Water inflation enema

During 'The New Arrivals' when we produce the Nuka Cola vaccine I find it hard to believe that we don't just mass produce Nuka Cola for their bottle caps, I mean come on! We have a WHOLE factory right there, clearly functioning! There's no banks, or way to calculate value, so even though we would inflate the market, it would probably be a while before anyone notices, and when people would start to notice, and prices start raising, why not just mass produce even more bottles and just leave. Even while writing I can think of many more useful cases of controlling the Nuka Cola factory Don't like a specific group of people? Mass produce bottles, and hand out the caps to everyone else essentially raising the price of everything, while the group of people you don't like keep their low amount of caps, which would ruin them if they don't sell everything they got to afford things like food and water. Anyways, just a quick thought, what do you guys think of it? I've tried my best to mark everything that could spoil the mission for the new folks

We don't go on holiday much but we have been away with my wife's extended family to celebrate her dad's 80th.
My wife and teenage boys flew, but I drove a couple days so I could stop in and see some customers who I would rarely meet.
Loads of booze for everyone each day, and I stick with NA beer and water. It's their holiday and while I don't like being around drunk people now, I cope with it. I did not like when they kept offering me drinks because "a few on holiday don't mattee" but I could cope with it as well. And yes they know how much I drank and how hard it was for me to stop.
Where I am pissed off: there is a load of opened leftover booze. Everyone else flew so they want me to drive with it and are "generously" giving it to me to drink later. And they kept putting the bottled with my stuff as i was packing up.
My wife has a fucked up relationship with her mom and always wants to please, so she gets aggressive at me that we don't want to seem ungrateful for not taking the open booze.
I tell her that I can not drive for a few hours let alone a few days with open scotch and wine in the car. I will throw it away for them on the way out if she wants. OK at that stage we agree that I won't take it.
Fuck them. If they are so concerned of the booze going to waste, they can all do 8 shots this morning for all I care. It's not my problem.
I feel like is akin to someone on an inflatable raft being urged to carry a bunch of broken glass and rusty nails.

I'm searching for a two-person inflatable kayak as a beginner living near Lake Washington. While looking for IK, I found lots options and gets totally overwhelmed which one to pick. My wife and I seek a kayak that's relaxing, stable, and easy to handle. Price is flexible as I am looking for stability, safety and durability. Among the choices, the Chelan 155 and Aire Lynx or Outfitter have caught my eye. But as novices, we're unsure which would be best for us. Our primary kayaking will be on calm lake waters. What would you recommend for beginners like us? Please recommend any other IK as well!

So my girlfriend is suffering from severe constipation she's in an unbelievable amount of pain. she was admitted to out of hours. They done all the tests, they first suspected it was appendicitis because the symptoms were similar. She also had a rectal exam. She was given morphine for the pain she couldn't handle it.
So then they did loads of scans, which ruled out appendicitis, they came back saying she has a very possible chance of endometriosis but can't diagnose it as that, until she's seen by a gynecologist for a laparoscopy.
They never dealt with the constipation and sickness properly. She's literally not went no. 2 over 2 weeks now, they just keep giving her laxatives, enemas, suppositories and stimulant laxatives. They did just mention that yeah she is heavily backed up and it looks hardened. But haven't done anything else.
We've tried everything We're literally lost and don't know what to do, drs are not helping. So I've said to her that she needs to drink a lot and I mean a lot of water to get her bowels moving because maybe all the laxatives have made it worse and dehydrated her and blocked her feces. I also read online that this can cause the muscles to forget how to poop essentially.
Hopefully some you out there can help, she's really suffering and I want her to get better. Any advice will be worth something. Thank you in advance.

So my girlfriend is suffering from severe constipation she's in an unbelievable amount of pain. she was admitted to out of hours. They done all the tests, they first suspected it was appendicitis because the symptoms were similar. She also had a rectal exam. She was given morphine for the pain she couldn't handle it.
So then they did loads of scans, which ruled out appendicitis, they came back saying she has a very possible chance of endometriosis but can't diagnose it as that, until she's seen by a gynecologist for a laparoscopy.
They never dealt with the constipation and sickness properly. She's literally not went no. 2 over 2 weeks now, they just keep giving her laxatives, enemas, suppositories and stimulant laxatives. They did just mention that yeah she is heavily backed up and it looks hardened. But haven't done anything else.
We've tried everything We're literally lost and don't know what to do, drs are not helping. So I've said to her that she needs to drink a lot and I mean a lot of water to get her bowels moving because maybe all the laxatives have made it worse and dehydrated her and blocked her feces. I also read online that this can cause the muscles to forget how to poop essentially.
Hopefully some you out there can help, she's really suffering and I want her to get better. Any advice will be worth something. Thank you in advance.

Trying to figure out a few things on a local lake that’s been recently stocked. Context in case some of it is relevant: - Smallish lake, stocked with hatchery rainbow trout 3-4 weeks ago. There’s also a natural population of black crappie. - Using primarily things like small rooster tails and spinners on a 7ft light or ultralight rod, light braid with a few feet of 4 lb leader. Switching up lures periodically. - Out in the lake with an inflatable and fish finder - partly cloudy, a bit windy, maybe 60 degrees, 9 - 10am. The water in this lake is not muddy or murky but not clear. - Lake varies between 5-40’ deep, fish finder pinging like crazy with most around 10-15’. - tried being anchored and casting all around, different areas. - tried trolling while we moved from spot to spot. - did not try stationary with a bobber & worm type setup
Not a single nibble in 3 hours. Hard to keep the kids interested when it’s like this 😕. It’s not the first time this has been the scene that played out.
Aside from in general what am I missing or doing wrong I’m also wondering.
How do you target a specific depth when casting/retrieving in this scenario and gear? I can see they are around 10 feet down. Same question about trolling, is it dumb to troll with rooster tails? I’m going as slow as I can while still having them do their expected spinning or other action. Frustrating!

I’ve never told another person this, but my quality of life has gone downhill so quickly in the last 2-3 years, that I really think of taking my own life. I don’t think I will. But I am due for the A-Lif and P-Lif back surgeries in a month. I’m dreading the surgery, the post op, the pain, the pain, the pain. I went through so many horrific surgeries in 2022. I was the healthiest I had ever been. I was barely taking any narcotics. I was working out every day. My weight was great. Then I started having more frequent episodes of severe back pain and leg numbness. My bf of a year got freaked out over my diagnosis’s and broke up with me. I moved back to my hometown, got a new place and started over. Then I developed sudden constipation. No warning. This had never been an issue before. After 10 days, I had the most severe abdominal pain I’ve ever felt. My daughter rushed me to the ER. After many tests, they said I was “just constipated” and go home and start Miralax. I did and nothing worked. I tried Laxatives, Magnesium Citrate, hot coffee, hot water with salt, enemas, glycerine suppositories, etc. Nothing happened. My belly became more distended. I was so nauseated 24/7. I called my GI dr and was told the soonest they could see me was 8/4/22. On 7/28/22, I went back to ER. The doctor there was awful. He said I was just constipated. He refused a GI consult, a Neuro consult and refused to admit me for even 23 hours. I told him something is wrong with my back and it’s made my colon stop functioning. He didn’t believe me. Finally he sent the nurse in with an enema kit and said the dr said I could “give myself an enema” to get the poop out. I was escorted to the bathroom down the hall that had a toilet, shower and a bench. I was given the kit and told that it should work. 4 times she came to the door and asked if I had any results. Nothing came out. I was instructed to keep doing them until they worked. It was a soap suds enema so basically just use the soap and water in there to refill the enema bag. After 2 hours, multiple attempts and no results, the nurse came to the door and told me to stop trying. She gave me fresh towels and a clean gown and told me to shower and return to my room. I went back, absolutely drained and in pain. The doctor came in and said he couldn’t do anything for me. I begged for another consult with Neuro or GI and he said no. I got up and took my IV out. He told me I couldn’t do that. I left. I went home and collapsed. My parents found me, took me to another ER and I was admitted. The GI doctors made 3 attempts at colonoscopies but said it was like dried cement. They finally removed my colon which “had stopped functioning due to nerve damage from my back”. I spent months in and out of the hospital. I was septic 3 times, almost died several times. I had an Ileostomy for 7 months which was hell. I fought constant infection and dehydration and malnutrition. I had to fight to live and was in agony 24/7. Now I am supposed to have this back surgery in a month. I don’t think I have it in me to fight anymore. I know the drill. You ask for pain meds, they give you the bare minimum and then always question if you’re really hurting. I stay at a 6-8 all the time. But when I hit that 8-9 and it’s quickly going to 10, I hate fighting for relief and being treated like I’m just trying to get high. I’m just wanting relief so I can move. I’m just unloading. I’m sorry. I don’t think anyone will read this and that’s ok. I just don’t know if I will come out of this procedure this time. The mind fu*k nurses play with you about your pain meds is horrible. It breaks you mentally. I’m not addicted. I just suffer 24/7 and dread what’s coming.
For context, my left leg used to be the one that was weak and numb. Now my right leg has started losing complete feeling without warning, leading me to fall often. That’s the reason for the back surgery. Without it, I’ll lose the ability to walk.

I know you plant lovers would understand my pain I have/had abit of plant collection going on which I was super proud of ranging from rare to common plants well anyway cut the story short , I’ve had them for some time for 4ish years and was super proud of them.
I let a friend care for them while I went away to just help my grandma as her health was deteriorating and when I came home about 10 days later, my ‘friend’ had stopped replying to be about 5 days before I came back and what’s seemed to happened is she’s had he dog over which no exaggeration has ruined my whole collection, absolutely devastated, the amount of time and money I’ve invested over the years completely void. The plants have been chewed removed from the pot and haven’t been watered as the sphagnum moss was crisp :( I’ve tried to salvage some nodes many of them were damaged and all my alocasia are gone .
I’ve messaged my friend a little bit upset but informed her that many of those plants that might have been injected were somewhat toxic to her dog but she hasn’t yet responded.
My plant room now looks empty
I’m having to start again and with inflation I can’t just go buying again as I have to prioritise other things. So I would like to start off with just a normal cheese plant cutting, but I’d like to get a from a well established so that it’s already on the bigger scale as mine had taken many years, I’ve came in here to see if any of you plant lovers have any cuttings available.
Thanks you for taking the time to read my post

Bird flu in the milk, an Israel-Lebanon War draws closer, and the worst-case scenarios get even worse.
Last Week in Collapse: April 21-27, 2024
This is Last Week in Collapse, a weekly newsletter compiling some of the most important, timely, useful, soul-crushing, ironic, stunning, exhausting, or otherwise must-see/can’t-look-away moments in Collapse.
This is the 122nd newsletter. You can find the April 14-20 edition here if you missed it last week. You can also receive these posts (with images) every Sunday in your email inbox with Substack.
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The EU Green coalition claims that the Green Deal is probably dead now, since conservatives are projected to make small gains in this June’s EU Parliamentary election.
Gullies are becoming more common across Brazil and several other South American states, a crisis worsened by climate change & deforestation. One coastal municipality in Brazil has seen 50+ homes eaten by new holes; 100+ families have been displaced there as well. The process happens when large quantities of rainfall, unable to be absorbed into the soil (because of overdevelopment & deforestation), run off, carrying the dirt away with it. In the Himalayas, glacial lakes are growing from the massive meltwater piling up in the mountains.
Climatologists believe this summer is going to break records for temperature and/or humidity, with a 70% chance. A study in npj climate and atmospheric science determined that AI holds great potential in forecasting future storms…An analysis of the November 2023 Storm Ciarán predicted its 48-hour trajectory with reasonable accuracy.
A dust storm blew into Athens from Africa, the worst such incident in 6 years. The images look like they’re straight out of a cli-fi movie—or from Mars.
Taiwan felt 6.3 magnitude aftershocks from its 7.3 earthquake 3 weeks earlier, rumbling buildings. Thailand [issued an extreme heat warning](​​https://phys.org/news/2024-04-heatstroke-thailand-year-kingdom.html) after temperatures surpassed 40 °C (104 °F) this week, with a heat index expected to break 52 °C (125 °F). In the first 108 days of the year, Thailand recorded 30 deaths from heatstroke—compare that with 37 in all of 2023. Meanwhile, the heat index in the Philippines hit 47 °C (117 °F), forcing the government to close thousands of schools; one scientist said there was a 50/50 chance it the heat worsening in the coming days. Drought in the Philippines got so bad that an old settlement, flooded by the construction of a 1970s dam, resurfaced after El Niño-aggravated Drought dropped reservoir levels.
The CDC and the U.S. National Weather Service released a new heat scale, with another color representing the most dangerous level of heat. You can search your zip code here to check for your heat alarm level. Meanwhile, the famed climate scientist Michael Mann is predicting the most storms on record this hurricane season, estimating 33 in total.
Water shortage in Scotland. Drought in Spain & Greece expands; one major Spanish wine company laid off 80% of its staff indefinitely because the vines are barely producing anything. In Thailand, sugar farms are drying up. In France, a strange kind of “last chance tourists” from all over are converging on the Alps to see once-epic glaciers before they’re gone forever… Europe, the fastest warming continent, is seeing more days of heat stress than ever before.
A study in Earth’s Future examined the effect of wildfires in Greater Siberia, and found that they are projected to create a cooling effect over part of the northern hemisphere, along with the more obvious: lowered air quality & economic damage.
The total area of oases across the world expanded from 1995-2020 by 220,000+ km² (85,000+ mi²)—an area larger than the size of the island Britain, or Japan’s largest island, Honshu. Most of this expansion was the result of artificial expansion. However, the study from Earth’s Future also says that the risk of desertification is quite high, owing to mismanagement of water resources.
Wildfires in British Columbia & Alberta, including dozens of carry-over fires from last year. Record night temperatures for April in parts of West Africa—Chad even tied its hottest day in history with 48 °C (118 °F). Six countries in southeastern Asia recorded their hottest April night temps. Türkiye felt its hottest day ever in April last week: 39.2 °C (102.5 °F). Drought in Mexico is causing conflict between subsistence farmers and the cartel-linked avocado plantations. Sea surface temperatures remain at record highs for this time of year.
A 14-page article in Science Advances claims that deep sea troughs ferrying circumpolar deep water (CDW) (often warmer & saltier) to the undersides of ice shelves is causing concerning levels of melt. Making the problem worse is an upwelling of an ice shelf’s newly melted freshwater, which rises and pulls the salty water upwards. The study summary explains better, and warns that this feedback loop may reduce the stability of our ice shelves, leading to their Collapse. Some experts are proposing a large geoengineering attempt, spraying aerosols in the stratosphere atop ice shelves within the next 25 years—although they warn such efforts will not be productive unless they are also accompanied by massive CO2 emissions reductions.
Anchovies traditionally found in the Mediterranean have been detected off the Irish coast—about 750,000,000 of them—and scientists are baffled. They say that rising ocean temperatures are probably not enough to attribute this habitat change, since fewer than 150,000,000 anchovies were detected in those waters four years ago.
South Africa & Namibia saw record autumn temperatures. Flooding in Mauritius forced the shutdown of many banks & offices, and flooding worsened in East Africa, where 90+ have been killed by storms in the last fortnight. Tobacco plantations in Uganda killed off the usual animal food sources, forcing local species to eat virus-thick feces...yes, really. Meanwhile, one of the largest mountains of trash in India has been on fire for a few days, spewing toxic fumes into the atmosphere; and it’s still growing by 2,000 tons of garbage every day.
NASA released before & after images from Dubai’s historic flooding.
Foreign diseases & pests are damaging EU agriculture—some 70 new threats each year. In Botswana, Drought is evaporating muddy ponds, trapping hippos; those which escape, desperately thirsty, become aggressive and invade nearby villages.
Over Antarctica, the ozone hole is stretching into December, the start of summer—and the breeding season. Scientists say the exposure to extra radiation is affecting the eyesight of animals, and may threaten their general health. They also blame Australian wildfires for the longer-lasting ozone hole.
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Drinking water in Bangladesh is being poisoned by rising salinity in drinking water. Women are especially affected, particularly pregnant women, who suffer complications resulting from malnutrition, hypertension, menstrual interference, and more.
Residents of an old neighborhood in Ethiopia were given 5 days notice before demolition—ostensibly to rebuild a modern city center……including a $10B (USD) palace complex. Standardized test scores in the UK are at appalling lows—a result blamed, myopically, mostly on COVID school closures.
A study summary from the UK claims that 28% of COVID survivors will develop some form of Long COVID—25% of those will experience brain fog, and 75% some form of depression and/or anxiety. Examinations into the variant of COVID which infected an old Dutch man—and persisted in his body for 613 days—found that the COVID strain mutated into a new immuno-evasive strain inside his body…before killing him.
A 75-page report from the International Organization for Migration (IOM) concluded that migration has now rebounded completely from its COVID dip. The U.S. FDA announced that food recalls hit a new high in 2023, the most since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Scientists claim bird flu was in cows last year, probably. The U.S. FDA also announced that traces of bird flu were found in pasteurized milk—some 20% of samples—but the milk is still safe to drink. Nevertheless, the USDA is doing ongoing milk testing, albeit less than they first promised. The spread of Asian tiger mosquitoes farther northward in Europe portends the spread of malaria and dengue fever to areas where it has never before reached.
Shadow banking relates to non-bank lenders: mostly private investors, and unregulated institutions. Shadow banking is supposedly a $63 trillion (USD) problem worldwide—and the shadow real estate market in South Korea has central banks concerned. Delinquency rates are up, and shadow banking in real estate totals almost $7 trillion (USD). The Bank of England is warning about massive job losses if trends in shadow banking turn sour. Commodity prices worldwide are supposedly going to drop slightly, but inflation will remain.
In Scotland, rising numbers of youths are smoking marijuana. Across Great Britain, child alcohol abuse has become a serious problem; the UK has the highest rate worldwide, according to the collected data. In France, youth curfews have been imposed to keep unaccompanied children under age 13 off the street—more for the safety of adults than the kids.
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Two Malaysian helicopters collided mid-air, killing 10. The UK once again vowed to move forward with deporting migrants to Rwanda this summer. Protestors clashed with police in Venice over a modest €5 fee to enter the historic city on the front lines of climate change. Espionage against Germany, by Russia and China, is growing—or at least being identified.
Haiti continues to get worse as famine continues eating away at the population. 90% of Port-Au-Prince lives under control of the gangs; the other 10% lives under fear of gang expansion. Gangs forced the stop of the unloading of fuel at a port terminal on Monday so they could better wield their fuel as leverage. Haiti’s new transitional council has been sworn in, but is impotent on arrival.
Rebel groups in Sudan, including but not limited to the RSF, attacked 11 settlements in Darfur, following an old anti-black pattern practiced by the Janjaweed. In addition to potentially thousands of lives lost, the traumas of War threaten to perpetuate generational tensions from which new conflicts could sprout. A city that once held half a million people (many of whom were themselves displaced earlier) was razed and the people scattered or killed. And barely a peep of this makes the weekly news…
In Balochistan, a large region of Pakistan, an insurgency is growing, targeting Pakistani security forces and Chinese workers. Killings and IED detonations are said to be reported almost every day. Recruitment into the terror group, several thousand members, has been increased in response to the government’s militarized approach to counterinsurgency. Years of somewhat porous borders have also allowed abandoned American weapons to transit from Afghanistan into the region, empowering rebels.
US-Philippines military drills began the biggest ever between the two nations. Hundreds of people are flowing into Thailand from Myanmar every day, many of them wounded by the heavy-handed ruling junta forces. “This is the worst in my time in 35 years here,” one doctor said of the spike in patients. The junta is becoming so desperate that they are trying to draft Muslim Rohingyas into their forces, some of the very people they attacked, and denied citizenship to, several years ago.
Donald Trump is building a team of China hawks for his potential cabinet, and allegedly planning a more aggressive stance towards China, should he return to power. Reports emerged that, on the day Iran launched 300+ drones against Israel, a simultaneous crackdown began in Iran against women flouting the country’s strict hijab laws. More details are emerging about a massacre in Burkina Faso from February: “They separated men and women in groups…As we started moving forward, they opened fire on us indiscriminately,” said one survivor.
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights announced the discovery of mass graves at two hospitals in Gaza—”buried deep in the ground and covered with waste.” An official from the United Nations announced that clearing all the rubble and unexploded bombs from Gaza could take 14 years. And the War isn’t over yet. A growing number of analysts say War against Hezbollah is inevitable as both sides have recently escalated strikes over their 130 km (81 mi) border barrier, the so-called Blue Line.
Hundreds of student protestors were arrested across a number of universities, demanding the institutions divest from Israeli corporations, and generally opposing Israel’s actions in Gaza. Hundreds of thousands of students in Argentina protested against cuts to universities.
Ukraine suspended consular services for some men aged 18-60 living outside Ukraine, as part of a pressure campaign to get them back to Ukraine, where they can be conscripted. Russia warned that every action has an equal and opposite reaction, threatening an unspecified retaliation if Ukraine’s allies seize the roughly $300B frozen assets formerly under Russia’s control. On the battlefield, momentum is moving against Ukraine, although small victories remain. Ukraine is pulling back its Abrams tanks because Russian drones are too easily taking out the tanks. Five of the thirty-one $10M-apiece tanks provided in September have been destroyed so far. Reports emerged that the U.S. sent long-range ATACMS to Ukraine secretly; the ballistic missiles can strike targets up to 300 km away. Ammunition for Patriot systems is now being rushed to Ukraine.
Russia vetoed a resolution to ban the use of nuclear weapons in space. Worldwide, defense spending hit new all-time highs in 2023—about $2.44 trillion USD. (The U.S. accounts for $850B of that total.)
Amnesty International released its enormous, 418-page State of the World’s Human Rights Report for 2023, with 155 country-specific rundowns of selected human rights violations. Search for your own country and judge for yourself how accurate their report is. The general worldwide picture is one of regression to old norms and the breakdown of international law.
“...authoritarian policies ate away at freedoms of expression and association, hit out at gender equality,and eroded sexual and reproductive rights. The underlying public narratives, based in hatred and rooted in fear, encroached on civic space and demonized marginalized individuals…Climate activists were branded “terrorists” for denouncing governments expanding fossil fuel production and investment…States turned increasingly to facial recognition technologies to aid policing of public protests…in Afghanistan, being a woman or a girl has been de facto criminalized…To be a Palestinian in Gaza today is to be plunged to a far more violent and destructive version of the 1948 Nakba...Russia’s aggression has continued to manifest itself in deliberate attacks against civilians, the killing of thousands, and widespread destruction of civilian infrastructure…” -selections from the executive summary
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Select comments/threads from the subreddit last week suggest:
-There will (probably) be signs before SHTF—so say these comments in a thread about horizon scanning a doomsday event. But for some crises, like earthquakes, they spring up suddenly and unexpectedly. This is the very nature of an emergency.
-Household financial troubles are mounting, getting a decent job is nigh-impossible, everyone is coughing, demoralized people are throwing away their lives, trust is gone, most people seem exhausted, and there’s bird flu in the milk—says this essay-length weekly observation from the United States.
Got any feedback, questions, comments, complaints, upvotes, crystal ball predictions, etc.? Check out the Last Week in Collapse SubStack if you don’t want to check collapse every Sunday, you can receive this newsletter sent to your (or someone else’s) email inbox every weekend. What did I forget this week?

If I sous vide cook a chicken that is vacuum-sealed in a bag, and the bag is tightly sealed with almost no air in it before I place it in the hot water, but there’s air in the bag and the bag becomes loose and inflated after the chicken is cooked, does that mean there’s a leak in the bag?
Please note: There’s juice coming out from the chicken after it’s cooked, but after I take the bag out of the water and use the chicken juice to test whether there’s a leak in the bag or not, none of the chicken juice inside the bag has leaked out.

 It's Friday, April 19th in New York City. Donald Trump is on trial for one of the many crimes he is accused of. Around 1:39 that afternoon, a man walks up to police barricades and the crowd of onlookers and media. He throws pamphlets on the ground before taking out a bottle of liquid and pouring it over his head and body. At 1:39 PM, the man lit himself on fire collapsing onto a police barricade. Police and bystanders attempted to extinguish the flames but their efforts failed to save the life of Max Azzarello. 

What would posses a man to do something like this? Well if you read all the news reports, it's because he was a crazy conspiracy theorist that lost his mind. That's where most of us left it. As with any story, there is usually more to it that we don't know. I don't like not knowing and this was a drastic and insane act that I had to better understand. Who is Max Azzarello and what was on the pamphlets he threw down before his horrible act? I started by looking into who Max was. He was some what of an activist, a researcher and investigator (in his own right) and a genuinely good person according to friends and family. Those close to him were devastated by the news and the actions that Max took on this April afternoon. The media has highlighted any flaw or error Max had during his life as they usually do when they want you to feel a certain way about someone. Outside of the act of setting himself on fire very publicly, why do they want you to dismiss him as a nut job? I had to find out what this was all about, what drove a seemingly normal man to do something this drastic. This final. With the help of a friend, I was able to find Max's final words online. I'll include a copy of Max's unabridged words below as I feel it is important that we all read it. After reading it, I understood what Max was trying to do. He wasn't a crazy man, he was a martyr. Max chose this fate not at random, but after much thought and analysis. He chose to travel from Florida to New York to enact his plan outside the trump trial because he knew that every media outlet in the “free” world would be outside covering the trial. They would not be able to ignore him now. He planned his actions with the mindset of getting the most coverage of it possible. The media mentioned it, then it went away like everything does in our society. Max was dead and nothing else has happened. I refuse to let Max be forgotten. Max had struggled deeply trying to get people to pay attention to his message. I can relate to that struggle as I've tried to spread his words since his death with virtually no response from anyone. The short of Max's claim is that our government here in America and others around the world working with them are planning something big. They plan a complete flip from democracy to fascism. That's crazy talk right? Well ask yourself this, is their any evidence of something like this happening? Would it even be possible? Let's look into that. In order for a government to overthrow the will and rights of its people requires many things and most of them have already been done. I'm not an expert on government and politics but I am a student of history and I have enough common sense to draw lines between things. I also have pretty good self-awareness that allows me to be critical of my conclusions and not grasp at straws. Let's go over some simple facts that we should all be aware of. Please remember, these are not conspiracies, these are hard proven facts. 1. Our government is corrupt. We all see the corruption and deceit no matter our political leanings or beliefs. We know they are robbing us blind and cheating and lying. They openly commit crimes and violate our civil rights. Let's look into the crimes we know of first before digging into our crumbling rights. 2. Crimes have included but are not limited to: Bribery, fraud, insider trading, sexual assault, theft, war crimes, extortion, and election fraud. I won't go into all the specifics on these, but I think the majority of people can agree that we have witnessed these crimes happen over and over and they go unpunished or get off with a slap on the wrist. We can argue who is guilty and who isn't of what crimes, but that is an argument distraction. They love that we argue and disagree so much. 3. Rights Violations. We are all generally aware of rights violations by police officers and law enforcement in general. We are less aware of the stripping of our rights by the government. This has been happening for a long time in America, but we only need to go back to the attacks on 9/11. After those attacks, a bill was passed illegally called the Patriot Act. We were sold a fake story with a fake premise of safety. They like to scare you so you want their protection. After we were lied to about Iraq having weapons of mass destruction resulting in another war, we were told the Patriot Act was a simple bill to protect us from terrorist. The truth was, that it was the first step in revoking our 4th amendment. With the revelations of Edward Snowden, we were informed of just how far our government went. Illegal spying, data collection, and rights violations under the name of national security. They don't need a warrant anymore and you have no defense from prosecution. They collect all of your data, all the time on all devices. Your entire life and everything you say or do is recorded by our handy cell phones and home assistants as well as a massive surveillance network. It's stored on NSA servers for anyone who gets out of line or stands up for their rights. Your fourth amendment died when those towers came down and a lot of you celebrated it. Censorship is putting the last nail in the coffin of our first amendment. We lost part of it long ago when the CIA enacted operation Mockingbird and infiltrated all of our media. We no longer have a free media. No matter what your favorite news channel, it and all of it's employees are government assets regardless of their personal knowledge of it. You only see what they want you to see. This is the main reason they have to kill tiktok. They always kill what they can't control.
I could go on with this for days, but hopefully you get the point that they are infringing or out right ended our rights. Maybe you are one of those people who is stars and bars American and believe in our system and country. You are probably insulting me as a conspiracy theorist or whatever the opposite of your political agenda is. Racist, communist, liberal, leftist, right wing, republican, democrat, whatever. I ask you only do one thing. Ask yourself if this is the country that we wanted for our selves and our children. Is this the nation and society our parents or grandparents wanted for us? Look around you. Don't add blame or feelings to things, just look at what they are. We are being destroyed by drugs and addiction. We have homeless encampments flooding our major cities. Crime is insane. Racial tension is higher than it's been since the civil rights movement despite the majority of American's being more accepting and less racist than our ancestors. We are being dumb-ed down with poor education and lies. Our economy is not good and we suffer from the pains of inflation. We have people starving to death in the worlds richest country. The cost of living is soaring past our income levels. 1% of our population owns more than the other 99%. You have virtually no workers rights in most states and are controlled by the corporations that own us all. Our food is poisoned and killing us. Just look at the report from an independent group on the amount of lead in Lunchables. Why didn't the FDA find that? It's what we pay them for after all. We are constantly inundated with propaganda designed to cause discourse, distraction and ignorance. The single most important document in American history has been labeled as bad and racist. Why would anyone want to make people turn against our constitution? They know most of you have never read the constitution let alone understand your rights. It's easy to manipulate those who are unaware of the facts. The constitution is not racist or evil. The men who wrote it might have been, that's an argument for another time. The document itself is amazing and critical. Stop reading it with negative thoughts about its writers and read it for what it says. We have the freedom of speech, freedom of press, and freedom of religion. It's the first right in the Bill of Rights for a reason. Our freedom of speech is required for us to speak out about injustices and have our concerns and complaints heard. It's singly the most important thing we have and yet many of your actively work to curtail that right for others. Be assured, it won't stop with the ones you don't want to hear. We need that freedom of speech to avoid having to enact other rights, but we will get back to that later. Freedom of religion doesn't feel that important to me because I'm not very religious. For those of us who are religious this is a major one. For those of us who are non religious, this right is for us as well. While it protects their right to practice their religion, it protects us from having to practice it with them. We all know that has been violated in both ways. Freedom of the press is very under appreciated. Having an open and honest news media allows the average American to know what is happening in our society and world. It use to be a very important tool for us to suss out corruption and crimes. It's now a weapon used against us and against political rivals. It shuts down open debate and promotes division and hate. It has been the single worst change for America. Many of you call for the removal of the second amendment and most with good reasoning and cause. Gun violence is ridiculous in the United States, but we have to understand the problem and not try to put a bandage on it. The criminals will still have guns even if you outlaw them. They might have less and be harder to get, but they will still commit crimes and own guns. We have to look at the reasons that so much gun crime happens. Is it culture, greed, hate, mental illness, or poverty? It's probably all of those and more but those pale in comparison to what could happen to an America without guns. We all want to live in a safe world where guns are effectively useless outside of hunting or sport, but that is a fantasy land currently. What the pro second amendment people fail to explain properly and often fail to understand themselves is that gun rights are required. You don't get to remove someone else's right. Sure we feel we need guns for protection in some cases, but the idea behind the second amendment is protection from the government. This is the point where someone comments about how stupid we are to think our little guns can defeat the American government or its forces. You are correct, that would be stupid to think that we can grab an AR-15 and defeat a group of FBI agents or military. After all, what can my little AR do to a tank or drone right? That's not the meaning behind the second amendment. The authors of the constitution were very aware of a governments ability to separate itself from its people and control them. We aren't supposed to start a fight or try some kind of war, they are a deterrent. It's our responsibility to hold our government accountable and when our branches are no longer separate and they are all corrupt, then we must act to arrest and prosecute the criminals on our own. Our government is so corrupt, so aligned, and so controlled by corporations and money that we will have to stand up, united and armed, and demand that they be handed to us for arrest and trial. We have to find honest judges and lawyers and we have to make sure that our laws are obeyed and we don't violate their rights while trying to retake ours. We must practice what we preach. Why the guns, because if you think they are going to stand there while thousands of unarmed citizens make demands you are crazy. We need to have massive numbers of people, all armed, to deter any action against us. We do not want a fight, we do not want war, but we will not be denied our rights and we will not allow the criminals to run this prison that use to be America. It's the second amendment because its the most important after our first amendment freedoms. They knew once you lost the first amendment, then the second is your only remaining option. We are nearly there and that's scary for most of us. We need to do this together because we can't fix any of our other problems while a bunch of elites who live in a different world from the rest of us are in control of everything.
You might be asking what can we do? Well, to start, go read the constitution or at least the Bill of Rights. Understand them and their value to you. Once you know your rights, its easier to see how often and horribly they are violated daily. Also, go read the words of Max Azzerrelo. Regardless of your feelings about him, have the respect to read the words that he died to share with the world. THE FOLLOWING ARE THE LAST WORDS OF MAX AZZARELLO
My name is Max Azzarello, and I am an investigative researcher who has set himself on fire outside of the Trump trial in Manhattan. This extreme act of protest is to draw attention to an urgent and important discovery: We are victims of a totalitarian con, and our own government (along with many of their allies) is about to hit us with an apocalyptic fascist world coup. These claims sound like fantastical conspiracy theory, but they are not. They are proof of conspiracy. If you investigate this mountain of research, you will prove them too. If you learn a great deal about Ponzi schemes, you will discover that our life is a lie. If you follow this story and the links below, you will discover the rotten truth of ‘post-truth America’. You will learn the scariest and stupidest story in world history. And you will realize that we are all in a desperate state of emergency that requires your action. To my friends and family, witnesses and first responders, I deeply apologize for inflicting this pain upon you. But I assure you it is a drop in the bucket compared to what our government intends to inflict.

Because these words are true, this is an act of revolution.

Last March, a billionaire named Peter Thiel started a bank run on Silicon Valley Bank. I knew enough about Thiel that I found this incredibly suspicious: My hunch was that this was intentional, though I couldn’t fathom why. I began investigating online, and quickly found cryptocurrency’s fingerprints all over it. The bank run occurred just days after Silvergate Bank – which catered almost exclusively to crypto companies – collapsed. Meanwhile, several crypto cheerleaders were all over financial media warning of a regional banking crisis, and nobody in media was addressing the clear crypto connections. I dug deep into the financials of Thiel’s venture capital firm Founders Fund and eventually uncovered the following, all proven many times over. Cryptocurrency is our first planetary multi-trillion-dollar Ponzi scheme. It was expressly created for this purpose by a laundry list of rich and powerful people out of Stanford/Silicon Valley and Harvard/Facebook. The March 2023 bank failures were all intentional: the banks were used to move out stolen Ponzi money. This signals that they’re no longer dumping cash in to keep the cryptocurrency Ponzi afloat, and that it will soon go insolvent, as all Ponzis must. When the Ponzi scheme goes insolvent, it will take down half the stock market with it: The perpetrators used their major companies to pipe into the blockchain so they could funnel money out from the crypto exchanges. This includes Google, Tesla, Apple, PayPal, Facebook, Disney, Walmart, Target, InBev, Zoom, and countless others. It is a Ponzi scheme so large that it created global inflation, which is why the price of Bitcoin has been a remarkable leading indicator for inflation rates. Victims who bought crypto don’t realize their money has already been stolen, so the money gets double-counted by the victims and the criminals who stole it. As it turns out, our elites are awash in Ponzi schemes. Stanford’s StartX.com investment fund and Jeffrey Epstein’s ‘Program for Evolutionary Dynamics’ he ran at Harvard are both fake-science Ponzi factories that these schools have invested billions in: They are filled with fraudulent companies that use smoke and mirrors to promise miraculous new technology, but always collapse while the perpetrators only get richer.

Funneling trillions of dollars in stolen cash through the stock market created the largest stock-market anomaly in history. The stock chart signature of a Ponzi scheme is a massive increase (while they stack up cash) and then a massive fall (as they funnel out the stolen cash). This chart shape appeared in all the companies listed above. In order to explain the massive anomaly, our criminal government unleashed COVID on the world and told us these were the “stay at home stocks.”

Ponzi schemes are vicious beasts, and cryptocurrency is history’s largest Ponzi by orders of magnitude. It could best be described as an economic doomsday device, intentionally made to shatter the world economy. The U.S. government is fully involved in this totalitarian con: To illustrate its bipartisan support, I’ll note that nearly every participant of the Clinton Global Initiative has ties to cryptocurrency, while two of the biggest tech VCs who participated are Trump associates Josh Kushner and Anthony Scaramucci. To better understand our form of government, I will point you to one of the most astonishing pieces of stand-alone evidence I’ve found: Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton’s 1988 DNC speech where he nominated Mike Dukakis for president against George H.W. Bush. The speech is a vile, mean-spirited roast of Dukakis that makes no sense whatsoever: For Clinton to ruthlessly attack a member of his own party should have been political suicide, and he repeatedly mocks Dukakis’ noble and earnest qualities. Notably, actor Rob Lowe, who was supporting Dukakis, was victim of a teen sex blackmail operation at the DNC that year. Since we know Clinton is a close associate with teen sex blackmail artist Jeffrey Epstein, we can suddenly make perfect sense of the nonsensical speech by applying this lens: Bill Clinton is a cocky mob boss who blackmailed Mike Dukakis because Dukakis thought his job was to help the public. He teases out the future public revelation that Kitty Dukakis drank rubbing alcohol, and offers a strange anecdote about the crack epidemic that reveals he is an exceedingly proud drug runner. What does this revelation tell us? That our government is conning us completely. That Bill Clinton was secretly on (former CIA Director) George H.W. Bush’s side, and that the Democrat vs. Republican division has been entirely manufactured ever since: Clinton is with Bush; Gore is with Bush; Trump is with Hillary, and so on. When they present themselves in public, they are acting as characters that are against one another, practicing kayfabe as wrestlers do. As it turns out, we have a secret kleptocracy: Both parties are run by financial criminals whose only goals are to divide, deceive, and bleed us dry. They divide the public against itself and blame the other party while everything gets worse and more expensive and handful of people take all the money.

Since it is fully parasitic, a secret kleptocracy is an incredibly unstable form of government – left to its own devices, it can only lead to fascism or failed state.

One of the key findings of this research is that Harvard University is one of the largest organized crime fronts in history, which is how they churn out billionaires – it’s a major hub of this sprawling criminal network. As it turns out, dozens of the writers of The Simpsons went to Harvard. So I asked myself the question: If The Simpsons served the interests of organized crime, how would it do so? Well, it offers a dysfunctional family suffering from moral decay, a community incapable of solving its problems, a worker drone who slaves away for an evil billionaire, and cathartic laughs for our poor collective circumstances. There are some notable specifics as it relates to this research, too: In Marge vs. The Monorail, the townsfolk are too oafish and divided to invest in the town’s needs (fix Main Street) and fall for the charms of a dazzling showman with a bogus monorail Ponzi scheme. When we know that the show is closely linked to an organization that invests billions of dollars in Ponzi factories, this becomes quite damning. In Lisa the Iconoclast, Lisa discovers that town founder Jebediah Springfield was a secret criminal con artist, and that the townsfolk’s lives are a lie. Realizing this is an important discovery, she desperately tries to get the townsfolk to listen to her. But they meet her with hostility, apathy, disbelief, and partisanship and she fails to get through to them. Ultimately, she realizes the town is so far gone that perhaps it’s better for them to be lied to by con artists, and she keeps the secret to herself. And here I’ve been, like Lisa Simpson, desperately trying to get friends, family, and the public to believe the proof of a totalitarian con I’m trying to show them, and they’ve turned away with hostility, apathy, disbelief, and partisanship. And so, we realize the criminal truth of The Simpsons: Our elites are telling us that our eroding collective circumstances are our own fault, and we can’t do anything about it, while they steal the American Dream from us. It is, for lack of a more elegant word, brainwashing. — Lastly, we string these major discoveries together: Cryptocurrency is an economic doomsday device; our government is a secret kleptocracy; The Simpsons exists to brainwash us. From there, the only research we need is critical thinking and we’re able to piece together the true story of our circumstances. Consider America since 1988: Institutions like healthcare and universities have become parasitic in their skyrocketing prices. News media tells us to be angry and tribalized. Daytime television warns us of moral decay. Local news tell us to fear our neighbors. The Simpsons tells us we’re too oafish and divided to save the American Dream. Seinfeld tells us to celebrate the assholes and be irritated by all the normal people around us. “Reality” TV tells us that real life is filled with hedonism and strife. Social media, owned by crypto criminals like Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk, is flooded with nonsense conspiracy theories and memes reminding us that we are hopeless, helpless, anxious, depressed, ironic, scared, apathetic, escapist, lonely, misguided, and jaded, telling us we can’t do anything but have a laugh at our circumstances. Liberals mock the hypocrisy of conservatives; conservatives mock the hypocrisy of liberals, and our collective circumstances erode. The left shouts “All Cops Are Bastards,” which ensures they’ll be hated by the police and the public (and flies in the face of leftist theory). The public’s distrust of the government is at an all-time high, but so is the belief that we are helpless to do anything about it. And with all this, a sharp rise in apocalyptic messaging: Climate change will kill us all; COVID will kill us all; vaccines will kill us all; AI will kill us all – no matter the bubbles we ascribe to, we’re bombarded with existential crises with no solutions. We’ve seen a surge in apocalyptic film, literature, and video games that tell us there is no way out of our poor circumstances but total societal breakdown. Zombies tell us that the public is our enemy. If you go to your nearest convenience store, you can buy a can of water called “Liquid Death.” This is our rotten farce: For our entire lives, we have been flooded with media designed to slowly steer us into a world where the American Dream was dead, where the public was fully divided against itself, where everybody believed we were powerless to do anything about our worsening circumstances. It is all so they can organize an unprecedented, apocalyptic rug pull on the entire populace as they pivot to fascism, which is perhaps best understood as kleptocracy at the barrel of a gun. When we piece it all together, we understand the truth: We are in a totalitarian doomsday cult. Why on earth would our elites do this? There are many reasons, but the simplest is because capitalism is unsustainable, and they knew it: Climate change and resource extraction would catch up eventually. So, they never intended to sustain it. They knew all along that they would gobble up all the wealth they could, and then yank the rug out from under us so they could pivot to a hellish fascist dystopia. — Things escalated wildly in 1988 when former CIA Director George H.W. Bush got the White House, but this plan had been in action long prior: Why is Stanley Kubrick’s comedy about mutually assured destruction called Dr. Strangelove: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb? Because he was a cocky secret fascist who was getting us to stop worrying and love the bomb. Why did he make A Clockwork Orange? So we’d rejoice at ultra-violence designed to desensitize us to the horrors of the world. Why were the Manson Family murders crawling with cover-ups and intelligence agents? Because our government wanted to make us fear for our lives and believe that hippies are deranged psychopaths. Why did Walt Disney produce a fraudulent documentary that told us Lemmings follow each other off cliffs? So we would believe it. Why did The Beatles tell us to fear the taxman, to scoff at revolution, chase nonsense conspiracy theories, and that happiness is a warm gun? So we would believe it. Why did Easy Rider tell us that the hippie movement was dead? So we would believe it. Why did Chinatown end with defeatism in the face of massive corruption? So we would believe it. Why did George Orwell tell us of a hellish future of totalitarian control that we are powerless to stop? So we would believe it. Why did Wall Street tell us “greed is good”? So we would believe it. Why did Do The Right Thing tell us we’re all racially tribalized? So we would believe it. Why did Simpsons creator Matt Groening make a comic strip called Life in Hell? So we would believe it. And on, and on, and on, and on. When it comes to any popular media, if you ask yourself the question, “Why would secret doomsday cult kleptocrats want the public to consume this?”, you will find your answers. — This is obviously very bad news, but the biggest lie we’ve been told is that we are powerless. We’ve got one way out of hellworld, and that’s for the public to realize that we’ve been conned completely so we can build a united movement that shatters every lie they’ve told us, mocks this rotten farce as loudly as it deserves, and aims at nothing short of abolishing our criminal government so we can build one that serves the public. To understand this story is to see right through the con, to become immune to the endless sea of criminal propaganda, and to feel the great joy and power that comes with freedom. If a small number of people quickly put on these truth-colored glasses, we are in for an unimaginably bright future. If not, we get an apocalypse. For more information, I’ve put together this booklet that includes other major findings and a map to a sea of proof, along with all the other essays on this site. For the true history of America since the end of World War II, see here. To see this discovery unfold in real-time, along with further explanations, hundreds of pieces of evidence not covered here, advice, inspiration, political theory, and the heart and soul of a man escaping history’s largest doomsday cult, see my Instagram story highlights. I apologize for leaving things so scattered, but this has been an exhausting affair. So long as you understand this (true) ideology, you will be able to learn the whole story. Here is a federal lawsuit I filed against dozens of perpetrators of the cryptocurrency Ponzi – not for litigation, but just to preserve the information and attach my name to it. I was terrified and hadn’t slept in days and it shows, but it served its purpose of keeping myself alive long enough to keep learning and telling this story. I no longer have my original research files from the crypto rabbit hole. If you want to see them, you’ll have to get my laptop back from the government. Ask them how they got it - it’s a very fun story. I hope you know how powerful you are. I wish you a hell of a lot more than luck. Max Azzarello

Human rights: Food for too many predatory thoughts ‘HR, unionism, colonialism and technofeudalism’
HRR 721
[TLDR (too long didn’t read): If you are reading this, chances are you care about HR. This Reader is about the evolution of the perennial and evolving seeking of profit in Capitalism. It covers the topic in a bit on an eclectic manner… For a quick overview, just read the bolded text]. Traducitraduire los/les Readers; usautiliser deepl.com
--Private property (and the ‘right’ to seek profit?), the bourgeoisie will say, is inviolable and sacred! (Note that, as a religious adjective, ‘sacred’ implies the divine acceptance of the preeminence of individual wealth over any social or collective right).
--Americans have long seen their country as morally exceptional, but is their exceptionalism really moral in the economic, social and cultural rights sense? (adapted from Joseph S. Nye)

1. The minority international community that calls itself ‘the Global West’ actually lives in a dissociated moral world. On the one hand, it claims universal principles that it purports to defend as guiding its actions; on the other, it engages in practices that clash with those principles. (Angeles Diez) …wither human rights (HR) in this contradiction.
   
2. The productive and economic system of many nations in the Global West is subjected to a process of almost total control by large corporations; their governments are sub-servient to the latter; the working class has no say or almost no say. (Nothing new here…).*
   

*: The workers' passive way of defending themselves is to wait for the political class to listen and to take into account their denunciations and demands. But the latter never or seldom come up with concrete solutions to workers’ grievances --will workers finally/ever get the message…? (Revista Primera Piedra).
No say? Trade unions do not appeal to the new generations since these organizations demonstrate a lack of depth in the preparation of their leadership with respect to what should be a social, HR, ecological, welfare and gender preoccupation in their struggles. (Primera Piedra)

1. A mini-course on unionism: During the 19th and early 20th centuries, workers formed unions to a) fight their bosses and their profit-driven system, and b) to improve their economic and social condition. Threatened by growing union power, the business class retaliated with physical force and racist, anti-communist attacks. To keep those unions weak, employers convinced union officials that they should work together to secure labor peace --meaning, a subservient workforce. Employers court union officials as partners in managing the workforce, which means depriving workers of their right to decide.
   
2. As a result, conservative union officials have too often taken social issues off the table; they have limited bargaining to economic issues and directed workers to channel their social concerns through the electoral system. The loss of workers’ decision-making power at the workplace has eroded their decision-making power in every non strictly labor aspect of life and society.
   
3. Regrettably, today’s unions are institutions of class compromise that strive to balance the interests of workers and employers. This is an impossible task, because the two classes have opposite interests. So, the business class gets richer every year while workers lose ground.
   
4. Union officials cannot change this social arrangement without challenging the de-facto right of the business class to dominate work and society. Under the contract-bargaining system, union officials must restrict workers’ demands to what employers will accept. Furthermore, labor laws prevent the crises that strikes cause by reducing the class struggle to a series of isolated contract battles. Workers do have the experience of fighting back in solidarity, but obstacles keep wearing them down and they often surrender.
   
5. Union officials regularly settle for less than what workers demand. To get more, they would have to seriously disrupt the employer’s business, and the State would retaliate with strike-braking legislation. When workers cause more than a temporary disruption, employers appeal to the State to physically remove demonstrators, criminalize them, and ban or bankrupt their organizations. In every affected nation, workers have demonstrated and struck against the loss of public services, the crisis of overwork, and the increased cost of living. And in most cases, the union establishment has blocked angry workers from using their class power to challenge the root cause of their distress, the drive for profit (and the push to war…) and the disregard for workers’ rights.
   

But there is also ‘the older’ constraint

1. Colonialism has continued in many forms since political independence and sovereignty of colonies were greatly conditioned by economic and financial dependencies, unequal contracts, privileges granted to companies of the former colonizing powers, including the expulsion of peasants to make way for mega-development projects. Add to this the continuity of social relations based on the colonial principle of the ethno-racial-inferiority-of-the-other, of which colonialism and racism are the most obvious expressions. Little known are the facts that: a) At the time of colonialism’s end, the colonized did not always mount much active resistance, and b) in the same year that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) was signed, the new universal rights were denied to the entire colonized world --not to mention workers [including during Apartheid and the Nakba (the massive expulsion of Palestinians from their territory)].
   
2. Acts committed by anti-colonial fighters have always been called state terrorism --only years later recognized as heroes of anti-colonial liberation. (Note: only in 2008, after he was elected president, was Nelson Mandela removed from the US list of terrorists…) So, you see? Scandalous double standards have been at play: This is how the global North devastated the native populations not distinguishing good violence from bad violence. This is the structural blindness of history’s victors!** (Boaventura de Sousa Santos)
   

**: This is complemented by a remnant of the old colonial mentality, the one that also says you are nobody unless you actually have a land of your own. (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
And now, beware of the new insidiously constraint growing on us
--Politics is about who has the right to tell whom what to do. It is thus about power. (Yanis Varoufakis, ex Greek economist ex-finance minister)
--Behind politics are powerful corporations that have the power to tell us what to do. A new distribution of wealth thus requires --that is, demands-- a new distribution of power. (Antoine Barnabe French legislator, 1761-1793)

1. Capitalism is now actually housed in the cloud where it concentrates its authority in specific corporate hands that hold the power. At the new Capitalism’s core is ‘technofeudalism’ which is de-facto replacing Capitalism as the Capitalism we knew as-of-today. We are talking about a system that uses elements of feudalism commandeered by today's technology. Yes, it is feudal lords that populate the cloud today. Their data management power commands huge resources that, none-other-than WE supply to the cloud for free --every hour, every day. This means WE are the serfs in this new system.
   
2. Huge profits*** are accruing to those who more-and-more get to know too much about us (as we use the internet on a daily basis). The greater the power of the ‘cloudalist class’, the faster the march of technofeudalism, i.e., the less we-the-people can do to avert this looming and growing situation that will eventually lead us to catastrophe (Y. Varoufakis)
   

***: Countries dominated by the power of money, by the voracity of profit, by the unrestricted power of the privileged... respect legality only when the Constitution and laws are made by and for them. (Louis Casado)
Bottom Line
--In its multiple political-economic, socio-psychological, cultural and religious dimensions, neoliberalism continues to be an incessant factory of non-alternatives and false alternatives. (B. de Sousa and Santos)

1. Just consider: neoliberalism condemns all that is public, the collective; equally the ideas of community, fraternity solidarity and HR. There is only room for the individual and his or her selfish interests. The basic issue remains the same in the New Perspective delineated above, i.e., to protect the wealth of the privileged and to continue to live at the expense of the wretched of the earth (plus millions of us who are not wretched, but use and feed the internet).
   
2. As you now, the reforms implemented by neoliberalism include the privatization of water, energy, education, health, social security and the franchising of the rest of services, in addition to the destruction of labor legislation, that is, the social protection of the workers. Add to this the facilitation of national and foreign investment, the sale of ecosystems to the highest bidder, the reduction or simply the elimination (or the skimming) of taxes on/by the wealthy and big corporations...**** In short, everything is a commodity, everything is bought or sold, everything is a matter of price. There is no common destiny, there is no society, there is only the individual, each one for his own and to hell with the rest.
   

****: The general budgets of states are substantially financed by the taxes paid by those rendered poor, starting with the VAT. (L. Casado) This being so, inflation is taxation without legislation. (Milton Friedman)
Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City
Your comments are welcome at [schuftan@gmail.com](mailto:schuftan@gmail.com)
All Readers are available at www.claudioschuftan.com

Race Information Name: Ironman Texas
Date: April 27th, 2024
Time: DNF
​
Goals
A Sub 10:15 No
B Sub 10:30 No
C PR No
​
Splits
Swim 1:20:39
T1 5:12
​
Swim
Got in and the all I could see was green. No feet, even if they were right in front of my face! Man that water was warm and nasty. Was hoping for a 1:15 swim, and started out holding that pace but overheated so quickly. The water was very warm and I started to feel pretty rough about 2K in and had to dial back the effort. Came through the halfway gate at 38:44 and managed a 1:20 which tied my last swim at IM FL in November of 2023. Heart rate got up to 179 at about 2K in. Average HR was 171. Got out and felt pretty nauseous but recovered pretty quickly as I got onto the bike.
​
Bike
Bike was super congested but was going well, was warming up and waiting for my heart rate to slowly drop down. Was sticking to my Garmin Powercourse plan from Best Bike Split which was set up for a 5:15 bike split. At about mile 20, right when you take the onramp down to the Hardy Toll road, there was an aid station right before you make the turn onto the on ramp. I did not need anything but was unfortunately pushed outward by someone who had slowed down to grab a bottle and then after getting the bottle swung wide back out left pushing me into the middle area between the two traffic lanes. This middle area had massive reflectors and I hit 3 of them in a row which caused a flat in my rear disc wheel. After coming down the on ramp someone pointed and told me it was flat so I pulled over into the grass and pulled out my Dynaplug air for a quick patch. This is where my day turned from a slight setback to something really unfortunate...
As I was fixing the puncture, a race support member saw me fixing my flat and asked if I needed assistance to which I replied "no, I just fixed the puncture thanks!" so then after hearing I did not need assistance he walked back and got into his truck which was positioned about 50ft behind me. As he drove past me in the grass area between the on ramp and the toll road, he suddenly veered right and ran directly over my bike as I was bleeding extra PSI out of the repaired tire about to resume my bike since the c02 had over-inflated it a bit. Another couple of inches and instead of my bike it would have been my arm or even possibly my entire body as I was squatted down by the tire of my bike.
The police were then contacted and an incident report was filed. I really hope that my bike can be replaced. It is an unfortunate freak accident and I understand accidents happen, the race support member was very shaken up and felt terrible. It's a really tough situation to be in and I feel bad, obviously there was no intent on his part to run my bike over. I am assuming he thought he had pulled his truck past me and checked his mirror before pulling out but because I was in his blind spot at that point he thought I was gone.
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Aftermath
The race support guy who ran my bike over said that everything would be taken care of and radio'd in for a "SAG?" I think they're called to pick me up. However I think he was so shaken up about it he was having a really hard time communicating over the radio and didn't realize they were waiting for me at the top of the on ramp for over 30 mins as I painfully sat there staring at my mangled bike for over an hour. After the car dropped me off back at transition, one of the full time employed Ironman staff members just told me there's nothing they can do right now about the situation and told me to email them. I'm quite at a loss of what to do now as the create new request page on the athlete services portal doesn't function correctly and won't submit. If anyone here has gone through a similar experience and has any suggestions I am all ears.
TL; DR: A race support member ran over my bike with his Ram 1500 right after I finished repairing a flat at mile 20 of the bike causing me to DNF.

TLDR: Not sure if this is the best sub to ask this, but I don’t really have anyone to talk about this with who might really get it. This was initially an advice-seeking, productive post that kind of turned into a vent. It’s a little unhinged and rather “woe-is-me” so if you make it to the end, I appreciate you. Despite that, it was cathartic to write.
Content:
I’m from the Northeast, US and moved to Colombia 3 years ago (in the capital, Bogotá).
It’s been a wonderful and enriching experience in so many ways learning a new language, immersing myself in a different culture, and above all else I’ve established many close friendships that mean the world to me. I’ve stayed here because in many ways I feel like I “fit in” here in a personality and values sense, and I also feel more comfortable and “at home” here than in the US. The original plan wasn’t to stay this long, but I kind of built a life here by accident, and I’m overall much happier here.
Despite all the positives, one thing I’ve been struggling a lot with lately is xenophobia in day-to-day life.
Just to be clear, when I say xenophobia, I am referring to how I’m treated due to my nationality and demographic group. In simpler terms, it’s the negative ways some people treat me just because I have a non-native accent and am visibly foreign-born.
On the one hand, I think some of the frustrations and criticisms of expats here are very valid. There are a lot of unsavory types who go specifically to Medellín and Cartagena for drugs and cheap prostitution.
Beyond the vices, there’s a noticeable number of expats who live in an expat bubble and either refuse or have no interest in integrating in any form (at least showing an interest in learning/using Spanish, simply being conscientious of social and economic struggles and our relative privilege, or just treating people decent and with respect). I use the word noticeable because I was only in Medellín for a week or so, and thus I don’t want to paint all expats there with too broad of a brush, but I saw that the core of these criticisms definitely exists and is visible.
I think that the scale of these issues is made to seem much more prolific than it actually is by a handful of expat-YouTubers uploading vlogs basically glorifying and encouraging all of the above behaviors for views. And so people who have never even been to Medellín or even met a gringo will develop their impression of gringos based on these jackasses online.
That’s all to say, I understand where this perception comes from and why, at a base level, many people hold negative views about this segment of expats.
What really gets to me and knocks my confidence is when people, particularly acquaintances and even close friends, make sweeping statements, generalizations, and basically type cast every American as the above. And it’s literally a regular occurrence at this point.
It’s pretty common where a conversation gets going where everyone in the room will just obliviously talk a lot of shit about Americans or American guys, and then someone notices me looking like 😐
Then they realize what just left their mouth, and they’re all quick to say ”OH but not you!!! Except you!!!” Or lots of backhanded compliments about how I’m “one of the good ones” and “I changed their view on gringos” such that not all of us are pieces of shit, but only 99% of us.
A high-profile story broke recently in which eight US tourists/expats were arrested for partaking in prostitution with kids. It’s all over social media, news articles, and a part of dinner-table and water-cooler discussions, and now the hate from the general public has basically been dialed up to 11.
In my life, I’ve noticed that the hostility has gotten more overt as acquaintances will publicly bring up the topic and either directly single me out for my opinion or subtly imply that I’m cut from the same cloth then wait for my reaction.
Literally nothing about my lifestyle, the values I embody and live, how I treat people, how I’ve integrated over the past 3 years, or even my most controversial personal opinions would ever implicate that I’m a sexpat or a piece of shit. But like I said, I fit the physical description and demographic (nationality and gender) of those people that were arrested.
My closest friends agree with me that this shit is not okay, and I know that they’d never say something like that either to me or behind my back. But I often feel very alone in trying to manage the situation. Maybe it’s not the best expectation, but what would make me feel really supported is when an incident like that occurs, my best friends will stand up for me and tell that person to go fuck themselves. And that’s what I would do if the situation were reversed.
I’ve gently and (sometimes not so gently) called people out on these inappropriate comments because it’s 100% true that if I made equivalent remarks about Colombians, Colombian tourists in Miami/NYC, or Colombian immigrants/expats in the US, then they’d be the first to cry foul and would lose their minds.
Some people take a step back, reflect on their comments, and give a genuine apology, which I appreciate and we move on. But it’s also so common where they just dig their heels in and do mental gymnastics to justify their xenophobic views and how “it’s different.”
That was a lot to get off my chest, and this doesn’t even touch on the topics of gentrification or a weak economy (for which many exclusively blame foreigners, despite the same issues, complaints, and inflation pounding literally every other metropolitan city and country on this planet since COVID), or people holding me accountable for Reagan-era foreign intervention policies as if I personally signed the bills myself.
I’m trying to focus on the positive people and relationships in my life, but damn, this seems to be simmering in me hotter and hotter. Every time I hear a bullshit comment I’m quick react non-verbally. It’s made me far less open and trusting when I meet new people since it’s happened a few times where we can have a strong bond initially, and once there’s trust they then feel safe to reveal a slew of deep-seeded, bigoted views with how they really feel about “people like me.”
This post got out of hand but it was cathartic to write. Not sure if anyone else has had a similar experience or if you’ve learned to overcome the distress and anxiety caused from these kinds of situations.

1: Any Toonforce character can be successfully evaded by walking hunched over on your tippy toes with your head down
2: Any Toonforce user can be incapacitated momentarily by a tasty pie sitting in a windowsill
3: A rake sitting in their path, it cannot be avoided as sidestepping the rake spawns more and flying just causes the rake to take off like a propeller
4: Any guy who speaks in a 1940s “Tough Guy” voice who rolls up his sleeves before the fight
5: Any pitiful or comically weak character or an insect that annoys them
6: A misplaced piece of furniture which causes them to stub their toe, making them hop on one leg while clutching their throbbing foot
7: A man in a suit sitting with one leg crossed while smoking a cigar and reading a newspaper can solo the average toonforce user
8: Any Toonforce user who wears metal can be defeated by a comically oversized magnet
9: A discarded banana peel being thrown in their path
10: a falling piano
11: A fake tunnel painted on a wall
12: a giant fly swatter
13: A really spicy pepper, causing their body to turn red from the feet up before steam shoots out of their ears
14: An Inflatable hammer
15: a teleporter which would continuously put them in worse and worse situations
16: A doormat hiding a giant spring
17: A bubble wand which creates a bubble big enough to carry them away
18: A puddle of invisible paint, which turns them invisible and makes them bump into everything
19: Giant flypaper trap
20: Stepping onto a patch of ice, causing them to slide continuously while flailing their arms
21: A piece of gum stuck to the bottom of their shoe will glue then to the ground
22: Someone sticking then with a pushpin, causing them to deflate
23: Disappearing floor or crumbling cliff
24: throwing a bunch of bowling pins at them, stunlocking them into having to juggle an absurd number of pins until they inevitably lose control and end up under a pile of pins
25: Cliff with a sudden end which causes them to run off before looking at the camera and falling
26: A spring loaded boxing glove
27: An exploding cake with a giant fuse sticking out
28: Handing them a paddleball racket, which inevitably smacks them in the face when they try to use it
29: A whoopie cushion
30: A giant bubblegum bubble popping and covering them
31: A gun barrel sticking out of a hole in a wall
32: Any punch has at least a chance of sending a toonforce user flying directly through the roof of a prison landing in a cell
33: Any Big BrotheSister of the opponent
34: Bed Time
35: A loose floorboard
36: Brain Freeze
37: Forcing them to hold an umbrella will cause them to be struck by lightning
38: Painting train tracks on the floor and then having them walk over them
39: Stunlock by giving them a birthday cake with trick candles that re-light when you blow them out
40: An exploding cigar
41: a trick can of peanuts
42: Any body of cold water turns them into an ice cube
43: having them chase you around a tight corner into a brick wall
44: Any Toonforce user can be evaded by stepping onto the other side of the street and disappearing as a bus passes
45: They take severe damage from having their head smacked between 2 trash can lids or cymbals
46: Any Toonforce character will stop to flirt with a mop leaned up against a table with a pair of sunglasses
47: Any Toonforce character can be sealed by being locked in a tower labeled “(Character) containment facility” that is just a small town prison with a giant barbed wire fence with spotlights and armed guards
48: A musical number painting them as a failure will cause them to be defeated on the spot (Cheers Animaniacs)
49: An appropriately sized net
50: A “Kick me” sign