#excerpt: the book of the damned
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‘We cannot defeat the Imperium with lies, because they can lie better than we can.’
-Alpha legion guy.
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Folks, hear me out.
DAILY...Wind in the Willows.
#wind in the willows#I know it would be pretty damn short compared to dracula daily#but it would be oh so fun#tumblr would love this book#I want to check this book out too all I ever saw was snippets of adaptations and an excerpt used in anthology book#there were some weird adaptations I'm pretty sure the two anthropomorphic ones were my first time seeing furries#anyway I've been too busy writing my own book and moving out to read another book let me have emailed pieces
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Book Carrie when she sees a gas station
#just finished the carrie book and holy shit#i get why all of you like sue now#i think i still prefer them movie just because i'm more of a movie person than a book person#but i love the little thought parentheses moments and the excerpts from reports and books from after#and wow norma and the gym teacher made it out alive damn#the moment when carrie felt tommys pain when the bucket fell got to me rip to a legend#carrie#carrie white#memes
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Bonsai – Alejandro Zambra
#bonsai alejandro zambra#book first sentence#this is one damn good novella#alejandro zambra#quote#excerpt#x
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Principal Kingston is sitting at one of the long tables, flipping through a copy of Sports Illustrated. He looks up as the doors close behind me.
"Our little roach girl! Come in, come in. Mr Gabriel's finishing up in the back. Have a seat!" He indicates the chair across from him.
I sit and look at him warily.
"I have to say, I was surprised when Mr. Gabriel told me about your offer," he says, leaning forward over his magazine. "But I think it's fantastic that you're able to see the big picture here. Thinking outside the box and all that. And even if your reasons are a little misguided, I am happy to be doing business with you. People so rarely consider alliances with their enemies to reach the greater goal these days. It's a shame, really." He shakes his head, apparently at the shame of it all. "So! How are your classes going?"
- Evil Librarian, Michelle Knudsen
#admittedly kingston was always my favourote demon in these books XDD#he aint there for long but i thought he was so fun XD#that whole scene where he and gabriel are talking only slightlyyyy threatening at each other#and he's holding onto cynthias hand so she cant get away#and she's literally got her foot on his thigh#trynna yank her hand away from him#was great XDDD#also? a strong principal wearing cargo pants? damn if thats jot my type 😅😅#Principal Kingston#Principal George Kingston#Evil Librarian#Michelle Knudsen#Evil Librarian by Michelle Knudsen#Book Villains#Mr Gabriel#Mr John Gabriel#Book Villain Excerpts
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i need authors to stop referencing shit like tumblr or grubhub or other Name Brand Companies in their books it is SO jarring and it immediately dates your writing and also just reads as a free advertisement like 99% of the time
#just read an excerpt of that corny ass scifi book going around rn#all on One page the guy references grubhub uber eats disney frozen and the book snow crash#all on ONE page. all by Name#and clearly pop culture references are like a Thing bc he also references pitch perfect later#i dont think having a couple is a terrible thing (ive done it myself usually as an homage to old horror movies)#but like. writing that many references in a SINGLE page is awful#covid is also a part of the plot which i don't have a problem with generally obviously that's something#ppl will be writing about for a long time. but combining it with everything else just makes me cringe#we get it u are hip and modern#wild thing is that i dont even think that author is a bad writer im actually familiar with some of his other work#but. damn that writing was Bad
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#arc reader#arc reviewer#book reviewer#book blog#book blogger#book influencer#netgalley#st martins press#jay kristoff#empire of the damned#empire of the vampire#book teaser#book excerpt#book sampler
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Hey so like many of you, I saw that article about how people are going into college having read no classic books. And believe it or not, I've been pissed about this for years. Like the article revealed, a good chunk of American Schools don't require students to actually read books, rather they just give them an excerpt and tell them how to feel about it. Which is bullshit.
So like. As a positivity post, let's use this time to recommend actually good classic books that you've actually enjoyed reading! I know that Dracula Daily and Epic the Musical have wonderfully tricked y'all into reading Dracula and The Odyssey, and I've seen a resurgence of Picture of Dorian Gray readership out of spite for N-tflix, so let's keep the ball rolling!
My absolute favorite books of all time are The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson. Classic psychological horror books about unhinged women.
I adore The Bad Seed by William March. It's widely considered to be the first "creepy child" book in American literature, so reading it now you're like "wow that's kinda cliche- oh my god this is what started it. This was ground zero."
I remember the feelings of validation I got when people realized Dracula wasn't actually a love story. For further feelings of validation, please read Frankenstein by Mary Shelley and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson. There's a lot the more popular adaptations missed out on.
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier is an absolute gem of a book. It's a slow-build psychological study so it may not be for everyone, but damn do the plot twists hit. It's a really good book to go into blind, but I will say that its handling of abuse victims is actually insanely good for the time period it was written in.
Moving on from horror, you know people who say "I loved this book so much I couldn't put it down"? That was me as a kid reading A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett. Picked it up while bored at the library and was glued to it until I finished it.
Peter Pan and Wendy by JM Barrie was also a childhood favorite of mine. Next time someone bitches about Woke Casting, tell them that the original 1911 Peter Pan novel had canon nonbinary fairies.
Watership Down by Richard Adams is my sister Cori's favorite book period. If you were a Warrior Cats, Guardians of Ga'Hoole or Wings of Fire kid, you owe a metric fuckton to Watership Down and its "little animals on a big adventure" setup.
A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry was a play and not a book first, but damn if it isn't a good fucking read. It was also named after a Langston Hughes poem, who's also an absolutely incredible author.
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury is a book I absolutely adore and will defend until the day I die. It's so friggin good, y'all, I love it more than anything. You like people breaking out of fascist brainwashing? You like reading and value knowledge? You wanna see a guy basically predict the future of television back in 1953? Read Fahrenheit.
Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain and To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee are considered required reading for a reason: they're both really good books about young white children unlearning the racial biases of their time. Huck Finn specifically has the main character being told that he will go to hell if he frees a slave, and deciding eternal damnation would be worth it.
As a sidenote, another Mark Twain book I was obsessed with as a kid was A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. Exactly what it says on the tin, incredibly insane read.
If Beale Street Could Talk by James Baldwin is a heartbreaking but powerful book and a look at the racism of the time while still centering the love the two black protagonists feel for each other. Giovanni's Room by the same author is one that focuses on a MLM man struggling with his sexuality, and it's really important to see from the perspective of a queer man living in the 50s– as well as Baldwin's autobiographical novel, Go Tell it on the Mountain.
Agatha Christie mysteries are all still absolutely iconic, but Murder on the Orient Express is such a good read whether or not you know the end twist.
Maybe-controversial-maybe-not take: Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov is a good book if you have reading comprehension. No, you're not supposed to like the main character. He pretty much spells that out for you at the end ffs.
Animal Farm by George Orwell was another favorite of mine; it was written as an obvious metaphor for the rise of fascism in Russia at the time and boy does it hit even now.
And finally, please read Shakespeare plays. As soon as you get used to their way of talking, they're not as hard to understand as people will lead you to believe. My absolute favorite is Twelfth Night- crossdressing, bisexual love triangles, yellow stockings... it's all a joy.
and those are just the ones i thought of off the top of my head! What're your guys' favorite classic books? Let's make everyone a reading list!
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Do you like Kakashi's dogs? Let's talk about why there are eight of them.
another example of naruto's ✨cultural code✨
contents | the eight dog warriors chronicles · legacy · eight confucian virtues. also look at the cuties love them sm
Naruto Vol. 10 CH 90
[ one dog is wonderful, I'm saying as the owner of a sweet little york terrier. two dogs are good, they won't be bored together. three dogs? yeah, cool! how are you going to walk them though? four? yes... look, maybe we have to draw the line h- wha- EIGHT? Excuse Me!? ]
surely, it's worth starting with the fact that eight is a lucky number in Japanese culture — everybody watched Hachi. of course, this is not the only cultural detail where the eight is mentioned. I want to pay special attention to a thing that I didn't know about until I googled it, and this is clearly what Kishimoto was doing homage to with Kakashi's eight ninken.
The Eight Dog Warriors Chronicles
Better known as Nansō Satomi Hakkenden. and it's not just some kind of book, it's a novel, consisting of 106 booklets written by Kyokutei Bakin in XIX century. Hakkenden is considered the largest novel in the history of Japanese Literature. this is one of the main representatives of the gesaku genre, which includes works of a frivolous, joking, silly nature. further I will emphasize a few more times how damn popular this work is and how often it is reflected in culture.
here are some illustrations for these books
now let's talk about the plot. It's weird, but it's weird at samurai-dogs-story level so stay here.
In brief, the story tells about the commander Satomi Yoshizane, whose native lands were attacked by the army of a man, whose forces surpassed those of Satomi, and the samurai in despair swore to a dog named Yatsufusa that the dog would get his beloved daughter Fuse as a wife if he chewed that man's throat. surprisingly, the dog not only understood the owner, but also fulfilled his wish! after that the commander refused to keep the promise. however, Fuse, true to her word of honor, went with Yatsufusa to the mountains and became his wife. upon learning that his daughter was pregnant, Satomi, in a rage, sent a samurai to kill Yatsufusa and bring Fuse home. she stood up for the dog anyways and died with him. at that moment, eight pearls with hieroglyphs that denoted the foundations of Confucian virtue burst out of her womb. (...cheers for mythology, I guess)
Soon, eight dog warriors who were Fuse's spiritual children were born in different parts of Awa province. after going through hardships, they got together and became vassals of the Satomi clan, then won the battle, and soon reached peace.
some more illustrations made by Utagawa Kuniyoshi. from left to right: Inukawa Sōsuke (the dog warrior), Inumura Daikaku (the dog warrior), Princess Fuse (their mother).
the novel mainly tells about each individual warrior dog and his shenanigans in a funny adventurous way. huge fame has led to excerpts from Hakkenden being staged at the Kabuki Theater and mentioned in the anime and manga, such as Inuyasha, Dragon Ball, as it turned out, Naruto and so on. there's also a lot of films and video games.
The eight virtues
these are loyalty, filial piety, benevolence, love, honesty, justice, harmony, and peace.
they relate more to Chinese culture, but basically Hakkenden was inspired by it too. since I did not read the whole novel, I would still like to mention at least the values on which it is based, and which were embedded in the symbolism of this story. It's quite interesting to apply this to Kakashi's dogs. gives them more weight and depth.
It is also interesting to note that the reason why Fuse gave birth to dogs was also that her father was cursed earlier in the story in a way that his descendants would become depraved like dogs. in Japanese culture, dogs embody the duality of character: the same mentioned filth and depravity, and devotion and bravery. so as samurai. but this is a different conversation, more related to Kakashi and his dog poetry.
Did you get here? Here's an additional discovery for you✨
Pakkun's name (パックン) is derived from the Japanese onomatopoeia “pakupaku” (パクパク) which reflects the sound of munching.
Kakashi, that's very sweet of you.
thank you for reading this to the end ♡
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Little excerpt of the next Masked chapter for you all:
“Hey Damian,” Dick said with a smile that he hoped didn’t look too forced.
“Grayson,” Damian sniffed.
“I brought you something!” Dick pulled his backpack off and searched around for it. He had brought something for each of his brothers. He was trying, damn it. The grey and white stuffed animal cat was stupidly soft in Dick’s hands as he pulled it out. “Tada!”
Damian leaned back. “What is it?”
Dick blinked. “What? It’s a stuffed animal. I know you didn’t get to really bring much of anything with you, so I thought something comforting would be nice.”
“I am not a child, I do not need to be comforted.”
Dick bit back the retort that Damian was very much a child and just set the stuffed animal down on the edge of the table.
“Everyone needs comfort. But it’s okay if you don’t want it! Just leave it there if not and I’ll see that it gets donated or something. It’s—yeah,” Dick said, making himself cut off any blabber. It’s fine, Damian didn’t have to like him. “I’m going to gather up Jason and Tim to play a game before lunch if you want to join us. If not, that’s okay too!”
Damian just gave a little click of his tongue and regarded Dick coldly as Dick made his escape.
One brother down, two to go. Tim next. Tim was easier than Jason.
Tim was, though, challenging to track down.
“Hey Tim, what are you doing out here?” Dick asked when he finally found Tim on a balcony that was really more decorative than functional.
Tim started and dropped his pen. It rolled off the balcony and fell, fell, fell down into the bushes blow.
Tim sighed.
Dick winced. “Sorry about that, I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“You didn’t scare me. I was just surprised,” Tim said as he quickly closed the folder that he had been had been working in. He hunched slightly around it. “I didn’t even know you were in town.”
“Still, I’m sorry. I’m just back until after lunch. I wanted to see you’d like to play a game. Oh, and give you these.” Dick fished the plastic box out of his bag and handed it over. “I noticed your skateboard wheels were pretty worn out, and I know you can just get what you normally have, but I thought I’d get you something fun to try too. These are supposed to be good on wet pavement and, well, it is Gotham.”
“Oh.” Tim just blinked at Dick, like he’d never been given a ‘just because’ present and didn’t know what to do, before he finally reached out and took the box. He peered at the green, wavey shaped wheels curiously. “These are great. I’ll put them on before I go out next time.”
“Yeah?” Disk smiled. “Cool. Let me know how they do, okay?”
Tim smiled shyly back. “Yeah.”
“Okay, right.” Dick gave his hands a clap. “Meet me in the living room? I’ve got to track down Jason still.”
“Try the library,” Tim suggested.
Dick gave a little salute as he set off that way. It was his first guess too. Jason always spent time in the library when he was trying to avoid big emotions and right then there were a lot of big emotions. Dick got it. He wanted to be back at the Tower curled up with Phantom. Instead he was rapping his knuckles against the door frame of the library as he entered it.
Jason was in ‘his’ seat—a seat that had remained empty since… since Jason’s death. Now that Jason was back, miraculously alive, the seat was finally be used again. It made Dick’s heart full to see it and he couldn’t help the smile that lit up his face.
“Hey, little wing.”
“Don’t call me that,” Jason growled.
Well, he wasn’t so little any more, Dick supposed. He tried not to let the response ruin his happiness.
“Sorry, Jay. I’ve got something for you!” Dick pulled out the paper wrapped package and bounced over to Jason.
Jason just eyed it warily, like it would bite. “What is it?”
“Just open it.”
“Tell me what it is.”
Dick held back a sigh. “It’s just books, Jason.”
Finally Jason reached out and took the package. He was still cautious as he pealed back the paper. Then he got that confused look on the face he had a lot since coming back.
“I figured while you were… gone,” Dick said. Jason snorted sourly, “that you wouldn’t have been able to finish the series. I know that you were reading it before.”
“You mean before I was killed,” Jason said. He threw the words out so casually, tossed between them like a bear trap. “I’m not a fucking kid anymore.”
Dick held back saying that eighteen was still basically a kid, he remembered how he had been at eighteen. He had thought himself such an adult.
Breathe. “I know you’re not. But I just… I thought you’d still like to see how the series ended. If I’m wrong, that’s okay. Maybe Damian would like to read them someday. It doesn’t hurt the library to have more books.”
“…yeah, doesn’t hurt,” Jason said. He brushed his fingers over the cover.
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A media literacy handbook for Israel-Gaza
Next Tuesday (Oct 31) at 10hPT, the Internet Archive is livestreaming my presentation on my recent book, The Internet Con.
Media explainers are a cheap way to become an instant expert on everything from billionaire submarine excursions to hellaciously complex geopolitical conflicts, but On The Media's "Breaking News Consumers' Handbooks" are explainers that help you understand other explainers:
https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/segments/breaking-news-consumers-handbook-israel-and-gaza-edition-on-the-media
The latest handbook is an Israel-Gaza edition. It doesn't aim to parse fine distinctions over the definition of "occupation" or identify the source of shell fragments. Rather, it offers seven bullet points' worth of advice on weighing all the other news you hear about the war:
https://media.wnyc.org/media/resources/2023/Oct/27/BNCH_ISRAEL_GAZA_EDITION_1.pdf
I. "Headlines are obscured by the fog of war"
Headline writers have a hard job under the best of circumstances – trying to snag your interest in a few words. Headlines can't encompass all the nuance of a story, and they are often written by editors, not the writers who produced the story. Between the imperatives for speed and brevity and the broken telephone between editors and writers, it's easy for headlines to go wrong, even when no one is attempting to mislead you. Even reliable outlets will screw up headlines sometimes – and that likelihood goes way up in times like these. You gotta read the story, not just the headline.
II. Know red flags for bullshit
The factually untrue information that spreads furthest tends to originate with a handful of superspreader accounts. Whether these people are Just Wrong or malicious disinfo peddlers, they share a few characteristics that should trip your BS meter and prompt extra scrutiny:
High-frequency posting
Emotionally charged framing
Posts that purport to be summaries or excerpts from news outlets, but do not include links to the original
The phrase "breaking news" (no one has that many scoops)
III. Don't trust screenshots
Screenshots of news stories, tweets, and other social media should come with links to the original. It's just too damned easy to fake a screenshot.
IV. "Know your platform"
It used to be that Twitter got a lot of first-person accounts from people in the thick of crises, while Facebook and Reddit contained commentary and reposts. Today, Twitter is just another aggregator. This time around, there's lots of first-person, real-time reporting coming off Telegram (it runs well on old phones and doesn't chew up batteries). Instagram is widely used in both Israel and the West Bank.
V. "Crisis actors" aren't a thing
People who attribute war images to "crisis actors" are either deluded or lying. There's plenty of ways to distort war news, but paying people to pretend to be grieving family members is essentially unheard of. Any explanation that involves crisis actors is a solid reason to permanently block that source.
VI. There's plenty of ways to verify stuff that smells fishy
TinEye, Yandex and Google Image Search are all good tools for checking "breaking" images and seeing if they're old copypasta ganked from earlier conflicts (or, you know, video-games). The fact that an image doesn't show up in one of these searches doesn't guarantee its authenticity, of course.
VII. Think before you post
Israel-Gaza is the most polluted media pool yet. Don't make it worse.
There's plenty more detail on this (especially on the use of verification tools) in Brooke Gladstone's radio segment:
https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/episodes/on-the-media-breaking-news-consumers-handbook-israel-gaza-edition
The media environment sucks, and warrants skepticism and caution. But we also need to be skeptical of skepticism itself! As danah boyd started saying all the way back in 2018, weaponized media literacy leads to conspiratorialism:
https://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2018/03/09/you-think-you-want-media-literacy-do-you.html
Remember, the biggest peddlers of "fake news" are also the most prolific users of the term. For a lot of these information warriors, the point isn't to get you to believe them – they'll settle for you believing nothing. "Flood the zone with bullshit" is Steve Bannon's go-to tactic, and it's one that his acolytes have picked up and multiplied.
It's important to be a critical thinker, but there's plenty of people who've figured out how to weaponize a critical viewpoint and turn it into nihilism. Remember, the guy who wrote How To Lie With Statistics was a tobacco industry shill who made his living obfuscating the link between smoking and cancer. It's absolutely possible to lie with statistics, but it's also possible to use statistics to know the truth, as Tim Harford explains in his 2021 must-read book The Data Detective:
https://pluralistic.net/2021/01/04/how-to-truth/#harford
There's a world of difference between being misled and being brainwashed. A lot of today's worry about "disinformation" and "misinformation" has the whiff of a moral panic:
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2023/10/are-we-having-a-moral-panic-over-misinformation.html
It's possible to have a nuanced view of this subject – to take steps to enure you're not being tricked without equating crude tricks like sticking a fake BBC chyron on a 10-year-old image with unstoppable mind-control:
https://sts-news.medium.com/youre-doing-it-wrong-notes-on-criticism-and-technology-hype-18b08b4307e5
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/28/fog-o-war/#breaking-news
#pluralistic#media literacy#fake news#disinformation#misinformation#israel gaza#gaza#israel#palestine#conspiratorialism#hoaxes#infowar#on the media#breaking news#npr#flood the zone
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Some more info taken from dailymail & other news sources — what we currently know about Luigi Maginone.
(pictured is the mcdonalds he was found at)
info under the cut.
!THIS IS AN EDUCATIONAL POST!
This section is specifically about his manifesto, and the things contained in his manifesto. I will regularly update this section with new information. There is not much currently known
Some lines from the manifesto were revealed:
'I do apologize for any strife and trauma, but it had to be done.'
'These parasites had it coming' ( Not potentially credible.. )
2. "The manifesto also stated that Mangione was acting alone and had funded himself."
The document was two pages long, and is currently being investigated by law enforcement.
This section is specifically about him & his personal life.
Luigi Mangione is 26 years old, an ivy league graduate from maryland who had two degrees from the University of Pennsylvania, and graduated from his high school with the highest cumulative four-year GPA.
2. a Facebook post from six years ago was written about Luigi Mangione. The page was set up for anonymous college kids to write love notes to their crushes.
2a. The post read: 'Luigi Mangione. Hot damn. Are you single? You make us engineers have hope!' 2b. Mangione, who graduated from UPenn in 2020, responded: 'Despite all my best efforts... yup still single.'
3. Luigi Mangione is heir to holiday resort fortune created by his grandparents and has sister who's top doctor. His family is deemed "powerful"
3a. His family is centered around the late patriarch Nicholas Mangiano, a first-generation American who built a real estate empire in the state that included country clubs and media.
4. He would talk about the virtues of homicide on his twitter account. " While not giving his own opinion, Mangione's conclusion seems to show that homicide can be virtuous if the action is utilitarian - as in, being an action that maximizes happiness and well-being for the greatest number of people. "
5. he had a fascination with backpain, health, and the medical industry.
5a. " Details from the suspected shooter's social media reveal that he was obsessed with the back pain - and had read two books on the matter. " 5b. " 'Crooked: Outwitting the Back Pain Industry and Getting on the Road to Recovery' by Cathryn Ramin, and 'Back Mechanic' By Dr Stuart McGill. "
6. also on his goodreads account; he seems to admire the unabomber, calling him an 'extreme political revolutionary'
"It's easy to quickly and thoughtless write this off as the manifesto of a lunatic, in order to avoid facing some of the uncomfortable problems it identifies. But it's simply impossible to ignore how prescient many of his predictions about modern society turned out,"
"He was a violent individual - rightfully imprisoned - who maimed innocent people. While these actions tend to be characterized as those of a crazy luddite, however, they are more accurately seen as those of an extreme political revolutionary."
More quotes he posted..
' Imagine a society that subjects people to conditions that make them terribly unhappy then gives them the drugs to take away their unhappiness,' read one excerpt from a Kaczynski quote on Mangione's Goodreads page.
'They say a healthy person has a thousand wishes but a sick person has only one wish - to get well,' another quote on his Goodreads page attributed to author Joe De Sena from The Spartan Way: Eat Better. Train Better. Think Better. Be Better.
" Some of the other Kaczynski quotes included, 'The conservatives are fools: They whine about the decay of traditional values, yet they enthusiastically support technological progress and economic growth.' "
Some more social media posts..
This next section is specifically about the shooting, and any known information in regards to it.
Luigi 3D printed a ghost gun capable of firing a 9 mm round. a ghost gun is " a type of weapon that can be assembled at home from parts without a serial number, making them difficult to trace"
2. " The Shooter appeared to be “lying in wait for several minutes” before approaching the executive from behind and opening fire. He used a 9 mm pistol that police said resembled the guns farmers use to put down animals without causing a loud noise. "
2a. A silencer was also used.
3. The suspect went to starbucks prior to the shooting.
4. " Ammunition found near Thompson’s body bore the words “delay,” “deny” and “depose,” mimicking a phrase used by insurance industry critics. "
5. " The gunman concealed his identity with a mask during the shooting yet left a trail of evidence, including a backpack he ditched in Central Park, a cellphone found in a pedestrian plaza and a water bottle and protein bar wrapper that police say he bought at Starbucks minutes before the attack. "
6. " On Friday, police found the backpack that they say the killer discarded as he fled from the crime scene to an uptown bus station, where they believe he left the city on a bus. "
7. " Retracing the gunman’s steps using surveillance video, investigators say the shooter fled into Central Park on a bicycle, emerged from park without his backpack and then ditched the bicycle. "
8. " He then walked a couple blocks and got into a taxi, arriving at at the George Washington Bridge Bus Station, which is near the northern tip of Manhattan and offers commuter service to New Jersey and Greyhound routes to Philadelphia. "
9. " Late Saturday, police released two additional photos of the suspect that appeared to be from a camera mounted inside a taxi. The first shows him outside the vehicle and the second shows him looking through the partition between the back seat and the front of the cab. In both, his face is partially obscured by a blue mask. "
10. "he was spotted by a McDonald's worker in Altoona, Pennsylvania, he had with him a ghost gun and a manifesto that officials believe could give insights behind the brazen murder that unfolded last week."
Here's some accompanying photos of Luigi.
More images can be found with this link: Photos of Luigi Mangione Thank you to @\redactedtrigger for the link and photos!
This post will be regularly updated with new information.
other posts ive made about Mangione:
Fake ID he used.
#luigi mangione#UHC ceo#UHC shooter#teeceecee#tccblr#true cringe community#educational purposes#informational purposes#tc community#uhc assassin#united healthcare#ceo assassination#ceo down#deny defend depose#ted kaczynski#unabomber#kewpietagdomeyay
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🐉 ONYX STORM PROLOGUE, CHAPTERS ONE & TWO MY THOUGHTS: (god bless the dutch 🇳🇱)
So not totally verified yet, but it seems legit. This is absolutely the scene I expected us to be starting with, and despite the translation it does read like Rebecca. Thank you so much to @thestarseternaal for sharing it with me! You can find it here.
Ok, let's fucking goooooo! 🤘
· That trigger warning list? "The death of an animal" 💀😬 The "descriptions of sexual acts" though, thank god, though it's not looking promising for the two of them so far.
· Garrick and Bodhi KNOW?! Ok that I didn't see coming?
· "I can't blame him for wanting to know what he is" ANDARNA 😭 "I'm as much in the dark as he is, and you trust me." 😭 I want to hug the baby
· "Magic feels different when I change colours. When I used my power, it was like the venin transformed, weakening-" Ok so confirmed, she's the solution they're looking for *sigh*
· It's going to be unfortunate if the allies we're seeking are just Poromiel, and I think they are given both the excerpt prior to the prologue and the fact the Target edition map had only a few places in Poromiel on it and no Isles. I guess we're not looking for Andarna's family over there until books four and five? 😞
· Wait...what? Leadership knows what Andarna is? Everyone knows? Who TF told them? I was certain they didn't see? I can't believe we spent all this time worrying about people knowing she was a baby when she bonded and y'all just told everyone she was a super special rare breed right off the bat. SMDH.
· Aotrom's only 22? 😭 I'm older than Aotrom? RIDOC and him are the same age, that makes so much sense!!
· TAIRN CALLS XADEN "THE DARK ONE"? 😭 I feel like I'm not going to like Tairn much this book, and I feel like he's gonna ☠️ but that's for my theory post.
· "His soul is no longer his own" "That's a bit dramatic." VIOLET I LOVE YOU 🖤
· "You mean whether I'll support you in the thousand ways you want to face death to heal someone who's beyond redemption?" Oh Tairn...why do I get the really, really bad feeling you lied about Naolin?
· The truth-sayers have let Caroline Ashton off the hook? Hmmmm suspicious. Everyone's evil, I just know it.
· "Devera and Kaori will be back soon. They’ll straighten out the command structure once the princes have signed a treaty that hopefully grants us grace for even leaving in the first place." Ummm princes plural? So I guess Cam hid for nothing? Well not nothing, but he's...back with his fam? Also why would they be signing shit? Where's the damn king?!
· "The rarest signet, which appear once per generation or century, have been documented twice simultaneously with an equal counterpart, both during critical times in our history, but only once have the six most powerful walked the Continent at the same time. As fascinating as that spectacle must have been, I would rather not witness it again in my lifetime. – A study of signets by Major Dalton Sisneros" Ok could be a weird translation but I'm confused by this. The counterpart thing could be either a rider and a venin (ie. one of the venin can distance wield and we're getting a distance wielder) or dark and light, ie. shadows and light. Also six like the first six and they all had partners within themselves? Three pairs? Or? What even were their signets because I can't believe we've NEVER FUCKING ASKED? I've literally never seen that mentioned and it seems...so fucking relevant.
· Perhaps a more outlandish theory, but I think the venin with the silver hair who distance wields might be Xaden's mother. I'll elaborate later, but 😬😬
· Ok well, 1. I'm fucking crying already, and 2. "Even if I reached the rank of Maven, led armies of dark wielders against everyone we care about, and if I had to watch every vein in my body turn red because I had drained all the powers of the Continent, I would still love you. What I’ve done doesn’t change that. I don’t know if that’s even possible." That's a little bit storm in the quiet, I love it when the vibe is proven ✨correct✨ 😭 @justallihere
So all in all, 1. As expected, every excerpt, hint, and thing we've thought about it over in one-two chapters, 2. This is going to hurt so bad and I think it will go as I expected, and 3. I'm still not ready 😭
Send help 🥺
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Ghostface Thriller
This was supposed to be my original fully fleshed out Halloween gig but I changed my mind at the eleventh hour to something else. I only have these very rough shallow sketches to offer that started the whole thing. Read on for a little texting excerpt of their conversation from this moment.
And for one single (quite tame?) Ao3 continuation.
Sirius: you know, this whole conversation is just proving more and more disappointing ghostie
Ghost: Why’s that.
Sirius: well
Sirius: the more you talk the more you
Sirius: this is gonna sound weird but you know when you can grow attracted to the way someone sounds without ever seeing their face? the way they hold themselves like through the screen, the way they talj
Sirius: talk*
Ghost: Are you about to tell me you’re crushing on me, pretty?
Sirius: i mean
Sirius: im telling you i think the way you talk is attractive and despite the damning circumstances you’re actually kinda smart
Sirius: you have to be to get away with the sick shit you do :)
Ghost: Mm, nobody’s made me blush before.
Sirius: me calling you a sick shit made you blush?
Ghost: And sent a jolt straight to my c*** little pretty.
Sirius: romantic
Ghost: Struggling to understand what’s disappointing about any of this.
Sirius: oh right
Sirius: well it’s just you sound hot but obviously you’re not actually you know
Sirius: hot
A moment passes where Sirius swaps the phone between one clammy palm to the other, doubting his turn of phrase with the radio silence that’d been dealt.
Staring at the bottom of the screen he waited another whole minute for the three dots to appear, which was excellent restraint in his books, before huffing out a breath through his nose and yielding.
Sirius: no ten wears a mask
Sirius: if you were as attractive as your fancy words make you sound you’d make it known
Ghost: You’re trying to unmask me through the phone and here I was thinking I was the pervert.
Sirius: doesn’t pretty get at least one photo
Sirius: of something? anything? to aid my crush :(
Ghost: Ask nicely.
Sirius readjusted, looking up to the ceiling as if he was going to find some sort of resolve there. What wasn’t yet clear, was whether it was the weight of the situation that was getting to his head and making his tummy swoop with this roleplay he’d voluntarily landed himself in, or, he really had a fucking crush.
Wetting his lips, he swallowed and was already blindly tapping out his response before his eyes fell to it again.
Sirius: please ghostie
Moments passed. Deadweight moments where Sirius convinced himself his shadow was moving on its own accord. In reality it was a handful of seconds but it felt like minutes, ticking by with the faint feeling of something hot dripping down the back of his throat.
Ghost: I don’t make a habit of sending selfies to my toys.
Sirius stared at the photo. It was his time to go quiet now, for reasons he planned to take to the grave; an event which may end up closing in sooner than anticipated if he plays his cards wrong.
Ghost: Tick-Tock, pretty. What you looking at?
The bastard.
Sirius: not much apparently
Sirius: i mean nothing i haven’t seen before apart from your legs
Sirius: never seen those out before
Ghost: You a leg man?
Against his will, Sirius giggled. Flushed in an instance from shame and shock and the feeling of very sudden self-awareness, but still had to swallow the tail end of it.
Sirius: am i going to get anything else more
Sirius: motivating
Sirius: i’ve been good all week and followed your orders
Sirius: i haven’t argued
Ghost: Oh, pretty. Come on now.
Sirius: okay but
Sirius: wouldn’t you get bored if i made it easy
Ghost: Clever boy.
Sirius squeezed his legs together, sinking further into the cushions.
Sirius: then reward me
Sirius: please
Sirius: please please please
Ghost: You’ll get what you want soon, but for now…
Another picture came through and for a sharp second, Sirius hesitated. It wouldn’t be his face, surely. He knew that and yet the moment felt pivotal either way as he hovered his thumb over the attachment and tried levelling his rattling heart.
He opened it, simultaneously losing feeling in his fingers and gaining it elsewhere.
Ghost: I wasn’t kidding about that jolt, not that hard yet but you’re doing a good job pretty.
Picture no.2
#tumblr is going to hide this#remus lupin#sirius black#wolfstar#ghostface#happy Halloween part one i guess#my art
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i was on NPR talking about Autism shit two weeks ago, and i have the book sales figures from that week and that national media appearance had.... absolutely zero relationship to sales. on the typical week these days, 1,400 to 1,500 copies of Unmasking Autism will sell. The week that I was on NPR there was a slight dip; only about 1,300 books were sold.
i have done a lot of press for my books. For Laziness Does Not Exist I did easily a 100 damn podcasts and radio shows and newspapers and excerpts in magazines. none of it corresponded to a noticeable bump in sales. the biggest "get" my publicist found for my latest book was the Glennon Doyle show, a booking she and her team celebrated and then spent months clamboring excitedly for... it, too, had no obvious relationship to sales.
Unmasking Autism became a bestseller because some other guy made a tiktok about it, and then a bunch of tiktokkers made videos about it too. all on their own. without any prodding from me, or any relationship to me. it was completely organic, passionate, and sincere, and rooted in the book's true merits and usefulness to other people, and that's why it inspired lots of sales. and continues to more than a year and a half later. all the press I did for Unmasking Autism prior to the release of that tiktok did relatively far less. NPR, Goop, the LA Times, Lit Hub, Jacobin, Huffpo, the New York Times, the Financial Times, MSNBC, Business Insider. Didn't matter. at least not much. so why do i bother?
publishers really ride your ass trying to make you give lots of interviews and show up for lots of events but it's all based on the worship of traditional media and magical thinking that it will somehow convert listeners into buyers. and that's just not how it works. the truth is 95% of books never sell more than 5,000 copies, and most people don't buy books or read them. i love reading but i dont think this is itself some terrible loss, as most books are padded-out commodities made for sale more than a work of true artistic passion or scholarly merit, and sometimes listening to a 90 minute interview with an author tells you the bulk of what you need to know.
it's freeing to know that the effort i put into getting my books out into the world have almost zero relationship to the books' success. marketing just does not work. it's a relief. unmasking autism did fabulously because it's actually both good and useful. laziness has had a long life span because it speaks to real problems in people's lives and gives them a message they are desperate to hear. but no amount of thirsty ass online shilling will make somebody realize that and it's maddening to try. you just gotta focus on doing good work, work that you enjoy making or need to make and that you feel good about, let things flop if theyre gonna flop, and keep on living your life.
which is all good news because i really do hate a lot of these fucking interviews. how can i stomach being on npr or in the atlantic or whatever these days given how complicit nearly all major media outlets are in justifying this genocide. like who fuckin cares about them, who wants their approval. who needs it. it's of no value
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Day 1 of @hprecfest - First fic you read/first fic you remember reading
I started reading in the early 2000s, before HBP was published, so this is a tricky one to start off with! I vividly remember reading along to Cassandra Clare's Draco Trilogy and Maya's Underwater Light - both WIPs at the time, and neither freely available now 💀 if anyone else was around then, though, I have compiled a reclist of Vintage Drarry Fics (2001-2006, including such classics as Irresistible Poison, Beautiful World, Seamus is Seamus, and Love Under Will).
The fic I've chosen to rec today is the one that brought me back into fandom after a decade out; indirectly I suppose it's the reason I'm here at all, and so perhaps the lesson for any creators reading this is that you'll truly never know the impact your works have, even decades down the line!
Transfigurations, by Resonant : E, 71k, 2003 (MCD warning, but not for Drarry)
Summary: Five years after Voldemort's defeat, Harry returns to England to help re-open Hogwarts.
Excerpt:
"You're going to have to talk about it sooner or later, Harry," she said. "I know it's hard for you, but --"
"Hermione --" He looked over her shoulder, searching for something that would distract her.
He succeeded a little better than he would have liked. First he caught a flash of pale hair in the shadows behind the top table. Then the shape came clear. An expensively tailored robe, an expensively bejewelled hand, an expensively barbered head, an expensively curled lip --
Was he never going to be free of Draco Malfoy?
Hermione followed Harry's eyes, and then she straightened up suddenly, crying, "Draco!" and ran to clasp Malfoy. Harry stared dumbly after her. "Mother sent a book for you, and some biscuits, they're in here somewhere --"
"Never mind that," Malfoy said, hugging her roughly. Harry felt a pang of fury. Since when was Hermione so cozy with Malfoy? "What I want to know is, did Mrs. Spenser ever find Bratleigh's tooth?"
"Oh, yes, it turned out to be in his little brother's forearm -- but how are you getting on without mechanical pencils?"
"Musgrove's Magic Pencils are nearly as good, though not quite so satisfying to click ..." Harry watched their two heads bent together, the dark and the fair. They were exactly the same height, like a matched set of figurines. Something extremely strange must have happened while he was in Florida.
Malfoy was still affecting the look of a wizard-bard from a storybook, Harry thought scornfully: pale hair falling to his shoulders, deep-plum robe heavily embroidered in the same color around the collar, narrow hands heavy with silver rings. Harry hadn't remembered his mouth being quite so red.
He looked up and caught Harry looking, and something crossed his face that wasn't quite the expected sneer. Hermione was tugging him over by the arm. "Harry just got in today from America, Draco, he didn't tell anybody he was coming, I think he forgot how to write a letter --"
"He's forgotten a lot of things, I imagine," Malfoy drawled, but he offered a hand. "Potter. Welcome back."
Damn it, even his languid, lingering handshake felt as though there was an insult behind it.
Where to start with this fic? The premise is that following the war, Harry left for Florida, settling down with a group of Indigenous wixen as they worked to set up a new school of wizardry. He returns, five years later, to a Hogwarts in trouble, rife with traps and curses laid by Death Eaters long gone, and to his old friends, whose letters he'd mostly ignored during his time abroad. Many of the old faces are familiar, but the addition of Malfoy, now, inexplicably, best friends with Hermione and Professor of Muggle Studies, irritates Harry beyond belief. Worst of all, when it comes to Cursebreaking, Harry and Malfoy's magic works best in sync, so to their horror they find themselves paired together as they work to make the school safe on its reopening.
There are so very many things to love about this fic. The narrative tone feels very true to canon, as does Harry's voice; possibly a result of its being published while the books were still coming out, but unlike many of the other fics written back then, it has a very adult feel. It's set entirely in Hogwarts, and with a huge cast of supporting characters, including a sneering, dramatic statue of the deceased Professor Snape, sexy handyman Ron, COMC Professor Charlie Weasley, and some wonderfully endearing OCs. The writing's lovely and clean, sparing, but still very visual, and full of worldbuilding details so unique and rich you'll be thinking about them years later (trust me). And the relationship development is truly second to none; we come to love this Malfoy reluctantly, but so so deeply, along with Harry. Also, this fic has, to me, the original rushed sex in a bathroom stall scene, and one of the sexiest undressing scenes you'll ever read. I absolutely adore it, can quote huge chunks, and every single time I read it it brings back everything I love about the world of Harry Potter. Go and add it to your MFL, and you can thank me later <3
If you read it, and if especially you love it, please do let me know! And as always, please do take the time to leave the author a kudos/comment <3
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