#North Jackson Chiefs

[svalleynow]

Area Football Teams Finish Regular Prepare for Playoffs

In South Pittsburg, when you lose 18 of 22 starters, you don’t think about rebuilding its next man up. The 2023 Pirates won the TSSAA state championship but only returned four starters. They were on the road on Friday night against their region rival, Whitwell Tigers. Both teams entered the contest ranked in the top 10 in the state and unbeaten in Region 3-1A play. South Pittsburg used their…

[whencyclopedia]

Etowah Mounds

Etowah Mounds (also known as Etowah Indian Mounds) is a National Historic Landmark and archaeological site near Cartersville, Georgia, USA, enclosing the ruins of a prehistoric Native American city whose original name is unknown. The present designation of Etowah means "town" in the language of the Muscogee-Creek Native Americans.

The city was built in three phases between c. 1000 - c. 1550 and the present site encloses three large and three smaller mounds surrounding a central plaza. The three large mounds were the chief’s residence (Mound A), the ceremonial site for religious rituals (Mound B), and the burial site for the nobility (Mound C); the smaller mounds are each attached or nearby the larger. Between the three was a plaza, which served for ceremonies, commerce, and as a ball field.

The city was built and flourished during the period known as the Mississippian culture (c. 1100-1540 CE) when many of the best-known mound sites in North America – such as Cahokia and Moundville – were also constructed. The city seems to have developed from a small village community of the Woodland Period (c. 500 BCE - 1100 CE) whose inhabitants were related to those who built Etowah and the later Creek and Muskogee Native American tribes of the region who lived in and near the site.

The Cherokee Nation arrived in the region from the north in the 15th century CE and settled at Etowah, but they, like many others in the area, had their numbers depleted by European diseases they had no immunity to. The Creek and Cherokee remained on the land, however, until gold was discovered in the region and they were forcibly removed to Oklahoma by order of President Andrew Jackson (served 1829-1837) in the 1830s, a tragic loss of land and heritage to the First Nations through the forced migration that has come to be known as the Trail of Tears.

The mounds were first noted by Americans in 1817 and test-sited in 1883 but no major excavations were begun until 1925 when the famous (or infamous) archaeologist Warren K. Moorehead (l. 1866-1939) arrived at the site. Moorehead’s work on Mound C – the most completely excavated area of the site to date – unearthed a number of significant artifacts which enabled the dating of the site to the Mississippian culture period. Excavations since Moorehead’s have been sporadic, but it is believed, based on what has been found and the general preservation of the site, that Etowah is the most intact of the Mississippian culture mound sites of the southeast built by the ancestors of the Muscogee-Creek Nation.

The Mound Builders & Mississippian Culture

The Mississippian culture is often cited as though it were the beginning of monumental mound-building, but mounds were built thousands of years before in North America. Watson Brake Mounds dates to c. 3500 BCE and Poverty Point to c. 1700-1100 BCE, with the Mississippian culture’s mounds following. The Mississippian culture has become the best known and most closely associated with mound-building, however, owing to the proliferation of mounds prior to that period and the skill of the people of the Adena culture (c. 800 BCE - 1 CE) and the Hopewell culture (c. 100 BCE-500 CE) who perfected mound-building and provided the model for later works such as the famous Mississippian Cahokia Mounds and Moundville.

Many mounds were constructed during the Archaic Period (c. 8000-1000 BCE) and the Woodland Period (c. 500 BCE - 1100 CE), but these differed from the later Mississippian culture sites, such as Etowah, in that those of the Adena were conical while those of the Hopewell were either effigy or flat-topped mounds. The Mississippian culture borrowed from both traditions in the creation of their mounds which were influenced, at least in part, by the religious beliefs spread throughout the region by the Hopewell culture.

Continue reading...

[therainingkiwi]

Train travel in The Lightning Thief/PJO TV season 1

Oh look, I'm overanalyzing fictional train travel because I'm one of Those neurodivergent people. Let's get into it. Warning for VERY minor book spoilers (just mentioning the names of all the cities our trio travels through).

TL; DR our trio's cross country travel route makes no sense at all.

In the first book/season of the Percy Jackson series, our main trio takes a cross-country trip from Long Island, NY, to Los Angeles, CA. In the beginning, it appears as if they've boarded a cross country bus that will drive them the whole way there (a trip that usually takes ~72 hours). However, they get derailed in rural New Jersey (presumably the northwestern part of the state).

After New Jersey, the action immediately skips ahead, and we next see our trio on an LA-bound train that's about to stop in St. Louis (and in the book, has a later stop in Denver).

So, just off the bat: the train route that the trio are taking doesn't exist IRL (assuming they board a train in Trenton, and that train stops in St. Louis, Denver, and Los Angeles). It's also impossible for a single person to travel that route for $200, much less three people. Chiron needs some up to date information about cross country travel prices.

If they were traveling a reasonable IRL amtrak route, they'd probably take the Cardinal from Trenton to Chicago, and then take the Southwest Chief from Chicago to LA. However, if they can get back to Penn Station from Aunty Em's, they could take the Lake Shore Limited from NYC to Chicago, which would be 7-8 hours shorter than getting to Chicago via the Cardinal.

They could also take a bus from north New Jersey to Chicago.

However, the Southwest Chief (most direct amtrak route to LA) stops at neither St. Louis nor Denver. The most notable cities along the route are Kansas City, Albuquerque, and Flagstaff.

If they wanted to take a route to LA that had them pass thru St. Louis, they could take the Texas Eagle from Chicago to St. Louis to San Antonio, and then take the Sunset Limited from San Antonio to LA. There are 3 trains per week that make this two-leg trip without requiring travelers to transfer at San Antonio, so our trio are probably on one of those. Why they didn't take the (shorter, cheaper, and more frequent) Southwest Chief is a mystery, honestly.

Since Chicago is the USA Amtrak hub, most routes will pass thru that city. The only alternative route is taking the Crescent from Trenton to New Orleans and then taking the Sunset Limited from New Orleans to LA. This would take them nowhere near Denver or St Louis, but probably wouldn't have a significant time/price difference from routing the trip thru Chicago (assuming they travel direct from Chicago to LA rather than taking the Texas Eagle thru San Antonio).

Unfortunately, there are no trains in the USA that travel between St. Louis and Denver (or even between St. Louis and Colorado in general), so that leg of their trip would have been made via bus. Greyhound (the USA's main long-distance bus travel company) has buses directly from St. Louis to Denver that end in California (but in San Francisco rather than LA).

In conclusion, I propose a new Amtrak route called "The Lightning Thief" that travels from New York-Penn Station, down the Northeast corridor thru New Jersey, and then turns west, making major stops in St. Louis, Denver, and Las Vegas, before terminating in LA. It doesn't stop in Amtrak's Chicago hub because all hub-and-spoke transit systems should have rim routes, and because Chicago isn't mentioned in The Lightning Thief.

Also, in conclusion, the USA needs better rail infrastructure and I'm a fucking nerd.

Amtrak map below for reference.

[on-my-vigilante-sht]

Masterlist

The Hunger Games

Finnick Odair

You’re Losing Me

Inspired by Taylor Swift’s “You’re Losing Me.” How Finnick loses the best thing he’s ever had.

Haymitch Abernathy

Capitol Punishment Masterlist

A story in which Haymitch’s lover is a plaything for the Capitol

I'm Sorry

Moments of Haymitch having to mentor his ex-girlfriend

Sleeplessness

Life just isn't the same after winning the Hunger Games

Percy Jackson and the Olympians/Heroes of Olympus

Luke Castellan

Follow Me

Luke's girlfriend is excited to finally become a year-round camper so she can spend it with him. But Luke has other plans for them.

Delicate

"Is it chill that you're in my head? / Cause I know that it’s delicate"

Competing With Gods

When Apollo is sent to camp as a punishment, he sets his sights on Luke's girlfriend.

The Way I Loved You

"But I miss screaming and fighting and kissing in the rain / And it's 2 a.m. and I'm cursing your name / So in love that you act insane"

The Final Quest

How a quest with the love of Luke's life turned him away from the gods

Asshole Instructor

Luke has been an asshole but he can't help it until he realizes the girl he likes could be gone any minute

Mine

"You are the best thing that's ever been mine"

Apollo

Immortal Danger

Apollo marries a half-blood without realizing how dangerous it can be

Immortal Danger II

Despite an extravagant wedding, Apollo is still confronted by those who want to end his marriage

John Wick

Forced Love Masterlist

Arranged marriages aren't uncommon in the crime world but John Wick never expected to be forced into one with his boss' daughter.

Criminal Minds

Aaron Hotchner

Undercover in a Skin Tight Skirt

The BAU Chief isn’t fond of sending his scantily clad wife in as bait

That Skirt

Smutty follow up to Undercover in a Skin Tight Skirt

I Can’t Leave

When the reader is forced into hiding, she’s desperate to inform her fiancé and his son

Move On

Rossi tells Aaron he should move on

Moving on to You

Aaron finally tells his longtime crush about his feelings when he almost loses her (Sequel to Move On)

Sparring Matches

The BAU undergoes PT evaluations, that includes sparring matches. And in the ring will be the secret couple, tipping off the rest of the team

Home Sweet Home

Sometimes going home isn’t always a good thing. Especially when your hometown is obsessed with marriage and you have a secret boyfriend.

"You're Okay"

After Aaron and his agent are saved from captivity, she grapples with returning to her regular life with her husband when the only person she wants to be around is Aaron.

Spencer Reid

Erotomania

Spencer’s girlfriend has a stalker

Game of Thrones/House of the Dragon

Sandor Clegane/Robb Stark

Between a Wolf and a Hound I

Sandor Clegane was never naïve enough to think he could marry the king's daughter but it doesn't make it any easier to see her married off.

Between a Wolf and a Hound II

The new Lady of the North tries to cope with the fact that she is now married and has a responsibility to her husband.

Robb Stark

The Godswood

When the newest Lady of the North is chased into the woods, the lords of the north search for Robb Stark's wife

Cregan Stark

Wrong Person (College AU!)

Aemond's girlfriend has a group project with the man he hates the most, Cregan Stark.

Forgiveness

Cregan begs for his wife’s forgiveness when he accidentally injures her

The Wall

When Cregan is forced to bring his wife to the Wall, he tries to ensure her protection but does not hesitate to defend her honor when necessary.

Grey’s Anatomy

Mark Sloan

Haunted

Mark finally finds where his wife has been hiding

Twilight

Carlisle Cullen

Sorry to Meet You

The moral dilemma of the patriarch of the Cullen clan finally meeting his mate after 350 years

Attack on Titan

Levi Ackerman

Amnesia

When the Levi Squad goes out on a mission with a few rookies, accidents happen

Favoritism

Captain Levi wouldn't let his feelings for a scout under him get in the way of his professionalism, right?

Reiner Braun

Guard

When Reiner returns from his ten year long mission, he is assigned to protect the the woman he could never have.

[batboyblog]

I haven’t been able to find a really good breakdown anywhere, but do you know who the current swing votes on the Supreme Court are?

I want to be clear there is not really a "swing vote" any more on the Supreme Court.

For many many years the court had Justices who tried to hold center ground on the Court, both Justice Potter Stewart (1958-1981) and his replacement on the court Sandra Day O'Connor (1981-2006) had a standard of "what does the average American feel" as for what was "reasonable" in a legal sense (O'Connor was more conservative than Stewart)

after O'Connor left the court the role of "swing" went to Justice Anthony Kennedy (1988-2018), but I think it would be more accurate and appropriate to say Kennedy was a liberal-Conservative, on some matters, like gun rights he was conservative, on some issues, like gay rights very liberal, on abortion you might say he was for as many restrictions as possible while still keeping it technically allowed.

Since his retirement in 2018 there are no real swings any more.

Chief Justice John Roberts is the most moderate of the Conservative majority, and has made clear he takes the responsibilities of being head of a co-equal branch of government, the Judiciary, seriously so at times has been more skeptical of Trump's claims of power, and at times as tried to rule, like Stewart and O'Connor where the majority of Americans are. But he is a conservative who voted against gay marriage, against the voting rights act (evil ass shit) and authored the Trump absolute immunity ruling

Other than Roberts there's Justice Neil Gorsuch, he's over all more conservative on a lot of issues than Roberts, but also has some weird idiosyncratic views on stuff which means he's for example super liberal on Native American tribal rights which saw him as the deciding vote on a lot of 5-4 rulings (before the death and replacement of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in late 2020) in favor of tribes, for example the case that ruled that most of Oklahoma over to the five tribes (later in 2022 with a more conservative make up the court pulled back and Gorsuch was rip shit) he's been kinda all over the place on LGBT rights, he authored the court's ruling on Bostock which declared the Civil Rights Act of 1964 covers LGBT people protecting them from work place discrimination, but he's joined with the two most conservative justices a bunch of times in 3-6 rulings whenever anyone says something about their religious believes allowing them to discriminate.

Finally there's Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who's only been on the court since late 2020, so her record is the least expansive of the Conservative Justices (and she'd only been a Judge since 2017) court watchers have been saying she's drifting away from the conservative block and becoming more independent and swing. I think it's a little early to say for sure. She did vote to overturn Roe which likely will be her legacy on the Court. But she did offer a much more narrow idea of Presidential immunity in her option than the other conservatives (since there were 5 of them it didn't matter what she thought)

Even Justice Kavanaugh has at times broken liberal, such as a voting rights case in North Carolina where he sided with Roberts and the liberals.

So basically Justices Clarence Thomas, and Samuel Alito, are literally ALWAYS bad news, you see a ruling has been written by them, it'll suck and be horrible. Chief Justice Roberts is a conservative but is most likely to side with the Court's 3 liberals, Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson, but that's just 4 votes, on different issues there are possibilities that Justices Gorsuch or Barrett, or even Kavanaugh might side with them, but I wouldn't generally bet on that happening, idk if Gorsuch with his quirks or Barrett with her maybe growing independence is the more likely "swing" vote.

[mariacallous]

The Justice Department delivered part of special counsel Jack Smith’s report to Congress early Tuesday morning, explaining his charging decisions related to the probe into now-President-elect Donald Trump’s alleged efforts to subvert the 2020 election leading up to and during the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

The report was originally intended to include information about Smith’s prosecution of Trump for his alleged illegal retention of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, his Florida resort. But because the case is still active against two of Trump’s co-defendants, Attorney General Merrick Garland agreed to keep those details under wraps for now. That case is likely to unravel entirely once Trump takes office, so it is highly unlikely that the public will ever see that information.

Smith explicitly says he believes the department had enough evidence to obtain and sustain a conviction were Trump to stand trial.

The 137-page document was first obtained by The New York Times.

“The Department’s view that the Constitution prohibits the continued indictment and prosecution of a President is categorical and does not turn on the gravity of the crimes charged, the strength of the Government’s proof, or the merits of the prosecution, which the Office stands fully behind,” the document reads. “Indeed, but for Mr. Trump’s election and imminent return to the Presidency, the Office assessed that the admissible evidence was sufficient to obtain and sustain a conviction at trial.”

Trump was indicted in August 2023 on four felony charges connected to Jan. 6: conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding, and conspiracy against rights. The latter charge was for allegations of intimidating voters as well as state and election officials.

Trump spent months filing motions to dismiss the election subversion case, invoking everything from vindictive prosecution to total immunity, but was eventually scheduled to go to trial in March 2024. He eventually raised the question of whether presidents were entitled to immunity from prosecution to the Supreme Court, leaving the case in a lurch for weeks until justices ruled, 6-3, that presidents are immune from prosecution for “official” acts and entitled to “presumptive immunity” for unofficial acts.

Smith revised and narrowed the original indictment to reflect the Supreme Court’s interpretation of immunity rules. His revised indictment would have forced Trump to defend certain conduct, including his speech from the Ellipse in Washington on Jan. 6 and his calls pressuring election officials to “find” votes for him, as “official” activity instead of campaign activity.

But Trump’s victory over Vice President Kamala Harris in November sealed the case’s fate: It was dismissed without prejudice, meaning it could be brought again at a later date. Since Justice Department guidance recommends that sitting presidents cannot be sentenced, however, Smith backed off.

In the report, Smith defended the investigation from its inception, writing that Trump’s “unprecedented efforts to unlawfully retain power” after he lost the 2020 election “compelled” prosecutors to act.

“Indeed, Mr. Trump’s cases represented ones ‘in which the offense [was] the most flagrant, the public harm the greatest, and the proof most certain,’” Smith wrote, quoting a passage from the 1940 text “The Federal Prosecutor” by Robert Jackson, once the chief U.S. prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials for Nazis.

Without regard for politics, “or the possible personal or professional consequences of a prosecution for me or any member of his office,” Smith said, investigators had “one north star.”

It was “to follow the facts and law wherever they led,” the now-former special counsel wrote. “Nothing more and nothing less.”

Smith, once the leader of the Justice Department’s public integrity division, said his office stands “fully” behind the decision to charge Trump because “to have done otherwise on the facts developed during our work would have been to shirk my duties as a prosecutor and a public servant. After nearly 30 years of public service, that is a choice I could not abide.”

The report is divided into several sections, with much of it reiterating allegations Smith laid out in the revised indictment last August, but the final report also contains explanations for why prosecutors opted against charging Trump with other crimes, including crimes under the Insurrection Act.

In U.S. history, there is little legal precedent available to help prosecutors interpret that law. To charge Trump, they would need to first define that what unfolded at the Capitol was unequivocally an insurrection against the authority of the U.S. and its laws. Then, they would need to prove that Trump incited the insurrection, assisted it or provided comfort to insurrectionists.

While courts have found that Jan. 6 was an insurrection and even described it as such, Smith said, prosecutors understood there was a keen “litigation risk that would be presented by employing this long dormant statute.”

Insurrections are defined generally as an uprising against a civil or political authority or established government. Other definitions, including legal definitions, acknowledge that it can also be a “rout, riot or offense connected with mob violence,” the report notes.

Courts have also observed that insurrections typically involve overthrowing a sitting government, rather than maintaining power.

Observing this, prosecutors said, they saw “another challenge to proving beyond a reasonable doubt that Mr. Trump’s conduct on January 6 qualified as an insurrection given that he was sitting president at that time.”

As they pored over litigation involving insurrectionary acts in years past to draw the comparison to Trump, Smith said, prosecutors could not find a single case in which a criminal defendant was charged with insurrection for “acting within the government to maintain power, as opposed to overthrowing it or thwarting it from the outside.”

If Smith would have charged Trump with violating the Insurrection Act, it “would have been a first, which further weighed against charging it, given the available charges, even if there were reasonable arguments that might apply.”

No matter how “strong the proof that he incited or gave aid and comfort to those who attacked the Capitol,” Smith wrote, the path to charging him under the statute was too “fraught with uncertainty.”

A reasonable case could have been made by applying “incitement” standards, too, especially given the evidence that Trump knew the violence at the Capitol was foreseeable and “that he caused it,” Smith wrote. Trump understood the riot would benefit his plan to thwart the certification of the 2020 election, the report said, and he could use any disruption to leverage his position.

“But the Office did not develop direct evidence — such as an explicit admission or communication with co-conspirators— of Mr. Trump’s subjective intent to cause the full scope of the violence that occurred on Jan. 6,” Smith wrote.

The charges that were eventually applied were the best fit because they did not introduce untested legal theories and could be defended concretely before a jury.

[beardedmrbean]

Do they ever give up? Those looking to divvy up Americans by race, that is.

In California they tried to get race preferences approved in a 2020 referendum, but voters rejected it 57.2% to 42.8%. This was a stunning rebuke, not only because the rejection came from residents of a blue state but because the losing side had outspent opponents something like 14 to 1.

In 2023 the Supreme Court weighed in with a landmark ruling that barred colleges from treating people as members of a racial group instead of as individuals—and cast constitutional doubt on all race-based preferences. “Eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote. Couldn’t be clearer, right?

Not in California. Undaunted state Assemblyman Corey Jackson is pushing a bill called ACA7. It takes aim at the state ban on race preferences that voters put in the constitution in 1996 when they passed Proposition 209. Californians reaffirmed Proposition 209 three years ago at the ballot box.

The language the voters agreed to and the activists hate reads as follows: “The state shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education, or public contracting.” Unlike the 2020 effort, the new bill would leave that language intact. Instead, it would add a provision allowing the governor to create “exceptions.” Effectively that would gut the ban.

Apparently, the lesson the advocates of state-sponsored discrimination have taken from their defeat is that if at first you don’t succeed, try something sneakier.

Here is Mr. Jackson’s press release summarizing the bill: “ACA7 will allow . . . the Governor to issue waivers to public agencies that wish to use state funds for research-based, or research-informed and culturally specific interventions to increase life expectancy, improve educational outcomes, and lift people out of poverty for specific ethnic groups and marginalized genders.”

Gail Heriot is a University of San Diego law professor who sits on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and was a leader of both Proposition 209 and the “no” effort on the 2020 referendum. She has launched a petition with Extremely Concerned Californians at change.org opposing the measure.

“ACA7’s proponents are hoping that voters will be fooled into thinking that it is just a small exception,” Ms. Heriot says. “In fact, it gives the governor enormous power to nullify Proposition 209.”

Edward Blum agrees. As the founder of Students for Fair Admissions, he spearheaded the lawsuits against Harvard and the University of North Carolina that killed race preferences in college admissions.

“Racial preferences are never legally justified because some specious ‘research’ report concludes it would be beneficial to a certain race,” says Mr. Blum. “This exemption will trigger endless litigation that will polarize California citizens by race.”

But sowing discord is a feature, not a bug. As the bill was making its way through the Assembly, Mr. Jackson got in a spat with Bill Essayli—a Republican who is also the first Muslim elected to the Assembly. Mr. Essayli pointed out that the majority of Californian voters disagree with state-sanctioned discrimination. “I fundamentally disagree with this backwards policy,” he later tweeted.

Mr. Jackson responded in his own tweet: “This is a perfect example how a minority can become a white supremacist by doing everything possible to win white supremacist and fascist affection.”

ACA7 passed the state Assembly in September. If it passes the Senate, it will be on the ballot in November. If Californians vote yea, it will become part of the constitution.

But all is not lost. The 2020 referendum awakened a sleeping giant: the Asian-American community. Asian-Americans quickly realized (as the Harvard case drove home) that they and their children are the primary victims whenever race is substituted for merit. Asian-Americans are more aware and organized than they were in 2020. They aren’t likely to be fooled by talk of “exceptions” based on “research.”

It also isn’t a given that ACA7 will make it through the state Senate. Though Democrats enjoy a 32-8 majority, polls consistently show race preferences are unpopular. Gov. Gavin Newsom’s support will be crucial.

Though he has no formal role in the constitutional process, some think the bill will go nowhere if Mr. Newsom doesn’t want it to. If it does make it to the ballot this November, he’ll be under immense pressure to endorse it. That’s another reason the Senate should kill ACA7 now, Ms. Heriot says.

“California voters need to make sure their state senators know where they stand—through emails, phone calls, letters, and petitions,” Ms. Heriot says. “Once the senators understand that, they will realize putting ACA7 on the ballot is not in their interest.”

[gentle-giant-swag]

HELLO EVERYONE! I SHALL NOW REVEAL THE BRAKCETS

First up

Wait

MOST FUCKABLE GENTLE GIANT

The A bracket (finished)

Battle 1-16

(most submissions in form 1 and most submissions in form b)

Starts Friday the 9th of June. 5pm CET. The brackets will be posted between the 9-10th of June.

Side A, 9th of June. 5pm to 8pm cet

Raphael Hamato (rise of the TMNT) vs Totoro (my neighbor Totoro)

Heavy (team fortress 2) vs Big Friendly Giant (BFG)

King Dedede (Kirby) vs Scorpia (She-ra)

Bismuth (Steven universe) vs Susan Murphy (monsters vs aliens)

Fezzik (the princess bride) vs Dick Gumshoe (ace attorney)

Master Chief (halo) vs Bumblebee (bumblebee)

Big Macintosh (my little pony: friendship is magic) vs Massimo Marcovaldo (Luca)

The titan (the owl house) vs Tyson (Percy Jackson)

Side B, 10th of June, 5pm to 8pm CET

Ivan Bruel (miraculous ladybug) vs Asahi Azumane (haikyuu)

Takeo Goda (ore monogatari) vs Caduceus Clay (critical role)

Milly Thompson (tri-gun) vs Sandy (Lego monkie kid)

Jaguar D. Saul vs Jean Bart (one piece)

Komamura (bleach) vs William Ellis (identity v)

Beelzebub (obey me) vs Kazanari Genjuurou (symphogear)

Senri (plus anima) vs Murakumo (rune factory 5)

Holly (super lesbian animal rpg) vs Brutus Feels (Kane and feels)

The B bracket (finished)

Battles 17-32

Characters who have returned from the spring bracket and from fandoms I’ve personally interacted with. So the spring bracket but we blacklisted big man

Date: Tuesday 13/6 to Wednesday 14/6, between 5pm to 8pm CET

Side A (Tuesday)

The iron giant vs Baymax (big hero 6)

Gonta gokuhara (danganronpa) vs Jonathan Joestar (JoJo’s bizarre adventure)

Dj (total drama) vs Yasutora “Chad” Sado (bleach

Muriel (the arcana) vs Jasmine (total drama)

Subject Delta (bioshock) vs aaarrrgghh (trollhunters)

Klaus Von Reinherz (kekkai sensen) vs Asterios (fate grand order)

Hunk (Voltron) vs Gooliope Jellington (monster high)

Dragonite (Pokémon) vs Asgore Dreemurr (undertale)

Side B (Wednesday)

Alphonse Elric vs Major Lewis Armstrong (full metal alchemist)

Urbosa (legend of Zelda) vs Glamrock Freddy (five nights at Freddy’s)

Milla Vodello vs Helmut Fullbear (psychonauts)

Dedue Molinaro vs Raphael Kirsten (fire emblem: three houses)

Winston vs B.O.B (overwatch)

Kanji Tatsumi (persona) vs Common Wubbox (my singing monsters)

Mordecai vs Muarim (fire emblem: gay rights path of radiance/radiant dawn)

Minsc & Boo (baldur’s gate) vs Big the cat (sonic the hedgehog)

C BRACKET (ongoing)

Battles 33-48

Those who fell in between the A and the D bracket. So this one has some pretty chaotic matchups

Date: Sunday the 18th to Monday the 19th, 5pm to 8pm cet

A bracket: Sunday

Nicholas St North (rise of the guardians) vs Grear Danes (irl)

Falkor the good luck dragon (the never ending story) vs Susan Strong (adventure time)

Grandpa Max (Ben 10) vs Cerberus (Greek mythology)

Kiryu Kazuma (yakuza) vs Dr Joshua Strongbear Sweet (Atlantis)

Fatgum (my hero academia) vs Takashi Morinozuka (ouran highschool host club)

Will Powers (ace attorney) vs Luther (Detroit: become human)

The Tick (the tick 1994) vs Evan Buck Buckley (911 on fox)

Riki Nendou (saiki k) vs Hearts Boxcars (homestuck)

Side B (Monday)

Shirahoshi vs Tony Tony Chopper (one piece)

Jetfire/skyfire (transformers) vs Indus Tarbella (epithet erased)

Sisyphus (hades) Vs Grog Strongjaw (critical role)

Hugo the abominable snowman (looney tunes) vs Aone Takanobu (Haikyuu)

Android 16 (dragon ball) vs Tiny (ever after high)

Wrecker (Star Wars: the bad batch) vs K (virtues last reward)

Goldlewis Dickinson vs Potemkin (guilty gear)

Yasha Nydoorin (critical role) vs Lily Bowen (fall out)

D BRACKET

Battles 49-64

Aka the one where the contestants sadly got the least amount of votes)

Date: Thursday 22/6th to Friday 23/6th 5pm to 8pm CET

Side A: Thursday

lain chu (dragon hunters) vs Panda (tekken)

Isaroth (genshin impact) vs Bizarro (DC red hood and the outlaws)

Jienji (Inuyasha) vs Jackie Wells (cyberpunk 2077)

Looks to the moon (rain world) vs Jogu (naruto)

Bane Perez (identify V) vs Zinnia (super lesbian animal rpg)

Vulkanon (rune factory 4) vs Argus (Greek mythology)

Mountain (ark knights) vs Taiga Saejima (yakuza)

Abbi (Omori) vs Gorem (bakugan)

SIDE B: Friday

Junko (storm hawks) vs Hajin (monstress)

Gylph (super lesbian animal RPG) vs Bongchun (Bongchun bride)

Fitz Fellow (detective grimoire) vs Bubbles (questionable content)

Dubo (omega strikers) vs Bob the titan (Percy Jackson)

Otto the giant water dog (wondla) vs Kurita Ryoukan (Eyeshield 21)

Mele the Horizons Roar (ishura) vs Gentle Bear (dog island)

The Selfish Giant vs Banjo Lilywhile (the hogfather)

Livio the double fang (trigun) vs Hank McCoy (x-men)

I will make propaganda master posts and if you want to add, just use the ask box or dm me with propaganda for one of the characters who’s going to participate. But that’s all!

May the best gentle giant WIN!

SECOND CHANCE BATTLES FOR ROUND 1

27/6, apricot bracket

Battle 1

Battle 2

Battle 3

Battle 4

29/2, shavedown of the apricot bracket

The battle

1/7, blueberry bracket

Battle 1

Battle 2

Battle 3

Battle 4

3/7, shavedown

The battle

4/7, citron bracket

Battle 1

Battle 2

Battle 3

Battle 4

5/7, shavedown

7/7, durian bracket

Battle 1

Battle 2

Battle 3

Battle 4

8/7, shavedown

The (un)official GGSmod messed up someone’s name post

The crime list

Ask game

[ifreakingloveroyals]

10 July 2011 | Chief Executive of Tusk Trust Charlie Mayhew and Meredith Ogilvie-Thompson (at rear, Tusk USA), Prince William, Duke of Cambridge and Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge laugh as they attend a reception to mark the Launch of Tusk Trust's US Patron's Circle in Beverley Hill, California. The newly married Royal Couple are on the final day of their first joint overseas tour to the USA. They arrived on Friday after spending 9 days in Canada. The couple started off their tour of North America by joining millions of Canadians in taking part in Canada Day celebrations which mark Canada's 144th Birthday. (c) Chris Jackson - Pool/Getty Images

[izuku]

ASOIAF Houses as NFL teams AKA A Game of End Zones/A Clash of Rings/A Storm of Scoreboards/A Feast for Throws/A Dance with Bandwagons.

Ok so I’m very bored and I’ve been brainstorming this and I wanna see how it plays out. Very “vibes” based, just like all NFL narratives! 32 teams for 32 houses. Long post below. Feel free to guess which team is my team, haha.

House Bracken - The Cleveland Browns. The vibes here are sort of perfect. House Bracken picks wrong in every conflict and somehow hasn’t been dismantled. The Browns pick the wrong quarterback 41 times and then will just show up in the playoffs sometimes

House Blackwood - The Baltimore Ravens. Blood feud with the Brackens/Browns. Competent, but can’t seem to really capitalize that competence. The Blackwoods never gain from picking the right side while the Ravens can’t do shit in the playoffs. Goth theme. How many eyes does Lamar Jackson have. You get it

House Stark - The Green Bay Packers. Just chilling up north, doing competent shit except whenever they have a new cool lord/draft a new HoF qb he literally dies when he goes elsewhere. Playboy type Brandon/Favre was cooked after an interception and shyer Ned/Rodgers did a failed coup and then got cut

House Martell - The LA Chargers. They’re going to do something…eventually…any minute now…hypothetically…Oberyn Martell remembers the day he was born...

House Targaryen - The New England Patriots. This was too easy…Unprecedented dominance thanks to the unparalleled power of dragons/some dude named Tom Brady. But have since fallen into decline without dragons/Brady…can Drake Maye wake stone dragons?

House Blackfyre - The New York Giants. Now I admit this is sort of narrative based w the previous pick. But let me speak. There was once one very cool guy who was also sort of mid at the same time who was able to really land a blow to the dominance of the Targs/Pats. And Eli Manning, uh, I mean, Daemon Blackfyre was his name-o. And since they lost that cool guy, they have not done shit. Daniel Jones is Daemon II Blackfyre.

House Greyjoy - The Minnesota Vikings. Now this is kind of cheating, but I feel it. Sam Darnold getting the Theon treatment on Pyke.

House Lannister - The Kansas City Chiefs. On top right now and seemingly aiming to be another dynasty except everyone hates them.

House Tyrell - The Philadelphia Eagles. Challenging the Chiefs/Lannisters at the moment with success! Everyone kind of hates them as well, though Saquon did go to the Margaery school of great PR.

House Baratheon - The Buffalo Bills. King Robert Bills mafia. I needn't elaborate.

House Velaryon - The Dallas Cowboys. Once a powerhouse, now largely irrelevant due to mismanagement. Aurane Waters would admire Dak’s ability to get a bag though.

House Dayne - The Denver Broncos. Guy with a great arm was here once and everyone thought he was so cool. Now we are left to see if Edric Dayne/Box Nix can carry on the legacy, but they’re around some shady characters (I know Payton knew about Bountygate 👀)

House Tully - The Chicago Bears. Run by an older member with skeletons in the closet who just died (RIP). Bears quarterbacks are like a metaphor for the River Lands.

House Arryn - The Indianapolis Colts. Relevant, but after their last main guy died (Jon Arryn/Andrew Luck), their last hope rests with a guy who can’t stay healthy. His symptoms have been accused of being psychosomatic. I guess Joe Flacco is Littlefinger.

House Frey - The New Orleans Saints. Bountygate/Red Wedding…covering stuff up…

House Bolton - The Houston Texans. Domeric Bolton has been sacked 76 times. Also doing evil coverups. Boy lords…rookie quarterbacks regressing a bit…the bane of every franchise/house.

House Peake - The Cincinnati Bengals. House Peake was "land poor, rich in stone and soil and pride, yet chronically short of coin." House Peake also probably has 4 scouts and refuses to pay anybody. Mike Brown is Unwin Peake. Coat of arms even matches Bengals colors.

House Westerling - The Washington Commanders. Oh hey…we thought you were dead! Their fortunes have, uh, faltered to say the least until some youngin took a chance. It’s worked out better for Jayden than Jeyne though.

House Hardyng - The Jacksonville Jaguars. Dreaming of bigger things and hoping Harry the Heir/Trevor Lawrence will change their fortunes.

House Harlaw - The Las Vegas Raiders. This is truly all vibes and their sigil colors matching the Raiders logo. It remains to be seen how 73 year old Alannys will coach this team. She keeps asking where Marcus Allen is.

House Hightower - The San Francisco 49ers. They were a bigger deal back in the day, but they’re still something of a sleeping giant. Trey Lance is sort of their Jorah Mormont, but they don't seem to have a Brock Purdy. They might be cooking something up, we'll have to wait and see.

House Dondarrion - The Seattle Seahawks. Had some good luck thanks to some BOOMS (lightning/defense) and now are mostly this old guy running around. They're just here so they don't get fined.

House Connington - The Tampa Bay Buccaneers. For the crime of not burning down a city/uncritically supporting your teammate when he tried to bash another dudes head in with his helmet, JonCon/Baker Mayfield has been banished, but he has returned with the goal of securing the IT/winning the Super Bowl.

House Umber - The Miami Dolphins. We put an Umber in an NFL game and he keeps using his head as a battering ram. Out on IR.

House Florent - The Atlanta Falcons. We are BETTER than you! [does nothing/screws things up]

House Darklyn - The New York Jets. So the Jets do technically still exist while House Darklyn was extinguished, but the entire affair is perhaps the most Jets thing ever. What was Serala’s Madden rating

House Mormont - The Pittsburgh Steelers. I guess? Kinda poor and have unconventional heirs/quarterbacks. I'm running out of ideas

House Manderly - The Detroit Lions. Dan Campbell would eat a Frey pie.

House Tarbeck - The Tennessee Titans. I feel like this house/team can be summed up by this quote: "What the fuck are you doing?" -Brian Callahan, Sep 15, 2024.

House Karstark - The Carolina Panthers. So one member made a Business Decision that didn't go well, but now we have a charming member that kinda flopped for a minute. However Alys/Bryce is back now and ready to get a ring!

House Rowan - The LA Rams. "They are all so young" - Mathis Stafford looking at the locker room.

House Redwyne - Arizona Cardinals. Seem to be a very streaky group and it's looking like success will all depend on Olenna/Kyler.

[svalleynow]

High School Recap for Games Played on Sept. 20

Last week, the Sequatchie County Indians stuffed a 2-point conversion attempt by South Pittsburg with less than a minute remaining to hold on for a one-point win. On Friday night, the Indians pulled off a huge upset over the state’s 2nd-ranked Class 2-A team, the Marion County Warriors, 13-10. Will Machado hit a 39-yard field goal as time expired for Sequatchie County. Sequatchie senior…

[ometochtli2rabbit]

13.0.12.7.18

lajun[10] ETZ'NAB[flint]/TIJAAX[obsidian] - jun [1] WAYEB

galactic tone: manifestation

sun sign: FLINT| fish/white/north

spend time in reflection and introspection - MAYA

mahtlactli[10] - TECPATL [flint knife]

Tezcatlipoca | Chalchihuitotolin

tecolotl [great horned owl]

lord of the night: Itztli

trecena [10]: Chalchihuitotolin

x: caxtolli [15] - hueicuilhuitl - NAHUA

"Self-portrait", Lois Mailou Jones,1948.

ETZNAB'

A Good Day to:

Avoid jealously and concealment

Let go of the past and move forward

As today's Maya advice is to spend time in reflection and introspection and obsidian was used to make mirrors in the Nahua culture, it is a time to look at oneself. Here are artists and songs that feature my name, JOE:

Dolly Parton: Gypsy Joe and Me

Patti Smith: Hey Joe

Olivia Rodrigo: Deja Vu

Aerosmith (Joe Perry): Sweet Emotion

Paul Wall: Sittin' Sideways

Nicki Minaj: Fractions

Joe Cocker: With A Little Help from My Friends

Jim Reeves: Mexican Joe

House of Pain: Jump Around

Rednex: Cotton Eye Joe

Ice Cube: What They Hittin' Foe?

Jerry Reed: Ko-Ko Joe

Wu-Tang Clan: Protect Ya Neck

Trisha Yearwood ft. Don Henley: Walkaway Joe

Billy Joe Shaver: Squidbillies Theme Song

Joe Jackson: Is She Really Going Out with Him

Bobbie Gentry: Ode to Billy Joe

Van Morrison: Joe Harper Saturday Morning

Pixies: Monkey Gone to Heaven

America: Ventura Highway

The Cult: Resurrection Joe

Joe Walsh: Life's Been Good

Lou Reed: Walk on the Wild Side

Lady Gaga: Cake Like Lady Gaga

Elvis Presley: Stay Away Joe

A Tribe Called Quest: Scenario

Bob Dylan: Diamond Joe

Lords of the Underground: Chief Rocka

Simon and Garfunkel: Mrs. Robinson

Quincy Jones: Killer Joe

Green Day (Billie Joe Armstrong): King for a Day

Harry Belafonte: Hold 'Em Joe

Johnny Cash: Joe Bean & Hank and Joe and Me

Soundgarden: Little Joe

Frank Zappa: Joe's Garage

Bob Seger: Fire Lake

Elton John: Holiday Inn

Labelle: Lady Marmalade

The Clash: Ivan Meets G.I. Joe

Nat King Cole: Joe Turner Blues

Buddy Holly: Smoky Joe's Cafe

Hank Williams: Jambalaya (On the Bayou) & Old Joe Clark

Nirvana: Sliver

David Bowie: Joe the Lio

Jimi Hendrix: Hey Joe

Chuck Berry: Mum's the Word

Ella Fitzgerald: Happiness is a Thing Called Joe

Lana Del Rey: How to Disappear & Wild at Heart

Nina Simone: The Gal from Joe's

Joan Baez: Joe Hill

The Beatles: Riding on a Bus

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Trudy Ring at The Advocate:

Twenty-six Republican state attorneys general are urging the U.S. Supreme Court to uphold the anti-transgender sports laws in Idaho and West Virginia. The AGs of Idaho and West Virginia have already asked the high court to review rulings that blocked them from enforcing their laws barring trans athletes from competing under their gender identity in school sports. The justices, who are in recess for the summer, haven’t said if they’ll take the case. The AGs calling on the court to uphold the laws filed friend-of-the-court briefs, known formally as amicus curiae, August 14. Such briefs are filed by people and organizations that are not directly involved in a case but want to express an opinion on it. The attorneys general of Alabama, Arkansas, Alaska, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wyoming signed on to the Idaho brief, and the same ones, with the exception of West Virginia and the addition of Idaho, signed on to the West Virginia brief — that’s because Idaho and West Virginia, respectively, are the states directly involved.

They assert that such laws are needed to assure equal opportunities for cisgender girls and women in sports. “Amici States all have laws or policies like Idaho’s that restrict girls’ sports teams to biological females,” the Idaho brief reads. “Basing the distinction on biology rather than gender identity makes sense because it is the differences in biology — not gender identity — that call for separate teams in the first place: Whatever their gender identity, biological males are, on average, stronger and faster than biological females. If those average physical differences did not matter, there would be no need to segregate sports teams at all.”

[...]

Arkansas AG Tim Griffin and Alabama AG Steve Marshall are the leaders in filing the briefs. “Like Arkansas, West Virginia has a strong interest in safeguarding the benefits of equal access to athletic opportunities for women and girls,” Griffin said in a press release. “They deserve the opportunity to shine on a level playing field. Biological males should not be robbing females of their opportunity to compete for athletic accolades or scholarships, nor should they be threatening the safety of women in competition. I will continue fighting to protect girls’ sports teams and the opportunities of female athletes.” In Idaho, Lindsay Hecox, a trans woman track athlete at Boise State University, filed a suit challenging the state's law, the first in the nation, shortly after Republican Gov. Brad Little signed it in 2020, along with Kayden Hulquist, a then-senior at Boise High School who is cisgender and was concerned about being subjected to the law’s invasive “sex verification” testing. They are represented by the American Civil Liberties Union and its Idaho affiliate, Legal Voice, and Cooley LLP.

Idaho Chief U.S. District Court Judge David C. Nye issued an injunction blocking the ban in August 2020. He noted that it appears to be on shaky constitutional ground. A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed his action in 2023. In West Virginia, trans girl Becky Pepper-Jackson, then 11, filed suit challenging the law in 2021, represented by the ACLU, Lambda Legal, and a private law firm. U.S. District Judge Joseph R. Goodwin that year issued a preliminary injunction temporarily blocking enforcement of the law and said she could try out for girls’ sports, noting that the suit “seeks relief only insofar as this law applies to her.” Goodwin also wrote that Pepper-Jackson, who is on puberty-blocking drugs, “has shown that she will not have any inherent physical advantage over the girls she would compete against on the girls’ cross country and track teams. Further, permitting B.P.J. to participate on the girls’ teams would not take away athletic opportunities from other girls.”

26 Republican AGs ask the MAGA majority on SCOTUS to uphold Idaho and West Virginia’s laws banning trans people from playing sports competitions matching their gender identity.

[iwanthermidnightz]

As Taylor Swift rolled into Los Angeles this week, the frenzy surrounding her record-breaking Eras Tour was already in high gear.

Headlines gushed that she had given $100,000 bonuses to her crew. Politicians asked her to postpone her concerts in solidarity with striking hotel workers. Scalped tickets were going for $3,000 and up. And there were way, way too many friendship bracelets to count.

These days, the center of an otherwise splintered music world can only be Taylor Swift.

The pop superstar’s tour, which is now finishing its initial North American leg with six nights at SoFi Stadium outside Los Angeles, has been a both a business and a cultural juggernaut. Swift’s catalog of generation-defining hits and canny marketing sense have helped her achieve a level of white-hot demand and media saturation not seen since the 1980s heyday of Michael Jackson and Madonna — a dominance that the entertainment business had largely accepted as impossible to replicate in the fragmented 21st century.

“The only thing I can compare it to is the phenomenon of Beatlemania,” said Billy Joel, who attended Swift’s show in Tampa, Fla., with his wife and young daughters.

In a summer of tours by stars like Beyoncé, Bruce Springsteen, Morgan Wallen and Drake, Swift’s stands apart, in numbers and in media noise. Although Swift, 33, and her promoters do not publicly report box-office figures, the trade publication Pollstar estimated that she has been selling about $14 million in tickets each night. By the end of the full world tour, which is booked with 146 stadium dates well into 2024, Swift’s sales could reach $1.4 billion or more — exceeding Elton John’s $939 million for his multiyear farewell tour, the current record-holder.

Swift has now had more No. 1 albums on the Billboard 200 over the course of her career than any other woman, surpassing Barbra Streisand. With the tour lifting Swift’s entire body of work, she has placed 10 albums on that chart this year and is the first living artist since the trumpeter and bandleader Herb Alpert in 1966 to have four titles in the Top 10 at the same time.

“It’s a pretty amazing feat,” Alpert, 88, said in a phone interview. “With the way radio is these days, and the way music is distributed, with streaming, I didn’t think anyone in this era could do it.”

But how did a concert tour become so much more: fodder for gossip columns, the subject of weather reports, a boon for friendship-bracelet beads — the unofficial currency of Swiftie fandom — and the reason nobody could get a hotel room in Cincinnati at the end of June?

“She is the best C.E.O., and best chief marketing officer, in the history of music,” said Nathan Hubbard, a longtime music and ticketing executive who co-hosts a Swift podcast. “She is following people like Bono, Jay-Z and Madonna, who were acutely aware of their brands. But of all of them, Taylor is the first one to be natively online.”

Before Eras, Swift hadn’t been on tour since 2018. And her catalog has grown by seven No. 1 albums since then, fueled in part by three rerecorded “Taylor’s Versions” of her first LPs — a project hailed by Swift’s fans as a crusade to regain control of her music, though it is also an act of revenge after the sale of Swift’s former record label, a move that, she said, “stripped me of my life’s work.”

“Folklore” and “Evermore” expanded her palate into fantastical indie-folk and brought new collaborators into the fold: Aaron Dessner from the band the National and Justin Vernon, a.k.a. Bon Iver, rock-world figures who helped attract new listeners.

The other major tour this year that is enticing fans to book transcontinental flights, and to show up costumed and in rapture, is also by a woman: Beyoncé, 41, whose Renaissance tour is a fantasia of disco and retrofuturism. Like Swift, she is also a trailblazing artist-entrepreneur, maintaining tight control over her career and fostering a rich connection with fans online. Together with Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie,” a critique of the patriarchy told in hot pink, they are signs of powerful women ruling the discourse of pop culture.

But in music, at least, the scale and success of Swift’s tour is without equal. Later this month, after completing 53 shows in the United States, she will kick off an international itinerary of at least 78 more before returning to North America next fall. Beyoncé’s full tour has 56 dates; Springsteen’s, 90. (Recently, Harry Styles wrapped a 173-date tour in arenas and stadiums, grossing about $590 million.)

Outside Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City, fans posed for selfies and shared their ticketing ordeals. Esmeralda Tinoco and Sami Cytron, 24-year-old former sorority sisters, said they had paid $645 for two seats. A stone’s throw away, Karlee Patrick and Emily DeGruson, both 18 and dressed as a pair in angel/devil costumes after a line in Swift’s “Cruel Summer,” sat “Taylorgating” at the edge of the parking lot; they said they had paid $100 for parking but couldn’t afford tickets.

As Swift’s opening acts finished, the crowd rushed in. Glaser, the comedian, later said that of the eight shows she had been to, her favorites were the ones where she had brought her mother — and converted her to Swiftie fandom.

“Everyone is in love with her,” Glaser said her mom told her after one show in Texas. “Now I get it.”

[tomorrowusa]

Sandra Day O'Connor died Friday at the age of 93. She was the first woman to serve on the US Supreme Court. Although she was appointed by President Ronald Reagan, her approach was more centrist than his and she was often the swing vote on the court.

After her retirement from SCOTUS in 2006, President George W. Bush appointed the hard right Samuel Alito to replace O'Connor. In 2022 Alito was the driving force behind the dismantling of Roe v. Wade.

Justice O’Connor joined the controlling opinion in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the 1992 decision that, to the surprise of many, reaffirmed the core of the constitutional right to abortion established in 1973 in Roe v. Wade. To overrule Roe “under fire in the absence of the most compelling reason to re-examine a watershed decision,” she wrote in a joint opinion with Justices Anthony M. Kennedy and David H. Souter, “would subvert the court’s legitimacy beyond any serious question.” Last year, the court did overrule Roe, casting aside Justice O’Connor’s concern for precedent and the court’s public standing. In his majority opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, Justice Alito wrote that Roe and Casey had “enflamed debate and deepened division.” Justice O’Connor also wrote the majority opinion in Grutter v. Bollinger, a 2003 decision upholding race-conscious admissions decisions at public universities, suggesting that they would not longer be needed in a quarter-century. In striking down affirmative action programs in higher education in June, the Supreme Court beat her deadline by five years. [ ... ] Justice O’Connor was also an author of a key campaign finance opinion, McConnell v. Federal Election Commission in 2003. A few years after Justice Alito replaced her, the Supreme Court, by a 5-to-4 vote in 2010, overruled a central portion of that decision in the Citizens United case.nge? A few days later, at a law school conference, Justice O’Connor reflected on the development. “Gosh,” she said, “I step away for a couple of years and there’s no telling what’s going to happen.” [ ... ] She held the crucial vote in many of the court’s most polarizing cases, and her vision shaped American life for her quarter century on the court. Political scientists stood in awe at the power she wielded. “On virtually all conceptual and empirical definitions, O’Connor is the court’s center — the median, the key, the critical and the swing justice,” Andrew D. Martin, Kevin M. Quinn and Lee Epstein and two colleagues wrote in a study published in 2005 in The North Carolina Law Review shortly before Justice O’Connor’s retirement.

Let this be a reminder that the direction of the Supreme Court depends on the President who appoints its members and the Senate which confirms them.

While we may not have warm and fuzzy feelings about Ronald Reagan, two of his three† appointments to SCOTUS were centrists. Of the six current justices appointed to the court by Republican presidents, one is a conservative and the other five are hardline reactionaries.

When voting for president or senator, we are indirectly also voting for SCOTUS justices who could be on the court for decades. We ought to keep that in mind when we hear people suggesting that we should cast "protest votes" for impotent third parties which have no chance of getting elected.

Remember that no 2024 Republican presidential candidate will nominate to the court somebody as relatively moderate as Sandra Day O'Connor.

† I count Rehnquist, who Reagan elevated from Associate to Chief Justice, as a Nixon appointee.

[mariacallous]

Addressing a single executive order from Donald Trump’s voluminous first-day edicts is like singling out one bullet in a burst from an AK-47. But one of them hit me in the gut. That is “Establishing and Implementing the President’s Department of Government Efficiency.’’ The acronym for that name is DOGE (named after a memecoin), and it’s the Elon Musk–led effort to cut government spending by a trillion bucks or two. Though DOGE was, until this week, pitched as an outside body, this move makes it an official part of government—by embedding it in an existing agency that was formerly part of the Office of Management and Budget called the United States Digital Service. The latter will now be known as the US DOGE Service, and its new head will be more tightly connected to the president, reporting to his chief of staff.

The new USDS will apparently shift its former laser focus on building cost-efficient and well-designed software for various agencies to a hardcore implementation of the Musk vision. It’s kind of like a government version of a SPAC, the dodgy financial maneuver that launched Truth Social in the public market without ever having to reveal a coherent business plan to underwriters.

The order is surprising in a sense because, on its face, DOGE seems more limited than its original super ambitious pitch. This iteration seems more tightly centered on saving money through streamlining and modernizing the government’s massive and messy IT infrastructure. There are big savings to be had, but a handful of zeros short of trillions. As of yet, it’s uncertain whether Musk will become the DOGE administrator. It doesn’t seem big enough for him. (The first USDS director, Mikey Dickerson, jokingly posted on LinkedIn, “I’d like to congratulate Elon Musk on being promoted to my old job.”) But reportedly Musk pushed for this structure as a way to embed DOGE in the White House. I hear that inside the Executive Office Building, there are numerous pink Post-it notes claiming space even beyond USDS’s turf, including one such note on the former chief information officers’ enviable office. So maybe this could be a launch pad for a more sweeping effort that will eliminate whole agencies and change policies. (I was unable to get a White House representative to answer questions, which isn’t surprising considering that there are dozens of other orders that equally beg for explanation.)

One thing is clear—this ends United States Digital Service as it previously existed, and marks a new, and maybe perilous era for the USDS, which I have been enthusiastically covering since its inception. The 11-year-old agency sprang out of the high-tech rescue squad salvaging the mess that was Healthcare.gov, the hellish failure of a website that almost tanked the Affordable Care Act. That intrepid team of volunteers set the template for the agency: a small group of coders and designers who used internet-style techniques (cloud not mainframe; the nimble “agile” programming style instead of the outdated “waterfall” technique) to make government tech as nifty as the apps people use on their phones. Its soldiers, often leaving lucrative Silicon Valley jobs, were lured by the prospect of public service. They worked out of the agency’s funky brownstone headquarters on Jackson Place, just north of the White House. The USDS typically took on projects that were mired in centi-million contracts and never completed—delivering superior results within weeks. It would embed its employees in agencies that requested help, being careful to work collaboratively with the lifers in the IT departments. A typical project involved making DOD military medical records interoperable with the different systems used by the VA. The USDS became a darling of the Obama administration, a symbol of its affiliation with cool nerddom.

During the first Trump administration, deft maneuvering kept the USDS afloat—it was the rare Obama initiative that survived. Its second-in-command, Haley Van Dyck, cleverly got buy-in from Trump’s in-house fixer, Jared Kushner. When I went to meet Kushner for an off-the-record talk early in 2017, I ran into Van Dyck in the West Wing; she gave me a conspiratorial nod that things were looking up, at least for the moment. Nonetheless, the four Trump years became a balancing act in sharing the agency’s achievements while somehow staying under the radar. “At Disney amusement parks, they paint things that they want to be invisible with this certain color of green so that people don't notice it in passing,” one USDSer told me. “We specialized in painting ourselves that color of green.” When Covid hit, that became a feat in itself, as USDS worked closely with White House coronavirus response coordinator Deborah Birx on gathering statistics—some of which the administration wasn’t eager to publicize.

By the end of Trump’s term, the green paint was wearing thin. A source tells me that at one point a Trump political appointee noticed—not happily—that USDS was recruiting at tech conferences for lesbians and minorities, and asked why. The answer was that it was an effective way to find great product managers and designers. The appointee accepted that but asked if, instead of putting “Lesbians Who Tech” on the reimbursement line, could they just say LWT?

Under Biden no subterfuge was needed—the USDS thrived. But despite many months of effort, it could not convince Congress to give it permanent funding. With the return of Trump, and his promises to cut government spending, there was reason to think that USDS would evaporate. That’s why the DOGE move is kind of bittersweet—at least it now has more formal recognition and ostensibly will get a reliable budget line.

How will the integration work? The executive order mandates that in addition to normal duties the USDS director will also head a temporary organization “dedicated to advancing the President’s 18-month DOGE agenda.” That agenda is not clearly defined, but elsewhere the order speaks of improving the quality and efficiency of government-wide software, systems, and infrastructure. More specific is the mandate to embed four-person teams inside every agency to help realize the DOGE agenda. The order is very explicit that the agency must provide “full and prompt access to all unclassified agency records, software systems, and IT systems.” Apparently Musk is obsessed with an unprecedented centralization of the data that makes the government go—or not. This somewhat adversarial stance is a dramatic shift from the old USDS MO of working collegially with the lifers inside the agencies.

Demanding all that data might be a good thing. Clare Martorana, who until last week was the nation’s chief information officer, says that while she saw many victories during her eight years in government tech, making big changes has been tough, in large part because of the difficulty of getting such vital data. “We have budget data that is incomprehensible,” she says. “The agency understands it, but they hide money in all kinds of places, so no one can really get a 100,000-foot view. How many open positions do they have? What are the skill sets? What are their top contracts? When are they renegotiating their most important contracts? How much do they spend on operations and maintenance versus R&D or innovation? You should know all these things.” If DOGE gets that information and uses it well, it could be transformational. “Through self-reporting, we spend $120 billion on IT,” she says “If we found all the hidden money and shadow IT, it's $200, $300, maybe $500 billion. We lose a lot of money on technology we buy stupidly, and we don't deliver services to the American public that they deserve.” So this Trump effort could be a great thing? “I’m trying very hard to be optimistic about it,” says Martorana. The USDS’s outgoing director, Mina Hsiang, is also trying to be upbeat. “I think there's a tremendous opportunity,” she says. “ I don't know what [DOGE] will do with it, but I hope that they listen to a lot of great folks who are there.”

On the other hand, those four-person teams could be a blueprint for mayhem. Up until now, USDS would send only engineers and designers into agencies, and their focus was to build things and hopefully set an example for the full-timers to do work like they do at Google or Amazon. The EO dictates only one engineer in a typical four-person team, joined by a lawyer (not known for building stuff), an HR person (known for firing people), and a “team lead” whose job description sounds like a political enforcer: “implementing the president’s DOGE Agenda.” I know that’s a dark view, but Elon Musk —and his new boss—are no strangers to clearing out a workplace. Maybe they’ll figure AI can do things better.

Whichever way it goes, the original Obama-era vibes of the USDS may forever be stilled—to be superseded by a different kind of idealist in MAGA garb. As one insider told me, “USDS leadership is pretty ill equipped to navigate the onslaught of these DOGE guys, and they are going to get the shit kicked out of them.” Though not perfect, the USDS has by dint of hard work, mad skills, and corny idealism, made a difference. Was there really a need to embed the DOGE experiment into an agency that was doing good? And what are the odds that on July 4, 2026, when the “temporary” DOGE experiment is due to end, the USDS will sunset as well? At best, the new initiative might help unravel the near intractable train wreck that is government IT. But at worst, the integration will be like a greedy brain worm wreaking havoc on its host.