#zero fail: the rise and fall of the secret service

[actuallylorelaigilmore]

Tagged by: Fave of faves @bethanyactually--and usually I save every post I'm tagged in to (at least theoretically) do later, but since I actually have returned to watching and listening to things lately, I'm gonna do this one right now.

Last song: Like You Do by Josh Ramsay. And Christian Kane's cover of Fast Car, both of which were recced to me by Leander, who knew I should hear them. But also, while I haven't listened to any of it since Tuesday, I woke up with the Daisy Jones and The Six soundtrack playing in my head...just like it has been ever since I originally started watching the series. Today it's mostly been The River featuring Simone, Regret Me, and More Fun To Miss. I know enough of the lyrics now for the soundtrack to be my constant mental radio as I go about my day.

Currently watching: Nancy Drew S2 (I'm 4 episodes in and enjoying it a lot), Schmigadoon S2 (I've seen half of it and it's still fantastic and I'm bummed I only have 3 episodes to go) and today I'm about to start my Good Omens rewatch so I can head into the new season full of S1 feels. Because my best friend is literally the best, I'm also partly through a DJATS rewatch with Leander seeing it for the first time--making that my favorite thing I am watching right now.

Currently reading: Nightwork by Nora Roberts (I'm about halfway through it and have been borrowing it from @actuallylukedanes forever and I feel very bad about that! I will finish it! I'm also partly through How to Raise an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi, also on loan from Leander. And before that, I was (and remain) partway through literally 20 other ebooks of all kinds--most recently Zero Fail: The Rise and Fall of the Secret Service by Carol Leonnig. There's a ton of great nonfiction that I already have on my tablet and know I'll enjoy cuz I'm that kind of geek...I just rarely read anymore because reading time is time I'm not spending with my millions of other hobbies.

Current obsession: As referenced above, Daisy Jones and The Six, which I am so so happy Leander is watching with me--both helping me get it out of my system a little and letting me indulge even more in my love of it. After we watched it on Wednesday, I was able to listen to something that wasn't the soundtrack for the first time, so I just may be able to dial this obsession down to manageable levels at some point. But GUYS IT'S SO GOOD. I want to gif it as soon as I get back to Photoshop and I kind of want to read the book, when I didn't before. I just want to burrow into the world and live there, and I haven't felt that way in quite a while, about anything. (It's made it harder to engage with other things, which is why I originally was going to add Ted Lasso's completed final season to my week along with Nancy Drew and Schmigadoon, but ended up not doing so because my head and heart are full of DJATS right now. But I missed this feeling, too, so I'm happy to be in love again.)

No-pressure tagging: @actuallylukedanes, @jicklet, @jakeperalta, @beturass, @hondagirll, @mythologicalmango, @dollsome-does-tumblr, @anextrapart, @sentichefuoripiove, @robbiedaymonds and anybody else who wants to do this.

[a-skirmish-of-wit-and-lit]

Book Review: Zero Fail: The Rise and Fall of the Secret Service by Carol Leonnig

There are so many adjectives I could use to describe the pitfalls this book highlighted about the Secret Service as an institution: Eye-opening. Disturbing. Unfortunate. Appalling. Problematic. Astounding. And so on and forth. If there's one thing in particular I took away it's that the Secret Service has had both systemic and organizational issues since before JFK, but especially after, with many of them still lingering to this day, and worse, having yet to be fixed. It was unsettling to hear about the hierarchy within the organization itself. The way so many scandals and security failures were swept under the rug while agents continued to be promoted. (Though, I admit, I was not surprised by this.) It was also horrifying to learn how exposed and vulnerable American presidents have been over the years, whether that be because of vile threats they faced to their person, like Obama, or because they slipped their details to engage in trysts with women, like Kennedy and Clinton, or because the Secret Service didn't have the funds to provide the adequate manpower and technology they needed to cover all bases and keep them safe. An excellent and enlightening book. It'll leave my head spinning for some time. If I'm sure of anything after reading, it's that there's need for reform. A desperate need. And what better place to start than at the top?

4/5 stars

**Follow me on Goodreads

[bigtickhk]

Zero Fail: The Rise and Fall of the Secret Service by Carol Leonnig

US: https://amzn.to/2RZ8GeG

UK: https://amzn.to/3uTjhXc

https://bookshop.org/a/17891/9780399589010

[nancydrewwouldnever]

Book recommendations?! Say no more.

She Has Her Mother's Laugh: The Powers, Perversions, and Potential of Heredity - Carl Zimmer

I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life - Ed Yong

The Unfit Heiress: The Tragic Life and Scandalous Sterilization of Ann Cooper Hewitt - Audrey Clare Farley

Zero Fail: The Rise and Fall of the Secret Service - Carol D. Leonnig

Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories from the Twenty-First Century

How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America - Clint Smith

Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland - Patrick Radden Keefe

Traveling Black: A Story of Race and Resistance - Mia Bay

On Violence - Hannah Arendt

There are just a few of the books I’ve read recently😊

LOL... remember that time Chris posted a sceenshot from Hannah Arendt?

[ms-cellanies]

Reporter Carol Leonnig is an expert on the Secret Service.  Expect to hear more disturbing information about the Secret Service, especially involving the agents who protected Trump.  

[didanawisgi]

By Bill Gertz - The Washington Times - Tuesday, January 26, 2021

U.S. intelligence findings recently declassified by the State Department provide fresh evidence for the theory that the COVID-19 pandemic likely began at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, China’s sole high-security laboratory that has links to the country’s military.

The department, in a report made public this month by the outgoing Trump administration, disclosed for the first time that several workers at the Wuhan institute, where research on deadly viruses is conducted, were sickened in the autumn of 2019 with COVID-19-like symptoms.

The report also made public U.S. intelligence that the People’s Liberation Army conducted secret research on covert biological warfare at the institute. Chinese leaders have consistently denied any link between the lab and the outbreak of COVID-19 and have even promoted speculation that the United States or some other foreign source brought the virus to China.

The lab illnesses were detected prior to the first publicized case of COVID-19 in Wuhan in early December 2019, but China has refused to disclose what happened to the workers.

“Accidental infections in labs have caused several previous virus outbreaks in China and elsewhere, including a 2004 SARS outbreak in Beijing that infected nine people, killing one,” the report states.

“This raises questions about the credibility of WIV senior researcher Shi Zhengli’s public claim that there was ‘zero infection’ among the WIV’s staff and students of SARS-CoV-2 or SARS-related viruses.”

“Based on my experience and understanding of the science, it’s hard to believe this is a naturally occurring phenomenon,” said Robert G. Darling, a medical doctor and expert on biological weapons formerly with the Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick, Maryland.

“I think somebody [in Wuhan] caught their experiment,” said Dr. Darling, now chief medical officer for Patronus Medical.

William Lang, a former associate chief medical officer at the Homeland Security Department, noted that the State Department report does not accuse China’s communist leadership of releasing the virus intentionally.

“But the circumstantial — and more than circumstantial — evidence of some relation to WIV is very strong,” said Dr. Lang, now with the health service WorldClinic.

Ms. Shi, the WIV scientist dubbed the “bat woman of China” for her work on bat coronaviruses similar to the one that causes COVID-19, co-authored a scientific study in 2015 that mentions the laboratory manipulation of bat viruses as part of studying how they infect humans.

The U.S. intelligence reports said Chinese authorities for more than a year have systematically prevented a thorough investigation into the origins of the pandemic and instead devoted “enormous resources to deceit and disinformation.”

A World Health Organization delegation to China was blocked from entering the country first in the spring of 2020 and again this month. Beijing then relented and permitted a team to visit. The investigators currently are in China.

Likely origins

The State Department report acknowledges that the U.S. government has been unable to determine “exactly where, when, or how the COVID-19 virus — known as SARS-CoV-2 — was transmitted initially to humans.”

The two most likely sources are contact with infected animals or “an accident at a laboratory in Wuhan, China.”

China initially said the virus began at a wild animal “wet market” in Wuhan, but Beijing authorities have been unable to identify an animal host that transmitted the pathogen to humans.

The failure to find the host has led many virus experts and intelligence analysts to examine more closely the idea that the virus leaked from the Wuhan laboratory. Skeptics of China’s official version say Beijing authorities have actively tried to keep the world from knowing what happened.

“The Chinese government has destroyed all the evidence from the outbreak because they want to avoid saying it began from a laboratory leak,” said a U.S. official familiar with intelligence reports. “China is trying to sell a story to the world that it began as a naturally occurring event from a wet market in Wuhan.”

Chinese authorities have tried to get WHO investigators to identify a credible animal source during their inquiry.

“Instead of focusing on an animal host that probably doesn’t exist, the WHO team should be focusing on the labs and biosafety,” the official said.

The official said, “It is very likely this was PLA secret work that went awry.”

U.S. intelligence analysts noted that China’s military is engaged in covert development of biological weapons and initial research on such arms would include developing vaccines. At least 2,016 Wuhan lab researchers experimented with a virus called RaTG13, a bat coronavirus similar to the SARS-CoV-2, the report said.

“The WIV has a published record of conducting ‘gain-of-function’ research to engineer chimeric viruses,” the report said, using the term for synthetic viruses.

“But the WIV has not been transparent or consistent about its record of studying viruses most similar to the COVID-19 virus, including RaTG13, which it sampled from a cave in Yunnan Province in 2013 after several miners died of SARS-like illness.”

According to the report, a laboratory accident could appear as a natural outbreak if those initially exposed were limited to a few people and spread more easily by those with a lack of initial symptoms.

“Scientists in China have researched animal-derived coronaviruses under conditions that increased the risk for accidental and potentially unwitting exposure,” the report said.

The report also revealed that the Wuhan Institute of Virology has links to the People’s Liberation Army, China’s military, and has conducted secret lab research at the institute since 2017.

American virus experts who have conducted research at the institute denied those claims as a conspiracy theory. Many private virus experts originally dismissed reports that the institute was linked to China’s covert biological weapons program.

“Despite the WIV presenting itself as a civilian institution, the United States has determined that the WIV has collaborated on publications and secret projects with China’s military,” the report said. “The WIV has engaged in classified research, including laboratory animal experiments, on behalf of the Chinese military since at least 2017.”

The report said the U.S. government “for many years” has publicly voiced concerns about China’s biological weapons work that Beijing has failed to fully document and has not shown that it had eliminated, despite the requirement to do so under the Biological Weapons Convention.

The report said the intelligence disclosures about the WIV “scratch the surface of what is still hidden about COVID-19’s origin in China.”

“Any credible investigation into the origin of COVID-19 demands complete, transparent access to the research labs in Wuhan, including their facilities, samples, personnel, and records,” the report said, as well as interviews with Wuhan researchers and access to worker health records.

China’s government blocked all efforts to interview researchers at the WIV, including those who became ill in the fall of 2019.

The detailed State Department report concluded that excessive Chinese government secrecy prevented international investigators from determining the origin of the pandemic.

Rising skepticism

Outside experts critical of China say the Trump administrationfindings only increase the skepticism of Beijing’s denials that the virus leaked from the laboratory through an infection of a worker or through a research animal that was sold illicitly to a wild animal market.

“That was a lie. And the Chinese government knew very early on that that was a lie,” said Jamie Metzl, a WHO adviser and a former Senate aide to President Biden.

“And so in the face of overwhelming evidence in May of last year, the Chinese government shifted its position,” he told the Toronto Sun last week.

China’s government instead sought to promote conspiracy theories. Beijing officials even floated the idea that the virus was first introduced to China by the U.S. Army. The U.S. government vehemently denied that charge.

The Chinese government later cited what it said were reports of an outbreak in southern Europe before it appeared in Wuhan at the end of 2019.

A more recent theory pushed by Chinese officials is that the virus was introduced into the country on frozen food packaging. Virus experts have dismissed that theory as highly unlikely.

Mr. Metzl, the WHO adviser, said in an email that U.S. intelligence reports “suggest the Chinese People’s Liberation Army was conducting secret animal research with highly contagious viruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, without notifying the World Health Organization even after the pandemic began.”

He said WHO investigators must be given full access to the workers and labs at WIV, including notes, a list of all viruses studied both past and present, and all records.

“If the Chinese government fails to immediately change course, however, the Biden administration should bring allies and partners around the world together to demand an impartial and unrestricted international forensic investigation into the origins of COVID-19, with full access to all necessary records, databases, biological samples and key personnel,” he said.

Yan Li-meng, an exiled Chinese virology expert who believes the coronavirus was an engineered bioweapon, said the State Department report shows the WIV has been “lying from the beginning” about the virus origin.

She said the report bolsters her contention that the “backbone” virus behind SARS-CoV-2 was discovered by China’s military in the 2015 to 2017 time frame and that “its gain-of-function process involved humanized animal experiments.”

“Intelligence here shows researchers in WIV were sick last fall, while WIV has denied it in public,” she said. “Then it is important to investigate whether the patients were infected with the same original strain of SARS-CoV-2 or similar strains from the lab,” Ms. Yan said.

WorldClinic’s Dr. Lang said the goal of the international community, including China, “should be to get to the root cause” of the pandemic.

“If it turns out that the root cause does lead to WIV, that means that the international community and [China] need to know that and then work collaboratively to make sure that nothing like this, which has had mortality and economic impact of a scale unseen outside of wartime, ever happens again.”

[vietnammmorg]

Life after life book non fiction

To know a subject is to understand it better! Maybe I’ll do a top 10 post on this subject too.) the science of pandemics (I read A LOT about pandemics in the past two years.My best non fiction books of 2021 included topics on: I read about MANY different topics this year and this is just a small selection of what I learned about in 2021. No Time Like The Future: An Optimist Considers Mortality by Michael J. Hill Women: Finding Family and a Way Forward in the Appalachian Mountains by Cassie Chambers T he Gifts of Reading by Jennie Orchard and Robert Macfarlane Zero Fail: The Rise and Fall of the Secret Service by Carol Leannigīroken (in the best possible way) by Jenny Lawson Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic by David Quammenīraiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teaching of Plants by Robin Wall KimmererĮ mpire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty by Patrick Radden Keefe Here are my top 10 Best Non Fiction Books in 2021Ī Life On Our Planet: My Witness Statement and a Vision for the Future by Sir David Attenboroughĭisability Visability: First Person Stories from the Twenty-First Century by Alice Wong I’ll have 30 non fiction books to offer you with that post. Stay tuned for my Non Fiction November challenge as well. In 2022, I’m tackling the same challenge again and will have more to offer you next year. My total number of non fiction reads was 52 books out of a total of 158 reads in 2021. I try to focus on as many different topics as I can. Check out my top 10 non fiction books from 2020 if you’d like more suggestions.Įach year, I challenge myself to read 52 non fiction books – one book a week. I post my top non fiction reads each year. Educating yourself is the best gift you can give to yourself With non fiction, it’s easy to understand that as someone who loves learning, I have varied reading lists on many different topics. Non fiction allows writers to collect facts for their own writing, while fiction helps writers to explore their imagination and how other writers see the world or imagine the world. You can’t write well if you’re not willing to pick up a book. I just really love sitting down with a good book!Īs a writer, I’m constantly learning and improving on my own writing when I read. I don’t listen to audiobooks, although I have nothing against them. You can follow all my book posts in my World of Books section.Īs a lifelong avid reader, It’s not unusual for me to read 150 books a year. These are my top 10! Those of you who have been following My Several Worlds know that I do a few yearly updates each year. Today’s post is an homage to the best non fiction books in 2021.

[olivia-books]

[Download] Zero Fail: The Rise and Fall of the Secret Service - Carol Leonnig

Download Or Read PDF Zero Fail: The Rise and Fall of the Secret Service - Carol Leonnig Free Full Pages Online With Audiobook.

  [*] Download PDF Visit Here => https://forsharedpdf.site/55057586

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The first definitive account of the rise and fall of the Secret Service, from the Kennedy assassination to the ongoing scandals under Obama and Trump--by Pulitzer Prize winner and #1 New York Times bestselling co-author of A Very Stable GeniusCarol Leonnig has been covering the Secret Service for The Washington Post for most of the last decade, bringing to light the gaffes and scandals that plague the agency today--from a toxic work culture to outdated equipment and training to the deep resentment among the ranks with the agency's leadership. But the Secret Service wasn't always so troubled.The Secret Service was born in 1865, in the wake of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, but its story begins in earnest in 1963, with the death of John F. Kennedy. Shocked into reform by their failure to protect the president on that fateful day, this once-sleepy agency was rapidly transformed into a proud, elite unit that would finally redeem themselves in 1981 by valiantly thwarting an

[middleearthpixie]

𝐆𝐧𝐨𝐦𝐞 - What is the weirdest thing you’ve eaten? 𝐀𝐦𝐮𝐥𝐞𝐭 - If you could turn back time and change one thing, what would it be? 𝐒𝐩𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐱 - What was the last book you read? 𝐖𝐚𝐫𝐥𝐨𝐜𝐤 - What song would you like at your funeral?

𝐆𝐧𝐨𝐦𝐞 - What is the weirdest thing you’ve eaten?

This is a tough one - I'm not that adventurous with food, so... it's probably sushi. Which is boring AF, but there you have it.

𝐀𝐦𝐮𝐥𝐞𝐭 - If you could turn back time and change one thing, what would it be?

I would have stayed in school - I quit college to go to work in my early 20s, went back in my late 20s to finish, but then found out I was pregnant with my firstborn. I finally got back in 2019 and finished up my degree in 2021 - nearly 27 years after I should have graduated.

𝐒𝐩𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐱 - What was the last book you read?

Zero Fail: The Rise and Fall of the Secret Service which was amazing and I highly recommend it.

𝐖𝐚𝐫𝐥𝐨𝐜𝐤 - What song would you like at your funeral?

This one took me the longest to come up with. Bruce Springsteen is my absolute favorite, but I cannot possibly pick only one of his songs so…

Good Riddance (Time of Your Life) by Green Day is one I’d like played at my funeral.

[news4u1]

Zero Fail: the rise and fall of the Secret Service

Zero Fail: the rise and fall of the Secret Service

Price: (as of – Details) From the Publisher ASIN ‏ : ‎ B095TP4P86 Publisher ‏ : ‎ Scribe (May 27, 2021) Publication date ‏ : ‎ May 27, 2021 Language ‏ : ‎ English File size ‏ : ‎ 2924 KB Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled Print length ‏ : ‎ 561 pages Lending ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled

[bigtickhk]

Zero Fail: The Rise and Fall of the Secret Service by Carol Leonnig

US: https://amzn.to/2RZ8GeG

UK: https://amzn.to/3uTjhXc

https://bookshop.org/a/17891/9780399589010

[calcidekudine]

out of my head of my heart of my mind

out of my head of my heart of my mind katsudeku. explicit. part one. also available on ao3. warnings: A/B/o dynamics

.

Katsuki's heat arrives as it always does, a slow and insidious burn. It begins low in his belly and creeps outwards, warring with the quick explosions he is used to, a fire he can control with a thought and a twitch of his hand. He has always hated his heat. He is disturbed by his helplessness, his intractable responses; it is why he has taken suppressants since the onset. The drugs made him sluggish for a few days, but sluggish was better than the uncontrollable alternative.

This time, however, when the base of his spine begins to itch, Katsuki does not take his suppressant. He stares at the pill pack—a ten day long ritual that he has taken every three months for the last seven years of his life���then gently sets it back in the medicine cabinet behind his mirror.

It is impulse, yes. But it is also a plan that he has let form in the back of his brain and, with this gesture, allows to finally take shape.

.

"I’m going into heat," Katsuki tells his agency supervisor, later that day between first and second shift. If his supervisor is surprised to hear such a thing, she does not show it. Instead, her face remains blank, and she asks,

"When?"

"In a few days," Katsuki informs. "A week at most."

His supervisor nods. "Do you need accommodations or services?"

"No." Katsuki does not elaborate. Giving his idea voice leaves a sour taste in his mouth. His instincts tell him that he isn't wrong—that nothing could possibly go wrong—yet the small possibility that he may fail stills his tongue.

"Thank you for informing us," his supervisor says. "Send me a text or an email when it comes, and we’ll have your shifts covered."

Katsuki nods once, rises from the comfortable chair, and leaves to begin his shift. There is nothing left to be said.

.

Patrol passes slowly. He wanders the streets with his hands on his hips and a scowl on his face, and stubbornly ignores the ever-present tingle at the base of his spine. He gets a few odd looks from passing alphas; they tilt their heads up and inhale deeply, their diaphragms pushing out with the effort. He makes eye-contact with each one that dares to smell him, flashing his best glare and smirking when they skitter.

It is no secret that Katsuki—that Ground Zero, one of the highest ranking heroes of his generation—is an omega. He knows some people are curious about his predilections, especially since his demeanor is not the purported ideal of omegas.

Katsuki doesn't care. He's never cared. His secondary gender and his ability to have children doesn't dictate how he behaves. The only person who gets to decide what Katsuki can and cannot do is Katsuki himself, and everyone else can hang.

.

Night falls. Katsuki stops at several food carts, buying skewers of charcoal-cooked meat. He is ravenous, chomping down twice as much as he normally would. He stops himself before he feels the bloat of fullness, having learned the hard way that being full on patrol is worse than being a little hungry.

As the moon rises in the sky, Katsuki wanders out of his assigned district and closer to the warehouses. His destination is a familiar, medium-sized office building. When he gets there, he launches himself into the air. Flying is as effortless to him now as breathing, and he lands gracefully, boots heavy on the rooftop. It is dusted with gravel, as many business buildings are, and the tiny pebbles grind together beneath the balls of his feet.

Crouched on the building edge, another hero stands. His costume���black with green accents—blends in with the darkening sky. A long white cape flutters from his broad shoulders. He hops down from his perch and chirps, "Kacchan."

"Deku."

"What are you doing here?" Izuku tilts his head. "I thought you had sector D-4 today?"

"I do," Katsuki responds with nonchalance.

"Bored already?"

Katsuki shrugs. Takes a step closer to Izuku. And another, and another, until Izuku’s nose twitches—

Until he inhales sharply—

Until his eyes widen—

Until he gasps, "Kacchan."

Katsuki tilts his head to the side, purposefully exposing the length of his neck. He used to think it was a submissive gesture. That it was weakness. He hated the thought of it. Baring himself to another person that way—it was unfathomable.

Now, when he does it, he realizes how wrong he was. It is not weakness he feels, but power. How easy it was to capture Izuku’s attention, to hold it.

"Are you...?" Izuku chokes.

"I didn’t take my pills," Katsuki announces as he steps boldly into Izuku's space. "It will be here soon."

Izuku’s uniform is stretched skintight over his throat and Katsuki watches the way his larynx contracts around a dry, strangled whimper. It thrills Katsuki to his core. People like to believe that alphas are the strong ones, but Katsuki—an omega—has reduced Izuku to incoherence in less than a minute with no more than a gesture and his scent.

"Kacchan," Izuku pleads. Each syllable scratches relief down Katsuki’s spine. "Are you asking me to..?"

Katsuki stands still. Waits. He can feel the strain of his silence as much as he can sense the tension in Izuku's body. He wants to laugh, victorious, triumphant. He refrains. Instead, he leans forward, curls a gloved hand around Izuku's thick side, and all but purrs,

"If you think you can."

Katsuki is off the roof before realization can dawn in Izuku’s muddled brain. It amuses him more than it should and, this time, when his laughter bubbles in his throat, he lets it escape.

.

On his second day of pre-heat, Katsuki spends most of his morning eating and readying his small apartment for the week to come. He cleans all his spare sheets, pushes all the furniture against the wall, and makes sure the few material items he has are tucked safely away. He goes to the store to buy packs of supplement bars and bottles of water. He even picks up a couple bags of Izuku's favorite snack, a sentimentality he tries not to think about as the cashier rings him up.

Thus prepared and with some time to kill before his shift, Katsuki picks up his phone and texts Kirishima. Though they work at different agencies, they've retained their friendship by meeting up at least once a week, going to cheap dive bars to drink excess amounts of alcohol and consume unhealthy amounts of fried food. Sometimes it's just the two of them. Sometimes it's with their coworkers or old classmates. Either way, Katsuki knows he won't be able to meet up with Kirishima later in the week because of his heat.

Briefly, Katsuki considers lying about why he can't make it. He isn't ashamed of his heat, but that doesn't mean he wants to talk about it. Still, he knows that Kirishima will eventually figure out the truth, and lying will only delay the inevitable.

"Such bullshit," Katsuki mutters as he jabs a message out.

BK  won't be able to go out this week  have my heat

Unsurprisingly, Kirishima texts back in less than a minute.

KE  ur going off suprressants???  IS EVERYTHIGN OKAY

BK  fucking calm down  i'm fine just didn't take them

KE  ok ok i just hear a lot of horror sotries  and its not like u to just not take them  WAIT did u meet someone????  UR SHARING UR HEAT WITH SOEMNEO ARENT U

BK  fuck, shut up, i'm not fucking some fcuking stranger  just deku

Katsuki's phone rings almost immediately and Katsuki contemplates not answering. He doesn't want to listen Kirishima yammer. But, as with the texts, he knows that it will be better to just get it over with.

"What?" Katsuki answers with a snarl.

"Midoriya?" Kirishima barks over the phone. Katsuki cannot see his best friend's face, but he can imagine it perfectly: eyebrows high, mouth slack, rapid blinking. "Really? And you want to just—just like that?"

"Whaddya mean, just like that?" Katsuki shoots back. "Isn't that how it fucking works?"

"I mean, not really," Kirishima blurts. "I mean—in a more traditional sense—in some circles—before people learned that it was, you know, wrong to force omegas that were heated into relationships that they didn't actually want—"

"I'm not fucking heated." Katsuki may be warm, yes, but even he knows his symptoms are a small portion of what awaits. His hormones aren't clouding his judgment and he won't pretend he's oblivious to why he wants to spend this heat with Izuku. In his softer moments—in those quiet spaces when Katsuki can be alone and honest—he thinks that he and Izuku have been building towards this since they were children. "I'm not fucking stupid."

"I know you're not. It's just—have you guys even gone a date? Hell, does he even know you like him like—you know, more than a friend?"

Katsuki smirks. "If he didn't, he's about to."

"This is a terrible idea," Kirishima mutters.

"So is your shitty haircut," Katsuki retorts, but there's no heat in the insult. He doesn't expect Kirishima to understand. There is so much history between him and Izuku, both good and bad, that it's difficult for other people to understand their dynamic.

"I know you won't, but you should still probably talk to him." Kirishima heaves a long-suffering sigh, the exhale distorted into mechanical pieces by the phone. "Who knows? Your relationship with Midoriya is complicated on the best of days. Maybe I'm just overthinking it."

"That'd be a fucking first."

And because Katsuki is an asshole with nothing left to say, he disconnects.

.

KE  YOU STILL NEED TO TALK TO MIDORIYA

BK  fuck off  (middle finger emoji)

.

Katsuki had his first heat midway through thirteen.

Like many first heats, it was short—barely scraping past two full days—but it felt so much longer. He remembers shaking through it, his muscles cramping as his body ached. Thirst and hunger were suspended as his dick stayed hard and slick leaked down his thighs. He jerked himself raw with one hand and stuffed his fingers inside himself with the other. He wriggled on his bed, rucking up the sweat-and-slick damp sheets, and whined. He cried and begged and felt incomplete.

When the worst of his heat passed, Katsuki ignored his still wobbly legs, got out of bed, and marched into the shower. He turned the water up as high as it would go and scrubbed the disturbing lack of control from his flesh. Then, once he pulled on a pair of fleece pajama bottoms and the softest shirt he owned, skin still hypersensitive, he stormed into the kitchen and demanded to be taken to the doctor.

Neither of Katsuki's parents protested. He was taken to the family doctor that afternoon, given a routine physical and asked several invasive questions, which Katsuki answered as a snap or a snarl. Eventually, the doctor gave him one of the stronger prescriptions. The suppressants didn't negate all the effects of heat; instead, they muffled them. Katsuki got hungry and hot for a few days, then incredibly horny for another, but it never compared to that first experience, where he laid on his mattress, writhing and gasping for an inexplicable more.

Because of this, Katsuki has never shared a heat. He's had sex, several times with several different partners, yet he never felt compelled to share such an intimacy with any of them.

Izuku is different. Izuku will take care of him. Izuku will take care of his heat, of his body, of his heart. Not just because Izuku is a good alpha and Katsuki is a needful omega, but because it's him.

And this—this is why Katsuki left his suppressants on the shelf.

He trusts Izuku.

.

Katsuki's shift is long and uneventful. He spends a majority of it stalking up and down his assigned sector, his dark scowl and clenched jaw guaranteeing a wide berth. His pre-heat has gone from ignorable to frustrating in less than a day, and still he knows that his symptoms are not the worst of it.

After his shift ends, Katsuki all but runs back to his agency. He bursts into the empty locker room; throws off his gloves, gauntlets, and mask; peels his skintight shirt off his torso; opens his locker and—

Sitting innocently atop his civilian clothing is an enormous, store-bought bento with a note taped to the thin plastic lid.

The bento isn't special. It contains a pile of plain white rice, several thick rolls of tamagoyaki, and a handful of tempura-fried jumbo shrimp. But there's a lot and Katsuki is starving. He scarfs it down, untasting, leaving the note unread until he has devoured all but a few stubborn grains of rice. He picks it off and unfolds it.

I can do it, it reads.

Though there is no signature, Katsuki knows who it's from. The scratchy handwriting is long-familiar and traces of musk linger on the paper. Katsuki brings it up to his nose and inhales deeply. His whole body throbs in anticipation.

Deku.

With a smirk, Katsuki refolds the slip of paper.

.

next >>

.

[garudabluffs]

Gen Mark Milley talks to Donald Trump after the State of the Union address at the US Capitol in Washington in February 2020

Interview

I Alone Can Fix It: Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker on their Trump bestseller

"The upshot of this encounter in March, and private interviews with more than 140 sources, is I Alone Can Fix It, a follow-up to Pulitzer prize-winning Leonnig and Rucker’s bestseller A Very Stable Genius (both titles are direct Trump quotations loaded with irony). It is among a wave of books about Trump’s disastrous final year hitting shelves just six months after he left office."

"...although I must say that when Phil and I were with him in Mar-a-Lago, I was strangely impressed by how completely the former president said all of these things about the election being rigged with a completely committed and straight face.

“Many of the things that are absolutely without any basis in fact – were looked into, run to ground and rejected by his attorney general – he still says are true. And his commitment to those lies physically is as if a person really believes it.”

This was the alternative reality bubble that the authors found at Mar-a-Lago, where up is down, two plus two equals five and a twice-impeached one-term president milks regular standing ovations. Leonnig and Rucker recall that after the interview and dinner, Trump offered to invite them back if they had any follow-up questions and admitted: “I enjoyed it actually. For some sick reason I enjoyed it.”

READ MORE https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/jul/25/i-alone-can-fix-it-carol-leonnig-philip-rucker-trump-book-bestseller

New Behind-The-Scenes Story Of Trump's Final Year In Office

Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker are authors of the New York Times bestseller "A Very Stable Genius." With unparalleled sources, including a wide-ranging and revealing interview with President Trump himself, their new book "I Alone Can Fix It" presents a behind-the-scenes account of Trump’s final year in office.

Carol Leonnig is a national investigative reporter at The Washington Post, where she has worked since 2000, covering Donald Trump’s presidency and previous administrations. She won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for her reporting on security failures and misconduct inside the Secret Service. She also was part of the Post teams awarded Pulitzers in 2018, and in 2014. Leonnig is an on-air contributor to NBC News and MSNBC and the author of "Zero Fail: The Rise and Fall of the Secret Service."

LISTEN https://www.wamc.org/post/new-behind-scenes-story-trumps-final-year-office

JAN. 6 2021 ".....five dead, more than a hundred injured"

[thereaderbooks]

[EBOOK] Zero Fail The Rise and Fall of the Secret Service !READ NOW!

[EBOOK] Zero Fail: The Rise and Fall of the Secret Service !READ NOW!

Zero Fail: The Rise and Fall of the Secret Service

[PDF] Download Zero Fail: The Rise and Fall of the Secret Service Ebook | READ ONLINE

Author : Carol Leonnig Publisher : Random House ISBN : 0399589015 Publication Date : 2021-5-11 Language : eng Pages : 492

To Download or Read this book, click link below:

http://read.ebookcollection.space/?book=0399589015

Free [download] [epub]^^

Synopsis : [EBOOK] Zero Fail: The Rise and Fall of the Secret Service !READ NOW!

The first definitive account of the rise and fall of the Secret Service, from the Kennedy assassination to the ongoing scandals under Obama and Trump--by Pulitzer Prize winner and #1 New York Times bestselling co-author of A Very Stable GeniusCarol Leonnig has been covering the Secret Service for The Washington Post for most of the last decade, bringing to light the gaffes and scandals that plague the agency today--from a toxic work culture to outdated equipment and training to the deep resentment among the ranks with the agency's leadership. But the Secret Service wasn't always so troubled.The Secret Service was born in 1865, in the wake of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, but its story begins in earnest in 1963, with the death of John F. Kennedy. Shocked into reform by their failure to protect the president on that fateful day, this once-sleepy agency was rapidly transformed into a proud, elite unit that would finally redeem themselves in 1981 by valiantly thwarting an assassination attempt against Ronald Reagan. But this reputation for courage and efficiency would not last forever. By Barack Obama's presidency, the Secret Service was becoming notorious for break-ins at the White House, an armed gunman firing at the building while agents stood by, a massive prostitution scandal in Cartagena, and many other dangerous lapses.To expose the these shortcomings, Leonnig interviewed countless current and former agents who risked their careers to speak out about an agency that's broken and in desperate need of a reform.