#Washington Sunder

[livenews24x7hindi]

IND vs SL: भारतीय ऑलराउंडर ने कहा, तीसरा वनडे चैंपियंस ट्रॉफी से पहले जवाब तलाशने का शानदार मौका

टीम इंडिया की खराब बल्लेबाजी के कारण भारत को दूसरा मैच 32 रनों से गंवाना पड़ा, जिसके कारण भारत पर 27 साल में श्रीलंका के खिलाफ पहली द्विपक्षीय वनडे सीरीज हारने का खतरा मंडरा रहा है। भारतीय ऑलराउंडर वॉशिंगटन सुंदर का मानना ​​है कि श्रीलंका के खिलाफ तीसरा और अंतिम वनडे जीतना टीम इंडिया के लिए चुनौतीपूर्ण परिस्थितियों में स्पिन के खतरे का सामना करने का एक शानदार मौका होगा। अगले साल होने वाली…

[nothing-but-paisley]

Ooh what's Bad Bones?

It's a short story I'm kicking around. This baby's got it all:

generational trauma

nature-as-gothic

heavily symbolic dead steel mills

a shit ton of rivers

just rust belt things

goth lesbians

a murder mystery

home remodeling (i learned it from you, anne)

Thank you for the ask! Sorry it's not vc related 😅

Excerpt:

These Appalachian foothills are older than the Atlantic Ocean, which sundered them from what are now the Scottish Highlands. Older than the moon, maybe. They might have been taller than the Himalayas once, worn down over unthinkable eons, and the fossils inside them are ancient and strange. I used to go hunting for them in the shale, a serious and lonely child, splitting rocks to find the ghosts of ferns. Seeing the skeletal ridges of land again after months or years away, I can always feel their age.

Anna looks over at me from the driver’s seat and grins at the song that’s just come on the radio (Tom Petty's "American Girl"), her black hair caught in the hot green-smelling wind. Soon we’ll be poking around the hundred-year-old rooms of all the little houses we can maybe afford in the city, old frame constructions of the kind realtors call good bones.

As we crawl up the winding tree-lined way to Mt. Washington for a showing, Anna points out a derelict red brick house crawling with weeds and honeysuckle, the rotting front porch sagging like skin, a blue tarp hanging from the upper window like the tattered sail of a ghost ship.

“Good bones,” she drawls in a vampire voice and bites at my shoulder through dark denim, making me laugh.

“Mm, yeah.” The weather is unusually sunny, and the scent of grass and hot pavement is making me crave a cigarette, an old adolescent vice. “Meat’s a little stringy though.”

Just past this neighborhood, at the western peak of the ridge across the river from the lean dark skyscrapers of downtown, is an area called Duquesne Heights, once known as Coal Hill. Its houses are notorious for foundation issues caused by mine subsidence. My grandmother’s house was built in a similarly precarious place, on top of abandoned coal pits that could swallow a house without warning. Once after a lightning storm, the old strip mines caught fire underground and coal smoke rose up from unseen holes in the ground like the mouth of hell was open. I remember being terrified of falling through the sweet grassy earth and into the burning coal. It was a fear that never really went away.

My dad always avoided the basement of his childhood home—bad bones down there.

[salmonthecat]

Liberty's kids and amrev ship dynamics

Ray of sunshine x not afraid to fight a grown man (James x Sarah)

A tired war veteran that's forced to be a leader of their nation x a politician secretly in love with them (George Washington x Charles Thomson)

Feminist man worshipping their wife x their wife (John Adams x Abigail Adams)

Yandere monarch x sundere President (king George iii x George Washington)

[mariacallous]

Before the war, Ivan Grek would take the train to the provinces bordering Russia and Ukraine. Researching Russia’s remembrance of its past wars, he would stop in small towns to visit friends of colleagues from the United States. The climate of cultural and academic exchange was a “fun time,” recalled Grek, who was educated in St. Petersburg, Russia, and completed his Ph.D. at American University in Washington.

Those borderlands are now a minefield, thousands of miles away from the muggy parks of Foggy Bottom, where Grek currently works as the director of George Washington University’s Russia program. But out of sight is not out of mind. “Russia will still be there,” he said. Despite mounting challenges to studying Russia, including the war, university boycotts, and broken-down academic exchanges, it is still the same riddle wrapped inside a mystery.

The first year and a half of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has sundered bonds between Russian and U.S. institutions, and academia is no exception. U.S. universities have canceled study abroad programs and ended research partnerships with their Russian counterparts even as they offered protection to Russian students and scholars—threading the needle between moral and logistical challenges against a backdrop of tension. Today’s environment is reminiscent of the Soviet era, Grek said. “Everything has been broken.”

As academics adapt to a new reality, specialists in topics from economics to cultural history are concerned that the taps are closing on one of the United States’ most important fountains of understanding Russia, past and present.

The United States’ foreknowledge that Yevgeny Prigozhin, the leader of the mercenary Wagner Group, would launch an abortive mutiny against Russian President Vladimir Putin shows that, when push comes to shove, Washington still has a read on Russia. But U.S. academics’ ability to understand the culture that gives birth to these kinds of events has taken a pounding from which it will struggle to bounce back. For those working on—and in—the field, this profound loss of knowledge has strained decades-long friendships and relationships with colleagues to a breaking point.

When Putin launched the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, U.S. academics had grown used to 30 years of open access to Russia’s archives and universities, reaping the returns of what the fall of the Soviet Union meant for research.

The opening of the Soviet archives was “exhilarating,” Cold War historian Melvyn P. Leffler wrote in 1996, ringing in a new era of access to information with the potential to change the West’s understanding of Soviet society. The Soviets were, like the tsars before them, first and foremost pragmatic, not ideological crusaders. “Realpolitik held sway in the Kremlin. Ideology played an important role in shaping their perceptions, but Soviet leaders were not focused on promoting worldwide revolution,” Leffler concluded.

Archive peeping could show that, in fact, Soviet leaders thought “communism fit Poland like a saddle fits a cow” and were more concerned with preserving hegemony in Russia’s backyard than they were with expanding Marxism-Leninism. Access to new information, it seemed, had the potential to change strategic understanding.

What else could it do? Regardless of the direct impact of the opening of the Soviet archives on U.S. policymakers’ knowledge of Soviet priorities, academics shared Leffler’s enthusiasm over the access boom itself. Open archives came with an exponential increase in open discussions, cultural exchanges, study abroad programs, and professional cooperation with Russian counterparts, all of which improved not just Kremlinology but the quality of U.S. academic knowledge of the region, from Leo Tolstoy to tea drinking. While some of those opportunities already existed during Soviet times as a calculated game of U.S.-USSR cultural diplomacy, after the 1990s studying Russia became much like studying any other country.

For social science, the past three decades have been a “golden age,” said Timothy Frye, a professor of post-Soviet foreign policy at Columbia University. Despite being an autocracy, post-Soviet Russia was unusual in that “you could do high-quality research there” in a way that is not possible in China or Saudi Arabia. Russia has an exhaustive public polling infrastructure; with relative ease, social scientists could tally reliable information about public opinion and socioeconomic trends.

In the early 2000s and through the 2010s, it was normal for Russian scholars to publish high-quality research in international, peer-reviewed journals; Frye himself co-wrote pieces with Russian counterparts. In 2011, he became a co-director of the International Center for the Study of Institutions and Development in Moscow, which for a time he led with a Russian economist, Andrei Yakovlev.

Things started to change in the wake of Russia’s illegal 2014 annexation of Crimea. The Russian government began cracking down on dissident voices, whether in parliament or within universities. “People really started to notice that working conditions were getting much more difficult,” Frye said. Among Russian social scientists, there was a growing concern that surveys were becoming less reliable and government officials were “unwilling to speak up.” The increasingly repressive environment was hurting their ability to do their job as well as the quality of their findings.

Then came last year’s invasion and with it an impossible dilemma. First, the Kremlin put pressure on researchers and officials at Russian universities to support the war, even as some resisted it, and banned Russian researchers from international outreach and publication. Then, many U.S. institutions cut ties with Russian academic institutions and former partners who openly expressed their support for the invasion. Russian scholars seeking refuge in the West often get the cold shoulder.

Russian academics with working ties to the United States, many of which spanned decades and provided Americans with insight into the Russian policymaking process, have been damned if they take a stand on the war, damned if they don’t, and damned if they try to avoid it. The heightened tension has strained personal ties as much as it has strained the pipeline of knowledge of Russian policymaking to the United States.

“People are uncomfortable,” said Frye, adding that “institutional ties with Russian institutes of higher education have been severed because of the war. But the personal ties still remain.” Formal ties are cut. There are furtive Zoom calls and WhatsApp chats and the odd email. There is a “very awkward, chaotic situation out there,” said Grek, adding that academics now “have to build their own networks with Russian scholars in Russia to revive and to conduct studies and just move on.” The United States’ knowledge of the region, in some respects, is hinging on those bonds.

Rupture and upheaval in academia are damaging the ability of today’s Russia experts to make sense of the country’s unraveling. As the Cold War ramped up, the United States had people such as George Kennan to act as sherpas. These days, it’s not so clear.

Academics do the spade work that helps U.S. government officials make sense of Putin’s game. A functioning field of Russia studies is needed now more than ever to understand the fallout of the Prigozhin mutiny and unanswered questions about his whereabouts and abject surrender. And whether Russia will go nuclear if the war goes worse for Moscow. And what comes after Putin. And how this all ends.

Unfortunately for Washington, “both the U.S. government and the Russian government know less about Russian society than they did before the war,” Frye said. “I would love to know what’s going on in Russian politics right now. Do I have a great way to study it? Not really.”

For Grek, academic breakdown breeds bad policymaking. “If you misunderstand and misinterpret what’s going on in Russia and push the wrong buttons, we can get closer to the third world war.”

The next generation of Russianists is stepping into a volatile field. Across Rock Creek from Grek’s office, undergraduates at Georgetown University continue to sign up for Russian-language classes; there has been little drop since the start of the war. Part of that, said Lioudmila Fedorova, the chair of Georgetown’s Slavic languages department, is because it’s Washington, and Georgetown is the home of the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service—a feeder school to the State Department.

Outside the Beltway as well as inside, Slavic studies departments are reassessing how to teach the region’s languages and cultures. “Historically, bad relations with Russia have been good for business,” Frye said.

This time, those entering the business will face a new set of questions. For regional experts working in the humanities, emphasizing Russia’s character as an empire whose history of conquest cuts to its cultural core is hardly a new approach—though it may become more widespread in light of the war. “We study and teach [Russian culture] as a counterculture, where many writers resisted the pressure of the state,” said Fedorova, pointing to courses such as “Exile and Prison in Russian Literature/Film.” This fall, the school will add a course called “Ukraine and the Russian Empire.”

The theme of the upcoming 2023 conference of the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies is “decolonization.” The call for papers, which extends to scholars studying the region from universities around the world, notes that “Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has led to widespread calls for the reassessment and transformation of Russo-centric relationships of power and hierarchy both in the region and in how we study it.”

How to teach Russian, Soviet, and post-Soviet history—and how to discuss empire in the context of the ongoing invasion—is also at top of mind for U.S. graduate students, as well as how to study it.

Jenny Lhamo Tsundu, a Ph.D. student in Brown University’s history department, spent nine months between 2014 and 2015 living with a host family in Bratsk, Siberia, as part of a Russian-language program organized by Middlebury Language Schools. During Tsundu’s stay there, talk of Putin’s then-recent invasion of Crimea reached the faraway city. “Crimea is ours,” people would say in an “ironic” and “half-joking manner,” she said. Living there, and listening to people there, was as important as hitting the books. Her field studies were interrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic and then ended by the war.

Younger graduate students may not be able to follow in her footsteps and visit the region they study. That bodes poorly: Expertise in regional areas is key, and ignorance leads to missteps.

At GW’s Russia program, Grek and his colleagues are looking for workarounds. Online databases and social media offer a stand-in for talking to actual Russians. It’s not ideal.

“I have a small dream,” Grek said. “I hope that one day there will be a world where we can reengage with Western scholars, Russian scholars, and Ukrainian scholars as we did before.”

[grigorikarpin]

Dr. Dan Goes to Washington - a new Vanguard tale featuring Dr. Dan from SCP-096 giving a presentation to the United Nations General Assembly announcing the existence of Vanguard, Anomalies, and the sundering of the Veil to the world

[bhaskarlive]

3rd T20I: Rinku, Surya help India script dramatic comeback win over SL in Super Over

Rinku Singh and Suryakumar Yadav’s late bowling efforts combined with Washington Sunder’s Super Over show helped India beat Sri Lanka in the third T20I at the Pallekele International Cricket Stadium here to sweep the series 3-0 on Tuesday.

Source: bhaskarlive.in

[x-mencomics]

The Uncanny X-Men #176 - Decisions

South Pacific Ocean.

Honeymoon time! Scott and Madelyne fly a plane to an island to celebrate their wedding (last issue). Madelyne asks if Scott has made a decision about leaving earth with his father (last issue again). Scott says he has not. Suddenly, the weather turns violent and there's wind, rain, lightning, and a lot of turbulence. Lightning strikes the plane and the electrical systems shut down. The plane starts falling towards the ocean, but being the excellent pilots they are, Scott and Madelyne land safely on the water. They climb out of the cockpit to examine the damage, and discuss getting the engines back in working order. And then a shark jumps up and tries to bite Scott! Scott blasts it with his powers. The shark swims away, but gets caught in some HUGE purple tentacles...

Japan.

Wolverine returns to Mariko's ancestral seat. He says now that Mastermind has been beaten, his influence over Mariko should be ended, and they can be together again. But Mariko disagrees. Because of Mastermind's manipulations, her family is now tied to a criminal underworld, something she wants to UNtie her family from. And she wants to do it alone. Wolverine says he understands. He leaves her again.

Washington, D.C.

Henry Peter Gyrich (see issue #142) arrives at the US Capitol for a meeting with the National Security Advisor, Judge Petrie. Gyrich assumes the meeting will be about "Project Wideawake," but he isn't sure - Petrie didn't say. At the meeting, Petrie explains that Magneto destroyed Varykino, a city in Russia, after the Soviets failed to disarm their nuclear weapons as ordered by Magneto (see X-Men #150 where the X-Men stopped Magneto from destroying anything OTHER than the Russian city). A woman at the meeting, Dr. Valerie Cooper, explains how mutants like Magneto and the X-Men have been appearing in many countries around the world, and that some governments want to use mutants' abilities for their own hostile interests - as assassins, spies, etc. She says the US must use its own mutant population to strike back against this. Gyrich worries that the government using mutants in this way may cause mutants to believe Magneto's argument - that humanity will use and eventually enslave mutants. Dr. Cooper says that mutants are a danger and must be dealt with at once.

New York City.

Callisto, the former leader of the Morlocks, visits Caliban. She's joined by Masque and Sunder. They discuss Caliban's obsession with Kitty and how foolish Caliban must feel since Kitty left the tunnels with the rest of the X-Men. Callisto says she intends to bring Kitty back to Caliban. Caliban seems very pleased about this.

South Pacific Ocean.

Scott and Madelyne get the engines of the plane working. Madelyne goes to pull up the plane's anchor and TENTACLES! The huge purple tentacles wrap around her and pull her underwater. Scott jumps in after her and gives the gigantic octopus a few optic blasts before finally unleashing a full power blast which explodes the octopus. They scramble back on the plane, start the engines and take off. Scott tells Madelyne he has decided not to go to space with his father after all. Instead, he wants to stay with Madelyne on earth and start a family.

[writer59january13]

Strong suspicion a 2024 presidential win...

for the trumpeting don spells loss for democracy after inauguration day witnesses his swearing-in nepotism will run rampant lawlessness the name of the game of thrones breaking apart ramparts of inalienable rightful freedoms rent sunder, whereby nothin can stop formidable has-been former forty fifth commander in chief to wreak havoc giving boogeymen run for his money. I cannot vote for that coiffed ogre - tough luck such as imprisonment doled out to "losers" - dragging them by scruff of their neck delegating his henchmen charged analogous to applying assault, battery and rape ever ready and rough each likened as assigned kapo spewing ala blow torch dragon

puffing out following remaining poetic lines dashed off in a huff - based on the scary political fracas - that a looming presidential nightmare doth not become reality show - apprenticing "Three Billy Goats Gruff" (Norwegian: De tre bukkene Bruse), a Norwegian fairy tale collected by Peter Christen Asbjørnsen

and Jørgen Moe in their Norske Folkeeventyr, first published between 1841 and 1844 requiring dye hard adherents to fluff up their orange hair and douse body courtesy sunlamps or other tanning equipment to affect getting more than enough emitted rays of ultraviolet (UV) radiation (courtesy booth installed

in every congressional seat) sycophants forever believing unhealthy glow (viz Rudolph) never enough while spending taxpayers money sitting on her/his respective duff meanwhile United States in general, and Washington District of Columbia in particular (the epitome western civilization) exemplifying City on a Hill,

a phrase derived from the teaching of salt and light in Jesus's Sermon on the Mount incorporated in political rhetoric in United States politics that of a declaration of American exceptionalism to refer to America acting as a "beacon of hope" for the world, when suddenly such grandeur precariously perched atop figurative bluff. Airing thoughts - no matter aye ham juiced one twenty first century piddling, noodling, and muddling ape poetic license serves as genuine esse cape to fly (during pitch black hours of night) on his witch a ma call it... to escape temporarily the cares and concerns of an uncertain world, where as an outlier

from the madding crowd I gape at forecasting sheer insanity, where vetted trumpeting drag queens dolled up as pansexual strumpets while they seductively eat crumpets soulfully bellow chilling hate innate prejudice and senselessness purr blind faith toward self avowed demigod – seize whore viz Cesar wind blown kickstarting mobs stir twittering paypal purchased

Monty Python's Flying Circus pretenders smelling of musk crowdsourcing Amazon sized nasty and brutish bodyguards to evict ruckus-causing murmur oh...how the controlling fiends will let this country go to hell in handbasket, and rack up stratospheric global debt cause zing at least one measly mortal male to fret

totalitarian rule will force every man, woman and child to march....het two...three...four, while the billionaire turns a third blind eye speeds away in his foo fighter jet argh...heavens to Betsy, how did fickle finger of fate let pompous ass vacuum up majority votes across world wide net to finagle vox populi,

and groom hooligan nasty ruffian thugs delivering smashed face upon those deemed peevish pet Long story short -

pondering my rental circumstance will be upended if this ret chad, evil, googly-eyed, gastronomic,

narcissistic bullish don will set the spark for world war three - unless....Katrina and the Waves, superman or the Sabrina can oust him yet.

[all-about-news24x7]

Mukesh Ambani, Google CEO Sunder Pichai Among Guests At State Dinner Hosted For PM Modi - Jammu Kashmir Latest News | Tourism

Washington, Jun 23: Big names in the tech world and billionaire industrialists such as Mukesh Ambani, Google CEO Sunder Pichai and Apple CEO Tim Cook were among those invited to the State Dinner hosted in honour of Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the White House on Thursday.The menu, comprising mostly vegetarian dishes, taking note of the dietary restrictions of the visiting prime minister,…

[aftaabmagazine]

کوه آسمایی

Asmai Mountain

کوه آسمایی

Asmai Mountain 

لیلا صراحت روشنی

Layla Sarahat Rushani

صبر شکست خورده

your forbearance has broken

ای آسمایی

o’ Asmai

 ای به آسمایی

in your stony breaths

روح هزار شعلۀ خاموش

is the spirit of a thousand silent sparks

ای سنگ

o’ stone

ای صبور

o’ patience

ای قامت صلابت ایمان

your height is faith’s firmness –

شعر بلند قامت تاریخ

history’s sublime poem

در ذهن هوشیار تو ای کوه

in your conscious mind

افسانۀ غرور مقدس

the myth of sacred pride

تحریر گشته است

is inscribed

در رگه‌های سنگی سردت

engraved in your cold stony vein

((از دیر تا هنوز ))

"from then until now”

اندوه بیکرانۀ این شهر

the endless pain of this city

تحجیر گشته است

fossilized for so long

ای سنگ

o’ stone

ای صبور

o’ patience

ای شاهد خموش جنایات

o’ silent witness of crimes

در سنگنای دل خونینت

in your inner-stone’s bleeding heart

آیا کدام درد

what painful 

آماس کرده بود

wound swelled

کاین گونه پاره شد دلت

that suddenly sundered your heart?

 ای سنگ

o’ stone

ای صبور

o’ patience!

۲ حمل ۱۳۷۰ خورشیدی کابل

March 22, 1991, Kabul 

Translated from the Farsi Dari by Sharif Fayez (1944-2019) with edits by Farhad Azad and Paween Pazhwak 

In this poem, Layla Sarahat Rushani (1958-2004) pens the saga of the Asmai mountain as the “patient stone,” a local folkloric symbol cited as a mystical rock that soaks the dilemma of those who confess in it until the stone cannot take it anymore and bursts, calling the apocalypse. 

Rushani wrote the poem on March 22, 1991, when the Asmai mountain creviced, once a volcano, it is the tallest summit in Kabul city at close to 7,000 feet. The name derives from the Sanskrit “Asha Mai,” meaning “mother of hopes.” At the foot of the mountain is the oldest Hindu temple in Kabul, dating back hundreds of years.  

Rushani, in a manner, foreshadowed the future of her beloved Kabul— a year later, the “Battle of Kabul” raged for nearly two years.

Steve Coll's article from the Washington Post (May 3, 1992) narrates the apocalyptical barbarity:

"Kabul today is anything but a city basking in triumph… [R]ockets and shells continue to crash into residential neighborhoods, fired by the forces of fundamentalist guerrilla leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar…Hundreds of civilians lie in hospitals lacking electricity, water, and basic sterilization equipment. More arrive each day…Heavily armed, ethnically divided guerrillas and militiamen prowl the city streets, defending patchwork blocks from their rivals, speaking in heated tones about their various enemies and sometimes looting homes and shops…In the semi-agricultural suburbs north toward the airport, farmers toil in their fields amid the crash of incoming rockets. A lone tethered calf is struck by shell shrapnel and within an hour, greedy local residents have slit its throat, carved it into pieces and carried off the carcass." 

The leading participants of the Battle of Kabul returned to power post-9/11. They resumed dominating the economic and political landscape until August 2021, when their predecessors, the Taliban, returned to take the throne of Kabulistan. 

How much pain and suffering will the Asmai mountain, the "mother of hopes," absorb before it crevices again?   

[livenews24x7hindi]

रोहित शर्मा ने खोया आपा, खिलाड़ी को मारने दौड़े, क्या था पूरा मामला?

रोहित शर्मा श्रीलंका के खिलाफ खेले जा रहे सीरीज के दूसरे मैच के दौरान मजाक-मजाक में एक खिलाड़ी को मारने के लिए दौड़े। इसका वीडियो सोशल मीडिया पर खूब वायरल हो रहा है। भारत और श्रीलंका के बीच तीन मैचों की सीरीज का दूसरा वनडे कोलंबो के आर प्रेमदासा स्टेडियम में खेला गया। इस मैच में टीम इंडिया को 32 रनों से हार का सामना करना पड़ा। जबकि, सीरीज का पहला मैच टाई रहा था। ऐसे में अब टीम इंडिया इस सीरीज में…

[anuragsinghs-blog]

Ravi Shastri dubbed it the best performance of IPL 2020 so far, tweeting name of player

Ravi Shastri dubbed it the best performance of IPL 2020 so far, tweeting name of player

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Image Source: GETTY IMAGES Ravi Shastri dubbed it the best performance of IPL 2020 so far, tweeting the namea of ​​the player

Everyone had their eyes on the match between Royal Challengers Bangalore and Mumbai Indians on Monday night. Ho, why not at the present time, the teams of the two legendary batsmen of the world, Virat…

[newsyatra]

Ravi Shastri dubbed it the best performance of IPL 2020 so far, tweeting the name of the player - रवि शास्त्री ने इसे करार दिया अभी तक के आईपीएल 2020 का बेस्ट परफॉर्मेंस, ट्वीट कर बताया खिलाड़ी का नाम

Ravi Shastri dubbed it the best performance of IPL 2020 so far, tweeting the name of the player – रवि शास्त्री ने इसे करार दिया अभी तक के आईपीएल 2020 का बेस्ट परफॉर्मेंस, ट्वीट कर बताया खिलाड़ी का नाम

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Image Source : GETTY IMAGES Ravi Shastri dubbed it the best performance of IPL 2020 so far, tweeting the namea of the player

सोमवार रात रॉयल चैलेंजर्स बैंगलोर और मुंबई इंडियंस के बीच हुए मुकाबले पर हर किसी की निगाहें थी। हो भी क्यों ना मौजूदा समय में दुनिया के दो दिग्गज बल्लेबाज विराट कोहली और रोहित शर्मा की टीमें जो आपस में भिड़ रही थी। हर किसी को इस मैच से जिस तरह…

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Michael de Adder, Washington Post

* * * *

The media’s dysfunction is occurring in the “Musk hellscape” that is Twitter. Shortly after Musk took over Twitter, he tweeted,

Twitter obviously cannot become a free-for-all hellscape, where anything can be said with no consequences! In addition to adhering to the laws of the land, our platform must be warm and welcoming to all.

         It took all of twenty-four hours for Musk to break his promise by converting Twitter into his personal “free-for-all-hellscape” by promoting a baseless, offensive, defamatory statement about the attempted assassination of Nancy Pelosi and assault on Paul Pelosi. Though Musk deleted his tweet, he offered no correction, no apology, and no suspension of his own account for violating Twitter’s terms of service. Twitter is quickly reflecting the disordered nature of Musk’s mind and personality. That bodes ill for Twitter and democracy.

         How should people who use Twitter legitimately react to Musk’s takeover and his immediate abuse of the platform? For the moment, I hope that responsible commentators will remain on Twitter and continue to provide fair, factual, and important commentary. Although I do not actively post on Twitter, I respect many who do. We cannot abandon Twitter to extremists and conspiracy-theory mongers who seek to undermine our democracy. There may come a time when being associated with Musk and Twitter is untenable. That time has not yet arrived. So, if you use Twitter responsibly, I hope you will continue to add balance and reason to Musk’s hellscape.

         Without regard to whether we use Twitter, each of us has a role to play in fighting the disinformation and hate that seem poised to overwhelm and sunder that platform—and our nation. Speaking the truth requires that we educate ourselves about the truth. That is the only way we can navigate the free-for-all-hellscape created by Elon Musk. I understand that can be difficult and exhausting—but that is what the trolls and lunatics who lurk on Twitter are counting on. In whatever way you can, to whatever degree you can, be an ambassador for the truth. Our nation’s future depends on it.  

[Robert B. Hubbell Newsletter]

[addn.]

TCinLA

Writes Thats Another Fine Mess

I hate that I have to use the term "fellow Aspergian" to describe Elon Musk. He is emotionally permanently the 12-year old who got so badly bullied it affected him mentally, as he demonstrates daily. Aspergians are really smart where we are "interested," plus we can be very successful in those areas when we apply ourselves because of our 8-10 hour spans of attention. Where we aren't interested, it's "in one ear and out the other" and we might as well be morons. I learned at an early age that "the mark of the intelligent man is to know where he's stupid," as my Aspergian (only they didn't know that was what it was then) father once told me. I stick to what interests me and all of you think I am really smart. Which I am. In those things. Trust me, I can be a moron's moron when it comes to what doesn't interest me, which is a long list.

Musk, because he was interested in computers and able to apply his span of attention, got rich with what became PayPal at an early age. Once that happened he was in danger, because being rich means being in "a world where there is no 'no,'" which eventually drives the inhabitant crazy but his enablers say nothing and he comes to believe because he is rich he is a genius in all things. The result is what we see with Musk (who I call Muck and that's not a typo).

Personally, I'd like to take the worthless piece of shit and stick him in one of his tinny toys, then stuff that in one of his rockets and fire it into the sun. Make the universe great again.

But god I hate the fact I understand him because he's one of us.

[ladytp]

Get to know you better

I was tagged by lovely @littlefeatherr – thank you, dear! Rules: tag a few people you want to know better; make a new post, don’t reblog!

Favorite color: Green

Currently reading: ‘The Last Smile in Sunder City’ by Luke Arnold (our local hero who portrayed Long John Silver in ‘Black Sails’ and has since turned author too). It is quite good, interesting world building – but I am still quite early on it.

Last song: Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Chain’ has been playing in my head non-stop now for weeks… since I saw episode 8 in ‘Our Flag Means Death’…

Last series: This may come as a HUGE surprise, but I saw just recently a lovely little series called ‘Our Flag Means Death’ that was pretty nice…😄

Last movie: ‘The Last Duel’ from 2021, directed by Ridley Scott. The topic was fascinating, actors stellar – so where did it go wrong? Just…a bit weird, and although I usually love weird, this was not it in a good way..

Sweet, spicy or savory: Savoury, definitively!

Coffee or tea: Coffee – although I do like my tea too!

First ever ship: Sansa Stark and Sandor Clegane from GRR Martin’s ‘A Song of Ice and Fire’

Three ships: Edward ‘Blackbeard’ Teach and Stede Bonnet (‘Our Flag Means Death’), Benjamin Tallmadge and Caleb Brewster (‘Turn: Washington’s Spies’) and Captain James Flint and Long John Silver (‘Black Sails’) (I have no idea why and how this happened - maybe because male characters are often given more dominance and focus and complexity than female, and I do like men a lot as a species, perhaps?)

Currently working on: Tallmadge/Brewster fic, a continuation to my earlier fic ‘always is not enough’

Favourite piece of clothing: Judging from the frequency of use, currently a loose pair of jeans I wear all the time – but for what I really like in my wardrobe, these shoes that I bought recently. Still wearing them in…

Comfort food: Creamy garlic potato bake is an oldie but goodie. And cheeses, all kind of cheeses, but especially bocconcini/burrata/buffalo mozzarella.

Favourite time of year: Spring – the promise of summer is intoxicating!

Favourite fanfiction: Oh, there are so many in my favourite fandoms I simply couldn’t say just one or two! My bookmarks (98 of them) say it more eloquently…

I’ll add no pressure tags to @writerloverpsycho-pomp​, @lordhellebore​  and @wyntremalfoy!