#it was ted cruz specifically

[thoodleoo]

had a dream the other day that america decided to bring back the poena cullei (death penalty where you sew someone up in a sack with a bunch of animals and then throw the sack into a river) but only for us senators and so every senate meeting just devolved into people shouting "THE SACK! THE SACK!" whenever ted cruz talked

[contagious-watermelon]

Why do I keep seeing transmascs and trans men insisting or implying that all trans men are "female socialized," or "understand the female experience," or "navigated the world as a woman." Because yeah, sure, that can be true for some people. especially if you weren't gnc at all as a kid and didn't crack your egg until well into adulthood, it makes sense.

But they don't stop at saying they had that experience. It always comes with an addendum that trans men, as a group, all can relate to this experience. I don't know about the entirety of my demographic, but I never got even a little bit of what some of them talk about. I didn't even believe that women were scared of going out at night until I kept consistently seeing them say it, online or wherever, for years. I never realized catcalling was a thing until I saw some women complaining about it on reddit.

But they posit it as some sort of, you're safer than cis men, right? You know what it's like? Which, on top of being patently, demonstrably false in the case of myself and many other trans men, holds some unpleasant and often outright hostile implications about trans women. And they always deny it, but if you can't even conceptualize someone like me who grew up gnc, and never got the bulk (or any?) of whatever we consider to be 'female socialization,' what does that say about what you think trans girls went through, growing up? I don't want to speak for them, as I've never experienced that firsthand, but I can guarantee that (if you're even a little bit obviously trans) people don't treat you like a cis kid of the opposite gender. By and large, they don't get treated like cis boys.

It just makes me mad that we're taking this inaccurate framework that (ever so conveniently) puts trans people into the box of our assumed birth gender, and trying to fancy it up and use it with a faux-progressive veneer; never mind the way that transphobes use it to bar trans women from being athletes, or using the bathroom, or having access to any gendered resources they need. It would be bad enough to try and dust it off and use it even if it were largely accurate, due to the aforementioned connections to outright transphobia, but it literally is patently false. Not in all cases, obviously, but why are we trying to revamp this untrue, inaccurate generalization and pretend that we can make it 'trans-inclusive?'

[boosstergold]

Didn't get a reply back on this but I'm going to post a few (DC) recs anyway? These are mostly places I think are good to start. (Disclaimer that these are influenced by personal taste).

Easy mode: Short contained run, probably less than 30 issues (can be more), very unlikely to have any crossovers, does not require much (if any) further knowledge of characters.

Medium mode: Approx 40-75 issues, will have some crossovers but you won't need to read them if you don't want to, may require a little wiki-ing about some characters/events but only if you're curious.

Hard(er) mode: We're reaching 100+ issue territory, many crossovers (some which can be ignored, some which may be confusing if ignored but you can wiki those if you don't want to read them). Believe me it is fairly easy to ignore a missing crossover/event issue and barrel on back to the main story in most cases.

Green Lanterns

Easy: Far Sector, Green Lantern: Legacy - both self-contained, introduce new characters.

Medium: Green Lantern Corps vol 2(2006-2011) - a few crossovers events here, (don't feel you have to read every blackest night crossover lmao just read what you want even if that is just this comic alone), Green Lanterns (2016-2018) (Jessica Cruz and Simon Baz).

Hard(er): Green Lantern vol 3 (1990-2006) (Kyle Rayner's run) #48 onwards, long run, not all of it is amazing quality but it is more good than not. Significant number of crossovers because this spans 12 years.

Superman

Easy: The Man of Steel (1986) six issue mini reintroducing Superman post-crisis, Superman Red & Blue (2021), Superman Smashes the klan (2019-2020), Batman/Superman: World's Finest (2022-ongoing)

Hard(er): Superman (1987-2006) + The Adventures of Superman (1987-2006) + Action Comics (1938-2011 starting at #597) These 3 titles run concurrently and the story sometimes moves from one to the next meaning you will miss something if you're not reading all three. (I am currently reading these and am only in the first quarter so cannot say anything about quality of later issues).

More under read more

Blue Beetle

Easy: Blue Beetle vol 2 (1986-1988)(Ted Kord), Blue Beetle vol 3 (2006-2011)(Jaime Reyes)

Hard(er): Justice League International/America (it renames at issue #26) (1987-1998) Team book (obviously) and a long run where quality is not always consistent but is fun overall and essential for Ted's character.

Booster Gold

Easy: Booster Gold vol 1 (1986)

Hard-(er): Justice League International/America (see above)

Misc.

Easy: Young Justice (1998-2003) (if you like Tim, Kon, Bart, Cassie etc an essential read)

Medium: Wonder Woman vol 5 (2016-2023) #1-#54 a good re-introduction of Diana post n52 (side note that I've heard Wonder Woman vol 2 (1987-2006) is good but I have not read it yet).

[anotherpapercut]

remember when the dems in the us legislature were like "if they overturn roe we'll riot" then they overturned both roe and Casey and Biden tweeted about it and that was basically it

[a-kinda-nerdy-girl]

Why does fled cruz open his mouth

[tim-official]

i am pro-voting and will be voting from abroad this year specifically and only because i want to see ted cruz miserable. i am voting entirely out of schadenfreude. he has been a senator for nearly all my adult life and i just want him to have a really, really bad time. if you live in texas please consider how nice it would be to see photos of him tired and dejected

[kiefbowl]

conservatives have always had a problem with stupidity but something shifted in...gwb era I think. the brazenness of stupidity is a bit much to handle anymore. like why did ted cruz fleeing his state during an emergency not ruin his career utterly. that would not have flown in the 50s conservative voters wanted to be treated like they were not fools then. now they are full on cult members who don't give a shit and will be like out loud white immigrants don't count and I'll cry if you call me racist about it even though I just said it specifically and out loud.

[prolifeproliberty]

Ted Cruz has really disappointed me here.

IVF is not pro-life.

Please call your senators and ask them to reject this bill. If your senator ran as a pro-life candidate or claims to be pro-life, PLEASE emphasize in your call that IVF is not compatible with pro-life values.

Even if you don’t care about IVF specifically, this bill represents huge federal overreach. It’s like the Roe v Wade of IVF. And worse, because it’s legislation and not a court case.

[vomitdodger]

This is interesting if you like debate, take an active interest in true constitutionality issues and mental gymnastics. About a six min vid. Discusses whether Harris is eligible for presidency based on the constitutional requirements. Not that I think it will make a difference. Discussion centers around what is a “natural born citizen” and “subject to the jurisdiction within”. Point being Harris was born on US soil while her non-US citizen parents had expired stays.

I’ve tried to find a definite answer for about two days and no such luck.

Points of considerations:

The Supreme Court has never officially ruled on this. There is much academic inference but it’s never ruled on a case/scenario like this.

The founding fathers original intent of “natural born citizens” was what most people would think…born to US citizens…not an anchor baby (Harris). Note they included the specific word “natural”.

Citizenship was later clarified to children of citizens born overseas…basically. Example: Ted Cruz born in Canada and McCain born in Panama Canal zone. Both considered “natural born citizens” so eligible to run.

Anchor baby’s are often referred to as “birthright citizens”. This is comrade Haley. Difference is her parents were in the US legally although not yet naturalized. Harris’ parents were neither…they stayed past their defined term. This is really key.

Most academics and some court rulings have made or attempted to make the terms “natural born” and “birthright” interchangeable. Others have said..not so fast…go back to original intent…they are not the same for constitutional legalities.

Truly a constitutional scholar/legal issue that would only be officially settled by the SCOTUS. Again not that it will likely make a difference anytime soon, if at all.

If you try to find info disregard anything in the last year or so…it’s clearly a setup for future Harris runs. Disregard fact checkers and the usual media. Disregard any source that simple lists the 3 presidential requirements as worthless, low IQ input.

I also suspect there’s heavy media censorship of arguments against Harris’ scenario. Most articles simply list those 3 basic requirements without any constitutional scholar authority….so again low IQ, meaningless input to influence the masses with repetition. Which is exactly what the media does.

[serpenttailedangel]

I'm back in "reading scholarly articles by people advocating for major policy and education program change" mode and, subsequently, back in "disgusted by the amount of mask-off shit people just straight up say that you get called a conspiracy theorist for repeating to people who don't read this garbage even though these fuckers publish their insanity" mode. Presumably, these people expect that no one outside of their circles reads their stuff, so they can put it in ink. Although I guess it also helps that they use a lot of deceptive language and contradictions to try and snag people who aren't thinking too hard about what they read.

United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization has a book available for free digital download in which they argue for some pretty insane shit (claiming to support academic freedom while also mentioning they want certain research subjects suppressed, wanting more politicized disciplines to have equal input to things like chemistry and biology in medical research, and new ranking for schools based on how well they comply with this guideline rather than the quality of their research or how good they are at teaching.) I tried telling someone about it IRL and they told me that whoever I heard about it from must have been lying. When I told them I was specifically citing UNESCO's official publication on their website, this person concluded that the only logical explanation was that the UN was hacked and someone wrote and posted a 100 page hoax paper for nebulous false flag reasons, and the UN has been unable to take the fake paper down and unwilling to release a statement saying it's fake for a year now.

But. like, in defense of the people who haven't read this stuff and also don't believe it when you talk about it, I've checked four different times to make sure that the author of Drag Pedagogy is an actual person affiliated with Drag Queen Story Hour events and not some intern Ted Cruz paid to write a false flag article. Sometimes shit gets so mask-off that I struggle to believe my own eyes.

[fierceawakening]

I want us to seriously consider the possibility that the shooter was a leftist.

Not because I know. Sometimes assassins are people who are just very out of touch with reality, who don’t actually have clearly discernible politics. Think of the guy who shot Gabby Giffords, who from all accounts was actively psychotic with delusions centering on Giffords ignoring or betraying him.

(Nota bene I do not think and am not saying most people experiencing psychosis are violent. I’m using the specific example of a guy who was to explain how someone can fixate on a politician for a reason that’s not clearly political.)

But I think we’ve got to consider it.

“We’re out of nonviolent solutions.” “What the system does to us is violence, and it should be answered with force.” “You don’t debate fascists, you punch them.” “The only good Nazi is a dead Nazi.”

We have to consider that maybe this person believed those things. Things a lot of us have been telling ourselves for a very long time.

Because look where what might have been that got us.

The violence didn’t succeed, so even if someone sincerely believed it was the only way, uh. Oops? The would be hero died. Their target, the one they saw as the villain, is fine. And will keep doing the villainy they were willing to die to try to stop.

And if it had succeeded?

What would we be seeing now?

I think a lot of us have had the idea that if an assassin did succeed, it would wake people up. Republicans who had been licking Trump’s boots would snap out of it, like whichever minions of Sauron didn’t die themselves in the Ring boom.

We’d suddenly see Ted Cruz defending his wife’s honor. Lindsey Graham finding his spine. People snapping out of a spell, and waking with a smile.

What we’re seeing today? Dictatorships love martyrs. They’re going to make him one even though he survived.

Those of us who said are we sure we should punch the Nazis? Maybe we should just ridicule them so much they can’t look strong?

We weren’t cowards. We were trying to tell you this.

It’s not going to be like waking up from a dream. It never is.

If you consider violence, and let me make very goddamn clear I do not think you should for reasons I just bothered to explain…

…you have to be VERY sure what you want to see will follow.

Which means you don’t just get to hope this doesn’t happen. You have to be sure you can rule it out.

Otherwise everything’s the same but now there’s some blood on your hands.

[zaprowsdower27]

So, the Des Moines Register, a big newspaper in Iowa, pays polling company every election to poll specifically Iowans. This polling company polls just Iowa, not just for the newspaper but in general. They're supposedly the gold standard in polling. In the last twelve years, the most their poll has been off was five percentage points in the 2018 governor's race - and other than that it's all under 3 percentage points.

Their latest poll has come out.

It has Harris beating Trump in Iowa by three percentage points. For context, Trump beat Biden by about eight percentage points in Iowa in 2020 (Selzer predicted a seven point margin).

If you plug that into the fivethirtyeight election map, the one that lets you pick which way you think a state is going to go and then incorporates that assumption into how it models the other states, it says that if Iowa goes blue, other things that are likely

Arizona, North Carolina, and Georgia go from 'lean R' to 'likely D'

Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Nevada go from 'toss up' to 'solid D'

Florida, Texas, and Ohio go from 'Likely R' to 'Lean D'

Alaska goes from 'Likely R' to 'toss-up'

Overall, the map goes from saying 226 likely/solid D electors, 50 toss ups, and 43 electors leaning R to saying 407 likely/solid/leaning D electors and 3 toss-ups

The last time a president won with over 400 electoral votes was thirty-six years ago in 1988

If there was a D presidential victory margin that wide it would likely put the Senate back in play, particularly vis-a-vis Ted Cruz and Rick Scott in Texas and Florida

I'm going to assume that this poll is somehow an inaccurate outlier despite the widely respected gold standard pollster because I don't think my brain is capable of processing that level of hope at this point

[mariacallous]

China's government can use TikTok to spy on American users and push propaganda at alarming levels, senators who received a classified briefing on the social media app told Axios.

Why it matters: The senators were hesitant to give details about Wednesday's briefing, but said Americans would be frightened by TikTok's ability to access and track their personal data.

One senator said national security officials described how China can harvest user data and weaponize it through propaganda and misinformation.

Another lawmaker said they were told TikTok is able to spy on the microphone on users' devices, track keystrokes and determine what the users are doing on other apps.

The big picture: Senate leaders are weighing what to do with a bill that would force China-based ByteDance to sell TikTok or face a ban in the U.S. The House passed the bill overwhelmingly last week after its members received a similar security briefing.

It's unclear whether the briefing from the FBI, Justice Department and the Director of National Intelligence office was a needle-mover for senators who may be skeptical of the bill.

What they're saying: Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) told Axios the briefing's "level of detail and specificity was extremely impactful."

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said the briefing was helpful in "bringing some members up to date with the threats that China poses through TikTok."

"Their ability to track, their ability to spy is shocking," Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) said.

Reality check: Such warnings from federal officials so far haven't been enough for senators to fast-track the bill.

Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), chair of the Intelligence Committee, said Thursday that it would take longer than the eight days it took for the bill to clear the House because that's "just the way the Senate works."

The legislation has been referred to the Senate Commerce Committee.

Sen. John Hickenlooper (D-Colo.), a member of the committee, said the TikTok legislation is "something we should move faster on, not slower."

[mostlysignssomeportents]

To save the news, ban surveillance ads

Tonight (May 31) at 6:30PM, I’m at the MANCHESTER Waterstones with my novel Red Team Blues, hosted by Ian Forrester.

Tomorrow (Jun 1), I’m giving the Peter Kirstein Lecture for UCL Computer Science in LONDON.

Then it’s Edinburgh, London, and Berlin!

Big Tech steals from the news, but what it steals isn’t content — it steals money. That matters, because if we create pseudo-copyrights over the facts of the news, or headlines, or snippets to help news companies bargain with tech companies, we make the news partners with the tech companies, rather than watchdogs.

How does tech steal money from the news? Lots of ways! One important one: tech steals ad revenue. 51% of every ad dollar gets gobbled up by tech companies — primarily the cozy, collusive ad-tech duopoly of Google/Facebook (AKA Googbook). If we can shatter the market power of the concentrated ad-tech industry, news companies would go back to getting 80–90% of the ad revenue their reporting generated, which would pay for more reporting.

There’s lots to like about fixing ads. For one thing, a fair ad marketplace would benefit all news reporting, not just the largest news companies — which are dominated by private equity-backed chains and right-wing billionaires who have repeatedly shown that any additional revenues will go to pay shareholders, not more reporters. Fair ads would also provide an income for reporters who strike out on their own, covering local politics or specific beats, without making themselves sharecroppers for Big Media.

One way to fix ads would be to break up the ad-tech “stacks.” Googbook both operate impossibly conflicted ad-placement businesses in which they bargain with themselves on behalf of both advertisers and publishers, with the winners always being the tech companies. The AMERICA Act from Senator Mike Lee would force ad giants to divest themselves of business units that create conflicts of interest. It’s popular, bipartisan legislation — and I do mean bipartisan; its backers include Elizabeth Warren and Ted Cruz! I wrote about the AMERICA Act and the role it will play in saving news from tech for EFF’s Deeplinks Blog last week:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/05/save-news-we-must-shatter-ad-tech

This week, I’ve got a followup on Deeplinks about another important way to unrig the ad market: banning surveillance ads:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/05/save-news-we-must-ban-surveillance-advertising

Even if we break up the ad-tech stacks, ads will still be bad for the news — and for the public. That’s because the dominant form of digital ads is “behavioral advertising” — the ad-tech sector’s polite euphemism for ads based on spying. You know these ads: you search for shoes and then every website you land on is plastered in shoe ads.

Surveillance ads require a massive, multi-billion-dollar surveillance dragnet, one that tracks you as you physically move through the world, and digitally, as you move through the web. Your apps, your phone and your browser are constantly gathering data on your activities to feed the ad-tech industry.

This data is incredibly dangerous. There’s so much of it, and it’s so loosely regulated, that every spy, cop, griefer, stalker, harasser, and identity thief can get it for pennies and use it however they see fit. The ad-tech industry poses a risk to protesters, to people seeking reproductive care, to union organizers, and to vulnerable people targeted by scammers.

Ad-tech maintains the laughable pretense that all this spying is consensual, because you clicked “I agree” on some garbage-novella of impenatrable legalese that no one — not even the ad-tech companies’ lawyers — has ever read from start to finish. But when people are given a real choice to opt out of digital spying, they do. Apple gave Ios users a one-click opt-out of in-app tracking and 96% of users clicked it (the other 4% must have been confused — or on Facebook’s payroll). The decision cost Facebook $10b in the first year. You love to see it:

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/02/facebook-says-apple-ios-privacy-change-will-cost-10-billion-this-year.html

But here’s the real punchline: Apple blocked Facebook from spying on its customers, but Apple kept spying on them, just as invasively as Facebook had, in order to target them with Apple’s own ads:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/14/luxury-surveillance/#liar-liar

The thing that stops companies from spying on us isn’t the strength of their character, it’s the discipline imposed by regulation and competition — the fear that they’ll get fined more than they make from spying, and the fear that they’ll lose so much business from spying that they’ll end up in the red.

Which is why we need a legal ban on ads, not mere platitudes on billboards advertising companies’ “respect” for our privacy. The US is way overdue for a federal privacy law with a private right of action, which would let you and me sue the companies who violated it, even if no public prosecutor was willing to go to bat for us:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/01/you-should-have-right-sue-companies-violate-your-privacy

A privacy law that required companies to get your affirmative, enthusiastic, ongoing, specific, informed consent to gather and process your personal data would end surveillance ads forever. Despite the self-serving nonsense the ad-tech industry serves up about people “liking relevant ads,” no one wants to be spied on. 96% of Ios users don’t lie.

A ban on surveillance ads wouldn’t just serve the public, it would also save the news. The alternative to surveillance ads is context ads: ads based on what a reader is reading, rather than what that reader was doing. Context-based ad marketplaces ask, “What am I bid for this Pixel 6 user in Boise who is reading about banana farming?” instead of “What am I bid for this 22 year old man who recently searched for information about suicidal ideation and bankruptcy protection?”

Context ads perform a little worse than surveillance ads — by about 5%:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/04/29/taken-in-context/#creep-me-not

So presumably advertisers won’t pay as much for context ads as they do for behavioral targeting. But that doesn’t mean that the news will lose money. Because context ads favor publishers over ad-tech platforms — no publisher will ever know as much about internet users as spying ad-tech giants do, but no tech company will ever know as much about a publisher’s content as the publisher does.

Behavioral ad marketplaces have high barriers to entry, requiring troves of surveillance data on billions of internet users. They are naturally anticompetitive and able to command a much higher share of each ad dollar than a contextual ad service (which would have much more competiition) could.

On top of that: if behavioral advertising was limited to people who truly consented to it, 96% of users would never see an ad!

So contextual ads will show up for more users, and more of the money they generate will land in news publishers’ pockets. If context ads fetch less money per ad, the losses will be felt by ad-tech companies, not publishers.

Finally: publishers who join the fight against surveillance ads won’t be alone — they’ll be joining with a massive, popular movement against commercial surveillance. The news business is — and always has been — a niche subject, of burning interest to publishers, reporters, and a small minority of news junkies. The news on its own is a small fry in policy debates. But when it comes to killing surveillance ads, the news has a class alliance with the mass movement for privacy, and together, they’re a force to reckon with.

My article on killing surveillance ads is part three of an ongoing, five-part series for EFF on how we save the news from tech. The introduction, which sets out the whole series, is here:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/04/saving-news-big-tech

The final two parts will come out over the next two weeks, and then we’re going to publish the whole thing as a PDF that suitable for sharing. Watch this space!

Catch me on tour with Red Team Blues in Manchester, Edinburgh, London, and Berlin!

[Image ID: EFF's banner for the save news series; the word 'NEWS' appears in pixelated, gothic script in the style of a newspaper masthead. Beneath it in four entwined circles are logos for breaking up ad-tech, ending surveillance ads, opening app stores, and end-to-end delivery. All the icons except for 'ending surveillance ads' are greyed out.]

If you’d like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here’s a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/31/context-ads/#class-formation

Image: EFF https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/05/save-news-we-must-ban-surveillance-advertising

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

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Jonathan Nicholson at HuffPost:

Donald Trump’s “guilty” verdict on 34 counts of falsifying business records in his hush money trial could make it harder for the Senate to get much work done in the next few months — at least, if a group of pro-Trump senators has their way. Eight Republican senators said Friday they would try to slow down the Senate’s business in response to the verdict. Unlike the House, the Senate runs its day-to-day business under small, temporary agreements between the majority Democrats and minority Republicans. It’s a system that can be undermined sometimes by even one obstinate senator.

“The White House has made a mockery of the rule of law and fundamentally altered our politics in un-American ways. As a Senate Republican conference we are unwilling to aid and abet this White House in its project to tear this country apart,” said the eight senators in a letter. Signatories included Sens. Mike Lee (R-Utah), J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.), Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.), Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), Rick Scott (R-Fla.), Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.). Specifically, the group promised three things: to not allow any increase in “non-security” funding or spending bills that fund “partisan lawfare”; to not vote for any of the White House’s political or judicial nominees; and to not allow faster consideration of Democratic legislative priorities “not directly relevant to the safety of the American people.”

“Those who turned our judicial system into a political cudgel must be held accountable,” Lee said in a social media post about the letter. “We are no longer cooperating with any Democrat legislative priorities or nominations, and we invite all concerned Senators to join our stand.”

8 felon-coddling Republican Senators signed a letter that they’ll muck up even more business in the Senate in protest of the guilty verdict handed down by a jury in the Trump business records falsification trial.

The 8 signatories are: Mike Lee, J.D. Vance, Tommy Tuberville, Eric Schmitt, Marsha Blackburn, Rick Scott, Roger Marshall, and Marco Rubio.

Surprisingly, Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, and Tom Cotton didn’t sign on to it.

[ruhua-langblr]

Holiday Gifts for Language Learners~

Here are some ideas for language learning enthusiasts this holiday season!

(Some specific examples will be focused on Chinese/Korean as the target language. None of the links are affiliate links. amazon is linked to out of convenience, but there are usually other places that these things can be purchased at!)

Books!

There's a lot of textbooks out there that approach language learning from different perspectives. Textbooks can often be expensive, so checking out used book stores is a great idea! I really enjoy Modern Mandarin Chinese Grammar and this used copy in very good condition is so much cheaper than the original price! Also, TTMIK's latest books are currently on sale!

While on the subject of books, there are so many options for reading in foreign language! For lower level learners, graded readers are a great choice as you can find books at your current level that can grow with you! For example Tales and Traditions has four volumes of short stories and myths in Chinese, with each volume increasing in difficulty. Abridged Classics like this series from Sinolingua Press or this Journey to the West series.

For advanced learners, buying novels in your target language is also a great choice! Soo and Carrots has collected Korean novels recommended by members of BTS.

2. iTalki!

I've been using iTalki for the past couple months and I've really enjoyed it! It's great to learn from a native speaker now that I'm out of a classroom environment, but still actively pursuing a higher degree of Chinese as well as starting Korean. They have a lot of deals on packages and prices vary between teachers, so it's easy to find something in your budget! I do have a code for $5 (AC6AGf0) for new users.

3. Notetaking!

For traditional notetaking, I think these translucent sticky notes are great for taking notes that aren't a hassle to erase, while still showing the text that you're commenting on! I also love to put relevant stickers on my notebooks. Lots of fun options like 我不知道，加油 salamander, 자고 싶어, many Korean words of encouragement,and the Ted Cruz meme 这个人吃了我的儿子。

Digital notetakers might enjoy this goodnotes journal! It's highly customizable to whatever language you might be learning. I have two versions of it in my goodnotes, and each uses different pages for Korean and Chinese. Goodnotes itself is also a great gift if you want to upgrade from free or a yearly subscription to total ownership!

4. Language Learning Apps/Sites!

I try to work within the free world as much as possible, but there are some things worth paying for! Reading apps for Chinese like Du Chinese, or my favorite, Readibu are super helpful! Readibu is free, but the paid option has a lot of great features!

Also for those missing TTMIK after they added a paywall to a lot of content, a membership to their courses would be great!

5. Movies and TV!

Besides the benefit of immersion, learning a language is also about learning another culture. Right now the Criterion Collection is 50% off at B&N until December 4th!

For TV, getting a subscription to a site like Viki or iQiYi is a great gift as they have new shows from many asian countries!