Why is there a diarrhea parasite outbreak in America?
Because Donald Trump and his Republican allies cut funding to disease prevention and control.
Why is measles back in America?
Because Donald Trump and his Republican allies, including RFK Jr, cut vaccine and measles prevention funding and programs.
Why is the New World Screwworm infecting cattle in Texas, when it had previously been eliminated from the area?
Because Donald Trump and his Republican allies, including Elon Musk, cut USAID funding, which in part worked to monitor and prevent screwworm outbreaks.
Why was there a flu outbreak in our armed forces?
Because Donald Trump and his Republican allies, including Pete Hegseth, cut vaccination requirements for our armed forces, putting all of them at risk alongside our military readiness.
What contributed to the Covid outbreak?
Donald Trump and his Republican allies cut funding to a pandemic prevention program in his first term because Barack Obama had created it.
“America first” sends its regards. Trump voters, please learn your lesson. And if you don’t, it’ll be taught to you again with yet another diarrhea outbreak.
The hardest part of watching/reading about cult members are the former cult members going “I don’t know why the government thought it was a good idea to do XYZ” and then they continue to describe the situation they’re in and it’s like.
Girl.
“I don’t know why the government thought they had the right to storm our compound in Waco.” “Anyway once the FBI hostage negotiator hung up with our leader, I and our children went back to stocking all our gun magazines with bullets so we could be prepared to shoot everyone in the upcoming war”
“I don’t know why the government required the mothers to be separated from our children after they stole us from our compound, they didn’t let us wash our clothes frequently enough and they weren’t prepared for us all.” “Anyway one of the mothers adopted one of the children our leader had raped and brainwashed so she could stay in the church under strict supervision, and then as soon as she turned 18 she let her go back to the church leader to continue being raped. It was hard looking after the 25 children in our care with just 2 wives and our kids kept getting into terrible accidents like falling out of windows and off of cliffs and one of my sons’ calves was torn from the bone, I hope they don’t have brain damage when they grow up.”
In a normal situation a mom isn’t allowed to have two separate kids fall from extremely high heights, Arely survive without medical care, and still keep their kids.
Just like, for your information.
I know you are very traumatized wnd insulated but I gotta reiterate that usually child number 1 falling out of a window is at least the beginning of a few court mandated parenting classes.
For future knowledge as to why “they did all that”. An outside perspective.
I need you to understand that when a normal mom is found out to have given her 14 year old daughter to an adult man to molest and rape with full knowledge that it’s happening, she’s usually not allowed to keep raising the rest of her kids, even if one of her kids is an infant.
Can you perhaps see why these social workers “ripped a baby from its mother’s nipple”. You were 8 when your dad started molesting you and 6 when he started molesting your sister.
Can you maybe understand. An FBI agent was listening to a tape of your dad raping a 12 year old girl while the rest of his wives watched in the room with them. Those wives are the same mothers that were being separated from their kids and then going on CNN begging for them back.
This man knowingly wore that skirt, in a PUBLIC address to the people, knowing there would be cameras there, and then not only crossed his legs, but crossed his leg in a way that exposed his underwear.
He literally chose to do this. The fact that JKR posted is not the problem here. This man blatantly displaying his fetish is the problem
male flashes entire audience of women on purpose, woman takes a photo from her seat, another woman reposts it: woman is evil sexual offender, man is "innocent victim"
You always know what you're going to get with TRAs, so that's nice, it's just sad that they're always gargling the balls of sexually violent white men.
Crazy how in the notes, OP doesn't even seem to have looked this up prior to posting about it and is backpedalling pretty hard. "Well, well, but you should still use her pronouns! Even though she did a bad thing!" But will OP make a followup post or reblog this one admitting it's bullshit? Unlikely.
Armenian clogs held by the British Museum. Belonged to an Armenian girl, who fled to Aleppo, Syria during the Armenian Genocide. The clongs had been passed on from her Grandmother.
Just a short time after I watched the grotesque comedy with satirical overtones that is Offenbach's "Barbe-bleue" I happened to come across another take on the Bluebeard story. This one could hardly be any more different - a surreal, dark, psychologically astute one-hour, one-act opera from 1911 by Béla Bartók that retains the fairy tale atmosphere of the French folk tale it is based on, but changes the story quite heavily. In short, I consider this "I can fix him: The opera".
You can download it here - beware though, the file is a 3GB DVD rip whose video quality does not justify the large size. VLC player can play it and subtitles in English, French, German, Spanish and Mandarin (I think) are included. If you have the disk space and the patience to switch to a new file every 20 minutes, I'd definitely recommend it, it's visually beautiful and contains what I consider some pretty nuanced acting by the only two singers, the bass Kolos Kováts as Bluebeard and the soprano Sylvia Sass as Judith, his latest lover.
Spoilers and my thoughts under the KR...
Okay so holy shit does she try to fix him! I absolutely loved so many things about this. The castle is clearly an allegory for his psyche - she loves a troubled, mysterious, morally dubious man and wants to "let air and sunshine into his dark castle", she notices right away how wet the walls are and wants to "dry them with her own body" (a visual I particularly like since it makes clear from the beginning that what she is attempting is impossible).
And he absolutely does not even want it. He rebukes her so many times and basically begs her to save herself. He seems conflicted, may be aware of the damage he has done to his past wives, but incapable of not causing pain. But she insists, she pushes past his resistance, when asking nicely does not help she forcefully demands access to the parts of himself that he does not want to reveal to her. She may be inexperienced, reckless (she knows the rumors about him killing his wives!) and unable to see the danger she is in, but the power dynamic between them is not clear at all for much of this work. Judith has a great capacity for love and empathy and she very much wants to help Bluebeard so they can have the beautiful future she envisions, but damn she is pushy. She will "help" whether he wants her to or not.
She does NOT take no for an answer. For much of this work you could think that she's the one in charge, she leads him along, and oh, maybe he's just shy..? Maybe he thinks he's too rotten to be saved? Aw, but *damaged girl voice* he has so much potential...
Something else I notice is that she is pretty much unfazed by the torture chamber and the armory. It doesn't bother her that he has them, it doesn't bother her when she finds the blood stains in them. I guess she thinks it's natural for a nobleman to have these rooms and it's natural for them to have blood stains - that's what they're for. What DOES spook her is when she gets to the beautiful parts of his castle and they ALSO have blood stains.
However, even then, she loves him too much and is too curious to save herself as he keeps begging her to do. Though of course one could also suspect that he is using reverse psychology and knows that refusing will make her even more eager. His inscrutability is part of his appeal both to her and, maybe, to the audience - certainly to me. They did well to cast such a majestic and elegant bass as Bluebeard. I could totally understand Judith's fascination.
A gloomy, humid, dark castle with untold riches inside, a beautiful garden in eternal bloom, wide lands and a frozen lake, if only Judith can force the doors open and get to them, and if she can ignore the blood stains and frozen tears everywhere. If that is not the ultimate "I can fix him" analogy, then I don't know a better one. (I have absolutely been to Bluebeard's castle myself, as you can perhaps tell from how much I vibe with this work.)
And then there's the end. What I've written so far is stuff I'm pretty confident about, I think it's probably what we're supposed to take away from this, more or less. My interpretation of the end is one that not everyone may agree with (maybe not my future self either) and I'm not sure it's what the librettist or the composer had in mind. It's very surreal and kind of strange. If Judith reacted differently to it, one could almost see it as a happy end. But in fact she is terrified, so it's not that.
Judith opens the seventh door (I was reminded of the seven seals of Revelation, actually) and finds out that all those miracles she has seen in the castle are the work of women who have been in the exact same situation as her, the blood and tears she has seen are theirs, and that she is now to become one of them - not dead, as the rumors go, but a mere symbolic representation of Bluebeard's associations with her, an abstract image of beauty and perfection and usefulness, forever locked in his dungeon with the other women who loved him. Her life will be spent as his eternally youthful servant, stripped of everything he doesn't have use for.
It's poetic and romantic, but also very sad. The last shot is of Bluebeard, once again alone in his dingy castle which Judith's presence has not been able to brighten for long. So he filed her away and assigned her a place in his life. Certainly she will be able to increase his riches. But his life is exactly the same, nothing has changed. Only now she is not a person anymore. He is irresistible, intriguing, addictive, but none of those women were able to make his castle less gloomy. Sleet starts falling and he disappears into the darkness.
Edit: A few hours later I'm already not sure about my interpretation of the end anymore. Maybe it's much simpler. Maybe the reason why the wives are eternally youthful and symbolic representations of what Bluebeard associates them with is that they're memories. Maybe he simply has killed them and since the castle is symbolic of his mind, they live in a chamber there as memories.
I really liked this opera! The music is yelling at us the entire time what a bad idea it is for Judith to continue insisting, anyone who knows what the name "Bluebeard" signifies knows she is in danger, and yet she is the one who pushes forward without any coercion from him. And in the end she finds her doom, but it's kind of a beautiful doom, one that looks like honour, even worship at first glance. There are so many details in this work - not only the music and the libretto, but the visuals, the actors' expressions, the entire "gesamtkunstwerk" - that I find extremely cogent and fitting for the story it is telling.
Annika Caswell a student from the Wimbledon School of Art wardrobe department, dressed as Catherine Parr, next to her portrait attributed to Master John, c. 1545 in the National Portrait Gallery, London. * The students are recreating portraits dating from the Tudor period to the 19th century which have been inspiration for their lavish costumes . (Photo by Rebecca Naden - PA Images/PA Images via Getty Images)
