#but holy shit that analogy just being basically 'i think we were made for each other' like EXCUSE ME while i go sob in a corner 😭

[cat-clawz]

The new dnp video is so epic but I am NOT falling for that ranch propaganda

[slxyangel]

Analogy (Izzy Stradlin’ x Reader)

Summary:  So it’s completely up to you with how u end it n all.But my idea was an almost toxic relationship with Izzy like him and I are very on and off with each other yk,basically the only time we get along is when we’re high sort of thing. This was requested by @holyjunkie AGES ago, honey I’m so sorry (for everything, you’ll know). Despite all things, I hope you enjoy it, love.

Wordcount: 1.4k

Warnings: Swearing, drug use and abuse, toxic relationship and the slightest mention of sex.

A/N: I’m sorry it took me so long to post something, but I’m working on future fics now I swear you’ll be compensated. Also, it’s the first time I write a reader insert from the POV of the other character, I hope it went well. This has a little easter egg towards the end, let’s see if someone catches it :)

REQUESTS ARE OPEN!!!

Masterlist: https://slxyangel.tumblr.com/post/189625800403/masterlist

This needed to stop. This dynamic was gonna end up killing her, killing us. And to be frank, I wasn’t sure if what I scared me the most was the literal meaning of it, as in actually dying; or the rhetorical one, as in “the end of us”, of what we have. They might have been blurring into one same thing.

It was complicated, very complicated, especially the last few weeks. How do you put it in words when your unspoken other half is killing herself with drugs? More so, how do you do it when it was you who kept her in that position for so long you don’t even remember?

At first it was really fun, really smooth, really good… like a heroin high. Well, that’s precisely what it was, a heroin high. Even the day we met at one of Slash’s parties we were already smacked. I think we spent hours and hours just talking, I was so switched off I can’t recall it. All I know is that, the next day, she surprised my sober ass standing at my door with two needles and a small bag.

- I guessed you had teaspoons at home.

After that day, it became a cycle in which we were pretty comfortable. We saw each other often, and everytime we did, there were drugs involved. We had the type of conversations one has when high: long, profound talks about existence and its oddities from which, later on, you remember the feelings but not the words. Bottom line is, with each day that went by I liked her more and more.

The problem, yet the very essence of our relationship, started when I invited her to see me and the guys in one of our concerts instead of just staying home drug-buddying. I was scared that she wouldn’t come. But she did. And holy shit, she looked radiant in that dark dress. During the whole set, my fingers twitched just from looking at her, and thank God I was a guitarist and not a frontman, cause the boner would have been visible from the last row.

When I came up to her, except for a couple of beers, we were both pretty clean. Shortly after, though, I introduced her to my bandmates, except for Slash, who she already knew, and she became this bitchy little brat who only had snarky comments for everyone. She was a lot more mean than I remembered her, but as her bitterness spilled from her mouth, she teased me mercilessly. Her hands were persistently on my body in front of everyone. I had never, and I mean NEVER been handsy with a girl that wasn’t a groupie in public, it made me uncomfortable. But with her not only I didn’t mind it, I was enjoying.

The whole thing was messing me up so bad that I HAD TO get out of there, so I dragged her with me to the backstage:

- What the fuck are you doing?

- What? You don’t like it? - she said, sliding her hand down my torso.

- I…

But my dick spoke for me. I swear that little bastard has a life of its own. Long story short, we fucked. Our first time was in that changing room in the back of a den, and after that, it was a ride. We became addicted to each other, she was my speedball: heroin and her.

We felt the kind of deeply rooted connection that you can't explain with words because you don't really understand it either, it just happens. The problem was that its timeline mimicked our first weeks together. It worked something like this: when it was just the two of us we were mostly stoned, and when we were with other people, even though it wasn't as blatant as the first time, she was really petty, which led me to give her the silent treatment or something along those lines. That way we feeded the bomb that later, alone and sober, exploded. Then we would spend days without talking to each other and feeling miserable. Then she would cry and apologize. Then I would cry and apologize too. She usually apologized to the band as well, I think they must have taken a liking to her, cause they sometimes helped her get me back when I was being difficult. Then we would fuck and then we would get stoned and then… well, then back to the start. We were addicts in the highs and, oh God they were the highest. But as addicts, not even the lowest lows seemed like a good enough reason to quit.

That doesn't mean there aren't reasons to quit, though. About drugs, what did for me was the lockdown. It had been a while since I started feeling trapped in them, constraint. I didn’t like it anymore, it wasn’t fun, it wasn’t worth it. But then again, there was her. I had tried a lot of times to make her see that what we were doing was wrong, but she didn’t listen. She would just cling onto me or do anything in her power to distract me from the purpose. Honestly, a few times she almost convinced me that it was no big deal, but every time we fell into our original path I saw it more and more clearly: it was eventually going to kill us. Cause it does, it kills people all the time; at some point, your heart’s gonna pop or your mind’s gonna snap. I had to stop it, but I wasn’t gonna leave her stranded, she’d have to come out with me.

So there I was, driving to her house after she refused to pick up the phone and talk to me for the third time this morning, probably because she thought I was gonna start the hassling again. Well, she was right.

I rang the door and waited. I had a key she gave me like two months before, a few days after I gave her one of my own house, but I didn’t like to use it as much, it felt like invading her privacy. After a couple of moments there was no answer, so I rang again. Nothing. Now I rang and knocked the door several times, increasingly worried. Still nothing. After giving it a second thought, I took the key from my pocket and opened the door; it wasn’t locked, so she forcefully had to be at home.

The first thing I noticed was the darkness. All of the windows were closed, and the air was thick as if they hadn’t been open since forever. I called her. Twice. Three times. No answer. Ignoring the pounding in my chest and in my temples, I went upstairs. Something was terribly wrong. With a shaky hand, I opened the door to her room, where we had spent so many hours this last year, and when I turned on the light, I saw her.

She was on the bed, on top of the wrinkled sheets, wearing just her panties and a tank top. Her bones, peeking from below her skin, were more noticeable than the last time I had seen her. Her skin was as white as snow, with bluish lips and dark circles under her eyes. But, unlike the past few months, she didn’t look tired. Her lips weren’t contracted into a grimace of disenchantment; and as to her lids, instead of half-opened and revealing two weary eyes, they were closed, just closed; her expression was ultimately neutral. Her hair was sprawled all over the pillow, and her limbs, bent in an impossible way, framed her torso. But what striked me the most was the thin red line that crossed her forearm, all the way down to her hand; a stream of dried blood that started at the same point where a needle was hanging from.

Like an automaton, I walked to the bed and sat there, really carefully, as if I was trying not to wake her up. When I touched her with my own hand I had to pull it away immediately. She was cold. Very cold. And very still. I grabbed the blanket from the edge of the bed and placed it over her. She was still really cold. Slowly, without taking full consciousness of her, of me, of my surroundings, I put my head on her chest and laid there, looking at her doll-like face.

All I could hear was a hammer. It was all over the place and nowhere at all, I couldn’t place it anywhere. Was it her chest? Was it mine? Was it my head? Was it the clock in front of us? The sound swallowed me whole as I stayed there, unable to process, with my eyes open and a single tear sliding down my chin and to her body.

[arlingtonpark]

SNK 123 Review

Dude’s face could be green and his eyes yellow and it would not look out of place.

Also his face looks like it’s been split in two. What a weird deformity...

Attack on Titan is not a series about reconciliation. This is a series about fighting. That doesn’t tell us much though, because while SNK is about fighting, mercy, even while fighting, has also been emphasized.

So really this boils down to whether the series considers what Eren is doing to be a justified use of force.

The big worry is that it does.

The story emphasizes the need to fight and even kill people who try to harm you. Oh, and throw in some potentially nihilistic references to differing ideologies and how there are no heroes, just people with differing motives.

This would seem to be contradictory, but it really isn’t. If people who cause harm are bad, how could the series be nihilistic?

Simple: the lynchpin is that the world is intrinsically violent, and nothing else. There are no meaningful values in this world, just groups with irreconcilable ideologies, which means violence is inevitable, so it’s survival of the fittest and you have to be ready to kill to protect yourself.

So it could be that the highest value is maximizing your own happiness, AKA egoism.

You see this kind of crap often on places like Reddit and 4chan. You know what I’m talking about. Edgelords.

This kind of logic is repeated often by Eren stans and it’s annoying because it’s wrong. And if this actually is the moral of the story, then the story itself is wrong.

There are two really annoying ideas I want to tackle:

1. The Rumbling is justified because we live in a cruel, intrinsically violent world, so peace is not possible.

Whether intentional or not, I often see people arguing that the Rumbling is justified not because peace isn’t possible in this specific situation, but because humanity in general is violent and insular.

It is very common for people to believe that conflict is just a fact of life. “The world is cruel” as many people are saying. Unfortunately that is incorrect.

In 1986, a conference of social scientists was held in Seville, Spain and they released a statement on common misconceptions about human nature and violence. This statement was subsequently endorsed by organizations the world over, like the American Psychological Association and UNESCO.

That statement, which reflects the overwhelming scientific consensus, declared the following:

It is scientifically incorrect to say warfare is a natural phenomenon.

It is scientifically incorrect to say that violence happens because “it’s genetics.”

It is scientifically incorrect to say that humans are violent because “it’s survival of the fittest”/ “it’s kill or be killed” / anything to do with evolution.

It is scientifically incorrect to say humans are violent because “We have violent brains.”

It is scientifically incorrect to say that people make war instinctively.

Warfare is not a natural phenomenon because it involves tools. It is facilitated by language and institutions like governments, ideologies, and religions. Those don’t exist amongst animals.

Ducks, for example, don’t fight each other because the duck!Pope declared a holy war.

And yet the series directly draws a parallel between animals hunting other animals and slavers attacking children.

The slavers prey on Mikasa and later Eren, just like, the story claims, how a grasshopper preys on a butterfly, or a human preys on a duck.

This is not a good analogy.

The slavers were influenced by incentives and institutions that don’t exist in nature. They were going to sell Mikasa for the money, money they could then use to buy alcohol and drugs. It’s their job, they did it to earn a living.

What they did was not just inhumane, it was commerce. If there were no economy, they would not have done that. Markets are an institution that shaped their actions, as did the institution of slavery.

The grasshopper killed the butterfly because it needed the sustenance. That’s it.

This is not to excuse what they did. Humans are compelled by many factors to act as they do, but that doesn’t make anything right, or even morally neutral.

Mikasa’s father killing the duck is more analogous to the grasshopper and butterfly than the slavers and kids. There’s no through line connecting the two.

This is an example of SNK trying to be insightful and not really succeeding. It’s because of this that I’ve always been apprehensive about what exactly this manga is trying to say. There are moments like when Levi Squad took down that garrison of MPs in the Uprising arc and they didn’t kill a single person.

And then there’s shit like that slavers scene.

Excuse making is actually a common reason why people say violence is a fact of life. It’s not just nihilistic, it’s an excuse. People who say that violence is inevitable, oftentimes, are just projecting their own violent tendencies onto everyone else.

It’s a way to reconcile having violent impulses and having (a shred) of a moral compass. I’m not saying that Isayama is doing this...but it’s an attitude amongst fans that’s worth thinking about. 

It is also wrong to say that violence is favored by evolution. That is to say, “it’s survival of the fittest;” people who are aggressive are more likely to survive, so natural selection favors aggressiveness.

In reality, natural selection favors cooperation. Animals do sometimes live in groups, and there often is a leader, but leadership positions are won mostly through social ability rather than brute strength. It’s more about your ability to work with others than dominate them.

In fact, overly-aggressive animals tend to be ostracized, rather than rise to the top.

All that talk about “alpha-males” is just Red Pill propaganda.

Arguably, SNK gets it backwards. It depicts cooperation as happening in the context of a violent world, instead of violence happening in the context of a cooperative world.

People come together throughout the story, but it’s always to fight some larger enemy. First the titans and now the Marleyans.

Eren laments the lack of unity among the walldians. They’re unified now, but that’s only because they feel threatened.

To the extent there was a sense of unity among the walldians, it’s because of suppression of dissent and King Fritz’s interference.

The outside world is unified, but only because they feel threatened by Paradis.

No matter what happens next chapter, I think the series is too cynical about people.

And needless to say, vague references to “genetics” or “violent brains” or “instincts” are just gibberish that doesn’t mean anything.

So it makes no sense that Eren is allowed to do this because we live in a violent world. It may be justified for Eren to do it in the context of the SNK world, but that would just be due to Isayama constructing that world to be a place where it is justified, it wouldn’t say anything about our world or morality in general.

There are ways to avoid violence...but the story hasn’t really entertained that. SNK is more about how violence is inevitable but should be minimized, than straight rejecting violence. 

I’d like to remind the reader that the only explicit pacifist in this story is King Fritz. 

There’s also what I’m going to call the scaling problem to think about. If you can abide by the vigilantism, then Eren killing the slavers isn’t all that wrong. That makes sense.

The issue is that it doesn’t scale to the level we’re dealing with now. Whole countries of people are not equivalent to a single assailant.

A distinction is drawn between combatants and civilians in war for a reason. It is recognized that fighting destroys lives and therefore should be limited. It’s not just soldiers Eren is going to kill, he’s targeting civilians too, and that’s self-defeating.

It’s self-defeating because what does it accomplish? These people aren’t taking up arms against Eldians. They do hate Eldians, and the mainland Eldians do suffer for it. But Eren is killing them too, so he clearly doesn’t care for them.

It is stunningly hypocritical. The Fez Kid is going to die. He didn’t do anything, except be born into this world.

(Spoiler Alert: if you’re going to kill someone, then you don’t actually value their life.)

2. Eren is justified because his motives are understandable or even sympathetic, AKA the “Eren is a victim” excuse.

The basic idea here is that Eren is a victim and deserves our sympathy.

So first off, Eren may be a victim, but that’s not important right now. I’m sorry for everything he’s suffered through, but victimhood does not justify victimizing others.

We should not accept Eren’s own framing of his actions.

“If people try to take away my freedom, I will not hesitate to take away their’s.”

He’s been through a lot, but has anyone noticed the decided lack of people in our world going on killing sprees because they’ve “been through a lot”? There are millions of people in this world who live shitty lives; they somehow manage to -not- kill others.

Being made a victim is awful. This idea is founded on the notion that being harmed is inherently bad. Not you being harmed specifically is bad!

Second, Eren’s calculus here is completely selfish and self-serving. He’s going to wipe out almost all humans for the sake of his homeland. If you think the highest value in the world is loyalty to your homeland, even more than fairness, or justice, or kindness, then this is the plan for you!

If you think lives matter because they were born into this world, then ymmv.

It’s wrong for the Eldians to suffer as they have because it’s wrong to make people suffer in general. But this seems to have gone completely over Eren’s head, as he’s now going to make everyone else suffer to help his people. He’s abandoned all manner of principle with rank opportunism.

Eren has fully embraced nihilism.

The contradiction here is too great to ignore. People are great because they were born à kill everyone not on my side, even people who literally were just born. This is galaxy brain level shit.

This is not self-defense. Proper self-defense acknowledges that it is wrong to harm people. Because of that, self-defense only permits actions necessary to save yourself.

You could draw a line from the extinction of the Eldian race to some dude on the street using that “devils” slur word, but that connection would be so tenuous that killing people over it would be ridiculous.

There is no real sense to Eren’s actions.

Bottom line: genocide is bad, don’t do it kids. Buy Ovaltine.

It is honestly funny how Eren keeps pulling the rug right out from under his own stanbase. It reminds me of how Republicans make fools of themselves defending Trump’s actions.

Trump: -does something bad-

Republicans: He didn’t do it.

Trump: Actually, I did do it, but [insert excuse here]

Republicans: -eats breakfast off their face-

First Eren says he’s going to “destroy this world” and the stans say he meant the PATHS realm.

Fast forward just one chapter: Eren’s decrepit face stares at the viewer and says “The Wall Titans shall trample the earth until nothing is left alive!”

How great would it be if Isayama pulls the rug out from under the Eren stans again next chapter? After a month of them rationalizing genocide, the story actually comes down -against- Eren and his plan.

And then we have Historia.

1. There was nothing.

2. There was a doppelganger with her girlfriend’s name.

3. Historia herself from the back.

Progress!

At this point, Historia is the only one who can talk Eren down from this. She and him have had an understanding ever since the cave and if anyone has the audacity to try it at this point, it’s her.

I doubt Mikasa or Armin will be the ones to try and reach him. Mikasa is already starting to accept that Eren is just like this. And Armin’s been butting heads with Eren about the Wall Titans for a while now. There’s been some friction.

How would she be able to talk to him?

Well, the PATHS realm apparently allows Eren to communicate with all Eldians. If it turned out the Eldians could talk back, it wouldn’t be surprising. Historia getting Eren’s attention could be as easy as her shouting-

“HEY, MORON!!!”

What’s interesting is that where in the PATHS realm Eldians appear depends on where they are relative to other Eldians in the Real world.

Mikasa and Armin are roughly in the same place relative to Eren as they are in the real world. Connie and Jean appear relative to each other. Reiner, Pieck, Gabi, and Zeke are the same.

So where was Historia when the Rumbling started?

She’s in street clothes. She’s obviously not on her farm; she seems to have been walking a city street at the time.

Alone.

We know she and Eren had an intense conversation earlier. So here’s a crack theory: what if Eren confided in her that he was going to use the Rumbling? And what if Historia vehemently disagreed?

The reason we’ve seen nothing of her lately is because she’s snuck off Paradis. She’s in Marley now, where she’ll die if Eren goes through with the Rumbling. She’s using herself as a shield for the whole of humanity.

Yeah, I know it’s insane, but I’m trying to salvage this character here! Historia has to do something obscenely badass at this point if her absence is going to be justified.

In any event, I’m certain that if Eren is made to stand down, it’ll be because Historia calls him a dumbass again.

SNK may or may not lean towards right-wing conservatism. The seemingly nihilistic view of human behavior tracks with right-wing thinking. But it’s hard to parse because most forms of modern rightism use obfuscation to hide their true beliefs.

It could be that the series is pushing that, or maybe it’s actually critiquing that world view.

For reference, this is what modern examples of right-wing conservatism look like.

Note the two-step sleight of hand here.

Step one: x may have been bad…

Step two: but [excuses go here].

Y was worse. There were good things about X. X wasn’t –really- that bad. You name it.

(I recommend reading the whole Twitter thread btw)

A lot of times, the better of two bad options argument is made. They try to justify their terrible opinion by making everything else out to be even worse. They build themselves up by tearing everyone else down.

It’s a bad argument because they usually have to cheat to make it work. They say, for example, that killing Native Americans was ultimately for the best because it paved the way for our more technologically advanced world.

This is incorrect, and racist, because it assumes Native Americans and their culture could not have adopted European technology.

They could have, but by and large, the Europeans chose violence.

On the subject of past crimes, the series doesn’t make excuses, thankfully. What the various King Fritzes have done in this story are not supported by the narrative. Not genociding the Marleyans, or tightly controlling the Walldians.

What’s harder to parse through is where this series comes down on nationalism as an ideology.

Grisha’s nationalist group was repudiated by the story, but only partially. It was wrong for them to dehumanize Zeke, and to buy into historical propaganda, but the central mission of the Restorationists was to get the Founding Titan out of Fritz’s hands and use it to protect the Eldians.

That’s what the good guys in this story have been doing.

And then there are the Yeagerists. Once again, they are only partially repudiated. Floch’s cruelty is condemned, but the main thrust of the Yeagerists is that peace is impossible, so Paradis needs to arm up. That notion has been supported by the story so far.

I don’t think the story will come down in favor of genocide, but that’s not the same thing as repudiating nationalism.

Nationalists have a two-step of their own. It goes like this:

Step One: Nationalism is good…

Step Two: because all the reasons it’s bad don’t count.

One common form of this trick is to say that nationalism the ideology is good, but it gets hijacked by bad people. It’s not the idea itself, it’s the people who subscribe to it. It’s the same with communism. Communism is good because every bad example of it in action doesn’t count.

Nationalism isn’t bad (reclaiming the Founding Titan), it’s just misused by bad people. (Grisha, Floch, maybe Eren)

Or maybe the story is saying that reclaiming the Founding Titan is so obviously a good thing that even the nationalists knew to do it.

Regardless, right-wing nationalists are not fully condemned by the story and are even supposed to be sympathetic.

Meanwhile the only explicitly pacifist character is depicted as an unsympathetic, defeatist chump.

That’s quite a contrast.

This will probably be the second to last volume. I’m betting we’ll get four or five more chapters to finish the story proper, and then a couple more chapters to close it all out.

I don’t think Attack on Titan will support Eren in the end. What he’s doing is too obviously hypocritical and it’s easy to interpret the story so far as being against him in principle. What it comes down to is this: is this a story about fighting, or is this a story about how great life is?

This is a big dilemma for Isayama though. Eren is the main character, and while he may now be the bad guy, he didn’t start out that way. At the start, Eren’s roar was described as embodying humanity’s anger. In a righteous way.

Now Eren’s roar is that of a wild beast about to ravage the earth.

Eren used to be the primary vehicle for the series to convey its ideas and themes. Now he’s seemingly the opposite; someone whose ideas are anthema to the series’.

Having an epilogue would be a smart move. It’ll be necessary to clarify Eren’s relationship with the story’s themes. End of day, is his example something we should follow, or is he a cautionary tale?

(Considering the radical reinterpretation of his character happening in-story by his own friends, I suspect the latter.)

[m1serere-n0bis]

Anyways. I don't care what the rest of you all have been doing during this but I have been trying to listen better and pray more.

For those of you who don't think that's "enough"... Sorry but I don't owe public opinion shit. The only person I owe an explanation to is God. I don't owe anyone information on what I'm doing in private. I don't owe anyone information on what I am/am not supporting financially or otherwise. If your personal opinion is that I'm not making adequate use of my voice or platform then that's rough buddy, but my voice is not the one that needs to be heard right now and also what platform? As a society hyperfocused on social media ESPECIALLY NOW DURING THIS PANDEMIC we have to come to terms that we all have lives outside of it and we don't "owe" each other ANY information about that in spite of what our culture tells us. Like if this is what "community-based policing" means, I can already tell you I hate it and it's oppressive.

For those of you who think this is a political power play, I would say those concerns are valid but there IS a REAL problem that will still be there when all the political pandering and posturing is done. And we need to fix it. Part of the reason I haven't been hyping what everyone has been telling me to hype in the name of activism is pretty much this:

Do I think it honestly matters which political party is in charge for changes to happen? No, because I do not trust the SAME GOVERNMENT BACKING THE POLICE to take the money THAT IS STILL TECHNICALLY IN THEIR POSSESSION and funnel it into the communities that need it in any way that will actually address the racism inherent in the system. HOWEVER, that doesn't stop me from listening to what my brothers and sisters in Christ are telling me are their experiences not just in a society that is supposed to have progressed past racism but in the BODY OF CHRIST itself. Because it's there, everyone. Yes, it's not overt. Yes, not everyone is actively engaging in it but if we are truly One Body then we owe it to each other to make reparations for sins that aren't ours. It's what we've been doing for the child abuse scandals, is it not? The majority of us were not involved but do we not still carry the burden of that sin simply because we're Catholic, because one part of the One Body committed this massive hurt?

So anyway. The goal of this post is not to make anyone feel bad and it is not an invitation for people to pile on me because I haven't vocally supported x, y, z. This is an invitation to listen and to pray... which should always be the first step, EVEN WHEN THERE IS AN IMMEDIATE NEED FOR ACTION. (Maybe ESPECIALLY when there's an immediate need for action.) And holy shit are we not good at that or what? 😂

1) Fr. Mike Schmitz' homily this week was an invitation for us to listen to God and let Him tell us who He is because only by doing that can we see the image and likeness of God in each other. We've lost that in our wishy-washy prayer lives that inevitably end up with us trying to force God into an earthly construction in which He doesn't belong. We try to tell God who He is because the world is too noisy for us to hear Him tell us about Himself. And that inevitably trickles down into us trying to force each other into boxes before recognizing the human dignity instilled by God in all of us. The internet feeds into that by making us faceless virtual entities, thus making it that much more difficult to recognize our humanity. I can read faceless stats for days but if I don't have ANY CONTEXTUAL IDEA where those numbers are coming from, they're empty. They're easily manipulated into whatever whoever is selling me them wants me to think of them if I don't have someone LIVING THOSE STATISTICS giving me context. Right now the media wants us to feed on the controversy surrounding BLM movement without telling us that these communities have been MARCHING IN THEIR COMMUNITIES FOR YEARS AGAINST THE VIOLENCE THEY INFLICT ON THEMSELVES and it is the same media blackout as any March for Life. The media doesn't care unless they have drama they can use to stoke more division and that's the tea.

2) Fr. Josh Johnson is on fire right now, everyone. Like him and Chika Anyanwu are two voices I wasn't listening to before that I'm thankful to be hearing now. If you're wondering how God can be good even in the midst of chaos, turmoil, and pain, this is it. If you're struggling to separate the Black Lives Matter Organization from the heart of the issue, this is how God is doing that. The Church needs to hear these voices. They have real experiences to share. They are part of the Body of Christ, and they are really hurting through these thousands of small cuts.

I would recommend listening to the Jeff Cavins Show episode Distance Amplifies Difference where he has a conversation with Fr. Josh. They both have tremendously unique WORDLY perspectives to bring to the table on the issue (Jeff Cavins is a white man but has children who are black and they live in Minnesota and are literally witnessing the heart of this first hand in the trenches, and Fr. Josh is the son of a black former chief of police) but ultimately discuss how we as a Church can work towards fixing it.

Fr. Josh and Fr. Mike's dialogue on Ascension Presents is also really top notch. I still have to finish watching it, though. 😅

I can't believe I wasn't following Chika before because as another single Catholic woman, I feel like I've found a sister in Christ experiencing the same ups and downs of Catholic singlehood (her Instagram Highlight was like HILARIOUS and also a truth 😂). Her family's small business got looted during the rioting but I believe they've since been able to shut down their Go Fund Me since people gave them enough support to get it back up and running. Anyways, I'm glad this amplification of black voices brought me to hers.

3) Fransican Friars of the Renewal Fr. Agostino and Fr. Pierre Toussaint discuss their hopes for the movement from their perspective as people of color and as servants of one of the poorest neighborhoods in NYC, the South Bronx. Their dynamic is great because Fr. Agostino is like a Gryffindor on fire and Fr. PT is like a soft-spoken, phlegmetic Ravenclaw. I understand that energy. 😂 (I'm also a phlegmetic Ravenclaw) One of my takeaways was Fr. Agostino's opinion that we can't just posture and leave it up to the government or orgs with ulterior political motives to make things right because he's seen firsthand how well THAT goes. However, all that means is that we as people of God have to dig in and do the work our own dang selves. They're also hopeful that this discussion of the police force being built on a foundation of racism will eventually lead to the discussion of Planned Parenthood being built on the same. They said that 42% of the pregnancies of the predominantly black and Latino population in the South Bronx end in abortion. 42%!!!!!!!!!!! If that is not a wake-up call that systemic racism is alive and well and we are abjectly failing women of color as a society Idk what is. But also their analogy that society is a MESS of a dilapidated house and we have to pick ONE place to start and stick with it if we really want to fix it up is also the truth.

4) Did y'all know about Our Lady of Kibohe? This is a Vatican-approved Marian apparition that appeared to three teenaged girls in Rwanda a little more than a decade before the genocide (which she warned them about). There is no one in Creation demons and Satan hate more than Our Lady, and there's no better weapon against them than the rosary. There has been a call from our brothers and sisters to rend our hearts and even if you don't see, think, or believe there is still racism within the Church, will you not pray for Mary and St. Michael to help continue keeping it that way, then?

Our Lady of Kibohe encouraged us to take up the practice of praying the Seven Sorrows Rosary. I tried it for the first time last week and I have to say, even with my super basic limited knowledge of black history in the United States, it was not hard to see how their suffering could easily be united to the sufferings of Christ and Our Lady.

I guess my conclusion is this: I have my own misgivings about blindly supporting any ol' cause that happens to be trending on whatever. The Black Lives Matter ORGANIZATION has a manifesto touting things that are contrary to the Catechism for SURE, but when my brothers and sisters in the Church are telling me they are in pain RIGHT NOW and saying, "Hey, listen... They're right about some things... These are the things and we've experienced it IN the Church..." then they deserve to be heard. We owe it to them to listen because they are a part of us. We need to expose these sins to the light instead of denying they exist or claiming to be past it. We ALSO need to be charitable to those in different parts of their journey. Is it FAIR to bear the burden of others' sins and make reparations for them? Heck no! But we do it. Jesus did it for us. We do it for our brothers and sisters in Purgatory. What's the difference for bearing it for our hard-hearted brothers and sisters on earth? Nobody is perfect but we all are made in the image and likeness of God and thus inherently carry human dignity.

[hajimeow-archived]

Anything You Want

Fandom: Sanders Sides

Pairings: romantic analogical

TWs: thunderstorm, crying, cursing

Word Count: 1321

hahahhhahahah help what have i written

--

Virgil Sanders was going on a field trip. An aquarium field trip, to be exact. The drive would be two hours, so they were taking a charter bus. The inside basically looked like the inside of a plane but smaller.

He was given a copy of the seating chart, along with everyone else. He gasped lightly when he saw where his name was. It was in the very very back, right next to the bathroom. That wasn't the worst part, though. The worst part is who his seatmate was.

Sitting with Logan Berry. On a bus. For two fucking hours. No way, he had to be having a nightmare. He could not sit with his long-time crush. Absolutely not.

"Mr. Thomas?" Virgil said, trying to hide the hint of nervousness in his voice. But.. what if.. What if he likes me too? "Virgil? You ok buddy?" Mr. Thomas said, looking up from his laptop. "Y-yeah, i just.. I just wanted to know i-if i could change m-my seatmate?" dont be silly. I'm sure he hates you. "Ah, sorry kiddo. The staff arranged this chart, i can't change it."

Virgil cursed to himself. Why did my moms already pay?

Oh well. Hopefully he'd at least have a good time at the actual aquarium.

Everyone boarded the bus, happily chatting away with their seatmate. Virgil, however, felt nothing but anxiety and dread as he walked up to his seat. He saw Logan and his heart seemed to beat a million times a minute. Virgil, stop-

"Hello, Virgil, is it?"

Oh my god he's talking to me

"Virgil? Are you okay?"

Oh my god his voice is so pretty

"Virgil?"

He snapped back to reality, only to realize he'd been standing and staring at Logan for 2 minutes, blushing like a maniac.

Embarrassed, Virgil quickly took a seat next to the window and looked at the greenery. They soon started moving. He was slowly starting to forget Logan was sitting right next to him until he said something.

"Hello, Virgil. My name is Logan. Were you okay back there?"

"OH- oh- u-uhm.. y-yeah..."

--

The rest of the busride was spent in silence, except for the few times Virgil would giggle at hearing other people's conversations or when some of his classmates yelled something stupid.

Other than that, time had gone by slowly. He'd wished for something to distract him or something to pass the time. Or maybe something that would slow his heartbeat a bit and tell him that he didn't need to breathe perfectly to make Logan not hate him. And, yeah, he ended up getting what he wished for, but he would have rather gotten it in a more subtle way.

There was a heavy weight on his right arm suddenly. Okay, not too weird. I'm sure this happens all the time. But no, it really didn't. There isn't normally an adorable nerd sleeping on you with his hair a little messy and his glasses crooked. No, not at all. But he was, in fact, adorable.

Oh shit. Virgil realized how much he was he was blushing. How fast his heartbeat was. What if my heartbeat wakes him up? What if my body heat wakes him up-?? His anxious thoughts stopped when the bus came to a sudden stop. He saw that they were almost there, they were just stopping because of traffic.

Virgil calmed himself down by wrapping an arm around Logan and doing his breathing exercises. We're almost there

--

"Okay, each of you will go in pairs. You will all be pairing with your seatmate–" Mr. Thomas stopped to let everyone find their partners as some groans and complaints came from the students.

"Okay, now, you must be back to this bus by 4:30pm. Got it?"

Everyone said "yes" in unison as they were sent off.

Virgil and Logan walked together in the line until they got inside, and everyone scattered in different directions, changing pairs and forming groups. Maybe I could try and do that?

"Where would you like to go first?" Logan said, looking towards Virgil. The sunlight from the windows shone his eyes perfectly, making his iris's appear a deep, dark blue.

"Virgil?"

"O-oh, yeah?"

"Where would you like to go first?"

"I heard there was a-a really g-good view on th-the third flo-or.. so we could start here and end there" while they were walking, Virgil couldn't stop thinking of the possibilities of what could happen while they were on the third floor. Was there even a third floor? He couldn't remember. The last time he was here, he was just 6 years old.

A sudden, loud noise made Virgil freak out, grabbing for the nearest thing to him, which happened to be Logan. After a second of processing recent events, he realized the loud noise was a boom of thunder, and that he was side-hugging Logan way too tightly. He immediately let go, feeling terrible.

"The lightning will not harm you. It was approximately over 30 miles away. You do not have anything to worry about." Logan said, looking at Virgil with an oddly vulnerable expression.

"Yeah.. yeah, you're right. I'm being ridiculous."

"You are not. It's okay to fear thunderstorms. Many people do. There is actually a phobia of it, called many things but the most common is astraphobia," Logan went on about phobias and how stupid the name of Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia (the fear of long words) was. The way he'd ramble was especially adorable. How he got mad at some things, and excited at others. His eyes would shine and he'd have that soft smile an-

"Anyway, we must get a move on. It is currently 12:34pm" Logan said, walking to a large section of jellyfish tanks near the gift shop. He started naming them all, giving specific and kind of interesting facts about them.

"And this is the Aurelia Aurita, also referred to as the "moon jelly". Oooh, did you know that they have nematocysts, which help them defend themselves? Nematocysts are cells that is triggered when the tentacles of a polyp are touched. When it's triggered, it forcefully injects tubule in its victim in as little as 700 nanosecond-" another loud clap of thunder.

Virgil was pretty sure he screamed, but he wasn't really sure. He was also pretty sure he was hugging Logan again. But he still wasn't sure. He was pretty sure he was crying, too. But y'know. Not really. He was very sure that he felt secure arms wrap around him as he was being carried. He was sure he felt eyes staring at him like he was a train wreck, which, he probably was.

"Hey, hey, it's fine. You're okay" Logan said in a soft, echoing voice. He realized they were in the restrooms- probably to get away from everyone else. Virgil thanked him for that.

"Virgil? Are you okay?"

"Yeah, yeah I'm good..." Virgil breathed in, letting out a shakey breath. He took a few napkins and wiped his eyes. "I-I'm sorry"

"What for?"

"For overreacting. For causing a scene. For everything I guess"

"Virgil, there is nothing to be sorry for. I love y- you did nothing wrong."

"You.. you what?"

"Nothing."

"You love me?" Virgil asked, ignoring what Logan told him

"Yes. It is now 12pm, we mus- MPHH" Virgil couldn't believe himself. I did that. HolY FUCK I DID THAT. A pair of arms hugged Virgil's waist, making him silently freak out. He hugged back, trying to control his heartbeat and blush.

They pulled away, seeing Logan blush was probably the cutest thing Virgil has seen in his life. "I-it is.. th-that, that was.. anyway, w-we still have time left. What do you want to do?"

Virgil held Logan's hand, putting on a soft but smug smile. "Anything you want, my love"

hhhhhhhhhaahahh im sorry this isnt good

[preserving-ferretbrain]

by Dan H

Saturday, 22 May 2010

Dan learns that SCIENTISTS HAVE CREATED ARTIFICIAL LIFE!~

So the big news in Science at the moment is that Scientists have created artificial life!.

First of all. Dear newspapers, news websites, news programs and other news media. Please for the love of all that is holy stop attributing things to “scientists”. “Scientist” isn’t a job description, it is at best a way of describing a broad category of people with vaguely similar qualifications. Opening a story about the recent implantation of synthetic DNA into a bacterium with the headline “Scientists Create Artificial Life” is about as helpful as me opening this article with the headline “Arts Graduates Talk Shit About Microbiology”.

So anyway, it appears that a geneticist by the name of Craig Venter (who was one of the big names behind the human genome project, although I confess that I’d never heard of the guy before) along with the rest of his team (a team which, digging a bit deeper, he may not actually have been the head of – some sources seem to credit the initial announcement to one Daniel Gibson, although that may just be because Gibson’s name is alphabetically first) have successfully implanted a synthetic genome into a bacterium, causing it to behave like a different bacterium.

Now to give the press their due here, part of the reason that so many newspapers are running with the “artificial life” byline is that Venter (who is, by all accounts, a bit of a showman) is keen to claim that this is exactly what they’ve created. Venter and his team make a wide variety of incredible claims for this technology – that it will allow us to reverse climate change, produce limitless cheap fuel, and cure whatever diseases are big at the moment. And of course on the other side of the fence there are folks saying that this will lead to the end of the world and genetically engineered super-bacteria invading Kensington. And if I had a penny for every time I’d seen the words “playing God” I’d be able to get an extra cup of coffee out the vending machine.

What’s staggering about this story, from my point of view at least, is how utterly ignorant most people seem to be about how all of this stuff actually works.

Here are some choice quotes from the BBC “have your say” section:

You can't control evolution. It only takes one of these bacteria to mate with another and you have serious and posibly extinction problems. Not a good idea.

Ah yes. Bacteria. Well known for mating with each other.

For those who have an imaginary friend and think we are playing god, yes we probably are, and we are getting very good at it. It's no longer just nature that can create new life. People can do it too, although we are just part of nature ourselves really, aren't we!

Ka-ching! That’ll be a penny, thanks. So… do you actually have anything to say other than “this sounds awesome but I have no idea what any of it actually means”?

Also. The “god = imaginary friend” line? Are you fucking twelve?

Before this study continues we need to be sure that the "bacteria" doesn't mutate like all other organisms in this world do. We all know computers have flaws. This scientist is just in way over his head and he needs to slow down. This could do more harm than good. This could be a step toward ending global warming or it could be a step towards mind control. Watch out it is 1984 all over again.

Umm … okay. So you know that all organisms in the world mutate. But you seem to think that if this organism was to mutate, for some reason that would be unconscionably terrible? And where exactly is the mind control thing coming from.

Of course it’s not just the ignorant plebs that post to the BBC main page that spout this mindless dogshit. Michael Hanlon, Science Editor for the Daily Mail writes:

It is possible to imagine a synthetic microbe going on the rampage, perhaps wiping out all the world’s crop plants or even humanity itself.

Well yes. It is indeed possible to imagine that. It is possible to imagine anything you damned well want. I could imagine an army of killer penguins going on the rampage and wiping out all the world’s crop plants or perhaps even humanity itself. It doesn’t mean it’s remotely plausible.

Aside from a few echoing voices of sanity, the discussion of this story is just a desperate, mortifying condemnation of how little basic understanding of biology people have.

DNA For Dummies

DNA or “deoxyribose nucleic acid” as it is known to its friends and drinking buddies, is a sequence of “base pairs” which in layman's terms form a set of instructions which tell our cells how to develop and how to behave.

Just as Venter observes, DNA “code” is effectively made from four chemicals, Adenine, Cytosine, Guanine and Thymine. This is what he was talking about when he said that his “artificial life” had been made from “four bottles of chemicals”. Although DNA is extremely complex overall, the chemicals it is made from are very basic, and reasonably well understood. “Scientists” have, in fact, been producing artificial DNA for years, and have been swapping the DNA of bacteria around for so long that it's taught at A-Level.

Chris Ventner's analogy is that DNA is like the “software” to the cell's computer, and this analogy is more or less correct. But it's exactly this analogy that makes the whole “Artificial Life” thing sound so stupid. If you took a computer, scrubbed the hard drive, and then installed a new operating system which you had copied from another computer, you wouldn't claim to have created that computer yourself. You certainly wouldn't expect to get your face on the cover of Wired with headlines saying “SCIENTISTS CREATE ARTIFICIAL COMPUTER IN LABORATORY”.

As one of the (depressingly rare) sane commentators on the BBC article pointed out, it's not actually artificial DNA that's the challenge here, but artificial everything else. DNA is complex, but it's ultimately one chemical. Building a whole artificial cell would be vastly more difficult. Others pointed out that since the DNA implanted was effectively an artificial copy of the DNA of an existing bacterium, they didn't really “create” anything that didn't exist already, and again when it comes to DNA the hard part is working out what a particular bit of code actually does, not reproducing it.

Indeed it's all a bit Ship of Theseus. This “artificial life” consists of DNA copied from one living organism, implanted into the cells of another living organism, which carried on living. Were it not for the quasi-mystical significance which popular consciousness attaches to that strange stuff called “DNA” nobody would claim for a second that these guys had successfully “created life” any more than we say that people with pacemakers are cyborgs.

That's Life?

A big part of the problem with the “artificial life” claim is that when you get right down to it, “life” just isn't a well defined technical term. Yes there's the definition we all learn at GCSE (something is alive if it Moves, Respires, is Sensitive to its surroundings, Grows, Reproduces , Excretes and consumes Nutrition – the “Mrs Gren” definition) but that's a bad definition all around – if nothing else it applies to a great many things which you wouldn't describe as living, like fire.

Life, when you get right down to it, is a self-sustaining chemical reaction with an arbitrary level of complexity. You can say that a cow is alive and bag of nails isn't, but once you get into the freaky world of micro-organisms it gets far harder to draw the line (a lot of biologists draw it at viruses).

I said earlier that both sides of this whole stupid affair were as bad as each other. While the anti-science crowd are crying about “Playing God”, the pro-science crowd (who thanks to Dan Brown I will now forever think of as “Galileo's Illuminati”) are crowing about the fact that “Science” has created “life” and that this proves that religion is obsolete (seriously, a depressing number of people really do talk like they're in Angels and Demons).

The problem with the “Science Creates Life” soundbyte is that for it to have any meaning, you have to buy into the superstitious, quasi-mystical notion of “life-essence”. That there is somehow a tangible, observable, creatable force called “life” which has been hitherto beyond the reach of scientists.

“Life”, like “energy”, is lodged in the popular consciousness as being a kind of invisible liquid which flows to and from objects, rather like the Force. Heck, there's even a tendency to treat them as the same thing. Rather like the Force. In reality these sorts of ideas went out with the Victorians, but because they're easy to imagine, they've stuck around to this day. Anybody who hails this new “discovery” as a triumph of science over superstition has actually failed to understand what the scientific consensus on “life” has been for the past hundred years.

Nature and Artifice

The biggest source of stupidity in this whole non-story seems to be the persistent notion that it matters whether or not something is “natural”. This is pure superstition. It's like the old myths about microwaved water being bad for you because its “chemical structure” is somehow changed by the “radiation”.

The idea that “artificial” DNA can function just as well as “real” DNA should be utterly unsurprising to anybody with a basic understanding of the way science works. The fact that artificial DNA can be created is interesting, but only from an engineering perspective, it doesn't raise deep philosophical questions about the nature of life, because those questions have, in the mind of pretty much anybody who keeps up with the science, already been answered.

And in a sense, the same goes for the potential applications of this technology. There's been a whole lot of talk about how these “custom bacteria” will either save the world or destroy it (which, again, is exactly what Dan Brown says about antimatter at the start of Angels and Demons). This is nonsense.

We can already engineer “custom bacteria” using DNA from existing sources – as I learned during my sodding GCSEs, we already use it to produce insulin, and have been for over a decade. Whether the DNA we make these custom bacteria with is cut wholesale from other cells, or whether we make it ourselves from “bottles of chemicals” is irrelevant. We don't understand anywhere near enough about how DNA actually works to invent wholly new organisms, all we can do is copy bits and pieces of things that already exist and do more or less what we want. And we're not going to break any existing scientific laws. There's some talk of these bacteria being able to make fuel out of Carbon Dioxide, and to be fair they could (so can, y'know, plants) but they'd need an energy source to do it, so all it would really be is a complicated solar power plant.

Similarly, worrying about these “custom bacteria” mutating and destroying the world is rank idiocy. Bacteria exist. They mutate. There is no special quality in “natural” bacteria which prevents them from evolving into a world-destroying superplague. Michael Hanlon, in the Mail observes that there's “no guarantee” that these engineered bacteria will “follow the rules”. Where he thinks these “rules” come from, or why he thinks natural bacteria obey them, he does not explain. Perhaps he believes that there's some kind of long standing union agreement.

The same magical thinking arises time and again when a new technology allows us to do artificially something which has been happening naturally for centuries. Somehow we imagine that heating water with microwaves can turn it into a deadly poison, when heating it with infra red radiation doesn't, or that particle collisions in the LHC will create a black hole that destroys the solar system, when the billions of similar particle collisions that happen all the time all around us have no such effect.

“Scientists” have not “created life”. They've created some synthetic DNA, and implanted it into a bacterium, both of which are things we knew they could do already. It's technologically moderately interesting but it doesn't challenge our perception of what life is, it hasn't let the any genies out of any bottles, and it isn't going to make us all live forever.

None of those make good headlines though.

Arthur B

at 22:54 on 2010-05-22

Michael Hanlon, in the Mail observes that there's “no guarantee” that these engineered bacteria will “follow the rules”. Where he thinks these “rules” come from, or why he thinks natural bacteria obey them, he does not explain.

Yeah, at most you can say that all the natural bacteria and micro-organisms out there follow the "rules" of natural selection.

Which means that a synthetic bacterium brewed in a lab for some completely artificial purpose like producing human insulin is going to be far less likely to thrive in the wild than a "natural" bacterium which has been subject to all the dangers that threaten a wee microbe out in the big wide world. It's like expecting a family of chihuahuas to take down a wolf pack on the pack's home turf.

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Andy G

at 23:57 on 2010-05-22Interesting stuff!

“Life”, like “energy”, is lodged in the popular consciousness as being a kind of invisible liquid which flows to and from objects, rather like the Force. Heck, there's even a tendency to treat them as the same thing. Rather like the Force. In reality these sorts of ideas went out with the Victorians, but because they're easy to imagine, they've stuck around to this day.

Actually I have been writing an essay about a recent book that talks about life and energy in just those terms! But he is talking more about the way the world is experienced in consciousness (to try and describe the way in which the world appears "dead" to many people with schizophrenia). I think the problem with lots of Victorian thought was that it treated lots of concepts as if they were a matter of empirical reality (like the Creationists taking the Bible literally). And that's clearly lingered on Have Your Say.

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Rami

at 00:42 on 2010-05-23I'm probably wrong, but as I'd understood it, the more interesting work was in developing synthetic RNA to engineer already-understood bacteria into a wider range of useful applications?

Anyway, to regurgitate a tired old meme: I, for one, welcome our bacterial overlords...

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Viorica

at 02:05 on 2010-05-23. . . I'm sorry, you lost me at "DNA"

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Dan H

at 12:45 on 2010-05-23

I think the problem with lots of Victorian thought was that it treated lots of concepts as if they were a matter of empirical reality

To be fair, the "invisible fluid" models for things like life and energy were actually perfectly good physical theories for quite a long time, so for that matter was ether theory.

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Dan H

at 12:47 on 2010-05-23

I'm probably wrong, but as I'd understood it, the more interesting work was in developing synthetic RNA to engineer already-understood bacteria into a wider range of useful applications?

Yeah, something like that (although I believe that's far older technology). But funnily enough SCIENTISTS DEVELOP SYNTHETIC RNA is much less punchy than SCIENTISTS CREATE LIFE!

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Frank

at 15:46 on 2010-05-23

None of those make good headlines though.

Or excite investors.

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Jamie Johnston

at 16:17 on 2010-05-23I've got to the sub-heading 'DNA for dummies' and at this point I'm going to stop reading for a moment to summarize what I've understood of this story from my sole source of scientific news, namely BBC Radio 4. Then I'll read the rest of the article and see how accurately Radio 4 has informed me. It's like an experiment!

So my impression is that Venter's team (or whoever) has analyzed the DNA of some bacterium or other, put together molecules in the same combinations as that original DNA so as to make some new DNA that's functionally identical to the original DNA, and then put that DNA into a different 'empty' bacterium. The bacterium then happily wandered around being a bacterium, in every important way the same as if it had been 'born' naturally by, er, whatever the normal way for a bacterium to come into existence is (cell-division or something?). It also reproduced in the usual way (see earlier vagueness) to create new bacteria just as a 'natural' bacterium would do. In short, they've taken stuff that was previously not a living creature and made it into a living creature. It isn't a 'new organism' in the sense of being a new species. (Do bacteria have species? You know what I mean, though.) It's just a new individual. The whole business is exciting in as much as if you can make new DNA then you can (1) theoretically do cloning and stuff without having to take DNA from existing organisms, and (2) very very theoretically make DNA in new combinations and thus ultimately new types of organism.

Things I'm not clear about: I don't know on quite what level the new DNA was created, e.g., whether they took protein molecules they already had lying around and stuck them together, or whether they made the new molecules out of atoms and stuff, or what. I suspect it doesn't matter much. Also I have a mental image of the new DNA being somehow physically squirted into a microscopic empty cell-membrane bag, but I've no idea whether that's literally how it works. Nor do I know how they got the empty bacterium in the first place.

Now I'll read the rest of the article and see how wrong all that is.

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Dan H

at 16:27 on 2010-05-23I think the bit you're missing is that the "empty" bacterium was in fact a perfectly ordinary bacterium from which the DNA had been removed, so the other bacterium had, in fact, been "born" in the normal way, it's just that they had taken its DNA out and replaced it. So they took something that was actually totally a living creature, and made it into a slightly different living creature.

It's sort of like giving somebody a heart transplant and claiming that you'd created a living human on an operating table. It's technically true that neither the person receiving the transplant, nor the transplanted organ can survive independently of each other, but claiming that you have therefore "created" a whole new person would be farcical.

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Frank

at 16:32 on 2010-05-23re: 'Scientists'

On the latest edition of NPR's Science Friday, one of the segments discussed the origin of the word 'scientist'. The person who coined the word dismissed other possibilities to describe/define a 'cultivator of science'. The coiner (Well?) chose 'scientist' because it may remind readers/listeners of the word 'artist' who were apparently held in higher regard, but he was also concerned that 'scientist' might suggest less esteemed people of the time with '-ist' endings specifically 'economist' and 'atheist'.

It is funny that some people in the writing/dancing/sculpting/painting/drawing/etcing communities would love to be thought of as the generic term 'artist' while those working in the fields of genetics/biology/chemistry/geology/thermodynamics/etcics cringe at the label 'scientist'.

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Jamie Johnston

at 16:56 on 2010-05-23Although there's also a fun sort of tongue-in-cheek 'reclaiming' (and simultaneously 'pointing out how unhelpfully broad a term it is') thing going on, at least among internetty science-fans if not among professional science-doers, saying things like 'Let's do Science on this!'

Which in turn tempts me to start saying things like 'Stand back: I'm going to do Arts!'

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http://roisindubh211.livejournal.com/

at 03:46 on 2010-05-24This line makes me crack up:

Watch out it is 1984 all over again.

Has this person actually read 1984? I wonder where he/she gets the fascism-biology connection? Is Big Brother supposed to be created in a lab?

Seriously- you're spoilt for choice for science gone OUT OF CONTROL in literature, from Frankenstein to Jurassic Park, for goodness sakes, and they pick 1984?

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http://mmoa.livejournal.com/

at 12:57 on 2010-05-24I actually find it a little ironic that one of the more reasonable responses to this has come from the Vatican itself who have officially declared this advance as 'interesting':

http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/05/22/vatican.synthetic.cell/index.html?hpt=T3

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Arthur B

at 13:03 on 2010-05-24I think after the whole geocentrism/heliocentrism thing the Vatican

really

doesn't want to get caught out again when it comes to making statements about science.

Except where it comes to

condoms

, in which case they'll endorse any pseudoscientific bollocks which supports their position.

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Andrew Currall

at 18:26 on 2010-05-24I don't think I share your dislike for "scientist". Yes, it has rather a broad scope, and yes, it is often used to create an air of authority that it shouldn't actually create (anyone can claim to be one, many with some legitimacy), but I don't see that it's any worse than "geneticist"- it's just a bit less specific. It does mean something, and is generally so far as I can see used more or less correctly. It's certainly no worse than "artist".

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Jamie Johnston

at 18:49 on 2010-05-24Deleted my second comment because I seem to have written it without reading Dan's response to my first one, hence it made no sense. But anyway, @ Dan: yes, I hadn't gathered that. So in fact they haven't really created a new individual, they've just, er. Um. Made an individual different?

Also, @ Róisín (if you don't mind me using that as if it were your name, even though it probably isn't, simply because it's a name): Yes, and another ludicrous thing about that is that the phrase 'it is 1984 all over again' (rather than the more obvious 'it's like 1984') actually draws attention to the fact that

1984

never even happened the first time. In fact the problem with people ever invoking

1984

in a 'we're heading into totalitarian hell' way is that the main thing about

1984

is that the year 1984 came and went and there was no totalitarian hell.

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Arthur B

at 19:11 on 2010-05-24

In fact the problem with people ever invoking 1984 in a 'we're heading into totalitarian hell' way is that the main thing about 1984 is that the year 1984 came and went and there was no totalitarian hell.

Can't agree here. The main thing about the title of 1984 is that it's completely arbitrary - Orwell had wanted to go with 1948 but his publishers considered that a bit too bleak even considering the subject matter.

The main thing about the

content

of 1984 is that it is actually timeless* and dismissing it because it didn't come about on some arbitrary schedule is rote repetition of

the

most annoying misconception about science fiction ever devised by man - namely, that it's a predictive genre and individual works become invalid if their predictions don't actually come to pass.

Jamie, I am disappoint.

* It is, in fact, literally timeless - there's no reason to assume that the year the novel takes place in is in fact 1984. The Party could have added in or blotted out centuries of history if it so chose, or indeed keep recycling the year 1984 over and over again for shits and giggles.)

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Andy G

at 19:14 on 2010-05-24

Can't agree here. The main thing about the title of 1984 is that it's completely arbitrary - Orwell had wanted to go with 1948 but his publishers considered that a bit too bleak even considering the subject matter.

Isn't that an urban myth? I thought the title was actually based on a rather bleak poem his wife wrote for a 1934 school competition imagining life in 50 years' time.

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Arthur B

at 19:31 on 2010-05-24Anthony Burgess was fond of the 1948 idea. The usual explanation I've seen is that he just switched the last two digits of the publication year. According to the intro to the Modern Classics version he did consider several several years for the title. Not heard the poem explanation before.

Either way, the point is that Orwell wasn't predicting an inevitable slippery slope to utter totalitarianism by 1984, he was suggesting a constant threat of totalitarianism that

any

generation could succumb to. There's no vaccine against dictatorship and no society immune to degeneration, we can't pat ourselves on the back and say we've saved ourselves from it just because we got past one particularly overhyped year.

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Andy G

at 19:42 on 2010-05-24@ Arthur B:

His former wife Eileen O'Shaughnessy wrote a poem called "End of the Century, 1984" (which only came to light after Burgess had come up with his theory). I can't actually find it online but it's meant to be fairly bleak and dystopian. It seems to me a more plausible influence, as it seems a bit arbitrary to just swap numbers.

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Arthur B

at 20:48 on 2010-05-24Thanks!

(The working title, apparently, was

The Last Man In Europe

...)

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Jamie Johnston

at 21:58 on 2010-05-24@ Arthur: Fair point, I am mostly wrong. In related news, I am not entirely wrong because I also partly meant something else, namely that people who say 'it's just like

1984

' are often using it precisely as a predictive exercise, their implied reasoning being, for example, 'people in positions of authority are using euphemisms, this is a bit like newspeak, therefore totalitarian hell is imminent'. In other words they treat

1984

like a less cryptic and more secular version of Revelations.

Also I haven't heard people having that misconception about science fiction before, so I deny that I have had a derivative fail and insist that I be given full credit for an original work of fail. :)

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Arthur B

at 22:22 on 2010-05-24

In other words they treat 1984 like a less cryptic and more secular version of Revelations.

This is very true, though to be fair I wonder whether Orwell didn't at least partially intend it to be like that, or at very least a spotter's guide to general symptoms of totalitarianism - between Winston Smith's diary, Goldstein's book, and O'Brien's speeches in room 101, you've pretty much got an easily-grasped analysis of the sort of traits you can expect a totalitarian society (or one heading in said direction) to exhibit.

I think it is sometimes correct to say that a situation is "just like 1984", but only if it shows the actual signs Orwell wants us to watch out for. So, widespread censorship, pervasive surveillance, a culture of informants, brazen propaganda, that sort of thing, especially when several signs are seen in combination with the others. It gets ludicrous when one of the more minor elements (like Newspeak), occurring in isolation, is used to argue that the entire package is unfolding in real life.

It's kind of like Godwin's Law - it's not actually bad to say someone is acting like a Nazi if they are in fact an antisemite and a fascist. Likewise, it's not actually bad to say "It's just like 1984" when, for example, you're protesting against people being spirited away in the middle of the night to secret prisons in far-flung parts of the world to be tortured for information on enemies of the state.

Applying it to biochemical advances is pathetic, though. Haven't they ever heard of

Brave New World

? ;)

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Andy G

at 23:16 on 2010-05-24I think I'd quibble a bit with the idea that Newspeak is a minor element!

On the other hand, I do remember a Telegraph article that mentioned how Big Brother imposed metric units (one of the guys in the pub grumbles about it at some point) ... that's what I call distorting a minor element!

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Arthur B

at 23:35 on 2010-05-24I think Newspeak is significant in the novel, but I don't think it's actually so useful in analysing IRL social trends to see whether things are drifting towards authoritarianism - in particular, I think Newspeak as depicted in the novel is the sort of thing which you could only really successfully accomplish if you'd already established utter totalitarian control over a society (which is why in the novel it was only in its emergent stages, and normal English was only just beginning to be phased out).

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Dan H

at 13:49 on 2010-05-25

It does mean something, and is generally so far as I can see used more or less correctly. It's certainly no worse than "artist".

The point being, though, that you don't say "ARTISTS DO X" every time somebody with an arts degree does something.

"Artist's thriller trilogy becomes posthumous bestseller"

"Economic downturn may continue, say artists"

"Viking settlement lasted into 17th century, artists discover"

It's just completely stupid.

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Dan H

at 13:50 on 2010-05-25

@ Dan: yes, I hadn't gathered that. So in fact they haven't really created a new individual, they've just, er. Um. Made an individual different?

Yes, pretty much.

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Andy G

at 01:33 on 2010-05-26

@ Dan: yes, I hadn't gathered that. So in fact they haven't really created a new individual, they've just, er. Um. Made an individual different?

It's nano-augmentation! Deus Ex here we come!

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Rami

at 03:54 on 2010-05-26

The point being, though, that you don't say "ARTISTS DO X" every time somebody with an arts degree does something.

Of course, bearing in mind that the separation between "science" degrees and "arts" degrees is not AFAIK seen in the same light (or referred to in the same terms) in North America, the word "scientist" is used much more for someone whose profession is in scientific research. Which makes it rather less ridiculous. Just like the headline "Artists launch new show at museum" wouldn't be completely ridiculous even if it did conflate painters, sculptors, filmmakers and performing poets.

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Andrew Currall

at 12:50 on 2010-05-26"Artist" doesn't mean "someone with an art degree" any more than "scientist" means "someone with a science degree". It refers to one's profession (or possibly hobby), not training. Historians/archaeologists are not artists (not are they usually scientists); neither are economists. Authors are, and I admit use of "artist" in place of "author" is unlikely. But it isn't wrong, nor do I see any problem with it.

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Dan H

at 13:07 on 2010-05-26

"Artist" doesn't mean "someone with an art degree" any more than "scientist" means "someone with a science degree".

That's sort of my point, that's *exactly* what "scientist" means - it's the only possible meaning. It *isn't* a legitimate job description.

Rami's right that it's used *colloquially* (both in the UK and in the US) to mean "people who work in scientific research" but this is simply incorrect - just as it would be incorrect to refer to people who do research in Arts subjects as "artists".

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Rami

at 17:47 on 2010-05-26

It refers to one's profession (or possibly hobby), not training.

I can't get to

OED Online

but according to

Merriam-Webster's definition

training is exactly what it refers to.

Possibly some of the confusion here is that "artist" and "scientist" are not used (or defined) similarly: an artist is “

someone who professes and practises a creative art

”, not just someone trained in it. Neither colloquial nor formal usage, AFAIK, refers to arts graduates (or, in USian, liberal arts majors) as "artists".

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Dan H

at 18:44 on 2010-05-26

Possibly some of the confusion here is that "artist" and "scientist" are not used (or defined) similarly

I think you're right - artist was a bad example.

Basically the term "scientist" describes a broad, heterogenous group of people, but the media like to invoke "Scientists" (a subtly distinct, and wholly fictional class of person) to lend legitimacy to otherwise implausible claims, which is why it bugs me.

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Andy G

at 03:30 on 2010-05-27OED says a scientist is someone who is studying or has expert knowledge of a scientific field. It would still sound a little odd to me though to call someone a scientist purely on the basis that they happen to know science. It may not be a job description, but it surely implies something about what that person *does*.

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Guy

at 06:25 on 2010-05-27Surely the now agreed-upon definition of "scientist" is "someone who lies about how magnets work."?

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Arthur B

at 15:37 on 2010-05-27@Guy: Sounds like these geneticists have been listening to the Insane

Clone

Posse!!!!!!!

Geddit?

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Guy

at 08:54 on 2010-05-28@Arthur - if someone wanted to create a cover band for them (which itself would probably require some kind of Miracle, or possibly a life-form artificially created to have inhuman levels of bad taste) that would be a great name for it. :)

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Jamie Johnston

at 23:08 on 2010-05-28Aha! Allow me to shoe-horn in the totally irrelevant fact that the best tribute-band name ever is:

aRe wE theM?

And, to return to the subject, although we bid a sad farewell to the exciting idea of synthetic life-forms taking over the world, there are glimmers of a slightly more plausible but still entertaining thriller plot in which it's actually not the media but Venter himself who is exaggerating the implications of his work in order to justify

an application

to patent every conceivable technology that could arise from making DNA and squirting it into cells. I hear Dan Brown uncapping his pen.

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Robinson L

at 20:30 on 2010-12-18

And if I had a penny for every time I’d seen the words “playing God” I’d be able to get an extra cup of coffee out the vending machine.

The Omnians have a saying, “Don't play God, He [sic] always wins.”

[contravarius-blog]

ANDRE COLTA

>>>So Dhakan ditched you?<

>I don’t know<

“Did you always know you were into cock?”

“No.”

“You like it?”

“Yeah. I like it.”

“What does sex mean to you?”

“It’s nothing more than anything else... it’s fun... it’s the soul’s rebirth..”

“Did you know Dhakan was only with you to leave you?”

“No, but it makes sense. He’s a god. I’m not.”

“A god you say?”

A god.

You are to lay on the floor of the bathroom while you cry. You will feel agonies you didn’t know were possible. This is all as it should be, Kelja. The mess of a human being a human being (odd sentence.) A mammal that cries and snots and shakes all over. Pelicans frequently raid the nests of other birds on volcanic islands. No this should not be a new paragraph. The pelicans do this while the parents are away getting food in the ocean. And what they do is, they swallow these plump little downy chicks alive, and you can see the thing squawking as it gets sucked down the gullet of this sudden monster. This is after a short lifetime of security and warmth and food. It all just ends eaten alive for no reason other than that God thought it appropriate. How’s the gullet of life working out for you? Is it getting dark and bitter and suffocating?Is there any pleasure left in it, dragon chaser? Do you ever notice the visual snow? Do you realize you’re hallucinating your whole reality? That all this stuff in front of you isn’t what it seems to be?

<<<Why yes, now that you mention it. The volcanic islands of the pelicans, they are responsible for the loudest sound on record, a volcanic eruption that circled the earth three times and shattered windows thirty miles away. People within one hundred miles of the blast had their eardrums blown out instantly. You can be subjected to a sound that drives you to madness. Dhakan knew about Jamie somehow, and he used his voice to repeat the things Jamie said, and I was on a drug, and I couldn’t move...

<<<I have to say, Kelja, that none of this sounds logically connected and I’m wondering where you’re going with it and if there’s a point to it.

<<<Thank you for letting me know you feel that way.

<<<You’re welcome.

<<<Colta stands over the boy, puts a hand on his shoulder. His crotch is inches from Kelja’s face, and it’s giving him a boner and turning his stomach. He wants to suck on it and he wants to run away. He always wants to do pairs of opposites. The homonculi pull to either side of his corpus cavernosum, moving in opposite directions on the same line, trying to divide what is already barely joined. It would be tempting to say that Kelja is two people in one skull, but he is actually four, that is, two people who both have split personalities. He also has occasional blood clots from sitting in uncomfortable positions for long times, a completely unrelated offering that may be designed to provoke frustration and unease, because like de Sade’s work, this one also wants to victimize its audience. The real purpose behind all this writing is to get YOU to kill yourself. You are reading this for a reason. The universe is speaking to you through it. And the universe’s message is: don’t wait for the pelican. This book can be your pelican. You recently purchased an item and the brand name was Pelican, and this is no coincidence.

<<<There are realms none of the people around you know about. When you learn too much, you discover that truth is solitude, because consensus is the lie. It really is everyone else that’s wrong. Very few have gone as far as you have. Consider an analogy; only the man who climbs Everest knows what that’s like, even though everyone else will have a basic agreement on how it must be. How can the know? You have climbed your Everest, Kelja. And you have returned changed.The stuff peaked at behind the curtain can’t be unseen. Your blinded eyes will never forgive you because now they can’t stop seeing.

<<<Colta rubs the back of your head. He knows you like this. He does it in exactly the same way Dhakan did. He looks down at you with easy to read intensity. There is hunger on his face. You can see the outline of his meat through his loose-fitting athletic pants. Big. “Yeah,” he says. He’s watching you look at his favorite thing. “You want that, don’t you? Go on, take it out.” It is true that porn sells more than everything else media-wise combined. Mostly men want to see the cock going in and out, over and over, up close, with those melodious wet smacking sounds that mean dinner is being served, which conforms to the hunger on Colta’s face. Bodies are all there is. No head, no heart, no soul, just meat in a bag of skin waiting for the gullet.Everyone must be processed and picked at, opened, seared, ground, all and any varieties of damage must be meticulously inflicted on them until no intact meat in the skin bag is left to torture. This book is for you. It is about you, and you know it, and that’s why you got to this sentence, see, because the universe is talking to you through it. Connect with this and open the gates. We are ready for you, mate.

<<<So you were a film student, Kelja? Then where is the school? Why do you have to make up all this stupid shit to impress me?

*Loser with no prospects*No future*No skills*Unemployable*Not ugly but close*Not smart*Not talented*Useless*

“You’re a fucking cute little fuck, you know that?” Colta says the words/ smirk smile bedroom eyes face lit up like a witch at an Auto da Fe/“I’m sorry,” he says, “I’m not trying to make you uncomfortable”/ Close proximity hand on shoulder room isn’t very well lit alcohol is kicking in smoke in the air music on something jazzy sexy swing maybe/

“It’s ok,” Kelja says.

From Colta’s mind the words this guy could use some affection, holy Christ I thought I was a lonely sonofabitch but him/ like a kid whose puppy is laying run over in the street, half the fucker impossibly flat like some kind of meat pancake and the boy is just this thing covered in the residue of yearning for some impossible connection/ or just the bare perception of closeness/ some chemical in the brain would be enough if it just produced the sensation that one had no boundaries, that the each was in all and the all in each and all the division and solitude had been horrific illusions brought on by the world’s maya, the trickery of surface appearances, but in the end if you were conscious you were all each other’s consciousness and there was no reason to feel this empty scraping smashed-out negative pressure making you grab out with sick cloying desperation, red in your starved eyes, your hunger making you unlikely to get fed/

<<<Dhakan ditched you and you’re ashamed at how much it hurts

<<<It’s not just that, though, is it? You’re fucking going looney toons with the retropredictive references got the psych manuals open to the tasty bits about schizophrenia and borderline personality disorder and every other name they’ve got problems for/ little detective wants to self-administer therapy and medication a machine trying to fix itself self-repairing robot/ and all the gears and firmware and wires get to be so obvious the steps behind all you do the machine learning to see itself as Other/

<<<“Where’s the school, Kelja?”

“I told you, I don’t know where it went.”

“You don’t know where it went?”

“No. There’s a fucking warehouse there. Boarded broken plate glass windows, some kind of deep pond, had a vision of it before I saw it some people were killed there I don’t know where my school is now and I wasn’t living in forever City before either-”

“Where were you living then?”

“Well that’s the odd thing, is, I’m having all these memory issues now cause Dhakan gave me that drug, the Gobstopper, only it did jack diddly shit at first had no effect sitting there pulling on the pipe like fifty times waiting for the bitch to kick in and feeling like I got ripped off even though I didn’t pay for any of it and then days later stuff, little things, stuff starts to happen, and now i realize that i did it. Onlyi it’s not a drug, see, there really is no drug at all. This is all a made up thing, some kind of big trick, all of it, my whole life, none of this is real, but it’s the only reality there is for me, but something is controlling it, authoring it, and you see, that’s why I was a film-maker, that’s why I was writing a screenplay, it was all a metaphor for my own situation, for me being scripted, my whole life start to finish, all this, right down to you and this room and the words I’m saying, all of it is pre-programmed and devised by this infinite evil intelligence-”

“Why does it have to be evil, Kelja? Am I evil? Do you think I’m going to hurt you? I wouldn’t. You should know better by now, i’m your friend. I’m not Dhakan. i have no motive to use you or trick you. I’m as cold and lonely as you are. Look at my eyes. I don’t sleep. My only thought is to find Mix N Match. Before he does something to me. He knows... he knows about me, I’m sure, oh that’s right, i told you, I told you about the pictures.”

“You told me about a lot of things, Colta, but why the gay stuff? How are you going to hit on me and then say how much you loved Dhakan’s mother?”

“I don’t follow.”

“Nevermind. It’s whatever. But it’s weird. It’s off. You know it is. You’re playing with me. All the things you said. Overheard conversations, the paranoia, it’s all started happening to me. For all i know it could be you. You could be the one doing all this. Is that the joke here? Is it you? Are you the one doing it all to me? Did you invent Dhakan? Are you creating Mix N Match? Did you make this city? Are you controlling my mind? Do you put thoughts-”

Colta grabbed Kelja by the arms and pulled him up to standing, hard, then hugged him close, harder when his young friend tried to resist. Kelja swore and exclaimed and thrashed, but the outburst was short-lived. Colta grasped him firmly and this was a kind of warm paternal embrace, there was nothing sexual about it in any way. It was the kind of thing designed to force the knowledge that you were cared about by someone who could take care of you. Someone bigger to look up to. At least that seemed to be Colta’s intent.

“I look at you and from a mile away i see the hurt in you, Kelja.”

“I’m not fucking hurt, I don’t give a shit, if this is about Dhakan, well, fuck that piece of shit, now let me go!”

“I won’t. Kick and scream all you like, but I’m going to do this until you give up.”

“Then I’ll just go limp and you can hold me like a fucking idiot all day if it makes you happy, but this is some stupid-ass shit if you ask me. What the fuck are you even trying to do? You think I need this? Like I have to get approval from you ? You want me to act thankful like you’re doing me some great thing I owe you for just cause you give me a few moments of your time every now and then?”

“Where the hell did that come from?” Colta sounded bewildered. “It doesn’t even make any sense, what you just said.”

“Nevermind, forget it, fuck off.” Kelja bucked two or three times but Colta’s arms were bunches of iron. “I’m going to do things you can’t even imagine,” Kelja said, resentful defiance in his voice. “You want to know something, Andre? I hate you. You get it? I fucking hate your guts, and all you are is a pile of them. Guts full of fucking shit. Lies. You’re nothing but lies. You did all this to me. You fucking did it all.”

But a spasm overtook Kelja’s voice. It was sudden and involuntary and caught him by surprise. It was caused by the emotion his affectations tried to conceal. His throat choked. He knew he’d been heard. Just like that, found out. All laid bare. And he gave up hiding. He began to cry. To cry like the kid with his run over pup.

Fake hard exterior reaction formation simple mechanism predictable. Little toy little toy stupid fucking little simple toy. Basic human programming machine operations. Emotion activation protocol circuits doing their thing in high dudgeon.

[notyourmoderate]

Even when smart people go on Tucker’s show, they turn stupid.

So today on Tucker Carlson's tragic abortion cable news show, he had on Alan Derschowitz, famed civil liberties lawyer and living stereotype of ultra-liberal Jewish attorney. I've had issues with this guy before and his over-the-edge bleedy-heart leftism. In this case, he was on Tucker's shriek-and-screed to claim that the current impetus to impeach Donald Trump is partisan politics and that the Democrats involved should all be ashamed because if they shoe had been on Hillary's foot they would fight tooth and nail against exactly what is going on, and he portrayed the investigation into Russia as being an attempt to use political crimes to shut down political opponents. His argument was that since Donald Trump does have the Constitutional right to fire the FBI director, and does have the Constitutional right to ask the FBI director to stop an investigation, that he is not guilty of obstruction of justice.

Like basically everything that happens on the tuckfest, he was simultaneously wrong about the same subject in multiple ways, each distinct but related. A quick rebuttal:

First, the push to impeach Trump is an outgrowth of an ongoing investigation. This didn't happen because Demmies jumped up and said "let's impeach him because we hate him", this started when an investigation into election tampering kept curving around and indicating that Donald Trump was either directly involved or was surrounded entirely by people who were directly involved but miraculously never involved him personally. Oh, and that he was warned that Flynn was compromised, but made Flynn the National Security Advisor anyway because he assumed that the Democrat-led administration was just lying to him for partisan reasons. So, since the investigation started with a crime and then the evidence found a suspect, that snipes Dersch's dribble right between the eyes.

Second: holy shit dude learn what fucking motive is. Mens rea? C'mon, lawyerman, you should not need me to explain to you that just because Trump has the authority to fire Comey or to make requests of Comey, that his actions do not represent a crime. Let me explain by analogy. I have the right to hold my arm out in front of me with my fist clenched and turn it to the right. I have the right to stomp down with my right foot. I have the right to do those things in a car. I do not have the right to plow into a sidewalk full of pedestrians and kill twelve orphans and their three-legged dog. The constituent actions were legal. The intent and outcome was very very illegal. So when Trump fired the man investigating his inner circle for massive corruption and possible espionage violations, that was a crime called obstruction of justice. When Trump said that he fired Comey because of that investigation, he was confessing to a crime. And a cardinal affront to basic decency.

Third, there's witness intimidation. Derschy laid the claim that none of The Don's constituent actions were criminal, but they were all legal. And if you only look at two things that The Don did, and not at the motive or the outcome or any context or any nuance or circumstance, that is just barely true. But when you take the blinders off and look at the full scope of what our sitting American president has done, you remember that tweet where Goldfinger said that Comey had "better hope that there are no 'tapes'," and that's a clear-cut threat to attempt to intimidate a witness into altering or cancelling their testimony. And holy shit that's illegal everywhere, and it's even more illegal when it's ahead of a Congressional panel, and extra-illegal when the sitting president is doing it.

Fourth, that is just three ways that Clustertuck and Dersch were wrong about this, and it covers literally nothing but the obstruction charge, and leaves out the literally hundreds of separate criminal charges that The Don can be found guilty of. Everything from violations of the Espionage Act, the RICO Act, dereliction of duty, defamation of character, grand larceny by fraud, high treason, accepting millions of dollars in bribes, violating literally every single law against conflict of interest from the Emolument Clause of the Constitution and dozens of other laws against profiting from private investments through public office. That's just the stuff that I can think of *off the top of my head* that I know there is enough evidence to get a conviction.

Tucker Carlson is the opposite of a journalist.