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mor-beck-more-problems · 3 years

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Face Heel Turn || Morgan & Ben

TIMING: Current

LOCATION: UMWC

PARTIES: @professorbcampbell & @mor-beck-more-problems

SUMMARY: Morgan and Ben face an unpleasant problem on campus and make a run for their lives.

(art credit @professorbcampbell)

With a sigh, Ben removed his glasses and slipped them into the soft travel case that he then tucked away into his attache case. Meetings. While he was sure that many of his colleagues despised such events, Ben had always thrived in them. There was nothing quite like watching the interdepartmental politics at work and he enjoyed giving the invisible strings that wrapped around his peers a gentle nudge from time to time. One of the other professors approached him, asking if he wanted to go for drinks with the others. “Ah, no thank you,” He said with a polite shake of his head, “I was hoping to talk to David- chair duties and all.” Ben gave a regretful smile before stepping to the side. To his great annoyance, Ben caught sight of David making a quick exit from the room, escaping one Morgan Beck. Of course it was her. She was the mousy looking thorn in his otherwise pristine working life. “Morgan!” He said with a hearty smile, “Wonderful to see you.”

Morgan didn’t need to have real magic to work her will. Lots of pagans didn’t have a mainline to the universe and did just fine. She could too. She could. And if her will was getting a real contract with real responsibilities, something worthy of settling into for a few years, maybe until she stopped being able to convince people about her age, then she would take any opportunity the universe presented to her to make it happen. Sometimes that opportunity was cornering the dean of the liberal arts and social sciences college after a meeting.

Unfortunately, the dean wasn’t having any of it.

“Not now,” he mumbled, sliding past her.

“I just noticed three deceased faculty from my department in the obituaries, sir, and rather than waste university resources looking across the country, it be to everyone’s credit to promote from within and--”

“Not now, girl.” He shook his head. “Building codes.”

It took Morgan several seconds to process what she’d heard, and another to decide that, no, she was not going to respond politely. But that time was more than enough for the dean to get away. Worse, it was time enough for Ben Campbell to get in her way. She fought herself not to sneer openly at him. “Hi, Ben,” she managed, her cheer thin and shrill. “Great seminar today, right? Just love those PD review sessions. Keeps it fresh!” She shouldered him out of her way, scampering out the room and toward the dean’s office as she said, “Woops! So sorry, Ben. But I really need to catch David for something.” And maybe consider reversing her new policy on violence. “So sorry! Tootles!” Surely, she thought, Ben would hate her enough to not try and follow.

It had been amusing, at the very least, to see the Dean completely brush of Beck. Ben didn’t let any emotion show on his face, pretending instead to be focused on trying to see where David went. But on the inside, he couldn’t help the smug, triumphant gloating wash over him. Served her right, for getting ideas beyond her position. She should keep her nose down, like any good adjunct would. Work hard, don’t bother people who clearly couldn’t give a shit about you, and make relationships. And the only relationships she’d made, as far as Ben could tell, were negative ones. Pathetic. “Oh yes, PD review, absolutely riveting.” He said with a good natured nod. Grunting as she shouldered him with more force than he would have expected out of such a tiny woman, Ben’s eyes followed her as she headed for the door. “Ah, you’re trying to talk to David as well? Wonderful, so am I. Co-chair duties. Quite a lot of work, but at the end of the day, it’s all worth it.” Ben said with a warm smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “What,” Exactly, “are you asking him about?”

Politeness kept Morgan from sprinting down the hall to the dean’s office, but determination kept her pace brisk and steady. “Oh, co-chair duties, of course. I bet you have lots to discuss and get approved. But so much of our paperwork is digital, right? I’m sure David would appreciate it so much more if you sent him a solid email with bullet points.” She walked a little faster. “I just need a few minutes with him alone to make a proposal for the english department. Plans for next semester, staffing, the usual problems this university seems to be facing. I’m sure you’ve got a hot date or somewhere else you’d rather be.” She skidded to the door and grabbed the handle. “But it was so nice running into you!” If she said it loud enough, he’d get the idea and leave, right?

Eyes narrowing as Morgan moved past him, Ben sucked in a breath and forced his face into a smile. Walking after her, his own long strides more than keeping up with her shorter ones, Ben shook his head. “I wish it was so simple. We’re meeting about recruitment for the prospective graduate students to the college. I need to hammer out some of the finer details with him that an email simply wouldn’t cover.” He said with a long suffering sigh. As Morgan explained what she was going after, Ben’s eyebrow arched. What exactly was Bitchy Beck up to? Staffing… they’d had quite a few deaths in the department-- nothing related to him, of course. But there had been some unexpected openings. With a laugh, Ben shook his head, “No dates for me, I’m a bit too busy for that.” As she pulled open the door, he followed quickly behind her. There was no way he was letting Morgan monopolize David’s time. “I’m sure Dave can pencil both of us in.”

“Aw, no someone special?” Morgan said, barely bothering to put on a guise of sympathy on her words. “That’s so sad. You should really do something about that, Ben. I mean, unless you’re aro in which case, friend dates are still a thing! In a place like this, you could die alone tomorrow.” And sometimes she wished he would. “And that would just be kinda sad and tragic, right?” She twisted the handle and swung open the door onto the dean, or who she thought was the dean, fumbling to open the window, not realizing it was sealed. This would have been enough to make her freeze in the doorway on its own, but by the desk, another dean writhed on the floor and clawed at the smooth fleshy plane that was once his face. The secretary was next to him, the skin around her sealed, lipless mouth already turning blue.

“Uh…” Morgan edged back until she stepped on Ben’s toes.

The dean who was not the dean whipped his head around to look at them. He opened his mouth.

The corner of his lips quirking with barely concealed irritation, Ben hurried after the woman. How could such a tiny thing be so quick? “No, no, not aromantic. Or asexual. I’m a very average American man, just with a busier than average work schedule. But, I might try to see someone, who knows.” He said, remembering that the Nichol’s woman had mentioned knowing Beck when she’d dropped by for that post lecture disaster. Just as he was about to mention that he was very interested in getting to know Erin better and, oh, did she happen to know her? What a coincidence, what a wonderful coincidence indeed--Morgan had already pulled open the door to the dean’s office without even the slightest decency to knock. And he was startled to see a pair of bodies writhing on the floor, their faces smooth, fleshy masks.

“Good Lord!” Ben swore, raising his arms instinctively to defend himself as the decidedly not-dean stood and screamed at them. The human lips split like seams and Ben could have sworn he saw circular rows of teeth lining the thing’s throat as it bellowed. His hands clasped over his ears at the harsh shriek and he stumbled backwards, not in fear but in pain. He’d seen demons do far worse than this, he’d done far worse than this himself. But, he was only human, after all. And without a weapon at his disposal, he could hardly do anything to protect himself. And, as irritating as Beck was, it wouldn’t do to explain how she’d been murdered as well. “Let’s get out of here!” He said, grabbing her by the shoulder and tugging her to the door as the dean moved with jerky, alien movements across the office towards them.

Several things happened at once before Morgan’s eyes: a very bright dangerous-looking something spewed out of Not-the-dean’s mouth and landed on the door next to her head, Ben pulled her away, and her confusion and panic erupted into a scream. She didn’t fight Ben. Not-the-dean had leapt to an open chair, landing on all fours and his toothy, four lipped mouth spread open again.

She started to run with Ben, but from the galloping thumps behind them, she could tell it was gaining. “Fucking fuck,” she hissed. She pulled back on Ben’s arm and made a sharp turn down the nearest hall. “You’re too slow!” Then again, so were her pumps. Morgan stopped long enough to kick them off, which so happened to be enough time for Not-the-dean to come bounding down the hall. He stopped just shy of the turn Morgan made and swiveled his head.

“If I carry you, are you gonna be a baby about it?” She asked.

The dean leapt for them, apparently determined. No time to find out. “Hold on tight, spider monkey,” she said. Then she swept her arm under his legs and went off with him.

The way the imposter’s face opened into a disgusting, peeling-apart mouth was enough to convince Ben that they needed to go post-haste, immediately, now. Scrambling out of the room, he sprinted down the hallway as quickly as he could and was startled to see Morgan was keeping pace with him? What? How could she possibly do that-- he wasn’t that old. But this tiny little thing was running alongside him, barely even winded from the effort. Turning an unexpectedly tight corner, the combination of his momentum and his considerable frame had him smacking into the side of the wall. Meanwhile, he could hear the loping sound of the creature echoing behind them.

“Carry me? I’m nearly 200--” Ben started but before he could finish his sentence, Morgan had already grabbed hold of him and was lifting him off the ground. And then, she began to run. Instinctively, Ben clung to her shoulders tightly, not wanting to fall off the woman’s thin frame. Gritting his teeth in irritation, he muttered, “Twilight? Really?” under his breath as Morgan sprinted his way through the hallways. As thoroughly emasculating as it was, to be packmuled out of danger by Beck of all people, there was a silver lining. Morgan had revealed herself to him. She was distinctly not human-- what breed of that, he had no idea-- but she was… unfortunately, a part of the true world.

Morgan managed to laugh wryly as she ran. “Got a problem with that, Bella?” Just a few more feet. It would be easier out in the open, right? Not-the-Dean thundered behind them, galloping the way no person should be able to. The air hissed, and Morgan heard something sizzling on her back and bubbling splatter on the wall beside her.

“Was that acid?” She wasn’t sure why she was alarmed. It wouldn’t do anything to her that couldn’t immediately be undone. But who liked getting acid thrown at them anyway? And there was still Ben in her arms, even if wiping away his face might be an improvement to his character. “Maybe duck your head!” They were almost out the hall. “And brace for impact!” If he was so tough, he shouldn’t mind her blasting through the double doors. Once outside they could split up, or double back and have it lose their trail that way.

Morgan barreled through the doors and into the purple evening, still running, until she crashed into the bike rack and fell over, dropping Ben and sprawling onto the ground.

“Yes.” Ben grunted emphatically, as he was jostled on the woman’s back rather roughly as they ran through the corridors. What the ever loving fuck was happening? What the hell was Morgan? Definitively not human, not human in the slightest. Unless she was moonlighting as some kind of bodybuilder or pro wrestler or something, but that seemed doubtful. But, he couldn’t dwell on this for very long as something hot, wet, and bubbling splashed against the wall next to them. Chancing a glance over, his face went pale as he saw bits of exposed concrete peeking through spots where acid had already begun to chew through the structure.

“Acid. Yes, yes, that was acid-- run faster, Beck!” He yelled, holding on tightly to the small woman’s shoulders. Twisting his head, he watched as the thing behind them was still hot in pursuit, barrelling after them on all fours. “What?” He asked, before turning back just in time to duck, though the crossbar of the door still caught the back of his head. He was seeing stars as Morgan barrelled out into the quad and spilled out on the ground when she slammed into the bike rack. Stunned, barely able to see, and head splitting with pain, Ben blindly scrambled backwards, wanting to put as much distance between him and the creature as possible.

For one terrible second, Morgan stayed on the ground. Too fast and she might be seen, identified for what she was, or else frighten Ben into telling enough people about her that she found herself hunted in her office one day. Too slow and it wouldn’t matter because Not-the-Dean and his acid was going to eat her. Ben was already moving beside her, getting up and far the fuck away. That was as good enough of a cue as any. Morgan jumped to her feet and kept running, past Ben and toward the nearest building. As she passed him she called, “You’re welcome! Don’t die!” Then she kept running, into the music building, then architecture, in and out praying that just this once the universe would bend her way and that she hadn’t been seen and she wasn’t a good enough target to be worth pursuing anyway. When she finally made it inside her car, she let herself take a beat and scan the horizon for signs of...whatever the hell she’d just seen. But it could look like anything, couldn’t it? One of the teenagers ambling toward the parking lot, the janitor pushing their cart into the next building, the MBAs strolling out in their suits. And she hadn’t even looked back, had she? Was Ben still alive? And what about the students, playing frisbee in the sunset and coming in for their late night classes and-- Morgan let her head hit the steering wheel and sighed. Too late to tie up loose ends now. She needed to go home, be grateful, and not think too hard about how bad she didn’t feel about Ben Campbell maybe losing his face.

Blinking the spots from his vision, Ben picked himself up to run from the creature that was still pursuing them-- him, he realized. Because as he was turning to dash away, he watched as Morgan scrambled past him, shouting such incredibly insightful advice as she left. Bitchy fucking Beck was going to leave him to die-- or worse, have his face ripped off and masqueraded around on some disgusting creature. “Lord!” He swore as he ran across the quad, his tie whipping behind him as he sprinted away. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Yanking open the nearest building’s door, he fumbled to pull his lanyard from his pocket, his staff keycard in hand. The top floors here were barred to relevant staff and he had access, he could go up there. Running towards the staircase, Ben chanced a glance behind him and saw that the creature had shoved open the doors of the building. A fresh spray of acid was shot his direction and he let out a yelp before slipping into the staircase.

Taking the steps three at a time, Ben hurried up the spiraling staircase and waved his keycard frantically at the heavy metal door. Green lights flashed over the electronic lock and he threw himself inside, slamming the door behind him. Sore, tired, and breathing hard, Ben slumped against the door and listened for the creature. He could hear it tearing through the stairwell, screeching and raging as it ran. But, it didn’t seem to know where he was. And he was fine with that. As the monster’s screeches faded, Ben was at last able to relax and reflect on just what exactly had happened. His mind was putting together all the pieces, forming a very hazy, very concerning picture.

About three things, Ben was absolutely positive. First, Morgan wasn’t human. Second, there was a part of her, and he wasn’t sure how large this part of her was, that was fine with him being dead. And third, he unconditionally, irrevocably hated her.

#heel face turn #wr ben #wr chatzy #wr ben chatzy

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alwaysbewoke · 4 years

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alwaysbewoke

dickslapthestate:

ranting-rose:

ittybittykittykisses:

ranting-rose:

vgcgraveyard:

caitallolovesyou:

friendly-neighborhood-patriarch:

lazyhat:

I was pretty skeptical about the figures, since they contradict what I usually hear on the media, so I did a little research. Here’s what I found: (Sorry this is so US centric) (I’ll also try to stay close to primary sources as possible)

(http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/ss6308a1.htm?s_cid=ss6308a1_e)

- the 12 months before taking the survey, an estimated 4.0% of women experienced some form of physical violence by an intimate partner -an estimated 14.2% of women experienced some form of psychological aggression in the 12 months preceding the survey. -*4,774,000 women have been victims of physical violence by intimate partner in the 12 months preceding the survey -*17,091,000 women have been victims of psychological aggression by intimate partner in the 12 months preceding the survey

- the 12 months before taking the survey, an estimated 4.8% of men experienced some form of physical violence by an intimate partner -an estimated 18.0% of men experienced some form of psychological aggression in the 12 months preceding the survey. -*5,452,000 men have been victims of physical violence by intimate partner in the 12 months preceding the survey -*20,471,000 men have been victims of psychological aggression by intimate partner in the 12 months preceding the survey

*Table 6

By the data presented by the Center for Disease Control, out of the estimate of 10,226,000 yearly victims of intimate partner violence, 53.3% of victims where male and 46.6% were female. As for psychological aggression, out of the estimate of 37,562,000 yearly victims, 54.4% were male and 45.5% were female. These statistics would support the claim made in the bottom left.

Now I couldn’t find a primary source for the 70% of DV is initiated by women, but here’s the facts that I found, which may have been interpreted by the people who made this poster:

(http://www.huffingtonpost.com/glenn-sacks/researcher-says-womens-in_b_222746.html) -Women who were in a battered women’s shelter, 67% of the women reported severe violence toward their partner in the past year.

This can be interpreted as “67% of violent couples with IPV is mutual”. But then again, primary sources and full data would be helpful to back up this claim.

But the one that is most interesting is:(http://psychnews.psychiatryonline.org/newsArticle.aspx?articleid=111137)(Another report analysis from the CDC)

-23.9% of relationships are violent -50.3% of IPV is non-reciprocal and 49.7% is reciprocal (Reciprocal IPV= Mutual violence) -70.7% of non-reciprocal IPV is initiated by women.

So summing up the numbers, it’s not that 70% of all DV is initiated by women, its that 70% of non-reciprocal DV is initiated by women. To go further would say that 49.7% of DV is mutual, 36.2% of DV is initiated by women, and 14.5% of DV is initiated by men

Male victims of domestic violence are real. They are hurting. And they often don’t get the attention and compassion they so urgently deserve and need.

Have a heart. Open your mind, and give a care.

Hm. These numbers are all so different to anything I’ve seen before. I’m reblogging and liking this both for my own reference and to spread these numbers to others. I’m definitely gonna look into this and see if I can find more sources and more information.

Mother fuckers can we all just say let’s not be dicks to our fucking love ones already?

Tagging this for my speech project that I need the sources for

Here are 221 studies on IPV / DV for y’all.

You are a life saver.

That list is good, but outdated. I e-mailed the researcher who compiled that list a couple weeks ago and he gave me three different documents. I uploaded them to this dropbox folder. You can go there and download them.

The list of studies is now up to 343 scholarly investigations (270 empirical studies and 73 reviews). Not only did he send me that list, but he also sent me two meta-studies (also in the dropbox folder). One is on male/female perpetration rates and the other is on male/female victimization rates.

There is also “Rates of Bi-directional versus Uni-directional Intimate Partner Violence Across Samples, Sexual Orientations, and Race/Ethnicities: A Comprehensive Review“. It’s a mouthful to be sure. Basically this study took the data from 48 other empirical studies, collated the data, placed it online for public viewing, submitted it for peer review, and was found to be accurate.

It’s findings basically wind down to this:

84% of relationships are non-violent

58% of relationships that are violent, both partners abuse the other.

28% of violent relationships only the woman is violent

14% of violent relationships only the man is violent.

This is featured Partner Abuse State of Knowledge Project website and is part of a much larger DV research project. You can read the summarized findings here or take a gander at the full 61-page review. This is a compilation of the research of Erin Pizzey, Murray Strauss, Don Dutton, and many others who are challenging the feminist model of patriarchal dominance. They also have some videos that are very informative as well.

Murray Strauss also compiled: Thirty Years of Denying the Evidence on Gender Symmetry in Partner Violence: Implications for Prevention and Treatment. A report detailing the existence of over 200 studies showing gender symmetry in victimization rates. Studies that show symmetry going as far back as 1975. He also examines the methods feminist researchers have used to suppress the evidence from public discourse, hence the title “Thirty Years of Denying the Evidence”.

Two other excellent and brief videos on the topic come from the MenAreGood YouTube channel:

Male Victims of Domestic Violence - The Hidden Story

Bias Against Men and Boys in Mental Health Research

I really need to write up a solo reference post for domestic violence data…

so what do we have here? what i’ve been saying forever. women as initiators of domestic violence is one of the biggest, closely guarded secret around. we literally had female FEMINIST researchers hiding evidence. FEMINISTS!! but i’m the bad guy for stating that feminism is filled with man hatred. what would you say of men of who information about abuse women and thus allowed the abuse to continue? YOU FUCKING KNOW EXACTLY WHAT YOU’D SAY!! am i surprised by the research? no fucking way. we don’t teach women in society to not hit men. we only teach men to not hit women. for little boys on up we are shamed if we even defend ourselves if little girls hit us BUT NOT ONE TIME HAVE I EVER HEARD OR SEEN ANY PARENT TEACHING THEIR LITTLE OR DAUGHTER THAT THEY SHOULD NOT HIT MEN!! we always make excuses for it. “she was emotional” “he said…” “he did…” “he had it coming…” and more. this research is fantastic but let’s be honest, this post isn’t going to get many reblogs at all because most of y'all are married to the idea that women are angels and men are devils. women have no agency and are always victims of men. that only men hit and women never hit. only men can be abusers and women can never be abusers. no amount of research is going to change your minds. men have done some evil shit but i so sick and tired of this narrative that women are just innocent, perfect deities. IF SHE HITS YOU ONCE, LEAVE HER ASS QUICK!!! IF SHE DID IT ONCE, SHE’LL FUCKING DO IT AGAIN!! GUARANTEED. and one more thing, FUCK FEMINISM. hiding empirical data but standing on your high horse preaching gender equality?! fuck feminism. so fucking glad i ceased to be a fucking feminist years ago. eye wide fucking open now.

sinjia

Thank you @alwaysbewoke !!! And did you know that there are feminists on here sending hate mail just because you don’t agree with them? It’s fucking sad, but I’m so happy that you said this. It lets me know that I’m not the only one realizing the shady bullshit that they preach but never practice themselves.

alwaysbewoke

i’ve only known one feminist who was on the right side of this issue and she was so because she works in the domestic violence field as a counselor. she told me she sees it all the time. men get hit, have things thrown at them, women come at them with knives, scratches on their faces and everything and yet we never talk about it. never. the only people who we pounce on for dv are men. we never ever talk about women. never ever. and if you do, you get shouted down. fuck all that.

this is why many men when they hear “feminism” they think “ok that means i get to hit back now.” because we’re tired of the bullshit. we’re tired of women getting away with hitting because society AND FEMINISM tells them it’s fine. it’s okay. they’re allowed. feminism PROTECTS FEMALE ABUSERS ALL DAY!! my goodness. to hide evidence as a researcher is akin to a crime. the ripple affect of that shit is fucking insane. however let them tell it, it’s a problem with men that we think feminism has a man hatred problem. yea the problem is with us because feminism is perfect. feminism ain’t never do no shit, no wrong ever. srsly fuck feminism. fuck it to the depths of hell.

this is why i tell people, dealing with only ONE half of a problem will only allow the problem to continue to exist. it doesn’t change shit. if anything it makes things worse.

racist, sexist feminism. fuck off. i spit on feminism every fucking chance i get. first they fuck over black women (and black men) and then they fuck over men with this type of bullshit. i refuse to align myself with that fuckery. i can help black women much better without it. i don’t need to be a part of something that hates me both as a man and as a black person to help sistas get equal pay and shit. fuckouttahere.

that’s why i call out all these people still posting pics and riding for solange knowles. imagine if i was posting pics and niceties for ray rice. but when women do some violent bullshit, we stay given them a pass smfh.

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tinyshe · 3 years

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Cornucopia’s Take: Ghostwriting aside, industry funded science seeks answers to industry needs. Cornucopia calls for research on behalf of truth, accuracy, and all of us, rather than only corporate balance sheets.

Inside the Academic Journal That Corporations Love Pacific Standard by Paul D. Thacker

Source:

USACE Europe District

A recent Monsanto lawsuit opens a scary window into the industry of junk science.

A recent lawsuit against Monsanto offers a clear and troubling view into industry strategies that warp research for corporate gain. In a lawsuit regarding the possible carcinogenicity of the pesticide Roundup, plaintiffs’ lawyers suing Monsanto charge the company with ghostwriting an academic study finding that Roundup’s active ingredient, glyphosate, is not harmful. Glyphosate is the world’s most widely used weed killer and is critical for successful cultivation of genetically modified crops such as corn and soybean, which are resistant to the pesticide.

Ghostwriting remains pervasive in some areas of academic research; in 2010, I helped author a Senate report on the matter. Studies drafted by corporations and then published in scientific journals with academic authors have been used to sway government decisions, court cases, and even medical practice. A host of universities have been caught in ghostwriting scandals, including Harvard University, Brown University, Stanford University, and Emory University.

The study currently under scrutiny appeared in 2000 in Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology, the journal of the International Society of Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology. On closer inspection, the ghostwriting charges seem unconvincing , and Science magazine reports that officials at one university have investigated and rejected the charges.

Monsanto has also strenuously denied the ghostwriting allegations and defends the integrity of the study on a blog: “The paper also underwent the journal’s rigorous peer review process before it was published.”

But the term “rigorous” is hardly an accurate description for the journal. Indeed, a glance into the journal’s history offers a telling window into the industry of creating and packaging junk science with the appearance of academic rigor.

“Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology is a vanity journal that publishes mercenary science created by polluters and producers of toxic chemicals to manufacture uncertainty about the science underlying public-health and environmental protections.” says David Michaels, professor of environmental and occupational health at the George Washington University School of Public Health. (Michaels recently returned to this position after serving as the administrator of the United States Occupational Safety and Health Administration.)

The history here is long, and damning. In 2002, several academics and public-health activists sent a letter to Elsevier complaining that the journal lacked transparency and a conflicts-of-interest policy, and that it could not demonstrate editorial independence from corporate sponsors. A couple of years later, I began studying the ISRTP’s membership and journal, and combing through the minutes of the society’s meetings.

The year before the journal published the Roundup study, the society held its June 1999 council meeting in the Washington, D.C., office of Keller and Heckman, the chief law firm for the chemical industry. In a recent court case, for example, Keller and Heckman represented the Vinyl Institute in a lawsuit to roll back 2012 regulations from the Environmental Protection Agency limiting toxics emitted during PVC production. Keller and Heckman also bills itself as the premier law firm for the tobacco and e-vapor industries. The minutes from the June meeting note a member of Keller and Heckman attending along with representatives of several chemical industry trade associations. Minutes from February 2002 also record the meeting taking place in Keller and Heckman’s D.C. office and state that future meetings will also be held at the law firm.

“[I]t is unusual to see a regulatory toxicology journal run out of a law practice office!” says Dr. Lynn Goldman, dean of the Milken Institute School of Public Health at George Washington University and one of the signatories on the 2002 letter.

“Having its meetings hosted by a corporate law firm is so obviously inappropriate — unless you aren’t so much a scientific society as a faux-science outlet for the corporate clients and funders of the journal’s authors,” says Jennifer Sass, a senior scientist who specializes in chemical policy at the Natural Resources Defense Council and is another of the 2002 letter signatories. After reviewing the Roundup study published in 2000, Sass says it doesn’t appear to be “what we normally call ghostwriting.” The study’s acknowledgement section, which is hidden behind the journal’s paywall, clearly notes Monsanto’s heavy involvement in the study’s science.*

“These people wouldn’t be able to stuff the scientific literature so successfully — muddying the waters and creating the false impression of controversy — if they didn’t have their go-to journals like Reg Tox Pharm,” she adds.

Examining the journal’s editorial board, Sheldon Krimsky, a professor at Tufts University who studies conflicts of interest and corporate influence on science, notes that industry consultants litter the journal’s masthead. Indeed, the journal’s editor is Gio Gori, a former consultant for the tobacco industry. In 1998, Gori partnered with Steven J. Milloy of JunkScience.com in a letter to Science magazine criticizing a story about tobacco consultants. I later outed Milloy in the New Republic for being on the payroll of the tobacco companies while writing articles for FoxNews.com that disparaged the science of second-hand smoke. And, in 2007, Gori published an op-ed in the Washington Post calling the science of second-hand smoke “bogus.”

Gori’s work for tobacco, Krimsky says, “places his credibility down at the bottom.”

Other controversial members of the journal’s editorial board include Michael L. Dourson and Dennis J. Paustenbach. Dourson is the president of TERA, a scientific consulting firm that was the subject of a 2014 investigation by Inside Climate News and the Center for Public Integrity highlighting the group’s cozy ties to industry. Documents made public during tobacco litigation note Dourson’s work for the industry.

When questioned about his tobacco consulting, Dourson said: “Jesus hung out with prostitutes and tax collectors. He had dinner with them.” He continued, “We’re an independent group that does the best science for all these things. Why should we exclude anyone that needs help?”

In 2005, the Wall Street Journal ran a front-page story questioning the role of Paustenbach and his company ChemRisk in a case that became the basis for the movie Erin Brockovich. According to the Journal, ChemRisk was hired to reanalyze data from a study that found chromium-contaminated groundwater linked with a range of public-health illnesses. Chemrisk’s reanalysis of data was then published in a new study under the names of two Chinese researchers without any mention of ChemRisk’s involvement, and was promoted for the next decade in court cases and regulatory filings. After the Journal article, the study was retracted, and environmental groups sought to have Paustenbach censured by the Society of Toxicology.

Seven years later, the Chicago Tribune wrote an investigative story critical of Paustenbach’s work for the chemical industry on flame retardants, and the Center for Public Integrity published an investigation last year noting Paustenbach’s work for Ford Motor Company to downplay the dangers of asbestos in car brake pads.

“This might be a kind of a rogue journal that looks like a journal,” Krimsky says.

The problem is that it’s not just Monsanto, and it’s not just this one journal. Corporations regularly buy academics to do their bidding, recasting industry talking points to create the beginnings of an alternative scientific canon. Universities do little to stop it, while academic journals, sometimes prestigious, are often complicit. Perhaps public shame remains the most — or only — effective medicine.

https://www.cornucopia.org/2017/04/science-bought-paid/

[note Bayer has since bought Monsanto’s; yes the Bayer company of Nazi Germany]

Five things to know about Bayer and Monsanto

August 13, 2018

Five things to know about Bayer and Monsanto

by Michelle Fitzpatrick

A cancer victim's surprise court victory over US pesticide maker Monsanto could open the floodgates to a slew of similar lawsuits, potentially leaving the firm's new German owner with a major case of buyer's remorse.

From the toxic legacy of Monsanto's Roundup weedkiller to fears about its use of genetically modified seeds, here's what you need to know about the $63-billion (55-billion-euro) merger between Bayer and Monsanto.

Heroin

Founded in Germany in 1863, Bayer is still best known for making aspirin. More infamously, it briefly sold heroin in the early 20th century, marketed as a cough cure and morphine substitute.

During World War II, Bayer was part of a consortium called IG Farben that made the Zyklon B pesticide used in Adolf Hitler's gas chambers.

Through a series of acquisitions over the years, Bayer has grown into a drug and chemicals behemoth and now employs some 100,000 people worldwide.

Agent Orange

Monsanto was established in St. Louis, Missouri in 1901, setting out to make saccharine.

By the 1940s, it was producing farm-oriented chemicals, including herbicide 2,4-D which, combined with another dangerous chemical was used to make the notorious Vietnam War-era defoliant Agent Orange.

In 1976, the company launched probably its best-known product, the weed killer Roundup.

In the 1980s, its scientists were the first to genetically modify a plant cell. Monsanto then started buying other seed companies and began field trials of GM seeds.

It eventually developed soybean, corn, cotton and other crops engineered to be tolerant of Roundup.

Goodbye 'Monsatan'

Dubbed "Monsatan" and "Mutanto", the US firm has for decades been in the crosshairs of environmentalists, especially in Europe, who believe that GM food could be unsafe to eat.

Campaigners also abhor Monsanto's production of glyphosate-based Roundup, which some scientists have linked to cancer although other studies dispute this.

Hoping to ditch Monsanto's poisonous reputation, Bayer has said it plans to drop the company's name from its products.

But Friends of the Earth, which has dubbed the merger a "marriage made in hell", said it would simply switch its protests to Bayer so long as it continues Monsanto's practices.

Another complaint about the latest consolidation in the industry is that it leaves the global seeds and pesticides market in the hands of just a few players—potentially pushing up prices and limiting choices for farmers and consumers.

Hello, lawsuits?

A California jury last week ordered Monsanto to pay nearly $290 million in damages to a dying groundskeeper after finding that the company failed to warn him that using Roundup products might cause cancer.

Observers say the landmark win by Dewayne Johnson, who has non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, could pave the way for thousands of cases against Monsanto.

Bayer's share price plunged more than 10 percent in response.

Monsanto has vowed to appeal the ruling, while Bayer insisted that herbicides containing glyphosate are "safe".

Analyst Michael Leacock of MainFirst bank said the legal setback was "an unlucky outcome" for Bayer just two months after sealing the takeover.

"It is highly likely that investors will take a very dim view of the recent deal," he said.

High price to pay

In an industry preparing for a global population surge with many more mouths to feed, Bayer was keen to get its hands on Monsanto's market-leading line in GM crop seeds designed to resist strong pesticides like Roundup.

It was also lured by Monsanto's data analytics business Climate Corp, believing farmers will in future rely on digital monitoring of their crops.

But the takeover, one of the largest ever by a German firm, comes at a high cost.

As well as the eye-watering price tag, Bayer had to give up much of its seeds and agrichemical business to satisfy competition concerns.

Those divestitures have gone to none other than Bayer's homegrown rival BASF, the unexpected beneficiary of the mammoth deal.

And following the California court verdict, Bayer may now have to set aside huge sums to settle future Roundup claims.

"The total cost, in our view, could easily reach $10 billion" if Bayer were to settle with a still larger number of plaintiffs, said Leacock.

Explore further

Bayer shares plunge after Monsanto cancer ruling

#education #health #toxins #poison

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magzoso-tech · 4 years

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New Post has been published on https://magzoso.com/tech/us-colleges-turning-students-phones-into-surveillance-devices-tracking-locations-of-hundreds-of-thousands/

US Colleges Turning Students' Phones Into Surveillance Devices, Tracking Locations of Hundreds of Thousands

When Syracuse University freshmen walk into professor Jeff Rubin’s Introduction to Information Technologies class, seven small Bluetooth beacons hidden around the Grant Auditorium lecture hall connect with an app on their smartphones and boost their “attendance points.” And when they skip class? The SpotterEDU app sees that, too, logging their absence into a campus database that tracks them over time and can sink their grade. It also alerts Rubin, who later contacts students to ask where they’ve been. His 340-person lecture has never been so full.

“They want those points,” he said. “They know I’m watching and acting on it. So, behaviorally, they change.”

Short-range phone sensors and campuswide Wi-Fi networks are empowering colleges across the United States to track hundreds of thousands of students more precisely than ever before. Dozens of schools now use such technology to monitor students’ academic performance, analyse their conduct or assess their mental health.

But some professors and education advocates argue that the systems represent a new low in intrusive technology, breaching students’ privacy on a massive scale. The tracking systems, they worry, will infantilise students in the very place where they’re expected to grow into adults, further training them to see surveillance as a normal part of living, whether they like it or not.

“We’re adults. Do we really need to be tracked?” said Robby Pfeifer, a sophomore at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, which recently began logging the attendance of students connected to the campus’ Wi-Fi network. “Why is this necessary? How does this benefit us? . . . And is it just going to keep progressing until we’re micromanaged every second of the day?”

This style of surveillance has become just another fact of life for many Americans. A flood of cameras, sensors and microphones, wired to an online backbone, now can measure people’s activity and whereabouts with striking precision, reducing the mess of everyday living into trend lines that companies promise to help optimise.

Americans say in surveys they accept the technology’s encroachment because it often feels like something else: a trade-off of future worries for the immediacy of convenience, comfort and ease. If a tracking system can make students be better, one college adviser said, isn’t that a good thing?

But the perils of increasingly intimate supervision – and the subtle way it can mold how people act – has also led some to worry whether anyone will truly know when all this surveillance has gone too far. “Graduates will be well prepared . . . to embrace 24/7 government tracking and social credit systems,” one commenter on the Slashdot message board said. “Building technology was a lot more fun before it went all 1984.”

Instead of GPS coordinates, the schools rely on networks of Bluetooth transmitters and wireless access points to piece together students’ movements from dorm to desk. One company that uses school Wi-Fi networks to monitor movements says it gathers 6,000 location data points per student every day.

School and company officials call location monitoring a powerful booster for student success: If they know more about where students are going, they argue, they can intervene before problems arise. But some schools go even further, using systems that calculate personalised “risk scores” based on factors such as whether the student is going to the library enough.

The dream of some administrators is a university where every student is a model student, adhering to disciplined patterns of behaviour that are intimately quantified, surveilled and analysed.

But some educators say this move toward heightened educational vigilance threatens to undermine students’ independence and prevents them from pursuing interests beyond the classroom because they feel they might be watched.

“These administrators have made a justification for surveilling a student population because it serves their interests, in terms of the scholarships that come out of their budget, the reputation of their programs, the statistics for the school,” said Kyle M. L. Jones, an Indiana University assistant professor who researches student privacy.

“What’s to say that the institution doesn’t change their eye of surveillance and start focusing on minority populations, or anyone else?” he added. Students “should have all the rights, responsibilities and privileges that an adult has. So why do we treat them so differently?”

Students disagree on whether the campus-tracking systems are a breach of privacy, and some argue they have nothing to hide. But one feeling is almost universally shared, according to interviews with more than a dozen students and faculty members: that the technology is becoming ubiquitous, and that the people being monitored – their peers, and themselves – can’t really do anything about it.

“It embodies a very cynical view of education – that it’s something we need to enforce on students, almost against their will,” said Erin Rose Glass, a digital scholarship librarian at the University of California San Diego. “We’re reinforcing this sense of powerlessness . . . when we could be asking harder questions, like: Why are we creating institutions where students don’t want to show up?”

SpotterEDU chief Rick Carter, a former college basketball coach, said he founded the app in 2015 as a way to watch over student athletes: Many schools already pay “class checkers” to make sure athletes remain eligible to play.

The company now works with nearly 40 schools, he said, including such universities as Auburn, Central Florida, Columbia, Indiana and Missouri, as well as several smaller colleges and a public high school. More than 1.5 million student check-ins have been logged this year nationwide, including in graduate seminars and chapel services.

SpotterEDU uses Bluetooth beacons roughly the size of a deck of cards to signal to a student’s smartphone once a student steps within range. Installers stick them on walls and ceilings – the less visible, Carter said, the better. He declined to allow The Washington Post to photograph beacons in classrooms, saying “currently students do not know what they look like.”

School officials give SpotterEDU the students’ full schedules, and the system can email a professor or adviser automatically if a student skips class or walks in more than two minutes late. The app records a full timeline of the students’ presence so advisers can see whether they left early or stepped out for a break.

“Students today have so many distractions,” said Tami Chievous, an associate athletic director at the University of Missouri, where advisers text some freshmen athletes if they don’t show up within five minutes of class. “We have to make sure they’re doing the right thing.”

The Chicago-based company has experimented with ways to make the surveillance fun, gamifying students’ schedules with colourful Bitmoji or digital multiday streaks. But the real value may be for school officials, who Carter said can split students into groups, such as “students of colour” or “out-of-state students,” for further review. When asked why an official would want to segregate out data on students of colour, Carter said many colleges already do so, looking for patterns in academic retention and performance, adding that it “can provide important data for retention. Even the first few months of recorded data on class attendance and performance can help predict how likely a group of students is to” stay enrolled.

Students’ attendance and tardiness are scored into a point system that some professors use for grading, Carter said, and schools can use the data to “take action” against truant students, such as grabbing back scholarship funds.

The system’s national rollout could be made more complicated by Carter’s history. He agreed earlier this year to stay more than 2,500 feet from the athletic offices of DePaul University, where he was the associate head basketball coach from 2015 to 2017, following an order of protection filed against him and allegations that he had threatened the school’s athletic director and head basketball coach. The order, Carter said, is related to NCAA violations at the program during his time there and has nothing to do with SpotterEDU.

Rubin, the Syracuse professor, said once-thin classes now boast more than 90% attendance. But the tracking has not been without its pitfalls: Earlier versions of the app, he said, included a button allowing students to instantly share their exact GPS coordinates, leading some to inadvertently send him their location while out at night. The feature has since been removed.

For even more data, schools can turn to the Austin, Texas-based start-up Degree Analytics, which uses Wi-Fi check-ins to track the movements of roughly 200,000 students across 19 state universities, private colleges and other schools.

Launched by the data scientist Aaron Benz in 2017, the company says in promotional materials that every student can graduate with “a proper environment and perhaps a few nudges along the way.”

Benz tells school administrators that his system can solve “a real lack of understanding about the student experience”: By analysing campus Wi-Fi data, he said, 98% of their students can be measured and analysed.

But the company also claims to see much more than just attendance. By logging the time a student spends in different parts of the campus, Benz said, his team has found a way to identify signs of personal anguish: A student avoiding the cafeteria might suffer from food insecurity or an eating disorder; a student skipping class might be grievously depressed. The data isn’t conclusive, Benz said, but it can “shine a light on where people can investigate, so students don’t slip through the cracks.”

To help find these students, he said, his team designed algorithms to look for patterns in a student’s “behavioural state” and automatically flag when their habits change. He calls it scaffolding – a temporary support used to build up a student, removed when they can stand on their own.

At a Silicon Valley summit in April, Benz outlined a recent real-life case: that of Student ID 106033, a depressed and “extremely isolated” student he called Sasha whom the system had flagged as “highly at-risk” because she only left her dorm to eat. “At every school, there are lots of Sashas,” he said. “And the bigger you are, the more Sashas that you have.”

A classifier algorithm divides the student body into peer groups – “full-time freshmen,” say, or “commuter students” – and the system then compares each student to “normal” behaviour, as defined by their peers. It also generates a “risk score” for students based around factors such as how much time they spent in community centers or at the gym.

The students who deviate from those day-to-day campus rhythms are flagged for anomalies, and the company then alerts school officials in case they want to pursue real-world intervention. (In Sasha’s case, Benz said, the university sent an adviser to knock on her door.)

Some administrators love the avalanche of data these kinds of Wi-Fi-based systems bring. “Forget that old ominous line, ‘We know where you live.’ These days, it’s, ‘We know where you are,’ ” Purdue University president Mitch Daniels wrote last year about his school’s location-tracking software. “Isn’t technology wonderful?”

But technical experts said they doubted the advertised capabilities of such systems, which are mostly untested and unproven in their abilities to pinpoint student harm. Some students said most of their classmates also didn’t realise how much data was being gathered on their movements. They worried about anyone knowing intimate details of their daily walking patterns and whereabouts.

Several students said they didn’t mind a system designed to keep them honest. But one of them, a freshman athlete at Temple University who asked to speak anonymously to avoid team punishment, said the SpotterEDU app has become a nightmare, marking him absent when he’s sitting in class and marking him late when he’s on time.

He said he squandered several of his early lectures trying to convince the app he was present, toggling his settings in desperation as professors needled him to put the phone away. He then had to defend himself to campus staff members, who believed the data more than him.

His teammates, he said, have suffered through their own technical headaches, but they’ve all been told they’ll get in trouble if they delete the app from their phones.

“We can face repercussions with our coaches and academic advisers if we don’t show 100% attendance,” he said. But “it takes away from my learning because I’m literally freaking out, tapping everything to try to get it to work.”

Campus staff, Carter said, can override data errors on a case-by-case basis, and Rubin said a teaching assistant works with students after class to triage glitches and correct points. SpotterEDU’s terms of use say its data is not guaranteed to be “accurate, complete, correct, adequate, useful, timely, reliable or otherwise.”

Carter said he doesn’t like to say the students are being “tracked,” because of its potentially negative connotations; he prefers the term “monitored” instead. “It’s about building that relationship,” he said, so students “know you care about them.”

But college leaders have framed the technology in exactly those terms. In emails this year between officials at the University of North Carolina, made available through public-records requests, a senior associate athletic director said SpotterEDU would “improve our ability to track more team members, in more places, more accurately.”

The emails also revealed the challenge for a college attempting to roll out student-tracking systems en masse. In August, near the start of the fall semester, nearly 150 SpotterEDU beacons were installed in a blitz across the UNC campus, from Chapman Hall to the Woollen Gym. The launch was so sudden that some students were alarmed to see an unknown man enter their classroom, stick a small device near their desks, and walk away.

Unclear what was happening, the dean of UNC’s journalism school, Susan King, had someone yank a beacon off the wall after learning of a commotion spreading on Facebook. She told The Post she faulted “stupidity and a lack of communication” for the panic.

Carter said the frenzy was due to the school’s need for a quick turnaround and that most installations happen when students aren’t in class. (In an email to UNC staff, Carter later apologised for the mass installation’s “confusion and chaos.”)

A UNC spokeswoman declined to make anyone available for an interview, saying only in a statement that the university was evaluating “streamlined attendance tracking” for a “small group of student-athletes.”

But campuswide monitoring appears to be on its way, the emails show. The school is planning to shift to a check-in system designed by a UNC professor, and an IT director said in an email that the school could install beacons across all general-purpose classrooms in time for the spring semester. “Since students have to download the app, that is considered notification and opting-in,” one UNC official wrote.

Chris Gilliard, a professor at Macomb Community College in Michigan who testified before Congress last month on privacy and digital rights, said he worries about the expanding reach of “surveillance creep”: If these systems work so well in college, administrators might argue, why not high school or anywhere else?

The systems, he added, are isolating for students who don’t own smartphones, coercive for students who do and unnecessary for professors, who can accomplish the task with the same pop quizzes and random checks they’ve used for decades. “You’re forcing students into a position,” he said: “Be tracked or be left out.”

Some parents, however, wish their children faced even closer supervision. Wes Grandstaff, who said his son, Austin, transformed from a struggling student to college graduate with SpotterEDU’s help, said the added surveillance was worth it: “When you’re a college athlete, they basically own you, so it didn’t matter what he felt: You’re going to get watched and babysat whether you like it or not.”

He now says he wishes schools would share the data with parents, too. “I just cut you a $30,000 check,” he said, “and I can’t find out if my kid’s going to class or not?”

Students using Degree Analytics’ Wi-Fi system can opt-out by clicking “no” on a window that asks whether they want to help “support student success, operations and security.” But Benz, the company’s chief, said very few do.

That is, until last month at VCU, which recently launched a pilot program to monitor a set of courses required of all freshmen. Students said they were frustrated to first learn of the system in a short email about a “new attendance tool” and were given only two weeks before the opt-out deadline passed.

Students quickly scattered the opt-out link across social media, and the independent student newspaper, the Commonwealth Times, sowed doubts about the program’s secrecy and stated mission, writing, “Student success my ass.” The university declined to make an official available for an interview.

One student who opted out, VCU senior Jacie Dannhardt, said she was furious that the college had launched first-year students into a tracking program none of them had ever heard of. “We’re all still adults. Have a basic respect for our privacy,” she said. “We don’t need hall passes anymore.”

The opt-out rate at VCU, Benz said, climbed to roughly half of all eligible students. But he blamed the exodus on misunderstanding and a “reactionary ‘cancel culture’ thing.” “We could have done a much better job communicating, and the great majority of those students who could opt out probably wouldn’t have,” he said.

Joanna Grama, an information-security consultant and higher-education specialist who has advised the Department of Homeland Security on data privacy, said she doubted most students knew they were signing up for long-term monitoring when they clicked to connect to the campus Wi-Fi.

She said she worries about school-performance data being used as part of a “cradle-to-grave profile” trailing students as they graduate and pursue their careers. She also questions how all this digital nudging can affect students’ daily lives.

“At what point in time do we start crippling a whole generation of adults, human beings, who have been so tracked and told what to do all the time that they don’t know how to fend for themselves?” she said. “Is that cruel? Or is that kind?”

#Miscellaneous

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waterkick15-blog · 5 years

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Weekend Reading, 8.5.18

I got a lot of good advice while I was a post-bacc student. Some of it took a while to settle in, either because I needed to overcome some initial resistance in order to see its truth, or because I couldn’t grasp what had been offered without hindsight to help me. Some if it hit me immediately and changed how I saw things.

An example of the latter is something my friend Erin said to me one day over coffee. I’d just wrapped up an exam for a class, and I was excitedly telling her about how I intended to use the little break I had before my next big test: scrambling to get ahead in my classes, memorizing and studying as far ahead of the next exam as possible.

Erin, who by then had completed her first year of medical school, paused.

“That’s all great,” she said. “But the thing I’ve learned in med school is that it’s really important to savor whatever free time you get. There will always be another test, another obstacle, another thing to cram for. When you can rest, rest. Cook, see movies, see your friends, have a date night with your significant other, whatever. You won’t always be able to do those things, so you learn to do them when you can.”

Erin’s words hit home. For two years, I’d been trapped in a pattern of thinking I had to use every lull in my coursework to get ahead. It was, I realized, a lose-lose scenario: trying to study that far in advance of a test wasn’t particularly effective, since I tend not to retain information I’ve memorized weeks before an exam. And doing so cost me the few, precious pockets of free time I had in those days.

My post-bacc made me feel helpless: it was the first time in my life when effort and discipline seemed to get me nowhere. Instead of accepting that I could only do and accomplish so much—the rest was going to be a matter of letting the chips fall where they may—I fought desperately to obtain a sense of mastery.

Listening to Erin, I realized that my need to use every spare moment as an opportunity to fight against inevitable academic struggle was keeping me prisoner. At the time, I was still planning to go to medical school, and it dawned on me that if I kept up with this pattern of behavior it might well be a decade before I allowed myself to feel free—a grim prospect.

I can’t say that I changed my tune overnight, but I did loosen up after that conversation. I stopped trying to get ahead frantically, and it was a turning point in my life as a pre-med. It’s the moment when I started cultivating friendships with my peers in earnest, began exploring and getting to know Washington, D.C., and when I accepted, however begrudgingly, the fact that I could only do my best. Needless to say, my academic performance didn’t suffer because I was recharging between tests. If anything, I found my (wobbly) sea legs as a student.

On August 1st, just a few days ago, I started encircling myself with rules and regulations about how I’ll spend these last four weeks before my DI starts. I’d devote a certain number of hours per day getting ahead on study guides, tighten my schedule in various ways to prepare myself for more rigid working hours, and start reviewing various reference manuals in order to be primed for clinical environments.

None of these efforts would be impractical. But they’re more than a little reminiscent of my time as a tense, worried post-bacc student who awarded far too much power to self-discipline.

Instead of winnowing away my pleasure and spare time, I’m using Erin’s advice to guide me. I don’t need to drain the sweetness out of August in order to ready myself for a different kind of hard work; the work will challenge me whether I deprive myself needlessly now or not. I’ll make time and space for the preparations I need to do, while also continuing to savor summer in New York, as I have been. I’ll take care of my study guides and see friends; review some of my old medical nutrition therapy notes and take ambling afternoon walks; get my paperwork together and indulge in a couple of committed TV binges.

There may come a time when I have to sacrifice most of my personal time for the DI, but that time isn’t now. Even once it starts, I hope I can treat the internship the way I ultimately learned to treat my post-bacc: doing the best I can and letting go of the rest. Allowing things to be easy when they can be and drawing on whatever inner resources I’ve got when they can’t be. Not wasting moments of rest because I’m primed for the next struggle; not tensing up against the experience more than I need to.

Wishing you all a full experience of this last official month of that summer—whatever that means to you. Here are the recipes and reads I’ve been peeking at this week.

Recipes

A light, beautiful breakfast: blueberry chia pudding with salted seed brittle.

Calling all comfort food lovers! I’m drooling over Alissa’s barbecue chickpea cauliflower pizza.

A perfect, vegan summer side: coconut milk corn.

I love an untraditional pasta, and this vegan cajun pasta looks so flavorful.

I made a batch of crumble yesterday and immediately regretted turning the oven on. Lindsay’s espresso dark chocolate sorbet is a much better option for this coming week.

Reads

1. An interesting perspective on how doctors may be taking too lax an approach to bone health and osteoporosis screening.

2. Screening is available for teen depression, but securing quality treatment and care may be much more complex. An important article from the Washington Post takes a closer look at the impact of limited psychological care options on teens and their families.

3. As a dietetics student, I spent plenty of time learning the signs, symptoms, and screening tools for malnutrition and wasting. Still, malnourishment often slips through the cracks in clinical settings, and it’s contributing to mortality and extended hospital stays.

4. I like Maryam Zaringhalam’s perspective on being a woman in the sciences. She acknowledges the challenges women can face, but she questions media coverage that may gloss over the work that women are doing to create a more equitable field:

But despite best intentions, that same flavor of media coverage piles up to paint a picture of what it’s like to be a woman in science that is both jarring and, in my experience, does not really reflect the complete reality. That’s because these pieces frequently ignore the change-makers working to fix a broken system. They perpetuate a narrative that paints women as passive victims, rather than people who are wise to science’s systemic inequities and advocate for change from a well of evidence and lived experience. Spotlighting injustice while ignoring the solutions we put forward erases our agency.

5. In the face of climate change, an environmental scientist examines what will happen to the world’s largest penguin colony. The article gave me faith in the penguins’ resilience.

Tomorrow I’m sharing one of my favorite summer breakfasts from Power Plates (spoiler alert: it’s almost dessert-worthy!). Till soon, take good care.

Source: https://www.thefullhelping.com/weekend-reading-8-5-18/

0 notes

oovitus · 6 years

Text

Weekend Reading, 8.5.18

Erin, who by then had completed her first year of medical school, paused.

None of these efforts would be impractical. But they’re more than a little reminiscent of my time as a tense, worried post-bacc student who awarded far too much power to self-discipline.

Wishing you all a full experience of this last official month of that summer—whatever that means to you. Here are the recipes and reads I’ve been peeking at this week.

Recipes

A light, beautiful breakfast: blueberry chia pudding with salted seed brittle.

Calling all comfort food lovers! I’m drooling over Alissa’s barbecue chickpea cauliflower pizza.

A perfect, vegan summer side: coconut milk corn.

I love an untraditional pasta, and this vegan cajun pasta looks so flavorful.

I made a batch of crumble yesterday and immediately regretted turning the oven on. Lindsay’s espresso dark chocolate sorbet is a much better option for this coming week.

Reads

1. An interesting perspective on how doctors may be taking too lax an approach to bone health and osteoporosis screening.

5. In the face of climate change, an environmental scientist examines what will happen to the world’s largest penguin colony. The article gave me faith in the penguins’ resilience.

Tomorrow I’m sharing one of my favorite summer breakfasts from Power Plates (spoiler alert: it’s almost dessert-worthy!). Till soon, take good care.

The post Weekend Reading, 8.5.18 appeared first on The Full Helping.

Weekend Reading, 8.5.18 published first on

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trendingnewsb · 6 years

Text

5 Bestselling Authors Reveal Their NaNoWriMo Secrets

Instagram / @imjustahuman

So, you’ve toyed with the idea of writing a novel for years, but for one reason or another, you haven’t got around to it. Don’t sweat it. Just spend the 30 days of November writing approximately 1,667 words a day, and then boom! You’ve got yourself a 50,000-word novel, all ready to hit the presses and become the next Great Novel.

Right? …Isn’t that how it works??

This notion of “simply” writing one-thirtieth of a novel each day is part of why NaNoWriMo receives some flack, but it’s of course not the intended message of the month-long writing marathon. The goal isn’t to hit “publish” on whatever you’ve written come December 1st; the goal is to get you to write every single day, and to end the month with some semblance of a novel — whether that’s a first draft or the first several chapters. (Or, as is the case in some of the stories below, the first few books in a series!) To prove that there is worth in just here is a list of bestselling novels that found their roots during NaNoWriMo.

1. by Sara Gruen

You’ve probably heard of this one. If you avoided the New York Times Best Seller list between 2006 and 2012, and didn’t watch a single movie trailer in 2011, then there’s a chance you missed it. But for the rest of us, is a title that rings instant bells.

Gruen used NaNoWriMo to draft three of her novels, including — a historical novel about a young vet who joins a Depression-era circus. She admits that the year she drafted her breakout success, she didn’t “win” the contest: she didn’t pass the 50,000 word count goal. Instead, she accumulated a solid 40,000 word base.

As she said in an interview with Lindsey Rivait, “Those were 40,000 words I did not have before.”

NaNoWriMo thoughts from Sara Gruen: “However far behind you are, take comfort in knowing that there is somebody else out there in the same boat, and look for that next fun scene. And then the next. And if that doesn’t work, set someone on fire. In your book, of course.”

2. by Rainbow Rowell

Rainbow Rowell admits that she first thought people just used NaNoWriMo to dump words on paper, and that she would be better off taking the time to write quality over quantity. She had already published two novels, one of which took her five years — so she certainly had the patience to go slow.

In the end, what she found great about the challenge was how the formation of a daily writing habit gave her the freedom to stop second-guessing herself. She discovered that writing with momentum didn’t result in just “words on paper” — sometimes these words could be pretty good.

During NaNoWriMo, I never left the world of the book long enough to lose momentum. I stayed immersed in the story all month long, and that made everything come so much smoother than usual. I got a much quicker grasp on the main characters and their voices. The plotlines shot forward…”

3. by Hugh Howey

In 2011, Hugh Howey prepared for his third consecutive NaNoWriMo by creating a detailed outline of the novel he intended to start writing on November 1st. However, in October, his recently self-published novelette Wool started to gain traction, generating reviews and selling copies by the thousands/tens of thousands. So, Howey swiveled on his heel, dropped his intended writing outline and decided to turn Wool into a series.

That November, Howey had a schedule that makes us wonder if he’s cracked the secret of time travel: he worked full-time, was taking night-classes in astronomy, was volunteering in NaNoWriMo Young Writers program at a local library, and woke up every night at 3am to write. On top of all that, by the end of the month he had solidly smashed the 50,000 word count goal: three stories in the series had been completed, and was edited, the cover was designed, and it was published on Amazon. And it was already generating sales… whew! Today, the film rights to are owned by 20th Century Fox.

“I can say with confidence that I wouldn’t have written the same books if I’d written them any other way. The compressed nature of a NaNo-novel makes for a tighter plot. It reinforces the importance of not taking a day off. NaNoWriMo isn’t a writing exercise for me. It trained me to be a pro.”

4. by Erin Morgenstern

Erin Morgenstern took part in NaNoWriMo every year from 2003 to 2009. Her best-known novel, , started to take form in 2005 and was refined over the next two years with blitzes of writing and re-writing in the 2006 and 2007 NaNos. Then in 2010, Morgenstern took her first break from the writing contest to edit her book, during which she altered significant parts of the story. According to Morgenstern, this is the point of NaNoWriMo: to discover a story that can be excavated and polished over months or years afterwards — until all that is left is a gem of a novel.

Published in 2011, spent seven weeks on The New York Times Best Seller list, reaching number two on the hardcover fiction list. The film rights have also been acquired by the producers of the movies.

“Even if you’re an outliner, leave room for the unexpected things to sneak in. Surprises are half the fun, the spontaneous road trips through tangents and subplots. They might end up being more important than you think. And if they’re not, you can always edit them out after November. No one has to know so for now, for this glorious November, you can do whatever you please. It’s your world to create and explore and even destroy if you want.”

5. by Marissa Meyer

Marissa Meyer had been writing Sailor Moon fanfiction for years when she started posting her daily word count as a means of motivating herself. And motivate herself, she did. In the 2008 NaNo, she wrote or drafted the first three novels of series: 70K for 50K for , and 30K for .

As many of her successful NaNoWriMo peers will tell you, most of those words were scrapped, but not wasted. They provided an in-depth roadmap that helped her write the words that stuck. All three of these novels went on to land spots on the New York Times Best Seller list and the series is now on its fifth volume.

“[NaNoWriMo] forces you to silence that internal editor and just get something written. If you’re telling yourself that it’s OK to be writing something bad because you can always come back and fix it later, it takes a lot of the pressure off.”

So, take heart, aspiring authors! Remember that NaNoWriMo is not about writing a bestselling novel. It’s about non-stop. Turning your 50,000 words into a potential best seller comes afterwards — with lots, and lots (and lots) of editing.

There is no shortage of great advice out there meant to help writers through the month-long writing blitz with the makings of great novel (and, for bonus points: their sanity). But, as Diana Gabaldon says: “…no matter how you write, it’s always you and the page. And the page isn’t in a position to tell you anything you do is wrong. Therefore…anything you do must necessarily be the Right Way to Write. Go for it!”