#if you can keep it

[contemplatingoutlander]

JOURNALISTIC CHOICES: Telling the Truth vs. "Bothsidesism"

Ben Raderstorf does a great job in this article discussing the dilemma modern journalism has in covering a lying, dangerous authoritarian like Donald Trump, without "appearing partisan." Raderstorf argues against bothsidesism, and in favor of good journalists just simply telling the truth.

[T]he best way for independent, fact-based media to win back the audiences they’re losing to polarization is to not chase them.... But rather, to double-down on independence, objectivity, and honesty. To report reality as it is and to let the chips fall where they may. To draw a hard distinction between the normal political jockeying of healthy democracy and actions that threaten our system of government.   Back in 2022, in response to questions from reporters about how to discern between those two things, we wrote a report on how experts understand threats to democracy: The Authoritarian Playbook: How reporters can contextualize and cover authoritarian threats as distinct from politics-as-usual. 

"Modern autocrats don't crush journalism — they corrupt it." 

Raderstorf also talks about how 21st century autocrats like Viktor Orbán (who is a role model for Trump) apply pressure in subtle ways to eventually "corrupt" journalism.

These days, many autocrats don’t just smash printing presses, throw reporters in jail, and be done with it. Often they pursue a more nuanced, and more insidious, strategy.   With a combination of intimidation, coercion, and financial manipulation, they slowly corrode the independence and autonomy of the press until it ceases to be a meaningful check on power. The media still exists; it’s just an empty shell, a useful facade.   Put differently, modern autocrats don’t crush journalism — they corrupt it. 

[See more below the cut about the role of "anticipatory obedience" and the changes in leadership at CNN and The Washington Post.]

[edited]

"ANTICIPATORY OBEDIENCE": An Explanation for Why CNN and The Washington Post Changed Their Leadership

Raderstorf mentions how the two journalistic outlets that Trump targeted most vehemently as president are the two that eventually replaced their leadership--and as a result, weakened their journalistic integrity.

In an article this week in the Columbia Journalism Review, my colleagues Ian Bassin... and Maximillian Potter ... dive into several case studies. They connect troubling dots suggesting that Donald Trump deployed the Orbán strategy in his first term to greater effect than many realize. [...] In their piece, Ian and Max explore the two major instances in Trump’s first term when he attempted to wield the powers of the presidency against journalists for coverage he didn’t like. First, by threatening to block a proposed merger between CNN’s parent company, Time Warner, and AT&T. Second, by looking to raise shipping rates on Amazon, whose owner, Jeff Bezos, also owns the Washington Post.  In both cases, Trump mostly failed to carry out his threats. But… it’s also true that both CNN and the Post subsequently went through high-profile leadership shakeups at least partly in response to Trump. For CNN, this was Chris Licht’s short-lived tenure and disastrous efforts to make the network “more neutral.” For the Post, it was Bezos installing a new publisher: “Will Lewis, a former Rupert Murdoch executive who has spent most of his career in right-wing media.” [...] Timothy Snyder writes in On Tyranny that autocratic leaders often succeed simply because the media, business leaders, and civil society look ahead to possible repression and move preemptively towards self-preservation. What he calls “anticipatory obedience."

[dilfslayer1080p]

"he died for our wins" - 2024, LIDL Oil paint on LIDL canvas

[bruciemilf]

Need a the Waynes Lived AU where Martha’s a vampire. She snuck in a Wayne Gala for a potential late night snack, but Thomas thought she was a socialite.

“So, what do you do?”

“I drain people of their life sources.”

“Oh, you’re a CEO too?”

She can’t drink Thomas’ blood because he smokes too much, the baggy eyes indicate long nights spent on his feet during surgery, which means it’ll taste bitter, and she saw him drown 10 whiskey shots in one go.

It’s a taste thing, nothing against him.

He is, how ever, very handsome, and she decided she’ll be his house cat for the time being. Fast forward two years later and they have a vampire cherub of a baby named Bruce.

Babies usually don’t come out with fangs and tiny bat wings, so, yeah. His wife’s a vampire. Cool.

“How come I’ve never seen your wife outside during the daytime, Tom??”

“How come I’ve never seen you mind your own fucking business?”

[bbbbbbbbatman]

Bruce keeping a tighter and tighter lid on his identity around the Justice League because with each new person to reveal their identity he realizes that he has fucked far too high a percentage of his co workers as Bruce Wayne and he has to take this secret to his grave

[a-scary-lack-of-common-sense]

How Bill was defeated and captured by Ford in my Gf AU! He basically just tricked Bill into accepting a deal that trapped him within Ford's mind and under his control :]

He may have gotten a little out of hand though....

>:)

Next post :]

[werewolfetone]

And put where you're from in the tags if you're comfortable w it!!!

[chloesimaginationthings]

The Afton kids deserved better in FNAF..

[brucie-baby]

the fact that alfred was the one to put up jason's memorial is so important to me

[mo-mode]

AU where Mr. D claiming to be Percy’s dad accidentally counts as Claiming according to Greek god law or whatever and now all the other gods legitimacy believe Percy is his son, but if Mr. D corrects it, he has to explain to Zeus why he pretended he was Percy’s dad so now he’s like “YEP ol’ Perry Johansson is MY child wowie just look at the little fry, you have your mother’s eyes. Please stop standing next to water or you will blow my cover”

Meanwhile Poseidon is just standing off to the side like “how on earth did I dodge THAT bullet”

[egophiliac]

bring back zooterkins, the best 17th-century swear word

I don't normally do Just Characters Swearing, but. ...this kind of wrote itself and then wouldn't leave my head. it comes from both a piece of character-writing advice that has always stuck with me, and also my conviction that Leona is 1000% funnier as a character if his dialogue has to stay G-rated. let Kalim say fuck, but don't let Leona say bastard.

(I'm sorry)

[ionomycin]

the new normal

[s8ans]

girl what kind of deranged advice was this guy going around giving people when he wasn’t trying to kill them…. 😭😭

[bean-spring]

Hot take and not to be a killjoy or the shipping police but people treating Viktor or Jinx's aroace headcanons as if they were canon is not the revolutionary take people think it is.

Headcanons are always all right but we have to acknowledge that they are somehow damaging when they apply to stereotypes. It might not be the case for everyone but most of the time people unconsciously assume that disability/mental illness=asexuality. These headcanons erase the freedom of attraction from people who are already seen as unable to have sexual/romantic experiences/desires, when it's completely untrue and harmful.

You can headcanon Viktor and Jinx as aroace, but I have seen people changing their minds once Viktor is no longer disabled (s2 with all of his other forms) and Jinx is no longer as mentally ill (alternate universe Powder). And it speaks wonders of how people see these characters.

"I never thought about Jinx being able to feel romantic/sexual attraction until s2!" To believe she's actually only capable of that when she's not "damaged" is incredibly disturbing. Especially since Jinx has always had a bit of a flirty personality too.

"I've always seen Viktor as asexual, I don't know why!" That's fine. You can headcanon him as ace. But I believe there is a reason behind it, most of the time, if for some inexplicable reason the "vibes" of the disabled character are making you think he's ace.

I say all of this being aroaspec myself, by the way. Headcanon all you want but going to people's posts commenting how "it's weird for you that they have romantic/sexual plots when they're clearly aroace" is not a win at all. It's a headcanon, after all, and it should be treated as such, and that's fine. But it also is damaging to spread stereotypes like these.

Of course the disabled character is asexual. Of course the mentally ill character is aromantic. It's not as revolutionary as you might think, tbh.

Fandom is not activism and it's all right to have any headcanons you want BUT some of them are filled with damaging stuff and perhaps we should look into ourselves more before treating these assumptions as something canon.

[abedallahmusallam]

Emergency: Help Abedallah and his family to Evacuate From GAZA WAR

✅️Vetted by @gazavetters, my number verified on the list is ( #276 )✅️

https://gofund.me/c358a1a5

Dear Humanity,

Please read this as if I'm a member of your family. maybe your brother, son or a friend and as if my family who's under death now is yours.

My name is Abedallah, a fresh graduate who wants to be a doctor like his role model, his father.

A student who was supposed to start his university and achieve the dreams he worked for but found himself losing the city he's living in, his house and losing any hope of a better future with it.

And after a alot of studying in Tawjihi ( The final level at high school before joining university), the war had another plan.

The story started since childhood, when every one I have knowen called me doctor.

This continued till I reach to the final grade at my school grade 12 (Tawjihi).

In this time, I felt that everything should be real, I can do it, I started to study

and work hard from begining to end, no sleep, no rest, all these things to achieve my goal and make my dream a real one.

The hard year has finished, then two week of fear waiting.

After this, the result came, it’s 99.4, I ranked the third in my country.

Since the war on Gaza strip started, we struggled alot, when we were at home at the beginning of the war the Israeli occupation bombed many houses around us, then we were displaced to Rafah because of fear and at the first day suddenly we heard the sound of many blasts,cracking glass and screaming women and children, they blew up a residential square near us.

After two months, I returned to khanyonis, but not to our home.

I live in tent becuse the israeli occupation burned my house completely, nothing left.

I feel that I lost and continue to lose every thing, this war made my dreams, hopes, my beloved things and my beautiful house burned and disappeared.

The single wish for me at this time is waking up from this nightmare and everything goes back to what it was.

Help your brother to get out of this disaster, rebuild his house and complete his education and realise his dream of becoming a doctor.

[ambrosiagourmet]

I want to talk about why I think this is the one of the most important Falin panels:

So, Falin is really nice, right? It's one of the first things we really learn about her. She's kind even to the monsters of the dungeon - choosing to ward the party rather than fight spirits and cause them needless harm.

In the above early flashback in chapter 11, we see Marcille fawning over Falin's kindness, calling her an angel. Namari calls her soft-hearted. We see Falin choose not to fight even when a zombie attacks - instead she resolves the confrontation with a hug. After the flashback, the first thing Senshi says is that Falin "sounds like quite the person," which Marcille strongly affirms.

At this point in the story, all we have seen of Falin are these impressions; she is a healer, an angel, a caretaker with an infinite well of kindness towards everyone she meets - both friend and foe.

And honestly, that remains most of what we have to go by to understand her. The only times we get to see Falin on the page, alive and just herself, are in the opening and closing pages of the story and in the brief period of time after she is resurrected.

Nonetheless, we do have some more details to work with. For one, there is the scene that The Panel is from - a short memory in chapter 75, when Marcille flashes back to while she's dying. In that scene, Falin prepares to teleport them all out, and says that she's sorry "if there is a person at [their] destination." And that's when we get The Panel.

If you teleport someone or something into another person, the person teleported into is likely to be, at minimum, severely injured. They could die.

We can see a lovely little horrifying example of exactly why in one of the Daydream Hour doodles:

So, hmm. That's not... that's not SUPER nice. Certainly not displaying the same "kindness to all, friend and foe included" we saw represented earlier. On a basic level, this adds some nuance to Falin's kindness. We see it break a little, when pushed to the limit. We see her chose to protect the people she loves above all else.

Which makes sense! As Laios says when the Winged Lion accuses him of similarly being motivated more by his friends' safety than everyone else in the dungeon, "...most people, aside from virtuous do-gooders, would feel the same way."

So, we can take The Panel as simply showing a moment of weakness for Falin. A time when she was pushed to her limits, and that "most people" selfish side of her shone through.

However... I think there's a little more going on with Falin than just her being an angel 99% of the time, except just that once. I love The Panel because I think it helps us understand that Falin isn't just motivated by kindness - she also has a desire to avoid seeing people in pain.

Isn't that the same thing?

No, no it very much is not.

Let's look at a short comic from the Falin section of the Adventurer's Bible, because I think it illustrates this point perfectly. The group is complaining about how much Marcille's healing hurts, and comparing it to Falin's, which "doesn't hurt a bit." Marcille retorts with the following:

Now, the punchline of this comic is that, despite Marcille's sentimental assertion that she's "thinking of [them]" by letting her healing magic hurt, they all still prefer to be healed by Falin.

But hey, this wouldn't be the first time that Dungeon Meshi hides a very real character beat or insight in a gag, so let's think about this somewhat seriously.

If Marcille is right (and she knows a fair bit about magic, so we can assume that she has at least somewhat of a point), then what Falin is doing isn't kind. I suppose if someone specifically requested to not feel the pain, it could be kind, but that's not really what happened here. She is the one who felt badly about the others being in pain, and she is the one who decided, without telling them or giving them a choice in the matter, to take away that pain.

Both Marcille and Falin are healing the party, but Marcille is doing it in a way that accomplishes the task in the most straight forward way, without any additional interference. Falin is going out of her way to perform the healing in a way she is more comfortable with. A way that avoids pain.

Going back the The Panel, I don't think its a coincidence that the only time we see Falin (well, non-chimera Falin) willing to do something that could hurt someone is when any potential pain will be far away from her. If she got someone hurt or killed by teleporting the party to the surface? Not only would it be far out of her sight, but she'd be dead before she had to deal with any consequences of that action.

Falin is not a confrontational person. She doesn't push when Marcille won't tell her the truth about the resurrection, and she comforts Laios about her own death - both of those things happening in the only full chapter she is alive and conscious in the whole story.

We also know that she considered accepting Shuro's proposal, despite not having any special feelings towards him, and that Falin never explained to Marcille that she wanted them to share a meal together. When she brought Marcille various foods at the academy, she just accepted Marcille's confused rejection and gave up.

And lastly, we know that she is still in contact with her parents, despite the neglect and abuse she suffered at their hands. Although the way someone chooses to handle contact with abusive or bad family is a complicated topic, which I don't want to overly simplify, I do I think this fact gets at the heart of how she handles conflict.

So many people that Falin loves have hurt her. There are understandable hurts, like Laios leaving the village, or Marcille not understanding the food. And there are bigger, far less justifiable hurts - like her parents neglecting her throughout her childhood, and sending her away to be alone at the magic academy.

It doesn't seem like Falin has ever confronted any of it directly.

And the unhealthy aspects of this kind of avoidance of pain and confrontation is one of the things that the story of Dungeon Meshi is all about. We see Laios grapple with it before he goes to kill Falin, and we see Marcille acknowledge it at the end of the story, when she tells Laios that she has come to terms with Falin's death:

Eating is a part of life. Consuming other living things is a part of life. It isn't really possible to avoid that pain - you can only hide from the truth of it. You have to be selfish everyday. You have to eat - to choose to live. To choose to take up space.

And this is something Falin embraces, too. She comes back to life, after all.

We see her choose to come back to life.

And how does she make that choice? She eats. She consumes, and then she is asked a question by the manifestation of hunger itself:

Do you want to eat more?

There is a double meaning in the Winged Lion's final words on the next page.

When I first read this, I took it as him saying: life is cruel. You will suffer. You will feel more pain.

But perhaps, especially for Falin, this also means: you are choosing a path where you must cause pain. Where you must consume. Where you must take, and must be selfish. Because eating is the special privilege of the living, and it is their burden, too. In order to stay alive, she will need to keep eating.

And she chooses that. Chooses to be selfish. It's why her resurrection scene is so important, and it's why The Panel is so important. Because Falin coming back isn't the ultimate reward for all of the party's hard work.

It's her choice. Just like it was her choice that started everything in the first place. But this time, she doesn't choose to accept causing pain for the sake of Marcille and Laios. She does it for her own sake.