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sobercentre · 9 months

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How does drug addiction affect the limbic system?

The human brain is the most complex and important organ in the body. It is responsible for the coordination and performing of various functions in our bodies; from motor skills to vision, emotions, memory, breathing, and digestion among other processes. limbic system

This is done by transmitting signals back and forth to different parts of the brain. The signals are transmitted across billions of small cells in the brain, neurons, which release neurotransmitters to facilitate the flow of information. Drugs interfere with the flow of this information by altering the way neurons send, receive, and process signals. The chemical composition of some drugs may impersonate that of natural neurotransmitters and consequently, create a ‘false positive’ signal which activates the neurons to relay information through the brain’s network. According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, three major areas of the brain are affected by drug abuse; the brain stem, the limbic system, and the cerebral cortex. This article will focus on how drugs impact the limbic system. However, before that, let’s look at how the limbic system functions.

The limbic system

The limbic system is the portion of the brain responsible for emotional, behavioral, and arousal responses. Frankly, it controls our feelings, whether or not we feel hungry, or thirsty, the conscious and subconscious reflexes, and even the flight or fight responses. This is made possible by sub-organs which make up the limbic system. They are: Thalamus It is responsible for processing all the senses in our body apart from the sense of smell. It detects and transmits to the suitable area in the brain where the appropriate response will be prompted. Hypothalamus It is responsible for the production of various hormones required in our bodies. the hypothalamus received messages from different organs of the body and works to keep it stable. For instance, it controls our body temperature, blood pressure, mood, sex drive, hunger, thirst, and sleep. Amygdala Named from their almond-like appearances, the amygdalae are responsible for feelings of fear, anger, anxiety, and pleasure. They are two, each located in each hemisphere of the brain. This is where our memories acquire an emotional attachment and determines how long they are retained in our minds. Hippocampus Like the amygdala and other parts of the brain, the hippocampus is located in each hemisphere resembling a seahorse. It is essentially the memory center of the brain. Besides forming memories and associating them with specific senses (or triggers), the hippocampus is responsible for neurogenesis- the generation of new neurons from adult stem cells. Basal ganglia The basal ganglia perform three paramount roles; it controls the reward processing system, motor learning and control, and habit formation. Now that we are aware of what the limbic system is in charge of, keep reading to explore how drugs of addiction act on the limbic system.

What happens to the limbic system during addiction?

Drug addiction is defined as a chronic, relapsing brain disorder that causes the inability to resist the urge of using a drug. This way, the user always feels the compulsive need to chase a ‘high’, effects which can linger long after consuming the drug. Also known as substance use disorder, addiction alters the natural reward system in the basal ganglia by surging signaling compounds and neurotransmitters that produce dopamine and endorphins.

The link between reward pathway and drug addiction

Pleasure, in the brain, is registered the same way regardless of its cause. Drugs, such as stimulants, nicotine, opioids, and sedatives alike, activate the reward circuit to produce dopamine– a hormone responsible for causing pleasurable feelings. Naturally, once a pleasurable feeling is produced, our brains are wired to remember it. Dopamine signals induce neural activity which makes it easier to repeat that activity over and over. After all, the activity still lingers in the human memory and so does the satisfaction it brings forth. Research reveals that drugs can produce up to 10 times the amount of dopamine produced naturally. Therefore, drugs of abuse work by flooding the reward pathway with dopamine hence, the user feels more inclined to use the drug again. Over time, the neurotransmitters are naturally desensitized and lesser natural rewards are processed successfully in the brain, that is, other pleasurable aspects of life do not produce dopamine. As a result, such surges cause changes in the neural activity in the brain, causing it to be reliant on the substance and addiction develops. Addiction is, therefore, a habit formed in the brain. The same goes for other neurotransmitters such as: - Serotonin – is a chemical responsible for mood stabilization, wound healing, sexual desire, and nausea. - Norepinephrine – also known as the stress hormone, norepinephrine regulates energy levels, focus, and the fight or flight response. Its functions are similar to those of adrenaline. - Gama-aminobutyric acid –is a natural tranquilizer that alleviates stress and lowers anxiety levels. Why the need for more and more drugs over time? As the motivation for substance use to increase the dopamine surges increases, the brain adapts a coping mechanism where less dopamine is produced. This being so, larger amounts of the substance will be required to raise the dopamine levels to the new normal and hence, feed the addiction. Even more, will be needed to achieve the desired high. This is called drug tolerance. Nonetheless, the likelihood of a drug-induced reward activity leading to addiction depends on the following factors: - The speed with which the drug will stimulate dopamine release. - The intensity of the dopamine release. - Method of administration of the drug – drugs ingested intravenously will trigger a faster and stronger dopamine signal compared to those swallowed. - The reliability of the drug to trigger a dopamine signal. Click here to learn more about the brain recovery timeline from alcohol abuse. Read the full article

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iloveyouphillipmorris · 1 year

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I think maid (medical assistance in dying) is a really complicated subject! And it has the potential to be something very profound in its impact as well as something terribly misused, or misrepresented. I have a family member who passed with maid in the summer, and I am forever grateful that it was an option for her. But I also know there is a large amount of very just fear that it is something that would serve to replace preventative, curative process. Or otherwise replace compassion to people who that no longer applies to. This is important too. It's a double sided coin that needs to be looked at with the weight it deserves, at every level of the equation. It frightens me, absolutely, the idea that we could do it wrong, but if we could manage to do it with complete understanding and with grace it could also be something indescribably impactful. Sorry, that was long, you don't have to publish this <3 love u

it’s ok dw honey!!! i love listening to you 🤍

maid is a bit daunting to me bcoz ever since i first heard about it when i was around ~14 or so and i just remember thinking like … “oh thank god, one day it’ll be over.” it gave me so much relief. i was going through alottuv physical / emotional abuse n i had no idea how much worse it was gonna get … like,,, and then it stopped being this vaguely suicidal thing, right?

like i turned 19 and began to develop fibromyalgia, i began to develop serious rheumatoid arthritis, i went thru 5yrs ov sexual, emotional, mental abuse + stalking, abuse from my step father blah blah blah. my ptsd & anxiety became beyond debilitating and it STILL is! and so when it came back to my mind i felt . so relieved bcoz i can’t imagine having to live like this for over 40yrs. i’m on 6 medications, going to therapy, trying to socialise, relearning behavioural patterns etc… and like.

i Couldn’t do this for longer than 40yrs, & if thee next 20 feel anything like this or it gets worse [my cognitive functions / memories / pain is getting worse] iv always maintained i’m going out my own way. iv had that conversation with every one ov my close friend; that one day it will end bcoz i don’t believe i deserve to have to live this way til my natural death. i don’t believe assisted suicide or maid or even suicide itself is morally wrong; it may be selfish but i don’t believe you can blame people for being selfish when living under these circumstances. your pain and grief are real, but thee act is morally neutral. which i know isn’t …? a popular ? idea but it makes sense in my system ov beliefs.

however i can see how this would be a slippery slope, in capitalist countries such as thee usa i could see it effectively being a low-key genocide … over diagnosing people just so they get to not have to pay for basic healthcare requirements. they could just kill thee disabled n mentally ill to cut back costs for care. it’s so much … it’s so hard to take my own desire away from it i guess; it’s just a relief to me ? i have to research it more and hear more opinions like yours to see how i feel …

i love you <333

#suicide /#maid /#abuse /#replies

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loveamongthesailors · 3 years

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“ Should the Haruspex attempt to autopsy her body on Day 11, he will make the curious discovery that Aglaya does not appear to have any organs. However, looting her body reveals she is carrying a Revolver. “

trawling some highly enjoyable patho wiki content. Congratulations Aglaya Lilich on becoming a Body without Organs, with a gun! you go girl!

“Aglaya contends with God. Those she touches begin to rebel against the established order of things. At the same time, Aglaya is the voice of the law. She sees the universe as a machine. She maintains that the logic of the universe is above everything—polyhedrons be damned. To her, contending with God, too, is a form of restoring justice and natural law. Those she touches begin to realize that there are limits of what’s possible, and they must be accepted with humility.”

Humility

“I should have written nothing[1] at all, but it is far too late for that. Sin and guilt[2] have entered the world[3]— never mind where from, since in any case it would do no good to close that box — and I am no longer striding the crests of my dreams, filling my lungs with air and expelling it again, now instead I am manipulating the keys of a machine[4] striving to thus let my dreams pour and play out across the space of an information-obsessed plane of existence.

There exists no good reason[5] to occupy this space, especially when I have the heights and depths of life wholly available to me at any moment, and yet something compels me, God help me.[6] I have no hope that I will save anyone this way. Not even myself. I know I will not even reach to prevent the wretched[7] from abusing whatever I create. It is a fact that to take something from oneself and put it out into the world is to let it escape and become everything you didn’t want it to be. They say this is so for God the Father as for every human father. I do not believe in either one, but their stories both hold a strange beauty for me.

One can create a monster[8] or a babe; the difference is purely aesthetic. But it is this question of creation. Many simply put it aside, to their own loss. They still create things but they deny they are doing so. They are befallen by atrophy.[9] Others take on the question of creation by accepting the market assurance that whatever makes money must be good because, so the logic goes, people buy things that are good.[10] They become lost to the world of production. Others, in reaction to this, turn toward smaller and smaller circles to keep their creatures safe from the real world. But these spaces are either infected by the social disease or else suffocate for lack of oxygen.

There are some rare exceptions. No one can say where they come from. They destroy all that has come before. They blow into a dying ember. Without them there would be nothing at all.

Now, we have to say that the whole world without them would be an empty[11] dull[12] pale[13] and suffocating lifeless and deathless nothingness, and that they themselves are also a nothingness, but an ecstatic explosion of creative destructive nothingness. So it will be worth keeping in mind that there is a huge and unspeakable gap between the qualities of different sorts of nothingness. Otherwise everything will be overcome by an immense confusion.[14]

The first aspect which ensures that there is something interesting rather than nothing is the explosive energy of the sun. The second is the implosive energy of the earth. These provide for the habitation of a thin membrane where their intercourse takes place. Here there exists a tension between them. Much life forms by rebelling against being crushed into the bowels of the earth and the depths of the sea, whether this rebellion is volcanic, evaporative, or organic. Life must protect itself from being lost in the emptiness of space or scorched in the heat of the sun, and so it also flows, crumbles, burrows, glides, swims, falls and floats downward. This might be all, were it not for something else. Organization, organism, orgasm.[15]”

-Musings on Nothingness (And Some of It’s Varieties)

“Producing, a product: a producing/product identity. It is this identity that constitutes a third term in the linear series: an enormous undifferentiated object. Everything stops dead for a moment, everything freezes in place—and then the whole process will begin all over again. From a certain point of view it would be much better if nothing worked, if nothing functioned. Never being born, escaping the wheel of continual birth and rebirth, no mouth to suck with, no anus to shit through. Will the machines run so badly, their component pieces fall apart to such a point that they will return to nothingness and thus allow us to return to nothingness?

It would seem, however, that the flows of energy are still too closely connected, the partial objects still too organic, for this to happen. What would be required is a pure fluid in a free state, flowing without interruption, streaming over the surface of a full body. Desiring-machines make us an organism; but at the very heart of this production, within the very production of this production, the body suffers from being organized in this way, from not having some other sort of organization, or no organization at all. "An incomprehensible, absolutely rigid stasis" in the very midst of process, as a third stage: "No mouth. No tongue. No teeth. No larynx. No esophagus. No belly. No anus."

The automata stop dead and set free the unorganized mass they once served to articulate. The full body without organs is the unproductive, the sterile, the unengendered, the unconsumable. Antonin Artaud discovered this one day, finding himself with no shape or form whatsoever, right there where he was at that moment. The death instinct: that is its name, and death is not without a model. For desire desires death also, because the full body of death is its motor, just as it desires life, because the organs of life are the working machine. We shall not inquire how all this fits together so that the machine will run: the question itself is the result of a process of abstraction.”

-Anti-Oedipus ch. 1, “THE DESIRING MACHINES”

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I can't stitch it together… but I can cut the knot.

We're all just… dancing on our strings.

Whenever I trace the edges of possibility on a map, I find myself reaching for an eraser not soon after…

Imagine a sphere. See it in your mind's eye. Now lay it out flat. Why is that so easy, when topology is so hard?

We live under the shadow of a higher power… I just despise it.

Only a fool would cut the Gordian knot. It ought to be… vivissected.

The squeal of the gears can't halt the machine.

Why do they insist on torturing me?

There is an immutable and rational order that fate itself has composed. All things run their inevitable courses, down the topology of the universe, toward the mass of this black gravity.

Let's open it. Carefully. And tally the contents.

The judgment of God, the system of the judgment of God, the theological system, is precisely the operation of He who makes an organism, an organization of organs called the organism, because He cannot bear the BwO, because He pursues it and rips it apart so He can be first, and have the organism be first. The organism is already that, the judgment of God, from which medical doctors benefit and on which they base their power. The organism is not at all the body, the BwO; rather, it is a stratum on the BwO, in other words, a phenomenon of accumulation, coagulation, and sedimentation that, in order to extract useful labor from the BwO, imposes upon it forms, functions, bonds, dominant and hierarchized organizations, organized transcendences.

The strata are bonds, pincers. “Tie me up if you wish.“ We are continually stratified. But who is this we that is not me, for the subject no less than the organism belongs to and depends on a stratum? Now we have the answer: the BwO is that glacial reality where the alluvions, sedimentations, coagulations, foldings, and recoilings that compose an organism—and also a signification aid a subject—occur. For the judgment of God weighs upon and is exercised against the BwO; it is the BwO that undergoes it. It is in the BwO that the organs enter into the relations of composition called the organism.

The BwO howls: “They’ve made me an organism! They’ve wrongfully folded me! They’ve stolen my body!“ The judgment of God uproots it from its immanence and makes it an organism, a signification, a subject. It is the BwO that is stratified. It swings between two poles, the surfaces of stratification into which it is recoiled, on which it submits to the judgment, and the plane of consistency in which it unfurls and opens to experimentation.

If the BwO is a limit, if one is forever attaining it, it is because behind each stratum, encasted in it, there is always another stratum. For many a stratum, and not only an organism, is necessary to make the judgment of God. A perpetual and violent combat between the plane of consistency, which frees the BwO, cutting across and dismantling all of the strata, and the surfaces of stratification that block it or make it recoil.

- “ Deleuze/Guattari; How Do You Make Yourself a Body Without Organs? “

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(every morning i listen to confessional, i don’t give a shit bout the bulk ov it, still i keep it professional. and as penance i tell em to proselytize, say the sun is red, say that i am red, say that all their bases belong to us)

The crack Where is the crack? When did I crack?

Then I’ll stand alone on a planet with Nothing left to remember it And I’ll try, I’ll try, I’ll try to prevent it I’ll try, I’ll try, but I’ll never stop it, no

Muzzle me, muzzle muzzle me Bind my will and break of me And you try, you try, you try to prevent it You’ll try, you’ll try, but you’ll never stop it, no

because, laugh if you like, what has been called microbes is god, and do you know what the Americans and the Russians use to make their atoms? They make them with the microbes of god.

- I am not raving. I am not mad. I tell you that they have reinvented microbes in order to impose a new idea of god.

They have found a new way to bring out god and to capture him in his microbic noxiousness.

This is to nail him though the heart, in the place where men love him best, under the guise of unhealthy sexuality, in that sinister appearance of morbid cruelty that he adopts whenever he is pleased to tetanize and madden humanity as he is doing now.

He utilizes the spirit of purity and of a consciousness that has remained candid like mine to asphyxiate it with all the false appearances that he spreads universally through space and this is why Artaud le Mômo can be taken for a person suffering from hallucinations.

- What do you mean, Mr. Artaud?

- I mean that I have found the way to put an end to this ape once and for all and that although nobody believes in god any more everybody believes more and more in man.

So it is man whom we must now make up our minds to emasculate.

- How's that?

No matter how one takes you you are mad, ready for the straitjacket.

- By placing him again, for the last time, on the autopsy table to remake his anatomy. I say, to remake his anatomy. Man is sick because he is badly constructed. We must make up our minds to strip him bare in order to scrape off that animalcule that itches him mortally,

For you can tie me up if you wish, but there is nothing more useless than an organ.

To Have Done With the Judgement of God

#patho tag #long post /

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cosmik-homo · 3 years

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Just because I understand and am sympathetic to the myriad of entirely valid circumstances and influences that shape the ways diasporic Jewish communities are woven and the ways these communities relate to their identity and their religion and/or discuss it, and the ways they differ from israeli culture, and just because its all coming from reasonable valid directions,

doesn't mean the way jewish tumblr acts like all judaism is inherently woke doesnt get on my fucking nerves sometimes

can we get a little bit of both intra-community accountability and also maybe, like, idk, evaluation of how organized religion is a system of power?

Or at LEAST if you're a religiously involved jew, no matter what section and how much you ove it there, THINK the next time before derailing posts about general breakdown of how organized religion as a power structure can fail/abuse its members, ok?

Again, disclaimer: I get it. sometimes, things that are valid and understandable.... are stil personally annoying

#again. i fully understand nay argument about why diaspora jewish culture doesnt want #to start publicly criticizning each other. cuz its giving antisemites material to view the ENTIRE sectors as problematic- i dont want harml #to get hate crimed just as much as you dont want them to. but maybe as a jewish queer person who cares about jewish queer people. or. yknow #dont come on posts where people are talking about fucked up religious structures and the way they fucked em up- christian or otherwise!- an #cuz thats just insensitive both to op and to jewish people- diasporic or otherwise- who ARE facing these problems #my dad dropped from high school because he always questioned religion and got no answers and a lot of opressive 'sit down and do what youre #literally they wouldnt let him get in class without a note he prayed shcharit and checking his tzizyiot and what not- and it impacted his m #but we're lucky! cuz a lot of people are disowned and worse for that! my dad didnt work his ass off on a charity to help people escape reli #defending our minority culture and religion from stereotyping that claims our religion in its orthodox form or otherwise is INHERENTLY abus #jumping out of the woodwork when no one asked and saying Judaism Lets Everyone Question And Is Always Good? why. examine what audience are

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bryanastar · 3 years

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How I (Accidentally) Write About Dark Subject Matter: Rough & Tumble Ramblings (Bonus Post)

I don’t like writing content warnings, not because I’m one of those losers that think they aren’t needed (because, believe me, they definitely are) but because it means I have to step back from my work and think about what the hell I just wrote. Now, in my teen writer eyes, there is nothing more embarrassing than thinking back to what you wrote and realizing that you need five different content warnings to fully prepare the reader for your work, and also remembering that you’re barely a rising Junior in high school. I end up having an out of body experience where I see myself and my work as a long and beleaguered r/I’m14andthisisdeep post, and it can make it hard to read back over my work to edit and submit.

Not that there’s anything wrong with darker subject matter. In fact, some of my favorite work to read contains some particular dark and disturbing content. But when you’re a young writer trying to submit your stuff, it can feel… a bit embarrassing. You feel like the stereotypical edgelord teen writing about edgy stuff for the sake of making the adults cry with your edgy edge.

The thing is, I don’t even intend to write about dark subject material ninety-nine percent of the time. It’s just a natural consequence of my intuitive (and rather impulsive) writing process.

I feel that—when it comes to writing about heavier content as a teen writer—there are two types of people: the ones who write about dark content on purpose, and the ones who write it by accident.

I think @shaelinwrites said it best when she wrote in a blog post that teens are often attracted to darker subject matter due to being at the age where we realize that the world is a far darker and scarier place than what we saw as children. Writing, therefore, is the safest way to explore this newfound knowledge and come to terms with it. This is why young writers who write dark subject matter on purpose do it.

But some, like me, do it on accident.

Let me explain. So I’m rather sheltered, as I suspect a lot of teen writers are. I’m not exactly the most world-weary person, despite knowing that the world is, objectively, pretty screwed up. Due to this, I can often add, on accident, some pretty screwed up material just for not thinking it through deeply enough.

For example, here was was my general thought process for my short story “Judith was Never Adopted”, a story that is, objectively, a about a young teenage girl getting left behind in the foster care system due to going through puberty and not being “adorable” any more, getting sexualized while in puberty, getting forcibly married to an older guy who sees her as an object, all the while desperately trying to reclaim the childhood she’s lost and feeling lied to by all the media that claimed that she’d have a lovely and charmed life after being adopted by rich and happy parents (also, spoilers):

“Gee, isn’t it funny that orphan girls in children’s books are often adopted by nice, rich families and get whole musicals dedicated to them, while orphans in YA and Wattpad books are often paired up with the older, assholic, ‘bad boy’ and probably have their lives ruined?”

“Wait… that’s a cool idea for a story!”

“How do I make the villain as awful as possible…? I know! He’s a twenty year-old gangster who has no scruples when it comes to hitting on teenagers, and he also has no problem with busting the kneecaps of literal orphans! That’ll really emphasize how crappy he is!”

“Why did the main character never come back for Judith? Uh… he was in the Iraq War? But why would he willingly join that conflict? Oh right! To pay for college! And he loses an arm, because the war has to have some consequence.”

“But why doesn’t he go to find her when he gets back? Well, uh, his foster mother is dead and his foster siblings are gone, so he has bigger crap to worry about first cause now he’s homeless. Also, the gangster left the city anyway and took Judith with him, and nobody really knows where they went.”

“There! Now to look over the draft! Wait… what the fuck have I written?!”

If this all sounds thoughtless… it’s because it is. To be fair to me, I usually realize pretty quickly that what I’m writing is dark and messed up (by, like, the second paragraph of this story, I really thought long and hard about it’s concept and went “oh shit”).

From there, I usually try my best to do right by the themes and concepts I accidentally introduced, mostly because it’s content that usually gets glossed over in other books that include it, or that is otherwise even romanticized! In fact, it’s anger at these storylines and characters not being treated well that usually inspires me to write the story in the first place!

I’d actually say I did a pretty decent job with this story considering that the first magazine I submitted it to accepted it a day later and praised the piece for its “insights into the psyches and circumstances of foster children.” And this was an adult-run magazine too—with adult contributors with MFAs in creative writing that should be able to write circles around me and my story ideas! They had no reason to be more forgiving of my piece just because I was a young writer! They had plenty of adult ones to pick from!

So yeah, I can be pretty blind to my own story’s content until it’s time to write, at which point I usually stubbornly try to stick with it. Part this is, again, just because I’m sheltered, but I think another reason I do this is because, like I mentioned earlier, I write about stuff that is usually conveniently ignored or downplayed in other works—especially children’s stories.

To give an example, let’s look at one of my favorite childhood movies: Matilda. Objectively, the plot of Matilda is about a severely neglected and abused kindergartener overcoming her abusive family with her equally abused and traumatized teacher, all the while forming a tiny found family with said teacher and moving on from their dark pasts together. Remove the magic and this isn’t a children’s movie; it’s a litfic novel that I know at least one person on this goddamn hell site it writing (not that that’s a bad thing).

Part of the, I guess, novelty of the work that I write is that I enjoy writing about tropes commonly found in children’s stories and contrasting them with I see as toxic or harmful tropes found in works for older teens. As a person who basically went straight from reading children’s literature to adult litfic, I’m fascinated (and somewhat horrified) by the difference in themes and ideas presented to children versus older teens—especially since those same themes and tropes seen in children’s fiction seem to bizarrely reappear in work aimed toward adults (A Man Called Ove is basically UP but without the magic—change my mind). The main difference between how adult fiction treats these subjects and how children’s fiction treats them is that adult fiction fully shines a light on how messed up these subjects are, while you can get away with writing about literal Nazis and genocide in children’s fiction (*cough* Avatar the Last Airbender *cough*) and have no one think it’s too dark or try to tone it down.

Due to this, I think I’ve already been conditioned to not see these subjects to be as bad as they really are, until I sit down to write about them and start to think about them more deeply! Looking back, I’m sure I could’ve written about the subjects outlined in my short story in a way that’s conducive to children’s fiction. Heck, you already have some of the base tropes: over-the-top villain, sad wittle orphans, and deep childhood friendships. Written in another way, I could’ve been the next Roald Dahl!

I’d also like to point out that I have nothing against these themes being explored in literature for younger audiences—in fact I think it’s necessary to teach children about these issues early. But I do think how we perceive certain media to be “kid-friendly” can cause us to forget how deep and nuanced the content in this “kid-friendly” media usually is, mostly due to much of the content having to be toned down as to not scar younger audiences (which is also important). The problem isn’t that this media is included; the problem is that we can sometimes forget how important these issues really are because they’re such common tropes in children’s fiction, which is a great disservice both to these issues and to the stories that include them!

This is also an issue present in YA media, but in a different way as some of toned down issues present in YA are executed in such a way that is actively harmful to teenagers (from the abusive and controlling “bad boy”, to the toxic “not like other girls” character that disparages femininity and promotes competition rather than support among girls). These are my favorite tropes to explore and tear apart in my own work because, when not viewed through a glorified or romanticized lens, they can actually form extremely compelling fiction due to the fallout caused to surrounding characters who have to deal with the bull these tropes and characters cause.

Of course, playing these tropes for what they are tends to lead to darker fiction by consequence, but, due to so many of these tropes being ironically extremely present in children’s and YA literature, many teens that aren’t myself also end writing about them because, really, they’re just writing what they know. This is how an entire generation of teen writers, including myself, ends up writing about content far darker than they realize by accident. We’ve been reading about these subjects for a long time, and now we’re just copying from the masters.

Wow, that was a long rant. Was any of it sensical? I don’t really know, but I still enjoyed writing it!

That’s all for now! See you next Tuesday for your regularly scheduled writing update!

#rant #essay #teen writer #young writer #creative writing #writeblr #writblr #bonus post

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bangtopp50-blog · 6 years

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digitalmark18-blog · 6 years

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Fiserv Flaw Exposed Customer Data at Hundreds of Banks

New Post has been published on https://britishdigitalmarketingnews.com/fiserv-flaw-exposed-customer-data-at-hundreds-of-banks/

Fiserv Flaw Exposed Customer Data at Hundreds of Banks

Fiserv, Inc., a major provider of technology services to financial institutions, just fixed a glaring weakness in its Web platform that exposed personal and financial details of countless customers across hundreds of bank Web sites, KrebsOnSecurity has learned.

Brookfield, Wisc.-based Fiserv [NASDAQ:FISV] is a Fortune 500 company with 24,000 employees and $5.7 billion in earnings last year. Its account and transaction processing systems power the Web sites for hundreds of financial institutions — mostly small community banks and credit unions. According to FedFis.com, Fiserv is by far the top bank core processor, with more than 37 percent market share.

Two weeks ago this author heard from security researcher Kristian Erik Hermansen, who said he’d discovered something curious while logged in to an account at a tiny local bank that uses Fiserv’s platform.

Hermansen had signed up to get email alerts any time a new transaction posted to his account, and he noticed the site assigned his alert a specific “event number.” Working on a hunch that these event numbers might be assigned sequentially and that other records might be available if requested directly, Hermansen requested the same page again but first edited the site’s code in his browser so that his event number was decremented by one digit.

In an instant, he could then view and edit alerts previously set up by another bank customer, and could see that customer’s email address, phone number and full bank account number.

Hermansen said a cybercriminal could abuse this access to enumerate all other accounts with activity alerts on file, and to add or delete phone numbers or email addresses to receive alerts about account transactions.

This would allow any customer of the bank to spy on the daily transaction activity of other customers, and perhaps even target customers who signed up for high minimum balance alerts (e.g., “alert me when the available balance goes below $5,000”).

“I shouldn’t be able to see this data,” Hermansen said. “Anytime you spend money that should be a private transaction between you and your bank, not available for everyone else to see.”

Hermansen said he told his bank about what he found, and that he tried unsuccessfully to get the attention of different Fiserv employees, including the company’s CEO via LinkedIn. But he wasn’t sure whether the flaw he found existed in all bank sites running on Fiserv’s ebanking platform, or just his bank’s installation.

Naturally, KrebsOnSecurity offered to help figure that out, and to get Fiserv’s attention, if warranted. Over the past week I signed up for accounts at two small local banks that each use Fiserv’s online banking platform.

In both cases I was able to replicate Hermansen’s findings and view email addresses, phone numbers, partial account numbers and alert details for other customers of each bank just by editing a single digit in a Web page request. I was relieved to find I could not use my online account access at one bank to view transaction alerts I’d set up at a different Fiserv affiliated bank.

A single digit changed in a Web browser request caused someone else’s alerts to pop up in my account at this small local bank in Virginia.

But it was not difficult to find hundreds of other Fiserv-affiliated banks that would be just as vulnerable. If a bank is using Fiserv’s platform, it usually says so somewhere at the bottom of the bank’s home page. Another giveaway is that most of the bank sites using Fiserv display the same root domain name in the browser address bar after login: secureinternetbank.com.

Fiserv said in a statement that the problem stemmed from an issue with “a messaging solution available to a subset of online banking clients.” Fiserv declined to say exactly how many financial institutions may have been impacted overall. But experts tell KrebsOnSecurity that some 1,700 banks currently use Fiserv’s retail (consumer-focused) banking platform alone.

“Fiserv places a high priority on security, and we have responded accordingly,” Fiserv spokesperson Ann Cave said. “After receiving your email, we promptly engaged appropriate resources and worked around the clock to research and remediate the situation. We developed a security patch within 24 hours of receiving notification and deployed the patch to clients that utilize a hosted version of the solution. We will be deploying the patch this evening to clients that utilize an in-house version of the solution.”

This author confirmed that Fiserv no longer shows a sequential event number in their banking sites and has replaced them with a pseudo-random string.

Julie Conroy, research director with market analyst firm Aite Group, said the kinds of banks that use Fiserv’s platform mostly are those that can’t afford to build and maintain their own.

“These financial institutions use a core banking provider like Fiserv because they don’t have the wherewithal to do it on their own, so they’re really trusting Fiserv to do this on their behalf,” Conroy said. “This will not only reflect on Fiserv’s brand, but also it will impact customer’s perception about their small local bank, which is already struggling to compete with the larger, nationwide institutions.”

Allen Weinberg, partner and co-founder at Glenbrook Partners LLC, said the ability of fraudsters to edit account transaction alerts somewhat negates the value of these alerts in helping consumers fight fraud tied to their online banking accounts.

“If a fraudster can just turn off the alerts, there’s one less protection that consumers think they have,” Weinberg said. “I think consumers do rely in large part on these alerts to help them detect fraudulent activity.”

The weaknesses in Fiserv’s platform is what’s known as an “information disclosure” vulnerability. While these are among the most common types of security issues with Web sites, they are also perhaps the most preventable and easily fixed.

Nevertheless, disclosure flaws can be just as damaging to a company’s brand as other more severe types of security errors. Other notable security incidents involving recent information disclosure issues include a weakness at Panera Bread’s site that exposed tens of millions of customer records, and a bug in identity protection service LifeLock’s site that revealed email addresses for millions of customers.

Update, 12:22 p.m. ET: Updated the second paragraph to include a link to information about Fiserv’s #1 market share. Also updated the story to reflect screen shots shared with KrebsOnSecurity indicating Hermansen was able to see full customer account numbers in his bank’s implementation of Fiserv’s platform. The account numbers I saw in both Virginia banks used in my testing were truncated to the last four digits.

Tags: Aite Group, Allen Weinberg, fiserv, Glenbrook Partners, Julie Conroy, Kristian Erik Hermansen, secureinternetbank.com

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 28th, 2018 at 9:27 am and is filed under Data Breaches, The Coming Storm. You can follow any comments to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a comment. Pinging is currently not allowed.

Source: https://krebsonsecurity.com/2018/08/fiserv-flaw-exposed-customer-data-at-hundreds-of-banks/

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integrativeaddiction · 5 years

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todaynewsstories · 6 years

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US Embassy in Turkey targeted by gunfire | Europe| News and current affairs from around the continent | DW

Gunshots were reportedly fired at the United States embassy in Ankara on Monday morning, according to reports on Turkish media. The shots were fired from a moving vehicle around 5 a.m. (0200 UTC/GMT). At least one of the bullets hit a security booth.

Police teams were searching for the suspects who fled in a white car.

Tensions between the US and Turkey have emerged over a range of issues, including Ankara’s detention of American pastor Andrew Brunson, which has triggered a tit-for-tat trade dispute and pushed Turkey’s lira currency to a record low.

US embassy spokesman, David Gainer, thanked police for their “rapid response” and said there were no reports of injuries. The embassy is closed this week to mark the Islamic holiday of Eid al-Adha, or the festival of sacrifice.

NATO partners adrift: USA and Turkey

Jovial gestures belie multiple disputes

May 16, 2017: Trump welcomes Erdogan to Washington, saying both presidents have a “great relationship” and would make it “even better.” Erdogan congratulates Trump on his “legendary” 2016 election win but complains bitterly about US arming of the Kurdish YPG militia, claiming that its inclusion in the US-led campaign against IS in in war-torn Syria provides a cover for Kurdish separatism.

NATO partners adrift: USA and Turkey

Melee becomes further irritant

May 17: As Erdogan ends his visit, Voice of America video footage emerges showing his guards assaulting Kurdish protesters outside the Turkish ambassador’s residence in Washington. A month later, US authorities issue arrest warrants for 12 members of Erdogan’s security detail, who had long returned to Turkey. US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson says the assaults breached “legitimate” free speech.

NATO partners adrift: USA and Turkey

First anniversary of coup attempt

July 15, 2017: Turkey marks the first anniversary of the failed coup attempt. In a post-coup bid crackdown 50,000 people were arrested, accused of links to the US-based cleric Fethullah Gulen, an Erdogan ally-turned-rival. Tens of thousands more face job suspensions. The refusal of the US to extradite Gulen has been a major sore spot in relations.

NATO partners adrift: USA and Turkey

Turkey ‘uneasy’ about US arming of Kurdish militia

August 23: US Defense Secretary James Mattis visits Ankara as the Pentagon stresses US commitment to bilateral relations and “honest dialogue.” Mattis had just visited Iraq to assess the anti-IS campaign. Erdogan tells Turkish media that Turkey will thwart any attempt by the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) to establish a “terror corridor” in northern Syria through to the Mediterranean.

NATO partners adrift: USA and Turkey

Turkey arrests US consulate employee

October 5: Turkish authorities arrest Metin Topuz, a Turkish national employed at the US consulate in Istanbul. He is formally charged with espionage and collaboration in the 2016 coup attempt. The US embassy in Ankara subsequently says it is “deeply disturbed” by the arrest. It’s reportedly the second since March, when a Turkish US consulate employee was arrested in Adana.

NATO partners adrift: USA and Turkey

US and Turkey suspend their respective visa services

October 8-9: The United States suspends its issuance of non-immigrant visa applications to Turkish nationals, saying it has to “reassess” Turkish readiness to respect security at US diplomatic missions. Turkey suspends its visa services for US nationals and summons another staffer at the US consulate in Istanbul.

NATO partners adrift: USA and Turkey

Attempts to make amends

November 6: The US Embassy in Ankara announces that it is reinstating its visa program for Turkish tourists on a “limited” basis after receiving assurances from the government that no employees will be detained “for carrying out official duties.” Shortly thereafter, Turkey confirms that it is also resuming visa services for US citizens one day before Prime Minister Yildirim visits Washington.

NATO partners adrift: USA and Turkey

At odds over Russian missiles

December through August, 2018: In December, Turkey announced it would buy the Russian S-400 missile system, which is incompatable with NATO systems. The US Congress has included a provision in a defense bill that would cut Turkey out of the F-35 fighter jet program if it moves forward with the S-400 deal.

NATO partners adrift: USA and Turkey

Release the pastor … or else

August 1, 2018: The US sanctions Turkey’s interior and justice ministers over the continued detention of pastor Andrew Brunson. Brunson had been moved from prison to house arrest in late July, but that fell short of US demands for his immediate release and end to terror and espionage charges. Brunson was arrested almost two years ago.

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Andrew Brunson went on trial over alleged involvement with both the movement of Fethullah Gulen — a Muslim preacher who lives in self-imposed exile in the US who Ankara says masterminded a failed 2016 coup in Turkey — and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

Turkey has repeatedly asked Washington to return Gulen, but US officials have said that Turkey has failed insufficient evidence to justify Gulen’s extradition, raising frustration in Ankara. Brunson, if convicted, could face two separate terms of 15 and 20 years in prison.

Read more: US pastor Andrew Brunson released from jail and put under house arrest

In the Syria conflict, the United States has backed fighters from the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG); a group Turkey considers a terrorist organization.

Ankara and Washington have imposed trade tariffs on each other and the US also slapped sanctions on two leading Turkish ministers, accusing them of serious human rights abuses.