#i want her to go to jail and be held accountable for her crimes

[marshmallowprotection]

ive never seen it before but i really like the lesbian rika hc!! is there a reason behind why you hc it or is it just one of those things that feels right?

Mainly, it's just because it feels right to me. In another sense, it's got a lot to do with the fact that I think Rika needed more time to live and experience the world before she stumbled into Jihyun Kim's artwork. She found him not long before she got kicked out. She worked as his muse / model for a short while before that happened, and that's how she ended moving in with him and their relationship snowballed from that point.

When Rika talks at length about Jihyun Kim, she doesn't speak like she's in love with him as a person, she speaks to the effect of wanting to BECOME him. Rika has never wanted to be herself. She, as herself, has never been good enough for the world in her eyes. She was never wanted as a baby as far she knows. She was never truly wanted with her adopted family because she wasn't "angelic" enough.

There was a single moment in her life when she found the agency to have control, and that's when she acted like the devil to keep Sally at her side and confronted the entire church for their bigotry. That's one of the major reasons why Rika bounces back and forth between that angel and devil iconography in the series. She only felt like she had a sense of autonomy when she was the devil.

But, Jihyun Kim?

The man with shining eyes who captured the sun in a way that made her feel alive?

He doesn't have to be the devil to feel in control. He doesn't have to fight inner demons like she does when it comes to trying to decide who he is as a person at crucial moments of right and wrong. He has a world of freedom and liberty and beauty. She doesn't have that. It becomes the reason why she ultimately obsesses over with him.

The game doesn't exactly do a good job in showing the full scope of this particular narrative, and unless you've got Rika's Diary from the Box and you've played her DLC, you're gonna miss these details. It's damning once you see it, though. Rika wants to become V to escape being herself.

I won't say Rika didn't love Jihyun because she did love him on some level. But, she wasn't in love with him. She was in love with the idea of love, and the idea of becoming Jihyun Kim. She could never become him, though, and that's... that's ultimately one of the things that hurt her when she hit rock bottom.

When she killed Mother Choi to defend herself and she stood there, realizing that she couldn't be an angel, she couldn't be the RFA's Rika Kim, and she couldn't become Jihyun Kim to run away from the devil she fears becoming even though being the devil was the damn thing that also helped her feel liberated? She gave up on trying to be what she thought the world wanted and accepted that she could only be a devil.

That led to the creation of Mint Eye as Mika spurned her to lean more and more into her devil. She took Mika's idea and made it her own in stride, going further than what Mika might've done had she lived as Rika lashed out at herself, Saeran, Ray, Jihyun, and the RFA in anger and contempt. She burned her bridges and everyone around her in an instant.

A huge part of her anger at Jihyun isn't just that he "spurned" her devil, it's because she's still angry that she couldn't become him to escape her devil. The obsession between Jihyun and Rika is such a messy topic to talk about from both sides, but just speaking from Rika's angle here since I've talked way more about Jihyun than her over the years, she loved the idea of him more than being with him.

Neither he nor her should've gotten in a relationship because they both needed a lot of help and care for themselves first.

Whenever Rika interacts with the player in the moments when the MC has a chance to bridge the gap and listen to her above everyone else, she lowers her guard in a way I don't see her doing Jihyun. Her relationship with MC in the V Bad Ending certainly isn't a healthy one in the slightest, but there's something worth saying about the way in which Rika says:

"You make me feel like a person, not the Savior, not the muse of Jihyun's obsession, or someone who will be taken advantage of by those around me."

Ever since I played that ending, I've just been unable to read Rika as anything other than a lesbian who never had the space to realize she liked women because of the oppressive environment her religion had on her as a person. She never had the chance to find the language to express her feelings and she latched onto V when she did because it was like... he was her only hope, and she wanted to become him more than she ever loved him.

In a way, Jihyun was her Savior, like God, and even Jihyun himself confesses he tried to act like a God or Savior to her at their lowest moments together in that codependent, toxic relationship.

I think if Rika had more of a chance to explore herself, she would find out that she's queer. She feels more drawn to women then she ever did with men and with time, she'd find the word for herself and feel at home with it. For someone who's felt the sting of religion hurt me on my journey to find my identity, the thought of Rika working hard to unravel her trauma and accept herself is a peaceful arc in my heart.

I just wonder, if I ever sat down with her, would she say she wanted to feel a spark with Jihyun but it was never there? She was obsessed with him because she wanted to be him, to love him, and to be loved in turn, but it always felt strange? She wanted it with him, but in her heart, there was always something there telling her that this wasn't quite how she wanted to experience love?

And maybe that's why being with MC in VBE1 felt so right for Rika, and why was she able to communicate how she felt at ease with her MC? Like, I know there are limitations in Mystic Messenger when it comes down to sapphic routes, and they get as close as they can in many ways, which paved the way for other otome to soar even more in that regard. But, I know the game won't outright say it one way or the other for Rika, even though we've had 1000000% confirmation for Jaehee and I'll fight anyone who says Jaehee's route isn't one of the most romantic ones.

But, yeah, lesbian Rika real in my heart. I know there are some people who headcanon Rika as bi, but I don't get a read on her that feels that way so I've always viewed her as a lesbian who only figures that out for herself when she meets MC and really self-reflects on what she thinks love is, not just as an idea or an obsession, but what it really means to be in love.

I'm surprised you haven't seen the lesbian Rika HC before because most of the people I know in this fandom also view Rika as a lesbian!

I know a few people with MCs shipped with Rika that are the cutest, actually! Off the top of my head, I know @natasha-in-space has an MC for Rika she'd probably love to gush about! I've done some art and writing in the past for folks who have Rika MCs, too. I just love seeing MCs for the entire cast. Rika MCs are rare, but when I see any of them, I'm happy!

[ukrfeminism]

‘What’s the worst that can happen?” That is what Georgia Harrison asked herself one Sunday morning in August 2020 when Stephen Bear, who lived opposite, invited her over for a cup of tea. They knew each other through the reality television and influencer circuits. She had been on The Only Way Is Essex (Towie) and Love Island; he had done Shipwrecked, Ex on the Beach, then won Celebrity Big Brother. They had hooked up before and he hadn’t treated her well.

“We’d been in lockdown and I was definitely quite lonely, feeling quite rubbish about myself,” says Harrison, 28. “I knew that going to Bear’s was a bad idea – there were two voices in my head. In the end, I thought: what’s the worst that could happen? Well, now we know.”

What happened was this: the morning cup of tea stretched into a long lunch washed down by tequila, followed by drunken sex in Bear’s back garden. The sex was different from how it had been in the past – more performative, with Bear carefully positioning Harrison in various locations. “It was more dramatic and lasted longer,” says Harrison. “I just thought he was having a good day.” Afterwards, to Harrison’s horror, Bear mentioned casually that it might have been caught on his CCTV system. When he showed her the footage and she began to cry (“I’ll die if anyone sees it,” she said), he promised to delete the video. Instead, three months later, Bear posted the footage on his verified Only Fans account. Within days, it was all over the internet, including the website Pornhub. “Georgia Harrison sex tape” had become a top search on Google.

Harrison found out when a fan in the US sent her a screenshot asking: “Have you seen this?” Her reaction was to gag. But she picked herself up and went to the police. Bear was arrested, charged and convicted. In March 2023, he was sentenced to 21 months in prison for voyeurism and sharing private sexual photographs and films with intent to cause distress. Now, she has written a memoir about it, Taking Back My Power.

It is hard to overstate the impact of this case. Most victims of intimate image abuse never report the crime. They are teenagers too terrified of their parents’ reactions, professionals who fear for their careers, parents who don’t want their children or partner to know, or anyone else who can’t face walking into a police station armed with a link to Pornhub. Of those who do come forward, only about 4% will ever see a charge; a prison sentence is rarer still.

Bear’s case – on the news, in headlines, all over social media – sent a message of hope to victims of this sort of abuse and a warning shot to potential perpetrators. There was a 56% rise in calls to the government’s “revenge porn” helpline in the month he was sentenced. Harrison didn’t stop there, though. She lobbied parliament to demand better laws around “revenge porn” and helped to secure amendments to the online safety bill that make the crime easier to prosecute. She is still campaigning for platforms that carry the footage of her and Bear to be held criminally accountable.

It is certainly not the life or career she had in mind when she left school at 16, the only child of a single mother, already intent on reality TV stardom. “I grew up in Essex and a lot of my friends were on Towie, so that’s what I wanted to reach for,” she says. “It was the idea of literally getting paid for doing photoshoots, partying and having some fun in all these mad countries and bars.” At 19, she did get on Towie; a few years later, she was on Love Island. She built a career as an influencer and was able to buy a flat in Essex at 21. Was it all she had hoped for? “Actually, it was even better,” she says.

Although she and Bear were neighbours, Harrison didn’t get to know him until October 2018, when they were cast in The Challenge, an MTV reality show. By then, the former roofer had built a TV reputation as a bit of a player, a “lovable rogue”. They got together during filming, but when the show finished, Bear went back to womanising. Shortly afterwards, they starred in the sequel and got together again. This time, though, Harrison says, he locked her out of their hotel room to sleep with someone else.

The next time Harrison saw Bear was in August 2020, when he invited her over for that cup of tea and secretly filmed them having sex. Afterwards, she felt certain he had planned it. “We’d been in every angle that his CCTV covered,” she says. “He’d made sure we were never outside the lines.” Even so, she didn’t see what lay ahead. “I was really upset and he seemed to understand. I never for a second thought he’d be stupid enough to send it to people. I hoped he had some form of respect for me, but I also thought he wouldn’t want to ruin his entire career or end up in prison. I just didn’t think he was capable of what he was capable of.”

In the days after, Harrison messaged Bear asking him to promise he wouldn’t do anything with the video. He assured her that he had deleted it. It was December when she received the screenshot from a fan in the US. “That’s when I knew it was global,” she says. “One of my first thoughts was: it’s time to tell my family. My mum knew already, but I needed to have the conversations with my dad, my uncle – the male figures, I guess – so they knew it was coming.” In fact, her uncle knew already; he had been sent the video by someone who didn’t realise Harrison was his niece. “They were all horrified, but supportive,” she says. “I was an adult having sex – they told me I’d done nothing to be ashamed of.”

She knew that, but shame still hit in waves. “It went so horrifically viral; my postman’s probably seen it,” she says. “It’s that feeling that I’d let myself down, let my family down, that I should have seen it coming and how could I have been so stupid?” Her influencer work went into freefall. Any post on any product would be flooded with comments about the video (“Congrats hon, you’re a porn star now!”). “There were so many other influencers – same amount of followers, been on Love Island, same calibre – who didn’t have a sex scandal. Why put me next to their brand?” She rented out her flat – for income and because she was terrified of seeing Bear – and moved in with her mum.

“I don’t think I’ve admitted to myself how bad my anxiety was until now,” she says. “I wouldn’t be able to go to the gym on my own, or I’d get in and feel everyone was looking at me and have to leave. I barely left the house and when I did it was really hard not to panic. It got to the point where I only wanted to be around my closest friends.”

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Harrison reported Bear, who was arrested in January 2021 and charged four months later. There was an 18-month wait for the trial. Harrison’s life was on hold. She knew she had a strong case – she had been filmed without her knowledge and had sent multiple messages to Bear begging him not to share it – but she dreaded a “not guilty” verdict. The Bear she knew, the Bear who had won Celebrity Big Brother, was a charmer. He could win hearts, talk you round.

“If he was found not guilty, I think I would have had to shave my head and move to Bolivia or something,” she says. “The career I love would have been over – that’s definite. But aside from that, my faith in the universe would have been so shattered. It would have drained all the hope and faith and love and life out of me. To see someone act in such an awful, evil, manipulative way and then walk away … I felt it might just ruin me – and it seemed possible. Bear could play things so brilliantly. I don’t know why he decided not to.”

Bear’s behaviour before and during the trial probably sealed his sentence. He uploaded X-rated videos of him and his girlfriend to the internet, captioning one: “At least she knows I’m filming her.” In another video posted just before the trial, the couple cavorted in orange prison jumpsuits. He ran a Twitter poll on what colour of suit he should wear to court – and turned up in a rented Rolls-Royce, dressed in pink and a huge fur coat, carrying a cane topped with a gold snake’s head. In court, he interrupted the judge and waved away the barrister. He pleaded not guilty, but his defence was nonsensical. At times, he claimed that Harrison wasn’t the woman in the video, or that she didn’t mind it being filmed, or that there was no proof that he had uploaded the images – it might have been his assistant, it could have been a hacker.

Had he pleaded guilty and expressed remorse, he would almost certainly have been handed a community sentence. Harrison still can’t understand it. “The Bear I first met was funny and cheeky, but also really charming – he could be kind,” she says. “That person in court seemed possessed. I feel like every show he went on, he was praised for being ‘the villain’ – and the worse he was, the more attention he got. At some point, the lines blurred. That role took over.” A reality TV monster? “That’s how it seemed.”

Giving evidence was excruciating for Harrison. She sat in the witness box as the jury (nine men, three women) looked through pages and pages of video stills, having to confirm that each one featured her. “I could tell the jury was absolutely cringing,” she says. “I was in a private garden in a private moment that I thought was between me and one other person. To know people have seen it is hard. To see people seeing it while they can see you is harder.

“As someone in the public eye, used to public speaking, it was still hard to get my words out. You don’t know where to look, who to talk to. You feel you’ve done something wrong when you haven’t. I dread to think what it’s like for a vulnerable young woman who isn’t used to addressing a room. I think it would be near enough impossible.” She hopes her case might make it a little easier. “Women come up to me all the time, crying, saying they’ve been through this horrible situation and never spoken to anyone about it before. They message me on a daily basis. Intimate-image abuse happens so much more than people think.”

After the trial, Harrison continued campaigning, initially to make cases easier to prosecute. At present, the sharing of intimate images without consent is not illegal – unless done “with intent to cause distress”, however hard that is to prove. In June, the government announced amendments to the online safety bill that will remove this requirement if the law is passed. This will mean that sharing intimate images without consent, whatever the motive, would become a criminal act.

But Harrison wants more.

“If you go to court for this and get a criminal conviction, that content should become illegal and any platforms that still show it and fail to take it down should become criminally accountable,” she says. “It’s crazy. If someone gets caught with drugs, those drugs are seized and disposed of. Why should this footage stay up there? A change like that isn’t hard to make and it would make a huge difference. Far more victims would come forward, because they’d know it will be possible to make all that footage disappear at the end.”

The video of Harrison and Bear is still out there. “I worry that one day I’ll have kids and it will be accessible to them,” she says. “I just hope that by that time, society may have got on top of this and it will be too risky and expensive for platforms to carry it.” She expects that finding a partner she trusts will take time. “As I get to the point where I am trying to have relationships, I’ve realised that I do have trust issues, but that’s not a bad thing. I’ve been burned so badly. I won’t accept anything that might be a red flag or makes me feel vulnerable. If someone really cares about me, they’ll just have to help me get past that.”

Meanwhile, she is busy again. There is a TV show coming up that she can’t talk about yet. The brands are back. Harrison has written Taking Back My Power. She would like to present daytime TV: “You literally get paid to have a natter!” She is also happy to be known for the court case. “I’ll never, ever lose the stigma of being all over those porn platforms,” she says. “But if I’m known as the person who stood up and fought back – I’d be proud of that.”

[peleksstuff]

Unravel

Jason Todd X journalist!reader

Unravel Masterlist

Seven

As Jason Todd got ready for the Black Mask public event party, he couldn't help but feel uneasy. He knew that the Black Mask was up to no good, and he had a feeling that something terrible was going to happen at the party.

As he was getting dressed, he heard a knock on the door. He opened it to find a (Y/N) standing in the hallway.

"I was invited to cover the party tonight," she said.

"Who invited you?" he asked.

"Johnny Rogers," she replied.

"The dirty cop," Y/N added."Do you think he knows that I know he is taking bribes from the Black Mask?"

Jason paused for a moment, considering his words carefully. He didn't want to put Y/N in any danger, but he also knew that she was a journalist and she had a job to do.

"It's possible," he said finally."But we can't be sure."

"Aren't you also going to the event?" Y/N asked, curious.

"Yeah, I am," Jason replied. "I can watch you if you want to go."

Y/N nodded, feeling reassured by Jason's offer.Y/N smiled gratefully at Jason, glad she wouldn't face the dangerous event alone.

"Why is the Black Mask having a public event anyway?" Y/N asked, trying to make small talk. "Isn't he a criminal?"

"Black Mask has lawyers, and he's rich," Jason explained. "He can easily bribe the government with money. Besides, he likes to show off his power and influence. It's a way for him to flex his muscles and intimidate his enemies."

Y/N nodded thoughtfully. "I see. It's still hard to believe that someone like him can get away with so much."

Jason gave a grim smile. "Welcome to Gotham. It's a city full of corrupt officials and dangerous criminals. You learn to adapt, or you don't survive."

Y/N looked at Jason with a mix of sadness and disbelief. "But you're investigating him, right? To put him in jail?"

Jason laughed bitterly. "What? No, I'm here to kill him."

Y/N's eyes widened in shock. "Kill him? You can't just take the law into your own hands!"

"I'm not interested in the law," Jason said coldly. "I'm interested in justice. Black Mask has hurt many people, and he's never been held accountable for his crimes. It's time to make him pay."

Y/N shook her head. "You can't just kill someone because you think they deserve it. That's not justice. That's revenge."

"Call it what you want," Jason said, his tone hardening. "But it's something that needs to be done. And I'm the one who's going to do it."

Y/N took a step back, feeling a sudden chill. "What about Batman? Does he approve of this?"

Jason snorted. "He might kill me, though."

Y/N raised an eyebrow. "He would?"

"He's not exactly fond of my methods," Jason said, his expression darkening. "But I don't really care. I'm not doing this for him or anyone else. I'm doing this because it's the right thing to do."

"But what about the consequences?" Y/N pressed. "You could get caught, or worse, you could get hurt. Are you not worried about that?"

Jason shrugged. "Of course I am. But I've been doing this for a long time. I know what I'm doing."

Y/N shook her head in disbelief. "I can't believe you're so reckless."

Jason smirked. "You wouldn't be the first person to say that."

Y/N sighed, feeling a sense of frustration. "I just wish there was another way. Killing someone isn't the solution to everything."

Jason's expression softened a bit, and he sighed. "I know it's not ideal. But sometimes, it's the only option left. Black Mask won't stop until he's taken down, and the law won't do anything about it. It's up to people like me to ensure justice is served."

Y/N bit her lip, feeling conflicted. She understood Jason's reasoning, but she couldn't condone his methods. "I just hope you know what you're getting yourself into. This isn't something to be taken lightly."

"I know," Jason replied quietly. "But it's a risk I'm willing to take. For the people who have suffered because of him, for the ones who can't fight back. I have to do this."

Y/N nodded, feeling a sense of respect for Jason's conviction, even if she didn't agree with his actions. "Okay, I understand."

"Thanks for understanding," Jason said, giving Y/N a small smile.

"I should probably go and get ready for the party now," Y/N said, breaking the tense moment. "I'll see you there."

Y/N returned the smile, but her expression turned serious. "But just so you know, it's not too late to change your mind about killing Black Mask. There are other ways to bring him to justice."

"I appreciate your concern," Jason said, nodding. "But this is something I have to do. I'll keep your words in mind, though."

Y/N nodded, feeling a sense of worry for Jason's safety. She knew she couldn't stop him, but she couldn't help but hope that he would come out of this unscathed.

As Y/N left, Jason took a deep breath and tried to push aside his doubts. He knew what he was about to do was dangerous, but he couldn't back down now. He had a job to do, and he would do it.

As he finished getting ready, he grabbed his weapons. He headed out the door, prepared to face whatever dangers awaited him at the Black Mask's party.

Tagged:@princessbl0ss0m @96jnie

[sapphicteaparty]

g witch ending spoilers

g witch is over. i don't have any criticism that isn't nitpicking and i don't care about nitpicking. to me this was a 10/10 show with zero filler episodes and i'm very happy with the conclusion of this story.

some thoughts about the ending:

calibarn's gay rainbow permet colors were so cool. no notes.

all the gay rainbow permet effects were cool. i don't even care about how ridiculous they were.

miorine dissolved the benerit group. i am so glad she doesn't have to continue the corporate legacy that delling created and it seems like she is working with gund-arm like she wanted, developing the medical uses of gund tech. living her best life.

nobody could end spacian capitalism but the space/earth power balance seems to be disrupted. that's not nothing.

delling, sarius etc are actually held accountable for benerit's crimes. good.

earth probably welcomed prospera after what she did to that SAL fleet IF they knew that she was behind it. i doubt earth even has a seat at the SAL table at all so someone like prospera could be a hero to them. or maybe she's just a refugee now, who knows. earth is probably the one place where she won't get arrested and where she can live in peace. either way i'm glad she lived. that scene in the data storm with nadim got to me. 😭

everything about Peil in this episode was so funny.

both miorine and suletta have some sort of gund-tech implants on the backs of their head. i assume this tech is for establishing connection to eri?

eri in the keychain??? so fucking stupid i love it. sometimes a family is you, your wife, your shitty dad, your mother-in-law and your sister-in-law inside a keychain mascot.

…what if you lose the keychain?? what then?? i'm not going to think about this any further. it's fine. she's fine.

sulemio is married. they should have kissed on screen (that's one nitpick) but i'll take this. i'm not disappointed at all in the way their relationship was portrayed throughout the show and i liked that they avoided so many common romance tropes. sulemio is canon (always was) and they get a happy ending which is what i wanted.

i knew she wouldn't die but suletta was still hurt by all of that gundam action. the permet scars, becoming disabled - details like that are a nice touch to show that suletta (and by extension anyone else) piloting giant death robots can't come out of it unharmed. and she didn't just survive, she's thriving and she's so happy!!!!

gund-arm's medical tech really is a ray of hope for many (like petra).

suletta's dreams came true 😭😭😭😭😭😭

actually nobody died??? after ep 23 i had the feeling that this would be the case because g witch seemed to be making the point that redemption through death is not helpful to those who are alive. killing off characters is such an easy way resolve conflicts and to drive stories forward and g witch examines if there can be a different way without violence.

…the downside to that is that it could go to the other extreme and be full on pacifist and excuse all those who had committed horrible acts (delling, prospera, shaddiq etc) but aside from prospera they're all held accountable and suffering the consequences.

prospera was right to want revenge and to want to create a place in the world for eri but her means were not justified. one of the thematic throughlines in season 2 was that how you do something matters just as much as what you do (like sameen shaw said). prospera admitting that she couldn't forgive herself for the things she'd done was just the perfect way of ending her story. i didn't need her to succeed in her revenge plot or to go to jail or die, i just wanted her to see that how she did things was wrong and that's the biggest payoff her story could have had.

and when she was like "my legs will be paralyzed soon anyway" and suletta just refused to leave her behind, and she got to be part of their family.... g witch really said disabled ppl deserve to be happy 😭

can't believe this show gave me everything i wanted???

[starlightshadowsworld]

Thoughts on Arcane Season 2 Episode 8

Spoilers below

Oh cool we’re back to Mel suffering.

Why does the Hex tech trio need to all be fucked up by the arcane?

I mean she looks great.

Oh great she’s an empath.

And that dudes dead and being experimented on? You know it’s probably what he wanted.

Viktors alive! Hell yeah I didn’t think he was but I was scared but hell yeah.

I dunno about the will to survive though he did wanna die…nevermind he’s happy to be alive.

Annd he’s still a cult leader.

Even more than before.

Yeah I still don’t trust Cait and Jayce was helping get them out?

Considering how much Cait wants Jinx dead, arrested is pretty good when you think about it. But yeah still sucks but I dunno why you’re surprised Vi.

Cait but have betrayed Ambessa but she’s still Cait.

And infront if the new girlfriend too….ooof.

Well jee say that next time. Jinx giving herself up…poor girl.

Once again proving that everyone in this show is suicidal. Apart from Viktor now I guess.

I think the door would disagree about the not having the energy to hate Jinx.

Gotta love how Jinx has to apologise and be held accountable for her crimes and mistakes. But Cait and everyone else doesn’t, classism man.

Ohhhh Jayce and Mel reunion.

Sad sad reunion.

Annnd Viktors here the polycule has returned. I do feel bad for Jacye even though he’s in the wrong. Like I get why he’s doing this dude saw all the horrors of the arcane and it’s still fucking him over.

But yeah this is not it man.

Same for Viktor I love him but turning everyone into your own vessel for glorious evolution is fucked up man.

Is it bad I was chanting kiss kiss kiss when they were talking about being formed partners? Ah well.

Oh great Silco’s ghost is here.

He’s not wrong tho.

Ew did that fall out of her mouth?

The hug! Crying these two…something something Vi’s in jail and yet its Jinx who’s imprisoned.

Yes you have Jayce I’m glad you’re having a break through.

“You will never be a passenger” them.

Oh shit everyone’s in here.

Yup the force of my ex boyfriend who’s also a cult leader and wants to make you all join his cult.

And that’s what unites everyone, a common enemy. Or rather maybe that’s wishful thinking. But there’s those that will.

I mean at least they aren’t leaving the undercity to die like I expected.

The jinx followers and the guard taking off his hat, love to see it.

Oh shit they kissing.

Hope they broke up with one guard.

Nevermind nothing to worry about.

I dunno if this the time but eh the world as you know it is going to war so sure go for it guys.

Oooo mother daughter reunion.

Yeah keeping your daughter at arms length funnily enough makes her distant to you. But you always doing what you thought was best for them both.

Ah yes the true answer: cults.

Bye Sky.

“No you won’t” ouch.

And you destroyed what was left of Vander. Fuck you Viktor.

[mangasstuffcomics]

Mha 378. I love gentle criminal though I geuss he can be considered somewhat of hero now I geuss we can give him a hero name how about how about the gentleman

And I know there's people who want the lov to get a redemption like gentle criminal is getting now but you need understand the difference between the lov and gentle criminal

There are similarities sad backstory leading someone into becoming a villain here's the difference we have gentle criminal who turned himself in and is held accountable for his crimes and he mentions his mistakes in this chapter and holds himself accountable and is that moment making up for all his mistakes and we had him flashback to the gorilla cop saying he could start over

He the main reason the all those prisoners from the 7 th prison are locked up

For the certain lov members to be redeemed like gentle say for example toga she would actually have to acknowledge her own crimes and how her killing those boys affected there families twice died and she's still can't comprehend that her actions could have affected other people the way twice death affected her

The reality is if the league survives there going jail I'm not saying the lov can't be redeemed I'm saying for that to happen they have to hold themselves accountable for there crimes and they have be held accountable as well

The only one in the lov that won't go to jail is kurogiri because again his nomu and has no choice but to follow orders and his programming there probably gives to continue to try and find way to undo what ujiko did to him

I'm certain that kurogiri will be helping the heores soon if aizawa and mic can get through shirakumo again

And also lady nagant is back and it's seems she's also realized her mistakes and is back to working with the heroes

[manie-sans-delire-x]

Jodi Arias: young woman who passionately murders her on/off again boyfriend who had a pedo fetish, for cheating and raping her while she slept

The law: life sentence, no parole

The comments: omg shes so evil and psycho!! Female ted bundy! She could have just left!

Young woman with no motive or prior behavior experiences actual drug induced psychosis and kills her boyfriend, stabs herself in the neck with a bread knife multiple times, and their dog

(from high potency weed he gave her, allegedly pressured her into consuming a large amount) (bf had anger issues and had been abusive during intimate moments in the past, he laughed when she asked him to help her when she felt sick from all the weed he made her smoke)

The law: all professionals agree it was legitimate psychosis, so no jail time

The comments: omg this proves the law is so soft on women!! Women never held accountable! Men oppressed victims! Im going to keep using this case as a weapon now because I didnt bother reading the case details, only the incendiary headline! No excuse!! "Psychosis" yeah right! She should be killed! Psycho!! I guess murder is legal now!

This ugly fat fuck (Carey Birmingham): old man who calmly murders his long term wife and mother of their daughter on video, for cheating and stealing money/giving it to her bf

The law: meh 10 yrs I guess but the judge is sympathetic

The comments: omg women are never held responsible, she deserved worse! This is a crime of passion! This is psychosis!! She literally took his life!! He seems like a good man and shes clearly abusive! (thats somehow the conclusion I reached from this 10 sec clip of her getting murdered)

(How the comments would have been if it had been sex swapped:

- Cheating is no excuse for murder!! She ruined their daughters life too!

-Hahah who wouldnt cheat on that?? I dont blame him! *insert lots of insults and sexual degradation*

-Ladies if you dont want your man to cheat, you have to take better care of yourselves lol!

-Even if she was abused its no excuse, women!! You can divorce and leave! Your choice your fault she should choose better

-Eww lol thats not a woman thats a whale!

-Look at her, just totally naked and exposed in their public neighborhood shes so gross! You can tell what kind of woman she was, clearly a gross slob and whore anyways

-Poor guy had no choice but to cheat haha!)

[oh-my-damn]

"I served in the IDF, I still serve in the army reserves, combat. I was very combat in the second anti-fada. I feel your grief and I understand it, but I have to say that I never got an order to shoot someone. The order was only to shoot if someone is a threat to your life or a threat to someone elses life."

"I also served in the IDF and they really do just teach us to defend ourselves. If we're not defending ourselves and we do kill someone, we go to jail."

"That's not true. That's not true. Both (the IDF soldiers) that murdered him (her father) did not spend one day in jail."

"But we don't agree because I don't believe in a Palestinian state. And you think you should have a two-state solution, so we don't agree. Israel with everyone equal, I'm fine with it."

And one argument that REALLY stood out to me:

"I'm with you. One state, under Israel's sovereignty, and everyones full equal citizen. But under Israeli sovereignty. Why is that a problem?"

"Why should one religion control?"

"It's not a religion, it's a nationality."

SO INTERESTING.

This video was made five years ago. Five years ago, the argument made by the Israeli former IDF soldier was that "it's not a religion, it's a nationality."

But NOW, by people who share eerily similar views as him (I'm not saying him exactly, I'm making a comparison) it's "being against Israel is anti-semitic."

Isn't that just so fascinating?

But, even more so, isn't that just so manipulating?

I've spoken up, time and again, against the rhetoric used by zionist supporters when it comes to this conflict, and how they just adore throwing the "anti-semitic" claim around, with no actual basis.

But it's interesting how the rhetoric from the Palestinians in this video have remained the same since; they are not to be conflated with Hamas, muslim radicals are not to be conflated with Palestinians, and what they want more than anything is a peaceful solution to the conflict. They will not tolerate Israeli's saying it's their land (and there's actually a great point about this starting at 5.40 in the video), because that land is not inherently theirs by any natural laws.

This fact is interesting because the former IDF soldier in the video has just claimed being Israeli is a nationality and not a religion, yet he argues his right to the land claimed on his supposed religious birthright.

Overall, this was a very interesting watch, especially considering the video is five years old. It proves to show that this conflict has gone on for centuries, it goes way beyond October 7th, and so when we talk, and consider, and evaluate, we should not compare it to October 7th or even use it as an argument.

The Palestinians in this video are from the West Bank. They are not from Gaza, which is also pointed out. And yet, this is still such a deeply rooted debate. Why is that, if "Israel pulled out of Palestine in 2005" and "Israel isn't settling on Palestinian land" and "Israel is only defending itself because of the October 7th attack"?

The facts. Do not. Have never. Will never. Add up.

They are lies. They are propaganda. They are storytelling. They are slander.

This conflict has lasted longer than most of us have lived. And it's time for it to end. It's time for the people of Palestine to be free. It's time for Israel to be held accountable for the countless crimes they have committed, not just against international regulation, but against humanity.

[newagesispage]

                                                                      MAY    2023

THE RIB PAGE

32% of the country is now Atheist, Agnostic or has no religious affiliation.

*****

Asa Hutchinson and Robert Kennedy Jr. have thrown their hats into the Presidential ring.

*****

So intrigued by the Broadway production of Shucked. We have always joked here in the Midwest about the corn that is everywhere. The corn is held in high regard, not quite the Dark Secret of Harvest Home but it rules.

*****

Summer Camp will come back to Chillicothe, il for May 26, 27 and 28th with Willie Nelson and family, Moe and many others.

*****

Brandon Johnson is the winner in the Mayoral runoff election in Chicago.

*****

May 1, 2011: We got Bin Laden. Thank You.

*****

There are armadillos taking up residence in Illinois!!

*****

Jon Stewart showed up for Roy Wood Jr’s turn at the Daily Show desk. An endorsement?? I do have to say that Wood, Sarah Silverman and Leslie Jones seemed like the best choices to me. They were good at every part of the show. All would be great permanent hosts but some say that permanent revolving hosts would be better. The biggest ratings have come from Al Franken and Roy Wood Jr. And BTW, Roy Wood Jr. Killed it at the White House Correspondence Dinner!! Biden did a great job too.

*****

Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government. And paramount among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent any part of the government from deceiving the people and sending them off to distant lands to die of foreign fevers and foreign shot and shell. - Justice Hugo Black

*****

Check out A Fever in the Heartland by Tim Egan. The book chronicles the rise of the KKK in the center of the country.

*****

Days alert: C’mon let’s get Tripp and Wendy together. They are so perfect so let’s get Johnny out of there and back to Chanel!! ** Surely they will kill off Sloan?!** Let’s bring Mimi and some more of Bonnie’s family to town.** Xander and Chloe?? I don’t know but when is her sister going to come to town??  

*****

Look for the new flick about David Johansen from Scorsese.

*****

Wicked is taking over the 4th spot on the Broadway list of success. The others are Chicago, The Lion King,  and Phantom of the opera. Cats will move to 5th.

*****

If you watch enough true crime, you begin to notice that it is usually the significant other that did it. It also seems that a lot of Police have to be prodded into actually taking murder seriously. There are great cop shops out there but not so many on the true crime shows.

*****

I wonder why Marjorie Taylor Green and Trump are such snowflakes. We can be hopeful that he will finally have to pay for some of his crimes but in reality, he may not get much from these charges. It will give him his favorite things: headlines. Fox and Friends keep saying that if this could happen to Trump, it could happen to any of us. I hope that if we break the law, we have to pay. Why is that so hard for them to accept? They must have a lot of lawbreakers at Fox! The 34 charges include creating shell companies and misdemeanors that became felonies. Scary Clown 45 or criminal defendant # 4913961R showed up over 2 hours late for court. Please let President Fraud pay for all his crimes!!  And don’t let anything happen to the Judge or his Fam since Don Jr. Is calling the out. JAIL THE THUGS! **MTG compared Trump to Jesus and Nelson Mandella. She did a 60 Minutes interview in which she was very defensive. If someone tweets things on their account or says something in public, they should be able to explain their position without being so cruel and dismissive. People just want you to stand by what you say not act bewildered and confused. And I wonder if New York will ever forget how much she claims to hate them? Jim Jordan makes no bones about how much he also hates NY. Toughen up Buttercups!

*****

Can we get a Librarians movie??

*****

A guy’s in an ad saying the phone company he “owns” will keep its rates low. In reality he has a 25% share and it’s being sold to a larger competitor. - Harry Shearer

*****

Th EU would not sell Miller High Life because the bottle says, “the champagne of beers” and they take champagne seriously. A bottle must actually hold real champagne to say it.

*****

Danny Trejo has a new cookbook, Cantina.

*****

It seems the flood protection system in New Orleans is corroding. The 35- year life span of the pumps that were put in at a cost of $14 billion are a mess after only 5 years.

*****

Phone booths were so cool and I miss them.

*****

Idaho has signed into law an abortion trafficking bill which restricts interstate travel.

*****

Are you watching The Diplomat?? Fucking awesome!! Go Mckean!! Keri Russell picks the best material.

*****

Forced birth in a country with no universal health care, no universal childcare, no paid family medical leave and one of the highest rates of maternal mortality among rich nations. This isn’t about “life”. It's about control.  - Robert Reich

*****

I sometimes wonder if anybody besides Trump lost their shit when Seth Meters hosted the WH Correspondent’s dinner. ** This year the dinner was hosted by Roy Wood Jr.

*****

Check it out: Elon Musk’s companies have received more Federal Government funding than NPR has in it entire existence. - Kaivan Shroff** Musk’s spacecraft exploded. ** Musk was on Real Time and boy, did Bill Maher kiss his ass. I found Musk’s talking style very halting and he only seemed to be talking in circles.  

*****

Just as we were hearing word that Don Lemon is a diva prick, he is let go at CNN. Tucker Carlson has also been forced out at Fox.

*****

Clarence Thomas is being looked into for ethics violations after he has accepted big gifts for decades. Being shady and greedy has become a sick art form. Why do soo many who have soo much take pleasure in all this trickery? And why are there no consequences? ** There are rumblings that he may not be the only Justice that has issues. ** In 1969, Justice Abe Fortas was forced to resign because of his rich friend. ** Other judges have to comply with a code of ethics but not the highest court in the land?? Dick Durbin introduced a bill similar to the circuit court of appeals. We must have a threat of legislation.

*****

Everything that Dan Rather used to tell us has come true. There are so many that do not seem to know fantasy from reality.

*****

Sadly, the only thing easier to buy in America than a gun is a Republican politician. Especially if you’re a billionaire who collects nazi memorabilia and owns a mega-yacht.

*****

The Super Mario movie is breaking records.

*****

Why does it sometimes seem like we often got along better in the 70’s when everybody was telling terrible ethnic and dead baby jokes?

***** There was a breech in intelligence from the Air National Guard. How does this 21- year old, Jack Teixeira have that kind of clearance? Is he that special or smart? Does he know somebody? Info in a gaming chat room? This is a 2023 problem.

*****

In Seattle, several pot farms were shut down due to high levels of old pesticides in the ground.

*****

James Corden did a bit with other late- night hosts, past and present for his final show. Where was Conan??

*****

Moms for Liberty is just a new name for an old lie. - Jane of the North

*****  

Support the Drag Defense Fund.

*****

Yamiche Alcindor is pregnant with a baby boy.

*****

The newest stars on the walk of fame are: Martin Lawrence, Courtney Cox and Michael B. Jordan. Carrie Fisher will be inducted on May 4.

*****

Aaron Rodgers will be joining the NY Jets.

*****

Love the opening for the John Mulaney special, Baby J and thrilled to see David Byrne did the music.

*****

Hooray!! Houses with History is back for season 2 and they brought along a ghost hunter.

*****

Texas Republican Rep Bryan Slaton, leader of the anti-groomer campaign has been caught for sex and a drink with an under 21 intern that is not his wife.

*****

Chicago is getting the Democratic convention. The city has held more conventions than any other.

*****

MAGAzine is a satirical take on what a Trump rag might look like. It is brought to you by former Spy mag people led by Graydon Carter.

*****

It looks like the charges in the Rust movie case against Alec Baldwin have been dropped.

*****

North Carolina is trying to entice Disney to their state.

*****

SCOTUS has lifted the ban on the abortion plll, mifepristone. ** Will citizens start suing Doctors if they cannot get an abortion and it causes harm or death? First do no harm, right?

*****

Dominion is getting $787.5 mil and Fox sort of admitted they lied. Courts and money are all these scammers seem to understand. People are lining up to sue. Dominion is also suing Rudy, Newsmax, Sidney Powell and Lindell. Smartmatic is next on the Fox docket.. ** Mike Lindell has to pay $5 mil. to the guy who proved that his election nonsense was just that. We have a winner in the Prove Mike Wrong contest!!** Fox news is like its own horror story.  The things they say are scary to the informed. Those that they preach to are hiding in fear from the rest of us they have been told are monsters.

*****

Tyre Nichols family is suing Memphis for $550 mil. over his shooting death.  

*****

Red Table Talk has been cancelled. “Good.” -Nick Cannon

*****

Trump asked people if they would like a slice of pizza that he had eaten on.

*****

A fund raiser for child prodigy Ralph Yarl, yet another shooting victim, has raised over $3mil. He was shot by Andrew Lester when he rang the doorbell.  There have been many instances like that since the beginning of the year from wrong driveways to balls in yards to mistaking a car in a parking lot.

*****

The U.S. got all the diplomats out of Sudan.

*****

2,571 books have been challenged since 2021. Sex, gender and race are being severely banned in 37 states. ** ONLY COWARDS BAN BOOKS.

*****

Iowa loves child labor!!!

*****

Tennessee seems to have violated the equal protection clause when they threw 2 members out of the house. The Jason’s (Pearson and Jones) have since been reinstated. This all came about because they protested gun violence.

*****

When I think of Jan. 6, I can’t help but think of Andrew Jackson’s inauguration. They just seem so similar what with all the simple folk running roughshod over the town.

*****

American Horror Story: Delicate will be the offering for season 12. It does sound like a real life horror.  I stand with Patti Lupone!!!!!!!!!!!! Go Girl!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

*****

Bryan Cranston and Allison Janney will star in Everything’s going to be great.

*****

It looks like the George Santos syndrome continues with Nicholas Alaverdian. More tricksters to ruin more lives. How wonderful would the world be if people used all their con energy for good?

*****

25% of the U.S. population is Jewish. 55% of hate crimes in the U.S. are against the Jewish people.

*****

Can we stop with the clothes tags. I thought we had the ability to stamp that info onto fabric.

*****

Bill Hader and Ali Wong are a cute new super couple!!

*****

I loved this piece I saw from Mo Rocca about wasteful meetings. I have been saying this for years. Why are there so many ridiculous meetings in the work place?  This just seems like work for people who do not want to work. And it is even worse when dealing with art. Creative work takes focus. Stop interrupting the flow. It is simple : Reduce meetings and raise productivity.  

*****

Check out RIP Medical Bills.

*****

CULT + TIME = RELIGION

*****

R.I.P. Leo D. Sullivan, Howell Wayans, Ben Ferencz, Mark Sheehan, Murray Melvin, Michael Lerner, Mary Quant, Keith Reid, Todd Holmes, Hedda Kleinfeld, Barry Humphries, Ahmad Jamal, Moon Bin, Jerry Springer, Harry Belafonte, Ginnie Newhart and Connie Friedan.                                                                        

[nebris]

A World Without Men

The women of South Korea’s 4B movement aren’t fighting the patriarchy — they’re leaving it behind entirely.

Youngmi’s childhood was a difficult one. The 25-year-old nurse was born to a poor family in Daegu, South Korea, known for being one of the most conservative cities in the country. Youngmi’s mom left the home when Youngmi was young to escape her husband’s physical abuse, leaving her and her sister behind with him and their paternal grandmother. When she was 5, her 8-year-old sister started losing her hair from stress.

As she grew older, Youngmi found herself depressed, unsure of what her future held, and financially unstable. In Korea’s patriarchal society — in which women are generally expected to defer to their fathers and to adhere to rigid beauty standards — she felt like a perpetual victim, obsessed by the wrongs done to her by her father and pressured into maintaining her appearance in order to please men. Despite her meager budget as a nursing student, she purchased new clothes each season, spending a lot of money on cheap, poor-quality clothes from H&M. She wore makeup religiously. “I could not go outside without any makeup. I felt ashamed of my face,” she said. “I had this pressure of wanting to look beautiful and wanting to be desirable, physically or sexually.”

While scrolling through Twitter in 2018, Youngmi came across footage of protests taking place in the streets of Seoul. In South Korea, where cases of femicide, revenge porn, and dating violence are widespread, a surge in spy-cam sex crimes, overwhelmingly committed by men, had mostly resulted in fines and suspended jail sentences, if they were prosecuted at all. That was not the case, however, for one 25-year-old woman who had taken a nonconsensual photo of a nude male model at art school and posted it online; she was sentenced to ten months in prison and court-ordered sexual-violence counseling. The demonstrations were a reaction to the blatant hypocrisy.

Youngmi was moved by the solidarity she saw, but there was one thing she found perplexing: Many of the women at the protests shaved their heads on-camera. As she began to follow more feminist Twitter accounts, Youngmi understood this was a public act of rejection of those same aesthetic expectations imposed on Korean women that have made the country a leader in grooming products and plastic surgery. She began to realize that “you know, men do not do that — men do not feel the pressure to buy clothes every season or wear makeup.”

Soon, Youngmi shaved her head, too, and stopped wearing makeup, joining the so-called “escape the corset” movement happening among young women in South Korea. The movement, which first gained popularity in 2018, saw Korean women publicly turn away from societally imposed beauty standards by cutting their hair short and going barefaced. (Youngmi was not alone — in 2019, a survey found that 24 percent of women in their 20s reported cutting back their spending on beauty products in the previous year, with many saying they no longer felt they needed to put in the effort.) This eventually led Youngmi to “4B,” a smaller but growing movement among Korean women. 4B is shorthand for four Korean words that all start with bi-, or “no”: The first no, bihon, is the refusal of heterosexual marriage. Bichulsan is the refusal of childbirth, biyeonae is saying no to dating, and bisekseu is the rejection of heterosexual sexual relationships. It is both an ideological stance and a lifestyle, and many women I spoke to extend their boycott to nearly all the men in their lives, including distancing themselves from male friends.

Through open chat groups on KakaoTalk, Youngmi connected with other feminists in Daegu, where she lived with her mother while attending nursing school, soon meeting each other offline. (“It’s so easy to recognize each other with short hair,” she said.) She stopped seeing her friends from high school and middle school whose conversations still revolved around makeup, clothes, and boys. When we met last November at a café in Seoul, where she’s been living for the last two years, she was barefaced and dressed comfortably in loose jeans and a white fleece jacket. Her hair was long enough to be pulled back in a ponytail, as she’d grown tired of people asking about her short hair at her nursing job, but it was tucked into a white baseball cap. Feminism, she said, had helped her recognize that it was patriarchy that was the problem, not her — that “the bad things that happened in your life are not your fault,” she said.

     4B is shorthand: bihon, is the refusal of heterosexual marriage. Bichulsan is the refusal of childbirth, biyeonae is saying no to dating, and bisekseu is the rejection of heterosexual sexual relationships.  

For Youngmi and many others who subscribe to its basic premises, 4B, or “practicing bihon,” is the only path by which a Korean woman today can live autonomously. In their view, Korean men are essentially beyond redemption, and Korean culture, on the whole, is hopelessly patriarchal — often downright misogynistic. A 2016 survey by the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family found the incidence of intimate-partner violence at 41.5 percent, significantly higher than the global average of 30 percent. While 4B’s adherents may hope to change society — through demonstrations and online activism, and by modeling an alternative lifestyle to other women — they are not trying to change the men whom they view as their oppressors. It is too soon to tell whether this movement can survive and thrive over the long haul. But its ideas and actions have already affected the country’s online discourse, its politics, and most of all, individual women’s lives.

“Practicing bihon means you’re eliminating the risks that come from heterosexual marriage or dating,” Yeowon, a 26-year-old office worker, told me on a café terrace in the seaside southern city of Busan. We talked over coffee and pastries, along with Yeowon’s girlfriend and another of their friends, all of them wearing wide black pants and black sweaters and sporting cropped short haircuts. Those risks Yeowon alluded to might seem familiar — trading career for child-rearing and housework, as well as the threat of physical violence — but in Korea, Yeowon said, marriage presents an existential threat.

There was a time when Minji, a 4B adherent in Daegu, had wanted to get married, “because, you know, everyone wants to get married.” Knowing what she knows now, however — like that domestic violence, as she puts it, is so common — “I don’t want to get married anymore.” Minji, 27, is probably heterosexual, she said, and has liked a few guys in the past, but they wanted her to “treat them like a king.” So she has no problem boycotting the men of her generation, who are little better than her selfish and abusive father.

Even young women who are not members of the movement echo that they could not imagine dating or marrying a Korean man. Sooyeon, a teacher in her early 30s, told me that talking to her male friends “made me always feel like, ‘Oh, maybe I can never find a Korean man’ … Even in my generation, some guys expect a really traditional role from their spouse.” As if to prove her point, a recent survey by a matchmaking company found that women were reluctant to marry because of the division of housework, while men hesitated because of “feminism.”

It is unclear how widespread or popular the 4B movement is given its fluid online and offline nature and its evolution over the years, beginning sometime around 2015 or 2016 when a simple “no-marriage” lifestyle grew to include a boycott of men and reproductive labor more broadly. One article estimated 50,000 adherents; others have put the movement’s numbers at under 5,000. Its origin story is similarly complex, though its contours can be traced.

Following years of financial crises in which young people faced growing housing costs and intense competition for university spots and jobs, the way women and men related to each other openly soured. Beginning in 2013, the rate of college enrollment among Korean women surpassed those of men; today, nearly three-fourths of women are enrolled in higher education, compared with less than two-thirds of men. Previously, women were expected to drop out of the labor force after marriage or parenthood. Now, young men see their female peers as competitors for increasingly scarce jobs. (Several academics I spoke with noted to me that Korea is largely ethnically and racially homogenous, making gender the default and central societal fault line.) In online forums and on social media, disgruntled men began labeling college-educated women kimchinyeo, or “kimchee women,” giving a name to “the stereotype of Korean women as selfish, vain, and obsessed with themselves while exploiting their partners,” wrote feminist scholar Euisol Jeong in her doctoral thesis on “troll feminism.”

     In their view, Korean men are essentially beyond redemption, and Korean culture, on the whole, is hopelessly patriarchal — often downright misogynistic.  

Around 2014 and 2015, a virulently misogynistic and anti-feminist community called “Ilbe” grew in size and prominence. In its interpretation, women were demanding additional rights and privileges when they already benefited from avoiding the country’s compulsory military service. To the Ilbe community, the entire female populace is gold-digging and shallow. Female Korean internet users responded by latching onto misogynistic strategies like trolling, mockery, and abusive language. Members of Megalia, one of the more prominent feminist sites in this period, coined the term hannamchung, or “Korean male-bug,” which stereotyped Korean men as “ugly, sexist, and obsessed with buying sex,” wrote Jeong.

In 2016, a young man murdered a young woman in a Seoul public bathroom, telling police after that he killed her because women had always ignored him. Despite the perpetrator’s own statement, police refused to label the murder a hate crime. Furious, women flocked to online feminist message boards, communities, and chat forums. This wave of digital feminism attracted women from all backgrounds, including working-class women like Minji and Youngmi, making it different from traditional Korean feminism, which was largely confined to universities, NGOs that often received government support, and other elite spaces.

In December of that year, as Korea’s fertility rate hovered at 1.2 births per woman (it has since slid to 0.78, the lowest in the world), the Korean government launched an online “National Birth Map” that showed the number of women of reproductive age in each municipality, illustrating just what it expected of its female citizens. (South Korean president Yoon Suk-yeol won the election in March 2022 with a message that blamed feminism for Korea’s low birth rate, and a promise to abolish the country’s Ministry of Gender Equality and Family. ) Women were outraged by the map, observing that the government appeared to consider them “livestock”; one Twitter user reportedly created a mock map illustrating the concentration of Korean men with sexual dysfunction. Several of these digital feminists responded with a boycott to the reproductive labor expected by the state and decided that the surest way to avoid pregnancy was to avoid men altogether. It was through these online communities that 4B emerged as a slogan, and ultimately a movement.

The blowback and fear that 4B practitioners experience underscores their conviction that Korea is still a frightening place for women. Yeowon’s photo was posted on an Ilbe site after participating in a feminist protest, and she was harassed and sexually threatened online for weeks. Youngmi said men have tried to physically attack her on the street three or four times. She recalled an episode when she and some friends, who all had cropped haircuts, were dining at a Japanese restaurant in Daegu. Throughout the night, the restaurant owner and his friends made gagging and puking noises and gestures at them. When Minji and I met at a coffee shop near the city’s central train station, she told me she was worried that someone in the café might post a photo of her online because she had short hair and was speaking openly about feminism. Others I spoke with insisted on using pseudonyms for safety reasons.

There are other consequences to forgoing long-term partnerships with men. Korea has the largest gender pay gap in the rich world, with women earning 31 percent less than men, and women still face widespread discrimination in the labor market, something the movement recognizes. A widely circulated 2018 tweet encouraged 4B women to save the money they would have otherwise spent on “self-fashioning labor” to sustain an independent life instead of winding up “a penniless granny with a wardrobe full of clothes.”

Women who commit to 4B “just work hard, because they know they will not have a breadwinner man or husband,” said Jeong, the scholar who wrote her doctoral thesis on troll feminism, adding that some take two or three jobs. Youngmi and her girlfriend live together about an hour by subway outside of downtown Seoul where rent is more affordable. Yeowon said her small studio apartment, the best option she can afford right now, is in an unsafe neighborhood near a market where drunken men often congregate after the local bars close. Her partner, who works in IT, recently moved apartments because her last one had cockroaches.

Several 4B women I met in Seoul still lived with their parents. Yeowon’s partner lives by herself but still eats at her parents’ house several times a week, even though they are no longer emotionally close. Her mother’s cooking is excellent, she said, and it saves her time and money. “I treat it like a restaurant,” she added. Youngmi and her friends created a map of women-owned businesses in Daegu so they could ensure their dollars went to supporting other women. “The economy is a very important issue for us,” she told me. Other 4B groups host events with personal-finance experts to help women learn how to save and invest. A subgroup of an online community called “WITH” (which stands for “Women in the Hell,” Hell being a nickname for Korea) is specifically focused on economics; members post job listings, advice on which banks are offering the best interest rates, and other financial tips. Han, a math tutor who runs her own tutoring company in Daegu, said she believes as women’s collective economic power grows, so will their political power, something she sees playing out over the next 20 years. Their interest in finance is both about the pressing matter of living an economically viable life today and the longer-term possibility that women practicing 4B at scale will eventually weaken the patriarchy. “When women are more economically influential, then it’s possible that the political parties will listen to women as important voters,” Han added. “But until then, I feel like women will still be utilized — their bodies will be utilized to reproduce.”

     For a movement born of rage, what happens when the rage mellows or when other concerns take priority?  

But it’s not just political backlash and straightened economic circumstances that pose a threat to the long-term sustainability of 4B and its influence. Like any social movement, 4B has its own internal rifts and divisions: Can 4B women be friends with men? With women who still want to date men? Does lesbianism privatize relationships, destroy feminist solidarity, and resexualize women, or is it a necessary foundation for a world without men? Some 4B practitioners also were turned off by the movement’s focus on cisgender women to the exclusion of trans women; many of the online communities require verification with a photo ID attesting to the applicant’s sex, and Minji said that one of the feminist communities she joined asked her to submit a video of her Adam’s apple,  ostensibly to ensure she wasn’t assigned male at birth. But regardless of where they stand on these questions, for the more than a dozen 4B practitioners I met in Korea, these were academic disagreements that had little impact on their own personal commitment to living apart from men.

For a movement born of rage, what happens when the rage mellows or when other concerns take priority? Yeowon said some of her friends are “selective feminists” who forgo makeup when they meet up with her, but are ultimately not ready to give up the advantages that come with being conventionally attractive. “They cannot let go of this power as women, of using femininity,” she said. “There are these feminists who say, ‘Oh, I’m a feminist, I hate men, but I also want to be, you know, consumable.’” She and her friends described videos on YouTube of ex-bihon women who told viewers that they’d seen the light and returned to heterosexuality, narratives that recall the profusion of #TradWife content online.

At least for now, it is clear that the message of 4B, regardless of how it is practiced, or however closely its followers identify with the label, has provided a refuge for Korean women. Taekyung, 24, is getting her master’s degree in German literature at Ewha University, an all-women’s university with a robust campus feminism movement and a respected gender-studies department. On a beautiful fall day, she proudly walked me around the campus, which dates from the 1880s, showing me the campus gift shop and the area where students socialize and sometimes take naps.

She has tried to avoid men since high school, after doing a research project on Ilbe that brought her to web pages where men had posted nude photos of their female family members and discussed how to get away with rape. She went to Sungshin Women’s University, another all-women’s university, for undergrad. She doesn’t believe in labels for her own sexual orientation and has little interest in dating other women, but she does believe in political lesbianism as a way for women to establish lives separate from men — with an emphasis on the “political” rather than the “lesbian.” “I don’t need to try being a lesbian, because in political lesbianism, I can just be a person, like a normal person — a human being. I can be in a safe place,” she told me as we drank sweet-potato lattes at a campus café. The most important thing, in her view, is the absence of men. “Always, when I use the word ‘safe place,’ it means the place for women.”

https://www.thecut.com/2023/03/4b-movement-feminism-south-korea.html

[masterofd1saster]

CJ current events 16mar23

***

Outstanding article: https://www.thefp.com/p/why-the-mental-health-of-liberal

***

Ted's a dirty bird

Former cardinal Theodore McCarrick, 92, filed a motion in a Massachusetts court claiming he is “legally incompetent” to stand trial for sex abuse charges, citing “significant, worsening, and irreversible dementia.”

McCarrick is charged with three counts of indecent assault and battery on a person over the age of 14 relating to allegations that he sexually abused the teenager who was a family friend at a wedding ceremony in the 1970s at Wellesley College in Wellesley, Massachusetts.

McCarrick, laicized by Pope Francis in 2019, held one of the highest offices in the Catholic Church and has been accused of serially abusing his priestly authority by sexually abusing minors and seminarians.

The state of Massachusetts told CNA that it wants an opportunity to examine McCarrick’s competency to stand trial.

McCarrick’s motion to dismiss the charges comes about a month after his legal team said a neurological exam of him was being conducted by Dr. David Schretlen, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

That exam remains unavailable to the public, as Schretlen’s final report includes “extensive confidential information” about McCarrick’s health and personal life, and would be “harmful” to McCarrick if it were available to the public, one of McCarrick’s lawyers, Daniel Marx, said in a separate court document.*** https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/253756/ex-cardinal-mccarrick-asks-for-dismissal-of-sex-abuse-case-against-him-citing-dementia

***

He's there left-wing mayor

The Prince George’s County Police Department’s Child and Vulnerable Adult Abuse - Internet Crimes Against Child Unit arrested a College Park man this morning for possession and distribution of child pornography. The suspect is 47-year-old Patrick Wojahn.

On February 17, 2023, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children notified the PGPD that a social media account operating in the county possessed and distributed suspected child pornography. The image and videos had been uploaded to the social media account in January of 2023. Through various investigative techniques, PGPD investigators discovered the social media account belonged to Wojahn.

On February 28, 2023, PGPD detectives served a search warrant at Wojahn’s College Park home. Investigators recovered multiple cell phones, a storage device, a tablet and a computer. Following additional investigation, PGPD obtained criminal charges against Wojahn and investigators took him into custody early this morning.

Wojahn is charged with 40 counts of possession of child exploitative material and 16 counts of distribution of child exploitative material. He is in the custody of the Department of Corrections.***

***

If someone tells you American criminal justice is sexist, the only proper response is "no poo, Sherlock."

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (KKTV) - A 31-year-old woman who admits to having sex with a 13-year-old boy and then becoming pregnant with his child, won’t face any jail time under a plea deal with prosecutors.

Andrea Serrano of Fountain was facing sexual assault charges after her arrest in 2022 but accepted this new plea deal to stay out of prison earlier this year.

Serrano gave birth to the baby boy after she admitted to having sex with the 13-year-old. The mother of the victim told 11 News she is not happy with the deal offered to a woman she says ruined her son’s life.

“I feel like my son is robbed of his childhood. Now he’s having to be a father. He’s a victim, and he’s going to have to live with that for the rest of his life,” the victim’s mother, who we are not identifying, told 11 News.

She questions why Serrano won’t face prison time.

“I feel like if she was a man and he was a little girl, it would definitely be different. They would be seeking more. I feel like because he is not a woman, they are not. They are having compassion for her,” the victim’s mother said.*** https://www.kktv.com/2023/03/02/colorado-woman-who-admits-having-sex-with-13-year-old-having-his-baby-wont-face-jail-time-under-plea-deal/

***

Suzi Weiss writes

→ Goodbye, Lori! No one’s favorite mayor, Chicago’s Lori Lightfoot, is out of a job. Lightfoot conceded Tuesday night, telling her supporters, “Obviously, we didn't win the election today. But I stand here today with my head held high.” 

Lightfoot won only one term as the Windy City’s head honcho, but what a term it was. The homicide rate is up 40 percent since she took office in 2019; public transit ridership has plummeted; and O’Hare has become a homeless shelter. There’s also a new casino. TGIF will miss Lori! 

The race is now between two opposing visions for the future of the Dems: Paul “Proactive Policing” Vallas and Brandon “Defund the Police” Johnson. The runoff election will be in April.

→ ‘Thank God for Bubba’: In the closing arguments of the Murdaugh murder trial—where now-disgraced Good Ole Boy Alex Murdaugh stood accused of murdering his wife and son—the prosecutor reminded the jury of one central figure to this alarming case: Bubba, the family’s golden retriever. Murdaugh swore he was nowhere near the dog kennels the night his son Paul and wife Maggie were shot, but it seems he was outfoxed by a dog. In a Snapchat video taken by Paul minutes before he and his mother were murdered, you can hear other voices in the background, including Maggie commenting that the dog might have a bird in its mouth. One of the voices was “100 percent” Alex Murdaugh, according to witnesses. Maggie and Paul were killed minutes later. 

When they played the video in court, Murdaugh began to cry. 

None other than O. J. Simpson predicted that Murdaugh would go to jail for stealing money, but “it wouldn’t surprise me in the least if this guy beats this case.” 

O. J. was wrong: Murdaugh was convicted of the murders at around 7 p.m. last night. ***

→ Can she speak with the manager? In a bid to get her sex trafficking conviction thrown out, Ghislaine Maxwell is claiming that she was kept under inhumane conditions at the Brooklyn Detention Center while awaiting trial. Maxwell says she was held in solitary confinement and that she was “malnourished,” which, I think for British former billionaire socialites, just means there wasn’t a full English and savory pudding every morning. Her attorney is saying that by the time of her trial, Maxwell was too exhausted and deflated to contribute to her own defense. 

Maxwell is now being kept at a correctional facility in Tallahassee in Florida—not quite the Palm Beach spread she’s used to—where she’s expected to serve out her 20-year sentence. There, the joke goes, she wakes up every morning shocked that she didn’t commit suicide. ***

***

Personal responsibility? That's crazy talk, fella.

Kia Boys, Quantified

In 2020, 4,507 stolen cars were reported in Milwaukee, giving it the 66th highest rate of motor vehicle theft among American cities. In 2021, the city surged to eighth on the list, as stolen car reports more than doubled, reaching a staggering 10,477. Two-thirds of the cars stolen in 2021 were Kias or Hyundais, despite the two companies accounting for just 7% of all cars owned in America. And Milwaukee is only the tip of the iceberg.

In 2022, Los Angeles saw an 85% spike in thefts of Kia and Hyundai vehicles. In St. Petersburg, Florida, more than a third of all car thefts last summer were linked explicitly to inspiration from TikTok videos. In Chicago, some jurisdictions saw month-to-month spikes in Kia and Hyundai thefts of over 800%. In November 2022, Atlanta Police reported that 40% of all car thefts in the city that year were of Kias and Hyundais. Kia Boys have popped up in Buffalo, Dallas, several cities in Ohio, St. Louis, Seattle, Memphis, Minneapolis, Philadelphia, San Antonio, the DMV area (DC-Maryland-Virginia), and Kent County, Michigan. The volume of local news reports on Kia and Hyundai thefts is seemingly infinite. ***

Is it somehow wrong to insist that children stealing cars is a problem, actually?

An interesting perspective, but the many lower-to-middle class victims who’ve been economically crippled by Kia Boy thefts tend to come at this subject from a different angle than millionaire celebrity actors. As do the Kia Boy parents who, having higher hopes for their children than a life of crime, are publicly begging law enforcement to step up and hold them accountable. And as does the president of the NAACP’s Columbus Chapter — that notoriously tough-on-crime organization — who has asserted “we can no longer have our children just running rampant in our community committing crimes, it’s got to stop.”

Unsurprisingly, beyond the insulated world of the wealthy, the basic tenets of working class solidarity, child-rearing, and community stewardship dictate we should not accept a wave of juvenile car theft as a mundane fixture of American life. The question is what to do about it. Lucky for us, the media is on it.***

https://www.piratewires.com/p/kia-boy-stolen-cars

***

Parody or truth, you decide.

Chicago Honors Lori Lightfoot’s Legacy With 21-Murder Salute

U.S.·Mar 2, 2023 · BabylonBee.com

https://babylonbee.com/news/chicago-honors-lori-lightfoots-legacy-with-21-murder-salute

***

DAs make life changing decisions

CV NEWS FEED // A talented high school volleyball player is battling for her life after being hit by a car driven by a released St. Louis felon – and now, officials in Missouri are working to remove George Soros-backed Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner because of her failure to put the criminal behind bars. 

Janae Edmonson, 17, was hit by a vehicle and lost both her legs while visiting St. Louis with her team and family on February 18. The Tennessee volleyball standout had just accepted a scholarship to play at The University of Tennessee Southern, which the school says it will still honor despite the double-amputation that has effectively ended her career. 

Records show 21-year-old Daniel Riley, who was out on bail awaiting a trial for a 2020 felony armed robbery, didn’t have a driver’s license when he was speeding, failed to yield, and caused the collision. ***

Riley had been set to go to trial last summer, but sources indicate Gardner’s office wasn’t ready or wasn’t willing to pursue prosecution. Instead, Riley was put on house arrest with a GPS tracker, which local news sources reported he violated more than 100 times in lead-up to the accident. 

Following a public outcry, including calls from Democratic officials for Gardner to step down, Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey gave her an ultimatum: resign or be removed.

“This is about a quantum of evidence that demonstrates her failure to prosecute cases, failure to inform and confer with victims in cases, and failure to file new cases that are referred by law enforcement agencies,” Bailey said. 

“The driver of the speeding vehicle, Daniel Riley, should never have been in that car. He is a dangerous gunman who should have been in jail,” a statement from Bailey’s office said. *** https://catholicvote.org/blame-mounts-for-soros-backed-prosecutor-after-horrific-crash/

***

Isn't there a 1st Amendment or something about that?

YAKIMA, Wash. – The Yakima Union Gospel Mission filed a federal lawsuit Thursday against Washington state officials to protect its constitutional right to hire employees who share the ministry’s religious beliefs. Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys represent the Christian ministry in its civil rights suit to protect its freedom to hire like-minded individuals who share and live out its beliefs and mission to spread the gospel of Jesus Christ through its homeless shelter, addiction-recovery programs, outreach efforts, meal services, and health clinics for the Yakima community.

The Yakima Union Gospel Mission will serve anybody, but it furthers its religious purpose by maintaining staff who are likeminded believers that agree with and live out the mission’s Christian beliefs and practices, including abstaining from any sexual conduct outside of marriage between a man and a woman. The Washington Supreme Court, however, recently reinterpreted state law to prohibit religious organizations, like the mission, from only hiring individuals who share its religious beliefs, and now state officials are threatening the mission with significant penalties for using its religiously based hiring practices.***

In the wake of the state’s new interpretation of the Washington Law Against Discrimination, the mission has received applications from people who openly disagree with, or are hostile to, its religious beliefs on marriage and sexuality. To avoid being penalized by the state, the mission recently removed an online employment posting for an IT technician, refrained from posting an operations assistant position, and has paused hiring for those two positions.

The Yakima Union Gospel Mission loves and serves all people “right where they are” in multiple ways. For example, the mission offers shelter for the homeless 365 days a year and provides a family shelter for families with children. From July 1, 2021 to June 30, 2022, the mission provided a total of 30,167 nights of shelter to 881 different adults and 3,592 nights of shelter for children. Its Good News Café provides free meals three times a day to the public and shelter guests; the mission served 141,629 free meals in that same timeframe. Additionally, the mission’s New Life Recovery Program helps people recover from drug and alcohol addictions and homelessness, and its health clinics offer free or reduced-cost services.*** https://adfmedia.org/case/union-gospel-mission-yakima-v-ferguson

***

funny toon https://www.gocomics.com/speedbump/2023/03/04

***

Should have let his unit handle him

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Friday, March 3, 2023

Former U.S. Army Soldier Sentenced to 45 Years in Prison for Attempting for Murder Fellow Service Members in Deadly Ambush

A Kentucky man was sentenced today to 45 years in prison for attempting to murder U.S. service members, providing and attempting to provide material support to terrorists, and illegally transmitting national defense information.

Ethan Phelan Melzer, aka Etil Reggad, 24, of Louisville, pleaded guilty to attempting to murder U.S. service members, providing and attempting to provide material support to terrorists, and illegally transmitting national defense information on June 24, 2022, before U.S. District Judge Gregory H. Woods, who imposed today’s sentence. According to court documents, Melzer planned a jihadist attack on his U.S. Army unit in the days leading up to a deployment to Turkey and sent sensitive details about the unit — including information about its location, movements, and security — to members of the extremist organization Order of the Nine Angles (O9A), a white supremacist, neo-Nazi and pro-jihadist group.

“Today’s sentence holds Mr. Melzer accountable for an egregious and shameful act of betrayal against his own military unit and his country,” said Assistant Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen of the Justice Department’s National Security Division. “The Justice Department will use all available resources to disrupt and bring to justice those who would aid foreign terrorist organizations and use violence to harm our men and women in uniform or any American anywhere.”

“Ethan Melzer infiltrated the U.S. Army in service of a neo-Nazi, white supremacist and jihadist group,” said U.S. Attorney Damian Williams for the Southern District of New York. “He used his membership in the military to pursue an appalling goal: the brutal murder of his fellow U.S. service members in a carefully plotted ambush. By unlawfully disclosing his unit’s location, strength, and armaments to other O9A members and jihadists in furtherance of this ambush, Melzer traitorously sought to attack the very soldiers he was entrusted to protect. Today’s sentence makes clear that Melzer’s brazen actions backfired and that this office — along with our partners in law enforcement and the military — will work tirelessly to bring traitors like Melzer to justice and to protect the safety and integrity of our armed services.”*** https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/former-us-army-soldier-sentenced-45-years-prison-attempting-murder-fellow-service-members

***

Fair point about separation of powers and minority rights.

*** America has a written constitution detailing citizens’ rights. It has two legislatures, the House and the Senate, and separate state elections and governments that further buffer citizens from federal power. Israel has none of those things. We have only one legislature, it’s controlled by the governing majority, and the single brake on majority power is the court. This is the only force that can stem the current paroxysm—and so it’s this force that’s now being removed, in what is being misunderstood by some as a simple “legal reform.” What’s actually happening is a takeover of Israel’s independent judiciary by the most extreme government in our history. 

There is a good case for reform that would set the limits of court power with broad consent. That’s not what’s happening. 

The new system, which is supposed to be set in law by next month, will allow the government to select judges and overrule the court’s decisions. If the reform passes and the government decides that there will now be elections every 10 years, for example, or every 20—there will be no force to rule otherwise. Israel, which has rightly prided itself as being the only democracy in the Middle East, will move closer to the model of Hungary or Turkey than of America.

Israel’s stable and internationally respected court system is one of the reasons for our economic miracle over the past few decades. (Another reason is Netanyahu himself, in his more responsible days). Several billion dollars are already believed to have left the country in the past month, a sign of a trend that could snowball. The tech CEOs of Tel Aviv, who need a liberal social ecosystem and strong courts trusted by foreign investors, are eyeing Palo Alto. There are warnings about our international credit rating, and the shekel has dropped. *** https://www.thefp.com/p/i-took-up-arms-to-defend-israel-now

***

Criminal Victimization in the 22 Largest U.S. States, 2017–2019***

***

When you define deviancy down, there's always someone saying "hold my beer."

After School Satan Club launching first Colorado chapter, but organizer promises “we are not devil worshippers”

***

Ex-NBC doctor gets no jail time after asking girl, 9, for nude photos

David Propper

An ex-medical correspondent for an NBC-affiliate station based in Los Angeles received no jail time after he pleaded no contest to asking a 9-year-old girl to send him “sexy and private” nude photos, according to a report.

Dr. Bruce Hensel, 74, apologized to the young victim’s family and even hugged her father — who is an acquaintance — as he entered his plea in an LA courtroom on Monday, the Los Angeles Times reported.***

The Emmy-winner was arrested in 2019 after he asked the girl for the sexually explicit photos through an online messaging app.

At the time, he worked as the on-air chief medical correspondent for the NBC station in LA, as well as for one in New York.*** https://nypost.com/2023/03/06/ex-nbc-tv-doctor-sentenced-for-asking-girl-for-naked-pics/

Remember, LA is the town that made Roman Polanski famous.

***

You going to believe your lyin' eyes?

Newly revealed surveillance footage from Jan. 6, 2021, shows two Capitol police officers escorting Jacob Chansley, the be-horned so-called “QAnon Shaman” who has come to symbolize the riot, through the halls of the Capitol and to the very door of the US Senate.

The footage aired on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show Monday night shows the officers closely following Chansley as he wanders the corridors of the Capitol, bare-chested and wearing face paint and a luxuriant fur hat with Viking horns.

“Virtually every moment of his time inside the Capitol was caught on tape,” says Carlson, who was granted exclusive access by Speaker Kevin McCarthy to 40,000 hours of surveillance footage from that day inside and around the Capitol, which has never been seen before by the public.

“The tapes show the Capitol police never stopped Jacob Chansley. They helped him. They acted as his tour guides.”*** https://nypost.com/2023/03/06/jan-6-footage-shows-cops-bringing-qanon-shaman-to-senate-floor/

I have always thought Carlson is a blowhard fake populist, but the tape was definitely interesting.

***

Crime costs

*** Walmart is closing its last two locations in Portland just months after CEO Doug McMillon warned that rampant thefts would lead the company to raise prices or close stores in some locations. Residents in the neighborhoods of those two locations will have to shop elsewhere, and 580 employees will also be affected by the closures.

Violence has also caused trouble for businesses, with one real estate developer and lifelong resident of the city preparing to move out after discovering his office was riddled with bullet holes. And stealing has been a problem for residents outside of business closures and departures, with 2022 seeing a record increase in car thefts.

Portland police are now finally taking this seriously. Officers are conducting anti-shoplifting “blitzes,” arresting 64 people in a December operation that led to 10 stolen vehicles being recovered alongside three firearms and almost $9,000 in stolen merchandise. A February operation led to another 40 arrests, with officers recovering $2,000 in merchandise and handing out 32 felony charges and 28 misdemeanors. Another of these operations was carried out on Sunday.*** https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/portland-is-bleeding-businesses-thanks-to-years-of-soft-on-crime-policies

***

Don't fly w/ the insane?

*** Francisco Severo Torres, 33, was charged with one count of interference and attempted interference with flight crew members and attendants using a dangerous weapon. Torres was arrested last evening at Boston Logan International Airport and, following an initial appearance today before U.S. District Court Magistrate Judge Dein, was detained pending a hearing set for March 9, 2023. 

According to the charging documents, on March 5, 2023, Torres was a passenger aboard a United Airlines flight from Los Angeles to Boston. Approximately 45 minutes prior to landing, the flight crew received an alarm in the cockpit that a starboard side door located between the first class and coach sections of the aircraft was disarmed. Upon inspection, a flight attendant found that the door’s locking handle had been moved out of the fully locked position – approximately a quarter of the way towards the towards the unlocked position – and that the emergency slide arming lever had been moved to the “disarmed” position. The flight attendant reported this to the captain and flight crew after securing the door and emergency slide. 

In subsequent discussions, a fellow flight attendant reported that he had observed Torres near the door and believed Torres had tampered with the door. A flight attendant then confronted Torres about tampering with the door, to which he allegedly responded by asking if there were cameras showing that he had done so. According to court documents, the flight attendant then notified the captain that they believed Torres posed a threat to the aircraft and that the captain needed to land the aircraft as soon as possible.  

Shortly thereafter, it is alleged that Torres got out of his seat and approached the starboard side door where two flight attendants were standing in the aisle. One of the flight attendants saw Torres mouthing something that he could not hear. Torres then allegedly thrust towards one of the flight attendants in a stabbing motion with a broken metal spoon, hitting the flight attendant on the neck area three times. Passengers then tackled Torres and he was restrained with the assistance of flight crew. Torres was immediately taken into custody upon the flight’s arrival to Boston.  *** https://www.justice.gov/usao-ma/pr/man-arrested-attempting-open-emergency-exit-door-aboard-flight-boston

***

Hip deep in irony

An attorney at the Southern Poverty Law Center, a civil rights group known for labeling conservative and Christian nonprofit organizations as "hate groups," was arrested Sunday on terrorism charges after allegedly taking part in a riot where agitators threw objects, including Molotov cocktails, at a police training center near Atlanta.

The Georgia Bureau of Investigation on Sunday arrested Thomas Webb Jurgens, according to Dekalb County Jail records. The name and occupation of the 28-year-old appear to match that of a staff attorney with the SPLC. He is facing one charge of domestic terrorism.

Jurgens was among 35 people detained after a violent clash between protesters and police at a construction site for the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center.***

“On March 5, 2023, a group of violent agitators used the cover of a peaceful protest of the proposed Atlanta Public Safety Training Center to conduct a coordinated attack on construction equipment and police officers,” Atlanta police reported Sunday. “They changed into black clothing and entered the construction area and began to throw large rocks, bricks, Molotov cocktails, and fireworks at police officers.”*** https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/courts/splc-attorney-among-23-others-facing-domestic-terrorism-charges

Interesting pic:

***

If you have a good plea deal, don't fornicate it up

Disbarred Denver attorney Steve Bachar skipped his sentencing hearing in his felony theft case Friday and is now wanted on a warrant, court records show.

Bachar, 57, was due to be sentenced for defrauding an investor in his business of $125,000.

It was not clear Monday why Bachar, who was out on a $25,000 bond, did not show up to be sentenced in Denver District Court. A call to his cellphone went straight to voicemail Monday and he did not return a message left seeking comment.

Bachar pleaded guilty in November to one count of felony theft and a second count of misdemeanor theft as part of a plea agreement in which he received a deferred judgment on the felony charge — that is, the felony will be wiped from his record if he meets court-set conditions for the next two years.*** https://www.denverpost.com/2023/03/06/steve-bachar-skips-sentencing-denver/

Accused of mishandling $2M - prolly should behave himself.

***

Excellent article about beliefs as status symbols

***

Really??

A Denver eating disorder doctor who has helped patients with anorexia nervosa obtain aid-in-dying medication is jolting the psychiatric community and sparking an emotional, national debate about the ethics of prescribing lethal drugs for people with mental illnesses.

Dr. Jennifer Gaudiani, an internal medicine doctor who specializes in eating disorders, published a paper in which she describes the deaths of three patients with anorexia nervosa. One 36-year-old woman died after ingesting the lethal doses prescribed by another doctor, with Gaudiani serving as consulting physician. Another 36-year-old woman died of severe malnutrition on the same day she planned to take aid-in-dying medication prescribed by Gaudiani.

In the paper, published in February in the Journal of Eating Disorders, Gaudiani advocates for allowing patients who are dying from anorexia to end their lives on their own terms. She writes that, although anorexia doesn’t have delineated levels of severity like cancer, which has stages of progression and a terminal phase, it can be brutally lethal. It is widely believed to have the second-highest mortality rate of all mental illnesses, behind only substance use disorders. *** https://coloradosun.com/2022/03/14/denver-doctor-gaudiani-aid-in-dying-aneroexia-patients/

***

Bank of America drops dimes to FBI

Turns out BoA gave FBI a list of all customers who had ever bought a firearm who were in the DC area on Jan 6. So if you bought a rifle in Montana in 1999, but you happened to buy gas in Silver Spring on Jan 6, BoA gave your name to the FBI. - Thanks, Margot. https://thefederalist.com/2023/03/06/whistleblower-fbis-d-c-office-tried-to-sic-local-agents-on-innocents-after-bank-of-america-volunteered-gun-records/

***

funny video

***

When policing stops

***Chris Waggett manages 70 acres at the corner of Broadway and Alameda, with a Safeway and Sam’s Club and a new apartment project that just opened. The site, known as Broadway Park, is a couple miles south of downtown, but Waggett said he always knows when the city breaks up a homeless encampment there.

“The big issue I’ve got is that when we do sweeps downtown or do pushes at Union Station, all it causes are people to push down the light rail corridors,” he said. “All we’re doing is playing Whack-A-Mole.”

Waggett said he’s lost three retail tenants, including an Ace Hardware store, because of crime and vagrancy. Employees are too scared to come to work, he said.

Waggett is now paying $500,000 a year for private security to patrol the property and try to deter vagrancy. But he said he regularly sees excrement, prostitution and open drug use. And his hired security is sometimes too frightened to confront drug dealers.

“We’ve had a very laissez-faire, permissive attitude and people don’t understand the economic consequence to the city,” Waggett said.

“We need leadership with a capital L: We need leadership not only in enforcing the law and addressing the three-pronged problem of homeless and drug use and mental health,” he said.***

“We pay a lot of taxes and we’re not getting services,” Isenberg said.***

He said a homeless man moved into a utility room at one property in Aurora and was discovered only because he was grilling food inside and the smoke wafted within view of Harris’ maintenance staff. Other property owners report similar problems with vacant buildings poised for development: squatters move in and other burglars strip the property of anything valuable, like copper.

Fires are also a common threat that can destroy an entire property and nearby ones, too, as BusinessDen has previously reported. Other business owners interviewed by BusinessDen watch security cameras and rush to their buildings when they see fires set outside their properties.***

***

Latest Oxford news

DETROIT–An appeals court on Tuesday grilled attorneys for James and Jennifer Crumbley, the first parents in America charged in a mass school shooting, about how the couple treated their son before he murdered four students and injured seven others in the November 2021 shooting at Oxford High School in Michigan.

The court focusedon why they bought him a gun despite his mental health troubles and why they didn’t take him home after seeing his note that read: “The thoughts won’t stop, help me.”

“There were warning signs all over the place,” Michigan Court of Appeals Judge Christopher Yates said during a one-hour hearing.

The appeals court is trying to decide if the Crumbleys should stand trial on involuntary manslaughter charges for the actions of their son, Ethan Crumbley, who pleaded guilty to murder charges last year. *** https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2023/03/07/james-jennifer-crumbley-oxford-michigan-court/11421222002/

***

Maaaaaybe

HOUSTON (AP) — Next month’s scheduled execution of a Texas death row inmate, whose attorneys say gouged out both of his eyes — each a separate incident — because of severe mental illness, was delayed by a judge on Tuesday.

Andre Thomas had been set to be executed on April 5, sentenced to death for fatally stabbing in March 2004 his estranged wife Laura Christine Boren, 20, their 4-year-old son Andre Lee and her 13-month-old daughter Leyha Marie Hughes, cutting out the hearts of the two children.

He later told police God had instructed him to commit the killings and that he believed all three were demons. The killings of Boren and her children shocked Sherman, a city of about 45,000 residents 65 miles (105 kilometers) north of Dallas.

State District Judge Jim Fallon on Tuesday issued an order withdrawing the execution date. Fallon’s decision came after Thomas’ lawyers had requested additional time to prepare for a court hearing to review his competency.*** https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/execution-delayed-for-death-row-inmate-who-cut-out-his-eyes/ar-AA18lwrs

***

100 Years of Unenumerated Freedoms Conference

In 1920, a school teacher was arrested and fined for teaching German in defiance of a state law. He took his case to the U.S. Supreme court and won, resulting in one of the most sweeping defenses of individual freedom in history. Join IJ for a conference to celebrate the centenary of this monumental moment for liberty and to explore the past and future of unenumerated rights.   This event will take place on March 31st in Washington, D.C. For those outside of the D.C. area, it will also be streamed online. https://ij.org/event/100-years-of-unenumerated-freedoms-meyer-v-nebraska-at-a-century

***

Aren't unlocked doors problematic?

A 22-year-old man is behind bars after entering a California high school and sexually assaulting at least three teenage girls on Monday.

Burbank police said Patrick Nazarian, of Glendale, was arrested for kidnapping and sexual assault after he allegedly entered Burbank High School around 9 a.m. Monday.

Investigators determined he entered the school through an unlocked door in the student parking lot.

Nazarian is accused of approaching a 14-year-old girl, who was in a bathroom inside the school, and sexually assaulting her. Police said a "short struggle" took place between the two before he fled.*** https://www.foxnews.com/us/california-man-jailed-allegedly-entering-high-school-sexually-assaulting-3-girls

***

Didn't Lord Humungous tell you about tranq ~ month ago?

What drug users and people who work with them in Philadelphia talk about is the smell. The smell of rotting flesh from open infected wounds.

Some users say they feel ashamed of the state of their bodies, but more feel a sense of urgency. They need help. The wounds are killing them.

“It is absolutely horrible. That’s the reality, though,” said James Sherman, known as Sherm around Philadelphia’s Kensington neighborhood, where he once used drugs and where he now tries to help those still on the streets.  

The need for help has become more urgent over the last three years, as the animal tranquilizer xylazine, also called tranq, has become a bigger part of Philly’s street fentanyl supply. Xylazine can cause large wounds that won’t heal, no matter where you inject it and they can appear even if you snort it or smoke it. Infections are common and can even lead to amputations.  

“Some people aren’t ready to see that yet,” Sherman said. “It’s literally people’s flesh rotting, and you can smell it.”  ***

Tranq made its mark on Philadelphia’s street drugs about three years ago. That’s when doctors, users and those who try to help them saw a difference. 

Dr. Joseph D’Orazio, an emergency physician and addiction medicine specialist at Temple University Hospital, said patients started to have major wounds that were different from typical injection drug use. “These wounds were a lot deeper, a lot more severe, there were big necrotic areas,” he said. “They were deep down into tendons. Sometimes you can see the bones, and we were starting to see more patients that were requiring amputations.”  ***

***

Faint?

***

Gascon

Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascon has already cost people their safety. Now, his egotistical power trip is costing taxpayers millions as well.

Deputy District Attorney Shawn Randolph won her retaliation lawsuits against Gascon and is to be given $1.5 million in taxpayer money as a result. Randolph alleged that Gascon effectively demoted her and denied her job opportunities after she spoke out against his policies, including the minimization of criminal conduct for juvenile offenders no matter how violent they are.***

There are 16 other retaliation lawsuits against Gascon from prosecutors, who Gascon treats more harshly than career criminals, gang members, and child molesters. ***

***

They said it tasted a lot like Peregrine Falcon

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Office of Law Enforcement has opened an investigation into two suspected illegal immigrants who allegedly killed a bald eagle with the intent of cooking it and eating it for dinner.

According to the Stanton County Sheriff's Office in Nebraska, two men were found with "a dead North American Bald Eagle in their possession" last month. Officers were initially responding to a suspicious vehicle near the main Wood Duck Recreation Area.

The sheriff's office said an investigation found that the men had shot and killed the protected bird and had plans to cook and eat it for dinner.***

***

Evisceration & "arrest me" tat

​On Wednesday, February 15, 2023, Deputies of the Bell County Sheriff’s Department responded to an address off Tallow Drive, in Central Bell County where a call was received of a stabbing victim. On Deputies arrival, they located a victim with an evisceration. ***

the Bell County Sheriff’s Department SWAT team assisted by members of the Temple Police Department K9 and Troopers of the Texas Department of Public Safety were able to locate Shawn Thomas Goodman today, March 7, 2023, and take him into custody on the warrant without incident. Goodman was transported to the Bell County Jail and is currently awaiting arraignment.***

***

Oklahoma might have passed if it weren't for those meddling cartels

***on Tuesday night, constituents in Oklahoma pulled the plug on a statewide effort to legalize recreational cannabis, meaning residents will still be required to have a medical license in order to enter dispensaries in the state, which is now home to more retail cannabis stores than Colorado, Oregon, and Washington combined.***

"Regardless of where one stands on the question of marijuana legalization, the stark reality is that organized crime from China and Mexico has infiltrated Oklahoma's medical marijuana industry," Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond, a Republican, told the Washington Examiner, saying he was "proud" that 63% voted against the measure. Drummond added that he'd "continue to focus on this serious threat to public safety by targeting the illegal grow operations throughout our state."

Last year, a man accused of killing four Chinese nationals at an illegal Oklahoma marijuana farm demanded employees give him $300,000 as a return for his "investment" in the illegal operation, prosecutors said. And just last month, a spokesman for the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics said people "tied to violent criminal organizations" had a Payne County growing site raided, resulting in the seizure of 28,000 plants and nearly 500 pounds of processed marijuana.***

***

U.S. District Judge Wetherell ruled in Florida v. United States, 21-cv-1066 (N.D.Fla. Mar. 8, 2023) that when 8 U.S.C. §1225(b)(1)(A) and §1225(b)(2)(A) say an illegal alien “shall be detained,” those laws mean what they say.

He vacated DHS's catch & release policy, but stayed enforcement for a week so the U.S. may appeal.

Rules on standing and political questions died an ignominious death in the Warren Court. This will not fix the border, but if it makes status quo untenable, I guess that's good.

MYFLORIDALEGAL.COM

***

There shouldn't be barriers?

→ The bar exam is not a bar: The state of Delaware has lowered the score to pass the bar exam, the test all lawyers have to pass in order to practice law. Explaining why, Delaware Supreme Court Justice Collins J. Seitz Jr. said: “The bar exam is not supposed to be a barrier to entering the profession.” Absolutely no notes there.  https://www.thefp.com/p/tgif-i-hate-him-passionately

***

Not bad advice for the moment....

https://www.findlaw.com/legalblogs/practice-of-law/tips-for-catching-deepfakes-in-evidence

***

Crime has lots of dangers

***Officers were called on March 7 after the man, Matthew Eric Smith, 32, was found dead under a car, the Chatham County Police Department said in a release.

“Evidence at the scene indicates that the man was killed while he was illegally removing a catalytic converter from the vehicle, and the vehicle fell on top of him,” the release read.

Catalytic converter theft has skyrocketed around the nation in recent years, according to the National Insurance Crime Bureau, surging more than 1,200% since 2019.

The converters, which reduce pollution and toxic gas from a vehicle’s emissions, are relatively easy to steal and contain valuable precious metals such as palladium, platinum and rhodium.

Last year, federal, state and local law enforcement carried out a “coordinated takedown” of a multimillion-dollar network of catalytic converter thieves, dealers and processors that led to 21 arrests in five states, the Justice Department said in a November release.*** https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/12/us/georgia-man-death-catalytic-converter-theft/index.html

***

Good article: don't lie, deprive people of their rights, or train others to do so

tumblrstinkshttps://www.washingtonexaminer.com/restoring-america/fairness-justice/police-need-training-but-not-like-this

***

Anger issues?

An 8-year-old Florida boy was arrested after allegedly attacking another child at a home on Saturday.

Lake County Sheriff's Office responded to a Clermont home around 4:25 p.m. for a report of a child cutting another child on the throat, according to an affidavit obtained by FOX 35 Orlando. 

Upon arrival, the deputy observed a juvenile outside the residence banging on the front door. The boy was crying and saying he did not want to be taken away. The child pulled away multiple times while attempting to be placed in handcuffs, the affidavit states. While the deputy attempted to put him inside a marked patrol vehicle, the boy allegedly kicked a master deputy and the patrol vehicle. *** https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/florida-8-year-old-accused-of-cutting-throat-of-another-child/ar-AA18BZnb

***

You can have my gas stove when you pry it from my...

Yes, the Biden administration is coming for your gas stove.***

The Department of Energy is conducting this gas stove grab through a rule that would impose extreme energy performance standards on residential cooktops. The department’s proposed rule sets requirements for gas cooktops at the maximum technologically feasible or "max-tech" level. Based on the Department of Energy's own analysis, gas cooktops at the max-tech level represent just 4% of current market share and exclude all conventional free-stand ranges.

Any rule that causes 96% of the products available today to be eliminated from the market is an extreme regulation. In fact, it is essentially an outright ban on gas stoves.*** https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/restoring-america/faith-freedom-self-reliance/biden-regulatory-move-to-ban-gas-stoves

***

google "26-year-old Nicholas Roske"

The United States Supreme Court has asked Congress to increase funding to help protect the Supreme Court justices.

The court’s budget request asks for $5,897,000 for the “expansion of protective activities” and a separate increase of $585,000 for new IT security positions in “cybersecurity, software development, and network engineering.”

“This request would expand security activities conducted by Supreme Court Police to protect the Justices,” the protective activities request says, before specifically citing the presence of threats to the justices.

“On-going threat assessments show evolving risks that require continuous protection,” the request continues. “Additional funding would provide for contract positions, eventually transitioning to full-time employees, that will augment capabilities of the Supreme Court police force and allow it to accomplish its protective mission.”*** https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/03/13/supreme-court-requests-additional-funding-to-protect-justices/

***

FBI blowing up on J6????

Defendant in United States v. Nordean, 21-cr-175 (D.D.C.) filed a notice on 9mar23 [Doc 678] that the FBI had hidden some evidence in the J6 case. https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/23699546/nordean-filing-on-fbi-testimony.pdf

DoJ is really bad at producing documents. This that should be redacted aren't; thing that shouldn't be redacted are....

***

Nawlins has problems

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Tuesday, March 14, 2023

Former New Orleans Police Officer Sentenced for Sexually Assaulting a 15-Year-Old Girl

A former police officer with the New Orleans Police Department (NOPD) was sentenced in federal court to 14 years in prison for sexually assaulting a 15-year-old crime victim in violation of her constitutional rights.

According to the court documents, in May 2020, Rodney Vicknair, 55, while working in his capacity as an NOPD officer, escorted a then-14-year-old girl, who had been sexually assaulted by another man, to the hospital to undergo a forensic exam, also known as a rape kit. Vicknair gave the victim his cell phone number and offered to be her friend and mentor. In the months and weeks thereafter, Vicknair and the victim spoke on the phone and exchanged messages on Snapchat. Vicknair, while in uniform, often stopped by unannounced at the victim’s residence. Over time, Vicknair made comments to the victim that were sexual in nature.

On the night of Sept. 23, 2020, Vicknair arrived at the victim’s house. By that time, she had turned 15 years old. He told her to come outside and get into his vehicle. She got into the passenger’s seat while Vicknair remained in the driver’s seat. Then, he locked the doors so that the victim could not leave. Vicknair leaned over toward the victim, and she feared for her physical safety. He then sexually assaulted the victim when he intentionally touched her genitals under her clothing without her consent. Vicknair admitted in court that he acted without a legitimate law enforcement purpose and that he knew his actions were wrong and against the law but that he engaged in such conduct anyway.*** https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/former-new-orleans-police-officer-sentenced-sexually-assaulting-15-year-old-girl

***Thurs

good sentence

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Tuesday, March 14, 2023

Rhode Island Woman Sentenced to Federal Prison for Falsifying Military Service; False Use of Military Medals; Identity Theft; and Fraudulently Collecting More Than $250,000 In Veteran Benefits and Charitable Contributions

PROVIDENCE – A Rhode Island woman who never served in the U.S. Military but perpetrated a massive fraud scheme by falsely masquerading as a Purple Heart and Bronze Star-decorated United States Marine who claimed to have been wounded by an IED in Iraq and to have developed service-related cancer was sentenced today to nearly six years in federal prison, announced United States Attorney Zachary A. Cunha.

Sarah Jane Cavanaugh, 32, whose near-daily criminal conduct over a period of five years is described in court documents as being “among the more reprehensible seen in this District from a fraud defendant,” defrauded veterans, veterans’ organizations, veterans’ charities, friends, and co-workers in a “methodical and calculated manner.”*** https://www.justice.gov/usao-ri/pr/rhode-island-woman-sentenced-federal-prison-falsifying-military-service-false-use

***

Pardons & paroles means releasing people found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of sometimes heinous crimes

Families of Connecticut crime victims are outraged after 44 murderers had their sentences commuted, accusing the Board of Pardons and Paroles of amending its policy to favor the state's most violent criminals. ***

State Sen. Heather Somers, R., accused the board of acting "in the dark" to reduce criminal sentences after the policy shift post-pandemic. 

"This is a policy that was done in the dark by the Board of Pardons and Paroles, which is appointed by our Democratic governor here in the state of Connecticut," Somers said. "They took it upon themselves, or they were given a nudge to revise this policy."*** 

"They are coming in front of this board of three and unknown to us as legislators, and they are shaving decades, not a few years, decades off of these sentences," she said. "Just last week, this board shaved off 67 years off of someone's 95-year sentence. It is outrageous. We are committed to making this stop."*** https://www.foxnews.com/media/families-connecticut-victims-outraged-state-commutes-44-murder-sentences-outrageous

*** Sex traffickers need exercise too

Ghislaine Maxwell exercises with buddy at Florida prison

https//www.foxnews.com/video/6314528433112

***

St Louis blacklist

A retired St. Louis, Missouri, homicide detective says district attorney Kim Gardner led a 'concerted effort to break the system down' after he and other officers were placed on an 'exclusion list' which prevented them from carrying out police work.

Roger Murphey, who left the police force in 2021, said he had to ask other officers to file paperwork like warrants and subpoenas for him after George Soros-backed District Attorney Kimberly Gardner placed him on the infamous 'exclusion list'.

It is thought that around 75 police officers could be on Gardner's list which prevents them from bringing cases to her office and fulfilling the scope of their law enforcement work. They are also gagged from speaking out about the list.***  https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11853475/Soros-backed-DA-tried-break-placing-police-exclusion-list-officer-says.html ***

***

Latest BJS pub https://bjs.ojp.gov/document/hivp21st.pdf

BJS says the latest rate - 2021 - of HIV in U.S. prisons is about 1,100 per 100k.  In the general population in 2019 the rate was 431 per 100k.  https://www.cdc.gov/nchhstp/newsroom/fact-sheets/hiv/hiv-in-the-us-by-the-numbers.html 

***

Are you free to choose 1) a straw? 2) a stove? 3) a washer?

New washing machine efficiency standards proposed by the Biden administration last month have sparked concern from some manufacturers and trade associations that fear the new machines could be less effective and more costly for U.S. consumers.

The Department of Energy said the new efficiency standards, which seek to reduce emissions from both washing machines and refrigerators, will save consumers an estimated $3.5 billion annually on energy and water bills. U.S. households will save an estimated $425 in utility bills over the lifespan of the appliances, DOE said.

But manufacturers and trade groups say these efficiency standards will not come without a cost, both literally and figuratively, for consumers.*** https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/energy-environment/new-doe-efficiency-rules-washing-machines-more-costly-less-effective-manufacturers-warn

Fornicate tumblr for removing all my links!!!

***

Really good article about Santa Clara County, California surveilling a church.

https://www.thefp.com/p/a-church-the-state-and-a-holy-war

Not just physical surveillance and spying ---

According to Zweig’s piece, Santa Clara County hired the company SafeGraph, which “aggregates information from 47 million mobile devices across the United States,” to set up a virtual perimeter around Calvary Chapel’s property, allowing GPS to track exactly where churchgoers were congregating. Daniel Ho, a Stanford law professor and expert in public health data analysis, was allegedly hired for $800 an hour to analyze the results of the SafeGraph data, Zweig reports. (Officials who monitored the church were paid $219 per hour.)***

***

Julius & Ethel Rosenberg were a better class of traitors

Hollywood has made a movie about the interrogation of Traitor Delusional Loser.

From a journalist’s point of view, one aspect of the story that was very important at the time was how The Intercept and Glenn Greenwald dealt with Reality’s leaked information, sending it to the FBI, which some claim gave them the clues that led to her arrest.

Reality believed that she was going to be anonymous and that she’d be protected. She truly did not comprehend or even realize until the FBI showed up that that was not the case. I don’t have anything personal to add to that, because I’ve never dealt directly with any of that. But it was definitely a really interesting part to play as a character in those moments as she started to realize something that she trusted in was not to be trusted at all.*** https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/sydney-sweeney-interview-nsa-whistleblower-reality-winner-film-berlin-2023-1235323097/

Remember, this turd ---

Winner had written in a notebook: “I want to burn the White House Down … find somewhere in Kurdistan to live. Ha-ha!”* during one of her jailhouse phone calls, which were recorded, Winner said she planned to “play that card: being pretty, white and cute.” AP. (June 8, 2017). Accused NSA leaker wanted to ‘burn the White House down’ https://nypost.com/2017/06/08/accused-nsa-leaker-wanted-to-burn-the-white-house-down/ Winner discussed Osama Bin Laden in another diatribe, deeming the terrorist leader "Judas" to the Taliban's "Christ-like vision of a fundamentalist Islamic nation.* "Look, I only say I hate America like 3 times a day. I'm no radical." "But you don't actually hate America, right?" the self-described "elder and wiser sister," Brittany Winner, asked. "I mean yeah I do it's literally the worst thing to happen to the planet," Reality answered. McMillan, T. (Sep. 28, 2021). Reality check: Adorable 'whistleblower' was an anti-American spy. Washington Examiner. https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/reality-check-adorable-whistleblower-was-an-anti-american-spy

Why couldn't we trade her for Griner???? Or maybe Bowe Bergdahl??? Is it too late to trade???

***

Alec Baldwin shooting case

The special prosecutor in the fatal October 2021 Rust movie shooting case announced her resignation on Tuesday, weeks after Alec Baldwin's legal team claimed her participation was unconstitutional.

Andrea Reeb is a New Mexico state representative, and by acting as a member of both the judicial and legislative branches of the state government, Baldwin's attorneys argued that "her continued service as a special prosecutor is unconstitutional."

"My priority in this case — and in every case I’ve prosecuted in my 25-year career — has been justice for the victim," Reeb said in a statement. "However, it has become clear that the best way I can ensure justice is served in this case is to step down so that the prosecution can focus on the evidence and the facts, which clearly show a complete disregard for basic safety protocols led to the death of Halyna Hutchins."

"I will not allow questions about my serving as a legislator and prosecutor to cloud the real issue at hand," Reeb added.*** https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/special-prosecutor-baldwin-rust-case-steps-down

Thought experiment: what if someone handed Baldwin a nail gun, told him it was empty, and Baldwin killed someone with it?

***

Maybe carjacking a rich woman will change things...

The wife of CME Group’s Terry Duffy was the victim of a recent carjacking in the Windy City, the chief executive said in a podcast episode published Thursday.***

His wife "got carjacked right in the city of Chicago" around 3 p.m. in the afternoon last week, he said. It is "absolutely insane what’s going on" in the city, he added before saying a majority of carjackings there were done by minors.

"So the juveniles go in and they come right back out literally an hour later. So is that investing in our future?" he said. *** https://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/cme-ceo-terry-duffys-wife-carjacked-chicago-crime-crisis

***

[yourtoradorasextendedwarranty]

Women are not a monolith but I need to explain something. This insane idea that groups are a monolith that all HAVE to vote the same way otherwise they are voting against their own interest is belittling and infantilizing.

Not all women want to kill unborn children in the womb. And abortion only has ONE definition. Intentional termination of a viable pregnancy. If it falls outside of that it's not an abortion.

Secondly, having consequenceless sex isn't a "human right" so using abortion as a contraceptive when you can just keep your pants on. It's like asking to get off scott free for drinking and driving. All you're actually demanding is that you never be held accountable because you can't care to be held responsible for your own actions.

Third, treating women like a monolith and assuming they all see unborn children as non human piles of dead cells is disgusting. That's like assuming all black people like to do crime. It's an ARROGANT take. Harris has a history of flipping non-stop on her "policies", and considering that she kept innocent men in jail to use as cheap slave labor? You can imagine black people (who were a high minority of non violent offenders who included being locked up for weed) decided they didn't want her in office because of her track record. And women, specifically conservative women who VALUE human life, to not want to pro abortion candidate.

Despite the, "oh no we are going to be handmaid's tale" the Dems have been trying to fear monger (because it's the only thing they are good at) Trump has no such plans.

Then there's like Moon said above with illegal immigration. They are being treated like kings while us in the US who were born and raised here, as well as people who came legally often leaving their countries and possession behind and going through our legalization process, are being treated as less than, using OUR tax dollars. Which has bankrupted several cities and states. As well as has helped spike inflation.

I'm not "a woman who voted for Trump" but I've talked to enough moderate and conservative women who are sick of the posturing, sick of the virtue signaling, and sick of the idea that you should be allowed to have an abortion at 9 months, because THEY believe (because it's factually true) that life starts at conception. They believe you should be responsible for your own actions.

And one of the last reasons I've heard personally? Crime. Consider Anna Kasparian for a moment. She's quite liberal. If I'm being honest she's pretty close to being a socialist. And even with that being true, she's seen the results of Dem policies, including sexual and physical harassment by criminals who DON'T get prosecuted. And watching the FBI stealth edit their crime stats is par for the course to protect Democrats.

So imagine the "shock" of women voting for Trump because the Democrat establishment is pro crime, pro Americans as second class citizens, pro war, pro socialism, and pro sending jobs over seas, and finally, pro abortion.

Thus, it should be pretty clear cut why there were a lot of women who likely voted for Trump.

why did women vote for Trump? is a fun question, much like why are women so attracted to Elon Musk lol

[diamond-coral]

The Heist- Part One

dark!Steve Rogers x Reader

You were just supposed to rob a government official’s apartment. Not Captain America’s. Right?

Series Warnings: Dark, Rape/Non-Con, kidnapping, strip club stuff, swearing

Chapter Warnings: Mentions of a strip club, swearing, committing crime ig, nothing much really.

You sure as hell weren’t a criminal. Well- your record would say otherwise, but it’s not like this was your dream profession. You wouldn’t call yourself a criminal. More of a Walmart Robin Hood; stealing from the rich and giving too...well...yourself. Fine. You were a criminal. But a girl had to pay the bills. At least you got to stick it to the man, right?

You let out a sigh while evaluating your life choices. It wasn’t every little girl’s dream to be breaking into houses and apartments for some cash or valuable possessions. Technically, you were an artist by day, going to art school in New York, living the aesthetically pleasing dream of student loans and a sky-high rent that your shifts at the strip club were hardly making a dent in. But hey, at least one time you got to dance for Captain America, even if he was reluctant and a bit shy. You were certain very few women could say the same.

And that’s how you found yourself in the elevator of a cozy apartment complex, traveling upward toward your new objective. Bella, your roommate, literal partner in crime, and the only good thing that came out of socializing with your coworkers at the club, had given you a new lead of a man who was supposedly loaded and yet lived in an accessible and modest living space. He was single, and worked some sort of political job that left his apartment constantly vacant, specifically on the day you planned for your heist. A perfect target. Some corrupt government worker who wanted to live a ‘low profile life’ yet was dumb enough to settle down in a complex who’s only security was a couple cameras and guards. Bella would easily be able to freeze the frames on the cameras for an hour, giving security the false pretense that the hallways were empty and giving you the perfect window to snatch some fancy watches and some cash.

The elevator doors opened right as you received a text message from Bella.

Cameras taken care of. Now go pay our rent ;)

You exited the elevator only to collide with a blonde woman carrying a laundry basket.

“Oh god, I’m so clumsy I’m so sorry!” she exclaimed while bending down to pick up the clothes that had fallen out of the basket.

You bent down to help her collect her clothing. “No, I’m so sorry! That was completely my fault!” You offered a smile as you stood back up, but was met with a calculating gaze as she studied you.

“I’m sorry, are you new around here?” She seemed to catch herself and her demeanor changed. “It’s just, I’ve never seen you around here before.” She gave  a small smile.

“Oh ,I’m just a girlfriend!” you replied. “Just stopping by.”

“Are you Steve’s girlfriend?” she asked while gesturing to the door at the end of the hallway with her head. It was your target’s door. So the political scumbag’s name was Steve. Lovely. “I don’t think he’s home right now.”

Your brain churned out a fast response. “Yeah, I know. Unfortunately for me, he’s always working. I just left my purse, and he gave me his keys to stop by and pick it up.”

“Well I’m just glad he’s found someone with all his work. I know it’s been hard for him.”

The two of you exchanged one last goodbye smile before she stepped into the elevator.

“I’m Sharon by the way. And you are...?”

“Olivia,” you replied, the fake name came out as a second nature as the elevator doors closed.

You let out the breath you’d been holding. 

“Well that could’ve gone worse,” you mutter to yourself as you approach the door at the end of the hallway.

You slipped the lock picker out of your sleeve before checking your surroundings cautiously. A minute after proceeding to insert the pick into the lock, a soft click resounded from the wooden door, and it easily swung open with a turn of the knob.

As you entered through the doorway, you took into account the little bits of vintage decoration that was dispersed amongst more modern furniture. A small Uncle Sam poster, a couple of war antiques, and some old photos with figures that remained unrecognizable in the distance. This government official seemed to have fought either in World War II or Vietnam, probably making him old. You shuddered at the fact you’d called yourself his girlfriend, but Sharon hadn’t seemed to bat an eye. Either way, you didn’t care for antiques, as much as they would have sold for a hefty price. They were probably personal to him and as you walked around, you realized there were quite a few personal items that were no use for you. As you walked into the bedroom a glint from the dresser caught your eyes, and your chest filled with giddiness and excitement as you neared. Three beautiful watches were on display under the mirror that sat atop the dresser. A Cartier that would probably sell for 8,000, a Rolex that would go for 10,000 easily, and then a beautiful older Rolex. With careful hands you snatched up the two newer watches and placed them into the small knapsack you’d been carrying. After consideration, you decided to leave the older one as it probably held a sentimental value and wouldn’t give you as much money as the other two.

You walked around some more, occasionally picking up valuables like solid gold tie clips and little pieces of Stark technology, which you were surprised he had. You had to be filthy rich to support, much less afford, anything made by that war profiteer. You picked up stashes of cash lying around, which seemed to be a lot. This man definitely seemed to use cash more than credit card which wasn’t as common around people your age. As you were rummaging around his study for any pieces of fine art (which you had already gotten two of) or government documents you could sell on the black market, you knocked over a picture frame which had landed on a file that read CLASSIFIED in red letters...right under the six letters that spelled S.H.I.E.L.D. This fucker was a S.H.I.E.L.D official. You were gonna kill Bella for the vague intel.

“Shit I need to get out of here,” you mumbled. Senators and representatives were fine targets, all usually too old and skeevy for you to care about, but a S.H.I.E.L.D. official was dangerous and could get you somewhere worse than jail. Hell, you could’ve accidentally broken into Nick Fury’s place. You were screwed. So screwed. And you needed to get the hell out of this apartment. As you went to put the picture back, you glanced at it, before doing a double take and squinting at it in the dark room. Oh. This was much worse than accidentally breaking into Nick Fury’s place.

The two men laughing with an arm around each other in war uniforms with an arm around one another was innocent enough until you could finally make out their faces. Steve Rogers an easy enough one to make out, especially considering you were on his lap a couple weeks ago, and James Buchanan Barnes looked practically unrecognizable without a murderous glare on his face.

“No,” you muttered before quickly placing the picture back down. 

You once again assessed your surroundings. It all made sense. The subtle 1940’s vibe, the war antiques. Bella had said he did work for the government and that wasn’t a lie. In the corner of the room you spotted a large circular leather case that was partially unzipped. Through the slight opening of the brown leather, the red, blue, and glinting bright silver was unmistakable.

“No, no, no, fuck,” you muttered frantically as you checked your watch. You still had 38 minutes before the security cameras in the hall unfroze. That was enough time to put everything you stole back. You’d much rather work open to close shifts at the club every day for three months straight than get fucked over by Captain Fucking America. 

You scrambled out of the study, moving to the living room first to put back the authentic paintings. You grabbed a stool from the high bar counter in the kitchen so you could rehang the medium sized work of art. Your mind was racing. This had to be karma for all the horrible shit you’d done in the past. God decided he had enough of your delinquent shenanigans and set you marching straight into the arms of America’s righteous hero. As you finished hanging the painting you spun around on your heel, completely forgetting you were on a wobbly wooden stool. Your heart stopped for a moment before you regained your footing. Carefully climbing down the stool, you almost missed the subtle turn of a lock coming from the door.

Oh you were so done for. Your limbs flew everywhere as you scrambled to the bedroom, sliding under the bed right as you heard the door open. The rumble of Steve Roger’s voice was clear as he talked on the phone and it cut through the walls from the living room.

“Well yea Buck, obviously Tony’s gonna be a little cold toward you. Not that I blame him. I’m just thankful he didn’t start an entire civil war over it. I guess it’s just a good thing we’re not war criminals.” He let out a chuckle before pausing. “Hey Buck? Yeah. I’m gonna have to call you back.” Another pause and you heard some rummaging around. “Why? I think my apartment was just broken into. I gotta go down to security. Yeah, thanks bud.” 

Steve hung up and you heard some angry muttering as he walked into his room. From under the bed you saw his tennis shoes and dark jeans as he paced at the foot of the bed. You covered your mouth to stop your anxious breathing, afraid he’d hear you from your hiding spot. 

The few minutes he spent in his room felt like eternity before he stomped out and you heard the opening and closing of another door as he exited the apartment. You crawl out from under the bed, your head spinning as you attempted to think of a way out of your predicament.

The window.

Quickly and quietly, you stood up and made your way to his bedroom window, looking out for a fire escape and letting out an annoyed huff when you saw none.

‘Maybe there’s one for the living room window,’ your brain chimed.

You rushed to the living room, scooping up the two watches and your empty knapsack on your way, and almost screamed with joy at the sight of the fire escape next to the window. Your fingers curled around the bottom of it and give it a sharp tug up, opening it just enough for you to squeeze through. 

Just as you were about to lift your leg over the ledge and climb down the stairs to sweet sweet freedom, being able to forget about everything that ever happened tonight, a large hand wrapped around the back of your neck and wrenched you back with such force that you tumbled backwards and landed on your butt.

He was massive. Six feet of pure muscle towered over you as you trembled from your position on the floor. He squatted down, resting his elbows on his knees as he took you in, blue eyes practically cutting through the darkness, and you let out a small whimper.

“Didn’t your mother ever tell you stealing is wrong?”

[mangasstuffcomics]

With mha 378 a villain can be redeemed if they want to be the villains are human yes and a crime a crime and the past doesn't go away

As seen with gentle he always wanted to be hero and I geuss gentle is the first villain deku saved

And lady nagant she realized her mistake in working for afo

Now my question do your think that lov members would want to change to redeem themselves to start a new life and stop to destroying things and killing innocent people

Its possible for that to happen the league would need to acknowledge there crimes they would have realize that there actions killed and hurt innocent people

In toga case she needa to realize that her actions affected her victims families the same way twice death affected her that should be the thing that makes her realize the error of her ways and be taught what healthy love is actually like she can't go around Killing her crushes and like ever other villain in the series needs to go jail and be held accountable for her crimes as well as getting therapy

For dabi this hard endeavor caused touya to become the way he is and he couldn't figure out a way to stop touya unhealthy obessesion when he was child he failed as parent now its chance to figure out a way to stop touya and break him out of his obessesion and dabi knows the difference between right and wrong and he knows full well that his going to prison but here's the thing dabi is about to die unless endeavor somehow gets afo to transfer rewind to touya which sounds absolutely ridiculous I want dabi to get out of this fight alive I just can't see how

Then we have shigaraki first thing is we need to do is get rid of afo he needs to be gone dead shigaraki does know the difference between right wrong and deku needs step in and save him how his going do that I don't know and if shigaraki does live his going to jail

And spinner he can't even think at this moment his far to gone I geuss the heroes and scientists are going to have to figure out a way to undo what afo did to him

Kurogiri is a nomu he has no choice in doing anything and is forced to follow his programming all that happening is shirakumo will awaken once again he will help the heores the heores will figure out a way to reverse what his done they did mention restorative research for nomu in mha 325 and then shirakumo will just follow his dream and do hero work with aizawa and mic

And this depending on whether or toga shigaraki and dabi want to change i don't really know if they really want to

[songofclarity]

when you said "[Huaisang] took taking down jgy so seriously and so professionally; he has no cheering moment or hail of victory" I was reminded of another post I saw about the moment at the beginning of NMJ's Empathy flashback where the disciples are celebrating the victory over the puppets but NMJ only looks grim. It's something the Nie bros have in common: both consider violence and killing to be necessary and justified— but it's a grim duty, to be undertaken with seriousness, not satisfaction

Yes, that comparison is exactly it, Anon! I do appreciate how CQL ensured Nie MingJue was all business during his fights. Even at the banquet when the Sunshot Campaign was over and done with, his group arrived late (‘Sorry I’m late, I didn’t want to come’) and he looked miserable. Not even an official victory party could put a smile on his face, much less encourage him to celebrate three years of hard work!

I would hesitate, however, before accusing the Nie brothers of finding violence and/or killing as necessary. Those are just tools in the tool box and they could be taken out as needed but they weren’t always needed, much less required. We see time and time again how the Nie brothers pick non-violent options when violence and murder would make their lives so much easier. And this choice between violence and non-violence is important. This is the choice that separates them both from Jin GuangYao. Because when it comes down to it, what was the point of having fought against the Wen Sect if they were all just to become violent and murderous themselves?

For convenience, I have outlined Nie MingJue’s 5 year plan here:

Fight a war against a violent sect

Win even if it might cost him his own life

Go home and live in peace

Nie MingJue stayed his hand from murder not once, not twice, but three times when confronted directly with a cold-blooded murderer. He picked suffering Meng Yao/Jin GuangYao to live over easily justifiable back-alley execution. He banged on the doors of Koi Tower demanding Xue Yang be turned over to him, but never used violence to take matters into his own hands, not even when he held Baxia at Xue Yang’s throat and could have ended the discussion right then and there.

The only people Nie MingJue ever killed were nameless cultivators on the battlefield; nameless cultivators when he was being held prisoner in the Sun Palace; and Wen Xu, a declared enemy met on the battlefield. There is no evidence or accusations that he ever killed anyone after the Sunshot Campaign, not at the Burial Mounds and not when he had his qi deviation.

Nie HuaiSang, for his part, could have just stabbed Jin GuangYao in the chest when he was crying on him and be done with it. Violence is easy. Murder is easy.

For the Nie brothers, violence was never necessary, but justice was. And there is no justice if you just become the beast you fought to defeat, so rules and morals must be taken into account.

Nie MingJue decided, on his own, to send Meng Yao back to his father to face justice after the murder of the Jin disciple. Nie HuaiSang worked to expose Jin GuangYao’s crimes and let the world decide on their own whether or not Jin GuangYao’s crimes deserved punishment.

Nie MingJue followed the rules. He played fair. He asked for permission. He talked in private. He made his demands. He was aggressive, but he never killed to get his way. How easy it would have been if he killed to get his way like Jin GuangYao did! But he didn’t. Nie MingJue was good. Nie MingJue died.

Nie HuaiSang picked up where Nie MingJue left off. The letter to Qin Su was just a letter to Qin Su revealing some of Jin GuangYao’s crimes. Jin GuangYao got away with murdering the Jin disciple all those years ago, and now he’s going to get away with direct involvement in the murder of his own child? Or baby-trapping and then marrying his own sister? No, no he is not. And he’s absolutely not getting away with Nie MingJue’s murder or dismemberment.

Nie HuaiSang still never picked violence. He never picked murder. He never told people what to do or how to do it, and he certainly never held a weapon in his hand. That’s the beauty of his revenge.

As the saying goes: the pen is mightier than the sword. He picked letting the information speak for itself and giving other people the option to use violence, but that was never their only option. Sadly, no revenge plan, no matter one taken as seriously as this one, is foolproof when other people are involved. Qin Su and the letter were discovered by Jin GuangYao, who then blackmailed her, imprisoned her, and then pushed her to suicide. This shows the depth of Jin GuangYao’s cruelty. Jin GuangYao reacting in violence is a Jin GuangYao problem.

As another saying goes: do not shoot the messenger. We already saw how the Jin Sect protected and absolved Xue Yang of his well-documented mass murder. Nie HuaiSang would have heard about how Jin GuangYao, Jiang Cheng, and Lan XiChen were all OK with the Jin protecting Xue Yang while Nie MingJue and popular rogue cultivator Xiao XingChen were very much not. In order to make Jin GuangYao face justice, the one choice Nie HuaiSang never had was to stand up and speak out and expose Jin GuangYao’s crimes. Xiao XingChen tried that with Xue Yang and it got him a fate worse than death. Nie MingJue tried to stand up to the Jin Sect and it got him betrayed and his death to look like an unfortunate event, not even a murder. So instead, Nie HuaiSang got the information out there as secretly as possible and let everyone else decide on what to do with it.

And thankfully everyone agreed with him that Jin GuangYao was trash. No violence was needed to help them see the light. Jin GuangYao made his bed and now he has to sleep in it.

Violence is only a Nie brother final resort when justice is about to be evaded. Nie MingJue is so horrified after the Sun Palace that he’s willing to kill Meng Yao and then himself over the murder of his subordinates. Meng Yao uses the “I saved your life” get-out-of-jail free card, which not only threatens to hold Nie MingJue hostage to a life debt but also means at least two cultivators where killed to save Nie MingJue’s one life. That’s terrible math! Where is the justice in this?? But in case he is in the wrong, Nie MingJue agrees to kill himself too, so justice WILL be served one way or another before Meng Yao runs away again.

Violence and murder are indeed grim tools for a serious duty and they need to be handled respectfully and with resolve! Note how Nie HuaiSang at no point lies and says, “I had no choice.” It was his choice to send the letters, it was his choice to put himself in danger at the Second Burial Mounds Siege and at Guanyin Temple, and it was his choice to save Sisi from her unlawful imprisonment and let her speak on her own behalf. This boy had choices, choices other than violence and murder, and he never victimized himself by claiming otherwise. He never pleaded innocence or passed the blame. He simply dodged the discussion entirely, but the ending shows he knows what he did and why.

Nie HuaiSang, "Wei-xiong, why do you keep on asking me? No matter how much you ask, I don't know anything." With a pause, he continued, "But..." Slowly, Nie HuaiSang brushed together his storm-drenched hair. "I think that if this person hates Jin GuangYao so much, they'd probably be entirely merciless towards something he cherishes more than his life." (Ch. 109, ERS)

Nie HuaiSang has so much conviction that his cavalier attitude after Jin GuangYao's death is so cold that if anyone touched him they would probably be burned. When Nie HuaiSang lies, he says, “I don’t know.” He knows the importance of information and he’s not about to expose himself for having any that might get him killed. Nie HuaiSang’s fight was different than Nie MingJue’s in tone and shape, but Nie HuaiSang kept the same agenda and, frankly, played by the same rules as his Nie MingJue.

Some rules Nie MingJue lives by:

Outside input is important

Don't kill people for the rewards

Have conviction in your choices

Jin GuangYao was in the process of fleeing justice at Guanyin Temple just like he fled justice at Langya. Jin GuangYao laid a trap for Nie MIngJue at Langya and there was no doubt going to be a trap at Guanyin Temple--so Nie HuaiSang sprung one on him first.

“Brother XiChen, behind you!!!” (Ch. 108, ERS)

And the choice to stab Jin GuangYao was Lan XiChen’s, not Nie HuaiSang’s, although Nie HuaiSang was determined to see justice prevail and that treacherous Third Brother brought down.

Of interest, Nie HuaiSang’s ten year agenda:

Expose Jin GuangYao’s violent crimes

Win even if it might cost him his own life

Go home and live in peace

Violence and murder were never on the agenda. They aren’t necessary. They were never necessary. The tragedy is thinking that they might be, and that’s Jin GuangYao’s tragedy, not the Nie brothers. Nie MingJue’s behavior shows a man who thought if he fought hard enough, pushed hard enough, allowed redemption arcs to a murderer, tried to work with people who didn’t want to work with him, peace might find a way.

Violence was only needed because Jin GuangYao could not be stopped in any other way. He burned the brothel down with all the women inside it to hide his past and he tried to massacre the whole cultivation world to hide his crimes. Considering the amount of death the Nie brothers have faced, from family dead from qi deviations to piles of bodies on the battlefield to allies killed to save their lives, I dare say the Nie brothers had a respectful relationship with violence and murder because they wanted to escape the cycle the most.

[hoursofreading]

Youngmi’s childhood was a difficult one. The 25-year-old nurse was born to a poor family in Daegu, South Korea, known for being one of the most conservative cities in the country. Youngmi’s mom left the home when Youngmi was young to escape her husband’s physical abuse, leaving her and her sister behind with him and their paternal grandmother. When she was 5, her 8-year-old sister started losing her hair from stress.

As she grew older, Youngmi found herself depressed, unsure of what her future held, and financially unstable. In Korea’s patriarchal society — in which women are generally expected to defer to their fathers and to adhere to rigid beauty standards — she felt like a perpetual victim, obsessed by the wrongs done to her by her father and pressured into maintaining her appearance in order to please men. Despite her meager budget as a nursing student, she purchased new clothes each season, spending a lot of money on cheap, poor-quality clothes from H&M. She wore makeup religiously. “I could not go outside without any makeup. I felt ashamed of my face,” she said. “I had this pressure of wanting to look beautiful and wanting to be desirable, physically or sexually.”

While scrolling through Twitter in 2018, Youngmi came across footage of protests taking place in the streets of Seoul. In South Korea, where cases of femicide, revenge porn, and dating violence are widespread, a surge in spy-cam sex crimes, overwhelmingly committed by men, had mostly resulted in fines and suspended jail sentences, if they were prosecuted at all. That was not the case, however, for one 25-year-old woman who had taken a nonconsensual photo of a nude male model at art school and posted it online; she was sentenced to ten months in prison and court-ordered sexual-violence counseling. The demonstrations were a reaction to the blatant hypocrisy.

Youngmi was moved by the solidarity she saw, but there was one thing she found perplexing: Many of the women at the protests shaved their heads on-camera. As she began to follow more feminist Twitter accounts, Youngmi understood this was a public act of rejection of those same aesthetic expectations imposed on Korean women that have made the country a leader in grooming products and plastic surgery. She began to realize that “you know, men do not do that — men do not feel the pressure to buy clothes every season or wear makeup.”

Soon, Youngmi shaved her head, too, and stopped wearing makeup, joining the so-called “escape the corset” movement happening among young women in South Korea. The movement, which first gained popularity in 2018, saw Korean women publicly turn away from societally imposed beauty standards by cutting their hair short and going barefaced. (Youngmi was not alone — in 2019, a survey found that 24 percent of women in their 20s reported cutting back their spending on beauty products in the previous year, with many saying they no longer felt they needed to put in the effort.) This eventually led Youngmi to “4B,” a smaller but growing movement among Korean women. 4B is shorthand for four Korean words that all start with bi-, or “no”: The first no, bihon, is the refusal of heterosexual marriage. Bichulsan is the refusal of childbirth, biyeonae is saying no to dating, and bisekseu is the rejection of heterosexual sexual relationships. It is both an ideological stance and a lifestyle, and many women I spoke to extend their boycott to nearly all the men in their lives, including distancing themselves from male friends.

Through open chat groups on KakaoTalk, Youngmi connected with other feminists in Daegu, where she lived with her mother while attending nursing school, soon meeting each other offline. (“It’s so easy to recognize each other with short hair,” she said.) She stopped seeing her friends from high school and middle school whose conversations still revolved around makeup, clothes, and boys. When we met last November at a café in Seoul, where she’s been living for the last two years, she was barefaced and dressed comfortably in loose jeans and a white fleece jacket. Her hair was long enough to be pulled back in a ponytail, as she’d grown tired of people asking about her short hair at her nursing job, but it was tucked into a white baseball cap. Feminism, she said, had helped her recognize that it was patriarchy that was the problem, not her — that “the bad things that happened in your life are not your fault,” she said.