#I was the greedy president who was still decent at it

[grayrro]

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes movie made a lot of minor changes that imo, cumulatively, changed how some of the themes hit

I think one of the most jarring was the Capitol students, and how, placed side by side, the film portrayed Coriolanus as sympathetic, and even decent. That he is somehow “smarter”, takes action compared to a lot of the Capitol students, and even somehow shows more empathy. And he definitely isn’t in the book

First, Arachne’s death. This one is maybe a little more forgiving since Snow’s duplicitous nature is hard to translate on-screen, but still minor changes made some striking differences in characterization. When Arachne is killed in the film, Snow jumps into action, being the first to go to Arachne’s aid, and tries to keep her alive. Whereas in the book, he pretty much shakes in his boots before Lucy Gray shocks him into action, and even then, he’s nearly more concerned with his reputation on camera than Brandy’s nor Arachne’s death.

And then, Clemensia. The academic-focused Asian. In the film, she’s depicted as too greedy for success, butting her way into Coriolanus’ assignment when he gets Dr. Gaul’s attention. When she tries to take the credit for Coriolanus’ work, she “rightfully” gets what she deserves when she’s bit for lying

In the book, she’s more forgivable. She’s distraught over Arachne’s death and doesn’t think that Dr. Gaul would still be expecting the assignment, which both her and Snow were voted into, instead of her volunteering for it. She lies so that it doesn’t look like she’s “feeble”, and doesn’t even hog the credit. Still, for this lie, she gets six mutated and highly poisonous snake bites (and not just the one like in the film lol). In the book, you see her left isolated in her suffering and her body gaining snake mutations from the side effects, even with the quickly administered antidote. It’s such a disproportionate punishment for a pretty harmless action, and shows Dr. Gaul’s unjustifiable ruthlessness

Lastly—and they did her a downright disservice—is Lysistrata. In the film, she’s practically an afterthought. When Jessup’s revealed to have contracted rabies, it is Coriolanus who has to force her to action. He pleads for her to send water to scare him off and that he’s “practically dead”, and precious moments are lost to Lysistrata’s indecision as Jessup chases Lucy Gray, shouting, accusing, “what have you done to me!”

In the book, while she has relatively minor role, it’s still a significant one, especially when you foil her with other students like Arachne, Sejanus, and Coriolanus himself. She’s intelligent, and compassionate. While she’s not as vocal as Sejanus from the start, she voices her opinion against war during discussions, and openly shows her gratitude after Jessup saves her life. She quickly realizes that water is needed to scare Jessup (who in the book seems more dazed, zigzagging into Lucy Gray’s direction, but nonetheless dangerous) and sends so unprompted. She‘s more or less composed, but sheds a tear over his death, and is one of the very first to acknowledge the tributes as human beings.

When you add up all of these differences together, I wouldn’t say Coriolanus’ arc in the film falls in parallel to the books. In the film, Snow is kind of a “good egg” (especially compared to his Capitol-born classmates, who’re either power-hungry, oblivious, or meek to a fault)

In the book, he was never such an outlier. He was never more empathetic than his Capitol-born classmates. But he hung on to the worst parts of himself (the hunger for power, the ruthlessness), and that’s what made him devolve to the President Snow we know in THG

[dwestfieldblog]

VERIFYING YOU ARE HUMAN...

…this may take a few seconds…

I started this blog in 2004, with several pages entitled ‘God Save us From Religions’. Not much changed outside in twenty years, but it does seem worse, so my stupidity must be increasing. Realism? ‘The end move in politics is always to pick up a gun’. Buckminster Fuller. Palestine, now over 35,000 dead. Over thirty thousand of whom were civilians, Benny still appears to be going all out to avoid his and his wife’s corruption charges by proving what a patriotic hero he is. The Holy wasteland, crater land.

Blind faith tested under ‘laboratory’ conditions fails beneath the beautiful remorselessness of doubt and actual experience. Christ, the Dalai Lama, Ghandi et al, appear to lean to the left with ideas the ‘God-fearing’ right wing describe as liberal/socialist/Marxist. Love and respect each all others. The most unchristian Christians are the evil angelicals. Being good humoured, reasonable or intelligent seems ungodly weakness to them. The greatest fraud (out of an unholy host of them) perpetrated by the Church is that the devil exists. ‘Satan’ is the scapegoat for the genuine evil of the wrongly far righteous.

‘The forest was shrinking but the trees kept voting for the Axe, for the Axe was clever and convinced the trees that because his handle was made of wood, he was one of them’.

Which brings me onto The Heritage Foundation and their foul masterplan of Project 2025… a manifesto to be used as a bible for ‘the next Republican president’. This is a policy document for an eviscerating pogrom against the federal government, the judiciary and mass media, to replace all the left leaning Deep State shills with moral decent right wingers to reset education and laws. With an expected side effect of exporting total Nationalism globally. So, all in a democracy would be ultimately controlled by politicians returning favours to policy setting dark money donors who are the actual ‘deep state’. Brilliant.

Trying to avoid the overuse of ‘is’ and ‘are’, as I am aware (or seem to think so) that I am only a very amateur writer of op-ed pieces, but having spent several years researching, must say this; Anyone who believes in the right-wing idea of a ‘deep state IS a moron. There are business intrigues, bureaucracy to the ninth circle of Hell, pseudo religious groups, criminal organisations, greedy bankers, state secrets all seeking control…but no Deep State. This is a lie to focus attention as usual away from reality, to accumulate power in the hands of those propagating the lie. There is no invisible sky wizard either. Hallelujah!

Of course, Boris Johnson and Liz Truss, (Steve Bannonites that they are) want identical things in the UK, replacing troublesome judges, police chiefs, parliament, civil service and the ‘biased’ BBC with political appointees. Anyway, another English rant coming…14 bloody years of Tories… ‘Ministers are to broaden the government’s definition of extremism as part of a clampdown on people and groups undermining Britain’s institutions and values.’

So, would that include various former and current cabinet members and prime ministers? Or is breaking the law, accepting large ‘donations’ (bribes) and then giving the donor an honour, sending dick pics, accepting cash for lobbyist’s questions to be asked, fast tracking friend’s dodgy business deals without checks on tendering, marginalising the poor to a truly inhuman standard and systematically ruining the NHS not counted as undermining in any way? Sunak the supercilious has asked useless ‘levelling up’ bug eyed disco dancer Gove to lead a crack team to thwart radicals at every turn. Including harder controls of extremism on campus.  Nice that MI5 have finally got round to hauling in bosses of 24 leading universities to warn them about ongoing enemy states infiltrating their seats of learning. So to speak.

Whereas most fine law-abiding citizens could see a benefit in having stricter dealings with idiots who stop trains, traffic (blocking those trying to get to work or in need of hospitals) and gaily throw paint and powder in galleries, sports events and flower shows, it is not too hard to see a time when quiet protesters holding a blank piece of paper are arrested, as in the far East. This green and septic isle where patriotic hedge fund managers linked to the government short the pound and Britannia waives the rules again. Politicians are the ones doing the undermining of this country’s’ values.

A recent (April) social media post by the Conservative Party trumpeted ‘BRITAIN IS THE SECOND MOST POWERFUL COUNTRY IN THE WORLD.’  Which it promptly withdrew within 48 hours, as ridicule over its utter inaccuracy and the pictures used exposed it for the four flush turd it was. Turning a blind eye to government lies is not patriotic whichever country you were born in. Many here are having to perform do it yourself dentistry and fewer and fewer people other than the criminally rich can afford to live healthily or safely. Cuando merda tiva valer pobre nasce sem cu. Enjoy the translation.

Britain has screwed itself. We have so few genuine friends abroad these days that the country can only rely on ever dodgier characters and shadier deals just to get some money, which in turn only props up the wealthy. The rich do not bring money into the country, they bank it offshore or in Switzerland. But at least Russia and China like to buy lots of properties here, eh? ‘Levelling up’ is just as bigger sham of rancid bowels as was Reagan’s ‘Trickle down’ economy in the eighties where yuppies spunked it all. Scraps for the workers, threats to the passive middle classes. Cold hearted arrogance to the poor and any unlike us. This island chose to be more isolated…be careful what you wish for. Very simple to sabotage our underwater cables, the Net, electricity, gas…we are extremely dependant on subsea infrastructure for essential living.  Very little cost or risk to the enemy to cut us off. Everything we do politically (and a lot socially) has been playing into Putin’s hands for the last 14 years.

In all democratic counties, the main and minority wings of society are encouraged to flap on about National pride, fighting the other religion, the woke, the racist, the multi genders, the outsiders and it doesn’t matter one whit which side ‘wins’ because they don’t hold the actual power. But they do get very tied up wasting time and energy having their emotions manipulated against them, which is the point…weaken and undermine to the Rubicon of internal collapse. Europe, the UK and America all have politicians spouting bile and bilge about ‘the deep state’ as if they are rebels against the mainstream… and every one of these mouth breathing bottom feeding swine is only doing it to gain power for themselves. But ‘the people’ still believe it. They love venal leaders, especially those who mention restoring ‘order’ with faith, pride and a cleansing of subversive aliens. Meanwhile, the UK is still using security systems and nuclear companies with backdoors to Beijing. How clever of us.

Hope things are going well in Tiblisi, good luck with the Georgian Dream. Seems strange Bidzina would want the Kremlin’s ‘foreign agent’ law to pass after having spent a long time speaking in favour of joining NATO and the EU. Bread buttered on both sides. Goddess bless the Cz Republic for shutting down ‘Voice of Europe’, a Russian disinformation campaign via an online site and YT channel. Journalists with very western names who don’t exist writing fake news and others doing interviews with various anti-western politicians (several of whom are actually European, traitors within) propagating Russian pig manure to sew discord among the Union. The Voice of the Orcs lead by a president who could be Gollum’s bald ugly grandmother. The gremlin in the Kremlin. But let’s not stoop to childishly denigrate such a fine diminutively upstanding murderer, eh? Blue eyes are not enough, as Czechs say.

Funny how many far-right politicians in Europe describe the Russian invasion as ‘just’, because Ukraine is a country run by ‘Nazis’. Missing the point that Nazi countries don’t vote for a Jewish president and Prime Minister and that their own politics have a great deal of similarity with National Socialist ideas, behaviour and rhetoric. Also amuses me in midnight jet black humour that so many right wingers are willing to do the dirty work of a bald ex left wing communist. Greed for power for the otherwise impotent is a deeply alluring thing, eh? Masochists who would be sadists.

16 members of the European Parliament engaged with ‘Voice of Europe’ to spout Moscow’s propaganda. Any country with Russian inhabitants can (with prompting) request ‘help’ from Uncle Vlad who will be happy to step in and support his citizens from imaginary threats and spread his avowed anti-imperialist empire via force and colonisation. So, no hypocrisy there. Just reclaiming former territories who wanted independence. What if Britain decided to do this? Oh wait, we can’t because the Tories defunded our armed forces.

As I repeatedly write (for some kind of balance) the two-faced double standard West is maybe not the best, but at least we don’t mass slaughter our own citizens, forcibly transfer thousands of children from their homes to another country and indoctrinate them in the name of ‘protection’. Nor do we deliberately fire missiles at civilian blocks of flats or torture and rape noncombatants in the streets. Or pretend to ‘rehabilitate’ any who speak out by interning them in camps to be beaten to death or poison them in other countries. Or hold ‘elections’ where there are no viable alternative candidates for whom to vote. (If I said you had a corrupt election, would you hold it against me?) Arf.

Elon Musk the pyromaniac fireman welcoming Martin Sellner’s (far) right to free speech…how long before the twitter symbol morphs into a swastika? ‘The relentless pursuit of the truth’ is the stated goal of ‘X’. Saying your opinions and feelings out loud or writing them down does not imply Truth unless provable.

Speaking of liars, Trump the reptile continues to work as Moscow’s ultimate Useful Idiot. If convicted of his many (alleged, HA) crimes, he could still run and serve as President, should he win. THAT is how bollocks America is. Imagine having a criminal as a leader of a democratic country! He sits in court, glowering at the jury and the cameras like a mafia boss, a spoiled clinically deranged child who could once again be in charge of nuclear weapons. Majorie Taylor Greene, the Liz Truss of US politics (‘Jewish space lasers’?) wants to be his running mate. Just perfect. Swamping the drain. Trump’s lawyer says he ‘is cloaked in innocence.’ Drenched in excrement seems to be a better phrase.

Luckily, The Earth is intelligent…think about that for a few seconds with logic and instinct. She will certainly be aware from tuning in, how close we are to a third world war and the damage already done. Irreversible for humans but not her. Harm none and do what you Will, springtime is rising…so, Love😊

[tuttle-did-it]

Hard disagree.

Larry Linville left specifically because he (and the writers and show runners) felt the character could NOT and should not ever become more fleshed out.

He was an archetype, an absurdity-- a symbol of the sadistic, erratic, greedy, malicious, malignant, bigoted, criminally incompetent US military (and US government). He was a symbol of the war they were fighting against, and so they could never fix him because they were still in the war.

He was a physical manifestation of everything they were surrounded by.

The point of Frank Burns was that he had a tiny kernel of potential to turn into a decent human, but with every opportunity he had, he refused it. Every chance he could be an empathetic, sympathetic, kind, sane, reasonable human, he refused.

Because there are humans like that. Look at the people in our governments. They are people like Frank Burns everywhere. Bosses at work. Their bosses. The white woman who votes for a rapist convicted criminal to be president, knowing her daughter’s autonomy is being stripped back to the 1950s. Your church-going neighbour with a MAGA hat cheering for a ‘United Reich.’ The TERF "feminist ally" who argues for white feminism. The "pro-life" military sergeant who votes to defund children getting food at school and removing gun control laws so children can be shot in schools. The doctor who asks you why you can't just be happy being the gender you were assigned to. The "loving" parent who asks "what they did wrong" to "make their child gay" before sending them to a church-run conversion "therapy" camp. The corrupt judges who give a Black child life in prison for being a witness against cops who beat him, and gives a white teenager who shoots up a fucking school 2 years probation. The billionaires who fund politicians and run the fucking world.

They are so many people who all have the potential for being more, and yet they willingly and repeatedly choose to use their power to destroy people without hesitation— gleefully so.

We are surrounded by these people. And just like Frank Burns couldn't be changed for the better by being around more open-minded people, we cannot change them. And we need to recognise just how dangerous these people are.

One such man is running for president again in America. And people just like him are going to vote for him, knowing what he will do. Another such man—in a long line of people just like him— is currently prime minister in the UK.

Pretty sure most countries can look at our leaders and see someone like Frank Burns. That he was capable of becoming a human, And repeatedly refused it.

Linville said of Frank that he

‘was displaying his genuine kind of insanity as if it were conscious and objective behaviour, and people reacted to that as if he were a conscious, objective, functioning human being. […] that kind of senseless double-talk, where the man didn’t even know he sounded like a complete idiot, is part of what made him such a dangerous person. […] There’s a mind that [is] stripped of its gears, obviously. And yet he is functioning with a knife in his hands on other human beings.’ (Kalter, 115-116)

They could not risk losing that. In fact, with every season, he became more exaggerated, more hateful, more unbalanced. Finally, he was essentially a cartoon. Linville left because he felt Frank had become so unstable, so exaggerated, that we were all laughing at a seriously mentally ill man (which I agree with).

When people asked Larry why Frank didn’t become a decent person, his reply was, ‘What do you want him to be, Alan Alda?’

They could never let Frank just become tolerable. They had pushed him so far, he could never have just turned around. It would never have been believable if they did, and it wouldn’t have fit the theme and framework of the show.

Them teaching Frank to be a decent human is not nearly as impactful as repeatedly failing to turn Frank into a human being. And it’s not nearly as impactful as him repeatedly refusing every opportunity he has to become a human being.

We are surrounded by Frank Burns. People who choose, over and over and over and over and over again to be the worst versions of themselves. And we cannot change them. This is the revolting sublime beauty and tragedy of Frank Burns.

Larry Linville was right — they couldn’t just change Frank into a good person; it wouldn’t have been believable. Because he represents these people who choose, every day, to be their worst selves. This is why he is so dangerous. Frank Burns is everywhere.

And Larry was also right that Frank had become so exaggerated that it was no longer funny to laugh at a truly unwell man. They could only ever make him worse, not better.

[anthonybialy]

No-Way Street

Avoid the Democratic way at all costs.  The path’s inherent peril should be featured in every map application.  You’ve been warned about heading that direction.  Sadly, innocent travelers are being dragged along, too.  The lack of rumble strips is as alarming as the quantity of potholes for quality government work.

Getting what they wanted is a curse.  It it helps liberals cope, everyone else suffers far worse fates.  A stubborn desire to avoid credit is why mandate embracers believe all that communal mumbo jumbo.  Having to suffer along with everyone else makes us feel like we are all in this together.  The party that’s spent a few years inflicting its dreams loathes noticing consequences for a good reason that’s less than decent.  The genie giggles as he grants their wish.

The hammer surely fixed the windshield chip.  Unfortunately for those regrettably in charge, those poor folks enduring what follows have noticed the pattern.  Everyone can see compulsory priorities in action, or rather lack of it.  There’s very little movement for a nation Democrats have changed so rapidly.  Rotting cities are the embodiment of their glorious values.  Mandatory ideas in practice don’t seem to show as much caring for others as advertised.  Enthusiastic taxers never try running businesses with their results in mind.

You may ponder how many more examples they need.  Victims have concluded the present amount is beyond sufficient.  Some rather misguided voters could apparently use a reminder of what they inflict.  It’s one thing to maintain an unfortunate doctrine.  A republic with democratic principles means those enabling legal buffoonery are relieved at secret ballots.

Enjoy the innovative approach to solving problems they totally didn’t create.  Joe Biden is saving you money by ensuring there’s nothing to buy.  The cunning strategy resembles lowering crime by making items too rare to locate and steal.  And please enjoy family time when there’s no possible way to purchase fuel.  You ingrates won’t even thank kind politicians who reduced your soulless materialism.

Professional politician and amateur president Biden is unable to achieve anything tricky like allow people to perform tasks for compensation.  He leads a movement that can only fib about how they’re succeeding.  It’s not the best skill to develop unless you seek employment in the rather disreputable field of filling an office.  The tired andn tiresome incumbent’s only success will take the form of deterring young people from bossing around others after winning elections.

Pretending the globe is melting hasn’t ruined it to the dismay of the apocalypse’s fans.  We might still be ruined by commerce.  Mean stores decided they wanted to make more for selling stuff, which is why proprietors gathered in secret and decided to simultaneously raise prices.  My sources indicate the vote was unanimous, which is just what’s expected from greedy capitalists.

Coincidences are the only presently thriving aspect.  Acting as if commercial outposts wouldn’t undercut competitors is crucial to maintaining the Democratic delusion.  Astute retailers can make more by selling for less, which is voodoo liberals don’t grasp any more than they do that there will be responses to incentives either positive or negative.  They prefer the latter as part of their effort to coerce citizenry into glory.  It’s no wonder trade foes are so dedicated to creating static societies.  You have no choice to shop elsewhere, bizarrely claim those who want to ensure a lack of competition by letting our stupid government commandeer industries.

It’s frustrating when nothing you believe works.  I just wish there could be a remedy.  Some extremist theorists suggest humans are free to modify their opinions.  You could always try a new mentality that doesn’t involve getting rich by printing money.  But that seems too much like the freedom of interaction innate autocrats reflexively oppose.  Stubborn pride leads to a refusal to change.  Nobody else gets a chance at entering a higher economic quintile as a result.

Alleged openminded geniuses aren’t into the whole ability to alter themselves, as seen by their steadfastly goofy belief that everyone rich was always that way just like the impoverished have no hope but to beg for federal alms.  Thanks to deleterious Democratic policies, the chances of self-improvement are far tougher.

The one lesson Donald Trump taught the party he soullessly joined out of convenience is that you only need to be better than the other awful option.  Aspiring to more than what a pouting steak peddler shared would be nice, but politics is even trashier than usual.

It’s not like Republicans are super amazing to the point sensible voters should worship politicians of their own.  The alleged alternative are at their worst when they rip off their adversaries.  It’s not exactly a wise strategy to be as scuzzy, much less attempt to bribe voters halfheartedly.  You’d think there might be an audience for being left alone after a Biden term of extreme helpfulness.

Democrats don’t think it’s fair they should be blamed just because they got their turn and showed they’re all-time putzes.  Professional whiners claim they never got a fair shake.  Mean conglomerates making massive profits ruined the chance to impose economic justice just like the world suddenly turned chaotic just to hurt Biden’s dreams.

Unhelpful checks and balances prevent a full agenda implementation.  Pushy dreams can’t even be partly realized.  The excuse for lack of partial progress makes as much sense as halting drilling then bitching when fuel costs more.  Wait: what happened?

[kitsu-katsu]

Random shit from a minecraft server I haven't touched in a month where I did a bunch of stuff:

Me and my friends J and S started the world and spawned in a village, we looted, broke a spawner I found and ran. That entire village died to a raid we were unprepared for like 3 days later.

We started making our homes, but mine was a whole project of building big walls with corridors out of which came the main rooms and in the centre I left it grass, the point is, it was going to be big, so I got in the server when no one else was on and since I had nothing I wnet mining in a hole right next to my house base. I went without enough torches and no optifine. And didn't see that I opened up a big hole until I fell.

So I fell into a ravine, right next to lava, but what little I had mostly survived, so now I needed to get down there. The thing is I legit lost it all, so there I was fumbling with some little blocks and a stone pickaxe in a time constraint. Died again. Fumbled some more, now with a wooden pickaxe, I think I have died once more, but eventually I got down there, my stuff was on sight, I jumped for it, and just before I got there it all despawned right in front of me.

I dubbed that place the cursed ravine.

I died constantly down there whenever I decided to get even a little bit greedy and lost my first dog to it. The weather was constantly at a 98% chance of raining creepers. But after countless deaths it was still cursed but familiar, so it was like a twisted attachment to it as a landmark as well as for whatever resources I hadn't exploited in it yet.

Once we were joking that I was going to be "the Wilbur of the server", so I declared myself president and even got the vote of 1 (J) out of the only first 3 people in there (counting me), the one who didn't vote me kinda was my rival and always wants to be a queen-dictator (S), so my power was legitimate, but she still claimed herself queen while living inside my house and stealing shit like my diamond helmet because she couldn't be independent.

In the end, one day I got in and built a little hut of like 5×5 blocks with a triangle roof and put a sign that said "casita de retiro para gente senil" (little retirement home for senile people in spanish) and kinda made her move out to there, she actually became independent after that.

Once I gave OP to S when I went away for an hour, J died in a mineshaft, wanted S to tp to her corpse, she fucked it up and tpd every loaded entity to the mineshaft. It was chaos. I sent her a "you are exiled" Tubbo sticker. Good chaos, I had no clue wtf they'd done.

The joke of me being "the Wilbur of the server" came back when one day S just brought me a salmon and was like "this is your wife now", so of course I named it Sally and hung it up in an item frame in my home (I lost that fish and replaced it like 4 times, oh god) and then got a baby fox I named Fundy and claimed to be my son. I gave Fundy an iron sword, he protected the home.

Once a piglin got out of the nether and zombified in my house, so I trapped him in a boat and named him Technodead, he became my roommate. Once he kinda protected me from a ravager that got in because him and his boat blocked the corridor where the ravager got in and it didn't damage him, it only wanted to get me, so I could shoot it, I was just screaming "TECHNODEAD POG" in the in-game chat to my friends.

I had a BUNCH of dogs, but one of them I just left in the nether once because it wouldn't go through the portal, so I left him and called him Cerberus and said that "in lore" he had mutated in the nether but had three tails instead of three heads. Later on I saw that I'd actually left two dogs, so I named the second one Loona, they were my loyal hellhounds.

My precious babies were my weapons: Inferno my sword (RIP, died because I pressed q when startled by a creeper), Inferno II my second sword, Striker my first bow, Boundless Curser my second bow and the best one, Hacker my axe, Poseidon's Grace my riptide trident and Mjölnir my channeling trident.

Once I got on and travelled to a village like 2k blocks away I connected with a cobblestone bridge, where I had our only menders. I started a raid. Killed everyone. It was like 2am. My friends wanted to kill me.

By a time when other friends had joined, one of them (G) made an ugly ass cobblestone platform in the sky and never came back. Then S abused creative to search for a fortress, me J and another friend (B) didn't really feel well going to the illegitimate fortress even if we never find one, so when S logged of right when we were going to get in, I just kinda said "no, I'm not setting foot there" and started heading back, J and B followed. And to make catharsis I just went "Wanna see some fireworks by your president?" And that's how I used almost all of my gunpowder to make half a stack of TNT, we placed it all, J and B died by falling before the show and both lost 27 levels, we took all valuables, I made a bridge that I broke to be floating in a single block, I shot the TNT, it all blew up, according to J my smile was able to be heard through voice chat and then I promptly died and lost 27 levels as well when I broke the block I was standing on, pretending to fall in water and instead of that falling on a tree.

[yaku-soba]

we’re planets in orbit, and i’m okay with this collision course

༶•┈┈ general m.list 

༶•┈┈ amanai kanoka x f!reader | pining, angst, eventual fluff

tags/warnings: swear words, best friends to one-sided sapphic pining to astronaut analogies to lovers, author brings back the space metaphors for another round of what is happening, lots of pining, the lyrics to space oddity 

word count: 3.2k

a/n: may i humbly suggest you listen to love you forever by takayan while reading this </3

synopsis: If Kanoka’s oxygen, and loving her is the vast expanse of space, you’re the astronaut setting herself adrift with a single oxygen tank and equally copious amounts of hope and resignation. 

Or: loving Kanoka will end in heartbreak. You might as well be greedy about how it happens. 

»»------------- ------------- ------------- ¤ ------------- ------------- -------------«« 

“Kanoka-chan!” The both of you look up from your lunchboxes to see your class president waving at your best friend. There’s an excited flush high on her cheeks, the same shade as the neck of the boy who’s hovering nervously outside your classroom. 

Ah, you think a little forlornly, as Kanoka shoots you an apologetic smile and a murmured promise of be back soon, trying not to look at the way her skirt sweeps the back of her thighs, just shy of the back of her knees. 

“Another one?” You hear someone say. 

“I wish she’d leave some for the rest of us,” another girl jokes, and you pick disinterestedly at the last of the tuna in your lunch.

Kanoka likes tuna. I’ll give it to her when she comes back, you tell yourself, as if you don’t already know how this will turn out. 

You wait five, ten minutes. She doesn’t come back. One of your friends - Aika - takes Kanoka’s seat in front of you, pushing her closed lunchbox to the side as she leans over the table to whisper in your ear that that was the captain of the baseball team, isn’t he just dreamy? 

“Yeah,” you say, because that’s what you’ve heard everyone else say, “didn’t they go to nationals last year?”

Predictably, Aika swoons. “He did,” she sighs, resting her chin in her hands, casting a longing glance at the closed door of your classroom, “it’s really too bad that Kanoka-chan’s going to turn him down.”

You hum, feigning interest. Your eyes drift to the wooden door too, and you can’t help but wonder where Kanoka’s taken him. Nonchalantly, you add, “Yeah, she’s hung up on her childhood crush, isn’t she?”

Aika wails into her palms. “A waste,” she mutters, “he’s not even in this school.”

Privately, you can’t help but agree. What a waste. 

A glance at the clock tells you it’s been fifteen minutes since Kanoka had left with the boy with the tan skin and the big hands and the sunshine smile. 

You eat the tuna. 

Kanoka slides back into class a sliver of a second before the bell that signals the end of lunch rings, smiling sheepishly. 

»»------------- ------------- ------------- ¤ ------------- ------------- -------------««

It’s lunch again, and this time, you’re on the roof. 

“What happened with Seiji-kun?” Kaori asks. 

Ah, the baseball captain. You try not to grimace. Seiji’s nice, after all - you used to sit next to him, in middle school. He’s sweet and kind and everything a girl who isn’t you would love in a boyfriend. 

Except you don’t want a boyfriend. You just want Kanoka.

Aika scoffs, digging somewhat vehemently into her bento. “She turned him down,” she eyes Kanoka the way a housecat eyes mice, “like every other guy who’s confessed.”

“Sorry, Aika-chan,” your best friend apologizes, embarrassed and sincere, and it grates uncomfortably on your nerves. 

“You don’t have to apologize,” the words are out of your mouth before you can think twice, “it’s totally up to you, you know, whoever you date. Or don’t.” You don’t look up from your lunch while you’re saying this, and belatedly, you hope that the edge to your voice is imagined, that you don’t sound as bitter as you feel. 

“It’s fine,” Kanoka is quick to reassure after a moment of painful silence, and all it does is make you feel worse. Stop apologizing, you want to tell her, it makes me want to kiss you to shut you up. 

“No,” Aika says, “Y/n’s right.” She sighs, and a pair of chopsticks come into view, dropping a cherry tomato in your lunchbox. “I was just hungry for gossip.” There’s a hint of playfulness in her tone, and you can’t help but feel relieved, even as it sears disgust deep in your stomach. 

(You’re always so selfish.)

Kaori laughs. “I guess it’s good for his ego to be turned down every once in a while,” she giggles, and the last of the tension is broken. “Besides, all Kanoka needs is us, right?”

“Of course,” Kanoka replies, smiling that smile of hers - the one that makes your fingers go weak till you can’t pop the lid off a can, the one that you’ve had a crush on since middle school - and it’s what you wanted but not enough and it hurts so damn much. 

All you’ve ever wanted is Kanoka.

»»------------- ------------- ------------- ¤ ------------- ------------- -------------««

The next time another boy calls Kanoka out of class - because of course someone does - you’ve got tuna in your lunchbox again. 

Aika and Kaori plop onto the seats next to and in front of you, throwing around names and giggling the way they always do when there’s a confession. 

“Kanoka-chan’s really popular, isn’t she,” Aika says enviously, and out of the corner of your eye, you see Kaori reach over to pat her on the shoulder. 

“A real heartbreaker,” she agrees, and you’re foolish enough to hope that that’s the end of that. You try not to stare back when they turn to you expectantly, cautiously picking up an egg roll, feeling like a rat before a snake, deer before a lioness. Maybe if you move slowly and carefully enough, they’ll lose interest. 

No such luck. “Though she’s nothing like Y/n-chan,” Aika says, “at least Kanoka-chan’s nice about her rejections.”

You frown. “I’m nice about it too,” you mumble defensively, fending off Kaori’s chopsticks when they attempt to sneak away an eggroll. 

“Sorry,” Aika intones flatly, “I’m not interested.” Kaori breaks into laughter at her impression, and you scowl into your bento. 

“You’re insufferable,” you complain, depositing your tuna into Aika’s lunchbox anyway.

“Is that what you said to Hirata-kun from 2-8 last week?” Kaori asks sweetly, and you stick your tongue out at her in retaliation. 

Aika sighs, flopping back in her seat dramatically. “Really, the two of you could have any guy you wanted. Your popularity is wasted on you.”

You force a smile on your face. I never said I wanted a guy, you want to say, all I’ve ever wanted is Kanoka. “It’s not my fault I’m good at everything,” you tease, “maybe if you’d pair up with Kanoka and I more often in gym, you’d learn to keep up.”

“But the two of you are always so intense,” Kaori whines, “everything’s a competition with you two.” 

“I hate you,” Aika adds, but there’s no real heat behind it. “You get everything -  didn’t you weasel your way out of detention just yesterday?”

Chewing on the last of your lunch, you look up just in time to see Kanoka sliding the door to your class open. “Fujimura-sensei has a soft spot for me,” you say in explanation. 

And isn’t that the truth - the whole, terrible, painful truth. You’re decent with your grades and competitive in gym; and everything that everyone else had wanted, like popularity and confessions from the guys in the sports clubs, you’ve gotten. 

Of course it's fitting that the one thing you really want, the one person you’ve every wanted a confession from, is the one you absolutely can’t, will never have.

All you’ve ever wanted is Kanoka. It makes sense that she’s the only thing you’ll never have. 

»»------------- ------------- ------------- ¤ ------------- ------------- -------------««

There is no way that this will end in anything less than heartbreak. You've always known this, since that precise moment in middle school when you’d realized that other girls don’t always want to run their hands down the sides of their other girl friends, don’t stay awake at night wondering what their lips feel like, the way you do when you think of Kanoka.

And you think of Kanoka a lot.

It’s not just about the way her hair shines beneath the sunlight streaming in from the classroom windows, or the way her face glows from the inside out like a miniature sun when she smiles, or that one week in your first year of high school when she’d hit a sudden growth spurt and the school skirts a size bigger than her old ones were out of stock. 

It’s about the way she likes to chew with all her food on one side of her mouth, like a hamster. It’s the way she looks on the court, focused and hungry for the victory you’re always sure she’d get. It’s the way she says your name, all soft and excited, the way your hands brush on the walk home like two planets on a collision course, the way you think you could hear her talk in a language you don’t understand and never get bored. 

You could look at her forever and still find yourself breathless, like an astronaut floating in space with an empty oxygen tank. And, well, isn’t that just terrible?

There’s a movie you’d watched once, with Kanoka warm along your entire left side as you’d cuddled on her couch, like a furnace, like phantom warmth the seconds before eternal sleep in the midst of a blizzard. The astronaut had been trapped on a ship without fuel, the oxygen levels low. And maybe it didn’t matter whether he’d stayed on the ship or floated out into space with the single oxygen tank left - he’d die anyway, and he knew it. In the end, he’d chosen to die out in space, looking at the world he’d died to see, and it hadn’t been sad so much as it had been admirable. 

Kanoka makes you feel like that astronaut must have felt, in those final few seconds. 

You have a crush on your best friend, and she’s in love with someone else. There’s no way this will end in anything less than heartbreak, but really, all you are is a satellite in orbit around Kanoka, and even though you know that you’ve set yourself up on a collision course, you don’t think you’re able to pull away.

You’re going to have your heart broken either way, you remember realizing as Kanoka falls asleep on your shoulder and the credits roll - you might as well be greedy about the way it happens. 

»»------------- ------------- ------------- ¤ ------------- ------------- -------------««

When Kanoka calls you at night, while she’s away for the Spring High tournament, it’s about that childhood crush of hers from elementary school. 

“Tanaka-kun likes someone else,” is the first thing she says when you pick up, and even with the crackling static you can tell that she’s on the verge of tears. “I was so stupid,” your best friend says, and you really, really, want to say me too, that makes two of us, “it’s been years, I should be happy he even remembers me.”

You let her sniffle into the phone for a while. Sometimes she just needs to get it out of her system, and you’ve known her for long enough now to know that this is one of those times. 

“You know,” you say once the frequency of the sniffling decreases, and you have a sudden, disjointed thought that this feels a little like that one english song - Ground Control to Major Tom; can you hear me, Major Tom? “Kanoka-chan, didn’t you go to nationals for something else?” 

Maybe it’s the wrong thing to say. But you’ve never been one to baby others. 

“Yeah,” Kanoka says into the receiver after a moment, and her voice sounds a lot steadier now, less like she’s floating in space, “I went to win.”

You hum into the phone, and lying on the bed on your back like this, you can kind of see the stars in the night sky if you crane your neck to peer out the window by your bed. 

You end the call a while after that. She’s got a match tomorrow, after all, and she needs her sleep. 

You let your phone loll out of your hand and onto the sheets. Fumbling blindly, you manage to lift the blinds up a little further. 

The stars look very different today, for here am I sitting in a tin can far above the world, you mouth the lyrics, and something in you aches to the beat of the dial at the end of a call, planet Earth is blue and there's nothing I can do.

You watch Kanoka play on live television the next day. She’s amazing, as she always is, and you wish you were there in the stands. 

Though I'm past one hundred thousand miles, I'm feeling very still, and I think my spaceship knows which way to go. 

You and Kanoka have always been planets in orbit, and you’ve convinced yourself that you’re okay with the collision course you’re on. 

It’s not, you and Kanoka have always been planets in orbit, but you’ve convinced yourself that you’re okay with the collision course you’re on. It’s and, and that makes all the difference. 

»»------------- ------------- ------------- ¤ ------------- ------------- -------------««

“Remember that movie we watched in middle school? About the astronaut with no oxygen?” The question slips out of your mouth before you can think twice. You have an odd sense of deja vu. 

Kanoka hums, chewing her tuna onigiri thoughtfully. You indulge yourself by allowing your eyes to trace the slope of her neck and the line of her jaw, outlined by the fading orange of the sunset. “Yeah,” she says after a moment, “it was really sad.”

Yeah, it’s sad. What’s sadder is that it’s happening to you on a daily basis. 

Instead, you say, “I was thinking of doing my art assignment on that,” and you really don’t know why you’d even brought this up in the first place. 

“That’s so cool,” Kanoka tells you earnestly, and you fight the urge to brush off the grain of rice stuck on her chin. Looking is fine, looking is all you’ll allow yourself. “Though I still don’t really understand why he’d choose to drift into space. Wouldn’t he have lived longer if he’d waited in the ship?”

You try not to smile to bitterly as you answer, “I guess he figured that if he was going to die either way, looking into space the way he’d wanted to was a pretty good way to go.” 

Kanoka frowns. “He could have done that from inside the ship,” she argues, and you really, really, should not feel this defensive. 

“It’s different,” you insist, and your chest aches the way it had when you’d nearly drowned in the pool in elementary school, all out of oxygen, “kind of like go big or go home, you know?”

You can tell she doesn’t know. But you do, and it hurts. 

“Still, maybe someone would have come if he’d stayed in the ship.”

“Yeah, maybe,” you accede, “but then he wouldn’t have had such a pretty view when he’d died. Because he was going to die anyway - no ship would have gotten there that fast.” You don’t know why you’re still on this topic, why you’d brought this up in the first place. It’s like you’re masochistic or something. 

“You don’t know that for sure,” your best friend says softly, an expression that feels oddly familiar and yet entirely alien on her face, and suddenly you feel like you’ve missed something, stumbled unknowingly into a whole other conversation. 

“But I do,” you say carefully, realizing belatedly that sometime in the past five minutes, you’ve both slowed to a stop. The streets are empty except for you and the best friend you have a crush for. 

(You’re not in love with Kanoka. You can’t be in love with someone who doesn’t love you back. It’s a childish distinction to make, like between and and but, but it’s the only thing standing between you and the cold, oxygen-less expanse of space, and despite all your bravado you never really expected the collision to be this soon.)

Kanoka reaches out hesitantly to touch your hand, brings it up so that your fingers are as hopelessly intertwined as the hope and resignation you’ve carried since middle school. Her onigiri is gone. You wonder if it had taken the surrounding oxygen with it. 

“Y/n,” she says nervously, and you hate yourself for hoping. You wonder when the last time she’d said your name without honorifics was.

You realize that this is the first time. 

“Y/n,” your best friend repeats, tongue darting out to wet her lips, and it’s such a small, miniscule action - you would have missed it if you weren’t so horribly fixated on everything Kanoka - but it draws your eyes to her lips, and once it happens, you can’t look away. Caught in orbit. 

And you’re so, so tired. Astronauts have to go through rigorous training to prepare them for space, but you’ve never had that. All you’ve had is a best friend who is as kind as she is tall and as pretty as she is loving.

And fuck it, you think a little hysterically, you’ve liked her for so long, and maybe this will mess your entire friendship up but you’ve liked her for so long, and maybe it will do you good to hear her rejection for what it is. Maybe it’d give you the closure you need to move on, and smile the next time a boy calls her out of class to give her snacks or a volleyball or a letter. Maybe, maybe, maybe.

(Maybe she would feel the same. 

Maybe you could be in love with-)

When it looks like Kanoka isn’t going to say anything else, you do, before you lose your nerve and your mind with it. Maybe you’ve already lost it. All you are is a collection of maybe-s, now.

“Kanoka,” you yank your gaze from her lips to her eyes, large, and the love in your chest swells and swells like a supernova, “I like you. I really, really like you, and it’s terrible, and I’m-” You choke a little, “I’m sorry. I wish we wouldn’t change.”

There’s a horrible, horrible, moment when you feel like the astronaut must have felt as he let go of the cord to the ship, as he set himself adrift in the vast coffin of space. Then-

“Y/n,” and her hands are tender around yours, her skin soft like the bruised fruit of your heart, “what if we could?” 

“What?” You’re lost, you’re drifting, and your lungs aren’t getting the oxygen they need. 

“We could change,” your best friend says patiently, and you let yourself pretend that the red on her cheeks is a blush and not the shade of the waning sun, “because I like you too.”

Your oxygen tank runs dry. It rattles the way your heart shudders in the age of your chest, a tin can. 

“Oh,” you say, and then you take a breath. “Oh,” you say again, in a tone of realization this time, and then you’re moving closer and Kanoka is too, until your noses brush like satellites and your lips meet like planets. Collision.

When you finally part for more than a few brief seconds for air, you smile. “I was always okay with this collision course,” you say into the crook of Kanoka’s neck. 

“What?” You feel her try to pull away in confusion, and you allow her to, just to pull her back to you with a hand on her collar. You smile into her lips, “Nothing. Just thinking about magnetism.”

»»------------- ------------- ------------- ¤ ------------- ------------- -------------««

a/n: one day i will stop self-inserting myself into my wlw fics. today is not that day.

do lmk what you thought abt this :”) i feel kinda rusty hhh but also i am on a self-imposed quest to spread wlw angst fics <33

taglist: feel free to drop me a dm/ask to be added!

[odinsblog]

Forget for a moment that the right thing to do is provide healthcare to people, in the middle of mass unemployment and a pandemic where your healthcare is tied to having a good job ...... forget that for a moment. What about common sense?? Medicare for All has mass approval in the Democratic base, and even polls well with many conservatives.

Why would you not offer that up??

Why is Biden sO vested in keeping a system with greedy insurance companies locked in as middlemen?

Biden himself admitted that even with his job as Vice President of the United States(!) even he had trouble paying for his son’s cancer treatments. So much so that Obama offered to give him a loan. Why on earth would anyone subject others to that?? Especially when it is within your power to change things??

Like the tweet said, this shit is transactional. If I believed for one second that Biden would seriously try to make M4A happen, I would be phonebanking my ass off rn. And making as many donations as I could afford. Just like I did for Sanders in 2016.

It’s not about “loving” Bernie Sanders either. It’s about the policies being offered on the menu.

Biden isn’t offering Medicare for All, he isn’t offering a ban on fracking, he isn’t offering complete student loan forgiveness, he isn’t offering free college, he doesn’t want to stop mass deportations, he doesn’t want to abolish ICE, he doesn’t want to defund the police ... hell, he wants even more money for the police and for the military.

Kids were in cages when he was VPOTUS, and they’re in cages now. But he still won’t abolish ICE??!!

I mean, FUCK.

Biden keeps saying he isn’t Trump, and how nothing would fundamentally change if he’s elected. Dafuq??

Like, how the fuck is that shit supposed to galvanize millions of people into going out and voting for him in droves??

Offer nothing, get nothing.

Look, I am not tryna tell anybody how to vote. Go do what you gotta do in November.

All I’m saying is, is this: The whole, “I’m not Trump” argument has already been tried, and failed.

Biden steadfastly refusing to offer concrete positives to people—not vague incremental “plans” and shitty platitudes—even in the face of what might be a close election, that’s criminally negligent on his part. Biden is tanking himself.

And it’s not selfishness on my part. My school loans are already paid off. I have decent healthcare. But I have tons of friends and family who don’t. These social programs would literally change their lives. For the better.

But Biden is insistent on being the status quo candidate. And I think it will cost not only him, but unfortunately millions of people who need some fucking help right now. Not incrementally over the next few decades. NOW muthafucka.

[viria]

What is it like to live in Ukraine?

Uh-uh…

That’s kind of a complicated question to answer? I have never lived anywhere that isn’t Ukraine. I have lived here and there in Europe for 6-7 days, but considering it’s tourism and not quite living/paying rent/working I don’t know what it would be like to live somewhere that isn’t Ukraine.

But from what I can say - on my part, it’s not horrible, as I work from home and freelance and I earn a decent amount to make a living and still have something saved up. But for people who work “usual” jobs it’s not always the greatest. If you’re a teacher and not in some fancy private school you will earn less than someone without education who works as a cashier. (not degrading that job at all, but it can be a bit unfair). And it’s, like. Not a lot. Some earn what would be about 150$ per month.

It’s often working a few jobs to be able to afford rent, and taxes, and still manage to have some food.

If you’re an elder who can no longer work and have to get by on a pension - you will be barely getting by. If you don’t have any kids and relatives who will help you - you’re even more fucked. My grandparents have their flat very cold in winter, because they have gas heating they can’t afford. So that’s set on a bare minimum in a few rooms, the rest of the flat is deadass cold. And that’s with my and my uncle’s parts in paying rent as well. Communals are very expensive if you need gas heating. (and just quite expensive tbh, they reise and reise)

Living in Ukraine is paying a lot for fuel, and therefore roads, but with close to everything you pay for the quality or roads being stolen by the government. Therefore having horrible hideous roads with huge holes in them and messing up the suspension (or however it’s called in english) of your car. You pay for roads, you get….almost none of that, and then you also pay to fix your car. (if you managed to afford one (:  ). Which also costs from 1600$ for a moderately decent one that would be somewhat from the year of 1989. or so. More decent and “newer” ones, say 2010, would be 10000$. or so. Depending on a car. Now take the average 320$ of ukrainian salary and try to save up for a decent one (:

It’s just. having no hope in the current government whatsoever for years. Presidents change, but you know each and everyone will be stealing from the country. Do we really have such poor country, or just very greedy government? oh well. From what I have read, whether that’s a true or not, the income of our president in the last year before the next (this) elections have increased up to (drumroll) 100 times. 100 TIMES CARL.  Well, better to steal as much as you possibly can before you run away or go to jail, right? Ha - ha

What also makes me sad is that considering people steal and steal so many of our beautiful old buildings just get..ruined. Because no one wants to repair them and save the beauty of the old city and the history of it.

We have so many good opportunities to be good but the country is so corrupted and in so much depts I don’t know how many years it would take to get through it. If ever.

It’s your government either buying trash for the army from the country you’re at war with OR selling the army trashy bits (haha that was thrown away by the same army) and making them pay way more it’s worth for that. For trash, basically. And then saying how patriotic you are while you take all the cash from them. Amazing.

But, it’s not all so bad. I get sad or angry only when I really think about it, and think about the changes that can happen, or can’t happen, and what the chances are. But for the most part you really just live. You think about your closer ones, and you go outside, and just get used to all of it. I usually have my worst kinda moments when I get back from another country, that’s when all the differences are the most striking, I guess, but for the most part I try to not think about it and be as decent of a human being as I can be, no matter where i live.

That’s kinda what’s on top of my head, and the bits I hear on the news, and generally what I know from people and relatives and just being here. I do love Ukraine, and I do hope for the best for it, but idk if that’s ever going to really come and if there’s gonna be Ukraine in the next 10 years or so.

[wellesleyunderground]

WU Reviews: Knock Down the House & Surge reviewed by Shloka Ananthanarayanan ‘08 (@shlokes)

This review originally appeared on Shloka’s blog, Pop Culture Scribe.

It’s October and people in many US states have already started voting, either in person or via mail-in ballots. I received my mail-in ballot last week but will be heading to my in-person early voting center on October 24th because I need the thrill of voting via a machine to feel like I gave this my all. If you are an American voter, make a plan and ensure you vote this year. And if you need a reminder of how important elections can be, I give you two wonderful documentaries that highlight all of the work that goes into political campaigning, all of the unnecessary horror of voter suppression, and what it looks like when truly deserving political candidates fight for the chance to represent their fellow citizens in a democracy.

Directed by Rachel Lears, Knock Down the House tells the story of four female Democrats in different parts of the country who ran for election in 2018. These women were not career politicians, but were all inspired to run following the 2016 election, where the shock of not seeing the first woman President get elected quickly gave way to sweeping anger and resolve to go into office themselves. The most famous candidate in the documentary is Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. She serves as the star of this film and gets more screentime than any other candidate, which is a bit unfortunate as I thought the other ladies were rather brilliant too. But in Ocasio-Cortez's case, what's intriguing is that she isn't a Democrat looking to flip her district - instead she is a progressive looking to upset the establishment Democrat, a complacent white man who can't even be bothered to show up to a debate and thinks that the voters in his district will just vote for him out of name recognition and sheer misinformed laziness. But with her grassroots campaign, Ocasio-Cortez convinces the people of New York's 14th Congressional District to vote with their best interests at heart, and thank goodness, they did. In the two years since she was elected to office, we've seen how great it can be when someone who actually gives a damn about the world and her constituents comes to Washington.

The other women featured in this documentary are Amy Vilela from Nevada, Cori Bush from Missouri, and Paula Jean Swearengin from West Virginia. They are all incredible women who are running to protect their people from greedy self-serving Republican interests. None of them won their primaries in 2018, but Swearengin and Bush both won in 2020 and I will be eagerly following their races this November to see if they flip their districts/states blue (Swearengin, in particular, is a fascinating woman who bucks the stereotype that West Wirginia coal miners can only be Republicans, and she is running for Senate, which would be such a coup for the country). All three women have incredible stories of why they chose to run in the first place and serve as a great reminder that politicians do not all have to be corrupt, amoral snakes. Sometimes, they can be women who want to protect their communities and serve their country proudly. Also, Netflix put this movie out for free on YouTube, so really, you have absolutely no excuse not to watch it.

Directed by Hannah Rosenzweig and Wendy Sachs, Surge tells a nearly identical story of three women running for Congress in the 2018 midterm elections. Like the women of Knock Down the House, they were all "activated" following the 2016 election and are determined to make a difference. This movie does a better job of giving each woman equal time to tell her story and following her campaign, and it also showcases some of the challenges they face on elections days with poor infrastructure that seems designed to discourage voting. There's also an incisive look at how the Democrats' Primary Machine works and how candidates depend so much on the support of the Party for monetary and logistical support that could give them a boost and much-needed name recognition during their races.

The film follow Lauren Underwood in Illinois, Jana Lynne Sanchez in Texas, and Liz Watson in Indiana. Again, these three women have different levels of political savvy, and different reasons for why they are running, but they are all united in their passion and commitment to the people of their districts. All three women win their Democratic primaries, but then we get to see how difficult it is to actually flip a district in the General Election when they are up against moneyed Republican interests. Millionaires and lobbyists (and racists and misogynists) aren't going to let these women win without a fight. Devastatingly, in Indiana, Liz Watson's grassroots campaign generates high voter turnout, but the Election Office in one county runs out of ballots as they never expected so many voters. Which causes a delay and results in her losing a lot of people who might have voted for her in the first place. While Underwood and Watson get Party support and have people like Obama, Biden, and Sanders show up to their rallies to get out the vote, Jana Lynne Sanchez's district in Texas is deemed too impossible, so the Party doesn't help her out. She ultimately loses the election, but because of her efforts, Democrats discovered it was actually winnable, and they will be investing in the candidate who runs there in 2020.

Politics is a complicated and dirty business, but what these two documentaries (that were directed and edited and shot and produced by women, FYI) reveal is that there are still idealistic and determined people that we can get behind. More specifically, idealistic, determined women, who face an uphill battle because women simply aren't treated fairly in the political arena. It was thrilling to see how excited they were to see other women running for office and formed a supportive clique to cheer each other on regardless of whether they won or lost their own elections. That's the kind of energy we need in today's toxic political climate. In addition, these women aren't taking corporate PAC money and they have a slog ahead of them, but they are fighting for the right to represent us fairly and decently, and they deserve our attention.

So before you vote this year, and in every election following, pay some attention to the people on your ballot. See if there's a new candidate who is more deserving of your vote than the establishment candidate you've been voting for all your life but who has never actually pushed any policies that you want. In Surge, someone talks about how party affiliation has become like a religion - you'll vote for the person from your Party even if they're ripping you off. Let's stop doing that and only vote in the people who actually want a better life for us and our families, instead of pocketing millions from corporate interests. Read up on what these candidates stand for and don't just vote for someone because they have a (D) or an (R) after their name, but because they actually represent the values that matter to you. Get out there and vote, America. We're all counting on you.

[meteorstricken]

Further thoughts and observations as of Monday night, in no particular order. I've made it up to partway through Chapter 9/ Wall Market.

>Jessie’s father is more or less a vegetable due to Mako poisoning, having worked in a reactor. This is what caused Jessie to want to join Avalanche, and study planetology. She believes that her father is stuck between life and death, and if I’m recalling correctly, fears that he may become processed Mako before returning to the planet.

>Tifa has a hard time being around the strong Mako stench in Reactor 5, as it reminds her of Nibelheim, and her anxiety noticeably increases as a result. Thus far, the game’s done a decent job of painting the characters as people who have suffered.

>According to President Shinra, the average Jane and Joe understand what Mako is. If he's not exaggerating, this means humanity at large is actively and knowingly complicit in harming the planet for convenience here. Always amazing what wrongs a society can get up to if they learn to label it as 'normal'. Frogs and their comfort with a slow-boil and whatnot.

>Aerith is a troll, constantly taking silly pot-shots at Cloud when he's being overly serious. She also seems profoundly more aware of things to come. There's a moment after she and Cloud encounter one of the Sephiroth clones where Cloud wonders aloud if Sephiroth is still alive. Aerith's reaction is very much, 'oh, that', and she changes the subject rather quickly. She also has a weird moment where ‘talking to the flowers’ is a plain stand-in for communing with the planet, and we get some hints for her anxiety around that. She talks about possibly ‘giving up’...which is not ominous at all. (Little bit of an FFX flavor there, actually.)

>Some environmental notes: Roughly the block around Aerith's house is covered in gardens and greenery. There is a 'waterfall' nearby that feeds into a small pond and stream that appears to owe its existence to some old, broken pipework that surrounds the area. (Insert ideas here about where the water comes from and how that probably smells. Oh well, fertilizer I guess.) I do not agree with critiques of Aerith's house as being overly upscale vs. others or vs. the OG. The layout is nearly exactly the same, and last I checked, a domicile with only a dining room and two tiny bedrooms isn't exactly a sign that anyone's rolling in the dough. It's certainly better decorated and well cared for than most slum dwellings--the residents are an old homemaker and an Ancient who can tell shit to grow and it does--but there's nothing wealthy-fancy going on.

>Cloud's less than likable traits shine through. So far, in his exploits with Aerith, he's been quite greedy about fees for his mercenary work. (Really, Cloud, 5K gil from the widower who couldn’t visit his wife’s grave because of monster issues? Yikes!)The only people he cuts any slack are small children. Various 'stay away from me' defense mechanisms are on full display in the form of cold or callous behavior or general standoffish-ness, all while he's increasingly struggling with the idea of failing those with whom he unwittingly ingratiates himself.

>Aerith actually does tell Cloud who Zack was by name, but his mental interference kicks in so that he misses it.

>Cloud is almost certainly having visions of the future on top of PTSD flashbacks at this point. One of these was of Aerith's death, and earlier on, he had a vision of the plate falling.

>It’s increasingly clear that the Remake is going to explore this story from a substantially different angle than the OG. As I mentioned before, this game is its own beast. This is not a problem for me, as I do not view the OG and Remake as competitive, am not using the OG as a strict grading metric for Remake, or feel that the Remake invalidates the OG. Each can be enjoyed or not on their own merits, and neither are without their pros and cons. Frankly, I am not here to focus on flaws unless they become so egregious that a) the characters are barely recognizable or fall flat; b) the story itself starts to bore me; or c) the Remake is completely stripped of the OG’s themes to the point of being unrecognizable. And even then, I’m more the kind of person who walks away silently from something that disappoints. If a game doesn’t deserve my energy, it doesn’t deserve it in any form. (FFXIII and anything after KH2 got this treatment from me.) 

>One small piece of criticism I do agree with I’ve seen out there is around branding. ‘Remake’ is not quite the right word for what’s going on here. Reboot would have better expressed the story intent. Semantics...

[awed-frog]

If I may ask, what do you think of the whole sea watch 3 mess? And indeed of the whole migrant situation in Italy?

Well - I have messy thoughts about that. Mostly I’m angry, disgusted, worried and pretty hopeless about the whole thing.

As a recap for people who haven’t been following this (complicated stuff ahead, so I don’t claim to be right about everything): 

1) In 1990, the EU decided on how to deal with migrants by drafting the Dublin Regulation, which came into effect in 1997. The idea was charmingly simple: people seeking refuge in Europe should ask for asylum in the first European country they got to. Optimists claim it was difficult back then to imagine any complications, since immigration was very low and European countries still had borders and everything else, but in hindsight, you have to wonder why countries like Italy agreed to this at all. You obviously can’t get to Germany or the UK without crossing through Italy or Spain first, so the Dublin Regulation was bound to cause huge problems. The other ridiculous thing is that the Italian government that signed this was headed by Andreotti, a nearly immortal ghoul princeling who’d been in politics since the 1750s and had been implicated in at least two murders.

(He’d also been found guilty of collaboration with the mafia, but was let go on a technical detail.)

2) In 2011, Muammar Gaddafi, ‘Brotherly Leader’ of Libya, was killed. We still don’t know exactly what went down - more on that in a second - but a general problem the West has in the Middle East and Africa is that we tend to support dictatorts, no matter how brutal, because it’s just easier to do business and get our way with one greedy and corrupt person than it is to deal with an entire Parliament, but the risk we overlook, time and time again, is that all-powerful dictators tend to become more and more ambitious and form their own plans, which may or may not align with Western interests. In the case of Gaddafi, Hilary’s emails (I know, I know) seem to indicate the real reason the West - and particularly France, as in former President Nicholas ‘I’m the son of an immigrant but he was the right kind of immigrant’ Sarkozy - suddenly got annoyed with Gaddafi is that Gaddafi was planning to introduce a new banking system in Africa - a thing that would rival the CFA franc. 

(That’s a currency used in fourteen African countries which is basically a leftover from French colonialism - it’s managed directly from the French Treasury, and that gives France more or less full control of those countries’ economies). 

So anyway, NATO got all tough on Libya, Gaddafi was killed, and as a result Libya is now a failed state with - if that’s possible - more human rights violations than before - particularly relevant for your question is a very harsh treatment of black Africans (down to and including literal ‘slave markets’ where people are bought and sold, also torture camps and everything in between). This happens partly because it’s lucrative af, and partly because there’s been bad blood between ethnic Arabs and black Africans for generations.

So, aynway, that’s the general context. What happened next is what we’ve seen for the last few years - an increase in the number of immigrants coming to Europe, therefore an increase of the number of deaths in the Mediterranean, therefore widespread panic leading to 

immoral and unethical deals with people like Erdogan (I say ‘people’, lol)

a sharp rise of the extreme right and 

a general inability to welcome those desperate enough to come here and offer them a decent life.

Most recently, Italy’s far-right Interior Minister decided to close down the harbours to prevent NGOs-operated rescue ships from docking. The Sea-Watch 3, which was carrying 42 migrants, decided to ignore this and go to Lampedusa, in Sicily - the closest and safest harbour. Now its captain has been arrested, but it’s unclear what will happen next.

If you’re asking me what do I make of all this - I don’t know. It’s a mess. 

For instance, there are studies showing that if NGO ships patrol international waters, the crossing gets more dangerous, because people smugglers don’t bother finding good ships - they know they just have to get migrants off the coast of Libya, and someone will pick them up. This means more risk for the immigrants themselves, and more money for the smugglers. But on the other hand, no rescue ships there means no help at all, so if something goes wrong, those people are doomed. The same ‘yes but’ applies to many other issues concerning migration. Like, a lot of migrants coming in (and these are people who were left with nothing, including ID) means more of them disappearing into thin air, because of the badly-organized and overcrowded camps. We know thousands of them end up exploited by criminal gangs - in Italy, a particularly brutal business is managed by the Nigerian mafia, which trafficks thousands of women into prostitution and terrifies them into obedience thanks to ‘black magic’, but there’s also agricultural workers, people forced into drug trafficking, kids who end up homeless and so on. Another major problem is that - other than the Syrians - the immigrants who got to Europe over the last decade are difficult to integrate into the legit labour market because they lack the necessary qualifications. Most of the European is now tertiary-based, which means you need some kind of post-high school diploma to do anything, and research shows about half of those coming here didn’t even finish primary school.

(To be very clear: I’m not saying this is in any way their fault, or something that can’t be fixed. But: it does encourage a battle of the have-nots, as people at the bottom - including chunks of the native population, immigrants from Eastern Europe and more recent immigrants from the rest of the world - compete for those few and miserable options open to them, like run-down housing, meagre welfare checks, and a handful of jobs you don’t need qualifications for.)

On top of that, many migrants would need a lot of support, because they escaped from horrific situations - not only those torture camps in Libya, but everything else you can think of: civil wars, political persecution, brutal rapes, whatever - that’s also something that has a cost no one wants to cover. And finally, since coming to Europe is so dangerous, most immigrants tend to be young men on their own - which is exactly the ‘worst’ group of people in any culture.

(Sorry if that sounds bad, what I mean is - we know that for whatever reason, young men everywhere tend to be more reckless than other social groups, and that increases the chance for risky behaviour - especially when the person is not ‘kept in check’ by a well-structured community. Thus, a young man without family or friends is more likely to make stupid or dangerous choices - for himself or others - than, say, a middle-aged father or a young woman.)  

All of this, as daunting as it is, could be solved - after all, this is not an invasion: it’s numbers we can manage - but probably won’t because:

1) There’s some interest in keeping the situation as it is. More migrants means more political success for right-wing and extreme right parties, not to mention huge profits for a lot of people.

2) Right now, the EU can’t agree on anything because of reasons. 

3) Nobody wants to do the right thing, ie treat Middle Eastern and African countries with a modicum of respect and actually support them and their development instead of propping up whatever strongman is convenient and robbing their citizens of whatever isn’t nailed down.

4) The countries on the EU borders have their own issues and right now it’s very hard to imagine those issues ever going away. Like, under many respects Italy’s basically a failed state that relies on the goodwill of half its citizens to keep trudging forward. It never rooted out clientelism, corruption, or tax evasion - plus, it still hasn’t defeated its own mafias, and despite an exceedingly brave and dedicated bunch of policemen and judges (plus all those ordinary citizens risking their necks every day by saying no and living an honest life), the battle against foreign mafias (like the Albanians, and more recently the Nigerians) is probably a task beyond its means.

So, well - sorry this turned into a novel. I guess what I think is - I admire people like Sea-Watch 3 captain Carola Rackete and everyone else who volunteers and fights for the most vulnerable, and I think the current government is a disgrace, but ultimately immigration is a political problem whose only solution is the usual solution to everything else: more courage, more competence, more transparency; less inequality, less greed, less corruption. More democracy, and a democracy operating without the (overt and covert) influence of powerful lobbies. Less support to dictators, fair wages for workers and fair prices for raw materials - even if that includes higher prices for Western consumers. And, above all, more regulations and less power to corporations and stakeholders.

Very few people actually want to leave their homes, but if we keep forcing them out, then they’ll keep fleeing - with all the consequences that entails.  

[thejakeformerlyknownasprince]

i saw the nyc au ask and wondered, what do you think animorphs would have been like if the series had been set in the midwest instead of california?

Bless.  (For anyone wondering, this is the NYC AU.)  Based solely on my experiences with living in central Iowa…

The selection of battle morphs would be a heck of a lot more limited.  The local zoo would probably have a large cat, maybe two large cats of the same species, and that’d be about it for ginormous predators.  Clearly, the only recourse would be for Marco to use domestic goat morph, Jake to find a coyote through the Wildlife Rehabilitation Center, and Rachel to kick butt as The Only Giant Cat in Fifteen Counties.  Tobias would have no shortage of raptors to choose from, given that there’s practically a hawk on every telephone pole, and the rabbit overpopulation problem would also keep him quite well-fed.  Cassie to go for something that that destrier morph Jake gets in MM3, and knowing her she’d be surprisingly good at fighting as a giant pissed-off horse.  Ax would have the largest and scariest-looking cow morph one can imagine, and would be quite happy with its superiority over mere bipedal humanity.

Obviously, there’s no ocean.

All five human kids would have to spend an entire week going on a massive adventure where they search corn fields, soy fields, wheat fields, and the occasional field-of-cows field to try and find the source of the mysterious andalite voice.  Presumably by the time they finally find him, Ax will have already made several attempts to communicate with the local cattle, and will have concluded that if these locals aren’t even sentient then there’s probably no hope at all for communication with the silly primates.

Rather than going through the trouble of building a secret underwater base, Visser One would simply construct a fake biodome.  The resultant airtight super-controlled environment might be even harder to penetrate than the underwater base, and would be guarded by a large pack of mind-controlled cougars.

Presumably the pemalite ship will be hidden in plain sight, perched on top of a truck stop and disguised as a giant metal dog that is advertising the local Kum and Go, or possibly an off-brand Fast ‘n Go, or else an off-off-brand Kwick & Go.  The password to access it will be to ask for the key to the bathroom like you’re some kind of rube from New York who thinks that all truck stops have locking bathrooms.

Visser Three would get a lot of conflicting information about whether armadillos and opossums are native to the area or not.  The human-controllers (presumably some of whom would have to be shipped in from elsewhere) would be known to emit occasional shrieks of terror while insisting that “no rat is EVER supposed to be that large… Hang on, it just dropped dead, never mind I guess.”

Instead of Jake complaining about rainy days, Jake would be complaining about any day when the wind is greater than 30 MPH.  Actually, Tobias would have a lot more to complain about on those kinds of days.  But either way, the windchill would be brutal for the poor Animorphs any time they’re birds.

The Sharing would either have to unite with FFA, or else die by FFA’s hand.  There is no third option.

Which outcome we’d see would probably depend on how much the Council of Thirteen allowed Visser One to intervene in the invasion plan.  If Visser One did get involved, then the Sharing would probably do some joint recruiting events, the yeerks would infest the FFA’s senior leaders, and there’d be plenty of cross-promotions.

If Visser Three was allowed too much oversight, on the other hand, then the Sharing would probably challenge the FFA to single combat for the minds and bodies of the local youth.  The Sharing would, of course, lose spectacularly.  The only way to save them would be through an alliance with 4H, which even then might not be sufficient.

In a small town in the Midwest, there’s no way that Marco’s whole “that controller cop knew Tom and so Tom must also be a controller” hypothesis would hold water.

Because of course the cop would know Tom; Tom’s the top scorer on the local high school’s basketball team!  Over half the county would know Tom.  Probably most local cops would be able to list Tom’s name and age and height and weight and jersey number and average points per game.  Tom scores points for a local team!  More points than any other player!   It wouldn’t be that unusual for his face to be on posters and novelty shirts and coffee mugs.

Assuming the Sharing could actually get a toehold in this town, Tom’s level of influence would then be fucking terrifying.

When it comes to protecting the local land from environmental pollutants and extraterrestrials alike, Southern California hippies got nothing on people whose livelihood literally depends on the continued quality of the land.  So expect all the civilians to be automatically on the side of whoever isn’t invading.  Maybe the Animorphs couldn’t go so far as to trust random strangers in the area — a decent percent of them are probably controllers — but woe betide any yeerks who get caught unnecessarily cutting down trees or shooting skunks.  There would probably be a lot more people like Derek and Polo who are like “I dunno what’s going on here, but if you’re local animals who are sometimes humans and you’re trying to do something about the guys in spaceships destroying everything in sight… How can I help?”

Either the Animorphs would have to learn how to morph more clothes, or else they’d spend way more time morphing to get rid of frostbite and hypothermia the way they do in #25.  It’s really only warm enough to be outside barefoot in leotards for about four months of the year in most places in the Midwest.  It would be miserable the rest of the time, but then being an Animorph is already like 85% relentless misery.  They would also stand out a heck of a lot more any time they ended up having to go into a public establishment like a McDonald’s wearing nothing but their morphing clothes, because everyone else in there would have on 15 layers of flannel.

The veleek would go almost totally unremarked-upon.  It probably wouldn’t make the news (it’s just a minor tornado; no one actually dies from it) and the Animorphs would probably take way longer to realize that it’s not behaving the way a normal wind storm does.

Infesting actors would be way more difficult (probably no Jeremy Jason McColes or William Roger Tennants in the area) but the number of politicians in the area would more than make up for it.

There are, at minimum, two or three presidential hopefuls per year at various events in Des Moines.  Most of the time their security is less than it would be in Washington D.C., because of the fewer vantage points and less-charged political atmosphere there.  It would be terrifyingly easy to infest the future president if the yeerks were based out of central Iowa.

Not only that, but there are always dozens of congress members at every single Iowa State Fair, usually because they’re angling for something political.  Given that politicians are a bunch of greedy power-hungry bottom feeders who definitely don’t have souls, the Sharing would just have to offer them powerful political connections and they’d practically be lining up to become controllers.

If the yeerks have less control of the media and also more control of the government, there’d probably be a lot more social conflict in the U.S. and less faith in Washington overall.  However, they also might be able to get martial law declared in the U.S., at which point suspension of the First Amendment is semi-legal…

What would probably be the yeerks’ downfall in a Midwestern town is sheer lack of bodies.  In the greater L.A. area, the yeerks can produce hundreds of thousands of controllers in a matter of weeks when desperate enough (#52) but they’d never be able to achieve that kind of army if they were working out of Kansas or Iowa or Nebraska.  Given that one Animorph can take on like seven controllers in open battle, and that it only takes about two dozen Animorphs (and several other intersecting factors, but still) to take down the whole Yeerk Empire, Jake wouldn’t have to recruit that hard to get enough of an army to face down maybe 400 controllers in total.

[2womenforme]

DAVID CORBETT- min wage should be 6$ hr now in 3rd world countries n going up each yr with cost of living or going up more then cost of living to get more equal to most developed countries wages , n so $2.50 a day or hr is not enough n is still extreme poverty big-time still so over half the world is still in extreme poverty idiot god play idiot united nations idiot UNICEF n many other foundations-charities ,,, n 16 $hr in cheap areas 17 to 18 hr in medium price areas n 18 to 19 hr in high price areas and should be in usa now n going up each yr with cost of living ,,,, David Corbett wake up leaders n god players devil player rich people united nations - it is not me that needs to wake up n come to otherside = u on otherside have not fixed the world for most n in fact done the opposite = u on other side broken David Corbett got a problem - good basics common-sense fairness for most will fix it n i am good at it so ask me,,,, david corbett government aid should be given in supplies for the poor mostly David Corbett presidents n generals around the world are also guilty of murder n manslaughter = we could have had all wars in last 100 yrs with sleep dart guns n sleep gas n still had a winner with almost no deaths David Corbett all leaders god play n rich are failing n always have so far n i am right n have been right since a young child n will always be right about what has been so far n if they do not fix it for the masses n i will continue to be right about the world needing to be way more fair for most n them attacking me will not change me being right David Corbett if it is too dark to see ya better put me in charge n do what i tell u then David Corbett fix this too idiots =respect be fair to n love all = put min n max wage in place that gos up with cost of living n max co. profit per amount off biz they do in proportion with # of employees n necessary expenses follow n enforce the rules = no man above another we the people for the people by the people justice n liberty for all , all men created equal - so treat all about equal in life-land $ materialism too ,,,,decent education up to 9th grade in the world so all can do ok job at job 9 months yr n get paid ok- 6 to 9 hr days so there is time for self n partner n kids friends family 2 days off week 2 to 3 months off yr,,,, the rich do not respect the masses -took more then their turn share they took others turn share they overcharge us raised cost of living underpaid us over paid themselves hoarding gauging selfish greedy vein egotistical sociopaths who do not care about most but want tons for self self self self = immoral n inhumane. no 1 is doing 10 times more better or more important work then the rest of us nor working 10 times more hours n it is not smart to be selfish greedy hoarding underpaying many overcharging many to overpay self take far more then anyone needs leave people in poverty wage =slave wage etc. put in 1st 2nd 3rd degree for all driving n pedal bike laws n less fine for pedal bikes=do way less damage n less of a danger most of the time , take out the worst criminals David Corbett fix this too idiot leaders= parents should have been taught the basics n taught them to their kids n schools teaching it too n then the kids would not be so screwed up = communication ,anger, problem solving, relationships, parenting, manage land $ materialism ,drug addiction,learn basic laws n how to improve them, partying safe n non destructive ,job training, stop the rich from stealing so much from us all, stop warmongers,stand up to god n devil player criminals, equal rights for all n how to stand up for self n all , we all pay taxes for schooling so should get most of what we use n need not tons trivia that is not used-needed David Corbett fix this too idiot leaders = lame usa = should be sleep dart guns only for citizens = fits mellow healthy side of right to bear arms = can protect n can hunt , even sleep dart gun as main gun for cops =kill no one even as mistake or minor or med offense ,along with rubber bullet guns tear gas sleep gas n 3 setting taser n have to prove u needed to use high setting to ever use it , n kill gun locked in car n use only under extreme conditions ,n assault weapons for swat team fbi fed marshals n military only n military trained to step in n help cops if needed , n all trained with same proticall = surround n contain area n move in as soon as possible n on same radio-communication station,,, assault rifles allowed is crazy man devil play usa ,if the retards will not get rid of guns insist on every gun having a gps on at all times n track record of where it is n was at all times = catching way more killers n the gun used to check prints n dna on it to catch shooter David Corbett fix this too idiot leaders =should be 1/4 of income on rent not half like is in usa now = leaders letting semi rich n rich screw most of us over n min wage should be doubled n going up each yr with the cost of living = it is a poverty wage n any poverty wage is a slave wage n even 10 hr is poverty=slave wage = our parents generation has left us in a pile of shit n then they say we want too many things free = no they have taken our turn share with overcharging n underpaying us = them wanting our share for free David Corbett fix this too idiot leaders= abortion should be allowed but try to talk them out of it with ok job ok pay ok cost of living 2 days off week 2 to 3 months off yr , n not judge point condemning them if they keep out of marriage or give for adoption or abort David Corbett drugs should be legal =drink prescription street , but with conditions for all drugs n all people n fair n protecting of most n rules n laws this n other side = register like prescription drugs with doc n get 2 weeks amount n dry out for days 2 times each month n have to take a class for this n other side think n do n a small bond for 3 days dry out shelter for misbehaving people this or other side n criminal punishment this n other side for criminal behavior being greedy should be criminal drugs or no drugs both sides ,,,, david corbett- foundations n charities do not fix poverty = they sustain poor in poverty with minor help = poor need fast ok job training fast ok job placement help n ok pay that gos up each yr with the cost of living,,,, David Corbett all over $100,000 yr or having 5 million or more total land $ materialism should not be able to collect social security= will fill lots of the shortage = so we keep it going ,,, david corbett -spend 90% less on military be smarter n team up with 20 other countries to take down the worst criminals or worst leaders= save some fix poverty n nature n help social security some. go to n live on moon mars n venus with 20 countries with some ,,,,,,, david corbett should be ok with 60% of same music n 60% of same lyrics = most things we have -can buy are 60% or more similar to other brands david corbett girls scout cookies should be cheap for the girls to sell lots = they are already low budget quality n overpriced-leaving girls at harder job n they should be compensated decent ,,,, david corbett - make sports stuffs proportionate for kids = fair fare smaller lighter lower etc ,,, david corbett - treat animals n nature in humane ways ,,,, david corbett - keep people biz with ok life not in jail cause they're left poor n desperate ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, david corbett - leave people biz with ok life not in jail cause left poor n desperate ,,, david corbett truckers are ripped off having to baby sit the truck n cargo all eve night with no pay n have to pay own tickets even when boss gives em too little time to make some delivery n many truckers have second book = illegal just to make some deliveries on time ,,,,, david corbett - internship should be illegal that is suppose to be why a min wage in place ,,,, david corbett monopolies are suppose to be illegal yet some have bought most of the companies n hide behind various names ,,, david corbett do things to make $ values around the world more similar in value-use this n other side positive constructive mostly to get it done like all things the world is part other side ,,, david corbett immigration should be reasonably easy fast n cheap but make sure poor countries have all needed basics fair laws equal rights for the people n improving reg n they will not run to better countries desperate ,but limit numbers per yr so not to flood any one country to fast of any one different type of think n do different peoples ,,,,, david corbett being gay or marrying gay is ok but do not be abusive to others with the play = think n do on this or other side -do not cram it down others throats-into their life- specially when in big gay groups at clubs or gatherings ,,,, david corbett get the zoos bigger for animals ,,,,, David Corbett should be a min but low n max for all crimes n explain what is min med n serious=1st 2nd 3rd degree rape or any crime like driving n pedal bike laws n less for pedal bikes n then a min med serious in each of those categories for judge or jury in case it was sorta the crime not completely crime -pushed-dragged into it mistake thought otherwise not intended tried not to tried to do something close but other misunderstood other like both drinking n she going along with it n look like resting a few minute into it n he not noticing much then next day not drunk she saying no i did not think it ok n thinking she said no n for sure n for real n not stopping it all ,,but if he is with it-not drunk at all n she out cold n they not lovers already n she did not say lets go fuck in car or your place etc it rape n if he showing friends n doing in front of them even worse n if he saying fuck her to others it even worse yet or if he just bully holding her n she saying stop get off repeatedly then it full rape ,, ,exception could be something like she said several times recently she wanted to get fucked by him n his friends gang bang several times n he would not let it but then he drunk n it ok n he encourages it =she gets what she wants-not rape ,,,,,n pedifile should have 1st 2nd 3rd degree versions n then min med serious punishment with in those with min n max in each of 1st 2nd 3rd degree doing=guilt David Corbett - kill gun n specially assault rifle is just a crazy mans devil play persons toy = cause even if most can control self the devil players n rich players puppet n push n step in others from time to time n get em to do things n even kill for dark pay power n all the rest of us suffer for it- mentally emotionally financially laws getting jerked back n for the politicians wasting time on things that should have been decided long ago n politicians doing things for the masses now like ok min wage that gos up each yr with cost of living= so do not let devil play have killing toys in many millions of hands around the world be sane be reasonable be respectful of the many be protecting of the many, a sleep dart pistol 6 ish shot will protect n can hunt, the desperate person will take your gun from u often n use it on u n or others also if the desperate person sees u have a gun they likely to shoot at u when they gonna just use the gun to scare u back away from them, the desperate will be burglarizing u n find your gun n leave with a kill gun n yet another kill toy is on the street for desperate angry bitter person left in poverty n a always tracking n recording gps on all guns would help after the fact catching criminals n sometimes beforehand n u can be sued or in jail if u used shot someone n deadly force was not needed

[urkingbby]

At Kingswood Academy, you may find yourself crossing paths with someone who looks a lot like ANSEL ELGORT, but that’s actually JACKSON KING. HE is a SEVENTEEN year old JUNIOR who lives in the HENRY HOUSE. Word is they are a REGULAR student who is FOR the changes happening at Kingswood this year. That makes sense, since I’ve heard they can be UNSERIOUS, COMPASSIONATE, ESCAPIST, and RESILIENT. Either way, like everyone else here at Kingswood, I’m sure they have their skeletons in the closet.

My lil or quite tall, rather munchkin is Jackson King!

TW: abuse implications??

( I also play Daphne Addington, for anyone who doesn’t know )

The rundown

☆*:.｡. Jackson is the twin brother of Isaac King

☆*:.｡. He has been here since freshman year, so if you want our charas to already know each other, I am 150% down!! Assume connections or hit me up with any ideas. I am literally open to anything. Like this and I’ll come to you (:

☆*:.｡. Jackson and Isaac were child actors. When they were very young, they would share roles due to child labour laws. I think some of their roles might have been Sprouse Twins’ Big Daddy-esque movies, but for the most part, the twins had more so serious roles

☆*:.｡. As they got a bit older however, Jackson had a few roles without his brother. (As did Isaac ofc)

☆*:.｡. He enjoyed acting when he was very young, but upon signing the contract for the Disney show Brady’s Brainwaves, he had a really shady incident happen with one of the producers at Disney that completely turned him off from the industry all together. He and his brother spent weeks begging their parents to somehow get them out of this contract but ultimately, Disney only allowed for one twin to leave the show and thankfully, Jackson left 

☆*:.｡. Since then, Jackson has somewhat had the privilege of doing his own thing and expressing his creativity in other ways, but at the cost of his greedy parents completely favouring Isaac in nearly every aspect of their lives lol

☆*:.｡. This has led Jackson to feel some level of resentment for both his parents and for Isaac, although he never shows it. Their parents were awful to the both of them and because of this, Isaac is the only person that Jackson ever truly had and as a result, he is afraid at his own ability to resent and feel jealous his brother. He tries to push it down pretty much whenever it arises.

☆*:.｡. Aside from that Isaac is the most important person in Isaac’s life. They are literally soulmates, they are best friends, they are silly, annoying and obnoxious together. Everyone around Kingswood knows them for being melodramatic goofballs who are attached at the hip

☆*:.｡. Jackson is extremely artsy-fartsy. He always has been. He s very creative, and from a young age, had always been good at drawing and painting. As he has gotten older, painting has gradually taken up his entire free time, literally painting everyone and everything that garnered his interest or inspired him.

☆*:.｡. Since Brady’s Brainwaves ended, and Isaac began pursuing a career of his own outside of what his parents had always wanted, Jackson gradually began to realize that he still did want to act, but was simply too afraid to even tread closely to that life ever again. His parents had definitely continued to pressure him, and it was through that pressure that he decided it was more important for him that he did what he enjoyed freely, and not under any influence of his parents. He much rathered staying under their radar at all costs.

Personality

☆*:.｡. He generally very outgoing. He almost jumps at the opportunity to say something silly or witty or just generally be over dramatic just bc he finds it and himself amusing

☆*:.｡. He is also typically pretty flirty... not always outwardly; he doesn’t make a big deal of himself but he finds it fun and usually doesn’t flirt with the intention of it going anywhere

☆*:.｡. He has a bit of a bleeding heart but it’s definitely not worn on his sleeve.

☆*:.｡. It tends to be hard for him to be serious bc he’s secretly an emotional wreck and tries to avoid it at all costs – he really can be when he has to tho

☆*:.｡. He’s pretty impulsive – he likes to have a good time – he’s stubborn af

☆*:.｡. He can be kinda awkward and shy at times usually if he’s intimidated by the person he’s speaking with in some way lol He usually hides it pretty decently

☆*:.｡. In the same way he doesn’t like to be serious, he tries to avoid conflict & 95% of the time he’s just a lil puppy

☆*:.｡. unless he‘s being a lil shit ofc

☆*:.｡. I think for the most part, though, his compassion and kindness outweighs it

Lil facts

☆*:.｡. He hates when you call him Jack but hey, if you want’ go for it… life isn’t fair. I can’t imagine close friends call him Jack tho lol

☆*:.｡. He’s a Pisces

☆*:.｡. He has control issues.  Not with other people but he has this thing about making his own decisions sometimes even at the expense, annoyance or dismay of others

☆*:.｡. He is a bit taller and slightly lankier than Isaac, unlike a lot older twins, the two have somehow managed to look alike even as they have gotten older

☆*:.｡. He plays the trumpet for the Kingswood orchestra, he is the president of the arts club and he is a part of theatre’s set design team

SO YEAH,

I am open to literally ALL of the plots. If you think Jackson might fit any of your wanted connections, I am very willing to hand him to you. Otherwise we can brainstorm something together!

[canchewread]

Editor’s note: Originally, I was going to save this quote until Bernie Sanders declared he was running for President in 2020, but I think there’s enough evidence that he’ll eventually declare now to confidently proceed with this write up - if he chickens out, I guess I’ll just have to deal with this post being thrown in my face for a while.

Today’s quotation comes from Matt Taibbi’s 2016 US Presidential election campaign book, “Insane Clown President: Dispatches from the 2016 Circus” - a volume that mostly consists of essays Taibbi released over the course of the entire campaign (Primaries and General Election) with some glue in the introduction and concluding portions of the book, to tie the whole thing together.

As those of you who regularly read my work here on Can’t You Read are no doubt already aware, I’m a big fan of Matt Taibbi’s writing - both in terms of style and the value of the content he provides. While nobody who can effectively work in mainstream media for over a decade should be trusted completely, I think it’s fair to say that Taibbi is, by the comparatively poor standards of his industry, an honest, rational observer of an institution (U.S. politics) that is anything but honest and rational. He is also, despite the numerous attempts to smear him, a fundamentally decent human being and that still matters a little bit in the world of American politics - although, maybe not as much as it should.

As for the book itself - Insane Clown President is ultimately a frustrating collection of writing; while two thirds of the book represents Taibbi at the absolutely height of his powers and easily ranks among his best work, the remaining third feels like a bunch of social media posts and fan mail cobbled into something resembling a narrative, then inserted into the book to fill out the page count. For example, while hashing out the rules of the GOP debate drinking game and conducting unofficial primary polls was probably a lot of fun for Taibbi’s followers on Twitter, it simply doesn’t translate into an enjoyable experience when transported onto the written page - the effect is actually quite jarring and somehow manages to detract from the rest of the extremely high-quality analysis Matt brings to the table.

The upshot here, are of course passages like the one quoted above, from a chapter appropriately and presciently titled - “June 9th, 2016: Democrats Will Learn All the Wrong Lessons from Their Brush with Bernie.” It is in moments like these that Taibbi seems to have his finger directly on the pulse of the class conflict between the voting public and the political elite (of which the mainstream media is effectively a public relations arm) in the United States. Unfortunately, despite Matt’s incisive analysis of the problems that would eventually define the entire 2016 election, the author’s (somewhat myopic) attachment to a liberalized ideal of previous editions of the Democratic Party, ultimately prevents him from drawing the obvious conclusion his own writing exposes throughout the book - that Trump is going to win, because American politics and its political media, are both fundamentally broken.

Despite these issues however, Insane Clown President’s most important contribution to understanding the current US political environment is Taibbi’s ability to recognize both swine emperor Trump and Bernie Sanders as symptoms of a populist insurgency waged not against internal factions within the normal framework of U.S. politics, but in opposition to the entire elite American ruling class and its institutions - our “establishment” if you will.

Before I go any further into what this means for the 2020 Democratic Party nomination race however, I’d like to talk a little bit about the false media narrative that the left wing populist movement behind Bernie Sanders is somehow “the same” as the revanchist, reactionary right wing movement that propelled Herr Donald to the White House in 2016 - a narrative which is, in a word, bullsh*t. While both political phenomenon are motivated to some degree by a mistrust of, alienation from and even outright loathing of the U.S. establishment and its institutions, the reasons for that mistrust, the overall end goals and the origin point of these respective insurgencies are totally different.

The far right “populist” movement that Trump was able to usurp during the 2016 Republican primaries, has its roots in Paleoconservatism and the largely AstroTurf, billionaire-funded conservative “Tea Party movement.” It is a fundamentally reactionary movement, created by the rich to blame America’s ills not on deregulated capitalism and an absurdly greedy ruling class, but instead on the proverbial “other” - brown-skinned immigrants, Muslims, the gay and transgender community, women, African Americans, the Jewish left, political correctness, big government and most of all, the dreaded “socialists, communists and liberals.” At its core, what we now call “Trumpism” is a revanchist Frankenstein’s Monster; the result of decades of weaponized and fetishistic worship of American exceptionalism, white supremacy and the absolute rule of capital - the only problem for the architects of this movement is that Trump managed to hack the code and establish his own mini-cult of personality by being more explicitly fascist and hateful than they were.

The movement propelling Sanders to the forefront of American politics by contrast is a genuine, grass roots endeavor. Although it’s easy enough to make the argument that the anti-globalization movement, Occupy Wall Street, anti-fracking activists, and the Black Lives Matter protests have all provided inspiration and ideological underpinnings for this democratic socialist wave, the fact is that there is no unseen hand at work here; no billionaire backers, no guerrilla marketing wunderkinds, and no AstroTurf corporate media campaigns can claim responsibility for the phenomenon Sanders has helped embody in American politics. I say helped, because this too represents a key difference between the DemSoc wave and Trumpism; as a policy-focused movement, this new American left isn’t just about Bernie Sanders and already we’ve seen inspiring young leaders like Lee Carter, Rashida Tlaib, and especially Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez step to the front with their own democratic socialist message.

Finally, unlike Trumpism, this Sanders-inspired DemSoc insurgency is a movement whose policy proposals match their rhetoric; striving for economic equality, environmental protections, universal health coverage, increased educational opportunities for all, a restoration of democratic rights, better jobs with improved working conditions, the right to collectively bargain, affordable housing, ending mass incarceration, women’s rights, civil rights, and yes, despite what you’ve heard in corporate media owned by rich white people - ending racism and injustice against all marginalized people. Indeed, particularly on the issues of supporting Palestinians living under Israeli apartheid and ending American imperialism abroad, the movement Sanders helped to inspire appears to be driving him further to the left on the political spectrum; although not as much as some, myself included, would like.

In short, if Trumpism is about dragging the country back to a more explicitly white supremacist era, the movement Sanders helps represent is about establishing a fairer, more compassionate and more democratic America than the world has ever known - even under FDR.

There is however, one potential analogue between these two insurgencies and this is where I think the above quote from Taibbi’s book comes in; while there are no real similarities between Trumpism and the Sanders movement, there are a great deal of similarities between the ways both established U.S. political factions and their media minions have responded to an insurgent voter’s revolt.

In 2012, and fresh off the heels of a traumatizing insurgent Tea Party revolt within the party, the Republican establishment put all its chips down on making Barrack Obama a one term president. Expending what would turn out to be the last of their political capital, the GOP establishment managed to force through the Butcher of Bain Capital, “center-right” candidate Mitt Romney during the GOP primary process - a choice distinctly divorced from the anti-elite sentiment (if not reality) of a Tea-Party base now openly indulging in Birtherism and starting to warm up to, you guessed it, Donald Trump. It was the type of calculated bet the party elite would only have been prepared to make if they were sure Romney would win the 2012 presidential election, because they were essentially gambling that deposing the hated Obama would quell the rage their reactionary base felt at being betrayed by the GOP elite, embodied in the form of Romney.

In retrospect, it seems obvious now that when (despite all of Karl Rove’s rosy projections) Romney went down in flames, the GOP establishment was fatally fractured; having demonized Obama as literally an enemy of the American people, when the Republican brain trust failed to deliver his head on a platter that morning in 2012, they effectively lost the revanchist right who’d powered their surge back to political relevance only two years before.

From the outside however, this was not immediately apparent; the Republican leadership quickly announced an election autopsy and soon enough the same people who’d failed Republican voters in 2012 were offering their prescriptions for how to win the next one in 2016. Putting their mighty heads together, these elite GOP power brokers came back with arguably the only candidate more Republican establishment than Romney, Jeb Bush.

It was as we now know, a drastic miscalculation but one that should have been recognized long before Trump won the GOP nomination. When Party leaders lacked the ability to preemptively weed a wild and opportunistic seventeen candidate Republican nomination field, including, incredibly, a credible “center-right” candidate from anointed establishment GOP champion Jeb Bush’s *own* state - the writing was already on the wall for a party leadership group that was only keeping up appearances after exiting 2012 essentially politically bankrupt and broken.

Moving the timeline forward four years, it’s extremely difficult not to see strong parallels on the Democratic side of the ledger. Here too we see a party that barely staved off a radical insurgency by expending an enormous amount of political capital to ram through a highly-unpopular candidate, all the while dismissing the growing outrage from the left wing portion of their base as irrelevant because Hillary Clinton would definitely be the next President of the United States. After losing the 2016 election, the Democratic establishment quickly conducted an autopsy, made some vague platitudes about listening to the angry left-wingers that backed Bernie Sanders and ultimately decided to keep doing the same things they’ve always done before; just like the Republican Party in 2012. Yet, as the 2020 Democratic Party race opens, it is clear that the liberal establishment no longer has enough control over the party to weed the field, and prevent more than a dozen nearly-identical centrist candidates from splitting a vote that would otherwise be united under one candidate, preordained to fight off Bernie Sanders once again.

Can a broken, politically bankrupt Democratic Party hold off Sanders a second time doing essentially the exact same things that failed to hold off Trumpism on the GOP side of aisle?

I wouldn’t bet on it - as beloved American author Samuel Clemens is often (and perhaps falsely) reputed to have said, “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.”

- nina illingworth

[questionablequestioningqueer]

“I meant today” Is not a good argument. Saying that something is wrong because it’s new is.. well, wrong. Just because you don’t agree with modern ideas does not mean that they should be disregarded. Unless there is something wrong with the idea itself, (and if there is, then do tell), there is no reason to bar change.

I was wrong in saying America invented racism, but America still weaponised racism for purposes of being rich and greedy. That much we can agree on: that it DID exist.

And just because you see black people as representatives does not mean they are no longer oppressed? Oppression is “prolonged cruel or unjust treatment or exercise of authority.” They have been treated cruelly and unjustly for a prolonged amount of time. There are a lot of statistics that show the targeting of blacks, it’s impossible to ignore. You think 1 president of 46 means oppression is over?

I can’t find any sources that say indentured servitude and slavery were the same things. They have a fair few similarities, like I said earlier. But they aren’t the same according to many scholars. Maybe I just haven’t found them, so could you please send some to me? I’ve found that history has a lot of conflicting expert opinions. The similarities are the labour and lack of monetary compensation for it. The differences are the time period and non-monetary benefits. Indentured servitude only lasted for a period established by contract, and the servant was freed after (Link). MANY died before it ended, thus they lived their life in servitude, but, due to the compensation of decent housing, food, etc. they had a MUCH higher chance of surviving to see their freedom than slaves, who never would.

The history of slavery isn’t black vs white, but it was most black and few white vs most white and few black. 89% of black Americans in 1860 were slaves (link). There were more black Americans in slavery than black Americans who were free. do you wanna know what percentage of Americans were slaves? (Since I can’t find the number of white slaves there were in that year for comparison, but let’s do the maths.) Of the ~31.44 million in the USA, ~3.95 were slaves. That’s 12.6% of the US population. 89% of blacks made up the 13% of slaves. How is it not about race at that point?

The history of slavery is complicated, with factors based on economics, region, politics and shit, but in American history, it became about race, and black people suffered from it.

From what I understand, you are saying that “it’s not racism, it’s exploitative economics. it’s not personal, it’s just business” please tell me I’m wrong