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godzillerd · 3 years

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Resident Evil 8 AU Pt 2: Parenthood Boogaloo??

Former Post Here

To summarize: Ethan takes deal. Miranda goes boom. Village goes boom. Chris is like this is serious. Heisenberg is like no baby for me pls. Ethan is like yeah no absolutely no baby for him pls. Chris is like sorry but baby for him. Didn’t even get a baby shower. Fucking brutal. Hate this place.

RIP pls forgive this obnoxiously long post that will never become a cohesive fic.

Why am I like this.

My life is a sea of regrets.

Seriously though forgive how all over the place this is - it is literally me vomiting thoughts for sport.

Immediately after leaving the village (what was left of it) Heisenberg headed west with Rose.

As expected, it took a matter of hours for the Duke to show up bearing gifts. Not much, mind you, but enough.

He even allowed Heisenberg to start running a tab, despite quibbling that it was a bad business practice.

For the first year, they were completely off the grid with zero contact with the rest of the world, usually living in ramshackle hunting cabins in the forests of whatever country they happened to be in at the time. Hungary, Austria, Slovenia, and eventually Switzerland.

Not requiring food or water himself, caring for Rose was relatively easy with some help from Duke. Heisenberg became an old hand at building fires out of nothing.

The whole baby thing did not come naturally to him. In fact, it took over six months for Heisenberg to have any kind of clue as to why the potato might be screaming this time.

He came very close to just killing it and fending for himself, but after seeing what Rose did to Miranda... it was enough to make anyone hesitant.

Around eight months in, Duke showed up with a new present: A cell phone. And a secure number. And a delicate observation that Ethan Winters might actually kill Heisenberg if he didn’t call soon.

Calls with Ethan were an infrequent thing. Ethan passed along pertinent information, but being under heavy monitoring, he didn’t have a lot of private time.

Heisenberg had less of an excuse, and just genuinely didn’t like Ethan.

Despite being told about it specifically, Heisenberg missed Rose’s first and second birthdays. She didn’t seem to mind. Ethan did.

Around then, it became obvious that living in the woods, completely cut off from humanity, wasn’t going to work out well for a growing child.

Did you know electromagnetic energy can really fuck up a bank machine?

Heisenberg (well, Duke) found a reasonable, small cottage on the outskirts of a village in the south of France. He put together a decent little business selling metalwork crafts that were simple (for him) to build, but could sell for high profit. Horses were a bit of a specialty.

Became the local backwoods crazy rural uncle who can fix anything using anything.

Ethan managed to pull enough strings to buy himself a four hour window while in France for unrelated business to visit Rose for the first time just before she turned three.

They agreed to meet in a town about an hour south as Ethan had ‘security concerns’.

ie. He and Chris both doubted Heisenberg’s ability to blend into a crowd.

To prove a point because he’s a petty bitch, Heisenberg walked Rose past Ethan five times while Ethan was waiting around for them. Ethan only noticed them when Heisenberg said his name.

Shaving, showering, a haircut, and new clothes can do a lot for a man.

Rose did not recognize Ethan and was extremely reluctant to speak to him at all. Eventually, she was coaxed into introducing herself as “Rosalie-Elise”. For reasons beyond Heisenberg’s comprehension, this seemed to have a profound emotional effect on Ethan.

Aside from occasional visits from Ethan (usually every year or two) it was mostly Heisenberg and Rose against the world.

Duke did roll through, though less frequently than when they were actively fleeing the village. He was incredibly fond of Rose, after all.

Until Rose turned three, Heisenberg largely saw her as a nuisance - something he was obligated to keep alive for his own sake.

When she was three, and shortly after they settled in the French House, Rose began picking up on Heisenberg’s mannerisms. Speaking like him, sitting like him, trying to mimic everything he did on a smaller scale...

Overnight she went from a nuisance to the apple of his goddamn eye.

Heisenberg rarely called Rose by her name unless it was serious. More often than not, she’s ‘Kid’ or ‘Blondie’

By the time she started school, Rose could dismantle, repair, and reassemble most standard engines (with a bit of help). She was also shaping up to be a mean little welder.

She also picked up a bad habit of swearing (fortunately, only in English)

Rose was raised speaking French almost exclusively, and her English was heavily accented. Heisenberg learned it with great difficulty, but became fluent by speaking only French for years.

Despite being happier by himself, cut off from other people, Heisenberg deliberately put in the effort to appear as ‘normal’ as possible.

He never claimed to be Rose’s father - to her or to anyone else. Instead, he called himself her crazy uncle and left the gossip-mongers to come up with a story about her parents.

Ethan was mockingly referred to as ‘Brother’ every time he called or visited, though.

When Rose was six, Heisenberg gave her a watered-down version of what happened in the village.

Watered down for him, at least.

Rose had nightmares for six months.

In the midst of that fun time, Ethan gave them a warning that the BSAA was starting to suspect something, so they up and disappeared in one night.

This pattern continued for years, destroying any chance of Rose having a ‘normal’ childhood.

Despite that, she developed a startlingly good mindset about things. Influenced by Heisenberg, Rose grew up with a tendency towards independence and isolation, with a hell of a lot of self-confidence and pride to boot. She never particularly enjoyed being around other children, even when she had the opportunity. She preferred staying close to Heisenberg whether it was necessary or not.

Being an obnoxiously touch-motivated brat, Rose spent most of her childhood hanging off his neck, or flopped over his shoulders, or literally hugging him while he was juggling hot metal. Heisenberg gave up caring when she was about four and by the time she was five he didn’t really notice it at all. He often sprawled on the couch just so the kid could nap on him and catch up on sleep.

After learning the truth about the village, Rose never did sleep particularly well at night - especially not alone in her room. Most nights, Heisenberg would sit next to her bed until she fell asleep. Sometimes even all night.

Again, likely influenced by Heisenberg, Rose grew to dislike Ethan as time wore on. Despite her solid relationship with Heisenberg, most of their arguments were about Rose seeing Ethan.

Heisenberg understood that their safety relied on Ethan being on good terms with both of them. Rose “didn’t give a fuck”

They reached a compromise eventually that Ethan was only ever promised one hour with Rose. If she wanted to leave after that, it was her choice. Similarly, Heisenberg let her set the boundaries about hugs and calling Ethan her father.

Needless to say, Ethan stopped getting hugs by the time Rose was ten, and he was never called her dad.

On the other side of things, Rose adored the Duke just as much as he adored her. Whenever Duke was in their neck of the woods, he made a special point to track them down in order to give Rose extravagant gifts.

Puberty was a hell of a time.

A hell of a time

Rose manifested a massive amount of power in the span of six months when she was thirteen. Around the same time she discovered her love of girls, teenage rebellion, and sticking it to the man.

During one rip-roaring fight when she was fourteen, Rose sent Heisenberg through not one, nor two, nor even three walls. She sent him through five.

Somehow, that incident was enough to curb the rising tide of teenage hormones and got them both back on track.

Heisenberg always struggled with knowing how much or how little to tell Rose about their predicament. On one hand, Ethan hated the idea and thought it would destroy her entire childhood. On the other hand, Heisenberg disliked the idea of lying to the kid.

Eventually, circumstances were such that there was no choice but to tell Rose everything in order to stay safe. By the time she was twelve, she had a pretty good idea about everything that had happened in the past.

Mostly because Ethan assumed he wouldn’t do it, Heisenberg also told her all about himself.

Surprisingly (or maybe not so surprisingly, after so many years) it didn’t change much. She tried to use it as ammunition during a few teenage tantrums, but when she realized it didn’t phase him, it was never really brought up again.

#Is this chronological #What is chronological #RE8 #RE8 AU #Resident Evil 8 #Resident Evil 8 AU #Resident Evil Village #Resident Evil Village AU #re8 heisenberg #Re8 Alternate Ending #re8 fanfiction #Re8 Rose #karl heisenberg #Rosemary Winters #re8 headcanons #re8 the duke #re8 ethan winters #Ethan Winters

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stillness-in-green · 3 years

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Ahistorical, Absurd, and Unsustainable (Part Two)

An Examination of the Mass Arrest of the Paranormal Liberation Front

Introduction and Part One

PART TWO: Logistics Problems

The Initial Arrests

Looking over the events above, one thing becomes apparent almost immediately: the only one that involves numbers even resembling those at the villa are the Rice Riots, and arrests there were scattered across two months. The only thing I could find that even came close to the idea of arresting the entire PLF in a day was a mass detainment in India in 2011: in the run-up to a separatist rally[7] that had stated its intention to be a “Million Man March,” police reportedly detained 100,000 people to stop them from attending. To do this, they used auditoriums and stadiums, not actual detention facilities.

And you can see why! We see a few pictures of the Gunga Villa group in the aftermath, but they’re pictures that raise more questions than they answer. Consider this one:

The detainment and relocation of the PLF. (Chapter 296)

This is but the tiniest fraction of the people captured, but every single one of them has had their hands and arms bound. The ones we see in the basement are restrained similarly. Where did all those restraints come from? Who got them all here? Were they, perhaps, made by the man in the center, who conspicuously has lengths of the same restraint wrapped around his wrists? If so, how did he make them all so freely, when most similar quirks we see rely on a certain amount of body mass or caloric intake?

Or take those transports in the background. How many people can each hold, and how long will it take to move a group of 17,000 into secure facilities? How are those 17,000 being kept docile all that time, especially once they’ve been moved onto the transports? Will there be a hero onboard every one, making sure the prisoners don’t get the opportunity to plan amongst themselves? Were there similar transports parked at every other raid site across the rest of the country? Enough of them and their assigned heroes to move the other 98,000 people?

Consider what we know about the Paranormal Liberation Front.[8] While easiest to compare numerically to widespread protest movements, they’re unlike any historical mass arrest in that context because they are, every one of them, combat-trained and ready to give their lives for the cause. There's no one there to tell them all to stand down, at least not that we see give such an order. Trumpet, perhaps, could have, but why would he have done so? Re-Destro gave the order back in Deika, but Re-Destro seems to have lost consciousness following his battle with Edgeshot, and I much doubt he’d have given the same order here as he did when facing Shigaraki in any case.

My Hero Academia has a long history of treating police custody as something like a status effect, like once a villain has been subdued, they’re In Custody, and magically become incapable of attempting to mount an escape. But why should this be so? There’s a relatively common misconception I see in fanfic that the police have “quirk cancellation restraints,” but let’s be clear: no such device exists in the series. This is the ostensible reason All For One and Muscular are restrained so unforgivingly; it’s why the prisoners in Tartarus have guns pointed at their heads at all times. It’s why Overhaul’s drug was such a big deal and it’s why the only way to stop Gigantomachia was to drug him or have Best Jeanist bind him in steel cables.

There is no way to stop someone in MHA from using their quirk except convincing them not to, via diplomacy or intimidation, or rendering them unconscious. Which of those tactics, pray tell, is in use here, such that the enormous numbers of people at issue remain subdued until they can be moved to secure facilities?

The Liberated Districts

Another problem quickly presents itself. We’re told that the PLF’s “other bases” around the country were hit, but we weren’t shown what that looked like. We saw Slidin’ Go and another hero in a prisoner transport; we know from bonus material that people like Class 1-B and Mirio—and presumably any number of other high school hero interns from around the country—were involved in those other raids. Still, we didn’t see what those base raids actually entailed.

That’s not surprising, because “base” is not really a very accurate word to describe the scale of the problem. See, with the intention of the raids being to put a stop to the PLF in one fell swoop, rather than risk a drawn-out conflict with a force that Hawks describes as, “On par with, maybe even greater than,” the power of their hero-saturated society, the Commission would have had to take into account an aspect of the MLA that readers learned about during My Villain Academia: what Trumpet calls “liberated districts.”

Deika was a liberated district—an entire town where an enormous chunk of the population was made up of members of the MLA. Ominously, the fact that Trumpet had a ready term to describe it—“a” liberated district, not “our” liberated district, or even “the first” liberated district—suggests that Deika was not the only one.[9] Further, Curious describes what we can expect the heroes would have to contend with in such areas: people who look like everyday civilians but are actually combat-trained warriors. Combat-trained warriors not gathered in one conveniently isolated compound or solitary building, but scattered across miles of homes and businesses, schools and parks, anywhere that an ordinary person might be found spending their day.

That is an entirely different can of worms than raiding one single building; thus it is here that the logistics really start to strain. Mass arrests of a civilian populace don't work at all the same way as a round-up of people all in a single area—how do you arrest an entire town? Well, there is such a thing as martial law, or military occupation, and maybe those tactics would work if the PLF had sent all their ace combatants to the villa and all the people remaining in the target city were terrified and unarmed civilians who could be ordered to keep inside their houses until further notice lest they start getting shot. That is not at all how the bulk of the PLF—that is, the ranks of the MLA—have been portrayed, though.[10] Again, Re-Destro and Curious characterize their 116,000 warriors as all being trained, combat-ready, prepared to rise up to answer the call. That is not a population that you're going to keep cowed with a certain minimum police presence, especially as time drags on.

Anyway, an occupation is clearly out-of-keeping with how the text presents the operation being run. We’re given no reason to assume other raids were any different than the ones we saw: a team of heroes launches a coordinated assault with a backline set up to catch stragglers. We’re told, after all, that the other sympathizers were “rounded up,” so extended detainment-in-place clearly wasn’t the intention. That just returns us to the problem, though.

According to Trumpet, Deika was 90% MLA. Presumably it was one of their higher-concentration bases, yes, but the situation isn’t any simpler in places that are “only” e.g. 80%, 70%, 60% inducted. It only becomes complicated in different ways.

Imagine a 70% liberated district. PLF-adherents are in the government, the municipal operations, the schools, the stores. How does this town keep running in a state of mass arrest? If the 70% are removed, what are the other 30% to do? Is the town even livable in that state? Will the remainder have to relocate? Can they afford that, and if not, what measures will be taken to help them? How quickly can those measures be enacted?[11]

The liberated districts present a bevy of other problems, too, but we’ll come back to those in Part Three.

Detainment Facilities

Let’s look at some more real-world facts and numbers.

As of 2018, Japan had 184 penal institutions, a term which covers prisons, detention houses, and juvenile facilities of either type. There are 70 prisons, 108 detention houses (eight of which are major facilities; the rest smaller branch locations), and 6 juvenile facilities. Their official capacity—that is, the number of occupants they are considered able to house without becoming overcrowded—is roughly 89,000. Their current population is around 48,000.

This puts Japan’s prison density—how close they are to being at full capacity—at 54%. They could not even double their occupancy without becoming overcrowded. Looking back to our PLF numbers, this tells us that real-life Japan could take an influx of 17,000. They absolutely could not take an influx of 115,000.

Here’s another way to look at it: in Japan currently, the rate of incarceration is 38 people per 100,000, in a population of 126 million. Adding the PLF to those numbers would mean they're incarcerating 130 per 100,000—more than triple the amount.

There’s another problem on top of the capacity issue: in Japan, penal institutions are divided up by what kind of prisoner they’re intended to house. Remand prisoners—that is, pre-trial detainees—are to be housed in different facilities than convicted prisoners. Convicted prisoners are sorted further by demographic traits, the type of offense they’ve committed, whether or not it was their first offense, and so on. For example, there’s an entire prison in Chiba Prefecture dedicated to housing men convicted of traffic violations; elsewhere, even murderers are subdivided according to criminal affiliation and likelihood of reoffending.

The relevance here is obvious. The problem isn't merely that there is limited prison capacity, but that that capacity is further limited by what space is available in the correct type of prison. And I am very prepared to bet that All For One prioritized targeting prisons that held violent offenders; he even implies as much when he describes the people he freed as violent escapees.

Speaking of All For One’s prison breaks, let’s take a look at some canonical numbers. They offer both information that mitigates the problems above, but also present new reasons to be concerned.

All For One, the night of his escape from Tartarus, targets seven other prisons, managing to free at least some inmates from six of them. Including the Tartarus escapees, 10,000 convicts are freed.

10,000 from seven prisons. Consider again the numbers above: Japan currently houses less than five times that many in twenty-six times as many penal institutions. In general, prisons don’t hold anywhere near those numbers—the largest one in Japan houses just barely over 2,000; even one that houses 500 is considered to be a large inmate population.[12]

I did some math based on the numbers I had available, and my rough estimate is that, in Japan, about 88% of the carceral population—42,000 people—are housed in the for-real prisons; the other 12% are remand prisoners and a negligible percent are incarcerated minors.

The MHA numbers are wildly, wildly higher. Now, this makes sense. In this post by @codenamesazanka, she notes that the first My Hero Academia movie describes Japan’s crime rate as a somewhat vaguely defined 6%, and estimates that this means the crime rate in MHA’s Japan is seven times higher than in real life—and that this is drastically lower than anywhere else in the world thanks solely to All Might! In other parts of the world, the crime rate is over 20% at minimum. So it seems reasonable to assume that Japan’s carceral capacity has increased likewise. Not, I think, to the degree that they automatically have the prison space to match their crime rate, but certainly more space than in real life.

Assuming, then, that MHA’s Japan has far more and/or far larger prison facilities, that also means they must need that kind of space—which means the space is already in use. Which, again, takes us back to the problem of overcrowding. If not—if the country is easily capable of dumping 115,000 people in prison without even causing a ripple of difficulty—then that implies its own deeply harrowing things about the rate of incarceration in the country. Either way, it sounds like a country that badly, badly needs to find a better way of doing things.

Legal Proceedings

Here’s another issue to consider: the legal proceedings. See, Edgeshot says this:

The hero Edgeshot explains why protecting the country requires these sixteen-year-olds be on the frontlines in a fight with people absolutely ready to kill them. Words cannot describe how much I wanted Re-Destro to knot this guy around a tree. (Chapter 263)

“If any of them get out, they could keep terrorizing other places.”

So assume for a moment that everything went exactly according to plan. Virtually all 115,000 members of the Liberation Front got rounded up, there’s easily enough room for them in Japan’s correctional facilities, and now the entire organization is awaiting trial. What happens next?

The Judicial Process

To provide some context for those of my readers whose only exposure to the judicial process is pop culture depictions, the very first thing that should happen after a person is arrested in the U.S. is a pre-trial appearance, at which people are formally told what the charges against them are and bail is set or denied. Non-violent offenders, provided they have someone able to post bail, are usually able to await their trial date at home, albeit under travel restrictions. Typically this pre-trial hearing should be within two business days; if a detainee hasn’t seen a judge in that time, the prosecutors’ office is obligated to let them go.[13] This doesn’t necessarily mean the person is off the hook entirely, of course; they can be arrested again later. It just means they’re free to go for the time being.

I don’t think for one second that Japan’s legal system can handle processing an influx the size of the PLF in just a few days. For comparison’s sake, in 2018 (the same year all my incarceration numbers come from, incidentally), 206,000 people were arrested in total, for the whole year. So will the overflow just be let go? Released to their homes to wait for the police to come back when they have more time? Yet that doesn’t seem to track with how Edgeshot was talking, does it?

On the one hand, if you look at the numbers from some of my historical analogues, it’s very consistent that only a small portion of people swept up in mass arrests in Japan ever actually reach trial. For the Rice Riots and the March 15 Incident, that portion is about a third—quite sizeable, given the numbers involved—but the others are lower still: the long-term arrests under the Peace Preservation Laws saw only about a twelfth of those arrested actually brought to trial; for the Righteous Army, it was less than a tenth.

Frankly, you don't arrest those kinds of numbers and then actually prosecute all of them; you arrest them to scare the shit out of people, and then you try the ringleaders and whichever others you have the most dirt on. This is the pattern in every other instance that involves over a thousand people being arrested.

On the other hand, even setting aside the fact that people can apparently be dropped in Tartarus without trial now,[14] a significant difference between the U.S. and Japan is that pretrial detention can stretch on and on and on in Japan. Legally speaking, charges should be filed with 72 hours, but prosecutors can request ten more days twice, then repeat the process over by adding other potential charges about which they need to question the suspect. So, yes, I suppose that, if the authorities do have the facilities to keep the PLF in, there’s nothing stopping them from dragging this detainment out indefinitely—it just isn’t very in-keeping with the historical record to do so with all of them.

As you might expect, lengthy detainments are a massively controversial aspect of the Japanese legal system to human rights activists both locally and abroad, since the loophole of detainees not yet having been charged or tried allows police to get around a lot of the rights that are supposed to be guaranteed, particularly the right to legal representation.[15]

So, now that I’ve brought up the right to legal counsel, here’s another procedural issue: due to a generally non-litigious culture and a very difficult bar exam, there's a dearth of attorneys in Japan. Defense attorneys have a particularly hard time; thanks to the presumption of guilt of those arrested by police, and an oft-vicious ostracization of criminals, it's seen as something of a blemish on one's character to willingly defend the accused, so defense lawyers are frequently unpopular and underpaid. I have to assume MHA is facing similar problems.[16] Good luck finding all the people you need to investigate and defend the new glut of people in the system, though!

No, the reason real-life Japan’s legal system can go on functioning even with a shortage of lawyers is, I suspect, that compared to how long pre-trial detention can go on, trials are fairly quick. Legally, they're required to last no longer than a few weeks. There is, however, concern among some in the legal profession that cases are not being examined closely enough, leading to preventable errors and miscarriages of justice,[17] due to both the haste with which trials are conducted and aspects of Japan's “lay judge” system.

Lay judges are a unique feature of Japan's legal system, in some ways similar to—and in other ways very distinct from—a jury of one’s peers. As in a U.S. jury, lay judges are a panel randomly selected from the citizenry to hear evidence and render judgement. However, where jurists are a passive audience to the presentation of the case, only debating the merits behind closed doors after the case concludes, lay judges are encouraged to take active part in the trial process, empowered to question witnesses and challenge evidence. The lay judges are joined by a smaller number of professional judges; a verdict requires a majority vote of the judges' panel, in which at least one vote is that of said professional judges.

As to what this has to do with concerns about justice, consider, if you will, how the requirements of a system that demands active involvement from its participants might intersect with the (self-)perception of the Japanese people as modest and not wanting to “make trouble” for others, particularly when combined with a widespread belief that suspects would not be brought to trial if they weren’t guilty. Additionally, in the specific context of My Hero Academia, consider how bias about villains or “villainous quirks” will influence such judgements.

I’ll talk more about the presupposition of guilt in Japan and how it relates to the treatment of suspects by both officials and the public in Part Three, but for now, let’s consider the trial itself. What will the charges be? What will the sentences be? How long will the PLF members be in prison? And will that time in prison do the slightest thing to prevent them from going right back to what they were doing when they get out? Are they just going to be imprisoned indefinitely? Until they say they change their minds?

When I began my research, there were two main things I wanted to examine in regard to crimes the PLF at large might be on the hook for: membership in an illegal organization and conspiracy to commit acts of terrorism.

Japan and Illegal Organizations

So here’s the thing: Japan doesn’t criminalize membership in organizations categorically. Because of the government’s history abusing laws to crack down on labor organizations and political dissent—e.g. the March 15 Incident—any attempts to legislate the process of banning criminal organizations get significant pushback from freedom of speech advocates. After all, critics say, the police may say that your community activist group doesn’t count as a terrorist organization now, but what’s actually stopping them from categorizing it as such in the future?

Now, that’s not to say Japan doesn’t have ways to regulate such groups at all! I’ll talk more about this later on, but briefly, groups that are found likely to be advocating for “terroristic subversive activity” can be forcibly barred from e.g. printing their organizational material, holding public assemblies, or owning property under the group’s name. One thing that isn’t mentioned in those prohibitions, though, is actual membership in the organization. That’s because, as I said, Japan is hugely gun-shy about criminalizing membership in any sort of organization, even organizations that have been declared criminal.[18]

It’s illegal to pick mushrooms on conservation lands if you’re doing it to raise money for your terrorist organization. It’s illegal to use protest sit-ins against new apartment buildings if you’re doing it on behalf of the mob. But it is not illegal to simply be a member of a terrorist organization or the mob—not even if that group has been formally dissolved by the government.

We can see a few places where this holds true even in the universe of My Hero Academia. The Shie Hassaikai is, like many yakuza groups, under police surveillance, but not barred outright from existing. Likewise, whatever prohibition there might once have been on printing material in support of the Metahuman Liberation Army has clearly lapsed, otherwise Curious would never have gotten away with reprinting Destro’s memoir.

Being a member of the MLA was likely not illegal as such, not any more so than membership in Aum Shinrikyo (currently calling themselves Aleph) or yakuza groups are in real life—they’re surveilled, sure, their activities curtailed, absolutely, but banned outright? Not so much. And membership in the PLF certainly wouldn't be banned even if it were legal to ban such memberships, seeing as it's brand new and, at the time of the raid, would not yet have been targeted for restrictions on its activity, lest such targeting tip the group off that the government was aware of its existence.

Keep that last point in mind; we’ll be coming back to it later, too.

Conspiracy

So, if membership in the PLF isn’t illegal in and of itself, what else can the government use to charge the 115,000 people they preemptively arrested?

Well, in general, for someone to be tried for a crime, they need to be either caught in the act or caught in an attempt. An attempted crime is something that is in immediate danger of happening—for example, if someone tries to kidnap a baby from the pediatric wing of a hospital but is caught by security before they make it out of the building, that’s an attempted kidnapping. An attempted crime may or may not be punished with the same severity as a successfully enacted crime, depending on the nature of the offense and the local laws.

What an attempted crime differs from, however, is a planned crime. If someone was planning to commit tax evasion but decided not to, they cannot be charged with tax evasion. This is how most criminal charges work—you can’t be charged with something you didn’t at least try to do, regardless of how close you came to it, and a policeman who tries to goad someone into such a crime should rightfully be running into charges of entrapment.

There are, unsurprisingly, some exceptions. It’s not uncommon for countries to criminalize planning insurrection or treason, and in cases like that, police are under absolutely no obligation to wait around for an active attempt before they respond. They can and will move as soon as they have sufficient evidence to get an arrest warrant. For lesser offenses, though, the legality of the advance-planning of a crime varies from country to country, and this is where we start getting into conspiracy.

Conspiracy in the legal sense has a couple of elements: it must be something that 1) two or more people 2) knowingly 3) discussed a plan for, which 4) led at least one person in the group to commit a “preparatory action.” i.e. do something to advance aforementioned plan.[19] All of these elements have to be proven to get everyone in a group on a conspiracy charge, though not all members of a group have to be in on all parts of a plan. If these elements are met, then everyone in the group can be charged with any and all crimes committed over the course of the plan being carried out, regardless of each member’s individual involvement.

What all this means for our purposes is that, because the heroes made the first move, they have to get the PLF on something that is illegal to even plan, not something that only becomes illegal in the attempt.[20] Huge portions of the PLF may wind up being released if the police can't conclusively prove not merely their association with the PLF, but also their direct knowledge of the relevant plans—not difficult for the ringleaders, obviously, but much dicier when you start getting out into the liberated districts. If the prosecution can't prove that knowledge, and lacks confessions otherwise—and as I’ll discuss in more detail later, a confession in and of itself is not considered sufficient; there has to be corroborating evidence[21]—huge swathes of those people are going to get cut loose.

So what are police going to be looking for? What crimes can the PLF be charged with under current law, and what are the sentences for such crimes like?

Prior to 1952, conspiracy was only illegal in the following cases: insurrection, treason, or aiding/abetting/instigating either of the above. Conspiracy to commit treason as a charge is right out—everything the PLF is doing, they’re doing for their own sake and for the sake of the future of Japan, not for the sake of a foreign power. Conspiracy to commit/instigate insurrection is more debatable, but, surprisingly, shakier than it might appear at first. This is because of the specific, legal definition of the term.

Japan’s Penal Code defines insurrection as rioting for the purpose of overthrowing the government, usurping the sovereignty of the State, or otherwise subverting constitutional order. The middle clause, the one regarding territorial sovereignty, is obviously not at issue—the PLF is not attempting to stake out land for a new country and secede. It’s the rest of the description that’s debatably more applicable, but still, to my eye, not an easy guilty verdict.

Firstly, per Hawks’ description of the plan, the PLF at least wants the government and the constitutional order intact enough for the Hearts & Minds Party to “storm the political world,” which to me suggests that their target is public opinion, not the intangible apparatus of the government itself. Further, even if you did argue that their manipulation of public opinion constitutes subversion of the constitutional order, you’d also have to argue the rioting part, and we have no idea whether any of the PLF’s plans actually involved a significant number of people mobbing in public as opposed to e.g. small strike teams.

So is the PLF off the hook? Not hardly! The Penal Code was established in 1907, after all—it’s been expanded lots since then, and those expansions are where the PLF really starts to run into trouble.

The Subversive Activities Prevention Act of 1952 criminalized a number of conspiracy-to-commit crimes—crimes like arson and homicide—if said crimes were to be undertaken “with the intent to promote, support or oppose any political doctrine or policy.” For example, conspiring to burn down a bank was not criminalized. Conspiring to burn down a bank as an act of protest against a new tax law became illegal as all get-out.

This gets us where we need to be for the PLF, as, on top of the crimes laid out in the 1952 act, I am very prepared to believe that acts of villainy (that is, illegal quirk use) in advancement of political ends have been folded into this particular branch of Japanese law.[22] So then, what kind of conspiracy charges are we looking at here, and what associated crimes?

I see two major possibilities at this point, and they hinge on exactly how much the prosecution ties Shigaraki’s attack on Jaku and Gigantomachia’s destruction to the run-of-the-mill PLF member sitting in a backwater town somewhere doing nothing more involved than e.g. quirk training and attending weekly meetings to get updates on where the plans stand for their local regiment’s part of the big push the following month. It’s difficult to say how feasible it is to make that connection—there are provisions in Japanese law for group criminal liability, but they tend to require things like joint actions, or specific knowledge and intent regarding the crime in question.

Obviously, random PLF members nowhere near Machia’s path of destruction didn’t take joint actions to abet it, so the pertinent question is, was Machia going on a rampage part of the plan? How about Shigaraki’s destruction of Jaku? If so, how much did random PLF members know about it? How specific does that knowledge need to be? If, say, the original plan had Shigaraki decaying the greater part of Hosu, does it still meet the specific knowledge requirement if he wound up decaying Jaku instead? If Machia was supposed to stampede across Tokyo, do the PLF members who chased after him count as furthering a conspiracy to do so when he stomped across Osaka and Kyoto instead?

Frankly, I don’t think we can say for sure how much a randomly selected member of the rank and file would have known. Any knowledge they had would have been many steps removed from the people actually making the plan; I would tend to think that the outer reaches of the PLF mostly knew about whatever plan their specific group would be tasked with, but would have much patchier knowledge of plans beyond that immediate sphere. As to how much that matters to the courts? Well, let’s take a look at the final logistics problem: the sentencing.

Sentencing Standards

First things first: I absolutely do not think the death penalty is on the table for the rank and file. People like Shigaraki and Dabi, yes, based on their pre-PLF crimes alone; Re-Destro and the other lieutenants are certainly a strong possibility. But the rank and file? No. Looking at our historical referents, it has never been the case that every single person involved in a mass arrest incident has been sentenced equally harshly, even in the case of the February 26 Incident’s outright uprising against the state! And that was in a time where human rights were considerably less enshrined in the constitution; in the modern day, the death penalty is usually reserved for murder cases,[23] typically only those involving multiple murders or particularly aggravated cases involving torture or ransom.

Whether or not the courts could attempt to punish all of the members of the PLF for all the deaths caused by Shigaraki and Gigantomachia under group criminal liability provisions, the degree of mass international outcry sentencing 115,000 people to death would involve is difficult to fathom. Egypt's 2014 mass trials of the Muslim Brotherhood are a good referent, and they “only” involved about 1,200 people.[24] Multiplying that number ten times over? I very much doubt Horikoshi is prepared to even imply that the system all these cute kids want to grow up and join is anywhere near that grisly and authoritarian.

Anyway, if the MHA government were that quick to hand down death sentences, I very much doubt Stain or All For One would still be alive—or, indeed, that Tartarus would serve much function at all. It's described, after all, as a place that houses those who threaten Japan's security on a fundamental, national level. That's the kind of thing countries keep death penalties around for.

That said, let’s assume for the time being that Shigaraki and Machia will be treated as their own thing, and what the PLF are going to be tried for is more in tune with the plan as Hawks laid it out. Remember again that the heroes attacked preemptively. This means that, in this scenario, all the conspiracy stuff is on the table, but it’s the only thing on the table—because it’s all the PLF had time to get to! There might be a few other charges—for example, if the black market support good proliferation is part of their plan, and the weapon proliferation is already underway, the whole group could feasibly be charged with whatever crime covers illegal weapon distribution. However, whatever crimes those support goods would be used to commit haven’t happened yet, so on that front, the PLF is still only on the hook for planning them.

Here, then, is what the Penal Code and its relevant revisions have to say about conspiracy sentences:

If they do wind up getting the group on conspiracy to incite insurrection:

A person who prepares for or plots an insurrection is punished by imprisonment without work for not less than 1 year but not more than 10 years.

(…)

A person who aids the commission of any of the crimes prescribed above by the supply of arms, funds, or food, or by any other act, is punished by imprisonment without work for not more than 7 years.

So that’s kinda bad! Not as bad as if they’d actually gotten to the insurrection, which is when death penalties and life sentences for ringleaders and key figures start cropping up, but still pretty bad! Seven years in prison is almost certainly enough time for a lot of those people to do some serious reconsideration of their life priorities!

As I already said, though, I think the insurrection charge is shaky. So what if they wind up instead charging the PLF with conspiracy to commit villainy for political aims?

Well, that’s why this whole section is in the logistics portion of this essay, because the sentencing for politically motivated villainy probably looks a lot more like this:

If it’s a crime on the level of, for political aims, preparing, plotting, inducing, or inciting:

Arson, illegal use of explosives, homicide, or robbery involving assault or intimidation: imprisonment with or without work for a term not exceeding five years.

A public disturbance: imprisonment with or without work for a term not exceeding three years.

A hazard for a train, tram, or vessel: imprisonment with or without work for a term not exceeding—oh, three years again.

The assault or intimidation of a public employee in the performance of public duty[25]: spoilers, it’s imprisonment for not more than three years again.

Five years or less. Three years or less.

Is that enough time to make people reconsider their life choices? Especially people who have been raised all their lives to follow the cause of Liberation?

Remember that when the heroes attacked, the intention was a clean sweep, a preventative tactic to stop the villains before they could enact any of their terroristic plans. Yet if they intended to stop things at a point where only conspiracy would be punishable, is three years in prison all that Edgeshot thought these people would be in for when he said that if a single one of them escaped, they might go on to terrorize other places? What was Japan’s government and/or the Hero Public Safety Commission planning to do in three years, or five years, or ten years, when 17,000 to 115,000 people were released en masse from prison, free to return to their lives? It certainly seems like they had more stringent consequences in mind, does it?

Of course, there are other factors to consider.

Lots of these people would, presumably, be up on multiple charges, compounding their sentences. Certainly, if Shigaraki and Gigantomachia are tied to the rest of the group, their tolls of death and destruction could potentially be applied to any and all co-conspirators. And maybe the penalties for conspiracy to commit politically motivated villainy are worse. Maybe the prosecutors will push for insurrection conspiracy charges regardless of their applicability, and the Japanese courts will just let them, because there will be a profound thirst for “justice” after Gigantomachia’s rampage and a few human rights violations or abuses of the law will seem like just what the Paranormal Liberation Front members had coming to them.

Maybe, behind the immediate logistical problems presented by this mass arrest, there are a whole fleet of problems of a different nature.

Next time: let’s talk ethics.

-----------------------------------------------------

Footnotes (Part Two)

[7] Whose supporters were eventually successful, by the way. Look up the Telangana movement.

[8] For example, “Skeptic can access such high-tech satellites that he can get up-to-the-minute views on the heroes approaching Gigantomachia, but he somehow didn’t notice a literal hero battalion bearing down on the villa until they were charging out of the tree line? Seriously?”

[9] Frankly, another 2-3 Deikas is the simplest way to explain how they can have a group that big and still be totally unknown to society at large. Far easier to maintain a cult’s required isolation and secrecy when your strongholds are more “this town and everyone you know and love in it” and less “this fancy resort that everyone has to drive thirty minutes to an hour to get to from the totally normal towns they actually live in.”

[10] And frankly, I don't know that that the, “All their really good combatants are at the villa,” assumption is even justified, given that you'd think the people at the villa for the “conference” are more likely to be the people who are going to be involved in coordinating the upcoming assaults—lots of great combatants, sure, but also people who are going to be doing the organizational work, the supply work, etc.

[11] Presumably, at this point, our hypothetical 30% will be instructed to relocate to one of the hero school shelters, but that obviously wouldn’t have been in the plan from the beginning, given that the shelters were only opened after heroes started retiring in droves.

[12] For comparison, a mid-sized prison is considered by the American Jail Association to have 50 to 249 beds, and we’re way more prone to incarceration than Japan is.

[13] For example, in 2005 in Baltimore, so many arrests were being made based on quality-of-life crimes like loitering that the system couldn't keep up, leading to thousands of people having to be released because they just couldn't be processed in time.

[14] When AFO was first brought in, we were told that his remand to Tartarus pre-trial was without precedent. However, Chapter 297 describes Tartarus as a detention facility that only calls itself a prison—remember, in Japan, remand prisoners are supposed to be kept separate from tried and sentenced prisoners. Thus, Tartarus should be reserved only for those who are sentenced to it, or it shouldn't contain sentenced prisoners at all. But with 297, we find that such is no longer the case, as people can be put there “regardless of their sentencing status.” It's unclear whether this change was a rapid case of slippery slope in-universe or whether it's a simple retcon.

[15] Suspects get one visit from a “duty lawyer” for free during detention, but otherwise, the right to counsel only kicks in after charges are filed, and lawyers are not allowed to be present during questioning.

[16] Among many other factors, it would certainly help explain why All For One hasn't even been brought to trial yet. Hell, we don't even know if he's really been formally charged, though Pixie Bob’s comment back in Chapter 184 could easily be interpreted as meaning that the questioning process is still ongoing. AFO needs a Yasuda Yoshihiro, clearly.

[17] Though both acquittals and convictions can be appealed.

[18] An “organized criminal group” per Japanese law has a few qualifications to meet. They need to be committing crimes in an organized fashion, obviously, and there are laws determining which crimes qualify, but further, they need to be a sustained organization, one in which members have assigned roles and duties such that those duties advance a common cause sought after by the organization as a whole. Ergo, a yakuza group definitely qualifies, while an impromptu group of people who got together to murder their boss but who have no further common cause afterward does not. Groups like the Metahuman Liberation Army and the Shie Hassaikai obviously meet these standards, but e.g. the League of Villains, lacking much in the way of a common cause or defined roles, might not.

[19] Like buying a ski mask if their plan to rob a bank involves ski masks.

[20] This, obviously, applies only to members of the PLF who haven’t already broken other laws. The League is boned no matter what. Likewise, there are laws against e.g. harboring criminals that could be brought to bear against whoever maintains the villa, and so on and so forth.

[21] Though one huge issue is that other peoples' confessions can be counted as evidence against you, and yours against others.

[22] A highly controversial anti-conspiracy law in 2017 criminalized the planning of a whole array of new crimes, some bizarrely innocuous-looking, but because it was aimed mostly at the yakuza and other groups engaged in human trafficking, the new roster was generally criminalized on the basis that they were crimes intended to gain some material benefit for the organization planning them. The PLF’s plans were going to do a lot of things, but provide material benefit—a legal term for something that has monetary value—is decidedly not one of them.

[23] Though there are 19 offenses for which it is legally invokable.

[24] The greater majority of the sentences were commuted to “only” being life sentences, but that only by virtue of a relatively powerful upper court, which Egypt’s president has been working to diminish ever since. The state of fair trials and humane prison conditions in the country is pretty appalling right now.

[25] Continued, “committed collectively by carrying any deadly weapon or poison, against any person engaged in prosecutorial or police duties, any assistant to such official, any person who guards or escorts persons in legal custody, or any person engaged in an investigation under this Act.” There are a lot of riders on this one.

#bnha analysis #bnha meta #paranormal liberation front #meta liberation army #boku no hero academia #my hero academia #bnha #bnha spoilers #my writing #plf arrests #stillness has salt

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sadachmesarthim · 3 years

Text

mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm anxiety brain go brrrrrr starker brain go FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFHHHHHHHHHHPPPTPTTTTTTTTTFFFFFFFFHFHHFHHHHHHHH

ᶦ'ᵛᵉ ᵒⁿˡʸ ˢᵉᵉⁿ ᵐᶜᵘ ᶜᵒⁿᵗᵉⁿᵗ ᵘᵖ ᵗᵒ ᵉⁿᵈᵍᵃᵐᵉ, ᵃⁿᵈ ᶦ ᶠᵘᶜᵏᶦⁿᵍ ʰᵃᵗᵉᵈ ᵉⁿᵈᵍᵃᵐᵉ. ˢᵒ ᵗʰᶦˢ ᶦˢ ᶜᵃⁿᵒⁿ ᶜᵒᵐᵖˡᶦᵃⁿᵗ ᵘᵖ ᵘⁿᵗᶦˡ ᵗʰᵉ ˡᵃˢᵗ ᶦᵈᵏ ˡᶦᵏᵉ ,, ³⁰ ᵐᶦⁿˢ ᵒᶠ ᴵᵂ ᵃⁿᵈ ᵗʰᵉⁿ ᵗʰᵉ ᵍᵒᵒᵈ ᵍᵘʸˢ ʷᶦⁿ ᵃⁿᵈ ⁿᵒ ᵒⁿᵉ ᵈᶦᵉˢ ʷᵒᵒᵎ ʰᵒᵒʳᵃʸᵎᵎ ᵇᵉᶜᵃᵘˢᵉ ᶦ ᴰᵒ ᴺᵒᵗ ᴸ��ᵏᵉ ᵁⁿʰᵃᵖᵖʸ ᴱⁿᵈᶦⁿᵍˢ™

content: weighted blankets, post iw-fix-it, talk of therapy but in an okay way

- peter's the only one that likes traditional therapy. sit down for 50 minutes and talk to the same person once a week every week type shit - he's so into it. because peter's so good at bouncing ideas off people that can click with him on a brainwave level

- and even though he’s more into biochem than he is psych, he can still rattle off dsm5 diagnoses and criteria better than the average trauma therapy patient. he likes seeing his therapist, even if she doesn’t have compound clearance yet (she’s technically not even licensed to practice in the state of new york, just california and washington, but tony pulled some strings for his favorite young adult. she’s the highest rated and regarded clinical psych social worker on the west coast and peter took to her so well... what was he gonna do, say no?)

- but peter’s been so active in his mental health journey - he’s been facetiming at least one friend every single day, getting a few hours of outside time every week, making sure to eat at least a couple of meals every day and getting to sleep at a ,, semi decent time.

- but his anxiety is still off the charts a year into grief and trauma therapy - he’s doing everything right but he’s still restless at night, still jumpy during the day, still can’t do serious missions because he’s too reactive

- and he feels like no one in the compound gets it. none of them want to talk about his appointments with him. no one was willing to look into therapy for themselves, so talking about their feelings is like talking to a bunch of brick walls.

- none of his normal/human friends get it either. sure, some of them are in therapy. but for, like, normal human reasons. how the hell are they gonna be able to relate to fighting an alien in outer space

- they aren’t

- so he decides to look into weighted blankets

- he honestly thought they were bullshit, for a long time. how can a blanket full of beads make him less flighty?? less lonely?? less likely to punch the nearest unidentified footsteps in the face without warning/cause?

- but he caves, and decides to buy one anyway. he finds a nice one online - 30 lbs, the heaviest he can find - and purchases it.

- it arrives at the compound a few days later, and peter’s actually a bit more excited for it than he initially thought

- he pulls it out and tries it out that night and oh,,, ,my god it’s the best sleep he’s gotten in fucking months dude

- he wasn’t even intending to but peter ends up napping for five hours after crawling underneath the grey blanket, brain completely shutting off. even his spider is calmed down, not getting overwhelmed by the smelltexturepressure presence of the new, unfamiliar fabric

- usually he’d have to get used to something like this. the blanket hasn’t been his long enough to be ,, fully comfortable around it. it’s foreign it’s new it’s not something he’s used to but it’s still the only thing in the world that can get peter parker to have a completely nightmare-free 8 hours of sleep

- so his spider shuts its god damn mouth, and peter is ,, so much better.

- it only took a week for his headaches to get better, his nausea to completely go away. his hands don’t shake anymore and he can talk without feeling his blood turn cold. it’s new and it’s exciting and it’s so nice to finally be able to do things anxiety free

- so peter starts bringing his blanket EVERYWHERE - i’m talking to breakfast, to meetings, to team debriefs, to the lab, to his telehealth sessions

- the team is starting to notice his new shadow and they’re ,, obviously a bit confused because the kid is 20 for fucks sake why does he need a security blanket but he excitedly explains the science and physiology behind it to thor one day during dinner when the god very blatantly questions him (totally without malice though, he’s just a big dumb god who wants to know if the blanket is a friend like the Strange man’s cape or if it’s somehow different)

- and they all seem to get it - they might not be in traditional therapy but it kinda clicks for them after listening to peter explain it in thousand year old asgardian terms

- peter kinda forgets about the conversation until he smells another new blanket as he’s coming into the common room one day

- when he rounds the corner he sees sam, curled up on one of the couches, covered in a blanket just like his but a much darker grey, snoring softly and completely unaware of just how loud the movie in front of him is (argo, for some reason. why the fuck would you watch a show about exfiltration and prisoners of war, sam, that’s literally so triggering)

- the next person to get one is thor, but he’s not really a fan. says he “cant find one that is truly heavy enough” and “are you really sure they make them for men as superior and strong as i, young spider?” which is really fucking funny because peter can literally lift 11 million tons and could probably throw thor halfway across the planet before the blonde could say “what”

- and peter kinda laughs and agrees, like “yeah dude, mine’s way too scratchy but it gets the job done”

- and they voice their complaints loudly enough that tony can hear. and, of course, being simultaneously the best friend and the perfect housewife, he makes a call to wakanda to see if he can’t get some vibranium to them within the next couple of days

- he and bruce and peter spend the next, like, week in the compound labs figuring a way to design enhanced-friendly weighted blankets. it took a bit longer than expected - tony wanted them to be soft enough for peter’s sensitive skin, resilient enough to handle hulk’s temper tantrums or thor’s lightning blasts, and dense enough that anyone enhanced could actually reap the cocooning weight benefits

- but they eventually found a design that worked ! really well actually, and peter was so excited he ditched his old blanket immediately

- and soon, everyone was carrying around their own custom stark weighted blanket - nat and peter’s with matching spider and web designs, cap’s with the shield, tony’s covered in blue triangles (like the core he made in IM2)

- if they all kinda agree that the kid might have been right about this one, no one says it out loud. but it was understood, and very apparent

- especially when they started having family movie nights in the common area, and they all brought their blankets. to show peter he wasn’t alone, to show him that he was right, and maybe to show him that yeah, he’s making them better

- especially when, one right after the other, they all start going to therapy. some in person, some with telehealth, some... offworld... but they all start going

- and especially when, eventually, they stop needing the blankets altogether

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newstfionline · 3 years

Text

Tuesday, April 13, 2021

Biden’s Infrastructure Push Spurs a Flurry of Lobbying in Congress (NYT) Members of Congress have begun a frenzy of lobbying to ensure that their pet projects and policy priorities are included in President Biden’s $2 trillion infrastructure and jobs plan, eager to shape what could be one of the most substantial public works investments in a generation. Officials across the country are dusting off lists of construction projects and social programs, hoping to secure their piece of a plan aimed at addressing what the administration estimates is at least $1 trillion worth of backlogged infrastructure improvements, as well as economic and racial inequities that have existed for decades. “My phone is blowing up,” Pete Buttigieg, the transportation secretary, said in an interview. Nearly every lawmaker “can point to a road or a bridge or an airport” in his or her district that is in dire need of repair.

Truck seized over ‘munitions of war,’ 5 forgotten bullets (AP) Gerardo Serrano ticked off the border crossing agents by taking some photos on his phone. So they took his pickup truck and held onto it for more than two years. Only after Serrano filed a federal lawsuit did he get back his Ford F-250. Now he wants the Supreme Court to step in and require a prompt court hearing as a matter of constitutional fairness whenever federal officials take someone’s property under civil forfeiture law. The justices could consider his case when they meet privately on Friday. It’s a corner of the larger forfeiture issue, when federal, state or local officials take someone’s property, without ever having to prove that it has been used for illicit purposes. Since 2000, governments have acquired at least $68.8 billion in forfeited property, according to the Institute for Justice, a libertarian public interest law firm that represents Serrano and tracks seizures. The group says the number “drastically underestimates forfeiture’s true scope” because not all states provide data. Serrano’s troubles stemmed from some pictures he took along the way of a long trip from his home in Tyner, Kentucky, to visit relatives, including a dying aunt, in Zaragosa, Mexico. The photo-taking attracted the attention of U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents in Eagle Pass, Texas. When Serrano refused to hand over the password to his phone, the agents went through the 2014 silver pickup truck in great detail. They justified its seizure by saying they found “munitions of war” inside—five forgotten bullets, though no gun. Told to park the truck, he said, he complained a bit before one agent reached into the pickup, opened the door, unfastened Serrano’s seat belt and yanked him out of the vehicle. “I got rights, I got constitutional rights and he snaps back at me, ‘You don’t have no rights here. I’m sick and tired of hearing about your rights.’ That took me aback,” Serrano said.

Should the U.S. boycott the 2022 Winter Olympics in China? (Washington Post) As if there aren’t enough sources of Sino-U.S. friction already, an emerging new irritant may soon outpace the rest: the growing calls for a boycott of Beijing’s 2022 Winter Olympics. The games are still 10 months away. But it’s not too early for the event to turn into a flash point. Critics of China’s ruling Communist Party—including a coalition of more than 180 human rights organizations—argue that the regime’s record of human rights abuses and geopolitical malfeasance ought to deprive it of the right to burnish its image with a spectacle like the Olympics. “Beijing won the right to host the 2022 Olympics in 2015, the same year it cracked down on lawyers and activists across China,” Chinese human rights lawyer Teng Biao wrote earlier this year. “Since then, it has detained journalists; harassed and attacked activists and dissidents even outside China’s borders; shut down nongovernmental organizations; demolished Christian churches, Tibetan temples and Muslim mosques; persecuted, sometimes to death, believers in Falun Gong; and sharply increased its control of media, the Internet, universities and publishers.” An Olympic boycott has become a popular cause among Republicans. Major sporting events—and especially international spectacles like the Olympics—always bear a political dimension.

‘Huge’ explosion rocks St. Vincent as volcano keeps erupting (AP) La Soufriere volcano fired an enormous amount of ash and hot gas early Monday in the biggest explosive eruption yet since volcanic activity began on the eastern Caribbean island of St. Vincent late last week, with officials worried about the lives of those who have refused to evacuate. Experts called it a “huge explosion” that generated pyroclastic flows down the volcano’s south and southwest flanks. “It’s destroying everything in its path,” Erouscilla Joseph, director of the University of the West Indies’ Seismic Research Center, told The Associated Press. “Anybody who would have not heeded the evacuation, they need to get out immediately.” The ongoing volcanic activity has threatened water and food supplies, with the government forced to drill for fresh water and distribute it via trucks. “We cannot put tarpaulin over a river,” said Garth Saunders, minister of the island’s water and sewer authority, referring to the impossibility of trying to protect current water sources from ongoing falling ash.

Colombia’s cartels target Europe (The Guardian) At 5 am on a chilly Tuesday morning last month, 1,600 police officers and balaclava-wearing special forces, bristling with arms and battering rams, were ordered into action around the Belgian port city of Antwerp. More than 200 addresses were raided in what was the largest police operation ever conducted in the country and potentially one of the most significant moves yet against the increasingly powerful narco-gangs of western Europe. An incredible 27 tonnes of cocaine have been seized on Antwerp’s quays, in container ships and safe houses, with an estimated value of €1.4bn (£1.2bn), and many arrests have been made. It has been hailed as a mighty blow against what Belgian federal prosecutor Frédéric Van Leeuw calls “a world where morality has totally disappeared”, but Operation Sky has also highlighted a chilling development. Europe has eclipsed the US as the Colombian cartels’ favoured market, because of higher prices and much lower risks posed by European governments in terms of interdiction, extradition and seizure of assets. Jeremy McDermott, a former British army officer who is now executive director of the thinktank InSight Crime, said a kilogram of cocaine in the US is worth up to $28,000 wholesale but that rises to $40,000 on average in Europe, and nearly $80,000 in some parts of Europe. “It is more money for less risk. I see a deliberate decision by some of the top-level Colombian traffickers, based on sources who sat in a series of meetings in 2005-6, where the business decisions were made,” McDermott said. “It is a business no-brainer.”

Conservative Ex-Banker Headed to Victory in Presidential Election in Ecuador (NYT) Guillermo Lasso, a 66-year-old conservative former banker, was set to win Ecuador’s presidential election and beat out Andrés Arauz, a 36-year-old leftist handpicked by former President Rafael Correa. With more than 94 percent of the votes counted after 10 p.m., Mr. Lasso had 52 percent compared with Mr. Arauz’s 47.32 percent, according to the Electoral Council official counting system in Ecuador. Mr. Arauz conceded defeat. The vote signaled a desire, at least among some, to shift right following years in which Mr. Correa has held sway over the country.

England reopens with pints pulled, shopping sprees and hair cuts (Reuters) People queued up outside retailers across England on Monday to release their pent-up shopping fever and some grabbed a midnight pint or even an early haircut as England’s shops, pubs, gyms and hairdressers reopened after three months of lockdown. After imposing the most onerous restrictions in Britain’s peacetime history, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said the reopening was a “major step” towards freedom but urged people to behave responsibly as the coronavirus was still a threat. Getting people spending again is crucial for Britain’s recovery after official data showed that 2020 was the worst year for its economy in more than three centuries with a 9.8% decline in gross domestic product.

Tropical Cyclone Seroja flattens Australian town (Washington Post) A tropical cyclone battered Australia’s west coast Sunday night and into Monday, destroying homes and leaving thousands without electricity. Severe wind gusts of up to 105 miles per hour tore houses apart and sent debris flying all over Kalbarri, a coastal tourist town of 1,350 people in Western Australia. Authorities estimated some 70 percent of the town’s buildings were damaged. Drone footage from the scene showed dozens of homes with their roofs ripped off. Power lines were down and roads were littered with shards of metal and other debris. Cyclone Seroja made landfall as a category three storm at about 8 p.m. local time on Sunday between the towns of Kalbarri and Gregory. Cyclones of such intensity rarely travel this far south in Australia, and towns outside the cyclone belt are not usually built to withstand the devastating conditions.

Muslims navigate restrictions in the second pandemic Ramadan (AP) For Ramadan this year, Magdy Hafez has been longing to reclaim a cherished ritual: performing the nighttime group prayers called taraweeh at the mosque once again. Last year, the coronavirus upended the 68-year-old Egyptian’s routine of going to the mosque to perform those prayers, traditional during Islam’s holiest month. The pandemic had disrupted Islamic worship the world over, including in Egypt where mosques were closed to worshippers last Ramadan. Ramadan, which begins this week, comes as much of the world has been hit by an intense new coronavirus wave. For many Muslims navigating restrictions, that means hopes of a better Ramadan than last year have been dashed with the surge in infection rates though regulations vary in different countries. A time for fasting, worship and charity, Ramadan is also when people typically congregate for prayers, gather around festive meals to break their daylong fast, throng cafes and exchange visits. Once again, some countries are imposing new restrictions.

Iran blames Israel for sabotage at Natanz nuclear site (AP) Iran on Monday blamed Israel for a sabotage attack on its underground Natanz nuclear facility that damaged the centrifuges it uses to enrich uranium there, warning that it would take revenge for the assault. The comments by Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh represent the first official accusation leveled against Israel for the incident Sunday that cut power across the facility. Israel has not directly claimed responsibility for the attack. However, suspicion fell immediately on it as Israeli media widely reported that a devastating cyberattack orchestrated by Israel caused the blackout. If Israel was responsible, it would further heighten tensions between the two nations, already engaged in a shadow conflict across the wider Middle East. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who met Sunday with U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, has vowed to do everything in his power to stop the nuclear deal. According to US intelligence officials, it could take more than nine months to resume enrichment in the nuclear facility.

Abductions and Torture Rattle Uganda (NYT) Armed men in white minivans without license plates picked up people off the streets or from their homes. Those snatched were taken to prisons, police stations and military barracks where they say they were hooded, drugged and beaten—some left to stand in cellars filled with water up to their chests. The fear is still so palpable in the capital, Kampala, that many others have gone into hiding or left the country. Three months after Uganda’s president, Yoweri Museveni, won a sixth five-year term in office in the most fiercely contested election in years, his government appears to be intent on breaking the back of the political opposition. His principal challenger, Bobi Wine, a magnetic musician-turned-lawmaker who galvanized youthful crowds of supporters, is now largely confined to his house in Kampala. Mr. Wine’s party said on Friday that 623 members, supporters and elected officials have been seized from the streets and arrested in recent weeks, many of them tortured.

Prince Philip’s mourners in the South Pacific (Foreign Policy) The death of Prince Philip, the husband of Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II, triggered mourning rituals across the country over the weekend. The mourning is not only reserved for the United Kingdom—on one of Vanuatu’s islands, Tanna, hundreds of members of a local tribe have long venerated Prince Philip as akin to a god, and are preparing to mourn his passing. Although it’s unclear how the Prince Philip Movement began, it is believed to have taken root in the 1970s—given life by the royal couple’s visit in 1974. Key to the movement is the belief that Prince Philip is one with the tribe, and fulfilled a prophecy of a tribesman who had found a powerful wife overseas and “would return some day, either in person or in spiritual form,” Kirk Huffman, an anthropologist, told the BBC.

#headlines #news

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reading-writing-revolution · 3 years

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August 3, 2021

Heather Cox Richardson

Aug 4

First, let’s get the obvious out of the way: former president Trump has raised $102 million since he left office, but aside from a recent donation of $100,000 to his chosen candidate in a Texas race which is not yet in the public disclosures (she lost), has spent none of it on anything or anyone but himself. Since January, he has convinced donors to fund his challenge to Biden’s election and to fund Trump-like candidates in the midterm elections. But election filings and a release of donors to the Arizona “audit” show he has not put any money toward either. So far, about $8 million has gone to the former president’s legal fees, while funds have also gone to aides.

The second piece of news that is surprising and yet not surprising is an ABC story revealing that on December 28, 2020, the then-acting pro-Trump head of the civil division of the Department of Justice, Jeffrey Clark, tried to get then–acting attorney general Jeffrey Rosen and acting deputy attorney general Richard Donoghue to sign a letter saying: “The Department of Justice is investigating various irregularities in the 2020 election for President of the United States. The Department will update you as we are able on investigatory progress, but at this time we have identified significant concerns that may have impacted the outcome of the election in multiple States, including the State of Georgia.”

It went on to say, “While the Department of Justice believe[s] the Governor of Georgia should immediately call a special session to consider this important and urgent matter, if he declines to do so, we share with you our view that the Georgia General Assembly has implied authority under the Constitution of the United States to call itself into special session for [t]he limited purpose of considering issues pertaining to the appointment of Presidential Electors.”

The letter then made the point clearer, saying the Georgia legislature could ignore the popular vote and appoint its own presidential electors.

This is classic Trump: try to salt the media with the idea of an “investigation,” and then wait for the following frenzy to convince voters that the election was fraudulent. Such a scheme was at the heart of Trump’s demand that Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky announce an investigation into Hunter Biden, and the discrediting of 2016 Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton over an investigation into her use of a private email server.

In this case, Donoghue and Rosen wanted no part of this antidemocratic scheme. Donoghue told Clark that there was no evidence of fraud that would have changed the outcome of the election and wrote: “There is no chance that I would sign this letter or anything remotely like this.” Rosen agreed, saying “I am not prepared to sign such a letter.”

The less obvious story today is the more interesting one.

Trump and his loyalists feed off Americans who have been dispossessed economically since the Reagan revolution that began in 1981 started the massive redistribution of wealth upward. Those disaffected people, slipping away from the secure middle-class life their parents lived, are the natural supporters of authoritarians who assure them their problems come not from the systems leaders have put in place, but rather from Black people, people of color, and feminist women.

President Joe Biden appears to be trying to combat this dangerous dynamic not by trying to peel disaffected Americans away from Trump and his party by arguing against the former president, but by reducing the pressure on those who support him.

A study from the Niskanen Center think tank shows that the expanded Child Tax Credit, which last month began to put up to $300 per child per month into the bank accounts of most U.S. households with children, will primarily benefit rural Americans and will give a disproportionately large relative boost to their local economies. According to the Washington Post’s Greg Sargent, “the...nine states that will gain the most per capita from the expanded child allowance are all red states.”

The White House noted today that the bipartisan infrastructure deal it has pushed so hard not only will bring high-speed internet to every household in the U.S., but also has within it $3.5 billion to reduce energy costs for more than 700,000 low-income households.

Also today, after pressure from progressive Democrats, especially Representative Cori Bush (D-MO), who led a sit-in at the Capitol to call for eviction relief, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced that in counties experiencing high levels of community transmission of Covid-19, it is extending until October 3 the federal moratorium on evictions that ended this weekend. It is doing so as a public health measure, but it is also an economic one. It should help about 90% of renters—11 million adults—until the government helps to clear the backlog of payments missed during the pandemic by disbursing more of the $46 billion Congress allocated for that purpose.

Today, the president called out Republican governors who have taken a stand against mask wearing and vaccine mandates even as Covid-19 is burning across the country again. Currently, Florida and Texas account for one third of all new Covid cases in the entire country, and yet their Republican governors, Ron DeSantis and Greg Abbott, are signing legislation to keep Floridians and Texans unmasked and to prevent vaccine mandates. Biden said that he asks “these governors, ‘Please, help.’ But if you aren’t going to help, at least get out of the way of the people who are trying to do the right thing. Use your power to save lives.”

At a Democratic National Committee fundraiser last night, Biden told attendees that Democrats “have to keep making our case,” while Republicans offer “nothing but fear, lies, and broken promises.” “We have to keep cutting through the Republican fog,” he said, “that the government isn't the problem and show that we the people are always the solution.” He continued, “We've got to demonstrate that democracies can work and protect.”

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Notes:

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/08/03/trump-spending-millions-gop-candidates-502233

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-backed-candidate-ballot-us-house-runoff-texas-2021-07-27/

https://abcnews.go.com/US/doj-officials-rejected-colleagues-request-intervene-georgias-election/story

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/08/02/gop-scamming-rural-trump-voters-continues-new-study-shows-latest/

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2021/08/03/fact-sheet-top-10-programs-in-the-bipartisan-infrastructure-investment-and-jobs-act-that-you-may-not-have-heard-about/

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2021/08/03/remarks-by-president-biden-on-fighting-the-covid-19-pandemic/

https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2021/s0803-cdc-eviction-order.html

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/03/cdc-will-extend-the-federal-eviction-moratorium-through-oct-3.html

https://news.yahoo.com/dnc-fundraiser-biden-accuses-gop-123000070.html

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2021/08/02/remarks-by-president-biden-at-a-virtual-fundraising-reception-for-the-democratic-national-committee/

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/08/03/cori-bush-eviction-crisis-502313

Cheryl

Aug 4

Just two things. I live in a rural red county in Virginia. I have always been astounded that folks here predominantly vote Republican against their best interests.

To get votes here, Democrats HAVE to make two things clear. First and foremost - that Democrats are not "coming to take people's guns away." That is the biggest fear out here in red country - the predominant reason folks vote Republican. Gun control is a vote killer and will be until Democrats out maneuver the NRA - and make crystal clear that great-granddaddy's hunting rifle is not at risk.

Second. ALL of the folks here benefiting from social welfare DO NOT associate that money as coming from programs supported by Democrats. That is "my govamint check" - and the government in their minds is Republican. The Democrats must inundate rural areas with advertising that clearly links child care money and internet services with Biden and the Democratic Party in conjunction with exposing Republicans who vote against the bill. Persistent Hard Ball is the only thing that is going to work here.

The former president will continue to “run” for president as long as the money keeps rolling in. Doubtless, as far as he’s concerned, the money is his to do as he pleases. The accounts should be closely monitored by DoJ and charges should be filed for any improper use of the funds.

Just now the thought came to mind that any of the donated funds spent on personal expenses, including legal defense fees, qualifies as income and should be subject to income taxes. Those taxes would be yet more personal expenses that could not be paid from political donations.

The tax man is going to be the one that gets him.

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theinnerhalf · 4 years

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2019 in Review: Highlights

Making a venture back into writing again with this “year in review”. I guess I’m slightly less damaged than I was last year and have finally built the courage to write about how this year was for me, even some dark times included. Thank you 2019, for not much, but I guess thank you. A “fuck you” would be more appropriate but regardless, I’m grateful. Let’s do this.

January 2019

An extremely slow start to the new year, as it usually is when it comes to me. My January’s tend to be bleak, gray, and cold especially considering the coming down from a constant holiday high. I spent this first month with friends I could call my family, regularly going out as much as we could while the two military guys (EJ and James) are here for the time being. In this month as well, I got to finally meet up with my ex who I can now proudly call a friend. Diana and I were able to catch up extensively to make up for all the lost time, talking about things like how we’ve been, the changes, the constants, and occasionally reminiscing. I know I’ve felt at peace before already, for having her back into my life rather than staying a bittersweet memory, but getting to catch up like this was a whole other type of joy I didn’t know I needed. As for the picture of the pants, I finally made the decision to buy a pair of jeans that I wanted soooo so bad from one of my favorite designers.

February

Goodness...Where do I even start for this month?...Like January, February for me is usually bleak. Regardless it being a month for “love”, it sucked. Maybe the worst for me in the year. The start of this month wasn’t all too bad though! There was a fashion show that Celine was walking/modeling for held at Rice University in order to celebrate Asian cultures and Chinese New Year. The show overall was alright...I guess it was just nice to be out supporting Celine and whatnot. I thought this month would at least provide a break for me, but just five days later, my grandma was sent to the ICU after suffering from a stroke...It happened so suddenly...Celine and I were at an outing when the two of us came back to my place and ran into my dad who was leaving in a hurry. He had a lost look on his face, as well as panicky and shifty eyes. He broke the news to us and had the sinking feeling in me hit so fast. The next thing I know, we’re at the hospital waiting room, anxiously waiting to be briefed with (hopefully) good news. I remember disassociating when the doctor had finally came to us, thinking that this really couldn’t be happening...not to us...not to my dad. I remember thinking that this isn’t fair...We literally had just gotten her into our lives’ and now we’re losing her.

We spent the following week trading stays at the hospital between my siblings and cousins. I can’t remember the proper psychology term for the feeling of false hope and security for an event that seems to be too horrible to be true, but that was what I had felt for the entire time. There’s no way that my family could lose our grandma like this...and not this soon. Just a day before my grandma’s stroke happened, she was asking when my younger sister and I were going to get married. The two of us looked at each other like, “What the fuuuu--? Where is this coming from?” My grandma explained shortly after that she felt as if she didn’t have much longer for her time here with us, and that she wanted to have the honor to make the dresses and suits for Lacel’s or my wedding. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I couldn’t stop thinking about how cruel and merciless the world could be, but also at the same time, that I should’ve known better and that I should be used to this...I should be but I would rather not. I think it was after a week and a half where I found that my grandma would be transferred to a hospice. My family had told me this and I was under the impression that hospices were for people who had recovered enough that they don’t need to be in a hospital but still needed professional caretakers. I told this to Andrew and Quin and they both shared painful and shocked expressions with each other. I asked why they were looking at each other like that and then they broke it to me that hospices were for people who didn’t have much time left. I remember crying in front of them that day during work.

Virginia Barreda passed away, February 19, 2019. My family grieved separately and in different ways. I slept off the entire day...The picture of the room was how my grandma left the room right before she was taken to the hospital and was left untouched for the entire duration of the situation. I embarrassingly and shamefully made a gofundme to help raise money so that my family and I could attend her final farewell back home in the Philippines. I thought it wouldn’t get anywhere...but my heart...I was so surprised to see the amount of love and support that friends and even strangers had decided to put out, and I was touched beyond anything I had ever expected. A big thank you to those who donated and have come across this post by any way. You have my sincerest gratitude and even with that, I cannot thank you enough.

To end the note on a positive note at least, Celine and I hit one year at the end of this month. Amazing.

March

My family and I were in such a weird head space entering this month. There was a lot of recovering to be made and coming out of the state of denial from my grandma’s passing. It was like a new chapter of our lives abruptly opened itself onto us and we all did not know how to proceed. My dad was stressing out over medical expenses and how we were going to afford to bring the entire family to Philippines for my grandma’s final resting place. I did my best to keep the gofundme a secret from him, because knowing my dad, he would not accept the money under any condition. He only came to find out about it because some of his friends and relatives came across it, donated, and then told him about how sentimental and touching my gofundme passage was. He just asked why, and I regrettably said that it was because we were struggling out here and all I wanted to do was help. After some convincing with the help of my two sister’s, my dad accepted the help and agreed that we can now at least afford to take my dad for the initial ceremony while the rest of us would follow-up, hopefully in the summer or late 2019.

The first picture in this month’s set is of the Pieta in Italy, taken by Lacel. Lacel was on a two week school trip, while in the second picture is the view my dad had while his two week stay in the Philippines. Both my older sister and I stayed at home while envying our dad’s and Lacel’s experiences. Their trips only served as motivation for me to save up a lot more for Japan and I really wanted to make that happen no matter what. Even if it meant me going alone, I was ready to accept it.

The following pictures of Lacel are when they came back from Italy and celebrated their two years of being clean/no relapses. I know I rarely ever let it be known, but I really do care and love my younger sister a lot, and to see them make it this far in the span of two years meant so much to me. I’m glad that my family was able to celebrate that milestone in Lacel’s life because it was definitely quite the journey. The last photo is of my car’s fourth brake light functioning again with Travis’ help and was fixed just in time for the long drive to Marfa.

April

Really, the only one significant highlight for this month, which I am incredibly excited to share, was the moderately spontaneous trip I took out to Marfa, Texas with Yentl. I do have to say, the two of us were quite ambitious for taking on this trip by leaving Houston around 12am shortly, after grabbing oh my gogi and some boba. With the help of a trenta iced coffee, I was able to knock out 6 hours of the 8 hour drive. While the drive was a lot of fun, I started getting really sleepy around the 4 hour mark but it started raining extremely hard after we had passed San Antonio. I was so reluctant to switch over to Yentl driving because I had been losing traction every now and then. It was only until the sun rose that we finally had passed the rain. I shortly knocked out after the switch.

I woke up to Yentl ecstatically saying, “We’re heeeeere!” I opened my eyes and was immediately blinded, forgetting that daytime was a thing. But from the short time my eyes were open, I saw a railroad and buildings styled from days of the past. I fought to keep my eyes open only to tell myself, maybe five more minutes. As soon as we parked, Yentl and I took the opportunity to walk around.The weather was pleasant, not too hot and not too cold either. The humidity that seems to be a pestering presence in Houston was nowhere to be found in Marfa, so the daytime stroll was bliss. The two of us checked out Marfa’s welcome sign, the city hall (only from the outside because it was closed), a couple of local shops and art galleries, and the hotel Paisano, a hotel best known for having a movie shot in it.

All the walking had made us hungry...That and the only thing inside of us were boba and caffeine. Yentl and I checked out a place called Aster’s that was primarily a breakfast joint recommended to us by a person working at the welcome center. We both got an egg’s benedict. Me with a lemonade, and her an iced coffee. After eating, we proceeded to go to our Airbnb located 30 minutes away at another small town called Alpine. The Airbnb’s neighborhood was located in some rural area with cliffs surrounding it all. The Airbnb itself was a small and cute place that was divided into just three small parts: the bedroom, living room, and a bathroom. Yentl and I freshened up, put on the new fits, and made our way back to Marfa.

Headed back, we decided that we would first go see the outlandish Prada store located in the middle of the desert. The Prada store itself is a permanent art installation by artists Elmgreen and Dragset, built with the concept of using biodegradable materials so that the art installation could eventually return and be reclaimed back to Earth as all things eventually do. The drive to Prada, Marfa was an unexpectedly longer drive than I thought. It was a non-stop view of your textbook Western landscape...Desolate, scattered with ordinary desert shrubbery, and one thing to set it apart, a lonely, silver blimp just casually floating at the wind’s mercy.

When we finally arrived, it looked surreal to say the least. The building was so unexpectedly placed, yet at the same time, it wasn’t intrusive to the desert landscape. There were less people there than I had thought, which made it easier for Yentl and I to take the photos we wanted. What a pleasant oddity it was, I thought, to even drive eight hours just to see this left me with a sense of fulfillment knowing that this had been on my personal bucket list for quite some time.

The two of us made our way back to the city to kill some more time before it was time to see the mystery Marfa lights. We checked out a bookstore placed in the lobby of a hotel, wandered around the from one edge of the town to the other, checked out some more art galleries, and ate dinner at a local BBQ place. The sun was on the verge of setting so we headed to the viewing area that was located right beside the highway. We got there conveniently early and was able to secure a good parking spot as there was not even a designated parking lot. Yentl and I situated ourselves onto a bench with a clear view of the field. We both sat there in amazement of the sunset…layers on layers of colors dancing in the sky, almost a love letter to us from the sun itself, as it sank over the horizon, tucking itself in to say goodnight. The two of us couldn’t wrap our heads around the fact that we actually did this, an 8-hour drive to see some art and an unexplained natural phenomenon that happens in the desert at night. We really did this.

The sky turned from its calm lilac tones to an enveloping darkness and what followed were gasps of oooooh’s and aaaaah’s. It was finally happening. We peered over the horizon, somewhat confused, and there it was. Beside a constant blinking red light, appeared the mystery lights, bobbing up and down inconsistently, disappearing and reappearing on a whims notice. Yentl and I watched in awe and pondered about the mysteries of life like, does the supernatural exist, are there aliens out there, and what does it truly mean to love? Apart from the mystery lights themselves, the stars overhead was truly a sight to take in. The indescribable feeling of being small while looking up at the stars happens to be a favorite sensation of mine, but only this time, I was overwhelmed by it. I found a completely empty bench to lay down on just to look up. It must have been the most relaxed I have been since forever and I never wanted the feeling to end…But as all good things do, it did. Yentl and I made our way back to our Airbnb after catching what seemed to be a UFO flying above us. Marfa truly was surreal.

The two of us rested for the night, packed our stuff the next day, and made our way on the long journey back home.

May

The start of this month initially started incredibly slow. Not much has been done aside from learning how to shoot better on film which I spent a lot of my time on. I would keep pestering my friends to let me use them as models and surprisingly, they agreed! The first three photos are just a few of the pictures taken. This was also the month that the restaurant I work at, Noon (previously known as Verts, also previously known as Vertskebap), had undergone the change to being Daphne’s Greek Mediterranean. The change allowed us to finally get tips trough credit cards and no longer just cash tips. This allowed me to leave my shifts with a lot more money in hand.

It occurred to me…with this I could finally make my Japan trip a reality…In the span of just a week, I was able to raise 100 dollars in just tips alone (I know this doesn’t sound like a lot, but this is a big difference coming from leaving work with no more than 50 cents to 5 dollars on a busy day). I decided that the tip money would be strictly set aside for Japan and Japan only. I thought at the rate it was going, a 100 dollars per week would be sufficient for a trip set out in October/November. The rough estimate was at least around 2000 dollars if I decided I would really stay true to my word and not touch this extra money.

In this month also, my little sister got their associates degree in art, which I am really proud of! They then decided that they would be continuing their education at the university of Texas at Dallas. The last picture is a picture of one of my favorite musicians, blackbear, taken at a concert for his DEAD 2 THE WORLD tour. It was my second time getting to see him perform live, and while he was not in the best health to perform my favorite song the way that he usually does, it was still quite the experience. I would be more than happy to see him perform live again, and hopefully in better health.

June

Ahhh June. What better way to start of this month by getting into an accident…My neighbor ran into the passenger side door of my car while they were reversing and failed to see that I had already pulled out first. Extremely disappointing knowing how much my car means to me…What followed shortly after were series of looking for a trustworthy and affordable auto body and collision shop to do the work while being able to get covered by the person at fault’s insurance. Was honestly such a convoluted process and was so stressful that a part of me decided that maybe I would just leave and live with it. I ended up finding a shop called legendary auto and agreed to the other person’s insurance’s choice to only cover 80 percent of the costs because I allegedly had some “preventative measure” on stopping the collision from happening. Me, tired and not in the mood for a disagreement, agreed. I just wanted my car back to the way it was before.

The next highlight for this month was for an overnight camping trip I took out with my family and other family friends somewhere near Austin. It was a lot of fun! Everything was nearly perfect with the trip aside from the sweltering heat combined with a THICK humidity that made its dominance extremely clear. I remember there being so much good food…and with family friends that you’ve grown up with, there was never a shortage of people telling you to eat more when you just downed three plates of crawfish, bbq, and rice. There were boats and a tractor with a little tow for people to ride on in the back, a working NES system, a basketball court, playground, and an entire forest to explore. We spent our time playing card/board games, held a basketball competition, the dads versus the boys, a bonfire complete with smores, and a sad attempt at a Marvin’s room music video, complete with a hot tub and color changing lights.

Spending your time consistently outdoors resets your internal clock, and so by 9, everyone had started to get ready for bed. I remember being outside on the campgrounds and it being pitch black. Not being able to see past 15 feet in front of me at the most. One look at the sky in this setting and there was the full moon. Brighter than I had ever witnessed it…almost blinding to be honest. The older “kids” were cooped up in the RV designated for more kids to sleep in and were there playing monopoly deal. I joined in and found ourselves playing monopoly deal until 2am until I called it a night. I woke up the next day, sad to leave earlier than we’d have to because I had a shift at work to attend to even with all the begging I did with my other coworkers to cover for me.

As for the rest of this month’s highlights, I finally got the see the Van Gogh exhibit that was here at the Museum of Fine Arts. It was the most packed I have ever seen the MFAH in a long time and was glad that I was able to see Van Gogh’s work as art is always inspiring to me…Sad that the starry night wasn’t there but that’s alright. I also got to visit and hang out with Yentl this month during a trip I made to Dallas for Lacel’s scholarship interview. I haven’t seen her since our trip to Marfa and we got to talking about the Japan trip we’d be potentially taking out in the fall. We had Gyu-kaku (which she covered for like BRUH) and went over the possible itinerary that I had been researching for months now. As usual, it was always nice to see her, and I left Dallas feeling even more hopeful and motivated for the trip.

July

After one long month, I finally got my car back in perfect condition! So exciting to see my car just the way it used to be…Marwan and the rest of his team over at Legendary auto have all my gratitude for doing a stellar job. Could not thank them enough. For this month also, my family and I visited Galveston for the 4th of July, mainly for a parade and pleasure pier. It was a really nice experience getting to spend a whole outing with my family which we aren’t able to do often considering how busy we all are. Even more so with Lacel going to school soon in an entirely different city the following month. As for the final highlight of this month, I got to catch up on life with Lexi as we talk about the occurrences of life and sometimes even the past and how much we’ve grown from it. Always an experience to see her and it’s so interesting to see how I get to hang out with her during my days in college when in high school, we weren’t all that close.

August

I kicked off this month by helping my younger sister pack and move into their apartment in Dallas. We had to rent a car for all their stuff to fit because the 86 definitely was not able to carry everything that Lacel was bringing. It was a quick and pretty emotional ordeal, having one last dinner together as a family, and then having to say goodbye. I thought that would be the last time I would see my sister for a long time, but soon enough, I found myself making a trip to Dallas once a week for five weeks straight haha.

For the next highlight, it’s just a picture of me reveling in the fact that I had finally mustered the courage to go and change my major from nursing to journalism. I was shocked by how much easier it would’ve been for me to finish my associates if I had done this so much sooner. I found myself with only two more semesters, and maybe even just one if I had dedicated myself to just school. Also, in August, I had been unemployed for about two months prior. Shoutout to Daphne’s for pulling the rug from underneath my friends and I without any warning whatsoever. A double-edged sword might I admit, because while it left me unemployed suddenly, the closing of Daphne’s allowed to me find more opportunities and finally be free from the comfort of familiarity that the restaurant had provided me for about four years. Being in H-E-B made me realize how much I was missing out on such a good work environment. Everyone was absurdly and unbelievably nice…The customers in my H-E-B are also nothing compared to the customers I dealt with in food service and my goodness, it was such a nice change of pace. Happy to be here, cause after all, “here, everything’s better.”

For the last highlight of this month, Celine threw an e-boi/girl themed late birthday party. It was honestly really well set up, especially with the Airbnb and the vibes it had come with. They were constantly anxious about how their party would end up and I was always telling them that it would be a lot of fun! Which in fact, it did turn out to be a lot fun and it was so interesting to see everyone so dedicated to the theme of the party. Seeing Celine around a lot of the people they care about was really something, and to see them have such a fun and good time was all that mattered.

A little later into this month, Celine and I decided to end things on a mutual note. Things had been comfortable for a while, and while there may have still been feelings, things have stagnated…A lot…My mental health at this point of our relationship wasn’t anywhere close to where I’d want it and things haven’t been okay with me for a long time. I spent a lot of my time getting triggered over the past and my thought process started falling towards methods of self-destruction rather than dealing with things head on. I found myself either in a constant state of anger or depression over not knowing how to deal with the thoughts eating away at me. Had I waited any longer, I’m not sure what I would have done.

Sad as that may have been…It was ultimately for the better. At least I hoped it was…

September

(Insert obligatory “Do you remember”) September was thankfully one of the better and more eventful months out of the year and kicked it off with Yentl’s birthday party. I remember making the 4-hour drive for the second year in a row just to celebrate a dear friend’s birthday. I arrived later than most and found myself in the middle of a really nice neighborhood where the Airbnb was located. Interesting, I thought. The area was devoid of streetlights with a lake nearby and made me hopeful that maybe a getaway like tonight could really take me away from all that was going on in my head. I’ll drink to that.

I shyly walked in, asking people where Yentl was. I was led to the kitchen where she was and found her already multiple drinks in. Received a tight hug from her and was cordially invited to start drinking haha. I told her that I’ll a eat a little bit, maybe get re-acquainted with everyone and the Airbnb first, properly settling in before I find myself trying to drown my demons lurking behind the corner, waiting to make themselves present in my conscience. I held my trusty detox water, comprised of lemon and limes, tightly, hoping it’d be my saving grace for this party. The objective for the night: Survive…But have a good time. I chatted up with people I haven’t seen in so long…probably since Yentl’s last birthday but I guess because of the vibes the party had, it felt incredibly easy to converse.

I made my way to the pool where everyone happened to be in the meantime. Too self-conscious to jump in so I just snapshotted everyone on film for the most part. Took the liberty and made myself the party’s personal photographer for the night. I went back inside to admire the Airbnb a little bit more or sneak a drink by myself but was ushered to take shots of someone’s personal tequila concoction. “I hate tequila”, I thought…but why not? The vibe was right and the goal was to get out of my mind one way or another. I downed it, regrettably. The burn of the tequila was reminiscent of the nights I spent uncoordinated, lacking self-control, and being passed out in a fetal position beside a toilet fighting for dear life. After recollecting myself after that shot, I was immediately handed another one while not realizing it. Everybody started bracing themselves for the shot, gathering their chasers and mentally preparing for the hit while I on the other hand, looked at everybody and the cup in my possession utterly appalled at the situation unfolding in front of me. Three…two…one…cheers.

After that, the rest of the night was a blur. There came I point where I nearly blacked out because my vision had nearly gone, but after two full servings of my detox water, I was all good to go. I spent the rest of the night just talking, occasionally grooving to Jayson’s live mixing, playing smash bros and leaving undefeated, making conversations, and trying my best to stay out of my head. The party had started to slow down so I went outside to sit by the pool with a glass of wine and admire the quiet and stillness of the night. The backyard overlooked a lake and I was reminded by how nice this Airbnb really was. The moon wasn’t out so it was extra dark and allowed for some reflecting on a couple things, like the break-up…maybe on how lonely I was feeling. I watched some ducks pass by and called it a night. I went back inside and saw Yentl passed out on one of the couches. Made sure she was okay, and we had a conversation about several things, like the break-up…and how lonely I was feeling. Eventually the conversation ventured onto more positive things like how nice this Airbnb is, how nice this party was, some unwanted drama that happened during this party, and the upcoming Japan trip.

After just spending a little more time with each other, and a disagreement on who would take the last bed and sleep on the couch, we said goodnight as she had declared I get the bed. Had to respect the birthday girl’s wishes, even when it was her who had paid for the entirety of this Airbnb…Not to disclose that information or anything, but it was a LOT. I woke up, surprisingly not hungover all thanks to the detox water. As much as I had wanted to stay for any further hangouts of the day, I had to leave for a shift at 2pm. I drove the four-hour drive back home hastily, only to find out that I wasn’t needed for work and that I could actually take the day off…Amazing. Thankful that I was able to attend the party in the first place and see Yentl at all.

The following highlight was a concert I attended in Dallas for the artist Aries’ Welcome Home tour and was a largely anticipated experience for both my younger sister and I. Aries had grown to be one of my favorite artists because of how new and refreshing his sound was. I also happened to find his music during a defining point in my life, specifically during a three hour mindless drive leading to nowhere and found myself halfway to San Antonio and has become the mood and aesthetic I had been living in for a quite a while now. Months prior, my sister and I had been listening to him constantly in preparation for this concert. My only concern was that since Aries is a smaller artist, the concert might only end up being more like a listening party rather than him actually performing. By listening party, I mean that his songs are playing in the background and is overpowering his vocals or that he’s not performing for majority of the time.

My sister and I arrived at the venue with the discovery of a line that wrapped around the entire block. The suspense was too real. The feeling of knowing that I just happened to stumble upon Aries from a YouTube video of him remixing a Post Malone song into a lo-fi one, to him suddenly having the anthem of the entire spectrum of my anger and the prolonging bitterness that dwelled inside me. His music is definitely a trigger, but in a different way. His music gets me angry but doesn’t drive me to a seething, blinding rage the way I see anything remotely related to skateboarding, tall fuckboys with curly hair, or the name Kevin (fuck you Kevin…fuck you!). If anything, his music was a testament to the three months of mental and emotional anguish I had undergone earlier in 2018. I was more than ready to yell my heart and lungs out to the lyrics, “fuck your friend, that man’s a bitch, probably wish I don’t exist”, and “Promise that I will stay out of reach, far gone, cause the shit still bothers me.”

The concert left me speechless by how much energy there was from the crowd, the hype man, and Aries himself. While it may only have been just over an hour, it was the most invigorating concert I have attended by far. Probably the most fun too. As Lacel and I headed out after taking pictures with the venue and our tour merch, we were suddenly told that Aries had came out to greet people. We rushed back in and just stayed around, somewhat awkwardly, casually standing by as fans took pictures with or of him. He was able to sign a piece of paper that Lacel handed to him and he left shortly after taking a big group picture with the fans that were present. We left soon after, put on his Welcome Home album to relive the concert in the car, and got lost driving around Dallas for maybe another hour to end the night.

The last highlight for this month was Quin’s birthday celebration that him and his closest friends organized. The initial plan was to pre-game at Marian’s place and then follow up by going out to Washington Ave. which is notoriously known for Houston’s night life scene. I arrived at Marian’s apartment for the pre-game, and even before I could greet anyone, a friend came by me with a bottle of Hennessy and started pouring some in my mouth. “So it’s gonna be that type of night”, I thought haha. I finally got around to greeting everyone including the birthday boy who was in the middle of taking a shot and was then shortly handed one to take alongside Quin and a handful of other friends.

We eventually made our way to Washington Ave. in different Ubers and arrived at Concrete Cowboy. The whole group lined up and waited for our turn to get in. As we neared the entrance, I pulled out my ID in anticipation as I’m used to being told that I don’t look older than 19 most of the time. The bouncer let my friends in but said something to me that I couldn’t quite make out over the music blasting from inside. I said excuse me, thinking like, hello…my ID is legit, I promise you I’m legal and this is a valid ID haha. “No air forces”, he said. “What?”, “No air forces…”, he repeated. Back to the line I went, astonished that this was even a problem in the first place. I received a bunch of texts from my friends asking where I was and exclaimed to them that I was denied access because of the shoes I was wearing. I went to the little fence that Concrete had and exchanged my air force 1’s with Andrew’s dress shoes and lined up once more.

Eventually that was all a waste because the group ended up leaving Concrete Cowboy…WITHOUT the birthday boy. We crossed the street to another club/bar that escapes my memory but this time around they let me in regardless of my shoes. Immediately, this was already better than the experience with Concrete, from the music, the general vibe, to how less packed it was. Ruben bought everyone two rounds of shots for some reason, and it really helped loosen everybody up. While the group was having a lot of fun in this bar, a handful of us felt guilty that we were having this much fun without Quin and decided we should go back to Concrete to go celebrate with the person this night was originally dedicated to. We left to go line back up across the street, only to find others that also separated from Quin to come join us over where we were at…We all found ourselves back in the same bar/club we just left haha.

Feeling guilty of admitting to this, but we were having an absolute blast at the place we were at. My friends and I ended up having the biggest floor presence and had even started a cypher with the occasional strangers jumping in who had actual dance experience as well. My friends and I shook hands and even made friends with these strangers after finding out we had mutual dance friends and connections to major Houston dance studios like soundbox and soreal. 2PM had finally snuck its way into the night and it was time to go back to Marian’s to regroup. We arrived at Marian’s apartment to find out that Quin had gotten shitfaced at Concrete Cowboy. Quin! The same Quin who took 20+ shots on his 21st birthday, just to be fully coherent, coordinated, and mentally sound to take care of other people rather than being taken care of. There he was, bent over the toilet, clutching it for dear life. It was an absolute sight to behold, and one we would never let Quin live down. It was finally our turn to take care of him, and as friends that love Quin, we were more than happy to finally get the opportunity to pay the favor back.

October

My birth month. My favorite month too and well deserved so. October for me is the transition from the Hell that is Houston’s summer to those cool crisp Autumn afternoons. A transition from bright yellow and blue hues to the golden, orange, and amber tones that coincide with everything regarding the season of fall. Fall is Halloween. Fall is Thanksgiving. Fall is pumpkin picking and carving, apple pies, and the metaphorical dusk of the year, while interestingly sharing the same colors as a sunset. This month was surprisingly uneventful but was largely a pre-cursor for what was coming up in November: Yentl’s and my Japan trip.

The first highlight for this month was this photoshoot/hang out with fellow FRZ86 owners, Lily and Ray. I was meeting both of them for the first time and was excited that they both agreed to be models for further practice with my film camera. Really happy with how the shots came out, I felt ready for taking pictures in Japan and grew more confident in this new profound hobby. The following highlight for this month but not pictured for privacy reasons, was my approval for my travel visa. The news had me beaming. After days of gut-wrenching anxiety at the thought of refunding my airfare, the Airbnb, and all the plans just going to waste if I was not approved, the good news was a major sigh of relief. It had finally cemented the trip, and the only thing that was left, was to save as much as I can in this last month.

My money saving process for the rest of this month involved eating four slices of a day for lunch (only when I was at work), refusing to hang out, and reducing my eating out budget to just under 30 dollars. I was determined. My will power, incorruptible. I attended a hang out that involved eating, and I only spent my money on a drink. My savings were not going to be stopped…My birthday eventually came around and my family and I found ourselves in Dallas…for the second year in a row. I don’t remember exactly why we were celebrating MY birthday in Dallas just to hang out with my younger sister, but that’s just what went down. We went to Gen Korean BBQ for lunch, and followed up with boba (a must). We hung around a Kinokuniya for a little bit to kill time and were deciding on what we should do now. I just threw in that maybe we could stop by the Dallas galleria to just waste even more time, while in the back of my head, I had a burning desire to finally pull the trigger on something I’ve been wanting since the summer of 2017: a Gucci ghost ring.

I only mentioned my intentions to my younger sister because I knew my idea would be met with opposition and disappointment from my dad. After several times being asked why we had decided to go here, I mentioned that I was buying the ring, as a big gesture to myself for making it this far and as a final accessory to bring along to Japan for the outfits I had planned. Ran me back $250 dollars, but did I mind? Not one bit. So much for saving…haha.

To close out October, I departed for Dallas to pick up my sister and Yentl. The plan was to pick up Yentl from Dallas, drive back to Houston because that’s where we’ll be departing for Japan, have a layover BACK in Dallas, and after an 8-hour flight, arriving at Narita airport in Tokyo weirdly at the same time we had left from Dallas due to time zones. The plan sounds counterintuitive with the layover being in Dallas and all…but departing from Dallas added an extra 400 dollars to the airfare. It also worked because it meant that neither of us would have to make a 4-hour drive back home to our respective cities due to another layover in Dallas on the way back home.

November

This month will have an entire separate post dedicated to Japan.

Enjoy these pictures for the meantime.

December

After Japan. I had spent the rest of November coming down from the high I had experienced from my vacation. I had to deal with the come down as well as the seasonal depression that comes along with the shorter days of Winter, despite always being fond of the season. It’s going to sound a little silly to admit, but things really did start to lose meaning. I had this goal of traveling to Japan for as long as I could remember, and it was finally fulfilled! The long workdays, forty-hour work weeks, the months of research and planning, and just everything I had been doing was for the sake of trip.

Not wanting to feel as if my life had lost meaning, I forced myself to get into the holiday spirit…Or at least I tried. In the first highlight presented for this month was Travis’ Christmas present to me. A bunch of treats…and a gun. Yes, a gun. Looks like just a random assortment of food but in reality, has a ton of sentimental ties to it. As described by Travis himself, the honey buns were given because of one time we were in the campus cafeteria and I was craving honey buns. The campus was charging 2+ dollars for a single one and Travis was like, “Don’t waste your money here smh”, and told me he had spent just a little over a dollar for a multipack. The oreo thins were given because I had an obsession with oreos, the gummies because whatever, and the limon lays for a callback when Andrew, Travis, and I would have consecutive movie nights together on the summer of 2017 where we would pick our usual snacks from out midnight Walmart runs. Lastly, but definitely not least, the gun. Travis was concerned by how often I would go to so many places during the middle of the night and was also tired of being my personal protection considering he himself was armed.

The gifts left me speechless and admittedly, a little teary eyed by how thoughtful it really was. During the brief period of trying to take the moment all in, Andrew pulls out his very own and the entire room goes up in screams and laughter. Travis bought guns for the two of us! Unbelievable and entirely wild of him. I love that man to death.

The following highlight of the drink and the board game was when I finally had a first successful meeting from a connection I had on a dating app haha. Wooo Ral finally stepping out there after multiple awkward matches and getting ghosted on several platforms. The two of us met up in Dallas at a videogame restaurant bar thing, where we can eat/drink while playing on a console! Pretty cool idea and props to her for actually catering to what my interests were. Ended making a cool friend out of that meet up since. The rest of the following highlights were just more Christmas festivities such as, baking Christmas themed cookies, secret Santa with the OG5 + DJ, H-E-B white elephant Christmas party, and seeing Christmas lights with Jackie at the River Oaks neighborhood.

Just like this year in review itself, I was so eager to get the year over and done with. 2019 seemed to be bad year for the world, myself included, but finishing writing this up in 2021…I only wish I had treasured the moments just a little longer, not knowing what I will be missing the following year.

P.S. If you’re just a person randomly coming through this, thank you for your time to scroll/read

#year in review #2019

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usingourvoices · 4 years

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The School-to-Prison Pipeline in Philadelphia

**Long Post Ahead!**

“The nature of the criminal justice system has changed. It is no longer primarily concerned with the prevention and punishment of crime, but rather with the management and control of the dispossessed.” ― Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (2012).

What is the School-to-Prison Pipeline?

If you’ve been paying attention to the news these past nine months, you’ll recognize a familiar racial justice buzzword appearing in the title of the article. The school-to-prison pipeline, like police brutality and the war on drugs, is a part of a larger system of oppression aimed at minority individuals. In this case, minority children in schools. Minority students are more likely to face disciplinary measures in their schools, namely suspensions and expulsions, which have a drastic impact on their lives outside of the classroom. This includes students being more at risk of entering the criminal justice system. It is believed that this system is purposeful— a cog in the machine of mass incarceration that spins around us daily. Gass and Laughter (2015) sum up the school-to-prison pipeline explicitly: “in short, ‘priorities to incarcerate compete against priorities to educate.’”

The school-to-prison pipeline is an umbrella term referring to the different policies that have been enacted by federal and state governments in schools to curb misbehavior since the late 1980s. Such policies have included zero-tolerance, metal detectors, school police/security officers, surveillance, and in general, harsher school discipline measures (Goldstein, Cole, Houck, Haney-Caron, Holliday, Kreimer, & Bethel, 2019). It was believed by the SDP that, as Jonathan Kozol claims in Savage Inequalities (2016), “the problems of the streets in urban areas... frequently spill over into public schools. These policies unintentionally affect students of color more so than white students. And, although students living in poverty are always in a place to face more severe consequences for similar actions, being from an affluent neighborhood does not necessarily exempt one from the school-to-prison pipeline. “A recent report by the Government Accountability Office, which relied on a previous set of federal civil rights data, found that racial disparities in school discipline “were widespread and persisted regardless of the type of disciplinary action, level of school poverty, or type of public school attended” (Blad & Mitchell, 2018).

According to a research study on suspension trends in the School District of Philadelphia, there is evidence that “[finds] relationships between suspending students and negative student outcomes, including low academic achievement, grade retention, dropping out, decreased levels of civic engagement, legal troubles, and emotional and psychological disorders” (Park, Karakus, and Lesnick, 2019). Indeed, author of Restorative justice in urban schools: disrupting the school-to-prison pipeline (2016) Anita Wadhwa agrees: “just as people who are not valued in the service economy have been socially excluded and contained in prisons, young people who are unable to perform on grade level or adhere to behavioral norms are often excluded through suspension and expulsion and contained in alternative schools or juvenile detention centers” . From the same study, we learn that black and African American students are twice as likely to be suspended than white students, and Hispanic/Latinx students are 3.38 times more likely to be suspended in fifth grade than white students (Park, et. al). This data is consistent with statistics that have been discovered across the country that points to disproportionate suspensions between racial/ethnic groups. “Moreover, school attendance protects against misconduct, and thus, suspending or expelling students may actually increase future student misconduct,” reports the Children and Youth Services Review. “When out of school, many suspended and expelled students are unsupervised during the day while parents are at work, increasing opportunities for further delinquent behavior” (Goldstein et al., 2019).

Both in-school and out-of-school incidents can result in legal action against students, including arrests, imprisonment, and court cases. “As a result, schools became the primary source of youth referrals to the justice system... transforming exclusionary school discipline policies into a school-to-prison pipeline” (Goldstein et al., 2019). This legal action can have a psychological and physical impact on students, not only marking them with a criminal record from a young age, but also increasing their chances of offending again. The school-to-prison pipeline ingrains ideas of mass incarceration into students from the time they begin pre-school throughout their academic lives and well into their futures.

History of School Discipline Measures in Philadelphia

Following the lead of other major U.S. cities in the early 1990s, the School District of Philadelphia implemented zero-tolerance behavioral policies to try to curb student violence and drug abuse. Those policies continued the long tradition of alienating people by socioeconomic status, ability, and especially, race through the ensuing decades. From 1993-2007, this included a sharp increase in the number of students suspended from school. “For example, although 21.6% of all students in grades 6 through 12 were suspended in 2007, nearly half (49.5%) of black male students in those grades were suspended and 16.6% of black male students in those grades were expelled” (Ritter, 2018).

Later in 2013, police analysts discovered that the SDP was the largest contributor to youth arrest referrals in the city, and a year later, it was concluded that “[Black and] African American students were involved in 75.0% of reported incidents in the SDP and accounted for 80.0% of arrests, despite constituting only 51.8% of the district's student body” (Goldstein, et. al). However, this was also the time that began to see improvements in the school policing system.

After reading the police analysis in 2013, former deputy police commissioner Kevin Bethel designed a diversion program to create barriers to arresting students. His plan saw a 84.3% reduction in student arrests in its first six years of implementation (Mezzacappa, 2020). Still, as of 2019, “14 million students attend schools with police but no counselor, nurse, psychologist, or social worker” (Mezzacappa, 2020).

The Diversion Program in Philadelphia

(Goldstein et al., 2019)

As mentioned above, Philadelphia’s Diversion Program is one of the city’s newest measures to minimize minority youth incarceration. Headed by Kevin Bethel, the program’s primary purpose is to prevent the involvement of the Philadelphia Police Department (PPD) in schools as much as is deemed safe by the program. The Diversion Intake Center (DIC) acts as a final check of qualification before an officer is dispatched to a school; if the student meets certain criteria (for example, being under the age of ten), then the PPD concludes its involvement and a social worker is sent to work with the student’s family within 72 hours (Goldstein et al., 2019).

PPD school officers, SDP school safety officers, and some school administrators received 8 training hours for the program, and the PPD officers obtained an additional 2.5 hours of training in adolescent decision making and positive behavior reinforcement (Goldstein et al., 2019). When an incident occurs that requires PPD school officers, the school first contacts their office. If the offence is minor enough, then the call is then transferred to the DIC. Only when this office determines that the student has no history of arrest is the student placed with a social worker.

The program has shown success in its recent years, but the issue of youth incarceration has not diminished entirely; “still, the promises that once beckoned— the promises of technology, material comfort, democracy, human rights, fairness, basic respect, and decency— have not been fulfilled in much of the world” (Isbister, 2019). Already, plans to expand the Diversion Program include branching out to the surrounding community. Training and resources for teachers are also items that the community has deemed high priority (Blad & Klein, 2018). One could add that the students could benefit from more education, as Peggy McIntosh said “My schooling gave me no training in seeing myself as an oppressor, as an unfairly advantaged person, or as a participant in a damaged culture” (McIntosh, 2019). Another researched solution could also include restorative justice, which the U.N. defines as “a problem solving approach to crime that focuses on restoration or repairing the harm done by the crime and criminal to the extent possible, and involves the victim(s), offender(s) and the community in an active relationship with statutory agencies in developing a resolution” (Mccluskey et. al, 2018). Any step listed above would be one in the right direction, but a combination of the above would like combat the issue the strongest. “The lesson for those committed to fighting inequality… is to fashion a new agenda that gives more scrutiny to both racial and nonracial political and economic forces” (Wilson, 2008).

Works Cited

Alexander, M. (2012). The new Jim Crow: mass incarceration in the age of colorblindness. Revised edition. New York: New Press.

Blad, E., & Klein, A. (2018, April 11). Betsy DeVos Weighing Action on School Discipline Policy; GAO: Black students disciplined more. Education Week, 37(26), 18.

Blad, E., & Mitchell, C. (2018, May 2). Black Students Bear Uneven Brunt of Discipline, Data Show; Disparity in school arrest rates rose. Education Week, 37(29), 10.

Gass, K. M., & Laughter, J. C. (2015). "Can I make any difference?" gang affiliation, the school-to-prison pipeline, and implications for teachers. The Journal of Negro Education, 84(3), 333-347.

Goldstein, N. E., Cole, L. M., Houck, M., Haney-Caron, E., Holliday, S. B., Kreimer, R., & Bethel, K. (2019). Dismantling the school-to-prison pipeline: The Philadelphia police school diversion program. Children and Youth Services Review, 101, 61-69. doi:10.1016/j.childyouth.2019.03.022

Isbister, J. (2014). Promises not kept: Poverty and the betrayal of Third World development. Bloomfield, CT: Kumarian Press.

Kozol, J. (2012). Savage inequalities: Children in America's schools. New York, NY: Broadway Paperbacks.

Mccluskey, G., Lloyd, G., Stead, J., Kane, J., Riddell, S., & Weedon, E. (2008). ‘I was dead restorative today’: From restorative justice to restorative approaches in school. Cambridge Journal of Education, 38(2), 199-216. doi:10.1080/03057640802063262

McIntosh, P. (2019). White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack (1989) 1. On Privilege, Fraudulence, and Teaching As Learning, 29-34. doi:10.4324/9781351133791-4

Mezzacappa, D. (2020, June 12). Movement for police-free schools reaches Philadelphia.

Park, J., Karakus, M., & Lesnick, J. (2019, March). Suspension Trends in the School District of Philadelphia, 2015-16 to 2017-18.

Ritter, G. W. (2018). Reviewing the Progress of School Discipline Reform. Peabody Journal of Education, 93(2), 133-138. doi:10.1080/0161956x.2018.1435034

Wadhwa, A. (2015). Restorative justice in urban schools : Disrupting the school-to-prison pipeline. ProQuest Ebook Central https://ebookcentral.proquest.com

#philadelphia #activism #mass incarceration #school to prison pipeline #racial justice #school discipline

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studyblr-to-stop-procrastinating · 4 years

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Organization Tips I use

Note: These are all my very unprofessional opinion and may not work for you

Get a password manager

I personally use Lastpass which is nice because there’s a free version and has both an app and a web version. Password managers are really good because it keeps all your passwords in 1 convenient place and you only need to memorize one. Plus, you can make notes on it so instead of putting important info on a sticky note or on google docs and you can keep it secure and organized. Here and here are articles on password managers if you want to take a look at them

2. Use some form of an organization system

This can be literally anything. Sticky notes, an app, a calendar, etc. I personally use a bullet journal and put reminders on my phone for anything i have to do at a specific time/ have an appointment for like taking medication. Try out different systems and see what works for you. I personally found I can’t stand using apps or calendars and that writing things down helps remind me of things I need to do, but it all depends on you

3. Set reasonable goals

In my bullet journal at the start of every day I put down five or so goals to do that day. Usually I try to vary the level of work needed with them and how much priority they take up. For example today I wrote down: calendar, bike ride, write, make a studyblr post, paint wall, read, lunch. My goal for the day isn’t to do all of them just 3 and if I do that many I feel accomplished for the day. Depending on the type of person you are even writing down “simple” things like ‘lunch’ and ‘shower’ are nice because by crossing it off you are giving yourself the boost that comes with its completion. I personally also put them down as reminders cause I can forget to eat and by making it a task I probably won’t skip a meal.

I also set more long term goals like writing for four days a week and reading a book every month. This helps me maintain a routine and see improvement over time.

4. Self-care

This ties into items 5 and 8, but try to take care of yourself. Eat meals at the same time every day, develop a sleep schedule, figure out a form of exercise, have some way to relax, and talk to people. This is really important (especially right now) so you can stay healthy and be okay. I like going on bike rides and walks for exercise which help me keep my admittedly awful energy levels up.

5. Maintaining medical stuff

This tip will vary in mileage depending on the amount of medical stuff you deal with and your age. I’m admittedly just heading to college this fall, so I’m still figuring this step out. For doctor’s appointments figure out how much time they’ll take out of your day. Oftentimes, appointments will run late, but also the amount of energy they take up. I usually crash even after a short appointment and can take almost a day to recover. I know that for me getting blood drawn means I’m definitely too fatigued to do anything else and I always have to eat something right after. Also some healthcare places now do online appointments and have a website set up to congregate your info. Also, in preparation for doctor’s appointments ask if there’s anything you need to do or bring. When asked about family history, I have a handout I had my mom make mostly cause my family has a crapton of medical issues that are both difficult to explain and rare. Not to mention my awful memory. My general thing on appointment days is if I attend the appointment and eat three meals that’s an accomplished day.

6. Figure out how much prep to do.

Try to decide whether you need to do things in advance. This can be homework, cleaning, and making food. During the school year I get my clothes ready the day before, so in the morning when I feel awful I can get ready quickly. I also do meal prep especially when I was in high school in advance for the week. I also have simple meals I can put together or heat up quickly on days I don’t feel up to cooking. Also sidenote: meal replacement drinks can be a lifesaver. On days where I can’t stomach eating they’re really helpful.

7. Clear out your emails

Basically just don’t let emails pile up or control your life. Try to set aside a certain time or date to answer emails and get rid of miscellaneous emails from various places. Use the unsubscribe button on everything you can and if there is something you want to get the emails from just in case use a secondary email or if a dumb site requires your email address.

8. Accept that you are going to have bad days

There are going to be days where you don’t get anything done. Days when you can’t get out of bed and the idea of doing anything is overwhelming. Days where you just are sad. On those days its okay to take a break. You’re not a failure because you didn’t do anything. Even just surviving through that day is enough. Eat something and go back to sleep. I have days where everything hurts and I feel overwhelmed, but I know there’s tomorrow and if I sleep for a bit maybe I’ll feel better. Yeah.

#tips #studyblr #organization tips #life tips #organizing #mythoughts #chronic illness management #ehlers danlos #ibs #this probably is a bit preachy #but oh well

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purplesurveys · 4 years

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1031

Do you usually take blame or blame others? Depends on the context, I guess? When things go wrong on a very deep and personal level between me and people I deeply care for, I usually try to find reasons to blame myself. But if it’s something superficial, like if someone messes up at work through no fault of my own, then I’m able to point my finger to whoever fucked up.

Have you ever been to a McDonald’s in another state? I’ve been to McDonald’s in different provinces and also in different countries. The McDonald’s we went to in Baguio was so surreal because we discovered that they were still using styrofoam containers that they had already phased out years ago everywhere else, and they also never changed the original spaghetti and chicken recipes I grew up with. It was such a blast from the past. As for other countries, I’ve tried out the McDonald’s in Malaysia, Indonesia, and China and made sure to order items that we didn’t have back home.

Have you ever seen 50 First Dates? Yeah, it’s one of my semi-guilty pleasures. It’s such a cheesy movie, but idk the concept is unique and the supporting characters made the whole movie enjoyable for me.

Do you like or hate the smell of fish? The fishy smell at the market can be pretty strong and bleck, but generally I don’t mind the smell of fish. I live in an archipelago, man. We live and breathe seafood. Idk anyone in real life who doesn’t like fish.

Have you ever been to Sea World? No.

Do you know someone who suffers from short term memory loss? I don’t think so, no.

Have you ever read any of John Green’s books? Yeah, but the only one I’ve gotten to read in full was The Fault In Our Stars. I also got to start on The Abundance of Katherines and Paper Towns, but because I only borrowed those copies from friends I never got to read either until the end. All were okay, but I don’t find John Green’s writing to be as great as it was once hyped up to be.

If so, which one is your favorite? I guess TFIOS, since that’s the only one I got to read through to the end.

Are you a protective person? With my loved ones and pets, yes.

Have you ever experienced an earthquake? Yeah I’ve felt a lot but fortunately it’s never been a severe one. Just super brief earthquakes where the most that happened to me was a little swaying.

Would you rather go to a beach or city for a vacation? I love beaches, but a change in scenery would also be nice because I already go to beaches for vacations fairly often. City.

Does your license plate number contain the number 8? I never actually memorized my plate number LOOOOOOL I think so? It’s either a 6 or 8.

Were you ever a ghost on Halloween? Nope.

Has someone ever held the door open for you? Yeah, security guards tend to do that for customers/guests. Sometimes, nice strangers that I enter a place with will do it for me too.

Are you a fan of penguins? I think fan is pushing it far lol. I like penguins, but I’m not obsessed.

Have you ever stayed up all night on a school night? Just a handful of times, and it was always as part of a groupwork. I’d never willingly go through an all-nighter for myself.

What’s your favorite brand of chips? Doritos or Pringles. We also have a local brand that makes these deeeeeelicious salted egg chips, but I’ve never actually taken note of what the brand is.

Has anyone ever sang to you? Not to me. But a lot of people have sung around me.

Are you a good painter? No. That’s why I opt for paint-by-number kits, because those come with a guide haha. I can’t actually craft images by myself – that skill belongs to my sister who has an insane talent for painting.

Before buying a car, do you usually test drive it? I’ve never bought a car by myself; my dad takes care of the car purchases. I know he test-drove the Vitara, but idk about the other cars we have.

Have you ever written a poem and then read it aloud? Hmm, I don’t write poems. I don’t find the vast majority of them appealing, and only once in a while will there be a poem that is able to speak to me.

Do you like pineapple? Nope.

Have you ever met your favorite author? I don’t have a favorite.

Do you look more like your mom or dad? Most comments point to my mom, but I’ll get the occasional remark that half of my face is my dad’s as well. I’m a good mix of both.

Have you and your best friend ever liked the same person? This hasn’t happened before.

When was the last time someone called you babe or baby? Maybe August? I’m not too sure. It’s been a few months.

Do you have an older brother? No. But I’m super close with my eldest cousin on my mom’s side and we grew up together and all that, and I pretty much consider him my older brother. He’s definitely more a brother than a cousin to me, and it has always felt and been that way.

Are you a fan of art? Yes, especially paintings and dioramas.

Did you get your mom or dad’s eyes? My mom’s, I think? I really don’t know, I’m bad at recognizing this kind of stuff. You’d have to ask people who actually see me on a daily basis.

Have you ever seen the movie My Girl? Is this the one with the really sad scene of a boy’s funeral and the girl’s like, “He can’t see without his glasses”? I haven’t seen the movie, but I’ve heard about that scene a million times.

Do you watch Teen Wolf on MTV? Ugh, MTV’s teen shows are such a cringefest to me. I never followed it, but I’ve had to watch a few eps back in high school when my friends would watch it while we were at someone’s place. Not my cup of tea.

When it was on, did you watch Cory In The House on Disney? I watched a few episodes, especially when it was still new. But we were also in the process of moving then and we didn’t have cable for a few years in our new house, so I had to miss out most of it.

Do you have any blackheads? I don’t.

Do you have any freckles? Nope.

Do you have a movie that you have to watch during the summer every year? No, but I have something similar. I like watching Love Actually at least once every year, during the Christmas season. I like watching Two for The Road once a year as well, regardless of the time of year.

Do you think that life isn’t fair sometimes? I mean yeah. It doesn’t revolve around me, so I know it won’t always be fair.

When was the last time someone bought you flowers? Valentine’s Day last year.

What was the last book you read? Midnight Sun. Haven’t touched it since September, though.

How many books do you plan to read this summer? It’s past summer, and I haven’t been doing a lot of reading in general.

Does your house have a dishwasher? No, not a common appliance here.

Do you know anyone who has a flower tattoo? I probably do. But I haven’t seen people outside of family for so long that I can barely remember who has which tattoos. I’m pretty sure I know someone who has flowers.

Do you like the name Carter? It just reminds me of the underwear brand honestly, so not a fan.

Have you ever had a secret admirer? No. Should there be one, they shouldn’t be having high hopes; I wouldn’t be interested in the least.

How many different languages can you say goodbye in? There’s English, Filipino, Korean, Spanish, German, French, Japanese – 7.

Agree or disagree: You like Adam Sandler movies. Disagree for the most part, but 50 First Dates is cute.

Did the last type of shoes you wore have laces? Yups. I wore sneakers when I went out to get Starbucks last Friday evening.

How much money did you spend yesterday? The charging cable that I ordered arrived yesterday, so I had to shell out ₱140 for that.

What genre is your favorite movie? It’s a romcom/drama. My other favorite is a drama.

Are you texting anybody right now? Nope. I’m all alone today, which is the way I want to be for this weekend.

Who was the last person you were in a car with? My parents.

Do you like the picture on your license/I.D. card? I really do, hahaha. I don’t know why the people at the LTO gave me a pass, but I had been allowed to smile with my teeth. That helped make my license photo turn out super well and I no longer feel embarrassed whenever I have to take it out and present it somewhere.

What’s your favorite thing to snack on while watching a movie? Potato Corner fries. Can’t be any other type of fries.

When was the last time somebody hit on you? July or August when this random guy slid into my PMs. I had never had so much fun blocking somebody so fast.

Was the last person you met a male or female? The last new person I met was male.

Which one of your friends do you feel most comfortable around? Angela or Andi.

Do you own a map of the world? I mean, I guess. I have a collection of the World Almanac for Kids books, and it had always included a world map in its Countries chapter every year.

What’s your favorite Thanksgiving food? We don’t celebrate Thanksgiving.

Is the light on in the room you’re in? No, doesn’t have to be as it’s bright out and I can see the sun from my window.

Who did you last spoon with? Gabie.

Are you currently watching TV? No.

Have you ever had surgery or stitches? Never. Hope I’ll never be needing one.

Do you own any clothing that has animal print? I have a tank top with cheetah print that I sometimes wear at home.

Does your family eat dinner together? Yes, every evening. We don’t eat together when my dad is working abroad, but since he has stayed home for all of 2020 because of Covid, we’ve gotten to eat together as a family all year.

Where do you work? Somewhere in Metro Manila; I’m not giving the city away.

Are you in high school? I got out of there nearly five years ago.

Do you have a TV in your room? I used to, but not anymore.

Are any of your electronics charging right now? My phone and laptop both are.

What was the last video game you played? Mario Kart 8.

Are you hungry?: I can def go for a snack, or maybe even a full meal. It’s taking everything in me not to order Popeye’s or Army Navy from Grab rn.

What color is the chair you’re sitting on?: I’m sitting up in bed; my sheets are blue with gold/yellow prints.

What did you buy last time you went to the store?: I got bottled coffee when I went to 7-Eleven a week ago.

Do you like salsa that has fruit in it?: ...Don’t all types of salsa have fruit in them though? It would be brand-new knowledge to me if I was told not all salsas have fruit.

Have you ever opened up your computer to clean the fan on the inside?: No. I’d rather have professionals do that.

Can you count in binary?: No, and I never even understood how it works.

Do you think stained glass windows are pretty?: No. Mostly because it reminds me of cathedrals.

Are you a chocoholic?: Nah. I like chocolate, but I can live without it.

Are you scared of snakes?: I mean if they were venomous or obviously wanted to eat me whole, of course. But I’ve also already held a couple of snakes before.

Have you had your wisdom teeth removed?: No.

Do you like hard or soft pretzels better?: Soft all the way. I find the hard ones too salty.

What was the last magazine or catalog you looked through?: I don’t even remember. Maybe Tatler? My grandma has loads of those at her house.

When was the last time you wore a raincoat?: I don’t think I have ever worn a raincoat.

Have you ever been carded when buying something?: Idk what that is but nothing out of the ordinary has ever happened to me whenever I’ve made a purchase, so I’m gonna go ahead and say no.

Do you eat meat?: Yep.

Corn and mashed potatoes, or beans and rice?: Both pairings aren’t really a part of our cuisine, so neither sound appealing to be honest. As someone who thrives on rice, I hate the idea of eating beans with it; so I would go with corn and mashed potatoes even though I’m having a hard time imagining how it would work.

Can you sleep with the light on?: I probably can, but it would take me a lot longer to fall asleep.

What’s your operating system of choice?: Mac/iOS.

Have you ever broken a bone?: Never.

Do you have a favorite highlighter color?: I don’t have a favorite color to use, but I prefer pastel shades in general over neon.

Do you have a flashlight?: My phone has a built-in flashlight, but we also keep a couple of emergency flashlights at home in case of blackouts.

Do you like watermelon?: I like some watermelon-flavored stuff like candies, but I’m not fond of the fruit.

…Honeydew?: Hahahahahaha. BoJack Horseman, anyone? Anyway, I’ve never had honeydew and probably wouldn’t like it considering my established opinion on fruits.

Can you shoot a gun?: I’ve never tried, so I’ll say no. I’ve always been meaning to go to a shooting range though; I feel like it’ll be such a cool experience.

Do you like salad?: Not for the most part. The only kind I enjoy is spicy tuna salad, which only has lettuce in it alongside tuna sashimi and spicy mayonnaise.

When was the last time you smashed your finger?: I don’t know if I ever have? This doesn’t ring a bell to me.

What color is your computer?: Silver/gray.

Have you ever made ice cream in chemistry class?: No, my chemistry classes in high school and college were never that fun.

Has anyone ever walked in on you while you were on the toilet?: Sure.

What color hair do you have?: Black.

Do you use the microwave often?: I wouldn’t say so; just a couple of times a month.

Are you good at spelling?: Sure, I’d claim that. Thank the movie Akeelah and the Bee; that movie made me super passionate about spelling and dictionaries for a time. I can still feel its effects today because I’m still very much particular about spelling more so than any other kind of writing/language mechanic.

Have you ever petted a donkey?: I’ve never even seen one before :o but I’d love to have the chance to pet one, heh. It would make me so happy.

When was the last time you went to the doctor’s for a physical?: 2016.

Do you like a lot of ice in your drinks?: Sure.

Have you ever painted a room? Never have, but would like to give it a try.

#survey #surveys #multiple ones again so feel free to chop up #might make this a thing just because #we'll see!#but i most likely will

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cdcycle18 · 4 years

Text

Non Medical Facelift Near Me

Elegance And Also Cosmetics

Content

Just How Does Doublo Hifu Job?

What Areas Can Be Treated With Hifu?

Face (hifu).

We understand it's a worrying time for people with cancer cells, we know to aid. HIFU is just helpful to treat a single tumour or part of a big tumor. This means that HIFU is not ideal for individuals with cancer cells that has infected greater than one area in their body. The Skin Repair Center have an interesting passion for delivering not just the best however additionally the most efficient and also reliable cosmetic therapies available to you throughout the South West and Wales areas.

With their extremely experienced background, both will certainly ensure you will not simply obtain the most effective solution from first enquiry right through to our thorough aftercare yet you will certainly attain the very best possible result. An excellent HIFU prospect has light to moderate skin laxity where the skin starts to really feel and look less company. Instances consist of a reduced brow line, loose skin on the neck, sagging under the chin, and also lines or wrinkles on the upper body.

Exactly How Does Doublo Hifu Job?

Ultrasound gel is after that put on the face, this is to guarantee that no warmth is felt on the skin surface and permit the HIFU power to be absorbed effectively into the desired skin layers. Permit 2 weeks before/after IPL treatments in the area that you wish to have dealt with. Enable 2 weeks prior to IPL therapies in the location that you desire to have treated. HIFU offers long lasting effects, tightens skin as well as promotes wrinkle decrease. HIFU facelift treatment is a cutting-edge, painless as well as non-invasive means to decrease wrinkles that lasts up to two years and also is skin-friendly, secure as well as effective.

How successful is HIFU?

Results: HIFU overall success rate was 84% (biochemical relapses in only 4 patients out of 25). Success rate was represented as follows: 94.2% in the low risk group, 83.4% in the intermediate risk group and 0% in the high risk group.

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What Locations Can Be Treated With Hifu?

It is very important you feel great that you have chosen therapy that is right for you as well as your skin. Everyone is various and also will see results at various times. Outcomes are totally based on your very own body's recuperation time, age, lifestyle, diet plan and case history. non surgical facelift Grays such as hi-fu.co.uk face and also neck lift that is done appropriately by a skilled technician should take about minutes. That is because the majority of factors on the face are dealt with at 4.5 mm, then the very same at 3mm and once again at 1.5 mm. Time, treatment and attention have to be paid by the technician to supply these points in a way that offer you finest results.

Several months after therapy, you look freshened and also renewed-- never pulled. You will see remarkable arise from simply one treatment, nevertheless to obtain maximum benefits a comply with up treatment in 8 to one year is recommended and also these exceptional results will certainly last from 2-3 years.

Face (hifu).

Collagen production will begin after only one session, with results showing up over the complying with months. Your skin will be healthier, more powerful, as well as younger-looking, without any abnormal, drastic changes. The goal is to raise the local temperature to at the very least 65 ° C, the temperature at which collagen contraction begins to occur. HIFU creates distinct thermal coagulation factors while saving nearby cells.

Obviously, the best way to discover if you're a suitable candidate is to consult with a specialist. HIFUTherapy deals with the deep foundational layer addressed in cosmetic surgery, however will not replicate the results of a facelift. Nevertheless it is a great alternative, especially for those not prepared for surgery or for individuals aiming to extend the impacts of cosmetic surgery.

What Is hi-fu non surgical facelift Gosport ideas ?

After learning lots about fat cold throughout the assessment and reading whole lots online I reserved in for treatment. I have actually seen such a big difference around my love manages and stomach area. The aftercare was great, you get a diet plan, email, adhere to up visits and also if I needed anything they were there for me. A huge many thanks to Ryan for today at RT Looks for my fat cold procedure. I was a little bit worried but much more due to the fact that I required to get down to my underwear in front of you. Whatever was fully clarified to me and also I' am excited for the results.

The HIFU non-surgical facelift supplies ultrasound at targeted midsts of 1.5 mm, 3mm as well as 4.5 mm. HIFU facelift is also known as the Ultrasound facelift, Ultrasound treatment or 'Ultherapy' This short video clip discusses simply exactly how ultrasound innovation works in the face to tighten up the skin. HIFU treatment often tends to last in between 60 as well as 90 minutes, depending on areas dealt with.

In addition to neighborhood coagulation, the application of warmth causes collagen fibers end up being denatured and contract. Have a look at our complete checklist of treatments and obtain scheduled in with our friendly staff today.

HIFU is the only non-invasive therapy that can especially target the deep foundation below the skin without cutting or disrupting the surface area of the skin through plastic surgery.

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It's minimally intrusive and also avoids the demand for surgery, making the healing time much quicker than surgery.

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elven-oracle · 5 years

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under the rose: part 1 |th.

CATCH A GRENADE

moodboard courtesy of @mcuspidey

SUMMARY: Would you do anything for the person you love?

Would you do anything for the person you lust?

PAIRING: Agent!Tom Holland x Agent!Reader

WORD COUNT: 4k

sub rosa: adjective and adverb. formal. happening or done in secret. directly translated from latin: “under the rose.”

Part 2

Part 1: Catch a Grenade

When you signed on to become an agent for a secret sect of the government, you hadn’t realized that the job meant being in disguise almost all hours of the day.

From the moment you entered your place of work, a mask shaded your face. You went from being one person around your family to someone else entirely around your fellow field agents, but there was no one you shaded yourself more from than your partner. For him, you masked yourself completely.

Tom Holland was practically James Bond, and he knew it.

He had been assigned to you after multiple cases of “conflicts of interests” according to Human Resources. After not much digging (you were an agent after all), your suspicions were confirmed. Tom had seduced his way through the female agents of their tier to the point where he was practically impossible to work with. Even the men of their department refused to work with him. You were the last-ditch effort. Upon discovering that, you made it your own personal secret mission to make that effort a success. You wanted to become the agency’s new favorite agent. Dealing with Tom was just a step in your path to climbing the ranks.

What he was after, you weren’t sure. Your theory was that he wished to work alone, and was trying to run the higher-ups dry of possible partnership opportunities, or even force them into giving him a promotion. Unfortunately for him, you had been the longest-lasting partner, having been paired with him for 6 months. His lips hadn’t come near to any part of your skin. No matter how delicious he attempted to be.

When your partner entered the room, all eyes gravitated to the way he walked. It was confident, yet you knew from the deepness of your heart that the false confidence was manifested from a dangerous arrogance. You had been working alongside Tom long enough to know how seriously he took himself, and how much of a joke everyone else was in his mind. You were the only one who didn’t fall to your knees at the sight of him. You dismissed him as if he was any other agent on level 36.

You didn’t lift your eyes when you felt him standing next to you, knowing that he had plenty of people already giving him the attention he needed. The game you played with him rubbed him the wrong way and you knew it and loved it. There was no one more he wanted to crack than you, yet nothing seemed to phase you. His penetrating aura had nothing on you. It barely left a scratch.

Which wasn’t to say it didn’t occasionally knock.

You felt his breath on his neck as he squeezed past you, laying a hand on your shoulder to get by which you promptly rolled your shoulders away from in an attempt to send a message. You were never sure if he actually received it, but it was always worth a shot. He had to figure it out one day.

“We need to be downstairs for a debriefing in five minutes,” you spoke sternly, pursing your ruby red lips as you finished the sentence. He was typically late to debriefings, so telling him the time frame was probably not going to be much help. Picking up the two files sitting on your desk for your current case, you waited to see if he would join you in heading to the second floor, or if he was just going to be late. When it was obvious it was the latter, you rolled your eyes and proceeded to the elevator.

Yourself and Tom were assigned to one of the most secret missions currently being taken on by the agency. After what felt like endless weeks of research, today was the day one of you, Tom, would finally be venturing into the field. As much as both of you loved research and paperwork (which was close to not at all), it was the disguises and collecting evidence that really gave you the rush. To most people, the act of putting one’s life on the line sounded terrifying, but you had always been an adrenaline junkie. Going for what was dangerous was what spoke to you.

“This mission is completely sub rosa. You have signed a contract saying that discussing this mission outside of this room and with each other is strictly prohibited. No agents below level 8 are permitted to know anything on Mission 8382. Is this understood?” Chief Agent Madison had her snowy white hair tied tightly back into a bun that rested in the middle of her head, and her eyes were fixed not on you, but on Tom, who had shown up 10 minutes late with a coffee in hand.

“Yes, ma’am,” you were the only one who spoke. In your peripheral, you saw Tom roll his eyes.

Because yeah, that’s a great way to get in my pants.

“Agent Holland?”

“Yes I understand,” it was almost irritating how chocolatey his British accent stood out amongst the sea of Americans. You stifled a heavy sigh of annoyance.

You both were walked through the basic outline of the mission, which you were both familiar with. The debrief before heading into the field was more of a formality than anything.

The end goal for you and Tom was to expose a group responsible for one of the largest sex-trafficking empires in the world. It was a case that your department had been following since before you had even been hired, and keeping everything under wraps and running smoothly was of the utmost importance. There was no room for error. Luckily, Tom was good enough at his job to know that.

“Agent Holland will be heading into the facility first. His application to work for them has been processed, and he has memorized everything that we put on it to make sure that his cover is secure. After a few weeks, he will be asking if his girlfriend, Agent Y/L/N, can come along with him as long as she keeps her mouth shut,” Chief Agent Madison hit a button and another formal-looking slide took the place of the previous, “From there you two will be gathering as much intel as possible. Talk to people, gain their trust, get to know them. You will file a mission report at the end of each day, and when it seems like we have enough information, you’ll be pulled and reassigned to your next case.”

The debrief was always a formality that no agent was a major fan of. It was essential so that agents were held accountable while in the field, but after spending so long in preparation for this case, having the chief of the agency reiterate what you already knew was only making you more anxious to get into your disguise and onto the field. Of course, it was Tom Holland who got to make the initial contact, but that boiled down to the underlying sexism in the criminal world that you were all too familiar with. The men of this trafficking ring were more likely to accept a young man and his girlfriend into their group rather than vice versa.

“All right. Head to level 40 for your disguise debrief.”

The red wig was a deep crimson that, by a miracle, didn’t look tacky. The dark red locks fell in waves over your shoulders, perfectly complimenting the red lipstick you had taken to wearing on the daily, solely to get used to the way it felt on your lips. Usually, you only wore makeup for special occasions, but the character you would be embodying for an extensive amount of time was an ex-waitress from New Jersey. Wearing heavy makeup on the daily had become second nature.

To your left sat Tom, whose hair was usually styled to perfection, but now a charming pile of curls that barely didn’t cover his eyes. He looked displeased.

“Is this really neces-”

“Yes Agent Holland, it is,” the woman fixing his hair was just as British as he was, steam coming out of her ears as she spoke. She must have fallen victim to Tom’s advances by the way he smirked at her in response.

You, on the other hand, liked the way you looked. The name you had come up with to go along with your cover fit the look well. Staring at the cat-eye flicked on your eyelid and the thick lashes, both of which you had placed on yourself, you perked your lips into barely a smile. This woman’s name was definitely Rose.

You had heard the term sub rosa so many times in the past few weeks, and just in general with your career, that you couldn’t help but create a name using a play on words. Tom had offered his disapproval almost instantly, but you weren’t really a fan of his name either.

“Ay,” he said in a well-developed New York American accent, “‘Name’s Johnny.”

It could not be more of a cliche.

The weeks that you were waiting to be thrown into the field were slow. You hated that Tom was the one to go first, no matter how many times you had reminded yourself that it was essential to the mission for Tom to make the introductions. It was not the agency’s fault that men, especially criminals, saw women as accessories rather than assets. If anything, you were a slightly better and definitely more professional agent than your partner.

You kept a careful eye on him while he worked, whispering suggestions into his earpieces, which he took about half the time. It was better than what you expected, which was he wouldn’t take any feedback at all. Typically he didn’t leave their main meeting base until about midnight or sometimes later. The day-to-day activities of the world’s most wanted criminals were more mundane than you had anticipated, limited to playing cards, watching sports, and lots of drinking and drugs. Tom only took part in minimal drinking, usually escaping to the bathroom to dump them out. He only wanted to give off the appearance that he was drunk.

By week four, it was hard not to get exasperated. You were starting to wonder if he was dragging the process out on purpose to keep you excluded from the case. He easily could have brought you into the picture during week three. Chewing on your lip, you listened to the menial conversation that that day’s group made while smoking blunts. Tom cleared his voice and started to speak.

“Hey boys, I was wonderin’ if my girl could start coming by,” on the small screen with the low-quality camera, you could see his pixelated body lean back into the chair, his arm swinging across the back.

A man that was usually referred to by the name of Hardy perked up, taking a hit and leaning on his knees, “Your girl….”

A different man, nicknamed “Candy” (you didn’t care to find out why) spoke next, “Will she keep her mouth shut?”

Tom this time, “Of course. She’s dumber than a doornail, she has no idea, what happens here.”

You held back rolling your eyes. It was all a part of the backstory, your alias had purposefully been written as not the smartest, but hearing it from Tom’s mouth had a different sort of way about it.

“Why does she want to tag along then?” it was Smithy that asked the next question.

“Just lost her job at Hooter’s,” the entire male group’s ears perked at the sound of that, “And she isn’t particularly the stay-at-home type.”

A dark brooding figure appeared amongst them in the outskirts of where the camera lens stopped, just at his presence, the entire dynamic of the room change, the attention going immediately to him as if waiting for something absolutely profound to be said. After a pungent pause, his profound words turned out to be, “We could use a little bit of ass around here.”

It was followed by chuckles and a few playful punches to Tom’s shoulders.

“Perfect,” by the way Tom was speaking, you could tell he was smiling, “I’ll bring her with me tomorrow.”

…

The drive to the evil lair was silent. If it had been any quieter, Tom probably would have been able to hear how your heart was pounding in your chest. Since he had already been doing this for a month, this was just another day of work for him, as much as this degree of “work” could be. There had been barely any intel in the month he had been working the case, only drinking and smoking. It was almost as if Tom, and now you, were getting a very tense vacation.

“Nervous?” you could see the warehouse by the time the first word was said.

“Me? Johnny, please,” you said it in the thick, well-practiced New Jersey accent that had been a part of studying this woman you were becoming.

Out of the corner of your eye, a hint of a smile twitched on his mouth.

You placed a pair of sunglasses over your eyes, a tacky pair that were so huge they shaded your eyebrows, not because it was bright outside but because the truth was you were slightly nervous. It wasn’t like shading your eyes from the criminals would protect you in any way,

The room that they spent most of their time in smelled of booze and weed (not much of a shock), with a hint of metal that probably came from the tall pillars and an entire wall that was elaborately decorated in graffiti, which were unintelligible through the crappy observation cameras that you were so used to looking at. With a deep inhale, you took in the scene, trying to memorize every detail.

The large man, the one that had given his seal of approval on Tom’s “girl” being allowed to come around, was the first to greet you. After the months of surveillance, you still had never caught his actual name. He was strictly referred to as “boss.” If you could weasel your way into figuring out what his name actually was, it would be a major lead in your case. In the moments that you had spoken with Tom about it, he had mentioned that his efforts to crack the alias hadn’t come to anything. As much as you hated it, maybe the boss needed a little more than what Tom was able to give him.

The man was tall, broad, and a lot more handsome than you had expected. He was tough in a sexy way, with the hint of stubble speckling his jawline, and veins popping out of the muscles that extended out of the white tank that tightly hugged his toned body. He approached you, slowly, sizing you up as if you weren’t the meek girl that you were pretending to be. Little did know, he was dealing with one of the most highly trained agents in the United States.

His fingers brushed a strand of your fake, red hair over your shoulder, and he took off your sunglasses for you, closing them with his mouth and placing them in the front pocket of your jeans, moving as if someone had pressed the “slo-mo” button.

“Hey, gorgeous,” his accent was Australian, “I’m glad you’re able to start joining us.”

You snapped your gum, ignoring the drumbeat of your heart, and spoke with your Jersey accent, “Pleasure’s all mine, mister.”

Tom’s hand snaked around your waist, and you ignored the butterfly feeling that accompanied it. No one had touched you like that for as long as you could remember. The way that he pulled you close following the subtle touch, you felt as if he was being protective. You turned your head so that you were facing him, each of your faces temptingly inches away from each other.

“Now, boss, let’s not get too handsy, eh?” Tom accompanied his teasing tone by placing a toothpick in between his teeth. He kissed the side of your head, which was rough but sort of endearing at the same time.

You soon discovered that your perception of what the men spent their time doing was exactly correct. Chairs in a circle accompanied by an endless supply of beers and straight whiskey. You kept to the beers, and when a blunt was passed around, you politely declined.

“History of lung cancer,” you winked at one of the guys across from you. You were pretty sure it was Hardy. His jet black hair was slicked back to a point where you were sure that wringing it out would follow with an ugly amount of hair product dripping out. He looked as if he belonged in Grease.

You had gotten what you wanted, though. Hardy responded with a slight bite to his lip and a subtle hiding of his eye contact upon noticing that Tom was glaring at him.

He was certainly good at playing his role. This was the most emotion you had gotten from Tom in all the months you had been working with him.

“Boys,” Boss clapped, his voice immediately altering the energy in the room, “I have news from our men on the outside that our rival might be in the area looking to...give us a frighten. Let’s take a walk outside, huh? Grab your toys.”

Of course, the day that you decided to make an appearance, there was something other than lounging around Home Base. You met eyes with Tom, who responded with a smirk, throwing his shades over his eyes.

You had heard of the rival group with a few mentions, and you were sure that the agency was on it, possibly assigning other agents to potentially take them down. Being in this line of work had given you a heavy realization that the world was a fucked-up place.

That’s why you did this. You had always aspired to make the world a better place, and now you had no choice.

“Of course,” the boss’s attention fixated on you as all the men shuffled to get what you assumed was weapons, “you are more than welcome to come, my dear, but I wouldn’t want you to find yourself getting hurt.”

You circled your finger around the rim of your beer bottle and sucked the liquid off your manicured finger with a cheeky POP, “I think I’ll be okay, mister.”

Each of the men filed back in, Tom quick to make his way to you and place a hand on the small of your back. If you hadn’t been wearing your chic denim jacket, his hand would have met bare skin thanks to the leopard print crop top you had picked for that day. A shiver tempted to shake your shoulders.

It was a hot, muggy summer afternoon in New York. Looking around, you saw that each of the guys you had been with had taken to their own set of shades, trudging through the high grass like they were hunting an animal rather than another group of people.

One of Tom’s arms held the automatic weapon, and the other hung over your now bare shoulders, the red curls brushing against it. You popped your gum with every step, keeping a keen eye on the situation around you, knowing that the newest people to this gang had the most experience.

The Jeep came out of nowhere, driving roughly across the field without any question of anyone’s safety. It was who they were looking for.

What you hadn’t expected was the projectile that flew from the front window, thrown by a man in sunglasses, mouth guarded with a black bandana. It was headed straight for Tom, but before you thought twice, you unraveled yourself from him and caught it, only taking a moment to realize exactly what they had thrown at you.

“Don’t worry, beautiful,” Candy spoke up. “It’s probably a fake-”

You were definitely not going to risk it. It was your first day on the job, and neither you nor Tom was getting killed. Throwing it, you used every muscle in your arm, almost popping it out of its socket. It did the trick, flying across the field far and high, where it exploded.

“Damn,” Candy adjusted his attitude.

The boss was now eying you, his arms crossed and a finger lingering on the corner of his mouth, “You got quite an arm, Rose.”

It was the first time you had been called by your fake name.

You laughed, forcing it to sound as natural as possible. Rose was an airhead after all.

“I was softball captain my senior year of high school. Guess your throwin’ arm never truly goes away, huh?” with another laugh, you wrapped your arms around Tom’s waist, the feeling of his abs pressing into your chest, “I saved your life, huh baby?”

On his lips were a smile, but his brown eyes were filled with some concern that was unfamiliar to you. Tom never worried about any one of his partners, “You sure did.”

The kiss was short and soft, and while you wished you could have said it was detached, all a part of the facade, there was something sugary about the way he interlocked your lips.

“Careful,” you said, brushing his lips with your finger. “I’m wearing my good lipstick.”

When you had returned to home base, you needed to take a minute to yourself. Asking for the restroom, you escaped to the grungy, foul-smelling bathroom that was littered with more graffiti.

The mirror was scratched and etched with names and quotes and years that were remnants of the past. With a deep inhale you took a square of toilet paper and dabbed at the sweat that was shining on your forehead and chin, mixed with the natural oil of your thick, full coverage foundation.

You were startled by the sound of someone bursting through the door, and you were about to stay in character and shriek before you noticed it was Tom, who was filling the little space that you already had in the grimey bathroom. You hardly got a word in before Tom wrapped you in his arms, gently.

“Johnny what-”

“No, this is Tom giving you a hug. Not Johnny,” he was speaking in his native, British accent.

You weren’t sure if this was authentic, so after standing stone-cold still, you returned the hug unenthusiastically. Was this his attempt to woo you?

“I just wanted to make sure you were okay,” he continued, parting from the hug. Your faces were barely inches apart, and you could feel his breath grazing your skin as he looked down at your feet.

“Well,” you swallowed the small amount of saliva remaining in your dry mouth, “I’m okay. I’m Agent Y/L/N, remember?”

“Catching a grenade is more intense than one would think,” he rubbed one of his eyes, “If you need anything let me know.”

You watched as he exited, unsure of how to feel. Tom had never seemed like a compassionate person to you, yet here he was making sure you were okay. It was so out of character.

It had to be him trying to get to you.

Clenching your teeth, you huffed out a sigh and returned to the group, greeted by the familiar smell of marijuana. With a simple smile, you sat back down in your spot next to Tom. You slid a lock of hair back behind your ear, and made eye contact with each of the different men, unapologetically gawking at you.

“You all are making me wish I’d kept the grenade in my hand. Eyes on your cards, gentlemen!” you flashed Tom a wink and watched as his ears turned pink.

Two could play at his game.

Part 2

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promptmaker · 5 years

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Prompt Left Overs

Below the reading line is a list of prompts from 2019 that are still available. There is no time limit and you can switch out characters if you prefer (they must be consenting adults or aged up). As always if you pick one, please let me know and I will cross it out.

1. My Hero Academia. Future AU. (Shoto/Momo): Pro heros Momo and Shoto have broke the top 10 Hero rankings for the first time and are celebrating with their former classmates with a party at their home. After everybody leaves and they are finally alone, Momo and Shoto can finally celebrate in their own way.

2. Fairy Tail City Hero (NaLu): Natsu and Lucy are stranded on the side of the road outside of town when their Patrol Car breaks down. Natsu quickly gets bored and entices Lucy into some sexy time until help arrives. Either inside or outside of the patrol car. (Optional: They accidentally give a show to the dash cam)

3. Fairy Tail (NaLu) Canon or AU: Natsu and Lucy have been together for a couple of months now and can’t keep their hands off each other it gets so bad that Lucy’s friends need to drag her away for some girl time at a spa/onsen. NaLu secretly keep in touch via text and facetime through out Lucy’s trip but things escalate when a drunken and flirty Lucy starts sending Natsu risque pics and texts throughout her time there. Their escapades end with a video chat session that turns steamy.

4. Fairy Tail (NaLu) Modern AU: Lucy goes to Mardi Gras in New Orleans with her lady friends as a way to let loose from work and College. The girls enjoy all the festivities Mardi Gras has to offer and Cana even leads them through a wild time on Bourbon Street. During the days of partying, Lucy befriends a local named Natsu who shows them the best places to go during their visit. Natsu and Lucy flirt the whole time and get a chance to hang out alone together for a day before Lucy has to go. Things escalate and they both show each other a wild time. (DISCLAIMER: I have never been to Mardi Gras or New Orleans)

5. Fullmetal Alchemist (EdWin): Ed and Winry (married/together) rent a car during a trip to central but when it breaks down and Winry goes into full mechanic mode trying to fix it, Ed decides that he has never been more turned on.

6. Fairy Tail (Mira/Lucy/Natsu): Mira is a little depressed after the end of a long term relationship. Not liking seeing their friend so down and wanting to repay her for all she has done for them and the guild, Natsu and Lucy invite her to their place for some no-strings-attached fun to help her get her mind of things. Mira, graciously accepts. (Or any extra female of your choosing. It doesn’t have to be Mira)

7. Fullmetal Alchemist (Roy/Riza) Riza helps Roy with their firearm re-certification. When he fails to take the tests seriously, Riza offers “incentives” for doing well with the test. Also works with Rebecca/Havoc.

8. Fairy Tail (NaLu) Canon or AU: Natsu and Lucy have been together for a couple of months now and can’t keep their hands off each other it gets so bad that Lucy’s friends need to drag her away for some girl time at a spa/onsen. NaLu secretly keep in touch via text and face-time through out Lucy’s trip but things escalate when a drunken and flirty Lucy starts sending Natsu risque pics and texts throughout her time there. Their escapades end with a video chat session that turns steamy.

9. Fairy Tail Gruvia: Possibly a sequel to (https://archiveofourown.org/works/10425108/chapters/42895043). An unexpected storm delays Nalu from returning home. They contact Gruvia through lacrima to check their home for any damages, but remembering what Nalu did in his favorite chair, Gray decides to get revenge. He entices Juvia into helping to leave their scent all over the house, from the living room to the bedroom.... When Natsu gets home a few days later, he knows what happened before he even opened the door and races off to find Gray.

10. Fairy Tail NaLu (or any couple really) AU: Lucy and Natsu are athletes in the Olympics. They are from different countries but they meet early on and become friendly. During a rare grace period where neither of them have event to be at, the two get drinks at a bar in the. They quickly discover that the rumors about down time in the Olympic Village are true, sex between athletes is abundant and constant. Be it out in the open or in the privacy of their rooms. The two decide that since they may go their separate ways after the games, they might as well join in the fun. TL;DR AU Athlete Natsu and Lucy has some adventurous sex in the Olympic Village.

11. Fairy Tail NaLu: Lucy is having renovations done to her apartment, so Erza graciously lets her stay in her room(s) at Fairy Hills while she is away on a mission. Her boyfriend Natsu comes to visit her in her new accommodations and to complain that she chose to stay there instead of his place (she didn’t want to deal with the mess and Fairy Hills is closer to FT). Lucy seductively promises to “make it up to him”. Natsu is hesitant to do anything in Erza’s room but then Lucy makes the mistake of teasingly asking if he is scared. Which leads her being dragged to Erza’s bed. Are they caught by Erza or do they get away with it? TL;DR: NaLu risk having sex in Erza’s bedroom.

12. Fullmetal Alchemist EdWin: Ed and Winry visit Xing for their wedding anniversary. Ling sets them up in a fancy room at his palace with its own private hotspring. After some drinks with the Emperor, the couple heads back to their room and a frisky Winry decides they need to test out the hotspring and have some extra fun in it. TL;DR EdWin fuck in a private hotspring.

13. SFW. Fairy Tail NaLu. Modern. AU: Natsu is a pyrotechnician and he thinks showing Lucy how he sets up a fireworks display for 4th of July makes for a good (first?) date.

14. SFW. My Hero Academia: After hearing All-Might mention it, Eri becomes fascinated by the concept. Especially the fireworks, having never seen any before. Class 1A decides to give her a fireworks display of their own and go overboard.

15 SFW. Fullmetal Alchemist. EdWin: Ed tries to show his kids the science behind Sparklers and they seem more interested in trying to set him on fire.

16. SFW. MCU canon divergent, Steve/Natasha: Steve and Nat have been together for a year now. After having a big birthday party for Steve, thrown by Tony at Avengers HQ, Nat/Steve sneak off to the roof to enjoy Tony’s elaborate firework show. NSFW optional: they get side tracked from the fire works and decide to make there own right there on the roof.

17. NSFW. Fairy Tail. College AU. NaLu: Lucy is dragged to a college 4th of July party by her friends. She tries to make her escape from said party until Natsu shows up. She has several classes with him and the sexual tension between them is palpable. He makes the party fun for her and when the party starts to wind down the two sneak off into a spare bedroom for some fun.

18. Fairy Tail Nalu and Nack/Lucia (A couple of years after 100 year quest): Fairy Nail has come to Fiore, doing an international tour of their show. Natsu, Lucy and other guild members are hired as security during the tour. NaLu are assigned to Nack and Lucia specifically and after only a week guarding them, they are becoming very annoyed by the lewd behavior the other two display. Having to pry them off each other often. While staying at a hotel, Nack and Lucia’s antics keep NaLu up all night, them having their room right next door and all. So NaLu decide to give Nack and Lucia a taste of their own medicine and try to keep the other two awake all night with their own antics. It turns into the couples trying to outdo each other through the night The same prompt as above EXCEPT, instead of separate rooms the couples are in separate beds. In the same room. TL;DR: NaLu and Nack/Lucia try to out fuck each other

19. Fullmetal Alchemist EdWin: Ed takes Winry shopping in Central for her birthday. He bemoans being dragged to clothing stores until she has him come into the dressing rooms with her. Ed enjoys watching try on clothes for awhile but soon can no longer contain himself and they go at it in the dressing room and have some fun with its mirror. (optional: Ed seeing her in skinny jeans and a tight top is what triggers it. Said jeans end up at her knees) TL;DR: Ed and Winry have sex in a changing room

20. Fairy Tail NaLu: Brandish is in town on a mission. Natsu and Lucy run into her and offer her to join them for drinks. She reluctantly agrees to join them. A few drinks later and Brandish has had a drunken mood shift. She switches between being overly friendly and apologetic about her past actions towards the two. Before returning home for the night Brandish drunkenly offers them a “gift” for being nice to her and to make up for what happened during the war. Not knowing what what she means, the confused couple accepts. So Brandish uses her magic to increase the size of Lucy’s breasts and Natsu’s dick (nothing to major. Like a cup size/inch or two). Brandish tells them they will be normal by morning and to have fun with it before leaving the flustered couple. NaLu aren’t sure how to handle it at first but decide to make the best of it. So when they get home, the two have some fun with their temporary new proportions. TL;DR Brandish makes the dick and breasts size of NaLu slightly bigger and they have fun with it.

21. Fairy Tail (NaLu Tattoo Artist AU): Lucy has a few tattoos and is looking into getting a back tattoo. She is told that local artist Natsu Dragneel, from the new tattoo place is the best and most affordable option in getting one. She goes to him to go over the design she has in mind and the two hit it off immediately. For about a month Lucy goes to Natsu for various tattoos (fairy tail symbol on hand, Aquarus one on breasts, ect.) and to flirt with him. When the back tattoo is done she is worried that their sessions have come to an end. But when Natsu suggests she come back after it heals so he can take a picture for his wall, Lucy decides to use the opportunity to seduce him and they go at it right there in the parlor. TL;DR: Tattoo enthusiast Lucy flirts with her Tattoo Artist Natsu until they can’t take it anymore and fuck each other.

22. Fullmetal Alchemist (EdWin): When Ed losses a bet with Winry, he must where a military uniform on their date night. Ed hates it of course but seeing him in Uniform is having an unexpected reaction from Winry to the point where she starts messing with him under the table and eventually drags him to the bathroom for a quickie. TL;DR: Ed has to wear a military uniform and it unexpectedly turns Winry on to the point that she jumps him at a restaurant.

23. Fullmetal Alchemist (Royai): Roy and Riza are visiting Xing and are given their own private train car on the way to the palace to see Ling. The car is like a fancy hotel room but when Roy starts getting bored of the sights, he turns his attention to Riza and convinces her to try some train ride fun. (Could also be EdWin) TL;DR: Roy and Riza take advantage of alone time in their VIP train car.

24. My Hero Academia Future AU (TodoMomo): Todoroki and Momo have finally returned home from a long mission/investigation. When Momo mentions her back hurts from the long hours of being awake, Todoroki offers to give her one of his “famous” massages. Momo eagerly accepts and Todo has her strip down so he can work his magic. He uses the heat and cold from his quirk to work wonders on her sore muscles. Once done she sees her moaning and excitement from the massage has gotten Todoroki worked up as well. So she makes use of the massage oil and gives him a rub down of his own. TL;DR an innocent massage leads to sexy fun with between Todoroki and Momo.

25. Fairy Tail NaLu+Female: Lucy wants to surprise Natsu with a threesome for his birthday! It is something they have considered for awhile and one of the potential female partners they have discussed it with says they are ready, so her and Lucy plan to give Natsu a night he won’t forget. (Suggestion: Natsu is blind-folded at the start). The extra female from the FT series is the writer's choice. TL;DR: NaLu have an MFF threesome for Natsu’s birthday.

26. Fairy Tail (NaLu+Male): It is now Lucy’s birthday thanks to an arrangement between her and Natsu, since he got a threesome with an extra female for his birthday, Lucy can now pick and extra male for hers. So, looking for a one night stand type deal, they go bar hopping, searching for someone that is compatible and easy going. When they find who they are looking for, they head back to their place for some fun. This could be a sequel to number 1 on this list or it can stand on its own. (Suggestion: Lucy starts with the Male first then Natsu joins) The extra male from the FT series is the writer’s choice. TL;DR:NaLu have a MMF threesome for Lucy’s birthday.

27. Fullmetal Alchemist EdWin: EdWin visit Rush Valley for Winry’s birthday. She doesn't know that her colleagues and customers are throwing a surprise party for her at Garfiel’s shop and Ed has been tasked with keeping her occupied until then. When she starts to get suspicious of Ed’s motives he tells her that his leg needs another oil rub down and Winry is happy to help with the new wax she just got. But once Ed’s pants comes off she is distracted by something else entirely and Ed seduces her. They are going to be late to the party... TL;DR: Ed must distract Winry while her surprise party is set up and they both end up side-tracked by sex.

28. Fullmetal Alchemist (EdWin+Rose): EdWin have a small gathering of friends at their home to celebrate Ed’s birthday. Afterward, when everybody leaves, it is just EdWin and Rose, who is staying with them until she leaves in a few days. They have a few drinks together and a tispy Rose mentions that she has been kinda lonely lately and admits having a thing for both Ed and Winry at one point. Winry surprisingly take this comment in stride and suggests Rose join her and Ed for the night. This would allow Rose to resolve her feelings for Ed and EdWin gets to try a threesome that they have discussed attempting for awhile. TL;DR: EdWin asks Rose to join them in a threesome to settle her unresolved feelings.

29. Fullmetal Alchemist (Royai+ Rebecca) College AU: Rebecca, Roy, and Riza are in their final year of college. The 3 friends are celebrating Riza’s birthday at a restaurant. Roy and Riza have been flirting all night and Rebecca has been trying to push the two together. But then a drunken Rebecca accidently reveals that her and Riza once had a threesome with her ex, Jean, in their earlier years of college before they met Roy. But instead of being mad about the revelation, Roy asks for details of that night and Rebecca replies that they can just show him instead. Riza surprisingly is on board with this and thinks it would make a great birthday present. TL;DR: Rebecca tempts Roy and Riza into a threesome with her in her attempts to get the two of them together.

30. Fullmetal Alchemist Roy/Rebecca + Havoc) Modern AU: Havoc and Rebecca are in an open relationship and for his birthday, Havoc asks Rebecca if he can watch her have sex with his friend Roy, from work. She and Roy agree to this and give Havoc quite the show. (Havoc joining in is also optional.) TL;DR: Havoc watches as Roy and Rebecca go at it for his birthday.

31. Fairy Tail (Any ship): Character A attempts to make their spouse/partner a cake for their birthday but fails miserably. Character B is more than happy to lick specific cake ingredients (Whip cream, strawberry, whatever the writer wants) instead as compensation. TL;DR: One character licks off the cake/dessert off of another.

32. Fireplace (NSFW): A tender moment in front of the fireplace in their new home turns steamy.

33. Hot Cocoa: Natsu give shows Lucy how he makes his “famous” hot Cocoa.

34. Sledding: Natsu and Lucy race each other down a mountain and use magic to their advantage. (Wendy cast Troia on Natsu for his motion sickness before hand).

35. Perfect Christmas tree hunt: NaLu explore the woods around Natsu’s house looking to cut down their first Christmas tree.

36. Mistletoe: Lucy shows Natsu the benefits of hanging multiple mistletoe around the house.

37. Stocking Stuffer (SFW): Natsu doesn’t quite grasp the concept of stocking stuffers so he just puts random things from around the house into Lucy’s stocking.

38. Stocking Stuffer (NSFW): Lucy wear Christmas themed stockings with a lingerie set as part of Natsu’s Christmas gift this year.

39. Gift Exchange: Lucy gets Natsu a proper “Nin Nin” outfit for missions (along with a matching one of her own). Natsu gets her a new key holder.

40. Gift Exchange (NSFWish?) Natsu and Lucy get each other racy underwear (at the suggestion of Erza).

41. Scrooge: A grumpy Natsu is not thrilled that Happy is spending the holidays with Carla instead of him so Lucy tries to cheer him up.

42. Gingerbread: Natsu shows Lucy how he and Happy build gingerbread houses every year (and promptly destroy them)

43. Caroling: Lucy drags Natsu caroling with her and her spirits. He is reluctant at first but becomes impressed with them.

44. Shicca (Edens Zero). Ice Skating: Rebecca uses her new Ether gear for Ice Skating while also teaching Shika how to skate.

45. Royai (FMA). White Elephant: Roy and his crew have a White Elephant gift exchange. Roy and Riza end up with a gift from the other.

46. TodoMomo (Boku My Hero Academia) Ornaments: It has become a yearly tradition that Momo and Shoto think of new ornaments for their tree. Momo will then create them.

47. GaJevy (Fairy Tail) First Christmas Together: It is Gajeel and Levy’s first Christmas together since she announced her pregnancy. The are excited/nervous of the fact that the next Christmas will be with a baby.

48. All Fairy Tail Ships. Guild Master’s game (NSFWish): The FT couples have a Christmas party together that devolves into a other Guild Master’s game. Though the dares become more intimate now that they are couples.

49. Havoc/Rebecca (Fullmetal Alchemist) Snowball Fight: A standard patrol turns into a snowball fight between a bored Rebecca and Havoc as they are temporarily stationed at Briggs together.

50. Royai (Fullmetal Alchemist) Decorating: Roy and Riza attempt to decorate the office for once with mixed reactions from the rest of the team.

51. EdWin (Fullmetal Alchemist) Jacket Sharing/snuggling: During a particularly chilly day at home, Winry puts on Ed’s old red jacket to keep warm. Ed insists body heat would keep her warmer so they both snuggle under said jacket.

52. Gruvia (Fairy Tail) Christmas cookies: Juvia’s attempt at making Christmas cookies end in failure but Gray shows her how Ur used to make them when he was young.

53. Jerza (Fairy Tail) Snowboarding/Skiing: A race down a mountain between Erza and Jellal gets out of hand when the two start using magic to try to win.

54. Invisibility: Lucy and Natsu have left over Invisibility potion from a mission. What starts as an attempt to prank Natsu turns into something else when Lucy decides pleasuring him when he can’t see her is way more fun.

55. Invisibility (2): NaLu are taking a bath together when Natsu introduces a new bath ointment that he was sold by a shady merchant. Lucy recognizes what it is but it is too late, once it is in the water it turns both of them invisible. Natsu uses his new invisibility to mess with some guild mates but when he gets bored with that, he and Lucy discover their are other benefits to not being seen. They can now do it anywhere in the guild they want. Will they get caught? Or they could just do it in the bath.

56. Transform: NaLu are at home practicing transformation magic for a mission. Once they get the hang of it they start having some fun with it. But once one (or both) of them find a transformation that the other finds to desirable for the other to ignore, the real fun can begin. (Bunny or Cat girl Lucy? Dragon Lord Natsu? Whatever the writer wants!)

57. Clones (2) When Lucy makes the mistake of asking Cana what to get Natsu for his birthday, Cana crudely reveals that she has a new multiply card that can multiply (x3) anyone she touches with it and she convinces Lucy it would be a great bedroom surprise for Natsu.

58. Pleasure: NaLu are exposed to a “Pleasure” spell from a dark mage during a mission. They are forced to leave the dark mage in the care of their teammates as they scurry off to find a secluded area where they can work off the spell. (Pleasure spell like Laracade’s, that sends a person into a heightened pleasured state until they reach completion with someone.)

59. It’s finally time for Natsu to move out of his cabin and into a new home with Lucy. Before they pack everything up, NaLu remembers all the fun (and sexy) times they’ve had in the place.

60. NaLu gets a little to drunk during a FT party and when they get home, have unprotected sex that leads to a pregnant Lucy. They will love the kid regardless.

61. NaLu are put in charge of making Erza’s Strawberry Cake for her birthday. Things go wrong when playful banter turns into them getting heated in the Kitchen and them getting covered in what is left of Erza’s cake. Does Erza find out?...

62. When Lucy gets back into their room after her morning shower, she finds a nude Natsu snoozing in bed right where she left him except the blanket has been kicked down to his ankles. Lucy takes the time to admire the view and appreciates that he is all hers. So she decides to give him a special wake up call.

63. When Lucy begins to feel self conscious after having kids, Natsu reminds her she is perfect just the way she is and proves it by giving her a special rub down/massage.

64. When Lucy tells Natsu he can pick their next date location she knew she was asking for trouble and he confirms her fears by taking her to a nude beach. When she realizes he picked the location specifically to fluster her she decides two can play at that game and the two tease each other the entire time they are there. They of course get carried away and sneak somewhere hidden to go at it before they get caught. Afterward Lucy realizes that she really had fun there and is open to returning. Also works under the Secret prompt.

65. AU: Natsu works at the fancy Heartfilia Hotel. He enjoys working there but doesn't really get along with the boss Jude Heartfillia since he forbade Natsu to hang around his daughter Lucy. Little did he know that Natsu and Lucy are already dating and use their free time to “defile” various areas of his hotel.

66. Lucy is pregnant and is looking for the best way to tell/surprise Natsu with the news so she has been keeping it a secret until she figures it out. Or that was the idea until she just blurts it out during the afterglow of sex.

67. NaLu have been married for a few months and they experience their first time spent away from each other when Lucy goes on a “girls only” mission for a week. When Lucy gets back she finds that Natsu was not handling the separation well since his dragon instincts are not used to her absence. When she reunites with him they become inseparable and told to get a room before they go at it right in the guild hall.

68. Natsu and Lucy dated in High School but were forced to go their separate ways. Now, at their High School reunion years later, the two re-connect and fall for each other all over again. The two then sneak away from the party to further “catch up” (in a classroom, office, locker room, or wherever the writer wants). Suggestion: When they hook-up again, they admire how much better they are at it then when they were awkward teenagers.

69. FT City Hero: Officers Lucy and Natsu indulge in a fantasy of theirs by doing it in the interrogation room. That part of the building is closed for renovation so they think they are safe from prying eyes. They get so into it that they don’t think to check the other side of the one-way mirror in the room or they would have seen one of their co-workers enjoying a quiet lunch (or drink if its Cana) and accidentally getting a free show. (Optional: NaLu are pressed right up to the mirror at one point)

70. Do to some comments from guild mates about them being insatiable, NaLu make a bet about how long one can resist the other. The one that caves first loses. So for almost a week there is a back and forth between Natsu and Lucy of them trying to seduce each other and trying to resist (via sexy clothing, innuendos, ect.). Who gives into their cravings first?

71. SFW- Haru,Shiki,Elie, and Rebecca visit NaLu at Fairy Tail. The boys have a drinking contest that escalates into a bar fight. The girls attempt to break it up but just end up joining in.

72. SFW- The three couples rent a house together and decide how to distribute bills/chores via contests. (Video Games, billiards, darts, wrestling, ect.)

73. NSFW- The couples have a weekly game night and tonight they are playing poker (or whatever game the writer wants). Natsu, wants to up the stakes so a game of strip poker is started.

74. SFW-The guys and girls go out to a karaoke club and chaos ensues.

75. SFW or NSFW- The couples treat themselves to a trip to an Onsen/Spa. They enjoy various activities like couples massages, ping pong, enjoying a private mixed bath, and the dangers of a drunken Lucy.

76. NSFW- The guys and the girls go out clubbing to blow off steam. It soon becomes a game to seduce and tease their significant other from the other group This could include alluring outfits, dirty dancing, body shots, ect. Eventually, each couple sneaks off for some alone time.

77. SFW- Lucy invites Elie and Rebecca on a mission with her. Ellie and Rebecca are interested in Lucy’s keys so she lets them use a key/star dress of their choice for the mission. (Lucy uses a spell that lets them borrow her magic). Lucy could in turn give their weapons a shot.

78. SFW- Haru lets Natsu and Shiki try out his sword with varying results.

79. Girls night. SFW- Rebecca,Lucy, and Elie have a sleepover. Throughout the night they discuss their various adventures, crazy friends, and their boyfriends.

80. Girls night out NSFW- The girls are enjoying a bachelorette party. The topic of sex is brought up (possibly thanks to alcohol), and the 3 recount some of their wildest and sweetest sex stories with their current significant other.

81. Boys night out SFW- The boys are catching up at their favorite bar and go over new life developments (marriage, kids, ect) with their significant other.

82. SFW - What starts out as a simple volleyball game between the Guys and the Ladies, quickly goes over the top as both sides will do anything to win!

83. NSFW- The Guys and Girls have a simple volleyball game but are willing to use dirty tactics and distractions to win. Winning team gets to do whatever they want to their significant other on the losing team.

84. NSFW- The group are on a vacation at a resort. When they hear of a secret beach near the resort they go check it out. Only to learn when they get there that it is a (optionally) nude beach. The group decides to be adventurous and gives it a shot. One couple, decides to get a little too adventurous and end up getting them kicked out.

85. SFW- NaLu,Haru, and Elie take a trip on the Edens Zero. Shki and Rebecca give them a tour and introduce them to the crew. Elie and Lucy would be drawn to the bath/massage area. Haru could want to fly the ship, while Natsu deals with his zero gravity motion sickness

86. NSFW. Haru/Elie or NaLu are visiting the Shiki and Rebecca on the Edens Zero. They take the opportunity to cross “sex on a space ship” off the bucket list. They of course are constantly interrupted by the nosey EZ crew.

87. SFW- (Famous): Lucy is Ellie and or Rebecca’s favorite writer and they meet her for the first time and become fast friends.

88. SFW- (Proposal): One of the guys plans on proposing. The other two give their unsolicited advice on how to do in the most extravagant ways possible.

90. NSFW- (Noise Complaint) Modern AU: Couple A (writers choice) has moved into a new apartment. They really like their new home but there is one major problem, their neighbors, Couple B, are very vocal during their nightly activities. The bedrooms sharing the same wall only makes it worse. Any attempts to keep Couple B quiet have failed so Couple A decides to fight fire with fire and starts making some noise of their own. It quickly becomes a back a forth between the two couples trying to outdo each other.

91. NSFW- (Swingers) The three couples are good friends with families of their own. But secretly, once every few months, they get together and swap partners. They meet up at one of their houses or a hotel and they either pick names randomly or play a game to see who is paired up with who. The decided pairs would go off to seperate rooms for the night. Match ups are up to the writer but my suggestions are Natsu/Rebecca, Shiki/Elie, and Haru/Lucy. Each pair could compare/contrast their current partner with their regular one. Lucy is with someone less hyper than Natsu, Rebecca is similar to Lucy but with subtle differences, Elie likes to take charge, Haru is methodical, ect. How they act and what they wear could also be a factor. Lucy wears lingerie, Shiki and Rebecca cosplay, ect. Could end with each couple leaving after everyone is finished or group sex in the living room.

#prompts #2019 #nalu #gruvia #jerva #edwin #royai #rebecca/havoc #fairy tail #Fullmetal Alchemist #boku no academia #todomomo #gajevy #smut #edens zero #shicca

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theliberaltony · 4 years

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via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

For the past few months, Alicia Wertz has barely seen her husband. Since schools closed in their northern Alabama town in March, they’ve been single-mindedly focused on a single goal: making sure that someone was watching their three kids. At first, Wertz tried working from home. But she wasn’t getting anything done, so they tried splitting the hours: Wertz’s husband watches the children in the morning, then a sitter comes to relieve him in the afternoon until Wertz takes over when she returns from work.

“When we’re not working, we’re by ourselves with the children. It almost feels like you’re a single parent. All you do is go to work and care for the kids,” Wertz said.

In her mind, Wertz is counting down the days until schools reopen. But there’s a nagging worry at the back of her head — what if they don’t open at all? “The thought of [my kids] not going back in the fall is devastating,” Wertz said when we spoke in early July. “It raises this question of — if one of us has to stay home with the children, whose job is more important? I think it was something that we did have conversations about before, but COVID-19 has made it much worse.”

Wertz isn’t the only working mother for whom the thought of the fall calendar sparks both relief and dread. And what comes next could have disproportionate — and long-lasting — effects on the careers of countless women across the country. Studies have shown that women already shoulder much of the burden of caring for and educating their children at home; now, they’re also more likely than men to have lost their jobs thanks to the pandemic. And the collapse of the child care and public education infrastructure that so many parents rely on will only magnify these problems, even pushing some women out of the labor force entirely.

“We’re in danger of erasing the limited gains we’ve made for women over the past few decades, and especially women of color,” said Melissa Boteach, Vice President for Income Security and Child Care/Early Learning at the National Women’s Law Center.

The crux of the issue: Child care just isn’t as available as it was before the pandemic. Data provided to FiveThirtyEight by the job-search website Indeed shows that child-care services have been much slower to hire again (a useful proxy for re-opening) than other areas of the economy:

Combine that with the news that many schools will remain closed in the fall, and it’s easy to see the crisis at hand. If polling is any indication, the vast majority of the fallout is being weathered by mothers, who were already doing the majority of household work even before the pandemic began.

In 2015, the Pew Research Center asked parents about how they divide family responsibilities when both work full-time.1 Some tasks were split relatively evenly: Twenty percent of respondents said the mother disciplined children more, 17 percent said the father disciplined more, and 61 percent said that responsibility was shared equally. For every task, however, more respondents reported that the mother carried a greater amount of the load than those who said the father did — including areas involving managing children’s schedules, caring for children when they’re sick and handling household chores.

Moms usually shoulder more of the load at home

Share of parents in households with two full-time working parents who say each parent does more work in a given category, according to a Pew poll

Share of parents who say… Category Mother does more Father does more Work split equally Managing children’s schedules/activities 54% 6% 39% Taking care of sick children 47 6 47 Handling household chores, etc. 31 9 59 Playing/doing activities with children 22 13 64 Disciplining children 20 17 61

Based on 2015 poll by Pew Research, with a sample size of 531 respondents. The sample included male/female married couples only.

Source: Pew Research center

Along similar lines, Pew also found in a poll from 2019 that 80 percent of women living with a partner who had children did the primary grocery shopping and meal-preparation duties for their families. And according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ American Time Use Survey — which tracks the average amount of time people spend per day on different categories of activity — married mothers with full-time jobs spent 56 percent more time doing childcare and housework than corresponding fathers. By contrast, fathers spent more time on work-related tasks, travel and leisure activities.2

All that extra time moms spend really adds up

Daily time spent doing various activities by married parents of children under 18 who both worked full-time, according to the American Time Use Survey

Hours spent per day Activity Mothers Fathers Diff. Household activities 1.87 1.23 +0.64 Physical care for children 0.59 0.28 0.31 Child care – other 0.36 0.22 0.14 Child-related travel 0.25 0.13 0.12 Education-related activities 0.10 0.06 0.04 Reading with children 0.05 0.03 0.02 Playing/hobbies with children 0.27 0.29 -0.02 Total 3.49 2.24 1.25

Survey data covers the combined years of 2015 through 2019 and includes both opposite- and same-sex couples.

Source: bls.gov

Even under normal circumstances, it was difficult for mothers of young children to balance work against the heavy burden of child care. The BLS found that in 2019, the labor force participation rate for women with children under age 6 was 66.4 percent, well below the rate for women with children age 6 or older3 (76.8 percent). According to a 2014 survey by the U.S. Census Bureau, 61 percent of women who were out of a job and have young children listed “caretaking” as a reason why they were not employed. Forty-six percent of women who were out of a job and have older children said the same. To put that in perspective, only 10 percent of all respondents who were out of work gave caregiving as a reason.4

A similar strain is apparent in working mothers’ decisions to take unpaid leave, or even part-time jobs instead of full-time ones. According to that same census survey from 2014, 30 percent of women who were part-time workers with young children — and 19 percent of women with older children — said caretaking was a reason they worked part-time. (Among part-time workers, the overall share is just 7 percent.)5

Now, with schools closed and day cares struggling to remain open, even more women may conclude that the best — or perhaps the only — choice for their family and their own sanity is to reduce their hours, or even press “pause” on their career.

“Sometimes I’ll get to a point where I’m like, ‘I’m so tired, I’ll have to go part-time to make it all work,’” said Lee Dunham, a lawyer who lives in Delaware. Since the pandemic started, Dunham has been mostly responsible for her 10-month-old daughter during the day — which means her work day doesn’t start until 8 p.m. and usually wraps around 2 a.m.. “I’m just basically not getting enough sleep because I’m watching the baby 40 hours a week and doing my job 40 hours a week. It’s really rough.”

Dunham feels she’s lucky to have an understanding employer who told her earlier this year that they’d be cutting all of their employees some slack because of the pandemic. But at the time, she added, everyone was assuming day care would be up and running by mid-summer. “It might be that I have to dial back my hours, which of course means I will get paid less.”

This kind of calculus already depresses women’s wages and makes it harder for their careers to progress. According to the National Women’s Law Center, mothers are typically only paid 71 cents for every dollar paid to fathers. In fact, a lot of recent research into the gender pay gap has found that much of it is simply due to the constraints on working mothers. For instance, a 2018 analysis of data from Denmark — which offers a counterpoint to the United States in terms of social safety net, yet still has a very large and persistent gender wage gap — found that women’s earnings drop significantly after having their first child, while men’s earnings aren’t affected at all. And crucially, several studies in the U.S. and other countries have found that the trajectory of wages for women who don’t have children resembles those of men, whether they have kids or not (although some research has actually suggested that becoming a father can contribute to men’s career success).

This disparity is particularly intense for women of color. Black mothers are paid only 54 cents for every dollar paid to a white father, according to NWLC; for Latina mothers, it’s 46 cents. Low-income women of color are also among the likeliest to have lost their jobs in the current recession. And they’re disproportionately likely to be the child-care workers who are being asked to come back to work, sometimes in unsafe working conditions, for low wages. “We’re in a vicious cycle where we need child care as one of the tools to get women to equal pay, and yet unequal pay is one of the primary reasons that women are pushed into staying home,” Boteach said.

Leaving the workforce, even if it’s just for a year or two, has ripple effects that can follow a woman for the rest of her life, even depressing her earnings in retirement. Finding a new job after a few years on hiatus can be very difficult for mothers, who may be stereotyped as less serious about their careers because they took time off to be with their children. One study from 2007 found that mothers were perceived to be less competent than fathers, and their recommended salaries were also lower.

During this pandemic, you can already see the disproportionate impact taking shape. The unemployment rate for women in April was 16.2 percent, higher than it has been in any month since at least 1948, before dropping to 11.7 percent in June — a percentage point higher than the rate for men (10.6 percent). Even more striking, labor force participation for women dipped to 54.7 percent in April before rising to 56.1 percent last month. Both of those numbers are reminiscent of the rates for women from the 1980s — back when the very notion of women in the workforce was still gaining momentum.6

Wertz has no plans to leave her job — at least for now. “I worked incredibly hard to get to where I am now,” she said. “I essentially paid my way through school with no family support. For years I worked entirely too hard for not enough money.” Already, she worries that she’s perceived differently in the workplace because she’s a mother. “Even if it was just a year, I know how that gap would look on my resume,” she said. “If I had to take that step back, I just don’t know if I’d recover from it.”

#IFTTT #Politics – FiveThirtyEight #politics #538 #Neil Paine and Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux

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ahgapride98 · 5 years

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REFLECTION ABOUT GOT7’S COMEBACK

Hello baby birds! I know it has been a long time since I last posted and I’m so sorry about it, I’ve been extremely busy with college and life in general and couldn’t find time to post anything here. But… good news: I’m finally free and I plan on finishing my ‘Memory Lane’ series, but first I need to address some things regarding this comeback that I’m not so happy about.

1. GOT7’s ‘Eclipse’ MV views in the first 24h. It’s no secret that we only got 6’5M views for Eclipse in the first 24h after its release (less than the views for ‘Miracle’ and ‘Focus On Me’ – JUS2 subunit). Now, I don’t really know who we should blame for this: YouTube or ourselves? While streaming the MV I noticed that the views were frozen for approximately 1h whole hour, and the worst part of all is that we never got those views back. I was so mad at YouTube for doing us dirty when we were putting all of our best efforts there for the boys (we had a great start, 500.000 views in just 1h after the release); But another thing I also noticed was that our streaming party didn’t really work, it was like ahgases were not working together to reach our 15M goal. It almost felt like we weren’t there, and that makes me sad because we almost got the same result as we did with ‘Look’ (6M views). I really had big hopes of breaking Lullaby’s record (10M in the first 24h), but it seems like we are going backwards instead of forward. This made me feel like the fandom decreased instead of growing - something that is not true because our fandom got bigger after the world tour. Now, like I said before, I don’t know if we should blame YouTube for this or ourselves. I honestly think it’s a combination of both, YouTube really did us dirty but we should have tried harder for our boys. (Funny thing: our views in the first 24h were really low but we managed to reach 30M views in just 5 days, beating our own record…).

2. Melon issue. This is something I talked about in my ‘Lullaby Comeback Reflection’ post, and I still think the same thing. I don’t know why Melon hates us, but they do. On the first day (20/05), we debuted at number 52, and just went downhill from there reaching the 71st place. Then, on the second day (21/05), it seemed like we went up for a bit and managed to reach the 45th position, then we dropped to 55 and from there we charted 100 and eventually disappeared from the chart. On the third day (22/05), we appeared again at number 90 only to drop to the 91st place, and then go up to 75. Finally, on the fourth day (23/05), we charted the 82nd place and after that we disappeared from the chart. As you can see our results are not good enough, ‘Eclipse’ charted really low compared to other songs. On top of that, we only charted for four days before completely disappearing from the Melon chart. I’m positive this is Melon’s doing, they did us dirty in our last comeback too and I wouldn’t be surprised if they are supressing our listeners and sabotaging our streaming party. I’m so sorry for the boys because they worked really hard for this, but their efforts are still not recognised in Korean charts (specially Melon).

3. Timing. This is a really important point. We have to be honest and admit that GOT7’s comeback came in the worst time ever. First of all, it was scheduled shortly after Bambam’s ‘Black Feather Tour’ in Thailand, Jackson’s birthday fan meeting in China and JUS2 debut and tour. Many ahgases spent a lot of money buying the new subunit albums and tickets for all the shows. Also, we have the world tour just around the corner, so it makes sense that many ahgases prefer saving their money to buy tickets for the tour instead of buying the new albums. On top of that, we can’t forget that the majority of the fandom are teenagers and young adults that have final exams around this time of the year (myself included, the day of the comeback I had my first final exam in college). This obviously made the fandom focus on other things that were by far more important to us than the comeback (sad but true).

4. Sales – Album stock. This is closely related to the last point. Because of the timing the comeback was scheduled, our sales weren’t good either. On the first day, we sold 62,002 copies (our best result ever), but throughout the week we only managed to sell 214.125 copies (not good enough to win on music shows). Now, this has to do with the lack of stock: for some reason there weren’t enough albums and a lot of ahgases had to wait until Wednesday to be able to purchase them (that’s a whole day lost there, thanks for nothing JYP…). I don’t understand why this happened, especially if we take into account that GOT7 is the best album-seller under JYP Entertainment (‘Eyes On You’ sold 223.844 copies in the first week, the best-selling album under the company). They should have been more prepared and have stock ready knowing that even though GOT7 are not digital monsters, the rock with album sales.

5. Music shows. We don’t have to be geniuses to know that with our bad charting and lower sales, we have very few options of winning with ‘Eclipse’, even if we do well with MV views. In music programs, they give more importance to digital sales than physical album sales, and since we are not even charting anymore (in most charts), I am going to be honest here and say that I don’t think we are going to win anything (‘You Are’ 2.0). My thoughts are based -specially- after today’s Show Champion: we were nominated but didn’t win. Usually the time to bring trophies home is during the first week after the comeback was released (or the second week of promotions), after the first week winning is really hard. But based on our horrible start and everything that happened last week, I don’t think we are going to get any trophy with this comeback (just my opinion, I could still be wrong).

EDIT: I WAS WRONG, WE WON ON MCOUNTDOWN (30/05), MUSIC BANK (31/05) AND INKIGAYO (02/06)!!!!! 💚💚

6. JYP Division 2 - Promotions. This is something that has to do with this comeback, but also something that I have been accumulating for months now. The way Division 2 handles and promotes GOT7 is pure shit, it’s like they are not even focusing on them. First, they barely put them on variety shows, and the only one they went to -Idol Room- was lacking promotion music wise; and the promotion period is just two weeks (meaning that this upcoming week is the last one we will be seeing them on music shows). They spent the first 30 minutes of the program talking and messing around with Doni and Coni, and then introduced ‘Eclipse’. For a non GOT7 fan, an outsider, this could get boring pretty fast. Secondly, the album stock situation: because of that mistake we lost sales, sales that were crucial for music shows. Thirdly, the time they decided to release the comeback was extremely bad calculated, they should have known this could happen. Also, their decision of debuting a new subunit and sending Bambam on tour was something benefitial at the moment but with not so good long term consequences, as everything now seems rushed and poorly done. I understand that it’s really hard to schedule comebacks, specially if we take into account the company as a whole: Itzy’s debut - JUS2 debut / Jinyoung drama - StrayKids comeback - Twice comeback - Itzy comeback - GOT7 world tour - Twice world tour - StrayKids world tour... but even though everything is packed, I still think that things could have been done differently. There’s something wrong with the management team in Division 2 that is affecting GOT7 negatively, and that also makes me fear for Itzy (as both groups are under this division).

7. JYP strict rules towards fans – Fansigns problems. This point has to do with issues that happened weeks prior to the comeback, but that is clearly affecting the promotions. In case you didn’t know, ‘fans’ followed GOT7 members everywhere (yes, even to their homes), the situation got so out of control that even the boys had to post in their personal Instagram accounts the official statement released by JYP Entertainment, and because of that JYP reinforced the rules that ahgases must follow when they are with the boys. But this rules have gone as far as to not even allowing the fans to touch or high five the members in fansigns (now, let’s remember that the fans that go to the fansigns have spent a ridiculously huge amount of money on albums just to get the chance of going), and not letting the members write the names of the fans in the albums (they just basically sign the album and that’s it). And not only that, recently ahgases that went to one of the fansigns last week took to Twitter to express their discontent with how they were treated by the staff. I’ll leave some of the messages that ahgases posted on Twitter:

I do agree that we must protect the boys, and I think those rules are great to be followed outside. But on a closed space with security to watch over everything that’s going on in the event, not allowing fans to even get a high five with the members is going a bit too far. Also, the staffs’ attitude needs to be checked: they are there working, not having fun with their friends. They should know their position in the fansigns, and not disturb the conversations going on between fans and the members of GOT7. I really hope JYP Entertainment thinks things over, because if not the consequences could be catastrophic. Take as an example the upcoming tour, no info about VIP tickets has been released yet. In fact, for the America leg of the tour there are no VIP tickets. That makes me wonder how things are going to be done in the tour.

8. Album and comeback thoughts (focused on just the boys and music). After so many negative comments, the only good thing about all of this is seeing the boys together and doing what they love. I can’t express with words how happy I am to see them together again after so much time. Also, the whole album is a bop. It’s the bop of the year (fight me on that): all the songs are amazing, the vocals, the raps, the lyrics, the music, the style, the concep... just everything is out of this world. I’m so glad that they get to perform on stage and carry out the message this album has. I couldn’t relate more with the meaning of this album, and I know we all ahgases feel the same way. Even though a lot of negative things have happened in the past few weeks, I’m still happy to see they are back and better than ever. As their fans, the only thing we can do is support them no matter what and be there for them just like they are here for us when we need them the most. Also, I can’t wait for the tour to start and I can’t wait to see them again this year. I’m so excited that just listening to the songs of the last tour makes me feel tingly on the inside!

Well baby birds, that’s it for today’s post. I’ll update my ‘Memory Lane’ series as soon as possible as some of you have been asking for the remaining members. I love you all!!! 💚🐥💚

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