#I just posted the 30 year old senior citizen and called it a day

[gae-bolg-alternative-dot-exe]

holy shit happy FUCKING birthday to the art sourcer and sharer of all time!!;

thank you Zerav!

#my birthday was the 29th but I've been swamped with work this week and I've been exhausted so I didn't mention it directly yesterday #I just posted the 30 year old senior citizen and called it a day #zeravmain #ask

[aviya932]

I’ve been thinking whether to write it or not. On one hand this is super important, on the other hand people don’t really care and I’ll probably get hate for it. But this has to be said and I’m gonna do it. This is really long but if you really want to understand what is happening in Israel right now- this is it

I live in Israel, and for the last 48 hours we have been under rapid missile attack. Hamas, which is a terror organization, have been shooting constantly at civilian cities and houses, while at the same time there have been various riots in mixed cities- by which i mean cities that have both Jewish and Islamic population- that in normal days live in co-existence. You have to understand a couple things right now before you come at me:

I don’t talk about high tension cities such as Jerusalem. This is Lod, Ramle, Jaffa and Haifa among others. Those are cities that truly are peaceful 90% of the time and I will talk about Jerusalem and Gaza so just stick with me.

THIS IS NOT A POST ABOUT WHOSE LIFE IS MORE IMPORTANT OR VALUABLE!! Living in Gaza sucks under normal circumstances but living in Sderot is not much better. There is no competition on misery and trust me as a person that actually live in Israel and knows what it’s like here on the day to day that we are well aware on how it’s like in Gaza.

this site REALLY likes to talk about experiences and how when you live through a unique event no one can talk for you about that because they don’t really know what its like. so right here right now it is my experience. You are welcome to ask follow up questions, you may send me a message to learn more or to disagree with a certain point. But if you don’t live here, even if you are from a neighbor country, then you don’t know what’s it like and i wish to god you will never know.

I don’t have all the articles right here with me, because most of the are in Hebrew and I’m writing this really quickly. So if there is interest I’ll give references and I’m really sorry for any typos here. 

Here is a brief timeline of Monday, April 10. I’ll try to stick to as many events without being partial, and for contest there have been two major events on that day:

It is still Ramadan- which means that religious Muslims were on temple mount.

It was also Jerusalem day- which I have no idea how to translate but  celebrates the liberation of the Jewish people and the old city from the Jordan army, and is an Israeli holiday in which it is custom to go to Jerusalem so there were a lot of Jewish people at the Kotel.

There’s a neighborhood in eastern Jerusalem called Sheikh Jarrah, in which there is an ongoing legal fight over ownership and governance. On April 10 there wad supposed to be a sitting in court about evicting Arab familiars. It was decided to postpone because of the tension but there has been many rallys over the topic.

During the Ramadan there has been a lot of tension, so the Israeli police have declared that no Jewish person will get on temple mount at that day. it made people mad, since it is a sacred location for us as well, and some groups have threatened to climb anyway. As far as I know no Jew have managed to get there, since things escalated quickly. Like i said, this month was very tensed, and when the cops hears that the Muslims in Al-Aqsa Mosque were hoarding stones they have decided to go inside. this was at about 08:30-09:00 AM. Since the mosque is right above the kotel this was very worrying but during the chaos there have been injuries- 21 cops and dozens of Palestinians. Stun grenades and stones.   Hamas have given an ultimatum- either the cops get off the mountain by 18:00 or they shoot rockets at Jerusalem, which at the time is filled with as much Muslims as Jews. During the day there have been terror attacks against Jews that came to the city for celebrations and for the flag parade that was planned to start at 16:00 and to end at the kotel. there was a lynch against 3 Jews at sha’ar ha’ariot (lion gate. a lynch that was depicted by the media as the drivers’ fault and as a running over. the truth is that the driver tried to escape the stoning, hit a cement half wall and continued to be hit until a cop came to his rescue) and a 7 month old girl was hit at the head by stones.

by 18:00 Hamas fired 3 barrages toward Jerusalem. And this is the part when i can tell you first-hand. because I was there, because I could not believe that they will shoot at their own people. There were SO MANY PEOPLE at the time from BOTH SIDES. this is a precedent- until then every single shooting was aimed at Jewish city and never at Muslims.

HAMAS SHOOT AT CIVILIANS IN JERUSALEM, A CITY THAT IS CONSIDERS HOLY FOR EVERYONE, DURING THEIR OWN HOLIDAY. THEY SHOT MISSILES AT A CITY IN WHICH MUSLIM ARABS LIVE. THEY SHOT BECAUSE THE POLICE WERE TRYING TO STOP MUSLIMS FROM THROWING ROCKS AT JEWISH PEOPLE WHO DIDN’T EVEN TRY TO GET ON TEMPLE MOUNT. AND YOU KNOW WHAT THE WORST THING IS? THE FACT THAT INTERNATIONAL NEWS IMMEDIATELY STARTED BLAMING THE ISRAELI GOVERNMENT AND POLICE AND COMPLETELY REMOVED ANY RESPONSIBILITY FROM HAMAS AND THE GOVERNMENT IN GAZA. It’s so so easy to blame Israel because Israel is more organized, because our government, while being mostly useless in the last year since we had 5 elections, is built by the peoples’ choice and not by fear, because Gaza is an underdog and we feel for the underdog- and for good reasons. Do not think for a moment that we don’t feel sorry for the people in Gaza. They live under a terrible government that cares more for the Palestinian agenda than their civilians, most Shekels that the Israeli government is transferring won’t reach the people and instead will be taken by Hamas to build bombs, guns, and tunnels. Hamas needs the people to stay underdogs. They will use them as human shields for as long as it gets them sympathy, they will take every opportunity they have to blame Israel and the media is giving them exactly what they want every single time- even Israeli media will twist facts and stories to sound more progressive and ‘woke’ and politically correct. so here are facts for all of you

while it makes me sound like a five year old it’s still true that this time Hamas shot first and unsolicited.

every country that has missiles shot at will, and has the right, to defend itself.

is it okay for civilian casualty? NO. Absolutely no. But don’t any of you dare to use that as a reason for Israeli cruelty. Hamas have sot over 1,000 rockets in the last 48 hours. IDF has attacked about a 150 locations. Hamas is shooting wildly at cities and homes without care who they hit. IDF is targeting senior Hamas figures only. Hamas is shooting from homes and streets. every IDF base that has weapons in will be located outside of civilian location.

IDF is using the “Roof knocking“ technique, and has been using for years. for those who don’t know it- IAF is dropping a non-explosive bomb- a smoke bomb that makes some noise- on top of any location they will hit to inform every single person inside that they need to get out. Only after a few minutes’ waiting will they hit for real. When Hamas is telling us when they will shoot it’s nothing like that. They don’t warn-they threat.

6 Israeli people have died so far. 2 of them were Muslim Arab-Israeli. They do not care who they hit.

the people in mixed cities have been rioting nearly nonstop for 48 hours now while attacking their neighbors, while burning synagogues, cars, homes and restaurants. One of my best friends lives in Lod. they have curfew from 20:00 today until 04:00 tomorrow. Her situations terrifies me more than any bomb because those are people who lived there for years.

not every Muslim and Arab is to blame, and blaming everyone is wrong. BUT ignoring what is happening right now is naive. Do not be blind and do not believe every single thing the media tells you. There are countless videos were Arabs fake death. where they dress as soldiers to fake scenes, where they openly teach their children hate and where their leaders openly lie on live television and get caught.

most of the time people lie because they really believe it, but that only serves the disinformation. Sometimes good intentions only cause more pain and hate.

Israel is not without blame. no one is without blame because life is not a book- there are no 100% good people and a 100% bad people. Life is complicated and so are people and political situations. You have to criticize your sources, and if they paint one side as good and one as bad then you should stop reading them. there are Israeli extremists as well, and far-right movements scare me as much as any Arab riots but no one is working in a vacuum.

the numbers are very different for many reasons. The death and casualties in Gaza is larger for many reasons, but I’ll focus on the most important ones. first, the IDF is more organized and so their bombs are stronger and more advanced. Second, Hamas is intentionally stationed in neighborhoods, schools and hospitals for human shields. third, Israel is using everything they can to protect its’ citizens and pays fortune on Iron Domes. Hamas does nothing to protect the people, and they have the money for that if they wanted since the receive money from Israel, the UN, and various different NGOs. If you don’t bother to protect your own how can you blame others? when people in Israel get hurt because they don’t have shelter they blame our own government.

right now everything here is a mess, and people from outside do not help when they only spread rumors and hate. You don’t live here? you have no clue what is happening. pray for all of us, but first educate your self and read more than one source of news for god sake. If you want the full picture you must read right-side news AND left-side news. Try to understand what is true, try to understand what is an exaggeration, try to understand what both sides are experiencing and don’t just assume that you are the smartest, most educated person just because you support the ‘right’ side. There is no right side. Only A side. So try to stand with us. Stand with Israel and have as much compassion for us as you have for Gaza. We are heading toward a civil war that will not hurt only one side, we have been living like that for years so trust me when i tell you that everyone is tired of how things are. We want peace but we don’t really see it happening anytime soon.

and for the love of god, don’t just send hate. I care about opinions, i want to think about stuff that i haven’t mentioned and to learn from others. Hate comments will not help either of us and will only keep us where we are now, and you trying to hurt me will honestly achieve nothing and will be kinda boring. Sorry for being so blunt but it’s the truth.

#Israel #jewish #jew #ישראל #arabs #jerusalem #ירושלים #standwithus #zionism #ציונות #יהדות #muslims

[encounterthepast]

If you enjoy this please follow @RussInCheshire on twitter for his regular threads on UK politics.

As it’s the weekend, let’s start #TheWeekInTory with a frivolous and jolly story about our own govt deliberately starving hundreds of thousands of children...

1. In May, Boris Johnson promised “nobody will go hungry as a result of Coronavirus”

2. He then denied school meals to the 600,000 poorest children

3. So Marcus Rashford ran a campaign to get the govt to feed children, which - just think about that: he had to *campaign* for it

4. Then Boris Johnson congratulated Rashford on his campaign to overturn the cruel policies of, erm, Boris Johnson

5. And then 3 days later, Boris Johnson refused to feed those kids during school holidays

6. So this week Labour organised a parliamentary vote about it

7. And 322 Tories voted against feeding hungry children

8. Vicky Ford, the Children’s Minister (who you’ll be surprised to hear neither looks nor sounds like a ludicrous Dickensian villain) went ahead and voted against feeding children

9. Tory MP Jo Gideon voted against feeding children. Jo Gideon, in case you didn't think things could get any more unbelievable, is also the chair of "Feeding Britain", a charity that campaigns to end food poverty and hunger in the UK.

10. Tory MP Paul Scully waved away the grumbling parents of kids with grumbling tummies, and said “children have been going hungry under Labour for years”, seemingly forgetting Tories have been in power for a decade

11. Tory MP Ben Bradley, who once had to apologise for suggesting sterilising the poor, said feeding children will simply “increase their dependency”. On food. Yeah, wean the little bastards off it. It’ll do them good in the end, which will be around 3 agonising weeks.

12. At this point, pause to consider that MPs get their food and drink subsidised. A £31 meal in a parliamentary restaurant costs MPs £3.45. In 2018 this subsidy cost the taxpayer £4.4m. I can’t find any record of Tories like Ben Bradley voting against this.

13. Pressing on: Ben Bradley also said “Some parents prioritise other things ahead of their kids. Small minority, yes... but some do”. Yes, and a small minority of Tory MPs have been arrested for rape. Should we send them all to prison?

14. Also, Mark Francois voted (by proxy) to keep kids hungry. Not related to the previous item. Why would you think that?

15. Tory MP Nicky Morgan said the govt voted to starve 600,000 children cos a Labour MP called a Tory MP scum. And that’s not a scummy thing to do at all.

16. Tory MP David Simmonds said Marcus Rashford’s experience of poverty in secondary school “took place entirely under a Labour government”. Rashford was 11 when Tories came into power, making David Simmonds are rare example of an ad hominem attack on yourself

17. Simmonds then said Labour’s parliamentary vote was “all about currying favour with wealth and power and celebrity status”. He might be right – the govt managed to unify Gary Linaker and Nigel Farage in condemnation of their denial of food to kids

18. Brandan Clark-Smith (who voted to starve kids) demanded “more action to tackle the real causes of child poverty”

19. So at once, the govt cut minimum wage for furloughed people. They now get 2/3 of the money the govt says is the absolute minimum it is possible to survive on

20. And then it was revealed that low-paid workers who have to isolate due to Covid can claim £500. Yay!

21. But if they’re told to isolate by the govt’s contact tracing app, they can’t claim anything. Un-yay.

22. Long story short: the govt cannot spend £120m feeding children. But it can spend £522 on the Eat Out Scheme, which its own report said contributed “negligible amounts” to the hospitality economy, and Boris Johnson admitted drove up infection rates – especially in the North

23. Those infection rates caused the govt to move Manchester into Tier 3

24. So the Mayor of Manchester asked for a £90m support package (1/6th of the money the govt spent causing the problem in the first place)

25. The govt said no, £60m

26. The Mayor said, how about £65m?

27. The govt said no, £60m

28. The Mayor said ok, fine, we’ll take the £60m

29. And then govt offered Manchester £22m, and then went to the press and said the Mayor was "being unreasonable"

30. The negotiations were led by Robert Jenrick, who recently set up a fund for the poorest 101 towns, then awarded his town £25m even though it is the 270th poorest, and therefore not even eligible

31. £25m is £237 per person

32. Manchester gets £7.85 per person

33. Robert Jenrick gave Manchester (2.8 million people) £22m

34. Robert Jenrick gave Richard Desmond (1 person) £45m

35. The talks broke down when the govt wouldn’t spend an extra £5m

36. The govt plans to spend £7m vitally rebranding "Highways England" to "National Highways"

37. Manchester Young Conservatives tweeted “Boris has lied about helping us in the North. It’s time for him to go". Don't look - they deleted it. Suspect somebody had a word.

38. Meanwhile the govt said Manchester will get the £60m after all, and chaos continue to reign supreme

39. But that £60m is brief reprieve for the Tories of Manchester, as a govt report said Tory seats in the North of England (the so-called "Red Wall" seats) can expect to lose at least 4000 jobs *each* as a result of Brexit, even if we do get a deal. More if we don't.

40. The govt rushed to begin its first airport Coronavirus testing, a mere 211 days after mandatory airport testing was begun in South Korea

41. South Korea has had 8 deaths per million

42. The UK has had 665 deaths per million

43. More airport news, as the govt finally accepted Brexit will cause “up to 8-hour delays at passport checks” and asked the EU to allow UK citizens to queue at EU-only lanes. Like we did when we were in the EU. But we aren’t now. So tough.

44. A senior diplomat said, “Having grown up in Brussels, Boris Johnson values the ability to travel freely to the continent”. You’d think Boris Johnson would foresee this problem when he led the campaign to stop that freedom.

45. The independent reviewer of Terrorism Legislation said the UK “will be increasingly unable to cope” after Brexit, as we lose access to EU data-sharing agreements

46. And a No-Deal end to UK/EU scientific collaboration will leave London with a £3bn annual deficit

47. In the space of 38 days, the govt announced the £100bn "Operation Moonshot" to solve Covid; then cancelled it; and then re-launched it again after it was found they’d accidentally continued to pay over 200 private consultants up to £7000 a day to work on it.

48. So this week, Boris Johnson said Moonshot would continue, but it’s goals “would take time”, which is the literal opposite of what he said it would do when it first announced it, and makes the entire thing absolutely pointless

49. And now it’s been admitted that Operation Moonshot would be quietly folded into the existing £12bn Test and Trace programme, and the £100bn has vanished. Apart from the bits the Serco consultants took for doing… nothing.

50. But Boris Johnson said the Test and Trace programme was “helping a bit”, and “a bit” is the least you’d expect if you’d spent £12bn

51. And then the £12bn Test and Trace programme fell to its lowest success rate so far, identifying only 60% of at-risk people

52. Local councils, with no additional funding, are tracing 98% of cases

53. A quick sweep though other epic successes you may have missed (or deliberately blocked out): Equalities minister Kemi Badenoch declared that it should be illegal to teach about inequality

54. The Cabinet Secretary said the report into “vicious and orchestrated” bullying by Home Secretary and Dementor Priti Patel “may never see the light of day”, cos if you have a report that vindicates you, you definitely sit on it as long as possible

55. And the appeals court unanimously overturned Priti Patel’s policy of removing people from the UK without giving them access to legal process or justice because – and I’m paraphrasing the judges here – what the fuck, Patel? What the actual fuck?

56. Undeterred, she announced plans to make rough-sleeping “grounds for removal of permission to be in the UK” and "denial of legal aid". So if you’re too poor to have a home, you must pay for a lawyer or she’ll shove you in the sea

57. After an unnamed Tory MP said it “looks bad to be handing top jobs to your friend and old boss”, Charles Moore, Boris Johnson’s friend and old boss, withdrew as next BBC chair.

58. The new favourite is Richard Sharp, the - yep - friend and old boss of Rishi Sunak

59. You’ll be amazed to hear this: Richard Sharp is a major donor to the Tory party. These little coincidences keep on happening

60. The govt decided to prevent EU citizens from having physical proof of their right to live in their own home

61. Grant Shapps threatened to “seize control of Transport for London” to save it from financial ruin at the hands of Sadiq Khan, who – the bastard - achieved a mere 71% reduction in the debts caused by his noble predecessor, Boris Johnson

62. Matt Hancock, facts at his fingertips, told MPs from Yorkshire their constituents could go on holiday abroad

63. But not in the UK

64. And then that they CAN go on holiday in the UK

65. But can't leave Yorkshire

66. He then said “I'll get back to you” about the details

67. A cross-party report found “the UK’s foreign policy is adrift”, that it lacks “clarity, confidence and vision” and that Britain is “absent from the world stage”. All of which is very soothing, as we move into the govt's proclaimed goal of a post-Brexit Global Britain.

68. And we can all relax: the govt is finally supporting culture in the UK, specifically the Nevill Holt Opera, which performs private operas, and is owned by Boris Johnson’s friend (and - jaw on floor! - Tory donor) David Ross, who is worth £700m so really needs the money.

69. The Nevill Holt Opera only functions in the summer, so thank god it has been prioritised with £85,000 to “maintain operations” in October.

And now, in honour of the opera, the fat lady can sing, cos I’m off to drink myself into oblivion. Join me.

We live in interesting times.

#tory scum #tory britain #uk news #uk this week #free school meals #andy burnham #marcus rashford

[newstfionline]

Wednesday, January 6, 2021

Covidization (Worldcrunch) COVID-19 is killing people even without the virus. Spain’s Lung Cancer Group, a research body, believes lung cancer will have killed 1,300 people more in the country in 2020 than predictive models had anticipated before the pandemic struck. Between January and April this year, lockdowns and diverted healthcare resources meant 30% fewer initial oncology consultations than during those months in 2019. This is just one of the many pathologies with significantly worse data for what many are calling a “covidization” of healthcare. Covidization is a term coined by Madhukar Pai, a tuberculosis researcher at Montreal’s McGill University to describe the pandemic’s distorting effect on resource allocation, prioritization and media attention in fighting other pathologies. Data appear to have confirmed his opinion. Since April this year, the European Commission has devoted 137 million euros to research on the coronavirus, or twice all the monies spent in 2018 on tuberculosis, malaria and AIDS.

Travel in the COVID-era (Foreign Policy) In a signal of what travel in a pandemic world will look like, a group of U.S. airlines have called on the United States to drop travel restrictions banning citizens from Europe and elsewhere in favor of a pre-flight negative coronavirus test requirement. The airlines have backed a U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) proposal to create a global program for testing travelers prior to entering U.S. borders. Vice President Mike Pence, the head of the White House coronavirus task force, is due to discuss the proposal during a meeting today.

Golf is not essential travel (AP) The speculation began with curious activity by U.S. military aircraft reported circling President Trump's Turnberry golf resort in western Scotland in November. Then the Sunday Post in Scotland reported that Glasgow Prestwick Airport “has been told to expect the arrival of a US military Boeing 757 aircraft, that is occasionally used by Trump, on January 19.” Could the American president, on his last full day in office, wing his way to his ancestral Scotland to hit the links at his shuttered resort, possibly missing the inauguration? On Tuesday, the leader of Scotland, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, was asked if Trump was headed her way, and what might be her message to him? At her daily news briefing, Sturgeon said, “I have no idea what Donald Trump’s travel plans are, you’ll be glad to know. … But “We are not allowing people to come into Scotland now without an essential purpose, which would apply to him, just as it applies to everybody else. Coming to play golf is not what I would consider an essential purpose.” The White House said that the reports of a Trump trip to Turnberry were “not accurate. President Trump has no plans to travel to Scotland.”

Divided U.S., Not Covid, Is the Biggest Risk to World in 2021, Survey Finds (Bloomberg) With the global economy still in the teeth of the Covid-19 crisis, the Eurasia group sees a divided U.S. as a key risk this year for a world lacking leadership. “In decades past, the world would look to the U.S. to restore predictability in times of crisis. But the world’s preeminent superpower faces big challenges of its own,” said Eurasia Group President Ian Bremmer and Chairman Cliff Kupchan in a report on the top risks for 2021. Starting with the difficulties facing the Biden Administration in a divided U.S, the report flags 10 geopolitical, climate and individual country risks that could derail the global economic recovery. An extended Covid-19 impact and K-shaped recoveries in both developed and emerging economies is the second biggest risk factor cited in the report. Biden will have difficulty gaining new confidence in U.S. global leadership as he struggles to manage domestic crises, the report said. With a large segment of the U.S. casting doubt over his legitimacy, the political effectiveness and longevity of his “asterisk presidency,” the future of the Republican Party, and the very legitimacy of the U.S. political model are all in question, it added. “A superpower torn down the middle cannot return to business as usual. And when the most powerful country is so divided, everybody has a problem,” said Bremmer and Kupchan.

Venezuela’s socialists take control of once-defiant congress (AP) Nicolás Maduro was set to extend his grip on power Tuesday as the ruling socialist party prepared to assume the leadership of Venezuela’s congress, the last institution in the country it didn’t already control. Maduro’s allies swept legislative elections last month boycotted by the opposition and denounced as a sham by the U.S., the European Union and several other foreign governments. While the vote was marred by anemically low turnout, it nonetheless seemed to relegate into irrelevancy the U.S.-backed opposition led by 37-year-old lawmaker Juan Guaidó. The opposition’s political fortunes have tanked as Venezuelans own hopes for change have collapsed. Recent opinion polls show support for Guaidó having fallen by more than half since he first rose to challenge Maduro two years ago. Meanwhile, Maduro has managed to retain a solid grip on power and the military, the traditional arbiter of political disputes.

Few reforms would benefit Japan as much as digitising government (Economist) It is a ritual almost as frequent and as fleeting as observing the cherry blossoms each year. A new Japanese government pledges to move more public services online. Almost as soon as the promise is made, it falls to the ground like a sad pink petal. In 2001 the government announced it would digitise all its procedures by 2003—yet almost 20 years later, just 7.5% of all administrative procedures can be completed online. Only 7.3% of Japanese applied for any sort of government service online, well behind not only South Korea and Iceland, but also Mexico and Slovakia. Japan is an e-government failure. That is a great pity, and not just for hapless Japanese citizens wandering from window to window in bewildering government offices. Japan’s population is shrinking and ageing. With its workforce atrophying, Japan relies even more than other economies on gains in productivity to maintain prosperity. The Daiwa Institute of Research, a think-tank in Tokyo, reckons that putting government online could permanently boost gdp per person by 1%. The lapse is all the more remarkable given Japan’s wealth and technological sophistication. Indeed, that seems to be part of the problem. Over the years big local technology firms have vied for plum contracts to develop it systems for different, fiercely autonomous, government departments. Most ended up designing custom software for each job. The result is a profusion of incompatible systems.

An ‘orchard of bad apples’ weighs on new Afghan peace talks (AP) Afghan negotiators are to resume talks with the Taliban on Tuesday aimed at finding an end to decades of relentless conflict even as hopes wane and frustration and fear grow over a spike in violence across Afghanistan that has combatants on both sides blaming the other. Torek Farhadi, a former Afghan government advisor, said the government and the Taliban are “two warring minorities,” with the Afghan people caught in between—“one says they represent the republic, the other says we want to end foreign occupation and corruption. But the war is (only) about power.” The stop-and-go talks come amid growing doubt over a U.S.-Taliban peace deal brokered by outgoing President Donald Trump. An accelerated withdrawal of U.S. troops ordered by Trump means just 2,500 American soldiers will still be in Afghanistan when President-elect Joe Biden takes office this month. The Taliban have grown in strength since their ouster in 2001 and today control or hold sway over half the country. But a consensus has emerged that a military victory is impossible for either side.

Iraq, Struggling to Pay Debts and Salaries, Plunges Into Economic Crisis (NYT) Economists say Iraq is facing its biggest financial threat since Saddam Hussein’s time. Iraq is running out of money to pay its bills. That has created a financial crisis with the potential to destabilize the government—which was ousted a year ago after mass protests over corruption and unemployment—touch off fighting among armed groups, and empower Iraq’s neighbor and longtime rival, Iran. With its economy hammered by the pandemic and plunging oil and gas prices, which account for 90 percent of government revenue, Iraq was unable to pay government workers for months at a time last year. Last month, Iraq devalued its currency, the dinar, for the first time in decades, immediately raising prices on almost everything in a country that relies heavily on imports. And last week, Iran cut Iraq’s supply of electricity and natural gas, citing nonpayment, leaving large parts of the country in the dark for hours a day. “I think it’s dire,” said Ahmed Tabaqchali, an investment banker and senior fellow at the Iraq-based Institute of Regional and International Studies. “Expenditures are way above Iraq’s income.” Many Iraqis fear that despite Iraqi government denials there will be more devaluations to come.

Qatar ruler lands in Saudi Arabia for summit to end blockade (AP) Qatar’s ruling emir arrived in Saudi Arabia and was greeted with an embrace by the kingdom’s crown prince on Tuesday, following an announcement that the kingdom would end its yearslong embargo on the tiny Gulf Arab state. The decision to open borders was the first major step toward ending the diplomatic crisis that has deeply divided U.S. defense partners, frayed societal ties and torn apart a traditionally clubby alliance of Arab states. The diplomatic breakthrough comes after a final push by the outgoing Trump administration and fellow Gulf state Kuwait to mediate an end to the crisis. The timing was auspicious: Saudi Arabia may be seeking to both grant the Trump administration a final diplomatic win and remove stumbling blocs to building warm ties with the Biden administration, which is expected to take a firmer stance toward the kingdom. Qatar’s only land border has been mostly closed since June mid-2017, when Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain launched a boycott of the small but influential Persian Gulf country. The Saudi border, which Qatar relied on for the import of dairy products, construction materials and other goods, opened briefly during the past three years to allow Qataris into Saudi Arabia to perform the Islamic hajj pilgrimage. It was unclear what concessions Qatar had made regarding a shift in its policies. While the Saudi decision to end the embargo marks a milestone toward resolving the spat, the path toward full reconciliation is far from guaranteed.

#headlines #news

[yakumtsaki]

Alright you guys, sorry for the delay, I’ve had to restart this post 20 fucking times because my changes weren’t being saved in the draft and then I kept getting the ‘upload failed’ error. In case you don’t remember wtf is going on you might wanna re-read the last update (I certainly had to) which is apparently from JUNE 2018. Jfc I suck so hard. Now this was gonna be really long but tumblr wouldn’t post it so I’m breaking it up in 3 parts, part 2 to be posted tomorrow. For those that don’t feel like reading back, general recap of the last couple updates:

Jojo cheated on Wyatt with Max Flexor and my solution to that marital crisis was to adopt our first dog ever, a puppy hilariously named Maxx.

The puppy grew up to be an asshole and is constantly beating up the cats, who have turned into giant pussies (no pun intended) and are losing every fight to him despite the fact they’re named after Mortal Kombat characters. They’re a fucking disgrace to Alegra’s/Victor’s/Ronroneo’s memory and I haven’t settled on a cat heir yet because they both suck.

Jojo is perma miserable, I don’t even remember how much money away from his 100k LTW, and still not a werewolf despite my pathologically persistent attempts to make him friends with the wolf.

Fucking useless Wyatt didn’t get promoted while Komei was alive providing us with his 100 townie friends, we spent 20 updates befriending every rando that crossed our lot to secure his promotion, and then finally on the day he was supposed to become Captain Hero, Wyatt got, of course, fired and is now on track to take longer to complete his literal career based LTW than Komei took to get 6 pets on the top of their careers.

Absolutely everyone hates noogie addict Shajar, she got a Kylo Ren makeover, and we still don’t know what her sexual orientation is thanks to her ridiculous fitness/fatness turn ons and cleanliness turn off.

Golden child/10 nice points freakshow Cyneswith grew up, rolled romance with the most disturbing turn-ons/offs possible (grey hair/mechanical & charisma turn off) and the 20 simultaneous lovers LTW.

Wulf grew up into a kid, got an Amadeus makeover, is officially a Wyatt clone and the only member of this family I don’t completely hate yet.

Now I’d like to begin the first Union post in more than a year by requesting you do me a solid and lower your expectations for this thing as far down as humanly possible. Like really try to recreate the Jules Verne classic “Journey to the Center of the Earth” with your expectations here, because my brain is so fucking fried that there’s a 20% chance I randomly start citing sources at some point during this post. This grad school crap has seriously been the worst trade deal in the history of trade deals, maybe ever. And speaking of bad trade deals, let’s get this update rolling with the man, the myth, the legend, the husband who managed to make Komei look like a dreamboat in comparison..

..Wyatt fucking Union, née Monif. It’s been a long time, but I’m not gonna lie to you Wyatt, not nearly long enough. Looking good man, just one small question, where the fuck are your eyebrows?

-You àccidéntally deléted thém, imbécilé, et I cannôt exprèss my irritatiόn prόperly becausé I hàve non eyebrôws!

Did your selective French accent get thicker this past year or is it just me?

-It géts thickér whén je suis distrésséd, givé moi mon eyebrôws bàcc!!!

No can do, brother. Actually can do, but I think the Mona Lisa look is working for you, and more importantly I still hate you, so I’m just gonna hardcore ignore you for the rest of this post if that’s ok. Talk to me when you finally get promoted, aka never the way this shit is going.

-Non! NON! MON EYEBROWS!

It’s been lovely catching up.

Jojό I mean Jojo, goddammit Wyatt, is spending most of his time building robots in the mausoleum (sweet hipster band name alert)..

..giving financial advice in Shajar’s room (inb4 what’s the difference between the mausoleum and Shajar’s room)..

..building evil snowmen alone in the middle of the night, like all mentally healthy middle aged men with 3 kids are wont to do..

..and getting the piss harassed out of him by the cat ghosts in the bathroom (sweet hipster band name alert #2). How is this like the fourth time this happens in the exact same spot, will you just stop autonomously cleaning the bathroom after midnight? It’s obviously where the cats hang out, give it the fuck up already.

-I’m actively TRYING TO DIE you absolute moron, what does a guy have to do to get killed around here?

Yea can’t say that I blame you but not happening, you can commit suicide by Ghost Alegra after the kids fuck off to college, ok? I promise.

-Oh like you promised me being heir was a route worth pursuing??

Um obviously you too need to go back and re-read your own life story, because I spent the entirety of our “““cherished””” time together telling you heirship is a shitty gig at generation 2. And then to top it off you went and married Wyatt to ensure maximum shittiness, so there you go, fucking enjoy. God I am so sick of both of you losers and we’re only 5 pics in. Let’s check in with your spawn, I’m sure they can’t possibly be more annoying than their parents-

-oh right, I forgot, this is the generation with 10/10/9 active points where the party never stops. Cyneswith are you somehow twerking to classical music?

-How else am I gonna attract all those hot senior citizens per my grey hair turn on and 20 lovers LTW?

Ok great yea I see how this is gonna go, you’re trying to entice people into voting you for heir based on how torturous playing this fucked up LTW is gonna be for me, well forget it, my readers are intellectuals and completely above such petty entertainment. (istg mofos, don’t even think about it, i already did Komei’s 5 pets career shit, i will burn this place to the ground if you saddle me with Cyneswith banging the elderly for 30 years)

-No need to worry your stupid little head, I will beat Cyneswith for HEIR just like I beat her HAIR up daily! HAHA!

Shajar no offense but you’re a fucking war crime of a sim, nearly everyone who’s ever met you hates you including your parents, and the fact that you’re the alternative here is really not helping my situation in any way. Also how the fuck are you gonna be heir when the only thing you seem to be attracted to is giving noogies, you’re like one week away from college and I still don’t even know if you’re str8 or gay or bi or w/e the fuck you are. You have Jojo’s personality combined with..

..yes exactly, DANIEL’S SOCIAL ABILITIES. I mean I was joking with the whole ‘Shajar’s the spawn of Satan’ thing, but this combo of traits was clearly drawn up in Hell’s boardroom.

ANYWAY. It’s a snowy Sunday morning, and anyone who has been a teen knows what that means:

Time to go clubbing! Man I remember being like 15, waking up on a freezing Sunday morning and my mom making me a cup of hot chocolate before I drove off to the club. Those were the days.

-Uh, Shaj, when did you learn how to drive?

-Don’t be stupid, Cyneswith, people don’t need to ‘learn’ how to drive.

-They absolutely do, actually.

-Well what can I tell you, the dark side of the Force is a pathway to many abilities some consider to be unnatural.

-Here we are, safe and sound! Celebratory noogie!

-YOU RAN OVER 9 PEOPLE

-How many times to I have to explain this to you, Apartment Life townies are not people.

Can’t argue with that logic. Let’s just go in and find out what Shajar’s sexual orientation is once and for all so I can spend the rest of this update aggressively promoting Wulf’s candidacy.

Now I consider ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’ one of the dumbest sayings there is, but even I have to concede that this particular picture truly is worth a thousand words. Quick poll, what is more horrifying, Shajar’s literal Joker face or Cyneswith, whom I’ve never seen read a book ever, autonomously pulling one out in the middle of the dance floor, in what I can only assume is an attempt to attract old perverts with the schoolgirl routine?

And I know what some of you are thinking, you’re like ‘bro, you’re just reaching to make a bad joke bro, Cyneswith is just a sweet nice introvert and not like other girls, she doesn’t feel comfortable in the club’, well to that let me reply with another picture that is worth a thousand words:

Yea that’s right, on the first minute of our first time out WE RUN INTO THAT ONE ELDER TOWNIE THAT HAS WRINKLE MAKE UP ON. GODDAMMIT CYNESWITH

Do you guys remember how Jojo was obsessed with Stephen Tinker as a teen? Are you seeing the connection here?? Those kids have literally inherited the worst possible traits from both their parents turned up to 11, it’s fucking unreal.  

Right after I get over Wrinkle’s presence I turn around and what do I see, those 2, who have never had a non-noogie physical interaction, autonomously doing the family kiss thing. I didn’t even catch it on time because I was loling irl, we came out here so these assholes can find age-appropriate partners, and instead they’re kissing each other. Seems about right with this family, and clearly Striped Scarf’s dumb ass ships it.

-They look so much alike, it’s meant to be!

Yes, and they even share the same last name! Talk about written in the stars.

Thankfully Abhijeet is here to save us from incest by perving on Cyneswith. GTFO ABHIJEET. Anyone like ‘bro townies just autonomously come to greet your sims on community lots regardless of age, stop calling them perverts’, see you in about 5 pics down.  

I try to have Shajar chat up Striped Scarf and suffice it to say Shaj ~stole her heart~ and presumably put it on this stick to wave around.

NO. CYNESWITH NO. I’m seriously having déjà vu of all the times I was like ‘NO. JOJO NO’, jfc.

Shajar is unsurprisingly exhibiting no interest in socializing with anyone around her, instead she’s trying every activity this terribly lit place has to offer, and she looks demented while doing it:

I’m feeling a primal urge to photoshop Darth Vader’s melted helmet on the bowling ball here, someone please remind me to do it for the heir vote photoshoot.

-HA. SUCK IT DENISE JACQUET

That’s Denise Jacquet?! I can’t tell who anyone is for shit anymore. The default replacements are a scourge upon premade brands, I’m getting rid of them pronto. Speaking of scourges, where the hell is your sister?

-Who cares?

I wanna say ‘me’ but we both know that’s a lie.

Oh ok, THERE SHE IS.

-So you see Cyneswith, just because something is technically ‘illegal’, doesn’t mean it’s morally wrong-

Yea yea fascinating stuff, now get out of the hot tub or I will fucking neuter you, I don’t know if a eunuch mod already exists for medieval games but I will make one if it doesn’t.

Here, Cyneswith, drink some water, have a nice G-rated convo with your sister about violins and stop pissing me off. 

-First of all this is straight vodka.

Great.

-Secondly Shajar is talking about Mozart’s coprophilia.

-I sure am.

Amazing. Well, I guess it’s at times like these when you need to look inside your heart and truly ask yourself, what did you expect from Jojo’s children.

ABHIJEET ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME DID YOU EVEN HEAR ME TALK ABOUT CASTRATION

-Ha, I went home and put on my most elderly-looking formal wear!

-I hate to see you go but I love to watch you leave Ab <3

CYNESWITH SHUT UP. I can’t believe you people are actually making me miss Gunther’s teenage whoring, at least he kept it age appropriate.

-Is some random lady pressing her breasts against my head?

She most certainly is, Shajar, because it is now crystal clear that this bowling alley doubles as the site of annual perv townie convention and we walked right into it-

-and it’s also clear we have serious issues and are enjoying ourselves. Shaj I legit don’t know what to tell you, this is the first time you get along with someone right away and it just had to be the adult with the bad haircut and the flasher’s trench coat???

-You’re damn right it did.

Alright then, I’m officially going to nope out of this situation, safe in the knowledge you’re a noogiesexual and nothing will actually happen with this freak, so I’ll focus on Cyneswith instead who is much more of a loose canon. 

Here Cyn, talk to this guy, who I’m 90% sure is the same guy your father rejected in favor of stalking Stephen Tinker when he was your age.

-Ohhhh, he’s dreamy!

Omg really?? Halleluj-

-oh never mind, you were of course referring to adult ass Brandon Lillard. I do like that our townies have recurring roles each generation, we should make rejecting Blondie a rite of passage in this family. We should also officially gtfo because this is happening:

-Um, now that I’m looking at you in harsher lighting, it’s gonna be a no from me dawg. 

Oh, thank the fucking lord.

-Let’s celebrate the fact we didn’t get hopelessly obsessed with any adults here by doing the traditional Dance of Normality!

-We beat Dad’s genes, we beat Dad’s genes!

-We’re normal!

Yes, and we’re definitely showing it. Can we please leave now so I can make sure I’ve uninstalled Inteenminator and turn off free will? 

-Nop! Venue change!

-Got-out-of-the-car celebratory noogie!

-Made-it-to-the-door celebratory noogie!

Shajar you unironically have a noogie addiction, I’m not kidding in the slightest, you need to see a doctor.

Great, great, not another teen in sight and to top it off Denise followed us here to ensure maximum elder presence. I feel comfortable officially declaring this day a complete waste of time.

God, the vintage pink dress and the pink alcohol combo is some straight up current era Taylor Swift nonsense. That’s it, we’re outta here, back home where no one is lurking, waiting to strike at us-

-SOPHIE NOOOOOOOOOOOO💔💔💔💔💔

-The Lord is my shepherd.

NO HE ISN’T EVERYONE KNOWS YOU CAN’T HERD CATS PLEASE DON’T DIE

-Nop, I’m over it. Goodbye heathens, it’s been nice, hope you don’t find your paradise. 

UGH SOPHIE, my beloved Westboro lunatic, the last gangsta generation 1 cat we had.. I can’t believe you’re gone and all I’m left with is stupid Goro and D’vorah who can’t even beat up the fucking dog. This is truly painful.

Yes, pets, I agree, Kaylynn is completely to blame for Sophie dying of old age. The time has now come to decide on a cat heir-

-and since Goro ran away like a little bitch after Sophie’s death despite the fact he didn’t even like her, he’s automatically disqualified and will be going off to live on Melody and Daniel’s farm once returned to us. Congratulations to D’vorah I guess, on being the least terrible of two terrible options. 

On the topic of terrible heir options, Cyn has non-stop wants to go on dates and have her first kiss and all that crap, and since our Sunday morning clubbing was a bust we invite over the matchmaker.

-Hello there young Union, I see your house has been upgraded since I was last here.

Oh right we haven’t required your services since Daniel was a teen and we lived in a trailer, well we are flush with cash now!

-Hopefully your payment reflects that.

It will!! Just please give us someone good, I can’t deal with single teen Cyn for one more second.

-Oh my, what a beautiful BLANK PIECE OF PAPER.

WHAT!? NO THAT’S 5K IT’S JUST A SNOW GLITCH 

-What do I look like to you, a money thawing service?

Does such a service.. exist??

-It does not, so I have to go home and use a hairdryer on this!

Just come inside and we’ll give you non-frozen money!

-No, no, you’ll get what you paid for..

-Have a magical time!

...

.........

......................

Lakshmi this was so fucking evil that I almost want to age you down and see if you and Shajar hit it off. 

-As if, the whole neighborhood knows what you did to Komei.

Helped him achieve his insane 6-pets-career LTW?

-Turned him into a servant while your sim was lounging around all day!

Oh yea I did do that. But Wyatt was also a townie and he does literally nothing, Jojo is the servant now!

-Only because Wyatt is too fucking stupid to do things! Word has gotten out, no townie will ever marry in this family again unless they’re brain dead, so it’s Wyatts only for you from now on, sister!

Well this has been a complete fucking disaster. It was great seeing you again, Lakshmi, thanks for the dream date with the adult farting machine, 5k well-spent.

Pretty sure it was you bro, and yes, how about we don’t do that again.

Wyatt has brought over Amanda from work! (Aka Victoria’s only friend and subsequent lesbian lover, who is really pretty and is definitely getting married in at some point, preferably after the brown hair genes have been weakened so we can go back to being gingers.)  

-Wow Shajar, your grandmother, God rest her soul, mentioned you were her favorite and now I can see why! Loving the Kylo Ren look!

-Is someone being genuinely nice to me?! What is happening?

-Yes, please stop being nice to her, Amanda, we don’t want her getting used to it.

Jojo istg.

-Cyneswith dear, tell Amanda all about how much money your grandmother left you so she can stop being nice to Shajar. 

-Soooo much money, Miss Amanda!

-Ah, what a polite child I’ve single-handedly raised.

-Now, Cyneswith, you really need to get back on the dating scene so you have ample time to find the perfect spouse and continue our line, since you’re clearly the only one of my children that is remotely heir material. 

-Dad, Shajar and Wulf are right next to you.

-Oh they are? I’m wearing my special contact lenses that make those disappointments invisible to me, but even better, they need to hear this. Shajar is a noogiesexual and thus incapable of reproduction, and Wulf is not even a Union, I mean have you seen that kid? Wyatt reproduced by himself like the amoeba he is. Now, your grandmother-

-YOU MENTIONED ME 3 TIMES AND HERE I AM

OH FUCK VICTORIA, deleting the default replacements gave you base game hair!!!!

-That’s the part you’re scared by, not my Beetlejuicesque entrance?

There’s literally nothing scarier than your ghost sporting this haircut for all eternity, I’m re-downloading that default immediately. 

-Oh mom, so good to see you! Let me just hug my beloved child, Shijer-

-Shajar, dad.

-SHAJAR, let me hug Shajar, like I do all the time. 

-I’m glad to see you’re not picking favorites among your children like I did, the way I treated David-

-Daniel, mom.

-DANIEL, is the one thing I’ve truly been regretting in the afterlife. That and not skinning Marisa Bendett alive when I had the chance. 

-Well, as you can see by Shajar’s totally normal and not at all shocked reaction to my hug, I am a wonderful, fair, and emotionally available father. 

(Bruh this freaked me out so much when it happened, I mean I KNOW it’s an animation glitch but I was convinced my sims had become sentient for a good while after)

-Is your grandmother’s ghost still on the premises?

-Yup. 

-When will this nightmare end, paying attention to you is the worst. 

-Ok she’s gone.

-FINALLY. Now it’s back to the crypt for you, and don’t you dare go complain to her urn!

-Ah, Stephen, Stephen, my life is crap and I can’t even🎵

And with the knowledge you have composed a theme song for Stephen Tinker, part 1 of the Union comeback update is concluded. Will Shajar’s sexual orientation reveal itself? Will Cyneswith find true love? Will Jojo become a werewolf? Will Wulf continue to be the only dignified member of this family? Will D’vorah have kittens? Will Wyatt do literally anything worth mentioning? Tune in for parts 2 & 3 to find out, unfollow button on the upper right corner for those who need it. 

#gen 2 #ts2

[prorevenge]

Bully Creates His Own Revenge

This ones a bit long but please stick with me because it's a good one...

So here's the basics, when I was a kid my dad was in the service, U.S. Navy, and so we moved around a lot. Because of this I was always the new kid over and over again, meaning I was constantly the target of would be bullies and this made me fairly introverted and distrusting of other people by nature. In the waning years of my father's military career he decided he would take his family back to his home town and do some recruiting until he retired. So away we went to the family farm built by my great grandfather.

If anyone has ever found themselves moving to a small town suddenly then you are well aware of what I mean when I say that the locals were very small town minded. For those of you who don't know, the small town mentality is basically thus, "if you're not from there, born and raised, then you don't belong there." A lot of small town citizens are closed off and want nothing to do with outsiders.

So there I was, not only the new kid but introverted and an outsider....bully magnet. For the most part I tried not to let it get to me but I did have some bad days and got into a few fights, always in self defense though. And eventually as people grew up most of the other kids matured out of trying to be a bully and began to just leave me alone. Especially once they found out who my great grandfather was...something about one of the four founding families...I don't know...I never really cared that much and besides those people had shown their true colors by treating me like crap for years by that point...but that's a different story. This story is about a kid we'll call Mike.

You see Mike was the only one who never seemed to grow out of trying to be a bully. He would daily track me down and tell me how worthless I was. That I was just some dumb farm boy who would never amount to anything and would always be a loser. He would walk up to me randomly and say things like "I know you're going to be the one who shoots up the school someday, and when it ends with your suicide I'll be the one cheering". He had some issues. At one point I arrived to school to find he had painted the combination on my locker with toothpaste. A lot of weird stuff like that.

Anyways we get into our senior year of high school and I've long since been doing my best to ignore him. His not being able to get a reaction out of me seemed to really upset him and even his friends started saying his seeming need to find me everyday to simply be a jerk was bordering on the creepy and obsessive. And then all of a sudden the verbal abuse stopped one day a couple months from graduation. I assumed he had finally just given up but that wasn't the case.

A couple weeks later I walked to the end of of our LONG driveway to catch the bus and found that our mailbox had been run over. I didn't think anything of it at the time other than that it must have been some drunk. I get home later that after noon, take some photos of the damage just in case and then fix the mailbox, new wooden post buried onto the ground. I finish my other chores and homework and relax the rest of the evening. Next morning I go to catch the school bus and the mailbox has again been run over. I get home, photos, repair it, chores, homework, relax. It happened again the next day and again the day after that...this went on for two weeks only stopping on the weekend. My parents had reported the smashing of the mailbox but there was no evidence as to who the culprit even was so nothing was done about it.

I finally have enough of digging out broken post and replacing them and so...The Revenge

I get up early on a Saturday and head to the end of the driveway. I dig a 2 feet by two feet wide hole 6 feet straight down and filled the hole with fresh cement and in the center placed a ten foot section of the old farm house' original cast iron water pipes, sunk 6 feet into the concrete. I filled the rest of the 10ft cast iron pipe with concrete as well and mounted the mailbox on the top. Mind you I looked into how far from the road the mailbox needed to be for safety reasons and attached ample amounts of reflectors.

Monday morning comes and I notice the mailbox post has all sorts of scratches on it but otherwise it's fine. I get to my final class of the day, creative writing, and am in the middle of a story outline for that week's project when a friend of Mike's comes in, we'll call him Steve.

Steve sees me and freaks out.

Steve: Do you have any idea what you did to Mike's car?! OP: I didn't do anything to Mike's car?? I don't even know what it looks like. Steve: Your little stunt with the mailbox totaled it! He had to get it towed into town at 5AM this morning! (small town. Auto garage is DEFINITELY closed at 5AM) Steve: He's gonna sue the [FRONK] out of you! (Censored for RSlash, just in case) OP: OK but you are aware that deliberately hitting and/or damaging a mailbox is a federal offense right? Steve: What are you talking about? OP: You don't actually own your mailbox. Legally it belongs to the Post Office so destroying a mailbox is destroying government property making it a federal offense. Steve: So what? He'll get a little fine, but your gonna pay! OP: Oh No...hahaha..It's actually a $250,000.00 Fine or up to 3 years in prison per offense for vandalizing a mailbox, and since it's happened 10 times in the last two weeks that translates to either a 2.5 million dollar fine or up to 30 years in prison.

Steve just stares at me for a moment and storms out. At that point I pull up the federal statute on the computer I was working on and Mike comes in insisting that I'm making that who thing up. So I show him the law and he freezes.

OP: You can take me to court and I might have to pay a small fine and maybe even tear down the mailbox...but your life would be over. Mike: Maybe but you can't prove I did it ten times! OP:Actually I took photos of the damages so I can prove it was at least ten times... But even if I couldn't $250,000.00 is till A LOT of money...much more then your car is worth I'm sure. Would you really bankrupt yourself or even get yourself sent to prison to force me to pay you a grand or two for the car?

Mike stormed out of the classroom and never bothered me again.

The Best part was actually the domino effect this created. You see Mike didn't have enough credits to graduate on time. Wasted to much time trying to be a Dr Phil case I guess. I heard through that small town grapevine that he was eventually shunted over to adult programs by the school. Without his car, which was totaled, and unable to afford another (his mother bought the 1st one and refused to buy a second when she found out how he totaled it) he couldn't get to his classes and was eventually tossed out of school due to attendance problems. Without a diploma or GED he couldn't get into even a community college nor find proper work. Not having access to gainful employment left him living with his mother in a trailer, living off her and the occasional odd job he gets.

Meanwhile I'm now married with a child and living in beautiful subtropical Algarve in the south of Portugal in Europe.

Mike if your out there reading this I only have one real question....Just how did that Mailbox taste?

(source) story by (/u/ThorsHammer0999)

#prorevenge #by /u/ThorsHammer0999 #pro revenge #revenge stories #pro revenge stories #pro #revenge #last10

[bluebrine]

ask meme time

tagged in by @a-humble-goblin​! C:

name: i go by Blue here!

nickname: ..... well, Blue again! (or whatever shorthand of my URLs ppl have used in the past... i never was enough of an active poster anywhere to get real nicknames given to me lol)

zodiac: as piscean as a pisces could be! 🐟

height: 5′8 (the shorty of the family.... curse you, 6′5 brother!!)

languages: monolingual english speaker here. shoulda kept up with spanish from high school, but alas :( looking to learn latin for taxonomic purposes someday though!

nationality: american- but more specifically, tennessean! ⛰️ ~good ol’ rocky top...

favorite season: the cool seasons! ^^ fall and winter are the best. the rain and wind of spring is also nice though! (basically anything except the sweaty-ass days of southern summers are alright with me lol)

favorite flower: oh boy. uh. i like a lot of plants... this one’s a toughie! it changes depending on what’s in season tbh. right now its the sweet little things we call ‘field pansies’ around here. they’re one of the first things to catch my attention on these early, sunny spring days

proper name is Veronica peduncularis, or ‘creeping speedwell’. sadly its not native to my area though :(

favorite scent: literally nothing on earth smells better than onions & garlic frying on the stovetop. full-stop. a fool-proof way to lure me into any trap, would 100% work in any situation

favorite fictional character: this changes depending on what i’m fixating on atm, but i’m on a dishonored kick rn, so it’s my girl lizzie stride! B) i’m always a sucker for mean-ass, violent gang ladies and she checks every box on my list tbh (and those TEETH. woof)

coffee, tea, or hot chocolate: hot chocolate babey!! B) i’m just here for tasty sweet drinks- i don’t care for tea or coffee at all. i have to add an ungodly amount of cream & sugar anyway to make ‘em drinkable. (also, caffeine literally does nothing to wake me up. its a cruel fate for my eternally tired self)

average sleep: i’m on a senior citizen’s sleep schedule... usually in bed by 9:30-11:00, & up at 5:00-6:00. a big leap from my early days of bed at 4 am, and pulling all-nighters..... i don’t think i could physically do that nowadays lmao

dogs or cats: hmm, cats slightly more probably? they’re more relaxing to be around, which is nice. love both though! (i have no pets atm, but looking to adopt some pigeons in the future! 🕊)

my old cat louie was my baby though. not sure any other cat can one-up his grumpy ass, but one day i’d like to have another cat with me. (he looks polite here but he was a total butthole, don’t be fooled!!)

number of blankets: 1 (one) big-ass weighted comforter (20 lbs)

dream trip: i would love to see the pacific ocean some day! 🌊

blog established: uh, i know it was the summer before i started high school...? oh god. i was a baby. who let me on here

random fact: the american persimmon (Diospyros virginiana) is a tree with fruit so popular in its native ecosystem, that it also goes by such delightful names as possum apples, deer candy, or sugar plums!

(bonus tmi fact: most of the seeds i’m propagating this year were found as the aftermath to some happy possum or coyote’s fall meal. but hey, according to this paper, the digestive process of these mammals actually boosts germination rates! go nature)

current time: 3:30 pm! a lovely overcast afternoon on this fine weekend of mine

favorite musical artists: Ulvesang, Black Hill, The Crane Wives, The Oh Hellos (... my favs are really just what i’ve been listening to recently lmao)

stuck in my head: gimme gimme gimme! by ABBA :y

last movie i saw: hmm... that would have to be knives out! saw it with em after we were gonna go laugh at cats, but missed it by like 2 days :( knives out was fun tho! hadn’t been to an actual theatre for a while, so the experience was nice. got to split one of those giant buckets of grease-corn, which was amazing

last thing i googled: .... technically, it was ‘fish emoji’ for this post. before that it was ‘american wild persimmon seed germination’ because i just got mine outta the fridge and into the pots for the spring! hope to have an ok amount sprout... i’d like to see these guys fruiting in a few years! (2 seeds per section- assuming a success rate of 25%, i might get 12 trees out of these! we will see)

lucky number: don’t really have one? i like the evenness of 8, but i don’t take any real stock in lucky numbers

currently wearing: the usual- tank top with comfy shorts!

dream job: working on my paleontology degree right now- trying to make this dream real soon! 🦕

favorite foods: pasta with cream sauces. literally anything that fits that definition is my fav. best combo i’ve made so far is something with grilled chicken, sautéed mushrooms + onions + garlic, and a cream sauce with spinach /chef’s kiss/

instruments: none! ain’t got a musical bone in my entire body 

favorite song: i possibly can’t pick this, but i’m listening to Curses by The Crane Wives right now!

#personal #mutual tag #i don't do enough ask things.... feel free to tag me in more of these folks #(i may or may not answer them though. can be stressful to talk about myself lol) #long post #tagging..... whoever else would like to do this! :> twas a lot of fun

[hayesit]

matt’s 2019 year in review

here it is! and it’s late because i had other/better things to do (and procrastinating), was recovering from hangovers (also procrastinating), and recovering from being sick (procrastinating).

i’ve been doing these year in review posts since 2016, so here is my fourth installment. every year i look back through my google calendar, my camera roll, and my bullet journal as a gratitude exercise and to chart my own development as an adult. 

here is my spotify wrapped 2019!

the beginning of this year was off to a good start: i met two friends that i know through the internet! i met my friend riley when she visited boston (i met her through a mutual friend and through overwatch league twitter) and my friend jimmy that i’ve known for…. 6 or 7 years (?!) through tumblr and designed the logo for me and alex’s late podcast, hardly tea, may she rest in peace. 

i moved dorm rooms in between the fall and spring semester, and once again i was not happy with where i lived. i lived with 4 rando’s that i was placed with and the 5 of us barely even talked with each other. my direct roommate i saw for only two weeks, and for the nights he slept over in the bed (that he was paying room and board for) and had the worst snoring humanly possible that not even earplugs could kill (video below). i hardly slept while he was there and roamed the halls of riverview suites like a ghost due to the anxiety i felt about my lack of sleep (we love a vicious circle)! he disappeared after those two weeks without notice and i lived in fear of him returning for the rest of the semester (which he didn’t), but returned to my normal sleep schedule. 

that semester was my first semester of full-time grad school. i got a poor grade on an assignment that had a note from the professor that said she knew i could do better and it hit me how much different grad school is from undergrad and how much more effort and dedication it requires. after crying in my professor’s office, my work ethic has improved since then, but it’s not anywhere near where i’d like it to be (more on that later). 

now to more positive things for the spring semester: i met some friends that semester both ~on and offline~ that made the semester far more bearable AND i did however truly pop off in every last one of my powerpoint presentations for class. i looooove making powerpoints and just fuckin telling jokes about my research topic and have ppl tell me that they are looking forward to my presentation & that i should teach college classes :)!

me and 4 friends had a social group in which we’d drink and play board games and forget about the board game and drunkenly talk shit called cabam after all our first initials! i always looked forward to that and dug the group chemistry a lot.

during this semester i grew a   “ beard “, otherwise known as i chose not to shave just to  “ see what would happen “ (praythatitfilledin). sorry about that!

the overwatch league was something that i had to look forward to watch every week and i had my experience enhanced through sideshow and avast’s unofficial companion streams, which guaranteed lots of laughs. i have bought tickets to two boston home games in 2020 which i am very excited about! analysts have predicted boston to be in 20th place this year (there are 20 teams) but i’m still excited for the 2020 season anyway!!

i can’t have a year-in-review of 2019 without mentioning game of thrones. due to the show’s final season being undeniably weak, i enjoyed the camaraderie with the other people that watched thrones during those six weeks. i haven’t thought about the show or its universe for quite a while, unfortunately. i truly was quite into the world of westeros, but the weakness of the end of the story cheapened the journey of each of the characters, in a way. such a shame.

while i got my diploma in december 2018, i walked across the stage of umass lowell’s tsongas arena with my bachelor of arts in psychology (and minor in theatre arts). it wasn’t as emotional or triumphant of an experience and just felt weird, considering i had already gotten my diploma and was going to remain in the clutches of rowdy the riverhawk as i am staying for my masters degree in applied behavior analysis/autism studies. i brought a ceramic monkey to graduation. it didn’t have any symbolism, but i just wanted to see if they’d stop me (which they didn’t)

 this summer was better than most summers of mine go, i hung out with alex nearly every weekend, got my very first iphone, and got a data plan. the combination of these three things got me back into playing pokemon go, an unexpectedly fun pastime! went on lots of walks!

my favorite day of summer was going to a lake with alex and our friend gianna, who i grew closer to after meeting her during macbeth last year. fond 2019 memories with gianna include: doing simulation patients with her, watching movies with her and alex, and the halloween party. what a great gd person and a great gd friend! big fan and eternally rooting for her. 

fire emblem: three houses came out on the switch in august and is, without a doubt, my game of the year. there’s truly so much to love about the game: the world, the characters, new changes made to the series, things that were gone but returned, interesting micromanaging, and best of all, how huge my brain feels when playing it. 

i got a 6-week summer job as a paraprofessional at an extended-school-year program for children with developmental disabilities at a preschool in haverhill which taught me a lot of lessons, such as: i hate cleaning shit off of children.

then i had feelings that didn’t make much sense for about a month! whoops!

my full-time job i currently have is working at my old high school as a behavior specialist. i provide consultation and work on programs to lead to more appropriate behavior in students, primarily ones with developmental disabilities. so far it’s been fairly rewarding, some days are more challenging than others, some days are a lot of sitting in meetings, and some days are a lot of running around. some days there is not much to do at all, which has its obvious upsides and downsides. working at the high school isn’t something that i want to do forever, but it’s a good place to start with. i’m definitely learning a lot and there are a lot of benefits to working here. sometimes i can work on my grad school work (which is all online until the 2020 summer semester) which is definitely huge. and my commute is either a 15 minute walk or 3 minutes if my mom drives me! 

a ~complex~ thing about working in my hometown is that it makes the most financial sense to live at home because it’s so close to work. this is my first time living at home full-time since high school and i’m not enjoying that part too much. most weekends i visit alex in lowell, but being stuck at home with no car (going to retake the license test in the spring when the ice melts!) and having to go to bed so early definitely hurts. sure, i have what is likely the lowest amount of expenses i’ll ever have in my life (no car-related payments, no rent, no groceries), but i feel landlocked. i feel like a teenager with minimal freedom, which is in part because my mom doesn’t quite understand yet that i’m a 22 year-old that should have a lot more freedom than i do now. the most i really do on weekdays after work gets out (2:30p) is go to savers with my mom if it’s tuesday (senior citizen day), maybe go for a walk if it’s nice out (which for most of the school year, it isn’t), or be on the computer watching bon appetit videos and playing overwatch, fire emblem, or pokemon, eat a bland dinner at 6, go to bed at around 9:30. sad! truly not a situation that i want to be trapped in that much that much longer!

i think the best and most important part of this year was becoming closer with alex. as i mentioned before, we see each other most weekends, to our great benefit. our living situations have flip-flopped, with me living at home and alex living in an apartment near campus, which in both similar and different ways have taken their respective tolls on us. having each other while going through changes and stagnations in our lives has been immeasurably important. thank you alex for providing a place to be myself other than my own head. thank you for being my best friend. 

now i come to the thing that i’m most excited about for 2020. not 2 suck my own horn but i have cobbled together a fuckin dream team of five friends (me, alex, chris, kelly, and molly). the two times we have all gotten together it has been so satisfying in such a wonderful and otherworldly way that i am filled to the brim of happiness being around them. the craziest thing is that i met chris and kelly through twitter! TWITTER. and they’re real-ass people and my real-ass friends! i haven’t been so pleased with something in my life like this for so long and it feels so good to have adult friends that i have chosen rather than friends by circumstance. it’s truly a crime that we can’t see each other more often, but we already have a day picked out for the next time we all do something together. feeling emotional writing this paragraph bc i love me gd friends so much!

there is a lot of uncertainty about this new year for me. i sure as fuck don’t want to live at home more than i have to but don’t know where to go, my practicum class starts for me this summer which means i’ll most likely have to change jobs (fine by me, but will be exhausting), i recently began my search for therapists and hope to find one soon to help me ~unpack things~, my thesis begins in the fall semester and i don’t know what to do for it, and i’m not 100% dead-set on working in special education. it’s been hard transitioning from living on campus and going to school full-time to the life i have now. 

#year in review #personal

[hachama]

Democratic debate analysis

I’ve read the transcripts.  I read the fact-checkers’ analysis.  I have ranked them. 

Due to the size of the field, I’ll be splitting my analysis into four groups.  This first one will be the Please Do Not Make Me Vote For Them group: 

Ryan, Hickenlooper, Williamson, Bennet, Delaney, O’Rourke, and Biden.

Under the break, I’ll be analyzing their debate performance, how effectively they represented themselves on the issues, and how much I hate them, in reverse order of preference. Let’s begin.

20) Biden

Biden is so… so out of touch.  Even the moderators asked if he was out of touch, and when the moderators of a debate you’re participating in think you don’t know what you’re talking about?  For a career politician, that has got to hurt.  Frankly, they were right.  Biden thinks that the reason people can’t pay their student loans without sacrificing everything else they want to do with their lives is because we’re not earning more than $25k a year, that freezing payments and interest until the graduated student crosses that threshold would magically make everything ok.  If he were right, there’d be no Fight for 15.  A $15 minimum wage, assuming full time hours, is more than $30k per year.  

His response to accusations of racism was to point to his “black friend,” former President Obama, which… dude.  You’ve got to know better than that by now.  Please tell me you know having been the first and only black President’s VP does not immediately absolve you of being an old white guy who worked with Southern Segregationists against integrating schools.  

His entire platform seems to be “remember when I was a senator/the vice president?  Wasn’t I great, back when I had ideas and did things?” and I gotta say, No.  No, you weren’t that great, Joe.  Even his closing comments were lackluster, talking about “restoring the soul of America,” and “restoring the dignity of the middle class,” and “building national unity.”  His answers to simple questions were, frankly, terrible.

Joe, what would you do, day one, if you knew you’d only be able to accomplish one thing with your Presidency?  Thanks for asking, I’d BEAT DONALD TRUMP!  Joe.  Joe, that’s how you get to Day One.  Unless you mean “grab him by the collar, haul him out on the White House lawn, and bludgeon him with heavy objects,” you’re not answering the question.   Joe, which one country do you think we need to repair diplomatic ties with most?  NATO!  Joe.  Joe, NATO is more than one country.  I just… *sigh*

To his credit, Biden trotted out many of the same old campaign promises Democrats have been making for as long as I can remember.  Closing tax loopholes, universal pre-K and increased educational funding, let Medicare negotiate prescription drug prices.  These are tried and true campaign promises because they’re things we can all generally agree we want.  But they’re old, a lot like Biden.  They’re not the bold solutions we need.  His newer ideas all sound pretty moderate and old, too: free community college (not 4 year public university), creating a public option for healthcare so people can choose between insurance companies and Medicare, rejoining the Paris Climate Accord, and instituting national gun buybacks.  His suggestion of requiring all guns to have a biometric safety is also a vague gesture in the direction of a solution.

Biden is too old, too timid, and too arrogant to understand that he’s got nothing to offer in an election where Millenials and Gen Z are going to be the largest portion of the electorate.

19) O’Rourke 

Beto, or as I like to call him, Captain Wrongerpants, got off to a roaring start by giving a non-answer in two languages.  This incredible display of pandering, and wasting precious time, made him seem pretentious and obnoxious in twice the number of languages most politicians aspire to.

Possibly more than any other candidate, O’Rourke completely failed to answer any question he was asked.  He presented a few good ideas, saying that he sees climate change as the most pressing threat to America and calling for an end to fossil fuel use.  He supports universal background checks and reinstating the assault weapons ban.  He wants comprehensive immigration reform, to reunite families separated by the Trump administration, and to increase the corporate tax rate.  

Unfortunately, he wants to increase the tax rate from the new-for-2019 level of 21% to a lower-than-2018 28%.  He wants immigration reform to protect asylum seekers, but thinks other immigrants should “follow our laws” and makes no guarantee to decriminalize undocumented border crossings.  Like Biden, he supports healthcare “choice,” meaning that for-profit healthcare would continue in this country until everyone, in every city, state, county, and cave, can be convinced that insurance companies don’t care about them.

In short, O’Rourke reaches for relevance and relatability, and lands in pretension and centrism.  

18) Delaney

John Delaney is the first candidate on my list to have been caught in a bald-faced lie by Politifact. Good job, John.  His lie, by the way, was about Medicare for All.  He claimed that the bill currently before Congress required that Medicare pay rates stay at the current levels, and that if every hospital in America had been paid at Medicare levels for all services, every hospital would have to close.  The truth?  The Medicare for All bill does not require that pay rates stay at current levels, and even if it did no one knows what effect that would have on the country’s hospitals.  There is no data to support his assertion, even if he was right about the terms of the legislation being considered.

Unsurprisingly, John is another healthcare “choice” advocate.  I think I’ve said enough about why this position doesn’t fly for me, so I won’t rehash it again.  

In a discussion of family separation, he interjected that his grandfather was also a victim of family separation, which must make him feel so relevant.  He also referred to company owners as “job creators,” a lovely little conservative talking point, and claimed that America “saved the world,” in some vague appeal to American Exceptionalism.  He also agrees with Nancy Pelosi about not pursuing impeachment proceedings.  

On the “I don’t hate him quite as much as Beto and Biden” front, he’s in favor of tax breaks for the middle class, increasing the minimum wage, funding education, family leave policies, a carbon tax (which he imagines would fund a tax dividend paid to individual citizens, rather than, I don’t know, paying for green infrastructure development?), thinks China is our biggest geopolitical threat, and is scared of nuclear weapons (a very sane, reasonable position, really).

If you want to pick a candidate based on who your moderately conservative uncle will yell about least if they win the White House, Delaney might be your guy.  If you want to pick a candidate based on issues like student loan debt and healthcare, keep looking.

17) Bennet

I had never heard of Michael Bennet before the debates.  In fact, I just Googled him to find out his first name.  After the debates, though?  You guessed it: I hate him.

His closing statement was an appeal to the American Dream.  He thinks there are too many people in America to make a single payer healthcare system work.  Asked to identify one country to prioritize diplomatic repairs with, he named two continents.  And he believes the world is looking to America for leadership.  

However, he did rate higher than three whole candidates, and here’s why: He supports a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants.  He wants to end gerrymandering and overturn Citizens United.  He wants to expand voting rights and electoral accessibility. He considers climate change and Russia to be the biggest threats to America, and he didn’t use any obvious racist dogwhistles.  He’s from Colorado, so he’s kinda proud of the state’s marijuana legalization and reproductive health policies, but he’s way too quick to see partnership with private businesses as the ideal path forward.

16) Williamson

Oh man.  Marianne Williamson.  I almost threw something every time she opened her mouth.  She is like a walking, talking, uninformed Tumblr guilt trip post.  At a nationally televised debate, she asked why no one was talking about… something. I didn’t write it down in my notes because I would have had to gouge out my own eyes if I had.  According to Google, she is a self-help speaker and that explains So Much.

In her closing statement, Williamson claimed that she would be the candidate to beat Trump, not because she has any plans, but because she will harness love to counter the fear that fuels Trump’s campaign.  I am not making this up and I wish I was.  

She claimed that Americans have more chronic health issues than anywhere else in the world, and attributed this to all sorts of factors, starting with diet and chemical contamination and extending, I assume, to solar activity and Bigfoot.  According to Politifact, the only American demographic with a higher incidence of chronic illness than other countries is senior citizens, and I’m going to guess that has a lot more to do with our crappy healthcare system than it does a lack of detox teas.

When asked what policy she would enact if she could only get one, she said that on her first day in the White House she’d call the Prime Minister of New Zealand and tell her that New Zealand is not the best place in the world to raise a child, America is.  

When asked which one country she’d make a diplomatic priority, she said “European leaders.”

By now you must be wondering how she rated higher than the bottom four, and I can sum it up in eight words: She supports reparations and the Green New Deal.

Please, please do not make me vote for Marianne Williamson.

15) Hickenlooper

John Hickenlooper is the former Governor of Colorado, and proudly takes credit for everything good that has ever happened in the state.  He is also proud of being a small business owner, a statement that makes me immediately suspicious of any politician.

To his credit, he supports “police diversity,” a charmingly non-specific term that could mean one gay Latine nonbinary single parent in an otherwise entirely white male department, or could mean he wants the demographics of the police force to match the demographics of the population being policed.  He also considers climate change a serious threat, and China.  The best thing he said all night?  He supports civilian oversight of police, a policy which has improved police relations with citizens.

Sounds pretty good, right? Wrong.

He also supports ICE “reform,” as if there is anything redeemable about that agency, and thinks that the worst thing the eventual Democratic candidate could do is allow their name to be connected to anything socialist.  He said it twice, it wasn’t an accident.  

14) Ryan

That brings us to the last of the worst, Tim Ryan.  Tim here cannot stop using conservative dogwhistles, like talking about “coastal elites,” and saying that acknowledging differences between people is divisive.  He is a basic ass white boy in the worst, most boring sense.

He wants to bring about a green tech boom, supports decriminalizing border crossing, supports gun reform, and thinks China is a serious threat to America.  He also thinks that, in addition to dealing with the issues that allow school shootings to happen, we need to address the trauma kids are growing up with as a result.  Unfortunately, he thinks that school shooters are misunderstood victims of bullying.

His confrontation with Tulsi Gabbard was very instructive and possibly the most damning exchange all night.  He mis-identified the terrorists who attacked the World Trade Center as being “the Taliban” (they were Al-Qaeda) and said that our military forces have to “stay engaged” for… stability?  I guess? As a veteran, I’m with Tulsi on this one: that’s not acceptable.

#politics #democratic debate #there is not enough wine for this

[swissmissficrecs]

Wedding themed johnlock fics?

Johnlock Wedding Fics

between each beat are words unsaid by darcylindbergh, hudders-and-hiddles (huddersandhiddles) (107K, T, Johnlock)On their wedding night, John and Sherlock gift each other with the things they each said when the other could not hear, the things they each put down where the other could not see: a collection of writings that illustrate the way their love for one another has grown over the years.

Classified(s) by blueink3 (36K, E, Johnlock and Harry/Clara)Clara’s American father is the ambassador to some such territory that Great Britain probably used to own, but she (and Harry’s undying love for her) is the reason John is getting on a flight at 12:30pm, flying across the second largest ocean in the world, and pretending to be in a perfectly happy, healthy relationship with an undoubtedly perfectly coiffed stranger.See, Clara is not only American (and wealthy to boot), she’s also best friends with John’s ex-fiancee. Whom she’s placed in the wedding party. As Maid of Honor.And John just happens to be Best Man.Bloody brilliant. [The wedding is Harry and Clara’s, but the focus is on Johnlock.]

Forever Hold Your Peace (or, Five times Sherlock interrupted John’s wedding, and the one time he interrupted his own) by BettySwallocks, mycapeisplaid (20K, T, Johnlock and Warstan)Sherlock reviews his…creative…imaginings of how he could have interrupted John’s wedding the night before he finally marries the only man he’s ever loved. 

God Help Me, I Do by PlainJane (90K, E, Johnlock and Mollstrade)A consulting detective, two doctors, a forensic pathologist, a DI, a senior citizen, a recovering alcoholic and the British government walk into a register office…

Horse and Carriage by flawedamythyst (60K for the full series, but it’s just the first two parts that focus on the wedding; G to T, Johnlock)Sherlock proposes. John thinks the whole idea is ludicrous.

Lifetime Achievement by Mad_Lori (47K, E, Johnlock)John Watson has just won an Oscar and gotten engaged in the same day.  Now what? [Part of a much longer actors AU series.]

Linens (from the bottom drawer) by Zingiber (15K, M, Johnlock)Five times Sherlock calls John his husband and one time John calls Sherlock his.

Set in Stone by SilentAuror (39K, E, Johnlock)Sherlock and John are back from Ravine Valley and planning their wedding. However, as they move past the trial of the human traffickers, Sherlock can’t help but wonder if he’s imagining that John is becoming a little distant. Surely he isn’t getting cold feet about the wedding… [Part 2 of a series]

The Allowables by cwb (14K, E, Johnlock)Got your email. Your idea of whispering filth to me in public is genius. ALWAYSI thought you might like that. CBTM [Part 2 of a series]

The Empty House by zmethos (49K, NR, Johnlock and John/OMC)Final part of a post-Reichenbach AU in which John is involved in a relationship with a man when Sherlock returns. [Don’t worry, the wedding is Johnlock]

The Way to a Man’s Heart by SwissMiss (21K, T, Johnlock and Mollstrade)When Greg asks Sherlock to be his best man, the past returns in an unexpected way, confronting Sherlock and John with the need to define what they are to each other. Set about a year after series 3.[The wedding is Molly and Greg’s, but the focus is on Johnlock.]

The Wedding Garments by cwb (105K, E, Johnlock)This is the story of a young consulting detective who wants nothing to do with marriage and an army doctor who wants to find true love. It’s 2020 post-Brexit England and the British government is encouraging arranged marriages. Candidates meet through state-run agencies and date in hopes of finding love (and tax benefits). Sherlock doesn’t need or want a spouse, at least not until John Watson shows up. Hesitant to give in to his more carnal urges because of the way they derail his mind, how will Sherlock progress toward the more intimate aspects of a relationship? The answer lies in a very special wedding gift.

To Have and to Hold by 221b_hound (12K, E, Johnlock)This is John and Sherlock’s wedding from John’s point of view - and the reception and honeymoon that followed.[Part of a much longer coffee shop AU series.]

Where Else Would I Be? by cwb (34K, E, Johnlock)John and Sherlock’s five-year-old granddaughter spends the weekend with them in Sussex. Sherlock happily indulges her whims, and John takes care of them while quietly revisiting the past thirty years of their lives together.[Their wedding is shown in a flashback.]

Where the Streets Have No Name by J_Baillier (54K, E, Johnlock)A work motivation crisis, a wedding, and a crazy plan (which turns out to be not so crazy after all) lead doctors Holmes and Watson to Africa.[Part of a much longer doctors AU series.]

Plus bonus video:

Sherlock: Special Wedding Edition by daasgrrl (3:30, Unrated, Johnlock)AU version of The Sign of Three in which Sherlock finally gets to marry John. You knew it had to happen.

#rec list #request #marriage

[eretzyisrael]

HAIFA — At the Ruach Tova Health Center in this northern Israeli city, three medical students are hard at work trying to keep up with the steady flow of patients.

Nicole Kasher, a third-year student from Los Angeles, reviews patient charts. Galilee native Neta Sagi inventories pharmaceuticals. In a nearby exam room, Leonora Narkis of Petach Tikvah takes a woman’s blood pressure.

This may look like a typical Israeli medical clinic, but it’s actually one of a kind: It’s the country’s only student-run clinic, and it’s free.

The clinic is located in a densely populated, relatively indigent neighborhood of Haifa called Hadar, and staffed with medical students and faculty from the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology.

“This is the first interprofessional kind of lab in Israel, where students learn with, from and about each other,” said the center’s director, Dr. Ruti Stashefsky-Margalit, a Detroit native who is now an associate professor and director of community engagement at the Technion’s Ruth and Bruce Rappaport Faculty of Medicine. “The Technion is investing in this to create a generation of students who think differently and engage in leadership even before they’re professionals.”

Narkis, 30, says the clinic – whose Hebrew name translates as “good spirits” — gives her a chance to practice her clinical skills.

“I do my daily rotation in a hospital, where I’m totally supervised,” Narkis said. “At the clinic, I’m responsible for doing patient intake, presenting patients to the doctor, concluding patients’ visits and making sure they’re getting the best treatments they can get.”

The clinic’s mission is to serve Haifa residents who, for one reason or other, may not have access to routine health care.

About half the center’s clientele are Israeli Arabs, followed by African migrants and asylum seekers living in Israel, mainly Eritreans and Sudanese. The rest are a mix of Russians, Palestinians living in Haifa and Ethiopian non-citizens. The clinic has a phalanx of interpreters who help work with patients who speak Arabic, Russian or the Ethiopian languages of Amharic and Tigrinya.

One Ukrainian patient is a victim of sex trafficking who was kidnapped off the street in Ukraine and forcibly brought to Israel. Now recovering from drugs and alcohol, she’s married to an Israeli and has a 9-year-old child, but no access to health care.

“Despite the Israeli system of socialized medicine, about 10,000 people in Haifa and its suburbs are either uninsured or underinsured,” Margalit said. “These people are really living in poverty, without access to health care, and they’re becoming a burden on emergency rooms.”

Since the clinic’s opening in February — 200 guests attended the lavish inauguration ceremony, which featured a 40-piece orchestra — about 70 students have volunteered at the clinic. It’s open two days a week for about four hours each day, and on Thursdays the center becomes an open studio where volunteers offer art therapy classes to women affected by domestic and sexual violence.

The most common problems treated at the clinic are diabetes, hypertension, mental health issues and post-traumatic stress disorder, according to Sagi. Patients also come in for treatment with infectious diseases and alcohol-related problems.

“It’s not urgent or emergency care, and we’re not suited to be an ER,” said Sagi, who is in her sixth year of medical school. By Margalit’s estimates, the clinic has prevented some 200 ER visits, each of which costs the equivalent of about $330.

“We’re saving taxpayers a lot of money,” Sagi said.

That’s just a fringe benefit, however.

“Our goal is education first,” Margalit said. “Students are at the forefront of everything, and we — the professionals, experienced MDs —provide guidance and tight supervision. No one here enters or leaves without seeing a senior physician.”

Rawi Naddaf, 24, a third-year med student from the Israeli Arab city of Nazareth, is crucial to the center’s operation. After meeting Margalit a year ago, the two brainstormed ways they could help Haifa’s underprivileged population.

“We started researching the aspects of a student-run health center, how it’s been done in the U.S. and Canada, and trying to figure out how to adapt it here for Israel,” Naddaf said.

Tenagnework Abay, an Ethiopian-Israeli Jew who volunteers at the clinic, is fluent in Hebrew, English, her native Amharic and Tigrinya, which is spoken in northern Ethiopia and Eritrea.

“Most of the Eritreans who come to our clinic are very happy to be here. Often they don’t understand Hebrew, and they don’t know which sickness they have or what medicines to take,” Abay said. “Here, when the doctor comes in, he introduces himself and shakes their hand. They’re not used to that.”

Ruach Tova opened with $55,000 in seed money from the Boston-based Ed and Barbara Shapiro Foundation, and the center has received thousands of dollars’ worth of donated hospital equipment from computer companies, private donors and even a dentist in Nazareth. But Margalit estimates that the operating costs will be about $500,000 per year.

With increased funding, Margalit hopes to open the center a third day a week and expand opening hours. She also wants dedicated rooms for dentistry, women’s health, family medicine and other specialized needs.

“We’re putting people back on the track to health, giving them hope without judging them,” Margalit said. “There’s a sense of respect and dignity here.”

#Israel #Healthcare

[readingsrantsrambles]

An Alternative to Police That Police Can Get Behind

In Eugene, Oregon, a successful crisis-response program has reduced the footprint of law enforcement—and maybe even the likelihood of police violence.

By Rowan Moore Gerety

The Atlantic - December 28, 2020

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/12/cahoots-program-may-reduce-likelihood-of-police-violence/617477/

Photographs by Ricardo Nagaoka

Should American cities defund their police departments? The question has been asked continually—with varying degrees of hope, fear, anger, confusion, and cynicism—since the killing of George Floyd on Memorial Day. It hung over the November election: on the right, as a caricature in attack ads (call 911, get a recording) and on the left as a litmus test separating the incrementalists from the abolitionists. “Defund the police” has sparked polarized debate, in part, because it conveys just one half of an equation, describing what is to be taken away, not what might replace it. Earlier this month, former President Barack Obama called it a “snappy slogan” that risks alienating more people than it will win over to the cause of criminal-justice reform.

Yet the defund idea cannot simply be dismissed. Its backers argue that armed agents of the state are called upon to address too many of society’s problems—problems that can’t be solved at the end of a service weapon. And continued cases of police violence in response to calls for help have provided regular reminders of what can go wrong as a result.

In September, for example, new details came to light about the death of a man in Rochester, New York, which police officials had initially described as a drug overdose. Two months before Floyd’s death, Joe Prude had called 911 because his brother Daniel was acting erratically. Body-cam footage obtained by the family’s attorney revealed that the officers who responded to the call placed a mesh hood over Daniel’s head and held him to the ground until he stopped moving. He died a week later from “complications of asphyxia in the setting of physical restraint,” according to the medical examiner. Joe Prude had called 911 to help his brother in the midst of a mental-health crisis. “I didn’t call them to come help my brother die,” he has said.

A few weeks after a video showing Daniel Prude’s asphyxiation was made public, police in Salt Lake City posted body-cam footage that captured the moments before the shooting of a 13-year-old autistic boy. The boy’s mother had called 911 seeking help getting him to the hospital. While she waited outside, a trio of officers prepared to approach the home. One of them hesitated. “If it’s a psych problem and [the mother] is out of the house, I don’t see why we should even approach, in my opinion,” she said. “I’m not about to get in a shooting because [the boy] is upset.” Despite these misgivings, the officers pursued the distressed 13-year-old into an alley and shot him multiple times, leaving him, his family has said, with injuries to his intestines, bladder, shoulder, and both ankles.

Neither these catastrophic outcomes nor the misgivings of police themselves have produced an answer to the obvious question: How should society handle these kinds of incidents? If not law enforcement, who should intervene?

One possible answer comes from Eugene, Oregon, a leafy college town of 172,000 that feels half that size. For more than 30 years, Eugene has been home to Crisis Assistance Helping Out on the Streets, or CAHOOTS, an initiative designed to help the city’s most vulnerable citizens in ways the police cannot. In Eugene, if you dial 911 because your brother or son is having a mental-health or drug-related episode, the call is likely to get a response from CAHOOTS, whose staff of unarmed outreach workers and medics is trained in crisis intervention and de-escalation. Operated by a community health clinic and funded through the police department, CAHOOTS accounts for just 2 percent of the department’s $66 million annual budget.

When I visited Eugene one week this summer, city-council members in Minneapolis, Los Angeles, Houston, and Durham, North Carolina, had recently held CAHOOTS up as a model for how to shift the work of emergency response from police to a different kind of public servant. CAHOOTS had 310 outstanding requests for information from communities around the country.

A pilot program modeled in part on CAHOOTS recently began in San Francisco, and others will start soon in Oakland, California, and Portland, Oregon. Even the federal government has expressed interest. In August, Oregon’s senior senator, Ron Wyden, introduced the CAHOOTS Act, which would offer Medicaid funds for programs that send unarmed first responders to intervene in addiction and behavioral-health crises. “It’s long past time to reimagine policing in ways that reduce violence and structural racism,” he said, calling CAHOOTS a “proven model” to do just that. A police-funded program that costs $1 out of every $50 Eugene spends on cops hardly qualifies as defunding the police. But it may be the closest thing the United States has to an example of whom you might call instead.

In 1968, Dennis Ekanger was a University of Oregon graduate student finishing up an internship as a counselor for families with children facing charges in the state’s juvenile-justice system when he started to get calls in the middle of the night. Through his work in court, word had spread that “I knew something about substance-abuse problems,” Ekanger told me recently. Anxious mothers were arriving at his doorstep desperate for help but afraid to go to the authorities. It was a turbulent time in Eugene, with anti-war protests on the University of Oregon campus and a counterculture that spilled over into the surrounding neighborhoods in the form of tie-dye, pot smoke, and psychedelic drugs.

The following year, Ekanger and another student in the university’s counseling-psychology program, Frank Lemons, met with a prominent Eugene doctor who agreed to help them mount a more organized response by recruiting local health-care providers to volunteer their time. Ekanger went to San Francisco to visit a new community health clinic in Haight-Ashbury that had pioneered such a model, offering free medical treatment to anyone who walked in. Back in Oregon, Ekanger and Lemons each put up $250 and signed a lease on a dilapidated two-story Victorian near downtown.

The White Bird Clinic opened its doors a few days later, with a mission to provide free treatment when possible and to connect patients to existing services when it wasn’t. But the city’s established institutions didn’t yet have a clue how to deal with people on psychedelic drugs. Teenagers who showed up in the emergency room on LSD were prescribed antipsychotic medications. Unruly patients got passed to the police and ended up having their bad trips in jail.

The forerunner to CAHOOTS was an ad hoc mobile crisis-response team called the “bummer squad” (for “bum trip”), formed in White Bird’s first year for callers to the clinic’s crisis line who were unable or unwilling to come in. The bummer squad responded in pairs in whatever vehicle was available. For a while, that was a 1950 Ford Sunbeam bread truck that did double duty as the home of its owner, Tod Schneider, who’d dropped out of college on the East Coast to drive out to Eugene.

It didn’t take long for the bummer squad to start showing up at some of the same incidents that drew a response from Eugene police. One day in the late 1970s, Schneider answered a call from a mother concerned about her son. “Mom, I think I made a mistake,” he’d told her. “I took some PCP, and I’m feeling weird.” Schneider showed up to the family’s home to find the teenager in “full psychotic PCP condition.” As Schneider got out of the truck, the boy came running out of a neighboring house naked and bloody, and tackled him. Another neighbor called the police, thinking they were witnessing an assault. “So police came out and figured out what was going on—they talked to me a little bit, and they just left,” Schneider told me. “The police realized … they didn’t know what to do with these people that was productive.”

White Bird continued its volunteer-run mobile crisis service—and its informal collaboration with the police—into the early 1980s. Bummer-squad volunteers periodically gave role-playing training to the police department, and some beat officers grew to appreciate Eugene’s peculiar grassroots crisis-response network.

In the late ’80s, Eugene was struggling to respond to a trio of convergent issues that still plague the city more than 30 years later: mental illness, homelessness, and substance abuse. Police in Eugene were caught in a cycle of arresting the same people over and over for violations such as drinking in public parks and sleeping where they weren’t allowed to.

“The police hated it; we were doing absolutely nothing for public safety, we were tangling up the courts, and we were spending a horrendous amount of money,” Mike Gleason, who was the city manager at the time, recalled. Gleason convened a roundtable with Eugene’s social-service providers, offering city funding for programs that could break the logjam. A local detox facility made plans to launch a sobering center where people could dry out or sleep it off. White Bird and the police department began a dialogue about a mobile crisis service that could be dispatched through the 911 system.

White Bird and the police were not a natural pairing. To the city’s establishment types, White Bird staffers were “extreme counterculture people.” Standing by as the bummer squad defused a bad trip was one thing; giving the team police radios was quite another. White Bird’s clinic coordinator at the time, Bob Dritz, wore a uniform of jeans and a T-shirt; for meetings with city officials, he’d occasionally add a rumpled corduroy jacket. With his defiantly disheveled appearance, Dritz seemed to be declaring, in the words of one colleague, “Look, I’m different from you people, and you have to listen to me.” White Bird staff members worried that working with the police would erode their credibility, and maybe even lead to arrests of the very people they were trying to help. But in the space of a couple of months, Dritz and a counterpart at the police department drafted the outlines of a partnership. The acronym Dritz landed on was an ironic nod to the discomfort of working openly with the cops.

Things were slow at first. Jim Hill, the police lieutenant who oversaw CAHOOTS at the police department, recalls sitting at his desk listening to dispatch traffic on the radio. “I would literally have to call dispatch and say, ‘How come you didn’t send CAHOOTS to that?’ And they go, ‘Oh, yeah, okay.’” Before long, though, CAHOOTS was in high demand.

CAHOOTS teams work in 12-hour shifts, mostly responding without the police. Each van is staffed by a medic (usually an EMT or a nurse) and a crisis worker, typically someone with a background in mental-health support or street outreach, who takes the lead in conversation and de-escalation. Most people at White Bird make $18 an hour (it’s a “nonhierarchical” organization; internal decisions are made by consensus), and some have day jobs elsewhere.

One Tuesday night this summer, the medic driving the van was Chelsea Swift. Swift grew up in Connecticut and, like White Bird’s co-founder a generation before her, was introduced to harm-reduction work in Haight-Ashbury, where she sold Doc Martens to the punks who staffed the neighborhood needle-exchange program. Swift’s childhood had been marked by her mother’s struggle with opiate addiction and mental illness. She never thought she’d be a first responder, or could be. She was too queer, too radical. “I don’t fit into that culture,” she told me. And yet, she said, “I am so good at this job I never would have wanted.”

Around 6 p.m., Swift and her partner, a crisis worker named Simone Tessler, drove to assist an officer responding to a disorderly-subject call in the Whiteaker, a central-Eugene neighborhood with a lively street life, even in pandemic times. When we arrived, a military veteran in his 20s was standing with the officer on the corner, wearing a backpack, a toothbrush tucked behind his ear. The man said he’d worked in restaurants in Seattle until the coronavirus hit, then moved to Eugene to stay with his girlfriend.

That day, he’d worked his first shift at a fast-food restaurant. Soon after he got home, a sheriff’s deputy working for the county court knocked on the door to serve him a restraining order stemming from an earlier dispute with his girlfriend. He did not take the news well. The deputy called for police backup, and when it arrived, the man agreed to walk a block away to wait for CAHOOTS and figure out his next move. He had to stay 200 feet away from the place where he’d been living, and he couldn’t drive. “I been drinking a bit, and—I’m not gonna lie—I want to keep drinking,” he said. He needed somewhere to stay, and a way to move his car to a place where he could safely leave it overnight with his stuff in the back.

Swift and the officer talked logistics while Tessler leaned against the wall beside the man and chatted with him. She told him that she’d worked in restaurants before joining CAHOOTS.

The Eugene Mission, the city’s largest homeless shelter, had an available spot, the officer explained, thumbs tucked inside the shoulder straps of his duty vest. You can show up drunk if you commit to staying for 14 days and agree not to use alcohol or drugs while you’re there.

The man hesitated, thinking through other options. He had enough cash for a motel room, as long as it didn’t require a big deposit. The officer prepared to leave so CAHOOTS could take over. Swift, Tessler, and the veteran took out their phones and began looking up budget motels along a nearby strip, settling on one with a military discount and a low cash deposit.

“Do you know how to drive stick?” the man asked. Tessler and Swift exchanged blank looks, then continued to spitball. Did the man have AAA? Was another CAHOOTS unit free to help? I felt a lump rising in my throat. I’d wanted to keep my reporterly distance, but I was also a person watching a trivial problem stand in the way as calls stacked up at the dispatch center. I drove the car three blocks to the motel with Swift in the front seat.

“So much of what people call CAHOOTS for is just ordinary favors,” she said. “We’re professional people who do this every day, but what was that? We were helping him make phone calls and move his car.”

A couple of hours later, CAHOOTS received a call from a sprawling apartment complex on the north side of town. Tessler and Swift showed up just as the last hint of blue drained from the sky. The call had come from a concerned mother who lived in Portland, 100 miles away from her 23-year-old daughter; she believed that her daughter was suicidal. The young woman’s grandmother, who lived nearby, stood in the parking lot and gave Tessler and Swift a synopsis: Her granddaughter was bipolar, with borderline personality disorder. She’d run away at 17 after her diagnosis, and never seemed to fully accept it, traveling across the West with a series of boyfriends, sleeping in encampments. She’d been back in Eugene for a few months now, the longest the family had ever gotten her to stay.

Tessler walked around the corner and knocked. “It’s CAHOOTS.” No answer.

“Can you come and talk to us for a minute?”

The door was unlocked from the inside and left slightly ajar.

The apartment was dark. A tiny Chihuahua mix barked frantically. A tearful voice called out from the bedroom, “I just want a hug. Are you going to take me away?”

Tessler crouched down in the bedroom doorway. “I’m not gonna take you anywhere you don’t want to go.”

“I’m really sorry I’ve caused all this,” the young woman said, sitting up.

Swift grabbed a handful of kibble from a bowl on the floor to quiet the dog. “My family tries to put me away a lot,” the young woman explained. Breathing fast between sobs, she seemed both overwhelmed by grief and adrenaline and primed to answer questions she’d come to expect in the midst of a crisis.

Unprompted, she told the CAHOOTS team her full name, letter by letter. “I know my Social Security number, and I know I’m a harm to myself and others.” She took a deep breath. “I’m just feeling really sad and alone, and I don’t know how I got here.”

Tessler turned on a light, and Swift went out to the parking lot to summon the young woman’s grandmother.

“Nana! Nana!” The young woman dissolved into her embrace.

Swift surveyed the bathroom scene that had prompted the call. An open pack of cigarettes lay on the wet floor along with a belt and an electrical cord. There was a straw in a bottle of gin on the edge of the tub, a six-pack on the toilet, and half a dozen pill bottles strewn across the bathroom sink and countertop. Swift unfolded a soggy piece of paper marked “Patient Safety Plan Contract” that identified seeing San Francisco as the one thing the young woman wanted to do before she died.

As Swift took her vitals, the young woman’s tearful reunion with her grandmother continued. “I love your blue eyes, Nana,” she said.

“I love your brown ones.”

CAHOOTS brought her to the emergency room, and she was discharged less than 24 hours later.

On my first morning in Eugene, I spent a couple of hours in Scobert Gardens, a pocket-size park on a residential block not far from the Mission. Many of the park’s visitors are part of Eugene’s unhoused population, which accounts for about 60 percent of CAHOOTS calls. Everyone I met in Scobert Gardens had a CAHOOTS story. One man had woken up shivering on the grass before dawn, after the park’s sprinklers had soaked him through; CAHOOTS gave him dry clothes and a ride to the hospital to make sure he didn’t have hypothermia. A woman had received first aid after getting a spider bite on her face while sleeping on the ground. Another man hadn’t had a place to stay since he got out of prison more than a year ago. When he had a stroke in the park earlier this summer, a friend called CAHOOTS. “If you go with the ambulance, it will cost you big money, so a lot of people go the CAHOOTS route,” the man explained.

Earlier this year, Barry Friedman, a law professor at NYU, posted a working paper on policing that highlighted the mismatch between police training and the jobs officers are called on to do—not just law enforcer, but first responder, mediator, and social worker. Reducing the number of instances in which police are called to assist Eugene’s unhoused population reduces the number of calls for which their skill set is a poor match. But if the goal is eliminating unnecessary use of force, helping people without housing is hardly sufficient.

In a 2015 analysis of citizen-police interactions, the Bureau of Justice Statistics found that traffic stops accounted for the majority of police-initiated contact: 25 million people reported traffic stops, versus 5.5 million people who reported other kinds of contact. And police are regularly involved in incidents that escalate partly because of a failure to consider mental-health issues. In October, Walter Wallace Jr.’s family members and a neighbor called 911 because he was arguing with his parents; according to the family’s attorney, Wallace had bipolar disorder. Two Philadelphia police officers arrived, found Wallace with a knife, and fatally shot him, despite his mother’s attempts to intercede. (Police and district-attorney investigations are ongoing, and no arrests have been made.) Near Eugene, police in the neighboring city of Springfield in March 2019 killed Stacy Kenny, who had schizophrenia, in an incident that began with a possible parking violation. None of the officers involved was criminally charged, though a lawsuit brought by the Kenny family resulted in the largest police settlement in Oregon history. Springfield also committed to overhauling police-department policy and oversight practices around use of force.

In July 2015, police responded to the home of Ayisha Elliott, a race and equity trainer and the host of a podcast called Black Girl From Eugene. Elliott’s 19-year-old son had been experiencing a mental-health crisis, she told me, which was the result of a traumatic brain injury. At 2:43 a.m., Elliott called Eugene’s nonemergency number and asked for CAHOOTS, not realizing that the service ran only until 3 a.m. In a subsequent call, to 911, Elliott’s ex-husband indicated that Elliott was in danger; authorities say it was this second call that led dispatchers to send police to the scene. Elliott greeted the officers on the front porch, and explained that she needed help getting her son to the hospital. Instead, in an incident that escalated over the course of 15 minutes, her son became agitated and began to yell. Elliott attempted to shield him from officers as they ordered her to stand back. Police say her son charged as they tried to separate him from his mother. Her son was punched in the face and tased. Elliott herself was pulled to the ground, resulting in a concussion, she said. She was arrested for interfering with a police officer. (She was released the following morning.) She and her son sued the city of Eugene as well as individual police officers in federal court, for excessive use of force and racial discrimination, among other claims; the court found against the plaintiffs on all counts. Elliott told me the experience didn’t change her view of the police so much as confirm it. “I realized that it didn’t matter who I was; I’m still Black.”

Together with the fatal police shooting that year of a veteran who had PTSD, the incident helped focus public attention on Eugene’s response to mental-health crises. In its next annual budget, the city included $225,000 to make CAHOOTS a 24/7 service for the first time. (Both the mayor’s office and the police department say the increase in funding was not related to a specific incident.)

Yet CAHOOTS is still limited by the rules that govern its role in crisis response. Its teams are not permitted to respond when there’s “any indication of violence or weapons,” or to handle calls involving “a crime, a potentially hostile person, a potentially dangerous situation … or an emergency medical problem.”

Many 911 calls unfold in the gray area at the limits of CAHOOTS’s scope of work; in Eugene, the same dispatch system handles both emergency and nonemergency calls, in part because so many callers fail to grasp the distinction. One call I went on with Swift and Tessler was to check on the welfare of a young man with face tattoos who was reportedly acting strangely on the University of Oregon campus. The fire department and the police had been out to see him, without incident, but also without resolution: The man was still there, unsettling passersby, who kept calling him in as a potential threat to himself and others.

By the time CAHOOTS arrived, the man was lying on the grass with a small burning pile of latex gloves next to his head. When Swift jumped out of the van, alarmed, he sat halfway up and poked at the fire with a kitchen knife, then lay back down. Had the cops been called again, I thought, the incident might have played out differently, and landed in the next day’s paper: “A young man setting objects on fire was shot after brandishing a knife.” But that’s not how it went. Swift grabbed the knife, threw it well out of reach, and began talking to him.

At 11 a.m. on a Friday, I met Jennifer Peckels, one of the few cops in Eugene who walk their beat, to tag along as she patrolled a quadrant of restaurants and curbside gardens downtown. Born and raised in Eugene, Peckels is now in her fifth year on the force. Many of her interactions downtown are with a core group of people experiencing homelessness, mental-health crises, and addiction, or some combination thereof.

Across the street from the library, Peckels recognized a woman who was sitting on a bench, crying inconsolably. When Peckels approached her, the woman explained in breathless bursts that her daughter’s surrogate parents were telling lies about her. She feared she might never see her daughter again. Over the radio, Peckels called in the woman’s location to dispatch. “CAHOOTS will come help you—they gotta help the fire department, then they gotta help a suicidal subject, and then they’ll come. You’re on the list.”

“I’m suicidal,” the woman said.

“Do you have any means to hurt yourself?” Peckels asked.

The woman explained that she was afraid she would start drinking again. She began to slap herself in the face. “I’m tired of Eugene,” she said, gesturing across the street at a statue of Rosa Parks seated on a pair of bronze bus seats. “I got threatened to be arrested for sitting next to Rosa Parks, and I said ‘Fuck the police.’ I haven’t done anything wrong here except be loud and drink in public!”

“You know, when I get upset, I do this breathing exercise,” Peckels suggested.

Together, they inhaled for four seconds, then held their breath. The woman closed her eyes and, by the exhale, appeared calmer for the first time. “You’re on the list,” Peckels repeated. The woman wanted to know when CAHOOTS was coming, but Peckels had no way of knowing. We continued walking.

The most common complaint about CAHOOTS you’ll hear in Eugene is that its response times are too slow. Last year, across roughly 15,000 calls in the city, the average time between receipt of a call and the arrival of a CAHOOTS team was an hour and 56 minutes, compared with an hour and 11 minutes across 46,000 calls for the police department. Having more CAHOOTS units on the street could serve to reduce Eugene Police Department response times as well, by freeing up officers to do what Peckels called “police work.” She said it’s not uncommon for reports of even very serious crimes that are no longer in progress—such as rapes or burglaries—to sit in the dispatch queue for hours while officers race to work through a backlog of calls.

White Bird and the EPD are trying to come to an agreement about the best way to quantify CAHOOTS’s contributions. CAHOOTS has circulated its own estimate, saying it responds to 17 percent of all calls handled by dispatchers. Yet the police department contends that most of those calls wouldn’t have gotten a police response to begin with, because many of the requests that CAHOOTS receives—to check on a person who seems heavily intoxicated, or for transport to a medical appointment—aren’t really “police calls.” According to the police department’s analysis, the true diversion rate is between 5 and 8 percent. Which number is the “right” one to evaluate CAHOOTS’s contributions to the city?

I asked Eugene’s chief of police, Chris Skinner, about the prospect of increasing CAHOOTS’s capacity to respond to calls. He told me he thinks of the benefit to the police as a question of probability: “The less time I put police officers in conflicts with people, the less of the time those conflicts go bad.” That, in a sense, is the same argument made by activists who have mentioned alternatives such as CAHOOTS in their demands to shrink the footprint of policing nationwide.

Before the coronavirus pandemic hit, Eugene voters approved a payroll tax projected to bring in $23 million a year for 126 community-safety positions. Originally, two-thirds of that money was slated to pay for positions in the police department; as several police officials I spoke with pointed out, Oregon has among the lowest number of police officers per capita of any state in the country. Now, in response to Black Lives Matter protests, Mayor Lucy Vinis told me, the city council is consulting with community organizations to revise that plan. “Until this challenge around ‘Defund the police,’” Vinis said, “I don’t think that the police department ever really looked at CAHOOTS as depriving them of funds: It was really excellent service for a very low price.”

Anecdotally, at least, Eugene’s citizens have come to appreciate the CAHOOTS approach to crisis response, perhaps too keenly. CAHOOTS exists in a society where many feel that the risk of police violence outweighs the potential benefit of calling 911, and where an encounter with EMS can wreck a household’s finances. Last December, a CAHOOTS team showed up to a fatal drug overdose hours after the victim’s friend had called in for help. The caller had avoided language that would have brought a faster police or EMS response.

Brenton Gicker, who has worked for CAHOOTS for 12 years and as an emergency-room nurse for the past five, told me that callers have sometimes omitted key details to bypass police. “They’ll say, ‘My friend is bipolar; he’s in a manic episode. I’d like CAHOOTS to talk to them.’ And we show up, and they’ve set the kitchen on fire, or they’re running around naked, stabbing holes in the wall.”

CAHOOTS has undoubtedly saved lives in Eugene. The question for cities hoping to emulate its success is how its approach might be adapted and scaled up. Eugene is a small, homogenous city (its population is 83 percent white). The proud hippie culture that helped give birth to the White Bird Clinic, the bummer squad, and eventually CAHOOTS continues to thrive there. The city supports a robust network of homeless shelters, crisis centers, and mental-health and drug-treatment providers that have a long history of working with CAHOOTS, which makes it easier to connect people in need with services that can help. Los Angeles has 23 times as many people as Eugene, living in dozens of far-flung neighborhoods, each with its own landscape of language, history, and social services. In October, L.A.’s city council voted unanimously to develop a CAHOOTS-like program of unarmed crisis responders. It will face different challenges.

When the pandemic struck, it revealed just how reliant CAHOOTS is on the city’s safety net—and just how fragile that net is, even in progressive Eugene. CAHOOTS was the rare social-service provider in the city that was able to carry on its regular operations. The Buckley Center closed its sobering program; the Eugene Mission continued to serve residents but closed the door to new arrivals for months; social-service agencies asked their caseworkers to work from home, which made it harder to help clients who don’t have stable addresses, schedules, or cellphones.

For a stretch, measures taken to stop the spread of the virus among Eugene’s poorest residents made up for the absence of some of the usual services. Federal CARES Act funding enabled Lane County to open a new 250-bed homeless shelter in buildings on its fairgrounds. To Gicker, the new shelter was a revelation. “This is the first time ever in my CAHOOTS experience where I can take somebody somewhere to sleep with no questions asked: They don’t have to be a battered woman; they don’t have to be experiencing a mental-health crisis; they don’t have to be ill or injured. I don’t have to sell it in some way.”

The CARES Act money ran out in June, however, and the fairground shelter closed. CAHOOTS was back to having very few places to take people in need of a bed. Similar bottlenecks exist for inpatient drug treatment and mental-health facilities. Eugene might have more social services than some American cities, but it’s still an American city. If it can’t manage the cries for help, how will larger, more diverse cities that lack Eugene’s long-standing interagency collaborations or progressive attitudes fare? In rural areas, gaps in service are even more pronounced. Earlier this year, officials from another jurisdiction called White Bird’s director of consulting, Tim Black, to announce with excitement that they’d received funding to “bring CAHOOTS here” in a matter of months. Black replied, “Where are you going to bring someone if not to the hospital or the jail?”

Around 5 p.m. on a Wednesday, I was halfway through the day shift with another CAHOOTS team, Tatanka Maker and Brian Troutz, when it was called to a parking lot just south of Washington Jefferson Park. A woman in her 50s stood at the lot’s edge, surrounded by a swirl of trash. She was barefoot and had a sheath of plastic wrapped around her midriff. This was someone the CAHOOTS team had known for years.

An employee of a nearby aquarium shop had made the call to CAHOOTS, and Maker approached him to get a sense of the situation. “She’s been trespassing since nine,” the employee said.

“I’m packing up,” the woman replied. She picked up armfuls of newspaper and takeout containers, then dropped them just as quickly, as though she’d spotted something else in the pile that she’d been looking for.

“That’s not an option any longer,” Maker said, addressing the woman by her first name. “You can pack one bag of important stuff, and then we’ll take off.”

“Where are we going?” the woman asked.

“Somewhere else,” Maker said.

Troutz brought a clean garbage bag from the van. Maker began guessing what she might want to put inside: “Do you want this sleeping bag?”

Imploring her to cooperate, Maker said she could bring a second garbage bag along too.

“If you don’t come to the van right now, they’re gonna take you to jail and throw it out,” Maker said. But the woman was stuck in another world.

“Can I focus on getting this done?” she asked, annoyed.

At last, Maker and Troutz succeeded in leading the woman to the van. They’d avoided an arrest, but it was a temporary victory. The woman had only just gotten out of jail. Before that, she’d been in and out of the state mental hospital for years. Space constraints, insurance issues, and time limits on residential programs all contributed to the difficulty of finding a place where she could receive long-term mental-health services and drug treatment.

Lacking a better option, Maker and Troutz opted to take her to White Bird. The clinic was closed, but a large shaded parking lot sits behind it.

“This is one of those cases where there is no perfect place to take her, but it’s better to take her out of the part of town where she’s been causing some trouble,” Maker said. The van stopped, and the woman got out and took a seat on a discarded couch in the parking lot.

“You know those orange cones they put on the highway?” Maker said when we got back in the van to head to the next call. “Last summer, there was a day that she spent 10 hours meticulously climbing up the embankment, grabbing them, and throwing them over the edge.” The police, the fire department, and CAHOOTS had all responded multiple times, she said. “We ended up bringing her to White Bird that day too.”

This article is part of our project “The Cycle,” which is supported by a grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation’s Safety and Justice Challenge.

[multipleservicelisting]

‘Tourists’ are flying to Florida to score COVID-19 vaccine early

Great Demand for COVID-19 Vaccine from Florida Seniors

Senior citizens in Florida who are eligible to get the COVID-19 vaccine are struggling to book appointments due to high demand. For some, who spend hours a day going to different health department websites, it feels hopeless.

Seniors are jetting off to Florida — but it’s not warm weather they’re seeking.

The state was one of the first to begin offering vaccines to people ages 65 and older, by executive order on Dec. 23. According to local news reports in Florida, the state is seeing an influx of “vaccine tourists,” out-of-state travelers hoping to jump ahead in line for the coronavirus vaccine.

It’s not just impatient Americans scurrying to the front. Momentum Jets, a Toronto-based private airline, told the Wall Street Journal that wealthy Canadians have been willing to pay between $25,000 to $80,000 for same day, round-trip flights with the carrier.

A spokesperson for Travel Secure Inc., a travel insurance brokerage agency, added that some 30% of clientele booked flights for the Southern US during the month of November — believing those folks had gone to receive their first dose of vaccine or set an appointment for one.

HIGH DEMAND FOR COVID-19 VACCINE LEAVES FLORIDA SENIORS STRUGGLING TO GET THE JAB: ‘IT SEEMS HOPELESS’

Governor Ron DeSantis insisted on Tuesday that the state would not allow one-time visitors arriving for the vaccine, clarifying that so-called “snowbirds,” or dual-state residents who weather their winters in the South, would be permitted, the Orlando-Sentinel reported.

“We’re not doing any tourists,” he said during a press conference, broadcast from Florida retirement community the Villages.

Nearly 800,000 have already received the first poke, according to the Florida Department of Health, where almost 500,000 of them were part of the 65 and over age group.

The trend is putting the squeeze on already strained hospitals, clinics and local health officials, who complained of a lack of support from the state and federal governments in terms of vaccine implementation.

FLORIDA ‘NOT WASTING VACCINE’ LIKE NEW YORK, PRIORITIZING ELDERLY: LT. GOV. JEANETTE NINEZ

“It’s very unstable and very frustrating for the population,” Dr. Mary Jo Trepka, an epidemiologist at Florida International University, told WSJ. “There are many worried people who want a vaccine and can’t get it.”

In Miami, the Jackson Health System, a network of more than 40 hospitals and health centers, stated they’re taking all measures to verify state residency among vaccine recipients, but they won’t turn away part-time residents, either.

“Regardless of where someone lives, if they are spending time in our community — on our beaches, in our restaurants, in our malls — they can be spreaders of this virus,” they said in a statement.

CLICK HERE FOR COMPLETE CORONAVIRUS COVERAGE

The DOH stressed that vaccine tourism, those who “come into Florida for one day to receive the vaccine and leave the next,” is prohibited. They’re asking that “all suspected incidents … immediately” be reported to a local health department branch.

When news broke earlier this week that Yanina Latorre, an Argentinian television personality, had enlisted fans to help bring her 80-year-old mother to Miami for the vaccine, Miami’s Mayor Francis Suarez vowed to take action.

“I’m totally in disagreement with people from out of town coming and getting the vaccine before City of Miami residents,” said Mayor Suarez. “I will look into all legal options to prevent this from happening.”

This article originally appeared on NYPost.com. 

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[rylredrants]

Early COVID Life (another from the vaults: 04/26/2020)

Excerpt from a personal history about 2020

March 15th was my last time in a restaurant as of April 26th. (ETA- as of November 15th, I’ve still not been to a restaurant in the US.)

The pandemic had been a conversation topic with both of the dates I’d been on the previous week. The screenings in some airports had begun in January and the first confirmed case in the US had been noted on January 21st. Back then it was still being called the “Wuhan Virus” because of its origins in the Wuhan province of China. Italy had gone on full lock-down back on February 23rd. 

The ‘national emergency’ in the US was announced on March 13th- the same day as my first “first date” with a border patrol agent. 

The panic buying, specifically toilet paper hoarding, began that week as well. My brunch date told me that he had hired someone to do some work for him that morning. He had offered $300 and the guy said he would take $250 and a pack of toilet paper. 

Basketball was the first sport to be cancelled on March 11th.. the Utah Jazz had 2 positive cases. Baseball, hockey, soccer, and the Olympic Games followed. For me, it was learning that the WWE had shut down that made it feel real. Not because I’m an avid fan these days but because they were the first to hold a major event after 9-11 when other people were still afraid to gather in crowds for fear of more attacks. 

Utah was hit with a series of earthquakes in the midst of it all with the biggest one on March 18th.Oh, and there were 2 meteors that came, in relative terms, closer to hitting the earth than any others in decades. Can we say, end of the world feeling much?

The first ‘stay at home’ order was in California on March 19th. Blue states were still scoffing at it as ‘liberal fake news’ in the wake of tweets like this from 45: 

By March 23rd several other states issued similar orders.

Here in AZ it wasn’t official until March 31st.  

On April 3rd CDC guidelines were released recommending cloth face coverings when in public in addition to the ‘social distance’ recommendation of staying 6’ or more from other people. An old friend in CA was making masks so I ordered 2 from her.

Monday, April 13th was the first trip into the grocery store since the pandemic began. My best friend picked me up at 6:45am and I gave her one of the two masks that arrived from California a couple days before. We pulled up to Walmart and saw a line of people outside waiting for the 7am opening. By this point, stores had begun limiting hours in order to properly sanitize things each night and some places started giving senior citizens an extra hour before general opening 1-2 times each week.

Our face masks were made of cotton on the inside and denim on the outside. I made the mistake of not taking my gum out of my mouth before putting mine on which only added to the difficulty breathing. On top of that, my glasses fogged up over and over again. It was awful.

The store itself didn’t seem too bad. The toilet paper aisle was about 10% stocked. The usual brands weren’t there and signs hung on empty shelves that said it was limited to one package per household. I got myself a pack of the Great Value brand, even though I had several rolls still at home. I also bought 2 two-packs of my dish gloves because they were another item that had become hard to come by. 

My basket was filled with frozen tater tots, steak fries and jalapeno poppers... junk food that I normally wouldn’t keep in the house, along with 2 packs of my favorite cookies, tuna, shampoo (2 big bottles) and deodorant even though I wasn’t out of either, command strips for hanging the 2 puzzles I’d recently completed, Kleenex because they had them in stock and had been hard to come by, mini loaf pans because I was baking banana bread before it was trendy, and instant coffee because I wanted to try the whipped coffee thing I kept seeing online.

I spent $100 and got $40 in cash that I would later turn into quarters for laundry and water bottle refills.

It has felt like Groundhog’s Day… work, dinner, couch, bed, stare at the darkness, and eventually fall asleep and do it again. 

I’ve had even more trouble than usual concentrating at work and instead find myself scrolling Facebook incessantly. Earlier this month, my department fired 3 people and transferred another out to her previous position which has made me that much more nervous about my job. Despite that, I’ve still struggled to get motivated to do the work I’ve just been assigned including a new course to create and an article talking about what my company is doing for our customers “during this time.”

I began watching the daily ‘Coronavirus Briefings’ from the White House as often as possible just because I’ve found that words really can’t capture just how awful the scene is. One day they showed a video that was all about the administration’s “terrific” response to the virus. Reporters described the video as a campaign video and when questioned about a missing chunk of time in it between the end of January when the Commander-in-Tweet said he had ‘bought time’ for the country and early March when they officially announced a national emergency 45 had his now-standard tantrum including, calling reporters “fake news” and attacking their credibility rather than giving any kind of answer.

Another day last week 45 started rambling on about possible cures including injecting UV light or disinfectants into patients. I immediately messaged the co-worker who has been posting about this kind of thing daily and told her that the next big episode would be about people injecting household disinfectants. 

Within 24 hours Lysol, Clorox and other household cleaning companies released statements telling people NOT to consume or inject their products. This is the world we live in.

Also last week, the governor of Nevada broke CNN’s Anderson Cooper with her lack of reasoning about how and why Las Vegas should re-open. There have been protests in several states as people who have been unemployed for weeks with only a single $1200 check from the government to help are demanding the economy re-open now. These protests have included masked (white) men holding guns and people with signs such as the one that read “My body, my choice” with an image of a face mask. All the while, other states have used the pandemic as a way of further restricting abortion access calling them ‘non-emergency medical procedures.’

People have applied for unemployment en masse while 2 trillion dollars in federal funds, grants, and loans “designed to help small businesses” (The CARES Act) were snatched up almost immediately. Some funds were granted to large publicly traded companies including as Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse ($20M) and Potbellies’ ($10M). They are among a handful of these companies who are returning the money only after public outcry.

I’m scared. 

Not of the virus necessarily, my county has just passed 30 cases which pales in comparison to a lot of other places, but I’m scared for how this is changing “normal” in terms of social interactions that would have typically lead to deeper bonds and eventually, hopefully, a new relationship for me.

A couple weeks ago, I loaned my sewing machine to a friend. She’s been notoriously anti-social and when I came by she invited me to hang out at a “social distance” for a bit. We ended up sitting on the concrete outside her front door about 5’ apart for about an hour just chatting. For her to feel the need for socializing is big. It’s on par with me having the urge to exercise (which hasn’t happened… yet).

I’m scared for my friend in Baltimore whose partner is a nurse in New York where the bodies have been piling up for weeks. He works for the Smithsonian and has been able to work from home for all but one day/week. Coping with the isolation for him has included turning meals into art that he posts along with the daily videos of his strongman feats and the occasional live shows with other performers who are struggling financially.

I’m scared for the New Jersey firefighter who told me about the increase in kitchen fires because people who never cooked are having to do so for the first time. He then told me about a friend that lost both her parents to COVID. She was unable to be with them in their final hours and their bodies were put into refrigerated trucks because there isn’t enough room in the morgues now. 

 If something happens to him, I’ll never know. He’s not on social media and we don’t have any friends in common who could tell me about it. He could just disappear one day. Or he could just appear. He’s talked about running away from his life for the last 5 years and I think this is really showing him that it’s time to make a change.

I’m scared for the friend in WA working 80+ hours a week between his two jobs. His health was shaky before his daughter’s murder in November 2018 and he lived in his car for months during the trial. He is finally working and has a roof over his head but is in contact with people daily who could potentially get him sick. Again. Because he was one of the people whose blood was being tested for antibodies, assuming he had already had COVID and survived.

I’m scared for my ex-husband who retired from the Army and moved to DC for his dream job right before the lock-downs started. The start date for his dream job was pushed back, and his last Army paycheck was getting closer and closer. Fortunately his resume is one that allowed him to start another job rather quickly and he just got an official start date at the dream job. But he is alone with the dogs, trying to rebuild himself and his life much in the way I am right now. 

We had friends in the area from the 3 years we lived there, but the virus means that all of the parties he wanted to go to that I wasn’t comfortable with… those parties may never return. They don’t have the grocery pick up options I have here, and his health has been an issue of concern for a long time. 

His girlfriend in the quad was a nurse who said that he had the ‘trifecta for a heart attack’ with diabetes, high blood pressure and high cholesterol. We are still legally married on paper so I have health insurance and am the primary beneficiary on his life insurance, but money can’t replace him. 

We may be separated but he is my family… and the only family I’ve really got.  And money wouldn’t make it any easier for me to have to re-arrange my life again and somehow go get the dogs if, Gods forbid, something were to happen to him.

It’s all a mess. It shouldn’t be such a big decision to go grocery shopping. 

Seeing people in movies and TV just casually touching one another and hugging shouldn’t seem so foreign already… but it is and it does. I know that we will never got back to the way it was. Masks are going to be part of my wardrobe for the foreseeable future. 

Just meeting a new person for coffee will feel riskier than unprotected sex, which makes dating a completely different experience… assuming I bite the bullet and reactivate my OkCupid account at all. And rather than calling my best friend and going out for lunch right now, I’m going to go stare at my stocked pantry with ‘nothing to eat’ and end up having leftover biscuits and gravy before putting on something resembling clothes, even if it’s just so I can take the trash out.

This is my life right now. This is the world we live in.

#covidー19 #lockdown #early days of the plague