#baby i can synthesize ideas from all kinds of media

[sir-subpar]

Can we try? (Zuke x Purl-Hew drabble)

Below the cut! Also, what's their ship name? ZukeHew? Purlzuke? Idk

Summary: Zuke's relationship with romance is complicated, but he's goingg to try again. (More of a warm up oneshot this time. Might do Zuke x Zimelu next)

Author’s note: Rarepair time baby! I was originally going to do Rin x Zuke, as I’ve seen lot’s of cute media of it, but then I had an idea: What about a ship I haven’t seen yet? (It’s so rare, if it were a steak, it’d be mooing.. Either that, or I somehow just didn’t notice it before.)

Zuke's relationship with romance was… complicated.

He didn't dislike the idea of romance. Quite the opposite, really. He wanted to have a partner in life.

The thing is… he was afraid. His last relationship resulted in a bitter, fiery, frightening end.

He shivered at the thought, subconsciously running his hand through his hair. 

Needless to say, he didn't need a repeat of that.

After a while, he came to the conclusion that romance… probably wasn't for him. Even if he wanted it to be. He just gave up trying.

He met Mayday, his best friend, band partner, and roommate. He was glad he met her. 

She was a great friend to have, he felt comfortable around her. Safe. As they shared their love for Rock together. Eventually the idea of romance drifted away from him. He stopped thinking about it.

Then the revolution happened.

It started with Sayu's comment. While she was wrong about his feelings being for Mayday, she did have a point, in a way.

"Ba-bump! Ba-bump!"

"Ba-bump?"

"It means follow your heart Zuke!"

He started thinking about it again briefly, before Mayday refocused everyone on the fight at hand. The revolution continued to be a distraction for Zuke, Yinu and DK West took his mind off it, (even if his brother brought a whole different kind of baggage) it gave Zuke something to prioritize. Until they met 1010.

“Haters gonna hate. When we show up, we get the sexy mission done. You better put on your tactical thermal goggles, ‘cause we’re gonna bring the heat!”

Ugh. So cheezy. It was just like 1010 to say things like that. May fawning over them didn’t help. Neither did the factory constantly dropping more bots each time they broke one, making the whole ordeal last even longer. The whole situation was aggravating to Zuke. At the time, he didn’t get what so many people (including May) saw in these guys.

At the time.

After 1010, there was the battle he dreaded, more than he did Tatiana. 

Nadia.

He missed her. He respected her. He understood her. He loved her…

Then he feared her.

He ran from her. He hid from her. He fought her.

“There is no one… Not even him.”

He comforted her, but still kept her at arm’s length.

When the rock revolution ended, he and May went indie again. Eventually, they became friends with various members of NSR. He began talking with Eve again, even if it was a bit tense. He also found himself bonding with Sayu’s crew, as well as Yinu and her mother. May, of course, quickly got attached to 1010.

Speaking of 1010…

That was what all these thoughts accumulating were about. Zuke had a bit of a dilemma going on.

One of the 1010 members, while as flirty as the rest, had chosen a different target to show his affection to. While most of them focussed on Mayday, one chose Zuke. The blue-haired, sunglass-wearing, boy band android: Purl-Hew.

Yeah, he didn’t know why either.

Well, at first, he didn’t even realize that was the case. 

A tapping on the sewer cover brought Zike out of his nap on the couch. Grumbling for a bit, he climbed up the ladder and pried open for the unexpected guest. 

He had to squint as he was met with a bright blue light. A synthesized voice pierced into Zuke's ears.

"Why does something so beautifully radiant hide away in the sewers rather than gracing the world with your light?"

Zuke rolled his eyes, "Dude, May's not here, you can stop. She'll be back later, I'll tell her you stopped by."

Then he closed the sewer grate, and descended back into his home.

'Huh. Wonder why it was just one of them this time.. Don't they usually do things as a group?'

He figured it was just a weird, one time occurrence.

Then, weeks later it happened again.

The tapping, Zuke opening the grate. Purl-Hew humming out a cheesy pickup line, Zuke telling him that May wasn't home again, and him closing the grate.

Then again. 

And again.

And again.

It became almost a routine at some point.

Weeks of Purl-Hew randomly dropping by. Almost every time it was when Mayday happened to be out.

Another few days went by, and May had gone to see a movie. Originally they were going to see it together, but Zuke's back and legs started acting up and he wanted to stay home and rest.

May offered to stay and help him with anything he'd need, but he insisted he would be fine and she should go still. It took a bit of convincing, but she eventually agreed, on the condition that he'd call someone if he needed help.

So, once again he was alone at home, laying on the couch.

And the tapping happened again.

He let out a frustrated groan.

Reluctantly he pried himself from the couch slowly. If he was careful (and lucky) maybe he'd be able to climb the ladder without hurting himself too much.

The climb was slow and cautious, yet still sharply shot pain up his back as he moved.

He pushed the manhole cover aside, poking his head out into the world above.

Once again, Purl-Hew was back.

Before the android could say anything, Zuke let out an exasperated sigh, already preparing to close the sewer's entrance.

"Dude, again, May isn't here-"

"I know."

Purl-Hew's hand caught the metal cover, preventing Zuke from closing it.

Zuke froze.

"... What?"

"She took Eloni to the movies, so I knew she wouldn't be here. I want to see you." Purl-Hew stated, his tone making it seem like that was an obvious fact.

Zuke tried to read the robot's expression, but with him wearing his signature tinted glasses and his silicon lips pressed into a thin line, it was impossible to read him.

"I uh… why uh… why though?" Zuke quizzed.

The android, despite not needing to breathe, did so just so that he could let out a frustrated sigh.

His hands practice shit to Zuke's sides, hooking under his arms.

Just as fast as he grabbed him, he yanked him out of the sewer and held him above the ground.

Zuke's feet dangled over a foot above the ground. Stunned and shocked, he could barely utter a question before he was interrupted again.

Purl-Hew held Zuke close, almost slamming his lips into Zuke's with a firm but chaste kiss.

Zuke might have been human, but he felt like a computer program crashing. 

All thoughts left him, all he could do was look at the blue bot wide-eyed.

Purl-Hew pulled away, looking Zuke in the eyes.

"Does that answer your question?"

"I- I guess? I mean, yes? But also, why me? When did this," Zuke pointed at himself, "Become a draw for you?" 

The android's jaw dropped. "You're kidding, right?"

"Aren't you?"

"No!" He protested.

"Is it really that hard to believe that I find you attractive?"

Zuke paused, thinking of his response. Purl's tone sounded so genuine, despite his mechanical voice.

"I.. I'm just not used to this. It's not that I see myself as ugly, but I know I'm not anything too special. I'm just… me."  Zuke confessed, shrugging as best as he could in his position. He still was hovering over the ground in Purl-Hew's grasp.

Purl pulled him close, touching their foreheads together.

"I'm very drawn to you, Zuke. You're not only a good looking guy, but you're also loyal. Kind. You have a relaxing atmosphere I've grown to appreciate about you. I like you… I want to spend more time with you, I want to know more about you. Zuke.."

He pecked Zuke on the cheek.

"Will you go out with me? On a date?"

Zuke's heart jumped into his throat.

Could he date someone again? After all this time? Did he want to?

… He wasn't sure how to feel.

But..

He chewed the inside of his lip. Purl-Hew's been trying to get his attention for months, relatively politely too.

He too was putting himself out there. Flirting with someone who's shown zero reaction to it till now. Opening himself up, and letting him be in a vulnerable position.

Zuke took a breath.

"Okay, we can give it a try.."

"Wait- really!?" Purl-Hew's voice raised. Excitement bubbling to the surface, his cheeks glowed a brighter blue.

 

Zuke nodded, avoiding eye contact.

"Y-yeah.. Let's try it out.." 

In a matter of milliseconds, he was pulled into a hug.

"Thanks Zuke. You won't regret it~" 

[terrainofheartfelt]

Serena uploading Blair’s diary entries to the Gossip Girl laptop was one thing (shitty, but maybe forgivable given that she didn’t actually intend to upload them and was Going Through It at the time), but what she did in 5x24 at the Campbell divorce party was something else entirely. Ignoring the dubious consent issues of Serena sleeping with a drunk Dan who wasn’t aware he was being set up or filmed (mega yikes), Serena intentionally set the scene to recreate one of the worst formative moments of Blair’s life. So many of Blair’s insecurities about herself and her relationships stem from Nate cheating on her with Serena on that fucking bar, to the point that it was STILL affecting her in the present day - we’re shown in season 6 that she still doesn’t fully believe that anyone could truly get over Serena, which is part of the reason she decided to get back together with Chuck. For Serena to purposely exploit those insecurities, to force Blair to relive that moment just because she’s mad at her for kicking her out? It’s indefensible. As much as I feel like the whole thing was majorly OOC, if we are considering it canon, then I don’t think Serena deserved to be forgiven by Blair at all - it really should have been the end of their friendship, as shitty as that would have been. But I just don’t see how anyone could get over their best friend doing something so intentionally malicious to them, y’know?

(And again, that’s without even acknowledging the impact that being taken advantage of in such an intimate way must have had on Dan!)

Oohf so I am trying to answer some asks today and I’ve left this sitting for a while because it requires many spoons and mine have all…been in the sink or something. 

And yeah as you have I am going to put the Serena & Dan of it all (mostly) to the side bc it is SO egregious and I am not trying to justify what Serena does because it is awful 

But because you’re bringing this back to Blairena, let’s take it there. 

I’m actually glad I put answering this on hold bc now I can refer you to this excellent piece of meta by Jo. And it really does all come back to 1x04 doesn’t it? Blair thinks she’ll never be enough, but Serena just is, for that fact that she exists — and that’s not Serena’s fault, it’s just who she is, so it has to be Blair’s fault. 

Ok wow I am making myself sad so like, when you frame the relationship this way, it just gives the s5 finale that much more power to hurt you, because Blair has spent her whole life reconciling with how she’s Too Much and Not Enough at the same time, and she finally reaches a moment of arrival with “Dan loves me for me,” bc she doesn’t have to do that math with him anymore. But then, in her eyes, (not what I think was actually happening in this moment in my own reading) Serena takes another person from her, because that’s who she is. And it’s the narrative, right? The story that Blair, more than any of the other mains, except maybe chip, has known how the story is supposed to end. And here it has. And then it adds this extra layer of her going back to chip: she’s never enough, but he hasn’t made that a secret really. The devil you know. Meanwhile Dan is grappling with his own issues of Never Being Enough and Always Being Too Much and gossip!Serena (#notmyserena) captures them both at their weakest moment and confirms their respective fears at the same time. God that is some shakespearean shit. Gossip! Girl! Is! A! Tragedy! 

As for Blairena in the post s5 economy…I’ve been thinking about it a lot, it’s the next knot I’m trying to untangle in my post s5 au. the wounds they have inflicted on each other are so severe, but narratively, I still want them to love each other. So, I guess I’m suspending my disbelief a little bit for the sake of the fiction (which I think is fine! it’s a good thing in media!). And there’s is a friendship that is built for fiction. It’s the true Mythic Relationship of the show, the deep deep love they have for each other counterweighted by the deep deep loathing they have for their own selves, and constantly colliding and revolving and thriving and surviving and destroying each other. 

But with all of that, narratively speaking, they still need each other. 

So, it reads very homoerotic and romantic—which is valid, but if I may broker a pretentious cringe comparison born of another fandom obsession: I’ve always kind of thought of Blairena’s friendship as comparable to the notion of parabatai that is in Cassandra Clare’s Shadowhunter Chronicles Series (I know, I know just let me go there for a sec). So, leaving all the magic and warrior cult context of this fantasy series aside, the parabatai relationship is like a deep, binding platonic devotional bond between two people. They are tied together by faith and ritual, from childhood (that’s actually an important point in these books), a very specific kind of soulmate. Clare uses the ancient greek delineations of love to describe it philia (friendship, brotherly love) & agape (selfless universal love) but not necessarily eros (erotic and/or romantic – for the purposes of this illustration – love). She also references the biblical story of Ruth and Naomi “thy people shall be my people / thy god my god…where thou diest, I shall die, and there they shall bury me” etc etc. I don’t want to get to into it (because I will if I let myself, but this is all just to say, I don’t think the world would spin right if these two were to be estranged forever. They are bonded together, by their shared childhoods, shared traumas, the way they carried each other through their adolescence. The red string of fate is tying them together by their pinky swears.

So I don’t want the friendship to end, but I do think it needs to be given space. In calling back to my au, Mouthful of Forevers, that’s what I’ve done so far. To heal, they absolutely have to be apart for a while, Blair moves to France, Serena starts traveling, yadiyadiyadda. It’s distance that they needed probably since the Pink Party. To grow into themselves, so that when they next see other and really talk, they know enough about their own self that they aren’t threatened by the strength and self-actualization that their best friend now happens, the growth has to happen separately, or it won’t last. 

Which also comes back to 1x04 (shocker), and the way they define themselves in opposition to the other. Because, in this world of wealth they grew up in, they were taught to believe in scarcity. If she has this, that means that I can’t have it too. If Serena is good, then I am bad. If Blair is smart, then I am foolish. If I love her, then I can’t love me. If he loves her, then he cannot love me. If he loves me, he can’t, because who will love her? 

It’s a theological principle my dad and I have talked about (I know, let it go there) the gospel of scarcity vs the gospel of plenty. Ultimately, the gospel of scarcity is a fallacy. There is enough. These girls have enough love within them to give to each other and to themselves. There is enough in the world for them to both be happy. One does not need to tear herself apart to save the other, and she doesn’t need to tear the other apart to save herself. And they have to learn that by being apart for a while, and build a happiness that is outside of their friendship, so that they know when they come back together, that life isn’t going to go away in the presence of the other’s happiness. 

I think what Dan and Serena’s friendship looks like in the aftermath is a whole other post, but I’ll say this: the way he and Serena are tied together is different, because they met at a different point in their lives and to a different end, so I don’t know if Serena’s betrayal of him is worse (given the history she and Blair have) but I think Dan feels it more keenly, and has less qualms about cutting Serena out of his life than Blair would have. Which is also something I am trying to tackle in MoF, once I get back to writing it. It’s all incubating right now while I’m working on the P&P au, but here, have a snippet: 

She had been staring out the window, gazing at the Alps on the other side of the glass, Dan’s head pillowed in her lap while he talked. 

I think – he’d said, After it first happened, I thought it was something we had done together, but the further I get away from it, the more I think she was using me. And I don’t – I don’t know what to do with that.

[edhaneyyy]

Hope Because Humanity Is Within Us

“Being human is given.But keeping our humanity is a choice.” – Ida Protuger

This quote simply showsor tells us that humanity is a choice.Meaning wenare human ourselves but living here in this world, humanity is hard to keep for some of us.

When we get asked, what is humanity? Answering this question is just as easy as a pie. Humanity is the good qualities a human could have. Humanity is our ability to have compassion, care, empathy and love others. Humanity is helping other wherever and whenever, it is being selfless. If humanity is a person, the best example is Mother Teresa. But, the real question is, is there any hope for humanity when some of the human beings keeps on ruining humanity in our world? Our deepest humanity, however, is rooted within the fragility of all of our lives. Unless we work together we are going to be unable to save lots of the earth. If we cannot see that our vulnerabilities, and not our masks of perfection are what bind us to one another, we are going to be left wondering what's wrong with us.

There is such a common scene in human history when the media community says that men have lost their trust in humanity. That's because most people these days are starting to be cruel to themselves and others. They hurt themselves and the people around them. A common problem was the many facts that made this "virus" bigger and affected the whole world. When we talk about humanity, we should think of it only about human life, not because humanity is about humanity, including all humanity on earth. It is also a terminology of the qualities that make us human. For example, the ability to love, be considerate, be creative, and not be a robot or an alien.

We have to keep humanity within us. Why? Because that is our only key to prevent chaos in our modern world. Without a little bit of humanity do you think we can live, sleep peacefully and have friends around us? No. I listed some acts that show humanity from the website Good Housekeeping . ( https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.goodhousekeeping.com/life/inspirational-stories/news/gmp5124/random-acts-of-kindness/)

1. Florence Rescue Force - After Hurricane Florence caused devastating flooding in North Carolina this fall, kindhearted citizens like Amber Hersel jumped into action. The volunteer from the Civilian Crisis Response Team helped rescue 7-year-old Keiyana Cromartie and her family from their flooded home on September 14, 2018 in James City.

2. Donor Network - The decision made by Patricia Almonte (right) to donate the organs of her late 3-year-old daughter Veronica Garcia helped save three lives: Essence Walls (left), an 8-month-old baby, received her heart; a 2-year-old received her liver; and a 68-year-old woman received her kidneys.

3. Canine Heroes - A lucky dog got a ride from some unnamed helpers in the aftermath of Hurricane Matthew two years ago. Photographer Sean Rayford caught these two men pushing a makeshift boat through the floodwaters in Lumberton, North Carolina.

4. Earthquake Heroes - Frida the rescue dog and her trainer Israel Arauz Salinas went viral for their life-saving efforts during the 7.1 magnitude earthquake that shook Mexico City in 2017. The 9-year-old Labrador has detected the bodies of 52 people during her career, and the duo recently received their own statue for their service to the Mexican navy.

5. Helping Hand - American Abbey D'Agostino and New Zealander Nikki Hamblin won a special Olympic commendation for their sportsmanship at the 2016 Rio Games. After Hamblin tripped in a 5,000-meter heat, and brought D'Agostino down with her, the American helped her competitor to her feet. Later on in the race, D'Agostino fell again as a result of her twisted leg, but Hamblin stayed by her side until the finish line.

6. Moments after posing for a fun photograph at a local beauty spot, brave teenager Cheng Changjiang was dead. Despite being unable to swim, Cheng, 18, waded into the lake to save the lives of three young children who had got into trouble in the water. But the brave act cost the teenager – branded a ‘hero’ by onlookers – his life. Cheng was enjoying the public holiday at the rural spot in Xinyang, at Henan province in central China, when tragedy struck.

7. ryclectic’ wrote: “My Buddy Witnessed an Act of Utter Kindness Today…While he was standing on the corner waiting for the crosswalk he saw this woman buy two meals at a street vender and go sit down beside this man and give him one of the meals. She proceeded to introduce herself and talk to him about his life and just shot the [breeze] with him. She wasn’t acting superior, she was his equal, she just wanted to talk to and express inclusion to a fellow human being.”

8. This is a picture of a chap called Tully holding a 46 year old, wheelchair bound man with severe mental handicaps. Tully picked him up so he could go on the hay ride with everyone else. 5 minutes into the ride the man got so excited that he peed all over himself and Tully. Tully sat there soaked in pee for the remainder of the 40 minute hay ride. As soon as it was over he changed the mans clothes before his own. If that doesn’t show character we don’t know what does.

9. I will not let you go. This woman spent 3 hours holding the horse’s head above the tide after it got stuck in the mud on a beach in Australia. The horse was later rescued, unharmed.

10. Strangers Leave her Money While She Gently Sleeps. “alexthegreat90″ wrote: “I took this picture this morning. Ever been somewhere and seen something that amazed you? I’m at the east side McDonald’s and this lady was sitting in front of me sleeping. She has everything she owns in a small backpack. Curled up with her blanket she sleeps not knowing what is going on around her. While she is sleeping everyone is getting their money out and putting it on the table so it’s there when she wakes up.”

These are only few of the acts that restored humanity. These acts showed us that no matter how cruel the world is. There are still people out there who shows kindness and selfless love without any hesitation despite any situation. So what are those things that could destroy our humanity? Stephen Hawking who is known for his work on black holes and gravitational singularities thinks that there are three things that ruin our humanity, but I will only cite two. He have this outspoken ideas about human civilization. Hawking suffers from a nerve cell disease just like amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, which left him paralyzed and unable to talk without a voice synthesizer. But that hasn't stopped the University of Cambridge professor from making proclamations about the wide selection of dangers humanity faces -- including ourselves. He is part of a small group who voiced out their concerns about artificial intelligence.

First, according to Stephen Hawking, “The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race," "The human failing I would most like to correct is aggression. It may have had survival advantage in caveman days, to get more food, territory or partner with whom to reproduce, but now it threatens to destroy us all," The Independent reported. I believe that Hawking here is telling us that AI could destroy us just like in the movie entitled Wall-e, we could see there that the AI are already controlling every move of the humans in the ship. They are dependent to the robot around them and don’t seem to care to anyone. There would be no care, love and empathy left.

Second, if AI won’t kill us, our own self might kill us. For example, a major nuclear war would likely end civilization, and could wipe out the human race, Hawking added. When asked which human quality he would most like to chose, he chose empathy , because "it brings us together in a peaceful, loving state.” Chaos would be everywhere without humanity.

In the current time, we ask ourselves sometimes, where is humanity? There are certain issues in our modern world that made us question ourselves. Despite those, we should look at the brighter side. There are still good people who we have mentioned above.

This year, our humanity is being tested. During this pandemic time we should remember our humanity. On the occasion of taking care of the elderly, and those who are sick and needy. This is what's happening in countless hospitals, clinics and medical aid units round the world, where truth heroes of this ordeal – the doctors, nurses and physicians – are risking their lives to avoid wasting others. This deeper humanity must spread to each street, every neighbourhood, every city and each country if we are to defeat the virus with our science and technology but also showing wisdom, compassion and humanity.

In the event that food and fun are what we were destined to be, there is one thing we should remember. Indeed, even creatures can do such exercises. In the event that God made us human, there must be an explanation behind it. No one but people can comprehend the importance of mankind, and it is humankind because of insight that truly gives the center substance to human presence. You needn't bother with a solid financial balance to add to helpful exercises. Paying your family help reasonably is humankind as well. You're prepared to pay a large number of dollars for your clinical test, yet with regards to paying your collaborator; You need to spare each penny. Compassionate exercises ought to never be embraced to pick up distinction or get a superficial point of interest. You can without much of a stretch accomplish popularity through the work you do. Lifting the weighty sack of an elderly person is humankind, helping an incapacitated individual to go across the road is mankind, helping your mom at work is humankind; truth be told, it is humankind to help whoever needs it. How would we express or show mankind? One approach to show our mankind helping poor people and the individuals who crippled. Additionally utilizing indicating counterfeit mankind to pick up distinction ought to never be one your choice. Did you experience finding a major measure of cash and when you return it, there's the incredible inclination that we can't clarify? Since on the event of indicating our humankind to other people, we have that believing that we can not get.

Humanity is significant in our daily lives. It teaches us to understand the problem and gives us ideas. It helps us understand others. Humanities students specialize in writing and critical reading. Humanity encourages us to think creatively. They teach us to explain why we are human and to ask questions about our world. Humanity produces informed and critical citizens. Democracy cannot flourish without humanity. We all need to assist one another. We humans are like that. We need to live by each other’s bliss – not by each other’s hopelessness. We don’t need to despise and loathe one another. Because that's not what humanity is.

Some may say, we are losing our humanity. No, we are not losing it. We could see it everywhere. It is within us. Humanity is lively and the light is sparkling profoundly within the hearts and souls of numerous individuals from all works of life. They are of all races, societies, social status and religions. It is individuals who see their commitments to the world as their employments and they continuously inquire what can l do to contribute to distant better;a much better; a higher;a stronger; an improved" a stronger world. It’s just that, humanity is covered by our selfishness, our hatred, all negative traits that prevents us from helping and doing good for someone. Never lose hope for we still have humanity stored in us.

https://www.humanitystyle.com/new-page-5

https://kindnessblog.com/2014/11/03/34-examples-of-heart-warming-humanity/

[nathanielbuildsatesseract]

It’s time for a milestone post—my 23,000th post to be precise. It’s been almost a year to the day since I hit 22,000 posts, which is by far the longest I’ve ever taken to hit another round number. After all, I hit 10,000 less than a year after diving into the blue hole.

In fact, the changes in my online habits are were so interesting to me that I went ahead and recorded the date and post-count of every past milestone that I could find. Plotting the data confirms my impressions.

The sharp drop-off around the 10,000 post mark is both because that’s around the time I realized how seriously I’d fucked up my first round of university, and because there’s a large gap where I didn’t record post numbers very well. Oops.

There’s a number of factors behind the ongoing taper. I could attribute it to reduced interest, but that’s a non-answer. For one thing, I still don’t think my actual usage time is down that much (though of course, I don’t have historical data to back me up on that one). What’s actually going on is a bit more complicated.

For instance, I’ve made some friends through the local rationalist meetup who rival anyone I’ve had in meatspace since....honestly, I have no idea. Hanging out with like-minded adults several times a week is pretty great. I’ve also gotten my parents attending more Mensa events (many of the regulars have known me since the baby shower), and of course I’m back in school so I’m talking to other grad students on a regular basis. My offline social life might literally have never been better. A low bar, I know.

Additionally, I’m feeling the weight of certain responsibilities honestly just a touch more, which makes me wary of the whole bottomless pit of infinite scroll. (Okay, actually, I keep my dash is short enough that I could finish it in a few minutes most days, which is kind of the issue: I go looking for additional content on blogs i don’t follow.)

More importantly, though, as my body starts showing signs of senescence—I found my first gray hair back in November, did I tell y’all about that?—I’ve been increasingly cognizant of mortality and my limited time on Terra. Or off it, should those dreams ever play out. I’ve been subtly aware of how online escapism is actually in opposition to achieving my dreams because it placates the ambition centers of my mind. Of course, there’s also avoidance behavior at play; my fanfiction consumption dropped from lots to zero in the first week of winter break. I was on short-form social media so much after that because I got sick.

The big thing is that I’m interacting less and less. I don’t know if this is a good thing. I’m not getting into internet slapfights and interminable debates nearly as often, but I’m also not developing any new friendships. The last time I developed a lasting new relationship online was...2015? 2016? Certainly not in the last two years, even though I definitely have the Dunbar slots available. (I think.)

Where do I go from here? I don’t know. I’m not sure what I want the future of my online presence to look like. I’m not really sure what “what an online presence looks like” really means, for that matter. I get a lot of good entertainment, information, and insight from online spaces, Tumblr especially, but I don’t seem to be saying as much anymore.

Maybe it’s a matter of experienced hands burning out. I’m still in the process of synthesizing and integrating a lot of ideas right now, which means I see a lot of posts that I can tell are wrong, but where I couldn’t explain the wrongness of in a rhetorically concise or compelling manner. I’d rather just write a book, but feedback is extremely important for shoring up the weaknesses in an argument or conceptual structure, so really I do need to be talking to people if I want to make progress. My meatspace circle is better at that than ever but probably not enough to get where I want to go.

Which questions do I want to tackle? Which activities are worth my limited time? What goals do I want to pursue in the near-, mid-, and long-term? I’m still trying to figure that out. I don’t know who I want my off- and online role models to be (and how much overlap I want between those two groups).

Maybe talking about it would help.

[howardstudent]

Baby’s First Literature Review

Racism: Internal and External

Department of Psychology, Howard University

PSYC 016-01: Psychology New Student Orientation

November 11, 2020

Racism: Internal and External

The Black Lives Matter movement in 2020 has sparked a major mainstream conversation about racism in the United States. Different expressions of racism, especially antiblackness, can be observed throughout the world, but most of the literature on racism comes from the U.S. Conversations on antiblack racism in America date back to 1773, when the first African American author was published (Library of Congress). Phyllis Wheatley, the aforementioned author, was not critical of her white oppressors but she did discuss the struggle of being enslaved, though she mainly focused her works around her Christianity (Library of Congress). In the over 200 years since then, a nearly infinite amount of content has been produced on the topic of racism. 

Racism is actually a fairly new concept in human history. “Race” as a word first entered the English language in the late 1500s (Wade). Its earlier meaning was synonymous with “kind” or “type”, and was a more general term (Wade). It was not until the 1700s that it began to be used commonly to refer to humans in a sorting manner. Built into this use of the word was a type of ranking system and in America, European settlers were at the top, followed by the conquered Native Americans, with African slaves holding the lowest rank (Wade). It is important to note that race is not a categorization system based on science. While there are physical differences between races of people, and some genetic qualities may be more common among individuals of a certain race, race is a social construct. This is most obvious when examining concepts like “whiteness”, and how the ingroups and outgroups of whiteness have changed over time. People of Irish descent were at one point not considered white, but now they generally are (Wade). This is not to imply that there are not real life repercussions associated with the concept of race, but rather to add context to the conversation and to further expose how absurd white-supremacy, and racism as a whole, are.

Black people are central to the discussion of racism in America because of the long history of antiblackness. Racism is something black folks are faced with from “crib to coffin” (Jones, 2020). Racism is often treated as a purely external issue, but its influence is so prevalent that it has bred “internal racism” (Sosoo, 2019). Both contribute to the pain, suffering, and oppression of black people. Racism wreaks havoc on black people’s self-image and mental health. Which is worsened by the fact that racism and racial disparities are even commonplace in the medical field. This creates a positive feedback loop where a black individual may seek medical assistance in coping with stress linked to racism they face, and they are then confronted with racism coming from their healthcare providers. 

Shawn Jones (2020) discussed African Americans attempting to cope with racism-related stress throughout their lifetime . It seems as though addressing and even dismantling internalised racism may be tangential to this process. Effua Sosoo studied “The Influence of Internalized Racism on the Relationship Between Discrimination and Anxiety” among college students (2019). Internalized racism further perpetuates racism and it’s deconstruction from within oneself is crucial to helping black Americans cope with and heal from the racism they face.

Jones (2020) breaks down racism throughout a black individual’s life, chronologically, as follows:

To illustrate, research suggests that racism—and not simply racial group—drives the persistent low birth weight disparities among Black babies (De Maio, Shah, Schipper, Gurdiel, & Ansell, 2017). As these children develop, research indicates that they will likely face differential treatment as early as preschool, an age wherein Black children’s suspension rates (48%) are nearly twice those of their White counterparts (26%; U.S. Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights, 2014). The period of adolescence then brings stories such as one in which a 16-year-old Black teen was taunted publicly for eating chicken at a pep rally contest, with video and inflammatory narrative shared across social media by his White peers (Wootson, 2017). As racism persists in early and middle adulthood, Black Americans may contemplate abbreviating their names given persistent biases in hiring practices (Nunley, Pugh, Romero, & Seals, 2015). Racist reverberations extend into older adulthood for Black Americans, with burgeoning research suggesting that poverty and racism raise the risk of developing Alzheimer’s (Alzheimer’s Association, 2017). These correlations and numerous others have been further synthesized by an at-once impressive and disheartening number of reviews linking racism and health or well-being across hundreds of studies spanning the last three decades (see Hope, Hoggard, & Thomas, 2015; Pascoe & Smart Richman, 2009; Pieterse, Todd, Neville, & Carter, 2012; Priest et al., 2013; Williams & Mohammed, 2009). These reviews generally congregate around one reality: that racism is a pernicious and unique stressor, with the potential to thwart the physical, physiological, and psychological health of Black Americans. This developmental overview seeks to add to this growing body of literature, applying a life-course perspective to investigate racism-related stress (RRS) and coping over time. (para. 2)

The study goes on to lay out their parameters, explaining (Jones, 2020),

As articulated by S. P. Harrell (2000) and derived from Lazarus and Folkman’s (1984) broader conceptualization of stress, RRS refers to “race-related transactions between individuals or groups and their environment that emerge from the dynamics of racism, and that are perceived to tax or exceed existing individual and collective resources or threaten well-being” (S. P. Harrell, 2000, p. 44). Harrell describes six prominent types of RRS: (a) racism-related life events (time-limited, specific life experiences), (b) vicarious racism experiences (observation and report of others’ racism experiences), (c) daily racism microstressors (subtle slights and exclusions), (d) chronic-contextual stress (social systemic and institutional racism), (e) collective experiences (“cultural-symbolic and sociopolitical manifestations of racism,” p. 46), and (f) transgenerational transmission (discussions of historical events). Importantly, these various types of racism-related stressors may (and often do) co-occur and interact, as well as interact with other stressors, including general and other-social-roles-related stressors (e.g., sexism, heterosexism, Islamophobia). (para. 5)

Interestingly, internalized racism is not included in any of six types of racism defined by S.P. Harrell. This is important as Sosoo (2019) explains “numerous studies have linked internalized racism to metabolic health (e.g., Chambers et al., 2004), but it has also been associated with psychological distress (Molina & James, 2016; Szymanski & Obiri, 2011)” (para. 2). The study was conducted among college students which fits well into Jones discussion. It concludes with stating that,

Analyses revealed that the relation between racial discrimination and psychological distress may depend on other factors such as levels of internalized racism. A significant interaction was found between racial discrimination and internalization of negative stereotypes such that racial discrimination was associated with increased anxiety symptom distress at T2 for individuals with moderate and high, but not low, levels of internalization of negative stereotypes. (Sosoo, 2020, para. 29)

To give credit where credit is due, both studies show deep analysis. However, Jones’ (2020) study went further in examining coping methods utilized by African Americans, beyond looking at racism from various input sources. Both send a strong message about the importance of addressing racism in America, and both point out the negative physical and mental effects racism has on black people. They both argue for a reduction of prevalence of racial stereotypes and racial discrimination. Sosoo’s study reveals that individuals who experience internalized racism “are more likely to report experiences of anxiety symptom distress, such as distress from feeling tense or scared” (2019, para. 29). This is potentially explained by the idea that their “experiences of racial discrimination may serve as a confirmation of these negative views, leading to psychological and physiological symptoms of anxiety” (Sosoo, 2019, para. 29). Therefore it is vital that all forms of racism must be considered, addressed, and dismantled for the sake of black people’s overall health, happiness, and wellbeing.

References

Jones, S. C., Anderson, R. E., Gaskin-Wasson, A. L., Sawyer, B. A., Applewhite, K., & Metzger, I. W. (2020). From “crib to coffin”: Navigating coping from racism-related stress throughout the lifespan of Black Americans. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 90(2), 267-282. doi:10.1037/ort0000430

Library of Congress. (n.d.). Revolutionary Period (1764-1789). Retrieved November 11, 2020, from http://www.americaslibrary.gov/jb/revolut/jb_revolut_poetslav_1.html#:~:text=Wheatley grew up to be,learn to read and write?

Sosoo, E. E., Bernard, D. L., & Neblett, E. W. (2020). The influence of internalized racism on the relationship between discrimination and anxiety. Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology, 26(4), 570-580. doi:10.1037/cdp0000320

Wade, P. (2020, July 28). The History Of The Idea Of Race. Retrieved November 11, 2020, from https://www.britannica.com/topic/race-human/The-history-of-the-idea-of-race

[upalldown]

Taylor Swift - Folklore

Surprise release of the eighth album from the pop artist produced by longtime collaborator Jack Antonoff and The National's Aaron Dessner

10/13

Eavesdrop on any Twitter thread between creatives during the last few months, and you’ll inevitably find conversations about artistic paralysis—and self-immolation derived from artistic paralysis. After all, while stories abound about how creativity is flourishing despite the global pandemic, that’s not a comfort to those who can’t stop doomscrolling or find themselves awake at 3 a.m. with crippling anxiety. Not everyone has the capacity at the moment to come up with a great novel or hit song; sometimes a successful sourdough starter is more within reach.

Taylor Swift is one notable exception to this rule. “Most of the things I had planned this summer didn’t end up happening, but there is something I hadn’t planned on that DID happen,” she wrote on Instagram on Thursday: an entirely new 16-song album, folklore, written and recorded in isolation and unveiled to the world with less than a day’s notice before release.

That Swift would be able to create a fully realized body of work is no surprise. Her work ethic has always been admirable, largely because it’s so immune to outside distractions. As a songwriter, Swift is unflappable, her observational faculties razor-sharp and keen, even when dealing with serious stuff: harsh critics, traumatic breakups, personal anguish, family stress, and now a pandemic.

But it’s clear being forced to alter 2020 plans compelled Swift to jettison precedent. While she again worked with long-time collaborator Jack Antonoff on folklore, she also teamed up with several intriguing new creative partners. These include Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon, who co-wrote and sang on “Exile,” and multiple members of The National. Aaron Dessner co-wrote or produced 11 of folklore’s 16 songs, while his twin brother Bryce contributed occasional orchestration, and drummer Bryan Devendorf and touring member Ben Lanz also took part. The album’s credits reveal even more collaborators, who contribute strings, horns, and other lush, luxurious instrumentation.

Unsurprisingly, folklore is a different album from what we’ve heard from Swift before. Although honeyed piano is prominent, gone are the brash beats and rainbow-hued textures of recent vintage. Instead, songs incorporate shivering strings, hushed synthesizers and keyboards, and subtle splotchy grooves. Songs echo other artists—the dreamy haze of Cocteau Twins (“august”) or Sarah McLachlan’s glacial piano work (“epiphany”)—and exude majestic orchestral-folk vibes. But it’s not correct (or fair) to say this is Swift fronting The National, or her releasing her own Man Of The Woods. If anything, folklore often feels like the photo negative of 1989, an album that also possessed a cohesive sound and a vision driven by texture and atmosphere.

This direction makes a lot of sense for Swift. The most striking tracks on her previous two albums—the introspective piano ballad “New Year’s Day” and the dusky, watercolor-tinted “Lover”—were relatively unadorned and lyrically vulnerable. On Lover especially, Swift refined the always-precarious line between personal confessions and universal sentiments. “Soon You’ll Get Better,” a tearjerking song about her mom’s cancer, was an emotional suckerpunch with both broad and specific appeal. This songwriting progression paralleled her personal evolution. Both Lover-era interviews and the 2020 documentary Miss Americana found Swift becoming more comfortable finding a balance between her public and private lives. “I needed to make boundaries, to figure out what was mine and what was the public’s,” she told Rolling Stone. “That old version of me that shares unfailingly and unblinkingly with a world that is probably not fit to be shared with? I think that’s gone.” Yet as her increasingly vocal social media posts underscore, she’s choosing to speak up when it matters—and is now making it even more explicitly clear what matters to her.

Swift also brings her usual sharp-eyed specificity to “exile,” on which a protagonist eviscerates a jealous ex: “I can see you staring, honey / Like he’s just your understudy.” And she weaves in personal details as bread crumbs throughout the lyrics, referencing her Rhode Island residence, Holiday House (“the last great American dynasty”), notorious reputation (“Cold was the steel of my axe to grind / For the boys who broke my heart / Now I send their babies presents”), and carefree youth (“Before I learned civility / I used to scream ferociously / Any time I wanted”).

In this way, the Dessners are the perfect foils for Swift’s ideas on folklore. For all of their ornate arrangements, the brothers’ collaborations exude the kind of sonic intimacy that centers vocalists, and gives them the space to stretch out. For example, Aaron Dessner recently collaborated with former R.E.M. frontman Michael Stipe on “No Time For Love Like Now,” a brittle and gorgeous song with nuanced, delicate singing. On folklore, this approach appears on the ornate standout “invisible string”—a gorgeous folk song with stair-step acoustic riffs and heart thump-steady vocal backbeats—a variety of colors (green grass, a teal shirt, gold leaves) come together to explain a great romance.

With references to an “American singer” and a dive bar, it’s tempting to view “invisible string” as being about her long-term relationship with the British actor Joe Alwyn. However, folklore’s protagonists aren’t necessarily perfect analogs to Swift herself. “In isolation my imagination has run wild and this album is the result, a collection of songs and stories that flowed like a stream of consciousness,” she wrote about the songwriting. “Picking up a pen was my way of escaping into fantasy, history, and memory.” folklore’s songs are about widows, love triangles, the indelible imprint of young love, infidelity, Swift’s grandfather. Taken together, they resemble someone flipping through snapshots housed in a yellowing photobook.

In this way, the Dessners are the perfect foils for Swift’s ideas on folklore. For all of their ornate arrangements, the brothers’ collaborations exude the kind of sonic intimacy that centers vocalists, and gives them the space to stretch out. For example, Aaron Dessner recently collaborated with former R.E.M. frontman Michael Stipe on “No Time For Love Like Now,” a brittle and gorgeous song with nuanced, delicate singing. On folklore, this approach appears on the ornate standout “invisible string”—a gorgeous folk song with stair-step acoustic riffs and heart thump-steady vocal backbeats—a variety of colors (green grass, a teal shirt, gold leaves) come together to explain a great romance.

With references to an “American singer” and a dive bar, it’s tempting to view “invisible string” as being about her long-term relationship with the British actor Joe Alwyn. However, folklore’s protagonists aren’t necessarily perfect analogs to Swift herself. “In isolation my imagination has run wild and this album is the result, a collection of songs and stories that flowed like a stream of consciousness,” she wrote about the songwriting. “Picking up a pen was my way of escaping into fantasy, history, and memory.” folklore’s songs are about widows, love triangles, the indelible imprint of young love, infidelity, Swift’s grandfather. Taken together, they resemble someone flipping through snapshots housed in a yellowing photobook.

https://music.avclub.com/taylor-swift-writes-her-own-version-of-history-on-folkl-1844498450

[my-book-reviews]

Tribe

3/5/19

Summary

Short and sweet. Junger did a crap load of research and synthesized it nicely in a 80 page book. No filler, just gets straight to the point.

Self-determination theory - human beings need 3 basic things to be happy: competence in their specialty (techne), feel authentic and autonomous in their lives, deep connection with others

Keeping this in mind, Junger primarily focuses the book on the connection part of that equation and makes some very interesting points. The human race’s sense of community is what has allowed us to survive for tens of thousands of years. Back in the day when your entire family could easily be massacred by a saber tooth and your baby could instantly die from bacterial infections with you being unable to do anything about it, it was important to be apart of a tight-knit community. By staying close together, you could split the focus and task members with different aspects of survival such as hunting, building shelter, and nursing children. Everyone had a role and each person had a huge responsibility in the tribe. If one person messed up, it would mean death to everyone, so it was expected that you did your job right. And in doing so, the entire tribe would receive the fruits of your labor as you receive their fruits as well. 

The main thesis of this book is that humans are hard-wired for this type of community-centered living, but the western world has lost touch with this type of connection. Junger argues that our affluent lifestyle has allowed us to not worry about danger and live very comfortable. We don’t need to talk to our neighbors to trade food or support each other's house construction, we have everything we need to survive nowadays. As lucky as we might be, it is also a curse. Never have we seen depression and anxiety rates so high, and a western theme of gluttony for gratification and self-centeredness has only isolated us from the people around us. The internet and social media only bolsters this isolation (when used immaturely of course, but that’s the majority). 

It’s the adversity that use to draw us together, and that’s what kept us connected. It gave us meaning, a significant role in our society. That’s why many veterans miss war. It gave them brothers and sisters, who they were willing to die for... it gave them absolute meaning. 

The main point is, if we want to survive what scientists call the sixth extinction, we must reconnect with this fundamental evolutionary need. We need to shift our focus to community building and selflessness. We must be able to sacrifice our time and resources to help others. In doing so, the world will gain so much more and all of us will thrive.

Favorite Quotes:

“...home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.”

‘[Both] the most affluent and the most miserable of the human race are to be found in the countries that are called civilized.”’

“When people are actively engaged in a cause their lives have more purpose… with a resulting improvement in mental health”

“...social bonds were reinforced during disasters, and that people overwhelmingly devoted their energies toward the good of the community rather than just themselves.”

“’I asked Ahmetašević if people had ultimately been happier during the war. ‘We were the happiest,” Ahmetašević said. Then she added: ‘And we laughed more.’”

“Adversity often leads people to depend more on one another, and that closeness can produce a kind of nostalgia for the hard times that even civilians are susceptible to.”

“There seemed to be a great human potential out there, organized around the idea of belonging, and the trick was to convince people that their interests had more in common than they had in conflict”

“...belonging to society requires sacrifice, and that sacrifice gives back way more than it costs.”

Takeaway

Being apart of a community and experiencing adversity with that tribe is essential to living a fulfilled life. Find that community. Be a big contributor. Give for others well-being and don’t expect anything for return. That is how you find meaning in life. Serve something greater than yourself and you no longer have to ask yourself whether you belong. 

[welcometomy20s]

March 19th, 2020

Warren’s Gamble (and other musings)

This is a rumination of a Medium post and the response regarding the need for unification in the current Democratic party after the climatic win on Tuesday.

I have talked throughout this blog about my waffling decision between Warren and Bernie. I liked what Bernie was trying to do, but I felt Warren was actually more effective at what Bernie was achieving... and instead nothing came forth.

One of the comments that I’m starting my inquiry is how one said Warren’s biggest difference with Bernie was that Warren was trying to bridge the gap. I agree with that, and that is a key point in the tragedy of the campaign. To re-interpret the story I have told countless times, Warren’s tragedy was the realization that the two sides of the party were more separated than thought.

I think this what Warren, or least her campaign believed. That center and the left of the party were essentially going for the same objectives, but have different paths. Best way must to be synthesize the two paths. That would have worked, until they realized the center actually had very different objectives in mind.

Why did the center have a different objective? Honestly, I think they were responding to the rightward shift in the Republican party. Centrist Democrats wanted civility in the chamber foremost, so they just shifted their position as the Republicans slowly shifted rightward. But did the rightward shift happen?

To explore that question, we must go back to the days of Roosevelt. The defeated Right slowly built their adversarial tactics and by the time we get to the 50′s, organizations were starting to form. They had their first triumph in having Nixon be the running mate of Eisenhower, their next triumph was putting Goldwater against Johnson in the election of 1964.

I’m going to take a scenic break and talk about the Democratic Presidents in the modern era. Roosevelt was brilliant in my minds, but Johnson I admire more, because I think he displays the magnificent combination of political smarts and passion for idealism. Throughout the New Deal, the Right was waiting for the New Deal to crack. In a multicultural democracy, Keynes-ism for one group was not going to work indefinitely, eventually the safety net had to be expanded.

It was good thing that we had Johnson heading that effort, because he believed in the ideal to help the people he hated the most, which was black people. He knew that his distaste couldn’t deny the fact that having everyone covered would be good for the whole country, and he did his best to try to make that happen. That’s kind of rhetoric that Bernie like to use, and I think we sorely need for our ideal to pass over the hatred that we espouse. Bernie Bro might hate you, but they will fight to the death to give you expanded Social Security and Medicare. They are going to make your lives better, even if you think they hate you, and they do, honestly. They still care about you. All the shouting comes from care.

After the painful defeat in 1964, the Right learned two things. Right might not be good at making stuff, but they are good at learning. They learn the important thing to build was to have a slate of judges ready at the back end, and good media strategy in the front end. What unites Roosevelt, Johnson and Obama was their media strategy. Roosevelt got lucky the method of communication went for people speaking in porches to radio transmission, so that people didn’t have to comment on your disability. Johnson masterfully crafted Goldwater as an existential threat and media didn’t stop Johnson. Obama’s message of Hope and Change in 2008, and his brilliant populist attack on Romney in 2012 was the main reason the ‘legacy’ of Obama’s administration exist in the first place.

So, after trying to needle through with Nixon, they eventually found themselves in the stardom of Reagan, and they were able to put their agenda to work. This worked for forty or so years, until series of big crashes happened.

At this point, I’m actually going to pivot to the Democratic side. Roosevelt always struggled with the eventuality of expanding the safety net. Truman did too. By the time Kennedy barely won the election, the brewing was too strong. Fortunately the hope of Kennedy and cunning of Johnson got things through. But by the end of Johnson, the demands were growing too fast for the economy to appreciate. The Left now threatened to shake up the entire economy and the technology wasn’t grown fast enough to accommodate. Democratic party didn’t know what to do with the resurgent Left, and eventually tried to crush it, they didn’t even if they won (in 1968) or they lost (in 1972) and they didn’t know what the Left was going to do. While the ideas of Right were familiar, the ideas of The Left were not. They didn’t know how to do social democracy. They didn’t want to know. So they tried to run away, and in that running they moved to the right.

Around the same time, technology shifted. I think one of the most fascinating argument against faking of the moon landing was the fact that media technology in 1969 was not good enough to fake the moon landing. We don’t quite recognize the incredible rise of media over infrastructure after the crisis in 1970′s. This was coming from the new winners. In the rise of media technology, PBS (a brilliant strategy by the Right to fund their own supposed opposition) created An American Family, and with the end of the Fairness Doctrine, the concept of Reality TV was starting to become institutionalized.

There was reality TV in 1950′s, but it was still a niche subject, and hearkened back to people standing crowded in a theater. By the time TV started to showcase reality and reality became more bizarre, people were starting to get used to the blurring of reality and fiction. Then recording media became plenty.

Yesterday, I had mentioned that I have been going through the history of what the documentarian called Unfiction. The narrator talked about the rise of the internet and viral campaigns in the turn of the millennium and how the idea of unfiction started to form. Narrator also mentioned ‘kayfabe’ and Professional Wrestling... which became an industry in the ‘70s, ‘80s and the ‘90s.

I think I need to append an extra part to Unfiction, and it’s super important, because, well, you know where we’re going. Right took on the idea of unfiction and ran away with it, eventually producing a president known as Trump, who famously played in unfiction. He was bolstered in his way of saying This Is Not A Game. This is a real business, this is a real deal-making, this is not a game.

At this point, I think I’m going to consider the Left’s conception of Unfiction. I always felt that UK was a strong democracy, because there was a sense of play in their politics. They knew all the pomps were silly and that meant they could focus on the circumstances. The pomp gave the scaffolding, but the real work could be done inside. They were able to make bold moves when needed.

Then the Third Way happened. They made a dangerous move by taking the pomp seriously. Taking the norm seriously. Building a government around the scaffolding rather than... probably anything else. It was as if Baby Boomers died in the ‘70s, and became a ghost, diddling around the same routine, thinking they would make them sane, when they crossed that river a long time ago. 

The Left resurged in the face of that. They know all the institutions are constructions, but the fact that they are constructions means we can focus on the material conditions and work to change the institution to fit our current need.

(Break - God I know how absurdly long this post is, but I realize we are not nearly done yet, and also I already have an idea for the next post in the series. So I actually have to continue this post. So, please stick around for a bit longer)

Okay, with that, let’s cut to the chase. What Obama created in 2008 was a Golden Coalition, one that could ushered in a Green New Deal and Medicare for All, but Obama promptly forgotten that... as in like he just forgot, as if he didn’t realize how momentous the coalition was. Democrats decayed, while Republican built fortresses and started to amp their unfiction tactics. The ruminant grumbles eventually became part of the unfiction and that was it. For most, this should be the time they should have abandon the planet. Democrats apparently didn’t know what is coming even if they stumbled across the answer! Answer smacked them right in the face! And they didn’t do anything!

It is because they are dead. They are haunting the halls of Capitol, their only job is to remain and to keep the hall standing. They do not have any beliefs, they were crushed a long ago, and they are too scared to be shrewd. I thought Sinema would be a shrewd politician, but she became more of a scaredy cat.

We live in the twilight of the Sixth Cycle, and if we cannot innovate away from the grips of the internet, once the promised land, now perverted by the Right, this would be the endless twilight. The system would collapse in the worse way. Inwards, killing all the people inside, and yet have the structure standing.

The gaudy McMansions that only showcase our worst impulse would be what grazes the world after we’re gone. We would be seen as mad savages, who have gone blindness with the knowledge of creativity. We would not deserve any form of pity. We would be worse than failures, we would be disgrace to the idea of sentience itself. Others would hide our planet in shame and spit on them.

But we know we can do better. We know. Can we actualize it? I don’t know as of this moment, but I want to die trying. I want to die with hope and brightness in my faculties. I don’t want to be a ghost. I want to be a phoenix.  

[theseventhhex]

Gang Gang Dance Interview

Lizzi Bougatsos, Josh Diamond & Brian Degraw

Photo by Ari Marcopoulos

Gang Gang Dance marks their return with the release of ‘Kazuashita’: their new full length record. ‘Kazuashita’ is an intoxicating mix of shoegaze and electronic ambience, all held together by Lizzi Bougatsos and her otherworldly vocals. Bougatsos, alongside founding members Brian DeGraw and Josh Diamond, formed the group as an improvisational outfit in the early 2000s, and have consistently worked to blur the boundaries between music and art; as comfortable today performing at the Whitney Biennial as they are at Coachella, and count Dash Snow & Nate Lowman, Tinchy Stryder and the Boredoms as previous collaborators. With Brian DeGraw self-producing, the album was recorded in whatever space would play host to them. The band were joined by a number of collaborators including drummer / percussionist Ryan Sawyer and Jorge Elbrecht (Ariel Pink / Lansing Dreiden) who was enlisted for additional production and the mixing of the album. Gang Gang Dance’s two decade career has never acknowledged a barrier between the art and music worlds – consistently offering an impressive array of diverse sounds across seven releases to their credit. ‘Kazuashita’ epitomises this hard working group of individuals with a body of work that is truly captivating and immersive… We talk to Josh Diamond about recording in various spaces, the perils of social media and imaginary celebrity guest lists…

TSH: After a seven-year break, how would you sum up the band dynamic and chemistry as ‘Kazuashita’ began to take shape?

Josh: I think we are coming together in a new way and I think we are still forming our dynamics as we are starting to play gigs again, so the record maybe started the process but now the dynamics are beginning to take form even more. I guess for better or for worse we are adults now and I think we are doing the band because it is very special to us, so we can perhaps voice things we wouldn’t have been able to with each other years ago. I think everyone has been feeling very positive about our project and we have so much history together, therefore I think we can approach it with extra love and respect - I think the break helped this to happen.

TSH: It’s been noted that there was a conscious effort to configure the arc of the record as one piece of music. Do you feel this is why it works as a whole piece of music so well?

Josh: For most of our records we have tried to make a more or less seamless listening experience, where songs and interludes run together and we often do a similar style in our live sets. That said I do feel this record has a kind of narrative arc that works very well as a single piece of music. I find that listening to it as a whole piece of music is more interesting than listening to it chopped into individual “songs”.

TSH: With the album being recorded in New York studios and art spaces, this was very much a different process due to the band being in various places through the whole thing; until close to the end – was this a challenging way to work or did you simply take it in your stride?

Josh: I think it was a challenging way for us to work, it really was a new sort of process for us and it wasn’t always easy. I really like the immediacy of the material coming together with everyone improvising/being in the same zone together. I think having a different process this time around was a good learning experience and also yielded interesting results. A challenge is good and a difference in process can be as well, some avenues perhaps close but others open up. I think it was good for us to even attempt something new.

TSH: In terms of themes and narratives, what sort of subject matter does the album primarily reflect upon?

Josh: Well I can’t speak for everyone, as I’m sure different people and other band members could have slightly different ideas about this. I think in some ways it is difficult to extract our history as a group for so many years from what I feel as far as the themes and narratives of the record. I think it has to do with the passage of time, the fragility and beauty of our planet, and how we are destroying it. Also, the madness of social technology which can be used to create beauty but can separate us from a more pure human experience, and isolate us. I think it’s both despairing and hopeful with more hope than despair. It’s about our family that we have made together through Gang Gang, the title comes from our dear friend Taka’s baby.

TSH: For your guitar work on this release, did you experiment with any new techniques and gear?

Josh: I am always trying to expand my palette on the guitar, a lot of the guitar on the record was done with overdubs, mostly due to the process that was brought up before - that we were in different places for most of the recording process. So each song, or each little part might end up with a different sound or effect depending on what fit to the song in that moment. Jorge, who did a lot of production work in the last leg of the recording helped me dial in a lot of sounds. As for new gear, I normally play the guitar synthesizer and trigger a bunch of synths and samplers as well as the normal guitar sound. On this record I did less of that and mostly played straight (as straight as I get, ha!) guitar, so I guess gear-wise it was a bit stripped down for me.

TSH: What was the process like as the band fleshed out and structured the excellent track ‘Lotus’?

Josh: The track started on Brian’s Electribe - he had a basic skeleton of the song including a melody line that I ended up playing and embellishing on the guitar. I went upstate where Brian was living at the time and him and Liz and I worked out a live version - just the three of us that we performed once at a small venue up there. Then we recorded it, it went through some editing and I think we reworked it again at some point. I remember it used to have a different ending that was scrapped at some point. A lot of this record started very simply, then was reworked and rearranged over a longer period of time.

TSH: Moreover, can you tell us more about ‘Young Boy (Marika in Amerika)’ originating from improvisation…

Josh: I guess what I consider the centering part of the song - the guitar and synth line that happens in the beginning and re-emerges in the chorus, this part was improvised. There was improvisation in our entire process, not just in this song, but the larger process I think this was done through re-editing and re-approaching songs until they felt right.

TSH: Lizzi’s vocal style has always been so stellar. What’s it like to see her style close up and to see her add unique touches to compositions?

Josh: Lizzi is very unique - she comes up with melodies that I think defy expectation - there isn’t anyone quite like her at all. It’s always exciting to hear her vocals on some instrumental that Brian and I have been working on - a song form we have can be completely transformed and elevated when she adds her vox, often in ways that surprise me, despite having worked together for so long.

TSH: You’ve previously talked about wanting the live shows to be a separate medium to the record releases. Are there certain changes that you’re looking to imply for the evolution of your upcoming live shows?

Josh: I love the immediacy of our live shows, and I think we will continue to try and bring that when we perform. We are currently performing some of the material from the new record in our live shows, but we often change our live material from our recorded material and I think they are very much different experiences. We are currently playing a version of ‘Kazuashita’ that feels very cathartic to perform; it has elements and melodies from the recorded version but is also very different. I really like the live version actually - it’s one of my favorite songs of ours to play at the moment.

TSH: I understand that Lizzi became a huge fan of London’s grime music scene many years ago. Has she been delving into the resurgence of UK grime in the last few years?

Josh: We were all into grime many years ago. We heard some of the pirate radio stuff happening in the early 2000’s, through a friend of ours Oliver Payne. I remember I had a cassette set called ‘UK crews 2003’ that we used to listen to a lot which had Roll Deep on it. Grime was definitely an influence (particularly the grime live radio sets from that time) on our early sound. Tynchy was on a jam from our record Saint Dymphna and we did a show with JME years ago. I don’t know if Liz still follows what’s going on now? I personally like the original raw sound from back then and haven’t really gotten into much of the resurgence. I am open though, if you have any recommendations on what to listen to?

TSH: Having never been on social media, what are your views on this medium in general?

Josh: I am sort of terrified of it but interested at the same time. I come from a time when being humble, or self-deprecating, or mysterious, or not wanting to share every intimate detail about your social life was sort of the cooler way to roll. I like meeting up with people in real life and having conversations into the night. I do think social media entails very real risks. I think it can isolate individuals. People get all of this validation from how many “likes” they can get, and this becomes a sort of addiction - it’s an artificial world in many ways, and people just get lost in it. Of course everyone has experienced the modern phenomenon where people are out somewhere with friends but everyone is on their phone, and no one is actually experiencing their actual time together? Somehow the artificial world becomes more important than the one we are living in together. I think it’s also sort of problematic to share such a large part of yourself with giant corporations that spy on you, and target you for ads. It’s nice info for the government to have as well, which they may or may not do anything invasive with, but you never know what sort of corrupt demagogue could be the next president - we have Trump now so clearly there are terrible possibilities - it all makes me a bit paranoid. Another danger of social media is group thought - while it can be a very good medium to organise protest (which I think is positive) it can be very dangerous to have so many people so aligned instantly with some idea that can often be dangerous. Beyond social media I think we are living in an age where information has in some sense flattened our experience of time. No matter where we are we can Google what something is or access a piece of information that would be sought out through means not as instantaneous. We can instantly go on YouTube and be exposed to music that in previous times would have been very difficult to find - one could perhaps naively imagine that it was special somehow because to discover something new could be difficult. I think before there was more of a sense of history, and healthy respect and admiration for those who came before you which was learned with experience - like living in the lower east side with the remnants of Warhol’s factory crew... now this experience of the connection to our past is all easily obtained from an online search. There is something which is good about all of this information being available at all times - it is very helpful, and it makes communication around the world so much easier, and information is probably meant to be free. Still, there are certain dangers, particularly with the social component that I am uncomfortable with. It truly is “everything time” as Taka said on our previous record.

TSH: How have your solo show ventures been since you started a year ago?

Josh: I’ve really enjoyed them. The first one I did felt like a giant accomplishment for me personally - I am somewhat shy about what I do, and am more comfortable collaborating, but it felt so good to be able to get in front of people on my own and play. I would like to do more of them in the future and I really want to make a record as well. A lot of the stuff I make feels half-formed to me and it usually prevents me from releasing it - still I think there is something nice about this suspended quality. Playing a live set was my attempt to “finish” loose ends-because if I can play for 45 minutes with a beginning and an end it turns into something that is whole, at least for the night I do it. I want to record the live set as well and am hoping to put something out there in the coming year.

TSH: What brings about most vocal input and band laughter when Gang Gang Dance is on tour?

Josh: Ah, anything can set us off into laughter. I am fond of the imaginary guest lists we make of random celebrities who will be “attending” our gigs.

TSH: Outside of music, how do you maintain a positive headspace?

Josh: It’s so tough, ha! Music is a special medicine for me. I’ve been making music since I was 4 years old which is needless to say a long time ago. I guess I sort of depend on it to keep myself focused in as positive a direction as I can manage. When I’m not doing music I often don’t maintain a positive headspace and I am prone to depression. However, I do like taking walks - a simple but effective way to keep your brain and body in a state of positive flux.

TSH: Finally, looking ahead with Gang Gang Dance, what matters most with your musical endeavours?

Josh: I want it to continue. I love Gang Gang. I have grown up with this band and have invested so much of my creative energy and time into this thing that we started to build so many years ago. I care deeply about our music, and feel like we have so much more we can create. I think what matters most at this point is maintaining a proper balance with the band and our separate lives. We aren’t in our twenties anymore, and we also have never really had “financial” success or whatever that means these days. I want us to do the things we want to do together and ignore the noise that tells us we have to do this thing or that thing for our career, which can put too much pressure on this project that we do only because we care about it, and each other, and because we want to - not because we will get rewarded for it somehow. If we can find a balance, we will make more music and more records, and I am very hopeful about this. I think we can figure it out, haha!

Gang Gang Dance - “Lotus”

Gang Gang Dance - “Young Boy (Marika in Amerika)”

Kazuashita

[queerasinfvckyov]

"#the rest of us on this particular blue hellsite #just send our conspiracy theories off into the wilderness #for the consumption of the others trapped here" i think this is quite a naive look at the larrie hive mind & the way fandom on tumblr operates. some of the things i see on here are just as problematic as twitter or instagram posts i see. the misogyny is rife, the verbal abuse of a CHILD is rife. i don't give a shit about larry either way, but big larries on here spread harmful [1/3]

misinformation & perpetuate harmful stereotypes of the lgbt+ community, and also focus on larry so much that their shipping is invasive in so many ways. i think shipping is fine if it stays within the realms of fandom, but having been a larrie and seeing it all on the outside now, i would say the majority of larries do not operate purely within fandom with their theories, and the families and friends of larry are often affected by their behaviour. this goes without mentioning the fact that [2/3]

the private lives of harry and louis (& the others, too) is actually none of our business. the laser beam focus on their love lives is nosy and disrespectful and sets a bad precedent for other, more impressionable fans who get this idea that someone’s relationship and someone’s sexuality defines them. and this is why shipping larry needs to 1) stay in fandom, and 2) stop morphing into ACTUAL real BELIEF that they are together. it doesn’t matter whether they are - it’s not our business [3/3]

Those tags were meant to be facetious, so I think that might be where you’re getting that sense of naivety? Obviously there’s definitely a lot of bs that goes on in the larrie part of the fandom on tumblr, too. I suppose I was just referencing more generally that there’s a lot more focus on rambly meta headcanon-y content analysis sort of content that I think probably takes up more focus on here than on the other platforms (if it occurs there at all? I’m not really sure how twitter and insta deal with that type of content but I digress). 

However, I will definitely have to disagree with you on the “larrie hive mind” bit. Like I’m genuinely surprised you’d get that kind of impression because there is a ridiculous amount of difference in the kinds of opinions larries hold on a variety of topics. I think the only defining characteristics you could say about larries is that we all believe hl are a thing and still together--even depending on the larrie you follow the stuff about the baby can differ (for example, some prefer not to talk about it which is fair). 

I’m not sure what big larries you’re thinking of when you say they spread misconceptions of the queer community, because, and bear in mind I’m not familiar with all the “big larries” in the fandom (I’m terrible with keeping track of most blogs I don’t follow), the ones I am aware about are part of the queer community themselves???? Sorry I don’t follow your logic here. 

And for the rest of the ask I’d say we fall on opposite grounds here, anon. I do agree we shouldn’t bother their friends and family members, but I don’t think that necessarily has to do with being a larrie or not. Fans in general shouldn’t bother their family members and bring fandom to the family, so to speak, however one engages with fandom (you know, don’t break the fourth wall and all that--FOR EVERYBODY, although that obviously isn’t always practiced but regardless it’s my personal philosophy). I mean fine, if people are sharing things on public social media like and share the pictures or whatnot because the family is posting it publicly (I assume; I don’t follow any of the family on sm so I could be wrong here) so that’s cool, but don’t bother the family. However, I firmly disagree that the simple belief (ie, that hl are together) and acting a certain way (operating under that assumption and blogging and creating content based on that belief) within fandom  confines needs to change based on the feelings of people who are supposed to be outside the fandom. 

Building on that, I don’t understand why if blogging about harry and louis (as well as the others) and their music and hl’s relationship in particular as I perceive it is nosier than, say, the way that their relationships (particularly louis’) are put front and centre during is musical promo and in newspapers and on his social media if one believes things that way. Why are the larries considered nosy and disrespectful and causing problems for simply believing one ‘reality’ (if you want to call it that) and engaging in fandom accordingly but not the media or the het fans or freddies or neutrals or whatever you want to call them for believing another and engaging in fandom accordingly? This is under the assumption of course it’s kept in-fandom because I believe we are in agreement on that point. 

Also, it’s not my personal business or responsibility to teach other fans that people aren’t defined by their sexuality or their relationships. If that’s the idea they’re getting from fandom that’s something they really need to think critically about on their own because, frankly, that’s a bigger problem than something that would come from larrie-specific business as far as I’m concerned. 

More generally, I don’t really understand the none of our business argument? Like, speaking for me personally (and I assume a lot of other larries? at least the ones I tend to follow and am friends with), I didn’t come to the conclusion that hl are together because I asked around and bothered people for information, it was genuinely just through watching 1d videos and seeing the matching tattoos pointed out. Like...is the expectation that people don’t come to conclusions based on how they perceive the information in front of them? Like I get that in the case of value judgments, for sure. 

But if I see two people I don’t personally know acting like a couple (or what I perceive to be couple-like based on certain standards, both personal and societal) and come to the conclusion that they are a couple I’m not sure how it’s a matter of somebody’s business or not? Because again, I don’t mean going out of your way to ask somebody or bother somebody about it (as one should not do if one is a respectful fan, larrie or not) because it’s none of your business in that sense for sure. I mean simply looking at scenarios/objective evidence/facts whatever you want to call it and drawing your own personal conclusions is really all that is? Taking in information from the environment, analyzing it, and synthesizing it to come to a conclusion. 

Idk. Just how I think of things. As always, you can unfollow if it’s a problem and you disagree. 

[ramialkarmi]

The $37 billion supplement industry is barely regulated — and it's allowing dangerous products to slip through the cracks

The FDA lacks the power to regulate the $37 billion vitamin and supplement industry.

Supplements send thousands of people to the emergency room each year and can be contaminated with banned drugs or bacteria.

Pills that advertise their ability to help with weight loss or muscle building are typically the riskiest of the supplements, experts say.

The supplement industry is still running strong, fueled by companies like Gwyneth Paltrow's Goop.

When Pouya Jamshidi, a resident at Weill Cornell Medical College, delivered his first baby, the doctor on call told him to take the newborn away from its mother.

The baby, a healthy girl with mocha-pink skin and a powerful set of lungs, was being quarantined.

In the middle of the pregnancy, her mother had come down with tuberculosis. She'd contracted the contagious lung infection in her teens, and the illness came back despite preventative antibiotics and regular screenings. The cause: a popular herbal supplement called St. John's wort.

"The trouble is most people don't consider it a medication because you don't need a prescription for it, and so she didn't tell us," Jamshidi told Business Insider.

St. John's wort is one of the most popular herbal supplements sold in the United States. But in 2000, the National Institutes of Health published a study showing that St. John's wort could severely curb the effectiveness of several important pharmaceutical drugs — including antibiotics, birth control, and antiretrovirals for infections like HIV — by speeding up their breakdown in the body.

"It basically overmetabolized the antibiotics so they weren't in her system in the correct dose," Jamshidi said.

The findings on St. John's wort prompted the US Food and Drug Administration to warn doctors about the herbal remedy. But that did little to stem public sale or consumption of it. Over the past two decades, US poison-control centers have gotten about 275,000 reports — roughly one every 24 minutes — of people who reacted badly to supplements; a third of them were about herbal remedies like St. John's wort.

You can overdose on a 'natural' supplement

The FDA defines supplements as products "intended to add further nutritional value to (supplement) the diet." They aren't regulated as drugs — only when a supplement is shown to cause significant harm is it called out as unsafe.

Half of all adult participants in a survey in the mid-2000s said they took at least one supplement every day — almost the same percentage of Americans who took them two decades ago. Yet research has consistently found the pills and powders to be ineffective and sometimes dangerous.

In November, researchers at Harvard Medical School identified four unapproved, unlisted stimulants in six supplements currently marketed for weight loss and fitness. Evidence suggests the stimulants could be similar to ephedrine, a compound derived from ephedra, the dangerous and lethal weight-loss supplement that the FDA banned in 2004. 

Steve Mister, the president and CEO of the Council for Responsible Nutrition, a Washington, DC-based trade organization representing more than 150 supplement and other companies, told Business Insider in September that this kind of adulteration harms the supplement companies who make legitimate products.

"There is nothing legal about supplements that contain things that aren’t on the label," Mister said.

Public health experts recommend that people stay away from supplements altogether.

"Consumers should expect nothing from [supplements] because we don't have any clear evidence that they're beneficial, and they should be leery that they could be putting themselves at risk," S. Bryn Austin, a professor of behavioral sciences at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, told Business Insider. "Whether it's on the bottle or not, there can be ingredients in there that can do harm."

Despite many such warnings, the supplement industry's market is as much as $37 billion a year, according to one estimate. Ads for supplements can be found on internet pop-up windows, on social media, in magazine pages, and on TV. They're sold in corner health stores, pharmacies, and big grocery conglomerates.

But supplements do not come with explicit instructions on how much to take — only a suggested dose — or potential drug interactions. Jamshidi's patient had no idea she was putting her life or that of her baby at risk.

But she was not alone. Using data from 2004 to 2013, the authors of a 2016 study published in the New England Journal of Medicine estimated that 23,005 emergency-room visits a year were linked to supplements. Between 2000 and 2012, the annual rate of negative reactions to supplements — or "exposures" as they are known in scientific parlance — rose from 3.5 to 9.3 cases per 100,000 people, a 166% increase.

Over that period, 34 people died as a result of using supplements, according to a 2017 study published in the Journal of Medical Toxicology. Six of the deaths resulted from the banned supplement ephedra, and three people died from homeopathic remedies. One person died after using yohimbe, an herbal supplement used for weight loss and erectile dysfunction. (Certain formulations of it can be prescribed to treat erectile dysfunction.)

'With supplements you don't know what you're dealing with'

Jamshidi said he knew many people who took a daily multivitamin and tried herbal formulations now and again when they were feeling tired or unwell and always withheld judgment. But he remembers the moment he became wary of supplements: when the pregnant woman his team was monitoring began coughing up phlegm.

"She had been an incredibly cooperative patient, super engaged and always showing up on time for her visits, taking all of our instructions carefully — just a really good patient," Jamshidi said.

When Jamshidi and his team realized their patient's tuberculosis was back, they asked if she'd started any new medications. She said no, but the next day she arrived at the clinic with a small bottle of St. John's wort.

She said she had been taking the herbal remedy for the feelings of depression she experienced after her last pregnancy. Although some small studies initially suggested St. John's wort could have benefits for people with depressive symptoms, the NIH researchers failed to find enough evidence to support that.

Jamshidi's patient had to be isolated to ensure the infection didn't spread. She spent the last three months of her pregnancy alone.

"It was miserable — she was isolated for all that time, and then she couldn't even hold the baby," Jamshidi said.

In his opinion, one of the reasons many people end up in emergency rooms after taking supplements is that the quantities of active ingredients in them can vary dramatically. A 2013 study published in the journal BMC Medicine found that doses of ingredients in supplements could even vary from pill to pill — which poses a significant hurdle for doctors trying to treat a negative reaction.

"There are other medications that can have side effects, but patients come in and tell you the dose, and you can reverse it," Jamshidi said. "But with supplements, you don't know what you're dealing with."

'Vitamines' were originally designed to stop scurvy

By isolating the first "vitamine" in 1912, the Polish chemist Casimir Funk unwittingly unleashed a frenzy among chemists to create or synthesize vitamins in the lab.

Between 1929 and 1943, 10 Nobel Prizes were awarded for work in vitamin research. By the mid-1950s, scientists had synthesized 12 of the 13 essential vitamins. These were added to foods like bread, cereal, and milk, which were sold as "fortified." Foods that lost nutrients during processing got these vitamins added back in and were labeled "enriched."

When supplements were introduced in the 1930s and 1940s, they were presented as a way to address nutrient deficiencies that caused illnesses like rickets and scurvy. They were also seen as a way to avoid expensive and difficult-to-access medical treatment.

In recent years, however, a new generation of supplements has emerged targeting primarily middle-class and affluent women. These formulas ooze with the lifestyle trends of 2017: minimalism ("Everything you need and nothing you don't!"), bright colors, "clean eating," and personalization.

The actress Gwyneth Paltrow's new lineup of $90 monthly vitamin packs — released through her controversial wellness company, Goop — have appealing names like "Why Am I So Effing Tired" and "High School Genes." They claim to deliver health benefits like energy boosts and metabolism jump-starts.

"What is different about what Goop offers is that the combinations, the protocols put together, were done by doctors in Goop's team," Alejandro Junger, a cardiologist who helped design several of Goop's multivitamin packs, told Business Insider.

But a look at the ingredients in "Why Am I So Effing Tired," which Junger helped design, suggests the formula is not based on rigorous science. The vitamin packets include 12.5 milligrams of vitamin B6 — about 960% of the recommended daily allowance (although on Goop's label it is listed as 625%) — and ingredients like rosemary extract and Chinese yam, whose effects have never been studied in humans and for which no standard daily allowance exists.

According to the Mayo Clinic, vitamin B6 is "likely safe" in the recommended daily intake amount: 1.3 milligrams for people ages 19-50. But taking too much of the supplement has been linked with abnormal heart rhythms, decreased muscle tone, and worsened asthma. High doses of B6 can also cause drops in blood pressure, the Mayo Clinic notes, and can interact with drugs like Advil, Motrin, and those prescribed for anxiety and Alzheimer's.

"People using any medications should check the package insert and speak with a qualified healthcare professional, including a pharmacist, about possible interactions," the Mayo Clinic's website says.

Junger declined to comment on specific ingredients in the formula but said that many of them were added to "address the most common nutrient-mineral deficiencies of today: B, C, D, and E vitamins, iodine, magnesium, molybdenum, among others."

Other shiny new pills and powders that have materialized in recent months include one called Ritual, which arrives at your doorstep in a white-and-yellow box emblazoned with the words "The future of vitamins is clear."

A month's supply of the glasslike capsules — filled with tiny white beads suspended in oil — costs $30. But the pills don't differ much more than your standard, cheaper multivitamin — they have similar amounts of magnesium, vitamin K, folate, vitamin B12, iron, boron, vitamin E, and vitamin D.

VitaMe, another new supplement manufacturer, ships personalized daily packets with names like "Good Hair Day" and "Bridal Boost" in a box resembling a tea-bag dispenser each month for $40.

Its website says: "Our mission is peak nutrition. Delivered." But its ingredients don't differ drastically from those in conventional vitamins either.

Vitamins can't save us from ourselves

No matter how colorful their packaging or messaging, all these supplements fall prey to the same problem: We simply do not need them to be healthy.

"We use vitamins as insurance policies against whatever else we might (or might not) be eating, as if by atoning for our other nutritional sins, vitamins can save us from ourselves," Catherine Price, a science reporter, writes in the book "Vitamania."

A large recent review published in the Annals of Internal Medicine looked at 27 trials of vitamins involving more than 400,000 people. The researchers concluded that people who took vitamins did not live longer or have fewer cases of heart disease or cancer than people who did not take them.

Another long-term study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in May divided nearly 6,000 men into groups and gave them either a placebo or one of four supplements touted for their brain-protecting abilities. The results showed no decreased prevalence of dementia among any of the supplement-taking groups.

Study after study has also found that many popular supplements can cause harm. A large, long-term study of male smokers found that those who regularly took vitamin A were more likely to get lung cancer than those who didn't. And a 2007 review of trials of several types of antioxidant supplements put it this way: "Treatment with beta carotene, vitamin A, and vitamin E may increase mortality."

Risks aside, research has suggested that our bodies are better equipped to process the vitamins and minerals in whole foods than those in pills. When we bite into a juicy peach or a crunchy Brussels sprout, we're ingesting dozens of nutrients, including phytochemicals like isothiocyanates, as well as carotenoids.

Austin said that's why "nutritionists recommend people get their nutrition from whole foods, not things that have been packaged and put into a box."

Virtually any registered dietitian, physician, or public health expert is likely to reiterate the advice health professionals have been giving for decades: Eat real food, like fruits and veggies, in moderation, and stay away from processed foods and sugary beverages. Or, in the words of the journalist and food writer Michael Pollan: "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants."

Where's the FDA regulation?

After spending the last few months of her pregnancy and the first few weeks of her new baby's life in isolation, Jamshidi's patient was able to go home and be with her family. Jamshidi said the experience changed the way he thought about supplements for good.

"I feel very negatively about them, and I didn't feel this way going into it," he said.

Ask Steven Tave, the director of the office of dietary supplement programs at the FDA, why the agency isn't stopping more similar situations, and he'll give a simple answer: "We're doing the best we can."

In 1994, Congress passed a controversial law called the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act. Tave said that before DSHEA passed, the FDA was starting to regulate supplements more stringently, the way it does pharmaceutical drugs, but getting "pushback from the industry." The law forced the agency to be more lenient.

Before a new drug can be sold, the company making it has to apply for FDA approval, and the agency has to conclude that the drug is safe and does what it claims to do.

"So if the drug says, you know, 'used to treat cancer,' then the agency's reviewers are going to look at it and make a determination that there's evidence that it does treat cancer," Tave said.

New supplements don't face any burden of proof. The agency can review products that add new dietary ingredients when it gets a notification, Tave said, but it doesn't "have the authority to stop anything from going to market."

When DSHEA was passed, Tave said, the bill still made sense. In 1994, about 600 supplement companies were producing about 4,000 products for a total revenue of about $4 billion. But that market has since ballooned — today, close to 6,000 companies pump out about 75,000 products.

"We're regulating that with 26 people and a budget of $5 million," Tave said.

Removing a supplement from store shelves comes down to documented emergency-room visits and calls to poison-control centers. Only when a supplement is reported to be unsafe as a result of one of these "adverse events," as the FDA calls them, is the agency compelled to act.

"Most of the time, we don't know a product is on the market until we see something bad about it from an adverse-event report. It's a very different regime from when we know everything is out there and we know what's in it," Tave said, adding: "We don't want to be reactive. We want to be proactive. But we can't be."

'Consumers have no way to know'

Most unsafe supplements have been found to contain ingredients that aren't listed on their labels — usually, these are pharmaceutical drugs, some of which have been banned by the FDA.

A study of product recalls published in 2013 in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that of the 274 supplements recalled by the FDA between 2009 and 2012, all contained banned drugs. A 2014 report found that more than two-thirds of the supplements purchased six months after being recalled still contained banned drugs.

"The products we see today have gone way beyond that sort of core group that they were in 1994," Tave said. "Now they're promoted for all sorts of things — some are long term, some are short term, some are chemicals no one's ever seen before. It's a much different universe than it was at the time."

Austin says three categories of supplements are the "most lawless of the industry": physical enhancement, weight loss, and sexual performance.

"Some of these companies won't identify ingredients that they purposefully put in the products," she said. "Some weight-loss drugs, for example, that have been pulled from the market — we can still find these in the bottle even though they don't put it on the label."

Tave's 26-person team, the only government employees looking into these issues, didn't even have a dedicated office until about a year and a half ago.

"We're pretty sure were not aware of everything that's out there, but we do what we can," he said. "All we can do is enforce the law."

Dangerous supplements continue to seep through the cracks, however.

In 2016, the world's largest supplement maker, GNC Holdings Inc., agreed to pay $2.25 million to avoid federal prosecution over allegations that it sold a performance-enhancing supplement that claimed to increase speed, strength, and endurance with an active ingredient called dimethylamylamine, or DMAA. Two soldiers who used the supplement died in 2011, which prompted the Defense Department to remove all products containing DMAA from stores on military bases.

A recent indictment against USPlabs, the Texas-based company that made the supplement, accused it of falsely claiming the product was made of natural plant extracts when it really contained synthetic stimulants made in China.

The problems are ongoing. Earlier this year, the FDA recalled several supplements after they were found to contain unapproved new drugs, and two more were recalled after they were found to contain unlisted anabolic steroids. On August 11, just days before this article was published, the FDA recalled another batch of supplements — this time pills manufactured by a company called PharmaTech — because of possible contamination with bacteria that can cause serious respiratory infection.

"Consumers have no way to know that what's in the label is what's actually in the bottle or box," Austin said. "There are many dubious companies out there that are willing to take a risk with consumers health and their lives."

SEE ALSO: Americans have been making a huge diet mistake for 100 years — here's what they should do instead

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The $37 billion supplement industry is barely regulated — and it's allowing dangerous products to slip through the cracks

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The FDA lacks the power to regulate the $37 billion vitamin and supplement industry.

Supplements send thousands of people to the emergency room each year and can be contaminated with banned drugs or bacteria.

Pills that advertise their ability to help with weight loss or muscle building are typically the riskiest of the supplements, experts say.

The supplement industry is still running strong, fueled by companies like Gwyneth Paltrow's Goop.

When Pouya Jamshidi, a resident at Weill Cornell Medical College, delivered his first baby, the doctor on call told him to take the newborn away from its mother.

The baby, a healthy girl with mocha-pink skin and a powerful set of lungs, was being quarantined.

In the middle of the pregnancy, her mother had come down with tuberculosis. She'd contracted the contagious lung infection in her teens, and the illness came back despite preventative antibiotics and regular screenings. The cause: a popular herbal supplement called St. John's wort.

"The trouble is most people don't consider it a medication because you don't need a prescription for it, and so she didn't tell us," Jamshidi told Business Insider.

St. John's wort is one of the most popular herbal supplements sold in the United States. But in 2000, the National Institutes of Health published a study showing that St. John's wort could severely curb the effectiveness of several important pharmaceutical drugs — including antibiotics, birth control, and antiretrovirals for infections like HIV — by speeding up their breakdown in the body.

"It basically overmetabolized the antibiotics so they weren't in her system in the correct dose," Jamshidi said.

The findings on St. John's wort prompted the US Food and Drug Administration to warn doctors about the herbal remedy. But that did little to stem public sale or consumption of it. Over the past two decades, US poison-control centers have gotten about 275,000 reports — roughly one every 24 minutes — of people who reacted badly to supplements; a third of them were about herbal remedies like St. John's wort.

You can overdose on a 'natural' supplement

The FDA defines supplements as products "intended to add further nutritional value to (supplement) the diet." They aren't regulated as drugs — only when a supplement is shown to cause significant harm is it called out as unsafe.

Half of all adult participants in a survey in the mid-2000s said they took at least one supplement every day — almost the same percentage of Americans who took them two decades ago. Yet research has consistently found the pills and powders to be ineffective and sometimes dangerous.

In November, researchers at Harvard Medical School identified four unapproved, unlisted stimulants in six supplements currently marketed for weight loss and fitness. Evidence suggests the stimulants could be similar to ephedrine, a compound derived from ephedra, the dangerous and lethal weight-loss supplement that the FDA banned in 2004. 

Steve Mister, the president and CEO of the Council for Responsible Nutrition, a Washington, DC-based trade organization representing more than 150 supplement and other companies, told Business Insider in September that this kind of adulteration harms the supplement companies who make legitimate products.

"There is nothing legal about supplements that contain things that aren’t on the label," Mister said.

Reuters

Public health experts recommend that people stay away from supplements altogether.

"Consumers should expect nothing from [supplements] because we don't have any clear evidence that they're beneficial, and they should be leery that they could be putting themselves at risk," S. Bryn Austin, a professor of behavioral sciences at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, told Business Insider. "Whether it's on the bottle or not, there can be ingredients in there that can do harm."

Despite many such warnings, the supplement industry's market is as much as $37 billion a year, according to one estimate. Ads for supplements can be found on internet pop-up windows, on social media, in magazine pages, and on TV. They're sold in corner health stores, pharmacies, and big grocery conglomerates.

But supplements do not come with explicit instructions on how much to take — only a suggested dose — or potential drug interactions. Jamshidi's patient had no idea she was putting her life or that of her baby at risk.

But she was not alone. Using data from 2004 to 2013, the authors of a 2016 study published in the New England Journal of Medicine estimated that 23,005 emergency-room visits a year were linked to supplements. Between 2000 and 2012, the annual rate of negative reactions to supplements — or "exposures" as they are known in scientific parlance — rose from 3.5 to 9.3 cases per 100,000 people, a 166% increase.

Over that period, 34 people died as a result of using supplements, according to a 2017 study published in the Journal of Medical Toxicology. Six of the deaths resulted from the banned supplement ephedra, and three people died from homeopathic remedies. One person died after using yohimbe, an herbal supplement used for weight loss and erectile dysfunction. (Certain formulations of it can be prescribed to treat erectile dysfunction.)

'With supplements you don't know what you're dealing with'

Jamshidi said he knew many people who took a daily multivitamin and tried herbal formulations now and again when they were feeling tired or unwell and always withheld judgment. But he remembers the moment he became wary of supplements: when the pregnant woman his team was monitoring began coughing up phlegm.

"She had been an incredibly cooperative patient, super engaged and always showing up on time for her visits, taking all of our instructions carefully — just a really good patient," Jamshidi said.

Business Insider / Skye Gould

When Jamshidi and his team realized their patient's tuberculosis was back, they asked if she'd started any new medications. She said no, but the next day she arrived at the clinic with a small bottle of St. John's wort.

She said she had been taking the herbal remedy for the feelings of depression she experienced after her last pregnancy. Although some small studies initially suggested St. John's wort could have benefits for people with depressive symptoms, the NIH researchers failed to find enough evidence to support that.

Jamshidi's patient had to be isolated to ensure the infection didn't spread. She spent the last three months of her pregnancy alone.

"It was miserable — she was isolated for all that time, and then she couldn't even hold the baby," Jamshidi said.

In his opinion, one of the reasons many people end up in emergency rooms after taking supplements is that the quantities of active ingredients in them can vary dramatically. A 2013 study published in the journal BMC Medicine found that doses of ingredients in supplements could even vary from pill to pill — which poses a significant hurdle for doctors trying to treat a negative reaction.

"There are other medications that can have side effects, but patients come in and tell you the dose, and you can reverse it," Jamshidi said. "But with supplements, you don't know what you're dealing with."

'Vitamines' were originally designed to stop scurvy

By isolating the first "vitamine" in 1912, the Polish chemist Casimir Funk unwittingly unleashed a frenzy among chemists to create or synthesize vitamins in the lab.

Between 1929 and 1943, 10 Nobel Prizes were awarded for work in vitamin research. By the mid-1950s, scientists had synthesized 12 of the 13 essential vitamins. These were added to foods like bread, cereal, and milk, which were sold as "fortified." Foods that lost nutrients during processing got these vitamins added back in and were labeled "enriched."

Library of CongressWhen supplements were introduced in the 1930s and 1940s, they were presented as a way to address nutrient deficiencies that caused illnesses like rickets and scurvy. They were also seen as a way to avoid expensive and difficult-to-access medical treatment.

In recent years, however, a new generation of supplements has emerged targeting primarily middle-class and affluent women. These formulas ooze with the lifestyle trends of 2017: minimalism ("Everything you need and nothing you don't!"), bright colors, "clean eating," and personalization.

The actress Gwyneth Paltrow's new lineup of $90 monthly vitamin packs — released through her controversial wellness company, Goop — have appealing names like "Why Am I So Effing Tired" and "High School Genes." They claim to deliver health benefits like energy boosts and metabolism jump-starts.

"What is different about what Goop offers is that the combinations, the protocols put together, were done by doctors in Goop's team," Alejandro Junger, a cardiologist who helped design several of Goop's multivitamin packs, told Business Insider.

But a look at the ingredients in "Why Am I So Effing Tired," which Junger helped design, suggests the formula is not based on rigorous science. The vitamin packets include 12.5 milligrams of vitamin B6 — about 960% of the recommended daily allowance (although on Goop's label it is listed as 625%) — and ingredients like rosemary extract and Chinese yam, whose effects have never been studied in humans and for which no standard daily allowance exists.

Goop

According to the Mayo Clinic, vitamin B6 is "likely safe" in the recommended daily intake amount: 1.3 milligrams for people ages 19-50. But taking too much of the supplement has been linked with abnormal heart rhythms, decreased muscle tone, and worsened asthma. High doses of B6 can also cause drops in blood pressure, the Mayo Clinic notes, and can interact with drugs like Advil, Motrin, and those prescribed for anxiety and Alzheimer's.

"People using any medications should check the package insert and speak with a qualified healthcare professional, including a pharmacist, about possible interactions," the Mayo Clinic's website says.

Mario Anzuoni / ReutersJunger declined to comment on specific ingredients in the formula but said that many of them were added to "address the most common nutrient-mineral deficiencies of today: B, C, D, and E vitamins, iodine, magnesium, molybdenum, among others."

Other shiny new pills and powders that have materialized in recent months include one called Ritual, which arrives at your doorstep in a white-and-yellow box emblazoned with the words "The future of vitamins is clear."

A month's supply of the glasslike capsules — filled with tiny white beads suspended in oil — costs $30. But the pills don't differ much more than your standard, cheaper multivitamin — they have similar amounts of magnesium, vitamin K, folate, vitamin B12, iron, boron, vitamin E, and vitamin D.

VitaMe, another new supplement manufacturer, ships personalized daily packets with names like "Good Hair Day" and "Bridal Boost" in a box resembling a tea-bag dispenser each month for $40.

Its website says: "Our mission is peak nutrition. Delivered." But its ingredients don't differ drastically from those in conventional vitamins either.

Vitamins can't save us from ourselves

No matter how colorful their packaging or messaging, all these supplements fall prey to the same problem: We simply do not need them to be healthy.

Ritual"We use vitamins as insurance policies against whatever else we might (or might not) be eating, as if by atoning for our other nutritional sins, vitamins can save us from ourselves," Catherine Price, a science reporter, writes in the book "Vitamania."

A large recent review published in the Annals of Internal Medicine looked at 27 trials of vitamins involving more than 400,000 people. The researchers concluded that people who took vitamins did not live longer or have fewer cases of heart disease or cancer than people who did not take them.

Another long-term study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in May divided nearly 6,000 men into groups and gave them either a placebo or one of four supplements touted for their brain-protecting abilities. The results showed no decreased prevalence of dementia among any of the supplement-taking groups.

Study after study has also found that many popular supplements can cause harm. A large, long-term study of male smokers found that those who regularly took vitamin A were more likely to get lung cancer than those who didn't. And a 2007 review of trials of several types of antioxidant supplements put it this way: "Treatment with beta carotene, vitamin A, and vitamin E may increase mortality."

Risks aside, research has suggested that our bodies are better equipped to process the vitamins and minerals in whole foods than those in pills. When we bite into a juicy peach or a crunchy Brussels sprout, we're ingesting dozens of nutrients, including phytochemicals like isothiocyanates, as well as carotenoids.

Austin said that's why "nutritionists recommend people get their nutrition from whole foods, not things that have been packaged and put into a box."

Virtually any registered dietitian, physician, or public health expert is likely to reiterate the advice health professionals have been giving for decades: Eat real food, like fruits and veggies, in moderation, and stay away from processed foods and sugary beverages. Or, in the words of the journalist and food writer Michael Pollan: "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants."

Flickr/With Wind

Where's the FDA regulation?

After spending the last few months of her pregnancy and the first few weeks of her new baby's life in isolation, Jamshidi's patient was able to go home and be with her family. Jamshidi said the experience changed the way he thought about supplements for good.

"I feel very negatively about them, and I didn't feel this way going into it," he said.

Ask Steven Tave, the director of the office of dietary supplement programs at the FDA, why the agency isn't stopping more similar situations, and he'll give a simple answer: "We're doing the best we can."

In 1994, Congress passed a controversial law called the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act. Tave said that before DSHEA passed, the FDA was starting to regulate supplements more stringently, the way it does pharmaceutical drugs, but getting "pushback from the industry." The law forced the agency to be more lenient.

Before a new drug can be sold, the company making it has to apply for FDA approval, and the agency has to conclude that the drug is safe and does what it claims to do.

"So if the drug says, you know, 'used to treat cancer,' then the agency's reviewers are going to look at it and make a determination that there's evidence that it does treat cancer," Tave said.

New supplements don't face any burden of proof. The agency can review products that add new dietary ingredients when it gets a notification, Tave said, but it doesn't "have the authority to stop anything from going to market."

When DSHEA was passed, Tave said, the bill still made sense. In 1994, about 600 supplement companies were producing about 4,000 products for a total revenue of about $4 billion. But that market has since ballooned — today, close to 6,000 companies pump out about 75,000 products.

"We're regulating that with 26 people and a budget of $5 million," Tave said.

Removing a supplement from store shelves comes down to documented emergency-room visits and calls to poison-control centers. Only when a supplement is reported to be unsafe as a result of one of these "adverse events," as the FDA calls them, is the agency compelled to act.

"Most of the time, we don't know a product is on the market until we see something bad about it from an adverse-event report. It's a very different regime from when we know everything is out there and we know what's in it," Tave said, adding: "We don't want to be reactive. We want to be proactive. But we can't be."

'Consumers have no way to know'

Most unsafe supplements have been found to contain ingredients that aren't listed on their labels — usually, these are pharmaceutical drugs, some of which have been banned by the FDA.

A study of product recalls published in 2013 in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that of the 274 supplements recalled by the FDA between 2009 and 2012, all contained banned drugs. A 2014 report found that more than two-thirds of the supplements purchased six months after being recalled still contained banned drugs.

"The products we see today have gone way beyond that sort of core group that they were in 1994," Tave said. "Now they're promoted for all sorts of things — some are long term, some are short term, some are chemicals no one's ever seen before. It's a much different universe than it was at the time."

Austin says three categories of supplements are the "most lawless of the industry": physical enhancement, weight loss, and sexual performance.

"Some of these companies won't identify ingredients that they purposefully put in the products," she said. "Some weight-loss drugs, for example, that have been pulled from the market — we can still find these in the bottle even though they don't put it on the label."

Tave's 26-person team, the only government employees looking into these issues, didn't even have a dedicated office until about a year and a half ago.

"We're pretty sure were not aware of everything that's out there, but we do what we can," he said. "All we can do is enforce the law."

Dangerous supplements continue to seep through the cracks, however.

Flickr/Steve DepoloIn 2016, the world's largest supplement maker, GNC Holdings Inc., agreed to pay $2.25 million to avoid federal prosecution over allegations that it sold a performance-enhancing supplement that claimed to increase speed, strength, and endurance with an active ingredient called dimethylamylamine, or DMAA. Two soldiers who used the supplement died in 2011, which prompted the Defense Department to remove all products containing DMAA from stores on military bases.

A recent indictment against USPlabs, the Texas-based company that made the supplement, accused it of falsely claiming the product was made of natural plant extracts when it really contained synthetic stimulants made in China.

The problems are ongoing. Earlier this year, the FDA recalled several supplements after they were found to contain unapproved new drugs, and two more were recalled after they were found to contain unlisted anabolic steroids. On August 11, just days before this article was published, the FDA recalled another batch of supplements — this time pills manufactured by a company called PharmaTech — because of possible contamination with bacteria that can cause serious respiratory infection.

"Consumers have no way to know that what's in the label is what's actually in the bottle or box," Austin said. "There are many dubious companies out there that are willing to take a risk with consumers health and their lives."

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