i think one of my least favorite troupes in tf2 fanfics has to be scout finds x and y are dating and freaks out/starts being openly homophobic towards them because "canon typical homophobia"

they are mercenaries. fucking contract killers. do you think anyone gives a flying fuck about homosexuality being illegal? you see, they are ok with murder and gruesome violence, HOWEVER they draw the line at two men holding hands because the words on the paper say it's a no no

he would probably tease them because, that's normal that's what friends and annoying coworkers do. and sometimes he might step on a line. but my dear friends. if scout was genuinely homophobic to any of the other mercs, im afraid he wouldn't survive the winter (irse a mimir). he would get snapped by a twig and it doesn't even have to be by the merc he was insulting. anyone in the vicinity would suplex his ass. son, we all suck dick here. get used to it

i'm definitely planning to vote but damn. it's like... constant? it's always been like this? it just sucks forever? and we just do the thing we've always done so that it gets the least bad it could get? while it all continues to get worse? that sucks.

unless you yourself are planning some kind of massive militarized coup to effect an immediate upheaval of the us government for the 100% certain betterment of the people then yeah you have to fucking vote bc positive change is neither swift nor linear and you have a responsibility to everyone around you not to act like a whiny little bitch just because you personally do not have the vision nor experience to understand that things really do get better when you exercise your civil rights

Former White House doctor Ronny Jackson is now a House member. He takes reliably MAGA positions on issues before Congress. It looks like Jackson may have picked up an aversion to the truth from his former colleague George Santos.

On his congressional website, the Texas Republican describes himself as a “retired U.S. Navy Rear Admiral with nearly three decades of military service.” But that leaves out one big omission—that Jackson was demoted from the senior naval flag rank to captain in July 2022. That move came after the Pentagon inspector general released a scathing report on Jackson’s behavior while serving in Donald Trump’s White House, including that the doctor—who had retired from the Navy in 2019—berated, drank with, and sexually harassed subordinates while serving as the director of the White House medical unit. Jackson was also accused of popping Ambien throughout the workday. Those revelations came with a $15,000 cut in annual pension payouts for a 24-year veteran like Jackson, as well as social stigma within the ranks. “The substantiated allegations in the [Department of Defense inspector general] investigation of Rear [Adm.] (lower half) Ronny Jackson are not in keeping with the standards the Navy requires of its leaders and, as such, the secretary of the Navy took administrative action in July 2022,” Lt. Cmdr. Joe Keiley, a Navy spokesman, told The Washington Post. Jackson casually dismissed the report in his July 2022 memoir, Holding the Line, conveniently skipping over the part where he was formally demoted.

In early 2018 Jackson's bizarrely bullish report about Trump's health made national news.

Dr. Ronny Jackson’s glowing bill of health for Trump

The press briefing he gave at the White House was widely mocked and inspired a sketch on Saturday Night Live.

Two months after that fabulist medical report, Trump tried to appoint Jackson as Secretary of Veterans Affairs to his revolving door cabinet. The move was widely viewed as a reward for services rendered. In April, Jackson was forced to withdraw from consideration. He was too corrupt even for a position in the Trump administration. 😱

Ronny Jackson withdraws as VA secretary nominee

The Jackson scandal is a reminder that we still lack direct credible information on Trump's physical or mental health. Considering that Trump apparently drinks 12 Diet Cokes® a day and is a notorious consumer of junk food, the true state of his health is probably far worse than what Dr. Jackson or Trump's self-reporting reveal.

So I’ve been a lurker on your blog for a decent while now but I’ve only just recently put it together that you teach high school. I’m not a teacher (yet), but I’m working on my Music Education degree right now and I do plan on teaching at the high school level as younger kids terrify me. Would you happen to have any advice or just general thoughts on the subject of teaching?

It's good you know what group of kids may be manageable to you, I have p bad memory, but I have to trust myself cause these HS kids are so good at gaslighting or omitting truth that they will make you doubt yourself. Please be sure to keep your trust in yourself. And always follow through with your consequences. Unfortunately, I can't always be immune but I quickly gain a form of respect, they don't push me but they play at the boundary with me.

Plan your classroom management, that will be your biggest weapon even if it takes them 2 months to get used to it, it is ESSENTIAL. That gives them a form of expectation to follow through.

sometimes even elementary tactics help. Annunciate your voice and keep an even tone, lock down the teacher's stare, and most importantly. Find yourself a teacher friend, who does not have to share the same content, just someone you can eat with.

The biggest thing is, don't forget these kids have 10,000 things going on and most of them will forget to be responsible or be entirely selfish. Remind them you are human too, and that you can help to a limit but there are expectations they must meet. That you might look like a bad guy to them, but you will never be their enemy.

Now here's something to have mixed feelings about. The American Veterans' Administration is now providing gender-affirming care.

Yes, we're talking about the industrial-capitalistic American death machine. Which I've been a part of and still both love and hate. (Mostly hate.) I'm wondering if this is yet another ploy to keep recruitment numbers up because--face it, that's one hell of an incentive.

I've been referred to the Gender Affirmation clinic at my local VA and am going to start the process to get these 36Ds of mine removed. I'll let people know what the experience is like.

Fourteen Republican Senators, including Mitt Romney and Rand Paul, have voted against providing healthcare and benefits to US veterans who came home from America’s post-9/11 wars sick and dying from rare cancers and respiratory illnesses.

On Thursday, the Senate passed the SFC Heath Robinson Honoring Our PACT Act – a landmark bill that will presumptively link 23 conditions to a veterans’ exposure to burn pits while on deployment overseas.

Now, around 3.5 million US veterans who lived and worked next to the huge open-air pits will finally be given automatic access to healthcare and disability benefits if they develop one of these conditions on their return home.

The bill sailed through the Senate with largely bipartisan support, with 84 Senators voting in favour of its passage.

All Democrats voted yes to passing the bill – but 14 Republicans voted no.

The senators who voted against were: Mitt Romney and Mike Lee of Utah, Rand Paul of Kentucky, Richard Burr and Thom Tillis of North Carolina, Mike Rounds and John Thune of South Dakota, Richard Shelby and Tommy Tuberville of Alabama, James Lankford of Oklahoma, Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming, and Mike Crapo and James Risch of Idaho.

Senators Steve Daines and Roger Wicker were absent from the vote.

Despite the efforts of the 14 Republicans, the bill is likely just days away from being signed into law.

It first needs to go back to the House for passage before it can be sent to the desk of President Joe Biden.

However, passage in the House is almost certain as all Democrats and 34 Republicans voted in favour of its passage back in March, sending it sailing over the threshold with a 256 to 174 vote.

In that vote, the only lawmakers voting no were also Republicans.

Among them was Rep. Lauren Boebert, who was slammed for heckling as Mr. Biden spoke about burn pits in his State of the Union address.

The Senate has modified the House version to create a phase-in period for illnesses presumptively linked to toxic exposure, meaning a new vote is needed in the House.

During America’s post-9/11 wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, huge open-air pits were used to burn mountains of trash including food packaging, human waste and military equipment on US military bases.

Thousands of US service members returned home from deployment and developed health conditions including rare cancers, lung conditions, respiratory illnesses and toxic brain injuries caused by breathing in the toxic fumes from the pits.

But, until now, the burden of proof has always been on veterans to prove their condition is directly caused by this toxic exposure and almost 80 percent of disability claims mentioning burn pits were turned down by the Department of Veteran Affairs.

The bill was renamed in March after the Sgt First Class Heath Robinson who died in May 2020 from a rare cancer caused by breathing in toxic fumes from burn pits while serving in Iraq in the Ohio National Guard. He was 39.

Two years on from his death, the bill passed on his daughter Brielle’s ninth birthday.

Susan Zeier, his mother-in-law, said that the bill’s passage means she now no longer needs to “carry Heath on my shoulders”.

Ms. Zeier gave an emotional speech outside the Capitol after Thursday’s vote where she told how she has been wearing her son-in-law’s army jacket for the past four years to draw attention to the plight of veterans fighting for healthcare and disability access as she and other advocates lobbied the US government.

“I’ve been wearing this since the summer of 2018 and today, with this bill passing the Senate, I think it’s time to retire it,” she said.

“I no longer have to carry Heath on my shoulders while I’m advocating for all the other veterans who are out there sick and dying.”

Ms. Zeier described her son-in-law as a “wonderful father” who was “always helpful and always generous” and fought his cancer “valiantly” to “survive as long as he could for his daughter”.

Born in 1919 South Carolina into a family of sharecroppers, WWII veteran Isaac Woodard knew struggle and poverty from a very early age --dropping out of school at the age of 11 and then leaving home altogether at 15, in search of better prospects than Fairfield County. After some years laboring in a lumberyard, Woodard joined the Civilian Conservation Corps, a New Deal public work relief program. In 1942, Woodard was drafted into the U.S. Army, along with an estimated 675,000 other Black Americans. He was eventually deployed to the South Pacific in 1944, serving with the 429th Port Battalion --a segregated unit. During the brutal New Guinea campaign, Woodard saw a great deal of action and was promoted to Corporal, and then ultimately to Sergeant, earning a battle star for combat service, along with a number of other medals. Thusly decorated, Woodard was honorably discharged from service and flew home to Augusta, Georgia, where on February 12, 1946, he caught a bus back to South Carolina and his family --literally the very last leg of his long journey home.

Enroute, a stray comment from Woodard to the bus driver about rest stops swiftly led to an altercation --the bus driver deemed Woodard's "attitude" to be insufficiently deferential, resulting in a call to the Batesburg-Leeville, South Carolina police department. In very short order Woodard found himself arrested and severely beaten by police, gouging out both of his eyes. Still in his uniform, Woodard was left sightless overnight in a jail cell, only to be formally charged with "drunk and disorderly conduct" the following morning. Woodard spent the next 2 months in a VA hospital, ultimately rejoining his family in New York, where they had decided to move.

Unprepared for a life of blindness in an unfamiliar city, Woodard reached out to the NAACP, who took up his case and turned him into something of a cause célèbre for a time --even meriting publicity from such luminaries as actor Orson Welles, and musicians Nat King Cole and Billie Holiday. Woodard found himself crisscrossing the very nation he had served, recounting his story and garnering some measure of fame, though this would be of no practical help during two failed attempts to bring his attackers to trial. The ultimate measure of Woodard's notoriety came in 1948 when President Truman issued Executive Order 9981, desegregating the U.S. Armed Forces (see Lesson #68 in this series).

Woodard's time in the national spotlight soon faded and he was faced with the more immediate problem of obtaining benefits from the VA --on a technicality, since his assault and blinding happened after his term of service, he did not qualify for full benefits nor payments. Woodard was forced into public housing in the Bronx but with his family's help was ultimately able to buy the building and became a landlord, living quietly and mostly forgotten for the next decade. In 1956 an article in Jet magazine brought some measure of national attention back to his plight and eventually led Congress to pass an amended piece of legislation that would now award full disability benefits to any veteran injured between their time of discharge and their arrival at home. Further legislative improvements to VA benefits followed in the 1970s, and Woodard was able to purchase additional property in the Bronx and lived there with his sons until his death in 1992. He is buried with other U.S. veterans at Calverton National Cemetery and a plaque now marks the site in Batesburg-Leeville where Woodard was attacked and dragged from his bus.

OLD KINSMAN CEMETERY Just located the grave of my Revolutionary War ancestor Martin Tidd, thanks to work by people in the Works Progress Administration during the Great Depression. Now, I only have to figure out how to read the map. Any tips for me?

I am once again thinking about my old star wars Rogue-One-Crew-Lives-And-merges-w-og-trilogy-crew Survival-And-Community-Building-With-Themes-Of-Disability-and-undoing-the-exclusive-focus-star-wars-has-on-combat fic concept i will enver write. it could have been so good if i had literally any narrative skills

Improving Medical Records

It seems to me…. “The digital world has been in a separate orbit from our medical cocoon, and it’s time the boundaries be taken down.”  ~ Eric Topol[1]. Progress in the medical field has, in general, been considerable slower than in other fields though more is invested in medical research.  In some ways, there has been relatively little progress since the days of primitive shamans and medicine…

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The VA saved my life. If you are a veteran and need help reach out to them. There is HOPE.

Liberty call Via Flickr: 240301-N-KC192-1051 PORTSMOUTH, Va. (March 1, 2024) Members with the Defense Health Agency (DHA), and Defense Health Network (DHN) Atlantic, Navy Medicine Readiness and Training Command (NMRTC) Portsmouth and Veterans Health Administration (VA) leadership pose for a group photo after discussing training and partnership in the DHA Naval Medical Center Portsmouth military treatment facility on board Naval Support Activity (NSA) Hampton Roads-Portsmouth Annex, March 1, 2024. DHA and VA leadership toured shore and at-sea platforms in the Hampton Roads area, which showcased Navy Medicine quality healthcare and patient safety capabilities. (U.S. Navy photo Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Decker)

PT 4 Torn Rotator cuffs

Hello, this is Fitness Helper. I’m glad you reached out to me for some guidance on physical therapy for torn rotator cuffs. 😊A rotator cuff tear is a common injury that affects the tendons and muscles in your shoulder. It can cause pain, weakness, and reduced range of motion in your shoulder joint. Depending on the severity of your injury, you may benefit from different types of physical therapy…

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"MAJOR HUGHES AT WINNIPEG," Kingston Daily Standard. May 16, 1913. Page 1. ---- Was Inspecting Stoney Mountain Prison. ---- When Interviewed by Free Press the Inspector Recalled Battle of Batoche. ---- The Manitoba Free Press, Winnipeg, in its issue of Tuesday, May 18, has the following which will be of interest to Kingstonians:

Major W. S. Hughes, inspector of penitentiaries for the Dominion government and brother of the Hon. Col. Sam Hughes, minister of Militia, is at present in Winnipeg in connection with his duties and is staying at the Royal Alexandria hotel. This is the major's first visit to the west in his capacity of inspector; though he was in Winnipeg two years ago on other business.

Major Hughes has just returned from a visit of inspection to Stoney Mountain penitentiary, and reported everything there working smoothly. He spoke most interestingly last night of his general impressions of Stoney Mountain penitentiary, and said that there was considerable improvement going on there just now. The old building was recognized to be quite out of date, and the authorities are gradually removing part and replacing it. At present they are completing the wall the institution. One cell wing has been built by the convicts themselves and the work was a credit to them. It is the intention to continue the work of improvement until the buildings are brought into line with the best of their kind. The convicts are also engaged in macadamizing the road and have an officer with five men and team working on this. The stone for the work is being brought from the city quarries.

The major spoke in appreciative tones of the work of Capt. Ponsford, the new warden, who had quickly got into touch with his duties.

Major Hughes has been engaged in penitentiary work for the last 23 years. Until his appointment to his present post he was at Kingston, where for a long period he was асcountant and clerk of industries in the penitentiary, and later chief keep- er and clerk of industries.

Major Hughes is an old timer of the city, having lived here from 1888 to 1885. He has had a varied, and extensive initiative experience and is at present Major of the 7th Infantry Brigade. He was engaged with the 90th regiment in the Riel rebellion of 1885, and last evening recalled the interesting fact that it was just 28 years ago to the day that they drove Riel out of Batoche, an event which ended the rebellion. The action leading to this successful issue really began on May 7, when Gen. Middleton's force left the camp at Fish Creek and advanced toward Batoche, but it was not until May 12 that the final attack was made and victory gained.

Incidentally, the major spoke most enthusiastically of the military parade of Sunday last, and declared that even old Toronto could not eclipse the showing that was made. Naturally he was specially interested in his old regiment, the 90th and thought they looked a fine set of men.

Major Hughes will shortly continue his journey west, and will make visits of inspection to the penitentiaries at Prince Albert, Edmonton and New Westminster, B.C. His trip will likely last about a month.

As I adjust to my new PTSD diagnosis, I have discovered that - as with all things on the 21st century - there's an app for that.