#The center cannot hold

[chainmail-butch]

Talking with experienced educators reveals an increasing trend which indicates that children in the post-COVID era are operating on a level of stress unseen in their preceding cohorts.

Which is nerd-speak for saying that kids are stressed the fuck out and people who have been in the game for over 40 years say that this is unprecedented.

[darthschabba]

" ...except for all the shooting and the screaming . "

[dk-thrive]

So I went back out into the world, shoved the violence and the delusions into a closet, and leaned against that closet door just as hard as I could.

— Elyn Saks, The Center Cannot Hold (Hachette Books, August 14, 2007)

[victusinveritas]

[litandlifequotes]

My good fortune is not that I've recovered from mental illness. I have not, nor will I ever. My good fortune lies in having found my life.

The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness by Elyn R. Saks

[dead-desires]

If you are a person with mental illness, the challenge is to find the life that's right for you. But in truth, isn't that the challenge for all of us, mentally ill or not? My good fortune is not that I've recovered from mental illness. I have not, nor will I ever. My good fortune lies in having found my life.

— Elyn R. Saks, from The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness

[awkwardpariah]

Election Night 2024: Donald Trump has managed to get his trial dates pushed back to after the 2024 election, unfortunately the conditions of his arraignments made traditional campaigning rather difficult. Instead his son Don Jr. has taken the lead as the primary campaign surrogate, but on election night it all falls apart. Simply put: overturning Roe and coming after queerfolk and transfolk was more than enough to turn most of the country against the Republicans, while a near full employment economy and the defeat of Russia has endeared Joe Biden as America's happy warrior. On election night, facing a trial he's sure to lose in Fulton County, GA in January Trump suffers a stroke and falls into a coma, effectively leaving Don Jr. as his successor in the MAGA movement.

Summers v. Idaho: A case over Idaho's abortion travel ban makes its way to the Supreme Court in 2024. The plaintiff, a 15 year old Idaho resident who traveled to Oregon to get an abortion. The argument: that the interpretation of the Privileges and Immunities Clause as laid down in the 1823 ruling in Corfield v. Coryell has long since established that the Free Movement between the states shall not be infringed. The ruling: in a 5-4 decision the supreme court overturns 202 years of precedent and declares that the states are free to restrict women from seeking an abortion, or any other service they find objectionable, in any other state. This effectively makes people seeking bodily autonomy prisoners in their home states. Before the court can rule, the newly Democrat controlled House and Senate rams through an extension to the ERA's deadline, in an attempt at legitimizing the Amendment's ratification. The court strikes down that power as well, and the ERA becomes the only amendment in history to be nullified by the Supreme Court. California Senator Katie Porter immediately begins drafting a new Bodily Autonomy Amendment which she introduces every year until it finally clears the Senate in 2028.

Red State Military Buildup: State Defense Forces get a surge in funding after the 2024 election. Partly in response to peaceful and violent demonstrations by activists, these measures see the expansion or reactivation of state-defense forces in the Red States. These forces are loyal primarily to their governors, and some states go so far as to pass measures giving them control of their National Guard Units, although the legality of this is hotly debated. Red States pay for this with higher property taxes and by cutting services. In some states, the officer corps is made up of retired members of the regular Army, former cops, and in some cases mercenary soldiers. Idaho gains infamy when its revealed that they've been hiring ex-Wagner Group soldiers to serve as advisors to train their State Defense Force.

Joe Biden Passes Away: At 83 years old, Joe Biden dies peacefully in his sleep. Kamala Harris is sworn in as the 47th President while many around the world mourn the last great liberal. Joe Biden, the man who rallied NATO to support Ukraine's war against Russia, and functionally the destruction of the Russian Federation itself. His legacy falls to Kamala Harris... and she is entirely unfit for the task. Most see her first national address as perfunctory, and her response to the rise of State Defense Forces, police brutality, and the nuclear non-proliferation operations in the former Russian Federation isn't actually all that different from Joe Biden's, its just that people were already losing patience with that set of policies and Harris is just not a very good speaker.

Trump 2028: Donald Trump Jr. announces his candidacy for President in late 2026. He is flanked not just by flags, but by armed security that absolutely nobody mistakes as anything less than a Trumpian SA. His campaign is a Dark MAGA nightmare, and he is supported almost without question by Republican governors. He frequently speaks directly to Red State Defense Forces and through is rambling, cocaine fueled speeches he uses his platform to call for violence if he's not given the nomination and the Presidency. The campaign also sees the MAGA movement transition into a pseudoreligious movement, with images of Donald Trump Sr. shown as objects of worship, and Don Jr. promising that his election will lead to his father's return as the True Leader of America. He is opposed only by Liz Cheney, who is constantly dodging hecklers, rotten fruit and vegetables, and on more than one occasion actual threats to her life by Magats. The primary is a farce, with Trump winning by Assad margins in a few states and the nomination with a clean sweep of the country. Cheney bows out and does not attend the convention, instead throwing her support to Mitt Romney in his effort to revive the National Union Party with former Arizona Senator Kyrsten Sinema. Romney's campaign is really a lifeboat for Business and national security conservatives pretending to be a home for the American center, and it is by far the most well funded campaign in the country.

Democratic Primary: Kamala Harris is not a bad President, but she's also not a very popular one. She announces her campaign almost with the expectation that doing so will scare off potential challengers, when in fact it does the opposite. By Fall 2027 there are 13 Democratic candidates in the race. The Press sees this as mainly a fight between California Governor Gavin Newsom and President Harris, but former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg surprises everyone by winning the Iowa Caucuses in a narrow plurality, and quickly swells to the number 1 slot in the polls. Harris goes all in on New Hampshire and South Carolina hoping to knock out most of the other candidates and giving her campaign the momentum to sweep the South and eventually Super Tuesday as Biden did in 2020. While she does win New Hampshire, the press is stunned to see AOC win a strong 2nd place. The same thing happens again in South Carolina, and in California Harris isn't even in the Top 3. On Super Tuesday, The top contenders are AOC, Buttigieg, and Newsom. Newsom simply doesn't have much appeal outside of the West Coast, Buttigieg dominates in the Great Plains, but AOC is able to appeal to a far larger coalition of voters than any single candidate, especially after a series of stunning debate performances. The race ultimately comes down to the wire, with AOC winning the last few delegates she needs in Washington State and Democrats Abroad to just barely secure the nomination, but with only 36.2% of the popular vote. AOC offers Buttigieg the VP slot almost immediately, and while its something of a shotgun wedding, it gives the Democratic nominees a mandate.

Campaign 2028: With the conventions done, the country braces for the most contentious election in living memory. Don Jr. is running almost as if he expects to lose the House and Senate. His MAGA security officers and armed supporters frequently clash with cops and national guard units in major cities and he frames his campaign as a true clash of civilizations. Mitt Romney briefly looks like he might actually win the election by a plurality of the vote, until the first debate in which he steps into a trap laid by AOC. She reveals that Romney's economic and social policies are almost identical to those put forward by Trump. The "gotcha" is powerful, but even more so is the string of memes online and across the press comparing it to Obama's "Please Proceed Governor" in 2012. Its made all the worse by Sinema giving an absolutely petulant response post-debate. The Romney campaign never recovers. Trump and AOC never actually face each other in a debate, this isn't a huge surprise as the GOP pulled out of the Commission on Presidential Debates in 2022 and Trump Sr. spent the 2024 campaign just talking on a stage to a sycophantic FOX moderator. There's also not much point of a debate, as AOC and Trump just repeat their opponents comments verbatim knowing that's all the attack ads they'll ever need. On Election Day, 20 states have outright banned mail-in voting, AOC has been removed from the ballot in Idaho, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Alabama, and West Virginia, and Texas actually deploys its State Guard to shut down the one polling location in Harris County when it begins to look like AOC might win the state by a plurality. Mail-in-ballots from the other 30 states take a week to be counted, but Ohio, Texas, Florida, North Carolina, and Georgia all vote to decertify the results in Democrat heavy counties or direct their states' Electors to cast their votes for Trump. It really doesn't make much of a difference, as AOC has a clear majority in the Electoral college. Ironically, the post-election map doesn't look that different from the one in 2020, save for 8 electoral votes from Utah, Nebraska, and Maine going to Romney.

Post-Election Chaos: With all the votes tallied, this Election has the highest turnout in over a century, but AOC, the victor has only 41.4% of the vote. The media's immediate concern is another attempt by Republicans in Congress to decertify the Election Results as they attempted in 2020 and 2024. But Republicans aren't waiting. Before the Electoral College even convenes Texas becomes the first state who's legislature votes to recognize Trump as the victor and their President. Florida and West Virginia follow not long after and Trump announces plans to hold an Inauguration/Constitutional Convention in Mar-a-Lago with members of the House and Senate Republican leadership and numerous Republican governors in attendance. By the time the EC votes, 16 state legislatures have simply voted to ignore the results and name Trump their President with 13 more states preparing to hold similar votes. By January 1, 2029, 22 states have voted to recognize Donald Trump Jr. as the legitimately elected President and not AOC. The stage is set for another civil war.

Part II

[mugglesauce]

Full quote from Henry Rollins in 2016: "This is not a time to be dismayed, this is punk rock time. This is what Joe Strummer trained you for. It is now time to go. You’re a good person. That means more now than ever. ‘Cause, as a voter, you throw your penny and you throw it in the sea, that’s all a vote is, it’s like nothing, you don’t even hear it fall. But you can be thunderous in your own life, and being cool to the eight people around you? It rubs off. Goodness is viral.”

[headlesssamurai]

have you seen fallout btw? like the show?

Ya'know, I'm not in the best state of mind for such discussions at present, yet even a few drinks in after a night out at a show I'm compelled to inform you I have in-fact watched Amazon's Fallout. My impression overall was generally unfavorable, though not for any of the commonly cited reasoning with which you might by-now be acquainted. I've a somewhat (from what I've noted) unique perspective on the topic; I believe there are only two "good" Fallout games, and neither was released in the 21st century. Given what I see as the abysmal state of Fallout in video games over the past two-and-a-half decades, I expect basically nothing from Fallout as a franchise. Given that Amazon's Fallout appears to exclusively reference all of the more recent (akin to garbage) entries in the video game series, and its overly-ambitious attempt at an ensemble storyline, I found its progression tediously dull, its writing confusing and illogical, and its worldbuilding weakly over-reliant on the oft-used key-jangling for gamer fans (absent meaning or depth) and leaning too hard into pre-informed knowledge of the game-world-- while also terribly contradicting it --a lore literacy which basic TV viewers would not understand. They broke away from Lucy far too quickly in my opinion, the audience should have first seen the surface when she does, the flashback with the Ghoul's past history should not have been the opening scene, do that later, much later -- I'm talking season-finale-later. Such jarring editing and progression was, let's say, less than skillful in its execution. Still, Lucy is well-written, interesting, and well-performed by the drop-dead gorgeous Ella Purnell, as is the Ghoul intriguingly written, performed, and elevated by the ever eminent Walton Goggins. I just wish they were they only main characters, rather than just the only two memorable ones of the four we get. Also, Ramin Djawadi's score is amazing, as wasted on this show as is all of Steve Jablonsky's wonderful work on Michael Bay's Transformers films. But, to me, Fallout has been in a state of horrific mangled afterlife for years now, and should have ended long ago, so trying to claim the show "ruins" something pure and awesome is a bit of a stretch. It's been ruined good-and-proper for a long time now.

侍 headless

[shannonsketches]

[iwilltrytobereasonable]

Something something cyclical nature of history

However, we do not have evidence to suggest a Big Crunch to echo the Big Bang. All we really have is half a hope that protons have a half life, and that the heat death of the universe can go from cold stillness to an Actual Nothing from which another Big Bang might emerge by unknown means.

The universe grows colder, which means the time scales of events grow longer. Maybe there are patterns on the very cold very slow scale that we haven’t been able to see because everything that matters to us is so hot and fast. Maybe. We hope.

hey so why would you end all of life when there's a gorgeous cosmos still evolving and creating new stars? what if there's another point to the stars, instead of just a silly wallpaper for humans to stare at?

Why do gardeners plant flowers just to pick them once they bloom? Put them in a vase on the windowsill until they wither and die? What's wrong with a little decoration? What's wrong with beauty being only temporary?

[phasewashere]

i need to write vdm

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Threads...

“There's an old Irish myth about how when the center falls apart, when there is no big unifying story that can be told in public so that everyone remembers, yes, we all are in this together, when that happens, when the center cannot hold, the old story says then it's time for each person to go to the margins and the edges of life. Because the centre when it's missing does not completely disappear. Rather, the elements of the centre are then found at the margins and edges of life. And so it becomes a time for each person to go to the edge that attracts them and at the same time causes them to be fearful.

And the old story says that if each person goes in the direction that is both attractive and fearful to them, they will find that at the edge of their life a thread, and if each person would then pick up that thread and begin to pull it back towards the centre, then the unifying centre can be remade from the weaving together of many individual threads of life. In the greater myth that serves life, not death, no one has to be heroic and do it all or claim that they are the only one who can do it. Each person is just responsible to find their thread and find a way to weave it back into life. And the key to this narrative of the great way is that no one can be excluded for any reason, not because of their age, or their origin, or their race, or their economic disposition. Because each person has a life thread that has vitality and meaning and creativity in it.

And the point isn't to indulge in some kind of magical thinking that would say that no one is going to die on this troubled path that we all share at this point. And certainly, the point cannot be that we're all going to go back to life and business as usual. The understanding of the bigger myth right now is the world as we knew it is already gone. The point now is to be inhabiting a bigger, unifying living myth in which the words that we are all in this together have genuine, heartfelt meaning. We are in a time of radical change throughout the world, where life and death are struggling on a daily basis. And that requires each of us to change and come out of the crisis as greater souls not smaller people.”

~ Michael Meade

[Thanks Ian Sanders]

[libraryspectre]

TURNING and TURNING in the widening gyre!!!!!!! The falcon CANNOT HEAR the falconer!!!!!!!!!!! THINGS FALL APART!!!!!! The center CANNOT HOLD!!!!!

[litandlifequotes]

All my life, books had been the life raft, the safe haven, the place I ran to when nothing else worked.

The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness by Elyn R. Saks

[lvebug]

for a city of nearly 4 million people, los angeles is the smallest city in the world for andie who knows or knows of nearly every member of the 118 before joining their ranks:

tommy: putting him first because as andie's uncle he's a reason for her knowing a lot of the others

chimney: andie meets him when he's fairly new to the firehouse and she's fairly new to tommy's care. they don't stay super in touch over the years, but their relationship literally predates the nickname chimney. he's watched her grow up

hen: same as above, though they know each other less well due to hen joining later and not being quite as close with tommy

bobby: see above. andie's a teen by the time bobby joins and bobby is a lot more closed off during this time. so more of a knowing-of than any true relationship, but still when her paperwork crosses his desk he knows that name & legacy

ravi: they literally go through the fire academy together and then end up at the same station? bffs. the wonder twins. neither of them are escaping this with a separate identity

liam kaz: andie took their call during the ucla lab explosion. it's literally liamandandie need i explain more

buck: andie works alongside maddie for years and alongside abby even longer before that. even if they never actually met via maddie, andie's at least quite familiar with stories of the guy

gerrard: boo andie hates him but yeah that was capt gerrard for the longest time and he helped her with her homework like exactly once

she walks into the station and everyone's like “little andie eliot!” and then eddie is like 🧍