#million different programs thing

[automatonknight]

patches fucking dies. sad!

[biblically-accurate-dca]

@vanweek2024 day 4 - food

peep the vanny

[iknowwhereyousleepatnight]

it’s contemplating if i should change my major even though i’m graduating in december hours….. again

[diseasedcube]

[sukimas]

no little german boy don't go into the spectroscopy program

oh mein gott zis data is full of automatische Phasenkorrektur

[meanderingstream]

Summary of the achievements by week. More info can be found in each week’s post and by following the links there. 

(when it says $ was announced for a project, that is the relevant agency’s plan to distribute that money in a program- the agencies are of course funded by Congress and do not just decide unilaterally how to spend taxes)

Week 1

Limit bank overdraft fees proposal- 

effective October 2025 if approved

Fine oil/gas companies for emitting methane proposal

Fully effective 2026 if approved 

$104 million in grants to support clean energy projects

$5 billion student loans canceled for income driven repayment and public service loan forgiveness plans

Launched program to fight lead exposure in developing countries

Deal reached to revive the expanded child tax credit projected to lift 400,000 kids out of poverty in first year

Week 2

Paused all new natural gas export facilities 

$5 billion for infrastructure projects like fixing bridges, interstates, and offshore wind terminals.

New guidance requires insurance companies to cover contraceptive medicine under Affordable Care Act

Medicaid, Medicare, CHIP, and Federal Employee Health Benefits Program also must cover it

Federal agencies reported on progress implementing the order to protect medication abortion signed 1 year ago

Expanded child tax credit deal made it out of committee in The House

Senate foreign relations committee passed a bill to distribute $5 billion in seized Russian assets to Ukraine

Senate passed Train More Nurses Act

3 more Biden judges confirmed

Week 3

House overwhelmingly passed expanded child tax credit deal

Began negotiations on drug prices for Medicare

$240 million to modernize/refurbish airports across the country

Announced the 10 sites across US that will receive innovation investment for clean energy, sustainable textiles, semiconductor manufacturing, etc

State dept. reviews options for recognizing Palestinian statehood

Imposed sanctions on Israeli settlers who have engaged in violence against Palestinians and peace activists 

Loan to help reopen a Michigan nuclear power plant as part of goal to decarbonize the electric grid

IRS launched program to let people file taxes for free with them instead of paying for programs like TurboTax 

$28 million in grants for help with treatment of substance use disorders.

$72 million for 46 hydroelectric projects

Senate confirmed Biden's 175th federal judge. 

For first time in history a majority of a president’s nominees are not white men

Week 4

Announcement that 23 million Americans have been connected to high speed internet through the Affordable Connectivity Program. Sadly, the program will be forced to end if Republicans in Congress continue to block new funding

$5 billion for a National Semiconductor Technology Center

Finalized rules that will strengthen air quality standards around soot. Projected to prevent 4,200 premature deaths and save Americans $46 billion in health costs

$1.5 Billion investment in America's bus systems

Memorandum directing a strengthening of human rights safeguards around weapons transferred from US stockpiles to allied nations

Announced joint program to streamline Gov response to homelessness between HHS, HUD, 8 states and DC

Released study projecting Puerto Rico will be able to be 100% renewable energy by 2050

Low income Puerto Ricans will soon be able to apply for a solar power program, the first investments in a billion dollar DoE program for the island's renewable energy future

$417 million dollar loan to the North Carolina Turnpike Authority to complete a major transportation overhaul in the greater Raleigh area

Announced plan to invest federal funds to help measure and reduce methane emissions from the oil and gas production

Senate confirmed 2 more Biden nominated federal judges

Week 5

Released first draft for a new student loan forgiveness plan that will hopefully hold up in court

1.2 Billion Dollars to combat human trafficking, including $175 million in housing assistance to human trafficking victims

$970 Million for improvements at 114 airports across 44 states and 3 territories

Medicare & Medicaid released new guidelines to allow people to pay out of pocket prescription drug costs in monthly installments rather than as a lump sum

Added 150 more communities to EPA’s Closing America's Wastewater Access Gap Community Initiative to ensure people have basic running water and indoor plumbing

Announced deferred action for Palestinians in the US. This means any Palestinian living in the United States, no matter their legal status, can not be deported for any reason for the next 18 months

This will need to be renewed next year. A Harris administration almost certainly will. A Trump administration likely won’t.

$60 million in investment into clean geothermal energy

$83 million to help improve air quality monitoring across America

$63 million in investments in domestic heat-pump water-heater manufacturing. Which  reduce greenhouse gasses by 50% over the most efficient condensing gas boilers\

$5.1 million to organizations working on preventing homelessness, fighting depression and suicide, drug use and HIV prevention and treatment, family counseling, etc for LGBTQI+ Youth and their Families

In support of the oppressed Uyghur minority in China, the House passed 2 bill that would prohibit US Gov from spending money on projects that source materials from Xinjiang and create a permanent post at the State Dept. to coordinate policy on Uyghur Issues

Week 6

$5.8 billion in funding upgrade America's water systems

Canceled $1.2 billion in student loan debt for 153,000 borrowers through the SAVE Plan which erases federal student loan balances for those who originally borrowed $12,000 or less and have been making payments for at least 10 years

$100 million in federal funding for women’s health research

500 new sanctions against Russian targets in response to the murder of Russian dissident Alexei Navalny

$700 Million in new investments to benefit people in rural America for high speed internet, clean drinking water, sanitary wastewater, and more

$1.5 billion in upgrades to expand chip factories to boost American semiconductor manufacturing

$1.25 billion in  funding for local projects that improve roadway safety

The 2022 Safe Streets and Roads for All program has spent $1.7 billion in 1,000 communities impacting 70% of America's population

$19 million to help New Jersey buy electric school buses

Bonus: NASA landed spacecraft, Odysseus, on the moon, the 1st time in 50 years America has gone to the moon.

Week 7

$1.7 Billion in new commitments from local governments, health care systems, charities, business and nonprofits towards ending hunger in America

The White House Challenge to End Hunger and Build Healthy Communities has also led to the USDA’s program which feeds children over the summer in 37 partnering states

House passed a bill on Nuclear energy expanding the Nuclear Regulatory Commission

Capping copays that families pay to no more than 7% of income for the CCDBG grants for childcare and streamlining payments to childcare providers, ensuring prompt payment

House passed a bill improving the Small Business Administration’s 8(a) program which offers wide ranging training and support to small business owners who are socially and economically disadvantaged, predominantly native owned businesses

Announced steps to boost housing supply and lower home costs through a program which has created 12,000 affordable housing units since 2021 with $2 billion, and a program which has spent $4.35 billion since 2021 to build affordable rental homes and make home ownership a reality for Americans.

Also funding for manufactured housing, the first administration to do so

$336 million in investments in rural, remote, and tribal communities to lower energy costs and improve reliability

Proposed new rules to ensure airline passengers who use wheelchairs can travel safely and with dignity

$3 Billion dollar program to help ports become zero-emission

$1 Billion dollars to help clean up toxic Superfund sites

Bonus: Sweden cleared the final major barrier to become NATO's 32nd member

Week 8

Finalized a rule capping credit card late fees at $8

Announced a new Strike Force on Unfair and Illegal Pricing (especially targeting shrinkflation) 

Proposed a new rule banning bulk billing, where in landlords charge tenants of apartment buildings for internet, cable, or satellite services, even if they do not use it or opt into being billed

Announced actions that have prevented the collapse of the Colorado River system which provides drinking water and electricity for 40 million Americans in the Southwest. 

Executive Order to expand apprenticeships and reestablish direct communication between unions and management in federal agencies (a program allowed to lapse under Trump)

Actions to lower price of health care

Medicare negotiating prices for 10 drugs, first time in history they are allowed to negotiate prices

Proposal that medicare should be able to negotiate 50 such drug prices a year

Medicare Part-D capped the yearly price of ALL medications at $2,000

The President wants to expand this cap to all Americans

President called on congress to make permanent the tax credits for insurance premiums that saved Americans an average of $800/year 

President called for $12 billion in Women's Health Research to help close the historic research gap

President called for surprise billing protections to apply to ambulance providers, meaning people won't have to worry about an outrageous bill for an ambulance ride

Announced the first over-the-counter birth control pill will be available on pharmacy and store shelves nationwide and online later this month, and major pharmacies CVS and Walgreens will now offer the abortion pill Mifepristone

In the State of the Union, Biden called for a ceasefire in Gaza to release the hostages and bring in wide-ranging humanitarian aid.

Added over 100,000 more additional households to rental assistance

Called on Congress to expand it by more than half a million and to pass a bill giving $25,000 in down payment assistance to first-generation homebuyers

President wants to expand the Affordable Housing Program and the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit. Also seeks tax credits for 1st time buyers and those selling their starter homes at under market value to owner-occupant

Bonus: March 7th 2024, Sweden formally joined NATO

Week 9

IRS launched direct file pilot program

Biden expressed support for trans and non-binary youth in the aftermath of the suicide of Nex Benedict, and Dept. of Ed.’s Office of Civil Rights opened an investigation into his school district

Vice President Kamala Harris became the first sitting Vice-President (or President) to visit an abortion provider as part of her Reproductive Rights Tour

$3.3 billion worth of infrastructure projects across 40 states designed to reconnect communities divided by transportation infrastructure

Taking steps to eliminate junk fees for college students, plan to ban schools from automatically billing for textbooks and pocketing leftover money on student meal plans

$120 million in investments to help boost Climate Resilience in Tribal Communities

$750 million dollars in investment in clean hydrogen power

$2.3 billion loan to build a lithium processing plant in Nevada (a key component in rechargeable batteries used it electric vehicles)

$1.2 billion in funds to reduce pollution in public transportation

Geothermal Energy Optimization Act introduced in the Senate, which would help expand geothermal projects on public lands.

The Justice for Breonna Taylor Act was introduced in the Senate banning No Knock Warrants nationwide

Bill was introduced in the House requiring the US Postal Service to cover the costs of any late fees on bills that USPS failed to deliver on time

Senate Confirmed 3 more Biden nominees to be lifetime federal judges: Jasmine Yoon the first Asian-America federal judge in Virginia, Sunil Harjani in Illinois, and Melissa DuBose the first LGBTQ and first person of color to serve as a federal judge in Rhode Island. Brings total # of Biden judges to 185

Week 10

Announced new emission standards with the goal of having more than half of new cars and light trucks sold in the US be low/zero emission by 2032

Canceled nearly $6 Billion dollars in student loan debt for 78,000 borrowers who work in public sector jobs like teachers, nurses, social workers, firefighters, etc

Under Pressure from the administration and Democrats in Congress, Drugmaker AstraZeneca joins rival Boehringer Ingelheim in capping the price of inhalers at $35, the same price the Biden Admin capped the price of insulin for seniors

The Dept. of Justice sued Apple for being an illegal monopoly in smartphones

EPA passed a rule banning the final type of asbestos still used in the United States

$8.5 billion to help build advanced computer chips in America

Executive Order prioritizing research into women's health and directing $200 million into it

Democratic Senators introduced the "Shrinkflation Prevention Act" 

$45 million in projects that improve Bicyclist and Pedestrian Connectivity and Safety

$77 Million to put 180 electric school buses onto the streets of New York City

Senate confirmed Nicole Berner to Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, along with Edward Kiel and Eumi Lee as district judges, bringing Biden’s federal judge appointments to 188

Week 11

The Administration responded to the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, promising to clear the harbor and rebuild the bride. $60 million in emergency funds are already released, and Biden is expected to seek $1 billion from Congress

VP Harris announced $1 billion dollars in new investments as part of the Central America Forward partnership to improve conditions in Central America so people there are not so desperate to trust human traffickers to reach the US. Also announced $175 million dollars of direct aid to Guatemala

Announced $1.5 billion dollar loan to help restart the Palisades Nuclear Plant in Michigan

Social media push to inform the public about the Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE) Plan under which anyone making $16 an hour or less has a monthly payment of $0 on their student loans. Republicans are suing to try to shut down the SAVE Plan

Biden extended the window for low-income Americans to apply for Obamacare, rolled back Trump era rules that allowed subsidies for "Junk Health insurance" which offer very little coverage, often mislead consumers about what’s covered, and don't have to follow Obamacare standards so can refuse to cover preexisting conditions.

Announced new regulations aimed at "turbocharging" the number of electric trucks on the road

Thanks to the Inflation Reduction Act, 41 different drugs will cost Medicare enrollees less than last year, announced the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services

$6 billion for an effort to decarbonize energy-intensive industries

Executive Order to Strengthen the Recognition of Women’s History

Senate confirmed 3 federal judge nominees, total Biden appointees now 190

Week 12

Biden united with Bernie Sanders at the White House to review Democratic efforts to bring down drug prices.

In the wake of the Francis Scott Key Bridge disaster, the federal government has released $60 million in emergency money toward rebuilding so far,and the Administration is working with business and labor unions to keep workers at work and cover lost wages.

$20 billion to help finance tens of thousands of climate and clean energy projects across the country like clean power generation/storage, 0-emission transportation, etc. 70% will be invested in low-income and disadvantaged communities

$20.5 billion in investments in public transportation

$4 billion in tax credits for businesses investing in clean energy, critical materials recycling, and Industrial decarbonization

$1.5 Billion in investments in climate-smart agriculture

Approved the New England Wind offshore wind project- the 8th such offshore wind project approved by the Biden administration

Dept. of interior announced:

$320 Million for tribal water infrastructure

$244 million to deal with legacy pollution from mining in the State of Pennsylvania

$25 million to protect wetlands in Arizona

$19 million to put solar panels over irrigation canals in California, Oregon and Utah

Dept. of Energy announced $27 million for 40 projects by state, local and tribal governments to combat climate change

Week 13

A further 277,000 Americans had student loan debt canceled through the SAVE plan, bringing Biden’s total to 4.3 million people seeing $153 billion of debt canceled so far

Biden announced a plan that would relieve debt for 30 million Americans through steps like automatically canceling debt for eligible public servants instead of them needing to apply.

Announced rules closing gun-show loophole so that all gun sales legally require background checks, even for gun shows or private sales online

EPA published the first ever regulations on PFAS, known as forever chemicals, in drinking water.

Dept. of Commerce announced a deal with microchip giant TSMC to bring billions in investment and manufacturing to Arizona

EPA finalized rules strengthening clean air standards around chemical plants

Dept. of the Interior announced it had beaten the Biden Administration goals when it comes to new clean energy projects

$830 million to support local communities in becoming more climate resilient.

Senate confirmed 3 federal judge nominees, total Biden appointees now 193

Week 14

Dept. of Commerce announced a deal with Samsung to help bring advanced semiconductor manufacturing and research and development to Texas

Dept. of Energy announced it granted New York State $158 million to help support people making their homes more energy efficient

Dept. of Education began the formal process to make President Biden's new Student Loan Debt relief plan a reality

$1 billion dollar collaboration with USAID to buy American grown foods to combat global hunger

food aid will help feed people in Bangladesh, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Chad, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Haiti, Kenya, Madagascar, Mali, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Sudan, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, and Yemen

Dept. of Interior announced expansion of four national wildlife refuges to protect 1.13 million acres of wildlife habitat and signed an order protecting parts of the Placitas area sacred to the Pueblo people

announced new workplace safety regulations about the safe amount of silica dust mine workers can be exposed to.

Administration announced its progress in closing the racial wealth gap in America. 

Black Unemployment is the lowest it's ever been since it started being tracked in the 1970s and the gap between white and black unemployment is the smallest it's ever been as well

Black wealth is up 60% over where it was in 2019

The share of black owned businesses doubled between 2019 and 2022 and new black businesses are being created at the fastest rate in 30 years

Since the creation of the Interagency Task Force to combat unfair house appraisals, the likelihood of black homeowners having their homes undervalued compared to whites who own comparable property has dropped by 40% and even disappeared in some states

2023 represented a record breaking $76.2 billion in federal contracts going to small businesses owned by members of minority communities. This was 12% of federal contracts and the President aims to make it 15% for 2025

EPA announced it plans to add PFAS, known as forever chemicals, to the Superfund law

Week 15

Biden with AOC, Bernie Sanders, and Senator Ed Markey announced a program, Solar For All, providing $7 billion aimed at supporting low income households install solar power

New rule raises income cap for required overtime. Before, employers only had to pay overtime to employees earning less than $35,568 a year. Now, the limit is $43,888, and in January 2025 it will be raised again to $58,656

$1 billion dollar program to help replace heavily duty vehicles with clean energy versions

To protect 13 million acres of Alaska wildland and secure the livelihood of Alaska native peoples who rely on it, the administration refused oil and mining rights as well as a 210 mile road across vast areas of northern wilderness

Finalized rules requiring airlines to give automatic cash refunds for canceled flights and other inconveniences

Finalized rules on emissions standards for fuel burning power plants

Security of Transportation Pete Buttigieg attended the ground breaking of a new high speed rail project to connect Los Angeles and Las Vegas, which the administration announced $3 billion to support last year

FCC announced a new rule restoring Net Neutrality

FTC passed finalized regulations to ban non-compete agreements in nearly all cases

$1 billion project to connect tribal communities to safe drinking water

announced plans to protect, restore and reconnect 8 million acres of wetlands and 100,000 miles of rivers and streams

Dept. of Health and Human Services announced a new rule boosting privacy protection for abortions

Harris announced a new rule requiring staffing standards at Nursing Homes across the country

$6 billion deal with tech giant Micron to bring high tech manufacturing to New York

Dept. of Education finalized the most comprehensive federal protections for Trans and other Queer students in the nation's history

Week 16

$3 billion to help replace lead pipes in the drinking water system

Biden canceled the student debt of 317,000 former students of a fraudulent for-profit college system

Biden expanded two California national monuments protecting thousands of acres of land

announced new rules that will require car manufacturers to install automatic braking systems in new cars

IRS announced plans to ramp up audits on the wealthiest Americans

Dept. of Interior announced plans for new offshore wind power

Biden Administration announced new rules to finally allow DACA recipients to be covered by Obamacare

Dept. of Health and Human Services finalized rules that require LGBTQ+ and Intersex minors in the foster care system to be placed in supportive and affirming homes.

Senate confirmed another federal judge lifetime appointment, total Biden appointees now 194. For the first time in history the majority of a President's nominees to the federal bench have not been white men

Week 17

Harris announced 5.5 billion dollars to build affordable housing and address homelessness

At the 3rd meeting of the Los Angeles Declaration group (a partnership between the US and 20 other nations in the Americas), Security of State Blinken announced $578 million in new humanitarian aid to Latin America

Dept. of Energy lead an effort to get the G7 to agree to phase out coal by the early 2030s

Biden announced a major investment deal in Racine, Wisconsin, site of the failed Trump Foxconn deal which promised $13,000 jobs that never materialized, and bulldozed over 100 homes and farms before pulling out of the deal. Biden’s deal with Microsoft will bring in 2,000 new jobs to help replace the 1,000 lost jobs during Trump’s presidency

200 tribal governments and the US territories of American Samoa, the Northern Mariana Islands, Guam, and the U.S. Virgin Islands, published climate action plans paid for by the administration’s Pollution Reduction Grants program

As part of marking Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day), the administration announced several actions as part of their National Strategy To Counter Antisemitism, the first ever national strategy addressing the issue by any administration

USAID announced $220 million in additional humanitarian aid to Yemen

$150 million to help communities fight drought supporting 42 projects across 10 western states

Week 18

Justice Dept. endorses lifting many restrictions on marijuana

Dept. of Interior announced moratorium on new coal mining in America's largest coal producing region, the Powder River Basin in Wyoming and Montana (40% of US coal production)

Harris announced that the administration had broken records by investing $16 billion in Historically Black Colleges and Universities

$30 billion dollars in renewal funding for the Housing Choice Voucher Program

$671.4 million in investments in rural infrastructure to improve electric and safe water utilities in 47 projects across 23 states

HUD announced a record breaking $1.1 billion dollar investment in Tribal housing and community development

$2 billion in investments in America's busiest passenger rail route, the Northeast Corridor between Washington DC and Boston

HUD announced plans to streamline its HOME program to speed up building affordable new homes

$520 million in new water projects to help protect against drought in the western states

Dept.s of Agriculture and HHS have stepped up efforts to wipe out the H5N1 virus prevent its spread to humans while protecting farmers livelihoods

Senate confirmed another 3 federal judge lifetime appointments, total Biden appointees now 197

Bonus: The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that transgender health insurance exclusions were illegal

Week 19

Biden wiped out the student loan debt of 160,000 more Americans, 

After the supreme court struck down Biden’s original broader forgiveness plan, the administration has patchworked different plans together to cancel $167 billion for 4.75 million Americans so far

Dept. of Justice announced it is suing Ticketmaster for being a monopoly

EPA announced $225 million in new funding to improve drinking and wastewater for tribal communities

Will help with testing for forever chemicals, and replacing of lead pipes as well as sustainability projects

$300 million in grants to clean up former industrial sites known as "Brownfield" sites, which will be cleaned and redeveloped into community assets for 200 projects across 178 communities

Announced a historic expansion of the program to feed low income kids over the summer holidays- rolling out SUN Bucks, a $120 per child grocery benefit

Harris builds on her work in Africa to announce a plan to give 80% of Africa internet access by 2030, up from just 40% today

Senate confirmed another 4 federal judge lifetime appointments, total Biden appointees now 201

Biden's Judges have been historically diverse. 64% of them are women and 62% of them are people of color.

Week 20

$900 million to school districts across the country to replace diesel fueled school buses with cleaner alternatives

For the first time the federal government released guidelines for Voluntary Carbon Markets- a system by which companies offset their carbon emissions by funding project to fight climate change like investing in wind or solar power

IRS announced it'll take its direct file program nationwide in 2025 to allow people to file for free through the IRS website instead of paying for programs like TurboTax

White House announced steps to boost nuclear energy in America- the single largest green energy source in the country accounting for 19% of America's total energy. This is a key part of the administration's strategy to reach a carbon free electricity sector by 2035

$824 million in new funding to protect livestock health and combat H5N1 virus to both protect the animals and make sure it doesn't spread to the human population and become another pandemic situation

announced a partnership with 21 states to help supercharge America's aging energy grid

$343 million to update 8 of America's oldest and busiest transportation stations for disability accessibility

$179 million for drought resilience projects in California and Utah and $242 million for expanding water access in California, Colorado and Washington

$150 million for affordable housing for tribal communities

Secretary of State pledged $135 million to help Moldavia, a tiny state bordering Ukraine which has long been dependent on Russian energy, but thanks to US investment is breaking away from Russia and moving forward with EU membership

US and Guatemala launched the "Youth With Purpose” initiative as part of the administration’s efforts to improve life in Central America. The initiative will train 25,000 young Guatemalans and connect them with with service projects throughout the country

Bonus: This week, May 31st 2024, was the last day of the Affordable Connectivity Program which helped 23 million Americans connect to the internet. Despite repeated calls from President Biden Republicans in Congress have refused to act to renew the program

The Biden Administration has invested $90 Billion high-speed internet investments. Such as $42.45 billion for Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment, $1 billion for the The Middle Mile program laying 12,000 miles of regional fiber networks, and distributed nearly 30,000 connected devices to students and communities, including more than 3,600 through the Tribal Broadband Connectivity Program

Week 21

$480 million in safety grants to all 50 states, DC, and all the US territories as part of Biden's goal to bring the number of traffic deaths to zero

Thanks to DoT safety actions, deaths involving heavy vehicles dropped by 8% from 2022 to 2023 and the dept. wants to keep pushing till the number is 0

$2.8 billion plan to protect public land and support local government Conservation Efforts for restoring national parks, public land, and historic sites, for funding Bureau of Indian Education-funded schools, and for conservation funding.

Dept. of Transportation announced that it had managed to get customers nearly $1 Billion dollars worth of flight reimbursements

$725 million to clean up legacy coal pollution

$700 million for long-term water conservation projects across the Lower Colorado River Basin

$123 million for fighting Youth Homelessness -- the 8th round of investment in Youth Homelessness totaling $440 million so far. 

Focused on innovative answers, like host homes, and kinship care models, with emphasis on creating equitable strategies to assist youth who are most vulnerable, including BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, and youth with disabilities. 

part of administration’s goal of cutting homelessness by 25% by the end of 2025

Dept. of Agriculture announced a series of actions to strength Tribal food sovereignty to support native animal harvesting, the Tribal Forest Protection Act, and serving Indigenous foods in school meal programs

Bonus: the Bidens and Secretaries of Defense and State marked the 80th anniversary of D-Day in Normandy France with a handful of surviving veterans

Week 22

Harris announced that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is moving to remove medical debt for people's credit score, improving the credit rating of up to 15 million Americans

EPA, Dept. of Agriculture, and FDA announced a joint "National Strategy for Reducing Food Loss and Waste and Recycling Organics" aimed to cut food waste by 50% by 2030

Biden signed with Ukrainian President Zelensky a ten-year US-Ukraine Security Agreement to help them win against Russia and meet the standards it will need to be ready for EU and NATO membership after the war

Biden also spearheaded efforts at the G7 meeting to secure $50 billion for Ukraine from the 7 top economic nations

Announced $500 million for the development of new non-injection vaccines against Covid  supporting a clinical trial of 10,000 people testing a vaccine in pill form and two other vaccines administered as nasal sprays

$404 million in additional humanitarian assistance for Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank and the region

$142 million for drought resilience and boosting water supplies which will provide about 40,000 acre-feet of annual recycled water, for about 160,000 people a year in California, Hawaii, Kansas, Nevada and Texas. 

Also supporting 4 water desalination projects in Southern California. Desalination is proving to be an important tool used by countries with limited freshwater

Biden took the lead at the G7 on the Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment, a global program to connect the developing world to investment in its infrastructure from the G7 nations. 

Heavy investment in the Lobito Corridor, an economic zone that runs from Angola, through the Democratic Republic of Congo, to Zambia. The PGI has helped connect the 3 nations by rail allowing land-locked Zambia and largely landlocked DRC access to Angolan ports. Also is investing in a $900 million solar farm in Angola, and got a $5 billion dollar investment from Microsoft for expanding digital access in Kenya, Indonesia, and Malaysia. 

Week 23

On the 12th anniversary of President Obama's DACA program President Biden announced a new pathway to legal status and eventual citizenship for Dreamers

Biden also announced protections for the undocumented spouses and children of US citizens

IRS announced that it'll close a tax loophole used by the ultra rich and corporations and believes it'll raise $50 billion in revenue

$850 million to monitor, measure, quantify and reduce methane emissions from the oil and gas sector

Administration took steps to protect the nations Old Growth Forests, greatly restricting any logging against land owned by the federal government

Also touted the $1.4 billion invested in the 20% of America’s forests in urban settings such as parks through Biden’s Investing in America agenda

Released new rules tying government support for clean energy to good paying jobs. To qualify for massive tax credits, companies will have to offer higher wages and better conditions

Announced large reductions in student loan payments, and even a pause for some, starting in July

Biden Administration celebrated the 1 Millionth pension protected under the American Rescue Plan. 

Thanks to the Butch Lewis Act passed in 2021, the government stepped in to secure the pensions of 103,000 Bakery and Confectionery Union workers which were facing a devastating 45% cut- bringing to 1 million the number of workers and retirees whose pensions have been secured by the Biden Administration, which has supported 83 different pension funds, protecting them from an average of 37% cut.

$900 million for the next generation of nuclear power to invest in smaller and more flexible nuclear reactors with smaller footprints

Harris announced a $1.5 billion dollar aid package to Ukraine for repairing the devastated energy sector, emergency infrastructure repair, and humanitarian assistance

$315 million in new food, water, and malnutrition treatment aid for Sudan during their ongoing civil war which has led to nearly apocalyptic conditions in the country. USAID director warned that Sudan could quickly become the largest famine the world has seen since the 1980s when million people died over 2 years in Ethiopia. 

Bonus: Maryland Governor pardoned more than 175,000 people for marijuana convictions, mirroring Biden’s pardoning of people convicted of federal marijuana charges in 2022 and 2023

Week 24

US Surgeon General declared for the first time ever, firearm violence a public health crisis and recommended firearm restrictions

Harris announced the $85 million in first grants to be awarded through a groundbreaking program to remove barriers to building more housing

Under President Biden more housing units are under construction than at any time in the last 50 years. Plans underway to build 2 million affordable housing units and invest $258 billion in housing overall.

Biden pardoned all former US service members convicted under the US Military's ban on gay sex

$1.8 Billion in new infrastructure building across all 50 states, 4 territories and Washington DC, focusing on smaller, often community-oriented projects that span jurisdictions, like repairing damage from permafrost melting in Alaska or electrifying a bus fleet in Maine

$2.7 billion to support domestic sources of nuclear fuel

$127 million to 6 states to help clean up legacy pollution from orphaned oil and gas wells

$469 million to help remove dangerous lead from older homes

Bonus: Biden’s student loan forgiveness hit a snag this week when federal courts in Kansas and Missouri blocked some elements. The Administration also suffered a setback to its efforts to regulate smog causing pollution which were rejected by the conservative majority on the Supreme Court. These legal setbacks underline the importance of courts and the ability to nominate judges and Justices over the next 4 years

Week 25

OSHA is putting forward the first ever federal safety regulation to protect workers from excessive heat in the workplace

 $1 Billion for 656 projects across the country aimed at helping local communities combat climate change fueled disasters like flooding and extreme heat

 flight cancellations at the lowest they've been in a decade

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg credited the Dept.'s new rules requiring automatic refunds for any cancellations or undue delays as driving the good numbers as well as the investment of $25 billion in airport infrastructure that was in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law

$600 million in the 3rd round of funding to reconnect communities divided by highways and other Infrastructure projects over the years, which most often affected racial minorities and poor areas.

The Biden Administration approved its 9th offshore wind power project

$504 million for 12 new Regional Technology and Innovation Hubs which will support high tech manufacturing jobs, as well as training for 21st century jobs for millions of Americans

$200 million to support improved care for older Americans, particularly those with Alzheimer’s and related dementia, by training health care providers in best practices, integrating geriatric training into primary care, and providing education for families and caregivers on supporting aging people.

$176 million to help support the development of a mRNA-based pandemic influenza vaccine

As part of the government's efforts to be ready before the next major pandemic, Moderna is working on an mRNA vaccine focused on the H5 and H7 avian influenza viruses, which experts fear could spread to humans and cause a Covid like event

Week 26

IRS announced it had managed to collect $1 billion in back taxes from high-wealth tax cheats through a program focused on persons with more than $1 million in yearly income who owed more than $250,000 in unpaid taxes. 

Thanks to funding from the Inflation Reduction Act, the IRS is able to undertake more enforcement against rich tax cheats after years of Republicans cutting the agency's budget, which they hope to do again if they win power this election.

$244 million dollar investment in the federal government’s registered apprenticeship program- focused on getting well paying blue collar opportunities to people

Republicans pledge to cut it, even as employers struggle to find qualified workers

$11 billion dollars in grants for the The Hudson River Tunnel- the most complex Infrastructure project in the nation would link New York and New Jersey by rail under the Hudson, improving and speeding connection throughout the Northeast

$1.7 billion to save or reopen auto factories and convert them for electric vehicles, which will save 15,000 skilled union worker jobs, and created 2,900 new high-quality jobs

Dept. of Housing and Urban Development reached a settlement over racial discrimination with the organization responsible for setting standards and qualifications for real estate appraisers, The Appraisal Foundation. 

Black and Latino home owners are far more likely to have their houses under valued than whites. Under the settlement with HUD, TAF (which last year was 94.7% White and 0.6% Black) will have to take serious steps to increase diversity and remove structural barriers to diversity.

Dept. of Justice disrupted an effort by the Russian government to influence public opinion through AI bots, shutting down nearly 1,000 twitter accounts linked to a Russian Bot farm focused on boosting support for Russia’s war against Ukraine.

$1.5 billion to help local authorities buy made in America buses, 80% of which will go toward zero or low-emission technology busses

Biden, Canadian Prime Minister, Finnish President signed agreement on the arctic to boost production of ice breaking ships and counter China’s dominance of that market and Russia's aggressive push into the arctic waters

$1.1 billion for greater rail safety to minimize rail crossings where possible and improve safety measures where not.

$120 million to help tribal communities prepare for climate disasters

$100 million in additional funds to help feed low income kids over the summer

If fully implemented SUN Bucks could help 30 million kids, but many Republican governors have refused the funding.

$100 million to the UN World Food Program to deliver urgently needed food assistance in Gaza. This will bring the total humanitarian aid given by the US to the Palestinian people since the war started in October 2023 to $774 million, the single largest donor nation

Senate confirmed the first Latina judge to serve on the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals, bringing the administration’s total judge appointments to 202.

Biden has appointed more black women to federal judgeships, more Hispanic judges, more Asian American judges, and more LGBT judges than any other President, including Obama's full 8 years in office. President Biden has also focused on backgrounds, appointing a record breaking number of former public defenders to judgeships, as well as labor and civil rights lawyers.

Bonus: At the NATO summit in Washington DC President Biden joined 32 allies in the Ukraine compact which confirmed their support for keeping a free and Democratic Ukraine in the face of Russian aggression. World leaders praised President Biden's experience and leadership during the NATO summit

Week 27

Biden announced the cancellation of $1.2 billion dollars worth of student loan debt, canceling the debt of 35,000 public service workers, such as teachers, nurses, and firefighters

After the supreme court struck down Biden’s original broader forgiveness plan, the administration has patchworked different plans together to cancel $168.5 billion for 4.8 million Americans so far

Biden announced actions to lower housing costs, make more housing available and called on Congress to prevent rent hikes

The plan calls for landlords who raise the rent by more than 5% a year to face losing major important tax benefits, the average rent has gone up by 21% since 2021

Also told federal agencies to see how unused property could be used for housing

Bureau of Land Management plans on building 15,000 affordable housing units on public land in southern Nevada

 USPS is examining 8,500 unused properties across America to be repurposed for housing

HHS is finalizing a new rule to make it easier to use federal property to house the homeless

Calling on lower levels of Gov to do so as well

$5 billion to replace or restore major bridges across the country

Executive Order aimed at boosting Latino college attendance through allowing institutions with 25% or more Latino students to more easily take advantage of federal programs and expand their reach to better serve students and boost Hispanic enrollment nationwide

$325 million in grants for housing and community development in 7 cities which have collectively pledged to develop over 6,500 new mixed-income units, including replacing 2,677 severely distressed public housing units. The cities will invest $2.65 billion – so that every $1 in HUD funds will generate $8.65 in additional resources

Biden took extensive new actions on immigration 

Allowing foreign born spouses and step children of American citizens without legal status to apply for it without having to leave the country

Easing Visa rules to allow Dreamers to get work visas to give them legal status and a pathway to citizenship

New rule expanding the federal TRIO program (which supports low-income and first generation college students transition from high school to college) to cover Dreamers

Plans to double number of immigration lawyers available to those going through immigration court

$160 million in grants to support Clean U.S. Manufacturing of Steel and Other Construction Materials

$203 million in humanitarian assistance for the people of Sudan where 25 million people are facing acute food insecurity due to war

Consumer Financial Protection Bureau put forward a new rule that would better regulate popular paycheck advance products to require lenders to tell customers up front about any and all fees and charges, as well as cracking down on deceptive "tipping" options

Week 28

$4.3 billion in Climate Pollution Reduction Grants to support community-driven solutions to fight climate change, and accelerate America’s clean energy transition

Administration announced a plan to phase out the federal government's use of single use plastics in food service operations, events, and packaging by 2027, and from all federal operations by 2035

White House hosted a summit on super pollutants with the goals of better measuring them and dramatically reducing them

$325 million in grants for climate justice, funded by the Inflation Reduction Act, 

to help weatherize and energy-efficiency upgrade homes for 35 tribes, to install onsite wastewater treatment systems throughout 17 Black Belt counties in Alabama, to support urban forestry, expanding tree canopy in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, and more 

Dept. of Interior approved 3 new solar projects on public land

Pledged $667 million to global Pandemic Fund to support Pandemic prevention, and readiness in low income nations who can't do it on their own

$240 million investment in tribal fisheries in the Pacific Northwest

IRS announced that thanks to funding from President Biden's Inflation Reduction Act, it'll be able to digitize much of its operations allowing taxpayers to retrieve all their tax related information from one source

IRS also announced that New Jersey will be joining the direct file program in 2025. In 2024 140,000 Americans were able to file this way, they collectively saved $5.6 million in tax preparation fees, claiming $90 million in returns

Republicans in Congress lead by Congressmen Adrian Smith of Nebraska and Chuck Edwards of North Carolina have put forward legislation to do away with direct file

Bonus: American law enforcement arrested co-founder of the Sinaloa Cartel, Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada

Week 29

Biden announced his plan to reform the Supreme Court and make sure no President is above the law. After the conservative majority ruled Trump has "absolute immunity" from any prosecution for "official acts" while president, Biden called for a constitutional amendment clarifying that presidents aren’t above the law

In response to a wide ranging corruption scandal involving Justice Clarence Thomas, Biden also called on Congress to pass a legally binding code of ethics for the Supreme Court, and endorsed the idea of term limits for the Justices

Biden Administration sent out an email to everyone who has a federal student loan informing them of upcoming debt relief options, mostly targeting run-away interest or those who have been making payments for over 20 years

Announced that the federal government would step in and protect the pension of 600,000 Teamsters, just the latest in a number of such pension protections the President has done in office.

Biden and Harris oversaw the dramatic release of American hostages from Russia in the largest prisoner exchange in post-soviet history at 24 people

A new Biden Administration rule banning discrimination against LGBT students takes effect, but faces major Republican resistance and lawsuits delaying implementation in red states

$2 billion to black and minority farmers who were the victims of historic discrimination and were improperly denied the loans they needed

Biden Administration took an important step to stop the criminalization of poverty by changing child safety guidelines so that poverty alone isn't grounds for taking a child into foster care

Administration agreed to a plan by the Democratic Governor of North Carolina to forgive the medical debt of 2 million people in the state (which has the 3rd highest medical debt in the nation)

Dept. of Transportation put forward a new rule requiring airlines to seat parents next to their children, with no extra cost

$3.5 billion to combat homelessness in grants to local organizations and programs

Pennsylvania and New Mexico would be joining the IRS' direct file program for 2025\

Bonus: President Biden welcomed families of released hostages into the oval office to call their loved ones on the plane home [video in week 29 post]

Week 30

$325 million to support State, territorial, DC, and tribal governments in buying new land for parks and outdoor recreation sites and the expansion and refurbishment of existing sites

$171 million to update and replace Birmingham, Alabama’s aging water system and remove all lead pipes

$2.2 billion in investments in the national power grid to help boost resiliency in the face of extreme weather

Justice Dept. won its massive antitrust case against Google, ruling it an illegal monopoly

Also has ongoing antitrust suits against Apple, while the Federal Trade Commission is suing Facebook and Amazon for their monopolist practices

$3.9 billion in direct aid to Ukraine to make up for massive budget shortfalls caused by the war with Russia. 

To help pay teachers, emergency workers, and other public employees, as well helping displaced persons, low-income families, and people with disabilities

$190 million to improve air quality and energy upgrades in K-12 schools

$424 million in additional humanitarian aid to the Democratic Republic of the Congo

Due to ongoing conflict and food insecurity, 25 million Congolese are in need of humanitarian aid

Senate confirmed 3 federal judge nominees, total Biden appointees now 205

Week 31

Announced the successful conclusion of the first negotiations between Medicare and pharmaceutical companies over drug prices. Savings on these first ten drugs are between 38% and 79% and will collectively save seniors $1.8 billion dollars in out of pocket costs

For years Medicare was not allowed to directly negotiate prices with drug companies leaving seniors to pay high prices. Thanks to Inflation Reduction Act, passed with no Republican support, this long time Democratic goal is now a reality

This is on top of capping insulin costs at $35/month and all out of pocket drug costs at $2,000 a year starting for Medicare recipients

Administration launched crackdown of companies wasting consumer time

Proposed rules that require companies to make canceling a subscription or service as easy as signing up for it

Requiring automatic refunds for canceled flights

Working on rules to require companies to allow customers to speak to a real person with just one button click

Working on rules around chatbots, particularly their use from banks

Working on rules to ban companies from posting fake reviews, suppressing honest negative reviews, or paying for positive reviews

Taking steps to require insurance companies to allow health claims to be submitted online

The Bidens announced further funding as part of the President's Cancer Moonshot which aims to cut the number of cancer deaths in half over the next 25 years

Harris announced a plan to lower housing costs- offering $25,000 to first time buyers for down-payments, building of 3 million more housing units, and $40 billion innovation fund to spur innovative housing construction- all in addition to Biden's calls for a $10,000 tax credit for first time buyers and to punish landlords who raise the rent by over 5%

Biden Designates a national monument at the site of the 1908 Springfield Race Riot, where thousands of white residents destroyed black homes and businesses and 17 people died. As a direct result of the riot, black community leaders and white allies met a few months later in New York and founded the NAACP

$775 million to help cap and clean up orphaned oil and gas wells

Harris announced plans to ban price-gouging in the food and grocery industries

In response to this pressure from Democrats on price gouging, the supermarket giant Kroger proposed dropping prices by a billion dollars

Week 32

$521 million to help increase the number of electric vehicle charging ports

Dept. of The Interior announced the first ever lease for off-shore wind power in Oregon

Finalized the protection of 28 million acres of public lands across Alaska

$558 Million for improving maternal health

Announced that Maine will join the IRS' Direct File program for tax year 2025 which allows taxpayers to file, for free, simple returns with the IRS instead of paying for services like TurboTax

Week 33

$7.3 billion in clean energy investment for rural communities

Administration announced a historic 10th offshore wind project, this one in Maryland

Executive Order aimed at supporting and expanding unions directing all federal agencies to take steps to recognize unions, not interfere with the formation of unions and reach labor agreements on federally supported projects

$1 billion to make local roads safer to 354 local communities across America to improve roadway safety and prevent deaths and serious injuries

Since National Roadway Safety Strategy launched in 2022 traffic fatalities have decreased for 9 straight quarters

$430 million to support America's aging hydropower- most dams were built in the New Deal Era, and need to be updated for safety

$300 million to help support tribal nations, and US territories cut climate pollution and boost green energy

investing $179 million in literacy to help support states research, develop, and implement evidence-based literacy interventions to help students achieve key literacy milestones

US government secured the release of 135 political prisoners from Nicaragua jailed by the dictator there since political protests started in 2018

Justice Dept. announced the disruption of a major effort by Russia to interfere with the 2024 US Elections. A Russian propaganda network spent $10 million to help spread Russian propaganda and help sway the election in favor of Trump and the Republicans as well as disrupting American society

Harris outlined her plan for Small Businesses at a campaign stop in New Hampshire- she wants to expand from $5,000 to $50,000 tax incentives for startup expenses which would help 25 million new small businesses over 4 years

Week 34

Biden marked the 30th anniversary of the passage of the Violence Against Women Act (which was written by him as a senator). He announced $690 million in grants to support survivors of gender-based violence.

Announced a new rule to force insurance companies to treat mental health care the same as medical care

Announced that 50 million Americans, 1 in every 7, have gotten health insurance through Obamacare's marketplaces

IRS announced that it has recovered $1.3 billion in back taxes from wealthy tax dodgers. The Inflation Reduction Act funded the IRS to chase high income tax cheats, which Republicans have been underfunding for years to hinder the ability to make the wealthy pay their fair share. IRS has collected over a Billion Dollars in back taxes from the richest Americans, so far this year

Dept. of The Interior and White House Climate Advisor Ali Zaidi highlighted the 41 renewable energy projects approved on public land by the administration

$236 million to help fight forest fires and restore landscapes damaged by recent wildfires

$157 million in wetland conservation focused on protecting bird habitats

Senate confirmed 4 federal judge nominees, total Biden appointees now 209

Week 35

$1.3 billion in new funding for Historically Black Colleges and Universities which have proven to be far better at boosting the long term economic prospects of graduates than non-HBCU colleges. Bulk of funding will go directly to helping students afford college.

Dept. of Transportation celebrated 60,000 infrastructure projects funding by the Biden-Harris Bipartisan Infrastructure Law

From major multi-state projects to small town railway crossings every project was lead by a local community in need not a make-work project dreamed up in Washington

Over $3 billion to support the battery sector in 25 projects across 14 states supporting over 12,000 jobs

Maine and Rhode Island both launched a partnership with the federal government to help save low income families money on their utility bills

$156 million to help bring solar power to low-income New Mexico residents as part of the "Solar for All" project to help low-income people afford the switch over to solar power

Announced the first ever leases for wind power in the Gulf of Maine

Senate confirmed 2 federal district judges and 1 appointment to the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, total Biden appointees now 212

Week 36

Announced new actions to curb gun violence at the one year anniversary of the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention such as an Executive Order combating machine gun conversion devices, 3-D printed guns, and addresses active shooter drills at schools

One year anniversary of the American Climate Corps has seen 15,000 young people connected to well paid jobs in climate resilience. A new Environmental Justice Climate Corps program was announced which will connect 250 American Climate Corps members with local communities and help them achieve environmental justice projects

Announced that 4.2 million small business owners and self-employed people get their health insurance through the ACA marketplace. The self-employed are 3 times as likely as other Americans to use the marketplaces for their insurance

Pressed freight railroad companies to close the gap and offer paid sick time to all their employees. Under Biden's leadership the number of Class I freight railroad workers with paid sick days increased from 5% to 90%. Now he is pushing to get it for the last 10%.

$965 million to help school districts buy clean energy buses

The administration took another step in its historic efforts to protect the Colorado River System by signing 5 water conservation agreements with local water authorities in California and Arizona conserving over 717,000 acre-feet of water by 2026

$254 million to help support local parks, the largest such investment in history

$1.5 billion to help combat opioid addiction and prevent opioid overdose deaths

$466.5 million in food assistance and development worldwide this year, including helping to feed 1.2 million children and helping 200,000 farmers shift to climate-smart agriculture in low-income countries

First Lady announced at UN meeting a partnership with USAID and UNICEF to end childhood exposure to lead worldwide

Senate approved another federal judge, total Biden appointees now 213

Week 37

Biden and Harris have led the federal response to Hurricane Helene earning praise from both Republican and Democratic local leaders. Thousands of federal workers have given out over 8 million meals, and 7 million liters of water. Harris announced the federal government will reimburse state and local government 100% of the costs from Helene

A strike by the International Longshoremen’s Association, that briefly shut down ports, ended in a tentative deal to give them a 62% raise, after Biden directed the Secretary of Transportation to take the lead pressuring management to make a deal with the workers

Harris announced new actions to help those struggling with medical debt- 

Requiring debt collectors to confirm debts are valid and accurate before engaging in collection actions

Cracking down on debt collectors that collect on debt that is not owed by patients

DoD announced that it was reducing pricing for civilians who get medical treatment at DoD hospitals

Crack down on tax-exempt hospitals who are required by law to offer financial assistance but often do not

$62 Billion in infrastructure funding for 2025 for roads, bridges, high speed rail, ports, airports, and high speed internet

$1 Billion dollars of investment in America's passenger rail future to help expand and modernize intercity passenger rail nationwide. (Coming on top of $8.2 billion in investments announced in December 2023)

$2.8 billion joint project between Dept.s of Energy and Agriculture to bring 100% carbon pollution-free energy to the rural Midwest

IRS announced that 30 million Americans, across 24 states will qualify for free direct filing of their taxes in 2025

$7.7 billion in funding for Climate-Smart Practices on Agricultural Lands

$1.5 billion in investments in transmission infrastructure to help ensure our grid is reliable and resilient

Week 38

Biden announced a new EPA rule that will require all lead pipes in America's drinking water systems to be replace within 10 years

Harris plans to expand Medicare to cover home health care. Currently long term care is only covered by Medicaid, the health program for the poor, so people must spend all their savings before they can qualify. This would allow more seniors to stay in their homes and would be a gamechanger for disabled Americans, who also get coverage from Medicare

Medicare released a preliminary list of 101 generic drugs which it would cover that would cost $2 or less for a month for enrollees. Thanks to the Inflation Reduction Act, Medicare will be allowed to pay for generic drugs, which was long resisted by drug companies

Administration’s Domestic Policy Advisor announced they had blown past goal of hiring 250,000 student support staff for 2024, with 320,000 tutors, mentors, student success coaches, postsecondary transition coaches, and support coordinators nationwide

$420 million to help get rid of lead paint and other lead hazards from homes

Week 39

Announced they had forgiven the student loan debt of 1 million public sector workers through the Public Service Loan Forgiveness, which was passed in 2007 but almost impossible to access until the Biden Administration’s overhauls

Federal Trade Commission finalizes its "one-click to cancel" rule which requires businesses to make it as easy to cancel a subscription as it was to sign up for it

Announced there are 1.7 million more construction and manufacturing jobs and 700,000 more jobs in the transportation sector since the start of the administration, and 400,000 more union workers than in 2021. 

60,000 Infrastructure projects across the nation have been funded by the Biden-Harris Bipartisan Infrastructure Law

$2 billion to protect the U.S. power grid against growing threats of extreme weather

$125 million to help upgrade older diesel engines to low or zero-emission solutions

Dept. of The Interior and State of California broke ground on the Salton Sea Species Conservation Habitat Project restoring and protecting a total of 5,000 acres of land in California’s largest lake

$900 Million in investment in next generation nuclear power, developing smaller lighter reactors which in theory should be easier to deploy

The federal government took two big steps to increase the rights of Alaska natives. 

The Departments of The Interior and Agricultural finalized an agreement to strengthen Alaska Tribal representation on the Federal Subsistence Board

Dept. of Interior  signed 3 landmark co-stewardship agreements with Alaska Native Tribes

$860 million to help support solar energy in Puerto Rico

Dept. of Interior announced it had approved the Fervo Cape Geothermal Power Project, a major step forwards towards geothermal energy of public lands and the goal of a carbon pollution-free power sector by 2035

Bonus: Biden meets with a Kindergarten Teacher whose student loans were forgiven this week [video in week 39 link]

Week 40

Biden issued the first presidential apology on behalf of the federal government to America's Native American population for the Indian boarding school policy

Proposed a new rule which would make contraceptive medication (the pill) free over the counter with most Insurance

EPA announced its finalized rule strengthening standards for lead paint dust in pre-1978 housing and child care facilities. The new standards set the lowest level of lead particle that can be identified by a lab as the standard for requiring lead remediation

$50 million dollar fine against American Airlines for its treatment of disabled passengers and their wheelchairs. Half the fine will go to replacing such damaged wheelchairs

Biden administration has leveled a historic # of fines against airlines ($225 million) for their failures. Also published an Airline Passengers with Disabilities Bill of Rights, passed a rule on accessible lavatories on aircraft, and is drafting a rule to make airlines replace lost or damaged wheelchairs with equal equipment at once

$430 million dollars to help boost domestic clean energy manufacturing in former coal communities in 15 different towns

$4.2 billion in new infrastructure investment for 44 projects across the country

$200 million to replace aging natural gas pipes saving the average consumer over $900 on gas bills and removing 1,000 metric tons of methane pollution, annually

$244 million to address legacy pollution in Pennsylvania coal country

Data shows that President Biden's Inflation Reduction Act (passed with Vice-President Harris' tie breaking vote) has saved seniors $1 billion dollars on out-of-pocket drug costs by capping yearly out of pocket costs and allowing generic drugs and price negotiation

Announced new proposed rule to bring student debt relief for 8 million struggling borrowers

Despite roadblocks from Republicans at all levels, the administration has managed to bring student loan forgiveness to 5 million Americans so far through different programs patchworked together. The new proposed rule to bring it to 8 million more can’t be finalized before 2025, so the election will decide its fate

$1.5 billion in 92 partner-driven conservation projects aimed at making farming more sustainable and environmentally friendly

What Joe Biden and Kamala Harris did in 2024.

I started this project back in January and for most of a year, every week, I came up with the highlights of what the Biden-Harris Administration did. I did it because it felt to me our media and national conversion was broken, our government was doing huge things that it felt like almost no one knew about. It's amazing how often I struggled to find a single news source that wanted to cover a huge life changing project.

This is the last Friday before Election Day, and if you haven't already voted, take a minute to go back and look at the last 40 weeks, and decide, do you like these things or want literally the reverse on every issue.

Week 1 January 19th

Week 2 January 26th

Week 3 February 2nd

Week 4 February 9th

Week 5 February 16th

Week 6 February 23rd

Week 7 March 1st

Week 8 March 8th

Week 9 March 15th

Week 10 March 22nd

Week 11 March 29th

Week 12 April 5th

Week 13 April 12th

Week 14 April 19th

Week 15 April 26th

Week 16 May 3rd

Week 17 May 10th

Week 18 May 18th

Week 19 May 24th

Week 20 May 31st

Week 21 June 7th

Week 22 June 14th

Week 23 June 21st

Week 24 June 28th

Week 25 July 5th

Week 26 July 12th

Week 27 July 19th

Week 28 July 26th

Week 29 August 2nd

Week 30 August 9th

Week 31 August 16th

Week 32 August 30th

Week 33 September 6th

Week 34 September 13th

Week 35 September 20th

Week 36 September 27th

Week 37 October 4th

Week 38 October 11th

Week 39 October 18th

Week 40 October 25th

Feel free to reblog this or go back and reblog a favorite, one that impacts your life or the one from the week of your birthday, whatever.

and remember to read past the headlines and dig to find out what your government is up to, it might shock you how much is happening that no one talks about.

[beemovieerotica]

struggling with how to word this, but putting it out there anyway:

i can fully understand the posts on here from a lot of americans being tired of "vote blue no matter who" posts when the #1 thing that people are constantly (and sometimes only?) addressing is how the republican party is going treat trans/queer people if elected.

it's part of an unfortunate pattern of prioritizing the effects on a demographic that includes white + upper class people, when people of color and those in the global south are actively and currently being killed or relegated to circumstances in which their survival is very unlikely

it is genuinely exhausting to witness this, and i was also on the fence about even participating in voting because i a) felt like it didn't matter and b) every time i voiced being frustrated with the current state of the country, white queer people would immediately step in with "but what about trans people!" -> (i am mixed race trans man)

and i say this with unending patience toward people who do this, because i know that it's not something they actively think about. but everyone already knows how the republican party is going to treat queer people. you are probably talking to another queer person when you bring up project 2025. the issue is that, for those of us who aren't white, or for those of us who are but who are conscious of ongoing struggles for people of color worldwide, the safety of people around the world feels more urgent than our own. that is the calculation that's being made.

you're not going to win votes for the democratic party by dismissing or minimizing these realities and by continually centering (white) queer people.

very few people on here and twitter are actually talking about issues beyond queer rights that concern people of color, or how the two administrations differ on these issues instead of constantly circling back to single-issue politics. this isn't an exhaustive list. but these are the issues that have actually altered my perspective and motivated me to the point of committing to casting a vote

the biden administration has been engaged in a years-long fight to allow new applicants to DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, the program that allows undocumented individuals who arrived as children to remain in the country) after the Trump administration attempted to terminate it. the program is in limbo currently because of the actions of Trump-backed judges, with those who applied before the ruling being allowed to stay, but no new applications are being processed. Trump has repeatedly toyed with the idea of just deporting the 1.8 million people, but he continues to change his mind depending on whatever the fuck goes on in his head. he cannot be relied on to be sympathetic toward people of hispanic descent or to guarantee that DREAMers will be allowed stay in the country. biden + a democratic controlled congress will allow legal challenges to the DACA moratorium to gain ground.

the biden administration is open to returning and protecting portions of culturally important indigenous land in a way that the trump administration absolutely does not give a fuck. as of may 2024, they have established seven national monuments with plans to expand the San Gabriel Monument where the Gabrielino, Kizh / Tongva, the Chumash, Kitanemuk, Serrano, and Tataviam reside. the Berryessa Snow Mountain is also on the list, as a sacred region to the Patwin.

i'm recognizing that the US's plans for clean energy have often come into conflict with tribal sovereignty, and the biden administration could absolutely do better in navigating this. but the unfortunate dichotomy is that there would be zero commitment or investment in clean energy under a trump-led government, which poses an astounding existential threat and destabilizing force to the global south beyond any human-to-human conflict. climate change has caused and will continue to cause resource shortages, greater natural disasters, and near-lethal living conditions for those in the tropics - and the actions of the highest energy consumers (US) are to blame. biden has funneled billions of dollars into climate change mitigation and clean energy generation - trump does not believe that any of it matters.

i may circle back to this and add more as it comes up, but i'm hoping that those who are skeptical / discouraged / tired of the white queer-centric discourse on tumblr and twitter can at least process some of this. please feel free to add more articles + points but i'm asking for the sake of this post to please focus on issues that affect people of color.

[thebrainofmae]

My last post on this didn’t get a ton of traction so I’m trying again. The latest budget proposal for NYC includes a $58.3 million cut to public libraries.

Previous cuts forced NYC public libraries to close on Sundays, and this further round of cuts would likely force libraries to end weekend service entirely. Additionally, it would mean further cuts to programming and the indefinite delay of reopening libraries that have been closed for renovation, which would leave entire neighborhoods without a library.

There is a preliminary budget hearing on May 21, and until then libraries are asking people to sign a letter here to urge the mayor’s office and city council to reverse the cuts.

I know things are terrible in a lot of ways right now and people probably feel overwhelmed and burnt out, but signing this letter (or reblogging this post) is a small, quick, concrete way to make a difference.

[inkskinned]

the thing is there's like, a point of oversaturation for everything, and it's why so many things get dropped after a few minutes. and we act like millennials or gen z kids "have short attention spans" but... that's not quite it. it's more like - we did like it. you just ruined it.

capitalism sees product A having moderate success, and then everything has to come out with their "own version" of product A (which is often exactly the same). and they dump extreme amounts of money and environmental waste into each horrible simulacrum they trot out each season.

now it's not just tiktokkers making videos; it's that instagram and even fucking tumblr both think you want live feeds and video-first programming. and it helps them, because videos are easier to sneak native ads into. the books coming out all have to have 78 buzzwords in them for SEO, or otherwise they don't get published. they are making a live-action remake of moana. i haven't googled it, but there's probably another marvel or starwars something coming out, no matter when you're reading this post.

and we are like "hi, this clone of project A completely misses the point of the original. it is soulless and colorless and miserable." and the company nods and says "yes totally. here is a different clone, but special." and we look at clone 2 and we say "nope, this one is still flat and bad, y'all" and they're like "no, totally, we hear you," and then they make another clone but this time it's, like, a joyless prequel. and by the time they've successfully rolled out "clone 89", the market is incredibly oversaturated, and the consumer is blamed because the company isn't turning a profit.

and like - take even something digital like the tumblr "live streaming" function i just mentioned. that has to take up server space and some amount of carbon footprint; just so this brokenass blue hellsite can roll out a feature that literally none of its userbase actually wants. the thing that's the kicker here: even something that doesn't have a physical production plant still impacts the environment.

and it all just feels like it's rolling out of control because like, you watch companies pour hundreds of thousands of dollars into a remake of a remake of something nobody wants anymore and you're like, not able to afford eggs anymore. and you tell the company that really what you want is a good story about survival and they say "okay so you mean a YA white protagonist has some kind of 'spicy' love triangle" and you're like - hey man i think you're misunderstanding the point of storytelling but they've already printed 76 versions of "city of blood and magic" and "queen of diamond rule" and spent literally millions of dollars on the movie "Candy Crush Killer: Coming to Eat You".

it's like being stuck in a room with a clown that keeps telling the same joke over and over but it's worse every time. and that would be fine but he keeps fucking charging you 6.99. and you keep being like "no, i know it made me laugh the first time, but that's because it was different and new" and the clown is just aggressively sitting there saying "well! plenty of people like my jokes! the reason you're bored of this is because maybe there's something wrong with you!"

[phantomrose96]

The conversation around AI is going to get away from us quickly because people lack the language to distinguish types of AI--and it's not their fault. Companies love to slap "AI" on anything they believe can pass for something "intelligent" a computer program is doing. And this muddies the waters when people want to talk about AI when the exact same word covers a wide umbrella and they themselves don't know how to qualify the distinctions within.

I'm a software engineer and not a data scientist, so I'm not exactly at the level of domain expert. But I work with data scientists, and I have at least rudimentary college-level knowledge of machine learning and linear algebra from my CS degree. So I want to give some quick guidance.

What is AI? And what is not AI?

So what's the difference between just a computer program, and an "AI" program? Computers can do a lot of smart things, and companies love the idea of calling anything that seems smart enough "AI", but industry-wise the question of "how smart" a program is has nothing to do with whether it is AI.

A regular, non-AI computer program is procedural, and rigidly defined. I could "program" traffic light behavior that essentially goes { if(light === green) { go(); } else { stop();} }. I've told it in simple and rigid terms what condition to check, and how to behave based on that check. (A better program would have a lot more to check for, like signs and road conditions and pedestrians in the street, and those things will still need to be spelled out.)

An AI traffic light behavior is generated by machine-learning, which simplistically is a huge cranking machine of linear algebra which you feed training data into and it "learns" from. By "learning" I mean it's developing a complex and opaque model of parameters to fit the training data (but not over-fit). In this case the training data probably includes thousands of videos of car behavior at traffic intersections. Through parameter tweaking and model adjustment, data scientists will turn this crank over and over adjusting it to create something which, in very opaque terms, has developed a model that will guess the right behavioral output for any future scenario.

A well-trained model would be fed a green light and know to go, and a red light and know to stop, and 'green but there's a kid in the road' and know to stop. A very very well-trained model can probably do this better than my program above, because it has the capacity to be more adaptive than my rigidly-defined thing if the rigidly-defined program is missing some considerations. But if the AI model makes a wrong choice, it is significantly harder to trace down why exactly it did that.

Because again, the reason it's making this decision may be very opaque. It's like engineering a very specific plinko machine which gets tweaked to be very good at taking a road input and giving the right output. But like if that plinko machine contained millions of pegs and none of them necessarily correlated to anything to do with the road. There's possibly no "if green, go, else stop" to look for. (Maybe there is, for traffic light specifically as that is intentionally very simplistic. But a model trained to recognize written numbers for example likely contains no parameters at all that you could map to ideas a human has like "look for a rigid line in the number". The parameters may be all, to humans, meaningless.)

So, that's basics. Here are some categories of things which get called AI:

"AI" which is just genuinely not AI

There's plenty of software that follows a normal, procedural program defined rigidly, with no linear algebra model training, that companies would love to brand as "AI" because it sounds cool.

Something like motion detection/tracking might be sold as artificially intelligent. But under the covers that can be done as simply as "if some range of pixels changes color by a certain amount, flag as motion"

2. AI which IS genuinely AI, but is not the kind of AI everyone is talking about right now

"AI", by which I mean machine learning using linear algebra, is very good at being fed a lot of training data, and then coming up with an ability to go and categorize real information.

The AI technology that looks at cells and determines whether they're cancer or not, that is using this technology. OCR (Optical Character Recognition) is the technology that can take an image of hand-written text and transcribe it. Again, it's using linear algebra, so yes it's AI.

Many other such examples exist, and have been around for quite a good number of years. They share the genre of technology, which is machine learning models, but these are not the Large Language Model Generative AI that is all over the media. Criticizing these would be like criticizing airplanes when you're actually mad at military drones. It's the same "makes fly in the air" technology but their impact is very different.

3. The AI we ARE talking about. "Chat-gpt" type of Generative AI which uses LLMs ("Large Language Models")

If there was one word I wish people would know in all this, it's LLM (Large Language Model). This describes the KIND of machine learning model that Chat-GPT/midjourney/stablediffusion are fueled by. They're so extremely powerfully trained on human language that they can take an input of conversational language and create a predictive output that is human coherent. (I am less certain what additional technology fuels art-creation, specifically, but considering the AI art generation has risen hand-in-hand with the advent of powerful LLM, I'm at least confident in saying it is still corely LLM).

This technology isn't exactly brand new (predictive text has been using it, but more like the mostly innocent and much less successful older sibling of some celebrity, who no one really thinks about.) But the scale and power of LLM-based AI technology is what is new with Chat-GPT.

This is the generative AI, and even better, the large language model generative AI.

(Data scientists, feel free to add on or correct anything.)

[nasa]

A simulated image of NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope’s future observations toward the center of our galaxy, spanning less than 1 percent of the total area of Roman’s Galactic Bulge Time-Domain Survey. The simulated stars were drawn from the Besançon Galactic Model.

Exploring the Changing Universe with the Roman Space Telescope

The view from your backyard might paint the universe as an unchanging realm, where only twinkling stars and nearby objects, like satellites and meteors, stray from the apparent constancy. But stargazing through NASA’s upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will offer a front row seat to a dazzling display of cosmic fireworks sparkling across the sky.

Roman will view extremely faint infrared light, which has longer wavelengths than our eyes can see. Two of the mission’s core observing programs will monitor specific patches of the sky. Stitching the results together like stop-motion animation will create movies that reveal changing objects and fleeting events that would otherwise be hidden from our view.

Watch this video to learn about time-domain astronomy and how time will be a key element in NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope’s galactic bulge survey. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

This type of science, called time-domain astronomy, is difficult for telescopes that have smaller views of space. Roman’s large field of view will help us see huge swaths of the universe. Instead of always looking at specific things and events astronomers have already identified, Roman will be able to repeatedly observe large areas of the sky to catch phenomena scientists can't predict. Then astronomers can find things no one knew were there!

One of Roman’s main surveys, the Galactic Bulge Time-Domain Survey, will monitor hundreds of millions of stars toward the center of our Milky Way galaxy. Astronomers will see many of the stars appear to flash or flicker over time.

This animation illustrates the concept of gravitational microlensing. When one star in the sky appears to pass nearly in front of another, the light rays of the background source star are bent due to the warped space-time around the foreground star. The closer star is then a virtual magnifying glass, amplifying the brightness of the background source star, so we refer to the foreground star as the lens star. If the lens star harbors a planetary system, then those planets can also act as lenses, each one producing a short change in the brightness of the source. Thus, we discover the presence of each exoplanet, and measure its mass and how far it is from its star. Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center Conceptual Image Lab 

That can happen when something like a star or planet moves in front of a background star from our point of view. Because anything with mass warps the fabric of space-time, light from the distant star bends around the nearer object as it passes by. That makes the nearer object act as a natural magnifying glass, creating a temporary spike in the brightness of the background star’s light. That signal lets astronomers know there’s an intervening object, even if they can’t see it directly.

This artist’s concept shows the region of the Milky Way NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope’s Galactic Bulge Time-Domain Survey will cover – relatively uncharted territory when it comes to planet-finding. That’s important because the way planets form and evolve may be different depending on where in the galaxy they’re located. Our solar system is situated near the outskirts of the Milky Way, about halfway out on one of the galaxy’s spiral arms. A recent Kepler Space Telescope study showed that stars on the fringes of the Milky Way possess fewer of the most common planet types that have been detected so far. Roman will search in the opposite direction, toward the center of the galaxy, and could find differences in that galactic neighborhood, too.

Using this method, called microlensing, Roman will likely set a new record for the farthest-known exoplanet. That would offer a glimpse of a different galactic neighborhood that could be home to worlds quite unlike the more than 5,500 that are currently known. Roman’s microlensing observations will also find starless planets, black holes, neutron stars, and more!

This animation shows a planet crossing in front of, or transiting, its host star and the corresponding light curve astronomers would see. Using this technique, scientists anticipate NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope could find 100,000 new worlds. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Chris Smith (USRA/GESTAR)

Stars Roman sees may also appear to flicker when a planet crosses in front of, or transits, its host star as it orbits. Roman could find 100,000 planets this way! Small icy objects that haunt the outskirts of our own solar system, known as Kuiper belt objects, may occasionally pass in front of faraway stars Roman sees, too. Astronomers will be able to see how much water the Kuiper belt objects have because the ice absorbs specific wavelengths of infrared light, providing a “fingerprint” of its presence. This will give us a window into our solar system’s early days.

This animation visualizes a type Ia supernova.

Roman’s High Latitude Time-Domain Survey will look beyond our galaxy to hunt for type Ia supernovas. These exploding stars originate from some binary star systems that contain at least one white dwarf – the small, hot core remnant of a Sun-like star. In some cases, the dwarf may siphon material from its companion. This triggers a runaway reaction that ultimately detonates the thief once it reaches a specific point where it has gained so much mass that it becomes unstable.

NASA’s upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will see thousands of exploding stars called supernovae across vast stretches of time and space. Using these observations, astronomers aim to shine a light on several cosmic mysteries, providing a window onto the universe’s distant past. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

Since these rare explosions each peak at a similar, known intrinsic brightness, astronomers can use them to determine how far away they are by simply measuring how bright they appear. Astronomers will use Roman to study the light of these supernovas to find out how quickly they appear to be moving away from us.

By comparing how fast they’re receding at different distances, scientists can trace cosmic expansion over time. This will help us understand whether and how dark energy – the unexplained pressure thought to speed up the universe’s expansion – has changed throughout the history of the universe.

NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will survey the same areas of the sky every few days. Researchers will mine this data to identify kilonovas – explosions that happen when two neutron stars or a neutron star and a black hole collide and merge. When these collisions happen, a fraction of the resulting debris is ejected as jets, which move near the speed of light. The remaining debris produces hot, glowing, neutron-rich clouds that forge heavy elements, like gold and platinum. Roman’s extensive data will help astronomers better identify how often these events occur, how much energy they give off, and how near or far they are.

And since this survey will repeatedly observe the same large vista of space, scientists will also see sporadic events like neutron stars colliding and stars being swept into black holes. Roman could even find new types of objects and events that astronomers have never seen before!

Learn more about the exciting science Roman will investigate on X and Facebook.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space!

[islesnucks]

𝓿𝓸𝓲𝓬𝓮𝓶𝓪𝓲𝓵 - Mathew Barzal x Reader

Summary: what started as an accidentall voicemial to your ex boyfriend ended up becoming routine and maybe even more TW: none that i can think of

Word count: 3.9k A/N: completely made up game schedule btw

Masterlist Add yoruself to the taglist if you wanna be notified when i post the fic!

-

“Hey, it’s Mat.” His voice echoed through the phone, so familiar yet strangely distant now. You’d heard him speak in interviews, but this was different. He was addressing you, or at least the voicemail version of you. “I can’t answer right now, so you know what to do.”

You didn’t know what to do. Calling your ex-boyfriend, the one you had broken up with months ago, wasn’t something you had exactly planned. Yet, when the acceptance email for the program you had worked tirelessly for arrived, the one he had witnessed you pour your heart into, he was the person you wanted to share it with. So that’s what you were doing, trying no to overthink it before nerves got the best of you.

“Mat, hi. This is so random—H-how are you?” Thank God he didn’t answer, you were a stuttering mess leaving a voicemail imagine if it had been him on the other end instead. “I got in! Into the program I mean. I don’t know why, but I wanted to tell you. You helped me so much before—” you cut yourself again. It didn’t feel right to mention the break up like that, but what could you say? Before I broke up with you? Before I stumbled out of your apartment leaving you behind without an explanation?

“Fuck it. I can’t do this.” You pulled your phone away from your ear and touched the red dot.

That’s it. He didn’t need to know, he probably wouldn’t even care. Who would want their ex to call to tell them they were doing great? That maybe after all the breakup was worth it because they had gotten into the program they had neglected their relationship for? Too long, right?

A second later, realization struck like lightning – you had ended the call before deleting the voicemail. It had been sent.

“Oh no, no, no!” you exclaimed, eyes widening in horror. There was no turning back. Mat would undoubtedly hear you stumbling over your words. Why couldn’t you have just left well enough alone? The last thing he needed was you barging back into his life with a pathetic voicemail about something he likely moved on from. ‘He probably already despises me after how everything unfolded, and now this’ you thought.

You were wrong, because no longer than 5 minutes after everything had gone down your phone was buzzing in your hand, Mat’s contact bright in the center as he now waited for you to pick up for a change.

“Mat.” you picked up.

“Hey. You called me?” He sounded confused, for very obvious reasons. Nevertheless it was nice to hear his voice now directed at you.

“Yeah, right. I left you a voicemail.” You rolled your eyes. At least you sounded less nervous than earlier on the voicemail, but it was not less embarrassing.

Mat’s voice came through, cool and collected. “Oh, sorry, I didn’t check. I just saw the missed call and, you know.”

“Sure, sure.” you replied, trying to sound half as calm as he seemed to be with the whole situation.

“Do you want me to hear it or …” his offer hovered in the air.

“No! I mean, I can tell you.” You cringed at the thought of him hearing your rambling voicemail. “So, I called because I just got the mail. I got into the program!”

“Shut up! That’s great! Congratulations!” Mat’s excitement burst through the line. Your heart melted a little. After everything that had happened he sounded genuinely happy for you.

“Thank you, Maty.”

Mat’s tone softened. “You deserve it, after all the hard work you put into it. I knew you’d get it.”

You chuckled, the tension easing. “I know, I know. You told me like a million times. I was just insecure.”

For a second you let yourself imagine this was under other circumstances. You were still together and he was calling you right after practice or from another city in one of his roadies. He’d come back home eventually and hug you so tight you wouldn’t be able to breath, probably lift you up and spin you around a little. You wouldn’t be able to stop laughing and-

“I know …” Mat’s response brought you back to reality. The reality in which he wouldn’t knock on your door with his arms wide open.

His tone carried an easy understanding. He definitely knew about your insecurities. They played a huge role on why your relationship was the way it was right now: nonexistent.

“So that’s what the voicemail said?” He broke the silence.

“Yeah, basically. But you know, all giddy and stuff. Really embarrassing.”

Mat’s laughter grew louder, and you could practically see him shaking his head. “Oh, really? Well, now I have to hear it.”

“No, no, no.” you protested, your embarrassment deepening. “Seriously, don’t Barzal. I know where you live.”

But Mat insisted, his curiosity piqued. “Come on! Embrace the cringe. It can’t be that bad.”

He ended the call before you could object anymore, only to call you back a minute later. Mat’s laughter erupted again as soon as you picked up, and you couldn’t help but join in, the shared humor dissipating the lingering awkwardness. If you closed your eyes you could almost picture him with that scrunched up nose as he laughed.

“The ‘fuck it, i can’t do this’ was the best part by far.”

-

The familiar buzz of the MSG postgame show filled the cozy confines of your living room as Mat’s name flashed brightly on your phone, catching you off guard. Shannon and Hickey were in full praise mode, replaying Mat’s epic goal on loop, and there he was, the main attraction, waiting on the other end of the line for you to pick up.

You fumbled for your phone, a grin tugging at the corners of your lips as you swiped to answer. “Hey, I didn’t expect your call.” you remarked, the commentator’s voices still ringing in your ears.

“Bad timing?” Mat’s voice crackled through the phone, a hint of breathlessness underscoring his words – probably still riding the adrenaline high from the ice.

“No, no. It’s just that a second ago you were on my screen falling all over the ice.” you teased, imagining his less-than-graceful moments on the rink.

“I don’t fall that much!” he argued, sounding mildly offended.

“You do, but you also score, so it’s forgiven. Congrats on your almost hatty, by the way.” You chuckled, knowing how much he loathed falling a goal short. Always so hard on himself. 

Mat scoffed, clearly annoyed at missing the mark. “So, you watched tonight?”

“Obviously, I watch every game I can catch.” you replied, the excitement of the game still coursing through your veins. The thrill of watching Mat succeed, even from a distance, even after all that happened, was undeniable.

“You should come, you know. I’m sure the girls would love to see you.” Mat suggested, his voice tinged with a hint of longing.

“I don’t know, Mat. It’s not my place anymore.” you hesitated, letting the uncertainty hang in the air. You had to change the subject before your mind started spiraling.  “Anyway, why did you call?”

“Oh, right. I listened to your voicemail again!”

“So you called to tell me you haven’t actually deleted it like you promised?”

“I heard it right before the game and got 2 goals and 2 assists. I think it’ll become my new pregame ritual, honestly.” Mat admitted, his voice softer now, laced with a hint of nostalgia. Why had he chosen to hear it? That’s something he would save for himself for now. The shared memories of your past flitted between you, unspoken but palpable.

“Really? Want me to send embarrassing voicemails before every game?”

“I’d love it. Yes, please.” Mat replied with a laugh, the warmth of his laughter washing over you like a comforting embrace. The playful banter held a certain intimacy, a bridge between past flames and the uncharted territory of what lay ahead.

The banter flowed seamlessly, a blend of shared history and the current moment. The familiarity was comforting, but the unspoken complexities of your past lingered in the air, a delicate tension.

-

NYI vs. TBL - November 5th

“Hey, Barzy. I don’t know if you were joking or not but here’s your pregame embarrassing voicemail as solicited. You weren’t serious, right? Well fuck it, enjoy it or ignore me whatever.”

NYI vs. CGY - November 7th

“Just walked past that coffee shop where we had our third or fourth date I think. Remember how you choked over your latte when I lied and said I loved the Rangers?”

NYI vs. SEA - November 9th

“Hey, you won’t believe who I just saw. That guy that lives in the building across the street, the one that has your face tattooed on his left arm. He asked about you, told me to wish you good luck. So good luck from him … and from me. Good luck tonight.”

NYI vs. VAN - November 11th

“Hi! Your sister told me your family is going tonight, so send them a kiss from me, ok? … I-I keep in touch with her, I don’t know if you knew that or like maybe I should’ve told you? Are you ok with that? I’m sorry I just assumed you would be. Anyway, good luck! Say hi from me! Or don’t if you don’t want to-”

NYI vs. NYR - November 16th

“Dude. Rangers tonight. Don’t mess it up. May have bet on you guys with a guy from work, I don’t wanna have to pay for his lunch tomorrow. Please. Good luck, 13.”

NYI vs. PIT - November 18th

“Shit, shit, shit. Hope you can hear this before the game. I’m still getting used to the program’s schedule and all of that, I’m kind of a mess right now. Anyway, good luck!”

NYI vs. DET - November 20th

“Maty, hi! I know this is kind of dumb because I saw you like 10 minutes ago and I’m in the building but still thought I should leave the voicemail just in case. (Come on!) Ok I have to go, Sydney has a tone of gossip to catch me up on. Good luck!”

NYI vs. DAL - November 23th

“Hello Mr Barzal, I won’t be able to watch tonight, but still good luck! Even if you don’t win, I hope you score a goal, make an assist. That 8 game point streak you have going on is insane. I think I’ll start charging you for this if they are working so well.Good luck Barzy!”

NYI vs. STL - November 26th

“Hey! First of all, good luck! Second, I left my scarf at the Lee’s last night. It’s red, I was wearing it when you picked me up. Grace said Anders would give it to you tonight. Maybe we can meet for coffee tomorrow so you can give it back? Anyway, good luck!”

NYI vs. CHI - November 28th

“13, hello! I don’t have anything funny to tell you today so just good luck! Love you- shit, sorry. Habit I guess. Bye.”

NYI vs. NYR - November 30th

“You have zero new voicemails. To record a new personal greeting press one-”

-

You tried everything to get your mind off it, but it wasn’t working. The cup of tea was now cold in your hand and you couldn’t even pretend to care what was going on in the movie you had playing on your tv. The game had ended an hour ago but it was on replay in your mind.

It was silly to think it was your fault. You couldn’t influence the score of the match, the 5-1 loss against the Rangers wasn’t on you. However the outcome would’ve been different if their starplayer hadn’t been taking stupid penalties, losing the puck, causing turnovers. That could be on you partially.

The bell ringing caught you by surprise, almost dropping the cold tea. You got up to answer, even though you had a feeling you knew who was waiting by your building’s door.

“Hello?”

“It’s me.” The familiar voice needed no introduction.

“Mat? What are you doing here?” 

“Buzz me in.” he requests, and you could practically hear the determination in his tone. With a resigned sigh, you pressed the buzzer, knowing full well he wouldn’t leave until he got what he came for.

A few moments later, a knock sounded at the door, and you found yourself face to face with him. Determination was bright in his eyes, your heart started racing.

“What’s going on?” He rolled his eyes, clearly not impressed by your attempt at pretending not to know why he’s there.

“You didn’t leave a voicemail.” Mat strided in without waiting for an invitation, and the unspoken tension was palpable.

“Right, that. I guess I forgot. Sorry.” you lied, trying to sound convincing but knowing there’s no use, he’d know. You closed the door behind him almost instinctively, as if shutting out the forthcoming emotional storm that’s about to break in your apartment.

“You’ve been sending me a voicemail before every single game for the past month.” he remarked, his gaze keenly picking up on your avoidance. Frustration started to take over. He already had been in this position before, begging you for explanations and all you did was look away. “Please, don’t shut me out. Not again.”

“I got confused, okay? Why are we doing this? I’m your ex-girlfriend, I broke up with you, Mat. And now I’m going to your games and sending you voicemails every game? What even is this?”

At some point you started walking all over the living room, the distress was clear. Mat was better at hiding it, he stood still by the door like he had been since he walked in, but you could see his hands fidgeting. Neither of you had a clear head to take on what was about to come, chaos was inevitable.

“I don’t know, but I thought you liked this. I thought it was like an inside joke, our own thing.”

“It was that. But you’re not supposed to have that with your ex.” you said, trying to emphasize the last word for him, as if a reminder of your status would help the situation in any way. 

“We’re friends?” He furrowed his brows, and, had it not been for the situation you were in, you would’ve laughed at the way even he sounded so unsure of what he was saying.

“Mat, come on. It’s confusing, I know I was getting confused. It started with the voicemails, which was already something, but then we’re talking every day, I’m going to your games again and team’s gatherings, we’re hanging out again. I said ‘I love you’ on my last one!” You finally looked at him, baring it all. There was only one solution in your mind and it had to be taken no matter the pain it would undoubtedly cost you. “I think it’s better if we stop.”

There was a moment of silence, he looked at you as if trying to read through the wall you were hiding behind. Trying to decipher if it was you speaking or your insecurities had taken over again. Most importantly, trying to figure out if this time he had what it took to get to you before he lost you.

“I don’t want it to stop.” he said, determination clear in his voice. In a second he closed the gap between you. The proximity caught you off guard, you couldn’t remember the last time you were this close. “Tell me you don’t feel anything.” It sounded almost like a beg, but he didn’t care.

“We broke up.” you insisted, trying to sound all resolute.

“You broke up with me.” he corrected you, his gaze holding steady, slicing through your defenses.

“We weren’t working, Mat! We could barely see each other, and when we did, we were too tired or stressed. We fought a lot. We broke up.” It sounded almost childish the way you stubbornly persisted on it, like you needed to reassure yourself more than him how things had played out last time.

“Couples fight sometimes; it’s normal. I was stressed about the playoffs, and you were stressed about getting into the program. It was a bad moment, yes, but that’s over.”

“Other problems are gonna come up.”

“We can face them together, we fight and make up. That’s it, that’s how couples work.”

You paused for a second, it made no sense to keep on repeating yourself. It seemed like he had a solution for every obstacle you presented. He had come here for answers, it was time to give them to him even if you were answering older already forgotten questions.

“I was scared, Mat. I was scared and insecure, and it felt like I was ruining it all.” Tears start rolling down your face and there’s nothing he wants more than to hug you, keep you close to his chest, push the pain away; but he knows he shouldn’t. You’re finally letting down your guard, telling him what he’s been dying to hear for months; he has to give you space to be vulnerable. “I thought it was better to break things up before they got really nasty.” your voice wobbled.

“I get it, I really do. But you could’ve told me and I should’ve been more present, not left you alone to deal with our problems. We could’ve tried to make it work. ” He looked deep into your eyes, his own reflecting a mix of understanding and unwavering love. “I know I loved you more than enough to work through it.”

“I’m so sorry. I’m sorry about how I ended things, and I’m sorry about the voicemail and all the mess I’ve caused.” You tried to walk away from him, the proximity being too much, but he caught your arm making you face him once again.

Tears started streaming down his face as you tried to grapple with the weight of your own decisions. He looked you in the eyes, the determination from earlier is still there, even behind the tears those glossy eyes told you he wasn’t gonna leave in silence like last time. This time he had to leave it all out, even if he ended up hurt in the process.

“When you first called me I was too nervous to answer so I let it go to voicemail. I think even then I knew it wasn’t over for me, I knew hearing your voice would bring it all back.” You winced, acutely aware of the emotional turmoil you’ve caused. What you didn’t know was he wasn’t worried about pain coming back; what worried him was all the love he had for you and had pushed away after the break up coming back and once again not having where to put it.

“But then I wanted to hear you, the real you, not the voicemail, so I called you. I cannot tell you how happy it made me to hear you, like my heart was beating again after months of numbness. And you were telling me this great news, when you got that acceptance letter you wanted to tell me.” he continued, and you released a heavy breath, a half-smile forming on your face. He was right, the first person you wanted to share your triumph with was him, you hadn’t thought much about it back then but no it was so clear.

“I replayed your voicemail before the game that first time because I wanted to hear your voice. I didn’t realize how much I missed it until I heard you over the phone earlier that day, and all I wanted was to hear you again talking to me.” he confessed, a mixture of vulnerability and longing in his words. “At first I thought maybe I was making it up, you know? Maybe it was just my unresolved feelings, maybe there was nothing going on. But you called me first and then you kept on sending the voicemails. Things were going back to the way they were before. It felt like I was me again, like we were us again.”

Mat smiled thinking how everyone could notice; his friends, his teammates, his family, everyone could see the old Mat was back. He told them off, too afraid to consider you were all he was missing because he knew he didn’t have you back, not yet.

His hand gently cupped your face, sending a shiver down your spine. Closing your eyes, you leaned into his touch. You missed it, there was no denying it anymore. You missed it all too much—his touch, his voice, his energy, his very presence. Him.

“You said ‘I love you’ on the last voicemail. I replayed it like 20 times at least, just to hear those three words. From you, to me.” The weight of those three words hung in the air between the two of you after so long, it was electrifying. Your heart raced; he was about to say it, and you yearned to hear it.

“I love you.” he declared, and there was no ambiguity this time. It wasn’t a recall of your words; this time, it was his confession to you.

“Maty…” was all you managed to say; his nickname laden with tenderness and echoes of old fears that still lingered.

“I want this. I want you even if I can only see you two times a week and even if half that time you are studying or working or stressing over both. I want to be there with you. I want to fight and make up. I want all of it, the messy and ugly included.”

“I love you.” you finally whispered.

It was over. He loved you, you loved him, and there was nothing left to say.

In that breath-holding moment, he leaned down, his lips finally touching yours. It’s not just a kiss; it’s a wild ride through forgiveness, longing, and the silent agreement to dive back into the messy and the beautiful, hand in hand. He was smiling into the kiss, so were you. The taste of salt from their tears lingered, mingling with the sweetness of the moment. The kiss spoke of second chances and the magic of beginnings, a promise to rewrite the story that had once unraveled.

You pulled away, breathless and teary-eyed, yet a radiant joy painted across your faces. You laughed, a melody of relief and newfound hope. One of his hands was on your back as the other traveled from your face to the back of your head, pulling you against his chest. Your arms hugged his torso tight.

“I love you.” he mumbled against your head before placing a kiss on top.

-

NYI vs. MTL - December 1st

“Hey! Good luck tonight babe-”

“I don’t think it counts if I’m literally next to you when you record it.”

“Shush. Who’s the voicemail expert here? Me. Anyway, as I was saying before you interrupted me: good luck tonight, I love you.”

“I love you too.”

-

soooooo it’s here! hope you like it! like and reblogs are always appreciated!

it felt so good to write again and to share it too, hope i have more time this year to write more stuff

taglist:

@glassdanse @2manytabsopen @barbienoturbby @sweetlittlegingy @mcsteamylove98 @ttylfedora @chieflawyerpastatoad @iwantahockeyhimbo @fallinallincurls @jordiee95 @heatherawoowoo @barzysreputation @farabeezers @4ambagelbites @matwith1t @audryaho @maximoff-xmen @astrydis @joelsfarabees @bitchforbarzy @deloughrey @brias1201 @besthockeyfics @ya-pucking-nerd @hoiyheadharpies @mckenna4 @rosesvioletshardy @hockeyunits @siriusly-parker @ilyasorokinn @lam-ila @boqvistsbabe @theycallmecassie @ephemeral371 @hal3ynicol3 @angelblooddevil @besthockeyfics @beauvertime @picked-off-by-barzal @1316 @cherrygirl1229 @lunabean @random-readers-world @poufsouffle21 @barzysbaby @matbarzal13 @alwaysclassyeagle @wanbach23 @evaggreendaily

[batbux]

It's forty minutes into the latest state of the company press conference and Bruce has had to mute his mic entirely to avoid being turned into a meme AGAIN for sighing too much at his own event. For all that he's spent almost 20 years coaching his own children on not making scenes, he's really not much better. It's hot and he doesn't want to be here. His ribs hurt. He's tired. He's hungry. He's every excuse Dick or Jason have trotted out over the years.

(Tim understands company manners and can almost always be trusted to stick it out as long as he's allowed to vent his frustrations afterwards. He's recently taken to smashing ugly thrifted dishes. Stephanie and Damian have been collecting any ceramic not entirely pulverized and turning them into pavers for Alfred's garden.)

(Bruce gave up after Tim. He really only needs one kid to tag along to social events. If the kid start to outnumber him they start getting IDEAS.)

His distraction is why it takes two very rude repetitions of his name for him to take notice at the young reporter pushing his way to the front. Lucius stands, cutting off the project manager currently presenting and speaks into the mic.

"Please keep hold all questions until the end of the presentation, thank you."

"Mr. Wayne," the reporter tries again and Bruce waves away Lucius's further protests.

"Can I help you?" He asks, smiling with the full force of Brucie Wayne's charm behind it. It's been awhile since his last scandal, but if the press is inventing drama then it's less work for him.

The man holds up a photograph almost accusingly. He reeks of gotcha journalism.

Bruce squints towards him, unable to fully make out the contents of the photo. Dick may have been right when he gently suggested Bruce add glasses to his Brucie Wayne persona but that was a hill Bruce was still willing to die on. It was bad enough he had to have a prescription COWL.

"What do you have to say about the presence of your adopted son, Timothy Drake at the illegal mob in Robinson Park last Saturday?"

"Drake-Wayne," Bruce corrected because Tim hyphenated, damn it. He was the first of his children to let Bruce tag the Wayne name on and it mattered, damn it. "Wait do you mean-"

"How about reports of him kissing a man while there?"

"A blond man?" Bruce asked, finally giving up and crossing to take the photo for himself. "Oh. No, that's his boyfriend."

There was a beat of silence before Bruce realized his mistake. Just as the reporters began to squall, he dropped the blurry photo and began to speed walk off, phone suddenly in hand.

Through the podium's microphone, the gathered reporters heard one thing as Bruce evacuated the immediate vicinity.

"Tim? Don't be mad."

---

Despite Bruce's best efforts, he becomes a meme.

---

Immediately following the bombshell that Timothy Drake-Wayne had a boyfriend, social media blows up, clamoring for more information. They're ravenous for it, desperate. Tim doesn't have a personal social media presence but they stalk his professional accounts religiously. Bruce does have personal social media, but he maintains radio silence.

In the end, a Gotham based "influencer" stumbles across Dick Grayson and Damian Wayne getting donuts at Kosher Donuts and Co. Dick is personable, as always, and stops to speak with the young woman briefly.

"Yeah, Tim wasn't mad," he laughs when asked. "Just disappointed. But man, he knows how to milk it."

"Bruce is in the doghouse, huh?" she asks, full of false sympathy.

"A little bit," Dick says as Damian mumbles, "Titus would never share."

"But," Dick continued. "Tim's spun it so Bruce is on the hook for like, half a million in donations for local LGBT charities. Tim says it would hurt less if he sponsored a new shelter too, so that's something to look forward to."

"That's a lot of money! Where's it all going?"

"Oh you know," Dick says and gestures vaguely. "A lot of different programs."

"Yeah? Anything you personally want to see done with the funding?"

"Drag story time," Damian answers before Dick can. He looks intense. "But not for children. For dogs. In the shelter."

---

A day later, Tim breaks the silence. He goes live on Bruce's Instagram.

"So the problem was that Bruce thought the reporter was saying I was being unfaithful," Tim explains. "He totally forgot I wasn't out to everyone yet. Bruce was just worried because he's already told me if I break up with my boyfriend, he's not uninviting him from any future family events."

"Luckily, I was in fact just kissing my boyfriend at PRIDE. Just because people got shifty with the permits at the last second because of protestors doesn't make it an illegal mob. If you wanna hear about Wayne's and illegal mobs, talk to Dickie about his younger years. Nothing I do can compare."

[ghost-with-a-teacup]

Okay okay, hear me out.

A bantery sort of annoying best friend trope with Miguel O'Hara. Like, hes stubborn, but reader is just as stubborn and hard headed. So like, on a mission Miguel is like "Why werent you paying attention?" and SpiderPerson!Reader is like "You're a very distracting man." And then like, the classic upside down Spiderman kiss. Apologies if this is a mess, the brainrot is real.

𝐃𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠

Pairing: Miguel O'Hara x Reader

Warnings: None, just some good ol' fluff paired alongside some classic best friends to lovers. You know the dealio :3

It wasn’t easy being best friends with Miguel O’Hara.

He was stubborn, stoic, annoying, always thought he was right, and incredibly grumpy (almost all the time! It must be exhausting) amongst many other things. But all those things made him who he was, alongside the kindness and care he has for everyone, hidden behind that Spider-Society leader guise.

It wasn’t easy, but he was your best friend just as you were his. Your favourite person amongst the millions of people on this planet, and the billions upon trillions of people in the multiverse.

But it was even more difficult when you had the biggest raging crush on him. You felt like a little teenager, lost in the vastness of your own heart that quickly grew more and more fond of the person you loved with each day that passed.

Your feelings made you act silly and lovesick (and you knew damn well he noticed, he just never said anything about it), but they weren’t going anywhere for the time being so here they stayed.

They weren’t too great during missions though.

~

“Hey, Miguel~,” you say, sidling up to him with a stupid grin on your face. He stops you with a palm on your face, not allowing you to get too close.

“Ugh, what-?” he says, pulling his hand back in disgust. “Did you just lick me?!”

“Don’t put your hand in front of my face then, you should know by now the consequences of that,” you say with a tsk, before bursting into laughter at his expression.

“Unfortunately,” he sighs, rubbing it onto your suit. “Are you ready?”

“Ready for what?” you say, pretending to be confused.

“What do you mean what- The mission? Are you ready for the mission we’re supposed to be going on in the next minute,” he huffs incredulously.

“Obviously, Miguel,” you snort. “How long have we been doing this job? Have you so little faith in me?” you ask.

“Yes,” he deadpans, and you gasp.

“How dare you?” you say, pressing a hand to your chest in offence.

“You are the most dramatic person I know,” he says, glancing over toward you as he programs the watch to the universe you were both headed to.

“You love me,” you say in turn.

“Unfortunately,” he says, and you grin widely.

“Awwww, Miguel~,” you say, pulling him into a hug that he hesitantly returns (though you knew he loved hugs, he would just rather die than admit it).

“Alright, alright,” he says pulling away. “Focus up, we need to be on our A-game for this guy.”

“Aye, aye, captain! Lead the way,” you say, and he rolls his eyes but can’t quite conceal the smile on his face at your antics before his mask reforms on his face.

Together you both make your way through the portal, getting transported past thousands of worlds in mere seconds before arriving at the one with the anomaly.

“Oh, cool~,” you say with a childlike wonder. Around you is a world that looked like it came straight out of a painting, everything looking almost acrylic in nature and beauty.

“You saw this in the briefing,” he says to you but looks around himself with a sort of wonder.

“A picture on a screen is entirely different from seeing something like this in real life, Miguel,” you retort, still looking around in awe. Looking down at your own form, your costume was blended in splotches of your iconic colours, like you had walked right out of a portrait.

He doesn’t say anything to that, instead patting your head once before walking away toward the mission site.

“C’mon. The faster we finish up, the sooner we can head back. We can have a movie night back at my place, yeah?” he says, and you perk up immediately before running after him.

“That sounds perfect, ‘cause I baked too many cookies that I don’t know what to do with,” you say embarrassed, knowing full well that you had baked them for him. He always did love your baking.

You notice the side of his mask shifts upward slightly, a telltale sign that he was happy even with the mask concealing most of his expressions but you don’t say anything, only smiling softly to yourself.

“Lyla, do a full sweep of the building before we head in. I don’t want any surprises,” he calls out, and the AI pops up immediately.

“Ugh, so bossy,” she says, and you snort.

“You could say that again,” you say in turn, while Miguel only sighs.

“Are you two done insulting me yet?” he says, and you turn to face him, walking backwards as you do.

“Never!” you say, before you’re snatched off of the ground with a yelp. He calls out your name, immediately swinging in after you.

“NOT COOL DUDE,” you shout to the villain who had his tentacles wrapped around your waist, dangling you upside down as she stuck to the ceiling. “Shouldn’t you be in the sea, doing…whatever octopuses do?”

“This seems a lot more fun,” the villain says, her voice a gurgling sort of low tone that sounds much more ominous than it should.

You shoot your webs out onto the ceiling, trying to pull yourself up and out of her grasp to no avail, her hold too strong.

Bit by bit her hold continued to tighten, inhibiting your ability to breathe.

“H-hey, we can talk about this right?” you gasp out, but before you know it Miguel was flying up toward you.

He looked so serious and intent on getting you out, his muscles flexing as he held on to his webbing.

Quite frankly, it was hot.

So hot that you failed to notice that Miguel had smacked you out of the villain’s grasp, expecting you to swing yourself out. Instead, you fall to the floor with a thud and a loud groan. It wasn’t a far fall, and all your limbs were still intact but the wind that was already limited in your lungs was smacked out of you, and the ground was definitely going to leave a bruise.

“FOCUS!” he shouts to you, sending another punch to the villain’s face to knock her off balance. That luckily snaps you out of your reverie as you stand back onto your feet, swinging up to help him out.

You use your webbing to pull the tentacles off of the wall, meanwhile, Miguel acts as a distraction so she can’t focus on the fact that she’s being brought down to the ground where a trap lay for her to land in.

Bit by bit more tentacles become loose, and with one last hit from Miguel she falls to the floor with a scream, the force field raising around her immediately.

“You won’t get away with this!” she says angrily, but you only smirk, swinging down to her level.

“Doesn’t seem like there’s much you can do in this position, can you? Don’t worry, we won’t keep you for long. You’ll be back in your universe in no time~” you say, opening up a portal straight into the holding room for the other anomalies and pushing her in.

“Bye!” you say simply before the portal closes, taking her with it.

Then, the building is quiet, and you wince as you feel Miguel’s imposing aura behind you. Grasping your shoulder, he whirls you around as he looks at you exasperatedly.

"Why the hell weren’t you paying attention?" he asks you, arms moving animatedly as they usually do.

“In my defence…you didn’t notice her coming either,” you say.

“That’s not an excuse! You have your Spidey-sense, you have an instinct that tells you when you’re in danger,” he says, pinching the bridge of his nose. “And that fall, what was that? You saw me coming, why are you so distracted today?” he says with a sigh.

“Well, you’re a very distracting man,” you mumble, and his eyes widen slightly under his mask before it dissipates, leaving only his handsome face behind. You pull off your mask in turn, only staring into his eyes.

He stares back before sighing.

“Are you hurt?” he says, his eyes running over your body scanning for any injuries.

“I’ve taken worse hits than that, you know,” you say in turn, your face heating up slightly.

“An injury is an injury regardless of how bad it is,” he says, walking around you to make sure nothing is out of place.

“Jeez, you should take your own advice Mr. ‘I don’t need to go to the infirmary ever’” you huff.

“That’s different,” he retorts.

“It’s really not.”

“It is.”

“It’s not.”

“I’m not gonna argue with you right now,” he rolls his eyes.

“Oh c’mon, you know that’s your favourite pastime,” you smirk.

“It’s not.”

“Don’t lie to yourself, it is.”

“I only tell the truth, it’s not.”

“You say that, but here you are arguing with me again,” you grin, and he groans.

“Regardless, you did good today,” he says after a moment.

“I always do good, what do you mean,” and he looks at you incredulously.

“Can you just allow me to compliment you?”

You just shrug.

“Ehhhh, I struggle to accept compliments because deep down I’m incredibly insecure and can’t make myself believe that I can do well, let alone have other people think that so…yeah!”

“…we’ll talk about this later,” he says, patting your shoulder (the tiniest bit awkwardly, which made you almost laugh considering how long you two have known each other).

“So, since you think I ‘did good’ today, what’s my reward?” you ask expectantly, the corner of your mouth quirked up. He hums for a moment before slinging his webs onto the ceiling, swinging himself up so that he hung upside-down.

“C’mere,” he says, and you look at him confused.

“What on Earth are you doing?” you say.

“Can you just listen to me for once and come here?” he says exasperatedly, so you relent and walk so you’re about a foot away from him.

“Closer,” he says, and you step closer hesitantly, the proximity making you nervous. He only huffs, reaching out to grasp onto your arm so you’re standing face to face.

The hand on your arm reaches up, softly placing itself on your cheek as you let out a little gasp. His eyes bore into yours, and you get lost in the swirling crimson and gold.

“Is this alright?” he says softly, his breath fanning across your face. You felt your heartbeat pick up as the warmth of his hand pressed into your cheek gently. You can’t do anything but nod.

His lips press into yours, slightly chapped but soft as he kissed you softly.

You had never felt anything so right.

“What was that for?” you whisper as he pulls away after a few seconds that felt like an eternity condensed into a single moment.

He snorts softly before swinging back onto his feet, pulling you into his chest with a hug.

“I know you have feelings for me,” he says, and your body tenses for a moment at the blatant comment.

“I-” you start, but he interjects calmly.

“Hasn’t it been obvious that I have feelings for you too?” he asks as he pulls away, cupping your cheeks in both his hands.

“I, I thought it was just because I was your best friend,” you say as all those little moments you’ve had over the years play through your head. It makes him laugh softly, oh how you loved that laugh.

“You’re painfully oblivious sometimes, you know,” he says, but the fondness is evident in his voice.

“Can you kiss me again?” you ask, a tad bit flustered but you already missed the feeling of his lips on yours.

He smiles down at you before kissing you tenderly, fingers tangling through your hair as your hand rests on his chest, feeling his racing heart.

Finally, you felt complete.

~

~

“I didn’t know you were so soft,” you giggle as you return back to HQ.

“I am not soft,” he says almost offendedly, but the corner of his lip is quirked up the tiniest bit. “Though if I was, it would only be for you.”

Taglist: @beiroviski, @scaraza, @blueoorchid, @remuslupinwifee, @local-mr-frog, @johfaam0, @rawegggohan, @honeycriess, @alexenoirex, @chimpkinnuggies, @rqdior, @banana—belle, @notasadgirlipromise, @6billionyearsold, @gods-perfectidiot, @ieatmunson, @honeii-puff, @wh0re4zaynmalik, @toplinehyunjin, @ohworm-writes

A/N: Two updates in one day? That's wild, haha. Am I writing this because I saw this prompt and I myself am in love with my best friend? Absolutely, but hey! Coping mechanisms, am I right :)

[bobacupcake]

Can you do one about the Sea of Thieves water?

OK

so . there was a biiig long talk about this at siggraph one year!! you can watch that here if you'd like . in the time between me getting this ask and me fully recreating the water, acerola also released a great video about it . the biiig underlying thing they do and the reason why it looks so good is they are making a Really Detailed Ocean Mesh in realtime using something called an FFT (fast fourier transform) to simulate hundreds of thousands of waves, based on a paper by TESSENDORF

WHAT IS AN FFT - we'll get to that. first we have to talk about the DFT - the discreet fourier transform. let's say you have a SOUND. it is a c chord - a C, an E, and a G, being played at the same time. all sounds are waves!!! so when you play multiple sounds at the same time, those waves combine!!! like here: the top is all 3 notes playing together, so they form the waveform at the bottom!!

now if someone handed you the bottom wave, could you figure out each individual note that was being played? how about if someone handed you a wave of One Hundred Notes. you would think it would be very hard. and well, it would be, if not for the Discreet Fourier Transform.

essentially, there is a way to take a bunch of points on a waveform comprised of a bunch of different waves, add them all together, do some messed up stuff with imaginary numbers, that will spit back out at you what individual waves are present. i made a little test program at the start of all this: the left are the waves i am putting into my Big Waveform, the top right is what that ends up looking like, and all the little rainbow points on it are being sampled to spit out the graph at the bottom right: it shows which frequency bands the DFT is finding (here it is animated)

this has enormous use cases in anything that deals with audio and image processing, and also,

THE OCEAN

tessendorf is basically like, hey, People Who Are Good At The Ocean say that a buuuunch of sine waves do a pretty good job of approximating what it looks like. and by a bunch they mean like, hundreds of thousands to millions. oh no.... if only there was a way we could easily deal with millions of sine waves..........

well GREAT news. not only can you do the DFT in one direction, but you can also do it in REVERSE. if you were to be given the frequency graph of a noise for example, you could use an INVERSE DFT to calculate what the combined wave graph looks like at any given time. so if you were to have say, the frequency graph of an oceaaaan, for example, you could calculate what the Ocean wave looks like at any given time. and lucky for us, it works in two dimensions. and thats the foundation of the simulation !!!!!

BUT WAIT

as incredible as the DFT is, it doesn't scale very well. the more times you have to do it, the slower it gets, exponentially, and we are working with potentially millions of sine waves here

THE FAST FOURIER TRANSFORM here we are . the fast fourier transform is a way of doing the discreet fourier transform, except, well, fast. i am Not going to explain the intricacies of it because its very complex, but if you want to learn more there are a ton of good 30 minute long videos on youtube about it . but essentially, due to the nature of sine waves repeating, you can borrow values as you go, and make the calculation Much faster (from exponential growth to logarithmic growth which is much much slower, and scales very well at higher numbers). it's, complicated, but the important part is it's so much faster and the diagram kind of looks like the shadow the hedgehog story plot

so if we use the inverse FFT on a graph of a rough estimate of what frequency of waves in the ocean (called a spectrum, basically tells us things like how many small waves, how many big waves, how different waves follow the wind direction. sea of thieves uses one called the phillips spectrum but there are better ones out there!!) now we have our waves !!!!!!! we can also use another inverse FFT to get the normals of the waves, and horizontal displacement of the waves (sharpening peaks and broadening valleys) through some derivatives . yayy calculus

OK MATH IS OVER. WE HAVE OUR WAVES!!! they are solid pink and look like pepto bismol. WHAT NOW

i cheated a bit here they look better than not being shaded because i am using the normals to reflect a CUBEMAP to make it look shiny. i think sea of thieves does this too but they didnt mention it in their talk. they did mention a FEW THINGS THEY DID THOUGH

FIRST OFF - SUBSURFACE SCATTERING. this is where the sun pokes through since water is translucent. SSS IS REALLY EXPENSIVE !!!!!! so they just faked it. do you remember the wave sharpening displacement i mentioned earlier? they just take the value where the waves are being sharpened and this will pretty naturally show off the areas that should have subsurface scattering (the sides of waves). they make it shine through any time you are looking towards the sun. they also add a bit of specular ! sss here is that nice blue color, and specular is the shiny bits coming off the sun. the rest of the lighting is the cubemap i mentioned earlier, i dont know if thats what they use but it looks nice !!!!!

then the other big thing that they do is the FOAM !! sorry i lied. there's more math. last one. you remember the wave sharpening displacement i Just mentioned. well they used that to find something called the JACOBIAN and well im not even going to begin to try and explain what it means but functionally what it does, is when the jacobian is NEGATIVE it means waves are clipping into eachother. and that means we should draw some foam!!! we can also blur and fade out the foam texture over time and continuously write to it to give it some movement, and bias this value a bit to make more or less foam. they do both of these!!!

YAYYYYY !! OK !! THAT'S SEA OF THIEVES WATER!!!!! THANKS FOR WAITING ALL THIS TIME. you can see my journey here if you would like to i have tagged it all oceanquest2023

thank you everyone for joining me :) i had fun

[historicity-was-already-taken]

What I'm actually furious about, isn't just the anti-Semitism I've dealt with here.

What I'm furious at is the Israeli government and military. I am furious that they have the nerve to perpetrate war crimes while appropriating the memory of the 6 million. It makes me sick. It feels me with rage. It fills me with feelings of betrayal (those are complex and require deconstruction, discussed briefly below). How dare they massacre children, civilians, and fucking hospital patients; and how dare they do so while using the 6 million as a rhetorical shield?

The edgelord who left me a snide remark comparing the situation in Gaza to the Warsaw Ghetto wasn't the first person to make that comparison to me. It was actually the Palestinian woman who translated two major sources from Hebrew into English for me.

She was translating a biography of Tossia Altman when her three nephews and sister-in-law were murdered during the IDF action in Gaza. I asked her if she wanted to stop working on the project (with no impact on her fee for the project, of course; that's where about $4000 of the money y'all helped me raise went, fyi). The brand of Zionism practiced by Tossia and her comrades is very very different from the version embodied in Netanyahu, and it was those schools of Zionism which mostly died in the Holocaust (I said), but I would completely understand if the material was too triggering for her.

She said "I’m not sure about this triggering me, I think holocaust survivors and Gazans are on the same boat to tell you the truth. It could be an opportunity for me to actually fathom the full picture, in a way." And I haven't stopped thinking about it since.

I'm not going to post the rest of our conversation here, for what I hope are obvious reasons. And for concerned parties, this woman has been living away from Gaza for a very long time.

But this is why I'm so angry and emotional.

And I'm over here having these, frankly, very painful, personal feelings (if my posts over the last 4 months haven't made it clear, I spent my teen years in an extremely manipulative right wing Israel "education" program, and was raised surrounded by first and secondhand Holocaust trauma which inevitably impacted how my elders educated me about The Conflict none of which I was fully able to deconstruct until I became a Holocaust Historian in grad school). Especially with my knowledge of how SHITTILY Holocaust survivors were treated when they got to Palestine in the mid-1940s; of how fucking disgracefully Yad Vashem treated Rachel Auerbach and Yitzhak Zuckerman. Of the way the Jewish fighters actually died in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. I became a Holocaust historian because I am the great/granddaughter of survivors and I do this work because it's a fucking calling, not something that brings me joy. And the goddamn Israeli government, the government of a nation which likes to say it exists for all Jews (when it barely even represents the Jews who live there but that's a different conversation); the way that government manipulates and misuses that history to excuse their actions in Gaza make me fucking sick. And, as demonstrated by some of you actual fucking pieces of shit, puts Diasporic Jews in danger. (side thought: Does Netanyahu WANT to put Diasporic Jews in danger?? He knows how this fucking shit works, and I wouldn't be surprised if he WANTED Jews to feel deeply unsafe and respond to that by fleeing to Israel).

And WHILE I'm experiencing all of this and trying to keep it all together while writing the what may be the most important thing I've ever written in my career, you fucking [word I don't use out loud or in writing] come in here and to throw your anti-Semitic bullshit at me when I ask you to please not spew it at me via my (year old) fucking Holocaust Remembrance Day posts, and when I ask you to be fucking mindful of it in your political speech.

So let me make it fucking clear, as far as I am concerned there are 4 separate conversations at play rn.

1) October 7 was horrific, genocidal, and traumatizing for Jews on a global basis.

2) Israel is committing heinous war crimes in Gaza right now which, if its own military's statements are anything to go by, are actively genocidal.

3) You shouldn’t harass random Jewish people because you’re disgusted with Israeli governmental and military decisions and actions.

4) The Israeli government’s appropriation of Holocaust memory within its larger state building project doesn’t give you [collective: non-Jews] the right to abuse Jews for discussing and generally having feelings about the Holocaust.

And FRANKLY I think all those conversations are accurate and valid. I also don't think I'm obligated to tear my heart open give you all my intimate feelings because a bunch of pieces of shit on this site can't grasp points 3 and 4.

So fuck that right wing program I belonged to as a teen, fuck you fucking left wing anti-Semites who can's grasp that you're touting the ideologies of people who would have wanted you dead, and fuck the Israeli government for committing war crimes. fuck them for their ongoing abuse of palestinian civil and human rights, and fuck them for invoking the memory of the 6million while doing it.

I've fucking had it with that fucking State, I've had it with you goddamn Jew-haters, and I've had it with the Jewish ppl who might want to destroy my career upon seeing this post.

I am mad as HELL.

I'm not even saying my mental health break is over. I've just had a moment of clarity, my period is over, and I'm pissed as hell. i'm tired of policing myself to make the gentiles who hate me comfortable; and I'm tired of policing myself to make my coreligionists who'd destroy me for having these thoughts comfortable. and there are 122,000 if you, so i don't care if you're so fucking fragile that this post makes you hit the unfollow button.

tl;dr: