#challenges and tariffs

[kazifatagar]

ASEAN Economies Navigate Tariff War Challenges

The impact of the tariff war on Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, and Vietnam varies due to each country’s economic structure, trade relationships, and the specifics of the tariffs imposed. Here’s a breakdown based on available information: ASEAN Economies: Vietnam Risks: Vietnam is particularly at risk due to its significant trade surplus with the U.S. and its heavy reliance on…

[undeniablerealities]

I'm sorry immigrants, you deserve to be here

I'm sorry afab's, you deserve control of your bodies

I'm sorry trans folk, you deserve to be alive

I'm sorry poor folk, you deserve your independence

I'm sorry disabled folk, you deserve help

I'm sorry old folks, you deserve the care you recieve

I'm sorry minorities, you deserve safety

I'm sorry parents, you deserve for your kids to know peace

I'm sorry children, you deserve to know peace

I'm sorry Ukraine, you deserve your sovreignty

I'm sorry Palestine, you deserve your sovreignty

I'm sorry Earth, you deserve residents who care for you

[voltaspistol]

ATTENTION EXECUTIVE DYSFUNCTION GANG. I am pleased to announce that getting a NICE FAUCET that FEELS NICE TO USE is actually helping me to DO THE FUCKING DISHES. The hose function is nice and tactile with exactly the right weight, the lever operation is buttery smooth, and although the button that does the spraying isn't quite as intuitive as it ought to be, it's a nice strong steam. It. Feels. Like. Luxury. Communist. Space. Utopia. Design.

My only adjustment is that I moved the pullout hose's counterweight several inches lower so that the pullout hose could extend easily to my water purifier pitcher (a pretty space age glass pitcher to convince me to drink more water which absolutely fucking worked).

So I'm posting the exact make and model of the faucet.

Is $160 expensive for you?

If you can still stomach Amazon, check their "used" section. I got mine for $112 because the previous owner opened the box took one look, realized it wouldn't fit their sink, and then sent it back. If you're willing to deal with a cosmetic ding or two you could get it for much less. There's also a version that's touch-activated if you need something more disability friendly.

Installing it was easy, Moen has made the installation guide phone-based which made me hella angry until I actually used it and yes, the website they built for installation is superior to paper. The phone stays on, and parts are hyperlinked back to the exploded view.

The hardest part was taking out the old faucet (manufactured with non-replacable plastic parts so when it broke it couldn't be fixed, fuck that company) and scrubbing off the accumulated hard water deposits that the old shitty faucet left behind.

[manuelnunezmd]

How Do Tariffs Affect Healthcare Costs and Patient Outcomes?

💡 Discover how tariffs on medical devices are affecting healthcare affordability—and what you can do about it! #HealthcarePolicy #MedicalDevices 🩺

Introduction Imagine this: You’re a caregiver for an elderly parent who relies on a life-saving pacemaker. Suddenly, the cost of their device skyrockets due to rising tariffs on imported medical equipment. This isn’t just a hypothetical scenario—it’s a growing reality for thousands of families across the U.S. In fact, studies show that tariffs can increase healthcare costs by up to 25%,…

[artisticdivasworld]

Cross-Border Freight in a Tariff-Driven World

American truckers who haul cross-border freight could see their livelihoods significantly affected by proposed changes to trade policies, including the implementation of a 25% tariff on imports from Mexico and Canada. While there may be a short-term uptick in freight volume as companies rush to move goods before tariffs take effect, the long-term outlook paints a more challenging picture. For…

[demonicintegrity]

“The golden age of America begins right now” my dude groceries are expensive and will not get cheaper overnight.

“We will be the envy of every nation” we’re not. And will not be.

Just. Eugh.

“A tide of change is sweeping over the country.” Sure is. That is correct observation.

“We now have a government that cannot manage a single issue from home” YOU MISMANAGED COVID?

YOU ARE BRING UP IMMIGRANTS NOW??

“They don’t have a home anymore. That’s interesting.” Those rich people have second and third homes and can always afford more. Shut the fuck up. If you care about people care about the people who cannot afford such things.

“I was saved by god to make America great again.” I cannot stress enough how much I dislike any god that could’ve sent this man to us.

“Meet every crisis with dignity, power and strength.” Remember when you sharpied on the path of a hurricane.

LIBERATION DAY??? FROM WHAT???

“Most consequential election…” yeah. Sure. Sure is.

Oh no not the historic executive orders— COMMON SENSE???

Declaring a national emergency at our southern border (and receiving standing ovation for it), beginning the process of deportations for “criminals” and sending troops to our border. Which. Surely won’t escalate violence at all.

I’m not familiar with this illegal aliens act from the 1700s but I fear I’m about to be very aware about it. I cannot imagine this is anything good.

DRILL BABY DRILL??? THATS GONNA SOLVE THE NATIONAL ENERGY EMERGENCY?? YOURE SHITTING ME.

“We will be a rich nation again, and it will be—

ENDING THE GREEN NEW DEAL, USING THE OIL UNDER OUR FEET WHILE CALIFORNIA BURNS. Fucking hell.

“We will tariff and tax foreign countries to enrich our citizens.” Somehow. I don’t believe that will enrich us.

Establishing the ERS and DOGE. Ough.

And he’s gonna bring back free speech while criticizing Seth Meyers for poking at him….. and he’s gonna stop political persecution. Yeah sure. Sure. Sure sure sure.

SOCIALLY ENGINEER RACE AND GENDER INTO PUBLIC AND PRIVATE PLACES?? THAT WAS HAPPENINGG.

It’s official policy. Only Male and Female. It’s really going to be official policy. Oh my fucking god. From a party that denies climate change. Oh my fucking god. I’m nonbinary and that’s about to be a fucking challenge.

“The wars we never get into.” Didn’t we worry about ww3 last time?

“That’s what I wanna be, a peacemaker and unifier.” YOURE NOT. YOU ARE NOT.

WHY ARE YOU CHANGING THE GULF OF MEXICO??

“foolishly given to the country of Panama” ITS ON THEIR LAND AND THEY CONTROL IT?? HELLO??? Yet China is operating the Panama Canal???

“As we liberate our nation” from WHAT. What are you liberating us from!?

“Pursue our manifest destiny” didnt that genocide natives— PLANT A FLAG ON MARS?

Yeah no this entire speech has been. A little concerning to say the least. And it just keeps going and going.

“Full of compassion, courage, and exceptionalism.” You are the least compassionate person here. Please.

I just. Don’t feel great after that. Hm.

[cleoselene]

from facebook of all places

posted by Jay Michaelson, and sourced by him as well:

Hello! I'm posting in response to the many sincerely anguished claims that not enough is being done to stop Trump. This is not reflected in the facts. - Represented by Public Citizen Litigation Group and State Democracy Defenders Fund, the Alliance for Retired Americans, the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) filed suit on Monday against the Treasury Department “for sharing confidential data with the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), run by Elon Musk.” Go to Public Citizen's website to learn all about this lawsuit, which is very likely to prevail. - On USAID, appearing with other Democratic lawmakers outside USAID offices on Monday, Representative Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) shouted, “Elon Musk, you didn't create USAID. The United States Congress did for the American people … like Elon Musk did not create USAID, he doesn't have the power to destroy it. And who's going to stop him? We are... This a constitutional crisis that we are in today.” Lawsuits have also been filed in this matter, and are also likely to prevail. - Hakeem Jeffries has announced lawsuits have been filed regarding the firings of inspectors general. - On Jan 21, Democracy Forward, was filed at 12:01 p.m. ET on Monday and accused Elon Musk's DOGE of being a "shadow operation led by unelected billionaires" that flouts federal transparency rules. That should win. - National Security Counselors filed a suit arguing that DOGE meets the requirements to be a federal advisory committee and is therefore legally required to have "fairly balanced" representation, keep regular minutes of meetings and allow public access to meetings. Clearly accurate. - Eighteen state attorneys general and a slew of immigrants' rights groups brought swift legal action against Trump after he signed his executive order seeking to ban birthright citizenship for some children born in the U.S., arguing that it violates the Fourteenth Amendment. Obviously, clearly unconstitutional. - "Schedule F" has been challenged in court by the National Treasury Employees Union, which represents employees in 37 agencies and departments. - Several immigrant rights groups in the United States, as well as the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), have filed a lawsuit challenging President Donald Trump’s ban on asylum claims. - GLAD Law and the National Center For Lesbian Rights (NCLR) have sued to stop Trump's ban on trans people in the military. And there are many more - I'll link to a great list of them in the comments. Yes, there are Trump judges in the courts, and if Aileen Cannon types get these cases, Trump may prevail. But most judges are not like her. These actions are clearly illegal and/or unconstitutional, and they WILL be stopped. Just like the tariffs were not meant to prevail -- Trump won that round, "forcing" Canada and Mexico to take "action" on fentanyl -- these actions are not meant to prevail. They're meant to flood the zone with shit, confuse and immobilize us. They said they'd do "Shock and Awe" and that's what they've done. Nothing here should be surprising. Shock and Awe is up to YOU. I am not shocked, I am not in awe. Oh, and the "mainstream media" has reported on all of these. The info above has come from Newsweek, the NY Times, and other mainstream sources. Please stop attacking journalists when we are being threatened by the FBI. Who do you think you're helping by doing that? Stop it with the doomsaying and gloomsaying. Want to make a difference? Give thousands of dollars to Public Citizen, the ACLU, and similar groups. Show up at marches. Put your ass on the line and help protect people from ICE. If you're safe, do simple symbolic things (like changing your social media pictures) to support people who are not safe. Just like we should not obey in advance, we should not panic in advance either. This is not the end of democracy. That is just what the bad guys want you to think. Get over it and fight.

I don't know how many times I've heard "Dems do nothing!" when they are in fact doing a lot of things. You just don't hear about it because the mainstream news doesn't pay attention or you don't see out news beyond your social media feeds.

The other thing is, Dems don't break laws in their fights the way Republicans do. Your desire to turn every Dem POTUS into the Dick Cheney Version of the Executive but then screaming injustice! when the GOP does it -- you see the problem there?

[reasonsforhope]

"It’s technically possible for the UK to achieve its goal of having a clean power system by 2030, and doing so should reduce electricity bills and bolster the country’s energy security, the grid operator says in a study commissioned by the new Labour government.

The context

The UK recently shut its last coal-fired power plant and aims to slash its use of gas turbines as it seeks to all but eliminate fossil fuels from its electricity mix by the end of the decade.

In 2023, renewables and nuclear accounted for 62% of the country’s electrical output, while fossil fuels held a 38% share. Under the 2030 clean power target, fossil fuels (gas) would be reduced to less than 5% of the mix.

The latest

“The analysis concludes that clean power is a huge challenge but is achievable for Great Britain by 2030,” the National Energy System Operator said in a statement as it published the study.

Overall system costs are unlikely to increase if the target is met, and tariffs could in fact decline as legacy power contracts expire and if the state makes sufficient progress on energy efficiency gains, flexibility mechanisms, improving grid connection processes, and overall policy modernisation.

Significant investments are required in a short amount of time, but they would allow the UK to become a “leader” in new technologies while also reducing the country’s exposure to potential energy price shocks stemming from spikes in international gas prices, as was the case after Russia invaded Ukraine.

NESO’s analysis shows that clean technologies — renewables and nuclear — will be able to produce at least as much power as Great Britain consumes in total in 2030...

“A clean power system for Great Britain will deliver a backbone of home-grown energy that breaks the link between volatile international gas prices; that is secure and affordably powers our homes and buildings; that decarbonises the transport that we take to school and work; that drives the businesses of today and catalyses the innovations of the future.”

Next steps: The government will now consider NESO’s advice as it develops its clean power action plan later this year."

-via The Progress Playbook, November 5, 2024

[mariacallous]

This should have been hammer the fuck home sooner louder and more consistently by the news media. You think the inflation and prices we have now and had immediately post-covid were bad?

And we won't have an administration trying to challenge price gouging and shrinkflation now.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Sign of the Day... in Greenwich Village...

(Mary Elaine LeBey)

* * * *

Kamala Harris meets the moment!

September 11, 2024

Robert B. Hubbell

Kamala Harris’s debate performance exceeded the unfair and asymmetrical expectations imposed on her by the press and pundits. She was terrific—in command of the facts, unfazed by Trump's bluster, personable, sincere, and likable but strong. That is a difficult mix to maintain in the face of a torrent of lies shouted by a bully who could not be controlled by the moderators. For those who were worried about the possibility that Kamala Harris would somehow stumble and harm her electoral prospects, put those worries aside. The reverse happened. She soared while Trump collapsed into his hollow shell.

Kamala Harris was confident and at ease. Trump sputtered and dodged in a futile effort to avoid answering the moderators’ questions.

I was struck by judgments delivered during the debate by two preeminent historians. I follow both Heather Cox Richardson and Michael Beschloss on Twitter. Near the end of the debate, the historians posted the following comments, which encapsulated the debate for me:

Heather Cox Richardson: “Trump is proving world leaders like him by citing Viktor Orban. Dear heavens. She is walking him like a poodle.” Michael Beschlossos: “From start to end, Kamala Harris has just delivered what is easily one of the most successful Presidential debate performances in all of American history.”

First, I hope HCR writes a book or starts a rock band with the name, “Walking Him Like a Poodle.” HCR’s comment gets to the pith of the debate: Kamala Harris was in charge, leading Trump into traps he knew were traps but could not avoid. In the instance cited by HCR, VP Harris chided Trump, saying that world leaders laugh at him and military leaders believe he is a “disgrace.” Trump responded by citing Viktor Orbán as a leader who respects him. As HCR said, “Dear heavens.” Trump was outmatched and outclassed—bigly.

Michael Beschloss’s comment is significant because it ranks Harris’s performance in the historical context of presidential debates. The precise ranking of her performance matters less than the fact it will be near the top, according to one of the nation’s preeminent historians.

There is too much to cover in tonight’s newsletter, so I will focus on the major newsworthy positions revealed in the debate. I will return later in the week to additional subjects when transcripts and analyses are available. Of note:

Harris presented herself as a candidate offering “generational change.”

Harris advocated for the middle class and small businesses.

Harris promised to sign a bill enacting the protections of Roe v. Wade.

Harris promised to sign the border bill that Trump convinced Republicans to kill.

Harris promised to reinstitute the child tax credit and institute a $6,000 credit for families with newborns

Trump refused to acknowledge that he lost the 2020 election.

Trump refused to express any regret for anything he did or failed to do regarding the January 6 insurrection.

Trump refused to say whether he would veto a national abortion ban.

Trump repeatedly claimed that Democrats advocate for the execution of babies after birth.

Trump refused to say why he urged Republicans to defeat the border bill.

Trump claimed that tariffs are “taxes on foreign nations.”

Trump refused to say whether he hoped Ukraine would defeat Russia war of aggression.

Trump said he didn’t have a plan for healthcare after nine years but has only “concepts for a plan.”

Trump repeated a racist slur that Haitian migrants are stealing and eating pets them in Springfield, Ohio.

No one who watched the debate could believe anything other than the fact that Kamala Harris is smart, capable, and up to the challenge of serving as president and commander-in-chief. Moreover, the debate served as a hyper-charged “media interview”—complete with hostile questions and an obnoxious heckler.

One of the first commentators to publish a review of the debate is David Frum in The Atlantic, How Harris Roped a Dope | She stayed human when Trump went feral. Per Frum,

Vice President Kamala Harris walked onto the ABC News debate stage with a mission: trigger a Trump meltdown. She succeeded. Former President Donald Trump had a mission too: control yourself. He failed. Trump lost his cool over and over. Goaded by predictable provocations, he succumbed again and again. Trump was pushed into broken-sentence monologues—and even an all-out attack on the 2020 election outcome. He repeated crazy stories about immigrants eating cats and dogs, and was backward-looking, personal, emotional, defensive, and frequently incomprehensible.

One final note: During the debate, I received outraged emails from readers about the moderators' failure to control Trump or treat Kamala Harris fairly. While true, let’s not make the debate about the moderators. That is what Republicans are doing tonight—to avoid talking about Trump's meltdown. Let’s focus on Kamala Harris’s ability to show Americans that she is up to the job of being president. That’s the story; let’s not bury the lead.

[Robert B. Hubbell Newsletter]

[thedialoguedilemma]

The Dilemma Bulletin: Monday January 27th, 2025

Keeping you informed about the daily events of the Trump Administration

China releases an AI source called DeepSeek set to rival ChatGPT and OpenAI. China claims it created this AI at a fraction of the cost causing US markets to trend downhill.

China releases an internet communications satellite set to rival Starlink.

NVIDIA has fallen out of being the world’s most valuable company after losing $600 billion dollars in market capitalization today under the Trump administration

Trump continues to threaten tariffs on nations that don’t agree with his policies which will skyrocket prices for everyone.

A January 6th terrorist that was pardoned and released into the public by President Trump was shot and killed by police during a traffic stop in Indiana following an altercation.

The Trump administration has instructed public health officials across the United States to stop working with the World Health Organization effective immediately as bird flu cases rise in the US

After Trump threatened Colombia with tariffs this past Sunday, coffee prices have risen in expectation of possible trade war with Colombia.

President Donald Trump announces a tariff on foreign semiconductor chips which will cause electronics such as refrigerators, game consoles, tvs, computers to all skyrocket in price.

Trump claims the United States military entered California and just “turned the water on” What does that even mean????? The pumps were temporarily off for a 3 day maintenance and are now up and running.

Trump says Microsoft is in talks to acquire TikTok

Google Maps updates Gulf of Mexico to Gulf of America despite every other world country still referring to the body of water as the Gulf of Mexico

Trump expected to sign an Executive Order banning transgender people from the military. Will be challenged in court.

Legoland Florida announces massive upcoming layoffs as a result of Governor DeSantis and President Trump leadership

Trump announces an idea of wanting to fly American criminals to other countries who will incarcerate them for "a small fee". Again— will be immediately challenged in court.

[centrally-unplanned]

A bonus pre-election thought as I post my way through this week: there is one strain of Trump supporter I will call the "policy gamble Republican". They think Trump is a moron and a shitheel, and generally do not think Kamala Harris is worse in any way on things like character - they know all those arguments are bullshit. Instead, they are just coolly looking at the expected policy outcomes for each and think it comes out Trump.

They focus on markets and tend to be libertarian types - oh sure Trump says that he will do the tariff thing, but he won't, Republicans will back him off that ledge. And meanwhile Harris will continue to double down on the nanny state, and do "price controls", woke DEI stuff, etc. "Given the exponential returns of long-run GDP growth a 1.3% reduction in GDP today is worth approximately 200,000 babies in 2100" type stuff; the kind of people who argue Bush was Good, Actually, because PEPFAR saved more lives than the Iraq War killed.

And I do get this argument, I am mocking them affectionately here - there is valuable policy analysis to be done like this, it isn't a crazy instinct. Obviously to me, my first objection is just "the 5% or higher chance of authoritarian backsliding is not worth any of that", and I think that does carry the day. But there is a second point, which is that they treat the election itself as bloodless vis a vis the wider political currents. That if the Republicans win or the Democrats win that means one of them is in charge, but it won't change the underlying parties and they repeat next year.

I think they don't realize they are making this assumption since when you spell it out like that it comes off as quite naive. When Trump won in 2016 it broke both political parties in the US - the Republican party spiraled into nativist, anti-trade platforms, while the Democrats fought a huge culture war over things like whether America was Irredeemably Racist or if economic populism would carry the day. And as much as people tend to forget it today, losing in 2020 - and Trump's behavior afterward - got quite close to breaking his hold on the party. Honestly he got absurdly lucky, with Biden being such a deeply unpopular president and his challengers coalescing around Ron DeSantis who turned out to be incredibly mid.

It isn't predictable or formulaic ofc, but all of this is to say that Trump winning is very likely to consolidate and expand his hold on the Republican Party, which if you are a libertarian-esque market type is an awful outcome for you. Trump actively endorses anti-market populists for down-ballot elections! The "Free Trade Center" isn't gonna hold forever in the face of someone who keeps winning. And meanwhile his defeat will likely have a positive impact on making the Republican party saner. He is certainly an electoral liability for the cause if you want it to be empowered!

So yeah, independent of any policy bills or actions, elections themselves are important events that shape political culture. I would value that over a good number of specific reforms of this or that market regulation in any EV calculation.

Not the Jones Act though. Fuck the Jones Act.

[schraubd]

New Frontiers of Darkness

The Washington Post has unveiled its new slogan to supplement (in practice, supplant) the old "Democracy Dies in Darkness": "Riveting Storytelling for All of America." I can't tell you how much I hate this. First of all, even out of context, it sounds both comically corporate and unbearably patronizing. "Riveting storytelling for all of America" sounds like how to market the Scholastic Book Fairs for emerging readers, not one of America's papers of record. But of course, we must take this slogan in context. And the context is the Post spending the last few months humiliating itself and dynamiting its journalistic credibility by repeated acts of groveling towards the MAGA movement. And I know I'm beating a dead horse here, but this slogan really encapsulates the media's self-delusion that it is part of the liberal family. Again, recall my thesis here: the media thinks its main audience is liberals, and so it sees its job as to challenge liberals with "alternative perspectives" or "competing views" (as opposed to just telling the truth and letting the chips fall where they may). One implication of this is that conservatives are a growth audience (because of course the Post in its prior manifestation couldn't be speaking to them) -- this is what "for all of America" means. We're no longer speaking just to the latte-sipping coastal elites, but to all of America. And lest you think I'm projecting, they're being quite explicit that this is what they mean: Mr. Bezos, the founder of Amazon, has made comments in line with the new mission statement in conversations with Post journalists in recent years, according to two people familiar with those discussions. Mr. Bezos has expressed hopes that The Post would be read by more blue-collar Americans who live outside coastal cities, mentioning people like firefighters in Cleveland. He has also said that he is interested in expanding The Post’s audience among conservatives, the people said. Now nominally, recognizing that conservatives are part of the audience could mean that the Post starts committing to telling them things they don't want to hear. For example, they could be informed, in no uncertain terms, how Trump's tariffs will crush working families with spiraling grocery bills. Or they could be told, in clear-eyed fashion, of how Trump's inner circle is proposing increasingly fascistic and lawless abuses of government power. Or they could be shown, without varnish or spin, how the Republican Party has begun to view sexual assault and rape as virtues in its political leaders -- not even a secret to be ashamed of, but as an affirmative basis for support and promotion. But of course, we all know that is not what Bezos and his cronies have in mind. "Riveting storytelling" suggests that what they want is sensation and soothing -- to reaffirm their (new) readers' priors, never to challenge them with something as dirty and discomforting as the truth. Conservatives can't tolerate hearing that Donald Trump was a grotesquely unsuitable choice for the presidency, and so the Post (even in its editorial endorsements) won't aggravate them. The Post knows that many if not most of Trump's cabinet picks fail the most basic (by the Post's own lights!) criteria of qualification for office in a democratic society -- respecting the outcomes of a democratic process -- and so the Post will just pretend it doesn't matter. The Scholastic Book Fair analogy is more than snark, for this is of a piece with the broader trend of infantilizing the American right. Conservatives, once again, are being treated as children, and spoiled children as that -- whatever junk keeps their attention, that's what will be provided.  A once great newspaper, reduced to an entertaining diversion for spoiled, coddled brats. Maybe the slogan isn't so bad after all. via The Debate Link https://ift.tt/lpZWSRu

[lucidbee]

Love Is A Science | Percy Jackson x Reader

Summary: You and Percy have always been best friends you just needed a little push for you to become more.

Word Count: 1.1k

Author Note: Did I write this in the car to eat dry turkey and complain to my family about what tariffs mean, yes. Did I get car sick from writing this also, yes. Not proofread. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! Feel free to leave any requests. 

—---—---—‐--—---—---—---—---—---

You and Percy had been friends ever since he came to Camp Half-Blood. You both were always next to each other; if you weren’t, you were talking about them somehow. Every camper could see that both of you were meant to be together. The teasing and questioning were endless. The Aphrodite cabin had a blast creating different scenarios and challenging each other on who could get you two together first. For years the both of you had been denying any claims that you were anything more than friends. Both of you believing that you were just really good friends, companions in battle. 

But after the battle in Manhattan, things started to change, both of you becoming more aware of each other's presence, not wanting to be more than an arm's reach away from each other at all times. Something deeper had started to grow after all these years, something unspoken.

That's where you find yourself, both silently staring into the fire crackling on the beach. You’re wrapped in Percy’s arms, your back pressed against his chest. Before the battle, if anyone had asked, it would have been simply cuddling nothing more, than just a way for two friends to stay warm. However, now if you were asked the same question, you weren’t sure what you would say. It was different now, you didn’t just want to be around Percy anymore, you needed to be around him. You needed to know that he was safe, that you weren’t going to lose him. The possibility of losing Percy opened up feelings you had no idea you had for the son of Posideon. 

You wanted to kiss him, to be held by him, for him to fight every battle with coming home to you as his only goal. You were hopelessly and undoubtedly in love with Percy Jackson. The only trouble was that you had no idea how to bring the topic up to him. You had spent years denying the claims that you were lovers, was it possible for him to have the same change of heart as you? 

The fire crackled loudly filling any awkward silence. You knew you only had so much time to confess your feelings before curfew, if you didn’t do it today you knew you would talk yourself out of it every day to come. 

“Percy?” You call out not taking your eyes off of the flames.

Percy, who is usually quick with his words, had been unusually quiet this whole time. Usually, he would be humming a song, or bouncing his knee to create any sort of noise. Today he looked completely lost in his thoughts. 

“Percy?”

“A daughter of Aphrodite asked me out today,” Percy said looking down to look at you.

Shocked was the only way you could describe what you felt right now. Your heart started to race and your head started to spin, were you too late?

“W-what did you say?” 

Percy sighed before saying “I told her I would think about it.”

More dread filled your body. “Do you like her?”

“Well no, but there is no harm in just one date right?”

Your head was still spinning but your heartbeat started to slow back down, you still had time. 

“Do you like anyone?” You asked.

“There is this one girl, but I don't think she is interested.”

Your heart broke at that moment, you had waited too long. You could have had him years ago but now that you are about to lose him you have never wanted him more. Pain fills your body, and you find it more difficult to breathe. 

“She would be dumb not to be interested in you, Percy.” You say tears filling your eyes.

“Y/n are you okay, did I do something?”

“No, it's what I did,” You say tears strolling down your face.

“What did you do?”

“I didn’t tell you how much I love you and now it’s too late.” 

You stand up wiping your tears, needing to separate yourself from Percy. Percy soon follows but keeps his distance.

“Y/n?”

“I should have told you so much sooner, but we both needed time to heal after the battle and I was worried you wouldn’t feel the same way,” You ramble off walking back and forth.

“Y/N,” Percy yells.

Your head swings to look at him, tears still streaming down your face. Percy steps closer taking your hands in his. Both of you keep eye contact the whole time as he allows you time to calm down.

“I love you too”

“You what?”

“The girl I was talking about was you, I love you.” 

“This isn’t funny seafoam, you can’t joke about this, I’m barely holding myself together right now.”

“I’m not joking, in Manhattan, all I could keep thinking about was that I was terrified I was going to die before being able to kiss you.”

For what felt like an eternity you were finally able to breathe. The pain washed away into a feeling of overwhelming joy.

“Kiss me,” You say.

“What?”

“Kiss me, do you not want to anymore?”

“NO,” Percy yells.

Percy quickly takes you into his arms and presses his lips against yours. Your eyes quickly shut, wrapping your arms around Percy’s neck. It was everything you imagined and more, you could have stayed in the position for hours. That was until the sound of a horn being blown in the distance alerting you both that curfew was in a few minutes. 

“I don’t want to let you go,” Percy said nuzzling himself into your neck.

“Then don’t.

Percy looks at you in a confused way, when you finally explain it to him. 

“You’re all alone in your cabin, sneak me in.”

“You are brilliant,” Percy says giving you a light peck.

Percy quickly put out the fire that was still burning beside you, before taking your hand and rushing off of the beach and into cabin number three. You both leave grinning and completely absorbed in each other. Completely not noticing the daughter of Aphrodite and Athena hiding behind the bushes.

“Told you all they needed was a little push to figure out what they were missing out on,” Annabeth said.

“You are a genius and about to be the richest person in camp, we’ve been betting on them for the last four years,” Drew says walking back towards the Aphrodite cabin.

“What can I say love is a science, after all, let me know if you need any lessons.”

“Don’t push it, brainiac.”

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Stephen Robinson at Public Notice:

A near-majority of American voters willingly reelected Donald Trump. This harsh reality is a collective moral failure, but it’s also not a choice made in sound mind. Consider that voters believed Trump’s first presidency was a roaring success and Joe Biden’s only term a Carter-level catastrophe. It’s an upside-down Bizarro World view that ultimately played a key role in dooming Kamala Harris.

Trump’s 2024 platform was rooted in an obvious lie — that the nation under Biden’s leadership is a flaming dumpster fire and everyone was much better off when Trump was president. Democrats challenged this false reality with facts, but they ultimately lost the messaging war. Their best efforts were no match for the most powerful weapons in Trump’s propaganda arsenal — a timid press and a right-coded social social media environment. Greg Sargent reports in the New Republic that the Harris campaign’s own internal polling revealed an alarming trend: “Undecided voters didn’t believe that some of the highest profile things that happened during Trump’s presidency — even if they saw these things negatively — were his fault.” According to exit polls, Trump decisively won the questions “who do you trust more to handle the economy?” and “who do you trust most to handle a crisis?” Of course, in reality Trump utterly botched the 2020 pandemic response, which researchers concluded resulted in 40 percent more deaths than necessary. And yet swing voters are willing to risk it all again in hopes of cheaper eggs and cruelty against outgroups.

Disinformation on demand

Legacy media shoulders significant blame for their “sanewashing” of Trump’s incoherency and deteriorating mental state. Voters believed Trump could fix a steadily improving economy despite his promotion of inflationary tariffs. The media even presented Trump’s rants as cogent discussions of economic theory.

It’s worth noting, however, that an NBC poll from April revealed that voters who received news primarily from legacy media (newspapers, cable news, etc.) still overwhelmingly supported Biden. Trump owes his victory in great part to low-propensity voters of all races, including young men, and those voters don’t necessarily form their views based on mainstream media reporting. Rather, far too many are stuck in an online social media bubble where they are delivered a steady diet of rightwing propaganda. The median age of a Fox News viewer is 68, and liberals have joked about the network “brainwashing” their conservative parents. But rightwing social media content has effectively targeted and radicalized younger people, who — unlike the typical Hannity-obsessed grandpa — can vote for the next several decades. TikTok, which Trump joined in June, has 170 million users in the United States, and according a Pew Research survey, more than half of them said they regularly get their news from the platform. That’s up from just 22 percent in 2020. This is a serious concern because the far right uses TikTok to advance unfounded conspiracy theories and outright lies.

[...]

Lower income Americans, particularly young people, do spend more of their income on groceries, rent, and gas. That’s why Republicans were so laser focused on the price of eggs. Unfortunately, there’s a dearth of liberal content countering the negative vibes. Of course, explaining the post-pandemic economic recovery is complex and requires more than a punchy one-minute video can convey. Although people might idly scroll TikTok all day, consuming 60-second quick hit videos like potato chips, they will balk at reading an extensive, well-reported news article. That’s too filling a meal.

According to a University of Oregon study, 40 percent of Democrats and 57 percent of Republicans surveyed said they’d become more conservative from their TikTok usage. Half of the Democrats surveyed said they’d grown more liberal, but a lot of far-left content on TikTok is downright alienating and can sound like MAGA’s idea of a strawman leftist. For instance, one user boasted that she “didn’t care” if liberal economic and social policies “hurt the economy,” thus conceding that those policies are in fact harmful to economic progress. TikTok’s artificial “vibecession” dominated the discourse, while abortion-related content was actively suppressed even while pregnant women were bleeding out in parking lots. Users of the platform resorted to disguising the word “abortion” as “aborshun” or “ab0rti0n” in order to reach an audience. TikTok has a longstanding policy against promoting abortion services, which it classifies as “unsuitable businesses, products or services.” However, TikTok, YouTube, and Meta have allowed users to spread and monetize anti-abortion misinformation. Studies have shown an interesting gender gap in where young people receive their news on social media: For most women, it’s TikTok, while most men learn about the world from YouTube, X, and Reddit, all of which have become havens of crude masculinity.

On YouTube, 56 percent of users are between the ages of 18 and 44. The Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a London-based nonprofit that researches extremism, conducted a four-part research project this year that determined YouTube’s algorithm consistently steers users to rightwing and Christian content. The algorithm does this even with seemingly apolitical search terms, like “male lifestyle guru,” which YouTube reflexively associates with conservative ideology. Rightwing news content was also more frequently recommended, including anti-vaxxer videos. As far back as 2019, both YouTube and Facebook’s autofill search boxes would return content that promoted anti-vaccine misinformation.

[...]

Why rightwing content has the edge

When Kamala Harris appeared on the Call Her Daddy podcast, host Alexandra Cooper told her listeners, “I do not usually discuss politics or have politicians on the show because I want Call Her Daddy to be a place that everyone feels comfortable tuning in.” Left-leaning podcasters/social media content creators often avoid politics for fear of turning off their right-leaning fans. Joe Rogan and Dave Portnoy at Barstool Sports don’t bother with such apologies when they have rightwing guests because it doesn’t compromise their brand. They are rightwing cultural influencers. Liberal podcaster Hasan Piker recently commented on the impact rightwing influencers have on young men of all races.

“There is a massive amount of rightwing radicalization that has been occurring, especially in younger male spaces. Everything is completely dominated by rightwing politics,” he said. “If you’re a dude under the age of 30 and you have any hobbies whatsoever, whether it’s playing video games, whether it’s working out, whether it’s listening to a history podcast or whatever, every single facet of that is completely dominated by center right to [the] Trumpian right. Everything they see is rightwing sentiment.”

Rogan and Portnoy might not present as overtly political as Walsh and Shapiro, but their edgy, hyper masculine personas are pure MAGA. Even billionaire CEO Elon Musk likes to present himself as a “disrupter,” an agent of change who boldly confronts the status quo. Anyone who’s seen the more popular indie films of the 1970s would realize how compelling this narrative is to young men. The subtle way that Rogan and Portnoy infuse politics into their personas presents a contrast with left-leaning social media content. The liberal TikToker or YouTuber who releases videos about home makeovers might endorse Democratic politicians during election season while wearing their “just voted” sticker, but rightwing influencers prime their audience on a daily basis. Young men marinate in a stew of rightwing sentiment and end up resenting the libs.

Stephen Robinson wrote in Public Notice a very valid case that a right-coded media environment gave Donald Trump the decisive boost to get elected, such as praising the disastrous Trump reign as a “success.”

Social media algorithms heavily favored right-coded and pro-Trump content, despite the never-ending whining about “censorship” from conservatives.

[patriottruth]

For All Anti-trump, Pro-Democracy, Pro-America Allies Awaiting the Section 3/14A Miracle That Stops donald trump, Please Remember This is a Chess Game All The Way Until the Moment Checkmate is Revealed.

Please, please remember that in this pro-democracy chess game, time is on our side and, most importantly, the law is on our side. We have to let MAGA implode, fester, and rot until there's no real MAGA support for a civil war or another insurrection; and that structural degradation is happening loud and clear every day; and it's being fueled, fed, and accelerated by orange Thanos' stupidity, ignorance, corruption, and tyranny.

How is time on our side?

Anti-trump American women are divorcing their MAGA husbands for voting against their and their children's, even their own daughter's, lives, human and civil rights, and their futures.

Anti-trump voters are kicking every trump voter in their lives to the curb and cutting them off from holiday gatherings.

MAGA voters are learning that they and their basic survival needs are in the crosshairs for elimination and extermination.

MAGA voters are learning that all of their costs are going up due to trump tariffs.

MAGA voters are losing their holiday bonuses and jobs due to trump tarifs.

The U.S. military is learning donald trump is going to declare a state of emergency and send them into American cities who don't want them there, where the local Democrat governor and their state National Guard is going to be ready to literally combat them to protect that state from trump's tyranny.

All immigrants, legal or not, are learning the hard way they're all going to be denaturalized, gathered up by the U.S. military, put into concentration camps, and disposed of via deportation or otherwise.

MAGA business owners are learning the hard way that their businesses are being shunned and their and their employees' futures aren't looking so great.

The insane MAGA cabinet appointments for the trump administration have MAGA voters pushing back.

elon musk...ha, ha, ha, ha, ha... He's pissing everyone off every second of every day. Chef's kiss! Literally an unprotected chewable face surrounded by hordes of hungry leopards!

The more MAGA overplays its hand in Congress, the more Democratic Leaders Schumer and Jeffries are going to realize they and the Democrat party have no other survival options than to force a Section 3/14A vote to disqualify donald trump from ever holding federal office again.

The more MAGA promises political prosecutions and imprisonments of pollsters and political activists, executions of federal and state prosecutors who've investigated and prosecuted them, and the more MAGA promises to shut down media outlets such as NBC, ABC, and CBS for not making Kamala Harris look bad enough, or not making trump and MAGA look good enough, and the more MAGA clarifies the American public will have no way to communicate and stay informed via the internet or social media, and have access to pro-democracy and anti-trump/anti-MAGA content, the more anti-trump and even trump voters are going to be willing to contact their representatives to protect their rights and freedoms.

Tomorrow, November 19th, is the official two-week mark since the election; and we're only just starting to see some of the final vote counts across the USA. Once all of that counting is done, the nationwide canvas and individual voter ballot confirmations, the checking of the final vote count against the total amount of voters, scrutinizing the vote and looking for any irregularities, investigating and challenging any potential election fraud, individual voter ballot curing/correction so that every vote is counted, and any and all recounts and challenges to the actual vote counts of all races will occur so that the national vote can be certified, and the Electoral College can vote and issue their official certificates on December 17, 2024. Remember, 33% of Republicans and 33% of Independents said they'd never vote for trump, 60% to 80% of the United States said they wouldn't vote for donald trump because he's too old, American women made it clear they weren't voting for him, Puerto Ricans said they'd be throwing him in the trash, Black and Jewish voters said they weren't voting for him, and yet the majority of all of those voters, along with abortion initiative voters, and Democrat voters who voted for all down-ballot Democrats, allegedly all voted for donald trump, anyway. The next stages of election certification will verify who actually voted for trump, and who didn't, so the next several weeks could get very interesting!

Every day that I post the trump disqualification reminder is a day that more people are engaging, fighting, sharing the information with everyone they know here on Tumblr and elsewhere, contacting Democratic Leaders Schumer and Jeffries, and contacting Marc Elias and Democracy Docket and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington to finally stop another donald trump presidency via Congress and the Electoral College. Time and the law is on our side! Thank you so, so much to everyone who refuses to accept the lie that donald j. trump, his MAGA cult, and their American dictatorship is inevitable and unstoppable; because the only undeniable and unstoppable truth is that in this fight, when we fight, we win!