#Qualification Protocol

[jsapharmaguideline]

Laboratory Instrument Qualification Protocol: Ensuring Accurate and Reliable Results

In the world of pharmaceutical manufacturing, maintaining precise control over every step of the process is paramount. Laboratory instruments play a critical role in ensuring the quality and safety of medications. To guarantee these instruments consistently deliver reliable results, a well-defined laboratory instrument qualification protocol is essential.

[studioeisa]

growing sideways 📧 jeonghan x reader.

yours, whether you like it or not,

📧 pairing. co-workers!jeonghan x reader. 📧 social media au & epistolary (told through emails). 📧 genres. alternate universe: non-idol, alternate universe: co-workers. romance, humor. 📧 includes. mention of alcohol; suggestive language; profanity. workplace rivals, corporate jargon, engineering terms i definitely butchered, use of y/n l/n for e-mail purposes. title from noah kahan’s growing sideways; waaay too many kahan references, really. style and format insp. by cinnamorussell’s tell all your friends i’m crazy (i’ll drive you mad). 📧 notes. this is a bit long, but we ball. in one of my first conversations with @diamonddaze01, we dreamed up workplace rival yoon jeonghan. i offer it, now, as part of a month-long celebration for the person i’ve dedicated a good quarter of my work to. tara, i’ll never meet someone who won’t know about you. nanu ninnannu pritisuttene! 🔭

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from: L/N Y/N ln.yn@svt.corp to: Yoon Jeonghan yoon.jeonghan@svt.corp subject: Re: Test Platform Validation Report (EU Submission)

Yoon,

I reviewed the validation draft you uploaded this morning. Fascinating interpretation of clause 4.3.2. Bold of you to skip the stability data appendix entirely. I can only assume it was an artistic choice.

Also, the raw tensile data from the 0528 batch isn’t included. If it was meant to be in the shared drive, it wasn’t in any of the usual folders (QA_Share > FR_Validation > tensile_data > missing_files > probably_Jeonghan’s).

I’ve attached my edits. I added actual numbers.

Regards, L/N Y/N she/her ln.yn@svt.corp

from: Yoon Jeonghan yoon.jeonghan@svt.corp to: L/N Y/N ln.yn@svt.corp subject: Re: Test Platform Validation Report (EU Submission)

Thank you for the prompt review. I assumed your obsession with clause 4.3.2 would outweigh your impulse to nitpick, but alas—some things never change.

The stability data was excluded intentionally while awaiting results from the accelerated aging test. If you opened the protocol (second folder under QA_Share > FR_Validation > tensile_data > definitely_not_missing), you’d see that.

As for your edits, I appreciate the effort. It’s cute when you pretend Excel likes you back.

Best, Yoon Jeonghan he/him yoon.jeonghan@svt.corp

from: L/N Y/N ln.yn@svt.corp to: Yoon Jeonghan yoon.jeonghan@svt.corp subject: Re: EU Submission - FR Manufacturing Coordination

Yoon,

Not that I expect you to read full briefs, but just in case you skimmed this one: yes, the transfer protocols need to be locked before next Friday if we want the France site to hit qualification by Q3.

Your last edits to the QAP template were inspired. I didn’t know it was possible to confuse ISO 13485 with a haiku.

I’ve restructured the equipment IQ section. You’re welcome. You’ll need to coordinate with Wonwoo at the Lyon site for vendor access, assuming you remember to email him this time.

I’ll see you in Lyon.

Disrespectfully, L/N Y/N she/her ln.yn@svt.corp

from: Yoon Jeonghan yoon.jeonghan@svt.corp to: L/N Y/N ln.yn@svt.corp subject: Re: EU Submission - FR Manufacturing Coordination

Of course I read the brief. Just because I don’t annotate every margin with red ink and superiority complexes doesn’t mean I don’t understand the deadline.

I’ll coordinate with Wonwoo, assuming you don’t scare him off again with your charmingly blunt emails. (I still have the screenshot of him calling you “intimidatingly competent.”)

By the way, your IQ revisions look fine. Shockingly legible this time. Congratulations.

I’ll see you in Lyon. Try not to sabotage the coffee machine this trip.

Until customs detains us, Yoon Jeonghan he/him yoon.jeonghan@svt.corp

from: L/N Y/N ln.yn@svt.corp to: Yoon Jeonghan yoon.jeonghan@svt.corp subject: Re: EU Submission - FR Manufacturing Coordination

If Wonwoo was intimidated, it’s because I sent him instructions written in complete sentences. A rare treat, I know.

You still haven’t confirmed the calibration matrix. We’ll need the traceable certs before equipment ships, or do you plan to charm EU regulators into letting us slide on documentation? Actually, don’t answer that. I’ve seen you talk to vendors.

Also: bring the correct adapter this time. I’m not sharing an outlet with you again.

Best of luck (to me), L/N Y/N she/her ln.yn@svt.corp

from: Yoon Jeonghan yoon.jeonghan@svt.corp to: L/N Y/N ln.yn@svt.corp subject: Re: EU Submission - FR Manufacturing Coordination

The calibration matrix is in the tracker: third tab, fourth column, next to the thing labeled “READ ME, PLEASE” Try it. It’s fun.

And yes, I plan to charm the regulators. You, on the other hand, can stun them into compliance with your piercing PowerPoint transitions.

As for the outlet. I’m bringing an adapter. And a surge protector. For reasons.

Looking forward to our time in France. Nothing says “teamwork” like four days of jetlag and passive aggression.

Yours in regulatory purgatory, Yoon Jeonghan he/him yoon.jeonghan@svt.corp

YJH 👿 (Work) [8:13 AM]: why do you type so aggressively. the guy next to me thinks you’re yelling at me You [8:14 AM]: he’s not wrong. YJH 👿 (Work) [8:15 AM]: did you really need three highlighters in your carry-on? You [8:15 AM]: yes. the pink one is for your mistakes. YJH 👿 (Work) [8:16 AM]: romantic You [8:16 AM]: if you die on this trip it’s going to be from a highlighter to the throat. YJH 👿 (Work) [8:17 AM]: worth it You [8:17 AM]: you are the worst seatmate in existence. YJH 👿 (Work) [8:18 AM]: you snore when you pretend not to be sleeping and your pointy elbow crosses the line You [8:18 AM]: so we’re calling it a truce? YJH 👿 (Work) [8:19 AM]: we’re calling it foreplay

☾ You have silenced Notifications.

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from: L/N Y/N ln.yn@svt.corp to: Yoon Jeonghan yoon.jeonghan@svt.corp subject: FR Submission Debrief + Documentation

Yoon,

Per our debrief notes (the ones not written on a cocktail napkin), I’ve uploaded the final QAP revisions and vendor qualification summaries to the shared drive. You can stop emailing me pictures of our hotel room as  “documentation.” Though impressive dedication to fieldwork.

Also, your expense report still lists the mini bar from Tuesday night. Pretty bold move, considering you insisted you only drank half the bottle.

Respectueusement, L/N Y/N she/her ln.yn@svt.corp

from: Yoon Jeonghan yoon.jeonghan@svt.corp to: L/N Y/N ln.yn@svt.corp subject: Re: FR Submission Debrief + Documentation

You’re welcome for the in-room stress testing of French plumbing. I was being thorough.

Also, I did only drink half. You drank the other half and then told the front desk I was your emotional support engineer.

Re: shared drive. I see your formatting crimes continue. I fixed your spacing in the risk assessment table. Try to be better.

Yours across all timezones, Yoon Jeonghan he/him yoon.jeonghan@svt.corp

from: L/N Y/N ln.yn@svt.corp to: Yoon Jeonghan yoon.jeonghan@svt.corp subject: Re: FR Submission Debrief + Documentation

Yoon,

I’d fix my spacing if you’d stop adjusting my bullet styles just to mess with me. And next time, maybe don’t volunteer us for the plant tour while hungover. Watching you nearly fall into a vat of solvent was not the regulatory impression we wanted.

Stop calling me yours, L/N Y/N she/her ln.yn@svt.corp

P.S. You still owe me one (1) bed. I’m adding it to your performance review.

from: Yoon Jeonghan yoon.jeonghan@svt.corp to: L/N Y/N ln.yn@svt.corp subject: Re: FR Submission Debrief + Documentation

Not my fault someone booked the hotel late and got us the romantic suite. You’re lucky I didn’t call room service for rose petals.

I’ve uploaded the final sign-offs and confirmation from the French regulatory contact—who says we’re the most “thorough and theatrically matched” engineers she’s worked with. I think that’s a compliment.

Let me know if I’ve missed any appendices. Or if you want your highlighter back.

Yours, even if you deny me (hotel registration said so), Yoon Jeonghan he/him yoon.jeonghan@svt.corp

P.S. I liked sharing the room with you. Not because of budget errors or international confusion. Just because it was you.

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from: Yoon Jeonghan yoon.jeonghan@svt.corp to: L/N Y/N ln.yn@svt.corp subject: Supplier Audit Timeline + Other Things

Great audit notes, as usual. I’ve attached my edits for the CAPA log. We’ll have to discuss column F, because your formulas hate me.

Also, bold of you to post a photo of flowers on a Tuesday. Does SVT approve PTO for midweek romance now?

Am I being cheated on?, Yoon Jeonghan he/him yoon.jeonghan@svt.corp

from: L/N Y/N ln.yn@svt.corp to: Yoon Jeonghan yoon.jeonghan@svt.corp subject: Re: Supplier Audit Timeline + Other Things

Yoon,

Corrected the formula logic in column F. Try not to break it again.

And yes, Tuesday dates are a thing now. Believe it or not, some people find me tolerable enough to see more than once.

Shocking, I know.

Regrets, L/N Y/N she/her ln.yn@svt.corp

from: Yoon Jeonghan yoon.jeonghan@svt.corp to: L/N Y/N ln.yn@svt.corp subject: Re: Supplier Audit Timeline + Other Things

Don’t worry. I’m sure your second date will be charmed by your bullet point consistency.

Personally, I’ve never seen the appeal of dating someone like you. Too sharp. Too bossy. Too quick to judge formula errors.

Fortunately, SVT doesn’t require us to like each other outside of Gantt charts.

Yours, whether you like it or not, Yoon Jeonghan he/him yoon.jeonghan@svt.corp

from: L/N Y/N ln.yn@svt.corp to: Yoon Jeonghan yoon.jeonghan@svt.corp subject: Re: Supplier Audit Timeline + Other Things

Yoon,

Believe me, the feeling is mutual. I'd sooner date a malfunctioning tensile tester.

I fixed your math in the timeline estimates. Again. Please don’t bother me for the rest of the week. I’m going to be busy preparing for date number two.

(You wish I was) Yours, L/N Y/N she/her ln.yn@svt.corp 

You [11:42 PM]: he ghosted me. u jinxed it. You [11:43 PM]: i shaved my legs for nothing. hope ur happy. You [11:44 PM]: he said he liked my slides. he LIED!!!!!!!!!!!!!! You [11:45 PM]: sitting alone at a bar rn contemplating the meaning of life.. and if i can blow u up telepahteitcally.... YJH 👿 (Work) [11:45 PM]: *telepathically YJH 👿 (Work) [11:46 PM]: which bar. You [11:47 PM]: fucking MANSPLAINER You [11:47 PM]: don’t come near me EVEREVER

YJH 👿 (Work) requested your location.

You started sharing your location with YJH 👿 (Work).

You [11:50 PM]: fuckfcuckfuckity my fat fucking thumbs FMLLL YJH 👿 (Work) [11:53 PM]: i’m coming. don’t order tequila until i get there. or do. i want to see the disaster myself. You [11:55 PM]: jerk YJH 👿 (Work) [11:56 PM]: always. save me a seat, heartbreak girl

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from: L/N Y/N ln.yn@svt.corp to: Yoon Jeonghan yoon.jeonghan@svt.corp subject: Re: Equipment Revalidation Schedule 

Yoon,

Your revised equipment validation timeline looks solid. I’ve flagged the dates where QRA and process requal overlap. You’ll need to talk to Ops to make sure there’s no resource conflict.

Also, thanks. For the other night.

Don’t make a thing out of it. Reluctantly yours, L/N Y/N she/her ln.yn@svt.corp 

from: Yoon Jeonghan yoon.jeonghan@svt.corp to: L/N Y/N ln.yn@svt.corp subject: Re: Equipment Revalidation Schedule 

Wow. A “thanks.” What is this, a truce?

Noted on the QRA overlap—I’ll sync with Ops and shift our timeline by 2-3 business days. I’ve attached a revised Gantt for your very critical review.

Also: you owe me fries.

Yours with no reluctance whatsoever, Yoon Jeonghan he/him yoon.jeonghan@svt.corp

P.S. Don’t let your guard down. I’d hate for you to start thinking I’m nice.

P.P.S. You’re beautiful when drunk. Infuriating, but beautiful.

from: L/N Y/N ln.yn@svt.corp to: Yoon Jeonghan yoon.jeonghan@svt.corp subject: Re: Equipment Revalidation Schedule 

Attached: my comments on your Gantt chart (see rows 14–27). Also, your font choices are unhinged. You’re lucky you’re marginally good at your job.

Fries are contingent on you not mentioning the karaoke. Sober now, L/N Y/N she/her ln.yn@svt.corp

P.S. You’re nice when you think I’m too drunk to remember.

from: Yoon Jeonghan yoon.jeonghan@svt.corp to: L/N Y/N ln.yn@svt.corp subject: Re: Equipment Revalidation Schedule 

I’ll swap the font if it means less red pen in my inbox.

And don’t worry, I’d never mention your rendition of “Dancing Queen” in front of senior management. Or that you made me sing backup.

As for being nice: I was just making sure you didn’t fall asleep in a nacho basket. Again.

Drunk on you, Yoon Jeonghan he/him yoon.jeonghan@svt.corp

P.S. I remember everything you said. Even the parts you don’t.

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user1 fly safe, babygirl user2 ermmm.. am i witnessing a soft launch ?! min9yu_k I’d know that YSL bag from anywhere 😏 user3 How can I be youuu :( user4 is that a BOYFRIEND?! junhui_moon strategic non-response to any of the comments here #respect

from: Yoon Jeonghan yoon.jeonghan@svt.corp to: L/N Y/N ln.yn@svt.corp Subject: Re: France Stability Testing Timeline 

Attached: updated protocol outline and projected data submission window. Added notes re: temperature excursions flagged by the lab.

Unrelated, but I saw your latest post. Interesting how you managed to frame the lighting just right on that cafe table. Almost as if someone you work with took the photo.

Also, bold choice uploading a cropped version of that one picture of me holding five tote bags. Very “soft launch,” very subtle.

Launched like a rocket ship, Yoon Jeonghan he/him yoon.jeonghan@svt.corp

from: L/N Y/N ln.yn@svt.corp to: Yoon Jeonghan yoon.jeonghan@svt.corp subject: Re: France Stability Testing Timeline 

This isn’t the time.

The humidity chamber failed mid-run and half of the accelerated aging samples are compromised. I’ll need to retest from baseline and revalidate the controls. Not sure yet if it pushes our submission, but I’m flagging it with QA.

I suggest you review section 6.2 of the protocol instead of obsessing over my Instagram.

L/N Y/N she/her ln.yn@svt.corp

from: Yoon Jeonghan yoon.jeonghan@svt.corp to: L/N Y/N ln.yn@svt.corp Subject: Re: France Stability Testing Timeline 

Didn’t mean to distract. I hadn’t seen the alert yet. Engineering just looped me in on the chamber issue. I’ll prioritize sourcing backup samples and contact Tech Ops to check chamber calibration across all zones.

You’ll have data. We’ll make it work.

(But if you were soft-launching me, I looked great.)

Trying too hard, Yoon Jeonghan he/him yoon.jeonghan@svt.corp

from: L/N Y/N ln.yn@svt.corp to: Yoon Jeonghan yoon.jeonghan@svt.corp subject: Re: France Stability Testing Timeline 

Yoon,

Appreciated. Sorry I snapped.

I just really didn’t want this run to go sideways. I know it’s not your fault—but I’ve been fielding calls since 7:00 a.m. and I’m a little fried.

Yours and then some, L/N Y/N she/her ln.yn@svt.corp

P.S. You looked ridiculous, but sure. Let the internet wonder.

from: Yoon Jeonghan yoon.jeonghan@svt.corp to: L/N Y/N ln.yn@svt.corp Subject: Re: France Stability Testing Timeline 

You can yell at me any time. Preferably not before coffee, but I’ll survive.

QA says they’ll expedite sample disposal so we can start the new batch by end of week. I sent you a revised Gantt. And a snack. Don’t fight me on it.

Yours in whatever way you’ll have me, Yoon Jeonghan he/him yoon.jeonghan@svt.corp

P.S. Internet speculation is already intense. I’ve received two DMs inquiring if I’m truly off the market. Is this your twisted little way of staking claim?

from: L/N Y/N ln.yn@svt.corp to: Yoon Jeonghan yoon.jeonghan@svt.corp subject: Re: France Stability Testing Timeline 

The snack was suspiciously well-timed. You’re lucky I like sesame.

Re: QA—I’ll update the submission calendar and notify Regulatory we’re adjusting the stability window.

And tell your fans I’m flattered, but my standards are higher than “guy who argues about font weight in shared spreadsheets.”

Yours for some reason (When did I succumb to this?), L/N Y/N she/her ln.yn@svt.corp

from: Yoon Jeonghan yoon.jeonghan@svt.corp to: L/N Y/N ln.yn@svt.corp Subject: Re: France Stability Testing Timeline

For the record, I wasn’t arguing. I was advocating for consistent formatting.

Also: I’m sorry. For earlier. I should’ve checked the system alerts before joking around. You always catch things first, and I forget what it’s like to be under that kind of pressure all the time.

Let me know what else you need. I mean it.

Yours for equally no reason (I bookmarked the first time you signed off with ‘yours’, btw), Yoon Jeonghan he/him yoon.jeonghan@svt.corp

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from: L/N Y/N ln.yn@svt.corp to: Yoon Jeonghan yoon.jeonghan@svt.corp subject: Apologies for the Timestamp 

Yoon,

I realize this is past hours. I won’t pretend it’s an emergency—it’s just the draft for the stability test realignment we discussed. I needed to get it out of my head or I wouldn’t sleep. It can wait until morning. I just didn’t want to forget.

Sorry. Again. Sleep well, or party well, or whatever it is you’re doing tonight.

Terribly sorry, L/N Y/N she/her ln.yn@svt.corp

from: Yoon Jeonghan yoon.jeonghan@svt.corp to: L/N Y/N ln.yn@svt.corp Subject: Re: Apologies for the Timestamp 

Got your email—yes, timestamp noted.

I’m out. Drinking. Loud music, terrible lighting, questionable tequila. I’ll look at the draft during actual work hours. I promise.

Also, you do know that you’re allowed to exist outside work. Don’t apologize for thinking too hard. That’s half your brand.

Buzzing like a drunk bumblebee, Yoon Jeonghan he/him yoon.jeonghan@svt.corp

from: L/N Y/N ln.yn@svt.corp to: Yoon Jeonghan yoon.jeonghan@svt.corp subject: Re: Apologies for the Timestamp

Yoon,

Enjoy your night out. Try not to bully the DJ. May your drinks be overpriced and your lighting flattering.

And hey—hope you pull. You deserve someone mildly tolerable for a few hours.

Cheers, L/N Y/N she/her ln.yn@svt.corp

from: Yoon Jeonghan yoon.jeonghan@svt.corp to: L/N Y/N ln.yn@svt.corp Subject: Re: Apologies for the Timestamp 

The drinks are terrible. The lighting is flattering. I’ve technically pulled, but she’s more interested in the bartender now, which is fine because—

I miss you. You, and your midnight overthinking, and your Excel color codes, and the way you always say “don’t wait up” but still check your inbox five minutes later.

I miss you. Stupidly. Even while I’m here.

Yours at my own risk, Yoon Jeonghan he/him yoon.jeonghan@svt.corp

from: L/N Y/N ln.yn@svt.corp to: Yoon Jeonghan yoon.jeonghan@svt.corp subject: Re: Apologies for the Timestamp

Yoon,

Pray tell why you're getting drunk and you're "pulling" what I can assume to be ABGs whose names you won't even know in the morning, and yet you're still in the club, emailing me? Missing my drunken emails?

Why? Are the girls of Wall Street not enough for you?

Totally not jealous, L/N Y/N she/her ln.yn@svt.corp

from: Yoon Jeonghan yoon.jeonghan@svt.corp to: L/N Y/N ln.yn@svt.corp Subject: Re: Apologies for the Timestamp

I can answer this so simply, it won’t even be fun.

The girls of Wall Street will never be you.

No one will ever be you.

I'm not enjoying my night as much as I should because you're not here. I'm in the club, drunk AND emailing you. That should tell you everything.

Come out with me next time. Wreck my plans. Ruin the music. Steal my coat.

I may be playing with fire, but to hell with it.

Burning myself, Yoon Jeonghan he/him yoon.jeonghan@svt.corp 

from: Yoon Jeonghan yoon.jeonghan@svt.corp to: L/N Y/N ln.yn@svt.corp Subject: Re: Apologies for the Timestamp

I can feel you overthinking all the way from here. You’re probably thinking that I’ll wake up tomorrow morning and regret all of this. That I will be unable to face you at work come Monday, when I am no longer drunk out of my mind and thinking you are the most brilliant, most gorgeous, most infuriating person alive. 

You will be right. Thankfully, though, these are—what do the kids call it? ‘Receipts’. You will have a paper trail. These emails will be between you, me, and that Australian guy from IT. 

He will know, and you will know, that I may have the most miniscule work crush on you. 

Jesus Christ. What am I? A high schooler? 

Let’s try that again: Love is just a chemical reaction that compels animals to breed. What I’m feeling for you isn’t love. It’s so much more than that.

Love sucks, and I need to sober up, Yoon Jeonghan he/him yoon.jeonghan@svt.corp

from: L/N Y/N ln.yn@svt.corp to: Yoon Jeonghan yoon.jeonghan@svt.corp subject: Re: Apologies for the Timestamp

Get home safe, Jeonghan.

Yours, with questions, L/N Y/N she/her ln.yn@svt.corp

from: Yoon Jeonghan yoon.jeonghan@svt.corp to: L/N Y/N ln.yn@svt.corp Subject: Re: Apologies for the Timestamp

You just called me Jeonghan.

Yours, with answers (maybe), Yoon Jeonghan he/him yoon.jeonghan@svt.corp

from: L/N Y/N ln.yn@svt.corp to: Yoon Jeonghan yoon.jeonghan@svt.corp subject: Re: Apologies for the Timestamp

That’s your name, isn’t it?

Stop e-mailing me while you’re at the club.

Fine. Yours, L/N Y/N she/her ln.yn@svt.corp

P.S.: I may have the most miniscule work crush on you, too.

from: Yoon Jeonghan yoon.jeonghan@svt.corp to: L/N Y/N ln.yn@svt.corp Subject: Re: Apologies for the Timestamp

i am  goi n    to die

Yoon Jeonghan he/him yoon.jeonghan@svt.corp

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[covid-safer-hotties]

Back in early 2020, the news of the strange illness causing terrible pneumonias in China saddened me, but I believed I was safe in Canada. Within weeks, there was a reckoning: thousands were dying on my doorstep, too.

Directors of an independent living residence at the start of the pandemic asked me to become the residence’s COVID-19 advisor. They had no qualified medical staff, despite supporting elderly residents. Back in those early days, anyone with a medical qualification was commandeered to help in any way they could.

Confronted with the task of providing guidance to the nonmedical staff taking care of these residents, I decided to learn everything I could about the pandemic. At that time, about 1,000 papers were being published every month detailing research into every aspect of the coronavirus. Of course, I couldn’t read all of them, but I read as many as I could and built a breadth and depth of evidenced-based knowledge about SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19. I wrote up the protocols and during my tenure as COVID-19 Advisor for this residence, we kept COVID out.

As a family physician seeing COVID-19 in my practice, I came to recognize that so many of my colleagues and patients had no idea how to keep themselves safe from the coronavirus, nor were they aware of its long-term risks. I saw the need to take action and effect change, which ultimately led me to becoming an advocate for Long COVID awareness.

I started the medical education company Kojala Medical, aiming to provide evidenced-based information about medical issues in a form patients could understand and reliably trust. I wanted a credible, trustworthy site to which I could refer my patients, colleagues, friends and family. We started with a focus on COVID-19 and have now expanded to Long COVID, with the site longcovidtheanswers.com.

I first learned about Long COVID in 2020 through publicity raised by the Body Politic COVID-19 support group, then became more alarmed as I read scientific articles about the disease.

Aside from the official death toll of over 7 million from COVID-19, Long COVID has emerged from the pandemic as the single biggest disaster to afflict humanity, yet very few people who are not sick with Long COVID are aware of it, want to know about it, believe in it, or even acknowledge that it’s happening. Sadly, many in the medical profession fall within that group of non and disbelievers.

This is bizarre, especially because of the impact of the disease. One recent review estimates more than 400 million global cases of Long COVID. I am furious that not enough is being done to alleviate this suffering. The injustice of yet another neglected and marginalized chronic illness that disproportionately affects women.

So, rather than sitting around waiting for ‘someone’ or ‘body’ to do something, I decided to act.

For me, medicine is fundamentally about aiding people to get as well as possible from any sickness they have — and even more importantly, preventing people from getting sick in the first place. In both of these regards, we are failing people with Long COVID dismally.

Long COVID is not the flu, it is a multisystem debilitating infection associated chronic condition. Developing Long COVID can be disabling and life-changing. Recovery remains low — and some manifestations like heart disease, dysautonomia, and myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME) may last a lifetime.

This is a terrifying situation to be in when, as a global community, we have chosen to act as though the pandemic is over and repeatedly expose ourselves to SARS-CoV-2, a grade 3 biohazard, with little to no protection.

As I read more and more research papers about Long COVID and looked at the inaction of global governments and my own profession, I feared that we were sleepwalking into a global mass disabling event unnecessarily, since we have many technologies available to prevent this.

Infection-associated chronic conditions do not have an established medical speciality, and are rarely taught in medical school. With the medical profession disengaged, people with Long COVID have been left to find answers for themselves.

My work aims to build on support groups, which have helped establish caring communities for people with Long COVID, but have also paved the way for us as scientists and medics to change the way we conduct research in a more patient-focused way. Nevertheless, they don’t entirely fulfill the need for evidence-based information about the disease in a readable format for nonmedical individuals.

I saw a huge need for a comprehensive website that would be of use to all people with Long COVID, their caregivers, the scientists researching the disease, and the multidisciplinary team of healthcare professionals that would be needed to rehabilitate them. Our organization believes that Long COVID The Answers meets those requirements.

There is also a pressing need to train medical professionals so that they will acknowledge Long COVID and feel confident about diagnosing and managing it. Inspired by an interview with Dr. Ric Arsenaeau, an expert in managing complex chronic diseases, my team and I created a podcast series: so that medical providers can receive continuing professional development/educational credits from watching this series.

The podcast series features a range of experts, including people with Long COVID, doctors, scientists, educators, and medical clinicians. Some of these experts also serve on our advisory board, overlooking and participating in the project.

Our site aims to raise awareness about the dangers of continuously exposing ourselves to a perilous virus with no thought of what it will cost us and our children.

This will mobilize the people of the world to demand that their leaders properly provide safe spaces for us all to prevent us from ever getting infected in the first place.

We need to mandate our governments to access all the mitigating technologies that we have in our roster, not only vaccination. The best way of managing Long COVID is to prevent people getting infected with SARS-CoV-2 in the first place!

We need national and international indoor clean air acts – to protect us from emerging pathogens.

For people with Long COVID, awareness will bring an educated and mobilized medical profession, governmental resources, financial and sociological support, and money for research — to facilitate treatments and, hopefully, a cure.

These are the main reasons why I jump out of bed in the morning with gusto, focus, and determination, and why I’ve poured all my money and my time into educating people about Long COVID.

Dr. Funmi Okunola is a British Family Physician who lives and works in Vancouver, Canada. She is the President and CEO of Kojala Medical, a digital medical education company behind COVID-19 The Answers and Long COVID The Answers.

[thehughesbrotherslover]

Hi! Are requests still open? This is a heavier topic so you don't have to write it. For context I'm genetically really anemic, and at work my coworker didn't follow protocol while moving something (that he had no qualifications to handle outside of being the boss' son). I ended up with a gnarly gash on my side. I sat on the ground and promptly passed out because I have the worse pain tolerance. My fault because my medical alert bracelet looks like a regular bracelet so he didn't read it and left me to wake up (and bleed out) for quite some time. Ended up being taken to the hospital in an ambulance and had to have a blood transfusion and everything. It wasn't super near death but also wasn't not near death. Sorry to ramble, it's been kind of hard to grapple with something so serious happening to me and I having no way to remember it from being passed out. Could I request any player of your choosing rushing down and just being sweet in the hospital?

Nico Hischier x Pregnant Wife Reader

TW: Car accident blood pregnant mentions of losing the baby stitches

The drive home from the doctor’s office was supposed to be a happy one. You had just finished your five-month ultrasound, and everything had gone perfectly. Your baby boy was growing strong, and you couldn’t wait to tell Nico all about it. You rested your hand on your bump as you drove, smiling to yourself as you replayed the sound of his tiny heartbeat in your head.

But then, everything changed in an instant.

You barely had time to react as another car ran a red light and swerved into your lane. You slammed on your brakes, but the impact still sent your car jerking forward. Your arm struck the dashboard, pain shooting up your forearm, but your only thought was your baby.

By the time the paramedics arrived, your heart was racing, tears blurring your vision. Blood trickled down your arm from a deep gash, and a sharp pain throbbed at your temple. But none of that mattered. "My baby," you whispered, panic clawing at your chest. "I need to make sure my baby is okay."

The ambulance ride was a blur, the fear consuming you. By the time you arrived at the hospital, your hands were shaking, and the tears wouldn’t stop. The moment you were wheeled into a room, all you wanted was Nico.

Nico had just finished practice when he got the call. The second he heard you were in the hospital, he didn’t even think—he just ran.

He didn’t care about traffic laws, didn’t care about anything except getting to you. His heart pounded as he sprinted through the hospital doors, his mind racing with worst-case scenarios. He didn’t even bother talking to the receptionist, just rushed straight to your room.

And the moment he saw you, his heart broke.

You were curled up on the hospital bed, fresh tears streaming down your face, a huge gauze bandage wrapped around your forehead. Your arm was covered in bandages too, but what made his stomach twist was how terrified you looked.

"The baby," you choked out the moment you saw him. "I don’t want to lose the baby, Nico. I’m so sorry."

"Shh, love," he whispered, crossing the room in three quick strides and wrapping his arms around you. He held you close, pressing a kiss to your temple. "Don’t be sorry. You’re okay. We’re gonna be okay."

"But what if—"

"You’re not losing our baby," he cut in firmly, his hand immediately finding your stomach. His palm pressed gently against your bump, rubbing soothing circles. "He’s strong, just like his mom."

You clung to him, your face buried in his chest as he continued to whisper reassurances, his hands never leaving your belly.

A few moments later, the doctor walked in with the ultrasound machine.

"Let’s take a look," he said kindly, rolling up your hospital gown just enough to expose your belly. He spread the cool gel across your skin and pressed the wand against you, moving it around.

For a few agonizing seconds, there was nothing but silence.

And then—

A heartbeat.

A strong, steady, beautiful little heartbeat filled the room.

You let out a sob of relief, covering your face with your hands as Nico squeezed his eyes shut, exhaling heavily.

"He’s okay," the doctor assured you both. "His heart rate is strong, and there are no signs of distress. You did the right thing coming in, but your baby is doing just fine."

Nico bent down, pressing a gentle kiss to your bump before resting his forehead against it. "You scared me, little man," he murmured, rubbing slow circles over your belly. Then, lifting his gaze to you, he wiped away your tears. "See? Our boy is okay. And you are, too."

You nodded, finally allowing yourself to believe it.

A little while later, after the nurses finished checking you over, they rolled you out in a wheelchair. Nico was right there, helping you into the car and buckling your seatbelt for you, his fingers brushing over your hand reassuringly.

But as soon as the car started moving, you tensed.

Nico noticed immediately. Without hesitation, he reached over and rested his hand over your belly, rubbing it just like he had in the hospital.

"I’ve got you," he murmured. "Both of you."

His touch was warm, grounding. You closed your eyes, focusing on the steady rhythm of his hand on your stomach, on the quiet strength in his voice.

By the time you reached home, you weren’t as afraid.

Nico helped you inside your condo, never once letting go of you. He guided you straight to the bedroom, where he helped you change into one of his oversized hoodies and some soft pajama pants.

"You good?" he asked, pressing a kiss to your forehead.

You nodded, but the exhaustion was catching up with you. "Can we just cuddle?"

"That was my plan, sweetheart."

He changed into sweatpants and a t-shirt before pulling you onto the couch with him, tucking you securely into his side. You rested your head on his chest, and his hand immediately found your bump again.

For a long time, you just lay there, watching a movie you weren’t really paying attention to, Nico’s fingers tracing mindless patterns over your stomach. Every so often, he’d press a kiss to your temple, whispering how much he loved you, how proud he was of you.

Eventually, your eyes started to flutter shut, the warmth of his body lulling you into sleep. The last thing you felt before drifting off was the gentle pressure of his hand over your belly and the quiet promise he murmured into your hair—

"I’ll always take care of you both. Always."

BTW Requests are alaways open and you can request anything now to andddddddddddd You can even request smut I will now write about smut so ask away on anything thing you want me to write about from my masterlist

[askanautistic]

Indoctrination: avoiding the undue influence of high control groups.

Anyone can be indoctrinated into a high control group. No one is immune to propaganda or manipulation, and in the right circumstances, targeted by the right person/people, and fed the right info, anyone can be indoctrinated. Being intelligent or strong minded doesn't prevent this manipulation from taking hold. Lots of highly intelligent and very strong-minded people become very enthusiastic cult members, possibly even bolstered by their own self-perception.

Intelligent people are prime targets - cults need people who are useful to them: people with qualifications, job roles and titles, people who are knowledgeable in their field. They make good spokespeople, they inspire trust from outsiders, prospective recruits, and current members. Sometimes they can also be useful in very practical ways (scientists backing your claims, or having lawyers advising on or fighting legal battles). People who have been indoctrinated are victims, even if they then go on to victimise people themselves.

So it’s important to be aware of what high control groups are, how they control people, and what to look out for.

What is a high control group? Most groups will exert some kind of influence over members. There are rules, hierarchies, and a popular viewpoint in most organisations. High control groups tend to have a range of behaviours that mean their control over members is fairly extreme (even if it’s not always obvious to the members or to outsiders that that’s the case – after all, part of the point of mind control is that the victims are unaware just how much they’re being manipulated and controlled).

We usually think of high control groups as being the more stereotypical religious cults and extremist groups (like the Moonies, or ISIS), but it’s also possible for this manipulation and control to happen on less extreme or obvious levels and in less rigidly controlled ways. The internet makes it easier to get a wider reach and maintain control over long distances and without having to meet in person. There are cultish groups that operate almost exclusively via long distance, using extremely long video chats and phone calls to keep members exhausted, busy, and under the influence of the group. There are others that gain followers via vlogging, and then gradually move towards in person meetings, and setting up living spaces for members where they can exert more control over them. There are spaces on the internet where people are radicalised and propaganda spreads rapidly, with ease – nowadays the internet means that high control groups can bypass a lot of the physical aspects of control commonly employed by cult groups. For example, incel culture often spreads online.

Again, not all of this necessarily means that a high control group is obviously involved or people are being recruited into a cult. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion (a long debunked antisemitic hoax) was being spread around fairly recently on Tiktok as if it’s a genuine thing, and that didn’t involve viewers of those videos joining a group or doing anything other than viewing, believing and sharing. But it’s very easy for high control groups to use the internet, and to update how they recruit or how they spread their doctrine. So it’s important to be able to recognise these issues, and protect yourself (and people you know).

What might be the added risk factors for an autistic person? There are various traits associated with autism/neurodivergence that would make it seem that we’d be less likely to be unduly influenced. We often perceive ourselves as being strong-willed/stubborn, not following the crowd, having a strong sense of justice, being 'sensitive', or being hyper-empathetic. Whether or not these self-perceptions are accurate, they create a false sense of security and also allows people to excuse their behaviour based on how they perceive themselves.

'This mistreatment of someone we consider 'the other' must be justice, because I am big on justice.' 'I cannot possibly be doing or saying anything that's prejudiced or cruel because I am hyper-empathetic and that's just not something someone as empathetic as me would do!'

So self-perception might make it harder to accept that someone is being/has been indoctrinated.

There are also lots of neurodivergent traits that would make someone vulnerable to indoctrination. Lots of neurodivergent people are very friendly and agreeable, might lack confidence and not be very assertive so might be more likely to follow than lead, might want to fit in and so might be just as likely to follow trends/be influenced.

Some might have a poor sense of self due to masking and so a group might be able to impose an identity on those people. Hyper-empathy/being sensitive might make it easier for someone to manipulate your emotions. A strong sense of justice might also be manipulated by the right dis- or mis-information. Taking things literally and possibly being more likely to believe what you're told can play a part. Being loyal is a good thing, usually; loyalty to or trust in friends or to groups you're affiliated with might make it more likely you'll agree with them/follow them. Developing a social strategy that involves mimicking peers (so following their script) might lend itself to mimicking recruiters/other members of a high control group, and their more rigid and definite way of communicating and behaving might make it easier to mimic and make the scripts and rules quite appealing. Black and white thinking can be very compatible with a cult organisation's oversimplification of complex and nuanced issues/with strong us vs them dichotomies.

When someone is/has been a victim of bullying, is/has been excluded and ostracised, we tend to assume that they’ll be kinder to others, but lots of people who experience being left out or belittled will go on to do that to others because it makes them feel more powerful and because they want to remain on the inside (and sometimes, part of creating/maintaining/remaining in an ingroup, means ensuring that there are undesirables on the outside). Or someone might join in with bullying behaviours as self-preservation – to avoid being ostracised and victimised themselves.

Lacking social skills and a desire for belonging might make an autistic person vulnerable to the ‘love bombing’ of a high influence group. In the initial stages, recruiters and other members will act like they’re your friends, to convince you to attend events and to convince you that you are valued and respected by the group. Being praised for doing and saying the right things might feel good, and later it might feel bad to be criticised for questioning or doubting the doctrine.

What should we look out for? There are cultish aspects to almost any kind of group that's pitted against another in some way. Not everything 'cultish' is the sign of a cult. People become very tribal when they align with groups - whether it's a political group, a football team, or even something like iPhone vs android or Coke vs Pepsi! It's very easy to adopt an 'us vs them' dichotomy without it necessarily meaning that someone is bring indoctrinated into a high control group that will cause them or others damage. However, in some groups, these aspects of human behaviour are manipulated and become tools for control. The dichotomy will be absolute/extreme. There will also be other factors in play, like the group controlling what information their members access, whether that’s by banning certain books or access to media, not allowing someone to visit friends or family, or whether it’s ensuring that you distrust outsiders/anyone who doesn’t follow the cult doctrine (so that if you do engage with outsiders you will not do so in good faith - you will not listen to outsiders and so won’t allow them to make you doubt the doctrine). Members of cults are routinely and intentionally deceived by those above them and often don't know the actual intentions of the organisation.

Here I break down some of the criteria of mind control/thought reform, so that you might be better able to recognise it. The more of these things you notice, the more likely the group is a high control group that it might be best to avoid. Some of these things might be subtle enough that it’s hard to identify them. Steven Hassan's BITE model of mind control: Behaviour Control In more stereotypical ‘cults’, this often involves members being told where to live, who to live with, having their sleep schedules and diets controlled, etc. People who are tired and malnourished or overworked are easier to control. Members are kept closed off from others in some way (whether physically or mentally), and are often told what to spend their time doing. There's lots of chanting and 'meditation' type activities that create the perfect mindset for indoctrination. In some groups people are told what to wear – this might be a uniform of sorts, or some limit on what kind of things are allowed (colours, fasteners, etc). Members are indoctrinated to control their own behaviour, and often go on to control each other's behaviour by ensuring there are consequences for not saying or doing the right things, not following the doctrine closely enough, etc.

Information Control Any source that isn't cult-approved is seen as unreliable and is rejected. Many more powerful high influence groups have members who work on editing Wikipedia entries about anything that might be linked to the group or the group’s dogma in some way, and might own organisations under different names to ensure that the top online search entries are all positive (and any information they don’t want you to have is buried under lots of positive, cult-approved entries). The sources people most rely on for quick info (and that comes up at the top of searches) is therefore full of propaganda and misinformation. This prevents members or prospective members from seeing anything that might cause them to have doubts. The high control group controls the narrative.

Thought Control Members are 'indoctrinated so thoroughly that they internalize the group doctrine, incorporate a new language system, and use thought-stopping techniques to keep their mind "centred".' They chant (even phrases that they don't understand the full meaning of, and even in languages they don't understand), give words new meaning (loaded language) to create barriers between communication with anyone outside of the group (who doesn’t use the words in the same way/doesn’t understand the group language).

'Since language provides the symbols we use for thinking, using only certain words serves to control thoughts. Cult language is totalistic and therefore condenses complex situations, labels them, and reduces them to cult cliches.' (Hassan) We see the same words repeated over and over and over, and it does exactly that - oversimplifies and prevents critical thought or good faith discussion that would lead to the cult losing power over its members.

Emotional Control They use the emotions of their members to manipulate them. This might vary from inducing euphoria to create a sense of belonging using rage bait to rally members to ‘the cause’, or using guilt and fear to control how members behave.

Euphoria: Members are amped up and unified in various ways depending on the individual group, via acts like marching, meditating, chanting, call-and-response, or praying.

Rage: Members might be taught to be angry at a certain person, certain groups of people, or world events, so members can rally against ‘the other’ or the group can present itself as the solution to the problems.

Guilt: For not believing or behaving as the doctrine says they should, for being in a privileged class of some sort, for not doing enough for ‘the cause’, for doubting or questioning. Fear: If you dissent in the slightest, you're evil and wrong and they dehumanise you. So there's also fear - fear of not living up to that standard, of being impure, of being rejected from the group, of having your ‘confessions’ shared. Personal feelings and struggles are also seen as selfish and unimportant because everything should be about the cause. Sometimes the group will convince people that awful things will happen if they leave, and these fears can be deeply embedded even if they seem obviously false (to outsiders who haven’t experienced the level of control the member has experienced).

Group conformity and obedience Even without behaviour modification techniques, group conformity and obedience to authority are powerful influences. Experiments have repeatedly shown this. If people are put in situations where the most confident people around them give the wrong answers, the majority will doubt their own perceptions and will accept those answers. The majority of people will be obedient to authority, even if it means causing harm to someone else. In a crisis people will often hesitate, waiting for someone else to take charge, or will follow others (even if the other person also doesn't know where they're going). People often don’t want the responsibility of having to make decisions so it’s easier to have someone else make those decisions and give you permission to enact them.

This can also occur because of trust in specific people or groups of people. Generally, we tend to assume that the people we are aligned with, and who we usually agree with, are probably right about everything else, as well. And we usually don't want to agree with people we dislike. So the politician we detest? If that politician says or does anything that we agree with, we are uncomfortable and might doubt ourselves. Whereas that politician or influencer we like and look up to says something we perhaps didn't agree with previously, we're more likely to be swayed into agreeing with them. Even though there are people who are hero worshipped and thought of as being very good and pure, who turn out not to be. No ones politics or identity makes them infallible.

Universities are prime places for cult recruitment - university students are separated from their usual home and their usual people; they might also be disillusioned, or desperate to make a difference, and stressed from studies and trying to fit in, trying to figure themselves out. Humans are also often primed to trust experts or people they believe to be more intelligent/more knowledgeable about a subject (there is a term for this phenomenon called Captainitis – there can be(and have been!) fatal results if other crew of an aircraft defer to the captain even when they recognise the captain might be making a wrong decision). And cult recruiters might offer all the answers. Or an escape. They provide meaning or belonging or ‘the truth’.

Lifton's Eight Criteria of Throught Reform: Mileu control This happens in various ways, but ultimately most people indoctrinated into a high influence group will heed their peers and leaders and isolate themselves (to some extent) from anyone who doesn't comply with the cult doctrine fully enough. Various other organisations or companies, professors or classmates, strangers online etc., are impure and not to be trusted, so a barrier is created between members and non-members.

Sometimes physically (through members all living or staying in the same place) or through encouraging members not to fraternise with non-members, to distance themselves from family or specific groups of people that might challenge the doctrine (or at least not to listen to others when it comes to discussing concerns with the cult or with issues the cult is concerned with). A campaign of disinformation, loaded language and emotional manipulation that’s successful enough will mean that the influential figure/group doesn't need to physically isolate people in ranches in the middle of nowhere, or control where they work and study, because people are so primed to react to the language and ideology that it's still powerful even over huge distances and spreads effectively via online discourse and other various mediums. Mystical manipulation (or planned spontaneity) Many groups have a defined ‘leader’ who is almost godlike, and in this case all the messages and occurrences are somehow supposedly coming from a higher power (not the careful planning of the ‘leader’ who is presenting themselves as a prophet or a kind of messiah).

Cultish movements don’t always rely on a mystical ‘leader’, however. Many are designed to look like a grassroots movement, created or initiated by 'the people', but if you follow the trail up the pyramid there'll often be big money and lots of organisation behind it all. The wizard is hidden behind a curtain (or two or three curtains).

Because it looks (and feels) spontaneous and organic (when events are put together and crowds gather, and people sing or chant of pray together) mob mentality kicks in. Speeches, chanting, etc. gets people fired up. it all feels like they're a part of something big, powerful, and real.

The demand for purity This demand for absolute purity enforces a strong us vs them divide. The cult and its members are pure, good, right, innocent, and anyone who opposes them or does not surrender to the cult completely is impure, evil, wrong, guilty. Bearing in mind there are good and bad people in all demographics, no group is a monolith, yet in the eyes of the 'ingroup', nothing bad they do is ever condemnable, and nothing good an outsider does is ever good enough.

The realistic and reasonable idea that there are good and bad people in every demographic – that all humans have hopes, dreams, doubts, fears, and all are fallible and capable of both good and bad, like the rest of us - does not align with the demand for purity. Anything anyone does or says that does not align completely with the cult rhetoric is deemed impure.

Feeling justified and right is quite a powerful feeling, and unfortunately that often hinges on having people who are ‘wrong’ to berate and judge. It’s also quite human to feel superior and to enjoy this dynamic, and the flip side of it is that the judge fears becoming the judged and so ascribes even more completely to the cult rhetoric to ensure they never have to become the judged.

The cult of confession Somewhat similar to the above. In some cults confession is used to gain useful info on members that can be used against them, and to make members more vulnerable, but it also has another function…

Guilt is a powerful deterrent (people feeling guilty for their own wrongdoings and privilege will work extra hard to become morally pure) and by 'confessing' and cleansing themselves, people feel they have more right to judge others.

Focusing on specific issues also excuses you from having to face up to the things you might actually need to work on. No self-improvement is necessary, no genuine self-reflection has to be faced, because you can 'confess' to the less personal failings, or confess and be cleansed by the purity of the cult. You can also focus on the perceived guilt of The Other to lessen your own guilt. The confessor then gets to become the judge, having confessed and basked in how aware and disgusted with themselves they are for their privileges or wrongdoing. [This also feeds into the demand for purity – people who feel guilty want to offload their privilege and they can do this by believing in The Other is an all-powerful entity (even if, in reality, The Other is a vulnerable and/or minority community. For example: antisemites (which specifically refers to Jew haters) claim that Jewish people (who make up only 0.2% of the world’s population) are supremely powerful and control the media (regardless of all the evidence to the contrary); transphobes often claim that there is a ‘trans lobby’ that is somehow taking over and has the power and influence to somehow make children transgender.]

People enjoy feeling superior and getting to criticise others, and many people will actually become quite gleeful and excited when they are being hateful towards 'The Other'.

Sacred science The world is simplified into a sacred set of dogma. Often the dogma won’t make sense to anyone outside the group, and might even seem ridiculous. Members might seem to just be regurgitating catchphrases and nonsensical conspiracy babble, but they've accepted it as the absolute truth.

There might be an ‘end times’ plan, where the group members will either survive or will ‘ascend’ to a higher plane. Or the group’s cause might involve acting to bring about a better era (which might be as innocuous as selling flowers and/or proselytising for the ‘cause’), or eradicating an evil that will apparently fix all the world’s problems, and supposedly create a utopia where people live in peace (basically it will being a messianic age, even if the group is not overtly a religious group, and even if group members do not consider themselves or the group to be religious). The Other is solely to blame for all the world’s ills (or primarily to blame, to the point that nothing else really matters).

Loading of the language The above feeds into the loading of the language. Everything is extreme and yet oversimplified. No critical thought is needed (or possible). The language is appealing and powerful and absolute - it's emotive. The same arguments are used for everything, whether fair or logical, and whether accurate or not.

Much of this language is made up of thought terminating cliches; it shuts down discussion and prevents facts or reasoning from challenging the cult doctrine. For example, saying that someone is brainwashed is in itself a thought terminating cliché. You’ve already rendered that person’s words not worth listening to because that person has already been labelled incapable of rational thought. By using extreme terms to label someone, they are effectively ostracised from the conversation, and/or the conversation is derailed (the labelled person now has to argue against the label or prove themselves, instead of being able to engage with the original topic).

The language is so extreme and false that you often can’t even argue with it effectively, and that’s the point. ‘I’m not listening to a [insert extreme label]!’ They don’t want a good faith discussion, they don’t care about the facts, they want to control the narrative by making discussion impossible. Whether that’s shutting things down completely, or creating a situation in which the non-member is forced to defend themselves against baseless accusations.

Words are given new meanings to weaponise them and render connection and understanding with outsiders impossible. This language also makes group members feel special and connected to each other (and to the sacred science), but creates a bigger divide between them and anyone outside the group who either doesn’t use those words, doesn’t use them in the same context, or uses those words correctly/differently. The same often goes for chants and slogans that might mean different things to members than non-members, or might be used in place of more accurate or understandable language (so that group members repeat things that they don’t really understand the meaning of, and that might not even have any particular meaning).

Doctrine over person The doctrine is everything - your thoughts, feelings, your previous morals (that the doctrine might contradict) are meaningless. If you do experience any doubt or guilt because of how the doctrine misaligns with your ethics, that's just evidence that you are guilty/impure. There is no nuance, no room for critical thinking or trying to understand someone else's perspective. Your suffering, the suffering of friends or family who are concerned about you, the suffering of ‘The Other’ are all unimportant compared to the doctrine.

Dispensing of existence Anyone who does not pass the purity test, and is not a part of the cult's movement, ceases to deserve to exist. The cult members are pure and elite (which feels quite good!) but, actually, even the members lives are less important than the doctrine. If the doctrine states that in order to achieve the end goal (whether that’s peace on earth, ascension to a higher plane, or protecting leaders from accountability) the lives and freedoms of members are expendable.

Everyone is a tool for the 'greater good'. Because...

The means justify the ends. However horrific or morally corrupt those means are, whoever those means are enacted upon, as long as it's done in the name of the cause it's magically purified.

In cults, anything can be justified. For a higher power or a greater good, anything goes. Deceit, mind control, slavery, human trafficking, all forms of domestic abuse. Leaders can lie to followers, followers can lie to prospective recruits or outsiders, because it's for a good cause. It's all somehow justified, then becomes normalised. And if someone has been taken in and has engaged in anything that they might not be quite so proud of if they really thought about it, the cognitive dissonance would be too much. So it becomes easier to continue to justify it.

[Most people who end up involved in high control groups probably start out with good intentions, and with optimism that the group is good and will help find the answers to all their problems. But the cultish nature of these groups or 'movements' (mind control, thought reform - limiting access to information, disinformation, loading language, a strong us vs them dichotomy, etc.) leads most people away from the well intentioned and caring place they started at into a radicalised, dogma driven mindset.]

Cult members are victims of the cult. Even members who have behaved horrifically whilst under undue influence. Like most things in life, this can be nuanced. So if you have been in a cult/under undue influence, realise you are currently in a cult/under undue influence, and you are struggling to come to terms with that, especially if you’ve done things that are wrong, or have demonised another group, it’s never too late to recognise this and to distance yourself from the cultish dogma. Seek support from other ex-cult members, find therapists who understand indoctrination and de-indoctrination. Better to stop now and work towards undoing the mind control than to continue. It doesn’t have to become another ‘cult of confession’ where you have to self-flagellate to make yourself pure – humans are not pure. We are complicated, multi-faceted, confusing (and often confused)! And that’s okay. We get things wrong, sometimes. We might get things drastically wrong. But once the harm is done, it cannot be undone, and all anyone can do is move forwards, seek support, apologise and take accountability for our actions, work to improve, and try to make amends. If you know someone who is under indue influence and has been indoctrinated into a cult or radicalised by an extremist group: Most people under undue influence will not accept it just because you tell them so. Any confrontation will just make them use the above-mentioned cultish tools to shut you down and to avoid having to think too deeply about it. It's jarring to have your reality or morals called into question. Sometimes more subtle methods might help, like referring to other cults with similar tactics, and if you know anyone who has been indoctrinated and managed to get out, perhaps asking them to share their experiences (it's much easier to hear from people with similar experiences (if someone feels they've been duped, that's easier to discuss with someone else who they recognise is a good person but was also taken in by similar tactics/if you've believed something radical and absurd, it's easier to discuss this with someoen who has also believed things that are radical and absurd). If someone has caused harm while under undue influence (towards you personally, or with their cult-influenced morals/ethics) and they then recognise this and want to leave a high control group, even if you’re angry or disappointed in them, it’s worth remembering that they were also a victim. It might still be worth offering them support to leave, and a chance to make amends and to get away from that influence as long as they are able to acknowledge any harm they caused.

[renthony]

Date: September 25, 2024

SAG-AFTRA announced today that the union filed an election petition with the National Labor Relations Board to represent intimacy coordinators employed by the AMPTP companies. Organizing intimacy coordinators is the natural evolution of the union’s commitment to help build a stable and safe future for our members. In the years following the #MeToo movement, the union has supported intimacy coordinators through key initiatives including the creation of Standards and Protocols for Use of Intimacy Coordinators on Set, and Standards for Qualification, Training and Vetting. “Working in scenes involving nudity or physical intimacy is some of the most vulnerable work an actor can do. Intimacy coordinators not only provide assistance in navigating these scenes but they also create a safetynet for performers ensuring consent and protection throughout the entire process,” said SAG-AFTRA President Fran Drescher. “Shifting the power imbalance that has been ingrained over a century is challenging but important work. Work that can be done even more effectively with the backing of a union. Intimacy coordinators have our backs on set and now it’s our turn to have theirs.”

[whatdyk]

No Peace for Soldiers

Captain Rex x Original Female Character

Newly knighted Jedi Zhara Voss joins the 501st during the brutal campaign on Umbara, where loyalty is tested, lines blur, and a forbidden bond with Captain Rex begins to form. As Krell’s betrayal fractures command, Zhara must decide where her heart truly lies — and what she’s willing to risk for those she’s come to trust.

(This is a story I started literally years ago. Until my obsession with the Clone Wars and a specific Captain returned..this is written very self indulgently with a character I had buzzing around in my brain. Don’t expect it to make sense or to follow the story line exactly! I’ve also tried my hardest and this is my first post in forever so pls don’t be mean x)

Chapter 1 - New Arrival.

(1.5k)

The vast hangar bay of the Resolute thrummed with activity.

ARC troopers polished their blasters in tight ranks, their armor gleaming under the flickering overhead lights. Maintenance droids flitted between formations, adjusting holo-projectors and fine-tuning ramp mechanisms. At the edge of the assembly stood Captain Rex, posture rigid; his white-and-blue-marked helmet tucked under one arm. He watched as the transport shuttle's cargo ramp began its descent.

Newly knighted, Zhara Voss stepped onto the bay floor as the ramp clanged shut behind her.

Her white hair caught the harsh fluorescent lights, framing a face both ethereal and unreadable. She wore standard-issue Jedi robes over fitted black battle leathers, twin lightsaber hilts at her belt. To the clones' trained eyes, she was the very picture of confidence: olive-green eyes bright, lips curved in a practiced, warm smile. Yet beneath the calm exterior, something like a shadow flickered in her gaze.

"Captain Rex," she announced, her voice clear and melodic. "Knight Voss reporting for assignment."

Rex inclined his head, expression neutral. Behind him, the troopers—Alpha through Omega squads—shifted to attention, boots clicking in unison.

"You're early," Rex observed.

"Prompt," Zhara corrected lightly. "I prefer 'prompt.' Besides, the war waits for no one."

A ripple of low laughter ran through the clones. Rex's eyes flicked to his squads before returning to the Jedi Knight, assessing her. He allowed a single nod.

"Briefing in ten. Follow me."

Zhara tucked her hands behind her back and fell into step beside him. Her robes whispered over the metal grating, her gait fluid, almost gliding.

The clones soon followed, with some troopers exchanging curious glances.

Though freshly knighted, Zhara's assignment to the 501st was no ceremonial posting.

The war had become a grinding engine, chewing through resources, troops, and Jedi alike. With veteran commanders spread thin, the Council had begun deploying younger knights with unconventional training to fill the cracks. Zhara Voss was one such name—her record marked by covert operations and battlefield improvisation rather than diplomacy or doctrine.

Her reassignment came swiftly, her dossier flagged for "strategic deployment," though some whispered it was a quiet exile after a failed mission that no one would speak of.

Captain Rex had read the file.

Twice.

It told him little beyond her combat qualifications, and even less about the Dathomirian woman behind the saber. That's what unsettled him. The Jedi he knew were measured, tempered by years of mentorship. Zhara's record suggested something different: raw power, shaped in the field, not the Temple.

When High Command informed him that she'd be joining the 501st for their next campaign, he volunteered to meet her shuttle himself—not out of protocol, but instinct. If she was to lead his men behind enemy lines, he wanted to see her walk, hear her speak. He wanted to know whether the calm in her smile was confidence or something far more dangerous.

The short corridor led them to the officers' briefing chamber, where General Anakin Skywalker stood before a holo-table, tracing glowing vectors across the surface of Umbara. Rex and Zhara entered, and the room fell into a hush.

"Ah, here we are," Anakin said, swiveling to face them. He smiled at Zhara, though the gesture didn't quite reach his blue-gray eyes. "Knight Voss. We've been expecting you."

"Thank you, General," Zhara replied, bowing her head in a small but elegant courtesy.

Anakin gestured back to the holomap, not pausing for long winded and unnecessary introductions, "Umbara's going to be a tough nut to crack. Their troops are dug in deep, and the perpetual twilight makes visibility nearly impossible."

"Our biggest problem is gonna be the local militia. The Umbarans have aligned themselves with the Separatists and are heavily armed."

He tapped a point on the map. "Remember, General Kenobi and his battalion will be 12 clicks to the south. We'll be landing in the North, to take out any enemy reinforcements that could stop the progress towards the capital."

"Rex, your squad will provide cover and coordinate the main assault with Knight Voss. You'll need to lead a recon team to map artillery positions and weak points in their trench networks."

Zhara stepped forward, one hand resting lightly on her lightsaber pommel. "We'll need Alpha and Beta squads for insertion—stealth approach"

Rex's jaw tightened. "Two squads are going to stand out like beacons in the dark. If we're going in stealth, we go in light."

Zhara met his gaze without flinching. "If we go in too light, we risk walking into their guns blind. I'll coordinate our entry points with your oversight, but once we're in, we need the freedom to move."

A charged silence hung between them. The clones, trained never to question a Jedi, felt the tension between their commanding officer and this newly knighted stranger.

Finally, Rex exhaled. "Fine. I'll pull Alpha and Beta. But if they go down, we stick to Plan B—extraction only."

Zhara inclined her head, the hint of a smile playing at her lips. "Understood."

Anakin deactivated the holomap. "Good. Get to your squads and plan the insertion. We launch at 0800 hours."

After the briefing, troops dispersed to gather gear, and Jedi stewards guided Zhara to her temporary quarters. The room was sparse: a single bunk, a small desk, and a viewport offering nothing but the hazy glow of a distant Umbara.

Zhara placed her lightsabers on the desk with gentle care, but first ignited and extinguished them in turn, watching the purple blades hum and flicker as they illuminated the room. She closed her eyes, drawing in a steadying breath.

Her breathing eventually evened, but a distant memory flashed: echoing screams in a cold cell, the sting of interrogation and the rasp of boots on metal grating. She pressed her palm against the cool wall, drawing on the Force to steady herself, banishing the tremor of anger.

—————————-

Hours quickly passed and preparations moved forward in quiet efficiency.

In the lower decks, techs ran diagnostics on shuttle nav systems, while troopers checked gear with the wordless precision of habit. The ship shifted into night-cycle lighting—dimmer strips lining the corridors, casting long shadows and bathing the Resolute in a quiet calm.

High above the hangar floor, Rex stood alone, arms crossed over his chest as he watched the movement below. His eyes tracked Zhara as she quietly appeared, walking between formations of troopers, her presence measured and deliberate.

She offered a word here, a nod there—easy gestures that spoke of familiarity, yet held something studied beneath the surface. He saw her laugh when a clone returned a nervous salute, saw the way she leaned in close to another with the care of someone trying to connect... or trying to be seen connecting.

She fit in too easily, he thought, too quickly. Like someone who knew exactly how to play the role expected of her.

A console beeped beside him. He keyed in his authorization code and a report flickered on the screen: Alpha and Beta ready. Equipment checks complete. All squads awaiting insertion orders.

He tapped his comm. "Alpha, Beta—stand by for Knight Voss. I'll be joining you en route."

He lingered a moment longer, watching her silhouette pass, cloaked in the pale blue-white of the shuttle's engines. Soon, they'd be boots-down in hostile territory.

And she would be helping to lead them through it.

————————————-

With launch only a few hours away, the corridors of the Resolute had grown hushed. Zhara moved with purpose, robes brushing the deck plates, her white hair catching the light as she passed.

Captain Rex rounded a corner and paused when he spotted her. He hesitated, then stepped forward, keeping a respectful distance.

"Knight Voss?" he offered, voice low.

Zhara froze, then turned. Her face was composed, but her eyes were cold.

Rex cleared his throat. "I saw you on the decks. Thought you might want company before the mission."

She took a measured breath, lips curving into a polite—but distant—smile. "Thank you for the offer, Captain, but I prefer solitude."

Rex's brow lifted. He opened his mouth, then closed it again. "All right. Just—if you need anything—"

She cut him off with a tilt of her chin. "I'll let you know."

She stepped past him, robes swishing, tone cool and clipped, like the corridor lights. "Good night, Captain."

Rex watched her stride away, her figure swallowed by shadow and silence. When the bulkhead doors hissed shut behind her, he stood alone, the echo of her dismissal lingering like unfinished orders.

Moments later the alarms sounded, signalling their impending departure.

(Chapter 2 )

[triscuitsandspraycheese]

what kibble do you recommend for cats?

Oh man, I don't think anyone's asked me this stuff on here before lol. This is a big question with a lot of correct answers. I'm gonna provide some context before listing brands.

Warning: it's long (but thorough!)

The goal when choosing a diet for your pet should be to target the companies that do the most regular testing of their diets as well as the most regular, consistent involvement with board-certified veterinary nutritionists.

A lot of "mid tier" companies can pay a board-certified veterinary nutritionist to formulate the original recipes, and then they go ahead and sell them with the Nutritional Adequacy Statement that the diet is formulated to meet AAFCO standards for adult maintenance. But in reality, when the recipe is tested, it might not be identical to the formulation, so some aspects of the diet might not be perfectly as they were intended. Basically... testing is important. The gold standard is to look for diets that say they were TESTED to meet AAFCO standards for adult maintenance, not just formulated to meet AAFCO standards.

This Nutritional Adequacy Statement must be present on ALL pet food bags, cans, pouches, treats, chews, literally any pet food product that is intended for consumption of any kind in the US. It will be one sentence long and clarify who this product is intended for as well as what qualifications it meets. If it says it's appropriate per AAFCO standards for adult maintenance, it means it meets the requirements for a healthy adult dog to eat that product regularly without being deficient in any nutrients. This is the BARE MINIMUM.

(Pro tip: You can just ask companies for their nutrient testing data for diets. The really good ones will be able to give you the full AAFCO panel with all the nutrients you can test for. Some companies might be like "nah that's too many, you can ask about a few ingredients at a time", and that's fine. If they have data to share, it means they've run at least one test recently. If they won't share any of their testing data other than what is legally required by the FDA, which is called the "Guaranteed Analysis", then they probably haven't run any real testing beyond that. Be wary of those companies.)

2. Companies that have a lot of money have time to run more tests to make sure their product doesn't have excessive levels of heavy metals, mycobacterium, required nutrients that can become toxic (think Vitamin D), etc. They also have money to buy facilities that can safely produce food and be regularly cleaned and sanitized daily.

Companies that are just starting out or are trying to work their way up won't have the money to buy the enormous facilities and kitchens required to mass produce their product for consumers. I know it's very tempting to support small businesses, but pet food is not one I would recommend. Think about the last time your local mom and pop diner had their paint tested for lead or their ice machine deeply sanitized and checked for mold. And then think about the overkill protocols in place by the monster fast food corporations like Taco Bell or In n Out who have more money than god and write you up for not adhering to their insane cleaning protocols.

When corporations have reputations to lose, legacies in place, they go above and beyond to make sure they are legally protected in every single aspect of their business. This applies to cleanliness, but also to things like recalls from toxic levels of a nutrient in the diet, testing for bone fragments or other foreign objects in food, removing the possibility of human error from the feeding process for your pet. Corporations above all else want to avoid legal problems, which means they will go above and beyond (I can't believe I'm saying this) to uphold the safety measures in place for their final product.

Basically, the more money they have, the more money they can spend on safety protocols so they can't get sued for something bad like accidentally making hundreds of dogs sick and having their reputation destroyed.

3. Marketing. My god, marketing has become such a shit show in the last few years with influencers and social media. Listen, if a pet food company is spending its hard earned dollars trying to scare the shit out of you by demonizing some random thing or another company, it's probably not real and they're just grasping at straws. If they're desperately trying to convince you that kibble is evil, or that Company B sucks for reasons X, Y, Z, or that you've been feeding your pet wrong this whole time and it's going to KILL THEM unless you feed *our product*, know that they are most definitely full of shit.

There is no magic diet for things like making your pet live twice as long or for curing cancer. It just doesn't exist yet, and trust me when I say companies are trying. The first pet food company that can prove their product makes pets live longer in a repeatable research study is going to be a gazillionaire.

But I digress. I don't recommend giving money to companies who spend money on incendiary marketing campaigns. If a company is trying to upset you, that's weird. A good product speaks for itself and/or has the backing of licensed (key word: licensed) professionals in that specialty making that recommendation.

"Certified Pet Nutritionist" and "Certified Animal Nutritionist" are NOT LICENSED MEDICAL PROFESSIONALS. There is no license required to call yourself that. They watch videos online for like six hours and then get emailed a pdf certificate. They are not licensed medical professionals, despite their best intentions. Be wary of any medical or nutrition advice you get from someone who calls themselves that.

Finally, the fucking list:

My cats both have medical problems so they're on prescription diets, but here are the regular brands I highly recommend if you have money to burn.

Top Tier

Royal Canin, Hills, Purina

Okay, I know what you must be saying. "That shit is expensive, dude. I'm not buying that."

But listen to me... these parent companies that make the expensive pet foods also make the mid tier pet foods and the affordable pet foods. MARS (who owns Royal Canin) is the biggest pet food manufacturer in the world has might actually have more money than god. Purina is owned by Nestle. Hills is partially owned by Colgate and is rollin in dough enough to make an affordable version of their top tier product.

ANY pet food company that is under the umbrella of one of these monster corporations will have the same testing and sanitation protocols as the "top tier" fancy ass pet food companies.

So all you have to do is see what pet food companies are owned by MARS or Nestle or Hills and pick what's in your price range.

This is MARS:

This is Purina:

And Hills just has Science Diet, I believe.

If it makes you feel better, I fed my cats Fancy Feast for literally a decade, and they loved it and had killer blood work results until they reached their older years.

Also, just a caveat: There are literally hundreds of pet food companies out there, more growing by the minute, so I'm sure there are also a lot of other great companies who make kibble for cats. You can use the info above to ask the right questions to the poor, overworked customer service agents who will hopefully be able to provide the info you need to make an informed decision.

Oh, and make sure to talk to your veterinarian before making any dietary changes for your pet! Seriously! None of this is intended to be a substitution for medical advice.

[eridanidreams]

WIP Wednesday

Who would have thought that being back on the right meds would have an effect?

tagging: @bearlytolerant, @silurisanguine, @aro-pancake, @fangbangerghoul, @atonalginger, @aislingdmdt, @fshenkoescape, @ninjaofnaps, @lisa-and-shadow, @a-cosmic-elf, @thatsgoodsquishy0, @hockeydemon42, @fomagranfalloon, @violenceandviolets, @therealgchu, @staticpallour, @artemis-crimson, @genesisarclite and @constellation2330

Enjoy this sneak peek from a future chapter of stars through my fingers like grains of sand!

Cait hunched over her chamomile tea. "I don't even know how to untangle all of this," she admitted. The heat of the cup did nothing to dispel the cold that had settled into her bones.

Andreja sighed. "Nor do I. I am afraid we have reached the limits of my ability to aid you."

"You've already done so much," Cait said. "I'm not asking you for more. I just… who could I even trust with this?" She could hear the despair edging her words, despite her best efforts to shove it down. "Between the alien genome, the uncontrolled empathy, and the mysterious powers, at least one of which has people hunting me…" There was nothing humorous in her laugh. "Even if I weren't worried about my own safety, I can't put that kind of target on someone else's back."

"Captain Caitlyn," came an unexpected voice. "Perhaps I may be of assistance."

Cait blinked. "Vasco? I don't—how?" Andreja looked as bewildered as she felt.

"Barrett once programmed me with a complete psychotherapeutic suite. He believed it would be useful while we were alone in the starfield for extended periods."

Andreja stared at the speaker with an expression of horrified fascination. "I would be greatly surprised if that did not end with blood on the decks."

"The suite was active for… three… days before he instructed me to delete it." As always, Vasco had no emotion that Cait could detect, and yet somehow the robot managed to sound smug.

Andreja frowned. "But if it was deleted, how could it be of use?"

"My protocols do not allow me to immediately delete operating software. The suite was moved into inactive storage pending a formal command to delete. A command that Barrett neglected to give." Now Vasco sounded satisfied.

"So…" Cait floundered, "I could order you to restore the suite?"

"Affirmative." Vasco's voice was definite. "This would allow me to provide the necessary assistance, while fulfilling the requirements of security. I," and Cait was absolutely certain that Vasco deliberately emphasized the pronoun, "will not betray your secrets."

"I never thought you would," Cait replied, absently rubbing her temple. She felt like she was teetering on the edge of a precipice—how could she know if this was a good idea?

"I am fully aware of all factors involved in this situation," Vasco added helpfully. "In addition, I possess a unique qualification."

"What would that be?" Andreja asked warily.

"As a robot, I do not possess emotions of my own." Vasco stated. "Captain Caitlyn may therefore focus on resolving her own emotional distress fully and freely, without the additional stress of holding off another's feelings, as I cannot affect her in that way."

Cait leaned back in her chair, completely gobsmacked. "That—that is a profound argument," she murmured. "I just—"

"Do it." Andreja's voice brooked no disagreement. "You shall find no better option."

Cait could still say 'no'. She was the captain; the order had to come from her. But her thoughts were in turmoil, her judgment uncertain. She desperately wanted to curl in on herself and shut the world out forever—but no matter how seductive the impulse, she refused to simply give up. The people who depended on her (who loved her, though the thought was a knife in her heart) deserved better. And if she couldn't trust herself, she could trust them. "Vasco," she said, surprising herself with the steadiness of her voice, "restore the psychotherapeutic suite to active memory."

"Affirmative, captain." Vasco's metallic voice carried a note of approval. "I will require some time to download and install all updates. It would be advisable for you to locate an isolated area in which we can proceed with minimal interruptions. Preferably, one with no negative associations."

That ruled out about half the known universe. Cait rifled through her scattered thoughts, finally coming up with an idea. "There's a place I know on Montera Luna," she offered. "It's the middle of nowhere, and doesn't have a whole lot of hostile fauna around."

"It will be no more difficult for me to commute to Jemison from there," Andreja agreed—and just like that, it was settled.

Cait stared down at the surface of her tea, seeing only the distorted shadow of her reflection. "How—how are—" She cut herself off; she desperately wanted to know, and yet she didn't. Not when she knew how much she had hurt them.

"They are as well as can be expected." Andreja's eyes were kind. "Cora is doing well in her lessons." That didn't surprise Cait one bit. "Sam…" Andreja hesitated, then continued with the air of one choosing her words carefully. Because Cait was fragile, dammit, and she loathed herself for it. "Sam is recovering. I believe he has sought help for himself." She gave Cait an intent look. "He asks about you, every day."

Cait tried to blink away the tears that sprang, unbidden, to her eyes, knowing it was useless even as she did. She sounded so small when she asked, "Will you tell him—no." No. Some things she wouldn't leave to another's voice, no matter how trusted. "Will you take him a message?"

Andreja nodded. "Of course." She rose from her seat. "I shall leave you in peace to write." Her hand fell to Cait's shoulder in a compassionate touch before she left the hab, her stride as easy and unhurried as always.

Cait pulled over one of the ubiquitous notepads and, with an unsteady hand, started to write.

Dear Sam…

[charliedawn]

got it. so what qualifications would one need to be a nurse at st. louis?

1. Professional Medical Qualifications

Valid nursing license (RN or equivalent) with active certification.

Experience in psychiatric or forensic nursing preferred.

Training in emergency medicine and trauma care.

Certification in crisis intervention and de-escalation techniques.

2. Psychological Resilience & Emotional Stability

Ability to work calmly under extreme stress and in the presence of violent, unpredictable patients.

Psychological evaluation to assess emotional stability and resistance to trauma-related stress.

Previous experience handling patients with violent or psychotic tendencies is a plus.

3. Specialized Training & Skills

Training in managing supernatural or paranormal phenomena (due to the slashers’ unusual natures).

Knowledge of restraint protocols for superhuman strength and durability.

Familiarity with sedation methods for patients who exhibit extreme resistance.

Basic understanding of mythologies, folklore, or lore surrounding notorious slashers.

4. Security & Safety Protocol Awareness

Must pass rigorous security clearance due to the dangerous environment.

Ability to follow strict safety protocols, including use of protective gear and emergency alarms.

Training in self-defense or close-quarters combat is highly recommended.

Ability to work within a tightly controlled, high-security facility.

5. Interpersonal & Communication Skills

High emotional intelligence to build trust and manage patient relationships with challenging personalities.

Multilingual skills helpful for diverse patient backgrounds.

Ability to communicate clearly and effectively with medical teams, security personnel, and psychiatric staff.

6. Physical & Mental Fitness

Good physical condition to handle the demands of restraining or assisting patients with superhuman strength.

Ability to remain alert during long shifts with irregular or night hours.

Regular mental health check-ins to monitor ongoing fitness for the job.

7. Background & Character Screening

Clean criminal record or only minor infractions — no history of violent or criminal behavior.

No history of substance abuse.

Strong moral character and demonstrated compassion.

Must pass extensive background checks including psychological and supernatural-related incident history.

8. Commitment & Flexibility

Willingness to work in an unconventional, often hostile environment.

Flexibility to respond to emergency situations at any time.

Commitment to maintaining patient confidentiality and dignity, even with infamous slashers.

[jsapharmaguideline]

Laboratory Instrument Qualification Protocol: Ensuring Accurate and Reliable Results

In the world of pharmaceutical manufacturing, maintaining precise control over every step of the process is paramount. Laboratory instruments play a critical role in ensuring the quality and safety of medications. To guarantee these instruments consistently deliver reliable results, a well-defined laboratory instrument qualification protocol is essential.

[mariacallous]

On February 26th the Washington Post announced a new editorial line that refers to freedom while restraining it. I submitted a proposal to them on the question of what it would meant to support freedom in a newspaper. I have waited two weeks for a response. I would still happily write that opinion piece! In the essay below, I explain how the Post's editorial line is nonsensical and authoritarian.

•••

Jeff Bezos, who owns Washington Post, has announced its editorial line: "We are going to be writing every day in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets." The use of these terms in this way demeans the concept of freedom and pushes the country in the direction of tyranny.

I will start from some arguments that are more conventional and that others have rightly made. But I want here, in ten steps, to push the point to the end. On February 27th, the day after the new editorial lines was announced, I enjoyed myself and did this as parody. Today I ask for your patience as I do so as philosophy.

1. "Liberty" is self-contradictory as an editorial code. To use liberty as a demarcation of what is and what is not to be published shows a deep misunderstanding of what liberty means. Liberty is an open meadow, not a fence. An editor who believes in liberty helps writers to make their own arguments well, because their freedom has to do with them. Liberty has to mean that people have the right to say what they want, including (for example) that liberty doesn't need to be qualified by the adjective "personal," that liberty is an infinite concept and not one that can be listed as specific "liberties," that the concept is in tension with the fiction of the "free market", or that the word is being put to pernicious, Orwellian purposes by American libertarian billionaires.

2. Editors who take "personal liberties" as a restriction on what contributors write would need protocols of measurement and control. Can we accept that a certain someone knows, for certain, whether a given article trends in favor or against personal liberty? What could this mean? To grant such authority is absurd, and also tyrannical. The whole point of freedom is that it extends beyond the boundaries of any one mind at any one moment. James Baldwin called truth "freedom which cannot be legislated, fulfillment which cannot be charted.” And surely this is all the more true of the truth about freedom! Treating the issue as impersonal makes matters no better. Imagine an official list of "personal liberties" hanging on the walls of the Post editorial offices, each with a definition. Who decides what that says, though? And such a list would not be enough. There would then have to be some set of rules (algorithms?) by which to establish whether an article met the definition. Very quickly (on day 1? has this perhaps already happened?) we get to the Kafkaesque situation of a Post editor submitting a proposed opinion essay to an AI and asking whether it "supports and defends personal liberties and free markets." Freedom is what distinguishes us from machines. It has to do with affirming values over the course of a limited time on earth, with taking risks, with building character. No machine can capture that. None of these practice that could be used to enforce the editorial line can possible affirm "personal liberties." Enforcement means either human arbitrariness or mechanized abasement.

3. The qualification of the noun "liberties" by the adjective "personal" is unfounded. Any qualification is unfounded. This particular one suggests that we can become free people without society, which is absolutely not true. We all begin life as helpless infants. Whether we can become free or not depends on circumstances beyond our control. No amount of declaiming "personal liberty" will create the conditions in which a baby grows up with the capacities and structures needed to be a free person. That effort to create a person must be social, beginning with the parents, and extending to friends, teachers, child-care workers, and others. A child needs a special kind of time at a special time of life, and that time will only exist if we recognize that the entire situation is about freedom and that freedom requires cooperation. If we want liberty, in other words, we cannot limit ourselves to the personal. The example of the newborn is important, because it is what we all share, but also because it suggests a truth that continues throughout life. In one way or other, we are always vulnerable, and our ability to be free will always depend on cooperation.

4. The pairing of the phrase "personal liberties" with the phrase "free markets" suggests an understanding of freedom that is negative: freedom as just an absence of oppression, or an absence of government. The editorial line implies a world in which there is nothing more than isolated individuals and a government that might or might not oppress them, with nothing in between. To be sure, the government should not oppress people. But to ensure that governments are not oppressive, people need freedoms that go beyond the personal: that we can all vote, for example. Voting is not just a personal freedom: if you think about it that way, you will be unconcerned about equal voting rights for others, and your democracy will soon become something else. And the government is not, as negative freedom indicates, the only possible instrument of oppression. Companies and oligarchs can also oppress. And when they do, democratic governments are the only institution that can defend freedom. But for governments to be democratic, people have to be able to act together. They need a freedom that goes beyond the personal: not only to vote in fair elections, but to protest in groups, to join labor unions, to assemble and cooperate.

5. The use of the plural "liberties" (rather than "liberty" or "freedom" in the singular) is not an extension but an unwelcome qualification, in fact a limitation. The use of the plural suggests that there is a finite list of specific liberties, rather than freedom for all people as such. This indicates that liberty is constrained for people. Interestingly, no such constraint is placed upon the inhuman abstraction that also figures in Jeff Bezos's editorial line, "the free market." What has unqualified freedom, according to Bezos? Not people. The market. And this, as we shall see, is not only incoherent but authoritarian.

6. The two parts of the editorial line would be contradictory in practice. The "free market" and "personal liberties" would have to contradict one another in editorial decision-making, to the point that they could not be enforced together (even leaving aside the inherent problem, discussed already, of defining and "personal liberties"). If "personal liberties" include anything meaningful, they would have to include the freedom of expression -- which would include the freedom to debate what markets should be like and how they should work. Otherwise the (nonsensical) orthodoxy of the "free market" functions as a restriction on freedom of speech, and "personal liberties" just turns out to mean repeating an unquestioned political orthodoxy.

7. The two parts of the editorial line are also contradictory in principle. The assumption that "free markets" and "personal liberties" work together as "pillars" is mistaken. These two concepts are not the same, and very often point in opposing directions. A "free market," for example, would mean that companies can pollute as much as they like. But if the atmosphere poisons me and I die of cancer, I am not enjoying "personal liberties" of any sort.

8. Any reasonable concept of "personal liberties," of freedom, will in fact constrain the market. Consider the market in human organs, which of course exists. Should there be a "free market" in human kidneys? Should rich people have the right to hunt you down on the street, tranquilize you, and harvest your organs to sell them? If not, why not? The answer has something to do with the freedom of human beings, the autonomy of their bodies, their right not to have them violated. There is no way to get to that answer, however, from the starting point of the "free market." A "free market" includes your kidneys.

9. The editorial code requires writers to affirm the non-existent. Americans say "free market" all the time, so it sounds like something that exists, but it does not and cannot. There is no such thing as a "free market," in the sense of a market that functions unconstrained, without government. The basis of a market is the right to property, which is of course enforced by a government. A government decides that there is such a right, and whether or not it extends to organs (or people, for that matter). Property rights are thus "government intervention," in the jargon of the people who like to talk about "free markets." Once this undeniable fact is recognized, we are simply in a conversation about which government action we advocate and which we oppose. Once we understand that we need governments for markets to work, and that we are inevitably making choices about how markets work, we can have a reasonable conversation about what sort of markets we want and how we want them to function. We can ask, for example, whether monopoly capitalism is the best sort of capitalism. If editors insist on calling markets "free," they are insisting that writers connive in political fiction. And a very dangerous one, especially right now.

10. The language of "free markets" is authoritarian. Freedom belongs only to people. It does not belong to institutions or abstractions -- and least of all to non-existent institutions or abstractions. The moment that we yield the word "free" to something besides a person, we are yielding our freedom. And we should be aware that others who abuse the word by taking it from us intend to oppress us. When we endorse the fiction of "free markets," we are entering a story told by others than ourselves, in which we are the objects, the tools, the non-player characters. We are accepting that we people owe duties to those markets. By way of an unreal concept we pass into real submission. We are accepting that we have the duty to oppose "government intervention," which is to say that we must oppose political actions that would help us to be more free: safety for workers, protection for consumers, insurance for banks, funding for schools, legality for unions, leave for parents, and all the rest. We must accept whatever the market brings us, to go wherever the billionaires take us, to surrender our words, our minds, ourselves.

[texasdreamer01]

Atlantis Expedition: Science Division Departments - Medical Department

Continuing from my starting post here, I'm now breaking things down by department, beginning with the Medical Department.

I did end up heavily revising this department after the commentary on the general departments post, and also after a lot of looking up of the actual divisions of medical specialties. So, first, the (new) numbers:

> Head: Carson Beckett (later, Jennifer Keller, later, whomever) > Contains: Surgery, psychiatry, physical therapy > Function: Maintaining health of expedition members > Examples of function: surgeries, medical prescriptions, recuperation from injuries, mental stability > Personnel quantity: 1 (Head) + 10 (surgical team) + 5 10 (nurses non-surgical team) + 1 (psych) + 1 (phys. therapy) + 1 (anesthesiologist) (grouped under non-surgical team) = 19 23 total > A/N: Nurses have training in medications and physical therapy, surgical team also doubles as general practitioners

Information carried over from the first post, with struck text indicating revisions. The new total is 23, and the author's note is now irrelevant in light of new information. Mostly.

After doubling the amount of nurses, realizing "nurse" is a very broad category of medical professional with multiple definitions and aspects of job duties in multiple countries, I did a bit of renaming of the teams within this department: surgical, non-surgical, and miscellaneous (sorry guys).

Something I had realized was that this was not going to be a typical medical department (duh, in hindsight). These people are all going through the SGC, and the SGC quite likely not already has their own training protocols in place for dealing with SGC-specific situations, but also adapted technology from Goa'uld tech. What is Goa'uld tech? Appropriated Ancient tech, but without the gene component - fascinating, but also a post for another time.

This did inform how I revised which personnel to include, their specialties, and their duties. You're not exactly going to be shoving a whole MRI machine through a gate, so a radiologist isn't going to be a necessary specialty. Because of this, there's going to be a lot more cross-training, and more of a focus that's similar to what Atlantis would actually operate as: a forward operating base.

So, on to the teams (commentary included).

Surgical Team

> Personnel quantity: 10 > Minimum education: Doctorate in Surgery (ChM) > All of these people are already trained in basic medical knowledge and practices, and also overall surgical practices in different areas of the body

Specialties

> Neurosurgery > Dentistry | Oral and maxillofacial surgery  » In the US, trained to do general anesthesia and deep sedation > Orthopedics  » Musculoskeletal > Trauma surgery  » Can contain combat surgeons  » 2x of these > OBGYN > Urology > Cardiothoracic  » 2x of these, by speciality:   ⇛ Cardiovascular surgeon    ⟹ "involving the heart and the great vessels"   ⇛ Thoracic surgeon    ⟹ involving the lungs, esophagus, thymus, etc. > Surgical technologist  » "In the military they perform the duties of both the circulator and the scrub."  » Creates and maintains a sterile surgical environment  » Anticipates the work a surgeon needs to do  » Walking compendium of surgical techniques and stitches

I had wavered a bit on qualifications, and thus who to include - at the end of the day, it was probably going to be on an American standard, given the physical location of SGC. This meant I got to do a nifty thing of having my oral/maxillofacial surgeon be the dentist that's also an anesthesiologist, even if this is apparently considered odd in many other countries.

Mostly I wanted to go by section of the body, and see what kind of specialties there were, and what did and did not overlap. Surprisingly, it was more difficult to figure out who did abdominal surgeries than it was neurosurgery or dental surgery, hence two people in cardiothoracic surgery and two "general" surgeons in the form of trauma surgery because, again, forward operating base - they have no idea what Atlantis will be, so some assumptions will need to be made and better to err on the side of caution.

In a more delicate but still very necessary subject, one OBGYN (obstetrics and gynecology) and one urologist (aka urinary system and male reproductive system). For various obvious reasons, everyone's health in this area still needs to be taken care of, so it's better to have them on the team than politely handwave the idea.

Neurosurgery, for an obvious reason - it's highly specialized and without significant overlap, while also being a critical function on a surgical team with the demands the Atlantis Expedition will likely face.

Orthopedics are musculoskeletal, or deals with muscles and the skeletal system. A fair amount of what they do has overlap (see: trauma surgeons), but having someone specialized for the particularities of setting bones and handling surgeries on things like the joints is incredibly useful when presuming setting up camp in an active combat zone (which they really, really did).

Trauma surgeons are, more or less, the ones that you would see in an emergency situation - acute situations and their injuries are their specialty, and for this expedition likely the head of the surgical team by dint of their training to assess a patient quickly and develop a care plan very quickly. Because of this, I found the overlap of combat surgeons immensely helpful, which means that there's a significant probability that this surgical team has military personnel assigned to it. These surgeons are also the ones most likely to be SGC-imported, and trained to deal with things like injuries from Goa'uld and Goa'uld devices.

All these very highly-trained people, who are all probably very, very smart - who supports them? As it turns out, at least in the operating theater, not the nurses, but surgical technologists.

Surgical technologists main job, at least here, would be to set up the operating theater and anticipate whatever it is a surgeon needs in assistance. This includes things like training on a wide variety of surgical techniques (i.e. stitches), disinfection procedures, and medications such as anesthesia (ish). I included the quote about military duties because it saves money on how many people to include in the expedition, and penny-pinching is the backbone of any hiring process.

Now, the surgical team is all done! That's ten people right there, and on to the non-surgical team.

Non-Surgical Team

> Personnel quantity: 10  » 5 Technicians/Nurses, 5 Non-Surgical Medical Specialists

Nurses

> (Advanced Practice) Nurses  » 5x of these  » Registered Nurse   ⇛ As the general minimum educational and experimental requirement  » Perioperative nursing   ⇛ Assists surgical team, helps with pre- and post-surgical patients  » Emergency nursing   ⇛ Can do triaging, suturing, casting/splinting, local/regional anesthesia, and other doctoral skills as needed   ⇛ Likely the SGC training model incorporates all of the above, and also training on medical technology adapted from Goa'uld healing technology (which is really Ancient but without the ATA gene lock)    ⟹ Radiology tech    ⟹ MRI tech (which is radiology but a bit to the left)    ⟹ Other adapted diagnostic equipment

Non-Surgical Medical Specialists

> Pathology  » 2x of these  » Coordinates with Life Science Department to develop diagnoses for novel diseases (in the Pegasus galaxy) > Internal medicine | Internists  » 2x of these > Anesthesiology  » For everything the OMS people don't do in terms of anesthesiology  » See also: Anesthesia (topic)

Remember how I said the qualifications were a doozy, and that nurses were a broad category? ... Yeah, this is why. The medical field is probably current in flux right now, given the shifting priorities of medical personnel and so much research that is still in the process of being applied, but I waved my magic plot-fixing wand and assumed the SGC figured this out for me.

All of these nurses are likely to be SGC imports, and thus unbelievably well-trained in everything that the SGC needs them to do. These are the personnel who know how all of the Goa'uld tech works on a functional level, have gotten the goodies first from engineering, and are waving their handheld MRI and other diagnostic equipment over their patients like a fairy godmother in scrubs. As with a real world hospital, these are the people actually running the show, and likely making the surgical team look like hypercompetent show poodles.

As for non-nurses who are also non-surgeons, pathologists are the ones who work up what people will actually be diagnosed with, figuring out all the newest and shiniest diseases and cataloguing them for reference. Doctor Biro is a pathologist, for example.

The thought occurred to me that we still need something resembling a general practitioner, but in light of fancy things like handheld MRIs and other scanners, this role is much reduced in favor of people who pack a greater intellectual punch.

However, I found that internists not only fill this gap, but are also hyper-specialized in their own way, in the respect of their knowledge base being internal diseases and multi-system diseases. Ergo, two of them, because they're just that useful. They'd probably coordinate quite a bit with cardiothoracic surgeons, as those are overlapping areas of study based on region of the body.

One (1) anesthesiologist, because the OMS cannot - nor should they - be the only person to perform anesthesia. This person functions as a sanity checker, and also the thin margin of the anesthesia that the surgeon doesn't cover.

We still need to round out this department, though. So far I've managed to cover in-patient, out-patient, and the various surgical stages. What else?

Well, recuperation - patients can't actually linger in the infirmary for the entirety of their healing process, for such practical reasons as beds available and boredom of patient, so the transitional phase needs to be covered.

Hence, the highly uncreative placeholder section name of Miscellaneous:

> Psychiatrist  » 1x of these, because canon says so? > Physical therapist  » 1x of these, because canon says so?

Now while personnel such as nurses and internists are meant to convey educational material and instructions to patients about recuperation, it helps to actually have specialists on hand to make the patients commit to the bit.

Having only one psychiatrist on hand seems a bit of a Star Trek logical fallacy, but I'm once again waving my plot wand and assuming anyone that managed to get through the arduous employment process of 1) being told the Stargate exists (and coping with their world views being upended), 2) being employed by the SGC in general, and 3) passes their psychological assessment is probably mentally stable enough to only need one psychiatrist for the entire expedition.

(Yes, this does mean everyone on the expedition got their rubber stamp of sanity, and probably in grueling triplicate. Such as it can be defined a fanfiction-like world of scifi. I think they're coping pretty well with everything, no?)

With all the work that the surgical and non-surgical teams put into taking care of injured expedition members, a physical therapist is, as with everyone else here, very good at their job, but ultimately one of the last steps for patients that require longer term care. Think gaining back muscle after a broken leg, or more serious injuries that require months of guided exercise to be back to gate team-ready health (or general running for your life because Atlantis is just as dangerous).

Total Medical Department Personnel

Head of Department: 1

Surgical Team: 10

Non-Surgical Team: 10

Miscellaneous: 2

Total total: 23

I'll be going over headcanons on canonical personnel, such as Carson Beckett, Jennifer Keller, and Biro in their own posts, but for now this is a general accounting of the expedition's medical department.

Shout-out to @savestave and @stinalotte for the discussion and feedback on the original post!

[hoeswater]

I'm Talking about MagPod and Archives Again

I know that those of us in the middle of the Venn diagram of “Magnus fans” and “People who actually know how archives work” have really given Jonny a hard time about the way that the Magnus Institute archives and artefact storage are shown as working (or, I mean, not working) in the podcast. Not just in terms of best practices (where) but also like… archives can be spooky, it can be a spooky job, but not really for those reasons, you know? Anyway, I think that Protocols Episode 9 actually engages with the archives’ role as an archives in a way that’s really, really interesting. Qualifications: I’m almost done with my master’s in Library and Information Science/Archives Management and have been working in actual archives of various types for a year and a half. 

Specifically, I’m really interested in how Dice Guy engages with the horror within the context of the donation process. We hear a lot about the horror that objects in this universe cause while they’re still in the possession of their pre-Institute owners-slash-avatars, and a lot about the horror that these objects cause when they’re mishandled (looking at you, Jon “It is Remarkably Easy to Buy An Axe in Central London” Sims) while being stored at the Institute, and every now and again we get to see Jon or Gertrude accept or turn down an offered object (the teeth apple, Eric Delano’s page, etc) in TMA. But this is one of the only places in the podcast(s) where the process of donation and acquisition registers as a part of the horror story for the people giving or receiving the object. I’m thinking specifically about the beginning of the “statement proper,” where the statement giver says:

“So yeah, I tell you all about them, how I got them, all that crap and you just… You take them away, right? You accept them. Good. I think. I’m pretty sure that’s how it works. It’s how it worked for me, at least. Put them in whatever vault you like, bury them, drop them in the ocean for all I care. All that matters is that they’re yours now.” 

At surface level, this disclaimer seems pretty similar to some of the other things that statement givers say in TMA: I just need to tell someone, I just need somebody else to know, You have the power to do something about this and I don’t, etc. But this statement differs from the ones we saw in TMA because it’s not just about catharsis or reaction to a terrible thing happening; it’s the actual change of ownership of the dice that gives this moment meaning within the horror story for Dice Guy. And this hinges on the fact that Dice Guy, like a lot of real-life people, sees the purpose of an archives as being locked vaults designed to keep non-expert people away from things they don’t know how to handle, rather than their actual purpose, which is to preserve things for the express purpose of making them accessible to the public. I imagine that the Magnus Institute, if it were real, would have some pretty strict access policies due to, you know, special circumstances– the stuff it holds generally having the ability to kill or maim or otherwise make people’s lives miserable– but it’s fun to think about. If Dice Guy had understood the fact that archivists and staff and conservationists and sometimes researchers interact* with the materials in their care, would he have still donated the dice? Was he at the point where it didn’t matter who got the bad luck, as long as it wasn’t him, or was he leaning on the stereotype of archives being locked vaults as a way to absolve himself of the guilt of giving the dice away to a person, because people use the things they're given and he thinks archives don't? 

It also raises some interesting questions about ownership. Real archivists think about the ethics of donation, acquisition, and ownership a lot. What does it mean for somebody to give something to an archive? What does it mean to accept it, therefore a) accepting responsibility for the preservation of the object and b) assigning cultural/historical/ideological value to it? This is where TMAGP comes pretty close to real archival theory: Dice Guy thinks that he’s nullifying the dice’s power by giving them to the Institute, but isn’t it true that to accept an object into an archive assigns it a level of power? The notes at the beginning of the statement seem to suggest that the dice coming under the Institute’s ownership lends them power beyond what they had originally, as well: “Viability as Subject,” “Viability as agent,” “Viability as catalyst,” “Recommend referral to Catalytics for Enrichment Applicability Assessment.” To me, this says that maybe the dice were in the running to potentially be chosen for the role that the tape recorders fill in TMA– to facilitate, or serve as a catalyst for, the narrative/the fears’ growing power by being passed to the “agent” (Jon or Jon-equivalent) through the Magnus Institute. We, the audience, know that, if the dice had been selected to fill the tape recorder role, that would give them the potential not just to make one individual’s life more miserable, but to fundamentally change the entire world a la TMA 160 and 200. 

*In TMA canon, the Web uses the Magnus Institute as a site for agents and catalysts to interact, just as much as the Eye does if not more. The fact that the archives is a site of interaction between people and particular objects is critical to the narrative as told by the Web, even if it seems incidental to Jon–and even if Jon doesn’t understand the archives that way. It’s an interesting way to look at the Magnus Institute and archives as functioning in a similar way to actual archives, which serve as sites of interaction between people and historical objects (in spite of Jon’s complete lack of ability to function as a regular archivist.)

[misfitwashere]

TIMOTHY SNYDER

MAR 9

On February 26th the Washington Post announced a new editorial line that refers to freedom while restraining it. I submitted a proposal to them on the question of what it would meant to support freedom in a newspaper. I have waited two weeks for a response. I would still happily write that opinion piece! In the essay below, I explain how the Post's editorial line is nonsensical and authoritarian.

•••

Jeff Bezos, who owns Washington Post, has announced its editorial line: "We are going to be writing every day in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets." The use of these terms in this way demeans the concept of freedom and pushes the country in the direction of tyranny. 

I will start from some arguments that are more conventional and that others have rightly made. But I want here, in ten steps, to push the point to the end. On February 27th, the day after the new editorial lines was announced, I enjoyed myself and did this as parody. Today I ask for your patience as I do so as philosophy.

1. "Liberty" is self-contradictory as an editorial code. To use liberty as a demarcation of what is and what is not to be published shows a deep misunderstanding of what liberty means. Liberty is an open meadow, not a fence. An editor who believes in liberty helps writers to make their own arguments well, because their freedom has to do with them. Liberty has to mean that people have the right to say what they want, including (for example) that liberty doesn't need to be qualified by the adjective "personal," that liberty is an infinite concept and not one that can be listed as specific "liberties," that the concept is in tension with the fiction of the "free market", or that the word is being put to pernicious, Orwellian purposes by American libertarian billionaires.

2. Editors who take "personal liberties" as a restriction on what contributors write would need protocols of measurement and control. Can we accept that a certain someone knows, for certain, whether a given article trends in favor or against personal liberty? What could this mean? To grant such authority is absurd, and also tyrannical. The whole point of freedom is that it extends beyond the boundaries of any one mind at any one moment. James Baldwin called truth "freedom which cannot be legislated, fulfillment which cannot be charted.” And surely this is all the more true of the truth about freedom! Treating the issue as impersonal makes matters no better. Imagine an official list of "personal liberties" hanging on the walls of the Post editorial offices, each with a definition. Who decides what that says, though? And such a list would not be enough. There would then have to be some set of rules (algorithms?) by which to establish whether an article met the definition. Very quickly (on day 1? has this perhaps already happened?) we get to the Kafkaesque situation of a Post editor submitting a proposed opinion essay to an AI and asking whether it "supports and defends personal liberties and free markets." Freedom is what distinguishes us from machines. It has to do with affirming values over the course of a limited time on earth, with taking risks, with building character. No machine can capture that. None of these practice that could be used to enforce the editorial line can possible affirm "personal liberties." Enforcement means either human arbitrariness or mechanized abasement.

3. The qualification of the noun "liberties" by the adjective "personal" is unfounded. Any qualification is unfounded. This particular one suggests that we can become free people without society, which is absolutely not true. We all begin life as helpless infants. Whether we can become free or not depends on circumstances beyond our control. No amount of declaiming "personal liberty" will create the conditions in which a baby grows up with the capacities and structures needed to be a free person. That effort to create a person must be social, beginning with the parents, and extending to friends, teachers, child-care workers, and others. A child needs a special kind of time at a special time of life, and that time will only exist if we recognize that the entire situation is about freedom and that freedom requires cooperation. If we want liberty, in other words, we cannot limit ourselves to the personal. The example of the newborn is important, because it is what we all share, but also because it suggests a truth that continues throughout life. In one way or other, we are always vulnerable, and our ability to be free will always depend on cooperation.

4. The pairing of the phrase "personal liberties" with the phrase "free markets" suggests an understanding of freedom that is negative: freedom as just an absence of oppression, or an absence of government. The editorial line implies a world in which there is nothing more than isolated individuals and a government that might or might not oppress them, with nothing in between. To be sure, the government should not oppress people. But to ensure that governments are not oppressive, people need freedoms that go beyond the personal: that we can all vote, for example. Voting is not just a personal freedom: if you think about it that way, you will be unconcerned about equal voting rights for others, and your democracy will soon become something else. And the government is not, as negative freedom indicates, the only possible instrument of oppression. Companies and oligarchs can also oppress. And when they do, democratic governments are the only institution that can defend freedom. But for governments to be democratic, people have to be able to act together. They need a freedom that goes beyond the personal: not only to vote in fair elections, but to protest in groups, to join labor unions, to assemble and cooperate.

5. The use of the plural "liberties" (rather than "liberty" or "freedom" in the singular) is not an extension but an unwelcome qualification, in fact a limitation. The use of the plural suggests that there is a finite list of specific liberties, rather than freedom for all people as such. This indicates that liberty is constrained for people. Interestingly, no such constraint is placed upon the inhuman abstraction that also figures in Jeff Bezos's editorial line, "the free market." What has unqualified freedom, according to Bezos? Not people. The market. And this, as we shall see, is not only incoherent but authoritarian.

6. The two parts of the editorial line would be contradictory in practice. The "free market" and "personal liberties" would have to contradict one another in editorial decision-making, to the point that they could not be enforced together (even leaving aside the inherent problem, discussed already, of defining and "personal liberties"). If "personal liberties" include anything meaningful, they would have to include the freedom of expression -- which would include the freedom to debate what markets should be like and how they should work. Otherwise the (nonsensical) orthodoxy of the "free market" functions as a restriction on freedom of speech, and "personal liberties" just turns out to mean repeating an unquestioned political orthodoxy.

7. The two parts of the editorial line are also contradictory in principle. The assumption that "free markets" and "personal liberties" work together as "pillars" is mistaken. These two concepts are not the same, and very often point in opposing directions. A "free market," for example, would mean that companies can pollute as much as they like. But if the atmosphere poisons me and I die of cancer, I am not enjoying "personal liberties" of any sort.

8. Any reasonable concept of "personal liberties," of freedom, will in fact constrain the market. Consider the market in human organs, which of course exists. Should there be a "free market" in human kidneys? Should rich people have the right to hunt you down on the street, tranquilize you, and harvest your organs to sell them? If not, why not? The answer has something to do with the freedom of human beings, the autonomy of their bodies, their right not to have them violated. There is no way to get to that answer, however, from the starting point of the "free market." A "free market" includes your kidneys.

9. The editorial code requires writers to affirm the non-existent. Americans say "free market" all the time, so it sounds like something that exists, but it does not and cannot. There is no such thing as a "free market," in the sense of a market that functions unconstrained, without government. The basis of a market is the right to property, which is of course enforced by a government. A government decides that there is such a right, and whether or not it extends to organs (or people, for that matter). Property rights are thus "government intervention," in the jargon of the people who like to talk about "free markets." Once this undeniable fact is recognized, we are simply in a conversation about which government action we advocate and which we oppose. Once we understand that we need governments for markets to work, and that we are inevitably making choices about how markets work, we can have a reasonable conversation about what sort of markets we want and how we want them to function. We can ask, for example, whether monopoly capitalism is the best sort of capitalism. If editors insist on calling markets "free," they are insisting that writers connive in political fiction. And a very dangerous one, especially right now.

10. The language of "free markets" is authoritarian. Freedom belongs only to people. It does not belong to institutions or abstractions -- and least of all to non-existent institutions or abstractions. The moment that we yield the word "free" to something besides a person, we are yielding our freedom. And we should be aware that others who abuse the word by taking it from us intend to oppress us. When we endorse the fiction of "free markets," we are entering a story told by others than ourselves, in which we are the objects, the tools, the non-player characters. We are accepting that we people owe duties to those markets. By way of an unreal concept we pass into real submission. We are accepting that we have the duty to oppose "government intervention," which is to say that we must oppose political actions that would help us to be more free: safety for workers, protection for consumers, insurance for banks, funding for schools, legality for unions, leave for parents, and all the rest. We must accept whatever the market brings us, to go wherever the billionaires take us, to surrender our words, our minds, ourselves.

[thaiattorney]

Thailand SMART Visa

1.1 Statutory Foundations

Established under Royal Decree on SMART Visa B.E. 2561 (2018)

Amended by Ministerial Regulation No. 377 (2021) expanding eligible sectors

Operates within Thailand 4.0 Economic Model under BOI oversight

1.2 Governance Structure

Primary Authority: Board of Investment (BOI)

Interagency Coordination:

Immigration Bureau (visa issuance)

Digital Economy Promotion Agency (tech qualifications)

Ministry of Higher Education (academic validation)

Technical Review Committees:

12 sector-specific panels

Investment verification unit

2. Eligibility Criteria & Qualification Pathways

2.1 SMART-T (Experts)

Compensation Thresholds

Base Salary: Minimum THB 200,000/month (USD 5,800)

Alternative Compensation:

Equity valued at 25% premium

Performance bonuses (capped at 40% of base)

2.2 SMART-E (Entrepreneurs)

Startup Metrics

Revenue Test: THB 10M+ ARR

Traction Test: 50,000 MAU

Funding Test: Series A (THB 25M+)

Accelerator Requirements:

DEPA-certified programs

Minimum 6-month incubation

3. Application Process & Technical Review

3.1 Document Authentication Protocol

Educational Credentials:

WES/IQAS evaluation for foreign degrees

Notarized Thai translations (MFA-certified)

Employment Verification:

Social security cross-check

Three professional references

3.2 Biometric Enrollment

Facial Recognition: 12-point capture system

Fingerprinting: 10-print electronic submission

Iris Scanning: Optional for Diamond tier

4. Privilege Structure & Compliance

4.1 Employment Rights Framework

Permitted Activities:

Primary employment (≥80% time)

Academic collaboration (≤20%)

Advisory roles (max 2 concurrent)

Restrictions:

Local employment outside specialty

Political activities

Unapproved commercial research

4.2 Dependent Provisions

Spousal Work Rights:

General employment permitted

No industry restrictions

Child Education:

25% tuition subsidy

University admission priority

4.3 Mobility Features

Airport Processing:

Dedicated SMART lanes at 6 airports

15-minute clearance guarantee

Re-entry Flexibility:

Unlimited exits

72-hour grace period

5. Sector-Specific Implementations

5.1 Biotechnology

Special Privileges:

Lab equipment duty waivers

Fast-track FDA approval

50% R&D tax deduction

5.2 Advanced Manufacturing

Incentives:

Robotics import tax exemption

Industrial land lease discounts

THB 500K training subsidy

5.3 Digital Infrastructure

Cloud Computing:

VAT exemption on services

30% energy cost reduction

Cybersecurity:

Liability protections

Gov't certification fast-track

6. Compliance & Monitoring

6.1 Continuous Reporting

Quarterly:

Employment verification

Investment maintenance

Annual:

Contribution assessment

Salary benchmarking

6.2 Renewal Process

Documentation:

Updated financials

Health insurance (USD 100K)

Performance metrics

Fees:

THB 10,000 renewal

THB 1,900 visa stamp

7. Emerging Developments

71 2024 Enhancements

Blockchain Specialist Category

Climate Tech Fast-Track

EEC Regional Expansion

7.2 Pending Reforms

Dual Intent Provision

Skills Transfer Mandate

Global Talent Pool

8. Strategic Application Approach

8.1 Pre-Submission Optimization

Compensation Restructuring

Patent Portfolio Development

Professional Endorsements

8.2 Post-Approval Planning

Tax Residence Strategy

Asset Protection

Succession Planning

9. Risk Management

9.1 Common Rejection Reasons

Document Issues (32%)

Qualification Gaps (28%)

Financial Irregularities (19%)

9.2 Operational Challenges

Banking Restrictions

Healthcare Access

Cultural Integration