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totallynotagentphilcoulson · 5 years

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A post I’ve honestly meant to write for years but kept putting off because I was overly concerned about whether or not people would be interested but I honestly don’t care so ANYWAY: my Star Wars OCs

gonna toss this under a read more though especially since I plan on reblogging this a few times, so yeah

Also guess I should also have some semblance of organization, so I’ll do them in order of when I conceptualized them. The first four are all my core characters whom I’ve conceptualized as all generally hanging out on various escapades.

Deak Idanian

- Male Human of Corellian, Socorran, and Alderaanian descent

- Attended Coronet City campus of Corellia University with a major in xenoarchaeology focusing on anthropology with a senior thesis analysis of Pre-Republic primitive lithic weaponry points and their use. Also took correspondence courses in basic starship systems and was a hobbyist racer for extra spending money.

- has always had a passion for galactic history, particularly in those parts of the GFFA considered to be backwater. Unfortunately for him, Deak is prone to occasionally neglecting to fill out all pertinent legal documents before an excavation because of being too enthusiastic. Sometimes this neglect is rather more intentional than it should be especially if stealing it from under the nose of the legal claimant coincides with that legal claimant being a dickish private collector. This puts Deak solidly in the very large category of “semi-legitimate field researcher,” which wasn’t exactly his plan but there’s worse he could be stuck doing.

- Related to the above, while he tends to try to work only for actual accredited institutions or for communities seeking repatriation, economic realities in the galaxy do lead him to working for less-than-legitimate clients as well. Or sometimes just for the hell of it. Retains a small personal collection of art and antiquities that he uses as a good source of income when jobs are few and far between.

- likes to think of himself as some sort of crack shot with a blaster. In reality, is more along the lines of Uncharted’s Nathan Drake and goes for the “try to aim when I can but otherwise just shoot vaguely in the enemy’s direction and hope for the best” school of firearms training. Has a small collection of blasters he considers his own including Blastech A180, DL-44, and rifle model DH-17; and both a Merr-Sonn Power 5 and Model 434 Death Hammer.

- Hella bi, not a lot of past relationships but not exactly a dearth of them either. Has largely retained amicable relationships with his exes, though he doesn’t talk to one ex-boyfriend who sold a Pre-Clone Wars Corellian battle helm Deak was preparing to donate in order to fund the downpayment on a new airspeeder.

- Eclectic tastes in fashion by some standards, is a big fan of the finer end of galactic fashion when it comes to dressing for business but often opts for basic durable spacer garments for casual settings and field research

- [started life when I was in middle school as basically me but as Indiana Jones as Han Solo. Last name was shamelessly stolen from the Legends EU while the first was taken from early drafts of the first movie. Now visually less brown haired white guy if you couldn’t gather from his ancestry and the general trend in the ethnicity of the actors who have portrayed canon characters from those planets (hint: Han is Corellian, Lando is Socorran, and Bail Organa is Alderaanian)]

ELE-47G6

- Began life as an RA-7 protocol droid, externally still largely remains as such due to sheer number of potential surplus bodies in the galaxy. Internally upgrades wiring alongside each major generation of protocol droid, tosses an eclectic mix of military-grade wiring and sensor systems in when the occasion calls for it. Droid brain consists of a core of a Synthtech AA-1 Verbobrain with a TranLang III communications module with T-series tactical droid combat-analysis software installed in place of superfluous language software (which, for ELE, is anything that isn’t linguistically related to Galactic Basic or Hutteses) mated to an Intellex VI R4 astro-agromech computer. There are at least three spares of this modified computational core squirreled away both on and off ship. Most notable external differences are the heavier duty torso plating and bulkier aftermarket legs that increase both height and mobility, and the fact that ELE sometimes wears a utility vest.

- Can interface with the ship directly in a secondary body of their own design. Said secondary body is an R4 unit with an old Clone Wars-era commando droid head and the arms of a KX-series security droid unceremoniously welded to one of the engineering station’s stools.

- Does not bother with and was never programmed to have a specific gender; through decades of life with very few memory wipes of any sort has become rather fast-talking and fluctuates between feminine and masculine vocal modules within the same conversation and often the same sentence.

- Gets flirty with the crew and the passengers that tag along on certain jobs, both for the hell of it and to get something they want. ELE does generally consciously choose a gendered vocal module in these cases, going for some form of old fashioned holofilm stars and starlettes’ affected Mid-Inner Rim accent. Knows this works most often on Deak and regularly uses this fact to their advantage.

- [ELE was conceived of in my last couple years of high school, initially as a droid character in a potential fan film in which only one organic being survives a freighter crash on a deathworld that’s also in the middle of a war zone and finds the head of one of the ship’s droids conscious but damaged enough to have fluctuating vocals as the deuteragonist. Obviously never made the fan film and actually fleshed out the droid character into something far better than that, I hope]

Kolgrahgth the Hutt

- A relatively young Hutt by his species standards (approx. 250 standard years old) Kolgragth is the owner and sometimes operator of both Krazy Kol’s Certified Pre-Owned Speeder Emporium and the Rusty Sparnacle tavern, a family-friendly dining establishment with tasteful Mon Cal oceanside resort decor. He is strictly above-the-table and by the books in all business and prides self on being a completely legal business-being of the highest breeding to the obvious point of personal flaw. Much to his chagrin however, his celebrity doppelganger is a younger version of the infamous Jabba and this perception does not only apply to members of other species who are prone to lumping all Hutts together, but to other Hutts as well. Kol does not enjoy this fact.

- while he himself sticks with the letter of the law in all business, he has no compunctions about the other crewmates operating in a less-than-legal manner as long as he doesn’t get roped into their nonsense. As such he does not wind up taking part in very many major misadventures space-side

- Is the head of the local HOA, VERY vocal about violations in the color of exterior house trim and lawn ornamentation

- Kol is also an avid Loth-cat fancier and owns about 15 felines. He would never admit it to himself or the other cats, but his favorite is actual an elderly one-eyed neutered mixed-species former stray feline named Grand Admiral Biggles.

- [Came up with Kol roughly the same time as ELE, also much more one dimensionally. Originated from the thought “what if there was a Hutt whose biggest dick move was instating and running a homeowner’s association”. On another note that doesn’t technically apply in-universe the same way as the rest of his backstory, despite the Disney-era Canon now stating that Hutts exist as a species in which some individuals produce one sex gamete or the other I have and always will personally stick with the old Legends EU approach of “Hutts are giant sapient gastropods and as such are hermaphroditic”]

Jasna Vintrakahs

- A Devaronian female who started her career path solidly on the wrong side of the law due to growing up in a poor formerly industrial city and the costs of genetic and hormonal therapies on Devaron being, at the time, exorbitantly out of range and the off-world options being more effective in a shorter time-span but still very expensive. Her greatest shame was stooping to bounty hunting and mercenary work to expedite her financial growth after transitioning, though she certainly appreciated and kept the skills and fun little toys that come with working in that field. Does now balance professional life on both sides of the legal line, but genuinely enjoys the rough and tumble fringe spacer life at this point due to more adventure and more interesting individuals. Also because it’s generally more accepted for a fringe spacer to nonverbally respond with the good old fashioned “fuck you” that is a pair of knuckledusters when some stranger asks why she’s a female Devaronian with horns than it would be for an accountant or a trader.

- Depending on the particulars of the job, will often undercut her competitors’ bids on smuggling runs to the point of intentionally being deeply in the red. Doesn’t do this out of a need to repent for her past but rather out of a deep sense of the rights of all beings to live a comfortable life free from external control by privileged outsiders and class traitors. Can usually count on Deak to find one of his less-than-legitimate antiquities obtainment jobs along the way or after delivery given the parts of the galaxy a lot of these vaguely humanitarian smuggling runs tend to be in.

- Captain of our merry band, or as much a captain as anyone can be in an eccentric group of friends and acquaintances. Okay, it really just boils down to she’s the one who owns the ship, but when they’re on-board everyone defers to her hard-earned experience. Passengers can be dicks, but that’s what turning down the inertial dampeners in the guest berths during rough patches of flight is for.

- Met ELE by purchasing the droid as a gift to herself for retiring from bounty hunting, manumitted them after modifying them from near-stock protocol droid and gave them back-pay for the year it took to get to that point.

- Original ship was the Moldy Mynock, a twin-seat variant Incom Z95 Headhunter. Managed to keep this starfighter in such good repair and with a nearly pristine interior that a collector of vintage ships wound up paying close to double the original price. This made it pretty damn easy to purchase the ship that became the Starry Loth-bat, which started life decades ago as a YT 1200 freighter. By the time Jasna obtained it the ship had already become a haphazard blend of the base YT 1200 and a stock YT 1300, and eventually became a hybrid of a number of various YT models with some auxiliary gun ports on the forward starboard and port sides that were once TIE-series cockpits.

- When at home enjoys leatherworking (made Deak’s favorite satchel and ELE’s vest), traditional Devaronian blacksmithing (it’s handy to have a few blades on hand to use for barter in the Outer Rim), and pulp holoadventures. Which Jasna regularly takes the piss out of them for unrealistic tropes but is sincerely an avid fan of them.

- [Jasna started life as an unnamed female Twi’lek, then a male Twi’lek, around 2011-2012. Shifted to being Devaronian a couple years later, then shifted back to being a woman a little after that. Naturally, much like ELE, I am a bit nervous about having this character as she is. I’m cis and as far as I can tell will always identify as such, so y’know not exactly on the forefront of having the life experience of being trans to build off of. But on the other hand half the people I consider friends are trans, more trans characters need to exist, and gender as a whole is a fuck so I’ll be honest as a whole I’m pretty comfortable with Jasna being trans. I’m sure someone out there will read into the whole “gender of the character changed multiple times over the years I conceptualized her” thing alongside me quantifying my cis status as being “as far as I can tell”, to which I say...-shrug- eh, whatev. I wanted a trans OC]

A few unnamed ones that sort of exist in a void of “there for world building, may expand their characters later

Torgorian barkeep with the equivalent to Janus cat syndrome, a Barabel mechanic, Fonzi Kaz and the Boys (a Rodian singer, Bith Dorenian Beshniquel player, Weequay touchboardist, and Gungan lutenist), and a Chiss lawyer. There’s also Jasna’s partner whom I have not yet come up with a name for but she’s a cis Twi’lek artist with prosthetics. And I’m trying to come up with a good compelling Yuuzhan Vong OC too, though considering the dearth of them even now a full two decades after the NJO series began to be published I could probably go for a less compelling more stereotypical one for the first one and create a second one but yeah what I’ve got right now is extremely bare bones

#text #star wars oc #star wars #I have not RP'd in years and idk if I ever would rp these characters #honestly I may just start writing my own fanon eu stuff

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canyouhearthelight · 6 years

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The Miys, Ch. 13

Author’s Note: This is the first chapter written by my new co-author, @ritualistic-raven, AKA The Real Tyche. Initially, this was a fanfiction she wrote from Tyche’s perspective, but as soon as I found out, I had to read it. The idea of everything was just too good not to include! Obviously, this chapter is dedicated, first and foremost to her: For being my biggest fan, my staunchest supporter, and with everything going on in our lives right now, making everything as easy as possible on us both.

She would like to dedicate this chapter to Dante, God Rest His Soul.

Please: Read, Review, Reblog.

“Where were you when it happened?”

I sighed deeply as I placed my mug on the table. “Antoine, why would you ask this?” As I said his name, his grip on my hand tightened reassuringly.

Sophia raised an eyebrow at his gesture. “You have been avoiding it. You haven’t even told me and I’m your sister. Between you and my old therapist, I know first-hand that talking helps. You know what I’m talking about.” She gently pet the purring puddle of fur on her lap, pausing only when it stretched, showcasing claws and fangs.

In my heart, I knew she was right. There was a complication though: my memory never had been reliable. “More holes than a sponge and nowhere as absorbent,” is how I had always described it. I could summarize ten years in three sentences. These survivors wanted a story, not the bullet points.

“I haven’t undergone repair yet. I know Noah can fix me. My memory. I’m just not sure I want that. Soph, you know how bad my life was back home. Antione, darling, I’ve briefed you on a few parts. Conor, Arantxa, you will likely find out soon. I don’t hide my past, but I also don’t simply offer it,” I sighed again, the last few words feeling tight in my throat. “What I mean is… I only remember pieces. I can share those, but a lot is missing. Most was either repetitive or I just don’t remember.”

All eyes were on me, even the bright green eyes of the fur-puddle.

“Tyche?” Antoine spoke softly, but his voice shook ever-so-slightly.

The hand that wasn’t on mine reached for my other wrist, the one I hadn’t realized was held in a fist next to my shoulder. He pulled back to show blood on his fingertips, only, it wasn’t his.

My sister stood up casually and announced our meeting was over for tonight. “Tyche will be okay. I’ve got this. If everyone could just leave, without touching her, I’ll get her cleaned up. It’s PTSD, and she just told us she hasn’t let the Miys treat her. Tyche will be okay. I’ve got her.”

Our friends placed their dinnerware on the counter and each said goodnight, concern in every word. After the doors to my quarters closed, Sophia sat beside me, where Antoine had been, and sat our now-shared cat on the table in front of me. “Can you see ‘now’ or are you seeing the past?” she asked quietly.

Being able to act in the present while my mind showed me only the past was an unfortunate skill of mine. No one could really explain how I could do this, but it was classed as a form of shellshock. With so many on the ship with moderate to severe levels of PTSD, the Miys had found my particular form of shellshock fascinating.

“Now,” I barely whispered. My right hand found the cat while my left was clenched tight. Blood dripped slowly toward my elbow.

“Good start,” Sophia said, still quiet, with a ridiculous level of calm that I knew was her own self-defense mechanism. “Your hand is bleeding. I’m guessing you flashed back to something really awful. I’m so sorry, Tyche.” She calmly uncurled my fingers to look at the cuts. My fingernails had dug into my palm pretty deeply, somehow without registering pain.

A voice came over the intercom that rang with panic and anger. “She’s bleeding! Why would you let her hurt herself, Soph?! How was bringing up the beginning of the End a good idea?!”

My chair fell back a few feet when I erupted from it. “Don’t you dare blame her for this!” I thrust my hand poignantly toward the camera module, emphasizing my last word. “Don’t you dare blame any of them, Simon!”

“Tyche, you need to calm down. Raising your—”

“Oh, fuck off. I have PTSD, as do all of us – except you, might I add? I am traumatized and I refused treatment.”

“That’s—”

An absolutely primal scream roared from my tiny frame because I could not stand Simon. He was truly terrible at handling any of my PTSD episodes, had been since the moment I first woke up on Ark.

“Tyche—”

I audibly growled before I spoke again. “What are you even watching me for? You swore you wouldn’t when you stepped down from the Council! What the hell do you want?”

He cleared his throat from his location elsewhere on the ship. “You have a meeting in two hours. Your quarter doors were set to Do Not Disturb and due to your illness history, there was concern for your safety. Apparently with good reason.”

“Simon,” my sister began as she set my chair upright, still unnaturally calm but clearly scolding him with that one word. “You know to check entry logs first. Then you would have seen I had an official appointment with our Assistant Director of Administration. Go back to work.”

“With all due respect, ma’am—”

“The concern is appreciated. She is my sister, though. I am one of the few people in any universe she trusts. Please, just – go away. Tyche would probably like privacy now.” She shifted her gaze to me.

I nodded almost imperceptibly. As I turned around to walk to my bed, the intercom clicked off. The Miys, with their not-very-good understanding of privacy, slipped words into my mind. “There is an infirmary approximately two-hundred and fifty yards from your quarters. Would you like to be escorted?”

The telepathic hive-mind alien ‘spoke’ in a tone of genuine concern. I don’t think it had witnessed a physical result from PTSD before.

“No, I have not. Your recollection is – fragmented, but very strong. How can the human psyche withstand such emotions of such strength?”

I brought the knuckles of my wounded hand to my forehead. “It can’t. The psyche breaks. Otherwise, post-traumatic stress disorder wouldn’t exist. If our psyche could handle it, our brains wouldn’t…” I waved my hand to signal I was trying to find a word. “Our brains wouldn’t glitch, or malfunction, or however you best understand the damage done to my brain by my traumatic experiences.” Sophia opened the door and reminded me about the infirmary. Apparently, our host had included her in the conversation.

“Right. Thanks. I’ve managed to keep my hand pretty since before the End. Let’s not break that streak now.”

The alien body in the infirmary was just as tall the all the others. Not really a surprise, given the months I had been on this ship, but I had hoped for some distinguishing feature from time to time. My sister, however, could tell them apart. How she did that remained a mystery to me.

I strolled over to the Miys body assigned here and carefully held out my wounded hand. With one pair of hands, it placed my arm on an exam bench adjusted to my shoulder height. It did know I was on my way, after all. This was also not my first visit. The Miys vessel moved a CD sized scanner over the wound, no doubt checking the severity of the injury.

“So, Tyche,” my sister said with a note of curiosity. “Who is this Antoine guy? You two seemed awfully chummy.”

I looked at her and blinked, trying to register what she asked. The Miys still had little understanding of dissociation, but Sophia understood perfectly and showed patience. She knew what post-panic numbness felt like.

“He’s, um… What do you mean? Chummy? In what sense?” My brain was catching up and my tone reflected playfully.

She placed a hand on her hip and tilted her head. “I saw Antione’s hand on yours. We both know you’re generally a prickly person,” she laughed. “You were practically cuddling with him, if someone knew what to look for.”

“Oh! That. He’s basically my assigned comfort-human. Ever since I told our hosts about touch-starvation, they’ve been trying to encourage me to bond with someone. Y’know. For my health.” A cold serum was injected into my palm. “Ah! You could have warned me!”

The serum was designed to heal our wounds almost instantly. It worked, mostly. As long as the injury wasn’t what human consider severe – the Miys considered everything severe – the serum could stimulate rapid cell growth. You could actually watch the injury heal within minutes. The only side-effect was a few days of the site tingling.

“Anyway,” I said as I watched the cuts on my palm heal, “Antoine was one of the ‘candidates’ to ‘facilitate’ catching me up on lost touch or whatever. He’s good at snuggling, will bring me meals when I’m not well, and fully respects that I am asexual. I ended up telling Them, well, It, since there’s only one mind… Ugh… I still feel awkward about the pronouns… Our Host that it really is best for me if I receive that touch from someone I can get to know. That sounds creepy, I know, but I digress. I guess Antoine is like an arranged boyfriend? He knows the deal. Aroace. He asked what it means and I explained. He said that actually makes things less awkward if we end up not getting along and have to end our ‘arrangement.’”

We both laughed as we left the infirmary. I told her it was much easier to get the cuisine I was accustomed to thanks to Antoine and some of the things he had told me about himself.

The pendant on her necklace chimed, signaling that my that my councilmember sister had another official meeting. Our three hours had come to an end.

“Same time next week?” She asked, casually brushing her fingertips over the pendant to silence it.

I looked down as I smirked. “I can take a sedative just to make sure things don’t turn out like this week. So yeah, same time next week.”

We parted ways and I couldn’t help but think of how badly I had reacted to a simple question. He didn’t mean anything by it. At some point, we all shared our stories with a crowd. Some days, the assemblies felt like Addicts Anonymous. The attending members were almost always awkward, fumbling through their histories on Earth. Given that my position on the ship dealt with so many people, I knew that sharing my story would help them see me less as a bureaucrat. Seeing me as a person they can relate to would make my job easier when learning where to place them for jobs.

Looked like it was time for me to get the hard part over with, damn the emotions and full speed ahead.

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#miys #the miys #humans are weird #humans are space orcs #earth is space australia #science fiction #sci fi #aliens #apocalypse #fiction #original #writing #my writing

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cydraulics · 6 years

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I need a fic

where Roddy asks Megs to help him harness his outlier fire powers. So he can look good and impress everyone better protect the crew. Rodimus was forged as a glorified messenger boy. He’s learned to scrap better than most in his weight class, he can fire a gun just fine, but he doesn’t have built-in weapons systems or anything that would truly equalize a dicey situation.

It’s his responsibility to do this. It’s just a bit unfortunate that he has to spend his already-limited free time with Megatron.

He reasons that if Megs used sheer willpower to pull Whirl’s arm back from an event horizon, he can definitely teach him how to FLAME THE FUCK OUT 🔥. Because it turns out that controlling your outlier abilities requires spark control. The ability to tap into your life force and modulate the raw energy, transforming it on a subatomic level into the desired output… Or whatever Brainstorm had said. All that, without accidentally bleeding your spark dry.

There’s nothing Brainstorm can build to get him over the hump. Nothing safe, anyway. So this is going to require good old-fashioned hard work and concentration, which are Roddy’s two least favorite things in the world.

Honestly, he’d rather die.

The first time he tries to talk to Megatron about it, he almost gets sliced in half by the habsuite door sliding shut. It takes a few more attempts and using Magnus as a go-between to suss out that Megatron thinks he’s an undisciplined child- his actual words- and it would be an irretrievable waste of time for the both of them.

It takes him by surprise, how much capacity he still has to feel hurt. Deeply, achingly hurt. He wants—

It doesn’t matter what he wants. What he needs is to convince Megatron that he can do this.

When Megatron relents, he does so under the condition that Roddy do his homework first. Data gathering before solutioning, or something. He is to document every time his powers manifested so they can recreate the optimal conditions for making it happen again.

The finished memo is pretty long and meandering by his standards, but Megatron had asked him to write down every last detail. To state facts and draw no conclusions- Megatron would do that, thank you very much.

What an arse. Roddy does have a decent analytical engine when the situation calls for it. As he sees it, there are three clear triggers:

Imminent death

Incendiary rage (literally)

A really mind-blowing overload

There is no way he’s explaining #3 to Megatron, so he deletes those instances from the record before pinging the file over. He’s sure that they won’t have to resort to— that.

Narrator: They definitely do.

#megarod #fic prompt #lOOk #if nobody writes this I'm going to have to #help me out #need at least 1 hot/fire pun per 500 words #mywrites

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jaybeartodd · 6 years

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The Darkest of Times Pt. 3 -- Jason Todd x fem. reader

Parts: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13

Warnings: cursing, mentions of very mild violence

Story tags: @janybaby @luna-san3 @idontlikepamts @tiniowl @nicunt

Permanent tags: @korindrs @alohabucky @sarcasmismyfirstlove @mad-hatter-has-nothing-on-me @russian-potatoes

A/N: So I am going to do something crazy... I am posting two parts in one night!! I just wasn’t satisfied with this one and so skipped to the next one and ended up finishing it last night. Today, I edited this one and voila. Hope you guys enjoy :)

Only one day had passed before your masked friend showed up again in your bunker.

“What are you doing here? Who did you piss off this time? Do you have information on Anthony? You can’t possibly have more supplies?” you bombard him as he steps off the ladder. He gently grabs your shoulders.

“I am here to take you up on your dinner offer. Many but I currently none are chasing me. Sorry no. And nope I have spoiled you too much,” he answers each question and lets you go. You blink at him thoroughly surprised.

“How is the leg?” he asks gesturing towards your bandage.

“It is doing okay, just a little sore,” you reply and gesture awkwardly, “Would you like to sit or something?”

He smiles underneath the helmet at the light blush dusting your cheeks while you are mentally cursing yourself for it. You find yourself yearning to see what he looks like. To hear the taunting voice in its natural state. But not nearly enough to ask him to show you.

“Um, so I was going to make Easy Mac?” you admit shamefaced and bite your lip.

“I definitely gave you more impressive meals than that, Y/N,” he acknowledges crossing his arms clearly amused.

“Yes, well, unfortunately I am not the greatest cook. Wait,” You shoot an inquisitive look at him as he parts for the kitchen, “How do you know my name?”

“I did my research,” he confesses nonchalantly. You shake your head in confusion as he starts to pull things from the small freezer you had stuffed full with the food he gave you.

“What are you doing?”

‘We are going to cook us a decent dinner.” he answers coolly and tosses something to you. You fumble but manage to catch the bagged cheese.

“Now, how do you feel about pizza?” you laugh at his absurd idea of a decent dinner.

“I think pizza would be fantastic.” you smile widely at a man who has literally killed people bounce up with an armful of ingredients preparing to make pizza.

“So,” you start nervously as he begins setting stuff down next to the stove.

“Yes?” he turns towards you curiously.

“Did you put a hole in the helmet to feed yourself through or are you just going to creepily watch me eat? Wait, do you not eat at all?” your eyes grow wide at the thought. He chuckles deeply.

“Actually, none of the above. I just wear this damn thing so much I forget it’s there.” he sighs looking at you, “And I suppose you already know my name so no hurt in knowing my face too.” He reaches behind his neck and presses something to release the helmet.

You hold your breath as he slowly removes it. The first thing you notice is his hair. It is a deep black. Like the black you see the first second after lights are turned out. The only exception being a white streak that weaves its way down through the matted hair on his forehead not quite reaching his eyes.

You inhale a sharp intake of breath when you notice a J shaped scar across his cheek. Your hand reaches towards it instinctively and sharp blue eyes track the movement cautiously. He snatches your hand before you can touch it, breaking your trance. In the deep blue you discern a rooted pain and fear that were hidden by the mask. You immediately drop your hand and look down. He clears his throat and grips the edge of the stove tightly.

“Well, shit.” you exclaim and he turns back towards you with an apologetic look, “I was really hoping you would be super ugly underneath the robot head.”

An amazingly charming smile graces his lips as the tension dissolves from the room.

“So what you are saying is that I am a total babe,” he deduces nodding his head. His voice is smooth and silvery in comparison to the robot you are used to hearing. You could definitely get used to its sound. He winks at you fueling your red cheeks

“Never said that,” you protest. He pulls out a bowl and starts pouring ingredients onto it.

“I am pretty sure that is exactly what you said.” he declares laughing while reaching over you to grab something.

“Well you aren’t too hideous, I suppose,” you admit sarcastically with a roll of your eyes. Not even a little bit.

After cheese ‘mysteriously’ ending up in your hair and tomato sauce not so accidentally smeared on Jay’s face, you finally end up with a decent looking pizza.

“Ah-ha!” you cheer twirling with the pan. Jason leans against the wall watching as you celebrate your victory.

“I cooked, Pete! Look!” You brag and shove the plate in your cat’s face. He returns with an uninterested meow but you do not let this curb your enthusiasm.

“Can we eat it now? You know, before it becomes collateral damage to your celebratory dance,” Jay bemuses but is secretly becoming greedy in earning your excitement.

“Yes, okay, I think I am finished.” you announce a bit out of breath and feel your leg seriously revolting.

He sits on the edge of your bed. You lounge behind him with your wounded leg stretched out and your other one curled up so that it is holding your plate in place on your lap.

You eat in silence and you find your eyes drawn back to his face. Your tongue is itching to inquire about the scar but as shown earlier, he wouldn’t be too thrilled with the idea.

“Why are you still here?” he pipes up and you shake yourself from your stupor.

“In Gotham, you mean?” you ask and he hums as he chews another bite.

“Well, it is kind of embarrassing actually,” you admit chuckling nervously. He turns his face and flashes you a roguish smirk.

“You? Never!” he jokes and you punch his arm, “Pray do tell.”

“The first memory I have of the event is the absolute chaos as students rushed away from the campus screaming,” you pause to in reaction to the unpleasant image and miss the remorseful look that shoots across his face, ”I was about to get on a bus when I remembered Pete.”

The devil himself jumps onto the bed in response to his name. You lightly pet him.

“Wait, you risked your life for a cat?” Jay interrupts baffled.

“No, not exactly. I mean, yes, but there were so many buses transporting kids that I wasn’t too worried about missing this one. But when I rushed to my apartment and grabbed him an explosion went off. Everything after that is pretty fuzzy and all I remember is Anthony reaching out a hand and dragging me to safety. The buses were spooked and transportation was cut off entirely. We were with some other students that had missed the buses but eventually they were found by family and escaped with them. There is no one to come for Anthony and me. Then it became too dangerous to be above ground and Anthony knew about this place so voila.” you gesture unenthusiastically. Jay looks at you with pity and a hint of something you can’t quite distinguish.

“Uh, yeah so what about you?” you distract yourself with another bite of pizza.

“I am righting a wrong,” he answers cryptically looking off absentmindedly. Is this guy for real?

“Seriously? Should we compare lengths of information given for a second?” He smiles at you but instead of answering he points to the other bed with his pizza slice.

“So how do you know Anthony?”

“He was in a class with me our freshman year. We hit it off and became on and off again friends. We didn’t become that close until this whole debacle.” you wave your finger around. He nods his head seemingly satisfied with the answer.

“Okay, since you know all about me, can I ask a few questions?” he analyzes you cautiously before slowly nodding.

“This one is really personal so I understand if I receive another mysterious Yoda answer,” you warn.

He snorts and raises his eyebrows, “You are such a nerd. Hit me.”

“What is your favorite color?” you articulate in the same serious tone. His face lights up as he gives another hearty laugh. You relish in the sound untouched by a voice modulator.

“A fan of red, I am,” he answers and you let out a laugh completely taken by surprise. He finds himself grinning widely at you as your head tilts back and your cackling noises become more contagious. He really thought he had lost this part of himself in the Lazarus Pit but you tempted him to think differently.

You play twenty questions with him for the rest of the night finding out random details about each other. You even learn about his odd obsession with “Pride and Prejudice” which, inevitably, turned into a playful argument about who is more like Elizabeth Bennett.

Eventually, you shoot up a hand to stifle a yawn but it doesn’t go unnoticed by him.

“We should probably call it a night,” he announces and you rub your tired eyes.

“Wimping out on me?” you tease with a lazy grin.

“Sure, let’s go with that.” he laughs and stands up to make his exit. He reaches down and grabs his helmet. He glances at you once more and you give a sleepy grin.

“I will be back tomorrow night,” he promises and you feel your heart skip slightly, “Just don’t go throw yourself into a burning building or jump off a bridge for a cat, please.”

You narrow your eyes and he flashes his smirk before putting on his helmet.

Jay visits every night for the next week and a half. You learn a lot about each other, well at least, he learns a lot about you and he teaches you surprisingly good recipes so you don’t have to resort to microwaveable or quick.

And you are not going to even try and deny it; you look forward to his nightly visits. No offense to Pete but he is not exactly the most vocal company and you don’t remember being this happy while talking to Anthony. Most of the time it was about how doomed you were.

“Yeah, he really couldn’t have been an ogre underneath that helmet?” you sigh to Pete not exactly too keen on the feelings you are developing for the smug brute. Tonight, you decide on surprising him with your newfound cooking abilities. After working hard in the kitchen with no major fires, you display the product on the counter satisfyingly and wait for him.

Hours pass with no sign of him leaving you slightly discouraged. You put the food away awhile back. A storm booms overhead matching the mood and you are left with only the sound of thunder and water dripping from the ceiling into buckets you strategically placed. Worry starts to prick at the back of the mind but you are mostly just angry. Angry at yourself for looking forward to this. For relying on this.

Once 2 a.m. rolls around you decide to give up and go to sleep. The storm still rages on outside and you are lulled asleep by it. The next morning you wake up half expecting him to be groveling at your feet but it remains as empty as it was when you fell asleep.

The next week pass the same way and your leg injury is mostly a distant memory. Every day that passes you become more disgruntled at being locked in the bunker doing nothing and stupid for ever thinking you could rely on Jay. This is why you decide tomorrow you are going to make your way to the Iceberg Lounge. If Jay isn’t going to help you out then you will do it yourself.

“Y/N, wake up,” someone hisses at your bedside. Your immediate response is to grab the knife you keep hidden underneath your mattress. You swing the knife up blindly and a hands catches your wrist. Instinct kicks in and you push against them only to lose your balance as well. Suddenly, you are both rolling on the floor in the pitch black while strings of curses follow closely behind You land on top of them and bring the knife onto their neck.

“Y/N, dammit, it’s me!” they shout and you finally make out a glint from a helmet.

“Jay?” you sit up and he removes his helmet. You can barely distinguish his face in the darkness.

“Yes, now please. Get off of me,” he commands through gritted teeth. You realize you are still sitting on him and shoot up.

“Let me turn a light on,” you fumble in the darkness until you reach the light switch. They flicker until the bunker is finally illuminated. Your attention is brought back down to Jay who is still laying on the floor. You blink at the blood spattering his uniform as well as the light bruises dotting his face.

“Wow, did you run yourself over with your own car?” you inquire sarcastically while rushing to his side.

“Ha-ha,” he spits with a spiteful glare in your direction. He sits up grabbing his stomach and groaning in pain.

“I will go get a medical kit,” you suggest digging underneath your bed for the one you have been using for your leg.

“Good idea,” he responds and winces again. You sit back down at his side with bandages and cold compresses in hand.

“Y/N?” he asks slightly irritated as you hesitate.

“What happened?” you demand.

“Jeezes, Y/N, not now,” he swears. You just raise your eyebrows. You are sick of the lies and hidden motives. You want to know who you are saving.

“Fine. It was a family squabble. There was an explosion and I got trapped underneath some of the rubble. You happy?” he spills and you stare wide-eyed at him. Okay, so maybe you didn’t want to know everything.

You gently place the compress on the bruises on his face to reduce the swelling and he raises a hand to hold it in place. You glance down and notice his abdomen wet with blood. You grab at the armor uselessly.

“How the hell do you take this thing off?” you ask flustered.

“They usually make me dinner first,” he chuckles and grimaces when the laugh sends pain shooting through his body.

“Yeah, I did but you missed it,” you grumble and his face falls. You finally find straps to unhook and the armor falls so that it hangs loosely overtop of his shirt underneath. You toss it aside and gently lift up his shirt revealing several gashes.

“Ugh,” you utter involuntarily. Jay snorts at this.

“Not the usual reaction I get.”

You ignore him and start cleaning out his wounds. He is amazingly still as you bandage him up. You examine the rest of the body and see he has a gash in his leg as well.

“You want to take my pants off next?” he wiggles his eyebrows from underneath the ice pack suggestively. You make a face at him but you do notice he is looking much more comfortable.

“Or I can spare us all and lift your pant leg,” you assert and carefully roll his pant leg up.

“Are you going to tell me about the family squabble?” you ask ripping another sterilized pad with your teeth.

“Nope.” You wind the bandage around his leg frustrated.

“Y/N,” you continue wrapping ignoring him, “Y/N!” You meet his eyes angrily.

“I know I am being an asshole but I really don’t want to drag you into this,” he says softly.

“So you were stuck underneath that rubble for a week?” you inquire drily. His guilt-ridden face reveals all.

“That’s what I thought,” you sigh and stand up.

“Y/N, I-”

“You can crash here. Use Anthony’s bed, it isn’t like he is returning anytime soon.” He can hear the loneliness and hurt behind your words.

“Would you please just listen to me?”

“Oh, sweet, now you want to talk? Where have you been?” you spin on your heel and cross your arms over your chest. He stands up mildly groaning in pain.

“I can’t tell you that,” he whispers and you scoff.

“No, of course not,” you mutter and reach for the light switch, “Get some sleep. And then we are officially even. You helped me, I helped you. No need to come back.”

Your words come out steady after days of turning your sorrow into resentment out of self-preservation. You flick the lights off.

The next morning you wake up to find the other bed empty. You can’t quite tell if you are relieved or disappointed. You rub your sleepy eyes and saunter into the kitchen to make Pete his breakfast. Your eye catches a note next to a phone.

“If you need me, I am only a call away.” you set down the paper and glare at the phone.

Anyways, you have bigger things to concentrate on. Today, you are going to get some answers as to where Anthony is.

#Jason Todd #jason todd x reader #jason todd x you #jason todd x y/n #red hood #red hood x you #red hood x reader #Red Hood X y/n #dc comics #dc #batman #BatFam #batman imagine

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astriiformes · 6 years

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You should tell us about all of the D&D characters you've played. I really like hearing about the ones you play currently and I bet the ones that you played in high school (?) were cool too.

oh man! this is an ask after my own heart

i will say that my first character in particular wasn’t super developed, because i was still learning the rules of the game and almost everyone else i was playing with were using pre-generated characters from the starter set, so we didn’t really come up with backstory or anything like that. but i definitely am still fond of some of my old characters and would be happy to talk about them

in order, i’ve played:

iain sinclair, reckless human college of lore bard whose character sheet included the phrase “do it for the vine” and who nearly got killed by a dragon because the rest of the party didn’t know he was in trouble. i think he ultimately made it to lvl 4 before we completed the starter set module? everyone in the party was deeply amused by me casting “vicious mockery,” particularly the one time i actually insulted an enemy very low on hp to death

aiko jhun, human battle master fighter with a background as a librarian. proved to me that playing a purely martial class can still be really fun, if you develop the character well. she was hopelessly awkward and the one time someone flirted with her she gave a response so odd that it was repeated by the rest of the players as a joke for the rest of the time we played together. once rescued a horse out of compassion. we never finished the campaign she was a part of, due to everyone moving to different states for college, but by the time that happened she was lvl 5

mara afahina, water genasi tempest cleric who i was playing at the same time as aiko, but in the adventurers’ league at a local game store. i wasn’t sure what the “official” pantheon we were using was as a result, but i did have it in my mind that her deity was poseidon. absolutely a butch lesbian. she was pretty rough-and-tumble for a cleric, with a background as a sailor and an alignment that leaned towards chaotic neutral. i don’t remember what level she ever got to, but man did i have fun maxing out “thunderwave” with her channel divinity

erwyn cestacelvar, high elf horizon walker ranger and wild magic sorcerer. i talk about him constantly on this blog so you probably know some things about him already. the first character of mine to ever die, which was an interesting experience. also definitely the deepest i’ve ever developed a character’s backstory (aiko had a fair bit, but it never influenced how i played her character as much as erwyn’s does). a poor constantly stressed and self-deprecating fellow, and polite to a fault. currently a lvl 4 ranger/lvl 1 sorcerer, though the multiclass was not intended. cursed with astonishingly bad luck when leveling up and gaining hit points and as a result unfortunately squishy

jamie gutterspell, human evocation wizard and general force of chaos. i created him before lup was even known to exist in taz but i would not deny that they have a few similarities. i pick his spells mostly on the consideration of what has the potential to wreak the most havoc. he likes blowing things up and causing confusion, and once gave our tiny bard a piggyback ride while casting thunderwave in a small enclosed space on the logic that if the spell wouldn’t harm the caster, it probably wouldn’t hit someone that they were carrying either. he just hit lvl 5 and picked up fireball and he and i are both very excited about it

amaruq umluria, human celestial patron warlock. i don’t know much about him yet because i’ve only played a single session with him! very cheerful and friendly though, and on a bit of a quest to see more of the world beyond his homeland. his patron is a ki-rin, and he already has almost as many hit points as poor erwyn, despite being lvl 2

#takeaways from this post:#1) wow i've played a lot of humans. mara and erwyn are the lone exceptions #and 2) i've yet to play the same class twice and i've had a lot of fun doing it #you wouldn't dungeon a dragon #anonymous

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tipsycad147 · 5 years

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8 Ideas To Inspire Your Magic

Avery Hart

This post may contain affiliate links. Please read my Disclaimer for more info.

I know everyone loves the idea of witches who are super structured and committed to their practice. In our minds, the ideal witch is doing magic all the time, casting spells every few days, working with gods, doing magic every day, meditating like a boss, this witch supposedly has it all together. The problem is, I’ve never met one of these witches!

I’m sure they exist, somewhere, but as far as I can tell, the majority of witches fall into a very different camp. We do magic when we need it and are sometimes good and sometimes not about our daily magical practice. We might not meditate every day (or let's be honest, ever) and that’s IF our lives aren’t insanely busy at the moment. If things do get crazy busy? You can kiss the vast majority of that goodbye.

To a lot of people, in their minds, this makes them a bad witch. They don’t have that ideal practice so obviously, they’re just not giving it enough attention and being lazy. More often than not though, this isn’t the case! Our modern lives are busy and full of distraction. We’ve got jobs, and school, and partners, and kids, and hobbies, and friends, and, and, and… There’s hardly any time to breathe in between all of the other stuff we do, much less sit down for a half hour ritual!

I'm here to tell you that this is ok. Your life is important and unless you are planning to devote your entire life to witchcraft then nobody expects you to be pursuing it like it’s your Ph.D.

If you’ve been struggling with general life burnout and a lack of magical time, this is the blog post for you. Below you’ll find 8 ideas to inspire you to make your life a little more magical.

1. Do something simple

I know, this isn’t exactly groundbreaking but hear me out. A lot of the time when we’re discouraged about doing magic, we feel like we don’t have enough time to do magic that “counts”. This idea that magic has to take a lot of time or be drawn out to count as magic is unfortunately widespread. Have you ever wanted to do a spell and then when you realised you only had 10 minutes just decided to do it later and forgot all about it? Yeah? Quit that. Instead of putting off the spell until you have enough time, do an abbreviated version of it right now. 10 minutes of witchcraft may not be as potent as an hour-long ritual, but it’s still a hell of a lot more potent than not doing anything at all!

I don’t care how small your window of time is if you have ten minutes you can squeeze in a quick candle spell. In five minutes, you can charge a sigil or brew a cup of magical tea. In one minute you can grab a crystal to charge in your palm while you’re rushing out the door and if you only have 30 seconds you can pause, breathe in an intention that you want for your day and breathe out whatever is blocking you from getting it. Stop putting off magic because you don’t have enough time to do something big, the little stuff counts and it adds up to a life that is absolutely filled with magic!

2. Learn something brand new

Sometimes, our separation from magic is due to getting bored with our normal practice. I know, it’s practically sacrilege to say that magic can be boring but if you’re stuck doing the same routine over and over and over, trust me, it can lose that magical spark real quick. If boredom is what’s stopping you from practicing witchcraft, shake things up a bit! Go out and learn something totally new, whether that’s sigils magic, a new form of divination, or a technique you’ve never tried before, get out of your comfort zone and find something that makes you feel excited about your practice again!

3. Hang out with a witchy friend

If you’re just feeling uninspired about your craft, sometimes it can take a little bit of an outside nudge to get back into gear. One thing that nobody likes to admit about the craft is that sometimes it can feel really isolating. Chances are, the majority of your friends and family are not witches (if they are I need you to spill the secret to making that happen). This may not seem like such a bad thing at first but eventually, it can really wear on you. The people closest to you don’t share your worldview, your spiritual leanings, and many of them probably don’t even believe magic is real! Having to keep those things to yourself all the time can be incredibly draining and demoralising.

The solution is to make time to get out and be with like-minded people, grab your witchy friends and go grab coffee, loiter in your local metaphysical shop together, or hang out in a plant nursery and gush about how many of those adorable little herb plants you want.

4. No witchy friends? Go make some!

For those of you who are lacking witchy friends of any kind, figuring out where to find witches can be a struggle. Here are a few ways to get out there and start meeting like minded people.

Use meetup.com, search for local groups using terms such as witch, pagan, metaphysical, meditation, shaman, energy, goddess, and magic.

Check out your local metaphysical shop, crystal shop, or boutique herb shop. If they offer classes or social gatherings of any kind, consider attending.

Check out online groups. Facebook is full of pagan groups and if you’re in a very small town, online may be the most accessible way for you to go. Also check out what kinds of groups are present for your area though, many local temples and pagan groups host their meeting info on facebook.

Ask around. Again, hit up those metaphysical shops and ask the people who work there if they know of any groups you could join. The people working in these places are often really plugged into the local community and can help you get a foot in the door.

If it’s safe, talk to your friends and family about it as well. While they may not share your beliefs, they might know someone who does!

5. Pick up one new witchcraft habit

Humans are creatures of habit. The vast majority of our lives are dictated by a complex series of habits that we hardly ever even think about! If you really want to make witchcraft a daily thing, you have to make it a habit.

Habit forming can seem complex if you’re new to it but with a little bit of knowledge about how habits form, it becomes incredibly simple. Habits are made up of 3 key pieces. If you want to establish a new habit, you have to have all 3 pieces in place or the habit won't stick.

#1: The Cue - The cue is what tells your brain it’s time to initiate your new habit. This cue needs to be something you are already doing every day, maybe it’s right after breakfast or your morning shower, maybe you use the moment you get back to your desk after lunch, or maybe you work it into your nightly routine. Whatever you choose as your cue, make sure it’s something you already do every day and make sure that you use the same cue every time.

#2: The Habit - This is the actual habit that you want to create. Whether it’s writing in your journal, meditating for 3 minutes, lighting a candle for your gods, or stirring an intention into your coffee, this is when you want to perform whatever action you’re trying to incorporate into your daily routine.

#3: The Reward - The reward is a crucial step in habit formation! Lack of reward is the primary reason why new habits fail to persist. You absolutely must follow your new habit with something that makes you feel good. Now, for many of you, this reward will be built in. Maybe your reward is the caffeine you get from your now magical coffee, maybe it’s the sense of peace and calm you get from meditating, maybe it’s just the chance to get a moment of quiet in your workday but whatever it is it needs to be consistent. If you’re the kind of person who sometimes feels great after meditation and sometimes doesn’t, then that feeling cannot be your reward! You’ll have to pick something else to reward yourself with. Even if the reward is smiling to yourself and giving yourself a quick “Awesome job!” after completing your new habit, you must find some way to end the habit on a positive note. The last thing to keep in mind, this reward needs to be instantaneous! Don’t reward your habit with the promise of chocolate later in the day, if you want the habit to stick have the chocolate as soon as you’re done.

6. Get out in nature

Sometimes the bustle of life just kind of drowns out the magic. If you’ve ever gotten to the point where you’re so worn thin that you couldn’t have felt the energies necessary to work magic even if you wanted to, you know what I’m talking about. There are times when it feels like that world of magic that we all love so deeply is about a million miles away. When this happens, one of the best ways to reconnect is to get outside. You don’t have to carve out a ton of time to go out and be by yourself in nature, even just 10-15 minutes of walking with a friend in the park can really help to reconnect you to your witchy roots. Get out, experience the raw natural world around you and don’t try to force anything. If all you can do is take a few minutes to appreciate some pretty trees and get moving, that’s plenty. You don’t have to reach a state of ultra-connectedness on this walk, just get out and experience it without needing to rush off somewhere or battling distractions!

7. Spend some time curating witchy music

Music can be an amazing mood modulator. Creating a playlist of nothing but music that makes you feel really witchy can be a great way to jumpstart your witchy mood anytime you want to. It doesn’t have to be stereotypical pagan music, you can skip the Celtic music if it doesn’t make you feel like a witch, and Stevie Nicks does not have to have a place on your playlist unless it makes you feel magical. Personally, I love listening to instrumental guitar music like Chon or putting on some Florence + The Machine. The only thing that you need to take into consideration here is whether or not it makes you feel witchy! Whether it’s rap, top 40’s, or Gregorian chanting, it just needs to get you into a magical mood.

8. Re-read your favourite witchcraft book, or pick up a new one!

When I’m really feeling stuck in my craft this is my go-to. I’m a big reader and find that my moods and interests are often very responsive to what I’m reading at the moment. If you have a favourite witchcraft book that you love, pick it up and re-read it! If you’re not big on re-reading, find something new. It doesn’t have to be a “how to” manual about the craft, choosing fiction, memoirs, or even historical accounts can be so inspiring! Below I’ve listed some of my most recent favourites in case you need a recommendation to get you started.

The Physick Book Of Deliverance Dane by Katherine Howe - This book is a fictional account of a modern day witch discovering her magical heritage. It pulls heavily from pre-modern American witchcraft and is a very fun read for those of you who like witchy fiction.

Witches Of America by Alex Mar - Witches of America is a memoir of the authors exploration of American witchcraft. She explores a myriad of subcultures including Feri, the origins of Wicca, and Thelema all while weaving a compelling narrative of personal growth.

A Great And Terrible Beauty by Libba Bray - The first in a trilogy of novels, this time set in 1895 England. This is a far less traditional approach to fictional magic but the magic, intruige, and danger that underpin the story make it a gripping tale and no less inspiring for the modern day with.

https://thetravelingwitch.com/blog/2018/5/24/8-ideas-to-inspire-your-magic

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avanneman · 5 years

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Ilhan Omar: The strange case of the little girl in the headscarf who noticed that the emperor has no clothes

Oh, Ilhan Omar, what have you done? Yes, speaking the truth in the halls of Congress has always been hazardous to your health, but when little Ilhan, newly elected representative for the fifth district of Minnesota (basically Minneapolis and environs), remarked that “I want to talk about the political influence in this country that says it is okay for people to push for allegiance to a foreign country” (meaning, of course, Israel), the walls of hypocrisy in DC really began to shake and sway.

From my perspective, it’s perfectly okay to “to push for allegiance to a foreign country,” as long as you’re willing to admit that that’s what you’re doing.1 But U.S. Likudists like Bill Kristol and Jennifer Rubin—both of whom I vehemently agree with on some issues—insist that, when it comes to Israel, simply making the charge of “dual loyalty”, as it’s usually framed, is in itself anti-Semitism in its purest and most vicious form. Old-fashioned liberal Jonathan Chait, whom I very often praise, writes furiously that “Ilhan Omar’s smearing of pro-Israel activism as a form of dual loyalty” is evidence that anti-Semitism may rip the Democratic Party apart as it has done to the Labour Party in Great Britain.

But nothing is more obvious that many champions of Israel, both Jewish and non-Jewish (e.g., evangelical Christians), insist that the U.S. has a moral duty to support Israel’s interests as defined by Israel, regardless of this policy’s effects on U.S. interests. On the death of Charles Krauthammer, I wrote a piece remarking on his endless efforts to sabotage and wreck the Democratic Party, for the single sin of less than absolute fealty to Israel—for Charlie, like so many Jewish neocons, was quite “liberal” on most social issues and “really” belonged in the Democratic Party.

Chait’s attempt to make the mere charge of dual loyalty a thoughtcrime, and to argue that any criticism of “pro-Israel activism” equates to a charge of dual loyalty, thus making any criticism of U.S. policy towards Israel a thoughtcrime. reflects the larger agenda of the Israeli lobby to take any rational consideration of the relationship between U.S. and Israeli interests off the table. President Eisenhower’s first secretary of state, John Foster Dulles, that great Presbyterian, intoned that “Israel is a millstone around our necks,” a piece of realpolitik that no politician would dare utter today, but much closer to the truth than the usual proclamations regarding the indissoluble ties that bind our two nations together. We kowtow to the Saudis, who are certainly more obnoxious than the Israelis, but who still hold the power to set the world price for oil. Israel, on the other hand, can do us no such favors, “defending” us against countries who hate us solely because we are allied with Israel. Every recent secretary of state, upon retiring, writes a memoir in which she complains about what a pain in the ass the Israelis were, how they never give and always take. But such statements are never made in office—not, at least, since Secretary of State James Baker, serving under George H. W. Bush, uttered the immortal line “Fuck the Jews. They never vote for us anyway.”

The furor over Omar’s comments, nicely dissected/discussed by the Washington Post’s Paul Waldman, “The dishonest smearing of Ilhan Omar” and New York’s Eric Levitz, “Ilhan Omar Has a Less Bigoted Position on Israel Than Almost All of Her Colleagues”, coincides with another Israeli-related furor, the “Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions” movement, directed against Israel, and the anti-B.D.S. movement, pursued by pro-Israeli groups through state and federal legislation, as well as pressure on universities and colleges. I understand that Omar supports B.D.S., which is not an encouraging sign.

I don’t see the point of singling out Israel for punishment when the U.S. (for example) is surely just as wicked, if not more so. The B.D.S. movement, though not entirely anti-Semitic (it seems), is largely so, and appeals to (some) academic types, particularly in the, uh, “liberal” arts,2 who are discovering that, well, nobody gives a damn about what they have to say any more, so they want to start making a racket about something. What (I suspect) mostly worries pro-Israeli groups is that B.D.S. appeals to frustrated academics desperate to prove that they “care”, particularly if they can do so in a way that offends conventional opinion, but, more importantly, in the arguments that will be/are ensuing over B.D.S., publicity will be given to the many less than savory activities that Israel engages in. Under Benjamin Netanyahu and his merry band of Likudists, Israel has slid steadily towards a deeply conservative, anti-secular culture that is bound to offend any woke folk and could significantly tarnish the Israel brand. And so we see a collision between two groups who both want to significantly stifle free speech. Charming!

Afterwords For decades, Israel’s most fervent supporters—The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), in particular—took it for granted that no one in Washington would dare defy them. Now they are attempting to claw back by force what they lost through vanity. The Washington Post’s David Von Drehle gives a rundown on the many constitutional issues raised by anti-B.D.S. legislation. The New York Times Catie Edmondson explains Republican strategy in crafting pro anti-B.D.S. legislation in Congress as a device to damage Democrats. The American Conservative’s Kelley Beaucar Vlahos provides more background. I have, on numerous occasions, accused right-wing supporters of Israel (basically, the entire Republican Party3) of trying to promote international tensions around the globe in order to convince the American people that we are in a permanent state of international crisis and need every ally we can get (i.e., Israel), while striving to suppress awareness of this fact.

UPDATE The New York Times' Thomas Friedman, in his column today, confirms Omar's unfortunate (unfortunate and amusingly nuanced) embrace of "B.D.S." and offers copious detail on AIPAC's sins. I very largely agree with what Friedman has to say, except for his notion (Friedman is, of course, Jewish) that Israel's existence is justified on the basis of “the right of the Jewish people to build a nation-state in their ancient homeland,” a “right” that I suspect Mr. Friedman does not extend to anyone else—the Algonquins, for example.

Israel is the solution to a Western problem (anti-Semitism) imposed on a non-Western people, a very clumsy one, excusable only on the grounds that no other feasible solution was available. It would have been much better if the U.S. had just accepted all the remaining European Jews into the U.S. after World War II, but unfortunately that was politically impossible. The Zionist movement created by Theodore Herzl that led to the creation of Israel was premised on the need for safety, not a return to the “ancient homeland”—Herzl, a thoroughly secular Jew, did not propose a return to Israel and the "reclaiming" of Jerusalem. European Jews, after all, had thousands of years to go back to their “ancient homeland” and never made the trip. It was only the rampant anti-Semitism of 20th century Europe, British control of the Middle East following World War I, Jewish political influence in Great Britain (and, ultimately, the U.S.), and, finally, the early triumphs of the Zionists in creating Israel in the years following World War II that led to the creation of the myth to which Mr. Friedman now subscribes.

For many years, the Irish Republican Army, a blatantly terrorist group, was openly financed and covertly equipped with arms by supporters in the U.S. in order to murder the soldiers and citizens of Great Britain, our most important ally. This was dual loyalty with a vengeance. Disgracefully, Democrats and Republicans alike looked the other way while a brutal terrorist group operated openly in the U.S. This shameful episode in our history has never given the attention it deserves. We seem to do this a lot. ↩︎

Yes, I am generalizing wildly. So sue me! ↩︎

In a recent piece loudly not lamenting the demise of Bill Kristol’s mouthpiece the Weekly Standard, I said the following: This is not to say that the neocons' pièce de résistance, the invasion of Iraq, was a “Jewish plot” as is absurdly alleged in some places. During the Clinton Administration, the entire Republican Party had become obsessed with taking out Saddam, aka “The Great Satan”, largely because they had nothing better to do. “We need a war,” said Lynne Cheyney famously. The Bush Administration had Saddam in their sights from the get-go, and the unholy trio who made it all happen were the seriously un-Jewish George Bush, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld. Bill Kristol was only the cheerleader—though he did wave his pom-poms with a passion. ↩︎

#Ilhan Omar #Israel #AIPAC #Jonathan Chait #BDS

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crunchyenglish · 7 years

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Angry Lunatic's Scientific Journal of Shit I Made Up. Vol. This One

Feeling uncharacteristically productive today, and my new job is unusually slow. Time for another edition of my extremely occasional series, where I take the bold, dynamic declarations of the internet's lowest life forms and try to hold them up as an actual scientific hypothesis. I also try to learn something, which is usually the easy part given my limited knowledge base and tremendously narrow worldview. And since I'm making pretty liberal use of the word "scientific", here's the usual disclaimer:

I am not, and never have been a scientist. My education is paltry and laughable. Part of the point of this series is that this knowledge is freely available to anyone with an internet connection (which all my targets obviously have) and a desire to learn (which all my targets obviously lack). My only qualifications are a willingness to spend sometime Googling and a desire to showcase the stupidity of others.

Note: A lot of the dumbest discourse on the Internet these days is political in nature. Nothing seems to shut down people's ability to reason and function quite as much as cheering for or against a political party. And that landscape is currently filled bizarre conspiracy theories that are deeply tempting to rebuke or debunk. However, they aren't really in the spirit of this series, and unfortunately politics breeds that stuff because there's a lot of grey area and no source is considered very objective these days. Also, no one following politics has ever learned anything except "we are a fucked up species", and learning is my stated secondary goal.

So, with the housekeeping out of the way, let's get to this issue's hypothesis. This one comes to us from Mathew Shields. From his website, "He is a free- lance researcher and international speaker on the human energy field, paranormal phenomenon and healing techniques to name a few." That's right, it's time for this journal to up its game and beginning analyzing the claims of professional bullshitters. Mat Shields is a top-shelf dickhead with a bunch of suckers following in tow, and this claim in particular stands out as primo material for our little article:

"Negative Ions- the invisible healer.

Negative ions enhance our mood, stimulate our senses, improve appetite and sexual drive, provide relief from hay fever, sinusitis, bronchial asthma, allergies, migraines, even post operative pain and burns. Negative ions stimulate the reticuloendothelial system which is a group of defense cells in our bodies which marshal our resistance to disease. Negative ions promote alpha brain waves and increased brain wave amplitude which results in a higher awareness level. The body is better able to absorb oxygen into the blood cells, oxidize serotonin and filter airborne contaminants."

That's actually just the opening to a much larger article, in which Mat tells people to keep their shower running constantly in their house, since water in motion produces more "negative ions" than standing water. Before I get angry (ok, I admit it, too late) let's take a moment and appreciate this fine, thick slice of bullshit. This really is a master class. You can tell we've moved up to the big leagues here. You can't tweet this level of bullshit. It's got a bunch of impressive sounding words. It's claims are vague and opaque enough to confuse and desirable enough to tempt. Truly splendid bullshit. Now, let's figure out how we're going to take it down.

Negative Ions are a widespread health myth, propagated by all sorts of pseudo-doctor types. Typing "Negative Ions" into Google is going to get you a lot of positive results, and not all on homemade web pages with links to a Zionist World Order Theory in the sidebar. Sites like WebMD, Nutrition Review and other seemingly "reliable" sites have hosted blogs, articles and editorials by all stripes of quacks, most of whom are happy to push this narrative in order to sell you "negative ion generators" or "negative ion bracelets" or some other brand of this particular snake oil. And the health claims are exactly the kind of unspecific promises on which pseudo-science thrives: more energy, better sex drive, clearing up headaches, the works. Let's start with what a "negative ion" is even supposed to be.

An Ion, as you learned for a test and then promptly forgot in school, is an atom or molecule which is carrying a "charge". This charge is either positive or negative, dependent upon the number of electrons versus the number of protons. More electrons creates a net negative charge, fewer creates a net positive charge. The actual term for a negatively charged ion is an anion. This is a clever dodge by the quacks here. If you google "Negative Ions" you get all their bullshit, in no way hampered by any actual science, because people who know what the fuck they're talking about don't use that phrase.

Supposedly, these electron discrepancies are the source of "Negative Ion"'s "healing" powers. The only thing Anions should attract are positively charged ions, called cations. This is simple electromagnetism. Negative attracts positive and repels other negatively charge particles. Arguably, you could say that Anions would also "repel" or push out other Anions, but if that's how they work you wouldn't feel any of their numerously claimed benefits. So, unless positively charged Ions, cations, are constantly draining you of energy, causing you pain, making your dick wilt, and are giving you hay fever, then there's no reason for fucking Anions to have any benefit to you.

And I can even prove cations aren't doing that. Coulomb's law bitches! I could try to stumble through a basic explanation, but for the sake of accuracy, let's just cut and paste this next part:

Coulomb's law states that: The magnitude of the electrostatic force of attraction between two point charges is directly proportional to the product of the magnitudes of charges and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. The force is along the straight line joining them.

Short answer, if for some reason, you had a bunch of positively charged cations clogged up in your body, you would be constantly discharging them anyway. You are constantly coming into contact with Anions, they are exceptionally common. You don't need "constantly splashing water", or a "negative ion generator" whatever the fuck that's supposed to do. Oxygen is a goddamn Anion. Fluoride is an Anion. Chloride is an Anion. Cyanide is a goddamn, fucking Anion.

Ions are everywhere. I mean it, fucking EVERYWHERE. The forming of covalent bonds is the literal building blocks of the entire universe. To somehow suggest that nearly everything in the universe is divided into "neutral atoms", "the good thingys" and the "bad thingys" is fucking infantile nonsense. It's stupid on a level that I can barely comprehend and I once scrolled through Trump's twitter feed for nonsense for another article. If you're having trouble understanding the absolute incoherency of the bullshit here, let me try an example.

Imagine if I told you that all nutrition was categorized in three ways - Solid, Liquid and Jell-O. Now imagine that I also tried to convince you that Liquid was "The Bad One" and tried to sell you a device that turned all liquid food into Jell-O. That's the level of arbitrary crazy we're talking here. The only apparent thing you have to do to convince people to buy your shit is keep the benefits vague and use science-y sounding bullshit like "Negative Ions".

This one was less experimental than some other articles I've written. I didn't cite my sources properly, and I ranted a lot more. That's because I'm starting to think that writing rebuttals and thought experiments is the wrong tact for solving this problem. Maybe you need to already be a trusted quack and then tell people to their face that you simply fooled them and stole their money.

To that end, I'm proud to announce my new product - the Energy Wave Modulator Collar. Simply place it around your neck and let it's natural minerals effortless modulate the alpha waves in your brain and the beta...channels...in your....ehhh, let's say eyes. You'll see results in just a few days, or hours, or weeks. Your headaches will be far less frequent and more manageable. Your energy levels will rise. Your sensation of taste will greatly improve, and everything will smell just slightly like vanilla. You'll gain immunity to bee-stings. Your dick will stay incessantly hard for days at a time. If you don't have a dick your uterus will make friends with you and never hurt ever again out of respect for that one time you came to its birthday party. You will suddenly eat healthier and make better romantic choices. Buy my shit, losers.

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ladystylestores · 4 years

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“Superwoman” Shabnum Sadiq Mourned By Her Family And Community In Slough

Slough Borough Council / PA

The journalists at BuzzFeed News are proud to bring you trustworthy and relevant reporting about the coronavirus. To help keep this news free, become a member and sign up for our newsletter, Outbreak Today.

Shabnum Sadiq was on holiday in Pakistan when she started feeling ill. Thought of by family and friends as a “superwoman” — a 39-year-old mom of five, including quadruplets, who also worked, volunteered for charity, and was an elected local representative — she didn’t think too much of it at first.

She had flown to Pakistan from her home in Slough in the UK and was looking forward to attending a wedding there. But then her condition got worse. She was taken to hospital in Islamabad on March 12, where she tested positive for COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, and was diagnosed with pneumonia. A day later, she was placed on a ventilator, and on April 6 she died from a cardiac arrest.

Her husband Khezran Sadiq only made it back to the UK this week, with flights disrupted because of the virus. He has now been reunited with their children.

“She was an amazing wife, and the best mother you could ever find,” he told BuzzFeed News. But that wasn’t all that kept her busy — she worked, she was involved in local politics, and she did charity work. “She was just in a hurry,” Khezran said. “She was doing anything and everything.”

Khezran said somehow his wife managed to juggle it all, and nobody ever felt like they were being neglected. “She was giving equal time to the house, to the kids, to me, and for the community — she was always there for everybody,” he said. “It’s a big loss for the family and I think is a huge loss for the community as well in Slough.”

While it hurts to talk about his sister, Kamran Sheeraz remembers fondly her big smile and her two dimples. “She was the youngest of four,” he said, “so she was a spoilt child — in a nice way. She used to always get her way. She was our little sister.”

Shabnum had five children of her own, including naturally conceived quadruplets: Shireen, 18, identical twin girls, Maheen and Zareen, and nonidentical twin boys, Haider and Zyan, who are 13.

Supplied

Shabnum Sadiq with her son Zyan

Khezran remembers going for the scan, and the sonographer telling them they were expecting quads.

It was a difficult pregnancy, but she and the babies got through it — which is why Khezran found it so hard when she did not survive COVID-19.

“When she was in hospital for 24 days, I was just thinking in my mind, If she can get through that one, she was worse than this one, having four children at once,” he said.

“In the last three months when she was going to have these quadruplets, she was on crutches and she was in a really nasty state. And I thought, if she can get through that, this is nothing for her. She was really strong, mentally strong and [physically].”

Kamran and his wife were there when the quads were born by C-section. He remembers their arrival as “brilliant” and said Shabnum took it all in stride.

“It was quite lively, trying to change four nappies at one time. It was quite funny,” he said. Like everything she did, he said, she gave her all to being a mum.

“She was a very, very hard worker — whatever she did, she gave it 100%,” he said.

Most recently Shabnum had worked airside for British Airways, and previously had been employed as a financial administrator for a GP practice and at a school. “Wherever she went,” Kamran said, “she made a lot of friends… She made friends and she left her mark.”

Sabia Akram and Shabnum were friends since childhood. They also used to attend the mosque together for Arabic classes. “We saw each other five days a week easily, if not the weekends too,” Akram told BuzzFeed News.

“On sports day, you’d always want to hang out with her and her family because they’d have a massive feast, and you’d always have a great time.”

“Her kind of her signature look was her dimples,” she added. “She was a very smiley, happy person generally, quite warm.”

The pair later lost touch, both got married and had children, but reconnected on Facebook, and Akram, who became a Labour councillor in 2012, encouraged Shabnam to also get involved in politics, where she excelled — and had aspirations of one day running for Parliament.

She was elected to Slough Borough Council on her third try, and in less than four years in office, held a number of official committee positions.

“As [a] politician, she was feisty, she was inquisitive, wasn’t afraid to stand her ground,” Sabia said. “And sometimes, most times, asked challenging and difficult questions. And I guess that sounds pretty obvious if you’re a politician in local government, but actually, once you’re in the reality is somewhat different.

“Particularly in the first term, you know, you’re talking about only being in for just over three years. It’s a difficult world if you’re not used to it.”

“Shabnum was a dedicated councillor and despite only being in her first term, she had made a contribution far beyond the years she’d spent in the council chamber,” councillor James Swindlehurst, leader of the council, said.

“We worked together closely and personally I will miss her very deeply. This is a significant loss for the council and the town, but is nothing compared to the loss her family, close friends, and community are feeling right now.”

One of the most important things Shabnum achieved, Akram said, was serving as an inspiration to other young women from minority communities, and proving to them that there was a place for them in politics.

“Most people, and if you look across the country, most people are retired, white, middle class, so you don’t tend to find women, particularly that come from minority groups that have young families.”

“By taking up the space, just in being, I think it spoke volumes,” Akram added. “She was supporting a lot of young councillors, other women, particularly from BAME communities, because there are so few of us that sometimes you become inspiring in yourself — people look to see actually, we can do that, we could achieve cabinet, we could achieve senior leadership.”

Her ability to do it all is something that friends and family said most defined her.

“She helped a lot of people…as well as running the daily house,” Sheeraz, Shabnum’s brother, said. “She was a superwoman, I’d call her a little superwoman. She was very well organized.”

He said he was proud of all the things his baby sister had achieved by the age of 39. “She was in the prime of her life, really,” he said, “she’d done all the hard work, and it was just being able to see the fruits of her labor, but unfortunately it wasn’t to be.”

Supplied

Hamzah Sheeraz and Shabnum Sadiq

The family did not even find out about a lot of the volunteer work she did until after she died, her nephew Hamzah Sheeraz said: “In all honesty, the charity work all came to light after her passing, and as the saying goes she gave with her right hand and the left hand didn’t know.”

But despite throwing herself into helping her community, she always kept time for her family. Her nephew, a European champion boxer, described his aunt as his “biggest supporter”.

“She was a very hardworking woman who had the community at heart,” he said.

“She brought her children up with true values and morals which is a reflection of herself,” he said. “Family was the most important factor in her life… She was a very well-valued member of our family who will always be dearly missed.”

Kherzan said his wife described him as “her sixth child”, and they will all miss her terribly. “She’d always look after me like a kid,” he said. “She always said to me… ‘I’ve got five of those ones and I’ve got a big boy here as well.’

“I got back here yesterday, to be honest with you, I’m in shock. I don’t know what to do. It just feels like she’s going to walk in any time.”

“I still can’t believe she’s gone,” Sheeraz said. Once he is able to travel again, he plans to fly to Pakistan to visit his sister’s grave. “Once this is over, it would be nice to go there with the kids and pay my final respects to her.”

“You’d never think twice, that I would never see her again. It’s just surreal, to be honest… You just can’t go round when she comes back, say I love her.”

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biofunmy · 4 years

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Here Are The Tech Failures That Defined The Decade

This decade saw the rise of subscription services, Kickstarter-backed gadgets, and radical new ideas that aimed to disrupt every industry on the planet. Risky ventures were commonplace: Building a product from scratch, designing a new business model, and raising money based on faith in some prospective growth or feature were standard-issue — and, under that framework, both tiny startups and tech titans that became victims of their own ambition.

The 2010s saw many tech flops. But what sets these failures apart is that they taught us something about how adept tech companies (and purported “tech companies”) had become at marketing themselves based on an optimistic future — and how much consumers and investors wanted to believe that the promised innovation was real. Here are the defeated ventures that defined the decade.

16. MoviePass (2011–2019)

MoviePass seemed too good to be true because it was too good to be true. Subscribers could watch an IRL movie a day for a month, all for just $9.95, less than the cost of a single ticket. Millions signed up. But the business model didn’t make any sense: MoviePass was forking over full price to theaters, while its moviegoers were paying just a fraction. The deal didn’t last. In 2018, MoviePass said it was hemorrhaging tens of millions of dollars every month in an SEC filing. Plus, theaters, envious of the MoviePass’s success, created their own copycat versions and tacked on extra perks, like popcorn discounts.

In September 2019, the service shut down, but not before a massive data breach of customers’ credit card information. MoviePass, like many other VC-funded startups that focused more on growth than profits, dangled irresistible, subsidized prices in front of consumers. Eventually, someone had to pay full price.

15. First-generation Peloton (2014–2019)

When it first launched in 2014, the internet-connected stationary bike company promised to bring the same community and focus of cult cycling classes like SoulCycle into people’s homes. The original bike cost $1,995, plus a monthly $40 subscription to livestream spin classes, broadcasted from the company’s New York studio, directly to the bike’s screen. Embedded sensors let spinners compare their stats to others’ on a global dashboard displaying the efforts of hundreds of other at-home workout fiends.

Five years later, Peloton’s first fans were in for a surprise. The company announced that it would stop supporting first-generation bikes after updates caused touchscreen performance issues. While all classes would remain accessible, these customers wouldn’t receive any new functionality. The company offered replacement parts for $350, on top of the thousands of dollars already paid, not including the service’s monthly fee. The debacle was a good lesson for all early adopters: Not even luxury gadgets are immune to obsolescence.

Mathew Sumner / Getty Images

Google’s Nexus Q, on display at Google’s Developers Conference in San Francisco, June 27, 2012.

14. Google’s Nexus Q (2012–2013)

During Google’s 2012 developer conference, wingsuit flyers wearing Glass prototypes, the company’s just-unveiled face computer, jumped out of an airship (twice!) and landed on the roof of the convention center, all while connected to a Google Hangout. Attendees were awed. Unfortunately, the spectacle couldn’t assuage the failures of the pricey new gadget, a media streamer called the Nexus Q, Google announced on stage with great fanfare just moments prior. A free Q was given away to every conference attendee.

The Q couldn’t play anything from non-Google services and the video buffering speed was terrible. It was also a $300 bowling ball. The New York Times reviewer said the Nexus Q was “wildly overbuilt” for how few features it had, and the product was canceled indefinitely in January 2013. But Google learned from defeat: The Q laid the groundwork for Google’s much more affordable — and successful — Chromecast.

13. Jawbone UP (2011)

The Jawbone UP was a very simple always-on activity tracker. It was the first to be worn on the wrist (Fitbit’s offerings at the time were limited to clips) and could measure activity, meals, and sleep. To sync the data to your phone, you plug it into your phone’s headphone jack (RIP). It was wonderful and easy to use — until suddenly, after a few weeks, the bands started to die.

And even though bands stopped functioning in droves, Jawbone continued to make them. The company struggled to diagnose the issue and the replacement units broke, too. The user complaints piled up and eventually, several months later, the company paused production and offered a refund to all UP users.

The primary issue wasn’t just that the band was crap — Jawbone’s response was, too. The company first minimized the issue, claiming that only a minority of users experienced malfunctioned (while nearly every gadget review site after a week), then failed to implement a long-term plan, while continuing to ship out shoddy bands.

12. Apple Maps (2012)

Apple decided that it had promoted Google Maps for too long as the iPhone’s default maps apps, and introduced its own, Apple Maps, featuring fancy 3D imagery and “flyovers” in iOS 6. The app was built entirely from the ground up, and the launch was a disaster. Some bridges were warbled. London looked like SimCity 2000. A farm was incorrectly labeled as an airport. Directions that led people over train tracks. Directions that required long-distance swimming.

The snafu was so bad that CEO Tim Cook was forced to issue a rare apology for Apple Maps’ shortcomings and pointed customers to alternatives while the company’s app was under construction. “We are doing everything we can to make Maps better,” Cook wrote.

Apple Maps isn’t totally terrible anymore. It has transit directions now. It promises to keep your whereabouts private unlike that other maps app. But a lot of folks were traumatized by AppleMapsgate 2012 and, when they need to figure out how to get somewhere, they go straight to Google.

Zbigniew Bzdak/Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service via Getty Images

The remains of Shanna Abraham’s, 13, hoverboard at home in Orland Park, Illinois, Feb. 15, 2016. The hoverboard exploded over the weekend while charging, causing minor damage to her family’s home.

11. Flammable Hoverboards (2015–2016)

The hoverboard, a two-wheeled, self-balancing personal vehicle, took over sidewalks in 2015. Every YouTube and Vine (RIP) influencer was crazy about them. A video of dudes dancing to Justin Bieber on hoverboards got millions of views. Rapper Wiz Khalifa was arrested for riding one in the airport. It was an epidemic, that started with two warring hoverboard makers, IO Hawk and Hovertrax, and snowballed thanks to the millions of Chinese copycats that rushed to market.

That’s until the transports started bursting into flames, causing multiple homes to burn down. One fire claimed the lives of two young girls. The Consumer Product Safety Commission issued a stern safety warning and recalled over 500,000 units. The board’s popularity has waned, but old two-wheelers continue to cause damage, as recently as October 2019. The ultimate takeaway from the board catastrophe is an important one: Lithium-ion batteries are dangerous and cheap, low-cost ones especially so.

10. Smart cards: Coin, Plastc (2014–2017)

“Smart” cards promised to slim down bulky wallets by combining multiple credit cards into one single piece of plastic. People loved the idea. At launch, Coin offered its smart card for $50 for those willing to preorder and wait. It hit its $50,000 funding goal in 47 minutes and sold 20,000 units within the first five hours. Plastc, a competitor, raised over $9 million through preorders.

Neither the hype nor the capital from backers was enough to get the products off the ground. Coin recipients had trouble swiping the card. Moreover, the card didn’t have a chip required at most point-of-sale terminals. Plastc never even shipped its hardware. In 2017, the startup announced that it was shutting down, and being acquired by Edge, a fintech company working on yet another smart card. Edge offered Plastc and Coin backers a discount to preorder its upcoming product. Two years later, the “Edge Card” still hasn’t launched.

The smart card’s demise wasn’t completely the startups’ fault. Mobile payment wallets, like Google Wallet and Apple Pay, would later take over, consolidating credit and loyalty cards onto the gadget already in our pockets.

9. Amazon Fire Phone (2014–2015)

The smartphone is the most influential gadget of the decade and, in 2014, Amazon wanted in.

The company had already made popular gadgets: the Kindle e-reader and Fire TV media streamer. Why not a smartphone? CEO Jeff Bezos introduced the Fire phone in June 2014. Its standout feature was a 3D- and gesture-based interface that showed different content onscreen based on tilts and the position of your face.

While the Fire Phone was great for buying things on Amazon, it was awful at being a smartphone. It couldn’t install any Google apps (even though it was technically an Android phone) and the gimmicky sensor-based navigation was deeply confusing. Amazon announced it would stop selling the phone in September 2015, the same day Apple unveiled its new iPhone at the company’s annual fall hardware event. The company didn’t need a smartphone, anyway — it would go on to expand its online retail, cloud computing, and logistics empires, currently worth over $800 billion.

Sopa Images / Getty Images

8. Cryptocurrency (2017–2018)

Bitcoin, the Internet’s first cryptocurrency, was hyped as the first currency that could be exchanged digitally, without the backing of any government, built on something called the blockchain. In late 2016, the price of Bitcoin started to grow, and grow, and grow. In June of that year, it was valued at over $2,900, marking a 500-fold increase over five years, and then briefly peaked at $19,511 in December. Profiteers rushed to acquire coins from dozens of different cryptocurrencies.

The bubble, which also saw the rise of other cryptocurrencies like Ethereum, minted overnight billionaires. Investors and opportunists rushed to buy crypto. Early Bitcoin holders who lost their passwords were devastated to forfeit tens of thousands of dollars worth of the currency.

After that December 2017 peak, a crash ensued. Economists Joseph Stiglitz and Paul Krugman called the craze a “bubble.” Researchers said the computer power needed to mine it was bad for the environment, too. Plus, the crypto economy was ripe for fraud. Scammers disseminated fake news to manipulate the price of their holdings. There were a number of pump-and-dump schemes. Evidently, Bitcoin’s radical idea — a decentralized money built with a brand-new technology — was still prone to all the problems of a traditional currency.

7. Facebook (2004–ongoing)

You know, Facebook. The one that singlehandedly exposed the personal data of over 80 million people, disseminated more fake news than real news leading up to the election of President Donald Trump, and tanked traffic to news sites, thanks to its massive influence over the media industry. Among other things.

6. Coolest Cooler (2014–2019)

The Coolest Cooler, a $185 do-everything “portable party” accessor, included a blender, wireless speakers, a USB charger, and a bottle opener, among other impressive features. The product is the second-highest-grossing on Kickstarter, with over $13 million in funding from 62,000 backers, slated to receive the coolers in February 2015.

That date was pushed to July 2015, then 2016. Nearly 20,000 people still hadn’t received their product, prompting an investigation from the Oregon Department of Justice and a settlement with the agency in 2017. Coolest never shipped those orders and shuttered operations in December 2019. CEO Ryan Grepper said that customers could claim $20 of the $200 originally paid to the company.

People were convinced that the cooler really could do it all. But Coolest, like many Kickstarter projects, promised too much, and couldn’t do the one thing it was supposed to: ship something — anything — to those that believed in them.

5. Samsung Galaxy Note 7 (2017)

The Galaxy Note 7 was one of 2017’s most well-reviewed phones. Reviewers called it the “best” and “beautiful.” That is, until, devices started catching fire. Like the cheap, flammable hoverboards, lithium-ion batteries were to blame for the Note 7’s downfall. The difference was that the Note 7 was made by Samsung, one of the biggest battery manufacturers in the world.

The company was not typically associated with low-cost, low-quality components — it’s even a supplier for Apple’s iPhone. So when the batteries in Note 7 phones started exploding in planes, cars, and homes, longtime Samsung loyalists were surprised. Samsung cited poor production quality and uneven, or even missing, insulation tape as the reason. Then the replacement devices started exploding too. Two months after its launch, the Galaxy Note 7 was “permanently discontinued.”

Samsung’s reputation plunged after the recall fiasco, showing that a company’s image is defined by how it handles crises.

Afp Contributor / Getty Images

Senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing at Apple Philip Schiller introduces AirPower, a wireless charging system, during a media event at Apple’s new headquarters in Cupertino, California, Sept. 12, 2017.

4. Apple AirPower (2018–2019)

The iPhone 8, introduced in 2017, was just an incremental update over its predecessor — except for one thing: a new glass back to accommodate wireless charging. Alongside the phone, Apple VP Phil Schiller also unveiled an unanticipated device, AirPower, a charging mat designed to power an iPhone, Apple Watch, and AirPods simultaneously, without cables. “Our team wants to make something I think all of us are going to want to use, and it might actually help move the entire industry forward,” Schiller said on stage.

“This is not possible with current standards,” he continued. “But our team knows how to do this.”

The AirPower was due “next year” — but 2018 came and went. Then in late March 2019, the company made a shocking statement: The AirPower was canceled. Many had just purchased a $79 AirPods wireless charging case, which was introduced the week before the cancellation and included a direct reference to AirPower, in anticipation of the mat.

Apple had delayed products and software features before, but it was the first time it had outright failed to deliver a promised, already announced product. In a statement, Dan Riccio, Apple’s senior vice president of hardware said, “After much effort, we’ve concluded AirPower will not achieve our high standards.” Some pointed to the multi-coil design, which was rumored to overheat. The whole thing was an embarrassing blunder for Apple, and sad for the rest of us who want to charge all the things without dealing with multiple stations or fraying Lightning cables once and for all.

3. Juicero (2016–2017)

Juicero was an extravagant Internet-connected $700 juicer (later lowered to just $400) that required proprietary produce packs sold separately through a subscription or at grocery stores like Whole Foods. The company raised $120 million in venture capital from firms such as Kleiner Perkins and Alphabet, the parent company of Google. David Krane, a partner at Google Ventures, said, “It’s the most complicated business I’ve ever funded.”

In April 2017, Bloomberg News published a video showing how the packs of pre-pulped fruits and vegetables could be squeezed by hand, rendering the pricey machine obsolete. Juicero’s CEO Jeff Dunn vigorously criticized the hack as “messy” and “mediocre.” But the damage had been done — the Wi-Fi juicer, already mocked for its price, became the poster child for Silicon Valley stupidity.

Investors were duped into pouring millions into an over-engineered machine. Add that to the fact that the product’s audience was essentially the tech elite — wealthy health nuts — and Juicero had created the perfect storm: a classic example of Silicon Valley creating tools for itself and “fixing” a problem that didn’t require a tech solution in the first place. Eat a peach.

2. WeWork (2010–2019)

Adam Neumann, the founder and CEO of WeWork, a commercial real estate and shared workspace company, charmed investors for the entire decade before meeting his day of reckoning earlier this year. Neumann used documents featuring sky-high projections to convince SoftBank and others that WeWork was not merely a real estate company, but a technology platform like Uber and Airbnb, and, most importantly, worth billions. The entrepreneur continued to raise capital despite a series of questionable moves, including illegally transporting weed on a private jet and acquiring the trademark for “We” and forcing WeWork to buy it for $5.9 million.

That is, until WeWork’s value plummeted 80%, from $47 billion to $8 billion earlier this year. The company nearly ran out of cash. Neumann stepped down as CEO in September 2019, and WeWork laid off 2,400 employees in November 2019. WeWork’s fall, detailed by the Wall Street Journal, was emblematic of both the boom-and-bust startup cycle and investors’ susceptibility to charismatic, larger-than-life male founders.

1. Theranos (2003–2018)

Theranos’s founder, Elizabeth Holmes, dropped out of Stanford at 19 to work on a blood-testing product that she claimed would revolutionize medicine. Theranos’s special machine, called the miniLab, could run hundreds of tests with just a few drops of blood. It could allegedly detect viruses like Zika and perform routine tests, like blood glucose measurement. It was also faster, cheaper, and more accurate than existing lab equipment, Holmes said. This was the first of many untruths the CEO told throughout the decade.

Michael Kovac / Getty Images

Marc Ostrofsky (left) and Theranos Founder and C.E.O. Elizabeth Holmes attend the Vanity Fair New Establishment Summit cocktail party in San Francisco, Oct.6, 2015.

The hype surrounding Theranos’s technology was boosted by magazine covers for Forbes, New York Times Style, and Inc. featuring Holmes as an innovator and self-made billionaire. Theranos at its peak was once valued at $9 billion.

But it was all built on a lie. According to a complaint filed by the Securities Exchange Commission, the founder faked demonstrations for Walgreens executives by testing blood on outside equipment instead of its own before securing a contract with the pharmacy chain, lying that Theranos technology had been used by the military in the battlefield (it hadn’t), and telling investors that the machine didn’t need FDA approval (it did). The miniLab also produced faulty results for patients in Arizona, where one woman was sent to an emergency room after inaccurate tests showed signs of an imminent stroke.

Holmes might have escaped scrutiny if not for reporter John Carreyou of the Wall Street Journal, who published a series of stories that led to the company’s collapse. In June 2018, Holmes was indicted for wire fraud and conspiracy. The trial is set to begin in August 2020.

Theranos is a cautionary tale about companies built on the promise of a future technology, and the great lengths to which their overzealous founders will go to convince investors — and themselves — of that destiny.

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lanceprance-blog · 5 years

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Ten Features Of SEO 2019 That Make Everyone Love It

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In truth, this is area of the SEO technique we have used to gradually grow our organic traffic throughout the last 12 months right here at SnapApp: #3. Mobile will certainly account for 72% of ALL OF US digital ad spend by 2019. This workshop is usually designed to help business proprietors implement Digital Marketing techniques regarding their business including social press, organic SEO as well since paid channels. The Beginner's Guide in order to SEO continues to be examine over 3 million times plus offers comprehensive information you require to get on the road to professional quality Search Motor Optimization, or SEO. Whether it's using web analytics for carrying out research or even conversion tools that monitor plus report the usage of essential keywords, SEO agencies know just how and where you can obtain the information they need in order to save time furthermore lessen your in-house price. Right now there is probably no more fundamental strategy for SEO than the particular integration of internal links in to your site - it is definitely an easy way to improve traffic to individual pages, SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION Consult says. SEO SERVICES Generally there are a number of SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION services which can help enhance the organic search engine ratings of a website. Over the particular last 20 years SocialSEO provides grown to be the biggest full digital marketing firm within the state of Colorado, supplying Social Media, Pay Per Click on and SEO in Denver, Co Springs, Boulder and across the particular State. Lastly, Amazon will dominate ecommerce queries in 2018 via Alexa voice, touch, as well as other innovative interfaces, leaving many e-commerce SEOs in order to focus in on the content-side of their marketing. If you could use thirty times more chances for website traffic, three times better outcomes than social, and returns upon investment that will only enhance over time, SEO must become a priority. Since artificial intelligence search motor optimization is in its preliminary stage, the impact of synthetic intelligence in marketing is heading to be felt in 2019 and 2020. So regional businesses have to put exclusive effort into maximizing their SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION efforts for local visibility, which usually means doing things like customizing their Google Places pages. All these types of steps are used by the particular company to provide the greatest search engine optimization services in order to its clients in Thailand, below the Thailand SEO concept. Keywords and phrases, whilst not being as important to be able to SEO ranking as they when were, still play a significant position. •Social Mass media Optimization - SEO services make use of various means of social mass media optimization for clients. Lots of people are usually now asking, How will AI and Voice Search impact SEO”?

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hollywoodjuliorivas · 6 years

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The independent evaluations of the Trump tax plan have been rough. They show a plan that deeply cuts taxes on the wealthy, causes the deficit to jump and does little to lift economic growth. Yet the plan’s defenders continue to describe it as a “beautiful” thing (President Trump’s word) that would transform the economy and bestow gifts on ordinary Americans. How do they keep making these claims? I count four major tactics that they’re using: 1. Describe the benefits of a different tax plan — and make it sound as if they’re talking about this one. A group of longtime Republican economists took this approach in a long open letter, published yesterday by The Wall Street Journal. It’s titled “How Tax Reform Will Lift the Economy,” which sure sounds like an article praising the current plan before the Senate. But it actually describes a very different plan, a “revenue-neutral” plan that would offset its corporate tax cuts with fewer corporate loopholes. The Senate bill is radically different from this imaginary plan the economists are praising. Instead of being revenue neutral — technical talk for a bill that neither grows nor shrinks the deficit — the Senate plan would increase the deficit by more than $1 trillion over its first decade. Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT Continue reading the main story The open letter is just one example of this deception. The bill’s defenders frequently say some version of, “We need tax reform.” But their plan bears little resemblance to meaningful tax reform. It’s akin to telling someone, “You need a new car,” and then giving the person a lemon. (For those who want more detail on the open letter, Jason Furman walks through its distortions in more detail.) 2. Talk about the plan’s middle-class tax cuts — and ignore the middle-class tax increases. The plan is a windfall for the wealthy, but it’s quite mixed for the middle class and poor. Some provisions raise taxes on the middle class and poor. Others cut taxes. Long term, most families would probably be worse off, as I’ve explained before. One favorite sleight of hand from the plan’s supporters is to talk only about the provisions that help the middle class and conveniently fail to mention the other parts. Take Senator Rob Portman, the Ohio Republican, who went on “Meet the Press” this weekend to sell the bill. “The middle class tax cuts are in there,” Portman said. “It doubles the standard deduction up to 24 grand for a family. It doubles the child tax credit. It actually — it lowers the rates.” All that is true. Unfortunately, Senator Portman left out the elimination of the personal exemption, which protects $4,000 per person from income taxes. He left out the elimination of various tax breaks that help the middle class. And he left out the introduction of a new inflation measure that will push more families into higher tax brackets over time. Newsletter Sign UpContinue reading the main story Sign Up for the Opinion Today Newsletter Every weekday, get thought-provoking commentary from Op-Ed columnists, the Times editorial board and contributing writers from around the world. Sign Up You agree to receive occasional updates and special offers for The New York Times's products and services. SEE SAMPLE MANAGE EMAIL PREFERENCES PRIVACY POLICY OPT OUT OR CONTACT US ANYTIME 3. Pretend that the future will never arrive. To hold down the estimated cost of the bill, Senate leaders have set some of its biggest provisions — the ones that most benefit the middle class — to expire over the next decade. The corporate tax cuts, by contrast, are permanent. ADVERTISEMENT Continue reading the main story But when the plan’s defenders describe the bill, they tend to be talking about a point before the bill is fully implemented — without admitting as much. If you hear a senator talking about a $1,000 tax cut that a typical middle-class family would receive, it’s in one of the plan’s early years. (If you hear a senator talking about a bigger tax cut, as Portman and many others do, they’re usually talking about the upper middle class or affluent without saying so.) By the time the bill is fully implemented, it will be a net tax increase on every income group below $75,000 a year. It will also leave federal taxes virtually unchanged for families making between $75,000 and $100,000. For the wealthy, it’s still a tax cut. And all of these estimates understate the long-term damage to the middle class, because they ignore the cuts to education, transportation, Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security that will eventually be necessary to reduce the deficit. 4. Rush, rush, rush. Perhaps the biggest giveaway about the plan is the way that its supporters are trying to push it through Congress as quickly as possible. They’re not holding hearings where experts can debate the content of the plan. They are not even waiting for a final analysis from Congress’s official tax arbiter, the Joint Committee on Taxation. They understand that facts and debate hurt their cause. They are hoping that partisan loyalty is strong enough to overcome substance. Related. “If the tax bill is so great,” Catherine Rampell asked in a recent Washington Post column, “why does the GOP keep lying about it?” “Why would anyone write a bill full of provisions that evaporate over time?” Paul Krugman asks. “There’s no economic or policy logic behind it. Instead, it’s all about trying to have it both ways, making a safe space for political double talk.” ADVERTISEMENT Continue reading the main story Poll after poll has shown that the tax plan is deeply unpopular, typically with a national approval rating around 30 percent. Three new polls show that the plan is similarly unpopular in Arizona, Maine and Tennessee, three states with swing-vote senators. In fact, it’s not clear any piece of legislation so unpopular has ever before become law, as Seth Hanlon notes. The failed Roy Moore scam. A conservative group tried to entrap some Washington Post reporters while peddling a fake story about Roy Moore, the Alabama Senate candidate with a history of pursuing teenage girls. The scam failed, and you can watch it fail on video. In The Times, Bari Weiss argues that the incident is a reminder of the limits of “believe all women.”

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calculatemygrade-blog · 7 years

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test grade calculator percentage

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biofunmy · 5 years

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Federal Agencies Thought Stories From A White Nationalist Site Were Necessary Reading For Employees

Leah Millis / Reuters

U.S. Attorney General William Barr

An arm of the Justice Department regularly sent summaries and links to articles from an online white nationalist publication over the last year, a BuzzFeed News investigation has found. In addition, similar newsletters sent to the Labor Department, ICE, HUD, and the Department of Homeland Security included links and content from hyperpartisan and conspiracy-oriented publishers.

In daily bulletins about media coverage for the department’s Executive Office for Immigration Review, which runs the nation’s immigration courts, a government contractor sometimes included links to VDare, an anti-Semitic and racist site whose editor has claimed that American culture is under threat from nonwhite peoples. That contractor, a Dade City, Florida–based company called TechMIS, also compiles newsletters for other agencies, including the Department of Labor, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and the Office of Housing and Urban Development.

While these newsletters typically shared articles from local and mainstream national news outlets — including BuzzFeed News — they also regularly delivered content from partisan publications touting anti-immigration rhetoric and conspiracy theories. Among these publications: the Western Journal, a hyperpartisan publisher whose founder once questioned if then-presidential candidate Barack Obama was Muslim, and the Epoch Times, a newspaper associated with the Chinese Falun Gong movement and whose related media properties have backed QAnon, a conspiracy theory claiming a group of high-ranking officials known as the “Deep State” is subverting President Donald Trump’s goals.

On Thursday, BuzzFeed News reported that an immigration judges union sent a letter of complaint to EOIR for its inclusion in an August newsletter of a VDare blog post that attacked its members with anti-Semitic slurs. After publication of that story, an EOIR press secretary said that the Department of Justice “condemns Anti-Semitism in the strongest terms” and that the post should not have been included. A former senior DOJ official said that the email in question was “generated by a third-party vendor that utilizes keyword searches to produce news clippings for staff. It is not reviewed or approved by staff before it is transmitted.”

“That’s absolutely incorrect,” said TechMIS CEO Steven Mains, adding that EOIR was the most specific and particular of the company’s clients. The agency’s staff would review its work “down to misspellings” if there was anything wrong before sending, he said.

A cursory review of EOIR newsletters by BuzzFeed News found two more mentions of VDare articles; Mains confirmed those and noted there were four others, saying that VDare had been included on seven occasions out of about 20,000 links and articles sent from September 2018, when TechMIS’s relationship with the organization began.

“These discoveries are deeply disturbing,” said Becca Lewis, a research affiliate at Data & Society, who studies online radicalization. “Unfortunately, they mark a continuation of a long history in which government agencies, and particularly law enforcement agencies, have promoted and enforced white supremacist and racist agendas. This also unfortunately shows that many white supremacist and far-right publications that seem to be on the ‘fringes’ of society actually have huge mainstream influence and impact.”

“Many white supremacist and far-right publications that seem to be on the ‘fringes’ of society actually have huge mainstream influence and impact.”

On Friday afternoon, immigration court employees were informed that they would no longer receive the briefing and were told to subscribe to a DOJ-wide briefing if they were interested. This instruction was sent hours after BuzzFeed News reached out to DOJ officials for comment on the discovery of the additional VDare links.

“After review of our daily news aggregation emails, we have determined that the sampling was over inclusive and contained non-news sources,” EOIR spokesperson Kathryn Mattingly said in a statement. “EOIR will no longer be distributing a daily news briefing to its staff. EOIR strongly condemns anti-Semitism and white nationalism. Those hateful beliefs do not reflect the views of EOIR employees and the Department of Justice.”

She aded that EOIR would not be renewing its contract with TechMIS.

One immigration court employee told BuzzFeed News they perceived a shift in the news sources included in their emailed media briefings after Trump took office.

“It shows an increasing effort to politically charge the perspective of immigration judges who are being tasked with being neutral judges who apply the law,” said the employee, who was not authorized to speak on the matter publicly. “The administration has been taking steps to make the court a political weapon in various ways, some big, some small, this is just one example.”

BuzzFeed News found that the Department of Labor also linked to VDare in a February 2017 newsletter. Daily bulletins for EOIR, the Labor Department, ICE, HUD, and the Department of Homeland Security included links from the Western Journal and Epoch Times. Links to the New American — the magazine of the John Birch Society, a far-right group that pushed conspiracy theories that Obama wasn’t born in the US — were also in some of those newsletters.

Mains said that TechMIS uses a combination of automated systems and human editors to find stories around certain keywords that are relevant to each agency. He noted that his company was “not chartered in any way to censor the news” and had not heard of VDare until Thursday when he was asked by EOIR to no longer include the white nationalist site on digests moving forward.

“We presented the news — the entire universe of news,” he told BuzzFeed News on Friday. “Including a link did not mean there was in any way an endorsement of anything that was in there. There was stuff from the left, far left, right, far right.”

Among other publications included in the newsletters were the Washington Post, New York Times, HuffPost, the Intercept, Fox News, Breitbart News, Daily Caller, and Daily Wire. Of the fringe and conspiracy sites, the Epoch Times was by far cited the most number of times. BuzzFeed News found citations of the publication in more than 120 EOIR newsletters.

TechMIS / Via TechMIS

An EOIR newsletter from July 24 included this summary and link to a VDare post. The linked story includes a mention of a “zerg rush” of immigrants coming across the border.

In one VDare post sent to EOIR employees in July, a blogger wrote that the “deep state” had scuttled previous efforts to enforce fast-track deportations. The post includes a mention of a “zerg rush” of immigrants coming across the border.

“We will see if Kevin McAleenan will implement this expansion. I think not. Sabotage is his specialty,” the piece concludes. The sentence links to posts about McAleenan that feature anti-trans comments about the acting DHS secretary, describing him as a “Ladyboy DACA, #DeepState operative” and “Tranny Kirstjen Nielsen,” a derogatory reference to the recently departed Homeland secretary.

In a story posted on New American and circulated to ICE staffers earlier this month, an author references an “invasion” of immigrants at the border. “Border patrol officials have said as much for months, but House and Senate Democrats, who hope to keep illegals coming in to swell the ranks of the party, have ignored them,” the post read.

Shawn Neudauer, a spokesperson for ICE, said the agency sends the clippings to a subset of its employees. The news briefing is delivered through an email service to the employees after the agency receives the brief from the contractor. He said the agency scans the briefings, which also include links to mainstream news outlets, as a way to understand how they are being written about online.

“Most federal agencies monitor news and clipping services capture headlines from web-published stories,” he said in an email. “It says absolutely nothing about the value of the material received — only noting whatever source said whatever ‘thing’ — which happens to be fairly useful in combating false narratives about the critical work our special agents and officers do every day.”

When asked about publications including the Epoch Times, the New American, and the Western Journal, Mains said he had never heard of or read them. TechMIS, he said, had been working with government agencies since 2012, and while most newsletters are sent to agencies without review, the EOIR staff is more “hands on” than the rest.

“We’re here to react to the needs of the government,” Mains added.

In April, a VDare story about the “border asylum crisis” found its way into the EOIR newsletter. Railing on the current state of the practice of asylum in the US, it also excerpted part of another article that mentioned the “deep state” for open borders.

“Like I say, I hope somebody in the administration is reading this,” the author wrote.

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