#Predatory

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

I am Sage's mother, better known as Nana. I adopted Sage after my son died when she was still a baby. She's been through six foster homes by then, but we loved her and she blossomed into a joyful, lively girl who made music and art.

Puberty began and COVID hit, and she was treated for depression and anxiety, at times very severe. Her teachers shared any concerns with me so her treatment could be adapted.

The transparency ended in August of 2021 when Sage started high school. She started a public high school and she told me that all the girls there were bi, trans, lesbian, emo and she wanted to wear boy's clothes and be emo. Because I saw it as just a phase, it was fine with me.

But at school, she told them something different: she was now a boy named Draco with male pronouns. Sage asked the school not to tell me, and they did not tell me even though I informed them of her mental health history and medication. If I had known, this would be a much different story.

She was terribly bullied. No one told me. But boys followed her, touched her, threatened violence and rape. Something happened in the boy's bathroom but for two days, the school told me nothing. They kept meeting with Sage alone and she became so distraught they called me to pick her up.

That evening, I found a hallpass labeled 'Draco' and Sage told me she was identifying as a boy, and that her counselor said she could use the boy's bathroom. She'd been jacked up against the wall by a group of boys. She was crying, terrified. I said just stay home, we'll figure it out. That was my last conversation with Sage for five months.

The night she ran, she thought, to a young friend she'd met online, she left a note saying she was scared of what would happen if she stayed. The sheriff, FBI, search dogs were called in. I dropped to my knees in prayer. Nine days later the FBI found her in Baltimore. My baby had been lured online, sex trafficked by DC then Maryland. She was locked in a room, drugged, gang raped and brutalized by countless men. It was night. The FBI told us to pick her up in Maryland the next morning.

We packed our cars with blankets and stuffed animals and arrived by 8 am, but we were told we couldn't see her, and were summoned before Judge Robert Kershaw late that afternoon. They didn't even tell Sage that we came for her. We finally entered the courtroom and Sage appears on a huge Zoom screen from a prison cell. She looks tiny and broken, and I cry out 'I love you Sage.' Sage responds 'I love you too, Nana.' But attorney Anisa Khan rebukes us. She is a 'he' and his name is 'Draco' not Sage. We were floored.

Khan accuses us of emotional and physical abuse, that we are misgendering her, even though we just learned she claims to be trans and we're willing to use any name and pronouns to bring her home. My husband was so tearful he kept forgetting the new pronouns, so the judge had the bailiff remove him from the courtroom. I was pleading for my child to be returned and treated for her unspeakable trauma. Judge Kershaw told me, if I use the word 'trauma' again, he would throw me out too.

For over two months, he withheld custody. He housed Sage in the male quarters of a children's home. Sage told me she was the only girl and repeatedly assaulted. She was given street drugs by the other kids and Khan told her she didn't care. She just wanted to win the case and all the way to the Supreme Court if necessary. Khan tried to prove abuse, but we were eventually cleared by both states of all charges.

Sage later told me Khan had told her to lie that we hit her. Khan even had Sage's school counselors testify against us, though they barely knew Sage and they didn't know us at all. Khan told my precious child I didn't want her anymore. I found out Sage never received any of the letters I sent her.

Sage ran from the Children's Home and disappeared for months. They told me she might already be gone forever, but I couldn't give up and I finally found a tip on her social media that led the marshals to her in Texas. She had been drugged, raped, beaten and exploited. This time I was able to be with her for the traumatic rape exam, and to bring her home.

Back in Virginia, she entered the mental health facility that Judge Kershaw had ordered, as it would affirm her as a male. The therapist began pressuring her to have her healthy breasts removed. Sage was too scared to protest, but she asked me to secretly buy her girl's clothes because she wanted to be a girl, but keep them in the car. It took a kind lawyer, Josh Hetzler to secure her discharge.

After almost a year. Sage was finally home. Safe. Alive. Sage is receiving professional trauma care. The first trafficker has already been convicted. Sage has nightmares, panic attacks, rape-related medical issues, but there's hope. I tell her she's not broken she's just scarred. And part of that hope is that in courageously sharing her story, others will be saved.

Sage said she doesn't know who she was back then. She wasn't a boy, she just wanted to have friends. But her school, the judge, the attorney and the doctor were all blinded by their ideology. The consequences for Sage were unspeakable.

Please don't let ideology harm another child. Let parents do our jobs. We know our children best and we love them a million times more.

Thank you.

==

Jesus Christ. This girl was exploited by everybody, except for her parents, who were villainized for literally nothing. It's opposite world.

And the fact that everybody with authority prioritized stupid shit like pronouns and trying to coax her further down into a fake identity, even against her will, and other ideological bullshit over her actual wellbeing is disgraceful.

The judge and attorney need to be disbarred, the therapist stripped of their license, and everyone who conspired to separate Sage from her parents fired.

[mizumywife]

"I need her this instant"

[pictures-and-things-321]

Yesterday afternoon I dragged my friend to Denge Wood forest. While there, I spotted one of my top five favorite beetles. These lustrous and magnificent little guys are green tiger beetles (Cicindela campestris).

They are incredibly fast predatory beatles that hunt down and eat other insects. The larvae of this beetle live in individual burrows in sandy soil. They flick out the sand around them creating a pitfall that other insects fall into.

So beautiful but deadly.

[russrusshell]

Your favorite lamb

[classycookiexo]

“Chicken leg” took me out but I completely agree

[melovibes57]

Telling an asexual person that, “It is human nature to want sex or it’s human nature to be sexually attracted to people” is not only acephobic, it’s also predatory.

Only two kinds of people use this statement: Cheaters and Predators.

[battleangel]

Jeff Goldblum warning us in Jurassic Park that cloning dinosaurs is raping mother nature was apparently an instruction manual and not a warning.

"Colossal Biosciences, a biotechnology company founded in 2021, is working to genetically resurrect the woolly mammoth by combining its genes with Asian elephant DNA. The company's goal is to create a hybrid species, called a "mammophant", that will look and behave like a woolly mammoth. Colossal plans to use cloning techniques similar to those used to create Dolly the sheep in 1996, inserting genetically edited cells into an elephant egg that would then be gestated by a surrogate elephant. The company has said it intends to complete the project by 2027."

Exploitative KKKapitalism = Eating like 💩 in the neighborhood! "Studies have shown that the prevalence of fast-food restaurants is positively correlated with the percentage of Black residents in urban neighborhoods in the U.S. Similar trends have been found for liquor stores."

$Anything for a Dollar$

"While dollar stores can fill a need in low-income neighborhoods, they are often regarded as predatory businesses that harm communities more than they benefit them, due to very low wages, displacing other grocery options while failing to sell fresh food, store design that increases the rate of armed robberies, and OSHA and FDA violations that put customers and employees at risk."

Who Needs Fresh Food?

"There are no fresh vegetables, fruits, or meats in most dollar stores. And yet, as limited as their offerings are, dollar stores are now feeding more Americans than Whole Foods is, and they’re multiplying rapidly. Since 2011, the number of dollar stores nationwide has climbed from about 20,000 to nearly 30,000. There are now more dollar stores than Walmart and McDonalds locations combined."

Dollar Tree Customers = Permanent Underclass

"In their latest annual reports, Dollar General and Dollar Tree say they have identified thousands of new locations for dollar stores. The two chains are planning to expand their combined empires to more 50,000 outlets."

“Essentially what the dollar stores are betting on in a large way is that we are going to have a permanent underclass in America,” Garrick Brown, a researcher with the commercial real estate firm Cushman & Wakefield, told Bloomberg last year.

“The economy is continuing to create more of our core customer,” Dollar General chief executive Todd Vasos told investors last year.

"More than one-third of American adults, and 48 percent of African American adults, are obese."

13% of the US population is Black, and 48% of Black Americans are obese.

"Look at the pharmaceutical companies. In my neighborhood, there is a fast-food restaurant on every block, from Wendy’s to Kentucky Fried Chicken to Popeye’s to Little Caesar’s Pizza. Now drugstores are popping up on every corner, too. So you have the fast-food restaurants that of course cause the diet-related diseases, and you have the pharmaceutical companies there to fix it."

"If you give people access to really good food and a living-wage job, someone is going to lose money. As long as people are poor and as long as people are sick, there are jobs to be made. Follow the money."

"I talk about power, and how power is a drug and power over people is a drug and it’s hard to give up."

"A substantial body of evidence indicates that diet, toxic metals, food additives, insufficient nutrients, food allergy, lack of exercise can all contribute to criminal behavior. Evidence is mounting that a good diet makes a positive difference when working with some offenders."

"Our estimates imply that the 42% drop in the natural gas price in the late 2000s, mostly driven by the shale gas boom, averted 12,500 deaths per year in the United States."

"Participants (60.55%) experienced unexpected or increased medical expenses (17.69%), job loss (13.64%), pay reduction (11.85%), and death of a family member (9.09%). Pay reduction and increased debt were associated with moderate hunger; death of a family member, pay reduction, and increased debt were associated with severe hunger."

Lung Cancer to Avoid Severe Hunger

"In unadjusted models, annual household income <$15,000, non-urban residence, lack of health insurance, unstable housing, heavier food pantry reliance, fair or poor adult health, adult anxiety, and adult smoking to reduce hunger pangs were all positively associated with VLFS-C."

Fast Food = Fast Death

"Survey respondents had 8 ± 7 fast-food outlets within 2 miles of their home. Individuals living in close proximity to fast-food restaurants had higher BMIs, and lower fruit and vegetable consumption."

Happy Meal = Psychiatric Distress & Violence

"Consumption of fast food has been linked to psychiatric distress, violent behaviors, and impulsivity in adolescents."

"The analysis found that liquor stores are disproportionately located in predominantly black neighborhoods, even after controlling for census tract socioeconomic status."

"At equal levels of poverty, Black neighborhoods had the fewest supermarkets."

[tfp-is-prime]

Transformers: Prime Season 1, Episode 12: "Predatory" Original Airdate: April 16, 2011 2023 TFP Rerun Date: April 16, 2024 [Watch on YouTube] Synopsis, courtesy of Apple: Arcee takes Jack along on a seemingly routine mission, but encounters an archenemy and must face her deepest fears.

[bytesizeambs]

Red-footed Cannibalfly | Robber Fly #shorts #insects #nature

This cute buggy-eyed critter is a Red-footed Cannibalfly. They're part of the Robberfly family. More info about them can be found in the description of this YouTube short.

Also available on TikTok!

[howtowhumpyourhiccup]

Predatory

Summary: Written for Day 22 of AU-gust 2024. Set during Httyd 1. Orphan AU, I guess. Hiccup loses Stoick during a raid and he's in shock. The wrong kind of man sees an opportunity.

Warnings: Implied Major Character Death

Rating: Teen and Up

Dead Dove: No

Words: 405

Prompts: Orphan

Fandom: How to Train Your Dragon

Characters: Hiccup, Gobber, Spitelout

Pairing: /

Author's Notes: Completely taken by surprise myself. I saw the AU-gust blog place today's card and that gave me the sudden idea to write this fic. Might look back at previous prompts, maybe I'll write a couple more, who knows.

Enjoy!

-XOXOX-

He should probably feel sad or angry, he should curse the dragons as he watches the fire rise and consume the ship, but Hiccup feels nothing.

That is his father on the funeral pyre and he feels nothing.

“It’s okay to cry, lad. You know that, right?” Gobber asks softly, taking a knee next to him as his arm settles around Hiccup’s shoulders. All of Berk is here at the docks or up on the cliffs for the funeral, a silence dominates them. It was during a raid that Stoick died. He did so protecting his son, he died a father.

Hiccup doesn’t give him any sort of a reaction, simply stares ahead and watches the fire. Why should he cry? He feels nothing.

Gobber watches him a moment longer, not missing the hollow pain in his eyes, the way he just seems so dull and muted. Like life could go ahead and pass him by now and he wouldn’t miss it.

So he sighs sympathetically as he rises, his knees aching. No child should have to bury their parents this young, but Hiccup has no one now. His mother died when he was a babe, his father when he was 15 and he has no other blood relatives. No grandparents. That leaves him as the sole Haddock, still the heir, probably chief by tonight. It’s early morning now, Berk wasted no time building Stoick a funeral pyre, he deserves to be taken away to Valhalla to feast until Ragnarok.

With one last rub on his upper back, Gobber decides to give Hiccup a moment. He didn’t help with the pyre, he didn’t help with anything, but they don’t blame him like they would with his other mistakes. Every attempt to talk with him is met with silence, like he’s not even here. Everyone can tell that he’s in shock.

But when Gobber leaves him be, someone else takes his place and rests a hand on his shoulder.

“Don’t worry, Boy-o,” the hand’s owner uses a nickname usually reserved for his own son. “You’ll be alright, we’ll make sure of that.”

Something inside of him causes Hiccup to move, to give some kind of a reaction at long last. He looks up and finds Spitelout standing by his side.

But he thinks nothing, he still feels nothing. And so he looks back at the fire consuming his father and Spitelout pulls the future chief closer.

[russrusshell]

Lynx and the hare

[simritaart]

I had a dream and had to draw it. Meet the anglertree. Think anglerfish but a tree. I mean, wouldn’t you stop for a glowing flower?

[erebusvincent]

It’s always disheartening to walk past a make up store and see it packed with children.

[aowski]

“one fine day, a purely predatory world shall consume itself. Yes, the Devil shall take the hindmost until the foremost is the hindmost. In an individual, selfishness uglifies the soul; for the human species, selfishness is extinction”

—David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

[afunn]