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Marty McFly VS The Doc-pocalypse or smth like that idk
I put way too much effort into what was supposed to be a stupid doodle so uh. Have this Tumblr. I really don’t have a better explanation for this other than I got two more Doc Pop! Figures today, which leaves me with a growing army of 3 Docs and one singular Marty, and I keep laughing every time I look at them in my display case so here we have Marty dealing with multiple Docs from different times that have all somehow ended up in the garage in 1986. Four dimensional thinking has never been his strong suit, and trying to figure this out is not helping. He’s got two hours of sleep, a bajillion positive encouraging post-it notes from the Doc of the present telling him to sleep, hot chocolate, and four very enthusiastic Emmetts crowding the lab. Send help. And caffeine. And maybe Clara cause he’s not so sure he can keep them from blowing something up for much longer.
Picture of the inspiration under the cut :)
Behold, my growing Doc army and my one single Marty McFly left to deal with them

At least Marty has his tunes. That might help him stay a little sane
#just cause I have to say this- DO NOT TAG AS SHIP HOLY FUCK#STAY BACK 🤺🤺🤺#okay now that that’s out of the way#Marty needs sleep#and a hug (which he’s already gotten multiple of because no matter the decade Doc is his best friend)#from left to right we’ve got:#confused 2015 Doc#paranoid 1955 Doc#one (1) very tired Marty who is actively ignoring the million sticky notes telling him to sleep#far too laid back (also due to lack of sleep) present Doc#and very excited to talk about science with someone who gets it 1931 Doc from the games#WHO IS A GINGER THATS CANON LOOK IT UP#i have no idea how this would happen or what would cause it but it seemed too funny not to doodle#then the doodle became a flat color#and here we are#high key could probably play with this idea if ppl showed interest#Oops All Docs AU#Docpocalypse AU#now for the obligatory tags#back to the future#back to the future the musical#back to the future the game#bttf#bttf musical#back to the future fanart#bttf fanart#until we meet again!
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ROB YOUNG - Uncharted [full colour]
more art || character page || commissions
Tag list (ask to be added or removed): @carrionsflower @statichvm @risingsh0t @simonxriley @tommyarashikage @sevikagf @confidentandgood @unholymilf @florbelles @thedeadthree @shellibisshe @roofgeese @aezyrraeshh @faerune @tekehu @jackiesarch @minaharkers @sergeiravenov @carlosoliveiraa @rosenfey @nokstella @queennymeria @heroofpenamstan @tethrras @viktorgf @d-esmond @solasan @bigbywlf @delzinrowe @fenharel @imogenkol
#oc: rob young#my art*#artists on tumblr#uc oc#uncharted oc#uncharted#original character#character design#digital art#my ocs#we’ve got another finished kiddo!#I’ll be posting the next poll in a min#so apologies about the double tags#but look at this old man#god I love him#such a grump#but so loving to those he cares about#v much a sugar daddy#except not in a relationship way#he just sends Jess/sam money to treat the kids#like ‘here’s £2000 treat the kids’#and Jess is like😳#I legit think he’d want to have bought their house for them to help them out#but also to rule it over them a little lmao#he’d say ‘it’s your house you can do what you want. but Sam if you fuck me off I’m kicking you out’ lmao#anywayyyy 3 more to gooooo
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Have you watched dead boy detectives yet? I think you’d like it. Canon gay ships!
I’m gonna be real with you, man. Absolutely fucking nothing I heard about that show made it sound even remotely interesting to me before, and now, the idea of even interacting with stuff tangentially attached to Gaiman makes me feel physically ill. I’m not watching that.
#i still wouldn’t watch it because it looks extremely boring. i did not watch it before for this reason.#but I *can’t* watch it now. you understand?#like i also probably wasn’t going to watch good omens s3 beyond wanting to see how bad it would be. but i. cannot do that now.#which sucks. but also like fine whatever those things don’t really impact me i guess. because i wasn’t going to interact with them anyway.#but i am still. i am trying to. i don’t know how to explain to anyone how i can’t do this. beyond just repeating it.#and that’s fine for things i wasn’t going to give a shit about anyway but there were things i did care about!#sorry you didn’t ask for this anon. you just hit a nerve. i’m sure that wasn’t your intention.#i am just. i don’t know. i’m still fucking angry. i’m just fucking angry.#the selfish and terrible thing about our relationship to an artist is that it is through the art. so the way this gets verbalized is as#being upset that the *art* has been taken away from you.#and that looks like a childish response in the context of it all. because how can you talk about art when people have been hurt.#but what remains is that i didn’t fucking know the man but i knew the art. and it doesn’t go away.#sorry god this is getting so off topic its. it doesn’t fucking go away. we’ve got posts on posts of ‘here’s what you should watch instead.#here’s what you should read instead. top 10 things to replace the artist that turned out to be a shit person’ but it doesn’t fucking go awa#that i didn’t read those things! did i! i can’t go back and unread anything! i can’t unwatch things!#of course we talk about the art that was taken away from us when these things happen. its selfish. its not what the conversation should#focus on. but of course we do. because it is violating that it was/is a part of you and now you can’t take it back.#anyway. that’s why im not watching you show anon. also because it looked boring. mostly it looked boring.#but also the other stuff.#ask
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MCFLY JULY ‘24 — 24-hour scientific services.
SEPTEMBER 15, 1983
“Listen, Mrs. Springer, I’m fine. Promise.”
He knows his English teacher probably isn’t going to appreciate the ‘cross my heart’ gesture, but he feels it’s necessary to really convey how totally, completely, one hundred percent fine he is.
“We’re almost to the office,” is all she says in response. Her expression is gentle, so’s her voice, but by her tone Marty recognizes that she means business. She almost looks… angry?
“Are you… mad at me?” he asks, eyes squinting to try to get a better look at her.
“What? Oh, honey, no,” she’s quick to reassure, and he feels so shitty that he almost doesn’t mind how she’s talking to him like he’s still in elementary school. “No, of course I’m not mad at you. You’re sick!”
That, he’s not going to argue with.
“But, y’know, I-I can stay, really–” he tries to protest. He’s totally okay to just sit and listen to everyone talk about… whatever book they were reading. To Kill A Mockingbird, probably? Or Inherit the Wind. Something about some trial or whatever. Yeah, he was totally getting it, even if he did kind of almost fall trying to get up and use the pencil sharpener. But it was no big deal.
“No, you’re going home to bed,” Mrs. Springer says definitively, sitting him down on a chair that’s in the hallway for some reason? No, they’re in the office now, he recognizes the big desk and the lady behind it. Mrs. Springer puts her hands on his shoulders. “Now, I have to go back to class, but Marjorie’s here and she’ll take good care of you. She’ll get someone to come and pick you up, okay? And if you need a ride, I can take you back home after school, but I don’t want you waiting that–”
“No, it’s… it’s okay, Mrs. S. Thanks.” He offers a half smile her way. It’s nice that she cares so much, but he’d be okay just to skate home, really. He didn’t want anybody to bother Mom and Dad or Dave but he also didn’t want them to freak out if he climbed into bed and didn’t climb back out for a solid two weeks.
Mrs. Springer and the desk lady– Marjorie, he guesses– exchange a look before Mrs. Springer goes back down the hall. Marjorie smiles at him.
“Hang tight, Marty,” she assures, cheerfully, “let me just call home for you, okay?”
He nods, letting his eyes shut for just a second–
“--Hi, sweetheart.”
Marty starts. Since when was Marjorie right in front of him?
“Nobody’s picking up at home,” she continues, “is there someone else we could try?”
He nods.
“Can I do it?” he asks.
“Sure, honey, go ahead.”
He stands, scuffing his shoes on the floor the way Mom always hates. He doesn’t mean to do it, but he’s pretty sure somebody tied weights around his legs while he wasn’t looking.
He squints again, trying to make sense of the jumble of letters, numbers, and squares. Eventually, he manages to punch in the right number, hearing @doctorbrown ‘s voice at the other end.
“Yo, Doc,” Marty begins. “Wait… you’re not your answering machine, right?... You’re you?... ‘Cause I, um, I kinda need a favor…” He rubs the back of his neck, his hair damp, fighting for words to describe his situation that just aren’t coming. “... I don’t feel good,” he eventually settles on, barely registering a wince at how babyish it sounds. “They’re sendin’ me home but Mom and Dad aren’t, uh, aren’t home, so is it okay if you pick me up?... I keep telling ‘em I’m cool and I’ll be good to skate back but…”
#drabble tbt.#mcflyjuly#mcfly july ‘24.#doctorbrown#a day late a dollar short etc. etc. etc. but it's *here*#(i have no good excuse other than i got hit by sleepy bitch disease)#i kinda went a little off with this one and took it to mean how marty and doc are always gonna be there for each other no matter what#and i've been thinking a lot how thanks to tp timeline marty doesn't call or go to his parents for things he calls / goes to doc#which is a Very Hard Habit to Break#also teachers are a godsend and ofc marty's teachers (the good ones) would be looking out for him#and could see how badly he struggles with some things#you're my best friend in the whole space time continuum [doc brown.]#we’ve been back together for five minutes and you’re already talkin’ about the end of the universe. i’ve missed that. [doc & marty.]#illness tw#sickness tw#fever tw#queue. this is heavy.
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Hey there girl—I mean parasitic jellyfish
#793#nihilego#pokemon from memory#“Looks like a young girl”#Anyway remember all those theories that Lillie was one of these?#Would’ve been more interesting than “oh my mom just loves them so much she wants me to dress like it :/“#They should explore something like that tho#Like what if you/you’re friend was a pokemon and just didn’t know it?#Like idk you got transformed in a reverse pmd fashion but just…didn’t know? Or remember?#you could be like. The child of a lead researcher#and they send you off on a journey to go meet pokemon :)#but what you DON’T know is that this is part of an experiment!#you used to BE a pokemon. So how will you interact with them?#will it make you connect better? Make you a better trainer?#big reveal is your parent is the team boss and there’s bunches of questionably ethical experiments#idk cuz we’ve had robot parents (Arven’s)#so what about doing something to the protag?#rambling now tho#Anyway here’s nihilego!#my favorite ultra beast :3
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Looking at vintage photos of lgbt+ couples is like being draped with a warm blanket it’s so comforting
#There’s something about visually seeing “we’ve always been here” that hits different#but yeah#I’ve got my mind on lgbt+ history recently and I need to refresh my knowledge#especially in this day and age where history gets buried rewritten and denied#I’ve been looking into the leather and kink community recently and with that comes lgbt+ history#and I’m excited to learn more about it! I need to learn more of what connected these communities together#anyways#LNB rambles
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.
#oh my gosh I forgot to mention this but I got connected with the most wonderful church here#it’s an international church so there are a lot of people cycling in and out#and it’s on the 7th floor of a building and a bit hard to find#but it is absolutely wonderful and the people are so welcoming#I’ve met SO MANY people and I feel like I’m doing well with socializing for once#I made friends with a couple of girls and we’ve run around and done fun stuff together and had actual serious conversations#and like I’m wondering if one of the reasons God has me here is to teach me how to be a member of a church family independent of my family#because you know being the preachers kid—that has expectations. you’re at church on Sunday because your dad’s in the pulpit#(not that that’s actually the only reason for me but that’s what it looks like to other people)#here though I’m at church because I want to be there. I’m an independent woman who chose to come to church on her own#and I’m really enjoying it!#Val’s gone globetrotting
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i am experiencing emotions rn and idk what they are :)
#so i got laid off in march and i have not shut up about it since bc it was a horrible experience and i’m still upset about it#and quite literally the only place i wanted to work after that wasn’t hiring at the time but they said to check back in the summer#so i just started picking up extra shifts at my second job bc i’d rather wait on this place than apply to places i have no interest in#then end of april i get a call from this girl i met at my old job saying she got fired#we were super close last year and then our friendship got super weird and tense when she suddenly became my boss#and tbh i’m not at all surprised she got fired bc as much as i like her as a person she was not at all qualified to be running that business#but anyway we’ve been talking more lately than we have in the past couple months#and i was thinking our friendship could maybe go back to normal now that neither of us works there anymore#BUT now i’m feeling super weird like idk if i’m uncomfortable or annoyed or what i’m just feeling put off#bc the place i wanted to work finally started hiring a couple weeks ago and i applied and interviewed last week#and yesterday i got the job which i’m super excited about#and this friend just sent me a screenshot of her rejection letter for the exact same job at the same location#like am i crazy or is it justified to be weirded out by that??#why would you apply for the same exact job as me and not even tell me until after you get rejected#and i know she knows i applied bc i’ve been talking about it nonstop with all my friends#like i’m so confused#it’s not even about the fact that she could’ve potentially gotten chosen over me it’s just weird that she didn’t tell me she was applying#i’ve literally been talking about this job since before they were even hiring like as soon as i got laid off i said i wanted to work here#she didn’t get fired until almost 2 months after that so she wasn’t looking for a job until a couple weeks ago#so i can’t think of any scenario where it would make sense for her to just not mention this to me#idk someone please tell me if this is weird or not bc idk how to respond to her rn#lj.txt
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“Damian isn’t ooc what are you talking aboutttt he’s only 14 and wants to trust his dad so badlyyyy guyssss don’t get upsettt” have you never read a comic with Damian in it in your life
#I FUCKING HATE TJISHDJDHF#WHAT IS GOING ON AM I INSANE???? AM I LOSING IT???#Damian trusting his dad despite BRUCE acting so out of character EVEN IF ITS TO PRAISE DAMIAN AND MAKE HIM FEEL SPECIAL#HAS HAPPENED BEFORE#AND HE HAS SPOTTED THAT SHIT AS STRANGE A MILE AWAY#AND HE WAS LIKE. 12. AT FOURTEEN WE’VE ESTABLISHED DAMIAN AS MORE OBSERVANT AND PREPARED FOR THIS#it can either be taken as retrofitting him into ‘normal’ developmental periods which again. we’ve established Damian has as the antithesis#or as a way to put down his character in the robin mantle in order to make Tim’s run look smart and perfect in comparison. which is gross.#Tim has been Robin and even moved past it and became even better and now we’re what? missing the good ol days?#Tim became Robin in 1989. NINETEEN EIGHTY NINE GUYS#THATS 35 YEARS AGO#I KNOW ITS NOSTALGIC FOR YOU BUT YOU HAD A LOT OF STUFF WITH HIM IN IT AND HES JUST A SMART LITTLE WHITE BOY#Damian became Robin in 2009 and we’ve barely tapped into his psychology because comics is so hot buttoned right now#that they don’t know which aspect to deal with first and foremost and always choose Bruce’s relationship as an easy out#Damian was Robin for barely 15 years and yet the guy that got DOUBLE his time is back for round 3. ok.#and here we are again.#Damian has proven himself to be so capable and smart his only downfall is his own hubris and inexperience#he has been trained SINCE BIRTH to use his head guys. a few years in America didnt take that out of him.#anyway. plz pick up a comic. damian would know better cause he’s not an average 14 y/o and he’s not just a traumatized little boy.#‘ohhhh he craves his dads attention and praise so much he’d believe anything he saiiiddd’ WHO TOLD YOU THAT??? ZDARSKY??#WHAT WAS ALL OF HIS YEAR OF PENANCE ON THAT ISLAND FOR#WHAT WAS HIS ARC WITH DISTANCING HIMSELF FROM HIS FATHER A BIT IN THE WAKE OF NEEDING SOME TIME TO HIS OWN REVELATIONS#WHAT ABOUT IT. DID IT JUST NOT HAPPEN SUDDENLY#whatever.
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when you get this ask could you perhaps maybe bless us with 5 of your fav songs (currently or of all time), and then send this ask to 5 of your mutuals who you think have good taste!

whipping out this old meme to say: sorry i’m basic and also have never once made a ‘favorites’ list without agonizing intensely 😭 so i narrowed it down to ‘favorite songs that have been used in hockey fancams’. HOWMSTEVER i also struggled with that. so. in no order are five songs shuffled from my fc songs playlist:
i cheated already i forgot we need to include anything hippo campus. yes i had to no i don’t even care which song (fc specific… bambi… semi-pro…) they’re my favorite band
sarah - alex g / astrid- glaive (*two songs but same vibes. it’s fine)
make out - julia nunes
junk of the heart (happy) - the kooks
pa’lante - hurray for the riffraff / thy mission - the garden (cheating again but these are both knox songs to me so they can be in one)
good old fashioned lover boy - queen
#THANK YOU BESTIEEEEEEE 🥰💕🥰💕☺️#OH GOD I’M TERRIBLE AT MAKING LISTS#<- second reaction after having the first reaction of 🥰🥺💕🦋☺️ messages!!! from beloved mutual!!!#liv in the replies#like??? we’ve got some varied taste? it depends so much on mood??? also even language 😭#i also CANNOT listen to songs on repeat. you know the algorithm where spotify’s like oh you liked this? we’re putting it on every playlist#i need the opposite. if i heard it three days ago i don’t want to hear it for the next week thank you so much 🙏#honorable mention on this list to ‘crimson to chrome’ by friko which i’m currently obsessed with &would love to make a drw legacy fancam to#nova scotia - magic man/texas#no rush - maude latour#i got - young the giant#sorry i completely changed the rules of the ask game. yeah yeah i know. look at it it’s got anxiety now. everybody i ask this to:#do your version not mine lol#other things that got put here as i worked through myself but still don’t LOVE because i couldn’t capture or explain the vibes like.#hippo campus is my favorite band but also vance joy needs to be on there but then like. classics? what does favorite mean? ????#OKY I’M DONE AGONIZING IT’S BEEN OVER 48 HOURS I’LL NEVER BE HAPPY#whitenikes
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I like to think that if my tumblr pals came to my house, they’d have a good time
#random post#I don’t mean that as in ‘yea woo let’s party and get fucked up’ like no lol#I just mean. our house is a place where people get along#there’s no expectations here. wanna sit and talk? we can hang out and talk about whatever#wanna play a game? chances are a few other people do to#need to get away for a bit and maybe take a nap? we’ve got plenty of beds take your pick. we’ll make sure no one bothers you#hungry or thirsty? help yourself don’t be shy. we can always get more#like we had ppl over on Saturday and it was so FUN like ppl would talk all together and then different conversations would split off of that#we would go outside then back in. we had food and some ppl had alcohol#we were laughing SO hard about funny shit (like discovering that my sisters bf worked on the gas meter at grandpas but didn’t SAY ANYTHING#ABOUT IT LMFAO) my cousin brought his gf to meet everyone and she just fit in perfectly and so obviously had an obsession for animals#her and my sister were like sudden bffs it was hilarious. my brother and younger cousin ate at 2:40 and slept upstairs till 6:00#and all we did was turn of the light and put on a fan for em lol. crack up at how comfortable they were#me and my lil sister were walking up and down the driveway talking and looking at the stars. the nap duo were pointing out constellations#when most everyone left it was my household and my sister and her bf. she played uno flip and incoherent with me (usually no one does lol)#and we laughed very hard at all of the adult cards. one of the hints she gave for sidechicks was ‘sad used to have a lot of these’ and#I immediately got it. it was fun. we blasted music from the 2000’s and ate bread#I slept for 11 hours that night lmao and I was tired the next day but I wouldn’t have changed it. I like them lots#it’s days like that that make me think I’m more extroverted than introverted. just because I don’t always know what to say doesn’t mean#I don’t like to talk yn? anyways I’m writing a novel in the tags but I don’t care <3 I just love us and I wish#other people were able to have love and fun times often#I hope this doesn’t sound like me bragging about my home life. trust me I know it’s not some shining light in the darkness or whatever#but it’s something. and I don’t mind sharing my love with other people
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Thinking about the unique circumstances that led to life developing on Earth and the eventual creation of fertile soil and greenery, the growth of blossoming plants and towering trees, of soft grass and verdant green leaves that almost seem to glow as the sun shines through them
And I think of how we’ve yet to find another planet out there that has definitely undergone a similar process. That for all we know at this current point in time, this blue, watery rock with all its flowers and plants and trees, is the only one of its kind.
That in all of the vastness of space we might live on the one rock where wood exists, and in all of what little we’ve glimpsed of the universe, we share our home with something so rare and precious and beautiful that it might cease to exist anywhere else altogether if we let it die.
#Life worked hard to grow here and we don’t have the time to be trying to kickstart that process on another planet#we’ve got what we’ve got here and we could preserve it for as long as our own species manages to persist if we could just#start protecting it. Start actually valuing how precious an rare and irreplaceable it is#with climate change causing more and more fires and deforestation ravaging the wild forests#And the effect this all has on the production of food and the survival of animals and people#the rage I feel for those in high places who have sat stubbornly and let this happen despite evidence and fact#the fact that little people like me can and do try to do what they can on an individual level but that it ultimately needs the Big Changes#to have any real effect..#the fact I’ve heard about all this stuff since I was tiny and we should be further along in combating it by now#I’m just … looking at that post about the big trees has me feeling some kind of way
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So I fully knocked out after getting back home, and looking outside things have gotten waaaaaay worse while I slept. I checked the doors and windows and I’m fully snowed in now. Oh well, I’m an electric specialist with like one decent answer to ice types. I was never gonna be on the frontlines lmao
#at least I’ve still got Wi-Fi so I can keep tabs on things#seems like a we’ve got tons of trainers out there doing their part#looks like we might be lacking frontline fighters here in Nimbasa bc Elesa and the Twins seem to have hunkered down#but I can’t blame ‘em. what else do you call what I’m doing lmao#anyway if anyone in the area wants to swing by my place and melt me free I’m totally happy to get you something hot to drink!#just lmk and I can send directions :)#pkmn irl#team winter#high stakes pokereality
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Bro, i go to bed at like, 9-10pm. 9:4something today. And then end up actually sleeping lie an hour later i think.
But BRO. I LITERALLY CANNOT SLEEP RN.
I GOT IDEAS JUST BEFORE BED AND NOW IM ALL GIDDY THINKING ABOUT THEM
They’re for tomorrow for school and i cant shut my mind up for it to calm down and just sleep.
Help—
#i had to express this#possibly ranting here might help actually…#ok so we’re making a trailer for a course I’m doing.#and 1. its supposed to be 2 minutes long and i think with what we’ve got so far its only like a minute or less.#2. i only have had a base idea of how its all gonna be laid out.#UNTIL NOW#I HAVE MADE A GOOD GOOD SOLUTION TO BOTH OF THE PROBLEMS#i got new scenes I LOVE and i figured out the layout/ length of scenes#and in my mind its looking EVEN BETTER than before#so now i just have to wait until tomorrow to explain to my group members what I’ve got.#and then plan a schedule for how when we do what.#and then storyboard some new scenes#and then figure out pacing of the day#etc and yeah#and then I’ve got a physics test in the morning. so i wanna finish up another project before that starts. and I’ve got the idea ever for tha#but yeah#okokokk#hopefully that rant helped;#i shall go back and try to sleep again now.#ciao—#have a good day
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The article is under the cut because paywalls suck
This is an edited transcript of an audio essay on “The Ezra Klein Show.” You can listen to the conversation by following or subscribing to the show on the NYT Audio App, Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube, iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts.
If you want to understand the first few weeks of the second Trump administration, you should listen to what Steve Bannon told PBS’s “Frontline” in 2019:
Steve Bannon: The opposition party is the media. And the media can only, because they’re dumb and they’re lazy, they can only focus on one thing at a time. … All we have to do is flood the zone. Every day we hit them with three things. They’ll bite on one, and we’ll get all of our stuff done. Bang, bang, bang. These guys will never — will never be able to recover. But we’ve got to start with muzzle velocity. So it’s got to start, and it’s got to hammer, and it’s got to — Michael Kirk: What was the word? Bannon: Muzzle velocity.
Muzzle velocity. Bannon’s insight here is real. Focus is the fundamental substance of democracy. It is particularly the substance of opposition. People largely learn of what the government is doing through the media — be it mainstream media or social media. If you overwhelm the media — if you give it too many places it needs to look, all at once, if you keep it moving from one thing to the next — no coherent opposition can emerge. It is hard to even think coherently.
Donald Trump’s first two weeks in the White House have followed Bannon’s strategy like a script. The flood is the point. The overwhelm is the point. The message wasn’t in any one executive order or announcement. It was in the cumulative effect of all of them. The sense that this is Trump’s country now. This is his government now. It follows his will. It does what he wants. If Trump tells the state to stop spending money, the money stops. If he says that birthright citizenship is over, it’s over.
Or so he wants you to think. In Trump’s first term, we were told: Don’t normalize him. In his second, the task is different: Don’t believe him.
Trump knows the power of marketing. If you make people believe something is true, you make it likelier that it becomes true. Trump clawed his way back to great wealth by playing a fearsome billionaire on TV; he remade himself as a winner by refusing to admit he had ever lost. The American presidency is a limited office. But Trump has never wanted to be president, at least not as defined in Article II of the U.S. Constitution. He has always wanted to be king. His plan this time is to first play king on TV. If we believe he is already king, we will be likelier to let him govern as a king.
Don’t believe him. Trump has real powers — but they are the powers of the presidency. The pardon power is vast and unrestricted, and so he could pardon the Jan. 6 rioters. Federal security protection is under the discretion of the executive branch, and so he could remove it from Anthony Fauci and Mike Pompeo and John Bolton and Mark Milley and even Brian Hook, a largely unknown former State Department official under threat from Iran who donated time to Trump’s transition team. It was an act of astonishing cruelty and callousness from a man who nearly died by an assassin’s bullet — as much as anything ever has been, this, to me, was an X-ray of the smallness of Trump’s soul — but it was an act that was within his power.
But the president cannot rewrite the Constitution. Within days, the birthright citizenship order was frozen by a judge — a Reagan appointee — who told Trump’s lawyers, “I have difficulty understanding how a member of the bar would state unequivocally that this is a constitutional order. It just boggles my mind.” A judge froze the spending freeze before it was even scheduled to go into effect, and shortly thereafter, the Trump administration rescinded the order, in part to avoid the court case.
What Bannon wanted — what the Trump administration wants — is to keep everything moving fast. Muzzle velocity, remember. If you’re always consumed by the next outrage, you can’t look closely at the last one. The impression of Trump’s power remains; the fact that he keeps stepping on rakes is missed. The projection of strength obscures the reality of weakness. Don’t believe him.
You could see this a few ways: Is Trump playing a part, making a bet or triggering a crisis? Those are the options. I am not certain he knows the answer. Trump has always been an improviser. But if you take it as calculated, here is the calculation: Perhaps this Supreme Court, stocked with his appointees, gives him powers no peacetime president has ever possessed. Perhaps all of this becomes legal now that he has asserted its legality. It is not impossible to imagine that bet paying off.
But Trump’s odds are bad. So what if the bet fails and his arrogations of power are soundly rejected by the courts? Then comes the question of constitutional crisis: Does he ignore the court’s ruling? To do that would be to attempt a coup. I wonder if they have the stomach for it. The withdrawal of the Office of Management and Budget’s order to freeze spending suggests they don’t. Bravado aside, Trump’s political capital is thin. Both in his first and second terms, he has entered office with approval ratings below that of any president in the modern era. Gallup has Trump’s approval rating at 47 percent — about 10 points beneath Joe Biden’s in January 2021.
There is a reason Trump is doing all of this through executive orders rather than submitting these same directives as legislation to pass through Congress. A more powerful executive could persuade Congress to eliminate the spending he opposes or reform the civil service to give himself the powers of hiring and firing that he seeks. To write these changes into legislation would make them more durable and allow him to argue their merits in a more strategic way. Even if Trump’s aim is to bring the civil service to heel — to rid it of his opponents and turn it to his own ends — he would be better off arguing that he is simply trying to bring the high-performance management culture of Silicon Valley to the federal government. You never want a power grab to look like a power grab.
But Republicans have a three-seat edge in the House and a 53-seat majority in the Senate. Trump has done nothing to reach out to Democrats. If Trump tried to pass this agenda as legislation, it would most likely fail in the House, and it would certainly die before the filibuster in the Senate. And that would make Trump look weak. Trump does not want to look weak. He remembers John McCain humiliating him in his first term by casting the deciding vote against Obamacare repeal.
That is the tension at the heart of Trump’s whole strategy: Trump is acting like a king because he is too weak to govern like a president. He is trying to substitute perception for reality. He is hoping that perception then becomes reality. That can only happen if we believe him.
The flurry of activity is meant to suggest the existence of a plan. The Trump team wants it known that they’re ready this time. They will control events rather than be controlled by them. The closer you look, the less true that seems. They are scrambling and flailing already. They are leaking against one another already. We’ve learned, already, that the O.M.B. directive was drafted, reportedly, without the input or oversight of key Trump officials — “it didn’t go through the proper approval process,” an administration official told The Washington Post. For this to be the process and product of a signature initiative in the second week of a president’s second term is embarrassing.
But it’s not just the O.M.B. directive. The Trump administration is waging an immediate war on the bureaucracy, trying to replace the “deep state” it believes hampered it in the first term. A big part of this project seems to have been outsourced to Elon Musk, who is bringing the tactics he used at Twitter to the federal government. He has longtime aides at the Office of Personnel Management, and the email sent to nearly all federal employees even reused the subject line of the email he sent to Twitter employees: “Fork in the Road.” Musk wants you to know it was him.
The email offers millions of civil servants a backdoor buyout: Agree to resign and in theory, at least, you can collect your paycheck and benefits until the end of September without doing any work. The Department of Government Efficiency account on X described it this way: “Take the vacation you always wanted, or just watch movies and chill, while receiving your full government pay and benefits.” The Washington Post reported that the email “blindsided” many in the Trump administration who would normally have consulted on a notice like that.
I suspect Musk thinks of the federal work force as a huge mass of woke ideologues. But most federal workers have very little to do with politics. About 16 percent of the federal work force is in health care. These are, for instance, nurses and doctors who work for the Veterans Affairs department. How many of them does Musk want to lose? What plans does the V.A. have for attracting and training their replacements? How quickly can he do it?
The Social Security Administration has more than 59,000 employees. Does Musk know which ones are essential to operations and unusually difficult to replace? One likely outcome of this scheme is that a lot of talented people who work in nonpolitical jobs and could make more elsewhere take the lengthy vacation and leave government services in tatters. Twitter worked poorly after Musk’s takeover, with more frequent outages and bugs, but its outages are not a national scandal. When V.A. health care degrades, it is. To have sprung this attack on the civil service so loudly and publicly and brazenly is to be assured of the blame if anything goes wrong.
What Trump wants you to see in all this activity is command. What is really in all this activity is chaos. They do not have some secret reservoir of focus and attention the rest of us do not. They have convinced themselves that speed and force is a strategy unto itself — that it is, in a sense, a replacement for a real strategy. Don’t believe them.
I had a conversation a couple months ago with someone who knows how the federal government works about as well as anyone alive. I asked him what would worry him most if he saw Trump doing it. What he told me is that he would worry most if Trump went slowly. If he began his term by doing things that made him more popular and made his opposition weaker and more confused. If he tried to build strength for the midterms while slowly expanding his powers and chipping away at the deep state where it was weakest.
But he didn’t. And so the opposition to Trump, which seemed so listless after the election, is beginning to rouse itself.
There is a subreddit for federal employees where one of the top posts reads: “This non ‘buyout’ really seems to have backfired. I’ll be honest, before that email went out, I was looking for any way to get out of this fresh hell. But now I am fired up to make these goons as frustrated as possible.” As I write this, it’s been upvoted more than 39,000 times and civil servant after civil servant is echoing the initial sentiment.
In Iowa this week, Democrats flipped a State Senate seat in a district that Trump won easily in 2024. The attempted spending freeze gave Democrats their voice back, as they zeroed in on the popular programs Trump had imperiled. Trump isn’t building support; he’s losing it. Trump isn’t fracturing his opposition; he’s uniting it.
This is the weakness of the strategy that Bannon proposed and Trump is following. It is a strategy that forces you into overreach. To keep the zone flooded, you have to keep acting, keep moving, keep creating new cycles of outrage or fear. You overwhelm yourself. And there’s only so much you can do through executive orders. Soon enough, you have to go beyond what you can actually do. And when you do that, you either trigger a constitutional crisis or you reveal your own weakness.
Trump may not see his own fork in the road coming. He may believe he has the power he is claiming. That would be a mistake on his part — a self-deception that could doom his presidency. But the real threat is if he persuades the rest of us to believe he has power he does not have.
The first two weeks of Trump’s presidency have not shown his strength. He is trying to overwhelm you. He is trying to keep you off-balance. He is trying to persuade you of something that isn’t true. Don’t believe him.
You can listen to this conversation by following “The Ezra Klein Show” on NYT Audio App, Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube, iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts. View a list of book recommendations from our guests here.
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Temperate Lake Dashboard Simulator

🐦⬛2xcrested_cormorant Follow Going to try and eat this weird fish
♻️🐦⬛2xcrested_cormorant Follow wilmdlife hopital

🐸rana-bufo Follow No one can ever truly understand what BULL4rog's music means to me 😭 this song in particular argrgrgrgrgrg the way he puffs out his vocal sack asdfghjk
BULL4rog: listen here on spotify ♻️🐸rana-bufo Follow I think I huave chytrid

🐟ilikeeatingminnowsFollow I just migrated here from finstagram please be nice

🐠powerbottomfeeder Follow
I have HAD IT with this lake, it’s the third day in a row we’ve had nitrates above 8 ppm and uug the algae, my allergies I can’t do this
♻️🐟carpy-diem Follow
Lol we regularly get nitrates up to 20 ppm in my lake ♻️🦞crawdaddy Follow uhhh you shouldn't be bragging about that, it's really unsafe ♻️🐟carpy-diem Follow suck it you little oligotrophic bitch

🐢snappturt Follow Dear Tumblr, am I the Basshole for the way I catch minnows? I was chatting with some of the guys I bask with and they said the way I catch minnows is problematic; What I do is I sit on the bottom of the lake, I hide myself in the mud and I open my mouth. My tongue looks a lot like a little worm so I wiggle it around- and because of that, minnows swim over and check it out. Once they get close enough, then I bite down and eat them. Some of my rockmates have told me that this is manipulative and toxic behavior- but they also eat minnows...I don't know guys...

🦆tree hole-nester-acorn-eater Follow
is it just me, or is this super homoerotic???

🐟bigpikexxl Follow liveblogging diving down to the bottom
♻️🐟bigpikexxl Follow dark
♻️🐟bigpikexxl Follow big log
♻️🐟bigpikexxl Follow rock
♻️🐟bigpikexxl Follow kinda cold
♻️🐟bigpikexxl Follow oh hi @deepwatersculpin!!!
♻️🐠deepwatersculpin Follow oh hey @bigpikexxl!!!
never thought i'd seen one of my mutuals irl!!! I didn't even know we lived in the same lake!!!

🐠Shadlad Follow I'm not sorry, and I'm not afraid to say it, if you're an introduced species, go dry yourself out. You're not welcome to eat up all of our resources and live in my ancestral longs and rock crags. These things are for us to relate to and not for you to squander.
♻️🦞crevice-steve Follow
Can't believe this type of fishcourse is still popular on this site, introduced species didn't choose to be introduced and have as much of a right to live as anyone else. Bigotry against introduced species is still bigotry and that's a hill I will dry on. ♻️🐠Shadlad Follow Go ahead, dry yourself out then ;) ♻️🪷nootnootnewt Follow Hey man, I hate invasive species as much as anyone else but please stop telling people to beach themselves for political reasons- yeah that includes inavsives too ♻️🦐typical_scud Follow Did you legit just use the word Invas*ve to describe introduced species? ♻️🦢flatfootswimmer Follow anyone in this thread eat pondweed?

♻️🐟largemouthbASS Follow A colab with my mutual @2xcrested_cormorant after they got released from the wildlife hospital. They haven't been on much since the Fish and Wildlife Service released them in the wrong lake and it took them a while to get back to their colony. We hope this guide will help you avoid accidentally eating/engaging with bait!

#fishblr#fishposting#fake post#dashboard simulator#cw thalassophobia#thalassophobia#ecology#freshwater ecology#wood duck#walleye
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