#numerical problems based on concentration

[shinjirev]

The Bizarre Adventures of Ritsu Shinjo Legal Consultant. Ep 1 – Ritsu in Love ENGLISH VERSION

After months and months of attending classes and going on joint missions with the scholarship student, Ritsu had found himself, to his great surprise, attracted to the latter. It is easy to imagine his sense of bewilderment towards a feeling so irrational and so inappropriate to his role and which, moreover, as if that were not enough, risked getting in the way of his race for the laurel crown by providing him with a reason for distraction.

So Ritsu, as was his custom, continued, with indifference towards his own irrational feelings, to carry out his tasks with meticulousness and concentration. However, the thought of the scholarship student did not seem to abandon him no matter how much he tried to ignore it and chase it away. It was therefore in this state of annoyance towards his own feelings that he decided: he would officially ask the scholarship student out.

Before acting so passionately, however, he consulted many essays on the typical practices of courtship and learned by heart the sectoral lexicon and all that set of situations and interlocutory exchanges that could be considered ROMANTIC without fear of overestimation. There was only one problem. The materials consulted were numerous and full of diversified opinions based on different studies and even more disparate contexts. Ritsu therefore could not help but find himself annoyed by all this overabundance of material that was difficult to catalogue and rationalize.

What did he know about love, after all? But above all, what should he do or say to make her reciprocate? In order to try to get a convincing answer to this doubt, he decided to behave in the only way he knew how: like a lawyer. He thought about the words to choose to make his speech more persuasive for when he would invite her, he looked for the best strategies to maximize his chances of success based on the data relating to the girl's behavioral habits. He even pretended to be in court rather than in a school. In short, after a whole series of insurmountable and - let's be honest - superfluous paranoia, he decided that the time had come to try his approach.

Next ep. Tomorrow ❤️

[lonestarbattleship]

The real story behind the lean by Tom Scott

"Like a case of herpes, exaggerated versions of TEXAS 'flooding herself' to 'lean the ship' and extend range of her guns pops up from time to time. It is hard to think of an action that has been more exaggerated or misstated than this one. The following is based upon the ship's war diary, daily deck log entries and study of a flooding effects chart for the ship.

Flooding torpedo blisters to create list wasn't some last minute stroke of genius by TEXAS' captain and crew. The act had not only been performed numerous times on British monitors in the 1920's, it was understood by the U.S. Naval War College and likely taught there. This was documented in a letter written in 1925 from the college's superintendent to the Chief of Naval Operations. It requested information on the ability to flood the blisters being added to TEXAS and how long it would take to flood them. The request specified that it be done with the intent of creating list that would extend the range of her 14" guns.

The fire mission given to TEXAS on June 15 was apparently sent to the ship during the early morning while she was at her overnight anchorage 1.5 miles off of Point du Hoc. The assigned target was a German troop and truck concentration located more than 20,000 yards from the assigned bombardment point. This placed the target at or just beyond the extreme range of the ship's 14" guns While we do not know precisely which sections were flooded, a flooding effects table on a damage control plate, shows that they could obtain the needed list perfectly by flooding a specific 4 of the 18 floodable sections in the starboard blister. This would have given 2.2 degrees of starboard list while maintaining the ship's trim. Maintaining trim was critical since any change would have created trunnion tilt error on the guns that would degrade their accuracy.

TEXAS raised anchor at 05:30 and sailed to the bombardment point 5.8 miles away that was about 2 miles offshore. While underway, she opened flooding valves on some starboard blister compartments to create the 2 degree list. That was complete by the time she dropped anchor and fired her first rounds at 6:30.

An entry in the daily deck log states that 24 rounds were fired in single and two gun salvos over the next hour, and that the target area was covered and eliminated. Nothing was stated in the logs, but it is assumed that the blisters were immediately drained, using the ship's big steam operated bilge pumps, after completing the mission to restore proper list.

All of this is to say that Captain Baker and crew were well read, well educated and fully understood their ship's capabilities. While they didn't invent the technique, they were certainly aware of it and understood it well enough to immediately use to solve a problem that would otherwise result in failure to complete the mission."

Posted on the Battleship Texas Foundation Group Facebook page by Tom Scott: link

[erbiumspectrum]

Hi! Do you have any tips for studying chemistry? For some reason I cant seem to get all the formulas in my brain.

Hey!

My unhelpful but still favorite advice for shoving formulas into one's brain is to understand them 😅 A purely memorization-based approach is very bad for chemistry.

If the problem seems to be particularly understanding/ remembering formulas:

Ask yourself if this particular formula is just words turned into numbers and mathematical symbols. I think it may not work for everyone, but for example I found it easier to remember the literal definition of pH that is "the negative decimal logarithm of hydrogen ion concentration" rather than "pH = -log [H+]" bc otherwise I'd keep forgetting about the minus sign.

Check if you find deriving a formula from another formula easier than just memorizing it. Again, my personal example is I hate memorizing things so much I never really bothered to remember the equation that describes Ostwald's law of dilution - bc I knew I could easily, quickly, and painlessly derive it from the equilibrium constant for concentration + degree of dissociation (and I've done it so many times now it stuck in my brain anyway).

When all else fails, I turn to mnemotechnics. To this day I remember that Clapeyron's equation goes pV = nRT because many years ago someone on the internet shared a funny sentence whose words start with these 5 letters. The sillier the better.

If the issue is with chemistry in general:

Take it chapter by chapter. Chemistry, like most STEM subjects, is just blocks of knowledge upon blocks of knowledge. For example, if you want to learn electrolysis, you need to understand redox reactions first. Try to identify where the struggle begins and work from there.

Once you've picked a topic you want to work on, follow the reasoning in your textbook. If you get stuck, that might be a sign you're simply missing a piece of information from a previous chapter. If an example comes up, try to solve it along with the tips in the textbook.

If anything remains unclear, it's usually not the best idea to just leave it and move on. If the textbook becomes unhelpful, turn to the internet or maybe a friend. Otherwise, the next chapter may just turn out to be needlessly confusing.

Practice problems practice problems practice problems!! And not just the numerical ones. The theory-based ones where they ask you about reactions, orbitals, the properties of the elements etc. are important too.

Choose understanding over memorizing whenever possible.

Try to look at the big picture: the way certain concepts are intertwined, how one law may be a logical consequence of another law you learnt before, why some concepts are taught together, why you had to learn something else first to get to what you're studying now. Again, as an example, I think it's particularly fun to see towards the end of ochem, somewhere around the biomolecules: you need to integrate your knowledge of aromatic compounds, ketones and aldehydes, alcohols, carboxylic acids... Stack new information upon what you already know.

Study methods I'm a big fan of: spaced repetition, solving past papers (anything I can get my hands on tbh), flashcards for the things I absolutely have to memorize, exchanging questions and answers with a friend, watching related videos.

If by any chance you end up taking pchem, I have a post for that specifically.

I hope you can find something helpful here :) Good luck!

[dailyanarchistposts]

I.1.3 What is wrong with markets anyway?

A lot. Markets soon result in what are termed “market forces,” impersonal forces which ensure that the people in the economy do what is required of them in order for the economy to function. The market system, in capitalist apologetics, is presented to appear as a regime of freedom where no one forces anyone to do anything, where we “freely” exchange with others as we see fit. However, the facts of the matter are somewhat different, since the market often ensures that people act in ways opposite to what they desire or forces them to accept “free agreements” which they may not actually desire. Wage labour is the most obvious example of this, for, as we indicated in section B.4, most people have little option but to agree to work for others.

We must stress here that not all anarchists are opposed to the market. Individualist anarchists favour it while Proudhon wanted to modify it while retaining competition. For many, the market equals capitalism but this is not the case as it ignores the fundamental issue of (economic) class, namely who owns the means of production. Capitalism is unique in that it is based on wage labour, i.e. a market for labour as workers do not own their own means of production and have to sell themselves to those who do. Thus it is entirely possible for a market to exist within a society and for that society not to be capitalist. For example, a society of independent artisans and peasants selling their product on the market would not be capitalist as workers would own and control their means of production. Similarly, Proudhon’s competitive system of self-managed co-operatives and mutual banks would be non-capitalist (and socialist) for the same reason. Anarchists object to capitalism due to the quality of the social relationships it generates between people (i.e. it generates authoritarian ones). If these relationships are eliminated then the kinds of ownership which do so are anarchistic. Thus the issue of ownership matters only in-so-far it generates relationships of the desired kind (i.e. those based on liberty, equality and solidarity). To concentrate purely on “markets” or “property” means to ignore social relationships and the key aspect of capitalism, namely wage labour. That right-wingers do this is understandable (to hide the authoritarian core of capitalism) but why (libertarian or other) socialists should do so is less clear.

In this section of the FAQ we discuss anarchist objections to the market as such rather than the capitalist market. The workings of the market do have problems with them which are independent of, or made worse by, the existence of wage-labour. It is these problems which make most anarchists hostile to the market and so desire a (libertarian) communist society. So, even if we assume a mutualist (a libertarian market-socialist) system of competing self-managed workplaces, then communist anarchists would argue that market forces would soon result in many irrationalities occurring.

Most obviously, operating in a market means submitting to the profit criterion. This means that however much workers might want to employ social criteria in their decision making, they cannot. To ignore profitability would cause their firm to go bankrupt. Markets, therefore, create conditions that compel producers to decide things which are not be in their, or others, interest, such as introducing deskilling or polluting technology, working longer hours, and so on, in order to survive on the market. For example, a self-managed workplace will be more likely to invest in safe equipment and working practices, this would still be dependent on finding the money to do so and may still increase the price of their finished product. So we could point to the numerous industrial deaths and accidents which are due to market forces making it unprofitable to introduce adequate safety equipment or working conditions, (conservative estimates for industrial deaths in the USA are between 14,000 and 25,000 per year plus over 2 million disabled), or to increased pollution and stress levels which shorten life spans.

This tendency for self-managed firms to adjust to market forces by increasing hours, working more intensely, allocating resources to accumulating equipment rather than leisure time or consumption can be seen in co-operatives under capitalism. While lacking bosses may reduce this tendency in a post-capitalist economy, it will not eliminate it. This is why many socialists, including anarchists, call the way markets force unwilling members of a co-operatives make such unpleasant decisions a form of “self-exploitation” (although this is somewhat misleading, as there no exploitation in the capitalist sense of owners appropriating unpaid labour). For communist-anarchists, a market system of co-operatives “has serious limitations” as “a collective enterprise is not necessarily a commune — nor is it necessarily communistic in its outlook.” This is because it can end up “competing with like concerns for resources, customers, privileges, and even profits” as they “become a particularistic interest” and “are subjected to the same social pressures by the market in which they must function.” This “tends increasingly to encroach on their higher ethical goals — generally, in the name of ‘efficiency’, and the need to ‘grow’ if they are to survive, and the overwhelming temptation to acquire larger earnings.” [Murray Bookchin, Remaking Society, pp. 193–4]

Similarly, a market of self-managed firms would still suffer from booms and slumps as the co-operatives response to changes in prices would still result in over-production (see section C.7.2) and over-investment (see section C.7.3). While the lack of non-labour income would help reduce the severity of the business cycle, it seems unlikely to eliminate it totally. Equally, many of the problems of market-increased uncertainty and the destabilising aspects of price signals discussed in section I.1.5 are just as applicable to all markets, including post-capitalist ones.

This is related to the issue of the “tyranny of small decisions” we highlighted in section B.6. This suggests that the aggregate effect of individual decisions produces social circumstances which are irrational and against the interests of those subject to them. This is the case with markets, where competition results in economic pressures which force its participants to act in certain ways, ways they would prefer not to do but, as isolated individuals or workplaces, end up doing due to market forces. In markets, it is rational for people try to buy cheap and sell dear. Each tries to maximise their income by either minimising their costs or maximising their prices, not because they particularly want to but because they need to as taking into account other priorities is difficult as there is no means of finding them out and deeply inadvisable as it is competitively suicidal as it places burdens on firms which their competitors need not face.

As we noted in section E.3, markets tend to reward those who act in anti-social ways and externalise costs (in terms of pollution and so on). In a market economy, it is impossible to determine whether a low cost reflects actual efficiency or a willingness to externalise, i.e., impose costs on others. Markets rarely internalise external costs. Two economic agents who strike a market-rational bargain between themselves need not consider the consequences of their bargain for other people outside their bargain, nor the consequences for the earth. In reality, then, market exchanges are never bilateral agreements as their effects impact on the wider society (in terms of, say, pollution, inequality and so on). This awkward fact is ignored in the market. As the left-wing economist Joan Robinson put it: “In what industry, in what line of business, are the true social costs of the activity registered in its accounts? Where is the pricing system that offers the consumer a fair choice between air to breath and motor cars to drive about in?” [Contribution to Modern Economics, p. 10]

While, to be fair, there will be a reduced likelihood for a workplace of self-employed workers to pollute their own neighbourhoods in a free society, the competitive pressures and rewards would still be there and it seems unlikely that they will be ignored, particularly if survival on the market is at stake so communist-anarchists fear that while not having bosses, capitalists and landlords would mitigate some of the irrationalities associated with markets under capitalism, it will not totally remove them. While the market may be free, people would not be.

Even if we assume that self-managed firms resist the temptations and pressures of the market, any market system is also marked by a continuing need to expand production and consumption. In terms of environmental impact, a self-managed firm must still make profits in order to survive and so the economy must grow. As such, every market system will tend to expand into an environment which is of fixed size. As well as placing pressure on the planet’s ecology, this need to grow impacts on human activity as it also means that market forces ensure that work continually has to expand. Competition means that we can never take it easy, for as Max Stirner argued, ”[r]estless acquisition does not let us take breath, take a calm enjoyment. We do not get the comfort of our possessions … Hence it is at any rate helpful that we come to an agreement about human labours that they may not, as under competition, claim all our time and toil.” [The Ego and Its Own, p. 268] Value needs to be created, and that can only be done by labour and so even a non-capitalist market system will see work dominate people’s lives. Thus the need to survive on the market can impact on broader (non-monetary) measures of welfare, with quality of life falling as a higher GDP is created as the result of longer working hours with fewer holidays. Such a regime may, perhaps, be good for material wealth but it is not great for people.

The market can also block the efficient use of resources. For example, for a long time energy efficient light-bulbs were much more expensive than normal ones. Over the long period, however, they used far less energy than normal ones, meaning less need to produce more energy (and so burn coal and oil, for example). However, the high initial price ensured that most people continued to use the less efficient bulbs and so waste resources. Much the same can be said of alternative forms of energy, with investment in (say) wind energy ignored in favour of one-use and polluting energy sources. A purely market system would not allow decisions which benefit the long-term interests of people to be made (for example, by distributing energy-efficient light-bulbs freely or at a reduced cost) as these would harm the profits of those co-operatives which tried to do so.

Also, markets do not reflect the values of things we do not put a price upon (as we argued in section B.5). It cannot protect wilderness, for example, simply because it requires people to turn it into property and sell it as a commodity. If you cannot afford to visit the new commodity, the market turns it into something else, no matter how much you value it. The market also ignores the needs of future generations as they always discount the value of the long term future. A payment to be made 1,000 years from now (a mere speck in geological time) has a market value of virtually zero according to any commonly used discount rate. Even 50 years in the future cannot be adequately considered as competitive pressures force a short term perspective on people harmful to present and future generations, plus the ecology of the planet.

Then there are corrosive effects of the market on human personalities. As we have argued elsewhere (see section B.1.3), competition in a free market creates numerous problems — for example, the creation of an “ethics of mathematics” and the strange inversion of values in which things (property/money) become more important than people. This can have a de-humanising effect, with people becoming cold-hearted calculators who put profits before people. This can be seen in capitalism, where economic decisions are far more important than ethical ones — particularly as such an inhuman mentality can be rewarded on the market. Merit does not necessarily breed success, and the successful do not necessarily have merit. The truth is that, in the words of Noam Chomsky, “wealth and power tend to accrue to those who are ruthless, cunning, avaricious, self-seeking, lacking in sympathy and compassion, subservient to authority and willing to abandon principle for material gain, and so on … Such qualities might be just the valuable ones for a war of all against all.” [For Reasons of State, pp. 139–140]

Needless to be said, if the market does reward such people with success it can hardly be considered as a good thing. A system which elevates making money to the position of the most important individual activity will obviously result in the degrading of human values and an increase in neurotic and psychotic behaviour. Little wonder, as Alfie Kohn has argued, competition can have serious negative effects on us outside of work, with it damaging both our personal psychology and our interpersonal relationships. Thus competition “itself is responsible for the development of a lower moral standard” which places winning at any cost above fairness and justice. Kohn quotes Nathan Ackerman, the father of family therapy, who noted that the “strife of competition reduces empathic sympathy, distorts communication, impairs the mutuality of support and sharing, and decreases the satisfaction of personal need.” [No Contest, p. 163 and pp. 142–3] Thus, the market can impoverish us as individuals, sabotaging self-esteem, promoting conformity, ruining relationships and making us less than what we could be. This is a problem of markets as such, not only capitalist ones and so non-capitalist markets could make us less human and more a robot.

All market decisions are crucially conditioned by the purchasing power of those income groups that can back their demands with money. Not everyone can work (the sick, the very old, children and so forth) and for those who can, personal circumstances may impact on their income. Moreover, production has become so interwoven that it “is utterly impossible to draw a distinction between the work of each” and so we should “put the needs above the works, and first of all to recognise the right to live, and later on the right to well-being for all those who took their share in production.” This is particularly the case as “the needs of the individual, do not always correspond to his works” — for example, “a man of forty, father of three children, has other needs than a young man of twenty” and “the woman who suckles her infant and spends sleepless nights at its bedside, cannot do as much work as the man who has slept peacefully.” [Kropotkin, Conquest of Bread, p. 170 and p. 171] This was why communist-anarchists like Kropotkin stressed the need not only to abolish wage-labour but also money, the wages system.

So it goes without saying that purchasing power (demand) and need are not related, with people often suffering simply because they do not have the money required to purchase, say, health care, housing or food for themselves or their families. While economic distress may be less in a non-capitalist market system, it still would exist as would the fear of it. The market is a continuous bidding for goods, resources, and services, with those who have the most purchasing power the winners. This means that the market system is the worst one for allocating resources when purchasing power is unequally distributed (this is why orthodox economists make the convenient assumption of a “given distribution of income” when they try to show that a capitalist allocation of resources is the best one via “Pareto optimality”). While a mutualist system should reduce inequality drastically, it cannot be assumed that inequalities will not increase over time. This is because inequalities in resources leads to inequalities of power on the market and, assuming self-interest, any trade or contract will benefit the powerful more than the powerless, so re-enforcing and potentially increasing the inequalities and power between the parties. Similarly, while an anarchist society would be created with people driven by a sense of solidarity and desire for equality, markets tend to erode those feelings and syndicates or communes which, thanks to the resources they control (such as rare raw materials or simply the size of their investments reducing competitive pressures) have an advantage on the market may be tempted to use their monopoly power vis-à-vis other groups in society to accrue more income for themselves at the expense of less fortunate syndicates and communes. This could degenerate back into capitalism as any inequalities that exist between co-operatives would be increased by competition, forcing weaker co-operatives to fail and so creating a pool of workers with nothing to sell but their labour. The successful co-operatives could then hire those workers and so re-introduce wage labour. So these possibilities could, over time, lead to a return a post-capitalist market system to capitalism if the inequalities become so great that the new rich become so alienated from the rest of society they recreate wage-labour and, by necessity, a state to enforce a desire for property in land and the means of production against public opinion.

All this ensures that the market cannot really provide the information necessary for rational-decision making in terms of ecological impact as well as human activity and so resources are inefficiently allocated. We all suffer from the consequences of that, with market forces impoverishing our environment and quality of life. Thus are plenty of reasons for concluding that efficiency and the market not only do not necessarily coincide, but, indeed, necessarily do not coincide. Indeed, rather than respond to individual needs, the market responds to money (more correctly, profit), which by its very nature provides a distorted indication of individual preferences (and does not take into account values which are enjoyed collectively, such as clean air, or potentially enjoyed, such as the wilderness a person may never visit but desires to see exist and protected).

This does not mean that social anarchists propose to “ban” the market — far from it. This would be impossible. What we do propose is to convince people that a profit-based market system has distinctly bad effects on individuals, society and the planet’s ecology, and that we can organise our common activity to replace it with libertarian communism. As Max Stirner argued, competition “has a continued existence” because “all do not attend to their affair and come to an understanding with each other about it … . Abolishing competition is not equivalent to favouring the guild. The difference is this: In the guild baking, etc., is the affair of the guild-brothers; in competition, the affair of chance competitors; in the union, of those who require baked goods, and therefore my affair, yours, the affair of neither guildic nor the concessionary baker, but the affair of the united.” [Op. Cit., p. 275]

Therefore, social anarchists do not appeal purely to altruism in their struggle against the de-humanising effects of the market, but also to to egoism: the simple fact that co-operation and mutual aid is in our best interests as individuals. By co-operating and controlling “the affairs of the united,” we can ensure a free society which is worth living in, one in which the individual is not crushed by market forces and has time to fully develop his or her individuality and uniqueness:

“Solidarity is therefore the state of being in which Man attains the greatest degree of security and wellbeing; and therefore egoism itself, that is the exclusive consideration of one’s own interests, impels Man and human society towards solidarity.” [Errico Malatesta, Anarchy, p. 30]

In conclusion then, communist-anarchists argue that even non-capitalist markets would result in everyone being so busy competing to further their “self-interest” that they would loose sight of what makes life worth living and so harm their actual interests. Ultimately, what counts as self-interest is shaped by the surrounding social system. The pressures of competing may easily result in short-term and narrow interests taking precedence over richer, deeper needs and aspirations which a communal system could allow to flourish by providing the social institutions by which individuals can discuss their joint interests, formulate them and act to achieve them. That is, even non-capitalist markets would result in people simply working long and hard to survive on the market rather than living. If one paradox of authoritarian socialism is that it makes everyone miserable by forcing them to altruistically look out for the happiness of others, market-based libertarian socialism could produce the potential paradox of making everyone miserable by the market forcing them to pursue a limited notion of self-interest which ensures that they do not have the time or opportunity to really be happy and at one with themselves and others.

In other words, bosses act as they do under capitalism in part because markets force them to. Getting rid of bosses need not eliminate all the economic pressures which influence the bosses’ decisions and, in turn, could force groups of workers to act in similar ways. Thus a competitive system would undermine many of the benefits which people sought when they ended capitalism. This is why some socialists inaccurately call socialist schemes of competing co-operatives “self-managed capitalism” or “self-exploitation” — they are simply drawing attention to the negative aspects of markets which getting rid of the boss cannot solve. Significantly, Proudhon was well aware of the negative aspect of market forces and suggested various institutional structures, such as the ago-industrial federation, to combat them (so while in favour of competition he was, unlike the individualist anarchists, against the free market). Communist anarchists, unsurprisingly, argue that individualist anarchists tend to stress the positive aspects of competition while ignoring or downplaying its negative sides. While, undoubtedly, capitalism makes the negative side of competition worse than it could be it does not automatically follow that a non-capitalist market would not have similar, if smaller, negative aspects to it.

[mariacallous]

Heat Waves Are Unleashing a Deadly but Overlooked Pollutant

Indian cities, afflicted by rising temperatures and poor air quality, are becoming hot spots of ozone pollution, which has proven a difficul

Lutyens’ Delhi is one of the most iconic neighborhoods of India’s capital. Home to the country’s parliament, numerous embassies, and a lush, 90-acre Mughal-era park, it’s an architectural paradise, connected by tree-lined streets and roundabouts with mini-gardens. Yet despite being one of the city’s most refined districts, this clean, green neighborhood is home to something sinister. It is a hot spot for a dangerous and overlooked air pollutant: ozone.

India is no stranger to pollution, with many of its cities reporting some of the worst air quality in the world. Every winter, New Delhi gets shrouded in smog for days. But discussions about air pollution and policies to mitigate it mostly focus on particulate matter: PM2.5 and PM10—small particles or droplets that are only a few microns in diameter. However, scientists are increasingly raising the alarm about surface ozone. It’s a secondary pollutant that isn’t released from any source, forming naturally when oxides of nitrogen and volatile organic compounds—such as benzene, which is found in gasoline, or methane—react under high heat and sunlight. This makes ozone a particularly ugly modern threat—a problem that arises where pollution and climate change coincide.

“Even an hour of exposure can give you very poor health outcomes,” says Avikal Somvanshi, a researcher at the Center for Science and Environment in New Delhi. While ozone is beneficial in the high atmosphere, where it absorbs ultraviolet radiation, down on Earth’s surface, concentrations of it can be deadly. Data on its impacts is patchy, but a 2022 study estimates that ozone killed more than 400,000 people worldwide in 2019, up 46 percent since 2000. And according to the State of Global Air Report 2020, it is in India where the number of ozone deaths has increased the most over the past decade.

Ozone wreaks havoc in the respiratory tract. The gas can “inflame and damage airways” and “aggravate lung diseases like asthma,” warns the US Environmental Protection Agency. It does this by affecting the cilia, the microscopic hair-like structures that line the airways to help protect them, explains Karthik Balajee, a clinician and community medicine specialist based in Karaikal, India. After exposure “we are more prone to respiratory infections,” he says, adding that inhaling ozone also affects lung capacity. Studies show that long-term exposure is associated with an increased risk of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, a lung disease that makes it hard to breathe, and increases the risk of dying from other cardiovascular or respiratory conditions. Even short-term exposure can land you in the emergency room. “One or two days following a peak in ozone, there have been increases in hospital admissions due to respiratory problems,” says Balajee.

Delhi and other major Indian cities see spikes in ozone throughout the year, but particularly during summer heat waves, which have become increasingly common due to climate change. The World Health Organization says that exposure to ozone in the air, across an eight-hour period, shouldn’t exceed 50 parts per billion; India’s air quality standard says this WHO limit shouldn’t be broken on more than eight days a year, and not on two consecutive days. But analysis by Somvanshi and his colleagues has found that ozone has already exceeded limits in Delhi and its surrounding areas on 87 days between March and May this year. And they’ve seen similar results over the past three summers. And while the number of monitoring stations recording a breach of the ozone threshold was fewer this year than in previous years, the duration of the exceedance was higher. “We are not even close to compliance with the standard,” says Somvanshi.

Part of what’s driving this problem is ozone’s complicated relationship with other air pollutants. Ozone formation is a cyclic reaction, meaning that after it’s generated by reactions between air pollutants, ozone gets converted back to oxygen when it reacts again with pollutants in the air, such as oxides of nitrogen. But if those pollutants are not present after ozone has formed, it lingers. That’s why ozone levels shot up during India’s Covid-19 lockdown in the summer of 2020, when traffic screeched to a halt—the air pollutants needed to convert it back to oxygen weren’t being produced. It’s also why ozone is often found in green neighborhoods like Lutyens’ Delhi—because their air is cleaner, reactions that get rid of the ozone don’t take place.

Controlling particulate pollution is relatively simple—you just regulate its sources, such as vehicles and crop burning. Reducing ozone levels is harder. “Our prediction of how ozone might respond to pollutant changes or emission changes is complicated by environmental factors,” says Steve Arnold, professor of atmospheric composition at the University of Leeds. When trying to drive levels down, everything depends on the exact mixture of the different precursor pollutants in the air, he says.

Reducing precursor gasses is one way to reduce ozone formation. But bring them down too much and you won’t have any left to neutralize the ozone that’s already present. This is exactly what has happened in China, says Arnold, where stringent policies have reduced PM2.5 pollution in recent decades but the ozone problem has worsened. “There’s a delicate balance that needs to be made,” says Somvanshi.

At present, particulate matter is India’s focus, and rightly so—it’s a bigger problem. According to Arnold’s research, 900,000 deaths in India each year are linked to PM2.5, with 374,000 linked to ozone. But in the future, we should worry more about ozone, Arnold says. He has modeled how ozone pollution in India might look in the coming years. “If you go to 2050, then the health impacts from particulate matter and the health impacts from ozone pollution become much more similar in magnitude,” he says. One reason is that researchers believe pollution control policies in the future will be more successful in mitigating particulate matter than ozone.

Arnold’s study estimated that by 2050, India could see more than a million premature deaths a year linked to ozone exposure if there is no change in emissions. Even under a strict pollution control policy, premature deaths due to ozone were estimated to be 791,000—more than twice as many as in 2015.

While the gas is a problem in other countries, it is India’s poor air quality and increasingly common heat waves that makes ozone a particularly grave threat there. And for Arnold, how the country will evolve is concerning: India will have both a growing and aging population in the coming decades—meaning more people will be exposed to ozone, and in particular, more who are vulnerable.

And it’s not just human health that is damaged. Ozone also threatens food security by causing plant yields to “reduce drastically,” says Madhoolika Agrawal, a professor in the department of botany at Banaras Hindu University. Ozone enters plants through small pores on their leaves, explains Agrawal, and then kills cells by oxidizing them. Leaves then start yellowing and the plant is unable to photosynthesize. India’s wheat crop is particularly vulnerable. The country is a major producer and aspires to be a top exporter—yet studies show it loses millions of tons of wheat and rice annually to ozone. In fact, a 2021 paper shows that ozone affects the yield and seed quality of all major crops in India. Current policies are “insufficient in reducing crop loss to ozone,” its authors write.

At present, Somvanshi says India is “not doing anything” about ozone, and that the way the country’s Central Pollution Control Board monitors the toxic gas is flawed. The CPCB caps ozone pollution measurement at 200 micrograms per cubic meter—above that, the measurement software just records a blank cell in the data sheet. “We don’t really know exactly how severe the problem gets,” says Somvanshi, comparing the situation to checking someone’s fever using a thermometer that can only go up to 100 degrees Fahrenheit. The CPCB also reports ozone levels after averaging values at all the monitoring stations in a city, which Somvanshi calls a “disaster” because ozone is a hyperlocal pollutant. “Within the city, there is a massive variation and if you average it out, it will always be below the standard,” he says. WIRED reached out to the CPCB for comment but did not receive any response.

And while ozone monitoring infrastructure is robust in the capital region—Delhi and its five satellite cities have nearly 60 stations—more than 200 Indian cities don’t monitor ozone at all. The rest only have one or two ozone monitoring stations, which is basically “useless” says Somvanshi, because of the localized nature of the gas.

A quick way to mitigate the problem would be to issue targeted local ozone alerts, he says. In the US, for example, health advisories during periods of high ozone pollution warn residents to not go to refuel their cars when it is sunny outside, because petrol or diesel can evaporate to form volatile organic compounds that can further increase ozone formation. India could do something similar. Somvanshi suggests that factories could also be directed to operate during the evening or nighttime. That way, any nitrogen oxides they release wouldn’t be converted into ozone because there’s no sunlight. To reduce the precursor gasses, Arnold says the government should encourage “policies that can limit motor vehicle emissions in cities.”

As for addressing the threat to food security, Agrawal says farmers could choose crop varieties that are less susceptible to ozone. Some plants show resilience, she says, and by cross-breeding we could get crops that are less affected by it. Another solution could be to plant crops during seasons when ozone levels are low, like during the monsoon, but that’s not possible for all plants.

Above all, Arnold says, the Indian government should “take the time to understand the potential consequences of emission reductions” and learn from what happened in China. Use “modeling to try and predict the response you might get to emission control policies,” he advises. Ozone pollution, he says, cannot be ignored anymore.

[noreservations]

GOP leader Kevin McCarthy says “everyone in the country” was responsible for January 6 when pressed if it was Trump's fault.

Which brings us back to the issue of stupidity. I mean, this is a ridiculously stupid statement. And so, I offer you a treatise on stupidity.

𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐓𝐇𝐄𝐎𝐑𝐘 𝐎𝐅 𝐒𝐓𝐔𝐏𝐈𝐃𝐈𝐓𝐘

by Peter Burns, Medium.com

“𝐒𝐭𝐮𝐩𝐢𝐝𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐢𝐬 𝐚 𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐝𝐚𝐧𝐠𝐞𝐫𝐨𝐮𝐬 𝐞𝐧𝐞𝐦𝐲 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐠𝐨𝐨𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐧 𝐞𝐯𝐢𝐥,” wrote German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer in 1943. “Against stupidity we have no defense. Neither protests nor force can touch it. Reasoning is of no use... Fools can easily become dangerous, as it does not take much to make them aggressive. For that reason, greater caution is called for than with a malicious one.”

After writing down those words, Bonhoeffer was soon arrested. He died two years later, in 1945, executed in a concentration camp by Nazi henchmen.

Bonhoeffer lived in a completely different era. Yet, the ideas he left us with have an application in any century. For stupidity hasn’t disappeared. It is eternal.

“If we want to know how to get the better of stupidity, we must seek to understand its nature,” wrote Bonhoeffer in his treatise. And the nature of stupidity has its roots deep in the subconscious of the human experience. Humans are social animals. It is this very sociability that is at the base of stupidity.

Stupidity is a group phenomenon. When a group acts stupidly, that greatly impacts the surrounding world.

Herd behavior is among the pre-eminent causes of stupidity. Numerous scientific studies have shown how individual humans can be swayed by the crowd to adopt positions which go against all logic.

People overcome with stupidity act as if possessed. Their logical part of the brain is shut down. Such a person starts acting as a political zombie, with whom any type of logic or discussion of facts fails. Instead, they function on the level of slogans, catch phrases, and low-level rallying cries.

“In conversation with him, one virtually feels that one is dealing not at all with a person, but with slogans, catchwords and the like that have taken possession of him. He is under a spell, blinded... Having thus become a mindless tool, the stupid person will also be capable of any evil and at the same time incapable of seeing that it is evil.” — Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

Stupidity facilitates the capture of society by spineless, evil forces. A narrative is created that incorporates simple explanations for complex problems, offering “solutions” and scapegoats. Whoever doesn’t conform to this standard orthodoxy becomes the “other,” an enemy to be destroyed.

The 21st century is seeing these internal failures of the human mind unfold in full swing.

“It becomes apparent that every strong upsurge of power in the public sphere, be it of a political or of a religious nature, infects a large part of humankind with stupidity,” wrote Dietrich Bonhoeffer in 1943.

The German’s reflections describe the current situation in the US and the world perfectly. More than 70 years later, they illuminate the forces at play. Recent upsurges of power have infected certain swathes of the population with great amounts of stupidity.

We have witnessed it in the pro-Trump rallies, which resulted in an attack on the US Capitol. We come across it every day in the filter bubbles on the internet, which often foster vitriolic groupthink. Stupidity is an ever-present danger, lurking at every corner of the political spectrum.

Yet, argue with the individual actors using logic and facts, and you get nowhere. Their brains are locked, captive to pre-conceived notions and biases. As Bonhoeffer noted...

“We must abandon all attempts to convince the stupid person.”

— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

It’s of no use. And the attempt could result in "the backfire effect": “When their deepest convictions are challenged by contradictory evidence, their beliefs get stronger.”

“The sick individual finds himself at home with all other similarly sick individuals. The whole culture is geared to this kind of pathology. The result is that the average individual does not experience the separateness and isolation the fully schizophrenic person feels. He feels at ease among those who suffer from the same deformation. In fact, it is the fully sane person who feels isolated in the insane society.”

— Erich Fromm (in “The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness”)

For Bonhoeffer, stupidity was not the problem of the individual. It was a matter of groups of individuals coming together. Madness finds its force in crowds.

This echoes Friedrich Nietzsche’s famous aphorism:

“In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche

[titospellspecialist]

Negative Energy Removal: Embracing Positivity and Inner Harmony

We come into contact with a wide variety of energies on our path through life, and these energies have the potential to have a significant negative influence on our emotional and spiritual health. While positive energies energize and motivate us, negative energies can cause emotions of worry, anxiety, and stagnation. Maintaining a balanced and harmonious existence requires understanding negative energy and dealing with it.

Unresolved emotions, traumatic experiences, and outside influences are just a few of the causes of negative energy that can arise. These bad energies may build up and result in a heavy aura that has an impact on every part of our life if they are not dealt with. Fortunately, some effective methods and practices may be used to get rid of bad vibes and regain our sense of calm and happiness.

I. Recognizing Negative Energy

Negative energy affects people and their environment in a variety of ways. Negative energy Removal frequently manifests as:

• Consistent Fatigue: Feeling depleted and fatigued for no discernible reason.

• Frequent mood swings: Unexpected changes in feelings, from grief to rage.

• Sleep disturbances and restlessness: Having trouble falling or staying asleep as a result of disruptive thoughts.

• Undiagnosed Pains and Aches: Having bodily discomfort without a specific medical diagnosis.

• Relationships that are strained: Constant disagreements and arguments with close friends and family.

• Stagnation and Lack of Progress: A sense of being unable to advance in life.

II. Techniques for Removing Negative Energy:

Rituals for Energy Purification: To rid your surroundings of bad energy, do rituals like smudging with sage, utilizing crystals, or burning incense.

• Meditation and mindfulness: Regular meditation can assist to clear the mind and let go of tension, which encourages a positive outlook.

• Salt baths: Taking a salt bath can help remove bad energy while detoxifying the body and cleaning the aura.

• Affirmations: Repeating encouraging statements can change your perspective and draw in beneficial energy.

• Reiki Healing:  To balance and purify your energy centers, seek the aid of a Reiki practitioner.

III. Negative Energy Spells: An Overview

People have used spellwork for generations to get rid of bad energy and bring balance back into their lives. bad energy spells can use universal energy to eliminate bad vibrations and build a shield of protection around you if they are cast by a skilled spell caster.

It's crucial to remember that casting spells are not about exerting influence on other people or changing their free choice. Instead, the emphasis is on directing energy and desire to bring about favorable changes in one's life. Spells that target specific negative forces can be tailored to function in line with the universe's fundamental rules.

IV. The Spell Specialist of The Power of Tito

A well-known expert in spiritual healing and energy work, Tito Spell Specialist provides a variety of services to help people on their path to positivity and self-empowerment. Tito is an expert in removing bad energy and performing spells with extensive knowledge and years of experience, positively transforming the lives of numerous people.

V. Negative Energy Removal According to Tito:

Comprehensive Evaluation: Tito evaluates your energy in depth to find the underlying sources of any negative effects.

• Customized Spells: Tito creates tailored spells to remove bad energy to address certain problems based on the evaluation.

• Ritual Precision:  Tito uses rituals to tap into the power of the cosmos, performing them with concentrated intention and precise accuracy.

• Effects That Last: Tito's spells are designed to bring about long-lasting beneficial changes, encourage harmony, and offer protection from future harmful energies.

To achieve inner harmony and emotional well-being, negative energy must be removed. You may successfully cleanse your aura and draw positive energies into your life by utilizing a variety of energy-cleaning procedures and utilizing the power of negative energy spells.

With the assistance and knowledge of Tito Spell Specialist, you may go off on a healing and self-discovery journey. Allow the power of spells to cooperate with your wishes, assisting you in letting go of negativity and embracing a life full of riches and optimism. Visit Tito Spell Specialist right away to learn more about the energy work industry and take the initial step towards a better future.

[highwaytothedangerzone502]

India Lima Yankee - Chapter 1

Pairing: Rooster x Female OC

Word Count: 2264

Warnings: None

Summary: Juliette Kazansky discovers Maverick is back in town for a special training detachment, but she's more than a little blindsided when her Rooster arrives too. Having not spoken to him for almost ten years after their less than amicable break-up, Juliette can only imagine how the next few weeks are going to play out when she remains head over heels in love with him while he wants nothing to do with Juliette other than to forget her.

Or so she thinks.

Notes: Chapters in italics are flashbacks.

Chapter Songs: The Answer to Our Life

Chapters: Chp 1 Chp 2 Chp 3 Chp 4 Chp 5 Chp 6 Chp 7 Chp 8 Chp 9 Chp 10 Chp 11 Chp 12 Chp 13 Chp 14 Chp 15 Chp 16 Chp 17 Chp 18 Chp 19 Chp 20 Chp 21 Chp 22 Chp 23

Juliette

The Backstreet Boys sang quietly from her CD player while Juliette studied for an upcoming biology test. Life sciences had never been her strong suit, but she'd be damned if she got anything other than an 'A' in the class. Juliette wanted to graduate with at least a 4.0 GPA and as valedictorian, and with her AP classes, it was entirely possible. Of course, if Juliette didn't get As in everything, that dream wouldn't happen. More than a few students were chasing the same goal as her, all equally as bright and talented. Juliette remained number one for now, but she couldn't allow herself to slip even once. There were no points for second place in her mind. 

Her buzzing cell phone broke Juliette's concentration. Irked, she glanced at the device to see who would be calling her at ten p.m. on a Thursday night. 'Bradley' flashed on the screen, and delight swiftly replaced Juliette's annoyance.

"Hey, you," Juliette answered cheerfully, keeping her voice down to avoid anyone overhearing her. "What's up?"

"Hey, yourself. Are you home?" Bradley asked, sounding equally as quiet as her, which was unlike him.

"It's a school night. What do you think?"

"Can I come up?"

Juliette bolted over to her window and opened it up. At the base of the giant oak tree, through the thick, leafless branches and the dim moonlight, she could just make out the silhouette of her friend peering around the trunk. Bradley gave her a small wave. She hung up and motioned for him to join her. With skilled precision from the numerous times he'd done this, Bradley swiftly climbed up the tree and into Juliette's room. Her heart sank at the sight of his bruised face and the numerous cuts on his arms.

"Sit down," she ordered, going to her dresser and pulling out her first aid kit. Bradley obediently sat in her window nook. He must've sensed her rising anger. Juliette took a seat next to him and demanded, "What happened?"

"I got in another fight," Bradley admitted, watching as Juliette opened the first aid kit and pulled out a small bottle of rubbing alcohol and antiseptic cream. She gingerly began cleaning his wounds. "I was at the mall picking something up and ran into a group of hoodlums. They were taunting me and saying all sorts of rude shit, and I wasn't going to do anything until one of them tried to take my purchase from me. I could've just pushed him off and continued on my way. The guy was a twig, but I lost my head and punched him instead. His friends came to his defense. I don't know how long we were fighting before security came and broke us up. I did a bigger number on them than they did me, but obviously-" Bradley held out his scraped-up arms- "they got a few good licks on me."

"How did you get away without the police getting involved?"

Bradley shrugged. "I convinced security to let me go. I could tell by their reaction to the other kids that this wasn't the first time they'd caused problems. Security didn't know me, so I pretended they'd initiated everything, which is kind of true. I drove around to cool off before coming here."

"You should've come straight here or gone straight back to your house to take care of your injuries," Juliette chastised, glaring at him. "You're lucky the cuts are shallow and that those hoodlums hit with the strength of a ten-year-old. You'll have minimal bruising, but it's still going to show for a few days."

"I'm sorry, Jules," Bradley said softly, staring at her with his warm, chocolate eyes. Typically, the gaze would melt away her anger, but not tonight. Perhaps it was due to the stress of the test or her exhaustion of constantly having to patch him up or the never-ending worry that he'd get into a fight he couldn't handle, but Juliette had had enough of Bradley's recklessness.

"Don't apologize to me. Apologize to your mom, who keeps seeing you with new injuries every time you come home," Juliette replied sharply, snapping the first-aid kit shut. "You know she worries about you enough, and she's not the only one! You're being reckless, and when you get into the Navy, it's not going to fly. It's going to get you into trouble. I don't want your recklessness to damage your record or, worse, get you killed when you actually start flying planes."

Bradley shook his head. "I won't let it get to me up in the air."

"You don't know that. Stay here. I need to get an ice pack for that bruise." Not giving him time to say anything else, Juliette slipped out of her room, tiptoeing downstairs to the kitchen. Her parents were already asleep, but her dad was a light sleeper. As much as Iceman loved Bradley Bradshaw, Juliette had no doubt her dad would throw an absolute fit if he discovered Bradley in his daughter's room in the middle of the night, let alone on a school night. She'd already come up with a plan of what to say should she be caught in the kitchen, but Juliette prayed it didn't come to that. 

For better or worse, the number of times she'd snuck Bradley into her room when he needed medical attention had given Juliette a lot of practice of sneaking up and downstairs without waking anyone up. She managed to grab an icepack from the freezer and creep back to her room without so much as a creak from the stairs.

"You know, if you became a fighter pilot," Bradley began when she shut the door, "your callsign would be Ghost because you're freakishly silent."

"I appreciate the compliment, but it doesn't make me any less mad at you," Juliette said, handing him the icepack. "Keep that on for at least ten minutes."

Bradley nodded, putting it up to his cheek. He winced slightly. "Thank you. For everything."

She sighed, hating to see him hurting. "You can always come to me when you need to be fixed up. Don't think otherwise because I'm mad right now. I just wished it wasn't so frequent."

"I know..." Bradley smiled apologetically at her. "Have I ever said how much I love you?"

"All the time, and I love you too, even if you are going to put me in my early grave with how much you make me worry." Juliette sat next to him, and her heart nearly leaped out of her chest when he laced his fingers with hers and lifted the back of her hand to his mouth. He placed a feather-light kiss on her skin, and her breath caught in her throat. "Bradley?"

He locked eyes with her, and the air between them electrified. Juliette watched his gaze drop down to her lips, and an impossible thought flashed in her mind. As far as she'd been aware, Bradley had no interest in anyone or anything but the Navy, let alone a relationship with his long-time best friend. But now...

His eyes flicked back to hers, and in a voice barely above a whisper, he asked, "Jules, can I do something stupid?" 

"As long as it's not getting into another fight, go for it," she told him, praying she hadn't misread the entire situation unfolding before her.

Bradley hesitated for a second, then leaned in and planted a kiss on Juliette's lips. Her brain short-circuited at the contact, not because she wasn't enjoying it, but because she couldn't believe this was happening! She'd liked Bradley for ages but had always taken the pessimistic approach that he'd never feel the same way to avoid having her heart broken. 

The kiss ended all too soon for her liking, but Juliette could barely comprehend it'd just happened, let alone form words to tell him to put his lips back on hers or make a move of her own. 

"How stupid was I?" Bradley queried, cringing at Juliette's stunned expression. He started to lean back when he received nothing but silence from her, and the sight knocked Juliette's senses back. Grabbing his shirt in her first, she pulled him back to her and crashed her lips onto his. In the distance, the sound of his icepack dropping to the floor could be heard, but all Juliette cared about what Bradley's hands cupping her face. She could've stayed kissing him forever had they both not needed to take a breath.

Bradley braced his forehead against hers and said, "So, is it safe for me to assume I wasn't stupid?"

"Not stupid. Not with this," Juliette answered, lifting her hand to his bruised cheek. "I'm pretty sure it's the smartest thing you've done all day."

"Honestly, you're probably right." He dropped his hands from her face, albeit reluctantly, and clasped them tightly in his lap. "I should've done that sooner, especially with me maybe heading off to the Navy soon, or college in general, but I wasn't- I couldn't tell if you liked me the way I did you."

"If it helps, until about thirty seconds ago, I didn't know you had any interest in me like that." Juliette reached down and placed the ice pack gingerly on his cheek. "I thought the only relationship you wanted was with the Navy."

Bradley chuckled. "Nah, I just wanted people to believe that. Look, I know you're studying for a big test tomorrow, and I don't want to distract you from it any more than I have already, but do you have time to come down to my car really quickly? I have something for you. A belated birthday present."

"Sure," Juliette replied, knowing fully well she would agree to just about anything Bradley asked of her in that moment. The two of them crept out her window and down the oak tree to Bradley's Bronco around the corner, just out of sight of the Kazansky household. She watched him open his door and pull out a small plastic bag from underneath the passenger seat. Curious, she asked, "What's that?"

He pulled out a dainty silver locket with a small anchor in the center, inlaid against an ocean blue backdrop. Juliette felt her mouth drop open as she took the piece of jewelry from him, rubbing her thumb over the facade of the locket. 

"Thank you!" she exclaimed, looking up at him with wide eyes. "I can't believe you remembered!"

"I went back and bought it a few days later. Flip it over. There's something on the back," Bradley told her, shoving his hands in his pockets. Juliette did as told. On the back of the locket was the inscription: India Lima Yankee. Juliette smiled at the words. It was part of her and Bradley's own little love language, something they'd say as a 'thank you' or when they wanted to say 'I love you' without anyone understanding or misconstruing the meaning. They said 'I love you' to each other all the time when it was just the two of them, but Juliette always assumed Bradley meant it platonically. After the events of tonight, she wondered otherwise. 

"Do you like it?" Bradley asked, leaning against his Bronco.

"I love it," Juliette replied, slipping it over her head. The statement piece came to rest dead center on her chest. As she placed her hand over the locket, still unable to fully believe it belonged to her, an epiphany dawned on her. "Bradley, I absolutely adore it, but how- how did you afford it? I remember it wasn't exactly cheap, and the engraving had to add an extra cost. I know you're trying to save money for when you're at college-"

"Maverick helped me out," he confessed, shifting on his feet. "I told him about the fights, how you've been patching me up so mom doesn't worry as much when I get home, how I wanted to get you this locket as a thank you and to show my appreciation. When Maverick heard that, I think he wanted me to get this for you as a thank you from him as well."

Juliette stood on her tiptoes and gave Bradley a kiss, short and sweet but full of adoration. "Thank you," she said, beaming up at him. 

"You're welcome. Happy birthday Jules." Bradley leaned down and pecked her on the lips once more. "As much as I want you to stay with me as long as possible tonight, we should probably get you back up to your room before your parents decide to do a random check. You also need to get sleep before the test tomorrow."

The last thing Juliette wanted to do was go back to her room. All she wanted to do was kiss Bradley again. It was all she could think about, and suddenly Jules understood what everyone meant by 'raging teenage hormones.' Still, his logic won out, and she reluctantly headed back to her room with Bradley beside her, his hand in hers. They said nothing on the way to the oak tree nor when they both climbed it. Only when Juliette turned around to bid him goodnight with a kiss did they say anything."

"India Lima Yankee," she whispered against his lips, heart fluttering at the double-meaning the words now held. Juliette feared it might be too early in their budding relationship to utter their inside saying in fear of running Bradley off with the implication, but he seemed wholly unfazed when he repeated the words back to her: "India Lima Yankee."