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noirflms · 10 months

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୧ ˚₊ FINDING — gojo satoru

finding out that you never liked him at first was pretty devastating.

“ what do you mean you never liked me before?! ”

what satoru has heard and seen is horrifying to him , it is devastating to know that the person you have always liked and loved since day one , never liked you back when you first met. he is in turmoil upon finding this through a old diary of yours , one you made in high school trying to portray as the main character with a journal of sorts but oh god that diary was such an embarrassment to your name.

“ where did you get to know that from? ” you’re surprised at his statement and finding , your now boyfriend-turned-fiancé is asking about something that had happened several years ago , that you do not even care about.

it is then he pulls out your old diary , one getting dusty while sitting in the attic of your shared home , the brown cover looks rugged and dirty , handwriting hard to make out but your fiancé did and that was surprising as he never understood what you wrote most of the times.

“ so it is true, that you never liked me before. ” his bottom lip is jutted out into a pout , his cerulean eyes look into yours and you sigh , finally the secret of yours is out and about.

“ well…i did think you were a nuisance before. ” and if finding out you never liked him before was devastating to him then hearing you say this was much more heartbreaking for him. he let’s out a dramatic gasp upon hearing this , finding out that the love of his life thought of him as a nuisance , as an irritating person. “ but that was years ago , toru. ”

“ but i liked you since the day i saw you , how was i supposed to comprehend such a thing. ”

and the world of yours halts for a moment , it comes to complete stationary speed , unmoving as you look at your pouting fiancé , his shiny eyes look into yours and you sigh for the umpteenth time today , and in your mind you are battling a smirking shoko who made a bet with you on how satoru liked you way longer than you ever did and she was correct.

“ i’m sorry , my love. but everyone told me you were such a womaniser. ” and now mentally you have gojo satoru on a stand still , his mind and body totally destroyed upon hearing this , and you are well to the way he dramatically falls to the ground , your diary in hand as he look at the ground shocked at another new finding.

“ now who told you that!? ” he has lost this war now , finding so much in one day was not his plan , all he ever wanted was to go through your stupid diary and find material on blackmailing you and teasing you but instead he has found so much that he seems to be having his world being torn to pieces.

“ and i didn’t know you liked me this long. ” and satoru deflates at these words , rewinding almost all the times with you and thinking where he was not as obvious as he was towards his feelings for you. “ but yeah , should have guessed , you were pretty obvious after all. ”

and it ensued a dramatic and pouting gojo satoru to go on about how you should have loved him before and all that , to screaming about the person who told you that he was a womaniser — it was shoko herself — and to hugging you as tight as possible as you consoled him with kisses and assuring words of ‘ i love you toru , you mean the world to me. ’

sometimes finding’s don’t always lead to good ends they end up opening pandora’s box , secrets long held spilled and let out , and gojo satoru has finally realised that finding anything to tease you upon will be hard , for you have so much that he still has to find.

young gojo is the meta.

#౨ৎ ⋆˚｡⋆ 𝒔.tamped #he is a nuisance and he forever will be. bet.#jujutsu kaisen #jujutsu kaisen x reader #gojo satoru #gojo satoru x reader #gojo fluff #gojo x reader #jjk gojo #sorcery fight #x reader #gojo satoru x you #gojo x y/n #gojo fanfic #gojo drabbles #jjk x reader #jjk gojo satoru

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zutaramonth · 27 days

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Zutara month 2024 Prompts

Reluctant Allies

Diary/Journal

Meet Ugly/Cute

Ashes

Katara kept her scars

Sun Warrior Zuko

Divine Intervention

Actors AU

“You’re Married?!”

Secret

“Mom & Dad are fighting again”

Kiss at Midnight

Breakup/Exes

Exposed

Scarf

Injury Recovery

Reality TV AU

Alter-egos

Rumors

Accidental Kissing

Wrong Blind Dates

Disaster

No War AU

“I wanted to, but…”

First Responders AU

Drunk

“Shall we?”

Rival School Teachers AU

Brightest in the Dark

Time Loop/Time Travel

Reincarnation

Due to the high number of similar prompts that were voted for and for the sake of variety, some prompts have been modified to be more inclusive.

Special thanks to @origo-tentaculum for the graphic

#zutara month 2024

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apricitystudies · 4 months

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what i read in 2023: best of

(full monthly lists) bold = favourite, * = interactive

investigative & longform journalism

shadow diplomats

the deputy and the disappeared* (usa)

adrift*

catching the men who sell subway groping videos (japan)

inside the secretive world of penile enlargement

have assisted dying laws gone too far? (canada)

the journalist and the pharma bro

raising the dead (south africa)

crime & justice

crime of the centuries

the indonesian children australia sent to adult jails for years*

the mercy workers (usa)

the occupation of water (palestine)

a hidden universe of suffering (palestine)

history

from mind control to murder

singapore's prison without walls made the world sit up in 1960s. how did it fall apart?* (interactive journey here)

the horrors of pompeii

blood on his hands* (cambodia)

culture & essays

quantum poetics

honey, i sold the kids

how to wash your hands in a war zone (colombia)

the strangely beautiful experience of google reviews

"blurred lines", harbinger of doom

the teacher crush

what kind of future does de-extinction promise?

#studyblr #studyspo #student #academia #university #literature #productivity #long reads #knife gang #myresources

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age-of-moonknight · 2 years

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Moon Knight Ladies (Adjacent???)

Baroness Khonshu of Earth-51910

She's a tyrant who enslaves mutants and turns people into werewolves, but dang, look at this design.

(Secret Wars Journal #1)

This iteration of Khonshu was created by Matthew Rosenberg and Luca Pizzari and appears in Secret Wars (Vol. 2/2015), #2 and #6, as well as Secret Wars Journal (Vol. 1/2015), #1.

Honestly there's not much to say, except she's as criminally condescending as 616!Khonshu and carries out the sort of vision that probably would have been the end result of the "Age of Khonshu." But again...she’s got some cool looks.

[Secret Wars (Vol. 2/2015) #2]

#Marvel #Marvel comics #Marvel 51910 #Secret Wars #Secret Wars 2015 #Secret Wars Journal #Moon Knight comics #Khonshu #Moon Knight Ladies #please don't ask me what happened during this event; this is my second time briefly visiting it and I'm still not entirely sure hahaha #there's a raft???? Sue Storm deserves better????#all I know for sure is that I wish 1610!Reed Richards would come with a jumpscare warning #and that countless realities may or may not have been saved by two Spider-Men and one 3-week old burger

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heliiacus · 2 months

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to traverse this with you

tags: armin x reader, forced proximity, one bed (technically), reader is cold, armin is dreadfully concerned, reader uses she/her pronouns

warnings: none!

words: 1.4k | masterlist

They used to love one another, long ago. Not loudly, nor ferociously, or even in a way that the other knew about, but they did. She knows that now. It could have stayed simple. They could have stayed apart. It has been years since she's been deployed to Marley, to live and work under a secret identity; and grieve as she may have for him, she could have lived with it. She really could have. They could have stayed star-crossed, torn away by war, but things just had to get difficult. Now, with tensions rising, she is forced to relocate – to trek through the lone mountains in the desolate Marleyan wilderness, in an attempt to clandestinely reach a port outside Liberio. And in another world it would have, perhaps, been a task of a casual undertaking. It could have been simple. Were it not for him, by her side: the man she has grieved for this entire time. Were it not for this one simple, stupid mistake.

She didn't pack slow enough. That's the truth. There was no time. He'd stood by her door then, face pale and stricken, fists trembling at his sides, and he'd told her they were leaving; he'd told her they were leaving now.

She did not think. The man stood straight on the step of her door, one hand digging into the wood of its frame, and her feet worked faster than her mind did. She grabbed the things most important to her then. Her journal, the photographs tucked tightly into the worn sleeve. Razomov's poems. Some spare clothes.

She locked the door on her way out, sparing her last, fleeting thought on a wonder if she should hide the key. She did not think about the festering fall, or the cold that would soon grow rampant. She did not think of anything at all.

It was her fault, of course. It was. And now, as she lay in the middle of the night, trembling from head to toe and curled on her side, she is paying for it. Silently, she curses the gods that walk this earth, and she watches the man sleeping next to her with a misery akin to a beaten pup.

Surely, it would be alright. Surely, he would understand. Though years have passed, she can't, she just can’t think of a world where Armin would make fun of her. He lies so close to her, just within an arm's reach, and does she not know him? Were they not friends?

Are they not now?

His name leaves her mouth quietly; far quieter than she intended for it to be. He wakes immediately; so swiftly that she almost feels bad for it, for calling out to him. She said it softly, weakly; through her teeth, through the cold – through the hope that he won’t, in the end, hear it. That he won’t wake. And yet there he is, breath rattled as he rises, looking at her with a panic.

"Yes?" He asks briskly, looking around: at her, first, then the flap of the tent, then around them altogether. She can see, even in the near-dim light, that he's reaching for his blades. "Are you okay? What's wrong?"

His tone is levelled but alert, and her insides roil, the embarrassment burning her cheeks so steadfastly it almost beats the cold in her veins.

"I’m sorry," she says, sounding so disastrously pitiful – even to herself. "I really am, this is so stupid."

At this he relaxes, from what she can tell at least. His hold loosens on the blade, and then his hand slithers away from it altogether. He watches her, apprehensive and achingly kind.

"It's alright, Y/N. What's wrong? Tell me," he urges, sitting up higher. He levels her with a look, she can see that much; inspecting her, she thinks.

She sighs, exasperation building in her, and she tries to pick her words, one after the other melting once she sees the spark of gentle amusement grow in his gaze. Seeing it, her shoulders ease, and instead of toiling over words or excuses, she simply tells him: "It really is stupid. But it's too cold," she admits, reaching out her hands in front of her, both shaking with a fervor. "I’m usually not that sensitive, but I think I got too cold in the river earlier, and I’m not able to warm up. I can't sleep."

And there is no beat missed. Armin grabs her hand hastily, and he curses right after. "Rose. Y/N," he begins, crawling to her swiftly, and her mind reels. Then she feels the back of his hand at her throat. "You're cold as ice," he breathes out harshly, pulling his hands away from her. The gesture, so quick and efficient, has her head spinning. "I’m so sorry I didn't notice. Y/N, this is no joke, you're shaking like a leaf." He looks up at her again, meeting her eyes. There is panic in his, swirling in the timid light. "You need to, I mean–" then his gaze falls, and for a moment he sits there, between her sleeping place and his. She thinks she sees discomfort course through him, momentarily; she tries to parse through it, frame trembling, but all she comes to is the blankness that follows. "If you want,” Armin tells her, “but you really should, we could– we should sleep close together. I mean, I tend to be warmer than most, because of the titan, and I can make my temperature grow higher if you'll need it." He prattles on, a nervousness entering his voice, and his hands grow animated as he tries to explain himself, and she just stares at him, lost in the momentary absurdity.

An odd feeling strikes her altogether. A breathlessness, a certain turmoil – and then a nostalgic sense takes their place, one that leaves her so swiftly that she barely places it. He notices it, she knows he does – or perhaps he just calms beneath the weight of her stare, and all at once his energy dies down. His hands fall to his sides, and his shoulders ease, and then he looks at her with this careful, almost boyish look. “You need to warm up,” he tells her in concern, and there, as she sit shaking in full, she feels her embarrassment wash away.

“Please,” she tells him, her mind, once more, growing blank with the cold, and he crawls to her. He takes her blanket, and he pulls at her sleep roll, and then he ushers her closer.

Within moments, they lay side by side, sharing the two blankets on top of the both of them, and while she still trembles, he still gazes at her worrily.

"Would you–"

"Could I–"

They both fall quiet then, and she smiles at him plaintively, urging him to continue.

Armin swallows. "Would you like to come closer? I think it would help." Then he opens his mouth again, to supply, to no doubt ensure her that he's not trying to be a lecher but that he is simply worried, and she could laugh, she really could. Perhaps he sees it in her gaze, and his mouth stays shut; waiting, instead, for her reply.

She does not reply. She pulls herself closer to him, in-between his arms and right up against his chest, and though she may have felt embarrassed, or shy, or anxious about such a thing, it all melts away when she finally, mercifully feels warm. She hums instinctively, and Armin hums back at her, quieter, softer; the sound so oddly familiar. She feels his arms wrap around her, just around the top of her back, and then she is flush against him.

"Better?" He asks softly, and his voice rumbles in his chest.

"Much better," she admits, sighing. Slowly, she can feel the trembling seep out of her. Her hand curls around his shirt, feeling the buttons in her grasp. She wonders if he minds, but he neither tenses, nor says anything. "You really can control your temperature?" She asks him absently, trying not to focus on the scent of him she's caught, or the surprise she feels at it. Vanilla. Sweet vanilla.

"Mhm," he hums again, shifting just slightly. "It's cause we regulate temperature before and during transformation," Armin tells her, seemingly, at least to her, just as absent. She wonders to herself, quietly, if he is uncomfortable, and then she thinks she would know. Then she thinks a second time – and then she is not so sure. "Would you like me to..?"

"No, this is okay," she reassures him, and before she can stop it from leaving her mouth, she tells him: "This is good."

He squeezes at her. Paperlight, just a fraction; but enough so she could feel it, purposefully so. It pinches something in her chest, an odd, indescribable feeling settling there – a memory, fleeting and fast.

She rests her forehead against his chest in response, and realises she can feel him breathe this way. In, and out, deeply; oddly deep, as if it were artificial, as if he were telling himself when to inhale, then to exhale.

And it's not long before she feels all of her exhaustion crash on her. She sought to talk to Armin more, to soothe herself off this embarrassment, or to simply drag this moment longer, but she finds that she cannot. Lulled by the metronomic nature of his breathing, she feels herself begin to slip quickly.

"I'll sleep like this. Is that okay?" She asks him faintly.

She thinks she feels his chin rest on her head. She thinks he squeezes her again, pulling her closer, but it could be just her mind. "Sleep, Y/N," is all she hears, and then she is gone.

dividers by arlerts-angel

tag list: @arlerts-angel @sukunascrustyfinger @supersupper @nilaaaas @levistealeaf @katestrophes @siy-draws @ryoiii @funkkage

reblogs would be dearly appreciated 💗 part two coming on sunday

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mostlysignssomeportents · 9 months

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America's largest hospital chain has an algorithmic death panel

It’s not that conservatives aren’t sometimes right — it’s that even when they’re right, they’re highly selective about it. Take the hoary chestnut that “incentives matter,” trotted out to deny humane benefits to poor people on the grounds that “free money” makes people “workshy.”

There’s a whole body of conservative economic orthodoxy, Public Choice Theory, that concerns itself with the motives of callow, easily corrupted regulators, legislators and civil servants, and how they might be tempted to distort markets.

But the same people who obsess over our fallible public institutions are convinced that private institutions will never yield to temptation, because the fear of competition keeps temptation at bay. It’s this belief that leads the right to embrace monopolies as “efficient”: “A company’s dominance is evidence of its quality. Customers flock to it, and competitors fail to lure them away, therefore monopolies are the public’s best friend.”

But this only makes sense if you don’t understand how monopolies can prevent competitors. Think of Uber, lighting $31b of its investors’ cash on fire, losing 41 cents on every dollar it brought in, in a bid to drive out competitors and make public transit seem like a bad investment.

Or think of Big Tech, locking up whole swathes of your life inside their silos, so that changing mobile OSes means abandoning your iMessage contacts; or changing social media platforms means abandoning your friends, or blocking Google surveillance means losing your email address, or breaking up with Amazon means losing all your ebooks and audiobooks:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/08/facebooks-secret-war-switching-costs

Businesspeople understand the risks of competition, which is why they seek to extinguish it. The harder it is for your customers to leave — because of a lack of competitors or because of lock-in — the worse you can treat them without risking their departure. This is the core of enshittification: a company that is neither disciplined by competition nor regulation can abuse its customers and suppliers over long timescales without losing either:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys

It’s not that public institutions can’t betray they public interest. It’s just that public institutions can be made democratically accountable, rather than financially accountable. When a company betrays you, you can only punish it by “voting with your wallet.” In that system, the people with the fattest wallets get the most votes.

When public institutions fail you, you can vote with your ballot. Admittedly, that doesn’t always work, but one of the major predictors of whether it will work is how big and concentrated the private sector is. Regulatory capture isn’t automatic: it’s what you get when companies are bigger than governments.

If you want small governments, in other words, you need small companies. Even if you think the only role for the state is in enforcing contracts, the state needs to be more powerful than the companies issuing those contracts. The bigger the companies are, the bigger the government has to be:

https://doctorow.medium.com/regulatory-capture-59b2013e2526

Companies can suborn the government to help them abuse the public, but whether public institutions can resist them is more a matter of how powerful those companies are than how fallible a public servant is. Our plutocratic, monopolized, unequal society is the worst of both worlds. Because companies are so big, they abuse us with impunity — and they are able to suborn the state to help them do it:

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-politics/article/testing-theories-of-american-politics-elites-interest-groups-and-average-citizens/62327F513959D0A304D4893B382B992B

This is the dimension that’s so often missing from the discussion of why Americans pay more for healthcare to get worse outcomes from health-care workers who labor under worse conditions than their cousins abroad. Yes, the government can abet this, as when it lets privatizers into the Medicare system to loot it and maim its patients:

https://prospect.org/health/2023-08-01-patient-zero-tom-scully/

But the answer to this isn’t more privatization. Remember Sarah Palin’s scare-stories about how government health care would have “death panels” where unaccountable officials decided whether your life was worth saving?

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26195604/

The reason “death panels” resounded so thoroughly — and stuck around through the years — is that we all understand, at some deep level, that health care will always be rationed. When you show up at the Emergency Room, they have to triage you. Even if you’re in unbearable agony, you might have to wait, and wait, and wait, because other people (even people who arrive after you do) have it worse.

In America, health care is mostly rationed based on your ability to pay. Emergency room triage is one of the only truly meritocratic institutions in the American health system, where your treatment is based on urgency, not cash. Of course, you can buy your way out of that too, with concierge doctors. And the ER system itself has been infested with Private Equity parasites:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/17/the-doctor-will-fleece-you-now/#pe-in-full-effect

Wealth-based health-care rationing is bad enough, but when it’s combined with the public purse, a bad system becomes a nightmare. Take hospice care: private equity funds have rolled up huge numbers of hospices across the USA and turned them into rigged — and lethal — games:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/26/death-panels/#what-the-heck-is-going-on-with-CMS

Medicare will pay a hospice $203-$1,462 to care for a dying person, amounting to $22.4b/year in public funds transfered to the private sector. Incentives matter: the less a hospice does for their patients, the more profits they reap. And the private hospice system is administered with the lightest of touches: at the $203/day level, a private hospice has no mandatory duties to their patients.

You can set up a California hospice for the price of a $3,000 filing fee (which is mostly optional, since it’s never checked). You will have a facility inspection, but don’t worry, there’s no followup to make sure you remediate any failing elements. And no one at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services tracks complaints.

So PE-owned hospices pressure largely healthy people to go into “hospice care” — from home. Then they do nothing for them, including continuing whatever medical care they were depending on. After the patient generates $32,000 in billings for the PE company, they hit the cap and are “live discharged” and must go through a bureaucratic nightmare to re-establish their Medicare eligibility, because once you go into hospice, Medicare assumes you are dying and halts your care.

PE-owned hospices bribe doctors to refer patients to them. Sometimes, these sham hospices deliberately induce overdoses in their patients in a bid to make it look like they’re actually in the business of caring for the dying. Incentives matter:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/12/05/how-hospice-became-a-for-profit-hustle

Now, hospice care — and its relative, palliative care — is a crucial part of any humane medical system. In his essential book, Being Mortal, Atul Gawande describes how end-of-life care that centers a dying person’s priorities can make death a dignified and even satisfying process for the patient and their loved ones:

https://atulgawande.com/book/being-mortal/

But that dignity comes from a patient-centered approach, not a profit-centered one. Doctors are required to put their patients’ interests first, and while they sometimes fail at this (everyone is fallible), the professionalization of medicine, through which doctors were held to ethical standards ahead of monetary considerations, proved remarkable durable.

Partly that was because doctors generally worked for themselves — or for other doctors. In most states, it is illegal for medical practices to be owned by non-MDs, and historically, only a small fraction of doctors worked for hospitals, subject to administration by businesspeople rather than medical professionals.

But that was radically altered by the entry of private equity into the medical system, with the attending waves of consolidation that saw local hospitals merged into massive national chains, and private practices scooped up and turned into profit-maximizers, not health-maximizers:

https://prospect.org/health/2023-08-02-qa-corporate-medicine-destroys-doctors/

Today, doctors are being proletarianized, joining the ranks of nurses, physicians’ assistants and other health workers. In 2012, 60% of practices were doctor-owned and only 5.6% of docs worked for hospitals. Today, that’s up by 1,000%, with 52.1% of docs working for hospitals, mostly giant corporate chains:

https://prospect.org/health/2023-08-04-when-mds-go-union/

The paperclip-maximizing, grandparent-devouring transhuman colony organism that calls itself a Private Equity fund is endlessly inventive in finding ways to increase its profits by harming the rest of us. It’s not just hospices — it’s also palliative care.

Writing for NBC News, Gretchen Morgenson describes how HCA Healthcare — the nation’s largest hospital chain — outsourced its death panels to IBM Watson, whose algorithmic determinations override MDs’ judgment to send patients to palliative care, withdrawing their care and leaving them to die:

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-care/doctors-say-hca-hospitals-push-patients-hospice-care-rcna81599

Incentives matter. When HCA hospitals send patients to die somewhere else to die, it jukes their stats, reducing the average length of stay for patients, a key metric used by HCA that has the twin benefits of making the hospital seem like a place where people get well quickly, while freeing up beds for more profitable patients.

Goodhart’s Law holds that “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.” Give an MBA within HCA a metric (“get patients out of bed quicker”) and they will find a way to hit that metric (“send patients off to die somewhere else, even if their doctors think they could recover”):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law

Incentives matter! Any corporate measure immediately becomes a target. Tell Warners to decrease costs, and they will turn around and declare the writers’ strike to be a $100m “cost savings,” despite the fact that this “savings” comes from ceasing production on the shows that will bring in all of next year’s revenue:

https://deadline.com/2023/08/warner-bros-discovery-david-zaslav-gunnar-wiedenfels-strikes-1235453950/

Incentivize a company to eat its seed-corn and it will chow down.

Only one of HCA’s doctors was willing to go on record about its death panels: Ghasan Tabel of Riverside Community Hospital (motto: “Above all else, we are committed to the care and improvement of human life”). Tabel sued Riverside after the hospital retaliated against him when he refused to follow the algorithm’s orders to send his patients for palliative care.

Tabel is the only doc on record willing to discuss this, but 26 other doctors talked to Morgenson on background about the practice, asking for anonymity out of fear of retaliation from the nation’s largest hospital chain, a “Wall Street darling” with $5.6b in earnings in 2022.

HCA already has a reputation as a slaughterhouse that puts profits before patients, with “severe understaffing”:

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/workers-us-hospital-giant-hca-say-puts-profits-patient-care-rcna64122

and rotting, undermaintained facililties:

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-care/roaches-operating-room-hca-hospital-florida-rcna69563

But while cutting staff and leaving hospitals to crumble are inarguable malpractice, the palliative care scam is harder to pin down. By using “AI” to decide when patients are beyond help, HCA can employ empiricism-washing, declaring the matter to be the factual — and unquestionable — conclusion of a mathematical process, not mere profit-seeking:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/26/dictators-dilemma/ggarbage-in-garbage-out-garbage-back-in

But this empirical facewash evaporates when confronted with whistleblower accounts of hospital administrators who have no medical credentials berating doctors for a “missed hospice opportunity” when a physician opts to keep a patient under their care despite the algorithm’s determination.

This is the true “AI Safety” risk. It’s not that a chatbot will become sentient and take over the world — it’s that the original artificial lifeform, the limited liability company, will use “AI” to accelerate its murderous shell-game until we can’t spot the trick:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/10/in-the-dumps-2/

The risk is real. A 2020 study in the Journal of Healthcare Management concluded that the cash incentives for shipping patients to palliatve care “may induce deceiving changes in mortality reporting in several high-volume hospital diagnoses”:

https://journals.lww.com/jhmonline/Fulltext/2020/04000/The_Association_of_Increasing_Hospice_Use_With.7.aspx

Incentives matter. In a private market, it’s always more profitable to deny care than to provide it, and any metric we bolt onto that system to prevent cheating will immediately become a target. For-profit healthcare is an oxymoron, a prelude to death panels that will kill you for a nickel.

Morgenson is an incisive commentator on for-profit looting. Her recent book These Are the Plunderers: How Private Equity Runs — and Wrecks — America (co-written with Joshua Rosner) is a must-read:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/02/plunderers/#farben

I’m kickstarting the audiobook for “The Internet Con: How To Seize the Means of Computation,” a Big Tech disassembly manual to disenshittify the web and bring back the old, good internet. It’s a DRM-free book, which means Audible won’t carry it, so this crowdfunder is essential. Back now to get the audio, Verso hardcover and ebook:

http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/05/any-metric-becomes-a-target/#hca

[Image ID: An industrial meat-grinder. A sick man, propped up with pillows, is being carried up its conveyor towards its hopper. Ground meat comes out of the other end. It bears the logo of HCA healthcare. A pool of blood spreads out below it.]

Image: Seydelmann (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:GW300_1.jpg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en

#pluralistic #hca healthcare #Gretchen Morgenson incentives matter #death panels #medicare for all #ibm watson #the algorithm #algorithmic harms #palliative care #hospice #hospice care #business #incentives matter #any metric becomes a target #goodhart's law

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the-magiarcheologist · 4 months

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The Forgotten Witch

Let me tell you the tale of the Forgotten Witch.

Chapter 1: The Prophecy

First of all, do you know Sylvia Pembroke? She is a seer in one of the portraits in the Grand Staircase.

Throughout the game she makes different prophecies that foreshadow events in the game:

"Ancient secrets bring forth an age of magic with the rise of a new hero."

This one is about the whole plot of the game.

"I can sense someone close to you needs your help. Someone with the initial "S"."

That one is obviously about Sebastian.

"When what was lost has been found, the brother's betrayal will turn the tides of war."

That's when Lodgok finds the last of Bragbor's journal and tries to bring it to the MC. Ranrok discovers that he betrayed him, takes the journal and kills him. And by getting hold of the last journal this turns the tides of the war since Ranrok now knows where to find the last repository.

"When mentor and student collide a path must be chosen."

I think that one is about the final choice of the player, whether we follow the path of the Keepers and keep the repository closed and secret or we follow Isidora's path and try to use the ancient magic in the repository.

I think all of her prophecies can be explained by event in the game. And then there is this prophecy:

"When the forgotten one's true power is revealed bonds of trust will be broken."

And for this one, I couldn't think of a straighforward, obvious interpretation for it. And trying to find out who exactly this "forgotten one" is has lead me down quite the rabbit hole...

Now, the first thought is: the forgotten one must be Isidora. After all, all mentions and memories of her have been erased by the Keepers. What is her "true power" then? It could be her ability to rid people of their pain. And what about the bonds of trust that are broken? That's where it all starts to break down. The MC learns of Isidora's "true power" through the Keepers memories, there is no big revelation about Isidora that causes MC to loose trust in the Keepers or Fig or anyone else, really.

Someone on reddit had another interpretation. They believed the "bonds of trust" that were broken were between Rookwood and Ranrok. When Rookwood discovered what the repositories they were looking for really were (Isidora's "true power") and what Ranrok intended to use them for the fragile alliance between Rookwood and Ranrok shattered ("broken bonds of trust"). But rewatching the scene in the mine when Ranrok takes bragbor's last journal I think it's pretty clear that Rookwood realizes that his alliance with Ranrok is over the moment he understands that Ranrok has now found the location of the last repository. He realizes then that he has lost all of his usefullness to Ranrok and that the tentative partnership they had is over. Hence why he tries to kill Ranrok right after (before Ranrok can try to kill him). I don't think any "bonds of trust" are broken here because there was no trust to begin with and there is no revelation of a "true power". Rookwood already knew they were searching for repositories of ancient magic.

But thinking along the same lines, maybe the broken bonds of trust could be between Sebastian and MC when Sebastian realizes that Isidora could use ancient magic to cure people of their pain (the "true power" that is revealed) and yet MC refuses to ask the Keepers about that power or refuses to use it to cure Anne. But I think that is stretching it. Even though MC and Sebastian have a little fight about this I hardly think that you could say that "bonds of trust" are broken.

So maybe we should go right back to the beguining. Maybe the "forgotten one" is not Isidora but someone else entirely...

Chapter 2: The Statue

How do you go about discovering the identity of someone who was forgotten? You go search through the game files for clues of course!

And low and behold, there is an asset called "ForgottenStatue", could it be related to our "forgotten one"?

I think the name of this particular asset is quite significant. Usually any asset in the game is identified with a letter. There are plenty of assets called "SmallStatue_A", "SmallStatue_B", "WallPlaque_D", etc. Few assets are given actual names like this.

And besides, don't you recognize this statue? It's the statue that is standing in the alcove by the water in the transfiguration courtyard!

It's the statue that Prof. Ronen had us repair at the very beguining of the game after learning reparo. Prof. Ronen says this statue alledgedly represents heartbreak and that perhaps a jilted lover, seing it and finding it too accurate, could have lashed out and destroyed it. But maybe that is not the full story. Maybe there is another reason it was destroyed, perhaps so that no one could ever recognize this statue and find anything out about the witch it represents.

So here we have a statue of a forgotten witch. No one really knows for sure who she is, what the statue represents. Looking at the clothing that she is wearing, it seems that she is from really ancient times (could be ancient greece, could be ancient rome,...) and alledgedly she had her heart broken at some point.

Chapter 3: The Dagger

The statue is not the only thing I found in the game files. There is also a very interesting asset called "SM_Evil_ForgottenWitch_Dagger". Again, note how this asset has an actual name (as opposed to just "SM_Dagger_A") and also that it is even labelled as "Evil".

Sorry for the image being so dark but I really wanted to show how the rune on the dagger is glowing. From what I can understand by looking at other in-game assets, the glow we see on the rune means there will be some VFX applied to it in game. So obviously, the rune etched into the dagger is significant somehow. The dagger is also very ornate. And, because it is labelled as "Evil", we can deduce that it is some king of artifact used for dark magic.

The gives us some new information about our "forgotten one". First of all it seems that she is a witch (that is also consistent with the "Forgotten Statue" that is of a woman) and she practised the dark arts. Could this be what her "true power" is? Some secret form of dark magic?

For the longest time I thought that this dagger was just part of some cut content, that it was not used in the game. Until someone found this exact dagger in a the middle of a standing stone circle near Marunweem Lake!

They also identified the rune on it as Mannaz rune. It's an Elder Futhark rune meaning 'mankind'. Elder Furthar dates back to the first century which is coherent with the type of dress of the forgotten statue. These runes also apparently had deep spiritual significance. Mannaz represents humanity, community and cooperation. It could also represent intelligence, mind and memory.

I went and found the dagger in-game myself.

It's in the middle of standing stones on a flat circluar stone engraved with some weird symbols reminiscent of alchemy symbols. Also note the human skeleton that could hint at some dark ritual maybe involving a sacrifice.

I don't know if there are other places like this one elsewhere in Hogwarts Valley where we can also find the dagger. I have not found any yet but let me know if you have!

But there's more! In the game files, the asset for the dagger is found within the folder of props for "Sanctum_Dungeons". These are any dungeons related to ancient magic (like the keeper trials). So, how exactly is this dagger related to ancient magic and the Keepers?

Chapter 4: Ancient Magic

There is yet another place where the "ForgottenWitch" appreas within the game files. There are assets for stone columns used to build the environments for the ancient magic dungeons which are the Keeper trials, the place below the restricted section when we find the book and the cave we go to with Richard Jackdaw to find the missing pages and get access to the Map Chamber.

First there is a set of assets called "SM_SanctumDun_Column_Natural" which look like stone swirls.

Then there is a set of assets called "SM_SanctumDun_ColumnFlair_Forgotten_Witch" which look a little more ornate with some developped "spikes" (sort of looking like thorns on the stem of a rose) but still made of stone.

And lastly, there is a set of assets called "SM_SanctumDun_ColumnFlair_Keepers" that are even more ornate and detailed with spikes and some sort of tendrils. These columns also glow (again I believe indicating some VFX being applied to it). There are also some gold trims that can be added.

To me, this looks like some kind of evolution of art style or archetictural style over time. As the technique is developped over the centuries (from 'Natural stone' to the work of the Forgotten Witch in antiquity and to the work of the Keepers in the late middle ages), more and more ornate designs are made possible.

I believe the "Forgotten Witch" could wield ancient magic. Like we see the Keepers do, she used ancient magic back in antiquity to transfigure the world around her, build elaborate colums. But then she also used her ancient magic for some dark purpose. This is the "true power" that the profecy refers to. What about the bonds of trust that are broken, then? I believe the events of this particular prophecy have not happened yet. Someone (and lets be honest, it's probably the Keepers because they are the only ones who seem to know anything about ancient magic) knows about this Forgotten Witch and the dark magic she used but they kept that secret from the MC. And when this secret is finally revealed, uncovering a dark history of ancient magic, the bonds of trust between MC and the Keepers will be broken.

After all, Isidora herself, another forgotten witch, could have left us a warning when she wrote on the wall of the Undercroft: "Percival is hiding somehing".

#hogwarts legacy #isidora morganach #hogwarts legacy theory #Forgotten Witch #Ancient magic #sylvia pembroke #Marunweem #Keepers

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n0oble · 6 months

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This is horrifying.

And a sad reminder that major news broadcasters, especially the BBC, are NOT impartial and they do present a biased view.

The BBC in particular has become increasingly right-wing in recent years.

But creating made up stories to give a flimsy excuse for a military megapower to bomb a hospital! Truly a new low.

This is not journalism. This is aiding a right-wing government commit genocide.

This is unforgivable.

Bombing a hospital is a war crime.

Even Tumblr is prompting me with 'hamas builds secret tunnels under hospital' tag for posts, @staff This is spreading misinformation and the dehumanisation of Palestinians; if everyone is a terrorist then no one is a victim, that is the goal. To dehumanise and ethnically cleanse one entire group of people.

That is a genocide.

We must call for a ceasefire and free Palestine.

#the bbc #gaza under attack #gaza #palestine #hamas #israel #free palestine #end apartheid #defund occupation #israeli occupation #apartheid

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donutz · 27 days

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— *🎩 Mach x reader headcanons!!

Mach x reader headcanons

— Before relationship

She enjoys your company

Why wouldn’t she?

Other than Pilby, she doesn’t really have anybody else to talk to

Minus family members

You’re a very entertaining person

“Do you use your banhammer to exercise?”

“... No.”

“Oh, so you use just normal exercising equipment?”

“No.”

“...”

She finds your conversation starters to be interesting

Because of her tall height(excluding her hat) she enjoys how small you are to her

Unless you’re her exact height or taller than her, seeing you all tiny makes her… She doesn’t know— Powerful? Yeah, maybe it makes her feel powerful.

She doesn’t feel that way with Pilby, so why is it different with you?

She really appreciates you respecting her boundaries

If you’re more of a touchy person, she can visibly see you trying not to hug her

When she sees this happening, she’ll open up her arms and say, “Here.” As if she’s inviting you to hug her

You run into her arms, all giddy and cheery

As she’s slightly blushing

Making her cold tempered body, more warm rather than chilly

Hm.

Physical affection with you makes her feel vulnerable, especially in a public setting, which is less likely to happen.

Her favorite part of physical touch with you is holding hands

If you’re smaller than her, she likes the size comparison between your hand and hers

Holding and hugging you is… Nice. She enjoys your company.

— In Love

She notices how her slow beating heart beats a little faster when she sees you

Strange.

That’s never happened before.

Not even in wars or battles.

What a strange person you are.

Seeing you happy makes her happy, and seeing you sad makes her sad.

She sometimes catches herself internally happy at you being overly excited

She doesn’t catch herself smiling, no, because it’s kind of.. Impossible.

Or I guess, within my view, out of character.

She writes it down in her very much personal journal

Lately over the days, she’s been writing about you.

Well why shouldn’t she? You make her feel something new almost everyday!

She’s chuckled at your behavior, hugged you, thought about you quite a lot and— Oh my the list goes on!

She’s even told Pilby about you

They very much appreciate Mach telling them such things, and are happy for her

But- Pilby let one thing slip between their lips

And that thing is…

You like Mach too!

Mach went silent, staring at Pilby for a good five seconds

Before she notices Pilby starting to cry.

She reassures them, saying that it was okay

That she’ll go to you to make sure Pilby was right

Pilby just stood there, worried and disappointed in themselves for letting out such a personal secret.

Pilby my baby :O(

— Confessing..♡︎

A letter, no, maybe words?

Though, actions do speak louder than words.

I think they’d find it more serious if I spoke it myself.

Mach takes you to her office to, “Discuss a topic”.

“I, myself, have considered something about you. A feeling. A feeling that makes me feel warm and happy.”

“...”

“That feeling is one I’ve never felt before. I enjoy your company and your nonexistence causes me worry at times.”

“Though you might have figured it out already, my feelings for you are immense. In words that may be hard to say, I love you.”

Hearing those words really made you go silent. Even if your feelings were the same, saying words wasn’t available.

“... Your silence tells me that you are surprised.”

“Oh— Sorry! I do return your feelings!! I was just taken off guard…”

Hearing your words makes my eyebrows raise, and the muscles within my jaw slightly part my lips.

You stare at her, worried you’d put her in a state of shock or something.

“I. Appreciate your reciprocated feelings..” Mach turns her head away when she sees your clueless expression.

I let out a breath, collecting the courage to ask, “Would you.. Like to receive the label as “My partner”?”

You smile at her nervousness, “Ya! Would you like to be my—”

She hugs you, hiding her face away from your view

“Yes. I do.”

It seems she’s too shy to hear the word, “Girlfriend”.

— Together <3

It’s… Awkward between you two.

It doesn’t really seem awkward for Mach, but you’re even more nervous around her presence, as if you two were just strangers!

But you don’t avoid her of course, why would you do that?

Mach enjoys quality time, physical touch isn’t her strong suit— But for you she doesn’t mind♡︎

Most of the quality time you two spend together is you checking out the obbies she creates

If you want to try them, she slightly hesitates but says yes

She watches over you very carefully, making sure to catch you the second after you fall

She’ll never get disappointed at you failing to complete her obbies

At first she doesn’t turn on the fire wall, but if you’re up for a challenge, she turns it on.

She’s smiled at you enjoying her obby many times

If you do complete it, she instantly praises you and talks about your skills

Her favorite times is when you both are watching other players play her obby

She does enjoy cuddling with you, quite a lot actually.

Doesn’t matter if you’re bigger than her, she’s the big spoon

Looking at you sleeping so peacefully is like listening to cat purrs, calming.

Though she doesn’t sleep much, you sleeping somehow convinces her brain to shut off(half of it) for a few hours

If you struggle with sleeping, she’s always there to comfort you

Insomniac? Hey, that’s probably her too

She really can’t judge

She’d never judge you

Most likely anyways, it depends on the situation.

Baking is an activity that she loves to see you do specifically, but baking with you just might be even better.

“Oh— You have some frosting on yer nose!”

She looks at you,

You gesture to lean her head down, as she is quite the tall woman

You lightly grab her face, using your thumb to wipe off the frosting

Then giving her nose a kiss

“There!”

You go back to whipping the frosting, as Mach stands there.

She also goes back to whipping the frosting, looking at the ground so you don’t see her very much red face.

A/N|| I apologize if this is ooc! I was looking at Mach's interaction dialogue and found out she wasn't as serious as I thought.. (-ω-、)

#regretevator #regretevator x reader #reader #x reader #gn reader #x gn reader #x gender neutral reader #gender neutral reader #mach #mach x reader #mach x gn reader #mach x gender neutral reader #mach headcanons #mach relationship headcanons

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