#but nobody asked me

[thickness-protection-program]

Even during thess tough times you can still show soft pole

Fuck it if you want it so bad just take it, here

[waterme-stories]

Since they're resetting the season count, I suggest the latest era of Doctor Who be dubbed "NcuWho" (Shoo-Hoo) 😌

[misscrawfords]

Okay good, I can stop pretending to care about football now and go to bed.

[muttsandmustelidae]

sigh

[patronsaint-ofswitchbladefights]

let's get this shit going 'tis the season and all that

[homewiththearmadillo]

These Professional Ding-Dongs Don’t Understand Abortion, But Nobody Asked Me!

Welcome to But Nobody Asked Me!, an occasional holler about stuff people are wrong about. 

Four days before the 2022 midterm elections, the New York Times ran a piece headlined “At Campaign’s End, Democrats See Limits of Focus on Abortion.” The article, written by two reporters who, the Times is careful to note, “have written about abortion for more than a decade,” quotes a number of “strategists and pollsters” who are reluctant to assert that abortion would absolutely guarantee big Democratic wins. Somehow, these two reporters with over a decade of experience (between them? each? unclear!) decided that this entitled them to call an election that hadn’t happened yet.

The piece is bad in general -- it’s too long, poorly edited, and lacks focus even as it genuinely tries to acknowledge the limitations inherent in predicting the future of abortion nationwide based on a handful of interviews with people scattered around the country, who have vastly different levels of experience and investment on the issue and with politics in general. Somehow, the “private” opinions of a few people became evidence of the nationwide deflation of all Democrats’ hopes of winning in the midterms. That’s not just poor reporting, that’s irresponsible journalism.

But what’s especially grim is that the piece is emblematic of an entire genre of outdated, old-world political reporting based on outdated, old-world political polling, stuck in a pre-Trump era when pollsters were still able to capture a relatively accurate snapshot of the American electorate. (Arguably most political reporting remains stuck in 2016, but that’s a post for another day.)

The AP: “Some in White House worry abortion message bungled before midterms,” published two days before the election. In the Washington Post, “Five reasons abortion may not deliver for Democrats,” published five days before the midterms. And here’s another piece in the Times, worrying about men’s general empathy failure around abortion having “profound implications” on elections -- published two days before the vote.

There were lots of “abortion will save the Democrats!” articles too, though those mostly ran many weeks and months ahead of the midterms. But as the days ticked down to November 8, 2022, the hand-wringing around whether Democrats had blown their political load too soon on abortion reached its peak, driven by mouthy pundits and overworked journalists desperate to fill pre-election quotas and even actual politicians who should know better, namely and specifically the senator from Vermont who in the year 2022 still does not understand that abortion is an economic issue.

Of course, we know what happened: abortion access was a big winner at the ballot box, thanks in no small part to Gen Z women, especially young women of color. (And actually and seriously no thanks at all to white women, who continue to vote for white supremacy over reproductive freedom, not to toot my own horn but I fucking told you so.)

So what’s going on here? Are mainstream and legacy reporters conspiring to tank Democrats by any means necessary? Something something but her emails? Nah, they just don’t know how to cover abortion, and the pundits and pollsters and strategists they’re prone to interviewing about abortion don’t know much about it, either. 

Abortion is very difficult to poll on. One of the few true experts on abortion polling (and by “few” I mean literally like, I don’t know, one of three or four individuals total nationwide), Tresa Undem, explained this in Vox:

We need to ask questions about how the public views abortion policy — but do so in a more real and accurate way. We shouldn’t, for example, simply ask "Do you support or oppose recent restrictions to abortion?" when we know most people aren’t aware of any trend or what the restrictions might be. Maybe one place to start is moving beyond legality and into reality. Although we don’t talk about it much, one in three women in this country will have an abortion in her lifetime. Maybe pollsters should learn more about what the public knows about access and what they want in place for a woman who has decided to have an abortion.

But pollsters do at least try to understand where folks are coming from; pundits, on the other hand, are pretty much hopeless on abortion unless they happen to have spent significant time working in or with the reproductive health, rights, and justice movements. Most pundits do not understand how common abortion is (even/especially among people whose religious views conflict with the right to abortion), how likely people are to choose, or feel forced to choose, abortion for financial reasons (very!), and how popular early clinical abortion is even among Republican voters. Big, mainstream pro-choice orgs like Planned Parenthood and NARAL have not, historically, done much to improve these professionals’ understanding of abortion, and have done more than a little to hurt it -- for example, by downplaying the percentage of abortion care Planned Parenthood provides, or by clinging to stigmatizing “safe, legal, and rare” language years past its expiration date.  

More broadly, politicos and pundits and journalists are all prone to overestimating the numbers of “undecided” or “swing” voters, as part of a causality loop fueled by outlets trying fruitlessly to shirk accusations about the “liberal media.” Many reporters working for mainstream and legacy publications that rely heavily on (older, conservative) subscribers are pushed by editors and decision-makers at their outlets to privilege right-wing perspectives, or have seen stories that may upset conservative subscribers killed or relegated to the back pages. And mainstream and legacy reporters can absolutely be fooled by campaigns on the basics -- just last month, the AP reported a touching scene between Mehmet Oz and an ostensibly random Black voter who supported him; turns out, the voter had been a paid staffer. If it’s that easy to pull one over on a seasoned AP reporter who’s just looking for a nice opening scene, imagine how little scrutiny goes into an issue as misunderstood as abortion.

Until mainstream and legacy reporters and broadcasters -- including your favorite TV hosts, even the lefties -- stop turning to the nearest political scientists/general pollsters/paid party strategists for easy quotes and facile perspectives on abortion, we are going to keep seeing coverage that, at best, misleads the public and, at worst, is being deliberately manipulated.

But nobody asked me!

[emeraldreverie]

local theater (would) make/s bank hosting otgw screenings, from marathons to two eps at a time, with themed drinks, and ranged age groupings

[inkskinned]

this is just my opinion but i think any good media needs obsession behind it. it needs passion, the kind of passion that's no longer "gentle scented candle" and is now "oh shit the house caught on fire". it needs a creator that's biting the floorboards and gnawing the story off their skin. creators are supposed to be wild animals. they are supposed to want to tell a story with the ferocity of eating a good stone fruit while standing over the sink. the same protective, strange instinct as being 7 and making mud potions in pink teacups: you gotta get weird with it.

good media needs unhinged, googling-at-midnight kind of energy. it needs "what kind of seams are invented on this planet" energy and "im just gonna trust the audience to roll with me about this" energy. it needs one person (at least) screaming into the void with so much drive and energy that it forces the story to be real.

sometimes people are baffled when fanfic has some stunning jaw-dropping tattoo-it-on-you lines. and i'm like - well, i don't go here, but that makes sense to me. of fucking course people who have this amount of passion are going to create something good. they moved from a place of genuine love and enjoyment.

so yeah, duh! saturday cartoons have banger lines. random street art is sometimes the most precious heart-wrenching shit you've ever seen. someone singing on tiktok ends up creating your next favorite song. youtubers are giving us 5 hours of carefully researched content. all of this is the impossible equation to latestage capitalism. like, you can't force something to be good. AI cannot make it good. no amount of focus-group testing or market research. what makes a story worth listening to is that someone cares so much about telling it - through dance, art, music, whatever it takes - that they are just a little unhinged about it.

one time my friend told me he stayed up all night researching how many ways there are to peel an orange. he wrote me a poem that made me cry on public transportation. the love came through it like pith, you know? the words all came apart in my hands. it tasted like breakfast.

[ayo-edebiri]

ILONA MAHER

Photographed by Ben Watts for Sports Illustrated (Aug 28, 2024)

[astralpenguin]

self care is writing a fic that you’re literally the sole target audience for

[opikiquu]

iknow my comics are ugly please just hear me out

[syoddeye]

ghost names your contact on his phone something absolutely diabolical like ‘svalbard’.

when soap accidentally on purpose sees a text pop up from you, he thinks ghost’s hiding a snowbird in norway. he risks the question.

“so…who’s ‘svalbard’, lt?”

ghost’s grin is beyond smug. pure filth. “where i dump my seed for safekeepin’.”

[anywhere-anywhere]

magic mountain

[tm87lord]

i finally watched season 2....also i'm literally beggingggg you to fullscreen this

[skunkes]

edit: ive updated dis post with links to the brushes i made, pls check reblogs ^_^

[daytaker]

The Gang React to You Ignoring Them

Lucifer

"How childish. They'll have forgotten by the end of the day."

By the end of the day, however, Lucifer has reached his fucking limit. But his pride will not only prevent him from begging you to knock it off-- it will prevent him from even acknowledging in your presence that he is remotely bothered.

He probably goes to vent to Diavolo -- that is to say, visit him for tea and offhandedly comment about your immaturity for pulling such a stunt, knowing that he'll just contact you and beg for him.

Mammon

"Oh no you don't! MC! MC! MC! MC! MC! Hey! MC! MC! Hey! MC!"

He will follow you wherever you go. At first he thinks he's hilarious, being an absolute pain in the ass, but the longer it goes on, the more dejected he gets. His energy level tanks and soon he's just lying on top of the nearest piece of furniture and whining for you to stop it.

If you manage to get him off of you long enough to escape him, he will just text you.

Mammon: MC Mammon: MC Mammon: Hey MC Mammon: Hey Mammon: MC

If you block him, he will just text someone else until that person becomes so annoyed that THEY beg you to stop.

When you finally give in, he pretends like he didn't even care that much. It was just a little joke between pals, right? Haha!

Leviathan

"So this is how easy it is for you to just toss me aside like a piece of garbage."

Levi will take this extremely personally. Depending on why you're ignoring him, he might blame himself and enter a spiral of self-hate. He'll hole up in his room, refusing to leave until you finally come in and either apologize or forgive him, whichever is appropriate.

He'll spend a few moody minutes acting like it's too late for that, but soon he'll be on the verge of tears, making you to swear on a copy of The Tale of the Seven Lords that you will never pull that kind of thing again.

Satan

"Really? Is this what it's come to? You understand how pathetic this makes you look, don't you?"

Like Lucifer, he won't be too bothered at first, assuming you'll get over things relatively soon. But if nothing has changed within an hour or two, he'll start to get testy. He'll send a text, sit in the same room as you and stare a hole through your head, and if you're still ignoring him after a while of that, he'll storm up to his room.

Depending on how emotionally charged the incident was that led to you ignoring him, he will be more or less capable of fending off an explosion of temper. Most likely, any acknowledgement you toss his way will ease the tension, so it might be a good idea to just shoot him a text asking him not to destroy the house, please.

Asmodeus

"But it's impossible to ignore me! You can't look away from a face like mine! See?"

I don't think you can ignore Asmo. Being the literal Avatar of Lust with powers to charm and an intense need to be admired and adored, he simply exudes an aura that demands attention. You should probably come up with a different strategy of attack.

Beelzebub

"...Are you mad at me?"

Why would you do that to him? How could you be so cruel?

If you did do it, it would probably confuse and sadden him. Confusion and sorrow both make him feel hungry, so he will go ahead and start eating his feelings within an hour of the silent treatment. Even if you're content to allow this to continue, the other six demons in the house aren't, and you will ultimately have no choice but to make up with Beel.

Belphegor

belphie.exe has stopped responding

Considering you'd already forgiven him for the whole murder thing, he can't comprehend how you've become so mad at him that you'd go so far as to give him the cold shoulder. He won't know how to respond at first, but he will quickly become an angry, sulky ball curled up under the blankets on his bed. If it takes more than a few hours for you to come crawling back to him, things will start to change. Belphie will return to the common areas of the house, acting mostly the same as usual, and he will not spare you a second glance. Even if you stop ignoring him, well, two can play this game, and Belphie is absolutely petty enough to drag this one out.

After a day or two of you trying to talk to him, he'll relent. He'll feel kind of guilty, having worked through most of his anger while ignoring you. He'll probably text you a lot for the next day or two, just to ease some of his anxieties.

Diavolo

"I don't understand."

You can't do that. That's illegal. Next character.

Barbatos

"Hehe. What a troublemaker."

Barbatos likes it when you ignore him sometimes.

Barbatos will not change his behavior at all, ever. You could spend the rest of your life ignoring him, and he would simply accept it as one of those unfortunate circumstances life sometimes throws his way. He would prefer it if things didn't go down that way, though. Basically, he'll let you come to him whenever you've gotten over whatever it is you're upset about. What a king.

Solomon

"Hmm? Are you sure that's a good idea?"

Solomon will act pretty much the same as usual around you too. He'll point out that you're ignoring him to whoever else happens to be around and bemoan the situation, but he won't actively appeal to you. Instead, he'll orchestrate a scenario that traps you in a situation where he is the only person you can go to for help. As soon as you do that, he'll act as if nothing ever happened. If you resume the silent treatment, well, he can always come up with another scenario.

Are you still sure it's a good idea?

Simeon

"I didn't realize you were so upset. I'm sorry (that/if) I hurt you."

Simeon will either immediately understand why you are doing this, in which case he will apologize (using "that") or he will have absolutely no idea what's going on, and he'll still apologize (using "if") to be on the safe side.

If you don't show any signs of breaking, he'll enlist Luke's help to make you an apology dessert of some sort. And how can you stay mad at him when he's offering you angel food cake with such a sad expression?

Luke

😧😠😣🥺😢

Wh- Whaaa...?! How dare you ignore him! That's so mean! It must be all the demonic influences rubbing off on you! Stop it! Stop it or he's going to tell Simeon!

And then he'll go and tell Simeon. Simeon will probably tell him to just wait until you've calmed down. If he thinks you're being unreasonable, though, he'll probably have a talk with you himself. Really? Pulling the silent treatment on an actual child? Sure, he's a millennium old, but he's still a child.