#anyway. voting is basically just having opinions but like professionally it seems

[rubberbandballqueen]

now that i have finished thoroughly examining my ballot i find it notable how few candidates mention queer rights/healthcare in their campaign platforms

[mewberii]

Streamer!Scaramouche AU

i feel like he’d be one of the biggest streamers on his platform- probably one of those that everyone has heard of even if they’re not into watching livestreams and all

but between those who do know who he is, they either love him or hate him. no in-between

it’s kind of understandable because his attitude is not suited/can be handled by anyone

he’s brutally honest even when his opinion may be seen as rude (to him he’s just saying the truth so he doesn’t mind if people get offended)

of course he doesn’t try to be rude on purpose but i mean it as in he’ll say what he thinks

imagine he’s playing a game and he doesn’t like a certain mechanic, or he isn’t enjoying the story;

he won’t say the game is bad but he’ll openly say he doesn’t like it/it’s not for him. it makes him seem strict but tbh he’s not that hard to please and even when he complains about one or two things he still enjoys the game

he usually gives every game a chance even when from what he’s seen it doesn’t sound like a game he’ll like. if he turns out to be right he just won’t play it again and if he’s wrong he’s a little too prideful to admit he spoke a little too fast but in the end he will admit the game is good or he’s having fun

probably the kind that just knows so much about all games and all the creators and all the game-making engines and is up to date with every single news of everything video-game + streaming-related,,, how does he do it, i don’t know,,,,

and also since he’s so popular he probably gets packages from game developers with limited edition stuff or merch from different games soooo often

and he placed the ones from his favorite games in his setup room and it looks INCREDIBLE he has so much stuff

he did a room tour stream once talking about all he has, where he got everything, from his monitor to every complement of his computer and like,,,,, the cost of his setup,,,,,,, some people already know they’ll never be able to afford that in their entire life

and he already had a great setup before he even became big as a streamer so people can already guess he’s fairly rich 

also i feel like he would have started his career as a streamer without using a facecam and even like that, he already managed to get very popular because of his professional commentary of game dynamics/playability + you can tell that he’s passionate about this and also he’s very funny without even trying??

he says some stuff so casually that he doesn’t realise how funny it is

probs showed his face after he hit a very important milestone

he never considered showing his face that important but he understood why people would want to see his reactions when playing games (even tho he warned them he’s not the most expressive/dramatique person in the world and they know by now) and would want to put a face to the person who entertains them so much with his streams

and when he does show his face people go absolutely cRAZY BECAUSE he is crazy good looking (if you don’t think he’s good looking i’m sorry for your eyesight. jk i’m sorry in general i just really love him)

some people who didn’t watch his streams will even check them out because of that but literally if you come for the visuals only you won’t stay for long because as i said not anyone can handle his personality

if he sees people being superficial about him too much instead of paying attention to what’s happening in the stream, he will immediately turn the subs mode on in the chat (if he didn’t have it on already)

being rude, being disrespectful/saying discriminating stuff or anything of that sort won’t be tolerated and anyone who does it will be banned instantly

without even interrupting what he was saying before he saw the comment, he’ll just type the ban to whoever said that and go on

and his mods do the exact same. they are just as strict as him

if it ever got too much of course he wouldn’t be afraid to speak up about it and tell his chat to stop that behaviour or else, as they should already know, he won’t be afraid of banning them even if they’ve been subscribed for months or years

ANYWAYS

why do i feel like he has a super organised chat— as in instead of spamming 5 emotes per comment they all send just one and it looks so tidy and perfect

literally other streamers would be jealous of how not-messy his chat is even when he has thousands and thousands and thousands of viewers all the time

also i have this idea that maybe any of his fans would have designed him as a genshin character (which would be the design of the scaramouche we know (?))

and the little pop-ups (i don’t know the name in english rIP) thingies that show up to notify when someone subscribed or donated would be lil chibi art of that design

it’d be really cool

and since i also doodled what a stream of his could look like (i’ll show it in the future when i’m done!!) i thought that way it’d be more recognisable that the streamer is scaramouche

99% of the people who have seen him irl found him too intimidating to go ask him for a picture or tell him anything

he’s not a huge fan of taking pictures anyway + is more on the introverted/reserved side but he wouldn’t mind if someone went up to him (if he’s not busy with something) to tell him something or say they enjoy his streams

i feel like in a couple occasions he would have played a game with some subscribers and he’d like to tease them speaking with his usual tone and face (in case they’re watching the stream as they talk) so they think he’s serious

“did you watch my 12 hour stream the other day?”  -scaramouche

“ah,,,, i-” -the sub

“think well of what you’re going to answer.” -scaramouche

“i-i couldn’t watch the whole thing,,,” -the sub

“ah, is that so…?” -scaramouche 

he’ll pretend to sound disappointed but at one point he just can’t help but smirk and hold in a chuckle before telling them he’s not serious

(he literally doesn’t know how the hell he survived that stream himself because he isn’t one to stream for that long)

i feel like deep inside people who know him would know he wouldn’t say such things seriously/wouldn’t be disappointed in anyone for not watching every single minute of his streams or not even all his streams

but he says all that so seriously that it’s,,, intimidating and they’re lowkey like “god but what if he’s not joking-”

he’d play games with the other streamers sometimes but i feel like most of the type he’d play more single-player games

it’d be so funny if he plays among us with others and for example one of those others it’s childe

both of them would always be suspecting of the other first/bickering, especially scaramouche

and if one game turns out they’re both the impostors… people would know right away

like, if any of them tried to defend the other, everyone else would be like “!?! what is this? scaramouche and childe defending each other? scary”

they’d vote one of them (maybe scaramouche) out because they started guessing + saying proof of how both of them could be the impostors (but the biggest proof is them not coming for each other’s throats sNKJFNGKJS)

scaramouche would have to resist the urge to S C R E A M

needless to say he doesn’t like when he has to be impostor with childe

and unfortunately for him, fate makes it happen considerably often

i feel like at least one time scaramouche would kill next to childe and then report it and literally blame childe

and childe would be like ?!?!?!?!?? WHAT- NO- (struggles bc his brain instinct is to say ‘it was you!’ but they’re both the impostors??? how-)

and then they’d eject childe,,, and then people wouldn’t suspect of scaramouche for most of the game because ? why would he- blame his partner---

well he did it with no regrets and at the end when they all found out they found it very funny (except for childe, but even he ended up laughing in the end because what a mean strategy sjkfhdsgkj)

i have this feeling that even though they bicker so much and for any strangers it’d seem like they hate each other, when scaramouche does play online games, many times it’d be with childe?

ik they aren’t supposed to get along but for the sake of it being a modern au i don’t want bad vibes between any of the characters pls-

and everyone enjoys their dynamic and those streams always get a ton of viewers sjfhdsgkj and i’m sure both their chats would be good friends (most likely one’s fans would also be a fan of the other too)

very very very rarely (because he prefers just playing and talking while playing) he’d do streams where he doesn’t play anything but just talks with the chat, watches videos that they send him, looks at the fanart they make, just talks about games,,,,

it’d be super chill and the perfect streams for people to be doing homework/work/play games/draw or do basically anything while they listen to his stream in the background

he’d also be answering some of people’s questions about him or about his favorite games, or if he’s playing this new game that came out earlier this week,,,

“will you play ‘it takes two’ with childe?” -someone in the chat

“absolutely not. i won’t play a co-op game with him”

not even 5 days later, tweet from childe saying “streaming in 30 minutes! Scaramouche and I will be playing It Takes Two on my ch---”

anyways this will be all!! (for now?) i obviously knew genshin before this but, yesterday i could finally start playing it myself! so i feel like if not now, soon i will also write headcanons of him playing genshin! i don’t take requests but if you guys have any ideas or anything you want to say about this AU, send me an ask!! i’d love to talk about this and about genshin in general!

also, i was very inspired to write this by @baeshijima​ ! so thank you very much to her for her wonderful streamer AUs and if anyone reading this hasn’t read hers already, go check them out!! they’re amazing!!

[etraytin]

What’s Your Favorite Chapter?

Hey all! I’ve been pretty caught up in applying for the bar exam for the last few days, but I’m also still archiving the JDFF list and trying to work on my WIPs as well. Busy, busy! Anyway, I was rereading some of my old stuff when it occurred to me that sometimes we don’t see peoples’ best stuff because it’s buried in the middle of stories that are too long for the time we have or that we aren’t sure we’d like the plot of. And that’s a shame. 

So all you authors who follow me, here’s a challenge! Find your favorite chapter of one of your long fics, then post it on Tumblr along with just enough background that we can follow it, plus a link to the story it came from. I don’t want to miss out any more! 

Here’s mine, it’s Chapter Six of my West Wing story Such A Winter’s Day, which is a rewrite of Seasons Six and Seven (and after) with the idea that instead of joining the Russell campaign after Impact Winter, Donna asked Sam to help her get out of DC entirely. Without Donna in the campaign mix, of course, everything unfolds quite a bit differently for our heroes. But this chapter, near the beginning, is mostly just the story of Bisexual Disaster Human Josh Lyman. 

Chapter Six: Interlude One, Been Thinkin’ About My Home 

Contrary to popular opinion, Josh Lyman was neither clueless nor even particularly obtuse when it came to the emotions of others. Nobody got to the top in backroom politics without an innate ability to size up another person and understand what they needed, what was most important to them, what they would sacrifice for and what they would never give up. Sure, a lot of times he simply didn't care what his opponents were feeling, but that didn't make him unaware. When it came to the people he was closest to, he'd always understood more than they'd thought. It just hadn't been enough to let him keep them from slipping away.

Sam, god, Sam. He'd known Sam forever, it seemed, back in a time when they were barely politicians, barely adults at all, finding their way around Washington DC for the first time and trying to figure out the people they wanted to be for the rest of their lives. Sam had been just as beautiful then as now, dark hair and sculpted face and impossible blue eyes that lit up with every new challenge. They'd made friends at the office and would go out together to blow off steam, pick up women, get irresponsibly drunk and talk about how someday they would cut through all the bullshit and change the face of politics forever. Sometimes they'd find women to take home, sometimes they'd bring along whoever they were dating at the time. Twice, just twice in three years, they'd gotten drunk enough to take each other home and wound up in Sam's bed together. But it was the eighties, and people could experiment, and they'd nervously laughed off both those times and never really talked about it afterwards. It didn't mean Josh didn't remember.

But then Josh had gone to the whip's office and Sam had gone to New York, and though they called each other after important votes or Mets games, it wasn't the same anymore. That was how it happened, Josh had figured, and ignored the pang in his chest that might have been lost chances. Sam had dated, mostly upwardly-mobile professional women looking for suitable marriage partners. Josh had dated, mostly Washington insiders with sharp smiles and quick minds who were looking for a power husband who would one day sit in important rooms. There had been Lisa, and there had been Mandy, and then there had been a day when Leo McGarry asked a favor from the son of an old friend, and then there was Sam, looking ridiculously polished in his thousand dollar suit but with the same impossibly blue eyes and goofy grin. He'd left Sam behind and gotten on the train to Nashua, but “Josh, what are you doing?” echoed in his head the entire time. When he'd watched Jed Bartlet speak and realized what kind of president he could be, he was back on the train to New York before the rubber chicken was fully coagulated in the pans.

Working with his best friend again had been amazing, infusing Josh with the energy to run a no-money, no-sleep campaign for a candidate who couldn't even remember the names of his closest advisors from day to day. With Sam around, he had a partner in crime, someone to bounce ideas off, someone to take his own pragmatic make-the-sausage politics and turn it into something beautiful and full of the ideals Josh was a little afraid to even say aloud. And sometimes he'd meet Sam's eyes across the room, but there was Lisa (for awhile) and Mandy (until there wasn't), and neither of them were naive or reckless anymore. They'd won the election, gotten the chance to change the world that they'd always talked about. Josh knew that doing anything to risk that chance would've been crazy, but sometimes when he would watch Sam get worked up and start making passionate speeches to anybody who'd listen, he had wondered if maybe a political genius could figure out a way.

During the celebration after the first State of the Union, Leo had clapped Josh on the shoulder while they watched Sam and Toby celebrate their own speechwriting. “You'll have my job one day,” he'd told Josh conversationally. “You'll have to kick Sam's ass around the block a few times until he's ready, but it'll happen. That'll be the day, won't it?” He'd given his hoarse bark of a laugh and wandered away then, leaving Josh with his jaw on the floor and such an overwhelming feeling of pressure in his chest that for a moment he'd wondered if he was having a heart attack at thirty-eight. Pride, there was incredible pride in knowing that Leo was right, that this could really happen. Anxiety, plenty of that, over the fifty million things that Josh would have to do in order to make that happen. And loss, amorphous, nebulous, not to be examined, over something that had never really existed in the first place.

Josh had still felt the weight of Sam's gaze on him from time to time, sometimes from halfway across the West Wing, sometimes from inches away, but he didn't look up to meet it anymore. Sam was going to be president someday, but not if Josh let the things they didn't talk about turn into a noose around Sam's neck. If Josh could just ignore those looks and those thoughts, then it would be just like they didn't exist, and he and Sam could be best friends like they'd always been. Except it didn't work out that way. Not meeting Sam's long looks had slowly turned into not going out alone with Sam for drinks, turned into not talking to Sam the way he used to because he kept choking on all the things he couldn't say. He'd send Donna to talk to Sam instead, then close himself off alone in his office, an unlikely figure for a Jewish martyr.

And Donna, of course there was Donna too. Josh had still been finding his feet on the campaign trail, stumbling around with Mandy, tiptoeing around Sam, when he'd walked into his office one day and run straight into another pair of impossible blue eyes. Donna was fresh off the farm and fresh out of a bad relationship, achingly vulnerable but at the same time so brave it had made his heart clench. He'd thought it had taken courage to leave Hoynes and join the Bartlet campaign, but he'd never in a million years have had the guts to pack his whole life in an old car and drive halfway across the country for the possibility of a job that paid nothing but might change his life. Technically he'd been doing her a favor, taking her on and giving her his staff badge, but in the moment it had felt like giving her nothing more than a deserved acknowledgment. Then she'd given him her sun-bright smile for the first time, making his heart clench even harder, and he'd wondered what he was getting himself into here.

From almost the first day, he'd fallen into a synchronicity with Donna that bordered on the eerie. Her office skills were basic and her political knowledge all but nonexistent, but she had a quick mind and such strong intuition that she usually seemed to know what he meant before he even finished saying it. There were whispers on the campaign because she was beautiful and so young, but he'd deliberately chosen not to notice those things about her. Didn't he have enough problems already? In any case, the fact that she'd managed to whip his disastrous office into shape had quieted any naysayers, especially after the way he'd fallen to pieces during her brief failure of resolve back in Wisconsin. By the time they'd stepped into the Operations bullpen for the first time, he'd had no idea how he'd ever coped without her.

No matter what crisis he'd gone through, national, professional, or personal, Donna had always been there, a step or two behind him, guarding his flank as they'd waged the political battles he'd been born to fight. She'd researched for him on a thousand topics, networked all over Washington to keep him informed of disasters hiding in the weeds, taken up deliberately contrarian positions on every stance he'd chosen, just to hone his arguments to perfection before he unleashed them. For all practical purposes she'd been his deputy and protege, but in reality, on paper, she was always his assistant, subordinate to him, subject to his evaluations and criticism. He'd seen the looks she gave him from across his desk, heard the undertone to her playful banter. How could he not? Just the heat of her body when she'd sit next to him on buses or in meetings was sometimes enough to drive him to distraction. And he was no saint. He'd flirted back, bought her presents, let her tie his bow ties as she watched him from below her lashes. But he'd never touched her back, not like that. It would've been inappropriate.

Three years of detente in all directions, and it might have gone on forever if it hadn't been for a handful of skinhead assholes and a single wild bullet. Josh had no memories from the night of the shooting or the next three days, but he'd been told how it happened, how Donna had waited like a statue, dry-eyed, barely moving, through fourteen hours of surgery. He'd seen the videos of Sam on Today and Good Morning America, answering questions as though he barely heard them, swallowing two or three times whenever Josh's name was mentioned. Toby had told him once, when they were both very drunk and he was feeling lyrical, how when the word had come down that Josh would live, Donna had collapsed into Sam's arms and Sam had held onto her like his last anchor to the earth, her face against his neck, his face in her hair. Josh's first memory of the hospital was of them both, sitting on either side of his bed. Sam had been asleep with his head resting very uncomfortably on the raised bedrail, while Donna read quietly aloud from Newsweek. He couldn't remember the article, but she'd assured him that all the magazines that week were about him. He did remember how relieved he'd felt, how grateful, to wake up and realize they were both with him.

Things had been different after the shooting, in ways both subtle and profound. He'd missed three months of work while trying to piece himself back together, and Donna and Sam had both been there for that as well. Donna had run his office for him, using her own light touch to keep the assistant deputies in line and on task, freely invoking his name even when he was really too drugged to be making cogent decisions on his own. Sam had stepped in as liaison to the Hill, taking Donna's thoroughly-researched positions and turning them into an actual legislative agenda with which to prod the Congress. When they weren't working, they'd taken it in turns to look after Josh, Donna mostly in the days, Sam in the nights. They'd come to some kind of understanding during that time, one that Josh had never been a party to, but he could see it easily enough in the tight-knit alliance between them after the midterms. Maybe it was fatuous, but it had reminded him a little bit of two people who'd gone to war and seen things nobody else could comprehend.

He hadn't thought about it much at first, just grateful that the two people who comforted and confused him most could get along with each other. After he'd returned to work, though, he'd found himself swamped by inexplicable anger at times, and at other times by suffocating isolation and loneliness. How did Sam and Donna understand each other, how were they war buddies, when Donna hadn't even been there that night? When Sam's worst injuries were scraped hands and skinned knees, not a bullet through the thoracic region? (That's what it was in the hospital and in CJ's briefings, not his chest, not his heart, “the thoracic region,” like he'd gotten shot in the demilitarized zone of some unpronounceable ex-Soviet state.) How were they getting on with their lives and going on dates with unsuitable people and god, still watching him with unbearably heavy gazes from impossible blue eyes? He couldn't reach out, so he'd pushed instead, taking verbal swipes at Donna, ignoring Sam, burying himself in the work that was always his refuge from things he couldn't think about. And even after all that, after the concert and the window and Stanley, Donna had taken him home to her apartment because his was too cold, and on Christmas Day she and Sam had boarded up his window frame and then rehung the curtains so he wouldn't have to look at it till it was fixed. They'd watched black and white slapstick comedies and eaten Chinese food (Jewish Christmas, Sam had quipped,) and Josh had finally started believing that maybe people really could get better.

Things had gone almost back to normal, but then there had been the MS debacle and the hearings, and Josh had seen Sam's deep disillusionment but hadn't been able to say anything about it. It was his fault, after all. He'd dragged Sam into this, promised him the real thing and delivered a frightened, lying man with feet of clay. He'd dragged Donna into it too, deeper than the other assistants, by relying on her for so much, for being closer to her than was proper even if he'd never crossed the line. If either of them had broken, it would've been his fault. But they'd each rallied in their own way, and they'd kept his head above the water at the same time. That lasted barely long enough to catch a breath, and then it was reelection and Bruno, midnight in America and a kind of campaign none of them had hoped for. Sam got louder and louder as his voice was heard less and less, and Donna had all but disappeared, shrunk small by the incident with her diary, made invisible by the radiating presence of Amy Gardner. Josh had seen all that too, but he'd been exhausted by Sam's stubborn idealism and angry about Donna's nebulous act of betrayal and he'd pushed all of it aside to focus on the thing he could actually affect. And sure, he hadn't been entirely absent, he'd tried to comfort Sam after Kevin Cahn and the return of Lisa, and he'd actually accomplished something nice for Donna when he'd gotten her teacher a Presidential phone call. But in hindsight it had been so little, not nearly as much as he should've done, not nearly what he owed.

He'd thought things would be different in the second term. Maybe he could've sorted some things out in his own head if he'd just been given a little time to think without having to think of polling numbers and the values voters of America's Heartland. Instead the election had come and Sam had gone, and with Amy and everyone else pushing him to run in the special election, what could Josh have said to make him stay? Sam had claimed he'd be back after the vote, but Josh could see in those impossible eyes that something in Sam was desperate to escape from what had become of them. So he'd let Sam run to California, run for Congress, run screaming away from the White House and from Josh himself. Josh tried not to think about it very much, and luckily there was always work. There had also been Amy again, and he hadn't been entirely sure she was anything he wanted, but once Donna had started seeing Jack Reese, at least Amy had given him something to counter with. He couldn't say aloud why having a counter had been so important, but even with Jack and Amy gone by Inauguration, he and Donna had both been bruised by the experience.

There had been a moment on the night of the Inauguration Balls, when he'd looked into Donna's eyes and seen everything in her that was waiting for him, all the love and trust in the world, that he'd thought seriously for the first time about reaching out and taking it. Taking her and keeping her and damning the consequences for both of them. He'd already lost Sam, and something inside Josh had known that Donna wouldn't look at him this way forever if he kept looking away. But it was wrong, he'd reminded himself. It was inappropriate and wrong and it would cause a scandal that would see both of them crucified by the right wing press. That might have been nothing new for him, but Donna, beautiful, smart, intuitive Donna with her quirky filing system and no college education, she'd never have worked in Washington again. So he'd made her call him “Wild Thing,” and had put her in a cab alone at the end of the night with money to get home and his key to her place, then had buried himself in the business of the government for weeks so he wouldn't have to see the love in her eyes fading into confusion and disappointment. Sam's election had ended the way everyone predicted, and Sam had decided to take a job at a law firm in Los Angeles instead of returning to DC. Then there way Hoynes, and Zoey, and Glen-Allen Walken, and Josh didn't even have time to miss anybody.

It wasn't as though he hadn't seen something coming with Donna, obviously. He wasn't that obtuse. But he'd had no idea how he could get by without her, and he had no viable plan that would let him keep her, so the only solution was to ignore the problem and not acknowledge it at all. They'd still worked together as well as always. She'd kept him in one piece through the hell that was Carrick and Angela Blake, she'd kept his office running via cell phone during the shutdown, she'd held her own with the pardon attorney and in the Oval Office (even if she'd wept on his shoulder after learning about Donovan Morrisey.) After the State of the Union, Angela Blake had come to him to ask for Donna in Legislative Affairs, where they needed someone with an endless well of tenacity to coordinate the policy shops. It would've meant more money and more responsibility for Donna, but it would've meant her leaving Operations, reporting to his office and Communications equally and usually through his assistant deputies. It would've meant her leaving him. He'd put Angela off with some muttering about big projects in the pipeline and maybe after the midterm elections. Later he'd wondered a thousand times if he'd moved her, or if he hadn't blown her off on that damned Brussels trip, maybe things wouldn't have happened the way they did.

Josh had enough regrets to keep him in therapy well into the afterlife, but giving Donna that diplomatic passport was easily in the top three. It hadn't been the career advancement she'd wanted and there'd been no real need for the Deputy Chief of Staff and the Communications Director to have eyes on the ground in Gaza, but Toby had wanted someone keeping an eye on Andy and Josh had wanted Donna not to leave him, and somehow that translated to him sending her to the most dangerous place on Earth, armed only with a little brown book and a laptop. When CJ had stopped him in the hallway and told him about the CODEL, he'd felt the familiar crushing chest pain he associated with love and bullets. His first, sudden impulse was to call Sam, make sure he was safe, ask what he was supposed to do now. The urge passed in seconds, but hours later he did call Sam from the plane, even if all he could do was worry along with Josh. Most of that trip was a blur in his memory, till he'd gotten to that hospital room and she wasn't gone and his heart could beat normally again, even with the new Irish boyfriend there to remind him of the lines he'd drawn and couldn't cross. Then Josh had gone and done his job, and come back and this time she wasn't there or okay and words like pulmonary embolism and brain damage erased all thoughts of lines entirely. He'd stayed at her bedside for hours, thinking pleas too disorganized to be prayers, until she'd opened her impossible blue eyes and murmured his name, and in that moment there was nothing in the world he wouldn't have given her if she'd asked. But she'd been exhausted and drugged, and she'd smiled at him instead and gone back to sleep.

He'd planned on keeping an eye on her when she got back to the States. Everything had been so hard for her at first, even just dressing and feeding herself, much less navigating the hectic pace of her life. She'd come back before she had probably really been ready, but the whole world had been going to hell and he'd needed her so badly that he didn't tell her no. He'd meant to help her do things, and make sure she went home when she was too tired and took her medicine when the pain got bad. And sometimes he had, but sometimes he'd left her sitting in the middle of the hall in her wheelchair, or asked her to stay just one more hour so she could finish something vital, or avoided looking at her face because seeing her in pain made him hurt too, made him remember that he was hurting her and there was no way to fix it. He'd noticed her tension and her bursts of sullen anger, but there'd been nothing he could do, not with Leo sick and CJ struggling and the country seeming ready to fly apart at the seams, not when he didn't even know if he still wanted the career he'd sacrificed everything for. He hadn't known if he was ready to leave the White House and start all over again, hadn't known if he was strong and smart enough to do it on his own, hadn't known what it would mean for him and Donna.

She'd started scheduling meetings with him, like she were some rogue Congressman he was supposed to talk back into line, but he didn't know what to say to her, so he'd found a reason to cancel, first once, then again and again. Eight times, he'd realized later, too late. Eight times he'd blown her off, made her feel worthless instead of invaluable, until she'd stopped him in the middle of the bullpen and told him she was leaving and his mind had gone entirely blank and he'd done what he'd been doing for a year and a half: deny the problem entirely until he could think of some way to fix it. When he'd looked into her cubicle the next day and a stranger was at her empty desk, all he could see was Donna's eyes as he'd turned and walked away, still impossibly blue, but shattered and sad and alone.

It hadn't taken long to figure out where she'd gone. Donna was methodical to a fault, even when she was packing her whole life into an old car and driving all the way across the country for a chance at a job that was entirely unknown but might change her life. It turned out she'd given two weeks notice to HR, sixteen days and eight broken lunch meetings ago, had provided them with a Los Angeles post office box as a forwarding address, and the law firm of Carrington, Schuster and Hawthorne as a work contact. Josh hadn't known whether to laugh or throw something when he'd realized that she'd run away to Sam, because of course she had. He'd noted the number, knowing as he did that he'd never call, because what could he possibly say? He'd given her everything he had available to give and it hadn't been enough and she was gone and it was over. He'd flown to Houston the next day. Leaving the White House had seemed less like a gamble by then. Somehow it seemed more like an escape.

[theliberaltony]

via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

Welcome to FiveThirtyEight’s weekly politics chat. The transcript below has been lightly edited.

sarahf (Sarah Frostenson, politics editor): Last week, congresswomen Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley and Rashida Tlaib captured headlines for breaking with House Democrats and Nancy Pelosi on an emergency border aid bill that lacked protections for migrant children.

This wasn’t the first time the so-called “Squad” broke ranks. Or the first time their public disagreement with House leadership has led to sniping in the press (Pelosi told New York Times op-ed columnist Maureen Dowd that “All these people have their public whatever and their Twitter world. But they didn’t have any following. They’re four people and that’s how many votes they got.”)

But it’s not just Democratic leadership taking aim. Republicans have tried to paint “the Squad” as part of the “radical left,” and the direction the party is moving in. And on Sunday, President Trump sparked a firestorm — at least among Democrats — when he tweeted that “‘Progressive’ Democrat Congresswomen” should “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.”

So what is it about the Squad that has captured the attention of both Republicans and Democrats? Let’s try to tackle this in two parts: 1) What role do we think the Squad has in pushing the Democratic Party in a new direction? 2) And what, if any, do we think will be the electoral repercussions in 2020?

To get us started, what do we make of the news surrounding the Squad and their split from Pelosi and House Democrats on the emergency border aid bill?

julia_azari (Julia Azari, political science professor at Marquette University and FiveThirtyEight contributor): Well, I can start from providing the view from poli sci Twitter, which tends to be a fairly pro-party group of people (and leans Democratic/anti-Trump). So in response to the Twitter fight between the House Democrats’ account and AOC’s chief of staff, there was a lot of talk like “have these fights behind closed doors, don’t have a big, public blowup.”

But I disagree. Party infighting should not be done in a smoke-filled room. That’s just not what people want from politics anymore, and I think when that does happen, it contributes to further institutional distrust and disengagement.

natesilver (Nate Silver, editor in chief): I’d note that AOC has a Trump score of 18 percent, meaning that she’s voted in line with Trump’s position 18 percent of the time. But according to her data, you’d expect her to vote with Trump about… 0 percent of the time based on how liberal her district is.

So she’s actually proving a bit problematic for Pelosi, in the sense that she should be a guaranteed vote, but Pelosi is only getting her ~80 percent of the time. Except none of this has really mattered since Pelosi has room to spare in the House, and a lot of legislation that passes the House has no chance of passing a GOP-led Senate anyway.

sarahf: Is there at least an argument to be made that Pelosi and the Squad should take fewer swipes at each other over their disagreements, as too much of a focus on intraparty fighting can’t be good for the party?

julia_azari: So here’s my galaxy brain take.

natesilver:

julia_azari: It’s good for the Squad for Pelosi, at least, to take swipes at them. After all, part of the anti-establishment brand is to be in tension with, well, the establishment. And it’s possible that leaders like Pelosi know this! What I’m not really sure about is how good the Squad (so much shorter than typing all their names) is for the Democratic Party.

I don’t think they’re a problem, but it’s too early to gauge their party-building potential. And obviously, they make some people nervous. But if the goal is to engage young people, women and people of color, and keep the left flank of the party somewhat happy, they seem like a good bet.

I am really long-winded today. #sorrynotsorry

perry (Perry Bacon Jr., senior writer): It would be smart for the party establishment to think of this as natural tension between the wings of the party.

The problem is I don’t think they actually do, which is one of the reasons why this is all so interesting. (The House leadership’s official Twitter account attacked AOC’s chief of staff over the weekend, with the implication that she should fire him.)

sarahf: To Julia’s point about the Squad’s party-building potential, isn’t there an argument to be made that they don’t even need to have that? Their ethos is that they’re here to do away with the old system. They agitate for change; they don’t need to bridge consensus within the party, unlike say, Pelosi, who has a very different role to play.

And the fact that virtually all of the 2020 Democratic candidates have a position on the Green New Deal is a testament to their effectiveness at pushing the party in new directions, no?

julia_azari: Right. Which maybe Pelosi likes and maybe she doesn’t. Obviously, moving to the left carries risks. But (and this is where I got into it with a bunch of people on Twitter on Sunday), it’s not clear to me that Democratic leaders actually want to go back to the 1990s and early 2000s.

Yes, the party was more “professionalized,” and less split internally, than it is now. It also won two plurality elections and lost to George W. Bush. Not to mention, voter turnout was low.

So one lesson you might learn from the 2008 period onward is that the party does well with fresh faces, even if it also has to win suburban swing districts that might not view AOC and Rashida Tlaib all that favorably.

perry: But the Democratic establishment (I don’t know about Pelosi, personally) seems to think that the prominence of these four women is not a natural, healthy tension, and instead is broadly bad for the party.

And I think their preferred outcome is that the AOC wing basically stays quiet until December 2020 (after the presidential election). That’s where the real tension is.

julia_azari: We’ve (and here, I specifically mean academics and the media) way overemphasized the concept of party unity.

sarahf: I guess I just don’t understand why the Democratic establishment is making this into such a big deal. But I agree with Perry that they definitely would prefer the AOC wing of the party stay quiet, especially when polls like this are leaked. (Axios wouldn’t disclose the group that conducted the poll, so there’s a lot we don’t know about it, and its findings should be treated with skepticism. But it reportedly found that many likely general election voters who are white and have two years or less of college education had a negative opinion of AOC and socialism.)

julia_azari: For the record, that Axios piece is extremely misleading.

sarahf:

It’s just hard for me to believe that these four women really would have that much of an impact on 2020?

natesilver: I kinda come back to Occam’s razor on this. When you have a bunch of new members who want to push the party in a more ideological direction, it usually entails electoral risk. But the benefit, potentially, is that you also shift the party’s platform in that direction.

perry: Yes, but so many party establishment people want to take away any unnecessary election risks–and I think they would argue AOC talking about getting rid of the Department of Homeland Security, for example, is an unnecessary election risk.

natesilver: It’s also probably a very marginal electoral risk in a world where Donald Trump is president and there’s much bigger news all the time.

julia_azari: Part of the problem is that the lessons of 2016 aren’t clear. You could say that 2016 showed that there was a real push to move Democrats to the left. Or you could say that 2016 was about how Democrats lost groups of voters to Republicans (e.g. the diploma divide among white voters). And those forces push the party in different directions.

perry: The party establishment is probably overstating the rise of the AOC wing in terms of affecting the 2020 elections. But their risk assessment, I think, is driving these tensions–leading Pelosi to bash the AOC wing fairly often, for example.

natesilver: But it’s not crazy for the party establishment to be worried about it! Sometimes I think everyone in this discussion is not always clear about what they think will be electorally advantageous versus what they do — or don’t — like policywise.

julia_azari: Most of this in relation to the Squad is marginal, though, no matter how many hot headlines Axios posts with polls that don’t actually say anything about AOC being the face of the party or about swing states.

natesilver: Journalistic malpractice on Axios’s part TBH to publish a poll without even listing who conducted the poll.

We don’t even know who leaked it. We don’t even know if the poll was real. We should be that skeptical when basic facts and details about a poll are missing like that.

sarahf: That’s fair. And I know we’ve talked about this before, but I think part of what we’re seeing play out here, especially with AOC, is there is now a group of politicians that aren’t willing to play by the old rules. And they will use their large social media followings to get their message across, and on their terms.

So maybe party leadership is scared of losing control?

And so we see Pelosi snipe about how they’re only four votes.

Maybe the Freedom Caucus and the headaches it has caused for the Republican Party has so scarred Democratic leadership that they’ll do anything to stop this faction of their party from growing.

But is this kind of fear misplaced? How much is the Squad really moving the party to the left?

natesilver: Clare said this yesterday on the podcast, but the Squad are very effective at getting media attention, and the media is quite happy to play up the “Democrats IN DISARRAY!” storylines. So in that sense it does seem like a mistake for Pelosi et al. to hit back at them.

perry: About a third of the 235 House Democrats (CNN has this number at 82) support starting an impeachment inquiry into Trump.

Ninety-five support the Green New Deal; 118 support Medicare for All. So just in terms of raw numbers, the positions of the AOC wing are much broader than four people.

I think the big shift for Pelosi is that she has never had a vocal, powerful group saying that she is too far to the right. For basically the entire time Pelosi has led the House Democrats, her biggest tension has been with the right flank of the party — some conservative Democrats in the House thought that she was too far to the left.

But now, Pelosi is being attacked from the left in a serious way, for the first time. And I actually think she and Biden are responding in similar ways to these attacks from the left.

My sense is they both see themselves as liberal icons–the man who helped elect the first black president, the woman who pushed through a huge health care reform that extended insurance to millions. And I think this criticism from the younger generation of Democrats makes them mad. Pelosi seems indignant at times, so does Biden.

julia_azari: Biden and Pelosi also managed to establish themselves as liberals when cultural/LGBT issues were on the rise in the party, and you didn’t have to do anything particularly radical to be liberal enough on economics and race.

In 2019, it takes more to be a liberal icon.

natesilver: I mean… I don’t know that the Squad always pick their battles all that well, and in that sense they are pretty Freedom Caucus-like. On the other hand, they have a lot more star power than the Freedom Caucus. There is a lot of political talent there.

And they’re all pretty young. So a lot of my critiques of Bernie Sanders’s campaign, for instance, i.e. that he doesn’t have a good plan to expand his base, definitely doesn’t apply to the Squad when they can unify leftist Democrats with nonwhite Democrats.

sarahf: Something I think we’re all touching on here is the fact that it is four women of color pushing the party to the left and challenging the status quo. And that matters. Each of them have made appeals to their background and how they represent people who historically haven’t had a seat at the table.

And this probably, to put it bluntly, does make certain older vanguards of the party uncomfortable, because they consider themselves to be liberal, and that now they’re forced to reckon with the idea that they’re maybe not as liberal as they think.

perry: I want to come back to something Nate said earlier that I think is essential.

“Sometimes I think everyone in this discussion is not always clear about what they think will be electorally advantageous versus what they do — or don’t — like policywise.”

The AOC wing at times says its ideas, like Medicare for All, are both the right thing to do on policy AND will help Democrats electorally, by either increasing turnout among people who might not otherwise vote or appealing to swing voters. Whereas the establishment wing often says a policy is bad on substance and that it will hurt Democrats’ chances in 2020.

To me, both sides are overconfident in saying that their policy views are the best electoral position, too.

natesilver: I get annoyed by this sort of question for a couple of different reasons. On the one hand, I think it’s generally bullshit to think that a policy that polls as being quite unpopular will magically turn out to be electorally helpful because it motivates the base or whatever.

On the other hand, there’s a lot of bullshit in which more establishment/centrist Democrats will deride a policy for being unpopular, when their real motivation against it is that they don’t like the policy.

perry: I know it’s our job to analyze elections. But I think it’s really hard to figure out exactly how policy ideas and outcomes affect election results. So I find claims people make suggesting “Policy X is unpopular so Candidate Y will lose” to be way too overconfident at times. At the same time, we can make some judgements.

For example, “Medicare for everyone who wants it’ (the basic position of Biden, Pete Buttigieg and other more centrist Democrats) is probably a safer political position than “Medicare for everyone and change the whole system” (the stance of AOC and Sanders). I say that even though Medicare for All might be a better health care policy.

natesilver: “Medicare for everyone who wants it” is indeed quite a bit more popular than “Medicare for all,” and one of the reasons “Medicare for all” polls well is because people assume “Medicare for all” means “Medicare for everyone who wants it.”

julia_azari: So my view on the policy thing is complicated. Nate has the Occam’s razor view that I think makes sense, but here’s another galaxy-brain take. I spend most of my time in Wisconsin, a state with a long anti-establishment political tradition, and around a lot of younger people (my students), so my sense of how popular some anti-establishment and left-leaning policies are is probably inflated. But in general, I think most people are NOT sophisticated on policy specifics, but they are sensitive to scary images and wording. There’s even evidence that policies that sound too left-leaning or disruptive are especially vulnerable to scary images and messaging. So while it might seem like a lot of people are not happy with the status quo, that does not mean major, risky policy change isn’t still intimidating.

perry: That’s well put. Medicare for All is very vulnerable to scare tactics.

sarahf: Especially when abolishing private insurance enters the equation.

natesilver: I don’t know. I sort of agree with Vox’s Matt Yglesias that people are learning the wrong lesson from Trump. He was actually perceived as a relative moderate by voters in 2016.

perry: I understand many voters said that Trump was more moderate than Clinton.

But I just have a hard time with this idea that the candidate who ran calling for a ban on Muslims traveling to the United States and suggested that he would “lock up” his opponent was the moderate candidate.

natesilver: IDK, I think we’ve shifted from a media environment in which a lot of outlets took an (implicitly center or center-left) “view from nowhere” to one in which the media is more outspoken, and the difference between partisan and nonpartisan media is a little blurrier.

And I think that’s shifted the assumptions about whether centrism is electorally advantageous in a direction that claims that, actually, elections are all about turning out your base. But I don’t think there’s actually any evidence that how you win elections has changed.

julia_azari: I don’t think I read Matt’s piece but that’s not gonna stop me from saying I’m not sure I think the discussion around moderate candidates is useful. Even if Trump was thought of as a moderate, he ran in a way that criticized the status quo.

Basically I’ve become one of those Twitter trolls who reads the headline and then makes a critique.

natesilver: Trump also won independents 46-42 though!

sarahf: We can’t downplay just how much Clinton and Trump were disliked in 2016, though. Yes, Trump won, but that might say more about how we think about women in politics more than anything else.

natesilver: What if Clinton had run as more of a centrist, though? Would she have gotten more than 8 percent of the Republican vote? The Democrats had a pretty darn liberal platform.

julia_azari: My suspicion is that it’s a wash, but I may be discounting the impact of Democrats being perceived as too left/liberal.

sarahf: If Clinton had higher favorables, I don’t think it would have mattered how she ran, i.e. centrist or super liberal.

perry: So that gets to the real question. Would Democrats be marginally better off if AOC

and company were a little less prominent till December 2020?

sarahf: Yes, I think that’s the argument Pelosi and leadership are making. I just don’t think it’s particularly salient. But I also haven’t seen the attack ads yet, I suppose.

perry: My own, non-data judgement, is yes, Democrats would be slightly better off if AOC and her allies were less prominent in the run-up to the 2020 election. Why? Because having issues of race and identity (like immigration policy and four very liberal, female people of color) being central to the presidential election is hard for Democrats. They have become the party of people of color but most voters are white and this is especially true in key swing states (in particular, Michigan and Wisconsin). Also, Trump is likely to run a 2020 campaign about race and identity that raises the question of who should represent America–forcing voters to take sides.

Pelosi, I assume, does not want the 2020 election to be seen by the public as a battle between AOC’s vision of America (even if Biden is the Democratic nominee) and Trump’s vision of America. And I think she is right to be concerned about that. This is not a new challenge for Democrats. Hillary Clinton was probably not helped by the rise of Black Lives Matter preceding the 2016 election, and backlash to the civil rights movement arguably helped Richard Nixon win the 1972 election.

natesilver: I guess the counterargument, which folks were sorta alluding to above, is that Pelosi can push back against the Squad to show that actually she’s the “reasonable,” moderate one. I’m not sure I buy that counterargument, but it’s an argument.

julia_azari: YES, THE GALAXY BRAIN TAKE.

My read on this is that this stuff is always bubbling under the surface, also. Like you can’t indefinitely ignore race issues because they’re tricky politically.

natesilver: Democrats derive certain benefits from having a more diverse coalition, one of which is that the coalition is simply broader — more people identify as Democrats in this country than Republicans. It also entails certain costs, including tension among different parts of your constituency that can have racial undertones (or even overtones).

The hard part for Democrats right now is that nonwhite voters are significantly disempowered by the Electoral College, and especially by the Senate.

[mashitandsmashit]

America’s Got Talent: The Champions - Auditions 4

So, despite what I said last week about not wanting the results to be spoiled to me, some jerk in the Youtube comments gave away this week’s results (and pretty much all of the remaining results for this season...I thought the finale would at least be live, but I guess not...) Needless to say, it kinda ruined my day...

I mean, some of my favorite variety acts in the history of the show were all there...And both of the acts to advance are the two solo singers with sob stories! (That’s a lot of S’s! And S is for SIMON!!!)

But since I heard them ahead of time, I was able to go into tonight with an open mind, take the results with a pinch of salt, understand that they probably would have been quite different if it was live, everyone watching at home could vote, there were more spots, etc.

And indeed, I was overall very satisfied! Everyone tonight seemed to put everything they had into their performances, and they all had something to offer...Even some singers that I wasn’t looking forward to rose well above my expectations! While I’m still very disappointed by the results, I can at least see what circumstances led to this, and overall, this is probably my favorite Champions show so far!

So let’s rank the acts that made up this strong show...

10: Moonlight Brothers. In a night filled with strong contenders, these two stuck out like a sore thumb...Ironically, by NOT sticking out! Howie pretty much summed it all up when he basically said that America is a completely different arena than where THEY come from, because if they were on AGT, they would have been cannon fodder...But hey, I thought they were pretty entertaining and had some interesting moves...Nonetheless, there was no doubt who last place was going to...Also, GOOD GOD, I’M SO SICK OF THAT FLOSS DANCE!!!

9: Issy Simpson. Didn’t know who she was before, but now that I do, I like her! ...Except she apparently already did this same trick for her BGT audition...Ouch! That’s gonna dock her some significant points!

8: Brian Justin Crum. This is who I THOUGHT was gonna get the GB, because his story is just the right amount of “inspiring” for Simon, but he’s also proven to be one of the more exceptional singers in recent seasons...Also, the promo last week showed him in front of a glittery golden background, so I thought it was a dead giveaway...Turns out I was half right, because that apparently comes up for the OTHER act advancing as well...Anyway, yeah, I still like him, but compared to some of the other acts, I wish it went to someone else...And it’s ironic, because I was ready to accept him advancing ALONGSIDE one of my favorites over the other two singing acts...And yet, the other two actually exceeded my expectations, whereas he settled on being...BIG! Not that that’s a bad thing in and of itself, but for me it just wasn’t as compelling to listen to...But I will say, that song choice was just a natural pick for him, especially since it’s from a fellow gay man! In fact, during Season 11, I was waiting to see if he was gonna perform it...

7: Drew Lynch. I’ve always considered Drew to be quite underrated, and his jokes tonight were mostly quite solid...Maybe if the set lasted longer than 30 seconds (I know that’s an exaggeration...His stutters add at LEAST an extra minute!), he’d rank higher!

6: The Texas Tenors. Ahhh, Season 4...The year I got into AGT! I was a naive young fool back then...I was VERY prone to getting my hopes up (even more than I am now!) I was like, “Well, that Kevin Skinner guy is good and all, but he’s not as good as the other singers, so maybe the semi-finals is as far as he should go...Can’t have TOO many singers in the final round, right? Gotta make room for the variety acts...Like Acrodunk! They should TOTALLY clean up tomorrow night!” That infamous season is what ultimately prepared me for the pain I would have to endure down the road if I were to continue to watch this show...And one of the biggest pains was watching these three pretty-boys (okay, the short one’s not that pretty) make it all the way to Fourth Place on what appeared to be nothing but their Southern charm! And it’s not even that I hated them; I acknowledged that they had singing talent, and they had this schmaltzy charm to them...BUT FOURTH PLACE!? I mean, I watched some great acts get knocked out in favor of them, some of my favorite acts of the season! And these rednecks get to smile their way all the way to fourth!? It was one of my first big outrages while watching this show...But why? Again, they could sing...But there was just something about them I couldn’t stand...Anyway, I’m rambling here; The point I’m trying to make is that I actually really enjoyed them tonight! I don’t know what it is...Maybe their individual vocals have improved (because they all have uniquely great singing voices), maybe the harmony has improved...Or maybe I just feel differently about them now! I guess I’ll have to go back and re-watch their Season 4 performances and make a comparison...(I have been strongly considering watching AGT from the beginning and giving my thoughts on the older seasons, seeing how they compare with my thoughts back then in the cases of Season 4 onward...)

5: Kechi. Ooh, I felt so much outrage when I heard she was advancing over the Top 4 acts in this list (who are mostly ranked like that out of sheer bias)! With all of the acts this season (and in this episode) that make me smile, seeing her tragic disfigurement again and hearing her sad story was bound to bring down my mood, and hearing that I will see her in the finals over said joy-bringing acts brought it down even more! Going into tonight, I knew she had damn well better justify her place! ...She justified her place! BY FAR her best performance to date! I think what I like about her is that she doesn’t try to belt it out all big...I just haven’t been a big fan of hers in the past because I felt that she could USE a little more “big”! And tonight, she went just big enough while keeping it nice and balanced, and when she does that, she really can be one of the best singers! I saw a hint of that in her quarter-final performance back in Season 12, but not until tonight have I seen her full potential unleashed! That said, I think it’s pretty obvious why Simon REALLY wanted to give her the GB, and I’m convinced that as producer, he made sure to arrange her to perform this week when he gets to do that! Classic Simon...

4: Kenichi Ebina. Okay, I’m not gonna deny that my constant support of Kenichi is mostly bias, because even back in Season 8, there WAS kind of a hit and miss quality to most of his performances...But I still couldn’t help but love this guy and everything he represented! Tonight was no different; The dances were mostly limited to the DDR segment at the beginning, and then he went all big fancy effects, and didn’t do a whole lot physically from there...So I can see where Mel’s coming from...But I loved the effects, I loved the story, and I especially loved the little robot dog aiding him throughout...It wasn’t perfect; Honestly, his performances never really were...But I don’t think any AGT contestant has inspired me as much as this guy has! My respect for him transcends his performances! I guess that’s a major reason why I was so happy that he won Season 8 despite his imperfections, and why I was deep down hoping he could defend his AGT cred in Champions by at least making the finals...But I guess you can’t have them all...Nonetheless, I still can’t help but salute this guy!

3: Paul Zerdin. I guess there weren’t any big innovations like the animatronic effects he did back in Season 10, but as Howie said, this guy’s always finding unique ways to play with the art of ventriloquism...Like Darci, I would like to see new puppets from him (and voices that don’t sound like Howie doing a British Bobby Generic), but this guy still entertains me every time!

2: The Professional Regurgitator. I think everyone can take Simon’s opinions here with a grain of salt...His decision to buzz the guy while he had a razor blade in his throat on the other hand...From what I heard from Stevie ahead of time as well as his curse to Simon backstage, I can tell he’s pissed at this, even more than Heidi is! And I know this isn’t for everyone...I should know; I didn’t like this guy at first when he came on in Season 10 either...But with all the crazy tricks he pulled off, he just kept growing on me! This might not have been his best trick to date...but I’m still pretty damn impressed, however he pulled it off! And for all his talk of swallowing Paul Zerdin, perhaps the one who he SHOULD be swallowing is Simon Cowell! It would surely be a terrifying sight...But also cathartic!

1: Tape Face. I’m actually quite surprised that he managed to get into the Top 3 (or 4?) But it provided a slight bit of satisfaction to an otherwise disappointing result...Perhaps a big part of it is that he made sort of a love letter to the show while getting Howie and Terry to do much of the performing...It’s actually quite genius! But a big part of what makes this character so charming is simply his presence! I could only imagine what it would have been like if I was in the audience waiting to see what old AGT act would come onstage next, and then seeing that weird intro where he’s in shadows...and then sits up and reveals himself! I would be cheering...at least in my mind, because I’m socially awkward...Not much else to say; It’s Tape Face! ‘Nuff said!

So again, I would have liked to see at least one favorite make it alongside whatever sob story singer that Simon was inevitably gonna give the GB to...But for what we got, I’m happy! Onward to next week!

I’m actually not gonna bother ranking next week’s acts based on my support, because half of them are foreign acts who I’ve never heard of (but they all sound interesting), and the other half...Well, I can’t say there are any that I DON’T like...Let’s just say that there are two clear front-runners (though I know only one of them will go through), a singing group that I really like, a singer who I...like enough...and a magician who I like, but will surely be overshadowed by the other one who is one of the pre-mentioned front-runners (in fact, they will no doubt play up a rivalry with the two).

I guess that is all there is to say for now...

[chasholidays]

Thanks for doing this again!! I'd love to read a Dancing with the Stars Bellarke AU if possible!!

The nice thing Clarke has found about Dancing with the Stars is that, as a general rule, the less she likes her celebrity partner, the sooner she’ll be eliminated.

It’s not a purposeful thing; she always does her best with every season, she’s way too competitive to not. But it tends to be hard, to work with people she dislikes, as the root cause of her dislike is generally that they won’t fucking listen to her. When she goes out early, it’s almost because her stupid celebrity refuses to listen to her or thinks she’s too harsh or the dance is too hard. It’s not like she usually gets to know them on any deep level; they spend a few weeks together in a surreal environment, and then she never sees them again.

Finn Collins, though. Finn Collins is new.

“You could just break one of his legs,” Bellamy suggests. They’re getting drinks and Bellamy is mocking her because while Ontari is something of a nightmare, she’s at least an expected kind of nightmare. She’s a controlling former actress who wants this to reboot her career and thinks Bellamy is there to serve her, not teach her. It sucks, but they’ve all dealt with that before. “Like, casually.”

Clarke snorts. “What’s the casual way to break someone’s legs? Ski mask and a tire iron?”

“I was thinking you just trip and fall and get him with your knee as you go down, but if you’ve got a ski mask and a tire iron–”

She elbows him. “Seriously, I’m worried that if he gets to the final he’s going to propose or something. Just to get audience votes.”

“That is how he got famous, right? Deciding he was going to marry a woman he barely knew?”

“If he tries to give me a rose I actually will break one of his legs,” she grumbles, and Bellamy laughs.

Finn’s not the first “star” to make it on the program because of his experience in reality TV, but Clarke will admit she finds him one of the least impressive. He went on The Bachelor despite, apparently, having a serious girlfriend, and he was somehow hoping that she wouldn’t find out because she hated reality TV, and that he’d be able to dump her cleanly if it went well.

Instead, it all blew up in his face, as he deserved, and by three months after his engagement at the end of the show, he was single and slightly infamous, which is, admittedly, the sweet spot for people who want to continue to appear on reality TV. He’s hosted some specials, been on some morning shows, and now seems to be known mostly as a pleasant, generic attractive white guy, like they didn’t have enough of those on TV already.

“If it makes you feel better, he’s not actually a good dancer, so he should get weeded out pretty soon,” Bellamy points out, practical as always. “He’s been scraping by on charm and luck. I’m just glad the charm stopped working on you.”

She makes a face. “It wasn’t working, I was being polite.”

“Because you didn’t know anything about him.”

“I’m still being polite.”

“I’m just saying, before I told you to google him, you actually kind of liked him.”

Clarke grins and nudges him. “So you were trying to save me?”

“Friends don’t let friends date former Bachelor contestants, Clarke.”

“Especially not ones who cheated on their real girlfriends. He would have lost me pretty soon anyway. He’s just so–”

“Finn?” Bellamy supplies.

“Pretty much. How’s Ontari doing? I feel like you aren’t complaining as much.”

“Well, I wouldn’t want to cut into your time,” he teases, and she elbows him again. He ducks his head, laughing, and Clarke finds herself smiling too. He’s in a good mood today, a rarity, and it’s nice to see him so relaxed. “Honestly, she’s fine. Don’t get me wrong, she hates me, thinks she knows better than I do, and if she could just be her own teacher and partner, she’d be fucking thrilled. But the judges keep praising all the stuff I say they will, so she’s coming around. And I’d take unnecessary asshole hostility over someone trying to hit on me every time.”

“So, my life is terribleand makes you feel better about yours?”

He raises his glass. “Appreciated.”

She shakes her head, smiling. “Happy to help.”

*

As with so many things, the Finn situation gets worse before it gets better. He’s one of those people who, as he gains experience and confidence, also gains opinions, and while that can be a good thing, his opinions are bad, and he should feel bad.

“He thinks we need to put more Bachelor stuff into the routine,” she tells Bellamy, a week later.

“I told you he wanted to give you a rose. I tried to warn you.”

“He used the word synergy.”

That makes him wince. “Jesus, really?”

“Synergy, I swear to god. He thinks the cross-promotional synergy will really help his brand.”

“If that’s an actual quote, I might break his leg.”

“It is.” She puts her head on his shoulder with a sigh. “I never thought basic competence would be this annoying.”

“Yeah, it’s a real burden.” He pauses, thinking something over. “Did he say what he thinks his brand is? Because asshole from The Bachelor is a pretty competitive field.”

“That’s why he wants to add dancing. None of the others are dancers.”

“I’ve seen him dance, he isn’t either.”

Clarke smiles. “Doesn’t that reflect on me? I’m the one who’s supposed to be teaching him.”

“You’re doing your best with what you have to work with.”

“Ontari is actually good.”

“She’s nominally a singer, so I guess she should be.”

“Nominally, you’re such a snob.”

“I just think when you autotune that much you should lose some of the credit for your musical skills,” he grumbles. Bellamy googles everyone who signs up for the show extensively, which is how he knows things like who Finn is and what Ontari’s music sounds like. Clarke’s experience tends to be more scattershot, with some people she recognizes and some she wouldn’t know were stars unless someone told her. Which doesn’t bother her, but she’s pretty sure Bellamy is still embarrassed about his first season, when they had Roan Churchill on the show and everyone else was star struck and Bellamy mistook him for a new PA.

So now he’s an expert.

“But she does actually have rhythm and some taste.”

“Let’s not get carried away. I’m still rooting for Monty.”

“Me too,” Clarke admits. Usually she roots for her own star, and then Bellamy’s, but since both of theirs suck, they had to find other people. Monty’s kind of quiet and dorky, famous as a cartoonist of all things, and everyone expected him to fail out basically immediately, but the guy can move. It’s kind of awesome.

“So, what does Finn do with the rose in this hypothetical dance?” he asks. “How bad is it?”

“It’s in his mouth.”

“For your disco week number?” Bellamy asks, sounding dubious.

“Don’t tell me you’re against disco roses.”

“At this point I think it’s safe to say I’m against Finn,” he grumbles. “I don’t really want you to get knocked out, but–yeah, if he could got horribly injured and you had to get a new partner, I could live with that.”

“Still working on how to break his legs and make it look like an accident. But if I figure out how, I’ll let you know.”

“If you need an alibi, just ask.”

She grins, kisses his cheek. “Yeah, I know.”

*

Clarke and Bellamy have been professionals on the show for six seasons together, but they’ve never actually danced together. It’s not something Clarke thinks about, not something she felt like she was missing in her life. She knows Bellamy is a great dancer, one of the best she’s ever seen, and she’s always thought it would be fun, but she hasn’t danced with plenty of people.

It comes up primarily because Bellamy and Ontari somehow get eliminated before she and Finn do, which is just absurd. It’s not like Clarke likesOntari–quite the opposite–but she was without a doubt a much better dancer than Finn is, and she definitely should have stayed longer.

On the bright side, Bellamy is no longer the competition, but he’s still her friend, so he’s just hanging around offering commentary on their moves. It’s kind of cheating, probably, but it’s not like he isn’t offering commentary on other people’s routines. She’s just his favorite, and he hates Finn, so he’s doing it extra for them.

“This is impossible!” Finn finally says, in exasperation. “No one could do this!”

“That’s just bullshit,” Bellamy says, mild. “Just because you can’t doesn’t mean it’s impossible.”

“Yeah? Then you do it.”

It’s an incredibly stupid thing to say, and Finn realizes it maybe a second after he says it, but it’s too late.

“Sure,” says Bellamy. He glances at his friend Miller, who’s behind the camera today. “Assuming that’s cool.”

“I don’t give a shit,” says Miller. “They might not use the footage but go for it.”

“Clarke?” he asks, and Clarke finds that she really, really wants to.

It’s a surprise, but it shouldn’t be.

“It would probably be good to get a demonstration in. You know it?”

“Yeah, I know it.” His eyes sweep over her, just once, like he’s checking in, and then he offers his hand.

She’ll be the first person to admit the whole thing works a lot better with Bellamy than it does with Finn. It’s less that sexual attraction is required for dance–it definitely isn’t–and more that comfort with the partner helps.

But it’s also a little bit that it’s a sexy song, and a sexy dance, and given her choice between dirty dancing with Finn and dirty dancing with Bellamy, Bellamy wins every time.

The speed was what was tripping Finn up, mostly, and some of the more complicated footwork, but of course Bellamy doesn’t struggle with that. He’s light on his feet, his movements sure, and his eyes never leave hers. It’s close and hot and intimate and like no other dancing has ever been, like no other partner has ever been. Her whole life, nothing has ever been like this.

By the time they’re done, everyone is staring at them, and Clarke’s wondering if she’s allowed to drag him off somewhere and fuck him now, or if she’s required to wait until later.

Judging from his expression, he’s wondering the same thing, but he makes up his mind first. “See?” he says, to no one in particular. “Anyone can do it.”

“Yeah, that’s the lesson we learned there,” says Miller, dry.

Finn, on the other hand, is just sort of gaping at them; Clarke offers him a sunny smile. “I don’t think it’s the choreography,” she says, and that makes him close his mouth.

“No,” he says, at last. “Probably not.”

*

Bellamy is waiting for her when she leaves the showers after, looking like an anxious kid after his first school dance, of all things.

“Hi,” she says.

“Hi. I thought I could, uh–I thought we should talk.”

“Talk?” she asks, amused. “You want to talk?”

“What’s wrong with talking?”

“Nothing. But it seems kind of unnecessary.”

“Unnecessary,” he repeats, but there’s a smile lurking around his mouth.

“Was some part of what happened there unclear?” she asks, trailing her fingers up his chest.

“I hope not,” he says, and leans down to kiss her.

So they’re definitely on the same page.

*

When she and Finn get eliminated that week, she assumes that it’s partly because they included some of the footage of her and Bellamy practicing together, and nothing she and Finn did came even close to being that good.

Bellamy assumes so too, because he greets her with a kiss and, “See? We got rid of him.”

“I don’t know if that counts.”

“He’s gone and we’re together,” he points out. “That sounds like winning to me.”

It’s hard to argue with that logic, and she cuddles into his arms, warm and perfectly content, despite the loss. “Yeah,” she says. “When you put it like that.”

[crush-the-patriarchy-today]

Have any of you out there in this wonderful wold of Tumblr ever seen the American President?

The Wonderful masterpiece by the Genius that is Aaron Sorkin.  Well if you haven’t i highly recommend it.  Especially with the way things seem to be going these days it makes you hopeful for what the future can hold.... even though it seems bleak right now.  But that is no the reason I am asking this or bringing up this movie.  Every time I have watched this movie since Nov 6th 2016 different quotes have stood out and I want to share them with you and compare them with what I see happening in this country.  

A.J.: [to President Andrew Shepherd] You've said it yourself a million times. If there had been a TV in every living room sixty years ago, this country does not elect a man in a wheelchair.

  First off with this one, you need to know this is true.  And was sort of/more than likely proven with the election of our 35th President, Mr. Kennedy.  The debate between Kennedy was televised and Mr Nixon was I believe ill at the time and it was visible.  And as the very shallow society that we live in even more so now that we all live on the internet and with instant news that is how it happened.  Kennedy looked healthy so the vast majority of the American public voted for him.  But think about it and look deep into yourself, would you have voted for Roosevelt if you had seen him in his wheelchair? Do you think people chose our current president because they didn’t think a woman could run the country....(that by the way is a topic for another post)  I ask you to look deep within yourselves and think, really think would you?

President Andrew Shepherd: [while playing pool] This is NOT the business of the American people!

A.J.: With all due respect, sir, the American people have a funny way of deciding on their own what is and what is not their business.

   This exchange here is 100% true.  An you know it.  This exchange it between the president and his chief of staff, who happens to be his best friend, basically discussing whether or not he should ask out a woman he is interested in.  While being the leader of the free world.  The President is saying how it is not the business of the American people about his private life.  And I agree with him.  However just as A.J. says we the American people have a funny way deciding what is our business.  We seem to believe that famous people, reality tv stars, political figures, professional athletes, and anyone in the public eye their lives are for us to care about.  When in reality if people were harassing you and making judgments about your life and your personal choices in the past and present then you would be pretty pissed. So maybe we should respect these people and their rights to privacy.  Because it is none of our business.  

Lewis Rothschild: [in the Oval Office] You have a deeper love of this country than any man I've ever known. And I want to know what it says to you that in the past seven weeks, 59% of Americans have begun to question your patriotism.

President Andrew Shepherd: Look, if the people want to listen to-...

Lewis Rothschild: They don't have a choice! Bob Rumson is the only one doing the talking! People want leadership, Mr. President, and in the absence of genuine leadership, they'll listen to anyone who steps up to the microphone. They want leadership. They're so thirsty for it they'll crawl through the desert toward a mirage, and when they discover there's no water, they'll drink the sand.

President Andrew Shepherd: Lewis, we've had presidents who were beloved, who couldn't find a coherent sentence with two hands and a flashlight. People don't drink the sand because they're thirsty. They drink the sand because they don't know the difference.

  I feel like I should just say I’ll leave this here but I’ll share my thoughts.  Lewis is right.  I think that is what happened last year.  The democratic party screwed themselves over, in my opinion, when they “picked” “nominated” whatever you want to call it Hilary.  First off yes as a woman, it would be nice to see a woman become president or hold high level offices, however I do not believe that this country is ready for a woman president, but not yet, not until the patriarchy has been crushed and we are all equal under the 14th amendment, like we are supposed to be,(ps that will also be a future post so stay tuned).  Anyway like I said they screwed themselves over with the Clinton pick over Sanders.  I believe that if Sanders had been the nominee then he could have beaten Trump.  And honestly if the vast majority of republicans weren’t so polarized to the right they would have seen that Gov. Kasich from Ohio was the best choice for the republican nomination.  Not some older white man who is clearly just saying things to anger the American people and get the people who have been silent for so long to come out in droves and vote for him.  Because the vast majority of people who feel the same way as our current president finally had someone speaking for them.  And Shepherd is right too.  Going off my last statement, these people are drinking the sand that is what Trump is giving them because they are so blinded by the fact that he is speaking to them, for them, that they think he is right no matter what.  (I know I will probably get called a snowflake for these thoughts that I am shouting into the void that is tumblr but I feel my voice needs to be heard.) I feel like they do not see how his extremeness and the way he lashes out at everything and everyone who disagrees with him are and will continue to damage and draw us further apart as a nation when we should be united as one. 

President Andrew Shepherd: [in the white house press room] For the last couple of months, Senator Rumson has suggested that being president of this country was, to a certain extent, about character, and although I have not been willing to engage in his attacks on me, I've been here three years and three days, and I can tell you without hesitation: Being President of this country is entirely about character. ...  America isn't easy. America is advanced citizenship. You gotta want it bad, 'cause it's gonna put up a fight. It's gonna say "You want free speech? Let's see you acknowledge a man whose words make your blood boil, who's standing center stage and advocating at the top of his lungs that which you would spend a lifetime opposing at the top of yours. You want to claim this land as the land of the free? Then the symbol of your country can't just be a flag; the symbol also has to be one of its citizens exercising his right to burn that flag in protest. Show me that, defend that, celebrate that in your classrooms. Then, you can stand up and sing about the "land of the free". I've known Bob Rumson for years, and I've been operating under the assumption that the reason Bob devotes so much time and energy to shouting at the rain was that he simply didn't get it. Well, I was wrong. Bob's problem isn't that he doesn't get it. Bob's problem is that he can't sell it! We have serious problems to solve, and we need serious people to solve them. And whatever your particular problem is, I promise you, Bob Rumson is not the least bit interested in solving it. He is interested in two things and two things only: making you afraid of it and telling you who's to blame for it. That, ladies and gentlemen, is how you win elections. You gather a group of middle-aged, middle-class, middle-income voters who remember with longing an easier time, and you talk to them about family and American values and character.

 The parts that are in bold are the quotes that stand out the most to me and need to be discussed.  We shouldn’t fight with one another we should discuss with those we disagree with to understand them and so they can understand us.  And this country is about more than a damn flag.  That’s right I said it is about more than a damn flag.  The flag is a symbol but we the American people are the real symbol.  And fyi for those of you who do not know they don’t have to play the national anthem before sporting events they could play any song in the world they wanted to.  It is not a law or a requirement for it to be played before sporting events. It started with baseball in 1918 at the world series(read more about that here http://www.history.com/news/why-the-star-spangled-banner-is-played-at-sporting-events)  The second part that is in bold is what I believe happened last year.  Trump made people afraid and told us all who was to blame that’s how he ran his entire campaign( again this is my opinion).

A. J. MacInerney: [in the Oval Office] The President doesn't answer to you, Lewis!

Lewis Rothschild: Oh, yes he does A.J. I'm a citizen, this is my President. And in this country it is not only permissible to question our leaders it's our responsibility!

Finally the most important quote of the entire movie, comes again from Lewis.  As a citizen of this country, yes you are my president, I am not happy about it, but as a citizen of this country, it is my responsibility and right to question you as a leader.  You are elected and answer to the American people, and the media, or social media is our voice.  And yes sir I will concede and agree with you that the media is skewed way to much to left and as a person who is in the middle, I do not appreciate it.  However it is their right and my right to question you and seek the truth.  What are you hiding sir.  Why are you trying to distract the American people with all the tweets?   I have one final quote that I feel you sir will identify with and this character is correct as well with it but that doesn’t me you can be like him. Be the better man and listen to those around you and stop acting like a spoiled child   Col. Jessup: Son, we live in a world that has walls, and those walls have to be guarded by men with guns. Who's gonna do it? You? You, Lt. Weinberg? I have a greater responsibility than you could possibly fathom. You weep for Santiago and you curse the Marines. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know; that Santiago's death, while tragic, probably saved lives. And my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, *saves lives*. You don't want the truth because deep down in places you don't talk about at parties, you want me on that wall. You need me on that wall. We use words like honor, code, loyalty. We use these words as the backbone of a life spent defending something. You use them as a punchline. I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom that I provide, and then questions the manner in which I provide it! I would rather you just said "thank you" and went on your way, Otherwise, I suggest you pick up a weapon and stand a post. Either way, I don't give a *damn* what you think you are entitled to!  (This is from A Few Good Men, another work from the genius mind of Aaron Sorkin, watch it if you haven’t.)  But he is right deep down we want to live in denial but the truth is we need to hear the truth no matter how much it hurts.  

Thank you for listening/reading or whatever #crush the patriarchy 

[deanlfc]

My, how the tables have turned!

Now it's not usually like me to comment on political matters through the medium of blogging. As far as I'm concerned I don't know nearly enough about politics to comment on such a complicated subject publicly. Football. That's me, I'm the football guy. I don't know much about anything else in the world, but football is the one thing I'm confident I know a lot about and I'm not afraid to voice my opinion on it.

I've been trying to stave off this blog for a while. When Jeremy Corbyn was attacked by his own party, I said to myself, "no Dean, you don't know as much as you think you do about this. Even if the party should be behind their leader regardless, should recognise his mandate and are only doing this because they fear his values." When Theresa May called a snap election, I said to myself, "no Dean, you don't know enough about this. Even though she said repeatedly over the past 9 months that this wouldn't happen. No, this isn't your field." When the media relentlessly attack Corbyn as a terrorist sympathiser and a pie in the sky idealist, I thought, "no Dean, you don't know half as much as you think you do on this subject. Even though peace talks have to start somewhere and these right wing papers are clearly desperate to sling mud because they're shit scared of this left wing hero." But today is results day...and I have been tipped over the edge.

Let's start this story 11 months and a few weeks ago. We all woke up on Friday 23rd June 2016 to the news that 52% of the British public had chosen to leave the European Union. The country was practically plunged into political chaos. David Cameron was stood outside Downing Street at 7:30 a.m giving his resignation speech and there was massive calls for the leader of the opposition to do the same, and I hadn't even put my bills on yet! While a race for number 10 kicked off within the Conservative party, Jeremy Corbyn resisted calls for his head. While Michael Gove convinced Boris Johnson not stand so he could take his place, Jeremy Corbyn stood firm. While Andrea Leadsom tried hard to discredit every other candidate, only serving to demonise herself within the party, Jeremy Corbyn refused to bow. While Theresa May was restructuring her cabinet and coining shitty phrases like "Brexit means Brexit" (whatever the fuck that even means), Jeremy Corbyn was unshakeable. People were even putting themselves forward for the man's job while he was in the position. Angela Eagle launched a leadership campaign which nobody of note turned up to.

Eventually a leadership election was called. What a huge wake-up call that was for the Labour party. Owen Smith was the man who would stand against the enigmatic current leader. Corbyn was right to shout about his mandate. He won the leadership vote with a landslide 61.8%, not only keeping his mandate but increasing it. Unlike the Tory leadership campaign however, there was no mudslinging. Yes both leaders put cases for their own leadership forward and how it differed from their opponents. But neither demonised the other (cough, cough Andre Leadsom, cough). When Corbyn won, Owen Smith didn't demand a recount or sulk in a corner of the house of commons. He stood down from his seat in Pontypridd with grace and wished Corbyn well. I could be chatting shit here and, if you're reading this and you know I am, then please do tell me so.

So Corbyn went on with his 61.8% mandate. Nobody within the Labour party could now question him. He had his doubters but he was immoveable. The media continued portray him as a man on borrowed time though. In his first shadow cabinet meeting after his re-election, he was made to look awkward and uneasy among his cabinet members. When you know half of them don't want you there, it's easy to see why that would be. But he carried on anyway because he believed in his values and that he could do right for the country.

Fast forward 8 months to the end of April this year. Jeremy Corbyn is still being laughed at by the press and they continually attempt to paint him as a poor leader, despite no evidence of this. Theresa May in the meantime has flip flopped on major issues without mention in the press but somehow has a 22 point lead on most opinion polls. She had said many times that she would NOT call a snap election. But her ego was getting the better of her. It was clearly irking her that she was having to stand in the House of Commons week after week and defend the fact that she was a remainer, and that she wasn't even elected by the public to be Prime Minister. "How could she possibly go to Brussels and get us a good deal?" the opposition would cry. She broke on 18th April 2017.

She did her usual. She spoke sternly, like this had been the plan all along. She wheeled out her "strong and stable leadership" line for the first time, although this, another u-turn on a major decision, was starting to prove people that she was anything but. Behind the scenes though, she knew Labour was weak in the eyes of the public. Murdoch and the lads had done their job. They'd made Corbyn look piss poor to the tune of a 22 point deficit in the opinion polls. She knew now was the time to strike. After 8 months trying to show what she could do in the job and thinking she could fool people by talking about Brexit at any given opportunity, she knew now was the time to make her move. All she had to do was keep doing exactly that; banging on about Brexit and scaring the public into thinking Corbyn would be bullied in Brussels.

It started off well for Theresa May. She was going steadily along. She wasn't putting a foot wrong. Corbyn likewise. He was just as steady. The media still vilified him but there was nothing new there. Then the manifesto's came out and things started to fall apart for the Prime Minster.

No free school meals. No triple lock for pensions. More cuts to public services. The return of fox hunting. More importantly, NO costing of anything within her manifesto. Was she insane? This screamed arrogance. The Tories were basically saying "vote us in and only then will we tell you how we plan to pay for everything (SPOILER ALERT: It's austerity.)" Then there was the Dementia tax. The Tories put forward that pensioners would have to pay for their own social care if they had assets worth over £100,000 and that included their house. It was a fucking scandal. Policy after policy made her seem more inhuman. Dementia tax - cruel. Scrapping free school meals - cruel. Slashing winter fuel allowance for pensioners - cruel. She had clearly targeted the most vulnerable in society and had done so with no shame. She was starting to show her true colours.

Labour on the other hand had come up with exactly the opposite. Jeremy Corbyn and his team had put together a manifesto which, on the face of it, had stood up for the working man. They planned to scrap tuition fees and zero hours contracts. They wanted to introduce a £10 minimum wage and instant union rights for all workers. In my opinion though, the greatest testament to Corbyns leadership which was reflected in his manifesto was Labours plan to keep Trident. Corbyn has been against Trident all of his professional life. He has campaigned for multi-lateral disarmament throughout his political career. But he kept it in because it was a party policy. OK, he has said that he will still campaign for multi-lateral disarmament. But, in my eyes at least, this typifies the man. He kept it, even though he doesn't believe in it, for the good of the party. It's a great show of socialist leadership. Looking at the manifesto's, it was 1-0 to Labour.  Again, I don't enough about this shit so I'm probably chatting wham. If I am, then please let me know.

Then the debates started and things went from bad to worse for Mrs May. She wouldn't show up. At first neither leader of the big two parties showed up. They left it to the minor parties to fight it out. Only the leaders of UKIP, Plaid Cymru, SNP and the Greens would fight this one out. You didn't miss much if you didn't watch it. The highlight was UKIP leader Paul Nuttall referring to Plaid Cymru's Leanne Wood as Natalie, not once but twice. It was turning into car crash T.V. Questions were asked of leaders who seemed unlikely to have any influence over the big decisions after 8th June.

On Monday 29th May came the second leadership debate and this was one was VIP only. It was exclusive to Labour and Conservative, and this time both major party leaders did turn up. Jeremy Corbyn defended his policies and came across as believable. You could tell he believed in his manifesto and it reflected his core values. He faced tough questions regarding his affairs with the IRA and Hamas in the past, but maintained that peace talks had to start somewhere. When up against Jeremy Paxman, he was strong and stood up to the miserly old journalist. Paxman interrupted Corbyn 56 times in 10 minutes during the interview. Keep that in mind. Theresa May was not as convincing. She brought every question back to Brexit and continually skirted around issues. In her interview with Paxman she was interrupted only 6 times. Fair media treatment? Hardly.

Just two days later came the another debate. This time all the parties were represented by their respective leaders - all apart from Conservative that is. Theresa May had obviously either shit out of turning up or didn't see the need to when she sent her Home Secretary, Amber Rudd. Paul Nuttall was painted as a racist. Star of the show was Green Party joint leader Caroline Lucas. She was passionate about issues raised and was not afraid to criticise and condemn on the big issues. Corbyn again presented and defended his policies stoically. Amber Rudd was OK, but she wasn't Theresa May. Her remark of "judge us on our record" was met with outright laughter by the audience. Her christening of the other parties as a "coalition of chaos" would come back to haunt her.

Two days following this came the final debate consisting of the leaders from the two major parties. Theresa May again played 6 degrees of Brexit. Her partys' biggest scandal to date, the handling of disability and PIP assessments, was put to her head on by a weeping audience member. She declared it unacceptable, but you get a feeling nothing will change. People being assessed for disability allowance and PIP payments will continue to be treated inhumanely and have professionals from irrelevant fields assessing their conditions. Corbyn faced questions regarding his proposed increase in corporation tax and scrapping of zero hours contracts, like they were awful things. Again he put on a great show.

These debates were played out to the backdrop of two major terrorist attacks. The Manchester Arena bombing on 23rd May killed 22 people and temporarily brought the campaign to a halt. Three days later, Jeremy Corbyn took a huge risk in using the atrocity to criticise Britains foreign policy. It could have backfired and, for a few hours at least, his politicising of the incident was condemned by the opposition. But the public agreed. They knew he was right and pretty soon the government were defending their foreign policy.

When 8 people were killed on London Bridge 5 days before the election, Theresa May was really in trouble. How were these people being allowed to travel to the middle east and admit to being Jihadis on T.V, yet still roam our streets? How had the Prime Minister thought it acceptable to cut the numbers of Police officers on our streets during her time as Home Secretary, when our threat level had been severe for so long? Why had she publicised the downgrading of the threat level after the Manchester attack? Brexit, an issue that many thought would be front and centre of this election, was taking a back seat to national security.

Media coverage of Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour party continued to be nothing short of scandalous. When Diane Abbot became confused in an interview with Nick Ferrari on LBC regarding how a Labour government planned to pay for 30,000 extra police officers, she was rightly crucified for an embarrassing gaffe. When Michael Gove did same thing surrounding a similar issue, it was barely reported. When Jeremy Corbyn couldn't remember the figure the Labour party had decided to spend on childcare costs for working parents, he was ridiculed to his face by presenter Emma Barnett. When Sir Michael Fallon was given a supposed Corbyn quote criticising Britains foreign policy on Channel 4 news by Krishnan Guru-Murthy and proceeded to tear it apart, only to be told it was actually a Boris Johnson quote - the Tory incumbent Foreign Secretary no less - it was not mentioned again after 24 hours. Jeremy Corbyn has been labelled a terrorist sympathiser and apologist by a red rag (which shall remain nameless but I'm sure everyone will get onto who I'm referring to) and the Daily Mail, for his dealings with Hamas, the IRA and members of Al Muhajiroun turning up to a public rally he was speaking at in 2002. Theresa May has received minor criticism in the media for her arms dealings with Saudi Arabia, a know ISIS supporting state. If it wasn't so serious it would be laughable. As it is, it's just a fucking joke.

Nobody truly believed a Labour victory to be realistic. It was such a massive difference to make up in the opinion polls. 22 points- it was unprecedented. So when the exit poll predicted a hung parliament, nobody could quite believe it. The Labour party had actually done it. They had taken Tory seats and could be on the verge of something incredible. When you look back though, it's easy to see why this has happened. Between Jeremy Corbyn becoming leader in 2015 and the present day, Labour has grown by 300,000 members. On polling day, 75% of 18-25 year olds turned out to vote. Theresa May was holding press conferences at specially held events with VIP guests and specifically picked members of the public. Jeremy Corbyn was turning up at concerts and rallies that resembled music festivals unannounced. Not only had he generated a huge amount of momentum, he had convinced the next generation of voters that politics was relevant to your future and you could make a difference.

The result was a hung parliament but the Tories still held a majority of seats. Needing just 8 seats to take power, Theresa May did something which would embarrass her party and demolish her credibility. She struck a deal with the DUP.

For those who don't know much about the Democratic Unionist Party, let me fill you in. The DUP are the largest party in Northern Ireland, holding 10 parliamentary seats. In a nutshell they are against equal rights for LGBT, gay marriage, a woman's right to abortion and have been Euro-sceptic since God was a kid. They campaigned against any peace talks in Northern Ireland up until the Good Friday Agreement in 1998. They were UKIP before UKIP. On top of that, and this is the worst thing of all about the Prime Ministers deal with the devil, the DUP have known links to terrorist acts. The DUP founders - Ian Paisley and Peter Robinson - would go on to also found the Ulster Resistance, a parliamentary loyalist association. They were renowned for stealing £300,000 from the Bank of Northern Ireland to fund arms deals. Members were frequently arrested for carrying guns, grenades and RPG's.

Theresa May's agreement with the DUP should be the final nail in her coffin. Her shameless attack on Corbyn last week as a terrorist sympathiser who could not ensure the security of the country, now looks hypocritical at best. This deal proves she is ready to sell her soul to keep hold of power. Her credibility within her own party is shot to pieces. It shows how truly out of touch she is on every level. Even this morning, in her speech to announce the deal, she failed to acknowledge the turnout of young voters and just how close the election was. Either she hasn't got a clue what's going on on the streets of Great Britain or she clearly doesn't give a fuck about you or me, and she will carry on doing what she is doing regardless of public opinion. Her arrogance throughout this campaign was characterised by her initially calling the election and not showing up to debates. In fact she didn't debate at all. She fielded questions from a studio audience and Jeremy Paxman, before swiftly pissing off when Jeremy Corbyn came onto the stage. She did not feel the need to defend her inhumane policies, instead choosing to bring every question fielded to her back to Brexit. By the way, Brexit meant fuck all by the end of this election in the light of two horrendous terror attacks. She again refused to address an issue staring her in the face after these attacks in the form of policing numbers. Her position is surely untenable. After all, who wants to live under a Prime Minister who is so out of touch with the electorate and has taken her party further to the right than it has ever been?

In contrast, Jeremy Corbyn has had a complete 180 degree turn in his popularity. This time last year, he was vilified by the media and his own party. A public coup was in operation to remove him from leadership. But he stood strong. He backed himself. He believed in his values. He didn't force them on his party, although he has taken it further to the left than it has been. Yes, there were issues along the way. But his humanistic values have shone through. He has shown the best of socialism and that it can work in modern day politics. He has inspired a generation of millenials who had previously saw voting as a waste of time on a subject they knew nothing about, to get out there and make a difference. Jeremy Corbyn has changed the political landscape for the better in this country, in my opinion.

Then again, I could be wrong...

[a-dawsonsblog]

Week Four:

During this week of class we looked at public opinion and audience citizenship relating to how strong media messages can have a massive effect on society and audiences. We specifically dove deep into Greta Thrunberg’s messages towards world leaders for their lack of care for the environment. It is clear what her message was by displaying her frustration and anger towards said world leaders. Furthermore, the way she captured her audience was by creating a deeply passionate media message so that the majority of the world would be on her side and feel for how she is feeling. I think it is important to highlight her use of emotion and how it can be used to her advantage to carry out her message which would then appeal to many citizens to possibly join her cause. I thought it was funny how Donald Trump reached out by tweeting “she seems like a nice young happy girl”, which Greta responded with putting those words into her bio on Twitter. Bestowed by Sullivan, the rise of quantification can express itself through many different public spheres (p. 61, 2013). An outstanding example of this is the reaction that Kim Kardashian and Kendall Jenner got when delivering the 2019 Emmy Awards. The public opinion of them is to see them as models in a magazine or on a reality television show, not handing out awards at a prestigious awards show, such as the Emmys. Noteworthy public opinions are like measurements on a scale. In order to gather people to your cause, you must have to be knowledgeable and understand how an outcome can either hinder or progress your current situation. Audiences as objects and outcomes need to take into consideration the potential violence from public audiences. In class we talked about power and audiences relating it to public opinion. A theorist named Plato in the 4th century BCE, was respectful of the powers to make decisions for the public. He usually was doubtful about the wisdom of common people to make decisions in their own best significance towards the morally state. Plato then drew a contrast between the two types of thinking ‘doxa’ and ‘episteme’. Doxa referred to popular belief that was fickle and unshaped by rigors of philosophy. Basically this means that audiences with a common political goal will have the same beliefs and outcomes presented to them. When looking at the other side, episteme was sure knowledge about true unchanging nature was formed by scientific principles. This demonstrates how people will have different ways of thinking and one way may be more theoretical with numbers and real life examples but perhaps another way will be pulling from a scientific background for clear evidence of a theory to be correct. Sulllivan highlights the importance of surveys and how it is the easiest way to gather quick information from a large group of people (2013, p.67). l I personally believe that gathering two different perspectives and looking at numbers is important because it will help justify your opinion of why you believe in that particular subject, surveys can be biased and unreliable. An example of this is trying to predict an outcome for a professional sports game, one typically wouldn't just guess, but instead it's important to analyze the players and the stats that they are known to produce, to take note of the records and all the important numbers to know before making your prediction. The 5th to the 15th century created a timeframe that was known as the king representing a body of political embodiment by society. During this time there were many challenges that had to be addressed such as power distributed and feudal lords less needed. The value of having these obstacles to face allow for groups and audiences to be formed to genter positive ideas and feedback for a constructive and fair system moving forward. So, moving forward to the 18th century where it was the beginning of bourgeois in public sphere. In this era we see the press making things public which shows its significance of opening up affairs to citizens who would have no way of knowing. This is important to note because it illustrates a movement in communication between the government, the press and the people for the information that is now available for them to have access to. By making things public, it grants permission for any type of audience to have their own opinions and reactions based on the news being delivered. This freedom is important because this was the first step where we saw true democracy, such as the common person being allowed to cast their votes. The way we measure public opinion is by holding surveys and focus groups so that citizens can have a place to go and express themselves in a demoncatic manner. Public opinions matter, therefore, random sampling is used to collect data for a better understanding of the overall meanings of communication. However, random sampling is hard to do and it turns people into numbers rather than using their ideas and giving credit to them. The question that needs to be addressed is, is there a such thing as the public and whose opinion matters anyways? The way to go about answering this question is that it comes down to what country you live in and what type of society and government operates within your country. For example, here in Canada people are allowed to share their ideas and express their opinions in any manner they choose to do, however, in a country like Afghanistan it's a lot more difficult to do such a thing because they are extremely underdeveloped which means they wouldn't have the resources like social media and connections we have in Canada and it's a dictatorship. Sullivan links how media reality and the public perception are two completely different things that need to be facing its own agenda to deliver an effect media message to the public (2013, p.70). The presence of a dictatorship means you have to be extremely careful of what you say. I feel like public discussion is necessary for any type of government because it is your people and you need to know how they are feeling and what potential changes are needed to make things better. The agenda setting theory compares readers, priorities, and the stories told by the media becoming their stories to be told. Spiral of silence proposes that we are social creatures and we want to fit in as best as possible, we use the media to tell us what people are thinking, we may not agree with something and will tend not to speak out if it is not the public majority opinion. These assumptions are being challenged to raise social environments on the internet so that people can investigate and use their rights to democracy to benefit them. In the seminar, we linked this assumption to reacher types that aim to investigate different sanctions for people to express a minority opinion, it's a way to test the willingness of various social situations and finally to explore whether situation perceptions and expected sanctions can contribute to how people behave and express themselves. The reason why people are afraid to make their opinions public because they face three fears, which include being judged, the fear of rejection, and finally the fear of being attacked. 

[topicprinter]

good evening fellow redditers!​tks in advance for reading the following tale and for any advice you may have! buckle up, its a long one (although hopefully our collective wisdom can come up with a few lesson to help others).​---​So, 2.5years ago i joined a startup active in the autonomous robotics field, focused in increasing efficiency in renewable energy maintenance and ops. Clearly, a very specific niche, completely b2b and whose clients are ultimately rather large organizations - but in a very "exciting" and "upcoming" tech space blending hardware/software, iot, etc...​The company actually began 4 years ago by a friend of mine who was solo founder, but backed by a public-private investment firm that only funds renewable-related startups - (apparently this made valuation go from 0 to 1M kind of "magically", before any prototype or really, any actual product work was started. clap-clap?).​As the entrepeneur in this case had a science background (i myself am a business major and have worked in different countries, for organizations of different sizes, and had my own business in the past) we actually spoke at length during the process he went through setting up the business, getting his first coupe engineers, and actually having an MVP. When he needed to create a board of directors, he asked me to join, as his "delegated" director (4 members, founder has casting vote).​At that moment, the company started getting its first enquiries from potential clients, and since they could finally afford paying a salary, i was invited to "officially" join the pre-client, pre-revenue startup as their "COO" (LOL, i know! :D wtf does that mean anyway!?).​The actual job was to ensure all the daily operations of the business run smoothly. This meant creating and maintaining systems from acc/fin to HR admin/hiring to marketing to ops, and I even helped in the tech/IT admin side as I find that calming! :) I thought "hell, why not? these guys may actually be on to something but they clearly dont know a lot abt running a business, and i know i can help" - so i said yes, even though pay was shit (literally minimum wage!!!) and NO EQUITY WAS OFFERED AT THE TIME (the usual "lets talk about it latter" scenario... i think you may know where this is going now! :D)​After i joined the company (sept 2016), we won a few awards and grants, from applications/submissions i wrote (and stellar pitches given by the founder/ceo!!), got our first client (i went to a different continent to deliver the 20k usd kit to equip the client's robots and link up to our software, then did it again last xmas when his operation doubled in size) and hired a few more engineers. Tech wise, we're still using 2 year old version in "production" - suffice to say shit runs on ubuntu 14!!! theres only 3 engineers fulltime, all above average, but only 1 (!!!) is actually a computer scientist, the other are engineers who code... but the product does work, we've served over 1000 "units" of it, and feedback from industry has been pretty great (although its clearly still seen as a "nice to have" and not a "must have" kind of solution)​Fast forward to 2019 and the company is kind of stuttering even though we had our best year last year in revenue (100k,,, :/) and have actually signed up two new clients in Q1 - but the industry is moving fast, our CEO spent most of last year depressing about a failed fundraising round, then on a "startup accelerator" program abroad to "recover his mojo",,, and finally the competition has MUUUUCH deeper pockets (couple of companies,, have raised dozens of millions from vc and work with some of the same enterprise clients we have). Basically he spends most of his time selling, as he should, but unfortunately most of it is spent selling chunks of his company, rather than his companies products/services. In the meantime, I've actually been crazy busy building his business, haven't taken a proper holiday since I joined (literally, 4 days off in 2.5 years!!) and never felt this close to burnout (but im a horse,,, and can handle it "well"-ish. just gimme my caffeine!)​"Fortunately", there finally seems to be a new investor in the picture, and a binding TS has been signed for a 1M round at aprox 4M valuation. (YAY??). Now here's where the fun stars,, right? Well, in truth, the 4x members of the core team, myself included (but excluding the CEO and current 66% (!!) owner) have been feeling increasingly uneasy with the "overworked and underpaid, but too busy to talk about equity" routine and have started to care less and less - at least, i see clear signs of this in the team. I've brought it up with the CEO and he seems to think that its "my opinion" and that "the team is fine"... so, after much talking and little doing over the years (everyone is always "so busy",,,,) CEO finally found sometime to prepare a 7 slide presentation that concluded with a table that was borderline funny, if it wasn't so tragic!!​He listed our 4 names in the columns (myself, and the 3 engineers, which he now deems the "core employees", and the rows were: "percentage of my equity", "money value of that equity" and "cash bonus". The percentages was around 4% each,, then he had the nerve of multiplying that by the valuation of the upcoming round (!!!) and presenting us a dollar value in the hundreds of thousands... the cash bonus row on the other hand read "8 thousand". The "cherry" on the cake? 50% of the shares on offer were actual shares, from his stash... the other 50% were actually to come out from a "to-be-created-eventually" esop, WITH TWO YEAR VESTING!! :D:D:D:D:D:D​Naturally, I left that meeting and went on a two-week "vacation" immediately.​Which brings us to the present day. I came back from holidays, all is "business as usual" he keeps saying that "end of next month" the deal should close (and paperwork signed,, making us 4 "official shareholders", and "getting a Mill in the bank", while "maintaining control" (barely,, like 50.01% counting with us 4). We are about to start another season of field operations, meaning ill be out of the office most of the time actually "bringing home the bacon", while him and the engineers keep "daydreaming" next-version-features back in the office.​Ok, now, all bitterness aside (hard, yes, but i think I can do it), i actually think this is mostly just the work of an unseasoned and naive entrepreneur, who CLEARLY, has never done, nor thought abt any of this before (before going on holiday, i told him to read "hard thing about hard things", which he actually did for once - first business book he has completed in years!!! likes to say hes a "slow reader"!!!) - and NOT the work of some evil genius visionary. The team is almost as "oblivious", none of the engineers ever heard or really understood what an esop even is!! (ye, have i mentioned we're a loooooooooong way from silicon valley here?)​Which brings me to my options:​A) "fuckit!" you know how Jared from Silicon Valley always has his resignation letter ready to hand in!?! :D well, I've been carrying one in my pocket for the two weeks I've been back. Just need to date and sign it and done! but there goes the 1%, give or take, of common stock i'd end up owning after this round. Then go start/join new projects in completely different industries, etc.. (is the ICO craze still going on!?!?! :D)​B) "take a job with the competition" Im pretty sure I can walk into a job with one the leading competitors, at the middle-management level. funny thing is that job would pay me around 5x what i take home today as "COO" :D However, that would get me back to working for "the man", which is exactly what I thought I was "escaping" from when I joined this startup! :P​C) "show him how its done!" Not being one that likes to admit defeat, I thought if there are any "checkmate" moves available to me. Here's what I came up with.. (warning: the following is VERY Machiavellian! :D) Remember how I said the whole team is pretty inexperience? well, turns out neither the company name, nor the main brand that the company uses was ever registered neither in the US, nor in the EU, only in home country. I can incorporate a delaware company using the name of his company (but that name is then "taken" for business, as a japanese company owns that trademark), then register the trademark of his company's product name (which is available also for incorporation), then buy a bunch of related domains and URLs - perhaps even file a utility patent, just for that "patent pending" stamp :P. Then I could either turn around to his company's competition and offer this corporation (effectively blocking his entry into US market without a major rebranding/marketing/legal costs) or offer it back to his company - for the 10% total ownership he should have offered me in the first place!! (im cheap, i know! ;)​D) ... you tell me... how do i keep my dignity, not to mention my motivation, to stick with this prototype of a company when clearly, the owner is looking for employees and staff,,, not co-owners and partners?​et pour la piece du resistance*,*​the CEO and I are high school friends, have been in each others lives for decades, and very much enjoy each other's company outside the professional setting. I actually "miss" just hanging out, as you can imagine this whole mess has put quite the strain of the friendship. There's a saying in a funny language,, that translates to smtg like "you can lose the friend, but you can't miss the joke". Ideally, I'd like to keep the friend, but the joke DEFINITELY won't be on me...​ok,, you did it! thanks for reaching ::: THE END ::: go get a cookie before you get busy replying! you deserve it!! :DHave a great weekend!---TL,DR? hmmm founder of startup i helped build to 100k revenue over last 2.5 years offered me less than 1/5 of the amount ive put in sweat,, a.k.a abt 0.5% at NEXTs rounds valuation

[graciepiefinale]

I think it must be very difficult in the music world to have not hear of BTS right now. They are a KPop group that appear to have come out of nowhere. But really, they haven’t.

Kpop is possibly one of the biggest industries in the world, and yet it still has a long way to go in terms of breaking the international sphere. Like most fandoms I join, I stumbled into Kpop through a fan… The same friend who introduced me to Kdrama. I had heard about BTS, who has been growing in popularity in the States, and asked her about them. She got very annoyed with me because apparently she had mentioned them before… I have no memory of this. She, herself, is a major GOT7 fan, whereas I have dug myself into the BTS fandom (ARMY) and there is no sign of ever being able to dig myself out of it.

My friend soon discovered that I don’t enter a fandom half-heartedly, and I think she was quite shocked. BTS (and other Kpop groups/idols) have so much content available, that I have to wonder how other fans keep so updated.

As my introduction into Kpop was done through BTS, I am going to explain how exactly i dug myself into this fandom.

Their music:

Where do I even begin with these? I spent, perhaps, two days watching just their music videos… falling in love with their music and their INSANE choreography. They co-write and produce most the music they released.

The boys themselves….

How do I explain them…. You have to experience them to understand them. I’m going to introduce them in the most basic of ways, because it is impossible to capture them using words:

Jin (born Kim Seok-jin, December 4, 1992) – vocalist. He is the oldest member of the group, and was scouted whilst walking on the street. He is considered a ‘Visual’ (person who is considered to be the prettiest/most attractive group member, official title of the “pretty face” of a kpop group). I say a ‘visual’ because there are three of them in BTS (but in my humble opinion, they are all visuals). He was nicknamed ‘World Wide Handsome’ as he gained a lot of attention on Twitter when BTS attended the Billboard Music Awards in 2017. He loves to eat (and boy can he eat). Loves blowing kisses. And isn’t the best dancer out there (not that I can talk, I’m probably worse than him).

Suga (born Min Yoon-gi, March 9, 1993) – rapper, song-writer and producer. Also known as Agust D, name he used when he released his solo mixtape, which can be found here, here and here. Second oldest of the group, he auditioned for Big Hit Entertainment and trained alongside two other members (Rapmon and J-Hope) before BTS debuted. He is not the most activate member, and has stated on many occasions that he likes to sleep when he doesn’t have anything to do. Loves basketball.

  J-Hope (born Jung Ho-seok, February 18, 1994) – rapper, dancer (and can singer but not classified as a singer). An all round performer, I mean, this boy can do it all. But when he dances, it is difficult to take your eyes off of him. He is an absolute ball of sunshine, his smile literally lights up a room. He is incredible professional and works hard to achieve perfect performances. He recently (like yesterday) released his very long-awaited mixtape (Hope World) which can be downloaded here, here and here. He has said that if he wasn’t in BTS, he would still be a dancer.

RM (born Kim Nam-joon, September 12, 1994) – rapper, song-writer, producer. Formerly known as RapMonster. He is BTS’s leader. The most fluent in English (he partly taught himself by watching Friends). Incredibly intelligent… He has an IQ of 148. He has collaborated with many Korean and American artists, and seems to be highly respected as an artist. He released his solo mixtape under the name RapMonster, and can be downloaded here, here, here and here. He is often the member to give the acceptance speech when accepting an award (the perks of being a leader), but is often seen encouraging his members to talk and share their thoughts (even in interviews). He, like Jin, is not the best dancer. But what he lacks in dance skill, he makes up for in being an insanely talented rapper.

Jimin (Park Ji-min, born October 13, 1995) – dancer, vocalist. Jimin drew a lot of attention when they debuted… as part of the choreography for ‘No More Dream‘ required him to show off his abs. At the time of debut, he had incredible abs and a baby face – I’m sure he still has abs, but like, that’s not why I love him. He is also there when members need him – literally will attack them with hugs. He seems closest to V, as they were born in the same year. He is a perfectionist as well, and works incredibly hard (the members often comment on it). He has been dubbed the scariest when angry, which can be a shock because he is such a cutie-pie. He has magic hair… When he sweeps it back, he goes from cute to goddam sexy in less than a moment. He loves being praised but at the same time he gets incredibly shy about it. He is the shortest member of the team, and is often mocked by the other members because of it.

V (born Kim Tae-hyung, December 30, 1995) – vocalist, song-writer, actor. I’m going to be honest here… he is my bias (a kpop fan’s favorite idol/member of a group)… Boy is just beautiful and his voice is pure magic. He is one of the ‘visuals’ of BTS. He was voted as the Most Handsome Face of 2017 according to TC Candler. He isn’t the best speaker and often struggles to communicate what he means, or people just don’t understand what he means (which has resulted in fans dubbing his speech as TaeTae Language). He makes friends really easily (his list of idol friends keeps growing). He made his acting debut in Hwarang with a supporting role; he and Jin also contributed to the OST with a song titled “Even If I Die, It’s You”.

Jungkook (born Jeon Jung-kook, September 1, 1997) – vocalist, dancer. The Golden Maknae (the youngest member of a (KPop) group or a family). He is one of the ‘visuals’ of BTS. To the annoyance of his older members, he can do anything he attempts. Despite this, the older members dote on him and pretty much let him get away with everything. He and Jin are often seen bickering about Jungkook mocking Jin’s age, but the clear love between them is something to behold. There really isn’t much to say about Jungkook…. he is just good at everything.

The content they produce

They don’t frequent variety shows when promoting, but they do produce their own content via V Live. They do solo chats, where they just talk to fans about whatever and produce their own weekly variety show called BTS Run… believe you want to watch it. They are hilarious. They have other content as well:

Rookie King: Channel Bangtan

American Hustle Life

BTS GO!

BTS GAYO

BTS Bokbulbok

BTS: Bon Voyage

BTS: Bon Voyage Season 2

If you want to check out all their content (concerts, Season’s greetings, pretty much all their stuff), check out this page. My life changed when I found it.

Anyway, I am still working my way through all their content. But that’s basically how I fell into Kpop. These boys. Their content. Their music. Their love for their fans. Just them.

For a treat, here is a performance by J-Hope and Jimin… It’s simply amazing.

Do You Know BTS? I think it must be very difficult in the music world to have not hear of BTS right now.

[nvrspl-blog]

Next Vision: Is Bullet Train a necessity over basic education and healthcare facilities in India?

Ever since the announcement of Bullet Train route construction was made, this debate has been raging the social media and otherwise packed discussions among Indian people. The much hyped Mumbai - Ahmedabad route was unveiled this year by PM Modi. He and his Japanese counterpart Shinzo Abe have laid the foundation for the high-speed train network. Looking at the bigger picture, this seems to be a sign of productivity, development and more power to the public in India. Japan is a model where bullet train technology is a success and people use it day in and day out as the main mode of conveyance. On the other hand, there are several countries where Bullet Train hasn't made it a hit with the public or the country simply didn't opt for it in the first place. The reasons might be different but let us give it a second thought that which country doesn't want a technology like high-speed train network to be a part of its map. Keeping this view in mind, there might be concrete reasons behind not going for this ambitious project in their country yet, despite being developed! For example: US hasn't opted for Bullet Trains despite being the first country to have the oldest high-speed subway train network. US knows that the amount of resources and money which it would invest in Bullet Train is not worth it when their existing train network is geared towards long-haul commercial freight traffic. It already serves the needs of public conveyance very well to the satisfaction of the commuters on a daily basis. For long distances also, it is more cost-effective to board a flight. Second reason is that in US there is a car-culture and there is a large chunk of population which prefers to travel by car whether inter-state or intra-state. Public conveyance is popular in big cities like New York the most. Third reason being the density of population and ratio of commuters from area to area which is not compatible with the requirement of a Bullet Train in US. Hence, US has weighed pros and cons and still is called a developed nation without having a Bullet Train. The US case study, therefore, proves that Bullet Train is not a benchmark for development.

People supporting the vision of present government, will say that how is Japan using the same technology so efficiently. The answer lies in the population density and affordability of the people commuting by Bullet Train there. The Bullet Train has been made accessible and affordable to the public at large and hence, people use it. Second reason is that there is less of car-culture and people are used to using public conveyance and transport more than private ones. Same is the case in Europe where people are used to public transport. In fact, there people are more comfortable on bicycles and other public transport system rather than cars. As for developing countries, they can't even dream of it before they fix their basic public facilities. A bullet train in developing countries would only mean another luxury transport system which is more of commercial entity from which government can make long time earning from one time investment. It is needless to say that in India also the condition is the same. Metro rails are more manageable and affordable hence, they are a success in metros. Out own railway system needs a serious over-haul and existing rails can be boosted into speed trains, tracks can be strengthened to avoid rail accidents. Today, when existing Indian railways system is in shambles and there are so many accidents, the internal condition of coaches is not at all up to the mark despite charging a significantly high sum of money from the commuters; investing such a large amount of money in an experimental ambitious project like Bullet Train doesn't seem a good idea to many.

Many people have also come up with a simple argument that when India lacks behind in basic education and healthcare facilities why is so much of investment being made in execution of a project from which the common man cannot benefit at all. Instead of that, the same amount could have been utilized in improving the basic state of affairs in the nation, and not just investing, but making sure that change happens at the ground level. Some concrete management of all the existing good visions of the present government is required otherwise, all will remain nothing more than just dreams. The amount of difference which could have been made till now would have been visible by now if the policies would have been implemented the way they should and if the projects would have fought red-tapism and corruption in present government's internal system. The Bullet Train is anyway up and above the basic dreams like Swachch Bharat, Beti Bachao Beti Padhao, Jan-Dhan Yojana and Demonetization to curb corruption and black money etc. because it requires much more time, money, management, tight-fist execution and maintenance.

Next Vision Research Solutions Pvt. Ltd. has put up the public opinion poll question on its distinct market survey app called Nishkarsh, where people have given their mixed response on the question: Do we really need Bullet Train ahead of basic education and healthcare facilities in India? 41% of the smart phone using Indian people have voted in favour of Bullet Train as they think of it as the benchmark of  development. However, 51% of the people think strongly that India doesn't need Bullet Train as of now and we must concentrate on strengthening the basic education and healthcare facilities till the time when the positive change becomes visible there. 8% of the people couldn't make up their mind on the question. Well, if we take those 8% in the segment which is not supporting the idea of an over-ambitious project like Bullet Train then the figure climbs up to 59%. Hence, it is observed that majority of people think that right now the time is not ripe enough to go for a Bullet Train in India.

Next Vision is a market research company who delivers fast, authentic and accurate research solutions for corporate, businesses, professionals and needless to say that they have an expert hand in public opinion polls and exit polls which cater to the political scenario of the country. They take in to account both quantitative and qualitative research methods. When it comes to political public opinion polls, Next Vision works with lakhs of respondents pan state and pan India, leaving almost no constituency, hence, the results are accurate and the most authentic. To ensure the viability of results, respondents are connected to the survey payment system through their Adhaar card. A unique feature of picture upload of the recently bought product in question also ensures authenticity of business surveys. Next Vision puts up a question of national importance on their public poll panel on Nishkarsh. People voice their respective opinions here without any influence or fear. To know more, please visit www.nvrspl.com.