#conflation 2023

[alacants]

rereading my own old post and finding a reference to novak and jannik last playing on clay at ""roland garros 2023"" lmao did they??? did they really????????

[aroaessidhe]

2023 reads / storygraph

Small Joys

literary fiction set in 2005 rural south England

follows a depressed/anxious young Black man who’s moved back to his hometown after dropping out of uni, becoming friends with the excessively joyful new flatmate who takes him under his wing

recognising mental health struggles and harmful relationship and finding community and happiness

music, birdwatching

gay MC, ace-coded SC

[chronicbitchsyndrome]

there's currently misinformation going around tumblr about what the SSI marriage penalty is, so this is my attempt to explain it in plain language.

when you marry someone who is not on SSI, and you are on SSI, their income is counted as your income. your SSI will be docked according to their income from then on. if their income outstrips your SSI (maximum SSI is $914 a month as of 2023), you will be ineligible for SSI from then on.

if two people on SSI get married, their maximum SSI benefits are reduced by 25%. they no longer get SSI as individuals, they get SSI as a couple, which is 25% less money than individuals are eligible for.

collectively, these two processes are known as the marriage penalty.

some news outlets are currently (September 2023) incorrectly reporting a bill as removing the marriage penalty. this is false. the bill is changing the savings cap for married couples on SSI. the savings cap is the amount of money you are allowed to save in your personal account before being kicked off SSI. this is different from the marriage penalty, and outlets referring to them as the same are conflating two different laws that apply to SSI recipients. please do not assume based on mis-worded news articles that you can get married without losing your income and health care if this bill passes. you may be putting yourself in danger by doing so.

[fishyartist]

INFORMATION: https://decolonizepalestine.com/faq (information about Palestine)

https://www.ochaopt.org/crisis (up to date information on reported death tolls)

https://bdsmovement.net/what-is-bds (information about the BDS movement)

https://www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org/2023/11/09/antisemitism-dangerous/ (short article about the difference between antisemitism and anti Zionism, and why conflating the two is dangerous. More articles from the same site here)

HOW YOU CAN HELP:

https://cartoonist.coop/journal/cartoonist-cooperative-buy-an-e-sim-for-gaza-donation-drive/ (esims allow Palestinians to contact each other+the outside world during Israel-created blackouts. Through this you can donate esims and get cool art)

https://donate.unrwa.org/-landing-page (UNRWA is a UN program created to provided lifesaving assistance, employment and direct relief to Palestinian refugees. Their funding was cruelly cut severely by several countries, including the US, during the humanitarian crisis in Gaza)

https://bdsmovement.net/Act-Now-Against-These-Companies-Profiting-From-Genocide (Palestinian-lead movement to challenge international support for Israeli apartheid+colonization through boycott, divestment, and sanctions [hence BDS]. Linked to their site earlier for more info, this is specifically what they’re calling on us to boycott+pressure and why, while emphasizing a need to focus effort on vocally boycotting a small number of brands for maximum impact)

LINK (CLICK ME) TO MORE WAYS YOU CAN HELP

[avi-on-jumblr]

awful tweet warning:

Before I describe everything that's wrong with this tweet, let me transcribe Stephen Fry's words:

I am Stephen Fry, and I am a Jew. The great Irish thinker and writer Conor Cruise O'Brien once said that antisemitism is a light sleeper. Well, it seems to have woken up of late. The horrendous events of October 7th, and the Israeli response, seem to have stirred up this ancient hatred. It's agonizing to see all violence and destruction that is unfolding, and the terrible loss of life on both sides brings me an overwhelming sadness and heartache. But whatever our opinions on what is happening, there can be no excuse for the behaviour of some of our citizens. Since October the 7th, there have been 50 separate reported incidents of antisemitism every single day in London alone, an increase of 1350%, according to the Metropolitan police. Shop windows smashed, stars of David and swastikas daubed on walls of Jewish properties, synagogues, and cemeteries. Jewish schools have been forced to close. There is real fear stalking the Jewish neighbourhoods of Britain. Jewish people here are becoming fearful of showing themselves, in Britain, in 2023.

(Then it cuts off.)

For those who still don't know why this tweet was ignorant and inane, let me explain.

"To hear him conflate antiZionism with antisemitism has shocked me."

Guess how many times Stephen Fry mentions zionism? Zero! Guess how many times he mentions the country of Israel? Zero! (Unless you count "the Israeli response" which is unrelated to the existence of the country, or Zionism at all.) What this person is saying, is that they consider the smashing of shop windows, and the vandalism and marking of Jewish property, to be anti-Zionism. Considering they are an anti-Zionist, by following their logic, we can conclude that they not only believe this destruction and harassment is acceptable, but they believe it is ethical.

Further, they accuse him of showing no care for the Palestinians, even though he explicitly states that the loss of life on both sides brings him overwhelming sadness.

Finally, they accuse him of "[Centring] people in this country". It is disturbing that this person believes one cannot be concerned over two issues at a time. It perpetuates the idea that we can only talk about the "worst oppression" and talking about anything else means you are complicit in "silencing" someone else. If this were true, we would not be allowed to talk about Gaza either, or Ukraine, or police brutality, racism, islamophobia, homophobia, transphobia, and so on and so on, because clearly there are other issues with hundreds of thousands more deaths, and millions more displacements, so why bring attention to it ever?

Unfortunately, people are not talking about those countries, like Syria, Yemen, Ethiopia, Congo, and more, and anyone who does is spammed with "free Palestine" comments. In fact, the most I've heard people talking about Sudan is when these TikTok geopolitical experts attempt to spam the Palestinian flag and get it wrong.

This is not new. This is obviously not new. I have seen tweets like these every single day in the hundreds for the last 80 days. It is not surprising that people think smashing windows is "anti-zionism", nor that they think it good. It is not surprising that they hear a Jew speak, and experience shock and disgust, regardless of what we say.

I do wonder if they would regard anything short of a second Holocaust as antisemitism.

[anistarrose]

So, it's not a moral failing to be bad at what I'm about to describe. But collectively, most of Tumblr is bad at identifying polls that function as bait for bigotry and harassment. Polls that, either intentionally or unintentionally, encourage people to spew hatred about a marginalized queer sub-community — because that sub-community is considered, at least by some, an acceptable enough target.

Most of us have probably seen that polyamory poll go around (as of September 2024). Fewer people have probably taken a look at the notes on that poll — and in many ways, that's for the best, because a lot of the notes are fucking vile. I won't link the poll itself, but content warning for threats of domestic violence and suicide in just this sampling. I don't know enough about the poll creator to make assumptions towards their intent, but that poll was functionally bait, acting as encouragement for people to spew vitriol and bigotry.

And none of this is specific to that individual poll! In December 2023, a single person made a series of polls about friends with benefits, and the "question" of whether aromantic heterosexual cisgender men were queer — and those polls led to huge waves of arophobia and sex negativity (inseparable from, let's be honest, some mask-off radfem shit). On top of that, multiple polls about people's feelings towards sex, or experiences with such, have turned into a festival for bashing both asexuals and virgins — insofar as the people doing the bashing use those words as anything but interchangeable insults.

Polyamorous people. Aromantic people, especially aromantic allosexuals. Asexual people, especially those who are virgins or sex-repulsed. That's a clear and obvious trend — they're all people who do relationships differently. People whose relationships and identities are considered "cringe." Who are considered acceptable targets to mock within the queer community. Making fun of "polycule drama," making fun of "queerplatonic," making fun of a-spec microlabels.

So many people who call themselves sex-positive refuse to extend that positivity to polyamorous people and aromantic people. To casual sex, to sex without monogamous romance. They insist that the polyamorous, the aromantic, are in fact the predators, the abusers, the degenerate queers that the conservative pearl-clutching queerphobes were right about. They tack on asexuals to the "abuser" category, too, because allegedly no one could ever be happy in a relationship with an asexual; because allegedly it's manipulative to your partner to refuse sex! Meanwhile, asexuality and sex repulsion are conflated with the completely different concept of sex negativity, twisting the language of sexual liberation to demonize asexuals further...

And yes, polls play a role in all of this! Of course, not every poll about sexual experiences, for one example, is a poll intended to bait or to harm people! But if they blow up, there is a high risk of people feeling emboldened to comment things like: "so many people are okay with casual sex, or multiple sexual partners! this is what's wrong with the world, it's all just toxic hookup culture!" Or if not that, then things like: "look how few people on this virgin loser website have had sex! this is what's responsible for cultural sex negativity! they'd all be better, more progressive queers if they just got laid more!"

And that's not even getting into the obvious, and obviously intentional bait. The "cishet aromantic men" poll, most egregiously. Clout-chasers hide behind the veil of "I'm just curious about people's opinions!" and then, put out a poll catered to the most rancid, exclusionist, verging-on-radfem opinions. At the very least, catered to platforming them seriously, when people inevitably feel emboldened to say that shit they've been thinking.

And "emboldened" really is the key word here. These polls increase the social acceptability of saying cruel shit about polyamorous people, a-spec people, and whoever else becomes the queer community's acceptable target of the year. The groups discussed in this post are by no means the only popular targets for harassment and exclusionism, but they are some of the most egregious examples I've seen personally, and they are tied together by their non-normative approaches to relationships or lack thereof. Moreover, the groups overlap — I am personally aromantic and asexual, not polyamorous — but even then, my struggles with amatonormativity overlap with those of polyamorous people.

And I bring this up because for years, I've witnessed popular Tumblr bloggers attack a-specs and polyamorous people within the same posts. With the same tactics, using cringe culture in addition to demonizing alternative types of relationships. Now, polls are another weapon for harassing us. And, it is... absolutely exhausting.

Of course, there's obviously a sliding scale of how prone polls can be to harassment. I don't think polls just asking about people's sexual experiences need to be totally anathemized and blotted off the face of the earth, for example — but you know, maybe consider searching OP's blog for "asexual" and some other keywords before you reblog one?

Furthermore, maybe just don't reblog polls about "does X count as LGBTQ," even if you're in support, because you're still legitimizing the poll to begin with. Maybe proceed with caution with posts that mention polyamory, even if not in an inflammatory way, unless maybe you know that OP is polyam themselves. Maybe block, obviously don't harass, but just silently and unceremoniously block people that make a lot of clout-chasing polls about controversial queer issues.

I don't know. I don't have all the answers. I'm not an expert on catching these red flags myself — the first time I saw the polyamory poll, I ignored it just because it was irrelevant to me as a non-partnering person, not because I clocked it as something that would generate hate and threats. So really, if I do have a plea to end on — it's just to listen to people, polyam and a-spec and otherwise, when they say that some post is generating hate and threats towards them. And then, maybe, try to learn some red and orange flags from the experience.

None of us are part of every queer sub-community that Tumblr loves to harass. We all have blind spots, and that's inevitable, not a failure of you as a person. But after seeing so many of these bait polls go around, after seeing multiple rallying effects in the communities followed by people letting their guards down, and circulating a slightly different bait poll... well? I just hope that eventually, people will be willing to learn.

[indigosfindings]

ok here's my timeline of egyptian koopa/king tut Notable Events, mostly to sate my own desire for one

AUG 2000: paper mario is released for the n64, debuting the character tutankoopa

SEPT 2002: adrian barritt & richard horrocks found fuse games (later renamed silverball studios)--not long thereafter, they pitch mario pinball land (aka super mario ball) to nintendo and are greenlit (source)

AUG 2004: mario pinball land launches in japan, followed by an autumn release elsewhere. the boss of its desert world--a pharaoh-themed koopa (video)--goes unnamed in the game. a page (author uncredited) on the official japanese promo guide site for pinball land calls it ボスノコノコ ("boss nokonoko", i.e. "boss koopa"--this follows a similar convention to the jp names for big bully, sunshine's wiggler, petey piranha, & others)

SEPT 2004: a walkthrough on gamefaqs by user qqwref refers to that boss as "tutankoopa"--afaict this is the first time anyone has publicly referred to this character by any name in english!

OCT 2004: a japanese licensed guidebook published by shogakukan (akiharu tsuchida et al) uses the name ファラオノコノコ ("pharaoh nokonoko", thus "pharaoh koopa"). everyone say thank you mariowiki for cataloguing the image. (i verified the book's release date via the final photo on this sale listing)

NOV 2004: nintendo power issue 185 features a mario pinball land guide (author uncredited, probably one of the names on this page) which refers to the boss as "egyptian koopa". note also the "piranha pete" error on the same page & the "spikey" error on the preceding page. the same month, a gamefaqs guide calls the boss "pharoe (sic) koopa troopa"

DEC 2004: (possibly earlier?) the american & australian mario pinball land promo flash pages (author uncredited) feature a(n unpreserved) video titled "king tut", presumably in reference to this boss:

JUL 2006: tutankoopa's mariowiki.com page is updated to add the claim that he is the boss in pinball land

AUG 2006: the first version of mario pinball land's mariowiki page calls the boss "tutankoopa"

some time before MAR 2007: the mario characters guide on gamefaqs by user spacepope4u conflates tutankoopa with the pinball land boss. sadly the version history is not very robust so i can't verify when this was added. references to the "egyptian koopa" name from np are also included:

MAY 2007: the first version of the boss's mariowiki page is created under the name "king tut" (probably taking the name from the site above, albeit without citing it). a revision the following day adds the name "koop tut" as well. around the same time, conflation of "king tut" with tutankoopa is removed from both the tutankoopa page and the pinball land page. the "king tut" name begins to gain traction

FEB 2008: "koop tut" is removed from the mariowiki page

DEC 2009: on the wiki's talk page two users very briefly discuss whether this character should be considered the same as tutankoopa

2012: silverball studios is bought by barnstorm games (source). not really relevant but i thought it was interesting

APR 2015: a "citation needed" template is added to the "king tut" page

NOV 2015: a thread is created on super mario boards to discuss the "king tut" name situation. the name of the wiki page is changed to "egyptian koopa", following the nintendo power name above. that name proliferates on other platforms, such as this beautiful forum thread:

SEPT 2019: a singular japanese deviantart user uploads fanart & refers to this character in the caption as ボスカメック ("boss kamek", thus "boss magikoopa"--notably, this is the jp name for kamella) as far as i can tell, literally nobody else has ever used this name for this character

OCT 2023: i post a video on the subject. lol

NOV 2023: warioware: move it is released: a microgame in 9-volt's stage, "mario pinball land", features an appearance by "egyptian koopa" (video). it continues to go unnamed

JUN 2025: the flash site from 2004 is rediscovered by mariowiki users: the page is renamed back to king tut in accordance with this new information

to recap the names that have been used, in the order of first extant public usage:

boss koopa (ボスノコノコ): comes from the official japanese guide site in 2004. a cursory search suggests that it's the most common name used on the japanese web (ex: pixiv, nintendo wiki, niconico, wikipedia, twitter)

tutankoopa: unofficial conflation of this boss with the paper mario character. earliest known recorded use is in the 2004 gamefaqs guide above. what the boss was called on mariowiki from 2006 to 2007. a variety of other sources have (possibly independently) furthered this conflation (ex: youtube (1, 2, 3), khinsider, gamefaqs (1, 2, forum), lemmy's land)

pharaoh koopa (ファラオノコノコ): comes from the licensed japanese shogakukan guidebook in 2004. appears in some of the "boss koopa" sources above, but only as a parenthetical. used only once in english in a fan guide, probably without referent

egyptian koopa: officially printed in nintendo power in 2004, used as the primary name on mariowiki from 2015 to 2025. widely used on the english web (ex: youtube (1, 2, 3, 4), deviantart, fandom.com, spriters resource, tvtropes)

king tut: featured on the official flash promo site in 2004. the name on mariowiki from 2007 to 2015, and again as of june 2025. can be seen online in some sources from 2015 and earlier (ex. fantendo, giantbomb, blogspot, datacrystal, youtube)

koop tut: unofficial, appeared in the body of the mariowiki page from 2007 to 2008. may have been pulled from a super show episode. not used anywhere else afaict

boss magikoopa (ボスカメック): unofficial, used by a single deviantart user in 2019

[fiamat12]

Re: We were on a break!

The A saga always brings up more questions than answers about Lukola being on a break. People always think L is referring to him & N and not Colin & Pen when he references Ross & Rachel (R & R). It could be that he conflates his characters w/ himself quite often, thus why many believe Lukola did take a break in 2023 to make sure it was them who fell in love and not them taking on the feelings of their characters.

A few things to remember:

• Just like the songs they post, not every detail is going to match - in R & R's story they were actually dating and due to a fight Rachel says they should take a break and Ross immediately has a one night stand*. That is unlike Polin or Lukola (as far as we know) in general.

• In the Hollywood Reporter interview (below), L says to N that he knows she thinks R & R weren't on a break, indicating they've discussed it before, not that it necessarily applies to them or Polin. In fact, it indicates L knows he wouldn't be able to do that to N; CJ also says she knows N wouldn't think they were on a break.

• L says exactly how he thinks Polin is like R & R (and he never references the break moment)**:

"They are constantly missing each other and there are obstacles in the way".

"We always reference how Colin and Pen are like Ross and Rachel [from Friends], because it never works out at the right time. They keep just missing each other. It’s so fun to play the different versions, of when someone is ready to commit and the other isn’t."

• Was Lukola really on a break? It seems likely around Fall 2023 per the timeline (to review it, search my blog w/ the linked timelines). But Lukola's circumstances were very different from R & R; it was their work as co-stars that many believe complicated the matter.

• How does A play into this? She appears to have started hanging out w/ L's friend group when Lukola was on a break and perhaps thought that she was on track to date L, until Lukola reunited on the press tour and things quickly changed...

*The Friends story⬇️

** L's references to "Friends" in interviews ⬇️

[biracy]

I can't remember if I've posted abt this before but regardless: I'm sorry but I really and truly cannot get behind the idea that there is any wide-scale societal "pressure for trans men to be feminine" or "to be twinks" or whatever. You are either conflating a very small online community's beauty standard (usually some kind of transmasc pseudo-appropriation of "femboy" aesthetics, which yes, are often Bad and regressive and fetishized and etc.) with Mainstream Society, or confusing society not wanting trans men to transition with "wanting trans men to be feminine", which are certainly not the same thing. Ultimately if a cis person believes there is any validity to the concept of being trans (i.e. not a Posie Parker-esque "there's no such thing as a trans person" type), they are more likely to think that trans men should be like as masc and buff and hairy as possible or whatever bc that's what cis people think men look like and it's easier for a lot of people to recognize someone who Looks Masc as a man. It is difficult sometimes to see derision of trans guys who are Too Feminine and Not Hairy Enough or whatever (which is not always something someone has control over btw) as anything but "this is Skye who I think is a confused little girl because Skye does not pass" slightly restyled for 2023 "filthcore fagdykes" or whatever lol

[utilitycaster]

different anon, but the "theist DNI" ask was hilarious to me because I am still reeling from the post and especially OP going "the gods aren't really gods (because they're not omnipotent but just really powerful)" in it and then in the replies doubling down on the standpoint of "gods aren't real" - apparently just over the bank, basically conflating real world and Exandria in one fell swoop with this Universal Truth(tm) - because of course they can't produce any analysis of worth. they refuse to engage with basic tenets of the setting that do not fit their particular worldview. it really time and again comes back to people being unable to engage with religious concepts beyond a very superficial and milque-toast "Christianity evil, actually"

Yeah, this is true for like...a lot of the people claiming Campaign 3 is Great and we are all Not Leftist nor Intellectual Enough nor Capable of Parsing Black and White Morality; they say that and then they make and reblog posts with messages like "well you see the Good Brown People who were Colonized will Always be radicalized solely in the name of their own liberation haha don't look at any historical events from the last century", and in the end I do think it is all mostly in the name of trying to support the conclusion that killing the gods is definitely the right answer, and trying to work backwards from there to make the text fit.

I really didn't address the point that their arguments about the gods not being "real gods" were absolutely nonsensical (pro-tip: in a media analysis you can't just reference other works of fiction nor, if any of these ignoramuses did, literary and/or political theory, without actually analyzing them and drawing comparisons in the service of a thesis; "gods in this work are different than the gods in Exandria" is not actually a meaningful statement given that it's like yes Runescape and Exandria are two entirely different settings, things are different) but as always, follow the thread and the implications and you'll find the problems: so if the problem is that the gods are powerful but not all powerful, or don't admit they're not all powerful...does that mean they're ok? If they had given Ashton and Imogen what they wanted, would that mean that killing the titans and Aeor was totally fine? Is your argument that the gods are a colonizing force because they are from outside of Exandria and because they (with the people of Exandria) killed the titans (but the people of Exandria are ok for doing this for reasons of [crickets]) or is your argument that they are a colonizing force bc they didn't kiss your blorbo so sweetly on the head and tell them everything they were doing was good and correct? Because this really is leaning towards the latter. It is, again, an individual grievance falsely claimed to be a system of oppression.

And that's really the key. We are looking at a party with a lot of valid personal traumas, but virtually nothing in the way of in-world systemic oppression, and I do not think it is a coincidence that this party has a unique appeal for a group of people who are overwhelmingly white, overwhelmingly from financially stable upbringings, overwhelmingly from wealthy Western countries, and overwhelmingly people who were raised Christian, left the religion, became some kind of dullard nihilist who labors under the misapprehension that this makes them leftist, and really, really fucking hate being reminded that they are not, in fact, remotely close to being Christianity's greatest victims. It has a unique appeal for people who are obsessed with painting themselves as powerless to enact change - who, as I said in earlier tags and also like a billion posts dating back to at least early 2023, fetishize and glorify a lack of agency - because then haha you can't blame them! they can't do anything! I think they're REALLY mad, actually, that one of the most prominent critiques of Campaign 3 has become "this indecision and inaction and endless waffling is actually insufferable" because that drives a spike through the idea that you can evade judgment through doing nothing, despite this being like, one of the most basic ethical concepts. And again just as I don't think the CR cast is doing THAT message on purpose any more so than a (horrendously flawed to the point of failure) anticolonialism message, I just think that the mismatch of plot and character and the multitude of issues in the execution have unintentionally presented themselves in this manner.

Anyway yeah this inability to consider the idea that maybe Bells Hells have a wildly limited viewpoint and so do you is superficial, it's self-obsessed, and it's so goddamn banal.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

The Guardian:

In early March, the Trump administration sent warning letters to 60 US universities it said were facing “potential enforcement actions” for what it described as “failure to protect Jewish students on campus” in the wake of widespread pro-Palestinian protests on campuses last year. The president of Cornell University, which was on the list, responded with a defiant op-ed in the New York Times, arguing that universities, and their students, could weather debates and protests over the war in Gaza. “Universities, despite rapidly escalating political, legal and financial risks, cannot afford to cede the space of public discourse and the free exchange of ideas,” the Cornell University president Michael Kotlikoff wrote on 31 March. On Tuesday, the Trump administration froze over $1bn in funding for Cornell University, a US official said. The administration also froze $790m for Northwestern University, which hosts a prominent journalism school.

The funding pause includes mostly grants and contracts with the federal departments of health, education, agriculture and defense, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. The newly announced funding freezes at Cornell and Northwestern come as Brown, Columbia, Harvard, Princeton and the University of Pennsylvania face similar investigations. The New York Times estimated that at least $3.3bn in elite university federal funding has already been frozen by the Trump administration in the past month, with billions more under review. In a statement Tuesday night, Cornell officials said that they were aware of “media reports” suggesting the federal government was freezing $1bn in federal grants. “While we have not received information that would confirm this figure, earlier today Cornell received more than 75 stop work orders from the Department of Defense related to research that is profoundly significant to American national defense, cybersecurity, and health.�� Cornell officials said the affected grants “include research into new materials for jet engines, propulsion systems, large-scale information networks, robotics, superconductors, and space and satellite communications, as well as cancer research.” Northwestern also said it was aware of media reports about the funding freeze but had not received any official notification from the government and that it has cooperated in the investigation. “Federal funds that Northwestern receives drive innovative and life-saving research, like the recent development by Northwestern researchers of the world’s smallest pacemaker, and research fueling the fight against Alzheimer’s disease. This type of research is now in jeopardy,” a Northwestern spokesperson said.

[...] Trump has attempted to crack down on pro-Palestinian campus protests against US ally Israel’s devastating military assault on Gaza, which has caused a humanitarian crisis in the territory following a deadly October 2023 attack by Hamas. The US president has called the protesters antisemitic, has labeled them as sympathetic to Hamas and foreign policy threats. Protesters, including some Jewish groups, say the Trump administration wrongly conflates their criticism of Israel’s actions in Gaza and advocacy for Palestinian rights with antisemitism and support for Hamas. Human rights advocates have raised free speech and academic freedom concerns over the crackdown by the Trump administration.

Tyrant 47 freezes funds to Cornell and Northwestern Universities in a crackdown on pro-Palestinian speech under the guise of “protecting Jewish students.”

[marypickfords]

“While attending Smith College from 1915 to 1919, the white girl crafted mixed-media diaries where she engages in epistolary soliloquies with an imaginary male interlocutor named ‘Jonathan.’ [...] A fear of morbidity pervades [Helena Edna] Davis’s letters to Jonathan, their self-accusatory tone as constant and troubling as that threading through Medora Espy’s contemporaneous diaries. Drawing on clinical terminology, Davis characterizes her ‘moods and strange feelings’ as symptoms of being ‘supersensitive or extremely sentimental.’ ‘Queer isn’t it?’ the nineteenyear-old muses, rhetorically conflating multiple vectors of divergence under perceived pathology. Davis goes on to describe herself as ‘supersensitive—or else crazy!,’ a ‘sentimental nut,’ ‘a huge joke,’ and ‘plain nuts.’ [...] Davis fleshes out this self-diagnosed deviance through film consumption. Her college diaries are dotted with drawings, newspaper clippings, stage programs, and amateur Kodaks, but only one image of a celebrity: Lillian Gish. A pocket-sized headshot, the sepia ephemera is collaged next to an entry where the moviegoer shares her secret ‘queer’ yearning: ‘I wish I were a man.’ Davis continues in a pressed speech, ‘I wouldn’t let Cora and Beth know it for the world. But there are times!—. . . I wonder, sometimes, that they don’t suspect. I hunger for it so, & they never understand!’ ‘Isn’t Lillian Gish appropriate up there?’ the girl blurts out at the end of her admission.”

— Diana W. Anselmo, from A Queer Way of Feeling: Girl Fans and Personal Archives of Early Hollywood (2023)

[everyday-is-brighter-with-you]

[ ID: Tweets from jia whose handle is @heartkiss_ on 28 October 2023 reading:

what is happening in palestine and sudan and the congo are not disparate causes that require dividing our attention, it is the same fight, several groups are facing occupation without coverage while palestine is being scapegoated, standing with palestine is standing with the rest

it's similar, in my mind, to how standing with haiti when they are repeatedly made an example of on the world stage is never solely about haiti, but about standing with the carribean, with enslaved africans, and with indigenous peoples across the 'new world' in general

corrections, as growing up in the imperial (imperial is censored with an exclamation mark) core has skewed my perspective: 1.calling congo "the congo" has imperialist (imperialist is censored with an exclamation mark) implications 2. while it's fair to link western black struggles to palestine the erasure of genocide on the african continent is more complicated than I thought

we can't conflate what is happening in congo or sudan to palestine, there is a history of northern african countries and countries in the middle east denying the atrocities there due to antiblack sentiment, we ought to highlight that erasure in discussions about global solidarity

end ID]

[all-things-are-nothing-to-me]

"Authoritarians may seek to control an individual's body. Since anti-oppression is the basis for anarchist thought, some individuals or groups have found that those who identify as anarchists are most sensitive to accusations of being oppressive. This sensitivity is exploited in order to conflate a mere opinion with fact, giving it the power to control. This may range from an opinion that one race has ownership over a particular hairstyle, to an opinion that one sex has ownership over a particular gender or gender expression. Authoritarians may then seek to ban individuals who openly disagree with these opinions from events or spaces, or even enact physical violence on them."

"Authoritarians who find power with identity politics are quick to disregard, silence, or altogether erase perspectives that are not socially valuable in upholding their dogmatic and unnuanced view of oppression. Any ideas coming from those belonging to the oppressed category are given precedence, regardless of their relevance to anti-authoritarianism; while any ideas held by those belonging to the oppressor category are automatically treated as suspect or less worthy of consideration.

This leads to the acceptance and proliferation of a subculture where those perceived as oppressors are intentionally given less opportunity than those categorized as oppressed. Rather than creating genuine equality by abolishing identity categories (along with their corresponding forms of oppression), the larger social hierarchy is inverted, and oppressive power is merely transferred rather than destroyed."

[mariacallous]

In April, as the world economy reeled from U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer posted on X, “Nero fiddled. Trump golfed.” Schumer joined a long history of comparing Trump to ancient Romans. Trump is Augustus concentrating the power of the Republic in a single authoritarian individual, a cruel and capricious Caligula, a demagogue in the model of Tiberius Gracchus or Publius Clodius Pulcher.

But most often, he’s compared to Julius Caesar, who in 49 B.C. led his soldiers across the Rubicon, the river marking the border between the province of Cisalpine Gaul and the area directly controlled by Rome. In bringing a legion across the Rubicon, Caesar broke the laws limiting his power. According to the Roman historian Suetonius, on crossing Caesar declared, “The die has been cast.” After five years of civil war, he was declared dictator for life in 44 B.C. and famously assassinated soon after.

The parallels between Caesar and Trump have proved so attractive that the comparison has collapsed under its own weight and inverted itself. Caesar is now compared to Trump, with a 2017 production of William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar and a 2023 BBC documentary series about Caesar’s dictatorship both explicitly conflating the two figures.

We don’t know the exact date when Caesar crossed the Rubicon, nor do we know precisely where. But Trump’s Rubicons have been many, as psychologist and writer Mary L. Trump, the president’s niece, has pointed out. Every few weeks, a pundit declares that Trump has crossed some Rubicon or other. The references are so frequent that, just days after Schumer’s post comparing Trump to Nero, historian Michele Renee Salzman published an impassioned piece in Zócalo Public Square titled “Stop Comparing Trump’s Lawbreaking to Caesar Crossing the Rubicon.”

Use of the Rubicon metaphor isn’t limited to critics of Trump. Rioters on Jan. 6, 2021, carried banners with the popular hashtag #CrossTheRubicon, hinting at the ubiquity of Rubicon rhetoric in far-right online spaces that I describe in my 2018 book, Not All Dead White Men. In 2022, Newt Gingrich explored in Newsweek whether the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago was a Rubicon moment, and in 2024, the Washington Times published an editorial titled “Democrats cross the Rubicon with Trump guilty verdict.”

Salzman’s critique of the Rubicon metaphor is that it doesn’t go far enough. Caesar, she argues, wanted to basically maintain the Roman political system with himself in charge: “When Caesar crossed the Rubicon, his goal was specific and limited. Caesar had no desire to remake the republic nor to destroy the way Roman politics worked. He simply wanted to bring his army with him to run for election for consul.”

Trump’s ambitions, Salzman writes, are far wider-ranging: “Unlike Caesar’s limited goals in 49 B.C.E, Trump desires to bring widespread change to our republic—overturning everything from decades of foreign policy and lawfully constituted federal agencies to medical research, education, and the law.”

It isn’t difficult to pick apart a comparison between Trump and Caesar, if you so wish.

Both were populists, but Trump is also a historically unpopular president, with his popularity rating at 100 days the lowest in 80 years. Caesar, in contrast, had a wide base of support as both a generous patron and a renowned general. Both were extremely wealthy, but Caesar was well known as a brilliant military strategist and a man of learning, respected even by fellow polymaths such as Cicero, who peppered his letters to Caesar with erudite references to Greek literature. (Caesar may have really said, on his crossing, “let the die be cast,” a quote from the Greek comedian Menander.)

But such nitpicking seems, ultimately, somewhat beyond the point. Of course, Trump doesn’t perfectly resemble a dictator from a vastly different political system more than 2,000 years ago (even if both were a bit self-conscious about their thinning hair). Trying to predict what’s coming next by looking to ancient Rome is an understandable but pointless exercise.

As historian Rhiannon Garth Jones argues in her recent book All Roads Lead to Rome, there is a long, rich history of empires defining themselves in conversation with Rome and using Rome as a shorthand, a way to express imperial power. Rome’s meaning is, it seems, in the eye of the beholder.

What do all of these Rubicon comparisons amount to? Commentators seem to want to declare that this moment, this action, this event is a point of no return, heralding vast change. Maybe they’re right, although the lessons of historical events are often opaque to those living through them. Maybe, to Romans in the 40s, Caesar’s crossing of the Rubicon was also just one of a series of events that felt completely unthinkable, dissolving all agreed-on norms and rules.

Maybe they felt just as unmoored as we do, searching desperately for a historical comparison to help them make sense of their own times, finding a precedent for the unprecedented. According to the Greek historian Polybius, when the Roman general Scipio looked out at the ruins of conquered Carthage, he quoted a line from Homer about the inevitability of the fall of Troy; perhaps Caesar’s contemporaries did something similar.

To me, these comparisons speak to the paralyzing but tantalizing futility of situating the present moment in conversation with the classical past. As with most comparisons, comparing Trump and Caesar ultimately tells you more about the person making the comparison than it does about either of the leaders involved. The Rubicon metaphor is so overused that, while it might be important for some people, it’s past the point of being meaningful as a way to explain the feeling of cherished democratic norms being transgressed on a near-daily basis.

The lesson of Rubicon metaphors may be this: When they’re utilized by the left, they signal discomfort with Trump’s actions. When used by the right, they signal a documented willingness to take collective action, even if it comes to violence. Maybe rioters holding banners understand the lessons of history better than pundits and historians do. Only time will tell.

[darkmaga-returns]

Anti-Trump progressives are shouting the now-ascendant Republicans are going to “take away your healthcare” and “deny Americans their ACA insurance.” Bravo! Because if that happens then finally, maybe, Americans might get the health...care they need when they need it without declaring bankruptcy.

There is healthcare, health insurance, and health care: all different yet frequently conflated. Healthcare as one word is a massive, byzantine system that consumed nearly 18 percent of U.S. GDP in 2023 ($4.9 trillion, more than the entire GDP of Japan.) 

Health insurance is a promissory note to deliver specified “benefits” (medical care) in return for a premium paid. Such insurance is widely considered, albeit falsely, the necessary key to getting medical care. People with insurance frequently cannot get care, and most uninsured do get care because of EMTALA’s (Emergency Medical Transport and Labor Act of 1986) unfunded mandate.

The benefits or medical care provided by insurance is at the discretion of the insurer rather than chosen by the patient with advice from the doctor. Denials of needed care are common. Wait times to see a physician are dangerously long, with an average maximum of more than 132 days. Death by queue has been documented in both Medicaid and Tricare patients — they are dying while waiting in line (a queue) for technically possible care that is not provided in time to save them.