pg. 7). Ireland was traditionally conceived of as an exception to this process of deterioration as, on this account, the extended family remained dominant while the rest of the world was going nuclear. it turns out to be the reverse in both cases: the extended family was never the dominant family structure anywhere (ibid. pg. 2-3; Vann 1974, pg. 3-4), except for in Ireland beginning in the 19th century, where over the course of the 20th century it did deteriorate (Laslett, 1974 pg. 34; Gibbon & Curtin, 1978).

the reason for this is embarassingly obvious once you realize it. the fact is that not all families in a society can be extended families. if all children remain in the family home along with their children into perpetuity this house will soon have the population of a small town. this is actually the origin of society proposed by Filmer in Patriarcha (1680), where parental authority becomes the “fountain of all Regal Authority” as their progeny multiply, until humanity is scattered about in the Confusion of Tongues (pg. 11-15). without a Confusion of Tongues to interrupt the exponential increase (and millions, rather than thousands, of years to account for) we have to imagine another sort of family structure. the 19th century sociologist Frédéric Le Play proposed that a new family structure emerged out of ancient patriarchy which he called the Stem-Extended Family. on this account one son was selected to inherit and he remained at the family’s residence; the other siblings were dispersed (Gibbon & Curtin, 1978 pg. 2-3).

to the extent that this form of family organization did exist, it could not have been the dominant form. in a family with three sons, two of them would have to go and form nuclear families with their spouses. they might go on to build their own extended family, or they might not. in many societies the extended family was indeed considered “a good thing to strive for”, and this was the position adopted by the conservative Catholic Le Play, and later accepted by the Catholic Church, who lobbied for policy interventions that would stem the tide of nuclear proliferation in Ireland, particularly by limiting employment opportunities for women. For example, women were barred from civil service positions until 1973 (Seward et. al., 2005, pg. 7).

if this is the case, how could the extended family become the dominant form of family structure in Ireland in the 19th and early 20th centuries? the most significant factor was the reorganization of agriculture carried out by English colonial interests; after the infamous Potato Famine the population of Ireland almost halved (after already more than halving after Cromwell’s genocides), as well as the almost constant state of war that Ireland was submerged in (continuing into the 90s in the occupied North). in the aftermath it was necessary for families to consolidate (Seward et. al., 2005, pg. 3). on top of this, fertility was exceptionally low and emigration was exceptionally high (in the North it remains very high, especially among Catholics). as a result, more generations could live together, and children were more likely to leave the country than disperse elsewhere in Ireland (Seward et. al., 2005, pg. 14). throughout the 20th century, as industry and free secondary education were introduced to Ireland, more children began to move from country to town and nuclear families rapidly replaced extended ones (Seward et. al., 2005, pg. 6).

my family tree more or less follows this narrative along. in the chaos following the Land War my great, great grandmother was the head of a large intergenerational family involving aunts and uncles, as well as an adopted street orphan. my great grandfather met a homeless woman possessing a child out of wedlock and fell in love with her; they moved to this town and rented a house while he sought work as a street sweeper, starting a new nuclear family. in the 40s my grandmother worked in factories until she married my grandfather, a sailor, and they began their own nuclear family in the same town, renting different little apartments until, thanks to the state of the housing market in the 80s, they purchased the modest accomodations aforementioned. by the 90s this arrangement threatened to become a new Stem-Extended Family (with my mother and i playing the role of inheriting sons), but it proved inoperable in the new context of the 21st century’s mechanized Ireland, and we spilled over into our own single-parent home. given that both me and my aunt are infertile, the maternal line terminates here.

does it follow that we ought to give in and admit that the nuclear family is the natural unit of human society, and that the extended family is possible only in the middle of an ongoing genocide? despite what we’ve just said, there doesn’t seem to be good evidence for this either. while Gibbon & Curtin characterized a debate where Laslett “advanced the iconoclastic [proposition] that there had been little essential historical change in family structure” (1978, pg. 3) this doesn’t seem to actually be Laslett’s position. Laslett argued that family size has not changed considerably throughout history, but on the very first page of his landmark Household and Family in Past Time (1970) he emphasizes that he is “not concerned with the family as a network of kinship” and instead defines his area of research in terms of “coresident domestic groups”, which might bear little relationship to kinship structures. in the past the household very frequently involved not just blood relatives but “lodgers, boarders and visitors” (Vann, 1974, pg. 5) as well as slaves and servants. Vann quotes Etienne Hélin's caution that “[a]rithmetic means, although they varied so little covered a whole series of different situations” and describes how post-industrial English households had twice the number of blood relatives per house as pre-industrial ones, but fewer lodgers, and thus about the same mean. the difference between historical and modern families might not be one of size but of an increasing emphasis on blood relations.

it may come as a surprise that, as a matter of fact, Old English has no word for family. they have a word for relatives in general (sibb), for tribes (cynn, the root of Modern English kin), but the basic social unit known to the Anglo-Saxons was the hiw (and its many compounds), which might be translated ‘household’ (or, indeed, ‘coresident domestic group’). who belonged to a hiw? it was somewhat nakedly a property relation. it was not only a man’s wife and children but also his servants, his slaves, as well as his animals (Stanley, 2008, pg. 1). the Textus Rofensus makes only one distinction between members of a household, that they be “slaves or free” (ibid. pg. 7). it could also refer to a monastic group, involving the whole cloister. Stanley notes (and it seems true to me) that there is a virtual absence of family relations in the corpus of Old English literature. in fact i cannot think of a single example, except perhaps for the monster Grendel and his mother. in the mournful Wife’s Lament and the passionate Wulf and Eadwacer the emphasis is on completely personal affections and seductions, and in any case both depict forbidden relationships outside of the hired.

correspondingly, we find that the average Anglo-Saxon home was a large one; typically they were a single room which measured about 50 square meters and “could have accomodated up to about a dozen or so people” (Hines, 2003, pg. 139). there is no reason to suppose that this was to accomodate several generations of blood relatives; the Anglo-Saxons had many, now very unfamilliar, relationships to populate their houses with. there was husband, wife, and concubine, along with their children; there was slave and hostage (Lavelle, 2006), including many orders of slaves with different status (such as the relatively respectable title of bryti, a sort of ‘head slave’); and indeed guest, visitor, boarder, and in the case of lords and aristocratic thegns, perhaps retainers. in Beowulf about thirty thegns sleep with their lord in Heorot, pulling aside the bench-planks and replacing them with straw beds at night (and when the Geats arrive they incorporate them as still more visitors). we know that at least some beds were placed in recesses in the walls and had curtains (Wright), perhaps to accomodate private intimacy between husband, wife and concubine or, indeed, guest, retainer, hostage, slave, or (why not?) animal. even when husband and wife are the only kin relatives in residence we would hesitate to call this arrangement a ‘nuclear family‘, or indeed an ‘extended family’ should it include a grandparent.

why has industrial modernization corresponded with the narrowing of the productive unit of society to the nuclear family (or, increasingly, the single parent family)? why have non-blood relations become so systematically excluded from the household? these seem like open questions to me. our own experience leads us to suspect conditions placed on family structure by the labour market together with city planning. until the 70s in Ireland, as we discussed, it was typical (and indeed lawful) for wives to stay at home and husbands to work; today very few workers could afford to keep their wives at home, even without children. houses are also too small to sustain extended families (nevermind concubines, hostages and the rest). old council houses such as ours have two bedrooms, one for the parents and the other for the children, along with a room for guests. today they do not include the guest room. there are, in addition, only two common rooms: a family room and a kitchen. it is not only difficult to accomodate three generations in these houses (the small guest bedroom is a poor substitue for the reitrement room of many 19th century Irish houses), it is difficult to accomodate even two generations. teenagers will already complain about sharing a bedroom, and one sibling might take up the guestroom. but we know of women with six, seven, as many as twelve children who live here. as adults they could fill at least three of such houses. all of this is possible only on the theory that as the children grow up they will move out into their own homes.

so. it is tempting to analyze the family situation abstractly, counting up the merits and dysfunctions of different systems and comparing them. for example, using Hirschman’s well-known framework of “exit” and “voice”, we might ask how effective the different forms of family structure are at responding to dysfunction (abuse, neglect and so on). the extended family, we might say, gives a child better access to “voice” - they can turn to parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles and siblings for help. your mother might answer to your grandmother who is therefore well poised to address parenting issues, while your father can probably smoothe things over with your uncle if you quarrel. this means that you actually have to worry less about “toxicity” in the family compared to a nuclear family where parents aren’t accountable to anyone. however, in case of a family wide problem, you may have much less room to “exit” compared to a nuclear family, where exit is expected.

which one is better? you might reply that the extended family sounds better. it very well might be; but in reality you’ll never get to act on this exercise in judgement no matter how much striving you do. the nuclear family does not predominate because of the tyrannical thirst for the awesome power of parenthood (no matter how much we do find this thirst satisfied), but because of the given conditions of labour, housing, inheritance and so forth. this is why @horatiovonbecker can reply that all of this is “fair enough” but that they ”don't think it follows that discouraging monogamy will help.” no, surely it does not follow. especially now that we know that family size and kinship relations are not essential features of domestic organization. why was monogamy ever implicated in the first place?

now it seems like a curious slip of the tongue that when Goldman and Parsons disagree about monogamy they do so by attacking and defending the family by turns. but at that time monogamy was not so easily separable. free love was not really polyamory. it was this and also the abolition of both marriage and parenthood, as they understood both as property relations: “marriage slavery”, as even Parsons called it, and parental ownership of children. it was also the abolition of sex work, which they understood as the "public” expression of the subjugation of women which finds its “private” expression in marriage (Marx & Engels, 1848, pg. 24-25), ie. that women are dependent on men’s property and must acquire it by marriage or by sexual labour. as a corrolary they advocated for divorce (which became an immense priority to later Soviet planners who designed mobile, modular homes which would allow couples to separate and cohabit arbitrarily). it was also access to contraceptives and to abortion, as well as, believe it or not, very often the advocacy of eugenics (on the account that with abortion, contraceptives and the freedom to select partners, the previously blind and mute force of sexual reproduction would become domesticated to the rational will; see the anarchist journal Moses Harman founded in the 1880s, Lucifer the Light Bearer, later renamed the American Journal of Eugenics).

this constellation of problems no longer appear all together. after most women entered the conventional work force we could no longer as easily see monogamy and marriage as a relationship of slavery. as we say in the previous post, for many women the struggle is that they are too independent, saddled with childrearing and wage labour and housework with only the cold comfort of the day-care for assistance. for this reason sex work no longer appears as anything special compared to the other forms of labour women do out of necessity; “sex work is work” is the guiding catchphrase of militant sex workers. contraceptives and abortion still appear as a leading issue in feminist agitation but we no longer imagine they have the power to transform the everyday life of the household (nevermind summon forth the genetic Ubermensch). all together the abolition of marriage was replaced, as @birlinterrupted reminds us, with its extension: gay marriage. as of right now monogamy and marraige are still inseparable (i can now marry one of my girlfriends but not all three), but we think it need not always be. all together the program fragmented as its success was realized in pieces and none of them were actually irreparably fixed by the property relation (even if they did emerge from it).

Engels actually believed that a true equality of the sexes would, “according to all previous experience,” result in monogamous men and polyandrous women (Engels, 1884, pg. 43), but he admits that we can only conjecture about “the way in which sexual relations will be ordered after the impending overthrow of capitalist production.” he finishes this thought with this remarkable little statement:

[W]hat will there be new? That will be answered when a new generation has grown up: a generation of men who never in their lives have known what it is to buy a woman’s surrender with money or any other social instrument of power; a generation of women who have never known what it is to give themselves to a man from any other considerations than real love, or to refuse to give themselves to their lover from fear of the economic consequences. When these people are in the world, they will care precious little what anybody today thinks they ought to do; they will make their own practice and their corresponding public opinion about the practice of each individual – and that will be the end of it.

the straightforward correspondence between property, economic dependence and monogamy is still here, and which to us now seems insufficient to the problem (ie. the problem still persists after these given conditions are eliminated). broadening the question from questions of marriage, sexual access and economic dependence to the more general question of the organization of the household in general and the necessary social and economic conditions proper to it would clarify what’s really at stake in domestic oppression, the organization of reproduction, and so on. but it remains true that we can only remain sensitive to trends, to those of us organizing new experiments with the household, and where new opportunities might open as the present conditions dig their own grave.

Let’s give the final word to an old friend. What is the Family, Renzo Novatore? Why, nothing but “the denial of life, love and liberty.” Nevermind his entry for Love, which is a “deception of the flesh and damage to the spirit, disease of the soul, atrophy of the brain, weakening of the heart” and so forth.

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route22ny · 4 years ago

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(Copied here in its entirety below for the paywall-challenged)

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The Differences Between the Vaccines Matter

Yes, all of the COVID-19 vaccines are very good. No, they’re not all the same.

Public-health officials are enthusiastic about the new, single-shot COVID-19 vaccine from Johnson & Johnson, despite its having a somewhat lower efficacy at preventing symptomatic illness than other available options. Although clinical-trial data peg that rate at 72 percent in the United States, compared with 94 and 95 percent for the Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines, many experts say we shouldn’t fixate on those numbers. Much more germane, they say, is the fact that the Johnson & Johnson shot, like the other two, is essentially perfect when it comes to preventing the gravest outcomes. “I’m super-pumped about this,” Virginia’s vaccine coordinator told The New York Times last weekend. “A hundred percent efficacy against deaths and hospitalizations? That’s all I need to hear.”

The same glowing message—that the COVID-19 vaccines are all equivalent, at least where it really counts—has been getting public-health officials and pundits super-pumped for weeks now. Its potential value for promoting vaccination couldn’t be more clear: We’ll all be better off, and this nightmare will be over sooner, if people know that the best vaccine of all is whichever one they can get the soonest. With that in mind, Vox has urged its readers to attend to “the most important vaccine statistic”—the fact that “there have been zero cases of hospitalization or death in clinical trials for all of these vaccines.” The physician and CNN medical analyst Leana Wen also made a point of noting that “all of the vaccines are essentially a hundred percent” in this regard. And half a dozen former members of President Joe Biden’s COVID-19 Advisory Board wrote in USA Today, “Varying ‘effectiveness’ rates miss the most important point: The vaccines were all 100% effective in the vaccine trials in stopping hospitalizations and death.”

There’s a problem here. It’s certainly true that all three of the FDA-authorized vaccines are very good—amazing, even—at protecting people’s health. No one should refrain from seeking vaccination on the theory that any might be second-rate. But it’s also true that the COVID-19 vaccines aren’t all the same: Some are more effective than others at preventing illness, for example; some cause fewer adverse reactions; some are more convenient; some were made using more familiar methods and technologies. As for the claim that the vaccines have proved perfectly and equally effective at preventing hospitalization and death? It’s just not right.

These differences among the options could matter quite a bit, in different ways to different people, and they should not be minimized or covered over. Especially not now: Vaccine supplies in the U.S. will soon surpass demand, even as more contagious viral variants spread throughout the country. In the meantime, governors are revoking their rules on face masks, or taking other steps to loosen their restrictions. It’s tempting to believe that a simple, decisive message—even one that verges on hype—is what’s most needed at this crucial moment. But if the message could be wrong, that has consequences.

The idea that all of the vaccines are pretty much the same, in that they’re perfect at preventing COVID-19 hospitalizations and death, got its legs on social media. The USA Today op-ed by the former members of the Biden team illustrated this by linking to a data table found on Twitter. Created by the infectious-disease doctor Monica Gandhi, it showed a variety of trial results for six different vaccines. One column was rendered in canary yellow—“Protection from hospitalizations/death”—and every cell read “100%.” A similar table, tweeted out a few days earlier by the dean of Brown University’s School of Public Health, Ashish Jha, conveyed the same idea through a grid of zeros—as in, zero people hospitalized, zero people dead. The prominent physician and researcher Eric Topol followed with his own clinical-trial data summary featuring a column of 100 percents. “That is impressive!” he wrote across the top. All told, their posts would be retweeted about 15,000 times.

The data were indeed suggestive of an encouraging idea. Based on the numbers so far, we can expect the vaccines to provide extremely high levels of protection against the most dire outcomes. Still, we don’t know how high—and it’s clear they won’t uniformly cause hospitalizations and deaths from COVID-19 to disappear in vaccinated people.

The experts understand this, of course. Gandhi has been updating her table as more data come in, and now pegs Moderna’s efficacy on that front at 97 percent; Jha has since tweeted that “nothing is 100 percent … But these vaccines sure are close”; and Topol told The Atlantic that the numbers in his tweet are not a sufficient basis from which to draw “any determination of magnitude of effect,” though the fact that they all point in the same direction is “very encouraging.” Still, the message of perfection that their initial tables and tweets spawned—the gist, for many readers, of all those 100s and zeros—has since been picked up far and wide, and misinterpreted along the way.

To grasp the shaky nature of these particular data, it’s important to remember how the vaccine-development process began. Last April, not long after the pandemic began, the World Health Organization set out a target efficacy for vaccines of 50 percent, with options for how that value should be measured. A vaccine could be shown to reduce the risk of symptomatic disease, severe disease, or transmission of the coronavirus. The FDA offered similar guidance in June, and other regulatory agencies also followed the WHO’s lead. Among these choices, symptomatic disease was the most feasible, because it’s both a common outcome and one that’s easier to confirm in a large-scale trial. An outcome that included asymptomatic infections would have been even more common, but screening for all infections would have been prohibitive, especially early in the pandemic. So that’s how the vaccine trials were designed: Each would try to demonstrate at least 50 percent efficacy with respect to symptomatic disease as its “primary outcome.”

The trials could have used severe disease, hospitalization, or death as primary outcomes, but that would have slowed things down. These events are far more infrequent—there could have been 200 infections for each COVID-19 death in the U.S.—and that means it would have taken more time, and larger numbers of trial participants, to generate enough data to be sure of a 50 percent efficacy. Developers did include “severe COVID-19” as a secondary outcome—that is, one that would be measured and analyzed, but for which the trial might not have been designed to provide a definitive answer. Efficacy against hospitalization and against death, however, were not included as secondary outcomes for every trial.

Given that fact, the data can’t support a claim that the vaccines are 100 percent effective at preventing these serious outcomes. (Topol highlighted this very issue in an op-ed last fall for The New York Times.) Out of the six vaccines included in the dramatic data tables that made the rounds on Twitter, the clinical trials for only two of them—Oxford-AstraZeneca’s and Johnson & Johnson’s—included hospitalization for COVID-19 as a secondary outcome, and reported that efficacy rate. The clinical research for one other vaccine, made by Novavax, had hospitalization as a secondary outcome, but that trial hasn’t been reported in full yet. (On my website, I’ve provided more detailed information and analysis of the relevant data.)

Now, a casual reader of clinical-trial reports—or their summaries on social media—might take the fact that no hospitalizations of vaccinated people are mentioned to mean that none occurred. That’s risky, given that pieces of the data have been published across various medical journals and via several different regulatory agencies rather than in full in one place; that the plans for some trials did not specify ahead of time that the vaccine’s efficacy at preventing hospitalizations would be calculated; and that we’ve seen only minimal early data (via a press release from Novavax) from one of them. It would be just as risky to assume that all hospitalizations would be included in the analyses of people who developed severe COVID-19. Hospitalization and severe disease are not synonymous—people could be coping at home even though COVID-19 has caused their oxygen levels to drop severely, and moderately ill people might be hospitalized out of an abundance of caution when they are at high risk of getting worse.

The two vaccine trials that did explicitly report hospitalizations as an efficacy outcome make this latter issue very clear. For the AstraZeneca vaccine, one person in the control group had severe COVID-19, but eight people were hospitalized; for Johnson & Johnson, 34 people in the placebo group had severe COVID-19, but only five people were hospitalized. It’s true that zero vaccinated people were hospitalized in either study after the vaccines took effect. But with numbers that small, you can’t draw a reliable conclusion about how high efficacy may be for these outcomes. As Diana Zuckerman of the National Center for Health Research pointed out about the Johnson & Johnson trial, “It’s misleading to tell the public that nobody who was vaccinated was hospitalized unless you also tell them that only 5 people in the placebo group were hospitalized.” She’s right. And you can’t be confident about predicting effectiveness precisely in a wider population outside the trial, either. For example, some of the vaccine trials included relatively few people older than 60 as participants.

You can see how fragile these numbers are by looking at those compiled for severe disease. In the Pfizer trial, for example, just one vaccinated person developed severe COVID-19 versus three in the placebo group—which meant that a single bout of disease made the difference between a calculated efficacy rate of 66 percent and one of 100 percent. For the Novavax and Oxford-AstraZeneca trials, there were zero people with severe disease in the vaccinated group versus only one in the control group, so adding or subtracting one would have been even more dramatic. The problem is even greater for deaths. For that efficacy analysis, only two of the vaccine trials—for Moderna’s and Johnson & Johnson’s—reported any COVID-19 deaths at all in the control groups.

It’s also important to remember that these are early results: Some people who enrolled very late in the trials aren’t yet included in reported data, and analysis is still under way. Indeed, the FDA pointed out in December that one vaccinated person in the Moderna trial had been hospitalized with apparently severe COVID-19 two months after receiving a second dose. That person was in a group still awaiting final assessment by the researchers, and was not mentioned in Moderna’s formal readout of results.

We’ve learned a little more from the ongoing public vaccination programs. Four important reports have come in the past two weeks. In one, researchers compared about 600,000 people who had had a full course of the Pfizer vaccine in Israel with 600,000 people matched in age and other demographics who had not been vaccinated. The shots’ effectiveness at preventing hospitalization was measured at 87 percent. (“This vaccine is fabulous in a real world setting,” Jha tweeted in response.) A preprint from Scotland reported an efficacy rate against hospitalization of about 80 percent among people 80 or older, almost all of whom had received only one dose of either the Pfizer or the AstraZeneca vaccine. Two reports from Public Health England estimated a reduction of hospitalization of about 50 percent and 43 percent for the same age group, again almost all after just one dose of the Pfizer vaccine. These are exciting outcomes—those vaccines really, really worked! But they oughtn’t lead anyone to think that the vaccines are all the same, and that protection will be perfect.

Where does that leave us for making decisions? As Anthony Fauci told The New York Times last weekend, “Now you have three highly effective vaccines. Period.” Again, you will get a lot of benefit from any of them, and your risk will shrink even more as those around you get vaccinated too. Whichever one you start with, a booster may be coming in the not-so-distant future, of the same vaccine or perhaps a different one. By taking the first vaccine you can get, you’ll also avoid the risk of finding yourself without protection if infection rates surge where you live.

Efficacy is merely one layer, though. The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines have an edge at preventing symptomatic illness, but the Johnson & Johnson vaccine brings its own advantages. It has no demanding freezer requirements, which means it’s easier to distribute and more accessible to many communities. It’s more affordable than the other two—the company is providing it at cost around the world. Then there’s the fact that resources can be stretched a lot further when only a single dose has to be administered.

For individuals, too, the Johnson & Johnson vaccine has benefits. As a one-and-done injection, it’s more convenient. It also has a lower rate of adverse events than Moderna’s. You can’t compare results of these trials too precisely, but there are indications of a striking difference. About 2 percent of those who got the Johnson & Johnson vaccine recorded having reactions, such as fatigue, muscle aches, and fever, that were severe enough to interfere with daily activities. For those getting their second injection of Moderna, that rate was higher than 15 percent. People who are on the fence about getting vaccinated may find that this difference tips the scales in favor of getting a shot. Others who have doubts about the newness of the mRNA technology in the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines may appreciate the fact that Johnson & Johnson’s approach has already been deployed in the company’s Ebola vaccine, which got full drug approval in Europe last year.

Given these concerns, there’s some danger in the message—however well intentioned—that the COVID-19 vaccines are all the same by any measure, or that they’re perfect wards against severe disease. Vaccination is a public-health imperative, and going full tilt to promote uptake supports the common good. But it’s a personal health decision too. People want to protect themselves and those close to them, and they are likely to care about outcomes other than hospitalization and death, no matter what anyone says now.

Still, raising these concerns in public can be fraught. In response to an inquiry about her data table, Gandhi affirmed the importance of looking at severe-disease outcomes and noted that “careful, collegial and collaborative scientific discourse on the vaccines is imperative moving forward to help us get through the pandemic.” Topol pointed out that he has emphasized the vaccines’ measured efficacy against symptomatic disease many times before, so any isolated reference to his table “takes that particular post out of context.” Jha wrote in an email that he stands by the message of his original tweet, and notes that COVID-19 hospitalizations and deaths are so rare among the people vaccinated in these trials, to quibble over differences is akin to “counting how many angels are dancing on the head of the pin.”

I can see why this might seem like quibbling, but I just don’t think it’s a trivial matter. It would be different if I thought the effectiveness of every one of those six vaccines against hospitalizations and death would really end up being close to 100 percent—or if I bought into the idea, now widespread, that they have already been shown to “nearly” or “effectively” eliminate these outcomes. There is very good reason to be encouraged by the data, but to say right now that people who have been vaccinated face zero risk of serious outcomes—that, for them, COVID-19 is no more dangerous than the common cold—is sure to influence behavior. Imagine how people in high-risk groups would feel about going to the movies, or how their employers would feel about putting resources into workplace safety, if we all assumed that vaccines confer perfect protection against hospitalization or death. Now imagine how the same people and employers would feel knowing they were 85 percent protected.

Nor is there any reason to believe that the public or the personal interest will be served by hype. People who think the vaccines provide ironclad protection may lose trust in experts if reality falls short. Trust in coronavirus-vaccine information is already a problem, and could sink even lower. Activists who are opposed to vaccination may end up turning experts’ “super-pumped” promises against them.

“The idea that people can’t handle nuance,” Jha tweeted at the end of February, “it’s paternalistic. And untrue.” I couldn’t agree more. The principle of treating people like adults is fundamental. We don’t need to exaggerate. Talking about the trade-offs between different medicines and vaccines is often complicated, but we do it all the time—and we can do it with COVID-19 vaccines too.

Hilda Bastian is a scientist, writer, and founding member of the Cochrane Collaboration. She was formerly the editor of the PubMed Health project at the National Library of Medicine.

#public health #covid vaccine #coronavirus pandemic #long reads

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mtchstick · 5 years ago

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hello all, time to meet my latest nuisance, michelle ‘mitch’ novak, 34, investigative journalist, chaos magnet, megagalactic pain in the ass. full bio + hcs & wanted connections below the cut!

“ alone in your car, the violence you imagine: it hurts so hard, a memory you can’t forget. wherever you are, why’d you ever concede it? as if, if a god would ever care, and if it did, then nothing unpure is ever complicated, and nothing undone is ever done or said by chance, and nothing unsure has ever resonated — i float through the walls. i float through the walls. ” .

name : michela michelle maria novak. the last is a taken name: not her birth father’s (pasqualino “lee” ferrante) but the name of the man who married her mother after her divorce with lee. as much of a shithead as he was, sometimes mitch regrets the novak name (only keeps it as a token of her ties with her siblings). her pen name, however, is mitch lennox — a very male, very white name that she believed would help her articles get some credit in the world of journalism (and that helped her distance herself from her red ridge past). age : thirty-four (born october 20th, 1986). pronouns : she/her. gender : cis female. location : red ridge, nv. occupation : investigative journalist. sexual orientation : pansexual, demiromantic. religion : agnostic (mostly a non believer, though she tends to find comfort in the thought of a higher power in dire times, and keeps her grandmother’s crucifix in her car). affiliation : none, although she’s never shyed from asking favors to valencia or law enforcement alike (and has often owed favors to both, and more). _________

personality :perhaps in order to understand the full range of mitch’s character one would require a century, perhaps a degree in archaeology. the short version of it is, what you get is mostly an act. not a genuine character, but a persona crafted, layer by layer, for survival, for self-preservation. on the outside, mitch novak is close to a hurricane: can’t be predicted, will show up unannounced, spread havoc all around, disappear again when the sun has set. one might call her volatile, fleeting some, never sticking to a plan but shifting constantly, as if the very essence of staying still was a risk far too big for her to run. it might look like evidence of a poor character, material perhaps — it is instead the proof of her determination, which barely knows any obstacle, surely not one of a human kind. she’s resolute, far too proud of her own beliefs, pushing ever forward with barely any thought over consequences or just the general, common sense awareness of danger. reckless, one might call her, but not for lack of a will to live, rather an attitude she’s developed in being extremely resourceful, constantly finding ways to get out of the corners she’s backed in (so far: there’s no telling how long this will last). this ever changing, constantly moving nature reflects itself in her dynamics with others, too: do not count on her to stick around, whether tied to a familial, friendly or romantical relationship — it is far more likely for mitch to disappear and then return as rapidly as the moon changes. the outer side of her is a shifting tide, never too still, never calm enough for anyone to dive. beyond that layer, however, she is passionate — alive with burning ideals, nursing bravery with seldom any comparison, a protector of those who are defenseless, someone who’s devoted an entire life to the ideal of truth. and yet the choices she’s made, the paths she’s walked in order to get to where her ideals prompted her to be, they have all piled up inside of her: while she’ll appear to have little to no moral compass, little to no care as to the consequences of her own actions, deep within mitch is the harshest of her own critics. she keeps herself busy, constantly moving so that she won’t have to stop and think — reckon with her graveyards of mistakes, deal with her own, deep-seeded self loathing. she’ll much more easily crack a joke instead, defend herself with the use of irony and sarcasm, and at the same time put people to the test, give them the sharpest corners of herself so their allegiance will be proved. but all of this, all her shifting and sharpening nature, it has led to a deep, sometimes unbearable loneliness — it is ever present and still sneaks up on her sometimes, the endless void around her scorched earth, the inability to bridge that gap between her and the rest of the world. perhaps there lies her love for stories: within the distance from her and others, trying to understand them in order to shorten it. but it stays there, separating her from the world, and so self preservation must be the only principle leading her forward. at the end of the day, mitch is as unpredictable as stormy weather: even those who believe they know her, most of the time, only really know the persona she’s allowed them to meet. she can be manipulative, a skilled liar, an unparalleled improviser — perhaps one day she will finally stare in the mirror and ask herself who she really is. positive traits : headstrong, clever, resourceful, brave, protective, witty, open minded, passionate. negative traits : impulsive, proud, self-destructive, fleeting, mutable, unreliable, arrogant, reckless, annoying. ___________

BIOGRAPHY —

trigger warnings : disappearance, death, abuse, child abuse, cults, substance abuse.

red ridge, nv, 1988. pamela rizzo is done with her boyfriend’s antics: never able to hold a job for more than a couple weeks, constantly wasting his pay in booze and boobs and whatever shit he feels like shooting in his own body. her youngest, michela, is two years old; her oldest, tommy, is seven years old: old enough to understand what’s going on. for a while he becomes the man of the house, making sure his little sister is okay when mom comes late from work: for a while, this broken up family makes it work. pamela meets andy novak when mitch is four — four months later they’re married out of a casino’s chapel, and she looks at her kids, bright eyed, and said: see kids? you got a daddy again, now. everything’s gonna change for the better.

red ridge, nv, 1995. everything starts changing for the worse, but none of them can see it yet. there’s two new siblings, jericho and liv, the lovely offspring of the novaks. adjusting to this new family is hard, and mitch sticks around her older brother: he’s good, he’s protective, he watches her back. she picks up from him, her fight and her curiosity and her boyish recklessness — five years apart, yet sometimes they look like twins. she loves her younger siblings, yes, but sometimes she looks at andy’s eyes and remembers this is not my father, and this is not my family, and all i really have is tommy and by tommy i will stand. but over time he gets tired of playing babysitter, one day he simply grabs her and says c’mon mitch, get off my back. don’t you have any friends?

red ridge, nv, 1996. mitch grows restless and reckless, too many hours spent in detention and not enough befriending kids her age. she thinks something’s lacking, a specific code that will allow her to bridge the distance with the other kids: she searches for it in comic books, studying the behavior of characters wondering how a hero is made. she searches for it in other kids, and sometimes she stays out entire afternoons spying on her brother and her friends, wondering what it is that makes people friends, what it is that she’s lacking. that’s when she starts seeing them spending their afternoons in mr. carlow’s house; they say he lets them do some handiwork around the house in exchange for some money, money for tapes, money for gas. tommy comes home full of new stuff every day — one day he brings home a cassette for mitch, jagged little pill. three days later, he goes to carlow’s and never leaves.

red ridge, nv, 1998. thomas j. novak is declared missing on november 1st, 1998. search parties begin, national attention brought to the case. there are errors in the investigation, leads mistakenly pursued. mitch talks to pam, talks to andy, talks to anyone: go to mr. carlow’s, she says, i saw them there. but mr. carlow is an old wealthy man, he’s given more money to the church than the vatican itself: and he was so concerned when they asked him about tommy that he passed out. nobody listens, so tommy isn’t found. they listen to pamela, her face plastered on every news segment, begging for her boy to come home: at night mitch holds her younger siblings close, and fears something will be coming for all of them.

red ridge, nv, 1999. the body of thomas novak, 17 at the time of his disappearance, is found in a ditch three miles out of red ridge, exactly nine months after he was declared missing. the police say he must’ve been trying to leave town when he was robbed, or maybe assaulted, or maybe a coyote got him. nobody seems to have a clear answer, nobody really cares to look for one. pamela finds some comfort in speaking to the nation of her child: every night her face is on tv, until the story of the grieving mother is boring too, and pamela disappears in the background, perhaps like her child did. that’s about the time andy taps into his anger, begins lashing out with his kids, with mitch too. he’s loud, he smells, he comes home and takes it out on the three of them. mitch tries to keep her head up, keep the small ones safe. she keeps yelling, nobody listens. nobody ever fucking listens.

phoenix, az, 2004. she finds another voice. she has parts of tommy that have stayed with her. the curiosity, the bull-headed quest for knowledge. she holds them close to herself, puts them all in the art of the written word, and somehow it gives her a purpose. in her mind remains the need to find an answer, connect the dots around her brother’s disappearance, but they never match to any coherent drawing. still she keeps on, and the moment she becomes a licensed journalist she starts travelling the country chasing stories, chasing mysteries and, above all — chasing answers.

montréal, canada, 2013. red ridge fades in the background, a dull nightmare unwilling to re-emerge to the surface. she finds new stories instead, she drowns in them. good stories, with martyrs and heroes who die for a cause (those are the ones she stares at in admiration, wondering if a good spirit is transmittable via osmosis). she finds bad stories, the ways men will make themselves wolves and devour their young (those are the ones she gets deep in, like the bloody entrails of a carcass, turns them inside out until she can make every accurate comparison between them and herself and say it isn’t me, i have nothing to do with people like this). she builds herself a kingdom of sorts, kings and queens and pawns to turn to in her quest for truth. (she asks favors too, sometimes she finds herself under the thumb of criminals and shady characters who can help her quest along, but will ask things of her: her shining moral character begins darkening now, she begins to understand the battle between good and evil must be fought along the line in between). while investigating a dark, morbid story of murder and finance, she meets priscilla — clever, arrogant, bright. selfish enough to drag her out of her own head when mitch lets her investigations swallow her whole. the two get married in a small ceremony with mostly just colleagues from priscilla’s work at the university — for a while mitch toys with the idea of belonging to someone, of a happy life, of a family, of a home.

sam’s cedar, mo, 2017. it lasts exactly four years, though it began rotting right in the honeymoon phase. colliding characters turning to sparks, the fights far outweighing the good they’d found in each other’s company. the crippling blow comes when a story breaks out about an odd, peculiar cult spreading its venomous tendrils around the plains of missouri. an old friend, head of a mainstream newspaper, says it’s just the kind of report she’d be great at. she finds an odd fascination in the idea of entering the cult, seeing evil from the inside: priscilla, of course, thinks it’s foolish, it’s guerrilla journalism, it’s just the pop culture rendition of what a reporter’s work is supposed to look like. her protests echo in the background still, while mitch packs her car and leaves. five days later she is entering the premises of the cult’s church under the alias of rebecca jean wasserman, knowing that this will change things. never once, for her stories, has she gone this deep: there is a fear within her, as she dyes her hair blond and crafts a new identity, that there will not be a way out.

phoenix, az, 2019. the way out is found by fighting teeth and nails. the way out is found through a dark, morbid journey that spits her out a paler self. her permanence in the cult amounts to eleven months, three weeks, four days: a long time to note down every creepy corner she steps in, every gruesome detail she collects. she sees minds reshaped, she sees crimes committed and barely keeps herself from giving in to the craze like the rest of them. being rebecca wears her out, being rebecca sometimes comes too easy: by the time she’s collected enough material that the point isn’t just an article anymore, but a criminal investigation, she feels herself slipping out of her own mind every night. her reports are so detailed they start a widespread investigation. somehow, she makes it out of the cult into one whole, rotten piece. her reportage gets mitch lennox (the pen name she’d chosen at the beginning, wanting to cut ties to whatever ties michelle novak had been living) two awards, good, it looks, has won over evil. but her mind is frayed, the shadows have come too close sometimes she wonders whether they haven’t gotten in somehow, become a part of her too. at night she lies awake and thinks of tommy: she’s found so many stories, so many villains have been given a name, but her brother’s is still just a ghost story.

red ridge, nv, 2020. sometimes she feels like a pawn on the board of a funny, twisted game. she gets a call one night, about a murder (one in a few) in the town she once badly tried to call a home. by then she’s tired, worn out, overly dependant on liquor and painkillers: but she’s lost herself so tragically she hasn’t thought to look for the pieces of herself back where everything started. she comes back to red ridge on a much too hot day of early may; she wears her identity like a costume, putting on a brave face because red ridge, she knows, has a tendency of swallowing people whole. and she’s been swallowed before, she’s been spat out too. what’s left is a half digested remain of a person. what’s left is someone who’s hungry for truth — and barely has anything to lose anymore.

_____________________

HCS:

when not undercover for any reason, mitch drives a purplish red ‘83 alfa 6 alfa romeo. not the most inconspicuous car, but a piece of her heart nontheless (stolen from her father as a ‘payback for him being a shithead’, or so she says). she had it slightly altered to fit a music cassette player so she could keep listening to the tapes her best friend sent her.

her biological father, lee, is a rather well known drug dealer in red ridge. he’s also, coincidentally, her main drug dealer.

currently, mitch lives in a motel, refuses to go back to her mother’s house, would rather sleep in her car.

she absolutely adores spicy food and has been known to have no chill when it comes to deadly spicy peppers, in fact she’s entered at least a couple competitions for pepper tasting and, though never winning, always managed to come up pretty high on the podium.

she’s almost constantly listening to music (mostly blues or grunge), although her heart belongs to alanis morissette, and evidence of that is her vast collection of concert t-shirts and the many cassettes in her car.

she used to be on the school soccer team but got kicked out after an unfortunate accident with one cheryl d. (the accident being mitch purposefully kicked her in the shins after she called her a psycho bitch).

_____________________

WANTED CONNECTIONS:

below i’ve listed some connections i’d love to get for mitch — if you’re interested in picking any of these up, please don’t be afraid to message me!!

priscilla — mitch’s ex wife was an academic she met while working on an article in montrèal in 2013. they got married a few months after they began dating each other, but it was short lived. their characters don’t match, they just fought constantly, and eventually mitch left to go undercover in a cult / pursue her career. overall their marriage lasted four years, and it’s safe to say they hate each other now, probably barely tolerate one another at best, and it’s unlikely they’ll ever be together again, but i’d love to explore their colliding, nerve-wrecking dynamic. suggested fcs: ruth negga, lupita nyong'o, leslie ann brandt.

jimmy — her best friend, the one person in red ridge who always knows when she’s coming around again. he used to be one of tommy’s closest friends, which brought him and mitch together once tommy was gone. they dated very briefly, eventually found they worked a lot better as friends. they went to college together for a bit there, he, however, eventually quit college around the time mitch graduated. he owns a record store and is the one who provides her with all the tapes she plays in her car. he’s mitch’s person and the one guy in the world she confides everything to (same goes for him, obviously). they’re kind of in a rough patch right now, considering she never told him about her undercover stint and he ended up not hearing from her for about a year. reconnecting with him is also one of the reasons she decided to come back to red ridge. suggested fcs: joshua jackson, jake johnson, john krasinski.

fwbs — clearly mitch isn’t made for stable relationships but she does have her fair share of one night stands and occasional flings. it would be great if it was something that has happened before, maybe while she was still in college and sometimes came home to red ridge.

fwbs from inside valencia — people she could sleep with that might provide information on valencia’s dealings and just generally be fruitful for her career (of course, they could ask favors of her too; it could be as casual or as tense as we want it to be).

affair (tw: cheating) — i’d love love love for her to have a painful sort of affair with someone who’s already in a relationship with someone. something sad, painful, that they both wish they could do without but can’t. gimme angst.

friends — either childhood friends from before she left red ridge or people she’s just meeting again, she needs someone she can have simple fun with, maybe even someone who can tell her to chill the fuck down sometimes.

enemies — there’s a lot of people who just can’t stand mitch at all, so gimme those. people who find her annoying, people from valencia who find her dangerous, old schoolmates who just never got her thing. give me also people who have stuff they can hold over her head, people who can threaten her and that she generally loathes.

friends in low places — mitch makes frequent use of recreational drugs and painkillers, plus her job often needs her to find various sorts of illicit goods (be them heavier drugs, weapons, surveillance equipment, etc). she’d need someone who can provide her with these things, maybe even someone she can be friendly with or something.

#redridgeintro

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hoodie-lover · 5 years ago

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My Multiverse Part 34

Classic was panicking. People he had literally tried to kill and vise versa were in his universe, and no one seemed to be in danger or hurt in any way. If he had even a touch more energy he would have blasted all the Dark Sanses to oblivion by now, but when he saw Blue, Sci, and Geno, his jaw only dropped more.

“What is going on here? Why are people who have tried to kill us here?” Classic asked and Blue bounced up, Classic only now realizing the short skeleton was very not ok.

“Ink is an asshole-” Blue said but was rudely interrupted.

“You just cursed...” Classic said, his shattered worldview now a fine powder.

”-with mind control powers who tortured Error and trying to RESET the multiverse so he can have infinite power and I only have partial immunity since I was left in the anti-void by the first people who tortured Error who are apparently having a civil war.” Blue summarized. “That explains the glitching and we do have a plan! Also since you are the original you and any alternate timelines that exist also have immunity, along with glitches but Ink got his hands on Error’s code but as long as he is not alone, he won’t be forced to betray us!” Blue finished and Classic somewhat understood.

“Blue, calm down. Sans just woke up, and it’s near the end of the day, so we can explain everything in detail later.” Undyne said as she stood by Classic.

“T-thanks Undyne.” Classic said, and Papyrus walked up to him.

“Brother, what do you remember? Just the big things like locations and any identifiers?” Classic thought and gave a quick response.

“It was a dark basement. Chains on the wall, and a large staircase leading to the floor on top. Until I was kidnapped, a week or so ago I’m not quite sure, I had never been there.” Classic said and he got very weird looks.

“It’s been less than a day since you went missing Sans.” Undyne said, and Geno had a simple answer.

“This AU, where Classic was held, seems to move at a faster rate than most of the universes, similar to the Doodlesphere, another one of Ink’s personal universes.” Though he remembered that the other originals don’t know what the Doodlesphere is. “The Doodlesphere is where Ink generally lives and anyone can access any AU.” And everyone who didn’t know nodded in understanding.

“Guys?” Sci asked, and every Sans in the room froze in sheer and utter terror. “I may or may not have called Alt in.” And they, except Classic, face palmed.

“Who’s Alt?” And Sci was ready with his explanation.

“Alternate multiverses exist. Predictable, and an unrelated project got turned into the plan to defeat this multiverse’s Ink.” Sci said and a small skeleton, around two feet tall sped past him.

“HI!” He said, he looked like Ink. But he was around a foot shorter and had long baggy brown pants that covered his feet, and a large rainbow sweater along with the signature brown scarf. His eyelights were also two light pink splotches, shifting and changing with time, and he had the same ink mark on his right cheek.

“This is your boyfriend?” Killer said and Sci screamed.

“NO! We’re just-” But he was interrupted.

“Trying to get him to confess his feelings to me.” Alt beamed as he looked at everyone and gasped when he saw Classic’s bandages.

“I’m so sorry! I didn’t think about how this world’s me hurt you! I-I r-really am an idiot! I shouldn’t have run out like that!” Alt said as he began to cry, collapsing to the ground with a thud, his eye lights going out. “T-those i-injuries, i-it hurt s-so m-much...” he mumbled as Sci picked him up and held him.

“We dealt with a pure evil Nightmare. What Classic went through, his multiverse’s Nightmare put him through. And yes, he does have the mind control power, but he is terrible at using it, one of those migraines at most on a good day to an alternate Sans.” Sci explained as he shushed and bounced the small Ink as if he were a small toddler.

“Forget boyfriend. You’re his dad.” Flowey giggled and was almost reduced to compost with a small bone straight from Sci.

“Poor thing.” Asgore said as he saw Alt drift off to sleep.

“He normally cries a lot, a few times a day. He’s been doing better, crying at least once a day but not as often and with. I’m just doing my best when I can’t visit him every single day.” Sci said as he rubbed the back of Alt’s skull as the small skeleton cuddled into him.

“Guess he was out through a lot huh?” Horror said, and asked a question he knew he’d regret. “What about that’s world’s us? We haven’t asked you much about this other multiverse.” Sci sighed as he looked at Alt’s face.

“You guys never came back from insanity.” And silence rang. “He was hurt mostly by that world’s Nightmare, I saw some footage while I had to break him out, it made me sick.” Sci said as he patted Alt’s head softly, causing the smaller to purr slightly in his sleep.

“I can’t believe he’s an alternate Ink.” Killer said, looking at him.

“I couldn’t believe it either. He’s so cute!” Sci beamed as he adjusted Alt’s scarf, though he got many looks from his friends.

“Is it moral to date an alternate version of yourself?” Alphys pondered, and Blue took offense to that.

“I’m dating an alternate me!” He slapped his hands over his mouth as all the Sanses gave him very determined looks.

“WHO?!” They all screamed, getting close to his face as Classic snickered with glee.

“I’m not telling.” Blue huffed as he turned away.

“Please Blue? We all want to know. Some of these bets go up to 200g.” Classic said as he leaned towards Blue, stopped by the railing of the bed.

“Let me guess. Underfell!Sans, is it Red?” Horror asked and Blue instantly blushed the most vibrant cyan any of them had seen.

“You mentioned him when we were cooking.” Horror explained and Blue smacked him hard on the head.

“No wonder you’re a Dark Sans. That was an emotional moment and you use it to win a bet.” Blue said, still blushing.

“Ha! Swapfell owed me 250g!” Classic exclaimed and everyone looked at him like he was mad.

“I said some. Not all, also Red may or may not keep a very unprotected diary.” Classic said winking.

“Wow. I would never expect that of your brother.” Papyrus said, giving Classic a weird look.

“I don’t hold back, and I don’t need to worry about RESETs. On the latter factor alone I feel so much more free and relaxed, like I can do things for a change.” Classic said and Alt stirred.

“W-what happened?” He said and Sci put him on the ground, Alt stood for about five seconds before falling on his butt with a thud.

“Sorry Sci. Anyway, how’s the enhancer going?” And everyone that didn’t already know, shot a deathly glare at the scientist. Though Flowey merely cackled evilly to himself.

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yuckubus · 7 years ago

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disclaimer: i love all my mutuals and respect their opinions, y’all will be missed if you decide to unfollow after i pour my judgmental heart out

1. the most well-rounded member of bts, is hoseok. yall can argue that it’s jk, but i said what i said

2. minghao with a mullet is godtier; out of all the male idols with mullets, he is The king.

3. speaking of seventeen, a lot of their songs are very edm-inspired but it works really well for them

4. woozi deserves recognition for the songs he produces, like i really hope he gets an award for his production skills bc he’s amazing

5. i feel like most wonwoo stans, stan him for his beauty and not his talent (which, he’s not a bad rapper)

6. that being said, i wish he (wonwoo) played around a little more bc his flow is kinda predictable. not only that, but he can do more than just rap lowly and get loud.

7. seokmin/ dokyeom > jungkook, in terms of vocal ability. he’s just better

8. imo, in terms of like younger groups i guess? leader wise, namjoon is the best leader. im not saying other group leaders like scoups, for example, are bad at their abilities to lead, but i think nj really is.

9. spring day, don’t leave me, the truth untold, best of me, and whatever else yall try to advocate as good songs...are not good. they dont do anything for me. sorry

10. also just one day is the superior rnb bts song.

11. house of cards didn’t deserve all the hype it got. like, its good but it hasnt done anything for me since i heard the full version.

12. while im not as into got7 as i used to be, ya’ll took all the stuff that happened with got7 and RAN lol like yall really went in on them and still do and it’s sorta.. annoying? like i get why people do not like certain members (i really do!!) but its tired now. it has been for a while

13. speaking of got7, if they did more stuff like just right (since it worked so well for them) and the flight log trilogy, ESPECIALLY turbulence, it would be effective

14. I dont know why people think lucas from nct is so dumb, he just has moments

15. speaking of lucas, i dont see any purpose for him in nct. he doesn’t provide anything special or new except some personality and physical beauty.

16. sm either needs to get rid of some members of nct, or really talk to these niggas bc he doesnt seem to care about anyone but mark, taeyong, jaehyun, and doyoung...and sorta lucas

17. jungwoo is a product of taemin. either that man is his father, or he’s a relative.

18. in terms of like newer and young rappers, mark lee is the only one with some potential; sometimes, he lacks, but he really is the only one

19. jaemin and jeno ended and revived kpop with their verses in Go!

20. chanyeol and sehun go off in some exo songs, especially forever. they’re still not great rappers.

21. exo has the better vocal line and bts has the better rap line. i just ended every pointless, unnecessary fanwar.

22. the exo l x army beef is so..stupid like all of y’all look childish. deadass. it’s never that deep unless both sides really said some serious shit and, most cases they dont so literally shut up lol

23. astro’s danceline are amazing

24. JEALOUSY BY MONSTA X? SLAPS. HARD

25. kihyun’s voice is absolutely beautiful and deserves that recognition bc he really has such a beautiful voice

26. Pentagon’s first album is THAT first mini album. if you havent invested time in it, please do

27. like the wonwoo thing, mingyu and wonho stans only stan these boys for physical attractiveness. I see something all the time (on twitter) anout wonho’s body and not really much about just him. this sounds fake deep, but forreal

28. stan twitter in general has great memes and stuff, but they are quite literally, the worst set of fans i have ever seen. facebook fans and instagram fans are just evil too but stan twt is satan.

29. in terms of talent level in twice...there’s 9 girls and only 4/9 really do something. i do love them though

30. tzuyu is great and shes so pretty but that’s it. the personality and everything else, where is it

31. imma be honest, i think chaeyoung is the prettiest

32. kyla isnt coming back to pristin, we all know this. it’s just time to face it

33. people only care about like 5 members of pristin, and theyre all in pristin v...there was a reason for their creation lol

34. miss shannon, aka sungyeon, of pristin? she’s got lungs and deserves to be seen as more than just her round face

35. MISS JOY is That member of red velvet

36. i dont think this is unpopular, but all the good rapper idols would be so much better if they just didnt sink into a niggaboo phase

37. ALL MEN WHO RUN ENTERTAINMENT COMPANIES (I.E. JYP, SM, YG, HITMAN BANG, AND WHOMEVER ELSE) ARE EVIL. IDC

38. i dont,...really care for jennie; she overdoes the cuteness sometimes

39. rose would be so much more powerful if she dropped the sza syndrome (I hope this isnt offensive, if it is please let me know)

40. if wendy wasn’t the leader and main vocalist of red velvet, her ass would have already been gone for that crap she pulled again

41. girl groups? are just as low down and dirty with their racism and antiblackness but that stuff gets hidden really well unless you look it up...or are mamamoo

42. IOI SHOULD HAVE LIVED LONGER THAN WANNABE. no one wants to hear that shit, ioi was giving us bops but after that year was up, they couldnt wait to get rid of them...but wannaone still exists. ok

43. all the my idols are gay legends stuff is kinda annoying now... like...you dont know their actual sexuality, so stop trying to justify your weird ass argument with proof from 1997, it’s not cute (this could be said about yoongi, but i mean in general)

44. people dont see holland as more than his sexuality, and what i mean by that is, a lot of people dont care about him or wont until he starts interacting with male idols, so people can start shipping them with him

45. kpop stans do women involved with male groups so fucking dirty, like ya’ll cannot wait to tear them down due to your insecurities as a fan. You’re not marrying any of them, so pipe the fuck down

46.nonblack stans, especially on twitter, dont really care about black issues lol yall do that fake oh my god im so sorry :( then use some form of aave with ?????????? and then move on.

47. IF KPOP GROUPS WOULD JUST ACKNOWLEDGE AND PROPERLY APOLOGIZE ABOUT THEIR PAST ACTIONS, MAYBE WE CAN LEARN AND MOVE ON; BUT THEM AND THEIR COMPANIES REFUSE TO. it’s like trying to feed a baby who doesn’t wanna be fed

48. people are allowed to still be upset about an idol’s past actions. it is valid ESPECIALLY if you are a fan of color. You are also allowed to unstan and not explain yourself bc no one’s gonna beat your ass for it.

49. these idols and their companies dont really care about their fans as much as they want y’all to believe. i believe they care to a degree, but it’s exaggerated

50. none of yall are family; you can say it a million and six times, but you really only believe that if you are not a person of color.

51. ya’ll do not know these idols like you think you do; they choose what they want you to show, even in their “RAW” shows; they are not going to let you see them in their 100% real self, ya’ll are strangers to them

52. being on kpop social media is exhausting, and idk how any of yall are able to do it 24/7. kpop is not that interesting enough for me to be around all day and all night.

53. Idol groups that play instruments deserve the world

54. that being said, i hope that n.flying, day6, and the rose get recognition because they’re out here being multi-talented, funny, and good looking.

i have more opinions but these are ones i could think of. anyway, hope yall enjoyed my ranting.

#if i find this anywhere near twitter im fighting #mine #kpop

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notesonnewyork · 7 years ago

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Absurd New York #91: Quotes by Trump Edition

In a world of slogans and soundbites, a brand jingle here and a sales pitch there, with oxymoronic pairings and definitions-be-damned, where search engine optimization is more sought after than content, and “liking” what’s written or uttered more lauded than actually comprehending it, are we becoming more anesthetized to words? Is the overload of all these things making us lazy and less willing to be critical of what passes before us? If so, isn’t that frightening? For all those who have the ability, and all those who still value language, the answer is emphatically YES.

In perhaps the most poignant part of Roger Waters’ current Us + Them Tour, Waters forces the issue. Near the end of Pink Floyd’s “Pigs (Three Different Ones),” the show’s massive LED screens flash a few of the things Donald Trump has said around the arena. Whether you care about Trump or not, whether you remember what he’s composed for public consumption or not, no matter: You’re challenged to think. You’re tasked with understanding his words and considering what they mean. Any maybe, just maybe, being detached from the image he cultivates for a moment you’ll be able to take a true measure of the man. Let’s give it a try.

----

“Im not schmuck. Even if the world goes to hell in a handbasket, I won’t lose a penny.”

On March 12, 1989, a piece by Glenn Plaskin appeared in the Chicago Tribune. The headline was “Trump: The People’s Billionaire.” Under the subheading “Tiny Trumps,” Plaskin wrote that “For R and R, in between tending to the little Trumps...Daddy raids corporations.” Also, having convinced banks and other investors to lend him money on the strength of his name alone--they gave him “instant credit” lines because they thought he had “unlimited collateral”--Trump went about building the Taj Mahal in Atlantic City for $725 million and purchasing the Plaza Hotel on Central Park South for $400 million. In reality, though, he only spent $50 million of his own money to buy the Taj. The remaining $675 million was “financed with uncollateralized junk bonds.” As far as the Plaza went, most of that $400 million was “borrowed.”

As Trump “reflected” during the interview, Plaskin recorded his words: “I’m not a schmuck. Even if the world goes to hell in a handbasket, I won’t lose a penny.” And he wouldn’t. When Trump bankrupted the Taj in 1991 and the Plaza too in 1992, he wasn’t left holding the worthless bonds or losing income from missed interest payments, his investors were. As far as the economic losses that got passed down to his employees, well, they weren’t his problem either. None of them did any damage to his bank account.

“A nation without borders is not a nation at all. We must have a wall.”

Trump first tweeted it out on July 14, 2015, and then again on July 28th as an attack on Jeb Bush, one of his then opponents in the Republican presidential primary. He’d double down with it again on September 17, 2016, only this time he including the hashtag “#AmericaFirst.” After being elected president, Trump decided to make his Twitter decree a cornerstone of national security policy. “Mexico will pay for the wall!” he tweeted. Of course it will, that’s why he’s spent the past year and a half trying to cajole Congress into giving him the funds.

So aside from sounding like Pink, the megalomaniac protagonist of Pink Floyd’s album “The Wall”--who, coincidentally, also wanted to barricade himself off from the rest of the world--what gives with Trump’s definition of what makes a nation? If you peruse the nearest map, you’d notice plenty of boundaries drawn around land masses across the globe. Don’t those markings designate countries? Is Canada, for example, somehow less a country because it hasn’t defined its sovereignty with a magnificent wall on the United States’ northern border?

“It’s freezing and snowing in New York--we need global warming!”

Although Trump has offered variations on this theme over the years, the original appeared via Twitter on November 7, 2012. Back then, the high temperature in New York was 41 degrees fahrenheit and the low 34. Sounds like just another pre-winter day in the Northeast, right?

Well, according to the folks at Custom Weather, not exactly. From 1985 to 2015, the average November day posted a high of 54 and a low of 41. Now, granted that particular November 7th was colder than normal, but it’s not as if the recorded high were zero and the low -15 as Trump would have had Twitter believe. Besides, his conclusion was wrong anyway. Given that November 7th’s readings were outliers, perhaps they were actually the predicted effect of a climate in flux. If so, he needn’t have clamored for global warming at all. It had already arrived.

“I was down there and I watched our police and our fireman, down on 7-Eleven, down at the World Trade Center, right after it came down.”

On April 18, 2016, that’s what Trump said at a presidential campaign stop at the First Niagara Center--today’s KeyBank Center--in Buffalo, NY. Yes, he inexplicably confused 9-11 with the Japanese-based chain store, sure, and didn’t bother to correct his mistake, but the core of what he proclaimed wasn’t true anyway.

On the morning of September 11, 2001, Trump actually called into the live broadcast on WWOR-TV Fox 5 Local News. (Although the station’s antenna was destroyed with the Twin Towers, its signal was being transmitted by other conduits.) He told anchors Alan Marcus and Brenda Blackmon that he saw the tragedy unfold from his apartment in Trump Tower at 5th Avenue and 56th Street--several miles from ground zero. Moreover, when Marcus asked “Did you have any damage, or did you--what’s happened down there?” he replied:

“40 Wall Street [a 71-story building he owned under the guise of “40 Wall Street, LLC”] actually was the second tallest building in downtown Manhattan, and it was actually, before the World Trade Center, was the tallest--and then, when they built the World Trade Center, it became known as the second tallest. And now it’s the tallest.”

Despite the horrific circumstances, he apparently couldn't resist promoting his interests. He even threw in an extra hyperbole. According to city property records, the 66-story building at 70 Pine Street--formerly known as the American International Building and the Cities Service Building--was actually 25 feet higher than his 40 Wall Street at the time. And still is.

Now 40 Wall Street didn’t suffer any damage in the terrorist attack, but the Trump Organization still applied for a $150,000 grant being offered to help small businesses in the aftermath. Known as World Trade Center Business Recovery Grants, they were given to businesses in Lower Manhattan with less than $8 million in annual revenue. However, in spite of generating $16.8 million that year, 40 Wall Street was still awarded a grant by the Empire State Development Corporation.

“You know, it really doesn’t matter what the media write as long as you’ve got a young, and beautiful piece of ass.”

While researching a story printed in the May 1991 edition of Esquire called “Donald Trump Gets Small,” Harry Hurt III was expertly entertained by the man himself. Trump took him on a VIP tour of the Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City and that apparently had the desired effect. When Hurt began his story, he scribed, “Given the kind of year he has had, Donald J. Trump might be forgiven a little ego candy.” What? Even then, the media seemed unfazed by what was happening under his shiny veneer.

At the time, the very casino Trump was showing to Hurt, the Taj Mahal, was going bankrupt. The Trump Castle, another Atlantic City casino, was destined for a similar fate until his father forestalled the inevitable. In December 1990, Fred Trump bought $3 million worth of chips at the Castle and left them in the casino cage so his son could use them pay off a bond payment on the property. Meanwhile, as Ivana Trump argued for more money from their divorce settlement, Marla Maples, the woman with whom Trump committed adultery while married to Ivana, was “pressuring him to propose in the wake of his highly publicized dalliance with model Rowanne Brewer.” But all that was seemingly of little consequence. Hurt remarked:

“One might think that the chill breath of potential collapse and enough tacky publicity to shame Pia Zadora might have taken the swagger out of Donald J. Trump. One would be wrong.

‘You know,’ [Trump] muses philosophically as we return to our ringside seats [in the Taj Mahal for the Ray Mercer-Frabcesci Damiani heavyweight fight], “it really doesn’t matter what they write as long as you’ve got a young and beautiful piece of ass.

‘But,’ he adds after a pause that suggests this is a distinction with a difference, ‘she’s got to be young and beautiful.’”

In other words, he’d never be held accountable by the media, by investors, by anyone if he could razzle-dazzle them with the women he attracted. Case and point: Hurt’s profile reads like a breezy apology for the economic havoc Trump was soon to unleash on Atlantic City. Something like “Give him a break, he’s too nice a guy to punish. After all, he gave me ringside seats, a few fun girls, and a comped penthouse suite for the night.”

-----

So how did you do? Did you measure the man by his words, or were you dumbfounded again by the show?

-----

(With Roger Waters and company at Barclays Center. Photos by Riff Chorusriff. Reading the Trump quotes pulled and projected under the watchful eye of Waters’ creative director/set designer Sean Evans. You can view more of Evans’ ingenuity on Instagram @deadskinboy. September 12, 2017.)

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comic-movieheroesranked · 7 years ago

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Cinematic Comic Characters Ranked! (Year 2011) Part III

This year I think has the most characters ranked so far, and all from movies introducing brand new characters. X-Men franchise gets a reboot with X-Men: First Class; The MCU welcomes the additions of Thor and Captain America: The First Avenger; DC Comics introduces Green Lantern, and we also get The Adventures of Tintin, Cowboys & Aliens, The Green Hornet, and Priest. Here’s #40-21!

*SPOILER ALERT FOR THE HIGHLIGHTED MOVIES ABOVE*

40. Erik Selvig (Thor)

"Anyone who's ever going to find his way in this world, has to start by admitting he doesn't know."

Erik is a wise man of science who helps Jane work on her projects. Despite not believing Thor's story one bit when the god arrives to Earth, he still helps Jane rescue him and even leaves some words of advice to Thor that helps him understand what it means to be a king. He's a good guy so it sucks to see that by the post-credits scene, when he's talking to Nick Fury, he's been possessed by Loki himself.

39. Ivan Ivanovitch Sakharine (The Adventures of Tintin)

"Nothing I do is an accident!"

A villain on a quest for revenge in his great ancestor's name. Sakharine had every move and action planned out to find the lost treasure of the unicorn but didn't quite predict Tintin's involvement. Despite all his efforts, he's unable to complete his mission and loses to Haddock just like his ancestor did.

38. Benjamin Chudnofsky (The Green Hornet)

"My gun has two barrels. That's not boring."

The big bad villain of the film, Chudnofsky is just a crime boss who is going through a mid-life crisis. Turns out that being scary means a lot more than just killing everyone who crosses you. He learned the younger generations want something a little more flashy. He tries but it's kinda like when a father tries to hang out with his teenage son at a party. It just doesn't work. However, he's still a violent being who takes out a lot of people but in all honesty, he can't be that impressive when he couldn't even kill Britt on his own. Sure, Britt had Kato, who managed to deliver the killing blow to the crime lord, but if he was as bad as wanted to be, he would've had no issues.

37. Lenore Case (The Green Hornet)

"If you even look at my ass again I'll sue you for sexual harassment."

Geez how did this girl even want to work as Britt's assistant after finding out what a complete douche he was? His attempts at flirty were so pervy you just couldn't help but feel bad for Case. Kato didn't really help either and if I were in her shoes I'd let the cops take them both down. But for some reason she helps them and decides to continue to help them keep the city safe by the end of the film.

36. Azazel (X-Men: First Class)

"Damn it."

In my opinion, Azazel is Shaw's most dangerous assassin in the Hellfire Club. Not only can he teleport but he's also a master at wielding a long blade. The combination of the two really shows when he kills most of the government agents protecting the X-Men by himself. His combat skills are so impressive that he's able to take on Beast and Havok at the same time. He apparently can't take a punch though, as it only takes one from Beast to knock him out. When everything's said and done, Azazel joins Magneto's Brotherhood.

35. Thaal Sinestro (Green Lantern)

"Are you afraid?"

With his mentor dead, Sinestro seems to be the strongest member of the Corps alive, but he's faced with a lot. Even with his skill he can't seem to defeat Parralax, who keeps destroying planets with his powers of fear. Worse, he strongly feels like Hal isn't fit to be a Lantern so in an act of desperation turns to the Guardians to find another source of power to defeat his foe. The source is fear, the opposite force of willpower, the very essence of what it means to be a Green Lantern. Despite Hal proving willpower can overcome fear, at the end of the film, Sinestro still puts on the yellow ring, becoming the first member of the Yellow Lanter Corps.

34. Black Hat (Priest)

"After all, if you're not committing sin then you're not having fun."

Black Hat used to be a priest who was taken down during an attack on a vampire hive that went wrong. Instead of killing him, the vampire queen feeds him her blood instead and turns him into the first vampire-human hybrid, containing the skills of a priest and power of a vampire. This makes him dangerous as he leads an overwhelming army of vampire to kidnap Lucy, Priest's daughter, and destroy towns full of humans. He also proved his power by killing three priests on his own as well as nearly taking out Priest towards the films climax. However, Priest had help in the form of Hicks and Priestess and was able to see Black Hat burn up in flames at the last second.

33. Laufey (Thor)

"Go now, while I still allow it."

Man was this guy a huge let down. I truly thought Laufey was going to be the big bad villain of the movie, but turns out he was just another pawn in Loki's ultimate plan to rule Asgard. King of the Frost Giants, he's definitely not to be messed with, but he puts his faith in his son and when he goes to kill Odin in his sleep, Loki betrays him and blasts him to dust.

32. Hector Hammond (Green Lantern)

"How wonderful that all it took for you to grow up was the end of the world."

I almost did want to feel bad for all the crap Hector seemed to be getting from his dad his entire life, but all of that went out the window when the first thing he does when he sees Carol is sniff her hair. The dude is weird, jealous, and entitled so of course he ends up getting possessed by Parralax and granted these psychic powers that comes with a disturbing physical appearance. He gets his revenge on his students, his dad, even Hal for a bit before the other male manages to trick him into wearing the ring. The ring doesn't recognize him and backfires on him and when Parralax shows up and sees him wearing the weapon of his sworn enemy? Yeah Hector died real quick after that.

31. Thomson and Thompson (The Adventures of Tintin)

"To be precise, you are under arrest!"

These two are pure comedy. Not only for how they exchanged words with each other, but because they were absolutely horrible at doing their jobs yet, oddly enough, seemed to be at the right place at the right time to help Tintin save the day. I mean the two were literally at the house of the kleptomaniac they were after and were arguing AGAIST him on how he wasn't their suspect. If that isn't what you call a pure comedic mess I don't know what is.

30. Britt Reid/The Green Hornet (The Green Hornet)

"Everyone knows, you corner a hornet, you get stung."

I hated Britt. He's almost exactly like Bruce Wayne when it comes to being rich, having dead parents, and then deciding to become a superhero, but his arrogance, rudeness, and in-capabilities with mental and physical prowess proved this dude could never be on Batman's level. There was just so many times that he would screw everything up that you just wanted him to fail because it was frustrating to see someone as annoying as him save the day.

29. Parralax (Green Lantern)

"Once I have devoured your world I will have all the strength I need to defeat the Corps and destroy the Guardians."

A former Guardian, Parralax wanted to use the power of fear instead of willpower, making him an easy enemy of the Green Lantern Corps. After his first defeat, he returns stronger than ever, devouring planets through their inhabitant's fear. He nearly destroys Earth as well until Hal manages to fight him off, tricking him into being pulled in into the sun and burns away. His legacy in fear lives on though, once Sinestro slips on the yellow ring that is fused with his powers.

28. Woodrow Dolarhyde (Cowboys & Aliens)

"Get off my plains!"

At first Dolarhyde seemed like a huge asshole that let his son terrorize a town just because he was rich and that he was actually going to be an obstacle Jake would have to face during his war with the aliens, but the latter never happened. Dolarhyde was quick to band together with the others, only really showing disobedience when it came to working with the Native Americans which, granted, was only because they had just taken him prisoner. He proves to be a good shot during the final fight and even saves Jake's life at the last moment inside the ship. I would have preferred Percy dying instead of Colorado and then Dolarhyde officially adopting Colorado to be his son but instead he gives Percy exactly what he wants again but at least Percy kinda stopped being a dick.

27. Alex Summers/Havok (X-Men: First Class)

"Whatever."

Havok seemed to be the member shrouded in the most mystery when he first joined the group. He was very hesitant about being around everyone and they quickly knew why, his energy blasts are out of control. After the death of his good friend Darwin, he decides to focus on his destructive blasts but still can't manage to do it. Even though he mocks Hank to no end, the brilliant scientist helps create a device that helps him control the blasts. He holds his own when the X-Men go up against the Hellfire Club and he officially stays with Xavier after Magneto kills Shaw.

26. Carol Ferris (Green Lantern)

"You don't think I would recognize you because I can't see your cheekbones?"

Carol Ferris is a strong fighter pilot, a smart businesswoman, and Hal Jordan's ex-girlfriend. While it's clear she still cares about him, she just can't take him seriously. She's even smart enough to realize the Green Lanter is Hal, but I mean she makes a good point on him not really having a big disguise. Her bravery matches her brain power too, when she saves Hal from death by blasting some missiles at Parralax and giving him the opportunity he needs to save the day.

25. Johann Schmidt/Red Skull (Captain America: The First Avenger)

"Hail, HYDRA."

This guy takes having a God complex to a whole other level. He wants the world at his feet and in order to do so he needs power. So he creates HYDRA and joins Hitler and the German Nazis to find it. He becomes the infamours Red Skull when he tries to take the super soldier serum and his body rejects it. Even though he's really intimidating at times, he never really accomplishes anything. When his plan fails and Captain America defeats him, he grabs the tesseract and it seems to kill him with it's sheer power alone.

24. Ella Swenson (Cowboys & Aliens)

"I won't be around for very long."

Yeah Ella's true identity as another alien being was definitely a plot twist I didn't see coming but after learning who she really is you really got to admire her selflessness. She literally lost her entire race of aliens like her yet still went out of her way to warn and later help the humans before they were wiped out as well. She manages to help rescue all the kidnapped humans from the alien's captivity but her real shining moment comes when she sacrifices herself to detonate a huge bomb that destroys the entire alien ship, killing every single one of them. We did see her come back to life earlier so who knows if she actually stays dead this time.

23. Moira MacTaggert (X-Men: First Class)

"You're your own team now. You're X-Men."

Moira is a great CSI agent. As soon as she discovers that the Hellfire Club is full of mutants, she goes and finds herself an expert on one. She holds no prejudice like most humans in her era which is probably why Charles starts developing feelings for her. Despite being the only human on the team, she does her best to fight Shaw and even Magneto when he proves to be a huge threat, firing several bullets at him, one of which ends up paralyzing Charles from the waist down. Afterwards, for the safety of him and his students, her memory is wiped clean for when she's interrogated by the CSI.

22. Sif, Vostagg, Hogun, Fandral (Thor)

"We must find Thor."

Sif and the Warriors Three are some of Asgard's greatest warriors and Thor's best friends. They're loyalty is shown all throughout the film when they travel with Thor to confront the Frost Giants and when they disobey Loki and travel to Earth to bring Thor back to Asgard after his banishment. They each have their own unique qualities and abilities that brings something good to the table, but it's only when they all work together that they really become a strong force of Asgardian warriors.

21. James 'Bucky' Barnes (Captain America: The First Avenger)

"This isn't a back alley, Steve. It's war!"

Steve's best friend who's looked out for him his entire life before he joins the army. He reunites with Steve after he becomes Captain America and rescues him from a HYDRA facility. Bucky really becomes that sense of home for Steve, but I couldn't help but feel a little hint of jealousy in him? I mean I think he was so used to being the better man and then all of a sudden Steve is the face of the US army. Don't get me wrong, I think he cared about Steve one hundred percent but I think it was a hurt ego that made him try to rush that giant machine with Steve's shield before he gets blasted away and falls to his apparent death.

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egoiistas · 8 years ago

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Black Tie

Day 2 of Royai Week Rated: T(?) | Words: 2709

It is the end of line, Colonel.

We’re here on this day. It has taken us 15 years, but we’re here. Your efforts will always be appreciated and recognized as one of the drivers of the new era for Amestris. Effective immediately, you are hereby relieved of your duties as adjutant to the Fuhrer and will be given your own unit, quite like back then. I hope you don’t take this personally, but this is how it was always going to be. We’ve met our goals and now the professional thing to do is to go our separate ways.

Signed, Fuhrer Roy Mustang

P.S. Please come to the inauguration ball. I’d like to see Grumman again and he needs someone to escort him.

Riza felt incensed. Disposable. Discarded. Her knuckles turned white as the executive order she clenched in her fists. She slammed it on her desk, the sound of the impact resonating in her office. She gripped the back of a nearby chair before she lost the feeling in her feet.

She prided herself on her ability to process and mask emotions; at this moment, she felt stunned. She tried reasoning with the unreasonable inner turmoil. She asked herself if she created this illusion; if there was even a flicker of promise for a definitive future. In truth, they never established the epilogue after their end-game. If they had, it was vague and verbless. But even in the worst scenario, she never imagined she would be tossed to the side - as if her bullets no longer made sense.

An uncharacteristic rapid beat pounded in her chest. She studied the Fuhrer’s order again, expecting a discrepancy. A sign. A joke. A forgery. Her trained eyes didn’t spot a tell; he signed the unmistakable signature she knew by each curve and loop himself. Riza reread it one more time.

The post scriptum felt like a slap on her face and her cheeks flushed from frustration and embarrassment. The paper underneath her hand wrinkled as she balled her fists. She stormed out, focusing on her footsteps instead of the tightness in her throat.

Riza headed to Catalina’s; the balmy spring air wafted freely, almost mockingly, around her. Upon arriving, she sat in Rebecca’s kitchen as the words around her sounded muted. She was only half paying attention, but after so many years of experience, she could predict Rebecca’s rants.

She looked up as she was handed a warm drink, a glint catching her eye as she glanced at Rebecca’s outstretched hand. Riza was unable to tear her eyes away from the wedding ring on her friend’s hand. She remembered that wedding, a sunny day in Southern Amestris. The happiness, vibrant and true, was unparalleled in the time they had been together. She was content now having what she always wanted, married and with Havoc no less.

“Riza!”

Riza glanced up again, startled by Rebecca’s change in volume.

“Are you even listening?” she reprimanded with fists to her hips.

“Yes, of course,” Riza intoned.

Rebecca’s arms crossed in front of her. “Then what did I say?”

She placed the mug back down after a sip. “That he’s a no-good man and never will be. Don’t put myself down, because you’re more than that jerk’s adjutant.”

From the corner of her eye, Becca relaxed. “Oh.” But she still huffed as she sat, placing warm hands over the terse ones still on the mug. “But I also said that you should just quit the military, move away, go explore Aerugo like you said you always wanted to, something!”

She has a point, she mused. Nothing was holding her back. She wasn’t married, and she didn’t have kids. The country wasn’t in danger anymore. She had her own back to watch now.

However, something about leaving everything behind shook her. The more she mulled it over the more she realized it wasn’t so much the fact that he ripped her partner from her. But it was the way he did it and the lack of forewarning that bewildered her.

“All right, fine. Don’t say anything.” She sniped. “I’ll tell you what’s going on with me. You know how Jean’s in the East, right?”

That’s right, Riza remembered, and nodded.

“Well, I wanted you to know that he and I are going to be trying for a baby when he gets back!” she shrieked and grabbed Riza’s arm, shaking it in excitement. Riza looked at her; she wasn’t even pregnant but she was glowing, practically brimming with excitement. “I can’t believe this, Riza. I am going to be on cloud nine.”

Riza understood the appropriate response, it was the inner storm within her that stopped her from expressing as such. She attempted her best by lifting her eyebrows and smiling openly at her, “Rebecca! How exciting.” Her face fell as she looked back to the mug, furrowing her brow as she took another sip. She was bothered by this and she couldn’t understand why. She suddenly felt like she didn’t want to be there anymore.

She looked to the time and acted. “Oh Rebecca! I’m sorry. I just remembered I have to meet grandfather for something. I have to go,” she lied.

Rebecca was understanding and walked her to the door. “Remember,” she started with a wagging finger, “you’ll be the first to know about the pregnancy and I expect no less than a wonderful baby shower when the time comes.”

Riza smiled. “Of course, Rebecca. You know I’m here for you.” The door opened for her and Rebecca reached out for a hug.

A chuckle sounded in Riza’s ear. “Same, you emotionless dolt,” she said, squeezing her slightly. “Look at you, going through your first breakup.”

Riza snapped away from her hug, eyebrows pointed angrily. “It’s not a breakup.” Rebecca shot her a “Do you see yourself?” look. Her lips thinned. “Bye Becca.”

The Colonel pushed back thoughts of where her life went at 33, nearly 34, and tried to cast off any feelings of regret. The purpose she dedicated her life to was important and virtuous. She accomplished plenty for the Amestrian military and could do so much more now that she wasn’t tied to the hip. Her personal feelings were irrelevant in the situation, and she made a point to dust it all under the rug, no matter how much it stung, no matter how much of the countryside girl was still left in her.

Her grandfather heard of what happened. She didn’t question how. She felt like her grandfather was the last person she’d entrust her intimate feelings to. Yet she did and the retired Fuhrer listened with diligence.

“Men like Mustang are ambitious and goal driven,” he declared and she nodded diligently. ”For him to relieve his most trusted subordinate must mean he has other plans for you. The Fuhrer’s seat couldn’t have been given to a better candidate,” he boasted and Riza didn’t try to hide the drop in her shoulders. When she made no effort to further the line of conversation, he asked her, “What was the issue?”

She shook her head, unable to make reason of it herself.

“If you feel strongly about it, darling, then why don’t you leave the military?”

The statement stunned her for a moment, something she would have never considered. It sounded absurd to her. After 17 years of military service, what else would she do with her life? How could she make a living?

She didn’t realize she had voiced her thoughts out loud, until an elderly hand rested on hers. Her eyes must have betrayed her sadness, not only because she felt it, but because there was a comfort in Grumman’s too. “You wouldn’t have to worry about that,” he said. “I’d take care of you for the days I wasn’t able to.”

Her emotional stability felt as sturdy as a plate on a pole and his proposal suddenly caused earth the shake underneath her feet. It wouldn’t be the first time she took care of her only relative.

He told her, “Think on it, dearest. But in the meantime, I feel springy enough to go to the Inauguration Ball.” The old man tried to jump quickly from his chair and gave a yip of pain, holding his lower back.

Riza dashed toward him to steady him by the arm and his back.

He groaned at his mistake and slowly sat back down. “I still want to go.”

It took place within Central Command. The courtyard was cleverly converted into a grandiose reception area as it took advantage of the cooler temperatures in the evening. On an elevated stage, a 16 piece orchestra played forgettable music.

Her eyes followed the new Fuhrer as he made his lone appearance from where she sat. She clapped slowly and without feeling. He dressed in a dashing suit, tailored to fit his athletic physique. He received comments on the progressive nature of his appearance, wearing a suit and tie in lieu of the expected military uniform. Eloquently, the Flame Alchemist commented on how he’ll have more than enough opportunities to wear the uniform and the crowd soaked it up, his charisma in full swing.

After the dinner, the Fuhrer gathered everyone’s attention. He made a speech of gratitude for their attendance, for their support, and for the ones especially who supported him from the beginning. He listed his friends in the academy and gave a heartwarming address in memoriam to his dear friend, the late Brigadier General Hughes. He personally thanked, by name, the rest of the old Mustang unit and those who helped him rebuild Ishval. “But my most sincere gratitude goes further back than my years in the military, I wouldn’t be who I am today if it wasn’t for her. In my times of darkness, in my times of happiness…”

As she felt herself hold her breath, she kicked herself. She couldn’t help it, especially with emotions running high at such a gratifying statement and she could swear he looked in her direction.

“…Chris Mustang, my foster mother, raising me after the untimely death of my parents.”

She smiled, despite herself. He didn’t name her. Nowhere in his touching speech, or his thanks. She looked towards her grandfather, who was smiling and possibly tearing up from the emotion. She clenched her fist from a fury she couldn’t place. She felt unlike herself. She wasn’t looking for a mention or anything like that. But to be completely ignored, to be tossed aside and overlooked in the same week was more than she could handle.

She tried to speak to Grumman, “Can you be-”

He shushed her and she felt taken aback. He eyes turned to her from the Fuhrer’s speech. “I’m trying to listen.”

She glanced back, trying to do the same. Nails were digging into her palm; it was almost laughable. Riza mentally tried to take a step back to wrangle in the hurricane of emotions. She bit her lip as his speech ended and he received a standing ovation. She clapped despondently and Grumman gingerly placed an arm over her wrist. She looked up at him.

“Is everything okay, my dear?” There was genuine concern, but she forced a smile on him to conceal her irrational behavior.

“Yes, perfect,” she responded.

The orchestra began to play and she swiveled in her chair to place her feet underneath the table cloth. Several gentlemen asked her to dance, probably something to do with her status as the previous Fuhrer’s granddaughter, but she graciously declined their offer, hardly in the mood to sway on the dancefloor.

Another hand appeared next to her arm with a “Care to dance?” She looked up and it was a uniformed officer this time, one she didn’t recognize except as Lieutenant Colonel by the stars on his epaulette. Riza offered a courteous smile and shook her head. “You’re too kind, but no, thank you.”

“I don’t want this dance, the Fuhrer does.”

Her arm fell on the round table and it rattled silverware and glassware alike. “Excuse me?”

“The Fuhrer wants this dance.” The man wriggled the fingers for her to take it, but his face remained stoic as he spoke.

“I’m honored, but I politely decline.”

“I’m under the express instruction to convey this as an order straight from the Fuhrer himself, Colonel.”

Her lips thinned, defeated.

A clever play on his part, she’ll give him that. He must have thought through asking her himself and the ruckus that would cause. This way he avoided looks if she were to decline like she just did. She took the hand and name of the Lieutenant Colonel who escorted her to newly established Fuhrer waiting at the end of the dancefloor.

She tried to control her breathing and outward cues of emotions. Unappreciative child or not, he was still the top of the military she was still enlisted under. His hands were behind his back, watching the other dancers. He turned towards them as they noticed them approaching. He smiled and it only made her stomach coil with subtle frustration.

“Good evening, Colonel.”

“Good evening, Your Excellency,” she responded listlessly, for the first time not saluting unnecessarily. She was off-duty, after all.

“I’m honored you accepted this dance,” he said, extending out his hand as the Lieutenant Colonel handed her to him.

“It was my pleasure, truly.”

He guided her to the dance floor and on cue, the music changed as he entered it. A soft, moderate-tempo waltz began to fill the air.

She felt a hand settle on her waist as he took his hand in hers. They began to move in tandem with the rhythm of the song. She said nothing and decidedly felt nothing, but the ire still bubbled under the contained surface.

“Did you enjoy the speech?” he asked her.

She glared at him as he moved her across the floor. She wasn’t sure if he was mocking her or if it was the machinations in her head. She took the high road. “It was moving. Grandfather might have shed a tear.”

“He was always a sentimental old coot.” She hummed in response, wishing to speak little to him. Unfortunately for her, he spoke again. “Can I take you out to dinner some time?”

Her eyes widened and before she could control herself, she moved the skirt of her long dress to extend over his foot as she mashed the heel into it.

Roy held back a pained groaned and smiled. He knew. “Someone’s angry.”

The statement cracked the surface of her emotional dam, and he kept prodding it. “Did I step on you? My apologies. You know military women aren’t suited for these events.”

“Nonsense, I’ve danced with plenty of military women and they dance just fine.” He twirled her and brought her closer with his hand at the small of her back. “In fact, I’d rate you a good 5 out of 10. Average is never bad.”

She stepped back to create the distance between them, biting the inside of her cheek.

“What do you think?”

“I think the song will end soon. I hope it will end sometime soon.”

He chuckled. “No, of dinner.”

“No.”

“Well, I can’t have a reminder of my rejection walking around; I foresee a transfer to the west.”

She chuckled this time, only bitterly. “That’s disappointing.”

“You didn’t take the bait to leave the military and I can’t promote a Colonel into First Lady. Instead, I’ll ask the lovely Colonel to dinner for now in hopes that I can convince her.”

Her heart felt like it stopped at the same time as the music. It finally clicked. “Everything you did: the transfer orders, the speech, the Lieutenant Colonel?”

He smiled smugly as he let her go. “All part of the plan.”

She mirrored his smile, watching him grab her hand and delicately kiss the back of it. “Plan to get a riot out of me?”

He raised his eyebrows as he came up. “An added perk. There’s a certain charm about you when you’re angry.” He led her off the dancefloor and asked her again.

She kissed his cheek and leaned in closer to his ear, whispering before she left him for her seat. “Try harder, Fuhrer.”

BIGGEST THANKS TO @hawkeyedflame who isn’t around rn, but ripped this apart and made it all the better <3

#royaiweek17 #royai #roy mustang #riza hawkeye #fma #fullmetal alchemist #fma fanfic #omg...not my best one #the one for catalyst isn't too great either #but then we get to the good stuff. hehehehehe #lots of good stuf.f... that i need to edit. oops

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salzspektrum · 8 years ago

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✨ 92 Statements ✨

I was tagged by @nightsky7ibra, thanks Lara my gurl <3

RULES: You must answer these 92 statements and tag 20 people.

THE LAST:

1. Drink: peach ice tea, my main hoe (yes I do have shitty teeth btw)

2. Phone call: my mom called me last night and I missed it lol

3. Text message: “a good boi, a loveable boi” (referring to Lara’s cat in a group chat with her)

4. Song you listened to: “Greedy” by Ariana Grande (shouldn’t this change by the end of the post-writing process tho?? since it’s about the last song??)

5. Time you cried: idk?? Surprisingly I didn’t cry at all this week so I probably cried last week or something, I cry a lot ask my roommate

6. Dated someone twice: dating? who is she? idk her

7. Kissed someone and regretted it: I only kissed @immortalpsychocat so far and I don’t regret it *wink*

8. Been cheated on: didn’t happen bc I don’t date

9. Lost someone special: well if this is referring to death then thankfully I didn’t have to experience the death of someone I love, but if this just generally means ‘loss’ then I did lose my best friend like 3/4 years ago idk anymore tbh, but soon after that I befriended @immortalpsychocat so everything’s fine now

10. Been depressed: it’s called depression sharon and the answer is ‘today’

11. Gotten drunk and thrown up: march 4th (my cousin’s birthday party, it was the 3rd time I was drunk and the 2nd time I threw up bc of that lol, I didn’t get drunk since then)

LIST 3 FAVOURITE COLOURS:

12.-14. blue, green, purple (all shades of these colors)

IN THE LAST YEAR, HAVE YOU:

15. Made new friends: Yes! Some people from university, some on tumblr and my most recently made friend is Lara actually

16. Fallen out of love: for that I’d have to actually have been in love with anyone in the first place so the answer is no

17. Laughed until you cried: today when I watched Dan and Phil’s latest sims video lol

18. Found out someone was talking about you: well there was only one person who blogged about me some months ago but they probably stopped doing that lol

19. Met someone who changed you: hmmm I don’t think so tbh

20. Found out who your friends are: yep, they are good eggs

21. Kissed someone on your Facebook list: well the only person that I kissed is on my facebook friend list so yes

GENERAL:

22. How many of your Facebook friends do you know in real life: I don’t have many facebook friends so most of my facebook friends I know from real life (also I kinda hate facebook and use it like once a month for 5 minutes lmao)

23. Do you have any pets: sadly no but catch me getting a dog and a lizard as soon as I’m financially stable

24. Do you want to change your name: I used to want to do that bc people are too dumb to pronounce it properly after I told them how to pronounce it but now I’m fine with it

25. What did you do for your last birthday: literally nothing

26. What time did you wake up: okay look;;;

27. What were you doing at midnight last night: watching my brother sending nsfw fanart to my best friend bc they were having a Troll War, once again, it ended with them teaming up against me bc I snaked on her so they both snaked on me

28. Name something you can’t wait for: “The Winds of Winter is the forthcoming sixth novel in the epic fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire by George R. R. Martin.Martin believes the last two volumes of the series will be big books of 1,500+ manuscript pages each.[1] They will take readers farther north than any of the previous books, and the Others will appear in The Winds of Winter.[2]Martin has refrained from making hard estimates for The Winds of Winter's final release date.[3] In 2014, estimates based on extrapolation of Martin's writing pace predicted the release date sometime between 2015 and 2018.[4][5] In January 2016, Martin confirmed that he had not met a deadline of October 2015 and an end-of-year deadline that he had established with his publisher.[6] In January 2017, Martin announced that he believed that The Winds of Winter will be released "this year", referring to 2017. However, he also noted that he believed the same thing would occur the previous year.” (source)

29. When was the last time you saw your mom: an hour ago

31. What are you listening to right now: “Scream” by Troy Bolton, Highschool Musical 3 Soundtrack ( don’t fucking judge)

32. Have you ever talked to a person named Tom: I don’t think so

33. Something that is getting on your nerves: L O L

34. Most visited website: youtube,then tumblr

35.-37. “Lost Questions??? (I’m just talking this over exactly as I found it, I also noticed some numbers missing, for example number 30, but idk man lol)” a fitting direct quote from Lara

38. Hair colour: black with some disgusting red streaks bc the hair stylist didn’t cover my entire hair when she dyed it from frikkin red to black

39. Long or short hair: my hair is currently at boob-length

40. Do you have a crush on someone: lol nope

41. What do you like about yourself: I like my eyes, kinda my eyebrow shape, my figure (except that I don’t like that my arms look like noodles), I like my silly humor, my loyalty to my friends and my enthusiasm for the little things

42. Piercings: [file not found]

43. Blood type: I think O- (yeah I’m kinda fucked with this one)

44. Nickname: Jos, Josi, Josuf, etc.

45. Relationship status: single

46. Zodiac: libra

47. Pronouns: she/her

48. Favorite TV show: game of thrones, sadly

49. Tattoos: none, sadly (yet)

50. Right or left handed: left-handed

51. Surgery: once bc I had a cyst and they had to surgically get that shit out of my mouth (it was somewehre in my jaw idk)

52. Piercing: bruh why are you repeating yourself?

53. Sport: lol exercise?? a healthy lifestyle?? what is that??? but if I had to do something regularly it would probably be swimming, tennis or volleyball bc I actually enjoy these activities

55. Vacation: last vacation would be croatia (dubrovnik, specifically), 2 years ago. next vacation will be crete (panormo, specifically) in august and I’M EXCITED BC I WILL BE TAKING MY FIRST FLIGHT SOMEWHERE JESUS FUCK (where did 54 go)

MORE GENERAL:

57. Eating: my mom’s a cook so you can imagine it’s good stuff

58. Drinking: usually non-alcoholic drinks since I don’t really fuck with alcohol if I don’t wanna get drunk (since I don’t really like the taste) soo it’s ice tea or water

59. I’m about to: watch highschool musical 3 after I finish this post lol

61. Waiting for: happiness (wow this got depressing real fast) where’s 60

62. Want: [see answer for question 61] oh and money

63. Get married: maybe idk, depends on if I will really want that in my future and also depends on my partner. if it ends up being a woman and austria doesn’t have same-sex marriage until then, well...but atm idek if I want ANY of that stuff tbh, I’m currently figuring out my sexuality and I’m c o n f u s e d

64. Career: something in the field of sociology, whatever the fuck that’s gonna be. My dream would be working for an NGO, maybe write some books maybe I will become a famous sociologist and people will learn about me lmaooo

WHICH IS BETTER:

65. Hugs or kisses: my only kisses so far were drunken pecks so hugs

66. Lips or eyes: eyes 100%

67. Shorter or taller: I don’t have a preference (same goes for my aesthetic attraction to men and women ajajajajajaj)

68. Older or younger: how about people my age, I don’t really wanna be surrounded by kids and old people all the time tbh (I don’t wanna be surrounded by people in the first place but you know what I mean)

70. Nice arms or nice stomach: it’s just fucken body parts my dude did you purposefully leave out 69 so that I can’t make a kinky joke

72. Hook up or relationship: atm? neither. in general probably relationship. but idk if i actually want any of that ever idkkkkk

73. Troublemaker or hesitant: the most hesitant to ever hesitant

HAVE YOU EVER:

74. Kissed a stranger: no

75. Drank hard liquor: if I choose to drink, I drink the hard stuff bc I wanna get drunk

76. Lost glasses/contact lenses: hmm no I don’t think so

77. Turned someone down: does not-going-to-one-of-his-plays-even-tho-he-invited-me-bc-i’m-not-really-interested-in-him count?

78. Sex on the first date: idk if I want sex or dates or both i d k f a m

79. Broken someone’s heart: lol idk how much the actor dude likes me so maybe

80. Had your heart broken: romantically? no. by someone who used to be my best friend? yes

81. Been arrested: no

82. Cried when someone died: as I said, I didn’t have to experience something like that in my personal life but I did cry when carrie fisher died :(

83. Fallen for a friend: nope

DO YOU BELIEVE IN:

84. Yourself: Hah most of the times no, sometimes I do

85. Miracles: I truly don’t know, maybe

86. Love at first sight: no

87. Santa Claus: WHAT SANTA ISN’T REAL??????????

88. Kiss on the first date: hey man you do you, I don’t care

89. Angels: maybe idk

OTHER:

90. Current best friend’s name: Victoria/Vicky, also known as Fake Hoe

91. Eye colour: green-grey-something

92. Favourite movie: Wonder Woman (2017) dir. Patty Jenkins

why exactly 92 questions tho??

Tagging: @immortalpsychocat @metaforkel @carriestreep @stupida-in-arte @starklinqs @bisexuallaurellance @patethenovice @ripley-stark @frogspears @fiftyshadesofnygma @britanniafork @littletinygothamite @winter-came @alius-alia @okayprincess @red-candy-rocks @clexasbellarke @accidentalkate @gaymickrory @hetpiglet

#none of you have to do it obviously #this is insanely long lol #i did it now bc i was kinda bored and now i'm gonna watch hsm3 bye fam :)#i'm basically tagging people that i know from real life/from group chats/or just who are some of my fave mututals #so if u got tagged feel honored or something lol #long post #shut up jos #tag thingy #lol @mututals #i meant mutuals obvs

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shslscifihorror · 8 years ago

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(questions taken from this questionnaire)

so, You Want To Know About Youji Fen. well.

{cw: uh... family drama, a lot of family talk, ableism}

1. She does not have any siblings as her father left her mother after having her, and the two met pretty shortly before then. However, who she does have is her maternal cousin, Yang Yunxu - her mother went to live with her sister and her spouse to avoid living in more poverty, and they had one kid. A bundle of energy and naiivite, he and Ailani unfortunately lost contact after she moved to Japan.

2. Poor Chou. Hailing from a poor background, she was an itinerant all her life and eventually underwent the difficult process to move from mainland China to Hong Kong, hoping three degrees of separation would give her a chance at a new life. She brought along remnants of her past life - this is why Youji Fen is properly written with pinyin, though Ailani grew up remembering only Cantonese. Chou didn't find her life there easier, and was frequently out of the house trying to gain employment. Ailani herself has a very distanced view of her mother, but also one that is dependent. The daughter, seen as a way to make the mother proud and give her a motivation to keep on going, but on the flip side Ailani relies on her mother to give her necessities and admired her for her dedication and hard work. This was one of the things that motivated her to write, as she wanted to make enough money to support the both of them. So while Ailani admires her mother, she did everything in her power to avoid ending up like her.

3. Oh boy. Chu is actually the son of a first generation immigrant from Vietnam who also found himself in Hong Kong for similar reasons to Chou. Also from a poor background, though not to the degree of his ex-wife, the two bonded over this and married fairly hastily. He was always a coward and left when Ailani was young, seeing her appearance as an omen of sorts. As she grew up she realized there was something different about her family arrangement, especially as she entered school and was exposed to others. After the events that led her family to move, she became acutely aware of his absence and began blaming him for leaving the family. This has continued until the present day, and there probably isn't a single person she loathes more than her father.

4. Oh yes, absolutely. There were three of these events, two of them are sort of stuff that hasn't come out yet, but in vague terms they are 1. the event that she witnessed that directly caused her to move 2. the time she lost a friend of hers and 3. what I'll be talking about now, which basically solidified her choice of career. Ailani, for her thirteenth birthday, was taken to a movie theatre to watch a film. On her way back from concessions, she accidentally walked inside the wrong theatre, and witnessed a horror movie. She only caught bits of what was going on, but the gory scene she beheld implanted itself in her mind, and as she grew older and was an edgy teen who liked to rebel, it made an impact on her and was essentially the day she knew what she wanted to do.

5. She likes to keep her pockets clean, typically one'd only find a pen, her keys/keycard, a miniature notepad, and a tissue. Anything else is only transitive.

6. ; )

Okay, but she does have many dreams about flying. One of her secret desires has always been the ability of levitation, and this has transferred over to her subconscious. Incidentally, another desire of hers has always been to become a robot, which she has dreamed about before.

7. She does, indeed have reoccurring nightmares, mostly about stuff she's seen in her life. However, a common theme with them is abandonment.

8. Nope. She has never, in her life, fired a gun.

9. Yup! Back in the dawning years of her life, she was very poor. Ailani's still poor but less so because she's actually making money from her books, but not enough to drag herself and her mother out from being lower-class. However, her life's doing substantially better since she's actually living with her mum in their own apartment instead of sharing with others.

10. Takes a long, hard look at Ailani and her jorts. Well, it's dependent on the weather but she gets cold very easily so she prefers more clothes, but usually as a safeguard rather than because of actual comfort.

11. Several, again. The first was the threat of being homeless following the incident that made her have to move, but she was still a child during that and didn't fully understand what went on. The second was the immediate period of time following the incident in which she lost her friend.

12. For the year she was preparing to write her third book, she would go to a temple and pray. That assisted greatly in instilling a sense of calm in her, and she looks back upon the last stretch of that time fondly.

13. Yes, she's disconcerted by it. As much as she works with blood and guts in her writing, there's no substitute for the real thing even if it helped desensitize her slightly.

14. Names. She's a very word-oriented person though she has a great talent for visualization, but the way Ailani's mind works it's simply easier for her to recall a string of letters.

15. Ohhh boy. Yes, absolutely. Being in poverty for much of her life has left her with a hunger for wealth and as a result she tends to hoard money and physical comforts (i.e. she still has a collection of hotel soap from when they were moving into their apartment even if they were in a better spot). It's very hard to get her to spend on material comforts, even if it won't affect her financially, and she treasures anything she's given.

16. Success, full-stop. She'd rather be famous and known rather than happy, which has been her mentality her entire life because she's desperate to become known and not stuck in the lot life dealt her.

17. Does a book count? She had a pop-up book of various animals that she found utterly fascinating, and would read over and over. It was actually what helped her learn to start reading and imprinted a love of the craft in her.

18. Both. She's harsh towards perceived negative traits in others, and while she doesn't believe ambition is inherently evil (look at her!), she feels those seized by it can easily become soured. Wisdom is also important in her mind, as one must know how to approach the world and not keep themselves closed off. She feels sympathy might be reached if people simply considered the circumstances of others.

19. -laughtrack- Well, uh. Ailani is ambitious to the point of ruthlessness herself, as in she will make herself successful and prioritize that above the happiness and safety of others. I'm not going to elaborate on her relationships rn but let me just say that this has caused big, big issues for her in the past.

20. Welcome to petty mcgee. Ailani feels she needs to be the best, and consequently can't help but compare herself to others. She doesn't mind criticism at all, but at the same time she's fully willing to rip elements of other people and learn from their failings in order to better herself. So for the most part she does this for self-criticism, but she's the nasty kind of person who looks at critics ripping apart others works in order to self-validate.

21. -laughtrack part two- Well, without getting too deep into it, Ailani blames others for anything negative that's ever happened in her life. She has a pretty good self-image but at the same time it's fragile and she doesn't like it being challenged, which causes her to blame others in like 90% of the cases. She really, really doesn't like being in the wrong.

22. Ailani's a person who's willing to genuinely like others, but keep them as arm's length. However, she prefers people who are honest and consistent, where she can better predict their reactions. The other kind of person she likes are those who are similar to her, who she can't help but relate to and feel a connection with. See the people she likes most: Yuka, Holly, Ayato, Piney, Sarara.

23. An entire laundry list of things. She hates hypocrisy above all else though, which, in itself, is hypocritical. Another trait she loathes is when people are unpredictable, as she prefers consistency. She also dislikes incompetence.

24. As can be displayed by her behavior in trials, pretty quickly. Ailani actually suspected Kanon after Haruna was defensive of her during investigation, and this carried with her all throughout the trial just for example.

25. Not quick at all, enough said. Unless your name starts with "Y" and ends with "uka Kagome". Really, Ailani only deeply trusts like five people in her entire life, both inside the simulation and out.

26. Ailani finds children kind of annoying and has no interest in having any, so she isn't very good around them nor should be trusted to look after them - she'd probably just leave them be and begin reading a book instead. Fictional preteens are enough, thank you very much.

27. Avoid! Avoid! Avoid!

28. Usually she only resorts to violence if pushed to her max, i.e. trial 6 with the knives and stuff in her backstory.

29. Believe it or not, she wanted to be an auto racer as a child after reading a book on it. Author was her second choice which took over her life, and she eventually did.... kinda fulfill that dream.

30. In terms of symbolic stuff? Hypocrisy and injustice. In terms of physical stuff? She really hates heavy food, especially cheese - and not just because she's lactose intolerant.

31. Relaxing in a quiet spot inside her house, book in hand and cup of tea to her side. Ailani's alone and can read at her leisure.

32. [monobear voice] youji fen shsl faker [ailani] -screaming-

33. Always willing to improve if it comes to her works. She doesn't mind if what she creates is criticized, moreso if she herself is criticized. Should someone suggest ways for her to improve as a person, she's likely to pull a knife on them.

34. Move on to a different method/solution. Ailani tends to search for creative ways to deal with a problem, and because of that will keep on trying different tactics until she find one that works. This isn't always good, as she might disregard a method if it didn't work once - even if it was her own fault it tanked.

35. Nice. No, really.

36. Nice, but in a super passive-aggressive way. She tends to regard them with disgust, and insult them covertly at every chance she gets.

37. Status. For Ailani, the concept of keeping honour is a thing she's never given much consideration to especially because of her family situation where keeping mum about not having a father was necessary, which caused her to resent the concept of "honour". As for her status, one needn't look further than trial seven.

38. It depends on the severity of the problem/threat and if it affects her directly. If it doesn't and it's relatively harmless, then she tends to take a hands-off stance, but if it does Ailani deals with it at earliest possible time, always.

39. Nah, she's never been bitten by an animal.

40. Considerately. She's very much one to root for the small person, and is a big fan of underdog stories. She knows they're just trying to live and make minimum wage, and she tends to try to be as polite as possible to people in general even if she resents them.

41. Oh boy, here's Ms. Entitled. She feels that, because of her lot in life she deserves to have good things happen to her eventually, but she also thinks she must work for them even if she deserves to have what she wants. In general, she believes it to be pretty dang unfair that she has to work, but she goes hard at her desires.

42. Yup, a librarian at the library she frequented. Because the librarian knew JSL and MCJ, she spoke frequently with them, and they grew fond of her. The librarian saw her grow up too, and as a result their relationship was rather parental, especially since they fretted over her and wanted to see her succeed.

43. Again, yes, a certain person in her backstory. They were her first crush, but they regarded her more as a sibling and friend. Still, the relationship eventually crumbled anyways.

44. It's very easy for her to say ilu, both with and without meaning. Ailani's willing to do a lot to ensure her success, and pretending she actually likes people is on that list. However, she also says ilu easily when she genuinely likes people - it's just a feeling, why shouldn't she be honest?

45. Ailani was raised Buddhist, and believes in rebirth. She's always been pretty religious, and this only intensified recently in her life. While she gives consideration to the idea of an afterlife, which she's afraid of the possibility of, she holds firm to her belief in reincarnation though.

#out of ink #about ailani #the more u know #family //#religion //#food //

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kristablogs · 5 years ago

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Local opposition to Alaska’s Pebble Mine grows as the project reaches the next milestone

Male sockeye salmon are among the prized resources in the proposed site of the Pebble Mine. (Bjorn Dihle/)

Editor’s note: Bjorn Dihle is a lifelong resident of Alaska, and an advocate for Alaska’s wild habitat and natural resources. You can find him on Instagram and Facebook.

This story originally featured on Outdoor Life.

Today, a host of conservation and news organizations received via the U.S. Postal Service the final Environmental Impact Statement from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for the proposed Pebble Mine in Alaska. This paves the way for the federal permit the controversial mine needs in order to proceed, which will likely be issued within 30 days now that the final Environmental Impact Statement has been released. With the current political atmosphere, the Pebble Partnership is now in position to bulldoze through the final state and local permits required to start development in the wild country of the Alaska Peninsula, where a fully realized mining district would likely spell the death of Bristol Bay and its incredible sockeye salmon runs, the largest on the planet.

Many Alaskans, myself included, have strong ties to the area and its incredible natural resources. In a recent poll, 62 percent of Alaskans said they’re opposed to Pebble. Former governor Jay Hammond and former senator Ted Stevens (both Republicans and likely the most influential Alaskan politicians in recent history) strongly opposed the mine. Many believe you can either have salmon or you can have the Pebble Mine, but you can’t have both.

And many Alaskan outdoorsmen and women have good memories from hunting and fishing the area. My dad had taken me and my two brothers on a caribou hunt there when we were teenagers. I remembered a blond grizzly rising from the brush and glowering as a herd of caribou flooded across the hilly tundra north of Lake Iliamna. My younger brother and I knelt, watching two big bear cubs appear. We’d just about gotten within rifle range of a group of massive white-maned bulls but, now, with the bears nearby, we weren’t eager to push our luck. We backtracked to our dad without firing a shot. A few hours later, we lay on the tundra as hundreds of caribou filed by us only 40 yards away. Twenty years have passed since that once-in-a-lifetime hunt, but the memories of thousands of caribou moving across the tundra and red salmon filling the waterways of that big wild country remain crisp to this day.

I hadn’t heard of Pebble Mine back then, nor did I realize that we were hunting atop the proposed mine’s deposit of gold, copper, and molybdenum. A few years after that hunt, geologists announced the deposit to be the world’s largest untapped resource of gold and copper, and estimated its worth at $500 billion. The idea of a mine in that location was met with staunch opposition in Alaska. And for good reason—the region has the world’s largest run of sockeye salmon, which is vital for the area’s mostly Native population and the $1.5 billion commercial fishery that supports 14,500 jobs and an array of other industries, including guiding sport anglers, hunters, and bear watchers.

Alannah Hurley, a Yup’ik resident of Bristol Bay and the executive director of United Tribes of Bristol Bay, testified before Congress that “Pebble’s proposal to build a mine at the heart of our watershed has been a dark cloud over Bristol Bay for the last 15 years.”

Triston Chaney, a Yup’ik and Athabaskan fisherman, doesn’t mince words when it comes to Pebble. The deposit lies partly beneath the Nushagak River watershed, which has sustained his people for generations.

“We don’t like Pebble. We don’t want it,” Chaney says. “They couldn’t have picked a worse spot to dig a big hole. This could damage our whole livelihood. Life here revolves around fish and if that went away…”

A moose hunter returning to camp on a lake on the Alaska Peninsula. (Bjorn Dihle/)

For Melanie Brown, a Yup’ik and Inupiat commercial fisherwoman, salmon connects her to her culture.

“Bristol Bay would become a desolate place without salmon,” Brown says. “Salmon don’t just nourish the people; they nourish the land. It’s sad to think that could be disrupted. The disappearance of salmon has happened all over the world. My hope is our collective consciousness can keep projects like Pebble from destroying places like Bristol Bay.”

During the Obama administration, Pebble was blocked from moving forward. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released a three-year peer-reviewed scientific study that concluded a mine “would result in complete loss of fish habitat due to elimination, de-watering, and fragmentation of streams, wetlands, and other aquatic resources” in a significant portion of the region and that “these loses would be irreversible.”

The EPA invoked the Clean Water Act, potential investors fled, and Pebble appeared to be dead. During the beginning of Trump’s administration, the EPA agreed the environmental risks were too great and announced they would block the mine from going forward.

That all changed in May 2017, when Scott Pruitt, the recently appointed director of the EPA, met with Tom Collier, a veteran D.C. lobbyist and the CEO of the Pebble Partnership. A few hours after Pruitt and Collier’s meeting, the EPA announced it was rescinding its plans to protect Bristol Bay. In late 2017, the Pebble Partnership filed for a mining permit from the United States Army Corps of Engineers. Collier, who stands to get a $12.5 million bonus if he gets Pebble permitted within four years, came forward with the idea of applying for a smaller mine that would operate for 20 years and only recover a small percentage of the deposit. There would be less environmental degradation, Collier pointed out, than the original 78-year mine plan. The “small” mine would still be massive. Its industrial footprint would cover hundreds of miles of the Alaska Peninsula with hundreds of miles of roads, toxic-sludge-filled lakes, power plants, deep water ports, and a natural gas line.

Some critics also argue that Collier’s 20-year mine isn’t economically feasible. Richard Borden, who has three decades working in the mining industry and once was a permitting expert for Rio Tinto, the world’s second largest mining corporation, predicted Collier’s model for Pebble would lose billions of dollars. The Pebble Partnership needs investors to build all the infrastructure and those folks wouldn’t want to commit to a 20-year mine. Still, Collier pushed on, claiming the mine would make a profit and not negatively impact the salmon and people of the region. After the Corps of Engineers released its draft Environmental Impact Statement in late February 2019, the Department of the Interior concluded the report relied on “subjective, and unsupported claims” from the Pebble Partnership and was “so inadequate that it precludes meaningful analysis.” Some locals say that the Corps of Engineers was in collusion with the Pebble Partnership, or, at the very least, under the sway of the current political atmosphere while forgoing any legitimate scientific process.

Alannah Hurley put it simply: “The Corps has made it clear that our people, science, and fact do not matter in this process.”

Since applying for a permit in 2017, the Pebble Partnership had led the public to believe it was planning a transportation route to the mine called the “southern route.” On May 22, 2020, on the eve of the Corps of Engineers releasing its final review and decision on whether to issue Pebble the primary federal permit it needs, the Corps of Engineers announced it was changing its preferred transportation route for the mine to the “northern route.” The northern route is the only transportation route able to accommodate the 78-year mine plan, which is economically feasible and would likely attract investors. The “northern route” would cross land owned by the Bristol Bay Native Corporation (BBNC), Pedro Bay Corp, and Igiugig Village Council; all three entities have made clear that their land will not be available to accommodate the mine.

An Alaska Peninsula brown bear chomps down on a sockeye salmon. (Drew Hamilton/)

Dan Cheyette, BBNC Vice President of Lands, said in a press release, “There are numerous problems with the northern transportation route. It has not been vetted and scrutinized by both the public and cooperating agencies on the same level as other transportation routes. It crosses lands that are not and will not be available for the purpose of building Pebble Mine. And most importantly, it is a clear sign that PLP has no plans to stop at its current 20-year mine plan.”

On June 18, Collier announced the Pebble Partnership will pay at least $3 million in dividends to residents of Bristol Bay who register. As the mine becomes more profitable, Collier claims, dividends will increase. Alannah Hurley called Collier’s dividends a “false promise” and “predatory and shameless.”

Tia Shoemaker, a brown bear and moose hunting guide who grew up on a remote homestead on the Alaska Peninsula, is calling B.S.

“Pebble is telling potential investors this will be a multi-generational mine, while telling the public this will be a 20-year mine plan,” she says.

Shoemaker’s hunch that the Pebble Partnership’s proposal is smoke and mirrors is shared by many who oppose the mine. Drew Hamilton, a bear viewing guide on the Alaska Peninsula—bear viewing brings in an estimated annual $34 million annually—agrees. Hamilton works tirelessly raising awareness of how Pebble threatens the greatest population of brown bears left in North America.

“By applying for a permit for a 20-year mine that won’t pay the bills, they are either lying or stupid, and I don’t think they are stupid. It is just red flag after red flag and our politicians’ commitment to the sham ‘process’ has gone beyond reasonable, to the point that they are just wasting our time and resources,” Hamilton says.

The battle for Bristol Bay isn’t over yet. With enough public support, the EPA could still veto the mine under the authority of the Clean Water Act, as it has before. But barring that, or big changes in national and state politics, Pebble Mine will eventually become a reality. I had this in the back of my mind when my brothers and I took my dad to the Alaska Peninsula for a moose hunt last September, in honor of his 70th birthday. King Salmon was buzzing with anglers, hunters, and bear viewers who’d come from all over the world to experience the region’s incredible fish and wildlife opportunities.

We glassed the country for days, looking out on miles of tundra and giant glacier-covered volcanoes, waiting for a bull to appear. I thought about how, during our caribou hunt 20 years prior, I believed Alaska would stay wild forever. I believed the streams would always be full of salmon and that there would always be places to make that hunt of a lifetime. I know now that isn’t the case. I was wondering if Bristol Bay’s natural wonders would still exist in the decades to come when two massive bulls appeared out of the tundra and snapped me back to the present. We grunted and racked brush, mimicking a rival bull. The moose steadily came our way, aggressively shaking their antlers—a true picture of the wild.

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scootoaster · 5 years ago

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Local opposition to Alaska’s Pebble Mine grows as the project reaches the next milestone

Male sockeye salmon are among the prized resources in the proposed site of the Pebble Mine. (Bjorn Dihle/)

Editor’s note: Bjorn Dihle is a lifelong resident of Alaska, and an advocate for Alaska’s wild habitat and natural resources. You can find him on Instagram and Facebook.

This story originally featured on Outdoor Life.

A moose hunter returning to camp on a lake on the Alaska Peninsula. (Bjorn Dihle/)

For Melanie Brown, a Yup’ik and Inupiat commercial fisherwoman, salmon connects her to her culture.

Alannah Hurley put it simply: “The Corps has made it clear that our people, science, and fact do not matter in this process.”

An Alaska Peninsula brown bear chomps down on a sockeye salmon. (Drew Hamilton/)

Tia Shoemaker, a brown bear and moose hunting guide who grew up on a remote homestead on the Alaska Peninsula, is calling B.S.

“Pebble is telling potential investors this will be a multi-generational mine, while telling the public this will be a 20-year mine plan,” she says.

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aliciabuncle · 6 years ago

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Insights from IFMA

Time flies, and never does it move faster than at a bustling customer event … like the IFMA World Workplace conference. For two days in beautiful (and warm) Phoenix, AZ, our TRIRIGA team talked to the professionals keeping our buildings at their best. We got to meet new people, show off Sarah, the interactive virtual assistant and building concierge, spend more time with IFMA members, discuss how to create a more engaging workplace experience, and chat with booth visitors. Here are five of the too-many-to-count insights from our time at the event:

“I’m not lazy, I’m innovative.”

We’ve all heard that half of all facility managers will retire within 10 years. That means that tomorrow’s leaders will come from today’s Gen X & Y workforce. And if you’ve got some preconceived notions about the under-34 crowd, hopefully you had a chance to listen to Yvet Brummelhuis from the wonderfully named World of Yes. This Dutch organization specializes in global development programs for young facility professionals. As she explained in her talk, “How Can You Engage the Next Generation Today and be Future Ready for Tomorrow,” these younger workers often bring new thinking and higher expectations. Plus, Gen Z has characteristics that any employer should value: a thirst for challenging work and a desire to be in a positive environment. Just be prepared to be more flexible, too, as that’s high on the Gen Z list if you’re trying to compete for this new talent.

“For today’s facility managers, IoT really is here to stay.”

We asked Calvin Hariman, Director of Strategic Partnerships at Tjene Corp, what he found most interesting at the IFMA event. He pointed out that today’s facility managers aren’t treating the world of IoT as a “maybe.” Previously, the question was “do we want to hook up all these sensors?” Now, that answer is yes, as more of his clients are realizing tangible outcomes from their endeavors. The secret to success is to start with a small use case that is almost seamless to the users, like “hassle-free meeting rooms.” Then, once implemented, the next step is to consider adding on AI for predictive modeling and decision making – especially given the amount of data most facilities generate.

“Meet AI, my new co-worker.”

Speaking of IoT and AI, we learned that your new co-worker may be AI-based, but it’s not taking your job. As our own Tina Scott from the IBM TRIRIGA team discussed in her session, today’s connected buildings are ripe with data. Solutions that include IoT and AI can augment what managers and operators know about their facilities, especially when it comes to space. We’re quickly moving past badge data to understand the how, when and who of space usage. And that knowledge can translate into real savings. That’s because it gives an organization the right insights to make the data-driven, strategic decisions and right-size their portfolios. Thanks, Tina, for such a great session!

“Your desk doesn’t relate to your job.”

Her title – Experience Manager – caught our attention, and we jumped at the chance to chat with Justine Clure from ISS. She’s a champion for service-led leadership, and she’s the future of facility management. She’s also got a strategic approach for space management using sensor data, a more thorough understanding of employee needs and executive support (and we’ll tell you more about that in a later blog).

We also talked about some of the challenges and opportunities for today’s younger workforce. Outcome-based is her mode of operation, and she speaks for her generation when she says that although some say Millennial don’t want to work, she counters that they do – for a greater purpose. There’s just no appetite to be a paper pusher. if you’re working with a different generation, just remember what Justine said, “Time is a social concept, and I might be late to your meeting but I’ll get the work done.” And we absolutely believe her!

“In the world that we live in, there’s more visibility into everything we do.”

Premier IBM business partner, eCIFM, had an IFMA booth directly across from the IBM TRIRIGA booth. So it was only natural to ask Cher Nicastro, VP of Development, her thoughts on trends and the next big thing for the industry. For her customers, it’s all about mobile solutions and having what they need in the palms of their hands. And while not everyone thinks in terms of “digital transformation,” her customers are focused on taking that next step: “I’ve got a great set of data; how do I use that to figure out what I’m doing next.” For both public and private sector customers. it’s also about optimizing space, including consolidation and shared option. For example, public schools may look at weekend space rentals to generate income that goes back into those schools. It’s all about making more with what you already have and being transparent in the process.

Thanks to everyone who stopped by our booth. We hope your found as much inspiration as we did. Feel free to send us your IFMA insights, too, on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Still have questions?

There’s never enough time to learn, see and experience all you want to at an event like IFMA World Workplace. So if ou still have questions or simply continue exploring, you can read more about the evolution of space planning, why the workplace matters and how you can find value from an Integrated Workplace Management System (IWMS).

Just keep learning …

And for the best learning opportunity in 2020, go ahead and mark your calendars for IBM IoT Exchange, March 17-18, 2020, in Orlando, Florida,. It’s two invaluable days of great learning, expert speakers, hands-on labs, unmatched networking and fun! Because at IoT Exchange, intelligence is your greatest asset.

The post Insights from IFMA appeared first on Internet of Things blog.

Insights from IFMA published first on https://decalsgraphicstore.tumblr.com/

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robertsmorgan · 8 years ago

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Are Energy Drinks Bad for You?

Energy drinks are popular among gamers, students, athletes, professionals, and anyone who has to drive overnight from Milwaukee to St. Louis. They’re big business, too. Americans spent $12.5 billion on energy drinks in 2012. Market experts predict that number to climb to $21.5 billion in 2017.[1] It’s clear that these drinks are only growing in popularity. With so many people guzzling them down every day, can energy drinks really be that bad? The short answer is yes.

Energy drinks can be devastating for your health. They contribute to heart problems, high blood pressure, obesity, diabetes, anxiety, insomnia, and a host of other health risks. In some rare cases, energy drinks have even proved fatal.

A Growing Public Health Concern

In 2011, 16-year-old Sara Milosevic went to a party where she consumed several pre-mixed alcoholic energy drinks. A few hours later she was vomiting violently. Other partygoers just assumed she couldn’t handle her alcohol. At 11 pm, the teen called her parents to come pick her up. By 3 am, Sara was dead. An autopsy revealed that her blood alcohol content was only .04—not even enough to be considered legally drunk. Sara’s father, a chemist, believes the energy drinks caused her death.[2, 3]

In 2011, mere days before Christmas, 14-year-old Anais Fournier suffered a fatal heart attack. In the 48 hours before her death, she consumed four energy drinks. In total, Anais consumed 480 mg of caffeine—less than one-tenth the official fatal dosage of the stimulant, but almost five times more than the recommended limit for adolescents. Doctors speculate that the energy drinks agitated a pre-existing genetic heart condition.[4]

It’s not just teens who are affected. In 2015, 28-year-old Martin Bowling suffered a heart attack after consuming eight energy drinks at a pub. Bowling was rushed to a hospital and survived. He had been spending $150 a week on energy drinks.

“I’d been drinking them for about seven years, and it was like I’d become addicted,” said Bowling. “Now I see those drinks as death in a can.”[5, 6]

Even popular athletes can succumb to the toxicity of energy drinks. In 2003, professional wrestler “Stone Cold” Steve Austin was hospitalized with severe heart palpitations. He believes that his then habit of consuming 3-5 energy drinks every day was a primary cause of the health crisis.

“I think I’m dying, dying for sure,” Austin recalls of the event. “My heart’s beating so hard it feels like it’s going to crack a rib jumping out of my chest. My heart might be doing 160 or 180 beats per minute. My legs are shaking and I can’t make them stop. I’m sure I’m having a heart attack.”[7]

Between 2004 and 2014, energy drinks have officially been a factor in at least 34 deaths.[8] Unofficially, perhaps many more. Caffeine deaths are often attributable to other factors and may be severely underreported and undiagnosed. Some doctors suspect that the actual number could be much higher.[9] Thousands of people have been hospitalized with symptoms of energy drink overdose, including insomnia, anxiety, convulsions, high blood pressure, heart attacks, and other cardiovascular complications. The wings that energy drinks give you might just come with a harp and halo.

How Your Body Reacts to Energy Drinks

We all need a little energy boost now and then, but there are healthier options. Energy drinks are a chemical cocktail of caffeine, refined sugar, and other ingredients. Some of which, like herbs and vitamins, may even sound healthy. What is it that makes energy drinks so dangerous?

One study looked at the effect that consuming just one 16-ounce can of a leading brand of energy drink had on basic, vital functions. The findings? Blood pressure jumped an average of 6.6 points within thirty minutes of consumption, and norepinephrine, a stress hormone, increased by 75%. Norepinephrine also enhances the production of cortisol, a fat-storing hormone, significantly increasing the risk of weight gain.[10]

Energy drink manufacturers maintain that their products are safe when consumed in recommended amounts. Do you know what the maximum recommended intake is? For most brands, it’s two or three cans per day. For some, it’s only one.

These warnings are easy to miss. Manufacturers usually hide them in small print on the back of the can with the other information that few people bother to read—that’s if the warning is on there at all. Make no mistake, beverage companies want you to drink as much of their product as possible.

There are two main health dangers of energy drinks—neurological and cardiological. In other words, your nervous system and your heart. These problems are caused by the very same ingredients that make you feel energized—staggeringly high levels of caffeine and sugar.

Energy Drinks Are High in Sugar

Energy drinks can contain up to 78 grams of sugar per serving. That’s 20 teaspoons of sugar every time you drink one.[11] Admittedly, that’s the high end of the scale, but these drinks average about 30 grams of sugar and 280 calories a can. That’s not health food. If staying trim is your goal, drinking just one energy drink makes your job 280 empty calories harder. That’s about 35 minutes of burpees.

Even if you work out enough to stave off diabetes and weight gain, sugar can still damage your health. Excess sugar is one of the leading contributors to heart disease. One study found that people who consumed 25% or more of their daily calories as sugar doubled their chances of dying from heart disease.[12]

Many companies have sugar or calorie-free versions of their product, but what are they using to replace sugar? Artificial sweeteners like aspartame may be even worse for your health. They can interfere with your gut biome, damage your metabolism, encourage obesity, and contribute to diabetes.[13, 14,15]

Energy Drinks Are a Source of Caffeine

Exact amounts vary, but the average energy drink contains about 70-100 mg of caffeine—about as much as a cup of coffee.[16] That doesn’t sound very dangerous, and to a healthy adult, it usually isn’t. Caffeine is toxic but generally safe in small amounts. The problem is the combination of caffeine and other stimulants in an energy drink, as well as lesser understood ingredients like taurine. This chemical cocktail can trigger existing health problems, including genetic disorders that you may not even know about yet.

This is likely what happened in the case of Anais Fournier. Anais had a heart condition called mitral valve prolapse, a relatively common condition that affects 1 in 20 Americans.[4] She consumed only two energy drinks in the 24 hours before her death. That doesn’t sound like much, but, when combined with her condition, it was enough to bring about tragic consequences.

Energy Drinks and Children

Fournier’s unfortunate case is unlikely to be the last. The use of energy drinks by young people is on the rise. Culture and media influence our diets in many ways, both directly and indirectly. Because of this, the youth are likely to see energy drinks as just sort of a cooler kind of soda. A 2014 study estimated that 68% of adolescents and 18% of children under 10-years-old consume energy drinks.[17]

While caffeine is safe in small amounts for healthy adults, it’s a proven health risk for children. Nearly 50% of the people who overdose on caffeine are under 19 years old.[18] Adolescents should limit themselves to no more than 100 mg of caffeine a day. Children age 4-6 should consume no more than 45 mg daily.[19] For children younger than that the number should be zero.

Unlike cigarettes and alcohol, there are usually no age restrictions when purchasing energy drinks in the U.S. Other countries have wised up. In Sweden, for example, most energy drinks can only be sold in pharmacies and selling to children is banned.[17] The World Health Organization (WHO) confirms that energy drinks have a “proven negative effect on children.”[17] The bottom line is simple—children should never consume energy drinks.

Energy Drinks and Alcohol

Eager for new profits, energy drink companies started marketing to the bar crowd in the early 2000’s. They urged bartenders to promote mixed alcohol and energy drinks. Sorry to be a buzzkill, but combining energy drinks with alcohol substantially increases the dangers of both. Caffeine is a stimulant, while alcohol is a depressant. Combining the two can imbalance your system.

One way this manifests is as a “delayed drunk” feeling. The stimulant masks some of the sensory cues on which you normally rely to determine your level of intoxication. In other words, you’re drunk, with the same loss of cognition and motor skills as usual, but you don’t quite realize it. This means that you will likely drink far more, and far faster than you normally would.

I know that some people might think this sounds like a pretty good thing. You get to party longer, right? Well, that’s what energy drink marketers want you to think.

Caffeine doesn’t change your actual blood alcohol level, just your perception of it. That means that as you drink more to hit your buzz, all the usual dangers of drinking are magnified. One study found that people who mixed alcohol and energy drinks were more than twice as likely to drive drunk and far more likely to be a passenger in a car with a drunk driver.[20] As you feel the need to drink more to feel the same high you’re used to, your risk of alcohol poisoning also increases. If all that isn’t enough, your hangover will be worse, too.[21]

A few years ago, energy drink companies were eager to capitalize on a potential new revenue stream. They started selling pre-mixed alcoholic energy drinks. The FDA warned consumers to avoid these dangerous drinks and sent warning letters to energy drink companies calling the concoctions a public health threat.[22] Pre-mixed alcoholic energy drinks quickly disappeared from U.S. store shelves soon after. That won’t stop you from ordering a mixed energy drink in a bar or mixing your own, but I strongly caution against it.

The Effect of Energy Drinks on Athletic Performance

Energy drinks remain popular among athletes for their supposed performance-enhancing effects. Some people don’t care about side effects as long as it provides results. Well, if the idea of a heart attack in the middle of a kickboxing match doesn’t deter you, maybe this will: energy drinks ruin long-term athletic performance.

Studies on the actual performance-enhancing effects have revealed mixed results. Some studies find a minor, short-term boost, while others have found no performance-enhancing effects at all.[23] The truth is that there’s no magic potion for winning inside those cans. Any perceived performance-enhancing effects come from the simple formula of caffeine plus carbs, and there are healthier ways to get those.

Our bodies quickly build up a tolerance to substances like caffeine and sugar, and prolonged overuse tends to have undesirable side effects. Caffeine reactions frequently include bowel instability, mood swings, and anxiety. With sugar, it’s weight gain and diabetes. Both can cause insomnia and other sleep disorders. A study published in the British Journal of Nutrition found that energy drinks significantly increased insomnia and anxiety in athletes.[24]

Aluminum: A Hidden Toxin

There’s another potential source of toxicity in energy drinks that you probably haven’t thought of—the can itself. Aluminum cans have been the standard beverage container for decades, but aluminum is toxic to the human body. Hopefully, no one is eating the can after consuming the beverage, but energy drinks are acidic, and trace amounts of aluminum break apart and contaminate the beverage itself. The average American ingests about 7-9 milligrams of aluminum per day in food and drink.[25]

If you ingest a tiny amount of aluminum, your body’s natural detoxification processes can usually filter the toxins out. Consuming an excessive amount of canned beverages over a prolonged period is a different story. When you ingest toxic material faster than your body can process it, that material accumulates, overwhelming your system. Those with existing kidney problems are especially at risk because of a reduced capacity to filter toxins.[25]

High levels of aluminum can cause disorders in the brain, bones, and nervous system including confusion, muscle weakness, brittle bones, and seizures. In children, aluminum toxicity can impair mental and physical development.[26]

Mixing your own fresh beverages at home is the best thing you can do to quench your thirst, but I understand that that’s not always practical. If you must buy pre-packaged drinks, only buy those in glass containers.

Energy Drink Alternatives

Without question, an overall healthy lifestyle with proper diet, plenty of rest, and regular exercise is the best way to feel fully energized. However, there are times when everyone needs that extra boost. If energy drinks are off the table, what are your best options?

Ginseng

Most energy drinks are advertised as containing ginseng. Ginseng itself is great, it improves energy, appetite, and sleep quality.[27] However, the ginseng used in energy drinks is cheap, processed, low-quality, and present in such tiny amounts that its therapeutic effect is practically non-existent.[28] When you factor in the health-ruining amount of sugar and toxic ingredients, ginseng’s potential benefits are more than wiped out.

Why not just cut out the chemical cocktail and go straight to the source? A ginseng supplement is far more active—if it’s high quality. In fact, ginseng effectiveness is completely dependent on quality, and quality varies considerably. Only purchase from reputable companies that are completely transparent about their sourcing and production and only invest in products that are completely natural and toxin-free, like Ginseng Fuzion™.

Vitamin B-12

If you feel drained constantly, you may be one of the 40% of Americans who are vitamin B-12 deficient.[29] B-12 deficiency leads to low red blood cell count—a type of anemia. Symptoms include fatigue, weakness, and difficulty concentrating.[30, 31] Red meat, mollusks, and dairy are the richest sources of B-12. There are few non-animal sources, so those of us that follow a plant-based diet should consider a high-quality B-12 supplement like VeganSafe™ B-12.

Black and Green Tea

If you absolutely need that caffeine boost in the morning, at least obtain it from a better source than energy drinks. Black or green tea can provide a similar mental boost. Tea has less caffeine than energy drinks and causes fewer sleep disruptions.[32] According to two double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled studies, tea improves attention and self-reported alertness.[33] The combination of theanine and caffeine, naturally occurring ingredients in tea, improves cognitive performance.[34]

I only recommend tea for adults and teens—it’s not for children. While tea has significantly less caffeine than energy drinks, any caffeine at all is a potential health risk to a developing brain and body.

Nuts

If you need an energy boost fast, try a handful of nuts. Nutrient-dense nuts help your body sustain energy levels and they’re a good source of high-quality protein.[35] They also contain valuable phytochemicals like carotenoids, phenolic acids, phytosterols, and flavonoids. These nutrients encourage physical and mental well-being, helping the body sustain higher energy levels. Walnuts, almonds, cashews, hazelnuts, macadamias, pecans, and pistachios provide the best bang for your buck.

Water

If you’re feeling irritable and tired, you may actually be slightly dehydrated. Studies show that even mild dehydration can cause drastic changes in mood and energy levels.[36] It’s important to stay properly hydrated, especially when exercising. Forget the brightly colored sports drinks—blue dye isn’t going to help you. Electrolytes are important, but in the context of energy drink marketing, it’s just a fancy word for potassium and salt. It is necessary to replace lost minerals after an intense workout, but you can get the same effect by adding a pinch of Himalayan crystal salt to purified water.

Exercise

It may sound counterintuitive, but exercise will actually make you feel less tired. In fact, regular exercise is the best thing you can do for increased energy, weight control, and overall quality of life.[37] In a pinch, even five minutes of light, low-intensity exercise can boost your mood, concentration, and energy levels.[38]

Sleep

Tired? Here’s a crazy suggestion: have you tried sleeping? Even a ten-minute nap will do wonders for your energy levels. For long-term success, you need to get the proper amount of sleep every night. Some people need more, some less, but the conventional wisdom of eight hours of sleep each night is a good starting point.

I know, who has time to sleep? Do you even know anyone who gets eight hours of sleep per night? You’re more likely to know someone who brags about only getting four hours. An unfortunate byproduct of the modern lifestyle is this bizarre idea that proper sleep equals weakness.

This mentality is pure self-destructive madness. You need sleep. No energy-boosting product is a substitute. Caffeine doesn’t give you energy; it fools your body into not noticing how tired it is. All you’re doing is biding a little extra time that you’ll pay for later.

What’s your opinion about energy drinks? Leave a comment below and share your thoughts and experiences with us.

The post Are Energy Drinks Bad for You? appeared first on Dr. Group's Healthy Living Articles.

from Robert Morgan Blog http://www.globalhealingcenter.com/natural-health/are-energy-drinks-bad-for-you/

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