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mostlysignssomeportents · 9 months

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Autoenshittification

Forget F1: the only car race that matters now is the race to turn your car into a digital extraction machine, a high-speed inkjet printer on wheels, stealing your private data as it picks your pocket. Your car’s digital infrastructure is a costly, dangerous nightmare — but for automakers in pursuit of postcapitalist utopia, it’s a dream they can’t give up on.

Your car is stuffed full of microchips, a fact the world came to appreciate after the pandemic struck and auto production ground to a halt due to chip shortages. Of course, that wasn’t the whole story: when the pandemic started, the automakers panicked and canceled their chip orders, only to immediately regret that decision and place new orders.

But it was too late: semiconductor production had taken a serious body-blow, and when Big Car placed its new chip orders, it went to the back of a long, slow-moving line. It was a catastrophic bungle: microchips are so integral to car production that a car is basically a computer network on wheels that you stick your fragile human body into and pray.

The car manufacturers got so desperate for chips that they started buying up washing machines for the microchips in them, extracting the chips and discarding the washing machines like some absurdo-dystopian cyberpunk walnut-shelling machine:

https://www.autoevolution.com/news/desperate-times-companies-buy-washing-machines-just-to-rip-out-the-chips-187033.html

These digital systems are a huge problem for the car companies. They are the underlying cause of a precipitous decline in car quality. From touch-based digital door-locks to networked sensors and cameras, every digital system in your car is a source of endless repair nightmares, costly recalls and cybersecurity vulnerabilities:

https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/quality-new-vehicles-us-declining-more-tech-use-study-shows-2023-06-22/

What’s more, drivers hate all the digital bullshit, from the janky touchscreens to the shitty, wildly insecure apps. Digital systems are drivers’ most significant point of dissatisfaction with the automakers’ products:

https://www.theverge.com/23801545/car-infotainment-customer-satisifaction-survey-jd-power

Even the automakers sorta-kinda admit that this is a problem. Back in 2020 when Massachusetts was having a Right-to-Repair ballot initiative, Big Car ran these unfuckingbelievable scare ads that basically said, “Your car spies on you so comprehensively that giving anyone else access to its systems will let murderers stalk you to your home and kill you:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/09/03/rip-david-graeber/#rolling-surveillance-platforms

But even amid all the complaining about cars getting stuck in the Internet of Shit, there’s still not much discussion of why the car-makers are making their products less attractive, less reliable, less safe, and less resilient by stuffing them full of microchips. Are car execs just the latest generation of rubes who’ve been suckered by Silicon Valley bullshit and convinced that apps are a magic path to profitability?

Nope. Car execs are sophisticated businesspeople, and they’re surfing capitalism’s latest — and last — hot trend: dismantling capitalism itself.

Now, leftists have been predicting the death of capitalism since The Communist Manifesto, but even Marx and Engels warned us not to get too frisky: capitalism, they wrote, is endlessly creative, constantly reinventing itself, re-emerging from each crisis in a new form that is perfectly adapted to the post-crisis reality:

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/31/books/review/a-spectre-haunting-china-mieville.html

But capitalism has finally run out of gas. In his forthcoming book, Techno Feudalism: What Killed Capitalism, Yanis Varoufakis proposes that capitalism has died — but it wasn’t replaced by socialism. Rather, capitalism has given way to feudalism:

https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/451795/technofeudalism-by-varoufakis-yanis/9781847927279

Under capitalism, capital is the prime mover. The people who own and mobilize capital — the capitalists — organize the economy and take the lion’s share of its returns. But it wasn’t always this way: for hundreds of years, European civilization was dominated by rents, not markets.

A “rent” is income that you get from owning something that other people need to produce value. Think of renting out a house you own: not only do you get paid when someone pays you to live there, you also get the benefit of rising property values, which are the result of the work that all the other homeowners, business owners, and residents do to make the neighborhood more valuable.

The first capitalists hated rent. They wanted to replace the “passive income” that landowners got from taxing their serfs’ harvest with active income from enclosing those lands and grazing sheep in order to get wool to feed to the new textile mills. They wanted active income — and lots of it.

Capitalist philosophers railed against rent. The “free market” of Adam Smith wasn’t a market that was free from regulation — it was a market free from rents. The reason Smith railed against monopolists is because he (correctly) understood that once a monopoly emerged, it would become a chokepoint through which a rentier could cream off the profits he considered the capitalist’s due:

https://locusmag.com/2021/03/cory-doctorow-free-markets/

Today, we live in a rentier’s paradise. People don’t aspire to create value — they aspire to capture it. In Survival of the Richest, Doug Rushkoff calls this “going meta”: don’t provide a service, just figure out a way to interpose yourself between the provider and the customer:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/09/13/collapse-porn/#collapse-porn

Don’t drive a cab, create Uber and extract value from every driver and rider. Better still: don’t found Uber, invest in Uber options and extract value from the people who invest in Uber. Even better, invest in derivatives of Uber options and extract value from people extracting value from people investing in Uber, who extract value from drivers and riders. Go meta.

This is your brain on the four-hour-work-week, passive income mind-virus. In Techno Feudalism, Varoufakis deftly describes how the new “Cloud Capital” has created a new generation of rentiers, and how they have become the richest, most powerful people in human history.

Shopping at Amazon is like visiting a bustling city center full of stores — but each of those stores’ owners has to pay the majority of every sale to a feudal landlord, Emperor Jeff Bezos, who also decides which goods they can sell and where they must appear on the shelves. Amazon is full of capitalists, but it is not a capitalist enterprise. It’s a feudal one:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/28/enshittification/#relentless-payola

This is the reason that automakers are willing to enshittify their products so comprehensively: they were one of the first industries to decouple rents from profits. Recall that the reason that Big Car needed billions in bailouts in 2008 is that they’d reinvented themselves as loan-sharks who incidentally made cars, lending money to car-buyers and then “securitizing” the loans so they could be traded in the capital markets.

Even though this strategy brought the car companies to the brink of ruin, it paid off in the long run. The car makers got billions in public money, paid their execs massive bonuses, gave billions to shareholders in buybacks and dividends, smashed their unions, fucked their pensioned workers, and shipped jobs anywhere they could pollute and murder their workforce with impunity.

Car companies are on the forefront of postcapitalism, and they understand that digital is the key to rent-extraction. Remember when BMW announced that it was going to rent you the seatwarmer in your own fucking car?

https://pluralistic.net/2020/07/02/big-river/#beemers

Not to be outdone, Mercedes announced that they were going to rent you your car’s accelerator pedal, charging an extra $1200/year to unlock a fully functional acceleration curve:

https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/23/23474969/mercedes-car-subscription-faster-acceleration-feature-price

This is the urinary tract infection business model: without digitization, all your car’s value flowed in a healthy stream. But once the car-makers add semiconductors, each one of those features comes out in a painful, burning dribble, with every button on that fakakta touchscreen wired directly into your credit-card.

But it’s just for starters. Computers are malleable. The only computer we know how to make is the Turing Complete Von Neumann Machine, which can run every program we know how to write. Once they add networked computers to your car, the Car Lords can endlessly twiddle the knobs on the back end, finding new ways to extract value from you:

https://doctorow.medium.com/twiddler-1b5c9690cce6

That means that your car can track your every movement, and sell your location data to anyone and everyone, from marketers to bounty-hunters looking to collect fees for tracking down people who travel out of state for abortions to cops to foreign spies:

https://www.vice.com/en/article/n7enex/tool-shows-if-car-selling-data-privacy4cars-vehicle-privacy-report

Digitization supercharges financialization. It lets car-makers offer subprime auto-loans to desperate, poor people and then killswitch their cars if they miss a payment:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4U2eDJnwz_s

Subprime lending for cars would be a terrible business without computers, but digitization makes it a great source of feudal rents. Car dealers can originate loans to people with teaser rates that quickly blow up into payments the dealer knows their customer can’t afford. Then they repo the car and sell it to another desperate person, and another, and another:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/07/27/boricua/#looking-for-the-joke-with-a-microscope

Digitization also opens up more exotic options. Some subprime cars have secondary control systems wired into their entertainment system: miss a payment and your car radio flips to full volume and bellows an unstoppable, unmutable stream of threats. Tesla does one better: your car will lock and immobilize itself, then blare its horn and back out of its parking spot when the repo man arrives:

https://tiremeetsroad.com/2021/03/18/tesla-allegedly-remotely-unlocks-model-3-owners-car-uses-smart-summon-to-help-repo-agent/

Digital feudalism hasn’t stopped innovating — it’s just stopped innovating good things. The digital device is an endless source of sadistic novelties, like the cellphones that disable your most-used app the first day you’re late on a payment, then work their way down the other apps you rely on for every day you’re late:

https://restofworld.org/2021/loans-that-hijack-your-phone-are-coming-to-india/

Usurers have always relied on this kind of imaginative intimidation. The loan-shark’s arm-breaker knows you’re never going to get off the hook; his goal is in intimidating you into paying his boss first, liquidating your house and your kid’s college fund and your wedding ring before you default and he throws you off a building.

Thanks to the malleability of computerized systems, digital arm-breakers have an endless array of options they can deploy to motivate you into paying them first, no matter what it costs you:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/02/innovation-unlocks-markets/#digital-arm-breakers

Car-makers are trailblazers in imaginative rent-extraction. Take VIN-locking: this is the practice of adding cheap microchips to engine components that communicate with the car’s overall network. After a new part is installed in your car, your car’s computer does a complex cryptographic handshake with the part that requires an unlock code provided by an authorized technician. If the code isn’t entered, the car refuses to use that part.

VIN-locking has exploded in popularity. It’s in your iPhone, preventing you from using refurb or third-party replacement parts:

https://doctorow.medium.com/apples-cement-overshoes-329856288d13

It’s in fuckin’ ventilators, which was a nightmare during lockdown as hospital techs nursed their precious ventilators along by swapping parts from dead systems into serviceable ones:

https://www.vice.com/en/article/3azv9b/why-repair-techs-are-hacking-ventilators-with-diy-dongles-from-poland

And of course, it’s in tractors, along with other forms of remote killswitch. Remember that feelgood story about John Deere bricking the looted Ukrainian tractors whose snitch-chips showed they’d been relocated to Russia?

https://doctorow.medium.com/about-those-kill-switched-ukrainian-tractors-bc93f471b9c8

That wasn’t a happy story — it was a cautionary tale. After all, John Deere now controls the majority of the world’s agricultural future, and they’ve boobytrapped those ubiquitous tractors with killswitches that can be activated by anyone who hacks, takes over, or suborns Deere or its dealerships.

Control over repair isn’t limited to gouging customers on parts and service. When a company gets to decide whether your device can be fixed, it can fuck you over in all kinds of ways. Back in 2019, Tim Apple told his shareholders to expect lower revenues because people were opting to fix their phones rather than replace them:

https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2019/01/letter-from-tim-cook-to-apple-investors/

By usurping your right to decide who fixes your phone, Apple gets to decide whether you can fix it, or whether you must replace it. Problem solved — and not just for Apple, but for car makers, tractor makers, ventilator makers and more. Apple leads on this, even ahead of Big Car, pioneering a “recycling” program that sees trade-in phones shredded so they can’t possibly be diverted from an e-waste dump and mined for parts:

https://www.vice.com/en/article/yp73jw/apple-recycling-iphones-macbooks

John Deere isn’t sleeping on this. They’ve come up with a valuable treasure they extract when they win the Right-to-Repair: Deere singles out farmers who complain about its policies and refuses to repair their tractors, stranding them with six-figure, two-ton paperweight:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/05/31/dealers-choice/#be-a-shame-if-something-were-to-happen-to-it

The repair wars are just a skirmish in a vast, invisible fight that’s been waged for decades: the War On General-Purpose Computing, where tech companies use the law to make it illegal for you to reconfigure your devices so they serve you, rather than their shareholders:

https://memex.craphound.com/2012/01/10/lockdown-the-coming-war-on-general-purpose-computing/

The force behind this army is vast and grows larger every day. General purpose computers are antithetical to technofeudalism — all the rents extracted by technofeudalists would go away if others (tinkereres, co-ops, even capitalists!) were allowed to reconfigure our devices so they serve us.

You’ve probably noticed the skirmishes with inkjet printer makers, who can only force you to buy their ink at 20,000% markups if they can stop you from deciding how your printer is configured:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/07/inky-wretches/#epson-salty But we’re also fighting against insulin pump makers, who want to turn people with diabetes into walking inkjet printers:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/10/loopers/#hp-ification

And companies that make powered wheelchairs:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/08/chair-ish/#r2r

These companies start with people who have the least agency and social power and wreck their lives, then work their way up the privilege gradient, coming for everyone else. It’s called the “shitty technology adoption curve”:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/21/great-taylors-ghost/#solidarity-or-bust

Technofeudalism is the public-private-partnership from hell, emerging from a combination of state and private action. On the one hand, bailing out bankers and big business (rather than workers) after the 2008 crash and the covid lockdown decoupled income from profits. Companies spent billions more than they earned were still wildly profitable, thanks to those public funds.

But there’s also a policy dimension here. Some of those rentiers’ billions were mobilized to both deconstruct antitrust law (allowing bigger and bigger companies and cartels) and to expand “IP” law, turning “IP” into a toolsuite for controlling the conduct of a firm’s competitors, critics and customers:

https://locusmag.com/2020/09/cory-doctorow-ip/

IP is key to understanding the rise of technofeudalism. The same malleability that allows companies to “twiddle” the knobs on their services and keep us on the hook as they reel us in would hypothetically allow us to countertwiddle, seizing the means of computation:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/12/algorithmic-wage-discrimination/#fishers-of-men

The thing that stands between you and an alternative app store, an interoperable social media network that you can escape to while continuing to message the friends you left behind, or a car that anyone can fix or unlock features for is IP, not technology. Under capitalism, that technology would already exist, because capitalists have no loyalty to one another and view each other’s margins as their own opportunities.

But under technofeudalism, control comes from rents (owning things), not profits (selling things). The capitalist who wants to participate in your iPhone’s “ecosystem” has to make apps and submit them to Apple, along with 30% of their lifetime revenues — they don’t get to sell you jailbreaking kit that lets you choose their app store.

Rent-seeking technology has a holy grail: control over “ring zero” — the ability to compel you to configure your computer to a feudalist’s specifications, and to verify that you haven’t altered your computer after it came into your possession:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/01/30/ring-minus-one/#drm-political-economy

For more than two decades, various would-be feudal lords and their court sorcerers have been pitching ways of doing this, of varying degrees of outlandishness.

At core, here’s what they envision: inside your computer, they will nest another computer, one that is designed to run a very simple set of programs, none of which can be altered once it leaves the factory. This computer — either a whole separate chip called a “Trusted Platform Module” or a region of your main processor called a secure enclave — can tally observations about your computer: which operating system, modules and programs it’s running.

Then it can cryptographically “sign” these observations, proving that they were made by a secure chip and not by something you could have modified. Then you can send this signed “attestation” to someone else, who can use it to determine how your computer is configured and thus whether to trust it. This is called “remote attestation.”

There are some cool things you can do with remote attestation: for example, two strangers playing a networked video game together can use attestations to make sure neither is running any cheat modules. Or you could require your cloud computing provider to use attestations that they aren’t stealing your data from the server you’re renting. Or if you suspect that your computer has been infected with malware, you can connect to someone else and send them an attestation that they can use to figure out whether you should trust it.

Today, there’s a cool remote attestation technology called “PrivacyPass” that replaces CAPTCHAs by having you prove to your own device that you are a human. When a server wants to make sure you’re a person, it sends a random number to your device, which signs that number along with its promise that it is acting on behalf of a human being, and sends it back. CAPTCHAs are all kinds of bad — bad for accessibility and privacy — and this is really great.

But the billions that have been thrown at remote attestation over the decades is only incidentally about solving CAPTCHAs or verifying your cloud server. The holy grail here is being able to make sure that you’re not running an ad-blocker. It’s being able to remotely verify that you haven’t disabled the bossware your employer requires. It’s the power to block someone from opening an Office365 doc with LibreOffice. It’s your boss’s ability to ensure that you haven’t modified your messaging client to disable disappearing messages before he sends you an auto-destructing memo ordering you to break the law.

And there’s a new remote attestation technology making the rounds: Google’s Web Environment Integrity, which will leverage Google’s dominance over browsers to allow websites to block users who run ad-blockers:

https://github.com/RupertBenWiser/Web-Environment-Integrity

There’s plenty else WEI can do (it would make detecting ad-fraud much easier), but for every legitimate use, there are a hundred ways this could be abused. It’s a technology purpose-built to allow rent extraction by stripping us of our right to technological self-determination.

Releasing a technology like this into a world where companies are willing to make their products less reliable, less attractive, less safe and less resilient in pursuit of rents is incredibly reckless and shortsighted. You want unauthorized bread? This is how you get Unauthorized Bread:

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/01/unauthorized-bread-a-near-future-tale-of-refugees-and-sinister-iot-appliances/amp/

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/2023/07/24/rent-to-pwn/#kitt-is-a-demon

[Image ID: The interior of a luxury car. There is a dagger protruding from the steering wheel. The entertainment console has been replaced by the text 'You wouldn't download a car,' in MPAA scare-ad font. Outside of the windscreen looms the Matrix waterfall effect. Visible in the rear- and side-view mirror is the driver: the figure from Munch's 'Scream.' The screen behind the steering-wheel has been replaced by the menacing red eye of HAL9000 from Stanley Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey.']

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

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

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sayruq · 21 days

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Human heads eaten by crows, unidentified and decomposing body parts, and hundreds of corpses piled up and buried in mass graves are all that remained of the victims of the massacre at al-Shifa Hospital. The grim scene was something out of a dystopian movie, the product of the two-week siege of Gaza’s largest hospital that ended in its total destruction. Following the completion of al-Shifa’s decimation, the Israeli army announced that it had been one of the most successful operations since the start of the war, claiming that it had arrested hundreds of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad members in the medical compound. But the question that no one seemed to ask is how such a massive number of so-called “operatives” from Hamas and PIJ had gathered at al-Shifa with the full knowledge that the place had already been combed by the army once before and that Gaza City had been occupied by the army ever since.

One young man who managed to escape the hospital mere moments before the army invasion began said that there had indeed been hundreds of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad-affiliated employees in the hospital, but none of them were military operatives. They were workers in the Gaza government’s civil branch, including Civil Defense crews, the police force, the internal security services, interior ministry employees, and employees of other branches of the local government. All of them had gathered to receive their governmental salaries at al-Shifa, given that it was one of the few remaining places that was supposed to be relatively safe from the fighting

When everyone left the buildings, the army began to separate the crowds of people into groups, making each group wear differently-colored plastic bracelets. The soldiers told them that these bracelets were connected to a system that alerts snipers to their movements. They were divided into two colors: yellow, which was attached to hospital staff and whoever the army considered civilians, and red, which was given to people who could not move on their own, such as patients, the injured, amputees, or people with broken limbs. The army also gathered people who were suspected of belonging to Hamas or the PIJ. They were not given bracelets but were separated from the injured and hospital staff, who were sent to a different building. A third much larger group was ordered to leave the hospital entirely — thousands of displaced persons who had been sheltering in the compound, in addition to some members of the hospital staff. Some of the staff members, including doctors, refused to leave. When they refused the army’s orders, they were executed immediately and without argument. The army then brought out a huge number of men from the group of suspected Hamas and PIJ members and employees, gathering them in the center of the courtyard. It then proceeded to execute them, one after the other. When the slaughter was done, army bulldozers piled up their corpses in the dozens, dragging them through the sand and burying them. As this was ongoing, other soldiers stormed various buildings in the compound in search of people who had refused to evacuate when the initial order was given. They killed anyone they found, regarding them as suspects.

This is a long article but I suggest you read the whole thing.

#yemen #jerusalem #tel aviv #current events #palestine #free palestine #gaza #free gaza #news on gaza #palestine news #news update #war news #war on gaza #al shifa hospital #war crimes #gaza genocide #genocide #long post

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girlgenius1111 · 1 month

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new world

alexia struggles with the adjustments that come with parenthoodcw: angst + fluff, mentions of anxiety

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Alexia liked to think of herself as a calm person. Good in a crisis. She always had a level head, regardless of whatever was going on.

As she stood, though, cradling your newborn daughter in her arms, tears streaming down her cheeks, she felt anything but calm. She felt overwhelmed and terrified and happy and proud. Most of all, she felt love, filling her whole body, until looking down at Mila’s little face felt like all she could do, all she ever wanted to do.

Alexia thought she knew love. She loved her parents, she loved her sister. She loved you, more than she could comprehend sometimes. This little baby in her arms, that had her eyes, she noted, was so indescribably perfect. Alexia knew her, somehow. Her tiny little nose, the wisps of hair on her head. The way her little hand barely wrapped around Alexia’s pinky. This perfect little baby that was hers, and yours, and she was so overcome with love for Mila, and love for you, that all she could do was sit. Sit, stare at her baby in her arms, and cry. Alexia wasn’t a crier, not really. Here she was, though. And she didn’t care. You and Mila mattered more than anything in the world ever had, and ever would again.

“Ale?” You said groggily, pulling her out of her thoughts. She turned to you and the look of wonder on her face that had been there since she laid eyes on your baby girl for the first time remained, even now, a few hours later. You smiled sleepily, the drugs from the c-section making you rather exhausted, not to mention the numerous hours you spent in labor. “Come sit.”

Your wife walked closer, sliding onto the hospital bed next to you. Mila looked absolutely tiny in her arms, and Alexia removed one arm to wrap around your shoulders, and carefully pulled you into her. “How are you, mi amor?”

“Perfect.” You mumbled back, resting your head on her shoulder. She delicately kissed your forehead.

“Perfect? Are you sure?”

“Well, I just had my abdomen cut open and my organs briefly removed. But I woke up to see you holding our baby and I don’t think I’ve ever been this happy before. It got scary for a bit there.” You told her quietly, voice thick with emotion. Mila had been… rather reluctant to come out. You’d been in labor for almost a full 15 hours before the doctors decided you weren’t progressing fast enough, the baby was under stress from the position she was in, and they took you straight to surgery. It had been the most painful 15 hours of your life, and the scariest of Alexia’s.

“I love you. And I am so proud of you, you did so well, mi niña, so well,” Alexia assured you, focusing on the feeling of having you both close to her, and not the anxiety still swirling around inside of her.

She didn’t know, though, that the anxiety would remain. It wasn’t temporary, a product of her baby’s delivery. It was the start of an almost constant level of stress she faced. Because she felt new levels of love and happiness that day. And with that, came the fear that something would happen to take it all away.

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Alexia remembered that day so well, the day Mila was born. The best day of her life. She remembered how scared she was. You’d promised her that with time, that fear would fade, and she’d fall into a more comfortable routine of having a tiny human being completely reliant on her.

The fear didn’t fade. The terror whenever she thought something might be wrong with her baby girl didn’t fade. The anxiety didn’t go anywhere; if anything, it strengthened. Until there she was; sitting in her daughter’s nursery, 3 months later, knees pulled to her chest, just watching the baby sleep. It was the only time she felt calm anymore, really, when she had Mila, and preferably you, in her sight. Safe. If Mila was somewhere else, something might happen. If someone else was holding her, something might happen. If she went too far for a match, or didn’t call to check in enough, something could happen. And she wouldn’t be able to stop it, or fix it. It was a different kind of fear, Alexia realized. The overwhelming sensation that if something were to happen, to you or to Mila, it wouldn’t be something she could recover from.

So, she stayed home with the two of you, as much as possible. Barring visitors for weeks, even her mom and her sister. If you were all together, under one roof, nothing could happen. It was alright, then, those weeks she had off for maternity leave. Eventually, though, they came to an end and Alexia had to return to training, return to her first love; football. And she still loved it, still needed it.

But being away from the both of you was so difficult. She was anxious constantly, checking her phone constantly, near tears constantly. Mila was so small. Alexia could practically hold her in one hand. And the birth hadn’t been easy for you, nor had the postpartum phase. Leaving the house felt like leaving her sanity behind, and she didn’t know how to fix it.

She thought she must be a terrible mother, if she was this scared all the time over nothing. She didn’t want to be a helicopter parent, but she couldn’t help being overprotective of her baby. She just wanted you both safe and happy.

Which is how she found herself where she was now; awake in the middle of the night. Just watching your little girl sleep, feeling some semblance of relief knowing, visually seeing, that Mila was okay.

Until Mila started to breathe weirdly, in a way Alexia was sure she’d never heard before. Then, the familiar terror, increased about a 100x, filled her chest, and she was taking Mila into her arms, and rushing down the hall to where you were peacefully sleeping.

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“Amor! Wake up, please,” Alexia pleaded. You stirred, sitting bolt upright when you noticed Alexia had Mila in her arms.

“What, what is it?” You asked frantically, taking in the absolutely terrified look on your wife’s face. Terror filled you and you rose from the bed, hovering over the baby.

“Something is wrong, she is breathing weird.”

“Let me see.” You replied, taking Mila out of Ale’s arms easily and cradling her close to your chest. Nothing seemed amiss; she had the hiccups, something she’d had a hundred times. She was half asleep, gazing up at you through cracked lids, and one of her hands lazily moved, searching for your pinkie to grab on to.

“Hey, little one,” you murmured, before turning your attention back to Alexia. “She has the hiccups?”

You were slightly grumpy at being woken up for the hiccups, but your annoyance faded when you saw Alexia shaking her head rapidly, fighting back tears.

“No, no, something is not right. She making a snuffling sound, it is not normal and I do not know what it is or when it started and I think we should take her to the hospital just in case because-”

“Alexia, breathe.” You interrupted, beginning to understand what was going on with her.

“NO, amor, please, we can just go please, let me put her in the car and we can go get her checked out.” Alexia cried, and you looked between her and the baby, wondering who needed you more at the moment. You decided it was Alexia, considering Mila had dozed back off. She wasn’t even hiccuping anymore, she was completely normal, completely fine. You placed her on the little cot next to your bed, the one she no longer slept in unless it was during the day, and you wanted her near you.

“Amor, no we have to go,” Alexia wheezed, pulling gently at the back of your shirt. She was really panicking now, her mind seemingly in a million different places.

Mila let you put her down easily, and you turned back to your wife, taking her face in between your hands.

“Alexia, relax. It’s just the hiccups. Mila is fine, completely fine. She isn’t even making a sound anymore, she’s asleep.” She shrugged your hands off to step closer to the cot, looking intently at the slumbering baby. Alexia was rapidly breathing, her hands clenching and unclenching into fists at her side.

“She is okay?” She asked quietly, turning back to you.

“She’s fine, my love.” You assured her, opening your arms and letting Alexia fall into them easily. Even though she seemed convinced, now, that Mila was okay, she was still panicking, her rapid exhales hitting the skin of your shoulder as she tried to regulate her breathing.

“Cariño, I do not know what is happening,” she whispered. “I cannot breathe, please do something.”

Now Alexia was begging you to help her, and you felt your heart break a little at the fact that she was so clearly afraid for Mila she didn’t even think of herself until she was sure the baby was okay.

“You’re okay, my love. Mila is okay, I am okay, and you are okay. We’re all fine, we’re all safe.”

“It does not feel safe,” she murmured, and you felt a teardrop hit your skin.

“Oh, baby.” You sighed, pulling out of Alexia’s strong grip even when she tried to pull you back in. You picked Mila up, and she squirmed slightly, but her eyes fluttered shut again, and you turned to Alexia, holding your daughter out to her. “Take her.”

“Cariño,” Alexia began to object.

“No, Ale, take our daughter.” You insisted, and Alexia relented, holding Mila close to her spasming chest. You wrapped your arms around the both of them, fitting your face into the crook of Alexia’s neck, gently stroking the baby’s head.

“She’s okay, baby. She’s right here with you, where nothing can hurt her. Look at her, Alexia. She’s perfectly fine, right?”

“Sí, she’s okay.” Alexia mumbled shifting Mila over to one arm, pulling you even closer with her other one. “And you are okay?”

“I am fine, my love. You are okay, too.”

“I am okay too.” Alexia repeated, as if trying to convince herself of it. “It was just the hiccups.”

You decided to push, just a little, even when Alexia didn’t take her eyes away from her baby in her arms. “She’s had the hiccups before, amor. What happened?”

“I- I do not know. It seemed different.” Alexia sniffled. You weren’t used to seeing her this distraught.

You were exhausted yourself, or you would have seen it sooner; the bags under Alexia’s eyes, the slump in her shoulders, the pacing, the anxiety that had completely taken her over. You saw it now, though, like a veil had been lifted in the dim room, and you saw how utterly broken your wife looked.

“Ale, put her down for a second.” You encouraged. She frowned but did as you asked, her hands gently and expertly maneuvering Mila back into her little cot. “Look at me, please.”

She turned to you, and you brought a hand up to cup her cheek. “You haven’t been sleeping.”

“No.” She admitted. “Not a lot.”

“Why?”

“I like to watch her sleep.” Alexia said softly, her eyes flickering back over to Mila’s sleeping form, before they focused back on you.

“Can you tell me why you’re staying up late, watching our baby sleep, instead of sleeping yourself?” You asked. Alexia’s eyes fluttered shut, and when they opened again, they were filled with tears.

“I have so much fear, all the time. That something is going to happen, and I will not be able to protect her. I love her so much, it is terrifying, amor. I do not know how to be a mom. I do not know how to do this, and I feel like I am doing a terrible job. I just love her, I just want her to be okay,” she sobbed, burying her face into your shoulder.

“Oh, Ale.” You sighed, pulling her back with you onto the bed until she was laying with her head on your chest, in between your legs. This had clearly been building up for a while, and there wasn’t much you could do while she was so upset. You let her cry into you for a few minutes, running your hands through her hair, and holding her close. The time gave you the opportunity to think, and decide exactly how you were going to approach this.

“A few months ago, when I freaked out. When Mila wouldn’t sleep without me holding her, and I was so exhausted and anxious, and I convinced myself I was a horrible mother. What did you tell me?” You asked, feeling Alexia tense under you. It wasn’t a fond memory, you falling into her arms and crying, so hard, and for so long, you were almost sick. The worst part was that Alexia hadn’t noticed you were struggling.

Alexia’s accent was thicker when she spoke, her voice raspy. “I told you that it is an adjustment, and nothing is perfect right away. You are a great mother. That when it is hard, you just need to ask for help, and I will be there.”

“Does that not apply to you, too?”

“It is different.” Alexia argued, but you shook your head.

“No, it’s the same. You’re having a hard time. You need to talk to me, so I can help, not keep it all inside until you break. This is normal, Ale, having increased anxiety after becoming a parent, but you don’t have to feel like this. There are things we can do to make it better, you don’t have to handle it all yourself. Just like I don’t.”

Your wife didn’t say anything for a while, just wrapped her arms tight around you, and pulled you closer to her. “I am sorry. I should have said something sooner.”

Trying to get Alexia to be honest about her feelings was something you still struggled with, though she was much better than she had been when you got together.

“It’s alright, baby. I know this is hard for you. You don’t need to be perfect. You’re doing so well, though, Ale. Juggling all of this with work. You’re so good with her, and I am so proud of you.” Your words were reminiscent of what Alexia had said to you in the hospital, a detail that wasn’t lost on either of you.

Alexia’s face grew red and she turned slightly to bury her face in your shirt; only you could make her blush like that, and she hoped you never stopped. “Te amo.” She murmured.

“I love you, Ale. And so does Mila.” You promised.

Almost as if on cue, Mila began to cry in her little cot, clearly awake and annoyed that her parents were nearby, and not holding her. Alexia rolled off you, but you shook your head, pushing her back down onto the bed as you picked up your daughter.

“No, you need sleep. M and I will stay here with you, and you sleep, okay?” You climbed into the bed next to her, laying Mila easily on your chest. She settled instantly, letting out a content little sigh, and Alexia layed down too, her face level with the baby’s. She traced a finger over the small slope of the baby’s nose, over her little eyebrows. Sleepily, Mila reached for her Mami’s hand, happily gripping on to one of her fingers, her eyes fluttering shut. You watched with an almost overwhelming amount of love in your body as Alexia’s eyes shut, too, her hand connected with your daughter’s. Both of them safe, and happy, and perfect.

--------

not super sure how i feel about this but thought it was a cute / angst mostly fluffy fic :) also... i'd def be down to write more about these 3!

#alexia putellas x reader #woso one shot #woso imagine #woso fanfics #woso x reader

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catoscloves · 5 months

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there's something to be said about gale telling peeta that katniss will choose the person she can't survive without - a sentiment that katniss notices lacks any mention of love or comfort or affection, only partnership and practicality. because survival is the basis of gale and katniss's relationship - their relationship is the product of an oppressive regime where so many people starve and die and suffer. they built a partnership out of pragmatic necessity - friendship and affection and yes, even love, did spring from that, but nevertheless, survival was the foundation for them, and the fact that the majority of their dynamic is spent in the woods and this is the only place gale sees her happy is symbolic of that.

but her relationship with peeta is extremely different. he gives her laughter and comfort and joy no matter where they are. he balances out the temperamental and volatile nature (a characteristic she shares with gale as a result of their conditions) with peacefulness and an appreciation for beauty and goodness. they have a trust and camaraderie and friendship that extends far beyond the need for survival, a bond that connects them beyond merely the need to stay alive and protect their loved ones. it is with peeta that she truly lives and laughs and loves and betters herself. peeta notices and brings out the most wonderful parts of her cold, dispassionate exterior (mockingjay, suzanne collins), gives her an appreciation for beauty in life (dandelion in the spring, the pearl on the beach, etc). he's the calmness and peacefulness that she needs to truly live and feel free and safe, while gale is violence and storms and outbursts (which she may agree with, but his tendencies to choose violence don't satisfy katniss's emotional needs in a relationship like peeta does).

to gale and katniss, love and relationships and friendships and human connection come second to practical concerns and the mere desire to simply not die. for peeta and katniss, love and life are about far more than just survival, which is why they share an emotionally charged connection that's stronger than what gale and katniss have.

#the hunger games #is this supposed to he anti GK because it truly isn't #I think they have great chemistry and a somewhat well written dynamic and are certainly compatible #they're just too similar and thematically peeta and katniss fit the message of thg more #also for people who have known each other six years g & k are honestly far less developed and feel less natural #than her and peeta #anti galeniss #i suppose #everlark #katniss everdeen #peeta mellark #katniss x peeta #otp: dandelion in the spring #anna reads thg

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shelbgrey · 10 months

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Honey, I want something for “being Carlisle and Esme's youngest daughter”. and being Garrett's love interest! I love him, however, he has few things on this platform! Guys are very protective of her as well as girls. Thanks for the attention 🌷💌.

Being Carlisle and Esme's youngest daughter HCs:

Paring: daughter!Reader x Dad!Carlisle x Mom!Esme (Reader x Boyfriend!Garrett)

Summary: headcanons about carlisle and Esme's daughter dating Garrett.

💜MasterList 💜twilight MasterList

So I think they're youngest daughter is gonna remain human for awhile. Your the only cullen 'child' that has been legally adopted by carlisle and Esme, So your actually they're daughter.

You were the daughter of an old friend of Esme's, your mother died giving birth to you and your biological father just wasn't fit to take care of you. Esme and Carlisle took you in under your bio-mom's wishes.

Anyway, Esme was over the moon excited to have a baby in the house, she practically never put you down... Unless Carlisle wanted to hold you and cuddle you.

The two never really gotten the chance to be actual parents, with the other's they were already grown and matured, but with you they could finally experience parent hood.

Your defently a daddy's girl, Carlisle loves you with every single cell in his body and he's very over protective of you... Unfortunately to the point he didn't trust Jasper alone with you when you were a baby.

Speaking of Jasper and siblings, you literally have the best siblings in the world. If you thought carlisle was over protective just wait till you see the boys.

Emmett and you are the closet, he's always making you laugh and 'wrestling'. He'll do just about anything for you or with you. He's probably also the most protective out of your three brothers.

When you were little Edward would often read you stories and teach you how to play piano.

Jasper is your go to person when you have a problem, he's the best listener and he has your back.

As you got older the protectiveness got old, high school wasn't easy with them around but honestly they're the reason you survived.

But the protectiveness didn't get really annoying till you met Garrett, your mate.

In all honesty it's Edward and Bella's fault (Emmett words not yours). You and Bella don't get along at all and she's jealous of yours and Edward's relationship... That's a story for another time though, this is yours and Garrett's story.

Anyway, the family didn't really expect it to happen. After going to Egypt with your parents you decided to met the other guests, that's how you met Garrett.

He cought your eye immediately and the feeling was mutual, Carlisle didn't like how Garrett would look at you.

“who were you talking to?” your dad asked after leaving the living room. “dose it matter?”

“no, no, it doesn't matter unless it's a Boy!”

You just brushed it off, knowing your dad was just being over protective and You continued to get to know Garrett.

You thought he was very charming and funny. Dispite the situation you were currently in with Renesmee he was always making you laugh.

Your parents were happy and all, but at the same time Carlisle didn't want to see you get hurt.

“Dad, what are you doing?” you asked after put some space between you and Garrett.

“there should be a safe distance between you and boys... Especially this one”

Anyway, Garrett realized the problem and went to Carlisle about it. They were both old fashion.

“I think I love your daughter and I want to your promising to date her”

Carlisle's problems seemed to go away slightly. “well it's up to her... But if you hurt her you'll deal with me”

after your family won the battle with the vulturi he took you at on that date. He treated you like a queen the whole time and he asked you to be his girlfriend at the end of the night.

So he did join the coven after awhile. The whole nomad life wasn't pleasant to him anymore. He even changed to the vegetarian diet for you.

He likes like being productive of you, but he knows you can take care of yourself.

Emmett dose send deth threats when you started dating. “you better not hurt her” carlisle doesn't have a violent bone in his body, but Emmett dose.

But after the family saw how happy you were they welcomed Garrett into the family with open arms.

“I'll follow you anywhere woman” he smiled.

#Breaking dawn part 2 #Garrett x reader #Carlisle cullen x reader #Esme cullen x reader #Twilight headcanons #Twilight Imagines #Garrett headcanons #Garrett imagines #Carlisle cullen headcanons #Esme cullen headcanons #Emmett cullen x reader #Rosalie Hale x reader #Alice cullen x reader #Jasper Hale x reader #Edward cullen x reader

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batboyblog · 3 months

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Things Biden and the Democrats did, this week #4

Feb 2-9 2024

The White House announced that a landmark 23 million Americans, 1 in 6 households, have been connected to affordable high speed internet with the help of the Affordable Connectivity Program, saving Americans between $30 and $75 every month on their internet bill. 4 Million ACP users are seniors, 1/4th of households on the program are African American and 1/4th are Latino, and it supports 320,000 households on Tribal lands. Sadly the program will be forced to end if Republicans in Congress continue to block new funding

The White House announced $5 billion for a National Semiconductor Technology Center, focusing on research and development as well as workforce needs. This is part of an effort under the CHIPS and Science Act to make America a world leader in science and grow jobs for the 21st century. This will include hundreds of millions of dollars of investment in workforce development

The EPA announced finalized rules that will strength air quality standard around fine particle pollution, AKA soot. The new stronger rules are projected to prevent 4,200 premature deaths and save Americans $46 billion in health costs by 2032. Soot is particularly harmful to those with lung and heart illnesses, children and those with asthma. Industrial soot is more common in low income communities

The Department of Transportation announced $1.5 Billion investment in America's bus systems. The bulk of the money will go helping local transport authorities buy low or no emission buses. There will also be investment in bus facilities.

President Biden signed a memorandum directing a strengthening of human rights safe guards around weapons transferred from US stockpiles to allied nations. The directive seeks to guarantee no arms are transferred that might be used to violate human rights.

HHS and HUD announced a join program partnering with 8 states and DC to help streamline an all of government response to homelessness. This is an off shoot of the $3.16 billion dollar investment amounted by HUD last week to end homelessness in America

The Department of Energy and FEMA released the findings of a two year study that projections Puerto Rico will be able to be 100% renewable energy by 2050. DoE also announced that by the end of the 30,000 low income Puerto Ricans will be able to apply for a solar power program, the first investments in a billion dollar DoE program for the island's renewable energy future

Department of Transportation announced $417 million dollar loan to the North Carolina Turnpike Authority to complete a major transportation overhaul in the greater Raleigh area

The EPA and Department of Energy announced a joint plan to invest federal funds to help measure and reduce methane emissions from the oil and gas production. Methane is the second largest green house gas after CO2 and is responsible for 30% of global warming in the last 200 years. This comes after the EPA pushed new rules to fine oil and gas manufacturers for excess methane emissions.

The Senate confirmed 2 more Biden nominated federal judges. This brings the total number of Biden judges to 177 For the first time in history a majority of a President's judicial nominees are not white men, Biden has nominated a majority women and people of color Biden also nominated 4 more federal judges, including two LGBT candidates. If they are confirmed it'll bring Biden's LGBT judge total to 11 tying with President Obama for the most LGBT people put on the federal bench

#Joe Biden #Thanks Biden #democrats #good news #politics #us politics #climate change #climate crisis #public transport #buses #puerto rico #clean energy

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headspace-hotel · 1 year

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today's completely random opinion that No One asked for: sex toys are morally neutral and important accessibility aids for a lot of disabilities, but in the age of articles about "something something Empowering Women's Sexuality" that have 29 affiliate links in them, we gotta take some steps to protect the sanctity of masturbation as one of the last remaining activities that you don't need to Buy Product to do. the clitoris is free and the most important body safe sex toy is the human hand

#anticapitalist #(really tho)#random

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artbyblastweave · 8 months

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I've never made any connections between Worm and the Captain America mythos before. Spill some ink?

Okay, so from a purely aesthetic perspective, the gimme is Miss Militia. She's the most obvious "Captain Patriotic" in the roster, she has the power of GUN, she's the only one who actively buys into the mythology of America specifically. She's a Kurdish woman occupying an aesthetic niche generally held by a rugged squinty white guy. She's an output of the melting pot narrative. She's sort of a rendering of what a grounded superhero who somehow became very aesthetically into America might look like. Not in the craven marketing-driven way of Homelander or Comedian, not in the jingoistic maniac way of USAgent or Peacemaker. She buys it in the broadly left-liberal (USamerican connotation of that term) safe, friendly, reclamative way. Why, what a great rehabilitation of the archetype!

She's also deeply, deeply afraid of rocking the boat. She's got a deepseated childhood trauma related to the bad things that happen when she puts herself in a leadership role. She goes along to get along. When she's proactive, it's usually to point a gun at Tattletale to stop her from upsetting the status quo. She sits through a lot of situations where Steve Rogers, as commonly modeled, would probably plant himself like a tree by the river of truth and go, "Hey, this is fucked up." She more or less capitulates to Undersider domination of the city, in a way that predisposes us to think of her as a voice of reason after all these total nuts that Skitter's been up against- but would Taylor "to relinquish control is a form of ego death" Hebert really be willing to leave someone in charge of the local Protectorate branch who she thought couldn't be corralled? She looks like a beacon, but doesn't- indeed, probably can't- ever truly behave like one. I mean, you can debate the on-the-spot morality of any given one of her judgement calls, that's actually one of the less exhausting Worm Morality Debates to have- but in aggregate, a person in American flag garb who actually meaningfully criticizes the paramilitary organization they're part of is not gonna survive long in that role!

So again, she's the gimme from an aesthetic standpoint. But what I don't really see a lot of discussion of is how Cauldron plays into the riff.

Captain America is institutional, but in a comically morally uncomplicated way. The serum was originally mana from heaven, granted to a living saint, conveniently divorced from any nitty-gritty sausage-making process and even-more conveniently divorced from the horrible consequences of giving the, uh, the U.S government a replicable super soldier process. And in fairness to Captain America, this is 100 percent something the overall mythos eventually patched to my satisfaction; the sausage-making process eventually revealed as prototypical government fuckery driven by human experimentation on black servicemen, the overall Marvel Setting littered with failed attempts by the U.S. Government to recreate that golden goose so they can have their fun new jackboots. (In Ultimate Marvel, this is how almost all contemporary superhumans were created, and this is a state of affairs with a body count in the millions or billions.)

Cauldron draws you in with the same noble rhetoric about greater goods, the same one-off proprietary irreplicable formula- but you don't get the luxury afterwards of representing nothing but the dream. You aren't partnering up with a plucky crank scientist with a heart of gold. You're selling your soul to an organization with an agenda. The narrative makes no bones about the fact that everything you do is fundamentally tainted by the fact you opted into an end product created through torture, kidnapping and human experimentation. You don't get to pull a Kamen Rider by going rogue or opting out or making good use of the fruit of the poisoned tree; you are owned, and everything you do has this Damocles sword hanging over your head- when are the people who bankrolled this going to come to collect?

So that's the question of "who would willingly dress like that" covered, and the question of who creates a serum like that. What about the question of who takes a serum like that? I'd argue that Eidolon is the examination of that. Pre-Cauldron David reads to me like pre-serum Steve Rogers viewed through a significantly bleaker lens. They're both sickly kids desperate to serve, rocketed to the pinnacle of human capability by an experimental procedure. But for Steve Rogers, the crisis was that he had a specific vision of the world and was frustrated by his inability to carry it out. Before the serum he picked fights over what was right and wrong and got his ass handed to him; afterwards he picked those same fights and just started winning instead. The serum neatly solved a problem he had, and to the extent that his mindset is influenced by his pre-serum experiences, it's generally constructive; a desire to protect the weak, help the helpless, an appreciation for people who stand up for what's right even when they're clearly gonna get pancaked for their trouble. So ultimately there's no dark side, downside, or underlying neurosis ascribed to his initial impulse to take that serum.

But with David, it's not a tragic case of the spirit being willing but the flesh being weak. He isn't a preternaturally-noble soul, out to represent the best elements of the American ideal- he kind of represents the inverse, a guy who's been failed at every level while utterly convinced that he's the problem. He's actively suicidal because he's a wheelchair-bound epileptic in an economically-depressed socially-backwards rural town in the 1980s, and he's spent his 18 years of life internalizing the idea that he's worse than useless unless he can somehow find a way provide value to something larger than himself. Doctor Mother finds him in the aftermath of a suicide attempt spurred by his rejection from the army- and he didn't even want to join the army specifically, necessarily, he just needed his situation to be literally anything else, and he took what he thought he could get. And then he finds himself in a position to become a superhero, so he does that, molds himself into that, subordinates himself to that, builds his entire sense of self and values around the value he can provide in that role. No grand design or sacred principles carried over through the metamorphosis. Just relief at finally, finally having something that looks like an answer to the question of what he's supposed to do.

And you know, you know that if Steve Rogers was facing down the barrel of being depowered, he'd smile and nod, he'd Cincinnatus that shit. It's happened before. But for David, the emotional trauma and self-worth issues that caused him to roll the dice on a Steve-Rogers treatment never really went away. When would it? He's been Providing Value as a ten-ton Hammer Against Evil for thirty years. No family, no social life. Certainly, no incentive on his handler's part to lance his Atlas complex. So he barrels towards atrocity in the name of remaining useful. Admittedly, this is where the comparison breaks down in a significant way; Captain America is much more of a symbol than he is an irreplicable powerhouse, so it's not catastrophic if he's taken off the board. Eidolon is so unbelievably powerful that his myopia and self-centeredness actually do align with a real problem everyone else is gonna have if he loses his powers. But in terms of the starting points- I think that Steve Rogers embodies the myth about why you'd want to join the army that badly. Eidolon is, I think, much more closely modelling why you'd actually want to join the army that badly.

#apologies for the delay in responding #worm #wildbow #parahumans #worm meta #eidolon #thoughts #meta #miss militia

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systlin · 11 months

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People that are absolutely convinced anyone can be vegan/vegetarian baffle me. I eat meat fairly regularly and I am already courting a B12 deficiency (for anyone who doesn't know the easiest source of B12 that the human body likes to absorb is red meat, you can get it from other sources primarily leafy greens I believe but your not getting as much because it's not as easy for your body to absorb) my levels aren't low enough to be considered clinically deficient but it's a near thing so my doctor has told me to take 2 B12 vitamins every day. I'm hoping this fixes my levels because if it doesn't that's a sign of a much more serious problem where my digestive system is biologically struggling to absorb B12

Gods, I feel you

When I got my Chron's diagnosis, the gastroenterologist and I talked about diet. High fiber is my enemy. I'm mostly OK now thanks to maintenance medication, but even now I can't have more than a single handful of nuts or popcorn without Suffering after. Raw vegetables are iffy; I can eat a couple of radishes or carrot sticks, but celery sets it off and raw broccoli or cauliflower is misery. I can have ONE small bowl of salad a day, which sucks because I LOVE salad. I have to be careful to limit servings of raw fruit, which also sucks because I adore cherries and pears and peaches.

Cooked vegetables are mostly fine, though I still have to keep the broccoli and brussels sprouts servings small. Cooked fruit is fine too. Beans are iffy. I can have some, but not a lot, which sucks because I love beans. Tofu is OK, but during my flare it gave me worse gas.

During a flare, my safe foods were cheese, meat, eggs, milk, fruit juice, vegetable juice, white bread, and cream of wheat. It was a fucking nightmare to try and get all the nutrients into me that I need. You will note that most of these are in fact animal products. I was under literal medical orders to keep the hell away from non-juiced fruits and vegetables.

Of course, a bunch of people came out of the woodwork to tell me that I could heal myself by cutting out all dairy and wheat and going vegan/raw vegan. People still do this regularly. I've deleted ten out of my inbox since yesterday.

If I tried to go vegan, it would be very, very rough on my traitor-ass large intestine and would probably send me into a flare. If I tried to go RAW vegan, it would probably mean surgery and might kill me.

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nrdmssgs · 11 months

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Little things, they do 2 (Price, Ghost, Gaz) (headcannons)

Masterlist

Part 1 (Alex, Soap, König) here

Little things, they do, that get you every time. Silly, warm, heart-melting, wholesome things.

Captain John Price

Knuckle kisses. That's it.

Praises you not only when you succeed, but also when you fail. “I know, you tried so hard, love. This doesn't make you lesser. You don't have to prove anything to me. I'm proud of you. You're enough.”

Compliments you at the most random times. You've just woken up with an absolute mess on your head, or you walk around the house in old faded sweatpants and a dirty T-shirt because the rest of the clothes are being washed? John takes your hand, brings it to his lips and whispers "You are incredibly beautiful." or “How did an old git like me ended up with the most gorgeous, hottest human being out there?”

He has this habit of going behind your back and leaning close to your very ear while telling you something. Maybe he just likes to feel you close and uses it as an excuse, maybe he wants to “envelop” you in a way, hide you from the whole world, sharing his knowledge, feeling, how interested you are in a topic.

One of those people to actually use paper and envelopes, that some hotel still provide their rooms with. You get these long 3-5 page letters from different corners of earth every now and then. They can be absolutely platonic - he can literally describe, what he's seen or overheard on the streets lately or rant about how he wants to hear seabirds voices, but they are interrupted by the unceasing roar of engines and roadworks here… But you see it: every line screams “I love you. I freaking love you so much, it's almost 4 am here, and I'm still wide awake, because I need to write to you, to communicate in any way that will be safe for you.”

Simon Ghost Riley

He is no stranger to triggered stress or panic. So if you have any phobia, and he finds out about it - he starts protecting you from its triggers. Let's say, you're scared of spiders and scorpions. Even a picture of one can absolutely freak you out. Simon goes above and beyond to shield you from any type of appearance of these creatures in your life. In summer, he'll escort and even tiniest spider out of your apartment, before you see it.

He even shares a googledoc with trigger warning time codes for every piece of media, you wanted to see. Even if it's a long series - he just checks every episode of it on a fast rewind and writes you, if it's fully safe to watch or not.

Ghost has a wealth of experience in dealing with insomnia and is willing to help you, if you come across this issue. Just don't hesitate to ask - he is ready to spend all the night helping you out. Will definitely start with pressing your back to his chest and guiding you through a breathing exercise.

If you had a bad day and dropped him a message - he`d surely call you as soon as he can to talk you through everything that happened and soothe you.

“I`m always there for you, you know?” “I know, Simon…” “No, thats not the way, we do that.” “...” “Come on. Say it.” “I remember, ok?” “Say. it. I need you say it out loud.” “You are always there for me, no matter what.” “And?” “... and I can call or text you any time and you'll reach back asap.” “Good job. I'll call you again before you go to sleep.”

Despite his ascetic way of life, he likes nice things and gradually accustoms you to the same preferences.

It all starts with tea. One day, you go grocery shopping together. You walk between the rows of shelves while Simon stays by your cart. Returning to the cart, you find him skeptically examining the box of tea you dropped into the cart earlier. "What is this?" "It's tea, Simon, stop pretending you can't read." Ghosts gaze eloquently demonstrates his attitude towards this product. "It's trash." He pulls out a simple but elegant box from the top shelf. "This is tea." You try to convince him that with the money spent on that "good" box, you could drink tea all year, but he is relentless. Simon ends up buying the tea himself and brewing it at your place. When you first try it and roll your eyes in pleasure - he smiles contentedly. “Told you.”

Kyle Gaz Garrick

“Babe this is delicious, wanna try it?” - say yes and firstly he will kiss you. You absolutely need to try that ice cream, his tongue is just a nice bonus. Ofc shares his food with you afterward.

One of the most supportive human beings out there. Encourages every your hobby, hella proud of you and not shy to demonstrate it. “Have you heard her singing? RNs got a voice of a songbird!” “Kyle, please, I just went to a few vocal lessons and learned like… 2 songs.” “Those are my favorite ones from now on, love.”

If you work from home, he'll walk into your room randomly (but only when he is 100% sure, you're not on the call), sit beside you and just stare silently at you. Ask him, what's up, and he'll give you a quick kiss on the forehead and walk away grinning.

Slow dances with you on streets, when you two pass by street musicians. Doesn't care if everybody looking, even if someone pulls out a phone and starts filming this wholesome scene. It's only you in Kyles hands, that matter right now to him.

If you have a pet - he definitely becomes its new dad. When Kyle is around - your four-legged friend absolutely forgets about your existence, because Gaz is an expert in best scratches!

By the way, your pets birthday is now Kyles official holiday!

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togglesbloggle · 1 month

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In Defense of Bad Things

'Bad' here meaning mostly 'amateur'; stuff made enthusiastically by people at an unprofessional level. Art with visible gaps between what the artist imagined and what they achieved, products of flawed craftsmanship. I suppose everybody can appreciate them to some extent, it's a rare parent that doesn't put up their kid's drawings on the fridge in one way or another. But it turns out to be a fully general skill you can cultivate, and the more I do, the more I'm glad I did.

Partly, it's the teacher thing; finding delight in amateur work is one of the ways to find delight in the process of learning. Cultivating a love of striving-qua-striving can help make you a force for good in the world, as people start to feel safe trying to do things when you're around, even when their efforts are wobbly. You get to participate a little more in the process of atoms spinning themselves into ideas, even when there aren't any illusions about whether you're helping cultivate some revolutionary genius in the field.

And partly it's a fabulous way to build community. By necessity, our professional-level skills tend to be at the service of other people, performed for economic benefit; that's kind of how you get professionally good at something in the first place. When we're acting for our own sake, and among friends, most of what we do with one another is amateurish. I only cook middling-okay, I can't hold a tune that well, I'll never be a speed runner for anything. If you can only enjoy singing from the hundred best singers in the whole world, manufactured and polished by major studios, then you and your friends will sit shoulder-to-shoulder and passively listen to music. But it's so much richer an experience to sit face-to-face, actually singing together, even badly; you expose yourself to so many new ways to appreciate and respect one another, building relationships on what you've accomplished and not just by witty criticism or liking the same things.

And partly it's because some of the most powerful and innovative artistic experiences are in high-churn environments with low expectations and low barriers to entry, if only because those catch the passionate and driven young people that have been otherwise overlooked by our systems. The golden age of webcomics meant that a ton of the actual art involved was pretty lousy, but it also produced work that people still talk about today. D&D began as a profoundly unpolished collection of handmade rulebooks sold at cons in a plastic baggie. By the time these products of enthusiastic amateurs filter themselves through various levels of popularity and absorb mainstream cash influx, they're often risk-averse and missing a lot of the bold spark that inspired their fans in the first place; others will simply never drift towards the mainstream at all. I'm not saying you should be the person who goes out to dig through the slush piles of the internet looking for overlooked art, unless you want to be-- but sometimes a work of actual staggering genius also happens to be a Supernatural fanfic by a first-time author who's a little hazy on commas, and if that's a dealbreaker, you're going to miss out on some profoundly valuable experiences.

And hiding behind all of these things is, like...

Our appreciation of beauty has an odd structure, right? When things are done very skillfully, by brilliant artists with years of training, we can usually appreciate those accomplishments. And when we're looking at nature without human influence, and especially when we think very deeply about natural processes and understand them in context, we often rediscover that sense of beauty. There's just this bizarre hole in the middle where we declare things 'ugly'; as if a little skill is worse than none at all.

I really don't trust that gap. It feels like a trick my brain is playing on me, you know? It has me suspicious that a lot of what I consider 'ugly' or 'bad' is not a very direct experience of the world at all, or an informed judgment. That it is, rather, a declaration of (self-, social-) identity; a desire to be seen as a person of good taste, or as somebody who does things well, or just more primitively as one of the monkeys who is in the good-stuff-tribe and not one of the monkeys who is in the bad-stuff-tribe.

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brokenpieces-72 · 2 months

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Stray Fluff

This is part 2. Part 1 is here. If you have any ideas or want to be included in the Taglist, leave a comment or send me a request. In this fic you are a dog, 100% canine, not a human. Enjoy.

“Pffah!” Johnny spat as he fruitlessly held out his arms for cover, and turned his head away while you shook your fur once again. The soap went everywhere including Johnny’s face, getting a bit in his mouth. Kyle shielded himself as well, as you wagged your tail unaware of their displeasure.

“Maybe we should call you trouble.” Kyle suggested, looking right at you. You just panted happily. Kyle couldn't stay mad at that face.

“Don’t name it Gaz ya’ll just get attached.” Johnny said, grumpily.

“The dog isn’t going much of anywhere mate. They’re staying here until we get a transfer sorted for them.” Gaz reminded him.

“Alright get over here mutt.” Soap commands. You obey, but not how he wanted. You walked over to him for another round of shampoo, and jumped up to lick his face, getting him even more soaked and drenched than before. Kyle was sympathetic enough to pull you off of Johnny who was getting fed up with your antics.

Price was still on video call with Laswell trying to figure out what can be done about the poor dog. Meanwhile Laswell was still trying to figure out how to deal with a dog and getting it safely off the base.

“And it stole a ration?” She asked.

“A potato yes. Soap was very adamant.” Price said, with a hint of sarcasm behind his statement.

“Hmm…” Laswell said before starting to mutter over the video call.

“You’re breaking up watcher.” Price commented.

"The dog is from an animal testing facility. Beauty products most likely." Kate exclaimed.

"Dog doesn't show any signs of testing, at least none that I've noticed." Price pointed out.

“There’s a stamp on the collar with a few numbers and a small logo but I can't make out what the logo is. This is very strange, John."

“Tell that to my sergeants currently giving the mutt a flea bath." Price commented. There was a small chuckle from Laswell.

“You’ll be the first to know if anything else comes up. Call it a fixation, but I'm going to do more digging, for now the dog will have to stay with on base.” Laswell said.

"Ghost is already out getting some extra supplies." Price said, guessing this would happen.

"I'll let you know what I find. Watcher out." Laswell said before signing off. Price sat back in his seat sighing. The Dog would stay until they figured out where it came from or a shelter could take it.

Price stood up and headed outside. As soon as he opened the door though, you slipped in, covered in shampoo and water. Price got out of the just in time to keep Johnny and Kyle from running into him. You’re around the corner of the hall in mere seconds with the two sergeants hot on your tail. Price just stood there and shaking his head in disbelief. Simon was standing next to him in a couple of minutes seeing the captain’s wet leg from you rubbing against him, and the remaining trail of puddles. He looked at his captain.

“What do we do with the dog?” He asked. Price looked back at his lieutenant and down the hall again, with neither you nor the sergeants in sight.

Each of the 141 came up with their own ideas. Or sometimes you were the one who came up with the idea.

Kyle would use his off time to give you attention. Didn't take long for it to become a bit of a routine and one you picked up on, finding him somewhere on base just finishing up, poking your head in and wagging your tail. It became a highlight of his day, and yours, as you got plenty of scratches and even belly rubs. Kyle enjoyed it for the chance to be active in a more positive sense. Work could be tiring for him, and he wouldn’t always go outside and throw something for you, but he welcomed snuggles on his bunk. Sometimes you would help with his work, actually listening to his instructions when you're ordered to drop it.

At one point Kyle decided to teach you some basic commands and even had a K9 unit and trainer join to help you learn as well. Yeah uh... you kept getting him tangled in the leash, and more than once you fell off whatever makeshift ramps and platforms they made. You did learn how to sit, stay, and go with leash tugs and spoken word. The K9 trainer would look after you whenever Kyle and the rest of the 141 had to leave to go on missions. You would often spend your days waiting on Kyle's bed for him to return. Anytime you overheard a chopper or jeep you would spring off the bed, barking excitedly until you got outside, standing and waiting to see if they had returned safely.

For the most part, you followed Johnny around while he was working out or doing other stuff on base. He found you a bit of a nuisance. If he didn't give you attention even when you were being so well-behaved, you would nip at his hand or leg. This led to him giving you attention, but it was usually just to chase you off. At one point though while he was working out he started doing sit-ups. You went over to him and sat at his feet before putting your paws on his knees. Your happy face stopped him before he got his first sit making him chuckle. After you helped him with sit-ups you made his push-ups more of a challenge, laying on his back. Johnny was able to distract you with a ball, but you two become more comfortable with each other. Eventually, he’s taking you with him to go running, using a leash to keep you from running too far ahead. You’re still a kind-hearted menace though, taking any food he leaves in reach of your mouth.

Simon found you very helpful. You’re a dog, and he could talk to you when he needed it. On occasion, he finds you sleeping in his bed, sometimes on his chest. You are not unwelcomed. Often you are discovered after he wakes up, sometimes from nightmares. You wake with him, and with you on top of him, you ground him.

“Good dog.” He muttered one night in a cold sweat. You stared at him in the dark and then felt his rough calloused hands massaging your ears. He found you soothing, even when you’re just hiding under the table waiting for something to drop. Simon doesn’t bother sneaking food, he straight up slips it to under the table.

Price didn't know what to make of you for the first week or so. You’re not like most stray dogs that tend to be frightened of humans. You’re curious and you openly show that curiosity. Price is often writing reports and doing paperwork so you’ll try to distract him, by getting a ball or stick. You get a ball and start begging for him to play with you. He has to focus on his work and he expresses this to you multiple times. Then you would see if you could get him to see the toy. He would scold you, and wrestle with you to get off his lap or desk.

Price sighed as one such wrestle led to the ball falling and bouncing away for you to chase. Then he noticed the time. Thinking for a moment he did need to take a break.

“Outside?” He asked you. You looked at him with the ball in your mouth, tilting your head. He asked again. “Outside?”

You wagged your tail as he got up, stretching and feeling his back crack before he took you outside. He was able to track down a large pillow, which was left by his desk for you to relax on so you could nap while you waited for him to finish. After that, if he ever has to step out of his office for drills or anything you’re walking right next to him, toy in mouth. You sit anytime he addresses the soldiers, at attention with the toy still in your mouth. If you couldn't be found on Kyle's bunk when the 141 were away, you could be found waiting on the pillow.

One day Laswell and Nikolai come by. Laswell was there to talk to Price and go over some intel, Nikolai came along as her ride (and to meet you). Kyle had you on a leash and you sat patiently. Laswell was somewhat impressed, seeing as your first story involved you getting into trouble.

“Captain.” Laswell said, shaking the captain’s hand, and then Kyle’s. “Sergeant.”

You gave a soft and polite woof, shifting your two front paws. Laswell couldn’t help but offer a hand for you to sniff. You sniffed it and then offered your own paw to shake which she accepts. None of them had seen you do that before. Nikolai is chuckling.

“Good dog. Knows manners better than most.” Nikolai commented.

“Take it no one has any ideas where the dog came from?” Kyle asked. Laswell shook her head. They all walked bavk inside and you retrived a ball as soon as Kyle got you off the leash. Johnny was close by, along with Simon intent to listen to Laswell’s intel. You took your toy to Laswell and basically sat on her feet staring up with puppy dog eyes. Johnny is snickering while Nikolai is laughing. Laswell looked back down at you while you wait for her to take the toy.

“John could you call them off?” Laswell asked the captain. Then she saw the grin on his face.

“‘fraid there’s only one way for that Laswell.” Johnny exclaimed. Laswell gave him a look that had him avoiding eye contact. You continued wagging your tail waiting for her to accept your gift. Laswell gave in and took the toy. She held it up for you to see before tossing it. You sprung after it quickly and picked it up again, this time bringing it to Nikolai. Nik wasted no time, playing with you, and even doing fake throws. Every time you returned it to him, he gave you plenty of praise and pets. This goes on for a short bit before Laswell can convince the rest of the team to go into a room to start the briefing. You follow the team inside where you're kept occupied by Nikolai.

While Laswell went over the meeting Johnny noticed you out of the corner of your eye and bites his tongue. To his surprise, you sat politely and listened to Laswell as she went over the intel she had brought with her.

Then Laswell brought you up in her intel, making you tilt your head. “Your canine may not be a simple stray.”

Laswell tapped the tablet and the view of the map moved and highlighted a specific location. A factory of some kind. “As suspected they were being used for animal testing. What they were testing was a serum. One that has yet to work without killing the subject.”

“They want to use this on humans?” Simon questioned, thinking this was starting to sound like a plot to a cheesy action movie. If Laswell brought up “super soldiers” he would’ve walked out or called bluff.

“No.” Laswell said. “They’re using it on animals.”

@yourlovely-moon @kaoyamamegami @H0n3y_L3m0n @sans-chara @1mommyrose4ever29 @smitten-haematite-quartz @talia-the-gemini @yuki2129 @whitetiger846 @graystorm444

#john soap mactavish #task force 141 x reader #simon ghost riley #captain john price #kyle gaz garrick #cod nikolai #kate laswell #doggo #dog reader #nonhuman #dog bath #how is this a thing #I’m not mad it’s a thing #just shocked #didn’t think this would be request to have a part 2 #call of duty modern warfare

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