#like the rat controlling me has been testing drugs for the government

[fernsfabulousfloweringfacility]

Shoutout to @xmaruu11 and @kitsuneisi for wrecking my brain and destroying my life with this stunning au

#ddvau #desert duo vigilante au #cute guy grian #hot guy grian #scarian #hermitshipping #trafficshipping #genuinely seldom have i been overtaken as quickly as this au has infiltrated my brain but i have been sketching all day and painting #the last like. 3 hours #i have so many sketches guys i feel deranged #like the rat controlling me has been testing drugs for the government #mcyt

[unnecessarywriting]

Agent Rogers

Chapter 2: Trials and Tribualtions

A/N: Thank you for all of the support. This is a story that gives info about the Character and how she became who she is. This has info from the show Agent Carter. The next chapter will take place starting around the Avengers and will move forward through the MCU. Again it’s gonna get a little weird. Also anything that is rushed may have more information in flashbacks later on in the story.

If you want to be tagged just let me know!

The first few trials weren’t too bad. The pain was mediocre and nothing really happened to me. Steve’s blood was limited and there were only so many combinations of the serum to be made. It wasn’t until trial 11 that my life completely changed forever. See, if none of them worked, I could go back home to Brooklyn and live out the life of a young single woman. I could find a husband, get married, have a few kids, and live my life out until I ultimately died of old age or some disease. That would be the ideal end, but alas, some idiotic genius had to find the missing part of the potion and make me “super.” The last vile of blood was about to be wasted on me, and I couldn’t help but be grateful that no one else would have to suffer through this like I have.

Howard gave me the look that said “I’m sorry but I have no choice.” He has a choice. I’m the one who is meant to become a mindless weapon of destruction.

The new drug was created and once again I am moved into the chamber. Here we go again. Another failed experiment.

The drug is injected into me, but the sting in my arm moves throughout my body. Every cell feels like it has been lit on fire and I am burning from the inside. It isn’t until my muscles start to spasm that I realize that this is actually happening. I am changing, and that happily ever after is too far for me to ever reach again.

Howard and I make eye contact when I emerge. He knows what happens. He knows this is his fault. He dragged me away from my sorrow. Now, I’m no better than my idiot brother who killed himself for his country. Great.

I walk down the street. I look normal, but it doesn’t feel right. My senses are heightened and my body feels both light and unusually heavy. The serum has been in my body for about a week now. Somehow Howard convinced the government to let me out of my confinement. The serum’s effects are unknown, so I’m a presumed threat to society.

Howard is walking with me talking about his latest inventions and what other ideas he has, but I tuned him out immediately.

“Elizabeth? What are you thinking about?”

I look forward and try to act as if my life isn’t completely over. “I’m fine.” It’s not untrue. I’m fine. My life is over, but what kind of life was I living before? A caretaker to my brother and waitress. What a life.

“Tomorrow starts a series of tests on your strength, so I need to make sure that you are stable mentally. Liz, this is not what I wanted for you. I never thought they would actually succeed.”

“Thank you Howard, but I m done caring. Whatever happens in the future is not you fault.” That is a lie. It is his fault. He should have just left me to myself that night. He could have even chose to kill me. Even that would be better than this.

——

Weeks of testing went by. Strength testing and training turned into weapon work. They gave me a shield, but I just threw it I to the wall. I’m not Captain America. I will not be his replacement.

Today they let me on my own for the whole day. I guess it was meant to restore my strength or mentality or something along those lines. All I want is to leave this place and live a life in solitude and peace. So, I drew up my plans.

The next day I woke up especially early. I strung up the rope and waited until it was time for them to collect me for more testing. As I heard the guards down the hall, I strung myself up and waited to be let down.

——

I was a rat. An experiment. Nothing more, nothing less. So, they threw me away like the trash I was. I was left out at sea to be eaten away by the ocean and eventually anything within its waters. Little did they know that a rope is not enough to kill someone enhanced. I escaped and am dead to the world. The Roger family is gone. For good.

——

A couple of months turned into a year. I was bored. Solitude was great, but I wanted something more. So here I am. In New York again. I walk up to the phone company. The SSR hidden away in the back. I know the drill. In my time alone I did my research. Amongst Stark’s “crimes” I was able to become more involved with the agents and their lives. Did they know? Of course not, but with Peggy Carter working there, I had no choice but to do my research.

I open the doors and emerge through the girls on the phones.

“I’m here for Peggy.”

“I’m sorry, but she is not here at the moment. I can take your name and a message.” The woman responds.

I pull out the pistol and place it to her side.

Soon enough I’m walking through the doors into the office of the SSR.

“Hello, Ms...”

“Call me Elizabeth. Can you show me to Agent Carter please?” I tried to sound as innocent as possible, but then again, this man must know that I just pulled a gun on one of his employees.

“Sure, follow me.” I am led into a room that looks a lot like an interrogation room. I sit down at the table and await the handcuffs. As suspected, I am cuffed to the table and the man leaves the room. A couple of minutes later another man enters.

“So, you’re the woman who pulled the gun on one of my own? You don’t look the type.” I stay silent and allow the comment to fly right over my head.

“Well, it appears that you have information about Stark. You are aware that he and Ms. Carter are in a lot of trouble with the government right?”

“I wasn’t born yesterday Agent...”

“Thompson.”

“Agent Thompson. I know nothing about whatever they have gotten themselves into. Truly, I am actually here to talk with Peggy about other matters. I wasn’t aware that she had been caught working with Stark so soon.”

“So you knew they were working together?”

“Well, it appears I have already said too much.”

“Listen. Here I have a stick. There used to be a carrot, but the man who ran that part of the interrogation has passed away recently.”

“I’m so sorry to hear that agent, but you aren’t going to hurt me. I know what that stick means. I do have to say Thompson, if you weren’t threatening me right now, you would most definitely be my type, but alas, we are here in this situation.” Sure, I flirted with the guy. I’m single now, so what’s wrong with a little fun. I guess the serum made me a little more confident.

We both hear a commotion going on outside. “Stay here” he says as he walks out. It’s almost like he read my mind. I pull out the pin from my hair and unlock the cuffs. I place the pin back in my hair and walk out into the office. In the conference room I see Peggy and Stark’s dog, Jarvis.

I open the door to see Howard sitting in one of the chairs. Only Howard would turn himself into the government for something he didn’t do.

“Ms. Carter, it has been awhile.” She turns around to look at me. The shock on her face was near priceless. She engages with me and I can tell that I was the last person she was expecting to see.

“What are you doing here?” She asks in unison with Stark.

“Well Peggy, I initially came here to taunt you, but I’ve been watching you over the past few weeks and I became intrigued. See, my brother really did have feelings for you. In fact, I think you were the first woman he ever really talked about. I was initially jealous over your ability to say goodbye to him, while I was left to find out later that he passed. Our last words weren’t the greatest, but here I am and I guess seeing you move forward has inspired me to finally do the same. So I guess I came here to thank you for loving my brother, and giving me the closure I need to move forward with my life.”

After my speech, I hear the door open behind me.

“How did you get in here?” Thompson asked.

“I told you I had business with Peggy, so please leave. I’m almost done.”

Peggy interrupted, “Ms. Rogers, I have a letter from your brother, but after he passed, I tried to find you, but you were missing.”

I turn my head to look at Howard. “Yes, I did have some things to attend to.” He hung his head in shame. “I will see you again soon then. I would like to see what my brother had to say. And Howard, the next time you get in trouble, I don’t want to be the one who has to get you out. We both know I am much less forgiving and kind than Ms. Carter.”

“Rogers?” I hear Thompson say behind me. “I thought all of the Rogers were dead?”

“Have you ever been hanged, agent? It’s quite the endeavor.” Peggy nods alongside me. I turn to leave and walk past Agent Thompson.

“Ms. Rogers..”

“Elizabeth.” I say with my hand up to him.

“You can’t just leave here knowing about this place. You did pull a gun on one of our agents as well.”

“And if you don’t let me leave, Agent, I will fire my gun on your, and I have to say that would be a shame. You’re too handsome for a bullet wound. Goodbye Mr. Thompson, I do hope that I will be seeing you again in the near future. Possibly over dinner?” I gave him a wink and left him alone with a slight blush and flustered look.

——

Years later

Peggy and I have met a few times through Stark. Him and I have become quite well acquainted.

I saunter into his home in California, where I see Peggy, Jarvis and one of the men from the SSR.

“Elizabeth, to what do I owe the pleasure.”

“Please Stark, I’m actually not here for you. Peggy, I have some business I would like to speak to you about.” She looks at me with confusion, but she agrees anyway. We gather in the other room where I deliver my plans.

“The government can’t keep controlling everything. Peggy, you are a woman who has constantly been pushed aside. If there is anyone who can understand this, it’s you. Let’s start something new. Our skills together and our brain power is enough to take over the world. For the better, obviously, but we could be doing serious things. Good things that could change the world.” We talked for hours, and eventually Stark invaded our plans. He would be important as well. By the end of the night, we had started our own agency, and we were in charge. Something that had never been seen in this time. SHIELD was about to begin.

——

“We got her.” That was all I heard as I awoke from my slumber. Kidnapped.

Shield has been working out really well, so I figured I could emerge from my shadow of operations and go off and find something to do. Peggy was doing amazing in charge and Stark was constantly inventing new and useful technology. Over the years him and I became close. Best friends if you will, but I needed time away from the chaos of government paperwork. Before shield really started, I had begun my journey out in the field, and when Shield took off, my field work was limited to walking in and out of the office.

My limbs felt slightly weaker, but I was not drugged. Starved maybe, but the serum doesn’t allow for drugs to compromise my abilities. I know, I’ve tried to get something to work. The door in front of me opens and a man enters. His voice is thick with a Russian accent.

“Ms. Rogers, I hear you’ve died.”

“The name’s Elizabeth, and I have done my time with death. What do you want?”

“A super soldier. Let me rephrase. A female super soldier. A killer, someone who can do the deed with ease. You see Ms. Rogers..”

“Elizabeth.”

“Ms. Rogers, we have a problem here. Hydra has weaponized another soldier, and it is only a matter of time before they send him upon us. We need you. Trained and ready for the kill, so we aren’t completely helpless when the Winter Soldier arrives.”

“So, all I have to do is train to become an assassin and protect you guys from this Winter Soldier?”

“And kill whoever we tell you to.”

“Fine, but I have a choice of killing who I kill.”

“It’s been a pleasure doing business with you Ms. Rogers.”

As he left, he told the guard something in Russian and never returned.

For a couple of years, I studied the art of assassination. I trained daily and killed who I was told. I knew who I was working for, but I needed, or rather wanted, my training to conclude. I got the kill list and went to work. Eventually, it was time to do away with my employers. After their deaths and an interesting meeting with another assassin, I returned to Shield.

Shield accepted me with open arms. If anything, no one knew who I was over the past years, or what I had done. All they knew is that I left and returned with a new set of skills and the nightmares to prove I had been through the ringer.

I told Peggy that I needed to spend my time disguised as just another agent of Shield. I couldn’t afford to be known as Agent Rogers, super soldier and little sister to Captain America. So, Agent R became my name for many years. Then it became Agent Marie. I could not afford to be found out. That target on my head would surely have me in the arms of Hydra who were still alive and well in the world. I, of course, kept this from Peggy and Stark. They thought my brother had ended their reign, and I couldn’t ruin their fighting spirit. I continued my research in private, but there was nothing I could do to them that would not blow my cover. For years I tracked their movements, but I often came up empty handed.

——

When Peggy stepped down, and Stark moved on and got married, I knew that only I could watch over Shield. With Fury in charge, I knew that my life needed to be hidden from everyone. He knew only the basics, but any information about me was kept in a single hand written file from the 40s. I couldn’t risk my life being put out into the world, so I gave him the basic run-down on who I was as.

——

2011

One day, I was on a mission as just another operative at Shield. I worked on my own, and it always worked out for the best. Fury called me back early. This was a high level undercover mission, so I knew that it was beyond important.

“We found him.” He was alive. He was just in the other room. I turned around and walked back to my apartment.

A few days later I received a call.

“He’s awake.” I hung up.

Chapter 3

@jessyballet @wherewecomealive @lilulo-12 @irespostthingsiwanttoseelater

#bucky barnes x oc #bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes #steve rogers #steve rogers x sister #steve rogers x oc #mcu #avengers #agent carter #steve rogers x reader #Agent Rogers

[we-are-the-rebellion]

Everything Is Gonna Be Fine - File 001

Date: 14/4/215

Outgoing message: Hello? Hello? Can anyone hear me? Is there anyone in the wasteland listening to me? Fuck, this is hopeless...  We don’t even know if people are alive out there, we’ve never left the region because of the horror stories we’ve heard. CeeCee are you sure? ...Yeah, right. Ahem! I’m Nate, I’m from the Eastern OQ region, and for the last ten years I’ve been fighting in, well to put it lightly, a pretty nasty civil war. The group I was with has been mostly killed or captured and our leader is missing, presumed dead. Please, if someone is out there and can hear this, we need supplies. Wait what’s- Shit! CeeCee get down they found- 

___________________________

Date: 10/6/215

Location: Prison Complex, Ottowa, Ontario-Quebec Region

   Nate sat, unmoving in the uncomfortable wooden chair he was cuffed to, staring at the woman across from him. She was sitting casually, one leg crossed over the other, smoking a cigarette. Everything about her said “status,” her perfectly styled hair, her polished gold jewelry, her immaculately manicured nails, her expensively tailored black dress, even the cigarette. Alcohol and tobacco weren’t rare, but it was exceedingly difficult to find anything of any quality if you weren’t at the absolute top of the food chain. This woman was beautiful, powerful, and everything about her sent a very clear message that she didn’t give a damn about Nate. Of course, he was used to this. From day one, the rich looked down on him. His parents got into the government to spread compassion and acceptance and encourage reform, it was only inevitable that they would be killed off and their name dragged through mud.

   The woman flicked her cigarette onto the floor and put it out with her heel. 

   “So. Not willing to talk yet?” she asked, checking her nails. Nate chuckled.

   “I’ve seen more interrogators in the last three weeks than I’ve had birthdays, there’s no way some rich old bag is going to make me talk.”  He swallowed. Life, he really sounded like Kenji, didn’t he?

   “Rich old bag?” she laughed.  “I’d heard you were an idiot, but I never thought you would be blissfully ignorant. Don’t you realize who I am?”  Nate gritted his teeth.

   “Of course I know who you are.”  She smiled in response, the corner of her lip twisting up in a nauseatingly smug smirk.

   Genevieve Ashworth. The Empress of the medical sector. A person so genuinely hateful that even the other monsters she rubbed elbows with on a daily basis lived in awe of her cruelty.

   “Why you? Why did Pryce send you to make me talk?”  She shrugged.

   “Because he knew I could. Simple as that.”

   “So now what? You going to electrocute me? Hold my head underwater until I can’t breathe? Or maybe you’ll do something more suited to your regular style and inject me with a deadly disease and dangle the fucking cure over my head until I tell you everything?”  She stared him down silently.  “Or are you going to use me as a lab rat to test your new drugs and vaccines on? And fuck, the real torture would be the knowledge that you wouldn’t even use them for good!” he shouted, leaning forward and wincing as the handcuffs bit into his hand. Huh, he really did sound like Kenji...

   “I’m not going to hurt you, Nathaniel.” she replied after a long silence. The lack of any emotion in her voice sent a shiver down Nate’s spine. She lit another cigarette and stood up, circling around the small room to stand behind him. To his surprise, she pulled out a key and uncuffed his hands. He rubbed his sore wrist tenderly with his left hand, the cool metal of his prosthetic hand soothing the stinging skin.  “I’ve seen Carson’s interrogations, and frankly I think he’s got the wrong idea. Torture isn’t universal, some people just don’t respond to physical pain in the way he wants. Your friend Hirayama was a perfect example of that. No, your methods have to be tailored for your subject if you want results. After all, we didn’t get the leader of the rebellion to abandon his entire life’s work just because we beat him senseless.” 

   Nate felt a pit form in his stomach. If Kenji had been captured and tortured, it would explain his disappearance. But what did she mean by abandoning his life’s work? 

   “What is this?” he muttered, defensively keeping his hands at his sides.

   “We have tapes of his interrogations. In fact, I wanted to show them to you, so sit back and get comfortable.” 

   She pulled a small remote control out of her pocket and pressed a button, turning on a projector on the far wall. Nate turned around to see what it was showing. It was security camera footage of two armed guards standing in front of a man who, despite the blurry footage, was clearly Kenji. One of the guards knelt in front of Kenji, the other pulled out a small voice recorder.

   “October 16, 214. Subject; K. A. Hirayama.”

   Wait... This was last year?

   “Tell us, cunt, where were you on the day your friends blew up a city block?” the first guard growled.

   “Your wife’s bedroom.” Kenji snapped, spitting in the guard’s face. The guard hissed and hit his prisoner across the face. Kenji coughed and Nate could see blood. 

   “Cooperate, else that’s gonna feel like a kiss in comparison to what I’m gonna do to you.”  Kenji chuckled.

   “My ex accused me of being a masochist. Guess she’s right, since I really, really want you to hit m-”  He was cut off by the guard hitting him again, much harder than before. Where there was only a little blood on his bottom lip before, now there was blood everywhere, gushing out of his nose and his split lip. The second guard stepped closer to him.

   “Aren’t you tired of this? We’ve been doing this song and dance for nearly a week.” 

   A week? How the fuck had Kenji been gone for a week and he couldn’t remember it? Did nobody bother to check where he was? 

   “I am tired. But I’d rather let you shoot my balls off one by one than let you anywhere near my revolution.

   “You think quite highly of yourself, don’t you?”  Kenji scoffed.

   “As if you rich pricks don’t all think of yourselves as fucking royalty.”  The first guard hit him again, shutting him up effectively. 

   “But what have you done, really? You’ve gotten scores of people killed in this war you started, and nothing is better. Your friends aren’t in better positions than they were twenty years ago, in face they’re doing considerably worse now that the threat of being arrested and killed is constantly looming over their heads. Nothing is better for people like you. Twenty years of fighting tooth and nail, and you haven’t accomplished anything.” the guard taunted him, motioning for their counterpart to step back. Kenji spit the blood out of his mouth.

   “People have hope. That’s a start. And more importantly they’re seeing through your bullshit propaganda! Even if I’m gone, even if you kill my rebellion, in a month or two people will start a new one, because they realize that things could be better. How’s that for what I’ve fucking accomplished.”

   The footage ended.

   “So you’ve made your point, pain doesn’t work. Now what?” Nate snapped, folding his arms and scowling. Genevieve blew out smoke into his face.

   “I was hoping we could move on from that talking point. There’s still more tapes, and if you’re worried you’ll get bored of interrogations then you should quite like them.”  Life, Nate hated this woman so fucking much. She pressed another button and a new video began. It was Kenji again, brutally beaten and stumbling around outside the prison complex. The camera was posted high on the wall, giving Nate a perfect bird’s eye view of Kenji’s awful condition. He was looking over his shoulder, anxious, and he had a phone held up to his ear.

   “Pick up, fuck pick up...” he was muttering. He slumped down against the wall and winced, tenderly holding his bleeding side.  “Finally, you fucking answered!” he snapped into the phone.  “I need you to send someone to come pick me up, I’m at the prison. I don’t have much time, I... What do you mean you don’t fucking believe me?”  Nate couldn’t hear the other side of the conversation, but he didn’t need to. He remembered that call. His stomach twisted into knots. Whatever was going to happen next, it was his fault.  “Oh so that’s it? You’re pissy that I didn’t show up so you’re gonna let me fucking rot here? Life, you’re such a fucking moron! I’m in danger, Nathaniel, I don’t have time to argu- Don’t hang up on me you fuck- DAMMIT!”  He threw his phone on the ground with enough force to break it. He leaned his head against the wall and looked up at the sky, looking angry, hurt and exhausted.  “I know you’re watching this, you elite shits. Having fun watching me bleed out?” he shouted sarcastically at the security camera. Nate felt sick. That was why he hadn’t noticed Kenji was gone. He had been avoiding him anyways, they had been fighting. He had let his stupid emotional bias get in the way, and Kenji had gotten hurt because of it. This was Genevieve’s plan, wasn’t it? To make him feel like shit. 

   The footage cut again, and the next video after it was back in the interrogation room. Kenji was being held up by one of the guards from before while the other shocked him with a taser. He was screaming, but his voice was so hoarse that it was clearly hurting him every time he opened his mouth. 

   “You know, we were going easy on you before, we only broke a few bones. You still managed to escape, and you even took down a couple guards. Now? Now, we’re going to make sure you wouldn’t be able to walk out of here if the doors were wide open.” the guard with the taser said as they walked around, fiddling with the settings.  “Let’s see how you like the highest setting, eh revolutionary?” 

   Nate had to look away. He didn’t want to see Kenji in that much pain, especially knowing that he could have stopped it from happening. But he heard it... He could hear the man he cared about so damned much, despite everything, screaming. His hoarse voice didn’t impact the volume, it was so loud, so intense. Nate couldn't handle hearing Kenji in that much agony. He snapped.

   “What do you want? To just screw with me, make me sit through videos of my partner being tortured? Fine. Fuck with me all you want. I’m not gonna break.”

   Genevieve only stared him down. She turned off the video and took another drag on her cigarette.

   "You don't think I know that?" she asked coldly, exhaling a cloud of smoke. "You've watched the people you love die your entire life. You live in a world where pain is the expectation. Seeing clips of him being tortured won't do anything but make you want to do anything but help me less. No, this is about making a point. About leading up to one specific moment."

   Nate felt completely enraged. This woman, this bitch, really found it so amusing to just toy with him?

   "If this is about making a point then make your fucking point." he snarled. She laughed quietly to herself.

   "If you insist. Although personally I think it's more fun to experience the whole thing."

   She turned the projector back on. The video showing this time wasn't security cam footage, it looked crisp, clean, expensive. There was a small group of producers and technicians scurrying around, adjusting mics, doing sound checks, setting up other cameras then adjusting them so they were never in the shot. Once everything had been set up, they brought in their subject; Kenji, wearing an entirely black suit and red tie. His face was slightly bruised, but it was nowhere near the condition it had been in the other videos. This had been filmed well after his face had had time to heal.

   A phone rang in the background.

   "That's our cue!" shouted one of the crew members. A small old woman came into frame and quickly adjusted Kenji's tie and hair. She pulled out a small clip on microphone and clipped it onto his collar before scuttling out of frame again. Kenji sat in total silence, not even looking up. He looked empty, as if the elites had cracked him open and carved out everything he had inside him. It made sense. Why else would he be wearing that suit in front of a green screen, three cameras worth more than everything he owned put together focused on him?

   A voice in the background called out commands. "Lights! Sound!" Kenji tapped the microphone on his collar. The sound came out strange and distorted. He nodded to someone off camera and then put his hands on the desk in front of him.

   “And we’re live in 5, 4, 3, 2...”  On one, the overhead lights switched off. Kenji was framed in the shot as a silhouette, and Nate felt himself stop functioning as he realized what this was. When the Leader made broadcasts, it was never just him talking to the camera. They always concealed his face and voice, he was always just a shadow.

   “Hello citizens. It’s me, here to tell you that that disgusting rebellion that has plaguing our society for so long is finally over. Just moments ago, the very last of their filth was arrested and killed. No more of their garish, crass music being blared in the streets. No more attacks. No more fighting. Only you, beautiful citizens, and us. Your government. Your protectors.”

   Nate couldn’t believe what he was seeing. That broadcast had been the symbolic end of the rebellion, the moment that made everyone who still clung onto hopes for the revolution being a success give up. All the last supporters were turned in, or they turned themselves in, and arrested. It was the final blow, and Kenji had been the one who pulled the trigger. It took the wind out of Nate’s lungs, he had to sit down. 

   “No... No you... You faked the footage. This is one of those fucking deepfake videos, I researched it. Before the war they had the technology to generate this shit with computers, you just... You uncovered it. Kenji wouldn’t... He didn’t...” he blurted out, trying to rationalize everything to himself. Genevieve smirked.

   “I always find these behind the scenes videos to be so fascinating. Really gives you insight into how things were made.” she said coolly, absentmindedly scratching a spot on her arm.  “I actually got one better, I was there when this was filmed. He was so willing to cooperate, he didn’t even waste any time rehearsing his lines.” 

   “Shut up! Shut the fuck up you harpy!” he snapped back, shouting and blinking away the tears stinging his eyes. She shrugged.

   “You told me to make my point, and that was it.”  She brought her cigarette to her lips.  “You rebels lived in a naive little fairy-tale world where you followed your leader as if he had all the answers. You can try and disagree, but be honest. You would have taken a bullet for him. You have taken bullets for him, because you believed he was going to always do what was right for his cause. Here is video proof that he was just as much of a coward, a regular person whose morals can and will be dropped at any time, as anyone else. This is my point, Nathaniel. Nobody is special, not even your precious Kenji Hirayama.” 

   Once she had finished talking, she called in a guard and had her prisoner cuffed and escorted away. Nate gritted his teeth the whole way back to his cell, his hands as tight fists at his sides. His nails were digging into his palms, but he barely felt the pain. He could only feel hatred and resentment. For Genevieve, obviously, but not just her. He was angry at Kenji for betraying the rebellion that he had risked his life to keep alive, and he was angry at himself for ever believing Kenji was better than that. When he got back to his cell, he slumped onto the floor with a heavy thud. He stretched awkwardly in the cramped space. Life, his shoulder was sore...

   “Hey... Nate, you back?” called a voice softly from the air vent next to him. It was CeeCee, she had found a way to talk to him through the vents. 

   “Yeah, I’m back.” he replied, sighing and slumping further onto the ground. 

   “How bad was it today?” she queried gently. Nate chuckled weakly.

   “Fucking terrible.” he mumbled. She sighed.

   “Same here. Like they didn’t even hit me or nothin’, but... Fuck. I just feel like shit.”  Nate furrowed his brow.

   “What’d they say to you?”

   “Just...”  She hesitated, and he could hear her breath hitch.  “They took me to Zander’s room. He wasn’t awake, and he was hooked up to all these tubes and monitors. He was fucking dying and they... They almost unplugged his life support right there in front of me. And if I didn’t know that Zander would’ve rather unplugged it himself before I said jack shit, I-I almost told ‘em. I almost said everything they wanted to hear.”  Nate could hear her sobs, muffled by the vent but still clear enough to break his heart.

   “Oh CeeCee... I’m so sorry.”

   “It ain’t your fault, Nate.” she mumbled back, sniffling. 

   The two of them sat in silence for a while, not sure what to say.

   “Apparently Carson managed to convince Kenji to read that last public broadcast for him.” he said quietly, just wanting to get it off his chest. CeeCee exhaled, clearly also just as shocked as he had been by the revelation.

   “Shit...” she muttered.

   “Heh, yeah. It’s fucked.”  Nate swallowed as a few tears managing to escape and roll down his face.

   “How the world did they manage that?” CeeCee wondered. Nate chuckled.

   “I dunno...”  He felt a wave of emptiness rock through his core.  “But if I ever see him again I’m going to fucking kill him.”

_______________________

Tag list:

@germanmetal @thereasontherumisgone​

//if you want to be notified when this updates let me know 

#dystopia #dystopian #dystopian world #dystopian ocs #original content #original story #ben barnes #mike shinoda #canada #rebellion #mike shinoda fine #everything is gonna be fine

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

September 25, 2020

Heather Cox Richardson

Trump’s refusal Wednesday to commit to accepting a loss in the November election with a peaceful transfer of power continues to make waves. Today the New York Times reported that military officers are worried that Trump will try to drag them into a contested election. But while people are rightly frightened about Trump’s increasing authoritarianism, it’s important to understand that he is deploying these particular threats about the election to create an impression that he has the option to control the outcome in November. He does not have that option.

Trump and his cronies are trying to create their own reality. They are trying to make people believe that the coronavirus is not real, that it has not killed more than 200,000 of our neighbors, that the economy is fine, that our cities are in flames, that Black Lives Matter protesters are anarchists, and that putting Democrats in office will usher in radical socialism. None of these things is true. Similarly, Trump is trying to convince people that he can deploy the power of the government to remain in power even if we want him to leave, creating uncertainly and fear. By talking about it, he is willing that situation into existence. It is a lie, and we do not have to accept it.

For his part, Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden recognizes that Trump’s repeated threats not to leave office are both letting him convince us that leaving is his choice, rather than ours, and keeping the media focused on him when we should, in fact, be talking about real issues. Biden is refusing to give the idea oxygen, reminding reporters that it is a “typical Trump distraction.” “I just think the people in the country are going to be heard on November 3,” he told them. “Every vote in this country is going to be heard and they will not be stopped. I'm confident that all of the irresponsible, outrageous attacks on voting, we’ll have an election in this country as we always have had, and he'll leave.” He said: “I don’t think he’s going to get the FBI to follow him or get anybody else to enforce something that’s not real.”

While the Senate voted unanimously yesterday to commit to the peaceful transfer of power in January, it was actually Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker, a Republican, who gave Trump’s refusal to commit to a peaceful transfer of power the dripping disdain it deserved. Speaking to reporters, Baker defended the mail-in ballots that Trump is saying will invalidate the election, and called Trump’s suggestion that he wouldn’t leave office peacefully “appalling and outrageous.” Baker said he would to do everything in his power to defend the results of the election.

“A huge part of this nation’s glory, to the extent it exists as a beacon to others, is the peaceful transfer of power based on the vote of the people of this country,” he said.

Trump responded with an insulting tweet, but one that suggested he was deliberately stoking the story to try to get free media coverage.

This makes sense, because there are signs that Trump and the Republicans have a real money problem. We know that the Trump campaign has run through close to a billion dollars, leaving him and other Republican candidates short of cash for the last weeks of the campaign. At the same time, Democratic fundraising in the wake of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death has been unprecedented. The squeeze showed clearly in three highly unusual appearances by Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) on the Fox News Channel begging for donations.

Two new ploys to advance Trump’s reelection, one claiming to address healthcare concerns and one claiming to address coronavirus concerns, reveal both the campaign’s attempts to construct their own reality and to do it on someone else’s dime.

The president has repeatedly promised his own healthcare bill to replace the Affordable Care Act that his administration is currently trying to kill. Under criticism for trying to end the law that protects people with preexisting health conditions from discrimination in buying insurance—the ACA will come before the Supreme Court a week after the November 3 election-- Trump on Thursday abruptly signed an Executive Order affirming that “it is the official policy of the United States government to protect patients with preexisting conditions.�� The Executive Order is toothless; if the Supreme Court overturns the ACA, the Executive Order will mean nothing.

But Trump also suggested that he might be willing simply to keep the law and call it his own. “Obamacare is no longer Obamacare, as we worked on it and managed it very well,” Trump said of the law that continues to provide coverage for more than 20 million Americans. “What we have now is a much better plan. It is no longer Obamacare because we got rid of the worse part of it — the individual mandate.” “We’ve really become the health-care party — the Republican Party,” he said.

Trump also announced he would give $200 toward the cost of their medicines to 33 million older Americans. That’s $6.6 billion dollars that he will be putting in the pockets of key voters just before the election. Apparently, his plan is to take money from Medicare under a rule that allows the Medicare to test out new programs. Authorization for such a shift in funding usually requires a lengthy approval process, and the new program needs to be cost neutral. Ameet Sarpatwari, assistant director of Harvard Medical School's Program on Regulation, Therapeutics and Law told NPR’s Sydney Lupkin: I think the administration is pushing the envelope in terms of classifying this as a demonstration."

The Trump campaign is also planning a taxpayer-funded advertising blitz, costing at least $300 million, to “defeat despair and inspire hope” about the coronavirus pandemic. According to Politico’s Dan Diamond, the ads will feature interviews between administration officials and celebrities. The ad campaign was conceived and begun by Michael Caputo, the top spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services before he stepped down last week for medical leave after an infamous Facebook rant.

Caputo claimed in his video that Trump has personally demanded the advertising campaign. "The Democrats — and, by the way, their conjugal media and the leftist scientists that are working for the government — are dead set against it," Caputo said. "They cannot afford for us to have any good news before November because they're already losing. … They're going to come after me because I'm going to be putting $250 million worth of ads on the air." The White House says it is not accurate that Trump “demanded” the campaign.

To pay for the ads, Caputo requisitioned $300 million from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and $15 million from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). But he sidelined the Ad Council, which is a nonprofit consortium of advertising companies that since World War Two has worked on a nonpartisan basis with the government on public health or social issue campaigns. Instead, Caputo hired his own business partner to make the videos.

Josh Peck, the former HHS official who oversaw the Obama administration’s advertising campaign for HealthCare.gov, told Diamond that officials in the Obama administration were never featured in videos, and that the Trump administrations Covid videos sound like they are about more than Americans’ health. He said: "CDC hasn’t yet done an awareness campaign about Covid guidelines — but they are going to pay for a campaign about how to get rid of our despair? Run by political appointees in the press shop? Right before an election? It’s like every red flag I could dream of.”

Trump’s challenge to the outcome of the election is a sign of his desperation, but it is no less dangerous for all that: as they say, a cornered rat will bite the cat. While Democrats and a remarkable number of Republicans are speaking out against Trump, and while teams of lawyers are fighting his lawyers in court, ordinary Americans also have a crucial role to play in this moment. It is up to us to reject Trump's fictions and reclaim the national conversation from the anger and hatred and fear Trump is stoking.

It is time to reassert our core American values so they dominate the public realm, demanding of our representatives a free and fair vote for everyone, a free and fair vote count, and a government of our own choosing.

—-

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

Heather Cox Richardson

#political #election 2020 #Heather Cox Richardson #Letters From An American #CDC #political campaign #corrupt GOP #criminal Republicans #taxpayer money

[iwakuraarisu-blog]

Trinidad And Tobago

We have tried ex-lax, too, but we don’t know if that is working. Working with industry and local communities to create partnerships that give shut down mines and factories new missions in manufacturing, agriculture, forestry, and renewable energy development. I don’t have to get ready for it; I just exercise right in my pajamas. Don’t just start lifting weights without proper instruction. Backing up files regularly can help protect you against the threat of ransomware. In both the short and long term, this transition will help fuel a vibrant Colorado economy. But if Congress is able to figure out a way soon to get the USPS back on its feet, it will open the doors for the postal service to catch up to the 21st-century society it serves. Some disability losses, such as back injuries, are very difficult to determine. Holland America Line worked closely with the Bermudian government to form the partnership that takes Holland America Line back to the island that it first visited more than 70 years ago. In the final rule, OSHA has not included prescription medications, whether given once or over a longer period of time, in the list of first aid treatments. First aid is usually administered after the injury or illness occurs and at the location (e.g., workplace) where the injury or illness occurred. This company is 100% false and misleading and, as everyone before me has stated on this blog, is absolutely a SCAM! It is important that an insurance company be able to verify a loss and to determine the financial loss involved. This did happen in the early history of fire insurance. The best option will most likely be to get CBD oil that comes from medically grown cannabis plants and a controlled process. A procurement notice said: “The objective is to contract for professional architectural interior design and construction project management services in order to provide the best interior design solution for the internal renovation of the Sessions House building. We don't know, order now before we remove them from our site! I’m fighting them right now myself. I’m trying peppermint inside as of last night I pray it works. Used this product twice last winter and it killed them all. Solid products last much longer than most expiration dates. This medication comes in the form of various generic forms, which enables patients to emit easier as it opens up the airways. Everything I've read indicates medication isn't the cause of a concussion. A small percentage of sharing dollars are spent on administrative expenses as they examine costs up front. Birds are not quarantined, but must have a similar permit and Health Certificate, along with a Species Certificate showing that the species may be imported. Since 2010, Holland America Line mid-size cruise ships have sailed on regularly scheduled cruises between New York City and this city. I have a dog so am unable to bait. Multiple studies and tests have proven that pest rats die once certain nutrients contained in raw dry beans and peanuts reach the rodent’s organism. Cars will quickly squash them and they dry out very quickly without decomposing. With this goal, we’ll galvanize a statewide effort that will forge a stronger and more economically vibrant Colorado for everyone. Later, in the RFP process, the site match is supplemented with a more detailed "disruption analysis," which compares members' most commonly used physicians to those in competing networks. As if tax season isn’t already dreaded enough without scammers making life more difficult! Making a choice on Tramadol drug has not ever been simpler, with due to the significant, canadian online pharmacy online health-related consultation. Newcomers may suffer from heat rash due to the high temperature and humidity. Every Wednesday, 24 weeks a year from April or May through August or September. Your sharing dollars are used to pay for the actual medical costs incurred by others in the community. Medical cost sharing is not unlimited. HealthGrades maintains a searchable database of medical and osteopathic physicians. Colorado will hold irresponsible corporations accountable when they try to take advantage of our laws and our workers. This feature will enable your machine to adapt its output with changing environmental factors. Mosquito-borne dengue fever has increased in frequency in recent years. However, at least one insurer places terminated employees into a separate group consisting of terminated employees from all plans. Naloxone kits are free to anyone who is at risk of an overdose, or who is likely to encounter one — either through work, or friends and family. Third, the employee can elect one of the policy settlement options for the liquidation of cash value in the form of annuity income. Worryingly, he has said it can easily be bought online or under-the-counter at rogue pharmacies. Where Can I Buy Activated Charcoal? The process continues in succeeding periods. The shift to government protection of participants' rights enacted in 1962 would carry through to ERISA. I SAW THESE ELECTRONTIC DEVICES THAT ELECTRIC SHOCK THE RAT BUT FEARED IT MIGHT KILL CAT — BATE IS PEANUT OR PEANUT BUTTER- I could put Rue on the entrance to deter a cat, but would it also deter rat?

[mrsawkward-blog]

Wasn’t He Recently Elected As President?

Work will involve replacing the ageing chiller plant and air handlers and installing a state of the art VRV system (variable refrigerant volume) which will provide finer control of individual tenant spaces and increase efficiency. Obtaining the Source Files | Installing Asterisk - The very first step we must undertake is to obtain the source files. 75 after the first year. My house is pier and beam and I have non-stop house guests that scurry inside all year long. As a pharmacist, I have actually had a patient YELL at me NOT to call the PCP for a refill because she was a afraid that I would "rat her out" for not taking her thyroid meds as prescribed. Afterward , I pick the trap up (with rodent attached) using disposable gloves, carry the trap out to the back yard and dump the rat. But if Congress is able to figure out a way soon to get the USPS back on its feet, it will open the doors for the postal service to catch up to the 21st-century society it serves. And, just like eBay, there were star ratings for sellers, detailed feedback, customer service assurances, an escrow system and a busy forum in which users posted helpful tips. Olmsted County recognizes employees for milestones in their years of service (5, 10, 15, 20, canada drugs online 25 and above). It can happen. My patients are living proof and so are the thousands of people who bought my Treatment System and successfully used this method! I get mail from Type 1s who cannot afford test strips. Swiss Post lets customers choose if they want their mail delivered at home in hard copy or scanned and sent to their preferred Internet-connected device. The premises were restored by the Bermuda Government, which does not own it (the Corporation of Hamilton does) but has operated it since 1959 as a branch post office of the General Post Office. I will continue to update this post as the process evolves and Liberty covers all our bills. I truly believe that this policy will benefit the entire state - especially rural Colorado, where most of our renewable resources are generated. Searching requires the physician's last name, state of practice, and specialty. If that sounds far-fetched, papers filed last Thursday show that he tried to take a contract on a second person. Fortunately, Karaya itself is so inert, that it is extremely rare for a person to be allergic to it. This is how we get attracted to buy all those products that promise to flatten the stomach and fix other trouble spots of the body. This will also subscribe you to my newsletter so you stay up-to-date with everything: new articles, ebooks, products and more! HEY THANKS I WILL TRY THIS HAVE NO QUAMS WITH KILLING RATS BUT WANT TO NOT KILL A CAT OR DOG OR INJURE THEM or other benign animals. You will become more fit. Remind yourself everyday that exercise is good for you and get to know more diabetes knowledge so you can continue with lifestyle changes. It is also a good idea to remember at this point that a balanced diet from a variety of food is advisable. To create more opportunities for people to live a good life, we can’t just throw money at old problems without any new solutions. THC is the cannabinoid that most people are familiar with. Then, to add to the unfairness of the system, drug companies and hospitals charge FAR MORE to people without insurance for every prescription, treatment, hospitalization, and doctor's visit than they charge to those with insurance. An insurance company is subject to the same problems as any other business—inadequate capitalization, a weak investment portfolio, or poor management. Use a prepaid credit card if you can get one where you live (most countries have them now) and only load enough on it to cover the cost of the order. We have the bait stations and the green poison cubes which appear to have been partially consumed. For one thing dieting can lead to a decreased metabolic rate especially if you are consuming less than 1000 calories. This FREE decision guide can help answer your questions. The ferry terminal, parade area, banks, liquor stores and more stores are on this street.

[kokomallos-blog]

Employee Benefits: 4/1/10

In the latter, the credit card details can be used in credit card fraud. In order to claim, they either have to pay a small fee (advanced fee scam) or provide credit card details for a deposit. Other insurance companies feel their marketing approach is designed so that adequate participation will result and, therefore, have no participation requirements. In addition, the highly competitive market for individual universal life insurance has resulted in rates with extremely low margins for contributions to surplus. 2018. January 12. Individual tenants will be able to control the temperature of their shops and offices once work on a multi-million-dollar replacement of an ageing air-conditioning system at Washington Mall is complete. Many of them offer free legal clinics or phone and/or online information for consumers and tenants. For example, brands like Ugg, Coach, and Michael Kors have had their websites copied almost exactly to make consumers believe they are purchasing genuine goods from the real brand. They have assured me that it is not. We have been doing this for approximately 3 days and the rats do not seem to be any unhealthier. This is yet another good rat repellent solution if you are OKAY with killing rats. There are several reasons for using benefit carve-outs. 2012. There is none generic Viagra currently. There are also numerous other special cultural events, festivals and competitions. Disclaimer: This webpage and website are for informational purposes only. Some scammers are using a tactic whereby they fake a pending payment to encourage the release of goods. A lot of people with PTSD are also finding tremendous relief by using CBD to help ease their symptoms. People have gone from having multiple seizures per day to being seizure free for an entire week using CBD oil. Just by logging in, you can see which bills have been submitted, when each was paid, and how much your responsibility might be. Too many people make huge lists of things they don't know why, but KENALOG doesn't appear to be much OTC medication that works to eliminate it. And if you’re struggling under the weight and expense of unreasonable Obamacare plans, it makes sense to shop around as much as you can. Long-term disability income plans, which provide extended benefits (possibly for life) after an employee has been disabled for a period of time, frequently six months. This one targets people who are expecting a tax refund. Wait, are you saying I can’t drink or smoke? We're now at the tipping point with the funding, momentum, and opportunity to ensure every patient has an electronic health record. According to a 2016 federal government study, the cost of utility-scale wind is now cheaper than natural gas. Cars have been attributed to about 30% of all greenhouse gas emissions in the country of Canada alone. Really the best schedule for blood sugar control is to have regularly scheduled three balanced meals with two snacks in between. Line the inner wall of the trash can or cage with cardboard and place a layer (two is better) or cardboard between each row of electronic devices when stacking them inside the cage. Having an outside administrator also can be an advantage to the employer. The insurance company or a third-party administrator performs other administrative functions, including providing employees with annual statements about their transactions and cash-value accumulation under the plan. Other approaches for determining the death benefit may be used, depending on insurance company practices and employer desires. The final rule's restricted work provisions also clarify that work restriction must be imposed by the employer or be recommended by a health care professional before the case is recordable. In order to be a recordable event, a loss of consciousness must be the result of a workplace event or exposure. Way back in 2008 when I announced my first campaign for Congress, the common thought among political professionals was that supporting single-payer health coverage would end your political career. Stakeholders have started to engage in health promotion activities to educate the public, yet their scope and impact has not been examined. For example, canadian prescriptions online Respionics and ResMed (ResMed S9 series) CPAP supplies have incredibly reduced noise levels. It also means they only have to actually speak with anyone who calls back. Did the person have any money at home to be stolen? Try not to pass it on to other people. It’s unfortunate that some politicians care more about what a handful of high-powered Washington lobbyists think than what the American people need. If a product has expired by 6 months, what do you think happens? Everyone will be afforded the full protections of their civil rights in accordance with the Americans with Disabilities Act. 500 copay before my insurer will pay for a single lab test. During the 1990s, Ambien, or zolpidem tartrate, was intended to offer the advantages of other sleep-inducing drugs without a portion of the more extreme symptoms. This just makes it even more important that you watch out for tell-tale signs. Whether it's trying to find them, expensive gym prices, or someone ripping you off online or locally - the government is trying to make it even harder! Go walking and stop to admire some of the birds you see flying around or find some activity you enjoy. So this type of research complements rather than replaces government funded research. However, their customer support was great over email. Liberty HealthShare is a faith-based community, and - at the time of this writing - over 100,000 households strong and growing rapidly. The email explains that its sender is coordinating some compensation for scam victims, and the receivers’ name is on a list of victims.

[northisnotup]

SidGeno 66 & 22

It’s not you, it’s my enemies/Space au. I am actually a little FURIOUS you specified Sid/Geno for this bc if not I could have detailed a star trek fic that has been living in my mind for years but I will never actually write. Though, to be fair, that would be less of an au and more of a canon-divergence? Ehhh whatever. WARNING:  This one gets a little dark. Minor character death, I want to be clear I just, uh, cast SOMEONE in the ‘dying’ role, there is no “hard feelings” or negativity towards this person as a person, i just, y’know, needed someone to die. Also, there is gonna be Othering of Geno which could read as Xenophobic. Proceed with caution!

All Sid meant to do was live a quiet life here on this planet, helping where he could and dying in obscurity.

All Sid wanted was a chance to make up for the things he’s done.

And he tried. The first month he lived here was bitter, between the biting cold, his empty pockets and empty stomach Sid’s resolve to change was tested. But he survived. There was not a day that passed he did not wake, alone and aching to struggle with his pride, longing for the lavish, exiting life and love he left behind.

He takes no formal job, but cleans the simple dirt streets of trash.

He has no formal training, but this system is lightyears behind his own in medicinal knowledge and so he heals where he can.

He is not a great speaker, but he has an honest face and charisma in spades and so he speaks to the ‘great’ peoples who govern this city on behalf of those who live on the streets as he does.

It takes years but, shamefully, Sid eventually begins to forget his reasons for and the idea of penance. He wakes to the phantom feeling of hands wrapped around his throat, has the fever-dreams of drugs and sex and the feel of a phaser whining at the pitch necessary to end a life stop being nightmares and begin to be fantasies on long days.

Sid wrestles his ambition and drive down and buries them deep in the back of his mind to become, not happy, but content. He keeps caring for the needy, dismisses those who would treat him as idol, even gets a job and takes a lover.

He should have known it couldn’t last.

He got complacent. It all happens so quickly.

“Sid, we’ve got to get out of here!” Jack has to yell over the gales of wind whipping past their ears and grabs at Sid’s arms, a fire from midway up the street casting ominous shadows on his face. “Sid?”

Sid falters. Looks over Jack’s shoulder to the ship, the largest of the fleet which has landed in the middle of their town’s square. Is frozen by the tall, alien form sauntering down the runway. Sid had told him, lips against the shell of his ear in an intimate parody of a kiss, a blade sharp at the man’s side, his arrogance would get him killed one day. He’d laughed and grabbed Sid’s wrist, dragging the blade up his body to rest against his breastbone while he stole a kiss.

“They’re here for me, Jack. I have to go.” He says, as loudly as he dares and near crumples at the confusion and hurt on Jack’s face.

“Sid! My love there you are!” Geno sweeps Sid out of Jack’s arms easily with his alien strength, gathers him into a kiss that is bruising, ravaging, and Sid melts under near immediately. Gods, it’s been four years and he’s still susceptible to his charms and touches. On some level, he knows it’s reactors in his brain lighting up under pheromone assault, but he doesn’t care enough to try and get himself under control. Sid’s ached with love and hate and anger and longing for four years.

Even as he forgot other things, he never forgot the way Geno looked, touched him, held him.

“W-what?” Jack stutters, and Sid remembers abruptly that Geno looks almost human, but also distinctly Not in a way that instinctively unnerves those unused to his kind. His skin is too pale, too smooth, limbs a bit too long and his predator wide mouth is filled with sharp, inhuman teeth.

Geno stares at Jack assessing the threat he poses, minimal, before obviously dismissing him and turning back to Sid, lifting a hand to caress his cheek while his other wraps secure and threatening around Sid’s throat. “You think we wouldn’t find you, my Sid?”

“I didn’t think you would look.” He lies, trying not to fall back into habits he thought he was rid of. “I thought the bodies of your generals might warn you off.”

Geno laughs, the raven-like croak of it shivering down Sid’s spine. “Never. I’m always telling you, Don’t ever fucking leave me, Sid. I said I’d kill you if you ever left me.”

Sid stiffens, pressing himself into Geno’s hands, spiting the words out around the pressure on his throat, “Leave you? You fuckin’ left me! For dead! You!” Sid pound his fist ineffectually against Geno’s chest, he’s so weak now. “Said we would die together or not at all and you left me to bleed out on a fucking asteroid. I was there for weeks. It took seven days of fever, surviving on water and rats til I figured out you weren’t coming back for me.”

The hands around his throat tighten and Geno drags him closer so they’re chest to chest and he can lean down to speak against Sid’s lips. “I did. I did come back for you.”

“You left me.” Sid interrupts, licking his lips, spine turning to water. He doesn’t want to forgive Geno, not as easily as he is.

“I found you.” Geno says it like a promise. Like their people aren’t burning and razing the place Sid’s called home for the last four years, like he can turn his back on everything he’s done, give up on the idea of penance and sail off.

“If I say no?” He flattens his hands and runs them down the hard planes of Geno’s chest, his cock beginning to thicken as screams tear through the air.

Geno growls, his hands tightening lightning fast around Sid’s throat. “I found you.” He says again, desperation leaking into his voice.

“Would you kill me, my love?”

Geno kisses him, chaste like a promise.

“Sid.” Jack speaks up then, confused, begging. “Sid what is this?”

The phaser Sid slipped from Geno’s waist whines as he pulls the trigger, high and…off-key.

Jack drops to the ground.

Sid turns his head, first to the unconscious body of Jack, stunned but still breathing and then back to Geno. “You do still love me.”

“The Iceburgh leaves no survivors.” Geno nods, whispering.

Whatever Sid expected to feel, he doesn’t. He’s lived with Jack for almost a year, shared his bed and his life and he feels, he feels….excited. His thumb moves on the dial and this time, the pitch that echos in the one he hears in his guiltiest, wettest dreams.

“Take me home, G.”

#ask fic #my fic #sidgeno #sid/geno #hockey rpf #dark fic #tw murder

[thecrotchhand]

health class >:(

-ug

-did somebody say rick of suicide

-”ooh, there’s a laser!” -student teacher

-good ways to manage stress- “punching a hole through the wall”

-”do you have a long-term goal?” “dying”

-”we should deport justin bieber back to canada”

-”if you say you're gonna do something, then do it" "i'm gonna kill myself ;))"

-"i'm busy singing Africa by Toto" *off-key singing continues*

-"when you lose weight, where does it go?" "it goes to weight heaven"

-the guy next to me started playing Africa quietly from his phone

-"i'm talking to bowl cut. just kidding chris. i love you." "...i'm getting a haircut."

-"you don't lift to get swole" -st

-"that sounds not good for you" "i'm gonna try it"

-"during pregnancy, the women in here are gonna need more folate, iron, and calcium" "no, i'm gonna need a coathanger"

-"liar liar pants for hire"

-"is eustress good stress or bad stress?" (long silence) "it's good stress! yay!" -st

-good ways to relax- "11 hours straight of anime"

-"everything's gonna be ok" lmao good joke

-"precipitation... wait i mean perspiration. it still counts, it's raining from your body."

-ways to manage depression- "kill yourself :D"

-help the teacher (flynn) has been yelling at us for the past five minutes

-uh oh she said damn it's gettin' wild

-she went back into her office after and all of a sudden we hear a quiet "oh, happy Wednesday"

-"is it possible to have an abortion 700 weeks late?"

-"what's the r-word we talked about?" "rawr XD"

-"what does autonomy mean?" "it's like grey's anatomy but for cars"

-alcoholism is a good sims trait

-guy: sneezes

guy's friend: "god bless... america"

-”what do you say to your sibling during an argument?” "you should've been aborted" “no”

- "your personality might be kind of boring" "like a potato!" "yeah"

-"what does down to earth mean?" "it means you're like the lorax, you speak for the trees"

-"he was happy?" "yeah! put him working with me and larson for ten years and... we fixed him!"

-the student teacher generally has a habit of sarcastic yaying and it entertains me

-"jason (chris) move your head" "just throw a rock at it, it'll move"

-someone was trying to come up with weird phobias and someone suggested genital herpes

-"sir you've been diagnose with hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia " "aahHH"

-"if someone comes up to you and says a mean word, you're gonna be upset" "hey sam" "what" "fuck"

-"i found a big circle"

-"*cough* flynn"

flynn, out of nowhere: "i heard that"

-"have you guys seen cabin in the woods?" "wait, the one with the cabin in the woods?"

-:(

-"let's say you don't have a gun" "pft, not in america"

-we were talking about miscarriage and cody goes "fetus... deletus"

-examples of anger- "when mcdonald's doesn't have ice cream"

-video from the 80's: "depression isn't talked about"

-a seal saved this guy's life and he just: 'ah yes it was all because of god' ¿¿¿???

-80's commercials are the weirdest shit

-yepperdoodles

-"...gonna get addicted to xanax"

-"you guys all did a really good job on your tests" "i got a C" "i got a D+" "yeah there wasn't a single person i was not happy with"

-"you say you see really good scores, but what i'm seeing is a D"

-examples of compromise- "i got a D+, but i feel i deserved an A, so let's meet in the middle with a C" "but what do i get out of it?" "if he passes the class, you don't have to see him anymore"

-"oh no my one feeling"

-"what are some ways to resolve conflict?" "killing yourself"

-"put away the candy this is health class"

-(talking about conflict) "...then the fire nation attacked"

-(softly) "yo what the heck dawg"

-"if they started a rumor-" "kill them"

-"when i was-" "a young boy"

-"you got two more weeks with the student teacher, then you get me back" *high pitched screaming*

-"they never broke out, and then one of them broke out"

-"wrestling uniforms are skimpy"

-(across the room) "hey man, can i touch your butt?" "i don't mind, dude"

-"let's say my wife is going to leave me and i'm... celebrating! oh wait"

-"they're fat and skinny, they're white, black, pink, purple, and orange-" "trump"

-"listen, idiotface"

-"do you think... the government is hiding the cure for cancer...?"

-i love government conspiracy theories during health

-"i... declare... bAnkrUptCY"

-"are we watching a movie?" "maybe if we're lucky it's the ring and it'll kill us"

-lmao i don't need drugs to feel numb

-"aww, flynn, we know you're drinkin' a bottle in the back room" "yeah, just look at ya, why wouldn't i?"

-The Weed™

-"weed stops your sperm from being produced correctly" "perfect, it's birth control too"

-"weed might shrink your... parts" "i think i'll just stick to meth"

-"weed might give you a special needs child" "it's wilson 2.0!"

-"i'm gonna be a drug dealer but not a mean one like a nice, happy 'eyy, wanna buy some drugs? :3'"

-oh no, grandma's growing weed in the basement

-"ahh, the weed's on fire"

-"guess that's how they caught the drug dealers. the deer were high"

-teacher: "ooh, i just sounded like yoda: don't smoke The Weed™"

-"hey, where can you buy a still? asking for a cousin"

-"raise your hand if you want to watch hentai"

-this guy keeps responding to people with "yes, my child?"

-"they put aborted fetuses in vaccines" "oh honey no"

-"how do you keep yourself from getting sick?" "stop breathing"

-examples of painkillers- "cocaine"

-"i know elvis presley is still alive because the king never dies"

-biggest drinker in our grade: "am i gonna be an alcoholic?" class: "you already are"

-c o m p r o m i s i n g  p o s i t i o n

-"trick question, i am hentai"

-"what would you do... if i said i could put you in your own hentai"

-"you're gettin' a hole in your nose oh my goodness"

-"depression" "nope" "wait... depression"

-"I can't remember the happiness i felt before drugs" "i can't remember feeling happiness at all"

-"oh you're back! just in time for meth"

-"oh my garage"

-"lotta meth in that town" "nah just incest"

-"it kills your brain cells. which some of you can't afford (staring directly at the class alcoholic)"

-"why do dentists have the highest suicide rate?? probably because everyone hates the dentist, i dunno"

-"that's accusations" "uuuuuhh no" "oh"

-"oh my gads. you got some meth?"

-"in the puss!" "terms" "sorry. vag!"

-"there's a pretty good chance that drug came out of someone's anal cavity" "that's why i don't do heroin"

-"hey, whose buttocks did this come out of?"

"i'm gonna go shoot myself with some dog food, brb"

-"oh my chicken pie"

-"i've been told we're gonna draw a penis"

-help they're genuinely discussing giving babies steroids

-"most of the female reproductive cells are useless" "just like my brain cells"

-the teacher keeps referring to developing babies as "little rat" and "alien creature"

-"if you eat my period snacks, i will eat you"

-*chiming* "is that santa??"

-"what's the only fluid that doesn't go to the baby?" "water" "no" "air" "no" "earth" "..." "fire"

-"you're supposed to snort those calcium pills" "don't snort the calcium pills"

-"mr. o'reilly, when'd you miss your period?"

-"is it true you puke the day after you get pregnant?" "no, if you puke the day after, it's from the alcohol the night before"

-fetus = jumbo shrimp

- i too, am a very sad lookin' heart

-"no, you cannot throw up your baby"

-"now that we've taken the baby home, we need to figure out what to do with it" "flush it down the toilet"

-"if you wear a hat all the time, all your hair is gonna fall out and die" "ha ha kevin, you're gonna die"

-"since i was 14. and i'm 112"

-"big dumb"

-"what do you want to be when you grow up?" "dead"

-"my parents say: 'hey... whatcha doin' with that 24-pack?'"

-"did jeffery dahmer's mom love him?" "hope not"

-"ohh i love the smell of babies *sniff sniff*"

-"they can be found in places that are... places"

-"why are there rotting apples under here?" "no you gotta let those ferment"

-"what's something you lose by age 3?" "hope"

-the guy in front of me had marvel porn on his phone????????????? hentai hulk's bright red ass is permanently ingrained in my mind

-"what am i supposed to do to live 2 more years? wrap myself in bubble wrap and eat brussel sprouts?"

-"for every 10 pounds overweight you are, subtract 1." "-50"

-"you're wearing a flamingo shirt, you're no one's favorite"

-"you don't snort viagra"

-"how do you feel about having guns in our home?" "how do you feel about how quickly i'd use it to kill myself?"

-"hey, 2 seniors walking down the hallway! wanna give her your papers?" "outta my way. hey! get back here and gimme your papers, ya bums."

-"it's not just the genitals that transfer STDs" "left calf"

-"what if they got an STD some other way?" "drinking sprite"

-"...serial monogamy-" "cereal is for mornings"

-"...trading sex for-" "chicken nugget"

-"you wanna try sex wearing a hazmat suit, go ahead" "don't kinkshame me"

-"STI: spaghetti time infection. it's an epidemic"

-"g- ross"

-"AIDS didn't come from sex with a monkey" "it's definitely about sex with monkeys"

-"what kinds of drugs do i need if i have AIDS?" "nothing, you wanna die"

-"do you know what they do to get rid of genital warts?" "chop your dick off" "mix wart cream with water and drink it"

-oh no they found out what they do get rid of genital warts

-"they shove a q-tip in your penis" "iiiiii'd rather die"

-"is that what tinder is? swipe right if you want crabs?"

-"i would suggest not setting your genitals on fire"

- "your penis doesn't do tricks"

-"do you have a driver's license? *nod* "do you have a car?" *nod* "are you a big boy?" *unsure nod*

-"i know it's only the last day but i will make you suffer for every last minute" "then i'll just do what i always do *sleeps*"

-our resident alcoholic was washing the board and people were jokingly flirting with him so he tied his shirt into a bikini and continued washing so the teacher docked him points for it. don't worry he was already failing

#quotes #notes #class #american school #american schools #meme #wtf #out of context quotes #offensive humor #i wouldn't be surprised if our class is the one that causes our teacher to become an alcoholic

[theextraspoon]

As the second week of 2020 is coming to an end, its become very apparent that Illinois has no idea what it's doing when it comes to marijuana legalization, most likely because Illinois dispensaries don't care much about green they care more about just the money. Is patients over profits truly done better in the CBD industry than that of total legalization or is it just Illinois, as usual, dropping the ball on its civilians? Let's find out five major blunders having us asking, what the **** are they doing with all the money we've been giving them in medical taxes for the past 10 years gone to?

If you're at all familiar with Natural Healthy CBD you'll be familiar with the many helpful things they do for their local, national, and even international communities. From secret shopper missions, dispensary tours, data audits, disability advocacy and education, we don't shy away from a challenge. It's often hard to walk the line during this time of legalization because half of people will always think you're a rat, the other half won't quite know what the catch, if there is a catch. We feel our moral compass to guide us to the sick and the people who need a fair fight but aren't given even playing fields but still stand up to with a scream and try.

No one is on your side, my side, anyone's side because there are no sides. There are sick people and not sick people. We try to understand every side and have learned a lot over the years. We've always been patients, but we're not victims. We're a business but we're not greedy. We're in medicine, kinda, but not diagnosing and we're not paid a kickback every time we prescribe this over that. We're disabled with jobs. We love animals but not like that. We have service dogs that are still learning during laws and medical change, hell, world change. So when people decide they can't play nicely with one another it makes it hard for us to know who's in the right and who has more than enough playing field. That's why it's hard to step between business and patient when the government just give us these toys, and you broke them. You broke them Illinois. This is why we cant' have nice things, er laws, in illinois.

1. No One's checking These People

Illinois, specifically Chicago, is the criminal capital, illegal gun capital, drug capital, crime capital of the world.

I'm sure from out of state it sounds like the law is easy here to get away from, that's not it either. We have, or had in marijuana for as long as I'm willing to tell you I've been in the industry, self regulated crime. I know that's not a good start but just listen for a moment and understand the we're nearing the end of prohibition. The end. Have you met someone that hasn't tried marijuana? Not very many. Self regulation. We all did our own little thing in our own little areas and we share what we can and mellow out, man.

That's why I can tell you other than collecting the money and stamping the licenses there's no one checking these places. They heard we're pretty gangster over there in California and Colorado, so who's going to tell on the weed man? We will. Most of us with medical licenses were treated like druggies with a fix and still are in many instances. Just to give all that away would be against the point, no?

The first day marijuana was legalized, there were lines around the block, venders with felonies, and the weed magically grew, was cut, dried, packaged, and delivered overnight because there was a lot of it. A lot of it is now gone again, even with those legal limits.Unless you're a patient, then what weed? Ha ha, there was never any weed!

2. Laws for thee! I have money!

These dispensaries aren't used to patients fighting back, not in Illinois it seems. That or they must think all of us are fat, lazy, stupid people that can't work because even though I hold a position of CEO even the lowest level bud tenders have shown me disrespect, as a paying customer AND patient. They make sure that you know about the lines they have to cross to provide... for you. Aww!

Thing is, every time we've seen cresco or revolution buy a place the service AND product goes INSTANTLY downhill. Every time and I've witnessed them buy out 3 now. Maybe they should spend more money on their seeds or something. We know they can because they don't spend it on background checks. We'd say this was a law thing, but it's not. You still can't work in a dispensary having just walked out of prison but wouldn't you know it.

Now, all of you know that I come off a little harsh, especially when pushed into a corner by people who do it to intimidate me. Maybe it's because I work and industry from a city littered with criminals that have learned intimidation or maybe my relationship with my dad I don't know. What I do know is when online want to be celebs attempt to gaslight and stalk me, I gaslight and stalk back. Call it a defense mechanism, or maybe horrible trait but need when it comes to getting into the mind of real scumbags like the kind that buy no-tested product to sell as product from another place or those selling stuff illegally made because they didn't know there was more than one kind of oil or when they join a dispensary to set it up for a robbery, or when people start dying from bad vape carts and mold maybe the powers that control that kinda thing will take care of it.

Now, I'm not a journalist and I don't share identities, I just think they should invest in background checks in 2020 if they don't want to invest in lawsuits. Looking at you Mindful. Earthmed... you're next.

3. Lawsuits

Lawsuits! There's already three of them! Ones even a class action!

Now, I've been in the industry a while and while I really, honestly tried to knock some sense into these people having worked with their parent companies for years now, or the industry, or patient advocacy and medical, or service dog law or literally any of the many hats I fill my time with (...thanks to CBD) or I've warned dispensaries I have to go to of what I do, they'll still do whatever they want because you don't have money. You're sick and you're a cripple, okay? You don't have real people money. At least it might as well sound that way with the way they've stacked up on the lawsuits. In fact, people started reporting to me thinking I knew to go about obtaining one.

Now, it wouldn't be fair transparency if we didn't mention one of them to be ours. Sadly, that's all I really can say because a lot of people have been coming forward and I think I'm going to stay quiet for a little bit. However, our friend Service Dog Paws doesn't have to stay quiet about the screencaps that were posted by Service Dog Headquarters posted from Mindful Dispensary to our Service Dog Training Log for Gotham and that is just the start of the bullshit I've gone through since people found out I was successful in CBD distribution and in fact, we've been informed they've been threatening our friends, but again... I'd like to stay quiet for a moment while I collect more information.

Gee thanks, Dom!

Say, did I also mention how I work in media and know about the websites being used by these kinds of people? I didn't?! We'll you see, the owner of these sites has been having people harass me for months but because we're unsure if he still works for or owns one of the dispensaries under investigation we'll say that pretending to be people isn't nice and threatening that people better never come to Chicago, when they aren't afraid of you and live here, also not a good idea.

4. Harboring Medicine from Patients

I know the look of a dispensary about to sell out. Everything goes away and becomes one brand for a little bit. That's how it happened with 3C and now Aurora with Mindful, IL in Addison and even our current site of investigation, EarthMED. We knew about the limit they've placed on their customers claiming it to be the cultivators who I've spoken to, all of them, there's no shortage. In fact, the only place with that two concentrate cap... is EarthMED.

That's why I find it so weird that they have products from October since our shortage started in Novemeber. Could it be to sell to recreational people at a higher price or maybe its because they're selling it illegally? I'll get back to you. I'm literally STILL taking in complaints.

Check out the public post about it. This is me, because I don't want you to threaten and intimidate sick people anymore courtesy of your family owned dispensary.

View this post on Instagram

"We're out of weed for medical patients," they said. "Only two medical products, *they said. "We're almost out, totally low on product," they said. How are #recreational #customers that pay 33% more getting this Today if you've been out of stock or low in stock for #illinoismedicalcannabis #patients since December? @earthmed (this is not my picture but I don't want to tag who's it is because I don't want to dox them or get them penalized for reporting to @vigilantecannabis)

A post shared by Kimber Kush CBD (@thekimberkush) on Jan 7, 2020 at 9:32pm PST

It's not the cultivators, but we feel like it's odd how long the owners of EarthMED have been harboring medicine, most likely to sell to recreational patients, who spend on average $33 more than medical patients.

We'll be sure to keep you up to date on legal dispensaries, behaving well for the right reasons and doing the right thing with real labs and honest people and you concentrate on getting better. We can't fix all these problems ourselves. For now if you've been intimidated by remember how their intimidation of people not only is just words, and it's done happening.

5. Shane Gentry and Vincent Nicotra

Vincent Nicotra is a problem. 

Grab your tinfoil hats for a moment with me because this one's a doozy. Over the past six months I've been on an audit to a case I detailed for the FTC regarding Google's wrongful ban of legal hemp ads. Much like the Hemp Industry Association did with their Timesquares ad to catch the attention of Facebook admins, it's much hard to grab their attention if their email and social media is guarded by their new hire, untrained pet dog owner, Vincent Nicotra. 

It's bad enough he threatened and harassed me, but he used my own family. He got into my friends list, made fake

profiles, fake companies, fake profiles, all to set others up with friend, Angel "Janis." It wouldn't be a problem if I wasn't forced to listen to twitch, discord voice chats, youtube videos and livestreams. Furthermore, because he'd studied me and my friends list, I was forced to listen to them mock me with personalized insults about my weight, my seizures, being raped, having my children taken, past abuse, a trusted flagger admit to gaslighting and stalking, a dispensary worker admitting to finding and running someone's debit card without their permission, doxxing paypal users, harassing porn stars and how they were going to frame people for it. 

I've seen people other than me suffer far worse. I've overheard it as a hunt for mental illness which, check. Others claim a legion, a group of people set to out people for making false allegations... unless the allegation of the allegation is false. I actually went to someone in this legion, someone I once held a lot of respect for. I sent him pictures of being threatened of being doxed and projecting... a lot. See Vincent likes to use the same couple insults like Lazy and if you show people he'll claim libel or slander. While Shane Gentry aka Spaceboy was playing character Norm, someone who suffers from a seizure disorder, Vincent was also playing in my information. Vincent got a job at a dispensary, my dispensary, Mindful dispensary where he continued to dig through my personal friends and attempt to sell them PLANTBASED or oneplant cbd, CBD products that never passed inspection and we do not sell due to failed labs in some weird MLM type of deal that I'm getting accused of but should ask Shane about. 

So, Vincent was feeding all my information back to a bunch of strangers on the internet to use against me for god knows what but I wasn't alone. If you've applied for a business license in hemp or cannabis, or you've ever purchased it, he's got you too. 

This man attempted to ruin careers like Petty Paige and Nick Schneider, in fact pitting us all against each other. He mass flags, scams, and lies then accuses others for it. I've been told that they'll use CBD Piggy to get in, whatever that means and not only told I've cost someone money and will never work in the industry again by Tommy C, but they threatened others as well in an effort to control the creative space. They're even threatening me using the name of my own father because they're to pathetic to use their own, but that is something for another time. I'm not sure what that has to do with medical or moral benefit. I've witnessed people become suicidal, relapse, I've lost friends, was mocked for my federal service dog rights, I was banned from my dispensary for having a service animal, threatened by to shut the fuck up, kept up countless nights, had my ex abuser contacted and then stalked by a legion I didn't know existed of people I respected. When I went to protect them and tell them what was happening, I was asked for proof of where some other dude asked to touch me 2 years ago because they don't associate with false allegations, of which there are none, because people who don't expect to accuse people of thing don't have every time they've rejected sex on video. This is worth two years of stalking from someone you sponsored. This sort of feels like you're going after sexual assault victims or women who speak up to force them to change their story. Classy.

That said, it concerns me that this lunatic has total access to the biotrak system with everyone's private information of which they're using to find, neigh set up pedophiles, for Chris Hansen.

I know, that's the crazy part. This man who mocked everything from my seizures to getting "throat fucked" is in charge of children that are victim of sexual predators. This man, has all your personal information and has been threatening and doxing celebrities and youtubers for god knows how long, the guy mocking and harassing sexual assault is in charge of the child victims on Hansen vs Predator. 

Don't take my word for it, I'm just going to let trusted creators of the Youtube space and the city of Chicago explain it to you.

Not to mention he dug through my friends, their friends, your friends, we're friends at this point. We all said and did some stupid stuff in the name of protecting ourselves and for that, I take responsibility and am truly sorry for my part. I'm very protective of my business and the partnerships, I've made and this guy has come between that, I have half a mind to wonder if there's anything else illegal being done at Mindful since Vincent works there and they hire felons. I'll keep you updated on that, and the current investigation and dispensary secret shop mission, now that I know Vincent won't manipulate it. I leave you with this video by Baked Salmon once again about this criminal working for Mindful and Chris Hansen because it was his channel that first was wrongfully flagged and taken down during the audit. I'm sorry it took me so long to see what was going on.

Please support each other and if you stream, don't be an asshole. Maybe you're not getting sponsors because you think it's funny to talk about their rape and throatfucking them and how abusive that must be for them mentally because you don't know who really is listening on that audit. 

If I can say one last thing out of court, I hope Nick and Paige wipe the fucking floor with you, because I'm going to.

For real products by real people or to sell yours, you know the place.

For ada law visit our new infopage here.

via Natural Healthy: Latest News

#IFTTT #Natural Healthy: Latest News

[hydepark1-6]

Flood of the spyre

History’s a bitch ain’t it?    It’s been so long now, we, those from before, don’t really see them as we once did. A muted rainbow of smoke and other tiny particles, ropey and living it twists reminding one of a fuzzy eel. In its mouth a spiral of teeth (the only part that feels solid) in a circle reaching inward, a reverse accordion to better grind, swallow and burrow. Some are lucky to have it attached to a fleshy forward facing bit. The stomach is a good spot, the chest even better, but most people were not as lucky when the wave of symbiotic leaches were released. A pyroclastic cloud like swarm of them, they came at us, everyone, from every direction. In a feeding frenzy whipping and spinning with keenest instinct they bit into the first warm thing they sensed. Legs, heads, asses, my best friend has one coming out either ear. My mother lost an eye, well it’s still there, not too far from where it was eaten. If we could ever find the waste hole on one of these things we might get some of our parts and bits back. Mangled and chewed and smelling of shit, but still flesh. Still some bit of a person. Luckily i didn’t lose but a patch of hair on the back of my head during the flood. There were those who resisted, marched, protested, but when the governments announced “there are just too many…these symbiotic spyrants will live either way…this is our chance to save the human race from certain extinction.” It was over. The flood was not to be stopped once unleashed.  

 Mosquitos don’t go after warm metal. They go after two things to find their dinner. The sweet smell of our sweat, mixed with our carbon dioxide laden breath and the heat of the living. To have both is to be a target. The spyrants were looking for the same things, only attacking and claiming that which possessed both.  Just one? Nope, not a viable host.      

 At the onset, some spent the rest of their entire existence trying to remove the unwanted guests. Scaring themselves in the process and the thing only dug in further. If a person kept trying to extricate the spyrant, it gets in too far and spreads to all points delicious and vulnerable until there is no person left. These are the dead espers, mindless harvest and assembly workers. They do what they are shown and much like a machine, work until broken or shut off.    Others don’t mind so much the relationship, though it is not voluntary, they work with it. The benefits seem to outweigh the nuisance. Besides, for many, it’s all they have ever known. Some gain the trust and friendship of their personal overlord. The spyrants tend to like small sweet bits and music it finds soothing. It’s funny, no ears or echolocation can be seen or determined, but an irritant or pain experienced by the host can be satisfied or quelled by playing something orchestral and stringy. The spyrant then releases a generous dosage of serotonin and something a kin to an opiate excreted directly into the host’s bloodstream. Mine likes grapes, small coppery things, and some springy Mozart or Philip glass can make my day a little dreamy if not taken too far.    Everyone has their story. Mine doesn’t have much of a before. When the flood came, I was only 5, just a little boy, hiding under my bed, my hands hugging my pillow buddy and my face buried and away trying to escape somehow through the fabric. The spyrant who found me was attracted to the heat generated from what had been a rather aggressive virus and an accompanying fever that was making my head feel bloated and my skin sizzle. Its teeth ate and swirled until positioned rather like a rat tail braid at the base of my skull. So like I said, “lucky”. My spyre is considered almost stylish. Spyrants or “spyres” are a part of everything we do now. They are fashion. They are prestige. They are pleasure appendages. They are pets. They are us. We are them. There are laws and religions set to protect and exalt them and us with them. They do not control us, but limit our ability to react or process. They do this not consciously (as far as we can tell) but rather as a result of occupying space where that bit used to be…and the drugs. It’s just making a more comfortable and compliant home for itself. It can’t force you to do anything like kill someone or yourself and it can’t kill you. It doesn’t increase your intelligence and it doesn’t seem to have any desire to hinder your personal progress, so long as it’s safe and sated. The symbiont wishes no harm on the host, but when it comes right down to it, they will choose survival every time. They always have.  

The water is a window, the sphere is a door     An inter-dimensional rip appears as a sphere of empty space in the Arctic Ocean. It’s an anomaly scientists and theorists rush to examine. The first team to reach and measure it determined two things initially. It’s growing, the sphere itself is expanding, and it isn’t empty, there is something swirling inside. Not one thing but many. If you could merge dark clouds and a school of fish in constant movement, you would be close. They observed the sphere engulfing all it ran into or disturbed, except for the water and the ice. It was suggested to plant testing equipment in its path and remotely test what the sphere is from inside it, and maybe determine where it came from. What was the swirl was made of? What were those smokey wisps that seemed to be alive and hungry?  

  The scientists constructed a crawler base, which well, crawled under the sphere. Not right under, but just at a half a mile under, crawling on the ocean floor. Like an underwater space station on treads, the whole observation team and support staff lived and worked pacing the sphere seated a half a mile up.    

  After initial testing was successful, they were able to plot a growth rate of the sphere, but not where it came from, and also that the cloud inside was indeed alive and made up of now hundreds of thousands of eel like wisps. They swirled and swarmed, occasionally attacking each other. It seems they were territorial even when spinning in a circle. Due to this trait, having two or more spyres on any one person is very rare.  The only way for this to happen is if the spyres have no knowledge of each other’s occupancy. Further tests to the sphere also revealed the inside was pretty dry but the sphere itself, the walls were wet. The equipment sensed moisture from other objects residing in the sphere, but no pools or puddles. The walls of the sphere seem to be made up of three layers of membranous stretchy water, making it both solid and porous. During examination, it appeared to make choices on which to be and when. Each layer rubs against one another (creating a hypnotic hum) but also shifts into place like tumblers in a lock. When the right elements, minerals, proteins and molecules are lined up, it can let objects pass while continuing to repel the water all around it.  

  As its diameter grew, it just pushed through the water choosing not to let any pass through. Everything sent into the sphere seemed to do ok and nothing seemed to disturb the swarm, So naturally humanity wanted to send an animal into it. After much debate, they decided to send a dog. Kraken was trained to find holes and cracks in ships and subs. Sure, he had other abilities, but this skill in particular was the one that got him the job, in the sphere.      Kraken was anesthetized and sent up a rope in a bell. They slowed and stopped his ascent when he was in range of the sphere’s path. The rope became ridged and moved him closer. The dog kraken passed slowly through the wall of the sphere. Having no water to support him or the bell on the other side, they both fell through the wispy eels (which seemed to take no notice of him) and down onto a pile of debris and dead fish at the bottom of the sphere.  

 Kraken woke and the science team in the crawler cheered. When they announced their success, the press had a field day over the dog essentially being sent on a suicide mission.  I mean they had a point. He was sent with no food to an isolated place with no food.  There was a public outcry to “Save the Kraken!” Posters, t-shirts, bumper stickers, graffiti, and kraken flags were seen pretty much everywhere.   Something had to be done. So a scientist from the team below by the name of Doctor Simon Jerry volunteered to be the first person to enter the sphere, face the swarm, save the dog and hopefully not die in the process. Suited up, DrJerry used the very same rope delivery system as the kraken in his bell. When he reached the sphere he just unhooked from the rope and swam to it. He passed through easily. Traveling from very cold low salinity water and now on the inside, he was surprised to find the sphere holding no significant amount of water (he and his colleagues had collectively assumed this reading was off). He also wasn’t prepared for the gut punchy smells of wet dog and fishy dogshit. He removed his ear plugs; there was a rushing sound the doctor attributed to the wisps above still circling and fighting. His wet suit squeaked slightly as he got to his feet and approached the dog. They were happy to see one another. DrJerry opened a zipper pouch on his front and offered the dog a mild treat and some water. The Doctor then gave kraken the command to search for a way out. “Search for a crack, find us a hole we can use to get home.” Kraken did search but found nothing. After checking and testing, DrJerry could find no flaw. There was no evidence he or the dog or anything else had passed through the walls and into the sphere, but here they were…trapped.  

 The sphere continued to grow and the swirling wisps never stopped.  DrJerry was succumbing to the stress of his predicament. So maybe it was just frustration because after 27hrs of testing and theorizing and reporting, he still came up with nothing, no possible let alone probable means of escape and now they wanted him to sit calmly for a friggin network tv interview? …or possibly because he just wanted the damn thing off his skin, DrJerry began taking off his wetsuit. His legs and feet were still very cold. His chest and arms were a little better, but only just. Then he took off his head piece. The swarm around him shuddered. And all at once the wispy eels took notice of the man and his steamy head. They shifted and went for him. The first to connect fought off all the rest and claimed its prize. DrJerry tried to fight the wisp but it wasn’t solid enough for him to grab onto. The thing had latched onto the top of his head right there where the hairline meets his forehead, dead center and while on a live feed with the crawler half a mile down.    So yeah…The first guy to get a spyrant attached to him has it positioned like a whipping unicorn horn on live tv. What are the odds really? After many hours where he desperately tries to cut the spyre from his head and takes to throwing himself against the sphere itself, he succumbs to his self-inflicted injuries.  Three days later the dog eats him. As kraken gets closer to the spyrant part of his meal, the spyrant itself wriggles free and joins the swarm once again. They do not die when the host dies. There is no known way to kill one. They vacate the host when it is no longer viable, and move on to the next host. No one has ever killed a spyrant, neither has anyone ever seen one die or reported a death.  

We gotta do what we gotta do   After the well documented tortured death of DrJerry, and with the sphere still growing, fear really set in and all efforts were considered in stopping this menace from reaching civilization. It was the aim of the decision makers that this “not blight humanity.” We were told, “If we cannot kill them, they must want to kill us” They didn’t want to send another person in. They studied the tapes of DrJerry’s fate and monitored kraken’s decline. They told the press the dog died in the attack that led to Jerry’s decent. Vigils were held and little girls cried for the German Sheppard/Labrador mix as he wasted to nothing while the powers of this world decided what position you and I would be forced to take.  

 Everything they sent into the sphere had no effect on the sphere itself or the growing swarm within. They tried explosions, acid, metal tools and drills. Nothing worked, until someone gave it air and sunshine. Just your typical oxygen nitrogen trace gas mix and our concentrated solar spectral distribution. Once applied, the sphere melted a little, but immediately reacted to the water around it and sealed up. It was like watching a hole evaporate into a solid wall. But now we knew the two things it needed to complete its task, and what most likely would happen next. It was all so clear now. It would continue to expand and the wisps would continue to multiply. When the sphere reached the surface, the air and sunlight would rip and melt the sphere away like a goddamned gelcap, releasing the wispy eel-things into the world, our world, now theirs. We were done for real.    It was a common concern that well if we can’t destroy the sphere because we don’t want to release the whatever those things were onto the world, then we need to stop it from growing or reaching through the water to the sky. Someone noticed the sphere didn’t like passing through ice. It actually can’t. It will do whatever it can to avoid it. A plan was hatched to freeze the water around it, and it seemed to work…at first. The sphere’s progress appeared to stop. The powerful corporations and governments patted themselves on the back and called the job done. They’re good at that…congratulating themselves and telling the world everything is ok, better than ok.  It was not.    The wisps continued to multiply and the force of the swarm pushed and stretched the sphere cracking the ice around it. Slowly at first, but like any flaw that is exploited, the crack became a gash and the ice broke away. The sphere now had only one direction to go and the path of least resistance was up. There was no more time. Humanity was going to face these things and we couldn’t stop them.    They sent in another volunteer. Since the wisps didn’t seem to want anything that wasn’t human, we needed someone to determine what they wanted with us, and to do that you just had to well, see what would happen. We needed a sacrifice, a well-paid volunteer. They found just what they were looking for in Filton Kenzy. Mr Kenzy’s family would receive a great deal of money for his sacrifice, and if he survived he would be not only a national, but a world treasure. “Citizen human” willing to sacrifice all for the good of humanity and lifetimes of security for his family….if we survived.  

filton kenzy, citizen human    Filton was rushed through equipment training for the task and briefed on what little we knew of what a spyre would do. The rest was for him to report back. Fully outfitted he was delivered to the sphere in style. No rope for Mr Kenzy. He got to enjoy the luxury of a two seater submarine with a bubble “encounter dome” its not usually recommended, but you can squish yourself into that bubble space, seal the compartment and unlock the dome to exit the sub in an emergency. And that’s how Filton did it. Out of the bubble, he swam for the sphere which was only 8 or 9 strokes away.   He met the outer wall with his back first in a spinning motion like a ball player trying to keep just out of grip of the other players. As he spinned, he breached the sphere, face forward and down. All at once the grotesque stinging cloud of smells emanating from the pile of dead and rotting kraken hit him hard. Choking back a wave of vomitus retching, he tucked, and rolled forward. He was slowed significantly by the squishy debris he found himself rolling over. He stopped, got up and found his footing. Filton removed the packs, excess gear and testing equipment he brought with him. He established communication with the crawler. He winced as he breathed deep and deliberate. One, two. Ok he had his orders, he was ready.    The running theory at play here is heat. Filton had been told he has a choice to make. The wispy smoke-eel will go for the warmest bit available. Depending on which part you expose, it can be lured to many different individual spots on the body, so what’s it going to be? Unfortunately for Filton, despite his calm exterior, he was scared and a bit overwhelmed by the sheer number of spyrants in the swarm. They moved so fast and they never stopped. He found himself swaying with the rhythm of the swirl. His attention was fixed. He didn’t want to move from this spot. To sit as still as possible was somehow everything. He might’ve stayed there and wasted like the abandoned kraken, but a pain shot through his chest. It was his lungs. It was becoming increasingly more difficult to breathe through the stale, thick stench of decay. As if particles were coating his insides making it harder to take in whatever amount of oxygen he was able to inhale. He shook his head. “This is it”.   When he got up to face the spyrants, he wanted them to come at him and get it over with. He took off his heated neoprene wet vest top. The swarm shuddered as it had when it felt the temperature slightly change around DrJerry. The reaction wasn’t fast enough for Filton. In his agitated state he began yelling, screaming at the swarm. They descended and the winner of Filton Kenzy dove directly into his open mouth and devoured his vocal chords. It thankfully sensed Filton’s distress immediately and began doping him almost on contact. Filton only managed a partial muted scream before the drugs kicked in and the chewing spyre silenced him.    Filton staggered and sneezed. The whipping forked tail of the spyre shot out his nose like a smokey mustache of tentacles, one from each nostril. He could no longer speak, but he was high as fuck and could type. Dreamy from the drugs, he thought of sign language, he was going to have to learn a new way to communicate face to face. What did he already know of signing? Not much. He wondered if anyone on the science team knew sign language.   And these were the first words in communication from Filton Kensy to the world as citizen human, the first successful living host to a spyre from the swarm. He smiled as he typed, “Does anyone down there know ASL?”

After two weeks of reports and on site testing he performed on the sphere, the swarm and on himself, it was determined that citizen human was apparently ok. Having made no attempts to fight the spyrant, he actually felt pretty good. Filton was rescued in a daring attempt where the team from the crawler sent a ropod into the sphere, but this ropod wasn’t the usual yellow bubble with arms remotely navigated to pick up marine samples, oh no. This ropod was modified and extended so as it passed into the sphere, Filton could open the forward hatch and quickly crawl in, press one button and he jettisons out the rear of the craft before it passes through and into the sphere completely.    Once back on the crawler, Filton was quarantined. However, they soon found out his spyre wasn’t a ravenous beast set on eating its way through humanity. It liked Filton and it wasn’t going anywhere. And HostFilton seemed happier and healthier than when he volunteered a month ago despite having his vocal chords eaten by an alien who now lived in his mouth and nasal cavity, not to mention basically sitting in his own filth with a rotting dog carcass for the past two weeks.     Yes, Filton Kenzy survived, but his family, most of them did not. When the flood came, they resisted the parasites. They spent their time and money destroying their bodies with the help of one extraction quack after another.    Citizen human and his spyre are in fact still alive. We had no way of knowing at the time, but it seems if properly cared for, your spyre can cure most ailments and less ravenous cancers. People aren’t dying. The new average life expectancy is 130, that’s when our bodies just give up, and the spyrant moves on to the next host.

Nowhere to hide     Bathed in yellowy artificial light, they held off until the last possible second. They did it in secret. For months now in the deepest bunkers and sitting around “the big table” they have been secretly debating the fate of the world. When the time came, when the sphere was a quarter mile in diameter and about to breach the surface and reach the sun, just as the cracks appeared and the sphere began to melt, they, the world powers and leaders of governments with their nuclear arms aimed at the Arctic Ocean, entered codes and pressed buttons. And in the greatest explosion this planet has ever seen, the flood began.  By then the number of wispy spyrants had grown from millions to billions. Unharmed by the blast they flew at a velocity no one at the time was prepared to measure. In seconds they were at the equator and seemed to get their bearings, the heat from the sun waking them, reminding them why they were here. To live, to find a home and they spread like a cloud of dust engulfing every horizon at once. Seeking, finding, and burrowing in.

 The rich and powerful were certain they were somehow immune. That the poor or “everyone else” would take the brunt if not the entire burden of host duties while the ruling class would naturally rise above and let the little people do the work, die in the struggle, and do what they’re told. They were expendable, that’s why they exist. They are seen as nothing more than flesh shields protecting the soft underbelly of privilege. The rich land owners, corporate slugs and lawyers who stink of old money have no idea how truly useless they are, but they are about to become of use.       The resistance was prepared. They took the obvious queues from DrJerry’s fate and opted to wear wet suits and other items invented to mask scent and body heat. They congregated and holed up in freezers and built houses of ice. They labeled their movement the Froggers. At first it seemed they had something going with their plan, but it didn’t last. Even lavish and well protected underground or underwater communities of the ultra-rich Froggers were infiltrated by the swarm eventually. You see, the spyrants can not only fly, they can somehow cheat what we know of physics and molecular density. They can pass through our walls. And the Froggers failed to understand a basic truth. It was the sphere that could not pass through the ice. The spyrants had no actual contact with the ice itself, just the sphere. The wisps could pass through ice quite easily. One by one the resistance were picked off and assimilated. Once someone in the community was infected, the community freaked out, locked down and outcast the victim. And so the resistance dwindled to nothing. It is believed there is no living person who is not host to our shared burden.     The flood did kind of level the field in a way, while other things stayed very much the same. There is no “bigger, better” symbiont to buy. Rich folk, and poor folk alike experience the same random placement and same health benefits. Although coma has become the preferred method of long term recovery and the rich are the only ones who can afford the maintenance.  

 Those born after the flood were saddled with the random placement just as those from before, but somehow more devastating and cruel. If you were infected, and procreated, the baby would be just as healthy as the genetic mixed bag of human traits and shortcomings would allow, but there was something new. A predetermined feeding and entry spot. A great circular scar which the first doctor to deliver the first infected baby thought would be a mark of resistance, a birthmark of superiority, proof we were better and that we would win. But no, all it really meant was we were the perfect host for this parasite. After exposure, our offspring are born fully outfitted to be a better host. Our very DNA liked the parasite so much it actually conformed to and supported it. Baby x and her adorable little spyrant port were soon met with a pupal spyre and both parasite and host grew healthily and happily for they knew no other way. This is what life brings us and these are the things we do now.  

 The espers and their handlers quietly, but globally cornered the assembly industries.  If pieces of something fit together to create something else, an esper is the fastest and cheapest labor out there. Their representation on the world stage is almost comically corrupt and they being a mindless but obedient mass of people, are a force when banded and therefore the “esperorg” is a feared organization. It is rumored they kidnap people, tie them up and aggravate the victim’s spyre until it burrows in far enough to create an esper. The org and its dealings are whispered to children and scary accounts of “this guy I knew” are shared around campfires under the stars and over beers in dive bars. Superstitions and cautionary tales weave in and out of what is and could be. so we lock our doors, and we walk a little bit faster.

There are spyre junkies. Their spyrant sways with the orchestral vibration blaring from headphones, releasing tiny doses which are just a topper for the junkie/hosts who are constantly hurting themselves for the reward. But the spyre can sense when the pain is not distressing and releases less, which in turn forces the junkie to do things more dire and more painful to get the goods.

 The spinning and circling of the spyrants in the sphere is a mating dance. (like a knot of snakes) That’s why they procreated so quickly. The hum from the sphere put them in a trance like mating state. Swimming and sewing the air, they were a great fluid knot of wispy in constant motion. Outside of the mating sphere, the spyrants breed only in the warmest climates on their warmest days and they do not need the knot of thousands it only takes six or so to get a good rhythm going and make a little spyre which is there immediately after the mating. Curled and immobile as if it were in an invisible egg it just sits there suspended in the center until the dance is over. The pupal spyre lazily wakes up, stretches it’s long forked tail and it’s off to find a newborn host. The pupal spyres can smell the new host offspring from quite a distance. The children never cry. No one has heard a child cry in over half a century. In the mating sphere, millions upon millions of pupal spyres were made. Hanging in the center space within the knot of the fully grown. A protective niche for the collection of pups. When they wake and stretch, the first and only motivation is food. And food is right there. They enter the swarm and latch onto the first adult they touch. One adult can support one pupil at a time. Every day the number grew, the sphere expanded and the knot continued to swirl and eat itself.  

The maple syrup kid Now that we have been relying on and held by these things for 66years, the maple syrup kid shows up and everything changes. There have been studies for decades, experiments where every wacky idea was thrown at the spyrants and their hosts. And in the 66th year of occupation a 13 year old girl is the first to remove her spyre. There is a way. It can be done, but now many don’t want to. Filton lobbys against it. Governments call the exhosts noncitizens of the global collective. A movement is started to release the espers from their captivity, which is a phenomenally bad idea. The only thing keeping any one of them from rampaging mindlessly is the constant monitoring by its spyre and the unending medication excreted from the same.

The idea of extraction was a simple one really. A symbiant will only vacate a host when it wants to. You have to get it to want to leave, if only briefly. The people who performed experiments based on this knowledge paid too much attention to the meal/home the parasite already had. The scientists tried influencing the spyre through manipulating its host. The spyrant merely compensated and adjusted and held tight. If you threatened or aggravated it, you would create an esper. Though it was considered to tempt it with another meal, the testers never really got what the spyre wanted or why. Like a child given this or that, it would get bored. The trick was to find something it could never get enough of. An irresistible treat, and the kid gave it a treat alright; one laced with something the spyre could not process. She made a mixture of maple syrup which most if not all spyres seem to favor, and cayenne pepper. The spyrant will go after the syrup and collect the pepper in a sputum sac. When it has enough pepper stored it needs to spit it out. This is revolutionary for two reasons. One, it was the first time extraction was successful without the host dying first. And two, the kid was born into host-hood. She had never known a life without her spyre. Which goes for the wisp as well. this was a 13year home and relationship the spyrant willingly detached from. This scenario in particular was one never imagined by present society. Yet the kid did it, and now humanity has a choice to make. each choice has consequences both known and unforeseen. 

#work in progress #legoule

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Your questions about COVID-19, answered, with UNE expert Meghan May

From University of New England News

For an expert’s view on the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, UNE’s Office of Communications recently consulted by phone with our very own professor of microbiology, Meghan May, Ph.D. With degrees in microbiology, pathobiology, and bacteriology, May’s research primarily focuses on virulence – that is, a pathogen’s ability to infect a host – which is not only useful in determining how new diseases appear and where they come from but also in predicting what new disease might appear next – a practice known as pathogen forecasting. In fact, May was among the first people in the scientific community to publish (on January 1) the hypothesis that the mysterious new virus that first appeared in December of 2019 in Wuhan, China, was, in fact, likely a coronavirus.

In our conversation, May discussed, among other things, how the virus is transmitted, why the elderly may be so at-risk from COVID-19, and where things stand with possible treatments.

Many government officials have expressed the sentiment that they were completely blindsided by the novel coronavirus. Given that there is an entire scientific community that is dedicated to pathogen forecasting, was the emergence of this virus truly a total surprise?

There are a few papers in which people talk about the most likely zoonotic agents, excluding influenzas, to jump into humans, and coronaviruses and another family called henipaviruses are almost always right at the top of that conversation. And we’ve had several examples of both of those in the not too distant past. So this has been something that people in my line of work talk about with some degree of frequency — that this is going to happen. So no, it’s certainly not an unpredictable occurrence.

How are the emergences of these zoonotic viruses in humans predicted?

There are scientists whose entire line of research revolves around doing a lot of sampling of wildlife species that are known to be reservoirs of those particular types of virus families that pose the greatest risk for what we call spillover events [the transmission of zoonotic pathogens to the human population]. The idea is that if there’s a lot of surveillance for these viruses that haven’t emerged in humans yet, then clever people would be able to predict which ones we could expect to be the most likely to actually emerge in cause studies in humans. And then on a translational level, it raises the question of whether we could even have a test all designed and ready or even a vaccine all designed and ready.

How has our understanding of coronavirus evolved over the past six weeks or so? What have we been able to learn from countries like China, South Korea, and Italy?

We don’t know a ton about this virus’ basic biology. But there have been a lot of genome sequences that have come out, so we’re able to look at its genetic diversity. We’re able to tell who its closest relatives are in the coronavirus family. And we’ve been able to figure out what it targets on human cells, which is a molecule called ACE-2, which is the same protein that’s targeted by SARS CoV-1 (the original SARS) and also MERS-CoV.

In terms of its epidemiology — its disease process, its pathology, its transmission — we have been able to kind of observe and learn a lot about it in real time. We have some knowledge of how long it lasts on different surfaces, the case fatality rate, and how it is spread. All those kinds of things seem kind of simple because we’ve been talking about them for a while now, but back in late December and early January, nobody knew any of that. So that’s been a big leap forward. One thing that is clear from studying the virus in other countries is that this is obviously transmitted person to person, but it’s transmitted through something called aerosols and fomites, which is a little bit different than something being truly airborne.

Could you explain the difference between what it means to be truly airborne and what it means to be transmitted through aerosols and fomites, as is the case with this virus?

This virus can be coughed out by a person or sneezed out by a person, and it remains suspended in air for a certain amount of time. It looks like that amount of time is right around an hour, and then it can kind of fall down and land on doorknobs and surfaces and everything else, which another person could then touch and inadvertently put it in their own nose. Something that is truly, truly airborne creates a situation where you wouldn’t have to be directly close to the person sneezing it out or you wouldn’t have to touch something that they sneezed near. It means a viable particle could truly float long distances in the air or float through something like the ventilation system on an airplane or something like that. This virus does not seem to be truly airborne in that way. It is transmitted by droplet aerosols. So that’s why social distancing and handwashing are being emphasized.

There seem to be many different theories as to why elderly people are so vulnerable to COVID-19. Could you address this?

Everything that we’re hearing now are educated guesses because we have not had a chance to really study what we would call the pathophysiology of this disease, which means, the actual step-by-step process by which it causes the damage to a cell that it does. We don’t know that at all yet.

One of the things that, to me, is a very attractive hypothesis for why you might see these very exaggerated effects in older adults has to do with the immune system, but it’s a little bit different than what we might think. To appreciate this hypothesis, you first have to wrap your mind around that fact that the damage that happens to you when you are sick with a viral infection, by and large, happens because of your own immune response. In an attempt to rapidly get rid of infectious agents, a lot of times you get these very massive responses that end up causing more damage in the act of trying to get rid of an offending agent. So you might use the analogy of a cancer patient getting chemotherapy. You’re throwing this enormous drug at a patient to try to get rid of the cancer cells, and, in the meantime, you also get rid of a bunch of healthy cells. So you’re causing a lot of damage to that person in an effort to make him or her better. Immune responses during an especially severe viral illness kind of operate on that same level. Now that being said, that might lead one to think that, well, since older people’s immune systems are a bit weaker, why wouldn’t they then have a less severe response?

To understand that, we need to know that it’s not necessarily that somebody’s immune response, on a general level, just drops and becomes ineffective as they get older. It’s the very specific and well-regulated adaptive immune system that is the one that weakens. That’s the immune system that helps you make very specific antibodies and very, very tailored reactions to certain pathogens. But the system that we call your innate immune system is still there and functioning, although it doesn’t necessarily regulate itself quite as well as it did when you were younger. And so, according to this hypothesis, what you end up seeing is that the innate inflammatory side of your immune system still goes into action, is not quite as good at regulating itself as it once was, and then tries to compensate for this weaker adaptive side. And so it just ends up going bonkers, and it does more damage than it intends.

And then there’s also the notion that older adults also have more comorbidities – diabetes or a circulatory problem or some other underlying health problem – so they’re going to be at greater risk because of that as well.

While we all wait for the approval of a vaccine, what types of medicine or treatments are being studied as having some potential in fighting COVID-19?

There are a few thing that are being discussed. One is a compound called remdesivir by the company Gilead Sciences. It’s an antiviral compound that, at least in a lab, seems to slow the growth of the virus. It immediately went into some clinical trials and was given to some patients in China, and it seemed to work reasonably well. So that’s promising. It’s a patented compound and could be produced right away. But the problem is that it was not approved for use in humans anywhere in the world and is still not, as I understand it. Why that is the case is not so clear. Is it because it was it just in a pipeline, and no one had gotten around to putting it through clinical trials yet? Or did toxicity studies in mice and rats go poorly? I don’t know why it hadn’t been tested, but nowhere in the world was this licensed for use. It did just get orphan drug status through the FDA, so that it could be distributed in the U.S. for compassionate care use, but again, no one is quite clear on what outcomes of that could be.

Another potential treatment that Trump has been discussing for the past few days is a drug called chloroquine and one of its derivatives, hydroxychloroquine as well as adjunct drug azithromycin. There was a very preliminary study done in France using a combination of hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin, but it’s definitely not something that one should take to the bank as being the answer. For starters, it had only 40 people in it. Twenty of them received hydroxychloroquine, and the other 20 received “routine care.” But the “routine care” was at a completely different hospital in a different city, so we’re not sure what “routine care” even means. There were no age- and sex-match controls used in the study. And of the 20 patients who received hydroxychloroquine, just six of them also got azithromycin. So you’re talking about six people on planet Earth who have received this drug combination; it’s hardly definitive evidence.

There was another trial in China where they used just hydroxychloroquine, and that had up to a hundred people, but it was pulling information from 10 different hospitals where the treatment was given. And again, there was no age- or sex-match controls. The controls were from something like 20 different hospitals, and there was no continuity in what dose patients received or where they were in their disease process when they started getting treatment. So it’s gently suggested that this might be helpful, but we are very far from being able to say that this a treatment that everyone should be using.

So, in addition to the fact that chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine haven’t been properly studied and found to be effective, there are four other major problems associated with their use, as I see it. First, chloroquine is a really toxic drug. It’s an unbelievably toxic drug. Hydroxychloroquine is better, but, still, it’s not a pleasant medication to take. You can give this to someone in their twenties who is at risk for having malaria, and they’ll deal with the side effects, but if you give this to somebody who’s already in critical condition, you might hasten their demise. So that’s problem number one: giving something with very bad side effects to people who are already critically ill.

Problem two: there are people who take that medication as indicated, and they need it. It’s used to treat lupus patients, and it’s not something we keep a stockpile of. So already all these doses are in short supply. And so we may create a situation where patients can’t get their medicine that’s working well for them. They will be in pain, and if lupus continues to advance, it causes heart damage, vessel damage and other problems.

Problem number three is that, this is an anti-malarial drug, and, as I mentioned, we have no national stockpile. So if we start buying it from other countries, who are we taking it away from? People who need it to treat or prevent malaria. And we would be taking it away in order to treat a disease when we don’t even have definitive evidence that it is actually doing anything to successfully treat.

The fourth problem is, I think, the less obvious one. All of these measures that we’ve taken in the past week and a half have been disruptive to everyone, but we’re doing it because we recognize this is how to slow down the spread of the disease. But when you’ve got a person in charge saying, “We’ve got this treatment; we’re sending it to hospitals; everything’s going to be fine,” are people really going to stay shut up in their homes? No. There’s just a difference in risk assessment that people make when they think that they can just take the medicine and then there’ll be fine. And so, I think there are real dangers in giving people false hope. Everybody wants to tell people that there’s a cure and this will all be over soon. Everybody wants to say that, but we can’t say that if it’s not true. And the risk of saying that when it’s not true and being wrong is really high.

There are a lot of myths around COVID-19 that people are finally becoming wise to. For example, it is becoming more widely known that yes, young people can get the disease and no, warm weather is not going to make the virus disappear. Are there any other myths, perhaps ones that have not been dealt with as extensively in the media, that you can dispel?

There is the belief that ibuprofen and ACE inhibitors could make the disease worse. That thinking is based on a kind of back-of-the-envelope kind of mapping that concludes that since these drugs cause your body to block a certain process that leads to inflammation and in so doing, cause your body to compensate by producing more of something called ACE2, which is the receptor that this virus binds onto, you will make yourself more susceptible to the infection, or will worsen the infection, if you take these drugs.

However, there doesn’t seem to be any actual clinical evidence that taking ibuprofen and ACE inhibitors are having this effect. It’s just somebody looking at it and saying, “I wonder if that would happen.” Certainly if you take ACE inhibitors to treat high pressure hypertension, you should not stop taking them unless your doctor tells you to. You have an actual risk with your hypertension if you don’t take them versus a theoretical risk if you do take them.

Read May’s January 1, 2020, Facebook post

Read May’s contributions to the coronavirus discussion in the news:

Business Insider: Epidemiologists have been warning of a coronavirus outbreak for years and say that another pandemic will happen again

Business Insider: 4 disease experts reveal how they’d address the coronavirus pandemic in the US if they could wave a magic wand

Associated Press: Malaria drugs’ promise for coronavirus spurs hope, shortages

Portland Press Herald: Maine fitness clubs struggle to work out a coronavirus strategy

UNE. Innovation for a Healthier Planet.

Read more

source https://une.scienceblog.com/2020/04/06/your-questions-about-covid-19-answered-with-une-expert-meghan-may/

[marilynngmesalo]

Newspaper publisher accuses wife of poisoning him in bizarre divorce case

Newspaper publisher accuses wife of poisoning him in bizarre divorce case Newspaper publisher accuses wife of poisoning him in bizarre divorce case https://ift.tt/2QwaNVU

PRESCOTT, Ariz. — An award-winning Arizona newspaper publisher and his wife are locked in a bizarre divorce case that has morphed into something more: a journalism ethics saga.

Joseph Soldwedel has accused wife Felice Soldwedel in a lawsuit of trying to kill him by poisoning him, and detailed the allegations in one of the small-town newspapers he owns, the 13,000-circulation Prescott Daily Courier.

None of the three news stories in the paper named his wife. But the Courier ran an ad accusing her by name, with a photo of her, bordered with images of skulls and rats. The ad said she had an unnamed accomplice, and it offered a $10,000 reward for tips.

In this Nov. 19, 2018, photo, Felice Soldwedel, wife of Joseph Soldwedel, poses for a photograph at her home in Prescott, Ariz.

Soldwedel’s wife of eight years calls the poisoning claims ludicrous and says he is retaliating against her for seeking a divorce.

“I’ve had people call me, text me, ’Felice, is that you in the paper? Oh my god,”’ she told The Associated Press. “It almost makes you feel like you want to leave town. He made me look like this horrible person.”

The lawsuit alleging poisoning seeks $18 million from Felice Soldwedel and was filed a week after a prosecutor said there was no evidence of a crime and declined to file charges.

“It’s highly problematic for a publisher to be using the editorial resources of the paper to pursue a personal vendetta,” said Edward Wasserman, dean of the graduate journalism school at the University of California, Berkeley. He added: “The whole thing is pretty bizarre because someone who is not the publisher would not get that kind of attention, absent law enforcement taking it seriously.”

Soldwedel said the coverage was proper and he wanted to ensure law enforcement thoroughly investigates his claims. The Prescott paper did not run a story about the police investigation clearing his wife, he said, because “we don’t think it’s concluded.”

“I’m hoping to get her into court and to get it into trial and bring up enough evidence to the surface that police could not ignore it,” he told the AP.

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Soldwedel’s father built Western News and Info Inc. by buying smaller newspapers across Arizona. Joseph Soldwedel, now 66, delivered newspapers as a boy and at 23 became publisher of a paper in the chain. He has run the chain that owns and partially owns 13 newspapers for more than three decades.

In 2001, he won an award from the Arizona Newspaper Association after launching a newspaper to investigate southern Arizona law enforcement and government agencies. He did so after he said police entered his home on what he claimed were false pretenses.

Felice Magana joined Western News in 1999 and worked as an advertising sales executive. They married in 2010; it was the third marriage for both of them. They signed a prenuptial agreement guaranteeing she would receive $900,000 if they divorced and $1 million if Joseph Soldwedel died.

He is now seeking to annul the marriage and invalidate the agreement. The divorce case will be tried in February, and Joseph Soldwedel’s attorney is expected to raise the poisoning allegations to try to nullify the prenuptial agreement, said John Mull, the lawyer representing Felice Soldwedel.

In 2016, Soldwedel said he had shortness of breath, headaches and fever that he first attributed to the flu. But he began to suspect he had been poisoned and sent hair and nail samples to a Colorado laboratory to test. The lab’s general manager, Kaily Bissani, told the AP that thallium — a heavy metal once used in rat poison — was found at levels six to 15 times higher than normal.

A toxicologist Soldwedel hired to interpret the results said there was a “strong probability” he was intentionally poisoned because Soldwedel didn’t have any environmental exposure to thallium.

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Soldwedel said he believes his wife slipped poison into his food, and his attorney requested police investigate in September 2017. Prescott police searched Felice Soldwedel’s computer and cellphone records and found nothing to indicate she poisoned him.

In October 2017, police collected their own samples of his hair and found no signs of thallium or illicit drugs. But by then, Soldwedel said, he had cut his hair and undergone therapy to rid his body of heavy metals. He said he has mostly recovered.

Police decided to test for illicit drugs a hair sample that Soldwedel had sent to the Colorado lab, and it came back positive for methamphetamine. Soldwedel told the AP he suspects his wife dosed his shampoo and food with methamphetamine, another claim she denies. Police did not retest that sample for thallium.

Thallium is sometimes found as an impurity in illegal drugs, and prosecutors suggested thallium in the sample could be caused by methamphetamine use.

Around the time Felice Soldwedel filed for divorce in April 2017, she reported to police her husband was stalking or harassing her. Joseph Soldwedel pleaded guilty to aggravated harassment and criminal damage. He’s on probation. The Prescott Daily Courier did not publish any stories about the case.

Felice Soldwedel, 63, first read about the poisoning allegations in a December 2017 issue of the newspaper left on her driveway, even though she wasn’t a subscriber.

No one from the newspaper has sought her side of the story, she said.

Joseph Soldwedel said that he never instructed reporters at his papers not to contact her, but that doing so could put him at legal risk because he is under court order not to contact her.

“We’re not going to test it,” he said.

Reporting all sides of stories is a basic journalism rule, said Mi-Ai Parrish, a professor at Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and former publisher of the Arizona Republic, the state’s largest newspaper. “Having ethics and credibility in journalism is paramount, and you damage not only the reputation of yourself but of your publication,” she said.

Joseph Soldwedel said he was careful not to name his estranged wife until her identity became public through his lawsuit. He said his staff urged him to hold off on the initial story for a few months to see how the police investigation played out.

“Everybody wasn’t on board 100 per cent but said, ’OK.’ I do have ultimate authority,” he said.

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Is there any truth to anti-aging schemes?

New Post has been published on https://nexcraft.co/is-there-any-truth-to-anti-aging-schemes/

Is there any truth to anti-aging schemes?

On a Thursday evening in late January, the faithful gather. They trickle into the Church of Perpetual Life, about an hour’s drive north of Miami, until a throng of around 100 people cram around tables lining the first-floor hall of this renovated house of worship. Along one wall is a display of reading material: pamphlets on heart disease, flyers itemizing the additives in Cheez-Its and their detrimental health effects, a handbill about the Ms. Senior Florida pageant. On the other side of the room, there’s a snack buffet with beans, broccoli, carrots, cubed cheese, sliced meats, and olives. It’s easy to pick out the regulars, who mingle clutching biology textbooks or readily shaking hands.

Many of them pause to greet the diminutive man who is their host: Bill Faloon. Clean-shaven and youthfully slim in a dark suit, with jet-black hair and a formidably bridged nose, he is the church’s founder. Just yesterday, he laid out its gospel to me, saying, “We’re talking about immortality.” His followers, he says, are “people trying to live as long as possible, maybe even forever.”

At 63, Faloon is old enough to remember when such talk labeled you a kook or charlatan. In the late 1970s, he co-founded the Life Extension Foundation, a nonprofit promoting the notion that people don’t need to die—and later started a business to sell them the supplements and lab tests to help make that dream real. Nowadays he also distributes a magazine to 300,000 people nationwide and invites speakers to monthly gatherings at the church, billed as a science-based, nondenominational meeting place where supporters learn about the latest developments in the battle against aging. Their faith is in human technologies that might one day end involuntary death.

After an hour of mixing, we all head to the second-­floor nave and fill the pews for the evening’s event. Several rows back sits a beer scientist. Next to me, two women in dresses and heels. At the front, an elderly gentleman with hearing aids. Tonight’s speaker is Aubrey de Grey, a biomedical gerontologist and chief science officer of SENS Research Foundation, a Mountain View, California, outfit that studies regenerative medicines that might cure diseases associated with old age.

De Grey’s startup reflects the rush of Big Tech money into this arena as the U.S. population ages. Baby boomers are retiring, and the Census Bureau estimates older people will outnumber children by 2035. Google launched Calico in 2013 to solve the challenges of aging and associated illnesses. Two years later, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, started the $3 billion Chan Zuckerberg Science program, whose lofty goals include curing all disease. And Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel invested in Unity Biotechnology, launched in 2016 to develop therapies for age-related ailments.

Today, it’s also easy to locate university-affiliated labs at places such as Harvard and Stanford investigating their own interventions in the process of growing old. Since the National Institutes of Health established its Institute on Aging division in 1974, scientists have dedicated more and more resources to the challenge. Over the past dozen years, the NIA’s budget has doubled to more than $2 billion.

Faloon predates them all. These days, the several ­hundred people who regularly attend events at the church are personal validation for Faloon, who thinks that anyone his age and younger, given the proper physiological tweaking, could live to a healthy age of 130. The hope is that, by then, new solutions will make death truly optional. Yet no amount of self-tinkering can assure him and his followers that day will ever come.

Faloon was 8 years old and living in ­Pittsburgh when his mother told him that dying was a part of life. The concept didn’t sit well with him. “I was determined to find a way to conquer death,” he says.

As a teenager, he became fascinated by the nascent and dubious field of cryonics—freezing the body upon death in hopes that a future technology can reanimate it. After high school, Faloon ­studied mortuary science so he could cryopreserve people. To this day, he is a licensed funeral director and embalmer. In the early ’70s, at age 19, he moved to South Florida and soon fell in with folks equally fascinated by cryonics. At a get-together of local enthusiasts, he met Saul Kent, a fellow believer, and in 1977, the two founded what would eventually become the Life Extension Foundation.

A few years later, the two men formed a business—the Life Extension Buyers Club—to sell supplements. The problem was that they were also helping their members obtain medications that were not approved in the U.S. In 1987, federal agents kicked in their doors, seizing their products. In 1991, the U.S. government indicted them for helping to distribute unapproved drugs and pharmaceuticals without a prescription.

We promoted ways to slow aging that hadn’t made it into the mainstream yet.”

Bill Faloon

“We were promoting all kinds of ways to slow aging that nowadays are recognized but hadn’t made it into the mainstream yet,” Faloon says. For instance, metformin. Approved for prescription in England in 1958 and in Canada in 1972, the drug increases insulin sensitivity, improving the body’s ability to process sugars. This effect on glucose metabolism is the main reason metformin is now commonly used in the U.S. to treat type 2 diabetes, but the Food and Drug Administration didn’t approve it until 1994. Studies since then show that diabetics on the medication generally live longer and appear to get cancer as much as 40 percent less than diabetics on other medications.

Back in the ’80s, Faloon considered what he’d read about metformin enough for him to recommend it to buyers. But science isn’t so quick to repurpose a drug. First, a randomized controlled trial has to show results . This year, one such test, called Targeting Aging with Metformin, or TAME, should get underway. It is the only FDA-sponsored study to look at whether a specific drug can slow aging.

FDA approval is predicated on outcomes. If you want permission to sell a new kind of pharmaceutical for lowering cholesterol, you will first need to show that it decreases a person’s risk of developing heart disease. That it took the regulatory agency this many decades even to consider greenlighting an anti-aging drug speaks to how complex a challenge it is to untangle the process of growing old.

Aging begins at the cellular level. But it took a long time to figure that out. For much of the 20th century, biologists thought that cells were immortal. That changed in the 1960s, when microbiologist Leonard Hayflick discovered that some human cells divide 40 to 60 times before stopping at what we now call the Hayflick Limit. That division is important. It’s what helps your body grow, or repair damage (like after you cut your finger ), or fend off attack (like when your immune system defends against a virus).

Since then, researchers have discovered that even cells that keep dividing age, and they become inefficient at basic functions such as repairing DNA and recycling proteins, lipids, and other key molecules. Unable to ­maintain themselves, they accumulate damage, which impedes their ability to function normally or repair bodily tissues. Think of a car that falls into disrepair until one day, it just won’t start. Our senses diminish, our skin goes slack, our joints creak, our muscles atrophy, and eventually the diseases associated with our older years creep in to finish us off: stroke, Alzheimer’s, pulmonary fibrosis, diabetes, heart disease, cancer.

Faloon was determined to use the Life Extension ­Foundation to search for alternatives. He persisted even while under indictment; the foundation and buyers club remained legally free to market and sell supplements. Federal prosecutors, struggling to find testifying witnesses, ended up dropping all charges by 1996.

In 2013, he and Kent took their mission a step ­further, spending $880,000 to buy a building and open the Church of Perpetual Life. At first attendance was low, but now the venue is regularly packed. The place attracts medical doctors and laypeople alike. For several hours each month, they swap the latest information, take in what visiting researchers have to say, and, afterward, enjoy a catered meal together (January’s menu offered chicken, salmon, and tilapia).

“The idea is to bring people together and talk about a lot of ideas,” says Faloon. “It’s a real attempt to persuade more of the public that dying is not a good thing.”

In 2013, the academic journal Cell published a paper called “The Hallmarks of Aging,” which identified nine factors. Some contribute to the decline of young cells, while ­others play a role in driving the ­pathologies that lead to our demise. The report also highlighted several experimental therapies that have yielded encouraging results so far.

Most of the approaches that are mentioned in the paper fit into particular buckets: drugs that regulate metabolic pathways related to aging; tactics for killing off cells that have hit their division limit; restorative treatments to supply missing stem cells, which divide to repair tissues and organs. Researchers had previously tested all of the remedies in rodents.

“We don’t know for sure that the same tricks we use in laboratory animals will work in people, but probably some of them will,” says Matt Kaeberlein, a pathology professor at the University of Washington Medical Center in Seattle. Metformin and rapamycin are two drugs with promising implications. In mice and rat trials, both ­extended life span. Some of Kaeberlein’s work shows that rapamycin, typically delivered as an immunosuppressant following organ transplants in humans, mimics the effects of caloric restriction. Eating less puts strain on the body, and might alert cells that it’s time to halt division and focus on repair and stress resistance, both of which could contribute to longevity. Rapamycin might create the same effect without requiring you to skip a meal.

Nir Barzilai likes metformin because it is safe. ­Diabetics have used metformin, a modified version of a plant compound, for decades. Barzilai is director of the Institute for Aging Research at New York’s Albert ­Einstein College of Medicine, the lead sponsor of the five-year TAME trial that will soon enroll 3,000 ­participants between ages 65 and 80. He believes that the drug does more to alleviate damage in an aging cell than it does for improving glucose metabolism.

“People with diabetes on metformin have 17 ­percent less mortality than people without diabetes, even though they are more obese and more sick to begin with,” ­Barzilai says of the drug’s effect. “So metformin is really about aging much more than diabetes.”

The Cell paper highlighted other ways to disrupt the aging process. If these units of living matter become inefficient as they age and divide, couldn’t we just replace them? In the case of stem cells, yes.

“What’s the key to being able to turn a 1950 ­Chevrolet into a useful operating tool?” asks surgeon-turned-­biomedical pioneer Bob Hariri. “It’s all about ­replacement parts, right? Look at what happens to people who get stem-cell transplants for bone-marrow reconstitution. If the donor is younger than the recipient, quite often the biology of that recipient improves.”

Hariri is a co-founder of Human Longevity Inc., a ­Silicon Valley venture using supercomputers to search for genes related to human aging. But he’s better known for his research into stem-cell therapies, first as CEO of Celgene Cellular Therapeutics, and now as founder of Celularity, a startup that launched this year. Its plan: Harvest stem cells from human placentas and inject them into older people. Hariri believes the usually frail organ systems of older individuals will improve because they will, in effect, be composed of younger cells.

Another strategy is to try to clear senescent cells—older ones that stop dividing—from the body. Research shows that some of these old-timers produce chemical signals that interfere with the functions of healthy cells. They can also cause symptoms such as inflammation, and help bring on fatal age-associated diseases.

Killing those rogues is a new focus among researchers. A team at the Mayo Clinic’s Kogod Center on Aging recently managed to destroy senescent cells in mice using a new class of medications called senolytic agents. As reported this past summer in Nature Communications, other testing on human cells in culture showed that seno­lytic drugs targeted senescent cells while leaving other types alone. A clinical trial to test the drugs in humans with chronic kidney disease is underway.

“We’ve got approval to start trials, and some are just beginning, but they’re in people who’ve got serious illnesses directly tied to cellular senescence,” says Kogod Center director James Kirkland. He adds that they need to see what happens before moving on to healthier populations.

Across all these potential aging interventions, there is one common denominator, and that is their fallibility. The medical community doesn’t know what slows or reverses the process in humans, let alone what might cause harm. For that reason, Kirkland and his peers caution against the kind of self-experimentation Faloon practices.

“We’re playing with a new treatment paradigm,” Kirkland says of their research. “I’ve been around long enough to know there are going to be unpredictable things that happen as we get into people.”

Faloon believes he faces a bigger risk from waiting than from being his own guinea pig. “I’m afraid that with aging research, some of the people don’t have a sufficient sense of urgency,” he says. He continually incorporates different interventions into his life-extension regimen. He restricts his calories to some 1,200 a day, about half what the average man consumes. He also ingests more than 50 medications daily, including metformin and Life Extension’s own concoctions of nutraceuticals with names like Cell Regenerator and LongevityAI. “Anything that might work, I am doing,” he says.

Most recently, Faloon underwent a series of infusions of NAD+ molecules, which David Sinclair, co-director of the Glenn Center for the Biology of Aging at Harvard Medical School, has called “the closest we’ve gotten to a fountain of youth.” The molecules help regulate cellular aging but diminish over time. In studies, older mice given NAD+ molecule precursors look and act younger.

Because he’s impatient for clinical trials to yield ­conclusive results, Faloon gives about $5 million a year in profits from the buyers club to underwrite medical research. So far, the data from two recent studies on NAD+ and rapamycin that he backed are unpublished. “If we don’t accelerate all these different projects, I’m not going to make it,” Faloon says.

Meddling with nature can carry unforeseen consequences. One strategy to renew old cells might encourage cancer.”

But there’s a reason that science is slow. Most researchers will say that aging, if not an outright mystery, remains a cross between a jigsaw puzzle and an ­aggravating game of Whac-A-Mole. They warn that meddling with nature can carry unforeseen consequences. For instance, one experimental strategy, which deploys the enzyme telomerase to renew old cells, might encourage premalignant cells to turn cancerous.

“People look at aging as something that is very simple,” says Michael Fossel, a former professor of the biology of aging at Grand Valley State University in Michigan. “They pick their favorite parameter, and then they push it. Can we reverse aging in people in clinical trials? Nobody knows yet.”

Most current studies have a more circumscribed ­objective, which is to ameliorate the diseases that occur in our senior years. Take, for example, the TAME trial. According to lead scientist Barzilai, the FDA will ­consider metformin a sufficient anti-aging drug if it can delay ­age-­related diseases for two years.

In other words, radical life extension—the notion of immortality that the Church of Perpetual Life promotes—is not the goal. Pushing back the onset of major maladies so we live a little longer and die a little healthier is. For the Silicon Valley companies and barons of Big Tech assisting this effort, there’s clearly a business imperative. “Anything that extends life and maintains health is the biggest potential business in the history of mankind,” Celularity’s Hariri says. Another researcher, Kris Verburgh, a professor at Silicon ­Valley-based think tank Singularity University, aptly points out in his book The Longevity Code, “If there is one thing ­multimillionaires dislike, it is having to die.”

But aging research can’t promise them—or Bill ­Faloon—​anything. “Gerontology is science, and immortalism is religion,” says rapamycin researcher ­Kaeberlein. “It’s based on the faith that human technology will get to the point where you can actually live forever. But there’s no scientific basis for that at all.”

In science, time outs the truth. For Faloon, time will ­always be the enemy. Undaunted, he keeps cryonics as an insurance policy for himself, his wife, and his two sons. Don’t wait for the mainstream, he tells his followers. Come to church. Celebrate. Rejoice. And live.

This article was originally published in the Summer 2018 Life/Death issue of Popular Science.

Written By Andrew Zaleski

#Science

[nancygduarteus]

Why is Nigeria Experiencing a Record-High Outbreak of Lassa Fever?

In 1969, an American missionary nurse named Laura Wine came down with a troubling fever while working in the Nigerian town of Lassa. The local doctors thought it was probably malaria, but Wine didn’t respond to the usual treatments. She eventually died. Shortly after, two more nurses contracted the same mysterious disease. One also died. The other, Lily Pinneo, was evacuated to Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital, and survived. From her blood, and those of her colleagues, scientists isolated a new virus, which they named after the town where the infections began.

Since then, scientists have learned a lot about Lassa fever, and the virus that causes it. They discovered that it resides within the multimammate mouse and jumps into people who eat food contaminated by the rodent’s waste. They’ve shown that it is common in West Africa, and causes many thousands of cases every year.

But for all that knowledge, no one knows exactly why this disease, which simmers gently in Nigeria from year to year, has recently come to a dramatic boil.

It’s hard to say exactly who has Lassa fever, because early symptoms are generic, and resemble conditions like malaria and typhoid. But according to figures from the Nigerian Centers for Disease Control, laboratory tests have confirmed that in the first two months of 2018, at least 317 people have been infected, and at least 64—around 20 percent—have died. (Eight further deaths are probably linked to Lassa, but haven’t been confirmed.) By contrast, there were just 143 lab-confirmed cases in all of 2017, and just 101 in 2016.

Lassa fever has similarities to Ebola, in that severe infections are accompanied by bleeding from the mouth, nose, and gut. But Lassa is both less contagious and less deadly than its infamous counterpart. Around 80 percent of infected people don’t develop symptoms at all, and those that do experience the usual litany of fever, vomiting, fatigue, and aches. More worryingly, around a quarter of survivors become deaf, although half of those regain some degree of hearing.  

The patients of 2018 aren’t any sicker than normal, says Christian Happi, who directs the infectious diseases lab at Irrua Specialist Teaching Hospital in Nigeria. It’s just that there are more of them. And it’s not clear why.

In addition to jumping from rodents to humans, the Lassa can spread from person to person through infected bodily fluids, though such transmissions are rare and usually limited to health-care workers. So far, there’s no indication that the virus has become more transmissible, or has changed in other important ways. But researchers from the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard will know for sure once they sequence the genes of Lassa samples, which they’ve been collecting for years. “Is it a slightly different strain of the virus? Is it transmitting differently? We’ll have a lot more clarity once we see the genomics of the virus,” says Kayla Barnes.

Another possibility is that the number of Lassa infections isn’t actually going up; it’s just that Nigeria is getting better at spotting them. “When you don’t have the ability to detect the disease, you’re not going to find it,” says Lina Moses, from Tulane University. In recent years, Nigeria has invested money in diagnostic tests that can confirm Lassa infections, and media coverage has raised the profile of the disease. “Clinicians are better at keeping Lassa at the back of their minds, and in ordering the tests,” says Moses. “It’s not at all surprising to me to see an increase in cases. It’s likely a good sign that the health system is improving.”

But Daniel Park, from the Broad Institute, says this can’t be the sole explanation, as there genuinely are more sick people to care for. “There’s a felt difference in the disease burden on the ground,” he says.

Changing climate and Nigeria’s growing population may also be a factor. As agricultural land expands, the mouse that carries Lassa virus is forced out of fields and moves into human homes. Its population also varies with the climate, booming after periods of rain. When the rains end, the rodents’ food supplies dwindle, compelling them to scurry into places human homes in search of a meal. In a simulation of environmental changes, Moses and her colleagues predicted that Lassa spillovers are likely to double by 2070. But “there’s so much about the ecology of Lassa in rodents, and the rodent’s relationship with humans, that we don’t know,” she says.

The fact that Lassa’s animal host is a mouse makes it especially hard to contain. The rodents are common, inconspicuous, comfortable in human settlements, and attracted to the food we eat—all of which increases the odds of a viral spillover. Also, “people enjoy eating them,” says Happi. “They’re the major sources of protein for some communities. If you tell them not to eat these rats, what are you going to give them instead?”

Lassa fever’s mildness, and its long incubation time of one to three weeks, also means that it travels easily. “People few bad for a few days, not horrible, so they’re more likely to get on a plane,” says Moses. For that reason, Lassa is one of the most commonly exported viral hemorrhagic fevers. It has made its way to the United States on six recorded occasions, the latest in 2015. Fortunately, unlike Ebola, Lassa doesn’t spread easily from person to person, so its ability to cause a full-blown pandemic is limited.  

Still, it is not a problem to be taken lightly. It can be treated with an antiviral drug called ribavirin, but that needs to be given during the first week of infection. It also comes with several side effects. “It’s a fairly harsh therapy,” says Barnes. “It’s not a super effective treatment, but there’s nothing else. There’s been a recent push in the scientific community to develop a better drug.” Researchers are also trying to develop a vaccine. In 2017, various governments and nonprofits created the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI)—a global fund to accelerate the development of vaccines against important infectious threats. They picked three initial diseases to target, and Lassa was one of them.

In Nigeria, investments from the U.S. and other wealthy nations have already been crucial in transforming a few hospitals into centers where Lassa can be accurately diagnosed. That allows doctors and nurses to take the right precautions, minimizing the already small risk of contracting the virus from their patients. Happi’s hospital in Irrua “used to lose at least five medical practitioners a year to Lassa,” he says. “Now, it hasn’t lost anyone to Lassa in 10 years, because we diagnose and treat them. That shows how foreign investment can change health. A small hospital in a rural community can become a center of excellence for treating and diagnosing Lassa fever, in a country of almost 200 million people.”

Still, the Irrua hospital is just one of three facilities in the country that can diagnose Lassa, and it is currently facing a shortage of personal protective equipment, like face masks and goggles. Nigeria suffers from the same cycle of panic and neglect that stops most countries from fully preparing for epidemic. “It seems to me that after each outbreak, people go to sleep,” says Happi. “And then we go back to this whole process of screaming and shouting.”

from Health News And Updates https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2018/02/nigeria-lassa-fever-outbreak-emerging-diseases/554528/?utm_source=feed

[lovingcheesecakestudent-lov-blog]

First Study Seeks To Deal With Sugar Addiction Like Drug Addictions.

The white stuff may be the most typical and primary addiction-- a cycle that begins with a stressed brain, triggering more unhealthy eating. Get some sugar-free gum from the shops and try to chew on them whenever you get the yearnings. In addition, the all-natural sweetener Stevia has absolutely no calories, does not raise blood glucose levels, and is 300 times sweeter than sugar. Although I started with just 20-minute sessions, I turned on Netflix and pedaled away. These folks will have more of a propensity to binge beverage and/or usage drugs to feel excellent since their brain isn't really supplying them with the proper levels of neurotransmitters they require for a balanced state of mind. Sugar is connected to a huge series of health issue, and the scientific proof has become far too strong to ignore. Sign Up With Allison Lesko, RD LD at November's Cooler Chat and find out how to identify your sugar triggers, indications of sugar dependence, the distinction between extra sugar and natural sugars, results of sugar on the body and ways to fight sugar addiction.

WebMD does not provide medical recommendations, medical diagnosis or treatment. Your body digests basic carbohydrates rapidly, which launches big quantities of glucose into your blood stream. For the last 3 weeks I have actually been drinking homemade flavored water (mix slices of ginger, lemon, a dash of cinnamon and in some cases mint leaves or apple slices). By cutting down on the sugar in your diet plan and by selecting carbohydrates that are high in fiber and nutrients, you can keep your insulin levels under control, get off the sugar high/sugar crash roller coaster, and stop saving a lot fat! It's typically prepackaged, quickly and hassle-free, and looks tasty, however it takes us far from great foods. If you can't slim down despite your best efforts, you might have weight loss resistance, when a metabolic imbalance obstructs the weight loss process. This works for me, but perhaps preparing an ice cream outing two times a cookie or a week splurge on Friday afternoons may work for you. Therefore, we developed an animal model to investigate why some people have trouble moderating their consumption of palatable foods, such as sweet drinks. However sugars are hiding in bread, milk, tomato sauce, beverages, and pasta too! Even with these health threats and continuing public health efforts to lower sugar intake, many individuals continue to eat more sugar than is recommended. Since then, I have actually gradually made modifications to my diet - ones that I understood I might sustain for the long-term. He thought he was doing whatever right with diet and workout, however then he suffered a cardiovascular disease simply over five years back. Mice naturally like sucrose-- just like humans loving sugar-rich sodas-- so Nieh trained mice to seek out sucrose at a delivery port upon hearing and seeing a hint. My palate isn't discriminating either, it enjoys genuine sugar and fake sugar, you name it, anything sweet will do. The gravity of my addiction came last year when I ordered my coffee at Dunkin Donuts with five Splenda. Heller and Heller structure on this science suggested that the carbohydrate addicts" might consist of one meal a day with as much of their prior binge foods as they desired. Eating genuine meals-- ones that are well-rounded with a mix of lean protein, healthy fats, and fiber-rich carbs-- makes all the distinction in managing my sweet tooth. Below is the records of my video about how to reduce sugar cravings, along with supplemental info on kicking your sugar addiction. And it's true that the healthy fats make you feel pleased. According to the National Institute on Substance abuse, numerous drugs disrupt this process, entirely rushing the brain's typical interaction systems. However, there was one third of the participants who abstained (another 46% were moving toward abstinence) and over half who stopped experiencing fascination. Although there is no fool-proof test you can require to provide you a definite response, there are a few tell-tale indications that decreasing sugar may help. Beating sugar addiction is a matter of discovering how to prepare and eat knowingly rather of reactively, and re-training yourself to be more mindful of why you eat, exactly what you consume and how much you eat.Sugar simply cannot be a staple of your plan if your diet plan prepares to slim down.

Spanagel R, Herz A, Shippenberg TS. The results of opioid peptides on dopamine release in the nucleus accumbens: an in vivo microdialysis study. Simply put, the important 'addicting' quality of sugar might be restricted to its sweetness, dietary worth, or some combination of the two. Here's what to do: Just sip 2 oz. of your preferred probiotic liquid, like CocoBiotic or InnergyBiotic, at any time a yearning hits. Colantuoni C, Rada P, McCarthy J et al (2002) Evidence that intermittent, extreme sugar consumption triggers endogenous opioid reliance. Mark GP, Rada P, Pothos E, Hoebel BG. Results of feeding and drinking on acetylcholine release in the nucleus accumbens, striatum, and hippocampus of freely behaving rats. Our children learn about life, love and yes, even food, from us, the moms and dads. OFC neuronal activity was taped while rats performed each of these 2 actions separately or while they selected in between ... Program full abstract. Abdelnaby illustrates that the factor behind why some individuals love sugary foods while others do not is just how much sugar they are accustomed to consuming. Some, which reset the social default mechanisms to prefer healthy eating over food addiction, can just be enacted by regional, state and/or federal government. A stylish sugar detox diet guarantees to end your craving for sugary foods and help you drop weight. The 2nd is to take a look at the significance of the periodic sugar gain access to schedule used in animal designs to the development of eating conditions (and possibly even a form of FA) in humans. We stress ourselves, work long hours being in head-heavy jobs, which require us to be alert, productive and innovative at all times. Therefore we see a whole system describing food dependency concentrating on changes in the biochemistry of the brain's satisfaction center, most specifically in the dopamine 2 receptor locations of the brain. Schulte et al. 5 argue that processing of raw foods increases the foods' 'effectiveness', or the absorption of the potential 'addictive representatives' (e.g. fat, sugar, salt) into the blood stream, as indexed by spikes in blood glucose levels following usage. To make blending the oils much easier for me every day, I bought an eye dropper bottle at Whole Foods and put the coconut oil in it. Drops and increases in insulin make us yearn for more sweets, and ultimately this can result in the severe condition of insulin resistance or diabetes. S. Sen, B. K. Kundu, H. C.-J. Wu, S. S. Hashmi, P. Guthrie, L. W. Locke, R. J. Roy, G. P. Matherne, S. S. Berr, M. Terwelp, B. Scott, S. Carranza, H. Frazier, D. K. Glover, W. H. Dillmann, M. J. how to end sugar addiction Gambello, M. L. Entman, H. Taegtmeyer. Lastly understand carbohydrates, protein, and fat with an easy nutrition system for weight-loss and healthy eating, including what to pick and what to stay away from. Keep in mind to seek out an expert familiar with WLS and/or eating/body image issues, if there is one readily available in your location. Consider taking at least 15 billion active germs daily. Lu L, Grimm JW, Hope BT, Shaham Y. Incubation of cocaine yearning after withdrawal: an evaluation of preclinical data. This is an extremely simple rule of thumb, and it truly works. A lot of everyone consumes more than the day-to-day advised quantity of sugar, however they may not recognize it. If you are among the countless people worldwide with excessive sugar in your diet plan, Beating Sugar Addiction For Dummies offers you with a safe and healthy method to eliminate these harmful sugars and conquer your addiction-- and change your life for the better!