#again i am a joe apologist but NOT for this | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

ram-de · 7 months

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[read] carter bennett is everything

AWWW small carter :( gshshshsh he's a good older brother my son carter

I love timber wolf😭 cute expressive pup

Fucking. Thomas bennett. this book is gonna be full of Thomas Bennett apologist propaganda isn't it. He's only human. He made mistakes. Well he should have apologize before he's dead not after! I will refrain from complaining about Thomas Bennett because this is my son carter's moment. OH MY GOD thank you thank you Carter for not... Absolving him of all his wrongdoing. HOLD HIM ACCOUNTABLE!!

Carter's farewell speech from his pov... I'm tearing up a lot reading this book... SOMEONE TIE HIM DOWN!!!

I always felt like the bond thing is so... Convenient sometimes. Carter should be all blue and tingling how come nobody noticed it? His presence? But then again Ox said he could mute bonds just like when he's gonna be the martyr. Hmm....

reliving all of this memories of leaving gordo... Pain... I don't have a choice. Oh the lie you tell yourself so you can sleep better, Thomas Bennett. My resentment for you is endless😂 He's gotten an easy way out after ruining both Gordo and Mark's life. Fucking Thomas Bennett.

So far though, in terms of trying to make things light of the impact of fucking Thomas Bennett, this book isn't as bad as Ravensong. Which is good. Please keep it like this

What should I do if I'm beginning to feel so repulsed of Thomas Bennett😭 Don't fucking try to be the victim in this one. OUUUUUU yeaa tell him mark. FUCKING SAY IT TO GORDO THEN?? LIKE MAN HE APOLOGIZED TO MARK. HE APOLOGIZED TO ELIZABETH. WHY. THE FUCK. DID HE NOT APOLOGIZE TO GORDO???? I need this man to go to alpha hell.

Mark is a better person than me because I'd be legit give that fucking shitass a solid punch or two (I cannot fight or do any offensive skill to save my life)

DON'T FUCKING TOUCH HIM YOU... THOMAS FUCKING BENNETT... AND DONT TRY TO JUSTIFY YOURSELF!!!! UGH. Mark can't even grief in peace wtf?? I FUCKING HATE THOMAS BENNETT.

Canes and pinecones, epic and awesome. Cutiepie adorable baby Joe it's nice to see you again😭 you were so different later on...

This psychic-witch lady is funny hshsjsjsjjs

I just read the table of contents... Is Elizabeth gonna die :-(

Timber wolf my cute pup you just gave Carter attachment issues shgsgjshdudh

Meeting the evil father in law...

HSGSHSJSH CARTER AND GAVIN IS A FUNNY PAIR I love opposites attract you don't understand

SEE I COULD LIVE OFF FROM SIMPLY READING THEIR INTERACTION I AM THRIVING I AM LIVING NOTHING MATTERS ANYMORE GRRRAAHHHHh

😐 Thomas. Fucking. Bennett. Knowing robert has another son. Keeping that from everyone. Visits him from time to time. COMPLICIT WITH THIS ALL. How the fuck do you see Gordo back at home and smile to him knowing his dad fucking cheated and that he have another brother??? SHOULD I MAKE ANOTHER POST ON WHY THOMAS BENNETT IS THE SOURCE OF ALL EVIL???

Thomas Bennett really flopped in his alpha leadership ngl how do you even fumble Mark your brother, him always around and chose Richard as the second instead? Tf

Elizabeth singing / dancing /cooking moments always make me soft... :-( she danced with ox, reminiscent of his late mother. She cooked with robbie for kelly... on one occasion she danced with joe too. I don't think gordo have danced. He sang with the pack on the road. But idk with Elizabeth. And now with Gavin. She's... SHE'S MY MOTHER....

It was warm like a summer day. It was candy canes and pinecones, it was epic and awesome, it was dirt and leaves and rain, it was grass and lake water and sunshine.

I always loved repetition hsgshsj they're so endearing to me (Ox has drilled into my head that his father gave him shits but that's ok because he's my son.)

Carter spitting facts a lot today. That's true. FUKC YOU THOMAS BENNETT. you kept Gavin here! You're complicit! Scum of earth! Fucking hell I hate it here. He's the one who wabbled in dreams AFTER HIS DEATH. Fucking coward.

“My dad says that Bennetts don’t deserve to be in control. They ruin everything they touch.” you're right kid from Carter's memory lmaoo Abel and Thomas were not good leaders so props :)

FUCKING THOMAS BENNETT'S SECOND RICHARD COLLINS. ruining my son's Joe childhood like wtf. This is all Thomas Bennett's fault.

Wait WAIT THIS IS THE ROADTRIP CREW REUNION😭

Gavin you menace gshgsjdjf

Please tell me Carter did laundry on his trip............... 😔

Wait whos taking on the green creek mayor's position if Carter ran away.

Aileen and Patice: the ultimate plot device

More Thomas Bennett forgivement propaganda. Snooze. This is... This is very blatant attempt to redeem thomas bennett and as #1 Thomas Bennett hater I will never stand for this😠 there is no way you can backtrack everything from ravensong, tj klune hshsjshsghs

Daddy Rico😭 gonna have a small pup (baby) soon

I'm tearing up oh lord this keeps happening. Every reunion... Damn it...

How the hell Elizabeth keeps knowing every single. Lady??? Robbie's mother. And then Gavin's mother. HMMM? ARE YOU A COMPLICIT TOO ELIZABETH

Damn it I can't believe everyone in town knows Gordo's father cheated on another lady and decided to traumatize him further through child labor and other means. That's disappointing. (yes I will babify gordo until the end of time) and that is a lot to ask ngl Elizabeth...

WERE HOME BABYYYY AND THAT MEANS MORE COZY PACK DYNAMICS AAAGAGHHHHH

Thank you, Carter being the only sane non-TB-apologist here... My son Carter... NOOO THEY'RE GASLIGHTING HIM UP... Thomas Bennet really has the whole clan manipulated... That scum... don't worry I'll carry the resentment enough for the whole pack

HSGSHSHSHSHS ngl I thought the premise of Carter leaving is a bit repetitive (and a bit dumb). but it is what it is

Gordo you old man you have said the father's day joke line before!! Your age is showing...!

My son robbie speaking facts. Gordo could kick the bennets when they returned. They had no rights.

I would read a whole book full of these, cozy, daily moments of the packs... No hunters, no alpha society shit, no wacky wizard trying to have power. Just... JUST STUFF LIKE THIS PLS... Die rabbit die? COURTING CHAPTER NEXT... I need to see Carter flustered.

Thomas uh... I had few objections to Elizabeth's heartful speech to Carter but I'll let it slide for the sake of, sake... Oh Elizabeth is dropping death flags... Rip... My queen...

Oh my god team former humans is so gentle with gavin😭 anything... NOTEPADS!!! just like bar scene in ravensong... My fav...

GAVIN DO YOU WANT ME TO DIE AGHJHhsshgsjs this is so sweet it hurts

I had several objections on how it can be Thomas Bennett's faults, Joe. But I won't say it because brothers bonding time. And I can kinda see his point... Damn Zen Alpha...

SHUEHSHDUE JOE :-( the bestest little brother ever please this is hurting me

I wish so too. Thomas is an awful alpha. Sure he may be a decent husband and father. Other than that he is shitty. I don't know why he has to pre-decide Joe as an alpha... Did he and Elizabeth go for a third son until they got an alpha... THIS IS SO INAPPROPRIATE I'll be back to Thomas slander

Tho-- no, no. I have better self control than this... HMM... ACTUALLY... SCREW IT. IT FELT LIKE. tj klune is like. Aware of how shitty Thomas Bennett too and to redeem him. He kept trying to backpedal. More and more propaganda, tch... the letters feel eerily similiar to my thoughts IF I were to be swayed to thomas bennett forgivement propaganda. No. No. I will not go over there.

Hmmm I don't know what to feel about this whole

*Thomas Bennett ruined a life and causes immense heartbreak that lasts 20 years (mark, gordo)*

Someone: oh sure he made an oopsie mistake he loved you, you know? Just forgive him, it's not a big deal. Get over it you fucking whiny bitch.

Less to say, I am not impressed...

HSGSHSJSH carter can be a straight one sometimes (as in, comedy duo. What do you call it, boke? Tama?)

THANK YOUUUI for backpedalling about gordo's mother. she's a victim. She barely get her respects even when she told the truth, that wolf lies, that wolf used gordo. Back then, Abel, Richard and FUCKING THOMAS BENNETT all is complicit in the scenescheme.

My son Gavin is 32 years old😭 when was he bitten because it can't be that long right...

I love that they're babying my 32 years old son😭

Elizabeth... You're so strong for admitting it all... Still won't change the fact that you AND FUCKING THOMAS BENNETT SCUM manipulated ox... And Mark... And gordo... Yeah idk...

Why are we skipping carter's i am wolf wolf provide wolf give food big wolf gavin must give food racoon racoon die racoon for gavin gavin eat racoon. Like WHY

THE JOY OF WHAT😭

I love love love the moments each protagonist got with other members of the pack...makes it very lively and just cozy

ELIZABETH HAD A CRUSH IN MAGGIE WHAT IN THE WORLD

...i feel like I should do write more live reactions but using the app is a hassle. This is now twitter💀 whatever...

Jessie is so real for cutting off that guys monologue. If you want to talk a lot at least make it interesting. It's not. I am still traumatized from Elijah's 3-pages rant referencing bibles and shit.

#brothersong #readingrams #I hate thomas bennett #I want to be Richard Collins when I grew up

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confettihipster · 1 year

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i miss your hollyoaks takes! do you still watch? what's your opinion on the sienna/ethan pairing?

thank you that's nice of you to say. i am barely watching atm, i am largely aware of what's going on but i got out of the habit of watching it bc i was working insane hours this time last year but tbh i miss it a lot and i think the structure is good for me. every so often i will watch like two weeks worth of episodes in a day and then not again for months. so you have #inspired me to get back into it but not excited at the prospect of diving back in and then juliet dies tbh!

so i have actually barely seen sienna and ethan together as a couple but they had a lot of chemistry before, idk where he ranks in her list of love interests (btw summer > trevor > warren > brody > darren and i say this as a big time dienna apologist). what i like about ethan is that he is this crime man who is trying to be hard but he's not actually menacing and he's kind of a dweeb

the thing about women on soaps is that they are always better characters than the men and sometimes they need a big romance with a big interesting character and then sometimes they need a 'he's just ken' - this is why joe is a top mercedes love interest - and if that's what he is for sienna then good!!!!!

#also i do have two tvs now so i could have it on the other tv while playing zelda #hmmmmmm #back in my hollyoaks era

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dontmeantobepoliticalbut · 3 years

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As condolences for the loved ones of Harry Reid poured in following his death Tuesday at the age of 82, progressives recalled the former Senate majority leader's vocal condemnations of the upper chamber's filibuster rule and urged Democrats to honor the late Nevada lawmaker by eliminating it for good.

"In a chamber where too many Democrats can be afraid of their own shadow, Harry Reid was willing to deliver for the American people and didn't care what it took," tweeted Rep. Mondaire Jones (D-N.Y.) following news of Reid's passing. "They should learn from his example and abolish the filibuster."

"I am now calling on the Senate to abolish the filibuster in all its forms."

Long a dominant political force in Nevada, where he grew up in deep poverty, Reid—an early supporter of the Iraq invasion and an opponent of Medicare for All—was hardly an unalloyed darling of progressives during his lengthy tenure as the Senate's top Democrat.

But Reid's outspoken opposition to the Senate filibuster in his later years was seen as a major catalyst of Democrats' growing push to kill the rule, which is stifling progress on voting rights, climate action, immigration reform, and other key elements of the party's agenda by effectively giving the GOP minority veto power over most legislation.

In November 2013, the Reid-led Senate Democratic majority ended the 60-vote rule for presidential nominations in response to unceasing Republican obstruction. Following his retirement from the Senate in 2017, Reid endorsed the complete elimination of the filibuster, which he said was "suffocating the will of the American people."

"The Senate is now a place where the most pressing issues facing our country are disregarded, along with the will of the American people overwhelmingly calling for action. The future of our country is sacrificed at the altar of the filibuster," Reid wrote in a New York Times op-ed published in August 2019. "Something must change. That is why I am now calling on the Senate to abolish the filibuster in all its forms."

That same month, Reid told The Daily Beast: "It is not a question of if. It is a question of when we get rid of the filibuster. It's gone. It's gone."

"The answer is yes," Reid said when asked whether he would support nuking the filibuster rule to pass climate legislation. "[T]he No. 1 priority is climate change. There's nothing that affects my children, grandchildren, and their children, right now, more than climate."

Altering or scrapping the filibuster rule would require the backing of all 50 members of the Senate Democratic caucus plus a tie-breaking vote from Vice President Kamala Harris—a level of support the party has yet to reach thanks largely to Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.), the upper chamber's most ardent filibuster apologists.

As soon as the first week of January, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) is expected to attempt once again to advance a voting rights bill in the upper chamber, an effort that is likely to prompt yet another GOP filibuster.

Should such a scenario play out, the Senate will "consider changes to any rules which prevent us from debating and reaching final conclusion on important legislation," Schumer wrote in a recent letter to colleagues.

In an appearance on MSNBC following news of Reid's death Tuesday, Schumer said the Nevada Democrat "was a strong advocate of changing the rules of the Senate, which I hope we carry with us forward in the next few weeks."

#us politics #news #common dreams #harry reid #nv #nevada #sen. harry reid #rip #rest in peace #filibuster #abolish the filibuster #end the filibuster #2021 #Rep. Mondaire Jones #sen. chuck schumer

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bisluthq · 3 years

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I think what i really like about taylor’s songwriting is how honestly she writes about her men, like i dont find it “cringe” or “patriarchal” like gaylors who kinda shame her for being so vulnerable and in love with the men she writes about. She says that she’s the fucking artist and takes these men as muses and portrays them in such an amazing light. As an example with Jake she was just…. so fucking into him and the “you’re my Achilles heel, twin fire signs, four blue eyes” makes me 🥺🥺🥺🥺 every time (i am sorry im a gyllenswift apologist i hate it but also jake is literally that older accomplished successful charming man who is all smart and posh and compliments you and in a few weeks you find yourself in his bed getting eaten out and he does these great gestures but he’s actually an asshole and you realise that the blame is on you) anyways also i think that’s one of the reasons i hated 1989 era cause she was all “I am a cool girl now😌no more love I AM A FEMINIST AND THESE ARE MY MODEL FRIENDS” and i was like “bestie you’re a hopeless romantic why u lyin and who are these fake bitches” and then joe happened and she was again whole “King of my heart, body and soul” “my lifeline” “i did one thing right” so i am really happy for her, and these bitches who think women are lesser beings because they want love and a family on their own and be the hype guys for their partners can suck it. Its very sad how lowkey misogynist these gaylors who think they’re revolutionary and feminist

Anon are you me?

#nat talks wise ass anons

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smokeybrand · 3 years

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Amazing

I am a massive, massive, Spider-Man shill. One hundred percent Pete apologist. Spider-Man means so much to me and has for a very long time. He’s my absolute favorite superhero character and one of the most profitable in the world. If Pete isn’t the top earning, then he’s second only to Batman, which is interesting because they have a great deal in common. Both are flagship titles for their respective franchises, both characters are orphans, both characters have the quintessential rogues in their respective universes, and both of them universally appeal to more people than any other hero on their respective rosters. That’s insane to me considering how different as people they are from each other. DC’s nu52 was an absolute dumpster fired but Batman made it through unscathed. Some of his best stories were written in the dark ages of the post-Flashpoint universe. Court of Owls, Endgame, Death in the Family; All absolutely excellent narratives, each enriching the overall Bat-legend to varying degrees. Spider-Man did not have that luxury. Not for a long time.

My version of Spider-Man starts n the Eighties. I was born midway through that decade so, for me, it was McFarlane and David Michelinie. Interestingly enough, this is the team who would introduce Venom, who would go onto become my fifth favorite Marvel character, all-time. When i got older and really into comics on my own, it was the bad times Nineties and, while the overall writing was sus, the art was exquisite. I remember, very specifically, the way Mark Bagley drew Pete. I loved his style, second only to Todd, himself. Almost as interestingly as the Venom thing, the team of Bagley and Michelinie introduced us to Carnage so, you know, the late Eighties/ Early Nineties were Symbiote heavy. The rest of the Nineties was just not kind to comics in general. However, i really liked Larry Mahlstedt’s art and the finale of the Clone Saga was f*cking top tier Spider-writing. We coasted for a while, not too many memorable arcs for me, and then we get to the whole sabotage that was f*cking One More Day.

One More Day ruined my Spider-man by effectively erasing the Mary Jane relationship. Whether you like Gwen or Felicia or bachelor Pete, Mary Jane is the one love interest that made Pete better. MJ is a strong, independent, female character cats are always harping about nowadays, and was so from the start. She did her own thing and grew into the role of love interest. She became a real partner to Pete and, while they had issues in their relationship, those conflicts played out in a very real way. This grounded Pete, not aged him. Loving someone and being loved to that profound level, has only ever been pulled off as successfully one other time, in my opinion, with f*cking Superman. This ridiculous change to one of the greatest comic relationships was orchestrated by Marvel’s then Editor-in-Chiefs, Joe Queseda, because his Spider-Man was a free balling College student of the Seventies. That version of Pete hadn’t existed for, like, damn near three decades by D-day and sh*t sucked for the next goddamn decade because of it. Some of it was decent, i rather liked the Big Time arc, the Spider-Island event, and Superior Spider-Man, but it never felt “right” to me. Pete was never the Pete i knew. I wasn’t alone in that sentiment because the entirety of the Spider-fandom felt the same, even the old heads.

People hated the fact that OMD erased the Spider-marriage. No one wanted to see Pete breaking up with MJ, especially not in the way that it was written. That sh*t was dumb. A deal with the devil? Word? Because Aunt May died? Again? What is she, like, ninety-six at this point Come on. Such pedestrian writing. The most f*cked up part about it is that Marvel execs knew people hated this change and just toyed with our emotions about it. There would be hints throughout this desolate time, MJ literally tells Peter she loves him in during the climax to Spider-Island, and then it was never addressed again. I mean, it might have been? I’s hard for me to recollect because i hate this period of Pete so much, not a lot stands out. I feel like when she was hired on at Stark industries, MJ basically friend-zoned Pete? I could be wrong though. People complained about OMD so much and for so long, the Marvel higher-ups finally tossed us a bone with the Renew Your Vows and that sh*t did gangbusters. Who’d of thought a book about a happily married Pete and MJ, out hero-ing together with their not-Mayday-Parker daughter, Annie, would be insanely popular? Oh, wait, literally the entire f*cking fanbase did! Eventually, we would find our way out of this darkness. MJ and Pete would find their way into a will they-won’t they thing, while the many Spider-Verse shenanigans would ensue, Miles would get a shot in the main 616, and Gwen would become the Ghost Spider. All this awesome would lead up to Nick Spencer’s run on the books and, let me tell you, it was breath of fresh air.

Spencer didn’t work his magic immediately. He was put on a Spider-adjacent book, The Superior Foes of Spider-Man, first. That book, on it’s own, is some of the bets Spider-content since the early Aughts and leads into his run on the mainline Amazing series. Spencer’s run started with his first arc, Back to Basics and it reset a lot of what came before. Pete was a poor and hated once again but Mary Jane was back in his life and sh*t felt correct for the first time in in a f*cking decade. Back to Basics was a great way to retcon a lot of dumb sh*t from the last ten or so years, while returning a very missed status quo in an interesting way. I really enjoyed this first arc and the one that followed, was also decent. Friends and Foes was a fun little romp seeing Pete shacking up with Boomerang, a main factor in why Superior Foes was so fun, eventually opening up to some pretty heavy revelations. The Hunted arc was a surprise ad felt very nostalgic as it was a spiritual successor to the Eighties classic, Kraven’s Last Hunt. I haven’t read Behind the Scenes but i hear it’s alright and i didn’t care for the Absolute Carnage tie-in at all. Red Goblin rehas? Really? Whatever, bro. Also, i really disliked that final arc with Kindred. What the f*ck? Such a wasted concept, even moreso than the f*cking Inheritors.. At least they were redeemed by the Spider-Verse stuff.

Ultimately, i think Nick Spencer’s run as a Spider-writer was more hit than miss. I , personally, will love the dude forever because of how he was able to fix a lot of the damage the last decade did to Pete and his overall universe. We saw a return of the only romance that matters, a supporting Spider-family that can give the Bat-family a run for it’s money, the resurgence of Norman Osborne as the Green Goblin, retconned the f*ck out of the horrible Gwen Stacy character assassination, called the familial validity of Theresa Parker into question, and even saw Black Cat getting back to being the best version of Felicia she can be, all while weaving some classic tales along the way. Spencer did right by these characters, by this legacy, and by the fans. A lot of great stuff dropped on Spencer’s watch. Not only did her write this pretty amazing Amazing content, but he had a hand in the Spider-Geddon event and we even got a solid MJ solo book; All because Spencer decided to give the fans what they had been asking about fr over a goddamn decade! Now that his run is over, i am already in morning. This feels like how Hickman was robbed of his -titles but i get it. I just hope we get more great Spider-content going forward but, seeing as how Ben Reily is Spider-Man again, i dunno. Feels like executive Marvel learned all the wrong lessons from Spencer’s reverence for what came before. The Nineties are back in comics and i have have very conflicting feelings about that.

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fantastic-nonsense · 4 years

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@geisterwand I’m bringing you up from the replies into a whole post because you need to sit down and listen

You are a disingenuous asshole. Bernie never chose the precise location in Texas for the waste disposal, and if you store it somewhere wet it contaminates the groundwater table. You're just posting disinformation. Next, the "wow how DARE he run against a wamen!!1" whinging is stupid as fuck

Bitching and concern trolling because Rogan, who committed the horrible crime of having 5 year old bad tweets endorsed Sanders, but being completely silent with the NYT endorsement of Warren despite the NYT's role in starting the Iraq War which killed hundreds of thousands of people, displaced many more and pushed the region into further chaos. But hey I guess to you, bad tweets are just SO much worse than dead citizens in the ME

you're also, of course, intentionally and dishonestly misquoting him about Castro but I think it's pretty clear at this point that even a fleck of honesty is too much to expect from you

and ALSO if it's apparently misogynistic to dare to run against warren, then it's also anti-semitic for warren to run against sanders. go figure out which of those ranks higher on the idpol totem pole and get back to me

You are a nearly 30-year-old man with an anime blog ranting at me in the notes of my own post because you can’t conceive of holding a man accountable for his own electoral failures. You are a grown-ass adult man talking like this in the year 2020. You have ZERO basis to stand on here.

I am not, in fact, a “disingenuous asshole.” You are the one that came onto MY post (SEVERAL of my posts actually. Like...bro. Get a fucking life) to genuinely tell me that, because I said that y’all have been rude-ass motherfuckers to everyone for five years and trashed anyone that remotely disagreed with you and I was no longer going to hold your hand about your shitty behavior, said that “performative woke class reductionism is not "progressive"” AS IF that hasn’t been Bernie Sanders’ playbook his entire goddamn life. You’re an utter joke.

But to actually answer your rant:

Bernie put his name on that legislation and advocated for it. He supported dumping Vermont’s nuclear waste in Sierra Blanca, a poor Latino community in Texas. He said on the fucking House floor he was in “strong support” of the measure. And he refused to talk to environmental activists about it in 1998, because “My position is unchanged, and you’re not gonna like it.” When they asked if they would visit the site in Sierra Blanca, he said AND I QUOTE: “Absolutely not. I’m gonna be running for re-election in the state of Vermont.” It’s not disinformation. It’s pure hard fact.

He did the same kind of nonsense with black people from the 60s until 2015...so well that the only thing his supporters can dredge up for how much he’s “supported” the black community can be distilled down to “well he was arrested that one time at a de-segregation protest in the 60s!” Vermont has one of the absolute lowest percentages of black people in the entire country and they make up nearly 10% of the criminal justice system. He did nothing. I can name more. Sorry your fave isn’t pure and doesn’t actually give a shit about non-white people until he needs their votes.

“How dare he run against women” that’s not what I meant and you know it. If he was so desperate for Warren to run in 2016? If he was SO SURE a woman could win the presidency? Why the FUCK did he declare his candidacy two weeks after she declared? For someone that supposedly begged her to run in 2016, he and his campaign did every damn thing he possibly could to undercut her run this go around, from declaring another run 2 weeks after she declared to the smears and “lying snake” shit to the "fauxgressive" nonsense. You know how he could have PROVED he thinks a woman can win the presidency? By throwing his full support and fundraising apparatus behind her after she declared her intent to run. Instead he, a 78-year-old white guy who just had a whole-ass heart attack 6 months ago, decided he needed to make another failed presidential run to appease his ego. I have no sympathy.

Acting like Joe Rogan, a racist, misogynistic, and transphobic fool that peddles in conspiracy theories, is in any way equivalent to one of the largest and generally most-respected newspapers in the United States (and one whose staff has changed several times over in the past twenty years) is utterly ridiculous and you know it.

Also, Bernie Sanders courting Joe Rogan fans before a single vote had been cast in the Democratic primary is a PRIME example of why he lost so terribly on Tuesday. He showed his true colors too early. He showed where he’d go hunting for votes in the general election. He looked at black voters and said “I care more about the votes of racist Trump voters than I do you.” He looked at women and said “I care more about the people who listen to Joe Rogan’s sexist drivel more than I care about you.” He looked at the LGBT community and said “I care more about the people who agree with his comments over you.” And they saw that...and they voted accordingly. That’s on y’all...and it’s a prime example of Bernie Sanders’ terrible political judgment and uh........what was that? “Woke class reductionism?” That’s a good term; thanks for using it. It’s apt for what he thought he was doing with that nonsense.

And no, I’m not. This is a consistent thing with Bernie; he’s all like ‘oh I oppose authoritarianism and of course they did shitty things!’ but then he keeps praising authoritarian regimes that murdered millions of people because they were socialist/communist and “damn we need that economic system here!!!!” There is a time and place for nuanced discussion about what a regime did well or badly. Making those kinds of comments when you’re trying to win the votes of people whose families were literally murdered by those regimes and fled to the United States to escape them? Not the time or place. Again: terrible political judgement, class and economics over intersectional solidarity and empathy for their multi-generational trauma.

It’s not misogynistic to run against Warren. What’s misogynistic is the way he and his campaign ran against her and treated her the entire damn primary. Keep the fuck up.

Thanks for misrepresenting me and my opinions. Thanks for deigning to grace me with your shitty political viewpoints on my posts. Thanks for “getting involved with politics bullshit” since your blog bio says you don’t like it. And thanks for deciding that I apparently give one single solitary fuck about what a Bernie Sanders apologist has to say to me today, because I don’t and I am exceedingly glad you gave me this lovely, wonderful opportunity to show you just how much I no longer care about appeasing y’all’s nonsense after five years of listening to y’all WHINE about how Bernie was “cheated” and how it “wasn’t fair.”

Life’s not fair, buddy, and you’re going to find that out when Bernie Sanders loses to ANOTHER subpar moderate candidate for the second time in a row because y’all spent five years straight trashing 70% of the party and then spent the last 8 months trashing your ideological allies, and then arrogantly assumed you are still entitled to their votes because “his policies are popular!” Go back to your anime and video games, grow the fuck up, and learn from this experience.

#bernie sanders #us politics #politics #replies

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lilacbreastedroller · 4 years

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tolkien's racism & misogyny must be accounted for but somehow i think lord of the rings as a *fandom* seems to be way less of all the yuck of every other fandom? idk. i never hear anyone being like "TRUMP IS SAURON FRODO IS JOE BIDEN WE MUST HELP HIM GET THE RING TO MORDOR" and i have never (and am not inviting you to show me it if it exists) seen like...incest fics of faramir and boromir or whatever and i have never (AGAIN NOT AN INVITATION TO SHOW ME IF I AM WRONG JUST TELLING ME WILL SUFFICE) seen ELROND APOLOGISTS DNI banners lol the vast majority of lotr fans i know are 1) (perhaps this is the most key) not online and 2) very open about and receptive to feminist & anti racist critiques of the work.

why does the lotr fandom seem way more chill to me? or have i just done a better job of tailoring my online experience to not see this shit

**** big exception being the addition of tauriel in the movies. but in general. way less internet shenanigans if you ask me.

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quakerjoe · 4 years

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The DEADLY question for women

So...Tara Reade changed her story AGAIN?

Uh, NO, not really. Going from the basic revelation of assault to adding on other instances and more details over time is not changing so much as adding to it. If you've ever talked with Survivors, this is how it goes. They're already scared to come forward because of all the slut-shaming and terror and even death threats they get. They're already lining themselves up to have their lives torn apart by it and be put under a microscope to be shown as the slut or the whore and accused of being the one who is at fault because she asked for it. She's got credible witnesses. Her story jives and this is deserving of being investigated. "Due Process" my ass. Where's the outrage from the Dems that they were screaming at trump when he was running? Where's Stacy Abrams' fury against Kavenaugh now? This whole #MeTooExceptBiden horseshit only shows how they're willing to blow off due process when it's THEIR boy. These are the same assholes who shoved Al Franken under a bus with full force and it was for FAR less and mostly it was made up bullshit.

So, is it possible she’s lying? Yes.

Is it possible that Biden RAPED HER? YES!

The bottom line is this- IT NEEDS TO BE TAKEN SERIOUSLY AND LOOKED INTO by people who aren’t being party hacks and rape apologists. This is what is involved in fucking VETTING PROCESS when you’re a presidential candidate, otherwise you get psychotic assclowns like trump! Wake the fuck up, people! Your hypocrisy is on fire out here for all to see!

Whether you believe Tara Reade or Biden, don’t you want to get to the bottom of this and clear it all up? If she’s found to be telling the truth, do you NOT want to see justice done for her?

If an investigation honestly clears Biden, wouldn’t it only help his campaign by clearing his name so that people won’t feel like they’re having to pick between the RED RAPIST and the BLUE RAPIST this November?

Regardless of what you believe, SURELY we can all agree on THIS MUCH: This has to be taken seriously and it has to be brought to light with a complete, fair and unbiased investigation so we can move on. Either she’ll get justice because she’s being truthful or Biden can continue his campaign because he’s being truthful. Until it is, there are a lot of us out here that won’t vote for Joe (or trump, so shut the fuck up with the bullshit false narratives trying to blame me if/when biden loses to that cock-thistle trump, I am NOT supporting him by not voting for biden; grow the fuck up there).

I already hated Biden to begin with. Unlike you desperate Dem stoners out there, I haven’t forgotten his shitty attacks against SS and Medicare/Medicaid, his support of NAFTA, his support of segregation and willingness to work with racists and to help the goddamn GOP achieve their goals. I remember that this babbling old asshat was all gung-ho for Iraq and Afghanistan! It would have taken a lot of pride swallowing to allow myself to yet AGAIN be compromised by the DNC like I was in 2016 to vote for Joe in the fucking FIRST place.

With all the creepy tales out there ON RECORD already about how creepy and touchy-feely he’s been to female staffers, feeling them up and sniffing their hair, I’d have decked the motherfucker if he did that to one of my daughters. Now, given this case with Ms. Reade, I don’t doubt that this happened and if you hypocritical shitgibbons want to abandon your rage against Cosby, Weinstein, Kavenaugh AND trump so that you can prop up YOUR rapist of choice, you’re not exactly convincing ME to vote for POTUS at all.

Due Process. You’ve been bitching about it for years. Lead by fucking example or go full GOP double-standard and show me you’re a hypocrite who is willing to sell out because you’re cheap and afraid of losing to trump instead of having a pair of whatever motivates you enough to challenge this and front a more viable candidate.

It’s only may, kids. There’s time to deal with this and for fuck sake do it because it’s the fuckin’ RIGHT THING TO DO and you goddamn KNOW IT!

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esonetwork · 4 years

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Tiger Kings, Snyder Cuts, and direct-to-streaming blockbusters: Entertainment in the time of COVID-19

New Post has been published on https://esonetwork.com/tiger-kings-snyder-cuts-and-direct-to-streaming-blockbusters-entertainment-in-the-time-of-covid-19/

Tiger Kings, Snyder Cuts, and direct-to-streaming blockbusters: Entertainment in the time of COVID-19

As an entertainment blogger, finding topics to write about this year has been somewhat of a challenge. Normally I have my blog schedule all neatly planned out, based on what movies are coming to the theater.

Of course, pretty much all the big spring and summer blockbusters have been moved to a later time, although of course due to the uncertainty surrounding COVID-19, those release dates may have to be moved again if quarantine procedures must be reinstated.

I’d initially thought this time might be a great opportunity to do a blog series project similar to my Western blog-a-thon earlier this year, but pandemic anxiety and the loneliness of the quarantine have made staying motivated challenging. I find myself turning to entertainment comfort food (a.k.a. watching Star Wars again for the billionth time and then staring longingly out the window and remembering what it was like to go to a movie theater).

Return of the (Tiger) King

Anyway, I finally got around to watching one of the more unusual hits during this pandemic: Netflix’s “Tiger King,” a documentary about private zoo owner Joe Exotic. The show is billed as a tale of “murder, mayhem, and madness” and honestly that doesn’t even begin to capture just how wild this show is. At numerous points, I found myself staring at the screen and thinking, “There is NO WAY this can be real.”

Even if you gather all the world’s best creative writers and told them to come up with the most outlandish story possible, I don’t think they could top the true story of “Tiger King.” If this show had come out before 2020, I don’t think I would have made it past the first episode. But 2020 has been so crazy that somehow it fits right in. The fact we’re all stuck in our homes and the world is awful right now provided the perfect environment for this show to become a viral hit.

I don’t even really know how to describe this show, other than that it must be seen to be believed. It features a feud (which you’ve probably heard about, thanks to Internet memes) that takes place between Joe Exotic and tiger sanctuary owner Carole Baskin (who may or may not have murdered her husband). The disappearance of Baskin’s husband is just one of the many over-the-top subplots this show has. In fact, it’s not even necessarily the craziest.

Ultimately, I wasn’t sure how to feel about the show after I finished watching it. I wanted to see it because it was a viral hit and everyone was talking about it, but in the end it actually made me feel a little sad. Because once you look past the eyebrow-raising drama, the real victims are the tigers who are bred solely for the purpose of entertaining people and who are not always treated with proper care and respect.

While Joe Exotic is getting a lot of attention right now, I hope that everyone who watched this show came away with an increased awareness of why people shouldn’t be keeping exotic animals like tigers as pets and why the breeding of these animals should be left to licensed, accredited zoos that can take care of these animals and that have their interests at heart.

To cut or not to cut

Though this entertainment news was not a surreal as “Tiger King,” I was still more than a little shocked by the announcement that the mythical “Snyder cut” of the Justice League movie did, in fact, exist, and it will be coming to HBO Max in 2021.

If you’re a geek, you’ve probably heard about all the drama surrounding the so-called Snyder cut of “Justice League,” but just in case, here’s a quick recap.

“Justice League” was released in 2017 to disappointing critical reviews and box office returns. Joss Whedon finished up the project after Zack Snyder had to depart the production due to a personal tragedy. The final film felt like a mishmash of Snyder and Whedon’s very different personal styles, and for a while now, certain fans have been quite vocal about wanting to see a specific Zack Snyder cut of the movie.

I always saw #ReleasetheSnyderCut as a quirky social media trend that would eventually fade away, but apparently Hollywood was actually listening and now the Snyder cut is a real thing. They’re even devoting a reported $30 million+ to the project.

Is this new cut a cash grab that won’t be that different from the version we saw in theaters? Maybe. But I have to confess that I’m already hooked; I will pay my hard-earned money to watch this alternate version, simply because I’m dying of curiosity. I did not really enjoy “Justice League,” but I’m actually a “Batman v. Superman” apologist, so I’m interested in seeing what Snyder comes up with here.

“Batman v. Superman” is a deeply flawed movie, but there are moments of greatness that it doesn’t receive enough credit for. Maybe “Justice League: The Snyder Cut” will still be a raging dumpster fire, but I’m intrigued enough to check it out.

As a side note, I am a little troubled by the concept of fans demanding a redo of a movie they didn’t like. Blockbusters, by their very nature, aim to be crowd-pleasers, but there’s also a danger of film makers being so concerned by audience reception that they’re afraid to try anything bold or ground-breaking. I don’t believe that “fans making demands of creators” is a very healthy process for creating art.

On the other hand, one could argue that “Justice League” suffered due to studio interference, and if the Snyder cut is a success, maybe Warner Bros. will give more directors freedom to follow their own vision for a project.

Skipping the theater?

Finally, an interesting trend we’re seeing in terms of entertainment in our new COVID world is that more films are bypassing a traditional theatrical release and going straight to streaming.

In some cases, it may be a good thing, such as Disney’s poorly reviewed “Artemis Fowl” that probably would have flopped at the box office.

Even as someone who deeply loves the movie theater experience, I’m okay with having a mix of films, with some going straight to streaming and others that start in the theater. I still think a movie theater is the best place to see a movie, but not every film necessarily needs to be seen on a giant screen.

I hope that as theaters are able to safely reopen, the industry will find a balance between in-person and on-demand.

#Artemis Fowl #Justice League #snyder cut #streaming #Tiger King #Zack Snyder

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alyxeris · 5 years

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attempting to write more and to remember better. a lot of what i write here this time isn’t going to be good but it needs to be written down. going to put it under the jump because it could be triggering for some people.

i’ve been having anxiety attacks all week. i was sexually assaulted months ago and it’s just now really registering for me. i dissociated hard from it. and right as i started dealing with it, someone in town committed suicide...he was a rapist. so now i’m listening to all these people say all this rape apologist shit, and honestly i’m scared. if i told them what’s happened to me, how would they react? would they even care? (mind you, none of the people spouting this shit are my friends because fuck that shit.)

i’m angry. i’ve spent months trying to make sense of it, trying to figure out or justify they’re behavior. oh they were just confused. no, they were predatory and backed me into a vulnerable state and took advantage of me. and then they tried to say that i was a lot of emotional labor afterwards. they’re exactly the same as the two other people i’m not fond of in the world right now. shitty people avoiding accountability and playing victim so no one scrutinizes their actions. it was a stranger i had the misfortune of meeting once, so there’s no accountability.

yesterday was mostly good though, some buds from NC were in town. they’re sweethearts and i get to see them again in florida this weekend. my first vacation in years. me and my buds dressed up for halloween. i dressed as eris, naturally. i cried a lot last night. my friends were there for me and didn’t make me feel embarrassed about it. joe pointed out i always seemed miserable around him which made me start crying again, and i told him to stop. it’s not about him right now, it’s about how fucking traumatized i am. i think they thought he said something shitty though, so ryann and rae walked me home and hugged me and reminded me they love me. it felt so much better. i have so much love for everyone holding me together right now. i can’t wait to road trip with them. this can’t come at a more needed time honestly.

i’m lost these days. i don’t know how to even begin to heal all this hurt i have. i need a lot of care, and there’s not a lot of people around who can do that. i’m both furious with joe and i miss him. i still don’t know how the fuck he could do this to me. i cry a lot. i can count more days i haven’t cried than i have. i hate my job. i hate the drama in this town. i like being alone a lot these days, but i also really need care. i need safe people to rebuild my trust with. i’m scared. i’m absolutely fucking terrified. i feel so completely broken, and i don’t know how to make myself okay again. weirdly my self-worth is at a high though. i know i’m worth getting better. i just don’t know how to get better.

anyway, there’s that rambling this isn’t very introspective or poetic like i normally write these. there’s just no other way to say that the things that have happened to me and how i have been treated has been supremely fucked up.

#alyxeris #personal #mental health #seriously this has a lot of fucked up shit in it so please don't read if that could hurt you

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bhvonbaseball-blog · 5 years

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Why Baseball's Hall of Fame Must Stand Firm Against Steroids

From: B.H.V., a baseball fan in Lawrence, Kansas. To: HOF Chairman Jane Forbes Clark, HOF Board of Directors, Living HOFers, and Writers who Voted for Clean Sport

Dear Chairman Clark, Thank you for taking time to read my letter.

I’m writing you because I’m deeply concerned about the Baseball Hall of Fame and its continued integrity and relevance.

Known steroid users are approaching imminent induction.

Clean sport is essential, and I fear that these inductions will disgrace, shame, and scuttle our cherished institution. We also stand to lose the integrity of the game and the reputation of the Hall of Fame.

In this letter I’ll lay out briefly the context, problem, and a possible solution.

CONTEXT During the 2000s baseball had its first major reckoning with the Steroid Era. The rippling effects of the BALCO investigation, Congressional hearings, and Mitchell Report highlighted and captured that decade’s prevailing outrage from fans, media, and the government. We believed that baseball’s home run records, batting titles, and MVP awards were earned by clean and legitimate play on the field.

This outrage prompted reforms including drug-testing and penalties.

It was unthinkable that steroid cheaters one day would reach striking distance of Hall of Fame induction. But that’s where we stand today.

I am saddened and angered that we’ve reached this point only a decade following investigations which uncovered the truth.

AN EXISTENTIAL CRISIS Our Hall of Fame faces the gravest existential crisis in our 84-year history.

Please consider the harm in honoring steroid users alongside existing baseball greats.

Do we want living Hall of Famers skipping induction ceremonies, as Vice Chairman Joe Morgan has asked? Do we want Induction Weekend turning into a media spectacle and a farce? This could brew discontent and division among those who cherish baseball.

How can parents warn their children not to take steroids, when steroid cheaters are glorified with plaques in the Hall of Fame Gallery?

Can we condone the Hall of Fame’s fading into cultural irrelevance, as fewer visitors pass through our gates and jeopardize our financial stability?

TELLING BASEBALL’S STORY AND HONORING BASEBALL’S GREATS Steroid apologists advance straw-man arguments including the following: “Should the Hall of Fame be a museum where we document and tell the story of baseball, or should the Hall of Fame be a shrine where we honor baseball’s greats?”.

To me, this argument is binary, misleading, and dishonest. It also shirks us of our responsibility to be custodians of the game.

To clarify, the Hall of Fame has two sections.

One section is a museum, which tells baseball’s story.

The other section is a plaque gallery, which honors baseball’s greats.

The museum features un-scrubbed, asterisk-free, and raw numbers. It showcases equipment and artifacts from players who acquired 762 home runs, seven Cy Young awards, batting titles, MVP honors, and eight-figure contracts. The museum lists records and makes no distinctions between records obtained by steroid use and those earned by hard work.

The museum cannot tell baseball’s complete history by excluding steroid users. So it includes them. The museum tells the unvarnished story — good and bad — of a 150-year-old sport. Virtually no one voices serious complaints about the museum and its exhibits. The museum provides a showcase for and a narrative about the game. This is as it should be.

On the other hand, the plaque gallery features players upon whom we bestow honors. Traditionally, admission to this plaque gallery has been selective. Admission has been granted after careful deliberation over honorees’ adherence to the spirit and principles of the game.

The plaque gallery is not a shrine, and its honorees are not saints. Some honorees are highly flawed yet decent individuals. Other honorees, by today’s standards, are beyond redemption. These honorees carried out deeds and bore attitudes in conflict with good sport and human decency. But the mistakes of our forbearers don’t absolve us of the responsibility to get elections right during our time. Just as we are required to do in our criminal justice system, we are charged to handle HOF elections justly today, even if elections were handled wrongly in the past.

To reiterate, our Hall of Fame does two things: It tells baseball’s story, and it honors baseball’s greats. This is a tradition worth keeping.

RECENT HALL OF FAME VOTING Since 1936, the Baseball Writers Association of America (BBWAA) has handled HOF voting privileges.

Five years ago, the BBWAA gave less than 36% support to steroid cheaters. Cheaters’ candidacies seemed dead.

Since then, writers have advanced arguments like the straw man argument I mentioned earlier. Many others have parroted and adopted these arguments to justify voting ‘yes’ for steroid cheaters. In addition, the larger voter base has turned over, as newer writers acquire voting privileges, and older writers lose voting privileges.

Here’s where we stand: Baseball’s two most infamous steroid cheaters have attained a supermajority of nearly 60% of BBWAA votes. They are barreling toward the 75% they need for election. Weak newcomer classes will debut in 2020 and 2021, and as a result the two steroid cheaters will be elected – soon.

After that, in 2022 a three-time MVP will debut on the ballet. In the 2013 Biogenesis scandal he confessed steroid abuse to criminal investigators representing the Drug Enforcement Agency. His 2022 ballot debut will compound the Hall of Fame’s steroid crisis. Voters, having elected the first two steroid cheaters, will find it difficult to deny this newcomer the same honor.

In all, BBWAA voters have been driving this march toward inducting steroid users. These voters are driven by groupthink, peer pressure, and false logic.

PRIVILEGE, RESPONSIBILITY, AND RESPECT FOR THE PROCESS For years BBWAA voters have been abusing and disgracing their election privileges.

Some BBWAA voters submit blank protest ballots, lowering voting percentages for all Hall of Fame candidates. Other BBWAA voters ‘trade horses’ with fellow writers by snubbing surefire HOF candidates in order to boost viability of down-ballot candidates. Other voters select only one or two candidates, an irresponsible voting practice when recent ballots have featured seven or more deserving candidates.

These BBWAA voters – and there have been many – dishonor HOF voting and make a mockery of the process.

How can we defend continuing this 84-year tradition, of entrusting BBWAA voters with HOF-voting honors and responsibilities?

PROPOSAL: HALL OF FAME VOTING COMMITTEE We should establish a hall of fame voting committee. This will align our process with those of other sports’ halls of fame.

This voting committee ought to be large, balanced, and averse to cronyism. Its mix should include Hall of Famers, executives, and people who study, write about, and broadcast baseball for a living.

In addition the committee must include analytics experts, who can champion players undervalued by traditional baseball statistics. In today’s game all 30 MLB teams employ analytics to drive their scouting, drafting, and payroll decisions. Analytics devotees on the committee can help us re-assess and promote players overlooked by the Hall of Fame. Already, analytics devotees have championed the causes of Ted Simmons, Lou Whittaker, Kenny Lofton, Billy Wagner, Bert Blyleven, Ron Santo, and Alan Trammell. Because of these efforts, the latter three players gained long-awaited and well-deserved elections to the HOF.

Committee members must be pledged to clean sport. The HOF should clarify guidelines regarding steroid use, and it should secure signed commitments from members to weigh steroid use with disfavor.

---------------

Committee voting is far from unprecedented. The halls of fame for basketball, football, and hockey all vote by committee. These halls of fame are well-attended and prosperous. And we have every reason to believe ours will be too.

Today’s active baseball players have high upside and Hall of Fame potential. These players will provide future committees with viable candidates for future HOF elections. By following other halls of fame, we will ensure that our Hall of Fame can survive and thrive. We will continue drawing visitors and flourishing for generations to come.

IN CLOSING Steroid users have stained our game. Steroid users have obscured and overshadowed accomplishments of clean teammates. Steroid users have banished clean teammates to languish in minor leagues, because clean players won’t cheat to gain an edge. Steroid users have perpetrated federal crimes involving FDA-controlled substances. After all, the U.S. government launched criminal investigations into the BALCO and Biogenesis scandals.

I ask you to act reasonably and as soon as possible. The longer we wait, the sooner our Hall of Fame will face an existential crisis, a crisis we’ve feared but not openly discussed.

We already might have inducted steroid users. We don’t know who – if any – they might be, and we can’t annul past mistakes.

But we can address the present. In going forward we can get it right by our fans and by our game. As best as we can, we can uphold the ideals of the sport we love.

Again, I sincerely thank you for reading my letter and for taking my suggestions into consideration.

Respectfully yours, B.H.V. in Lawrence, Kansas A fan of America’s greatest team sport

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queencitydispatch · 4 years

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"Please can we not make her mayor?"

I woke up today to this fascinating question regarding Cllr. Ana Bailão’s votes to uphold systemic oppression within the Toronto Police. “Please can we not make her mayor?”

It was a deceptively complex question that got me thinking of some of the fundamentals of activism, social change and politics, that I wanted to unpack this question bit by bit.

I’ve cut it into five sections: PLEASE, CAN, WE, NOT MAKE HER, MAYOR.

///

1. PLEASE

I assume this softens the meaning of the phrase - “I want her out of politics” is pretty harsh – especially in the context of a man publicly critiquing a woman. Yet it shows us something important – we are implying we need permission to participate in politics.

Why are we asking for permission? And to whom is this appeal directed? Last time I checked, I don’t need permission to do most things in life, including participating in the political process. Our US-based friends did not ask for permission when they recently revolted against their governments; they did it even though they faced police brutality, neo-Nazi paramilitaries, psychological warfare, a global pandemic and more.

The “please” comes out of the respectability politics that makes “Ontario” as a political entity so curious. “Please don’t gut our healthcare!” is not coming from a position of strength. (Anyway, it’s much easier for progressives to walk back overzealousness in the name of justice than it is for people to walk back bigotry.)

To best challenge power, we must never apologize for having ambitious convictions. We need to champion big ideas, even if they’re ahead of the curve. Two months ago, police reform would have been considered impossible in America. And they were right, it was impossible...under the existing model. So they changed the model.

Change – especially lasting change – comes from the grassroots, so while it’s not a bad thing to support progressive political candidates, parties and organizations, it is *significantly* more important to support issues-based activists and organizations (i.e. if you give $10 monthly to the NDP, why not also give $10 to your favourite advocacy group?). Issues-based groups are formed to challenge one specific cog of power at a time and can therefore deliver deep, fundamental and long-lasting impacts. (Plus…this is a great way for potential candidates to gain some experience; get those ppl knocking on doors now and they’ll do much better in 2022.)

2. CAN

If we are asking “do we, as a community, have the capacity to elect someone better?” The answer to this is yes, but if we’re instead asking “will someone within the existing structure please FINALLY get off their ass and challenge her?” then we might ask ourselves why this hasn’t already happened. The civic left has largely allowed Cllr. Bailão (and, to a lesser extent, Mayor Wonderbread, who is merely a pathetic, respectable version of Rob Ford) to go unchallenged because she’s been deemed impossible to beat, but by not challenging her, the civic left has allowed her career to continue essentially unfettered because they don’t want to spend resources on a race they’re unlikely to win. If only there were some other downtown districts where a new, young generation of activists can start to build their careers…except the seats available are full with straight white boy progressives.

Why does the civic left protect Gord Perks, Joe Cressy and Mike Layton? Like…honestly…I just don't see what the big deal about Joe Cressy is. He bumped Ausma Malik out of the 2018 election instead of doing the right thing and making way for a supremely talented racialized woman like I'd hope someone committed to true justice would. There is even a movement in the democratic party to ask white men to not run in safe seats. [This paragraph and the next have been edited for tone, thank you to Colin Burns for encouraging me to rethink my words and my misdirected anger, my frustration naturally lies with Cllr. Bailāo's behaviour.]

Gord Perks verged into alt-left territory last year as a free-speech absolutist and consequently an apologist for bigotry when he should have defended trans folk. He even shared his disappointing thoughts publicly (yup, he did, they’re still up, don’t @ me on this one, you’ll regret it: http://gordperks.ca/toronto-public-library-chief-librarians-decision/) so considering who he seems to be, we can do better after 14 years? (TL;DR – there’s need for renewal in a lot of parts of our movements, and the labour movement is no exception.)

Mike Layton is a lovely man with his heart in the right place. I’ve volunteered for him and would gladly do it again. It therefore pains me to recognize that his last name is more than a name. I’m happy for everything he (and his team) has contributed in a rapidly changing district. My concern is that lefties can’t afford to support dynasties in the same way that liberals and conservatives can, especially in downtown districts where our odds of winning are good and where we ought to be supporting talented Black, Trans, Indigenous, disAbled and economically-disadvantaged candidates that are already on the front lines of social change. (This list is illustrative, not exhaustive.) By the time of the next election, Mike Layton will have been there for 12 years. Perhaps it’s time for him to open an opportunity for others.

3. WE

Who is “we”? Is it people in this district? Is it people in Toronto? Is it progressives? Whoever can identify this “we” and mobilize them will have the best shot of defeating her. This is the “coalition” people describe as needed to win election. Of course, this includes whoever’s running for office and their team. That organizing work needs to start right now if there’s going to be any chance of a lefty winning this seat in 2022. (If you think she isn’t already considering her council seat successor, remember that her old boss was Mario Silva, who was *coincidentally* Davenport’s City Councillor and MP for a combined 16 years.)

4. NOT MAKE HER

This is maybe the biggest hurdle to get over since “NOT ANA BAILAO” is not an option on the ballot. Considering there are no formal (lol) parties or slates on council, her name recognition is her biggest electoral asset, so a keep-it-safe campaign won’t work. Plus her public image is fairly non-toxic, so as pissed off as we all are, most people won’t be swayed by a STOP BAILAO campaign from the left (the trope of the conservative woman can be very powerful – thanks Maggie – so expect her campaign to lean pretty typically right).

When we say “Cllr. Bailão should not be Mayor” we rob ourselves of the ability to say “I think this person would make a great mayor” or “these are the some of the values I want in a mayor.” – and I don’t mean just of the City Council types. (At this point, Josh Marlow is the other councilor to watch.)

I hate hearing “why can’t we have AOC or Jacinta Arden or Anne Hidalgo or Ilhan Omar?” They didn’t come out of thin air. We already have those people here, we just haven’t elevated them to where they can make a difference and this is why. (Also, lefties, let’s seriously push for term limits and ranked ballots…especially the term limits, most ppl out there love the idea, it costs zero dollars and ensures districts have a healthy amount of turnover.)

5. MAYOR

Toronto City Council is a “weak mayor” system. The Mayor need council approval for pretty much everything important. The Mayor will find success or failure on how well he can build a team of reliable allies on council. It’s something thing Mayor Wonderbread does too well: his allies don’t offer a lot of different views. A hypothetical Mayor Bailão would probably do similar.

So then how rigid should a politician be? Are they supposed to be trustees, where we trust them to do what’s best for us and we have a check-in every 4 years? Or are they supposed to be conduits of public opinion with little regard for context? Or is a councillor meant to reflect the demographics of their district, even though they can only truly embody one set of lived experiences as an individual? Or perhaps, in the case of Cllr. Bailão, someone not dedicated to steering the ship but merely running the engine, not caring where it sails even though we've seen icebergs on the horizon? We’ve grown up in a SimCity generation where we think the mayor can make whatever they want happen. As great as that might sound sometimes, in a democracy, accountability matters. But it must come with a recognition that SimCity mayors don't fear the wrath of the voters.

///

I want to recognize that a 10% reallocation is fucking pathetic and still Toronto council couldn’t do it…but at least we know where we stand, and with whom.

We often look at politics as a sport or a soap opera, and it feels great when your team scores points or your favourite character delivers a knockout performance. Even I was like “dang girl” when Nancy Pelosi defiantly ripped up the President’s speech. I was also touched by Jagmeet Singh’s touching display of emotion the day after he was ejected from the House of Commons for calling out bigotry. But that’s not politics, that’s a long running TV drama series, so as disappointed as I am in what happened, I’m not gonna yell at her in the street because White Man Raging is not a great look these days…or ever.

So let’s not make this about my neighbour, Cllr. Ana Bailão. Let’s make it about the system of oppression she has willingly chosen to uphold and tearing that motherfucker down piece by piece.

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nigeiadigitalmarketingcompany · 5 years

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2:00PM Water Cooler 8/2/2019

Digital Elixir 2:00PM Water Cooler 8/2/2019

By Lambert Strether of Corrente

Trade

“5 Smart Reasons to Tax Foreign Capital” [Michael Pettis, Bloomberg]. “Senators Tammy Baldwin and Josh Hawley have introduced a bill that would require the Federal Reserve to manage the foreign-exchange value of the U.S. dollar to achieve balance in the U.S. capital account…. The bill would task the Fed with implementing a variable tax on foreign purchases of U.S. dollar assets whenever foreigners direct substantially more capital into the U.S. than Americans direct abroad, something they have been doing for more than four decades…. Today’s U.S. trade deficits are driven mainly by capital flow imbalances, and so the most effective way to reduce them is with restrictions on capital inflows. Tariffs are much less efficient and only work by distorting the real economy and rearranging bilateral imbalances.” •

Politics

“But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature?” –James Madison, Federalist 51

“They had one weapon left and both knew it: treachery.” –Frank Herbert, Dune

“2020 Democratic Presidential Nomination” [RealClearPolitics] (average of five polls). As of July 31: Biden dips to 32.0% (32.2), Sanders up to 16.4% (16.2%), Warren up at 14.8% (14.3%), Buttigieg flat at 5.6% (5.5%), Harris up at 11% (10.8%), others Brownian motion. All the bottom-feeders — except O’Rourke! — went down.

* * *

2020

“Detailed Maps of the Donors Powering the 2020 Democratic Campaigns” [New York Times]. “Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont has a huge lead over other Democratic presidential candidates in the number of individual donors they have each accumulated so far.” • This is very good data-driven reporting. Kudos to the Times. Here is a map of individual donors for all the candidates:

And here’s a map of all the candidates but Sanders:

I think the story these maps tell is the strong influence of local oligarchies, not just for “favorite children” like O’Rourke and Klobuchar, but for Biden and Harris as well. Sanders, by this metric, is the only truly national candidate, with Warren reaching for that status, but doing poorly in the South.

* * *

Candidates Answer CFR’s Questions: Joe Biden Council on Foreign Relations

“What role will climate change play in the 2020 presidential elections” [Yale Climate Connections]. “The roughly two dozen Democratic presidential candidates by and large have voiced support for a debate devoted exclusively to climate change and climate policy. The Democratic National Committee has remained reluctant to hold single-topic debates, but outside groups are planning a presidential candidate climate forum on September 23rd…. At that point, both major political parties increasingly see the writing on the wall, and candidates from both sides of the aisle will come to compete for the voting public’s favor on climate change. The heat is rising.”

“Why We’re Challenging the 2020 Democrats to a Climate Summit [Updated]” [Gizmodo]. From last week, still germane: “On September 23, 2019, The New Republic and Gizmodo will host a presidential climate summit in New York City. We’ll be joined by the League of Conservation Voters, giving us a leg up on the candidates’ environmental voting records and 2020 climate plans. We’ve also brought on Columbia University’s Earth Institute, ensuring our questions will be in line with current climate science… We hope all the candidates in the 2020 Democratic field will find a way to take part, because the climate crisis deserves to take center stage in the 2020 primaries. For now, this will be a forum-type event; candidates will appear on stage one by one, to be asked questions by our moderator and others. During that time, they’ll be asked to respond to key policy statements and claims now shaping the emergent Democratic climate agenda. We are, however, prepared to change our summit to a debate if the DNC changes its rules, which bar candidates from participating in non-DNC hosted debates. We are also willing to work with the DNC to make our event the officially sanctioned Democratic climate debate of the 2020 election. Either way, we intend to host a robust discussion with and among the candidates.” • Yet again, the DNC pins the bogometer.

* * *

Gabbard (D)(1): “Tulsi: A Living Reminder of Iraq’s Liars and Apologists” [The American Conservative]. “When Chris Matthews asked Gabbard about Biden’s support for the Iraq war, she said, ‘It was the wrong vote. People like myself, who enlisted after 9/11 because of the terrorist attacks, were lied to. We were betrayed.’ Her moral clarity is rare in the political fog of the presidential circus. She cautions against accepting the ‘guise of humanitarian justification for war,’ and notes that rarely does the American government bomb and invade a country to actually advance freedom or protect human rights. Gabbard’s positions are vastly superior to that of the other young veteran in the race, Pete Buttigieg. The mayor of South Bend recently told New York that one of his favorite novels is The Quiet American, saying that its author, Graham Greene, ‘points out the dangers of well-intentioned interventions.’ Buttigieg’s chances of winning the nomination seem low, and his prospects of becoming a literary critic appear even lower. The Quiet American does much more than raise questions about interventions: it is a merciless condemnation of American exceptionalism and its attendant indifference to Vietnamese suffering.”

Harris (D)(1): “Victims question Kamala Harris’ record on clergy abuse” [Associated Press]. “Survivors of clergy abuse and their attorneys say that Harris’ record on fighting sex abuse within the Catholic Church is relevant as the U.S. senator from California campaigns for the presidency as a tough-on-crime ex-prosecutor who got her start prosecuting child sexual abuse cases. They complain that Harris was consistently silent on the Catholic Church’s abuse scandal — first as district attorney in San Francisco and later as California’s attorney general. In a statement to The Associated Press, the Harris campaign underscored her record of supporting child sex abuse victims but did not address her silence regarding victims abused by Catholic clerics.” • So Gabbard was pretty nice; she didn’t mention Mnuchin, and she didn’t mention sex abuse either.

Harris (D)(2):

Kamala Harris on Tulsi Gabbard’s comments regarding her record as a prosecutor: “I’m obviously a top tier candidate and so I did expect that I would be on the stage and take hits tonight. … I’m prepared to move on” #DemDebate pic.twitter.com/kPNYfBs2rB

— CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) August 1, 2019

People who get totally owned are always “prepared to move on.”

Sanders (D)(1): Holy moley:

I’m not only going to be Commander in Chief. I am going to be Organizer in Chief. pic.twitter.com/bBWYvN4iyj

— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) August 1, 2019

Sanders (D)(2): “What the Left Must Do” [Jeremy Toback, Medium]. “Sanders is building his campaign around a clear commitment to transformative universal policies, which create the solidarity necessary to win them. The others are not. Sanders is using his campaign infrastructure and volunteers to create solidarity on the ground with workers and unions. The others are not. Sanders is coalescing the movement necessary to win the fight against powerful, monied interests. The others are not. None of the DEM candidates allegedly in Sanders’s lane exhibit even the most rudimentary understanding of the scale of this fight or the political power needed to win it. Sanders has made political revolution a mantra.”

Warren (D)(1): “The old Democratic trade paradigm is collapsing. Good riddance.” [The Week]. “Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren is now proposing a bold overhaul of how the U.S. conducts its trade negotiations. It’s only a matter of time before the old trade paradigm dies an ignoble and well-deserved death…. [Warren] would replace the current wildly business-slanted negotiation process with one that is carried out in the open, and prioritizes “labor rights, human rights, environmental protection, combating climate change, heading off international tax avoidance…. Critically, Warren would also include the welfare of other countries as part of the considerations.” • Warren’s plan just got savaged on the WaPo Op-Ed pages, so that’s a good sign.

Yang (D)(1): “Yang campaign slams DNC over poll qualification criteria for September debate” [The Hill]. “Andrew Yang’s presidential campaign accused the Democratic National Committee (DNC) of rejecting one of the two NBC polls that the tech entrepreneur had promoted as having qualified him for the September presidential debate, which left him short of making the stage for the crucial showdown…. ‘A particularly important rule in our debate framework is the requirement that candidates’ initial qualifying poll be conducted by different sponsors, or if by the same sponsor, in different geographies,’ [DNC senior adviser Mary Beth Cahill] wrote [in response]. ‘The intent of this rule is to avoid scenarios in which a single poll sponsor or media outlet is responsible for qualifying a candidate through multiple sets of results in the same geography.’” • Which is fine, but isn’t Cahill’s hidden assumption that the pollsters are independent of the party? MSNBC certainly isn’t!

MI: “Democrats Spend Little Time Courting Union Voters in Debate in Crucial Michigan” [Bloomberg]. “Hillary Clinton lost Michigan by less than 11,000 votes out of almost 4.8 million cast. In doing so she got 75,000 fewer votes in Wayne County, which includes Detroit and nearby towns, and 26,000 fewer in Genesee County, which includes Flint, than Barack Obama did in 2012. There are votes to be had if Democrats can bolster turnout. In a mostly white, working-class county like Macomb — a swing district and much studied as the birthplace of Reagan Democrats — Obama won with less than 52% of the vote. It’s always hotly contested.” • Learned nothing, forgotten nothing.

The Debates

“The Democratic Debates Were Built to Fail” [Frank Rich, New York Magazine]. “In the end, perhaps the most salient fact to be taken away from the debates is the collapse in viewership: 8.7 million viewers tuned in the first night (second-night figures are not yet available as I write this), as opposed to 15.3 million viewers for the first Democratic debate a month ago and 18.1 million for the second. We’re down to the hard-core, highly engaged base of Democratic voters who probably are the least in need of the debates to make up their minds, plus Trump campaign strategists and scattered hate-watchers from the other side. It’s not hard to see why other viewers are staying away. The election is more than a year away. There are too many people onstage. The format is both counterproductive and actively annoying. There is no new face or new story that the broader public is thus far panting to see — and no new one emerged.” • MSNBC ran a far worse debate and got the best ratings. That’s life. Meanwhile, why can’t we put the debates on C-SPAN? Then this won’t happen:

Okay so as YouTubers, we’re used to dealing with a lot of shit. Adpocalypses, random demonetizations for no reason, algorithms redirecting to “safe” establishment media outlets and away from us. But this one really makes me furious (1/4)

— Secular Talk (@KyleKulinski) August 1, 2019

This YouTuber, among others, was deplatformed for using short, fair use-style clips from CNN’s “exclusive” coverage of the debates. That’s ridiculous and anti-democratic. If the debates were on C-SPAN, they’d be in the public domain, and the public wouldn’t be at the mercy of YourTube’s capricious moderation policies.

“Debates Identify Plenty of Democratic Divisions, but Not a Consensus Favorite” [New York Times]. “After nearly 10 hours of nationally televised and often contentious candidate forums, the Democratic hopefuls and their voters are plainly torn over how best to take on Mr. Trump and how aggressive a program they should embrace, particularly on health care and immigration. And far from coalescing around a possible nominee, Democrats are also sharply divided over what kind of standard-bearer would best bridge the larger generational, gender and racial differences shaping the party in the 2020 race.” • Nice erasure of class in that last sentence.

“The Real Winners of the Second Debate Were Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders” [The Nation]. “Granholm sighed after the second group of 10 Democratic presidential candidates finished the second night of the the second round of the exercises that the Democratic National Committee refers to as ‘debates.’ ‘This was a joyless debate,’ said Granholm. She was right. The front-runner, former vice president Joe Biden, took his expected hits on Wednesday night. The other leading contender on the stage, California Senator Kamala Harris, took some unexpected hits. Biden and Harris pushed back, sometimes effectively, sometimes not. But the second night of debating lacked the electricity, the energy, and the clarity of purpose that Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders brought to the first.” • Very true. However, I would like to see, for want of a better word, a little more “joy” from both Sanders and Warren. They’re both at the top of their game in the most important election of their (and our) lives, and I think a little exhiliration is in order. Oh, and Neera Tanden agrees with Frank Rich:

I’ve heard from die hard Dems from all over the country who have volunteered for many elections who told me they shut off the debate or watched in anger. And this last debate lost 50% of its audience from the first one. Politics is about addition; the debates seem to be repelling

— Neera Tanden (@neeratanden) August 2, 2019

Maybe if we rebranded “Medicare for America” to “Medicare Advantage Plus for Americans Who Want It.” Yeah, that’s the ticket…

RussiaGate

It still goes on, presumably funded:

But his emails.

What does Russia have on #LeningradLindsey? Why is he so willing to support Trump’s criminal behavior and aid and abet Putin’s attack on America?https://t.co/IPWSXIIknt

— The Daily Edge (@TheDailyEdge) August 2, 2019

First, #MoscowMitch. Now, #LeningradLindsey. What poor soul is being forced to come up with this reflex action-only nonsense? “Leningrad” was changed back to “Saint Petersburg” in 1991!

Realignment and Legitimacy

DSA National Convention in Atlanta:

Follow along live here:https://t.co/hQUFKy1Sbv#dsacon2019

— NYC-DSA Tech Action

(@NYCDSATechWG) August 2, 2019

Can’t really opine; I don’t know enough! There do seem to be rather a lot of factions. But somebody’s thinking:

Here’s some good info for all travelers, courtesy of @DemSocialists pic.twitter.com/Xo8fEim90m

— Annie Shields (@anastasiakeeley) August 2, 2019

Stats Watch

Employment Situation, July 2019: “How far along the rate-cut path will the Fed go? Maybe a bit further given a middling employment report where an important detail is pointing to big trouble for the next industrial production report” [Econoday]. “But a key detail is a decline in manufacturing hours… Even if wages aren’t rising that much, the availability of labor does show some tightening.”

Factory Orders, June 2019: “Capital goods that surged in last week’s advance data are revised down a bit in the factory orders report, limiting June’s monthly headline increase” which is still in consensus range [Econoday]. “Capital goods orders had been softening and duly raising concern at the Federal Reserve over the health of business investment; June’s jump does not fit into this pattern. If strength continues to appear in this reading, then a central concern for the Fed and its policy shift will be less pressing.”

Consumer Sentiment, July 2019 (Final): “Consumer sentiment did fall noticeably in June but stabilized well in July” [Econoday]. “The consumer, backed by solid job growth, looks to remain in place as the fundamental driver of the economy.”

International Trade, June 2018: “[B]oth imports and exports contracted” [Econoday]. “June’s trade report edges the trade debate deeper on the troubled side, but only slightly. Yet if the pattern continues and both exports and imports contract, the Federal Reserve’s concerns over the effects of slowing global trade, expressed by this week’s rate cut, will look more and more justified.”

Employment Situation: “Has the Jobs Report Become Irrelevant?” [Bloomberg]. “Everyone knows the labor market is the one part of the economy that is in stable shape. But even though unemployment is at a 50-year-low, it hasn’t been strong enough to keep growth from decelerating while Trump ratchets up the trade wars. And while the Fed knows the U.S. has held up better than most other economies, that won’t last forever given how interconnected the world’s economies are today…. The bond market is pricing in two more rate cuts for this year, just like it had before the jobs report. Going forward, the more important data for markets will be those reports that show how the broad economy, especially manufacturing, is responding to the escalating trade wars rather than what is happening with jobs and wages.” • “Everyone knows.”

The Bezzle: “Brixmor and former executives charged with accounting fraud by SEC, Justice Department” [Francine McKenna, MarketWatch]. “MarketWatch reported on Feb 11, 2016, that Brixmor used a non-GAAP metric that triggered incentive bonuses called “cash NOI” that starts with total property revenues and then also subtracts straight-line rent, above- and below-market rent amortization, and Brixmor’s share of cash net operating income from unconsolidated joint ventures. [Brixmore executives] Carroll, Pappagallo and Splain were each awarded bonuses in 2014 for exactly meeting the targeted $2.79 per share on the NOI measure. That non-GAAP metric was one of three quantitative metrics used to determine bonuses for the executives. Carroll received a bonus of $800,000, Pappagallo received $750,000, and Splain got $210,000.” • All in the six figures. Clearly, these pikers didn’t steal enough.

The Bezzle: “How Jaywalking Could Jam Up the Era of Self-Driving Cars” [New York Times]. “In New York, the unwritten rule is plain: Cross the street whenever and wherever — just don’t get hit. It’s a practice that separates New Yorkers from tourists, who innocently wait at the corner for the walk symbol. But if pedestrians know they’ll never be run over, jaywalking could explode, grinding traffic to a halt. One solution, suggested by an automotive industry official, is gates at each corner, which would periodically open to allow pedestrians to cross.” • As I keep saying: If your algo doesn’t work, change the inputs, in this case by. mandating on enormous infrastructure investment that would also destroy the street life of the city. On the bright side, we could sell advertising on the gates. Captive audience!

The Bezzle: “Electric scooters aren’t as green as they seem” [Axios]. “Electric scooters are often worse for climate change when compared to the transportation methods they’re displacing, according to what is likely the first-ever peer-reviewed study on the new trend…. The report’s ‘results show that dockless e-scooters consistently result in higher life cycle global warming impacts relative to the use of a bus with high ridership, an electric bicycle, or a bicycle per passenger-mile traveled. However, choosing an e-scooter over driving a personal automobile with a fuel efficiency of 26 miles per gallon results in a near universal decrease in global warming impacts’… The study finds that the global warming impact of an e-scooter, including how it’s made and during its use, is equal to about half the impact of an average gasoline-powered car per mile traveled.” • As usual, Silicon Valley dumps something into the public space and lets others handle the externalities.

The Bezzle: “Goldman Sachs is spending $100 million to shave milliseconds off stock trades” [CNBC]. • No capital allocation issues in our economy, no sirree.

Honey for the Bears: “Wall Street’s Least-Loved Stock Is Now a Personal Loan Company” [Bloomberg]. “World Acceptance Corp., a company that specializes in small loans to people with limited credit, was already having a rough day after its first-quarter earnings miss. Now, an analyst downgrade has made it the least-loved stock on Wall Street…. World Acceptance is one of the largest small-loan consumer finance companies, operating 1,218 branches in 16 states as of June 30.” • So, we’ve got this great labor market, but…

Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 35 Fear (previous close: 43, Fear) [CNN]. One week ago: 60 (Greed). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Aug 2 at 1:01pm. • Restored at reader request. Note that the index is not updated daily, sadly.

The Biosphere

“These scientists found 2,500 years of economic history frozen in ice” [Grist]. “Lead pollution topped out near the end of the 20th century thanks to the 1970 Clean Air Act, which banned leaded gasoline, among other pollutants. The result: an 80 percent decrease in atmospheric lead levels, according to Chellman’s team’s findings. There’s still 60 times as much lead in the atmosphere as there was during the Middle Ages, but it’s evidence that regulatory measures are working.” • Onward to carbon!

“Warm Weather Brings Major Melting to Greenland” [NASA Earth Observatory]. “In late July 2019, a major melting event spread across the Greenland Ice Sheet. Billions of tons of meltwater streamed into the Atlantic Ocean throughout the month, making a direct and immediate contribution to sea level rise.” • Which, sadly, is not quantified in the article. There was apparently a similar, but less intense, event in 2012.

“Economics of the disintegration of the Greenland ice sheet” [William Nordhaus, PNAS]. That William Nordhaus. From the abstract: “A key finding is that, under a wide range of assumptions, the risk of GIS disintegration makes a small contribution to the optimal stringency of current policy or to the overall social cost of climate change. It finds that the cost of GIS disintegration adds less than 5% to the social cost of carbon (SCC) under alternative discount rates and estimates of the GIS dynamics.” • Here is one comment on the Nordhaus paper. Thread:

This is a good study that can be done within the bounds of the DICE model. But it is a bit ludicrous to treat large-scale changes to the earth system as a stand-alone event. Here’s one example: potential impacts to ocean circulation. https://t.co/rzkg4XbD5d

— Arvind P. Ravikumar (@arvindpawan1) August 2, 2019

Health Care

“When Did You Realize American Health Care Was Broken?” [New York Magazine]. From mid-July, still germane. An aggregation of horror stories, of which there are many: “Much of access has to do with money, but it also has to do with information — who can get it, and how it is (or isn’t) communicated. Below, we share stories from women who’ve experienced devastating (but not uncommon) encounters with the health-care system at every level: insurance companies, debt collectors, emergency rooms, and more.” • Yes, “access” is a red flag, but access to information adds a new wrinkle. More: “‘When I had a terrible stomach bug last year and couldn’t stop vomiting, I took an ambulance to the hospital. They gave me an IV, some strong anti-nausea meds, and a vanilla milkshake (I’d been vomiting for hours, so I was very dehydrated), and a few hours later, I was discharged. They charged me over $4,000 (and I have health insurance!) just for the ambulance ride! It shouldn’t be like this. $4,000 for an ambulance ride is ridiculous!’ — Madeline”

“Cancer patients are being denied drugs, even with doctor prescriptions and good insurance” [Fresno Bee]. “Norma Smith was diagnosed with stage-three cancer in December… Smith, a retired special education teacher in Fresno, and her husband, Rodney, a retired school psychologist and director of special education, consider their ‘very expensive’ health insurance coverage to be ‘the best.’ But that insurance didn’t ensure Smith would get the drugs she needed when facing CVS Specialty Pharmacy – the pharmacy their insurance required them to use. Cancer drugs prescribed by Smith’s oncologist were denied because they didn’t follow the standard protocol sequence of medications that Smith’s pharmacy benefit manager, CVS Caremark, had in their guidelines. That means pharmacy benefit managers have the authority to trump a doctor’s medical judgment without seeing patients or knowing their full medical history, and without accountability for the consequences of what happens to sick people. Smith is among thousands of documented cases of patients who have been denied needed medications in this way. Doctors and other medical professionals say these denials are only expected to get worse as the country’s largest health insurance companies and pharmacies are increasingly joining forces. These elusive middlemen with the authority to deny doctors’ prescriptions based on company policies are sometimes referred to as PBMs for short. ” • PBMs are being run by the Harkonnens, it seems.

Guillotine Watch

“Two Iowa football assistant coaches reach $800,000 in base salary” [Hawk Central]. “Iowa football strength and conditioning coach Chris Doyle and defensive coordinator Phil Parker have reached the $800,000 mark in annual base pay, according to documents obtained by the Des Moines Register through an open-records request.” • You could pay an entire department with that kind of money. And that might even have something to do with the university’s putative educational mission.

Class Warfare

Awesome:

“For more than three days, hundreds of coal miners and their allies have been blocking the tracks refusing to allow a load of coal that they mined from leaving the site.”

by @MikeElk

https://t.co/vRW7YhSkeF

— Heidi N. Moore (@moorehn) August 1, 2019

“Acts of Kindness, and the Underlying Rot – When `Good Stories’ Happen for Bad Reasons” [Portside]. “Sweet stories like these, the critics say, hide an underlying rot. Individual acts of kindness don’t solve systemic problems — in fact, they can do harm by glossing over deeper issues. ‘They reveal the deficiencies of public policy, but the interesting thing is people may not make that connection because a feel-good story has short-circuited that connection,’ said Lessie Branch, an academic with the Scholars Strategy Network and a senior fellow at the DuBois Bunche Center for Public Policy. She added, ‘So the frame, essentially, is individual deficiencies — not systemic issues — for why people need the rescues that we’re seeing.’”

“Review: Unions keep watch on corporations — Steven Greenhouse digs into labor’s battle” [Los Angeles Times]. “If labor’s predicament seems dire, its future may lie in a new approach — organizing low-wage workers whether or not they can be unionized. LAANE’s success is one example. Greenhouse describes others: the Coalition of Immokalee Workers raised pay for 35,000 workers and fought sexual abuse in Florida’s tomato fields with a successful boycott of Taco Bell; the Fight for $15 movement, funded by the Service Employees International Union, mounted a global campaign to raise pay at McDonald’s, and then branched out to support minimum-wage hikes in cities and states across the country, benefiting some 22 million workers. Those efforts may be having an impact. Public approval of unions has risen to 62%, the highest level since 2003. But the path forward for a diminished labor movement is far from clear. ‘In the balance,’ Greenhouse argues, ‘is the future of our economy and our democracy.’”

News of the Wired

“Tinkle, booger, flapjacks, schmuck. What makes a word funny?” [National Geographic]. Handy table:

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Readers, feel free to contact me at lambert [UNDERSCORE] strether [DOT] corrente [AT] yahoo [DOT] com, with (a) links, and even better (b) sources I should curate regularly, (c) how to send me a check if you are allergic to PayPal, and (d) to find out how to send me images of plants. Vegetables are fine! Fungi are deemed to be honorary plants! If you want your handle to appear as a credit, please place it at the start of your mail in parentheses: (thus). Otherwise, I will anonymize by using your initials. See the previous Water Cooler (with plant) here. Today’s plant (EW):

EW writes: “I was struck by the intense green in early April, low tide seaweeds.” From Maine.

* * *

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2:00PM Water Cooler 8/2/2019

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Poor Bret Easton Ellis. For someone I imagine to be rather fastidious – years ago, a friend of mine visited his New York apartment, where he was a little surprised to be told not to touch any of its owner’s CDs – this can hardly be the easiest of Monday mornings. For one thing, Virgin Atlantic has lost his luggage. Ahead of my arrival at his pristine London hotel, he had to dash out to buy deodorant; his black tracksuit bottoms are faintly marked with a stain that may (or may not) be airline toothpaste. For another, I have an absolutely stinking cold. In the bar where we’re to talk – it’s called the Punch Room, which is appropriate, given the territory covered by his new book – he sits down, not at my table, but at the one next to it, which makes us both laugh. Is he really going to stay all the way over there? “Well,” he says, faux sheepish. “I’m so susceptible to these things, and I am on a book tour.” Reluctantly, he inches towards me.

Still, he is such a good sport. His manner is warm, and his face – pinker and heavier now than at the height of his literary fame, and topped with hair that is silver – bears a near-permanent smile. He talks and talks; he doesn’t watch his words; he is frequently very funny and sometimes a touch scabrous. All of which makes me wonder about the way he is treated both by some journalists and on social media. In the days before our meeting, I read a review of his new book that was so gratuitously spiteful, it fairly took the breath away. I also read an interview on the New Yorker website, one that had done brisk business on Twitter, causing indignation, outrage and glee wherever it appeared. People were saying that it dispatched the supposedly beyond-the-pale Ellis satisfyingly, and with utmost appropriateness. But it seemed to me to be mostly an exercise in baiting, interruption, disingenuousness and grandstanding on the part of its writer.

Ellis’s new book is his first for almost a decade, and his first work of nonfiction. It is called White, and is best described as a provocation, though it’s much more than that if you take the trouble to read it. Yes, there’s lots of goading about why he hates snowflakey millennials (“Generation Wuss”, as he has dubbed them). It attacks what he regards as the narcissism of the young, roundly dismisses the rush to offence and the cult of victimisation, and chases down the self-dramatising of those liberal Americans who must be passed the smelling salts at the mere mention of Donald Trump. Although he thinks the #MeToo movement had real meaning when it began, Ellis dislikes the way it has since extended to include, most recently, such supposed crimes as what some might call the overfriendliness of the former US vice-president Joe Biden. He is largely dismissive of identity politics, and despises the way that people can now be “cancelled” (erased from public life) over some relatively small but dumb thing they may have said in the past. Like I said, the book is a provocation – and it’s up to you, the reader, to choose to what degree you are prepared to allow yourself to be riled.

The first year of fame is always fun, then you spend the rest of your life trying not to be humiliated

But the essays in White also contain some pretty nifty film criticism; reading it, I felt for the first time in ages interested in Richard Gere again (and even, momentarily, in Charlie Sheen). There are interesting sections on Joan Didion and David Foster Wallace, and on what our cultural lives were like – more precious? More intensely felt? – before the internet. Ellis is good on his 1991 novel, American Psycho, and its strange prescience (we’ll come back to this). Above all, there are some neat flashes of memoir: in particular, an account of his 70s childhood in Sherman Oaks, Los Angeles, where he grew up the son of a wealthy property developer, and the friend of kids whose parents were directors and movie stars. As he notes, the world then was built for adults rather than children – something he experienced as freedom, and on which he looks back with gratitude. And here, perhaps, he places his finger firmly on one of the primary causes at the heart of the war of words that rages between his generation and that of his boyfriend of 10 years, the musician Todd Michael Schultz, who is 22 years his junior (yes, he lives with a millennial). What it comes down to is a question of timing, and of upbringing.

“I thought it was rather exciting,” he says, of a childhood that enabled him to see the films he wanted to see, and to read the books he wanted to read, unbridled by anxiety on the part of his carers (thanks to this, he developed as a teenager a passion for the films of Brian de Palma, the director of Carrie, Scarface and The Untouchables).

“This is not a blanket statement, but…” He guffaws, knowing full well that it absolutely is a blanket statement. “What I’ve noticed is a kind of helplessness in millennials. I didn’t realise this until lately, but I was on my own. My parents were narcissistic baby boomers, more interested in themselves than us [they would later divorce]. Not that they didn’t love us, but they were very wrapped up in their own lives.

“I do remember floating on my own. I had to grow up on my own. I had to figure things out for myself. I had some help. I’m not saying that I didn’t. But certainly, there wasn’t the overprotective bubble that so many of my friends raised their children in. Growing up, I didn’t know a single person on medication. None. On my boyfriend’s side of the aisle, though, there wasn’t anyone who wasn’t on something, including him. Growing up, I didn’t know anyone who wanted to victimised either; we wanted to be affected by stuff.” He emits a hammy sigh. “I don’t care if I sound old any more. I haven’t changed at all. I was the old man at 15.” He then launches into a brief and somewhat practised riff about the emotional support animals that people are now allowed to take on planes, should a medical professional have decreed such a creature beneficial to their mental health: “I can’t go anywhere without my chihuahua! Are you kidding me?”

White by Bret Easton Ellis review – sound, fury and insignificance

It is this mollycoddling, he believes, that accounts, in part, for what he regards as the total inability of his boyfriend’s generation to understand not only that others may have a different viewpoint to their own, but that it is entirely acceptable for them to do so. “It has disabled him in a lot of ways,” he says, of Schultz. White contains more than one account of his boyfriend’s liberal meltdowns in the face of Trump and his supporters. So how are things currently at their West Hollywood homestead? How did Schultz respond to the recent publication of the Mueller report? “He was very quiet for 24 hours,” says Ellis, not without satisfaction. “For two and a half years he had been praying for it: Mueller is going to save us. Then it came out, and it was: Mueller is a stooge. People have gotten so obsessed and so angry with Trump – you could say that they have been Trumped – and I have warned him about this. I have told him: you need cunning, you need a plan, you need to get someone good [as a candidate] and then you can get him out of there. But just screaming about the resistance and shouting that Russia is to blame for everything isn’t going to work.”

This makes me wonder: what’s the nature of their bond? (The two of them met at a dinner party.) “Mysterious!” whispers Ellis, loudly. Well, does Todd look to him for guidance? “Yes, he does. But I don’t know why it has lasted for 10 years. It is an intense friendship.” Does Todd make him laugh? “All the time, and I make him laugh, too. Also, what I’m talking about in the book takes up only about 10% of our time, though…” He can’t help himself. “Actually, he has become really anti-media, and against the Democratic party, too. He is a socialist, and he does believe in ‘tear it all the fuck down’, and I don’t believe that can ever happen in America. I think it’s a centrist country.” To be clear, however, Ellis also regards Trump as an “idiot” and “grotesque”. He did not vote for him, and thus is bewildered – or, at any rate, irritated – to be repeatedly described as an apologist for him. “Molly Jong-Fast, the daughter of Erica Jong, wrote this piece in the Daily Beast where she asked: How did he [Ellis] turn into this Maga cap-wearing ultra-conservative? These people have been raised to think their reactions to things are completely correct and that the other side is not only totally wrong but also therefore immoral, sexist, racist. All my book argues is: let’s have a conversation. But of course it has already been totalled in America. My ability to trigger millennials is insane.”

I have the impression that, unlike most writers, Ellis genuinely doesn’t care what people say in their reviews. On the page, he might sound pugnacious, even thin-skinned. But in person, he is cheerily blithe. Then again, for him it was ever thus. As he writes in White, to have a long-term career as a writer, it’s possible that you need to be hated as well as loved. When his first novel, Less Than Zero, made him famous at the age of just 21 – he was still a student at Bennington College when he completed this famously affectless account of the lives of a group of rich LA teenagers – it received as many bad reviews as good ones. “Simon & Schuster were taken to task for publishing the journals of a 21-year-old drug addict,” he says. “I remember newspaper op-eds about it, and it has been like that ever since. It’s just part of what my brand is.”

His third novel, American Psycho, starring the serial killer, investment banker and (yes!) Donald Trump worshipper, Patrick Bateman (later made into a faithful film starring Christian Bale and, more recently, a musical), was rejected by his publisher shortly before it was about to appear – when the decision was taken in November, 1990, its cover was already designed – after some at Simon & Schuster found themselves discomfited by what they saw as its misogynistic violence. In the end, Random House published it. Ellis sees the book now as something of a canary in the coal mine – and it’s hard not to disagree with him in a world where censorship, seen and unseen, is undoubtedly on the rise.

“That book wouldn’t be published now,” he says. “I mean, no one wanted to publish it then. Very few people came forward. I was just lucky. But what’s interesting is that I didn’t know until I was putting White together just how haunted I’d been by American Psycho. I can’t get away from Patrick Bateman. I mean, it was prescient, and not only because of Trump.” (Trump is mentioned 40 times in the novel, thanks to Bateman’s obsession with him; as Ellis writes in White, in the late 80s, Trump was, to some, an inspirational figure – and maybe this was why he felt more prepared than some on the left when he was elected president: “I once had known so many people who liked him.”)

At the time of American Psycho’s publication, he says, people conflated the crimes of Bateman with the attitudes of his creator – if Bateman was a woman-hater, then surely Ellis was, too – just as they’re now convinced that he supports Trump simply because he has had the temerity to criticise those who are opposed to the president. Thanks to this, he received death threats. Perhaps this is why it took him a while to admit that there were indeed things he and his most famous character had in common. The novel was born of the dislocation Ellis felt as he was writing it: if Bateman was living a double life, then so was he. In 1987, having moved to New York, he was still coming to terms with his sudden, glossy fame. It seemed to him that there were then two Brets: the party boy whose image appeared in newspapers and magazines alongside actors such as Robert Downey Jr and fellow members of the newly minted literary Brat Pack such as Jay McInerney (sometimes, Ellis barely knew he’d attended whichever opening was being reported), and the one whose anxiety and self-doubt were spiralling out of control, and who treated these conditions with a liberal use of cocaine and benzodiazepines.

Did fame screw him up? “A little bit, but it wasn’t something I was chasing, and it didn’t mean anything to me. The first year – ’85 to ’86 – it was fun. The first year of fame is always fun, then you spend the rest of your life trying not to be humiliated. People are suspicious of you for ever.” The Brat Pack was, he says, entirely a media construct. “I was never friends with Tama Janowitz[another of its members]. I barely knew her. There are these pictures of me and Jay with her that are reprinted all the time – and yet, those are the only three, and they were all taken at the same party. I wasn’t even hanging out with Jay that much. I got to know him much better after the Brat Pack thing went away.”

There is, he agrees, something almost inevitably disappointing about the career of a writer, particularly one who enjoys early success (at Bennington, he also knew Donna Tartt and Jonathan Lethem). “People would be shocked by how few books most writers sell. The writing career is not at all long.” Does this make him feel mournful? “No. I’ve never won a prize, there are advances I still haven’t made up: two of my books that were bestsellers still haven’t made their advances yet. My audience is… niche. But I’ve written the books I wanted to write, and I’m happy with them.”

These days, he spends his time writing film scripts and working on his podcast, which has a small but devoted audience of subscribers. Will he ever write another novel? “I can never say never. But the notion right now of using the novel as a form of artistic communication… I really don’t have that kind of story, or if I do, I want to tell them in movies or TV.” Does he believe it’s over for the novel generally? Though he agrees that novels are not such a big deal as they were when he was young, he still loves reading them. “I liked The Girls [Emma Cline’s 2016 novel about the Manson cult]. It had a consciousness, and I’m looking for that. But… The Woman at the Window [a bestselling thriller by AJ Finn]. Something like that is a style-free zone, and I can’t read it. The Girl on the Train [Paula Hawkins’s thriller]. That was a terrible book.” He slaps his thighs, delightedly. The internet, and the choice and speed it lends us, has led, he believes, to a reduction in what he calls “ardency” when it comes to books, films and TV. People don’t get passionate – we tend not to make a fetish of art – the way he did as a young man.

Is he happy? “I’m… mellow. Are you ever really happy? No. But I’m not miserable. There’s no point. I’m getting older. You realise: why am I so uptight about things? Why do I care? Everything matters a lot less. I was here in London in 2010, and then I was still in my absurd midlife crisis. I think there’s this notion that you’re being supplanted by younger men; you’re being aged out of the biological imperative that is the world. It happens to everyone, but it happens to women and gay men much earlier. You realise: oh, I’m not being looked at, and this person’s not interested in me, and I’m going to try and hold on to my youth, and colour my hair, and get a sports car. And then you realise: this is misery, and you think, fuck it, and you relax, and that’s freedom. The burdens of sex and having to be attractive and stay in shape are gone. It’s the pose. The pose is gone.”

He laughs loudly. “It gets to the point where even the notion of possible friskiness is oppressive.” What he says next is too filthy to print, but it makes me laugh, too – the mind that brought us what David Foster Wallace called Nieman Marcus nihilism (Patrick Bateman and his ultra-designer life, all labels and muscles) thinking only of elasticated waistbands, and sleep.

• White by Bret Easton Ellis is published by Picador (£16.99). To order a copy go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £15, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99

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