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pinkscaped · 5 months

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͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏͏ ͏ ͏ ͏*˚⁺‧͙˚◌ . . ࣪. EMBERS was a South Korean boy group consisting of the members Inseok, Moon, Hada, Elliot, June, and Kenji under Angelico Entertainment from 2018 to 2020. They originally started as a pre-debut group known as “angelboyz” in 2017, releasing two digital singles, “Wave” and “Illusions,” as well as a physical single, “Fun Timez,” before their official debut in which they would reveal their official name to be Embers. Their debut was highly emancipated due to the success of who was heavily marketed as their “sister” group, Venus.

Embers' debut in 2018 with the mini album “Win It All” featuring the title track “LIT” was a resounding success. It not only captured the attention of international audiences but also laid the foundation for a growing domestic fanbase. Their two other releases in 2018, digital singles “Undercover” and “Killing Me”, especially gained them traction within Korea, further solidifying their global recognition. Though seemingly on the rise, Embers’ promotions would begin to dwindle in 2019, only releasing two more singles “Beautiful” and “JikJin” before they would stop making music for the rest of the year only making public appearances and releasing sparse variety content.

In 2020, the group ceased all promotions when the eldest member, Inseok, was found dead at the bottom of the Angelico parking garage stairwell. His death would be deemed a tragic accident, and the group would disband in that same year.

͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏͏ ͏ ͏ ͏*˚⁺‧͙˚◌ . . ࣪. BASIC INFO ?!

DEBUT DATE: JUNE 14TH 2018.

FANDOM NAME: SPARKS.

YEARS ACTIVE: 2017 - 2020

DISCOGRAPHY:

͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏͏ ͏ ͏ ͏*˚⁺‧͙˚◌ . . ࣪. THE LINEUP ?!

JEONG HADA. 1997. LEADER & LEAD DANCER.

KIM INSEOK. 1997. MAIN RAPPER & PRODUCER.

MOON CHAICHANA. 1997. MAIN DANCER & MAIN VOCALIST.

JUNE SONG. 1998. VISUAL & LEAD RAPPER.

ELLIOT SON. 1998. MAIN VOCALIST & LEAD RAPPER.

KENJI CHIBA. 2001. MAIN DANCER & LEAD VOCAL.

͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏͏ ͏ ͏ ͏*˚⁺‧͙˚◌ . . ࣪. WHAT'S THE STORY ?!

TW // Mentions of Sexual Assault and Murder.

After their disbandment, the once visual of the group June would disappear from the public eye, allegedly going back to Australia to live a normal life with no signs of life from him since the group’s disbandment.

Moon would leave the idol industry for nearly five years, working as a dance teacher and choreographer until he’d redebut in Angelico’s newest boy group, Twilight, in 2024.

Hada would retire from the idol industry as well but in favor of becoming an actor. While he stayed with Angelico after Embers’ disbandment, he would eventually leave the label in 2022 when his contract expired and is now signed to Cathdrial Company as an actor and model.

Elliot would redebut the same year of the disbandment, debuting in the co-ed group Pushing Daisies who are still active to this day.

Finally, Kenji would also retire from the idol industry, going back to America and getting an education. He now lives a normal life and says he has no want or need to go back to music ever again.

Embers are very rarely ever mentioned when Angelico groups are in discussion. This is chalked up to them not making much impact during their short activity period, but Angelico often tries to pretend they never happened. Most official Embers content can only be accessed through archives, as all their official accounts were deleted in 2021. The only official remaining Embers content is their playlist on the official Angelico channel, where a majority of their variety and behind-the-scenes content has been private. The only watchable videos on the playlist are their music videos and dance practices.

Additionally, the members don’t talk about Embers. The most open member is Hada, but only after he officially left Angelico. When asked about his past as an idol, Hada revealed many of the horrors that went on during Embers.

Embers was a mess not only on the outside but also internally. Bullying was rampant in the group, the primary bullies being June and Inseok, who would target Moon and Kenji. It was revealed that Elliot didn’t really live in the dorms and only showed up when he had to, as he didn’t like most of the members. June and Inseok would physically, psychologically, and verbally abuse both Moon and Kenji up until the group’s disbandment.

Unknown to the public, Inseok did not die in a tragic accident but was instead murdered. He was killed by Angelico CEO Son Jinhwa and Rejects members Reid Kim and Aiden Yoon when his involvement in the assault of their groupmate Kubo Miyu was discovered. Though Inseok did not directly assault Miyu, he would facilitate the assault by drugging her drink. It would be revealed during the confrontation with Inseok that Miyu was not their only victim and there was a whole operation between him, June, soloist Hyunwon, and former Rejects member Sunhee.

The murder of June would take place three days later in an Angelico practice room. Son Jinhwa, Reid Kim, and Aiden Yoon would be involved yet again though Reid would be the one to deliver the final blow that killed June. They would later get rid of his body in the wooded area behind the Angelico dorms.

Embers are often not remembered, which is exactly what Jinhwa wanted. Everything always goes according to plan.

#ི᭨ᩧྀ ANGELICO #ི᭨ᩧྀ LORE #fictional idol community #idol au #idol oc #oc kpop group #kpop oc #kpop au #bts addition #fake kpop oc #fictional idol group #kpop addition

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ru5t · 5 months

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How the World Fell Under Darkness: A Zones Timeline

In brief format. Hits the major events, skips so much of the daily tragedies.

50s — post World War II relations and recovery

60s — the Cold War of intelligence and counterintelligence, fear campaigns; the arms race keeps everyone afraid of each other on a global scale

70s [diverging point from actual history]— the conflict goes hot, the world goes ugly; in America, only two large settlements survive the bombings, near LA in the west, and a fortress in the south- Better Living establishments which were protected from the damage in advance, seeing as they built a large number of the weapons used (by both sides)

1980-1984 — radiation is scrubbed from choice locations in the east, and Empire is founded, establishing a port for BL/ind's relations with other surviving entities

1985-1989 — following a health crisis in the south, the Analog Rebellion begins in Fort F.I.S.K. and spreads as people break free of the fort, skirting through what habitable land remains, and group together; the idea catches, and as the numbers of resistance climb, both Battery and FISK are cornered into retaliating

1990-1994 — rebellion continues, escalating into mass casualties on both sides- casualties no one can afford, in a world already post global war

1995-1999 — tenuous ceasefire is declared; it's not peace, but it's not war. the cities build walls, closing themselves in, and those that left the settlements are abandoned to the wilds to eke out whatever life they can without aid from Better Living

2000-2004 — the lands surrounding FISK backslide, and become entirely uninhabitable or navigable without specialized equipment; Empire City receives its first "transfer" from beyond the cities

2005-2009 —the zones around Battery begin to experience more regular patrols and tensions between city folk and desert folk fray

2010-2011 — Better Living develops ReEducation; patrols and raids into the desert become more violent in nature, and zone folk are disappearing (not killed, just gone)

2012 — a series of fire storms -"The Fires of 2012"- start west of the city and sweep the zones all the way to the Fort; both sides experience minimal casualties, but lots of structural and food supply damages

2013 — widespread unrest in the zones and a significant amount of infighting; recovery efforts in the city and a significant amount of infighting

2014 — The Collapse -a yet unexplained mass casualty event- takes place in zone five to the northeast of Battery City, effectively reducing the population of the zones by a third; more die off in the months afterward of bizarre afflictions and injuries, often going mad in the process. the city blames disease, spreading it as anti-zones propaganda among citizens; the desert creates the Destroya mythos

2015 — the Fabulous Four, though only teenagers, begin to become notorious, making their fame by pushing back violently as Better Living begins to expand its reconstruction efforts in zone one, seeking to reclaim it as part of the city

2016 —killjoys get bold, and the city suffers a sudden unbalancing as a large number of young people find ways into the desert; in-city raids, especially of lower districts, become common as BL/ind cracks down on smugglers and introduce new security measures to the walls surrounding the city

2017 — the Fabulous Four are declared public enemies 1-4. Exterminator Korse is assigned to end the threat

2018 — everyone on the edge of their seats as Korse and the Fab Four are locked in a power struggle that becomes the embodiment of city vs. desert; almost all other directly physical city/desert confrontation has ceased, except in service of aiding their champion(s). Dr Death's broadcasts updating listeners on the events of fights and escapes are the most listened to thing on both sides

2019 — the Fabulous Four destroy the eastern checkpoint, storm the city, and decimate the S/C/A/R/E/C/R/O/W headquarters before, ultimately, falling in battle; all for one little girl. they become Martyrs.

2020 — the dark year. Better Living seems inescapable, the killjoys are scattered and scared, and a great many are killed or disappear into reEd. some return to the city without being captured. those who remain are more certain than ever they can never give in. despite killjoy interference, parts of zone one are annexed into the city

2021 — the Fab Four reappear in the zones. some say they were never killed after all, a few become suspicious they are reEd's, or android dupes of the originals, but by and large the mythology of their martyrdom lends to another explanation altogether: they've been brought back to life by the desert itself to lead the fight. they are solidified as the Heights of killjoy fame, bulletproof and lauded, even outright worshiped by some; hope returns

2022 — there are several building collapses and series of fires in the newly expanded Neon District; rumors of a rogue city agent as well as stories about Perro -a mythical figure from the zones- being responsible both go flying in all directions. nobody's really sure what happened, other than that a lot of citizens and neutrals died (that is, nobody publicizes what actually happened)

2023 — as part of their recovery efforts, the city attempts to smooth relations with neutrals and claim land in the zones, establishing several greenhouses almost literally overnight; in answer, most are destroyed by the killjoys, the two left standing are claimed by rebel crews and renamed into independent settlements

2024 — emboldened by the destruction of the greenhouses, a killjoy leader of a particularly violent group attacks the city directly; the city retaliates, destroying a peaceful settlement in zone three. both sides are criticized by their allies, the resulting unrest spans both city and zones

2025 — the Destroya Rampage unfolds. zone five and parts of six go dark, nothing but static on every radio for months. entire crews from both sides (local killjoys & investigative excursions from the city) are lost, seeming to turn on their own while within these 'dark zones'. several massive dust storms sweep over Battery City and the surrounding zones, causing blackouts and widespread interference with broadcasts and electronic systems of every type. fighting between the city and desert scales back as the environmental conditions threaten everyone

2026 — the sandstorms are replaced by torrential downpours (which sounds good but isn't, in the desert), some of which are typical rain and some of which burn on contact- relatively normal in the outer zones, but unheard of in the city. city initiatives focus on re-assuming relative control over the city's climate, desert settlements focus on surviving.

2027 — weather patterns gradually begin to stabilize in the city; in the desert, old secrets -uncovered by the winds and rains- begin to surface. whether they lead a new charge against the city or destroy the fragile balance of the desert . . .

2028 — . . . Remains to be seen. The whispers gather, but don't seem to go anywhere. Things have gone still and quiet -as still and as quiet as they get, anymore- and the only sure about a staring contest is that someone has to blink, eventually. something will shift, everyone's waiting for it, waiting to see which direction the world tilts this time

2029-2030s — You Are Here. Don't panic. Keep running.

#c:\\work>dir z:\ wld:bld* //.insp .stdy/

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badlydrawnarsenelupin · 2 years

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Thoughts on Chiho Saito's VS Lupin

So back in 2019, I found this series while I was browsing for Lupin things, as one does, and proceeded to buy the whole set, because it’s Lupin, drawn as a sparkling shoujo-manga pretty boy.

What is this series?

VS Lupin (Original Title: VSルパン) is a currently ongoing series serialized by Shokugakan in the magazine Zoukan Flowers, based off of the original Lupin stories by Leblanc. It is written and drawn by Chiho Saito (さいとうちほ), a shoujo and josei mangaka, who is best known for being a creator of the Revolutionary Girl Utena series.

By the way, while I’ll be mainly using shoujo when describing the series in this post, VS Lupin is officially listed as a josei manga. The labels shoujo and josei for the most part are used as an age-rating to specify the intended audience. As a genre they have a lot of overlap in the style and tropes… I’m just using the terms interchangeably. If you’re a Manga Expert™ pretend you didn’t see this.

As of writing this, VS Lupin has a total of six volumes completed in the original Japanese, covering a handful of stories and novels including: The Countess of Cagliostro, The Crystal Stopper and The Damsel With Green Eyes. Volume 7 is currently in progress and is said to be based off of Eight Strokes of the Clock.

Volumes 1-4 from that have been translated into Chinese (which are the ones I have).

Just look at how pretty the covers are! From left to right, we have Lupin, Joséphine Balsamo, Clarisse d'Etigues and Lupin again. I'm not entirely sure when the original VS Lupin actually started serialization in Zoukan Flowers, the closest to a date I have is the publication year of the first volume (2014) printed inside the Chinese-edition.

I actually went back and checked to see if the original listing I bought these from was still available but uh, no. Seeing how there hasn't been news for a translation of vol 5-6, I fear this series may be falling into the same fate as Aventurier Lupin (niche and cursed to cease physical publications forever). The original Japanese editions are still available for purchase, as well as ebook versions of the Chinese-translations… which are better than nothing, but I really would love to have the full series so here’s to hoping they continue the publication at some point.

General thoughts:

As it is probably obvious from the art style and creator, VS Lupin is a retelling of the Arsène Lupin stories in a shoujo/josei-esque style. Visually, the art-style is heavily reminiscent of many classic shoujo series of the late 80s and 90s.

VS Lupin, Ch 7 Illustration / Volume 1 Afterword

The illustrations are carefully drawn with very thin lines, giving everything a delicate and elegant appearance. It is especially noticeable in the details of the backgrounds and objects, such as the fancy frills and jewels.

VS Lupin, Ch 1 "The Princess's Wedding" / Ch 3 "The Queen's Necklace"

It’s a weirdly fitting look for Arsène Lupin, as it really encapsulates the vibe of a past time period. Plus the whole heroic-gentleman-sweeping-away-young-girl-in-distress trope that Lupin has in common with the shoujo-genre.

Also, just. Tuxedo Mask.

Top: Sailor Moon, Act 47 / Bottom: VS Lupin, Ch 8 "The Wedding Ring"

And early Kaitou Kid, who was also originally created in the 80s and actually precedes Sailor Moon and Tuxedo Mask.

Magic Kaito, Ch 2, "The Police Are Everywhere"

Look at them sparkly-cape-hat-glove-boys go. There's probably something to be said here about the influence of the original Arsène Lupin as a trope in the genre, but it's not something I'm well-versed in so let's just leave it there.

Plot & Story:

Much like the art, the story and characters are also written through a more romanticised lens. The series is not a one-to-one adaptation of the original Leblanc canon, telling a more chronological story with slight but noticeable changes to the timeline.

Volume 1 of VS Lupin starts off in a more episodic manner, with the three short stories of “Lupin’s Marriage” (Confessions of Arsène Lupin), “The Black Pearl” and “The Queen’s Necklace” (Arsène Lupin, Gentleman Thief).

The first major change occurs in “The Queen’s Necklace,” where Raoul is shown meeting Clarisse d'Etigues for the very first time. The introduction of Raoul’s backstory with the Queen’s Necklace leads into vol 2-3, which covers the entirety of The Countess of Cagliostro and Raoul’s evolution into Lupin. Clarisse, unlike the original Leblanc canon, is given a much larger role and presence in the story as Lupin’s first wife.

In the afterword of vol 3, Saito-sensei explains the reason she decided to change so much of the story:

「 Clarisse 」 "In Japan, perhaps it is because of the strong impression Lupin III’s anime (Castle of Cagliostro) left on people, the name ’Clarisse’ is the most well-known of all of Lupin’s heroines. "

But, but, as Lupin’s first wife, she only briefly appeared in the original story, I was very surprised. The original story of The Countess of Cagliostro itself was a work written very late (in Leblanc’s career), which was why there was no other way. And so, I heavily rewritten chapter 8, ‘The Wedding Ring’ and chapter 9 ‘The Birth of Lupin’ from the original. I’m sorry! Leblanc-sensei and fans of the original Lupin stories! – Chiho Saito in VS Lupin, Volume 3 "Afterword"

Honestly, for me personally, the changes and the original chapter “The Birth of Lupin,” were a big positive. It was well-written and tied Clarisse into Lupin’s life in a satisfying way, it also fills in a blank with how Lupin originally found the Hollow Needle, something that was not there in the Leblanc canon.

Also, we get Clarisse coming in on a horse to save Raoul’s sorry ass. I see this as an absolute win.

VS Lupin, Ch 7 "The Countess of Cagliostro 4"

The last volume of the series I have, vol 4, covers The Crystal Stopper.

Compared to The Countess of Cagliostro, the pacing of the story in this is noticeably more rushed. The Countess of Cagliostro had two volumes and a little more leading up to it, plus the original chapter, “The Birth of Lupin” rounding off the ending. While The Crystal Stopper had only less than one volume of time to cover the original novel in its entirety, having to share the page count with “The Silk Red Scarf.” (Confessions of Arsène Lupin)

As expected, much more was cut from the story. Especially noticeable were the scenes where Lupin in the original canon acted more… unflattering. I guess we can’t have our heroic pretty-boy doing cartwheels all over the villain’s lifeless body, it’s not very marketable for a male-lead in a shoujo story. I jest.

Amongst the scenes that were cut, there were also Lupin baby-talking to “Hercules,” Lupin and Clarisse Mergy torturing Daubrecq then popping his eye out, and most regrettably, the little epilogue at the very end between Lupin and the Narrator. There were probably more, but it’s been awhile since I’ve read The Crystal Stopper and those were the main ones I can recall.

On the positive side, here’s Gilbert being taller than Lupin.

VS Lupin, Ch 10 "The Crystal Stopper (Part 1)"

And this fruity, very edible-looking blond Lupin harassing Ganimard.

VS Lupin, Ch 12 "The Silk Red Scarf"

Bonus, the afterword from VS Lupin's Crystal Stopper:

「 The Crystal Stopper 」 The biggest impressions of Lupin this time are, "the weakest," "always losing." Or rather, the antagonist he was up against was the strongest! No matter if it was in the appearance, or rotten personality, (Daubrecq) excelled in it all! "At the start, I got scared of the graphic descriptions in the original story, however after getting used to drawing (him), M. Daubrecq made me feel very happy."

Not only that, Lupin, with the beautiful young man who believed in him without a doubt, then trying and falling in love with that certain mother, (his) feelings once again becoming messy amidst it all. And Lupin, out of his love for them, absolutely would not give up! "So good! In other words, when talking about 'cool' Lupin moments, people will no doubt think of these!" – Chiho Saito in VS Lupin, Volume 4 "Afterword"

Thoughts on the characters:

In VS Lupin, Chiho’s Lupin is noticeably sanitized. The story smoothes out some of Leblanc Lupin’s more asshole-y behaviour and makes him more appealing for a shoujo/josei manga audience. I wouldn’t necessarily say it’s a complete negative, as it gives the story a more fluffy shoujo, romantic atmosphere. Good if you just want something light-hearted and a bunch of fluff. But compared to Leblanc!Lupin it’s definitely a bit lacking, and slightly takes away from some of the complexity Lupin has as a character.

The female characters on the other hand, are more of a mixed bag.

For Clarisse d’Etigues, she was definitely a big winner here. She was given more focus and screen time, plus a slight increase in her agency as a character, such as letting her save Raoul twice. She definitely reminds me of some of those magical girl protagonists in that aspect, able to be a heroine who saves people and while also being unapologetically girlish and feminine.

I really do love how Chiho’s Joséphine Balsamo was drawn, probably my favourite character in the series design-wise. It really perfectly captures her more adult-ish allure with her thick, dark curls in contrast with Clarisse’s thinner, lighter hair and girlish grit.

VS Lupin, Ch 7 "The Countess of Cagliostro 4"

Writing-wise, the narrative in VS Lupin noticeably leans more in favour of Raoul than Joséphine than the Leblanc canon, which makes sense as a decision for the series overall. Joséphine is shown more treating Raoul in a belittling manner, referring to him as a “youngster,” and from Raoul’s inner-thoughts, feeling as if he was treated like a dog. There was definitely an effort to make her more unlikable… After all, in VS Lupin, we are supposed to be rooting for him to get back to Clarisse.

Clarisse Mergy on the other hand… I felt that she was, unfortunately, slightly scuffed on. She was framed as more of a classic damsel-in-distress role, while in the original stories, she was more aggressive in her desperation. I think the main problem here was just how much had to be cut from The Crystal Stopper, such as the scene where Clarisse Mergy tortures Daubrecq.

VS Lupin, Ch 11 "The Crystal Stopper (Part 2)"

The one positive Chiho!Mergy got was the scene showing her directly rejecting Lupin’s confession at the end of the story. Compared to canon, where we were only shown Leblanc!Lupin complaining to the Narrator about how she refused him even after he saved her sons, which is… bad Lupin, bad. *bonk*

Conclusion:

I enjoyed this series a lot! The art is, again, absolutely gorgeous. The writing is pretty well-done overall, and paired with the lovely visuals, it’s very much worth a read for those who can.

Here is Chiho Saito’s twitter, here are the Japanese versions of the series from the official Shogakukan site, and lastly, the Chinese-editions of volumes 1-4.

Please, publication gods let me have volumes 5-7 orz

#arsène lupin #leblanc lupin #reviews; en coulisse.#m: mots.#b: vs lupin (saito chiho)#[ tumblr really fucks up the image positioning....#read it on blog in desktop for best experience ]#[ a part of me wanted to try translating this series from cn > en but...#even translating that author afterword here gave me a headache ]

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warningsine · 1 month

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BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) — The ex-partner of former Argentine President Alberto Fernández has accused him of physically and emotionally abusing her, according to an Argentine court order issued Tuesday. The allegations shocked the country and threaten to further stain the reputation of the moderate leftist whose government many Argentines blame for deepening an economic crisis.

In the judicial order obtained by The Associated Press, the Buenos Aires federal court opened a criminal investigation into the accusations of “psychological terrorism,” phone harassment and physical abuse against Fernández from Fabiola Yáñez, his former partner of at least eight years and the mother of his second child.

The order said Yáñez, who testified by phone from her home in Madrid, has decided to press charges against Fernández for threatening and “psychologically intimidating” her daily and causing her “minor injuries in a context of gender-based violence.” The document did not give further details about her accusations of physical violence.

Fernández, a left-leaning Peronist politician who was president of Argentina from 2019 to 2023, vigorously denied her allegations and promised he would prove to the courts “what really happened.”

“It’s false and what I’m now being accused of never happened,” Fernández said in a statement posted Tuesday on the social media platform X, declining to say more to the media, citing his family’s privacy.

In the ruling, Judge Julián Ercolini granted Yáñez a restraining order that prevents the former president from coming within 500 meters (yards) of her and from contacting her.

The judge barred Fernández from traveling outside Argentina, and demanded that he “cease all forms of intimidation or harassment, both directly and indirectly” toward Yáñez. The ruling also asked Argentine authorities to provide Yáñez with police protection.

The court order comes weeks after Yáñez’s accusations first surfaced among thousands of leaked text messages under scrutiny by federal investigators in a separate embezzlement case against Fernández. That case accuses Fernández of irregularities in awarding state insurance contracts — allegations he also denies.

In leaked texts exchanged with Fernández’s former private secretary, María Cantero, Yáñez recounted episodes of abuse and harassment that occurred when she was pregnant with her now 2-year-old son, Francisco.

The court document seen by AP said Ercolini contacted her about the revelations in June, but Yáñez “did not wish to pursue criminal proceedings.” But she changed her mind and on Tuesday contacted the Buenos Aires court to press charges against the former president. Her lawyer did not respond to a request for comment.

Under the Peronist administration of Fernández and his vice president, the powerful populist former President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, Argentina descended into its worst economic crisis in two decades with surging inflation and deepening poverty.

Fernández, a former law professor, chose not to run in Argentina’s 2023 election. Public outrage over the country’s tumbling fortunes helped propel the radical libertarian President Javier Milei to office.

#argentina #alberto fernández

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certaintacowerewolf · 2 years

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What Sports Can Teach Us About runtz kush strain

The 2-Minute Rule for Coochie Runtz

Table of ContentsExcitement About Debunking The Weed Halloween Candy MythGet This Report on Cherry Runtz Review - Runtz Cherry Cannabis StrainThe Main Principles Of Runtz Family Seeds 3 Easy Facts About God's Vagina Marijuana Strain Information & Reviews - Allbud Shown

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But also to that, lots of proverbially roll their eyes. flavor of the coochie. "It isn't such as yearly there is an unique threat. It cease due to the fact that there's certainly never just about anything to mention." Similar Leafly investigation: Fentanyl-laced marijuana is actually a misconception (froze strain). It is actually time to finish the hype And lest our experts overlook, our experts stay in a country crazy along with industrialism as well as the appeal of income.

Because I think she is actually therefore small, she's not definitely heading to understand what the result will be actually likethat discussion happens eventually. It's actually vital when you're talking with little ones, truly of any ages. I try to provide her the facts and what I know to become real without any kind of interpretation.

Fascination About Cherry Runtz Review - Runtz Cherry Cannabis Strain

I am actually certainly not ignorant to the truth that she's mosting likely to experiment with cannabis, possibly just before she's 21." Top, regrettably, doesn't find the pattern fading anytime very soon, especially when even selected authorities continue to bolster beliefs. But not long after Halloween come the midterm political elections, and cannabis is throughout them (blue runtz weed). Our experts think, Leafly nation, that this account isn't new to you, and also you have actually dismissed it.

Snowman, also referred to as Snowman OG, is actually a marijuana stress that is actually hybrid in attributes and also bends considerably a lot more towards Sativa (cookies snowman stress) - runtz strain indica or sativa. It is generated originating from the parent tension Gal Scout Cookies. The Snowman strain possesses a THC material of 21%, which generates it extra satisfied for specialist cigarette smokers (marijuana runtz).

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imagepiner · 2 years

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allthecanadianpolitics · 4 years

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Please consider posting this: A petition to the House of Commons to repeal current sex work laws - to be signed by MARCH 30, Canadian residents only

From this Globe and Mail opinion piece:

“If sex workers are as ‘vulnerable’ as the law suggests, where’s their pandemic support?”

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/amp/opinion/article-if-sex-workers-are-as-vulnerable-as-the-law-suggests-wheres-their/ Bronwyn McBride and Jennie Pearson are community-based researchers at the Centre for Gender and Sexual Health Equity in Vancouver. They link to an actual House of Commons petition to repeal Bill C-36, that MUST only be signed by Canadian residents - which also means this petition will be delivered and actively used, if it gets enough signatories. It closes MARCH 30. https://petitions.ourcommons.ca/en/Petition/Sign/e-3132 Excerpts: …Many workers, supported by the Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB), ceased work to abide by public health guidelines for physical distancing. Sex workers, as workers, were expected to follow suit. Instead, what happened was just an extension of sex workers’ normal: exclusion from labour rights and protections. …After previous sex work laws were deemed unconstitutional for violating sex workers’ rights, the federal government implemented Bill C-36 in 2014, which took aim at demand for sex work – criminalizing the purchasing of sex but decriminalizing its sale. But that law deemed Canadian sex workers to be victims, not workers. This inaccurate framing has restricted sex workers’ freedoms under the guise of their protection and had severe consequences for sex workers’ occupational conditions; for instance, most sex workers can’t access government income supports created to help workers stay safe during the COVID-19 pandemic. These precarious workers have had no choice but to continue to work during this crisis, risking their health and safety and highlighting the inherent contradictions of laws that effectively criminalize sex work to “protect vulnerable communities.” These “end-demand” laws were due for federal review by the end of 2019, but they remain in effect to this day. Last July, community organizers called for law enforcement to cease surveillance and ticketing of sex work-related charges during the pandemic; they were largely ignored.

…Sex workers are equal members of society who deserve occupational health and safety protections, income supports, security and self-determination at work. This crisis is an opportunity for Canada to listen to decades of activism and to fully decriminalize sex work.

#cdnpoli #canada #canadian politics #canadian news #canadian #submission

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sunbookie · 4 years

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The Negro Motorist Green Book was an annual guidebook for African-American roadtrippers. It was originated and published by African-American New York City mailman Victor Hugo Green from 1936 to 1966, during the era of Jim Crow laws, when open and often legally prescribed discrimination against African Americans especially and other non-whites was widespread. Although pervasive racial discrimination and poverty limited black car ownership, the emerging African-American middle class bought automobiles as soon as they could, but faced a variety of dangers and inconveniences along the road, from refusal of food and lodging to arbitrary arrest. In response, Green wrote his guide to services and places relatively friendly to African-Americans, eventually expanding its coverage from the New York area to much of North America, as well as founding a travel agency.

Many black Americans took to driving, in part to avoid segregation on public transportation. As the writer George Schuyler put it in 1930, "all Negroes who can do so purchase an automobile as soon as possible in order to be free of discomfort, discrimination, segregation and insult". Black Americans employed as athletes, entertainers, and salesmen also traveled frequently for work purposes.

African-American travelers faced hardships such as white-owned businesses refusing to serve them or repair their vehicles, being refused accommodation or food by white-owned hotels, and threats of physical violence and forcible expulsion from whites-only "sundown towns". Green founded and published the Green Book to avoid such problems, compiling resources "to give the Negro traveler information that will keep him from running into difficulties, embarrassments and to make his trip more enjoyable". The maker of a 2019 documentary film about the book offered this summary: "Everyone I was interviewing talked about the community that the Green Book created: a kind of parallel universe that was created by the book and this kind of secret road map that the Green Book outlined".

From a New York-focused first edition published in 1936, Green expanded the work to cover much of North America, including most of the United States and parts of Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean, and Bermuda. The Green Book became "the bible of black travel during Jim Crow", enabling black travelers to find lodgings, businesses, and gas stations that would serve them along the road. It was little known outside the African-American community. Shortly after passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which outlawed the types of racial discrimination that had made the Green Book necessary, publication ceased and it fell into obscurity. There has been a revived interest in it in the early 21st century in connection with studies of black travel during the Jim Crow era.

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thatmultifandomhoe · 4 years

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Knitting You a Home - 2

Pairing: Wolf Hybrid Namjoon and Human Reader

Word Count: 3k

Genre/Rating: Hybrid AU - Established Relationship - Angst - Fluff - Smut - PG-13

Overview: Things have changed for you and Namjoon. It’s been a year since the two of you got together, and despite a rocky start, it was impossible to deny the bond and love you shared for each other. But ever since Hoseok had been separated from his Mate, Namjoon has been withdrawing himself from you and doesn’t come home until late at night.

With questions far larger than either of you imagined, you can’t help but wonder if he’s let his past and old fears come back to haunt him. You had shown him that it was possible to have a home and be loved once before, but will you be able to do it again?

Warning: None.

Playlist:

Main Master List:

Knitting You a Home Master List:

Mated Love is Never Easy Master List:

Sneak Peak - Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4 - Part 5 - Part 6 - Part 7 - Part 8 - Part 9 - Part 10 - Part 11 - Part 12 - Part 13 - Part 14 - Part 15 - ?

©thatmultifandomhoe Do not repost, translate, or use my stories without permission.

June 2019

The ringing of the overhead bell captured your attention, whisking you out of your memories. With a forced smile, you looked up from where you pricing the bamboo knitting needles to greet the customers.

You recognized the two women as regulars who frequently came to your shop for supplies or to add to their yarn addiction. “Hi Carol, hey Tammy, how are you ladies today?”

“Doing fine,” Tammy answered. Carol disappeared to the back of the store where the larger displays of yarn were kept. Yup. Adding to their yarn addiction was on the menu for them today. “Is your grandmother here?”

Chuckling, you added another package of needles to the wire basket you had sitting on the stool next to you. “In the back fawning over the Mongolian Cashmere yarn.”

“Are you talking about the Jade Sapphire brand of Mongolian Cashmere?” Tammy’s eyes widened, leaning closer to you as she held onto the counter.

With a serious nod, you fought back the urge to smile. “The very one.”

“What colors?”

“Moonstone, Red Light District, Ivory, Perugia, and Umbrian Sky.”

Tammy gasped, her hand coming up to clutch her chest. “You only had three colors last time.”

It never ceased to amaze you how die hard some of the women who came into the shop were for the yarn, especially the luxury yarn that you sold. The conversation didn’t last much longer, and it was with a smile that you watched Tammy scurry her way to Carol and whisper in her ear, the two of them high tailing to go find your Grandmother.

While you had your own love and passion for the age-old hobby of knitting – so much that you went into business with your Grandmother to open your own shop, Second Gen Knitters – you weren’t about to go spending fifty dollars on a single hank of yarn. Not only would your bank account cry, but Namjoon would most likely choke on whatever you fed him in an attempt to break the news.

Sighing, you stuck a label on another pair of needles, taking a moment to look around the store. The teal carpet stood out from the hardwood floor, and the mahogany bookcases that lined the walls gleamed from being dusted earlier that morning. On a large square table in the middle of the front room were wicker baskets displaying smaller hanks of colorful sock yarn, and a decorative black wrought iron stand that stood out among the bright colors, held up a sign you had painstakingly painted to display the prices.

In the corner to the left near the windows, was a sitting area with matching teal couches and chair along with a mini coffee table. A various group of knitting, country lifestyle, and People magazines were neatly spread out, completely ignored by the group of husbands that sat there on their phones, letting their wives go about and shop.

It always amused you when a couple would enter the shop and after only a few moments the husband would hightail it to the sitting area, leaving the wife completely unsurprised.

Namjoon never outright said anything, but every time he saw that area filled and he was in the shop, he made a habit of making faces in their direction to amuse you. Whenever you went on your own knitting shopping spree, he would join you and help to make decisions if you were stuck between colors or how many you needed to complete a project. Especially when what was being made was for him, he was there to give his input on colors and textures.

The summer weather made it too warm for the scarves and sweaters that Namjoon loved to wear, but it was perfect to sit down and knit away so he’d be able to wear them in the fall.

As much as you loved him, these last few weeks had your mind spinning with his strange behavior. When Hoseok’s life had gotten turned upside down, Namjoon had become extra protective of you. While the possibility of what happened between Hoseok and his mate would happen to Namjoon and you were highly unlikely, the instinct for him to be there and watch over you was too strong for him to suppress.

You hadn’t minded it, especially when his physical affection increased greatly. But it’d be a lie to say that you weren’t affected by what happened, even if you were barely involved in the situation. It was one of those things that buried itself deep in your mind, forcing you to think about it even when you didn’t want to.

It was different for the two of you though. You weren’t just his Mate, but it was your name written on his Adoption papers.

Life had begun to go back to normal when Hoseok and Sarah were finally reunited, but then they dropped another bomb. Hoseok had signed a contract with a dance company in Seoul and at the end of the month, he was leaving for a year to tour with a professional team made up of elite dancers from all around the world. While you had been stunned by the announcement and how long he was to be gone for, you were ecstatic for your friend to pursue his dreams.

But then, Namjoon changed again.

As the days inched closer to Hoseok’s departure, Namjoon had grown quieter, and surprisingly, withdrawn. The extra affection had declined along with his usual amount. While he was naturally a quiet person, he always managed to start up a conversation and keep it going for hours, but something had flipped inside him and he was barely able to keep one going. Now it was you who was randomly hugging him while out in public or crawling between his legs when you saw him reading on the couch. He never turned your affection down, but he wasn’t seeking it out either.

The bell rang out again, but you didn’t look up as you were in the middle of counting how many needles you already had labeled. If the goal number was met, then you’d be able to put the rest back in the storage room for now.

“Hey Angel.”

The corner of your mouth curled up at the soft and familiar voice calling out his pet name for you, abruptly dropping the needles back into the basket to turn and face him.

Namjoon raised an eyebrow as he looked at the basket, a teasing grin appearing as he leaned against the counter. “Isn’t that important?”

“Not as important as you,” you sweetly answered, smiling as you watched Namjoon duck his head. It was absolutely cheesy, but it worked like magic to make him happy.

“Shut up,” he murmured, handing you a coffee before taking a sip out of his own.

Grateful for the caffeine, you tapped the white recycled cup that’s only design was the black lettering that spelt out, Kim Seokjin’s Café in cursive. “I thought you had work today?”

“Lunch break,” Namjoon answered, his ears twitching as he glanced around the shop. “I thought you might want a cup, and the bus stop just happens to be conveniently near your store.”

You hummed in agreement, leaning back to look in the direction of where your Grandmother was. Well, in the direction that you heard her voice coming from. Even from the front, you were able to hear her explaining how to do a cable stitch to someone.

“How’s your day been though?” You asked, gesturing for him to come around the counter with you. At least his little visits hadn’t stopped. They were a habit he started not long after moving in with you and when he saw how much you looked forward to them, made it a point to come by when he was able to during the day.

He held onto his cup a little tighter, not wanting to spill a single drop as he maneuvered his way around the counter. The space was small and even as you moved the wire basket and stool out of his way, he didn’t seem to relax until he set his cup on the counter. “Good. We’re working with a rapper this time. He’s really hands on with the album, which is amazing considering the last artist we--”

“Oh, Namjoon!” your Grandmother called out.

Teasingly rolling your eyes, you grinned as she came out from the back, her glasses on the bridge of her nose when she held her arms out to bring Namjoon in for a hug, despite the fact that he was easily a foot and a half taller than her.

“Hey Ma, how are you?”

“I’m good sweetheart.”

Without even looking, you were willing to bet that his dimples were showing. Grandmother just had a certain way about her that made it impossible for anyone to not be happy around her.

You leaned backwards against his Namjoon’s chest out of habit when he came back, feeling the gentle vibrations coming from him as he wrapped his arms around your waist in a loose hug. The gesture, while small, had you relaxing even more so. This was the majority of any affection the two of you had been sharing lately.

The moment would have been more enjoyable had you paid attention to the conversation that your Grandmother was having with Namjoon, but you had glanced around the store out of habit. You didn’t want anyone to feel ignored in case they had a question about a product, needed assistance with a project, or simply was ready to check out.

She was looking at the sock yarn at the table across from the counter. An older woman with a wire basket resting on her elbow. It was with experienced eyes that you noticed two of the Jade Sapphira hands sitting in there, and in her hands was some blue sock yarn, but she wasn’t looking at that. Matter of fact, her gaze was focused on you, but it was too low to be an attempt to capture your attention.

To someone who didn’t understand anything about Hybrids, the scar on your neck appeared to be the result of a painful accident. In reality, it was the exact opposite. The scar was your Mate Mark, the very one that you treasured when Namjoon had given it to you almost a year ago, sealing the bond between you as Mates for the rest of your lives.

The old woman stared at the Mate Mark, her gaze flicking towards Namjoon to see the wolf ears on top of his head, then down to his tail that was carefully wagging behind him.

“I’m sorry ma’am,” Grandmother suddenly spoke, stealing your attention as she walked towards the woman who had been staring. “But I couldn’t help but notice you’d been looking at this young man, and while my son-in-law is not for sale, we do have some great patterns in the back that have almost as equally handsome young male models on them.”

Your heart nearly stopped as she led the old woman away and to the back, internally dying at her antics but grateful for them at the same time. Embarrassment had your cheeks feeling warm, and with Namjoon’s body shaking from holding back his laughter, you covered your face with your hands when the women were out of sight.

With the exception of the chuckles slipping out, he was quiet as he tightened his arms around you, leaning down to gently kiss at your Mate Mark. While you had only been able to see her stares, Namjoon had been able to sense the woman’s distaste the second she saw him hugging you.

“She’s a closed-minded old woman,” he softly murmured in your ear, hoping to ease your hands away from your face. “Who is currently having to deal with an upset Ma right now, and I think that’s punishment enough.”

Like always, your skin tingled each time he kissed the mark, the sensation coursing throughout your body even after you lowered your hands. “That doesn’t mean I like her,” you muttered.

Namjoon simply chuckled, settling for kissing your neck again. Normally, you would have let him have his fun before teasing him to stop, reasoning that you were at work and the last thing you wanted to do was make anyone uncomfortable with all the affection. But you didn’t stop him this time. This was perhaps the most affection that he had given out since Hoseok’s career announcement, and you weren’t the one having to initiate it.

“I’ve missed you,” you whispered, sliding your hands over his until you were hugging his arms. It had felt like forever since you last shared such a sweet moment with Namjoon. All you wanted was to make it last, because if tonight was anything like it has been for last several weeks, he wouldn’t be home before midnight again.

Despite your silent wishes, Namjoon lifted his head and kissed your cheek once before resting his chin on top of your head.

“I know,” he softly murmured back, his arms wrapping around you further in an attempt to bring you closer. “I miss you too.”

Your heart dropped however, and you stared at the packaging of the knitting needles you had been counting, wishing that it didn’t feel like there was sea separating you from Namjoon these days.

“Will you be late coming home again?”

He closed his eyes, signing as he kissed the side of your head. Able to sense you true feelings, he knew that you already had the answer. “I’m sorry Angel.”

Pressing your lips together, you gently squeezed his hand. “Will Yoongi be there?”

“Yoongi practically lives there,” he joked, kissing your mark once more before finally pulling back. “I should get going, the bus will be here soon.”

His hand slid down to your lower back before disappearing completely as he walked around the counter, leaving you feeling cold and alone.

It was reassuring to know that Yoongi was going to be with him, but with all the hours he’s been spending at work, it was becoming impossible to recall the times that he was at home. Most nights he was only getting home after you crawled into bed, and having gotten used to Namjoon hugging you to his chest while the two of you slept, sleeping without him wasn’t easy. A majority of the time you found yourself playing on your phone for an hour or so before ditching it in an attempt to get some sleep, but then you’d be woken up at the touch of his arms sliding around your body as he slipped under the covers with a kiss to your neck, coaxing you back to sleep.

Stolen moments and gentle kisses were the most romantic the two of you were getting these days.

As much as you loved them, it all reminded you of the early days of your relationship, and as he withdrew in on himself, you couldn’t help but wonder if it had to do with you. Had the relationship become too much of a routine? Were you becoming predictable? Was he no longer attracted to you?

Like she knew that she was needed, Grandmother once again came back to the front, this time without the old woman following her. “Heading back out Namjoon?”

Namjoon nodded as he leaned down to give her a hug, his arms carefully wrapping around your Grandmother like he thought she was fragile and was afraid that he’d break her. Which wasn’t unrealistic, considering all the dishes that he’s broken in the last year.

“Yes, I need to catch the bus to get back to work.”

“You need to get yourself a driver’s license hun,” Grandma teased, rubbing Namjoon’s back before tilting her head to kiss his cheek.

As they parted from their hug, you smiled at seeing the light blush on his cheeks for a brief moment, any worries disappearing for the time being.

“I like taking the bus Ma,” Namjoon teased, pulling out of her embrace to lean against the counter for a moment. “It’s relaxing and lets me clear my thoughts.”

“You can clear your thoughts at home you know,” Grandma pointed out, her eyes crinkling at the corner. “I’m not getting any younger, and to be able to hold my great-grandbabies is a dream I want to see come true.”

Once again you felt your cheeks heating up, the sound of her laughter echoing as she left the two of you alone again. Ever since you told her that you were Namjoon’s Mate, she made sure to hint around about grandkids whenever the moment struck her.

“I love her I do…” Namjoon murmured, reaching his hand out for yours to hold.

“But she drives us nuts.” You supplied, smiling up at him.

He nodded, his own embarrassed smile appearing to be permanent while displaying his dimples for you. “Okay, I really have to get going or I’ll be late. I love you Angel.”

Your smile softened as he held your hand to his lips, his fingers squeezing your palm quickly. “I love you too Namjoon.”

He didn’t stay much longer, his tail wagging as he walked out the door and shortly out of your sight, his departure forcing you to get back to work, and allowing your worry to come back to the forefront of your mind. This time free to do so since Namjoon wasn’t around to sense your emotions.

It was proven time after time that Hybrids only had one true Mate in their lives, and once couples completed the bond, they weren’t able to have any romantic feelings towards anyone else. Which was why you were struggling to understand these changes with Namjoon.

Reaching up, you touched the Mate Mark, recalling all the moments when Namjoon had been the one to pull you back to bed, to cuddle you for five extra minutes because he had missed you. It was stupid to doubt his love for you, but you couldn’t help it.

There had to be a reason for why he was so distant again. For why he was barely being affectionate these days. Was it because these long nights that he spent at work with Yoongi, were with someone else? That he was enjoying the warm embrace of another before coming home? The idea was far-fetched, and you began doubting it a second later like always, but what were you supposed to think?

“Oh Joonie,” you sighed, seeing that he had left behind his coffee cup.

It was too late to try and rush out to bring it to him, so you tossed it into the trash with a thump, feeling like you were grasping at straws at this point. When you had done researched on what it meant to be Mates, never once did you come across a point where there was a possibility that the couples separated. It wasn’t even a consideration.

But now…you weren’t sure what to think.

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fatehbaz · 4 years

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26 August 2020: “West Papuan lawyers die ...” Loss of two major Indigenous independence figures, Yuliana Yabansabra and Ganius Wenda. Though they apparently died due to illness, both had been the victims of repeated and escalating physical attacks and intimidation throughout 2020. (As lawyers, they defended the activists known as the Balikpapan Seven, who recently received prison sentences for “treason” because displaying the West Papuan flag is illegal.)

25 August 2020: “NGO: A year after West Papua uprising -- 61 deaths and no progress.” Updates after 2019′s uprising and following Indonesian state censorship of West Papua news/journalism.

14 July 2020: “West Papua Autonomy -- Lies, Bullets and Murders.” Papuan Students Alliance and National Committee of West Papua harshly criticize deliberation of a West Papua autonomy bill being heard at Indonesian House of Representatives without Indigenous input. An excerpt from this article: Indigenous Papuans -- the subject of the bill -- were not included in discussions [...]. On July 9 [2020], Benny Wenda the chair of the United Liberation Movement of West Papua expressed the concerns of West Papuans “Under this so-called Special Autonomy, we have only been further killed, marginalized and ethnically cleansed. Our environment and way of life [have] been destroyed in an unrelenting ecocide – our mountains have been mined, our rivers polluted, our forests turned down.” She also called for the European Union, World Bank, United States, Britain, New Zealand and Australia to cease funding of the Indonesian occupied forces and to help address the conflict’s root causes in accordance with the Asian Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) resolution – which seeks for the Papua human rights situation to be a standing item on the United Nations Human Rights Council Agenda.

Excerpt:

West Papuan liberation leader Benny Wenda has questioned the mysterious deaths of two leading lawyers who successfully advocated for the rights of political prisoners. Ganius Wenda and Yuliana Yabansabra both died this month after facing threats and intimidation for speaking out about human-rights abuses by Indonesian forces.

Ms Yabansabra was physically attacked days after appearing at an Amnesty International press conference on June 5, and died a month later. Aged just 35, officials said that she had succumbed to breast cancer, which had advanced rapidly in the weeks preceding her death.

Ganius Wenda, who was one of the most well-known members of the West Papuan legal community, received threatening phone calls and text messages which said that she was an enemy of the Indonesian state. He was reported to have died after a short illness.

Both lawyers had successfully defended the so-called Balikpan Seven who were detained during last year’s West Papuan uprising. Prosecutors had been seeking 17 years’ jail for the defendants, including senior United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP) figure Buchtar Tabuni.

But following a high-profile trial all defendants were freed despite receiving sentences of up to 11 months for treason. Despite protesting against racism the defendants were charged after raising the Morning Star, West Papua’s flag, which is illegal to display in public. ULMWP chair Benny Wenda said his people had suffered “another great loss.”

Excerpt: Human rights NGO Tapol reported that a year after the West Papua Uprising swept across 22 towns in the Indonesian province of West Papua and 17 cities in other parts of Indonesia from Aug 19 to Sept 30, 2019, a total of 61 people lost their lives but that the province is no closer to self-government. "The trigger of the Uprising was the racist persecution of West Papuan students in the Indonesian cities of Malang on Aug 15, in Surabaya on Aug 16 and 17, and in Semarang on Aug 18, 2019. "The most significant of these incidents were, however, the incidents in Surabaya, where Indonesian soldiers shouted ‘monkey’ repeatedly at the students, a word which was later reclaimed by West Papuans who used it during protests," Tapol said [...].

Excerpt: On July 4, 2020, the spokesperson for the National Committee of West Papua (KNB), Victor Yeimo repudiated a unilateral deliberation of the West Papua autonomy bill in Indonesia’s House of Representatives. Indigenous Papuans – the subject of this bill – were not included in the discussion. Sixteen groups in Papua have voiced their opposition under the Petisi Rakyat Papua (Petitions by the Papuans) movement over their concerns of the potential continuation of its special autonomy (Otsus) status. They are demanding a referendum that would let them determine their own fate; whether they want the special autonomy continued or become independent. Former Papuan prisoner Sayang Mandabayan has refused to acknowledge this proposal, condemning the political decisions that have pitted the Otsus against Jakarta’s elites. John Gobay, head of the Papuan Students Alliances, stated, “ever since before the Otsus until today, almost 20 years after the Otsus, racism towards Papuans, land grabbing, military operations, rights abuse, and social and economic inequality keep happening in Papua.” [...]

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thefolliesofmen · 3 years

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History in the Making - Panel Discussion

Hi folks! Today I was honored to be a part of Concordia’s History in the Making Conference and speak on the making of meaning through Death Tourism. As not everyone was able to attend, or just prefer learning in a different format that isn’t Zoom, I figured I could at least share my slides and speakers notes here for posterity.

As these are speaking notes, please excuse if I do not catch every grammar or spelling mistake, but I hope you enjoy them nonetheless.

Today I am going to be going through how meaning is made at Death Tourism sites, and how that meaning changes over time. To do this, I am first going to explore some brief definitions of death tourism, the history of it, and how it is viewed by the general public. So please buckle up and join me as we go on a speed run through three prominent dark tourism sites – particularly what they are, how they qualify, and how meaning is made around them through the perspective of thanatourism. The site we will be using are Pompeii, Salem, and Chernobyl.

In my introduction alone, I used a mired of terms interchangeably. Death Tourism, Dark Tourism, Thanatourism, and just for funsies I am going to throw another one in there, Disaster Tourism. Some scholars will separate all these terms to represent specific aspects of the field, the site in particular, and the intentions behind the visitors themselves. Foley and Lennon are often credited with coining the term “Dark Tourism” and have defined it as a “product of the circumstances of the late modern world.” Intent is something that will come up often during my talk, as it is hard to concretely define a field like tourism that has so much to do with the intentions of the people taking part in it as well as the people presenting the history. Today, I will be using these terms fairly interchangeably. A definition to start us off: Dark Tourism taps into the macabre, secret, and shunned interests of humans; the world we create; and the one we leave behind.

The Macabre The Secret The Shunned Creation and Destruction Are real and valid reasons for someone to visit a site I said before that the intention of the visitor is a hot topic when trying to figure out how to define this field. Most of us have probably been to Death Tourism sites and have never really thought about, because it fit into a different category in our mind. The image here is a graveyard, which makes sense on the surface to count as death tourism especially if you are visiting it for a reason outside of knowing someone who is buried there – this cemetery in particular is Old Burial Hill Cemetery in Salem Massachusetts and would be a hotspot for that, as it was a filming location for Hocus Pocus, Old Burial Hill Cemetery in Salem Massachusetts. Dark Tourism deals largely with the commercialization of sites associated with large amounts of human suffering and death. Commercialization can happen in a variety of ways, whether it be through charging admission to a specific site, merchandise and materials relating to the event, or economic benefits that are by-products of the sites being visited, such as surrounding towns gaining revenue from hotel rentals, meals, etc.

Since the enlightenment, European and North American cultures have taken a strict stance on separating the dead from the living. Death occurs in buildings, cities, countries removed from us and we only see the sanitized version – the more removed we are from something with our engagement with death the better it is. That isn’t a hard and fast rule however, because the distance from the death and disaster in question can be spatial or temporal in nature, as long as there is some kind of way in which you can convince yourself that all this death and destruction happened to an Other. Caitlyn Doughty, a mortician who found notoriety through her YouTube Channel Ask a Mortician has done some research on what she refers to as the “witch to kitsch factor”, that being how much time has to pass before it is socially acceptable to take tragedy and make it into a thing of entertainment? My argument here however is that, the meaning that a dark tourism site creates and is created unto it has both to do with the temporal separation between the entertainment and the tragedy, but also the spatial and cognitive space between the two. I know I am probably preaching to the choir when I say that history permeates pop culture, and the line between tragedy and entertainment can be seen here. Pompeii occurred close to 2,000 years ago and is now a 13 years old Doctor Who Episode wherein even an Alien that alters many historic events, even this could not be stopped. Salem Witch Trials took place over 300 years ago, and the Halloween edge of kitschy witches have taken over the narrative of Salem, as the town has gained even more infamy in recent years due to the popularity that Disney has continued to experienced in the 26 years since its release. Chernobyl occurred 35 years ago. It is most recently a 2019 somber but still drama packed mini-series on HBO exploring the disaster and aftermath. These are not the first nor are they the last instances of Pompeii, Salem, and Chernobyl influencing popular culture.

The temporal and spatial separation that I just spoke of is what Foucault would use in the argument that dark tourism sites are examples of Heterotopias. That, and the Othering.

These dark tourism sites are marginal spaces, that are infused with the juxtaposition of sameness and contradictions. Foucault breaks down what a Heterotopia is through examining its:

Precise and determined function within a society, but can still have multiple functions

The power to Juxtapose the incompatible

A break with traditional time

Presupposition of opening and closing the isolation and penetration

Illusions of real spaces that create and Other

Each of these criteria hit on the combined need for things relating to death and destruction to be both intimate to our experience of the world, but also separate from us in a way in which we can walk away from them afterwards and cease to think about it. Dark Tourism is assumed to be an escapist pastime in which we as humans can displace our fears of death, decay, destruction, and general apocalyptic fears onto this physical place – particularly because of its seemingly socially acceptable mode in which we can grapple with these kinds of topics. I said before that it was after the Enlightenment that death became removed from our day to day life. But before that? It was common and fashionable to interact with death on ones down time – morgue tours in Paris were all the rage, with some people even asking to be locked in the display room with the unknown corpses to scare their friends and other visitors.

Death has been removed from us, and so these romanticized ideas of escapism and morbid contemplations are the simplistic and incomplete theories as to why people are drawn to Thanatourism.

Now don’t get me wrong, while I say that these theories are simplistic and incomplete – I am not denying that they have some merit and nuggets of truth and wisdom to them. We come back to intent. Why people engage in Disaster Tourism does not interest me so much as what their interaction with the field tells us about our own society. We make meaning out of everything, that is who we are as academics but also who we are as a general species. But how do we make meaning out of sites and events through the lens of dark tourism? I believe that the reasons we are so fascinated with these sites, outside of just general morbid curiosity (pun intended) – for starters, our fascination with these places, I posture, has to do with our false yet engrained belief that we are no longer experiencing such death and suffering anymore. This all happened in another time, in another place, to another group of people. Our fascination shows our ignorance. We think, Pompeii happened so long ago, it is more of a story than anything. We think, Salem will never happen again, we are past the time of believing that witches walk among us. We think, Chernobyl was the fault of the Soviets, we are a democracy. We don’t think – that this could happen again and is still happening.

I have mentioned Pompeii, Salem, and Chernobyl quite a bit now – lets get into how they are case studies for us making meaning out of dark tourism sites. First up: Pompeii The eruption of Mount Vesuvius and subsequent destruction of Pompeii and Herculaneum was first recorded in the letters of Pliny the Younger to Tacitus. On October 24th 79 AD,pumice stones and ash started pouring down onto the city, killing part of the population before those who were unable to escape were buried by the hot volcanic ash and burned alive by pyroclastic flow. By the end of the day, the city was buried in six to seven meters of debris, and it remained as such until its re-discovery in the seventeenth century. During his tenure as the lead archaeologists working to recover Pompeii from 1863-1875, Giuseppe Fiorelli is credited with not only the Fiorelli process of pouring plaster of Paris into cavities in the ash to discover what created those cavities – but he was also a driving force behind excavations being done on the city from the top down, rather than the streets first to further pillage the homes that were uncovered.

Pompeii is a special case when it comes to tourism of Roman ruins. To Victorian and Edwardian tourists – Pompeii was a disappointment to finally see. Mary Beard discusses how to these visitors, the depictions of Pompeii in art and literature, outshone the real ruins. From the beginning of tourists coming to the site though, it was always known that what they were coming to see and what would shock them the most, were the casts of the bodies that had been excavated were front and center as soon as you entered the site along the aptly named Street of Tombs. For most of its history, Pompeii has existed on this marginal plane, being both a city of the living and of the dead. Rome as a whole has always been plagued by the stereotypes and ideals placed upon it by people outside of Italy’s borders – namely it being an eternal city that should be temporally static, anchored in its own heritage – and Pompeii has been subject to the same expectations in many respects. has been constructed many times since its unearthing. First, through its own use as a city, and then during the Romantic period as a theme park for tourists, and even in the modern era as a place of education and where “the processes of historical discovery are laid bare”. The overall shift in identity for Pompeii was its change from a city of the living, where people went about their daily lives, to a city of the dead populated by corpses and ruins, now being re-populated annually by millions of tourists. Because Pompeii is a ruin, empty of life, and so far removed from the present reality in terms of time, it is very easy to project meaning onto – both meaning for itself and meaning for the visitors.

One of the darkest moments in American history was the Salem Witch Trials of 1692. The “largest and most lethal witch hunt in American history” began in Salem Village (now Danvers, Massachusetts) when several young girls, including Elizabeth Parris, who was the daughter of the town minister Samuel Parris, began to experience “fits” that had no discernable cause other than what the town doctor declared to be bewitchment. While the accusers themselves and many of the “witches” they targeted lived in Salem Village, the Town of Salem was where the hangings took place, with the first ones occurring in the fall of 1692 when Sarah Good, Elizabeth Hose, Susannah Martin, Rebecca Nurse, and Sarah Wildes were executed. From the Fall of 1692 to the summer of 1693, there were 20 executions, 19 of which were hangings and one pressing.

Salem is a place of societal ruin. The entire community turned on itself, before coming to the confusing conclusion in 1702 of the magistrates declaring the trials that were held unlawful, and decreeing that the good names of the victims be restored. I mentioned that Salem Village is now know as Danvers Massachusetts and while Salem and Salem Village, share the terrible history, Salem Village works hard to separate itself from the narrative, as seen by it renaming itself to Danvers in 1752. It desperately wants to be removed from the story of the witch trials, when arguably it has more geographic claim to the narrative than Salem itself. Danvers has gone about making visiting any sites within its border nearly impossible. Homes and buildings related to the trials that remain in situ have continued housing families and businesses, memorials have little to no parking available, and heavy traffic on the roads makes it difficult to visit them as a pedestrian, meaning only a specialized tourist who was bound and determined to see the locations would make the Herculean effort to find them. For Salem, the buildings that it claims connections to the trials have either been moved or demolished in the time since the witch trials, and key places like the exact location of the gallows have ended up being lost to memory. The markers that denote the locations also denote their own inaccuracy and obscure the events that took place during the trials – thus disappointing tourists when they learn of the deception. Salem capitalizes on a false authenticity of place It is not through education that Salem profits off of its dark history, but through the kitsch-based fascination of pirates and witches existing in one of the oldest colonial ports. The Salem Police Department logo even contains a witch motif. With souvenirs, dungeon experiences, and large events such as a Witch’s Walk, Salem revises the tragedy in its history in a way that romanticizes and idealizes it, similar to the way that Disney movies present history. There was a monument erected to the victims of the witch trials in 2017. It stands apart from the rest of the city in aesthetic and in placement, silent and innocuous that it can be missed: it does not loudly advertise its existence like the rest of Salem. It works in the way that dark tourism sites overall do, in the fashion of “visitors deciding the meaning”. By being ambiguous in its specific design, it allows for the tourist to see what they think is fitting for a monument, whether that be the gallows, a jail, or a ruined building.

Chernobyl to this day still has the reputation for being the world’s worst nuclear accident. Through a surge of energy to Reactor #4, the unit caught fire on April 26th, 1986, leading to its rupture and explosion later that same day. As people fled and were evacuated from their homes, with instructions to leave everything behind as they were promised they would be able to return in a few days, Pripyat, the closet town to the reactor, was re-born as a ghost town. Across the Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia, an estimated 200,000 people have died due to radiation exposure, and an even greater number of people suffer from ongoing health conditions. As expected, the argument for the inclusion of Chernobyl in these case studies is that it represents a man-made ruin through the folly of trust in technology.

With Chernobyl, it is important to remember that it took place against the backdrop of the Cold War. The USSR and America both had agendas that they were trying to further in their coverage or lack there of, of the reactor blowing. Seeking any advantages they could claim in exposing or concealing the situation, inflating or deflating the numbers of people harmed. It wasn’t until 2011 when Ukraine finally allowed tours to take place through Pripyat, before this it was only illegal tours led by members of the surrounding communities or family members of those impacted by the exodus. The tourists have a wide range of reactions to the site – expressing indifference to the history, excitement about the danger that they perceive, and some individuals even schadenfreude, pleasure of witnessing the misfortunes of others. For dark tourism concerns, it’s authentic for being in situ, adding the aura of the place to the experiences and representing death in a more immediate way. Chernobyl is prime for the romanticization treatment of media due to being within the living memory and located in Eastern Europe, a place that is already seen and depicted as a foreign Other to many, adding to the forbidden allure of visiting. With the rise of social media, the number of tours to Chernobyl see spikes in the fall and winter, when the nature around the abandoned ruins is dying and decaying as well, lending itself to the desired aesthetic for people to show off that they visited. “Chernobyl is both real and imagined,” where one can go explore and tell others about later – but it is also staged. Knowing that people are drawn in by the heterotopic binaries of the real and the contrived, items within Chernobyl and Pripyat are posed to illicit the maximum emotional impact when photographed, the creations of juxtapositions within a juxtaposition itself.

Death Tourism deals with sites of ruin, that are explicit reminders of the circle of life and death being indiscriminate. Tragedy has happened here, and it will happen again. Someone was here before, and someone will be here after, until one day in which there will no longer be an after for humans to inhabit. The meanings of these sites and those who visit them is continually in flux, and relates largely to the society that is taking note at the time. But how we make meaning of these sites tells us about our current society, whether we like what we are hearing or not. It is romantic to think that we only travel to dark tourist sites because we are contemplating our own mortality, but it is ignorant to forget that history is a spiral – events will happen again if not in the same circumstances. Witches are replaced by minorities and religious groups that we don’t want to understand. Natural Disasters like Vesuvius are happening more and more as we continue to ignore climate change. Chernobyl will not stay the worst nuclear accident in mans history for very long, as every year we outpace ourselves in technological advancements. A hopeful part of me wants to think that we are participating in Dark Tourism because we want to learn from our mistakes, but the way history is presented to the visitors, both intentionally and unintentionally and interpreted, seems to always come back to schadenfreude. Death has been removed from us for so long that we seek it as a macabre pleasure, one that society doesn’t allow us to have – and that’s fine, but only when it is the death and suffering of someone else, somewhere else, sometime else. Our fascination stems from ignorance, but not from wanting to learn from our mistakes, but from a place of relief that it wasn’t us. ________________________________________________________________ I hope you enjoyed this! I know the writing isn’t as high quality as a paper traditionally would be, but if there seems to be interest I can do future posts breaking down each site further <3 Thanks!

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ill-will-editions · 4 years

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QUARANTINE LETTER #4

A fourth letter in our quarantine series, from our friend Icarus.

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EVERYTHING IS TRUE, NOTHING IS PERMITTED

“They’ve already destroyed everything, all the structures we believed in, trusted. Maybe we’re in a transitional phase, you know? There’s some sort of substitution going on. Meanwhile, we’re navigating in a tremendous vacuum, vaguely oriented by the stars but with no true reference point. Our compasses have gone wild, spinning madly, attracted by thousands of magnetic poles. We might as well throw them out the window, they’re obsolete. It’s just us and the night sky, like it was for the early explorers, while we wait for new, more advanced navigational devices to be invented. My only fear is that the stars have somehow gotten out of place and will be no help as references either.”

- Ignacio de Loyola Brandao, “And Still the Earth”

Dear friends,

It can be strange to intervene in someone else’s debate, but I don’t believe you’ll hold it against me if I do. Over the past weeks, I’ve rather enjoyed the commentary and exchange of letters between my friends, August, Kora, and Orion. Something about the reflections of my friends is missing for me still, so I’ll chime in without wasting too much time, I hope.

QUARANTINE: INCOMPLETE—WHAT WE THINK IS HAPPENING IS ONLY SOMEWHAT ACCURATE

Today, millions of people are working. In warehouses, in offices, in fields, kitchens and storerooms; from the computer, the sorting room and at construction sites, millions of Americans are sharing the coronavirus with each other and with their neighbors. Many of them are asymptomatic, a portion are not sick yet, and certainly some of them are still hiding their symptoms from their families, employers, and coworkers. No zombie apocalypse is complete without the inconsiderate hot-head who insists, deceptively, that his injury is “nothing, it’s fine, let’s keep moving”. Orion wrote that the virus imposes “its own temporality, which immobilizes everything.” If only.

Logistics, shipping, freight, warehousing: these are some of the largest sectors of the 21st century workforce, and they are all on overtime. From Whole Foods to Old Dominion, these disposable workers are simultaneously killable - insofar as the market facilitates their endangerment via assured contact with the virus - and indispensable, insofar as they must not be allowed to strike, unionize, or cease working that this society may minimally function. In these industries, overwhelmingly, black men and immigrants are crammed into job sites without any protective equipment. In other words, they are proletarians in the classical sense, and they are still at work. A true quarantine, a dignified exodus from the commodity society and its extensive productive apparatus, would halt all forms of labor and toil, a circumstance as yet unrealized. If we can say we are living in a quarantine, we must say that it is still incomplete.

AUTONOMY OR AUTOMATA?—THE PANDEMIC AFFECTS ALL OF HUMANITY—WHICH NO LONGER EXISTS AS SUCH

What we once called "society" (an entity which now insists it can survive unity and distance simultaneously, even distance for the sake of unity), has been replaced by billions of apparatuses. These apparatuses constitute a vast ACEPHALOGRAM - a system of machines designed to trace and retrace the consciousness of a world that has definitively lost its head.

The period of real domination opened by the aggressive economic and political restructuring in the 70s, 80s, and 90s - “globalization” - has pushed a vast quantity of workers out of manufacturing and into service related industries. Services being overall less profitable then commodity manufacturing and heavy industry, other technological implements such as we see emerge from Silicon Valley have filled the gap, so to speak, of lost profits for the economy by allowing large advertising and analysis firms to mine directly the collective human ambitions in art, sex, politics, culture, and society. To open up this mine, which has produced an existential ruin comparable to the environmental ruin associated with mineral mining, the internet has developed as a global network of pseudo participatory information systems. The data thirst of these industries cannot be sated by the administration of facts from the center or top, they must be produced by the masses directly. But technology does not simply catch data falling naturally from the sky or running off the gutters of consciousness. It produces data by arranging relations such that they produce content that can be bought and sold. Under such conditions, the medical, political, technological and ontological crisis of a pandemic cannot help but be experienced as a video, a collection of tweets, graphs, memes, as background noise, as a conspiracy theory, as a genre in the endless relay of notifications.

THE MIDDLE OF THE BEGINNING OF THE END—WHAT MAKES INDIVIDUAL INTERPRETATION POSSIBLE, MAKES COMMON UNDERSTANDING IMPOSSIBLE.

The truth is that social media has allowed billions of people to coordinate themselves into large and small containers of meaning and virtual energy. These containers, ecosystems of signs and signifiers, by dint of their polycentralized arrangement, function as an epistemological subversion of established truth-making infrastructures that require a certain amount of hegemony or global purchase: the scientific method, fact-checking, and debate. Occasionally, the understanding produced in these containers, theory-fictions more than anything else, incidentally conform to an intensity with physical correlatives capable of overpowering police infrastructures and seizing public space, as we saw across the world in 2019. More often, the echo chambers, as they are often called, curtail feelings of common dialogue and the perception of shared futurity that would be seemingly embedded in such a “global” sharing of information. This curtailing allows people of all “types” to be bundled together as data sets, insulated from the experience of true diversity of thought, of experience, of analysis. The polycentralized arrangement of the internet today may be even less participatory than previous eras of information sharing, even though it doesn’t feel that way.

Commentators and critics have used the ongoing crisis to delay the moment of our collective education with unwavering ideological entrenchment. At work, it is not uncommon for me to hear small business owners and day traders talk about the failures of socialized medicine in Italy, implicitly endorsing greater privatization in the US. Among activists, liberals, and leftists, it is impossible to imagine a greater indictment on the privatized, decentralized, healthcare system than what is taking place. Apocalyptic Christian sects believe the government is going to repress churches for gathering, and social justice advocates believe the coronavirus crisis will be “the same, but worse” on every oppressive axis. It’s hard to imagine another reflex.

While they recognize that the internet has plunged billions of people into a pulverized simulacrum, some of my comrades would have us devote ourselves to the dissemination of real news, of verified and sober analysis, of scientific rigor, in order to combat the prevailing disarray. This warms my heart just as it saddens my intellect. We have always been machine-breakers, in a way, revolting against the forward and crushing movement of industry to preserve a less alienated experience of reality, labor, and community. We aren’t wrong for that. We should be reliable sources of information, but not because we will convince people with our reports — which may no longer be so possible online — rather because we believe it is the right thing to do, and because we can at least proceed on a clear and shared basis with each other. But what other strategies could we utilize for analyzing the world that would allow us to act within the protracted vertigo, without trapping ourselves or others in ideological camps, and without losing revolutionary aspirations in a world where global verification of facts seems impossible, but where universal need for a transformation, fascistic or revolutionary, feels like common sense?

EVERYTHING IS TRUE, NOTHING IS PERMITTED—THE SYSTEM REDUCES ITSELF TO A PURE FLUX OF DYNAMICS

“We dreamed of utopia and woke up screaming

A poor lonely cowboy that comes back home, what a wonder”

-Roberto Bolano, “Leave Everything, Again”

For millennia, the administration of public facts was the cornerstone of political power, and stamping out alternative readings the chief objective of the repressive machinery. The ruling bureaucracy has organized itself to prevent any global loss of control. They’ve always done that. What is surprising is how readily, since 9/11 at least, perhaps much earlier, they have abandoned many important methods for doing so. As the possibility of imagining its own future became increasingly stamped-out, the reigning order abandoned any pretense of pursuing the ideals it propped itself up on, its sole promise being to ward-off unforeseen eventualities. Without embarrassing myself with long-winded arguments about things I am ill-equipped to discuss - certainly less knowledgeable than my dear friends are on such matters as philosophy and critical works - I’d prefer to refer to an argument advanced by Brian Massumi in his essay “National Emergency Enterprise”. In this piece, he argues that a primary strategy of governance is to identify all possible causes of a scenario. The market refashions environments that submit the living tissue of relations one and all to technological “dataveillance”, information which, in principle, allows the administrators of such a system to model its every possible outcome, translating every action into a trans-action, while ensuring that every aberration meets a form of control. He utilizes the example of a forest fire, but we can just look at the pandemic and it’s consequences.

The ruling class everywhere, has argued and governed as if the coronavirus is "merely the flu", justifying late responses and insufficient care, while also closing borders and taking emergency measures as if we are living in a veritable plague. There are strategies attached to every discourse, interests silently advanced with each interpretation, and powers produced and mobilized by every kind of theory and operation. Anyway, we have been living in the fall out of multiple convergent strategies for controlling and responding to this situation. The governors of the world, at least of the democratic countries, are basically throwing things against a wall and seeing what sticks. We can imagine that modeling and predictions are conducted endlessly based on analytics produced through data mining and network analysis purchased from Google, Facebook, Twitter, and elsewhere. As technocratic governments subordinate welfare states to the "science" of neoliberalism, the nihilism of the powerful today subordinates everything to the "science" of control.

Anyway, who organizes oblivion today acts with no principles and can only speak in lies. What does this mean for the rest of us?

NOTHING IS EVERYTHING, TRUE IS PERMITTED—TRUTH DOES NOT REQUIRE A SUBJECT ONLY LIES DO. LET'S KEEP IT REAL, WHATEVER THAT IS.

We can and are responding to this situation. The most important thing, from my perspective, is that we develop a vibrant enough ecosystem of strategies, corresponding to the largest possible interpretation of facts, without dividing our sympathies and concerns into rival fiefdoms and ideological sects. There are benefits to arguing that nothing of the situation is unique, that in fact the worst off before are the worst off now, that today simply represents an opportunity for us, etc. I am not among the comrades advancing this position, but I want to see the results of that framework as soon as possible, if it does not in fact raise the threshold for meaningful interventions. There are benefits to arguing that the quarantine is not deep enough, that the politics of mobilization have failed utterly to devastate the economy, but that a true lock down of the world could resemble the worlds first ever international wildcat general strike. I want to hear advocates of this position contend with the possibility of carceral interpretations of this argument. For those planting survival gardens, for those running autonomous rent strike hotlines, for those training in firearms, I want us to develop a shared enough perspective to see that there is a simple unity in our strategies, which is what is precisely, and incorrectly, attacked in Kora’s most recent letter to Orion: our autonomy. Beyond any individualistic misinterpretations, it is my perspective that the ability of human beings to self-authorize our activity, to determine our shared destinies, to control supply chains, vital infrastructures, and means of subsistence without the mediating factors of the market, are necessary prerequisites for a dignified life on earth. This is not to say, as Kora has intelligently argued, that anyone could come to control the unfolding course of history - a delusion that preppers, governors, and revolutionaries have all held - but precisely that autonomous, self-organized, structures are the only structures capable of responding quickly enough to the destabilizing, frightening, and uncertain futures lying in wait regardless of what we or anyone else do. We must utilize the current situation to repolarize the circumstances to the best of our ability around foundational concerns of power: on the one hand, there are all of the people of the world, some of them bastards we would not live with, and our shared need for dignified healthcare, housing, sustenance, and livelihood; and on the other hand there are all of the bastards waiting this out on yachts, manipulating public data for the sake of a geopolitical PR battle, utilizing the pandemic to pursue totalitarian power fantasies and clampdowns. We don’t need to steer the ship forward, we need to be able to swim in the wreckage.

Sorry, I wrote too much. Thanks for reading and I look forward to reading what others think soon.

-- Icarus

04.11.2020

STATE OF EMERGENCY, DAY 40

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

#Quarantine letters #COVID19 #USA #articles

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otogetranslations · 5 years

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Announcing of Dropping DIABOLIK LOVERS MORE;BLOOD

To sum things up:

Someone leaked the Diabolik Lovers Limited V Edition patch, posting it publicly despite all our warnings and requests. Thus we are following through with our original policy.

We’re stopping every projects related to Diabolik Lovers, including further support for Limited V Edition, and there won’t be a patch for More;Blood.

Collar x Malice Unlimited will still be released, but privately. After all, you guys will get the English version of it from Aksys for the switch next year!

I (the leader of otogetranslations) will still be helping other translators with their projects: Brothers Conflict, Hakuoki SSL. How the patch is gonna be distributed is up to their respective leaders (coquettishcat for Hakuoki SSL, and PassionandBrilliance for Brothers Conflict).

No more Black Wolves Saga. This project I (Reishiki) started by asking permission to use existing translation from orlandoblue @tumblr, Siberia (twitter.com/bakemeatz). The patch of Black Wolves Saga Bloody Nightmare is to be completed soon. But it’s no more.

Read on if you wanted to know what really happened:

As you all know, we released DIABOLIK LOVERS LIMITED V EDITION fan translation patch this August 16th, 2019 for homebrew enabled/hacked Playstation vita, and only for people that have proof or purchasing the game.

There are over 50 people who showed us the proof of purchasing the game and they received the patch for free. All we asked was for you to actually buy the game before you can play it with a hacked playstation vita.

Our 30-people team worked on the patch for 10 months. We only used outsource translation for 8/277 total scripts. Our in-house hacker did the romhacking process, our in-house proofreaders proofed the translation, our recruited translators worked on the translation. Everything was done by us and it’s our team effort. So we have the right to decide how we’re gonna distribute it.

However, on August 20th, 2019. Rojaaalice on reddit r/vitapiracy posted a thread, asking the patch to be given to them for free (without purchasing the game). A lot of people who frequent this subreddit accused us of being Gatekeepers, while all we’re doing is asking for proof of purchasing the game (not the patch, the patch is 100% free). Is buying the game you play wrong? Is asking for a proof of purchasing something you play gatekeeping, when we could have chosen to not share the patch at all in the first place?

I don’t think so.

But, this person, SilicaAndPina (https://twitter.com/SiliCart) is not happy with how we distribute our patch. He said that we should keep the vita hacking scene free, we can’t ask for people to buy anything to be able to get the PATCH that we worked on. He doesn’t play otome games in general, and he doesn’t even know what otome games is.

He started to trick me into giving the patch to him, by making a fake proof of purchase with a cloned gmail account. I noticed the proof was fake and didn’t give it to him. Then he got mad and sent this (WARNING: GORE IMAGE) to me. He stated that he will leak the patch eventually.

He attempted to acquire the patch once again with a different fake proof this time. I also noticed this and we trolled him by sending him a FAKE patch. We left the prologue in English and put ridiculous/crack fanfiction in other parts. He thought it was real and distributed it, declared he has won over us.

He thought he tricked us but no, we weren’t being tricked by his half-assed effort.

Today, August 22nd, there is someone from the DiaLover Fandom that received the real patch sent it over to him. I’m sorry to say that the patch would be leaked eventually, one way or another, because if someone really wants to leak it, they could buy the physical copy, take a photo with it and send it to us. Then they can sell the game to get the money back.

So, we lost.

But to the one that sent the patch to him, lost to the malice of this world, and not to him.

I had envisioned this would happen when I first started the project. So I’m not surprised. I had a small ray of hope this wouldn’t happen so soon, but I was wrong.

As we’ve stated before, we will cease every project translation related to DIABOLIK LOVERS.

No more patches of DIABOLIK LOVERS will be made from us, at least when I’m the leader of that project (as well as the leader of otogetranslations): Reishiki.

I’m proud to say our patch was enjoyed and praised by people that bought the game and received the patch.

I (Reishiki) will still be supporting other translators if they need it, but I won’t start any new project from now on (in which could be AMNESIA LATER/CROWD/WORLD, VARIABLE BARRICADE - these games I completed extracting the texts with our inhouse hacker’s help, and I planned to announce we would start one of these projects soon. But… I’m sorry to say that it’s no more. At least it won’t be made available to the public.)

Thank you everyone for your support.

These are our team members opinions:

JokerTrap-Ran: I think I just lost faith in the community as a whole again, coming back after 4 years. I hope you’re happy! This was really demoralising and I hope ya’ll had fun putting us down like that. I’m not one for drama and honestly I’d very much like to stay out of it considering the bad medicine bashing that happened on otome reddit about 3 years ago. I’ll continue releasing translations for blog’s followers but that’s it. I’m whimsical, and most of my followers know it. I pick things and I drop it all the same.

Khikari: For those who thinks that what we have committed is blasphemy and should be shut down for this, great, please take the time to learn Japanese yourself. Or learn to care about other people with emotions for once in you life. Demoralising people who were willing to work endless hours for free with just one condition sure is satisfying, isn’t it? It really hurt all of us. For those who genuinely cared and are saddened by this post, I am sorry and I wish the best for you all. I know that the few doesn’t represent all but this is a massive motivation killer, and I don’t need this drama in my life. From now on, private translations all the way! Also, Silica, attacking an idea is fine, but attacking people with malicious intent is stepping out of line. Enjoy being a rock specimen.

LoliChan195: I hope you are happy with what you have done! We only wanted to bring this out for people that had difficulties playing the game, and also help support Rejet by having more people buy their games. Its people like you that cause all these game companies to go bankrupt! (Also SiliCar, you sick fuck. Who sends pictures like that!? XD you’re probably just some edgy 12yr old XD Besides, who says WE WILL NOT FORGIVE XD what a dumbass! And is it that hard to search on google about the game? Why would we make it so it specifically needs to be the limited edition?!?! ) Seriously, the people who attacked us for putting the rule out are just as bad, like can’t you just wait and buy the game? Or even if u just pirate it, read online translations. Its not that hard!

Hermy: Nothing much to say, except, ya’ll could have totes pirated the game and played it along the translations available on the net. Welp, I hope you don’t dislike that idea too much because that’s what ya’ll gonna need to do if ya’ll wanna play the sequels.

PS: the MB translations available on the net are riddled with errors, but by all means have fun with them :)

Anon: Oh yes, silica? Perhaps you should just lead on with your true intentions next time instead of trying to honey your words and do some "re-con" for dots, yeah?

Marzi: I'm a bit numb to this situation at this point, but it is disheartening to know Silica was so intent on distributing our translations that he didn't stop even when we threatened to cease all translations. It wasn't like he was ever going to play the game - he just felt so personally offended by the fact that we were "gatekeeping" for some reason - which, in my opinion, is a bit of an immature reason to ruin a translation group. You can't argue that we're "unrightfully holding something when we don't have the intellectual rights," when you're bypassing all copyright laws as well in wanting to post it PUBLICALLY. But what's done is done - whoever manages to get a copy of this, I hope you enjoy it. Please know so much effort and passion went into these translations, and that we loved working on this project every bit of the way. If the game leaves you antsy for More Blood well LOL you know who prevented that from happening.

Sonic-nancy-fan: I never knew someone could have such an illogical mindset. Silica/PSSDude made the original base repatch program, and we used one that someone had edited and added to (which Silica was fine with). But, because he made the original one, that means he feels like HE can getekeep all uses of variations of it. This would be like saying people can’t use paper to make a paper airplane because the original creator of paper said no, or you can’t print manga because Gutenberg said no. Also, who in the world thinks they can take a moral high-ground by telling us to promote piracy? Patches are already a sort of grey area, so we were trying to take the most legal method available while still making a patch. I know in modern society, piracy is very common, but I can’t imagine your average person would call us in the wrong for trying to hinder piracy. God forbid we try to get people to buy Diabolik Lovers. I can’t say I’m shocked as I expected it to get leaked sometime. I’m just saddened at certain people’s general hate and unyielding desire to leak it. So, I don’t blame the community as a whole, nor do I feel any malice toward the community (we had a lot of people buy the game and get excited). I’m just mad at very specific spiteful people. Also, if I ever hear someone say “the scene” as much as Silica, I’m going to go nuts. It sounds like something the “cool guy” in an 80’s show would say.

#diabolik lovers #otogetranslations #announcement

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sustainablecontributions · 4 years

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The Two Faces of Fashion

In 2007, Angel Gurria, the former Secretary-General of the OECD, gave a speech to the Foreign Relations Commission. He enthusiastically described globalisation as “a major positive force which provides key contributions to global progress and prosperity” (Gurria, 2007). While he acknowledged areas for improvement, the speech was overwhelmingly supportive of globalisation. However, it is becoming increasingly evident in recent years that globalisation has a darker side (Saval, 2018).

In the late 20th and early 21st century, many UK fashion brands, from high street names such as M&S (Adams, 2011), to luxury brands such as Burberry (BBC, 2007), began sourcing garments from the far east and ceasing manufacturing in the UK. Driven by a desire to cut costs and remain competitive, brands were able to benefit from cheap labour in developing nations, and reduced compliance overheads in the UK (Hoskins, 2014). An increased obsession with profitability has encouraged business leaders to turn a blind eye and encourage unsustainable demand, whatever the environmental and social cost. These actions have led to opacity and complexity in supply chains, and it is now difficult for consumers to mentally connect their purchasing decisions with the harm caused by the production of their items.

While supply chains are opaque, the impacts of globalised fashion are deeply understood. Barely a week goes by without a report exposing forced labour, hazardous working conditions, pollution, unsustainable farming practices and animal welfare issues, to name a few (Young, 2020)

Fortunately, not all businesses hold profitability as their sole objective. Johnston’s of Elgin (JoE), a luxury garment manufacturer and retailer in rural Scotland has valued quality and purpose since it was founded in 1797. A dedication to serving the communities in which it operates, both in the UK and abroad, makes them an aspirational model for any brand selling physical goods. Their contributions to the Sustainable Development Goals are evident, and they have also consistently delivered economic growth.

While most UK manufacturing communities have been devastated by job losses following offshoring, JoE has retained all manufacturing in Scotland, preserving jobs in a rural community, nurturing skills, and making production decisions that reduce environmental harm.

The fashion industry is notoriously wasteful, with over 300k tonnes of clothes heading to landfill each year (Ellson, 2018). JoE has not only improved on quality, and therefore lifespan, they also offer a return and repair service, contributing to responsible consumption goals.

Sourcing cashmere is becoming increasingly unsustainable for similar businesses. In 2015, Simon Cotton, the CEO of JoE, jointly founded the Sustainable Fibre Alliance, an NGO dedicated to enabling the supply of sustainable cashmere from China and Mongolia. Since then, JoE has been instrumental in securing herder livelihoods and setting codes of practice that ensure preservation of rangelands, animal welfare, and the environmentally friendly processing of raw materials, and a transparent chain-of-custody process (JoE, 2019).

It is inspiring to see a local Scottish business demonstrating that growth is achievable while embracing sustainable practises and serving communities.

____

Reference list

Adams, F. (2011). M&S Switch to Foreign Suppliers Threatens 16,000 UK Textile Jobs. [online] The Independent. Available at: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/m-s-switch-to-foreign-suppliers-threatens-16-000-uk-textile-jobs-740621.html [Accessed 31 Jan. 2021].

BBC (2007). Burberry demo despite £1m offer. news.bbc.co.uk. [online] 27 Jan. Available at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/6305703.stm [Accessed 31 Jan. 2021].

Ellson, A. (2018). Clothes Worth £12.5bn Are Thrown in Bin. [online] Thetimes.co.uk. Available at: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/clothes-worth-12-5bn-are-thrown-in-bin-b8rqfrcg2 [Accessed 6 Feb. 2021].

Gurria, A. (2007). Reaping the Benefits of Globalisation: the Importance of Public Policies. [In-Person] Available at: http://www.oecd.org/general/38144150.pdf [Accessed 6 Feb. 2021].

Johnstons of Elgin. (2019). Johnston’s of Elgin - Our Philosophy. [online] Available at: https://www.johnstonsofelgin.com/retail/about-johnstons-of-elgin/our-philosophy/ [Accessed 6 Feb. 2021].

Labour Behind The Label (2020). Boohoo & Covid-19. [online] Labourbehindthelabel.net, p.4. Available at: https://labourbehindthelabel.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/LBL-Boohoo-WEB.pdf [Accessed 6 Feb. 2021].

Robinson, P.K. and Hsieh, L. (2016). Reshoring: a Strategic Renewal of Luxury Clothing Supply Chains. Operations Management Research, [online] 9(3-4), pp.89–101. Available at: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12063-016-0116-x [Accessed 6 Feb. 2021].

Saval, N. (2018). Globalisation: the Rise and Fall of an Idea That Swept the World. [online] The Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jul/14/globalisation-the-rise-and-fall-of-an-idea-that-swept-the-world [Accessed 6 Feb. 2021].

Tansy Hoskins (2014). Luxury brands: Higher Standards or Just a Higher mark-up? [online] The Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2014/dec/10/luxury-brands-behind-gloss-same-dirt-ethics-production [Accessed 6 Feb. 2021].

Young, S. (2020). What Was the Rana Plaza Disaster and Why Did It happen? [online] The Independent. Available at: https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/fashion/rana-plaza-factory-disaster-anniversary-what-happened-fashion-a9478126.html [Accessed 6 Feb. 2021].

Image Credits -

1. United Nations (SDG Icons) 2. Johnston’s of Elgin

Podcast Reference list

Bradley-Ross, C. (2014). How Is Cotton Biodegradable and Why Is That Good? [online] The Sustainable Fashion Collective. Available at: https://www.the-sustainable-fashion-collective.com/2014/10/09/cotton-biodegradable-good.

BrotherEarthJp (2014). Project for Combating Desertification in Inner Mongolia -full version-. YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxcSTU4UtXw&t=81s [Accessed 7 Feb. 2021].

Business Insider (2019). Why Cashmere Is So Expensive | So Expensive. YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Fy1suDnO3o&t=39s [Accessed 7 Feb. 2021].

Filei, A.A., Slesarenko, L.A., Boroditskaya, A.V. and Mishigdorj, O. (2018). Analysis of Desertification in Mongolia. Russian Meteorology and Hydrology, 43(9), pp.599–606.

Hernández, J.C. (2017). “We Don’t Exist”: Life inside Mongolia’s Swelling Slums. The New York Times. [online] 2 Oct. Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/02/world/asia/mongolia-slums-ulan-bator.html [Accessed 7 Feb. 2021].

Johnstons of Elgin. (2021). Cashmere Clothing & Fabrics | Scottish Cashmere. [online] Available at: https://www.johnstonsofelgin.com/ [Accessed 7 Feb. 2021].

JohnstonsofElgin (2012). Our Story - Celebrating 215 Years. YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEyeWsoISLM [Accessed 7 Feb. 2021].

PETA. (2019). Brands That Have Banned Cashmere Cruelty. [online] Available at: https://www.peta.org/features/international-brands-that-have-banned-cashmere/ [Accessed 7 Feb. 2021].

Sustainable Fibre Alliance. (2021). SFA | The Sustainable Fibre Alliance. [online] Available at: https://sustainablefibre.org/ [Accessed 7 Feb. 2021].

T, B. (2019). Mongolia Has 70.9 Million Livestock Animals Counted. [online] MONTSAME News Agency. Available at: https://montsame.mn/en/read/211029 [Accessed 7 Feb. 2021].

The Economist (2018). The true cost of fast fashion | The Economist. YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLfNUD0-8ts&t=32s [Accessed 7 Feb. 2021].

Timmins, B. (2020). Cashmere and climate change threaten nomadic life. BBC News. [online] 5 Mar. Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-51315490 [Accessed 6 Feb. 2021].

United Nations (2015). The 17 Goals. [online] United Nations. Available at: https://sdgs.un.org/goals [Accessed 7 Feb. 2021].

Walsh, F. (2008). Partywear and cashmere help Primark beat the gloom. [online] the Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2008/jan/17/associatedbritishfoodsbusiness.christmas2007 [Accessed 6 Feb. 2021].

www.eda.admin.ch. (n.d.). National Rangeland Forum: Caring for our homeland and rangelands. [online] Available at: https://www.eda.admin.ch/countries/mongolia/en/home/news/agenda.html/content/countries/mongolia/en/meta/agenda/2017/rangeland_forum [Accessed 7 Feb. 2021].

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salamandersofftheclock · 4 years

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Coffee Alternatives & Weaning

A Very Thorough Guide to Quitting Coffee and Other CaffeineHere’s the secret for how to quit caffeine—permanently or as a temporary break—without feeling terrible.

by John Fawkes · Mar 1, 2019 · · 10 min read ·

Caffeine Is Nice but Overrated

The positive effects of caffeine are real and valuable, but in this case, more is not better.

The mental benefits of caffeine are, for the most part, fully realized at very low doses. Consuming as little as 40 mg of caffeine can improve attention, alertness, vigilance, and reaction time. Higher doses of caffeine can actually be counterproductive from the standpoint of productivity or mental performance: after a certain point, more caffeine will cause anxiety, jitters, and brain fog, and the increase in energy level it produces can make it hard to stay still.

To give you some context, here’s the amount of caffeine in some common beverages, as reported by the Center for Science in the Public Interest:

One tall (12 oz.) Starbucks coffee, Pike Place Roast: 235 mg

One cup of Folgers ground coffee, House blend, made with 2 tablespoons of coffee: 60–80 mg

One 8 oz. cup of brewed green tea: 29 mg

One 20 oz. Diet Coke: 76 mg

One 8 oz. Red Bull: 80 mg

One 2 oz. 5-Hour Energy (or one caplet of Vivarin or NoDoze): 200 mg

Improvements in physical performance require higher doses of caffeine. Improvements in endurance start happening at dosages of 3 mg per kilogram of body weight, and sometimes even more is needed. Since most people weigh between 40 and 100 kg (1 kg = 2.2 lbs), a minimum of 120 to 300 mg of caffeine is needed to aid with distance running. Improvements in strength and power require even higher dosages, and many studies find that caffeine leads to no improvement at all. One research review found that 11 of 17 studies found a relationship between caffeine and improvements in power, and 6 of 11 studies found that caffeine was associated with improvements in strength. Of the studies that did show a benefit of caffeine usage before resistance training (weightlifting), the minimum dosage required was always at least 3 mg per kilogram of body weight, and sometimes as high as 6 mg/kg.What most people don’t realize is that the physical effects of caffeine are largely due to the placebo effect. So strong is this effect that it actually gets stronger the more caffeine subjects believe they’re consuming. In fact, there’s not even a plausible physical mechanism whereby caffeine could improve strength and power—it actually works primarily by boosting your motivation so that you push yourself harder, which you could potentially train yourself to do without caffeine. Studies also consistently find a greater benefit to caffeine usage early in the morning, when it works in part by banishing any remaining sleepiness from the night before.As you’ll see in a minute, it only takes 100 mg or so per day to start getting addicted to caffeine. With that in mind, usage is best limited to very low dosages, taken early in the morning and with an eye toward mental rather than physical benefits. How Bad Is Caffeine Addiction? This is really two questions: How easily can you get addicted to caffeine? and How much can excessive caffeine consumption hurt you? I’ll tackle the “How addictive is it?” question first. Caffeine’s Addictive Potential: Consuming as little as 1.5 mg per kilogram of body weight per day is enough to start building up a tolerance for caffeine. That means tolerance will start to build at a daily intake of somewhere between 70 and 150 mg per day. This amounts to roughly one cup of coffee a day or maybe two cups of relatively weak coffee or tea if you’re especially big.Once you build up a tolerance, you become dependent on caffeine just to function normally. Effectively, your baseline level of physical and mental performance goes down, and your usual caffeine dose is only enough to get you up to normal. So if you normally consume 100 mg per day, for instance, after a few weeks you’ll be subnormal without caffeine; 100 mg will get you functioning normally, but it will take an even higher dose to truly reap its benefits.Once your consumption rises to around 750 mg a day—the equivalent of 5 to 8 cups of coffee or 15 to 20 cups of tea—your tolerance will be complete. You’ll cease to get any benefit from caffeine, even at higher intakes. And, of course, the withdrawal will be … not fun.Withdrawal can begin to occur when you’re habitually consuming around 100 mg per day. On the plus side, while caffeine withdrawal is painful, it’s not dangerous. Also, some of caffeine’s withdrawal symptoms, just like some of its positive effects, are purely subjective—caffeine withdrawal does not significantly reduce cognitive ability, even though it almost always feels like it does. Why You Shouldn’t Be Consuming Much Caffeine Anyway Everyone knows that caffeine can disrupt your sleep, but most people vastly underestimate just how easily it can do so. The standard advice to stop consuming caffeine in the afternoon actually doesn’t go nearly far enough, because even a single moderate dose of caffeine consumed first thing in the morning—such as a double espresso or two cups of coffee—can measurably reduce the amount of time spent in deep sleep later that night.This reduction occurs despite the fact that by nighttime, the caffeine is almost entirely gone from your bloodstream; that is, its effects seem to last beyond the active life of caffeine itself. Note that a much smaller dose of caffeine consumed in the afternoon, like a can of soda, will also have been metabolized by this time and thus could be expected to have the same effect. Caffeine also causes anxiety—in fact, this is likely a secondary mechanism behind its sleep-inhibiting effects. Even 150 mg of caffeine, usually considered a moderate dose, will significantly increase anxiety levels in most people.Daily consumption of even lower doses of caffeine can have even worse long-term effects. If you regularly consume more than 100 mg a day, you’ll experience increased anxiety and have chronically elevated cortisol levels. Cortisol, of course, is known as the body’s main “stress hormone.” And while it’s not as bad of a hormone as it’s often made out to be—you want it to be high first thing in the morning, for instance—chronically elevated cortisol levels are one of the most reliable biomarkers of poor overall health.When your cortisol levels are consistently high, you’re likely to die sooner. As if that wasn’t bad enough, higher cortisol levels can also cut your ability to recover from exercise in half—meaning you’ll make half as much progress as you would with low cortisol and only be able to exercise half as much before experiencing symptoms of overtraining. With all that said, there is good news here. You don’t need to quit caffeine forever, but habitual users should go on a one- to two-week caffeine detox every so often. Thankfully, there’s a way to kick a caffeine addiction in one week with very little pain. The Good News: It’s Not That Hard to Quit Typical caffeine withdrawal symptoms include the following: Lethargy Increased heart rate Decreased motor activity (you don’t feel like moving much) Shakes or hand tremors Increased need to urinate (i.e., a diuretic effect) Skin flushing Flu-like symptoms In addition, the following symptoms can occur, but usually only after a person has been habituated to higher dosages (several hundred milligrams per day): Muscle aches and stiffness Constipation Joint pain Abdominal pain Nausea and/or vomiting Withdrawal symptoms usually set in about 12 to 24 hours after cessation of caffeine intake. Fortunately, it only takes about nine days to get over a caffeine addiction and reset your tolerance, and the worst of the withdrawal symptoms will usually be behind you after two to three days. Those first few days can be quite unpleasant, however.The good news is that there are a couple of things you can do to make the process—and particularly the first two days—easier, and in fact nearly painless. Surprisingly, a simple amino acid supplement can block the worst effects of caffeine withdrawal.Here’s how that works: While caffeine’s primary mechanism of action is inhibition of the depressant neurotransmitter adenosine, the most painful symptoms of caffeine withdrawal aren’t linked to this process. Among other things, caffeine causes the brain to overproduce three stimulant hormones and neurotransmitters: dopamine, epinephrine (adrenaline), and norepinephrine.All three of these chemicals are synthesized by the body from the amino acid tyrosine, which in turn is synthesized from the amino acid phenylalanine. The biosynthesis pathway looks like this: Phenylalanine → tyrosine → L-Dopa → dopamine, epinephrine (adrenaline), norepinephrine Chronic caffeine usage can therefore deplete the brain’s stores of tyrosine and phenylalanine, two amino acids that act as building blocks for dopamine and adrenaline. This depletion is partly responsible for caffeine tolerance, as well as some of the more painful side effects of caffeine withdrawal—which is why research shows that phenylalanine and tyrosine depletion reduces the effectiveness of stimulants. As such, it is unsurprising that anecdotally, many people find that supplementing either tyrosine or phenylalanine can make recovery from caffeine addiction (and probably addiction to other dopamine-producing drugs) faster and easier. You might also recognize phenylalanine as an ingredient in diet sodas: a 12 oz. can of Diet Coke, for example, contains 104 mg of phenylalanine, one of the components of aspartame.Of the two recommended supplements—tyrosine and phenylalanine—I recommend phenylalanine, in the form of DL-phenylalanine (abbreviated DLPA), over tyrosine. Since each step in the synthesis pathway described above is irreversible, taking phenylalanine will restore your tyrosine levels as well, whereas taking tyrosine won’t directly restore your phenylalanine levels. DL-phenylalanine is a mixture of the left and right isomers of phenylalanine, and because your brain uses both, it’s best to supplement with a mix of the two. The other thing you can do to make the withdrawal process easier is replace your caffeine habit with another habit. According to The Power of Habit, the seminal book on habit change, it’s almost impossible to simply get rid of a habit without replacing it with something else. It is far more effective to replace that habit with something else that you can do at the same time and under the same circumstances as your old habit.What this means for caffeine is that you should replace your usual caffeine source with a decaffeinated version of the same thing. This decaffeinated substitute should also be available from the same sources from which you’re used to getting your caffeine. So if you normally have coffee at home, instead have decaf at home. If you normally get Diet Coke from 7–11, instead get caffeine-free Diet Coke if your store has it; otherwise, go for diet root beer, which is the closest thing to decaffeinated diet cola. Part 1 of 3

#fifth precept #quitting coffee #quitting caffeine #addiction ref

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