#how was 2023 WORSE than 2020 2021 AND 2022????

[matchbet-allofthetime]

a fucking nightmare, glad it's almost over

its the last month of 2023 so i’m just gonna say it: what the absolute fuck was that

[unknought]

In 2007 the US Department of Housing and Urban Development started reporting homelessness rates:

As you can see in this chart (from Statista) there was a fairly steady decrease in the number of homeless people from then until 2016. It flattened out for a couple years in 2017 and 2018, and then rose in 2019 and 2020. No data was collected in 2021 (due to COVID) and the increase from 2020 to 2022 was negligible, so one might hope based on the data from this chart that the upward trend was flipping around, and that by now by now it might be on its way back down, but this does not appear to be the case.

For 2023 the Department of Housing and Urban Development reported a homelessness count of 653,104. This is a dramatic increase which blows previous annual changes out of the water. It's a 12.1% increase relative to 2022, an 18.7% increase relative to the low in 2016, and the highest absolute number of homeless people since data started being collected in 2007.

So this is one way, at least, in which standard economic metrics being up has not translated to people doing well.

An objection one can make here is that even this new high is only about 0.2% of the national population, and while things may have gotten worse for the people in the very worst of economic straits, this doesn't say much about what things are like for the rest of us.

I agree with this up to a point. (Probably not the implied argument about what we should care about but let's not get into that for now.) It's probably true that homelessness rates don't shed a lot of light on how the median American is doing. But I think they are relevant to the well-being of a lot more than 0.2% of the population.

Even though only a small proportion of Americans are homeless at any given time, there a lot more for whom the threat of homelessness looms very large in their financial considerations, not irrationally. More people who are homeless probably means more people who can just barely make rent as long as they skip a few meals, more people who stay with an abuser because they wouldn't have anywhere else to stay, more people who can't quit their job to find a better one because they couldn't afford to miss a month's rent, more people who can't move out of a mold-infested apartment, more people who are just struggling with anxiety about whether they're going to be able to make rent every month. It also almost certainly means more people couch-surfing and more people who were homeless for part of the year that happened not to include late January, neither of which would be counted in the official statistics.

How much of an impact does this end up meaning, on how many people? I'm pretty unsure, but here's a suggestive statistic from the Federal Reserve:

> Challenges paying rent increased in 2023. The median monthly rent payment was $1,100 in 2023, up 10 percent from 2022. In addition, 19 percent of renters reported being behind on their rent at some point in the past year, up 2 percentage points from 2022.

It seems at least very plausible to me that claims about how great the US economy is doing merit a substantial asterisk.

[queersatanic]

We fuckin' won, y'all

It hasn't fully sunk in yet, but we did just get some truly joyful news.

The Satanic Temple lost AGAIN, and ours is a full victory here

The King County Superior Court just granted our motion for summary judgment in full, dismissing all claims with prejudice and ruling on our declaratory judgment counterclaim we have the right to use "the Memes Page".

facebook.com/queersatanic

It has been 1635 DAYS since The Satanic Temple filed their case against us in federal district court. We got it dismissed there once in February 2021; we got it dismissed again in January 2023 after TST re-filed.

The Satanic Temple appealed the second loss to the Ninth Circuit and also re-filed part of the case in state court in April 2023 — notably after the three-year statute of limitations had run out.

The Ninth Circuit affirmed most of the lower federal court decision but allowed TST to revive their defamation claims if they could specify what exactly had been said about them that was false and defamatory.

Apparently unable to do so, The Satanic Temple voluntarily dismissed the federal case against us.

Meanwhile, in 2022, TST sued Newsweek for writing about our case back in October 2021. The Satanic Temple dragged us into those proceedings to give depositions, but Newsweek seems to be prevailing with just one claim remaining and a bunch of embarrassing stuff coming out about TST.

TST sued a woman in Texas for making TikTok videos critical of them, after first forcing her to record a pretty upsetting retraction. This is despite the fact that she was right.

TST has threatened more people than we can make a reliable count of with litigation both before and after us.

The Satanic Temple's agents have stalked and harassed us and our loved ones, and there have been long periods of misery and where it seemed like the courts would let them keep doing this sort of thing indefinitely.

But today we won.

The Satanic Temple has lost every step of the way and shown themselves to be a toxic, abusive religious organization to everyone who has bothered to pay attention — tho unfortunately, too few people have.

Thank you all for your support over these long 4+ years.

Based on their pattern of behavior, The Satanic Temple is likely to appeal this loss or perhaps invent a new pretext to continue this SLAPP in a new venue. We know that.

The Satanic Temple, its owners, and lawyers have had had no argument justifying the last 1635 days beyond their wealth and desire to hurt and intimidate people. But TST also should have much bigger issues to deal with than lighting money on fire by continuing to come after us.

So, maybe The Satanic Temple will finally walk away now. They're definitely more vulnerable now than they have been in a long time.

Please let people know what The Satanic Temple is and how they behave, and also that however scary they seem, if you stand up to them you can win.

When it comes to The Satanic Temple, there's always more, and it's always worse, but they are at least as incompetent as they are malicious. They are ghouls, to be sure, but not ones who can survive any light on their actions.

So Ave Satanas, and Hail Lucifer the Lightbringer

[i-like-to-look-at-your-back]

Yearly summary!

Here are the previous ones: 2022 / 2021 / 2020 / 2019 / 2018 / 2015

My thoughts under the cut ✂

Oh boy let me tell you. (TMI probably) It was a pretty good year until it totally wasn't. And I can't stress enough how much it wasn't good then. It all started with jumping head-first into WolfStar bc why not. And it was so nice, I still have like 5 other illustrations started. But then my doc prescribed me some hormones and it all went crashing down. I didn't expect it and I was so very not prepared. It started like a regular sad PMS that just didn't end. But then it got worse, every day I felt like I was stepping into depression at an alarmingly fast pace. When I reached the bottom it felt so much worse than what I've ever experienced and the only thing keeping me going day after day was the knowledge that those damn meds were to blame and if only I could go through the whole treatment I surely (HOPEFULLY) would go back to normal. Looking back at it now, I realize I could have contacted my doc and simply dropped the treatment bc it was totally not worth it (and it didn't work anyway so (^: ). But I didn't know my brain was capable of jumping so deep so fast. So I pushed through somehow, wasted 4 months of 2023 on barely surviving. With the hormones out of my system I managed toy prepare and finish whole Inktober. I still don't know how it happened. Where I found the energy to do that after my mid-year drama? But I'm very proud it somehow happened :) Also sometime during Fall I found out about and started "Artist's Way". It slowly changed my mindset and now I'm full of willpower and creative energy for 2024 (still have pretty much zero free time so ya know, I don't know when new works will drop)

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Private equity finally delivered Sarah Palin's death panels

Tonight (Apr 26), I’ll be in Burbank, signing Red Team Blues at Dark Delicacies at 6PM.

Remember “death panels”? Sarah Palin promised us that universal healthcare was a prelude to a Stalinist nightmare in which unaccountable bureaucrats decided who lived or died based on a cost-benefit analysis of what it would cost to keep you alive versus how much your life was worth.

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/2023/04/26/death-panels/#what-the-heck-is-going-on-with-CMS

Palin was right that any kind of healthcare rationing runs the risk of this kind of calculus, where we weight spending $10,000 to extend a young, healthy person’s life by 40 years against $1,000 to extend an elderly, disabled person’s life by a mere two years.

It’s a ghastly, nightmarish prospect — as anyone who uses the private healthcare system knows very well. More than 27m Americans have no health insurance, and millions more have been tricked into buying scam “cost-sharing” systems run by evangelical grifters:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/02/health/christian-health-care-insurance.html

But for the millions of Americans with insurance, death panels are an everyday occurrence, or at least a lurking concern. Anyone who pays attention knows that insurers have entire departments designed to mass-reject legitimate claims and stall patients who demand that the insurer lives up to its claim:

https://kffhealthnews.org/news/article/khn-podcast-an-arm-and-a-leg-how-to-shop-for-health-insurance-november-24-2021/

The private healthcare sector is designed to deny care. Its first duty is to its shareholders, not its patients, and every dollar spent on care is a dollar not available for dividends. The ideal insurance customer pays their premiums without complaint, and then pays cash for all their care on top of it.

All that was true even before private equity started buying up and merging whole swathes of the US healthcare system (or “healthcare” “system”). The PE playbook — slash wages, sell off physical plant, slash wages, reduce quality and raise prices — works in part because of its scale. These aren’t the usual economies of scale. Rather the PE strategy is to buy and merge all the similar businesses in a region, so customers, suppliers and workers have nowhere else to turn.

That’s bad enough when it’s aimed at funeral homes, pet groomers or any of the other sectors that have been bigfooted by PE:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/16/schumpeterian-terrorism/#deliberately-broken

But it’s especially grave when applied to hospitals:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/05/21/profitable-butchers/#looted

Or emergency room physicians:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/03/14/unhealthy-finances/#steins-law

And if you think that’s a capitalist hellscape nightmare, just imagine how PE deals with dying, elderly people. Yes, PE has transformed the hospice industry, and it’s even worse than you imagine.

Yesterday, the Center for Economic and Policy Research published “Preying on the Dying: Private Equity Gets Rich in Hospice Care,” written by some of the nation’s most valiant PE slayers: Eileen Appelbaum, Rosemary Batt and Emma Curchin:

https://cepr.net/report/preying-on-the-dying-private-equity-gets-rich-in-hospice-care/

Medicare pays private hospices $203-$1,462 per day to take care of dying old people — seniors that a doctor has certified to have less than six months left. That comes to $22.4b/year in public transfers to private hospices. If hospices that $1,462 day-rate, they have lots of duties, like providing eight hours’ worth of home care. But if the hospice is content to take the $203/day rate, they are not required to do anything. Literally. It’s just free money for whatever the operator feels like doing for a dying elderly person, including doing nothing at all.

As Appelbaum told Maureen Tkacik for her excellent writeup in The American Prospect: “Why anybody commits fraud is a mystery to me, because you can make so much money playing within the guidelines the way the payment scheme operates.”

https://prospect.org/health/2023-04-26-born-to-die-hospice-care/

In California, it’s very, very easy to set up a hospice. Pay $3,000, fill in some paperwork (or don’t — no one checks it, ever), and you’re ready to start caring for beloved parents, grandparents, sisters, brothers, aunts and uncles as they depart this world. You do get a site inspection, but don’t worry — you aren’t required to bring your site up to code until after you’re licensed, and again, they never check — not even if there are multiple complaints. After all, no one at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has the job of tracking complaints.

This is absolute catnip for private equity — free government money, no obligations, no enforcement, and the people you harm are literally dying and can’t complain. What’s not to like? No wonder PE companies have spent billions “rolling up” hospices across the country. There are 591 hospices in Van Nuys, CA alone — but at least 30 of them share a single medical director:

https://auditor.ca.gov/reports/2021-123/index.html#pg34A

Medicare caps per-patient dispersals at $32,000, which presents an interesting commercial question for remorseless, paperclip-maximizing, grandparent-devouring private equity ghouls: do you take in sick patients (who cost more, but die sooner) or healthy patients (cost less, potentially live longer)?

In Van Nuys, the strategy is to bring in healthy patients and do nothing. 51% of Van Nuys hospice patients are “live discharged” — that is, they don’t die. This figure — triple the national average — is “a reliable sign of fraud.”

There are so many hospice scams and most of them are so stupid that it takes a monumental failure of oversight not to catch and prevent them. Here’s a goodun: hospices bribe doctors to “admit” patients to a hospice without their knowledge. The hospice bills for the patient, but otherwise has no contact with them. This can go on for a long time, until the patient tries to visit the doctor and discovers that their Medicare has been canceled (you lose your Medicare once you go into hospice).

Another scam: offer patients the loosest narcotics policy in town, promising all the opioids they want. Then, once their benefits expire, let them die of an overdose (don’t worry, people who die in hospice don’t get autopsies):

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/12/05/how-hospice-became-a-for-profit-hustle

You can hire con artists to serve as your sales-force, and have them talk vulnerable, elderly people into enrolling in hospice care by convincing them they have nothing to live for and should just die already and not burden their loved ones any longer.

Hospitals and hospices also collude: hospitals can revive dying patients, ignoring their Do Not Resuscitate orders, so they can be transfered to a hospice and die there, saving the hospital from adding another dead patient to their stats.CMS’s solution is perverse: they’re working with Humana to expand Medicare Advantage (a scam that convinces patients to give up Medicare and enrol in a private insurance program, whose private-sector death panel rejects 13% of claims that Medicare would have paid for). The program will pay private companies $32,000 for every patient who agrees to cease care and die. As our friends on the right like to say, “incentives matter.”

Appelbaum and co have a better idea:

Do more enforcement: increase inspections and audits.

Block mergers and rollups of hospices that make them too big to fail and too big to jail.

Close existing loopholes.

They should know. Appelbaum and her co-authors write the best, most incisive analysis of private equity around. For more of their work, check out their proposal for ending pension-plan ripoffs by Wall Street firms:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/05/05/mego/#A09948

Catch me on tour with Red Team Blues in Burbank, Mountain View, Berkeley, San Francisco, Portland, Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, DC, Gaithersburg, Oxford, Hay, Manchester, Nottingham, London, and Berlin!

[Image ID: An industrial meat grinder, fed by a conveyor belt. A dead, elderly man is traveling up the conveyor, headed for the grinder's intake. The grinder is labelled 'HOSPICE' in drippy Hallowe'en lettering. It sits in a spreading pool of blood.]

Image: Seydelmann (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:GW300_1.jpghttps://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:GW300_1.jpg

CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en

[starrysharks]

ive sent like 20 asks to you atp but i really love ur art soooo so so so much like ur like my biggest inspiration fr like seriously i could blab all day abt how much i love your art and your arts almost singlehandedly motivated me to start working on shape language more bc i think thats like the key part of your art (to me at least) and youre like the true embodiment of "same face syndrome fears me" but like fr because all your ocs are so distinct and unique

do you have any tips on creating unique silhouettes / just general character design tips?? also id love to hear abt how your use of shapes and shape language evolved over time if ur fine sharing that!!

ok this is literally the sweetest ask ever like first off thank you so much ;_; i'm glad i was able 2 inspire you!!!

for me if you look at my old art there's little to no focus on shape language cuz i wanted to express a 'pointy' animeish style. examples are from 2020, 2021 respectively

as you can see i did NOT flip my canvas and my art was samey as hell,,, but in 2021 i started going for softer colors and shapes rather than points and spikes and brighter shapes. but, if you were to look through all of my art from either era, you'd see it's identical cuz i didn't care for shape language. this went on for quite a while :,)

then i discovered worlds end club in late 2021 and everything changed !!! i watched playthroughs cuz i didn't have a means to play at the time, and decided on making my artstyle a blend of cartoony and animeish - which ended up in choosing more expensive silhouettes and faces in turn

honestly i'm too tired to actually chronicle my artstyle change so i'll just skip to late 2022 in this timeline, sorry 😭

so by now has my artstyle evolved into aomwthing super cool n expressive ? no actually i think my art got worse in late 2022

as you can see, my colors got super washed out and i didn't really take risks, i guess? but i was finally starting to come into my own in terms of artstyle and was finally acknowledging shape language a little bit.

very early 2023 is the same, so let's skip to the one thing that changed my artstyle - the big 8 lineups

suddenly everybody was like 'wow your shapes are so good!!!' this was because i had tried to challenge myself with character design in these drawings. so i tried to emphasise interesting shapes more - using a technique where i'd just take an interesting shape or line that corresponded with a character's personality and repeating it as much as i could across the design.

like this deep cut art, where i tried to 'dial up'their already exaggerated shapes and design aspects (such as making frye's pants sag more or changing up shiv's hair. big man is perfect and needs no changes)

but this journey is still not over because a few months ago i rewatched all of panty and stocking and watched clone high for the first time, and both of these shows emphasise shapes a LOT in their designs, and i picked those up. here's art from a few months ago - in short, i tried to find the 'focal point' of the design, something that set it apart from other designs with similar body types or clothing, and built around that, if it makes sense? here's some art that i think expresses that well

comparing the new quintet art to the old one, i think you can also see that i started to try and use different body shapes and shapes in general (such as clyde having a more triangular build ig) . and tumblr doesn't let me add more pictures so this is where the overview ends !

my advice is - watch and rewatch anything that might inspire you, because it has the ability to push you in the right direction. for technical tips, id say -

draw different body types and age ranges (often times same face syndrome is born from only drawing the same age range, usually 15-20 for most sufferers)

play around with style - do you want a more western inspired style or something more akin to modern anime ? maybe something entirely different! try drawing in different styles that you like and see which ones stick

research fashion if only a little bit - it can help understand visually pleasing silhouettes (such as the famous big jacket or big pants silhouettes)

speaking of big jacket or big pants, contrast is key !!! top or bottom heavy designs are an easy way to express personality and an expressive silhouette ig

ummm thaz it ithink. once again thank you for your kind words and remember to take advice from multiple artists im just one guy!! i hope anything in here helped or was at least interesting to read

[vote-democrat-president-congress]

Trump secretly sent covid tests to Putin during 2020 shortage, new book says

“War,” by Bob Woodward, traces how Trump and Biden responded to international crisis and concludes that Trump is worse than Nixon, the president exiled by the Watergate scandal.

By Isaac Stanley-Becker October 8, 2024 at 8:56 a.m. EDT As the coronavirus tore through the world in 2020, and the United States and other countries confronted a shortage of tests designed to detect the illness, then-President Donald Trump secretly sent coveted tests to Russian President Vladimir Putin for his personal use.

Cut through the 2024 election noise. Get The Campaign Moment newsletter. Putin, petrified of the virus, accepted the supplies but took pains to prevent political fallout — not for him, but for his American counterpart. He cautioned Trump not to reveal that he had dispatched the scarce medical equipment to Moscow, according to a new book by Washington Post associate editor Bob Woodward.

Putin, according to the book, told Trump, “I don’t want you to tell anybody because people will get mad at you, not me.”

Four years later, the personal relationship between the two men appears to have persisted, Woodward reports, as Trump campaigns to return to the White House and Putin orchestrates his bloody assault on Ukraine. In early 2024, the former president ordered an aide away from his office at Mar-a-Lago, his private club and residence in Florida, so he could conduct a private phone call with the Russian leader, according to Woodward’s account.

The book does not describe what the two men purportedly discussed, and it quotes a Trump campaign official casting doubt on the supposed contact. But the unnamed Trump aide cited in the book indicated that the GOP standard-bearer may have spoken to Putin as many as seven times since Trump left the White House in 2021.

These interactions between Trump and the authoritarian leader of a country at war with an American ally form the basis of Woodward’s conclusion that Trump is worse than Richard M. Nixon, whose presidency was undone by the Watergate scandal exposed a half-century ago by Woodward and his Washington Post colleague Carl Bernstein.

“Trump was the most reckless and impulsive president in American history and is demonstrating the very same character as a presidential candidate in 2024,” Woodward writes in the book, “War,” which is set to be released Oct. 15.

The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

With publication on the eve of the presidential election, Woodward, who has chronicled the successes and failures of U.S. presidents for 50 years, concludes that Trump is unfit for office while President Joe Biden and his team, mistakes notwithstanding, exhibited “steady and purposeful leadership.” Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, makes several appearances in the narrative, with Woodward presenting her as a shrewd and loyal No. 2 to Biden but not an influential voice in his administration’s foreign policy.

The book is Woodward’s fourth since Trump’s upset victory in 2016. It focuses principally on the twin wars consuming Biden’s national security team — Russia’s all-out war in Ukraine, which began in February 2022, and Israel’s campaign against Hamas and other Iranian-backed proxies since the Hamas attacks of Oct. 7, 2023.

The book also examines the long shadow cast by Trump over the foreign conflicts of the past four years, and over the bitter U.S. political environment in which they have unfolded. And it includes candid assessments by Biden of his own missteps, including his decision to make Merrick Garland attorney general. Reacting to the prosecution of his son Hunter — by a special prosecutor named by Garland amid partisan recriminations over the Justice Department’s prosecution of Trump — the president told an associate, “Should never have picked Garland.”

Woodward reveals how Biden weighed his fate before exiting the presidential race in July, including over lunch earlier that month with Antony Blinken, his secretary of state. Blinken, reports Woodward, warned Biden in the private dining room off the Oval Office that everyone’s legacy is reduced to a single sentence — and that, if he continued to campaign and lost to Trump, that would be his legacy.

Still, Blinken believed at the end of the meal that the president was leaning toward staying in the race, underscoring how unpredictable Biden’s decision-making remained until the final moment.

“War” illuminates the frantic, and often failed, effort by Biden’s team to prevent escalation of fighting in the Middle East — fighting that the president came to see as inseparable from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s political fortunes, and from political dynamics in the United States, too.

According to Woodward, one of Trump’s national security advisers, Keith Kellogg, secretly met with Netanyahu during a trip to Israel earlier this year. Upon his return, Kellogg publicly circulated a memo effectively blaming Biden for the Hamas-led attack on Israel, writing, “This visit reinforced that the Biden Administration’s erosion of U.S. deterrence globally and its failed policies vis-à-vis Iran have opened America up to a regional war in the Middle East with devastating consequences for our ally Israel.”

At the time, Biden advisers were pushing Israel’s leaders to agree to a cease-fire deal as part of an effort to head off an invasion of Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip. Their entreaties were futile; the Rafah offensive began in May. No one felt the limits of the administration’s ability to restrain Israel more acutely than Blinken. “It was obvious Blinken had no influence,” Woodward writes.

On Ukraine, too, Trump’s influence was pronounced, even from his home at Mar-a-Lago. The former president’s resistance to funding Kyiv’s war effort created a blockade on GOP support in the House. This past spring, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) was able to persuade Trump to soften his stance, according to Woodward, not by showing him that Ukraine’s cause was just, but by convincing him that the aid package would help the Republican conference’s electoral chances and thus benefit him personally in the run-up to the November election.

“War” offers several snapshots of Harris, always in a supporting role to Biden and hardly determining foreign policy herself.

The book recounts how Harris sought to spur French President Emmanuel Macron into action in the fall of 2021, in preparation for what the U.S. intelligence community indicated would be a significant Russian military action against Ukraine. So, too, the vice president made her case to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the Munich Security Conference in February 2022, going so far as to press him to develop a succession plan ensuring stability “if you’re captured or killed,” as she put it. And the book reveals how her forceful public tone following a meeting in July with Netanyahu — pledging that she would “not be silent” about Palestinian suffering — contrasted with her more amicable approach in private. The difference, according to Woodward, infuriated Netanyahu, who was taken aback by her public remarks.

From the Israeli viewpoint, however, Harris had little responsibility for the administration’s approach to the conflict.

“Until now, I didn’t feel that Vice President Harris had any impact on our issues,” Michael Herzog, the Israeli ambassador in Washington, is quoted as saying about the period before Harris replaced Biden on the ticket. “She was in the room, but she never had an impact.”

As for Trump’s own decision-making process on foreign affairs when he was commander in chief, the book shows how he took in a wide range of viewpoints, including from people without relevant expertise. During a high-level meeting about Afghanistan held at one point in the Situation Room, Trump went around the table to ask everyone’s opinion.

“Mr. President, I’m the notetaker,” one person deflected.

“Oh, no,” Trump replied, “if you’re in this room, you’re talking.” The notetaker briefly shared her views.

“War” presents the withdrawal from Afghanistan, in the summer of 2021, as a wound for the Biden administration that would shape its response to other international flash points. The debacle, in which U.S. intelligence failed to foresee how quickly the Taliban would seize power, elicited sympathy from the architect of the initial 2001 invasion, George W. Bush, who told Biden, according to the book: “Oh boy, I can understand what you’re going through. I got [expletive] by my intel people, too.”

Woodward contrasts the intelligence failure in Afghanistan to the remarkable insight gained by American spies into Russian plans ahead of its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. U.S. capabilities, Woodward reports, included a human source inside the Kremlin.

The book shows how Biden’s early decisions, which were sometimes in conflict with the judgments of his closest advisers, shaped the course of the war. Foremost was his public vow that Washington would not commit troops to the conflict, which took a key bargaining chip off the table but laid down a marker for the American public wary of new foreign entanglements. Biden, according to Woodward, felt past Russian aggression had been badly mismanaged by his predecessors, including the one he had served, Barack Obama.

“Barack never took Putin seriously,” Biden told a close friend.

Biden’s own blunders were costly, the book reveals. In January 2022, he seemed to undercut American resolve by raising the possibility that Russia might seek only a “minor incursion.” His national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, had to do damage control with counterparts in nine NATO countries, in addition to Japan, Woodward reveals.

Woodward writes that Biden’s most delicate diplomacy, however, involved seeking to foreclose Russia’s nuclear option. In the fall of 2022, that option seemed like a live one, as U.S. intelligence agencies reported that Putin was seriously weighing use of a tactical nuclear weapon — at one point assessing the likelihood at 50 percent. An especially frantic quest to bring Moscow back from the brink came in October of that year, when Russia appeared to be laying the groundwork for escalation by accusing Ukraine of preparing to detonate a dirty bomb.

Biden’s team confronted similar hair-raising moments with the Israelis, Woodward reports, foreshadowing Netanyahu’s recent campaign against Hezbollah, the Lebanon-based militant group and Iranian proxy, in an explicit rejection of U.S. calls for a cease-fire. In a parallel of unsubstantiated Russian claims of Ukraine’s intention to use a dirty bomb, the Israelis seemed poised, in the days after Oct. 7, 2023, to launch a preemptive strike against Hezbollah based on what American experts deemed “phantom” warnings of Hezbollah mobilization along Israel’s northern border.

“The Israelis always do this,” was the reaction of Brett McGurk, Biden’s Middle East coordinator, according to the book. “They claim ‘We got the intel! You’ll see it. You’ll see it.’ But like 50 percent of the time the so-called intel doesn’t actually show up.” Apparent drones reported by the Israelis turned out to be birds.

Yet the book also shows how the Biden administration did little to alter its policy toward Israel even as senior U.S. officials abandoned their belief that the government in Jerusalem was operating in good faith. Already in the days after Oct. 7, Blinken’s impression of Defense Minister Yoav Gallant’s approach was: “It doesn’t matter how many people die. I have a mission to eradicate Hamas and it doesn’t matter how many Palestinians die. It doesn’t matter how many Israelis die.”

Biden, according to Woodward, was cautious about setting limits on Israel’s conduct lest Netanyahu blow past them. In a one-on-one call in April, Netanyahu promised Biden that the Rafah offensive would take only three weeks, a vow the American president never took seriously. “It’ll take months,” Biden replied.

To associates, Biden complained that Netanyahu was a liar only interested in his political survival. And he concluded the same of the prime minister’s associates, saying that 18 out of 19 people who work for Netanyahu are “liars.”

At the same time, support for the Biden administration’s Middle East policy came from unexpected places, the book reveals. Before the Oct. 7 attacks, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), a loyal Trump lieutenant and shape-shifter who went from an outspoken critic of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to a trusted interlocutor, had relayed information to Biden about prospects for the normalization of relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel. Graham believed normalization was best completed under Biden, arguing that congressional Democrats would be reluctant to lend support to a Trump-sponsored initiative. Graham promised he could deliver the Republican votes.

After Oct. 7, Graham continued to engage with the crown prince. During a March visit by the senator to Riyadh, which is recounted by Woodward, Graham proposed a phone call with Trump, so the crown prince pulled out a burner phone labeled “TRUMP 45.” In earlier meetings, the crown prince had brandished other such devices, including one labeled “JAKE SULLIVAN” for Biden’s national security adviser.

During the March call with Trump, conducted by the crown prince over speakerphone while Graham was present, the former president teased the senator for once calling for the Saudi royal’s ouster over the assassination of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, which the CIA concluded Mohammed had ordered. Graham brushed it off, professing to have been wrong about the autocrat.

The royal court in Riyadh, however, is not the comparison Graham uses when describing visits to Trump’s residence at Mar-a-Lago. According to Woodward, the senator invokes an even more brutal form of authoritarianism.

“Going to Mar-a-Lago is a little bit like going to North Korea,” the book quotes Graham as saying. “Everybody stands up and claps every time Trump comes in.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/10/08/bob-woodward-new-book-war-trump-putin-biden/

[aleisters]

Would it be alright to get some recommendations on how to get into wrestling? I'm intrigued by your posting but I also have no idea where to start do I just search "most homoerotic wrestling" and go from there?

i will do my best to provide a baby starter guide … this is kind of how i got into things, but streamlined so that you dear reader can figure out what you want out of life, instead of fucking around consistently like i did

“isn’t wrestling silly and fake?”

yes. however, the unreality of wrestling and the blend between what��s real, what’s staged, and the genuine athleticism of the wrestlers makes for incredible long-term, partly improvised narratives that can happen nowhere else. you’re not watching a sports show — you’re watching a mix of theatre and gymnastics.

“is wrestling for me?”

suggestion: watch supereyepatchwolf’s video , “professional wrestling is stupid and beautiful and i love it”. it’s meant to convey the wonder and fun and joy of this silly silly thing to people who are not into wrestling or don’t understand it. if you’re still curious about wrestling when you’re done, it’s time to start watching for real.

“ok, i’m still curious. now what?”

fuck it, we ball. the beauty of wrestling is that whilst there are long term narratives, all the individual matches need to convey is the struggle of that moment. whether it’s a long term feud coming to a head, friends who have to compete or have turned on each other, someone struggling to the top of a championship mountain, or a challenger coming in to try and dethrone a champion - all that matters will be conveyed to you by the tone of the match and the commentators. so you can just pick up anywhere and dive right in. but across dozens of promotions, where do you start?

well, for you i’ll do what i did, which is pick on all elite wrestling (aew). they’re not better or worse than anyone else, but bluntly for me i think a lot of the wrestlers there are cute and they’re easy for me to find. here are a few matches off the top of my head, not in any particular order. i list their names and then what show you can find the match on. most of these can be found on the internet archive, if not all.

MJF vs CM PUNK (Revolution 2022) — dog collar match. they’re collared and chained to each other. mjf hits cm punk over the back with the chain and it leaves very real, visible marks. extremely sexy if you’re into that sort of thing.

DARBY ALLIN vs JON MOXLEY (Dynamite 08/05/2020) — i’ll be real this one awakened something in me it’s just very. um. it’s just very. umm. uhhh. 😓

DARBY ALLIN & STING vs TEAM TAZ (Revolution 2021) — this is fun because it’s filmed in a warehouse location and more cinematically. it’s goofy, but has some intense stunts too. i love this match. bonus points because sting literally picks darby up and throws him.

BRYAN DANIELSON vs KAZUCHIKA OKADA (Forbidden Door 2023) — so fair warning, bryan breaks his arm for real in this match. you can’t really tell except for how he stops using his right arm for the last 10-15 mins of the match, but i love this match. bryan and okada are just both great and very intense. (btw okada broke bryan’s orbital socket last month, please help)

MJF vs KENNY OMEGA (Collision 28/10/2023) i wanted a kenny match on this list and this one is recent but great, in part because of the respect the two men show each other, rather than being an outright feud. my heart grows three sizes whenever matches end in a cuddle.

i also recommend AEW ALL IN 2023, which was a ppv at wembley and literally every match is incredible and a banger. fucking rules.

“i watched those and they sucked!”

i dunno man try wwe or npjw or gcw idk or maybe you just don’t like wrestling

“i watched those and they RULED!”

congrats! now look into aew’s weekly shows or their numerous PPV shows, and start looking at shows from other promotions like wwe, njpw, and gcw! search the names of wrestlers you enjoyed to find more matches that they’re in! be free, and let the half naked sweaty men consume your brain 💜

i hope this helped 🥹

[foxes-that-run]

2017 Haylor Timeline

Timeline Tag, or years 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024.

3 January - Taylor "based in London" (end of Cornelia St period)

5 January - date of Harry’s leak “lately” recorded. Anniversary of clear blue water/rain on window posts which may be their last break up anniversary. He was pictured in London

8 January - Taylor and Zayn film I don't wanna live forever music video in London

13 January - Taylor was in LA papped at the the gym in LA. The scenario she told secret session fans she wrote  DWOHT

21 January - Harry goes to LA

22 January Joe in Paris

28 January - Harry in LA

1 February - Harry's Rose Ring maybe at his birthday in Malibu 1 February 2017. Taylor posts a video of her and Gigi singing along to "I Don't wanna live forever" for the first time on the radio, which ‘happens’ to be on Harry's birthday.

4 February - Taylors only performance of 2017 in Houston. Super Saturday Night, rep coded.

14 February - Tom Hiddleston GQ article where he sounds traumatised, it is bad press for Taylor and later indirectly referred to in the Joe dating announcement.

7 - 19 February - Fans spot Taylor in London, once in a brown wig

24 February - Little Big Town perform, say Taylor is on London

March - Stalker arrested for breaking into Taylors NY apartment

5 March - Rose Ring seen clearly at Studio in London.

7 March - Ed Sheeran seen at Taylors NYC Apartment, he said they would collab again and March 2 said she was working on new music. (End Game)

8 March - Harry at Cottons Rhum Shack London

15 March - Harry arriving NYC with head down

23 March - E New story: "Where in the World is Taylor Swift?" that she had not posted candids since Thanksgiving.

Late March. Behind Album performances likely recorded at Abbey Road, they appear in the documentary in May and Harry was holding Ben’s daughter who looks about 3-4 months. Harry’s hair is also shorter than it was 5 March, a similar cut April 21.

4 April- Taylor recording Rep in Nashville 'to avoid paparazzi'‘. Joe in London. Harry shot Sign of the Times in Scotland. Mirror headline "Harry Styles goes all Peter Pan in his gloriously magical new video for Sign Of The Times"

7 April - Sign of the Times released

10, 16 April - Harry in NYC

18 April - Harry’s rolling stone interview where he leaves the table over her name and tips his hat and ex because it’s all for them. Harry possibly shades Matty Healy:

There’s nothing worse than an inauthentic tortured person. ‘They took my allowance away, so I did heroin.’ It’s like – that’s not how it works. I don’t even remember what the question was.”

21 April - Harry on Graham Norton, performs sign of the times and writes Spanish girl that later leaks backstage.

26 April - Harry in Paris for nrj

29 April - Harry is papped wearing the same St Laurent shirt Calvin copied for the Ole music video, on the date Taylor later identified in High Infidelity.

1 May - Taylor filmed LWYMMD Video, Harry London 2 & 7

7 May - harry driving in London using phone behind wheel wearing packers hat with Tess ward

8 May - Harry in Williamsburg

9 May - Harry today show with the pink suit when he performs Stockholm. Xander and Jeff there. Harry dating Tess Ward. left NY

11 May Tess ward posts a photo of Harry’s kitchen with his cap in and is never seen again

12 May - Harry styles debut released, behind the album released just after. Cute Nick Grimshaw interview with 2 ghosts question

15 May - Harry behind the album released, includes parts of performances. Taylor paped in Nashville and flys to London in Charter (not her plane)

16 May - The Sun reports a source that Joe and Taylor dating 'for several months.' "after what happened with Tom Hiddleston", reminding me of the Tom GQ article from February. Having not been seen at all with Taylor previously Joe will now be seen 20 times for the rest of the year. The way this changed from completely unknown to very public (but saying it wasn't??) is .... sure they were totally together before this. Harry went on Carpool Karaoke wearing Haylor ring

17 May - Tess ward wore a shirt Harry wore in an interview

18 May - TMZ pap photos of Taylor in Nashville

19 May - Harry at troubadour ONO. James, Jeff and Xander there carpool karaoke, Harry sang IKYWT in broadcast not you tube. Stevie Nicks comes, Harry emotional on stage in Landslide with Stevie Nicks. The music business people there were impressive, including the then head of the recording academy and Grammy voting member Savan Kotecha, who wrote WMYB, had fell out with 1D and some members but remained close with Harry.

20 May - Harry lists LA house, reported on the 22nd, sold in 2019.

1 June - Joe and Taylor papped together

5 June - Joe mention in blinds and seen having coffee

9 June - Taylor returns her music to Apple Music on the same day Katy Perry releases Witness.

11 June - Joe and Taylor and her plane

18 June - Joe and taylor spend fathers day in London with his dad

15 June - Harry follows Camille on IG, fans abuse her.

17 June - Harry attends Pixie Geldof's wedding in Mallorca, Louis rumoured to be there but no photos of Louis. Daisy Lowe is a bridesmaid.

20 June - HS stepdad passed away :( H Tess BUA

21 June - Mirror: "Taylor Swift "hosted Father's day for boyfriend Joe Alwyn and his parents - who served up a classic Sunday roast"" also referring to Joe as a 'new boyfriend'

24 June - Joe and Taylor at gym together

July - Harry NY in bar with Xander

4 July - Karlie Kloss posts a photo with Kendall in Paris, the internet realises KK is not in the squad. Taylors inflatable slide seen being inflated - but no 4th July party for Taylor. Blind item that Taylor skipped the party because Joe would not do a photo shoot.

13 July - Taylors last post before her socials wiped was to promote Selena's album. Reputation promo planning underway, Joe was announced a month before.

14 July - End Game written. Kendall came to Harry's show.

21 July - Harry and Camille seen together, Nick mentions her and she is in the background of a fan photo.

19 July - Dunkirk released

24 July - Joe and Taylor walking NYC

27 July - Joe and Taylor with umbrellas this time

29 July - Harry in NY

7 August - two ghosts release date

14 August - Taylors sexual assault trail v David Mueller, from his hand allegedly under her skirt in 2013 is settled and Taylor wins damages of $1.

27 August - LAWYMMD video, Karlie not on junior jewels shirt, Kendall tea time reenactment, Katy car crash and she eats a lobster in a cage.

28 August - Taylor deletes instagram

31 August HS releases two ghosts recording from Behind the album performances

3 September - Taylor at Abigail's wedding Martha's vineyard. Ready for it...? released after Saturday football preview.

7 September - Joe and Taylor NYC

9 September - Joe and Taylor in NY at Cornelia St

Sept 2017 – 14 July 2018 - Harry Styles Live on Tour

19 September - Harry points at himself on ‘I’m a fool for you’ in JALBOYH

25 September - Watermelon Sugar written

20 September - Harry LA, Greek Theater, wears same custom Gucci suit as Kiwi Music Video, with roses. Shania Twain comes and posts a photo of them together. Plays 'Still the One' on Kazoo in Grammy Museum interview. Taylor at Cara's London for month

27 September - Harry released Two Ghosts and Girl Crush as a Spotify Single recorded in Metropolis London, and photos of him recording it. Two days before he performed it in Nashville

28 September - Harry wears red in the Radio City music hall, NY plays Story of My Life in full and has an aborted heart kiss.

29 September - Taylor releases Spotify playlist of 70 songs. Anniversary of Harry’s “we don’t need no piece of paper tweet” and Harry’s another man mixtape. Song 7 is Boys, 20 is Liam Gallagher "for what's worth", followed by "miss you". 27 is We don't deserve love, Niall Horan is at 37 "Too much to ask", it also features Ariana Grande, Kesha, Kings of Leon, Bon Iver, 57 is Perfect by Ed Sheeran, the same name as the 1D song. It ends with #70 'She's casual' about a guy falling in love with a fling.

11 October - Taylor in London with Joe's family

14 October - Phoenix - Harry cries during Meet me in the Hallway (1:39). After “I walked the streets all day” before “running with the thieves”. This was Harry's last US show

16 October - Taylor films End Game music video in London

4 October - Rob Sheiffled on Swiftcast Podcast https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/225-on-the-record-rolling-stones-rob-sheffield/id634257561?i=1000393060172&r=1086

Well, I mean, it's funny because that's a special case because her Harry Styles songs are really good and his songs about her are really good, and it's really kind of weird that, like, you know, the songs they write about each other are so consistently good, I can't think of any analogic pop history to it, where these two artists of that stature are going back to, like, who knows even, like, you know, how long they dated or anything like that, or, like, and of course all these songs are just, you know, allegedly about the other one, but when I was listening to the Harry Styles album for the first time and I heard him sing about, you know, like, you know, why can't we just be us in the refrigerator light? And I was like, oh my god, you went there. You went to the refrigerator light. I mean, really kind of, you know, mind- blowing. Even when I was listening to the last One Direction album, and that was another one where I was, you know, listening to it in the record company offices and had to keep a real straight face because you don't want to show any reaction. I get to Olivia and I'm like, seriously? Harry wrote a song named after her cat? Did they not think people would notice this kind of thing? But it's kind of a beautiful thing. It's that kind of inspiration that they bring out of each other.

October - Liam said he saw Harry at the Bowery Hotel “I bumped into him in The Bowery Hotel. He’s been through a rough time recently. God bless him, he was really happy to see me. The funniest thing was we didn’t really talk business. Dunkirk was out and all this was happening, and we just gave each other a big hug.”

20 October - Taylor reportedly likes a post "I’m here to drop some tea listen up and listen good!! Any love song Taylor writes now is about Joe and only Joe. She is so happy and this is about them. And only them. This is confirmed. It's a rule. Joe love songs from here on out, this goes for all of Reputation. No speculating if it is about Taylor’s ex from a million years ago because I promise you it’s not. Joe and Taylor. Happy. The tea has been served."

25 October - Harry performs in Paris, he cries on 'even my phone misses your call' twice in FTDT (1:53 and again 3:30). Taylor was in Nashville for Rep Secret Sessions.

2 November - Call it what you want - Taylor posts home movies that are in the CIWYW lyric video.

8 November - kiwi video released with Taylor looking kid

11 November - Taylor in NYC

10 November - Reputation released end game radio single on 14th

13 November - blind item that This Is What You Came For was about Harry

17 November - the HS behind the album performances released, first seen in BTA

28 November - Harry performs VS Show, Taylor cancels. New Years Day released as a single 27 November.

29 November - Derek Blasberg (fashion journalist reportedly the person KK had in TS apartment that ended friendship) posts a photo of KK sipping tea and asks for captions then comments "I knew brew were trouble when I met you"

4 December - Harry Haneda Airport

8 December - Joe and Taylor papped holding hands NYC

10 December - Taylor performs then watches Ed's show with Joe at Jingle Bell Ball London

12 December - Taylor and Joe in NYC

13 December - Reputation Stadium Tour tickets go on sale

31 December - Joe and Taylor NYE (Toe Twitter timeline)

Continue in 2018

[chaifootsteps]

Metallica Anon here responding to Taxidermy Anon's roll call. I'm going to be a little more extensive with my post so grab a snack and a drink. I'm a 31 male and I'm 10 months older than Viv. My story began around November of 2019 when I was (and still am) a member of a forum related to a show that I used to love but completely lose interest in. (If you're wondering what show? Let's just say Blitzø would love it. 😉) Then I noticed a few members had this particular character as their avatars. That character turned out to be Angel Dust of Hazbin Hotel. My curiousity grew and I eventually watched the pilot. I was completely enamored with it. I loved the animation, the characters, the voice acting, etc. Not long after, I began watching Helluva Boss and soon became enamored with show as well. For nearly four years, I was quite emotionally attached to Viv's shows, almost at the level of the cartoons I loved from my childhood. For a while, I thought Hazbin and Helluva could be some of the greatest cartoons in history. Unfortunately, as Phil Collins once sang, something happened to on the way to Heaven.

Actually, three things happened. I'll explain each one.

The Long Wait for Hazbin Hotel: I don't know how or why I managed to hold on for so long, but I did. I've endured HH's signing to A24 in 2020, the voice actor replacement debacle in 2021, and the character "redesigns" in 2022. I remember in November of '22, I had two things to be excited for in '23: the new Metallica album in April and Hazbin in the summer. (At least one of the things happened.)

To occupy my mind, I binge watched a cartoons until Hazbin would air, which I assumed would be as early as June. When June came, a lot of us were expecting at least a trailer. What did we get?  A cheap Angel Dust picture! I think this is when my hype for HH began to deflate. Then in July, Viv announced HH would be delayed due to the WGA/SAG strikes. At first, I thought the reasons were understandable, but then found out A24 can promote their stuff during the strikes. This made me feel suspicious on what’s going on. Once summer ended, I officially gave up on Hazbin Hotel… then the trailer came out with a release date, which is JANUARY 2024!

Did the trailer reignite my interest? HAH! No! I’m wasting any more time waiting for this shit! But that’s not the only reason…

The Decline of Helluva Boss: Up until this year, I loved Helluva Boss. I enjoyed the shenanigans of Blitzø, Moxxie, Millie, and Loona. I would always find some enjoyment in every episode, even the bad episodes like “CHERUB” and “The Circus.” However, Helluva had long waits between episodes ranging from two to six months. Yet somehow, I endured because at least new episodes were coming out.

Then came the episode “Exes and Oohs.” I hesitated to watch it at first as some previews and clips I saw turned me off. Then I finally watched the full episode… and I absolutely hated it! Unlike the previous bad episodes of HB, I did not find ANY enjoyment in this episode. Then came the episode “Western Energy “and the same happened again. Hesitated to watch at first, finally watched it and absolutely hated it. I began to question myself on why I am I still watching this. Finally came the episode “Unhappy Campers,” and that episode was the final straw for me. That episode made me so angry that I wanted to smash my head into my laptop. Three strikes, you’re out!

Ever since that damn episode, I swore off Helluva Boss. I have not watched a new episode or even rewatched an old episode. It also got me thinking if HB’s writing is this bad, I believe HH’s writing will be just bad or worse. Now let’s get to the source of the shit…

Viv’s True Colors: For a long time, I did not know very much about Vivienne Medrano, her history, or who see really is. I simply viewed her as a regular person who somehow found success in independent animation…

Then came spring 2023 when I learned of the ErinFrost and KenDraws allegations against her by Ayy Lmao’s YouTube videos. Those allegations really got me thinking and my views of Viv began to change. Later in the summer, I began using my abandoned Tumblr account and I stumbled upon the Viv Critical community… and learned everything awful about Viv. Not only is Viv awful, so is her fanbase. I can honestly say that the VivziePop fanbase is probably the most toxic I have ever been in… and this is coming from someone who was apart of another infamous fanbase back in the 2010s. I mean, I have never seen a creator that encourages their fans to attack and send deaths to anyone who has even the slightest bit of criticism.

*sigh* This post has gotten too long so I’m gonna wrap it up. Fuck Viv, she’s a leper messiah. 🖕

-Metallica Anon 🤘

That was a great story, Metallica Anon. Sucks that it had to happen, but if it had to, glad you found your way here!

[ikjun]

AL'S DRAMA RECS VOL.1: these recs will solely focus on the writing of the shows, which to me comes down to two things: how well does the plot accomplish what it set out to do in the beginning? and how compelling are the characters written, no matter if their character arc means they become better or worse through the story or even remain who they are? my favourite dramas usually succeed in giving us a satisfying answer to both questions and these are the ones you will see on this list!

★★★★★ dramas (aka the greatest hits):

SECRET FOREST / STRANGER (2017-2021): the pinnacle of all dramas. follows the duo of no-nonsense prosecutor hwang si-mok (the acting star turn of he century by cho seung-woo) and police detective han yeo-jin (the ever-exceptional bae doo-na) investigating a murder case that blows open several scandals in the prosecution. season 2 follows several cases leading to an internal investigation on police bribery. it just does not get better than this and i fear it won't ever will. this drama has the understated styling of nordic noir, the classic shenanigans of an unlikely leading kdrama duo, and one of the tightest scripts ever seen in any tv show ever. | genre: thriller, melodrama, crime procedural

MY LIBERATION NOTES (2022): following the yeom family's three siblings living in the small town of sanpo on the outskirts of seoul, and the stranger moving into the house next door to theirs, this story navigates questions of sibling-hood and family, the purpose of life, as well as the sacrifices we make for the relationships in our life as well as our own happiness. this show earned its hype from the central love story between mr. gu and yeom mi-jeong (son seok-ku and kim ji-won acting the house down) but every one of the three main storylines is well-paced, gives the main actors moments to shine and grow, and ties neatly into the overarching plot to render you either moved or comforted, or even both. | genre: slice of life, melodrama

VINCENZO (2020): at this point are there still followers on this blog who haven't at least seen me talk about vincenzo? the writing of this show is maybe the peak of genre-blending done in kdrama, a culmination of years refining this skill to sharp perfection in a biting black comedy. vincenzo cassano (song joong-ki), consiglieri of a mafia clan he got adopted into, goes back to south korea to recover a frankly unholy amount of gold and fights a gigantic conglomerate (babel) to get there. if you watch past episode four, you will finish this drama, because everything ensuing from then on is just one iconic story beat after another. | genre: black comedy / satire, crime, romance

HOSPITAL PLAYLIST (2020-2022): a medical drama beyond reproach. this show is on this list for the way it wrote its characters and achieved the most satisfying character arcs in any kdrama, maybe, ever. a group of five friends in their fourties all working at the same hospital and navigating their professional and private lives, this drama doesn't shy away from eclectic backstories (and the leads all playing music together in a band) as well as truly heart-tearing moments of friendship and romance. never have i seen character growth done as well as i have seen it in the characters of yang seok-hyeong and kim-jun-wan. | genre: medical, slice of life, rom-com

D.P. / DESERTER PURSUIT (2021-2023): d.p. to me is a no-notes kind of show. it depicts the work of the military police pursuing army deserters through freshly enlisted ahn jun-ho (jung hae-in playing years below his age and leagues above many his actual age) who ends up empathizing and working to help and save the deserters he and his team partner han ho-yeol (an exceptional koo kyo-hwan) are meant to bring back to the army instead of incriminating them further. d.p. is much better for its tone, its writing and the risks it takes in its no-nonsense approach than some of the drivel revered solely for being more flashy and showy in this genre. | genre: military drama, action

★★★★☆ dramas (aka near-perfection):

PRISON PLAYBOOK (2017): the perfect prototype of the bromance as romance formula and one of the best found family dramas that really focuses on that. star baseball player kim je-hyuk (park hae-soo in his career-defining role) loses his career and lands in prison after he assaults the ex-boyfriend of his younger sister to protect her. the show centers on je-hyuk's time in prison, where he reunites with his childhood best-friend-now-prison-guard lee jun-ho (a supreme jung kyung-ho) and assimilates himself with the people he meets in his cell. this show hits all the beats so well from a stellar supporting cast to a great comeback kid narrative for je-hyuk from his time in prison to being released. glaring flaw: the age-gap / childhood friends romance, the conclusion of hanyang's story arc, who gets the short end of the stick while being the one out gay character in the show. | genre: black comedy, found family, slice of life

GOBLIN: THE LONELY AND GREAT GOD (2017): the defining kdrama for many. it may be the one drama that really delivers in answering its plot's defining question twice over and then some. goblin kim shin (gong yoo), cursed to immortality, gets his life upended once a grim reaper (lee dong-wook as wang yeo, a performance never to be seen or repeated again since) and the young woman (kim go-eun as ji eun-tak) who turns out to be his fated bride enter his life. an immortal man resigned on life finds purpose while knowing he will fatally die once the woman he falls in love with cures him of his curse. glaring flaw: the age gap romance between eun-tak and kim shin. could she have not been in college at least? | genre: melodrama, romance, fantasy

CRASH LANDING ON YOU (2019): the romance drama that could, and did. based on a real life incident, ceo yoon se-ri (son ye-jin, an acting veteran near beyond reproach imo) accidentally crash lands in north korea after a paragliding flight gone wrong. there she meets active duty soldier captain ri jeong-hyeok (hyun bin, thank you for your service) and has to stay with him and his military company. the fated love story starts there, but neither of them know they have met before, and already changed the courses of each other's lives before doing so again. minor flaw: is this drama romanticising the military? or is depicting of that on screen just that and nothing more? that is up to you to decide. | genre: melodrama, romance

HOMETOWN CHA CHA CHA (2021): the series remake of a korean rom-com film of the early aughts, this remains my favourite romance drama over all. dentist yoon hye-jin (shin min-a blessing our screens) moves to rural gongjin, a seaside village where nothing happens at all, after her professional life in seoul goes up in flames. it's not all sunshine in gongjin either as ye-jin meets hong du-sik (kim seon-ho),a handyman who is called chief hong by everyone and fixes all the big and small fires in the village. the two start as enemies that eventually fall in love. the romance is well-handled and paced and the second lead (lee sang-yi) is the best i have ever seen in a show, especially because of the arc written for him. minor flaw: the plot is not as tight as the respective character arcs, so sometimes sacrifices are made for the sake of a more emotional scenes. | genre: rom-com, slice of life

THE GLORY (2022): when you put the revenge in revenge drama, this is what you can get. song hye-ko returns to small screen brilliance in an incomparable performance as moon dong-eun, a woman who decides to infiltrate the lives of her school bullies and take them down one by one. this show delivers on plot even more than on characters, following through on every step of moon dong-eun's revenge without shying away from how gruesome or painful that path of vengeance can be. dong-eun gets help from plastic surgeon joo yeo-jeong (a delightful lee do-hyun), and the main cast is rounded out by lim ji-yeon and jung sung-il as dong-eun's grown up tormentor and her reluctant husband respectively. minor flaw: the show does spend a big chunk of its time on the group of school bullies and their interpersonal relations, which sometimes takes time away from the main plot. | genre: psychological thriller, revenge drama

♡ more specific genre watches (beware: usually crime):

LIFE (2018): written by the writers of secret forest, life is another thriller with understated direction and a more sombre tone. i would have put it in the greatest hits category, but watching it with other people made me realise how niche it actually is in genre. a corporate hospital thriller, the show revolves around the newly-minted ceo of sangkook university hospital, gu seung-hyo (a once again flawless cho seung-woo) and a dedicated ER doctor (lee dong-wook, stellar as ever) who depict the two sides of the patient care vs. profit conflict in the hospital. i can't even say more about the show because every other plot point is basically a spoiler. sharply directed and written, this is one of the best genre pieces i have ever watched, and is mildly reminiscent of hbo prestige television of the decade before. | genre: medical drama, corporate thriller

THE WORST OF EVIL (2023): are you even surprised? this was the drama of 2023 for me, one of the most stellar scripts i have seen. the worst of evil is very firmly a noir show and you have to treat what you are watching as such. it is heavily entrenched into its genre tropes and arcs, even more than most crime shows i have seen, and that can be off-putting for people unfamiliar with the genre, but if you are up for it, you will not be disappointed. opportune violent crime detective park jun-mo (ji chang wook, korea's finest new gen action actor) infiltrates a drug ring lead by jung gi-cheol ( fantastic and emotional tour de force by wi ha joon) and the lines begin to blur when neither of them knows if what they bargained for is actually what they want. the show lets its main plot dictate the pace, focusing on park jun-mo's descent into crime, and it is all the more better for it. | genre: noir, crime thriller, action

BEYOND EVIL (2020): the story about dejected and grieving small-town detective lee dong-sik (baeksang-awarded veteran actor shin ha-kyun) being partnered with elite detective and spinster seoulite han joo-won (child actor prodigy turned actor to watch du jour) has made its waves online for its very apparent gay subtext, but to reduce beyond evil to this would be a crime in itself. following lee dong-sik and han joo-won as they are tasked to solve a reoccurring serial killer case, the framing plot then fans open the age-old wound of dong-sik losing his twin sister and being blamed for her disappearance with joo-won having taken an obsessive fascination with the case. the two crime cases are exceptionally interwoven and the stories of the people in the small town of manyang, and how they all somehow tie back to dong-sik, is the perfect example of turning the small centrepiece of a plot into the binding force of every thread. | genre: procedural, psychological thriller

OUR BELOVED SUMMER (2021): i put this into the genre-piece category because obl is majorly focused on its main trope. romantic dramas can easily be trite to me, as this obvious list of crime shows doesn't tell you, but our beloved summer is one of the few that did everything right. it plays out the best trope ever done - exes to lovers - and does not back down from embracing the whole shebang to the nth degree. high school / college sweethearts choi woong (known beloved actor on ye-xiu tumblr dot com, choi woo-shik) and kook yeun-soo (the ever great kim da-mi) have to unite to replicate, or rather continue, the viral high school documentary they filmed years ago. the show shimmies its way from one moment of reconnection to another, culminating in the best kdrama kiss to ever be put to screen, and concludes in one of the most satisfying and, yes, romantic endings ever. the things a show can do when it just sticks to its main narrative, huh. | genre: rom-com, coming of age

[babyarty]

An incomplete list of Trans and gender nonconforming people murdered for existing in the 2020s

Here is the complete list of Trans people murdered in 2023, compiled by Transrespect versus Transphobia Worldwide (TvT).

2020 – Özge Bilir, aged 25, was a Dutch trans woman of Turkish descent living in Leidsche Rijn, Utrecht. She was stabbed to death by her ex-boyfriend.

2020 – Alexa Luciano Ruiz was fatally shot in Puerto Rico on 24 February, after an incident in a local restroom. Ms. Luciano was killed while the assailant men laughed.

2020 – Michelle Michellyn Ramos Vargas, a 33-year-old trans woman, was found dead on an isolated road after being shot multiple times on 30 September in San Germán, Puerto Rico. She worked as a bartender and was studying to become a nurse.

2020 – Selena Reyes-Hernandez, 37, was fatally shot in Chicago, Illinois, on 31 May by a man she went home with, after telling him that she was transgender.

2020 – Brayla Stone, 17, was murdered in Arkansas in June 2020 by a man seeking to conceal his sexual relationship with her. The killer pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 50 years in prison.

2020 – Valera, a 46-year-old man, a janitor, was raped and killed on 10 February in Chelyabinsk, Russia, by his dorm roommates after they learned he was a transgender man.

2021 – Ebeng Mayor, a trans man from Batasan Hills, Philippines, was found raped, mutilated, and killed on 20 May 2021, after being missing for three days.

2022 – Briza Garces Florez, a 40-year-old Colombian trans sex worker from the Netherlands, was stabbed to death by her 32-year-old boyfriend.

2022 – Doski Azad, a 23-year-old Kurdish transgender woman, was murdered by her brother for being transgender.

2022 – Ariyanna Mitchell, a 17-year-old Black trans girl from Virginia, was shot and killed by 19-year-old Jimmy LeShawn Williams with an assault rifle, after he asked her if she was transgender, and she replied, "yes".

2022 - Cherry Bush, a homeless 48-year-old trans woman, was shot to death in Los Angeles.

2023 - Brianna Ghey was stabbed to death in Culcheth Linear Park on 11 February 2023.

2024 - Nex Benedict, a 16-year-old non-binary American student died one day after being assaulted in the girls' restroom.

(This is Nex)

Their friends and mother say that they experienced bullying for more than a year, because of their gender identity, before the assault. The bullying got progressively worse after a bill was passed in Oklahoma to prohibit the use of non-binary gender markers on birth certificates. Public school students are legally required to use restrooms only according to the gender on their birth certificate.

Nex was assaulted in the restroom by three girls and beaten unconscious. Sue Benedict, Nex's mother, was called to school and she found Nex with bruises on their face and scratches on the back of their head. She was informed that they had been suspended for two weeks. Sue took them to a nearby hospital and called the Oklahoma police department.

Nex told the officer how they had heard the girls making comments about their group and how they had poured water on the girls which then led to the altercation. They then said that had been attacked and had blacked out on the floor. The officer told Sue that this could be considered "mutual" and if they were to press charges, Nex would be open to those same charges. She declined at the time. Nex were later discharged and reportedly went to bed with a sore head.

(Nex with their cat)

The following day, on February 8, as they were preparing to travel with their mother for an appointment, Nex collapsed in the family's living room. Sue Benedict called 911, saying that Nex’s eyes had rolled back and they were struggling to breathe. Nex had stopped breathing by the time EMTs arrived. Nex was declared dead at the hospital that evening.

This is, by no means, a complete list. It does not even include a fraction of the murders of gender queer people in the 2020s, let alone the suicides, rapes, assaults, attempted murders, etc. It does not include the crimes against the rest of the LGBTQIA+ community.

Thank you for reading the whole thing.

[gabrielokun]

Hi. You watch a lot of dramas/series. Do you have any favorites? If you do, what's your top 20 favorite Asian BL dramas/series?

Hi, anon)) thank you for asking. Sorry, it took a while) but I have to prepare a visual representation to compensate for the lack of writing skills))) english is hard T_T

anyway, here are some of my favorite things

Love by Chance (2018)

The show that started it all (づ ᴗ _ᴗ)づ♡ Yep, my first Bl therefore I just must include it. Is is a good show? - not really. BUT! AePete are my babies, I love them. Nobody does it like them ٩(ˊᗜˋ*)و ♡

2. My Only 12% (2022)

Childhood friends to lovers done right! My favorite show of the last year. It is a slooooow burn but it's so worth it! Very lively and real boys. great family and friend dynamics, kind of meh last story outside of CakeEwi but still…If you want some great friendship slowly blooming into romance this is the show

3. Kieta Hatsukoi (2021)

Super cute show. All characters are amazing, story well written, minimum hurt all the comfort. Good girl-not an enemy (im really easy too please ( •̯́ ₃ •̯̀) xd)

4. 30-sai made Dotei Da to Mahotsukai ni Nareru rashii (2020)aka Cherry magic

JapBL are totally for me when they do fluff, (cause their angst is on a such level I need a lifetime to process it xd)

but this one is so fluffy (ฅ́ ˘ฅ̀)♡ They make me happy and I grateful for it

5. My Ride (2022)

Speaking of fluff °ʚ(´꒳`)ɞ° Other couples are kind of boring But! Mork's uncles, MorkTawan's adopted son (still a bit salty we didnt see him again, Tawan should've had more parenting time, he is clearly a great dad ଘ(੭◌ˊᵕˋ)੭* ੈ♡‧₊˚) natural growth of their friendship into love *_*. This one is good!

6.Color Rush (2020)

I love soulmates. Its short, simple story but with very interesting and original idea.

7. Hello Stranger (2020)

Such a simple story but the way it was done is amazing! Falling in love through web camera (੭ ˊ^ˋ)੭ ♡ Characters have such an incredible chemistry even tho they have minimum personal contact(kudos to actors they done well)))

I Will Knock You (2022)

Okay, yes age gap not for everyone. But again it was done very respectful. ૮₍ ´ ꒳ `₎ა I love love love Noey's ˖°.✧aesthetic✧˖°., his room is my fave ngl, i want everything he has))))I love this delusional king He was so sure Thi is into him from the second they met and i live for it.

9. Until We Meet Again (2019)

I love soulmates 2. I just love this show. Its gonna traumatize you and then comforts you with cutest fluffiest boys that going through it

10. Vice Versa (2022)

I didn't like it at first

Puen annoyed me too much ૮꒰˶> ༝ <˶ ꒱ა but then I binge rewatch it in one weekend and I just fall for it. Its so good))) I love soulmates 3 and it's super pretty. I love colors

11. About Youth (2022)

Show where I love main and second couple the same ପ(๑•ᴗ•๑)ଓ ♡ thats rare))) Again very simple story but told beautifly

12. HIStory2 Right or Wrong (2018)

Let's talk HIStory. They kind of getting worse imho. 4 and 5 were just fine. thats sucks ʚ₍ᐢ ›̥̥̥ ༝ ‹̥̥̥ ᐢ₎ɞ i still love them tho

HIStory2 Right or Wrong (2018) 13. HIStory3 Trapped (2019) and 14. HIStory2 Crossing the Line (2018)

are superior for me. but just watch any of them they all are worth your time

15. Our Dating Sim (2023)

Second chance romance done very very right!

16. Oxygen (2020)

Good fluffy fluff. P'Phu and his bunny are so precious. Main are cute and sweet and adorable. Ignore weird girl and doctor everything else is just so lovely

17. Light on Me (2021)

Love triangle done right. Good light fluffy show that did hurt so good (๑˃̵ᴗ˂̵)

18. To My Star Season 2: Our Untold Stories (2022)

I love how they told this story

19. Not Me (2021)

its hard to explain how good this show is, its more serious than usual bls, great acting, amazing story, strong message told through not just cinematography but art and dance too. its truly great show

20. Triage (2022)

Time loops are fun

+ some honorable mentions

Ingredients (2020)

not a show))) just an add but damn. It such a feel good little comfort add Jeff and Gameplay have an amazing chemistry, simple slice of life stories but so good , mutual pining done so well

anything by strongberry, literally just go at their YT chanel and enjoy ଘ(੭ˊᵕˋ)੭ ੈ♡‧₊˚

emmmm that a long post sorry

[rrskinny02]

I don’t have a diagnosis the last time I got one I was 15 I think now I’m 21 so it’s been a while. In the meantime a lot has happened. This is my ED story.

It started when I was 12, my mom had put me on a very strict diet because I had a lot of food allergies. She put me on the diet when I was like 8 but around 11/12 I started stealing food at the supermarket like chocolate and candy and cakes because I was so hungry and I wanted everything I wasn’t allowed and all the kids my age were eating that so I wanted it too.

From 13/14 I got bullied because I gained a LOT of weight because I was basically binging everyday i got to the weight of 97kg by 14. The bullying got so bad that I started looking up ways to lose weight fast. That’s when I discovered eating disorders and what was what. And also tumblr and pro ana sites and also when pro ana was still a thing on Pinterest.

First I started throwing up after dinner. That worked obviously, after that I started skipping lunch and counting the calories I ate at breakfast. Soon after came that I was eating something different at dinner than the rest of my family. I had made a list of foods by calorie and how much it was by 100g. I didn’t know MyFitnessPal was a thing. I had also made a list if foods I wasn’t allowed to eat and a little of foods I was.

That’s where fear foods started.

I didn’t puke anymore because I had control I lost weight from 97kg to 81kg in 3 months. I was 16 when I got my first boyfriend. And we started dating aka eating food together and I slowly started to gain back weight over the 1.5 year we were dating. When we broke up I weighted nearly 100kg

That’s when I decided to work on myself again. I lost a bit of weight but not that much, I quickly gained it all back and even more.

That was all in 2020/2021. In October of 2021 I moved out of my parents home to a student room. I relapsed for a month in not eating and counting calories but the binge eating came right back.

In 2022 I had a year of using drugs so I didn’t gain that much and had less eating attacks because I was drinking and doing drugs. I tried to quit in 2023 but in the beginning I was hard but finally I quit but in stead of drugs I started eating and eating again. In may of 2023 I weighted up to 115kg. I was BIG and I didn’t see it myself.

In July 2023 i RELAPSED BAD. I lost 30kg in 4/5 months. I didn’t eat at all I was obsessed with fasting, fast lasting up to 111 hours. And every hour u can imagine. I was also obsessed with eating as clean as possible. I went from 115kg to 85kg in less than 6 months.

Over the last 9 months I actually gained back 10kg. But I’ve already lost 5kg form those 10kg.

So if I lose 5 more kg I’m back at 85kg but I really want to lose another 15kg. I just need to get a good relapse or trigger because right now I’m not doing okay.

My depression has not been worse than this. But for some reason the Ed is not raging right now. I do under eat most days now but than I have extreme hunger other days 2/3 days a week so I don’t know what to do about it.

I’m just gonna try and eat healthy again. That’s the best I can do for now I guess

[strideofpride]

On that note, can you imagine how INSANE the media circus would be if it did come out publicly that Chuck and Blair illegally backdated their marriage certificate and the case against them was actually re-opened? Especially in 2023, at a time when anti-billionaire “eat the rich” sentiment has become very mainstream, and true crime is one of the most popular and profitable genres of entertainment?

Like, the events of season six happen so fast that we don’t really get to appreciate just how wild they are from the outside looking in. Imagine if Michael Bloomberg or pre-presidency Donald Trump died in a car crash, and their then-teenage progeny took over their real estate empires. Everyone just gets used to the idea of a little boy real estate mogul, I guess, and a few years pass, and then - surprise! They were faking their death all along!! Yes there was a funeral, yes they were legally declared dead, but who cares! They’re back baby, and ready to go back to being the same shitbags they were before!

Except, a mere handful of months later, they’re dead again - this time having gone careening off the side of one of their company’s most famous buildings (imagine if Donald Trump died falling off of Trump Tower lmaoooo). Did they fake it again? Was it foul play? By the time rumors start to swirl of the alleged involvement of their recently deposed nepotism baby, the cops close the case and rule it an accident. Their heir, still barely an adult, retakes the reigns of leadership - newly married, a detail no one realizes is suspicious because they likely have no idea that the spouse was at the scene of the crime.

Years pass. YouTubers and online conspiracy theorists periodically bring up the case, but the public at large once again more or less accepts the public narrative. Another piece of shit real-estate mogul gets elected president, and the attitude of the general public towards the uber wealthy turns increasingly hostile. Then there’s 2020, and 2021, and 2022, and- And then. “Billionaire boy and family linked to father’s mysterious death after discovery of faked marriage license”.

Even though we, the audience, knows Chuck didn’t actually kill his father, do you think in a world where this was an actual case involving actual public figures anyone would believe that? The coverup is so ridiculously suspicious that the general public almost definitely assumes they really did do the crime.

And consider the players in this case - a terrible billionaire who died a deliciously ironic death, his somehow worse son who in a post-#MeToo world is already a PR nightmare waiting to happen, and the ex-princess of Monaco (?!) who just so happens to already be tabloid fodder. If they get especially unlucky, Dan (a pretty famous novelist, at least according to the reboot), Serena (a 2000s era “it girl” and semi-celebrity), and Nate (an ex-NYC mayoral candidate, media mogul, and in universe Kennedy equivalent) might just find themselves implicated too - or at least forced to testify - given they were at the very much in public wedding where any rando could have snapped a picture.

There is just soooo much fucked up entertainment value in a case like this I can’t imagine it being anything less than a public fucking spectacle, and not the kind Chuck or Blair could just shake off. I genuinely do not know how they could absolve themselves in the court of public opinion if it actually went to trial, even if they managed to prevail legally.

Oh my god. Okay well, first of all, I really want the fake Serial podcast that unpacks all of this lol. Someone should make that lmao.

"little boy real estate mogul" took me out lololololol

also like...faking your death is a crime right??? how was Bart just able to re-enter society so easily??? did they ever say???

i'd also like to point out that it's actually much vaguer whether or not Chuck killed his father. They cut away during their fight and then next thing you see is Bart hanging onto the edge. Chuck himself says that he isn't sure whether or not he pushed him or Bart fell over. but also Chuck and Blair both just stood there and did nothing to help Bart before he fell, which is involuntary manslaughter I believe

But seriously though, you're so right anon that all of this was made for true crime. In 2030, someone makes a "Jinx" style doc about Chuck I bet

[myimaginarywonderland]

Here's why I will never not make fun of this situation.

2018: Ricciardo leaves RedBull because he doesn't want to be second driver to Max. Maybe he didn't say it but it was clear as day that was the reason. Max was a great driver that was slowly becoming the talent he is now and everyone knew that and everyone also knew Daniel would probably have to take the place as second driver in a season. He leaves to go to another team which is Renault eventhough there were engines problems with that engine in this year.

2019: An okay season in the midfield

2020: A great season. He is in the top 5, had 2 podiums and Cyril adores him. Him and Esteban both got podiums. And yet Ricciardo decides to go to McLaren. Everyone is surprised, Cyril saying that they had many changes and that it takes stability which he thought Daniel valued. He also though that Daniel would provide that stability. Not surprising given that Cyril made bats, got a tattoo and truly valued both of his drivers deeply. Nonetheless Ricciardo decides to go to McLaren. Cyril supposedly warns him not to trust Zak Brown. I feel it is also worth nothing that while I would argue that with Esteban they were close matched, after one season Lando was already shaping himself up to be a genuine great talent with beating a far more experienced driver.

2021: Yeah many people will say this was a good season for McLaren but looking at it the only real standout result was Ricciardo's win. But already he pales in comparison to Lando who continues to get podiums and is consistently in the top 10 in nearly all races.

2022: The final nail in the coffin. I frankly don't want to hear about how bad McLaren treated him. I truly don't. Yes, they did sometimes make questionable calls and yes they weren't kind at points. That doesn't matter though when one team-mate is scoring 3x the points off the other. There are no excuses for that big off a gap. The qualy stats speak volumes. No team-mate qualified worse in head to head than Ricciardo. There was all reason to drop him especially since he was already worse than Lando the previous year eventhough he won a race. It turns out that McLaren treated him horribly to the surprise of no one and once again, we are reminded that his former teamboss warned him about his exact same scenario.

The moment Oscar is announced Ricciardo fans twist him as a villain, accuse him of stealing someone's seat, call him a snake etc.

2023: This is even before the season. Ricciardo declines seats at teams such as Haas because he doesn't want to be in a backmarker. He then says he needs a break from racing and that for now he will take the role in RedBull as it allows him to focus on himself and have more time for everything that F1 makes difficult.

So what am I getting at?

Ricciardo leaves a team not to be second driver. He then leaves another team where he is beloved to go to a team that his former boss warns him about because he doesn't trust the dude that is plastered everywhere eventhough he is not the boss. Said team turns out to be shit and he then does not accept other team offers because the teams are so far back that he apparently doesn't consider it seat worthy. He also wants to take a break from racing.

Then, he joins the worst team on the grid this season as third driver in an environment that is notorious for throwing at anyone that doesn't perform to their ideals see a rookie that wasn't even halfway through the season.

Sorry if I can't stand him but he brought this entirely on himself.