“I have always felt ashamed in being witnessed in the act of wanting” Instant. favorite character material. frankly.

LoSlavery Is Not OUR "Original Sin" The thick lines show majority of African slaves went to Spain’s (they started trans-Atlantic slave trade) Latin American & Caribbean slave colonies, Muslim and African Countries. Few went to colony that became the US

How many times have you heard that slavery was “America’s original sin”? I’m not quite sure what that means, but I think the idea is that slavery was a uniquely horrible thing that defines the United States and will stain whites forever. It’s one of the few things Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Barack Obama agree on. There are books about it. Here’s a college course at UC Davis called “Slavery: America’s Original Sin: Part 1."

The fact is, there has been slavery in every period of history, and just about everywhere. The Greeks and Romans had it, the ancient Egyptians had it, it’s all over the Bible, the Chinese and the pre-Columbian Indians had it, the Maoris in New Zealand had it, and the Muslims had it in spades. But I have never, ever heard of slavery being anyone else’s “original sin.”

About the only societies that never had slaves were primitivehunter-gatherers. As soon as people have some kind of formal social organization, they start taking slaves.

You’ve heard about slavery and mass human sacrifices of Central and South American Indians, but North American Indians were enslaving each other long before the white man showed up.

Tlingit and Haida Indians, who lived in the Pacific Northwest, went raiding for slaves as far South as California. About one quarter of the population were slaves, and the children of slaves were slaves. During potlatches, or huge ceremonial feasts, the Tlingit would sometimes burn property and kill slaves, just to show how rich they were. What’s a couple of slaves to a guy who lives in a house like this?

When we bought Alaska from the Russians in 1867, Indians were furious when we told them they had to give up their slaves. The Tlingit carved this image of Abraham Lincoln, the emancipator, to try to shame the government into compensating them for slaves.

What were called the Five Civilized Tribes of the American Southeast happily bought black slaves. In 1860, there were 21,000 Cherokee, and they owned 4,000 slaves. And that was just the Cherokee. Many took their slaves with them when they were forced to move West.

Free blacks in the South owned slaves. The fact of having been slaves didn’t stop them from wanting to be slave masters themselves. In 1840, in South Carolina alone, there were 454 free blacks who owned a total of 2,357 slaves. Only about 20 percent of Southern households had even one slave, but 75 percent of the free-black households in South Carolina owned slaves.

Don’t believe me? It’s all in this book by the expert on the subject, Larry Koger of the University of South Carolina. And he demolishes the idea that most blacks bought slaves only to get family members out of slavery. Like whites, some were kind masters and some were mean, but, for the most part, they owned slaves for exactly the same reasons whites did.

There’s a whole book about this black guy, Andrew Durnford.

He had a plantation of 672 acres along the Mississippi in Louisiana, and close to 100 slaves. Another black slave owner in Louisiana, P.C. Richards, owned 152 slaves. Black slaveowners avidly supported the Confederacy. There are no accurate estimates of the number of slaves held by free blacks at the time of the Civil War, but they would have been tens of thousands.

If slavery is somebody’s Original Sin, it’s sure not ours. Take a look at this map of the slave trade, beginning in 1500.

[Source: SlaveVoyages.com, click to enlarge]

The thicknesses of the lines represent numbers of slaves. What became the United States imported just around 400,000 slaves—about 3 percent of all the slaves who crossed the Atlantic. Look at all the slaves who went to Brazil and to the Caribbean Islands.They needed millions because, unlike American slaveowners who raised slave families, they bought grown men and worked them to death. And let us not forget, virtually every slave on this map was caught by blacks or Arabs.

And look at all the slaves who ended up in North Africa and the Middle East.

That’s millions of them going to Muslim countries at exactly the same time slaves were crossing the Atlantic. And Arabs had been taking black slaves out of Africa, across the Sahara, for 900 years before America was even discovered—and a forced march across the desert was a lot worse than crossing the Atlantic. In this article about Africa’s first slavers—the Arabs—historian Paul Lovejoy estimates that over the centuries, Muslims took about 14 million blacks out of Africa [Recalling Africa’s harrowing tale of its first slavers – The Arabs – as UK Slave Trade Abolition is commemorated, March 27, 2018]. That is more than the 12 million who went to the New World.

And you might ask, where are the descendants of all those Middle Eastern slaves? America has millions of slave descendants. Why don’t you see lots of blacks in Saudi Arabia or Syria or Iraq? Arabs castrated black slaves so they wouldn’t have descendants.

Muslims were even more enthusiastic about enslaving white people. Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters, by Prof. Robert C. Davis is the best book on the subject. Remember the Barbary Pirates of North Africa? Between 1530 and 1780 they caught and enslaved more than a million white, European Christians. During the 16th and 17th centuries, Arabs took more white slaves south across the Mediterranean than there were blacks shipped across the Atlantic.

Mostly, Muslim pirates captured European ships and stole their crews. In just three years, from 1606 to 1609, the British navy admitted it had lost 466 British merchant ships to North African pirates [Counting European Slaves on the Barbary Coast Past & Present, August 2001]. Four hundred sixty-six ships in just three years. Arabs took American slaves. Between 1785 and 1793 Algerians captured 13 American ships in the Mediterranean and enslaved the crews. This is a 1804 battle between Arab pirates and the USS Enterprise.

It was only in 1815, after two wars, that the United States was finally free of the Barbary pirates.

Muslim pirates also organized huge, amphibious slave-catching assaults that practically depopulated the Italian coast. In 1544, Algerian raiders took 7,000 slaves in the Bay of Naples in a single raid. This drove the price of slaves so low it was said you could “swap a Christian for an onion.”

After a 1566 raid on Granada in Spain netted 4,000 men women, and children, it was said to be “raining Christians in Algiers.” Women were easier to catch than men, and were prized as sex slaves, so some coastal areas lost their entire child-bearing populations. One raid as far away as Iceland brought back 400 white slaves.

Prof. Davis notes that the trade in black Africans was strictly business, but Muslims had a jihad-like enthusiasm for stealing Christians. It was revenge for the Crusades and for the reconquest of Spain from the Arabs in 1492. When Muslim corsairs raided Europe, they made a point of desecrating churches and stealing church bells. The metal was valuable but stealing church bells silenced the voice of Christianity.

It was a tradition to parade newly captured Europeans through the streets so people could jeer at them, while children threw garbage at them. At the slave market, both men and women were stripped naked to evaluate their sexual value. In the North African capitals—Tunis, Algiers, Tripoli—there was a big demand for homosexual sex-slaves. Other Europeans were worked to death on farms or building projects.

Prof. Davis writes that unlike in North America, there were no limits on cruelty: “There was no countervailing force to protect the slave from his master’s violence: no local anti-cruelty laws, no benign public opinion, and rarely any effective pressure from foreign states.” Slaves were not just property, they were infidels, and deserved whatever suffering a master meted out.

For a man, there was a fate even worse than being a sex slave. Hundreds of thousands became galley slaves, often on slave-catching pirate ships. They were chained to their oars 24 hours a day, and could move only to the hole where the oar went through the hull—so they could relieve themselves. If the men were rowing, they fouled themselves. Galley slaves lived in a horrible stench, ate rotten food, were whipped by slave drivers and tormented by rats and lice. They could not lie down and had to sleep at their oars. Many never left their ships, even in port. Their job was to row until they died, and to be tossed overboard at the first sign of weakness.

Muslims have taken slaves for as long as there have been Muslims, which is about 1,400 years.

Mohammed himself was an enthusiastic slave trader. Muslims still take black slaves. As this article points out, Libya still has slave markets, Mauritanian Arabs take black slaves, and there is still slavery in Niger, Mali, Chad and Sudan[Libya’s slave markets are a reminder that the exploitation of Africans never went away, by Martin Plaut, New Statesman, February 21, 2018].

And, of course, it was white people who abolished slavery, both in their own countries and, except for a few stubborn holdouts, the whole world. Africans, just like the Tlingit Indians, screamed about all the wealth we made them give up.

But slavery’s still our “original sin.” As Time magazine wrote just this month about slavery “Europeans and their colonial “descendants” in the United States engineered the most complete and enduring dehumanization of a people in history."[Facing America's History of Racism Requires Facing the Origins of 'Race' as a Concept, by Andrew Curran, July 10, 2020]

What a small minority of Americans did for 246 years—and in a relatively mild form—is worse than anything that was ever done anywhere by anyone.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is the power of white privilege. I hope you are enjoying it. Watch this video:

Both Sides Now [’Second Place’ Sequel]

Pairing: Bale!Bruce Wayne x Reader

Summary: 8 years after Rachel’s death and taking place before the events of “The Dark Knight Rises”, Bruce and Y/N meet and relive a painful memory. 

Tagged: @kittenlittle24​ @fzzziiiieee

Read ‘Second Place’ before you read this. 

Author’s Note: Y’all ain’t ready for this. 

It wasn’t clear how he found her, but she wasn’t upset. She’d secretly hoped the day would come.

Eight years had passed since she walked out of the Wayne penthouse, since she and Bruce broke it off, and since Rachel had passed. Sometimes, when the memories come back to her it feels like they happened the month before. 

She smoothed her jeans as she made her way up the stairs to Wayne Manor, the pitter-patter of rain surrounding her as she attempted to keep dry with the umbrella over her head. When they were together, he was living at the penthouse in the middle of the city, she had dreamt of living in the Wayne Manor and raising a family of their own, but life had other plans as it always does.

She exhaled quickly and adjusted the strap of her purse on her shoulder. She knocked on the door and closed the umbrella.

Butterflies flew in her stomach as anticipation and anxiety ran throughout her body. She wondered how he looked. He had disappeared from the public not too long after the Dent memorial, as did Batman. In the wee small hours of the morning, she used to lie in bed and look outside the window, waiting for him to stand outside like he used to. He used to spend so many nights at her place at the end of his Batman shift. But eventually just like their relationship, her silly hopes came to an end and she stopped waiting.

The door opened and Alfred greeted her. His eyes lit up at the sight of her.

“Miss Y/L/N.”

“Alfred!” 

He opened the door, letting her in. He closed the door behind her, taking her umbrella. She slid off her raincoat, placing it on the rack beside the door. Her smile widened as she wrapped her old friend into an embrace.

“You haven’t changed a bit,” she marveled.

“I could say the same for you,” he responded warmly.

“How are you doing?”

“Well enough. Yourself?” 

“I’ve been quite alright. Busy, but alright.” 

She eyed the manor, noticing the white sheets over the furniture and home decor. She heard Bruce lost money in a bad investment, but didn’t know what to believe considering he was one of the most the smartest men she’d ever met. It was strange seeing the proof with her own eyes, but she didn’t care. Her reason for coming was bigger than him losing his fortune. 

“So this is the famous Wayne manor,” she sighed. “Bigger than I expected.” 

Alfred chuckled. “It’s certainly something else. I’ll take you into the living room. Master Wayne will join you shortly.” 

She followed the older man into the packed up living room. The only piece of furniture that was unpacked was an emerald velvet. While the windows were covered, slim rays of sunlight peaked through, adding tiny bits of sunlight into the dreary room. She took a seat on it and smiling at Alfred as he left. 

She set her purse down and rested her hands on her lap. She eyed the room, imaging what it must’ve have looked like prior to it’s current state. Bruce was insistent on making the place exactly how it was prior to the fire. She remembered teasing him about how specific he was with the interior decorator about having certain, specific colors in certain, specific rooms. 

Then from the corner of her eye, she spotted a painting that had yet to be covered. Her eyebrows furrowed, curiosity taking its course. She got up and knelt down in front of it to find it a was oil painting of Bruce and his parents, Thomas and Martha. Bruce looked like he was at least 10 years and had a stern expression on his face. Y/N chuckled at the thought that knowing how impatient the man tended to be, how dreadful posing for the picture must’ve been for young Bruce. 

“Aren’t you a sight for sore eyes.”

She turned her head, her body springing up. A heaviness weighed over her chest, butterflies fluttering in her stomach. Her breath hitched.

Age had been incredibly kind to Bruce, minus the grey stripe in the side of his hair. He played it casual with a plain grey tee, jeans. His playful, mischievous eyes stayed on her as he flashed the smile that still made her weak in the knees.

Her lips curved into a small, slightly embarrassed smile. “You always did like to make an entrance.”

Bruce stared at her in wonderment, amazed at how she’d managed to look the same after all these years. The way she smiled at him brought him the comfort he once felt when being in presence and it reminded him of a home he’d missed. 

He chuckled. “I can’t help it.”

He started walking toward her when she noticed the limp in his walk. Her smile fell a bit.

“Shattered knee,” he explained casually. “Years of Batman injuries caught up with me.” 

“Here, let me-.”

“It’s quite alright.” He laughed it off much to Y/N’s surprise. He limped his way to the sofa, taking a seat. Y/N followed close behind, taking a seat beside him and turning to face him. 

“So how have you been?” he asked.

“I’ve been well,” she answered. “Still doing event plannings and whatnot. How about you?”

He shook his head. “I’ve been better but, it’s all good.” 

“I heard,” she agreed, nodding her head. The heaviness of the subject of him losing everything lingered in the silence that followed. Feeling somewhat comfortable, Y/N took a deep breath. “Are you going to be ok?”

He nodded reassuringly, almost too confidently. “I have some thing I’m working on.” 

“Well that’s good to know. You know, if you ever need anything-.” 

He waved his hand. “I’m alright. I appreciate it though.” 

“Bruce, you know I’m being serious.” 

“I know and I appreciate it, but I’m ok for now.” 

She gave him a small smile, silently agreeing to drop the subject. She shifted in her seat, clearing her throat.

“I have a daughter,” she admitted, pursing her lips back. 

Bruce’s eyes peaked up, his face lightening up in interest. “You’re kidding.”

“Her name is Mallory,” she beamed. She pulled out her wallet, pulling up a photo. 

Bruce took it from her, studying it. The child had Y/N’s smile and eyes as she smiled photogenically at the camera. His heart melted at the sight of her. “She’s beautiful. How old?” 

“Just turned three.”

“So you’re married?” he asked, looking up from the photo.

She chuckled, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. “I, uhm...I used a sperm donor.”

Bruce nodded and she cleared her throat. “I’ve always wanted to be a mom-.”

“I remember that.”

In the time they were together, he couldn’t help but notice how Y/N looked at children and babies she passed by on the street. When things became more serious between them, she told Bruce her dreams of becoming a mom. Bruce, secretly having wanted kids himself, was in for it and the two spent time talking about a future with a child. 

“Anyway, I just decided to go for it,” she went on.

“Were you ok?” he asked. “You know, with the delivery and everything?”

His mind wandered to the what if once again, imaging himself in the room with her, holding her hand as she had a mini-breakdown. He’d remind her she could do it, while pressing multiple kisses on her forehead and hands. 

“My parents and friends supported me. I also had a great doctor and team of nurses to help me.” 

The dream in his mind died. Nevertheless, there was some comfort in knowing she wasn’t totally alone. 

“Are you seeing anyone?”

She shook her head. “I was for a while but that didn’t work out. It ended amicably though.” She paused. “What about you?”

He shook his head. “You’ll be happy to know you were the last.” 

Her cheeks filled with color. “Wow, you’re kidding me.” 

“I’m not.” 

“You didn’t even sneak anyone in while you hung in here all these years?” 

He shook his head as Y/N cocked her head back in astonishment. “Holy shit. That’s a long time for you.” 

He laughed. “Yeah, yeah it is.” 

Y/N cleared her throat and she fiddled with her fingers. While the small talk was great, she knew just why he called her here and she was ready to get to it. “I’m glad you called me.” 

“I am too. It’s good to see you.” 

She pursed her lips back, exhaling through her nose. “After...uhm...her voice trailed off as she sat up. 

Bruce’s head lifted a bit, his body leaning toward her, waiting eagerly. 

She sighed, realizing she had to rip the bandaid. “After what happened with us and to Rachel, I went to therapy and...while for the most part I was able to come to terms with most of it, there’s still...I still...” She stopped, chuckling. “God, this is fucking embarrassing.” 

“It’s not,” he assured her. “Whatever is you want to say or ask, please. Go for it.” 

She swallowed hard, pursing her lips. “Something Rachel brought up with me was that the night I went back to the apartment, you were going to propose to me.”

Bruce lowered his head, the memory coming alive in his mind. 

“Was that true?” she asked.

He shifted his head up. “It was.” He reached into his jean pocket and pulled it out. 

Y/N’s heart leapt at the sight of it. He handed it to her as she brought the ring closer to her eyes. It was a simple silver band with a .75 carat round diamond, with two little diamonds on each side of it, like the leaves of a flower. It was like watching her wildest dream come true in the palm of her hand. 

Tears sprung from her eyes and she quickly wiped them, sniffling her nose. 

“Y/N, what happened between Rachel and I...” his voice faltered. “We couldn’t be together because of Batman. Then she moved on with Harvey and I moved on with you.” 

“But you didn’t fully move on,” she pointed out. 

He nodded. “There was a lot between Rachel and I that we didn’t exactly come to terms with. When it became clear to me that I wanted to spend my life with you, I told Rachel. She told me she felt the same and wanted to be with Harvey. The kiss...neither one of us meant for it to happen, but it did.” 

“You don’t regret it though?”

He shook his head. Much to his and her own surprise, Y/N gave him a small smile. “I understand.” She paused. “Would you ever have told me about it?” 

“Truthfully?” 

“Honestly.” 

“No.” 

“Fair enough, I guess,” she sighed. “This leads me to a follow up question, why was she the first person you told that you were giving up Batman?” 

“Because a long time ago, she said that when I ended Batman we could be together. I wanted her to know that I was ending Batman but that I chose to be with you.” 

“Were you going to tell me?” 

“Of course.” 

She leaned forward. “It took me a long time to come to terms with everything and if I’m being honest, it took me a long time to really forgive you.”

She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “I have to ask you something that’s been bothering me for years.”

“By all means.”

“Did you ever actually plan to have a future with me?”

A small smile crept on his lips. “I did.”

“But you said Rachel-.” 

“A part of me loved her still, but a larger part of me loved you more.” 

She felt her heart shatter once again, just as it did almost eight years ago. “There are so many times I wondered if I had made a mistake walking out that door.” 

“You were rightfully angry, Y/N-.” 

“Not then. That morning after I woke up and you were on the couch and you...and I...” She exhaled. “I wish I never walked out the door that morning.” 

He nodded his head. “And I wish I had stopped you. After all these years, I still wish I did.” 

There was a sense of peace in his words. She still mattered to him, a conformation that she selfishly wondered about all these years.

“Do you wonder what we could’ve been?” Bruce asked, breaking the silence.

“Do you?”

“All time.”

She tilted her head, smiling. “Me too.” She sighed. “I sometimes live in the past too, Bruce.”

She sighed. “I better go. I have to pick up Mallory.” 

His heart broke, realizing their meeting had come to an end. “I’ll walk you out the door.” 

She swung her purse over her shoulder as the two walked together to the entrance of the house.

Stopping at the front door, Bruce scratched back of his head. “Would you ever try again? With me?”

Just as he began to regret his words, he felt her hand caress his cheek. She smiled. “When you’re ready, give me a call.”

As she walked away, Bruce watched her, a hopeful smile played on his lips. 

“I take it the meeting went well?” Alfred inquired. 

“Very much so.” 

“She showed you pics of the child?” 

“Her name is Mallory. She’s beautiful.” 

“Did you tell her?” 

Bruce turned to Alfred. “Not yet. Soon though.” 

Christmas Fluff Snippet Megapost

(brought to you by your host Mooshi bc I’m stuck at home and wanna procrastinate cleaning my room :) )

Rated: G/Fluff

Relationship(s): Literally as many I can think within the span of 3 hours as they’re all basically 1 paragraph long. Feel free to read whichever ones you want I’m making word soup rn. We smackin’ tonight kings, queen, and royals in between😌😭✨

All relationships can be whatever universe you want, unless stated otherwise. Have a good time

Also please keep in mind that I haven’t read a lot of the comics and have a limited knowledge on the cartoons bc I haven’t watched some of them, but I’ll try my best to write out the dynamic as I see it.

1) Starscream/Optimus (StarPrime) you knew we were gonna start with OTP

“I know you wanted to visit Earth for a small vacation, but did you really have to choose the coldest of Earth months to visit?”, Starscream said with borderline disgust as he stared at the snow at the bottom of their ship, the only redeeming thing about the environment was the setting sun.

He kneeled down and scooped up a pile of snow, watching it crumble away between his digits. His internal heating system kicking into overdrive to compensate, little puffs of steam floating into the air. It wasn’t that it was cold, the issue was how wet it would be. The mess that would be made inside their circuits and the water dripping from exposed wiring made Starscream shiver.

“No, I didn’t have to but Earth has such a happy culture this time of year and I wanted to share that with you. I think you’ll like Christmas. Cheer up, let’s take a walk.” , Optimus planted a small peck on the side of Starscream’s helm and stepped outside, the soft crunch of snow following the Prime.

Starscream reluctantly stepped into the snow and groaned with how much water his sensors were already detecting, “How happy could this holiday possibly be with frozen condensation falling from the sky and getting into your circuits?”

“Well, according to what can be found on the internet, it’s an annual religious festival, but most humans use it as a time to see loved ones and celebrate their love for one another.”, Optimus took Starscream’s servo and interlaced it with his own, removing his battle mask to reveal a soft smile with blue optics to match, “and besides you can take a warm lather in the washracks later while I warm up some energon. I know you like watching Earth movies every once in a while.”

Starscream really couldn’t argue with his conjux and just vented out more heat, the puff leaving a trail of white steam as it floated into the evening sky. If being on a mud ball planet meant Optimus would be relaxed then he supposed it would be worth getting his circuits drenched for. Honestly, doing anything was worth it if it meant his Prime would stop thinking about his responsibilities even for just a cycle.

“Your strobes are blinking by the way.”

Starscream stopped walking and flapped his wings into view then dipped them low, brushing it off.

“It doesn’t mean anything.”

“I’m sure it doesn’t.”, Optimus rolled his optics and laughed, holding his conjux’s servo a little tighter.

———

2) Knockout/Breakdown (KOBD)

“Merry Christmas Knockout!”, Breakdown burst into the Medbay with a clumsily wrapped box.

Knockout nearly dropped his datapad and jumped from the sudden intrusion, his servo switched out for his buzz saw until he saw who it was.

“Breakdown!”, Knockout vented out and transformed his servo back, “Don’t scare me like that so suddenly.”

“I’m sorry, but I just wanted to finally give you this. I knew you just had to have it when I saw it and I really hope you like it.”

“All is forgiven. Thank you.”, Knockout casually tore away at the wrapping and lifted the lid, his optics glowing brighter.

“Well...do you like it?”

“Like it? I love it!”, Knockout unfolded the white stripe vinyl inside to it’s full length, laughing with a full smile, “You always know just what to get me!”

He put his gift down on the examination table and went to go hug his conjux, climbing up a little to properly plant a kiss.

As high as the mood was brought up, it was quickly shot down again.

“Wait, I’m not done with your gift yet.”, Knockout left for his datapad and scrolled through something.

“It’s alright, you don’t have to give me one. Your company is the only gift I need.”, Breakdown tried to comfort his conjux, but Knockout held out a servo to stop him.

“That’s a sweet sentiment, but it doesn’t feel fair if I had my gift before yours is even done and I don’t want you seeing it while it’s incomplete.”

“I’m sure I’ll like it even if it’s unfinished. The thought matters more than what it is. Can you tell me what it is?”

“Are you sure?”

Breakdown nodded excitedly.

Knockout sighed and handed over the datapad, “It’s only about 75% of the way done, but it’s a transcription of that Earth book you wanted to read but couldn’t find an online PDF version of it.”

Breakdown scrolled through the pages of words and felt his frame melt.

“I know it’s not as good as what you gave me but—”

“I love it!”, He lifted Knockout off the ground and squeezed, “Thank you!”

“You’re welcome but watch the paint!”

———

3) Bumblebee/Blitzwing (TFA Blitzbee)

Bumblebee wasn’t one for snow to be perfectly honest. Sure, making snowmen and having snowball fights with Sari were fun, but he mostly did those activities to make her happy as her best friend. The frosty windows on the base served as another reminder as to why he liked to stay inside where it was warm and there was plenty of oil to drink, so it was rather ironic when he started seeing a mech who could make ice and enjoyed just burying himself in the frozen stuff.

“Come outside my little bee~”

Random sang softly and taunted him from outside the Autobot base. The heat from Blitzwing’s system fogging up the window further. Everyone else in the base had retreated back to their rooms for the night, leaving Bee free to do what he wanted in the living room. At least, he would be if there wasn’t a giant beige and purple bot trying to get him outside.

“No way Blitzbrain. It’s beyond freezing out there. I’m not locking up my servos just so you can eat street snow again.”

Bumble whispered harshly and opened the window, a gush of frozen air creeped their way through the cracks of his frame. His central heating system kicked online.

Random’s glossa slithered out of his intake, “Aww why not?”

“Because it’s gross. And that’s saying something when it comes from me!”

Vrrrr.

“I suppose that’s true.”, Icy’s lips pouted outward as he pressed his digits to his chin. His sharp features standing out in the crisp darkness of the night, “But aren’t you the one always wanting to go out? Why is it so different this time?”

“Because time impossible to drive in snow and I don’t wanna deal with traffic.”

“It’s the middle of the night.”

“So?”

Vrrrr.

“So why don’t you want to come out here and spend some time away from this stupid base you tiny bug bot!”

Bee held a digit to his intake, “I’m right here idiot, you’ll wake everyone up and then they’ll see you and then we’ll have to fight.”

Vrrrr.

“You’re afraid of the snow aren’t you.”

“What? No. That’s not—I’m not afraid of it are you kidding me? Only sparklings are afraid of stupid things like that.”

“Ok, so you just don’t like the cold.”

“So what if I don’t?”

“Even if you can’t drive, it’s still a nice night for flying.”

Bumblebee’s optics widened, “Flying?”

“Yes. Calm winds, clear skies, no organics or bots in the streets, what more could you wait for?”

“You’re gonna take me flying?”, Bee’s voice rose in pitch and he looked up at his mechfriend with stars in his eyes.

Vrrrr.

“If you keep repeating the same thing I’ll crush you with this wall!”

Vrrrr.

“It’s been a while since I’ve seen something go splat!”

Random laughed at his own morbid thought.

“Ok, first of all, don’t crush me. You’re like three times my size, you don’t need a wall. Second, as long as I don’t have to get my servos wet I’ll be there in a nanoklik.”

Bumblebee gave a quick peck before racing away to touch himself up a little for his small impromptu date.

———

4) Megatron/Soundwave (MegaWave)

Megatron was busy. Again.

Soundwave didn’t mind it much as he just worked on his reports, but deep in his spark he really hoped he would’ve made some time to be with him. There was no such luck unfortunately. Soundwave knew his leader was always busy which is what made their small times together all the more special and intimate. Nobody ever saw the side of the warlord that he did and he was quite proud of that. It made him feel special.

>Soundwave.

A private communication line blipped open from Megatron. What convenient timing.

>Yes, Lord Megatron?

>I need you to send a message to Shockwave about the latest export of energon. There will be a delay because of Autobot meddling, but it shouldn’t take more than a couple earth cycles to have everything in order.

>Message received. Will be sent as soon as possible.

>Good. By the way Soundwave, I’ve left something for you in your desk compartment. Consider it a token of my appreciation for all you’ve done staying loyal to the Decepticons.

>Understood. Thank you Lord Megatron.

With that, the line cut off and Soundwave was left alone again in the communication center. His optics glanced over at the large compartment in his desk and opened it. Inside he found a small stack of datapads and one single use datapad filled out.

—

‘To: Soundwave

Silent as a thief in the night

You crept into my spark and took flight

Your visor so full of mystery

Yet take away much of my misery

In war there is treachery

In war there is loyalty

No words could ever be strung to say how much you mean to me

Merry Christmas,

From Megatron

—

A/N: I’m done with this post. Whoop. 4 short stories in one post. This is all I could crank out in a few hours. I didn’t anticipate this day to be so busy for me😭😭. I’ve been hanging out with family and dropping off gifts for friends at their door step. You can kinda tel I gave up at the end and poems aren’t really my thing. I’ll finish the rest tomorrow, so just pretend that whatever I post tomorrow was done today. Tell me what you think and have a nice night. I’m gonna pass out now. Mwah.

AND YES WHEN I WRITE MEGS IN ANY FIC HE IS A MUSHY BASTARD WHEN HES NOT AN ASS HAT AND THATS ON SOFT BASTARDS😌✨✨

time to learn about Actual American Hero Robert Smalls!!!! split into two sections: before and during the civil war, and after the civil war

before and during the civil war:

born into slavery in Beaufort, South Carolina in 1839 (his owner was most likely his father). he grew up as part of the Lowcountry Gullah community.

his mother had grown up in the fields but worked in the main house when he was born. Robert was a favorite of their owner but she wanted to make sure he understood what it was like for field slaves so she requested that he work in the fields and witness a whipping

he was sent to Charleston to work when he was 12 and earned $1 a week, with the rest of his money going to his owner. he started as a laborer and eventually started working on boats, working his way up to become what was essentially a pilot (even though he was a slave and couldn’t be given the proper job title). due to his work on ships, he knew Charleston Harbor really well

the civil war started in spring of 1861 (the Battle of Fort Sumter, which started the war and took place at the mouth of Charleston Harbor, was in April 1861) and in the fall he was assigned to steer the CSS Planter (CSS stands for Confederate States Ship). the ship’s jobs included surveying waterways and laying mines. he earned the trust of the crew and owners by pretending to be happy working on the ship while secretly planning an escape with the other slaves on board

on May 12, the Planter picked up four big guns from a Confederate post that was being dismantled south of Charleston, then returned to CHS and loaded 200 pounds of artillery and a bunch of firewood. that night the three white officers left the ship to sleep on shore and left the enslaved crew aboard as usual.

early in the morning on May 13, Robert Smalls put on the captain’s uniform and a straw hat similar to the one the captain usually wore and left the wharf. they stopped at another wharf to pick up his family as well as family members of some of the other enslaved crew, all of whom had hidden out on another ship earlier on May 12. Robert Smalls and his straw hat copied the captain’s mannerisms and sailed past FIVE confederate forts using the correct hand signals; the alarm was raised at Fort Sumter only after they had passed out of the fort’s gun range. Robert Smalls drove that confederate ship directly to the Union blockade at the mouth of Charleston Harbor and raised the white sheet his wife Hannah had brought to surrender the ship to the union

not only did the ship have four guns and 200 lbs of artillery - Robert Smalls also had the captain’s code book of confederate signals and a map of all of the mines in charleston harbor, as well as a ton of knowledge about the waterways around charleston and the confederate military instillations and movements. he was viewed as extremely intelligent and hailed as a hero in the north (obviously)

he was given what we all can agree was a criminally small amount of “prize money” for the transfer of the Planter to the union - his share was $1500 (he was one of eight slaves aboard) based on the appraisal. in the 1880s, the appraisal was disputed and it was said the value of the ship should have been close to $60,000. even still he didn’t get any more money until 1900, when he was given an additional $3500 (bringing the total to $5000, which a lot of people still felt was too little and they were definitely right)

RS served as a civilian in the union navy and army and was instrumental in convincing Lincoln and Edwin Stanton to allow black men to enlist in the union army at Port Royal, SC (google the Port Royal Experiment for more information!! I could do another entire post about Mitchelville tbh). he was supposedly given a commission in the navy so he could be properly paid as a pilot. when he tried to collect his pension after the war, he was told he hadn’t received an official commission. it took TWO acts of congress (1883, which failed probably because he was black, and 1897) for him to be put on the Navy retired list and allow him to collect a pension of $30 per month, that of a Navy captain

you thought that shit was amazing? after the war:

he moved back to Beaufort and bought a house. which house you ask??? that’s right, he bought his FORMER OWNER’S house (511 Prince Street) which had been seized in 1863 because the dude refused to pay taxes (and then won the court case when his former owner tried to sue him to get it back, which became a very important precedent case). his mom lived with him for the rest of her life, and he even let his former owner’s wife live in the house at the end of her life

he taught himself to read and write in less than a year(!!) and bought another building to serve as a school for african-american children

he had several successful businesses: a store specifically to serve the needs of freedmen, a horse-drawn railway line that went from the wharves in charleston to the depots 18 miles inland, and he owned and published the Beaufort Southern Standard newspaper

his fame during the war and the fact that he was fluent in the Gullah dialect spoken in the Lowcountry helped him in his very, very successful political career - he was a delegate at the SC constitutional conventions in 1868 and 1895 as well as at several Republican National Conventions (back when the republicans were the good guys); he was elected to the SC House of Representatives in 1868 and then selected to complete the unexpired time in Jonathan Jasper Wright’s SC Senate seat; and he was elected to the US House of Representatives five times (until the mid-1900s, he was the second-longest serving african-american member of congress)

while in the HoR, he introduced an amendment to a bill that would desegregate the army, which wasn’t considered by congress. he was a supporter of racial integration legislation while serving in the senate.

the 1895 SC constitutional convention he and five other african-american delegates tried to stop the disenfranchisement of black voters, and worked to publicize the issue, but weren’t successful in stopping the ratification of the new constitution

he died in 1915 (aged 75!) and was buried at the Tabernacle Baptist Church in Beaufort - a monument to him was installed in the churchyard in 1976 and is inscribed with the following quote of his: “My race needs no special defense, for the past history of them in this country proves them to be the equal of any people anywhere. All they need is an equal chance in the battle of life.”

Excerpts from Korean comfort woman Mun Ok-chu’s memoir

The following are excerpts from Korean comfort woman Mun Ok-chu’s memoir. It shows what it was like to be a comfort woman in Burma. (Translated)

버마전선 일본군 위안부 문옥주 문옥주 할머니 일대기 역사의 증언 두번째 이야기 모리카와 마치코 지음 김정성 옮김 2005년 08월 08일 출간

                                         ▲ Mun Ok-chu

“Myself as a comfort woman for Tate Division deployed in Burma” by Mun Oku-chu (published August 2005)

(In Mandalay, Burma) page 63 The soldiers and we had the same thoughts, that is, we must work hard for our emperor. The soldiers gave up their wives, children and their own lives. Knowing how they felt, I did my best to solace them by having conversation with them.

page 68 I prayed for safety of Ichiro Yamada. After two or three of months, the troop unit to which Yamada belonged returned from the front. Yamada returned in good health. He immediately came to the comfort station. He said “I, private first class soldier Yamada, have just come back from the front.” Yamada gave a salute to me. We hugged in full of joy. Such a day was so special that the comfort station owner Matsumoto (a Korean from Daegu) closed business for the day. The comfort station was full of excitement, and we, comfort women, contributed 1 yen per woman to hold a big party for them.

page 75 I saved a considerable amount of money from tips. So I asked a clerical staff whether or not I could have a saving account and put the money in the account. His reply was positive. I knew that all the soldiers put their earnings in the saving accounts in the field post office, so I decided to put my money in the saving account. I asked a soldier to make a personal seal and put 500 yen in the account. I got my savings passbook and found 500 yen written on the passbook. I became the owner of the savings passbook for the first time in my life. I worked in Daegu as a nanny and a street seller from the childhood but I remained poor no matter how hard I worked. I could not believe that I could have so much money in my saving account. A house in Daegu cost 1,000 yen at the time. I could let my mother have an easy life. I felt very happy and proud. The savings passbook became my treasure.

page 98 Ichiro Yamada came to see me once a week and I was in a great mood on that day from the morning. But if he did not show up on his once a week holiday, I became so worried wondering if he was killed by the enemy that I could not work properly. He made me worry so much.

(In Rangoon, Burma) pages 106~107 I was able to have more freedom in Rangoon than before. Of course, not completely free but I could go out once a week or twice a month with permission from the Korean owner. It was fun to go shopping by rickshaw. I can’t forget the experience of shopping in a market in Rangoon. There were lots of jewelry shops because many jewels were produced in Burma, and ruby and jade were not expensive. One of my friends collected many jewels. I thought I should have a jewel myself, so I went and bought a diamond.

page 107 I often went to see Japanese movies and Kabuki plays in which players came from the mainland Japan. I enjoyed watching players change costumes many times and male players portray women’s roles. I became a popular woman in Rangoon. There were a lot more officers in Rangoon than near the frontlines, so I was invited to many parties. I sang songs at parties and received lots of tips.

(In Saigon, Vietnam) pages 115~118 It was finally time to return home. I went to Saigon via Thailand. The ship was to depart from Saigon. Then Tsubame said “I had a nightmare in the morning about my mother vomiting blood. I am afraid that something unlucky will happen, so I will not return to Korea.” Hiroko, Kifa and Hifumi agreed with Tsubame saying “We will not go back to Korea, either.”

page 120 When I went to a cabaret where Japanese military men hung out, navy pilots were there. Some of them asked me “Why are you still here?” I replied “I am still here because I don’t want to go home. I want to go back to Rangoon.”

page 121 I put on a pair of high heels, a green coat and carried an alligator leather handbag. I swaggered about in a fashionable dress. No one could guess that I was a comfort woman. I felt so happy and proud.

(Back In Rangoon) page 123 A military man came on a bicycle and asked me “Hi Yoshiko, can you ride a bicycle?” I replied “No, I can’t.” He asked “Would you like to learn how to ride?” I learned with pleasure. I rode it smoothly through the town of Rangoon. I didn’t see any other women on bicycles. People on the street looked back at me. It was fun for me to go to the town of Rangoon. I talked with people in Burmese, Japanese and Korean. I had no difficulty communicating when I shopped.

page 126 I killed a non-commissioned officer who was drunk and held the sword against me. I won acquittal as legitimate self-defense, and many military men were pleased with that court decision.

page 137 I withdrew 5,000 yen from my saving account and sent it to my mother.

_________________________________________

Mun Ok-ju worked in Burma during the period of two years and three months between June 1943 and September 1945. She accumulated total savings of 26,145 yen in deposits at the military post office (Japan’s post office has banking functions). With interest, she earned 50,000 yen from her business. In the 1940s, 5000 yen would have been enough to purchase a house in Tokyo.

http://scholarsinenglish.blogspot.jp/2014/10/former-korean-comfort-woman-mun-oku.html

____________________________

Psychological Terrorism by The Unification Church at Cheongpyeong

Understanding Sun Myung Moon’s attitude to sex by taking a look at Korean history

Almost all these Comfort Station managers / owners were Korean

Koreans who experienced the Japanese annexation of Korea explain some facts

The Comfort Women controversy Contents of the webpage: 1. Meet Miki Dezaki, Director of the film, Shusenjo: The Main Battleground Of The Comfort Women Issue. 2. Thousands of Korean men and women tricked, kidnapped or forcibly abducted Korean girls to be ‘comfort women’. Statistical Yearbook of the Governor-General of Korea, from 1931-1943. 3. U.S. military documents featuring Korean POW testimony discovered at U.S. National Archives 4. Korean testimony documents highlight ethnic and gender discrimination under Japanese colonial rule 5. “The Comfort Women” (2008) book by Professor C. Sarah Soh (352pp) 6. “Comfort Women of the Empire” the battle over colonial rule and memory (2014) 帝国の慰安婦 植民地支配と記憶の闘い  by Professor Park Yu-ha, 박유하, 朴裕河 (336pp) 7. Mun Ok-chu’s memoir 8. Chart of Comfort Station managers, revealing they were Korean 9. The Korean “Comfort Station Manager’s Diary” 10. Comfort Women Urgently Wanted – Ads in Korean newspapers 11. Comfort Women rescued by Japanese military police 12. Kim Tŏk-chin was recruited by Koreans at 17 to be a ‘comfort woman’ Various historical documents and oral histories 13. In 1965 Japan gave $800 million as reparations for Korean occupation 14. Military commentator Ji Man-won raised “fake comfort women” question

Footnotes 1. Interview with Professor C. Sarah Soh 2. Extract from a presentation by Professor Soh 3. Behind the Comfort Women Controversy: How Lies Became Truth by Professor Nishioka Tsutomu 4. No Organized or Forced Recruitment: Misconceptions About Comfort Women and the Japanese Military by Hata Ikuhiko Professor Emeritus, Nihon University 5. GSOMIA lives, but what’s next for Japan and South Korea ties?

____________________________________________

Japan gave $800 million in 1965 as reparations for Korean occupation

The Japanese government supported Korea with $800million in 1965, $400m in 1983 and over $10 billion in 1997.

The Japanese Role in Korea’s Economic Development

“About 100 Korean women were abducted by Korean prostitution brokers but were rescued by the Japanese military police.”

Japanese woman recruited by the Unification Church and sold to an older Korean farmer

6,500 Japanese women missing from Sun Myung Moon mass weddings

SkyFire 3: Chapter 2

New York & Saturday Night Live: April 2017    

Word count: 4.8k

SkyFire 3 MASTERLIST

Sorry it's been so long since the last chapter but I'm finally back at work after 75 days in lockdown. Updates will probably be a bit more spaced out than they were in Parts 1 & 2 but please know that I am still working away at it and I already have so many future chapters planned out that I'm really excited for.

This chapter is a bit of a long one and I thought about splitting it in half but figured you deserved the treat after waiting patiently.

Don't forget to leave a comment if you're enjoying the series and let me know what you think.

>Instagram posts

By the time Aurora woke up Monday morning, Harry’s side of the bed was cold, and he had long since left for the day. Since he would be appearing in multiple sketches on the upcoming episode of Saturday Night Live, he was needed for rehearsals all week. Aurora was thankful that she and the rest of the band weren’t needed until Friday and instead she was able to sleep in. Their flight had arrived in New York well after midnight and by the time they made their way to the tower they had both decided to head straight to bed. Aurora was fairly certain her father would have still been awake, working in his lab but she was far too tired for a reunion after hours on a plane.

Once she managed to roll herself out of bed and get dressed for the day ahead, Aurora made her way down the hall to the open plan kitchen/living area of the penthouse with its wide, floor to ceiling wall of windows looking out over the sprawling expanse of Central Park. Both Tony and Steve were sitting on the stools at the kitchen’s island bench, waiting for their daughter to wake up. Steve had seen Harry earlier that morning as he was leaving, and Steve had been coming back from his early morning run. Both he and Tony were eager to have their daughter home for an entire week and while Steve was happy to sip on his tea and read the morning while they waited, Tony was practically vibrating in his seat with barely contained excitement. Steve’d had to stop him twice from having JARVIS ‘accidentally’ wake Aurora up, so Tony was unsurprisingly the first out of his seat when she finally appeared.

Aurora was grinning widely and broke into a fit of giggles as her father rushed over and lifted her off the ground in a crushing hug. Despite having seen each other only two weeks ago, the craziness of the wedding hadn’t really allowed them much time to just hang out together and prior to the wedding they had spent a solid 5 months apart given the last minute changes to their Christmas plans in the wake of Johannah’s death.

“Missed you Dad,” she said, returning the tight hug.

“Missed you too Kiddo,” Tony replied, finally setting her back on her feet and allowing her to cross the room and fall into Steve’s arms.

The small family spent the entire day together, watching a movie and then moving down to Tony’s workshop in the afternoon so that he could work on a prototype for Stark Industries while Steve and Rori sketched on the sofa. It was reminiscent of how they had spent many evenings shortly after Rori first came to live with her fathers, the memories of those long nights brought a soft smile to her face as she sketched Dumm-e and Butterfingers, where they were attempting to help Tony, but instead were causing more problems than they were able to solve. Harry found them all there when he arrived back to the tower later that evening, grinning excitedly as he launched into his recounting of his first day with the SNL cast.

xXx

Since first meeting her father’s childhood best friend, James ‘Bucky’ Barnes, three years ago, Aurora had slowly come to see him as a member of the family. For the first year that they had both lived in the tower together, they had coexisted amicably but had been far from friends, nothing close to the way Aurora was with the rest of the team. Even as her relationship with Sam had flourished quickly as he acclimatized to life as an Avenger she had struggled to be around Bucky. He hadn’t held her distant behaviour against her, knowing that while most of the team had been able to separate the actions of the Winter Soldier from Bucky himself, Aurora had struggled to accept into her home the man who had tried, on several occasions, to assassinate one of her fathers. Following the Columbia Shooting, she had surprised him by seeking him out during her recovery and their friendship had bloomed after her amputation surgery. Now, many years later Bucky easily filled the role of another uncle in Aurora’s life, a shift that had made Steve overwhelmingly happy.

It was late Tuesday afternoon and Steve went in search of his daughter, having not seen her since they’d shared lunch together. He expected to see her in the workshop with Tony, however his husband said he hadn’t seen her since breakfast. With the help of JARVIS he finally found her on one of the lower floors, the one shared by Sam, Bucky and Rhodey when he was in town. She was in the living room sitting across the table from Bucky, a game of Battleship between the pair. Steve suppressed a chuckle as he joined the pair, well aware by now of how much his best friend and his daughter enjoyed playing a variety of tabletop games together. Many arguments had been started over a game of backgammon or canasta.

“Who’s winning?” he asked, pulling up a chair beside Aurora and throwing an arm around her shoulders.

“I’m kicking his ass,” she smiled.

“She’s getting cocky,” Buck replied, “and it’s going to backfire on her in a minute.”

“Of course it is,” Aurora said, her tone dripping in sarcasm.

The game continued for a while, Aurora cheering and taunting when she sunk another of Bucky’s ships, mocking him mercilessly when he continued to miss her own turn after turn.

“I don’t understand why you always beat me,” he moaned when she won. “I mean surely your luck has to run out eventually.”

“It’s not luck, Bucky,” Rori laughed. “It’s about strategy and reading your opponent and I hate to tell you, but you are entirely predictable.”

“I’ll have you know I’m an excellent battle strategist,” Bucky retorted.

“Apparently you’re not,” Aurora bit back, a wide smile gracing her face. Steve let out a loud peel of laughter at their bickering.

“Excuse me,” JARVIS interrupted. “Miss Stark, you requested that I alert you when young Mr Styles returned to the tower.”

“Thanks J,” Rori replied, kissing her fathers’ cheek and jumping to her feet, ready to head towards the elevator.

“Miss Stark?” Steve asked.

“He said that Dad programmed him to call me that and no marriage certificate is gonna change it,” Rori explained with a roll of her eyes. “Dad could probably get him to stop but honestly I like it. I didn’t get to be a Stark for very long so it’s nice to be one when I come home.”

“You’ll always be a Stark, bug,” Steve promised, returning the kiss on her cheek and watching as she left the room in search of Harry on the upper floors of the Tower.

“Enjoying having her home?” Bucky asked.

“Absolutely,” Steve answered. “I miss her when she’s not here. Tony does too, even if he won’t admit it. She grew up too fast on us.”

“Can’t have been easy not meeting her until she was practically all grown up,” Bucky pointed out.

“No, you’re right,” Steve agreed. “Sometimes I wish we’d got to raise her, but I’d also never want to have taken away any of the time she got with her mom.”

“You and Tony ever think of having another kid?”

“We’ve talked about,” Steve said. “It’s not very easy process. The worlds come a long way since the 40’s Buck, but it’s still hard for two men to adopt. It certainly doesn’t help that we’ve got such dangerous jobs.”

“Guess that makes sense,” Bucky replied. “Never known you to back down from something just because it’s hard or because someone tells you no, though.”

“You might have a point there. Seems we’ve managed to accidently adopt Peter over the years so maybe we’re just meant to keep collecting teenagers.”

xXx

Something Aurora loved about the city was the way that New Yorkers didn’t care about anyone around them. Everyone was busy getting from one place to another and had very little time or care to look at those surrounding them on the crowded sidewalks. Aurora could easily wander the streets without being hassled as she went about her day. Occasionally a tourist would recognize her, but more often than not, a large pair of sunglasses and a hat pulled low would hide her enough to avoid all but the most astute fan. She wore a loose oversized cardigan which hung over the tips of her fingers completely concealing her prosthetic hand as she headed through the streets of midtown Manhattan, her hands full of shopping bags as she walked back towards Avengers Tower. She could have halved the time to get home by taking the subway, but the weather was nice, so she enjoyed the walk, reaching the towers lobby a little after 2 in the afternoon.

By the time she stepped out of the elevator and into the penthouse, she noted Steve, Clint and Bucky sprawled out on the sofas in front of the tv. She dropped her shopping bags onto the floor and launched herself onto the sofa cushion next to Steve, curling herself into his side as his arm fell around her shoulders, hugging her tightly against him.

“Where’ve you been all day?” he asked.

“Went shopping,” Rori explained.

“Do I want to know?” he asked with a soft chuckle.

“I bought wigs.”

“Why on earth are you buying wigs?” Clint butted in.

“Because with the tour coming up,” Rori said, “I want to try out some different hair colours, but I’ve never bleached my hair before and I’m honestly terrified of ruining my hair. So, wigs.”

“Do we get a fashion show?” Steve asked.

“Maybe later,” she mumbled, yawning widely before resting her head back against Steve’s shoulder and staring, glazed eyes at the tv.

xXx

The following day, Sam found Rori sitting alone against one of the large windows, hugging her knees tightly against her chest as she stared out over the city.

“Hey, you,” he said as he took a seat next to her on the floor. “You ok?”

“Yeah I’m good,” she replied, her voice soft and a little distant, her gaze remaining on the view spread out beneath them.

“Remember when you promised me you wouldn’t lie about how you were feeling,” Sam reminded her.

She sighed, her shoulders sagging and her head leaning forward to rest against the cold glass. “I had a panic attack last week,” she mumbled.

“When you got home to London?” he asked.

She shook her head. “On the last day of our honeymoon. This thunderstorm came rolling in out of nowhere the day before we flew home, and I just freaked out and ruined everything. I thought I was getting better.”

“You are getting better,” Sam argued. “This is the first panic attack you’ve had in months. That’s a huge improvement.”

“But I thought they were gone,” Rori sobbed. “I was just starting to feel normal again but I’m never going to be like I was.”

“No, you’re not,” he agreed. “I know this isn’t what you want to hear, but PTSD isn’t something you just get over. It’s going to be with you for the rest of your life, but that doesn’t have to mean there’s anything wrong with you and I’m sure Harry didn’t think you ruined the trip.”

“Of course he didn’t, he’s Harry,” she said. “He’s always so supportive and just wants to help me through it. It’s not even really about last week,” she admitted. “It’s more about what it says about the rest of the year. The rest of my life. When Harry asked me to join his band, I was terrified that somehow, I would do something to ruin it all, like that somehow my prosthetic would malfunction, and I’d ruin a show. Now I’m wondering what will happen if I have a panic attack at a show? There are so many things that can go wrong, and he’s worked so hard for all of this. I’ll never forgive myself if I do anything to damage that.”

“What happens if Mitch slips over in the rain and breaks his hand and can’t play the guitar? What if Sarah gets the flu and has to sit out a few shows? What if something happens with Adams kids and he has to leave the tour?” Sam asked. “There are so many what ifs and things that can go wrong but did you notice how none of those things had anything to do with anyone’s disabilities? There are things in your life that are going to be more challenging for you than they would have been if you hadn’t been shot. You can’t let that stop you from living. I’m sure Harry and Jeff have all kinds of plans in place for what happens if one of you gets sick and can’t perform, so maybe you should talk to them about your concerns and you can have some plans in place and that will help with the anxiety of it all.”

“You know I really hate when you’re right Sam,” Aurora mumbled, the corners of her lips twitching.

“I know,” he smirked. “But one of these days you’ll learn to accept that I’m never wrong.”

Aurora stuck her tongue out at him before letting out a tired sigh. “I’m just so exhausted. Like, my brain just never stops stressing over these tiny little things and it’s so exhausting to constantly be worrying about everything. I mean Christ, I chipped my nail polish at lunch and it’s all I’ve been able to think about for the last few hours which is ridiculous because who cares if my nail polish is chipped, but I’m going to be on live tv in two days and what if they want a shot of my hands while I’m playing and it’s not like I have time to go get them redone now.”

“Why not just tell the camera operators not to set up that shot?” Sam asked, always the rational voice.

“Yeah,” Rori nodded. “Yeah, that makes sense.”

Having said his piece, Sam stood up after giving her shoulder a quick squeeze and then walked away, leaving her to think about what he’d said. She was still sitting on the floor beside the window deciding how to bring her anxieties to Harry without adding to his already full plate when Nat appeared beside her. “Heard you could do with a manicure,” she said.

She extended her hand, helping Aurora up off the floor and then led her to the elevator and down to her personal floor. Nat didn’t press Aurora to talk as they settled down in her living room and set about removing the chipped polish from the nails of her right hand. Rori was grateful for the silence, not sure that she had the energy to carry a conversation but also glad that she wasn’t alone. Where others in the tower felt that they needed to distract her from her anxiety, it was always Nat that provided what she needed without her ever having to ask. Her thoughts whirled in her head as Nat applied the new pale yellow polish to her nails in slow, methodical strokes, Sam’s advice echoing in Aurora’s ears.  

“You seem stressed,” Nat finally said as she finished the topcoat on the last nail.

“Just nervous about the show on Saturday,” Rori replied softly. “Live TV doesn’t leave any room for error.”

“I’m sure you’ll all do great,” Nat promised with a warm smile. “Now lay back and I’ll do a face mask and help you relax. You’re way too tense for a 22 year old.”

Aurora did as she was told without argument, laying back and closing her eyes as Nat spread the cool clay over her face and then she started massaging her long fingers into Rori’s scalp. Once the mask was finished and Nat had cleaned it away with a warm cloth, she set about rubbing moisturizer onto Rori’s face, soothing the pinched muscles between the younger woman’s brow until she fell asleep under Nat’s hands.  

When Harry arrived back at the tower a little over an hour later he found most of the team in the penthouse, however his wife was conspicuously absent from the group. He asked JARVIS if she was downstairs in either of the studios, his brow furrowing when the AI informed him that she was in Agent Romanoff’s private quarters and he headed for the elevator.

Nat was sitting on the other sofa across from where Rori was sleeping peacefully, a book in hand when JARVIS’ voice filled the room and she was thankful that she had asked the AI to lower its volume when Aurora had fallen asleep.

“Mr. Styles is requesting access to your floor Agent Romanoff,” JARVIS announced in a hushed whisper.

“Tell him to come in,” Nat replied in an equally soft tone.

A few moments later, the elevator doors opened at the end of the hall and Harry strolled into the room, his eyes immediately falling to his sleeping wife. “Hey,” he whispered to Nat. “Everything ok here?”

“She was getting a bit anxious about Saturday, so we had a bit of a spa day to help her calm down,” Nat explained.

Harry nodded and then headed over to the sofa, sitting on its edge next to Aurora’s hip and reached out to trace his hand along her cheekbone. “Rors?” he soothed. “Time to wake up love.” As she began to stir, Nat left the room allowing the couple to have some privacy.

“You’re home,” Rori mumbled, her voice thick with sleep and a soft smile lifting the corners of her lips. “Missed you today.”

“Heard you had a bad day,” Harry said, pulling her up and into a tight hug. “Sorry I wasn’t here.”

“S’ok,” she replied as she pressed her face into the crook of his neck. “Just got in my head a bit and spiralled.”

“Feeling better now?”

“Much,” she promised. “Always feel better when you’re here.”

“Mitch text me about 20 minutes ago that their flight landed so they’ll be here soon. Wanna come upstairs with me? Think Steve’s cooking a massive dinner.”

Aurora nodded her head and laced her fingers through Harry’s as the headed for the elevator doors.

xXx

Aurora tried to hold back her anxiety as she walked through the door with Harry, Jeff and the rest of the band Friday morning. She knew she was doing a poor job of it when Harry squeezed her hand tightly in an attempt to comfort her. She was angry at herself for her nervousness, knowing that she had performed on bigger stages in front of live audiences in the past, but she couldn’t seem to overcome the fear that she would make a mistake that would make Harry look bad. She could always deal with embarrassing herself, but the idea of screwing up everything that Harry had worked for was what truly made her terrified.

The set was a blur of activity and Harry led them down the halls towards the set where their equipment had been set up. Sarah headed straight to her drum kit and the boys picked up their guitars while Rori and Harry walked over to where the keyboards where a grand piano was waiting for her.  

“You look like you’re going to be sick babe,” Harry said. He kept his voice low, whispering in his wife’s ear as she sat down on her bench seat, not wanting draw anyone’s attention to their conversation. “I know you’re going to nail this. Just gotta trust me.”

“I know,” she replied. “God anxiety is such a bitch.” Harry chuckled at her little outburst and then he kissed the top of her head before walking over towards the microphone stand.

They spent the rest of the day running through the two songs they would perform the following evening. They discussed the lighting and camera set ups, making sure that everyone in the band and the crew knew exactly where they would stand and which way the equipment would move during the live broadcast. Occasionally they would take breaks for Harry to go work on the sketches he would be appearing in or they would stop so that Aurora could remove her prosthetic for a while. In the year since she had started wearing the prosthetic hand, Tony and Peter had redesigned the original many times, constantly upgrading and improving it’s coding to make it easier for her to wear for longer periods of time. Despite these upgrades, she still found it hard to wear for too long and after about 4 hours of prolonged use she would start to get horrible tension headaches from the transmitting device she wore behind her left ear. It was for this reason that the majority of their soundchecks were happening on Friday so that Aurora wouldn’t be required to play before the show was ready to go to air. She was always uncomfortable whenever plans had to change in order to accommodate her disability, but Harry had  assured her repeatedly over the course of the week that it was not a big deal and that they wouldn’t have been needed much on Saturday afternoon anyway, so it wasn’t even that much of a change to the schedule.

By the end of the day, Aurora was exhausted. They had taken plenty of breaks throughout the day, but she knew that she had definitely pushed herself, never wanting to be the one to call for a break and know she was paying for it. She had her prosthetic off and stuffed into her bag before they even reached the car that would take them all the few short blocks back to the tower.  She sat in the back seat beside Harry and let her head fall against his shoulder, closing her eyes for the quick 10 minute drive.

“You alright love?” Harry asked quietly as they pulled up in the underground carpark of the tower.

She hummed in response, letting him lead her out of the car and into the waiting elevator. “Just tired,” she promised. “It was a long day.”

“It was,” Harry agreed, his arm wrapped tightly around her waist. “Went great though. Think tomorrow’s going to be amazing.”

Aurora wasn’t the only one who was tired and after such a long day of rehearsals, everyone in the band was happy to return to the tower, the inviting smells of dinner greeting them as they stepped out of the elevator to see the entire team crowded around the dining table, waiting for them. Aurora’s eyes lit up as she saw Peter at the table and immediately rushed over to him, pulling him out of his seat and into a hug, her exhaustion evaporated in the wake of seeing him again for the first time since they’d arrived back in town.

“God, where have you been all week?” she asked.

“Sorry been busy with school and patrols,” Peter replied. “I usually only have time to come over Friday nights and on the weekends.”

“Lucky we’re not leaving till Monday then,” Rori smiled. “Otherwise I wouldn’t get to spend any time with you at all. Now talk to me, how’s it feel to almost be finished with High School?”

Harry watched them with an amused smile as they sat next to each other, talking excitedly about Peter’s upcoming graduation and which colleges he had been accepted to. They barely stopped talking throughout the entire meal, completely oblivious to anyone else at the table. Harry hadn’t spent a great deal of time around Peter, given how much time he had spent on the road with One Direction or off filming Dunkirk while Aurora had still been living in the tower full time, but it didn’t really take a lot of time to understand why Tony, Steve and Rori had all rushed to absorb Peter into their little family. He was such a nice kid, always energetic and excited about anything going on everyone’s lives and he was joy to be around. He had so seamlessly fit into the family dynamic that everyone considered him a Stark in all bar name. Harry had once asked Rori about his place in the team, and she had smiled brightly, explaining how happy she was that while she and Steve had always had their art to bond over, she was relieved that Tony now had someone that could keep up with him in the lab and that he could teach Peter and watch him improve. She’d always wanted a little brother and now she had one in Peter. Tony and Steve had already experienced the emotional minefield of establishing parental roles without stepping on the memory of Rori’s mother, to it had been so easy for them to find a way to fill those same roles with Peter over the last few years without diminishing May’s place in his life or erasing the importance of Peter’s parents. The Avenger’s had always been a messy, happy, found family, and with the addition of Peter and May, and then with Mitch, Adam and Sarah, the family just seemed to keep expanding and Harry could see how much Aurora loved having each and everyone of them crowded into the penthouses dining room.

xXx

Saturday was a blur of activity and rushing around, and before Aurora realised someone was yelling that they were going live in 10 minutes. She was sitting out of the way with Sarah on one side of her and Adam on the other, waiting for their time to perform. Harry was off getting ready for the first sketch and they had a small tv hanging on the wall nearby so that they could watch the show while they waited. The first half of the show went off without a hitch and all four of them simply tried to keep out of everyone’s way until a technician came over to heard them towards the set. They were all situated behind their instruments by the time Harry joined them and he quickly ducked over to Rori for a good luck kiss before taking his place at the mic stand and waiting for the signal to start. One of Aurora’s knees was bouncing beneath the piano and there was a slight tremor in her right hand as she closed her eyes and took a few deep breathes on the darkened set. She tuned out the camera’s and the studio audience, her attention narrowing down to her instrument and Harry a few steps in front of her as she began the opening chords of the song. For a few brief seconds her piano was the only sound as the lights began to lift, and Harry’s voice rang out through the studio. As they hit the pre-chorus Rori and Sarah added their voices to the mix and then all of the other instruments joined as they entered the chorus. All of Aurora’s nerves disappeared as Harry belted out the lyrics of the chorus, and in the brief moment right before the second verse he turned, catching her eye and winking before returning to the microphone. In the final lines of the song, right in the middle of the most difficult notes, Aurora heard Harry’s voice falter and he missed a line. She tried to hide a grimace, knowing that he would be kicking himself for slipping at the end of the song. The moment the camera’s cut away she was at his side, arms wrapped tightly around his waist and he pecked her lips quickly. She attempted to comfort him before he was quickly whisked away to change into the costume for the next sketch.

By the time they returned to their little set for their second song Harry appeared to have shaken off the slip up and everyone, including Aurora, was buzzing with adrenaline and ready to go with their second performance. This time the grand piano was gone, and Aurora’s keyboard was positioned behind Harry’s spot at the centre of the stage. With all the sketches out of the way, Aurora watched happily as Harry allowed himself to enjoy the performance. As they finished the song and the audience cheered, Harry quickly pulled his guitar strap over his head and walked over to where Rori was seated behind the keys. He cupped her cheeks in his hands and kissed her softly. “That one was for you my love,” he whispered as their lips separated.

“So proud of you,” she whispered in reply. “You absolutely killed it tonight.”

NEXT CHAPTER

OR CONTINUE READING ON AO3

So You Want To Believe The So-Called 'Experts'?*

By Karl Denninger

Let's go down the list.

This virus was newly discovered in January of 2020. FALSE; Judicial watch has now proved that Fauci and the NIH knew that Covid-19 was diagnosed no later than December 2nd 2019 in Wuhan. This was deliberately concealed under confidentiality agreements between China and the NIH. In short Dr. Fauci and the NIH knowingly and repeatedly lied about the time of first discovery and diagnosis and it is documented that this was known in February and early March and not disclosed. We also now know with scientific certainty that the virus was in the US no later than the second week of December of 2019 because antibodies were found in about 1.5% of blood donations from that time. This, along with the sequencing back-computation I performed in early 2020 places the latest the virus entered the US as sometime in October of 2019 and from the blood bank data it is scientifically proved it had infected about 1.5% of the population, or roughly 4 million people in the US, by the second week of December 2019. This in turn means that we had widespread disease which was blamed on something else. Indeed we handled all 4 million of those cases just fine up until the hysteria started, didn't we? You didn't even know those 4 million sick people, and those who died of it, existed prior to the hysteria being ginned up.

15 days will slow the spread. "If we all stay home and minimize contact for 15 days -- including closing businesses, schools and not traveling -- Covid will be under control and we can trace infections and stop it." FALSE and we now know impossible because the virus was already all over the country on an uncontrolled basis by that time and the NIH knew the virus had been circulating for at least a month earlier than they admitted at the time. It is true that if you immediately slam your borders shut 100% you can trace and quarantine yourself out of a transmissible epidemic -- at the cost of essentially all external trade, travel and tourism. But Fauci factually knew when we started that this was impossible because the virus had been spreading here for at least two months at the time and we hadn't done a thing about it for those two months. We were later to learn it was four months and perhaps longer.

If you give us 30 more days (remember, this is now six weeks to slow the spread) it'll work. FALSE AGAIN for the same reason; the NIH and Fauci knew there was no possible way to contain the virus when the original 15 days expired as he knew, factually, that the virus had been uncontained for at least three months.

But the lockdowns and restrictions worked to save lives! Nope; this is called the "exception fallacy" and now a peer-reviewed journal entry demonstrates it. We knew this early on too; indeed for five decades we've had "pandemic response plans" that make clear that once you have widespread community dispersion of an infectious agent attempting to lock down people or impose any other sort of non-pharmaceutical intervention is futile and causes harm. We ignored said decades of hard-won experience -- intentionally.

We don't have enough ventilators! FALSE; not one of the DPA-produced ones was ever needed; NY's Governor lied and had plenty of them, as did everyone else.

Ventilators not only are needed they will save lives. FALSE; they killed nearly everyone put on one then, and still do. We knew they didn't work in February as they killed 95% of the people put on then in Wuhan and this had been reported out by March.

This is mostly a community-spread disease in places like stores, bars, restaurants, churches, concerts and the local city street. FALSE; the CDC itself documented that more than half of all transmission was happening in homes and the next largest, and only other statistically material spread was occurring in industrial (e.g. meat packing) plants and health care settings. Nashville suppressed the fact that they could only trace about one percent of infections to social businesses such as bars and restaurants and now the CDC itself has stated that less than 1% of spread is traceable to such public venues as restaurants and bars. In other words we knew by late spring of 2020 the restrictions, including business closures, school shutdowns and masks couldn't work as that's not where the virus was spreading; we couldn't shut down the industrial plants without starving the population and destroying both energy production and sanitary services leading to an immediate societal and economic collapse. Nor could we invade every house and forcibly segment positive-tested people either; we had neither the resources nor would they get away with it without the cops and government goons being turned into swiss cheese. And when it comes to health care we could have segregated Covid-19 facilities and the people working in care homes but intentionally did not.

Asymptomatic transmission is a major risk. FALSE. Over millions of contacts traced in China not one was ever proved to be from an asymptomatic person. There has never been scientific evidence that asymptomatic spread has been material in any pandemic through history and there is no documented evidence of material asymptomatic spread for Covid-19 in the US or anywhere else. Worse, symptomatic persons least able to afford to call out sick due to lack of paid sick time or even the threat of being fired are those in low-wage and high-contact jobs such as fast food, grocery, meatpacking and other "essential" service industries never mind care home employees who are poorly paid and often moonlight in home health care among extremely vulnerable people.

We had no way to stop the nursing home deaths and did the best we could. FALSE. I pointed out immediately after Kirkland occurred that isolating the employees from all general public interaction, effectively creating a bubble, would stop nearly all of the transmission into these environments. We happened to have a lot of empty hotels at the time too. Yes, we would have had to pay significant bonuses to entice employees to go nowhere other than that hotel room and to work but we could have, and if we did it would have saved nearly 50% of those who died in the first four months. Not one so-called "expert" demanded or even suggested doing so but I was calling for exactly this in March of 2020. This, of course leaves aside the various Executive Orders that intentionally seeded the virus into nursing homes in multiple states by multiple Governors. Indeed even this winter in still-locked-down New York there was still no segregation of employees and residents were killed in size by infection brought into the care home by employees. Recent small case number spikes have been associated with vaccine distribution. How's that possible? There's only one rational explanation: The health care workers are giving the virus to the patients getting the shot! And yet we are still told that all these people are "heroes" and don't you dare forget it.

We didn't -- and don't -- have early treatment options that work. FALSE; Japan spent their effort on early treatment and keeping people out of hospitals. They have roughly a third of our population and only 8,000 dead people. Japan is far more-dense population-wise than us yet did a hell of a lot better despite having a materially older population. What Japan didn't do, in short, is spread the disease via their health care workers. In short if you went to the hospital you were likely to die; this has proved out in my own county in Tennessee with a >60% death rate. Up until we started with the panic porn -- the entire first three months of this outbreak in the US until March of 2020 -- we did fine too despite the virus being literally everywhere for months. We in fact knew of several early treatment candidate drugs, all cheap and available, in March of 2000 and exactly zero of them were investigated by the NIH, CDC or any of the so-called "public health" institutions such as Vanderbilt, IHME, Johns Hopkins and others. Those physicians and even hospital systems who did investigate them on their own were derogated, attacked and in some cases even threatened with license suspensions and other sanctions which continue to this day.

Age is the primary determinant of risk. FALSE; obesity and the panoply of health conditions caused and exacerbated by being a fat-ass is the primary determinant of risk. Nations with lower obesity prevalence have a ten times lower or better risk of death from Covid-19 on a per-100,000 population basis. Obesity is in each and every instance a lifestyle choice. This was known very early on in the NY Coroner data which is updated frequently; only six persons 75 and older have died of Covid without one of a relatively short list of underlying conditions -- and over 10,500 died with one or more. Simply put most of those who died deliberately put themselves in a medically compromised condition through their own lifestyle choices just a person who drinks too much and ruins their liver decided to drink. Absent those personal lifestyle decisions the death rate from this disease, while certainly not zero, is approximately half as likely as death due to an automobile accident over a year's time. Read here -- this is exactly what I pointed out one year ago. Who's been right on this -- and who's been wrong?

Existing drugs will not work and we have no existing treatments until you're hospitalized; we must develop new treatments and vaccines. FALSE. The data is that ivermectin works, among others. A trial out of Australia conducted in Britain (they locked everything in and did not have enough people in Australia who were sick) showed Budesonide (a cheap inhaled steroid used for asthma) works if given immediately when someone becomes symptomatic. The latter trial was stopped because it was ruled unethical to not give the controls the medicine since it prevented ninety percent of hospitalizations. Ivermectin has worked in every trial run thus far except one recently reported study the authors themselves state cannot prove effectiveness as the necessary deterioration in cases to do so was violated to the downside immediately, possibly due to widespread community use of the drug. The data on HCQ says it works if used early but appears to be worthless if not used until you're in the hospital. Remdesivir, which has an EUA, was disproved -- that is, shown worthless in a very large trial called "Solidarity" (along with several other drugs) and yet is still being used as it is on-patent and expensive. No drug works 100% of the time nor should it be expected to, but we should damn well not continue to use drugs that are proved worthless just because they cost $3,000 and the FDA issued an EUA for them. Deliberately not treating people until they're choking to death is monstrous and has resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths, many if not most of them avoidable at a cost of a few dollars.

Masks are the best tool we have to stop the spread and, if you just wear them for a few -- 4, 6, 8 weeks -- we will have Covid under control. Stated under oath before Congress by the CDC's director in September following multiple previous statements over a two month period in the summer by the CDC and NIH which urged (and got) the issuance of mandates. FALSE and known false as Hawaii took a ten times case rate spike a month after their mandate. This was known before Redfield perjured himself before Congress. There are ZERO states which did not take a monstrous spike in the winter despite mandates including California with the most-strict lockdowns and mask mandates in the nation. Compliance via multiple surveys has been around 90% with no evidence of effectiveness anywhere against non-mandate states and counties next door. Those states including South Dakota and Florida who repudiated the mandates or refused to issue them in the first place had identical or better outcomes than the states and locales that imposed them. The CDC has now itself published a MMWR (weekly report) in which they "claim" masks work -- their definition of "work" is a shockingly tiny 1-2% decrease in deaths and this assumes you ignore the confounding elements in their study that could invalidate even that tiny impact. In other words despite the nearly year-long and continual screaming about masks even the CDC itself now states that out of the 500,000 dead only 5,000-10,000 lives were saved at best and statistically-speaking it is entirely possible zero lives were saved. REMEMBER, WE WERE TOLD IN THE SUMMER AND EARLY FALL THAT MASKS WOULD ABSOLUTELY CONTROL THE VIRUS AND IN FACT THE CDC STATED UNDER OATH THAT MASKS WERE BETTER PROTECTION THAN A VACCINE. THIS LIE WAS REPEATED FOR MONTHS AND IS STILL BEING REPEATED TODAY. This wasn't a random statement made "off the cuff" it was made under oath to Congress five months ago and has, over time and by the data, been conclusively proved to be a lie.

The new strains will cause another spike even worse than the last one. FALSE; this was stated originally in the fall and repeated in December through February and yet since then cases have dropped like a stone despite these "new strains" becoming more and more prevalent. Florida in particular has documented widespread prevalence of one of the "demon strains" that were trumpeted in Fauci's fear porn. There has been no spike. Incidentally viruses mutate all the time; within the first few months there were hundreds of distinct viral RNA strains of Covid-19 known and that was only of the infections sequenced -- a tiny minority. If our actions do lead to new strains (specifically our ridiculously-unsound mass-vaccination campaign) and viral evasion occurs you may well be more screwed if you took the vaccine due to ADE than if you did not!

The Super Bowl will cause a huge case, hospitalization and death spike in Florida due to the ridiculously crowded parties and no masks in bars and similar all over the Tampa area. In fact the mayor threatened to arrest people for exactly this reason (an empty threat as the Governor had banned enforceability of said mandates.) FALSE; there has been no spike. Look for yourself; it's been over a month and cases, hospitalizations and deaths are all falling. Where's the spike?

Texas dropping its mask order will lead to mass-disease and death. FALSE; there has been no spike at all. Biden called the move "Neanderthal thinking" and predicted disaster, as did California's Newsom among myriad others, both among political leaders and so-called "medical experts" such as Fauci. Multiple lefties claimed that "there is no limit to how far Republicans will go to kill people." The truth is that Covid-19 cases fell by 28% in the next two weeks. The histrionics were, once again, wrong.

If we social distance and wear masks we will buy enough time for the vaccines to be developed and approved. FALSE. The case and hospitalization rate on a national basis peaked and was falling before the first jab went in the first arm. That which you do after something happens cannot be the cause. Simply put the vaccines did not stop any of the death; despite the lack of testing and rushed approvals they came too late.

The only people who count for "herd immunity" are those vaccinated. FALSE; never in history has such a lie been propagated for any disease, ever, anywhere. The CDC by its own estimates puts the lower boundary of persons infected and recovered at over 1/3rd of the nation and that's their lowest estimate. By more-reasonable belief the number is over half. Those people have immunity and absolutely count. Further, we knew in the first months that a material percentage of the population has pre-existing resistance to some degree, likely due to previous infection with other coronaviruses. This is why the case rate peaked before fully-vaccinated persons existed in the US; there is no other possible explanation.

Even if you've had the disease and recovered you should get vaccinated. There is zero science behind this claim. If you've had the measles or Chicken Pox would you take a vaccine against either? I certainly would not and have not; that would be pointless and stupid. The claim that there is no durable protection once infected is nothing more than conjecture; note that coronaviruses circulate among us all the time and while immunity may not be perfect (e.g. eventually you may well get it again) the odds are extremely high that if you do it will be a mild case and of no clinical or personal significance. Suggesting that you take the risk of an experimental vaccine if you were previously infected is wildly inappropriate; there is no such thing as a drug without risk and there is zero scientific evidence that your acquired immunity will not protect you against serious disease.

Even if you've been vaccinated or had the disease and recovered you should wear a mask and distance from others. FALSE, unless you believe the vaccines are worthless. If you believe the vaccine protects the person who takes it then you no longer need a mask or to distance and since others can choose to take a vaccine or not you have no reason to wear a mask or distance for allegedly protecting others either. If you do not believe the vaccines are effective protection then why did you take it? In short you either believe that you gain immunity by vaccination or infection or you do not; if you do then there's no reason for you to take any measures beyond either recovery or completion of the vaccination. Further, if you don't believe infection and recovery provides meaningful and durable protection then neither will the vaccine so the same scenario applies to both cases and if you do not then believe the shots are protective then you are stupid for accepting them.

These are the very same people folks -- the NIH, the CDC, State Departments of Health, Fauci, Harvard, Johns Hopkins, IHME, Vanderbilt and many more who now tell you after a solid year of unbroken lies and falsehoods that the vaccines are both safe and effective while at the same time our government has provided a 100% waiver of all liability to the pharmaceutical companies that developed and manufactured them.

I note that unlike the other common vaccines that are safe and effective, and which took 10+ years to so-prove, the mechanism of action of these shots are wildly different; they use only part of the virus and rather than introduce it into your body they hijack your cellular metabolism to produce the spike protein exactly as would a replicating infection with the virus, but since only the "spike" is there rather than the entire virus the hypothesis is that hijacking your cellular metabolism in this fashion will not hurt you. While for other vaccines the immunity produced is metabolically identical to infection because a killed whole virus that cannot replicate is used in this case the shots deliberately cause replication in your body of only one part of the virus, the spike protein. This is not identical to the broad immunity provided by natural infection because it can't be with this approach; if the entire virus was used you'd get the disease and it would be systemic in every case instead of localized to your upper respiratory tract. Further, unlike a killed virus vaccine that cannot replicate in your body at all these shots all cause production of the spike protein by your cells exactly as would an infection and that production is systemic since it is given by injection and thus circulates through the body.

The safety of this approach is unproved and in fact the rate of deaths closely associated with these vaccines is wildly higher than that associated with any of the other routinely given vaccinations including flu and chicken pox. The intermediate and longer-term effects of this approach including the possibility of long-term or even permanent damage as a result of systemically hijacking your cellular metabolism to produce that foreign protein are unknown.

Unlike a mask you can remove you cannot un-take a shot and the litany of those previous lies killed over 400,000 Americans who otherwise would not have died.

What if their statements are false this time, specifically on safety? What if viral evasion shows up as did during early trials for a SARS vaccine in animals, trials that were abandoned and not performed for these preparations? It typically takes ten years to know if a candidate vaccine produces unacceptable side effects including lifetime disability due to immune dysfunction, never mind exactly how effective it is and for how long. Further, the media and these people continually claim that nobody has been killed by these vaccines yet VARES, the CDC's own reporting data which is public, shows roughly two thousand associated deaths. The number of associated deaths with the annual flu shot from last year's flu vaccination which shipped roughly 170 million doses, was twenty-six.

That means the Covid-19 shots are associated thus far with roughly seventy five times (7,500%) as many deaths as last year's entire set of flu vaccines! Remember that we give flu vaccines to old and morbid people just like the first priority for Covid-19 vaccines, so these should produce similar "associated" rates of bad events if they are similarly safe.

VARES reporting is voluntary and thus always under-reports vaccine-associated events. Association does not establish causation but a pattern of 75 times as many deaths as are associated with another commonly-given vaccine in the same population group damn well ought to raise anyone's eyebrows; to claim that such does not represent a "safety signal" is a flat-out lie.

I remind you that the false statements of alleged facts outnumber, by a wild margin, the true ones particularly when it comes to things you were told to do that "would work" to stem the spread of this virus. Every single one of those claims has been proved false over time.

In short you're now being exhorted to believe a cadre of people and government agencies who are proved repeated liars and to trust them with your life after their previous lies killed your mother.

The facts are that Covid-19 basically burned itself out before the first shot went in the first arm and that none of the mitigating factors prevented net deaths from occurring; in fact all these mitigations, from mask orders to lockdowns to closing businesses and others caused more deaths due to ODs, suicides, avoidable heart attacks and strokes not screened for and other maladies by a wide factor than the mitigations, even using fatally flawed claims taken on faith by these very same agencies, could have possibly saved. The actions we could have taken to actually reduce death, specifically as regards care home and other medical facilities we deliberately refused to do and we knew those actions would save lives. Instead of protecting the most-vulnerable while those least-likely to be seriously harmed were naturally infected and built a wall of population immunity we deliberately refused to protect those older and sicker people from infection via the health care system and they died.

Given this record of falsehoods, actions and intentional refusals to act you're willing to bet your life they're telling the truth this time?

Even without full testing there may be reason for certain people to accept the vaccine, particularly those at specifically-high risk who have not had the virus. However, on the data if you are not specifically morbid in known ways the risk of death from Covid-19, by the CDC's own data along with that of the NY coroner, is approximately 3/100,000. From the associated deaths in the CDC's own VARES system it appears the vaccines are approximately as dangerous to materially more dangerous than the disease in non-morbid individuals and that is without having any data on intermediate and longer-term effects which can only add to those risks. Further, if you've already been infected with Covid-19 you already have broad immunity and there is zero scientific evidence that vaccination can be of any value to you whatsoever.

When do we stop allowing people like Fauci, the CDC, Joe Biden, Donald Trump and Governors along with various health departments to lie through their teeth about virtually everything related to this virus?

Is not your dead Grandmother enough reason to put a stop to this horse**** -- and all who support it?

Original article has hyperlinks. Link: https://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=241875

100 First Meetings (Dialogue Prompts)

1) "Were you the one in the bathroom a second ago trying different lines in the mirror to work up the courage to ask that barista out?" 2) "Wow, you're cute." 3) "You come here often?" "This is a morgue." 4) "You! What the hell are you doing in here? We're closed!" 5) "Ahhhh! I hate my fucking life!!!" "Mood." 6) "You have magic?!" 7) "You don't look like you'll last a day here." 8) "You should leave before your date gets back from the bathroom, I saw them in here the other day popping the question to two different people." 9) "They never told me they had a younger brother/sister." 10) "Who's the twink?" 11) "I gotta ask, are you mad about something or is your face just /like that?/" 12) "You're my new roommate?" 13) "You're not married are you?" 14) "Hey, you're not dead are you? Cause I'm on probation and I can't afford to be involved in a fucking murder or something." 15) "So you're the one causing all this trouble." 16) "I need you to pretend we're dating so this dude will leave me alone." 17) "Honey, there you are I've been looking all over for you! Pretend you're with me so this person will go away." 18) "So you're the loud moaner from upstairs, huh, never knew you'd be so cute." 19) "You're not the pizza guy." 20) "You know, when I said I wish the love of my life would just fall out of the sky this isn't exactly what I had in mind." 21) "Any particular reason you're putting peanut butter in my kid's hair?" 22) "You made me dinner?" 23) "You've got the wrong room, but feel free to stay naked." 24) "You must be the motherfucker who broke my windshield!" 25) "Hi, you are very naked." 26) "You their new toy?" 27) "How'd you like to make fifty bucks?" 28) "I know I'm going to regret asking but who are you?" 29) "You got any friends?" "No." "Well you do now, come sit with us!" 30) "Cute face, I'd love to sit on it sometime." 31) "Where'd you find this dork?" 32) "Uh, there any particular reason you're screaming at two thirty-six in the morning? 33) "Out of curiosity, do you think you could lift a dead body?" 34) "If you don't let go of this bag of chips I swear to god I'll bring you to your knees in the middle of this fucking WinnDixie." 35) "WHO THE FUCK ATE THE LAST OF THE FUCKIN DORITOS, I SWEAR TO GOD I'LL-oh! I'm sorry, I didn't know we had a guest. If I'd known we had a guest I would've cleaned." 36) "Are you the vegan cannibal? Because I have so many questions." 37) "Ooh, hello Mommy/Daddy. Fuck, did I just say that out loud?" 38) "Am I dead? Are you an angel? Am I in heaven?" "Actually you're in a taco bell, you tried to do a kick flip on your skateboard in the parking lot and hit your head on the side of the dumpster." 39) "You brought a fucking guest to our SECRET BASE?! I'll deal with you later. Hi, hello, it's very nice to meet you please make yourself at home!" 40) "So, you gay or what?" 41) "No, sorry, we don't want any girl scout cookies." 42) "Holy shit, you just saved my fucking life!" 43) "Hey, honey, it's just me. You were in a really bad accident so don't try moving around too much, okay? How are you feeling?" "You called me honey. Do I know you?" 44) "Jesus, your face is about as red as your hair." 45) "Run along little ballerina, you wouldn't want to be caught hanging around the bad kids, would you?" 46) "No, I'm not the stripper, but I can be if you'd like." 47) "You ready to cut open some bodies?" 48) "Get in if you want to live." 49) "What are you looking at, short stack? Mind your own business." 50) "Your headphones aren't plugged in properly so I can hear everything you're listening to. I was going to tell you earlier but then you started watching the weirdest porn I've ever seen and I didn't want to embarrass you, but I'm about to leave so I figured I'd tell you before someone else sits around you." 51) "I don't know what they've told you but we don't need another member, go home." 52) "Hey, stop right there, you can't steal that! That's illegal!" 53) "Who's the nerd?" 54) "You look like the kind of person who wears days of the week underwear." 55) "So, how many pitchers of margaritas are you allowed to sell me?" 56) "My head fucking kills, I shouldn't have drank last night. Hey, wait, why do you and I have matching rings on our fingers?!" 57) "Congratulations, idiot! You just ruined a six month plan and now we have to start all over!" 58) "That is the ugliest shirt I've ever seen, where can I get one just like it?" 59) "I know you make straight A's, but I'm still not sure if you're really smart or dumb but really lucky. Because I've seen someone ask you what the square root of pi is and you answer with 'I don't know, I guess it depends on the flavor.'" 60) "Who the fuck let you in?" 61) "Hey, I'll give you twenty bucks if you take a photo with me to make my ex jealous." 62) "So, you eat ass or what?" 63) "You a cop?" "No." "Too bad, you would have looked good in a uniform." 64) "With a face like that I'll be whoever you want me to be." 65) "Hey, you have eyes, do you think this outfit makes me look fat? You can be honest, I can handle it." 66) "I'm just looking for a nice person to settle down with who'll fuck me hard and tell me they love me when they cum on my face, like, I feel like that's not too fucking much to ask for, you know? Anyway, I'll have a diet coke and the chicken salad, please." 67) "I swear to god, this is not what it looks like." 68) "First of all, don't you fucking come in here and try and start a fight with my best friend while you're looking straight goofy as hell in those fucking Walmart shorts and those thrift store crocs." 69) "HEY! YOU ACROSS THE STREET! YOUR DOG IS SO FUCKING CUTE AND I WOULD FUCKING DIE FOR THEM!" 70) "Anyone who says they don't like musicals is either lying to themselves, has never watched one, or is a heartless android sent by the government to blend into society and collect information about us." 71) "Asking someone out is easy, watch this. Hi, I think you're cute and if you're not seeing anyone do you want to go out sometime?" 72) "Hey, I saw you crying earlier when you stepped on a bug. Do you need me to, like, call someone for you?" 73) "I can't tell if you're really high and just hungry or if you're buying 28 family bags of shredded cheese at three am because you just love cheese. Either way you should probably also buy some laxatives or lactaid while you're already here." 74) "When I told you to make a power point about something you're passionate about for our first class meeting I didn't mean make a power point on 'How to Give Great Head' and I absolutely didn't tell you to include pictures." 75) "Are you wearing that tacky ass outfit because you genuinely like it or because you're a Leo and crave the attention?" 76) "Did you really just buy the last chocolate chocolate chip muffin? You are now dead to me." 77) "The fuck are you looking at loser?" 78) "Dude, books are just like subtitles without the movie." 79) "Hey, in your tinder bio is says your friends call you Badger Slammin' Sam and I literally only swiped right just to find out why." 80) "Are you hitting on me? Am I being punked? Are you a hooker? Did my dumbass friend put you up to this?" 81) "Hey, I need you to settle something for me and my friend. Which is the right way to pronounce carrot?" 82) "Do you believe in love at first sight, what about disgust at first glance?" 83) "Look, I'm not saying that MCR's last album changed my life, but I'm absolutely saying that." 84) "Can you move out of my way, I have to clean puke off the floor before I'm allowed to use my lunch break to cry in my car." 85) "Hi, I believe this very drunk person is your roommate, they told me this is the address. I caught them in my backyard playing with my dog again." 86) "I know you're probably not allowed to do this, but I kind of need to borrow an iguana." 87) "Hey, I saw you drop your sandwich in the parking lot earlier and start crying and I felt bad for not saying anything earlier, but I went to the sandwich shop and luckily the dude remembered your oddly specific order so I got you another one. I hope you get to feeling better." 88) "No, we don't sell 'that crazy kush' here, you can try Target." 89) "I was just calling because you sent me a picture text three weeks ago by accident with the caption 'When they let you deliver the digiorno after you clap them cheeks.' and I was just wondering if you could explain what that means because it's been keeping me up at night ever since you sent it." 90) "Hey, I just overheard you talking with your friends about how you put mustard, ketchup, and ranch on your macaroni and cheese and I just wanted to come over here and personally ask you which circle of hell you crawled up from." 91) "What the fuck is a diet water?" 92) "You guys here for the orgy?" 93) "Was that your scream? Why did it sound like a banshee?" 94) "I saw you pour two five hour energy shots into a cup of coffee earlier and then proceed to mix it with monster and red bull and like, dude I know this isn't really my place or whatever but I think you should probably go to the hospital. Like, I think you're gonna die." 95) "Your profile said you're a vegan but my profile says 'Only contact if you eat ass' and you contacted me, so what's the truth here?" 96) "Call me adorable one more time and I'll knock your teeth down your fucking throat." 97) "Move, I have to go fail my Stats test before I can go home and cry into a bag of hot cheetos while I rewatch The Office." 98) "I'm sorry, did you just order a fifty piece mcnugget for here, for yourself?" 99) "So, how do you feel about lizards?" 100) "Question, are you a top or a bottom, because you're giving off major power bottom energy but I'm not one hundred percent sure."

Even more striking than the scale of need are the shifting demographics of who is eating here and why. The homeless population is getting younger, staffers say, and more likely to have children and full-time jobs. In one hour, over taco salad and Fanta, I meet fast-food employees, a former car salesman who lost his home in the financial crisis and a pregnant 31-year-old whose baby is due the same month her housing vouchers run out.

But the biggest surprise about St. Vincent’s may be the state in which it’s located. Just four years ago, Utah was the poster child for a new approach to homelessness, a solution so simple you could sum it up in five words: Just give homeless people homes.

In 2005, the state and its capital started providing no-strings-attached apartments to the “chronically” homeless — people who had lived on the streets for at least a year and suffered from mental illness, substance abuse or a physical disability. Over the next 10 years, Utah built hundreds of housing units, hired dozens of social workers ― and reduced chronic homelessness by 91 percent.

The results were a sensation. In 2015, breathless media reports announced that a single state, and a single policy, had finally solved one of urban America’s most vexing problems. Reporters from around the country came to Utah to gather lessons for their own cities. In a widely shared “Daily Show” segment, Hasan Minhaj jogged the streets of Salt Lake City, asking locals if they knew where all the homeless people had gone.

But this simplistic celebration hid a far more complex truth. While Salt Lake City targeted a small subset of the homeless population, the overall problem got worse. Between 2005 and 2015, while the number of drug-addicted and mentally ill homeless people fell dramatically, the number of people sleeping in the city’s emergency shelter more than doubled. Since then, unsheltered homelessness has continued to rise. According to 2018 figures, the majority of unhoused families and single adults in Salt Lake City are experiencing homelessness for the first time.

“People thought that if we built a few hundred housing units we’d be out of the woods forever,” said Glenn Bailey, the executive director of Crossroads Urban Center, a Salt Lake City food bank. “But if you don’t change the reasons people become homeless in the first place, you’re just going to have more people on the streets.”

This is not just a Salt Lake City story. Across the country, in the midst of a deepening housing crisis and widening inequality, homelessness has concentrated in America’s most prosperous cities. So far, municipal leaders have responded with policies that solve a tiny portion of the problem and fail to account for all the ways their economies are pushing people onto the streets.

The reality is that no city has ever come close to solving homelessness. And over the last few years, it has become clear that they cannot afford to.

Eric (not his real name) is exactly the kind of person Utah’s policy experiment was intended to help. He is 55 years old and has been homeless for most of his life. He takes medication for his schizophrenia, but his paranoia still leads him to cash his disability checks and hide them in envelopes around the city. When he lived on the streets, his drug of choice was a mix of heroin and cocaine. These days it’s meth.

Despite all his complications, Eric is a success story. He lives in a housing complex in the suburbs of Salt Lake City that was built for the chronically homeless. He has case workers who ensure that he takes his medications and renews his benefits. While he may never live independently, he is far better off here than in a temporary shelter, a jail cell or sleeping on the streets.

The problem for policymakers is that Eric is no longer emblematic of American homelessness. In Salt Lake City, just like everywhere else, the population of people sleeping on the streets looks a lot different than it used to.

As the economy has come out of the Great Recession, America’s unhoused population has exploded almost exclusively in its richest and fastest-growing cities. Between 2012 and 2018, the number of people living on the streets declinedby 11 percent nationwide — and surged by 26 percent in Seattle, 47 percent in New York City and 75 percent in Los Angeles. Even smaller cities, like Reno and Boise, have seen spikes in homelessness perfectly coincide with booming tech sectors and falling unemployment.  

In other words, homelessness is no longer a symbol of decline. It is a product of prosperity. And unlike Eric, the vast majority of people being pushed out onto the streets by America’s growing urban economies do not need dedicated social workers or intensive medication regimes. They simply need higher incomes and lower housing costs.

“The people with the highest risk of homelessness are the ones living on a Social Security check or working a minimum-wage job,” said Margot Kushel, the director of the UCSF. Center for Vulnerable Populations. In 2015, she led a team of researchers who interviewed 350 people living on the streets in Oakland. Nearly half of their older interviewees were experiencing homelessness for the first time.

“If they make it to 50 and they’ve never been homeless, there’s a good chance they don’t have severe mental illness or substance abuse issues,” Kushel said. “Once they become homeless, they start to spiral downward really quickly. They’re sleeping three to four hours a night, they get beat up, they lose their medications. If you walk past them in a tent, they seem like they need all these services. But what they really needed was cheaper rent a year ago.”

Other research has found the same connection between housing costs and homelessness. In 2012, researchers found that a $100 increase in monthly rent in big cities was associated with a 15 percent rise in homelessness. The effect was even stronger in smaller cities.

“Once you’re homeless, it’s a steep hill to climb back up,” Bailey said. “When an eviction is on your record, it’s even steeper. And even if you do get back into housing, you’re still one illness or one car problem away from becoming homeless again.”

And rising affluence isn’t just transforming the economic factors that cause homelessness. It is also changing the politics of the cities tasked with solving it. Across the country, as formerly poor neighborhoods have gentrified, politicians are facing increasingly strident calls to criminalize panhandling and bulldoze tent encampments. While city residents consistently tell pollsters that they support homeless services in principle, specific proposals to build shelters or expand services face vociferous local opposition.

“The biggest hindrance to solving homelessness is that city residents keep demanding the least effective policies,” said Sara Rankin, the director of the Homeless Rights Advocacy Project at Seattle University School of Law. The evidenceoverwhelminglydemonstrates that punishing homeless people makes it harder for them to find housing and get work. Nonetheless, the most common demands from urban voters are for politicians to increase arrests, close down soup kitchens and impose entry requirements and drug tests in shelters.

“Homelessness is a two-handed problem,” Rankin said. “One hand is everything you’re doing to make it better and the other is everything you’re doing to make it worse. Right now, we spend far more effort undoing our progress than advancing it.”

No municipality demonstrates this dynamic better than Salt Lake City. Thanks to rising housing and construction costs, the building of new homeless housing has slowed to a trickle. A plan to replace the city’s central homeless shelter with a handful of smaller, suburban facilities has been delayed and scaled down due to neighborhood opposition. In 2017, after years of demands by downtown residents and businesses, Utah initiated a $67 million law enforcement crackdown on the population sleeping on the streets of its state capital. In its first year, the campaign resulted in more than 5,000 arrests — and just 101 homeless people being placed into housing.

And there are no signs that it’s going to get better. The economy is creating new homeless people faster than cities can house them.And the worse the problem gets, the harder it becomes to solve.

“The entire system has stalled,” said Andrew Johnston, the vice president of program operations for Volunteers of America Utah, one of the largest service providers in Salt Lake City. “As the economy has improved, policymakers seem to believe that the market will supply affordable housing on its own. But if you don’t put public and private money into it, you’re not going to get it.”

Three years after she escaped from homelessness, Georgia Gregersen’s most enduring memory is how quickly she fell into it.

“I’m a waitress, I’m at home with a new baby and three months later I’m sleeping in an empty parking garage,” said Gregersen, who now lives in a Salt Lake City suburb.

Her story plays out as a series of unraveling safety nets. She had been trying to get clean for years, but the waitlists for rehab were months long. She got on methadone when she found out she was pregnant, but it cost $85 per week, almost as much as she had been spending on heroin. After her son was born she was eligible for daycare vouchers, but the never-ending paperwork — “something was always wrong or required another appointment” — meant she never actually got them.

Eventually, the cost of childcare and the stress of being a single mom got to her and she relapsed. Within weeks she had lost her job and handed her son over to her parents. Her aunt, with whom she had been staying, asked her to move out.

Sleeping outside made her even more desperate to get clean, but everywhere she turned her options were cut off. Every halfway house and detox center in Salt Lake City was full. When she applied for subsidized housing, a government official told her it would take two years just to get on the waiting list.

“I thought, I’ll probably be dead by then,” she said.

Gregersen spiraled downward in 2015, right around the time Utah announced it had ended chronic homelessness. Unlike the recipients of that experiment — most of whom required 24-hour, lifelong support — Gregersen didn’t need permanent supportive housing. She needed every other form of support to be adequately funded and available when she needed it.

“We always look to one thing to be the answer,” she said, “but I needed everything, and in concert.”

Gregersen’s story perfectly encapsulates the challenge of urban policy in a changing and deteriorating America. Truly ending homelessness will require cities to systematically repair all the cracks in the country’s brittle, shattered welfare system. From drug treatment to rental assistance to subsidized child care, the only way to address the crisis is through a concerted — and costly — expansion of government assistance.

And yet, even as homelessness becomes a defining feature of urban growth, no city in America can afford to meaningfully address it.  

“Politicians keep proposing quick fixes and simple solutions because they can’t publicly admit that solving homelessness is expensive,” Kushel said. Before the 1980s, she points out, most of the responsibility for low-income housing, rental assistance and mental health treatment fell on the federal government.

Since then, though, these costs have been systematically handed over to cities. Between 1980 and 1990, the number of low-income households receiving federal rental assistance dropped by more than half. Hundreds of thousands of mental health treatment beds have disappeared. Despite having far deeper pockets, the federal government now spends less per homeless person than the city of San Francisco.  

The relentless localization of responsibility means that cities are spending more than they ever have on homelessness and, at the same time, nowhere near enough. L.A.’s recent $1.2 billion housing bond is one of the largest in American history. It will construct 1,000 permanent supportive housing units every year — in a city where 14,000 people need one. According to a 2018 analysis, Seattle would have to double its current spending to provide housing and services for everyone living on the streets.

Smaller cities have an even wider spending gap. According to Salt Lake City’s Housing & Neighborhood Development Department, building one unit of affordable housing costs roughly $154,000. Providing a home to all 6,800 people currently accessing homeless services would cost the city roughly $1 billion — two-thirds of its entire annual budget.

“We know that it’s cheaper in the long run to provide housing for homeless people, but cities don’t get money back when that happens,” said Tony Sparks, an urban studies professor at San Francisco State University. Expanding social support and building subsidized housing require huge upfront investments that may not pay off for decades. Though the costs of managing a large homeless population mostly fall on hospitals and law enforcement, reducing the burden on those systems won’t put spending back in city coffers.

“If you know how city budgets work, everything goes into a different pot,” Sparks said. “When you save money on health care, it just goes back into the health care system. It doesn’t trickle sideways.”

But all the challenges of funding their response to homelessness doesn’t mean cities are entirely powerless. For a start, municipal leaders could remove the zoning codes that make low-income housing and homeless shelters illegal in their residential neighborhoods. They could replace encampment sweeps and anti-panhandling laws with municipally sanctioned tent cities. They could update their eviction regulations to keep people in the housing they already have.

Cities can also, crucially, address the huge diversity of the homeless population. Rankin points out that for young mothers, the most frequent cause of homelessness is domestic abuse. For young men, it is often a recent discharge from foster care or prison. The young homeless population is disproportionately gay and trans.

All these populations are already interacting with dozens of municipal agencies that haven’t been designed to serve them. Even without major new funding sources, cities could do a lot better with the systems they already have. Schools, for example, could provide social workers for unhoused students. Libraries could invite health care workers to help homeless patrons manage their chronic illnesses. Law enforcement agencies could reorient themselves around outreach and harm reduction rather than arrests and encampment sweeps.

75, but kinda like a secuel to your fic for 3?

halloween is over which means it’s officially that time of year where i watch a bunch of shitty hallmark movies as background noise and imagine newt and hermann in all the romantic scenarios instead........AND revisit all my leftover winter ficlet prompts from last year! the op of the original prompt list has since moved to pillowfort so i’ll link the list from there instead. this one is a sequel to one i wrote last year (one of my favorites of my own imo) w/ cool uncle hermann and hot single middleschool science teacher newt found here

75. our first date is spent walking around our small town holding hands and talking as soft snow falls around us 

from winter writing prompts here

--------------------------------------------

It gets dark before long, and--following a quick text from Karla informing Hermann she’s finished her errands and is on her way to pick the three of them up--Hermann decides he ought to round up her kids. The string lights hung around the ice rink have flickered to life, and between them, the haze of the falling snow, and the fresh piles of it gathering atop the nearby pine trees, it makes for a strangely pretty picture.

The snow flecking Dr. Geiszler’s eyelashes makes for a pretty picture, too.

“I’ll get them,” he says, when Hermann stretches his stuff limbs with a groan and prepares to trek back across the snow. He stills Hermann with a hand to his arm. He’s still wearing the silly mittens. “No offense, dude, but they’ll definitely listen to me more than you.” He waggles his eyebrows and gestures to himself with his thumb. “Teacher.”

Hermann nods and sags back against the railing. He wasn’t fancying the idea of shaking life back into his frozen joints and shouting himself hoarse anyway. “Thank you, Dr. Geiszler.”’

“Newt,” Geiszler corrects with a wink. “You wanna hang back with me so we can get that coffee? My apartment’s only a few minutes away, I can give you a ride to your sister’s afterwards.”

“Oh,” Hermann says. “Yes, if you wouldn’t mind.” Truthfully, he hadn’t expected Geiszler to make good on his invitation. Hermann isn’t the sort who gets asked out on spur-of-the-moment dates, especially not by cute, scruffy strangers; it seemed too good to be true.

“Be a second,” Geiszler says, and then cups his hands around his mouth and bellows, “Hey, guys, over here in five minutes or you’re on lab clean-up duty for all of January!”

This gets their attention. Fast. After a minor setback involving a missing hat (found, as it were, in a snowbank on the other side of the railing), they’re ready to go with time to spare when Karla’s car pulls up at the curb. She rolls down the passenger window while her children (pushing aside shopping bags and flinging in wet coats) clamber into the backseat, and waves at Hermann. “Did you have fun?” she says.

“Oh, loads of it,” Hermann says, sarcastically. Karla grants him a small, amused smile. (You’d be hard-pressed to get much more out of a Gottlieb, really. Hermann often envies her children for how easily mirth comes to them.)

“Well, your torture is over at last,” Karla says. “Get in. I got Indian takeaway for dinner.”

Behind Hermann, Geiszler coughs, and Hermann flushes. He hadn’t forgotten Geiszler--not by any means--but he’s not quite sure how to explain I have a date to his sister in terms that don’t use the word date. Date carries an awful lot of baggage. “Ah, actually,” he says. His voice sounds falsely casual even to his own ears. “That won’t be--necessary. Dr. Geiszler has offered to take me home.”

“Hi,” Geiszler says.

Karla peers around Hermann and narrows her eyes. “You played the piano at the winter program,” she says.

“Sure did,” Geiszler says. “I organized the whole thing, too.”

“Dr. Geiszler is going on a date with Uncle Hermann,” Hermann’s niece informs her mother solemnly. 

“It’s coffee,” Hermann says quickly. “Only coffee.”

“Coffee and a ride back on my motorcycle,” Geiszler confirms.

Motorcycle? Karla nods slowly. “Of course.” The window rolls back up, but not before--like he’s still her kid brother, and she’s caught him sneaking out the back door at midnight to meet up with a boyfriend all over again--she calls out “Don’t stay out too late, Hermann!”

Her car peels away.

Geiszler sticks out his hand. Hermann takes it.

The coffee shop Geiszler takes him to is two blocks away on main street, kitschy and tacky as anything from the outside, and has, predictably, closed early by the time they get there. The sign in the window blames it on the inclement weather. Geiszler scuffs his unlaced boot against the snowy sidewalk and groans. “Well, fuck,” he says. “Sorry. I guess there’s always Starbucks. This place rocks, though, I wanted you to see it.”

Hermann gives his hand a consolatory squeeze. “Oh, I don’t need coffee, anyway,” he says. “The cup you bought me at the rink was just fine.”

“The cup I bought you at the rink tasted like shit,” Geiszler says.

“It was fine,” Hermann says.

“Dinner, then,” Geiszler says, peering up the street at whatever still has its lights on. Most of the businesses, Hermann realizes (from the Indian place Karla ordered from, the antique shop, the used bookstore) have closed early tonight. There’s a single diner, equally kitschy-looking, still lit up with neon. “Do you like…” He hums. “...Hamburgers?”

“Not particularly.”

“Neither do I,” Geiszler admits. “What about--”

“How about we just take a walk, Dr. Geiszler?” Hermann cuts across. “I’m really not that hungry, and it’s...a nice night.” It is, really: fluffy snow, and old-fashioned lamp posts, and not a car in sight. Geiszler’s rainbow flappy hat and lumpy mittens. 

“It’s Newt, dude. Newt,” Geiszler insists, but he links their arms together with a smile.

They make their way back down to the park that houses the skating rink--now also closed for the night--and start down a small, well-lit path. “So what’s the infamous Uncle Hermann doing in all the way over here?” Geiszler says. “The kids said you teach in England.” He nudges their shoulders together and grins. “You don’t exactly sound like a local, anyway.”

“Winter holiday,” Hermann says. “I’ve a month off of work, and nothing to do with myself, really, and I don’t see my sister all too often--well, she thought it’d be good for us if I came to stay. For me. What’s a scientist doing at a middleschool hosting winter programs?”

Geiszler laughs. “The arts are important, man!”

“But a middleschool--out of everything you could be doing--”

“I like it,” Geiszler says. “It’s--I don’t know. Fun. I like teaching kids. Like I’m shaping scientists of the future or whatever.” Hermann hums, skeptically, and Geiszler sticks his tongue out. “Okay, I know that was corny. Shut up.”

They loop the whole of the park, hand-in-hand, and talk about the most inconsequential things: the weather (the first snowfall Hermann’s witnessed this December), their research (Geiszler is astoundingly intelligent, with a comical amount of PhDs), Geiszler’s mittens (personally hand-knitted after all), how much longer Hermann is in town for (until mid-January), how Geiszler ended up at that middleschool in the first place (he moved to town to be near his father, and they were hiring for Earth Science and Music). Their footprints have entirely disappeared under fresh snow when they make it back to the ice rink. It’s far later than Hermann realized, too; the large clock hanging at the front booth reads a quarter past ten.

“I guess I should take you back to your sister’s,” Geiszler says. He points in the opposite direction of where they walked main street before. “I’m down that way. I--”

He doesn’t get to finish, because Hermann (feeling pleasant and bold) leans in and brushes a kiss against his cheek. It’s cold and scratchy with his stubble. “I would like to do this again,” Hermann says, while Geiszler blushes and gapes. His glasses have slid all the way down his nose. Hermann pushes them back up for him. “If you’re amenable.”

“Wow,” Geiszler says, giddily. “Sure. Okay. Hah!”

Then he steps directly onto a patch of ice and slips and falls on his face.

Luckily, he hits the snow, though he does lay there for some time and groan. It’s a bit dramatic. Hermann pokes the small of his back with his cane once he starts to get bored. “Are you alright, Newt?”

Geiszler groans again, though with a distinctly affirmative flair, and rolls over. “You called me Newt,” he says. He pushes his glasses back up again.

“I did,” Hermann says, with a very small smile. Then he shivers. The chilly air has gotten a lot more noticeable now that he’s standing still. “Now please get up and take me home before we both freeze to death.”

“Cool, okay.”

quarantine question time

courtesy @whifferdills​

when was the last time you left your home?

I went for a walk this morning. I am fortunate enough to live near a large college campus, so I can mostly take my quiet side streets there and walk around without having to dodge too many people.

what was the last thing you bought?

If you count online shopping, I bought tea from the nice tea shop near me that is, of course, otherwise closed. But Friday I went to the grocery store and got a few extra staples – milk, fruit, green peppers – to hold us until I do a larger grocery run on Wednesday. Also marshmallow fluff to make ding dongs (WORTH IT).

is quarantine driving you insane or are you finally relaxed?

I’ve worked at home since late 2004, so I was already used to being in the house 75% of the time. But I have to admit that not being able to go take a walk to a destination, like the local poké or burrito joints, or being able to walk on the local bike path, which is way too crowded at the moment, is kind of getting to me. Plus there’s the general anxiety about running out of work and my friends running out of money and the literal criminal enterprise running my country, so I’d say I’m probably functional four days out of seven. Five on a good week.

who are you spending quarantine with?

My husband @violetimpudence​ and two kitties. Thank goodness the spouse and I are both very introverted and used to spending quiet time at home, or this would be a much more annoying quarantine than it already is.

do you have pets to keep you company?

Nicole (dilute tortie, below) and Noir (black, camera-shy). Nicole has adopted @violetimpudence​‘s laptop bag for her naps:

what are your current responsibilities?

I run my own business, so I have to tend to current projects and clients. I expect things to slow down (unfortunately) within the next couple of months, though. A lot of my work is for higher ed, which is busy flipping out about whether they’ll even have students on campus in the fall, so as you can imagine, this means fun budget times are happening that ultimately affect whether there’s work for me at all.

do you have a room to yourself?

We own a house, so yeah, I can have a room to myself if I want one. Though the cats will inevitably follow me there.

are you exercising?

I’ve been diligent about exercising at least half an hour a day, not just because I’m trying to lose a little bit of weight, but also because at 50, it’s in my best interest to keep up healthy habits I should have started three decades ago. So every day, it’s a walk and/or weight work and/or running in place on my portable elliptical (it’s just foot pedals, but very handy) and/or yoga. I’m always going to be a chonky girl and am perfectly fine with that, but getting stronger and more flexible now while I still can is really important to me.

town, country, city?

I live in Greater Bostonia, in the most urban part of one of the close-in suburbs. Someday the Green Line may even run within a few blocks of my house, if I ever get to leave it again.

how’s your toilet paper supply?

Shockingly good! For once, my age-related forgetfulness is coming in handy: about a week or two before lockdown, I was totally convinced we were low on TP, so I went to BJ’s and got a giant pack of IDK, 30 rolls or something? And then it turned out we already had like half that same-sized pack in the basement because I’d relied on my shitty old neurons instead of actually walking down a flight of steps to check, so we unexpectedly lucked out on the TP front.

what’s the worst thing that you had to cancel?

Not officially cancelled yet, but we’re going to have to postpone our big summer trip to New Zealand and Australia. I can’t even think about it; that’s how upset I am.

what’s the best thing you’ve had to cancel?

Uh ... I guess the week where I was supposed to have a mammogram, dental cleaning, and annual physical, all of which got cancelled on me, was probably a net win, though every one of those is going to have to happen eventually.

who do you miss the most?

I can’t see my sister/brother-in-law/niece/nephew right now, nor the friends I was going to have dinner with right before the lockdown, nor a nearby friend I’m at least talking to on Twitter most days. And I’m worried about my mother, who’s on her own 400 miles from us, though she’s doing as well as she can right now.

do you have any new hobbies?

Not really, though I learned to make yogurt when I began having a hard time finding it at the store, and the homemade stuff is so good.

what are you watching the most?

I blew through Unorthodox on Netflix, and I frequently work out with Flavorful Origins on in the background even though it makes me both hungry and frustrated that I can’t get some of these ingredients here. And I’m finally catching up with Gourmet Makes like all the cool kids.

are you still going to work?

My commute down the hall to my office remains intact.

what are you out of?

We’re not out of anything yet, though I had a panic about running out of kosher salt – I haven’t seen Diamond Crystal at any of the stores I frequent – and that led to panic-buying salt, industrial bathroom paper towels, hand soap, and buttermilk powder online. Which you wouldn’t think it would be possible to panic-buy, much less panic-buy all of that at once, but did I mention the panic?

have you made any changes to your hair during quarantine?

I bought a pair of clippers online and have been buzzing my hair, which my stylist already did; I just can’t do the layering with scissors she could do on the top of my head. Honestly, though, the odds of my just using a #2 guard all over my head increase by the day.

Tagging: tagging is oppressive, so consider yourself tagged if you want to do this.

New York Times: text under cut

What Lockdown 2.0 Looks Like: Harsher Rules, Deeper Confusion    

By Damien Cave

_________________________________________________________

Melbourne, Australia’s second-largest city, is becoming a case study in handling a second wave of infections. There are lots of unanswered questions.

Credit...William West/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Australia’s second-largest city, Melbourne, is grappling with a spiraling coronavirus outbreak that has led to a lockdown with some of the toughest restrictions in the world — offering a preview of what many urban dwellers elsewhere could confront in coming weeks and months.

The new lockdown is the product of early success; the country thought it had the virus beat in June. But there was a breakdown in the quarantine program for hotels. Returning travelers passed the virus to hotel security guards in Melbourne, who carried the contagion home.

Even after masks became mandatory in the city two weeks ago, the spread continued. And now, as officials try to break the chain of infections, Melbourne is being reshaped by sweeping enforcement and fine print. A confounding matrix of hefty fines for disobedience to the lockdown and minor exceptions for everything from romantic partners to home building has led to silenced streets and endless versions of the question: So, wait, can I ____?

Restaurant owners are wondering about food delivery after an 8 p.m. curfew began on Sunday night. Teenagers are asking if their boyfriends and girlfriends count as essential partners. Can animal shelter volunteers walk dogs at night? Are house cleaners essential for those struggling with their mental health? Can people who have been tested exercise outside?

“This is such a weird, scary, bizarro time that we live in,” said Tessethia Von Tessle Roberts, 25, a student in Melbourne who admits to having hit a breaking point a few days ago, when her washing machine broke.

“Our health care workers are hustling around the clock to keep us alive,” she said. “Our politicians are as scared as we are, but they have to pretend like they have a better idea than we do of what’s going to happen next.”

Pandemic lockdowns, never easy, are getting ever more confusing and contentious as they evolve in the face of second and third rounds of outbreaks that have exhausted both officials and residents. With success against the virus as fleeting as the breeze, the new waves of restrictions feel to many like a bombing raid that just won’t end.

For some places, risk calculations can change overnight. In Hong Kong, officials banned daytime dining in restaurants last month, only to reverse themselves a day later after an outcry. Schools in some cities are opening and closing like screen doors in summer.

In many areas where the virus has retreated and then resurged, the future looks like a long, complicated haul. Leaders are reaching for their own metaphors to try to explain it.

Image

Credit...William West/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

In California, Gov. Gavin Newsom has compared his opening and shutting of businesses to a

“dimmer switch.”

Dan Andrews, the premier in Victoria, the state of which Melbourne is the capital, has repeatedly referred to “pilot light mode” for industries like construction and meatpacking, which have been ordered to temporarily reduce their work forces.

Whatever the metaphor, the situation is bleak.

In Melbourne, a city of five million that is considered a capital of food and culture, the pandemic has come raging back even after a so-called Stage 3 lockdown began in early July — until recently the highest level of restrictions.

Officials have been flummoxed at every turn by the persistent complacency of just enough people to let the virus thrive and multiply.

Traffic data showed people driving more in July than they had during the first Stage 3 lockdown, in March and April. Even worse, almost nine out of 10 people with Covid-19 had not been tested or isolated when they first felt sick, Mr. Andrews, the state’s top leader, said in late July. And 53 percent had not quarantined while waiting for their test results.

“That means people have felt unwell and just gone about their business,” Mr. Andrews said.

Sounding the alarm, he made face masks mandatory the next day, on July 22.

Still, infections have continued to rise. They peaked at 753 new cases on July 30, and have hovered around 500 a day ever since, with the death toll in Victoria now standing at 147, after 11 deaths were recorded on Monday.

Those figures, while far less troublesome than those in the United States, have paved the way for a Stage 4 lockdown — what officials are calling a “shock and awe” attack on the virus — that will last at least six weeks.

Image

Credit...Daniel Pockett/Getty Images

Overwhelming force, with precision, seems to be the goal. The chief modelers of the pandemic response in Australia have found that the virus can be suppressed only if more than 70 percent of the population abides by social distancing guidelines and other public health rules.

Mr. Andrews said the new restrictions would take 250,000 more people out of their routines, in the hopes of reaching the necessary threshold.

So retail stores will be closed. Schools will return to at-home instruction. Restaurants will be takeout or delivery only. Child-care centers will be available only for permitted workers.

Those restrictions are already well understood. The rules requiring more explanation are tied to the curfew and industries that have to cut back.

Large-scale construction projects of more than three stories, for example, will have to reduce their on-site work force by 75 percent, and workers will not be able to work at more than one location. Small-scale construction cannot have more than five workers.

All of which sounds clear. But does a bathroom renovation, for example, amount to home building in an apartment with one bathroom? And what about fixing things that break, like Ms. Von Tessle Roberts’s washing machine?

Some businesses, like cleaning services, are already emailing customers to say they think they can do some work, for people who pay through welfare or who need help for mental health reasons. But, like many others, they are still seeking official clarification.

Image

Credit...David Crosling/EPA, via Shutterstock

Mr. Andrews, a Labor politician sometimes described as awkward and paternal, has become the dad everyone needs answers from. He now oversees, under the lockdown rules, what may be the country’s most intrusive bureaucracy since its days as a penal colony.

The Coronavirus Outbreak ›

Frequently Asked Questions

Updated August 4, 2020

I have antibodies. Am I now immune?

I’m a small-business owner. Can I get relief?

What are my rights if I am worried about going back to work?

Should I refinance my mortgage?

What is school going to look like in September?

As of right now, that seems likely, for at least several months. There have been frightening accounts of people suffering what seems to be a second bout of Covid-19. But experts say these patients may have a drawn-out course of infection, with the virus taking a slow toll weeks to months after initial exposure. People infected with the coronavirus typically produce immune molecules called antibodies, which are protective proteins made in response to an infection. These antibodies may last in the body only two to three months, which may seem worrisome, but that’s perfectly normal after an acute infection subsides, said Dr. Michael Mina, an immunologist at Harvard University. It may be possible to get the coronavirus again, but it’s highly unlikely that it would be possible in a short window of time from initial infection or make people sicker the second time.

The stimulus bills enacted in March offer help for the millions of American small businesses. Those eligible for aid are businesses and nonprofit organizations with fewer than 500 workers, including sole proprietorships, independent contractors and freelancers. Some larger companies in some industries are also eligible. The help being offered, which is being managed by the Small Business Administration, includes the Paycheck Protection Program and the Economic Injury Disaster Loan program. But lots of folks have not yet seen payouts. Even those who have received help are confused: The rules are draconian, and some are stuck sitting on money they don’t know how to use. Many small-business owners are getting less than they expected or not hearing anything at all.

Employers have to provide a safe workplace with policies that protect everyone equally. And if one of your co-workers tests positive for the coronavirus, the C.D.C. has said that employers should tell their employees -- without giving you the sick employee’s name -- that they may have been exposed to the virus.

It could be a good idea, because mortgage rates have never been lower. Refinancing requests have pushed mortgage applications to some of the highest levels since 2008, so be prepared to get in line. But defaults are also up, so if you’re thinking about buying a home, be aware that some lenders have tightened their standards.

It is unlikely that many schools will return to a normal schedule this fall, requiring the grind of online learning, makeshift child care and stunted workdays to continue. California’s two largest public school districts — Los Angeles and San Diego — said on July 13, that instruction will be remote-only in the fall, citing concerns that surging coronavirus infections in their areas pose too dire a risk for students and teachers. Together, the two districts enroll some 825,000 students. They are the largest in the country so far to abandon plans for even a partial physical return to classrooms when they reopen in August. For other districts, the solution won’t be an all-or-nothing approach. Many systems, including the nation’s largest, New York City, are devising hybrid plans that involve spending some days in classrooms and other days online. There’s no national policy on this yet, so check with your municipal school system regularly to see what is happening in your community.

On Tuesday, he answered questions from reporters about dog-walking (allowed after curfew, sort of, only near home) and other subjects of great confusion at a news conference in Melbourne.

Thanking those who complied with the new rules and scolding those who did not, he announced that no one in self-isolation would now be allowed to exercise outdoors. A door-knocking campaign to check in on 3,000 people who had Covid-19 found that 800 of them were not at home.

All 800 have been referred to the Victoria police for investigation. The fine for violators going forward, he said, will be 4,957 Australian dollars, $3,532.

Working, even legally, will also become trickier. Other than, say, hospital workers with formal identification, everyone traveling for a job deemed essential during the lockdown must carry a formal document — a work permit signed by the employer and employee.

For Cara Devine, who works at a wine store that closes at 8 p.m., that means carrying a government form with her everywhere, and hoping that the police recognize her task as essential when she heads home after the curfew. But she also worried about the Uber drivers who take her back and forth.

Image

Credit...William West/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

“Even before the newest restrictions, I’ve had two Uber drivers being really late picking up from the shop because they got stopped by the police, taking about an hour out of their work time,” she said.

The police are already confronting opposition. On at least four occasions in the last week, they reported having to smash the windows of cars and pull people out after they refused to provide a name and address at a police checkpoint. The Victoria police commissioner, Shane Patton, said a 38-year-old woman had also been charged with assault after attacking a police officer who had stopped her for not wearing a face mask.

Some criminologists are questioning whether the harsher enforcement will help. Mostly, though, Melburnians are just trying to endure.

Walking to get groceries, Peter Barnes, 56, said he welcomed the stricter rules, though he admitted his city was starting to feel like George Orwell’s “1984,” with the heavy hand of the state around every corner.

Those focused solely on the economics, he said, should remember the obvious: “You can’t hire a corpse. Very bad employment prospects for people who are dead.”

By Monday night, the city seemed to be in listening mode. The streets were emptying out, silent in hibernation.

“It’s like a Sunday in the 1950s,” said Mark Rubbo, the owner of Readings, Melbourne’s largest independent bookstore. He also noted that people were stocking up again on books through online orders, with a memoir called “The Happiest Man on Earth,” about a Holocaust survivor, becoming a runaway hit.

Ms. Von Tessle Roberts has found another solution, perhaps just as likely to grow in popularity: Stand on your front porch and scream. That’s the name she has given to an event she posted on Facebook, set for Friday at 7 p.m. By Tuesday afternoon, 70,000 people had expressed an interest in joining her collective shout in anguish.

“Yelling is great,” she said. “It’s less dehydrating than crying.”

Image

Credit...Erik Anderson/EPA, via Shutterstock

_________________________________________________________

Besha Rodell and Yan Zhuang contributed reporting from Melbourne, and Livia Albeck-Ripka from Cairns, Australia.

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Breaking Up With The Idea of Home

I always see these beautiful home interiors. I love their intricate rugs and mid-century furnishings and gorgeous light. Then I think about my own apartment life, spending 75%+ of my monthly income on rent, cyclically selling belongings to make each move easier than the next. And I think: I want to own a home.

I want to settle in. I want to paint a mural in the living room. I want to drill holes in the walls. I want to build a kitchen island that isn’t on wheels. I want to put my initials in the wet cement of my front walkway. ...Or do I?

I have spent exactly 6 days in Durham, North Carolina, a place I spent the same amount of time in just over 11 years ago, and loved it. Before I got here, my friend and I have spent 6 months researching the housing market in the hopes to buy here, to live in or to rent out. But since arriving, brimming with hope and possibility, ready for a fresh start, I have felt overwhelmed by the confronting truth of how utterly unfulfilling it is to live in a beautiful home in a dull town.

I have lived in cities all my life, but because I so love camping and hiking and the beach, for a day or three at a time, and because I so hate pollution and noise and the frantic pace of bustling streets and non-stop traffic, I somehow concluded that I was *not* a “city girl.” But I also have never had a license, or a car, and thus travel 100% of the time via bicycle, or if I must, via walking.

At present we are 1.2 miles from the closest business. Double that to reach downtown. Downtown Durham is not like the downtowns I know. It is widespread, and even after 20 minutes of biking the grid, hadn’t seen it all. The roads were wide and multi-laned. The buildings were homogenous, and businesses covered all the basic necessities: food, shelter, alcohol, laundromat, bike shop. But where was the warehouse for aerial silks classes? Where was the PaintNite? Where was the club after club after club of nonstop live music? Where was the little theatres with museums of bad art? The “little free libraries”? The culture? The history???

Bikeability has always been important to me, but I hadn’t really placed value on convenience until now. But I’m glad to have this realization, because it allows me to let go of idealizing home interiors by remembering the importance of exterior placement.

Here’s the exterior of the home shown above, found in Joshua Tree:

If I lived there, I’d have my beautiful home with my beautiful things just the way I liked them - and just ready to be photographed for Instagram - but I’d be stuck in the middle of the desert, with no neighbor to speak of.

A house, my friends, is not a home.

Source: benjaminheath

Enslaved Real Estate - Why I Can't Stop and Why You Should Start off

The All-Money-Down Technique So how does the all-money-down practice work by purchasing a home with cash? First of all, i can repeat that I really didn't have any cash, and yet I had a significant amount of equity from Terry's home plus several homes that I owned put together to give me a substantial hard cash down payment. Banks and mortgage companies alike will accept dollars from a home-equity line of credit as cash to purchase a home. Not less than they did in 1997 under the financial guidelines of your day. What you must remember about mortgages and providing credit is that the guidelines change constantly, so this technique I actually used in 1997 may or may not be able to be used someday. Whether it is or isn't able to be used again doesn't genuinely matter to me as I believe that there will always be a way to order real estate with limited money down sooner or later. There will always be a technique to acquire real estate but exactly how that will be done at some point I'm not completely sure. I began purchasing property in the Mayfair section of Philadelphia with the prices in the $30, 000 to $40, 000 per home price range. We'd purchase a home with three bedrooms and one bathroom about the second floor with a kitchen, dining room, and living room within the first floor and a basement. What we call a line home in Philadelphia would consist of a porch outside front and a backyard the width of the home. Most short period homes in Philadelphia are less than twenty-two feet big. For those of you who are not from Philadelphia and can't impression what a Philadelphia row home looks like, I suggest you watch your movie Rocky. Twenty-two homes on each side of the block will really test your ability to be a next door neighbor. Things that will usually cause an argument with your Philadelphia neighbors sometimes stem from parking, noise your children make, where you will leave your trash cans, parties, and the appearance of your townhouse. In 1998 my girlfriend and I moved throughout together and to the suburbs of Philadelphia called Warminster. After living on a street in Tacony, much like Rocky did, I really looked forward to having space between great home and my next-door neighbor. I told Terry not to even think about talking with the people who lived to your neighbors to us. I told her if one of them comes in excess of with a fruitcake I am going to take it and punt it as a football right into their backyard. I believe I was affected by Philadelphia row home syndrome. My new neighbors through Warminster turned out to be wonderful people, but it took me 20 months before I was willing to learn that. This means you just bought your row home for $35, 000 in Mayfair, and after $2000 in closing costs and also $5000 in repair costs, you find yourself a good tenant who would like to rent the home. After renting the home with a positive cash of $200 a month, you now have an outstanding debt involving $42, 000 on your home equity line of credit that will should be paid off. When purchasing the home, I did not get a property loan as I just purchased a home for cash as it will be said in the business. All monies I spent on this house hold were spent from the home-equity line of credit. The move now is to pay off your home-equity line of credit so you can go do it again. We have now go to a bank with your fixed-up property and tell a mortgage department that you want to do a cash-out refinancing of this real estate investment. It helps to explain that the neighborhood you purchase your property on should have a wider range of pricing as the neighborhood associated with Mayfair did in the mid-90s. The pricing of real estate in Mayfair is quite unusual as you would see a $3000 difference in home values from one block to the next. I thought this was important when doing a cash-out refinancing because it's rather easy for the bank to see that I just bought my place for $35, 000 regardless of the fact that I did many maintenance tasks. I could justify the fact that I've spent more money on my best home to fix it up, and by putting an important tenant in, it was now a profitable piece of realty from an investment standpoint. If I was lucky including I was many times over doing this system of purchasing properties in Mayfair and the appraiser would use homes the block or two away and come back with an value determination of $45, 000. Back then there were programs allowing the investor to purchase a home for 10 percent down or placed in as equity doing a 90 percent cash through refinance giving me back roughly $40, 500. Employing this technique allowed me to get back most of the money Document put down on the property. I basically paid just $1, 500 down for this new home. Why did all the mortgage companies and the appraisers keep giving me the actual numbers I wanted? I assume because they wanted the business. I would primarily tell the bank I need this to come in at $45, 000 or I am just keeping it financed while is. They always seemed to give me what I want within reason. This whole process took three to four many months during which time I may have saved a few thousand cash. Between the money I saved from my job plus my investments and cash out refinancing, I had replenished most or all of my funds from my home-equity line of credit that was now almost back to zero to begin doing this again. And that is exactly what I intended to do. I employed this system to purchase four to six homes a year utilizing the same money purchasing home after home after home over and over again. In reality, any technique is a no-money down or little money downward technique. At the time maybe I had $60, 000 in attainable funds to use to buy homes off of my HELOC, i really would buy a home and then replenish the money. It was an awesome technique that was legal, and I could see my want being a real estate investor full-time coming to an eventual real truth even though I wasn't there yet. During the years as a result of 1995 to 2002, the real estate market in Philadelphia made gradual increases of maybe 6 percent because each year went on. I began to track my net worthwhile that was 100 percent equity, meaning I had no other forms from investments to look at when calculating my net worth. By and large, the first five years of my real estate career will not go well because of the bad decisions I made selecting buildings and the decline in the market. Furthermore, my lack of understanding and experience in repairs made it a rough. The actual five years of my real estate career that I just simply finished explaining didn't make much money either. That i supported myself primarily through my career as a salesperson, but I could definitely see the writing on the wall who down the road real estate was going to be my full-time gig. Real estate Professionals of America I own an office building that includes a real estate company as a tenant called Realty Professionals about America. The company has a terrific plan where a new professional receives 75 percent of the commission and the broker becomes only 25 percent. If you don't know it, this is a pretty good put up, especially for a new real estate agent. The company also offers a 5 per-cent sponsorship fee to the agent who sponsors them regarding every deal they do. If you bring an individual who's going to be a realtor in to the company that you have sponsored, the broker will probably you a 5 percent sponsorship out of the broker's end so the new realtor you sponsored can still earn seventy-five percent commissions. In addition to the above, Realty Professionals of U . s offers to increase the realtor's commission by 5 percentage point after achieving cumulative commission benchmarks, up to a maximum connected with 90 percent. Once a commission benchmark is come to, an agent's commission rate is only decreased if fees in the following year do not reach a lower baseline amount of money. I currently keep 85 percent of all my deals' commissions; plus I receive sponsorship checks of 5 percent from the commissions that the agents I sponsored receive. If you'd like to learn more about being sponsored into Realty Professionals for America's wonderful plan, please call me directly within 267-988-2000. Getting My Real Estate License One of the things that I did in the summer of 2005 after leaving my full-time job was to make plans to get my real estate permit. Getting my real estate license was something I always was going to do but never seemed to have the time to do it. I'm certain you've heard that excuse a thousand times. People normally say that they're going to do something soon as they find the moments to do it, but they never seem to find the time, do individuals? I try not to let myself make excuses for things. So I've made up my mind before I ever in your life left my full-time job that one of the first matters I would do was to get my real estate license. I just enrolled in a school called the American Real Estate Initiate for a two-week full-time program to obtain my license selling real estate in the state of Pennsylvania. Two terrific individuals with a world of experience taught the class, as well as I enjoyed the time I spent there. Immediately after handing in the course at the American Real Estate Institute, I booked the next available day offered by the state to take the state exam. My teachers' advice to take the exam immediately after the particular class turned out to be an excellent suggestion. I passed the assessment with flying colors and have used my license often times since to buy real estate and reduce the expenses. If you are likely to be a full-time real estate investor or a commercial real estate real estate investor, then you almost have to get a license. While I know a few people who don't believe this, I'm convinced it's the only technique. I worked on one deal at $3 million from where the commission to the buyer's real estate agent was $75, 000. By your time my broker took a share, I stormed with $63, 000 commission on that deal only. With the average cost per year of being a realtor running with regards to $1200 per year, this one deal alone would've paid for the real estate license for fifty-three years. Not to mention all the other fringe benefits like having access to the multiple listing service offered too many realty in this country. While there are other ways to get access to typically the multiple listing services or another program similar to the software, a real estate license is a great way to go. Some of the negatives My spouse and i hear over and over again about having your real estate license is the news that you have to disclose that you are realtor when buying a home for anybody who is representing yourself. Maybe I'm missing something, but When i don't see this as a negative at all. If you're proficient in the art of negotiation, it's just another hurdle you will have to deal with. I suppose you could end up in a lawsuit where a court in law could assume because you are realtor you should know each one of these things. I don't spend my life worrying about the zillion ways I can be sued any more than I concern yourself with getting hit by a car every time I cross the road. The Addict From his first investment property through 20 years ago to his relentless search for the next a lot every day, Falcone is a nonstop real estate investment machine! Get Passionate Sometimes addiction is a very good thing. In this book Phil Falcone, the ultimate real estate addict, will show you how to achieve remarkable success as a real estate investor: • Delve into the details regarding actual deals he negotiated and learn why his / her methods were so effective • Discover why his or her residential to commercial real estate strategy will create greatest wealth • Learn how he used apparent liabilities (OCD, insomnia, and workaholic behavior) to help him achieve the goals • Explore why he can't stop purchasing real estate, and how you can start controlling your own financial destiny through real estate

Addicted to Real Estate - Why I Can't Stop and Why You Should Start

So how does any all-money-down technique work by purchasing a home with dollars? First of all, let me repeat that I really didn't have any specific cash, but I had a significant amount of equity from Terry's home and several homes that I owned put together to give my family a substantial cash down payment. Banks and mortgage companies equally will accept money from a home-equity line of credit as cash purchasing a home. At least they did in 1997 under the personal guidelines of the day. What you must remember about home loans and lending is that the guidelines change constantly, so this technique I used in 1997 may or may not be qualified to be used in the future. Whether it is or isn't able to be used once more doesn't really matter to me as I believe that there will always be a way to buy real estate with limited money down gradually. There will always be a technique to acquire real estate but exactly how which is to be done in the future I'm not completely sure. I developed purchasing homes in the Mayfair section of Philadelphia with the rates in the $30, 000 to $40, 000 per place price range. I would purchase a home with three bedrooms and the other bathroom on the second floor with a kitchen, dining room, and also living room on the first floor and a basement. What we label a row home in Philadelphia would consist of a fabulous porch out front and a backyard the width of the property. Most row homes in Philadelphia are less than twenty-two feet wide. For those of you who are not from Philadelphia plus can't picture what a Philadelphia row home looks like, It's best to watch the movie Rocky. Twenty-two homes on each one side of every block will really test your capacity to be a neighbor. Things that will usually cause an argument with your Philadelphia neighbors often stem from parking, noise your children produce, where you leave your trash cans, parties, and then the appearance of your home. In 1998 my girlfriend and I actually moved in together and to the suburbs of Philadelphia called Warminster. After living on a street in Tacony, much like Rocky did, I really looked forward to having place between my home and my next-door neighbor. Document told Terry not to even think about talking with the individuals lived next door to us. I told her if one too comes over with a fruitcake I am going to take it and punt it like a football right into their backyard. I believe That i was suffering from Philadelphia row home syndrome. My fresh neighbors in Warminster turned out to be wonderful people, but it got me eighteen months before I was willing to learn about that. So you just bought your row home just for $35, 000 in Mayfair, and after $2000 sum it up costs and $5000 in repair costs, you find yourself a good quality tenant who wants to rent the home. After renting the home along with a positive cash flow of $200 a month, you now have an remarkable debt of $42, 000 on your home equity loan that will have to be paid off. When purchasing the home, I did not even get a mortgage as I just purchased a home for hard cash as it is said in the business. All monies I invested on this house were spent from the home-equity line of credit. Typically the move now is to pay off your home-equity line of credit so you can turn do it again. We now go to a bank with your fixed-up property as well as tell the mortgage department that you want to do a cash-out refinancing of your real estate investment. It helps to explain that the neighborhood you purchase your property in should have a wider range of pricing because neighborhood of Mayfair did in the mid-90s. The discounts of homes in Mayfair is quite unusual as you would certainly see a $3000 difference in home values from one discourage to the next. This was important when doing a cash-out refinancing for the reason that it's pretty easy for the bank to see that I just purchased my property for $35, 000 regardless of the fact that I did many repairs. I could justify the fact that I've spent a higher cost on my home to fix it up, and by simply putting a tenant in, it was now a worthwhile piece of real estate from an investment standpoint. If I was basically lucky like I was many times over doing this technique of purchasing homes in Mayfair and the appraiser would utilize homes a block or two away and come home with an appraisal of $45, 000. Back then there were services allowing an investor to purchase a home for 10 percent downward or left in as equity doing a 90 percentage point cash out refinance giving me back roughly $40, 500. Utilizing this technique allowed me to get back many of the money I put down on the property. I basically paid out just $1, 500 down for this new home. The reason did the mortgage companies and the appraisers keep presenting me the numbers I wanted? I assume because they wanted the work. I would only tell the bank I need this to come on at $45, 000 or I am just keeping the software financed as is. They always seemed to give me personally what I wanted within reason. This whole process had three to four months during which time I may have saved a handful of thousand dollars. Between the money I saved from your job and my investments and cash out re-financing, I had replenished most or all of my funds as a result of my home-equity line of credit that was now almost back to actually zero to begin the process again. And that is exactly what I intended to achieve. I used this system to purchase four to six homes a year employing the same money to purchase home after home after home frequently. In reality, the technique is a no-money down or bit money down technique. At the time maybe I had $60, 000 in available funds to use to buy homes off of a HELOC, so I would buy a home and then replenish the income. It was a terrific technique that was legal, and I could notice my dream of being a real estate investor full-time coming to a strong eventual reality even though I wasn't there yet. Within years from 1995 to 2002, the real estate current market in Philadelphia made gradual increases of maybe 6 percent as each year went on. I began to track our net worth that was 100 percent equity, meaning I had basically no other forms of investments to look at when calculating my netting worth. Generally speaking, the first five years of my properties career did not go well because of the bad decisions I just made purchasing buildings and the decline in the market. Furthermore, my personal lack of knowledge and experience in repairs made it an important rough. The second five years of my real estate work that I just finished explaining didn't make much dollars either. I supported myself primarily through my professional as a salesman, but I could definitely see the writing within the wall that down the road real estate was going to be my full-time gig. Realty Professionals of America I own the office building that has a real estate company as a tenant called Realty Professionals of America. The company has a terrific plan certainly where an new agent receives 75 percent of the commission as well as broker gets only 25 percent. If you don't know it, this is usually a pretty good deal, especially for a new real estate agent. The company also offers the 5 percent sponsorship fee to the agent who sponsors them on every deal they do. If you produce an individual who is a realtor in to the company that you have sponsored, the particular broker will pay you a 5 percent sponsorship out of the broker's end so that the new realtor you sponsored can however earn 75 percent commissions. In addition to the above, Realty Individuals of America offers to increase the realtor's commission through 5 percent after achieving cumulative commission benchmarks, up to a maximum of 90 percent. Once a commission standard is reached, an agent's commission rate is only smaller if commissions in the following year do not reach a lesser baseline amount. I currently keep 85 percent of most my deals' commissions; plus I receive sponsorship cheques of 5 percent from the commissions that the agents My spouse and i sponsored earn. If you'd like to learn more about being sponsored into Real estate Professionals of America's wonderful plan, please call others directly at 267-988-2000. Getting My Real Estate License The things that I did in the summer of 2005 after leaving behind my full-time job was to make plans to get great real estate license. Getting my real estate license was a thing I always wanted to do but never seemed to have the moments to do it. I'm sure you've heard that excuse a thousand conditions. People always say that they're going to do something soon like they find the time to do it, but they never seem to find the occasion, do they? I try not to let myself make excuses for anything. So I've made up my mind prior to I ever left my full-time job that one of your first things I would do was to get my realty license. I enrolled in a school called the American Real Estate Institute for a two-week full-time program to obtain my best license to sell real estate in the state of Pennsylvania. Couple of terrific guys with a world of experience taught typically the class, and I enjoyed the time I spent right now there. Immediately after completing the course at the American Real Estate Initiate, I booked the next available day offered by the state to try the state exam. My teachers' advice to take the test immediately after the class turned out to be an excellent suggestion. I handed down the exam with flying colors and have used the license many times since to buy real estate and reduce the prices. If you are going to be a full-time real estate investor or a business oriented real estate investor, then you almost have to get a license. Even while I know a few people who don't believe this, I'm convinced oahu is the only way. I worked on one deal at $3 million where the commission to the buyer's real estate agent was $75, 000. By the time my broker took a reveal, I walked with $63, 000 commission on who deal alone. With the average cost per year of being an agent running about $1200 per year, this one deal alone would have paid for my real estate license for fifty-three years. Including all the other fringe benefits like having access to the multiple listing service proposed too many realtors in this country. While there are other ways so you can get access to the multiple listing services or another plan similar to it, a real estate license is a great way to go. A few of the negatives I hear over and over again about having your real estate permit is the fact that you have to disclose that you are realtor when the purchase of a home if you're representing yourself. Maybe I'm missing one thing, but I don't see this as a negative in the slightest. If you're skilled in the art of negotiation, it's just another hurdle that you have to deal with. I suppose you could end up in a lawsuit the place where a court of law could assume because you are real estate agent you should know all these things. I don't spend my life having to worry about the million ways I can be sued any more compared with I worry about getting hit by a car every time When i cross the street. The Addict From his first investment decision property over 20 years ago to his relentless seek the next great deal every day, Falcone is a nonstop real estate investment equipment! Get Addicted Sometimes addiction is a very good thing. Through this book Phil Falcone, the ultimate real estate addict, will show you easy methods to achieve amazing success as a real estate investor: • Investigate the details of actual deals he negotiated and find out why his methods were so effective • Explore why his residential to commercial real estate strategy will probably create ultimate wealth • Learn how he used clear liabilities (OCD, insomnia, and workaholic behavior) to help your pet achieve his goals • Explore why he just can't stop investing in real estate, and how you can start controlling the financial destiny through real estate Frank, funny and interesting, Addicted to Real Estate will inspire any investor to achieve more significant levels of drive and success in the rewarding world regarding real estate.