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tocrackerboxpalace · 3 years

Text

January, 1972

Summary: In Paul's first interview since the breakup of the Beatles, things go slightly awry when a nosy reporter gets more out of him than she bargained for.

Part 1/3 (2, 3)

Paul flashed a blinding grin at the camera, hoping none of the looming anxiety beneath the surface would read. He quickly seated himself in the plushy chair, running his fingers up and down the smooth red velvet of the arms a few times to soothe his nerves. A tad self-consciously, he scratched his jaw, fingers twitching with unfamiliarity against the now smooth skin. This was his first interview in nearly two years.

He had been in a bad way since the breakup. It did no good to mull over it now, but it was hard to stop the same intrusive thoughts from popping into frame—the fuck-all, nothing-matters-anyway attitudes; the gnawing sensation of his own incompetency at the bitterness of feeling utterly lost; the desire to waste his fucking life away drunk out of his mind so he didn’t have to wake up in the morning and remember. What now?

Paul sighed inadvertently, ignoring the curious way the interviewer’s eyes danced over his form. What now? Now, this interview. One day at a time. A nice, simple discussion about the past year—about the success of RAM topping the charts in the U.K. and the slow but steady promise of Wild Life. Family and new beginnings. Peace.

Getting better all the time, right? His stomach did a violent flip at the thought.

Paul jumped a bit as the interviewer leaned forward, brushing a tentative hand across his knee. “Paul? Are you all right?”

Paul blinked. “What?”

She lowered her voice a bit, eyes flicking in the direction of the cameraman. Paul felt dizzy as the red light blinked back at him. “Should we—should we cut?”

Shit. Already off to a poor start.

Slowly, Paul came to his senses, breathing returning to normal (though he hadn’t realized it had been erratic). His chest felt tight as he gave a curt, polite nod, forcing a smile that, to him, felt borderline grotesque.

“No, love. Everything’s fine. Just a bit distracted, is all.” He shot her a wink, hoping to assuage her. Maybe a bit of flirting would do the trick.

He sighed in relief as the reporter flushed, a pleased grin sneaking onto her otherwise hard features. “Right. Well, if you’re ready, we can begin.”

“In earnest,” he beckoned, waving an inviting hand in her direction.

—

Half an hour later, Paul’s face felt utterly plastic from faking so much interest and expression. The poor girl was trying, for Christ’s sake, but Paul had to actually hold back groans at some of the painfully bland questions. Every goddamn thing reminded him of the Beatles, anyway, even if it had nothing to do with them. He felt surrounded by ghosts: the echo of George’s laugh, a flash of fangs; the dissipating vision of the way Ringo bit his lip real hard and furrowed his brow when asked any remotely difficult question; the trace of John’s fingertips on his arms or lightly thumping the back of his head. Things hadn’t been the same for a while, now, as far as those things went; but it was almost like they’d never changed. Everything was rushing back to him as if he’d just woken up from a long nightmare. Only to find that the nightmare was more pleasant than reality, of course.

Paul swallowed hard, fighting the urge to be sick. He wasn’t ready for this.

He wished Linda was there. Paul nearly kicked himself for agreeing to do this alone—he wasn’t sure why they had requested that, anyway, if they were just going to make him repeat the conception of “Yesterday” all over again. He needed her there, needed to distract himself by caressing her and leaning on her and whispering subtle inside jokes in her ear at inappropriate times. He needed to have her, just like—just like he needed—

“On your newest record with Wings, you have a particularly interesting track I’d like to touch on,” the reporter was saying, bearing down on him with a sudden insatiable gaze that should have been frightening, if Paul had literally cared one bit.

“Hmm?” He replied, noncommittedly.

“’Dear Friend’. It’s about John, no?”

Paul tensed.

The interviewer stared back at him, daring him to speak, the lust for truth plainly evident in her eyes, and Paul swiftly understood. Everything had been mere formalities or trust-building exercises up to this point. Everything to get him here: trapped, with nowhere to go, no one to turn to. His mind worked quickly, frantically, pushing the blossoming anger aside to make room for the desperate bid to save himself. He could only think of one solution, and one he was king at.

Paul began to laugh. Not loudly, not absurdly; just casual enough to where the audience would soon be able to read the feigned perplexity in his tone. “John?” He practically scoffed, cocking an eyebrow at the woman with a look that bordered on condescending. “No, love, it’s not about John.”

“Who’s it about, then?” Came the follow-up.

Paul answered too quickly. “Linda.”

“Ah,” the interviewer affirmed, leaning back in her chair slightly. “I see. So the bit about throwing the wine—”

“Celebration!” Paul interjected, his voice much too shaky for it to ring true. “Throw back the wine. Congratulations, and all that.” He mimicked a drinking glass. “Young and newlywed.”

“Mm.”

Paul’s heart was hammering in his chest, so violently he was sure the cameras could see it. He never should have put out the song. He had knownit was too transparent, but had convinced himself it was his own paranoia. The public was desperately searching for anything to drive the wedge between him and John deeper—even if the song really wasn’t about him, they would have found a way to make it so.

So, that’s what the story was. He felt a sudden angered hopelessness, offended by the audacity of the reporter. To coax him out of practical hiding, persuade him to do this huge press event for the “good of his album”, to pull him from Linda and thrust him into the spotlight he tried so desperately to escape, all so they could catch a hope of getting Paul to contradict and expose himself? Like she was some kind of Pharisee?

He could see her eyes working coldly, calculatedly, and he felt the sudden urge to run. His mouth felt sour, tongue acidic against his teeth that were clenched far too hard to be healthy. He had to get out of here.

“You say friend,” the interviewer started, almost cautiously.

“She’s my best friend,” Paul argued.

“What about the fear? What is Linda afraid of?”

“It’s a general fear,” Paul retorted, almost pouting, feeling more than fed up with the increasingly dangerous questions.

“Is what ‘true’, then?”

“All the things he said, of course,” he snapped.

It wasn’t until she responded that he realized his mistake. “He?”

Shit! Paul’s eyes shot wide as he stumbled for an answer. “I-what?”

The reporter narrowed her eyes. “You said ‘he’. All the things he said.”

Paul’s heart was in his throat. He struggled to breathe, mimicking the feeling of having your head barely above water as the ocean closes around your neck. “I most certainly did not.”

“But you did. You said, ‘all the things “he” said’. I presume you’re referring to Lennon’s more public digs, especially in response to RAM. He's far less subtle than you, you know. ‘Too Many People,’ though, that one’s about him to anyone who has ears to hear it and a brain to really listen. So he comes back with ‘How Do You Sleep’, and though you’ve been sitting on this one for quite some time, it feels right to put it out, a spitball to his face, an olive branch in the face of his fire. It doesn’t matter that it sounds like it’s to a lover. Because, in a way, it is—"

“No!” Paul all but cried out, wanting to press his palms so far into his ears that it would crush his skull. The beginnings of desperate tears well up inside of him. “No, that’s not—I’m not—”

“What happened in India?”

Paul froze.

The reporter simply stared back at him, almost expressionless. Paul’s brain had short-circuited at the question, leaving behind nothing but a dull buzz, his thoughts as comprehensive as television static. The buzzing of the studio lights was the only sound for a long time, save the soft pants escaping Paul’s lips as his chest constricted with the effort of not hyperventilating. When he finally spoke, his voice was dripping with a malice that shocked even himself.

“What the fuck do you know?”

Even the interviewer looked momentarily taken aback. She licked her lips almost hungrily. “Is there something to know?”

“No. It’s—nothing happened, all right?”

“That’s the trouble, isn’t it?”

“What? No!” Paul was astounded, flabbergasted, so far past the point of shock he no longer had control over his ramblings. “Or—no. I don’t know. Nothing happened, it couldn’t—”

“Did you want it to?”

“He wanted—”

“What did Lennon want, Paul?” There was an edge to the reporter’s voice, a twinge of excitement at what may be perhaps the biggest story since their breakup.

Paul said nothing. He couldn’t trust himself to speak. A cloud came over him, blurring all thoughts of past and future. All implications and consequences. He was blissfully, numbly empty.

“Paul McCartney, were you in a… a physical relationship with John Lennon?”

The question went unanswered. He simply stared at the woman opposite him, cool and stony. He could tell by the slight waver in her expression that his intent was evident. It was a dare—turn the fucking interview off, or sit here in silence for the remaining half-hour. Give the viewers quite a special.

Her choice.

Eventually, the woman cleared her throat and shuffled the stack of notecards in her lap that Paul hadn’t noticed until now. He let his gaze trail over her lazily as she made to signal the camera cut. As soon as the little red light went dead, she shot Paul an aggravated glare and shuffled off the set.

He only winked, feeling much more hollow inside than before.

#the beatles #beatles fanfiction #paul mccartney #john lennon (mentioned)#linda mccartney (mentioned)#george harrison (briefly mentioned)#ringo starr (briefly mentioned)#interviews #confessions #songwriting feud of the seventies #beatles breakup #part 1 #part 1 of 3

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jzxtube · 3 years

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Week 7 The role Social Media in informing COVID-19 in Malaysia

The world has learned during COVID-19 that social media becomes a fantastic tool for individuals and communities to keep in touch even when they are geographically isolated (Kushner 2020) . To understand about recent issues, we now have been relying on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitters, YouTube, and What's app in the 20th century .These platforms enable us to update our personal and professional lives as well. In the corporate world, this involves taking use of social media in new and creative ways to help workers and consumers. For the government, social media lets to provide the accurate and real time information as effectively as possible.

Why is Social media really that important?

As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, people are using social media at higher rates than usual to obtain health - related information for themselves and their loved ones. The usage of social media channels has turned out to be a welcome relief in the ongoing health catastrophe and global crisis caused by the COVID-19 epidemic. It's undeniable that social media sites have made it so much easier for people to access health information, providing the ability to evaluate their own health concerns and solve global health issues. Social media users often generate and share health information available from both nationally and internationally sources in response to a global public health issue.

Hence, health care providers and authorities are beginning to employ social media technology to manage and mitigate the negative consequences of health emergencies. It becomes more difficult to handle a pandemic when the government and health institutions are placed under greater pressure. A critical component of disease mitigation and control is the communication of precise, consistent, and trustworthy information about the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak.

Is social media effective ?

The short answer, yes

Malaysia has made several noteworthy efforts to improve communication sharing on social media, in particular Updates on official channels have enabled the broader public accept and embrace relevant knowledge and information on social media. As an illustration, the Ministry of Health Malaysia created an official website to transmit COVID-19 guidelines (Liew et al 2020).

The rapid global spread of COVID-19 has altered where people turn for news and updates about the virus. A recent report that analyzed media behaviors during the pandemic reported that 40% of people visit social media more for news than they did before COVID-19 and All social platforms have made gains in usage in the wake of Covid-19, with Facebook and WhatsApp benefitting the most. 33% of respondents said they had been using Facebook more than usual, and 28% said they had increased their use of WhatsApp.

Havas Media Group (2020)

Source: http://www.imamalaysia.org/what-we-do/imaret/main-page-covid/

Other than that, non-governmental organizations (NGO) have indisputable support from the Malaysian public, mainly thanks to social media. According to Amirul et all (2020) More than RM2 million has been raised for the COVID-19 pandemic due to IMARET's partnership with social media influencers, while the organization has been sharing timely & accurate information on the pandemic (Ihsan 2020).

The downside of Social Media

Source: https://www.malaysiakini.com/news/540298

An example of misleading information is shown in the figure above, which is about a warning from people to stay away from Indian restaurant due to new deadly variant COVID-19 from India. Fake news like this one typically misrepresent the public and cause them to get worried about something. As a result of receiving false news and misleading information from the media, folks may begin to lose trust in it.

It is difficult to manage the spread of false information, and it serves to emphasize the thin line that social media companies must walk between serving as communication channels and serving as arbiters of freedom of speech and expression. Although this conflict will probably not be addressed very soon, it should be noted that even the most advanced technology techniques coupled with human effort are not without flaws (Das & Ahmed 2020) .

Conclusion

There is no such thing as a perfect platform. Social media may be a double-edged sword when it comes to raising consciousness and sharing information on COVID-19 in Malaysia while there was a lot of fake news and fear on social media. however thanks to this platform there was also a lot of lifesaving information, connections with others, and a sense of worldwide solidarity. It was shown during COVID-19 that social media proves to be a crucial place for governments, humanitarian organizations, influencers, and ordinary users to debate frequently difficult academic ideas in new and innovative ways and to mediate the effect of these ideas on their lives

Reference lists

Das, R & Ahmed, W 2020, Despite concerns, COVID-19 shows how social media has become an essential tool in the democratisation of knowledge, viewed 20 October, 2021, <https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2020/06/05/despite-concerns-covid-19-shows-how-social-media-has-become-an-essential-tool-in-the-democratisation-of-knowledge/>.

Kushner, J 2020,The role of social media during a pandemic, viewed 19 October, 2021, <https://khoros.com/blog/social-medias-role-during-covid-19>.

Liew, S, Khoo, E, Cheah, W, Goh, P & Ibrahim, H 2020, "We have to write and share valid and reliable information on COVID-19", Malays Fam Physician. 15(1):1. doi: 10.51866/ed0001.

Ihsan, S 2020, Vivy Yusof and Fadza Anuar start fund for Covid-19 front liners | New Straits Times, viewed 19 October, 2021, <https://www.nst.com.my/lifestyle/flair/2020/03/575658/vivy-yusof-and-fadza-anuar-start-fund-covid-19-front-liners>.

#week 7 #Social Media #Covid-19 #Information #mda20009

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julemmaes · 4 years

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your favourite prompt for Fairondale please?

“If you want to leave, we can leave.” / “I don’t want to ruin your party.” / “You could never ruin anything.”

Matthew Fairchild and Lucie Herondale modern au

I’m sorry this took so long but I had other things to do and it’s kinda short, but nice, I guess. I really hope you enjoy it.

Word count: 1,728

Lucie couldn't bear it anymore.

She took another sip from the red plastic cup she was holding in her hand, faking a grimace so that if her friends were watching her, they would think she was drinking alcohol and not what was actually sparkling water. She wasn't in the right mood to drink and she certainly didn't want to have overprotective guys asking her why she had that long face.

That's why she had been pretending to be having fun for the last two hours at a party organized by Matthew in honor of the reunion of the group.

By the time everyone had gone off to college it had become difficult for them to get together every weekend as they were used to in high school and, although both James and Matthew were still around, most of the time they had too much to do or were busy with work, so she often found herself alone with Cordelia. Not that she minded spending time with her best friend, but she missed the close-knit group they used to have.

Christopher had moved to the other side of the world with Grace right after graduation and they rarely saw him around five times a year during major holidays like Christmas and various birthdays, which is why neither of them was there that night. Thomas had returned to Spain right after high school for a while and had came back when the distance was starting to create big problems in his relationship with Alastair, who had stayed in London with his siblings. The two of them had stayed in England for a year before moving permanently to Paris with Kia.

Anna and Ariadne, on the other hand, were travelling the world. They had visited almost all of South America and Lucie knew that they would soon begin to travel in Asia, starting in India. They sent her a postcard from each city they visited, with a detailed description of the people there, so that she could introduce characters from different countries in each of her books.

James and Cordelia, fortunately for her, had never left London, but had moved out of the city in search of a quieter, more isolated place, and Matthew, who had just come out of a long period of rehabilitation, had decided to follow them. It was not difficult to visit them, but the trip from the city to the countryside was long and Lucie could not afford to do so every weekend.

She heard her brother and her best friend in the next room while they were playing beer pong with Thomas and someone she couldn't recognize. Cordelia had just made the winning shot and James was lifting her up in the air holding her by her hips, while Thomas and his partner dropped the last remaining glass of beer with an amused grimace on their lips.

From the way he was swinging and from the grip on the other's shoulder, Lucie realized that he was completely wasted. She smiled sincerely when she caught Thomas' eyes and he sent a little grin her way. With all he had done in the last few years, a little fun was what he deserved.

Alastair was talking to other people a few feet away from the ping pong table and occasionally glanced in the direction of his boyfriend.

Lucie sighed. She wondered who he had left Kia with that night. Probably her Aunt Sophie. She loved the boy as if he had been Thomas' son, which, in a way, was true. Both James and Thomas had helped the Carstairs so much after Sona's death and had all actively participated in raising the child, but after they had moved to France, Kia had begun to see Thomas as a full-time parent and very often poeple had mistaken the child for the adopted son of the two boys.

Taking one last look at her friends, Lucie sighed again and moved to another room, quieter and with fewer people. She looked around, watching the couples who preferred to talk rather than dance and get shit-faced.

She headed for the stairs, knowing exactly where to go. She would lock herself in Matthew's room for a moment and just sleep for a few minutes. She didn't want to ask Thomas and Alastair, with whom she'd come to the party, to go back home so soon.

She went up the last step and closed her eyes and stood still at the top of the stairs, thinking how tiring the day after would be. She had to finish reviewing the book and send it to her publisher. She had managed to make it to the deadline without losing all her hair and without biting her nails to the bone and this she considered a great achievement.

She leaned against the wall yawning and dragged herself to the last door on the left down the hall. She entered without knocking and breathed a sigh of relief when she found it empty and dark, except for the light coming from under the door of the adjacent bathroom. She could hear the water from the sink running, but there was no sound or noise to suggest that there was more than one person behind the door.

She sat on the edge of the bed and dropped back onto the mattress at the same time as the bathroom door opened. Lucie turned her head to the person in question and smiled tiredly when she met Matthew's surprised look.

The boy turned off the bathroom light, closing the door behind him and leaning against it. He raised an eyebrow, confused as he found her on his bed. "Lu, are you drunk?"

He broke away from the door, taking a few steps to reach her and sat down next to her, placing his hand on her knee. The contact made Lucie shudder. Although she was wearing heavy black jeans, she still felt the warmth of his skin.

She closed her eyes, shaking her head and waving the glass, "Nope." She answered popping the P, "This is just water. I'm not in the mood to celebrate tonight."

Matthew looked at her with a hint of worry in his eyes. Normally she would be with the others playing silly games that included all kinds of alcohol, and when he hadn't seen her with Cordelia before, he didn't worry much, thinking she was with someone else.

"When did you come in?" he asked, lying next to her.

Lucie yawned again, "Like less than a minute ago."

Matthew turned his head to her and in a hesitant tone asked, "What's wrong?"

She remained silent so long that Matthew doubted that she was still awake, but then a lonely tear fell on her temple and his heart tightened in his chest. "Lucie..."

"It's all right, Math. It's just stress." she answered immediately as she passed the back of her hand over her eyes. She pulled herself up, finishing up the water in the glass.

Matthew followed her and sat down and put his hand on the small of her back, "You wanna talk about it?"

Lucie shook her head, her eyes still shiny, but more alert than before.

"If you want to leave, we can leave." he whispered to her, massaging her back with his thumb.

She took a deep breath, passing her hand over her face. "I don't want to ruin your party."

Matthew chuckled, "You could never ruin anything."

The look she gave him made him choke on his laugh. His eyes darted to her lips for a second, and if Lucie had noticed, she didn't show it. They had been in this situation for years. Years spent wondering if every partner the other had was just a distraction or if it was because they were trying to move on.

"All right, take me for a ride," she said, standing up and cleaning her jeans from something that wasn't there. "But please don't put tsum tsum music because I might get sick and throw up in your precious car."

Matthew put his hand on his heart, "I solemnly swear that I will not put anything on the radio that is not to your liking in this special adventure we are about to embark on."

Lucie laughed and felt better already. It was easy to laugh with him, to feel lighter and freer and not crushed by all the deadlines and orders of her bosses.

Matthew looked at her with a dazzling smile and offered his hand, pulling her towards his bedroom window. She frowned, "What are you doing?"

"I'm not going to hear your brother insulting us in every language in the world because we're running away on the one night we're all together." he smiled over his shoulder.

Lucie, having understood what he was going to do, shook her head, "Uh uh, I'm not going to get down the gutter." She took her hand out of his grasp and squeezed her fist, hoping not to let that feeling go away. Matthew's eyes found Lucie's lips again and her mouth dried up. She swallowed and and the movement did not go unnoticed to the boy.

His eyes immediately found hers, "Do you trust me?"

"Of course."

"Then you'll come down this stupid gutter."

Lucie snorted, "All right, but you go first."

Matthew started to climb out of the window and as she kept her gaze fixed on him, she grinned, backing away. "Where are you going?" the blond asked, falsely alarmed.

Lucie did not answer, leaving the room, and walked quietly down the stairs to the front door. She opened it wide with nonchalace, and came out into the stinging air of the English countryside, finding a sullen Matthew in front of her. She reached out to him, disheveled him and then tied their arms together.

Matthew leaned over her, kissing her cheek. Lucie blushed, clutching herself in her sweater, and then turned to him.

Matthew's green eyes glowed with the emotion of what was waiting for them that night and Lucie felt something pull her towards the boy, a tug inside of her chest.

They looked at each other and burst out laughing, heading towards his car.

Whatever would happen in the next few hours, when they returned home the next morning, it would not be the same Lucie and Matthew as before.

tsc tag list

@queenofthemoon22 @tyherondaletrash @clara-sm @can-god-strike-me-down @tessaherongraystairs @idontgetit-whydoihavetosaymyname @jamescordelias @grxceblqckthxrn @thecerridwen @stitch-kiss @alastairlightwxod @ahiretsinging @allofmywonders @tremendousheadachecollector @tlh-tea @taco-taco-belle @city-of-fae @ifeelfreewithoutmyshoes @thomascarstairsx @alastaircarstairsx @fair-y-child @matthew-herondale @thomaslightwoodx @abigneignenn @imherongraystairstrash @rednailpolishqueen @herondamnn @parababitch-herondale @silent-nerd

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chickensarentcheap · 4 years

Text

Best Part of Me -Chapter 55

Warnings: none

Tagging: @c-a-v-a-l-r-y, @innerpaperexpertcloud, @alievans007, @ocfairygodmother

They arrive in Mumbai at three thirty in the morning. Checking into a hotel just on the outskirts of the city; a simple and unassuming place owned by an ‘informant’ of Anil’s. An inside man with access to both Mahajan and the higher ups temporarily in charge of running his business and carrying out his dirty work. While their true identities are known only to the owner and a handful of his most trusted staff, they register under the fake names given to them prior to boarding the plane. There is to be no trail leading back to them and who they really are; using cash only for all purchases, given different cell phones with unlisted and untraceable numbers to communicate amongst each other with, signing the passenger manifesto before the flight with entirely different monikers. Assured that everything during their stay will be kept low key to avoid any suspicion from ‘the wrong crowd’; two guards in casual clothing assigned to the lobby, monitoring everyone that comes through the front doors. Granted use of the establishment’s personal conference room for all planning and strategic meetings, and for Yaz to set up his command post.

Anil’s money and influence are quite prominent; his dealings and interactions with those he comes across are always friendly, but remaining professional. He’s well liked. Respected. And perhaps more than a little feared. A man that presents himself as calm and level headed but whose tone and facial expressions never leave a doubt that he’s not to be crossed. There’s an edge to him; a grittiness just under the businessman in designer clothes and linen suits and silk ties that suggests a tough and checkered past. Tyler has done his research; digging up some of the truth behind Anil’s departure from Special Forces. It isn't as cut and dry as he led them to believe; it isn’t just vengeance for his brother that saw him and the military parting ways. Multiple complaints of ‘excessive force’ against apprehended criminals -most drug and human traffickers- leading to an honorary discharge and no access to a pension. He knows there’s more to it than that; through his own experience with the SASR and the tales of others who’d served in various branches of the military world wide. Most war machines and police forces turns a blind eye to roughening up -and even killing- more hardcore offenders like child molesters, traffickers, and terrorists. But the further he dug into Anil’s past, the most questions he walked away with. His search for the full story only led to heavily guarded military pages that even all the tricks Yaz had taught him over the years couldn’t get past.

He doubts it’s anything serious or scandalous. His money on involvement in missions kept under the radar and out of public knowledge; most likely involving top officials in the Indian government. He’s worked a handful of those jobs himself; everything kept on the down low, his true name and identity kept a secret; nothing more than a ghost or an urban legend behind a high profile assassination.

The room is far more spacious and inviting than the bland and sparsely furnished front lobby. Two queen sized beds and a large walk in closet, burgundy walls adorned with paintings encased in thick, highly polished gold frames, natural wood furniture and a small table with two chairs nestled in the corner by the balcony doors. It’s twelve stories up and he pauses momentarily to look out at the city in the distance; brightly lit skyscrapers and the glow of random lights in apartment buildings, the flashing red of stop signs. The last time he’d ventured to Mumbai, Millie had been just turned two and a half months old and they were a week and a half away from finding out they were having another baby; staying in Mahajan’s cold and pretentious mansion, discussing how they couldn’t -in good conscience- leave Ovi behind. They couldn’t -and wouldn’t- allow him to be raised in such a sterile and unloving environment; no one to protect him from his father’s enemies, never feeling the touch of someone who truly cared for him. It was inhumane; expecting any human to live like that, never mind a scared and impressionable kid.

They hadn’t even had a home themselves. A situation beyond their control making it impossible to return to that small, two bedroom apartment just outside of Sydney. But they’d made the best of it, taking Ovi with them when they’d headed for Colorado with nothing more than the clothes on their backs and whatever money was in their bank account.

For now, this is home; no telling just how long he’ll actually be there. All that really matters is that there’s a bed to sleep in and hot, running water, and a toilet that actually works. The rest is just window decoration; needless trimmings and frills that he’ll either never touch or even acknowledge. Living on the job is the best way to do things; no true comforts, nothing to distract you from the seriousness of the mission. And he thinks of Dhaka and how well things had done there, until they didn’t. That squalid hotel room with its dirty walls and cold water and view of the crowded and chaotic street. As desolate and dreary as it had been, for five days it seemed like a paradise. The outside world -and the job at hand- ceasing to exist the moment they locked themselves inside. It seems like forever ago. He’d been a different person then. So had she. Both fractured and damaged, bonding over their empty and meaningless lives.

He’s unsure if his exhaustion is mental or physical. Or if it’s perhaps a mix of both. But the five hours of restless and pain filled sleep he’d managed during the flight has done little to ease the head to toe weariness. Feeling as if his body is running on autopilot as he completes even the simplest of tasks; locking the door, toeing off his boots, placing his own stash of weapons and ammo and other tactical gear in the closet and securing them with a heavy chain and padlock. He feels numb. Empty. As if the emotional well has been bled dry and there’s just nothing left to give. The Tyler that existed before he stepped onto the plant almost gone; replaced by a darker, more savage and vengeful version. His finger longing for a trigger to pull; that long simmering rage finally reaching its boiling point. It's all he DOES feel now; the desperate seeking of revenge and carrying it out through whatever means necessary. Pushed to a near breaking point and determined into something useful; the feel of blood on his hands and the terrified, haunted look on another’s face as he stands over them and watches them die.

It should bother him. Wanting to kill. Enjoying the thought of it and knowing he’ll get satisfaction out of doing it. He’s never felt that before; a want and a need to take a life. Before killing had always been a means to an end; a way of securing his own survival. Now it’s a longing. A way of proving two things. That he’s more capable of chaos and violence than Mahajan ever expected, and that even a reformed and changed man will go to any length to protect what’s his.

It’s justified. The things he needs to do. And it will be easy. He won’t have a guilty conscience. He’ll experience no shame. No regret. No remorse. He’ll feel nothing but relief and satisfaction. And IF he manages to survive, he’ll go on with his life; not once thinking back to things he’d been forced to do in Mumbai.

He checks the time on his phone before tossing it onto the nightstand between the beds. With the four and a half hour time difference between India and Australia, it’s peak insanity time for getting the kids ready and out the door in time for the school bus. And just like that the feeling of emptiness...and nothingness...briefly lifts; a sudden tightening in his chest and throat and the bitter sting of tears. Actually missing -despite often grumbling about it- that morning routine; the race to get lunch pail paced and stuffed into backpacks, the madness that ensures when three kids all attempt to find missing shoes in the disaster that is the hall closet, often finishing Millie’s hair while standing in the driveway while the boys sit on the curb and watch YouTube videos on his phone. Those moments that most people would take for granted yet he always feels so lucky to even be experiencing. Almost seven years ago he’d been on the brink of death; only to be snatched back and given a second chance. To do something good with his life; one again be a husband and a father but this time get it right. Experience the ‘boring’ and the ‘mundane’ instead of nothing but danger and self sacrifice. Instead of taking jobs and checking into cheap, shitty hotels, spending his night on the couch with his wife; suffering through her love of reality television while they eat ice cream straight out of the carton.

THAT was supposed to be his life. It’s what they had planned on when they decided to uproot the kids and move back to Australia. Be just another ordinary family; just a mom and ad raising five kids and enjoying their own slice of paradise after years of stress and worry and fear brought on by the job. And he thought he’d be happy with that LIKE that. But the past always finds a way to sneak up on you; reminds you why you’d ever got into it in the first place and convinces you that you aren’t complete without it. The adrenaline, the fast pace, the unpredictability. He’d somehow let himself fall prey to all of that. Once again going back on every goddamn promised he’d made; ruining every good intention he’d started out with.

If one thing has accompanied him to Mumbai, it’s the guilt. It’s deep and it’s painful and it makes him feel physically ill. That he would ever willingly get back into the game when he has so much to lose. The job is draining. Soul crushing. An unfair existence to spouses and children. Yet he’d brought them into it. He’d gotten close enough to someone to trust them -with his life- and had fallen in love with them and had desperately hung on to her when everything should have been telling him to push her away. And then he’d brought kids into it. Innocent little beings that are totally dependent on him for their survival and who would be the ones to suffer if anything happens to happen.

It WAS selfish; his reasonings behind not forcing her out of his life and back to Colorado. IT was the first time since Austin...since he’d made the terrible decision he had...that he felt alive again. That he actually allowed himself to feel. Finding someone that was equally as broken and damaged; connecting with them through their experiences with the job and their tortured pasts and horrendous life choices. He hadn’t wanted to lose that. He hadn’t wanted to lose HER. Even though it should have been painfully clear that her life would have turned out so much better without him in it.

He forces those thoughts out of his mind. Concentrating instead on the pain inhabiting his body and the need for a hot shower. Maybe even something to eat. It’s been close to twenty hours since he last ate, and he can feel the pang of hunger that accompanies the guilt and regret and gnaws at his stomach. And he strips off his clothes as he heads for the bathroom. Letting them fall where they may, planning to gather them later; wincing at the agony that accompanies even the simple task of removing his shirt.

Like the sleeping quarters, the bathroom is spacious; clean and modern with its subway tiles and infinity tub and a glass enclosed shower. And the water is hot...almost punishing...when he stands underneath it; pressure pounding and stinging. A form of self flagellation; punishing himself for both the selfish choice he’d made almost seven years ago and for feeling that way in the first place. Eyes closed, chin dropped to his chest and his palms flat against the tiles. Losing the battle against the threatening tears; allowing them to trickle freely down his cheeks and the sides of his nose, the droplets mixing with the soapy water that gathers at his first before swirling down the drain. It’s the first and only time he’ll let this happen; the open expression of emotion, the loss of control. It can’t happen again. Not on this job. He can’t allow it to. Not when there’s so much to lose.

His body is still damp damp and a towel is wrapped tightly around his waist when the confusion first hits. Distinctly remembering where he’d dropped each item of clothing on his journey to the bathroom; shirt having been the last item abandoned, left just on the threshold. Yet it’s no longer there. The door is cracked open to allow some of the steam to escape, and he can hear the sound of the tv -a laugh track for some shitty sitcom- drifting through the suite. He knows for a fact that he didn’t turn it on. And that he’d shut the bathroom door long before stepping into the shower. It isn’t a threat; no one is going to break into his room and gather up his dirty clothes and watch some television before attempting to kill him. Yet he still moves cautiously towards the door; years of being in a job where you have to expect the unexpected. Bare feet quiet against the tiles and then the dark, plush carpet. A scowl spreading across his face when he rounds the corner of the wall that separates the sleeping area from the bathroom and finds Koen sprawled out in the middle of the spare bed; clad in just a pair of boxers, hands behind his head as he watches tv.

“Just what in the fuck are you doing?” Tyler asks.

Koen nods towards the television as a form of response.

“Why are you doing it here and not in your own room?”

“Figured you wouldn’t mind having a roomie.”

“Actually, I do mind. So…”

“I picked up after your lazy ass. Were you born in a barn? Or are you just too used to someone picking up after you?”

“Why are you here? And how the hell did you get in here?”

“Front desk gave me the spare key card. Everyone is bunkin’ together; I thought why not the two of us?”

“Have you ever thought I like being alone?”

“You spent way too many years being alone and miserable,” Koen reasons. “Now I know I ain’t as pretty as who you’re used to sharing a room with, but…” he looks up at Tyler limps past him. “...well holy shit…” he drawls, and issues a low whistle. “...I think I’m questioning my sexuality.”

Tyler doesn’t respond; dropping down onto the edge of the bed closest to the window and digging through the old army rucksack for a pair of sweats.

“I could tell you had a pretty good rig under all those clothes, but I didn’t think you looked like THAT. Now I see why she doesn’t leave you. Or is the real reason she doesn’t under the towel?”

Tyler smirks, then shoves his legs into the sweats, towel still around his waist when he stands and pulls them on the rest of the way.

“Don’t be shy on my account. Be proud of what the good Lord gave you. Must be something extra special if your ugly mug manages to keep such a good woman around. Ain’t you ever worried about breaking a tiny little thing like her in half?”

“Fuck off,” Tyler grumbles, then yanks the damp towel from around his waist and tosses it at his friend.

“Humble, are we? I already know what it looks like, remember? How many times did we have to piss standing next to each other when we were in Kandahar? I’d be lying if I said I wasn't a bit jealous. Still don’t understand how you don’t hurt her, though.”

“I’m not discussing my sex life with you.”

“Never shied away from it before. Used to tell Rata and I all about your lady ‘friends’ stashed all over the world.”

“Yeah? Well I’m not that guy anymore, am I. And this isn’t just some piece of ass. This is my wife. So if you don’t mind…”

“Easy, tiger, easy. I know how defensive you get when it comes to her. And I don’t blame you; I don’t hold the overprotectiveness thing against you. I mean she’s cute, she’s tiny, you’ve almost lost her a couple times already…”

“Thanks for reminding me for that,” Tyler snarls, snagging his phone off the nightstand. “As if I haven’t been thinking about that every second of every fucking day since this Mahajan shit started.”

“...but she’s a grown woman with children and she knows how to take care of herself.” Koen finishes. “Ever think of easing up on her a bit?”

“You ever think of fucking off?”

“All I'm saying is that you don’t need to worry about her so much. She’s more than capable of handling things; taking care of herself and those littles.”

“Not against someone like Mahajan she’s not. And why are you even here? I don’t need company.”

“Hell you don’t. You gonna call home? She’s probably worried about you.”

“Get off my ass and go back to your own room.”

Koen ignores him. “You know this place has twenty four hour room service? We’re a far cry from eating army rations, ain’t we? I took the liberty of ordering both of us a little something. They didn’t have vegemite for your steak,though. What kind of savage bastard does that to a steak?”

“The kind of savage bastard that might kill in your sleep if you don’t fuck off and leave him alone.”

“Nope. Can’t do it. You’re stuck with me. No getting rid of me. Unless you DO kill me.”

“Don’t tempt me.”

“Call home. I know you’re missing her. It’s okay to admit that; that you need to hear her voice. You’re a lucky bastard that you have a voice to call and help ground you. Don’t take shit like that for granted. Treat her right. ‘Cause there’s probably a lot of guys willing to take your place on her dance card.”

“How about you leave giving relationship advice to someone who is actually in a relationship?” Tyler retorts.

Koen smirks, then gives him the finger before he slides open the balcony door and steps outside.

****

“Job Tyler” is quick to assess his surroundings; considering what could go wrong and how he’d carry it off if he was the one targeting someone. If Mahajan’s people have been tipped off that he’s in Mumbai and they’re either keeping an eye on him or have been sent to take him out, the only way they could achieve it is from the apartment building to the right. It’s nothing but one story single family homes and empty lots in the other directions, and with his room being on the twelfth floor, there is no possible way even the best of snipers could manage a decent shot from that angle and distance. So instead of standing at the railing and possibly giving someone a chance at him, he stays behind the cement partition that separates his balcony from the one belonging to the room next door.

What a fucking way to live.

It’s nine in the morning in Australia; the kids will have already arrived at school leaving her with just Declan and Addie. It’s easier this way; not calling when the three oldest are around. It will only make things harder on them. And him.

She answers on the third thing; both dogs barking in the background, along with the faint sound of waves.

“Hey,” Esme greets, and her surprisingly cheerful voice brings a smile to his face. “I was wondering if you’d fallen asleep on me,”

“I wanted to wait until the kids were at school. Didn’t want to make things harder on them. They’re okay?”

“Better than they usually are when you leave. Millie and TJ are all about going on a trip and seeing where Ovi came from. Tanner…well you know Tanner...he’s so intuitive and so sensitive and he’s become so close to you since New Zealand. He’s having a hard time. But I knew he would. He’s so much like you. More than anyone...even you...realizes. He feels so deeply and so powerfully.”

“He’ll be alright.” Tyler assures her. “He’s got a pretty amazing mom loving on him.”

“I don't know how amazing she is. She puts herself at mediocre.”

“Well tell her she’s delusional and she’s a fucking rock star and her husband worships the ground she walks on.”

“Her husband sounds like a very smart man.”

He grins. “He has his moments. You okay? What’re you doing?”

“Declan and I are down at the water with Saju and Mac. Kyle’s in the house with Addie. I’m okay, I guess. I’ve been better. I feel...I don’t know...like I’m in some kind of daze or a fog. Like I’m just going through the motions. Know what I mean?”

“Yeah, I know exactly what you mean. But are you? Okay?”

“Not really,” she admits. “It’s real now. Not something we just talk about or plan. It’s so real and I’m worried and I’m scared and I’m trying so hard not to be. And I miss you. Already.”

“I miss you, too. So much.”

“You usually wait a couple days before admitting it,” Esme teases, and he can’t help but smile.

“Well I’ve gotten used to being around you all the time. Six months of just being about you and my kids. Hits a little deeper now. A little harder. Being away from home.”

“I’d gotten used to you being around all the time, too. I know sometimes I bitched about it, but I really DID like it; having you here THAT much. And I like my brother, don’t get me wrong, and he’s a huge help, but he’s not you. It was weird waking up and you not being there. I’ve been spoiled, I guess. I took it...you…for granted. I hate myself for that.”

“Don’t, baby. Don’t ever feel like that. We’ve both done it. Not just you.”

“I did wake up to four little ones in the bed, though. I don’t know how they take up so much damn room. And Declan is freaking tall and so heavy!”

“Kid’s a tank. Gonna be six seven and weight three pounds and be solid as fuck.”

“Even with the red hair, he looks more like you every day. You have some seriously strong genes, Tyler Rake. Are you okay?”

“I’m okay.”

“Are you really okay? Or…?”

“I’m okay now,” he says. “Now that I’m talking to you. I needed to hear your voice.”

“And you say you’re not sappy,” Esme chides. “There’s a lot of people here. That Anil has sent. It’s making me even MORE nervous. And they’re not subtle. They're armed. Heavily. And they’re not making an attempt to hide it.”

“How many?”

“A dozen so far. There’s two of them watching Declan and I right now. We DON’T need this. This isn’t helping.”

“Better to be safe than sorry,” Tyler reasons.

“Our kids aren’t stupid. They notice everything. And they’re going to notice them and they’re going to start asking questions and they’re going to get scared. Can’t you get them to scale it back? Just a little? I don’t want the kids stressed out. I’m stressed out enough for all of us.”

“I’ll talk to Anil,” he says. “See if he’ll tone things down.”

“The kids do not need to know what’s going on. You know what Millie gets like when she thinks too much about you going after bad guys. She gets anxious and panics and then we’ll have a six year old that will start sucking her thumb and wetting the bed again.”

“I’ll talk to him. You’re right; there’s no need for all of that.”

“Do you think something’s happened?” she asks. “That maybe the threats have gotten worse? Or maybe Mahajan’s people are on the move?”

“What I think is that you need to NOT think so much. I’ll take care of it. And you guys are leaving tomorrow, so…”

“I wish you could be there,” she sighs. “When we arrive.”

“So do I, baby. Nothing I wouldn’t give to be there. But…”

“I know. I know it’s not safe. It’s just me being selfish and wanting to see you. It must be really late. Or really early.”

“Almost five.”

“You should rest. You sound tired.”

“I am,” Tyler admits. “I’m going to have something to eat and then try and sleep. There’s nothing to do until early afternoon. Just a team meeting to go over shit. I’ll call later. After dinner, your time. So I can talk to the kids.”

“Okay. Take care of yourself, please. You NEED to.”

“I know. I’ll talk to you later. Give Declan and the baby a hug and a kiss from me. Tell them I love them.”

“I will. We love you. Your little peanut misses you most of all, I think. She wouldn’t settle for her feed this morning until I wrapped her in one of your t-shirts from the dirty laundry basket.”

Tears prick his eyes, but he manages to hold them back. “Why would you do that to my little peanut?” he teases. “Traumatize her like that? That thing probably stinks.”

“It smells like you. And that’s the best smell in the world. I miss you. So much. And I can’t wait to see you. I hope it’s sooner rather than later."

“I hope so, too. I miss you. I love you.”

“I love you too, Tyler. Take that with you, okay? Wherever you go, whatever you get mixed up in.”

“I will,” he promises. “Talk later.”

“Be safe. Please. Be smart. You’ve got this. I know you do. You’re strong and you’re tough and nothing Mahajan throws at you is too much.”

“You’re good for my ego, you know that?”

“I’m in your corner. No matter what. We’ll talk soon,”

“We will,” he confirms, then waits for her to disconnect the call before hanging up himself.

****

“Well?” Koen asks when he steps back into the room. “Everything good on the home front’?”

“Best it can be, I guess.”

“Felt good, didn't it? Being able to talk to her. Hearing her voice like that?”

Tyler smirks, dropping his cell onto the bedside table. “When the fuck did you get so sappy?”

“There was a time where I did love all my ex wives, you know. When I liked hearing their voices. Now all I feel is a cold chill if I hear even the slightest peep from those three hens. Nice seeing you this way. All head over heels, a fool in love for someone. Considering I know what you were like when you were with Sarah. Back when you THOUGHT you were in love.”

“Do we have to talk about her? Nothing good ever comes from talking about her.” He stretches out in the middle of the bed, pillows behind his back as he leans against the headboard. “When is the food showing up? I’m fucking starvin’.”

“Soon. And all I’m saying is that there’s a huge difference between the guy you were with Sarah and the guy you are with Esme. Back then, you thought you were in love. Now you really are. It’s written all over your damn face. Every time you look at her, it’s right there. How you feel. And you can’t tell me you don’t see the difference. FEEL the difference. Between the two.”

“Of course I do. It’s night and day.”

“You two are still so loved up on each other. I know I complain that it’s nauseating and annoying, but it’s actually really nice. Seeing you like that. Loving someone; them loving you. You deserved it. Finding that. Finding HER. It’s changed you. SHE’S changed you.”

“For good or…?”

“Of course for good, don’t be a dumb ass. She’s the best damn thing that’s ever happened to you. Her and those kids. She made you a daddy again. You ask me, she deserves you worshipping the ground she walks on. And you’re a good daddy. A damn good one.”

“I’m just doing whatever I can do to make up for the shitty I mess I made the first time around.”

Koen frowns. “Don’t do that, mate. Don’t compare those kids to what you lost. They’re not a replacement for Austin. Don’t talk like they are. And don’t treat them like they are. They deserve better than that. You did a crappy thing; we all do crappy things. But that’s a long time ago and you’re a different man now and them kids aren’t holding the past against you. You’re doing that all on your own. You have this uncanny ability to fuck your life up without even trying. Those kids don’t care who you were back then. Just who you are now.”

Tyler sighs. “You talk a lot of shit, you know that?”

“I’m talking the truth. You just hate hearing it for some reason. You hate when other peoples’ narratives don’t match your own. When they don’t see you as the shitty human you see yourself as. Knock that shit off. You’re better than you think.”

“Maybe,” Tyler agrees. “Maybe I am. But sometimes I wonder if I did the right thing. If I should have forced her to leave; when I woke up after Dhaka. If I should have found a way to get her to take off.”

Koen scowls. “You’re taking shit and you know it.”

“I was selfish. I wanted her to stay. I liked the way she made me feel. Not just the sex part of things. I mean everything. I liked having her around. I liked hearing her voice and seeing her smile. I liked how she looked at me. She didn’t look at me with pity or disgust. She looked at me like I was worth something. Like I wasn’t just a big fucking mess.”

“She saw the potential.” Koen reasons. “We all saw it. Just took her to get out of you.”

“But I kept her there for me. I didn’t think about what it would do to her; being mixed up with someone like me. And I should have. I should realized I’d only make her life a big fucking mess.”

“If she wanted to leave, she would have. You didn’t force her to stay.”

“I didn’t make her leave, either. And I should have. Especially after she found out about the baby.”

Koen’s eyes narrow. “What the fuck you going on about?”

“She would have been better going back to the States and having the baby on her own and never bothering with me again.”

“That’s horseshit and you know it! You really think you could have lived like that? Knowing you had a kid out there? Yet never knowing if it was a boy or a girl or even their name or what they looked like? You wouldn’t have been able to live like that; knowing you had blood out there So quit talking crazy. Look at that little girl. Think about her. How much she loves her daddy.”

“I’m a selfish fuck,” Tyler insists. “For getting married. Having kids. Dragging them all into this.”

“You didn’t drag anyone into anything,” Koen argues. “Esme stayed. She chose to be with you. And no matter what you could have said or done to push her away, it wouldn’t have worked. Her mind was made up. She wanted to be with you. For some fucking reason,”

“She deserves better than this. So do those kids.”

“Those kids wouldn’t even exist without you! They’re just as much yours as they are hers. You know what they deserve? They deserve to be on this earth. They have a mom and a dad that love them. That take damn good care of them. You know what’s selfish? You thinking FOR them. You’re their daddy. And you sit here talking about them like they’re mistakes?”

“I never said that.”

“You might as fucking well! You deserve a normal life. A wife and kids. People that love you no matter how big of a mess you think you are! And you know what? Fuck you for questioning that. Questioning their existence!”

“I never…”

“You’re the luckiest fucker I know,” Koen continues his rant. “I’ve seen you at your lowest. I’ve seen you in the gutter, practically. And this beautiful, selfless woman comes along and gives everything of herself to you. Gave up her old life to have a new one with you. And that’s how you think of her? Just to hell with the last seven years? To hell with five kids? All you think is ‘I should have pushed her away’? That’s what she gets after everything she’s done for you? Fuck you, mate. Guys would kill for what you have. Stop looking at what’s wrong and look at what’s right! You have a great life. That you deserve. So get your head out of your ass and appreciate it before someone comes along and does it for you. Yeah, you're a selfish prick, alright. Not even thinking about what pushing her away would have done to her and the baby she had in her belly. How none of those kids would even exist. THAT makes you a selfish prick.”

Silence descends on the room; Koen’s harsh words and accusations hanging heavily in the air. He’s right, of course. Even if Tyler hates to admit it, even to himself. Had he pushed her away, he would have spent the rest of his life drinking himself stupid and dwelling on what could have been and thoughts of what his kid turned out to be; what they looked like or what their name was. Did Esme give them his last name or did she just go with her? Was she with anyone? Did she ever think about him and those five days in Dhaka or did she hate him enough to never think of it...or him...again?

How would her life have turned out? Who would she have ended up with? Would she have been happy? Or would part of her always be back in Australia? His child serving as a bond that would always keep them connected. Millie would exist,but none of the others would. No TJ with his fiery temper but a propensity to love with his entire heart and soul. No Tanner with his dad’s old haircut and his huge emotions and his sensitive, old soul. No Declan with his red hair and his strong, solid build, so affectionate and loving. No Addie; impossibly tiny with a headful of dark hair and those enormous dark eyes. And that’s a reality he’d never want to face; a life without any of his kids.

“You love her, yeah?” Koen speaks up.

“Of course I do. With everything I am. Everything I have. What..?”

“You love her and that’s enough for her. And she loves you. Or she wouldn’t have stuck around after Dhaka or after any of the shitty times. She’s given herself willingly to you. Given you five kids and a damn good life. Don’t ever talk about her or those kids like that again, or I WILL beat you ass. Understand me?”

Tyler nods.

“No that we’ve got all that worked out,” Koen sighs. “Food’s gonna be here soon. You gonna eat?”

“I could definitely eat.”

“Gotta take care of yourself. You’re no good to anyone if you don’t. What do you wanna watch?” He gestures towards the tv with the remote. “Probably got some good adult channels on here.”

Tyler smirks. “I am not watching pron with you in the room.”

“I ain’t gonna like while you’re jerking off if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“You’ve got issues, mate. Why are you so obsessed with my dick?”

“Gotta be a reason she sticks around, I figure. I’m just trying to piece together what it is. Something’s keeping her happy. Unless…” Koen’s eyes narrow. “...you’re a giver and not a taker, aren’t ya. You’re going above and beyond down yonder to get your woman happy.”

“I already told you; I’m not talking about my sex life with you.”

“That’s it, isn’t it. You’re spoiling her THAT way.”

“My wife has no complaints. I’ll leave it at that.”

“Atta boy! You’ve your priorities straight! You must be something right; she sticks around.”

“Have you ever thought maybe she just loves me? That’s all it is?”

“No doubt in my mind she does. But I’m proud of you; doing what it takes to make her happy. She reciprocating or..”

“Mate, we are not having this conversation.”

“Just give me a sign that she is. Some kind of hint. Give me a thumbs up if she’s doing her bit, too.”

Tyler smirks, then gives two thumbs up.

“You fucking bastard!” Koen snarls. “I don’t know whether to be jealous or you or hate you right now. Maybe a bit of both. No wonder you always got that goofy grin on your face whenever you’re around her. You’re getting yourself some. On a regular basis.”

“Probably get more in one week than you get in six months.”

“Now THAT’S harsh.”

Another silence descends on the room. This time far more comfortable. And Tyler lays his head back against the pillow behind him and closes his eyes. He feels better now. Slightly, at least. Koen’s tough love and hearing his wife’s voice and picturing her down at the water-with the sun capturing the natural red highlights in her dark tresses and that little burn she always gets on her nose and under her eyes- doing wonders to alleviate the guilt and regret. Loosening some of that tightness around his heart.

“You’ve got a good thing,” Koen says. “A good life. Don’t fuck it up.”

“I won’t,” Tyler vows.

But the confidence is lacking. It isn’t himself he doesn’t trust. He has the skills and the strength to complete the tasks at hand; his instincts and abilities strong. HE isn’t the problem. It’s everything...everyone...else around him. There’s no control over the situation . He’s at the mercy of his environment; unfamiliar surroundings working as a weakness. His kryptonite.

Mahajan holds all the cards. And it’s time to take them away.

#tyler rake #tyler rake fan fiction #tyler rake fan fic #chris hemsworth character #extraction

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Innocent Part 1 2020 Season 1 Ullu Web Series Download 720p

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and he is also the hero of this film. He put the bad guy Sadashiv Amrapurkar at the time because, I suspect, he kept stealing the heroine's clothes and his wigs wandering around in them. Now he also hits the baddie, Gyaan Prakash "Guruji" (Makarand Deshpande), when he appears in the gotta-patti lehnga-dupatta that the heroine may have had on a special night. Father Bhatt is back to normal after 19-20 years. In his long career,

a prominent director made Arth, Saaransh, Janam, Naam - stellar films in a large pond of boring independence. But in his life he has never made a bad film like Sadak 2. Watching Sadak 2 felt like he had recaptured Sadak's undeniable food power, which was not a good film to start with, but he worked at the time due to innocence and Pooja Bhatt's lisp, Sadashiv's evil act and catchy songs. Sadak 2, set directly in Sadak - in the sense of what happened to those characters - comes from the same journey as the heavily pregnant characters who seem to have nowhere to go except the godown where they are badly found,

the B-1980s are discarded. Aarya (Alia Bhatt) is the richest heir of the Desai Group of Industries, headed by Pope Yogesh Desai (Jisshu Sengupta) and mother Shakuntala. At the age of 21, he should inherit all of his property. But Shakuntala is dead and replaced. Nandini Maa (Priyanka Bose) is Aarya's mother and new mother. And, presumably, he is the murderer of his sister at the behest of Guruji. So Aarya is angry and committed to fighting him on Instagram. This involves wearing a hoodie and putting on his ashram to heat Guguji's cut bigger than life. Please, dear reader,

pause and think about this: Aarya in a hoodie first spray paint "BADLA" on Guguji's cut, then pour petrol on it and burn it. As it burns, he starts recording it and sends it to his account @IndiaAgainstFakeGurus, #Victory. What is the purpose of sprinkling the word "EAT" while burning? Still. A few minutes later, when armed with Guruji's armed chellas, Aarya points to two fingers and pretends to shoot, "Thish".

Aarya is considered mentally unstable by Nandini Maa and given the sequence of events mentioned above, there may be something in that diagnosis. Meanwhile, somewhere in Mumbai, Ravi (Sanjay Dutt), owner of Pooja Tours and Travels, is crying and smelling the saree. He continues to talk to Pooja under his big black and white poster brand new scented candle. She was so upset that she decided to stop. But the ceiling hinge cannot take his weight off. He was taken to the same psychiatric hospital where Aarya was treated.

When he returns, Ravi is busy trying to find another way to stop himself, but Aarya, who has run away from his luxurious house that looks like a banquet hall designed by JJ Valaya, keeps knocking on his door. It appears that three months ago Pooja took his booking to be transferred to Kailash Parvat. Meanwhile, Gyaan Prakash emerges from a small black dot and wears the entire Tribal collection of Amrapali jewelry, in gold. Her hair is cold and so is her shocking conversation like ordering the removal of a young heir.

Enroute to Kailash, Aarya tells Ravi to turn in jail. When he asks why, we are bombarded with a thousand-year-old imagination involving treadmill, dedicated activists and a meeting of the two. Only two India Fights Fake Gurus activists important to Sadak 2 - Aarya and troll-turned-ally, Vishal (Aditya Roy Kapoor). Vishal emerges from Central Jail with a guitar hanging from one shoulder and a ullu in a cage in the other. It was as if he had not been sentenced to a felony conviction but had been invited by the inmates to sing and strengthen his guitar in a weekend match.

Ravi does not like Vishal, but he likes Kumbhkaran ullu and they form a temporary bond that reminds me of Iqbal and Allah Rakha (Coolie). In the flashbacks we see Aarya and Vishal arguing over the need to fight vishwas and wealthy children expressing concern, all without getting any attention that they are on their way to Kailash Parvat to say Har Har Mahadev. Aarya discovers that at least two trusted people have been planted by Guruji to remove him, and Ravi decides to give in to Aarya's attitude and the irritating indifference shown by Vishal, one Hathkata goon (Gulashan Grover) and a loyal Bollywood's overactor (Mohan Kapoor). , should treat.

So he goes out alone, singing Ram Naam Satya Hai. She is lucky for him, all the people who need to remove them are gathered at a feast made by Valaya. After a bloody climax "thish-thish" comes a press conference. This scene, which is constantly evolving, is so bad and boring that I felt as if we had not just been given a delicious meal by a chef who had been waiting for him, but when he turned to leave, he let out a sigh of relief.

Alia Bhatt has never been so bad or looked so lost, though the same cannot be said of Aditya Roy Kapoor. As with most of his films, here he looks like he has come to the sets that will hang him, but suddenly he was told to change to two or three lines. Watching Priyanka Bose's "action" is a work in progress. It's just that she can't play Lady Macbeth mentally, over and over. The Sadak 2 drama, written by Mahesh Bhatt and Sumitra Sengupta, may have been completed with a post-it note. It is the first festoons with two small letters with random features and edges and then inc

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theroadbuildinggeek · 5 years

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Why not Trudeau for PM again? Ask Trudeau about these things

Your minister of finance engaged in insider trading – should be a 10 year sentence.

You blew the Asia Pacific deal.

You blew the helicopter deal with the Philippines.

You blew the pipeline deal (he's now trying to save himself from it).

You blew the deal with China.

You blew the deal with Europe.

You invited "irregular" immigration and the taxpayer foots the enormous bill for it.

You alienated the United States – our largest trading partner.

At the G7 you pledged $400 million to Education around the world along with another $180 million to the Global Partnership for Education in Europe. None of it is going to fix our messed up school systems here at home. Meanwhile education costs are skyrocketing for our youth making university a mountain too high for many to climb.

You pledged $241 million to Family Planning around the world including a $20 million donation to the Bill and Hillary Clinton Foundation (because they have integrity!). This all happened while you told vets that they were asking too much.

You pledged $2.65 billion to climate change at the Commonwealth Leaders Summit and now you’re trying to bully the provinces into new taxes to pay for this pledge.

You pledged $300 million to the Rohingya Refugee crisis while we have a refugee crisis of our own flooding into Quebec that you won't address.

You pledged $125 million to Caribbean Reconstruction while our own infrastructure in cities is falling apart.

You pledged $650 million to Sexual and Reproductive health in Haiti and around the globe wanting safer abortions for woman while many women in our own country are left without a family doctor.

You pledged $50 million to Palestine for flood relief when NB had some of the worst flooding in decades this past spring.

You pledged $840 million to Syria for Humanitarian Assistance when half the native reserves in our country don't have clean drinking water.

You gave $10.5 million to a convicted...CONVICTED terrorist in a backroom deal that has lead to another $30.8 million paid out for three others who say they were wrongfully detained.

You spent $4.5 billion on a 65 year old pipeline, and now the courts have ruled it shut down. Now it's back on (at a delay cost of $250 million) - good investment for Canada you said? (And KM uses that money to build a pipeline in Texas)

You pressured Jody Wilson Raybould repeatedly & INAPPROPRIATELY with several different high ranking officials to offer SNC Lavalin a DPA instead of prosecution for repeated & sustained corruption AFTER the former AG had determined they were ineligible for such a deal. You lied about the above having ever taken place.

You replaced Canada’s old F-18s with Australia’s old F-18s.

Your bizarre love of all things Castro.

You imposed tough regulations and taxes on oil from Alberta, Saskatchewan and Newfoundland but not oil from Saudi Arabia.

Every new project has to undergo strict environmental assessments...except cement plants in Quebec.

You said that a proposed pipeline must consider “the intersection of sex and gender with other identity factors” (what does that even mean???)

You think older Canadians should be replaced. How is that moral?

You chase foreign companies (and their investment capital) out of the country like they have the plague.

You chased our WW1 soldiers out of our national anthem... lest we forget.

You continuously use identity politics...then complain about identity politics.

You forgot Alberta was a province.

You called small business owners “tax cheats”.

People voice concern over money spent on illegal immigration and you call them intolerant racists.

We have an equalization program, but you give half of it to one province.

You spent $8 million on a skating rink (vanity project) when Canada's largest skating rink is 500 meters away.

You added tens of billions added to the national debt while lying to Canada's face about it.

You groped a woman and when caught - laughed about it (MacLean's interview) and said she experienced it differently.

You elbowed a female MP while dragging another MP by the arm in a petulant huff.

You renamed Fishermen to "Fisher-folk"

Peoplekind? (international embarrassment)

You got India to invest $250 million in Canada but we have to invest $750 million in India first.

You compared returning ISIS terrorists to Italian immigrants and said they will be an extraordinary powerful voice for Canada.

You let terrorists keep their Canadian citizenship.

You spent $212,234 on artwork for the cover of the 2017 budget report.

You think Canada is 100 years old instead of 150.

You spent upwards to $348,000 on food and alcohol in five flights on our government’s plane. On your G20 trip to Argentina, you spent $103,000 on food and alcohol alone. How is that even possible?

You gave Canadian taxpayers' money to Hamas.

You voice outrage over fake racist attacks and say nothing about real terrorist attacks.

You took 10 vacations in a single year. Who does this??

You spent a little over $1.5 million on the trip to India that did nothing but worsen ties. Plus paid over $17,000 to bring an Indian chef to India to cook Indian cuisine. And to top it off, invited a convicted attempted assassin to diner and posed for pics with him.

And you’re the only PM convicted of ethics violations. (multiple times in fact)

You allegedly destroyed the career of one of Canada’s honest military leaders to cover up possible massive corruption in ship building contracts.

You invited Joshua Boyle, an alleged perpetrator of sexual assault and unlawful confinement for a photoshoot in the Office of The Prime Minister.

You threaten to sue the leader of the opposition then chicken out when you realized that your alleged crimes will be exposed in court.

You offer over $600 million dollars in subsidies to failing mainstream media outlets if they can prove to be trustworthy. You put a union who vows to destroy your opposition in charge of selecting these new “trusted” sources to receive funding. You could school the Russians in election interference.

You pay off your friends to engage in election ads for you and get Elections Canada to pay for it.

$200 million to Loblaws for new refrigerators.

You made public statements of deep admiration for Chinese communism.

You wore preposterous costumes during a state visit to India.

What moral, functioning Canadian human could possible justify voting for you?

#canadavotes #nomoretrudeau #canadianpolitics

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reliefindiatrust1 · 2 years

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Is Relief India Trust Fake Organization? Why People Don’t Believe in Helping Hands

Whenever there is a major setback or imbalance in the sector, an NGO steps in to lend a helping hand. Despite our best efforts, we continue to hear Is Relief India Trust Fake? Relief India Trust always facilitates a better quality of life and education for the sensible class. Is this a fair way to treat an NGO? How can you question someone’s dignity while having a proper understanding of the facts? The Relief India Trust has been labelled as a forgery. Read More

#Relief India Trust Fake

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truemedsblog1 · 3 years

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Buying Medicine Online

Why do people think buying medicine online is a good idea ?

People nowadays have come forward to participate in online shopping and the health sector too is not spared.

With better internet connectivity in India and smartphones in almost every hand, people are getting aware of different ways to buy their medicines online, taking risks & precautions with seriousness.

Pandemic induced growth in the online healthcare sector has led to the booming birth of various online pharmacies that are currently focused on to meet the new online customers.

7 types of People benefitting from buying medicines online:

People who want to keep their identity anonymous while purchasing online or want better privacy on what they are buying online.

People who are living in remote areas and don’t have reach to brick and mortar pharmacies

Consumers who are short of time and want their medicines delivered fast to them.

With online pharmacies, consumer receive discounts that reduce their cost on overall health budget and give a sense of relief

Busy lifestyle and coronavirus concern has motivated people to order medicines online from trusted apps & websites

People who are affected from chronic diseases and are not able to step out of their homes order their medicines online.

Single parents with small babies order health care products from online pharmacies to take full care of their babies.

People know from where they should buy online medicines :

With the Information Age, comes the awareness, caution with which consumers protect themselves from any breaches.

With competitors in the online pharmacies sector, widespread advertisements, education among buyers.

New age consumers are looking for following 7 points before they order medicines online:

Possible discounts & fake discounts : consumers know that they should look for true discounts and not heavy discounts that offer medicines online at a very cheap rate.

HTTPS vs HTTP web URLs : customers are aware of security features that come with HTTPS websites and trust that comes with them. They are aware that their information is safe and encrypted from 3rd party

Outdated, counterfeit medications or substitutes: consumers know the websites they should be moving out from and from where they should buy online medicines so that they do not get fake medications.

Online pharmacies that do not demand online prescription : consumers are aware that buying medicines online without prescription is bad for them and they should keep themselves away from these types of online pharmacies.

Online pharmacies with certified pharmacists, team of licensed doctors: customers of new age know that an online medicine store must have a registered pharmacist with them, and a team of listened doctors

Efficient and fast delivery system: customers value their time and hence want to have efficient and fast delivery with promise that their online purchased medicines and drugs delivered to them are properly packed and within a given time frame.

Friendly customer support & FAQs that solve customer’s queries: With friendly customer support , customers find their concern & problem solved instantly.

You might be thinking from where you can buy medicine online to join this new-age consumers group:

Ask from anyone and you will get the only name that follows all the safety rules.

They are trustworthy for the medicine you buy online.

They are not but your near name : they are Trumeds.

They give you “ True medicines at True prices” because they value your time & money.

#Online Pahrmacy #Buy Medicine #Generic Medicine

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daniloqp · 3 years

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She risked everything to expose Facebook. Now she’s telling her story.

https://theministerofcapitalism.com/blog/she-risked-everything-to-expose-facebook-now-shes-telling-her-story/

The world first learned of Sophie Zhang in September 2020, when BuzzFeed News obtained and published highlights from an abridged version of her nearly 8,000-word exit memo from Facebook.

Before she was fired for poor performance, Zhang was officially employed as a low-level data scientist at the company. But she had become consumed by a task she deemed more important: finding and taking down fake accounts and likes on the platform that were being used to sway elections globally.

Her memo revealed how she’d identified dozens of countries, including India, Mexico, Afghanistan, and South Korea, where this type of abuse was enabling politicians to mislead the public and gain power. It also revealed how little the company had done to mitigate it, despite Zhang’s repeated efforts to bring it to the attention of leadership.

“I know that I have blood on my hands by now,” she wrote.

On the eve of her departure, Zhang was still debating whether to write the memo at all. It was perhaps her last chance to create enough internal pressure on leadership to start taking the problems seriously. In anticipation of writing it, she had turned down a nearly $64,000 severance package to avoid signing a nondisparagement agreement and retain the freedom to speak critically about the company.

But she was disturbed by the idea that, just two months out from the 2020 US election, the memo could erode the public’s trust in the electoral process if prematurely released to the press. “I was terrified of somehow becoming the James Comey of 2020,” she says, referring to the former FBI director who told Congress the agency had reopened an investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server days before the election. Clinton went on to blame Comey for losing her the presidency.

To Zhang’s great relief, that didn’t happen. And after the election passed, she proceeded with her original plan. In April, she came forward in two Guardian articles with her face, name, and even more detailed documentation on the political manipulation she’d uncovered as well as Facebook’s negligence.

Her account supplied concrete evidence to support what critics had long been saying on the outside: Facebook makes election interference easy, and that unless such activity hurts the company’s business interests, it can’t be bothered to fix the problem.

By going public and eschewing anonymity, Zhang also risked legal action from the company, her future career prospects, and perhaps even action from the politicians she exposed in the process. “What she did is very brave,” says Julia Carrie Wong, the Guardian reporter who published her revelations.

In a statement Joe Osborn, a Facebook spokesperson, vehemently denied Zhang’s characterization. “For the countless press interviews she’s done since leaving Facebook, we have fundamentally disagreed with Ms. Zhang’s characterization of our priorities and efforts to root out abuse on our platform,” he said. “We aggressively go after abuse around the world and have specialized teams focused on this work. As a result, we’ve already taken down more than 150 networks of coordinated inauthentic behavior…Combatting coordinated inauthentic behavior is our priority.”

After nearly a year of avoiding personal questions, Zhang is now ready to tell her story. She wants the world to understand how she became so entwined in trying to protect democracy worldwide and why she cared so deeply. She’s also tired of being in the closet: Zhang is a transgender woman, a core aspect of her identity that informed her actions at and after Facebook.

Her story reveals that it is really pure luck that we now know so much about how Facebook enables election interference globally. Zhang was not just the only person fighting an entire swath of political manipulation, it also wasn’t her job. She had discovered the problem because of a unique confluence of skills and passion, then taken it upon herself, driven by an extraordinary sense of moral responsibility.

To regulators around the world considering how to rein in the company, this should be a wakeup call.

Zhang never planned to be in this position. She’s deeply introverted and hates being in the limelight. She’d joined Facebook in 2018 after the financial strain of living in the Bay Area on part-time contract work had worn her down. When she received Facebook’s offer, she was upfront with her recruiter: she didn’t think the company was making the world better, but she would join to help fix it.

“They told me, ‘You’d be surprised how many people at Facebook say that,’” she remembers.

But the task was easier said than done. Like many new hires, she joined without being assigned to a specific team. She wanted to work on election integrity, which works to mitigate election-related platform abuse, but her skills didn’t match their openings. She settled for a new team tackling fake engagement instead.

Fake engagement refers to things such as likes, shares, and comments that have been bought or otherwise inauthentically generated on the platform. The focus of the new team’s work was narrower, on so-called “scripted inauthentic activity”—fake likes and shares produced by automated bots, used to drive up someone’s popularity.

The vast majority of such cases were people obtaining likes for vanity. But half a year in, Zhang intuited that politicians could do the same to increase their influence and reach on the platform. It didn’t take long for her to find examples in Brazil and India, in the lead up to general elections.

But in the process of searching for scripted activity, she found something far more worrying. The Facebook page administrator of the Honduran president, Juan Orlando Hernández, had created hundreds of pages with fake names and profile pictures to look just like users, and was using them to flood the president’s posts with likes, comments, and shares. (Facebook bars users from making multiple profiles but doesn’t apply the same restriction to pages, which are usually meant for businesses and public figures.)

The activity didn’t count as scripted, but the effect was the same. It could not only mislead the casual observer into believing Orlando Hernández was more well-liked and popular than he was. It was also boosting his posts higher up in people’s newsfeed. For a politician whose 2017 re-election campaign was widely believed to be fraudulent, the brazenness—and implications—were alarming.

“Everyone agreed that it was terrible. No one could agree who should be responsible, or even what should be done.”

But when Zhang raised the issue, she says she received a lukewarm reception. The pages integrity team, which handles abuse of and on Facebook pages, wouldn’t block the mass-manufacture of pages to look like users. The newsfeed integrity team, which tries to improve the quality of what appears in user’s newsfeeds, wouldn’t remove the fake likes and comments from the ranking algorithm’s consideration. “Everyone agreed that it was terrible,” Zhang says. “No one could agree who should be responsible, or even what should be done.”

After a year of Zhang applying pressure, the network of fake pages was finally removed. A few months later, Facebook created a new “inauthentic behavior policy” to ban fake pages marauding as users. But this policy change didn’t address a more fundamental problem: no one was being asked to enforce it.

So Zhang took it upon herself. When she wasn’t working to scrub away vanity likes, she diligently combed through streams of data, searching for the use of fake pages, fake accounts, and other forms of coordinated fake activity on politicians’ pages. She found cases across dozens of countries, most egregiously in Azerbaijan where the pages technique was being used to harass the opposition.

But finding and flagging new cases wasn’t enough. In order to get any networks of fake pages or accounts removed, Zhang found she had to persistently lobby the relevant teams. In countries where such activity posed little PR risk to the company, enforcement could be put off repeatedly. (Facebook disputes this characterization.) The responsibility weighed on her heavily. Was it more important to push for a case in Bolivia with a population of 11.6 million, or in Rajasthan, India, with a population close to 70 million?

Then in the fall of 2019, weeks of deadly civil protest broke out in Bolivia after the public contested the results of its presidential election. Only a few weeks earlier, Zhang had indeed deprioritized the country to take care of more urgent cases. The news consumed her with guilt. Intellectually, she knew there was no way to draw a direct connection between her decision and the events. The fake engagement had been so small the effect was likely negligible. But psychologically and emotionally, it didn’t matter. “That’s when I started losing sleep,” she says.

Whereas someone else may have chosen to leave such a taxing job or perhaps abdicate themselves of the responsibility as a means of coping, Zhang leaned in, at great personal cost, in an attempt to single-handedly right a wrong.

Over the year between the events in Bolivia and her firing, the exertion sent her health into sharp decline. She already suffered from anxiety and depression, but it grew significantly—and dangerously—worse. Always a voracious reader of world news, she could no longer distance herself from the political turmoil of other countries. The pressure pushed her away from friends and loved ones. She grew increasingly isolated and broke up with her girlfriend. She upped her anxiety and antidepressant medication until her dose had increased by six-fold.

For Zhang, the explanation of why she cared so much is tied up in her identity. She grew up in Ann Arbor, Michigan, the daughter of parents who’d immigrated from mainland China. From an early age, she was held to high academic standards and proved a precocious scholar. At six or seven, she read an introductory physics book and grew fascinated by the building blocks of the universe. Her passion would lead her to study cosmology at the University of Michigan, where she published two research papers, including one as a single author.

“She was blazing smart. She may be the smartest undergrad student I’ve ever worked with,” recalls Dragan Huterer, her undergraduate advisor. “I would say she was more advanced than a graduate student.”

But her childhood was also marked by severe trauma. As early as five years old, she began to realize she was different. She read a children’s book about a boy whose friends told him that if he kissed his elbow he would turn into a girl. “I spent a long time after that trying to kiss my elbow,” she says.

She did her best to hide it, understanding that her parents would find her transgender identity intolerable. But she vividly remembers the moment her father found out. It was spring of 8th grade. It had just rained. And she was cowered in the bathroom, contemplating whether to jump out the window, as he beat down the door.

In the end, she chose not to jump and let him hit her until she was bloody, she says. “Ultimately, I decided that I was the person who stayed in imperfect situations to try and fix them.” The next day, she wore a long sleeve shirt to cover up the bruises and prepared an excuse in case a teacher noticed. None did, she says.

(When reached by email, her father denied the allegations. “I am sad that she alleges that I beat her as a child after I discovered her transgender identity, which is completely false,” he wrote. But multiple people who knew Zhang through high school to present day corroborated her account of her father’s abusive behavior.)

“To give up on them and abandon them would be a betrayal of the very core of my identity.”

In college, she decided to transition, after which her father disowned her. But she soon discovered that finally being perceived correctly as a woman came with its own consequences. “I knew precisely how people treated me when they thought that I was a dude. It was very different,” she says.

After being accepted to all the top PhD programs for physics, she chose to attend Princeton University. During orientation, the person giving a tour of the machine shop repeatedly singled her out in front of the group with false assumptions about her incompetence. “It was my official introduction to Princeton and a very appropriate one,” she says.

From there the sexism only got worse. Almost immediately a male grad student began to stalk and sexually harass her. To cope, she picked a thesis advisor in the biophysics department, which allowed her to escape her harasser by conducting research in another building. The trouble was she wasn’t actually interested in biophysics. And whether for this or other reasons, her interest in physics slowly dissolved.

Three years in, deeply unhappy, she decided to leave the program, though not without finally reporting the harassment to the university. “They were like, ‘It’s your word against his,’” she remembers. “You can probably guess now why I extensively documented everything I gave to Julia,” referring to Julia Carrie Wong at the Guardian. “I didn’t want to be in another ‘he said she said’ situation.”

(A Princeton spokesperson said he was unable to comment on individual situations but stated the university’s commitment to “providing an inclusive and welcoming educational and working environment.” “Princeton seeks to support any member of the campus community who has experienced sexual misconduct, including sexual harassment,” he said.)

“What these experiences have in common is the fact that I’ve experienced repeatedly falling through the cracks of responsibility,” Zhang wrote in her memo, after summarizing these experiences. “I never received the support from the authority figures I needed…In each case, they completed the letter of their duty but failed the spirit, and I paid the price of their decisions.”

“Perhaps then you can understand why this was so personal for myself from the very start, why I fought so hard to keep the people of Honduras and Azerbaijan from slipping through those cracks,” she wrote. “To give up on them and abandon them would be a betrayal of the very core of my identity.”

It was during the start of her physical and mental decline in the fall of 2019 that Zhang began thinking about whether to come forward. She wanted to give Facebook’s official systems a chance to work. But she worried about being a single point of failure. “What if I got hit by a bus the next day?” she says. She needed someone else to have access to the same information.

By coincidence, she received an email from a journalist in her inbox. Wong, then a senior tech reporter at the Guardian, had been messaging Facebook employees looking to cultivate new sources. Zhang took the chance and agreed to meet for an off-the-record conversation. That day, she dropped her company-issued phone and computer off at a former housemate’s place as a precaution, knowing that Facebook had the ability to track her location. When she returned, she looked a little more relieved, the former housemate Ness Io Kain remembers. “You could tell that she felt like she’d accomplished something. It’s pretty silent, but it’s definitely palpable.”

For a moment things at Facebook seemed to make progress. She saw the policy change and takedown of the Honduran president’s fake network as forward momentum. She was called upon repeatedly to help handle emergencies and praised for her work, which she was told was valued and important.

But despite her repeated attempts to push for more resources, leadership cited different priorities. They also dismissed Zhang’s suggestions for a more sustainable solution, such as suspending or otherwise penalizing politicians who were repeat offenders. It left her to face a never-ending firehose: The manipulation networks she took down quickly came back, often only hours or days later. “It increasingly felt like I was trying to empty the ocean with a colander,” she says. “Two steps back, two steps forward.”

“I have never hated my autism more than when I joined Facebook.”

Then in January of 2020, the tide turned. Both her manager and manager’s manager told her to stop her political work and stick to her assigned job. If she didn’t, her services at the company would no longer be needed, she remembers the latter saying. But without a team assigned to continue her work, Zhang kept doing some in secret.

As the pressure of her work and her health worsened, Zhang realized she would ultimately need to leave. She made a plan to depart after the US election, considering it the last and most important duty she needed to perform. But leadership had other plans. In August, she was informed that she would be fired due to poor performance.

On her last day, within hours of her posting her memo internally, Facebook deleted it (though it later restored an edited version after widespread employee anger). A few hours later, an HR person called her, asking her to also remove a password-protected copy she had posted on her personal website. She tried to bargain: she would do so if they restored the internal version. The next day, instead, she received a notice from her hosting server that it’d taken down her entire website after a complaint from Facebook. A few days later, it took down her domain as well.

Even after all that Facebook put her through, Zhang defaults to blaming herself. In her memo, she apologized to colleagues for any trouble she may have caused them and for leaving them without achieving more. In a Reddit AMA months later, she apologized to the citizens of different countries for not acting fast enough and for failing to reach a long-term solution.

To me, Zhang, who is autistic, wonders aloud what she could have accomplished if she were not. “I have no talent for persuasion and convincing,” she says. “If I were someone born with a silver tongue, perhaps I could have made changes.”

“I have never hated my autism more than when I joined Facebook.”

In preparation for going public, Zhang made one final sacrifice: to conceal her trans identity, not for fear of harassment, but for fear that it would distract from her message. In the US, where transgender rights are highly politicized, she didn’t want protecting democracy to become a partisan issue. Abroad, where some countries treat being transgender as a crime punishable by prison time or even death, she didn’t want people to stop listening.

It was a continuation of a sacrifice she’d repeatedly made when policing election interference globally. She treated all politicians equally, even when removing the fake activity of one in Azerbaijan inevitably boosted an opponent who espoused homophobia. “I did my best to protect democracy and rule of law globally for people, regardless of whether they believed me to be human,” she says with a deep sigh. “But I don’t think anyone should have to make that choice.”

The night the Guardian articles published, she anxiously awaited the public reaction, worried about whether she’d be able to handle the media attention. “I think she actually surprised herself at how good she was in interviews,” says her girlfriend Lisa Danz, who Zhang got back together with after leaving Facebook. “She found that when there’s material that she knows very well and she’s just getting asked questions about it, she can answer.”

The attention ultimately fell short of what Zhang had hoped for. Several media outlets in the US did follow-up pieces as did foreign outlets from countries impacted by the manipulation activity. But as far as she’s aware, it didn’t achieve what she was ultimately hoping for: enough of a PR scandal for Facebook to finally prioritize the work she left behind.

Facebook once again disputes this characterization, saying the fake engagement team has continued Zhang’s work. But Zhang points to other evidence: the network of fake pages in Azerbaijan is still there. “It’s clear they haven’t been successful,” she says.

Nonetheless Zhang doesn’t regret her decision to come forward. To her, it was a foregone conclusion. “I was the only one in this position of responsibility from the start,” she says, “and someone had to take the responsibility and do the utmost to protect people.”

Without skipping a beat, she then rattles off the consequences that others have faced for going up against the powerful in more hostile countries: journalists being murdered for investigating government corruption, protestors being gunned down for showing their dissent.

“Compared to them, I’m small potatoes,” she says.

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truemeds03-blog · 3 years

Text

Why do people think buying medicine online is a good idea ?

People nowadays have come forward to participate in online shopping and the health sector too is not spared.

With better internet connectivity in India and smartphones in almost every hand, people are getting aware of different ways to buy their medicines online, taking risks & precautions with seriousness.

Pandemic induced growth in the online healthcare sector has led to the booming birth of various online pharmacies that are currently focused on to meet the new online customers.

7 types of People benefitting from buying medicines online:

1. People who want to keep their identity anonymous while purchasing online or want better privacy on what they are buying online.

2. People who are living in remote areas and don’t have reach to brick and mortar pharmacies

3. Consumers who are short of time and want their medicines delivered fast to them.

4. With online pharmacies, consumer receive discounts that reduce their cost on overall health budget and give a sense of relief

5. Busy lifestyle and coronavirus concern has motivated people to order medicines online from trusted apps & websites

6. People who are affected from chronic diseases and are not able to step out of their homes order their medicines online.

7. Single parents with small babies order health care products from online pharmacies to take full care of their babies.

People know from where they should buy online medicines :

With the Information Age, comes the awareness, caution with which consumers protect themselves from any breaches.

With competitors in the online pharmacies sector, widespread advertisements, education among buyers.

New age consumers are looking for following 7 points before they order medicines online:

1. Possible discounts & fake discounts : consumers know that they should look for true discounts and not heavy discounts that offer medicines online at a very cheap rate.

2. HTTPS vs HTTP web URLs : customers are aware of security features that come with HTTPS websites and trust that comes with them. They are aware that their information is safe and encrypted from 3rd party

3. Outdated, counterfeit medications or substitutes: consumers know the websites they should be moving out from and from where they should buy online medicines so that they do not get fake medications.

4. Online pharmacies that do not demand online prescription : consumers are aware that buying medicines online without prescription is bad for them and they should keep themselves away from these types of online pharmacies.

5. Online pharmacies with certified pharmacists, team of licensed doctors: customers of new age know that an online medicine store must have a registered pharmacist with them, and a team of listened doctors

6. Efficient and fast delivery system: customers value their time and hence want to have efficient and fast delivery with promise that their online purchased medicines and drugs delivered to them are properly packed and within a given time frame.

7. Friendly customer support & FAQs that solve customer’s queries: With friendly customer support , customers find their concern & problem solved instantly.

You might be thinking from where you can buy medicine online to join this new-age consumers group:

Ask from anyone and you will get the only name that follows all the safety rules.

They are trustworthy for the medicine you buy online.

They are not but your near name : they are Trumeds.

They give you “ True medicines at True prices” because they value your time & money.

0 notes

truemedsblog · 3 years

Text

Why do people think buying medicine online is a good idea ?

People nowadays have come forward to participate in online shopping and the health sector too is not spared. With better internet connectivity in India and smartphones in almost every hand, people are getting aware of different ways to buy their medicines online, taking risks & precautions with seriousness. Pandemic induced growth in the online healthcare sector has led to the booming birth of various online pharmacies that are currently focused on to meet the new online customers. 7 types of People benefitting from buying medicines online: People who want to keep their identity anonymous while purchasing online or want better privacy on what they are buying online. 2. People who are living in remote areas and don’t have reach to brick and mortar pharmacies 3. Consumers who are short of time and want their medicines delivered fast to them. 4. With online pharmacies, consumer receive discounts that reduce their cost on overall health budget and give a sense of relief 5. Busy lifestyle and coronavirus concern has motivated people to order medicines online from trusted apps & websites 6. People who are affected from chronic diseases and are not able to step out of their homes order their medicines online. 7. Single parents with small babies order health care products from online pharmacies to take full care of their babies. People know from where they should buy online medicines : With the Information Age, comes the awareness, caution with which consumers protect themselves from any breaches. With competitors in the online pharmacies sector, widespread advertisements, education among buyers. New age consumers are looking for following 7 points before they order medicines online: Possible discounts & fake discounts :consumers know that they should look for true discounts and not heavy discounts that offer medicines online at a very cheap rate. 2. HTTPS vs HTTP web URLs :customers are aware of security features that come with HTTPS websites and trust that comes with them. They are aware that their information is safe and encrypted from 3rd party 3. Outdated, counterfeit medications or substitutes: consumers know the websites they should be moving out from and from where they should buy online medicines so that they do not get fake medications. 4. Online pharmacies that do not demand online prescription :consumers are aware that buying medicines online without prescription is bad for them and they should keep themselves away from these types of online pharmacies. 5. Online pharmacies with certified pharmacists, team of licensed doctors: customers of new age know that an online medicine store must have a registered pharmacist with them, and a team of listened doctors 6. Efficient and fast delivery system: customers value their time and hence want to have efficient and fast delivery with promise that their online purchased medicines and drugs delivered to them are properly packed and within a given time frame. 7. Friendly customer support & FAQs that solve customer’s queries: With friendly customer support , customers find their concern & problem solved instantly. You might be thinking from where you can buy medicine online to join this new-age consumers group: Ask from anyone and you will get the only name that follows all the safety rules. They are trustworthy for the medicine you buy online. They are not but your near name : they are Trumeds. They give you “ True medicines at True prices” because they value your time & money.

0 notes

supermansup · 3 years

Text

Why do people think buying medicine online is a good idea ?

People nowadays have come forward to participate in online shopping and the health sector too is not spared.

With better internet connectivity in India and smartphones in almost every hand, people are getting aware of different ways to buy their medicines online, taking risks & precautions with seriousness.

Pandemic induced growth in the online healthcare sector has led to the booming birth of various online pharmacies that are currently focused on to meet the new online customers.

7 types of People benefitting from buying medicines online:

People who want to keep their identity anonymous while purchasing online or want better privacy on what they are buying online.

2. People who are living in remote areas and don’t have reach to brick and mortar pharmacies

3. Consumers who are short of time and want their medicines delivered fast to them.

4. With online pharmacies, consumer receive discounts that reduce their cost on overall health budget and give a sense of relief

5. Busy lifestyle and coronavirus concern has motivated people to order medicines online from trusted apps & websites

6. People who are affected from chronic diseases and are not able to step out of their homes order their medicines online.

7. Single parents with small babies order health care products from online pharmacies to take full care of their babies.

People know from where they should buy online medicines :

With the Information Age, comes the awareness, caution with which consumers protect themselves from any breaches.

With competitors in the online pharmacies sector, widespread advertisements, education among buyers.

New age consumers are looking for following 7 points before they order medicines online:

Possible discounts & fake discounts :consumers know that they should look for true discounts and not heavy discounts that offer medicines online at a very cheap rate.

2. HTTPS vs HTTP web URLs :customers are aware of security features that come with HTTPS websites and trust that comes with them. They are aware that their information is safe and encrypted from 3rd party

4. Online pharmacies that do not demand online prescription :consumers are aware that buying medicines online without prescription is bad for them and they should keep themselves away from these types of online pharmacies.

7. Friendly customer support & FAQs that solve customer’s queries: With friendly customer support , customers find their concern & problem solved instantly.

You might be thinking from where you can buy medicine online to join this new-age consumers group:

Ask from anyone and you will get the only name that follows all the safety rules.

They are trustworthy for the medicine you buy online.

They are not but your near name : they are Trumeds.

They give you “ True medicines at True prices” because they value your time & money.

#order medicine online #online medicine delivery app #medicine home delivery #online medicine shopping

1 note · View note

reading-writing-revolution · 4 years

Text

Heather Cox Richardson:

August 11, 2020 (Tuesday)

The big news of the day is that presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden named his running mate: California Senator Kamala Harris.

Harris was born in Oakland, California. Her mother was an endocrinologist who immigrated to the U.S. from India; her father is an economist from British Jamaica who is now retired from the Stanford University economics department. Harris has a degree in political science and economics from Howard University and a law degree from the University of California, Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco. She spent seven years as the District Attorney of San Francisco, then six as the Attorney General of California. Both are elected offices, and in both she developed a reputation as a tough prosecutor. In 2016, California voters elected Harris Senator with more than 60% of the vote. Shortly after arriving in Washington, she was placed on the important Senate Judiciary Committee, so she has had a front-row seat at the hearings and proceedings of the past three years.

Harris is perceived as solidly in the moderate wing of the Democratic Party. Her inclusion on the ticket disappointed members of the progressive wing, who had hoped for someone closer to their own principles to balance out the moderate Biden. It seems likely that Biden himself would have preferred former National Security Advisor Susan Rice, with whom he has a close relationship, but her association with the attack on Benghazi, Libya, would be prime fodder for Republican attacks.

Still, Harris stakes out some important turf for the Democratic ticket. She is a woman with both Black and South Asian American roots, enabling the Democrats to illustrate their commitment to a multiracial democracy by nominating her. She is crackerjack smart, a quality that many Americans would like to see in an administration. She is seen as a defender of the rule of law at a time when it seems under attack—she caught Attorney General William Barr in a falsehood at his confirmation hearing, noticeably throwing him off and forcing him to avoid her question out of fear of perjury. At 55, she is a generation younger than Biden (or Trump) balancing out the older ticket. And since she was hard on Biden during the primaries, his invitation to her indicates his willingness to accept criticism and continue to work with those who are not yes-men, a significant contrast to Trump.

Finally, I’m pretty sure Harris is the first Democratic nominee for the top of the ticket who has ever hailed from California, and one of the first from the far West. In 1988, Michael Dukakis’s running mate Lloyd Bentsen was from Texas, and LBJ was from Texas, but I can’t think of another. This is significant because since World War II, the far West has been Republican turf. It is where Reaganism rose in the 1970s to win the White House in 1980 and take over the nation. That the Democrats are cracking into that Republican stronghold with a national candidate suggests they are marking a sea change in American politics.

Already Republicans are insisting that Harris, a former prosecutor, is, as Trump tweeted, part of a “radical left.” National Review ran an article titled “Kamala Harris Is Farther Left than Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders.” Trump campaign advisor Katrina Pierson said that Harris had “gleefully embraced the left’s radical manifesto” during her own run for the presidency, and that Biden’s choice showed that he was “surrendering control of our nation to the radical mob.”

The Republicans are clearly hoping to convince voters that Harris is an extremist. It will not be an easy charge to make stick to a former prosecutor, especially on a day when a Republican candidate who supports QAnon conspiracy theories won a congressional primary in a solidly-Republican district in Georgia, virtually guaranteeing that she will go on to Congress. Marjorie Taylor Greene seems the definition of an extremist. She has spouted anti-Semitic, anti-Black, and Islamophobic comments, and called George Soros a “Nazi.” She has defended QAnon, a mysterious source of a belief that Trump is secretly fighting against a well-connected ring of Satan-worshipping pedophiles that has taken over the government, praising the source as “someone that very much loves his country, and he’s on the same page as us, and he is very pro-Trump.”

When Trump talked to Fox News Channel personality Sean Hannity tonight on his show, though, there was something else on his mind. Asked about Senator Harris and her previous comments about Biden and race, Trump responded by talking about the 2016 Russia investigation. According to the transcript, he riffed on how bad the media is and how the “fake reporting” got the Russia story wrong. Then he complimented Hannity on getting “the Russia hoax correct,” and finally, after complaining about Pulitzer Prizes, moved on to how “we caught Obama Biden. That’s why I didn’t think that [Obama’s National Security Advisor] Susan Rice could get it because he’s part of this whole illegal thing that happened, which is one of the worst perhaps the worst political scandal in the history of our country, and they got caught. Now let’s see what happens but they’re caught red handed…. Russia, Russia, Russia was made up fabricated….”

Russia is clearly on Trump’s mind. This morning, he tweeted “John Bolton, one of the dumbest people I’ve met in government and sadly, I’ve met plenty, states often that I respected, and even trusted, Vladimir Putin of Russia more than those in our Intelligence Agencies. While of course that is not true, if the first people you met from… so called American intelligence were Dirty Cops who have now proven to be sleazebags at the highest level like James Comey, proven liar James Clapper, & perhaps the lowest of them all, Wacko John Brennan who headed the CIA, you could perhaps understand my reluctance to embrace!”

What might be behind this is that Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI), chair of the Senate Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs Committee, is under fire for his ongoing investigation of the debunked theory that it was Ukraine, not Russia, that attacked the U.S. in the 2016 election, and of the idea that Hunter and Joe Biden were involved in corruption in Ukraine. Intelligence experts and the chairs of the Senate Intelligence Committee have warned Johnson that he is amplifying Russian disinformation.

This weekend, Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post warning that Johnson was taking information from Ukrainians with ties to Russia. The accusations hit close enough to home that Johnson responded yesterday with an 11-page single spaced letter denying he was spreading Russian lies and instead accusing Democrats of trying to hurt Trump by attacking Johnson's investigation.

But, as Ryan Goodman and Asha Rangappa at JustSecurity pointed out, the letter was disingenuous, at best. They write, "the letter itself contains apparent products of Russian disinformation. And while Johnson denies taking information directly from two specific Ukrainians linked to Russia and its disinformation efforts, he makes no mention of his staff taking information directly from one of those individuals’ principal collaborators, which reportedly occurred over the course of several months."

This controversy might be bothering the president. One of the things not on Trump's mind, though, is the bill to help Americans weather the coronavirus pandemic by extending federal unemployment benefits, shoring up ailing states and cities, and preventing evictions, all things that his executive actions did not, in fact, do.

Senior administration officials say there is little chance of talks about a new coronavirus relief bill any time soon. White House chief of staff Mark Meadows is away for the week. More than that, though, the White House thinks it has Democrats in a “real pickle” because if they try to stop the Trump’s executive actions of last Friday, they will look like they are refusing to help ordinary Americans. While this was clearly the plan for those three memorandums and one executive order, it doesn’t look to me like it has worked. Democrats are not pushing back on legal grounds, but on the grounds that the measures don’t actually do anything, and that seems to be the story that is dominating the media.

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