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harrysfolklore · 1 year

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the first meeting - babysitter!yn and harry

can you believe it’s been a year since the first babysitter!yn blurb was posted? this is how they initially met !

gif creds to @londonharry <3

MY PATREON | BABYSITTER!YN MASTERLIST

September 4, 2021. Las Vegas, NV,

"Hey sissy! As you know, Mitch and I are set to go back on the road for work next month, we've been looking for a nanny for baby boy everywhere but we just can't find someone we trust enough. If you don't have anything going on for the next three months, would you like to join us as his babysitter?"

That was the text YN got a month ago, and she didn't need to give it a second thought before she packed her best clothes and took Sarah's offer.

Now there she was, walking around the halls of MGM Grand arena in Las Vegas, with her nephew in a sling and the possibility of running into Harry Styles at any minute. When YN told her friends about her new job they were ecstatic, claiming that she was god's favorite for being able to work for the Harry Styles, the hot, talented, pop star Harry Styles.

YN, however, didn't think about it that way. She was working for Mitch and Sarah, not him, and even tho she certainly found Harry handsome and intriguing, the idea of something other than an acquaintanceship happening between the two of them didn't even cross her mind.

"Do you miss your mummy baby? Should we find her so you can cuddle before we have to go back to the hotel?" YN cooed at the baby on her chest, who suddenly started to get fuzzy, since he's a pandemic baby he's not quite used to being away from his parents for long periods of times and that makes him get upset often "Let's go find her, I have no idea of where she could be tho" YN told the baby again, and before she could start walking, a voice made her turn on her heels.

"Hey, you're looking for Sarah?" it was no other than the man of the show, Harry Styles, in running shorts, a hoodie, long socks and sneakers, probably out of a workout before he had to start getting ready for his show. It was safe to say that YN was taken back by the pop star talking to her, not that she thought he was one of those cold, self-absorbed celebrities who felt like no one deserved to breathe the same oxygen as them, but she was still taken back by the action.

"Yes, this one is getting fuzzy and we need to head back to the hotel soon, wanted him to say goodbye," she replied, not sure if he just asked because he was around the area or if he was actually interested on helping her find her cousin, "Well, I think I spotted her at the dining area with Mitch, want me to walk you there?" he casually asked again and if YN was puzzled about his actions before, now she was even more taken back.

He's a really nice person, that was her main thought.

"That would be really nice, actually. These backstage areas are so big, I've lost count of how many times I've walked in the wrong direction," and she wasn't exaggerating, as someone who had never been on the road before, everything was new to her and she wasn't used to how backstages worked "I'm YN, by the way, baby Jonesland's babysitter on the road" she spoke again introducing herself as she walked the way Harry lead, "I know who you are, Mitch and Sarah have told me wonderful things about you, It's really nice to finally meet you" a wink and a small smile were attached to his reply, and if YN's judgement wasn't playing games with her, she could swear that he was flirting.

"Interesting, I've heard all kinds of stuff about you too" she decided to go along with whatever their conversation was leading, but when a sign with the words 'Dining lounge' came in sight she instantly felt bummed because she knew their short time together was coming to an end.

And Harry was disappointed too.

"As long as that stuff is not coming from Twitter or the Daily Mail, I would like to thank whoever put on a good word for me," they reached the door that lead to the dining area where Mitch and Sarah were chatting along with some other crew members, and it was time for their goodbyes.

"Well, Mitch and Sarah should be the first ones on your list, they're always talking about you," and once again, she wasn't exaggerating, the amount of the stories her cousins told her about who they called their lovechild were uncountable "Thank you for walking me over here, I would've been lost and with a crying baby without your help," she gave him a small smile, and Harry felt like a teenager with a brand new crush, he met the girl just a few minutes ago and he was already giddy over those small gestures.

"Yeah, of course, no need to thank me, love," he didn't even think about it before letting the pet name roll out of his tongue, and now it was YN's turn to feel like a school girl with a crush, "See you around?" YN awkwardly let out, instantly feeling stupid over her poor response, but that feeling turned into a huge surprise when his response came out.

"Sure thing, I'll make sure of it." and with another wink and a smile, he turned on his heels and walked away until he was out of her sight.

He's a really nice person. She thought again.

With her nephew peacefully sleeping on his little crib, YN waited in the hotel room until the show was over to wrap up her first babysitting shift.

She loved her new job so far, there's nothing she wouldn't do for Sarah, who she loved as a sister, and she also adored kids so she had no problem looking out for one as a job.

While she sat in the plush chair of the hotel room, her mind couldn't help but travel to her interaction Harry earlier that day. Was he flirting? Am I just reading the situation wrong? He was just being kind, no big deal. Those were some of the assumptions that navigated through her brain, but something her mind definitely wasn't expecting was the texts that made her phone screen light up.

"Hey, It's Harry. We're done with the show and Pauli and some other crew guys suggested we should go to his room to have some food and drinks. Want to come along?"

"It's okay if you don't, tho. I guess you must be tired from babysitting all day"

"I got your number from Mitch, by the way, I hope you don't mind x"

YN read the texts one, two, three times to make sure she was reading right and Harry was actually texting her and inviting her for drinks and food with the tour crew , and when her brain finally registered what was happening, she didn't let her intrusive thoughts win her over as she typed her reply.

"See you there, Harry x"

Once again, Harry felt like a teenager with a brand new crush.

There he was, standing in the back of Pauli's hotel room, exhaustion clear on his face, but waiting for the pretty girl he just met earlier that day to show up.

Call him a sap, a total cliché, but he was infatuated by her and wanted nothing more than to get to know her better, and if the only time he could get her alone was late at night after his shows because that was when she was done babysitting, then he was willing to put his exhaustion behind and meet her.

A small sigh of relief left his mouth when he finally saw her walk inside the room, she was wearing matching grey hoodie and joggers, no makeup on and her tied in a low bun, and Harry thought she looked gorgeous.

He was in fact, a sap and a total cliché.

He approached her before anyone else in the room could and greeted her, asking if she wanted anything to drink, "Don't judge me, but I would just like a fresh club soda," she shyly replied, and of course Harry found that adorable, like everything else she did "Not really a drinker? And I would never judge you, don't be silly" he said as he fixed her drink, and fixing one for himself too, "I do like to drink, just not the occasion I guess, I'm pretty tired if I'm honest," and her response made Harry feel guilty, thinking that she only took his invitation to hang out because she didn't want to be rude.

"How was the show, by the way? How does it feel to be back on the road?" she added shortly after and Harry felt his heart skip a beat for the millionth time that day, the fact that the girl he was interested in wanted to hear about his favorite thing in the world to do was enough to make him giddy and giggly.

"It was amazing, I missed the stage so much, performing is my favorite thing in the world and not being able to do it for almost two years was devastating," he told her sincerely as they sat down on a couch situated a bit far from everyone else in the room, Harry wanted nothing more than to place his arm on the back of it to pull her close to him, but he knew it was too soon for that even if he was dying to get closer to her already.

"I'm so glad everything worked out so everyone could get back on the road, Mitch and Sarah were dying to play shows again too, and I bet your fans were eager to see you again," she took a sip of her club soda before continuing "I know your shows are known for being a blast, and I did have a blast when I attended one during your last tour, but I bet the energy is different this time around, isn't it?" she looked at him with expecting eyes, interested on his reply, and Harry felt like he could that to the girl in front of him for hours and he wouldn't feel tired.

"Yeah, I mean, the crowd tonight was wild, and I bet it'll only get better each night, I'm really excited about that" at this point, Harry's voice gave away the fact that he was exhausted, but he kept trying to play it cool because the last thing he wanted was for his time with YN to be cut short because of his tiredness, "That sounds so lovely, I wish I could be on the crowd for one of the shows but duty calls" she said with a small smile and Harry wanted nothing more than to have her on the crowd of one of his shows too, dancing to his songs along with the rest of his fans "We'll figure something out, I promise you'll be a proper pit girl before the tour ends" he smiled and sipped on his own drink before carrying on with their chat.

Another hour had passed and Harry and YN found themselves talking about whatever crossed their minds. It was late, they were both tired, letting out small yawns between conversations, but none of them dared to call it a night. They were enjoying each other's company way too much, they felt like they could stay like that till the morning.

However, when YN's eyelids started to slowly close after a moment of comfortable silence Harry knew he needed to let the girl rest, "Come on, sleepy girl, let me walk you to your room," he gently patted her arm, and the way she almost jumped on her spot almost made him melt "No, It's okay, I can find my way back, you should rest too," YN stubbornly told him, as if he was going to let her walk alone through the huge hotel at almost 2am, "Don't be silly, I'm a gentleman, let me walk you to your room" he stood up and offered him his hand to take, YN was too tired to overthink the situation and she just grabbed it and allowed him to walk her out of the room, taking her all the way to her own room.

“It's here, 508," she says before swiping the card and unlocking the door. The quiet beep echoing through the quiet hotel corridor, "Thank you for walking me all the way here, and keeping me company tonight, I really enjoyed it" her voice was soft and gentle, tiredness taking over once again, her eyes were soft as well and Harry could swear she had never seen someone more beautiful.

He really wanted to kiss her.

But he wasn't going to do it in the middle of a dark corridor, after just knowing her for a day.

"No problem, I really enjoyed your company too," he reserved himself to say, fighting his urge to take a step forwards and connect their lips, "See you around?" YN repeated the words from their first conversation, and with a smile on his face, Harry's reply came out smoothly.

"Sure thing, I'll make sure of it, we still have a lot of late night talking to do"

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khunvegas · 2 years

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i basically just stole this ask from @gunsatthaphan, partially because i’ve been wanting to make a post about it and after almost 3 years watching bls, i might as well. right? right. anyways.

Compilation of Bad Kisses in BLs (Part 1)

mind you, this is only for the ones i’ve seen. if i put every single bad kiss out there, this post would go on forever.

i strongly believe a kiss, whether is good or bad, can make or break a show and in my personal opinion, a lot of them fell off simply because of the fishy kisses. they are truly hard to watch, so much so that you have to look away because they are ugly and this is something we CAN and SHOULD blame both the actors and the company. sometimes, workshops are not enough.

i also believe that these actors shouldn’t play dumb. like, they HAVE to know there’s gonna be a kiss at some point. put in the work, pls.

LET’S GET IT

1. My Engineer (MekBoss)

at the time, i didn’t think it was that bad. i just thought they needed some work, a little bit of help because clearly it wasn’t that good either. now, i just see two walls kissing and we might not see these walls kissing ever again.

2. YYY (NottPun)

imagine watching this mess of a show, they promise you a kiss, and once you’re sure you’re gonna get it, they literally bring the sun out, block the view and that’s how the season ends. but honestly? the little i can see it’s still awful.

3. YYY 2 (NottPun)

well... there it is. no words.

4. 2gether (SarawaTine)

maturing is accepting the fact that 2gether had two straight bros playing these characters and that’s how they kissed and then the high five. it was a bad kiss, bestie. we were all just blinded by the pandemic and though this was high cinema.

5. SOTUS (ArthitKongpop)

i’m not afraid of the girlies still caught up on this show. this was a bad first kiss and i’m ready to die on this hill. granted, this was 2016, the actors were still iffy on playing queer characters, they were calling each other wife and the obsession with pink milk was at its peak. gmmtv had $5 and a dream and you could tell.

6. ‘Cause you are my boy/My Tee (TeeMork)

this was frankdrake’s first roles and you could tell. you could also tell that they were in the trenches because everything was bad with this show and i truly think it was a cry for help. they did the best they could with what they had but there was no way in hell they could save this show and honestly, i’m not surprised that their first kiss was like this. it goes well with the quality of the show.

7. Love By Chance (TinCan)

and it doesn’t get better after this. i’m gonna be the devil’s advocate, mean actually tried to make these kisses better but there was no helping with this couple. a mess.

8. Oxygen (SoloGui)

as far as first kisses go... yeah. granted, oxygen wasn’t really that good either but they could have salvage this show with a decent kiss. nothing. nada. it was a let down.

9. Make it right (FuseTee)

make it right paved the way for angle kisses.

now listen, i’m pretty sure boom and peak were 17 or something when they filmed this and back in the day, this was already too much. like, cheewin was pushing it by directing this show. still, it has to be on this list (it’s not like it hasn’t changed anyways. boom and peak would never EVER kiss. this was the closest we could get).

10. Where your eyes linger

i mean, come on. COME ON. i know this was like the first kbl and you know, they paved the way. give credit where credit is due and all that but LOOK. it’s bad. it was a good show, for the plot that it had and the limited time, it was good. BUT THE KISS WAS... it was a letdown.

11. Gen Y (MarkKit)

how are you gonna be a senior in the industry and still kiss like this? kimcop are one of those settled ships that are hard to break and to ship with someone else. with that in mind, you would think they would do wonders. gen y was a dumpster fire and so were the kisses.

12. WISH YOU: Your melody in my heart

this is where you start to understand that it’s not about the production or how short kbls are and that’s why the kisses are so bad. no, it’s because workshops apparently don’t exist in korea and they put these men to kiss without practicing first. this is the product. this is what you get.

13. Color Rush

i know some of you call it the best kbl out there because the plot was different, which is true, but like... their lips are not even touching... so yeah. next.

14. Nobleman Ryu’s wedding

i’m pretty sure this was supposed to be an angle kiss and they changed their mind at the last minute and we got... this. i mean, compared to others in this list is not that bad but is it good? far from it. this was also the first period kbl we got and it was kind of forgettable too. it was very low budget and you could see it with the kiss

15. What Zabb Man

BOTH COUPLES because both of them were such a let down. i was here mainly because of the toxics from gen y and with the crazy tension they had going on, i thought they would go off. not even that. don’t even get me started on the main couple. the manipulation that went down between them UGH but i can’t even get a good kiss out of this mess anyways.

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is-the-fire-real · 3 months

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judío por elección (part 1)

(TW: aging, death, brief description of dead body and the effects of death)

We were stopped on the street two years ago by a small gray-haired lady who was thrilled to hear us speaking English. She herself was a Londoner who transplanted to our small Andalusian village with her husband almost twenty years ago. She was thrilled to hear people speaking in her mother tongue and invited my wife and I in for coffee anytime.

We started taking her up on it. The pandemic was still On, but not Lockdown On. We wore masks, sat on their broad terrace over six feet apart, and shouted conversation at each other. She always gave us tons of cookies and coffee from her once-white, now-brown-from-use plastic electric kettle. I get nervous about plastic kettles, but drank it anyway. And here was where we met her husband, E.

E was stooped and frail where his wife, S, was merely beginning to run down a little. When you get to E's age, the skeleton starts to come out in your features. Even then, we had no idea how old E really was until he casually mentioned that he remembered his father coming back from the war.

The War, he said, and I told my wife afterwards this must be WW2, and later, we asked enough questions to validate that guess. So in his 80s.

E forgot a lot of things. He acting like being Jewish was a secret because he'd forgotten how he'd hung up a Passover plate on one wall, and how he'd marked the eastern wall of the house with a plaque of the Tablets of the Law. We decided to make him feel safer by talking about my Jewish stepfamily and my wife's experiences of being mistaken for Jewish. He talked about learning Hebrew before he learned English, a little about growing up Orthodox in England in the fifties. Then he made us swear we'd never tell anyone in the village that he was Jewish.

We swore.

He wasn't an easy person to be around. Part of aging sometimes is feeling the weight of all your seemingly-innocent choices along the way dragging your body down into oblivion. Throughout his life, E smoked and E was a jeweler who did woodworking and home repair and almost never wore a mask. E when I knew him was tied to an oxygen tank and sounded like he breathed underwater. Throughout his life, E was strong and able to exert gentle control over others; when I knew him, his reedy voice rose to sharply criticize anyone around him.

He complained of how things were different now in the village; I saw his fear of the last great big change behind his words.

That was how my wife and I treated these visits: we were seeing an old man at the end of his life far away from his family trying to cope. He told the same set of stories over and over again; we took it as him needing certainty that somebody would know and tell those stories. (One of them: E worked on set design for the show "Merlin", kept the molds, and utilized them in his home design... so some of his walls had little archways with Merlin's star or the throne's symbol impressed upon them.) He went back and forth between taxing S with unreasonable requests and trying to ratchet them back when he saw he went too far.

Early in the summer of 2023, E started repainting and cleaning off his terrace and rooftop. S would cry and beg and plead for him not to, it was too hot, he'd go without oxygen too long (she was right). E ignored her. I drank my coffee and thought about how he must know the end was near and how he wanted to leave the house in a nice condition for S to live in, or sell, afterward.

The last thing he tried to do was repaint part of the ceiling which had collapsed and decorate it with stars, galaxies, and black holes. "It takes a great deal of time to reproduce the universe," he'd say, and my wife would laugh and say "Of course, it took G-d six days but we're not G-d", and then E'd laugh, every time.

Toward the end of an obscenely hot June, S called me in shrieking tears and told me "I think E has died!"

I was in the middle of six chores when I got that phone call, none of which were done that day. My wife and I ran for S's house. E had been mostly bed-bound for the past two weeks. He had gotten out of bed, walked into the foyer, and collapsed. He was almost certainly dead immediately. S had to do CPR on him while weeping and talking to the emergency workers in broken Spanish.

Never seen a dead body before.

After the workers finally arrived, it went more quickly. They picked his body up and wrapped him in a sheet and laid him on the marital bed. My wife, who speaks Spanish natively, spoke to all the different workers. I didn't, so I ended up finding a mop and cleaning up the urine that coated the entire foyer. (The next day I'd bring by a steam cleaner, run it through the whole foyer, and then I steam cleaned her kitchen so we could all pretend I hadn't brought it over to cleanse the last of E from the house.)

(When I learned that you kasher a microwave by steaming water in it, I immediately thought of that day.)

I led S into the room where E's body lay. I pulled out my phone while she cried. I didn't yet understand how an ethnoreligion worked, but I still had a sense that while E wasn't passionately religious, he would want certain things for himself. If he didn't, then S needed something that would help her move into grief. And I knew that it'd help me. So I pulled up an English language version of a mourning prayer and guided S through it.

This calmed her a little, and after touching his outline, she left the room. Alone, not sure if he said it or if I believed it, I recited the Shema on his behalf. (Which I had learned, to my goyim embarrassment, from "The Sandman".)

After E's passing, none of his remaining family were Jewish, and nobody wanted his Judaica. Once S started cleaning all the remnants out of her house, she went hard on purging the Judaica. I don't blame her for this, exactly. She was grieving and she had no concept of how important some of those objects could be. My wife told her to give us any books or items that were about Judaism instead of throwing them away. When she did, S lit up and immediately gave us his mezuzahs. One was empty. One had a tatty old prayer sheet inside it.

My wife and I looked for hours on how to dispose of the prayer (we still haven't, we're working on it). I looked up whether or not it was okay for non-Jews to hang mezuzah. As I shared the results, my wife laughed and said they'd feel weird about it, like they were cosplaying Judaism.

"I'd like to be Jewish," they said, as they had for the past fifteen years on and off, "only I can't."

This time, for the first time, I said: "Why not?"

#is-the-fire-real original #jewish conversion #jewish convert #judiasm #jumblr #jew by choice #jew in progress #spain #andalusia #tw: death #aging

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fieldofdaisiies · 1 year

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Ultima Ex Nobis | ch. IV

Nessian AU word count: ~2,4k words warnings: mentions of bad mental health summary: Six years into a global pandemic which was caused by a mass fungal infection that turns hosts into zombie-like creatures and makes the whole of Prythian collapse, the former army general Cassian Cadell is tasked with one very special mission – escorting Nesta Archeron, one of the few immune survivors, across a post-apocalyptic Prythian to a group of people of the name L. Their identity is unknown but they can make an antidote.

masterlist

Exhaustion burns in Nesta’s lungs when she runs over the dry soil, through the high grass, her heavy feet aching. She was active, danced and did gymnastics once a week before the infection started. Now, after having been denied sports for nearly six years, she is weak. The muscles in her legs are not strong enough to carry her as fast as Cassian is running. But the general would never leave her behind, he slows down, Nesta trying to keep up with his pace. Cool morning air wheezes in an out of her lungs, a sharp stinging pain erupting in her chest. They are inside a forest now, the morning air so very cold, sending shivers down her whole body.

“FASTER!” the former army general shouts, but Nesta can barely hear him over the blood rushing in her ears. She wants to shout back that she is already trying to, but decides against it — it would only be a waste of oxygen and her lungs and torso are already aching, burning like she has swallowed poison, like she is being suffocated.

The engine once again gets louder, sounds nearer, and Nesta does not even have to look back over her shoulder. She knows who is behind them and she also knows that Keir is probably in one of those cars, hunting her like his own favourite little prey. But well then, he is a coward, so he probably did not join.

Cassian takes a sharp turn, his hand snatching out to grab Nesta’s. He brings her closer to him, somehow like his shielding her from the danger. He is her protector after all.

They take a path off the beating track, now blazing through wild bushes and grass. Dead leaves and pine needles are caught in furred clumps of moss, moss is also climbing up the tree trunks which tells Nesta they are very deep in the woods by now. There are acorns and pine cones scattered across the ground and Nesta has to make sure she does not stumble over them — she has to admit her Converse haven’t been the best choice of shoes, but the only. Cassian with his thick boots simply smashes the pine cones when he steps onto them and Nesta envies him for a moment.

The moment does not last too long. The silence of the early morning forest, only being disturbed by her heavy pants, soon gets interrupted by shots that are being fired behind them.

Pebbles crunch underneath their feet when the first shot reverberates through Nesta and she shudders, her legs slowing in shock. She feels like life has been sucked from her and she can't continue running, to caught in a stupor.

“They are shooting at us,” she brings out and realises how silly it is that she wasted energy and breath on in this statement. It was so useless, as the shot could not have gone unnoticed by Cassian.

“Fuckers,” Cassian grumbles next to her, still not letting go of her hand. It is the soft press of his palm against hers that brings her a little comfort in the midst of the uproar around them. Another shot is fire, and both don’t know where it landed or if it was close.

“Where to? We can never escape them,” Nesta queries, her voice ragged and horse. Her throat is one fire, so are her lungs and she can barely feel her legs anymore. She slows a little again, everything hurts too much.

Her stomach coils at the helplessness she is feeling — hasn’t she felt that weak in a long time. Not even when she was taken to the hospital did she feel like that. She is disappointed — in her herself, in her body. Could she really not make it? Could she really not bring herself to safety? Would this truly be her and Cassian’s end…because she failed?

“We can, I am not letting you die out here, Nes.” Cassian pulls her a little closer again, giving her hand a firm squeeze, his big feet hitting the ground in big steps while he tries to make Nesta follow his pace. He knows she is weak, having had no chance to train at all in the past years, but he needs her to go over her limits, to cross the line of pain. He needs her to be strong and deep in side he knows that she is strong — one of the strongest people he knows.

“Come on, Nes, you can do this—“

A shout of pain interrupts Cassian. The shout has sounded just a second after she has heard another shot and even though she does not dare look over she knows exactly what has happened. Knows exactly what has been done to Cass. But she does not want to believe it. It couldn’t have happened.

“Fuck!” Cassian growls and folds his hand over his lower belly where thick red liquid already starts to build up. What Nesta really admires in that moment is that he does not slow down, does not stop. He keeps up the pace, dragging his feet over the ground and pulling on Nesta’s hand, changing their directing again. The trees are standing closer together where they are heading now. There are even more pine needles on the ground and thicker, bigger bushes. They are now chopping their way through the undergrowth, shielding themselves from the attackers, hoping they go unseen.

“We hid here,” Cassian breathes and crouches down, pulling Nesta along with him. She topples slightly forward, tumbling onto Cassian and bracing her slim hands on his strong thighs, nothing but corded muscles underneath his pants.

“You have been shot,” Nesta shudders, and lifts her gaze to Cassian’s. Her right hand moves over her chest, hoping to calm her heavily beating heart, to regain her breath. “I’ve noticed that, Nes,” Cassian answers matter-of-factly. He brings both his hands up to lift the hem of his shirt and curses again. “Right through me,” he says and Nesta really does not want to look, does not want to see the wound, but she looks anyway. The bullet went write through the side of Cassian’s belly, blood pooling around it and running down his toned belly.

“Just a graze wound. It will heal.” He has noticed Nesta’s gloomy grimace, having felt her concern.

“We left all the medicine behind, Cassian, you need medical help.”

But Cassian gives his head a little shake and forces a weak smile onto his lips. “Are you worried about me, Nes?”

Yes! She wants to say, but does not. “I am worried about being alone out here,” she says instead and somehow wants to immediately take the words back when she sees how the smile falters from her companion’s face. But Cassian brushes it off and lets his hands fall to his thighs, his finger tips brushing Nesta’s. Oh God, why is her hand still there?, Nesta thinks and cringes internally.

She sharply pulls it back, pink splotches appearing on her cheeks and she quickly averts her gaze. “For how long are we going to stay here?” she hisses in a whispered voice.

They are only covered by a few bushes, it is not at all safe and once the sun has fully risen their cover will be for nothing.

Cassian does not answer immediately, he seems to deliberate, ponder about how their route should or would continue. He is unsure about what to do next, but he does not want Nesta to see his uncertainty. Also he does not want her to see his pain, because that damn wound hurts like hell. But he has to be strong fighter, the strong survivor, not only for himself but most importantly for her. He has promised to bring her to safety and to help her save the world. Yes, he does not like her that much, but letting her alone out here to die would never be an option. Even if it was the last thing he did, he would bring Nesta Archeron to safety.

“We need to listen now, figure out where they are. They turned off the engine, I assume.”

Nesta thinks so too. She doesn’t really think they have left — they are still out there, just waiting for them to make a move. When she looks back at Cassian she notices the thin film of sweat coating his forehead and his neck — cold sweat that is breaking out on his skin due to the injury.

If only she had taken the backpack with her… She could tend to his wound now, but no, obviously she had to forget about it. Doubt and regret fill her brain…is she really not good for anything? Has she not even been able to save her younger sister that one fateful night. She hasn’t seen Elain in nearly six years. She has no idea if she is alive. If Feyre knows, she has no idea.

Nesta clamps down on the rising emotions, biting the inside of her cheeks to stop the tears from building up in her eyes. Crying would be the last thing she would want now. Her chest still aches from sucking in the sharp breaths of cool air and her knees and legs and feet still hurt from running. Nesta moves into a kneeling position, hoping to be as calm as possible, and sits back down on her heels. “Your wound needs to be checked.”

She couldn’t lose another person because of her doings, of her failing. Back then Elain followed her outside when she went looking for Feyre. It was and still is her fault.

And if Cassian now as well —God forbid— dies because of her, she would never forgive herself for it. Yes, she does not like him that much but still, he has been kind to her and he has not chosen to escort her through Prythian, he has been tasked with it, has been pushed into just like she has.

She can barely finish the thought when another engine howls in the distance, a car nearing with great speed. Tree branches get smashes and crunched. More people are coming.

Nesta’s eyes widen in panic and she searches Cassian’s gaze. There is a gloomy grimace on his face and he opens his hand for Nesta to take it. “We make it out alive, Nes.”

Shots sound from all around them like thunder — there are so many and they are so loud their ear drums nearly burst. One can hear shouts, wails more shots and then there is nothing but silence.

Irritation coats Nesta’s insides and she folds the hand that is not in Cassian’s palm over her chest as if in pain. Her heart beats in her throat, her chest heaving with deep inhales. Cassian closes his eyes for a moment, waiting.

“Cass!” A male voice sounds and the former general’s eyes immediately snap open. He looks relieved, some colour returning to his face.

“Cass, where the fuck are you? The pager shows that you are close,” the male shouts, foot steps all of a sudden sounding closer. One can hear pebbles crunch, wood being shoved away. Nesta’s throat works on swallow and she tries to search Cassian’s gaze. The corner of his mouth lifts a little and then— “Az?” Cassian says loudly. “We are.”

Still holding Nesta’s, hand the general straightens up, pulls the young female with him and brushes the weathered branches out of their way.

A blood bath and several dead bodies are revealed to them and in front of them stands a male. Nesta has to admit that he looks incredibly handsome, wearing army pants, a black tight shirt that leaves little to nothing to imagination. His hair is dark, his skin tanned, he holds a huge rifle in his hand and when he sees the two of them, his lips form a smile. “There you are. I have been looking for you,” he says and stalks forward.

“You did that?” Cassian breathes and gestures to the dead bodies, his other hand still holding Nesta’s.

The male of the name Az inclines his head with graceful simplicity, cool indifference etched into his features.

The males makes bigger steps forward and Cassian slips his hand out of Nesta’s hold, pulling his friend in for a tight hug. “You saved our asses, Azzy. We owe you.”

Something dips low in Nesta’s belly — is this envy? Envy that Cassian has someone who saves his life, who comes to his rescue, who hugs him like a brother? Probably it is envy, mixed with disappointment. And sadness, hasn't she hugged her sisters in nearly six years.

Once having pulled back from the hug, Cassian decides it is time to introduce the two of them. “Azriel, my brother from another mother,” he says and grins, slowly bending forward when a rush of pain floods him. “Nesta Archeron, my immune companion.”

What a nice way to be introduced, Nesta thinks and extends her hands for Azriel to shake. The skin of his hands is marred with deep scars, but Nesta does not let her sympathy show, not knowing if he would appreciate it, and shakes his hand.

“He is hurt. Cassian got shot, he needs to be taken care of,” Nesta quickly says and practically feels how Cassian rolls his eyes next to her.

“Isn't the first time that happened, but thank you for informing me, the bastards wouldn’t have said anything for days. Again,” Azriel chuckles lowly and extends his arm, showing them to truck.

“But first we get out of here, back to where it is safe.” “Where to?” Nesta queries. Azriel's presence, and she really does not know why, makes her feel safe. With him she feels just as safe as with Cassian and that is odd, but also somehow a very welcomed feeling.

“Starfall basecamp. We just need to head a little north, it is a thirty minute drive,” Azriel explains when he opens his door, Cassian on the other side, but letting Nesta go in first.

“You have been watching me? Making sure I am safe, Azzy?” Cassian muses when he slides into the seat, his hand pressing down on his wound. He swallows a groan when he sits down, biting down on his lower lip to clamp down on the rising pain.

“I am making sure she is safe,” Azriel answers matter-of-factly.

~~~~~~

tags: @helhjertet @moonlightazriel@aayo-whatt@crushedcloudsx @brekkershadowsinger @girasoli-e-sorrisi @ignite-me@swifti-ed @cassiansbigwingspan @burningsnowleopard @headcanonheadcase @banasheefan56

#nesta x cassian #nesta archeron #cassian acotar #acotar #nessian #nessian fanfic #acosf

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crippled-punk-guy · 5 months

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I want to talk about outbreaks, poverty, and medical oppression.

I’m sure most of you are aware of long covid, the phenomenon that people who were infected with covid are having health problems they didn’t before infection that are now following them through their life. A lot of these situations have been disabling; I myself now have an extra disability tacked onto the list as well as many of my once abled friends joining me. Even my grandpa has developed a disability because of his infection. And this is something our family is not new to.

For the purpose of this story I’m going to call her aunt M. Aunt M was my grandma’s aunt, so technically my great aunt I believe. When she was a little girl she was completely able bodied like most of her immediate family. They had no known health problems that would cause anything like what happened to her. By this time polio was very well known about, vaccines were starting to be rolled out and treatments had started to become available to more people according to my uncle (her older brother). One day aunt M and her siblings go outside and find that their neighbors yard had flooded, so like a group of five kids in a small town with nothing else to do they play in the water. They had no idea that something so small would completely change the course of their little sister’s life. She ended up contracting polio, the only source anyone could think of was the standing water. As far as I’m aware no one else got sick or at the very least as sick as she did. It completely destroyed her lungs and her ability to walk, the muscles in her legs contracted and got stuck in a bent position and could hardly handle any weight. Aunt M spent the rest of her life using an oxygen machine and a power wheelchair once her family was able to save enough for one, and while you will not give her any pity because she never wanted any, I will tell her story to remind everyone of her. She shouldn’t have been disabled. She wouldn’t have lived a life of pain if not for one reason: poverty. You see the rich neighborhood a couple miles away had the resources. Any kids there were properly vaccinated and given treatments like leg braces to help them. Their family didn’t have any of that. No access to medication. No way to help her. She was very lucky that her symptoms didn’t get worse, she could’ve very easily died.

Aunt M passed away during the covid pandemics first year, it was very sudden and unexpected, we were all devastated. But part of me thinks it was slightly a blessing, a blessing that she wouldn’t have to watch her nephew go through the same thing. I was already disabled when this whole thing started, I already used a wheelchair and she knew that, I always felt a closeness to her because of it even though I hardly got to see her. But I got sick, more sick than usual, and ended up developing severe POTS. I have much less energy than I did before and that’s saying a lot, I have trouble pushing my wheelchair now because of my lung capacity and overall weakness. Hopefully soon I will be getting a power chair. And I can’t help but think of Aunt M.

I can’t help but think of all of the people like her, just innocent people who were living and then suddenly now their life is changed forever. I feel like it was easier for me because I had already accepted being disabled, sure more to worry about isn’t ideal but at least I’m no stranger to it. But think about that and think about aunt M. How a little less than a hundred years ago the same fucking thing happened.

Post polio syndrome and post covid syndrome are one in the same in a lot of ways. The effects they cause are surprisingly similar, at least in my family and experience, and it took years for people to admit post polio existed like it will for post covid. This is why it’s called a mass disabling event, people go into it relatively healthy and come out with health problems and disabilities that will never go away. The wealthier people can try out the experimental treatments and possibly be helped or cured, while the rest of us have to live with the proof that our government doesn’t know how to take care of their own people.

While POTS does effect the body differently than how polio effected their lungs and chests we need to comprehend how serious this is. Some people live with POTS and can mitigate their symptoms to the point of it barely effecting them, and some of us need to use wheelchairs because we can’t breathe or think while standing for longer than three minutes. It’s a syndrome with a wide variety of presentations and effects on patients, and it is a nervous system disorder so it may have more lasting effects than we can even think of right now.

Honestly I don’t have a point to summarize into, but just remember how the government handled polio and how it’s handled covid so far, I predict that when those of us who are young adults now are my aunt M’s age we’ll see the same fucking thing happen all over again. And we’ll sit there, with our long covid impacts and know, we haven’t learned a god damn thing.

I’ll end you with reiterating, do not hold any pity for my Aunt M, she was a very strong willed person who wouldn’t accept any amount of other people feeling bad for her, direct your emotions to the government who did this to her and us. Aunt M was healthy, she should’ve stayed healthy. Government inaction decided her fate for her.

#disability #post covid #post polio #personal

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bopinion · 5 months

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2023 / 46

Aperçu of the Week:

"How do you get revenge for killing a child? By killing other people's children? Certainly not."

(Palestinian Bassam Aramin and Israeli Rami Elhanan. Both have lost a daughter in the Middle East conflict. And still strive for reconciliation).

Bad News of the Week:

I won't be alive in the year 2100. Maybe my children will. If they have children, they certainly will. And they will look back on their grandparents' generation. And probably curse them. Because they will have us to thank for the world they (have to) live in. It will be in a miserable state. And that is our fault.

My grandparents and parents created the German "economic miracle". Primarily with sweat, coal and steel. An industrialized nation like all developed (if you can call it that way) western countries. The environment was a resource and not a living habitat worth protecting. But these generations didn't know any better. At least not in society as a whole. That no longer applies to people my age. We know better. So we have no excuse for doing nothing.

In 2100, it will be almost 3 degrees warmer than it is today. That is the result of the so-called Emissions Gap Report presented by the UN Environment Program (UNEP). The world will look fundamentally different. Apart from a remnant of continental ice in the Antarctic, there can no longer be any glaciers at these temperatures. Ocean currents will be completely different due to the warming of the upper water layers. Or won't be at all. But with significantly less oxygen, i.e. with fewer sea creatures. Which will then not only be missing from the species balance, but also from the food chain. Etcetera.

The current German government with green participation has suffered a severe setback in its already modest plan to convert the economy to sustainability. This is because the Federal Constitutional Court has ruled that 60 billion from the "Transformation Fund" may not be used for this purpose. Because it is a reallocated budget that was actually intended to deal with the effects of the pandemic. Let's not misunderstand each other: the money is there, not some nebulous air booking in the future. It just unfortunately has the wrong label.

This frustrates me in many ways. Not that I want to question our supreme jurisdiction. But I do want to question the standards by which it is measured. Just as electric cars are given preference over petrol cars when it comes to parking spaces in the city, priority should be given to ecological and sustainable measures in budget planning. Quite simply because it must undoubtedly be the top priority. It is bad enough that the urgently needed reorientation of our society is being held back by laziness, convenience and ignorance. Then please don't add bureaucracy to the mix.

Good News of the Week:

The EU is finally getting serious about prosecuting environmental offenders. In future, serious crimes against the environment will be punishable by heavy prison sentences and fines. Representatives of the governments of the member states and the European Parliament agreed in Brussels on new rules to improve the prosecution of environmental crimes.

This includes a wide range of offenses, from illegal timber trading to violations of chemicals regulations. Environmental crime is one of the world's most profitable organized crime activities and has a considerable impact on the environment and human health, the Council of Member States said in response to the planned new directive.

The proposed penalties are severe. Individuals face up to 10 years in prison, companies at least 5% of their global turnover. Equally worth mentioning: offenders will be obliged to restore the environment to its previous state or provide compensation. A clear victory for the environment. Which ultimately belongs to all of us. Or actually to no one, because it is a greater good.

Personal happy moment of the week:

My work-life balance is currently very uneven. Because I'm extremely busy at work: several problematic and time-consuming projects are stupidly overlapping at the same time. That's why I'm almost exclusively in the office at the moment and not with my family. They are kind enough to understand that daddy and hubby have very little time - and are in a bad mood. Thank you very much for your understanding and patience!

I couldn't care less...

...that Vladimir Putin wants to take part in a virtual G20 summit. Sure, he can't be arrested there either - the International Criminal Court had issued an arrest warrant for war crimes against Ukraine. The worst joke, however, is his topic. According to Moscow's announcement, he wants to present "his view of a deeply unstable world situation". Suggestion: resign. That would make the world much more stable in one fell swoop.

As I write this...

...I discover the work of Karl Jenkins. The Welsh composer is responsible for countless contemporary hits in classical music, such as Adiamus and Palladio. I know his music - from advertising and from movies and television. But I never knew that it was one and the same mastermind who created it.

Post Scriptum

Anarchy reigns in Argentina. At least Javier Milei, the winner of Sunday's presidential election, calls himself an "anarcho-capitalist". The people's longing for change was extremely strong. After all, the record of the center-left alliances that have been in power for decades is anything but brilliant: over a third of the population officially falls below the poverty line, inflation recently reached 147% and any innovation is suffocating in an over-regulating state.

Many of Milei's plans sound very radical - at least by European standards: the introduction of the US dollar as the official national currency, the closure of public institutions such as the national broadcaster or the privatization of state-owned companies. However, the political novice has neither a majority in parliament, nor a functioning party apparatus or a solid network in the regions of his country. What he can actually implement is therefore more than questionable. But he is challenging the status quo and at least bringing a breath of fresh air. And that has never done any harm.

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livehorses · 9 months

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I was a little reluctant of telling this openly, but at the same time, I want to vent a little about this.

On another post, I said my grandaunt has just died last Friday and I said her last years were hard.

Well, to begin with, she was the oldest of nine siblings. She was the matriarch of my father's side of the family. Many important events were done around her. One of her younger sisters invited her to go in trips to their home state, and she bought her gifts and was very caring towards her.

Turns out, that sister's family got involved in a huge corporation fraud some years ago, and they lost a lot of money. Her sister went to see my grandaunt to tell her everything, the trips, the gifts, the caring was all borrowed, and she demanded to be paid back with the heritage of my grandaunt's house. It's most likely she didn't want the house but wanted to tear it down and sell the land where it was built to win money.

When we found out, we couldn't believe it. How did she dare? It was her sister! How can you tell someone of your same blood that you owe them all the good they did to you? Only to cover your money loss?

My mom told us that that house was already destined to us, with the other possessions and that there was already a testament saying so. But we didn't care about that. We were only offended on how our grandaunt was just unfairly treated.

From that moment on, my grandaunt's mood and health decreased terribly. All in the middle of a pandemic. She felt so unloved and forgotten. We barely visited her before and no other cousins did. She only had the company of her personal nurse, her servant, her dog and the car's driver, and my grandfather that went to visit her often because he lived near.

She often insisted us to go to see her, but we always thought we had a busy schedule, and my grandfather didn't like that we visited her because he didn't want her to get exhausted afterwards. But I knew she would feel very alone, and more after her sister's mistreatments. I started calling her in Thursdays at noon. I insisted to go visit her when the pandemic started to end.

Then she died, the same week we went to see her in honor of her Saint's name day. I felt very guilty for taking her granted before, and I felt like I just cared for her when my other grandaunt was unfair to her. I feel like I could've done more for her, and I didn't call her that Thursday because I just thought it was enough with the last visit.

But the funeral was the worst. I took it a bit more calmy when I found out she died, it gave me a bit of relief considering she barely could breath and connected to a huge tank of oxygen at almost 100%. I was calm when I went to the funeral. There were only my grandfather, my family and my grandaunt's staff in the room.

But then she appeared, her sister. It has been a while since I hadn't seen her, probably the last time being my grandparents' wedding 50° anniversary. She went to greet us with a smile, so charming... But the next minute she started to give orders about getting rid of the dog, about the staff being fired that very day and screaming that no one was allowed to enter the house, not even the staff. "It's my house!" She screamed. "Yes, the house might be yours but not its content." My grandfather said. "No, I have the testament, and everything is mine!" she replied. Wisely, my older brother persuaded us to leave the room.

I had a couple of paintings of the Blessed Virgin Mary that I made and I gave to my grandaunt to keep her company, but the paintings were never placed in her room, so they lost their original purpose there. They were piled up on a living room. I always thought that, I would never allow my grandaunt's sister to take them away, because there's no way she could appreciate them as my grandaunt did. So, I anxiously asked my grandfather when he met us outside if he could recover them before that woman snatched them away. My grandfather and older brother went to the house, even if that meant to miss the funeral out.

When they arrived there was a locksmith already there, changing the locks by my grandaunt's sister orders, with also the order of not allowing anyone to get in. But in the words of my older brother, he seemed to feel bad for them so they let them in. They recovered my paintings and a few valuable documents and that was all they could rescue from there.

My grandaunt's sister spent all the funeral making phone calls, taking notes, chatting lightly with her nurse and close relatives as if it was another frivolous event, putting her plan of taking over the house and its possessions in motion, without any consideration to her dead sister being there present. I can't get over the disrespect, the audacity. That whole situation was the one that brought me to tears.

I'm sure My grandaunt is already at peace, she's now beyond any mortal human worry, and therefore I can be at peace too rewarding that. But my grandaunt was a huge keeper of traditions. She literally religiously put the Friday of Sorrows Altar, the Nativity scene, the Day of the Dead's Ofrenda. But I'm pretty sure her sister didn't give a single grain of salt about those things and pretty sure she threw everything to the trash. I don't care about the house, but the part that really hurted me, was to see all my grandaunt's legacy being thrown away. I was also very worried about the dog, because she was already rescued and I didn't want her to end on the wrong hands. However, it seems that she's okay, I hope so...

Okay, that was it. This funeral shouldn't have to be so hard if it wasn't for that family drama. I want to forgive my grandaunt's sister, even more, I think she's the one loosing it all. I don't think she hasn't won any battle or any heritage at all. I don't think that will make her happier, because she did it at the expenses of my grandaunt. Nothing could be rewarded from that.

#livehorses confessions #livehorses rants #Maybe I'll delete later #Family drama #Grief

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ausetkmt · 1 year

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Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health: Lets Talk About Racism | Columbia Public

Our researchers are shining a light on discrimination’s effect on the public’s health and taking steps to stop it.

In March of 2020, when then-Mayor Bill DeBlasio announced that the New York City Police Department would be responsible for enforcing mandates related to the raging COVID-19 pandemic, Seth J. Prins, MPH ’10, PhD ’16, had a bad feeling. “We saw anecdotal reports in the media that most of the people being arrested or given summonses were Black,” says Prins, assistant professor of Epidemiology and Sociomedical Sciences.

Sure enough, once data became available, Prins and his research team found that ZIP codes with a higher percentage of Black residents had significantly higher rates of COVID-19–specific court summonses and arrests, even after researchers took into account what percentage of people in each area were following social distancing rules. The team’s findings suggested that tasking police with enforcing mandates may have contributed to overpolicing of Black communities and the harms that result. Living in a neighborhood with a high rate of police stops has been associated with elevated rates of anxiety, post-traumatic stress, and even asthma. Prins and his colleagues found that pandemic policing mirrored the discretionary nature of the city’s stop-and-frisk program, which was deemed unconstitutional in 2013 due to racially discriminatory practices.

“It was a sick irony,” he says. “Not only did the policy increase close contact with police, who had incredibly low vaccination rates and often weren’t wearing masks, but also the people arrested were taken to crowded jails, where transmission rates were extremely high, and then sent back to their communities, which were already experiencing disproportionately high rates of coronavirus.”

His team’s report is one of several highlighting the ways in which the COVID-19 pandemic brought to the fore the long-standing effects of racism on public health, with findings of far higher death rates in this country among people of color. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention declared racism a serious public health threat in 2021, following decades of research supporting the idea that structural racism is a significant driver of the social determinants of health, impacting everything from where people live and where their children go to school to the quality of the air they breathe, the food they eat, and the healthcare they receive. In recent years, Columbia Mailman School researchers have published numerous studies that underscore the persistent and devastating effects of racism on public health and illustrate the ways in which historically marginalized groups experience deep-seated health inequities that lead to higher rates of diabetes, hypertension, obesity, asthma, and heart disease, as well as a shorter life expectancy.

In her course titled The Untold Stories in U.S. Health Policy History, Heather Butts, JD, MPH, assistant professor of Health Policy and Management, guides students through an examination of policies that have embedded structural racism in healthcare over several decades. Among them is redlining, a racially biased mortgage-appraisal policy dating to the 1930s that led to food deserts (and the adverse health impacts that result) and other environmental adversities. More recently, research has shown that pulse oximeters are less effective on people with darker pigmentation. Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, “You had Black and brown people going to their doctors and saying, ‘I’m having trouble breathing,’” she notes. “The doctor says, ‘The oximeter says your oxygen level is 96, you’re good to go.’ Meanwhile, that’s not an accurate reading.”

By continuing to probe the less obvious ways in which these historic mindsets continue to affect society, the researchers hope to contribute to a conversation whose ultimate goal is true health equity. Ami Zota, ScD, MS, who recently joined the School, has published research linking elevated levels of endocrine-disrupting chemicals in the bodies of Black, Asian, and Latinx women to products, such as skin lighteners, hair straighteners, and fragranced feminine care products, that reinforce Eurocentric beauty norms. Discrimination based on hair style and texture has been directly traced to a lack of access to economic opportunity.

She also noted a subtle racism in some of the responses she got from the media covering the work. Some reporters asked her why, if the OB-GYN community had discouraged douching, Black women were still engaging in the practice. “They took the approach of vilifying the user,” she says.

So pervasive is structural racism that it affects the temperature of the air circulating within our homes. Diana Hernández, PhD, associate professor of Sociomedical Sciences, has documented how racism has resulted in both segregation and a lack of investment in housing among certain populations, with enduring implications for physical and mental health. Hernández is a sociologist who conducts much of her research in the South Bronx, where she grew up in Section 8 housing. She has found that people living in poverty and people of color are more likely to live in energy-inefficient homes (such as those with poor insulation), despite consuming less energy overall. Energy insecurity—the inability to meet basic household energy needs—is associated with poor sleep, mental strain, and respiratory illness. Affected households might cope with the lack of heat by using ovens, stoves, or space heaters to warm their homes (exacerbating the risk of fire and contributing to respiratory problems), and by wearing coats and extra layers of clothing indoors. They might spend their days in bed, tucked under blankets and quilts, and forgo food, medicines, and other necessities. Hernández tells the story of one woman who sent her kids to school with holes in their shoes so that she could afford to keep the lights on at home.

Though the energy crisis of the 1970s and ’80s led to the implementation of some programs that address home-energy insecurity, only about 1 in 5 eligible Americans actually obtain benefits. In addition to a lack of awareness about where and how to access help, people with limited incomes face administrative burdens, from having to take time off work and pay for transit to submitting documents verifying identity and need. Energy insecurity also tends to be internalized in a way that other issues aren’t, says Hernández, and is often interpreted as a personal failure. “There are ways people navigate the food landscape—by visiting food pantries or accessing Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits, for example—that are not available when it comes to energy,” she says, a situation that can affect social relations. In managing the shame and stigma associated with a lack of heat or power, many will keep friends and relatives at a distance.

Prins, whose early-career work in the policy realm spurred him to ask bigger-picture questions about racism and our country’s drug policy, has written extensively about the school-to-prison pipeline, a set of practices that make it more likely for some adolescents to be criminalized and ensnared in the legal system than to receive a quality education. The phenomenon gathered steam in the 1990s, part of a trend that saw the government cut spending in welfare, education, and housing while investing in systems of surveillance, punishment, and incarceration. “There are over 10 million students in the United States who go to a school that has a police officer but no nurse, counselor, social worker, or guidance counselor,” Prins says. Out-of-school suspensions have more than doubled over the past 40 years, and these policies have been borne disproportionately by adolescents of color, which is directly related to the preponderance of Black people in the nation’s criminal legal system.

Many Columbia Mailman School researchers have had the satisfaction of watching their work translate into real-world change. Zota testified before policymakers in California, Washington, and elsewhere as they considered regulations on beauty and personal care products, for instance, and saw the Toxic-Free Cosmetics Act, which bans the use of 24 hazardous ingredients from personal care products, passed in 2020. (Eighteen states, including California and New York, have also passed laws banning discrimination based on hair style and texture in the workplace and in schools.) A write-up in The Washington Post about Zota’s research into the presence of harmful chemicals in fast food led Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California to take the issue on and spurred Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi of Illinois to petition the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) about it.

The wins can be gratifying, but Zota and the others acknowledge that, like racism, entrenched interests including Big Pharma, Big Food, and other industries can obstruct the work getting done. For example, thanks in part to the trailblazing research of the Columbia Center for Children’s Environmental Health, Congress instituted a federal ban on seven phthalates in levels exceeding 0.1 percent in toys and children’s products. But the dangerous chemicals can still be found in clothing, shower curtains, detergents, shampoos, and other products. Zota points to a lack of enforcement mechanisms for various consumer protection laws and to a dearth of funding for implementation. Last year, she published a paper looking at the effects of phthalates on learning and attention among children and recommending their elimination from food contact substances, only to see the FDA rule soon after that the petrochemical industry could continue using the most common phthalates—and leaving out any mention of health concerns in its decision. Facing challenges related to climate change, she noted, the industry appears to be digging in when it comes to the production of plastic.

Some progress is being made where the school-to-prison pipeline is concerned. Prins points to pilot programs in New York City that use restorative justice practices in schools to deal more holistically with disciplinary issues and that train teachers to be less discriminatory when applying discipline. But such measures can only go so far. Truly addressing the structural issues behind the school-to-prison pipeline, Prins says, will require a fundamental shift, one where social services are redirected from punishment to prevention. Similarly, he says, addressing mental health and substance use issues related to exploitation in the workplace shouldn’t be about offering underpaid and overworked people seminars on work-life balance. Policymakers should be looking at things like enforcing overtime laws and making it easier for people to unionize.

Systemic change will likely come about only once different questions start getting asked—and different people ask them. In 2019, Zota, whose parents hail from rural India, created Agents of Change in Environmental Justice, a fellowship aimed at amplifying the voices of environmental health scientists from marginalized backgrounds. The program’s move to Columbia with Zota’s arrival complements the work of RISE (Resilience, Inclusion, Solidarity, and Empowerment), a peer mentor program launched at the School in 2018. These days, Zota says, most of the people shaping public perspectives in the environmental health field are older, male, and white, but the members of her program—which works with the nonprofit Environmental Health News to amplify research and engage with the public—offer different lived experiences. “Whether you’re talking about climate justice or environmental justice, if you’ve grown up in one of the communities that is hardest hit, that is going to shape how you view the problem and how you view solutions.” Participants in Agents of Change write essays and produce podcasts and videos. Graduates, including at least four Columbia Mailman School alumni, already have been invited to give talks at the National Institutes of Health and the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

A new initiative capitalizing on the expertise of Epidemiology professor Mary Beth Terry, PhD ’99, will tackle systemic health problems among historically marginalized groups in a revolutionarily holistic way. In January, Terry was named director of the Center to Improve Chronic Disease Outcomes through Multi-level and Multi-generational Approaches Unifying Novel Interventions and Training for Health Equity (known as COMMUNITY). While the citywide center has roots in public health, it incorporates representatives from cardiology, oncology, neurology, nursing, and general medicine and draws expertise from across Columbia University. The goal is for the Columbia researchers, working with colleagues from Cornell, NewYork-Presbyterian, Hunter College, and the City University of New York, to engage with the communities Columbia Mailman School serves, particularly the Black and Latinx communities, across several diseases at once. Whereas most research programs get their funding through a connection to individual diseases, the aim here is to break down silos and focus on more comprehensive interventions.

Terry calls this new initiative the realization of a 20-year dream shared by the entire team, whose members have wanted to work together, given the common antecedents to many chronic diseases. “This new funding focuses on developing and validating interventions as we have so much descriptive epidemiology already,” she says. “These data have existed for decades. We need scalable, successful interventions.”

Terry notes that community health workers, who tend to have large networks and inspire trust, will be central to achieving health equity. They are already part of a program focused on improving outcomes for people juggling multiple chronic diseases, including a sleep program recently launched in the Latinx community in Washington Heights. A Harlem project will rely on community health workers engaging with churches to identify candidates for colorectal cancer screening, as the guidelines recently changed in response to a surge in diagnoses among young Black men. Terry expects the combined initiatives, which are led by her Columbia colleagues, to improve health and help build the evidence for the cost-effectiveness of community health workers, and ultimately to fund them better.

Hernández, too, sees leveraging community networks—in her case, within reimagined multiple-unit housing—as a way to bridge gaps in public health. Practitioners have long worked in gathering places such as churches, particularly in Black communities, to get public health messages across. “In some ways,” she says, “sharing an address can be more of a connection point than sharing faith. There are so many things that can be done to think about meeting people where they are, reducing barriers, and reaching populations that are quote-unquote hard to reach.”

Researchers affiliated with the COMMUNITY Center will continue the work that Columbia Mailman School has long undertaken with community organizations such as the Harlem-based WE ACT for Environmental Justice—work that centers the concerns of people of color. Like Zota’s fellowship, COMMUNITY involves an educational element, including training the next generation of new investigators who are interested in combating the health inequities of chronic diseases. This deliberate passing on of knowledge is critical. “To me, structural racism is not having the mentors you need to move up the ranks,” says Butts. As an African American with degrees from three Ivy League universities, Butts stands as a living example of the change she and her colleagues all believe is possible.

#Systemic Racism #american racism #Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health: Lets Talk About Racism

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smokeybrandreviews · 2 years

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Good Love

Last week was a whole ass emotional train wreck for me and i just kind of gave up. Literally slept the last three days. Didn’t go to work yesterday. Barely ate anything. Couldn’t muster not one f*ck. Sh*t was wild. I did, however, watch the new season of Love, Death and Robots because of course i would. I love that series. Overall, i thought it was pretty good. Better than the second season as a whole, even if this is, technically, the second half of last year’s offering, but still not a great as that first run. I had so much fun with these nine shorts and, fingers crossed, look forward to season four. But who knows at this point. Netflix has decided to kill all of their animation houses because they overextended their shareholders during the first part of the pandemic. F*cking idiots.

Three Robots: Exit Strategies

I as a fan of the first short starring these three assholes so it’s no surprise i enjoyed their second outing. The writing is much more polarizing in the one, leaning heavy into the political, but it’s as sharp as ever and i thought it was hilarious. It can be a little macabre at times but, when you’re making light of the slow heat-death choking our planet, of course it can get a little morbid.

Bad Traveling

Bad Traveling is very good. I thought, as a story, as a narrative, it’s easily the strongest This thing is a very straight forward tale of human nature and it’s sobering reality. I liked this one a lot, mostly because i like David Fincher a lot. Dude has been one of my favorite directors since Alien 3 (yes, i actually, unironically, love Alien 3) but i don’t think it’s the best of the lot. Traveling is a strong second or third for me but, as a short, it’s very, very, excellent.

The Very Pulse of the Machine

This one was pretty f*cking cool. I loved the ambiguity of Kivelson’s weird ass, aggressively psychedelic, relatively intimate, with the moon/machine, Io. I’d like to believe that all of this happened but, let’s be honest, ma was just real high on the morphine and experiencing oxygen deprivation to boot. Still, this f*cking thing is all sorts of technicolor brilliant and it really speaks to those big existential questions i love to ponder.

Night of the Mini Dead

I don’t know what the f*ck this was but i loved it. It’s just as absurd as When the Yogurt Took Over. Sh*t comes out of nowhere, does it’s thing, never overstays the welcome, and leaves with a complete and utter “What the f*ck” reaction. Like, i had just finished watching something as enthralling, as contained, as The Very Pulse of the Machine, and then f*cking Micro Machines Day of the Dead comes on. I love it so much!

Kill Team Kill

Kill Team Kill is just abject gore porn. It’s f*cking ridiculous and absolutely over-the-top drivel. It’s what i think Last Action Hero would be if it was Rated R. I thought the animation in this one was exceptional because, and i can’t stressed this enough, I'm a sucker for traditional pencil animation like this. I’m an anime guy so to see proper cartoon work like this getting such loving attention is always going to rank up there for me. As a narrative, its dog sh*t. As a watch, it’s fantastic.

Swarm

I did not like Swarm. It felt like a poorly executed Beyond the Aquila Rift, and that is a particularly egregious to me because Rift is one of my favorites. I love that short so to see it done poorly? Sh*t hurts. That said, Rosario Dawson is in this thing and i generally enjoy Rosario in things so Swarm got that going for it at least.

Mason's Rats

This one is the short that gives Bad Traveling challenge for that second spot. Mason’s Rats is fantastic. It’s gorgeous, hilarious, violent than a motherf*cker, and has a pretty solid ending. The premise, alone, was enough to get me into this world but the plot really delivered something special.

In Vaulted Halls Entombed

I don’t know what the f*ck this was about. It felt really disjointed but, more than that, it felt like a Diablo trailer. I wasn’t mad at this one at all but it’s not anything new. I’ve seen this narrative before and I've seen it done better. Again, Diablo trailers kill this thing easy. Seriously, check out the trailer for Diablo 4. Giant blood demon mommy, Lilith, make the fear boners stronk. Jokes aside, even if this one was a little derivative, it was still a very fun watch.

Jibaro

Jibaro is, hands down, for me, the best of this season. It’s gorgeous and tells a complete narrative with no dialogue. None. This sh*t is pure visual storytelling and those visuals are f*cking breathtaking. The cats who did The Witness from season one, Pinkman.TV, blessed us with this entry and it really shows. They have a distinct style to their art and i seem to be drawn to it like a moth to a f*cking flame. It’s weird that something with no dialogue can tell such a heavy story, rife with some very poignant themes. I was impressed with this entry and would be surprised if this thing didn’t get a few Emmy nods this year.

#Love Death and Robots #Love Death + Robots

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ss3890 · 2 years

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TAROT - One of my favorite things to do is to pick a Card of Contemplation:

I’ll shuffle until 1.) It just feels right or 2.) I fumble a card and it falls out of the deck. #2 usually happens first.

This week’s pull was:

I run the Witches Tarot deck. It’s one that has really nice artwork and just seems to mesh. I have an affinity for it, which makes me use it more - and when I do, it is almost always relevant to my situation.

You don’t always need to do a full reading. A simple pull like this is often all you need for valuable bits of insight and advice and is my default use of the deck.

Here’s what this card is telling me:

This past month I was sickest I’ve been in quite a few years (pre-pandemic, wasn’t even sick throughout the entirety of that.) Really knocked me on my ass and was pretty miserable because:

I am also 35 weeks pregnant and can’t take any significant medication to soothe symptoms of any sort. My body is constantly in flux, huge, out-of-balance, and sleep is kind of hard when a small being kicks the shit outta your ribs every time you try to do lay down…

And I have to lay and sit down A LOT. Climbing a flight of stairs is a fight for my life. Getting anything done around the house and simply bending down is a chore. I thought that was a normal part of the pregnant experience…and it is, to a point…but as it turns out, I’ve grown anemic and didn’t realize it - so I just couldn’t ever get enough oxygen in my body no matter how hard I was breathing. Supplements are helping, but I’m still huge and waddle around like a penguin everywhere I go.

This card is a much needed reminder that I NEED to slow down and that it’s OKAY if I do. It’s time for it. I’m putting on that good face - still working, still managing a house, and still have a bad habit of feeling like I need to take on everything myself - and I need to start letting that go. I need to be okay with asking for more help than I’m used to, to be okay with stepping back and trusting in others to get things done, and to not let my anxiety at being out of work and losing income push me beyond what I should physically be doing right now.

I don’t need to beat myself up for not getting every little chore done, or having a bit of clutter here and there, or feel frustrated at my own helplessness. It’s okay for me to rest and recover from the physical strains I have already been enduring. I have the monumental task of childbirth fast approaching, and I won’t be able to do it successfully if I’m already worn thin. That’s not doing myself or my child any favors.

It’s okay to rest.

#tarot #tarot reading #witches tarot #witchery #witchcraft #paganism #listening to the universe #self reflection

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renardchien · 3 months

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After what is at least six years I'm free of depression

After what is at least six years I'm free of depression, though until last year I didn't really understand I had it. I thought I was ok but now it feels like a weight has been lifted from mind. The bad goop has been drained away from my heart.

Let me be vulnerable here on the internet for a minute and talk about it. I'm not even clear when it started but it was negative thoughts and self-deprecation. Humor became nihilistic. It was slow and it crept up on me. I had no idea it was happening.

I knew I wasn't happy somewhere in there but it was a small voice in an ocean. What it did do was let me be very kind. I never would put anyone else down because I couldn't imagine someone feeling like I did. That probably should have been a sign.

Some of the best moments of my life happened during that depression. I didn't necessarily recognize them at the time because they were overshadowed by the fog of my mental state. It was not until now where I can really appreciate some life events that I had.

Unfortunately I think my depression put a lot of stress on the people around me. I drifted away from people. I became antisocial. I had negative views, high sarcasm and a lot of self deprecation. That said, I don't think people knew I was depressed. I didn't even know. Each day I would put on a smile to wear all day. It was exhausting and I just told myself it was normal. I was there to help many people through tough times and try to be a lighthouse for them even though I was drowning. Self deprecation can be dangerous because it made people laugh. It made them smile. It didn't feel bad, but over time people would start to repeat it back to me. They would put me down because I was putting myself down. I would laugh, but it hurt.

The saying is to put your oxygen mask on before helping others but I was putting everyone else first and not taking care of myself. I had, and still have, imposter syndrome but not just for my job. It was for every part of my life. I felt like I wasn't good enough for my job, relationship, my friends, my students, etc. For awhile I used self checkout in stores because I felt like I wasn't worth the cashier's time. It felt embarrassing for them to bag groceries for someone as lowly as me. I also put my job first as an excuse instead of admitting I was depressed, and that was unhealthy.

I also didn't know how to communicate. Communication is probably the most important skill for a human to have. You can get far in survival by just communicating with others. I didn't communicate these problems. I blame a lot of that on society and toxic masculinity. From a young age, I was raised to just hold in all emotions and not show any feeling. That's a problem to begin with. Even now, men tend to have strong reactions when they see another man cry. It's like they don't know how to process seeing another man show emotions. I think that also limits their ability to feel and show happiness, love, trust, etc.

Anyway it eroded a lot of my life and no one knew. I didn't even know. Then the pandemic hit. Alone in a new city far from anyone I knew. For about six months I didn't see another human being. I had lots of remote calls but no seeing of people in person. No touch, no body language. Really alone. The world starts to feel different when you're depressed and alone. That wasn't good. That's when I knew I needed help. I tried therapy and antidepressants. It made things slightly better but I feel like I was six feet deep by that point.

Once I felt 5% better, I stopped therapy and antidepressants because I told myself I was all better. I felt better so why was I not better? Then it just kind of eroded away again. At that point I felt frustrated that I wasn't feeling good. I was adamant about telling myself I wasn't sick and that nothing was wrong. I never would judge any person for having depression. I would try to help but for some reason I was really hard on myself. I was angry at my brain for not doing what I wanted it to. Like someone else was running the ship and I was upset with them.

It took awhile for me to say that I was not okay and I needed help again. This time a therapist really helped me understand how deep I was. Just at the bottom of a well with no self worth. We started cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). The first time it didn't work for me but I don't think I was trying very hard. This time I did try and I felt like I had to really fight for it. I'm lucky in that I had access to a therapist and antidepressants. Not everyone does. I also had support from my job, which many places don't. I'm very lucky that I have a wonderful boss. Many people would be put on performance improvement plans, which are designed to be about as painful as possible. Even people that aren't depressed and get put on performance improvement plans, end up depressed. They are designed to fail you and crush you. Thankfully my boss and my job were supportive. Even with that support it was a battle that took me probably like 7-8 months. Really had to focus when I had invasive or self deprecating thoughts.

I forget what the therapist called it but I was like capturing those thoughts and then letting them go. I had to make sure each time those thoughts occurred, I acknowledged them and promptly focused on something good instead. It didn't feel like much and it was very very slow. Like I said, I had to fight for it. Over time it got easier but it took many months. It wasn't until probably the last two months that I started to feel alive again.

It really is night and day. I feel happy again. My heart is full of life. I find joy in doing things, old and new. I think I forgot what is was like to experience very real joy. I forgot what it was like to see a movie trailer and feel excited, or to eat a pizza and think of it as more than just substance. Now I smile a lot. I don't have to wear a fake smile all day. It feels genuine. I can be myself now without worrying what people think of me. It's a new confidence. I'm social again. I feel like life is at my fingertips just ready to be enjoyed when I want. One of the things I really struggled with was making decisions, but now it feels so much easier and I am more confident in the decisions I make.

I won't say it's happiness or bliss all the time. I'm still early in rebuilding my relationships but it's very rewarding. I feel like I'm part of communities now and that how I contribute matters. There's still sad days or the flash of emotion but that's normal. That's human. Not all news is good news. To the most part I feel happy most of the time.

That was a long winded way to say to get help and stick with it. I really had to fight for mine but the weight off of your chest it completely worth it. There are different therapies for different people, so you might need to try a few different approaches to find one that works. You might think you're "happy" enough or that you know what it's like to be better, but I assure you it's far better than you think. Being free of depression and happy isn't really describable. While I was depressed, I couldn't even imagine what the happiness would feel like. I thought I did, but it wasn't even close. If you go through it, I promise you getting out of depression is much better than you could ever imagine.

#depression #mental health #therapy

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ear-worthy · 4 months

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Truer Crime Podcast Season Two: When True Just Isn't Good Enough

If there is one genre that defines podcasting, it's true crime. The fascination with true crime is not restricted to podcasting. TV shows proliferate with true-crime motifs, from long-running shows like Forensic Files and Dateline to more recent shows like Crime Scene Confidential and Murder In My House.

When a genre inundates a medium like podcasting, more intense adjectives are needed. For example, a comedy show is no longer just funny, it's funnier or the funniest.

We've now reached that point in true crime. There's a show called Truer Crime. Essentially, we've up the ante on true crime.

The good news here is that Truer Crime is a podcast worthy of its -er extension. Truer Crime has just been purchased by growing Atlanta-based podcast network, Tenderfoot TV.

Tenderfoot TV does have an impressive roster of podcasts, including Culpable, Cuidad Magica, Radio Rental, and Radical. Here's what host Celisia Stanton has to say about her show: "Crime stories are hard to ignore and even harder to forget. But the thing is... they’re stories. And getting a story right is all about how you tell it. Truer Crime talks about real people — murdered, missing, misled — with more nuance, more context, and more questions." On her website, Stanton explains the genesis of her podcast: "For years, like you -- or at least someone you know -- I kept coming back to this captivating and questionable genre: true crime. Then 2020 hit. And in the middle of the pandemic, I was the victim of a huge financial scheme, one that defrauded me of tens of thousands of dollars. Suddenly, I was learning first hand what the ‘justice’ in ‘criminal justice’ really meant. It’s easy to criticize true crime as sick entertainment, but we can’t deny that the way these stories are told has a profound impact on how we view our world. So I don’t think the answer is to stop telling them. In fact, I think we need to go deeper. So I created Truer Crime to do just that. Aside from podcasting, I’m a wedding + portrait photographer, high school debate coach, and mother to three cats (Piedmont, Jean Jacques, and Newton)."

Ahead of season two, which is slated to premiere this spring, there is a three-episode prequel, out now.

I listened to the three-episode prequel and came away impressed. The Mindy Dodd episode was representative of the show.

First, Stanton begins in an unusual yet refreshing way for a true-crime podcast, taking a much-deserved swipe at Snapped, an Oxygen network TV show where the focus is on murderous females. Apparently, the show is sometimes guilty of fitting a case's facts to its theme. Mindy Dodd was on Snapped, and Stanton tells listeners that Mindy's story is far more complicated and nuanced than a woman who kills her husband. By the time, Stanton presents us with all the facts -- Mindy's husband Henry started out as her stepfather who abused her, got her pregnant, threatened to kill her, and forced her to marry him -- we perhaps better understand her motive.

It's fitting that the show has an uplifting ending. Listen to find out.

Stanton is excellent as the host. Unlike some true-crime hosts, she is not overly dramatic. Her tone is more measured than some of the more self-righteous true-crime hosts, who would condemn jaywalking as if it were a capital crime.

The background music -- usually overwrought and too loud -- is more understated and mood inducing than finger-pointing screeching.

While I'm not sure that Truer Crime is that much different than your average true-crime podcast, I readily admit that Stanton is a talented host with a unique focus and the show's texture sounds more fair-minded and even-handed than judgmental.

A terrific insight into the show comes from Dani Bruflodt, who produces the Thyme is Honey blog about daily efficiency. "Finally, a true-crime podcast that looks at the darkest corners of humanity and, instead of providing us with a constant stream of trauma porn, asks us to confront the failures of both our society and justice system and seek better solutions. Stanton delivers the stories with compassion and a keen understanding of abolition and transformative justice." Check out Truer Crime. If you like true-crime podcasts, it's a good one.

#podcast #podcasting #true crime

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shell-o-knee · 5 months

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Tonight I am Someone Else

It started out as a mild fever. Paracetamols and my mother’s constant fussing took care of it momentarily but as dreaded (by mother dearest, I was preoccupied) it made a dramatic comeback- like an overpowered hero in a painfully mediocre film. Makes one think all that clamouring of thaalis doesn’t rip the virus apart. Next door, Mr Bagga couldn’t stop puzzling over the same. “You must have not done the chants right.”, he concluded from behind the safety of his pathetic makeshift mask. Quarantine was in order, of course. That wasn’t much of a problem, I don’t think it was humanly possible to isolate any further than I already had.

When the news spread, courtesy of the platoon of aunties and neighbourly spirit, it became a commonly held view that the Singhal’s unstable daughter - the one who dyes her hair like a junglee, yes- the one wasting time by studying English, hanji hanji- the one who tried to meet her maker, tauba tauba tauba- was doomed. That is precisely when I started receiving calls for the first time in two long years. A small, awful part of me basked in the attention.

Contrary to what one would expect, not much changed after the tests came out positive. Stalwarts of the Holy Cow union mass-consumed cow piss, the neighbours murmured, mother cried softly at night, I swallowed medicines and passed out for inordinate stretches of time. The usual. It was all anticlimatic till the day my lungs decided to shake things up a bit.

It is when I lay gasping for breath that I started regretting my decision of refusing to become a chain smoker- if I had known I was going to end up wheezing like an old geezer in a cross-country one day, I might have as well sinned a little. Short-sighted woman.

My involuntary beatboxing stirred the whole household up. ‘whole’ consists of mother and a morally-obliged-to-check sister. It was extremely embarrassing to be wheeled into an ambulance for the second time in the short span of a year.

We don’t talk about the first time.

Ever.

From what I could gather, there are two types of ambulances- the first type is always gleaming, blindingly well lit, posh interiors and beeping machinery; the second is akin to something Yamraj would drive- a suspiciously dented Omni with a brazen driver at the wheel, the trademark rusty oxygen cylinder of which was now thrust upon my self with excessive force.

The streetlamps’ warm orange light refracted through the ambulance’s compact window, onto my arms. Orange, then briefly black. Orange, black. Orange, black. Day and night. Orange, black.

The next few days passed in a blur. I made a friend at the hospital on the third day. By the middle of the fourth, she was wheeled out on a gurney and the one at the end of the number on the blackboard was immediately replaced with a two. I cried miserably, more so on realising I did not want to die after all, than on her death. On the sixth day, I sounded a mental verdict that death in the midst of a pandemic would firstly do me no good and secondly, would simply not be poetic enough. There was also the bigger issue of mother being alone. I worry about her.

It finally rained that day. The joy rains bring to Indians, in my opinion, is unparallel- except for that one time Neeraj Chopra grabbed a gold. To others, rainfall brings dread- too dark, too wet, too cold, thoroughly depressing. To us, it is unadulterated joy- dark but welcomed, cold but comforting, wet yet not enough till we are drenched to our bare bones. Rain is one of the leading factors that unite us, second to only cricket.

On the eighth day, the squadron of aunties in the colony video called. Something about the multiple sets of empathetic brown eyes and furrowed brows made me tear up. Annoying as they are, I felt...substantial.

Mr. Bagga visited. Dad called.

Mother never stopped sobbing.

On the fifteenth night, she sobbed even harder when I couldn’t breathe at all. When it dawns upon one that that certain impending doom that was once sitting at a comfortable distance has sneaked up on you, a sense of panic grips you. I lay there, terrified, choking, fighting. Alone.

Alone till I saw my mother and the helpless father with a limp daughter in his arms outside the isolation ward.

The father was begging for a bed. There were none. I counted.

He was shaking the young savable limp daughter in the physicians face, still begging. There were none. I counted.

My worn-out mother followed my gaze, then looked back at me. Last stage of grief, briefly.

I am many things- a burnt-out student, an ex-overachiever, that antisocial neighbour, the girl who tried to meet her maker, always my mother’s daughter, sometimes a friend, and seldom myself, but not tonight.

Someone readied the chalk.

Tonight I am someone else. Tonight I am Dead and Gone, yes, but more importantly, tonight I am Hope.

PS- this is only and only for the sake of documenting my words. They might not mean anything to anyone but they mean something to me sometimes. Hehe!

#literature #short fiction #short story #covid #writing prompt

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obiternihili · 9 months

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opinions on random great filters because I can't sleep

False

Magnetosphere, an atmosphere can do enough

Moon itself. theia might have been an outer solar system object instead an earth lagrangian partner and might have been needed to deliver water, though

Plate tectonics, ours apparently didn't even run for like half of earth's existence (early on mantel too hot, boring billion might have been a transition point for convection that slowed it down)

Jupiter (actually drags in more bodies towards inner solar system)

nuclear self destruction

ai itself, though it may enable a stifling political regime

active galactic nuclei

Iffy

free oxygen

metallicity/age of universe

political limitations ("capitalism", "monarchism", etc)

Easy to Pass

K, G, or F type star. K is probably ideal

local stellar density

water world

water world in the goldilocks zone

earth-like mass for earth like worlds

intelligence itself. kinda think it's a punctuated equilibrium kind of thing and we've had this level of intellect since erectus. what makes humans different is industrial revolution like events.

long lives in conjunction with intelligence. these aren't correlated in terms of evolutionary advantages, which screws a lot of cephalopods, but isn't a big issue for apes, elephants, etc. this needs to be counted separately because it has a multiplicative relationship with intelligence itself

pandemic destruction

supernovae

gamma ray bursts

ecological collapse due to ecological mixing

Hard to Pass

Earth-like ocean world. Most Earth-likes are probably Venus like, ice shell worlds ok for life but halt space

Land life

Hands. Limbs are expensive and the other smart animals are like, birds, elephants, underwater

niche overspecialization

ice shell worlds and super ocean worlds have a tendency to freeze their ocean floors in high pressure ices (sometimes normal ices with i think enceladus) and block volcanic nutrients from mixing into their seas

pure ocean worlds/ice shell worlds probably have issues fixing the deleterous elements of their oceans

idem probably suffer creating nutrient cycles

language

industrial revolution like events (dependent on language)

climate self destruction

Might block space

too big of an earth and it's hard to get into space

ice shell very hard to get to space also

might need a carboneferous in order to have fossil fuels for an industrial era

why no aliens

dust is hell to hit at relativistic speeds

dust is negligible speeds too slow to bother with galactic conquest

zero g is terrible for health

no atmosphere terrible for health

other space things probably terrible for health

small populations on things like space colonies prone to collapse

life would adapt to the generational ship rendering colonization kinda pointless, and generational ship too precarious to survive long term

inward turn (e.g. sinking into vr, wireheading to apathy, becoming too self involved to care about aliens) probably real to some extent

machines smart enough to take over would choose not to because it would hang "existential threat" on them

machines dumb enough to take over fail to really expand outside their system

machines also constrained by dust and relativistic speed. not out of patience but lifespan; quantum decay becomes an issue especially for metal

there will never be a kardeshev civ because no one wants to boil their oceans with waste heat

maximum efficiency with energy limits technological complexity below ocean boiling temperatures

once we figure out physics the hard questions become too personal for aliens to be insightful - politics, biology, psychology, too different

figuring out how to communicate over light years using primitive radio technology not worth it

everyone loses interest once the first question (are we alone) is answered, pretty much.

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dreams123-fantastic · 11 months

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Figure 1 38 year old Devendra Sura, a constable in the Haryana Police, whose mission it is to make the state green.

From Arid to Abundant: How Devendra Sura’s Vision Transformed Barren Land Into Oxygen Parks in Haryana

“It has been written in the holy books of our motherland that as long as we live, it is our duty to protect the environment: to plant enough trees, to safeguard the birds, and conserve wildlife. We should take care of the environment at all costs”, exhorts 38-year-old Devendra Sura as he looks placidly at the vast expanse of greenery that stretches as far as the eyes could see, at the Oxygen Park in the village of Bhatgaon, Haryana. Over the course of the past one and a half years, Devendra, a constable in the Haryana police has inspired over 7000 youths across villages in the state to transform dry, arid patches of land into pristine habitats of natural life and greenery. The Oxygen Bagh in Bhatgaon is the 10th such oxygen park planted across Haryana, serving its function to restore forest cover and sequester carbon in the state. A land the size of ten football fields initially defined by its thorny bushes and bumpy surface is now home to over 25000 plants, spanning over 100 different species.

Figure 2 Before and after images: A dry arid, patch of land measuring 10 acres has transformed into a Oxygen Park in the village of Bhatgaon, Haryana.

The people’s movement or “ Jan Anodlan ”as Devendra describes it have resulted in the plantation of over 3 lakh trees in Haryana, at a time when the state holds the ignominious record of having the lowest forest cover in the country at 3.65 percent. The mission to make Haryana “green” was spurred after witnessing the bird species in the region losing their abode on account of the rampant loss of forest cover. In addition to providing oxygen and food, Devendra said trees offer myriad benefits supporting an ecosystem of plant and animal species.“ The idea of the Oxygen Bagh came about after witnessing the deadly impacts of Covid-19. The pandemic was caused by humanity’s collective failure towards preserving the environment. When trees are cut down, bird species lose their home, leading to their extinction. The earth’s inherent balance is disturbed. It’s only when birds are safe, we can assured that humans are safe”, believes Devendra.

The villages and its inhabitants have transformed into the nerve center for Devendra and his efforts. While he invests some of his life earnings into the plantation initiative, the effort is aided greatly due to the generous shramdan’s (donations) that the villagers dole out. “ This Jan Andolan has come to fruition thanks to the absolute dedication and fierce passion displayed by our youth warriors. I draw inspiration from the philosophy of Swami Vivekananda. He believed that if he had 100 hardworking, committed boys at his disposal who give their heart and soul to the progress of this nation, he would fulfill his dreams of making India the Vishwa Guru (World Leader). While there may be have been challenges initially in convincing the older villagers at the panchayats, the enthusiasm and energy displayed by the youngsters was enough to ensure this movement takes the form of a Jan Andolan”, asserts Devendra.

Figure 3 Villagers come together for the establishment of the Oxygen Park, spurred by Devendra's intitiative.

One such ‘youth warrior’ is Mohit Dhounchack, a 21 year old who has made it his life’s duty to preserve the environment. Inspired by the ideology of Devendra, Dhounchak is responsible for maintaining the Oxygen Bagh and Janata nursery in the Sonipat area. Despite his dedicated efforts, he does not earn any renumeration for the services he renders. For Dhounchak, the cause holds spiritual significance, making the initiative of preserving the environment beyond the incentives of livelihood and material pursuits.

“ Our generation is blinded by the impacts of Westernization. We are increasingly engaged in wasteful behavior, indulging in aspects of partying, drinking and smoking. There is never enough to fulfill our desires. The cost of materialism is rising. As a result, it’s the unspeaking living creatures: the animals, trees and birds that are affected and at their most vulnerable. Man should only have enough to fulfill his essential needs. Once they are taken care of, he must dedicate his life to the service of the nation. It could be any particular aspect. It is just that I have chosen my mission to be the protection of the environment. The model that Devendra and his troops are adopting is beyond any imitation, we don’t take inspiration from Western efforts. Our work reflects the ethos of this nation, and follows the diktats laid down by the forefathers of our ancient civilization. This is the land of Sadhu’s and Sants, we must preserve its beauty”, says Dhounchack.

Failed afforestation projects

The mass movement of the establishment of Oxygen Bagh is aiding India in its climate goals of Net Zero Carbon Emissions and restoring forest covering at a time when the government’s planned afforestation projects have failed in the state. According to data released by the Indian State of Forest Report 2021, Haryana lost over 140 sq. km of tree cover from 1,565 sq. km in 2020 to 1,425 sq. km in 2021. The primary reason for the loss in tree cover has been attributed to the large-scale development projects in the state's urban centers. D.P.S Verma, a retired IFS officer, and Ex PCFF, held the poor execution of the specific climate-related action plans of the state responsible for the loss of tree cover. “Most of the forests are being diverted for non-forestry purposes to aid the sanctioned development projects, particularly the widening of roads. The evidence clearly shows that we lack tree and forest cover. It isn’t that the government does not have specific agendas in place to restore forest cover, but rather its improper execution that is leading to the failure of its climate efforts. Further, the determined policy plans for implementing large-scale afforestation projects are flawed in their conception.”

Recognizing the consequences of the uninhibited felling of trees in the region to make way for commercial and industrial projects, the state government decided to enact the flagship compensatory afforestation practice in a bid to make up for the loss in green cover. Under the policy, any project proponent that endeavors to break forest ground and fell trees for infrastructure projects or growth initiatives must pay the government for plantation of trees in another area of equivalent degraded forest land or non -forest land. Despite the implementation of such large- scale afforestation projects, the forest cover has decreased from a mere 1,604 sq.km in 2005 to 1,603 sq.km in 2021, as per the latest data released by the IFSR.

"What is the point of undertaking such policy initiatives when there is a clear unavailability of land to compensate for the loss in forest cover? The compensatory afforestation policy is nothing but an eyewash that merely serves to allay the public's concerns regarding the impending effects of climate change without specifically addressing and solving them. Crops are grown on land types and terrains that don't support their growth, while most forest conservators lack little incentive and initiative to monitor the progress and growth of the crops. However, even beyond these factors, the misallocation of funds is responsible for the policy initiatives of the program not coming to fruition. Most of these funds are hardly ever invested in actual plantation efforts", articulates Verma.

Over the past five years, less than half of the compensatory afforestation funds have been utilized by the state, while plantation targets have not been fulfilled, suggesting a colossal waste of public expenditure. Out of the 1,286 crore rupees allocated for the afforestation, only 579 crores were utilized, the Compensatory Afforestation Fund and Planning Authority revealed.

The recent decision of Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar to utilize the funds earmarked for the creation of compensatory afforestation to create a jungle safari in the Aravalli has sparked widespread controversy among environmentalists and policy planning experts. It is not just the motives but rather the decision's legality that is being questioned.

Haryana has the task of undertaking compensatory afforestation in the Aravalli region to make up for over 130 sq. km of tropical forests being cleared for large-scale development projects in the Andaman and Nicobar region. Environmentalists have criticized the plan's purpose, claiming that a region separated over 2,400 kilometers away from the Andaman and Nicobar Islands cannot make up for the loss of flora and fauna in the territory.

"The entire plan is an exercise in futility. A tropical forest, a natural habitat, takes over hundreds of years to develop. How can we expect a region with a completely different soil type and land terrain to recreate and harness the ecology of a place that is so abundant in biodiversity?" says Kumar Rajesh, a policy planning expert who was associated with the '#Repeal Compensatory Afforestation Programme' with Oxfam India.

He further highlighted the dubious aspects of the government's decision to utilize the funds to create the "world's largest curated wildlife safari," a major tourist attraction that would attract visitors from across the world. "A report undertaken by the Controller and Auditor General of India in 2013 which observed the state of compensatory afforestation, found irregularities with the usage of CA funds in India, clearly decreeing that usage of funds cannot be utilized for the purpose of ecotourism. Ten years later, the rules have not changed. Even if we are willing to ignore the legality aspect, it is evident that the government has misplaced priorities, with its aim set on monetizing ecology rather than restoring tree cover in the region", emphasizes Rajesh.

Under the condition of anonymity, a forest official working at the higher levels of the government admitted that such a policy imitative is not allowed to be implemented. "We cannot create a wildlife safari using the funds. The rules simply don't allow that."

The barren, arid lands that populate Haryana are a fitting symbol of the failed implementation of the compensatory afforestation initiative in the state.

Focus on plantation, not restoration.

In stark contrast to the government's policy initiatives, the efforts of Devendra Sura and his Paryavaran Mitra ( friends of the environment) are focused on the aspect of the plantation rather than the restoration of tree cover. “ Is there ever a discussion about chopping human beings? We are expected to extend a sense of civility and good behavior toward our fellow beings. Humanity is expected to nurture each other with kindness and dignity. Similarly, we should extend kindness to our unspeaking fellow living beings: whether it be the trees, plants, or birds. Make no mistake; a tree is a living being. We don’t have the license to carry out brutal acts on the plants just because they cannot speak. They have as much right to live on Planet Earth as we do. That is why I have never understood the aspect of compensation. We are not focused on restoring tree cover, but rather on nurturing the environment”, says Devendra, poignantly articulating his life’s mission and purpose.

While his dream of turning the state green has not been fulfilled yet, Devendra remains undeterred and motivated as ever, reflected by his vision of a Van Khestra in every village in the country “ I don’t have targets and goals. This is my life’s purpose. The movement will continue even beyond me. However, before my last breath, if my initiative inspires villagers in the country to adopt the practice of planting a Van Kshetra in their village, I will die a happy man”, says Devendra with tears in his eyes, gazing away into the distance.

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