#Presidential Fan Sites

[deadpresidents]

What do you make of some of the tumblr presidential fan accounts and their activities? Shitposting, fanart, bizarre headcanons, etc?

There are A LOT of those fan sites about the Presidents and the Presidency on Tumblr! I'm shocked at the sheer number of them that have been popping up over the past few years. I don't follow very many other Tumblrs, but they are frequently recommended to me on my dashboard and I often see my stuff being reblogged by them, so I do notice them and know what you are referencing. I usually don't follow them, but it's not because I'm some sort of history snob. I've just never followed all that many blogs here on Tumblr. Some of those Presidential fan sites on Tumblr can be weird and seem to have some goofy posts and reblogs that I just don't "get", but that's normally just due to the fact that I'm old and boring and socially incompetent. Even though I'm probably one of the OGs of Presidential history blogs on Tumblr because I started Dead Presidents in 2008 (!!!), my site has always been pretty normal, straightforward history for those 15+ years. For the first few years, I even tried to steer away from being too political because I worried it would interfere with the credibility of the history writing I was publishing on Tumblr. That all changed in 2015 when I couldn't stay on the sidelines as Trumpism started taking over. But my Tumblr has always been mostly conventional, and a lot of those Presidential fan sites are very much unconventional.

I think because of that the assumption would be that I'm annoyed or dismissive of the Presidential fan Tumblrs that you mentioned because of how unconventional they can be. However, that's not the case at all. I actually think it's really fucking cool that so many young people -- and most of those Presidential fandom Tumblrs belong to really young people -- are into history, especially Presidential history, so much that they've shaped their own little universe about it. There's some really creative stuff that I've seen when sites are recommended and pop up on my dashboard. I'm particularly impressed by the Presidential fan art that a lot of these kids are posting. They are having fun and they are finding unique ways to expand history literacy, which has always been one of my main goals for creating Dead Presidents in the first place, posting original writing, and answering questions over the years.

Again, some of the stuff goes completely over my head and I don't understand the memes because I'm old, but I still think it's really cool that people are finding their own path into the field of Presidential history -- a subject I've spent most of my life interested in and hopeful that I might be able to interest others in. And, despite what a lot of those fan sites might look like at first-glance or appear to be while quickly skimming through dashboard recommendations, a lot of these kids who are curating the sites genuinely know their shit! It's great and I'm excited by the idea that there are creators finding new ways to introduce these subjects and these endlessly fascinating stories to diverse new audiences.

At its core, history is always just a collection of connected stories about people, and with so many talented young folks finding and creating original ways of telling those stories I want to support and encourage those efforts. From what I can tell, there are a lot of these Presidential fan sites that follow me on Tumblr because I've been around forever and it's pretty easy to remember that I write about the Presidency because of my blog's name. This might make me sound even more ancient than I already am and nobody needs my validation to keep doing what they are already doing well and successfully, but I'm proud to see the work that those young people are doing to further their own interests in Presidential history and inspire history literacy through their own creativity. Those memes and fan art can animate and energize far different -- and newer -- audiences than my 3,000-word essays about Presidential history and that's so important. They are appealing to demographics that I can't reach as easily and in ways that I never would have thought of, and I'm always going to be an advocate for that (even if I never understand the memes!). And the most important part is that they are having fun exploring history and making history fun for new explorers.

[wilwheaton]

Like Trump, Ross is also no stranger to controversy. He’s hosted Nick Fuentes, the antisemite and white supremacist, and Andrew Tate, a former kickboxer facing charges of rape and sex trafficking in Romania. Trump too has hosted Fuentes, at a dinner at Mar-a-Lago in 2022 (Fuentes was a guest of fellow antisemite Kanye West, who is now being sued for mistreating workers and for sexual harassment, yet whom Trump described to Ross as having “a good heart”). But the biggest overlap is their respective fan bases: predominantly white, aggrieved, disaffected young men with Gulf of Mexico–size reserves of anger toward women. As Jonathan Haidt discusses in his recent book, The Anxious Generation, many of these young men grew up attached to screens and never developed the social skills to communicate with employers or women. Many are incels, addicted to porn and video games. (Ross himself was banned from Twitch after visiting the site PornHub while livestreaming the Super Bowl.) Threatened by diversity and the elevation of women in the workplace and society, they yearn for a return to a world of male domination. Many are also racist and antisemitic and hold extreme right-wing political views. So it is no surprise that they gravitate toward the only presidential ticket that represents their views. We might take inspiration from Tim Walz and call them “weirdcels.”

Trump Is Going All in on Weird, Lonely Young Dudes Who Hate Women

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Ed Luce: It is not just Donald Trump who dodged a bullet. Half an inch to the left and the cartridge that grazed Trump’s ear would have turned him into a martyr. There is no telling what his death would have unleashed. As it is, the reprehensible attempted assassination of Trump will have profound reverberations for US democracy. Within seconds of being blanketed by secret service agents, Trump was yelling “fight, fight, fight” to the crowd. The instantly ubiquitous photo of him pumping his fist against the backdrop of the stars and stripes will become the emblem of his campaign.

A high-trust society would have awaited the facts of the shooting before leaping to conclusions. By that yardstick, America is close to the edge. Two of the Republicans auditioning to be Trump’s vice-presidential running mate blamed Democrats for inciting hatred of Trump. The favourite, Ohio senator JD Vance, said the Biden campaign’s rhetoric “led directly to President Trump’s attempted assassination”. Tim Scott, the South Carolina senator, said Democrats’ “inflammatory rhetoric puts lives at risk”. Elon Musk, owner of the site, X, on which these statements were posted, was quick to weigh in on a conspiracy about how the shooter could have got so close: “Either extreme incompetence or it was deliberate,” Musk wrote.

Many on the left were equally quick to claim that the shooting was a staged or false flag operation to boost Trump’s election prospects. It is notable, however, that no senior Democratic official has yet fanned those rumours. The identity of the suspected shooter, a 20-year-old man called Thomas Matthew Crooks, offered little help. Though he was a registered Republican and an enthusiastic gun owner, he had made a small donation to a pro-Democratic group. It is plausible that like most US assassins, Crooks was acting alone and delusional. That will not stop political entrepreneurs from blaming the shooting on their ideological enemies.

The biggest question is what Trump will do with it. No honest accounting of America’s fetid climate can ignore the fact that the former president himself is the country’s most influential exponent of political violence. He described those who stormed Capitol Hill with knives and nooses on January 6 2021 as “unbelievable patriots”. He mocked an attack on Paul Pelosi, husband of former Democratic speaker, Nancy Pelosi, after one of his own supporters smashed his head with a hammer. And he encouraged extremist militias to “stand by” shortly before the 2020 election. In calmer democracies, an incident as lethal as the near murder of a party leader with a AR-15-type semi-automatic rifle would lead to bipartisan calls for gun control. There is no chance Trump’s party will change its mind on that subject. The number of AR-15s in America has been estimated to be as high as 44mn, which puts comparisons with earlier periods of US political violence into perspective.

Whether Trump gets a lasting sympathy boost remains to be seen. But three conclusions can already be drawn. The first is that the Republican national convention in Milwaukee this week will be dominated by his near miss. Trump’s campaign is enormously skilled at choreographing optics to enhance his message. The iconic fist-pumping imagery of the candidate rising courageously from his near death will suffuse the convention stage. Trump is expected to name his running mate in the next two days — probably on Monday. Expect the nation to be riveted by admiration or dread at the use to which Republicans put Trump’s near martyrdom. At Trump’s first presidential convention in Cleveland in 2016, the streets around the main hall teemed with private militias brandishing arms. Policing the streets of Milwaukee this week will be an unusually fraught challenge, even by America’s standards.

[Financial Times]

[mariacallous]

After months of spewing racist remarks about Kamala Harris and ginning up his base about invasions at the border and the promise to harm millions of immigrants, Donald Trump will once again be the president of the United States. Despite his naked racism and misogyny and attacks on his political opponents, the American people have chosen to send him back to the White House. Candidates use the last days of their campaign to make their final case before the American people. They say the thing you want voters to remember as they’re casting their votes on Election Day. The last thing Trump wanted millions of Americans to hear from him and his campaign? A cacophony of bigotry. Trump chose to host a rally in New York City that was reminiscent of a Nazi rally held there 85 years ago. He was set to speak in front of thousands of his fans in his hometown — but first, more than two dozen surrogates would get on stage to make the case for him. Comedian and podcaster Tony Hinchcliffe compared Puerto Rico to a pile of garbage, said Black people carve watermelons on Halloween and made crude comments about the sexual habits of Latinos. David Rem, who the campaign said is a childhood friend of Trump, called Democrats “degenerates.” Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson said Harris was a “Samoan, Malaysian low-IQ” person. (Harris’ father is Jamaican, and her mother is Indian.) The only comment the GOP attempted to do damage control on was the “joke” about Puerto Rico. Having such explicit racism on stage during a rally for a presidential campaign speaks volumes about the Republican Party and America at large. White conservative ideology, and by extension, Trump, has long been threatened by the sense that full racial equality was just on the horizon. It is not an accident that Trump began his political career after America elected its first Black president. During their own presidential campaigns, famous Alabama segregationist George Wallace promoted keeping the races separate and George H.W. Bush deployed an ad implying his opponent Michael Dukakis would let violent Black criminals out of prison. Ronald Reagan touted his love of “states rights” at a speech in Mississippi near the site of where civil rights workers had been brutally murdered 16 years earlier. Critics viewed it as a wink to racist white Southern voters. Still, no other major-party presidential candidate has embraced explicit racism the way Trump has. Trump entered the political foray during the Obama administration by leading the charge in the false claims that the president was secretly born in Kenya and thus ineligible to be president. A few years later, in a now infamous scene, he would come down the escalator at Trump Tower to announce that he was running for president himself and referred to Mexican immigrants as criminals and rapists. His major policy promise was to build a wall along the southern border. As president, Trump instituted a ban on people from several majority-Muslim countries entering the country, told three members of Congress who are women of color to “go back to where they came from,” and tried to send in the military to squash racial justice protesters. His reelection campaign in 2020 was marked by more of the same. During his speech accepting the GOP’s nomination, Trump said Democrats wanted to release “criminals” into suburban neighborhoods and declared on X that “when the looting starts, the shooting starts,” referring to Black Lives Matter protesters. Much of that seems tame compared to the 2024 campaign.

[tomorrowusa]

The increasing weirdness of Donald Trump 🤤 👿 ☢️

While news media in the US often get blamed for "normalizing" Weird Donald, the Washington Post looked at the recent craziness in plain sight exhibited by the GOP presidential nominee.

Some excerpts...

As that saga first unfolded publicly Tuesday night, Trump’s interview with TV’s Dr. Phil aired. The friendly conversation Trump filmed last week turned into another venue for him to air inflammatory claims about his opponents without presenting evidence. “I think to a certain extent it’s Biden’s fault and Harris’s fault,” he said of the attempted assassination against him last month, adding, “They weren’t too interested in my health and safety.” There is no public evidence that Biden or Harris were personally involved in decisions about Trump’s security protections. With pressure mounting to drive a sharper message against Harris, the Republican presidential nominee is delving into distractions and delivering a mix of incendiary and false statements. While such tactics have been on regular display in his third run for the White House, he is now pushing them further, running the risk of alienating key voters. [ ... ] Trump spent Wednesday morning venting on Truth Social, his social media site. He let loose a flurry of reposts just after 8 a.m. There was an image of Biden, Harris,Hillary Clinton, former House speaker Nancy Pelosi, former White House medical adviser Anthony S. Fauci and others in prison uniforms. There was a call to jail members of the congressional committee that investigated Trump’s supporters over the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol after Trump’s election loss. Another repost used a QAnon slogan: “WWG1WGA! RETRUTH IF YOU AGREE.” Just after noon, Trump began to claim — without evidence — that Harris was exaggerating her online footprint. “IT’S ALL FAKE,” he wrote. Soon he turned to resharing a video of himself promoting digital trading cards for $99 a piece: Buy enough, he said, and you could get a physical card with bits of Trump’s outfit from the June debate that helped push Biden out of the race.

He's desperately trying to reignite QAnon. We haven't heard from QAnon (except for one probable fake) since Trump left office. Trump is like an aging rock star reminding fans of his greatest hits.

Trump's demented rantings are not difficult to provoke. He will toss aside prepared comments on policy to respond to something unrelated with an unhinged fact-free tirade.

With Trump trying to put QAnon back in the spotlight, maybe he could get some fashion tips from the QAnon Shaman.

[power-chords]

The naming of the space shuttle Enterprise involves one of the funniest presidential orders of all time.

Enterprise, the first space shuttle orbiter, was originally to be named Constitution, in honor of the Constitution of the United States. However, "Star Trek" fans started a write-in campaign urging the White House to instead select the name of the starship that James T. Kirk captained in the original TV series. Although President Gerald Ford did not mention the campaign, he directed NASA officials to change the name, saying he was "partial to the name" Enterprise.

In recognition of their namesake, "Star Trek" creator Gene Roddenberry and most of the principal cast of the original series were on hand when the shuttle Enterprise was rolled out of Rockwell's Air Force Plant 42, Site 1, Palmdale, Calif., assembly facility on Sept. 17, 1976.

Enterprise was built for NASA to perform test flights in the atmosphere; lacking engines or a functional heat shield, it was not capable of actual spaceflight. NASA planned to eventually outfit Enterprise for spaceflight and to make it the second space shuttle to fly, after Columbia, but final design plans for the fuselage and wings of the orbiters changed during the construction of Columbia, and refitting Enterprise in accordance with the new plans would have required significant effort: Entire sections would have to be dismantled and shipped across the country to subcontractors. Instead it was deemed less expensive to build the space shuttle Challenger from existing materials.

And she now resides in New York City at the Intrepid Sea, Air, and Space Museum :)

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Anna Merlan at Mother Jones:

In recent days, a number of news sites that rely heavily on aggregation have posted stories about Minnesota governor and vice presidential candidate Tim Walz, reporting “allegations” that he sexually assaulted a minor while working as a teacher and football coach. The clearly false claims stem from the prolific work of one man, a Twitter conspiracy peddler who goes by Black Insurrectionist. After previously pushing a lie about a presidential debate “whistleblower,” he’s at it again, and even his clownish mistakes haven’t kept the claims from taking off on Twitter, or being promoted by automated sections of the news ecosystem. Black Insurrectionist, who tweets under the handle @docnetyoutube, is a self-professed MAGA fan who says he’s based in Dallas. He’s paid for his Twitter account, meaning his visibility is boosted on the site; he’s also followed by a number of people in the MAGA and right-leaning fake news spheres, including Donald Trump Jr., dirty tricks specialist and Trump adviser Roger Stone, Pizzagate promoter Liz Crokin, and conspiracy kingpin Alex Jones.

In September, he promoted an obviously fake story about a “whistleblower” at ABC News anonymously claiming the presidential debate hosted by the channel had been biased in favor of Kamala Harris. To back up the claims, he published a purported affidavit by the whistleblower, a poorly formatted and typo-riddled document that, among other things, claimed that Harris had been assured she wouldn’t be questioned about her time as “Attorney General in San Francisco,” a job she never held, as it doesn’t exist. The clumsy story still received immense pickup, including from hedge fund billionaire Bill Ackman, who began tweeting at various entities to investigate the claim; Elon Musk also shared some of Ackman’s posts. 

Black Insurrectionist (aka “DocNetyoutube”), a fake news-peddling far-right conspiracy theorist X account, was the culprit behind the lurid lie about Kamala Harris VP pick Tim Walz by falsely accusing him of “sexual assault.”

[darkeagleruins]

EXPOSED: SUPPORT FOR KAMALA HARRIS ON @tiktok_us AND INSTAGRAM IS FAKE AND PAID FOR

The social media support for Kamala Harris is paid for astroturfing.

@KamalaHarris’s Presidential campaign appears to be paying for social media influencers to post videos and posts in support of her, which is further evidence that her online social media support is fake and paid for. It has been discovered that a company by the name of LAUNCH VIRAL is running advertisements for social media influencers who are interested in a “PAID POST OPPORTUNITY” to get paid to post in support of @KamalaHarris’s Presidential campaign.

The advertisement below which is offering $150 CASH, plus a paid incentive per post…

The ad says: WE'RE ASKING YOU TO...

1. EXPERIENCE • Encourage your fans to share, like, and follow Kamala

2. CREATE Post one of more memes ONLY using our pre-approved assets Feel free to add your own spin or commentary on your TikTok - IG, too, would be awesome

3. POST Post your content on TikTok, Instagram or both. Mention: @kamalaharris

Hashtags: #kamalaharris#harris2024

The media wants people to falsely believe that the surge of support for @KamalaHarris on Tik Tok and other social media sites by GenZ is organic, but as exposed, it’s being paid for via social media influencer agencies like Launch Viral.

Kamala Harris is so unlikable, her campaign @KamalaHQ literally has to pay influencers to create the illusion and delusion that young people support her.

[myobsessionsspace]

“If it was me I’d…”

“I don’t understand why he just doesn’t…”

“why doesn’t he say/do…” “It’s not enough they should…”

“This person has it so easy…”

Do we understand the members are between the ages of 25 years of age and the oldest is 31?

Do we understand their only JOB is to make music, fulfil their contractual obligations to their company?

Do we understand that they still have to work for the next 10, 20, 30, 40 years? They can’t just up and quit. They have WAGES, as much as we would like to think, money doesn’t go directly from your PayPal to the members accounts.

Fans money doesn’t go directly to the idol. It goes from the company. We’ve seen idols who have been in the game for decades (nationally known and lesser known but still known internationally) struggling with their company to even get a look at the figures of how much they’ve earned in their time working. They don’t even know how much money they’ve earned! They have gone months without pay from their companies, yet still working and producing content their fans see. Yet still having albums sold, merch sold, tickets sold, fan support.

Even the most popular, richest western celebrity still works when they don’t ‘have to.’

Why? Because they look after other households, family? Because money gets spent, the more money you have the more you spend? Because what else would they do? They still have a passion, a need to be engaged, work, be occupied.

Do we understand they are watched by MILLIONS all over the world, they every move photographed, discussed online, on the news, by the water cooler.

Do we understand that unlike the regular everyday person, someone wouldn’t know your cats name, your hometown, your high school unless you told them, there are actually personal security questions because it shouldn’t be that well known. Yet with the members we can find out nearly anything about them, their pets, their families etc. where is their safe zone??

They have become more than singers, not by their choice, it has been thrust upon them.

They have become presidential special envoys, exposition ambassadors, they speak against hate and discrimination in foreign countries, at the White House, the speak of love in all its different forms at the United Nations. They have had soo much weight put in their shoulders, more than any of us could ever dream of AT ANY AGE.

We hated our high school haircuts, we delete the pictures off of Facebook, we hide the years books.

Don’t wanna speak at an event, don’t have to, or if we do only those present may know about it, maybe LinkedIn or the company site etc, still insular, not international news.

Wanna quit your job, lie on your resume, you are more likely to get away with it, than the members.

Any company they chose to go to, if they ever wanted to, would know EVERYTHING about them, what they accepted in the past, what they would and wouldn’t do at a company.

Cheated on your ex, there are ways your current may never find out. Not the members, they can’t even be on the same street with someone without it being brought back every 5-10 business days. Can’t be in the same event without close up analyses and theories that they blinked too long near someone. Nothing stays in the past for them. Old differences/hurts brought up 7 years later. Millions of people who can’t even speak the same language as them dictating who they can have in their home, go to eat with, watch movies with, though they’ve NEVER set foot in their country before.

Fans wishes cannot be directly implemented by the idol. Idols don’t call the shots. The wildest things they can do are live everyday human lives. The most autonomy, ‘rebellion’ they can have is switch on an unscheduled live or *gasp* date (what are they 13??).

It’s A LOT. We need to catch ourselves. The pressure on them is already immense.

As fans we should be their support, their comfort, their safe zone.

Not another group of people telling them where to look, how to breathe, what to say.

Give them understanding, give them the benefit. Let them act in the ways they can, we don’t know everything. We don’t know we could do ANY DIFFERENT in their shoes.

🖤🤍

[leelee120000]

Looking Back On: Fall Out Boy, “Folie à Deux”

April 12, 2020

“Folie à Deux” came out when I was eight years old. Fall Out Boy (FOB) was a band I enjoyed but it wasn’t my favorite yet. That didn’t occur until 2010 when I got my first laptop and suddenly had access to play any music I wanted. After countless times listening, I came to think of it as one of the most musically intricate and well-developed albums FOB has ever produced. However, “Folie à Deux” didn’t sell well and ultimately contributed to FOB’s hiatus.

There is a plot in “Folie à Deux,” however, it is very hidden and not really understood without the additional “Fall Out Toy Works” comics, which was published in ‘09 and continued into ‘13. The comics are mostly unknown by many which makes talking about them all the more fun. 

“Fall Out Toy Works” was created by Pete Wentz of FOB, Darren Romanelli and Nathan Cabrera. It is written by Brett Lewis and illustrated by members of Imaginary Friends Studios. The story is a cyberpunk tale set in futuristic LA centered around a gynoid (female android) named Tiffany, the Toymaker’s perfect creation. Think “Pinocchio” meets “Pygmalion.” 

Baron is the main antagonist and his company controls the production of pretty much everything in Los Angeles, even the weather but he has no control over his relationships. He asks the Toymaker to create a robot wife for him, named Tiffany. Talking about the story any farther without spoiling the ending is hard.

The trade paperback and webcomic version both had the final page of issue 5 removed, which changed the entire tone of the ending. (It is relatively easy to find online, though.) There are so many things that the comics explain, even the meaning of the album’s cover art: the bear is a boy robot named Crybaby.

To promote “Folie à Deux,” the whole label of Decaydance Records artists did a mixtape of demos and custom songs called “Welcome to the New Administration.” The promotional campaign began on Aug. 18, 2008, when Decaydance’s website was supposedly hacked by a shady group called “Citizens For Our Betterment.”

The link led to the group’s website which was red, white and blue. Links on the page were blocked needing specific IP addresses to work. The Decaydance site was normal the following day. 

The Citizens for Our Betterment web page was updated every day, many posts referring to Nov. 4, the same day as the 2008 U.S. presidential election. The locked links were gradually opened and by Aug. 24, one link led to a page saying “FOB – The Return – November Four” in large big bold letters.

This caused some fans to believe that Fall Out Boy would release their new album on Nov. 4. Others theorized that this was another one of Pete’s attempts to raise political awareness as he previously held a rally for then U.S. Democratic Party presidential candidate Barack Obama. Members of FOB members are publicly democrats. 

Many bands from the Fueled by Ramen label posted on MySpace that same day with the title “Welcome to the New Administration.” Every post contained the word ten. On Aug. 25, the Citizens for Our Betterment website was redirected to the band’s Friends or Enemies page. On which was an image of a voting booth and ballots with the names of several Decaydance artists. 

By clicking on each individual ballot, there was an audio clip from the band reading past posts on the Citizens for Our Betterment website. A mixtape was then made available for download. Listen to it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUZKSsP8Sdo

As for the album itself, the album “Folie à Deux” itself is perfectly gapless as every song fades into the next. It starts with a hidden track called “Lullabye.” It’s a charming track featuring just acoustic guitar and Patrick singing. “Disloyal Order Of Water Buffaloes” is the first official song. The hook goes: “I’m a loose bolt of a complete machine. What a match, I’m half doomed and you’re semi-sweet.” These lines set the tone of the album with industrial elements and dark storytelling. The world of the Toymaker and how it intertwines with the music. 

“I Don’t Care” kicks off with a classic rock tone, and the accompanying music video is zany and weird. Gilby Clarke from Guns N’ Roses starts the video by saying, “what the hell happened to rock and roll? Eyeliner? Energy drinks? And no guitar solos? I’ve taken sh*ts with bigger rock stars than them!”

The video is filled with miscellaneous sights. There’s the infamous spaghetti cat clip, band members dressed as nuns, Joe flashing people – and it ends with everyone removing a mask and being a different rock star. Clarke himself reveals himself being Sarah Palin in the end, winks.

It’s an all-round weird video. A reminder that ‘08 was a different time, but all and all it fit into the political climate.

Next on the album is “She’s My Winona,” named after actress Winona Ryder. It is a true bop and a slower-paced song with the chorus of “hell or glory, I don’t want anything in between. Then came a baby boy with long eyelashes. And daddy said ‘you gotta show the world the thunder’.”  

This is followed by “America’s Suitehearts” with its nightmare carnival aesthetic that really adds to the story of the album and causes a lot of the nonsense to make sense. 

“Headfirst Slide Into Cooperstown On A Bad Bet,” in which the beat goes hard but the lyrics go harder, follows. It’s a song blatantly about infidelity within a relationship. Considering Pete Wentz’s divorce, it’s safe to assume that this was somewhat based in reality. 

The music video is labeled as “A Weekend At Pete Rose’s,” and is on the old FriendsOrEnemies YouTube channel. In it, Panic! At The Disco’s Brendon Urie and Spencer Smith carry Pete’s dead body around the city. 

“The (Shipped) Gold Standard” is a sad masterpiece about fearing loving another person. This was written before gay marriage was legalized and at a time where the LGBT+ community found safety within emo music and the Fall Out Boy fan base because FOB supported them. 

“(Coffee’s For Closers)” is a song about lost faith, and it hits hard especially with its placement behind “The (Shipped) Gold Standard”. 

“What A Catch, Donnie” has a music video and it’s an odd, nostalgic chronicle of the band’s (at the time of the video’s creation) seven-year history. Filled with memorabilia for other music videos, the video shows Patrick saving his fellow bandmates, as well as Brendon Urie and Spencer Smith. The end of the song includes lines from Fall Out Boy’s most iconic songs at the time. 

“27” jumps the pace back up to fast rock and fades into (all songs fade, but this is the best fade on the record) my favorite song on the album, “Tiffany Blews.” The song makes almost no sense at all lyrically but musically it slaps. The best explanation I can give is that it’s about a hot girl. Lil Wayne has a spoken section that is my favorite part. “Not the boy I was, the boy I am is just venting – venting. Dear gravity, you held me down in this starless city.” It’s such a perfect moment of breath in a nonstop album.

Next is “w.a.m.s.,” which is an acronym that has never had a confirmed meaning. But, the bass in it is so good, and the ending’s stripped vocals are as well! 

“20 Dollar Nose Bleed” is about drug abuse. It includes vocals from Brendon Urie and ends with a creepy poem by Pete Wentz. “It’s not me, it’s you, actually, it’s the taxidermy of you and me / Untie the balloons from around my neck and ground me / I’m just a racehorse on the track, send me back to the glue factory…”

“West Coast Smoker” has the futuristic synth sound that ties the whole album together and that sound is on full display. The vocals pulsing with the music is almost spiritual. I’m skipping the remixes and acoustic versions off of the deluxe version. Instead, I’m hopping over to the bonus tracks. 

“Pavlove” is criminally underrated, and such a good song. The heavy rock cover of Michael Jackson’s “Beat It” is also wonderful.

I love this album because every song in it is amazing – it goes without saying, “Folie à Deux” is my favorite album by my favorite band. 

LeAnne McPherson

[dailyexo]

Xiumin - 240102 'Boss-dol Mart' Twitter update: "2024년 2월 18일 일본 도쿄 토요수PIT 에서 사장돌마트 드라마 팬미팅이 개최됩니다! 자세한 내용은 사장돌마트 일본 공식 홈페이지를 체크해주세요~! 사장돌 마트 일본 공식 사이트 https://welovek.jp/ceodolmart/"

Translation: "On 18 February 2024, the 'President's Doll Mart'Boss-dol Mart' drama fan-meeting will be held at Tokyo Toyosu PIT! For more information, please check the official Japanese website of 'Boss-dol MArt'! The official site 'of the presidential idol mart 'Boss-dol Mart' in Japan: https://welovek.jp/ceodolmart/"

Credit: sajangdolmart. 

[holycatsandrabbits]

Hey Good Omens fans! We tend to have big participation from creators and bidders in Fandom Trumps Hate, but there's always room for more! In fact, there's room for everyone! <3

Please consider getting involved in the Fandom Trumps Hate auction!

Info: FTH Carrd ~ @fandomtrumpshate ~ FAQ

What is Fandom Trumps Hate?

FTH is an online auction of fanworks, with the proceeds going to small, progressive nonprofits that are working to protect marginalized people. We began FTH in the immediate aftermath of the 2016 Presidential Election, and over the course of the last 6 years have raised over $192,000 for a range of amazing organizations.

2023 nonprofits

How do I participate in the auction? Become a creator and/or bidder and/or volunteer:

Creator signups for the auction will open on February 6th. We use google forms for signups; the link will be available here and across all our other social media sites as well. (dreamwidth) (pinterest) (carrd) (twitter)

The auction itself will be hosted on Dreamwidth, on a separate site dedicated solely to this year’s auction offerings. This site is not available yet: it will be publicly visible at the start of “browsing week,” which is the 3-4 day period before the auction officially opens.  But if you’re wondering what these auction posts look like, take a look at last year’s auction site for some examples. Although we update our tagging system every year, the tags for the 2023 auction will work pretty similarly to those on last year’s site.

What types of fanwork can I offer?

You can offer any type of fanwork that can be delivered digitally, including:

written fanworks (fic, poetry, remixes, etc.)

digital art, which includes but is not limited to gifsets, manips, moodboards, etc.

podfics

fanvids (including fancams)

fan labor, which includes but is not limited to betaing, brit/japan/america-picking, or offering specialist expertise.

For the truly uncategorizable, we also have an “other fanwork” category.

And/or, join the ROFL:

The Regiment of Fan Laborers (ROFL) aims to connect FTH creators with beta readers, expertise-pickers, and other kinds of fan labor support. The ROFL is a group of fan laborers who – in addition to offering individual fan labor auctions – have volunteered to make their services available to anyone creating fanworks for FTH over the course of the year. Fan laborers who sign up to offer their services in the FTH auction can opt-in to the ROFL, or they can join without offering an auction by emailing fandomtrumpshate at gmail dot com. Note that fan laborers who sign up for auctions are NOT automatically enrolled in the ROFL.

How to make an invitation post like this for another fandom (or you can just copy this one)

[kaesaaurelia]

Apropos of the last reblog... whenever I have had doubts about the 1926 fic being well-received in fandom (I had a crisis about this when S2 was announced, and also again when S2 happened) [edit: also I'm using "well-received" as a euphemism for "I won't get crickets and will not get more than 5 people telling me I don't know canon"], my therapist is just like "Why don't you just publish it [commercially as original fiction]?" And like... I don't want to, that should be enough, but I foolishly make the mistake of saying "I don't want to do that, because I'd hate the result and it wouldn't sell anyway." But it's true.

First off, I'd have to fundamentally change the characterizations of not-Aziraphale and not-Crowley to be comfortable with publishing it, in ways that would make them much less appealing to me, because I like those characters. I could see myself writing origfic about Vehuel and Nisroc, and have posted some stuff to AO3 tagged "origfic" because people who would like it will find it more easily there than in the GO tag, but I don't think I'd feel comfortable publishing it for profit unless I changed the setting completely so it wasn't Comically Bureaucratic Heaven and Hell -- which I'd also want to do with the 1926 fic, because everyone who's read or seen Good Omens is going to instantly recognize it. It's not bad to be influenced by something, of course, but look, if I have to rework both the setting AND the characters that's a lot of work to make a story less itself. Had I had more interesting-to-me ideas for either story or characters I would have written those instead.

The other issue is I do not think she understands how LONG it is. People who aren't writers hear "1000 words" and think "wow that's a lot of words, that's like 20 pages, right?" People who aren't writers hear "400k words" and think "wow that's a lot of words, that's like a hundred pages, right?" People who are writers understand that 1000 words is the point during an average NaNoWriMo day where you're like "I don't think I can do this actually," and then you're annoyed with yourself because you barely wrote a page and a half, and that 400k words is "oh no the idea got away from them, RIP." No traditional publisher wants to publish something that's 400k unless it's by George R. R. Martin and it is specifically the thing they've been waiting for him to finish for several presidential administrations.

So I'd have to self-pub. Which I don't really feel like doing because, bluntly, I would not get anything out of it. I do not know how to market a 400k book that is a historical action/adventure story with a substantial queer romance B-plot, but also a lot of it is torture porn, but not like that, it's not dark romance, the romance is fluffy. There isn't a good marketing niche for this. I'd either have to take out the sex scenes or rewrite them to be more appealing to the market (which means less appealing to me, a person who has found maybe one explicit sex scene in self-published fiction that I was into, and surprise surprise, the author's webpage linked to their AO3 account) and if I rewrote them I'd probably do better condensing the story down drastically to 15-20k of mostly porn with a light dusting of historical fantasy, which is not what I wrote.

But back to the marketing: I'd have to build a social media following, something I am not good at, on a social media site that is doing well and not in crisis (how??? where???) and all my insecurities about posting things online would be magnified a hundredfold if a. I had to do that and b. money was on the line. If I'm posting on AO3, I won't get money, but I will (very occasionally) get people telling me they liked it, which I will probably enjoy much more.

Anyway, I don't want to go into all of this with my therapist because she keeps doubting any of these assertions -- as if I do not keep up with publishing drama, or know self-pub authors, or understand that fans can diagnose "they painted landlord white over my blorbos to publish this" at 50 paces -- so it takes the whole hour.

But when I just leave it as "I don't want to do that, because I'd hate the result and it wouldn't sell anyway" she hears it as "I don't think my writing is good and I think no one likes it [clearly a symptom of depression]" but what I am trying to convey is "I don't want to take a sledgehammer to my favorite things about this story just so I can pitch it to a commercial audience I didn't have in mind when I wrote it, and I do not want to waste my free time and energy for socializing professionally trying to get people to like me on social media, something you know full well makes me deeply unhappy even at a small scale."

[cynicalclassicist]

Thoughs on Nixon in DW

I don't think that you could do The Impossible Astronaut/The Day of the Moon today. That is due to the prominence of one Richard Milhous Nixon.

This post is inspired by a discussion that I had with my friend @dalesramblingsblog (who you should follow if you aren't already) on Twitter. And I refuse to call it by the other name.

Steven Moffat did not set out wanting to write a story about Nixon. He wanted to do one set during the Moon Landing which had the White House, due to being a fan of The West Wing. I found this on Shannon Sullivan's site (https://www.shannonsullivan.com/drwho/serials/2011ab.html), recommended if you like looking at the details that went into making DW stories! When he found out who it was he considered a fictional President but went with Nixon. I think that this was the right choice, you can kind of get away with fictional Presidents in a Present-day story but in a historical setting, as in decades ago, it works less well.

Nixon is still mocked for things like Watergate and Vietnam... but the story still ultimately presents him in a positive-ish light.

However... nowadays I doubt that we could do that.

This is partially down to Trump. There hasn't been a President quite like him before... and I do not mean that as a compliment. And there is a lot of re-examination of Nixon now, partially as he feels like the closest thing to some of the scandals around Trump, with impeachment and ideas of Presidential overreach.

Now when TIA/DOTM came out the US was beginning to be viewed a bit better internationally under Obama. The Bush administration was viewed pretty badly around the world, DW even had a caricature of him being killed in a 2007 story. Nixon is still given a sort of... dignity of the office?

He also seems... sort of progressive for the 1960s? In that when Canton Delaware talks of marrying someone who is black Nixon seems ok with it... then when Canton says it's a man Nixon balks a bit. Which is played for comedy in showing progressive for the 1960s attitude.

However, nowadays we are seeing more examination of the horrible things aside from Watergate. The Southern strategy for example, in short using racism to pick up votes in the South, drawing the old Democratic base to the GOP... which has become ever more the GOP platform, with them now pulling in white supremacy.

What Nixon did to Chile, with his Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, one of the most notorious war criminals in American history, is horrific as well.

Now the story is aware that Nixon is a pretty despised figure. But I doubt that at a time where the US had a President who is pretty openly a Fascist and who might get in again... well, it would be harder to see this in an amusing light.

I could go on about this and about how Nixon is presented in Futurama is indicative of how he is often seen but in a comical sense as a cartoonish supervillain and whether that can deflect from the true depths of his awfulness.

But that's a topic for another time.

Btw, please vote Democrat if you can. The list of their flaws is long but the alternative is actual Fascism. That is really not an exaggeration. I do not want to look over from Britain and see the US go the way that Germany did in the 1930s and that Russia has gone under Putin.

I hope that this post doesn't become really difficult to look back on next year.

I'll probably think of new things to say later but... well, I'm just putting this down now.

[mariacallous]

On Nov. 20 and 21, everyone in Iraq stayed home, waiting for a knock on their door. Crowded highways were empty, bazaar shops shuttered. A team of around 120,000 specially trained census-takers fanned across the country for Iraq’s first national census in four decades. The last national census was held in 1987; the one held in 1997 excluded the Kurdish region.

The census results will shift the balance of power in the Iraqi Parliament, alter the distribution of crucial funding to provinces, and could aggravate long-standing territorial disputes between the federal government in Baghdad and the autonomous region of Kurdistan. For the international community, the census offers a chance to help Iraq improve its government’s performance and capture a potentially transformative demographic gift.

Censuses get less fanfare than elections, yet they are enormous feats. A census requires what sociologist Michael Mann calls infrastructural power, a state’s ability to administer and manage, not just coerce. Teams must be capable of reaching the length and breadth of the national territory, having accurate knowledge of where to find people and the ability to tabulate and compilate. Most importantly, a census requires convincing people to comply in answering the questionnaires.

In deeply divided societies, a census can be the site of considerable mobilization and contestation. Lebanon still relies on its 1932 census, out of concern that updated results would further upset the delicate balance of power struck between Christians and Muslims in the country. And Iraq’s censuses, too, have been long delayed. What does this census—more than 25 years in the making—reveal about the country’s population after a period of seismic change?

Censuses do more than offer an accurate picture of a country’s demographics. They also shape nations. This is because census rosters become the building blocks for other governmental powers—monitoring movement, taxing revenue, and finding potential soldiers. Censuses can also cause social disruption. The U.S. census of 2020 was riled by controversy after the Trump administration tried—unsuccessfully—to add a question on citizenship status that many feared would bias results and lead to undercounting.

Iraq’s 1997 census, conducted by Saddam Hussein’s government, was about as credible as the 1995 Iraqi presidential referendum granting Hussein over 99 percent of the vote. It also pointedly excluded the three northern provinces that make up the semi-autonomous Kurdish region within Iraq; the region was established in 1992, after the 1991 uprisings attempted to topple Hussein’s regime. The U.S. occupation authority in Iraq was able to hold elections in 2005 but abandoned plans to run a census. Indeed, for much of the 2000s and 2010s, Iraq seemed too unstable and the violence too severe to dispatch government census-takers to the streets.

Concerns about staff safety overlapped with political reluctance. After Hussein was overthrown, Iraqi politics evolved into an unwritten power-sharing pact between factions representing the primary ethnolinguistic groups of Sunnis, Shias, and Kurds. Few Iraqi leaders were eager to go forward with actually counting their numbers. Elections occurred regularly every three to five years. But Iraqi elites were simply too afraid of finding more reasons for conflict to confirm the demographic assumptions upon which their entire political system was based. As a Shia Islamist party leader said in 2014, “the lack of accurate census will not affect the social reality of the parliament that reflects the demography in Iraq.” It was better not to know.

Getting the 2024 census going in Iraq was a major undertaking outside of the historical setbacks. Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani had to convince his fractious parliamentary coalition to agree to proceed. Sudani bet big on the census, declaring beforehand, “The census is not merely a collection of numbers. It serves as a dividing line between predictions and reality, and acts as a decisive tool for determining important and influential decisions.” U.S. officials and other foreign powers touted it as a major step forward. The United Nations Population Fund provided technical assistance and training. Chinese technology firm TrustKernel and other foreign companies were hired to assemble the tablets, design the software, and operate the data center and communication networks.

The census survey had 70 questions, focusing on basic information like sex, age, education level, and family status. Equally as important, the census did not ask questions about ethnicity. Many had feared that the census could be used to alter ethnic demographic balances in Iraq’s internally disputed territories.

The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) has long maintained that the oil-rich province of Kirkuk, along with slivers of Nineveh, Diyala, and other provinces, are part of the Kurdish homeland. However, from the 1960s to 1980s, the Iraqi government sought to ethnically cleanse Kurds from these disputed areas and encouraged Arab transmigration to shift the demographic balance. Iraq’s 2005 constitution stipulates that a referendum would be held to allow residents to decide on whether to join the Kurdistan region, but the measure has been postponed indefinitely. While KRG forces seized the territory during the Islamic State 2013-2017 war, Iraqi troops and Iranian-backed militias retook the disputed areas shortly after.

The KRG fears that the census could set the stage for a government-run referendum in areas where Kurdish residents have fled. The federal government acknowledged that fear by writing the census to rely on people’s place of origin rather than their current residence, in an attempt to assuage concern and the potential for sectarian violence. It used information from the Iraqi migration ministry and the 1950s census for reference in the disputed areas. Still, this did not allay fears. KRG Prime Minister Masrour Barzani was guarded at best when discussing the census, emphasizing that it needed to remain neutral and free of political motivations, especially regarding the disputed territory. Alternatively, local leaders from the Kurdish, Arab, and Turkoman communities urged their supporters to participate in the census, including encouraging families that had relocated to return. At the same time, each faction accused their rival of defrauding the census-takers or falsely registering occupants.

After all that, and although full findings will take months to calculate, the initial census results affirm what many have long suspected. Iraq remains the largest Arab country by population east of the Nile River. But the census also confirmed that Iraq’s population (including foreigners) is over 45 million. The growth is striking considering the human toll of war and sanctions on the country over the last quarter century. Iraq, like many countries exiting long periods of strife, experienced a post-conflict baby boom that propelled a demographic recovery. Even so, the new figures exceed many expectations.

The census also underscored that Iraq has received a rare demographic gift. Over 60 percent of the Iraqi population is of working age (15 to 64). There are, in other words, a relatively small number of dependent children or older adults in the Iraq economy. A similar demographic dividend helped spur the so-called East Asian economic miracle and the rise of Asian tigers in the 1990s. If Iraq can turn its surfeit of labor into productive employment, the country could become a regional economic powerhouse.

The follow-on consequences could also be substantial. The Iraqi Parliament will have to add more seats in order to maintain the mandated ratio of representatives to citizens. With fertility rates highest in the primarily Shia provinces of the south, it was expected that Sunni Arab and Kurdish areas in the north and center of Iraq would lose demographic weight and relative political power. Government and international agencies like the World Bank will likewise have to revise how they allocate funding to provinces based on proportions of the population. Many expect that the census results will be crosschecked against government payroll rosters, curbing so-called “ghost employees” who kicked back most of their salaries to their political patrons.

The census is not the end, but rather the beginning of Iraq’s administrative and political reform. Whether the census enhances Iraq’s state capacity and leads to an improved economy depends on how Iraqi’s political elites respond to the results. Disregarding or delegitimizing the census results will further weaken Iraq’s state institutions, erode trust, and produce even more instability. It is important for the United States and its international partners to help Iraq build the momentum that the census has provided. This includes assisting Iraq to make the most of its demographic benefit and build a basis for productive employment. Reducing Iraq’s singular reliance on oil and associated public sector employment is critical. Public-private partnership and targeted foreign investment in agriculture, food processing, and the transportation sectors can help absorb Iraqi labor and diversify its economy.

Economic reforms must go hand in hand with the fight against corruption that has stunted labor productivity and siphoned off billions in government spending. The Sudani government, like its predecessors, has recognized the need for economic diversification and fiscal transparency but struggled to put reform into action. Each measure has faced pronounced resistance from within its own coalition. Consequently, Iraq’s demographic gift is already in danger of being squandered. Still, outside powers can help mediate and broker agreements to adjust the balance of power to account for the demographic realities and seize advantage of the new opportunities that the census underscores. Just as the international community can support democratic transitions by recognizing an election as free and fair, foreign powers can enhance the legitimacy of a census by urging all the actors to accept its outcomes and capitalize on its promises.

[tomorrowusa]

Disclosure: I don't go out of my way to visit Twitter/X these days though sometimes a link will take me to a post there or, more often, a news site will display a tweet in an article.

The HuffPost recently displayed a relevant pre-Musk 2021 tweet from Hillary Clinton. (screenshot)

That quote may be slightly too long for a bumper sticker but it would fit nicely on a meme or a poster. 💡

In case you've been in a news vacuum this weekend...

Opinion: Kristi Noem might have underestimated the decency of dog lovers

“If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog,” goes the famous line attributed to late President Harry Truman. And if you do get that dog, be sure to keep it far from GOP South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, who reportedly brags in her new book about an incident some two decades ago when she shot her 14-month-old puppy named Cricket because the dog was “untrainable.” [ ... ] Perhaps Noem included the tale of shooting Cricket in her book because she had read reports of how Trump did not like the beloved pets that bring joy to millions. As Trump’s late wife Ivana wrote in her memoir “Raising Trump,” “Donald was not a dog fan.” [ ... ] Given that history, assuming she knew about Trump’s antipathy to dogs, maybe Noem thought that the story of shooting Cricket would give her a bit of an edge as the GOP’s apparent presidential nominee chooses his running mate.

Among Republicans, kowtowing to Trump apparently now involves bragging about executing dogs.