#moral-turpitudes

[maddie-grove]

Honestly the thing that annoyed me most about the Barbie movie is that the little girl’s opinions were so second-wave feminist. It’s not even a matter of agreeing or disagreeing—I just don’t think that’s the type of feminism that politically aware little girls espouse these days. She sounds like a mom circa 2000 (any mom from a conservative center-right Republican still practical enough to want her daughter to be successful academically and professionally to a feminist Marxist hippie—in my experience, if your mom wasn’t an actual pageant mom back then, she felt kind of weird about Barbie). These days basic tenets of feminism like “it is to your benefit to have your own money” seem to be a hard sell to young women. What chance does anti-Barbie sentiment have?

[sweaterkittensahoy]

“An absolute unit of moral turpitude” is the best thing I’ve heard in a long time.

Oh, thank you! "moral turpitude" is one of those phrases that's been in my head since I read it in a book in middle school. Never thought I'd use it, but the wonders of the internet and all that.

[iishtar]

In the Sixties, as a proto-feminist, my work was deeply misunderstood whenever I used the body, because it was assumed that it was an appeal to male culture. But I was trying to subvert it. I took my films to curators and they said, “This is shit. If you want to paint, put your clothes back on and go paint.” I was rejected by every interesting gallery in New York City. My sexuality was distracting and confusing to the galleries, though I didn’t understand it at the time. In 1963, when I enacted my Eye Body: 36 Transformative Actions for the camera, my intention was to be both image and image maker. The traditions of the female nude had always been the central obsession of the male artists I studied, from the French surrealists to the Pop artists. None of these depictions related to my experience. It was my wish to transform and vitalize an actual artist’s female body as part of her materials. I was one of the first female artists to integrate my own nude body into action photographs. I felt I was physicalizing the kinetic implications of abstract expressionism. Only an ideal physical body could manage to subvert the traditional expectations of pleasing the male gaze. If our bodies didn’t look appealing we couldn’t have gotten subversive messages through them. We would’ve been laughed away or dismissed as feeble pornographers. There is now marked appreciation for all the pussies I have fought to celebrate. Meow.

Carolee Schneemann [x]

[girlsdenaked93]

Not only does she show off her flexibility, but Koto also gets licked then sucks and fucks her boyfriend's rock hard cock!

Savannah struggles hard to get loose as she is kept trussed up and stashed away. CONTINUE...

[literaryvein-reblogs]

words for your dystopian novel

Bad situation

abend, accident, adversity, anarchy, apocalypse, backwash, bad scene, bane, bedlam, bind, blooper, bottleneck, bug, bummer, can of worms, cataclysm, catch, chaos, clog, cobweb, collision, commotion, conflict, contempt, crisis, crunch, damage, deadlock, debacle, decline, deficiency, detriment, difficulty, disadvantage(s), disaster, discomfiture, disorganization, disservice, disturbance, downfall, drag, drawback, duress, emergency, error, exigency/exigence, failing, famine, fiasco, fix, flash point, flip-flop, flotsam, friction, gadfly, hang-up, harm, havoc, hell, histrionics, holdup, hurdle, impasse, impropriety, inconvenience, infirmity, jalopy, jump, lapse, limitation, lose, madhouse, malfunction, maze, mire, misery, misfortune/mishap, mix-up, neglect, nightmare, obstacle, onus, ordeal, pall, pass, pell-mell, pickle, pitfall, plague, poison, press, problem, quagmire, question, restraint, reverse, ruin, scandal, scrape, shambles, showdown, smash, snare, spot, storm, strife, syndrome, tiff, to-do, trap, trouble, turmoil, undoing, uprising, upset, weight, wreck

Danger

act of God, bad trip, calamity, cataclysm, crapshoot, curse, dilemma, emergency, hardship, ill, mayhem, peril, risk, seriousness, threat, trouble, violence

Fate

accident, break, bummer, chaff, contingency, damnation, destiny, doom, downfall, duty, flip-flop, fortune, future, good, judgment, limbo, lot, misfortune/mishap, outlook, penalty, plague, predestination, setback, suspense, undoing, windfall

Morality

abandon, affirmative action, blasphemy, conscience, craft, decadence, delinquency, dirt, enormity, equality, ethics/ethic, excess, faithfulness, falsity, favoritism, good, good will/goodwill, guile, guise, honesty, ideals, imposture, infamy, infraction, iniquity, innocence, liability, loyalty, misbehavior, misconduct, misdeed/ misdemeanor, morals, obscenity, outrage, principle/principles, profanity, responsibility, sacrilege, scandal, score, sin, treachery, trespass, trickery, turpitude, validity, veracity, virtue, wrong

Assert

accredit, adduce, advocate, affirmation, allege, announcement, attest, bemoan, bluster, brag, bring out, come clean, crow, declaim, declare, deny, drum into, emphasize, exclaim, exult, gloat, gloss, gush, impute, insist, justify, level, maintain, mockery, overrate, play down, plead, point out, proclaim, promote, pronounce, punctuate, push, rave, retract, rumor, speak out/speak up, state, stress, support, swear, testify, testimony, underscore, vindicate, vouch, whitewash, witness

Authorize

accede, accredit, acknowledgment, affirm, appoint, approve, assign, back, bar, bless, certify, chicken out, concession, constitute, countenance, crown, dedicate, delegation, disown, enable, endorse, enjoin, entrust, exempt, forgive, induct, invest, lay, let off, make, negate, nominate, notarize, okay, order, overrule, permission, place, prohibit, recall, release, repeal, revoke, spare, subscribe, validate, veto, warrant, witness

Criticize

abuse, admonition, aspersion, assault, bad-mouth, baste, beef, berate, browbeat, castigate, chasten, chew out, come down on, complaint, condemnation, correct, criticism, critique, cut, damn, debase, denigrate, denunciation, deprecate, deride, detract, diatribe, disparage, dress down, flak, fulminate, gainsay, gird, gripe, grouch, hiss, humiliate, impugn, invective, jaw, knock, lament, lay into, malign, mortify, mug, nag, offense, pick at/pick on, protest, rail, rap, reflection, reprimand, reprove, revile, row, sarcasm, scorn, sit-in, sneer, storm, swear, tell off, upbraid, vituperate

Demand

adjure, beckon, behest, bidding, call, charge, command, crave, cross-examine, debrief, demand, direct, enjoin, exact, extortion, grease, importune, inflict, instruct, necessitate, order, petition, query, request, requisition, solicit, squeeze, supplicate, take on

Government action

abdicate, abolition, administer, amnesty, cease-fire, command, depose, dethrone, dominate, enforce, exile, filibuster, override/overrule, reign, run in, second, tax, veto

Government organization

administration, cabinet, capitol, confederacy, cop, court, democracy, dictatorship, empire, government, jury, police/police officer, regime, sovereignty, tyranny

Political action

amnesty, arbitration, campaign, crusade, demonstration, drive, elect, endorse, mutiny, nomination, picket, poll, reaction, revolt, riot, sedition, vote

Restrict

bar, bind, bound, brake, circumscribe, cocoon, constrain, constrict, control, curb, dam, defer, deferment/deferral, desensitize, embargo, enjoin, expatriate, expulsion, fetters, forbear, gag, grind, hamper, handicap, hem/hem in, hobble, hold back/hold off, impair, imposition, inhibit, keep one’s cool, localize, moderate, obligate, ostracism, prohibit, rein, restrain, retard, shackle, slowdown, squelch, strangle, subdue, suspend, tie/tie up

Symbol

arms, autograph, beep, capital, charm, code, cue, device, emblem, ensign, flag, flourish, graffiti, handwriting, herald, imprint, indication, John Hancock, landmark, letter, logo, notation, numeral, script, sign, spot, stripe, tag, tick, trademark, type, writing

NOTE

Excerpted from Roget's 21st Century Thesaurus, Updated and Expanded 3rd Edition, in Dictionary Form, edited by The Princeton Language Institute.

The above are concepts classified according to subject and usage. It not only helps writers and thinkers to organize their ideas but leads them from those very ideas to the words that can best express them.

It was, in part, created to turn an idea into a specific word. By linking together the main entries that share similar concepts, the index makes possible creative semantic connections between words in our language, stimulating thought and broadening vocabulary. Writing Resources PDFs

Source ⚜ Writing Basics & Refreshers ⚜ On Vocabulary Dystopia ⚜ Dystopian World ⚜ Pain & Violence ⚜ Hate

[midnightmadwoman]

Following in the "James Woods as Hades in Disney's Hercules" school of casting legitimate garbage people to play villains

Been posting these on twitter, might as well share here too.

“SPN AU where everything is the same except Lucifer’s lines are taken from Mark Pellegrino’s twitter feed”

[bellarad]

Would you sell your nudes

I would for the right price, and technically I have (though for artistic purposes) but I doubt most people would pay my price for nudes lol.

For reference, I'm getting paid $200 an hour to model in photographs for someone who wants to paint me. So. If you've got the funds, come on off anon lol

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Occupy the Democratic National Committee

Picks and Shovels is a new, standalone technothriller starring Marty Hench, my two-fisted, hard-fighting, tech-scam-busting forensic accountant. You can pre-order it on my latest Kickstarter, which features a brilliant audiobook read by Wil Wheaton.

Back in 2017, the Democratic National Committee's lawyers submitted a legal brief that didn't just say the quiet part out loud; they bellowed it: "[The DNC can] go into back rooms like they used to and smoke cigars and pick the [presidential] candidate that way":

https://observer.com/2017/05/dnc-lawsuit-presidential-primaries-bernie-sanders-supporters/

The brief was submitted in the lawsuit between Bernie Sanders and the DNC. Sanders sued over the DNC changing the rules midway through 2016 process in order to sideline him and give the nomination to Hillary Clinton. The DNC's response boiled down to, "Sure, we cheated. So what? We, the committee, are ultimately answerable only to ourselves, and we can choose anyone to lead the party into any election."

The DNC is a weak institution, in other words. There's a universe in which that would be OK. After all, there's a lot of overhead that comes with making strong institutions, all those checks and balances and oversight and transparency soak up resources that you could be using to do other stuff. In an ideal world, a badly run Democratic Party would be spurred to improve after it lost elections, which would result in the defenestration of bad party bosses and the ouster of bad candidates:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/30/weak-institutions/

But the US political system is not an ideal world. In the real world, it's possible for party bosses who pursue disastrous strategies that result in key electoral losses to remain in power. The Democratic Party still rakes in massive donations from people who hate Trump more than they hate the Democratic Party's incompetence. Candidates in gerrymandered safe seats can be wildly incompetent and still hold onto power for improbably long timescales, despite the manifest evidence of their total unfitness for office:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Lipinski

In the absence of real consequences for corruption, incompetence and utter moral turpitude, the Democratic National Committee needs some other form of discipline to get it into fighting form. We need to occupy the DNC, strengthen its institutional safeguards, and turn it into an election-winning, fascism-fighting, extinction-rebelling, worker-defending powerhouse.

Three weeks from now, the DNC will meet in National Harbor MD to elect its new president and officers. Who gets to vote on that? The 448 members of the party's national committee. Who are they? As Micah Sifry writes for The American Prospect, it's a secret, even to the committee members:

https://prospect.org/politics/2025-01-10-opening-dncs-black-box/

No, really. While nominally, members can request a list of their fellow members, the DNC stalls and stonewalls and does everything it can to prevent the committee from communicating in any way they can't control. This is incredible, but it's true. Which is why Sifry has published a leaked list of all 448 members:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1bQKIP3W1NWChRjSbsE0O5k5s7OdgXrJi5-CMfFECIBU/edit?gid=0#gid=0

Looking at the spreadsheet of members, we get a rare glimpse inside the Democratic sausage factory. There's te 73 "at large" members who were voted on as a single block after being handpicked by outgoing president Jaime Harrison. These members are a mix of great people and terrible people, and that's by design: it meant that Sanders and Warren voters could only get their people onto the committee if they voted for some of the most disgusting corporate shills you can imagine.

The fact that the national committee's membership is secret and their communications must pass through a DNC chokepoint means that they get up to all kinds of shenanigans, like at the 2023 summer meeting where they voted themselves the power to throw out any bylaw amendments passed at a national party convention. The vote was whipped by paid DNC staff, creating an atmosphere so poisonous that Jessica Chambers (a rep from Wyoming) called the DNC "the least democratic organization that I’m involved with."

Sifry's breakdown is really useful: he identifies the minority of members who are elected by the party rank-and-file, calling them "the people most responsive to what the base of the party cares about." He also calls out the corporate shills who "buckrake as lobbists," like Donna Brazile, "a partner at “corporate reputation strategy firm.”

But even where state party organizations have elections for their committee members, some states keep the results of those elections a secret. Illinois, Minnesota, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, and Pennsylvania have 69 members, but the identities of all but 14 of them are a secret.

This is a rotten institution, and that's by design. If you want to know why we can't have nice things – or, you know, a world that's not on fire and haunted by creeping fascism – this is why. The takeover of the DNC won't be easy, but it can't start until we know who the DNC is.

Check out my Kickstarter to pre-order copies of my next novel, Picks and Shovels!

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

https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/10/smoke-filled-room-where-it-happens/#dinosaurs

[rosie-posie1313]

Aemond Targaryen Fic Recs I 🐉

Masterlists

House of the Dragon masterlist  By @thesithdiaries

ASOIAF CHARACTERS MASTERLIST By @frankcastleonlyfans

Aemond Targaryen Fanfics By @psycheflame

Fic Recs

The Northener who tamed the dragon By @heartysworld

Your beauty never scared me By ^

Gods Eye Prequel By ^

The Sweetest Betrayal  By @ladyviserra

The Sweetest Betrayal By ^

The Sweetest Betrayal pt 3 By ^

Strong words  By @osferth

a family divided By ^

𝘽𝙡𝙤𝙤𝙙 𝙤𝙛 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝘿𝙧𝙖𝙜𝙤𝙣 By @chloesolace

𝘉𝘭𝘰𝘰𝘥 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘋𝘳𝘢𝘨𝘰𝘯 [𝘗����𝘳𝘵 2] By ^

Pretty Thing By @aemondtargaryenswhore

Angst blurb By ^

Vhagar By ^

Sleepily in Love By @thestoryden

Drawing the Lines By ^ (A)

The Next Morning By ^ (F)

You Belong To Me By @mybeautifuldelirium (A/F)

Pt4: under the dragons eye By @gay-dorito-dust (A)

demolition lovers  By @sainttherezia

Of Fire & Blood Headcanons (Part One). By @midnight-fairee

Of Fire & Blood Headcanons (Part Two). By ^

Little Secrets: One By @qarl-grimes

Little Secrets: Two By ^

Is This What You Wanted  By @nonalie

Moral Turpitude - The One-Eyed Prince (Pt. 1) By @aemondbreakbones

BLACK BRIDE pt 6 By @highqueensworld

Family Ties  By @vivalarevolution

As Beautiful As Endless By @two-white-butterflies

Always Meant to be Together By @mybeautifuldelirium

Amusement  By @theficthatwaspromised

Headcanon for a ball By @factorydefaultlu

The Tournament By @afro-hispwriter

A Good Wife By ^

Letters By ^

Growing Pains By @lilibethwrites

LINGERING IN OUR MEMORIES By @goldsainz

midnight escapade By @jacesbeloved

Aemond being your childhood best friend who’s obviously not in love with you By @jacaeryswhore

Your beauty never scared me By @yourwonkywriter

Your beauty never scared me pt 2 By ^

Tell me the story By ^

You make it better By @star-girl69

To young for war, too beautiful for battles By @simpingland

Wolfs and dragons, both have claws and teeth By ^

A new life  By @demiguisemoon

I know yours  By @bookofbonbon

Love Lost  By ^

a welcome distraction By @good4olivia

don’t you love me? By @endless-ineffabilities

possessive Aemond By @factorydefaultlu

aemond showing his sapphire eye By @gay-dorito-dust

I’m the mess that you wanted By @thegreatestsandwich

The Dragon Dance By @dreamcatcher2113

The Dragon Dance By ^

UNLIKE HIS FATHER By @sansaorgana

DRAGONS BANE By @house-strong

Keeper of his Heart By @factorydefaultlu

in the still of the night By @saltywritings

Uncle Aemond to the rescue? By @cryptaris

“the dreamer” part 2 By @yummycastiel

My Fierce Lady By @runningmunson

A divine tribute and a divine prince. By @yzzart

A dragon knows a dragon. By ^

Now I’m here, with you. By ^

Blood of my Blood By @ultralightpoe

Salt the Earth Behind You By ^

No other remorse By @shawty-writes-a-little

[aminul-24]

´Tis the season(ing)!!

[ooctlt]

I couldn’t spot the Silas cameo at the Third’s House Party; is it the Jake Johnstone tweet?

hes here

ask transcript: Anonymous asked: Surely you've received noise complaints for this so-called "party." It's an excuse for debauchery and moral turpitude is what it is. It surprises me not at all that that vexatious pair of twins are largely responsible. Consider lowering the volume so that you do not disturb the entire neighborhood, as you are doing now. Nobody would be pleased about being forced to file a formal report with the local authorities.

[porterdavis]

The autopsies continue

The man elected president last night is a depraved and brazen pathological liar, a shameless con man, a sociopathic criminal, a man who has no moral or social conscience, empathy, or remorse. He has no respect for the Constitution and laws he will swear to uphold, and on top of all that, he exhibits emotional and cognitive deficiencies that seem to be intensifying, and that will only make his turpitude worse. He represents everything we should aspire not to be, and everything we should teach our children not to emulate. The only hope is that he’s utterly incompetent, and even that is a double-edged sword, because his incompetence often can do as much as harm as his malevolence. His government will be filled with corrupt grifters, spiteful maniacs, and morally bankrupt sycophants, who will follow in his example and carry his directives out, because that’s who they are and want to be.

George T. Conway

[floral-ashes]

It took me too long but I’ve finally finished your book. I loved every part of it, some of it forcing me to pause and think for days or even weeks before coming back to it. The penultimate chapter especially affected me. I am an academic. A professor with tenure. Outwardly and ostensibly male, and I identified as such for my entire life until recently. Over the past year, in my late 40s, I have embraced my queerness as nonbinary, bisexual, and polyamorous. My appearance has shifted at work considerably. As yet, nothing negative has occurred. In fact, very little has been said about it at all, despite the makeup and painted nails and newly pierced ears and a wardrobe that reads more lesbian than straight male. I guess I’ve frog-in-a-pot-of-water’d them all really well (the shirts get compliments, but that’s about it). Anyway, the lack of mention or discussion about my shift has been both reassuring and annoying. And after reading that chapter, I realized it may be the prurience of academia that stops people from saying anything. I’m not fully out at work, but I’m not hiding either. I’ll answer any questions honestly but I’m not making any grand announcements. I’m in Texas, after all, where new laws can have me fired for “moral turpitude” regardless of my status as an associate professor. So, this is all a long winded and rambling way of saying your book is important. It is necessary. And it has made my life more enjoyable, given me some pathways to be more myself, some reassurance I’m not alone, and some resolve to fight back more vigorously against the prudes and the bigots. Thank you.

This passage from p. 150 sums it up for me.

💖💖💖

[isaacsapphire]

God, I'm just glad that the rest of you are trying to figure out wtf qualifies for moral turpitude. There's a government form associated with my industry's hiring that asks about moral turpitude and inevitably people ask about it. As best as I can tell, the term "moral turpitude" is used on this form and in immigration and that's all I could find... And the mildest thing that counts as moral turpitude is drunk driving. But don't quote me on any of that, I am definitely not a lawyer and I might be completely wrong.

California Penal Code section 243(e) does not touch on fraudulent activity and therefore can qualify as a crime involving moral turpitude only if it involves "grave acts of baseness or depravity." To determine whether it does, we consider the intrinsic or inherent nature of the crime. See Cuevas-Gaspar v. Gonzales, 430 F.3d 1013, 1018 (9th Cir.2005) ("Where an act is only statutorily prohibited, rather than inherently wrong, the act generally will not involve moral turpitude.")

To determine if something is a crime of moral turpitude or not, the judge simply refers to its inherent wrongness.

[kaurwreck]

I like it when the fandom engages with Chuuya drinking problematically or Akutagawa smoking despite his lung disease or Fyodor indulging his gambling addiction.

Asagiri can't explore the same, there's a censorship regime in Japan for manga aimed at certain ages. But even if he doesn't care to, fan works should be transformative and exploratory; and fan works that do so while engaging with the source material and its themes like humanity and contradiction and culpability are even more golden for doing so.

The urge to lacquer fiction in performative didactism and aversion to moral turpitude is self cannibalizing.

[literaryvein-reblogs]

Writing Notes: Fossil Word

Fossil word - In linguistics, a fossil is a word or sense of a word that was once in common use but is now obsolete or no longer actively used except in certain idioms, phrases, or other words.

EXAMPLES

ado - as in "without further ado" or "with no further ado" or "much ado about nothing"

amok - as in "run amok"

bated - as in "wait with bated breath"

betwixt - as in "betwixt and between"

bide - as in "bide your time"

fro - as in "to and fro"

inclement - as in "inclement weather”

lo - as in "lo and behold"

turpitude - as in "moral turpitude"

wedlock - as in "out of wedlock"

yore - as in "of yore", usually "days of yore"

Writing Notes & References ⚜ More: Word Lists