#they’re more than just a ‘stimulus check’ they’re ‘survival checks’ | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

companiespiner · 2 years

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Whilch bills to pay in job loss

#WHILCH BILLS TO PAY IN JOB LOSS HOW TO#

If you don’t need this money to make a rent or mortgage payment or buy groceries, use it to jump-start your emergency fund. According to CNBC, the federal government will be sending out $1,200 checks to most Americans within the next several weeks. Or if you used to spend $25 per week eating out for lunch with colleagues, put that money into your emergency fund.Īnother option is to use your tax refund to build your emergency fund. Or you can use the stimulus check the federal government sends in response to the pandemic. Start putting the money you usually spend weekly on gas into your emergency fund.

Going out for an evening drink with colleaguesįor example, if you’re currently working from home during the pandemic, it means you don’t have to spend money on gas each week to get to and from work.

Stop and think about everything you used to do before the pandemic that you’re not doing now, and put those expenses into your emergency fund. While it can feel stressful or frustrating to give up these activities or purchases, these changes give you a chance to build your emergency fund further. Every dollar you cut out of your budget right now should go straight into your emergency fund if possible.Ĭhances are your life has changed significantly due to the pandemic, and if you’re like most people, you’re not doing many things you used to. If you do have one, make sure you have enough to cover you and your family’s expenses for three to six months.

#WHILCH BILLS TO PAY IN JOB LOSS HOW TO#

If you don’t currently have one, learn how to build an emergency fund by placing cash in a high-yield savings account from a bank like CIT Bank. USA Today reports that many cities and private companies are halting service interruption due to nonpayment, waiving late fees, offering flexible payment plans, or even delaying payments altogether. If you’re worried you’re going to be unable to pay for essential services such as electric, Internet, gas, or water during the current pandemic, call your provider and explain your situation. Keep lights turned off to save money on your electric bill.Keep the air conditioning turned off or the heat turned down to save money on utilities.Use services like Truebill to find subscriptions you might have forgotten you’re paying. Cancel any subscriptions you have, which might include magazines, streaming, or subscription boxes.Raise your car and home insurance deductibles to lower your monthly premium.Streaming services like Disney+, Amazon Prime Video, Hulu, and Netflix are much cheaper alternatives. Some ideas to save money on a tight budget include: Trim whatever you can out of your spending. And if you devised your current budget based on your previous income, go through and analyze your expenses based on your new situation. If you’re facing a job loss and don’t have a monthly budget for your household, make a household budget immediately. For $79 (or just $1.52 per week), join more than 1 million members and don't miss their upcoming stock picks. Motley Fool Stock Advisor recommendations have an average return of 397%. Fortunately, there are many steps you can take right now to prepare for the possibility of layoffs or a drastic reduction in your working hours. The news comes as a complete and unwelcome surprise. Most of the time, people don’t know in advance they’re going to lose their job. How to Prepare Your Finances for Job Loss The steps you take now can help reduce your stress and help you survive financially. If you’re worried you’re going to lose your job during the pandemic, it’s essential you start preparing for this possibility. Everywhere, people are scrambling to find ways to save money on a tight budget and looking for side gigs to supplement lost wages. CNN reports that up to half of all American jobs are at risk because of the pandemic. For people earning less than $50,000 annually, this figure is currently at 25%. Many people are facing the prospect of unemployment or reduced hours right now, as the COVID-19 pandemic spreads around the globe and companies both big and small are shutting their doors or reducing staff.Ī March 2020 poll by NPR found that 1 in 5 American households has lost work due to the pandemic.

#Whilch bills to pay in job loss

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hoedameron · 3 years

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Biden still owes you and me $2k, not $1.4k

#some never got $600 so it’s unfair to say that six hundred is a ‘down payment’#and these checks have to be reoccurring and not just a one time ordeal #they’re more than just a ‘stimulus check’ they’re ‘survival checks’#it’s upsetting whenever I try to explain that Biden promises $2k and people ask ‘didnt you get $600?’ like yeah I did but others didn’t #I’m advocating for those who haven’t and need them. I am in a more fortunate situation than others and I am here to use my voice to help

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monstersdownthepath · 2 years

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Monster Spotlight: Chrestomath

CR 6

Neutral Medium Outsider

Adventure Path: Shattered Star: the Asylum Stone, pg. 84~85

These enormous, bloated brains are the centerpiece of the Caulborn hive minds, little more than a consciousness suspended in a sea of information. Completely blind, deaf, and numb to the outer world, they rely wholly on their Caulborn brethren for care, being almost entirely unable to defend themselves and about as mobile as a slug (10ft fly speed). They, too, feed on information of all sorts, increasingly nourished the more facts and data are poured into their curdled bodies, and their unaging nature means they can gather a truly mind-boggling amount of knowledge. Any Caulborn entering a 300ft bubble around a Chrestomath immediately triggers its Racial Memory, all data in the Caulborn’s mind immediately copied and transferred to the banks within the bulbous brain for storage and perusal, prompting frequent exchanges of members between individual hives. This Racial Memory can also be shared via the hive mind of all Caulborn, who can access it to add half the Chrestomath’s Knowledge skill bonus to their own (already significantly enormous) Knowledge checks by taking a full-round action.

What kind of Knowledge does a Chrestomath offer to its mobile kin? Well, nothing particularly impressive... just, y’know, +32 to Arcane, History, Local, Planes, and Religion, and a slightly more moderate +29 to Dungeoneering, Engineering, Geography, Nature, and Nobility. This means they add +16 to a Caulborn’s A/H/L/P/R checks, and a +14 to D/E/G/Na/No, assuring they’ll more or less know anything they require. Chrestomath tend to use their titanic Knowledge bonuses for the exclusive benefit of their hive, steering their assimilated information towards assuring the short-term and long-term survival of their kind, and though they don’t possess any natural or magical precognitive abilities, the book notes that a Chrestomath’s nigh-divine intelligence and lack of distraction from outside stimulus allows them to calculate the likelihood of future events with an accuracy that may as well be precognition.

Among a Chrestomath’s other impressive abilities is the +3 deflection bonus to AC they confer to all Caulborn within 300ft of them, deflecting and dodging incoming blows with pure calculative insight and their ability to activate Cooperative Scrying with two other Caulborn present, letting them gather intelligence on any planet or plane they desire. Between their Knowledge checks and ability to scry on anything, anywhere, at any time, it’s very likely that a Caulborn hive will always know when they’re being approached with ill intent. While typically willing to at least try talking things out--and capable of doing so with its mile wide aura of telepathy--a Chrestomath with no other option can open the floodgates into an opponent’s mind, with debilitating results.

The Mind Flood of information isn’t so much damaging as it is overwhelming, pure information lacking context wielded as a literal bludgeon against the minds of whatever is presenting a danger to the hive. Any creature affected must succeed a DC 19 Will save or take 1d6 Int and Wis damage as their own memories are pushed further and further down in favor and, just as dangerously, becoming confused for 1d6 rounds and potentially becoming a danger to themselves or the party. Able to bombard targets every round with this blast of muddled memories, it should be noted that Chrestomath don’t need to be able to see or even have line-of-effect for this ability to work; the target just needs to be within 60ft and not shielded by Nondetection, Mind Blank, or similar. The brain sacks can be completely concealed by magic, artifice, or simple natural architecture as they crush an attacker’s psyche into submission.

And, of course, there’s the fact that you will likely not be fighting a Chrestomath on its own. As the grand archives of the Caulborn race, each member of a hive will gladly give their own lives to defend them. There may be anywhere from 12 to 40 of them, all ready to fight to the death. ... or use their full-rounds assimilating as much knowledge from the Chrestomath as possible before fleeing to restart elsewhere. Taking their memories to a new hive, sharing them with other Chrestomaths. All of them plotting potential revenge with their incredible intelligence.

Or, y’know, just avoiding you. Whichever path their math works out is most optimal.

You can read more about them here.

#Monster Spotlight #CR 6 to 10 #pathfinder #Dungeons and Dragons

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robertreich · 4 years

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youtube

Brace Yourself for Trump’s Great Recession

Trump and businesses demanded America "reopen" to revive the economy. But we’ve reopened too soon, before Covid-19 is under control. So we're needing to close or partly close again, which will prolong the economic downturn and wreak even more havoc on millions of Americans’ livelihoods. It never should have been a contest between public health and the economy, anyway. The economy has always depended on getting public health right. And we still haven’t. Trump has downplayed the risks. He got in the way of governors trying to keep people safe. And now all of us are paying the price. Brace yourself. The wave of evictions and foreclosures in the next 2 months will be unlike anything America has experienced since the Great Depression. And unless Congress extends extra unemployment benefits beyond July 31, we’re also going to have unparalleled hunger. Eviction protections for federally subsidized properties run out at the end of July. In some states that enacted their own moratoria on evictions, renter protections are already running out. One study estimates that 19 to 23 million renters, or 1 in 5 people who live in renter households, are at risk of eviction by September 30th. The people most likely to be evicted are Black and Latinx people, single mothers, people with disabilities, formerly incarcerated people, and undocumented people. This is systemic racism playing out in real time. Meanwhile, delinquency rates on mortgages have more than doubled since March. Unemployment itself is different than what we saw back in March and April. Today’s layoffs are permanent, the result of businesses throwing in the towel or permanently slimming down. In the public sector, loss of state tax revenue is running up against state constitutions that bar deficits. This is putting vital public services on the chopping block – schools, childcare, supplemental nutrition, mental health services, low-income housing, healthcare – at a time when the public needs them more than ever. In April and May alone, states and localities furloughed or laid off some 1.5 million workers, about twice as many as in the entire aftermath of the Great Recession a decade ago. These cuts will be just the tip of the iceberg if the federal government doesn’t provide more fiscal aid for states and localities. Let me remind you: Expanded unemployment benefits are set to expire by July 31, leaving at least 21 million unemployed Americans with a 60% income reduction and no stimulus check to fall back on.

To make matters worse, over 16.2 million households have lost employer-provided health insurance. The Census Household Pulse Survey shows large losses in income in coming months, along with high food and housing insecurity.

So what’s Trump’s and Mitch McConnell’s response to this looming catastrophe?

Do nothing.

Don’t extend supplemental unemployment benefits beyond July 31, when they’re due to expire.

Don’t help states and cities.

Reject the HEROES Act, passed by the House of Representatives to keep struggling families afloat and the economy from going into a tailspin.

Trump has even asked the Supreme Court to strike down the Affordable Care Act. If the Court agrees, 23 million Americans will lose their health insurance, and the richest 0.1 percent of households with annual incomes of over $3 million will receive tax cuts averaging about $198,000 per year.

This is lunacy. The priority must be getting control over this pandemic and helping Americans survive it physically and financially. Extra unemployment benefits must be extended.

The HEROES Act must be signed into law. Moratoriums on evictions and foreclosures must be extended. If it’s necessary to go back to sheltering in place to contain this pandemic, we must be willing to do so.

This shouldn't be controversial. It's the bare minimum of what our government must do to prevent an even worse economic and human catastrophe.

Anything less is indefensible.

#video #videos #trumpvirus #Trump Virus

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persephonbee · 3 years

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Pretty fucked up that they're calling them stimulus checks instead of survival checks

You're gonna have to give ppl more than that if you want to really stimulate the economy instead of just getting it out of its current state of understimulation into a neutral state

#diary #mine

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barry-j-blupjeans · 4 years

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TAZ Balance Fic Recs

I’m making this 90% because I love these fics and the world needs to know and 10% because I need help finding them once I’ve read them. Let’s begin!! (I will not be tagging authors because I only know a few writers on this list, but if anyone else wants to tag them, feel free :>)

Refractory - Written by Nesswrites on Ao3 - Rated T

Refractory adj. (rih-frack-tuh-ree) 1. Stubborn or unmanageable. 2. Resistant to a process or stimulus.

Kravitz, a young orthopedic surgeon, is thrust into what feels like a different reality when he meets psychiatric patient, Taako. In a strange flurry of events, he finds himself being drawn toward this man, spending more and more time in a department that he used to hate and becoming invested in a patient who isn't one of his own.

Taako, an in-denial anorexia patient, is forced into a long-term hospital stay by friends and family who worry about his waning health. When he meets an attractive doctor from another wing, he begins to wonder if maybe this was the star-crossed love that he was always destined for. At least, that's what hundreds of episodes of Grey's Anatomy taught him.

In other words, the hospital drama nobody wanted but everyone got

I just really love this fic, guys, there’s not a lot I can say. It’s well written

Bury the Lead - Written by marywhale on Ao3 - Rated T

Taako’s senior year at Neverwinter High could be going better. Faced with a choice between joining the school’s floundering newspaper or being expelled, he opts for a career in journalism.

Lucretia, the paper’s editor, kind of wishes he'd gone the other way.

As the first TAZ fic I ever read in my life, this was really good. Even if it wasn’t the first fic I ever read, I still would love it. It captivated me in a way I didn’t think fics could.

Seven Raptors - Written by DragonWrites on Ao3 - Rated M

In a distant plane, Fate brings together seven scientists and explorers, who set out to explore the unknown and find themselves on a mission to save all of existence.

In another, far harsher plane, Fate brings those same seven together again. But these Seven Birds have been shaped by a crueler, much less forgiving world. These Seven Raptors are the villains in their story.

And when the two flocks meet, each of the Seven Birds must come face to face with who they might have been--who they might still become--if they let the darkness consume them.

I’ve had an idea in my head for a while of the birds meeting themselves but on a different plane? And this fic makes that idea so much more than I ever thought it could be. The first chapter really drew me in and I read it all in one night (with help from insomnia).

More below the cut!!

Serendipity and it’s inconspicuous faults - Written by TasteofDeath of Ao3 - Rated G

The morning after Angus comes home with a sore tummy and a stomach bug, things are starting to get better.

Or, Angus’ fathers have a fun time loving their little boy and a not so fun time worrying about his health

This is absolutely the cutest fic I’ve ever read. It made me tear up but in the good way. Also everything by TasteofDeath is amazing, check them out.

From the blackest room - Written by FordRiverBlues - Rated M

The authorities on a new plane mistake Barry for an enemy spy. They want information he doesn't have. Barry just wants to survive.

What can I say, I like angst. I’ve spent long hours thinking about this fic. Barry is a comfort character of mine and apparently I love seeming my comfort characters going through hard stuff. It’s just a good fic, my dudes.

The Sweetest, Dorkiest Love - Written by ceilingfan5 - Rated G

Anxious about giving Taako the perfect Valentine's present, Kravitz trades Lup two weeks of night shifts so she'll teach him how to make chocolates. It doesn't go as planned, but love wins out anyway.

Okay listen. I just said I liked angst buuUUUT - Heck, this fic is so soft and I really love and it made me cry because they’re just so soft.

All the Things You Prayed For - Written by anonymousAlchemist and marywhale - Rated T

Taako's been dead for two years. Taako's been dead for seven decades. Depends how you count it.

Her brother is dead and Lup’s a whole lifetime into the future. It’s a brave new world out there and she’s trying not to think about it too hard. She gets the feeling that if she starts thinking, she won’t ever stop, and she can’t afford to be out of commission. She's the only Captain America the new century’s got.

Lup is Cap, Taako fell from a train, and eventually all ghosts come in from the cold. You guessed it—it's a TAZ/Marvel shakeup baby. We're bringing the party to you.

If you’ve been anywhere on tumblr, you’ve heard some mention of this fic and for good reason!! I’m not into any superhero stuff so it took a while to read it because I didn’t think I’d understand it. But honestly? You don’t need to know anything about any superhero to read this. It’s written excellently and I really like it.

It's Difficult To Learn About Yourself When You Didn't Know You Could - Written by Casual_Scribbles - No rating

He licks his lips, running his knuckle along the spiral binding of his notebook. “I was reading my Caleb Cleaveland books – some of the newer ones, where he's a teenager – and one of the characters that were introduced was, um, they’re nonbinary. And I- I've heard of that before, but I didn't know a lot about it, so I looked it up.” He looks up and Miss Lup is listening to him attentively, her ears perked up. She nods at him.

“And I found out- I thought it was just one thing, ma'am,” he feels bolder, having seen the encouragement on her face. “But it's not. It’s a lot- it's so many things, Miss Lup! And I was looking through them and I just- some of them felt really familiar. Like- like I knew exactly what the writer was trying to say and I-”

(They'd been more than familiar. They'd been-)

No. They weren’t his.

Angus struggles to come to terms with something new he learns about himself, but thankfully his family is there to support him.

Non-binary Angus!!! Non-binary Angus!!!!!!! That’s all I have to say!!! Read it!!!!

Back to Wonderland - Written by OhWowAltMal - Rated G

When lich twins Edward and Lydia pull a trick far too convincing for Taakos liking, he may have found himself panicking and making some rash decisions. Just a little, though.

He definitely doesn't break the umbrastaff in half, looking for his (real?) sister.

An alternative look at the live show in Orleans, and how it could have gone.

This idea was something I didn’t even think of but I love it so much?? Half of me wishes this is what really happened, but they write the characters so well that it feels like it did.

I Know I've Kissed You Before - Written by Desiree_Harding - Rated T

"He thinks, one day, that maybe what he’s been feeling is the urge to show Kravitz, really show him, how much Taako cares about him. To make it… official. That he’s not going anywhere. Because Kravitz doesn’t live off of implications like Taako does, and maybe Taako’s a little tired of making him translate.

Maybe Taako wants to do a little bit of the work for him, just once."

AKA The story of how Taako and Kravitz got married alone in their kitchen on Candlenights (on purpose they swear)

This??? Is incredible?? It’s a (long winded but worth it) process of Taakitz proposing. I have no words, truly.

Six Years - Written by WritingIsMyCoffee and zumbah_plumbah - Rated T

Six years ago, Taako was kicked out of culinary school for an altercation between him and his roommate, forever crushing his lifelong dream of becoming a chef.

Six years ago, Merle was fiddling with the ring on his finger that he no longer needed to wear.

Six years ago, Magnus was sitting beside a hospital bed and holding his wife's hand.

Now, Taako is burdened with the struggles of raising a ten year old. Merle is wondering whether or not he wants that ring to become an obligation. Magnus is struggling to overcome the grieving process. For the past six years, the three of them have been running away from their problems and the reasons that brought them to where they currently are. Now they will be forced to face the music and deal with what happened in the past in order to move on.

FUCK!!! Fuck this made me cry?? I really like it. I really really like it. It’s so raw and emotional. All the characters fit perfectly.

synecdoche - Written by androids_fighting93 - Rated M

Echoes of the seven of them stretch into infinity, and now there’s Kravitz, a parallel line that they keep crossing despite all physical laws. Taako can see how they are bound together, he and Lup and the rest of the crew, white shimmering cords that stretch between them, between himself and Kravitz, and every aspect of Kravitz and every aspect of the Raven Queen in every world, all existing simultaneously. The Light falling to countless worlds at once, the Hunger descending over it all, the same patterns into infinity and nothing to stop it except for a silver ship, a bright beacon, unique among it all. He can see all of it.

They’re hunted by two immensely powerful creatures now, the Hunger and the Raven Queen’s servant. It's too bad Taako can't seem to stay out of harm's way.

I read this again recently and it broke my heart all over again. The idea is wonderful, the writing is even better. Please go read this fic!!!

#vic speaks #taz balance #taz #taz fic #taz fic rec #The Adventure Zone #the adventure zone balance

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newstfionline · 3 years

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Wednesday, May 19, 2021

Changed by pandemic, many workers won’t return to old jobs (AP) There’s a wild card in the push to return to post-pandemic life: Many workers don’t want to go back to the jobs they once had. Layoffs and lockdowns, combined with enhanced unemployment benefits and stimulus checks, gave many Americans the time and the financial cushion to rethink their careers. Their former employers are hiring again — and some, like Uber and McDonald’s, are offering higher pay—but workers remain hesitant. Employers and business groups argue that the $300-per-week federal unemployment supplement gives recipients less incentive to look for work. But Heidi Shierholz, a senior economist who researches low- and middle-income workers with the Economic Policy Institute, said health concerns and child care responsibilities seem to be the main reasons holding workers back. In April, she said, at least 25% of U.S. schools weren’t offering in-person learning, forcing many parents to stay home. And health concerns could gain new urgency for some workers now that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said fully vaccinated people can stop wearing masks in most settings. Some workers say the pandemic helped them prioritize their mental and physical health. And in a tight labor market, some workers are also finding that if they hold out, they might get a better job than the one they left.

Unhealthy Dose of Litigation (CNN) It’s not personal, it’s just business. Tell that to tens of thousands of individuals sued by hospitals for ‘medical debt’ they have no way of ever paying. Community Health Systems, Inc. (CHS) is one of America’s largest hospital chains. A CNN investigation found that since March 2020, company-owned hospitals filed at least 19,000 lawsuits against their patients over allegedly unpaid medical bills, even as other hospitals around the country have curtailed similar lawsuits during the pandemic. CHS’s 84 hospitals are concentrated in the South, but stretch across 16 states from Alaska to Key West, Florida. The hospitals have sued patients for as little as $201 and as much as $162,000. Most defendants didn’t hire a lawyer or fight the lawsuits, and judges often rendered a default judgment in the hospital’s favor. Attorney’s fees and interest are often tacked on. Once a court rules against a defendant, a hospital can proceed to put a lien on the defendant’s house or garnish part of their wages. Many garnishments were against people working for low-wage employers like Walmart. A researcher who has studied hospital lawsuits said that it’s typical for hospitals that sue patients to only make a tiny fraction of their revenue from those lawsuits. “It’s not keeping the lights on for the hospitals—they don’t need to be doing this,” she said. “But for the patients... They’re choosing between medical care and food.”

Argentina Halts Beef Exports for 30 Days to Contain Prices (Bloomberg) Argentina’s government is limiting exports of beef, a staple in the country, in the latest unorthodox move to try to contain runaway inflation that’s approaching 50% annually. President Alberto Fernandez told a key beef export association that they won’t be allowed to sell the product abroad for 30 days, according to a Production Ministry statement released late Monday. “The president expressed his concern over the sustained growth in domestic beef prices over the last few months,” according to the statement. The country’s beef exports in 2020 amounted to roughly $3 billion, but the government may be more focused on the political cost of falling domestic consumption.

Spain Turns to Corruption Rehab for Officials Who Can’t Stop Stealing (NYT) Carlos Alburquerque isn’t your typical rehab candidate. He’s a 75-year-old grandfather living in Córdoba, a city in southern Spain. He was a town notary before he retired in 2015. He hasn’t touched drugs or alcohol in years. But his isn’t your typical rehab program: It’s an 11-month boot camp to reform corrupt Spanish officials and “reinsert” them into mainstream society. “Repairing the damage is what is left for me in this life,” said Mr. Alburquerque, who is serving a four-year prison sentence for stealing around 400,000 euros, nearly a half a million dollars, in his work drawing up contracts and deeds. That such a program exists in Spain may say much about the country’s belief in second chances as it does about how corruption has captured the public imagination here. Flip open a newspaper or turn on the radio: You will hear of schemes, scandals and skulduggery which almost always lead back to the public purse. According to Ángel Luis Ortiz, a former judge who now runs Spain’s prisons, the boom-bust cycles of Spain’s economy had led it to a long history of fraudsters and betrayals of public trust, he said. But at least, corruption rates in Spain were no worse than in other European nations, Mr. Ortiz said, just 5 percent of all crimes.

Russia’s northernmost base projects its power across Arctic (AP) During the Cold War, Russia’s Nagurskoye airbase was little more than a runway, a weather station and a communications outpost in the Franz Josef Land archipelago. It was a remote and desolate home mostly for polar bears, where temperatures plunge in winter to minus-42 Celsius (43 degrees below zero Fahrenheit) and the snow only disappears from August to mid-September. Now, Russia’s northernmost military base is bristling with missiles and radar and its extended runway can handle all types of aircraft, including nuclear-capable strategic bombers, projecting Moscow’s power and influence across the Arctic amid intensifying international competition for the region’s vast resources. Russia has sought to assert its influence over wide areas of the Arctic in competition with the United States, Canada, Denmark and Norway as shrinking polar ice from the warming planet offers new opportunities for resources and shipping routes. China also has shown an increasing interest in the region, believed to hold up to one-fourth of the Earth’s undiscovered oil and gas.

Cyclone kills 19 in India, heavy rains lash parts of Gujarat state (Reuters) A cyclone on India’s west coast has killed at least 19 people and damaged infrastructure and agriculture, while heavy rains continued to lash some regions even as weather officials said on Tuesday that the storm’s intensity had weakened. The cyclone Tauktae, which made landfall in the western state of Gujarat late on Monday, has hit power supply in 2,400 villages in the state as a thousand electricity pylons were damaged, Chief Minister Vijay Rupani said in a media address. Nearly 160 roads have been destroyed, 40,000 trees uprooted and several houses damaged, Rupani added.

India reports record day of virus deaths as cases level off (AP) India’s total virus cases since the pandemic began swept past 25 million on Tuesday as the country registered more than 260,000 new cases and a record 4,329 fatalities in the past 24 hours. The numbers continue a trend of falling cases after infections dipped below 300,000 for the first time in weeks on Monday. Active cases in the country also decreased by more than 165,000 on Tuesday—the biggest dip in weeks. But deaths have continued to rise and hospitals are still swamped by patients. Infections in India have surged since February in a disastrous turn blamed on more contagious variants as well as government decisions to allow massive crowds to gather for religious festivals and political rallies.

In Gaza, grief and destruction (Washington Post) In a conflict already marked by harrowing scenes of tragedy, one image stood out. Rescuers in Gaza City on Sunday pulled out Suzy Eshkuntana, a 6-year-old, from the rubble of a building that had once been her home, but which was flattened by Israeli airstrikes. She was covered in dust but alive. Her mother and all four of her siblings were dead. It’s not clear why the Eshkuntanas’ home was brought crashing down. Israeli authorities told reporters that they had targeted a network of tunnels used by Hamas militants that may have run beneath the area where the family lived. “The collapse of the tunnel system,” Reuters reported, “caused the houses above to collapse and led to unintended civilian casualties, the military said.” In Israel’s telling, there are many more “unintended” casualties in Gaza. According to local Health Ministry officials, the death toll in Gaza climbed to 212 people, including 61 children and 36 women, as fighting entered its second week. Gaza is one of the most densely populated areas in the world, home to some 2.1 million people, the majority of whom are classified as refugees by the United Nations. That’s a legacy of the displacements that followed Israel’s creation in 1948 and the 1967 Arab-Israeli War. Children make up about half of Gaza’s population. The territory has been under Israeli blockade since 2007, after Hamas took power following a rift within the Palestinian Authority. “Living conditions in Gaza are bleak: 95 percent of the population does not have access to clean water, according to [the United Nations], and electricity shortages periodically bring life to a halt,” my colleagues reported. “The territory has one of the highest unemployment rates in the world, World Bank statistics show, and the United Nations estimates that roughly 80 percent of the population relies on international aid to survive and access basic services.”

The New Arab Street: Online, Global and Growing (NYT) The video traveled at 4G speed, leapfrogging across international borders, social media platforms and social justice movements: a young Palestinian woman in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, shouting in furious English at a Jewish man, “You are stealing my house!” “If I don’t steal it, someone else will steal it,” he retorts. Within days—as Israel bombed the coastal territory of Gaza, Palestinian militants there launched rockets at Israel, and Arab and Jewish mobs faced off in Israeli cities—the video had rocketed from young Palestinians’ social media feeds into the Arab diaspora, then lit up the internet, kindling outrage around the world. It used to be that when Palestinians were under fire, protests would follow in the streets of Arab cities. That potential for combustion forced Middle Eastern and Western leaders to keep a wary eye on the temperature of what was called the “Arab street.” This time, a week into an Israeli bombing campaign that has killed 212 Palestinians in Gaza, the reaction from Arab capitals has been muted and protests small and scattered. Instead, solidarity with the Palestinians has shifted online and gone global, a virtual Arab street that has the potential to have a wider impact than the ones in Middle Eastern cities. The online protesters have linked arms with popular movements for minority rights such as Black Lives Matter, seeking to reclaim the narrative from the mainstream media and picking up support in Western countries that have reflexively supported Israel.

Ransomware hits AXA units in Asia, Irish healthcare (AP) The Thai affiliate of Paris-based insurance company AXA said Tuesday it is investigating a ransomware attack by Russian-speaking cybercriminals that has affected operations in Thailand, Malaysia, Hong Kong and the Philippines. Meanwhile, a cyberattack on a public health provider in New Zealand took down information systems across five hospitals, forcing staff to cancel some elective surgeries and creating all sorts of other problems. It was unclear if the event was linked to a cyberattack that has nearly paralyzed Ireland’s national healthcare IT systems. The Irish government’s decision not to pay the criminals means hospitals won’t have access to patient records—and must resort mostly to handwritten notes—until painstaking efforts are complete to restore thousands of computer servers from backups.

The Places Ranked Best for Expats in 2021 (Bloomberg) Taiwan, Mexico and Costa Rica have been ranked as the top spots to live and work abroad in 2021, based on their cost of living, ease of settling in and overall quality of life. The U.S. was ranked only 34th out of 59 places, largely because of how expats viewed quality of life in America, according to a new survey published Tuesday. Taiwan topped the charts for the third year in a row in the survey of 12,420 expats conducted by InterNations, a Munich-based expat network with about 4 million members. The top 10: Taiwan, Mexico, Costa Rica, Malaysia, Portugal, New Zealand, Australia, Ecuador, Canada, Vietnam.

#headlines #news

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apprenticeofcups · 5 years

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Self-callout but: Headcannons for the main 6 and an MC that flinches a lot due to trauma/anxiety, even when they know they're wholeass safe?

‼Main 6 + Hypervigilant MC

Asra

Catches imminent loud noises or sudden movements a split second before they happen, and does his best to warn you

It’s usually quick, no more than “door” or “bang”, but it does help so you’re not totally blindsided

Never touches you without warning (he actually asks, usually), and hardly ever raises his voice

Doesn’t like it when you get down on yourself for flinching, or won’t ask for things that you know will make you feel better

He doesn’t care if you know you’re safe; he cares about if you feel safe

Because they’re different things, and how you actually feel is much more important than how you think you should be feeling

Julian

Learns to minimize his sudden volume changes - he tends to shift gears quickly and drastically, which doesn’t help you feel more stable in the slightest

Doesn’t draw attention to it when you flinch, but if he knows you don’t mind touch, he’ll put a hand on your back or your arm, just letting you know he’s there

If you don’t like touch, he’ll just put his hand close, so you have something to grab if you want it

Always willing to listen, if you want to talk about what’s bothering you lately or in the past

Surprisingly insightful as to why certain things set you off

It doesn’t make them magically go away, but instead of feeling like a weirdo who flinches at random things, you take a little more ownership of them, feel a little more in-charge

Nadia

Keeps a mental list of everything that makes you flinch

A lot of the more general ones (sudden noise, unexpected touch) are things she’s not big on, herself

Her disgust, surprise, the occasional un-Countess-like squeal, etc. are instant validation - you don’t feel like you’re overreacting when you’re not the only one reacting

She also doesn’t hesitate to lay down the law if someone does it to you intentionally or maliciously

Reminds you whenever you get self-conscious that you did your part by surviving, and it’s hard work just living with anxiety, so you’ve earned the right to be a little jumpy now and again

Oh, and also, she loves you

Muriel

He flinches when you do, either because of the same stimulus, or because you flinched

You end up apologizing to and reassuring each other a lot, usually at the same time or overlapping

More than once, you’ve flinched and apologized in perfect sync, which makes him laugh in spite of the whole mess

“Talking” about your “trauma” is supposed to be “good”, so he makes an effort to open up to you, so you feel like you’re allowed to do the same

If you’re having a bad day and just want to stay inside where nothing is loud and nobody bothers you, he’s way ahead of you

Tells you often how much safer he feels going into town when you’re with him, and asks what he can do so you feel the same

Portia

Knows exactly what parts of the city and Palace to avoid at what times

The Docks get wild in the early morning when the cargo ships come in; when the gardeners do the hedge maze, it disturbs the peacocks, etc.

Starts picking up on your triggers and reacting to them, too

She doesn’t flinch, but she’ll make a face or say “ooh, yikes”, and talk about it with you

Reassures you that you’re not the only one freaked out by those things

Sneaks you little kisses when you’re shaken up, on your hand or shoulder or the side of your head, and gives you that sunny smile

Lucio

It’s hard to manage, at first, because on the one hand, he doesn’t set you off on purpose

But on the other, it’s hard to argue that it’s not him when “loud and arresting” is his preferred way of going through life

If other people make you flinch, just say the word, and he’ll go off on them (sometimes, it really does make you feel better to see him rip into some jerk who shoulder-checks you in the Market)

Once you tell him what to avoid doing, he makes a point to be more aware of it

And if he does slip up, he tries not to make a big deal out of it, apologizing to you later with everything from candies to big, impractical stuffed animals

He made you flinch; the least he can do is make you smile to balance it out

☕ Ko-Fi | My AO3 ☕

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muppets-galore · 4 years

Text

8/26 “Argumentative”

The idea of divine intervention in the Iliad was brought up in class today, and. beyond that, how the gods in Greek mythology spend their free time pondering and arguing over things that don’t matter, because they don’t have any real things to worry about. My mind immediately shot over to the classic, incomparable staple of reality television, “The Real Housewives of [City or Area].”

I’m very familiar with that series, New York to Beverly Hills to Atlanta, because my mom pretty much only watches the Bravo network. Throughout my hours and hours of viewing Real Housewives, spanning childhood to today’s holiday visits, I’ve picked up on one very, very common theme: it’s nothing. The show is about nothing. The people in it do, for the most part, nothing. The only thing that keeps the show moving is the drama, which may seem like something, but under the surface it too is nothing of substance. Frankly, it’s impressive - no TV show since Seinfeld has done nothing so well.

So a group of gals are gathered and given camera crews, and basically the only driving force of the show is incessant bickering of the stars. Why? Why do they argue, why do they fight, why do some of them just fabricate stories about others in order to stir up d r a m a ? My cumulative days-worth of research leads me to one conclusion: they have no worries. Like the Greek gods, the Real Housewives don’t have anything uber meaningful to discuss because... they don’t really have anything meaningful going on. Don’t get me wrong, some of them have careers (despite the title containing the word “housewives”), many start their own businesses, but there’s never really a concern of failure. They have projects that they partake in, they have children and families that they take care of, but those often are more of a drama-plot device than anything else. For the vast majority of their screen time they’re entrenched in some pointless argument, and it’s because their wealth allows them to float above any real concerns of survival.

I also realize that it is a reality show, which means that it really isn’t reality, but let’s look at Congress. Congress is different, they have SOME sort of meaning, if not only for the fact that they are one of three branches of government. But one thing is for sure, and that is that they do a lot of bickering. And that’s what it is, bickering, at least for the most part, as opposed to truly arguing. Some members of Congress argue for things that their constituents need, like healthcare, I can’t and won’t deny that, but a lot of the time both sides of the aisle actually agree more than they disagree, and the bickering comes from that environment. Think about recent stimulus check debates - Democrats want $x to give to people, but Republicans want to give $(x-y). Both agree that a one-time stimulus check is the best course of action, they just disagree on the dollar amount, and when their debates fail to bring about any agreements or resolutions the idea is effectively scrapped altogether, and why? Because stimulus checks don’t effect the vast majority of members of Congress, they don’t feel the effects of COVID in nearly the same way as the average American, so it just isn’t a huge deal to them.

That’s the big idea. They debate and bicker and occasionally argue “on behalf of the American people,” but really what they discuss is nothing. In the end, a one-time stimulus check will not cut it, it will not resolve the woes of the American people felt due to COVID, and that much is proven by the fact that a SECOND stimulus check was seen as necessary. Do they think that they’re fighting the good fight, discussing what they discuss? Maybe, but that’s really beside the point. People NEED healthcare, they need social safety nets, and the fact of the matter is that the majority of Democrats and Republicans don’t want to hear that, and that’s because they don’t have to worry about that stuff. For a majority of members of Congress, they are so distanced from the Average Joes they represent due to economic gap that they don’t truly bring forth (or at least they don’t seriously consider) ideas that would actually address the needs of the people. What they’re left with is debate of ideas that truly don’t mean anything - at the most they’re short-term fixing problems that will just resurface in a short amount of time (again, see stimulus checks).

All in all, a leader is only effective if they are in touch with the people that they’re leading, otherwise they’re just performing as an individual and implementing policies and ideas that either (1) they THINK could work, or (2) they personally like and agree with regardless of the opinions of their constituents. To bring it back around to the Iliad, Agamemnon was a leader who made decisions that his soldiers (Achilles in particular) didn’t always like. If you’ve seen Stanley Kubrick’s “Paths of Glory” from 1957, the French generals most CERTAINLY act in a way that is unpopular among their subordinates (this post is long enough already so I won’t give a synopsis, but I do recommend watching it). Even though they were likely in the place of the soldiers they command at some point, they’ve distanced themselves so much from that position and those responsibilities that they’ve lost touch with it.

The higher up the command chain you move, the less to relate to those at the bottom, and so my concluding point is that hierarchy aids dysfunction. With more and more levels of command comes more and more degrees of separation among people who are supposed to be working toward the same goal, and that is no way to properly tackle and solve issues - in fact, I would say it’s a means of creating MORE issues, given the internal confusion and tension that comes from that separation. Should there be a more direct means of solving issues, a flat organization system where everyone contributes to making the machine run, you lose the muddling that hierarchy brings with it. You can better satisfy the masses since the members of those masses are directly addressing their problems. People know what their problems are, and it only makes sense that they would also be a great resource for finding solutions.

#pols383

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violetsystems · 3 years

Text

#personal

The holidays are quiet if not a little more restful than usual. I facetime’d my dad and his wife and talked to my mom on the phone. Since I left my job way back in July I haven’t had much video contact with anybody. Everybody is too busy baking banana bread on YouTube I guess to check in. The final days of my employment had devolved into a virtual SCRUM twice a day led by myself on camera. It was exhausting at times to lead but kept people focused. That is when they bothered to show up. One of my employees was off making music with my boss half the time I was trying to lead those discussions. I’m beginning to sense a theme. People saying they are there but not really. Maybe the mic is muted. Maybe you can’t see behind the screen. All I know is the follow through lately with people is missing entirely. I spent a good hour the last two days trying to decouple a credit card from my old job’s contact info. I’m locked out of both the phone number and the email attached to the account. I got the run around trying to provide a US passport to confirm my identity. It was good enough to enter China alone. The first call that ID was sufficient. They had said they sent an email to follow through with the process to two different emails I provided. The email never came most likely because neither had been tied to the account previously. I called back on Christmas eve and suddenly the passport wasn’t good enough. Neither was an expired driver’s license. The woman actually asked me why I hadn’t renewed my driver’s license. I told the truth. My ex girlfriend stole my car. That didn’t really help the situation. I sent a passport photo to unlock my facebook but they never followed through. I had an easier time unlocking my Fortnite account with it although that took a full week. I ended having to call the police on Christmas eve to explore filing a report for fraud and identity theft. The police officer on the phone pretty much gaslighted me at the end of the questioning. “Nothing criminal.” he stated plainly. I didn’t get mad. I didn’t even complain. I simply said Happy Holidays and hung up. Much like I’ve hung up on the last twenty years of my life at this point. Nobody seems to want to answer the video call. The opening introduction if they did would be something like “What exactly have you done with my life?” Maybe they’re afraid to confront the truth. The media, the government, and even the police seem to not want to believe evidence that contradicts their narrative. I guess you could throw up your hands and revolt. But the holidays have been peaceful and quiet enough to simply roll my eyes and move on. I’ve had years of failures to connect. COVID has taught me a lot of things. I heard the mantra in all the mandatory corporate webinars. This pandemic has brought to light structural problems we were never aware of before. Sexual harassment in the workplace. Check. Organizational corruption. Check. The fact everybody is full of bullshit and will just mute the mic and pretend it never happened. Check. People feel invincible behind a screen and think they know it all. Check. Now that we’re aware. What do we do? How do we move on with our life now that we have all this space? How do I even care about participating in a broken process when I have no debt and fiscal maturity? How can I go back to being the old me when I’ve been completely erased and conveniently forgot about? Why would I even bother?

Mostly I take the time with this process to make sure my identity is completely secure. Which is why it’s not really fun to be locked out of twenty years of your own information in the form of an email account and forgotten about for six months. But this is just the structural reality come to light. Much like the rest of America is waking up to the reality of what greed really does to people. That was my Christmas present this year aside from the coffee that never came and that Cyberpunk game that I don’t really have the time or the subpar computer setup to criticize. I’m guilty of tricking myself into thinking people care about me. I have statistical data from the last six months that proves otherwise. I also have financial data that points to whatever hustle I have been hustling during that time has paid off and will continue to. But I don’t really have an answer to anything. I’m in the worst kind of limbo. I don’t get the sense these days that I should even remotely worry until July. Which is kind of like saying fuck you to the world for the next six months. I spent the last six waking up from a nightmare. The only times I look back is to clean up the mess. And a Christmas Eve call to the police is kind of messy. But the result is more of the same for me. An extravagant “I told you so.” I’ve been telling myself for awhile now a lot of things. Some of them were kind of unbelievable. Now those very dreams are all I really take comfort in. The limbo I’m in is more pointed to the light at the end of the tunnel than the void. But I can’t say the same for everybody else. I work for myself for the time being. It looks really nice on paper. I can even pay myself if it fits into my organization’s financial outlook. But none of this matters when you or your struggles don’t even exist to people other than to mock or judge it. All the work we do to survive. All the work we do to create art and to be beautiful in the face of chaos. All of that is negated by a loud mouthed jerk who can bark you back into submission. A mob of dumb ass fraudsters that talk over and mute any opposition without any warrant or merit. The press follows this mentality pretty clearly. Everybody has a hot take and a theory. But nobody wants to sit down and listen to the culmination of lies spread about people and situations. Everyone is too emotionally interested in sharing their recipe for banana bread to an invisible audience. I guess I could be guilty of that too. Except that I share actual human emotion and care with a community of people who pay attention week to week. For a person like myself who has no real need to worry about money for the foreseeable future what’s the value of care and attention? A lot. I don’t feed myself with vapor or fake sentiments. I take it all at base level as real as it gets. You can’t build a future on speculation. You can technically if you are in the stock market. But risk is risk. And money is money. No one can be me at the end of the day. Sometimes I can’t even prove I’m myself. My mom reminded me I had to provide ten pieces of documentation to renew my passport ten years ago. The reasoning was simple. The government did not believe I existed. No bullshit. A decade later nothing really has changed. I’ve been to Shanghai by myself and eaten McDonald’s. I read all these Republicans talk about how you put your identity at risk just setting foot in that country.

And yet when does the rhetoric and brainwashing fall flat on it’s face? When you can’t pass economic stimulus to not only save your own people but the fragile stock market all this bullshit is built upon. I could keep telling you I told you so. Or I could save my own ass. And largely I did without really owing much to this country whatsoever except taxes in Q1. Taxes billionaires don’t have to pay because they offer us so much relevant employment and benefits that fit on their bottom line. The real truth is that America would rather not face the truth. It hasn’t for years. It’s built on this kind of thing. It always has been. And the world gets bigger and the excuses get worse. And so what does anyone expect a person like me to do after you openly admit that there’s nothing criminal going on here. How does that sound when you’ve been treated openly like a criminal in so many unsettling ways that you just don’t want to participate in society anymore? Not that anyone really asks me to participate. They’re too busy signaling or whispering secret messages. Is it suggestion or valid communication? I’m the one that has to shift through it all and detangle the mess from what is real and what is some sort of mass hallucination. An alternate reality hunger game that the rich have been playing for years without any punishment or oversight. When you get caught up in the crossfire they expect you to know the drill. Keep your mouth shut if you know what’s good for you. None of this is good for me. You could argue it made me the beast that I am. But I am the one who had to actively make that choice to adapt and survive. But I’m not like any normal person these days. I refuse to admit it anymore. They say the first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem. I have a problem. One that it seems I cannot fix. And if you isolate and quarantine yourself from an entire twenty years of nostalgia what is left? Where are the texts of merry xmas from yesteryear. Probably pinging my old work number. I can’t access my facebook. Maybe that’s for the best. I can’t shut down lines of credit until I renew my state ID. I could jump on a plane and visit Shanghai Disney quicker than I could prove I’m alive to the US government. And when does the constant gaslighting break down? When do we realize that people gaslight to cover up an elaborate lie that has gotten out of control. That we are not all in this together. Not by a longshot. That the problem of connectedness is right there in front of our faces. We’re exhausted propping up entire infrastructures that keep a bloated empire alive. Family fortunes built on opioids and war strewn out across the landscape in trusts and elaborate tax schemes. Oligarchs that have generational wealth that buy our politicians and scam people into debt and forced labor. This is America. This is the systemic problem the pandemic brought to light. This shit was built this way. And like any fort constructed with shaky foundations, good luck hiding from the storm in that shit. At least I can still access my Epic account. What am I going to do for the next six months? Complain about something I can’t fix because everybody wants to consider me part of the problem? I don’t know what to do anymore except move forward and lead by example. There’s enough quality people who follow to keep me warm with those thoughts through the holidays alone. I won’t be drunk on a zoom call. I’ll be in bed watching Wonder Woman or something. When everyone you worshipped comes out of this looking fake, tired and exhausted you’ll know where to find me. Unlocking more accounts tied to an identity that doesn’t exist anymore. Nothing criminal. Hopefully people will stop treating me like one eventually. <3 Tim

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a-new-way-forward · 4 years

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America’s Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Future

Our futures are, put simply, absolutely f**ked.

Throughout most of my early childhood, I looked forward to growing up.

I was excited to go to college, get a job, buy a house, and pursue my career. I want to be a novelist and filmmaker, and perhaps a career in politics. At the time, I thought the U.S Government knew how to provide, to protect, and open doors to great opportunities for aspiring youngsters like myself.

Boy, was I wrong.

This year, 2020, has proven just how weak and flawed the U.S Government is, and how most of those who serve in it only care about their personal political gain. Not to mention, the politicians in DC are utter hypocrites. And in all honesty, I don’t think they give a rat’s ass about me.

Pelosi going to a hair salon without a mask. Trump going on dozens of golf trips. Mitch McConnell blocking stimulus bills, and going on vacation. They all are just poorly developed characters in the horrendous soap opera that has become everyday American politics. Meanwhile, my parents are struggling to provide for me and my six younger siblings. I had a job working for a local newspaper, but now I’m unemployed. And I’ve had a very, very difficult time trying to find a decent job to help out my family.

My family isn’t the only one suffering. I know a man lives in Alabama with his daughter, and they’re barely making ends meet. They were homeless for a while, and now they can barely pay their electric bill, water bill, and pay for food. A local cafe--run by a lovely couple I know--shut down for good due to lack of financial help from the government. And just the other day, in my town, I saw a homeless veteran sleeping on a bench, shivering. He wasn’t homeless nor jobless before. Thanks to the monumental failure of the U.S government, he’s miserable. So are millions of other people.

Seeing all of this unfold before me is terrifying. I constantly wonder what my future will be like: will I be able to go to college? Or get a house? Or pursue my dreams? And what about my friends? And my family?

I’m sure you find yourself wondering the same thing.

Almost half of jobs lost to COVID-19 are gone for good. 78% of Americans live paycheck-to-paycheck, and 57% couldn’t afford an unexpected $500 bill—and this was BEFORE COVID-19.

40% of American home-renters are at risk of eviction. According to recent Census data, levels of food insecurity in Black and Latino households are significantly higher, at 19% and 17%. White households are at 7%. In 2019, 1% of adults with children said that their children sometimes or often went hungry. Between 9% and 14% of the aforementioned adults said the same about their kids in August of 2020.

Millions of Americans are at risk of losing their healthcare. Especially now that Trump wants to repeal the ACA. Unemployment benefits will not last forever.

Not to mention, Amazon continues to soak up $20billion a year in business—even before the pandemic. Dozens of big businesses are at risk of being eaten alive by Amazon, and those businesses include: Auto Parts, Kroger, Barnes and Noble, Best Buy, Blue Apron, Etsy, FedEx, and thousands of smaller businesses. Amazon and other giant corporations have made billions upon billions during this crisis.

Levels depression, drug usage, drug overdoses, anxiety and financial stress is at record highs, even more so than they were last year. Those numbers have more than likely tripled over the past months.

The American people need money NOW. My family needs money. My friends need money. But the U.S government only sent out one round of stimulus checks. One. Round. Politicians don’t seem to care what happens to us, as long as their $100k+ salaries aren’t harmed. President Trump only payed $750 in federal income taxes in 2016-17. My dad, a carpenter, payed more than that. Not to mention Trump flat-out lied about his tax returns.

Trump clashes with the media. Pelosi and McConnell and the other politicians bicker like bratty children as Americans are starving, and desperate to survive and struggling to make ends meet. People made at risk of losing their homes. Millions of jobs are gone, and many will never come back. Automation is going to surge, eliminating even more jobs. Hundreds of thousands of Mom and Pop businesses are going to be obliterated. Small communities—like mine—are going to suffer miserably.

People like me, a 16 year-old Boy Scout, and the rest of my generation will inherit this bleak future. Joblessness. Risk of homelessness. Financial stress. We’re going to inherit an economy that doesn’t give a single damn about the people.

I don’t want this future. You don’t want this future.

I want to pursue my dream of filmmaking and writing novels. I don’t want to be a servant of an economy with an ever-growing appetite.

We need to pass UBI. We need Andrew Yang’s Freedom Dividend, $1,000 every month.

We need an economy that values us, the people. It’s every person, not every dollar. People have WAY more value than money.

Congress, the Senate, and President Trump need to realize this. If they don’t, they’re going to be responsible for the bleak future that may lie ahead. They’re already responsible for the crap that’s happening now.

Change needs to happen. Change is coming. In fact, change is already happening. We can either adapt to it, merge with it in a way that benefits all Americans. Or, we can do nothing—like the U.S government is doing—and be eaten alive by it.

The government can’t seem to do it. So, that means we have to take the wheel. This is our generation. The future is ours. So let’s work together and make it work for all of us.

Let’s make America truly happy.

Let’s move humanity forward.

Our time is now.

Onward.

#us politics #humanityfirst #government #yang gang #genz #2020 #thefutureisyours #economy #usgovernment

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theculturedmarxist · 3 years

Link

An old adage known as Betteridge's law of headlines asserts that "Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no."

There's a Bloomberg story trending on Twitter right now about China having the ability to control the weather, with the headline reading "Has China Mastered Weather Modification? Should We Worry?"

According to Betteridge, no.

It just goes on and on and on. Every single day the western mass media are bashing us in the face with stories about horrifying scary things other countries are doing which we all need to be afraid of, and from which we must turn imploringly to our own kind and beneficent rulers for protection.

Today China is controlling your weather. Yesterday the Russians were hacking your mind. The day before it was Kremlin microwave guns. Before that it was Chinese super soldiers. Tomorrow Venezuela will be using communist gamma rays to ruin your performance in bed.

And on and on and on and on. And, strangely, at no time will these media institutions warn you about the fact that your government is constantly murdering people in other countries every single day while you and your neighbors struggle to survive.

Right now the hot topic in US lefty discourse is the fact that Americans are struggling financially and medically as a result of Covid-19 and the ensuing lockdowns, yet the US government is doing virtually nothing to help with this. Americans received a piddling one-time $1200 payment eight months ago, and now after all this time they're looking at receiving an even more ridiculous one-time $600 stimulus check.

There's also the debate that's been raging in US left circles over the call initiated by commentator Jimmy Dore for House progressives to force a floor vote on Medicare for All legislation, a big part of the argument being that it's more important than ever to start pushing for a normal healthcare system in the United States right now. Millions of people are being thrown off their employer-provided insurance during the economic downturn and it is both a necessary and opportune time to either implement universal healthcare or at least draw public attention to which elected officials are standing in its way.

Both the campaign to get the US government to implement a proper healthcare system, and the fight to get meaningful financial support during the pandemic, will fail. Necessarily.

They will not fail because there's a lack of public support for these things. They will not fail because of the number of seats controlled by members of a given party in the House or the Senate. They will not fail because "It's just not realistic right now".

They will fail, ultimately, because an entire globe-spanning empire depends upon keeping Americans struggling financially.

The US has a system of deliberately institutionalized poverty because if wealth were more evenly distributed in the most powerful nation on earth, there'd be no ruling class to ensure the domination of the globe-spanning empire. Plutocrats wouldn't be able to use their massive wealth advantage to buy up influence over the political class and control public thought by purchasing mass media outlets and other mechanisms narrative control in order to ensure the continuation of the global status quo upon which those plutocrats have built their kingdoms. The system would belong to the people.

This is the real wall US progressives keep crashing into in their fight for economic justice in America. Ultimately their efforts to work within the official political system to implement economic justice fail because that system is set up to preserve economic injustice. It's not ultimately about this or that political faction or any one particular politician, it's the fact that there's a massive amount of power riding on the ability to keep Americans too poor and powerless to interfere in the operation of the nation which serves as the hub of a massive global empire.

It's like attempts to end the war in Afghanistan. Anyone who isn't a brainwashed dupe knows there's no legitimate reason for western forces to continue that 19-year occupation, yet whenever there's a major push for withdrawal something always comes up. We can't leave because of Al-Qaeda. We can't leave because of women's rights. We can't leave because of Russian bounties. The official talking heads of the political/media class agree that it would be great to withdraw from Afghanistan, but for this or that blah blah reason, "It's just not realistic right now".

The unspoken reality is that those troops are in Afghanistan primarily due to that nation's prime geostrategic location relative to the most powerful nations who oppose the dictates of the US-centralized empire, namely China, Russia, and Iran. The fall of those unabsorbed governments is the only thing that could ever bring about a military withdrawal from Afghanistan.

In the same way, the American left is fed all kinds of reasons for why they need to remain impoverished for a few more years until conditions change in some way, when really the only reason is because there's a massive globe-spanning power structure which depends on their remaining impoverished. It's a larger-scale version of the real reason why Palestinians need to remain oppressed instead of treated as equal citizens in Israel: there's just too much power riding on the control of that crucial geostrategic part of the Middle East for a population with no loyalty to the empire to be given any control over what happens there.

American leftists and progressives will keep crashing into this wall, over and over and over again, every time they try to work within the official US political system to ease the crushing poverty and inequality in the wealthiest nation on earth. If by some miracle they are able to overcome all the many, many, many obstacles built into the plutocrat-controlled system and put themselves in a position to implement policies of economic justice by following all the rules to a 't', there will be an antisemitism scandal. There will be a Russia scandal. Someone will say they were raped. Whatever needs to happen to keep the people from obtaining wealth and power which could disrupt the global world order which depends on endless warmongering that benefits zero ordinary Americans.

Americans will never succeed in fighting economic injustice by appealing to the official US political system, no matter how many charismatic lefty politicians they find and no matter how energized their grassroots campaigns are. Only direct action outside the system, with the people using the power of their numbers to force real change, stands any chance of changing this.

But the bastards have bolted shut that escape route as well. People are prevented from using the power of their numbers to force real change by a highly sophisticated domestic propaganda operation controlled by the media-owning plutocratic class and heavily influenced by sociopathic government agencies. As long as people are being successfully propagandized by mass media manipulation into accepting the status quo, they will never rise up and make it change.

So the US left needs to address the problem of establishment narrative control first, before any change can even begin to occur. This can happen by way of a grassroots information rebellion with a sufficiently forceful push to help their countrymen realize that they are being propagandized. Trust in the mass media is at an all-time low and our ability to network and share information is at an all-time high, so we absolutely do have the ability to pry the rapey fingers of the establishment manipulators out of the minds of the public and help people see that they can have something better. If enough people awaken to the lies of the propaganda machine, they can shrug off the oppression machine like a heavy coat on a warm day, without a shot fired.

But it needs to happen soon, because our rulers understand this as well. This is why we've been seeing escalation after escalation in internet censorship protocols being rolled out by government-aligned Silicon Valley tech giants; they know they need to cut us off from our ability to wake each other up. And they know they need to hurry, because we're already rapidly beginning to do exactly that.

That's where you need to place your emphasis if you ever want economic justice, America. On overthrowing the establishment propaganda machine, and doing it now. Save yourselves and you might just save the entire world.

#imperialism #institutional poverty #medicare for all #universal healthcare #manufacturing consent #narrative control #jimmy dore

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wanderrlus-t · 4 years

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Okay... but like... honestly.. the whole US election and the pressure for change has really given me so much anxiety?

What about the people who don’t like either candidate? Who do we vote for? Cause literally the main two candidates I literally just don’t want in office..

I like how Trumps been handling the pandemic (the best he can, I think.) don’t get that twisted. I don’t like that he’s dismissing the deaths of 200,000+ Americans, but trying to help the lower class who do ACTUALLY NEED the help? I appreciate it. Although I don’t appreciate him putting a hault on the checks to help many American families with the stimulus check until after the election? I think that’s him saying “Elect me and I’ll give you money!!1!1” like the American struggle from the pandemic is some kind of joke? Like it’s almost a bribe. I also believe he’s worked to make Americans have jobs IN AMERICA instead of saying “yeah, we have this job open in America but like.. wait, let’s give it to our foreign friends!” his ideas on racial matters, social justice, BLM, and other big topics is wrong.. so incredibly wrong and it hurts. It almost feels like they’re out to put us against each other and it’s just wrong..

I know Joe Biden has good health care plans, but with the good he’s eliminating the things that are already in place. For instance, he wants to get rid of SSI... but SSI is something that you work for? It also plays a part into disability, so if you are for instance like having epileptic seizures every 5-10 mins and you can’t stop them because they’re uncontrolled.. you would rely on SSI / disability to even survive. He also wants to tax the less wealthier lower class, making the rich practically never losing a dime? Uhh... tell me why they need to keep every cent if they’re already living a more than enough stable lifestyle? Trying to tax the less wealthy Americans won’t give you more? It won’t fulfill whatever you’re looking to get with increasing taxes? So why aren’t they going for the wealthy? The ones who make 400k a year OR EVEN MORE.

I just wish someone could honestly run for president who has good ideas to help everyone, and who understood the struggles of people who are just trying to build their life and be stable. Who just started working, and are trying to fix their life all together. 😓 I don’t even know who I would vote for.

Don’t attack me pls, it’s just a thought I was having because as November comes around.. I don’t even know what to do. 😔

#us elections #Joe Biden #Donald Trump #elections #personal #help #BLM #2020 election #politics #new voter #election 2020 #PSA

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bigskydreaming · 4 years

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Hey feel free to ignore this ask if it's too personal, but could you explain more about how ADHD can help you check out from/survive abuse? Because as someone recently diagnosed who also had an abusive childhood, that sounds very familiar, I am definitely curious about that. Again, ignore this ask if it makes you uncomfortable, and thanks for posting so much about ADHD, it's literally because of recognizing myself in your post that I brought it up to my therapist who diagnosed me lol

No problem! As far as I’m aware, we’re mostly in the realm of more theory than hard confirmation because its not really something you can get much data on other than anecdotal, and when we’re talking the really young end of the showing-signs-of-ADHD spectrum and also in terms of regular or at least persisting experiences with abuse, all that anecdotal data isn’t gonna be current and empirical, its more than likely going to be years old.

So, all that said, my understanding as its been explained to me, is C-PTSD, or complex PTSD, which is technically what I have as it stems all the way from early childhood, like....it literally affects the hardwiring of our brain. When the abuse or trauma occurs early enough in life that the brain is actively in its developmental stages still, the resulting brain patterns and neural pathways of say, an abused kid pretty constantly living in a heightened state of fear or wariness, like....they’re going to be different than those of a kid who thankfully has lived a fairly sheltered life.

This is where things like hyper-vigilance come from.....I’ve had it as long as I can remember, because like, its essentially our fight or flight instinct dialed up to a constant eleven.....and since that’s pretty much where it was for me back when my brain was still developing, that ended up solidifying as my ‘default’ setting, pretty much. That level of vigilance WAS my normal, so my brain by the time it finished developing, was hardwired to TREAT that as normal.

And thus, anything that would trigger a fight or flight response in most people, for me is just.....amped up more than it is for most people. Like, its literally just having more of a hair trigger, being quicker to leap to that physiological and mental response and state of mind....and at a heightened intensity.

My point in going into all of that is to illustrate just one of the many ways childhood abusive experiences can actively affect and shape our developing brains. Someone like me, our trauma quite LITERALLY leaves a lasting impression, because the pathways in my brain that developed as what my brain considers normal, or regular, or just another Tuesday....are geared around the fact that while my brain was developing, Tuesdays pretty much sucked giant donkey balls.

Like, the trauma isn’t just bad memories, the trauma is why someone else hears a car door and their brain goes “oh Mom’s home,” whereas I hear a car door and my brain goes “quick, hide in a closet.” My childhood experiences and C-PTSD literally trained and hard-wired into my brain that this IS normal. that this IS the appropriate, safe, sane response to that stimulus.

Now, where the ADHD comes in, is when I was trying to focus on a single task and get it done? Yeah, it could and still can be a pain and get in the way of that happening. But by the exact same token.....if the only thing in front of me at the time or situation I was immersed in wasn’t something I needed to accomplish, but rather just...an actively unpleasant experience....here’s where my brain’s tendency to take unscheduled vacations no matter WHAT’S going on in front of me or around me, like....was likely an active asset to me.

Because by making it unlikely or even impossible to keep my attention focused entirely on how much a situation might have sucked for me, no matter how bad it was or how long it lasted....the hard-wiring that otherwise would have happened according to the blueprint that situation was mapping out for my brain and attention was interrupted. So it just didn’t happen.

Obviously, this didn’t happen every time, or otherwise I wouldn’t have C-PTSD, but if that’s what was happening at all, to any degree, it means what my brain ended up set at as considering ‘normal’ ended up not being AS dominated by simply traumatic experiences as it otherwise might have.

The sheer fact that I’m as likely to get distracted even from intense pain as I am from a task I’m trying to accomplish means that instead of JUST the abuse and trauma taking the clear lead and being the only defining influence in the matter of shaping my developing brain and neural pathways....my brain ended up being the end result more of a random sampleage, as befits the way my usually scattered focus is just as likely to land on anything else and fixate, as it is on just an extremely crappy situation or experience.

So, in essence, even though I’ve got plenty of even physiological lingering after-effects of childhood abuse, let alone bad memories....its entirely possible that if not for my ADHD, I would have ended up with more. And I mean, frankly, I have enough to deal with in terms of the after-effects I do actually have, lol, so I’m pretty happy to not have even more on top of or besides that.

Hopefully that made enough sense to follow, and helps you in some way or maybe put certain things from your own past in a different context or perspective.

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lonelyhearteds-a · 4 years

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hi .

okay , ive literally been sitting on this for actual months now because i realize there are more important things going on in the world right now , but im at my own personal breaking point and i’ve realized that i need a space to get everything off my chest and this is as good as it gets since i can’t afford therapy so ,, here goes nothing .

tl;dr. tw : drugs , mentions of suicide , overall negativity

so , we’re gonna ignore january and february issues because honestly .... i don’t recognize those months as canon . anyways , i’ve been off of tumblr since the pandemic started in america in march . i lost my job , and i’ve had to use my personal time in order to keep getting something in my bank account , but i was making that + unemployment for a few weeks . everything was fine , truthfully and utterly i was making enough just off of unemployment despite the fact it took 3 weeks to even be processed . then everything hit the fan and it flew everywhere . my mom relapsed in mid-april and she relapsed hard , but me pretending it’s just her illnesses went about my business and decided to ignore it until it exploded in my face . i’m not going into too much detail about it , but with everything she’s done since april we’ve now got a really broken and fractured relationship . it’s taken me nearly fourteen years to realize the amount of sheer trauma she’s put me through ; mentally , physically and emotionally . then , we were almost evicted because she didn’t pay rent for two months - so i had to use my entire stimulus check just to catch up on rent and the mortgage payments . then , i went back to work in may just to process shipping orders . again , was fine for the most part , however i wasn’t making as much and what i had saved my mom found a way to guilt me to spend it . this went on all of may , living paycheck to paycheck . june week one came along and my mom overdosed . this was one of the worst experiences of my life ; it was re-opening week ( apparently clothing is essential during a pandemic ) , my mom was acting like she had no common sense ( destroying the house , not feeing the animals , not taking care of herself , LOSING MY CAT , locking the dogs in the car in 100 degree heat , calling me names i dont even want to repeat .. amongst other situations ), and i didn’t eat . for a week . i was sick to my stomach with stress and exhaustion , living off of literally 5 hours of sleep between friday and thursday when i finally got help from my family after begging them to help me send her to a psych ward for two weeks . she called me every single day and we’d argue every single day . when she was released , it was as if nothing’s changed . she said she was gonna change , but she hasn’t . she walks around with a rain cloud above her head and if i don’t give her money , she guilts me into doing it . so on so fourth . we argue almost everyday about something , whether it’s money or my attitude somehow making her life worse . i asked her one day if she’s ever going to be happy and she flat out told me no . there’s so much more going on with her but if i posted it all i might as well write a book . i’ve never wanted to kill myself more than i do everyday so far this month .

now , july , i’ve recognized i can’t keep living like this . my company has filed for bankruptcy and is closing more than 1200 stores and we don’t know which ones are closing and which ones are remaining opened yet , but if my store closes i have no money to fall back on until i find a new job . i have no money for groceries or pet food , and i don’t have enough to pay all of the bills . my mom over drafted one of my accounts and now i have to pay that back with my next paycheck which means i’m losing $110 automatically when i get paid next .

i’m honestly just exhausted ? like . i’m twenty-three years old and i literally have no will to live because of this woman and the shit she’s put me through . i was not planning on making it to my birthday this year and i was definitely not planning on making it to august . i don’t know . to be frank , i don’t have the energy to care about anything anymore and my anxiety keeps telling my some of my closest friends are over me when there’s no reason for me to even believe that . i’m seeing them all next year at different times and i know they’re excited to see me but i sat here the other day just questioning if that’s even real . i don’t have any friends in the town i live in ; i don’t go out and do things because of corona and if i do , my mom forces herself along . if i buy myself something i have to buy her something or it turns into an argument and an all around guilt trip .

i’m trying so hard to save enough so i can move out , but .. it’s almost impossible at this point . and i don’t know what to do . i work full time ; there is no reason i should have to consider getting another part time job just to survive . i shouldn’t have had to to parent my parent and sacrifice so much of my life . i shouldn’t be this mentally fucked up , but here i am , once again , crying over spilled tea .

anyways , if you read all the way through , i don’t know when i’m returning to tumblr , but when i do i am still going to be moving blogs . nonetheless , i’m on d*scord ( ♡ kezrah fan club president ♡#9812 ) and i’ve been doing more rp things on there if anyone wants to talk or do things again ( im always game for a welcomed distraction , even if it takes me a minute to reply ) ; i still , for the most part , have the same muses that are listed on my page . love u all loads nd loads .

#tldr #long post tw #overall negativity tw #idk what else to tag

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