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longliverockback · 9 months

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Ian Anderson Rupi's Dance 2003 Roadrunner ————————————————— Tracks: 01. Calliandra Shade (the Cappuccino Song) 02. Rupi's Dance 03. Lost in Crowds 04. A Raft of Penguins 05. A Week of Moments 06. A Hand of Thumbs 07. Eurology 08. Old Black Cat 09. Photo Shop 10. Pigeon Flying over Berlin Zoo 11. Griminelli's Lament 12. Not Ralitsa Vassileva 13. Two Short Planks 14. Birthday Card at Christmas 15. The Stormont Shuffle —————————————————

Ian Anderson

Laszlo Bencker

James Duncan

Andrew Giddings

David Goodier

John O'Hara

George Kopecsni

Leslie Mandoki

Ossi Schaller

* Long Live Rock Archive

#IanAnderson #Ian Anderson #Laszlo Bencker #James Duncan #Andrew Giddings #David Goodier #John O'Hara #George Kopecsni #Leslie Mandoki #Ossi Schaller #Rupi's Dance #LP #Folk #2003

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mitigatingchaos · 9 months

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Tull Tuesday #29

From the 1991 album, Catfish Rising. A lament about the life of a traveling musician and the first album featuring Andrew Giddings on keyboards. Performed in 2008.

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#Andrew Giddings #Catfish rising #Jethro Tull #Rocks on the road #Tull Tuesday #Youtube

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giveamadeuschohisownmovie · 3 months

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guys-in-distress-database · 1 year

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Entry #458: Knock at the Cabin

Media: film (live action)

Character(s): Andrew, Eric

Type of restraints: tied up

Location: throughout most of the first half of the film

Now, I haven’t actually seen this, so take the timing with a grain of salt. The research I’ve done seems to indicate that the bondage scene is mostly in the first half of the film.

The plot of this movie revolves around a couple being taken prisoner by some cultists who have seen visions of the end of the world. The two men spend most of the first half of the film tied to chairs, with extended shots of their bound hands and some struggling. Always love when a film’s plot explicitly revolves around the bondage.

#knock at the cabin #andrew #eric #tied up #film #live action #gid

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religion-is-a-mental-illness · 2 months

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By: Andrew Doyle

Published: Apr 10, 2024

The review into paediatric gender treatment by Dr Hilary Cass has finally been published. Its conclusions should herald the end of “gender-affirming” care in the United Kingdom, and its impact is likely to reverberate around the world.

The review has shown that 89% of girls and 81% of boys referred to GIDS (Gender Identity Development Service) were either homosexual or bisexual. The NHS has been practising gay conversion therapy in plain sight, and this has happened because politicians have been too ignorant or too afraid to do anything about it.

Cass has explicitly noted how fear of standing up to ideologues has resulted in a situation in which “attempts to improve the evidence base have been thwarted by a lack of cooperation from the adult gender services”. We have long suspected that the “gender-affirming” model of healthcare has persisted because its critics were too intimidated to speak out. This has been confirmed by Cass’s final report.

The report finds that vulnerable young people who should have been supported with therapeutic treatment were fast-tracked onto lifelong medicalisation. The risks of puberty blockers are now clear, and Cass notes that there is no evidence to justify them. Most crucially, we now know that the common assertion that puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones reduce the risk of suicide is completely false.

Cass refers to the influence on the NHS of the World Professional Association of Transgender Healthcare (WPATH), and how its guidelines have been found “to lack developmental rigour”. The recent revelations of the “WPATH files”, internal messages and videos from the organisation, have shown that leading practitioners were aware that children could not give “informed consent” to the treatments they were prescribing. In addition, they were also aware that gay or bisexual youth and those with mental health and autistic conditions were disproportionately affected. More details about the WPATH files can be read here.

Given the significance of WPATH’s influence, now confirmed by the Cass Review, it is remarkable that the BBC has yet to report on the WPATH files. Like the NHS, the BBC has been promoting gender identity ideology as though it were uncontested fact. In the light of the Cass Review, surely an investigation into the ideological capture of the BBC should be initiated.

School policy is beyond the remit of the report, but Cass notes that “social transitioning” – that is, adopting preferred names and pronouns – can increase the chances of a child proceeding on a “medical pathway”. It would be prudent for the Department for Education to bear this in mind when drafting future guidelines.

Cass offers an important recommendation for patients aged between 17 and 25. At present. young people who turn 17 are treated as adults and can be prescribed cross-sex hormones without parental consent. Given that the human brain is not fully developed until the age of 25, the risks here are obvious. Cass had recommended that “NHS England should establish follow-through services for 17-25-year-olds at each of the Regional Centres, either by extending the range of the regional children and young people’s service or through linked services, to ensure continuity of care and support at a potentially vulnerable stage in their journey.”

In light of the Cass Review, we now need an urgent investigation into how ideological zealots were able to dominate the NHS and branches of government to the detriment of children. Those charities who once supported gay rights – most notably Stonewall – have been complicit in this scandal which has mostly harmed gay youth. Any government departments and quangos still associated with Stonewall should sever all ties immediately.

Both the Conservatives and the Labour Party ought to ditch their commitment to a ban on “trans conversion therapy” and recognise that this will effectively stymie the therapeutic efforts of medical practitioners to support gender nonconforming children. The proposed ban on “trans conversion therapy” is tantamount to a new form of gay conversion therapy. You can read my thoughts on this subject here.

Above all, there now needs to be a concerted cross-party effort in parliament to identify those responsible for harming so many children and to hold them accountable for their negligence. The NHS should never have been in the business of practising pseudoscientific methods at the behest of activists, and we must ensure that this never happens again.

Download the Cass Review here.

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Even the BBC hasn't been able to just ignore this.

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gamesception · 4 months

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Sception Reads Cass Cain #34

Robin (1993) #88 - May 2001 Story: Chuck Dixon & Scott Beatty Pencils: Pete Woods, Ink: Andrew Pepoy Letters: Willie Schubert, Colors: Noelle Giddings

Guest appearance again this week. A bit more of a notable one because as far as I know this is officially the first time Cass Cain and Stephanie Brown meet. Kind of more significant in retrospect than in the moment, as they don't exactly hit it off right away, but still.

So the basic setup is that Bruce has decided Stephanie isn't going to just go away and stop doing Spoiler stuff so he might as well take her on officially and train her, a decision spurred on by Tim working more and more on his own & not answering Bruce's calls. When Tim disappeared from the country completely without telling Bruce where he went Bruce turned to Stephanie to check up on him, in the process telling Steph Tim's secret identity, which iirc (my Robin knowledge is limited, I could have this wrong) previously Tim had used as the reason they couldn't be in a relationship. Like "I can't date you, you don't even know who I am, and I can't tell you that even though I want to because it might give away Batman's identity, which isn't my secret to share. Also my life is super dangerous, and Batman doesn't think you're ready, and as much as I like you I have to respect his professional opinion on this"

On the one hand it's dicky of Bruce to not respect Tim's privacy the way Tim respected his, but on the other hand Tim blowing up about it kind of implies that all those things he told steph were excuses, and the real reason he didn't want to date her was that he just wasn't that into her. Or maybe he was, but got mad at her for getting pregnant by someone else after he rejected her and now doesn't want to date her because of that? Did that happen already, or after this? Again, I don't know the details of Robin Lore, but reading just this issue and the previous one for background, Tim is absolutely the one who comes off as worse here between him and Bruce.

So anyway that's what's going on. Cass shows up in all of this when Bruce takes Stephanie to one of his training caves and has Cass demonstrate a training routine that Steph is struggling with.

Which, yeah, I guess this is pretty badass or whatever,

But if this were a real life situation, Cass would have just decapitated like seven dudes. 100% fatality rate for the criminal dummies. You'd think Bruce would be a little less glowing in his praise over that, considering how much of his shitty behavior towards Cass started when he found out she might have (definitely did, but denial is a powerful drug) killed somebody.

Cass gives Steph the cold shoulder. Giving Dixon & Beatty the benefit of the doubt for a moment, this does fit very much into the recent evolution of Cass's character, becoming harder and harsher as she gets more isolated. She also may be picking up on and echoing Batman's lowish opinion of Stephanie as a vigilante / person, even if it has softened enough for the moment that he's willing to train her.

And it sets up for future interactions where Stephanie basically puts in the work to break through Cass's walls, despite her initial frosty attitude, to become the friend Cass needed when when she didn't have any others. The whole arc is honestly pretty touching and really speaks to Stephanie's character, and it isn't possible without this initial attitude from Cass.

....

On the other hand, this plays into an obnoxious trend of the entire bat family being written as incredibly rude and dickish towards Stephanie, in ways that very often feel completely out of character. Even (especially) Tim, her supposed love interest. Even Alfred!

Yes, calling Alfred 'the Butler' is rude, but Alfred was uncharacteristically rude and dismissive to her first in this scene.

And since it so often feels out of character, you get the impression that the people who actually hate Stephanie aren't the characters themselves, but rather the writers and editors at DC. That is eventually undeniably the case, once DiDio is in charge and War Games is happening.

But that's still 3 years away! I had to check, because the way the narrative is treating Stephanie right now, the way all the characters we're supposed to think are in the right here are treating her (Alfred, Tim, not Bruce), feels very much like the build up to War Games, with Stephanie finally getting a chance to shine and getting some respect from bruce, but with the overall narrative implying that's a bad thing somehow and that she isn't worthy, that despite all her work and earnest commitment she's somehow only coasting on hubris and setting herself up fro a fall, one that we as the audience are supposed to find, like, cathartic, or maybe at best tragic but in a cosmically justified sense that she brought on herself.

And it all kind of sucks, because no, she really doesn't deserve any of it. Or rather she hasn't been written to deserve any of it. The differences between her and Bruce's other sundry teen sidekicks and hangers on have overwhelmingly been in how others have been written as treating her, not the things she's been written as doing or in her personality or whatever.

I guess that's a free writer tip for you. If you want the reader to not like a character, write that character as doing or saying or thinking unlikable things, or acting for distasteful motives. Or give that character things they don't deserve or appreciate without having to work for them. Don't make them sweet and put-upon and have them try hard to do the right thing despite coming from a bad place and struggle to earn respect that others get for free only to have it denied to them anyway and then have all your main characters shit on them constantly for no reason or even explicitly for doing things that they all do and get rewarded for.

If you do all that, your readers will end up identifying with the character you want them to dislike and disliking the characters you want them to identify with.

EDIT: oh, I almost forgot, we do get this one cute 'proud papa' moment from Bruce:

Always nice to see those, especially amid all the less positive stuff going on with him and Cass right now.

#cassandra cain #batgirl #stephanie brown #spoiler #sception reads cassandra cain

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drrutherford · 1 month

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❖ Timeline ❖

April 16th 1984 — Born to Natan & Mikaela Weiss, of Israeli and Irish origin, respectively. Both parents are doctors, living in Yeovil (Somerset) UK, and raise their son with warmth and stability in a happy home.

1990 — Parents die in a car crash when he’s 6 years old. Grief-stricken and unable to cope, his aunt abandons him in a London orphanage where he meets wee lil Damon (@damon-rutherford), who’s only 4. Takes him under his wing, and a few months later they get adopted by Andrew and Cerys Rutherford.

1994 — Cerys falls ill and dies, the boys ( aged 10 & 8) are broken-hearted. Lara (@lararutherford), who’d been adopted before that, is still too baby to remember much of it. Andrew uproots the family (+ Adriana @amaroadriana who’s basically a foster sister at this point + her mother, who continues on as the family’s nanny) to Porto Velho in America. Connie (@constance-rutherford) enters the picture shortly (contentiously so) thereafter, and Yvonne (@yvonne-rutherford) is born.

1997/8 — Aged 13/14, discovers the truth about Andrew’s line of work. Fractures his relationship with his father and Johnathan (@johnathan-parsons), who was something of an uncle figure to him. Partially motivated by this event, partially by his dislike of PV, he sets his sights on Med School in Oxford, to get as far away from his father, and follow in the footsteps of his biological parents before him.

2002 — Graduates highschool at 18, accepted into Oxford University’s School of Medicine, moves back to England.

2002-2008 — Med school days, these years give rise to Team Posh, giving rise to his long-standing friendships with people like Spencer @spencerberkeley, Harrison (☠️), and Cassandra @cassandra-acton, among others. Also meets his first steady girlfriend, before moving on to Diana (@diana-sehgal), and then Mila (@milaxkorshunova) during these years no more dates bc fuck that i’m confused.

2009 — Some time after graduating med school, he (aged 25) heads to the US to start his long-ass surgical residency. This is followed by an amicable, mutual decision to split with then-girlfriend, Mila, due to the pressures of being long-distance, and some meddling by her v. Russian father.

2011 — On one of many sporadic visits back to the UK, Damon introduces him to publicly adored British actress Katherine Mayfair, and a whirlwind romance ensues, devotedly followed by the press.

2014 — Marries Katherine (aged 30), partway through residency, prompting a transfer back to England to complete his surgical training in London. Despite indulging a hidden drug habit, Katherine promises to stay clean.

2017 — After three years’ worth of a struggling marriage and multiple lies, the dam finally breaks when he finds out that Katherine’s still using drugs while pregnant with their child. This is the same year as he completes his surgical residency and becomes a fully licensed neurosurgeon/consultant (aged 33).

2018 — As soon as his son is born (June 6), Gideon (aged 34) files for divorce. Katherine punishes him in the worst way possible for this decision, and paints him as a cheating scumbag to the media to cover up her own infidelities and continued drug use. This poisons the public’s opinion against him and a bitter custody battle ensues. Easily the worst year of his life, the results of which have lingered through the ensuing years.

Some time in between idk bear w me ok — Befriends his apartment neighbour, Elene Dadiani. The lines blur between friendship and something more, but before it can flourish she’s gunned down outside the apartment one horrible night. The event scars him and puts him off the prospect of romance for a few more years. Also there are many attacks on his family in between and mob life is pervasive as shit and the Ruthas are constant drama rip, but y’all know this already

2024 (Present day) — Gid is 39 going on 40, and still goin’ thru it. Felix is 5 going on 6, and goin’ thru it somewhat less. He is currently in a bid to launch another appeal against his ex for full custody of their child.

#damn i started this draft so many eons ago it's still the old tumblr formatting #that's whack #anyway... long overdue #timeline #i will be updating this as i go along and reblogging #also... for any in-game charas mentioned above - if i got any of the dates or headcanons wrong pls dm me and i'll happily edit!#Also for the sleuths who’ve been here long enough to detect it his bday’s jumped around a bit over time but sticking with the og #which also fits bc... ARIES... RAM... STUBBORN AF #anyway maybe i'll add this as a page on his nav one day #WIP #about

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batgirlarchive · 1 year

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Robin #120 - Jon Lewis (w), Pete Woods, Andrew Pepoy, Noelle Giddings (a)

#batgirl #barbara gordon #babsgirl #dc comics #panels

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motherofkittens94 · 1 year

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23 Books in 2023

I was tagged by @readingaway

i have a bunch of book i want to read this year im already behind a bit but im gonna do it here is some

hare house sally hinchcliffe

daughters of izdihar hadeer elsbai

Shield maiden sharon emmerichs

meet me in another life catriona silvey

station eleven emily st john mendel

The shards bret easten ellis

spare prince harry

unwell woman elinor cleghorn

testimony mark hardbourn

the three body problem cixin liu

the women could fly megan giddings

Agatha christie lucy worsley

midnights children salman rushdie

the Parisian isabella hammod

wild and true relation kim sherwood

house of ghosts w c ryan

the mermaid and mrs hancock

the confessions of frannie langton sara collins

babel r f kaung

ithaca claire north

the long way to a small angry planet becky chambers

the marriage portrait maggie o farrell

what can you see from here marianna leky

tagging @mrs-storm-andrews @saltwaterwoods @lyledebeast @duchess-of-tales @softironman

if you like to :)

#yes my house is overflowing with books #books #personal stuff #bethans pals #shut up behan

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therealcrimediary · 2 months

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Price: [price_with_discount] (as of [price_update_date] - Details) [ad_1] 36 Disturbing True Crime Stories of Murder and Deception Readers Love This Series - Over 7,000 Five-Star Ratings on Amazon & Goodreads Three Book Collection: Volumes 7, 8, and 9 of the True Crime Case Histories Series (2022) *** This series can be read in any order ***If you’re a fan of true crime, you’re undoubtedly familiar with the big-name cases: Ted Bundy, BTK, David Berkowitz, Christopher Watts, Diane Downs, Casey Anthony, Jeffrey Dahmer, Jodi Arias, Ed Gein, etc. The list of well-known, notorious cases throughout history is seemingly endless. Books, websites, podcasts, streaming television series, and magazines are filled with their abhorrent tales of mayhem. They’re some of the most foul killers the world has ever known. In my books, I do my best to find stories you may not have heard of. To do this, I count on my readers to send me stories that may have gone forgotten and aren't found all over the internet. Inside, you'll find 36 True Crime stories from the 100 years. Many of which you may never have heard of. You'll read the story of five-year-old Stephanie Hebert, who walked only three houses down her quiet suburban sidewalk and disappeared forever. Her case went cold for forty years before other children from her neighborhood came forward in their adulthood with information leading to the killer. There’s the story of the sadistic mother who viewed her children only as the spawn of their demon father, torturing them for their entire short lives. You’ll also read of the deranged husband and wife team who started their own cult and made it their life’s mission to rid the world of witches. Another story tells the disheartening tale of a toddler’s skeleton found in a suitcase on the side of the road. Motorcyclists discovered her mother’s skeleton more than 600 miles away. Five years had passed, with no one even realizing they were missing. There’s also the heartbreaking story of a single mom, drowning in debt, who did the unthinkable for insurance money. Many of the stories in this book feature women killers, three of whom took the time to meticulously dismember their victims—a task that can take great strength. Another woman manipulated her two teenage boys into killing for her. Plus many more disturbing stories. The stories in this volume are shocking and exhibit human behavior at its absolute worst. Pure evil. However, these things really happen in the world. We may never understand what goes on in a killer’s mind, but at least we can be better informed. Included in this volume: Stephen McDaniel, Lauren Giddings, Leonard Tyburksi, Dorothy Tyburksi, Cheryl Knuckle, Greg Rowe, Ellen Boehm, Bevan Spencer von Einem, Alan Barnes, Neil Muir, Peter Stogneff, Richard Kelvin, Omaima Nelson, Betty Freiberg, Kimberly Hricko, Steven Hricko, Hilma Marie Witte, Sky McDonough, Leanna Walker, Carol Carlson, Daniel Carlson, Gerard John Schaefer, Evans Ganthier, Rebecca Koster, Gary Vintner, Mikhail Drachev, Chris Andrews, Dennis Tsoukanov, Sean Southland, Konstantin Simberg, Jason Massey, Brian King, Christina Benjamin, Sheila Keen, Debbie Warren, Michael Warren, Marlene Ahrens, Charles Albright, Travis Lewis, Martha McKay, Grant Amato, Cody Amato, Chad Amato, Margaret Amato, Robert Willy Pickton, Marty Dill, Heather Teague, Joe Ball, Jared Chance, Ashley Young, Theresa Knorr, Robert Knorr, William Knorr, Jason Vendrick Franklin, Stephanie Hebert, John Joubert, Danny Jo Eberle, Christopher Walden, Ricky Stetson, Anna Maria Cardona, Lazaro Figueroa, Charles Schmid, Jeremy Gipson, Jessica Thornsberry, Justina Morley, Domenic Coia, Nicholas Coia, Eddie Batzig, Jason Sweeney, Angela Stoltd, Jimmy Sheaffer, Vincent Tabak, Joanna Yeates, Edmund Arne Matthews, Lisa Ann Mather, Daniel Holdom, Karlie Pearce-Stevenson, Khandalyce Pearce-Stevenson, James Carson, Michael Bear, Suzan Bear, Susan Barnes Carson From the Publisher

Publisher ‏ : ‎ iDigital Group (June 20, 2022) Language ‏ : ‎ English Paperback ‏ : ‎ 418 pages ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1956566295 ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1956566291 Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.47 pounds Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 1.05 x 9 inches [ad_2]

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mitigatingchaos · 1 year

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Tull Tuesday #9 (Happy Birthday, JS Bach)

By nothing more than a stroke of luck, I am able to combine a “Tull Tuesday” along with a birthday tribute to J.S. Bach, who had he still been alive, would turn 338 years old today. Bourrée (aka The 5th Movement from the Suite in E Minor for the lute, BWV 996) has been a Jethro Tull concert staple for decades. This version features a 28-second bass solo by Jonathan Noyce, along with a fun…

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#Andrew Giddings #Bourree #Jethro Tull #Jonathan Noyce #JS Bach #Tull Tuesday #Youtube

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keynewssuriname · 2 months

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AWJ lanceert binnenkort digitale gids voor de jeugd

Het ministerie van Arbeid, Werkgelegenheid & Jeugdzaken (AWJ) zal binnenkort de applicatie ‘Gids Positieverbetering voor de Surinaamse Jeugd’ (GPS Jeugd) lanceren. Het gaat om een digitale gids, waarbij nuttige informatie snel te vinden zal zijn. De applicatie zal informatie verschaffen over de diverse mogelijkheden op het vlak van: educatie, vorming, vrijetijdsbesteding, bescherming en gezondheid. De beschikbare informatie moet bijdragen aan het bekend raken met jeugdactiviteiten, scholing, vorming, hulp & dienstverlening. Deze applicatie moet worden gezien in het kader van het streven van het ministerie naar jeugdontwikkeling. De applicatie is gebouwd door Datasur in opdracht van het ministerie. De demo van de digitale gids werd op maandag 11 maart 2024 door Datasur en het onderdirectoraat Jeugdzaken, gegeven aan minister Steven Mac Andrew en de directie van Jeugdzaken. De bewindsman bleek na de presentatie tevreden te zijn met de applicatie. Hij heeft een beroep gedaan op de app-ontwerper om het gebruik van de app zo eenvoudig, aantrekkelijk en gebruiksvriendelijk te houden. De app kan volgens hem vanwege de beschikbaarheid van verschillende data op een centrale plek een positieve invloed hebben op deelname van jongeren in hun eigen ontwikkelingsproces. De bewindsman benadrukte het efficiënt gebruik van de app door zowel de providers als de doelgroep. Tegen deze achtergrond heeft hij zijn directie gevraagd om erop toe te zien dat zowel particuliere organisaties als overheidsinstanties, de nodige informatie ter beschikking stellen waardoor de app volledig tot zijn recht kan komen. Het project is geïnitieerd door het onderdirectoraat Jeugdcentra dat belast is met de coördinatie hiervan. De medewerkers die verantwoordelijk zullen zijn voor het beheer van deze applicatie, zullen de komende week worden getraind door Datasur. De app zal voor gebruikers kosteloos via Google Play (Android) en App store (IOS) te downloaden zijn. Read the full article

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howdoifixme · 4 months

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Give this album a listen: Divinities: Twelve Dances With God

#Spotify

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theblotsays · 8 months

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Dungby & Pooba Glowy Edition Soft Vinyl Figure Set by Andrew Bell

Andrew Bell is finally releasing a new colorway of his adorable Dungby and Pooba soft vinyl figure set, the Glowy Edition! When the lights go down this glow in the dark soft vinyl figure set gives off some serious shine. Dungby is 2” flat or 2.5” standing, while Pooba stands about 3” tall – so together they are 5.5” of poop-powered friendship! The Dungby and Pooba Glowy Edition Soft Vinyl Figure Set by Andrew Bell is cast in GID soft vinyl and features black hand painted details. Limited to just 50 sets, the Glow Edition comes bagged with a colorway specific header card. This set can be purchased now at shop.deadzebra.com for $65. http://dlvr.it/SxMfDD

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religion-is-a-mental-illness · 2 months

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By: Andrew Doyle

Published: Apr 8, 2024

One of my shortest-lived jobs was as a teacher at a school for girls near Sloane Square in London. I resigned after just two weeks because the headmistress was a religious zealot who had objected to me teaching a text which featured a gay character. In my resignation letter, I explained that I wasn’t prepared to work at a school which fostered such antediluvian attitudes. I stayed on to finish the term, but was delighted when I eventually made my escape.

I had previously worked at a boys’ school, and I soon noticed that there were some broad differences that manifested in an all-female environment. One of the most concerning was that many of the girls were engaged in what can only be described as competitive starvation. During lunch duties, I was warned to keep an eye out for pupils who had taken just a single lettuce leaf from the salad bar. If I saw any girl doing so, I was told I must immediately intercept her and demand that she return and fill her plate.

My first teaching post had been at a co-ed school in which cutting one’s own skin was the fashion. We even had a visiting expert telling us how to encourage these pupils to hold ice cubes in their hands until they felt shooting pains as a substitute for the razor. I remember at the time thinking that this wasn’t the best advice, but I was too green to raise an objection. Besides, this speaker had spent a considerable part of the session reminiscing about a shepherd she had once counselled who had, over the course of many months on the hillside, used a sharp wire to whittle his penis so that it eventually became forked. To this day, I am none the wiser as to the purpose of this anecdote.

But the shift from cutting to starvation was striking. At the former school, pupils were not refraining from food, and at the latter there were very few who were injuring themselves with blades. It was almost as though only one form of self-harm could predominate at any given time. And when a small group started doing it, the trend spread with remarkable rapidity. I hadn’t seen an equivalent back when I was teaching boys.

I have since learned that social contagions are especially common among teenage girls, and that there are numerous historical precedents for this. I have written elsewhere about the Salem witch trials of 1692-93, in which a group of girls began seeing demons in the shadows and accusing members of their own community of being in league with the Devil. Then there were the various “dancing plagues” of the middle ages which seemed to impact young women in particular. In 1892, girls at a school in Germany began to involuntarily shake their hands whenever they performed writing exercises. And when I visited Sweden last year, I was told about a local village where, during the medieval period, the girls all inexplicably began to limp.

It's perfectly clear that the latest social contagion to take hold in the western world is that of girls identifying out of their femaleness, either through claims that they are trans or non-binary. Whereas in 2012, there were only 250 referrals (mostly boys) to the NHS’s Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS), by 2021 the figure had risen to more than 5,000 (mostly female) patients. Gender activists like to claim that this is simply the consequence of more people “coming out” as society becomes more tolerant, and at the same time insist that it has never been a worse time to be trans. Consistency is not their strong suit.

Of course there are no easy answers as to the explosion of this latest fad, but surely the proliferation of social media has something to do with it. Platforms such as TikTok are replete with activists explaining to teenagers that their feelings of confusion are probably evidence that they have been “born in the wrong body”. For pubescent girls who are uncomfortable with their physiological changes, as well as sudden unwanted male sexual attention, the prospect of identifying out of womanhood makes complete sense. These online pedlars have some snake-oil to sell. And while a limping epidemic in a medieval village would be unlikely to spread very far, social contagions cannot be so confined in the digital age.

Much of this is reminiscent of the recovered memory hysteria of the late twentieth-century, when therapist cranks promoted the idea that most victims of sexual abuse had repressed their traumatic memories from childhood. It led to numerous cases of people imagining that they had been abused by parents and other family members, and many lives were ruined as a result. One of the key texts in this movement was The Courage to Heal (1988) by Ellen Bass and Laura Davis, which made the astonishing and unevidenced claim that “if you are unable to remember any specific instances… but still have a feeling that something abusive happened to you, it probably did”.

A common feature of social contagions is that they depend upon the elevation of intuition over material reality. Just as innocent family members were accused of sexual abuse because of “feelings” teased out by unscrupulous therapists, many girls are now being urged by online influencers to trust the evidence of their emotions and accept a misalignment between their body and their gendered soul. We are not talking here about the handful of children who suffer from gender dysphoria, but rather healthy children who have been swept up in a temporary craze.

Activists have been quick to demonise the entire notion of “social contagion” as a “transphobic talking point”, but the evidence for it is now indisputable. The review into paediatric gender treatment by Dame Hilary Cass is due to be published this Wednesday, and is likely to include recommendations that schools stop the “social transitioning” of children. The interim review had already pointed out that enabling pupils to adopt alternative names, pronouns and dress codes was “not a neutral act”. And there is mounting evidence that such an approach consolidates a child’s psychological conceptualisation of herself as a member of the opposite sex. While social transitioning is seen as compassionate, in reality is causes long-term harm.

It would seem that teenage girls will always be prone to these social contagions, but some are more damaging than others. Whereas limping and dancing and trembling can be overcome, the lifelong impact of puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and surgery will not be so transient. Let’s hope this particular hysteria soon goes the way of all the others.

#Andrew Doyle #gender identity #social contagion #mass psychogenic illness #hysteria #mass hysteria #born in the wrong body #metaphysics #gender thetans #gendered souls #religion is a mental illness

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metalshockfinland · 8 months

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FLY TO THE SUN to Release Inaugural Album on October 27th, Feat. Members of Jethro Tull, Kansas, Jeff Beck, Mr. Big, Ringo Starr’s All-Stars + Others

This new eclectic album project by innovative band FLY TO THE SUN crosses over into several musical genres, including prog rock, progressive pop, art rock, R&B, and more. Featuring Ray (Vocals, flute – Universe Records), Jennifer Batten (Guitar – Jeff Beck, Michael Jackson), Billy Sheehan (Bass – David Lee Roth, Mr. Big, The Winery Dogs), Andrew Giddings (Keyboards – Jethro Tull, The Animals),…

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