#and I might be off on my twitter numbering!

[unsolicited-opinions]

Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib writes on Twitter about Secretary Blinken's NYT interview:

The "pro-Palestine" movement's role in prolonging the war on Gaza: Though many are angry with Secretary Blinken’s responses during his interview with the New York Times about Gaza, some of the points he shared are absolutely salient and accurate. I have said this time and again and received immense backlash for doing so: Hamas’s war strategy, statements, behavior, and goals regularly shift and oscillate based on international public opinion, the actions of the “pro-Palestine” solidarity movement, and political statements by world governments, leaders, and institutions against Israel’s war. To be clear, I’m not in any capacity saying I endorse the horrendous war that Israel’s been waging on Gaza, killing a large number of civilians (including my family) and failing to achieve strategic and lasting results 15 months later. However, Hamas refused to engage in pragmatic negotiations to end the war it started, pulled back several times from closing a ceasefire/hostage deal, and thought that mass civilian casualties would delegitimize Israel and force it to end the war. Many are uncomfortable with Secretary Blinken’s remarks because he shed light on the reality that “pro-Palestine” rhetoric and pressure on Israel has inevitably or perhaps indirectly resulted in a strengthening of Hamas’s position and the overall worsening of the situation for Palestinians in Gaza. I have said time and again that even if folks wanted to attack and criticize Israeli actions, they should call upon the Islamist group to release hostages and negotiate and off-ramp from the war to implement political transformation. Instead, the “pro-Palestine” and international solidarity movements completely ignored Hamas’s criminality against Palestinians and Israelis alike while failing to promote pragmatic, realistic pathways forward to save the most Palestinian lives and make it clear that Hamas’s actions are unpopular, unsupported, and condemned. Secretary Blinken is right on the money with his remarks. The “pro-Palestine” movements across the world after October 7 bear a significant responsibility for prolonging this war and directly contributing to the massive suffering of Palestinians in the coastal enclave. This dereliction of duty delegitimizes almost the entirety of the premise upon which current “pro-Palestine” activism is built. Take a step back and never, ever speak for, over, or on behalf of the Palestinian people!

Haviv Rettig Gur says he agrees:

I agree with Ahmed. We might assess the war differently, but we assess the future the same. When the dust settles, when the rebuilding begins, the old truths everyone likes to ignore will reassert themselves. We'll be back at square one, with the same problem as before. Israel can't rule the Palestinians for all time, nor can the war ever end as long as Palestinian ideological factions like Hamas consistently undermine every attempt at peace-making. Anyone who doesn't understand how catastrophic Hamas has been to the Palestinian cause is of no use to the Palestinian cause. 90% of Israeli Jews now tell pollsters that the fundamental impulse of the Palestinian national movement is to annihilate them. Imagine for a moment that I personally would like to see Palestinian independence in my lifetime. What am I supposed to do with the reality that that statistic describes? How do I urge my fellow Israelis to once again ante up in a game that they have learned from repeated bitter failure - and from Hamas's own consistent rhetoric - is meant to bring about their destruction? And Hamas did that. It was Hamas (with some help from Arafat) that convinced even most progressive Israelis, through explicit word and endless bloody deeds, that withdrawal or compromise would only bring more bloodshed. As long as Israeli Jews believe that, believe what Hamas tells them, they will remain immune to the moral emotions of foreigners. This is the profound folly at the heart of the pro-Palestinian movement. It wants to pressure Israelis to withdraw while Hamas tells Israelis that it will come for their kids from any inch of land they abandon. The pro-Palestinian movement has not yet noticed that it and Hamas are sending Israelis opposite messages, making opposite demands, and so canceling each other out in the Israeli psyche. And it is Palestinians, always Palestinians, who are the first and greatest victims of this folly. Even their defenders are mostly just corralling them into that same old trap. If you can't separate the Palestinian cause from Hamas's cause, or, indeed, if you share Hamas's yearning to see us destroyed, then you're no defender of Palestine. You are one of its destroyers.

[kirby-the-gorb]

[risingsunresistance]

twitter is entering their "rts > likes" phase now that likes are private after they spent years calling us ungrateful for being demotivated by ratios lmao

[unproduciblesmackdown]

maybe bsol is that time jen tepper mentions when she was so upset about a review of a show of joe's that she broke a glass (&/or threw it out a window)

[lemonlover1110]

𝐁𝐀𝐁𝐘𝐒𝐈𝐓𝐓𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐒𝐄𝐑𝐕𝐈𝐂𝐄

Toji Fushiguro

Pairing: Toji Fushiguro x babysitter!f!Reader

Summary: Your dad's friend needs your babysitting services for the night. What will you do to help him out when his date goes in the wrong direction?

Warnings: MDNI, babysitter!Reader, Smut, Vaginal Fingering, Handjob, Vaginal Sex, Squirting, Degrading, Praising, Slight Dumbification, Creampie, Age Gap (Reader in 20s, Toji in 30s), Reader's Parents and Toji are friends, Cute baby Megumi is adorable

Discord +18 - Twitter - Ko-Fi

“Mr. Fushiguro.” Your brows furrow at the name of the man who solicited your babysitting services. You started off babysitting for your parents’ neighbors and they spread the word around, and as a broke college student who refuses to get a real job, you appreciate every time someone calls that they need someone to watch their kids for the night. You usually don’t know the person who calls, they believe you’re amazing simply by what your parents’ neighbors said, but this time the name looks familiar. You repeat the name a couple of times, yet a face isn’t coming up.

You knock on the door, and patiently wait. You have no problem waiting for almost five minutes because you keep trying to put a face to the name. Until Mr. Fushiguro finally opens the door, and you’re met with his bare chest which causes your face to get warm. You look up at the man, and it immediately hits you, you weren’t recommended by your neighbors, the man that stands in front of you is a friend of your parents. Toji Fushiguro. You smile at him, trying your best to not look back down at his well toned torso.

“You’re here early.” Toji comments, and you grab your phone from your purse to look at the time. You’re not early, on the contrary, you’re five minutes late. You end up not saying anything because you’re obviously not going to point out that you’re late to your gig.

“It’s so nice to see you.” Your voice sounds awkward as you speak. You’ve maybe met Toji a handful of times before. He became acquainted with your parents after you left for college so you don’t really know him. You’ve seen him a couple of holidays since apparently he doesn’t have a big family so he takes up your parents offer of coming over for the holidays. Your conversations with him have always been… dry, therefore you don’t have much of a bond. You have no idea how to greet him.

He leans on the doorframe, and you try to look into his eyes but it’s hard when he’s shirtless in front of you. You wait for him to move out of the way to enter the house, but he’s staring you down. He frowns, his eyes glued to your bare legs and he asks, “Is that appropriate attire for babysitting?”

“What?” You look down at your skirt and then at your legs. You end up rolling your eyes, biting your tongue to not say anything that you might regret. You look down at his chest and the sweatpants that hang dangerously low before you tilt your head to the side. There’s a smirk on your face when you look back up at him, “Is that appropriate attire to greet your babysitter?”

He snickers before getting out of the way and inviting you into the home. You take off your shoes and look around the place. You find his son running after a dog, and you try not to laugh as you watch Megumi aimlessly run after a dog that’s way faster than he is. You almost trip on a toy since you’re not really watching where you’re going, and the man that notices chuckles. He guides you to the living room and when you’re no longer moving, he finds himself completely clueless on what to say.

You’re staring at him, waiting for him to speak first. But he doesn’t so you take it upon yourself. “So… Where are you going?”

“I have a date and what not. I got the number from your dad since I told him I needed a babysitter.” He says, and you slowly nod in response. You didn’t need that second part, but it’s nice to know that he asked your father and he didn’t randomly get your number. “I have to get ready for my date.”

“Yeah… Before you go though, do you have–” You begin but he cuts you off.

“I have a list with Megumi’s schedule. He’s not allergic to anything but he is picky. Just make some mac ‘n’ cheese. You’ll be good.” Toji tells you and it’s as if he’s read your mind. You mutter a thank you before he yells, “Megumi, come here! Say hi to your babysitter.”

The four-year-old comes running your way, and he pants when he’s right in front of you. He’s sweaty after chasing the dog. He recognizes you and he greets you by using your name. 

“So nice to see you again, Megumi.” 

Toji leaves you two to interact while he finishes getting ready.

Megumi has to be the cutest child that you’ve ever babysat. He’s shy at first but when he warms up to you he becomes clingy. You find yourself playing a match of Uno, a card game that he doesn’t quite grasp the concept of. But he’s trying his best. Although you’ve explained the point that the game is to get rid of your cards, he keeps grabbing cards when he can put so many that are in his hands, down. 

“Am I winning?” He asks, even though he’s far from it. You end up nodding in response, watching as a yawn escapes his little lips. You grab your phone to look at the time, and see it’s almost his bedtime. You ruffle his hair before telling him,

“You won, buddy. It’s time for you to go to bed now.” You watch him put down the fifteen cards in his hands, and get up from the couch. You walk him to his bedroom, pick out some pajamas for him, and he proceeds to go to the bathroom to brush his teeth. 

You put him to bed with no problem, and now your only task is waiting for Toji to get home. You turn on the television and try to find something to watch, and when you find something interesting enough to watch, you lay down on your side on the couch and focus on the screen in front of you. You assume you’ll be here for a while, so you get comfortable. You lose track of time and don’t pay attention to anything but the screen in front of you, which is why your heart is in your throat when you feel a pair of large hands lift up your legs.

Luckily for you, it’s just Toji, lifting your legs and putting them over his lap when he takes a seat. He throws his head back, an exasperated sigh leaving his lips. You get your legs off his lap and properly sit down on the couch, feeling your face warm as you look at the man. He looks tired to say the least, and while you don’t usually ask this question, you feel inclined to ask, “How was your date?”

“I could not stand her voice, and for the life of me she has to be the most annoying woman I’ve ever met.” He puts his hands over his face, and he exhales. This is truly one of the worst dates he’s ever been on. Just when he puts himself out there again he meets the most irritating woman. “She wasn’t even that hot either. When she opened her mouth, all attraction went out the door.”

“She couldn’t have been that bad.” You respond with a low chuckle. You laugh even more when he rolls his eyes.

“I’m never going out on a date again.” He replies. Toji isn’t afraid of oversharing, at least not when it’s only the two of you there. He doesn’t know you all that well either but he still says, “Worst of all, I didn’t get laid.”

“I mean, you could’ve still fucked her. Just block out her voice.” You tell him, and his brows raise. He chuckles before he reveals to you,

“Yeah, she wouldn’t have wanted to. I couldn’t control the look of disdain on my face.” Which makes you laugh. You bite down your lip looking him up and down. He looks handsome.

“If I were her–” You feel bold but your confidence goes away in an instant, just as you open your mouth. There’s a smirk on his face, and he leans your way. He licks his lips, and you sense that you’ve made a mistake.

“If you were her then?” He invites you to continue your sentence, but you shake your head. You try to play it off with a sweet smile, but that’s not enough for Toji. He’s about to say something obscene, but he bites his tongue. He ends up chuckling before he confesses, “Oh, your dad would kill me for what I was about to say.”

“Oh? What were you going to say?” Your curiosity rises and you aren’t going to back down now. You’re the one that leans in now, and your faces are mere inches away from touching. He has a cocky look all over his face, and you hate to admit that you love seeing it. “My dad isn’t here. You can tell anything you want to his adult daughter.”

“You’re still a little girl in his eyes, he would kill me.” He comments while you grab his hand and you put it on your bare thigh. Your other hand goes up his chest and lands behind his shoulder, creeping toward his nape. You make sure to lower your voice.

“You’re not him nor is he here. You can tell me just about anything.” He moves his hand up your thigh and under your skirt. You feel his fingers hook under your panties and he finally says,

“How about I just show you.” His lips land on yours, and your mouth opens to let his tongue in. You feel his finger toy with your panties, while your hand goes to his lap. His tongue presses against yours while his fingers begin to play with your clothed cunt. You weren’t expecting that your night babysitting would end up like this– Or maybe you did since you were greeted by a shirtless Toji. Either way, you don’t mind it.

He pushes your panties to the side, his finger running through your folds before they begin to toy with your clit. Your hand begins to palm his erection that feels so uncomfortable in his pants. When he gets his fingers wet enough with your slick, he pushes two inside your warm cunt which causes you to moan into the kiss. 

“I don’t think we should be doing this.” You breathlessly comment when you pull away from the kiss, a sudden wave of consciousness hitting you. But it’s not stopping either of you because it feels so good. You rebuke your statement by kissing him again. Your hands unbuckle his belt and get his cock out. Your eyes glance at it, and they widen at the sight of how big it is. That has to be the biggest cock you’ve seen. 

You pull away from the kiss and spit on his cock a couple of times before your hand wraps around it and you begin to stroke it. You feel as his thumb begins to play with your clit, and you use your other hand to cover your mouth. Toji can’t help but say, “You’re loving this… Oh you’re such a little slut.”

You end up humming in response as he curls his fingers. Your eyes are rolling to the back of your head, feeling so good while he moves his thick fingers in and out of you. He’s right, you are a fucking slut because you’ve been thinking about a similar scenario the moment you saw him shirtless.

“You came wearing a skirt so I could do this, didn’t you?” He asks, and you’re tightening around his fingers as pressure builds up in your lower abdomen. Your hand lazily strokes his cock, and you’re doing such an awful job which almost annoys Toji but he knows you have much bigger things on your plate– Rather, inside of it. You’re shutting your legs, and he forces you to spread them. “Don’t act shy now.”

“It’s so good.” You remove your hand from your mouth to tell him that.

“I know, baby.” He responds, and just as you’re about to come, he takes his fingers out. A whine leaves your lips. “C’here.”

You move your legs up, hovering above him on the couch, your back to him. He licks his hand before he grabs his cock and runs it through your folds. He slowly pushes his cock in, and it feels even bigger while inside you. You have to slap your hand over your mouth while he bottoms out.

“You got a tight little cunt–” He groans, his voice low, mindful that you aren’t home alone. Toji has never been more glad that a date didn’t work out because otherwise he wouldn’t be fucking the cute little babysitter. You feel so nice and warm around him… This is truly the best way to end his night– Only problem is that he can’t tell a single soul about this. “Fuck…”

You begin to bounce on him, moving slowly. Toji’s hand goes under your shirt and bra, his fingers pinching your nipple. His other hand begins to play with your clit, and it’s all so much for you to handle. Toji’s lips kiss your neck before they go to your ear and he whispers, “You like that, baby? You like my dick?”

You really can’t say anything but moan. You feel the orgasm that was stripped from you, build up once again. Your eyes are rolling to the back of your head and he asks, “Aren’t you gonna answer? Or are you too dumb to answer?”

He takes control for you, thrusting in and out of you at a much faster pace than the one that you have set. His cock hits every right spot, and it’s too much for your poor little pussy to handle. Your hand goes over your mouth again because you’re getting louder and louder with every thrust. “You like it, pretty girl?”

“You’re such a dumb girl, can’t even answer a simple question.” Your cunt is tightening around him, getting so close to your climax. When you finally come, and you make the biggest mess by squirting all over him and the living room. It causes Toji to grin, his hand slapping your cunt while saying, “You’re so fucking messy. You’re such a good girl.”

Toji’s thrusts keep picking up speed as his peak approaches. Your pussy feels so nice and tight around him, and he’s so fucking glad that he didn’t just toss you the money and dismiss you. He just wishes that instead of going to that dumb date he would’ve stayed with you and fucked you over and over again. 

“Good girls like you need some sort of reward.” He begins, and the words don’t register in your mind. He was thinking of pulling out at the beginning of this, but he can’t let you leave without coming inside of you. “You want my cum, pretty girl?”

“Please!” You almost yell. It doesn’t take too long for his warm cum to fill you up, and you love the feeling of it. He leaves you on top while his cock softens, and he peppers your neck with kisses. After a while he speaks up.

“You can’t tell a single soul about this.” He reminds you, and you laugh.

“I should be the one telling you that. I’d never hear the end of it.” You respond.

“I also need your services next week.” He brings up, and your brows raise, turning to look at him.

“Another date?”

“Not the babysitting service.”

[5ummit]

AO3 Ship Stats: Year In Bad Data

You may have seen this AO3 Year In Review.

It hasn’t crossed my tumblr dash but it sure is circulating on twitter with 3.5M views, 10K likes, 17K retweets and counting. Normally this would be great! I love data and charts and comparisons!

Except this data is GARBAGE and belongs in the TRASH.

I first noticed something fishy when I realized that Steve/Bucky – the 5th largest ship on AO3 by total fic count – wasn’t on this Top 100 list anywhere. I know Marvel’s popularity has fallen in recent years, but not that much. Especially considering some of the other ships that made it on the list. You mean to tell me a femslash HP ship (Mary MacDonald/Lily Potter) in which one half of the pairing was so minor I had to look up her name because she was only mentioned once in a single flashback scene beat fandom juggernaut Stucky? I call bullshit.

Now obviously jumping to conclusions based on gut instinct alone is horrible practice... but it is a good place to start. So let’s look at the actual numbers and discover why this entire dataset sits on a throne of lies.

Here are the results of filtering the Steve/Bucky tag for all works created between Jan 1, 2023 and Dec 31, 2023:

Not only would that place Steve/Bucky at #23 on this list, if the other counts are correct (hint: they're not), it’s also well above the 1520-new-work cutoff of the #100 spot. So how the fuck is it not on the list? Let’s check out the author’s FAQ to see if there’s some important factor we’re missing.

The first thing you’ll probably notice in the FAQ is that the data is being scraped from publicly available works. That means anything privated and only accessible to logged-in users isn’t counted. This is Sin #1. Already the data is inaccurate because we’re not actually counting all of the published fics, but the bots needed to do data collection on this scale can't easily scrape privated fics so I kinda get it. We’ll roll with this for now and see if it at least makes the numbers make more sense:

Nope. Logging out only reduced the total by a couple hundred. Even if one were to choose the most restrictive possible definition of "new works" and filter out all crossovers and incomplete fics, Steve/Bucky would still have a yearly total of 2,305. Yet the list claims their total is somewhere below 1,500? What the fuck is going on here?

Let’s look at another ship for comparison. This time one that’s very recent and popular enough to make it on the list so we have an actual reference value for comparison: Nick/Charlie (Heartstopper). According to the list, this ship sits at #34 this year with a total of 2630 new works. But what’s AO3 say?

Off by a hundred or so but the values are much closer at least!

If we dig further into the FAQ though we discover Sin #2 (and the most egregious): the counting method. The yearly fic counts are NOT determined by filtering for a certain time period, they’re determined by simply taking a snapshot of the total number of fics in a ship tag at the end of the year and subtracting the previous end-of-year total. For example, if you check a ship tag on Jan 1, 2023 and it has 10,000 fics and check it again on Jan 1, 2024 and it now has 12,000 fics, the difference (2,000) would be the number of "new works" on this chart.

At first glance this subtraction method might seem like a perfectly valid way to count fics, and it’s certainly the easiest way, but it can and did have major consequences to the point of making the entire dataset functionally meaningless. Why? If any older works are deleted or privated, every single one of those will be subtracted from the current year fic count. And to make the problem even worse, beginning at the end of last year there was a big scare about AI scraping fics from AO3, which caused hundreds, if not thousands, of users to lock down their fics or delete them.

The magnitude of this fuck up may not be immediately obvious so let’s look at an example to see how this works in practice.

Say we have two ships. Ship A is more than a decade old with a large fanbase. Ship B is only a couple years old but gaining traction. On Jan 1, 2023, Ship A had a catalog of 50,000 fics and ship B had 5,000. Both ships have 3,000 new works published in 2023. However, 4% of the older works in each fandom were either privated or deleted during that same time (this percentage is was just chosen to make the math easy but it’s close to reality).

Ship A: 50,000 x 4% = 2,000 removed works Ship B: 5,000 x 4% = 200 removed works

Ship A: 3,000 - 2,000 = 1,000 "new" works Ship B: 3,000 - 200 = 2,800 "new" works

This gives Ship A a net gain of 1,000 and Ship B a net gain of 2,800 despite both fandoms producing the exact same number of new works that year. And neither one of these reported counts are the actual new works count (3,000). THIS explains the drastic difference in ranking between a ship like Steve/Bucky and Nick/Charlie.

How is this a useful measure of anything? You can't draw any conclusions about the current size and popularity of a fandom based on this data.

With this system, not only is the reported "new works" count incorrect, the older, larger fandom will always be punished and it’s count disproportionately reduced simply for the sin of being an older, larger fandom. This example doesn’t even take into account that people are going to be way more likely to delete an old fic they're no longer proud of in a fandom they no longer care about than a fic that was just written, so the deletion percentage for the older fandom should theoretically be even larger in comparison.

And if that wasn't bad enough, the author of this "study" KNEW the data was tainted and chose to present it as meaningful anyway. You will only find this if you click through to the FAQ and read about the author’s methodology, something 99.99% of people will NOT do (and even those who do may not understand the true significance of this problem):

The author may try to argue their post states that the tags "which had the greatest gain in total public fanworks” are shown on the chart, which makes it not a lie, but a error on the viewer’s part in not interpreting their data correctly. This is bullshit. Their chart CLEARLY titles the fic count column “New Works” which it explicitly is NOT, by their own admission! It should be titled “Net Gain in Works” or something similar.

Even if it were correctly titled though, the general public would not understand the difference, would interpret the numbers as new works anyway (because net gain is functionally meaningless as we've just discovered), and would base conclusions on their incorrect assumptions. There’s no getting around that… other than doing the counts correctly in the first place. This would be a much larger task but I strongly believe you shouldn’t take on a project like this if you can’t do it right.

To sum up, just because someone put a lot of work into gathering data and making a nice color-coded chart, doesn’t mean the data is GOOD or VALUABLE.

[rosyblooom]

could you please do lando and a stem girl who goes to uni but has a private life please

they don't know about us | ln4 smau

pairing: lando norris x private fem computer science major!reader a/n: this took me forever but hope u still like :) also, if you've got requests could u add if you want it to be smau or fic pls <3

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f1gossip

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f1gossip Y/N L/N, current girlfriend of Lando Norris, has been photographed arriving at the paddock for today's Miami GP.

Y/N's presence comes as a bit of a surprise, considering she was absent during practice and qualifying sessions, and rarely attends races. Speculation about a potential breakup has been rampant, but her appearance suggests that there might not be trouble in paradise after all... 👀

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username she always looks so classy and put-together, i'm obsessed <33

username no bc am i the only who has no problem with her only attending a few races a year? some ppl don't have time to jet off across the globe 24/7 like

username it's the fact that they literally travelled to miami together and she still didn't go to quali or practice😐 the other wags do it, why can't she?

username i just know lando had to beg her to come smh

username why are y'all so rude omg?? some ppl are introverts...

username when you're in the public eye, you don't get to be "introverted"🙃 username that's an insane take wtf?

username GUYS i think she's a uni student cause peep lando's story a few days ago🧐 that explains why she's never at gps

username so? i'm a senior and i went to the aus gp this year username okay... do you want a cookie ?

username if a wag is at all races she's fame-hungry, and if she doesn't she's unsupportive like make up y'all's minds pls 🙄

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landonorris Memories for life ❤️

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username aw the 5th pic🥹

username do you think number six is y/n??👀 username 100%

username 🧡🧡🧡🧡🧡

username LANDO NOW WINS IKTRRRRR‼️🤩

username ofc y/n couldn't even be bothered to comment... and the most unsupportive wag award goes to y/n l/n!! congrats hun x

username y'all are weird YOU DON'T KNOW THESE PPL!! username it's the 'be kind' in ur bio for me miss gurl 🤡

username best day ever 🤧

lewishamilton 👏👏👏

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riabish sooo happy!!!

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username not ria being more of a gf then y/n oop username thanks for being such a good friend to lando, we love you💖

username next goal: beome world champion 👀👀

username yessirrrr

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harvard

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harvard Final projects, theses, dissertations, and more! Check out what these soon-to-be graduates explored in some of their last assignements on campus.

Y/N's thesis navigated the intricate relationship between privacy and secure multi-party computation, enhancing data analysis while safeguarding sensitive information.

2. Steve's environmental science project examined urban development's impact on local biodiversity, providing insights for sustainable urban planning.

3. Nya's dentistry research poster explored new methods to improve dental implant success, promising better patient outcomes and oral healthcare.

—

We are celebrating the extraordinary members of the Class of #Harvard24 🎓

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username 👏👏👏

username Awesome!

username Very good! Congrats to all these students!!💪

username wait am i tripping or is this y/n as in lando's gf y/n???😳 btw my biggest dream is to go to harvard in '26 !!!! 💕

username 😍😍

username streets are saying y/n goes to harvard so i had to come check and omg??😩

username no bc wag AND harvard girly?? just looked at myself and sighed fr... username now i feel bad for talking shit🫤

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lando.jpg 🍾🎓❤️

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username a win for women iktr 😌

username wow i'm so happy for her omg 🫶🫶 (jealous too but mostly happy loolol)

username LMAO are we the same person?

carlossainz55 👏👏👏

username now she has no excuse anymore

username if lando's completely happy with it all, why the hell are u upset? 🤡

username 2024 really gave us lando's first ever win and now this?? we love to see it 😍

yourusername ❤️❤️

(liked by author)

username we love you y/n <333 username i hope you'll be able to attend more races from now on!! i love seeing you in the paddock 💕

username the way i still haven't fully processed the fact that harvard gave her a shoutout goddamn🤯

usernmae not you calling that a shoutout bye💀💀

username AAHHHH YAYY CONGRATS Y/N YOU'RE DOING AMAZING SWEETIE 🤍🤍🤍🤍

0:33 ───ㅇ───────── 2:40

[manikas-whims]

Before this issue gets drowned out like certain bootlickers do everytime..

Here's more on Papergames and Infold’s unreasonable money milking

via twitter fandom

• how it was worse and how certain things were slightly improved only after CN whales complained

• endless mistranslations aka issues with Lumiere's r2 solar pair bonus (Lumiere havers you might know) + the mistranslation and wrong flower still being mentioned on Xavier's Lightseeker Myth (it should be Forget-me-nots, not whatever that other flower is)

THE BUGS IN MASTER OF FATE ZAYNE 🫠 something my friend constantly keeps complaining about but no fix..

• JOURNEY

There used to be a feature where you used to get some extra rewards by completing certain actions per chapter of Main.

I started playing around end of May so i still experienced this. But this feature only lasted till 4 chapters??

And after the version 2.0 update, this feature was completely eradicated. Not even there for NEW players.

Now I can't believe i have to praise Genshin of all but they DO have chapter rewards as well..

Genshin has rewards for even leveling up characters and artifacts (similar to protocores) to a certain level.

• lack of events (genshin runs at least 3-7 events at the same time)

• a lot of content locked behind cards, and even then the amount charged far more compared to the meagre content in said cards

• Reruns (though i believe they might happen from next year onwards)

• Insane Difficulty in leveling up cards

this game just doesn't allow people to have spare materials! forget hoarding, you can barely save on the materials you acquire..

compared to this.. I can't believe i have to praise Genshin and Star Rail again..

Below are 2 characters I pulled recently in Genshin, and I've managed to upgrade both in like a few minutes because Genshin allows me to keep spare materials instead of charging insane amounts to get a card to just level 40

You can see my in-game currency, my upgrade materials compared to the bare amount of bottles we get from Heartbreaker (and we don't even get the golden bottles for free)

• Reduction in the amount of New Event Rewards

someone pointed out how the Diamond rewards are lesser (from 750 to 500) for the upcoming event, compared to the past ones

• Amount of Banners in a Month

Y'all can call me annoying but doing this many number of banners in a month is INSANE. It allows no room for breathing to any LIs fans.

“pick one guy & you won't have to spend” 🤪

I STILL BELIEVE A BANNER SHOULD RUN FOR AT LEAST 25~30 DAYS because rn running 3+ banners in a month seems like nothing but low quality cash grabs with pretty outfits..

Lastly, I do not mean to spoil anyone's mood for the upcoming quad banner but these are all issue that need to be given consideration, instead of brushing them off simply because sOme PeOpLe cAn pAY 🫠

[d1s1ntegrated]

omg ur streamer shigaraki is SO MHMGGGFFFFF, ive been thinking ab shigaraki w his (super out of his league heaven sent) gf and how chat goes crazy when he does a gf reveal at like a 1 mil milestone or whatever.. GAWDDDDD

“chat is this real”

“How did he pull HER?” type beat

streamer!shigaraki: gf reveal! 1mil subs :)

mini smau/lowkey crack

ignore how poorly made the tweets are i did my best 😔

█▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒

"alright fucks we somehow made it to a million, i'm gonna finally prove im not lying and i do in fact know the touch of a woman"

chat going absolutely wild waiting for her to show up

instead he gets up, goes off cam, and returns with a cardboard cutout of some girl from high school dxd and the chat immediately spams L

->"loser we knew u didn't have a gf"

->"touch grass buddy come on"

->"go back 2 streaming games bro"

->"it's ok we're all a little delulu sometimes"

->"ur still my fav bro"

->"buddy...."

->"clapped"

->"not the dxd girl wtf"

->"ew"

->"LLLLLLLLLLLLLL"

->"troll"

he reads the chat out loud, stopping specifically on "troll". he smiles wide and nods

"yeah, i guess i am a troll. i dunno, what do you think babe?"

an unfamiliar voice rings out, muffled from the side; "you might be"

you come out from the side to "read the chat" better and they stop altogether, like chat literally dies for a few seconds

->"what."

->"WWWWWWWWWWW"

->"ain't no way"

->"HOW"

->"how much does he pay u"

->"NO SHOTTJWJW"

->"YO????????"

->"HE PULLED HER??????"

->"W"

->"IS THIS REAL??"

->"guys he's lying it's his sister"

->"he doesn't have a sister dumb fuck"

->"ON GOD??1?1?2"

->"CAN U BE MY GF TOO"

->"SHIG UR GF SO HOT PLS DONT DIE"

->"on my knees crying"

->" ('-')7 sorry we doubted u"

->" ('-')7"

->" (•_•)777777777"

->"W"

-> "w chain"

->"W"

->"W"

->"W"

you sit on his lap and he grins, laughing at the reactions of the chat

"i fucking told you"

you laugh and read the chats out loud, answering a few of them along the way

"no i'm not his sister, ew, it's very real, we've been together for a while now, also that cutout is mine, i bought it for the stream"

over the next few hours, both of your phones go off repeatedly with notifications. social media sites are booming with your reveal, and #shiggygfreveal becomes a top tag on twitter.

scrolling through the tag, you find multiple posts about how beautiful you are, how lucky he is, etc

u both finally decide to collab, which brings a huge number of followers up QUICKLY

chat is forever stunned and bowing at shiggys feet because of it ('-')7

██████████

guys lmk if i should keep making this smau/other ones cause this was kinda fun ngl

hope u enjoyed :-3

fank u 4 the request sweet babe @yuckyyenaa ! 🥳🫶

[firelightmlpoc]

I recently received a DM from a fellow who was a junior mod in the Shipping Container server, & they’ve been gracious enough to allow me to use their words on the current happenings, covering the events of the 0303Emily internal happenings of the server at that time.

Now, you may wonder why exactly I’m bringing up the 0303Emily debacle, much less in association with Pansear?

Well, besides the fact that the accusations leveled against 0303Emily are baseless themselves (One example of why at the bottom of this post, completely ignoring the fact that Azriel was only a month or 2 away from being 18 at the time of the accusation while 0303Emily was just 20.), they indicate a trend between both accusations that further shows minimal actual PROOF & deliberate misinterpretations of situations to then twist things into a more negative light.

Now, the statement from the junior mod:

“first off, sorry this isnt really that well worded. i dont even know where to start with all this. i wanted to offer my view on things from the internals of the SC server and some info that might explain the origins of all this. ive wanted to talk about this for a while but im not a very confrontational person and i didnt even have a tumblr or twitter

i was a helper (basically junior mod that had bare mininum perms) on SC during the entire event, and while I did not participate in the decision because it was really complex and i was busy with finals but i did lurk the convo and read a lot of it. i dont have any screenshots of this because i left a few weeks later after the entire mod team basically dissolved and the server lost all its users.

basically a while back before the grooming accusations some kids (like under 18) on the server were going around looking up artists on furaffnity, e621, and other nsfw websites and then reporting it to the mods of SC and i think mainworld too. the mods were pretty "this isnt really our business" about it and told the kids to stop snooping, and that was the end of it.

a few months later still before the grooming the issue resurfaced with the same users going after nsfw artists, they were again told to mind their business but a few weeks later came back with the grooming accusations on top of it. the key thing here is that the mod issue was heavily centered around the nsfw art that emily had been making, along with several other users who were in nsfw servers that these kids had joined to snoop around. they logged thousands of messages from multiple users and sifted through them looking for anything that could be added to this report.

again i just want to emphasize that this was not at all about Emily and Azriel at this time. The entire report was about NSFW people were doing in private NSFW sites and places that the kids had to lie and sneak into because they were LOOKING for dirt on these people. It was not just emily but around a dozen users in our server that had been perfectly fine up until this point.

there was a lot of delay with getting this report finalized and the grooming accusation came later. however given the context this seemed to raise a few red flags for the staff because the accusors had been so intense about their search for info and the fact that the conversation between them was months prior, there was some question of if the accusors had coached or otherwise convicned azriel about them being groomed just to get more dirt on emily.

Well the SC mods were tired of the NSFW artists being reported and considering the number of people being reported (again, more than just emily) and the methods the accusors had taken, decided that this was basically tantamount to stalking and kicked everyone involved.

What you see on tumblr is the response to that. They went and said "SC is run by groomer zoophiles" and everyone who had a hate boner for pansear jumped on board and it went nuclear.

I dont really know if this helps but i am just tired of sitting here being unable to speak about it because i dont have a following and i really miss pansear.”

I want to further emphasize this part:

“again i just want to emphasize that this was not at all about Emily and Azriel at this time. The entire report was about NSFW people were doing in private NSFW sites and places that the kids had to lie and sneak into because they were LOOKING for dirt on these people. It was not just emily but around a dozen users in our server that had been perfectly fine up until this point.”

Minors actively invaded adult-spaces, willingly & ACTIVELY exposed themselves to adult content EXPLICITLY to ‘dig up dirt.’

So, with that in mind, why would they stop at that? Why would they stop at something so trivial as faking screenshots? Multiple members have actively made threats to people accused & they care not about spreading a falsehood (Just look at Pansear’s old Tumblr handle!).

And here’s the example I said I’d give earlier. Azriel starts the conversation with mention of the horrors of some NSFW content from the fandom & then gives an example. 0303Emily follows up with a shared experience. This is some of the ‘proof’ that was presented in the doc Azriel & Co. put forth.

This doesn’t even mention any of the other discrepancies in their own ‘proof.’ The ‘Zoophilia’ allegations are once again Anthro on Anthro characters engaging in sexual acts, just like the allegation against Pansear.

Don’t believe me? Their own google doc is right here on this chap’s post. Read through it.

And if you want to read more, read this. It further emphasizes on this matter.

[qqueenofhades]

Hi! This question has been noodling in my head for a few weeks, and I’ve been really curious to hear your opinion. I’ve appreciated your very thoughtful commentary on the ways the online left in particular have hurt the real and concerted efforts that have been made to navigate through the Gaza war in support of Palestine. I’ve seen a lot of outrage online about Biden bypassing congress in order to make another emergency weapons sale to Israel, which does indeed read as counter to helping to the Palestinians facing endless and indiscriminate violence. I understand that you might not want to answer this ask, because the work that you already do in your life offline and the work that you do here on tumblr to respond to and explain these issues is exhausting enough. Thanks so much for your time and your thoughtful contributions! It’s always really helped me remember to slow down and think critically about the media I consume.

Because you have asked this thoughtfully and in good faith, I will return the favor and give you a careful and extensive answer to the best of my ability. However, obligatory top-of-post disclaimer that I will disable reblogs at the first hint of any wankery in the notes and I will not answer any follow-ups or secondary asks at this time (unless I decide to do so, but I engage with this topic sparingly, judiciously, and only in small doses, so don't count on it).

First, let me say that the moment, I disagree with substantial portions of how Biden is handling the two main foreign-policy crises (Ukraine and Gaza). In regard to Ukraine, I think he's backed off, taken his foot off the gas, and otherwise given Republicans ammunition to keep delaying or watering down a new aid bill, is refusing to disburse military aid packages from the $4 billion of funding remaining that was previously approved by Congress, hasn't sent long-range ATACMS and other critical military hardware that might bring the war to an end sooner, and is not (as of the moment, though recent reporting suggests this might change) pushing hard enough for frozen Russian assets to be transferred to Ukraine for military and/or humanitarian financial assistance. However, I am also aware (unlike, it seems, much of the left-leaning internet) that I am basing these judgments only on my personal impressions, on what is reported (or not reported) in the media (which has plenty of its own problems) and otherwise what is formed in my role as an ordinary American citizen without any kind of special, classified, high-level, or government access. I know nothing more than any of you, and I also know that a lot of what goes on behind closed doors does not appear on Political Twitter and/or the Washington Post or the Guardian or Daily Kos or whatever other aggregate sources of information I or any left-leaning person typically consumes. So it's highly possible (and this is my cautious academic instinct speaking) that I do not, in fact, have a full picture of events. There are also contributing factors that Biden cannot simply handwave aside, even if he did, say, dip back into the $4 billion pot in the meantime. Congress will need to pass a new funding bill for Ukraine aid and the MAGA Republicans have been enthusiastically blocking it to the point where Putin's cronies on Russian state TV praise them effusively for it. We all know about the Republicans and Russia's mutual love affair. So.

The same goes for Gaza, and even more because we have already had reporting about how the Biden administration is walking a behind-the-scenes tightrope in a number of seemingly impossible tasks: keeping the war from spreading to a larger theater, pressuring Netanyahu to dial down, y'know, the rampant genocide (when Netanyahu notoriously doesn't like Biden, was very close with Trump, and would be happy to keep the war going in order to boost Trump's chances of being re-elected and save Netanyahu himself from his own criminal prosecutions), and pursuing a complex policy toward the state of Israel that does not follow the antisemitic Western Online Left's fever dream of "Israel suddenly disappears overnight and falls into the ocean and all Jews die or disappear." We have had multiple credibly sourced reports about this. Blinken is back in the Middle East right now trying to keep the war from spreading. The US under Biden has criticized Israel's essentially empty policy document for post-war Gaza as not being remotely feasible (because it's so vague) and gone so far as to voice support for a two-state solution with Palestinian self-determination (which is itself quite radically different from previous administrations). However, they have also vetoed UN ceasefire resolutions and other essentially meaningless political theater (the UN as a whole has been ruthlessly exposed in the last few years for being completely useless) that are easy to gin up outrage about, and that's what the internet focuses on, rather than any of the other complicated actions taking place.

All of this is to say that no, in fact, I don't blindly support everything the Biden administration is doing in regard to either Ukraine or Israel right now, but I actually have a sense of real-world perspective about it and understand that there are certain immutable realities that we are working with and which will not be erased by some absolute jackasses yelling at Biden in a historically black church at the commemoration of an anti-black terrorist attack. Likewise, as I've said it before and I'll say it again, and as plenty of other people have noticed and pointed out, the Western left is using this as an orgy of pseudo-revolutionary fervor that focuses on using Hamas as a proxy for their own fantasies of violent uprising against their own governments. Because while yes, anti-zionism and antisemitism are two distinct things and represent different aims and goals, it's become more or less irrelevant in allegedly pro-Palestine Western leftist spaces. It's just increasingly rabid, accelerationist, and nihilistic antisemitism all the time, or the obvious usage of "Zionist" to mean "Jew." It's not good. There is no concept of actual restorative justice for Palestinians or other people, such as Ukrainians, Syrians, Uyghurs, Taiwanese, etc, either undergoing genocide or facing the threat of it, because Western leftists have latched onto this cause solely as a stick to beat the Democratic Party with and have no actual moral interest or concern in stopping genocide elsewhere in the world or repudiating it as a method overall. They just want the state of Israel (which they characterize as a "proxy state for white western colonialism" despite the many, many things historically, religiously, and politically wrong with that statement, because it means it now Contains the Right Buzzwords to Oppose It) to be destroyed altogether in the name of "opposing colonialism," but it really seems to be all about opposing Jews. Hmm.

Simply put, Biden is not ever going to pursue a policy of "let's totally abandon Israel tomorrow, never sell it any weapons or allow it to defend its own civilians, and agree that Hamas is actually a good representation or advocate for the Palestinian people" in the way a number of Western Online Leftists seem to think he should do. There is still the fact that Israeli civilians do exist and that Hamas has continued to launch missiles at them daily, inconvenient as that fact might be for the Hamas fanboys (and fangirls) who now populate much of what passes for Western leftist discourse spaces. (Either that or they don't care, because in their view, Israeli civilians are fully acceptable collateral damage by virtue of simply living in Israel in the first place, which -- yikes. Fucking yikes. That is all.) The number of people professing to be lifelong leftists who are Just Shocked at all the antisemitism, or thinking that any and all antisemitism is just artificially introduced into leftist spaces by bad-faith right-wing/Nazi psyops either has not spent any actual time around leftists, or (more likely) simply does not listen to what they openly say. The antisemitism is virulent, constant, and only getting worse. On the most basic level, regardless of the other difficulties around the founding of Israel as a state in 1948 and the fact that doing so on some of the most bitterly religiously, politically, ethnically, and culturally contested territory in the world for over two thousand years was always going to be a massive clusterfuck, the fact of its immediate post-Holocaust creation simply cannot be ignored the way many Online Leftists do. Israel exists because of the worst antisemitic mass murder in recorded history (and that's a high bar). That fact must be incorporated into any actual discussions about its right either to exist or to protect its own civilians. But this gets turned into "Israel exists only as a puppet state of white western colonialists" which is just bad on so, so many levels.

The collective Western Online Leftist feeling seems to be that Hamas are innocent and wronged freedom fighters who are begging for a ceasefire and the cruel Israelis aren't granting them one. This is not true. Hamas has rejected multiple ceasefire opportunities, and continued to launch missiles and retaliatory attacks, because they are terrorists and they do not want or represent any serious opportunity to negotiate in the framework of western liberal democracy. They are treated as helpless woobified blorbos by much of the Western leftist-leaning internet. They are not. In that case, Biden bypassing Congress to sell Israel weapons (which was just something like 100 million of artillery shells, which is not nothing but still not a huge systematic thing like, say, Reagan's Iran-Contra scandal) is not great. I do not support anything Israel is doing to Gaza. It is abhorrent. However, there are reasons for Biden to provide some limited amount of weapons to Israel without congressional approval that do not automatically and mindlessly equate to BIDEN SUPPORTS TOTAL GENOCIDE IN GAZA!!!!!!1 Especially when as I've said, the Online Leftists only care about stopping genocide when it fits their political self-righteousness, and absolutely not at all the rest of the time.

This is representative of the fact that Western Online Leftism has now completed its all-out descent into blind Noam Chomskyism. Chomsky has never met a "leftist" or "anti-Western" genocide he couldn't deny, excuse, or openly cheerlead (going all the way back to the 1970s and Pol Pot/the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia and going up to the minute with Russia/Ukraine and Israel/Palestine). Noam Chomsky is the leftist Henry Kissinger. His ethics and morals are equally abhorrent, he's just as willing to justify total genocide in the name of advancing his preferred political ideology, and while there were (justifiably) celebrations and gloating memes across Tumblr when Kissinger finally bit the dust, Chomsky's beliefs are replicated with slavish adoration in many other Tumblr spaces and spread in some form or another to the rest of the website, which now takes them as leftist gospel (and let's not even talk about Twitter). This represents my absolute frustration with the fact that Western Online Leftism has devolved to such a degraded, mindless, useless, and malevolent level that "cheerlead for any anti-western/Leftist TM terrorist group or state" is taken to be the be-all and end-all of their moral philosophy. Someone remarked that ISIS peaked too early; if they were still at the height of their powers today, they would have a legion of devoted white so-called progressive Twitter users shilling earnestly and angrily for them, and Christ, isn't that the fucking truth.

I know we live in a hard, frightening, complex, and difficult world, and it's hard to sort out what our moral responsibility and action should be at any given time, especially since the answer is always so frustratingly partial and incomplete. Nobody of basic good sense and decency wants to see Gaza leveled while the Israeli state continues to apply a number of violently cruel collective punishments even outside the actual daily bombing of civilians. But for the love of god, let's get rid of the idea that the continued mindless violence doesn't benefit Hamas (because it does; unsurprisingly, sympathy for their cause has soared in Gaza) as much as it does Israel, or that Hamas is some kind of benevolent peacemaker that is being thwarted by the cruel imperialist US/West. And going back to the incident that prompted you to send me this ask: white leftists have often and repeatedly demonstrated their withering disdain for black people, Democratic voters, "mainstream" Americans, and anyone else doesn't buy into the twisted tankie fantasy land where getting rid of Biden would somehow be a massive coup for social justice (by getting Trump, now openly announcing at every turn that he will be a dictator, back into office! Very praxis, much justice. Wow.)

In short: if you, a white person, stand up in Mother Emanuel AME -- one of the most sacred sites for Black churchgoers, who are indeed often heavily Democratic voters -- in the middle of a remembrance service for victims of white supremacist terrorism, after the Black pastor has asked you not to protest inside the church out of respect for the Black community coming together to relive its trauma -- just so you can heckle Biden and feel good about yourself, then Jesus Christ. You don't care about restorative justice for people of color, or literally any justice at all, much less "stopping genocide." You just want to use them as props for your Chomsky cosplay revolutionary fantasies and your sense of self-righteous superiority over literally everyone else, regardless of the real-world consequences. So I have no hesitation whatsoever in telling those people to get fucked. Often and repeatedly.

[sadhours]

gamer boyfriend with kurt

kurt x female reader

cw: 18+ minors dni, virginity loss, oral (m receiving), no use of y/n, awkward dirty talk, p in v (unprotected)

“Ya know, if you actually stream the gameplay and not just your face, people might watch,” you tell him as you sit back on the bed, plugging in your phone.

Kurt looks down at his lap and then back up at you, looks like he’s connecting the dots and you’re right. Like he’s never thought of that before. He pouts, “Yeah well maybe when the money from Spree gets to my bank, I’ll look into it.”

You huff, propping yourself up on your elbow so you can watch him. You have no idea what game he’s playing, video games aren’t really your thing. But it’s a bunch of dudes running around with guns. You’d have a better chance guessing if the games were listed on a board and you threw a dart at it. Who you think is Kurt’s character isn’t very good, though. The dudes running around in circles and not shooting. Gets shot several times in the few minutes you’re watching.

“Are you winning?” you ask, bored.

“No,” he mumbles.

You sigh and pick up your phone, scrolling through Twitter absentmindedly when some porn pops up and out of curiosity, you don’t keep scrolling. An idea pops into your head and you reach your foot out to poke Kurt’s thigh. “I know how to get some attention online,” you purr.

“How?!” he asks excitedly, glancing briefly at you and then his eyebrows furrow. “I’m talking to my girlfriend, not you guys!” he screeches into the mic. Then his eyes roll, “Yes, she’s real.”

You giggle, stroking your foot up his thigh and back down. His cheeks flush as he continues in the mic, “We haven’t had a chance yet.” He sounds embarrassed and you can assume they’re asking if he’s slept with you, in not so nice words. And you two haven’t. Not for a lack of trying on your end. Hell, you would’ve blown him in his Spree the first time you met. Granted, you were drunk but you thought Kurt was cute and really, you would’ve invited him in if he wasn’t so awkward. So you left him your number on a napkin but he never called. And for about two weeks you wracked your brain trying to remember his instagram handle that he repeatedly rattled off to you and your drunken friends. They thought he was cringey but something about Kurt intrigued you. He was sweet. And really goddamn good looking under that mop of greasy hair and clothes his mom picked out for him.

She was really the reason you guys hadn’t done much more than rushed handjobs in his Prius. Kurt’s mom was… protective. Babied the hell out of Kurt. Treats him like a teenager and not a 23 year old man. The door has to stay open when you’re over. Like that would stop two adults from fooling around.

“We’re busy, I don’t know,” Kurt’s mumbling interrupts your thoughts. “No! She wants to. She definitely wants to.”

You get up from his bed and get yourself between his thighs, purring into the mic, “Oh, I really want to.”

Kurt’s face lights up, cheeks flushing as they swell with a bright smile. You giggle, and close his laptop, ending his stream. Something like this will get him banned, and you’re pretty sure he’d cry over it. He starts to protest, “Wait! What are you—“ it dies in his throat as you palm at his crotch over his pants.

His eyes roll back the harder you rub and yours glance up towards the door, making sure his mom isn’t being nosy. But she works a lot so when she gets home, she tends to pass out watching TV. You’re probably in the clear as long as Kurt keeps quiet. Your fingers work to unbutton his jeans, pulling down the zipper before grabbing his waistband and tugging his pants down. You can see the swell of his dick chubbing up in his briefs and you rub your nose against him, looking up to see his pretty, full lips falling open. He’s gripping the controller close to his chest and his eyes are on you. Sweetest brown eyes you’ve ever seen.

Mouthing at his boner, you hook your fingers into his briefs and start pulling them down his thighs. Kurt’s impressive length flops out and rises with arousal, filling out quickly. Kurt hasn’t admitted he’s a virgin, but you’ve come to the conclusion he is. Which is a first for you and it’s exciting. The thought that you’ll be his first is intoxicating and has you soaking through your panties. You wrap your fingers around his cock and stroke him slow and tight, mouth watering at the sight of it. His cocks huge. Pretty. Thick and long with a pink head and it gets wet. Never seen a man leak so much. You lick his slit, giddy when he whines and grips the Xbox controller tighter.

“Maybe I am,” he mumbles into the microphone and smirks and you laugh softly, squeezing his dick tighter. More precum bubbles out of his slit and you’re quick to lick it up.

“Tell them, Kurt,” you bite your lip, “Tell them what I’m doing.”

He looks shy, eyebrows raising as his cheeks ruddy even more, “She’s literally touching my dick right now.”

He whispers it, barely audible and you wrap your lips around his tip, sucking softly as you look up at him. Wide eyed. Kurt whines again and then says, “I’m not lying!”

“Shh,” you hush him when you pull off his dick, “We have to be quiet.”

“Sorry,” his eyes are so so sweet and apologetic. You need him. Can’t handle it anymore. You stand, pushing down your leggings and underwear before climbing into his lap. He grunts, looking at you all wide eyed and confused but it just spurs you on more. You’re almost feral for it. For him. For Kurt.

“Shh,” you repeat, “Need you, now.”

You grip his cock, lining it up with your entrance and sinking down on him. You whine from it and Kurt moans, loud and shaky. Slapping your palm over his mouth, you look at him with wide eyes before looking over to the doorway.

“Kurt… keep it down, baby. Okay?” you whisper, gazing into those beautiful brown eyes. He nods, and you grab the controller, dropping it to the floor and guiding his hands to hold your waist. He grips you tightly, looking up at you with stars in his eyes. You smile, stroking his cheek with your thumb before lifting up and slowly lowering back down on him. Kurt looks amazed, eyes and mouth open in absolute awe. You build a slow and gently rhythm, wanting this to last at least five minutes.

You connect your lips to his, pushing the headphones off his head and they fall around his neck. Riding him steadily, you deepen the kiss as you slide your tongue along his lower lip. But Kurt’s Kurt so he doesn’t get it and you have to press your thumb to his chin and pull his mouth open. When you lick inside his mouth, he moans and digs his fingers into the small of your back. Thank God his cocks so long, it prods at your g-spot perfectly, hooked just right. You’re sure you can cum if you time it properly. So you kiss him filthier before picking up the pace, sucking on his tongue and licking against the roof of his mouth. Kurt’s completely falling apart, whimpering and messy. You bounce in his lap, adjusting the angle to ensure he’s slamming against your spongy bit just so.

His gaming chair squeaks under the weight, rhythmically mirroring your thrusts. You gasp, pulling back from the kiss and whispering in his ear, “Talk to me, baby. Make me me cum.”

“Oh!” he whines, “okay, uh… I’m fucking you. With my dick.”

It’s almost sweet and dorky enough to work, it makes you smile and you nod as you whisper back, “Yeah, baby. You are, your cock is so big. Filling me so deep, aren’t you?”

“Yeah,” he whimpers, “Filling your pussy up.”

“How’s my pussy feel, baby?” You coax him along, knitting your fingers in his hair, slowing your movements.

“Good. Really good,” he struggles to get stay quiet, voice wrecked and shaky, “It’s wet and so good.”

“Yeah?” you hum, kissing along his jaw, “You wanna cum in my pussy, baby?”

“I—fuck,” he grits out, wrapping his arms around your waist while he holds you still, spurts of hot cum shooting from him inside you.

Well, you tried. You nuzzle against him and repeatedly kiss his jaw as he rides out his bliss. “That’s it, Kurt. Fill me up.”

He lets out a pathetic sound, face all contorted as he thrusts his hips up at you. Then his arms fall to his sides while he lets out labored breaths. You keep kissing his face and stroking his hair.

“Let’s go to mine. And we can do that some more,” you say and Kurt laughs, full of excitement and disbelief.

[82mitsu]

Previously translated pair names that had been posted to Twitter. However corrections had to be made (misinterpretations & an instance of mistranslation), so this is version 2.

Note: This is the only translated thing I will be posting, I am not off hiatus. I had been meaning to archive this before my hiatus, but I also had to fix some things, which is why there was a delay.

Please consult to this post only regarding pair name translations done by me (82mitsu), any other posts or reposts you might see of this chart is the older version. (Previous version has been deleted, but I'm unaware how far the information had spread.)

If any other corrections need to be made, feel free to contact me and I'll make them as soon as possible.

Below follows an extreme lengthy TL note breaking down some pair names, it's a lot of text, so be warned once you unfold the read more.

A lot of research went into these due to 18TRIPs tendency to mix up words, use Gen-Z slang that hasn’t been picked up by everyone yet (or limited to TikTok) and make up their own words (“Omotenashisto” -> “Hospitalister”). I used dictionaries, searched forum results, looked up how people use these words on social media, went TikTok digging, etc.

I tried my best to localize in a way that should make sense even without added context. I only explained the ones that I thought might needed some more back-up in a cultural sense or because it was a specific JPN thing. Thus, not everything has been explained. However, I hope things are clearer compared to the first version that was posted. For Renga & Yukikaze: For ぽゆぽゆ (poyupoyu) there is no definition or anything for this word, but from context clues and digging through how people used it, I deduced that it means something soft and squishy like a plushie or cheeks, so to say. For Renga & Liguang: かりそめの宿縁 (karisome no shukuen) is a Japanese saying about a fated connection of bond that only lasts for a brief moment, but leaves a deep impact on your life. For Renga & Raito: Party is mispelled in the katakana as “paachii” and not the usual “paatii”. Renga has a tendecy to say English words wrong. While “friends” is spelled the correct way, both words have been “mispelled” to drive the point home. For Renga & Kinari: なぁぜなぁぜ (naaze, naaze) is JPN Gen-Z slang from Tiktok. It’s a statement made as an act for complaining, with a bit of sarcasm and irony thrown in at times. Like, “I said I wanna diet but I ate a big meal anyway! なぁぜなぁぜ” or “I’m an idol but I get more anxious doing improv than performances! なぁぜなぁぜ”. Best way I can describe the usage in this context is Renga is throwing a bit of a self-aware tantrum as to why Kinari would correct him. (As mentioned earlier, he isn’t good at English). I guessed a close equivalent would be “nuh-uh”, since that is a dismissal of someone else’s opinion without actual good reason, even if the other person has a point. For Renga & Netaro: まんまん (manman) means “a lot” but I also believe it’s a reference to meatbuns (nikuman). For Kafka & Yodaka: Hanbei is Takenaka Shigeharu, a Japanese samurai from the Sengoku era. He was known for being Toyotomi Hideyoshi’s strategist. For Liguang & Yodaka: 闘牌伝 (touhaiden) is related to Mahjong stuff. 闘牌伝 seems to be an old timey Mahjong video game with RPG elements. Rekka is a fighting game term, and I will quote the website The Fighting Game Glossary by Infil on this: “A type of special move that has multiple stages, as long as you input more commands to continue the sequence. Not all multi-part specials can be called rekkas though; a rekka tends to have exactly three distinct parts and will move your character forward along the ground with each new input.”  For Akuta & Nanaki: They went to the same kindergarten and were grouped together in the “Oden Class”. Japanese kindergartens, from my understanding from researching, tend to have a name for their class, rather than a number. To give an idea what such names could be, in 2019 the website hyenasclubs hosted a poll of most commonly used names for classes, and the top 3 were “baby chick” (hiyoko), “peach” (momo) and “dandelion” (tanpopo). For Akuta & Muneuji: My take on はっけよい輝矢部屋 (hakkeyoi kaguya heya) is a bit of an elaborate bit joking with Princess Kaguya of the Moon (from Tale of the Bamboo Cutter) because I was wondering why they suddenly opted for Muneuji’s last name instead of first. (I might’ve also just overestimated Kaguya Heya being some joke on Kaguya Hime). Hakkeyoi is what a referee shouts at the start of a sumo wrestling match. For Akuta & Ushio: I think ポジティブに腕押し (positive ni ude oshi) is a take on 暖簾に腕押し (noren ni ude oshi) that means something has no effect or is pointless. Lit. it means “pushing a curtain with one's arm”.    For Akuta & Tao: Akuta Nine is a joke on the baseball movie Gyakkyo Nine which is an adaptation of the manga of the same series, I believe. The movie is referred to as GK9, hence I made it AKT9.  For Akuta & Ryui: The original is OYAxKOBU which comes from 親分子分 (oyabunkobun) meaning “boss and his underlings”. Akuta also calls Ryui by “Oyabun”.

For Kiroku & Nanaki: Weebs who watch highschool anime should be familiar with this, but emergency staircase refers to the hallway stairs in a JPN highschool that are sometimes used as chilling out spots by students. For Kiroku & Chihiro: TuRyStA is the clothing brand they wear. 18TRIP has a various selection of clothing brands, which each character having a preference for one or another. For Kiroku & Yodaka: Zhao Yun, as quoted by Wikipedia, “was a military general who lived during the late Eastern Han dynasty and early Three Kingdoms period of China.” For Ushio & Raito: Some heavy freedom was taken with バスボムしゅわリスト (basubamu shuwaristo). After considering how to approach it in the most sensical way, I decided to translate it as “bubblist” due the other options being “hand sign list” or “bubble list”. I thought リスト might function as in -ist, like dentist, artist, guitarist. しゅわ comes from しゅわしゅわ which means bubbly. Although bubblist isn’t not that common, it is sometimes referred to entertainers that do bubble performances (in English). And I think it made more sense than “hand sign list” or “bubble list” to say the least. This was also taking in consideration how 18TRIP, as explained in the intro, gets very creative with its language usage. For Raito & Nagi: Mandarin ducks symbolize “soulmates” of some kind in China. In other words, Mandarin Duck Touring is more along the lines of “Motorcycle touring soulmates”. However, I find the mandarin duck reference and interesting pull compared to just “soulmates”, so it was kept as is. For Kinari & Ryui: “Super Darling Gap Inspection” is more along the original lines. “Gap” in Japanese is usually used in the context of when someone acts one way, but unexpectedly, can act a different way. Ex. A very shy person shows they can be super vulgar, that can be considered a “gap” of some kind. In English, people are more familiar with “gap moe”, thus gap moe was used. For Tao & Nagi: Might be a reference to Yokohama’s Zo-no-hana (Elephant Nose) Park. For Toi & Yodaka: The original is more along the lines of, in the most literal sense, “going around raisins circle (of friends).” Toi likes raisins, but Yodaka doesn’t, so Yodaka passes them onto Toi. I’ve turned into on a play on “sharing is caring” since that’s a common concept in English.

[olderthannetfic]

So, you mentioned low standards of research in podcasts. I don't listen to podcasts or watch a lot of videos about fandom analysis, but I have seen error corrections happening in the wild for what I have listened to, so I can only imagine how annoying it is when you know your shit.

Do you have any resources that come to mind as things everyone who likes fandom should be comfortable with, or specific essays on uniquely important fandoms (such as Sherlock Holmes or Star Trek) that everyone should read? Obviously the OTW resources are up there; what else?

Aside from resources, do you think there are any skills that are especially vital for getting to the bottom of fandom trends? Interview skills are probably pretty high up there.

Any pitfalls you see a lot of young fans falling into?

(I do a lot of fandom history research. It is the thing that gives me joy in fandom; other people like shipping or AUs, I like my little mini-anthropology sandbox and watching how ideas spread. I'm not necessarily good at it, but it's fun!)

--

Well... it's the usual things.

For example, a lot of fans claim to love fandom stats, but the ones that get passed around come from like three people. The people doing those stats, including me, don't usually have a statistics background, which doesn't automatically make them bad, but it really seems like people are just trusting anything with a pie chart.

We've recently seen people discover that those year-end AO3 ship stats have a seriously weird methodology. They don't show the thing their fans are actually trying to find out. People were pissed. But most of the time, they don't even bother asking what the methodology is or trying to do anything themselves.

There's far too much sitting back and waiting for some BNF to spoon feed one publicly-available information.

--

The big failings aren't usually the math itself but, of course, not knowing what question to ask, so it pertains to history research, not just stats.

You'll see a lot of stuff on shipping that looks at AO3 because AO3 shipping numbers are easy to pull... But AO3 shipping numbers don't just happen to be easy to pull: that is both an effect and a cause that is directly related to AO3's content. Someone interested in meta shouldn't be asking "What do AO3's numbers show?" as their first question. They should be asking "Why is this metadata available or not available and what does that mean on a sociological level?"

--

Thing two is the eternal I Have Apparently Never Heard of Anime problem. A fuckton of people theorizing about fandom trends seem to know fucking nothing about whole massive sectors of fandom or treat them as afterthoughts. This is okay if you're writing a history of Media Fandom. It is criminally stupid if you're trying to talk about what makes a piece of media have fic when another doesn't, what kinds of websites make fandoms take off, etc. Those kinds of broad questions need a broad understanding of what's out there.

It's not anime-specific, and I'm not asking for a high degree of knowledge.

I have routinely had people tell me that best friend ships and mystery/crime as a genre aren't popular, and that's why AO3 has this or that pattern... Meanwhile, buddy cops are the bedrock of oldschool slash fandom and make up basically all of the longest-running Western m/m fandoms that aren't Star Trek. CSI slop tends to have legions of future canon het shippers, and they make plenty of fanworks. It's just that some of this is more visible on FFN or older places, not AO3.

I'm always seeing things like someone speculating about how this and that anime fandom thing or bit of mid-00s FFN community drama led to this other thing on AO3, not realizing that AO3 came out of LJ Western fandom slash culture. To them, FFN is so central that it must be the main reference point, not the bajillion and one archives AO3 founders ran or Usenet or mailing lists or LJ.

I once saw someone asking on twitter about where a prominent Ranma fic might have been posted in the mid-90s. People claiming "My professor is an authority!" came out of the woodwork in droves to blither about K/S zines and then LJ. Not only was this entirely wrong, but the right answer was blindingly obvious if you knew enough to interpret the google results. I can only assume that the person tweeting had never heard of Usenet and didn't recognize the acronym for the big anime fanfic group that literally everything like this was first posted to.

I'm talking people insisting that fandom only goes for white characters when it's very obvious that fandom goes for majority leads who are not othered. All the bawwing in the world about "People assume anime characters are white" won't get rid of The Untamed or Kpop thirsters or whatever.

I'm talking sweeping pronouncements about gender and fanfic writers where the person hasn't even heard of FIMFiction or SpaceBattles or Dark Lord Potter cheesefests.

I've been in fandom for a long time, but I wasn't in all these parts, and I wasn't around for 80s zines. You don't need deep knowledge until you pick a research topic. But it's shocking how little shallow, broad knowledge a lot of people have when they're writing their Theory Of All Of Fandom History.

--

People are stupid as shit about survivorship bias, and fandom history is no exception. They're also dumb in the opposite direction, assuming that the thing they like now has always existed in this exact form.

For example, someone got mad at Fanlore for supposedly not documenting the history of f/f zines. Others have searched and searched for the zines of their old show they got into last year and are bewildered to not find any. The reality is that Fanlore editors are attempting to document every Media Fandom zine and have combed through old adzines looking for any mention of anything. Because of the methods of distribution—because it was expensive—small fandoms often had no zines at all.

Femslash fandom doesn't seem to have gotten enough critical mass to do much until Xena. The internet has really democratized things, but even the early internet was still somewhat in that old mindset where only certain popular things have a fandom. I think Yuletide itself, which started in 2003, really helped spread the idea of rare-but-existing fandoms being a thing. FFN and perhaps some other multifandom archives like Media Miner played a huge role.

Nowadays, we think of fic as just how you respond to media, any media, even if there are only two fics for that one car commercial, but that isn't how people saw things in every era—or at least it's not how fandom infrastructure worked. A lot of the time, the big hosting spots were single-fandom archives, often with restrictive content rules. Finding somewhere to post a m/m/f OT3 fic used to be hard. Never mind early zines when photocopiers didn't even exist yet and you had to sell out your print run of 500 to make a go of it.

All good research starts with a lot of preliminary investigation to figure out what you're even trying to look for.

Actually bothering to look for fans talking about their own history or casually chatting with your interview subjects before the formal interview will put a person miles ahead of many of the cringeworthy fandom ~papers~ I've seen.

The biggest mistake people make is going "Okay, these numbers aren't perfect, but some numbers are better than no numbers".

Bullshit.

As soon as there's a pie chart of the false numbers, everyone's brain turns off and they never look at the chart subtitle, never mind the research notes.

Bad numbers are often worse than no numbers.

Look at the logic behind the methodology first. Look at the social context. Basic understanding of human nature and familiarizing oneself with the shape and hangout locations of a community will get you most of the way there before you sit down for a specific interview or try to collect any specific numbers.

--

None of this is a fandom thing. Research is research. It's just that most people think "research" means watching a tiktok that the algorithm likes and were never taught how to evaluate a source for reliability.

Evaluating sources is a skill. I had explicit lessons on it in school. Lots of people don't, and that sucks.

Honestly, watching the more thoughtful debunking content on non-fandom topics, like Miniminuteman's stuff on pseudo-archaeology or Dan Olson's... everything, is a good window into critical thinking, and that's most of what's missing from bad fandom history.

--

But more than any of that, more is more. Not the crap stats, but the narrower, more personal accounts, the interviews. The more fans who investigate their little corner that isn't the same old AO3 site-wide "Why is there so much m/m?" ship stats or the same canned "Everything comes from K/S" history, the better.

What I object to is not amateur efforts but efforts that pull from the same small pool of data or that just reblog a tiny handful of supposed authorities.

--

If people are going to read just one thing... hmm... go try to look up a history of rec.arts.anime.creative, not because I think it's the most important fandom history out there but because it's at the nexus of things a lot of current fandom history work miss.

[ayyy-pee]

hii lexi!!! hope you’re doing well :)) would you be interested in writing a suguru first date kinda thing? i thought it might be cute ^_^ (also i love your pfp!! it looks so good!)

AHHH THANK YOU NONNIE! <3 I'm so late, but I imagine Suguru would be exactly like this for a first date when he's really into reader lmaooo it's short but i'm trying to flex my brain with little drabbles. i appreciate you sending this request in! i hope you like it! <3

𝐹𝐼𝑅𝒮𝒯 𝒟𝒜𝒯𝐸

Discord 18+ - Twitter

Pairing: Suguru Geto x Female Reader

Warnings: Cutiepie sweetie face nervous Suguru Geto!, downbad Suguru, Gojo being an annoying shithead, fluff and cuteness <3

It's so hot here.

Is it hot in here?

Has to be. Or else Suguru wouldn't be sweating so much. He can’t even hold his drink, the damn glass keeps slipping from his hands.

Maybe it’s the lights making his palms so moist?

Are the lights too bright? Too hot?

Was this restaurant the right choice? If it’s making him this uncomfortable, surely you’ll be uncomfortable, too.

Maybe he should have chosen another place. Do you even like Italian? Fuck, he should have asked you before making a reservation. What if you’re allergic to…pasta or like…tomatoes? He didn’t even think about that. Maybe it's not too late to change plans.

The soft buzz in Suguru’s pocket pulls him from his scrambled thoughts, and he takes his phone out to see a text sitting at the top of his notifications.

Beauty: Pulling up now. See you soon :) <3

Fuck! It's too late to change plans!

Okay. Okay, this is fine. It will be fine! He’s got this. What’s there to be nervous about? Nothing, because Suguru doesn’t get nervous. He asked you out, anyway. Not the other way around! There’s no reason he should be reduced to this clammy, sticky mess he’s become. 

And yet, it seems that’s all Suguru ever is when he’s in your presence. Although, it’s only been one other time.

It's been an entire week since Suguru first laid eyes on you coming down the aisle at his best friend's wedding. You would have thought he was the one getting married, the way his face grew red watching you smile, so stunning in that gown the bride had picked for you. The way his heart practically tried to punch its way through his ribcage when you’d graced him with a glance, aiming your beauty right at him. How you watched, teary eyed as your very best friend married his very best friend and it’s so insane of him, he knows. But Suguru thought he could see himself in this exact position one day…with you. And he didn’t even know your name.

It's so cliche, truly; a groomsman and a bridesmaid getting together at a wedding? It’s a romcom waiting to happen, but Suguru couldn't help himself.

You were the epitome of beauty. Your eyes, your lips, your smile, everything about you. They were all things Suguru could not get out of his head after you'd danced with him at the reception. With that cheesy love ballad playing way too loudly, you slipped perfectly into his embrace, like the missing piece of a puzzle, and he had to get to know you.

"Fuck your honeymoon," he'd told Satoru, rolling his eyes as his best friend panned his camera across the beautiful powdery sands of Turks and Caicos. “Can you ask your wife for her number?”

“Hmm…” Satoru flipped the phone back around and Suguru could see him pretending to think about it, tapping his chin just to irritate Suguru. “Beg me.”

“...Excuse me?”

“Beg…me…”

That stupid grin on that long limbed bastard’s face. If Suguru could, he’d reach through the phone and smack it right off of him. Why would he beg for your number? He’d get connected with you some other way. Suguru is not a beggar. Nothing in this world could make him open his mouth and plead for something.

“No.”

“Then I’m not asking. Good luck finding her! Gorgeous girl. Hope she doesn’t find someone else because there were quite a few people asking about her at the wedding…”

Suguru knows what he’s doing. And he fixes his friend with a deadpan stare as he says, “Nice try. Not begging.” 

And Satoru chuckles. “Okay! See you in three weeks!” He sings on the other end.

“Wait!”

And so Suguru…begged for your number. Not his proudest moment, but as he sees you slip through the doors of the restaurant, grinning and waving excitedly when you spot him…well, it makes every bit of groveling worth it. He just saw you exactly one week ago. A full 7 days. 168 hours. 10,080 minutes. And you look just as breathtaking, if possible.

This feeling is familiar, the heat radiating from his cheeks and the intense pounding of his heart and this sensation to get on his knees before you and offer you the world.

“Hi,” you greet him, out of breath as you approach.

Suguru stands quickly, stealthily wiping his damp palms on his pants. And it’s a little awkward at first, but you hug him, slipping into his hold like you just…belong there. It’s driving him insane, the way you just seem to fit him so perfectly.

You take your seat on the other side of the booth, all smiles and god, if it doesn’t send Suguru spiraling. You’re just so cute. You almost seem as excited to be here with him as he is to be here with you.

“I meant to get your number at the wedding, but honestly, I was just too nervous to ask.” You confess, giggling, a bubbly and airy sound that makes Suguru want to hear it more, maybe set it as his ringtone then piss Satoru off so he’ll blow his phone up. Then Suguru can hear it over and over. 

He chuckles, smoothing his hands over his pants again, trying his damndest to stop the sweating. “Yeah?”

You nod, picking up the menu and gracing him with a sweet, shy smile before hiding behind the sheet of paper. “Yeah, so I’m really happy you called.”

Suguru’s heart races and he can’t help the goofy grin that’s now formed on his lips as he picks up his menu. “Me too.”

[hussyknee]

Made in the USA: Wage Theft, Fraud and Hidden Sweatshops

Unrolled twitter thread by derek guy (@dieworkwear)

4 Oct 24 • Read on X

ALT enabled on all images. Video has closed captions but is not transcribed.

Not trying to create a pile-on here. But let's talk about why something might still be made in unethical conditions even though it bears a "made in USA" tag. 🧵

The first thing to understand is that not all workers are covered by US labor laws. You might assume that workers get paid a minimum wage (after all, it says "minimum"). In fact, many garment workers in the US toil under what's known as the piecework system.

Piecework means you get paid not by the amount of time you work but the number of operations you complete. This system should be familiar to many of you. As a writer, I get paid per word. The pay is the same whether it takes me 100 or 10 hours to write a 1,000 word article.

My situation is fine bc I get paid enough to eat. But for a garment worker, the pay structure can be peanuts: three cents to sew a zipper or sleeve, five cents for a collar, and seven cents to prepare the top part of a skirt. These are real numbers for LA-based garment workers.

Piecework is how companies skirt minimum wage laws. Among labor organizers, the term "wage theft" refers to the difference between what a worker should have earned under min wage laws and what they actually earned through the piece rate system.

This system is incredibly common. A 2016 UCLA Labor Center study showed the median piece-rate worker in Los Angeles scrapes together $5.15 per hour—less than half the state’s mandated minimum wage. Labor conditions are also very bad: poor ventilation, dusty air, rats and mice.

A Federal Department of Labor investigation the same year found that 85 percent of Los Angeles garment factories were breaking labor laws. In 2016, these violations amounted to $1.3 million in back wages owed to 865 workers in a sample of 77 factories. This is wage theft.

In 2021, labor organizers won a fight to get piecework banned in California. But two years later, it's still incredibly common. I interviewed an LA-based garment worker who toils 12 hrs a day for $50. She sleeps in the corner of a kitchen. From my article in The Nation:

Currently, there's a new fight get piecework banned nationwide through the FABRC Act. I would link, but Twitter throttles threads that have outbound links, so I would prefer if you Google how you can support this legislation. Or follow @GarmentWorkerLA for more info.

The other reason why a "made in USA" tag may not mean much has to do with how the label is applied.

When you see this label inside your garment, what do you assume? Think about this before moving on to the next tweet.

The Federal Trade Commission has pretty strict rules on who gets to apply that label. For clothes, the item has to be cut and sewn in the US using materials that were made in the US. The FTC tries to match its rules with the common understanding of what "made in US" means.

If you're a giant company like Levi's or LL Bean, you may have lawyers who are advising you on these rules. This is why you see labels like "imported," which means the item was made abroad. Or "made in the US from imported materials" when they can't meet the MiUSA standard.

But it's incredibly common for companies to violate FTC rules. In 2022, the FTC fined the pro-Trump brand Lions Not Sheep $211k for labeling their t-shirts "made in USA" when the shirts were actually imported from China and other countries.

The company was basically importing blanks from China, ripping out the "made in China" label, screen printing the shirt in the US, and then applying a new screen-printed "made in US" label. CEO Sean Whalen claimed he was being persecuted for his pro-Trump views.

But the whole thing started bc Whalen made a video about how his customers are price sensitive, so he imports blanks from China. That's what kicked off the FTC investigation. So while this mislabeling is common, it's hard to get caught unless you make a video about your crimes.

The truth is that making a t-shirt in the USA according to FTC standards will result in a relatively expensive garment. Heddels and Velva Sheen both produce shirts in the US from US grown cotton. The first is $26; second is $90 for a two-pack.

Once you add things such as screenprinting—or if you want a more unique cut and not just basic blanks—the costs go up. This is why Bikers for Trump sourced their merch from Haiti. They knew their customers would not pay an extra $8 for true made-in-USA production.

Today, there are countless companies that make merch for other organizations. They source their t-shirts from a variety of places—some made in the US, most not—and then screenprint a design and fulfill orders. This way, the other org doesn't have to do any work but marketing.

When you see a screenprinted t-shirt for $20, ask yourself: Where was the material grown? Where were the yarns spun? Where was the cutting, sewing, and finishing performed? Where was the screenprinted done? What were the wages and labor conditions along these steps?

I'm not a nationalist, so I don't prioritize American jobs over foreign ones. But I do care about fair wages and labor protections. Just because something was made abroad doesn't mean it was made in a sweatshop. Just because it was made in the US doesn't mean fair wages.

Paying more for a garment is also no guarantee of ethical manufacturing. But when the price of a garment is so low, you leave little on the table for workers. Just because you see a $20 t-shirt that says "made in USA" doesn't mean it was made fairly.

Please don't harass the person who posted that original tweet. My intention is not to cause harm or stress for anyone. Only to help shed light on what goes into garment manufacturing, fair labor, and labeling. Hopefully, you will consider these issues when shopping.

For the inevitable question: "How do I make sure my clothes were made ethically?" This is very difficult to answer in a thread. My simplest answer is that we should elect pro-worker politicians, fight for pro-labor laws, and empower unions so workers can advocate for themselves.

--------------------End----------------------

TL; DR: Doesn't matter if it's the US, if it's not union it's probably a sweatshop. And not all merch is priced high because of fair labour conditions (looking at Taylor Swift and Beyoncé). Look for supply chain transparency.