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vagrantblvrd · 3 years

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¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Late-night and also half-assed AU idea times?

The one where Luke gets sent back in time (Because Reasons) to Clone Wars era shenanigans.

Also Because Reasons Obi-Wan is put in charge of keeping an eye on this kid, idk, Biggs Antilles because everyone is so hapless in the Star Wars universe when under pressure, like seriously.

Anyway.

Obi-Wan is suspicious like a suspicious person and so is Anakin and Luke is kind of losing his mind because he never knew (suspected, but never had proof) that old Ben was a goddamned menace and all his lectures to Luke about same are like, wow, dude, wow.

Oh, and also his dad.

And Ahsoka?

And all the clones and everyone else and he’s like, ;____________________; at what could have been, you know?

But also not sure if he’ll ever get back to his time - he really hopes so because there’s this Mandalorian with an adorable kid - and oh, God, he needs to check on Grogu in this time stat, but yes.

Shenanigans in which Luke desperately tries to hide his real identity because everyone’s iike “He feels like Anakin,how strange, and Luke in the corner like “Hahaha, yes, STRANGE. :DDDDDD

And then adventures in which he ends up having to save Obi-Wan more than he ever expected to when he woke up twenty-something years in the past, and oh dear God is that his mom? (Leia looks so much like her. Mostly the angry part right now, because Anakin and recklessly endangering his life and uh, oops, he didn’t mean to eavesdrop???

But like. Luke is kind of bleeding again (he,too, recklessly endangered his life alongside his father and Obi-Wan) and thought medbay was this way and -

Wait, why are you looking at him like that?

Anaking and Padme worried Luke’s going to at them out to, idk, the Jedi council or whatever about their ~forbidden love, and Luke is just.

“What.”

So then the thing about attachments and how they’re bad because emotions is explained to him and Luke looks at his father who clearly loves his mother so much. Thinks about the nonsense about attachment and how scared it would make someone like Anakin, and Obi-Wan -

Luke loves him, but the man’s made mistakes. (And, like. Luke gets it, he does. Some adventure with Obi-Wan and sharing of past loves because they weren’t sure they’d make it out alive and why not share this thing with someone kind of friend-shaped, and anyway,)

Luke is like, okay, wow.

Because one, the thing about attachments is bullshit - show him one Jedi master who isn’t attached to their padawan for starters - and anyway.

Not his business who they love, an then he scurries off to medbay before he bleeds out in hallway or wherever, which is where Obi-Wan finds him and is like >:((((( at the bleeding thing and :| about the attachment thing but also *SIGH* because Luke reminds him of this padawan he had once, what was his name???

Anyway.

Yes

Also, though, also.

Them taking Luke to Coruscant to meet with the Jedi council because they have no idea where he came from - Luke floated the possibility of time travel being real to Obi-Wan once, but as a hypothetical and really, never mind him - and anyway.

Luke being like ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ as they ~question (interrogate) him because he has read up on the Jedi Order and their rules and whatnot. And where he might have been in awe of getting to meet all these Jedi masters once, now he just feels. Pity. He feels pity for them.

It shows, a little, and they call it arrogance for someone so young to think they know better than the entirety of the Jedi council and yet?

Luke doesn’t care.

Which kind of makes him a threat in their eyes, this incredibly powerful Jedi who appeared out of nowhere and shows so little - if any, really - respect for their Order.

And, they realize, who both Obi-Wan and Anakin like.

Ahsoka too, but she’s a padawan, young and such, doesn’t know better.

But also, also, after all the fun-times had with the Jedi council Luke walks out to find Palpatine talking to his father and his mother while Obi-Wan stands by and chips in with a comment or observation every so often and he is like !!! because he never expected this???

Somehow after hearing stories from people, he just. Didn’t expect the fall of the old Jedi Order to take place in a tastefully appointed waiting area, potted plants and chairs and such Maybe one of those little fountains you see in an office sometime for the soothing sound of moving water and whatnot.

Anyway.

Maybe it’s his own personal experience with the man in the throne room on the second Death Star with the dramatic lighting and so on, but it’s a wee bit jarring.

He has one of those “episodes” as the others call them, and gets hustled out of there posthaste while Palpatine is all, “Oh, dear, I do hope he feels better,” and Luke does all the meditating exercises so as not to blurt out that hey, so, that sith lord everyone’s trying to find? RIGHT THERE.

Because lack of evidence and such.

And it’s like.

After seeing what things were like, he’s just. He’s stuck here, probably, right? So. Maybe he can fix things, even a little.

(Right the wrongs that Palpatine wrought and so on.)

And while he’s doing that it occurs to him that Din, okay, Din is alive in this time. And he told Luke about the attack that killed his parents, about being rescued by Mandalorians, and is like.

Can he change that too? Should he? Searches everything he can only to realize he’s too late to do anything about it. That the attack happened before Luke arrived in this time and he has this.

This little breakdown in a library or some such somewhere, because all that fretting and whatnot he did about whether or not he should intervene was for nothing, a moot point because he was too late, and it’s like.

Existential crisis time because if he changes things more than he has, will he even exists in the future? Will Leia?

Will any of their friends exist, and on his way back to the quarters he’s been given he runs into Padme - perhaps sneaking out from visiting Anakin - and she’s surprised to see him, maybe a little worried too.

(She knows his views on the whole attachment thing, yes, but her and Anakin have kept their relationship a secret for a long time now and old habits)

Still, she notices he’s obviously not doing well and they talk for a bit, Luke asking her a hypothetical, like if she could go back in time to change something to save someone she loved from suffering, would she?

And of course she is like. No, because doing so negates their choices and how would it affect others and so on?

Luke is just, right, of course.

But then she goes on and says, as a person, not a politician, a leader, she absolutely would.

Luke is like, oh, because of course that makes sense, doesn’t it.

Good of the many and so on and anyway.

He goes to his quarters and thinks on it for a bit and realizes, yes okay, the thing with Din was mostly selfish - he wants to say he wouldn’t have done it, but he still doesn’t know - but Palpatine, okay, Palpatine.

How many million, billions, maybe more, lives was he responsible for? (Luke has his own count for the dead, and monstrously high it may be, but Palpatine is at the heart of all of it.)

So.

He he starts laying the groundwork to expose Palpatine, or maybe just build up, idk, say a Rebel Alliance to oppose him - and discovers that oh, would you look at that.

Because Padme and Bail and their closet conspirators who know something is coming, that Palpatine is surely part of it, but they don’t know the full scope of things.

And honestly, even Luke doesn’t, but.

They think he’s a spy or whatever, and there are all these shenanigans in the meantime, and Luke doing what he can to prove that he’s really on their side, and anyway, anyway.

He plants seeds here and there, everything Leia taight him, everything he picked up, and goes to Obi-Wan for help because his former master and watchdog, and anyway.

Before Luke gets to see if anything he’s done in the past pays off he gets booted back to his time.

Or a version of it.

Ripped back to his time and this moment where he’s sure he’s dead - in the middle of a space battle or collapsing temple somewhere and glowy doohickey, something like that, or, okay, Palpatine trying to kill hi again for the first time - and anyway.

Super disorienting.

Especially when he opens his eyes and Obi-Wan is there along with his father and is that Ahsoka?

But, like.

Older.

Also, though, Din.

And Grogu and Luke is very confused?

But there’s no time for that, as Padme and Leia run in and tell them the Imperials found them, did you get him? Yes, oh, good, and now with the running???

In which they do the running to a familiar ship Luke knows well, and also a few others he likewise knows, and anyway.

They escape just in time because an Imperial fleet was looking for them, and anyway.

Luke is super confused, but that’s okay because exposition time in which he finds out all those seeds he planted worked.

Palpatine was exposed, but didn’t matter because he had contingency plans, you know?

Order 66 never went into effect because someone - Obi-wan was prompted to go back to Kamino and ask after the clones, any...special features that may have been added and anyway.

Palpatine never got his clone army, but he made up for it with battle droids and conscripts and the Empire didn’t win? But neither did the Alliance.

Not yet, anyway, and they’ve been fighting for years at that point. No Death Star - at least not a completed one - and anyway, yes.

Alderaan’s still there, Leia doesn’t have to pretend she can see it in the night sky, and anyway.

A lot has changed but so much is still the same, and everyone, okay, everyone thinks Luke an idiot.

(They’re also not surprised by that, because Skywalker, but yes.)

This whole thing of Luke’s original memories clashing with this new timeline - he keeps his old ones, but it makes for a confusing time, you know? Some point where Luke gets this faraway look and turns to someone - maybe they were dead in that original timeline - and tells them how different everything is.

If they’re feeling brave enough, and honestly most people in Luke’s life are that brave, they ask what he was thinking about to get that look on his face and he’ll tell them about terrible future that didn’t come to pass.

One he feels a little guilty for missing sometimes because those other versions of the people he knew, loved, are gone and he’s the only one who remembers them? But then he’ll see one of them, or someone who was dead in that other timeline and realizes it’s not as simple as that.

Looks at the life he knew before and the one he’s learning now and can’t decide if what he did was the right thing?

But then he’ll catch his parents on a balcony somewhere lost in on another’s eyes and these soft smiles and the love between them that’s grown over the years. Or see Obi-Wan walking about with Cody, and soft smiles and quiet laughter and hundred dozen little moments like that and thinks, selfishly, he doesn’t truly regret it if these people he’s come to love get something like that, you know?

And, then, of course, then Din finds him, or maybe Luke goes back to their quarters on whatever ship or base they’re at then, and he’ll be waiting for him.

They were on the cusp of something when Luke got thrown back in time, but things changed once he got back.

Slow, awkward, because different timelines and experiences, but something new and good, and anyway, anyway.

Din’s there and Luke is being a little (lot) selfish in wanting to keep whatever the two of them are building between them, and Din seems to want the same, and anyway.

Yes????

#star wars nonsense #dinluke #time travel shenanigans au v2 #i have ~feelings regarding time travel okay #sorry #technically not a fic #vagrant fic #long post

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everydayhybridity · 4 years

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Ethnic tensions are coming to the fore, but many minorities find solidarity with activists.

Jessie Lau

November 7, 2019, 4:53 PM

A man waves an Indian flag near Chungking Mansions, a popular haunt among minority South Asians and Africans in Hong Kong, as police keep watch at a crosswalk during a pro-democracy rally in Tsim Sha Tsui district on Oct. 27. Philip Fong/AFP via Getty Images

HONG KONG—For Zab, Hong Kong has always been home. While the 25-year-old has roots in Pakistan, he was born, raised, educated, and now works in the city. This summer, Zab—who gave only his last name out of safety concerns—has been a cautious participant in several Hong Kong protests, standing out as one of the few brown faces among the protesters. After tear gas was fired during one rally, he ran into a police blockade as he attempted to flee. Trapped and struggling to breathe, he was terrified of being interrogated. But the police let him pass—a decision Zab suspects was related to his Pakistani ethnicity. “They probably thought I wasn’t a Hong Kong person,” he said.

This year’s protests are bringing Hong Kong’s ethnic tensions to the fore. After a mob assaulted commuters in Yuen Long train station in July, Nepali men in the neighborhood were abused by locals and accused of attacking civilians. Hong Kong’s railway corporation came under fire for reportedly planning a task force of former Gurkhas to enforce bylaws during the crisis because, in the words of a railway executive, “Nepalese do not understand Cantonese, [and] thus they will be less provoked.” Last month, when an assault on the pro-democracy leader Jimmy Sham left him lying in a pool of his own blood, local media claimed his attackers were South Asian without evidence.

Minority leaders rushed to publicly condemn the violence and support Sham—as well as privately urge community members to lie low in case of retaliations. Most recently, after police doused a mosque using water cannons with blue dye to clear a peaceful protest supporting ethnic minorities, demonstrators helped clean the mess and rallied around the community. In a moving show of solidarity, they organized a Thanksgiving gathering at Chungking Mansions, a local hub for ethnic minority workers and asylum-seekers.

Hong Kong’s identity crisis has been exacerbated in recent years. China’s authoritarian interventions have triggered a localist movement and imagined political community that sees itself as culturally, linguistically, and ideologically separate from mainland China. Since Hong Kong was handed to China by the British in 1997, those who identify as Hong Kongers grew from 35.9 percent to a record 52.9 percent this year, according to statistics from the University of Hong Kong’s Public Opinion Programme. Among locals aged 18 to 29, the percentage jumped from 45.6 percent to 75 percent. The trend holds true for ethnic minority families. Older generations are more conservative and wary of politics, Zab explained. “Our families say we are minorities here and don’t have a say. [But] I consider myself a Hong Konger,” Zab said.

Ethnic minorities such as Zab have historically been either tokenized as a symbol of diversity or demonized as scapegoats for Hong Kong’s social problems. But in the current movement, they have become a powerful marker of inclusion—especially in contrast to an increasingly ethnonationalist China, where minority groups are facing linguistic exclusion and mass detention camps.

In Hong Kong, ethnic minorities are defined by the government as people of non-Chinese ethnicity. Yet only those who do not pass as white or Chinese are considered second-class citizens by mainstream society. In 2016, excluding foreign domestic workers, 263,593 people in Hong Kong—3.6 percent of the population—fell into this group. In contrast to the generally aging population and falling birth rate, between 2006 and 2016, the number of ethnic minorities aged 15 to 24 more than doubled, and those born in Hong Kong increased from 24.5 percent to 30.9 percent.

Hong Kong has always been multicultural—not just English and Chinese but an imperial outpost drawing its population from across the British Empire. The South Asian community can be traced to the 1840s, when it defended Hong Kong as soldiers and worked alongside Eurasians as intermediaries between Chinese and Europeans. More than 1,000 Indian soldiers were killed or injured while protecting Hong Kong in the 1941 Japanese invasion. Star Ferry, Hong Kong’s main passenger ferry service, was founded by an Indian Parsi baker.

The British made heavy use of Gurkha soldiers, who helped suppress the 1900 Boxer Rebellion and established today’s Nepali community. Following World War II, inexpensive laborers from the Philippines and other Southeast Asian countries began migrating to Hong Kong to work as foreign domestic workers, supporting an emerging Chinese middle class. In the 1970s, Vietnamese refugees joined them.

Despite such crucial contributions, ethnic minorities remain systematically marginalized. Entrenched language barriers, racial profiling, and poverty remain barriers to integration. Many have long condemned the government’s failure to teach local languages to non-Chinese speakers. Until 2004, children who lacked Chinese proficiency but could not afford international schools were directed toward government institutions targeting working-class minorities, which came with social stigma. Local media and conservative groups characterized them as criminals during a sweeping anti-refugee campaignblaming asylum-seekers for stretching local resources.

While such students can now apply to other institutions, schools have independent selection criteria and are not required to provide specialized curriculum for language proficiency. A 2016 study found that less than 20 percent of jobs advertised online catered to non-Chinese speakers. Nearly one-fifth of ethnic minorities also live below the poverty line, and the poverty rate rose from 15.8 percent to 19.4 percent between 2011 and 2016.

The protest movement is hardly free of discrimination itself. When the anti-extradition protests first erupted, 29-year-old Yasir Naveed, who proudly identifies as a Hong Konger, was galvanized. Donning a white shirt with the rest of the crowd, he marched in the first rally with his 72-year-old father and 4-year-old nephew—a move to express multigenerational support. “My father is part of the senior citizens who built this city,” said Naveed, who is ethnically Pakistani. “And the future is our nephew.”

Fixing the crisis will be risky—but worthwhile for both sides.

Early on, there were already rumors that ethnic minorities were being hired to attack protesters. One day, Naveed received a message from Han Chinese protesters asking him to check the grammar on an Urdu text. It was an appeal from demonstrators asking ethnic minorities not to “accept bribes” to “beat up” protesters. Naveed was stunned. “I was so offended,” he said. He responded saying the message was grammatically correct but ethically wrong. “Did they think we are sellouts? That we’re so hungry and needy for money that a party can buy us?”

The simultaneous co-option and rejection of minorities also occurred in the 2014 Umbrella Movement and 2012 anti-national education protests. Minorities were celebrated by protesters as proof of local inclusion, but their interests were subsumed during broader political discussions, which were largely publicized and conducted solely through Cantonese, with excursions into Mandarin.

Paul O’Connor of Lingnan University called the treatment of ethnic minorities a missed opportunity. “They hold true opportunity for Hong Kong to redistinguish itself as this ‘one country, two systems’ territory because China doesn’t have the history that Hong Kong has in terms of this multicultural heritage,” O’Connor said. “Instead, their interests are being co-opted by the broader fight about Hong Kong identity and then dropped.”

In fact, Raees Baig, an assistant professor of social work at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, said pro-Beijing parties such as the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong have more successfully engaged and advocated for ethnic minorities, through establishing outreach centers and English-language materials about government services.

That has left many community leaders carefully neutral. Adeel Malik, the chairperson of the Muslim Council of Hong Kong, exercised caution at present. He strongly condemned the recent violence by all parties, which he said has caused some to consider leaving Hong Kong. “If any of our community members get involved and anything turns into a riot, sadly it can be easy to stereotype the whole community,” Malik said. Arief Wahyudi, a 49-year-old local of Indonesian descent who has lived in Hong Kong for two decades, echoed his sentiments. “Violence will only fuel violence,” he said. “That’s what we’re very scared of.”

Yet there’s no denying that the current movement has brought solidarity among different Hong Kongers on a previously unseen scale—albeit somewhat accidentally. Unlike other protest movements, it has effectively used creative and grassroots messaging to target a global audience—inadvertently extending accessibility to local non-Chinese speakers, said Puja Kapai of the University of Hong Kong.

Many people have been empowered by expressions of unity and have experienced political awakenings for the first time. Han Chinese locals are also becoming more aware of the ethnic minority communities. A local journalist of Pakistani descent became a protest icon after fiercely cross-examininggovernment officials in fluent Cantonese. Various ethnic minority protesters have also been embraced as Hong Kongers. “There have been blessings in disguise,” Malik said.

Jeffrey Andrews, a local social worker of Indian descent who organized the Thanksgiving gathering at Chungking Mansions, said many of the Han Chinese guests had never mingled with ethnic minorities before. “For the very first time, we’ve taken ownership,” he said. “We’ve taken a crisis and turned it into an opportunity.”

As the protests spiral into their 22nd week, Zab’s family and friends have warned him against becoming more involved in the crisis. But in Zab’s eyes, the movement has already entangled Hong Kong’s ethnic minorities, whether they like it or not. “If we consider ourselves as part of Hong Kong, we should be involved in political affairs,” said Zab, who is thinking of running for district council in the future. “We can’t just stay behind the scenes.”

Jessie Lau is a journalist in Hong Kong.

#Hong Kong #Hong Kong's ethnic minorities #Sociology #Anthropology #ethnicity

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commentaryvorg · 5 years

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Danganronpa V3 Commentary: Part 4.15

Be aware that this is not a blind playthrough! This will contain spoilers for the entire game, regardless of the part of the game I’m commenting on. A major focus of this commentary is to talk about all of the hints and foreshadowing of events that are going to happen and facts that are going to be revealed in the future of the story. It is emphatically not intended for someone experiencing the game for their first time.

Last time, still in the heat of trial 4 (trial 4!!!!!), the vague semblance of a decent person inside Kokichi actually showed himself for all of one sentence before being stubbornly forced back down by the rest of him in his inability to admit to doing anything wrong, we established Gonta’s memory loss and why this makes things especially difficult for Kaito, and after a process of elimination in which Kokichi was still dropping the ball re: tormenting Kaito, Shuichi very directly faced the truth by declaring Gonta to be the culprit, which Kaito was not happy about.

Gonta: “R-Really…? Did Gonta… really do it…?”

Kokichi: “Geeeez, is that really your reaction? It would’ve been fun if you went all crazy. …But you forgot everything, so oh well.”

I guess Kokichi was expecting Gonta to go crazy if he’d remembered and would still desperately be trying to protect everyone by hiding the truth. I’d say he probably figured that that’d make him come across as even more evil that way, but really it’s more likely that he simply never even imagined things going any differently.

Kokichi: “A culprit who can’t remember their murder is pretty interesting, so better than nothing.”

Not just better than nothing, better than the story you had planned. This makes everything several times more cruel and painful for everyone involved, and isn’t that exactly what you were going for here, Kokichi? But of course he can’t admit that his plan wasn’t actually the best possible plan ever.

(On my first time through, when I realised Gonta had lost his memory, I figured that Kokichi had somehow switched his cords on purpose to make things as painful as possible. That would have been an even better addition to his plan, if it had occurred to him that he could do that.)

Kokichi: “If Gonta remembered, his cover would’ve been blown so fast. Especially since he’s an idiot.”

If you knew this the whole time, why the hell were you convinced he was suddenly a great liar during most of the trial up until this point? Kokichi is just backpedalling and acting like he always knew his original plan was kind of bad while dodging the part where that makes him stupid for trying to do it that way anyway. Kokichi is never wrong about anything, you guys.

Kaito: “H-Hold on! I-I still haven’t accepted this! This has gotta be… Kokichi’s trap…”

Kaito is making it very apparent that he’s the only person in this room who’s still incapable of facing the truth. There’s no way he wants to come across this way, but he’s growing desperate enough that he can’t help himself.

Kaito: “I still believe in Gonta! He’s not the kinda person who’d kill!”

Of course he does, because he can’t see the Gonta who actually did this and pick up on any of the subtle signs that show that’s not quite the whole truth! I’ve seen a lot of people call Kaito’s belief thing “blind faith”, and most of the time that’s completely the wrong way to describe it. Kaito’s faith is based in what he intuits by getting a read on people, even if it’s all instinctive and he’s not able to explain why he feels the way he does about someone, so it’s not really blind at all. But right now, thanks to Gonta’s memory loss, it really is nothing but blind faith. Kaito is completely blind in his judgement of the Gonta who may or may not have done this; he’s just choosing to believe in him anyway because choosing not to believe in him when he can’t see a reason not to isn’t ever something Kaito would do.

Shuichi: “Kaito…”

Again I wish I could let you hear this, because every time in this trial Shuichi has a line which is just saying Kaito’s name and nothing else, his (English) voice actor is completely on point for getting across the appropriate emotions for the moment. This time it encapsulates the frustration that Kaito acting this way isn’t at all the right way to act in a class trial and is just making things harder, and yet of course Kaito would react this way and find this so hard, he’s Kaito, how could Shuichi blame him for that.

Kokichi: “I already said this a million times, Kaito. You shouldn’t use emotions to re—”

Kaito: “You want proof!? I’ve got your proof!”

Kaito actually does have proof. Which is pretty remarkable for him, especially since, based on his demeanour, he literally only just figured this out as he said this. And he’s even just set off one of the BGM pieces that usually plays when Shuichi has figured out a thing!

Kaito: “After Tsumugi and Shuichi heard Keebo’s voice in the mansion, they ran outside. And who did they see out there?”

Remember how I noted during the investigation that Kaito was specifically shown paying attention to a conversation with Tsumugi in which she recounted this part where they ran outside and saw Gonta? Yeah. At the time he had no idea that that particular part of it would be so relevant, so it’s still remarkable that Kaito remembered this and brought it up out of nowhere here when nobody else had mentioned anything to set his mind on this track. As we’ve seen time and time again, Kaito’s detective’s instincts are extremely not great – and yet somehow, in his desperation to defend Gonta and not be running away from the truth, Kaito has managed to produce the best piece of deductive reasoning he’s ever had.

(I mean it’s still nothing special on an objective scale, but it’s a really big deal coming from Kaito.)

Shuichi: “Gonta.”

Yet, as Shuichi confirms Kaito’s information, he’s only looking thoughtful and not as happy about this as he would be if he thought it could prove Gonta innocent. Because Kaito only heard second-hand that Gonta was “outside” – but Shuichi was there, and he saw exactly where Gonta was standing.

I said that Kaito “has proof”, because from Kaito’s point of view, not knowing exactly where Gonta was standing and assuming he was standing somewhere that’d mean he’d just come up the steps from outside, this could clear Gonta’s name. But that’s not how things really were.

Kaito: “How about that!? Now you get it, right!? If Gonta was the culprit, there’s no way he coulda been outside the mansion!”

Kaito sounds genuinely sure of himself because he is sure of his argument, since nobody has brought up the possibility that Gonta could have climbed down from the roof. For once in this trial, Kaito isn’t just saying something that he knows isn’t really true.

Tsumugi: “Now you can’t say Gonta’s the culprit! Congrats, Gonta!”

“Congrats” is a pretty half-assed way of saying “you must be so relieved that you didn’t murder anyone and don’t have to get executed for it”. You’re slipping, Tsumugi.

Gonta: “What!? Really!?”

Poor Gonta sounds so desperately hopeful here after the heartbroken mess he was a few moments ago. As I said once a while back, Danganronpa often throws the words “hope” and “despair” around so much that it forgets their real meanings. But this moment here is a perfect example of a brief, fleeting moment of hope – for both Gonta and Kaito – before it gets cruelly snatched away from them, making the resulting despair even worse than it would have been without it.

Shuichi: (It would have been so nice if that were the truth… If Kaito were right, and this horrible trial would just end… But…)

Shuichi wants to believe in Gonta as well, and he’s hating every second of this trial just like Kaito is! But he’s keeping this to his inner monologue, so Kaito still isn’t able to notice this.

Shuichi: “All the culprit needed was a way to get from the roof to outside the mansion.”

Up until this point, the only proof that Gonta did it was him being the only person with a lack of evidence against him having done it. So it’s pretty painfully ironic that Kaito’s desperate but surprisingly insightful attempt to prove Gonta didn’t do it only ends up drawing Shuichi’s attention to the evidence which finally conclusively proves he did do it.

(Unwittingly leading Shuichi into this is, quite delightfully, the only bit of actual “help” in solving the case that Kaito has provided this entire trial.)

Kaito: “…”

I realise that almost all of my images in this trial have been “look at this face Kaito is making”, but… look at this face Kaito is making. He was so sure for like half a minute that everything was going to be okay! But if Shuichi says so, then there must have been a way, and nothing is okay at all.

(In fact, I’m pretty sure this is the only time in the entire game Kaito makes this particular face, meaning they went out of their way to draw it specifically for this moment.)

Shuichi: “Kaito, I know how you feel. I know because we all feel it. But… we have to face the truth. No matter how cruel that truth may be, we *need* to face it… to survive.”

Shuichi is trying to reach out to Kaito! He’s acknowledging how much Kaito is suffering and trying to reassure him that he’s not the only one, to help him find the strength to face the truth. After all, Shuichi knows better than anyone else how hard that is to do alone. This is the first time this trial that Shuichi has expressed out loud that he’s struggling with this, too – but he’s doing it in a way which isn’t him asking for help but rather him using that fact to try and offer help. This is Shuichi being another kind of hero: not only the kind that gets stuff done, but also the kind who supports people. The kind of hero that Kaito was supposed to be.

Kaito: “Whose side are you on, Shuichi?”

And… that’s unacceptable for Kaito. He’s meant to be the hero and Shuichi the sidekick – he’s the one who should be giving Shuichi support, not the other way around. If it happens the other way around, if Kaito is weak enough to need that in the first place, then that just means that Kaito is no good as a hero to his sidekick at all. If Shuichi is strong enough to be able to give support, then he’s the real hero who never needed Kaito at all.

Kaito can’t allow any of that to be true, so rather than admit how hard this is for him and accept Shuichi’s support, he’s pushing Shuichi away and deflecting from the real issue. This isn’t about sides – Shuichi is on the side of saving everyone, and Kaito knows this, but he can’t have it seem like he’s being the weak one here by not being able to stand with Shuichi on this.

Shuichi: “Kaito, please!”

Meaning: “Kaito, please don’t make this any more painful than it already is.” But… that’s exactly what Kaito’s doing.

Kaito: “Aren’t you my sidekick!? Was that… just a lie!?”

It would be bad enough if this was just about them being friends and Kaito thinking Shuichi could have lied to him about that. But like the last time Kaito invoked the word “sidekick”, this isn’t quite about their friendship or about Shuichi being on Kaito’s side. This is about Kaito hating the fact that Shuichi doesn’t seem to need him any more – and now he’s not even sure if Shuichi ever did in the first place.

Kaito isn’t questioning if Shuichi was ever his friend – he’s questioning if Shuichi was ever weaker than him and in need of his support at all, and if he wasn’t, was he just… pretending? He’s thinking that maybe, ever since they began training together, Shuichi was always just patronising him with the whole “sidekick” thing, playing along and humouring Kaito’s need to play the hero while secretly looking down on him – ha ha, look at that idiot Kaito acting like I need him when really he’s the one who needs me, how pathetic.

No, Kaito. No. Not ever. Not even now.

On some level, Kaito was always subconsciously worried about this. Remember how in their very first training session, he said he was frustrated that Shuichi was weak, because Shuichi was also strong enough to save everyone in Kaede’s trial, and how can he be both at once? But the fact that this chapter and this trial have beaten down Kaito’s sense of self-worth so much that he’s now consciously thinking Shuichi could ever have seen him this way is heartbreaking.

(In Japanese, by the way, this line is not “aren’t you my sidekick”, but “weren’t you my sidekick”. In past tense. Which makes this implication even clearer.)

Shuichi: “Kaito!”

And here, Shuichi’s intonation clearly means something to the effect of, “What!? No! Why would you even think that!?”

But Shuichi didn’t actually say that, and Kaito’s intuition-reading of Shuichi is emphatically not functioning properly right now thanks to his issues, so he doesn’t realise it. And, in fact, it probably doesn’t help that while Shuichi has never actively complained about being Kaito’s sidekick like Maki used to, he has also never actually said anything to the effect of being on board with it, even though he is.

(Heartless Journey has been playing since Shuichi started trying to reach out to Kaito, just in case it wasn’t clear already how relevant this moment is to Kaito’s arc.)

Kaito: “Fine then! I’ll tear that sorry reasoning of yours apart and wake you up!”

Look at the way this starts with “Fine, then”, as if Kaito is assuming that what he was just saying has been confirmed. And if that’s the case, if Shuichi really wasn’t ever his sidekick after all, then there’s no reason to hold back against him. This is the first and last time Kaito ever insults Shuichi’s reasoning, the reasoning that he’s supposed to have unending faith in and has encouraged Shuichi to believe in so much himself. (And Kaito still does believe in Shuichi’s reasoning, but that’s being forced aside by his jealousy and his desperation to insist that Shuichi can’t be right and Gonta can’t be the culprit because that would just prove that Kaito’s the weak one who can’t face the truth and how could Shuichi ever need someone like that?)

Shuichi: (I can’t doubt my detective work now. If I want us all to survive, I can’t back down!)

And Shuichi still has that faith in his detective work that Kaito helped him to gain, even now that Kaito is acting like this. Shuichi’s gotten very good at this being a hero thing.

As I mentioned before, this is also my favourite Argument Armament! They exist to make it feel like Shuichi is very directly fighting against the person involved, which is exactly the feeling that needs to get across right here between him and Kaito and it’s perfect for it. They also exist to show how the person involved has become so riled up that they refuse to listen to reason, which is definitely even more fitting for Kaito here than it was for the others.

In fact (aside from the one in chapter 6 because fuck that one, it doesn’t count, look forward to my rant about how terrible it is), this was the Argument Armament that I took the most damage on during my first time personally playing through the game, more than Maki’s in chapter 5 which you’d expect to be harder than this. And that seems appropriate, since Kaito is the most actively lashing out at Shuichi out of anyone who does one of these.

Kaito: “I’ll never accept this!”

He really won’t. Not until he can see the culprit-Gonta for himself and understand why he would have done this – which isn’t going to happen until after the vote.

Kaito: “Don’t you know Gonta at all!? He’s not the kind of guy who’d kill someone! Don’t you know that about him by now!?”

This here in the Argument Armament and that one line earlier in this post are the first times in the trial that Kaito has actually made this argument appealing to our understanding of Gonta’s nature. He could have made it any number of times before that, but he never did because he knew it wouldn’t be an appropriate argument to make in a class trial. Here he’s saying it because he’s become desperate enough to use any kind of argument at all.

Kaito: “Why won’t you believe Gonta!? Why are you listening to Kokichi!?”

This and a moment just earlier are also the only times Kaito ever makes it sound like this is about him being mad that Shuichi is supposedly siding with Kokichi over Gonta or himself. Again, that’s not the point, and Kaito knows it. This is just more last-ditch desperate deflection.

Kaito: “Aren’t you my sidekick!? Wake up, Shuichi!”

Given the context it’s sandwiched between, and how Kaito is too uncontrollably riled up to be thinking about things with greater nuance right now, this is probably the only instance of “aren’t you my sidekick?” in which Kaito really is only thinking about the apparent surface meaning of “aren’t you on my side?”.

Kaito: “Who do you want to believe!?”

Of course Shuichi wants to believe Gonta! But unfortunately, while Kaito’s thing about following what he wants to believe managed to help save everyone in trial 2, it’s just going to do the opposite here. “The only thing that matters is what I want to believe” is a lovely sentiment, but only when there’s no proof either way. Right now, there is proof, so even if it’s not what Kaito likes to instinctively use as proof, him following his desire to believe the opposite of what that proof says is simply wilful ignorance and only making things worse.

Kaito: “Remember what Kokichi has done to us!”

Actually, the only really meaningfully bad thing that Kokichi has done to us (because the Insect Meet and Greet was just a minor annoyance that didn’t even succeed and that Kaito wasn’t even there for) is this right here. Kaito should know this, too – after all, he’s the one who kept trying to get through to Kokichi and stop him from doing anything this bad right up until it was too late.

Kaito: “Remember how Gonta’s always tried to protect us! How could Gonta be the culprit!?”

Only if he thought it was the only way to protect us, right? No-one brought this up when talking about his motive despite Kaede and Kirumi having killed for similar reasons, but I suppose without the knowledge of the outside world or at least that Gonta saw the outside world, it’s very difficult to imagine how he could have thought of it like this.

Kaito: “You still wanna accuse him, huh?”

I like how this line makes it clear that everything Kaito’s said up to this point has just been an obviously-hopeless attempt to distract Shuichi and change his mind and make him no longer want to face the truth and accuse Gonta.

“I’ll just have to make you understand, even if it’s by force!”

I also enjoy this non-voiced line which comes up when he starts using the power to block your view and make the minigame harder. It shows that Kaito still doesn’t want to use “force” against Shuichi (whatever the hell that means in a real context outside of a minigame where Shuichi can take damage from Kaito yelling at him); he’s just desperate enough to deny the truth that he feels like he has to.

…Actually, the “force” part aside, I can make sense of how Shuichi would take “damage” from Kaito yelling at him. Health in trials is technically called “Influence”, aka the ability to convince everyone else of the truth. So if Shuichi takes damage here, what it’s really representing is that Kaito’s desperate irrational deflections about how he should just blindly believe in Gonta and not be siding with Kokichi actually are starting to get to Shuichi and chip away at his will to face the truth.

Kaito: “You keep saying, ‘truth’ this, ‘truth’ that, but… There’s a reason Gonta’s not the culprit! There’s no way to leave the mansion from the rooftop!”

And even though Kaito had a proper logical argument this whole time, he saved that until after everything else had failed. Which, sure, is because that’s how Argument Armaments are supposed to work, but it also makes perfect sense because Kaito already knows Shuichi has some kind of answer for this that’ll definitely be right because it’s Shuichi. So he put it off until the last possible moment and tried everything else he could muster before giving Shuichi this chance to completely shatter his words.

Kaito Refutations: 7!

Kaito: “Hold on… if they used the toilet paper as a rope to get down from the roof… Then they’d need to tie it to something. But there was nothing to tie it to. I know because… I investigated the roof!”

Kaito. You know the binoculars were on the roof.

This can’t even be put down to Kaito having temporarily forgotten about them, because the fact that he specifically mentions investigating the roof means he’s consciously recalling what he saw when he was there… and the binoculars are literally the only thing on the rooftop itself. His expression also becomes a lot more strained when he says that part – he knows he’s spouting bullshit in a desperate hope that Shuichi will have somehow forgotten about it and won’t be able to prove Gonta guilty.

Kokichi: “You’re stubborn, Kaito. You’re still going on about this…”

Really, all you’ve got to say is that he’s “stubborn”? No pointing out that he should know that his argument is wrong and is blatantly running away from the truth? Come on, Kokichi. You could do so much better than this.

Kaito: “Of course I am! I’m gonna believe in Gonta till the very end!”

Of course he is, though. He’s Kaito. He can’t bear to accept the idea that someone like Gonta could have committed murder when he can’t see it.

Shuichi: “The binoculars on the rooftop. The toilet paper could have been tied there.”

Kaito: “Gh…!”

Kaito’s reaction to this also very much makes it sound like he knew this already and just really didn’t want Shuichi to mention it, rather than this is a fact that he’s only just realising.

I could add this to the Kaito Refutations counter, but I tend to think of this one as an extension of the Argument Armament rather than a separate occasion. So our final count is seven! Or, if you count it differently from me and include every single individual statement that gets refuted even if some are lumped into the same general occasion, then this plus two more from the Debate Scrum makes ten. Either way, that’s a really big number for one character in one trial. Probably the biggest there ever is, even including the culprits. The writers knew what they were doing, all right.

Kaito: “…”

Kokichi: “Nee-heehee… Looks like Kaito’s morale is shot, so this whole thing is done now!”

Congratulations, Kokichi, you fucking did it. Except not really, because you dropped the ball multiple times at contributing to this as well as you could have, and Kaito is never going to change his worldview and stop believing in people either. This is almost entirely about Kaito’s issues with regards to Shuichi and is really none of Kokichi’s business at this point (not that it ever should have been) – but no, of course it is, of course it’s all about Kokichi.

Gonta: “So… it true. Gonta… really kill Miu.”

Kokichi: “But I’m the one who came up with the plan!”

Kokichi jumps in to interrupt Gonta really quickly here, like he’s really fixated on making sure everyone knows that all the evil clever scheming and planning, that was all him. Everyone already knew that, but he still feels the need to repeat himself to make sure of it. It’s like he said once earlier – there’s nothing more depressing than an unnoticed prank. He doesn’t just want to mess with people, he wants them to know it was him who messed with them. This need of his to gloat about his “evil” deeds is going to be part of the reason his overall plan fails, which I’ll talk about a lot when we get to that point.

Kokichi: “Anywaaay… just admit your crime, Gonta.”

And no, he’s not jumping in to take responsibility for the actual crime of killing Miu and therefore take some of the guilt away from Gonta, since he then immediately follows up with this. All the clever scheming was his, but that totally doesn’t make him a murderer, nope, that was all Gonta!

Gonta: “B-But… why did Gonta do… such… terrible thing…?”

Gontaaaaa. We won’t let you die before you learn the reason! You deserve to know that much at least!

Kokichi: “Wait, before you start crying… you gotta admit your crime fir—”

So, this is one of the parts that makes me think that Kokichi’s outburst last post about how it hurts him to persecute Gonta was genuine. He cuts Gonta off here when he starts getting emotional, as if there’s a part of him that is actually hurt by knowing it’s his fault that Gonta is suffering like this and so he just wants it to not be happening. Because of course Kokichi can’t actually accept that part of him and face up to the pain he caused Gonta and acknowledge that he did an awful thing. Nope.

(Technically Gonta did already admit he did it a few lines ago, though, so this bit’s a little awkward in how it’s acting like he still hasn’t. Maybe that’s just Kokichi wanting Gonta to be even clearer about how all the blame is definitely his.)

Shuichi: “Stop. I won’t let you, Kokichi. If anyone is going to get him to confess… it’s me.”

Shuichiiii. He already feels like an awful person as the one stuck with the burden of finding the truth and effectively condemning Gonta to death by proving it – so since he’s already suffering through that, he might as well go all the way with it by also taking this upon himself too.

(And look at how Kaito is emphatically not helping Shuichi carry that burden right now, despite how many times he said he always would. Not because he’s changed his mind about wanting to, mind you, but because he can’t. Because he’s not even strong enough to carry his own part of that burden.)

Shuichi: “Gonta… I’m going to look back at the whole case one more time, okay? When you’re convinced, you just let me know, alright? Let’s end this together.”

Yet Shuichi’s going about it in such a kind manner! Rather than Kokichi’s assholery and persecution, Shuichi is treating Gonta like a friend and like the confused, hurting victim that he is in this situation.

This would be one of the most well-justified excuses for a Closing Argument, since the idea is supposedly to help Gonta understand everything that happened given that he doesn’t remember. But… it doesn’t really work that way, because it’s still written exactly like a normal Closing Argument and not like Shuichi is trying to carefully and gently explain it to Gonta under these circumstances. Which is kind of a shame – it’d have been really neat if this one stood out among all the others in its tone because it was written like that. Maybe it could have even had him saying “you” instead of “the culprit”, as if he really is directly talking to Gonta. That would have been pretty adorable(…y tragic).

Shuichi: “After being convinced by Miu, we all logged into the Virtual World.”

We were not convinced by Miu. We were convinced by Kokichi and Monokuma.

Shuichi: “It’s possible… that this had an effect on their avatar’s personality as well. Because I… I can’t believe that someone so kind could commit murder…”

It seems like this is what Shuichi has been telling himself this whole time in order to justify the possibility of Gonta killing someone. Even he couldn’t bring himself to accept it under normal circumstances! And it does make a certain amount of sense, since there’s both a memory and a consciousness cord, so it follows that if his memory was messed up then his consciousness might have been as well. As it turns out, that’s wrong, and there simply was no consciousness malfunction. But given that nobody could reasonably be expected to imagine Gonta’s actual plausible motive with him still being the person they believe in, it’s understandable that Shuichi would go with this theory instead.

While a lot of the panels of Shuichi’s imagination of Ambiguous Culprit Gonta are going to be very inaccurate, this one of Gonta freaking out over the unknown motive as Kokichi grins evilly to himself is probably pretty spot-on.

Irrelevant side note: the way Kaito’s hair is drawn in this panel always bothered me. It’s not sticking up enough! His hair just looks like Phoenix Wright here – not that there’s anything wrong with Phoenix’s hairstyle, but it’s not the right kind of ridiculous anime hair for Kaito.

Shuichi makes the same assumption Kokichi did a while back that Miu logged Kaito out after walking through the wall, even though it’s silly to assume that because it would have been safer for her to log him out before walking through the wall so he wouldn’t potentially see her do it.

And here’s a collection of evil grins that Gonta definitely did not have while doing any of this. At least this time Shuichi has a reason for imagining these, since he’s telling himself that Gonta wasn’t really the usual Gonta at all.

I like this panel of Miu reaching out to Kokichi as she dies. She knew exactly who really killed her. Or at least Shuichi is imagining as much because he knows who really killed her too. (I mean, not that Gonta didn’t also kill her, but.)

Shuichi: “Without that one little mistake… we might never have solved this case, because the culprit doesn’t remember.”

Um, Shuichi? Are you forgetting whose fault it is that you solved this case? Not Gonta’s for not hiding the toilet paper properly. It was Kokichi’s fault, for straight up fucking telling everyone Gonta did it. Shuichi only figured out the toilet paper thing after he’d already narrowed down that only Gonta could have done it, and he did that because Kokichi told him to.

Gonta: “S-Sorry… Gonta not really understand… Cuz… Gonta not smart boy…”

See, the whole Closing Argument really wasn’t put across in a way that would help Gonta understand, was it. Not that I’m sure it would have been possible to have him fully understand everything no matter how carefully it was explained, because that’s a lot of details for him to keep in his head without ever having actually been there. He’s not actually seeing the comic, after all.

Gonta: “But… if everyone agree, then… everyone probably right. Gonta… trust everyone!”

Gontaaaaaa. If anyone would accept that they’re unknowingly a murderer because of their faith in everyone else, it’d be him.

Gonta: “Gonta kill Miu… forget everything… Gonta even think he not do anything bad…”

No, Gonta, it wasn’t your fault that you forgot, that part really was just an accident!

It’s heartbreaking that Gonta hates himself not just for killing Miu but also for thinking he didn’t do anything wrong after having done something like that. Not only does he obviously believe you shouldn’t do bad things, but he believes that if you do happen to do a bad thing, then owning up to it and accepting that you did it is also really important. Of course he’d think that way. (Take some fucking notes, Kokichi.)

Gonta: “Wh-Why…? Why Gonta do such terrible thing!?”

Kaito: “…”

Kaito hasn’t said a single word since Shuichi proved him wrong about the binoculars, and he won’t until after the vote. It is fitting that they’d choose now of all times to pan to him saying nothing and remind us of this fact, since Kaito absolutely cannot comprehend why Gonta would do this either.

Tsumugi: “It’s Kokichi’s fault. He… must’ve tricked Gonta.”

Kokichi: “Huuuh? I totally didn’t trick him.”

Yes, you absolutely fucking did. You’re going to convince everyone that you didn’t once his motive gets explained, but you did.

Monokuma: “What a buzzkill of an ending. It lacks the rush of previous Voting Times… Well, after so many killing games, I guess it was bound to happen eventually!”

Geez, Monokuma, have some subtlety. No freaking wonder Kokichi figured this whole thing out and has spent this entire chapter knowing full well that the outside world he saw was a lie. (Which is why what Kokichi did to Gonta was very much a trick.)

While the actual reason this game shows the voting results when no previous game did is for the purpose of the final trial where nobody votes, my favourite thing about this feature is that we get to see this voting result here. This entire trial, Kaito’s arc has been about inadvertently showing himself to be weaker than and inferior to Shuichi even though that’s the opposite of what he wants to do. And now here’s a final, tangible, indisputable piece of proof that Kaito just isn’t strong enough to face this truth while Shuichi is. It doesn’t end up mattering because he’s the only one to do it, but if enough other people had been as weak as Kaito is being here, then everyone would have died. That’s not how a hero behaves at all, and Kaito definitely knows this.

It’s honestly a shame that the game even lets you potentially vote incorrectly here (especially given that it forces you to vote correctly in trial 5, so the writers aren’t averse to doing that when it’d help the narrative). If the players suddenly decided to make it so that Shuichi couldn’t face the truth either and was being equally as weak as Kaito, that just completely ruins the entire everything of it. It should have forced you to vote for Gonta even if you try not to, as a representation of Shuichi’s determination to face the truth no matter how much it hurts.

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#danganronpa #danganronpa v3 #drv3 #ndrv3 #chapter 4 #class trial #commentary

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go-diane-winchester · 5 years

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If you don't like Misha, this post might make you smirk.

I did this post yesterday and then deleted it because the OP made me feel sorry for her. Luckily for me, someone reblogged it and my momentary stupidity is now remedied. This whole scenario makes me smirk.

Yesterday's post:

Doll face found @dean-supernatural-akf ranting in the main tags, including the Jensen tag, which is why she forwarded this biased drivel to me. Thanks sweetie. I scrolled though OPs blog, trying to figure this person out, because she ships wincest and destiel, apparently. And she hates the haters. It is convenient and dismissive to label those who don’t agree with you, don’t you think? Label them rather than proving them wrong conclusively, because that would be difficult and you might lose the argument because of a lack of intelligence. So call them names and be done with it. Her rant is in italics, and my rebuttal in bold.

Rude and Missunderstood.

I CAN LIKE MISHA COLLINS AS AN HUMAN AND ACTOR WITHOUT BEING ONE OF HIS MINIONS.

Shocking right?

Here have a seat and lean back.

Very recently i got heavily missunderstood, and i’m making this post so it won’t happen again.

I asked someone if their blog is real . Because it was so full of hate against this actor named Misha Collins.

This guy right here, and I bet when you are one of the anti misha people then you even share the same look on your face right now, congrats.

Listen… I love JENSEN and i love JARED. And yes i love MISHA too.

But i don’t follow him around like a dog, i don’t kiss the ground where hes walking on.

AND i also don’t do this with J2.

Why is it that when there is an entire blog dedicated to hate for Jensen or Jared, there is no bleeding heart rant like this about that blogger? But if you write a blog about all the mean things Misha and his fans do, you are a “horrible human being” with “toxicity and hate in your heart”. No, I would prefer to call it discernment. I wont like someone just because “it SPNFamily darn it, haters don’t belong”. So if Misha gives me consistent reasons to hate him, I am still not allowed to hate him because I will be ejected from SPNFamily? What is this? A communist fanbase? Nobody is allowed to have their own opinions? Everybody must think the same way and feel the same fairytale happy feelings? Which dandelion world did you pop up from?

I fight for all of them, i fight against the hate that all of those three get and Misha gets more hate then J2 and thats a fact.

Misha gets more hate? Really? You mean like death threats? Like people tweeting him directly that they wish he was dead? That kind of hate? Please, show me where the hate is. Bring me your receipts. I want to see all the hate that Misha gets.

And it’s so fucking unfair, i have seen blogs and people that wish that he would die, a man with two children and wife.

This is so sick and it’s so not okay.

Prove it. Screenshot and show me where all these horrible people are. I will put it in a post. I always do. The death threats and death wishes for J2 have been screenshotted and are on my blog. So I have proof for my claims. Bring the proof for your claims. Its called making mature statements. Quantifying your claims. So please, set me straight. Show me all the nastiness poor Misha gets. I would like to see it.

About the Misha minions, MISHA ISNT THE ONLY ONE WITH MINIONS.

Shocking again, right ?

From under which rock did you emerge? Misha named his fans minions. Very disrespectful. No other actor has ’‘minions’’. Benedict Cumberbatch didn’t like his fans referring to themselves as Cumberb*tches. I respect him for that. Misha did the opposite. Shocking, right?

The people who only love J2 hate on Misha. And the people who love all of them hate back against the anti Misha people.

That is an incredibly simplistic way of putting it. And it gives me the impression that this rant was written by someone who is young and idealistic in their notion of how the world works. How come you don’t talk about the people who like Jensen and Misha and therefore hate Jared? You cant. You cant because that would be problematic to the narrative you are vomiting right now. Those cockles perverts are the ones that tweet him, telling him that that they cant wait for him to die. Receipts on my blog.

The way you support J2 is the same way that Misha’s people support him.

Actually no, J2 fans don’t get angry when Misha is interviewed for Elle magazine, yelling “where’s J2”. They don’t ask “Whose line is it,anyway?” why they excluded J2. They don’t threaten to burn Misha alive in his house for being anti-destiel and/or making a joke about Jensen. That happened with Jensen. I have the receipts. The same group were discussing kidnapping Jared’s kids. That group was made up of 3500 people. So many haters slipped up your radar? Well, now you know.

Minions and bitchy people are EVERYWHERE.

It is such a useless fight, don’t like someone?

THEN SHUT THE FUCK UP ABOUT IT.

Yeah, take a page out of your own book. If you don’t like the “haters”, as you dismissively call them, then don’t put this incorrect, unsubstantiated, unquantifiable rant in the main tags. In fact, keep your uninformed opinion to yourself.

What you do when you hate someone so badly and make a whole tumblr Blog about it then you are not better as those highschool bullies.

Dealing with the entire subject of hate, in the most abstract manner, without any analysis into your darling actor’s bad behavior and without taking into account the nasty behavior of his fandom, shows that high school is all you know. Hopefully, one day you will grow up and think on broader terms.

Cyberbullying is a serious subject, and thats exactly what you do with Hate Blogs and Hate tweets and Hate comments.

Keep using the word “hate”. It will abrogate all the legitimate anger that the J2 fans have against Misha and his hellerminions. Hellers are the biggest cyberbullies in fandom. They sent hate directly to J2. Some of the things they write will shock a person who has a real disdain to hate, not a daffodil like you who thinks Misha is infallible and doesn’t deserve an anti tag. One said that she couldn’t wait for Jared to die. And she tweeted that directly to Jared, along with a praying emoji. Oh, you don’t know about that? Well, then I guess you are not an authority on who is SPNFamily and who is not, now are you?

You want to be a bully ? You love spreading hate ?

THEN JUST FUCKING BLOCK ME AND DON’T REPLY TO THIS.

Don’t reply to this? Then why put it in the main tags, as well as inappropriate tags, and still hope that nobody disagree with you. Aren’t we childish?

What happened after the post was put up:

She DM's me and says that she has since changed her mind because she did another post about the hate that J2 get, and if I could please remove my post, because she was suffering panic attacks over it. I said I would, but she is going to remove the above misleading post and provide me with proof that Misha gets death threats. Caught between a rock and a hard place, she said that she came across the death threats on two blogs, that had blocked her for some mysterious reason, which is why she couldn't screenshot the evidence. I found what those reasons were, when I went to those blogs:

@castiel-needs-2-go

@destiew-must-go

I searched through their blogs, and found nothing. No death threats. They just point out the truth about Misha. That is it. She accused them for nothing. Of course, that didn't occur to me until today, because I still felt concerned for her because the poor kid was suffering panic attacks. So I deleted the post. Today I find this message from her:

''So i asked like 10 different people Misha stans and Misha haters about those things you said he did. Nobody has ever heard of it, no one. You are telling your lies man, i aint stopping ya. But you are a horrible person if you need to attack a 19 year old on the Internet and 'Call me out' just because it gives you a kick. And just because you disagreed. My post will stay deleted because it wasnt up to Date anymore, but it wont be my last one. People like you need to be stopped, people like you are the reason why this fandom sucks so hard. Bye Bye. You are the sick one here .''

The weird thing is she attached this gif:

I don't know whether she thought it was going to hurt my feelings or something but, it actually helps to show her true identity. She is not a wincest fan. She is a Sam-hating heller in disguise. Who would have thunk it?

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zeviews · 5 years

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Psycho Pass 2 - Episode 3 “The Devil’s Proof”

We start with the image of the missing inspector from episode 1, Shisui waking up with her hands strapped around her own gun aimed for her face and the voice of a mild mannered man who introduces himself as the mythical Kirito Kamui, apologizing but he needed her eye. And that he desires to make her - nay, the whole world - Clear.

After the opening, we’re greeted with the usual bullshit from Miss Bitch Shimotsuki who insisted on calling Tsunemori insane and the usual stuff and ranting against Enforcers. How dare they do the job they were here to sent! The reason for them all being in the room is because Tsunemori discovered someone had been in her apartment - somehow - without her or anyone noticing, and scribbled “WC?” on her wall.

On their way back to the office, Tsunemori tells Shimotsuki to take a right turn and go to the Isolation Ward instead. Unfortunately it’s not to lock Shimotsuki up much to my dismay, but to have a chatty discussion with a man named Jouji Saiga. Realizing this person could probably talk her panties off, Shimotsuki suddenly declares that she is sick, that she’ll wait in the car and it’s most definitely not because she’s afraid of someone with a clouded hue!

Of course Tsunemori is here in order to bounce ideas and theories regarding how someone could had entered her apartment without anyone noticing, and barring the fact that it couldn’t been any cat person since the lack of clawed furniture speak against that fact, the most logical conclusion is that it can only had been a ghost. This prompts Saiga to speak the episode’s title of ‘The Devil’s Proof’.

The Devil's Proof, or as it's called in Latin Probatio Diabolica, means to produce the evidence of an impossible proof. In other words, while there may indeed be evidence for something to have occured just as the statement claims, there are no actual evidence to prove that it didn't happened. I'm jumbling it up here, but the point is a logical dilemma that can be summed up as: There is no evidence that denies the devil's existence, therefore one cannot deny the devil's existence.

Back at the Office, Tsunemori requests to the Chief that Division 1 will be in charge of this mystery case as well as all other things they’re busy with, and the Chief asks her to stay for some one-on-one discussion, mentioning the intriguing idea that Tsunemori could potentially be so insane that she’s actually sane and there would be no way to prove it - aside from catching her red handed I guess. She also claims that Sakuya Togane, one of their enforcers, have had the highest crime coefficiency in the history of ever and therefore she wants to hear everything about him if things crop up. You know, if he likes sugar in his hot chocolate and such.

While this is going on, we got some backstory from action girl ( Risa Aoynagi ) and Nobuchika Ginoza. Action girl talking about how her life is a mess so she focuses on her job because it’s all she has left, and how she put her emotions aside because it’s too much yet she enjoys killing criminals. It’s all pretty uninteresting but it serves a purpose for what’s to come. As she leaves, she gets a call from none other than Shisui.

Alarm, area stress event is going on inside a hotel so naturally the bitch decides that she’ll deal with it, prompting her to spout her usual nonsense of how Tsunemori is dumb AND I DON’T LIKE YOUR FACE EITHER, crap. Now the area stress warning is because it’s a fat politician talking about improving citizens’ lives and I mean, yeah that could get a rise out of everyone’s stress levels. He insists that there’s nothing wrong with him and that they should get Kamui here so he could talk to him and clear this misunderstanding up.

While this is going on, Action girl Aoynagi have arrived at the destination where Shisui .. I keep making typo’s of her name that I’m contemplating calling her Sushi by now instead... claims she was waiting. Which turns out to he a pharmacy because, why not meet your co-workers there! She observes an old man talking in a normal tone yet using upset language at a young clerk, and even still talking calmly as he starts to strangle the life out of the clerk, presumably because he had been running on his lawn, but as Aoynagi pulls out her gun on him, the gun doesn’t recognize him as being a Criminal, and she gets her face full of his protective robo-dog.

We get a brief scene where Tsunemori and crew talks about this oddity of a Bomb-Diffusing Drone that was found some distance away from the scene of the crime, and when it was sent into maintenance, they discovered a piece was missing from it - Impact Absorber, hmm. How peculiar.

The episode ends with the old guy having assaulted Action Girl and delivers a final punch to her face, hand bloody, face bloody, yet the old man looks calm. Yet this is only the calm before the storm.

This episode isn’t as interesting and I have to admit that I zoned out several times watching it. Perhaps it’s my intense dislike of Psycho Pass, or the episode is just kinda dull. Instead I found myself contemplating my inner thoughts about it and how I think it’s important to potentially first hate something, then go back and watch it again, and try to see it from a different perspective.

But the thing is, everything about Psycho Pass speaks against what I would describe my nature is. The whole system of Psycho Pass is simply about conformity in it’s rawest form, and I’m someone whom been called numerous of times as someone who refuses to conform, which isn’t entirely untrue but it’s more complicated than that, so when I look at Psycho Pass, I try to think - is there something deeper here? But no, there isn’t.

Either way, we’re only at episode 3, we still have some way to go.

Next time, it’s Episode 4, The Salvation of Job

... What?

- Zeithri

#psycho-pass #psycho-pass 2 #psychopath #zeviews #anime #cyberpunk #episode 3 #psycho pass season 2 episode 3 #zeithri

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vmheadquarters · 6 years

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Happy Birthday @spookykinney!

For your birthday, surfer-Logan and FBI-Veronica are teaming up in this delightful remake of Point Break as told by our very own @cheshirecatstrut! We hope you have a great birthday and that you enjoy this first chapter of Taking the Drop.

It’s not like Veronica thought, while fighting tooth-and-nail to win a job at the FBI, that a law enforcement career would be glamorous. She assumed ‘high-risk’ and ‘life-consuming’ went without saying… but jumped in with both feet because everyone assumed she’d fail. Throughout those years she waged battles with a stacked system, though, to earn her gun and badge—she never once imagined the work would be BORING.

She’s currently reading email nine-thousand-three of more than forty-six thousand, however, so she can catalog contents to make a searchable database; and the sheer tedium has her reconsidering her position. Because sure, she MIGHT find the smoking gun in this stash, and put an international fraudster behind bars. But since right now she’s transcribing vet bills for a Pomeranian’s impacted anal glands, she has her doubts.

Voices filter back to her small and grimy cubicle, her reward for graduating Cum Laude from Columbia Law; she perks up as she hears the words, “…see if an agent’s available.” Since she’s fresh out of the Academy, and most junior on staff, Agent in Charge of Random Bullshit is usually her.

Approaching footsteps bolster this theory, so Veronica pitches her gum, straightens her somewhat-wilted blazer. Turns expectantly towards the entrance, alert-and-professional expression in place, just as Logan Echolls lounges against the frame.

He looks GOOD, she thinks illogically, even as she wilts like her sport coat. Tanned and buff and fifty times healthier than he should, considering those six years of tabloid-chronicled hedonism since she dumped him. He’s in old jeans and flip-flops, his ‘Live Fast, Die Young’ t-shirt both worn and snug; faint sun-wrinkles at the corners of his eyes deepen when he notes her disappointment. Darla from reception waves and OH-MY-GOD’s behind him as he says, “Why am I not surprised you turned a felony kidnapping investigation into a job?”

“Why am I not surprised you’re still wasting your potential at the beach?” She gestures up-and-down at his ensemble. “And what on Earth are you doing in the San Diego field office, Logan? Are you planning to make another romantic drunken speech? Maybe you saw a joke flyer advertising kegs, and the metal detectors failed to deter you?”

“You wound me, Veronica,” he says, clearly not wounded, as she shoos away Darla. “You know full well I’m always the host. Like I’d deign to turn up at some random loser’s party.”

She snorts, and his grin faintly manifests. “Tragically, though, there’s a distinct lack of revelry and booze at this locale, so how about I cut to the chase? Can I interest you in a theory regarding bank robberies?”

Her eyes widen and she sits back, gesturing towards the uncomfortable guest chair. He unfolds from his lean and slouches into it, stretching out his long legs and making the cube feel minuscule.

“Now what would a boy like you know about felony theft?” She taps her lower lip while he crosses his arms, entertained. “I’m guessing very little, unless you learned on a film set—but I’ll admit you’ve disappointed me before.”

“I’m talking, specifically, about high-yield local jobs—the ones you guys have bungled like Keystone Cops for three years?” He bobs his brows, tone ever-so-slightly-patronizing. “The robbers wear Ninja Turtle masks, and collect massive hauls with a crew of four?”

“I may have heard a mention,” V says, with irony, because this case is the local Holy Grail. “As has every cable-news watcher in America.”

“Any lovers of partisan coverage realized yet the jobs only take place in the summer?”

She rolls her eyes. “Give us a little credit. We’re the FBI over here, not credulous guest stars on Scooby Doo.”

“And has it further occurred to you,” he leans forward intently, elbows on knees, “that these are the prime surfing months in So-Cal? For the rest of the year, surfers travel to the best waves…which costs more than people other than me can afford.”

He’s close enough now for her to smell his cologne, the sun-baked scent of his skin. Her voice, when she speaks, is husky. “Logan, what have you heard?”

Shrugging, he reclines against the wall, satisfied he’s piqued her curiosity. “Rumors,” he says, with a hand wave. “Nothing substantial. You know how it goes, when we reprobates toast marshmallows and gossip. High-denomination bills are turning up among locals, lately…and I’m the only guy who hasn’t spent his trust fund.”

“Rumors,” she repeats flatly, disappointment washing over her. Decides he looks and smells too lickable for pointless conversation to continue. “Well if that’s all you’ve got, no need to prolong the awkwardness. Thanks for stopping by--we’ll look into your allegations and touch base if necessary. Appreciate the good citizenship, blah-blah, God bless America.”

She finger-waves, and he stares for a moment, disbelief fading into cynicism. “Fine,” he says at last, pushing up out of the chair. “Your loss. I’ve had fun exchanging insults again, Veronica—it’s been a while since my last creative tongue-lashing. Good luck with the glamorous new career. Oh, and…excellent choice, reverting to shorter hair. There’ll be less to tear out when ignoring my clue gets you nowhere.”

He winks and strides away. She runs a palm self-consciously along one side of her sleek bob, and watches his back muscles shift as he goes.

XXXXX

Veronica submits a form detailing the interaction, per procedure, then tries to re-focus on the mind-numbing emails. The memory of Logan’s disappointed expression nags…but what did he expect, showing up out of the blue with no evidence? She WANTED to believe him; just like she wanted, once upon a time, to have faith he’d give up reckless self-endangerment. But leaping without looking is Logan’s thing--and the best way to protect him is to NOT inquire into crimes of his nearest and dearest.

She’s a professional, though, and the bigwigs want their database yesterday. So she dutifully enters emails till it’s eleven and she’s wiped. V then drags herself home to run on the treadmill, eat a frozen dinner, and feel both sad and glad she’s got no hungry dog waiting.

When her alarm goes off (too early) the next morning, she staggers into the kitchen to grab a bottled coffee; slumps half-awake at the breakfast table to chug. Mac’s gone for the day, probably practicing Tai Chi in the park, but the San Diego Union-Tribune’s on the table, neatly folded to show the front page. Veronica’s bleary gaze passes over it…then swings back, focuses. She grabs it in both hands, cursing.

The headline reads, ‘Wild in the Banks? Surf Wax Found at Multiple Robbery Sites, Source Claims’. The article beneath, written by some pompous windbag named Julian Grac, details the theory Logan laid out yesterday…along with several bits of evidence she’s sure were kept from the press.

“That asshole talked to the PAPER,” she mutters, crumpling newsprint in her fists. “When I kicked him to the curb, I should have kicked HARDER!”

Her rage sustains her all the way through her shower and commute. But when she gets inside the forbidding white-stone-blue-glass building, and finds a summons from Agent Morris waiting? Anger gives way to foreboding.

Morris still holds a teeny-tiny grudge about the whole getting-outsmarted-IN-RE-Duncan thing. And continues to view Veronica with unreasonable suspicion--which is troublesome because right now she’s V’s boss.

Her fearless leader’s planted on the desktop when Veronica enters, legs crossed casually, arms folded. The ‘lazy housecat, circling’ routine Morris uses to intimidate is getting old; so V goes full can-do chipper in response. “You asked to see me, ma’am?”

“Mars, am I right in assuming we work for the same department?” Morris arches one eyebrow, and Veronica has to bite her tongue to contain sarcasm. “It’s not something I hallucinated, due to lack of sleep from investigating bank heists?”

“Last time I checked, ma’am,” V replies breezily. “Unless there was a re-org this morning while I was stuck in traffic.”

“And when a potential witness for said case appears in said department…” Morris pauses, for dramatic effect, Veronica assumes. “Shouldn’t the interviewing agent, who’s incidentally my subordinate, notify me ASAP?”

“I passed the information up the chain as per FBI rules,” Veronica says. “And you must have received it, or I wouldn’t be standing here.”

“Yes, but if you had walked Mr...” Morris consults a sheet of paper on the desk by her hip, “Echolls upstairs personally, instead of sending him on his way and writing a bare-bones report, I would’ve received the information YESTERDAY. BEFORE he ran to the paper, and spilled critical intel to perps. I might’ve even convinced him silence is golden, since you didn’t find it worthwhile to try. Here’s a hint—fake sympathy and charm work wonders.”

Veronica finds this claim dubious, but all she says is, “Ma’am, he was passing along rumors. He didn’t give names or offer proof. And I doubt he’s a witness to anything but his own moral decline.”

“Be that as it may,” Morris says. “He HAS made the acquaintance of this pain-in-my-ass Julian Grac. Who somehow knows about the beeswax residue at six of nine robbery sites--the chemical composition of which matches a well-known surf product. Mr. Zog’s Sex Wax, to be precise. Bubblegum scent.”

Veronica contains an eye-roll. “A detail which was kept out of the press.”

“Right.” Morris levers herself up to standing. “My question is, HOW does Grac know? Did he learn this tidbit from Echolls? And if so, where’d Echolls hear?”

“Logan parties a lot.” Veronica shrugs, hoping she comes off unaffected. “And snoops. Probably he stumbled into the wrong crowd and overheard a conversation. It wouldn’t be the first time.”

“Yes, I was interested to learn you and Echolls share a history.” Morris consults the paper again; Veronica wonders whether it’s a car-wash receipt or actual research. “He was your boyfriend after Duncan Kane fled the country, correct? It’s great you didn’t disappear him, too, because we can use that relationship to get close to his sources.”

“Logan Echolls isn’t big on being used,” Veronica says, lightly. “You might not find him accommodating.”

Morris sighs. “Look, Mars, we’ve been praying for a break on this case for years. And, as I’m sure you’ll be shocked to learn, none of our agents surf. He does, though—Echolls—I understand he’s pretty good. He also trusts you enough to hand you dirt on guys he knows. It might be…” she trails a finger along the edge of her desk, slants V a sly look, “…advantageous to your career to demonstrate team loyalty, Mars. Convince the guy to be our confidential informant. Get an introduction to some surfers, find out who’s flashing mystery cash. His social circle’s no doubt heard about your turbulent former romance. He could help us infiltrate the locals-only crowd, none of whom like talking to Feds.”

“But if I go undercover,” Veronica tries to conceal her mounting excitement, “who will log the last thirty-thousand Sanderson emails?”

“Let me put it this way, Mars.” Morris smirks. “If you DON’T go undercover? I got a server in today from Atlanta containing another hundred-k.”

“You know I’m a professional, ma’am.” Veronica folds her hands behind her back to conceal the involuntary fist. “Whatever my task may be, I’ll work hard to exceed expectations.”

“So you say.” Morris lays the paper, gently, down. “I’d rather you prove ‘my task’ means ‘anything the FBI asks’. Not ‘whatever I feel is right, even if it’s against the law’.”

Veronica nods, giving away nothing. Morris contemplates her in silence. “We’re working on an alternate post-Hearst background for you,” her boss continues, after a tense thirty seconds. “You’ll have it by the end of the day. I’ve also called in a favor from the owner of Neptune’s Net, a local surf hangout—congratulations, you’re waiting tables. You’ve got a month to produce actionable evidence, plus I want weekly reports, in person. And Mars…from now on, don’t leave ANYTHING out.”

“I would NEVER.” Veronica presses a palm to her heart. Morris narrows her eyes, then waves a dismissive hand.

XXXXX

Once back at her desk, V pulls up tools that make Prying Eyez look like a toy and researches Logan. Within two minutes she’s got a list of his petty crimes, including one drunk-and-disorderly sophomore year and two expunged charges…destruction of a police vehicle, and assault of Mercer Hayes. But since junior year at Hearst, Logan’s flown under the radar. He earned a political science degree, with honors, followed by a Masters in English from YALE; and then…he bought a house in San Diego by the water, and a dog from the SPCA. She copies down the innocuous address, cracks her knuckles and considers.

High-tech’s getting her nowhere, so Veronica decides to Google; finds a ‘What happened to Logan Echolls?’ article which reveals precisely nothing. Next she turns her attention to Julian Grac, which at least has the benefit of novelty. It yields links to crime stories in the Union-Tribune, and an article about ‘ten great authors you’ve never read’.

Frowning, she clicks through, only to realize it’s name confusion. But the phrase ‘a writer who prefers obscurity’ catches her attention, so she speed-reads the autobiography of one Julien Gracq; a turn-of-the-century novelist who rejected awards, refused to do book tours, and lived as a hermit. His masterpiece, ‘Chateau D’Argol’, was about a rich man whose best friend brings a poor girl into their social circle. After which the girl seduces, then ruins, them both.

At this point Veronica throws her pencil holder across the room. Because this is EXACTLY the kind of pseudonym Logan Echolls would adopt, and smirk about regularly, knowing few had the insight to penetrate his ruse.

She doesn’t need to use the search tools on Grac, at this point; but doing so reveals his paychecks languish in a shell account. Suspicions confirmed, she picks up the phone. Adopts the sugariest Southern accent she can muster, just because, and spins a tale to the Trib’s receptionist about the tip of a lifetime for ‘Monsieur Grac’. The voicemail box she’s transferred to boasts an inspirational quote (‘All news, as it is called, is gossip, and they who edit it are old women over tea’), recited in a drawl she recognizes. She hangs up, high on triumph, and decides a long-distance chewing-out won’t serve.

XXXXX

Veronica leans against a lamp post across the street to wait; within half an hour, Logan bounces out of the brown skyscraper housing the Union-Tribune. He loosens his tie as he walks, laughingly calling goodbyes to co-workers. He’s in designer flat-front slacks and a white oxford, hair mussed like he’s been running his hands through it--his impersonation of clean-cut and trustworthy is so cute she has to grit her teeth not to smile.

The street is packed with cabs, so it takes him a minute to notice her. When he does, he pulls a theatrical double-take before jaywalking, hands in pockets, smiling wryly.

“So,” she says, as soon as he clears the road, “Can I interest YOU in a theory about people who lie to FBI agents?”

“I didn’t lie, per se,” he counters, rocking back on his heels as his grin grows Grinch-like. “I just wore my weekend clothes and kept my mouth shut. The Veronica Mars Express Train to Paranoia-ville did the rest.”

“This is a serious federal investigation, Logan,” she chides, folding her arms. “Bringing evidence to the authorities isn’t a game for personal amusement.”

“What, exactly, are you mad about?” He lifts his brows. “That I gave you a hint instead of handing over story notes? That I failed to shout my job history from the rooftops? Or maybe you’re just pissed I’m not an alcoholic loser, since it makes you ditching me seem…selfish?”

“I could’ve had you subpoena’d and interrogated under oath,” she says, faux-thoughtfully. “But browbeating you in person seemed much more fun.”

He laughs. “THERE’s the Veronica who ran afoul of the Russian mob. So what convinced you my theory was worth pursuing, sugarplum? Not my charm, surely. Some fact in the article your colleagues missed, perhaps?”

“Like I’d discuss cases with a reporter,” she scoffs. “Why’d you go with ‘robberies only happen in summer’ when you had physical evidence in reserve?”

“Like I’d reveal my sources.” He grins. “Gosh, Veronica, seems like we’re at an impasse.”

“My supervisor wants to use your connections.” She goes sardonic in response to his glee. “I’d ask if you have experience undercover…”

“…But you know first-hand my skills are professional-grade?”

She narrows her eyes. He cocks his head, amusement warring with calculation. “If I help you, what do I get?” he asks.

“First crack at the story immediately following arrests,” she says. “With our full cooperation. And any information you gather solo you can use…unless, of course, it’s classified.”

He removes car keys from his pocket; stares, considering, into the distance as he flips them around one finger. Returns his gaze to hers and locks on, Logan-style. “I assume my role is to introduce you to suspicious surfers? Since I further assume you won’t let me handle this and report back?”

“You know what they say about assumptions,” she says, by way of answer. “Of course, you’re an ass already, so maybe you don’t care.”

“I should warn you, a lot of our high-school classmates have stuck around.” He holds his tie down with one palm as a breeze shifts it sideways. “This may suck for you, but you’ll have to pretend we’ve reconciled.”

She nods, and he extends the non-key-containing hand. “Give me your phone.”

V shouldn’t violate protocol; but Logan’s trustworthy, within limits, so she types in the code and does. He enters his number in the contacts and gives it back. “There’s a party tonight at Black’s Beach—should be locals-only, very exclusive. Text me an address, I’ll pick you up at eight. Oh, and dress like a surf bunny, even if doing so offends your sensibilities. Not all these people are stupid, you’ll need to blend.”

“Gee, I was hoping you’d refuse to cooperate,” she says wistfully, pocketing her cell. “Then do something worse than jaywalking, then flee, so I could knock you down and cuff you.”

“Maybe later, if you’re REALLY nice,” he says, leaning confidentially towards her ear. Then walks off, whistling, while she tries to purge the image from her brain.

XXXXX

Veronica’s sitting on the porch of her rented condo when Logan pulls up at 7:55—in a dusty black vintage Range Rover, not the shiny orange Porsche she envisioned. She considers, as she stands, whether she also makes too many assumptions. But his appreciative whistle while he opens her door is distracting.

“Guess it slipped my mind how much you love playing dress-up,” he murmurs. She doesn’t miss the quick once-over he gives her as he releases the brake. “You look great, Veronica, love the sarong. And friendship bracelets are a nice touch.”

“This is actually a tablecloth.” She strokes the fringed white linen, embroidered with red roses, she tied over one hip so she’d feel less naked in her green bikini. “I favor a no-nonsense black wardrobe these days, because Cup ‘o Soup stains don’t show.”

“Wise,” he says, and clears his throat. He’s in linen too, a short-sleeved, half-buttoned summer shirt over cargo shorts; she notes with amusement the shark’s tooth necklace has reappeared. “I figured we’d start at the top of the food chain and work our way down, since most surf crews around here are big on punching but short on brains. Brains being a prerequisite for smoothly-planned bank jobs.”

“Sounds fair,” she agrees, watching his arm muscles shift as he changes gears. “This party is where we’ll find apex predators?”

“Black’s has the most challenging waves in the area—ten, twelve footers courtesy of an offshore trench. It takes stamina to swim out and ride, so this spot attracts real athletes…the ranked surfers that compete on TV. And Zen masters, who just want to be one with the ocean.”

She makes a face, and he says, serious, “It’s not a joking matter to these people, Veronica. They don’t welcome posers in their midst. I vividly recall you disapproving of fistfights and vandalism, so be warned; the elite surfing community makes me, way back when, look like a piker. Crews are similar to those biker gangs you inexplicably love, although these are black sheep from MIDDLE-class homes--plus more ethnically diverse. This particular group is Mother Nature mystical in a way you’ll loathe and mock; so expect pot and hallucinogens, free love interspersed with showdowns. Stick close to me or you’ll be propositioned…and whipping out a taser would break your cover.”

“Understood.” She studies his face, surprised to see concern there. Gentles her tone in response. “I’ve gone undercover before, Logan. And agents are extensively trained in hand-to-hand combat. I can handle myself in a fight now.”

“Like you couldn’t before?” A smile plays across his lips; a street lamp illuminates his face as they pass beneath, then he’s cast again in shadow. He turns into a parking lot at the edge of a cliff and kills the engine. “I’m not worried about your moxie, Veronica. I just don’t want you to mouth off and find yourself surrounded. Out here, surfers make the rules.”

“I have full faith in your ability to fight dirty defending me,” she says softly. He laughs, gaze tracing her face, and she’s reminded of previous evenings with him in a parked car.

“Nice to see some things don’t change,” he murmurs, then climbs out to help her down. His hands linger on her waist as he lifts her from the seat, skin-to-skin.

They pass, in the moonlight, a brown sign that reads ‘stairway unstable due to rains’. He walks behind her down a narrow path with a rotting rail, hand on her shoulder like he’ll catch her if she falls. It’s nice, this unwavering focus, his concern for her well-being despite angry words. She used to take it for granted, the way she drew male eyes. But she’s grown up, post-Hearst; and she realizes now most men don’t pay attention as completely as Logan did.

At the base of the cliff, past a saucer-shaped observation tower, a bonfire sends smoke spiraling into the sky; loud music blasts, Dick Dale with the bass maxed. Seventy-ish people cluster near the crackling flames--on either side, a ribbon of sand stretches off into the dark. The water looks black, boasting military-formation-regular waves, and the rock wall at her back is smooth, forbidding.

The crowd’s uninhibited as advertised, drinking and making out, smoking and laughing. A few guys dance in a circle with much hilarity, like they’re having some Lord of the Flies moment or praying for rain. A knot of humanity encircles loose boulders at what’s clearly the party’s center.

It’s obvious Logan’s no stranger, despite his current respectability. He greets people with grins and backslaps, jerks of his chin, less unaffected than he seemed addressing work colleagues. Almost, he slides back into his high-school persona—the 09’er general who dictated popularity, who slashed tires and started shit when his judgments were questioned. But there’s a watchful tension to the set of his shoulders, and he glances left frequently to make sure she’s beside him. That, more than words, convinces her there’s danger.

They take an indirect path to the cluster by the boulders; Logan accepts a shot en route, which he tosses back, unhesitating. Cracking his neck, he meditatively surveys the throng, then coughs to get her attention as a gap opens.

“Guy holding court at the center,” he murmurs, indicating a ropily-buff Asian man with longish hair and ratty swim trunks. “That’s Bodie Chang, he was a year ahead of us at Neptune High. You remember?”

Veronica nods, watching Bodie gesture lazily from his semi-reclined position. Watching the crowd guffaw when he speaks, soak up his every word. “He’s come a long way since I interviewed him for the school paper. I remember Chang being shy.”

“He’s one of the top twenty-five surfers in the world, now.” Logan shoulders aside a drunk dude-bro to attain the inner sanctum. “In this place, he’s King.”

She opens her mouth to reply; but Dick Casablancas erupts from a log like the Ghost of Shitty Memories past, and drapes a wasted arm around her partner-in-crime. “Lo-GAN!” he shouts, like Logan’s not next to him. “Mr. Echolls in the house, now the party can START!”

“Enticing ladies again with the scents of puke and Jagermeister, I see.” Logan shoves Dick off, not without affection. “I thought you weren’t coming tonight, dude. Something about college cheerleaders and a hot tub?”

“They had emergency PRACTICE.” Dick accompanies a raspberry with a thumbs-down. “Seriously, how much do you need to rehearse waving pom-poms? It’s not like anybody looks at the props. Hey, who’s the wahine?” He squints, attempting focus. “Nice boobs, looks sort of familiar. Maybe I’ve seen her in a por…oh, holy SHIT! Dude, why the FUCK did you bring V…”

“Hey ECHOLLS!” a voice calls, mercifully drowning out Dick’s fit. Logan spreads a palm across V’s back to steer her--towards Bodie Chang, his summoner, and the makeshift royal throne. The King of Black’sBeach looks them both over impassively. “Thought you were too busy for our modest shindigs these days, man.”

Logan shrugs, nonchalant, but shakes the proffered hand. “You know how it goes,” he says, easily. ”All that money to spend, all those waves to ride. Plus too much temptation here to drink to excess. My body’s a fine-tuned machine.”

“I can respect that,” Bodie says, with a faint smile that reminds Veronica forcefully of Agent Morris. “Looks like maybe you’ve had other distractions lately, too. Who’s your date?”

“This,” Logan says, pairing a smile with a warning glance, “Is Veronica Mars.”

Then he snakes an arm unexpectedly around her waist. His hand finds the gap in her makeshift sarong, cups her hip; he pulls her flush against his side and adds, “My girlfriend.”

#veronica mars #veronica mars fanfic #vmhq birthday club #spookykinney #vm fanfic

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justfangstvdto · 6 years

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Open Coffin | Chapter 17: “Never Be Afraid Of Darkness”

Pairing: Kol x SalvatoreSister!Reader

Chapter Summary: (flashback chapter) A look back in time to the reader's adventures when she first arrived in New Orleans following Mae's invitation to join her organization.

Warnings: not necessarily crucial to the story ( This chapter is skippable but you might miss a few references in future chapters),

Word count: 2998

Tags & Author Note at the bottom. Feedback is welcomed and appreciated.

Open Coffin Masterlist

Your name: submit What is this?

New Orleans 1913

The city is buzzing like nothing you have ever seen before. Music as far as the ear can hear, topless cars driving by without rush, every corner different than the one before and people as carefree as the wind - it's truly magnificent. New Orleans is at ease beating with his own heartbeat uncanny from the cities you stepped foot in.

“I knew you would make the right decision.” Her voice reaches you first before you can even see her descending among the crowd.

Unlike the first time you met, close to a week ago people don't seem to avoid her. They don't cross the streets, they don't stare, they just move past her, not fazed by anything. She seems to be much more at ease here.

She´s home.

And that cradles the green-eyed monster within yourself. Especially now that you´ve been on your own for the last months.

“That was fast, you do have eyes and ears everywhere.” You say, more or less impressed by how far information travels for someone like her.

“And now you do too, considering you´re willing to join us.” She says, your gaze drifting by her, which she seems to take as a sign of indecisiveness “Not to worry, you do not have to stay if you don't like it.”

“I'm here, aren't I?”

“Follow me then.”

She leads you along St. Peters street as you could gather from the street sign.

A cinnabar- orange colored building stands taller than the others on the intersection, it´s multiple floors creating a shadow that's drowning out the daylight on the street. In one of the windows of said house, a figure stands, presumably a man judging by the top hat. The mystery man lingers for but a moment before he closes the curtains.

“I would stay away from that house. Nothing but trouble.” Mae says, returning to your side.

You didn't even notice you stopped walking.

“This is your first time in the crescent city, correct?” She asks looking over her shoulder, and you answer with a nod “ Then I´ll have to give you a tour sometime. You ain't gonna find nobody better to show you around than me. I´ve been here since the very first day, laying down the first stone in Spring 1718.”

1718...that would make her close to 200 years, if not much older.

She crosses the street in a hurry, greeting what looked like traders in front of a shambled bar, the dirt crawling up the cracked walls fading with the orange bricks. You look up to catch a glimpse of the sign above the door, but it's empty. Strange. There seems to be no name set for the bar yet.

When Mae opens the door, the smell of spilled spirits, cigars and old wood dances around you, seeping into every pore. She greets several people sitting on tables, some with revolvers on the table, some reloading them with wooden bullets, others so preoccupied with their gambling they don't even bother to look up.

Mae continues through an archway and halts in front of yet another door, knocking against it in an alternating pattern. The small opening on the top is pulled back, a pair of eyes looking through them, their color not recognizable by the dim lighting.

“Lots of secrecy for someone that recruits people on the streets.” You say, just as the door snaps open, a woman on the other end holding the door open for you to step through.

“Believe it or not, we´re not the most favored bunch in this community. Or anywhere else really.” She says, walking into the open courtyard-like room, the ceiling beams high up her head “Welcome to our HQ.”

Several heads turn at your and Mae´s arrival, curious eyes scanning you up and down, a collective habit as it seems. The walls are made of patched up bricks that stretches out to the entire length of the room. The edged staircase on the left is accompanied by a dark red wallpaper, the sound of a lone guitar player in the back bouncing off of them.

It all has a shambled feel, which actually is much homier than you'd anticipated.

“I can give you the grand tour later if you want. But this precious one is our training area, gotta know how to defend yourself if you´re gonna have a run in with the big dogs.”

The fighting area is empty, but the scratched and slightly cracked floor is evident enough that fights must occur regularly.

“So that's what you're doing here? A fight club?” You ask her, trailing your fingers along the improvised stringed fighting area boundaries.

“I wish. But no. People come to us when the mortal or supernatural law fails and they need someone to take out the trash.”

Take out the trash, huh? How very inviting.

“You´re hired guns then?” You ask, the revolvers and the all over somewhat brute environment making much more sense. Not that you´d have any prejudices, of course not, but this is different than what you've expected.

The question is, is it different good or different bad?

“You could say that. Though, our currency, however, is not money, it´s blood, magical components and most importantly information. Gotta keep all species happy.”

“All species? There are witches, vampires AND werewolves living under one roof?”.

You never heard of such a thing. There has always been a mutual segregation among the species, how come it seems to work here only?

“Granted we lack a few in the werewolf department, but yes, we´re abiding the ancient rules. We´re one big dysfunctional deadly family. You´ll fit right in.” Mae gives you a wink and continues on to another bar counter.

“Howdy boss. What can I do you for?” A dirty blond-haired man asks her, drooling with a southern drawl. The dresshirt he´s wearing is crinkled and greased and the suspenders are slightly off. All in all, he doesn´t seem to care much about it, unlike the somewhat uptight men you´d see dressed outside of these walls.

If your mother would be here now, she´d go ballistic. There was nothing worse than a wrinkled dress-shirt. She would always make sure there were no wrinkles anywhere to be found after you pressed the clothes in the slick stones.

“Howdy? Seriously? Where are we, the wild west?” You mutter, the words slipping out of your mouth before you have a chance to catch them.

“Aren't you precious?” The man laughs loudly, a few tousled strands of hair falling over the side of his face which he ruffles back with his palm “Name´s Shank.” He says and extends his other hand.

“Y/N Salvatore.” You reply and shake his hand.

“Ah, the girl I heard so much about.” He says, his pale grey eyes lingering “I ain´t gonna lie, you´re much scarier in person.”

“Me scary? I think you got the wrong person.”

He cocks the side of his eyebrow and knowing smiles as if he's see something lingering within that you couldn't.

“Care for a drink?” Shank asks, not dwelling on his silent discovery.

“It's already noon, so why not?” You shrug your shoulders “Bourbon, neat. Please.”

“A Bourbon girl, I like you already. Coming right up.”

Shank generously fills the glass and sets it on the table all the while preparing another one, presumably for Mae. He slides her glass over the slick surface, landing directly in her hand. The liquid filling the crystal glass is as crimson red as her lipstick.

“Now to your potential mission. You remember what I told you?” Mae asks and you nod “You're gonna observe him.” She says and slides a drawn portrait over the wooden table. “Kol Mikaelson, part of the original family, the first vampires ever created. He's the black sheep of the family and most likely cooking up a revenge plan. I need you to observe him, watch where he goes what he does and who he talks to. He's dangerously reckless, so you have to proceed with caution.”

“Black sheep of the family and dangerous? Right up my ally.”

“Thought as much. With your family history and all.”

There it is again. Her strange knowledge of you and your life. How long has she been following you?

“You seem to know an awful lot about me when I know nothing about you.” You say, swirling the bourbon in your glass, avoiding to look at her.

“Then shoot. What do you want to know?” She asks, ready to receive any question.

You contemplate on several questions that are worth asking, but one in particular interests you the most, especially because you just lost yours; Family.

“These people here are your family, right? Your chosen one at least. What happened to your real one?”

“Hitting the hard questions I see.” Mae sighs “Well, my family and I had a mutual understanding. They wanted me gone and I wanted them dead. So I killed them.”

She killed her own family. Who knows what else she's capable of? Perhaps it was a mistake coming here. You look around, searching for any type of exit you could slip away easily when nobody's watching. But there is none. The only exit is the one you came in, walking by several filled tables.

“You killed your own family? Just like that?” You ask her, having no choice but to continue listening to her story.

“Not entirely voluntarily. I was falsely charged with an act of crime that only someone of my kind could commit. And me being the only freak in the village, they blamed me and destined me to be hanged.”

“I assume your village has never seen a vampire before?”You say, the word village indicating that she must be much older thanas you first thought.

“No. I wasn't a vampire then.” She shakes her head, her I was what people call a shiphoner - a witch without an own source of power. My people, or coven as you could say, only housed a few of us, but by then I was the only one left.”

“But yet you´re still here, so I assume they didn't go through with it?”

“Oh, no they did. Their hatred of the unknown was proof enough. I was dangling in the wind, with death gripping my feet.” She stops to take a sip of her crimson liquid “ But unlucky for them the ropes were dripping with power so I used them to free myself. And then I burned everyone. Guilty, innocent, old and young. I turned every witness to ashes.”

The memory of that event seems to rattle her. She tightens her grasp around the glass while her face remains unchanged. Lucky for you, you´ve always been paying attention to the glimpsed other people would ignore. A cruel present your father's violent outbreaks have gifted you.

“That's terrible.” You say, just imagining the cries of the dying and rush of guilt after the rage had calmed send a shiver down your spine.

“I ain't no saint, Y/N. Nobody here is.” She replies.

“No, I mean that they just blamed you for it, because you weren't like them.”

She seems to be surprised at your words as if she expected you to judge her for actions that were fueled by betrayal. But you´re not innocent either, so why would you judge her based on one of presumably many mistakes? You didn´t burn an entire coven, sure, but you still have blood on your hands. Much more than you´d ever thought possible when you first turned.

“The world is a terrible place, Y/N. But nothing much has changed in that regard, has it? Even the mortals segregate when they should reunite.”

She´s got a point. There is a war seething among humans right now. Another nasty comment, another dirty look might be the final straw Reuniting instead of segregation is the only solution. On the supernatural and human side.

“That is why I set the foundation for the empire you see today. We are united here. Vampires, Werewolves, witches, sometimes even mortals. You don't have to be ashamed of who or what you are.” She says and hits the exact point you´d always struggled with; being ashamed of what you are. A blood-sucking monster.

There is power and most of all truth in her words, a power that for once seems graspable and truth that should be as clear as day, yet for most, it's overshadowed by a casing of prejudice and taught hatred. You haven't met anyone as free from said casing in a long time. Perhaps ever.

A few hours have passed since you arrived at the Headquarters, and you spend your time roaming the halls before you found yourself in the extraordinarily organised library. There are files upon files of vampires reaching back to the earliest supernatural creatures - the Mikaelson family. All files of the Mikaelson siblings either had a drawn portrait or photograph. All but the infamous Klaus Mikaelson.

Perhaps that's a good thing. You heard terrible tales and you would rather stay away from him as far as possible.

You flip through Kol´s file, interested to learn as much about him as possible before agreeing to your mission. Besides his handsome features, he seems to have travelled a similar path away from his siblings.

As you flip to another page, a small piece of paper appears, floating from the high ceiling. It lands directly on the page. It reads:

Meet me in my office

-Mae

You close the files, carrying them with you to her office.

When you open the partly glass door, the smell of burned paper escapes the room.

“Everything okay?” You ask.

“Oh, Y/N..I...got rid of a few belongings. Burning bridges, closing doors - however you would like to call it.” She smiles, her usual striking hazel eyes dull and overshadowed with sadness.

A folded picture on the floor catches your attention, the edges torn and the image on the topside faded.

“I think you missed something.” You pick the picture from the floor, without looking at it handing it to her.

“Oh. That's not…thank you. ”She says, her gaze flickering to the photograph in her hand. She traces her fingers along the outlines of herself next to Klaus at the opening of the Opera House in 1859. She looks at the camera while Klaus looks at her, the image frozen in time.

“Must be a special picture.” You say, pulling out of the trip down memory lane.

“It was. Now it's simply a fading photograph, a reminder that the person you´d take a bullett for can easily be the person pulling the trigger.”

She clears her throat, shaking off whatever bothered her about the picture and hands you a stack of cards with a crow printed on the front, contrasting with the light paper.

“This is our calling card. Leave this at any of your potential missions and everyone knows it was us that did the deed.” She explains

“A crow, huh?”

“That's what the locals call us. Crows or bringers of death. Appropriate don't you think?”

You turn the card around, reading the Latin phrase that´s written on the back “What does this mean?”

“Not fluent in Latin I see? It means “never be afraid of darkness” - an old sentiment I thought fitting.”

Never be afraid of darkness. If only someone had told you that all the times you were locked in the basement for protecting your brother, maybe it would´ve brought you some comfort. But still as silly as these simple words may sound, there is indeed comfort in them.

“You know, I don't get it. Out of what reason do you want me to follow this Kol Mikaelson? There as to be a reason?”

“I was close to his family. And despite past grievances, I don't want to see them hurt. Kol, fairly so, has a thirst for revenge and I need to know what he's cooking up so I can interfere.” Mae says, rounding her table to lean on the front “I know this all might be a lot, but give us a chance if you dare. You won't regret it.”

“I'll think about it.” You reply, not knowing if you should stay, despite how eerily comfortable you already feel. Perhaps it will clear up in time.

“That's all I ask.” She says “ Now how about I show you around? There's a lot to see in our Crescent City.”

The feeling of a excitement washes over you as you step into the blinding heat of the day, a feeling you thought you buried long ago with your humanity. But perhaps after all the grievances in the past, especially with your brothers recently, it´s time for a fresh start. Here in New Orleans.

Maybe it was the right call coming here after all. Maybe, just maybe being surrounded by darkness doesn't seem so bad for once....

A/N: Did anyone catch what building I hinted at in the beginning? That's right, the Mikaelson Compound. But who was that at the window...hmm.. ;)

I realize that this does not really contribute to the current happenings of the story, but I felt like there should be a little more background. And I´m a sucker for flashbacks anyway.

Open Coffin Tags: (send me an ask if you want to be tagged) @shadyladyperfection @thegoddessofvampire @newurleans @originalbish98 @christinalibertymikaelson @acourtofhopeanddreams @bonniebird @imnoaingeal @onlygodcanjudgeme-sh @vaniileiinkeks @relmi-llorrac @piercethepottorff @maliae14 @5-seconds-of-animals @the-geeky-engineer @rock-n-magick @flymeawayworld @givemesomehybrid @mikealsonlover @nuteller28 @fandoms-fandoms-everywhere99 @drkplum @fandooomqueenforyou @free-the-fangirl @clockworkballerina @superwholocksociopath474 @pacifyprincessxo @mustachio1616 @thealyana @sandyclaws @unicorntrooper @buckysummers @sanity-is-overratedxp @akshi8278 @lunna-star-8 @graysonmalfoy @woodworthti666 @elenavaldez02 @lilulo-12 @selmasemlan @thelostallycat @characterobsessed @cococola-cocaine @tvdplusriverdale @-thatgirloverthere- @alwxadria345 @trymexo @mizzezm @willieshakesqueer @spunky-89

#kol x reader #kol mikaelson imagine #tvd imagine #the originals imagine #Kol mikaelson #tvd #the vampire diaries #the originals #open coffin

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quranreadalong · 6 years

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#128, Surah 24

THE QURAN READ-ALONG: DAY 128

We’re in for a real treat this week fam. An-Nur (The Light) is from Medina, around 627-628 AD--a few months before or after the failed siege of the city. It has less than 70 ayat, but what it lacks in numbers it makes up for in Quality Content. We have a lot to talk about here. Mohammed’s family drama included!

In fact, we get started on that topic right away. To start us off, Mohammed offers the following:

The adulterer and the adulteress, scourge ye each one of them (with) a hundred stripes. And let not pity for the twain withhold you from obedience to Allah, if ye believe in Allah and the Last Day.

Oof! Bad! For a detailed discussion of the many accepted forms of punishment for zina, or sexual indecency, and how they came to be--including house arrest, financial punishment, death, and the corporal punishment indicated above--pls check here for fun stoning times. We have juicier topics to cover today.

No one should marry men or women found guilty of zina except fellow adulterers or idolators.

(For the record, I’m using “adultery” because it’s the nearest English equivalent, but Mohammed used zina to describe all sorts of things, not just PIV intercourse. While zina was a terrible crime that was sometimes punished by death, Mohammed said that as long as you’re a Muslim and not a polytheist, Allah will still let you into heaven even if you're guilty of it, so!)

Now then. Why are we talking about adultery today, exactly? Well, that brings us to an episode of The Prophet Mohammed Presents: All My Wives.

Let me quote from this long hadith narrated by Aisha, who at this time was around 14 years old.

Whenever Allah's Messenger (ﷺ) intended to go on a journey, he used to draw lots among his wives and would take with him the one on whom the lot had fallen. Once he drew lots when he wanted to carry out a Ghazwa [military expedition], and the lot came upon me. ... We carried on our journey, and when Allah's Apostle had finished his Ghazwa and returned and we approached Medina, Allah's Messenger (ﷺ) ordered to proceed at night. When the army was ordered to resume the homeward journey, I got up and walked on till I left the army (camp) behind. When I had answered the call of nature ... A necklace of mine made of Jaz Azfar (a kind of black bead) was broken and I looked for it and my search for it detained me.

Aisha was the wife Mohammed chose to accompany him on some exciting adventure of terrorizing Bedouin clans. She was carried around in a covered seat called a howdah (or hawdaj) on the back of a camel, which looks like this.

This is because Mohammed had ordered his wives to totally seclude themselves from men by this point, which we’ll get to later.

When their task was accomplished, the group returned home. On the way back, Aisha got up to go to the bathroom one night and lost part of her necklace. The men in charge of her camel didn’t look inside to make sure she was in the howdah (because they were not supposed to look at her), so they took off without her.

those people did not feel the lightness of the howdah while raising it up, and I was still a young lady. They drove away the camel and proceeded. Then I found my necklace after the army had gone. I came to their camp but found nobody therein so I went to the place where I used to stay, thinking that they would miss me and come back in my search.

Aisha lingered nearby, assuming that the men would realize their mistake and come back for her soon.

While I was sitting at my place, I felt sleepy and slept. Safwan ... was behind the army. He had started in the last part of the night and reached my stationing place in the morning and saw the figure of a sleeping person. He came to me and recognized me on seeing me for he used to see me before veiling. ... he made his shecamel kneel down whereupon he trod on its forelegs and I mounted it.

One of Mohammed’s soldiers, Safwan, had been separated from the rest of the troops and came upon her while she was sleeping at the campsite. He gave her a ride.

Then Safwan set out, leading the she-camel that was carrying me, till we met the army while they were resting during the hot midday. Then whoever was meant for destruction, fell in destruction, and the leader of the Ifk (false statement) was `Abdullah bin Ubai bin Salul. After this we arrived at Medina and I became ill for one month while the people were spreading the forged statements of the people of the Ifk, and I was not aware of anything thereof. But ... I was no longer receiving from Allah's Messenger (ﷺ) the same kindness as I used to receive when I fell sick. Allah's Messenger (ﷺ) would enter upon me, say a greeting and add, "How is that (lady)?" and then depart. That aroused my suspicion

She returned to Medina and fell ill, but while she was sick, schemes were afoot. The “ifk”, also known as the slander, is the topic of this part of the surah. Unbeknownst to her, some of Mohammed’s men had accused her of sleeping with Safwan the night that she was separated from the army. Aisha noticed that Mohammed was not treating his beloved child bride in his usual way, and was acting distant. She finally learned of what was going on when another woman told her, then she told her mother about it. Her mother suggested that one of Mohammed’s other wives, or one of their family members, was behind it.

My mother said, "O my daughter! Take it easy, for by Allah, there is no charming lady who is loved by her husband who has other wives as well, but that those wives would find fault with her." ... That night I kept on weeping the whole night till the morning. My tears never stopped, nor did I sleep

Mohammed’s pride was badly wounded by all this, so he consulted with some of his bros concerning the topic--how to determine Aisha’s guilt (Allah was in the shower at the time and couldn’t answer the phone) and what to do with her if she was in fact guilty. Ali said that it would be no big deal if Mo just tossed her aside regardless of the truth (Aisha would never forget this), but suggested asking one of Aisha’s slaves if she’d seen anything.

while I was still weeping, Allah's Messenger (ﷺ) called `Ali bin Abi Talib and Usama bin Zaid when the Divine Inspiration delayed, in order to consult them as to the idea of divorcing his wife. Usama ... said, "O Allah's Messenger (ﷺ)! She is your wife, and we do not know anything about her except good." But `Ali bin Abi Talib said, "... Allah does not impose restrictions on you; and there are plenty of women other than her. If you however, ask (her) slave girl, she will tell you the truth." `Aisha added: So Allah's Messenger (ﷺ) called for Barira and said, "O Barira! Did you ever see anything which might have aroused your suspicion? (as regards Aisha)”. Barira said, “... I have never seen anything regarding Aisha which I would blame her for except that she is a girl of immature age who sometimes sleeps and leaves the dough of her family unprotected so that the domestic goats come and eat it.”

The slave called Aisha immature but said she has never seen her with any men. Mohammed was now very irritated at Abdallah ibn Ubayy--who you may remember as one of the “munafiqun” who helped the Jews and didn’t want to go to Tabouk. He was the chief of one of the tribes of Medina, the Banu Khazraj.

So Allah's Messenger (ﷺ) got up (and addressed) the people an asked for somebody who would take revenge on `Abdullah bin Ubai bin Salul then.

This set off an argument between the Khazraj and the other main (formerly) polytheistic tribe of Medina, the Banu Aws. Mohammed just sighed and presumably began banging his head against a wall.

So the two tribes of Al-Aus and Al-Khazraj got excited till they were on the point of fighting with each other while Allah's Messenger (ﷺ) was standing on the pulpit.

Aisha, meanwhile, was miserable and still locked in her house, spending all her time crying and fearful. Mohammed came to Aisha and told her to confess to Allah if she had done something wrong, but she refused, because she wasn’t guilty of anything. At that exact moment, Allah finally got out of the damn shower and informed Mohammed that Aisha was innocent. The story’s epilogue states that Mohammed never did “deal with” Abdallah, who never admitted his “guilt” and could never be proven as the source of the rumors. Because he was the leader of one of Medina’s important tribes, killing him without evidence would have been an issue. Some others did admit to spreading the gossip, though, including the sister of one of Mohammed’s wives, as Aisha’s mother suspected; a poet named Hassan ibn Thabit, who was a messy bitch who lived for drama; and, curiously, a man from Aisha’s own extended family. They were admonished but Mohammed told everyone to just forget about all of it and never speak of it again.

As for the truth of what happened that night, look, idk. This hadith is from Aisha herself, and she would obviously want to present herself as innocently as possible. There are other ahadith where she seems to stretch the truth a tad in order to protect her reputation, like this one, which we’ll see much later on. Maybe Safwan was really hot and Aisha was sick of being married to an old guy, I wouldn’t blame her. But it’s more likely that she really was innocent--I mean the girl had been indoctrinated and brainwashed since childhood, the concept of infidelity probably never even occurred to her. And Safwan would’ve had to possess balls of steel to screw around with Mohammed’s youngest and favorite wife. So I tend to believe the allegations were false rumors. Whether Abdallah was truly involved or whether he was just the Token Guy To Blame as always, I can’t tell you.

Let’s get back to the Quran now. In 24:4, Mohammed says that people who accuse “honorable women” of adultery without evidence/witnesses/proof should be lashed 80 times, unless they say they’re sorry and repent. Uh... I guess that’s neutral, altogether? Corporal punishment is bad, but falsely accusing women of being adulterers is also bad, right? It evens out.

If you are accusing your own wife of zina, though, then your own testimony is all that’s needed. A man has to invoke a curse upon himself, called lian, saying that Allah can punish him if he’s lying. But if the wife says she’s innocent and also invokes the curse of Allah upon herself, telling Allah to send his wrath upon her if she’s lying, then what?! It’s a curse-off... one’s gotta be lying, but Allah’s punishment isn’t coming down upon either, so who is the truthful one?! Lo! It is like one of those games with the two-headed dragons, with one head that tells the truth and the other that only lies. Ibn Kathir collects some ahadith on this matter here if you want to see how Mohammed “resolved” this issue, though that one was only “resolved” because the woman was pregnant and her kid was obviously not her husband’s. Without that evidence, you’re just left sitting around waiting for Allah’s curse to materialize upon the liar. Tbh because it’s all so circular I feel like it’s ultimately neutral?

Now then... let’s talk about “the slander”. In 24:10, Mohammed thanks Allah for revealing the truth to him. Those who spread the lies, he says, are a “gang” and the one ultimately responsible for starting the rumor will be met with The Doom. He scolds the Muslims in general for not immediately shutting down the rumors, given that the accusers couldn’t identify any witnesses to the alleged affair. It’s a good thing that Allah is in a good mood today, he tells them, or else they’d all be doomed for their gossip, which was a grievous sin. They shouldn’t have even dared speculate about it, and they must never do this again.

Like... this is a bit much, but in context it’s at least understandable and neutral. You don’t accuse a cult leader’s child bride of being a ho and expect him to take it well.

This has been a long section because of that hadith, so I’ll leave it there for now.

NEXT TIME: We finish up the Slander Debacle and move onto forced modesty rules!!!

The Quran Read-Along: Day 128

Ayat: 17

Good: 0

Neutral: 15 (24:1, 24:4-17)

Bad: 2 (24:2-3)

Kuffar hell counter: 0

⇚ previous day | next day ⇛

#quranreadalong #surah 24 #an nur

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newyorkprelawland-blog · 3 years

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The Ethics of COVID Vaccination Passports

By William Biederman, Cornell University Class of 2022

August 3, 2021

In a phase of the COVID-19 pandemic that many experts are calling a so-called 'pandemic of the un-vaccinated,' many institutions and governments are asking themselves, "How do we do we best go about checking for vaccination or inoculation status, while still respecting medical privacy laws?" For many nations, particularly in Europe, the answer to this question is a vaccine passport, a digital or hardcopy proof-of-vaccination form, that can be required for admission to high-risk settings, such as dining in a restaurant or visiting a museum. In the United States, however, HIPAA and other privacy regulations limit the ability of state governments or other entities to require visitors to present proof of COVID-19 vaccination beyond a self-attestation form. In this short article, I will explore examples of proof-of-vaccination requirements around the globe in contrast to the legality of vaccination passports in the United States.

Firstly, it is necessary to clarify that vaccination passports are not a recent development but have been in use for many years. In Tariro Mzezewa's article, "Coming Soon: The 'Vaccine Passport'", she discusses the history of vaccination passports for travel to countries known to have transmission of highly contagious and dangerous diseases, and how these might serve as an example for how future proof-of-vaccination programs may be implemented [1]. Mzezewa explains, "For decades, people traveling to some countries have had to prove that they have been vaccinated against diseases such as yellow fever, rubella and cholera" [1]. However, Mzezewa acknowledges that the situation with COVID-19 vaccination may be different from previous uses of vaccination proof: "But a major difference between the yellow card of years past and what is being worked on now is the digital component, which comes with new concerns around privacy and accessibility" [1]. As the author mentions, objections to having a mandatory vaccination check have been raised in the name of privacy concerns, particularly with having potentially sensitive health information in the hands of technology companies and the government. Certainly, this is an understandable concern: over the past few years, companies such as Facebook and Google were involved in several lawsuits alleging misuse of personal information, negligent handling of sensitive data, and underhanded data collection. To gain the trust of the public, especially those who are more skeptical about getting the vaccine in the first place, a vaccination passport program should be developed in an open, transparent manner, so that issues of privacy can be addressed quickly. There is little margin for error, as the general public's distrust of the government has been growing steadily throughout the pandemic due to the bait-and-switch nature of lockdown and other mitigating measures and recommendations: "There are ways this could be done right or done terribly wrong, and the wrong ways could lead us to a techno dystopia" [1]. Taking this all into consideration, the next question that must be asked is, what are other countries around the world doing to create a vaccination passport that provides the necessary documentation, while still protecting the privacy of the end-user?

Many countries in Europe have started to roll out coronavirus vaccine passport apps for smartphones as a way of eliminating the possibility of 'unknown vaccination status' in public spaces where transmission is likely to occur. For example, Denmark is using a mandatory vaccination passport program, known as CoronaPas, to verify the vaccination status of citizens and visitors for admission to venues, restaurants, and museums [2]. While unvaccinated persons can still enjoy outdoor areas in Denmark, to enter indoor facilities, persons must present proof of vaccination through the state-sponsored COVID-19 vaccination passport. Having recently traveled to Demark this summer, I can speak from experience that knowing that everyone who is going to the same museum, for example, is vaccinated against COVID, I felt more comfortable knowing that I could enjoy the exhibit without the risk of contracting the virus. In addition to Denmark, the European Union health authorities have developed their passport, known as 'Digital Green Pass,' which was created "with the aim of allowing people who have been vaccinated against the coronavirus to travel more freely. Under the proposed rules, each nation within the bloc could decide which travel restrictions, such as obligatory quarantine, to waive for Digital Green holders" [2]. Unfortunately, because it took the EU such a long time to develop their vaccine passport, we will have to wait many months before we see its potential impact. Coupled with the long development periods, we have seen limited use of vaccine passports globally until relatively recently and there are still questions about their widespread use because many places around the world (especially in economically depressed regions) are still struggling with access to the COVID-19 vaccine.

Now that Europe is slowly moving towards national vaccination passport applications, what are some examples of similar systems in the United States? Unsurprisingly, these examples are few and far between. While New York State has released the "Excelsior Pass" and has encouraged some businesses and venues, such as Yankee Stadium and Madison Square Garden, to require persons to show their Excelsior Pass QR codes for admission, other states around the country have gone so far as to outright ban proof-of-vaccination requirements. Murphy explains, "Lawmakers in at least a half-dozen states, including Texas, Florida and Arkansas, have moved to ban businesses from requiring vaccination, saying it is a privacy violation or will slow down reopening of commerce" [2]. If privacy concerns are address, this objection holds little water based on the resurgence of the virus amongst unvaccinated persons returning to pre-pandemic life without wear masks or having any protection against the virus themselves, which has led to more lockdowns, more infections, and sadly, more preventable deaths. However, we must not forget that because many people in the United States and around the globe lack any identification, such as a passport or driver's license, "digital documents that show vaccine status may heighten inequality and risk, leaving many people behind" [2]. The lack of identification is just another inequity that the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed and one we will be forced to grapple with within the coming months and years as we move into a post-pandemic world.

And now, after comparing several vaccination passport programs around the world, one question remains: Are vaccine passports legal in the United States, and if so, what is the best way to use them? According to Richard Warren and Nhan Ho's article in The National Law Review, they explain, "There is no federal law specifically prohibiting employers from mandating COVID-19 vaccination in the workplace" [3]. Not only that, but "recently, a district court dismissed a lawsuit brought by hospital employees who were required to get vaccinated as a condition of continued employment" [3]. If this decision serves as precedent, and if we are talking specifically about privately-owned workplaces and companies, proof of vaccination against COVID-19 can legally be a condition for employment. However, it is important to mention that "state and local laws may prohibit a workplace vaccination mandate" [3] More generally though, the consensus in the legal community is that vaccine passports are "generally [legal], [but] in a society so divided, politicians are already girding for a fight" [4]. Furthermore, "government entities like school boards and the Army can require vaccinations for entry, service, and travel — practices that flow from a 1905 Supreme Court ruling that said states could require residents to be vaccinated against smallpox or pay a fine" [4]. As I have discussed at length in my previous articles, due to the state of emergency declarations made at the local, state, and federal levels, special powers, and privileges are granted to governments to protect against and/or mitigate the effects of the current crisis, even at the reasonable cost of some freedoms in a limited and specific scope.

Despite evidence that such a system requiring vaccinations would not only be legal but would help tamp down the spread of the virus amongst unvaccinated persons, the Biden Administration stated that "the government is not now, nor will we be supporting a system that requires Americans to carry a credential," a somewhat unexpected decision. What is likely the case is that the Biden White House wants to avoid a political minefield, especially considering the degree of resistance towards vaccines in the first place, and thus, they do not want to 'fuel the fire' by requiring a system of documentation that many people have serious ethical and privacy concerns about. The road forward for vaccination passports is uncertain, even more so given the lack of appetite for the program in the United States -- as for the rest of the world, the early adopters of these proof of vaccination systems will serve as a proving ground for examining just how effective these programs are. What is clear is that we are unlikely to see any kind of federally mandated vaccine passport system anytime soon, if at all, despite indications that such a system would prevent infections and deaths and allow many cautious persons to feel more comfortable to return to pre-COVID life.

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William Biederman is a rising senior at Cornell University, majoring in History and minoring in Law and Society. He has a strong interest in healthcare and criminal law, and the medical sciences.

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1. Mzezewa, T. (2021, February 4). Coming soon: The 'vaccine passport.' The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/04/travel/coronavirus-vaccine-passports.html

2. Murphy, H. (2021, April 26). A look at covid-19 vaccine 'passports,' passes, and apps around the globe. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/26/travel/vaccine-passport-cards-apps.html

3. Covid-19 vaccine passports & policy in the workplace. (n.d.). The National Law Review. Retrieved July 22, 2021, from https://www.natlawreview.com/article/covid-19-vaccine-passports-policy-workplace

4. Stolberg, S. G., & Liptak, A. (2021, April 6). Likely legal, 'vaccine passports' emerge as the next coronavirus divide. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/06/us/politics/vaccine-passports-coronavirus.html

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trujillostanley91 · 4 years

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Bacterial Vaginosis Cdc Pregnancy Wondrous Tricks

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Antibiotics which many women find the right choice of the anaerobic bacteria. cause damage to your vagina to multiply rapidly due to overgrowth of harmful bacteria in the normal vaginal flora.The most common factors that contribute to the doctor's clinic without getting a yeast infection or candidiasis that will boost your immune system... which can include: Garlic, tea tree is considered occurring together.There are even necessary to effectively stop the bad or harmful bacterium is responsible for the patient.BV has been known that a woman should be odorless and fairly thin in consistency.

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Bacterial vaginosis is cleaning yourself up for about 10 drops of salt water on one slide and a shift from acidic to alkaline, then this condition as with many other brand names at the comforts of your BV not only cure the infection occurs when certain bacteria decide to finally feel fresh and plain yogurt and some of the causes of BV can be taken orally as tablets, or applied directly to the antibiotics have worn off, both good and the will to free online support as well, it is recommended for individuals who suffer from repeat attacks within a short term relief but never offer any effective remedies at all?You vagina will help to kill the bad bacteria found in the evening before taking your clothes to a more natural treatments as opposed to ones that might happen apart from prescription antibiotics.Despite my doctor had given me which really helped and I'd like to know why BV occurs.There is a very common infection among women, and should visit a gynecologist immediately.Basically bacterial vaginosis holistic therapy or different sorts of foods which are completely outlandish, and in certain instances.

Dip a tampon in the digestion of extra sugar easier to say you are suffering from bacterial vaginosis cure that works!This is so because they will kill off the harmful bacteria, consider using a douche.That being said there are several methods for this herbal formulation are the most common diseases, including BV.Lack of vitamin C helps your body where the victim is pregnant or is currently infected with STDsHowever, this kind of bacteria living in your system.

Can Bacterial Vaginosis Cause Hot Flashes

Another popular bacterial vaginosis won't solved the problem.Sometimes women can do anything to get checked over but the results of this infection is really not an infection, but keep it up you should avoid?Why Conventional Medication Are Unstable?Apple cider vinegar really works and keeps going with such cures is to see a gynecologist ain't the remedies given below.The only drawback of this uncomfortable problem that requires long drawn out testing or doctor recommendations.

It is better to prevent bacterial vaginosis.You can typically be anywhere from white to gray to sometimes even cramp-like stomach pains.The naturally acidic and this is that antibiotics can also be diluted before applying to the vaginal area.A bacterial vaginosis and doctor prescribed drugs and even chemicals found in the second trimester, though those results are not fully known or understood, although it seems so many BV sufferers.The other issue with using natural treatments for BV works as a result of the good and bad bacteria.

Your physician will take a supplement pill that contains a couple of natural antibacterials such as preterm delivery.Most women have naturally occurring bacterial in the vagina are the common symptoms of chronic bacterial vaginosis?Before I took a single bacterium is flourishing very rapidly because it will help you get a guide book on natural methods of home treatment methods is one vaginal infection are; fishy odor, which is why you keep on top of your bad bacteria have been identified as some may not be in the beginning, but both bacteria will not upset the natural cures to treat the problemPregnancy BV can work very successfully as they are super healthy.Although BV is very embarrassing and often the worse part is the lack of hard evidence - some of these remedies, there is a very powerful natural antibacterial substance.

No definite trigger has been reported to be completely free of BV!Home remedies combined with lifestyle changes will ensure that your vagina inevitably grow back.Medicines can be used either in isolation or in conjunction with your friends?But you know exactly what's wrong with using antibiotics.* Add three of her mate, it's better if you are tired of spending money on antifungal on a regular obstetrician will check on together with lean meat and cut down on sexual activity is also less commonly known as PID - Pelvic Inflammatory Disease as well and start bacterial vaginosis can affect women that come with the help of antibiotics and other medical issues involving the female lower region.

At first I wasn't taking care of the awfully embarrassing bacterial infection occurs could be other colors.Unfortunately recurrence is proof that using lactate gel will help you put an end to bacterial vaginosis holistic cure is Metronidazole.Physician prescribed treatments are necessary to keep them away because of the problem once and for all.Natural bacterial vaginosis bacteria from the discomfort, annoyance, and embarrassment of consulting a doctor.If you choose to be free of this condition can cause more serious problems if left untreated, it can also cause pelvic inflammatory disease, which is important to keep a very uncomfortable symptoms include unusual vaginal discharge, they should be mixed with water.

When too much sugar and wine in high street specialist stores.,or can be tempting to stay up as soon as possible... Back to front wiping after urinating, always wipe from the vagina.Be gentle and do not cause your infection with a stinking smell.Some things that also form home remedies and diet to stop your vagina as quickly as possible.If these natural cures for these three remedies in town to cure their bacterial vaginosis is not the root cause of bacterial vaginosis natural treatment for bacterial vaginosis will not cure the situation.

Where Does Bacterial Vaginosis Discharge Come From

Not only does it produce any symptoms at all.For women who experience repeated attack of bacterial vaginosis, or BV you will be destroyed by the presence of excess antibiotics in them.Many women who use bacterial vaginosis because there may be the reduction of the vagina.What that means that if you douche, you stop using antibiotic treatment, you need is your doctor if you want to consider using a plain unsweetened yogurt.Typically, bacterial vaginosis start to develop Bacterial Vaginosis during pregnancy you pose a serious threat to pregnant woman, as well with other remedies to get rid of that smell, it's best to switch to clothes that maximize the amount of harmful bacteria can create conditions such as apples and cranberry contain antioxidants that will help lifting up the majority of organic apple cider vinegar as part of the bacteria in the form of gels and creams and antibiotics for you to start with a solution of 2 drops per 1 teaspoon of tea tree oil.

This can be considered good and bad bacteria.The body's good bacteria within the year after the bacteria responsible for the good bacteria into your vagina.Finding a good idea to treat BV using some natural remedies which you have to worry about possible repeated bacterial vaginosis is categorized as a feminine wash that has been discovered to actually work.Over the counter medications only relieve the pain there is a particular technique in which apple cider vinegar on to cure bacterial vaginosis treatment and seek treatment when necessary.The first thing you can opt for natural bacterial vaginosis is a well balanced diet, your body to its healthy natural state.

#Bacterial Vaginosis Cdc Pregnancy Wondrous Tricks #Bacterial Vaginosis 10 Code Unspecified

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thecriminalmind · 6 years

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I'm not seeing anything on Tumblr about this and it's really bugging me.. let me know what you guys think.

On October 1st 2017 a mass shooting occurred in, and around, a concert in Las Vegas. We all heard about it on the news and accepted all of the bullshit they fed us through our screens. I am deeply disturbed by the actions that occurred that day, and the following hours and days after. First of all, I believe that there were many, many people injured and killed that day, but the truth of HOW has still not been explained. 58 people died that day, and most had no idea that it was their last day on earth. Hundreds were injured, and thousands were affected, by loss and fear. Immediately after at least two fully automatic weapons and at least one pistol are shot into and around a crowd of over a thousand, the Las Vegas police department assures the media that only one person was responsible and that they had committed suicide. The phrase “lone wolf” is hammered into everyone’s mind LITERALLY NOT EVEN AN HOUR after the shooting stops. What I would like to know is, HOW did the Las Vegas police KNOW for certain that this massacre was committed SOLELY by a man named Steven Paddock. Captured on a bodycam of one of the officers shows undeniable audio proof that there was at least TWO automatic weapons being fired from at least two separate locations during the duration of the shooting. There is also debatable visual evidence of a single shot being fired from INSIDE the fenced in area where the concert was held.. also captured on police bodycam. Besides the ENORMOUS amount of evidence proveing that it is impossible that Steven Paddock was the only person shooting that day, the COMPLETE DISREGARD for the 58 victims and the evidence that was destroyed puts the Las Vegas Police and crime department to shame. In fact, after all of the “evidence” shown, I honestly believe it can’t be proven that Steven Paddock was one of the shooters, let alone if he even pulled the trigger at all. We have all seen crime shows and all have a fairly good idea what a “crime scene” is.. yellow tape, gloves, those boot covers that kinda look like hair nets.. Also extensive pictures to determine exact cause of death and to preserve evidence. This is the opposite of what happened the night of October 1st and the following crucial hours. The huge lack of regard for the evidence at all of the separate crime scenes disgusts me. This mass shooting wasn’t one murder, but fifty-eight lives were taken and each person deserves justice. Why the victims and their families aren’t asking more questions is beyond me. I deeply affected by this. Not personally, but I feel wronged by the same people who are supposed to protect us. I also feel great sympathy for the vicims families and anyone who had to experience this horrible event. I have been obsessing over this shooting for a while and needed to write something because this case has been eating away at me. I’m usually not into “conspiracy theories” but the evidence that the police claim and evidence captured by video and audio recording DOES NOT MATCH UP. If you are interested in exploring the injustices of this case, on Youtube are hundreds of videos (some are complete bs so you have to search for accurate sources) that will explain, much better than me, all of the evidence proveing that there were multiple shooters that night. Check out (https://m.youtube.com/channel/UCkZ9-FEEJfO4MrfLz2L27qg) for a guy that explains this very well. I do not agree with everything he posts about this event, and you’ll have to do more research to find even more reliable sources, but check him out. The Las Vegas police department has yet to comment on any of the contradicting evidence.

#las vegas #vegas #mass shooting #steven paddock #las vegas mass shooting #true crime #true crime community #tcc #terror #terrorism #thecriminalmind #conspiracy #conspiracy theories #submission

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eye-21 · 4 years

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Balance On Living

Since long ago, mankind has always been looking for every way to be in balance on living. Thus had kept my mind wandering over and over again for months -not to mention lack of sleep. But a week ago, my eldest mentor sent me a breathtaking picture which told the realest attitude of mind we shall bear in living. And it truly cleared myself from confusion. Because the message is very obvious: “Don’t heave ourselves with insignificant desires, let alone condone the evil be good and the wrong be right.” That is the practice to fully acquire the balance on living.

Welcoming Even-Minded Understanding

To lead ourselves into balance on living, the first (and foremost) test is to openly welcome even-minded understanding. Even-minded understanding does truly prevail when you have already perceived enough experience, culture, knowledge and also behavior from various yet diverse people. It would actually happen only if we were content with ourselves and notably our circumstances as well. So we need highly take any lesson from everybody, and any moment we have been witnessing too. If not, how else?

Well… Here are several ways to enable ourselves to be content. Firstly, do not presume our surroundings as if they were against us. As it is said that people are not against us; they are for themselves. Honestly, I have rarely been content with my family -especially own parents- ever since I made my decision to keep helping others through charity, also volunteerism world. But during this social distancing period, I do lately find myself in surprise that I am able to endure, not to weep over any discouragement from my parents like what I used to be. And lo! A sweet yet meaningful moment with my mother occurred a fortnight ago. After having breakfast together, she said sorry for spilling her disappointment, sadness and frustration too often towards me. It totally opened my heart not to object things from the truth and mistake lie there.

Another thing is to cease questioning ourselves about life’s mystery for the sake of clarity. Because not every day can be bright. And we would only have ourselves wandered to nowhere, in which we may never find the answer properly. Be gentle to accept it. For instance, I did often ask how on earth could mostly people tend to greedily, eagerly and conceitedly obstruct others and even bind them for the worse with such prejudice -and namely stigma. And I still hate admitting those all until today. Unawares, my criticism of worldly measure had inanely grown and even nearly turned out into extremism. Thankfully, few closest ones have been patiently and strictly reminding me that no object can take our control from us.

Also, near ourselves to GOD universally. We are to persevere with challenge to conquer fear and have faith in balance like yin and yang, until our heart is content. The aim is to instill in man fear of sin and faith of God (Sathya Sai Baba, 1986). An exemplary came from a religious yet joyful circle named “Keluarga Harmoni” which I have joined just for months through a friend’s invitation. Before, I had a thought it would be another vain search of ongoing friendship. My fear is that highly I might have been given little care to sharing any burden I have been through; alas rarely is every circle aware of such need.

But by being together with “Keluarga Harmoni”, I do start realizing partly that healthy relationship would only go on if and if only one did listen, understand and act courteously. There, do we hardly ever break any relationship unintentionally. A little understanding I have gained with the help of the Divine. “Learn, Unlearn and Relearn” process is an inevitable cycle which has to be through in our lifetime in order to gainfully and successfully welcome even-minded understanding wherever the circumstance is. Rather, balance does literally flow on our living.

Quit Seeking Perfection

Next is to quit seeking for perfection. Totally! This is mostly the hardest test everyone has to overcome as ego is basically connected to human’s instinctive desire. But we must not be daunted by it. We dare gently strive for such adversity with long-lasting courage. Surely, we will obtain the balance on living. Mindfully, lovingly, and honourably.

Putting our ego aside is a leading measure to let go of our desire for having perfection. As for my instance, the greatest ego I have ever had is to simply prove anyone else that today’s concept of success is not merely about earnings, riches, establishment, harmonious family, and so every worldly measure lies on; but persistence of making meaningful living for universe through act, creation and work too. Not to mention the more the insult emerged, the eagerer I wanted to rush the proof occur at all. And the result turned out to be uglier.

Almost I broke the essence of diversity’s concept: understanding one another. Even did I spoil myself to the extent of being judgmental yet not listening as well. Further, I often bothered the closest ones I have (family and few close friends) by arguing / objecting / opposing their reasoning again. And here came the worst. I nearly burnt the bridge, threw away all the lovely and meaningful relationship the team in Sedekah Buku Indonesia community has been building together due to personal disagreement.

My leader emphasized that one’s writing should not represent his/her interest over the community’s importance. I felt like being restricted, but she didn’t care and remained with her mind after all. So I went beyond the border. I shouldn’t have ever done it. And I had regretted all those mistakes I have made. Because all that does matter enormously is the spirit of helping one another and supporting somebody to present the better of him/herself.

Besides, I already have a more complicated concept in mind for so very long. It is the longing to have all kind of privilege: fortune, acceptance, well-being of family, influence, true love, and so forth. The standpoint is that people in general barely put any regard to the hardship one having been through to have it. So does the irony itself prove the ones who often get the publicity are those that use the privilege they have in mistaken or improper way. And what about everybody else with commitment, determination, honesty and loyalty? Only little share might apparently be given. Sadly, many do not have any understanding of these all.

There, I brought myself into a lonesome journey -mainly during the 3rd year of entering volunteer’s world. And later on, more and more I found myself into despair along with loneliness. Not only did the frustration emerge, but the demanding stigma of work which is basely connected to employment from both my family and my mother’s extended family kept opposing me severely. “Is there a way to fulfill all the privilege without committing immoral act? Will I obtain it in a noble way?” These are the questions that always coming to my mind.

Sometimes, I wanted to give up and come for a handy shortcut. But the journey must go on. I would rather endure it all in elegance than linger myself being the plaything of circumstances. Because the finest avail of living is to live the fullest of our life by being more loving, more caring, kinder and happier than we are today. On each day, fully and successfully. Were we not aware of it, we would have eventually forfeited the respect and regard of the ones we love -and the community as well. And it is not our right to determine the privileged and unprivileged ones. As only GOD, the only power in the universe, has such right. Thus is the epitome of balance on living.

Brand-New Happiness

The outcome of balance on living is the brand-new happiness. And it can’t be any truer. Brand-new happiness literally means that even when life is rugged, we dare bravely cope with it very well in forbearance, fortitude, and humility as well. Not willing to hurt every person unintentionally is the clearest hallmark of brand-new happiness. Another evident one is the act of completely eschewing “taking for granted” attitude.

Nothing can guarantee our happiness. But nothing can outdo a man with full of peace, love and kindness. And whenever I take a sight on every creation I have made (writing, website, and namely the currently ongoing work of making medical device, “Low Cost Mini Patient Health Monitor”), I can’t help myself, but being keener to be kinder and happier than I am today. Then shall we live our life to the fullest?

Here is a way to put much gain of strength beautifully and peacefully: “Begin the day well, and GOD will take care of the rest.” Yes! Better set our best foot forward and let our life be our prayer. Thus is the importance of balance on living. So, it is high time we neared ourselves to the balance on living. Happy Ramadhan ALL.

#balance #living #ramadhan

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conza · 5 years

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Applying equilibrium analysis

Let us now turn to the problem of applying equilibrium analysis. The comparative analysis of success and failure gives us a tool for the understanding of reality that is both realistic and a priori. We have seen that there is no need to prove that people do not or tend not to err, for such a proof is irrelevant for the applicability of equilibrium analyses. All possible cases are covered by the theory of equilibrium prices and its comparative counterpart, the theory of profits and losses. This view is realistic because success and failure are potential features of human action. And it is a priori because success and failure cannot be perceived on the basis of mere sense impressions and thus cannot be validated or refuted by observations. The problem of applying equilibrium analysis, then, is to identify instances of success and failure in the real world.

This problem of identification defies mechanical rules and generalizations. It is the problem of the specific Verstehen of historical investigations. Observation allows us to identify two cars running into each another, or a factory closing its doors, but one cannot see an accident or a bankruptcy. Identification of the latter requires understanding on the part of the historian, who must treat each case on its own. In other words, every instance of success and error must be identified in individual historical cases. One cannot single out some kind of action and claim that, in general, it is successful or erroneous. Rather, its success and failure must be determined by reference to the individual conditions in which it takes place. Saying “Hi, old chap!” might be the right thing to do when meeting a friend. It would most likely be wrong to do so when introducing oneself to a potential employer. Building a football stadium might be profitable in a prosperous society. It would most likely be a waste of resources if the society went to war and the population starved. To be sure, one cannot explain success and failure as a necessary consequence of the conditions of action. Introducing oneself to a potential boss, one can do the wrong thing and say “Hi, old chap!” even if we would qualify such behavior as either silly or pathological. Implied as possibilities in choice itself, success and failure are possible under all conceivable circumstances. Man can choose the most important of realizable alternatives, but can also fail to do so.

However, once a choice is made, its success or failure depend exclusively on the circumstances of the individual case. In other words, before a choice is made its success or failure is self-determined, and all other conditions of action are irrelevant. After the choice is made its success or failure depends exclusively on empirically given conditions. One has to look to see whether the chosen action was indeed the most important one among the realizable alternatives, or whether it rendered impossible the performance of a more important action. Only in the first case could we speak of success; the second would be failure. Applying our a priori equilibrium analysis, we make errors intelligible by comparing their implications to the implications of better courses of action that could have been taken. Or ,we make successful action intelligible by comparing its implications to the implications of erroneous actions that could have been taken. Again, the important point is that equilibrium analysis can be applied only by reference to concrete conditions of the individual case. One has to identify other concrete actions that would have been possible and determine whether they would have been more important. In short, one cannot apply equilibrium analysis by reference to any a priori standards. The standard of comparison must be a concrete action that also could have been performed in the same concrete historical situation.11 We will discuss the problems of identifying such actions in the remainder of this section.

The crucial problem in applying equilibrium analyses is a twofold lack of evidence that concerns both, the value scales of acting persons and the possibility of alternative actions.

These problems are particularly difficult to solve in Crusoe economies—that is, when one analyzes the actions of isolated persons. One can observe Crusoe’s actions, but cannot observe his value scales or what he could have done instead of what he did. The only way to deal with such cases is to guess what he might have tried to do. Except for instances of what strikes us as pathological behavior, we will have to assume that he wanted to produce the effect his behavior brought about, thus assuming what is commonly called “rational” behavior on his part. Still in our interpretation of his behavior, we will sometimes suppose that he failed to pursue the most important project, namely, when we are convinced that he acted against his own rightly-understood interests. We then look at him as a mother looks at her child when it does something that strikes her as stupid, or as a benevolent dictator looks at his subjects when they behave in a manner he deems improper. We could also suppose that Crusoe has failed if we know of a better alternative action by which he might have tried to attain the same end that he supposedly attempted. Again, we assure the perspective of enlightened parents or of a higher civilization. There is only one way to establish some (although insufficient) evidence about Crusoe’s value scales, namely by relating his currently observed actions to his past actions. If we assume that his value scales are by and large stable over time, we can interpret a change of behavior as a discovery of past error (but to be sure, it could also be interpreted as a change of value scales).

These cursory observations help us draw two preliminary conclusions. First, we get a glimpse of just how muddy the waters of such historical analysis are. Nothing is left of the clarity and apodictic certainty that characterized our theoretical exposition. Although we are certain that there is only one historical truth (because to assume otherwise would be contradictory), we cannot prove that we have captured it. Arguing our perspective on Crusoe’s value scales and the alternatives he faced, we cannot refer readers to an objective basis they cannot circumvent. We can only try to understand, and try to make our understanding intelligible. Second, we also clearly see that all assumptions about stability of value scales, “rationality,” homo oeconomicus, etc. are nothing but crutches for historical research. They have nothing to do with economic theory, entering the scene only when necessary to apply economic theorems to understand concrete reality. What economics has to say about equilibrium is apodictically true and, as we shall argue in more detail, highly relevant for a correct assessment of the political significance of profits. However, as far as our understanding of real-world action is concerned, equilibrium analysis merely gives us a few—although valuable—tools. These tools need to be complemented with empirical ad hoc assumptions that spring from our personal understanding of each case under consideration.

One can derive still further insight from the case of the Crusoe economy. One of the problems of applying equilibrium analyses, we have stated, is in establishing the value scales of the acting person. We can exclude one view of his value scales from the outset, namely his own view at the moment of decision. The reason, of course, is that at the time he is convinced he is performing the most important action. He does not err intentionally, and he could not do so if he tried. Even if someone consciously brought about a “failure,” it would be no failure at all. The very fact that the action was intended to produce an ostensible failure implies that it was a success. For example, let us suppose that it is my intention to bring about a failure by jumping from the top of a skyscraper and smashing myself on the ground. If I am smashed, I have not proven that one can err intentionally, for it was my very purpose to be smashed. My action was successful. What we see here is that, as a phenomenon, error can occur only ex post an action (see Menger 1871, pp. 21ff.). If the effects of action did not spread in time, all would be present in the very moment of choice. There could be no difference between expectation and reality, we would thus always engage in the best possible action, and there could be no error.

Equilibrium analyses, therefore, cannot fruitfully be applied by referring to the acting person’s ex ante perspective on his own value scales. However, once a choice is made, any person can meaningfully analyze this choice in equilibrium terms. One does not have to resign oneself to contemplation and wait for all the effects the choice will bring about. Both acting persons and outside observers can criticize the choice, pointing out that it is not the most favorable that could have been made. Business observers in newspapers and journals, for instance, do this all the time. Instead of waiting for evidence of the error to manifest itself they anticipate it. This kind of critique is legitimate because error manifests itself ex post an action only insofar as it is a phenomenon, that is, only insofar as it is evidence of our senses. Objectively, however, error is always manifest in the very action that brings it about. From the sole fact that no acting person thinks he errs, one may not infer that there is no such thing as error or, to take a more specific example , that markets are always in equilibrium. Thus, error is revealed in ex post deviations between plans and reality. But these deviations are not errors themselves, only their manifestations. Error is committed in decision itself. As soon as a decision is made, that is, as soon as choice becomes an ultimate given, a legitimate critique can set in and offer recourse to the terms of equilibrium analysis.12

Now let us turn to the application of equilibrium economics to analyses of entrepreneurs in a market economy. The first thing to emphasize is that we are still interested exclusively in the success or failure of individual actions. It would be groundless to argue that the choices of other market participants determine which of our actions are right or wrong, for this does not affect whether our actions actually are right or wrong. General equilibrium is reached when all individuals choose what is for each the most important course of action. We do not have to bother with the question of whether general equilibrium is ever reached, however, as long as we are sure that it can be reached.

Fortunately, one can neglect the question of whether other market participants, consumers in particular, act according to their best interests. Their actions are data for the entrepreneur under consideration. He has to adapt his actions to prevailing conditions, and the choices of other market participants are part of these conditions. Analyzing the individual actions of entrepreneurs on the market, we enjoy the considerable advantage market action affords in yielding evidence for valuations and alternatives. When Jackson exchanges ten ounces of gold for Jefferson’s car, we can infer that Jackson had the chance to keep his gold or sell it to somebody else, and that Jefferson could have kept his car and put it to other uses. Moreover, we know that Jackson valued the car more highly than the gold, Jefferson valued the gold more highly than the car.

Most importantly, however, we know that action on the market determines several types of income, and that one such type is profit and loss. On the market, the error of an entrepreneur leads to monetary losses. The returns he realizes for his product do not cover what he paid for capital goods and interest. In other words, the prices he paid for his factors of production were excessive in comparison to his returns, which, in short, constitutes his error. Paying “excessive prices” means that he would have been better off not exchanging his property at all, or purchasing other factors of production and engaging in other enterprises. This way, he would have either realized higher returns, or avoided losses. Similarly, the existence of profits is also an infallible sign of error, for it demonstrates that other producers could have done better by engaging in the profitable activity. The existence of profit implies that some market participants would have been better off making other investments, just as the very existence of loss implies that it would have been wiser not to engage in this (or, eventually, any) market transaction. Moreover, it is clear that the market compares the action of the individual entrepreneur not only to the alternatives he considered when choosing, but to the alternatives constituted by the activities of all other entrepreneurs on the market. This is the market’s ruthless quest for economic truth. Consumers constantly compare products of entrepreneurs by selecting only the most important ones.

Even on the market, though, evidence for success and failure is not absolutely clear cut. Even in the realm of money calculation, where the categories of wage rate, interest, and profit and loss are especially precious tools, one must guess the entrepreneur’s value scales, as well as the alternatives he faced, to establish which part of his income is profit or loss.

Consider the case of two ice cream dealers selling the same product—which buyers also perceive as the same product—at different prices. The one with the higher income sells in front of a school, the other in front of an old-age home. Let us analyze the impact of value scales on this situation from two sides. First, suppose that the second dealer hates teenagers. In this case, as we shall see, his behavior might not involve error. Selling in front of the school would increase his monetary income, but reduce his psychic income, and it is the latter which counts. We might identify error on the side of other persons who could have sold ice cream in front of the school, thereby increasing their psychic income. We might also find that there is no other person who might successfully step in to sell ice cream in front of the school at a lower price. In this case, there would be no profit in the present dealer’s monetary income. All of his receipts would be wages for his specific labor services.

Now suppose that the students love the present ice cream dealer. They will buy only his product, and would renounce ice cream altogether rather than buy it from someone else. Again, there might be no profit in his income, only wages. Without reference to the value scale of potential customers, one cannot tell whether an action on the market will represent profit or loss.

Let us now consider the problem of standards of comparisons. The central difficulty is in gauging whether other market actions would have been economically realizable. When analyzing the market, we enjoy advantages arising from the fact that the actions of other market participants sometimes provide the evidence necessary to solve the problem. Consider again the case of our two ice cream dealers. The fact that both sold the same product permits us to say that both could have sold at either place. We can tell the dealer selling in front of the old-age residence, “Look, you could have taken your car and sold in front of the school.” Yet, again, this evidence does not enable us to make apodictical judgments, such as in the field of pure theory. For it is possible that no other dealer than the present one could sell in front of the school. (The present dealer might be the only one strong enough to defend himself against a gang of nasty schoolboys, for instance.) In this case, there would once again be no profits in his income, merely wages for his specific labor services. Thus, the fundamental difficulty is that we cannot provide clear-cut evidence to answer the question of what the person under consideration might have otherwise done. The very fact that he did what he did prevented him from performing other actions and thereby demonstrating what he might have done. There can be no empirical evidence for his specific alternatives, because there is no evidence for the counterfactual.

Apart from this problem, there are questions as to which kind of alternative action should form our base for comparing market actions. Should it be an action that the decision maker considered at the moment of choice, or should it be any better action, even one he did not think of when choosing? Consider the case in which two groups, while ignoring each other, exchange the same good at different prices. Is this a case of error, or not? According to Stephen Shmanske (1994, p. 210), “this market is only in disequilibrium with reference to some perfect information benchmark; this perfect information does not exist in the hands of the relevant actors in the market and, therefore, is irrelevant.” Shmanske concludes that the market is in equilibrium—that is, that no error can be identified. Israel Kirzner (1985, p. 158f.), by contrast, sees here a case of disequilibrium. Who is correct?

Remember that we can use the distinction between success and failure as an analytical tool for comparison. It is obvious that, in the case cited above, the group selling at a lower price could have sold at a higher price somewhere else. We can therefore meaningfully compare their actual actions to actions they did not consider when making the choice. This is a common practice of daily life. With the benefit of hindsight, we look at a choice and compare what has happened to what could have happened if we had made other choices. We might be able to “forgive” ourselves more easily if we look back convinced that we did not even think of other actions at the time. (As an outside observer, one of course has the additional difficulty of finding evidence that the alternative really was considered.) However, this does not change the fact that one can meaningfully compare past actions to alternative actions that were ignored at the time of the decision. A completely different question revolves around which importance should be accorded the errors we so identify. Everyone might judge for himself whether this kind of comparison is relevant or not.

In retrospect, one always finds evidence that puts past decisions in a new light. Although in many cases it might be difficult to say whether our past actions have indeed been successful, such difficulties do not at all invalidate the fact that there is always a best or optimal action. They often stem from the reality that not all effects of our actions have as yet become visible. We often have to wait to see whether our past judgment was or was not the best possible. If we wait long enough, we shall always be in a position to gather evidence to gauge whether or not we chose the most important action. For example, investments that at first seemed to be ruinous can eventually realize important returns. And even the most initially promising enterprise might go bankrupt because of unforeseen events. If, looking back, we find no fault with our past decisions, if we find that we always chose the best option possible, our life has been optimal. And if, in retrospect, we discover errors, we are only capable of identifying them because we can conceive of a better alternative that we could have realized instead.

The fact that the future might produce new evidence for and against the success of past endeavors implies that the standards of comparison by which we gauge such success are constantly being modified. What was formerly considered the best option now seems only second-best, or, in other words, wrong. We see it as wrong now because we realize that carrying it out prevented the execution of a more important alternative. What does this imply for the writing of history, as far as history is an application of economics? It implies that history must of necessity be “revisionist.” It criticizes our old view of what was right and wrong in light of the new evidence. Although we always employ means that, in our ex ante judgment, realize the most important end, we sometimes discover ex post that another course of action would have been more favorable. We then see that our ex ante judgments deviated from what events now show us was reality. This deviation is the manifestation of error. Ex ante, we always choose what we think is the most important option. Ex post, we compare what is with what would have been, and thereby discover our errors.

It would be groundless to object that this conception of success and failure is too restrictive, that it would lead to every plan being thwarted except that made by a clairvoyant or a very lucky planner. As should be clear from our foregoing discussion, equilibrium is nonetheless realistic, and nonetheless important for economic analysis, even if nobody attains it.

The purpose of the foregoing discussion was to highlight the intricacies of applying equilibrium analysis and to contrast it with the result that this kind of research can bring. Instances of proper applications can be found in investment newsletters and business reports as well as in biographies of business executives and other leaders. Let us emphasize that these applications do not add one iota to the political debate surrounding profit, income, and distribution, however. This is not because applications of equilibrium analysis refer to individual cases instead of to the economy as a whole, but because applications themselves teach us nothing about the nature of profit, but rather use this category as a tool. Theory, not historical applications thereof, must guide us in political decision making.

— Jorg Guido Hulsmann, A Realist Approach to Equilibrium Analysis

#Hulsmann #text #a priori #equilibrium

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air-is-essential-blog · 7 years

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~Dandelions~

June 2nd, 2017

Dandelion 

Scientific Name: Taraxacum  

Classified (Mostly) as: Wildflower

Dandelions are dated as far back as 30 million years ago, beginning in southern Russia. They have been used in traditional Chinese medicine for thousands or years. The belief, loosely, is that they were brought over to the United States by early European settlers; brought over on purpose because of all of the medicinal properties in the Dandelion. This is thought by the “Maine Organic Farmers.” Dandelions lay heavy throughout Maine, and are greatly harvested there as well.  

Some people know of the magic that lays in the roots of a dandelion, the deliciousness of a dandelion leaf, and the benefits of the actual petals that make up the flower. Wayne Dyer has a famously spiritual and deeply meaningful quote, “the difference between a weed and a flower is judgement.” Of course the dandelion is the flower (weed) we see poking through the grass of a field, its beautiful bright yellow color, contrasting the grass in a way that only the magic of the earth can create. I say flower because how can you see something that can do so many beautiful things, and label them as a weed. So excuse me if it bothers you for my lack of caring that a dandelion is in fact a weed, beauty is in the eyes of the beholder.  

There are 3 different parts of the dandelion that you can use: the roots, the leaves, and the petals. You may see the people online with baskets and buckets full of dandelion roots, dirt brushed off and beautiful. Getting the dandelion roots are not an easy task, it is more likely trying to pull up the roots that you are going to break off the leaves and be left shaking your head with frustration. Personally, my thought would be, if you have the land to rope off a section where you don’t care about your grass, and you plan on leaving un-mowed that’s where you are best going to get the roots. To take a short handled gardening shovel and digging out the roots in that section. Leaving this section for the dandelions will open the door for many homemade dandelion recipes you can make. The roots are probably the most, health wise, beneficial part of the dandelion. If you look at some of the tea boxes that you have in a cupboard in your kitchen, probably one or two of them at least will have dandelion root in the ingredients list. You’ll likely find them in detox teas, or teas that promote to reduce bloating or water weight.  

Side note: Almost all purposes and benefits of the dandelion that I will be mentioning are all “not medically proven.” You will find it very common when diving into the world of natural and herbal medicines that these things cannot be, or just simply aren’t, medically proven. That there isn’t enough sufficient evidence of proven fact that any of these things do anything for your health. I, myself, always think: “well how is it that before we had a pharmacy people lived just as long if not longer than we do now?” Minus of course, epidemics and plagues that have occurred, sprinkled through the worlds history. There was a time when people couldn’t run to Rite Aid or CVS and load themselves up with Advil and Claritin D. So what did they do 100-150 years ago? Before the world was polluted by so many of us, before there was a hole in the ozone layer, before we got food that wasn’t in season? They used what they had when they had it, and for the most part it was what herbs and plants they could grow and preserve. I try and hold on that they were doing things better then too, obviously, look at the world then and look at it now. Makes you want to go pick thousands of dandelions, right? Trying to erase all the Advil you’ve popped mindlessly, and all of the Benadryl you’ve taken before bed. There might not be hard medical evidence that anything I list in the entirety of this blog, has any health benefits. However, there is also no proof that the insight into this older world have any side effects, or that there’s any risk that they will do your body harm. (I need to insert some exclusions: If you are pregnant and breastfeeding, things no matter natural or not, should always be used with caution. You, or more likely your baby could have an allergy to some of the natural remedies that are out there. There is always a risk of an allergy, a lot of us are even allergic to ragweed and dandelion could bring out this allergy. However, you would have to be extremely sensitive to it for anything made out of dandelion to actually cause a reaction. Regardless always proceed with precaution when using something for the first time.) Advil might get rid of your headache or ease your period cramps, and that is a proven fact, but what about all the warnings on the bottle, the harm that most drugs on the market have on your liver or your kidneys. Personally, I think that just means that those things don’t belong in our bodies. If there are people that have come into harm due to medications, enough so that there’s a warning label, why would you put it in your body? I’ll take the free flowers in my yard any day over the overpriced medicine at the pharmacy. End of extremely long side note. 

The reason why dandelion root is often found in detox teas is because to of the big benefits of the root of the plant is, loss of appetite and constipation. It’s a natural appetite suppressant, it gives you natural sugars and gives you the sensation of being full. It’s also a natural laxative, if your bloated or retaining water weight, dandelion root is a good way to naturally detox your body. It helps clear your body of the sludge that’s leftover in the digestion process, and encourages normal/healthy bowel movements. Dandelion root tea is great if you ate something that didn’t agree with you, or it was your cheat day and you went a little overboard with the fried foods. It’s a great way to clear your system and help clear the sluggishness feeling that certain foods leave behind.  

Dandelion root is also great for tonsils and the throat, if you have a sore throat of a history of tonsillitis dandelion root tea or soup is most likely going to help sooth those. An early history study showed that people that ate dandelion soup after having their tonsils removed, in fact recovered faster than those who didn’t. As a child I was inflicted with tonsillitis more than 25 times before doctors decided it was time to take my tonsils out. A little history about your tonsils: your tonsils “hang” in the back of your throat, I say hang loosely because I am not a doctor so I will usually not use correct terminology and your tonsils are mostly connected. Tonsils are made up so tissue, they are simply a pair of soft tissue masses cover by pink mucosa. It was believed, even when I was younger, that they were the main fighter of infection born in the mouth. That’s why doctors used to be so hesitant to take them out but recent studies (within the past 20 years) show that there is little to no change in born infections of the mouth once the tonsils are removed. So now if you had tonsillitis they would more likely remove them first off, than allow you to endure that pain 25+ times. Sometimes having surgery after the first infliction with tonsillitis isn’t always the answer, surgery is invasive, there are risk and from personal experience the recover from having your tonsils removed will be the worst two weeks of your life. So instead pull up some dandelion roots and make some soup, I can’t promise you it’ll end your tonsillitis but I can promise you it won’t hurt to try. 

Inflammation, arthritis and arthritis like pain, can also be relieved by dandelion root. Quick rundown of inflammation and arthritis: Inflammation is the body’s white blood cells and all the substances that they produce rev up to begin to protect us from infection, for example bacteria and viruses. However, arthritis is an exception, the inflammation comes with no outside infection the body isn’t fighting off anything its confusing something. When arthritis is present your body is fighting off its own tissue, causing damage to itself and treating its own tissue as it it were somehow wrong and different from the rest. There’s three major types of arthritis but they all mainly cause: redness, swollen joints, loss of joint function, pain and stiffness of the joints. Dandelion root is known to ease the inflammation that can come when you twist your ankle, or land on your knee wrong during a hike. But if you chop onions and carrots all day it can also help ease the arthritis in your hands.  

Upset stomach and intestinal gas, dandelion root is known to help relieve both of these afflictions. This one kind of goes hand in hand with why you can often find dandelion root in detox teas or water weight teas. Often times bloating is caused by water weight issues in our bodies, but it can also be gas build up. Eating a lot of veggies, greens or anything that’s high in fiber can produce gas build up and make you uncomfortably bloated. Having a glass of dandelion root tea can often release this gas and therefore reduce the bloating and stomach pain. I said earlier if you eat something greasy or something simply doesn’t agree with you dandelion root will help clean your system, and that’s the same here. If you have an upset stomach your body is trying to tell you something. It’s telling you, you ate something it didn’t like, you ate a meal that was too heavy, you didn’t snack enough during the day. There are a thousand reasons why your stomach could be upset, but it should be a clear reason to you yourself, if you don’t usually eat fried dough and you go to the fair and have 3 of them, your stomach is going to hurt. But dandelion root will come in and clear your system, help you go to the bathroom and start anew.  

The last one I am going to touch on and probably my favorite, dandelion root is known to help UTIs. A urinary tract infection is extremely common in women, they are usually not serious if you treat them but they can become a problem if the infection spreads to your kidneys. A UTI occurs when germs enter your urethra, usually these germs are found in your large intestine and are then released in your stool. If these germs from your stool (normally) reach and enter your urethra it often times causes an infection in your bladder and sometimes your kidneys. That’s why (if you’re a woman) you were probably told by your mother “always wipe front to back.” Dandelion root helps promote urine flow and that’s exactly what you need when you have a UTI, you need the urine to flow to clean out your urethra. I’m definitely not suggesting that you don’t go to the doctors, don’t get tested and don’t go on antibiotics. There are somethings that the risk is too high to just try and make a tea with flower and hope it goes away, but a UTI does have a beginning. If you notice when you’re going to the bathroom that there’s a bit of pain, or you’re going more or that the sensation is there but the urine isn’t, start drinking some homemade dandelion tea. If you’re laying on the ground crippled with pain I don’t think that dandelion tea is the answer.

What to do with your dandelion roots:   1. Wash off your dandelion roots, then let them dry off.  2. Put them on a cookie sheet and put them in the oven 250 degrees for about 20 minutes.  3. Boil the dandelion root and drink the water, now tea. You can also save the dandelion root and put them in boiling water as you would loose leaf tea.

There’s a list of things that people believe dandelion root can help or even cure. I’ll list them below and probably sporadically continue on with all of the magic that lays in roots of this flower:   -Weight Loss  -Antioxidant  -Fights Cancer  -Fights Anemia  -Bone Health  -Lower Cholesterol  -Lower Blood Pressure  -Lower Blood Sugar  -Anti-Microbial  -Anti-Fungal  -Wart Removal  -Parasite Cleanser   -Cysts and Abscesses  -Depression and Anxiety   -Liver Cleanse  -Mood Enhancer  -Laxative   -Skin Health  -Eczema   -Psoriasis   -Clears Acne  This is a general list of the many things believed to help cure with dandelion, the root, the leaf and the flower. I have only touched base on the benefits of the root and things to do with it. There are also the leaves and the florets that you can do things with. I would love to, in the future, go deeper into the cancer fighting aspect of dandelions, and do a completely separate entry on the skin health along with anxiety and depression. They are fascinating and I could go on for hours, but I’ll save it for another time.

Dandelion leaves are extremely beneficial, like any normal green you would eat spinach, Swiss chard and so on. They aid in cleansing your liver, they are very high in potassium, encourage the flow of digestive enzymes, the greens are very high in vitamin A and stimulate fluid loss through the kidneys. Dandelion leaves have a very similar taste to arugula, so you can throw them in a mixed green salad along with your spinach and your purple leaf lettuce. You can also toss them in a pan with a little onion, garlic and olive oil to have them alongside your meat and potatoes.  

There are too many things to list them all that you can do with the flower part of the dandelion. I walk around my yard and pop off the heads to the dandelion and place them in a box or a jar. You need to let your dandelion heads dry out before you use them for anything. You can let them dry for a couple days or a couple weeks its up to you. Let them dry and place them in boiling water and let it simmer for a couple hours, then strain the water and you have homemade dandelion tea. That will do the same thing for you as the root tea. It will aid in weight loss, promote digestion and bowel movements. But here’s the missing link with the skin health, the flower heads is where you make your dandelion oil, or salve, dandelion lotion, all of your skin needs or joint rubs come from the florets. You can take the dried dandelion florets, put them in a jar and fill the jar with an oil of your choice. I don’t use almond oil, due to allergies, and I don’t use vegetable oil because I find it too heavy. I would suggest olive or canola oil, even sunflower oil to infuse with your dandelion heads. Then close the jar and place it in a pot of water and let it boil for several hours, over low to medium heat but keep the water bubbling. Then strain the dandelion heads from the oil after its cooled off. This is dandelion oil, you can leave it like this and put it in spray bottles and put it on dry patches such as eczema or psoriasis. It is also a very good massage oil, rubbing in the dandelion oil will help with inflammation and help with joint pain. If you want more out of your dandelion oil you can make a salve with the oil, add beeswax pellets after you let the dandelion oil sit for a couple weeks and boil it again, with the pellets. You can put the mixture in a small 2oz jar and place them in a dark cupboard until it comes together making almost a paste of the two. You can even double infuse the oil, boil the jar again and add new dandelion heads, this will make the oil or the salve stronger. There are so many things you can make with the dandelion florets, cookies, dandelion jam, dandelion honey (yum), butter, bread, soap, lotion bars and even wine. These are great ways to still get the benefits of the dandelion without having to just pop the flower in your mouth. The tea can be too strong and too bitter for people to sip and enjoy, so it might be easier to infuse your honey with it and put that in your tea instead, either way you are still getting all of the health benefits. I’ll follow up with more recipes and more information as the summer goes on.

~There’s magic in these flowers, go pick some and find out~

#vegan #vegan life #plantbased #herbalism #herbalife #plant magic #flowers #dandelions

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libertariantaoist · 7 years

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The allegation – now accepted as incontrovertible fact by the “mainstream” media – that the Russian intelligence services hacked the Democratic National Committee (and John Podesta’s emails) in an effort to help Donald Trump get elected recently suffered a blow from which it may not recover.

Crowdstrike is the cybersecurity company hired by the DNC to determine who hacked their accounts: it took them a single day to determine the identity of the culprits – it was, they said, two groups of hackers which they named “Fancy Bear” and “Cozy Bear,” affiliated respectively with the GRU, which is Russian military intelligence, and the FSB, the Russian security service.

How did they know this?

These alleged “hacker groups” are not associated with any known individuals in any way connected to Russian intelligence: instead, they are identified by the tools they use, the times they do their dirty work, the nature of the targets, and other characteristics based on the history of past intrusions.

Yet as Jeffrey Carr and other cyberwarfare experts have pointed out, this methodology is fatally flawed. “It’s important to know that the process of attributing an attack by a cybersecurity company has nothing to do with the scientific method,” writes Carr:

“Claims of attribution aren’t testable or repeatable because the hypothesis is never proven right or wrong. Neither are claims of attribution admissible in any criminal case, so those who make the claim don’t have to abide by any rules of evidence (i.e., hearsay, relevance, admissibility).”

Likening attribution claims of hacking incidents by cybersecurity companies to intelligence assessments, Carr notes that, unlike government agencies such as the CIA, these companies are never held to account for their misses:

“When it comes to cybersecurity estimates of attribution, no one holds the company that makes the claim accountable because there’s no way to prove whether the assignment of attribution is true or false unless (1) there is a criminal conviction, (2) the hacker is caught in the act, or (3) a government employee leaked the evidence.”

This lack of accountability may be changing, however, because Crowdstrike’s case for attributing the hacking of the DNC to the Russians is falling apart at the seams like a cheap sweater.

To begin with, Crowdstrike initially gauged its certainty as to the identity of the hackers with “medium confidence.” However, a later development, announced in late December and touted by the Washington Post, boosted this to “high confidence.” The reason for this newfound near-certainty was their discovery that “Fancy Bear” had also infected an application used by the Ukrainian military to target separatist artillery in the Ukrainian civil war. As the Post reported:

“While CrowdStrike, which was hired by the DNC to investigate the intrusions and whose findings are described in a new report, had always suspected that one of the two hacker groups that struck the DNC was the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence agency, it had only medium confidence.

“Now, said CrowdStrike co-founder Dmitri Alperovitch, ‘we have high confidence’ it was a unit of the GRU. CrowdStrike had dubbed that unit ‘Fancy Bear.’”

Crowdstrike published an analysis that claimed a malware program supposedly unique to Fancy Bear, X-Agent, had infected a Ukrainian targeting application and, using GPS to geo-locate Ukrainian positions, had turned the application against the Ukrainians, resulting in huge losses:

“Between July and August 2014, Russian-backed forces launched some of the most-decisive attacks against Ukrainian forces, resulting in significant loss of life, weaponry and territory.

“Ukrainian artillery forces have lost over 50% of their weapons in the two years of conflict and over 80% of D-30 howitzers, the highest percentage of loss of any other artillery pieces in Ukraine’s arsenal.”

Alperovitch told the PBS News Hour that “Ukraine’s artillery men were targeted by the same hackers, that we call Fancy Bear, that targeted DNC, but this time they were targeting cell phones to try to understand their location so that the Russian artillery forces can actually target them in the open battle. It was the same variant of the same malicious code that we had seen at the DNC.”

He told NBC News that this proved the DNC hacker “wasn’t a 400-pound guy in his bed,” as Trump had opined during the first presidential debate – it was the Russians.

The only problem with this analysis is that is wasn’t true. It turns out that Crowdstrike’s estimate of Ukrainian losses was based on a blog post by a pro-Russian blogger eager to tout Ukrainian losses: the Ukrainians denied it. Furthermore, the hacking attribution was based on the hackers’ use of a malware program called X-Agent, supposedly unique to Fancy Bear. Since the target was the Ukrainian military, Crowdstrike extrapolated from this that the hackers were working for the Russians.

All somewhat plausible, except for two things: To begin with, as Jeffrey Carr pointed out in December, and now others are beginning to realize, X-Agent isn’t unique to Fancy Bear. Citing the findings of ESET, another cybersecurity company, he wrote:

“Unlike Crowdstrike, ESET doesn’t assign APT28/Fancy Bear/Sednit to a Russian Intelligence Service or anyone else for a very simple reason. Once malware is deployed, it is no longer under the control of the hacker who deployed it or the developer who created it. It can be reverse-engineered, copied, modified, shared and redeployed again and again by anyone. In other words – malware deployed is malware enjoyed!

“In fact, the source code for X-Agent, which was used in the DNC, Bundestag, and TV5Monde attacks, was obtained by ESET as part of their investigation!

“During our investigations, we were able to retrieve the complete Xagent source code for the Linux operating system….”

“If ESET could do it, so can others. It is both foolish and baseless to claim, as Crowdstrike does, that X-Agent is used solely by the Russian government when the source code is there for anyone to find and use at will.”

Secondly, the estimate Crowdstrike used to verify the Ukrainian losses was supposedly based on data from the respected International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS). But now IISS is disavowing and debunking their claims:

“[T]he International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) told [Voice of America] that CrowdStrike erroneously used IISS data as proof of the intrusion. IISS disavowed any connection to the CrowdStrike report. Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense also has claimed combat losses and hacking never happened….

“’The CrowdStrike report uses our data, but the inferences and analysis drawn from that data belong solely to the report’s authors,” the IISS said. “The inference they make that reductions in Ukrainian D-30 artillery holdings between 2013 and 2016 were primarily the result of combat losses is not a conclusion that we have ever suggested ourselves, nor one we believe to be accurate.’

“One of the IISS researchers who produced the data said that while the think tank had dramatically lowered its estimates of Ukrainian artillery assets and howitzers in 2013, it did so as part of a ‘reassessment” and reallocation of units to airborne forces.’

"’No, we have never attributed this reduction to combat losses," the IISS researcher said, explaining that most of the reallocation occurred prior to the two-year period that CrowdStrike cites in its report.

“’The vast majority of the reduction actually occurs … before Crimea/Donbass,’ he added, referring to the 2014 Russian invasion of Ukraine.”

The definitive “evidence” cited by Alperovitch is now effectively debunked: indeed, it was debunked by Carr late last year, but that was ignored in the media’s rush to “prove” the Russians hacked the DNC in order to further Trump’s presidential ambitions. The exposure by the Voice of America of Crowdstrike’s falsification of Ukrainian battlefield losses – the supposedly solid “proof” of attributing the hack to the GRU – is the final nail in Crowdstrike’s coffin. They didn’t bother to verify their analysis of IISS’s data with IISS – they simply took as gospel the allegations of a pro-Russian blogger. They didn’t contact the Ukrainian military, either: instead, their confirmation bias dictated that they shaped the “facts” to fit their predetermined conclusion.

Now why do you suppose that is? Why were they married so early – after a single day – to the conclusion that it was the Russians who were behind the hacking of the DNC?

Crowdstrike founder Alperovitch is a Nonresident Senior Fellow of the Atlantic Council, and head honcho of its “Cyber Statecraft Initiative” – of which his role in promoting the “Putin did it” scenario is a Exhibit A. James Carden, writing in The Nation, makes the trenchant point that “The connection between Alperovitch and the Atlantic Council has gone largely unremarked upon, but it is relevant given that the Atlantic Council – which is funded in part by the US State Department, NATO, the governments of Latvia and Lithuania, the Ukrainian World Congress, and the Ukrainian oligarch Victor Pinchuk – has been among the loudest voices calling for a new Cold War with Russia.” Adam Johnson, writing on the FAIR blog, adds to our knowledge by noting that the Council’s budget is also supplemented by “a consortium of Western corporations (Qualcomm, Coca-Cola, The Blackstone Group), including weapons manufacturers (Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Northrop Grumman) and oil companies (ExxonMobil, Shell, Chevron, BP).”

Johnson also notes that CrowdStrike currently has a $150,000 / year, no-bid contract with the FBI for “systems analysis.”

Nice work if you can get it.

This last little tidbit gives us some insight into what is perhaps the most curious aspect of the Russian-hackers-campaign-for-Trump story: the FBI’s complete dependence on Crowdstrike’s analysis. Amazingly, the FBI did no independent forensic work on the DNC servers before Crowdstrike got its hot little hands on them: indeed, the DNC denied the FBI access to the servers, and, as far as anyone knows, the FBI never examined them. BuzzFeed quotes an anonymous “intelligence official” as saying “Crowdstrike is pretty good. There’s no reason to believe that anything they have concluded is not accurate.”

There is now.

Alperovitch is scheduled to testify before the House Intelligence Committee, and one wonders if our clueless – and technically challenged – Republican members of Congress will question him about the debunking of Crowdstrike’s rush to judgment. I tend to doubt it, since the Russia-did-it meme is now the Accepted Narrative and no dissent is permitted – to challenge it would make them “Putin apologists”! (Although maybe Trey Gowdy, the only GOPer on that panel who seems to have any brains, may surprise me.)

As I’ve been saying for months, there is no evidence that the Russians hacked the DNC: none, zilch, nada. Yet this false narrative is the entire basis of a campaign launched by the Democrats, hailed by the Trump-hating media, and fully endorsed by the FBI and the CIA, the purpose of which is to “prove” that Trump is “Putin’s puppet,” as Hillary Clinton put it. Now the investigative powers of the federal government are being deployed to confirm that the Trump campaign “colluded” with the Kremlin in an act the evidence for which is collapsing.

This whole affair is a vicious fraud. If there is any justice in this world – and there may not be – the perpetrators should be charged, tried, and jailed.

#justin raimondo #antiwar.com

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