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#kerning abuse
shiftythrifting · 1 year
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Champlin, MN
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dear-indies · 14 days
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From the article:
Among the letter writers were James Marsden, Taran Killam, Growing Pains stars Alan Thicke and Joanna Kerns, Twin Peaks actress Kimmy Robertson, Boy Meets World actors Will Friedle and Rider Strong, American Horror Story actor Ron Melendez, and Amanda Show crewmembers Rich and Beth Correll. Reps for Marsden, Killam, Robertson, Kerns, Friedle, Strong, Melendez, and Rich Correll did not immediately respond to EW’s request for comment. Beth Correll could not be reached for comment.
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jordanrosenburg · 8 days
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After watching the “Quiet On Set” documentary, I can’t help but feel like there are literally no good people in the entertainment industry. Even the “good” ones aren’t good. It solidifies that we don’t actually know anything about them. We only know who they present as to the media. 
I think like most people around my age, we grew up watching Nickelodeon during its golden age. I always looked forward to watching “All That” not only because it was funny, but because it was something I could watch with my older siblings. It was something the four of us could laugh together about. My sister and I still laugh over the bit from “Keenan and Kel” where Kel admits to dropping the screw in the tuna. So many iconic characters and television shows were created at the hands of Dan Schneider. 
What else was created at the hands of Dan Schneider were countless acts of abuse, harassment, manipulation, and much more. His sets were homes to child sexual abusers. Adults who are around children each and every day, taking advantage of their trust and innocence, grooming them and harming them physically and mentally. 
It’s not easy for victims of abuse to speak up. Many aren’t believed. Reliving trauma is a horrific experience, so I commend each and every person who shared their story for this docuseries. There were previous cast members who aren’t as well known who got to share their truths, there were crew members sharing stories about Dan’s harassment and sexism on set. There were many crew members that felt uncomfortable about the scenes they were shooting, but no one spoke up. Dan had so much power at Nickelodeon because he kept churning out hit after hit after hit. The parents weren’t much better, but I’ll come back to that. 
The docuseries revealed three adult men who were caught for child pornography, and for sexually abusing children. One man’s name is Brian Peck. He groomed Drake Bell for years. Joe Bell, Drake’s father, did everything he could to keep Brian away from Drake because he knew something just wasn’t right with how Brian acted around his son. Brian eventually convinced Drake to fire his father as his manager, and let his mother take over. This gave Brian the room to drive Drake to and from auditions, take him to Disneyland with him and his friends, and more. Drake Bell revealed in the documentary that Brian Peck sexually assaulted and abused him for years. Since Drake was a minor when it started, his identity was kept secret.
During the trial, many people wrote letters for Brian Peck, attesting to his character: James Marden, Taran Killam, Alan Thicke, Thomas DeSano, Ron Melendez, Rider Strong, and Will Friedle. Some of these names are extremely surprising, and others aren't at all.
Joanna Kerns saying, "there must have been some extreme situation or temptation exerted on him to influence is actions" at the time, and is now saying "I have now learned that my letter of support was based on complete misinformation.
Knowing what I know now, I never would have written the letter". For me, it's not even about her writing the letter, it's about her blaming Drake Bell, the victim, and child in the situation, as if Brian Peck wasn't a grown man who should have known better.
Kimmy Robertson also wrote victim blaming language in her letter of support for Brian Peck.
Rich Correll wrote, "it would be my pleasure to work with him again". And then he did! Brian was allowed to work on The Suite Life! Correll later said, they had no input or involvement in the casting". He also went on to say that, "Mr. Peck simply replied that 'the problem had been solved'".
The series went on from there, explaining how Dan’s behaviors just got worse and worse, and he “flew too close to the sun”. The inappropriate sexual innuendo bits on his shows happened more and more frequently. This included constant closeups on actors’ feet, many of the young female actresses being forced to be squirted in the face with various liquids to represent “money shots”. Ariana Grande probably had it the worst in that she had to film videos that went directly to YouTube, many of which included her biting her own toenails, squeezing a potato until juice squirted out of it, etc. Just absolutely disgusting things that do not make sense for a CHILDREN’S television show. These weren’t jokes for kids. This was Dan Schneider abusing his power, and seeing how much he could get away with. 
It wasn’t until Jeanette McCurdy’s mother died that Nickelodeon finally launched an investigation into Dan Schneider. Jeanette talks about this in her book, “I’m Glad My Mom Died”, which was a heart wrenching read, but well worth it. Jeanette returned to work a WEEK after her mother died from a long battle with cancer. Because of the backlash she got for that, Nickelodeon realized that it was the culture Dan created that probably made Jeanette feel like she had to come back, that she couldn’t take more time off. 
All Nickelodeon did was remove Dan from his sets, and made it so he could only watch from his office and give notes from there. Even though he wasn’t physically on set, the toxic and hostile environment was still alive and well because he was still watching everyone’s every move. 
Thanks to #MeToo, more and more women started speaking up about their experiences on set with Dan Schneider. And then in 2018 Nickelodeon finally kicked Dan Schneider to the curb after launching another investigation based off the new claims. The investigation didn't reveal proof of sexual abuse, but it revealed more cases of harassment of his actors and his crews.
Child stars are often made fun of and exploited by the media as they transition into adulthood. We watch their mental health decline until they’re caught having a breakdown. People point and laugh, and say it’s just another child star who couldn’t handle life as a grown up. But what I think a lot of people don’t understand is that many child stars are forced into the entertainment business. Parents put their financial burdens on their children, tell them they need to work to support the family. That’s a lot of pressure to put on a child. So, if something bad is happening on a set, a kid is going to be too afraid to speak up because they could be fired, and if they’re fired, then they’re not making money for their families. The parents are supposed to be on set and with the kids at all times. But so many turn the other cheek and don’t speak up because they don’t want to risk their kids getting fired. 
It just feels like no adults, not even the ones you’re meant to trust, are safe to be around. In some way, shape, or form these kids get abused. Whether it’s sexual abuse, racism, inflicted eating disorders, or other types of mental abuse, they’re not safe. No one is looking out for them. Everyone is more concerned with making money. 
The entertainment industry squeezes the youth dry and tosses them aside when they can’t legally control them anymore. And we wonder why so many of them have a tough time later on in life. The lucky ones are helped through therapy, and the not so lucky ones either turn up dead, broke, abused, or end up abusing others as they were abused. 
I am feeling very sad and heartbroken. And I’m not sure where to go from here. So many of these shows have brought me comfort and laughs over the years. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to enjoy them again. Is it okay to sit and watch reruns or should we be boycotting everything? I want to help in the ways that I can, but I also know that the world will stop caring about this in a week or so when the next big truth bomb about something else is dropped. 
People who have no moral conscious, people who are okay letting children be hurt for the sake of their own wallets shouldn’t have any power. And I hope everyone involved in hurting these kids, past and present, is forced to answer for what they did. I hope they’re shamed and cancelled and doxxed and everything else bad that can happen to people like them. I hope they go broke and become ruined. And at this point, I hope Nickelodeon just crashes and burns. They don’t deserve any salvation. 
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gatheringbones · 5 months
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[“Per Kern’s research in Feminist City, new, luxury condominiums, which are significant purveyors of gentrification, capitalize on urban racism to advertise particularly to young adult women by emphasizing their extensive security measures that safekeep women from external, street-based violence. But Kern notes this dynamic “wasn’t going to make life any safer for the women who would be displaced by this form of gentrification,” and it served to make “safety a private commodity in the city . . . less and less available to those who lack the economic means to secure themselves.” In contrast, funding for affordable housing, or social housing, is increasingly and routinely being gutted, in many cases robbing domestic violence victims of what could be their only means for safety and independence from abusers. Further, the capitalist housing market is fundamentally unconducive to multifamily or cooperative housing setups that can provide safety and supports like child care and community, and alleviate the gendered norms and divisions of labor that standardize the oppressions of women and non-cis, straight men in single-family homes. Options for communities, multigenerational households, and non-single families to live together, in general, are dwindling in a market saturated with increasingly expensive single-family homes, as well as ever-increasing incentives for ambitious Airbnb hosts to purchase homes solely to rent out to wealthy travelers.”]
kylie cheung, from survivor injustice: state-sanctioned abuse, domestic violence, and the fight for bodily autonomy, 2023
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cobragardens · 6 months
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Another Post About Crowley's Terrible Handwriting
Actually his handwriting here isn't terrible, it's just, like Anathema's spelling, 300 years too late.
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So first, I posit that we can be reasonably confident this is Crowley's handwriting because he is very likely the only celestial being besides Aziraphale who can spell devourer correctly.
Crowley has taken more care than usual with his penmanship today because this is a Fancy Presentation, and there are some delightful things to note about it:
--The beautiful serifs on each letter and variation in width of the strokes (the lowercase r's especially)
--Enthusiastic but intermittent capitalization of nouns
--The L that ends "Hail" is a small capital like the ones used in the Bible to spell LORD; the l in Worlds is lower-case
--The lozenge shape of the letter o
--Both s-es are oversized and dip below the writing line
--The kerning is terrible, the script wanders off the writing line at several points, and the location of the writing line is not imagined consistently
I am not an expert in the history of handwriting, but every single point of this suggests to me that Crowley learned to write in English in the late 16th or early 17th century, between say 1570 and 1620, and he learned to do it by copying printed material, not somebody else's handwriting. And it looks like late 16th-century writing. Or rather, like somebody learned to write by copying late 16th-century print and hasn't practiced enough for his style to change significantly in the last 400-500 years.
This means Crowley would have learned using a quill pen, poor devil, and if that's true no wonder he doesn't do it more often. (I wonder if this is why he now owns a pen that looks like it can break the sound barrier; if the Bentley is a permanent replacement for the loathsome, buttocks-abusing horse, maybe he keeps the expensive pen as self-reassurance that he'll never have to write with a quill again.) Quill pens would explain the lozenge-shaped o's: quills can only make a downstroke, so writers who used them shape o's as lozenges made of four downstrokes. Someone who learned writing with a quill would shape his o's like a calligrapher.
16th/early 17th century is the earliest I think Crowley would have learned to write in English because before that there was no block print; there was no print at all, only handwritten scripts of varying legibility, none of which look remotely like Crowley's handwriting does.
Here's what print looked like in Germany in 1471 (printing does not arrive in England for another 5 years after this):
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The printing press showed up in England in 1476. Between 1500 and 1600, England got its shit sorted out wrt fonts and typesetting and started turning out what we would recognize today as readable material.
Here's what English printing looked like in 1623, c. 150 years after the German one above:
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Not bad, right? I've received Xerox copies less legible than this in classes I paid for. I think it is likely based on his handwriting that Crowley learned to write from printed material a decade or two older than this. The adornments Crowley puts on his letters are serifs, not ligatures: these are not letters that were ever meant to join up in cursive, but letters that were copied from typeset.
From the 16th through the mid-19th century, variations in how a handwriter capitalized letters were very common, and two of these variations show up in Crowley's writing as well.
First, English inherited from German the capitalization of all its nouns. You can see it in Titus Andronicus, above (1623). Due to variations in education and taste, this quickly shifted to capitalization of whichever nouns the writer (or publisher, or printer) felt were important to capitalize, as you can see in Paradise Lost from 1688, below. Hail the Great Beast, devourer of Worlds.
Second, It was also very common during this time to capitalize terminal letters of words, either as a sign to the reader that previous letters had been omitted or because writers using quill pens wanted to be sure readers knew what letter they were looking at through the smudges and weird spacing and general wretchedness of the reading experience imposed by quill writing. I think this latter reason may be why Crowley writes "HaiL" when his other letter L, in "Worlds," is both lowercase and carefully printed with a pretty serif.
Handwriters in English between 1500 and 1800 also had a major hard-on for abusing the letter s, which was shaped like a lowercase f (to contemporary eyes) or a loose S, either of which drop below the writing line. Here's an example in print from 1688:
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Use of the long S in print fell out of favor and disappeared abruptly in the UK after 1800.
Crowley's S-es could be a holdover from this: they both drop below the writing line, and they're both oversized.
What I think we can say for sure is that he's not very good at writing s-es, so they always turn out bigger than he intends. The S in "Beast" is noticeably different at the left curve than the S in "Worlds," which I would expect for someone who hasn't written thousands of s-es yet, and the S in "Worlds" looks very much like someone has faithfully rendered a shape they have seen rather than written a letter. Since he can write a letter r elegantly but can't do a curved s, it suggests to me that he hasn't had as much practice doing the curved s yet as he has the other letters, which fits with someone used to writing a long s 75% of the time.
Even the kerning speaks to me of someone who learned to write with a quill: leaving (comparatively) large spaces between letters gives the ink somewhere to drip and smudge without rendering the letter illegible.
There's one other reason I think Crowley probably learned to write in English in the 16th century: He's lazy, and he probably wouldn't have needed to know before then.
The movable-type press arrived in England in 1476. The Protestant Reformation kicked off in England c. 60 years later in 1534 when Henry VIII declared himself head of the English Church. Prior to the surge in literacy among the wealthy and merchant classes in the 16th century, thanks to this intersection of printing press and Protestants (who believe it's important that each person read the Bible for themselves), almost no one knew how to read, including most of the gentry and nobility, and still fewer knew how to write. If you had a message, you sent a guy or you showed up yourself. If you had something you wanted recorded, you summoned a scribe. If you needed to know something, you found somebody who knew and you asked them.
By the time of Queen Elizabeth's accession in 1558, 82 years after William Caxton began operating England's first movable-type printing press, a fully literate royal court were passing each other and their spies and their assassins gossipy notes like everybody was a 12yo in math class. Elizabeth wrote letters and poems. Among the gentry gentlewomen replaced monks as the medical caregivers for their communities (bc Henry shut down all the monasteries), and they wrote and shared and copied multi-generational "receipt books" and herbals of medical and cosmetic treatments. In the space of a single generation, literacy--the ability to write, not just to read--became a prerequisite for functioning in the upper echelons of society.
So if he didn't already know by then, Crowley would have needed to learn to write in English in the mid-16th century. And he would have had to learn it with a quill. (Wearing black probably came in handy for all the ink he spilled or dripped on himself.)
Last to consider is the W in "Worlds," which has no serifs and is not written with any particular attempt at straightness or symmetry. To me this suggests that Crowley learned to write w's from a modern reference, not his original reference. And this makes perfect sense: w was very much in use in the 16th century in English, but nobody agreed on how to write or print it, so there were crossed v's, two capital U's, and this weird gothic lowercase n with extra tentacles. W, Crowley would have learned, always needs to be checked up on before you commit.
Crowley's spelling here is modern, which is frankly a huge achievement for someone who was present for the formation and transformation of all 3 English languages. The contemporary Modern English we use today was a going concern for over 2 centuries before anyone wrote an English dictionary, and it was three centuries before dictionaries became authorities on how to spell correctly and people started giving a shit about that. (Before that as long as people could read the word and understand what you meant by it in context, you'd spelt it correctly.)
Taken together, the W and the modern spelling suggest that although Crowley almost never writes by hand, he reads regularly. This matches with two Words of God I've seen from Neil Gaiman (which I am too lazy to find and link) in which he mentions that Crowley likes to read but won't admit to doing so or to liking books.
Aziraphale should get him a book about ducks for Valentine's Day.
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killed-by-choice · 1 year
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Mary Pena, 43 (USA 1984)
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Mary Pena was killed by an abortion at San Vicente Hospital, which had already killed 16-year-old Natalie Meyers and Sara Lint. Despite the misleading name, SVH was an abortion facility owned and operated by Family Planning Associates.
The FPA corporation had a long history of dead clients and institutionalized racism. Founder Edward Allred was infamous for the invention of the reckless 5-minute abortion and for a newspaper interview where he went on a racist tirade that especially targeted young Black mothers and Latina/o immigrant families. It should come as no surprise that multiple clients killed by FPA suffered extreme negligence shown to them allegedly because of their race. Mary Pena was one of them.
Mary was 43 and pregnant with her sixth baby. She was six months pregnant, but San Vicente allowed her to believe she was in the first trimester. Abortionist Ruben Marmet was the first at San Vicente to operate on her on December 15. When Mary started bleeding heavily, Allred himself along with S. Sohn performed a hysterectomy. They didn’t even find the severed artery during the hysterectomy and finally just left surgical sponges inside of Mary and closed the incision site. Not surprisingly, Mary kept bleeding.
Mary lost so much blood she went into cardiac arrest. She died at 1:50 A.M. on December 16 1984.
Mary’s killers tried to cover up what they’d done to her. Allred managed to call in a few favors and managed to get her body released without an autopsy. Luckily, Kern County Health Department realized how suspicious the request for no autopsy was, especially coming from FPA. They alerted the Los Angeles County Coroner and Mary’s corpse was brought back in for an autopsy.
The truth was out. Mary died of exsanguination. The claim that Allred couldn’t find where the bleeding was coming from was ridiculous considering the massive perforation that went all the way around the ring of the cervix. There was also another separate laceration that appeared to have been sutured, meaning that Mary’s killers knew they had torn her uterus.
The Pena family sued for the horrifying abuse Mary endured at the hands of San Vicente. Mary was not the first or the last to be killed by FPA. Other abortion clients they killed include 16-year-old Patricia Chacon, Susan Levy, 18-year-old Christine Mora, 19-year-old Tami Suematsu, Kenniah Epps, Emmeko Reed, Joyce Ortenzio, Denise Holmes, Josefina Garcia, 17-year-old Laniece Dorsey, 13-year-old Deanna Bell, 16-year-old Nakia Jorden, Ta Tanisha Wesson, Maria Leho, Kimberly K. Neil, Maria E. Rodriguez and Chanelle Bryant.
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Press-Telegram July 14-22 1985
LA County Coroner Case No. 84-16016
"Abortion held safe, but not for these 2 women," Press-Telegram, July 14-22 1985
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mogkiompmovieguide · 1 year
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Cinema of Trangression. p1
Where Evil Dwells
Tommy Turner, David Wojnarowicz. U.S, 1985, 28 min
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Au fil de mes futurs posts je vous proposerai de découvrir ou bien de revoir les films du Cinéma de la transgression - subversif bien évidement, chaotique et dépravé, un mouvement flash essentiel aux scènes de la No-Wave et du cinéma underground new-yorkais en général.
Cinéastes transgressifs clés, dont Nick Zedd, Richard Kern, Casandra Stark, Beth B, Tommy Turner, Tessa Hughes-Freeland, ainsi que d’autres collaborateurs comme Lydia Lunch, Joe Coleman et David Wojnarowicz, dans la lignée des œuvres pop-trashs d’Andy Warhol bien sûr, de Paul Morissey, Jack Smith, George & Mike Kuchar, ou encore John Waters et bien d’autres.
IIustrations, performances, sonorités rares et souvent dérangeantes, Cinema of Transgression est un mouvement chaotique et spontané, sexuel, marginal, brutal et mort-né. Rien qu’on ne puisse ignorer.
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Where Evil Dwells
Initialement intitulé, Satan Teens, Where Evil Dwells est une collaboration inachevée avec Tommy Turner. En septembre 1985, Wojnarowicz et Turner ont commencé à écrire un script basé sur un reportage de 1984 sur Long Island à propos d'un adolescent adorant Satan en train de commettre un meurtre. Le script a pris trois nuits. Ricky Kasso, le chef des abuseurs de PCP, a assassiné son ami de 17 ans, Gary Lauwers à Northport, Long Island en le poignardant à plusieurs reprises et en lui arrachant les yeux. Kasso s'est vanté du meurtre, montrant des amis incrédules Lauwers décomposant le corps, tout en affirmant que Satan avait approuvé. Il a finalement été arrêté et s'est pendu en prison avant son 18e anniversaire. Wojnarowicz et Turner ont non seulement trouvé l'histoire humoristique mais aussi symbolique de la génération
Le film a été tourné à l'origine sur un appareil photo Canon 8 mm, que Turner a emprunté à Richard Kern. Bien que Turner affirme que l'audio et les images ont été perdus dans un incendie, Fales Library and Special Collections possède deux bobines de film Super 8 mm directement de la caméra d'origine. Le film peut être visionné avec des fragments audio originaux, y compris des voix-off parlées à travers une poupée Howdy Doody et la chanson Where Evil Dwells de Wiseblood.
Jim Thirlwell, à l'époque un leader du groupe Wiseblood et connu comme le leader du groupe de metal industriel Foetus, a offert sa chanson à Ricky Kasso pour l’utiliser dans le film, sous réserve que le titre de la chanson soit également le titre du film, Where Evil Dwells.
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CINEMA OF TRANSGRESSION
Over the course of my future posts, I will suggest that you discover or review the films of the Cinema of Transgression - "Cinema Of Transgression", subversive, chaotic and depraved, essential to the scenes of the No-Wave movement of the 80s and underground cinema. New Yorker.
Key transgressive filmmakers, including Nick Zedd, Richard Kern, Casandra Stark, Beth B, Tommy Turner, Tessa Hughes-Freeland, and others like Lydia Lunch, Joe Coleman and David Wojnarowicz, along the lines of pop-trash 'Andy Warhol of course, by Paul Morissey, Jack Smith, George & Mike Kuchar, or John Waters and many others.
IIustrations, performances, rare and often sounds disturbing, Cinema of Transgression is a chaotic and spontaneous, sexual, marginal, brutal and stillborn movement. Nothing you can't ignore.
Beware all the same it will shake! Keep the fragile ones away.
These are not films to summarize. But to watch
Here are the first two for today. (Second one follows in another post)
Originally titled, Satan Teens, Where Evil Dwells is an unfinished collaboration with Tommy Turner. In September 1985, Wojnarowicz and Turner began writing a script based on a 1984 report on Long Island about a teenage boy worshiping Satan committing murder. The script took three nights. Ricky Kasso, the chief abuser of PCP, murdered his 17-year-old friend Gary Lauwers in Northport, Long Island by stabbing him repeatedly and tearing out his eyes. Kasso bragged about the murder, showing Lauwers incredulous friends breaking down the body, while claiming that Satan had approved. He was eventually arrested and hanged himself in prison before his 18th birthday. Wojnarowicz and Turner not only found the humorous but also symbolic story of the generation
The film was originally filmed on an 8mm Canon camera, which Turner borrowed from Richard Kern. Although Turner claims that the audio and images were lost in a fire, Fales Library and Special Collections has two reels of Super 8mm film directly from the original camera. The film can be viewed with original audio fragments, including voiceovers spoken through a Howdy Doody doll and Wiseblood's song Where Evil Dwells.
Jim Thirlwell, at the time a leader of the group Wiseblood and known as the leader of the industrial metal group Fetus, offered his song to Ricky Kasso for use in the film, provided that the title of the song is also the film title, Where Evil Dwells.
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Le film ICI
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90363462 · 1 year
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Matthew McConaughey’s White House Speech on Gun Control Hit Different – Here’s Why
Bianca MercuriJune 13, 2022
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Tuesday, June 7, 2022, Academy Award-winning actor Matthew McConaughey appeared at the White House press briefingto ask congress to pass gun control legislation on behalf of the children and teachers who were killed in the Uvalde massacre.
RELATED: Teflon Tom: Why Tom Cruise Remains Hollywood’s Top Gun – Despite His Controversial Reputation
Mass shootings in the U.S. are more common than many citizens would like to admit, with more than 250 mass shootings taking place in the US in 2022 alone. The May 24 Uvalde elementary school shooting hit a little too close to home for McConaughey. The Texas native is actually from Uvalde and addressed growing up in this warm Texas town.
What Did Matthew McConaughey’s White House Speech Say About Gun Control?
(Photo by Rick Kern/Getty Images)
McConaughey’s plea for gun control might have been the most compelling case for gun reform from a celebrity yet, given his connection to Uvalde. He prefaced by saying, “Uvalde is where I was taught to revere the power and the capability of the tool that we call a gun,” he stated. “Uvalde is where I learned responsible gun ownership.” 
But for McConaughey, it’s more than that: he’s also a gun owner, himself, saying that he and others are “fed up with the Second Amendment being abused and hijacked by some deranged individuals”.
RELATED: The Truth Behind Matthew McConaughey and Sandra Bullock’s Secret Relationship
His stance on guns and his Uvalde roots set a particularly telling stage, particularly as his plea became more impassioned and emotional. McConaughey shared stories of and spoke on behalf of the victims who could not be there to do so. 
He and his wife, Camile Alves, spoke about the time they spent time with the families of those who were killed. He used his White House speech to show pictures and artwork of the children, as well as the actual shoes that were used to identify the body of a little girl. 
Because the shooting was perpetrated using an AR-15 rifle, most of the bodies were mutilated to the point where only DNA tests or pieces of clothing, like the shoes of that little girl, were able to identify them. This was not the only time emotions ran high in the totality of his 20-minute call for action, though.
McConaughey’s speech truly was a call for action to congress. “How can the loss of these lives matter?” he asked, “While we honor and acknowledge the victims, we need to recognize that this time, seems that something is different.” 
He asked Congress for background checks for gun purchases as well as to raise the minimum age to purchase an AR-15 and similar rifles to 21 from the current minimum of 18-years-old. He also suggested a waiting period for purchasing AR-15-style rifles and “red flag” laws. McConaughey made these demands with the fierce opinion that he wants “gun laws that won’t make it so easy for the bad guys to get the damn guns.”
Celebrities and the Uvalde Elementary School Mass Shooting
Piers Morgan, a British journalist, and media figure, is usually known for his controversial and strong opinions. This time around, he had the majority of people siding with his New York Post article responding to McConaughey’s White House speech. He admitted that, like many others, McConaughey’s words evoked tears and raw emotion. He even went as far as to say, “There’s never been a more powerful or gut-wrenching moment in the White House briefing room.”
While McConaughey’s cry for gun control in the midst of a national crisis had the deepest impact, many other celebrities weighed in on the issue. Another Texan star, Selena Gomez, posted a thread on Twitter expressing her concern for the situation: “Today in my home state of Texas 18 innocent students were killed while simply trying to get an education. A teacher killed doing her job. If children aren’t safe at school where are they safe?” 
She then followed up by expressing, like McConaughey, that those in power need to change the laws in order to prevent these mass shootings from continuing to occur at an alarming rate. Gomez also used her enormous online platform to share a resource where people can get involved and donate. 
RELATED: Why Matthew McConaughey’s Wife Stopped Him From Doing More Rom-Coms
The Kardashian family also spoke out about the shooting, and gun violence in general. Kris Jenner expressed how the tragedy broke her heart, saying, “No words can make this better. There is much that needs to change. Law makers – Please stop failing our children.” Kim, Kourtney, and Kylie also used their social media platforms to bring awareness to the issue of mass shootings in America, but it was Khloe’s statement that made the most impact. “It was ‘enough’ ten mass shootings ago. It was ‘enough’ after Sandy Hook,” Khloé’s Instagram story read, “What good is our freedoms when there is no protection of our lives?”.
Many athletes such as Golden State Warriors head coach, Steve Kerr, as well as famous NBA players Steph Curry and Lebron James, made statements in light of the Uvalde mass shooting. In fact, Kerr’s speech was shared extensively online, warranting a response from Taylor Swift who said that “Steve’s words ring so true and cut so deep”.
How Can Celebrities and Social Media Invoke Change?
Social media can be an amazing tool for sparking change. Not only do we have access to global networking and connections at our fingertips, but we have the opportunity to reach new audiences. As individuals, we can use our smaller platforms to change the communities around us. On a much greater scale, celebrities have the reach to change the world.
RELATED: 5 Daily Habits to Steal from Matthew McConaughey, Including His Penchant for Mixing Work and Pleasure
This might seem like an overly optimistic statement to make, but optimism in times of hardship might just be what we need. Many of our favorite celebrities have hundreds of millions of followers. Think about the impact that one statement from someone so influential can make. Not only do they have the resources to make a difference in the form of donations, but by simply sharing resources and bringing awareness to what’s going on in the world, they can inspire change.
The domino effect is the idea that change can start with one person and become a chain reaction. This is the power that celebrities hold, and we have seen it work this way in the past. From McConaughey’s meaningful speech to the plethora of Tweets and Instagram posts, we can already see that society is responding in a powerful way.
The Uvalde mass shooting is not a political issue; it’s an issue of humanity. In the words of McConaughey himself, “Regulations are not a step back; they’re a step forward for a civil society and — and the Second Amendment.”
KEEP READING: 
Why Matthew McConaughey’s Decision To Open Up About His Trauma Is Powerful
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"Gabriel’s autism was a contributing factor in most of the harrowing incidents he went through. Clinicians suspect that the condition increases the risk for certain kinds of trauma, such as bullying and other forms of abuse. Yet few studies have investigated that possibility or the psychological aftermath of such trauma, including PTSD.
“We know that about 70 percent of kids with autism will have a comorbid psychiatric disorder,” says Connor Kerns, assistant professor of psychology at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. Depression, anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder are all known to be more common among autistic people than in the general population, but PTSD had largely been overlooked. Until a few years ago, only a few studies had delved into the problem, and most suggested that less than 3 percent of autistic people have PTSD, about the same rate as in typical children. If that were true, Kerns points out, PTSD would be one of the only psychiatric conditions that’s no more common in people with autism than in their typical peers.
One potential explanation, Kerns says, is that, like other psychiatric conditions, PTSD simply looks different in people with autism than it does in the general population. “It seems possible to me that it’s not that PTSD is less common but potentially that we’re not measuring it well, or that the way traumatic stress expresses itself in people on the spectrum is different,” Kerns says. “It seemed we were ignoring a huge part of the picture.”
Kerns and a few other researchers are trying to get a better understanding of the interplay between autism and PTSD, which they hope will inform and shape treatment for young people like Gabriel. The more they dig in, the more these researchers are finding that many autistic people might have some form of PTSD. “We’re all just trying to put together the pieces and recognize that it’s an important area that requires further study,” she says. “It’s been a call to arms for the field to start looking at this.”
These researchers have their work cut out for them. In the typical population, PTSD is fairly well defined. According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM-5, psychiatry’s guide to diagnoses, PTSD usually develops after someone sees or experiences a terrifying or life-threatening event. After that initial episode, any reminder of it can trigger panic, extreme startle reflexes and flashbacks. Beyond that, however, there’s a wide variety in the way PTSD manifests: It can lead to hypervigilance and anger; it can cause recurring nightmares and other sleep issues; or it can lead to depression, persistent fear, aggression, irritability or difficulty concentrating and remembering things.
“If you do the math, according to the PTSD criteria in the DSM-5, you can have 636,000 different combinations of symptoms that describe PTSD,” says Danny Horesh, head of the Trauma and Stress Research Lab at Bar-Ilan University in Ramat Gan, Israel. Given all the traits in people with autism that may overlay these permutations, “you have a lot of reason to think that their version of PTSD might be very different,” he says."
--"At the intersection of autism and trauma" by Lauren Gravitz (via spectrumnews.org)
TRIGGER WARNING FOR DESCRIPTIONS OF ABUSE IN THE LINKED ARTICLE
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omkarpatel · 3 months
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U.S. Naloxone Market is Estimated to Witness High Growth Owing to Increasing Cases of Opioid Overdoses
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The U.S. Naloxone market consists of opioid overdose reversal drugs that are used in emergency situations involving opioid-induced respiratory depression or overdose. Naloxone is an opioid antagonist that works by blocking the effects of opioids on the brain and reversing the life-threatening respiratory depression they often cause. The rising prevalence of opioid addiction and overdoses in the United States has significantly increased the demand and necessity for naloxone-based drugs.
The global U.S. naloxone market is estimated to be valued at US$ 1,390.7 Mn in 2023 and is expected to exhibit a CAGR of 10% over the forecast period 2023 to 2030, as highlighted in a new report published by Coherent Market Insights. Market Opportunity: Increasing Cases of Opioid Overdoses According to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) data, over 1500 people die every year due to opioid overdoses in the United States. The growing cases of opioid dependence and addiction has led to a spike in accidental and intentional overdoses. The need to safely reverse opioid related breathing issues with naloxone-based treatments presents a massive market opportunity. With the introduction of intranasal and auto-injector formulations of naloxone in recent years, bystanders without medical training can now easily administer and potentially save lives in overdose situations. As opioid dependency and mortality rates show no signs of decline, the demand for easily accessible naloxone overdose reversal drugs is expected to see substantial growth over the forecast period. Porter's Analysis Threat of new entrants: The U.S. Naloxone market features stringent regulations for new entrants which act as a barrier. The bargaining power of suppliers is moderate due to the presence of several suppliers of active pharmaceutical ingredients and raw materials. Bargaining power of buyers: The bargaining power of buyers is high due to the availability of generic versions of naloxone and presence of substitutes. Threat of new substitutes: The threat of new substitutes is moderate as there are few substitutes available for emergency opioid overdose treatment currently. Competitive rivalry: The competitive rivalry in the market is high due to the presence of many established players. SWOT Analysis Strengths: High prevalence of opioid overdose in the country, strong distribution network of major players, favorable reimbursement policies for naloxone products. Weaknesses: High R&D costs associated with drug development, Price erosion due to entry of generics. Opportunities: Increasing government support programs to curb opioid crisis, Scope for combination therapies. Threats: Patent expiries of major drugs, emergence of alternative treatment options. Key Takeaways The U.S. Naloxone market is expected to witness high growth driven by increasing opioid overdose cases and supportive government policies for expanding access to naloxone.
The Southern region currently dominates the market due to high abuse rates and various government initiatives. Key players operating in the U.S. Naloxone market are Mylan N.V., Novartis AG, Indivior Plc., ADAPT Pharma, Inc., Amphastar Pharmaceuticals, Inc., INSYS Therapeutics, Inc., Mundipharma International Limited, Kaleo, Inc., Kern Pharma, S.L., Samarth Life Sciences Pvt. Ltd., Opiant Pharmaceuticals, Pfizer, Sandoz, and Amneal Pharmaceuticals. The South region is expected to remain the highest revenue generating region during the forecast period owing to factors such as higher prevalence of opioid abuse disorders and supportive government programs for improving access to naloxone.
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bramblewatchescharmed · 3 months
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The thing that gets me about male Charmed fans pushing for a male version of the Charmed Ones is that, AFAIK, there wasn't as much of an obsession with the idea until Joey Falco came out on social media with his plans for a hypothetical fifth season of Charmed (2018) that would have introduced a "triquetra-verse" where one universe was that of the Halliwells', the second was the Vera/Vaughn/Dansos' universe, and the third was for a universe where the Charmed Ones were male witches . . . only they would be college frat dudebros and exist solely to prove Falco's point that men can't handle magic.
(Weird take, considering the reboot he was a writer on since season 1 and then showrunner for season 4 went out of its way to show that male witches don't exist in its universe, but okay. The only male magic users in the reboot are Whitelighters, demons, and whatever the hell Jordan is by the end of the show with his healing ability.)
Plus, if people are that desperate for male!Charmed Ones:
The original series already had this concept with the Rowe coven of warlocks, with each generation of the Rowe line becoming stronger and stronger, culminating in the arrival of three brothers who would inherit an evil version of the Charmed Ones' Power of Three.
Season 5 under Brad Kern changed the sex of Piper's unborn child from a daughter to a son, and to top this all off, Wyatt was born on Imbolc (a Wiccan Sabbat) + was the never-before-mentioned prophesized Twice-Blessed Child with super-powerful magic potentially greater than that of the Charmed Ones. To make things worse, Season 6 reveals that he eventually inherits Excalibur and is basically the next King Arthur.
Fanboys wanting male Charmed Ones, to me, completely undermines and misses the whole point of why the original series (and even the 2018 reboot) has the Charmed Ones being female, and why the 1998 series based its witchcraft in Wicca.
Charmed (1998) was created by Constance M. Burge, who based the lead characters of Prue, Piper, and Phoebe on herself and her two sisters. The Craft came out two years earlier in 1996 & Practical Magic was also released in 1998: Hollywood riding on the sudden wave of popularity of Wicca in the United States now that the Satanic Panic from the previous decade was over. Teenage girls and young women were very much into exploring witchcraft / Wicca as a counterculture to the dominant mainstream religion/culture of Christianity.
Through using magic and witchcraft as an allegory, Charmed was able to explore real-life issues women face through its female leads: sexual harassment, work-life balance, mistreatment in the workplace, stalking, kidnapping, domestic violence, murder, religious & gender discrimination. It didn't shy away from the fact that women can, in fact, be abusers, murderers, and sexual predators. It also was not afraid of its female leads showing sexual interest in men and pursuing their desire on their terms, something not even Buffy the Vampire Slayer did: Buffy was punished by the narrative for having consensual sex with her vampire boyfriend Angel by him losing his soul and becoming Angelus.
All this, while having powerful female leads, and still including male characters who are powerful in their own right: Leo Wyatt, Cole Turner, Darryl Morris, Andy Trudeau, Victor Bennett, Sam Wilder. Charmed (1998) has its heroines being the most powerful good witches on Earth, saving Innocents and helping other witches, while allowing for the existence of male witches (in fact, it's stated in the pilot that all warlocks were once good witches who killed another witch to steal his/her power, making Jeremy, Rex, Nicholas, and all the other male warlocks seen on-screen former male witches--at least, those who became warlocks by killing other witches to steal their powers). The first male witch explicitly identified as such that we meet is Max, a thirteen-year-old boy who inherited his power of psychokinesis from his witch mother. (Max, his father, and his mother are all Black --- this is something not even the 2018 reboot did, by the way, despite two-thirds of that show's heroines being Afro-Latina.)
I could do without a male version of the Charmed Ones, because, frankly, men are not lacking in that sort of representation in other media: John Constantine, Doctor Strange, Tony Stark/Iron Man, Marvel Comics' take on Thor and Loki. Powerful male characters with superpowers (supernatural or scientific) are a dime a dozen. The Charmed Ones themselves are undermined in the later seasons with the introduction of Wyatt, whom one of the Whitelighter Elders conspires to kill in season 6 because they are so scared of his power level: that it's too much for one person to have. More, that he's the son of a Charmed One and a Whitelighter born on a Wiccan Sabbat, and the Warren line of witches was destined to become more powerful. This is also after Brad Kern, a straight cisgender man, took over the position of showrunner and executive producer from Constance M. Burge, the woman who created the series.
Charmed does not need a male version of the Charmed Ones, and fanboys pushing for it after coming into a female-led, female-created show, in a fandom primarily dominated by women and LGBTQ+ people (both, even!) have missed the point entirely.
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ao3feed-bunny · 3 months
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whatisonthemoon · 1 year
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US-Funding in Post-War Japan
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Excerpted from "Kishi and Corruption: An Anatomy of the 1955 System" by Richard J. Samuels (Japan Policy Research Institute - Working Paper No. 83, December 2001)
Using American Money
Kishi brilliantly exploited American paranoia about communism during the Cold War. The historian Michael Schaller reports that Ambassador Douglas MacArthur II convinced Secretary of State John Foster Dulles that the United States had to support Kishi or risk losing the alliance. Kishi returned triumphant from his June 1957 visit to Washington with promises that the security treaty would be revised and, possibly, with promises of secret funding from the Central Intelligence Agency. There have been rumors for decades about a secret "M-Fund" that was constructed out of surplus military materiel that came under allied control at the war's end in 1945. These stockpiles allegedly included rare metals and diamonds, proceeds from the sale of which were used by General Marquat, chief of SCAP's Economic and Science Section (hence "M"-Fund) as a sort of Japan-specific secret Marshall Plan to stimulate the postwar Japanese economy. The Fund was probably also used to underwrite the sudden (and unbudgeted) formation of the National Police Reserve at the start of the Korean War and to buy conservative political support for the alliance with the United States.According to journalists, M-Fund disbursements went to two channels. One was to mainstream conservatives led by Yoshida Shigeru. A separate channel was purportedly opened to Kishi Nobusuke to help sustain the anti-mainstream group. Both were allegedly managed jointly with U.S. officials. Former U.S. Assistant Attorney General Norbert Schlei alleges that Vice President Nixon turned over exclusive control of the M-Fund to Kishi (presumably during their 1957 Washington meeting) and that this was when things changed: "Beginning with Prime Minister Kishi, the Fund has been treated as a private preserve of the individuals into whose control it has fallen. Those individuals have felt able to appropriate huge sums from the Fund for their own personal and political purposes. . . . The litany of abuses begins with Kishi who, after obtaining control of the fund from (then Vice President Richard) Nixon, helped himself to a fortune of one trillion yen. . . . Kakuei Tanaka, who dominated the Fund for longer than any other individual, took from it personally some ten trillion yen. . . . Others who are said to have obtained personal fortunes from the Fund include Mrs. Eisaku Sato . . . and Masaharu Gotoda, a Nakasone ally and former chief cabinet secretary."All, some, or none of this may be true, but we know for certain that Kishi and his brother Sato Eisaku frequently approached Ambassador MacArthur to play the anti-communist card in the hope of securing financial support. According to Kishi's own account, he frequently used the good offices of his friend, Harry Kern, a former Newsweek Bureau Chief, to make arrangements for him at the U.S. embassy in Tokyo. Declassified U.S. State Department records note efforts by Sato, then Kishi's Finance Minister, to seek U.S. funds "to combat extremist forces." In July 1958, Sato met secretly with one S. S. Carpenter, the First Secretary of the U.S. Embassy. According to Carpenter's declassified memorandum of a conversation on July 25, 1958, Sato explained that a "secret organization (of) top business and financial leaders" had been established by the LDP and that this group had "contributed heavily" to the recent electoral campaign. Sato explained that they would shortly have to return to these business leaders for an expensive upper house campaign and felt that the LDP and the zaikai could not "combat communism" alone. If there was already an M-Fund to cover these requests, Carpenter did not let on. He told Sato that the Ambassador "had always tried to help Mr. Kishi and the Conservatives in every way possible,"but he declined to authorize the funds Sato was seeking. In short, it is plausible but not yet demonstrable that Kishi Nobusuke played a central role in establishing a financial relationship between conservative Japanese politicians and the government of the United States.
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