#[ ROUND 2! ];

[sekaicards]

Project Sekai Card Tournament! 2.61

[cherrhara]

happy valentines day <3

[rainbowchaox]

Round 2 of “canon” ships at war

We have the top four: Pissa, Fitpac, Slimeriana, and barely coming in fourth is spiderbit.

I find it interesting that the canonical husbands are barely making the cut. (Wonder if because they are canon they lost the something else other ship pairs has). I was legit thinking Frubbo would have made it. Spiderbit is legit only .1% above frubbo. Congrats frubbo shippers your ship may be recent but you almost made spiderbit be out of the running

Now onto the main event!

[the-writer-mao]

P O P GOES THE W E A S E L ✨ 🕷️

[tiptapricot]

Wrap up second round between the top two from the previous ship poll (PBM&Ms being first and PBMigJ being second) as well as the addition of Spiderparents just to cover all bases! When this has wrapped, the most popular term will be the one I urge people to tag all their posts with, however you can always continue using the secondary tag you prefer as well! But having a level of homogenization will hopefully help a lot.

Here is the previous poll with some descriptions and context for why ship names are what they are!

Additionally for this round Spiderparents: plays off the spiderdads ship name with the multiple parties involved/the addition of MJ!

Rmr searchability/uniqueness and character clarity are vital in making sure things don’t get mixed up, and that can also b checked via peeking at tags yourself! But either way, vote for what you’d like to be used :-D

(Sorry this is another week long length again btw poll timing is so frustrating and I wanted ppl to get their opinions in)

[cadrenebula]

Happy All Saints' Wake (part 2 of 3)

[1o1percentmilk]

i also had to look up suzuki on google images and im being launched back into suzuki obsession in real time guys im not kidding he. i might have a mental issue

[tracybirds]

other polls

Scott | John | Gordon | Alan | Kayo

[aturnoftheearth]

hotel bagel time 😎

[shatteredspark]

Earthspark tournament! Round 2!

Round one is over!! The winners of round two are:

Grimlock

Starscream

Tarantulas

Breakdown

Soundwave

Ravage

Megatron

Dottie

Skullcruncher

Schloder

Optimus

Bombshell

Bumblebee

Alex Malto

Nightshade

Hashtag

Twitch

I’ll try to figure out the battles and post the polls today!! :)

[sekaicards]

Project Sekai Card Tournament! 2.139

[esoanem]

Paris already told us the US can't shoot for shit (per capita)

wow i wonder what piece of breaking news i missed

[embervoices]

A very useful thread on Bluesky:

(There is a lot more. Rather than give you all the images, I've copied the full text below.)

Meredith Rose‬ ‪@mrose.ink‬ November 8, 2024

This is not going to be a repeat of 2016-2020. It will be better, it will be worse, but most of all it will be different. Here are things I want every single person to keep in mind as we head into round 2 of a Trump admin.

My credentials: I’m a queer female public interest attorney working on tech policy in DC. I’ve been doing this for a decade--longer than some, not as long as others. I had to navigate three different administrations, as well as Congress, regulatory agencies, courts, and the advocacy world.

FIRST: don’t let despair override your media literacy.

The left has grifters, just like every other movement. If you’re able and compelled to donate, give to orgs with established track records. Avoid giving to individuals, especially anyone who emerges overnight with a one-weird-trick “plan.”

The left is not immune to misinformation, and everyone—EVERYONE—falls for it sometimes, present company included. There is no shame in it. When (not if) it happens to you, you should acknowledge it; delete or retract the post to reduce the spread; and move on.

If a source consistently shares half-truths or outright misinformation, it is not trustworthy, no matter how much “their heart is in the right place.” Unfollow and move on.

Prediction, analysis, and reporting are three fundamentally different things. Learn to identify them for what they are. Reject attempts by amateur “analysts” to predict the future. They know as much as you do.

Real subject matter experts know and acknowledge their limits. They’re also (usually) hesitant to try and predict the future. The best frame their predictions in terms of a range of possible outcomes. Subject matter experts may also disagree with one another! It happens!

SECOND: What we know for sure about how the Trump, how he operates, and how that will impact the next four years.

Trump is a narcissist who avoids reading and doesn’t care about details. He cannot be persuaded by argument or logic; he’s moved mostly by flattery, and will agree with the last person who flattered him. He can and will upend his own administration’s work without warning, often by tweet.

As a result, most policy experts—even those "on his side"—dread him taking an interest in their field. Ask any Republican staffer who worked in Congress during the last administration, and most of them will confirm that their greatest fear was Trump tweeting about anything related to their work.

As such, people who are serious about their work will do everything to make it as invisible and boring-seeming as possible. This is the policy equivalent of defensive camouflage. Lots of “normie” work will continue in silence. (The lion’s share of tech policy ends up in this bucket.)

If you have a niche issue that you care about, now is a great time to donate to orgs that work on it. Lots of money will be funneled to big legacy orgs working on headline issues: ACLU, climate change orgs, etc. Consider sending your donations where they matter most: local, niche, established.

Trump runs his cabinet like the Apprentice. He thrives on chaos and making people compete for his approval. Not only does he not reward collaboration between his subordinates, he actively undermines it.

Moreover, everyone who works with him knows that they’re vulnerable to being thrown under the bus at a moment’s notice, for any reason (or for no reason at all). His cabinet is going to be scorpions in a bottle. They will not be able to coordinate, for good or ill.

One scorpion can still do a lot of horrific damage. But large scale inter-agency coordination is unlikely, particularly after the first few months, by which point he will likely (prediction warning!) have gone through a handful of cabinet secretaries already.

FINALLY: The view from inside civil society heading into 2025.

In 2016, Trump was a largely unknown quantity. The left and establishment right alike wasted a lot of time trying to read tea leaves and make sense of this guy, because he was completely outside the realm of what anyone had dealt with. That’s not happening now.

He did us a favor by broadcasting his plans in advance (aka Project 2025). Civil society has spent the last 2.5 years strategizing around it. We’re not starting off flat-footed.

The Biden admin did a good amount to future-proof its own achievements. Folks can speak to their own areas of expertise, but clean energy and CHIPS and Science Act (investing in domestic semiconductor production) have benefitted from huge sunk investments. That money’s not getting clawed back.

OVERALL TAKE-AWAYS:

It's going to suck. But civil society and the political left have some advantages we didn't have last time. We know him, we know his angles, and we know who he's bringing in--none of which we had in 2016.

We'll get through this. It will be grim, but we'll get through it.

John Cutting‬ ‪@johncutting.bsky.social‬

Thanks Meredith. I really valued your analysis over the past few years, and I think this is a reasonable, actionable framework to think about the upcoming storm

Meredith Rose‬ ‪@mrose.ink‬

I really cannot overstate how much time was (necessarily) wasted in 2017 trying to figure out this guy and his influences. The fact that he's not only a known quantity, but ran the most over-studied administration in this nation's recent history, makes this a very different game.

John Cutting‬ ‪@johncutting.bsky.social‬

I bet we can weaponize his narcissism. Let's say some ghoul starts making progress with a mass deportation effort, if we start calling that ghoul that "shadow president" en masse, Trump would fire him in right away and appoint Hulk Hogan or something

‪Meredith Rose‬ ‪@mrose.ink‬

This is exactly why I don't think Musk will last very long. Trump is very clear that he's the only one in the room allowed to have an ego or any kind of brand name.

[why-animals-do-the-thing]

The Bronx Zoo has just released Flaco's necropsy results.

He was not thriving, as the people championing the ideal of "freedom" claimed.

He was poisoned.

He was sick.

He was suffering.

"Freedom" would have eventually killed him. A building just happened to do it first.

"Postmortem testing has been completed for Flaco, the Eurasian eagle owl that was found down in the courtyard of a Manhattan building a little over a year after his enclosure at the Central Park Zoo was vandalized on February 2, 2023. Onlookers reported that Flaco had flown into a building on the Upper West Side of Manhattan on February 23, 2024, and acute trauma was found at necropsy. Bronx Zoo veterinary pathologists determined that in addition to the traumatic injuries, Flaco had two significant underlying conditions. He had a severe pigeon herpesvirus from eating feral pigeons that had become part of his diet, and exposure to four different anticoagulant rodenticides that are commonly used for rat control in New York City. These factors would have been debilitating and ultimately fatal, even without a traumatic injury, and may have predisposed him to flying into or falling from the building. The identified herpesvirus can be carried by healthy pigeons but may cause fatal disease in birds of prey including owls infected by eating pigeons. This virus has been previously found in New York City pigeons and owls. In Flaco’s case, the viral infection caused severe tissue damage and inflammation in many organs, including the spleen, liver, gastrointestinal tract, bone marrow, and brain.   No other contributing factors were identified through the extensive testing that was performed. Flaco’s severe illness and death are ultimately attributed to a combination of factors—infectious disease, toxin exposures, and traumatic injuries—that underscore the hazards faced by wild birds, especially in an urban setting."

The naturalistic fallacy kills animals in horrible ways. The romanticism of what humans want to think of as a "free, wild, pure life" cannot be allowed supplant the reality of injury, sickness, and death. Releasing captive animals (or keeping them from being recaptured) because it's "better" for them to suffer untethered than live a healthy, safe, captive life is inhumane and horrific.

Flaco's life didn't have to end in pain, sickness, and suffering.

Flaco's death didn't have to be tragic.

But once the idea of "freedom" entered the chat, Flaco's fate was unavoidable.

[hinamie]

parenthood was not on my 2024 bingo card but clearly life is full of surprises