#also don’t get me started on the trump era of it all

[o-wild-west-wind]

While I’m still a bit bummed that they didn’t go with a more book-aligned POC Fiyero for the Wicked movie, I’ve been thinking (heheh) about how his being white highlights the really interesting foil relationship between him and Glinda (and, in many ways, the audience yourself).

At its core, Wicked is a cautionary tale about propaganda, (literal) scapegoating, and what it means to uphold the status quo. The audience is watching through Glinda’s eyes—it is through her, arguably the most beautifully tragic character of the show, that we learn how lonely life becomes when you forfeit your values in favor of systemic power and likability (“No One Mourns the Wicked” is, in many ways, about HER).

Now, this is where Fiyero’s whiteness can get interesting—if you consider him and Glinda to share roughly equal footing at the beginning in terms of privilege/how much they have to lose (applying our real-world lens of race and power here, where whiteness is the apex), his storyline essentially represents what could have happened if Glinda had made the brave (and arguably wise and loving, if you’re picking up what I’m putting down 👀) choice to go with Elphaba and fight the good fight (this is also why I feel like a queer reading of G&E’s relationship is almost implicit to the story, but I digress).

As the POC/marginalized allegory, Elphaba has much less of a real choice in her curtain-pulled-back turning point. But Fiyero and Glinda—both representing privilege—get to choose. So in Act II, we see the consequences of both the choice to stay (Glinda) and to go (Fiyero). In Fiyero’s case, his ultimate rejection of his own power, privilege, and even beauty leads to immense physical loss—including his own body—but that is then compared to the loss of love, community, and identity that we see Glinda left with by the end. And this brings us to the question that the audience is left grappling with: in an unjust system where loss is inevitable (a.k.a. our own world, as the Wizard himself represents), which of these things are YOU more willing to give up?

It’s important that Glinda is an empathetic character because, in reality, most people are going to be Glindas (obvi this is nuanced among us Elphabas of marginalized identities, but I’d still argue that there’s some level of Glinda in us all)—and it’s important to be rattled by the end of the show when you realize that she is the one who has the sad ending. But it’s also so important that Fiyero is empathetic (which I’m SO glad this movie leaned into)—because he’s ultimately who Glinda—and thus we, as the audience—should have been.

And especially given the state of US politics right now…this is just all more relevant than ever.

[nikethestatue]

In my opinion people hate acofas for three reasons: 1. Feyre deciding to start trying for a baby with Rhys. They can’t stand that she became a young mother and that hatred continues to this day. 2. Elriel moments. Elucien was officially dead in the water and elriel was sailing. 3. Characters, especially Rhys, being mean to their favs. Whether it’s Tamlin or Nesta.

I know the fandom changed a lot in 2021 and that was the beginning of the end, but I also think you can trace a lot it back to 2018. I noticed people started getting more “anti” Feysand (because of Rhys’s “meanness” and for the pregnancy decision). Which continues to this day, people think Rhys was too mean in ACOSF and people belittle Feyre and hate that she had a baby in ACOSF, and they call her horrible misogynistic things. Obviously some people didn’t like elriel then and they hate them now. People started to feel sympathy for Tamlin then and they stan him now. People started to be “team Nesta” or “team Feyre” and I know you love Nesta but I think there is now a type of “Nesta stan” now that… we all know about and avoid lol. So I think these factions have roots in the ACOFAS era. It’s just x100 now. In my mind, the fandom falls into two categories. Category 1 is feysand lovers, elriel lovers, people who look at the text closely and have high reading comprehension, people who love most or all the main characters, dislike ACOSF, like ACOFAS, favorite book is ACOMAF.. and category 2 is gwynriel lovers, Nesta stans, people who yap a lot on tik tok, come up with crack theories they believe aren’t crack, people who read too much into certain phrases, people who hate the main characters except like 2, Azriel stans, favorite book is ACOSF, hate ACOFAS. I know not everyone falls into these categories but I think ACOFAS was the start of this divide.

All this to say I think the hate for ACOFAS is based on pretty petty, and sometimes harmful, reasons. I don’t really think it’s based on “there was no plot.” I think they didn’t like the direction acotar was going in that everyone didn’t girlboss their way into the sunset, and there remained conflicts between characters and feysand was starting the next chapter of their immortal lives. I love ACOFAS and it’s a red flag to me if someone hates it.

I think I would agree with this. I think the fraction of Feyre vs Nesta became pretty apparent after ACOFAS.

Overall, I've come to realize that Elriel and Feysand stans are more cerebral in their reactions and their arguments. Gwynriel and Nessian are intensely emotional, where 'feelings' trump any rationality and common sense, and forget canon. And Eluciens only care about Lucien, so everything else is irrelevant. That's why 94% of all debates end up with Gwynriels blocking the other person, because emotions take over and it's as if they can't deal with the argument.

To me, the whole 'don't read ACOFAS it has nothing to offer!' call to action from GAs is very telling. I, or any Elriel, would NEVER and have NEVER told a new reader not to read ACOSF or Azriel's bonus. We don't care. We have enough evidence that we don't need to hide a whole book because the book is 'inconvenient' towards our ship.

Elriels also don't prosthelytize on every platform and preach the Gospel of Elriel. We don't care. We don't descend in droves on every newbie and start screaming 'BUT DID YOU READ THE BONUS CHAPTER!?!?!" Elriel is endgame regardless of how many faithful adherents it has. We just enjoy the pairing because it's a good pairing. And it's canon.

[professor-in-progress]

Engineering is Inherently Political

Okay, yea, seemingly loaded statement but hear me out.

In our current political climate (particularly in the Trump/post-Trump era ugh), the popular sentiment is that scientists and other academics are inherently political. So much of science gets politicized; climate change, abortion, gender “issues”, flat earth (!!), insert any scientific topic even if it isn’t very controversial and you can find some political discourse about it somewhere. However, if you were to ask people if they think that engineering is political, I would bet that 9/10 people would say no. The popular perception of engineering is that it’s objective and non-political. Engineering, generally, isn’t very controversial.

I argue that these sentiments should switch.

At its base level, engineering is the application of science and math to solve problems. Tack on the fact that most people don’t really know what engineering is (hell, I couldn’t even really describe it until starting my PhD and studying that concept specifically). Not controversial, right? We all want to solve the world’s problems and make the world a better place and engineers fill that role! But the best way to solve any problem is a subjective issue; no two people will fully agree on the best way to approach or solve a problem.

Why do we associate science and scientists with controversy but engineers with objectivity? Scientists study what is. It’s a scientist’s job to understand our world. Physicists understand how the laws of the universe work, biologists explore everything in our world that lives, doctors study the human body and how it works, environmental scientists study the Earth and its health, I could go on. My point is that scientists discover and tell us what is. Why do we politicize and fear monger about smart people telling us what they discover about the world?

Engineering, however, has a reputation for being logical, objective, result oriented. Which I get, honestly. It’s appealing to believe that the people responsible for designing and building our world are objective and, for the most part, they are. But this is a much more nuanced topic once you think deeper about it.

For example, take my discipline, aerospace engineering. On the surface, how to design a plane or a rocket isn’t subjective. Everyone has the same goal, get people and things from place to place without killing them (yea I bastardized my discipline a bit but that’s basically all it boils down to). Let’s think a little deeper about the implications though. Let’s say you work for a spacecraft manufacturer and let’s hypothetically call it SpaceX. Your rocket is so powerful that during takeoff it destroys the launch pad. That’s an expensive problem so you’re put on the team of engineers dedicated to solving this problem. The team decides that the most effective and least expensive solution is to spray water onto the rocket and launchpad during takeoff. This solution works great! The launchpad stays intact throughout the launch and the company saves money. However, that water doesn’t disappear after launch, and now it’s contaminated with chemicals used in and on the rocket. Now contaminated water flows into the local environment affecting not just the wildlife but also the water supply of the local community. Who is responsible for solving that issue? Do we now need a team of environmental or chemical engineers to solve this new problem caused by the aerospace engineers?

Yes, engineers solve problems, but they also cause problems.

Every action has its reaction. Each solution has its repercussions.

As engineers we possess some of the most dangerous information in the world and are armed with the weapon to utilize it, our minds. Aerospace engineers know how to make missiles, chemical engineers know how to make bombs, computer scientists know how to control entire technological ecosystems. It’s very easy for an engineer to hurt people, and many do. I’m not exempt from this. I used to work for a military contractor, and I still feel pretty guilty about the implications of the problems that I solved. It is an engineer’s responsibility to act and use their knowledge ethically.

Ethical pleas aside, let’s get back to the topic at hand.

Engineering is inherently political. The goal of modern engineering is to avert catastrophe, tackle societal problems, and increase prosperity. If you disagree don’t argue with me, argue with the National Academy of Engineering. It is an engineer’s responsibility to use their knowledge to uplift the world and solve societal problems, that sounds pretty political to me!

An engineer doesn’t solve a problem in a vacuum. Each problem exists within the context of the situation that caused it as well as the society surrounding that situation. An engineer must consider the societal implications of their solutions and designs and aim to uplift that society through their design and solution to the problem. You can’t engineer within a social society without considering the social implications of both the problem and the solution. Additionally, the social implications of those engineering decisions affect different people in different ways. It’s imperative to be aware and mindful of the social inequality between demographics of people affected by both the solution and the problem. For example, our SpaceX company could be polluting the water supply of a poor community that doesn’t have the resources to solve the problem nor the power or influence to confront our multi-billion-dollar company. Now, a multi-billion-dollar company is advancing society and making billions of dollars at the cost of thousands of lives that already struggle due to their social standing in the world. Now the issue has layers that add further social implications that those without money are consistently prone to the whims of those with money. Which, unfortunately, is a step of ethical thought that many engineers don’t tend to take.

Engineers control our world. Engineers decide which problems to solve and how best to solve them. Engineers control who is impacted by those solutions. Engineers have the power to either protect and lift up the marginalized or continue to marginalize them. Those who control the engineers control the world. This is political. This is a social issue.

Now look me in the eyes and tell me that engineering isn’t inherently political.

[strideofpride]

On that note, can you imagine how INSANE the media circus would be if it did come out publicly that Chuck and Blair illegally backdated their marriage certificate and the case against them was actually re-opened? Especially in 2023, at a time when anti-billionaire “eat the rich” sentiment has become very mainstream, and true crime is one of the most popular and profitable genres of entertainment?

Like, the events of season six happen so fast that we don’t really get to appreciate just how wild they are from the outside looking in. Imagine if Michael Bloomberg or pre-presidency Donald Trump died in a car crash, and their then-teenage progeny took over their real estate empires. Everyone just gets used to the idea of a little boy real estate mogul, I guess, and a few years pass, and then - surprise! They were faking their death all along!! Yes there was a funeral, yes they were legally declared dead, but who cares! They’re back baby, and ready to go back to being the same shitbags they were before!

Except, a mere handful of months later, they’re dead again - this time having gone careening off the side of one of their company’s most famous buildings (imagine if Donald Trump died falling off of Trump Tower lmaoooo). Did they fake it again? Was it foul play? By the time rumors start to swirl of the alleged involvement of their recently deposed nepotism baby, the cops close the case and rule it an accident. Their heir, still barely an adult, retakes the reigns of leadership - newly married, a detail no one realizes is suspicious because they likely have no idea that the spouse was at the scene of the crime.

Years pass. YouTubers and online conspiracy theorists periodically bring up the case, but the public at large once again more or less accepts the public narrative. Another piece of shit real-estate mogul gets elected president, and the attitude of the general public towards the uber wealthy turns increasingly hostile. Then there’s 2020, and 2021, and 2022, and- And then. “Billionaire boy and family linked to father’s mysterious death after discovery of faked marriage license”.

Even though we, the audience, knows Chuck didn’t actually kill his father, do you think in a world where this was an actual case involving actual public figures anyone would believe that? The coverup is so ridiculously suspicious that the general public almost definitely assumes they really did do the crime.

And consider the players in this case - a terrible billionaire who died a deliciously ironic death, his somehow worse son who in a post-#MeToo world is already a PR nightmare waiting to happen, and the ex-princess of Monaco (?!) who just so happens to already be tabloid fodder. If they get especially unlucky, Dan (a pretty famous novelist, at least according to the reboot), Serena (a 2000s era “it girl” and semi-celebrity), and Nate (an ex-NYC mayoral candidate, media mogul, and in universe Kennedy equivalent) might just find themselves implicated too - or at least forced to testify - given they were at the very much in public wedding where any rando could have snapped a picture.

There is just soooo much fucked up entertainment value in a case like this I can’t imagine it being anything less than a public fucking spectacle, and not the kind Chuck or Blair could just shake off. I genuinely do not know how they could absolve themselves in the court of public opinion if it actually went to trial, even if they managed to prevail legally.

Oh my god. Okay well, first of all, I really want the fake Serial podcast that unpacks all of this lol. Someone should make that lmao.

"little boy real estate mogul" took me out lololololol

also like...faking your death is a crime right??? how was Bart just able to re-enter society so easily??? did they ever say???

i'd also like to point out that it's actually much vaguer whether or not Chuck killed his father. They cut away during their fight and then next thing you see is Bart hanging onto the edge. Chuck himself says that he isn't sure whether or not he pushed him or Bart fell over. but also Chuck and Blair both just stood there and did nothing to help Bart before he fell, which is involuntary manslaughter I believe

But seriously though, you're so right anon that all of this was made for true crime. In 2030, someone makes a "Jinx" style doc about Chuck I bet

[qqueenofhades]

as a young person who is also very fed up with online leftists, it’s so frustrating because i do understand where a lot of my peers are coming from. i was born in 99 and i feel like american politics has just been nightmare after nightmare throughout my life. we weren’t quite old enough to understand what obama was up against during his presidency, and when we did finally start tuning into politics, it was during the trump era of clownery and everything has just felt so much more panicked and urgent (a lot of which is manufactured, i’m aware) since. i understand people being sick of things taking so long to change, i am too, i just don’t know how they think not voting or claiming both sides suck (which diminishes how dangerous the gop is) is going to put us in a better position. they may think it sucks right now under biden but it sucked a lot more under trump and would suck even worse if the gop took the presidency in 2024

Like... yes, to an extent, I understand. You guys came of age right when things really went off the rails with Obama Derangement Syndrome, everything got a lot worse and a lot scarier overnight, and it felt like the current system was so laughably inadequate for the problems at hand that of course it needed huge and immediate changes. Which, like! I'm not disagreeing! I wake up every day and I see something else terrible and/or stupid has happened and I occasionally just wish for the meteor too! But I am also a grownup who recognizes that that's not going to actually fix anything, and that life beyond echo-chamber leftist Twitter exists. So yes, we all have the "just give in and blow it up" moments. But that's... not actually a political strategy, certainly not a humane one, and it continues to baffle and infuriate me that that's just Online Leftist staple rhetoric.

I know that it can be difficult for people of any age, but particularly young people, to conceptualize anything outside of their own lived experiences/personal memories, and yes, you have the misfortune of coming of age in a particularly bad political moment. Again, nobody's denying this! But if someone's response to that is to insist that only they know anything "true," history and/or culture and/or the besetting problems of America for its entire 250-year existence either aren't real or could have been solved by the Democrats already if they just Tried Hard Enough, then those of us who know better are under no obligation to take this BS seriously. It gets even worse when these people start acting like they're the only authority to ever be trusted, everyone else is wrong and/or evil, and their twisted immature ideal of "revolution!" is the only way forward.

Humans, and human society, politics, culture, history, etc., are complicated. The world does not exist in a neat black-and-white, zero-sum moral vacuum where one choice is totally right and the other is totally wrong. Attempts to impose the Most Correct Ideology, of whatever stripe, have always ended terribly and done a lot of avoidable damage. But "things got really bad in four years and Biden hasn't fixed that + every other problem in America since its founding, therefore he and the Democrats are actually worse than Trump!" is just straight-up clown magical thinking, and it offers absolutely nothing useful for anyone, especially those who sanctimoniously claim to want to fix it. So, yeah.

[josiebelladonna]

one of the reasons why i struggled during the trump era was that it felt like i was being forced to have an opinion rather than have it genuinely come from me. add to this, it felt like i was being yelled at and judged constantly simply because i felt like i had nothing to add—i still feel this way, too. not just in opinions about current events but opinions in general. my opinions, the ones that i have, do not matter, and most of them don’t belong to me anyway. when i was in a.p. english, and we had to participate in book reviews, i didn’t know what to add to the conversation that wasn’t already being said, and i just sat there, baffled and bored out of my wits (my teacher even noticed, too, i remember her pointing out this out to me and i basically said all of this. i want to talk but everyone is talking over me). plus, telling me to “speak up” doesn’t make me want to do it more: if anything, it doesn’t make me want to do it ever, period. for this reason, i hate being told to speak up. (it’s like when i call my dad and he complains that i don’t call him enough: it doesn’t make me want to do it more.)

it’s not because “i’m on the side of the oppressor”, no, that is extremely unfair and cruel. it was because all i wanted to say back then was already being said, i felt like i had nothing to add, and i was exhausted mere days into that godforsaken administration because everyone just wanted to scream and assume that we all know rather than educate. it’s like, what do you want me to say? what do you want me to do besides kiss your ass? what can i add to this? nothing? okay, well, what can i add to here? oh, also nothing. everyone gets a participation point but me. i’ve always been on the fence about politics, even with my dabbling in political cartoons in my early days of cartooning: i could never fully commit because i found it incredibly boring and there’s so much else that piques my interest anyway.

the opinions i do have are either weak, lame, will have me subject to ridicule, or will have some bullshit feud fired up against me in the form of forgettable fanfic. i really do feel like people just tell you to speak up under the pretense of “you being the oppressor” because they don’t want to be proven wrong, not because they actually stand for something or give a shit about what you have to say.

okay, you want a couple of political opinions from me? why do political or social posts and tweets have to be so elaborately worded? get to the point, i’m dumb, i don’t know what’s happening here or why i should care. why does pro-life feminism exist? like… who is this for? you think an abortion is “killing a baby” when the mother is a 12-year-old girl, and the only other option is for her to have it, i.e., the psychological, physical, mental, and emotional effects of having a child while she’s still a child, i.e., the real killing of a baby. it’s not feminism: it’s rape apology and control. it’s anti-science and antisemitic, too, as most of these holier-than-thou cunts tend to be “all about science” (when science has proven that life starts at birth numerous times) and it’s a part of jewish law for a woman to have an abortion if she chooses. we mustn’t base our laws off religion, absolutely, but it doesn’t take away from the fact that telling a jewish woman she can’t have one is a violation of her religion. we spend an ungodly amount of money on our military but once service is done, veterans are basically told to get lost. and all everyone can bitch about is the first thing. why is everyone vegan now? don’t get me wrong: vegan food is some of the most delicious i’ve ever eaten, but it’s like every time i turn around, someone talks about how they’re vegan. everyone famous is vegan. everyone goes on about how healthy they are ever since they went vegan and that’s all they can talk about. did i miss something here? this is another thing i feel is just another trend for people to seem important, not because they’re like linda mccartney and actually believe it’ll do any justice. some of you don’t look good, either: you look malnourished and tired, and you probably smell bad, too. where i draw the line is making your pets vegan (which is something some people really do): cats and dogs are carnivores, and depriving them of that is a form of cruelty. donald trump and that whole parade of republicans around him are such hot-button issues that they’re boring to talk and read about. they’re all sacks of shit who are trying to kill us, the end.

and that’s all i got. are you happy now? i sure as hell am not. if anything, i feel exposed, perhaps more so than i did when i wrote those sex journal prompts. take them or leave them, i don’t care and i’m not confident in these things anyway.

[fahrni]

Saturday Morning Coffee

Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️

I’m still really enjoying the project I’m on at WillowTree and I hope we’re able to extend it further down the road.

I’ve been thinking about a way to fix my completely broken layout of Stream for Mac table view cells. For some reason the same layout I used on iOS isn’t working on macOS? Are the layout engines that different between UIKit and AppKit? No idea. But I do hope my new idea fixes it once and for all.

Then I need to get back to adding async await functionality to my feed adding code. This whole time it’s been synchronous because you really can’t mess with the UI during the initial get of the site data. When you select the feed you’d like to add everything becomes asynchronous, just like feed updating is.

This little change is the fire step in moving all of Stream’s asynchronous code to async await. I still need a much deeper understanding of how it works and why I need it. The code isn’t broken as is today but if Apple requires using async await at some point in the future, it will break.

Hey, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, amirite? 😁

Chris Quinn • cleveland.com

The truth is that Donald Trump undermined faith in our elections in his false bid to retain the presidency. He sparked an insurrection intended to overthrow our government and keep himself in power. No president in our history has done worse.

It’s extremely difficult to write about Donald Trump as an equal to Joe Biden. Trump is a narcissist, rapist, twice impeached, criminal former President with desire to be a forever Dictator of the United States of America. He wants to end democracy as we know it. He’s only in it for his own gratification, to be cruel, and as a means to enrich himself.

Joe Biden is a leader who believes in helping people and he supports the Constitution. He’s been an effective leader.

Look, no President is perfect. President Biden is no exception to that rule. I’m a liberal and don’t agree with everything he’s done, but he has done great work for the people of the United States.

Vote for democracy. Vote for Joe Biden for President.

Craig Hockenberry • Iconfactory

This post will explain the technology behind Project Tapestry and how we tested it as a prototype. We’ll keep this discussion at a fairly basic level: if you’re a web or app developer, you’ll have no problems following along.

I just love everything Iconfactory does. Yes, I’m a software developer, yes Tapestry will somewhat compete with Stream, but I don’t care. I love this idea and I’m a little green with envy I didn’t think about it. 😃

This is the way to open up your app and make it more easily extensible internally in the process. There are lots and lots of great JavaScript developers out there.

I backed it as soon as I heard about it and I’m really looking forward to the final product.

Matthew Haughey

I’d like a hosted, centralized web app that is akin to early-era Blogger.com that lets me save new posts into a system, then it’s up to me where the output goes.

By blog began life as a Blogger blog. I published this site from 2001 to 2010. It generated static HTML and would FTP the generated HTML to my site. I loved it and it was extremely easy to move my site when I changed hosting providers. I just zipped up the directory and expanded it in its new home, updated Blogger to point to the new location, and went back to posting.

Today I publish this site using Micro.blog. It also generates static HTML but it’s all hosted on Micro.blog’s hardware. If I ever leave it’ll be easy to move.

I have been considering a move to a completely hand written blog. 😃

Of course once I started thinking about doing that I thought up some tools I’d like to write to help me out. 😂

Max Tani • Semafor

The shift, Apple wrote in a blog post, was technical: The dominant podcasting platform had begun switching off automatic downloads for users who haven’t listened to five episodes of a show in the last two weeks.

This is a piece from January but it is interesting. Like blogging I believe it’s safe to say the idea behind Podcasting was never about monetizing, it was about freedom of expression. But, in the end, you can’t and shouldn’t, stop folks from monetizing it. That’s part of the freedom.

Reliance on a single centralized source of podcasts is a mistake. Apple has been so gracious in sharing their feed directory with the world for nothing it’s difficult to call it a mistake. The fact that it exists isn’t a mistake. The fact that so many podcasting apps and podcasters rely on it is.

There are now many podcast networks, from Indie to BigCo, and some apps and networks have their own directories but Apple is still the dominant player.

Oh, not to mention they have their own player that ships with their OS’es. That’s where the hit to podcast download numbers originated. Apple’s podcasting backend and their distribution front end in the form of the Podcasts app.

Hurubie Meko and Michael Wilson • New York Times

A magnitude-4.8 earthquake sent tremors from Philadelphia to Boston and jolted buildings in New York City. An apparent aftershock was widely felt around 6 p.m.

It’s strange to hear about a quake on the east coast. It was a topic of conversation at work yesterday in our weather Slack channel, of all places.

East coasters aren’t used to this. Here they’re accustomed to cold and snow and hurricanes, not earthquakes.

ROB BESCHIZZA • Boing Boing

Amazon is to end the AI-powered “Just Walk Out” checkout option in its Amazon Fresh stores. It turns out that “AI” means “Actually, Indians” and it isn’t working out.

So now we know what AI actually means! What a complete failing on the part of Amazon. It would’ve been so much better to have failed using AI than to move the jobs of cashiers to India where a bunch of overworked, underpaid, Indians are doing the same job.

Just hire some real people to manage the store.

Matt Birchler • birchtree

You probably got to this post because you Googled some question about what exactly “the fediverse” is, what “ActivityPub” actually means, or what would happen if you turned on federation on your Threads account today.

I still hear about folks struggling to understand how to sign up for Mastodon. The Join Mastodon site should just present the user with a signup form and host everyone on mastodon.social or a new instance and let folks decide what to do next. Most will probably be perfectly happy to stay on that instance forever. 👍🏼

Zack Sharf • Variety

Christian Bale Transforms Into Frankenstein’s Monster in First Look at Maggie Gyllenhaal’s ‘The Bride’

I’m diggin the look of Bales monster. Sign me up for the finished product.

Anthony Bonkoski

Ref-counting is garbage collection.

But is it really? I can see the point but it’s a tough sale for this old curmudgeon. 😂

I wrote a tiny sample to explain reference counted objects to a co-worker years back — 13 years at the time of this writing. It still illustrates the point fairly well, I think.

Today C++ developers get a lot of great reference counting and other newer memory management techniques through the stl.

Sarah K. Burris • Raw Story

Judge Cannon ‘basically inviting’ Jack Smith to ask for her removal in new filing

This judge seems to be incompetent or in the bag for Trump.

Look, the dude took too secret documents home with him. Probably not a big deal if he’d returned them when he was asked to. But no, not his Orangeness, he hold onto them, claiming they’re his through the magical process of declaring them his through mind control or some crap.

The trial is all about that. Not the Presidential Records Act.

[pretty-good-girl]

Okay if you legit want to know I'll do my best, along with a few articles/sources for further reading, but know I'm doing this on the understanding that you actually want to engage with this information in good faith, because it took me a while to put all this together, and this isn't even all of my sources/arguments as I've had to prioritise and categorise for the sake of coherency.

So, the TERF movement has a lot of common ground with the alt right. Neither of you are huge fans of trans people, both of you define womanhood on a biological level, and there's a tendency in both camps to reduce womanhood to reproductive abilities.

Because of this, multiple prominent TERFs have been cosying up with the alt right, eg:

Posie Parker, TERFs Find Audience With White Supremacists (jezebel.com)

And multiple people have pointed out the parallels between modern day TERFs and Weimar era Nazis:

TERFs are using Nazi tactics. Don’t let it work. – Another angry woman

Antisemitism Meets Transphobia - Progressive.org

A well known TERF in the UK also wrote a book that lists three Jewish people as the 'driving force' behind the 'trans trend' and the Buffalo shooter specifically stated in his manifesto that Big Pharma is trying to trans white kids into sterility so minorities can take over. Which is a rehash of the great replacement theory, also used in Weimar Germany. It's no coincidence that when the Nazis started book burning back in the day, their first target was the Institute of Sex Research, which was studying, among other things, transsexualism, and trans people were also victims in the Holocaust.

The same woman who claimed that the whole concept of trans people was down to three Jews also said that trans people were a 'problem' to a 'sane world' and should be reduced, calling for TERFs to infiltrate institutions and make transition harder for trans people, ALSO a rehash of Weimar tactics:

Now we've covered a fair amount (but still not all of) the antisemitism, let's get into the racism. There's also a fair amount of racism present, as explained in this article:

The racist roots of transgender exclusion | ROAR Magazine

And there have been lists meant to help 'clock' trans people shared on places like twitter and mumsnet that specifically list things like skin lightness as an indicator of birth sex, while also making some very troubling comparisons between trans people existing and racism:

And attacking WOC's accomplishments, such as Sharron Davis, a sports personality in the UK, suggesting that the top 3 runners in a race, all WOC, were aided by excess testosterone, and the 4th place runner, a white woman, was the real winner:

There's also a very strongly misogynistic undercurrent to... just about the whole movement. Probably why Matt Walsh, Ben Shapiro, Trump and Putin are all also TERFs, alongside the Conservative parties who are trying to take away reproductive rights, but that's fine because TERFs are willing to give that up:

And there's another prominent TERF here in the UK, Baroness Nicholson, who JK Rowling started a charity with, who is trying to get abortion restricted to 12 weeks, and of course Caroline Farrow, who JK Rowling sent 'big love' to, who is also a pro life, anti choice, anti gay campaigner. Because people who don't want pregnant people to have a choice regarding their own bodies and people who don't want trans people to have a choice regarding their own bodies are the same people.

It also adversely affects LGB+ women, such as the disabled butch woman who was pushed into the men's loos at a local shop and the woman with short hair who was harassed in a bathroom, and there's just a general trend of women who don't have the ability to get pregnant or don't look stereotypically feminine getting shit from them for not looking womanly enough:

Calls for M&S to be boycotted after customer is mistaken for a man - Birmingham Live (birminghammail.co.uk)

I've also received a fair number of threats myself for being a woman who is pro trans:

^ this one contains my home address

I also had to turn off anon on my ask box temporarily due to the influx of threats I got following making this post, receiving about half a dozen within a couple hours of posting. I turned it back on and within an hour had a fresh threat.

There is also a general issue with consent in the TERF movement. A TERF was fined this week for grabbing a trans man's genitals, another flashed parliament with a (fake) fanny in a premeditated act of indecent exposure despite there being children present:

Gloucester woman fined for grabbing transgender man's genitals - BBC News

And as a reminder, most women are pro trans, and yet TERFs claim to speak on behalf of women:

It's also recently come out that the LGB Alliance, or LGBA, the primary organisation that claims to defend the rights of gay people against trans people, operates out of 55 Tufton Street. If this is not significant to you, it should be, because 55 Tufton Street is an alt right thinktank.

The LGBA has also been classed as a hate group in multiple countries.

There's also a fair amount of just... casual ableism... in the TERF movement. A good example would be Greta Thunberg, who spoke up just this week about being pro trans and was told that as she is autistic, she wasn't able to have a fully developed opinion.

So, to recap: The TERF movement is based in racism, antisemitism, ableism, and homophobia, and has extremely close ties to the alt right, specifically the white supremacists, science deniers, and pro lifers.

Side with TERFs all you want, but if you are anything but a straight, white, able bodied cis woman, don't think they'll ever truly side with you.

The way I have absolutely no standards when it comes to dating except TERFs don't get pussy... iconic of me tbh

[puthyflapps]

A tmz article about what...

Aaron Rodgers

[stanfordsweater]

happy wincest wednesday to you and yours!! if you had to point to one single canon scene that exemplifies why wincest is so powerful and engaging and worth thinking about as much as we all clearly think about it, which scene would you pick?

AWWW YESSSS, DO I EVER

okay so of course i could take the easy route and point to any scene in the first 3-4 seasons, because i have at least one moment in every episode from that era. HOWEVER. there is one that i believe trumps them all, and that moment is [pause for drumroll]

i don’t think this will be a controversial choice 😅 still, there’s a reason that this scene is at the top of a lot of people’s lists, and that’s because of what a great job it does to bring together a ton of threads from the previous episodes and lay them all plain, while also giving us one of dean’s Iconic Moments of Vulnerability™️ AND being a great example of how to write conflicting character motivations between two people who love each other. sam and dean are both heartbroken in this scene, but they’re both sticking to what they want.

one thing i find really interesting about it is how sam, the optimist, starts talking about “getting back to real life” to cheer dean up, as a way to get them both battle-ready and distract them from the possibility of dying in the next few hours. what’s always really drawn me to sam and dean is the way that their intrinsic motivations get in the way of them having a smooth relationship-- that conflict is catnip to me, and it’s something we get a TON of in season one. sam brings up what comes next because he’s genuinely trying to calm dean, but in doing so he brings up his worst nightmare because he doesn’t know!!! he doesn’t know!!! we don’t even explicitly know that sam leaving for stanford was dean’s worst night of his life until dark side of the moon, although he makes it pretty obvious in this scene. then we have dean revealing the only thing he wants for himself, which is having his family together. (and i find it really interesting how sam’s silhouette cleaves the sentence in half, placing “you, and me” separately from “and dad.”) you can see on sam’s face how much he wants dean to let himself have one thing when he asks him what it is, but dean’s only wish here is sam’s worst nightmare-- to be trapped in this life forever, stuck following john’s orders, and seeing them die violent and bloody.

i also love how this scene carries on sam’s theme of committing himself to dean while still chafing against him (”you’re my brother, and i’d die for you, but some things i need to keep to myself.” “dean, that guy was probably gonna die anyway.” “i’d do anything for you, but things will never be the way they were before.”) it’s laying the groundwork for the next [checks calendar] LITERALLY 14 SEASONS. this theme just keeps coming up, and every time it does it comes in a different form. it’s so clear even just from this scene how much sam would do for dean and how little he can conceive of a life together-- flash forward to season nine and you have sam who can only conceive of a life with dean and can’t handle the things they’ll do for each other. mmmmm.

THEN we have sam’s face after dean’s done flaying himself open, and that mix of love and pity and misery is fodder for thousands of fics. the way dean’s eye twitches right before he says “could be.” the weird undercurrent of desperation that shouldn’t be present in a conversation between two brothers about living with their father forever. the way dean can’t even look at sam while he’s explaining himself. sam’s rock solid response, knowing what it will do to dean and knowing it needs to be said. U G H

fantastic. 10/10. i wish i had been on livejournal the night this episode dropped. i hope everyone involved got a million dollars for this.

[dekusleftsock]

This is just a quick train of thought post but I still wanna share it

Either way I’ve seen this phenomenon where people hate the mha fandom because of how shippy it is. People want to act like bc this shonen then that means romance hardly exists. But you’ve got to understand how fandom EVOLVES!

I’ve not been in this fandom for long. Maybe since October of 2021. But I HAVE been in other fandoms before. Fnaf, undertale, and Minecraft come to mind first. (The old and new mc fandom btw, yes I watched dsmp. I don’t like the creators now but the fandom taught me how to analyze storytelling so ??? Idk how to feel about the fandom with my fondness lmao) And after a bit of research, pre-existing knowledge I have of the internet as a whole, and a TON of thinking and mulling it over in my head, I’ve come to my personal conclusion of why THIS FANDOM SPECIFICALLY gets so much hate and is so “shippy”.

The actual reason the fandom itself is so focused on ships and characters is because horikoshi writes characters well. Simple as that. It’s a character driven show, and compared to other shonens that’s a bit out of character for a show of the “genre”.

Anyway, let’s give a bit of background to the general internet. Up until about I wanna say, 2018? The internet was really really bad. The main social platforms running the show were YouTube, instagram, Reddit, and Twitter. Tiktok wasn’t exactly a thing, it was musically or however it’s spelled. 4chan was also still relatively popular as was tumblr. Tumblr is an interesting character during this time but I’ll get into that.

The general ideas of the internet were all relatively “right leaning” and cringe culture was still VERY rampant. This is because when the internet and, more specifically, the gaming community was being born the alt right communities that were pretty small migrated to the internet. This made a trade off: in exchange for organizational power they now had more reach. That’s why nazis and bigots have always been so common on the internet. It’s also why a lot of our amab siblings, children, uncles, etc in their teen years were so far gone into the alt right pipeline. It directly targets young white boys who like video games. YT created a lot of parasocial relationships by letting those people get the platforms they did. (I recommend watching “the alt right play book” by innuendo studios, they voice this better than I did)

The anime community, parts of the art community, 4chan/Reddit, and political spaces online were filled to the brim with nazis due to this phenomena.

And here’s comes tiktok. A platform who just gave themself a brand new face and name ready to start the trend of shorter videos instead of images or longer videos. At first, we still have the remnants of the alt right with the furry vs gamer war specifically, and then comes vsco girls. And you know what’s so weird about this trend? They TRIED to memeify it, they TRIED to shame women into not getting metal straws, into not dressing in the certain style. But it was a turning point in the entire worlds political spectrum. More specifically, gen y and gen z.

This was the start of a “new era” on the internet. And TikTok’s algorithm is probably the best one I’ve ever fucking seen! It was able to completely cut people off from different ideas and parts of the platform, while simultaneously sharing content that would make people argue. This, was tiktok 2020. BLM happened as a trend (blm has been around for a lot longer than tiktok, it was just a trend on the platform itself), trumps rallies happened. For the first time organization on a platform fucking worked. It was what the alt right WANTED to do, but never could.

Now, why am I saying all of this? Because tiktok opened the gate to fandom. For the first time since I’ve been on the app, (and I was on in 2018) fandom has started to pop up more. Toh and some anime communities have gotten more popular there.

But given this context, it starts to make sense why people HATE that it’s so shippy. Tumblr was the weird kid of the internet for a long time, and as that’s shifted to being 4chan, I’ve got to say that shipping and the mha fandom (along with other more known “toxic” fandoms) has gotten to a point where it’s more socially acceptable. And since a show like stranger things can now have a fandom, I can solidly say that fandom has become more mainstream because TIKTOK is mainstream.

So, yeah, people hate fandom and more specifically the mha fandom because of nazis. Cringe culture still exists and it’s kinda hard to not think a fandom that’s already been painted as terrible is actually, not all that bad. It’s like literally every other fandom. Stranger things has the same problems we do, death note has the same problems we do. Mha is not an exception.

[pleuvoire]

blade being the rare kamen rider to have two openings, i like them equally musically (maybe elements wins out a bit but aaahh it’s so hard to choose) but round zero definitely wins for me lyrically because while elements is a more straightforward inspirational shounen song (“forge the courage in your heart into a shining blade” “the wind is telling you strength is inside you” “if you can harness even your fear you’ll evolve”), round zero is like… downright ominous? in a way that i think really evokes the eventual tragedy of the show and when you go line by line it really jumps out at you. like let’s go through it

“you all on your own, your existence will change the world someday” which sounds inspirational on its surface but with context seems to point to the whole joker thing (especially since it just says existence/presence/存在 and not actions or something…. getting major world-destroyer-hajime vibes) and the wording also emphasizes the concept of solitude ;__;

“what’s out there somewhere, is it hope or despair?” self-explanatorily ominous

“round zero is beginning” THAT’S IT THAT’S THE SHOW. THE BATTLE ROYALE OF THE EARTH’S DESTINY IS STARTING BABY

“the sin of not knowing, and the trap of knowing too much” idk yet how this specifically relates to the plot of blade but it’s also ominous and such a striking lyric. although i’m thinking of king form.... :x

“make your move, before you become unable” a warning, alludes to an inevitable or at least encroaching end

“the card flipped over by the wind laugh as though it’s foretelling” MAN. [thinking about the ending] MAAAAAANNNN

“there’s no way you won’t be lost, even so search for tomorrow” are you seeing this. all “this is gonna suck but you have to do it anyway”

“a dazzling destiny leads to an era on the verge of ruin” foreshadowing the apocalyptic stakes of blade again, and the heavy feeling of fate in kenzaki and hajime’s story

so really the only unambiguously inspirational/optimistic lines in the op are the final “the trump card is inside you, forge it into a blade of courage” which very closely parallel the lyrics of elements, so i don’t even really view them as “of” the song itself but mostly there to supply a parallel to the other opening. unless you want to view it as the volta of the song as in a sonnet, where it caps off all that ominousness with “time to face the bad shit, you got this!” either way, an absolutely lyrically fascinating opening

[enigmaticxbee]

✖️✖️✖️ 11x04 The Lost Art of the Forehead Sweat

The one where... Reggie Something was erased from the X-Files. Maybe.

Best: Scully: I want to remember how it was. I want to remember how it all was. I wish we could just end things here, with Mulder and Scully smiling at each other on the couch of their Unremarkable House over a Sasquatch footprint shaped Goop-O ABC 🥰

Worst: The Trump era-ness of this episode is a LOT. I really enjoyed parts of it, but I had to just tune out other parts to avoid anxiety inducing truthiness flashbacks.

✔️ Flashlights

❌ Woods/Desert

❌ Slideshow

❌ Autopsy

✔️ Evidence Disappears

❌ Scully Misses It

❌ Mulder Ditch

✔️ Sunflower Seeds

✔️ Voiceover (Scully, Reggie narration)

❌ Catch Phrase

❌ Scully is a Medical Doctor

❌ Mulder is Spooky

❌ Scuuullllaaaaayy! Muullllderrrr!

❌ Fox/Dana

✔️ Inappropriate Touching (that I am here for)

✔️ Casual Scully (date night!)

✔️ Casual Mulder (Squatchin suit)

✔️ Trench Coats

❌ Bad Tie Watch

❌ Glasses Watch

✔️ Taking! It! Personally!: Mulder

50 States: DC x108 (44/50)

Investigate: Together & Apart

Solve Rate: 70%

❌ Bechdel Test: Unless you count Mrs Peacock screaming in the flashback there were no other women who spoke in this episode. C’mon Darin Morgan!

MSR: 🐝🐝🐝🐝

Goriness: 👽👽

Creepiness: 👽

Humor: 👽👽👽👽👽

Rewatch Thoughts:

William check-in: No mention

Break-up check-in: I guess they’re officially dating again!

Scully’s been calling him all day - maybe to confirm that dinner date?

Squatchin! Love that for him. And that Scully’s like sure, do your thing Mulder.

That moment when someone starts telling you a story for the millionth time and all your “oh yeah, I remember”s and “yeah, yeah you told me”s won’t stop that story train.

Scully just wants to go on her dinner date! Her casual date night outfit is cute too

Also Mulder in his piles of tapes perfectly captures that feeling when you know you put the thing you’re looking for away in a perfectly logical safe place and you can’t find it anywhere and you tear your home apart in search of it

Mulder’s head and voice on his little boy body in this flashback cracks me up

Scullz 😂

Scully chilling with her feet up on Mulder’s desk 😍

Scully poking fun at Mulder’s super secret rendezvous signal

Mulder waggling his eyes at Scully about a stakeout date. Scully: Well this is romantic. Mulder: Isn’t it! I think he’s sincere, hanging out with her, investigating X-Files, what could be better!

There are some great vintage posters and things in the background in the memorabilia shop.

It’s not parallel universes!

Mulder: Who is “they”?

The a-cappella theme song! The flashbacks inserting Reggie into scenes from the original run - Unusual Suspects! The Pilot! Tooms! Clyde Bruckman’s Final Repose! Teso Dos Bichos 😂 Home! Small Potatoes - so fun.

Mulder: I’m Fox freaking Mulder, you punks!

Mulder: The world has become too crazy for even my conspiratorial powers. Scully: Maybe you’ve just lost your taste for it, especially after all this “birther” stuff. Seriously, conspiracy theories used to be fun. Now they’re everywhere, with real world consequences, it’s depressing.

The sculpture park is cool looking but I can’t with gobbledygooky-ness of the monologuing - but who knows that’s probably part of the point!

Foxy 🥰

It’s a Darin Morgan episode so Scully is the voice of reason and figures it all out.

The cubicle farm of government agencies montage 😂

Spotnitz Sanatorium

Their final case together, so silly, so good. Especially Mulder flinging himself to the ground in a hissy fit in disappointment over getting All the Answers.

Reggie: But maybe the point wasn’t to find the truth, but to find each other. And no matter where we go in our lives, we will always have the memories of our time together, and no one can take those away or alter them in such a way to make us doubt that they actually happened.

Mulder finally finds his lost episode! I don’t know that I’ve had a real Mandela Effect experience (although I too would have said it was the Berenstein Bears rather the Berenstain Bears) but there is a movie my sister and I loved when we were little that we can’t remember the name of and no one else has ever heard of and it sounds like a fever dream when I try describe the plot 😅

Scully’s little grin of anticipation at her spoonful of Goop-O ABC.

Let’s just leave them here in this nostalgic moment shall we.

[whatiwillsay]

hey, i haven’t been on tumblr in months even though i started following you back in the beginning of 2021 i think it was. recently i’ve been doing a lot more reading about gaylor and the rumored relationships she’s had with women and i was wondering what relationships you think are most likely to have happened? i know that’s probably been asked many times before but i’m quite torn over some of them. i think swiftgron and kaylor (when they were seen out and about all the time, not late stage kaylor) is likely and perhaps tayliz and tily too but i don’t think any of her rumored wlw relationships were like monogamous girlfriends situations.

relationships i think happened in at LEAST a hookup fashion from most likely to least likely (but still think they happened):

julianne hough x taylor- got this confirmed to me by an insider and julianne is out as queer and they did all that funny stuff at katy perry’s birthday

lily donaldson x taylor- got this confirmed by an insider and tons of good stuff over at @tilynation - i think it occurred during a time toe was still new and not 100% monogamous and she saw both of them for a while. lily is basically almost out (almost) likely also hooked up w rihanna and they were inseparable in late 2016 and tho some of the blonde london angel stuff works for joe it 6000% works for lily as well

swiftgron- the clues are there and dianna is gay as fuck @swiftgronmasterpost for everything and ofc my swiftgron tag

kaylor- joshlie is real confirmed by insiders but i think karlie possibly cheated on josh with taylor in one of those messy codependent homoerotic situations the wildest dreams mv and now i’m your daisy is some good clues but i don’t think they were monogamous gfs since i have a joshlie confirmation i trust

bitches and models- i have an insider confirmation that taylor had a slutty gay puberty and hooked up with some nameless models and such, taylor basically confirms this in the man sort of lol

zoe kravitz- tbh this could go in the next category but it’s so hot i want it to have happened taylor’s obsession with cheating and infidelity in the folkmore era maybe has something to do with zoe’s divorce that just happened? do i believe it? idk but i WANT to believe!!

ships that i don’t think happened:

tayliz- there’s some good content but they stayed close too long through too many other insider confirmed ships such as houghlor and gyllenswift plus liz is like besties with a loud and proud trump supporter + fully has a bunch of legit boyfriends that check out to me and were around when she was working with taylor. could they have drunk bestie made out? absolutely hell they probably did. monogamous gfs? no not in my opinion.

taymily- no gross do not want it would have been statutory rape and it was debunked on the be there in 5 patreon by an insider that knew them. emily is now a republican prosecutor in fucking indiana or some shit it didn’t happen unless maybe taylor had a crush.

i can do another post on guys that i think we’re real if y’all want just lmk taylor is just bi- dated women and men, some secret some pr some legit all and ofc…

huge grain of salt on all of this it’s just gossip and speculation. insiders could be wrong and gossip could be false. i trust my industry friends but it’s fully possible they are misinformed so grain of salt always!! 🥰 check my of interest tag also for more thoughts on all of this and go stream what i will say podcast wherever you get your pods for deeper thoughts on all of this! what i will say patreon #tea series for more info on the insider confirmations!

[ponett]

hi i watched the new my little pony movie and it was... pretty good! it was very cute, i like the new cast a lot, there were some nice heartfelt moments that had some surprising depth, all the locations were really pretty to look at, the poppy musical numbers were fun, the character animation is really lively. it's a solid little fantasy adventure flick for kids. i do have mixed feelings about the story though. here are some casual-ish thoughts. (i posted some of this on twitter last night but i have even more thoughts now. i'm sorry. i'm so sorry)

spoilers below the cut

okay so, i liked it a lot when it was just letting the new characters play off each other, but unfortunately my fears came true and almost the entire movie is laser focused on the oversimplified extremely on-the-nose trump era racism allegory plot. i do have to cut it some slack for their good intentions, and this is a 90 minute animated movie for 5-year-olds, so there's only so much they can do. it did also have a bit more nuance than i expected at points. (it's more nuanced than zootopia, for what it's worth. not that that's hard.) and hell, friendship is magic also screwed up its attempts at similar topics, and y'all know how much i still love that show. so it's not like i hate this movie. but it has such an oversimplified "we should all be friends!" take on real issues, and it frustrates me that it completely dominates the film, being the main focus of almost every single scene

there's some interesting stuff where they show how those in power are stoking peoples' fears to maintain their own power. like the big factory in the earth pony town is essentially an arms manufacturer capitalizing on the fear of outsiders, the cops mainly exist to uphold the laws segregating the ponies, the pegasus royal family pretends they still have the ability to fly and this lie seems to be the only reason they're in power (the queen literally gets arrested the second the truth comes out lol). but then they all just kind of... see the error of their ways shortly after meeting other types of pony, and there are no repercussions? not saying this toy commercial cartoon for little girls needs to fuckin kill the bad guys or throw them in jail or whatever, but we don't even get like a "they made them turn the arms factory into something else" type resolution, and no one even really acknowledges that these characters did anything wrong. no one is considered an oppressor, the movie takes for granted that these people in power who derive their power from bigotry were just misguided, and that they'll totally change their beliefs as soon as they're presented with new information. society is fundamentally unjust, but none of the individuals maintaining that unjust status quo are at fault for doing so

i also don't know if it's a good or bad thing that there's no explanation for why the ponies hate each other now. like on the one hand at least there's no historical backstory that inadvertently justifies the prejudices (like zootopia and its story about how the predators used to eat the prey). but on the other hand... how the hell did they get from g4 to here in the intervening centuries? at my most uncharitable it feels like this whole story about how equestria used to be this land where everyone got along and now everyone is divided is a heavy-handed metaphor for The Sudden Division Of America In The Trump Era as it's perceived by a lot of liberals. history didn't logically lead us to this point, no one is really at fault, everyone just arbitrarily started hating each other at some point and we just all need to put that aside and get along again. it's almost the FiM episode about how the cowboys and the natives should just learn to share all over again. (again: i will admit this is an uncharitable read of the film)

(sidebar with BIG SPOILERS: the very end also really bugged me, but that's more just a personal taste thing. in the leadup to g5 i was excited to see them make an earth pony the protagonist. i thought that was a nice change of pace after nine seasons of twilight. but then in the end of the movie, after sunny delivers the moral, she's magically turned into an alicorn... like oh we're just doing that again huh. okay. it also doesn't really gel with this story where the different types of pony are being used for a racism/xenophobia allegory)

i feel a little bad hyper-focusing on the way the allegory falls apart like this, but like. the allegory is the entire fucking movie lol. they are constantly talking about it in every scene, the first song mentions "building a wall," the main antagonist (who may or may not be intended to evoke trump???) manipulates the earth ponies' prejudices to make them all go full fascist, etc. it is not subtle. of course, this story isn't ALL bad - the adventures along the way were fun, i was relieved when everyone realized that the macguffin wouldn't magically make everyone get along again (although realizing this DOES make the macguffin restore everyone's magic which seems to mostly fix everything, so... lol), and a message about looking past stereotypes and misinformation to befriend people who are different from you definitely isn't a bad one for a kids' film. and obviously a story with this target demographic is ALWAYS going to have to simplify reality a bit. it's just extremely obvious that they wanted to go for a nuanced topical political story that would surprise the parents in the audience and maybe teach kids a thing or two, and it turned out messy

but again, i liked the characters. it was nice to look at. it was cute. i'll gladly watch a new show with these characters. i hope the inevitable show focuses less on this political allegory though lol

anyway there's a shot of fluttershy and rainbow dash in the opening scene so 10/10

[qqueenofhades]

Okay, I’ve read Joe Biden’s plans.

I’ve just sat down and spent several hours actually reading all the damn plans on his website, the whole thing, so you don’t have to. And here’s the conclusion:

They’re pretty good.

Are they absolutely everything we want immediately? Maybe not. Are they a solid Democratic agenda anyway? Yes they are. Are they better than Trump?

Light years!

His Violence Against Women plan is lengthy, detailed, and pays specific attention to violence against Native, lesbian and bisexual, low-income, disabled, rural, transgender (especially trans women of color) immigrant, domestic abuse victims, and other vulnerable women. He calls for replacing and expanding Obama-era policies and funding for campus sexual assault programs that DeVos trashed, and for providing money for culturally specific services that are sensitive to the diverse backgrounds of survivors. He also notes that sexual assault, while it predominantly affects women and girls, needs to be taken seriously and addressed for people of all gender identities.

His gun safety plan is forceful and lays out several steps for banning assault weapons, taking existing weapons from offenders, closing gun purchase background check and other legal loopholes, addressing the intersection between domestic violence and weapons ownership, and reducing or eliminating weapons and ammunition stockpiling.

His plan for tackling climate change and creating green jobs is also lengthy. He makes the connection between economic, environmental, and racial justice. He pledges to immediately rejoin the Paris Agreement and restore American leadership on the issue in pushing for even stronger climate standards, make climate change a central part of our trade, international, and justice goals, demand a worldwide ban on fossil fuel subsidies and tax breaks (!!!) and if the Green New Deal is passed, to sign it, as well as for the U.S. to achieve 100% clean energy and zero percent net emissions by 2050.

His healthcare plan is decent. It offers an immediate public option for all Americans regardless of private, employer, or no coverage, and generous new tax credits to put toward the cost of coverage. It strongly protects abortion rights and federal funding for Planned Parenthood, as well as rescinding the “gag rule” that prevents U.S. federal aid money from being used to provide or even talk about abortions in NGOs abroad. It attacks generic and drug price gouging. It calls for doubling the capital gains tax on the super-wealthy (from 20% to 39.5% paid on capital gains by anyone making over $1 million) to help fund healthcare reform. He also has a separate plan on the opioid crisis in America, and on older Americans and retirement, including the protection and re-funding of Medicare and Social Security.

His immigration plan is lengthy and detailed. He apologizes for and acknowledges the excessive deportation that occured during the Obama-Biden administrations, pledges to do better, and attacks Trump’s current inhumane acitivities on every front. The policy of children in cages, indefinite detention, the metered asylum system, and the Muslim Ban are gone on day one. In this and his LGBTQ plan, he notes the vulnerability of LGBTQ refugees, incuding LGBTQ refugees of color. He proposes streamlining of visa applications and prioritizing the immediate reunification of families. It also specifically states that ICE and CBP agents will be held directly accountable for inhumane treatment.

Speaking of which, his LGBTQ plan is comprehensive. It pays attention to multiple intersectional issues, down to the high rates of incarceration among trans people of color. (He also notes the rates of violence against trans women of color particularly.) He calls for a complete ban on conversion therapy and the discrimination against HIV-status individuals, as well as removing the ban on blood donation from gay and bisexual men. He will remove the transgender military ban immediately. He calls for funding for mental health and suicide prevention among LGBTQ populations.

His plan to empower workers calls for raising the federal minimum wage to $15, as well as indexing this to median hourly wages to ensure that working-class and middle-class wages grow closer to parity, and implementing strong legal protections for unions. He expresses support for striking workers and to empower the National Labor Relations Board in workplace advocacy. Farmworkers, domestic workers, gig economy workers, and other non-traditional labor groups are included in this. He will restore all Obama-Biden policies related to workplace safety and regulation.

His plan to restore American dignity and leadership in the world calls for immediately investing in election security and reform, restoration of the Voting Rights Act, immediately restoring White House press briefings and other Trump refusals of information, tackling criminal justice reform and systematic racial discrimination, calling for campaign finance reform, and basically blowing up all the stupid things the Trump administration does on a daily basis. It also calls for an end to all ongoing wars in the Middle East, restoring the Iran nuclear deal, and new arms control treaties with Russia, among general repairing of international alliances.

His plans for K-12 education and post-high school education call for greatly expanded funding across all levels of 2-year, 4-year, and other educational options. There will be no student loan payments for anyone making under $25,000 a year; everyone else will pay a capped amount and be completely forgiven after a certain period. Public servants qualify for up to $50,000 in loan forgiveness. This is not total loan forgiveness for everyone, which is obviously important for me and many of us, but it’s acceptable to start with. Additionally, his wife is a teacher and has a proven track record of calling for education investment and supporting public school funding.

His plan for housing addresses the needs of formerly incarcerated, LGBTQ, veteran, low-income, sexual assault survivor, black and Hispanic, and other vulnerable populations at risk of losing housing. It calls for a tax on companies and corporations with in excess of $50 billion in assets to fund comprehensive new housing initiatives, including $100 billion in accessible and low-income housing development. It includes extensive investment in public transportation and a high-speed rail system. This ties into his plan to repair infrastructure and invest in new technologies across the country.

His plan for criminal justice reform calls for the end of mass incarceration, the decriminalization of marijuana, the automatic expunging of all cannabis convictions, and an end on jail sentences for drug use. It highlights systematic institutional racism and the impact on black and brown people particularly. It calls for an end on all profiteering and private prisons. It focuses on reintegrating offenders into society and funding the needs of people released from prison. It proposes to “expand and use the power of the U.S. Justice Department to address systemic misconduct in police departments and prosecutors’ offices.” It broadens funding for social services and other programs for people who are otherwise placed into the prison pipeline.

There are more plans, which you can find here. These are the ones I read top to bottom. I am not by any means a Joe Biden fangirl; he was not my first choice, my second choice, or really anywhere on my list. However, having carefully read through his policy documents, I can say that:

He has at the least a good team of advisors who are keenly aware of the political climate, and is willing to both restore Obama-era standards and to improve on them where necessary. Obviously, all politicians’ promises are politicians’ promises, but this is a solid Democratic platform with obvious awareness of the progressive wing of the party.

If progressive legislation is passed in the House and Senate, he will sign it, including the Green New Deal.

He represents a clear and definite improvement over Donald Trump.

Is he everything we want? No. Are his policies better than I was expecting? Yes. I advise you to read through them for yourself. It has made me at least feel better about the likelihood of voting for him.

I realize it’s an unsexy position, especially on tumblr, to advocate for an old centrist white man. I’m not thrilled about having to do it. However, speaking as someone who was very resistant to Biden and still doesn’t agree with all of his previous legislative track record, that’s my consensus. He is a candidate who broadly aligns with values that I care about. His policies represent a concrete end to the damage of the Trump administration and gets us on the right track again.

Joe Biden, if he is the Democratic nominee, will receive my vote on November 3, 2020. I urge you to consider what I’ve laid out above and join me.