#intractable disease

[falseandrealultravival]

"The Surgical Room" (Kyoka Izumi) book review

Speaking of "Azumi Inoue", she is famous for singing several theme songs for Hayao Miyazaki's animated films, and she sang "Sakura, Dance" in NHK Minna no Uta. It's a sad love song about someone who can't forget a chance encounter and will carry that feeling with her for the rest of her life...

♪ It's sad because I was young

A burning face deep in my eyes

The short story "The Surgery Room" is very similar to the situation in this song. It is the work of Kyoka Izumi. It's a love story that can be described as horrific. The main character is afflicted with an intractable disease and is brought to the hospital in such a state that she will not survive unless she undergoes a surgical operation. She is "Countess Kibune" and her surgeon is Takamine Medical Doctor. However, during this period, there were people who could never marry, even if they were medical students, and those were the people of the upper class.

She refuses an anesthetic procedure. If she was anesthetized, she was afraid to say the wrong thing. It was because she loved Takamine. She wishes to die in Takamine's arms and plunges deep into her body as if inviting Takamine's hand to operate on her.

"In the first place, these two have only met once in the past." At first glance, even though they only passed each other on the road, they left a deep impression on each other. Mrs.Kibune asks, "You don't remember me, do you?" Takamine replies,” Never forget.” She hears it, and in a sense ``joyful'' and ``obediently'' she follows the path of her death. This tragic pure love even though they saw each other's faces only once. And Takamine commits suicide on the same day, just like going after the deceased “wife”.

Rei Morishita

「外科室」（泉鏡花）

　「井上あずみ」さんと言えば、宮崎駿・アニメ映画の主題歌をいくつか歌ったことで有名ですが、彼女はNHKみんなのうたで「桜、舞う」という作品を歌っています。どんなものかと言うと、ふとした出会いが忘れられなくて、その感情を一生引きずっていく、という悲しい愛の歌なのですが・・・

♪哀しいくらい　　若かったから

瞳の奥に灼きついだ顔

この歌のシチュエーションに良く似た短編に「外科室」があります。泉鏡花の作品です。凄惨と言ってもよいラブストーリーです。主役は難病に罹り、外科的手術を受けなければ助からないといった状態で病院に運びこまれます。彼女は「貴船伯爵夫人」、執刀するのは高峰医学士。ただ、この時期、たとえ医学士と言えども、決して結婚できない存在があり、それが上流階級の人だったのですね。

　夫人は、麻酔薬の施術を拒否します。彼女は、麻酔をかけられて、あらぬことを口にすることを恐れたのです。それは・・・高峰を愛していたからなのです。彼女は高峰の腕のなかでの死を願い、執刀する高峰の手を誘うように自らの体内深く突くのです。

　そもそも、この二人、過去に一度だけ逢ったことがあるのです。一見（いちげん）、しかも道路ですれ違っただけなのですが、お互いに深い印象を残すのです。夫人は、「あなたは、私のこと、覚えてないでしょう？」と水を向けますが、高峰も「忘れるものですか」と返します。それを聞いたうえで、ある意味「嬉嬉として」また「従容として」彼女は死出の道をたどります。たった一度お互いの顔をみただけなのに、この凄惨な純愛。そして、亡くなった夫人を追うように、高峰は同日に自殺します。

#The Surgical Room #Kyoka Izumi #book review #rei morishita #Azumi Inoue #intractable disease #Medical Doctor #upper class #anesthetic procedure #tragic pure love #Youtube

[prismaticpichu]

‼️ IMPORTANT! ‼️

Sephiroth notices when Zack is upset.

#sephiroth #ffvii #love this lil scene #zack fair #crisis core #ff7 #beans #she is still riddled with the intractable disease of these two #<3333 #final fantasy vii #zackseph

[chicago-geniza]

Finally did my Xolair shots a week late and can suddenly think and write again and were you aware: being in low-grade anaphylaxis all the time makes you stupid and near-comatose with exhaustion. I ate a chicken salad wrap yesterday where the wrap was one of those spinach whole wheat things and my joints and bones unionized and went on strike and then my face broke out in a rash and then I fell asleep sitting up outside in the middle of distro for like 5 minutes wearing two coats when it was almost 70 degrees ddsklfjdlfjsf. Woke up, took Midol, decongestants, and antihistamines, but oh my GD, I literally just took the fucking biologic that binds to my igE and goes “stop doing that” like it’s Osmosis Jones and my brain stops feeling like it’s padded with cotton balls and I stop feeling like I’ve drunk a deep draught of Bone Hurting Juice. Why do we have that lever. I can’t believe mast cell disease is real

#I don't even have the life-threatening anaphylactic severity of mast cell disease I just have the constant pain and vomit/ #have intractable reflux/get eosinophilic ulcers & throat swelling when I eat kind #that also gives you ~*~chronic and temperature-sensitive urticaria #but it still sucks so hard!!!!!!

[jimgreen1]

A recent study by Moody's, an international rating agency, estimated that over the past 20 years, the racial wealth gap in the United States and access gaps in education, housing and investment havecost the country $16 trillion in economic damage. The report also calculates that if the racial geographic makeup of all U.S. communities aligns with the nation’s “most integrated communities,” then U.S. economic growth could increase by 0.3 percentage points over the next decade. The report concludes that deep-rooted racial prejudice and substantive segregation are limiting the potential of American society. In the words of the report's lead author, Moody's Chief Economist Mark Zandi, "racism is taking its toll on all Americans.""Homeownership" is just the "American Dream" of white people? This comes after a study released by the University of California Berkeley's "Others and Belonging" Institute also showed that over the past 30 years, racial segregation in some metropolitan areas in the United States has increased,leading to African-American and Latino The living conditions of ethnic communities are deteriorating. The study found that while the U.S. government has created "fair" housing laws and policies to promote integration, 2019 data showed that 81 percent of areas with more than 200,000 residents were more "community segregated" than they were in 1990. It is more serious in years, especially in big cities such as New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, and Detroit. Minority residents in these communities have lower incomes, higher unemployment and lower levels of education. "Community segregation" reflects, first and foremost, housing inequality. Systemic, institutional racism persists at every level, including U.S. real estate and federal housing policy, and racial disparities in home ownership are even greater than during segregation in U.S. history, according to the newly released State of Black American Housing report. The report shows that in the first quarter of this year, the home ownership rate of white households in the United States was 73.8%, and the home ownership rate of black households was only 45.1%, a gap of nearly 29 percentage points; in 1960, the two ratios were 65% and 38%, a gap of 27 percentage points.

#The Intractable American Racial Disease: The “Segregation” That Never Dies

[natalievoncatte]

Lena could feel the weight in her hand. A little extra swing in her fist as she walked, sending a jolt up her arm as she jogged up the steps to Kara’s apartment. She’d decided to walk today, to clear her head a little as she went to see her best friend. She had a lot on her mind lately- usual Luthor stuff like defusing random death traps that Lex left behind, fending off attempts to dethrone her as CEO and challenge her status as he brother’s heir, and cures for intractable diseases and solutions for the energy crisis and thorny ethical issues around the advance project department’s latest AI experiments… and Kara.

Kara was on her mind. She had a way of sneaking into Lena’s mind at the most inopportune moments, like a board meeting, or a symposium, or her TED talk. It was really a TEDx talk; the organization wasn’t *quite* ready to invite Lena to the real deal, no matter how many photo ops she did with Supergirl or cancer research facilities she paid for. That didn’t stop Kara from following her around saying “thanks for listening to my Ted talk” for three weeks after the fact.

She had been thinking about Kara so much that it had finally been noticed. Sam flew in from Metropolis earlier that week for a catch up lunch, and as usual, after business was handled they shared a bottle of wine and things grew informal.

“Lena,” Sam said. “I’ve been talking for five minutes and you’ve been holding that glass of rosé and staring at it for the entire time. What’s going on?”

Lena almost dropped the glass when she heard her name. “Oh, right. Yes. Wine.”

She took a sip, hoping Sam would drop her question, but she persisted.

“I know that look. You were miles away. What is it? Did the cure for cancer pop into your head?”

“No,” Lena said. “It’s nothing, I was just lost in thought.”

“Mmm,” said Sam. “I’m sure.”

“What?”

Sam smiled enigmatically and finished her wine. “I’d better get going. I’m taking a red eye back to Metropolis.”

“Sam, you’re flying on a Lexcorp charter. It doesn’t work that way.”

Sam snorted and left Lena sitting there, wondering what that was about. Of course she’d been daydreaming about Kara, about her hands specifically- she’d nodded off last weekend and woke to see Kara at her ease, brow furrowed and hands moving wildly as she painted something. Lena had remained still and watched, fascinated by Kara’s hands, the skill and dexterity she showed.

It was that day that Kara had passed her the key she now carried in her hand. A key to Kara’s apartment. Unfettered access. Lena didn’t have to knock (she would anyway) and could stop by when Kara wasn’t even there. She hadn’t said anything but she’d been holding back tears the entire ride home; Lena had no problems with *access*, but trust was another matter. That was what the key was. It was a talisman of trust, Kara’s confidence in her given form.

Lena did knock before she turned the key and swung the door open. She was expected, but part of her worried that Kara wouldn’t be alone. It seemed odd to Lena that Kara hadn’t started dating again- her best friend had taken the whole Mon-El thing very poorly, and it was bizarre to begin with, so Lena understood why she’d stay single for a while, but it had been years.

Years of kindling a soft, secret hope, a desire so fragile and so brittle that Lena rarely dared think of it, afraid that the tiniest brush of longing would crumble it and with it break something inside her permanently.

The apartment smelled like cookies. Burnt cookies. Kara was in the kitchen, brow furrowed, bent in concentration over a cookbook, eyes darting to a mixing bowl. Foul smelling attempted cookies practically filled the garbage can.

“Hey,” Kara said, cheerfully. She gave Lena a soft, gentle smile that seemed only for her, and brushed a loose gold curl from her eyes. “You’re early.”

“I wanted more Kara time,” said Lena. “I was hoping to get a few minutes alone with you before the few shows up. Just us.”

Kara looked at her curiously, then turned to her project.

“I can’t get this right. I cream the sugar like it says, but they keep coming out wrong.”

Lena moved closer, stopping her hand from seeking the small of Kara’s back. When she saw the carton of cream on the counter, she busted out laughing so hard she snorted.

“What?” said Kara.

“Darling, you don’t put actual cream in it. Here, let me help you.”

For the next half hour, Lena and Kara made cookie dough, laboriously, by hand. Every step brought them closer together, literally. By the time they were scooping out evenly sized blobs of it together, they were hip to hip, both floured and sugared, hands greasy with butter.

“I’ll pop them in the oven,” said Kara. “You go clean up and relax.”

“Alright,” Lena said.

She ended up on the couch. Game night would begin hours later, and Lena turned on a nature documentary. (She had her own distinct username on Kara’s Netflix.)

Lena must have dozed off, because the alarm on the oven, along with a warm, pleasant, homey smell, woke her up. She padded on her stocking feet into the kitchen to see how the cookies came out.

Kara had already taken them out and was holding the tray, hot from the oven. Something was off. It nagged at Lena’s mind.

Then it hit her. Kara seemed to realize at the same time.

She wasn’t wearing oven mitts. No heating pad. Not even a dish towel. Kara was holding the hot tray, fresh from the oven, in her bare hands.

Lena yelped. “Kara! You’ll burn yourself!”

Kara started to move. A cry rose on her lips, then died. She stared at Lena with such softness, her eyes full of hesitation, but more than that, a kind of longing that echoed Lena’s own soul.

“I’m tired of lying to you,” Kara said, still holding the tray. “It doesn’t hurt. I can barely feel it.”

They stood for a frozen moment that lasted an eternity, the truth just on the wrong side of revealing itself. Lena already knew, but she didn’t want to acknowledge it. Say it.

“You’re Supergirl,” Lena whispered, soft and breathy.

Kara nodded, starting to choke up. She put the tray down almost violently and stepped back.

“I’ll understand if you need time, if you’re angry, if you don’t want to continue our friendship-“

She didn’t finish her ramble. Lena crossed the space between them in three quick steps, firmly took Kara’s face between her palms, and kissed her.

Pure terror gripped her. What if she was wrong? What if this was a mistake? Why wasn’t Kara moving, responding, reacting?

That question responded when hands that could crush diamonds moved her her body with surpassing tenderness, turning the awkward kiss into something more, Kara guiding Lena as their bodies molded together and Kara kissed her back with hopeful desperation, drawing it out as if she was afraid to let it end for fear it might never be repeated.

It was, intimately and immediately. Lena was shocked but pleased when Kara let Lena push her back against the counter, bending her back lightly, almost climbing her. Kara almost shocked Lena when her hand slid up her side and found her breast even as Lena grabbed a double handful of steely buns and squeezed.

Then someone coughed and they jerked apart.

Alex stood by the door, arms folded.

“I’m going to go ahead and text the others so they know game night is cancelled,” she said, smirking. “Next time, hang a sock on the doorknob or something.”

“This is my house,” said Kara.

Alex rolled her eyes. “I’m leaving now.”

As the door slammed shut, and Alex could plainly be heard blurting, “Jesus Christ,” Lena turned back to Kara.

“Should we talk?” she said, her voice small. “What is this? What are we doing?”

Kara swallowed, hard. “What do you want it to be, Lena?”

Lena couldn’t answer. She just stared.

“I know what I want it to be,” said Kara. “I want us to be an us. I’m so tired of wanting you so bad it hurts, but being scared to touch you a certain way or look too long or too openly or be afraid I’ll say the wrong thing. I’m tired of hiding so much from you.”

Lena licked her lips.

“The truth is, I’ve wanted you for years.”

Kara’s gorgeous eyes lit up with unbridled delight, and with shocking quickness, Kara had Lena in a bridal carry. Lena instinctively curled up in her arms, practically wrapping herself around Kara’s body.

“What do you want to do now?” said Kara. “I don’t know how to do this part, Lena.”

Lena smiled. “I think what you do now is carry me back in the bedroom and cream your sugar.”

“You want to make more cookies? Why… oh.”

“Oh indeed,” said Lena.

Lena didn’t make a habit of it, but this one time, she let Kara talk her into cookies for breakfast.

#supercorp #supergirl fanfiction #supergirl #supercorp fanfic #lena luthor #kara danvers #kara x lena #karlena #supergirl fanfic #ficlet

[homara8524]

━━━━ Hospitals are still tiring.

Yesterday was the day of my monthly hospital visit for an incurable disease.

I have a cavernous hemangioma and a giant lymphatic malformation of the head and neck, the latter of which is designated as an intractable disease in Japan.

I was hospitalized in September 2022 with blindness caused by these diseases, and I have been undergoing steroid pulse therapy, radiation therapy, and progress.

The number of departments visited yesterday was 5. I went to the hospital at 8:30 am and left the hospital at 3 pm after completing all the consultations and accounting.

After that, I went to buy a cake for my mother's birthday, which made me so tired that I was finally able to start moving at around 4 pm today.

I don't know if it's because I've been in the hospital for a long time or if it's because I've been working in the medical field, but I feel like I've been losing a lot of mental and physical energy when I go out.

However, one good thing that has happened recently is that I have drawn Patchouli, which has inspired me to draw my next illustration.

It is still snowing in Japan, but I heard that plum blossoms have started blooming in Rikyu Park near my house.

In Japan, plum blossoms are said to be a seasonal change that signals the arrival of spring.

I have not been able to paint since November, and I have been able to paint in the spring when the plum blossoms bloom. In other words, I may have been hibernating.

I hope this hibernation will have a positive effect on my future illustration work.

#touhou project #東方project #東方プロジェクト #透明水彩 #watercolor #touhou #touhou fanart #鍵山雛 #梅の花 #hina kagiyama #plum blossoms

[reasonsforhope]

"One in five Americans will experience major depressive disorder in their lifetime, and many will not find relief from current therapies. But now researchers have identified an unexpected source of the problem: inflammation.

Inflammation in the body may be triggering or exacerbating depression in the brains of some patients. And clinical trial data suggests that targeting and treating the inflammation may be a way to provide more-precise care.

The findings have the potential to revolutionize medical care for depression, an often intractable illness that doesn't always respond to conventional drug treatments. While current drug treatments target certain neurotransmitters, the new research suggests that in some patients, depressive behaviors may be fueled by the inflammatory process.

It appears that inflammatory agents in the blood can break down the barrier between the body and the brain [and specifically the blood-brain barrier], causing neuroinflammation and altering key neural circuits, researchers say. In people at risk for depression, inflammation may be a trigger for the disorder.

Research suggests that only a subset of depressed patients - roughly 30 percent - have elevated inflammation, which is also associated with poor responses to antidepressants. This inflammatory subgroup may be a key to parsing out differences in underlying mechanisms for depression and personalizing treatment...

The inflamed body and the depressed brain

...A number of studies show that depressed patients tend to have increased inflammation compared with non-depressed subjects, including more inflammatory cytokines and C-reactive protein — which is produced by the liver in response to inflammation — circulating in the blood. Patients with autoimmune diseases have inordinately high rates of depression. And postmortem brain samples from people who died by suicide showed more activation of the brain’s immune cells, which release inflammatory agents.

Crucially, pro-inflammatory drugs can induce people to become depressed, which suggests a causative link. In one seminal study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, Miller and his colleagues conducted a double-blind study of 40 cancer patients undergoing treatment with interferon-alpha, an inflammatory cytokine.

Though none of the patients had depression to begin with, the inflammatory agent had a striking effect: Many became depressed, a finding that has been consistently replicated.

"The patients recognize pretty much immediately that, 'Hey, you gave me something, and now I feel this way. I don't know why I feel this way,'" Miller said.

Can treating inflammation treat depression?

If inflammation can induce or exacerbate depression and its symptoms, then reducing inflammation could provide relief.

Even if inflammation is a disease modifier rather than the cause of the problem, “you have to take care of it in order for you to be able to get your therapeutics working to restore your circuitry and what’s happening in the mind,” said Eleonore Beurel, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine.

Anti-inflammatory drugs, used alone or in conjunction with a standard antidepressant, may help some depressed patients. A 2019 meta-analysis encompassing almost 10,000 patients from 36 randomized clinical trials found that different anti-inflammatory agents, including NSAIDs, cytokine inhibitors and statins, could improve depressive symptoms...

“We’ve come to the tipping point,” Miller said. “And we know enough at this point to begin to target the immune system and its downstream effects on the brain to treat depression. We are there.”

How to manage your own inflammation

Experts agreed that people should not take anti-inflammatories without talking with their health-care provider. Your doctor can order a C-reactive protein blood test to measure your level of inflammation.

“There are so many patients who do not respond to antidepressants,” said Ole Köhler-Forsberg, a physician and associate professor of psychiatry at Aarhus University who has given anti-inflammatory drugs to his patients in addition to antidepressants. “So there is the issue of how can we improve the individual outcomes.” Tailoring treatment for each individual on a holistic basis may add some benefit.

More clinical tests for inflammatory markers may be a way to differentiate the effectiveness of antidepressant treatment. If confirmed, it would “be the first actual biomarker in psychiatry,” Raison said. “I mean, we’ve been looking for biomarkers for 50 years and had zero luck. And it’s ironic that it’s not a brain chemical.”

In the meantime, “you get much more mileage out of the lifestyle changes than you would out of supplements or any other over-the-counter drugs at this point,” Miller said."

-via The Washington Post (via Yahoo News), February 24, 2023

#depression #cw sui mention #cw suicide mention #inflammation #autoimmune #cytokines #neuroscience #medical news #medical research #anti inflammatory #antidepressants #ssri #mental health #mental illness #good news #hope #way way more details at the source btw

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Ian Millhiser at Vox:

The Supreme Court will hear a case later this month that could make life drastically worse for homeless Americans. It also challenges one of the most foundational principles of American criminal law — the rule that someone may not be charged with a crime simply because of who they are. Six years ago, a federal appeals court held that the Constitution “bars a city from prosecuting people criminally for sleeping outside on public property when those people have no home or other shelter to go to.” Under the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit’s decision in Martin v. Boise, people without permanent shelter could no longer be arrested simply because they are homeless, at least in the nine western states presided over by the Ninth Circuit. As my colleague Rachel Cohen wrote about a year ago, “much of the fight about how to address homelessness today is, at this point, a fight about Martin.” Dozens of court cases have cited this decision, including federal courts in Virginia, Ohio, Missouri, Florida, Texas, and New York — none of which are in the Ninth Circuit.

Some of the decisions applying Martin have led very prominent Democrats, and institutions led by Democrats, to call upon the Supreme Court to intervene. Both the city of San Francisco and California Gov. Gavin Newsom, for example, filed briefs in that Court complaining about a fairly recent decision that, the city’s brief claims, prevents it from clearing out encampments that “present often-intractable health, safety, and welfare challenges for both the City and the public at large.” On April 22, the justices will hear oral arguments in City of Grants Pass v. Johnson, one of the many decisions applying Martin — and, at least according to many of its critics, expanding that decision.

Martin arose out of the Supreme Court’s decision in Robinson v. California (1962), which struck down a California law making it a crime to “be addicted to the use of narcotics.” Likening this law to one making “it a criminal offense for a person to be mentally ill, or a leper, or to be afflicted with a venereal disease,” the Court held that the law may not criminalize someone’s “status” as a person with addiction and must instead target some kind of criminal “act.” Thus, a state may punish “a person for the use of narcotics, for their purchase, sale or possession, or for antisocial or disorderly behavior resulting from their administration.” But, absent any evidence that a suspect actually used illegal drugs within the state of California, the state could not punish someone simply for existing while addicted to a drug.

The Grants Pass case does not involve an explicit ban on existing while homeless, but the Ninth Circuit determined that the city of Grants Pass, Oregon, imposed such tight restrictions on anyone attempting to sleep outdoors that it amounted to an effective ban on being homeless within city limits. There are very strong arguments that the Ninth Circuit’s Grants Pass decision went too far. As the Biden administration says in its brief to the justices, the Ninth Circuit’s opinion did not adequately distinguish between people facing “involuntary” homelessness and individuals who may have viable housing options. This error likely violates a federal civil procedure rule, which governs when multiple parties with similar legal claims can join together in the same lawsuit. But the city, somewhat bizarrely, does not raise this error with the Supreme Court. Instead, the city spends the bulk of its brief challenging one of Robinson’s fundamental assumptions: that the Constitution’s ban on “cruel and unusual punishments” limits the government’s ability to “determine what conduct should be a crime.” So the Supreme Court could use this case as a vehicle to overrule Robinson.

That outcome is unlikely, but it would be catastrophic for civil liberties. If the law can criminalize status, rather than only acts, that would mean someone could be arrested for having a disease. A rich community might ban people who do not have a high enough income or net worth from entering it. A state could prohibit anyone with a felony conviction from entering its borders, even if that individual has already served their sentence. It could even potentially target thought crimes.

Imagine, for example, that an individual is suspected of being sexually attracted to children but has never acted on such urges. A state could potentially subject this individual to an intrusive police investigation of their own thoughts, based on the mere suspicion that they are a pedophile. A more likely outcome, however, is that the Court will drastically roll back Martin or even repudiate it altogether. The Court has long warned that the judiciary is ill suited to solve many problems arising out of poverty. And the current slate of justices is more conservative than any Court since the 1930s.

[...]

The biggest problem with the Ninth Circuit’s decision, briefly explained

The Ninth Circuit determined that people are protected by Robinson only if they are “involuntarily homeless,” a term it defined to describe people who “do not ‘have access to adequate temporary shelter, whether because they have the means to pay for it or because it is realistically available to them for free.’” But, how, exactly, are Grants Pass police supposed to determine whether an individual they find wrapping themselves in a blanket on a park bench is “involuntarily homeless”? For that matter, what exactly does the word “involuntarily” mean in this context? If a gay teenager runs away from home because his conservative religious parents abuse him and force him to attend conversion therapy sessions, is this teenager’s homelessness voluntary or involuntary? What about a woman who flees her violent husband? Or a person who is unable to keep a job after they become addicted to opioids that were originally prescribed to treat their medical condition?

Suppose that a homeless person could stay at a nearby shelter, but they refuse because another shelter resident violently assaulted them when they stayed there in the past? Or because a laptop that they need to find and keep work was stolen there? What if a mother is allowed to stay at a nearby shelter, but she must abandon her children to do so? What if she must abandon a beloved pet? The point is that there is no clear line between voluntary and involuntary actions, and each of these questions would have to be litigated to determine whether Robinson applied to an individual’s very specific case. But that’s not what the Ninth Circuit did. Instead, it ruled that Grants Pass cannot enforce its ordinances against “involuntarily homeless” people as a class without doing the difficult work of determining who belongs to this class. That’s not allowed. While the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure sometimes allow a court to provide relief to a class of individuals, courts may only do so when “there are questions of law or fact common to the class,” and when resolving the claims of a few members of the class would also resolve the entire group’s claims.

The Grants Pass v. Johnson case at SCOTUS could make life worse for unhoused Americans.

#Unhoused People #Homelessness #Grants Pass v. Johnson #SCOTUS #Crime #Martin v. Boise #9th Circuit Court #8th Amendment #Poverty #Grants Pass Oregon

[oathbreakerapologist]

Sortie Thought Journal 2: A Disease of the Houses of the Mind

That red triangle that was painted on the door of the warehouse in Sad Sack sure does show up a lot, huh.

Minimally, it appears in the following locations at least: Sortie #2 page 183, and extensively at the end of Sortie #3, plus it's echoed in a few other places (as a triangle above a cross on a lighter in Sortie #2, suggested by the body/leg/head shapes of the praying mantis in Sortie #1 (a question I need to resolve: what the hell is up with that praying mantis?), and mimicked by the triangle cutouts in the door of the confessional in Sortie #1.) Honestly the section from Sortie #3 alone is vivid enough to make it stand out as a symbol even without the other occurrences, but they certainly help. So why the triangle? It clearly lingers in Sal's mind for a reason.

Question 2: Why is that symbol so significant to Sal?

The red triangle seems to haunt, perhaps even contaminate, the spaces in which Sal finds himself (in real life and in his mental life)—contaminate, that is, insofar as it seems to have spread itself out from that warehouse door to elsewhere in his subconscious, like a malignancy, like an infectious disease. Like, perhaps, leprosy. (Bear with me.)

Leviticus 14 talks about, among other things, what to do when a person has leprosy, and then it talks about what to do when a house (like, the actual physical structure of the house) has leprosy. Obviously we know now that leprosy/Hansen's disease can't afflict a house. But that's not the point. The point is that there was something affecting houses—perhaps mold, perhaps something else—of great enough concern that it was referred to using the term "leprosy" at all (well, technically, using the term "tzaraath"/צָרַעַת, effectively meaning leprosy but also denoting ritual impurity), a disease of great concern for a variety of reasons. But the actual historical reasons for the inclusion of leprosy of houses in Leviticus 14 don't matter that much.

You know how Leviticus says you can identify when a house has leprosy? A leprous house bears green or red marks that appear "lower than the wall", per 14:37. I find the "lower than the wall" part to be both incredibly evocative and also profoundly unsettling, but I must admit my Sortie analogy doesn't quite extend that far. For now the most relevant part is the red marks. Sounds familiar, doesn't it? A red mark, a creeping contagion spreading from edifice to edifice, a plague of spaces both real and imagined.

Is this our metaphor? That which might be misdiagnosed as a haunting is perhaps an affliction more intractable: a disease of the houses of the mind. In House of Leaves of course it would be easier for everyone involved if what was wrong with the house was merely a haunting, if it weren't the case that the house was fundamentally aberrant, malignant, contaminated. For Sal perhaps the moment of contact with one malignant space sufficed to contaminate the spaces that exist within the mind, and perhaps that contamination has seeped back out from the mind into the world—or perhaps he perceives that it has.

This is probably my most speculative bit of exegesis yet, and perhaps I'm merely looking for a disease metaphor because infectious disease is kind of my thing. If nothing else it's an interesting possibility.

#not bg3 #sad sack #sortie #my sad sack thought journal

[receival]

vector prime starters.

the following is a collection of sentence starters from the star wars legends novel, vector prime, written by r. a. salvatore.

i beg your indulgence — but i don’t believe that’s correct.

they should know to leave us alone.

we’ll be killed! we’re doomed!

perhaps we should find a place where you can rest.

by all reports, we should be rested before dealing with him.

if i had needed assistance, i would have called for it.

but they shot first!

do you even understand that your stupidity likely escalated an already impossible situation?

we planned to avoid them. avoid! do you understand that word? avoid them and thus cause no further problems or hard feelings.

i did not know that (name) would prove so … intractable.

it was a stupid thing to do.

i still don’t understand how any of that concerns the jedi.

here, he’s just found a convenient receptacle for his wrath.

even when i tried to use the force to gain a better perspective on him, i drew … a blank. as if the force had nothing to do with him. no — more like he had nothing to do with the force.

early again? or is it that you’re still here from last night?

he’ll get bored with it soon enough.

come here, quick. i can’t believe you missed this!

this is bigger than us.

way to go, newbie.

a convenient excuse for our jedi hero to rush to the rescue.

quick to the trigger, they are.

let us not be premature.

are we to deny their help in those areas where they are best qualified?

and what are you going to do about it?

it’s hard to keep up with it all, and sometimes it feels like i’m fixing symptoms without ever getting to the real disease.

why would you want anything from them and their foolish arguing?

you learn to play along, (name). that’s the game called diplomacy.

and these are the people you want to please?

these are the people you seek to emulate with your own council?

she should long be dead.

you bring interference where it is not wanted.

perhaps we should retire to more private chambers.

what have you to hide?

there is only one truth. it is when one does not like to hear it that one concocts other, more palatable versions.

this is not a meeting. it is a lecture in a hallway.

you can’t believe what you’re saying.

have i somehow offended you?

your mere existence offends me!

speak your mind. your questions will only strengthen me.

barbaric! the inhumanity!

he is about as infuriating as any being i’ve ever met.

i admire you.

you’re a braver person than i.

i thought you’d have fixed it by now.

you’ve been hanging around me too long.

what are you smiling at?

i’m sorry. you don’t have to tell me anything.

you have to keep hoping.

i’m sick of hearing all of this.

you’ll hear it until you learn the truth. that is my responsibility.

this isn’t about him. this is about you and me.

anger betrays you.

you’re getting better.

you’re sure he wasn’t just trying to help?

you’re hearing all the problems, and they seem like they’ll overwhelm you, but that only means you have to deal with them one at a time.

so what’s the problem now?

you’re not going alone.

you’re sure you don’t want to come along?

you did well to quiet them.

i already said my good-byes.

do you think you could enlighten me?

you know the decision i face.

i don’t know how to tell you.

i’m afraid of your words, and the way you speak them.

i’m not even going to tell you that you’re wrong. but i will assure you that, as you grow older, you’ll come to see things a bit differently.

you call me that again and i’ll send you into an oil bath with an open flame.

feeling a bit trapped by the attention?

do you think that selfish?

why are you so nervous?

forgive me. i am surprised to see you here, as many others are.

just to talk with you makes me suspect.

i’m not here to give you any trouble.

run. i’ve been slowing you down for the last hour.

you’re wasting time. and oxygen.

do you understand the honor i offer you now?

you’ve got a mean streak in you.

not many people dare to hug me.

what are you doing here?

why didn’t you tell me you’d be coming? i could have prepared something.

how are repairs going?

i never doubted you.

i’ll beat you right now.

do you think it beneath us?

when innocent people are robbed of all their wealth, or taken captive, perhaps, and tortured, is it not the province of the jedi to come to their aid?

there is a difference between finding trouble in your path and going out of your way searching for it.

he asked me to temper my choices, but not to stop.

i’m too old and too slow and too sore.

always appeal to his pride.

always the hero.

and how much of this stuff is illegal?

they seem to know us better than we know them.

it took you longer than i had anticipated.

did you believe that you had a chance?

i told you honestly that you were not worthy.

do you see the truth now?

do you understand the futility?

you will learn your place.

oh, you’re right. that’s much more effective.

i can’t even begin to tell if there’s any organization to this place.

get away from my ship!

i knew you’d come back.

they’re all dead.

it’s like a tomb.

it is an abomination.

i am the beginning of the end for your people.

do not mock me!

i think you’ll be coming with me.

did he hurt you?

i couldn’t sense a thing. with either of them.

every second means someone else dies.

go with glory and victory. die as a warrior.

woe to our enemies.

let me know when you’re getting too hot.

you left him.

you turned and ran away while (name) stood his ground and died.

i’m going back.

there was nothing else i could do.

it will be a glorious day.

that’s a living organism?

it’s alive. or at least it was, i think.

something very big and very bad is going on.

you do plan to come back out, don’t you?

where in the galaxy do they speak such a language?

i’m not done with you yet.

if you suffer a relapse down there, you’ll jeopardize the whole mission.

i’m going. and if i have to go alone, then so be it.

enjoy it while you can.

you’re safe now.

why’re you asking me?

i thought they were all destroyed.

well, i had to build a few more. couldn’t lose the technology, after all.

why would they come back?

what’s taking them so long?

i don’t even know what we’re trying to do.

this should have, logically, happened a long, long time ago.

i’d built a bubble around us. we were all in it, you know? in it and safe. nothing could hurt us — could really hurt us.

#ask memes #ask prompt #rp ask meme #rp prompts #rp sentence meme #rp sentence starters #sentence starter meme #sentence starters #inbox memes #roleplay memes

[lifewithchronicpain]

I am a chronic pain patient in Florida with multiple modalities of pain: chronic intractable pain, pain from a sports injury, and pain from an autoimmune disease. To further complicate my situation, I also have a list of allergies and genetic mutations that leave me unable to take aspirin, NSAIDs, gabapentin, codeine, and morphine for pain relief.

I have a background in medicine, pain management and hospice, so I’ve always been mindful of the spectrum of things that can go awry with opioids. I keep myself on a stable dose with the goal of just “dialing down” the pain enough so that I can function, while not relieving it entirely.

Fifteen years ago, when public attitudes started turning against opioids, I was switched to a fentanyl transdermal patch because it was “less likely to be abused.” I had hoped to avoid using fentanyl until my final days, knowing that once you’re on fentanyl for an extended period, it’s a nightmare if you have to switch to anything else and potentially deadly if you suddenly stop.

Starting in September, I started having trouble getting fentanyl patches at the CVS pharmacy I’ve been using for 30 years. Instead of the Mylan fentanyl patch that I’ve been using for 15 years, CVS only had a fentanyl patch that used a completely different type of adhesive mixture -- one that I absorb inconsistently and too quickly. (Read more at link)

#opioids #chronic pain #disability #ableism #prescription shortages #spoonies #chronic illness #fentanyl #article

[sarahwatchesthings]

Reasons to watch House MD:

The soundtrack

Learn lots of medical terminology

Learn about every rare disease and disorder known to man

Enjoy the spectacle of the severely and intractably disordered ruining their own lives repeatedly but being really self-aware about it

#house md #sister was in the middle of a rewatch when we finished up classic who so we're both rewatching it now #it's like enough of a doctor being virtuous and helpful and saving everyone #now here's a doctor with bpd and a drug problem who traumatizes everyone he comes in contact with (affectionate)

[prismaticpichu]

‼️ IMPORTANT! ‼️

Sephiroth and Zack bond over Angeal’s preachiness

#sephiroth #ffvii #crisis core #zack fair #ff7 #angeal hewley #beans #she still has the intractable sephzack disease #zackseph

[danielnelsen]

weirdest symptom of my current graves’ disease is that i keep getting hiccups. it’s not a known symptom if i google it (except for like…3 case studies where it’s always intractable hiccups and/or thyroid storm, neither of which is what i have), but it’s absolutely related. it’s way too often to be a coincidence. and it started a few days before i found out i was sick so it’s not the medicine.

it doesn’t concern me or anything and it’s only mildly annoying (and sometimes it’s literally only 1 hiccup), but it’s just Weird

#personal

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

1. It’s well known that the earliest gospels do not mention anything about the nativity story. For example, Mark says nothing about it. The birth storyline is known to have been added much later. And even once it is finally added over a century later in Matthew, like every important event in the bible, it’s inconsistent and the different versions are irreconcilable. The birth fable is not regarded as being historically factual.

2. There are no records anywhere of any of the things he supposedly did. There’s no record of the Cleansing of the Temple, which would have been a Jewish scandal, nor any record of thousands of followers going to see him that would necessitate feeding them with a few scraps of food. Nobody literate followed him around and wrote it all down. There are no records of strings of villages where people were mysteriously cured of the most debilitating diseases and maladies untreatable by contemporary medicine, tracing his pathway through the land.

3. The crucifixion fable, aside from being predictably contradictory, is also ahistorical. Crucifixions were not carried out in that way for those purported crimes. Thieves, for example, were not crucified. Those who were crucified were left hanging publicly, to rot and terrify others. The point of crucifixion was not about the punished but the compliance of those who observed the results. Some Jewish rabbi may well have been executed, but the crucifixion described in the bible never happened.

4. The earliest gospels do not mention the resurrection. Mark stops at verse 16:8, and everything after is a known forgery. Even then, this addition spawned multiple conflicting, contradictory tales of the resurrection, which are irreconcilable. Nobody can even actually tell you where the tomb was. The only attestations to it are in gospels written decades after, in propaganda written to recruit believers by people who weren’t there or even alive. The “best” support given for it is that 500 people saw him, without naming a single one of them, where they were, what they saw, how they verified it, and the bizarre claim that believers wouldn’t have insisted it was true, even under duress, unless it was true. As if blind, intractable faith isn’t the cornerstone of Xianity to begin with.

5. The Jesus character was insistent that his return would occur within the lifetime of those he was preaching to. This is stated repeatedly. They are all dead. Even if Jesus had existed, as written in the bible - and we have literally no reason to think so - he must necessarily be regarded as a false prophet. Indeed many of the prophecies Xians claims he fulfils are references to other people, or even other places and things (the “suffering servant” refers to Israel, not an individual), or don’t exist at all.

None of the above is even controversial. And it means it’s impossible for anyone to pretend they know anything about the character.

If you’re a Xian and unaware of this, you should ask yourself why you believe a mythology without knowing the nature of it, and why you just believe what you’re told. If you’re a Xian and are aware of this, you should consider why you still subscribe to a belief that you know to be false.

Time to give it up. The bible’s Jesus character was no more real than Sherlock Holmes.

(And no, a real-world Yeshua, even if you could find him, doesn’t add any weight to the claims of magic and supernatural war in the story.)

#christianity #jesus christ #virgin birth #resurrection myth #resurrection #crucifixion myth #crucifixion #bad fiction #fiction #religion #bible #bible study #blind faith #religion is a mental illness

[cringywhitedragon]

The International Cranberry Association of America (ICAA)

They’re are an arm of the World Heath Organization that specializes in exterminating intractable diseases that threaten cranberry kind and people who have the touch of the god of tweaking.

(I’m (not) sorry)

#reshi rambles #shitposts #Game grumps #trauma center #cranberries #Memes