Tag: Health

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SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA – A high level North Korean defector, Jun Yi, spoke out yesterday at the UN describing previously unknown facets of Kim’s personal life, such as his affinity for Yoplait with granola and many more disturbing details.

Yi, age 46, a party leader, first tried to defect from North Korea in 2009 under the guise of “making a quick run to Target,” but was told to “come up with a better one, we just went shopping.”

Years later, Yi and his family found their lucky break when Kim was low on groceries and they made their escape.

When they made it to South Korea, they “just kinda stayed” and are now telling their stories of what it’s like living in the repressive nation of North Korea and, more specifically, what the leader is like personally.

“Even as a high-ranking official, the meals we got were never of any good quality. We were often forced to eat garbage like Chef Boyardee just to survive,” Yi said when describing the struggle he and his family faced during their time in North Korea. “Kim always had his food imported, though, so he always ate the good stuff.”

According to Yi, The Supreme Leader of the country would splurge on many luxuries, specifically citing Yoplait with granola. The $3.98 price tag didn’t deter Kim from getting his fix; he had even been heard to exclaim when pressed that it’s “worth the extra $3.”

Such gross inequality is standard in North Korea. While the poorest of the poor have to make due with eating Kraft Singles with mayo, the North Korean dictator lives in such luxury that a cup of silky, smooth, decadent Yoplait yogurt topped with the beautiful crunch of delicious granola is almost passé.

The inequality problem runs so deep in North Korean culture that it’s unknown whether or not the citizens of the country even are aware of such luxuries. During Yi’s time as a party leader, he ran the many slave camps in the country, and noted to us that the political prisoners and people imprisoned for what their grandparents did “have it easy because they didn’t even know what they were missing. To be honest, I wish I could be eating cabbage or whatever it is they eat and just be blissfully unaware of what I could be eating. I mean, we’re talking Yoplait with granola here,” he told us, almost shouting that last part.

We didn’t reach out to Yoplait for comment, but you can imagine that it would be something along the lines of how good their product is and that they don’t condone slavery or something like that.

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MINNEAPOLIS, MN — According to a new poll by Pew, 76% of teens in the US would definitely kill themselves in a, “joking kinda way.” The poll comes as many teens in America have been finding reprieve in knowing that depression and suicide are no longer taken seriously. APR’s Chief Suicide Correspondent, Albert Gordon, tells us that most teens are happy that overblown issues of depression and suicide are okay to talk about lightly to describe mild inconveniences, as opposed to reserving such statements to those suffering from those fake ailments.

“Vanity depression,” speaking as though one has depression while also understanding that such an illness has yet to be proven, has been on the rise especially with teens who like sympathy. Our Chief Anxiety Correspondent, May Spencer, is concerned however that this recent trend is delegitimatizing mental health causes.

“In the mental health community we’re all faking it for attention, and the better fakers get more attention. But when everyone is throwing around pleas for death in such a joking manner, it strips away the legitimacy of those of us who are legitimately faking a mental disease.”

In the past few years, vanity depression has eaten away at the divide between the fakers and the liars. Office Intern Anthony Ellis helped offer some insight into the world of vanity depression and why it’s as big as it is. Anthony, a local 13 year old, told us that vanity depression is “fun.”

“Everyone knows I won’t kill myself but it makes my feelings easier to understand,” he said. “Because everyone jokes about it all the time, only the good fakers make it, and those really good fakers are the funnest to laugh at and we wanna see more of them.” He went on to describe the fact that he and his friends have a hard time understanding each other’s feelings, so light hyperbole is needed to make sure the message comes across.

Vanity depression is also used as a means to become more liked. Anthony told us early this morning through an Xbox Live message that when “people say edgy things like that, they’re a lot cooler.”

He added that he knows his friends don’t care about mental illness, but it all sounds edgy so they like using the terms. When we asked the young man on what he thought specifically about depression and suicide, and how he thinks people feel when those terms are used in such a liberal manner, he called our reporter “gay” and signed out of Xbox Live.

The Pew Poll shows Spencer just how outgoing people who misappropriate culture have become. To her, people like Anthony are stealing part of her identity and making it their own, with their own twists that don’t conform to reality.

“How would you feel if, as a righty, I just started using left-handed scissors but I flipped them upside down when I did it so my right hand would fit properly?” Spencer said while providing a visual demonstration. “You see? Not as fun when I do it.”

For people with mental illness, it’s usually their one identifiable characteristic as a person, and usurping such an intrinsic part of one’s identity is as bad as it gets when it comes to cultural appropriation.

The left, who is usually fine tuned to be outwardly angry online and in the street —when they can be bothered— seems to be playing the largest role in all of this. Alt-left websites like Tumblr, a hotbed for neo-fascist propaganda, are constantly flooded with messages about people claiming to want to kill themselves. To some, the hypocrisy displayed really hurts.

Spencer and so many other liars are looking for a world where they can go about their day pretending that they have “real” issues without their heritage being stolen away from them. Pew has reminded America that it has a lot of work to do in making society a fairer and better place for all.

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TEL AVIV, ISRAEL — A proposal by Israel’s Public Security and Justice ministries shocked the world today as it was passed by the cabinet. According to Gilad Erdan, Public Security Minister, the measure is to put emphasis on “treatment instead of criminal enforcement.” According to the law, repeat offenses in public are only punished criminally after being caught four times in public, otherwise there is only a small fine that is to be paid.

Both being and getting stoned in the Middle East as a whole is a recreational activity that has been practiced for hundreds of years, according to APR’s Chief Everything Non-US Affairs Correspondent Catherine Wyman:

“As with some other things that we see in society, getting stoned is an activity that a majority of the people in the Middle East enjoy, but for whatever reason it’s a criminal offense in so many of these places.”

Israel is the first in the region to stand out and make the already popular pastime legal.

Jerusalem, the holy city caught in the middle of a fight between two illegitimate entities, has been the scene of several small scale rallies with both Muslims and Jews celebrating the “return to traditional values shared by both sides.” For generations both sides have happily agreed on the issue, so occasions like this are ones where Jews and Muslims alike can come together.

Common ground has been difficult to find, but it’s clear that Israel is looking for it. Both faiths in the Holy Land can now be stoned in public, as both religions explicitly allow.

UPDATE: For clarity’s sake, APR would like to state that what is being decriminalized is weed, not throwing rocks at people to the death.

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WASHINGTON D.C. — Tonight President Trump will address congress on the specifics of the kind of dystopian future he has in mind for the country. The most anticipated thing on the president’s docket is the fate of Obamacare. Yesterday in a meeting with several governors , Trump exclaimed in befuddlement, “Nobody knew health care could be so complicated.” Hopefully the president has had sometime to read about it on the Wikipedia page in preparation for his speech.

Democrats also have some preparing to do before Trump’s speech tonight. Steve Beshear, former governor of Kentucky, is going to be making the official Democratic rebuttal in defence of the ACA. Unofficially though, Democrats across the country are gearing up for an intellectual and impassioned debate through Twitter using funny reaction gifs.

While explaining his faults in communicating his faults, Trump quite eloquently summed it up by saying, ““I think I’ve done great things, but I don’t think I have — I and my people — I don’t think we’ve explained it well enough to the American public.” In terms of how he’s done generally, he believes he deserves an A – which he’s working to achieve with his teachers and counselors.

In the address tonight, the president’s goal is to articulate what he’s done so far and what his plans for the future are. According to several sources who have illegally leaked information to APR, Republican lawmakers are worried he’s going to do “a little too much articulation”. Our unethical, anonymous source added, “We’re honestly still reeling from that time Trump said that we’d have ‘healthcare for everyone’ that one time. We don’t wanna be writing checks our asses can’t cash, y’know what I mean?” Republicans are bracing for new positions that they may have to take starting tonight and they are going to have to think hard about their priorities; “An off script President Trump might just promise no taxes, for example, so we have to figure out how we incorporate ideas like that, and others that we’ve sworn against, into talking points that we make to the media.”

The Democrats are supposed to have a good night. It’s impossible to be stressed out about talking points if you just ignore who’s making them.

Be sure to join APR tonight in our live blog coverage tonight of Trump’s comments as they happen.

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MENLO PARK, CALIFORNIA — Facebook has announced today that is it launching a joint effort with The American Red Cross to figure out how to convert likes on Facebook into food to send to impoverished people across the globe. According to the social media giant, most people care enough to like photos of starving children, but don’t want to be inconvenienced by having to find their wallet to donate to the Red Cross and other organizations.

Mark Zuckerberg sat down with APR’s Chief Poverty Correspondent Bryan Graff and told us more about the initiative:

“At Facebook, we strive to do the most good we can in the world and we think that with this we can continue doing this.”

Working closely with the scientific community, Zuckerberg tells us that the process of converting likes on pictures and even text posts is close to being perfected. This conversion method is very closely guarded but, according to a source within The American Red Cross, the process is a lengthy one.

For years, the best mode of activism on Facebook is liking posts because it’s streamlined. It shows your support but you also don’t need to go to an entirely different website and follow arduous steps to donate.

“And that’s not even including the fact that you’re losing money,” Graff says. “In our modern age, this initiative gives us the best of both worlds: we can help without inconveniencing ourselves.”

A representative from The American Red Cross tells us that they wish people would “just send money, but if this is the best we can do, we’ll take it.” They’ve seen a loss in donation along with charities and have been looking for alternative methods of getting support to those who need it.

“In a world without donations, where do we get donations? The answer is clear: we work with what we have.”

UPDATE: According to a leaked memo from The American Red Cross, the process seems to be printing out lists of names who liked certain photos on Facebook and shipping them to Africa for kids to eat.

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SAN FRANCISCO, CA — A Silicon Valley startup has a solution for those of us contemplating suicide, but also are scared of death. According to the W.H.O., the one thing stopping most from suicide is the fear of death. In a 2015 study, the agency reported that 13% of those who have suicidal thoughts stop short specifically due to this phobia.

Cryocide founder, Florence Walters (center in photo), told us today that he saw a gap in the market and wanted to address it. “When I saw those stats, I was shocked. 13% of people are holding back from something that they want to do.”

The company was started just over a year ago with the aim to let people kill themselves without having to face their fear of death. The startup uses cutting edge cryonic technology to allow their customers to do that.

“The process is a very simple one,” Walters told us in a sit down interview at the company’s San Francisco headquarters. “It’s just two steps. First, we give our customers a wide selection of methods to commit suicide and they do it— in the company of doctors of course. Then, our trained team cryogenically freezes the person and stores them in the hopes that future technology can bring them back when all of their troubles on earth are either dead or irrelevant in the time that they’re woken up.”

APR’s Suicide Correspondent, Albert Gordon, tells us that customers will be getting the best of both worlds with this revolutionary service. “Forever we’ve been told that suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem, but in the modern age it doesn’t have to be that way. Cryocide allows many people to have the satisfaction of the sweet embrace of death while not actually dying.”

The technology behind the so-called “neo-cide” service is staggeringly complex and a closely guarded secret. And while all can agree that the technology is quite the feat, some have reservations about the service.

APR spoke to Linda Jackson, a strong critic of Cryocide. She believes that traditional suicide is “nothing but tarnished” by services like this. She explains, “I just want to go back to a time when you could kill yourself in dignity. If I’m going to do it, I want to do it for real, just as God told us expressly not to do in the Bible. Why would anyone in their right mind kill themselves, come back to life in the far future, and then do it again for real down the line? Honestly, just a waste of money.”

Other critics question whether a medical fix for blown out brains will ever be found. Gordon posed this to Walters, who answered immediately by saying, “There have been so many other things that these ‘doctors’ have said would be impossible but look where we are right now; all kinds of things can be fixed now. We’re giving the customer options and we believe, regardless of the choice, future medical professionals will be able to fix it.”

Even with criticism, Cryocide has opened up their doors to customers. Pricing starts at $850,000.