#once again because he’s president and has to be the model resident

[fireheartwraith]

Defending Forever online is not enough I need a gun

[my-miraculous-headcanons]

Stand-In Journalist

“You want me to do what?”

Marinette’s vaguely aware that her voice may have been a tad too loud, especially considering the fact that Alya had been attempting to whisper to her just moments ago. She’s also vaguely aware that’s she’s attracted the attention of most students currently walking up the school steps, including that of her crush, Adrien Agreste. Surprisingly, she finds herself unbothered. And more than a little distracted.

“Alya, you’re joking, right? You have to be.”

“Girl, shush,” Alya hisses out, wrapping an arm over Marinette’s shoulders and taking glances around them. It seems a little on the paranoid side, but Marinette isn’t one to judge.

“Listen, my grandma has to go into surgery, so me and my family have to take off for a week. I really, really, wish I could do this myself, but I’ve got no other choice right now. I know you’re busy with all your commissions, and the bakery, and class president stuff, but Nino sucks at talking professionally, and Adrien’s, like, never allowed out of the mansion.”

“What makes you think I’d be a better choice in comparison to literally every other student in our class?”

Alya rolls her eyes at all.

“Marinette, I’ve heard your customer service voice.”

“Ah.”

Right. Helping out her parents at the bakery meant an awful lot of occasions where she’d had to deploy the infamous customer service voice. After all, they do own one of the most popular bakeries in all of Paris, which meant attracting quite a lot of tourists.

Unlike America, the Dupain-Cheng bakery doesn’t take bullshit. She makes sure to let rude customers know that just from the tone of her voice.

If she tells you to leave, you leave. She only needs to say it once.

“Besides,” Alya continues on. “If you do this for me, you can consider all of your IOUs paid off.”

“Do what?”

The two girls look away from each other in surprise, now noticing they had the attention of their resident model. Despite teasingly calling out Marinette as an eavesdropper, everyone’s rather aware of his nosy tendencies. (Not many can blame him, though. He’s not socially incompetent, but boundaries are still not his strong point. Really, considering his only friend for years was Chloé, well… It’s understandable, to a point.)

“And what makes you think that’s your business, Agreste?” Alya smirks, placing a hand on her hip and using the other occupied one to pull Marinette closer.

She’s been doing that around Adrien a lot, testing some theory about Adrien and his touchy-feely habits. Marinette decided she didn’t want any part of that and didn’t ask any further.

“Well,” Adrien playfully smirks back. “I overheard―”

“Eavesdropped,” Alya loudly whispers into Marinette’s ear, who giggles in response.

“Overheard,” Adrien corrects, though he’s clearly smiling. “You pressuring poor Marinette into doing something that she doesn’t seem to want to do. So I was just curious, is all.”

He pauses, glancing back and forth between the two girls.

“This wouldn’t happen to have anything to do with Lila, would it?”

Alya bursts out into a short laugh, not realising the fond look Marinette shoots Adrien’s way or how his shoulders are tensed, maybe even worried.

“No way! This is way more important than that! Marinette’s just filling in for me for one of my, uh… Ladyblog duties.”

Adrien relaxes, then smiles almost knowingly.

“Ah, I see. Nino said you’re going out of town in two days, right?”

“Yup! But you’re not getting any more than that. Now shoo, we got a lot to talk about.”

“Wait, hey,” Marinette protests. “I didn’t agree yet!”

“So you’re not going to take the opportunity to pay off all your IOUs in one sitting?”

The designer snaps her mouth shut and stares off into space for a moment, brows knit together and cheeks puffed up in what seems to be intense consideration.

“… Okay, deal.”

“Yes! Let’s go, then! Bye, Adrien!”

And with that, Alya drags Marinette away before the poor girl realises who she was standing in front of, and accidentally makes a fool of herself as a result.

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Alya had given Marinette most of the material she would need to do the job. Not only that, but she had coached Marinette through lines and responses, and how to use her customer service voice and morph it into a similar but distinctly different interviewer voice.

With all that, you would think that Marinette would be prepared for what she was about to do. But the truth of the matter is that no, she was not prepared. In fact, she was the opposite of prepared. While, yes, the chairs and cameras were all set up, and everything looked neat and tidy, and she was wearing her best professional clothing— a ruffled pink top and grey pencil skirt— Marinette was...

Well, she was freaking out. She had never practiced with the blinding light fixtures or with a camera pointed directly at her face. She never practiced her lines with anyone other than Alya. She only learned how to turn the cameras on today, right when Nino had finished up putting the cameras in place and was about to go home before curfew. 

It was just the push of a simple button, so that shouldn’t be something to worry about, but the fact of the matter was that she hadn’t even considered she would be the one responsible for the cameras. Which left the question― What else was she responsible for, that she hadn’t even anticipated?

“Well, this is a surprise.”

Oh god, he’s already here.

Plastering on a forced smile, Marinette turns her attention to a silhouette crouching on a high window. The crescent moon is hovering just behind his head, and his eyes seem to glow in the darkness of the corner he was in. He’s clearly already putting on a show, and Marinette realises with some panic that she doesn’t have a camera lined up in that direction.

Was... Was she supposed to move it? No, no, what if she accidentally breaks it? No, she can’t move it. But what if Alya wants this footage?

“Hello, Chat Noir,” Marinette forces out, stopping herself from prematurely pressing the record button. She... She’s supposed to do something first before doing that, but she’s forgotten what.

The superhero jumps down from his perch and walks into the artificial lighting, smiling easily and swinging his lower body over the back of the velvety red armchair, sinking into the seat cushions. 

“I was under the assumption that our favourite ladyblogger would be conducting the interview.”

“She had a family emergency, so I’ll be taking her place this time.”

His smile twitches down a bit, then completely fades away. His gaze grows more intense.

“... I see.”

An awkward silence stretches between them, and Marinette feels her face gradually heat up in embarrassment. Her mind is completely blank. 

“Marinette, are you alright?”

It takes her more than a couple seconds to process that question, and when she does, her embarrassment increases tenfold.

“I’m fine, sorry about that. Just got lost in thought. Anyways, are you prepared for the interview?”

Apparently, her response displeases him, because he stands up and walks around the table between them, stopping just beside her. His eyes never leave her face.

“... Marinette, I think you’re either having an anxiety attack right now, or you’re dissociating.”

“Am I,” is her automatic response. He doesn’t say anything, only frowning as though he was given a rather unfortunate answer. He reaches for his baton and opens it up, kneeling down beside her legs. He takes several minutes to check something up, reads through it, then puts the baton away.

“Okay, definitely dissociating,” he mumbles to himself. He stands up again then goes over to the equipment, and Marinette doesn’t do anything to stop him from messing with it. 

Abruptly, the lights shut off. 

“Marinette, you okay? Do you hear me?”

His voice is soft in the darkness, which is comforting, but it’s still distressing that she can’t see. Yes, the lights were horrible, but now the only thing in her vision is the imprint of a bright, blueish hue, fixed in place no matter how many times she blinks or where she looks.

“Marinette?”

His voice is closer, now, but even softer, just shy of a whisper. She hums in response, then blinks a few more times. One of the light fixtures is moved out of the way, allowing for moonlight to splash over the table and chair in front of her. Her shoulders untense, just a little. There’s still spots in her vision, but she can see now, so it doesn’t matter.

“Do you want me to keep talking?”

Yes, yes, she would very much like that. Her body is beginning to feel a little shaky, but she manages to give the voice a sharp nod. The voice? Who was she talking to again? She couldn’t—

“You know, I lied when I said I was surprised,” the voice says, interrupting her spiralling thoughts. “I knew that Alya was gonna be out of town, I had overheard about it. I also know you’re her best friend, so I kind of expected to see you. I was really excited about it.”

A figure moves in front of her, briefly, before once again getting comfortable in the plush red seat. His lips move in time with the voice.

“I really enjoy talking with you. It’s really easy to trust you with things I wouldn’t tell others, because you’re very respectful and kind. I’m honestly amazed that you never told Alya about that whole balcony thing, the day Glaciator attacked. I didn’t even have to tell you not to say anything, you just naturally understand boundaries like that.”

Chat Noir smiles in a way that’s nothing like all the previous smiles she’s ever seen on his face.

Right. Chat Noir. She’s talking to Chat Noir, because she was supposed to be filling in for Alya, who is out of town, for an exclusive one-on-one interview with Chat Noir. And she...

And she already messed up.

“Oh, God,” she says with sudden realisation. She quickly raises both hands to squish them against the front of her face, covering up her burning cheeks. “Oh, God, I can’t believe that just happened.”

“Hey, it’s alright—”

“No, it’s not alright, because I promised Alya I would get this done, and that it would be perfect, but I totally messed up everything because I couldn’t keep my stupid feelings in check, again, and Alya had worked so hard and deserves—”

“Marinette, stop.”

She flinches back, and sees Chat Noir now seated down on the table, his knees just barely bumping into hers on either side. He leans forward and takes hold of both her hands, placing them on her lap.

“You need to stop thinking about what Alya will think or how she would do this. You’re not Alya. You may be the stand-in journalist, but that doesn’t mean to have to do everything by her rules.”

“But, no, this is Alya’s interview, she—”

“She’s not here right now. You are. Listen Marinette, you can’t do this by pretending to be some imitation of Alya. If you want an authentic, smooth-going interview, you’ll need to go about this your own way. Everything you learned from Alya is going to be your base template. A resource for you to borrow from. You with me so far?”

Marinette presses her lips together and nods. Chat smiles and cups her cheeks, using his thumbs to brush away tears she hadn’t even known she’d shed.

“Good. Now then, tell me how Marinette Dupain-Cheng would interview a superhero.”

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The light fixtures were back in place, now at a much lower level than they were previously. The table had been moved out of the way, allowing for the chairs to be close enough that either one of them could stick their leg out to kick the other, easily. The cameras were rearranged to film at different angles, now, and no camera view excluded either of the two out of the shot.

Most importantly, Marinette had ditched the file Alya had provided her. She already knew the questions by heart, anyways, in case she needed to use one of them.

“You ready to begin?”

It’s funny, really, that the interviewee was asking that, and not the interviewer. 

“Yeah,” Marinette responds. “Let’s get this show started.”

And with that, the cameras start rolling. Marinette grins at camera A, placed to have a perfect side-view recording of both parties from a distance.

“Bonjour, Paris! I’m Marinette Dupain-Cheng, and while I’ve literally never done an interview in my life, Alya Césaire decided that I would be the purrfect replacement in her absence. So, really, you should blame her for this.”

Chat snorts loudly at that.

“Continuing on, today we’ll be asking our favourite feline superhero, Puss in Boots, a few questions. Say hello, kitty!”

“Oh, God,” Chat says in-between a short bout of laughter. “Bonjour, Paris. Just so you know, I did nothing to deserve this blatant mistreatment.”

“Hush,” Marinette says, giving him a light kick in the shin. “I punned for you. I get a pass.”

“What? No way, you can’t get passes for animal cruelty.”

“Oh, you’re an animal now? Way to start this interview off strong for your lady fans, Chat Noir. Please, do go on.”

The interview goes by smoothly. There’s never a lull in conversation, boundaries remain untouched, and the atmosphere remains playful, warm, personal, and overall enjoyable.

But, it isn’t the end.

“Are you sure you want to do this, Marinette?”

She sighs, picking up the file she had previously discarded, squinting due to the bright lights. 

“I won’t lie and say I didn’t enjoy doing things my way, but I did promise Alya that I’d do it the way she planned it. So, we might as well film this version as well, right? She can decide for herself which one she likes better. Besides, I...”

She smiles.

“I feel a lot better now. I think I can do this.”

“Alright then,” Chat concedes. “Let’s take it from the top, then.”

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Alya has watched both videos at least ten times each, and she has to admit, the superior one is rather clear. As much as she doesn’t like it, Marinette was clearly more in her element in the first one filmed, which went on to further charge the chemistry between her and Chat.

And boy, was there chemistry. 

That leads to the next problem. If she posts the first video, Paris would practically erupt, a new brand of shippers will jump into the scene, and Hawkmoth may very well place a target on her best friend’s back.

If she posts the second video, her followers would find the interviewer rather lackluster, and possibly make a lot of rude comments that she doesn’t want her best friend to be subjected to.

… Really, the answer to her dilemma would be pretty obvious. Marinette can handle a few internet jerks. It’s no big deal, and, most importantly, it won’t get her targeted by Hawkmoth. 

But the thing is... Marinette and Chat Noir want her to post the first video. They wouldn’t have filmed it and given it to her if they hadn’t wanted it to go public.

The ladyblogger leans back into her desk chair and sighs, glancing towards the bedside digital clock while biting down on her thumb. 1:53. She really needs to make a decision, otherwise she’ll never be able to actually go to bed.

Her sleep deprived mind suddenly gets an idea. She latches on to it, posting both videos with different captions, then collapses into her bed with a sigh of relief. She’ll deal with the consequences tomorrow.

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Chat Noir is a little shit and he’s going to pay. 

She feels fooled. Bamboozled. A few nights ago, he had been gentle and kind, had given her good advice, and encouraged her to do her best without sacrificing the way she is. That Chat Noir was an inspiration. A friend and an ally. Someone she trusts and could count on. 

The Chat Noir of today made her realise that, yes, while he can be all those things, he’s still a little storm of trouble, mischief, and utter bullshit. 

And she was not prepared for this. 

It’s only been a day since the interviews have been posted, but almost immediately after they had gone public, Chat Noir decided to post a link to it on his social media and make comments.

Ones specifically made to rile up every shipper, analyst, and hero fan in Paris.

If she gets stopped one more time by some creepy adult fan who thinks it’s perfectly okay to grab a little teenager by the wrist, she’s going to kick their fucking ass. 

She eyes the expensive fabric scissors with an expression that screams murder. She wonders if it could tear through a magical catsuit. Probably not. Besides, she’d have to pay for it if she gets blood on it, and she only brought enough money to get herself some fabric.

Ugh.

She feels her hands twitch as her phone dings with another update on Chat Noir’s twitter. Begrudgingly, she shoves her hand into her purse and fishes it out, wondering what he could possibly be saying now. Seriously, how has he not exhausted himself yet? Wasn’t he awake at, like, 2 in the morning?

Marinette is not a toy. Quit grabbing her and asking her questions on the street. She’s a person. I SEE you, lady in the blue cardigan at the fabric store. She's 13. Back. Off.

Quickly, she whips her head around to look over her shoulder, catching sight of a middle-aged woman in a navy blue cardigan. The woman is looking down at her phone, silently walking away in embarrassment.

Her phone dings thrice again.

Hey Paris, remember when I DIDN’T need to play bodyguard because you guys were respectful towards teenaged girls who were lucky enough to interact with superheroes? Let’s go back to that.

Seriously, I only noticed like 30 minutes ago when I saw some university guy corner her on the street. What the hell’s going on? @ladyblogger Was this a normal occurrence and me and Ladybug just didn’t know?

I admit I was joking around and maybe fueling some ship wars but I didn’t expect grown adults to take that as a sign to harass a young girl. Knock it off and wake up, real life isn’t the internet. 

...

Well, Marinette decides. She supposes the cat will live to see another day.

Ding!

To the TV crew hanging out at the entrance of the fabric store: Filming and interrogating a 13 year old without parental consent is illegal. I WILL apprehend you. Leave.

A minute later, Marinette hears about a dozen curses from multiple people at the front of the store, and the rushed packing of equipment.

With a smirk, Marinette sends out a tweet of her own.

Wassup, Paris, thanks for landing me my very own furry stalker, @therealchatnoir. Much appreciated. Always wanted one of those.

Ding!

?!?!?!? FURRY?!?! EXCUSE ME?!?!

Marinette cackles and pockets her phone, ignoring the resulting dings.

DON’T PUT YOUR PHONE AWAY ON ME, HEY!!! HEYYYY!!!!

I’M NOT A FURRY TAKE YOUR PHONE OUT YOU COWARD

dcvgthgrfCFRVGTBHYGVRFCDEX F I G H T M E

I’LL SPAM YOU DON’T THINK I WON’T DO IT. HEY LADYBLOGGER GIVE ME HER NUMBER I JUST WANNA TALK

Marineeeeetttteeeeee don’t ignore me pleeaaaaseeee ;(((((

He’s a dork. He’s sweet and kind, but ultimately he’s a total dork. 

And maybe a little her type.

...

She buys black fabric, that day.

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“Please? Pleaaase?”

“No, Alya.”

“Oh come on, just one with Ladybug!”

“I can’t, Alya. I’m busy that day. Ask Adrien to do it or something.”

“... You know what? I will. He’s free Wednesday morning, right?”

[perfectlymarilynmonroe]

Hi darling, I've been following you on Instagram for a while and I truly love how you always stay true to marilyn and never post anything other than the truth. She's one of my role models and she's always been a part of me, so I greatly appreciate it. I did have a question though. I mentioned to my mother that there's no proof on the JFK scandal and she doesn't believe me. Am I going crazy and there is proof or is there no proof like I was lead to believe. Lots of love, liv 💋

Hi Liv ! <3 

Thank you so much for being so kind about how true I stay to Marilyn and in sharing her life and legacy, it means very much to me.

It really depends on what one defines as proof. I would personally say there’s little to no proof of an affair. Of course, everyone is going to weigh in their own opinions, but here are some bits & pieces I’ve pulled from credible sources.....

Michelle Morgan:

“Rumours of an affair between Marilyn and both Jack and Robert Kennedy have been rife since the 1960s. The general feeling is that she was romanced by Jack, then later passed along to Bobby when the President became bored. There is no concrete evidence to prove or disprove these rumors, but she certainly met both on several occasions, including at a party at the home of Peter Lawford and his wife, Patricia Kennedy, in October 1961, when she bombarded Patricia’s brother, Bobby, the Attorney General with questions supplied by Daniel Greenson. Then Whitey Snyder drove Marilyn to the Lawfords’ home in February 1962, where there was a party held for President Kennedy, while Ralph Roberts was said to have received a call from her on March 24th 1962 as she was spending time with the President at the home of Bing Crosby.”

Donald Spoto:

“A passionate love affair between Marilyn Monroe and John F. Kennedy has been assumed for so long that it has achieved as solid a place in public awareness as almost any other event in the man’s presidency. But if the phrase “love affair” describes a protracted intimacy sustained by some degree of frequency, then such a connection between these two is impossible to establish with any of the rudimentary tools of historic-critical studies. In the absence of such evidence, no serious biographer can identify Monroe and Kennedy as partners in a love affair. All that can be known for certain is that one four occasions between Oct. 1961 and Aug. 1962, the president and the actress met, and that during one of those meetings they telephoned one of Marilyn’s friends from a bedroom; soon after, Marilyn confided this one sexual encounter to her closest confidants, making clear that was the extent of their involvement. In October 1961, after a photography session for a magazine story, Marilyn asked Allan Snyder to deliver her to a party at Patricia and Peter Lawford’s Santa Monica beach house. The occasion was a dinner party honoring Pat’s brother, President Kennedy, and among the other guests were several blond movie stars- Kim Novak, Janet Leigh, and Angie Dickinson, for all of whom the president had a keen appreciation. All contrary allegations notwithstanding, this was the first meeting between Marilyn Monroe and John Kennedy; hearsay about any earlier introduction simply cannot be substantiated. Before this, the schedules of Monroe and Kennedy since his January 1961 inauguration reveal wide geographic distances between them. That October night, Marilyn was driven back to her apartment by one of the Lawfords’ staff. The second encounter occurred during February 1962, when Marilyn was again invited to a dinner party for the president, this time at the Manhattan home of Fifi Fell, the wealthy, socialite widow of a famous industrialist. She was escorted from her New York apartment to the Fell residence by Milton Ebbins, who also saw her home. The third meeting occurred on Saturday, March 24, 1962, when both the president and Marilyn were houseguests of Bing Crosby in Palm Springs. On that occasion, she telephoned Ralph Roberts from the bedroom she was sharing with Kennedy. “She asked me about the solus muscle,” according to Ralph, “which she knew something about from the Mabel Ellsworth Todd book [The Thinking Body], and she obviously been talking about this with the president, who was known to have all sorts of ailments, muscle and back trouble.” Ralph clearly recalled not only the origin and detail of Marilyn’s question but also the ease with which Kennedy himself then took the phone and thanked Roberts for his professional advice. “Later, once the rumor mill was grinding,” according to Ralph, “Marilyn told me that this night in March was the only time of her “affair” with JFK. Of course, she was titillated beyond belief, because for a year he had been trying, through Lawford, to have an evening with her. A great many people thought, after that weekend, that there was more to it. But Marilyn gave me the impression that it was not a major event for either of them: it happened once, that weekend, and that was that.” The fourth and final meeting took place in May 1962, at the legendary birthday gala for Kennedy at Madison Square Garden, an event that included a party afterward at the home of a movie executive Arthur Krim and his wife Mathilde, a scientist later renowned for her great work against AIDS. This May meeting was the briefest of them all, as the president, his brother and his family were mobbed by friends, admirers and the press all evening.”

From The Marilyn Encyclopedia by Adam Victor:

“Marilyn Monroe famously sings “Happy Birthday” to President John F. Kennedy. We know for a fact that Marilyn Monroe and JFK met on four occasions: October 1961: Marilyn and other female stars were invited to Peter Lawford’s beach house to attend a dinner in honor of his brother in law, JFK. Early 1962: A dinner party for the President in NY. March 24th 1962: A gathering at Bing Crosby’s home in Palm Springs. May 19th 1962: JFK’s birthday gala. It was encounter number three, at Bing Crosby’s home, that Marilyn and JFK shared a bedroom and this ‘affair’ most likely happened. Marilyn made a call to Ralph Roberts, her masseur, who later said: “Marilyn told me that this night in March was the only time of her ‘affair’ with JFK. Of course, she was titillated beyond belief, because for a year he had been trying, through Lawford, to have an evening with her. A great many people thought, after that weekend, that there was more to it. But Marilyn gave me the impression that it was not a major event for either of them: it happened once, that weekend, and that was that.” Two more of Marilyn’s close friends agree. It is Susan Strasberg’s opinion that, “Not in her worst nightmare would Marilyn have wanted to be with JFK on any permanent basis. It was ok for one night to sleep with a charismatic president - and she loved the secrecy and drama of it. But he certainly wasn’t the kind of man she wanted for life, and she was very clear to us about this.”

I’ve also answered this question in a few different posts, here are some links [x], [x].

I hope this was helpful!

Along with her death post (which I promise to have finished very soon), I’m going to make a page dedicated to the Kennedy family where you can read all there is to know on the subject. xo

[newstfionline]

Tuesday, May 18, 2021

Fire Season Comes Early To California (CNN) Fire weather is coming early to California this year. For the first time since 2014, parts of Northern California are seeing a May “red flag” fire warning due to dry and windy conditions. The warning coverage area extends from Redding in the north to Modesto in the south, and includes portions of the Central Valley and the state capital of Sacramento. The warning also extends to the eastern edges of the Bay Area. A brush fire that started Friday in Pacific Palisades flared up Saturday due to gusty winds, burning more than 1,300 acres and threatening homes in Topanga Canyon. Topanga State Park in the Santa Monica Mountains is about 20 miles west of downtown Los Angeles. The Palisades fire caused about 1,000 people to be evacuated from their homes early Sunday, with other residents on standby to leave.

Pandemic Refugees at the Border (NYT) The Biden administration continues to grapple with swelling numbers of migrants along the southwestern border. Most of them are from Central America, fleeing gang violence and natural disasters. But the past few months have also brought a much different wave of migration that the Biden administration was not prepared to address: pandemic refugees. They are people arriving in ever greater numbers from far-flung countries where the coronavirus has caused unimaginable levels of illness and death and decimated economies and livelihoods. If eking out an existence was challenging in such countries before, in many of them it has now become almost impossible. According to official data released this week, 30 percent of all families encountered along the border in April hailed from countries other than Mexico and the Central American countries of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, compared to just 7.5 percent in April 2019, during the last border surge. The coronavirus pandemic has had far-reaching consequences for the global economy, erasing hundreds of millions of jobs. And it has disproportionately affected developing countries, where it could set back decades of progress, according to economists. About 13,000 migrants have landed in Italy, the gateway to Europe, so far this year, three times as many as in the same period last year. At the U.S.-Mexico border in recent months, agents have stopped people from more than 160 countries, and the geography coincides with the path of the virus’s worst devastation.

The U.S. conversation on Israel is changing, no matter Biden’s stance (Washington Post) In Washington, support for the Palestinian plight is getting louder in Congress. On Friday, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) wrote a widely circulated New York Times op-ed pulling the spotlight away from Hamas’s provocations to the deeper reality of life for millions of Palestinians living under blockade and occupation. He pointed to the havoc unleashed in recent weeks by rampaging mobs of Jewish extremists in Jerusalem, as well as the questionable Israeli legal attempts to forcibly evict the Palestinian residents of a neighborhood in the contested holy city. “None of this excuses the attacks by Hamas, which were an attempt to exploit the unrest in Jerusalem, or the failures of the corrupt and ineffective Palestinian Authority, which recently postponed long-overdue elections,” Sanders wrote. “But the fact of the matter is that Israel remains the one sovereign authority in the land of Israel and Palestine, and rather than preparing for peace and justice, it has been entrenching its unequal and undemocratic control.”      In another era, Sanders would have cut a lonely figure among his colleagues. But he is not alone. A number of Democratic lawmakers, including solidly pro-Israel politicians, issued statements indicating their displeasure with the casualties caused by Israel’s attacks in Gaza. Others were more vocal, accusing Israel of “apartheid.” Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (D-NY) tweeted: “This is happening with the support of the United States....the US vetoed the UN call for a ceasefire. If the Biden admin can’t stand up to an ally, who can it stand up to? How can they credibly claim to stand for human rights?” Jeremy Ben-Ami, president of J Street, a center-left pro-Israel advocacy organization that increasingly reflects the mainstream position of American liberals, said in a briefing with reporters last week that the “diplomatic blank check to the state of Israel” given out by successive U.S. administrations has meant that “Israel has no incentive to end occupation and find a solution to the conflict.”

Mexico City is sinking (Wired) When Darío Solano‐Rojas moved from his hometown of Cuernavaca to Mexico City to study at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, the layout of the metropolis confused him. “What surprised me was that everything was kind of twisted and tilted,” says Solano‐Rojas. “At that time, I didn't know what it was about. I just thought, ‘Oh, well, the city is so much different than my hometown.’” Different, it turned out, in a bad way. Picking up the study of geology at the university, Solano‐Rojas met geophysicist Enrique Cabral-Cano, who was actually researching the surprising reason for that infrastructural chaos: The city was sinking—big time. It’s the result of a geological phenomenon called subsidence, which usually happens when too much water is drawn from underground, and the land above begins to compact. According to new modeling by the two researchers and their colleagues, parts of the city are sinking as much as 20 inches a year. In the next century and a half, they calculate, areas could drop by as much as 65 feet. Spots just outside Mexico City proper could sink 100 feet. That twisting and tilting Solano‐Rojas noticed was just the start of a slow-motion crisis for 9.2 million people in the fastest-sinking city on Earth. And because some parts are slumping dramatically and others aren’t, the infrastructure that spans the two zones is sinking in some areas but staying at the same elevation in others. And that threatens to break roads, metro networks, and sewer systems. “Subsistence by itself may not be a terrible issue,” says Cabral-Cano. “But it's the difference in this subsistence velocity that really puts all civil structures under different stresses.”

Today’s the day: British holidaymakers return to Portugal as travel ban ends (Reuters) Sun-hungry British visitors descended on Portuguese beaches once again on Monday as a four-month long ban on travel between the two countries due to the COVID-19 pandemic ended, in a much-needed boost for the struggling tourism sector. Twenty-two flights from Britain are due to land in Portugal on Monday, with most heading to the southern Algarve region, famous for its beaches and golf courses but nearly deserted as the pandemic kept tourists away. Visitors from Britain must present evidence of a negative coronavirus test taken 72 hours before boarding their flights to Portugal and there is no need to quarantine for COVID-19 when returning home. Back at home, most British people will be free once again to hug, albeit cautiously, drink a pint in their pub, sit down to an indoor meal or visit the cinema after the ending of a series of lockdowns that imposed the strictest ever restrictions in peacetime.

Afghans who helped the US now fear being left behind (AP) He served as an interpreter alongside U.S. soldiers on hundreds of patrols and dozens of firefights in eastern Afghanistan, earning a glowing letter of recommendation from an American platoon commander and a medal of commendation. Still, Ayazudin Hilal was turned down when he applied for one of the scarce special visas that would allow him to relocate to the U.S. with his family. Now, as American and NATO forces prepare to leave the country, he and thousands of others who aided the war effort fear they will be left stranded, facing the prospect of Taliban reprisals. “We are not safe,” the 41-year-old father of six said of Afghan civilians who worked for the U.S. or NATO. “The Taliban is calling us and telling us, ‘Your stepbrother is leaving the country soon, and we will kill all of you guys.’” At least 300 interpreters have been killed in Afghanistan since 2016, and the Taliban have made it clear they will continue to be targeted, said Matt Zeller, a co-founder of No One Left Behind, an organization that advocates on their behalf. He also served in the country as an Army officer. “The Taliban considers them to be literally enemies of Islam,” said Zeller, now a fellow at the Truman National Security Project. “There’s no mercy for them.”

A Desperate India Falls Prey to Covid Scammers (NYT) Within the world’s worst coronavirus outbreak, few treasures are more coveted than an empty oxygen canister. India’s hospitals desperately need the metal cylinders to store and transport the lifesaving gas as patients across the country gasp for breath. So a local charity reacted with outrage when one supplier more than doubled the price, to nearly $200 each. The charity called the police, who discovered what could be one of the most brazen, dangerous scams in a country awash with coronavirus-related fraud and black-market profiteering. The police say the supplier—a business called Varsha Engineering, essentially a scrapyard—had been repainting fire extinguishers and selling them as oxygen canisters. The consequences could be deadly: The less-sturdy fire extinguishers might explode if filled with high-pressure oxygen. A coronavirus second wave has devastated India’s medical system. Hospitals are full. Drugs, vaccines, oxygen and other supplies are running out. Pandemic profiteers are filling the gap. In many cases, the sellers prey on the desperation and grief of families.

Full-blown boycott pushed for Beijing Olympics (AP) Groups alleging human-rights abuses against minorities in China are calling for a full-blown boycott of the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, a move likely to ratchet up pressure on the International Olympic Committee, athletes, sponsors and sports federations. A coalition representing Uyghurs, Tibetans, residents of Hong Kong and others issued a statement Monday calling for the boycott, eschewing lesser measures that had been floated like “diplomatic boycotts” and further negotiations with the IOC or China. “The time for talking with the IOC is over,” Lhadon Tethong of the Tibet Action Institute said in an exclusive interview with The Associated Press. “This cannot be games as usual or business as usual; not for the IOC and not for the international community.” The push for a boycott comes a day before a joint hearing in the U.S. Congress focusing on the Beijing Olympics and China’s human-rights record, and just days after the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee said boycotts are ineffective and only hurt athletes.

Grief Mounts as Efforts to Ease Israel-Hamas Fight Falter (NYT) Diplomats and international leaders were unable Sunday to mediate a cease-fire in the latest conflict between Israel and Hamas, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel vowed to continue the fight and the United Nations Security Council failed to agree on a joint response to the worsening bloodshed. The diplomatic wrangling occurred after the fighting, the most intense seen in Gaza and Israel for seven years, entered its deadliest phase yet. At least 42 Palestinians were killed early Sunday morning in an airstrike on several apartments in Gaza City, Palestinian officials said, the conflict’s most lethal episode so far. The number of people in killed in Gaza rose to 197 over the seven days of the conflict, according to Palestinian officials, while the number of Israeli residents killed by Palestinian militants climbed to 11, including one soldier, the Israeli government said.

Israel, Hamas trade fire in Gaza as war rages on (AP) Israel carried out a wave of airstrikes on what it said were militant targets in Gaza, leveling a six-story building, and militants fired dozens of rockets into Israel on Tuesday. Palestinians across the region observed a general strike as the war, now in its second week, showed no signs of abating. The strikes toppled a building that housed libraries and educational centers belonging to the Islamic University. Residents sifted through the rubble, searching for their belongings.

Israel’s aftermath (Foreign Policy) In Israel, the aftermath of days of violence in mixed Arab-Israeli towns has led to a one-sided reaction from state prosecutors: Of the 116 indictments served so far against those arrested last week, all have been against Arab-Israeli citizens, Haaretz reports. Meanwhile, Yair Lapid, whose centrist Yesh Atid party’s chances of forming a coalition government has crumbled since the violence broke out, placed the blame on Netanyahu. If he was in charge, Lapid said on Sunday, no one would have to question “why the fire always breaks out precisely when it’s most convenient for the prime minister.”

Long working hours can be a killer, WHO study shows (Reuters) Working long hours is killing hundreds of thousands of people a year in a worsening trend that may accelerate further due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the World Health Organization said on Monday. In the first global study of the loss of life associated with longer working hours, the paper in the journal Environment International showed that 745,000 people died from stroke and heart disease associated with long working hours in 2016. That was an increase of nearly 30% from 2000. “Working 55 hours or more per week is a serious health hazard,” said Maria Neira, director of the WHO’s Department of Environment, Climate Change and Health. The joint study, produced by the WHO and the International Labour Organization, showed that most victims (72%) were men and were middle-aged or older. Often, the deaths occurred much later in life, sometimes decades later, than the shifts worked. It also showed that people living in Southeast Asia and the Western Pacific region were the most affected.

[louisishj334]

How to lose $1 million and risk it all again

When Abbas Dayekh was 18 several years aged, he walked confidently to the reception of Sussex Location, London Enterprise University’s primary campus, and asked: “Where can I enrol?” Safety advised him he would have to wait a several years. Dayekh was in the wrong spot. He was in search of Regent’s University London, exactly where his parents experienced sent him to check a BA (Hons) in Worldwide Enterprise with French. Dayekh, ethnically Lebanese, is from Nigeria, the grandson of the textiles’ industrialist. He was sent to the united kingdom to achieve knowledge, then return and insert benefit inside the loved ones business.

Dayekh, CEO and founder of OyaNow, an application-primarily based shipping and delivery service in Nigeria, chuckles within the memory. It’s not the first time he has taken a detour in his life, and it possibly was one of many additional pleasant – and less expensive - events. With no doubt, one of the most tricky was having to notify his mom he experienced shed all her price savings – about $600,000 – that she invested in him to put in place a Beirut branch of distinctive Parisian couture model CLVII in 2012. “It absolutely was a buddy’s store. The purchasers are certainly top quality; elite footballers and these kinds of. It’s obtained a particular image.

“I ran CLVII notion capital for about a year, and afterwards the Syrian civil war escalated. Bombs started heading off in Beirut. The Saudis and Emirati holidaymakers – my buyers – they went household and didn’t return. I used to be trapped with a great deal of expensive couture and no funds”

I ran CLVII for around a year, and afterwards the Syrian civil war escalated. Bombs started off going off in Beirut. The Saudis and Emirati travellers – my prospects – they went residence and didn’t come back. I was stuck which has a large amount of pricey couture and no dollars. Involving my mom’s price savings, a buddy’s financial commitment of about $two hundred,000 and the money I’d expended in that two-year period, I’d managed to lose $one million.

‘Not a tech dude’

While Dayekh, from Kano in Nigeria’s northern province, felt upset that he’d Enable down his mom, his initial – and biggest – entrepreneurial flop did nothing at all to dampen his enthusiasm for the entrepreneurial route and his zeal to triumph. In actual fact, he reflects that it spurred him on to at some point found OyaNow, an application-primarily based logistics enterprise aiding enterprises to achieve Nigeria’s progressively related populace of just about 200 million by trustworthy and rapidly previous-mile shipping and delivery.

This Regardless of the simple fact Dayekh promises to generally be “by no means a tech man”. He laughs: “I'm able to’t code.” Dayekh has gained the Persons’s Decision Award while in the George Bernard Shaw Unreasonable Individual category at this calendar year’s Serious Innovation Awards (RIA) in recognition of his dogged perseverance to succeed Even with there becoming no fantastic rationale that he should really.

When he had The theory for OyaNow, he was pretty much broke, acquiring returned from Shanghai the place for 9 months he had been performing being an outsourcing broker for just a number of Nigerian clientele he’d managed to secure. “They had been tiny contracts and Therefore the Fee was little,” he claims. “I had return to Abuja for being with my mom and determine what I had been gonna do with my life. I barely experienced any revenue, but I nonetheless realized I used to be about to do my own factor.”

It transpired to him that buyer self esteem in Nigeria was zero. “There was no rely on in the market in Nigeria and not Considerably purchaser treatment possibly. I thought of the accomplishment of foods shipping expert services in Europe and The us like Deliveroo and Uber Eats. Nigeria is probably one of many final nations around the world on this planet with such a big inhabitants that remains so underdeveloped. I observed that hole as a huge possibility.”

But who was about to buy the coders? And to the bikes? In fact – this was Africa, not Europe. Banks don’t give financial loans to people with no property. Dayekh was fortuitous to have a network of Intercontinental experts and traders he cultivated from having long gone to one of the better boarding schools in the world in Switzerland. A friend came by with a few seed income Which paid out for creating the app and the main motorbikes.

Ideal time, right solution, proper place

“I realized This may be a really diverse proposition from Deliveroo and Uber Eats. For 1, we would want to supply total pastoral care to our riders – whom we contact Entrepreneurs – mainly because they could be coming from all around the country. We would have to give them a destination to Are living. They would be the brand. I needed to be sure that I did all the things I could to empower them for being entirely engaged in OyaNow and assist the manufacturer to accomplish its key performance indicators of reliability, usefulness and high quality of assistance usually.

“My uncles felt I were born which has a silver spoon in my mouth Which I'd volume to nothing exterior the relatives small business. I'd a burning desire to establish them Improper and clearly show the entire world I could allow it to be by myself”

OyaNow is definitely an abbreviation of the phrase indicating “we've been coming” in Nigerian slang English. It really is widely recognized throughout ethnic teams and tribes and was a great match with the operating product and to the cultural context. It soft released in Abuja, in advance of launching in Kano after which Lagos.

Starting up off to be a foods shipping service about 3 many years ago, OyaNow obtained an sudden fillip within the Covid-19 pandemic which noticed desire for its very last-mile supply provider go with the roof. Now, it delivers Pretty much anything at all that may be shipped and OyaNow has business associations with lots of factories across the country.

The organization now has about eighty five bikes and vans as well as other vehicles, microinvestors which is eyeing the subsequent stage of enlargement in other nations in Africa, but Dayekh can’t say too a great deal more at this time. The serial innovator also has enterprise passions in medical marijuana and hemp in Malawi by way of a Swiss-based startup called House Africa. Previously this yr, Malawi legalised the expanding, promoting and exporting of cannabis for professional medical use.

“Winning this award – the George Bernard Shaw Unreasonable Individual Award – I love it! It pleases me in excess of if I had been to generally be manufactured President of America! It appears that evidently I do new points on a regular basis. But, the truth is, there is a pattern. Africa is often a tough area to know if You aren't from listed here. Western organizations see likely during the economies here but are nervous to generate a transfer due to perception of danger and a lack of certainty.

I've realised that I may be that bridge that inbound links Africa With all the West. It is a fairly distinctive situation to be in and I am just getting started.”

six tips about entrepreneurship from OyaNow founder Abbas Dayekh

Being an entrepreneur seriously isn’t straightforward. You require conviction and dedication. It’s probably a cliche but You can not succeed devoid of it. It’s a lonely highway. You may get dangers. You will upset the established order, and people don’t like that. Men and women like it any time you fall short. Personally, when I turn into devoted to a thing, no one can cease me.

The most important enterprise lesson I've discovered was the four Ps: value, products, promotion and spot. They're the key elements for achievement. OyaNow delivers all 4 together beautifully.

Failure is Studying and almost nothing to become ashamed of. Be honest with your self about what went Mistaken and go forward, striving not to generate precisely the same mistakes once more.

Entrepreneurship can be difficult on your own mental health and fitness. You can find every day considerations about cashflow, and regardless of whether you'll have enough funds to pay your charges; to pay your employees. Even now, I put up with panic assaults. It might be very difficult to repeatedly need to project a façade of strength for your personnel, buyers and the market when deep down you don’t know wherever your following tranche of cash will originate from to maintain heading. Be sincere with oneself about whether or not you can handle this strain.

Any time you expand, empower your personnel. They can be your small business. They will be the distinction between accomplishment and failure ultimately. Be humble as a pacesetter and hear your staff. Apologise for the mistakes. They must invest in into your eyesight. Empower them to co-create that eyesight mainly because it evolves.

Use a disproportionate number of Gals in the management staff. Females tend to be a lot less self-centred and aggressive. Coming from the patriarchal household business enterprise dominated by warring factions, I wish to be surrounded by Girls, who often carry balance and direct for your greater great rather then individual acquire.

The Real Innovation Awards is undoubtedly an once-a-year ceremony celebrating business innovation all over the world, hosted via the London Business Faculty’s Institute of Innovation and Entrepreneurship (IIE). To determine this year’s celebration occurring on ten December 2020 and hear insights on ‘Innovating in Adversity’ sign up below.

[wisdomrays]

TAFAKKUR: Part 88

Healing and Faith: Part 1

The relationship between faith and healing has always been a point of curiousity and controversy. Most of us have heard stories of people recovering from serious diseases due to their faith. Exploring and investigating this relationship by scientific means has been a taboo among scientists and medical doctors for centuries. As recently as 15 years ago, it would have been considered academic suicide to propose such a study.

But this has started to change. Increasingly, professionals from respected institutions are conducting scientific studies of the effects of faith in healing. Recent conferences at Harvard, the Mayo Clinic, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) signal this change, as does major media coverage on PBS, NBC Nightly News, CNN, and CBS This Morning. Below we give examples of such scientific studies, the people behind them, and their findings.

Dr. Herbert Benson

Dr. Herbert Benson is an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and the founding president of the Mind/Body Medical Institute at Boston's Deaconess Hospital. As the author of 150 scientific papers and six books, Benson has made important contributions to our understanding of the physiology involved in the healing effects of faith.

As a young cardiologist working with people suffering from high blood pressure, Benson noticed that their blood pressure was the highest during office visits. He reached this conclusion after noticing that after treating his patients with anti-hypertensive medicines to lower their blood pressure, they would report such symptoms as fainting. This indicated that the adjusted blood pressure was generally too low. Since doses were set according to measurements made during the visit, the calibration was correct. He concluded that their blood pressure should have been lower before or after the visit.

To establish a model for stress-induced hypertension, he stopped his routine in cardiology and returned to physiology research at Harvard Medical School. Once when he was studying monkeys, about 15 young people involved with Transcendental Meditation asked him to study their responses to stress. Electrodes were attached to their chests and scalps to measure their heart waves and brain waves. Masks collected their breath as they exhaled, so their metabolism and rate of breathing could be measured. Then baseline measurements were taken while they sat quietly for 20 minutes. The same measurements were taken again while they meditated for 20 minutes, and then one last time while they sat quietly without meditating. The individuals had a 17 percent decrease in their metabolism during meditation, and a 20 percent drop in their rate of breathing. Also the frequencies of brain waves were lowered.

Benson identified two basic components of Transcendental Meditation: meditation and prayers involving the repetition of a word, sound, or movement with the out-breath; and passively setting aside other thoughts when they come to mind and returning to the repetition.

When he studied various religions and cultures, he found these essential elements in virtually every one of them. The earliest account was in Hinduism, where there were accounts of individuals focusing on their breathing and repeating a phrase of scripture while disregarding every-day thoughts. The pattern was found in Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Shintoism, Taoism, and Confucianism. He posited that this practice may be conducive to improved health perhaps by reducing parasympathetic nervous system responses to stress, known as the "fight or flight response".*

Benson sees his work not as alternative medicine but rather as one leg of a three-legged stool. In his words: "One leg is pharmaceuticals, another leg is surgery and other procedures, and the third is self-care. That last leg includes nutrition, exercise, and the relaxation response. It's vital not to neglect the last leg, because 60 to 90 percent of visits to doctors are for conditions related to stress, where employing pharmaceuticals and surgery is not effective."

Benson also found out that as much as faith inspires prayer, this form of prayer or meditation inspires health. He and his colleagues treated such conditions as hypertension and cardiac arrhythmia with the relaxation response, the common ingredient in his self-care program and prayer/meditation practices. They cured 75 percent of insomniacs, treated symptoms of depression in people with AIDS and cancer, and relieved nausea and vomiting related to chemotherapy. In a fertility program for infertile women that emphasizes self-care through relaxation response techniques, proper nutrition, and re-framing thinking patterns, 34 percent become pregnant in contrast to 15 percent in other programs.

Dr. David Larson

Psychiatrist David Larson is the president of the National Institute of Healthcare Research and author of the teaching workbook, The Forgotten Factor (co-authored with his wife Susan). In this book, he discusses the relationship between religion and health. Numbers supporting his work come from Gallup polls showing that 95 percent of Americans believe in God, and that although half believe in Hell, 80 percent sanguinely trust in a forgiving God. In addition, 40 percent of Americans attend worship services weekly.

During his psychiatric residency at Duke University, Larson asked a professor for some guidance on how to bring his faith into psychiatric practice. The response was: "Are you the type person who wants people to believe like you do?" Although he said he was not, the professor continued: "It is obvious you are going to hurt your patients." He recalls that anyone who would bring up that subject would be quickly labeled as a fundamentalist. But his later research and extensive publications have brought attention, which helped fund the National Institute for Healthcare Research. The Faith in Medicine program, which the institution funds, gives $10,000 grants to medical schools for courses on religion and health. Johns Hopkins and George Washington University are among the eleven schools that have received the grants.

[sciencespies]

A Behind-the-Scenes Look at Maintaining Tourist Sites During COVID-19

https://sciencespies.com/nature/a-behind-the-scenes-look-at-maintaining-tourist-sites-during-covid-19/

A Behind-the-Scenes Look at Maintaining Tourist Sites During COVID-19

Under normal circumstances, spring is the time when the country’s many zoos, aquariums and botanical gardens come alive with activity after a long, cold winter. However, this year has been anything but ordinary. Over the course of the last couple of months, the nation has watched as these popular travel destinations as well as museums and historical sites have closed to visitors in an attempt to help curb the spread of COVID-19. But while these attractions may have been (or in many states, still are) off limits to the general public, essential workers have been showing up daily to take care of animals, plants and artifacts amidst their closures.

However, it’s not just the workers who are feeling the affects of the pandemic, but the animals, too. Zoos worldwide report that there have been noticeable shifts in the animals’ behavior. In some cases, the animals are craving more human interaction, which they normally receive when these facilities are bustling with visitors. Giraffes at the Houston Zoo, for instance, are used to visitors feeding them lettuce, and the chimpanzees at the Maryland Zoo are normally hand fed but due to social distancing procedures are receiving scatter feedings instead.

Zookeepers, animal trainers, horticulturalist and other essential employees across the United States have had to maintain a sense of normalcy to keep things running smoothly behind-the-scenes. Whether that means working longer, more sporadic hours or taking on new duties, these caretakers’ roles have shifted in the wake of COVID-19, sometimes in interesting and creative ways.

These staff members have had the unique opportunity to witness changes at their places of work that are the immediate result of closures. Colleen Kinzley has been living onsite at the Oakland Zoo in California for nearly 25 years, but it’s only been in the past few weeks that she’s witnessed a shift in animal activity at what has been her home for much of her career. As vice president of animal care conservation and research, she’s responsible for leading a team of zookeepers in caring for the animals, particularly the zoo’s resident herd of three African elephants, whose quarters are within close proximity to her own. If one of the animals should need immediate assistance at night, either she or the other onsite manager springs to action. But because there haven’t been large crowds of people visiting the zoo, she’s noticed animals from the adjacent Joseph Knowland State Arboretum and Park, a nearly 500-acre green space, starting to roam the zoo.

Colleen Kinzley (left), vice president of animal care conservation and research at the Oakland Zoo, works with a mountain lion rescued from the wild.

(Courtesy Oakland Zoo)

“I walk to and from work each day, and lately I’ve been seeing more deer and turkey during that time,” Kinzley says. “I’ve seen a couple of deer strolling through the elephant exhibit. We also have some frogs living in the [Wayne and Gladys Valley Children’s Zoo] that are usually silent, but now they’re deafening. It’s been interesting seeing wildlife take over where people have left off.”

While Kinzley’s animal encounters are something that the public will not likely get to experience once the zoo reopens and the crowds return, at the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago, animal care staff have lifted the veil of what goes on behind-the-scenes by putting some of their resident animals in the limelight. In March, trainers filmed the aquarium’s colony of Rockhopper penguins as they went on a “field trip” through the building’s beluga whale exhibit. The video quickly went viral. However, one thing a lot of people may not realize is that these roughly 30-minute jaunts are a regular occurrence for the penguins once the crowds have left the building.

“Sometimes we’ll walk them into the offices upstairs, or during slower times we’ll take them through the exhibits when the building is less crowded,” says Steven Aibel, senior director of animal behavior and training. “We want our animals to be flexible and used to closed and open buildings. In the wild, animals are meant to be flexible and adaptive, so we’re parlaying that into their current environment by making things variable and each day new.”

Aibel says that the viral video’s international acclaim was a fluke and the result of one of the trainers who wanted to capture the moment to share with family, friends and colleagues.

“Little did we know that the world would be interested,” he says. “We thought it was cool and fun, and the experience shows the positive affect animals can have, especially right now when people are looking for hope these days.”

This hope is proving especially important as these essential employees are not only trying to keep operations running smoothly, but also striving to educate the public, which during normal times is a crucial part of their day-to-day work.

“The biggest change for us while we’re closed is that we’re not doing any public-facing programs,” Aibel says. “Normally, each morning we come in and prepare for ways to engage with guests by doing presentations, meet and greets, and animal encounters. These things are very purposeful to the welfare of the animals, since it gives them activities and stretches their brains. Because these exercises are no longer supplied through daily programming, we’ve had to figure out ways to still do these elements, such as taking them on walks through the aquarium.”

In institutions where there are no animals to care for, essential workers have had a little more leeway in how creative they can get while still engaging with audiences. At the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City, Tim Tiller, the museum’s head of security and resident cowboy, has become the unofficial social media spokesman for the museum. For the past couple of months, Tiller has been working with the marketing team by hijacking the museum’s Twitter feed (@ncwhm) with his viral #HashtagTheCowboy posts. In his tweets, Tiller highlights some of the high jinks he’s gotten into as one of the sole staff members on site, like modeling items sold in the gift shop and interacting with the exhibits, including a stint in the museum’s jail. He’s also been answering fans’ questions like, “How often did cowboys take a bath?” and “What’s the proper way to tie a wild rag or bandana?”

Thanks for the mug tips, folks. Checked the Brodkin gallery. Nothing. Whoever is behind this is very sneaky! You can telegraph me any more tips to Prosperity Junction. Or use our hashtag. Whichever is easier for you. #HashtagTheCowboy Thanks, Tim pic.twitter.com/W6RrI5hF72

— Nat’l Cowboy Museum (@ncwhm) May 22, 2020

“We were hoping to gain a few new audience members, but had no expectations that they would be from all over the world,” Tiller says. “People are telling us that the posts have helped them through their day, and thank us for the positivity during this tough time.”

Seth Spillman, the museum’s chief marketing officer, and his team are the ones responsible for recruiting Tiller in the first place.

“Tim is an authentic voice for our institution and has been a real sport with all of this,” he says. “We’re getting feedback from people from all over the world who have said that they’ve never been to our state and museum, but now they can’t wait to come and visit us when we reopen.”

Another popular tourist destination that has been finding new ways to engage with the public is the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx. When it closed on March 15, the organization was quick to keep the garden’s many fans actively involved by posting photos and videos of its popular Orchid Show, which was already in full bloom and, during normal circumstances, one of the first signs of spring for many New Yorkers. Over the years, the NYBG has served as a beacon of hope and popular respite for city dwellers.

“After 9/11, people enjoyed having access to the garden, since they saw it as a place that’s fundamentally peaceful and where they could bask in the benevolence of peace and beauty,” says Todd Forrest, the Arthur Ross Vice President for Horticulture and Living Collections at the NYBG. “People need that now more than ever, and it’s frustrating that we’re not able to provide that since we’re closed. We’re anxious for people to come back.”

Todd Forrest, Arthur Ross Vice President for Horticulture and Living Collections, spoke during a media preview of an exhibition in June 2019 at the New York Botanical Garden.

(Don Emmert/AFP via Getty Images)

However, there is some hope that, slowly but surely, things are beginning to go back to (more or less) normal at the gardens. Forrest says that during the first few weeks of its closure, only a small number of horticulturists were onsite, but every week more employees are returning to work to help out by watering and planting flowers, mowing the expansive lawns and transplanting plants in anticipation of summer’s first visitors.

“Right now the cherry trees, gardenias, and daffodils are all in bloom,” he says. “It’s stunningly beautiful, but haunting because the crowds aren’t here to enjoy it.”

Some day, perhaps sooner rather than later, these popular attractions will once again be alive with activity. But until then, at least we can find solace in knowing that these important destinations are right there, waiting for us to return.

#Nature

[stardew-imagines-me]

Can you tell us more about the highschool au? I ADORE your work btw

Thank you and of course!

Introduction

Due to rough circumstances, you were unable to keep living with your mother in the city, and had to move onto one of the many properties your late grandfather had owned. Luckily, your grandfather was a smart man and before passing, left you a large amount of savings you could live on for a few years. So that’s how you started your life in Stardew Valley.

Stardew Valley was quite a beautiful town. It wasn’t too big, with only a 100,000 residents, but big enough that it reminded you of certain parts of the city you had come from. Before leaving back to the city, your mother had helped transfer you in Stardew High school, or SDHC where you’d have to call home for the next 3 years.

Stardew high had roughly 2,000 or so students so you hadn’t expected to be noticed transferring in the middle of the year. How wrong were you.

12 special students had taken an interest in you since arriving, and your name became a hot topic around school when you were officially deemed the president of the gardening club the moment you entered. It wouldn’t have been that scary if those 12 students weren’t the most skilled, and popular kids in the school.

Many of them were top in the state, if not the country, for their skills while the others were basically school mascots with overwhelming amounts of school pride. There were only two modest and skilled students who hadn’t a huge part in spreading their name out there like the others and yet, they were still part of the special 12.

These two students were named Penny and Harvey; instead of taking part in clubs, they decided that doing more conventional things like studying medicine or tutoring stuggling students was way more important.

Penny is a very quiet girl; she’s got strong opinions but no voice, which is why she had denied presidency to the debate club her freshman year. Instead, she opted in tutoring students who are a little slower in other subjects — the kids she tutored often excelled after her sessions and wouldn’t need assistance any longer. She would’ve been valedictorian too but again, her voice wasn’t loud enough to earn her the position.

• Penny is a junior

• Penny is often found in the library reading, tutoring or helping the librarians organize shelves

Harvey is a very smart boy; deciding since a very young age that he would become a doctor and help the injured and dying. When Harvey wasn’t studying medicine, he would be in the nurses clinic learning world experiences and medicine measuring. The nurses don’t mind him being in the clinic during classes because he had already learned the material months ahead.

• Harvey is a junior

• He is known around school for skipping a grade and having the brightest future out of the special 12

Then there’s the skilled. The 5 students that had earned that named were naturally gifted kids that often used those to an advantage — they awed everyone when in action.

Shane of the cooking club. Shane is by far, one of the most aggressive and rude people you’ve ever met. But he has a gentle side to him as well. When faced in both cooking and baking competitions, he rises upon all his competitors with dishes that only highest of chefs could succeed in pulling off in such a short amount of time. He’s rude but his peers still adore him nonetheless.

• Shane is a junior

• He raises hundreds for the school when bake sales come around — everyone waits all year just to taste his molasses cookies or triple layer fudge brownies

Alex, star quarterback of the football team. Although Alex isn’t intellectually the most gifted, he is very skilled on the football field when he’s tasked with dodging, swirling and throwing the ball at all costs. He’s very handsome, and a little arrogant, but otherwise, a genuinely kind boy.

• Alex is a junior

• Alex is the high school sweetheart. He wins many games for his school, has been scouted by many different colleges already and has dyslexia

• He gets tutored by Penny when he has the time, Penny always scorns him for being late

Sebastian, the valedictorian. Now, when you think ‘valedictorian’, you see some scrawny nerd that studies constantly and stresses about everything. Well, Sebastian is a little special when it comes to that stereotype. The Stardew valedictorian comes to school in ripped skinny jeans and half combed bed head. He’s got piercings of all kinds, scars and looks that could kill. But he’s very gifted too. Sebastian has never gotten anything below 100%, hasn’t even missed a second of school and actively participates in school events even though he couldn’t give less of a shit about them.

• Sebastian is a junior

• Many kids know that Sebastian and Maru are siblings, but find it quite shocking when they are told that their parents also work at school

Maru, the president of the robotics club. Maru is a very gifted student, a common trait in her family. She’s actually the top student in the country for her engineering projects and robotics creations. She isn’t too fond of going out after school since most of her time is spent making blueprints or organizing competitions for her club, but can’t bare to see Sebastian mope at another pep rally by himself.

• Maru is a junior

• Her and Sebastian had actually created half of the computers in the computer lab. She put them together while he coded them

Leah, the art prodigy. You had actually heard about Leah before coming to a Stardew; her art being displayed in one of the most famous galleries in the world, but were surprised when you found out she had attended a generic high school. Her art is displayed across the banters of the second floor and one of her sculptures is the main piece of the school’s entrance.

* Leah is a junior

* Leah is quite modest about her art, and doesn’t like to talk about it if she isn’t currently working on another piece or really if a conversation doesn’t involve art at all

Then there’s the school pride mascots. The other 5 either deal with special causes, contribute to local communities a lot or are basically just popular.

Haley, the head cheerleader. Haley is quite popular not only in school, but worldwide too. At a young age, she had been scouted for a modeling agency that sky rocketed her reputation and displayed her beauty on many different products and billboards. It only made sense that she would also become head cheerleader for her winning smile and overbearing personality on the field.

* Haley is a junior

* Haley’s personality isn’t really a surprise once she’s done putting up an act. She’s kind when she feels like she can trust you, but otherwise, she bites harder than Shane at times.

Emily, the president of fashion club. Much like her sister, Emily had been scouted out by the same modeling agency, but quit a year or two into the gig to pursue her own clothes line she had been working on since the start. Often, her club is filled with envious kids who adore her modern works and fancy tailoring. She owns her own company, but chooses to graduate school before working on her career right away.

* Emily is a junior

* Emily and her club often make the costumes for Elliot’s drama club when play season comes around. Her clothes are put on display after being worn

Elliot, president of the drama club. Elliot had always had a passion for writing plays and directing them. He was also quite a phenomenal actor, and often attracted people who weren’t even attending the school to his plays. He was adored by the English teacher, no surprise, and had many people swoon over his looks.

* Elliot is a junior

* He’s a famous modern poet, but uses a pen name because he prefers to stay anonymous until he graduates

Abigail, founder one of the human rights club. Abigail is a strong willed girl who is often found preaching about human rights and leading many of the parades in Stardew Valley. She’s a huge supporter of the LGBTQ+ community and runs a women’s shelter during the summer. Her peers adore her and Sam as one of the most well known duos in the school for running courses about abusive relationships and drug abuse as an elective.

* Abigail is a junior

* When Abigail has free time, she usually makes positivity  bracelets that students flash around outside of school for the cool aesthetic4

Sam, founder two of the human rights club. Sam is loud and has such an infectious laugther that it’s hard not to want to be around him 24/7. He participates in quite a bit of funder raisers for certain organizations he’s passionate about and volunteers at a few different preschools to play with the kids and teach basic life skills like stranger danger and saying no. He’s a loud cutie who gets asked out about 6 times a day.

* Sam is a junior

* Sam loves hanging out with Abigail and often helps around school when she’s busy

Farmer:

* You are president of the gardening club because the club had actually been falling apart and only a hand full of students were left since the president had graduated a year prior of you transferring

* What had brought all the attention on you was saving the school’s dying garden in only a week or two. The wilting petals had looked as if they were replaced with luscious, healthy flowers that everyone had stopped to look at at least once a day

* “It was the new kid,” You had heard your garden mates say proudly as they pointed over to you, “The new president, isn’t that neat?”

[askthedustbowl]

elysian ballet company dancers

patroclus:

- 11 years at the company

- first language: ballet/pointe

- secondaries: hip-hop, jazz, modern, tap, ballroom

- closest to cory, they trained together, basically grew up together, and got into the company together. he knows firsthand the shit that mnemosyne put her through. he acts as her protector and big brother figure to make sure she’s not pushing herself too hard.

- pat is best friends with erato and has been for several years. he often features on her instagram

nyx:

- 9 years at the company

- first language: ballet/pointe

- secondaries: modern, jazz, tap

- originally auditioned in the same group as cory and pat when they were nineteen and she was sixteen, but wasn’t accepted due to the small number of spots. two years later, she auditioned again and got in. cory and pat welcomed her as if she were an old friend and they’ve been inseparable ever since.

- nyx and selene are happily married and have been for two years. together they function as mothers to perseus—and they have ever since he was sixteen.

- orpheus loves her. they met when he was eight and immediately hit it off.

myrina:

- 8 years at the company

- first language: gymnastics

- secondaries: ballet/pointe, jazz

- president of the Narcissus Shut Up Squad

- many of the younger dancers look up to myrina because of her confidence and skill, and she takes her position as role model very seriously.

- myrina and thalia have been flirting for a while, dancing around one another if you will, but as of late, nothing has come of it.

harmonia:

- 10 years at the company

- first language: ballet/pointe

- secondaries: modern, ballroom

- transferred from another company, joined the elysians when she was a soloist.

- wants to teach when she retires.

- harmonia shares a dressing room with cassandra and cory. she has a little pet dog named viola that has become the unofficial mascot of the elysian ballet company.

- there is not a single person on earth that has anything bad to say about harmonia. she is the personification of grace and kindness.

asterion:

- 6 years at the company

- first language: ballet

- secondaries: modern, jazz

- while he has fuckboy tendencies, asterion actually drinks his respecting women juice twice a day, every day.

- he shares a braincell with narcissus and has it 98% of the time.

- he respects the people that he works with very much, and he’s always trying to learn and be better.

- cassandra is his dance partner, and he’s been in love with her since the minute he laid eyes on her. these days it almost seems like maybe she could possibly like him back.

cassandra:

- 4 years at the company

- first language: ballet/pointe

- secondaries: modern

- cass joined the elysians the year that cal died, so she saw cory struggling and they became friends when cass offered to help. she is one of the only people (in the span of eleven years) that have gone on for sugarplum instead of cory.

- she acts as a big sister to the younger soloists and the corps girls, and has a special talent for making perseus, daphne, and mimi behave themselves.

- dances with asterion.

narcissus:

- 6 years at the company

- first language: modern

- secondaries: ballet

- narcissus has exactly one braincell, and he’s not in possession of it all the time, but he is very trusting and compassionate once you get past the sheer dumbass energy radiating from him. he’s a wonderful dance partner, though, and everyone trusts him implicitly when they’re dancing. off stage? not so much.

- while he is a very good dancer, he can either act OR dance. doing both is a little too much for him.

- currently unfortunately in love with tyro.

orestes:

- 6 years at the company

- first language: ballet

- secondaries: hip-hop, modern, tap, jazz

- orestes may play the mouse king, but he’s truly the most gentle man you’ll ever meet.

- he’s been dating pylades for a little less than six years, and they’ve been the happiest years of his life.

- once had a close call with unemployment—he was involved in an altercation that left him no other choice than to fight back, but really, he’s too valuable to fire.

pheme (“mimi”):

- 5 years at the company

- first language: hip-hop

- secondaries: ballet/pointe, modern

- she trained in france for a good deal of her dance career. once she returned, she auditioned for the elysian company and was accepted. she speaks fluent french.

- as elysian theatre’s resident gossip girl, mimi knows everything about everyone. she can either use this for good or for evil, but mostly she just uses it for fun.

- a being of chaos at heart, she can usually be found with perseus and daphne, wreaking havoc on someone or something.

perseus:

- 3 years at the company

- first language: tap

- secondaries: ballet, modern, jazz

- perseus had no intention of going into ballet. his first love was (and still is) tap, and he took lessons at PK dance school for quite a few years after his father refused to let him continue. after an incident involving the police, nyx and selene took him in and started training him in ballet.

- he has been forbidden from dancing with cory because when he’s onstage, he gets so excited that he practically vibrates, and cory needs stability when she dances, not a babysitting job. because of said excitement, he dances better with partners who are a good few years his senior (harmonia, myrina, phoebe). the person he dances the best with is nyx. she keeps him grounded.

- possibly a trickster god in a past life, he’s typically seen with pheme and daphne at his sides.

phoebe:

- 5 years at the company

- first language: ballet/pointe

- second language: contemporary

- phoebe can usually be found with her head in the clouds, but out of all the dancers (besides maybe cory), she has the best technique. she makes dancing look effortless and a lot of the younger dancers who are still working on their technique look to her as a role model.

- she has a playful rivalry going on with mimi, as mimi is an aries and phoebe is very into astrology—or at least into astrology enough to know that arieses are usually up to no good.

daphne:

- 3 years at the company

- first language: ballet/pointe

- secondaries: hip-hop, jazz

- infamous for being cranked up to an eleven 24/7.

- due to her skill, she’s an understudy for several larger roles, but never gets the chance to go on. at this point she would commit murder to go on for sugarplum AT LEAST ONCE.

- if you recall, she’s the one that slipped her number into orpheus’s pocket when he and eurydice went backstage with cory. she’s a hopeless romantic and has a very, VERY unfortunate crush on narcissus.

lethe:

- 3 years at the company

- first language: ballet/pointe

- secondaries: river dancing

- while lethe’s technique is near perfect and her stage presence is excellent, her dance career hasn’t gone past the corps because she has a track record of forgetting the steps once she’s finally put onstage. the way she counteracts that is near-constant rehearsal—she and cory are usually the last ones at the theatre.

- she’s known for her punctuality and she NEVER misses class. the older dancers love her because she’s so well-behaved and responsible.

- of everyone, lethe may be the one that pandora hates most.

pandora:

- 11 months at the company

- first language: acro

- secondaries: ballet, hip-hop, modern

- pandora constantly has a sneer to spare and seldom talks. she got into the company with ty, so she’s also the newest member, but unlike ty, she doesn’t care whether people like her or not.

- unbeknownst to all but thalia, pandora is the creator of most of the best rules of thalia’s game of chess. they’ve known each other for a long time.

tyro (“ty”):

- 11 months at the company

- first language: sports (soccer), hip-hop

- second language: ballet/pointe, step

- she’s the youngest elysian at 21 years old. the older dancers love her as one would love a small, excitable puppy.

- when she was a little girl, pat babysat for her and her siblings. she wasn’t a ballet dancer as a kid, so when she walks through the elysian doors for the first time, pat is shocked.

- she never set out to be a ballet dancer—in high school, she was a soccer player, and she was AMAZING. but after she wasn’t scouted, she picked up ballet as a different outlet and she got pretty good.

[precuredaily]

Precure Day 165

Episode: Yes! Precure 5 17 - “Love Story of a Pure-Hearted Maiden” Date watched: 12 December 2019 Original air date: 27 May 2007 Screenshots: https://imgur.com/a/md9kwKC Transformation Gallery: https://imgur.com/a/6k6SzS0 Project info and master list of posts: http://tinyurl.com/PCDabout

Remember the Prism Love Checker, the Takoyaki Handy, or the Charm Pencil Case from the last three seasons? Yeah, it’s that time again! Time to loosely base an entire episode around a toy that doesn’t fit the theme of the series.

The Plot

Natts House is sold out of everything, and for some reason there’s an implication that Rin should be doing something about this, but instead she’s crafting a bead bracelet, ignoring her surroundings, and generally acting strangely. Nozomi recalls that only other time she’s seen her friend this way was when she had a crush.....

Later, the girls pay her a visit at her mom’s shop, and see her giddily selling flowers to a handsome young man, and blushing. They confront her and she doesn’t admit to having a crush on this guy, but doesn’t deny it either. Since she agreed to deliver a flower to him, they urge her to make the delivery now while they mind the shop, and dress nicely to do it.

Nuts gives her a blue bead bracelet to match the red one she’s wearing (again, toys) and she sets off. However, the girls are curious to see her shoot her shot, and after some debate Karen justifies it by saying she’s just looking out for the students, so they follow her in secret. Rin arrives at his residence but hesitates, unsure what to say. Meanwhile, Girinma watches ominously from a tree....

As she’s just about to knock on the door, he opens the porch door and sees her. She gives him the flower and is just about to confess her feelings when a lady comes over and he introduces her as his girlfriend, for whom he buys the flowers. Rin goes from crushing to crushed, but manages to hide her feelings long enough to give them both the bracelets and wish them well before running off and breaking down. She sits on a bench and reflects on how she met him, as a patron of her shop, and starts to cry. Girinma shows up, taunting her dream for being pointless, and he prepares to attack her. The other girls catch up, declare Rin’s feelings to be precious, and they all transform. Girinma turns a nearby water fountain (the large, decorative kind, not the ones you drink from) into a Kowaina, which tosses the girls around. Even Aqua, who is supposed to be able to manipulate water.

Despite being overpowered and heartbroken, Rouge declares that she still wants to look forward to good things in life, and refuses to give up. The Kowaina suddenly weakens and it turns out Coco and Nuts have cut off the water supply to the fountain. Lemonade, Mint, and Aqua handle Girinma while Rouge and Dream take out the Kowaina, and the day is won.

As they all walk home, Nozomi, Urara, Komachi, and Karen suggest activities to cheer Rin up, but she knocks them each down in turn because they’re impractical or not to her tastes. Then she realizes that with all of them there, including Nuts and Coco, nobody is watching the shop, so they have to get back there as soon as possible, and the episode ends with a still frame.

The Analysis

First off, if I haven’t established this by now, I’m a sap for romance episodes. Always have been. So seeing Rin crush on someone warms my heart, even if I know it’s not going to end well for her. Also, she’s really cute when she’s like this. I mean, she’s always cute, but more cute. Actively cute.

I have to give props to her actress, Takeuchi Junko, for this. She sounds a bit more high-pitched and aloof than normal. Also there’s a sequence where she’s roleplaying in the mirror as herself and the guy, switching between personas and voices and it’s hilarious and a good show of skill.

I can’t really say her taste in men is great, this guy’s only notable feature seems to be “he comes to her shop, is personable, and is moderately attractive” but since she’s modeled after Nagisa, the bar isn’t exactly high. And of course, young love is rarely rational. It’s less about who she likes as much as the fact that she likes someone, and the writers’ ability to craft an episode around that. As far as episodes of this show goes, this one isn’t very good, especially coming off the fantastic Komachi focus episode, but it’s still fun overall. In this series, even the bad episodes are still pretty solid. They spend just the right amount of time showing Rin as lovestruck, doing silly things, and then getting heartbroken, before they move into the battle.

Now, the elephant in the room here is the Pop’n Beads Maker. It will appear again, and I know it appeared in HUGtto under a different name. This is a toy that was released in the Precure 5 toyline with branding from the characters, but it doesn’t have any plot relevancy. We’ve seen this before, but the previous items they were plugging were a bit smaller than this.

In stores now! Wait, I’m 12 years late.

Based on translated Amazon reviews it seems it was well-liked. I don’t have much to say about this. It threads beads onto a string for you so you don’t have to do it by hand. I read mixed reviews of how good it was at doing this. It may feature the least into the story of any of these gimmick items. For reference, the Prism Love Checker was used by Nagisa to see how compatible she was with Fuji-P.... or would have been if she hadn’t chickened out. The Handy was shown to be useful at Akane’s takoyaki cart, and Honoka used it to control a slideshow as well. The pencil cases in Splash Star were used to share messages about how Saki and Mai cared about each other and were sorry for upsetting one another. The bead maker is shown once, as Rin makes a bracelet, we see Nuts hold one more bracelet, and then it’s never seen or heard about again in this episode. Very weird. It’s preferable to forcing their whole relationship to center around the bead maker, but then it comes across as a less effective toy plug. I feel like there’s a middle ground for effectively marketing your product and integrating it into the plot in a non-hamfisted way, but I don’t want to waste time coming up with one.

I would like to point out that, despite being portrayed as sporty and tomboyish, they always take care to show that Rin also has feminine interests as well. She’s happy making flower arrangements, and here she is fawning over a boy. Her friends make note of this, and I’m not bringing it up to say it’s unusual for her. I like that she’s able to express all aspects of her personality mostly freely (she feels a little embarrassed about the crush, as people are wont to do).

I really like how they showcase Rin and Nozomi’s old friendship. We know they’re second generation friends who have known each other since they were very young, and we know they always look out for each other, but I love is how they show it in this episode. Nozomi recalls Rin’s previous crush that got her acting all giddy, and wants to support her wholeheartedly. When she gets her heart broken, Nozomi gives her some space, but when Girinma mocks her, she jumps on the offensive and declares how important Rin’s feelings are. When it’s time to strike the final blow, she works in tandem with Rin and says “Don’t make a maiden angry! You wouldn’t like us when we’re angry!” She has no time for anyone who upsets her friends, especially Rin, and that’s admirable.

Komachi, Urara, and Karen don’t have a whole lot going on this episode. It’s not about them. They’re mostly moral support, and encouraging poor decisions. All of them know they should leave Rin alone to go talk to this guy herself, but they’re also curious to see how she does. Karen is initially the voice of reason, saying they should give her her privacy, and Nuts backs her up. However, when Nozomi insists, she comes around and says as student council president, it’s her responsibility to look out for the students, and comes along. This is a pattern of behavior with her, she acts reasonable at first but then she makes poor decisions. I kinda like that about her, it shows that she’s not the unflappable student council president they all think she is, she’s just good at logic-ing her way into situations. And then when they’re all coming up with ways they can cheer her on, using their unique skills, Komachi suggests that she could write lines for Rin and Urara says she’ll be her stunt double!

she is unique.

They’re a bunch of dorks and I love them.

Also over on the villain side, Girinma isn’t doing so hot. Bunbee handed him his termination papers and threatened to fire him if he didn’t improve his performance, so he’s especially cynical of Rin’s misadventures when he spots her, but it doesn’t really relate to his attack. It doesn’t seem to amount to much of anything, except to show that Bunbee is at the end of his rope with his employees, which will come into play in a few more episodes.

To wrap it up, it’s a filler episode with the intention of plugging a toy they couldn’t advertise any other way. No Pinkies are gathered, but we see a little insight into Rin’s softer side, and some machinations behind the scenes. It’s not a bad episode, but if I had to recommend ones to skip for time, this would be one of them. I do understand the importance of fleshing out your cast so the audience cares about them and appreciates the bond between characters, which is what this does, but ultimately it’s not especially relevant. I would rate it a 7 on a scale of 10.

Next time, Masuko Mika interviews Karen at home, and we see spring uniforms! Look foward to it!

Pink Precure Catchphrase Count: 1 Kettei!

[cuthian]

Starting Over Chapter Two

Chapter Two

MALALA YOUSAFZAI WINS NOBEL PEACE PRIZE 2014

MALALA YOUSAFZAI, THE PAKISTANI TEENAGER WHO SURVIVED AN ASSASSINATION ATTEMPT BY THE TALIBAN, HAS WON THE NOBEL PEACE PRIZE JOINTLY WITH KAILIASH SATYARTHI OF INDIA.

[…]prize was awarded jointly to Malala Yousafzai and Kailash Satyarthi from India, “for their struggle against the suppression of children and young people and for the right of all children to education”.

“[…]Nobel Committee regards it as an important point for a Hindu and a Muslim—an Indian and a Pakistani—to join in a common struggle for education and against extremism,” the committee members said in a statement issued after the official announcement. The awarding of the prize to the two campaigners was celebrated widely on social media, with congratulations from several celebrities, including former Nobel Peace Prize nominee Alexander Pierce, who turned down the nomination earlier this year.

Pierce, 78, has been Secretary for the World Security Council for a number of years, and turned down the nomination with the now famed words, “Peace is not an achievement that needs to be celebrated, it is a responsibility that is shared by all of us.”

[…]Malala, now 17, was living in Pakistan’s Swat Valley when she was shot in the head by militants in October 2012 as punishment for her high profile campaign to encourage girls to go to school. A year later, she was living in Britain, having staged a remarkable recovery thanks to surgeons in Birmingham, and has become an international role model for young people.

Pakistan's president, Nawaz Sharif, said last year that she was "the pride of the nation".

[…]“We cannot express the level of our happiness in words. I just spoke to Ziauddin [Malala’s father], and her mother. I also spoke to Malala, and they are all very excited and happy about this," he said. "Malala told me that Allah has blessed her with this award and she hopes this peace prize will help her cause [of educating girls], which is what she is focused on."

One of Malala’s teachers, Shumaila Khan, said she was very proud of her former pupil. "I have never seen a girl as brave as her. She challenged the Taliban at a time when all men didn’t have the courage to oppose them," she said.

—Harriet Alexander and Jessica Winch, The Telegraph, “Malala Yousafzai Wins Nobel Peace Prize”, October 10th 2014

————————

Residence of Steve Rogers and Rebecca Barnes, Washington D.C., U.S.A.

7:08 PM

Steve

Steve’s hands were still trembling slightly when he unlocked the front door.

The house was quiet, and despite the relatively early hour, the lights were off. Becca and Thor were either not in, or they’d decided to retire to their room early.

Knowing them, both options were equally likely, Steve mused.

As the mission leader, he had been stuck at the Triskelion and in debrief a good few hours longer than the rest of the team, and between sessions with Maria Hill and Nick Fury, he’d caught a glimpse of an upset in the lobby. He’d recognized Thor’s distinctive figure easily, and he’d spotted him just in time to see Becca—out of her mission gear, hair tied in a ponytail and clad in sweatpants—collapse in his waiting arms.

He’d been a little startled then, to feel something quite like jealousy curling in the pit of his stomach at the sight of them. It wasn’t like he’d never felt envious of them before—but the intensity and the suddenness of it had scared him.

He didn’t like to think he was really jealous of either of them. And he wasn’t. Not really.

He’d spoken to Karen-the-therapist about it, once, and she’d helped him see that he envied what they had. Steve envied the easy intimacy Becca had managed to build with Thor over the course of their unconventional relationship. It didn’t mean that Steve didn’t love them or that he didn’t want them to be happy together—he just missed having someone to come home to after difficult missions, missed having the opportunity to fall into someone’s arms and letting go.

He did have Becca and Thor, of course, as his friends, but… it just wasn’t the same thing.

His thoughts drifted to Sam, and he smiled a little despite himself. It was still difficult to think of someone other than Bucky in a potential romantic fashion, but Steve wanted… he wanted to be hopeful about it. He wanted to be happy, to have someone to come home to, but it was so incredibly difficult to… imagine.

To imagine anyone but Bucky being the one that caught Steve when he needed to be caught, even after four years—or seventy, depending on one’s point of view.

Steve sighed, rubbing his hand through his hair as he stepped inside.

He’d been able to shower and change in the locker rooms, thankfully, so he wasn’t covered in sweat, blood and dried ocean water anymore, but his heart was still racing and his mind was still spinning.

He made a valiant effort of kicking his shoes in the general direction of the shoe rack, but he was tired, and he was still shaken about his argument with Becca and Nat’s secretive secondary mission within Steve’s mission—again, he might add—so he honestly couldn’t be bothered with Becca’s insistence on “cleaning our shit, like actual goddamned adults, Steve”.

He spotted Becca’s worn black Converses, tipped over one another half-underneath the shoe rack, next to her S.H.I.E.L.D.-issued boots and Thor’s leather boots—the only kind of Midgardian shoe, beside flip-flops, that he wore voluntarily when he was on Earth for prolonged periods of time.

Definitely still here then.

Steve rubbed his hand over his forehead and sighed.

Becca had been on duty all night before the mission had called them in too, so while Steve was exhausted and still more than a little upset, he imagined Becca had been feeling worse.

Steve winced.

He and Becca didn’t argue often—not beyond Becca calling Steve a dumbass and Steve reciprocating with whatever sassy reply came to mind in the moment—but when they did…

Steve really did need to talk to Becca.  

The argument they’d gotten into after his admittedly slightly ill-advised actions on the Lemurian Star had rattled him more than he wanted to admit, and he knew Becca felt similarly, because she hated public displays of affection and showing any kind of emotion that could be construed as weakness while they were at the Triskelion, but she had very readily fallen into Thor’s arms regardless.

He’d been too far away to be sure, but he was fairly certain Thor had been as surprised as Steve had been by the way Becca had responded to seeing him.

Not, of course, that Thor would have minded the way she greeted him.

Thor loved public displays of affection.

Slightly too much.

Steve had been there to see the very first signs of interest between them, and he’d seen them messily work their way from friends with benefits to casually dating to actually voicing their feelings for each other out loud. He was happy for them, thrilled to see them both happy after they’d been so incredibly heartbroken before they’d gotten together…

But he’d seen too much of them.

He had learned, over the course of Becca’s three-year relationship with Thor, to knock on every door in their shared house when Thor was on Earth. From the moment their friendship had progressed into something more, Becca and Thor seemed to have an impossibly hard time keeping their hands off each other—and much as Steve was happy for his friends, he’d seen far more of the both of them than he’d ever really wanted to.

He’d also come to suspect that Thor might have a bit of an exhibitionist kink.

He’d somehow managed to look both smug and chastened every time Steve walked in on them, regardless of their state of undress.

Asshole.

Steve’s stomach growled at that precise moment, making its thoughts on Steve’s train of thought quite clear. He chuckled a little at himself and shook his head to clear his thoughts as he made his way to the kitchen, stomach growling furiously all the while.

He spent way too much time thinking about everyone else’s love lives, and probably not nearly enough about his own. That was, admittedly, because he didn’t have one and never really wanted to have one before this morning either.

He was, in all honesty, still not sure if he wanted one.

He hadn’t had much of a chance to think about it.

Meeting Sam had thrown him for a loop, and Steve still couldn’t imagine walking away and never seeing the other man’s smile again. They’d really only talked shallowly before he’d been called away, and Steve knew his poor attempt at flirting probably hadn’t been all that successful, but he’d still gotten Sam’s phone number and the promise of a date, so… He’d done something right.

He’d just... he’d not even really considered what it meant.

When Sam had looked at him with that adorable, gap-toothed smile and had nodded, something in Steve’s chest had simultaneously cracked and healed and he’d very nearly had a panic attack.

Steve sighed and leaned his head against the fridge door with a quiet thunk.

He had no fucking clue what he was doing.

His stomach growled again, plaintively this time, and he hung his head. He should probably scrounge up something simple to eat before his stomach decided to eat him.

He settled on tossing some leftover vegetables in a pan, cracking some eggs and adding in a packet of protein powder Tony had assured him would soothe even Steve’s ravenous metabolism, stirring everything together lazily. He could cook up something more substantial when he’d taken the edge off his hunger.

It didn’t take more than a couple of minutes to fry his eggs and toast a couple of slices of bread, and he took his plate into the living room with only a minor twinge of guilt—he’d vacuum if he spilled all over the armchair again.

He so would.

He sighed and turned to his food, summarily letting his own thoughts stray back to the man he had sort-of not-so-accidentally asked out that morning.

Steve wasn’t sure what would come out of it.

He’d spent just a few minutes casually chatting with the man, but he’d actually been pretty surprised by how easy it had been. He’d never been very good at making friends—with the noted exception of Bucky, Becca, and the Howlies, who had basically seen him and decided they were friends, without much input on his side—and he thought that if he decided he didn’t really want to date Sam after all, he’d still make a pretty awesome friend.

Either way… he thought it would make Bucky proud to see him making things work.

He’d been working hard, since his breakdown three years ago, to learn to love the second chance at life he’d been given, to appreciate it for the miracle it was, because he very nearly hadn’t had this chance, and it would be like completely disregarding the sacrifice Bucky had made to refuse to live now.

Peggy had told him something similar once, Steve knew, shortly after Bucky had fallen, but he hadn’t been willing to listen to it then.

He hadn’t been ready to hear it for a good long while in this century either.

He had heard it, though, when Becca said it, when his therapist said it, when Becky did and mostly when Peggy said it, when she had come to visit him. She had, eventually, come to see him because she was, to paraphrase her, “tired of waiting for him to get off his bloody arse”. Steve had done nothing but cry on her perfectly pressed blouse as she patted his head.

It had taken time, but he’d heard what they were saying, and more importantly, he remembered what Bucky had always told him, and what he had always told Bucky.

I want you to live. I want you happy, because if I have to come back from the dead to kick your sorry ass, I will. Make me proud, will you?

Steve had been on Death’s threshold more times than he cared to count, and he remembered all he’d wanted in those moments was for Bucky to find a way to become happy. During the war, they’d discussed the same, and Steve knew Bucky wanted him to move on.

He still didn’t know if that was even possible, but he had to try.

Steve Rogers would always have done almost anything Bucky Barnes asked of him—and he could try to do so now too. He was working, he was making friends, building himself a family; and he’d even asked someone out, even if he hadn’t really decided what he was going to do about it.

Karen-the-therapist would be proud of him when he told her.

If he told her.

He was drawn from his thoughts by a door opening on the second floor, and he recognised Thor’s lumbering gait even from a floor away.

He smiled despite himself.

Thor was a good friend, and Steve enjoyed having someone around that he couldn’t accidentally punch so hard they’d die. Thor was more than a match for Steve physically, and that made sparring sessions—whether in the gym at S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters, or in the Tower when they visited New York—infinitely more interesting.

Thor appeared in the doorway seconds later, lips curled up into a beaming smile as he took in the scene before him. “Ah, Steve, you have returned to us!” He bounded inside and clasped Steve’s shoulder jovially before he snatched a piece of broccoli off of Steve’s plate and plopped down on the couch, angling himself towards Steve.

“Hey,” Steve smiled, swiping at Thor’s head playfully. “Get your own food.”

“It tastes much better from your plate, my friend,” Thor chuckled and stuck out his tongue at Steve, looking for all the world like a twenty-something college student rather than a thousand-year-old God.

Steve just rolled his eyes and finished his omelette. “Becca asleep?” He asked when he’d finished, setting his plate on the table, aiming to sound casual—although even he could hear that he was anything but casual.

Thor, kind and good friend that he was, did not laugh at his shoddy attempt to start a conversation and shook his head. “She insisted on a bath first.”

Steve tried not to wince. Becca only took baths when she needed the time to calm herself down.

Thor, it appeared, knew that as well.

“She is not angry,” he informed Steve kindly. “Not truly. You merely… frightened her. You must be more careful, Steven. Strong as you are, you are not invulnerable.”

Steve did wince at that, because he knew that, and he hated that he had, but he did not know how to make it better. He didn’t regret jumping from the plane without a parachute because… well, honestly, there were very few things that gave him a thrill anymore, that were actually dangerous, and…

Steve might be a bit of an adrenaline junkie.

Just a little.

Taking off his helmet in front of Batroc though… that was a genuine mistake.

Thor seemed to sense his conflict and patted a large hand on Steve’s shoulder. “Worry not, Steve. She will come around, and you will have your opportunity to apologize. Loki and I suffered many an argument for similar reasons—time apart solves all issues. We were always fine after a century or so. Two, if Loki was feeling particularly irate.”

Steve snorted a little at that. “Well, Becca and I don’t have a few centuries. Also, it’s a little different than you and Loki. I’m not trying to bide my time to get into her pants, pal.”

Thor smirked. “Good. I would hate to have to smite you.”

“Why are we smiting Steve?”

Steve spun around, finding Becca propped up against the doorway, wet hair coiled into a neat braid, dressed in one of his old shirts and a pair of sleep shorts. She raised an eyebrow at him, unsmiling and very clearly still upset.

“Becca,” he breathed, because shit, they’d been living together for four years, and she was his best friend on this side of the ice—she was like the little sister he’d always wanted. Before he realised what having a little sister like her was like, of course.

She was annoying and pissed him off to no end, but Lord, he loved her.

“I’m sorry,” he blurted before anyone else said anything, turning his entire body towards Becca. “I’m sorry I scared you. And that I put away my shield—”

“And your helmet,” Becca interrupted icily, though her expression slowly eased into something less pissed off.

“—and my helmet,” Steve conceded. “I wasn’t thinking. It was stupid. You were right. I’m sorry.”

Becca’s eyes were suspiciously shiny when she spat, “No, you clearly weren’t. They could’ve killed you. He had a gun on you.”

Steve sighed. “I know. I’m sorry, Becs.” He pushed himself up, off the couch, moving until he stood directly in front of her. “Please. Forgiven?”

He pouted prettily, because he knew Becca couldn’t keep a straight face when he did, and grinned triumphantly when Becca snorted at him. “Fine,” she snapped, poking at his shoulder. “But if I catch you jumping out of a plane without a parachute one more goddamned time, Rogers, I swear to God—”

“I won’t,” he chuckled, holding his hands up in submission.

“Ah, but that is simple. Don’t let her catch you,” Thor advised from his spot on the couch, grinning unrepentantly when Becca glared at him.

“What?” Thor said innocently. “You let me do it.”

“Steve can’t fly, you dumbass,” Becca argued, pushing past Steve to swat at her boyfriend’s head before she plopped down beside him.

“Ah,” Thor shrugged. “We all have our failings. I shall teach him.”

Steve snorted and Becca swatted at Thor’s head again, scowling at him playfully. “Boy, you really wanna sleep on the couch, don’t you?”

His easy grin became a groan easily enough when Thor merely smirked at that, waggling his eyebrows at Becca as he replied, “Only if you’ll join me here, Krúttið mitt.” Such sappy declaration was met with Becca groaning in disgust before she gave in and kissed Thor anyway.

Steve rolled his eyes and dropped down in the armchair, throwing a pillow at the couple. “I’m burning that couch if you two defile it again.” He’d caught them doing… stuff he’d rather not think about them doing on that damned thing far too often to still be chill about it. He’d declared the armchair off limits on the pain of death, and never sat on the couch when he could help it. He did secretly kind of revel in it when others—less wise in the ways of living with Thor and Becca—did though. “Get a fucking room.”

“I can’t,” Thor told him cheerfully, detaching himself from Becca long enough to grin at Steve. “I’ve been banished to the couch.”

Becca laughed delightedly and Steve groaned.

He needed new friends.

————————

Residence of Steve Rogers and Rebecca Barnes, Washington D.C., U.S.A.

9:46 PM

Steve

Natasha didn’t show up until well after dinner, appearing suddenly in their living room, still dressed in her mission gear and looking hilariously out of place, considering they’d all long since changed into sweatpants, comfy shirts and—in Becca’s case—a fleece Captain America onesie Tony had gifted each of the Avengers with because he thought he was hilarious.

Becca was half-dozing by the time Nat appeared, lying on her stomach on the couch, head on a pillow on Thor’s lap, her nose nearly pressed against his stomach, and Steve was feeling decidedly sleepy himself, blinking blearily at whatever romantic comedy Thor had turned on after he’d won the battle for the remote control.

He’d been sketching, earlier, but he was drowsy enough that he’d really just been filling in the tight line of Bucky’s jaw and the ragged edge of his torn jacket over and over again.

He blinked at Nat in surprise, before sighing a little. He’d long since given up trying to teach her to respect any sort of boundaries—he knew she did shit like this to provoke him, to see how far she could push him before he pushed back, before he’d get angry and yell—and mostly stuck to insisting she knocked if she came into one of their bedrooms.

She mostly respected that rule too.

And he had told her, sort of, to come over to tell him about what had been going on.

He really did kind of bring it on himself this time.

“Hey Nat,” he said lazily, smiling when Thor and Becca stirred to look at their visitor too. “Have a seat,” he added, gesturing to the other armchair as Thor reached for the remote, turning down the volume on his movie with great reluctance.

She eyed them all with a predatory kind of assessment before she smiled at Steve and tossed a brown manila folder on the coffee table. “Read that,” she ordered as she took a seat in the floral armchair. “It’s every intel-gathering mission within a larger mission that Fury’s assigned me on in the last six months,” she added when Steve reached for the folder and Becca sat up, sleepy and bleary-eyed but clearly paying attention.

“That’s what you were doing today?” Becca questioned when Steve handed her part of the file, skimming through the papers.

Nat nodded silently.

Steve clenched his jaw and looked down at the papers he was holding. The page detailed the info Nat had pulled from a classified server during a raid of an abandoned—or so they’d thought—A.I.M. base, referencing to… to key pieces of evidence going missing, easy missions going horribly awry in a myriad of increasingly unlikely ways, agents—good, dependable agents—going missing or dying in the line of duty—

Nat was right.

There was a pattern.

“Nat,” Becca said, and Steve’s head snapped up, because Becca sounded wrecked. “This is Sharon’s mission. The last—where—whydo you have Sharon’s mission in here?”

Natasha turned her gaze towards Becca, and there was something in her expression that set Steve’s nerves on edge. “Because there’s something very fishy going on.” Steve took the file from Becca, eyes scanning over the information quickly, stomach turning at the picture the report was painting.

“They’re trying to pin murder on her,” he spit, looking up at Nat desperately. “This is insane.”

Natasha nodded sharply. “I know that. Fury knows that. Sharon was recruited in high school. S.H.I.E.L.D. put her through college. We know she’s loyal. That’s why the file is in there; he’s keeping an eye on things, I think. He’s trying to… see patterns, find out if there’s something more going on. There’s been rumors of a mole inside S.H.I.E.L.D. before, but in the light of all of that,” she waved towards the files, “they’re thinking it might be Sharon.”

“What will happen to the young lady Carter while they try to see these patterns?” Thor questioned, rubbing his hand over Becca’s back when she hunched over, looking slightly green around the gills.

“Nothing bad,” Nat insisted. “Fury wouldn’t let them get rid of her or imprison her, unless they can prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that it was her. They’re probably going to put her on desk duty, assign her to the research department, something like that.”

“Do we trust him?”

Steve loathed to be the one to ask, because he didn’t want to distrust Fury, but… the man was the head of S.H.I.E.L.D. and it was very hard to imagine anything going on in the agency without Fury knowing about it.

“Yes,” Nat said vehemently, appearing almost insulted that he’d dared to question it at all.

“Do we trust him to be able to direct the investigation the right way?” Thor questioned. “The lady Carter is a friend to us all, none of us would see her wrongfully imprisoned.”

“I wanna call in the others,” Becca interjected hoarsely, tearing her eyes from the mess of papers on their coffee table. “I want to call in Tony. And Clint. I trust Fury, but Sharon’s family. I’m not taking any risks. We already know S.H.I.E.L.D.’s hidden things from us before. We can’t take a chance with this kind of investigation. If there’s a mole, they’ll do their level best to pin it all on Sharon.”

Natasha nodded. “I agree. I already contacted Stark and sent him everything I have.”

Steve nodded. “Who else knows about this so far?”

“Just us,” Nat replied tightly. “Fury knows something is off, I’m sure, that’s why he’s been sending me on side missions for months. I haven’t told him what I found yet.”

“Are you going to?”

Becca’s voice was quiet, but Steve could hear the steely resolve in in her tone.

He looked from his roommate to Natasha, who had perched on the second armchair carefully, and considered the advantages and the disadvantages of bringing Fury into the fold.

On the one hand, having the Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. on their side would definitely ensure that they had a semi-reliable source of information and someone who could get into places they couldn’t without arousing too much suspicion.

On the other… they had no idea how far up the mole was, and for all they knew right now, Fury was the mole. Steve honestly did not think that the man was, but stranger things had happened. After he’d seen the Red Skull peel off his own face, and crashed a plane into the Arctic and woke up seventy years later, he’d learned to stop taking things at face value.

Natasha didn’t reply for a long while, but eventually, she nodded. “I’ll tell him that I suspect something. I don’t need to tell him everything else until we know what we have.”

“So we run it like an Avengers Black Op,” Steve mused. “Strictly need-to-know. Only the team and essential personnel.” The idea of the Black ops was that no one but the Avengers themselves and a few trusted others would be in charge of gathering intel, analyzing the data and planning their next steps. Tony had insisted on developing the concept shortly after the mess in Greenwich, rightfully pointing out that they didn’t always have the luxury of letting Natasha run thorough and intense background checks on everyone involved. One day, they might have to handle information so delicate and dangerous they couldn’t afford to trust just anyone.

It was a sound idea, and Steve had been all for its development.  

They had not yet needed to put the concept to use, but if Natasha was right, and there was a mole in S.H.I.E.L.D., Steve didn’t want to risk trusting anyone but his teammates—and possibly Jane, Darcy, Maria and Erik Selvig, if they needed their expertise.

“Sounds like a fine idea,” Thor nodded approvingly, although he returned his attention to Becca swiftly when she exhaled with a shudder, fingers clenched around Sharon’s file.

“We have to tell Sharon,” Becca said, not looking up from the file. “This is her life, her career—we can’t do this without letting her know we’re on her side.” She looked up at Steve pleadingly, and Steve had to actively stop himself from immediately digging out his phone to call Sharon. Becca was right, and he hated it, because they couldn’t risk telling Sharon that the Avengers were on the case.

“We can’t,” Natasha said, and Steve felt a momentary wave of gratitude, because he really hadn’t wanted to be the person to tell Becca she couldn’t comfort her cousin when she needed it.

Becca opened her mouth to protest, but Nat cut her off before she could say anything. “Think, Barnes. Whoever this is, they’re very good at what they do. They have to have access to Sharon, there’s no other way for them to pull this off. Whoever they are, I’ll bet you anything Sharon knows them.”

Becca frowned at Nat, but grudgingly nodded. “Still. She needs to know that we—“” she gestured between herself, Steve and Thor, “—are on her side at least. I understand we can’t tell her we’re investigating things, but she needs to know her family’s got her back, at the very least.”

Natasha nodded begrudgingly. “Just keep her in the dark on the Avengers Op. I know we trust her, but we can’t afford for this to get back to whoever is trying to cover this up.”

Steve looked at the files and swallowed thickly. Natasha was right, however much he would like to pretend that she was not. There was something much bigger than just Sharon’s botched mission going on, and if Nat’s hunch proved right…

“This isn’t just about Sharon,” he said, gesturing to the rest of the files. “There’s something much bigger going on. We gotta—we gotta do this the right way, Becs.”

Becca nodded, leaning back against Thor with a deep sigh. “Yeah. Okay.”

“Do we have eyes on Sharon?” Steve asked, taking the file on her that Becca had discarded on their coffee table, flipping through the information laid out in it carefully.

Nat shook her head. “I haven’t set anything up yet.”

“Tony’ll probably have something untraceable and undetectable for us,” Becca pointed out calmly, shifting to sit crosslegged on the sofa. “We gotta use the fact that we have access to tech that no one else does.” She spread out a couple of files across her own lap and Thor’s as she spoke, and Steve was glad to see she wasn’t caught up on Sharon’s misfortune in all this, because he could really use Becca’s insights on this—he’d come to rely on her keen eye a lot over the past few years, and he knew that she saw things that he didn’t.

Natasha, too, had proved herself invaluable—it’s why they made such a good team.

“You called Tony, right?” Steve checked, looking up from his own file to see Natasha nod.

He looked down at the files again, glanced at the clock, and sighed. “Okay. We’re not going to be able to do anything tonight anyway. Becca, text Tony to call in the others too, we’ll convene at the Tower tomorrow—we’re due forty-eight hours off rotation anyway; we might as well use them. We can discuss the best and most efficient ways to set up surveillance on Sharon then. Thor, you’re not due in Asgard for a few more weeks, right?”

“Correct,” Thor boomed. “I’ll gladly be of assistance to clear young Lady Carter’s name.”

Becca smiled tiredly at him, leaning in to peck him on the cheek before she leaned down, resting her cheek on his shoulder.

Natasha nodded stiffly and stood, clearly making to gather the mess of papers on the table and disappear to wherever she liked to hide when she wasn’t here, trying to set Steve up with every eligible single she knew, and Steve sighed. “Nat,” he said, drawing her attention. “Just sleep in the spare room,” he said firmly. “I’ll feel better knowing you’re here and not getting into fights by yourself.”

Natasha smirked dangerously, raising an eyebrow at him. “I’m not you, Rogers.”

“Humor me then,” he insisted. He really would feel better knowing that his D.C. teammates were all under his roof—with the exception of Sharon, but Steve assumed she had Brock to look out for her, at least, and it wasn’t like he had another guest room to offer up. “You can probably borrow something of Becca’s to sleep in,” he added.

Becca, who looked like she was well on her way to falling back asleep on Thor’s shoulder, waved her hand vaguely, which Steve took to mean she was okay with Natasha raiding her closet.

She should be.

She stole his and Thor’s shirts often enough.

Nat glanced towards Becca for a moment before she turned to Steve again, carefully coiling her body as seductively as she could, jutting her full lower lip out into a pout. “What if I’d rather wear something of yours?” she purred, and Steve would be exasperated, but it really wasn’t the first time Nat tried to flirt with him like this, and he knew she was doing it to get a rise out of him anyway.

“I’m sure there’s plenty of my stuff in Becca’s closet too,” he replied evenly, offering her a mild smile.

Nat held the seductive pose for a moment longer before she let it go, nodding lightly. “Alright then,” she said softly. “We’ll do it your way, Rogers.”

Becca heaved herself up from the couch with a big sigh, gesturing towards the stairs impatiently. “Well then, Romanoff. Let’s go.”

Thor merely smiled when Becca looked back at him, holding her hand out, before he tapped her hip lightly. “Go on, Krúttið mitt. I will join you shortly, after I have helped Steve clean up.” He gestured grandly towards the mess of papers, and Steve watched as Becca shrugged, trudging towards the stairs with all the air of a woman about to fall asleep on her feet.

Nat eyed them both shrewdly for a moment, but remained silent as she followed Becca up the stairs.

“So,” Thor said when they’d heard the women disappear into Thor and Becca’s room. “What do you truly think of all this?” He gestured to the mess of papers he had gathered, messily attempting to shuffle them into a neat stack so he could shove them back into the folder.

Steve sighed and went to help, purposefully not looking at the words written on the pages. “I think we’re getting into something a lot bigger than we’re prepared for,” he admitted wryly. “I’m probably not gonna have time to go on that date after all.”

Thor smiled sympathetically and clasped his hand on Steve’s shoulder. “Worry not, my friend. We shall ensure you get the chance to speak to your Sam, and that our mission runs smoothly.”

Steve grinned a little despite his concerns. “If you say so.”

“I do,” Thor nodded decisively. “All will be well. You’ll see.”

———

Start from the beginning:

In Hell We Stand By You:

(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8)

Never Feel Alone:

(1) (2)

Decisions: (1)

Dancing with a Limp:

(1) (2)

Chances:

(1)

Starting Over: 

(1) 

Or read it HERE on AO3 :D Find the next chapter HERE on Tumblr :)

[newstfionline]

Saturday, May 1, 2021

Student loan debts (WSJ) U.S. taxpayers could ultimately be on the hook for roughly a third of the $1.6 trillion federal student loan portfolio. This could amount to more than $500 billion, exceeding what taxpayers lost on the saving-and-loan crisis 30 years ago. While defaulted student loans can’t cause the federal government to go bankrupt the way bad mortgage lending upended banks during the financial crisis, they expose a similar problem: Billions of dollars lent based on flawed assumptions about whether the money can be repaid.

Costa Rica to close non-essential businesses next week over COVID-19 (Reuters) Costa Rica will for the next week close non-essential businesses, including restaurants and bars, across the center of the country due to a sharp increase in new cases of COVID-19 and hospitalizations, the government said on Thursday. From May 3-9, restaurants, bars, department stores, beauty salons, gyms and churches must close in 45 municipalities in central Costa Rica, where almost half the population lives and over two-thirds of new cases have been registered. The government will also impose travel restrictions during the week.

After a Year of Loss, South America Suffers Worst Death Tolls Yet (NYT) In the capital of Colombia, Bogotá, the mayor is warning residents to brace for “the worst two weeks of our lives.” Uruguay, once lauded as a model for keeping the coronavirus under control, now has one of the highest death rates in the world, while the grim daily tallies of the dead have hit records in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia and Peru in recent days. Even Venezuela, where the authoritarian government is notorious for hiding health statistics and any suggestion of disarray, says that coronavirus deaths are up 86 percent since January. As vaccinations mount in some of the world’s wealthiest countries and people cautiously envision life after the pandemic, the crisis in Latin America—and in South America in particular—is taking an alarming turn for the worse, potentially threatening the progress made well beyond its borders. Last week, Latin America accounted for 35 percent of all coronavirus deaths in the world, despite having just 8 percent of the global population, according to data compiled by The New York Times.

France Proposes More Surveillance to Hunt for Potential Terrorists (NYT) The French government, responding to several attacks over the past seven months, presented a new anti-terrorism bill on Wednesday that would allow intense algorithmic surveillance of phone and internet communications and tighten restrictions on convicted terrorists emerging from prison. “There have been nine attacks in a row that we could not detect through current means,” Gérald Darmanin, the interior minister, told France Inter radio. “We continue to be blind, doing surveillance on normal phone lines that nobody uses any longer.” The draft bill, prepared by Mr. Darmanin, came in a political and social climate envenomed by Marine Le Pen, the far-right leader, who applauded a letter published this month by 20 retired generals that described France as being in a state of “disintegration” and warned of a possible coup in thinly veiled terms. Published in a right-wing magazine, Valeurs Actuelles, the generals’ letter portrayed a country ravaged by violence, swept by hatred and prey to subversive ideologies bent on stirring a racial war. “If nothing is done,” they said, “laxity will spread inexorably across society, provoking in the end an explosion and the intervention of our active-service comrades in the perilous protection of our civilization’s values.”

Toll of Afghan ‘forever war’ (AP) After 20 years, America is ending its “forever war” in Afghanistan. Announcing a firm withdrawal deadline, President Joe Biden cut through the long debate, even within the U.S. military, over whether the time was right. Starting Saturday, the last remaining 2,500 to 3,500 American troops will begin leaving, to be fully out by Sept. 11 at the latest. Another debate will likely go on far longer: Was it worth it? Since 2001, tens of thousands of Afghans and 2,442 American soldiers have been killed, millions of Afghans driven from their homes, and billions of dollars spent on war and reconstruction. The U.S. and NATO leave behind an Afghanistan that is at least half run directly or indirectly by the Taliban—despite billions poured into training and arming Afghan forces to fight them. Riddled with corruption and tied to regional warlords, the U.S.-backed government is widely distrusted by many Afghans.

In India’s devastating coronavirus surge, anger at Modi grows (Washington Post) As he surveyed the thousands of people gathered at an election rally in eastern India on April 17, Prime Minister Narendra Modi appeared jubilant. “Everywhere I look, as far as I can see, there are crowds,” he said, his arms spread wide. “You have done an extraordinary thing.” At the time, India was recording more than 200,000 coronavirus cases a day. In the western state of Maharashtra, oxygen was running short, and people were dying at home because of a shortage of hospital beds. In Modi’s home state of Gujarat, crematoriums were being overwhelmed by the dead. For Modi, the most powerful Indian prime minister in five decades, it is a moment of reckoning. He is facing what appears to be the country’s biggest crisis since independence. Modi’s own lapses and missteps are an increasing source of anger. As coronavirus cases skyrocketed, Modi continued to hold huge election rallies and declined to cancel a Hindu religious festival that drew millions to the banks of the Ganges River. Modi swept to a landslide reelection victory in 2019, offering Indians a muscular brand of nationalism that views India as a fundamentally Hindu country rather than the secular republic envisioned by its founders. He has cultivated an image as a singular leader capable of bold decisions to protect and transform the country. Now that image is “in tatters,” said Vinay Sitapati, a political scientist at Ashoka University in the northern Indian state of Haryana. Modi and his governing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) built a formidable machine for winning elections, Sitapati said, but their mind-set of continuous campaigning has come “at the cost of governance.”

Iran and Saudi Arabia Edge Toward Détente (Foreign Policy) Iran’s relationship with Saudi Arabia could be entering “a new chapter of interaction and cooperation,” Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said on Thursday, as the two countries signal a rapid mending of diplomatic ties. Khatibzadeh’s comments came in response to an interview Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman gave to state television this week, when he said that problems between the regional rivals could be overcome and “good relations” could soon prevail. His recent comments offer a stark contrast with ones he made in 2018 when he compared Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to Adolf Hitler and described Iran as part of a “triangle of evil.” Behind the scenes, the two countries have also been busy. Earlier this month, the Financial Times broke news of direct talks, held in Baghdad, with a primary focus on ending the war in Yemen.

Chloe Zhao's challenge to Chinese Beauty standards (Quartz) Although Chloé Zhao’s Oscars win has largely been censored in China, her chill, no-makeup look at the awards ceremony has become a hit among many Chinese women, who say Zhao made them feel they can also ditch cosmetics and stop appealing to mainstream beauty standards in the country. China has a set of rigid standards for women’s appearance, prompting online slimming challenges that encourage young girls to pursue body shapes that allow them to wear children’s clothes, or have waists with a width similar to the shorter side of a piece of A4 paper (around 21 cm). As such, Zhao’s no-makeup look is a much-needed endorsement for women in China, where few public figures dare to break away from traditional beauty requirements.

Hong Kong’s latest star TV host? City leader Carrie Lam. (Washington Post) In a city known for producing action-packed martial arts movies, there’s a gripping new TV show on the block. The title promises to captivate viewers: “Get to Know the Election Committee Subsectors.” The star? Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam, not as a guest but as the host. The show, which premiered Wednesday on public broadcaster Radio Television Hong Kong, gives Lam a platform to promote electoral changes introduced by Beijing that further tilt the system against pro-democracy voices, add weight to industry-sector representatives and ensure only “patriots” loyal to the Communist Party can govern Hong Kong. People in mainland China have long been accustomed to state propaganda broadcasts. Hong Kong, however, traditionally had a freewheeling media environment. But almost a year after China imposed a security law that curtailed freedom of speech there, the public broadcaster has become a vital instrument of Beijing’s efforts to control the narrative. Wednesday night’s double-episode premiere featured furious agreement on the merit of Beijing’s electoral changes. The episodes scored only a few thousand views and mostly “thumbs-down” responses on YouTube. One user drew comparisons to George Orwell’s “1984.” If you missed the show, there’s plenty of opportunity to catch it again; episodes will air four times a day, every day.

Cambodians complain of lockdown hunger as outbreak takes toll on poor (Reuters) Residents in Cambodia’s capital gathered on Friday to demand food from the government, outraged at what they called inadequate aid distribution during a tough COVID-19 lockdown that bars people from leaving their homes. Authorities put Phnom Penh and a nearby town under a hard lockdown on April 19 to quell a surge in coronavirus infections that has seen Cambodia’s case total balloon from about 500 to 12,641 since late February, including all 91 of its deaths. Though private food deliveries are operating, markets and street food services are closed, making it difficult for poorer families to get supplies, with many without income because of the stay-home order. Amnesty International on Friday called Cambodia’s lockdown an emerging humanitarian and human rights crisis, with nearly 294,000 people in Phnom Penh at risk of going hungry.

Palestinian election delay (Reuters) It could have marked a political turning point. Palestinians were slated to go to the polls starting next month for the first time in 15 years—but on Thursday, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas announced he will indefinitely postpone the elections. He blamed Israel, accusing authorities of stonewalling efforts to let Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem cast their ballots. But Israeli officials suggested Abbas was using Israel as a pretext to cancel a vote his faction might lose. Hamas, his party’s rival, has rejected the move, and some Palestinians took to the streets to protest.

The real threat to Chad’s military rulers: unemployed youth (Reuters) When Neldjibaye Madjissem graduated with a mathematics degree in 2015, he began searching for work as a school teacher. Six years on, he is still looking—and is angry. The 31-year-old blames Chad's government for lack of work, mismanagement of oil revenues and corruption. No wonder people are protesting on the streets in their thousands, he says. The battlefield death of President Idriss Deby last week, after 30 years of autocratic rule, sent the Central African country into a tailspin. But perhaps the greater threat for Chad’s rulers comes from the mass of unemployed young people tired of the Deby family and its international allies, particularly former colonial ruler France. At least six people died in violent protests this week. "The lack of jobs risks creating a great problem. The people are angry," said Madjissem, as he prepared a private lesson to a high school student in the living room of a tiny house in N'Djamena. His infrequent wage: $3 an hour.

Famine looms in southern Madagascar, U.N.’s food agency says (Reuters) Famine is looming in southern Madagascar, where children are “starving” after drought and sandstorms ruined harvests, the U.N.’s World Food Programme (WFP) said on Friday. Amer Daoudi, senior director of WFP operations globally, speaking from Antananarivo, Madagascar, said he had visited villages where people had resorted to eating locusts and leaves. “I witnessed horrific images of starving children, malnourished, and not only the children—mothers, parents and the populations in villages we visited,” Daoudi told a United Nations briefing in Geneva. Malnutrition has almost doubled to 16% from 9% in March 2020 following five consecutive years of drought, exacerbated this year by sandstorms and late rains, he said.

[theliberaltony]

via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

For the first time this cycle, a state that isn’t more than 85 percent white will weigh in on who should be the Democratic nominee for president. There are significant demographic differences among Nevada’s four congressional districts, too, which could mean different candidates will win different districts — unlike in Iowa and New Hampshire where the district-level picture didn’t vary much. This is important because 23 of the 36 pledged delegates at stake in Nevada today are actually awarded based on the winner of each congressional district, not who wins statewide.

Our primary model takes this into account, calculating the average forecasted pledged delegates for each candidate in each district. And while we forecast that Sen. Bernie Sanders will win the state so handily that he also carries all four congressional districts, some of the lower-polling candidates are still likely to do better in some corners of the state than in others.

Nevada’s 1st Congressional District, which covers the heart of Las Vegas, is the least white district in Nevada — which also makes it the most racially diverse district to vote in the primary thus far. A plurality (45 percent) of the population here is Latino, while 31 percent are white and 11 percent are black. Given Sanders’s and former Vice President Joe Biden’s strength with Latino voters and black voters, our forecast thinks they will do the best here: Sanders gets 2.7 of the 1st District’s five total delegates in our average model run, while Biden nabs 1.0.

In addition, the 1st District has the lowest median income in the state, and few residents here have a college degree. That probably hurts candidates such as former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg, Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Sen. Amy Klobuchar, whose bases include college-educated white voters. We are forecasting all three to get fewer than one delegate in the 1st District.

However, Warren isn’t letting this district go without a fight — she has opened three field offices in the district, tied with Sanders for the most. And while philanthropist Tom Steyer technically has zero field offices in the 1st District, that doesn’t mean his field operation doesn’t have easy access to the area. His 3rd and 4th district field offices are just a few blocks away from the border with the 1st.

The 2nd Congressional District is the only one not to include a portion of metro Las Vegas; it covers the northern half of the state, most notably the Reno area, and it is the most rural district in Nevada. But before you picture a vast desert, consider that it is still about as dense as the most urban congressional districts in Iowa and New Hampshire.

In 2016, this was the only district in Nevada that Sanders carried, which he did by about 9 points. Our model anticipates that he will dominate here again in 2020, winning an average of 3.0 of its six delegates. But we’re also expecting Buttigieg to earn 1.4 delegates here, making it his best district. Buttigieg did well in rural counties in Iowa, and he appears to be courting them in Nevada too. Buttigieg has opened four field offices in the 2nd — his most of any district — and is the only candidate with an office in Fallon, a city of 8,500 on U.S. Route 50.

The 2nd, however, might be Biden’s worst district. He only wins, on average, 0.5 delegates in our forecast. This could be due to the fact that this is the whitest district in Nevada (although there is still a substantial Latino population). Perhaps to offset this, Biden also appears to be putting in a disproportionate amount of effort in the 2nd District: There are two Biden field offices here, while every other district has only one.

The 3rd Congressional District, worth six pledged delegates, covers the southern tip of Nevada, including southern Las Vegas and the booming suburb of Henderson. In this fairly working-class state, the 3rd District qualifies as Nevada’s most affluent and college-educated. That’s good news for the likes of Buttigieg, whom we expect to perform better here than in most other districts, with 1.2 delegates on average. (He and Sanders are the only candidates with more than one field office here.)

Despite voting for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton by 5 points in 2016, this year the 3rd District is expected to be Sanders’s best district, awarding him 3.1 delegates. No other candidate — including Biden — averages more than one delegate here in our forecast.

Finally, the 4th Congressional District stretches from North Las Vegas to several rural counties upstate. In 2016, this was Clinton’s best district — she defeated Sanders here by more than 17 points. The fact that the 4th District has Nevada’s highest share of black voters, with whom Clinton excelled in 2016, may have contributed to that. And this year, although black voters have warmed to Sanders recently in national polls, most are still behind Biden, helping to explain why our forecast thinks this will be Biden’s best district: He gets 1.1 of the 4th District’s six delegates on average. Once again, Sanders is on track to receive the most delegates from the district, at 3.1.

However, Buttigieg has opened the most field offices of any candidate in the 4th District — three, including one in Pahrump in rural Nye County, where he is the only candidate with a presence. But while he may do well at the district’s rural caucus sites, the bulk of the Democratic vote has historically come from urban Clark County, explaining why he only gets an average of 0.8 delegates here in our forecast.

Got all that? There will be a quiz — it’s called the FiveThirtyEight live blog of the Nevada caucuses, coming to your computer screen this afternoon.

[hillchill]

MANDELA TAKES CLINTONS FOR A WALK THROUGH HISTORY OF SOUTH AFRICA                    

By Peter Baker   March 21, 1997  

In her many travels around the world as first lady, Hillary Rodham Clinton has been toasted by plenty of foreign leaders who proudly showed her their palaces, their historic landmarks, their national treasures.

Nelson Mandela showed her his prison cell.

But then again, there may be no more historic landmark in South Africa these days than Spartan, 6-by-9-foot Cell No. 5 in this island prison six miles off the Cape of Good Hope. And there is certainly no more revered national treasure than Mandela himself, the prisoner-turned-president who struggled for the liberation of South Africa's black majority.

Less than three months after the infamous Robben Island facility was reopened as a museum celebrating the fight against apartheid -- South Africa's now-vanquished system of racial separation -- Mandela returned today to lead Clinton and her daughter, Chelsea, through its halls and past the bars that once separated him from the outside world. With an easy smile and no trace of bitterness, Mandela played the genial guide. Here he had a garden. There was the court where prisoners played basketball. This was the small cabinet where he kept his few belongings.

"When we first arrived, they put me in this one," he said, gesturing to a wooden door where a cell has now been made into an office. "Then one day we came back, and they had put me in the very last cell. We didn't know why they did that."

It soon became clear, though. In the first cell, Mandela recalled, "I acted virtually as a spokesman for the prisoners." Prison officials hoped that by moving him they would isolate him. But it didn't work, he said, because any time they came to talk to the inmates, "every prisoner here said, Now you go down to our spokesman.' "

Clinton's visit off the southern tip of the continent was perhaps the most emotional touchstone so far during her two-week journey through Africa. At her every stop over the last four days, from a housing project started by shantytown women to a monument to the Soweto uprising, Clinton has sought to highlight Africa's progress toward democracy and offer encouragement from the United States.

"We have an old saying in America that idle hands are the Devil's work," she said in a speech to 500 students and guests at the University of Cape Town this morning. "From what I have seen in just a few short days, the Devil will have no help here. South Africa is a country that is too busy to hate."

In her address, modeled after one delivered at the same school by Robert F. Kennedy 31 years ago, Clinton announced a commitment of $16 million more in U.S. aid for efforts to eradicate polio from Africa by 2000.

During a question-and-answer session with students, though, Clinton sounded themes that might have sounded more familiar to a domestic audience. In assessing their role in history, she said "women do most of the hard work in our world" and warned the young women in the audience not to be "tricked or seduced into undermining other women's work or opportunities."

Clinton laughed when one woman asked her whether there might ever be a female president in the United States. "Well, hope springs eternal," she answered.

"You know, I have thought a lot about this," she continued coyly, prompting gales of laughter and applause, before she added the caveat, "strictly as a student of political science."

The first lady predicted that women would run in 2000 and win within 20 years. Wondering aloud why it had been easier for Britain's Margaret Thatcher, India's Indira Gandhi and Israel's Golda Meir, she theorized that perhaps it was because they worked in parliamentary systems where they were elevated by peers who knew their work.

After her speech, Clinton spent the rest of her day with Mandela. Their two stops together vividly illustrated the vast distance he has traveled, physically and politically.

Before heading to Robben Island, where he spent 18 of his 27 years behind bars before being set free in 1990, Clinton met with him at Genadendal, the picturesque presidential mansion he inherited four years later, located on a rolling, leafy estate in Cape Town, where security guards keep others out, not Mandela in.

The 79-year-old president moved slowly but steadily as he led the first lady by the arm and later wrapped his arm warmly around Chelsea. After the prison tour, the Clintons joined Mandela for a $56,500-per-couple dinner on the island to raise money for the museum, which opened Jan. 1. Among the other guests were U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan and comedian Bill Cosby.

Mandela was first taken on the long, lonely boat ride to Robben in 1964 after he was convicted of treason and sentenced to life imprisonment. In those days, African prisoners were called "boys," deprived of sugar and bread, and forced to wear short pants no matter the season. Letters and visits were restricted to one every six months. Eventually, the inmates were sent to a nearby limestone quarry, where for eight hours a day they swung pickaxes -- and, when guards weren't looking, quietly passed along news of the liberation movement on the outside.

Mandela came to look forward to the quarry, even though the intense glare from the reflected sun damaged his eyes. "You get used to hard work," Ahmed Kathrada, who was convicted alongside Mandela and now serves in Parliament, said today as he showed the Clintons around the quarry. "But you don't get used to loneliness in your cell." CAPTION: South African President Nelson Mandela talks to first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton at his residence in Cape Town before their visit to Robben Island.

[bountyofbeads]

Trump asks for military tanks on the Mall as part of grandiose July Fourth event

https://wapo.st/2NrChuC

Tanks. On the Mall. As a "prop for Trump's Salute to America."

Totally normal.

We all knew he would. He was told they would wreck the DC streets. And we all knew he’d seem to drop the issue, only to attempt to “order” it to happen anyway, at the last minute and with zero logistical planning.

Trump asks for military tanks on the Mall as part of grandiose July Fourth event

By Juliet Eilperin and Josh Dawsey | Published July 1 at 7:29 AM | Washington Post | Posted July 1, 2019 |

National Park Service acting director P. Daniel Smith faces plenty of looming priorities this summer, from an $11 billion backlog in maintenance needs to natural disasters like the recent wildfire damage to Big Bend Park.

But in recent days, another issue has competed for Smith’s attention: how to satisfy President Trump’s request to station tanks or other armored military vehicles on the Mall for his planned Fourth of July address to the nation.

The ongoing negotiations over whether to use massive military hardware, such as Abrams tanks or Bradley Fighting Vehicles , as a prop for Trump’s “Salute to America” is just one of many unfinished details when it comes to the celebration planned for Thursday, according to several people briefed on the plan, who requested anonymity to speak frankly.

White House officials intend to give out tickets for attendees to sit in a VIP section and watch Trump’s speech, but did not develop a distribution system before much of the staff left for Asia last week, according to two administration officials. Officials are also still working on other key crowd management details, such as how to get attendees through magnetometers in an orderly fashion.

Traditionally, major gatherings on the Mall, including inauguration festivities and a jubilee commemorating the start of a new millennium, have featured a designated event producer. But in this case, the producer is the president himself.

Trump has demonstrated an unusual level of interest in this year’s Independence Day observance, according to three senior administration officials. He has received regular briefings about it from Interior Secretary David Bernhardt, according to the people briefed on the plan, and has weighed in on everything from how the pyrotechnics should be launched to how the military should be honored.

As a result, the administration has organized a far more ambitious celebration than was originally planned, at a yet-to-be specified additional cost to taxpayers. Twomajor fireworks firms have donated a pyrotechnic show valued at $750,000, for example, but the Park Service will have to pay employees overtime to clean up the remnants of that display. The fireworks have also been moved to a new location in West Potomac Park at Trump’s urging.

Trump has also spurred the use of military aircraft for a flyover, including one of the jetliners used as Air Force One. In addition, the Navy’s Blue Angels were supposed to have a break between a performance in Davenport, Iowa on June 30 and one in Kansas City, Mo. on July 6, but will now be flying in D.C. on the 4th.

The White House declined to comment on the ongoing plans.

Asked about the discussions about using armored vehicles and the projected overall costs of the event, Interior officials also declined to publicly comment. They noted that the department issued an updated itinerary announcing the timing of the president’s speech as well as additional details on the military performance and 35-minute fireworks display.

“This is going to be a fantastic Fourth of July with increased access across the National Mall for the public to enjoy music, flyovers, a spectacular fireworks display, and an address by our Commander-in-Chief,” Bernhardt said in the news release.

Trump has been fixated since early in his term with putting on a military-heavy parade or other celebration modeled on France’s Bastille Day celebration, which he attended in Paris in 2017. Trump angrily backed off plans for a grand Veterans Day parade down Pennsylvania Avenue in 2018 amid concerns from District officials over costs and potential road damage from military vehicles.

The type of armored tactical vehicles under consideration for this year’s Fourth of July celebration can weigh 60 tons or more, and some, such as Abrams tanks, have tracks that can be particularly damaging.

The Pentagon is aware of Trump’s interest in having armored vehicles involved and is weighing having static displays of them during the celebration, defense officials said.

Advocates for the Park Service as well as some Democratic lawmakers and D.C. officials have questioned why the federal government is devoting resources to the event given constrained budgets and other demands.

“It’s irresponsible to ask the National Park Service to absorb the costs of an additional and political event when there are so many unmet needs in the parks,” said Coalition to Protect America’s National Parks Chair Phil Francis, whose group represents current, former and retired Park Service employees and volunteers, in an email. “The men and women of the National Park Service have been asked to do more with less for too long. Funds should be directed to the agency’s highest needs such as operation of the parks and the maintenance backlog and should not be directed to support political objectives.”

Trump’s decision to transform the nation’s long-standing Fourth of July celebration provided an opportunity for firms like Fireworks By Grucci, the family-run Long Island company that has produced shows to celebrate Independence Day in major cities around the world as well as ones at different Trump properties. As soon as the president tweeted about the idea in February, the firm’s president, Felix “Phil” Grucci Jr., recalled in a phone interview, he began sketching out a possible show.

“I made some design renders for what we would do,” Grucci said, adding that he had expected there would be a designated point person for the show, as there has been for other federal observances.

“We were originally thinking there would be an announcement of what the project would be for the event,” he added.

Instead, Grucci — who has teamed up with Phantom Fireworks CEO Bruce Zoldan, a major supplier of consumer fireworks in the U.S. — reached out directly to the White House, along with other federal officials. Grucci said he did not recall the names of his firm’s White House contacts, but said he did not speak directly to the president.

The Park Service already had a multiyear contract with Garden State Fireworks to launch fireworks on the Mall for the Fourth of July. While the cost varies per year, it was $271,374 in 2018.

Administration officials discussed whether they could cancel the existing contract to accept the new donation and save taxpayers money, according to two government officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. But they concluded they could not break off the agreement with Garden State, these officials said, and instead opted to provide a show that will be roughly twice as long as last year’s.

“There was always a question of how the performance we were designing and envisioning how it would integrate with the existing Park Service show,” Grucci said. “We weren’t thinking we were going to replace that performance at any means.”

The upcoming pyrotechnics show will include several new elements, including a massive American flag and the words “U.S.A.” spelled out in the sky.

The only comparable event on the Mall in recent decades is “America’s Millennium Celebration: A Celebration for the Nation,” an effort commissioned by former president Bill Clinton and first lady Hillary Clinton to mark the start of the 21st century. The festivities, organized by their friend and fundraiser Terry McAuliffe and White House social secretary Capricia Marshall, took place on Dec. 31, 1999 and Jan. 1, 2000, and included a concert on the Mall, an appearance by the Clintons, a fireworks show and presentations at multiple museums.

McAuliffe said in an interview that the effort raised roughly $4 million in private donations and was closely coordinated with the Park Service and other federal agencies. But he emphasized that it was different from Salute to America, because the Clintons played only a modest role in it.

“The Clintons did not take over a decades, century-old celebration of the nation and insert themselves in the middle of it,” he said, adding that the president did not weigh in on any of the decisions and Hillary Clinton only initiated the event because other countries were preparing similar celebrations.

“Once she knew it was up and running, she was not involved in it at all,” said McAuliffe, who went on to serve as Virginia’s governor. “They showed up for the day, and were very happy.”

In a phone interview last week, Zoldan said that he hoped the Salute to America would bring people together rather than prove divisive.

“We wanted to do it as a gift to America,” Zoldan said. “We wanted to give back for this special great time to do bring people together again, by celebrating America’s birthday.”

Anti-Trump protesters, including the group Code Pink, are negotiating with Park Service officials over whether a massive “Trump Baby” balloon they want to fly will comply with flight restrictions that will be in place over the Mall during the Fourth.

But at least one protest is going forward: a group of senior citizens living at The Residences at Thomas Circle will hold a singalong at the same time as Trump’s speech, in a gathering they’ve dubbed, “Make Americans Friends Again.”

Dan Lamothe contributed to this report.

[sportsgeekonomics]

Competition once again sniffs out a bogus claim of principle

In 2015, after having lost the O’Bannon case, the "Power 5″ conferences (P5) (who like to call themselves the Autonomy 5, like some sort of super hero coalition)[1] agreed among themselves to start allowing their scholarships to include cash payments to cover the off-campus elements of the full Cost of Attendance (COA) that had been prohibited by NCAA rules since 1976, such as living expenses and travel expenses.

Under the new “autonomy” rules the NCAA had passed the previous summer, these five conferences were now allowed to collude among themselves and no longer needed to collude with the rest of the schools in D1, as long as they did not exceed COA.  Thus, when they made this move in January 2015 (effective August 2015), they essentially moved to the absolute highest level the NCAA allowed them.  Those same rules said that any other conference that wanted to do so, could match the P5.

There were a lot of people who knew deep in their bones that few, if any other schools could afford to match the P5 on this.  The Colonial Athletic Conference, an eastern conference with schools like Delaware, William & Mary and Elon, was one of just two conferences that voted against allowing the P5 the independence to make this change (the Ivy League was the other).  The representative of the Colonial Athletic Association, University of Delaware President Patrick Harker explained:

“Division I is very diverse — schools with very large budgets that are very well resourced and those like us that subsidize athletics,” he said. “Often the media think of all college athletics as making millions of dollars. That’s not true. The majority of us don’t.”

Colonial conference leaders and others say that in addition to widening the wealth gap in college sports, already deeply entrenched, the new structure does not address important issues that could have just as well been dealt with under the old structure.

Presumably smart people accepted the idea that this was going to permanently severe the Haves from the Haves-Nots, the schools that could afford to pay COA from schools, like Delaware, that clearly could not.  As the Dothraki attendants of Daenerys Targaryen were fond of saying, “It is known” that only the P5, or maybe a fringe of other schools, had the money to match this.[2]

Quickly, it became clear that the extent of the ability to pay COA to athletes was far greater than the 65 schools in the P5.  In early 2016, an expert report by Daniel Rascher[3] estimated how many schools had adopted (or announced plans to adopt) COA, and already it reached deep into the non-P5 ranks, with all but 5 FBS schools announcing the adoption of Full or Partial COA, and over 200 D1 basketball schools (out of a total 340 non Ivy League, non-military schools in D1) doing the same.

By mid-2017, the schools themselves had to declare whether they had adopted some form of COA or not.  Over 260 schools admitted in legal proceedings that, yes, they had in fact adopted COA for some or all of their football or men’s/women’s basketball athletes.

Now, to be clear, this left about 80 or so hold out schools that had not done some.  Among these were HBCUs, which struggle with funding for all elements of their campuses, sports included.  But there were also some well-funded schools that made a big deal out of the fact that they were not going to adopt COA, because COA was, essentially, immoral.  That it was wrong to provide a true “full ride” to athletes when so many other deserving students were getting less.  Chief among these were nine schools that wrote an open letter in September 2015, declaring their principled opposition to the very idea of increasing athletic scholarships to cover the full attendance, who I like to call the Nine “No, No, Never!” schools.  

The four most prominent of these schools were Elon University, James Madison University, the University of Delaware, and William and Mary University. They explained that:

“While we are happy for that very small number of students who are able to pursue professional sports careers (which typically last only a few years), we must maintain our focus on the education that we provide that will prepare them for life after college and life after sport. Given that focus, we believe that we must continue to treat these students as we do our other students.” 

And thus, while other schools “have recently opted to offer ‘cost of attendance’ payments that provide additional economic benefits for miscellaneous expenses to some or all student-athletes (particularly in high-profile sports that receive significant media attention),” these nine schools “have chosen not to offer additional “cost of attendance” payments to student-athletes at this time.”

As they explained, their opposition was based on principle, because as they saw it, paying Full COA was, “a more professional model towards individual compensation” and, as they put it:

“Spending even more money on payments for certain high-profile sports could lead to pressures to eliminate other varsity sports on campus, which would limit the athletic experiences available to many of our students or cause an increase in tuition and fees for all students. It is our responsibility to ensure that the disproportionate media and financial attention on certain high-profile sports does not undermine opportunities for large numbers of students or get in the way of larger institutional interests. Accordingly, we are committed to administering our institution’s athletic programs in ways that are consistent with our mission, culture and values.”

You can read the full thing, but be sure to wear a hazmat suit or whatever, because the sanctimony might drip all over your shirt while you read it.  Keep in mind that these schools essentially laid down a marker – paying COA is inconsistent “with our mission, culture and values.”

Of course, as a matter of competition theory, this is how markets should work.  If 260 schools want to pay their athletes COA, and 80 don’t, and among that 80 the reasons vary from lack of funding to a desire not to compete on price, that’s great.  It’s a little troubling that 9 schools seems to have agreed among themselves, but the Presidents of those universities were clear each had reached the decision independently, so if we take them at their word, then 9 schools choosing not to compete using COA as a recruiting tool is really the same as Chick-fil-A choosing not to open on Sundays, out of principle.

But competition theory also says, in the words of the philosophy Bobbi Fleckman, that money talks and bullshit walks.  Even before the second season of COA was underway, James Madison (JMU) had changed its tune.  Facing an angry fan reaction (along the lines of: how dare you not compete for talent as hard as other schools), principled opposition turned into acquiescence to the market.  Eight months after the letter, JMU announced that it would offer Full COA to men’s and women’s basketball (but not football) athletes beginning in the 2017-18 year.  

When asked about the change under oath, JMU President Jonathan Alger explained:

So basically -- we didn’t want to lose good athletes, and we didn’t want to lose good coaches if they were afraid of losing good athletes, and they didn’t want to lose basketball games.  So we know what JMU’s real principle always was.  And perhaps for this reason, it was not stated in the announcement, whether it was now consistent with JMU’s mission to adopt “a more professional model towards individual compensation” for basketball, but remained inconsistent for football, or whether it was just the fact that JMU is more competitive in basketball than it is football, with its football still in FCS, the lower half of D1 football.

Other schools on the list of the “No, No, Never! Nine” slowly changed their minds as well.  According to public information from the “Alston v. NCAA” case, New Hampshire began offering COA on a case-by-case basis in 2016-17, and Delaware began offering Full COA to MBB and WBB athletes beginning in the 2017-18 year.

But still William and Mary (W&M) and Elon stood out.  Neither was on the list of the ~260 schools that acknowledged they had adopted some form of COA in the settlement of the damages portion of the “Alston v. NCAA” case, which included all schools that “provide, have provided, or have indicated by or before June 1, 2017 an intent to start providing any portion of the gap between the amount of GIA allowed prior to August 1, 2015 and full COA to at least one” football or basketball athlete.

So, principle over profit, right?  Well, as the philosopher Lee Corso has said, not so fast my friend.  

New methods of competition, like any innovation, takes time to diffuse throughout a marketplace.  Not every company adopted on-line shopping on Day 1 of the internet.  Not every household bought one of those new-fangled color TVs on the first day they hit the market.[4]  And not every school that was on the list of 260 COA schools had adopted it on August 1, 2015, when they were first allowed to.  It took some time, but the number of adopters grew and grew.  And not surprisingly, the cut-off for the settlement of June 1, 2017 was also not the end of the process of adoption.

Steely Dan saw it coming all along, when they sang “Woah no, William and Mary won’t do.”  Very under the radar, even for someone like me who keeps tracks of hypocrisy with respect to “amateurism,” in August 2016, it was announced that William and Mary would do COA for men’s and women’s basketball:

“A William & Mary representative on Friday said that the Tribe this school year will start providing cost of attendance to men’s and women’s basketball scholarship recipients. The COA stipend will range from $2,800 to $3,000, depending on various factors, among them being whether the student does or does not reside in Virginia.”

At the same time, JMU expanded its COA offers beyond basketball, announcing

“James Madison will begin providing cost of attendance for football players and all scholarship athletes starting in the fall of 2019, the Harrisonburg Daily News-Record reported this week. JMU already was offering cost of attendance in men’s and women’s basketball, at about $4,000 per player.”

But Elon stood firm.  Mere economic pressure cannot sway a school if it’s committed to the principle of amateurism, and is standing firm against “a more professional model towards individual compensation” and intent on “administering our institution’s athletic programs in ways that are consistent with our mission, culture and values,” right?

Wrong.

As anyone who believes in the power of markets as a lie detector might have predicted, competition got the better of Elon’s claims of principled opposition.  Last month, Elon announced that it too had begun paying its athletes full COA:

“In what registers as the calling of a considerable audible, Elon is changing course on the cost of attendance stipends that are permitted by the NCAA and will pay those allowances to its athletes, beginning with men’s and women’s basketball players…. Men’s and women’s basketball players will start receiving cost of attendance during the approaching 2019-20 school year, as Elon embarks on a phasing-in process across its 17 sports teams. By 2022-23, athletics director Dave Blank said the Phoenix plans to have the stipends implemented for all of its scholarship athletes.”

Elon’s reasoning?   Doing well in basketball (and other sports over time) is apparently more important to them than “administering our institution’s athletic programs in ways that are consistent with our mission, culture and values.”  Or maybe a better way to say it is that the “mission, culture and values” of Elon is more about avoiding “competitive disadvantage in recruiting in our region and our conference” than it is about refusing to pay the going rate for top talent.

In other words, money talks and bullshit walks.

If you are one of those old fuddy-duddies who reads this and thinks, o, alas! How filthy lucre corrupts even the best of us, you aren’t paying attention, remember that no one made JMU, W&M, or Elon pay college athletes anything.  They aren’t required to give a single scholarship in men’s basketball if they don’t think athletes should be paid. (and yes, a scholarship is pay.)

They were not required to add a monthly COA pay check when it was adopted, and they said they would not.  But in markets, choices have consequences.  The consequence these schools suddenly faced was that the quality of their basketball (and other sports) programs faced the risk of declining.  Coaches maybe started losing recruits to other schools.  Now remember, these are schools that explicitly claimed they do not make money with sports – go back to their letter from 2015 and you can see they included themselves among the schools that “invest millions of dollars annually beyond the monies generated by athletics in order to support their student-athletes and the benefits and values intercollegiate sports bring to the institution.”  So by their own logic, spending more on sports was just a waste, right?  Not making any money at the old price, why spend more?  And it’s not like Elon is so dominant in men’s basketball that its identity was at risk or anything.

No, despite the claims that “everybody’s broke,” when the schools faced the prospect of having slightly lower-quality sports on campus, they eventually realized that their principled opposition wasn’t really all that important after all.  After all, explained Elon, they were the last hold out in the Colonial Athletic Association [a conference which voted AGAINST allowing the P5 the ability to allow COA without a full NCAA vote], saying “The other nine schools were going to be doing it, so we felt it was important to keep up.”

Chick-fil-A doesn’t feel the need to keep up with other fast food places on Sundays, because, whether you agree with them or not, they hold a deep principled belief that Sunday is a day of rest.  That’s what principle over profit looks like.  “We felt it was important to keep up” is an admission that your claims of principle were bogus rationalizations.  If your principles are so weakly held that at the first contact with economic reality, you abandon them, they probably weren’t worth a damn to begin with.

And that sums up the Principle of Amateurism pretty well.  Not worth a damn to begin with.  Thank you, James Madison, William & Mary, and Elon, for showing the world your true principles and making it clear that Amateurism is a Con.

[1] As you probably know, these five conferences are the ACC, Big Ten, Big Twelve, Pac-12, and SEC.

[2] Another thing that was “known” was that in order to afford COA for superstars, schools were going to have to cut the scholarships of benchwarmers… this little post doesn’t cover that, but rest assured, that too was false.

[3] Full disclosure, Dan is my friend and business partner, and I helped him with the research to build this table back in 2015 and 2016 when he wrote the report.

[4] In economics this process is known as the diffusion of innovation.  You can read more about it at Rogers, Everett M., “Diffusion of Innovations,” Fourth Edition, The Free Press, New York, 1995 (http://bit.ly/1xzRwkp).