#why did I decide public health for my major

[transxfiles]

lost phineas and ferb episode where perry is called to investigate what dr doofenshmirtz is up to because carl the intern got ahold of some intel that doof has been seen speaking to lawyers and looking up the endangered species act at internet cafes and as major monogram says, "something fishy is going on"

meanwhile phineas and ferb's subplot of "i know what we're gonna do today!" is that isabella needs her environmentalist fireside girls badge so they start researching which species are in urgent need of help in the tri-state area so that they can use new cloning and gene therapy technologies to bring at-risk animals back from extinction

(yes there is a c-plot where buford and baljeet argue the ethics of this idea, i don't have time to explain it all for you rn)

we cut back to🎵doofenshmirtz evil incorporated🎵where we see perry carefully maneuvering around doofenshmirtz's lab scared he might fall into a trap but he hasn't set off a single booby trap and it's clear something is off

he runs into doofenshmirtz and goes to kick him in the gut action movie style but doof steps back one overly confident and says, "nuh uh uh, you see perry the platypus, you are TRAPPED! by the danville section of the endangered species act of 1973!"

doof goes on to explain his tragic backstory: "you see, perry the platypus, when i was a child my parents did not show up for my own birth! but you know that already, yadda yadda yadda they did not love me and then they loved roger more, ANYways i was raised by ocelots! i had a lovely foster mother who took me in and made me one of the pride, and so you see, perry the platypus, i am still legally considered an ocelot. did you know that there are only 50 recorded ocelots still alive in the continental united states? very sad for me as a member of a near-extinct species. it would be immoral for you to hurt someone critically endangered... in fact, you have made many attempts on my life this summer"

[montage of doof's security camera footage of their battles]

"which is why i have decided to bring you... TO COURT!" we cut back to phineas and ferb's back yard where they've decided to start cloning ocelots in their kiddie pool

candace storms outside enraged and says, "phineas and ferb are you cloning ocelots in my duckie momo kiddie pool!?"

ferb's one line of the episode is "well, i guess it's more of a kitty pool, now"

candace storms away saying, "i'm going to tell mom!" and isabella turns to phineas and says, "oh, does your mom have experience in wildlife conservation?"

we cut back to the doof and perry plotline where the two are now in the danville hall of justice and we learn that doof has spent his monthly alimony check on a defense lawyer and perry turns and sees the lawyer and then vanessa helping her organize her briefcase and perry chitters at her and vanessa shrugs and says, "i'm thinking about going into legal defense. sorry perry."

the rest of the doof and perry b-plot is spent in court and perry is about to ask for a public defense lawyer when carl runs into the room and explains that he's owca's official legal defense and perry looks at him like, "uhhh is that even allowed?"

it doesn't matter because apparently the judge is out sick today but because it's danville roger's the judge now because he's the mayor and everyone loves him.

the court case continues.

meanwhile phineas and ferb have successfully cloned multiple ocelots from the original ocelot dna they had on hand and isabella asks phineas if these clones will experience health problems like premature aging, phineas casually explains that ferb figured out the problem while they were experimenting with stem cell harvesting.

back in the courtroom, doof's ocelot foster mother has been brought to the stand along with an ocelot to english translator. doof gets emotional seeing her after so long. she says that he was one of her favorite child and he was as strong a hunter as anyone else in the family. it's incredibly sweet. the jury's in tears.

meanwhile, isabella has established connections with a group in texas who are going to release the ocelots back into their natural habitat and, using the cloned ocelots to prevent inbreeding, help establish an ocelot breeding program. the group explains that they are going to send a helicopter to retrieve the cloned ocelots from danville and bring them to texas soon.

isabella gets her fireside girls badge.

candace manages to get mom to see the backyard only after the ocelots have been helicoptered off to coastal texas, their primary habitat.

mom makes it into the backyard as phineas stares wistfully over the fence and says, "if you love something, you have to let it go." candace goes, "look mom look look look!" and points at the ducky momo kiddie pool, devoid of cloned ocelots, where baljeet and buford are now chilling out, having settled their philosophical debate about the ethics of animal cloning.

back in the courtroom drama, doof looks like he's about to win when an attendant walks into the courtroom and whispers something in roger's ear.

roger looks up, grinning, and says, "good news, everyone! my attendant here has just enlightened me that ocelots are no longer considered critically endangered!"

this settles the case, with perry being decreed not guilty and the entire affair being called off. the courtroom cheers, roger walks over to doof and personally congratulates him on his species' return from the brink of extinction.

doof shouts, "curse you endangered species classification system!" at the ceiling of the danville hall of justice.

perry arrives back home just in time for mom to say, "who wants pie?"

the end.

#cricket.chatterbox #phineas and ferb #pnf #dr doofenshmirtz #perry the platypus #phineas flynn #ferb fletcher #greatest hits

[damianbugs]

What you mean by" willis todds love for jason is the reason bruce failed him" ?

Sorry ive seen your post and I agree with everything but this just kinda suprise me, not hating, just curiuos

HELLO! so this is a take that is based on pre-new 52 todds, before they were simplified to the one dimensional (and classist) personalities they're known for now. neither of them were shown to be abusive or willfully negligent, but rather found themselves in bad situations out of their control and died, leaving jason to fend for himself.

in the most simplest way what i mean is willis todds self sacrificing actions of turning to crime in order to provide for jason and catherine is the key defining part of jasons life and why he views bruce's love for him as 'not enough'.

(of course, the actual proof of this is like. one single panel and its not even said by jason. however i think it is something that can be found in jasons character through other, less obvious situations.)

in jasons initial (public) return to gotham and that long and convoluted plan to mess around with batman psychology to get the two of them and the joker in the same place, it all seems like a well planned out revenge story until the final conversation:

Batman: Under the Red Hood

it always stood out to me, not just because of how absolutely heart wrenching the entire moment is (definitely read utrh if you haven't, at least once), but because it really gives you an insight into what love and loving someone means to jason.

to him it's an all encompassing responsibility. this idea that love is something that you need to be able to prove by the quantitive value of what you'll sacrifice for it. in this case, jason is saying i love you" in the way he truly believes gets across how much he means it; i would kill the person who hurt you.

whenever i read this part of utrh, another situation immediately pops into my mind. and that's when jason found out two-face had killed willis todd.

Batman #411

upon finding out two-face had killed willis, jason goes on a brief grief filled rampage, swearing he'll kill him for what he did. it's important to note that up until now, jason had assumed willis was still in prison, only to find out he was actually murdered.

again, it's this idea that love is the extremes you'll go to for family. jason was well aware of willis' less than legal means to make money, and even bruce makes a mention of it in.

Batman: A death in the family

i imagine, like a lot of what fuels jason to fight crime now, guilt is a major deciding factor in a lot of his choices. it's this guilt that he feels upon hearing about willis' death that makes him take it out on two-face. it's even guilt that plays a huge factor even in new 52 stories (such as Cheer).

so when he returns to gotham, or even before that, just hearing about what bruce had done following his death (locking the joker up instead of killing him, taking in tim as his robin) were, to him, clear evidence that he did not love jason in any way that mattered. that bruce did not love jason as much as jason loved him.

because loving him means giving up your morals. loving him means sacrificing your health and your time and your safety.

but bruce didn't do any of that in a way jason could see.

i imagine to someone like jason, who lost every parental figure in some capacity, whether it be to illness or crime or something else entirely, the evident disregard for him was as painful as any rejection could have been.

a lot of how jason feels and acts can be seen in much more interesting ways if we all look at him for he is; an unreliable narrator. he is missing huge chunks of story, especially when it comes to bruce, and has no choice but to act irrationally on the little truth he does know.

of course we the readers, and some other characters, know just how hard jasons death was for bruce. how destructively he mourned for his son.

but again, the surface level proof of it is not enough for jason, who's entire life has been love through sacrifice. but now, it's a sacrifice bruce can not ever give him.

Batman: Under the Red Hood

#<- he who is not normal about pre new 52 willis todd #its the first time im getting this thought written out properly so i hope it makes sense #jason is just such an emotionally complicated character #but he was also a child #which is the one thing everyone seems to forget #bruce wayne #jason todd #willis todd #dc meta #character study #saki anons

[fallout4-reacts]

How would the companions react to seeing a pre-war picture of Sole (maybe a wedding photo?) and realizing Sole lost a lot of weight since— and not a healthy amount, like going from muscular to thin?

I imagine Sole rolling their eyes and being overly snarky It's never easy to discuss a person's weight, and having undergone a major weight fluctuation (but rather the reverse) over the last two years, I can attest that when others want to discuss it with us, we do not want looool

That's said, thank you for the fun!

Cait : "Was that really you? You'd have been a powerhouse in the arena! But tell me, how did you lose so much weight?"

"Radiation. All HS cars."

"The…cars?"

"These funny metal carcasses all over the landscape—we used to use them to get from place to place instead of walking in the desert for hours as soon as we were called somewhere."

"Walking! It's true that there's not a lot of fat in the corner. But what about the muscles?"

"Probably the 200-year nap."

"That makes sense."

Codsworth : "At the time, I felt like I was doing a good job taking care of you. I can only watch you melt like snow in the sun now, no matter what I do."

"You've never seen any snow."

"My data strips provide me with precise information. It's comparable to your weight decrease."

"Sliding into enemy camps is easy like this."

"I'll make you a delectable brahmin steak. With mashed tatos. And I think the cook hid some oil in the storage room."

Curie : "It's completely unhealthy to have lost so much body mass index in such a short period of time."

"200 years."

"In so little real time."

"Radioactive food."

"This public health issue must be addressed."

Danse (romanced) : "You were such a juicy piece of meat!" He casts a glance towards Sole, quickly realising his blunder. "Not that you aren't... I mean… Understand that you are perfectly fine as you are, yet regaining some of your prior mass would not be a bad thing. That doesn't imply you're not appealing. I mean…"

"Stop causing yourself pain, Danse. I'm not foolish; I realised that I shed about 100 pounds in the last year... way of speaking."

"But nonetheless... It would be a first to have a soldier who did not require a frame to wear power armor."

"It really wasn't that bad."

"Let them come, super-mutants; I'll have my super-Sole!"

"I never realized how dense you could be."

Deacon : "Have you had any surgery or something? I'd like to see a doctor that can transform someone's shape like that. What's your trick?"

"Radiation? Going for a walk in the desert? Low carbohydrate, high radiation diet?"

"The grand total. I guess I won't be able to compete at that level."

"The Brotherhoods have a weight room— 

"Why don’t you use it? You might get a terrifying figure back for a super-mutant!"

"I make use of it."

"I believe I've been asked to the headquarters."

Dogmeat : Doesn’t even know what it’s about. Sniffs around and doesn’t pay attention to the picture on the wall.

Elder Maxson (romanced) : "We need more soldiers of this size. Have you considered trying to restore that lost mass?"

"Lack of butter in the corner."

"Of what, exactly? Still, I'm going to ask Cade to take a closer look at you; you can't be in this condition because of something healthy."

"Does my condition bother you?"

"Not at all," he strategically retreated, realising his mistake.

Hancock (romanced) : "No way, it ain't you." He gets a good dose of Jet and details the picture better. "Them eyes. Yeah, I think I can see. The peepers are identical. Damn, you were a whole snack. What's the sitch?"

"War, bombs, the current Commonwealth, lack of food, the never-ending race to stay alive, lack of sleep, lack of food, running—

"OK, I get it. If you ever decide to lounge in Goodneighbor for good, I got you - no more running and you can grub all you want. I'd damn myself to get my hands on those love handles."

Gage : "I've seen what hunger and drugs can do to a human being, but this is the brightest example."

"I don't take that many drugs."

"Enough to lose, oh, what, 100 pounds?"

"And it has nothing to do with walking a thousand miles through the desert with only a piece of dry meat in your pocket for any meal."

"I'll speak with Mason. He can give his Overboss his meat weight. We’ll round those calves right up."

"I'd almost be offended. Did you ever wonder whether it was my wish?"

"Look at that!" With the back of his palm, he hits the portrait. "That's you, Overboss!"

"Okay, this time I'm being insulted."

MacCready : "So, people used to be really spoiled, huh?"

"Yeah, a little. Radiation-free steak, buttered potatoes, and a car for long journeys."

"Car? These things were long trips? How much long?"

"How far can you imagine a distance?"

"The farthest I know is the Capital Wasteland."

"A few hours' drive."

"Wow, okay, but we don't get to the capital every day."

"It took me eight hours to get from Sanctuary to Diamond City... with a piece of dry meat and a bottle of hot water. Not exactly the best diet for mounting a titan frame."

"Well, the muscles are still there; they're just... dry."

Nick (romanced) : He spends so much time in front of the picture that Sole becomes concerned.

"Nick?"

"It's sad..."

"What exactly is sad?"

"You looked so joyful and good in that photograph. And all that, all that mess."

"You know, I can't deny everything I've gained since."

"However, it wouldn't hurt to regain some forms. The Brobovs, you know, don't just serve bad booze; they also have a fine menu, and the butcher provides them with good meat for the chefs. You should go there more frequently."

"Caps, Nick. Caps."

"So, from time to time, we'll take a break from our investigations to go hunting. It will not be said that you will remain skeletal in my custody if we can do otherwise."

Piper : "Are you kidding me? It can't possibly be you. Is it?"

"It is."

"But you were so... How could that have happened?"

"Radiation, starvation, and constant walking through the desert."

"Damn you. Perhaps we should write an article to distinguish healthy lifestyles from those who—

"It's getting really cliché, the way you always look for an article to write about everything."

"Eh! I'm not always looking for new subjects to write about."

"You asked a settler about his impressions of radiation storms!"

"It is critical to take the pulse of the people. But first, let's get back to our radsheeps and your...weight loss."

"Subject closed."

"Sooooole!"

"Subject.Closed."

Preston : "That's a significant weight loss."

"A little, yeah."

"And all in less than a year? It’s almost incredible that you’re in shape."

"Fit enough to have pulled you out of the clutches of the raiders when we first met."

Preston smiles slightly as he recalls this incident. Then he removes the frame from the wall.

"This goes straight to the castle vaults."

"Have you ever heard of the concept of private property?"

"History has no private property, and this picture is now part of the Minutemen's history."

"But do so without hesitation," Sole says, hardly masking his annoyance.

Strong : "Puny human not so puny back then."

"No, I wasn't at all."

"Why not stronger?"

"Aaaaah, that's a long story."

"Boring. Eat well. Eat more. Stronger, like before."

"I'll give it a shot..."

X6-88 : "It's incredible that Father's parent were so... well-developed. Specifically observing you today."

"I'm not sure if that's meant to be a compliment or an insult."

"A statement. Certainly, your former self had physical characteristics worth highlighting."

"I'm still not sure if it's a compliment or an insult."

"What I'm saying is that a physical threat like that would require significantly less protection. In what circumstances did you evolve into... that?"

With a dismissive gesture, he indicates Sole's current smaller size.

"All right, I get it now. That is an insult. You won't get an explanation just for the sake of it."

X6 sighs. "As you like. Now that we have squandered sufficient time contemplating the remnants of the past, it's appropriate for us to continue on towards our current objective."

#fallout 4 #fallout 4 companions #fallout #fallout 4 reactions #fallout 4 react #fallout companions #fo4 #sole survivor #danse #deacon #cait #fallout 4 curie #curie #piper wright #preston garvey #nick valentine #codsworth #danse fallout 4 #maccready #paladin danse #fo4 danse #fo4 deacon #deacon fallout #deacon fallout 4 #deacon fo4 #fallout 4 deacon #fallout deacon #dogmeat #elder maxson #arthur maxson

[dismemberment-on-a-tuesday-night]

Eden part twenty-one

TW: emotional breakdown, agoraphobia, Stockholm Syndrome, trauma, abusive relationships, forgiveness, referenced stalking, referenced major character deaths, pet whumpee, creepy/intimate whumper

As it turned out, all of Ezra's attempts to track down Christopher were totally worthless. Stalking was certainly outside of his skillset, which didn't particularly surprise him.

He managed to banish the thoughts of Stockholm Syndrome and "whump" spurred on by Tumblr, and avoided the site altogether for some time. No point opening old wounds.

His skills at compartmentalization and mild denial kept him sane, or at least tricked him into thinking he was. But other issues still plagued him, even when he managed to bury any thought of Christopher.

His once mild agoraphobia had clearly spiraled out of control after his kidnapping, along with several debts. He chose to ignore the crippling debt for the time being in favor of dealing with his mental health issues.

Agoraphobia first. Stockholm Syndrome second. Debt last.

Even though it terrified him, he forced himself to go out in public. Nothing dramatic, just walking around the block to a coffee shop so he could prove himself capable of existing in public.

Talking to the barista was far more stressful than he had anticipated, and he stumbled over his order multiple times before finally communicating that he wanted a latte with lavender flavor. He hastily handed over a few crumpled dollar bills and dropped the returned change in the tip jar.

Why he had chosen to subject himself to yet more lavender was a mystery to Ezra. He had never liked it before meeting Christopher, but now he was torn between craving it as a source of nostalgic comfort and wanting to put it in a new setting to divorce it from his past trauma.

He collected his drink when the barista was done making it, and forced himself to sit down at one of the tables instead of high tailing it back to his apartment. The cafe was pleasant enough, with flowers on the tables and soft music playing.

While it tasted far different than the lavender tea he had grown used to drinking, the smell and taste of his coffee sent him straight back to Christopher's home. He forced himself to breathe, clutching the table to ground himself in reality. He had to get used to real life.

Christopher wasn't coming back. That was final.

Unfortunately for Ezra, Christopher was quite intent on returning to his life, and had decided to confront him in a public space.. So while Ezra's grounding techniques would have served him well otherwise, they failed immediately when Christopher sat down across from him.

Ezra couldn't understand how Christopher looked so similar in such a wildly different context. If Ezra tuned out his surroundings, he could easily imagine that he was staring at him across their dining room table.

Christopher smiled warmly. "Hello, my dear Ezra."

"Hi s- Christopher." Ezra tried for a practiced smile, just as he had all those weeks ago in Christopher's bathroom mirror. But it crumpled within seconds, and he burst into tears. "Oh god…"

"Breathe," Christopher said soothingly, gently squeezing Ezra's hand. "It's alright. I'm here now. My dear Ezra, you have no idea how happy I am to see you. I spent days searching the woods for you before checking if you might have gotten home…"

"I'm sorry," Ezra sobbed, all emotional progress made over the last few days utterly failing him. "I'm so sorry, sir. I didn't mean to run away. I panicked. It was an accident."

"I'm the one who should be apologizing," Christopher said gently. "I should have never put you in the position I did. Bringing poor Jay into our home, or even allowing Colt's conduct towards them in the first place, was the worst mistake of my life. I don't blame you for running away."

This was everything Ezra had ever wanted to hear from Christopher. An apology wrapped in layers of forgiveness for all of Ezra's mistakes. Just as comforting as Christopher had always proven himself to be.

Despite his overwhelming relief and joy, Ezra still felt compelled to ruin the moment, pouring out all the resentment he didn't know he had. Surely some misguided attempt to take control of his situation.

"You really fucked up," he said shakily. "I wish that we could have been happy, how we were in the beginning. But your fiance blew that all to hell. I don't know what you ever saw in that man, unless you just wanted to fix him the same way you tried to fix me."

"You're absolutely right," Christopher said, still holding Ezra's hand. "I have to take responsibility for my mistakes. Trying to fix men who never wanted to recover in the first place. Putting up with their violence against myself and others. It hurts to admit, but I owe you that much."

"Jay deserved better. But I'm glad they're dead, because they were never going to get better. That's not your fault, or mine, but I have to say it."

"Two lives were just cut short because of my mistakes. But you're still alive, so I owe you an apology above anyone else. I'm truly sorry, my dear Ezra."

Ezra choked back a sob. "You're the only person who ever cared about me. The real me, not some front I put up. Even if your idea of love is screwed up, and you thought rohypnol was the right way to win me over."

"Ezra…" Christopher took a deep breath. "I won't deny that I was possessive and obsessive. I wanted to give you everything you had always deserved, and to be the sole love in your life. That was unfair, and only caused you more pain."

"Why are you so good to me?" Ezra croaked, voicing the doubts that had plagued his heart since the day he met Christopher. "Even if you did screw up. You're still so good. I've never done anything to deserve it."

"Everyone deserves love. And you, my dear Ezra, are an intelligent and kind hearted young man, who I am blessed to have gotten to know so well. You deserve all the happiness in the world, whether I am the one to provide it or someone else entirely. I love you."

"I love you too," Ezra said, fighting back tears. "More than I've ever loved anyone. I'm sorry for getting so upset with you. I'm just having a really rough time."

"You don't owe me an apology," Christoper said. "I already told you that you didn't do anything wrong. You have every right to be upset with me. I don't hold it against you."

"Please take me home," Ezra begged, completely disregarding his friends' warnings and his own life lessons. "I can't stand being a person. I just want to be your pet again. Real life hurts so much. I've missed you more than I've ever missed anyone in my life. I want our Eden back."

Christopher stared at him in disbelief for a moment, before nodding solemnly. "I'm done keeping you against your will. This is entirely your decision.. But if it's what you truly want, I would like nothing more than a second chance."

Ezra rose from his chair, and Christopher stood up after him. After a moment's hesitation, fighting back his doubts and fear, Ezra collapsed into Christopher's open arms. He melted into the warm embrace as easily as he always did, allowing the scent of lavender to envelop him once more.

He didn't care what his breakdown must have looked like to the other people in the coffee shop. The only thought on his mind was that he was finally going home. Back to where things made sense, and he would have all the safety and comfort in the world.

Taglist: @hugh-lauries-bald-spot @thedarkmongoose @whumpsday @whump-by-robin @kira-the-whump-enthusiast @annablogsposts @whumpshaped @seetheothersideofparadise @knittedeyebrowsandcardigans @whatwasmyprevioususername @boonasaurusrex @suspicious-whumping-egg @heavenlyeden @melancholy-in-the-morning @snakebites-and-ink @suck-my-clit-loser @i-eat-worlds @scp-1296 @chiswhumpcorner @skittles-the-whumpee @whumpkinz @dokidokisadness @enbygesserit @canislycaon24 @be-gay-do-crime-ahaha @a-crumb-of-whump @pixelated-whump

#Abraham original: Hot off the press #Eden #Whump #Pet whump #Whump writing #Whump series #Pet whumpee #Creepy/intimate whumper #Willing recapture

[sanguinifex]

Losing my mind at how Big Tobacco kept it secret for years that smoking causes cancer

And then how when everyone else finally found out bc everyone was like “wtf why are all these people in their 60s dying of lung cancer,” they got away with no penalties except having to put warning labels on their products and all tobacco taxes and higher insurance premiums fell on the consumers they’d deliberately gotten addicted to their cancer sticks as in they spent billions of dollars of advertising worldwide to get people hooked

And then just when it was starting to look like public health was about to win the war on smoking, they rolled out vapes and used the exact same playbook they had with cigarettes, as in they knew their products were dangerous and they lied that they were safe and heavily marketed their toxic lung destroyers to kids. And they’ve STILL faced no penalties. The companies didn’t get nationalized and forced to only make the least dangerous products possible that could still contain nicotine and that looked like unappealing medical devices. Nobody’s gone to prison. No company or individual has paid a single significant fine. They haven’t even had to settle a serious lawsuit.

I cannot stress how uncool smoking had gotten by 2010, around when the first commercially successful vapes hit the market. I knew so few people my age who smoked that I could count them on one hand. Nobody in the honors/AP program smoked. Smoking was seen by the vast majority of teenagers as something nasty and smelly and seriously stupid and uncool that maybe your parents or grandparents did, as old people stuff like being bad at computers or buying single-ply toilet paper.

The public health campaigns and the warning labels and the posters in the pediatricians’ offices had worked. It was all set up to be the greatest public health victory since routine childhood vaccination. The public health people were already doing victory laps. But, like a bacterium that discovers how to resist an antibiotic, Big Tobacco developed a new addictive product and a new marketing strategy.

Vapes weren’t marketed very much to adult smokers, not at first. Like, the first couple products did that, and also tried to look as close to real cigarettes as possible, but adult smokers were primarily older, suspicious of new tech, knew Big Tobacco had knowingly gotten them hooked on an unsafe product before and didn’t trust them, and probably most saliently, other nicotine replacement products like gums and patches, plus a couple of meds that make the cravings less bad or something, already existed.

No, the first effective vape marketing focused on kids. This was legal because all the laws focused on tobacco leaf products; you had to be 18 to buy tobacco replacement products, but ones that are approved by the FDA have to be unappealing to tobacco-naive consumers.

From everything I’ve heard, nicotine gum tastes terrible, and it it’s packaged like medicine (I found some at a relative’s house when I was a kid, and it was about as appealing to children as prescription antibiotics pills, in fact less so because it wasn’t colored). Because nicotine patches are FDA approved, it’s illegal to make ones that look like cute stickers that middle school children would love.

Big Tobacco realized that this was a problem, and decided to forgo FDA approval as a smoking cessation device, even while positioning to regulators and the adult public that it was one and the FDA just had too much red tape, and marketed vapes heavily to children. They designed vape pens to look like school supplies and cell phone power banks instead of like cigarettes. They marketed them to the kids who were in middle school and late elementary in 2010. They marketed them as a legal high, fun flavors, told them the vapor clouds were cool like skateboard tricks, and perhaps most importantly, sold vapes as something that was different from smoking and also as safe as chewing gum.

By 2014, per the CDC, vapes were the most used tobacco product among US adolescents. By 2016, when I graduated college, vapes were already not an uncommon sight in bars, though most people preferred cigs in the few bars that allowed smoking; by the time I started going back to bars after the pandemic became less dangerous, every fourth or fifth person was sucking on a vape.

The kids who were toddlers in 2010 are in high school now. Per data from 2022, 14.1% of them vape. That doesn’t sound like a lot, but put it this way: in a typical class size of 30, there’s 4-5 kids who vape either socially or habitually and are willing to admit it to federal researchers despite it being illegal for people their age to vape; that means there’s 2-3 more at minimum who won’t admit it, and likely several more who will take a puff if someone offers one in the school restroom or at a party, but who don’t currently have the money to develop a proper habit; most of those will get addicted within weeks of becoming old enough to get a work permit or their first college work-study, not to mention also becoming old enough to buy vapes at a store instead of from a dealer. That’s nearly half the class! The kids know it’s unhealthy, but they think it’s like ice cream is unhealthy, not the way shooting up a cocktail of meth and tranq dope with a dirty needle is unhealthy.

Capitalism literally causes cancer. The vapes weren’t safe; they cause heart attacks, strokes, and horrifying lung damage. They cause them far sooner than cigarettes do. We don’t know anything about the cancer risk yet, but I suspect that will show up in another 10 to 20 years, and that it may be different from and/or more virulent than cancers caused by traditional tobacco products. Or it may be fewer cancers but weirder ones. We simply don’t have the data yet.

Big Tobacco got another generation hooked on a killer, and capitalism let it. The execs are still eating $500 meals at Michelin-star restaurants instead of prison food. We should change that.

[beardedmrbean]

Annalisa Lombardo, Haiti country director at Welthungerhilfe, a non-governmental aid agency, has been living in the Caribbean nation for 15 years. Asked why she is still in Haiti considering the many crises it has faced over the years, she told DW: "I call this country home, fell in love with its people, they are my people, moun pam, as they say in Creole, and I am not ready to turn my back on them."

Lombardo did, however, close the Welthungerhilfe office in the capital, Port-au-Prince, earlier this week for security reasons.

"I decided that, as a matter of precaution, none of our colleagues should take the risk to traveling the road," she told DW.

"Taking the road used to be risky because of kidnappings, hold ups, stray bullets when there are clashes between gang members and the police, but lately — as the tension has grown, also because if you happen to cut through a neighborhood that is not yours and somebody believe[s] you look suspicious — you risk being lynched for no further reasons."

UN issues stark warning

Over a dozen suspected gang members were lynched in Port-au-Prince by a mob on Monday. The attack happened in public and in broad daylight. According to Haitian media, an enraged mob forced individuals off a bus before stoning them and ultimately burning them alive.

The incident marks yet another level of escalation to the violence that has rocked the Haiti for months. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has gone so far as to call for international forces to be dispatched to Haiti to restore order. In the latest UN report on Haiti, Guterres even warned that insecurity in Port-au-Prince "has reached levels comparable to countries in armed conflict."

Lombardo sees no way out of the crisis. Several weeks ago, Welthungerhilfe in Haiti joined other organizations such as Care, Plan International and World Vision in publishing a desperate appeal calling on the international community to send help.

Lombardo told DW they want to see humanitarian intervention. "The re-establishment of the state of law is a necessity, she said, adding that the security of the city neighborhoods, of strategic points such as the fuel terminals and major roads, also needs to be ensured."

A desperately poor country

Lombardo can rattle off countless figures that illustrate the full extent of the misery that is blighting the impoverished country. Nearly half of Haiti's 11.5 million people depend on humanitarian assistance. Some 90% of Haitians in rural areas live below the poverty line, according to the World Bank, with almost one in four living in extreme poverty.

Cholera has flared up again, too, with 670 deaths and 35,000 suspected cases so far — mostly among children. Only about half of households in rural areas have access to clean drinking water, and open defecation is still practiced by about a third of the rural population, exposing people to significant health risks.

As if the humanitarian situation were not worrying enough, the country is experiencing ever more extreme violence. Marauding gangs have a chokehold on Port-au-Prince in particular.

The UN's Special Representative for Haiti, Maria Isabel Salvador, even flew to New York to brief the Security Council on the current situation and present the UN report. 

Gang violence is surging at "an alarming rate in areas previously considered relatively safe" in Port-au-Prince, she said at the briefing on Wednesday. Compared to the first quarter of 2022, criminal incidents — homicide, rape, kidnappings and lynching — more than doubled in the same period in 2023 to 1,647, she said, citing figures from Haitian police and the UN.

According to the report, rooftop snipers "frequently fired at people in their residences or in the streets." It also cites attack in which a 16-year-old girl was raped by multiple gang members in broad daylight, one of dozens of documented attacks.

The report finds children are often abducted near schools, then forced to shuttle munitions to warring gang members, load weapons or carry out attacks.

The gang violence is also affecting people's access to essential services. For example, the Albert Schweitzer Hospital, which serves about 700,000 people, had to suspend services two months ago due to security risks, according to the UN report, released on April 14.

Around 130,000 internally displaced people are currently scattered throughout the capital city, the report says, which also documents the fates of hundreds of pregnant and nursing women deported back to Haiti after fleeing east to the Dominican Republic.

Gangs in charge

In 2010, Haiti endured what remains the most devastating earthquake of the 21st century. According to official figures, 316,000 people lost their lives. Today, the country finds itself in yet another catastrophic situation: One that started when President Jovenel Moise was assassinated in his private villa in July 2021. The interim government of Prime Minister Ariel Henry, who also serves as acting president, lacks popular support and protests have become a daily occurrence.

Moreover, seven large gang associations have banded together to take advantage of the resulting power vacuum, according to Haitian authorities. The UN estimates gangs control 60% of Port-au-Prince whereas locals say they are in charge everywhere. The situation led Henry to call for an armed foreign intervention six months ago.

"The latest president in particular has been fiercely opposed during his entire mandate. The president, on his side, did very little to find a compromise, but, on the other side, he had a quite diverse, incoherent and anarchic movement opposing him," said Lombardo from Welthungerhilfe. "Unfortunately, that kind of movement cannot express clear leadership, on the contrary, its anarchy opened the way to a common practice in Haiti, to arm gangs to impose oneself, to the point that the situation went out of control."

Nation breaking up

Lombardo said she has been unable to get much sleep lately because she is repeatedly woken up by nightly gunfire. Such fighting has almost become the new normal in Port-au-Prince. Not long ago, Lombardo received a video showing a primary school near the capital whose walls riddled with bullets and with students lying on the floor in complete panic.

Hait's future looks bleak, Lombardo said. "I feel we are already racing full-speed towards my worst-case scenario. Somebody has already used the noun 'Somalia-ization' to describe the current situation in which we witness the process of territorial fragmentation and a government's failure to establish authority — with all the consequences that has for poverty and human rights violations."

#nunyas news

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Leor Sapir

Published: Feb 27, 2024

The U.S. Endocrine Society (ES) is updating its clinical practice guidelines on “gender-affirming care.” ES, however, appears to be putting its thumb on the scale in favor of medical interventions by appointing experts with serious conflicts of interest to its guideline-development group, ignoring its own standards for how to write trustworthy medical recommendations, and trying to keep the process hidden from the public.

On January 4, Yahoo! Finance reported that ES had decided to appoint John Pang, a surgeon from Align Surgical Associates, Inc., a California-based clinic that specializes in “gender-affirming” surgeries, to its Guideline Development Panel tasked with updating its existing gender medicine guidelines. Because the article concerned Pang and a colleague at Align who was appointed contributing editor at the prestigious journal Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, and not the ES guideline group, it flew under the radar of those of us following the U.S. gender medicine debate.

Two weeks ago, a colleague alerted me to the Yahoo article, and I decided to write about what was going on at ES. On Wednesday, February 21, I sent the ES media-relations team a notice of my intent to write about the new guideline group and included a list of questions about their process, why they hadn’t made it public, and what they were doing to manage conflicts of interest. I pointed out a 2022 article in which ES explained its commitment to increase transparency and adopt a more rigorous method of guideline development, and asked whether they were planning to adhere to the standards announced in that article. I asked them to respond by Monday, February 26, at 5:00 p.m. EST—a request from which they could reasonably infer that my article would run in the following day or two.

I received no response, but on Monday, at 5:48 pm EST—less than an hour after that deadline passed—CNN published an article by Jen Christensen, a reporter and vice president of NLGJA: The Association of LGBTQ+ Journalists, titled “First on CNN: Major Medical Society Re-Examines Clinical Guidelines for Gender-Affirming Care.” The article is yet another puff piece for the controversial medical treatments and celebrates ES’s role in promoting them. In fact, it’s a particularly lazy puff piece. Christensen makes the usual unsubstantiated claims about “medical necessity” and “evidence-based individualized care,” not mentioning why European countries have taken a more cautious approach. The short piece reads like it was put together hastily—almost in a state of panic. Christensen quotes Joshua Safer, a WPATH endocrinologist chairing the guideline-development group, who assures her that “we’ve been following our usual guideline process that we apply to anything that we do, whether it’s diabetes or thyroid etc., to transgender medical care.”

Did ES panic about being exposed for something that it was apparently trying to keep quiet—and get in touch with an allied journalist at a major news outlet, one whom it knew would toe the activist line and vouch for its process? Obviously, I can’t prove that such a thing happened, but the timing of the CNN piece certainly seems suspicious—as does Safer’s unprompted assurance that ES is following its own guideline-development procedures. What exactly is ES up to?

While gender clinicians frequently tout the consensus among almost two dozen American medical associations in favor of pediatric sex-trait modification, ES is one of only three groups (the others being the American Academy of Pediatrics and the World Professional Association for Transgender Health) to have issued treatment recommendations based on cited research. ES’s current guidelines, published in 2017, recommend pubertal suppression and hormonal treatments for adolescents, despite recognizing the “low” or “very low” quality of evidence supporting these recommendations.

Experts have questioned the soundness of ES’s guidelines. Last year, Gordon Guyatt, a world-renowned expert in evidence-based medicine at McMaster University in Canada, told the British Medical Journal that ES’s 2017 guidelines have “serious problems.” Similarly, of a panel of six evidence-evaluation and guideline-development experts convened in 2021, only one concluded that ES’s guidelines were trustworthy in their current form.

For reasons not entirely clear, ES’s 2017 clinical practice guidelines made recommendations on behalf of surgery, not just hormonal interventions, and the appointment of a plastic surgeon to its guidelines panel suggests that it might do so again.

The appointment of Align Surgical’s John Pang undoubtedly constitutes a major conflict of interest. The most obvious type of conflict of interest is financial. Pang’s practice, and by extension Pang himself, stand to benefit directly from a recommendation to provide gender-affirming surgeries. (The practice specializes in unusual genital surgeries such as “nullification,” “penis-preserving vaginoplasty,” and “vagina-preserving phalloplasty.”) Moreover, hormonal treatments are often a steppingstone to surgery. A 2018 study led by Johanna Olson-Kennedy, a prominent “gender-affirming” clinician, found that girls’ discomfort with their breasts (“chest dysphoria”) increased with every month they were on testosterone. The researchers noted “a common clinical phenomenon” in which “a honeymoon period after testosterone initiation . . . quickly becomes eclipsed by the greater disparity between a more masculine presentation and a female chest contour.” Thus, even recommendations on behalf of hormones would likely benefit Pang and his employer. Conversely, if the data indicate that, for example, mastectomies for minors are not a beneficial intervention, or that surgeries should be provided only after extensive evaluations, Pang’s practice stands to lose business.

Align Surgical promises clients that it is “quite adept at working with most insurance plans.” Public and private insurance programs usually cover procedures (and under Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act may be compelled to do so) when these are considered “medically necessary.” A strong recommendation from ES on behalf of hormones and surgeries would help ensure that clients can access the expensive and experimental procedures that Align Surgical performs. Insurance companies can then spread risk and recover costs by raising premiums for everyone else.

Evidence-based medicine also recognizes nonfinancial conflicts of interest. A leading textbook on evidence-based medicine notes, for example, that such nonfinancial conflicts “may have even greater effect than financial conflicts,” and “include intellectual conflicts (e.g., previous publication of studies relevant to a recommendation or strongly held views) and professional conflicts (e.g., radiologists making recommendations about breast cancer screening or urologists recommending prostate cancer screening).” Pang, a member of the hormone- and surgery-promoting World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), has both financial and intellectual conflicts. He has published research supportive of medical interventions. One of his studies, for example, which examines whether estrogen use in trans-identified males increases risk for perioperative complications, concluded that “estrogen [hormone therapy] suspension is not necessary for the transfeminine patient undergoing gender-affirming surgery.”

Ideally, a guideline-development committee would be free of conflicts. The panel would include experts in research methods and evidence evaluation as well as subject-area experts. In practice, however, including subject-area experts on such committees almost always introduces intellectual conflicts of interest, requiring committees to balance competing perspectives. This doesn’t always happen, of course; recently, we learned that the World Health Organization convened a guideline-development group on “gender-affirming” hormones and gender self-identification that was made up almost entirely of advocates for hormones and gender self-identification. Of the 21 empaneled experts, 17 had significant conflicts of interest.

A 2022 article, “Enhancing the Trustworthiness of the Endocrine Society’s Clinical Practice Guidelines,” published in ES’s Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, laid out ES’s intended steps to ensure that its guideline-development process was more transparent and methodologically rigorous. Explicitly noting the trade-off between subject-area expertise and minimizing actual or perceived bias, ES adopted the National Academy of Medicine’s recommended standards, which prefer a more aggressive conflict-of-interest management strategy, even if this means loss of subject-area expertise. ES’s clinical guidelines committee, which oversaw the policy change, “trust[ed] that its guidelines [would] achieve full credibility via methodological rigor and transparency.” Assuming ES’s current panel is made up of experts who share Pang’s opinions and have similar conflicts, it is almost certain to make recommendations that contradict the direction or strength of the evidence.

In evidence-based medicine, “discordant recommendations” are recommendations in favor of an intervention where evidence for that intervention’s safety and efficacy is weak. Such recommendations are generally discouraged, but a number of scenarios exist where they are acceptable.

An example of such a scenario is when non-treatment with a proposed intervention is likely to lead to death. Despite repeated claims about “trans youth” being at high risk of suicide if not given access to hormones and surgeries, evidence suggests that the elevated rates of suicide and suicidality (the two are distinct) in this population are very likely due to coexisting mental health problems, which are extremely common among the trans-identified, and not because of gender dysphoria or transgender “minority stress.” A recently published Finnish study, arguably the most important so far on the question of gender medicine in relation to suicide, shows that suicide is, thankfully, a very rare event and is better explained by the comorbid conditions. Last year, ES’s president drew criticism from 21 international experts when he used the “suicide prevention” narrative to defend his organization’s approach. As noted by Guyatt, a major flaw of ES’s 2017 guideline is that it did not invoke any of the exceptions that would justify the “discordant recommendations,” making its guideline non-transparent and untrustworthy.

In evidence-based medicine, recommendations for or against treatment are never based on studies alone; patients’ “values and preferences” are also relevant. Values and preferences are especially important where the quality of evidence is poor. Ideally, the ES guideline panel’s members would rely on high-quality research on the values and preferences of those who experience or are candidates for a medical intervention. In gender medicine, however, patients’ values and preferences have not been systematically researched. Instead, those preferences are conveyed to survey proctors by clinicians who are themselves “gender-affirming” and who believe strongly in the value of hormonal and surgical interventions. This introduces a serious risk of bias in the characterization of values and preferences.

ES’s 2017 guidelines for adolescents prioritized “avoiding an unsatisfactory physical outcome” over “avoiding potential harm from early pubertal suppression”—likely an assumption about how the most determined and satisfied trans-identified adult patients would rank these two outcomes. A more rigorous guideline-development process would systematically collect evidence of values and preferences from all individuals who go through transition procedures as minors and from parents who are involved in these decisions, not just from patients who happened to come out satisfied.

Such a process would track outcomes into adulthood to see whether or how these values and preferences change. For example, the values and preferences of a 20-year-old woman who had a double mastectomy at age 16 may change a decade later, when the meaning of her inability to breastfeed begins to dawn on her. The same goes for teenagers who give up their future fertility, believing “I can always adopt.” In a recently presented Dutch research study, 20 percent to 30 percent of the respondents in the carefully chosen cohort indicated that they regret having lost their fertility. A significant number are single and in their thirties.

Assembling a guideline-development panel of experts with different viewpoints is therefore necessary not only for a more objective assessment of the quality of evidence but also for a more rigorous examination of values and preferences. For example, a 2022 study published in the ES’s Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism found a hormone discontinuation rate of up to 30 percent—some of it possibly due to harms experienced from hormones. A panel that includes detransitioners and the clinicians who treat them will likely reach different conclusions than a panel in which only “affirming” clinicians and trans-identified patients are represented.

It’s noteworthy that most of the authors of ES’s 2017 clinical practice guidelines were also big names at WPATH. Two—Peggy Cohen-Kettenis and Louis Gooren—were Dutch pioneers of pediatric gender medicine. Despite the perception that ES and WPATH are separate entities, and that recommendations on behalf of “gender-affirming care” are not just made by trans advocacy groups but also by run-of-the-mill U.S. medical groups, the truth is that WPATH members used ES as a guise for embedding hormonal interventions as an accepted standard of care in the United States.

ES’s actions—which include repeated evasion of transparency and accountability, willingness to speak only with ideologically aligned journalists, and appointment of a president who is himself a gender clinician and whose views are out of step with those of his international colleagues—do not inspire confidence that its new guidelines will be ethical, trustworthy, and in accordance with well-established principles of evidence-based medicine.

#Leor Sapir #gender identity ideology #queer theory #gender ideology #The Endocrine Society #ideological corruption #medical corruption #medical scandal #gender affirming care #gender affirming healthcare #affirmation model #gender affirming #religion is a mental illness

[as-if-and-only-if]

BREAKING: ‘Morbius’ Wins Both Republican and Democratic Presidential Primaries

With 99 senators now registered as Morbius Omni-Representational Bicameralists (MORBs) and one Independent (Bernie Sanders, Vermont), the Morbius Act, which has already passed the House unanimously, is poised to be signed into law on Jan 20, 2024.

The primary wins came Thursday despite the fact that ‘Morbius’ is already planning to run under the MORB banner, serving to cement its victory in the upcoming presidential election and clearing the playing field of any major contenders.

Given that most Americans have already switched their party affiliation to MORB, voter turnout in the two primaries was low in absolute terms, yet in each case consisted of 100% of the remaining registered party members. Fraudulent ballots in favor of ‘Morbius’ were widespread, but did not change the outcome of either election, as both primaries were unanimous.

The Presidency will enable the long-awaited Morbius Act to become law, which has so far stalled in the senate due to lack of support from President Biden.

When MORB senators were asked why they do not simply use their supermajority to overpower a potential veto from President Biden, they replied simultaneously, with one voice: “WE WILL ALL MORB TOGETHER, PRESUMABLY WITH THE HELP OF OUR FRIEND BERNIE SANDERS AS WELL, OR NOT AT ALL.”

President Joe Biden could not be reached for comment, having last been seen entering an exclusive IMAX showing of ‘Morbius’ five months ago. White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre assured the public, who have been denied access to the theater for national security reasons, that he is still “in good health” and “just trying to take it all in.” No theater exit date has been announced, nor has the White House provided any update on the President’s stance on the Morbius act.

The President has historically been mostly negative when asked about the Morbius Act, calling it “a load of bunk. Just hogwash” and “not even scary, I’ll bet you anything.” When pressed after watching the film on Air Force One, the president admitted “I was maybe a little scared. Their faces, you know.” Two weeks later, the President entered the IMAX screening that he remains in to this day, saying in a statement just beforehand that he was “committed to doing whatever it takes to understand the needs of the American people.”

The President “did not seem to appreciate just the magnitude of its cultural impact, at least not quickly enough, and this definitely contributed to the Democratic Party’s unusual decision to hold a primary, I would say. It’s what lost me my race, too” said former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, who declares she is now “a certified Morbhead” and contributes to the ‘Morbius’ presidential campaign. She is still registered as a Democrat, but says “that doesn’t matter now. None of that matters now. It’s just Morbius from here on out. Make the government work for Morbi-Us!”

In the meantime, Americans are left to anxiously anticipate the beginning of ‘Morbing Time’, a state of uninterrupted and indefinite morbing that will begin as a direct consequence of the Morbius Act the moment it is signed into law.

Other consequences include the replacement of presidential portraits on existing legal tender with that of Jared Leto, the First Live Morbius; the design and minting of $17 bills, which will bear the portrait of Matt Smith; universal basic income, dubbed ‘Morb Money’; and a nationwide ballot to decide what the country’s new name should be. Voters will be able to choose between either ‘The United States of Amorbica’ or ‘Morbius’, with recent polls overwhelmingly favoring the latter.

—

Morby Morbius (formerly Wolf Blitzer) is a columnist for Morbius Tobay interested in Morbius, Morbing, and this wonderful, crazy group of people called Morbheads. He’s one of them! You can reach him at [email protected].

RELATED: How Morbius Are You? Find Your Morbiosity Wi…

#sometimes this is what Ritalin does to me if I have too much. jfc #when asked why Matt Smith would not be on an $11 bill #the writers of the Morbius act replied ‘THIS ISN’T ABOUT HIS OTHER WORK. THIS IS ABOUT HIS CONTRIBUTION TO MORBIUS #WE SYMBOLIZE THIS BY THE NUMBER 17 #WHICH IS HOW MANY TIMES HE BROKE DOWN DURING PRODUCTION SAYING ‘I CANT DO THIS PLEASE MAKE IT STOP’ #AND EACH TIME HE GOT BACK UP AND DELIVERED THE WORLD THE SECOND BEST PERFORMANCE IN ETERNITY #THE FIRST OF COURSE BEING GIVEN BY JARED LETO AS MORBIUS’

[sims-your-way]

Influential Black Women in History Framed Portraits

Black History Month Special. Set of framed portraits featuring just a handful of amazing influential Black women throughout history.

I was inspired to make this after watching The Watcher’s Puppet History episode on Bessie Coleman. Watch it for yourself here.  I was both angry and sad that I had never heard of this woman at all - ever. So I decided to make this portrait set featuring Black women who did extraordinary things that I don’t think the majority of people have ever heard of. This is why I didn’t include more well-known figures such as Harriet Tubman, Rosa Parks, Coretta Scott King, or Michelle Obama - everybody knows who they are and I wanted to broadened everyone’s knowledge just as mine was when I did my research. The only woman here that I knew of was Marsha P. Johnson.

Here’s a list of the women in these portraits: Phillis Wheatley (1753 - 1784) Fannie Barrier Williams (1855 - 1944) Maria 'Molly' Baldwin (1856 - 1922) Lillian Parker Thomas (1866 - 1917) Madam C.J. Walker (1867 - 1919) Mary McLeod Bethune (1875 - 1955) Nannie Helen Burroughs (1879 - 1961) Lyda D. Newman (about 1885 - unknown) Bessie Coleman (1892-1926) Daisy Bates (1914 - 1999) Sister Rosetta Tharpe (1915 - 1973) Katherine Johnson (1918 - 2020) Shirley Chisholm (1924 - 2005) Audre Lorde (1934 - 1992) Claudette Colvin (1939 - present) Angela Davis (1944 - present) Marsha P. Johnson (1945 - 1992) Mae Jemison (1956 - present)

To learn more about these women, click the “Keep Reading” below.

18 swatches available

base game compatible

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DOWNLOAD HERE (SimFileShare)

Phillis Wheatley (1753 - 1784) Taken from her native Gambia, she was brought to Boston in the mid-18th century and enslaved to the family of John Wheatley as a domestic. Aware of her intelligence, the Wheatley's taught her how to read and write. She eventually became a well-known poet in both New England and England, with her work "An Elegiac Poem, on the Death of that Celebrated Divine, and Eminent Servant of Jesus Christ, the Reverend and Learned George Whitefield," celebrated on both sides of the Atlantic. (Chicago Tribune)

Fannie Barrier Williams (1855 - 1944) She was an influential educator and activist who was a staunch advocate for freed slaves in the South. She spoke at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893, expressing her concern over the lack of Blacks on the Board of Control for that cultural event. She helped found organizations such as the National League of Colored Women, the National Association of Colored Women, and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. She also supported women's suffrage and in 1907, was the only African-American chosen to eulogize Susan B. Anthony at the 1907 National American Women Suffrage Association convention. (Chicago Tribune)

Maria 'Molly' Baldwin (1856 - 1922) She was a teacher and civic leader in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She became master of the Agassiz School, a public school for middle-class white children, in 1916. She was one of only two women masters in Cambridge schools and the only African-American in New England with that distinction. During Baldwin's tenure, the Agassiz School was considered one of the best in Cambridge. The 12 teachers who served under her were all white. (Chicago Tribune)

Lillian Parker Thomas (1866 - 1917) She gained a reputation as an effective collaborator and organizer while working as a journalist for the Indianapolis News, where she was the first African-American to write a regular column. Thomas used her contacts and influence at the newspaper to further the cause of racial equality. She was also involved in the founding of the Woman's Improvement Club, which helped African-Americans get health care. (Chicago Tribune)

Madam C.J. Walker (1867 - 1919) Before Mary Kay, there was Madam C.J. Walker. Walker is widely regarded as one of the first ever self-made American female millionaires. She created hair-care solutions and remedies with Black women in mind and sold them door-to-door. She eventually created a brand people recognized, widely manufactured her products, and hired 40,000 ambassadors since the company's inception to help her sell her products. (Teen Vogue)

Mary McLeod Bethune (1875 - 1955) After struggling to go to school and working on a plantation to help support her family, she became an educator and, in 1904, founded the Daytona Educational and Industrial Institute for Girls. Her educational activism and leadership set her up to be a political activist. She went on to found the National Council of Negro Women, and worked in Franklin D. Roosevelt's administration, where she served as the informal "race leader at large." (Teen Vogue)

Nannie Helen Burroughs (1879 - 1961) Born to former slaves in Virginia, she was a leading educator, feminist, and suffragist in the Washington, D.C., area. After she was rebuffed for a teaching job in the Washington, D.C., school system, Burroughs founded a school for girls and women, the National Training School for Women and Girls, in 1909. She served as the school's president until her death in 1961. (Chicago Tribune)

Lyda D. Newman (about 1885 - unknown) She gravitated toward a career involving the hair-care industry. Newman got a patent for her invention, the first synthetic hairbrush, in 1898. Her innovation allowed for easier access to the bristles in order to clean out the brush. In addition, she introduced synthetic bristles. Before her invention, brushes used animal hair, such as a boar’s. Her invention made brushing long locks a more hygienic process. (Teen Vogue)

Bessie Coleman (1892 - 1926) She was the first African-American woman and first Native American to hold a pilot license and was the first Black person to earn an international pilot's license. She then became a high-profile pilot doing notoriously dangerous air shows in the United States. She was popularly known as “Queen Bess” and “Brave Bessie”, and hoped to start a school for African-American fliers. Her pioneering role was an inspiration to early pilots and to the African-American and Native American communities. (Wikipedia)

Daisy Bates (1914 - 1999) She an American civil rights activist, publisher, journalist, and lecturer who played a leading role in the Little Rock Integration Crisis of 1957. As the leader of the NAACP branch in Arkansas, Bates guided and advised the nine students, known as the Little Rock Nine, when they attempted to enroll in 1957 at Little Rock Central High School, a previously all-white institution. (PBS)

Sister Rosetta Tharpe (1915 - 1973) She is one of the most influential artists of the 20th century. Her flamboyance, skill, and showmanship on the newly electrified guitar played a vital role in the conception of Rock & Roll as a genre of music. She gained popularity in the 1930s and 1940s with her gospel recordings, characterized by a unique mixture of spiritual lyrics and electric guitar. She was the first great recording star of gospel music, and was among the first gospel musicians to appeal to rhythm and blues and rock and roll audiences, later being referred to as "the original soul sister" and "the Godmother of rock and roll". She influenced early rock-and-roll musicians including Little Richard, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Eric Clapton. Tharpe was a pioneer in her guitar technique; she was among the first popular recording artists to use heavy distortion on her electric guitar, presaging the rise of electric blues. Her guitar-playing technique had a profound influence on the development of British blues in the 1960s. (PBS)

Katherine Johnson (1918 - 2020) She was profiled in the film “Hidden Figures” as a NASA mathematician whose trajectory calculations helped astronaut Alan Shepard become the first American in space. Her skills were crucial in calculating orbital equations that led to the success of astronaut John Glenn’s Friendship 7 mission in which he orbited the Earth successfully. Johnson also was a pathfinder in her native West Virginia, where she was among the first African-Americans to integrate West Virginia University. (Chicago Tribune)

Shirley Chisholm (1924 - 2005) She made history by being the first Black woman elected to Congress in 1968. She served as a representative from New York for 14 years, advocating for early education and child welfare policies. She eventually ran for president as a Democrat in the 1972 race, becoming the first Black candidate to run for a major party nomination. Chisholm's infamous campaign slogan was “unbought and unbossed." She was also one of the founding members of the Congressional Black Caucus in 1971, as well as the Congressional Women's Caucus in 1977. (Teen Vogue)

Audre Lorde (1934 - 1992) This lesbian, Black, female poet’s 1973 collection, “From a Land Where Other People Live”, was nominated for a National Book Award and increased America’s awareness of intersectionality of race, gender, and class that can put particular groups at a disadvantage or lead to discrimination. Lorde’s identity shaped her speeches and writings about the struggles of women, Black people, and the LGBTQ community. (Teen Vogue)

Claudette Colvin (1939 - present) Though we've all heard the story of Rosa Parks refusing to give up her seat on the bus in Montgomery, Alabama, most of us don't know that Colvin did the same thing — nine months before Parks did. She was only 15 at the time, and was one of the first Black activists to openly challenge the law. (Teen Vogue)

Angela Davis (1944 - present) She was a major activist in the late 1960s and early '70s. Profoundly affected by her childhood in the segregated city of Birmingham, Alabama, she joined the Communist Party and became an affiliate of the Black Panthers as a young woman, and ran as the Communist vice-presidential candidate in 1980 and 1984. She was arrested, tried, and acquitted for her role in a Black Panther courtroom shootout. She went on to have a distinguished academic career at institutions including Pomona College, Rutgers, and Vassar, and has remained politically active. (Chicago Tribune)

Marsha P. Johnson (1945 - 1992) She was a Black transgender woman and activist most known for her involvement with the Stonewall Inn riots — a 1969 uprising against police brutality by New York City's LGBTQ community. Johnson went on to become a prominent voice in the fight for LGBTQ equality and was an activist during the 1980s AIDS epidemic. (Teen Vogue)

Mae Jemison (1956 - present) She was the first Black woman admitted to the astronaut training program, in 1987. In 1992, she became the first Black woman to fly to space on the space shuttle Endeavour. (Teen Vogue)

#black history month #sims 4 #custom content #sims 4 cc

[prettyboysdontlookatexplosions]

do you think tutoring/freelancing is better/easier than being a full-time teacher

i mean, that's obviously very subjective - a friend of mine was a tutor as her main gig for a long time to pay the bills while doing opera directing, and she wound up deciding to get her master's in teaching (secondary level, i.e. middle/high school), and now she's teaching english at an academically selective public high school and seems overall pretty happy with the switch. but for me, like, yeah, no question. the major downside is the financial piece. i am lucky that when i sent out a bunch of applications i got picked up by a company that pays me a good hourly rate, regularly sends me clients, and is pretty nice to work for. but i am definitely still figuring out the financial piece & currently making a lot less than i did per year as a teacher, with a higher effective tax rate because of self-employment tax (15.3% of 92.35% of your net earnings from self-employment, which is covered by your employer if you are a w-2 employee - if i calculated right my effective tax rate is a little under 31% and i am expecting to clear less than 40k this year). this is my first full calendar year of it and i'm definitely still learning the ups & downs of the calendar, and am lucky that i have been able some months to ask my partner to write the rent check and i'll pay him back a few days later when my next paycheck clears. i also domestic partnered with my dude when i quit my teaching job so i could go on his health insurance, & without that i would probably be paying maybe slightly less monthly for insurance but it would be insurance that functions like being uninsured because (having been on it before i can tell you) ACA insurance in new york is so, so, so so so so so so bad. nobody fucking takes it and any remotely affordable plan involves a deductible high enough to i guess maybe prevent you from going bankrupt in case of emergency (which is important but which i'm also like genuinely unsure about bc like what if you get hit by a car and the ambulance takes you to a hospital that doesn't take your shitty insurance that fucking no one in this city accepts?) but otherwise basically mean you will be paying out of pocket for everything anyway. this is all why i think that next year i am gonna start trying in earnest to figure out how to pick up more clients on my own so that i can charge my own rates and hopefully build them up over time to something where i'm not like, sweating when it's spring break and half my clients are in europe or whatever. (my friend still does tutoring on the side and her rates are hella high - the best paying clients i've had have been people she referred over to me because i just charged them whatever she would have quoted and rich people in new york will pay crazy ass money for basically anything.)

but like as a job? yeah, it's easier, no question. i like being able to wake up without an alarm and work out or do chores in the middle of the day and waking up with period cramps and deciding that today the standards will be lower and opening tumblr to answer an ask while i pray for the advil to kick in (lol). i like that i can say i mostly don't work wednesdays so i didn't have to give up the volunteer commitment i picked up when i was Figuring Stuff Out in peak covid times which has also become the source of like half of my social contact. my finances are more precarious than they were but based on my friend's experience i am cautiously optimistic that won't always be the case and in the meantime i am pretty much paying my bills working substantially less than 40 hours a week. the lifestyle agrees with me, a lot, now that i have Evolved enough in my Journey that i no longer want my remunerative work to also be the primary filler of my emotional needs, lol - when i was younger i actively wanted a job that would demand a lot of me, and the fact that i no longer to do definitely has partly to do with teaching burnout but also because i figured out how to get other things to make me feel happy and fulfilled.

i also am better at it. my strength as a teacher i think was always in the actual teaching part, but to be a classroom teacher, especially in elementary school, you need to be good at like 900 fucking different things, and i sucked at a lot of them. i never got to a place in years of working with kids where i felt like i could reliably handle a group of kids, behaviorally, and like... i dunno, behavior stuff is unglamorous and you can argue that the phrase "classroom management" is kind of dystopian, but what i came to believe as a result of my classroom experiences, not before, is that establishing and maintaining a calm, mostly quiet, predictable classroom is a way of protecting children's access to education and a way of protecting children from each other. when i was working in a public school job that i quit after four months, i really felt like if i had been able to be a tyrant who kept them silent all day, that would have been an emotionally healthier situation for them than what i had going on, which was just children being terrorized and hurt by each other all day long, with nobody around who could make it stop. unpopular i know! but once i watched a fourth grader mock another fourth grader's speech for being an english language learner and then tell her to stop talking if she can't speak english (in a conversation i was attempting to have about how we could treat each other more respectfully), and then totally refuse to ever apologize or engage in any kind of reflection about why that wasn't okay, i was like, yeah all of these children's lives would be better if i could get them to just stop talking. they wouldn't be good. but they would be better than what i was doing.

i also found teaching a morally exhausting job, which is maybe best illustrated by the fact that the mean kid in that previous example was also a homeless kid whose dad was probably in jail. that was the kind of thing i ran into constantly - to take an example from private school, my last year i faced a repeated situation where i was like, "i can either tell this 8 year old to just get over and ignore the fact that someone said something objectively fucked up to them, or i can attempt to have some kind of completely doomed problem solving exchange with the most emotionally fragile child i ever met whose dad died a year ago and whose mom is a mess and who is psychologically incapable of admitting imperfection and will accuse you of victimizing her if you suggest that you believe someone else saying that she said this thing that she definitely said." and like, i still don't know what the fuck i was supposed to do with that. i still don't know if it was fucked up of us to try to get that kid to try, like, ever, at anything, or if it was good because even in the midst of grief and many other issues kids need structure and boundaries and to be treated like their feelings matter but are not the only thing in the entire world [truly i do believe this: raising kids to believe their emotions are too important is very, very damaging to the kids, because believing that your emotions are emergencies is a terrible way to go through life] and it's unpleasant for them in the morning but better in the long run than the alternative. like, i don't fucking know. and meanwhile her mom called us to tell us that she was a happy child whose only problem in the entire world was that her teachers were insufficiently sensitive. she called to tell us that, btw, within two weeks of the one-year anniversary of the kid's dad's sudden death, which like, i'm not a child psychologist but................ (tutor-parent relationships are also way easier than teacher-parent relationships, and also if they decide they hate me like who cares there will be others.) (sometimes i feel bad complaining about parents because honestly the vast majority of parents i ever had were very pleasant and lots of them loved to effuse about how much their kids loved school and loved their teachers and were having a great year and they were so grateful to us, even when i didn't think we were necessarily doing an awesome job. lol. but the difficult ones do have a way of lingering.)

i am getting off track. anyway. so i didn't have a lot of faith in my abilities as a teacher, and i also by the end didn't have any faith basically in my ability to find a school where i felt i could trust the institution i was in to be a good place to develop those abilities. sometimes i still do get sad because i think if i'd found my way after my master's to a school that was a decent-ish fit, i probably would have been really happy and would still be teaching. (a bonus bummer is that in retrospect this would have probably required me to skip trying out public schools in general, since what i later learned is that basically only terrible schools hire teachers new to the DOE and the trick is to stick it out a year and then you can be considered by a non terrible school - but i couldn't hack it that year.) but i had a pair of nightmares back to back and at the end i just didn't have the energy to try again. and some of that was the Miscellaneous Skills stuff mentioned above but also some of that was pedagogical. when i say "all schools are bad" i'm actually not referring to structural issues like underfunding problems or lack of arts programs or excessively high student-teacher ratios. i am referring to the fact that graduate schools of education are terrible? like worse than useless? i think i learned a few things in my grad school but basically all of them were in the slightly higher-level special ed classes i took because i was doing the dual certification program. which, to be clear, i do NOT think prepared me successfully to teach students with disabilities. the special ed classes were the only classes that i felt like taught me useful things about general ed teaching. if i had done the general ed degree idk what the fuck i would have learned. like unpopular opinion but at a certain point i was like, i may as well have done fucking TFA for all that i got out of the many thousands of dollars i paid and am still paying these fuckers.

i mean, at grad school, we were taught that learning styles are real. and when sometimes in a small group i would be like, "i think learning styles are maybe not real actually?" people would look at me blankly. (or if i said something like, "can you explain to me how an audio recording of a picture book is more suited to auditory learners than just... a teacher reading it out loud. like why... is that more auditory." they did not understand the question and could not answer it. these are the people educating america's youth.) i got docked points once actually on an assignment where i was working with this kid for 8 weeks and i described this thing i had done with her that had hugely boosted her comprehension - i mean she'd gone from not being able to answer the simplest most basic factual questions about literally anything she'd read despite having strong decoding skills to like, being able to thoroughly and accurately answer the questions i was asking her - but it hadn't Aligned With Her Learning Style. and so then another week i reluctantly tried a different thing that was more vaguely kinesthetic because "learning styles are fake" was not an option, and the thing i did worked LESS WELL and i got a BETTER GRADE for Clearly Aligning With Her Individual Learning Style. like, let me just underscore for this: i got a better grade for doing WORSE TEACHING, AS MEASURED BY LEARNING OUTCOMES, because i was doing better alignment with a model that is discredited and fake. and this is like, all ed schools. all of them. and therefore, all teachers.

i suffered a major crisis of disillusionment when i was maternity subbing at the place that wound up being my last classroom employer where i found a post on timothy shanahan's blog (i love him now and recommend him to anyone interested in literacy shit but he hurt my feelings at first) where he was like, "independent reading is a waste of time." the HORROR! the HERESY! but his case was undeniable. and as i came to accept that i also came to realize that i had never been in a school environment, in grad school or as a teacher, where i could say something like, "i read this very interesting argument that independent reading is not a good use of classroom time for these reasons based in both logic and research," and be met with anything but scorn. and like that was the thread that unraveled the entire sweater of, uh, the most popular literacy program in new york city. (the TC workshop program.) like, by the end of my classroom time, i was like, wow this program literally doesn't help anyone but borderline gifted kids. any kids who need actual help to learn to read are completely 100% left in the dark. but when i tried to say something in team meetings like "hey this student who has not progressed in his reading in two years across two different classrooms, i think he is not benefiting from our program," i got told, "don't feel bad, i think he's a complicated case." (this from the math specialist who also tried to convince me that being able to add single digit numbers without counting is not important, and that not being able to do that has no relationship whatsoever with a student's present ability to learn to multiply. in case you thought it was only reading that was bad.) one time (i learned from the literacy specialist who i did like) an outside consultant came to do some professional development (i hated her for reasons too complicated to get into but i was complaining about her which is why i learned this story) who was very into creating Independent Self-Directed Reflective Learners Blah Blah Blah and she did a conference with a student and then was debriefing it for the teaching team and naming all the Strengths she had as a reader and all the good stuff she was doing and the literacy specialist had to be like, "i have read the book she's reading and nothing she said about it was accurate."

ok. i am really just ranting now. also the advil is starting to work so i almost feel human again and should probably try to do something with that while it lasts. the original point i was going to make that was relevant to your inquiry re: pedagogy was that in tutoring if i try something and i decide it was bad and didn't work, then i don't have to do it anymore. and if i have an idea that i think might be good then i can do it. and it turns out i fucking love that. to the extent of like, i don't work a lot, as i said, but i definitely put in more prep time than i know at least a lot of test prep tutors do, and sometimes i feel weird about that because test prep tutoring is basically widening the achievement gap and like the whole point of it for me also was to work less. but like it turns out that while i love not having a real job, i have still retained a certain core ability to derive satisfaction out of feeling like i am doing something with integrity and skill, and like... idk man it still feels really fucking good to have that moment of like Wow I Taught Someone Something, even if it's like... oh man a while ago one of my SAT kids was like, "i was going to pick B because the passage mentioned calcites [or whatever random science terms], but it's not really saying that they did that, so i went with D," which was perfect SAT logic (the SAT reading section, and actually most standardized test reading sections in my experience, loves to have one tempting answer that mentions some hyperspecific terms from the passage but says something inaccurate about them, and then a correct answer that doesn't use any words from the passage but requires you to have like actually understood the idea conveyed in order to identify it as correct, and students who don't come in as great readers get sooooo tripped up on "well it MENTIONED..." because students who are not great readers are not in the habit of reading texts as integrated wholes) relating to a trap she had fallen into many times before, and i was soooo proud of her lmao. and i actually like, not just don't hate but do kind of actively enjoy being able to chase those moments fully on my own terms and using my own judgment, observation, learning, & experiences. [which ok sorry to loop back into being a bummer but like: in theory it's nice to say i want that for all teachers, but in practice see above re: the learning and experiences of most teachers are bad because ed schools are bad.]

working evenings & weekend during the school year can be a pain tho. i like test prep work because as i spend more time with specific tests they become a lot less work-intensive to tutor because i've already made my little highlighted answer keys (remember what i said about how i know for a fact most test prep tutors put in less time than i do...) but i might try in the future to figure out a way to get more elementary school clients because they get out of school earlier, lol. maybe one day i'll go in for orton-gillingham certification so i can bill myself as qualified to work with students with dyslexia.

#askbox #sorry this became a giant vent about my many bad experiences in the education world

[xiaojuun]

hi eri!! i hope you’re having a good night (or day hehe) 🥰 for the ask game, i would like to know how you decided on being a nursing major! was it what you intended on doing all along, or did you enter uni with something different in mind? also WHAT TYPE OF NURSING IS YOUR JAM !! i will hopefully be working in the NICU bc it’s where i had my preceptorship during my last semester <3 if it’s not too much to ask!

ahhh mädch beloved first of all, going backwards first you are most DEFINITELY a very special person and nurse to choose the NICU. i don't know that i'd be strong enough for it and in my heart to my core know that if that's your calling, you are TRULY something incredible (not that i had a single doubt ♡). to return to your questions! this will get long so i'll put it under the cut.

i had no idea i wanted to be a nurse, it was actually theeee farthest thing from my radar growing up with no medical professionals in my family (save for my non-biological godmother who is my mom's best friend and a fabulous nurse). i have an entirely separate degree in music and thought i'd spend my life in concert production. a lot of things happened after i graduated the first time haha i was very unhappy in my job which inevitably ended up not working out and i needed to leave my home state desperately, and i tend to do things . in extremes so . i opted to do a service year and spend some time traveling, figuring out how to lead a team that i also lived with, and doing community service all at the same time. i quickly learned how closely tied community service and community health are and that spoke to me, but even still i didn't know i'd want to do nursing. after i came home from that experience i knew i wasn't done traveling and i ended up contracting for a few organizations that allowed me to keep doing that - i toured with a program run by a mental health nonprofit in the school year and led teen community service trips in the summer all over the US . i was always the most safety/health minded with my teens and met a lot of public health professors in that time, i was interested in public health but it didn't quite fit ... i knew i wanted to be on my feet, and i wanted to be working directly with the people who could tell me what they need in order to figure out ground-up change in healthcare. that's how i landed on nursing ! i took a few science classes while i continued touring before the pandemic to see if i could handle it ajdfhjb and i found it really interesting, and then once the pandemic hit i continued to take classes and applied to nursing school officially.

as for my nursing calling ... well, i'm a nanny, and i love babies but like i said i don't think something like the NICU is for me. but maternity / ultimately midwifery might be !! i've also considered that being a peds doctor's office nurse might be my speed bc i'm not entirely sure about hospitals, and i'm also interested in lgbt healthcare both from like . working for an office specifically for that but also from an advocacy perspective. i think no matter what i do i will always want to do community health and public health in some capacity, like not necessarily as my main job but definitely in my own time and network, i know i'll work hard to make change in this wonky healthcare system we have here. anyways ... thank u so much for this question bc as i'm off for the summer i'm not necessarily tuned into my 'why' right now and i think it's important that i don't forget it as the semester approaches and i'm like why am i doing this again ... NDBJHGB but ! if u read all this mwah and i'd really love to hear more about your nursing journey as well !!! pls feel free to dm me if you want to exchange non-tumblr contact info to talk more since. the messaging system here is like . u know <333

#the amaaazing thing w nursing is that there are TRULY so many avenues ... the opportunities are endless and it's a profession where u HAVE #to keep learning no matter what. and that was super appealing to me as well going in #and is reassuring going forward bc like. we can do ANYTHING we really can and we'll be making a difference <3 #erimail #mail from: mädch! 🩺 #sorry this is a novel KJDBGJHBD but thank u for asking ... nursing besties 🥺💖

[dialectical--revolution]

The prison cell was chilled and damp. I couldn't remember what time it was, but I knew it was late.

We had been arrested. Picked up and thrown away for being "different". Sigh. Humans were SO TYPICAL. Anyone who was different was judged, spit on, and tossed aside. It was the typical human experience.

Which is why I always tried to hide my powers from others. Why I always wore contacts when I was around people I didn't know. They disguised my now golden eyes from the judgemental public. People always freaked when they saw my glowing eyes. Luckily, they only changed color when I became overwhelmed with emotion. Emotions like anger and fear.

When my eyes changed color, my powers were active. I became a siren, my sonic scream tearing through the night. People called me blonde siren or “Golden Girl”. Golden Girl was my favorite.

My powers…I never fully understood them. I could burst eardrums and make small objects float; all with the power of sound. I was never good at science, so I had my Auntie Anna explain it all to me. She told me that sound, at certain frequencies could suspend objects in mid-air.

And sound at high enough decibels could kill or harm a person. I remember Auntie Anna thought that was “cool” and “fascinating”. I thought she was weird. I’m sorry; I loved my aunt, but she was a weirdo.

I realized my powers firsthand the night my aunt was attacked. It was a dark night, and the power was out yet again. My Aunt, lacking common sense, decided to venture out in the darkness.

I was watching from above.

I was watching from the top of a factory building. Due to her health issues, I always followed her wherever she went. It was my way of telling her “Thank you” for all the times she was there for me.

The muggers seemed to come out of nowhere. At least, that’s how it seemed to me. It was so dark but they moved so quickly. It was like they were “ninja-fast”. It was when they surrounded her that I came down from above. My eyes were glowing gold and when they called me a “freak”, that’s when I screamed.

The muggers grabbed their ears and fell to the ground. They vomited and then they fell unconscious. Crouching on the ground, I turned to my Aunt. She was unconscious, too.

I touched my ears: no blood. I looked at my Aunt; her ears were bleeding, too. Just like the muggers.

Why was I the only one unaffected? Did it have something to do with my powers?

I had one of my friends help me get her home. Ever since, I was careful not to use my powers around her for fear of hurting her. When she woke up, she was still in shock about how much everything changed. Then she told me she had powers, too. If she concentrated really hard, she could literally disappear.

Like me, she was just a shell of the person she once was.

***

“Do you know how long we’ll be in here?” I asked my Aunt. I was hoping for a rational, calm answer from her. She was silent for a while, then she spoke.

“I don’t know,” she said. She looked up and nodded. “Why don’t you ask him?”

I turned to look at the Military personnel. One in particular stood out: the Major. He looked at us in disgust. He was the one who arrested us. He came to our home and took us in. Sigh. He must have heard about the muggers. Figures. In this new world, it didn’t matter what the situation was. Just being “different” was enough to be taken in.

“Hey, asshole,” I asked him. “When the fuck are we getting out of here?” He looked at us with total and complete disgust. That was typical behavior for people nowadays. They only looked at us when they needed us. We were a rare commodity, one of the chosen few to survive a disaster. We were both feared, and the ones people looked to as a saving grace during the war.

We were a precious commodity, super soldiers. Our country LOVED to insert itself into foreign politics. You know, the kinda stuff that wasn’t our business. Wars, disputes, you name it. We were running out of soldiers; meta-humans were the next choice. People didn’t care much for us, but they needed us.

I hated them for it.

“You’re not getting out of here,” he said with a commanding tone. “We need you for the war. You’re a necessary evil.”

Necessary evil. That’s all we were now. Not people, just machines used for fighting wars. Well, fuck em’.

Fuck em’ all. They were the real monsters, here. Not us.

“If we’re evil, " Auntie Anna began. “Then what does that make you?”

“Yeah,” I countered. “I was wondering…how does someone who is supposed to be saving the human race get to be such an asshole?”

That really pissed him off. He looked right into my soul with a hatred I couldn’t quite place. I couldn’t take it anymore. I had to scream.

I quickly winked at my Auntie. It was my way of letting her know that she needed to cover her ears. I would never forgive myself if she got hurt again.

I let loose a scream. It was somewhere between a moan and a shriek. A banshee; it sounded like a banshee. It rocked through the whole room, knocked “Major Asshole” back up against a wall, and everything went dark.

#original story #science fiction #science fantasy #sci fi #scifi #Youtube

[xtruss]

Norma McCorvey, Jane Roe in the 1973 court case, left, and her attorney Gloria Allred hold hands as they leave the Supreme Court building in Washington, DC. April 26, 1989. Mark Reinstein/Alamy

Sandra Day O’Connor and the Reconsideration of Roe v. Wade

A legal journalist considers the intersection of abortion rights and the Justice’s Supreme Court career.

— September 10, 2021 | Linda Greenhouse

By the time Sandra O’Connor came to the court in 1981, there was a fire raging about Roe v. Wade, which had been decided just eight years earlier. Now, why was that? My research tells me smart, strategic people around Richard Nixon in the Republican party thought, aha, we’ve had a really good run with the Southern strategy—to play the race card and peel the white Democrat voters in the South away and turn them into Republicans.

How about a Northern strategy? We’ve got a democratic party in the north filled with Catholic voters, urban, ethnic. We can inspire them to become Republicans if we go hot and heavy on abortion. Richard Nixon could not have cared less about abortion. The Republican party historically, for a number of years, had been the party of the equal rights amendment and of women’s reproductive rights.

What happened in the years after Roe was not a natural evolution, as many people think. It was cultivated. It was a party realignment that was carefully stage managed.

It wasn’t until 1980, with the platform that Reagan ran on seven years after Roe, that the [Republican] party said, we are committed to the right to life, and we’re committed to finding judges who will fully respect the right to life, which was code language for who would overturn Roe v. Wade. It was still incipient at the time that O’Connor arrived.

Akron v. Akron Center for Reproductive Health

Nobody knew what her views were, but the right to life crowd knew was she wasn’t marching along with them. So she got some frantically programmed questions at her Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, and she just played it very straight. She said at one point: I don’t support abortion; abortion is abhorrent to me, but I’m not a woman who’s about to get pregnant. So she really played it very smartly.

From her first several years on the court, one would have thought, here’s somebody that’s going to be a rock Republican conservative judge. She was way over on crime. She was very, very skeptical of affirmative action. She was skeptical of Roe v. Wade.

Her first public [Supreme Court] opinion on abortion came in the Akron case in 1983 [Akron v. Akron Center For Reproductive Health]. She had been on the court for two years. The Akron case served up to the court a series of abortion restrictions that really challenged Roe v. Wade [including requirements for: all abortions performed after the first trimester to be done in hospitals, parental consent before the procedure could be performed on an unmarried minor, doctors to counsel prospective patients, a 24 hour waiting period and that fetal remains be disposed of in a "humane and sanitary manner."]. The court reaffirmed Roe, and O’Connor dissented, [saying, “I believe that the State's interest in protecting potential human life exists throughout the pregnancy.”]

It was obvious there were four justices opposed to that, and there were four justices fully for that. And everybody assumed that O’Connor was going to be also fully for undercutting Roe. But she wouldn’t go along. She wrote a separate opinion, deciding the case very narrowly. She said there may be time in the future to deal with the bigger, deeper issue, but that time has not arrived.

Planned Parenthood v. Casey

In 1992, it really did look as if the court was about to overturn Roe v. Wade, because Justice Brennan had retired, replaced by Justice Souter. Thurgood Marshall had retired, replaced by Clarence Thomas. There was no longer the original Roe v. Wade majority. They were gone.

So the case came to the court. Like all of these cases, it came as a set of restrictions that, in this case, the state of Pennsylvania had imposed on access to abortion. But there was a real effort, actually by the pro-choice side to get the court to focus on the big issue. Why? Because 1992 was a presidential election year, and President Bush was running for reelection against Bill Clinton. The pro-choice side thought, okay, if in June of 1992, in this Casey case, Roe v. Wade is overturned, we’ll have one hell of an election issue.

It’s not that [the pro-choice side] wanted it to be overturned. They were afraid it was going to be overturned in the quite immediate future. And so, if that was going to happen, let it happen when the election in 1992 could become a public referendum. So there was just a lot of noise surrounding this Casey case. The case was argued in April of ’92. And from the argument, things were not looking very good for the pro-choice side.

Last day of the term in June of ’92, everybody troops up to the Supreme Court. Usually, you don’t know when a Supreme Court decision is coming, but it was the last day of the term, and Casey was the last undecided case, so everybody knew this was the day. I mean, I remember going into the courtroom thinking, okay, you know, I’ve been writing about this issue for 20 years, and now it’s going to be over?

But famously, three Republican-appointed justices, Justice O’Connor, Justice Kennedy and Justice Souter, held the balance of power in the case. They were joined on the left by Justice Stevens and Justice Blackman. And they reaffirmed the right to abortion. They didn’t reaffirm Roe v. Wade, per se. They changed the standard to a standard that O’Connor had been advocating for some years, the undue burden standard. If there’s a restriction that has the purpose or effect of cutting off a woman’s access to abortion, that burden is undue.

O’Connor-ism

It was an example, really, of kind of O’Connor-ism in a sense of we can do what makes us feel comfortable. There are things we don’t like about Roe v. Wade, but there’s things we really don’t like about just getting rid of it. And so this is what we’re coming out with. And this is what has basically held since 1992.

Her strength as a justice was not to be swayed by the rhetorical dressing that cases often come in, one side or the other side. She looked beyond the rhetoric for the facts that would indicate how the case should be decided as a dispute, not as a billboard, not as a voice of the ages. We’ve got a dispute before us. We’re going to solve it. We’re going to not necessarily settle it. We’re going to solve this case. I think that was her strength, and it’s not all that common on the court.

Our interview with Linda Greenhouse has been edited for clarity. Greenhouse is a New York Times contributor and co-author of The Burger Court and the Rise of the Judicial Right.

#Sandra Day O’Connor #Supreme Court of the United States 🇺🇸 #NOVA| PBS

[atlanticcanada]

'Telling us we are not important': Lack of permanent paid sick days making health-care crisis worse, say experts

Major viruses are impacting Canada’s hospital systems— and a shortage of staff at a critical time is being exacerbated by poor working conditions for the lowest paid in the health-care sector, several physicians and academics told CTVNews.ca

Those conditions include a lack of permanent paid sick days, and it’s only fuelling workers' desire to leave the field, they said.

When the pandemic led to lockdowns across Canada in March 2020, only two provinces offered any kind of permanent sick days. Prince Edward Island provided one day, and Quebec provided two.

Since then, only B.C. has been added to the mix. In January, it legislated that five permanent sick days be provided to all workers. Other provinces have offered paid leave, but they are temporary policies implemented due to the pandemic that come with expiry dates.

Kwame McKenzie, CEO of the Toronto-based health equity policy group Wellesley Institute, said it’s “very worrying” that permanent paid sick days are not available for these workers, especially at this point in the pandemic.

“We don’t seem to learn the lessons from pandemics, and we know that not having sick days caused problems. People went to work sick and they passed on COVID-19 to others, making workplaces hazardous,” he saidin an interview with CTVNews.ca.

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Not having access to paid sick days prevented people from getting vaccinated, he said.

“It also meant people didn’t want to be tested because they thought, ‘If I test positive, that’s a problem, because maybe I won’t be able to pay the rent,’” he said.

Now, amid RSV and flu season and while COVID-19 is still spreading, we have a “triple threat” occurring, he said.

“Having paid sick days is a triple imperative, instead of a single imperative,” McKenzie said.

With hospitals overwhelmed, academics and public health experts say governments across the country missed another opportunity to ensure the most vulnerable workers are protected, keep patients safe, and retain health-care staff.

WHAT WORKERS ARE SAYING

Personal support worker Daniella works at two long-term care homes in Toronto.CTVNews.ca is granting Daniella anonymity due to fears she could face punishment at work.

She emigrated from Colombia in 2018, and was “starting from scratch” when she arrived in Canada, she said in a phone interview.

She was cleaning homes when she first moved, but then decided to take a course to become a PSW, along with learning English at the same time.

She said it’s not just herself that she has to provide for: “I’m living with my partner here and I have to send money back to my mother, I have to support her.”

With people to support and the inflation rate skyrocketing, Daniella says, she can’t afford to miss a single day of work. She works six days a week in order to pay her bills and send money to family back home.

As a contracted worker, her employers offer no paid sick days, under any circumstance. More than two-and-a-half years into the pandemic, caring for the most vulnerable older people in the long-term care system, many workers like Daniella still can't afford to stay home if they are sick, or if their children are sick, workers'rights organizations and academics tell CTVNews.ca.

Why doctors, advocates are calling for permanent paid sick days for Canadian workers

At the end of 2021, Daniella got COVID-19. She had to stay home for the 10-day isolation period, and she was not paid for any of it. Her employer did not let her know about the province’s three-paid sick days program, and by the time she found out about it, it was too late to apply, she said.

“It was really bad, I had to live under my savings,” she said.

Daniella said if she goes to work sick, the residents in long-term care could die, due to their fragile condition.

“I feel like the government is telling us we are not important for them. They want us to work for Canada, no matter how, and in what conditions. They are trying to tell us we are some kind of machine,” she said.

PAID SICK DAYS ACROSS CANADA

Though the discussion on sick days has focused on health-care workers, any enacted legislation would likely cover workers across multiple sectors.

There is no province or territory in Canada that offers 10 paid sick days in a calendar year despite recommendations from advocacy organizations over the last two years to allow that amount of time off.

Employers can offer more leave to their employees— but advocates want to ensure all workers are entitled to a minimum of 10 days per year under legislation.

Based on current sick days legislation, some jurisdictions are requiring businesses to shoulder those costs.

For instance, in B.C., legislation went into effect at the start of 2022 that mandated all workers in the province be entitled to five days of paid sick leave if they’ve been on the job for 90 days or longer. It's the only province that has provided five days permanently to its residents. B.C. instructs employers they will need to pay stafffor those five days.

Others have implemented policies that are temporary, due to COVID-19.

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However, the B.C. legislation does not cover those excluded by its Employment Standards Act.This includes unionized workplaces, independent contractors, and other workers,like a home care worker who is employed for less than 15 hours per week.

Currently, workers in Ontario are entitled to three paid sick days that were implemented in April 2021 during the height of the third wave of COVID-19, after calls from advocacy groups that said the lack of paid leave was fuelling what was one of the most devastating waves of COVID-19 in the province.

On Dec.5, the Ontario Conservative government voted against a bill introduced by NDP MPPs Jill Andrew, Peggy Sattler, Doly Begum and Sara Singh titled the Stay Home If You Are Sick Act, 2022 or Bill 4. The legislation would have provided 10 paid sick days and 14 days during public health emergencies within a calendar year.

In the summer, Ontario announced it was extending the temporary three sick days program until March 2023. The program works by allowing employers to be reimbursed by the government up to $200 a day, for a maximum of three days, for pandemic-related absences including vaccination, isolation or caring for relatives.

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In an emailed statement to CTVNews.ca, the Ontario Ministry of Labour, Immigration and Skills Development said the province's COVID-19 sick days program has supported over 500,000 workers since it was implemented. As the program was extended to March 31, this will give workers the ability to "take time off when they needed," it stated.

In Prince Edward Island, a bill introduced by the Opposition Green Party that proposed 10 paid days a year was voted down at the end of November. Currently, the province mandates one paid sick day per year be provided to workers who have been at a job for at least five years.

And in Quebec, workers are able to take two paid sick days a year. That legislation was in place prior to the pandemic.

The federal government recently implemented 10 days of paid sick leave but only for the one million workers across the country who are employed in federally regulated private sector workplaces. The federal government announced in November that the policy was introduced so that those workers do not have to choose between their pay and staying home when sick.

While legislation would cover all workers, those in precarious jobs, especially contracted health-care workers would benefit from legislation—as would the health-care system overall, experts told CTVNews.ca

WHAT EXPERTS ARE SAYING

According to McKenzie, there is currently a “two-tiered” system, where some health-care workers, often in hospitals, are paid better and receive benefits like sick days, while others are low-wage, and work on contract.

“It makes very little sense to me, to be saying that this is the time where we ignore what is a basic public health imperative, if not a human right,” he said.

“They’re the people we really need to be focusing on, because they are the fundamental building blocks which the whole of the health-system is based, doing face-to-face care in the community or long-term care.”

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In October, the Wellesley Institute published a report titled Thriving at work: A health-based framework for decent work. The report said that, according to the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board, more than 27,000 Ontario workers had been infected with COVID-19 on the job.

Neighbourhoods in Toronto that had the highest proportion of COVID-19 cases contained the highest amount of essential workers, who were more likely to be racialized and not able to work from home, it states.

The institute determined that in order for workers to thrive, adequate income, benefits, job security and inclusive work environments are critical for an individual’s health and well-being.

Maxwell Smith, a bioethicist and assistant professor in the faculty of health sciences at Western University said via a phone interview with CTVNews.ca last month that paid sick leave is a strategy that's not only a way to curb infection, but makes good economic sense too.

“It also reduces absenteeism, by preventing outbreaks and the chance of workplace closures that could come because there’s so much infection,” he said. This will protect the health of workers, communities and it’s good for businesses, said Smith.

“It seems pretty barndoor-obvious to me that it’s good from whichever perspective you want to take on it,” he said.

Without protections, it may be difficult to recruit new health-care workers into a system amid a pandemic as there’s a fear of becoming infected and repeat infections, especially with the threat of long-COVID, said Smith.

“It’s incumbent on the government to provide as safe an environment as possible for people to do these jobs,” he said.

If Ontario expects individuals to stay home when they are sick, and wear a mask if they are sick at home, as Dr. Kieron Moore has recommend, then provincial governments should give workers the tools to be able to stay home, said Smith.

In May 2021, the Ontario science table released a paperon the benefits of paid sick leave.Its research highlighted that in the U.S., introduction of paid sick leave was associated with a 50 per cent reduction in COVID-19 cases per state, per day.

The paper found that essential workers experienced “disproportionate rates” of COVID-19 infections. It also indicated that the economic impact of paid sick leave was a factor in economic stability and recovery, through increasing productivity, preventing absences and stopping workplace closures.

'Staying home is a privilege': Ont. government needs to implement paid sick days, doctor says

And according to a 2022 paper from the Decent Work and Health Network, a health and labour rights advocacy group, the lack of paid leave has impacted Ontario’s most diverse neighbourhoods the most, as immigrants and newcomers are more likely to take low-wage, precarious work due to employment barriers.

The lack of paid leave is also a factor in increased burnout among health-care workers, according to Decent Work and Health.

A report released in June from Statistics Canada that surveyed health-care workers found 86.5 per cent, including doctors, nurses and personal support workers, were feeling more stressed on the job during the period of September 2021 to November 2021.

But nurses were the most likely to report they planned to leave their job or change their job in the next three years, according to the survey.

A 2018 analysis of OECD nations found there will be a shortage of 120,000 nurses in Ontario by 2030, and a 2020 report from the RNAO found a third of nurses that provide direct patient care are approaching retirement.

At of the end of October, Ontario’s nursing college allowed nurses educated outside of the country to temporarily practice while they work toward being fully licensed in Canada, to help bring more nurses into the system.

But increasing conditions overall including leave policies would help as well, according to Decent Work and Health.

Dr. Naheed Dosani, a physician and member of the health network, told CTVNews.ca in a phone interview that he was very disappointed the Ontario government had voted against the NDP proposed sick day legislation.

“It would have really helped a lot of people,” he said. “It will undoubtedly have negative impacts on workers across the province,” he said.

Dosani said he and his colleagues who are working on the frontlines are “very frustrated” and “upset” by the province’s inaction on more sick days. Workers need to be able to stay home when they are sick or when their children are sick, he said.

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