#clinical research remote

[ccrpsorg]

Clinical Research Monitoring: A Guide to Clinical Monitoring

Clinical research monitoring is a vital part of clinical trials and it involves various activities to ensure the safety and accuracy of the data collected. It is important that the clinical trial is conducted in a way that meets regulatory standards, protects human studies participants, and minimizes potential risks to their health and well-being. Clinical trial monitoring can include activities such as auditing study sites, evaluating data for accuracy and completeness, review of protocols and amendments, reviewing case report forms (CRFs), identifying any deviations from the standard operating procedures (SOPs) or protocols, managing corrective action plans (CAPs), following up on safety reports, tracking progress against enrollment goals and much more. Apart from evaluating data quality, clinical research monitoring also ensures compliance with all regulatory standards like GCP (Good Clinical Practices) ICH (International Conference on Harmonization), FDA regulations and local laws. In addition to this ongoing monitoring throughout a study's duration, there may be audits conducted by sponsors or regulatory authorities at any time during or after completion of a clinical trial. All these efforts are dedicated towards ensuring that the results obtained from a clinical trial are accurate, reliable and applicable for use in making medical decisions.

Steps to Clinical Monitoring

1. Establish an Effective Monitoring Plan: Ensure that the plan is comprehensive and contains all applicable elements, such as the types of monitoring activities to be conducted, frequency of monitoring visits, data collection methods, and specific criteria for acceptable performance.

2. Develop Appropriate Documentation: Design protocol-specific monitoring tools and forms to document information from site visits including source documents, data collection instruments, case report forms (CRF). In addition, develop a Monitoring Log or Tracking System which will enable better accountability for study activities.

3. Execute Monitors’ Visits: Depending on the complexity of the trial and regulatory requirements, conduct pre-study qualification visits (PSQV), pre-initiation visits (PIV), initiation visits (IVs), periodic monitoring visits (PMV) and close out visits (COV). During each visit, ensure that good clinical practice is followed at all times by reviewing source documents and data collection instruments. Review patient enrollment logs to ensure accuracy and record any discrepancies in the visit report.

4. Report Findings: Generate detailed yet concise reports per each monitor's visit with clear recommendations for corrective actions if required; provide professional feedback to investigators regarding their performance; identify any areas of noncompliance with protocol requirements or applicable regulations; recommend training or educational sessions when appropriate; track all follow up activities related to corrective actions taken in response to findings from monitors' visits; ensure that essential documentation is complete before closing out a particular study site.

5. Quality Assurance: Validate accuracy of tracking systems used by monitors during their visits; assess risk associated with various deficiencies identified during monitoring process; carry out periodic internal audits/assessments to ensure compliance with established SOPs/guidelines related to clinical research monitoring activities; take preventive measures based on audit/assessment results in order to strengthen internal quality system processes.

Types of Clinical Trial Monitoring

1. Types of Clinical Research Monitoring: Clinical research monitoring is the process to assess the quality and integrity of clinical trial data and ensure compliance with applicable regulatory requirements. It can be done through three primary methods: onsite monitoring, centralized or remote monitoring, and risk-based approaches.

2. Onsite Monitoring: Onsite monitoring is considered the "gold standard" for clinical research monitoring, as it requires the presence of a monitor at a study site during the entire duration of a trial. The monitor will typically review source documentation such as patient records, lab results, and investigational product dispensing logs to assess accuracy and conformance with study protocols and good clinical practices (GCP). The monitor also interviews staff members responsible for conducting the trial to verify that procedures are being followed properly.

3. Centralized or Remote Monitoring in Clinical Trials: Centralized or remote monitoring enables sponsors to conduct clinical research monitoring without needing to send someone onsite to each study location. This is accomplished by using technology such as web portals, video conferencing, and virtual meetings that allow monitors to remotely review data from various sites simultaneously and quickly flag any issues that arise. Additionally, centralized/remote monitoring allows sponsors to be more proactive in identifying potential risks associated with a trial prior to sending monitors onsite for an assessment.

4. Risk-Based Approaches: Risk-based approaches use data analytics tools such as descriptive statistics and predictive algorithms to identify potential trends or outliers in clinical trial data that may represent heightened risk of noncompliance with GCPs or other regulations. By leveraging technology, these approaches can help sponsors identify issues earlier in the course of a trial so they can take corrective action before something goes wrong.

5. Benefits of Clinical Research Monitoring: Utilizing effective clinical research monitoring strategies helps ensure that trials are conducted ethically, safely, correctly according to protocol standards, within timelines agreed upon with regulatory authorities, and within budget constraints set out by sponsors/CROs/investigators/other stakeholders involved in a study’s execution.. Clinical research monitors act as an independent third party who are able to provide objective insight into how studies are being conducted across multiple sites which helps minimize errors due to bias from investigators or other personnel who may have vested interests in outcomes associated with their studies.. In addition, effective clinical research monitoring helps ensure patient safety by providing oversight about how drugs or medical devices used in trials are administered as well as ensuring patient confidentiality is maintained throughout the course of a study.. Lastly, robust clinical research monitoring protocols help reduce costs associated with delays caused by errors made during trials which can add up significantly over time if not avoided through proper oversight methods both pre-study start up until closeout occurs after all enrolled patients have completed their participation in a given trial

Clinical Research Monitoring Guide

1. Understand the Basics of Clinical Research Monitoring: Clinical research monitoring is a key part of the clinical research process, ensuring the safety and accuracy of results. It involves periodically assessing study sites to confirm that data is being collected properly, according to ethical and legal requirements, as per Good Clinical Practice (GCP) guidelines.

2. Know What Types of Studies are Monitored: Clinical research monitoring can be used for a variety of studies, including clinical trials, observational studies, epidemiologic studies, and public health surveys. It is important to know what type of study you are monitoring in order to ensure that the appropriate procedures are followed.

3. Understand How to Monitor a Study Site: The primary goal of clinical research monitoring is to confirm that the protocol and informed consent form have been followed properly at each site. This requires a thorough review of all relevant documents such as case report forms (CRFs), source documentation (e.g., physician notes), internal audit reports (audit trails), and external quality assurance reports. Additionally, it involves evaluating compliance with GCP guidelines during study visits or remote reviews, as well as conducting interviews with staff members to assess how they are handling data collection and reporting processes.

4. Become Familiar With Regulatory Requirements: In addition to GCP guidelines, there may be applicable regulations from local governments or other institutions that must be adhered to when conducting clinical research monitoring activities. Understanding these regulations is essential for ensuring compliance with applicable laws and regulations related to clinical research activities.

5. Develop an Effective Monitoring Plan: An effective monitoring plan should include a detailed timeline for visiting sites, information about any specific areas where focused attention is required (e.g., enrolling/randomizing patients or managing adverse events), and plans for auditing/reviewing data generated by the study site(s). Additionally, it should incorporate measures for controlling risk associated with data collection processes so that issues can be identified early on in the study process before they become problematic later on down the line.

Clinical Research Monitor Job

The job of a Clinical Research Monitor is to ensure that clinical trials are conducted ethically, safely and in compliance with established standards. The primary responsibility of the monitor is to protect the rights, safety and well-being of the human subjects enrolled in the trial. Duties typically include developing protocols for clinical studies; coordinating study start up activities; conducting site visits; monitoring data for timeliness, accuracy and completeness; auditing files for regulatory compliance; managing investigator queries/issues; preparing visit reports; reviewing update protocols related to study operations; resolving issues raised through audit reports or other sources; providing technical guidance to sites regarding protocol implementation or study conduct; and escalating complex issues or potential risks as needed.

Clinical Research Monitor Salary

Salaries for this position tend to vary depending on education level, experience and geographical location but can range from $60,000 per year for entry level positions up to around $90,000 per year for more experienced professionals. In addition to salary many employers also offer benefits such as paid vacation days, health insurance plans and retirement packages.

Resources for Clinical Research Monitoring

1. National Institutes of Health (NIH): Clinical Research Monitoring

This link provides information on NIH's guidelines for monitoring clinical research, which include topics such as the roles and responsibilities of the investigator, data safety monitoring boards, and protocols for reporting unanticipated problems and adverse events.

2. National Institutes of Health (NIH): Guide to Clinical Research Monitoring

This comprehensive guide walks readers through all aspects of clinical research monitoring, including topics such as study design, randomization strategies, regulatory compliance requirements, data management, monitoring plans and reports, quality improvement initiatives, and safety assessments.

3. US Food and Drug Administration (FDA): Guidelines for Clinical Trials Monitoring

This resource from the FDA outlines the importance of effective monitoring in clinical trials and provides an overview of the different roles within a clinical trial as well as details about essential elements for implementation of an effective monitoring strategy such as risk assessments and adverse event tracking.

4. International Conference on Harmonization of Technical Requirements for Registration of Pharmaceuticals for Human Use (ICH)

ICH has developed standards that provide a set of harmonized technical requirements for clinical trials conducted across countries in the European Union (EU), Japan, and US with an emphasis on quality assurance and safety monitoring during trials.

5. Association of Clinical Research Professionals (ACRP)

ACRP's guidelines provide best practice recommendations for conducting clinical research studies in accordance with applicable regulations and standards to ensure patient safety monitoring during studies as well as data integrity throughout the process from start to finish.

6. Pharmaceutical Research & Manufacturers of America (PhRMA)

The PhRMA guidelines provide an overview of expectations around clinical research activities with respect to ethics, data integrity, safety reporting, resource allocation and more. It defines roles and responsibilities of all those involved in overseeing a clinical trial such as a Clinical Research Monitor or CRA who has primary responsibility for ensuring that the protocol is implemented correctly throughout a study’s duration

Clinical Research Monitoring Review

1. What is the main purpose of clinical research monitoring?

A) To ensure that a research study is conducted in accordance with applicable regulations and ethical standards

B) To ensure that data collected during a research study is accurate and reliable

C) To evaluate the safety of participants enrolled in a research trial

D) To oversee the financial management of a research project

Answer: A) To ensure that a research study is conducted in accordance with applicable regulations and ethical standards. Clinical Research Monitors are responsible for ensuring compliance with Good Clinical Practice guidelines, protecting participant privacy, verifying data accuracy, and evaluating protocol deviations. In addition, they may also be involved in reviewing participant eligibility requirements, conducting site assessments, providing training to investigators and staff on proper study procedures, as well as monitoring progress towards completion of all requirements of the study.

2. What type of individuals typically serve as clinical research monitors?

A) Physicians

B) Nurses

C) Regulatory specialists

D) All of the above

Answer: D) All of the above. Clinical Research Monitors can come from various backgrounds such as medical doctors (MDs), nurses (RNs), pharmacists (RPhs), regulatory specialists (e.g., Regulatory Affairs Professionals or Paralegals), or biostatisticians/data analysts who have experience in clinical trials and understand local regulations related to human subject protection. Each monitor has specific job duties depending on their education and experience, such as assessing compliance with regulatory guidance or analyzing data sets for accuracy, completeness, integrity, or validity.

3. What kind of activities do clinical research monitors need to perform?

A) Protocol reviews or verifications

B) Ensuring appropriate documentation completion

C) Site visits to observe investigator conduct

D )All of the above

Answer: D )All of the above. Clinical Research Monitors need to perform several activities including protocol reviews or verifications; ensuring appropriate documentation completion; site visits to observe investigator conduct; liaising between sponsors and sites; assisting with resolving issues associated with adverse events; reviewing case report forms for completeness, accuracy, consistency and correctness; evaluating subject safety throughout enrollment process;and writing reports detailing their findings at each visit.

4. What is one benefit gained from having an effective Clinical Research Monitor on-site? A) Reduced risk for legal liability stemming from negligence

B) Improved protocol adherence by investigators

C) Increased patient engagement during trial period

D )All of the above

Answer: D) All of the above . An effective Clinical Research Monitor encompasses several benefits such as reduced risk for legal liability stemming from negligence due to thorough oversight and accurate record keeping; improved protocol adherence by investigators through continued communication between sponsor representatives and researchers on-site regarding best practices; increased patient engagement during trial period due to more detailed explanations about potential risks/benefits offered by having monitor on-site ; and improved efficiency when dealing with complex protocols that require multiple levelsof oversight due to familiarity with protocol specifics which decreases time spent troubleshooting errors or unclear instructions..

5. How often should Clinical Research Monitors visit a particular site?

A) Weekly B) Biweekly C) Monthly D) Quarterly

Answer: C) Monthly . It is recommended that Clinical Research Monitors visit sites at least once per month in order to maintain active surveillance over ongoing studies at each location while also providing timely feedback regarding any issues discovered while on-site visits are taking place within a shorter timeframe if needed based upon changes made midstream or other unanticipated circumstances which might require immediate attention by sponsor personnel.

#clinical monitoring #clinical trial monitoring #remote monitoring clinical trials #clinical research monitor #clinical research monitor salary #risk based monitoring in clinical trials #clinical trial monitor #clinical trial monitor salary #monitoring of clinical trials by industry sponsors #centralized monitoring clinical trials #clinical research monitoring #clinical site monitoring #clinical trial monitoring services #clinical trial remote monitoring #clinical trials monitor #medical monitor clinical trial #risk based monitoring clinical trials #clinical monitor #clinical research monitor jobs #clinical trials monitoring #clinically validated blood pressure monitors for home use #monitoring in clinical trials #clinical monitoring services #clinical trial monitor jobs #journal of clinical monitoring and computing #monitoring clinical trials #remote monitoring in clinical trials #central monitoring clinical trials #clinical data monitoring #clinical monitoring jobs

[jeeva-trials]

Why Improving Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Clinical Trials should be a Research Priority? | Jeeva Trials

Disparities related to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) are common and well-known in clinical trials. It is well-documented that racial minorities, underprivileged, and non-white ethnic groups are much less represented in clinical trials. Historically, the numbers of clinical trial participants from diverse populations have not reflected real-world populations. Minorities often underrepresented in clinical trials include women, members of the LGBTQ+ community, indigenous populations, older adults, Native Americans, pediatric patients, and people living in hard-to-reach geographies.

In the United States, socio-economic and geographic divides persistently limit patient diversity in clinical trials. As a result, we have only partial understanding of how safe and effective therapies are when they launch. Without diverse communities, researchers run the risk of making assumptions about drug safety and effectiveness that may not be accurate. There is a need to increase participation and retention among diverse patients who may otherwise not be invited to participate in clinical trials for new drug development. Not only would these measures provide pivotal data for a variety of backgrounds, but it would also provide these study participants with first access to new precision therapies at no cost, a privilege of the few.

Why are inclusive clinical trials important?

Addressing the challenges of diversity, equity and inclusion in clinical trials is important because there are many occurrences when drugs behaved differently from one population to another. Failing to understand these differences at the clinical trial stage, in which patients are monitored most closely, could result in suboptimal drug efficacy and potentially avoidable safety issues due to overexposure and underexposure to the drugs in many future patients. Having representative patient populations in clinical trials helps ensure the safety and effectiveness of therapies for everyone.

How to increase diversity, equity and inclusion in clinical trials

Do not select a site merely because of familiarity or convenience, especially if these sites have no demonstrable reach in that community beyond their location. Clinical Trial sites should include locations with a higher concentration of racial and ethnic minority patients. Factor in relevant disease prevalence data in those areas when designing protocols or planning recruitment initiatives.

Do not treat Black and Brown communities as monolithic groups that have the same life experiences. Do not set people of color into shallow narratives and stereotypes, such as Black people can only be reached through the church. Similarly, defaulting to do business with majority-owned (read: White) firms simply because they are familiar, and you feel comfortable to communicate and connect with them is not the right practice.

It is important to carefully examine exclusion and inclusion criteria to ensure they are necessary to achieve study objectives and that they do not pose an unnecessary barrier for would-be enrollees. When possible, reducing the frequency of study visits, collaborative strategies, expanded access, flexibility in visit windows, and electronic communication tools should be employed to make trials more inclusive. Clinical trial participation should be made less burdensome for the volunteers and caregivers.

Legal frameworks and recent initiatives to improve diversity and inclusion in clinical trials

Improvements in DEI initiatives have of late come from recognition by drug developers, lawmakers, sponsors, patient advocates and regulatory authorities of the importance of DEI in clinical trials, and how sociocultural variables reverberate in clinical research. In reality, the void in diversity, equity and inclusion in clinical trials and research is an old problem as it only represents a disproportional disease burden. What is unprecedented is the widespread attention that diversity, equity and inclusion has gotten in clinical trials recently. The fierce urgency to develop effective coronavirus solutions means that these inequities in clinical trials are finally getting the attention long needed.

Indeed, there is a need to address the issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion in clinical trials if innovators are to fulfill their promise of precision medicines for each individual. Information flow, data sharing, and reducing the logistical burden to participate are high-priority areas to improve access for underrepresented populations. This is also true in research laboratories where the greater the diversity of the participating patient population, the higher the chances that certain breakthroughs from clinical trials may be achieved.

Overcoming barriers and achieving DEI in clinical trials with technology

Systematic change in how we approach the issue of diversity, equity and inclusion in clinical trials is needed for the real clinical trial diversity to transpire. The Jeeva eClinical Cloud (Jeeva) is a modular Software as a Service (SaaS) subscription model that is designed to help a clinical study’s annual budget on a simple per participant basis, while ensuring that the study participants are truly represented to include diversity, equity, and inclusion. The platform has many features such as eConsent, pre-screening, automated enrollment workflow, adverse event reporting and more to maximize diversity, equity, and inclusion for the participants, such as women and minorities that are less likely to participate in clinical trials due to logistical burdens and special needs such as childcare, transportation and loss of pay.

Walking the talk of patient-centricity

Jeeva considers patients as critical partners, not merely subjects of study, and walks the talk of patient-centricity. The cloud platform incorporates patient voices early during clinical trial protocol development and logistical planning. Jeeva believes that humanizing the workflows leaves room for humanizing the patient experience, and creates an atmosphere of trust, especially among the communities of color and ethnic minorities that have traditionally been underrepresented in studies. Jeeva is developed by researchers with empathy who listen to help clinical researchers, hospitals, academia, CROs and biopharmaceutical sponsors to address the issues of diversity, equity and inclusion in clinical trials, and accelerate patient recruitment by three times faster.

Minimizing regulatory risk and maximizing compliance

Jeeva’s bring your own device (BYOD) platform makes it easy for study investigators to onboard, retain and engage participants with an appropriate focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion. Jeeva’s experienced coordinators are trained to manage trial operations to minimize burden, reduce dropouts, and improve compliance meeting regulatory requirements at various levels, such as Good Clinical Practice (GCP) guideline by the international code of harmonization (ICH), human subjects’ protection guidelines, data protection guidelines such as GDPR, and institutional review boards (IRBs) that help in accelerating the development of therapies.

The platform is designed to enhance geographic and demographic diversity and reduces 70% burden on study teams and participants to collect data that are representative of the population. Jeeva supports multi-site studies with centralized monitoring dashboard, and centralized study management & monitoring.

As researchers seek to accelerate regulatory approvals, Jeeva eClinical SaaS can help achieve this goal while also increasing diversity, equity, and inclusion in clinical trials by enabling wider access to participants irrespective of their zipcode.

#eclinical cloud #clinical trial cloud software #eclinical platform #mobile eclinical #clinical trial recruitment challenges #decentralized clinical trials software #software for clinical trials #clinical research software #clinical study software #software used in clinical research #clinical trials software #software used in clinical trials #clinical solutions research platforms #accelerating patient recruitment #patient retention in clinical trials #Remote Consent #clinical trial protocol software #clinical trials recruitment and retention #clinical trial software platform

[dharmveer]

Remote Health Monitoring Apps by SISGAIN in California

#Remote patient monitoring is one of the most well-liked and often utilised telemedicine techniques. It allows a doctor to check on a patient #heart disease #or allergies. Patients feel more at ease as a result of the ongoing monitoring. Maintaining open channels of communication between the pati #SISGAIN is a leading remote patient monitoring services provider in California #USA. #Remote patient monitoring #whether done at home or somewhere else than a clinical environment #is common practice. Since remote health monitoring has the potential to significantly improve patients' quality of life when utilised in th #it should come as no surprise that it is growing in popularity. #Leading Features of the Ideal Remote Patient Monitoring System: #Big data analysis at a high level: RPM can be able to recognise #grasp #enhance #and analyse complicated patterns depending on the data sources. In order to address complicated issues #artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning employ sophisticated research software #cutting-edge algorithms #and rich visualisations (ML). Based on patient-generated health data #RPM dashboards for clinicians provide alert levels from low to high-risk status. The physician dashboard regularly displays information abo #Dependable cyber infrastructure: RPM initiatives are carried out by several parties #and these parties could employ applications and biometric devices to disclose personal information and whereabouts to third parties #endangering cybersecurity and privacy. One of the major components of a perfect RPM should be a robust cybersecurity architecture. #Information from RPM medical devices that is accurate and trustworthy #assisted by AI: By gathering #analysing #processing #and holistically interpreting vital and physiological data from patients #optimum RPM technology enables the system to assess #test #and measure solutions. Because of its exceptional ability to protect sensitive data while minimising or eliminating human error #it inspires confidence.

[centralhealthsolutions]

How Central Health Solutions Help Physicians Provide Better Patient Care

The COVID-19 epidemic redefined how healthcare is approached, especially when the virus was at its peak and nationwide lockdowns were announced. It accelerated the need to provide remote patient care. The result was that clinicians, healthcare providers, and physicians turned toward providing remote patient monitoring and support. At Central Health Solutions, we help them offer remote healthcare services to their patients.

#Clinical Research provides #remote patient management #Remote Patient Monitoring USA

[sluttywoozi]

Kinktober Day 31: Alien Kink + DK

For ⚔️

Rating: M (18+) | WC: ~2k

Pairing: Seokmin x Reader | Genre: smut, sci fi

Warnings: dk is a clueless virgin alien, sex ed, oral f. rec., vaginal fingering, alien anatomy, breeding mention

Seokmin has only been dating you for two earth months, but already, he knows he’s in love. 

His species doesn’t put much stock in romance or dating - the most they seek is a suitable mate to help produce offspring every mating cycle - but Seokmin has always been different. Different enough that he’s never participated in the mating cycles at all, not wanting to share that side of himself with someone who won’t stay. 

Different enough that he’s one of the few of his species that has ever left their planet, different enough that he can almost pass as human, if it weren’t for his pointed ears and chameleon-like qualities. You don’t seem to mind them, thankfully, nor do you mind the odd looks you get whenever you go out in public together. 

Your kind has known about aliens for less than five years, barely long enough to grow accustomed to the idea and definitely not long enough for interspecies relationships to be normal. Seokmin isn’t worried though, knowing that as earth grows into a galactic trade hub, more and more relationships like yours will pop up. 

Until then, he’s content to ignore the looks, hold your hand on the street, and proudly let his cheeks flare purple, the color a sign of his deep, true love for you. 

Or at least, that’s what he tells himself. 

The truth is, he’s dying to know what you look like naked. 

He’s tried to do research, but what he now knows is called ‘porn’ doesn’t seem to be for him, and he can’t even begin to understand the words or the diagrams in that anatomy textbook he borrowed from the library. Besides, he only wants to see you, touch you, learn you, no one else.

So, he does what’s most logical to him, and simply asks. 

It’s on a calm Sunday afternoon that he first broaches the topic, one that sees Seokmin reading with his head in your lap as you rewatch your favorite show for the nth time. His book is getting to a particularly spicy bit, one that has heat growing in both of his stomachs, but as usual, when it gets to the more specific parts, Seokmin is clueless as to what they’re talking about. 

What is a pussy? Why is the main character putting his mouth on the love interest’s? And why is everything so wet??

These are all questions Seokmin needs an answer to, and he reaches over for the remote to pause your show so he can have your full attention. You blink down at him, arching an eyebrow in curiosity as he opens and closes his mouth like a fish, unsure of how to voice his questions. 

In the end, he just asks you flat out. 

By the time you get over your shock, finish laughing, and pull yourself back together, he’s pouting on the other end of the couch, his arms crossed and his cheeks bright orange in embarrassment. 

“I’m sorry, Minnie, you just caught me off guard. Ummm,” you stall as you try to figure out how to answer, deciding to just be as clinical and explanatory as possible. “Humans generally have one of two types of genitalia, a vagina or a penis, and pussy is a less formal word for vagina, which is what I have. There’s something called oral sex, and it’s when you use your mouth to make someone feel good. That’s what’s happening in your book.”

Ohhh. That makes sense, Seokmin thinks.

“And everything is wet because, well, the mouth is wet and the pussy can make its own wetness, so everything just gets a little… messy.”

Seokmin squirms in his place at the end of the couch, suddenly not at all interested in his book and only too intrigued by the idea of putting his mouth on you. 

“Can we try that?” Seokmin asks urgently, shuffling over to you on his knees and imploring you with his eyes. 

“Right now?” You question, trepidation in your voice and nervousness on your face. “I haven’t shaved or anything.”

“What’s shaving?” He’s never heard that word before, doesn’t have a clue what it means, though you seem to think it’s bad that you haven’t done it. 

“Never mind,” you sigh happily, throwing your arms around his neck and pulling him into a deep kiss. 

Kissing, Seokmin is used to. Kissing, Seokmin is good at. 

And he loves loves loves kissing you, loves your sounds and the taste of your tongue and the feeling of your lips against his. Loves how close he feels to you and how close you get to him, loves how his head spins and how your hands wander, your fingers tracing over the pointed tips of his ears and down the ridges of his abdomen. 

He shivers when you break away to suck kisses into his neck, his head falling back to give you more room as you bite and lick your way down his throat. You pull down his t-shirt collar to get at his collarbones and he covers your hand with his, pulling back and reminding you of the goal. 

“I’m going to perform oral sex on you, remember?”

You bite back a smile and tell him, “Seokmin, try saying ‘go down on you’ or ‘eat your pussy’ instead. They sound a bit sexier.” 

“Baby, I promise I would never eat you. Sure, humans can be a delicacy on some planets, but that’s not how I do things,” he says, hand on his biggest heart and with all the seriousness in the world, unsure why threatening to consume you would sound any sexier than what he said. 

“It’s just a figure of speech, Minnie. You won’t actually be eating me,” you promise gently, reminding Seokmin just how much he has left to learn about you and your people and your silly combinations of words.

“Oh. What will I be doing?” 

“It’s like kissing, but you kind of have to multitask? It’s hard to explain, I’ll guide you once you get down there.”

He rolls off the couch and shuffles close to you on his knees, placing his hands on yours to push your legs apart. Gazing expectantly at you, he waits for you to remove your clothes so he can see what he’s working with, all three of his hearts beginning to race as you lift your hips and shyly push at your pajama shorts. 

He can’t believe he’s about to see you bare, his first lover, his first girlfriend, his first human, and if he has anything to say about it, his last. The shorts get to your knees and he has to move his hands, settling them on your upper thighs and taking in a deep breath, tasting something sweetsour and heady on the air. 

When you open your legs for him, he knows instantly that the flavor was you, and that it’s something he wants on his tongue now. He should take a look around, explore you a bit, but he’s letting his instincts guide him and they’re saying to get his mouth on you as soon as possible, lest he lose this chance. 

And oh, oh, Seokmin gets it now, why it’s called ‘eating out,’ because he does want to eat you, he wants to consume you, he wants to drink you down. He wants to lick his fingers and taste you. Bite his lip and taste you. Swipe his tongue over his teeth and taste you. He wants you all over him, so he practically shoves his face into your pussy, shaking it from side to side to spread you out as his tongue laps at the folds and creases of you. 

The taste is more concentrated further down, so further down he goes, making a questioning noise when he encounters something unexpected. There’s a… hole, or maybe an entrance? Are you hollow here? 

His tongue delves inside, and all at once, he’s in heaven. It’s like everything else falls away, his shoulders untensing and his fingers spasming on your knees as his cheeks flare a bright red, the color of deep, gnawing arousal. 

You’re searing hot and soaking wet, like a scalding shower on a freezing day, and your walls feel like molten velvet, the texture and flexibility of them mind blowing as they ripple and squeeze around his tongue. 

He’s never felt, tasted, encountered anything like you in his life, and he hopes you’re alright with him sticking around for the rest of it, because he can’t give this up. 

Seokmin can’t know about the glory of your pussy and then suddenly forget about it, no, this will stay with him forever. 

He feels something nudge against his forehead and looks up, his eyes nearly crossing in an effort to identify what’s touching him. It’s your fingers, you’re swirling them over something and with every pass, he feels you tightening up on his tongue, feels more of your slick coming out to coat his face. 

“What are you doing?” He pulls away to ask, his tongue slightly sore and his lips swollen. 

“Um, this is my clit, there’s a lot of nerves here and touching it makes me feel the best,” you pant, stilling your hand and moving it to rest on your hip so he can inspect you closer. There’s a small bump peeking out of a little hood, and when Seokmin pokes his tongue out to give it a kitten lick, your hips buck into him. 

“Like that?” 

“Yeah, Minnie, like that. And you can fuck me with your-- your fingers, they can go inside.”

Oh, he likes whatever’s happening to your voice right now. You sound all breathy and needy and relaxed, and when he slides two fingers inside like you said, you moan raggedly and clench around them, the feeling of your walls grasping his fingers making his head spin. 

He can only imagine what you would feel like around his aching cock, can only hope that one day, he’ll get to experience it. Maybe if he does really good with this, you’ll let him inside of you, let him fill you up and stretch you out, let him mate you and breed you and keep you. 

Just the idea has him doubling his efforts, has him wrapping his lips around your clit and sucking hard, increasing the speed of his fingers until he feels like he really is fucking you with them, until your walls are undulating around his fingers and your arousal is dripping down his wrist. 

“Just like that, Seokmin. Don���t stop, please,” you cry brokenly, your hips moving with his hand as he pushes you higher and higher. 

He moans his affirmation into you and the vibrations must send you over the edge, because your pussy is fluttering and clenching and squeezing like crazy, and he can feel your clit throbbing between his lips as wetness seeps out of you, your whines so high and sweet he wants to bottle them up, save them for later. 

He wants to keep going but begrudgingly stops when you push him away by the forehead, his fingers stagnant inside of you and his lips detaching from your clit with a slick pop. 

“Was that good?” Seokmin slurs, his mouth exhausted and his brain drunk on you. 

“It was perfect, Seokmin. You did such a good job,” you murmur as you pet his hair, not stopping him when he lays down again, his cheek pillowed by your thigh. He’s still aching but you seem tired, and he’s not sure how long he’ll be able to last after that, anyway. 

He’ll need to practice a lot if he wants to make it through to the actual mating part. 

Oh no, how terrible that will be, Seokmin thinks with a giddy smile. 

Kinktober Masterlist

AN: okayyy this was getting a little long so i cut it off before we got to the fucking but i might do a part two!! if that's something you're interested in, pls comment or reblog to let me know!!

thank you so much for sticking with me and encouraging me through all of kinktober, it's been harder than i ever thought it would be but also more fun than i expected, and i feel like i've really grown as a smut writer!

ily and happy halloween 💖💖💖

#svthub #kvanity #seventeen smut #seventeen x reader #seventeen x you #seventeen x y/n #seventeen fic #seventeen au #seventeen imagines #seokmin smut #seokmin x reader #seokmin scenarios #lee seokmin smut #lee seokmin x reader #lee seokmin imagines #dokyeom x reader #dokyeom imagines #dokyeom smut #dk smut #dk x reader #dk fic #dk fanfic #kpop smut #kpop imagine #kpop oneshots #kpop scenarios #kpop fanfic #✨emily writes✨ #✨em's kinktober✨

[bioethicists]

Your post about how the clinical process surrounding mental illness and addiction was really interesting!

I wonder what your thoughts are about Housing First models and Common Grounds models? Because I feel like they speak directly to your points and provide the needs but also a structure that can be relied on if one wishes to change oneself.

my job as a research assistant is actually doing an evaluation of the benefits of a massive housing first project in boston! i am a fan of housing first particularly because i think everyone should be housed + the possibilities for life shrink dramatically the second somebody is unhoused, regardless of their substance use status. unhoused ppl are treated as less than human (sometimes less than animal tbh) in many spaces. i also have a personal investment because my brother overdosed in part because of the fact that he had been kicked out of his living situation for using + was forced to use with a depressed tolerance in a remote location. if he had been in a housing situation which was not contingent on sobriety, where others may have been present to narcan him or he would not have had the immense stress + trigger of dogshit menial labor jobs needed to pay the ridiculous, price gouging rents at sober living- i mean, i can't speculate, but it's something i do think about.

i think my hesitation with how it can be implemented is, again, the assumption that the end goal for everyone is recovery. my position is not "well some people can't recover" or "well some people can't recover until xyz is met" but "nobody is obligated to recover, ever, and recovery is a subjective concept which can be put to extremely reactionary uses. i want to reduce people's suffering and increase their possibilities for life."

i do think, based on my work, that it's really important for people who are using substances to have access to resources which facilitate their safety and happiness + a lot of them would probably choose either sobriety, MAT, or safer drug use habits if that was something which was easy for them to do. they often express genuinely felt desires to "get better" (in whatever way that means to them or whatever way they hope it means to me) but similar, competing desires to continue experiencing the benefits of their drug use, as well as avoiding the negatives of sobriety. while i chafe at the idea that all people's "true selves" want to recover (in the specific way that recovery is constructed by substance use treatment providers), i do think that most people want to suffer less. things like methadone/suboxone (or safe, legal, surveillance free supply!!!), medications provided on site, easily accessible, non judgemental medical treatment, etc can save lives.

it's important for ppl to be very skeptical of who is allocating/managing the resources for these interventions + their motivations. to be frank, i get scared about the future of the (admittedly imperfect) housing projects i work with because they are funded by the state of MA with the primary goal being to get ppl off the street, because housed members of the community were complaining about the encampments. the state very clearly wants to see that these projects 1) reduce the prevalence of visible homelessness and 2) reduce the rate of drug use among participants. my job is very explicitly to collect and produce data that indicates this + the questions i ask when i collect data are quite explicitly centered around figuring out if being housed makes ppl use less drugs. the point here is that the state absolutely can + will revoke the massive amounts of money it has allocated towards these programs if they don't see them as making people Stop Doing Drugs or Stop Wandering the Streets. this is why i think harm reduction responses should be grassroots responses originating within + for communities, as described in some of the chapters of Saving Our Own Lives. unfortunately, these communities rarely have the infrastructure or the resources to implement these projects, so they must rely on the state + all of its messy biopolitical motives

#anti psychiatry #substance use #overdose //

[nachosncheezies]

I can't find the post where you've rambled about Kurt Crawford before! Please ramble to me about Kurt Crawford!

Hi hello and thank you for your patience as I answer this one month to the day from when you sent it!!!! 🙈 oops

The Crawfords was my original answer to @perpetually-weirdening's question "what character do you wish we learned more about" but I'm so happy to expand on that, I have a lot of feelings!!! xD

The thing about the Kurt Crawfords is that (unless I'm forgetting something big) they're the first clones we've seen that are explicitly said to be the progeny of abductees/the MUFON women. We've met other clones before including the Samanthas in Colony/End Game but those were rogues trying to figure out how to hybridize themselves into some kind of genetic variability that would let them look different and blend in. (they used discarded tissue from abortion clinics rather than stolen ova) The bounty hunter was after them for simply existing outside The Project.

The Crawfords are different. They're part of The Project. The first one that Mulder and Scully meet is the one they track down after finding someone is remotely copying Betsy Hagopian's computer files. This Crawford claims to be a member of Betsy's MUFON chapter, and he tells them there's a conspiracy to cover up the women's deaths. He leads them to Penny Northern, who (unfortunately) directs Scully to Dr Scanlon and her first attempt at treatment. The bounty hunter comes for Crawford #1 in Betsy's basement the minute Mulder steps away.

Crawford #2 turns up at the fertility clinic where Betsy and some of the others had been treated. This Crawford is dressed differently but Mulder doesn't know yet that there's more than one, and accuses him of having run off with the files they'd been working on in Betsy's basement. Between them and the Gunmen, they track down Scully's name in a research lab directory, which leads them to data on the branched DNA they'd already identified after Scully's abduction. But if someone's looking at this as a possible cause for her illness, maybe they're also looking for a cure, so the Gunmen help Mulder break into the Lombard facility where he finds a whole room of Kurt Crawfords.

And this is where IMO it gets so complicated and so bittersweet and so REAL. We learn very little about the Crawfords in the few minutes Mulder is with them but what we do learn is pretty significant for something that's never really talked about again. They recognize Mulder, they welcome him. They lead him straight to the drawer containing Scully's stolen ova (the first time we learn what the project did to her when she was abducted). They tell him how they were harvested, that the radiation used in that procedure caused her (and the MUFON women's) cancer. They tell him that the men who are claiming to treat this rare cancer are the same ones that caused it, that those men are actually working to hasten the women's deaths.

But!!!! what gets me most is this exchange:

Mulder: You're trying to save them. Crawford: They're our mothers.

What a thing to think, to feel, to say. The Crawfords came from fucked up circumstances and they're not really human. They're complicit in perpetuating it all by making more of themselves, but this is their life cycle, this is their job, this is what they know. From what we're shown we have no reason to believe that any of them has ever experienced what it is to have a mother in any sense other than a genetic donor. They're grown in tanks from tampered genetic material taken from tampered women without either party giving consent.

But they recognize that they owe their existence to these human women, who were violated and now suffer and die for it. And in those very few words he says: they don't want that. They recognize it's wrong. They're trying to stop it. (They are risking their lives; their subversion sends the bounty hunter after them.) It's their chance at redemption for the crime of being alive and that alone is painfully human.

They want Mulder and Scully to know the truth. The fact that they lead Mulder directly to where Scully's stolen ova are kept. That they let him take from that drawer without comment. They let him take the truth in his hand, surely aware that he might return it to her. (I like to think they hoped he would.) Because she, and the other women, are their mothers.

IMO one of the biggest elephants in the room for this whole show, although we don't learn about her until well after this, is Emily. How many others like her might there be? It's fucking TRAGIC to think about. But she's not the only thing to come from those stolen ova. The Crawfords are not the children Scully or any of the other MUFON women wanted. But they exist. They are grateful, in whatever way a hybrid clone can be. They recognize the sacrifice and suffering that brought them to life. They are doing what they can, in their own way, to set it right. Because to them, those are their mothers.

Knowing about the Crawfords and their subversion of The Project could never undo what was done to Scully or the others. But as gross and shocking a revelation it would be to know that inhuman things are being made in place of the children they can never have, what the Crawfords show us is that not everything that came from those violations are tragedies in the way of Emily and any other children like her. I wonder if it might have been a comfort for Scully to know that out of one of the worst things to ever happen to the abducted women, These Men Who Would Create a Life Whose Only Hope Is To Die have also accidentally created lives whose greatest hope is to save people, to save her and others like her. That these inhuman children the women never wanted have somehow grown to have a sense of empathy, a sense of justice, a moral compass, a desire to do what's right. Things a mother would want for her children, things a mother could be proud of. That they may not be human, they may not know what it is to be children, but they know that somewhere out there they have mothers, and they care.

I wonder if Mulder ever told Scully. I hope someday he did.

#mulder recognized the boy in the tank from the drones he met in the bee fields #where he also met Project-approved samantha drones #so here's a question: #are there Samanthas out there - grown like the memento mori Crawfords - who consider the abductees their mothers too? #are there Samanthas out there made of what was stolen from Scully? #x files #the x files #thank you for the ask it was fun to ramble about and a PERFECT excuse to rewatch memento mori 😍 #folks ask nachos answers #scully #kurt crawford

[jitterbugjive]

guess what fuckers

trans youth's suicidal ideation rate drops when they have access to hormones

So fuck off with your "It'S ThE HoRMOnEs!" bullshit, that's not how hormones work, not unless you're forcing someone to take hormones that don't align with their identities like they used to do to gay men

maybe do some actual research before just jumping to the conclusions that hormones=hormonal=more suicidal

I'm willing to listen to peoples' arguments but they had better back that shit up if they expect me to even remotely agree with them

I'm not here to start any drama but when I hear something that doesn't sound right, I just have to really look into it and share what I find so people can be less ignorant about the facts.

Feel what you want but "This sounds like it makes sense therefor it's probably right" is not a good argument.

[fablesrose]

Ch 7 - The Fairy Godparents Job

Series Rewrite Masterlist 

Pairing: Eliot Spencer x Ford!Reader

Description: Another crooked financial guy, but this time under house arrest. Helping his son into the spotlight must be the play here.

Words: 4768

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Nate texted the group chat letting us know that he was meeting with a client and to meet for briefing. I stepped into his apartment to see that Eliot was already in the living room reading a magazine. I greeted him and sat on the far side of the couch, tucking my legs underneath me.

He greeted me with a nod, but nothing more. 

Hardison walked in and started showing Eliot a phone sized device that he said was actually a metal detector. He started explaining how it worked, but I didn’t understand much. It was clear that Eliot wasn’t listening.

“Are you even listening?” Hardison asked after stopping mid-spiel. 

Eliot looked up from his magazine, “yeah.”

“Well, what did I say?”

“You’re explaining how you’re still a virgin?”

I couldn’t stop the short laugh that escaped me. I noticed it cracked a smile out of Eliot before he turned back to his magazine. Hardison looked at me with betrayal.

“I’m sorry, Hardison, that’s super cool, but I don’t understand what you’re saying… and it was a little funny…”

“Woman-”

Nate walked in with Parker cutting off whatever he was going to rebuff with.

“Talking to clients, you’re supposed to sympathize,” Nate seemed to be explaining to her. 

“I told you not to take her,” Eliot said.

“Well, you were right. Where’s Sophie?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, we’re not waiting,” Nate said as he sat down, “let's go, let’s start.”

Hardison took over researching this mark as I was busy with a project. He told us all about Daniel Fowler, our mark. He posed as a private investor, but just stole people’s money, including our client, a small clinic set to shut down because of him. The whole firm was busted as a Ponzi scheme and the FBI froze all of his assets and put him on house arrest. 

“I’m talking corporate accounts, personal accounts, real estate holdings… anything on planet Earth with this dude’s name on it is on ice,” Hardison explained. 

“FBI’s very thorough, huh?” Eliot asked. 

“Isn’t this going to be a problem for us though?” I asked, “I mean, what are we gonna do if he’s this locked up?”

Hardison had a slight smirk on his face, “Wait for it…” he pointed at Parker. 

“What’d they miss?” she asked, humoring him. 

“Oh…” a couple of screens came up with a press of a button, “Twenty million dollars. Moved it off the books right before the warrants came down.”

“He knew the end was near and he was getting ready to bolt,” Nate said. “Tell me something, where was Fowler arrested?”

“Oh, in his apartment,” Hardison answered, “packing for his “business trip” to the Maldives.”

Sophie walked in then, but she didn’t look as chipper as she usually did. She didn’t say anything as she walked to the kitchen.

“You see, he’d need it light, portable, close at hand,” Nate thought out loud, “that twenty million is in his apartment.”

“Yeah, but y/n brought up a good point,” Eliot added, “This guy’s on house arrest, man. I mean, he’s practically living with the FBI.”

“The problem is not getting into the apartment,” Sophie interjected, “but getting them out.”

There was a moment of awkwards silence before Nate asked, “where were ya?”

“Oh. I was running an errand,” Sophie stuttered noncommittally. 

“Weren’t you with the boyfriend?” Parker asked innocently.

“Parker” I whispered with a pointed look.

She had the grace to look a little guilty.

“So what are the terms of his house arrest?” Sophie changed the subject. 

Hardison answered, “Fowler’s confined to his six million dollar penthouse overlooking the Charles River.”

“That’s a rough punishment, huh?” Eliot asked sarcastically. 

“The whole place is outfitted with 24/7 surveillance so the Feds can keep an eye on him.” Hardison pointed his remote at the screen, “now… we can too.”

The screen showed a feed of Fowler’s apartment with him lying on the couch. We all smiled at him when he continued.

“I piggybacked the wireless feed.”

“Still,” Sophie sat on the back of the couch behind me, “for us to get in and search the place, we got to get rid of Fowler.”

“Now there are three general exceptions for house arrest,” Nate starts. “There’s personal safety, death of a relative, and family events.”

“Personal safety? We could burn the apartment down,” Eliot suggests. 

Parker cheered and volunteered.

“Or death of a relative…” He continued.

Nate disregarded them, “Who is that?”

A kid and a woman crossed the screen.

“Oh, the kid. The kid is from her first marriage, Widmark.”

“I’m sorry what?” I asked him.

“Widmark?” Eliot emphasized.

“Rich people, man,” Hardison replied. 

“Can you punch in on that, please?” Nate asked.

Hardison turned up the volume of the screen so we could hear what was being said. We watched as the kid was yelled at for apparently losing a cell phone. The adults stormed off, leaving him alone in the living room. 

“Wow, okay. What do we have on the kid?” Nate asked.

Hardison described Widmark. There was nothing particularly exceptional about him, 10 years old, in the fifth grade, no extracurricular activities. The only thing interesting about him on record is that he was allergic to strawberries. 

“Judges give out day passes for family events,” Nate reiterated, “it’s one of the three things right? So, Fowler is going to ask for one, so he doesn’t miss out on his kid’s big debut.”

“Wait,” I said, “What is he debuting as?”

Nate thought for a moment, “yeah, I don’t know. But we’re gonna steal his school and find out.”

Hardison was in charge of getting rid of the current principal, which he did quite easily with a couple of plane tickets. Nate was to pose as the new headmaster, with Sophie and Eliot his head teachers of “mind und body.” The parents weren’t too happy at first when they found out, but they were soon pacified enough for them to get to work. Meanwhile, Parker and Hardison were securing an apartment in the same building as the Fowlers so they had easier access to the penthouse. 

I hung out in the headmaster’s office while Nate, Sophie, and Eliot spoke to the parents. 

“Hardison and Parker are all set, now all we gotta do is give Widmark a triumph worth a day pass,” Nate said, strolling in. 

“A triumph? In what?” Sophie asked, looking at his file, “I mean, in five years this kid hasn’t joined a club, he hasn’t played a sport…”

“I gotta be honest with ya, I don’t know how I feel about using the kid to get a mark,” Eliot commented. 

“We’re not using him. I mean, every kid is good at something,” Nate insisted. “We just gotta draw Widmark out, give him his moment to shine.”

“Oh, so, we’ll be like his fairy godparents,” Sophie concluded. 

“Exactly,” Nate said, “I mean, come one, look at this: cushy private school, no gunrunners, mob bosses, Interpol. This is a breeze!”

“Wait, you guys have dealt with all that before?” I asked, finally speaking up. 

Nate nodded at me, “We got one week before the clinic closes for good… Athletics, academics…” he pointed at me, “this should be a good job for you to learn with. I want you to shadow Eliot and Sophie, work on staying in character. Whatever character you choose.” He turned back to address us as a group, “let's go get Widmark the win, alright?”

I followed Eliot first as he had Widmark in his class. He introduced himself to the class before gesturing to me to do the same. 

“Hello everyone, you can call me Ms. Jenny. I’m going to be accompanying your class here and there for this upcoming week, let me know if you need anything.” I smiled at all of them, making a particular effort to make eye contact with Widmark. 

Eliot directed the class to grab fencing equipment and to put it on before turning to me with a bit of humor, “Ms. Jenny? A little simple… are you even playing a character?”

I stuck my tongue out at him, “I’m working on it. It’s easier to remember than your name Mr… blah blah blah.”

“It’s Mr. Brewer, it’s not that hard.” He smirked at me, “I thought you said you saw the fun of this in Nebraska?”

“I do! It's just…” I bit my lip, “It makes me nervous, too, okay? This is so new and… I’m not sure I know how to do all of this.”

His smirk softened to a smile, “That’s okay, this’ll be a good run for ya. You’ll get the hang of it, but first,” he handed me a fencing sword, “help me teach these guys how to fence.”

He walked away towards the kids, and I followed quickly after, “I don’t know how to do that either.”

Eliot gave a brief demonstration, with me being mostly a prop. It was then time for the kids to try. 

“Alright Widmark, get on the line, you’re up.”

Widmark looked around as if Eliot had not just asked him. 

“Widmark, come on,” I urged him. 

“Get on the line,” Eliot repeated, “Show ‘em what you got, man.”

Widmark went to stand on the line, but a taller boy tripped him. I went to help Widmark up from the floor. 

Eliot immediately jumped in, “Hey! Take your helmet off. What’s your name?” 

The boy complied, “Skylar Sanford.”

I immediately rolled my eyes at his tone.

“Skylar?” Eliot asked. After the boy affirmed he said, “Is that a boy’s name? Don’t do that again.”

He took Skylar and put him against Widmark on the mat. Widmark had to be directed to put his helmet on, but struggled and put it on backwards. 

“Oh, Widmark-” I tried to correct him as the kids started to laugh, but Eliot beat me to it.

“What are you doing?” Eliot asked him after telling the class not to laugh. “There’s girls here. You’re better than that. Turn your hat around.”

Once Widmark did as he was told, Eliot started the match. It did not last long. Skylar quickly overpowered him, the buzzer indicating a hit and point ringing in my ears. 

Strike one on helping Widmark. 

Next up was Sophie with a spelling bee to prep for the state spelling bee next week. She held a tryout for a competition on Friday for the schools best spellers, plus Widmark. It all seemed to be going well with the words clearly marked in Widmark’s favor. Unfortunately there was one girl that rose to the challenge. Sophie was determined to get her to break, but I could see that it was not happening easily, if at all. I finally had to take a break and stepped out, running into Eliot again. 

“What are you doing out here? Thought you were shadowing Sophie?” He asked me.

I leaned against the hallway wall, “I was, but she’s doing a spelling bee and there’s a girl in there spelling words I didn’t even know existed. It’s giving me a headache.”

Eliot sighed, “Another strike?”

I nodded, “Another strike.”

We just looked at each other for a minute causing me to remember something that I had been meaning to talk to him about, but we hadn’t been alone since after the previous job.

“Hey, uh,” I spoke up before he walked away, “I’ve been meaning to… I don’t know. It’s just, after the last job, I mentioned what you did for that kid, it seemed to make you uncomfortable. I just wanted to apologize, I guess.”

He tilted his head at me before he responded, “Oh, uh, no you didn’t do anything wrong. I just wasn’t prepared. I didn’t think anyone heard about that…”

“I don’t think anyone else did, to be honest. I won’t bring stuff up like that again though if you don’t want me to.”

“No, not at all. I’m sorry I made you feel like you couldn’t…” He trailed off, but smiled. “We’re good, sweetheart, don’t worry about it.”

The bell rang and kids started to flow out into the hallway. He nodded his head down the hallway signaling that he had to go and I waved him off. I went to join Sophie in the auditorium when I heard her talking with Widmark. 

“I try hard, all the time,” Widmark said, “but, no matter how much I want something, it never happens.”

“Oh sweetie,” Sophie replied, “What do you want?”

“I don’t know… I just,” Widmark frowned, “I want someone to like me. Does that get easier when you’re a grownup?” 

I shook my head no, just to myself when Sophie answered him.

“Um, no. I don’t think it does.”

“You’re nice,” Widmark said, “but weird.”

Sophie shewed him off to class and he walked by me, “bye Ms. Jenny.”

“Bye Widmark,” I smiled at him as he walked off. I looked at Sophie once he left, and sighed.

This may be harder than we thought. 

We met back up at Nate’s apartment this time, but I had snacks from mine, which I thought was needed in this situation. Hardison and Parker recounted their experience setting up equipment at the Fowler’s place. 

“Let me just, can I get this straight?” Nate started, pacing around my kitchen, “Ok, alright, you two, you couldn’t rig a gym class and a spelling bee.” He turned towards Hardison and Parker, “and you two, you ran into the only FBI agents on the planet that recognize you?” He turned towards me, “what did you do?”

I raised my hands, full of chips, “I’m just shadowing.”

“I gotta be honest with you,” Eliot said, “I think we broke the kid even more.”

“We are the worst fairy godparents in the world!” Sophie exclaimed, dropping her spoon in her cup.

“Listen, we’ve still got to get Fowler out of the apartment so we can get in.”

“Yeah, except now, when he leaves there’ll be somebody waiting to kill him.”

“Can’t we use that? Isn’t that personal safety or whatever?” I asked, my mouth full.

“No,” Nate replied.

“Man, one of his victims wants payback more than he wants to be paid back,” Hardison said. 

“Well, one of you two can identify the gunman, right?” Eliot asked. 

“Yeah, sure. He stopped and let me take a picture of him as I was chasing him.”

“You know what? I’ve been around little kids all day, I don’t need to come home and do all this crap.”

“I’ve been in this pink shirt and these tight plaid pants, these old Webster loafers, this girl walking on my back…” Hardison went on as Parker handed Eliot her sketch pad. 

“Is this the guy?” he asked, and I walked over to look at the drawing. 

She hummed an affirmative.

The drawing was very detailed showing the face of a man, dark hair, slightly sunken eyes, drawn with a pen. 

“See?” Eliot tossed the pad at Hardison.

“I didn’t know you could do that,” Hardison remarked. 

“I thought everyone could do that,” Parker replied.

I shook my head, “No Parker, not everyone can do that, that’s some talent you have there.” 

She smiled at me proudly before Nate continued. 

“Okay, alright, keep an eye on him. In the meantime, if they think you’re real FBI, be real FBI. I mean, use it to case the apartment.”

“So, I’m out of this and I’m on FBI detail with Parker and Hardison then,” Eliot concluded. 

“Actually, no. I need you to be Coach Brewer.”

“There’s an armed gunman out there,” Eliot insisted, “you want me in the gym with kids named Skylar and Indigo?”

“Where did Coach Brewer go?” Nate raised the question.

“Shut up,” Sophie said, urging us to listen to the surveillance feed on the TVs. 

Widmark was singing to himself, and was doing a pretty good job. 

“The play’s the thing wherein I’ll catch the conscience of a king,” Sophie said, excitedly. I assumed she was quoting something, but I didn’t ask. 

We all looked at each other for a moment before Nate smiled, “Sophie, how long would it take you to stage a musical?”

“Six weeks,” she answered. 

“You have two days.”

I watched as the next day, Sophie lined up the kids, and instructed them to sing their science fair projects. When Widmark went, he wasn’t too bad, but his project was about mold, so kind of gross. Sophie encouraged him, and insisted he sing in the finale. 

I smiled at him from the auditorium seats, and he had a slight smile himself.

The parents were outraged that this kid, this child, was to be in the starring role when his father had done so much to all of the parents, ripping them off. Nate explained them away, saying it was based on merit, and that his father should have nothing to do with it. He was right of course, it angered me that he had to explain that at all. This poor kid.

“Could you just please try to maybe not make this so difficult?” Nate asked Sophie.

“I can’t take you seriously with that dead cat on your head” Sophie replied.

Nate looked at me before he sat down next to her, but I only shrugged in agreement, his hair was atrocious. 

“Eliot had trouble adjusting, alright, but he found a way to make his style work in this setting.”

I recalled the last class I watched him in, he had changed from private school style athletics to combat. He was enjoying it more than he let on.

“Look,” Sophie replied, “it’s the best I could manage under such short notice. The props are made, the kids have memorized their presentations, I’m just setting it to a bit of music.”

“Listen, I mean, let’s not forget why we’re here. Let’s not lose focus. The object is to get Fowler out of his apartment, not…”

“What, not Widmark, right? He’s just the bait.”

“Well that’s not fair.”

“You’re right Nate,” I cut in, “it’s not fair. It’s not fair to Widmark, this whole situation isn’t fair to him. The way people see him? His dad thinks he’s a loser, his mom sees him like a little baby, his classmates see him as the kid whose dad is the Grinch, who took everything. He…”

Sophie finished for me, “we just want people to see him as he really is.”

“He deserves that,” I added, “Everyone deserves that.”

The night of the musical was not going as smoothly as we had hoped. Hardison was going to be the one breaking into the apartment instead of Parker because of an FBI agent with a crush, and Widmark wasn’t on his musical game. I was helping direct kids to setting up, but I was getting nervous. It all came to a head when Sophie said she couldn’t find Widmark at all. I abandoned my post to help her look.

We finally found him in the bathroom, crying to himself. 

“Widmark, you can’t let them win,” Sophie told him, “you can’t show them they’re getting to you.”

Nate spoke through the comms, “Sophie, no. Just talk to him, don’t tell him what to do or who to be. Just talk.”

Sophie lost her American accent, “I’m sorry Widmark.”

“For what?” He asked. 

“For trying to con you into being brave. That’s what I do, I’m a bloody con artist. Look, I’m not very good at being honest, not even with my friends.”

Widmark finally came out of the stall and looked between us, “Do you have a lot of friends?”

“No,” we both responded.

I leaned against the sink and looked at him, “Can I tell you a secret Widmark?”

He nodded.

“When I was around your age, I was kind of like you, nobody really liked me, didn’t have any friends. You know who I was in school?”

He shook his head.

I looked at my feet before looking back at him, “I was the kid whose parents died, and that made me the weird one. Luckily that doesn’t mean anything anymore, and we have a few friends now.”

“I used to have friends,” Widmark said, “They don’t talk to me anymore, because of what my stepdad did.”

“That’s got nothing to do with you, you know that, don’t you?” Sophie asked him.

“Then why do they make fun of me?”

“Cause when they look at you, they see him. Just like they only saw my dead parents,” I responded.

“They’re not seeing you for who you really are,” Sophie responded.

Hardison and Parker were talking on comms, trying to get Hardison broken in and past the security, but I quickly tuned them out.

“Did you know I was an actress?” Sophie asked Widmark.

“No, are you good?” he asked.

She hummed, “Well, others don’t seem to think so.”

“Maybe they just can’t see you for who you are,” he concluded.

I kept quiet, thinking that I had my moment, she could have hers. 

“You know what they say about acting? They say it’s about telling the truth, about sharing a little part of yourself that people don’t normally see. But, if you don’t- if you don’t really know yourself, then they think you’re lying… I think that’s my problem.” 

I reached out and took her hand, comforting her for being vulnerable.

“I’ve been lying for so long that… I don’t even know what the truth is anymore.”

“I don’t want to lie to anybody,” Widmark said. 

I laughed a little bit, “No, you don’t Widmark.”

Sophie stood and approached him, “You don’t have to Widmark. What you need to do is you just have to go out there, and be Widmark. Just tell the truth, be who you really are. If you can do that, then I promise you, people will believe in you.”

“Just like we believe in you.” I smiled at him as Sophie and I both exited the bathroom. 

We rendezvoused with Eliot backstage. 

“Widmark okay?”

“Guess we’re about to find out,” Sophie answered. 

The lights dimmed in the auditorium, signaling the show was about to start. Hardison told us on comms that the safe he cracked was empty, cleaned out, giving us a problem, where was the money?

“Hate to tell you this, but that ain’t our biggest problem right now,” Eliot replied.

I turned to him, “What do you mean?”

He pulled me closer to where he was standing and subtly pointed to where he was looking. Above the auditorium stood a man who looked awfully like the drawing Parker made. 

“We got company,” Eliot said. “How’d he know Fowler was gonna be here? Only ones who knew were us and the FBI.”

“Yeah, and Fowler himself,” Nate said. “Maybe we were wrong, maybe Fowler isn’t the target.”

“Then who?” Parker asked, then had to recover as she was still technically talking to the FBI agent.

“His FBI handlers. Fowler arranged to have them killed. He’s about to run,” Nate concluded.

“No man,” Hardison rebuffed, “there’s no way he could arrange that. He’s under house arrest. No phone calls, no internet, they’re even reading his mail. How could he arrange a hitman?”

“Let’s ask him,” Eliot answered. He was tracking his movements in the rafters, and pointed me over to Sophie to be a bit out of the way which I obliged. 

“Feds confiscated his cell phone,” Hardison said, “They didn’t take Widmarks.”

“Really?” I asked, “What a jerk, he yelled at Widmark for losing that… Can Eliot punch Fowler when this is over? Can I?”

“No,” Nate replied. 

“Maybe,” Eliot responded.

“Fowler’s getaway explains the empty safe,” Nate continued, ignoring us, “whatever cash he had on him, he took with him. And… I think I know where to look.”

“Wait,” Parker interjected, “Didn’t you search Fowler before he left?” She asked the agent.

“Of course, nothing on him except for that camera and some tapes.”

“Yeah, well there’s something in that bag, or on those tapes,” Nate insisted. “Sophie, y/n, can you swipe it?”

Sophie was on stage, “yes, I’m a little bit busy here.”

“You want me to do what?” I asked, I was still backstage where it was loud and I couldn’t believe what he was asking me, “I’m making my way to you.”

“Has anybody seen Widmark?” Sophie asked. 

“Sophie, the job’s over,” Nate said. “What happens from here on is not our concern. We have other priorities”

“No way, no, no. The clinic isn’t the only victim here, I didn’t prop up this boy, just to see him fail. No way. I’m not letting that happen.”

Eliot engaged with the hitman and I tried to ignore the commotion in my ear. 

“Uh, Nate?” Hardison said, “This phone has sent a bunch of text messages in the last forty-eight hours to some guy named Skylar.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Skylar’s a kid at this school.”

“Why would Fowler be texting a middle schooler?”

I made my way around the auditorium and stood beside Nate, “what do you want me to do?”

He held his hand up, “Nothing now.” He was looking in the audience, specifically at Skylar’s dad, “he wasn’t texting Skylar, he was texting Skylar’s dad.”

I watched as the man in question walked up towards the stage with a camera. He stumbled and picked up the camera bag next to Fowler, dropping his own. 

“Mark Sanford’s an accomplice,” Nate said, “He set up the gunman. He just traded bags with Fowler.”

Hardison wasn’t having it, “No, man. Why would Sanford help Fowler? Isn’t he one of the guys who invested with him?”

I heard Widmark over the comms, “sorry I’m late.”

Sophie responded before putting him on stage, “no, no, you’re right on time.”

Eliot was still fighting the gunman backstage of which Sophie wasn’t happy about.

“Keep it off the stage, you’re gonna ruin his big finale!”

I laughed to myself as I could almost hear Eliot’s eyeroll. 

Nate turned to me after Widmark finished his song, of which he did quite well in, and everyone was distracted by the standing ovation, “Wait here.” He walked down the aisle and grabbed the bag by Fowler with the hook of his cane before returning to me. 

We turned the corner before opening the bag.

“Ah,” Nate said, looking inside, “Hardison, are you near your computer? I need you to check a name for me.”

“Go ahead.”

“Doug Fineman” Nate said as he opened up a passport from the bag, it had Fowler’s face, but clearly not his name. “Sanford is providing Fowler with a new identity, and a new life waiting for him in…”

I looked over his shoulder, “Bogota?”

Eliot and Sophie grabbed Sanford and took the bag that was previously Fowler’s. Sophie seemed to find something she liked in it and placed it in a tape player, playing it through the entire auditorium.

Out came Sanford’s voice, “I’m just saying you can’t make the returns too consistent. Ten percent growth every year, no matter what the market does? The SEC is going to ask questions.”

Then Fowler replied on tape, “Let me worry about the SEC work.”

“But we have to be careful.”

“My job is to buy off the regulators, your job is to bring in new money. Now this whole thing goes off the rails when you stop doing your job!”

By now Fowler was trying to run through the crowd away from the FBI handlers in the audience. I took the opportunity to step in front of him with my foot outstretched a bit further than necessary, effectively tripping him.

“Oh, Mr. Fowler I’m so sorry,” I apologized with an overt sweetness as the agent handcuffed him.

“Where do you think you’re going?” the agent asked him.

Nate approached from behind me with the bag, offering it to the agent, “ja, ja… He dropped this. All of this. I thought his name was Fowler. I don’t know.” 

Once the agent took it Nate shrugged and took my arm guiding me away with the illusion of me helping him walk along with his cane. 

It sounded like backstage was taken care of with Sandford as the other agent arrested him. The agent made an attempt at flirting with Parker again while doing so, which made me smile. He was cute, I’d give him that, but the things he doesn’t know, especially about Parker, and a certain hacker…

The clinic stayed open, to everyone’s pleasure. I heard that Fowler’s wife and Widmark even worked there. Hopefully he had a better life ahead of him.

Tags: @isoldeahlstrom @kniselle

#eliot spencer x reader #eliot spencer #leverage #rewrite #slow burn #multichapter #nate ford #sophie devereaux #alec hardison #parker #ford!reader

[butch-reidentified]

An anime pfp transwoman with nudes all over their profile demanded I define sex based oppression today. This was the response I wrote up in just over 5 minutes. I'd love for yall to add all the things you can think of. I intend to add more myself later on, but was too exhausted to right now.

If you buy into the idea that misogyny is based on a "female identity" rather than the female sexed body, you must also believe that all of the following either don't exist, or could be avoided if the victim simply called herself a boy:

• Infant girls around the world are tortured and/or murdered as infants for not being born male.

• Girls around the world are denied access to education entirely or to higher education.

• Girls around the world, many of single-digit ages, are sold into marriage with middle-aged men - often arranged before she is even born in exchange for a small money loan.

• Women and girls around the world are forcibly impregnated (and remember, pregnancy is life-threatening), forced to give birth, and forced into motherhood.

• Women and girls in many places are "trained" to become mothers and housewives in place of education.

• Women and girls in many places are forced to stay in dangerous, unhygienic conditions away from society while menstruating, thus losing a week per month of school, work, and their lives, and possibly becoming sick or even dying.

• Males are significantly more likely to survive things such as car accidents because the dummies used to design and test are based on male bodies.

• Symptoms of many serious conditions are different in males and females, but typically the male symptoms are more taught and/or better known and understood than the female symptoms. Most of us know the example of heart attacks.

• Sex education teaches girls very little about their bodies and natural processes. Many girls are taught more about male sex organs than about their own. There is also a focus in many sex ed classes on shaming girls for their bodies and natural sexual desires.

• Women and girls around the world are sold into sexual slavery at approximately twice the number of men and boys.

• FGM. And no, circumcision is not even remotely the same thing.

• Breast ironing, foot binding, and other torturous practices reserved for female people.

• Female socialization. Be quiet, your beauty is your worth, you exist to please and serve men, apologize for everything, never take up space, don't play in the mud and dirty your dress, be ashamed of your body's female characteristics, etc.

• Viagra is a wildly successful treatment for menstrual cramps, but virtually nobody knows that and it won't be prescribed to female patients. It is much more important for a man to be able to get hard than to alleviate a woman's suffering.

• Female bodies were left out of medical trials for most of medical history, and this has a massive ongoing impact on the treatment women and girls receive. Many medications should be dosed entirely differently for women, but aren't, and female patients pay the price.

• Underdiagnosis in girls of conditions like autism and ADHD due to clinical models being based exclusively on boys

• Female pain is taken less seriously and investigated and treated less aggressively than male pain in all medical settings.

• Medical conditions that primarily affect women are overwhelmingly underfunded, under-researched, underdiagnosed, and improperly treated.

• In nearly every country on earth, including the USA, people have a sex preference for sons over daughters. It is common for parents, especially fathers, to be visibly or openly upset upon learning they will be having a daughter instead of a son.

• Reproductive rights and bodily autonomy are virtually nonexistent in most of the world if you're female.

• Sex roles (aka "gender") are legally enforced in many places and socially enforced essentially everywhere.

Honestly, this is a miniscule proportion of examples of sex-based oppression, but I wore myself out just writing this. There is SO much more, and this is only current shit, too, not even including historical matters, as well as not even getting into sexual terrorism, and this is only off the immediate top of my head. Female oppression starts before we are even born, and much of the worst of it occurs in girlhood, well before most trans-identified people announce their identity. And even then, trans identity will not protect female people from all aspects of sex-based oppression, though it may reduce interpersonal discrimination in some places for some (usually passing) FTM individuals.

I especially am aiming for examples that can't possibly apply to transwomen like FGM, the car crash risk stats, etc., since I know they'll try to pull the "well we suffer too!" MRA line and ignore the massive disparities in rate/frequency etc.

#mine #radblr #radfem #radical feminism #gender ideology #gender cult #genderism #sex based oppression #female oppression #misogyny #radfems interact #radfems do touch #radfem friendly #radfem safe #tra nonsense #trans ideology #gender critical #gc #gender criticism

[humming-pokemon-helpers]

Welcome to Humming Pokemon Helpers! We provide better therapy for both trainer and Pokemon.

Currently Ongoing: A Vision in the Mirror (link to masterpost)

Past Arc: A Cross of Strange Colors (link to masterpost)

My name is Vanilla (26, any pronouns); I am a human-Zorua hybrid and a psychologist* certified to work with humans and their Pokémon partners, with a trauma-based focus. My practice is based in Unova, my home region, but I take on remote clients as well.

Please feel free to inquire via asks if you would like to know more about my line of work; I am happy to provide advice* on bonds with Pokemon, knowledge, or simply chat. Feel free to ask me about hybridization as well; I know it's a bit of an odd topic.

If you're looking for more information on me, I recently did an interview that gives some pretty good insight into my life!

(Art commissioned from RhymeWithRay! Highly recommend checking them out.)

If you're just looking for the elevator pitch, I grew up in the Lostlorn woods, that was fun, and nowadays in addition to being a psychologist I'm also a Paldean Champion-Rank trainer and technically a model? I'm also taking on the Unovan Gym Challenge, where I've got all 8 badges.

Let's talk about my Pokémon partners! My clinic "mascot" is Chiru, an Altaria who I've known since I studied in Paldea. Those who have known me for a while knew my half-brother, Wolfgang, as well. Though he passed away a hero, protecting our home, I still talk about him a lot, and will continue to do so. Love you always, Wolfy.

My other partners include Ringogo (Appletun), Maamaa (Wooloo), and Momo (Fidough), all of whom provide immense support to my work as therapy Pokemon. I’ve also met Dolly, a deaf Darmanitan, Soda, a Wobbuffet, Wingman (an "ultra-domesticated" Carvanha), Shuu the Servine, Fruit By The Foot the Scolipede (new and improved name for her height!), Chibi the ✨ Vanilluxe, and Amadeus, my Zoroark mix niece (Dark/Ghost).

I am blessed with the gift to clearly understand Pokemon speech (as part of my hybridization), and as such we are all quite good friends. I would be happy to share their thoughts with this website too!

I look forward to continuing to work with you all!

(OOC and important * under the cut.)

(Profile picture picrew courtesy of ヨイコ.)

Mod is Ace (she/he) @aceoflilies, follows and likes from there. Mod is an adult (21), so please keep in mind if uncomfortable interacting with adults. No shame in using the block button!

I will manly tag with #pokeblogging, #pkmn irl, or similar tags. OOC posts will be tagged #//ooc, and any ooc comments in tags will be denoted with #//. Any and all trigger tags are denoted with #tw [trigger].

*By the way, since I'm posting about therapy and all, I should mention that nothing I post here qualifies as actual IRL advice, nor will I be providing actual therapeutic advice here. Happy to roleplay that IC, but just know that I'm not an actual expert myself, so please don't take my replies as serious advice (though I do try to research them)!

#pokeblogging #pokemon irl #pkmn irl #open to asks and interactions! #//pinned post #//cut contains important info :)

[jeeva-trials]

CROs can differentiate their services to sponsors with the white-labeled Jeeva eClinical technology platform advantage

Maximize the probability of winning contracts with sponsors by differentiating your proposals with Jeeva eClinical cloud. Sponsors want to know how you can ensure faster patient recruitment and better retention compared to your peers. Jeeva can rapidly turnaround with a budget proposal and branded material for inclusion in your response to sponsor RFPs and support you throughout the pre-bid and post-win study startup, configuration process.

#patient registry software #clinical trial protocol solution #fast patient recruitment #clinical trial matching software #disease registry software #patient recruitment platform #remote clinical trial software #clinical trial patient retention #patient recruitment software #clinical trial software platform #clinical trials recruitment and retention #clinical trial protocol software #Remote Consent #patient retention in clinical trials #accelerating patient recruitment #clinical solutions research platforms

[adventuresinchemistry]

would you care to elaborate on getting a phd. I ask this mainly because I would like a recap of your time away from tumblr. your blog was one of my faves 😀😀

Let’s see…so I stopped posting in 2018 which was a big year for me. That’s right around the time I started dating my wife and also got an ADHD dx and finally started medicating both that and my anxiety. Both of which aren’t not reasons why I stopped posting here as much lol.

Once I was medicated and in therapy to work specifically on my ADHD and work related issues and also not super anxious all the time grad school got way more manageable. I made a lot of progress on my research and finally started to feel a bit less stuck.

It was still slow going though because of the nature of my research and also because it took time to get some forward momentum. And then COVID hit and we had a complete research shut down from mid-March to June 2020. I spent most of that time working on my dissertation, writing my intro chapters and analyzing data. Living in NYC during the height of the first COVID wave was definitely an experience lol.

In the summer of 2020 campus started to slowly open back up and we were able to get back in the lab on a limited basis. I also got engaged and we adopted our beautiful baby boy Charlie the Cat that summer.

Around that time I really started to push to try and get approval to defend. I did a two big experiments and things really started to come together. I defended in April 2021 and graduated in May. After that I postdoc’d in the same lab to finish my research and write a paper. My paper was finally published this fall!

We moved to Minnesota this spring and I worked remotely until October when I got my current job doing technical writing and data analysis for a clinical research organization. And I got married in October!

So yeah, that’s the highlight reel. Over the past four years I went from being a girl and her cat to being a girl and her wife and their two cats.

#anonymous #life updates #I doubt I’ll ever be as active on here as I was from 2014-2018 #because I have way less free time and way better mental health lol

[meg2md]

And the cycle continues, with seasonal depression hitting just as hard as ever. I woke up early to prep the twelve thousand patients I have to see in high-risk OB clinic on Wednesday but I can't figure out how to remotely change my password, so I came to Tumblr instead. After this maybe I'll read Throne of Glass and Dune. I've worked three weeks in a row since Thanksgiving and this is my first break since then... I'm only now, four days later, starting to feel recovered. And that was after playing probably 6-8 hours of Baldur's Gate/day for like.... three days straight. I've said it all over this blog, I'll say it again: residency is fucking hard, man. At least I'm starting on a gynecology-heavy ambulatory rotation after the new year, so in theory it should be lighter and I should be able to make strides on my research project once my research mentor gets her IRB protocol edits back to me.

The theme of my second half of R2 year: the quest to become competitive for MIGS fellowship. It's one of the most competitive OB/GYN specialties (I think because of the volume of applicants, and because it's not ACGME certified there's a wide variety in program standards). If I don't match, I'll probably just try to find a gyn-heavy practice.

Coming from a non-academic center, I feel at a disadvantage, so I'm trying to get a couple research projects going and endear myself to my attendings. And I took FLS earlier in the month so I can focus on my robotics curriculum this half of the year. I'm also going to a few conferences through ACOG and going to try and go to AAGL next year, even if I have nothing to present (which feels likely, since none of my research is MIGS-related). I should also probably start studying for CROEG.... :(

The grind never ends. And I am so, so tired. And yet I keep doing this to myself.

Medicine sure attracts a certain type

#residency #medblr #premed #medical school #studyblr

[why-am-i-here-just-to-suffer]

Guys, gals and nonbinary pals: I present the latest development in Dystopian Tech Inventions:

[begin article: "Are You Ready for Workplace Brain Scanning?"]

"Get ready: Neurotechnology is coming to the workplace. Neural sensors are now reliable and affordable enough to support commercial pilot projects that extract productivity-enhancing data from workers’ brains. These projects aren’t confined to specialized workplaces; they’re also happening in offices, factories, farms, and airports. The companies and people behind these neurotech devices are certain that they will improve our lives. But there are serious questions about whether work should be organized around certain functions of the brain, rather than the person as a whole.

To be clear, the kind of neurotech that’s currently available is nowhere close to reading minds. Sensors detect electrical activity across different areas of the brain, and the patterns in that activity can be broadly correlated with different feelings or physiological responses, such as stress, focus, or a reaction to external stimuli. These data can be exploited to make workers more efficient—and, proponents of the technology say, to make them happier. Two of the most interesting innovators in this field are the Israel-based startup InnerEye, which aims to give workers superhuman abilities, and Emotiv, a Silicon Valley neurotech company that’s bringing a brain-tracking wearable to office workers, including those working remotely.

The fundamental technology that these companies rely on is not new: Electroencephalography (EEG) has been around for about a century, and it’s commonly used today in both medicine and neuroscience research. For those applications, the subject may have up to 256 electrodes attached to their scalp with conductive gel to record electrical signals from neurons in different parts of the brain. More electrodes, or “channels,” mean that doctors and scientists can get better spatial resolution in their readouts—they can better tell which neurons are associated with which electrical signals.

What is new is that EEG has recently broken out of clinics and labs and has entered the consumer marketplace. This move has been driven by a new class of “dry” electrodes that can operate without conductive gel, a substantial reduction in the number of electrodes necessary to collect useful data, and advances in artificial intelligence that make it far easier to interpret the data. Some EEG headsets are even available directly to consumers for a few hundred dollars.

While the public may not have gotten the memo, experts say the neurotechnology is mature and ready for commercial applications. “This is not sci-fi,” says James Giordano, chief of neuroethics studies at Georgetown University Medical Center. “This is quite real.”

How InnerEye’s TSA-boosting technology works

In an office in Herzliya, Israel, Sergey Vaisman sits in front of a computer. He’s relaxed but focused, silent and unmoving, and not at all distracted by the seven-channel EEG headset he’s wearing. On the computer screen, images rapidly appear and disappear, one after another. At a rate of three images per second, it’s just possible to tell that they come from an airport X-ray scanner. It’s essentially impossible to see anything beyond fleeting impressions of ghostly bags and their contents.

“Our brain is an amazing machine,” Vaisman tells us as the stream of images ends. The screen now shows an album of selected X-ray images that were just flagged by Vaisman’s brain, most of which are now revealed to have hidden firearms. No one can knowingly identify and flag firearms among the jumbled contents of bags when three images are flitting by every second, but Vaisman’s brain has no problem doing so behind the scenes, with no action required on his part. The brain processes visual imagery very quickly. According to Vaisman, the decision-making process to determine whether there’s a gun in complex images like these takes just 300 milliseconds.

What takes much more time are the cognitive and motor processes that occur after the decision making—planning a response (such as saying something or pushing a button) and then executing that response. If you can skip these planning and execution phases and instead use EEG to directly access the output of the brain’s visual processing and decision-making systems, you can perform image-recognition tasks far faster. The user no longer has to actively think: For an expert, just that fleeting first impression is enough for their brain to make an accurate determination of what’s in the image.

Vaisman is the vice president of R&D of InnerEye, an Israel-based startup that recently came out of stealth mode. InnerEye uses deep learning to classify EEG signals into responses that indicate “targets” and “nontargets.” Targets can be anything that a trained human brain can recognize. In addition to developing security screening, InnerEye has worked with doctors to detect tumors in medical images, with farmers to identify diseased plants, and with manufacturing experts to spot product defects. For simple cases, InnerEye has found that our brains can handle image recognition at rates of up to 10 images per second. And, Vaisman says, the company’s system produces results just as accurate as a human would when recognizing and tagging images manually—InnerEye is merely using EEG as a shortcut to that person’s brain to drastically speed up the process.

While using the InnerEye technology doesn’t require active decision making, it does require training and focus. Users must be experts at the task, well trained in identifying a given type of target, whether that’s firearms or tumors. They must also pay close attention to what they’re seeing—they can’t just zone out and let images flash past. InnerEye’s system measures focus very accurately, and if the user blinks or stops concentrating momentarily, the system detects it and shows the missed images again.

Having a human brain in the loop is especially important for classifying data that may be open to interpretation. For example, a well-trained image classifier may be able to determine with reasonable accuracy whether an X-ray image of a suitcase shows a gun, but if you want to determine whether that X-ray image shows something else that’s vaguely suspicious, you need human experience. People are capable of detecting something unusual even if they don’t know quite what it is.

“We can see that uncertainty in the brain waves,” says InnerEye founder and chief technology officer Amir Geva. “We know when they aren’t sure.” Humans have a unique ability to recognize and contextualize novelty, a substantial advantage that InnerEye’s system has over AI image classifiers. InnerEye then feeds that nuance back into its AI models. “When a human isn’t sure, we can teach AI systems to be not sure, which is better training than teaching the AI system just one or zero,” says Geva. “There is a need to combine human expertise with AI.” InnerEye’s system enables this combination, as every image can be classified by both computer vision and a human brain.

Using InnerEye’s system is a positive experience for its users, the company claims. “When we start working with new users, the first experience is a bit overwhelming,” Vaisman says. “But in one or two sessions, people get used to it, and they start to like it.” Geva says some users do find it challenging to maintain constant focus throughout a session, which lasts up to 20 minutes, but once they get used to working at three images per second, even two images per second feels “too slow.”

In a security-screening application, three images per second is approximately an order of magnitude faster than an expert can manually achieve. InnerEye says their system allows far fewer humans to handle far more data, with just two human experts redundantly overseeing 15 security scanners at once, supported by an AI image-recognition system that is being trained at the same time, using the output from the humans’ brains.

InnerEye is currently partnering with a handful of airports around the world on pilot projects. And it’s not the only company working to bring neurotech into the workplace.

How Emotiv’s brain-tracking technology works

When it comes to neural monitoring for productivity and well-being in the workplace, the San Francisco–based company Emotiv is leading the charge. Since its founding 11 years ago, Emotiv has released three models of lightweight brain-scanning headsets. Until now the company had mainly sold its hardware to neuroscientists, with a sideline business aimed at developers of brain-controlled apps or games. Emotiv started advertising its technology as an enterprise solution only this year, when it released its fourth model, the MN8 system, which tucks brain-scanning sensors into a pair of discreet Bluetooth earbuds.

Tan Le, Emotiv’s CEO and cofounder, sees neurotech as the next trend in wearables, a way for people to get objective “brain metrics” of mental states, enabling them to track and understand their cognitive and mental well-being. “I think it’s reasonable to imagine that five years from now this [brain tracking] will be quite ubiquitous,” she says. When a company uses the MN8 system, workers get insight into their individual levels of focus and stress, and managers get aggregated and anonymous data about their teams.

Emotiv launched its enterprise technology into a world that is fiercely debating the future of the workplace. Workers are feuding with their employers about return-to-office plans following the pandemic, and companies are increasingly using “ bossware” to keep tabs on employees—whether staffers or gig workers, working in the office or remotely. Le says Emotiv is aware of these trends and is carefully considering which companies to work with as it debuts its new gear. “The dystopian potential of this technology is not lost on us,” she says. “So we are very cognizant of choosing partners that want to introduce this technology in a responsible way—they have to have a genuine desire to help and empower employees,” she says.

Lee Daniels, a consultant who works for the global real estate services company JLL, has spoken with a lot of C-suite executives lately. “They’re worried,” says Daniels. “There aren’t as many people coming back to the office as originally anticipated—the hybrid model is here to stay, and it’s highly complex.” Executives come to Daniels asking how to manage a hybrid workforce. “This is where the neuroscience comes in,” he says.

Emotiv has partnered with JLL, which has begun to use the MN8 earbuds to help its clients collect “true scientific data,” Daniels says, about workers’ attention, distraction, and stress, and how those factors influence both productivity and well-being. Daniels says JLL is currently helping its clients run short-term experiments using the MN8 system to track workers’ responses to new collaboration tools and various work settings; for example, employers could compare the productivity of in-office and remote workers.

Emotiv CTO Geoff Mackellar believes the new MN8 system will succeed because of its convenient and comfortable form factor: The multipurpose earbuds also let the user listen to music and answer phone calls. The downside of earbuds is that they provide only two channels of brain data. When the company first considered this project, Mackellar says, his engineering team looked at the rich data set they’d collected from Emotiv’s other headsets over the past decade. The company boasts that academics have conducted more than 4,000 studies using Emotiv tech. From that trove of data—from headsets with 5, 14, or 32 channels—Emotiv isolated the data from the two channels the earbuds could pick up. “Obviously, there’s less information in the two sensors, but we were able to extract quite a lot of things that were very relevant,” Mackellar says.

Once the Emotiv engineers had a hardware prototype, they had volunteers wear the earbuds and a 14-channel headset at the same time. By recording data from the two systems in unison, the engineers trained a machine-learning algorithm to identify the signatures of attention and cognitive stress from the relatively sparse MN8 data. The brain signals associated with attention and stress have been well studied, Mackellar says, and are relatively easy to track. Although everyday activities such as talking and moving around also register on EEG, the Emotiv software filters out those artifacts.

The app that’s paired with the MN8 earbuds doesn’t display raw EEG data. Instead, it processes that data and shows workers two simple metrics relating to their individual performance. One squiggly line shows the rise and fall of workers’ attention to their tasks—the degree of focus and the dips that come when they switch tasks or get distracted—while another line represents their cognitive stress. Although short periods of stress can be motivating, too much for too long can erode productivity and well-being. The MN8 system will therefore sometimes suggest that the worker take a break. Workers can run their own experiments to see what kind of break activity best restores their mood and focus—maybe taking a walk, or getting a cup of coffee, or chatting with a colleague.

What neuroethicists think about neurotech in the workplace

While MN8 users can easily access data from their own brains, employers don’t see individual workers’ brain data. Instead, they receive aggregated data to get a sense of a team or department’s attention and stress levels. With that data, companies can see, for example, on which days and at which times of day their workers are most productive, or how a big announcement affects the overall level of worker stress.

Emotiv emphasizes the importance of anonymizing the data to protect individual privacy and prevent people from being promoted or fired based on their brain metrics. “The data belongs to you,” says Emotiv’s Le. “You have to explicitly allow a copy of it to be shared anonymously with your employer.” If a group is too small for real anonymity, Le says, the system will not share that data with employers. She also predicts that the device will be used only if workers opt in, perhaps as part of an employee wellness program that offers discounts on medical insurance in return for using the MN8 system regularly.

However, workers may still be worried that employers will somehow use the data against them. Karen Rommelfanger, founder of the Institute of Neuroethics, shares that concern. “I think there is significant interest from employers” in using such technologies, she says. “I don’t know if there’s significant interest from employees.”

Both she and Georgetown’s Giordano doubt that such tools will become commonplace anytime soon. “I think there will be pushback” from employees on issues such as privacy and worker rights, says Giordano. Even if the technology providers and the companies that deploy the technology take a responsible approach, he expects questions to be raised about who owns the brain data and how it’s used. “Perceived threats must be addressed early and explicitly,” he says.

Giordano says he expects workers in the United States and other western countries to object to routine brain scanning. In China, he says, workers have reportedly been more receptive to experiments with such technologies. He also believes that brain-monitoring devices will really take off first in industrial settings, where a momentary lack of attention can lead to accidents that injure workers and hurt a company’s bottom line. “It will probably work very well under some rubric of occupational safety,” Giordano says. It’s easy to imagine such devices being used by companies involved in trucking, construction, warehouse operations, and the like. Indeed, at least one such product, an EEG headband that measures fatigue, is already on the market for truck drivers and miners.

Giordano says that using brain-tracking devices for safety and wellness programs could be a slippery slope in any workplace setting. Even if a company focuses initially on workers’ well-being, it may soon find other uses for the metrics of productivity and performance that devices like the MN8 provide. “Metrics are meaningless unless those metrics are standardized, and then they very quickly become comparative,” he says.

Rommelfanger adds that no one can foresee how workplace neurotech will play out. “I think most companies creating neurotechnology aren’t prepared for the society that they’re creating,” she says. “They don’t know the possibilities yet.”

[end article.]

Ok what the fuck has gotten into the capitalist's brains this time?

The working class has been voicing its issues with its employers since the beginning of time. Hundreds and hundreds of studies show what needs to be changed. Shorter week and hours, more pay, less power dynamic, etc. Nothing is being changed regardless. There's no need to do fucking brain monitoring to figure out what the problem is. Are they really that ignorant or is it an act?

And there's no telling how long if possible it will take to fully decode people's thoughts. The scientists behind it imply they are quite close. If it happens then it will be literally 1984 but unironically. Employers and government would quickly jump on the train of creating thoughtcrimes exactly as Orwell envisioned it. Why wouldn't they?

Also, anonymize my ass. Make it FOSS. Software is always guilty until proven innocent. There's literally no way I can prove that you aren't sharing the data, and literally no way you can prove there will never be a data breach.

And these so-called "ethicists" just brush it off like

Both she and Georgetown’s Giordano doubt that such tools will become commonplace anytime soon. “I think there will be pushback” from employees on issues such as privacy and worker rights, says Giordano. Even if the technology providers and the companies that deploy the technology take a responsible approach, he expects questions to be raised about who owns the brain data and how it’s used. “Perceived threats must be addressed early and explicitly,” he says.

" 'Percieved threats must be addressed early and explicitly.' " So you're admitting that workers don't get to have a choice in the matter and that you intend to use force (Economic pressure is still force. If you can't find a job in the future that doesn't do this you are effectively forced. And the government could use this too.) to make us comply.

Everyone called George Orwell crazy. Everyone called Richard Stallman crazy. Everyone called Edward Snowden crazy. Yet their predictions continue to come true again and again. And no one bats an eye. Society had just blindly accepted the onset of mass surveillance. Everyone knows about it in dictatorships like China and North Korea but no one wants to talk about how rampant it is in other places where it's done more silently.

Some people say "I have nothing to fear because I have nothing to hide." Ok, so what happens when the government goes wack and decides to start rounding up groups of people? What happens if your race/ethnicity, religion, gender, sexuality, disabilities, etc falls into one of those categories? It happened in Germany and we are at risk of it happening in the U.S. and other places. (In Germany there wasn't surveillance tech yet so they just force searched your home instead. Same difference.) How do you know it will never happen? What do you do then? What. Do. You. Do. Then.

No one I have asked it has ever been able to answer this question beyond blind faith that it won't happen. The real answer is you're fucked. That's the answer.

#fuck capitalism #workers rights #privacy #technology #science #fuck government #ai #artificial intelligence #computer science

[zeglythofficial]

i am going to be brave to prev anon and say that the whole point of tbosas is not that snow is inherently evil and psychopathic, but that society's structures can have devastating effects on the people it produces. there's a reason the book starts with a frankenstein quote about how his "protectors" blighted all the virtues that were present. i'm going as far as to say that if you believe snow is evil inherently and that all his actions can be summed up as "because he's a pyscho" you don't understand what the hunger games series is trying to say at all. why does it end with katniss killing coin instead of snow, if his sole actions are the cause of all the issues? why does suzanne collins say that the events of tbosas "happened" to snow? why does suzanne collins put snow in a position where following the capital is going to be the best for him and his family? why is dr. gaul with her messed up ideas the only powerful person remotely supporting snow?

and as someone coming from a background of research & psych (not psych anon lol) i want to ask what people think is the clinical definition of sociopathy. because suzanne put a lot of things in there that heavily indicate not. he has sympathy for animals, he is not motivated by lust or love for killing, but from fear and survival. he takes full blame for sejanus' death in his mind - his blowup at the end comes from his guilt and paranoia. i would say that it can even be argued that a lot of the questionable things he says in the book are a result of his circumstances. be realistic. he's an 18 yr old boy who's lived in this society and been indoctrinated...do you expect him to hold wholesome thoughts about the districts? not to say that he doesn't have flaws and negative traits, but that is not indicative of sociopathy or psychopathy. to say as such is honestly a copout for us to condemn snow without looking deeper into why we might become something like him.

sorry for the rant but i'm sick of people completely abusing the term sociopath or pyschopath just because a character ends up doing horrible things. non-neurodivergent people can and have done evil things. and there's room for argument on potential mental disorders snow does have, but he's not a demon. he's human. that's the whole point.

You ate. Left no crumbs. No notes, only facts. Nothing to add.

I’m tried of telling people this so I’m glad you said lol.

#my answers #off topic