#Lack of Transparency

[simply-ivanka]

By the Numbers:

Number of official interviews and press conferences Harris has done since becoming putative nominee. This compares with roughly 240 she did between taking office and Biden’s exit. The 2024 version of the “basement” campaign?

[thoughtlessarse]

The plaintiff in the Pfizergate affair has called on the European Council to force the resignation of EU executive chief Ursula von der Leyen and the rest of her Commissioners in a letter seen by Euronews. The letter from the plaintiff's lawyer was addressed to all 27 EU leaders and Manfred Weber, the president of von der Leyen’s European People’s Party (EPP). Its receipt was logged yesterday (29 May) at the European Council. The plaintiff asked EU leaders “to refer the [Pfizergate] matter to the Court of Justice so that it may order the compulsory resignation and forfeiture of pension rights not only of Mrs von der Leyen but also of all the European Commissioners who make up her Commission.” Additionally, the plaintiff asked “the European People's Party to withdraw the candidacy of Ms von der Leyen for the post of President of the European Commission” as well as “prohibiting anyone from presenting the candidature of Mrs von der Leyen to the post of President of the European Commission or any other post within the European institutions as long as she is the subject of criminal proceedings.”

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[signode-blog]

Biticode Method - Learn The Truth

Have you seen the below post about the “Biticode Methods” on reputed websites: In recent days this has become a trend by some people to promote their products. Most of these are fake and they are trying to scam innocent people in this way. I would suggest you to be careful and do not be greedy. I have noticed that many people believe the scammers more that people who are trying to save them…

[indiebirds]

Unmasking the Dark Side: Corruption in the Indian Film Industry

Unmasking the Dark Side: Corruption in the Indian Film Industry

Introduction: The Indian film industry, often referred to as Bollywood and Tollywood, has garnered international recognition for its vibrant storytelling, charismatic actors, and mesmerising song and dance sequences. However, behind the glitz and glamour lies a murky reality. Corruption, like an unwelcome guest, has found its way into the very heart of the Indian film industry, tarnishing its…

[mthomasapple]

Another day, another JAXA failure

The bankruptcy filing by Richard Branson’s Virgin Orbit Holdings Inc (VORB.O) has dealt a blow to Japan’s hopes of building a domestic space industry, with plans for a Kyushu-based spaceport designed to attract tourism on hold for lack of funding. https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/virgin-orbit-bankruptcy-casts-shadow-over-japans-space-dreams-2023-04-07/ Granted, this news is…

[deancasforcutie]

Dean complimenting fellow queer people on their game

Bonus inverse, trying to out-game someone to vicariously flirt for/with your presumed-but-not-at-all-straight friend who has no game whatsoever:

[not-poignant]

I've seen an increase in accordion content warnings (not the instrument, the collapsible drop down menu which is otherwise hidden except for a tiny symbol) in the author's notes on AO3.

Please don't use these.

They're hard to notice, and you can just put your content warnings in the end notes and say they're there, and a person can click, see them, and then return to the back of the chapter.

The tiny little arrow is not super accessible, is not visually immediate to readers, and is not a 'clever way' of hiding your content warnings (which should also be in the goddamned tags unless you ran into a tag limit or are just writing 400~ kinks and can't be bothered).

You're not supposed to be hiding your content warnings. Spoilers never matter more than your content warnings. You can choose to put your content warnings in the end notes and avoid the spoilers, because a sentence: 'CWs in the end notes' is so much clearer than a tiny little > symbol that people have to click to see all your warnings.

Don't do it.

Save the cleverness for a site that's not built on being open and transparent about your content warnings if you're not going to choose Creator Chose Not To Use.

[acekindaneat]

serirei cuddling ft. sericat & reigencat commission for @seriweewaa !!!! 🧡

[sesamenom]

Family Tree Version 3, now featuring dwarves, hobbits, and the intricacies of however ainur are related!

Double lines on each side of a line break are used where lines overlap (---ll | ll---). Dashed lines indicate unknown numbers of generations, and dotted lines are for adoption. Grey text is used for alternative/old draft versions and assumed relationships (such as sticking oropher in with the sons of galadhon, or putting one of the dunedain as the tooks' fairy ancestor).

Version 2 here

[reachexceedinggrasp]

Danny 'I don't do weird' Pink frustrates me as a character, because I'm honestly not sure whether he was supposed to have an arc or not.

His primary role is as a foil for Clara's arc and, in aid of that, as a mirror to the Doctor. A solider with survivor's guilt and a man of action who can't stand by when people need help etc., in some ways he and the Doctor have a lot in common, but he's also a very grounded and circumspect personality versus the Doctor's being fantastical and adventurous. Danny isn't curious and doesn't want to pursue new things or experiences, instead he wants to be fully present with and grateful for what he already has. The Doctor is incorrigibly curious and always interested in new things.

Danny is someone who desires nothing more than an ordinary life, and looks for beauty and satisfaction in the normal things and people around him. He wants his world to be small and quiet, he values the mundane things others might take for granted. He's normal, patient, dependable, simple, honest, etc. His reaction to trauma hasn't been to disavow the things which lead him to that event, or to seek out stimulation to avoid thinking about it, it's to be thoughtful and cautious and somewhat rigid so he can always apply the mindset and skills he retained from before he was traumatised.

He's very firm and unbending in his worldview and in his self-image. He doesn't seem to ever reassess people once he's decided what he thinks of them. He's not unreasonable or unwilling to compromise, he is in fact maybe too reasonable, but he is implastic. He's extremely even-tempered except for around his identity as a soldier, which he's prickly about, but still pretty quick to let it go as long as he's not being deliberately antagonised.

So anyway Danny represents this other path, and this opposite response to the horror of war and making a catastrophic mistake, but he never learns, he never grows and he and Clara are never much on the same wavelength about anything. He's supposed to be stability, the things she 'should' want, the 'person she's supposed to like', the safe choice, the presentable life which Clara feels like she has to have. He's orderly and ordinary and that's what she wants from him. She has to control her image, her future, and her options.

And their simple relationship, once it exists, functions well as the contrast to her complicated and tumultuous relationship with the Doctor while the companion power dynamic is being dismantled and rebuilt so they can be emotional equals. But like, the set up is confusingly executed.

Listen- they have zero chemistry, they have nothing to talk about and have to resort to talking about work, every conversation goes instantly off the rails, they rub each other the wrong way, there is never any reason for them to keep reconciling and trying again to connect. Like. You are not hitting it off! and keep offending each other bc you're not compatible! Quit!!

Clara is forcing it, that makes complete sense with what she's going through, she's trying to take control of her life and her emotions, trying to prove to herself she's not pining for the Doctor and at the mercy of his whims for her life to be full and complete. She doesn't want to need him or to be dependant on him. She doesn't want to be the heartbroken sadsack whom he abandoned at Christmas or who will take whatever scraps he'll throw her. She wants to control his position in her life and control how she feels about him. Hence her assigning him a specific day and confining their adventures on her own terms. She's trying to keep the Doctor compartmentalised. Having an Appropriate Human Relationship means she's successfully put the Doctor in his box (lol) and neutralised the chaotic power of her feelings for him. I mean, obviously not, but that's what she tells herself.

But what is Danny doing? Why does he keep pursuing this when it's so clearly not a good match?

Again in Listen, and much more so The Caretaker, Danny illustrates that he does not know who Clara is, he's wildly wrong about her and what she's like, and he's very high handed about it as well. He's convinced that the Doctor is taking advantage of her, that the Doctor is domineering in their relationship, that she is not a person who wants to be put into challenging or dangerous positions, that the Doctor is pushing her to takes risks and become a leader where that's not her nature. None of this is true. Clara was always a decisive, assertive, strongly driven person who seeks out new experiences and naturally assumes a leadership role any time that's necessary; she relishes being challenged and facing the unknown. Her blow up with the Doctor wasn't about him 'pushing her too far', it was about him failing to support her when she needed him and condescending to her as a human rather than treating her with the intimacy and equity their bond and history together demands. It's personal and it's about their emotional relationship. It's not about making hard choices, it's about having to make hard choices without her partner being honest with and emotionally available to her.

Clara was always an adventurous person, willing to be spontaneous as long as it's on her terms, and excited by the prospect of authority and responsibility. The danger and challenge isn't an unfortunate side effect or a risk she has to take to see amazing sights, it's part of the appeal. She lied to Danny by omission when she said she went off in the box to 'see wonders', not just because the real reason is that she's in love with Doctor, but also because she doesn't just want to be a tourist. She wants to get involved and save people, she wants things to sometimes go pear shaped. She enjoys and craves that part of it too.

Danny is also wildly wrong about the Doctor, but this is understandable and would be fine except that he's never corrected? He never learns better? What's the point?

In Death in Heaven Danny goes out still wrong about the Doctor, still condemning him cruelly and unfairly while knowing nothing about him. He had a point with some of his original rant, there was actual insight there, but it's buried in assumptions and bitterness and then Danny keeps tripling down on the assumption. The one which doesn't understand that the very thing he's shitting on the Doctor for (being willing to lead and make hard choices that must be made in order to save people) is something the Doctor has in common with Clara. And always has. The Doctor didn't change her or push her into that, that's who she's always been.

What is the point of Danny calling him a blood-soaked general and mocking him, calling him an officer as a pejorative again, and again because the Doctor is trying to save the planet. Like, memory check, that's what Danny is mad about. The Doctor doing everything in his power to save literal billions of lives. Doing it for no reason, out of altruism. Doing it while always trying very hard not to fight or kill anyone. Doing it even at enormous spiritual cost to himself.

I don't understand how we're meant to find Danny sympathetic in that moment, because he comes off like a complete dickhead. And it's all the more frustrating because in the intervening episodes Danny has been eminently reasonable. As I've discussed before, we're exhaustively shown that Danny is 100% okay with what Clara claims is going on, that he doesn't want to get in the way of her friendship with the Doctor, that if it really were only the relationship she's pretending it is, there would be no conflict. He's the one who encourages her to make up with him after Kill the Moon! He tells her to go on travelling and it's fine!

Even when he discovers she's been lying to him and cavorting with the Doctor behind his back (again despite him telling her it was fine with him!), he's calm about it and repeats for the millionth time that all he wants from her is honesty. The truth. Which is the one thing she can't give him because Clara knows their entire relationship is built on the lie, they're only together because of the lie. The truth is, as Moffatt said, that Danny never stood a chance. There is a conflict between the two relationships and she's always going to choose the Doctor.

And that does come out, she gives the whole speech to Danny, not knowing it's him, finally being honest. And he seems unsurprised by it, which makes sense because on some level he definitely always knew ('do you love him?' 'no' 'really had enough of the lies'), but then nothing comes of that. Clara just soldiers on, going right back to pretending this relationship wasn't a façade doomed from the start, and Danny allows her to pretend. He goes off on the Doctor, but not in a way the Doctor actually deserves at all, and just sweeps her confession under the carpet. Letting her get away with it again. True to form, I guess! he always did. But shouldn't we make progress?

And it's like... I hate that he dies on that note. It feels like he dies in denial. I guess you could argue it contributes to his decision to not come back, but that feels like a disservice to the character. Saving the kid is important to Danny, it allows him to atone for his greatest mistake, but he didn't need to change or grow to accomplish that and it doesn't provide any closure to his actual role in the narrative, which was as Clara's foil. Clara is off the hook, free to go on lying to herself about their relationship. It's not addressed in Last Christmas, either, it's only barely hinted at.

[utilitycaster]

something interesting I've noticed in this campaign's discourse is that there's a fascinating moving of goalposts closer to what I (and others with similar opinions) said originally. Like, consider:

this ship isn't interesting because it lacks conflict being met first with "yes it is, you're just evil haters" to "must ships have conflict to be interesting?" to "well if things were DIFFERENT you'd like it"-style claims, threaded through constantly with "obviously it's great/bc I have eyes" tell-and-never-explain style arguments

or

"Bells Hells isn't as bonded" met with "YES THEY ARE THEY PLAYED WHAT THE FUCK IS UP WITH THAT??" to "they would be bonded, but for the plot, which I see as something separable from the story and not the story itself" to "um actually it's better that they're not because that makes it different from the past campaigns where the characters had strong and complex relationships with each other, and novelty is always superior."

[pokemonedits-outofcontext]

[indiebirds]

Unmasking the Dark Side: Corruption in the Indian Film Industry

Unmasking the Dark Side: Corruption in the Indian Film Industry

Introduction: The Indian film industry, often referred to as Bollywood and Tollywood, has garnered international recognition for its vibrant storytelling, charismatic actors, and mesmerising song and dance sequences. However, behind the glitz and glamour lies a murky reality. Corruption, like an unwelcome guest, has found its way into the very heart of the Indian film industry, tarnishing its…

[sekaitransparents]

HARUKAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

thank you, colopal <3

btw, would y’all be interested in a tour of our engsekai account lmao. it’s not anything crazy, since we’ve been mostly f2p, but it would be fun.

[sheriffthompson]

as much as i dont care that they brought tord back for $$$$ and all, they could uh. they could be less blatant about it. they could also Tell Us Something other than constant merch drops. like how animation progress is going, how theyre building up to tords return, just SOMETHING. i cannot stand this no communication bs esp when theyre actively making merch but wont give us a crumb of progress or how its lookin for The Show Itself.