cherryblossomshadow

[cherryblossomshadow]

I'm Asking Trump Nominees: Is Trump a Russian Asset?

Senator Jeff Merkley

Transcript:

Jeff Merkley: Is President Trump a Russian asset?

Christopher Landau: Absolutely not, Senator. He's the president of the United States, duly elected by the American people

M: Well the reason I ask is many people back home have been asking me this question. And they say, "If he was an asset, we would see exactly what he's doing now."

For example, he proceeded to express from the Oval Office, propaganda that has been Russian propaganda. That Ukraine started the war, that Zelenskyy is a dictator.

Second of all, he gave away key things on the negotiating table before the negotiations even started ensuring US would absolutely oppose any possibility of of NATO membership for Ukraine.

Third, he's cut off the armed shipments to Ukraine, completely undermining their ability against a massive neighbor next door.

Fourth, he's undermined the partnership with Europe, which has been essential to security over the last 80 years, a major goal of Putin's.

And then, he's done everything to discredit Zelenskyy on the international stage, with the just shameful press conference, in which he teamed up with the vice president to attack Zelenskyy.

I can't imagine that if he was a Russian asset he could do anything more favorable than these Five Points.

What else could have Russian asset act actually possibly do that that Trump hasn't yet done?

[cherryblossomshadow]

Replace 'just"

Remove "just" from your sentences and say what you need. 👏 -Grammarly

Transcript:

Here are some easy ways to replace the word "just." It's often used as a filler word and there's no need to minimize yourself or your impact.

Instead of "just checking in," try "can you please provide an update?" Instead of "I just wanted to ask you a quick question," try "is now a good time for a quick question?" Instead of "just wondering if you had a chance to review …" try "I would love your feedback on my presentation." Instead of "I'm just here to take notes," try "I'll be taking notes during today's meeting."

[cherryblossomshadow]

Access to Expertise

Hank Green (@/hankgreen):

This is what happens when we select a president who prioritizes conflict over governance. No effort to understand or explain. No looking forward to solutions. No accountability or leadership. This sounds like a post from a guy with no power or access to expertise.

(in response to the following post)

Trump on Truth Social: "The airplane was on a perfect and routine line of approach to the airport. The helicopter was going straight at the airplane for an extended period of time. It is a CLEAR NIGHT, the lights on the plane were blazing, why didn't the helicopter go up or down, or turn. Why didn't the control tower tell the helicopter what to do instead of asking if they saw the plane. This is a bad situation that looks like it should have been prevented. NOT GOOD!!!"

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There is a special kind sadness in me reading Trump saying that the helicopter was "going straight at the plane" because that's what it looks like from the perspective of the video that's on social media.

Of course, both the plane and the helicopter were moving.

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This is something any thoughtful person considering the situation would be able to figure out, but also something anyone briefing the president would tell him. This indicates he isn't getting expert briefings, his priority is to go to social media to be angry in public.

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This is authentic human behavior, which is maybe what people like about Trump. But I think we can all agree it is not good leadership.

[cherryblossomshadow]

RBF

Sasheer Zamata

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Transcript:

I was talking to a guy in a bar recently and I was just listening intently to what he was saying and I guess my face into neutral pose because he called me on it.

And he was like, "Oh you must suffer from resting bitch face."

Has anyone gotten that before? Yeah, it sucks. I hate that that term even exists. Like if a woman's not smiling all the time or looking happy all the time, she looks like a bitch?

Which is also crazy because I know what I look like when I'm being bitchy. I look like this. That's my active bitch face. So to say my resting face is bitchy is an outlandish claim.

Also my face is resting because it's tired. It's so tired from smiling all the time or being told to smile all the time or waiting for my turn to speak when I'm in a room full of men or apologizing for things that I'm not sorry for but my speech is conditioned in a way to think that I need to be apologetic for taking up space. It's tired, let it rest.

Also I've never heard a term like that for a guy's face. There's no equally horrible term for a guy's face when it's resting, it's always like "stoic." "Pensive."

And I wanted to explain this to the guy I was talking to but I didn't want to prove his point by being a bitch about it.

So I just said oh that's so funny that you say that, this whole time we've been talking, I noticed you have resting rape face. Ended that conversation very quickly.

[cherryblossomshadow]

Skeptical hedonism

hankschannel

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Transcript (emphasis mine):

Hank: So you've seen this video

*video of Delta Connection Flight 4819 crashlanding*

Hank: What that man thought was "I just watched a lot of people die." And this is absolutely still a tragedy.

People don't have to die for things to be bad

There were a couple people on this plane who were seriously injured, but none of them died. There are lots of reasons why this could have gone much much worse. But one of them was that everybody on the plane was wearing their seatbelts.

Hank: *searches "seatbelts on planes" on X, formerly known as Twitter* I've seen this take like a billion times.

"Wearing seatbelts on planes has always felt like the dumbest shit to me." . "Passenger: I was wondering how this seatbelt would keep me alive in this plane crashes Stewardess: It won't. Its function is to hopefully tether your mangled corpse to your assigned seat for identification purposes in the event of a crash" . "Why do we have to wear seatbelts on planes? Has there ever been a time when a air crash investigator has viewed a plane crash scene and said, if only they were wearing seatbelts."

There are certainly some situations in which you are not going to be helped out by having a little lap belt. But also, there are a bunch of situations where you will!

Stories of like, the top of a plane popping off and people getting home. Remember that? This is not actually the one I was thinking about. This is not an actual photo of it in flight by the way. That's a photo of it on the ground.

Then there was recently that the door plug flew off of the plane. That's a situation where you want to have your seatbelt on. So you don't get sucked out of the window.

There was another one where the engine exploded and popped a hole in the side of the plane and the lady got sucked out and she died.

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There are a fair number of people who move through the world with the belief that if they are being told to do something, that's probably stupid.

The thing they are most skeptical of is anything that potentially inconveniences them.

Skeptical Hedonism is the thing that is behind people freaking out about masks. They're like, "I don't like smelling my breath. I don't like this wet thing on my face. It pulls on my ears a little bit. And I will, through motivated reasoning, create a circumstance in which I shouldn't have to wear this stupid thing."

Putting the tray table up, having the seat in the upright position, those are both because, if there is an accident, they want it to be easy for you to get out of the plane.

Am I over-exaggerating all of this because it was just a few tweets and it's a thing that I heard in the past and it's dumb? Yeah, probably. But, is this like skeptical hedonism thing a bigger deal than just this? Yes! It is huge, and it is growing, and it is a problem. And I think it has a lot to do with vaccines. It has a lot to do with like this crazy wave of populism. And I think it's a big part of people hating the government. Of people hating the USAID.

I think that it's everywhere.

"If something doesn't help me, it must be bad. If it does help me, then it is unquestionably good."

And that's just not how you build a society.

[cherryblossomshadow]

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A post shared by The Liberal Aggregator (@the_liberal_aggregator)

"The best analogy I've seen so far about the effects of inaction"

Transcript:

This is my paint bottle. This is the end of the table. I'm pushing this paint bottle towards the edge of the table. Now when you see me pushing this paint bottle towards the edge of the table, you have three options: You can push back, you can help my hand push it towards the edge of the table faster, or you can stand and do nothing and watch me push the paint bottle toward the end of the table. This is why "neutrality" is not an option when it comes to oppression. Because while there are three options, there are still only two outcomes. If you are not choosing this outcome (pushback), you are choosing this one (floor), whether you're helping or not. And this is an outcome we can't crash afford. I splattered black paint on the floor so you can get this analogy. Neutrality helps the oppressor. Silence helps the oppressor. Only direct open opposition to the oppression helps the oppressed. So call yourself neutral all you want, but your choices still impact where the paint bottle goes. What impact do you wanna have?

[cherryblossomshadow]

Night Wings Turning the day into the night, the sun into the moon This print and more are %15 off on my website with code SPRING25

[cherryblossomshadow]

me, every single time i see people (especially women) talking about the divine feminine energy, or the sacredness of the womb or whatever it is now:

[image description: a two-panel photo of a person dialling a number and then placing the phone to their ear. the contact is saved as ‘Ursula K. Le Guin’ /end ID]

context is this quote by her:

But I didn’t and still don’t like making a cult of women’s knowledge, preening ourselves on knowing things men don’t know, women’s deep irrational wisdom, women’s instinctive knowledge of Nature, and so on. All that all too often merely reinforces the masculinist idea of women as primitive and inferior – women’s knowledge as elementary, primitive, always down below at the dark roots, while men get to cultivate and own the flowers and crops that come up into the light. But why should women keep talking baby talk while men get to grow up? Why should women feel blindly while men get to think?

[cherryblossomshadow]

Holy shit, oh my god! 50 of them??

[cherryblossomshadow]

WHERE IS MY SILLY APRIL FOOLS GIMMICK I WANT IT ON MY DESK NEOWWWW

[cherryblossomshadow]

#april fools #:((((((( #i want a little joke to annoy my mutuals with!! tumblr! what are you doing (tags courtesy of OP)

back in my day, we got fun little games and jokes for april fool's. the lizard president race. coppy. crabs. the horse. boops, god, remember boops? now all they do is fuck up the ui. this used to be a website.

[cherryblossomshadow]

[cherryblossomshadow]

Good morning tumblr where is my silly little prank

[cherryblossomshadow]

[cherryblossomshadow]

i don’t want you like a best friend.

[cherryblossomshadow]

Me: Once Upon a Time season 1 is so cozy and comforting :)

ouat s1: government corruption, a woman almost having to give her baby away against her will, a mine collapsing with a child inside, a girl locked in a mental hospital, arson, homeless children needing to steal to survive, said homeless children almost getting separated in the foster care system, infidelity, drugging and kidnapping, attempted muder, actual murder, a murder trial that has nothing to do with the real actual murder, a man slowly and painfully turning into wood, etc.

[cherryblossomshadow]

Last chapter of Loop is coming this week but also please consider a very painful excerpt from a fic that I may or may not write that I just wrote in like ten minutes but I think is neat.

At some point you stop seeing them as people. The lucky ones won’t notice the switch when it happens–maybe recognizing it one day in passing, but never in the moment. Temari was not a lucky person in any aspect of her life and was certainly not among the few who did not feel it immediately. No–the first time she took someone’s life and felt nothing, she was fully aware of the change. 

It was a girl, no older or younger than herself at the time. This, perhaps made it even worse, since she knew exactly what it was like to be a 12 year old girl staring death in the face. 

Temari was standing over her as she bled generously into the river, her sunset colored hair swirling behind her and turning to red wine as her own blood stained it. The girl was begging her to stop, to show some mercy, but Temari wedged a kunai into her temple as casually as if she were cutting through a loaf of bread. 

It was just another job; another day; another mission. It didn’t matter that the person beneath her was a human being or that she had a life with people waiting for her back home. It didn’t matter because she was told that it didn’t. She was told she shouldn’t care about them. And that day was the first day that it was actually true. 

This was the reason, the primary one anyway, that Temari knew she could never be loved. It would be impossible for someone to care about a person like her who was so cold, calculating and cruel. That particular word was one he’d used to describe her before. It stung more than she cared to admit, hearing Shikamaru call her the very thing she’d always called her father. You call the world cruel, you call kings cruel, but you don’t call the people you love cruel. 

So in retrospect she should have known better when she fell into his arms seeking comfort, that it was too good to be true. When she slinked into his tent night after night as the war around them raged on, she should have been keeping her heart close, but she did just the opposite. She opened up like a book, letting him read her from cover to cover. She told him her secrets, her biggest fears and brightest hopes, she spread her legs and whispered those words in his ear. “I love you,” she’d say and he’d say it back, but never first. 

She should have known better. She should have seen it coming when he broke her into a million pieces, because cruel girls do not get to be loved and have happy endings. Cruel girls reap exactly what they sow.