#packed house

[tacosaysroar]

[lgbtlunaverse]

"How did Shuro think he could marry Falin when he hated her brother?" you have to understand. Toshiro is from a whole different country. In his head he and Falin would move back to the Eastern Archipelago and they'd see Laios twice a year tops. You can pretend to get along with in-laws you don't like for a few days a year, people do that all the time.

The actual flaw in his plan– which shows he doesn't really understand either of the Touden siblings– is the fact that if the plot hadn't happened and Falin had for some reason said yes to his proposal, Laios would have packed his bags and moved away with them instantly.

[andi-o-geyser]

local gang of dnd players intimidate and viciously bully game show host sam reich, threatening to push his ass down the stairs like he's a 90-year-old grandma in a retirement home. more at 8

[sunderwight]

Scenario where Yue Qingyuan and Luo Binghe both pick up on and independently confirm for themselves, a few years into the matter, that Shen Qingqiu's soul has indeed been replaced with someone else's. But they have polar opposite reactions about it. Yue Qingyuan keeps trying to figure out how to get SJ back (alone, since it's nothing he can prove and also he sucks at asking for help), while Luo Binghe is doing everything in his power to make sure that Shen Qingqiu stays the new version or doesn't have his soul replaced again. The two of them each entirely unaware of the other's knowledge or actions, basically cancelling one another out.

Yue Qingyuan finds an item that should loosen the current occupant soul's hold on the body, potentially allowing Shen Jiu's soul to come to the fore again (if it's still in there somewhere) or regain control. Luo Binghe, around the same time, discovers a rare herb that is said to help reinforce the connection between the soul and the body, to help with individuals who have troubles with dissociation. Yue Qingyuan gifts the "rare artifact" and gets Shen Qingqiu to put it in his study, Luo Binghe mixes the herb into a medicinal tea and serves it to him every day. Net zero impact.

[puffywuffy8904]

HAPPY 90TH BIRTHDAY TO THE GUY OF ALL TIME!!! THE MOST SPECIALEST DUCK EVER!!!!!!!

[mintygreencake]

Sam after leaving his house and joining the Shaw pack security team.

[thaliajoy-blog]

Rereading Lady's death in AGOT and crying so much and I just realized :

"She was the smallest of the litter, the prettiest, the most gentle and trusting. She looked at him with bright golden eyes, and he ruffled her thick grey fur."

The "trusting" descriptive is super painful because of the implication that she'll gently trust even the man who comes to kill her, there's something painful in her not struggling for her life...and like it makes me think of Sansa and her trust, the trust she puts in Cersei & Joffrey which blinds her to their evil, and leads her to surrender herself & her father because of this damn trust she had that nothing can go wrong and she has never been in the hands of anyone who would harm her & her own. Like Lady has never known anything but her pack (wolf & human) & their love.

[rainingriversofyou]

CC3 - HOUSE OF FLAME AND SHADOW - INDIE EXCLUSIVE BONUS CHAPTER - BRYCE & DANIKA - PART 1

LIGHT IT UP ❤️‍🔥

Art by Petit Kitsune

[lilac-dreamxxz]

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ℬio paֺ︩︪ᥴk⠀ # ᪲⠀ 1

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ luvlilac on pin ⪩⪨

ㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤㅤㅤ ꒰͡⠀   ׅ    do͚ᥣᥣ⠀ho͜use   𝆬⠀⠀͡꒱  ׂㅤㅤ ㅤ

ㅤ ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ⠀⎯⠀ 444 ㅤ۪ ㅤ⬭

ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ ㅤㅤㅤ 𝓟retty 𝑔𝑖𝑟𝑙 ㅤ۪ ㅤ🎀 ྀི

ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ ㅤㅤㅤ ㅤ 𖦹 ̼   ᮫   ᘞ̸⠀ ׁ ₊

ㅤ

ㅤ ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤ ℰla͡yn͜ꫀ⠀𑁍

ㅤ ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ ㅤ ㅤ     𓈒 ◌    ੭ৎ ֹ 𓈒

ㅤ

ㅤ󠀠󠀠󠀠𓊆ྀི󠀠󠀠󠀠󠀠󠀠󠀠󠀠 ⠀ׁ⠀ㅤ © ㅤ 𝑙𝑖𝑙𝑎𝑐⠀ ︎︎︎︎ ︎︎︎︎ . ⠀⠀✿ ㅤ 󠀠󠀠󠀠𓊇ྀི

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[fanofspooky]

Scream King - Boris Karloff

[lotus-pear]

i think you guys are onto smth..

i unironically got invested in this HELP

[aestradairio]

@jimzittos prize🫶🏻.

[skullsemi]

you have converted me into this fandom and I have accepted it at this point

ONE OF US ONE OF US– I couldn't be more glad!

Dear sweet anon, I am not kidding when I say we have a little bit of everything going on around here, pick your flavor, your toons and hey do sit back cause the show's only starting

And I'm not even mentioning the truly amazing side characters, that's a whole new world right there

[yeossemble]

　　（ ❀ ˘˘）　　🍀　　　　"　　　🍏

[casually-eat-my-soul]

I am completely normal about the hale family.

I’m totally not obsessing over any of the characters

Like Laura hale who haunts the narrative. Hell she’s was the creation of the narrative, her death is the reason that Scott and stiles were in the woods that night. She was a means to an end. She was an older sister. The girl who stays with her brother even after her death. We know nothing about her, and everything we do know is forever tainted by the biases of the characters that remained. The Aphla Heir, the first victim of the show. A body in the woods, a girl in a grave

Or Peter hale, who is a walking contradiction and Manipulator. He cares for his family but he sacrificed Laura and Derek (Paige) for power. He kills his niece, then later on he wants to save her (Cora). Peter who died in the house fire, all Derek was doing was putting down a corpse. Peter who died engulfed in flames in the house haunted by death and fire. Peter who knew how to bring himself back, who knew about necromancy and banshees. How young was he when he created a plan to bring himself back to life?

How about Cora?? A girl who lived in the shadow of her families death for years. Believing that she was the only one who lived. A girl who only knows how to run, who keeps her bags packed always ready to leave. It’s how she grew up. Cora who returned to her burnt out shell of a home at the mere mention of a hale alpha. Who leaves beacon hills once again but this time with her brother at her back. (Laura and Derek leaving after the fire parallel)

And last but not least, Derek fucking Hale. The man who blamed himself for the death of his entire family. Who lost everything, and despite that, got up every single day. Who never got to bury his family members, but never wanted to bury Laura. Who killed his uncle and buried him in the grave of their house, so he could rest among the rest of forgotten Hales. What’s one more grave to dig, One more family member to bury. Who helped people even when they didn’t want him to. Derek who was used and abused over and over again. Who was nothing more than a body. Someone with one foot in the grave and one on a train. He just wanted a pack again and had that taken from him as well. He leaves beacon hills, and comes back to once again help those in need. Who dies and comes back. Who drags himself with bloody fingers to a happy ending, with a son. Who takes care of a car for fifteen years as an act of repentance and love. And who still dies in a fire like the Hales that came before him.

What about Eli, whose legacy is pain, fire and death.

The hales who are tied so fucking tightly to beacon hills and to each other. They can never leave this place but they can’t stay. Nothing will ever be the same again. The fire is gone but the wood is still charred. There’s still an open grave

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Scientific American endorses Harris

TONIGHT (October 23) at 7PM, I'll be in DECATUR, GEORGIA, presenting my novel THE BEZZLE at EAGLE EYE BOOKS.

If Trump's norm-breaking is a threat to democracy (and it is), what should Democrats do? Will breaking norms to defeat norms only accelerate the collapse of norms, or do we fight fire with fire, breaking norms to resist the slide into tyranny?

Writing for The American Prospect, Rick Perlstein writes how "every time the forces of democracy broke a reactionary deadlock, they did it by breaking some norm that stood in the way":

https://prospect.org/politics/2024-10-23-science-is-political/

Take the Thirteenth Amendment, which abolished slavery, and the Reconstruction period that followed it. As Jefferson Cowie discusses, the 13th only passed because the slave states were excluded from its ratification, and even then, it barely squeaked over the line. The Congress that passed reconstruction laws that "radically reconstructed [slave states] via military subjugation" first ejected all the representatives of those states:

https://newrepublic.com/article/182383/defend-liberalism-lets-fight-democracy-first

The New Deal only exists because FDR was on the verge of packing the Supreme Court, and, under this threat, SCOTUS stopped ruling against FDR's plans:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/09/20/judicial-equilibria/#pack-the-court

The passage of progressive laws – "the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, Medicare, and Medicaid" – are all thanks to JFK's gambit of packing the House Rules Committee, ending the obstructionist GOP members' use of the committee to kill anything that would protect or expand America's already fragile social safety net.

As Perlstein writes, "A willingness to judiciously break norms in a civic emergency can be a sign of a healthy and valorous democratic resistance."

And yet…the Democratic establishment remains violently allergic to norm-breaking. Perlstein recalls the 2018 book How Democracies Die, much beloved of party elites and Obama himself, which argued that norms are the bedrock of democracy, and so the pro-democratic forces undermine their own causes when they fight reactionary norm-breaking with their own.

The tactic of bringing a norm to a gun-fight has been a disaster for democracy. Trump wasn't the first norm-shattering Republican – think of GWB and his pals stealing the 2000 election, or Mitch McConnell stealing a Supreme Court seat for Gorsuch – but Trump's assault on norms is constant, brazen and unapologetic. Progressives need to do more than weep on the sidelines and demand that Republicans play fair.

The Democratic establishment's response is to toe every line, seeking to attract "moderate conservatives" who love institutions more than they love tax giveaways to billionaires. This is a very small constituency, nowhere near big enough to deliver the legislative majorities, let alone the White House. As Perlstein says, Obama very publicly rejected calls to be "too liberal" and tiptoed around anti-racist policy, in a bid to prevent a "racist backlash" (Obama discussed race in public less than any other president since the 1950s). This was a hopeless, ridiculous own-goal: Perlstein points out that even before Obama was inaugurated, there were more than 100 Facebook groups calling for his impeachment. The racist backlash was inevitable had nothing to do with Obama's policies. The racist backlash was driven by Obama's race.

Luckily, some institutions are getting over their discomfort with norm-breaking and standing up for democracy. Scientific American the 179 year-old bedrock of American scientific publication, has endorsed Harris for President, only the second such endorsement in its long history:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/vote-for-kamala-harris-to-support-science-health-and-the-environment/

Predictably, this has provoked howls of outrage from Republicans and a debate within the scientific community. Science is supposed to be apolitical, right?

Wrong. The conservative viewpoint, grounded in discomfort with ambiguity ("there are only two genders," etc) is antithetical to the scientific viewpoint. Remember the early stages of the covid pandemic, when science's understanding of the virus changed from moment to moment? Major, urgent recommendations (not masking, disinfecting groceries) were swiftly overturned. This is how science is supposed to work: a hypothesis can only be grounded in the evidence you have in hand, and as new evidence comes in that changes the picture, you should also change your mind.

Conservatives hated this. They claimed that scientists were "flip-flopping" and therefore "didn't know anything." Many concluded that the whole covid thing was a stitch-up, a bid to control us by keeping us off-balance with ever-changing advice and therefore afraid and vulnerable. This never ended: just look at all the weirdos in the comments of this video of my talk at last summer's Def Con who are absolutely freaking out about the fact that I wore a mask in an enclosed space with 5,000 people from all over the world in it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4EmstuO0Em8

This intolerance for following the evidence is a fixture in conservative science denialism. How many times have you heard your racist Facebook uncle grouse about how "scientists used to say the world was getting colder, now they say it's getting hotter, what the hell do they know?"

Perlstein points to other examples of this. For example, in the 1980s, conservatives insisted that the answer to the AIDS crisis was to "just stop having 'illicit sex,'" a prescription that was grounded in a denial of AIDS science, because scientists used to say that it was a gay disease, then they said you could get it from IV drug use, or tainted blood, or from straight sex. How could you trust scientists when they can't even make up their minds?

https://www.newspapers.com/image/379364219/?terms=babies&match=1

There certainly are conservative scientists. But the right has a "fundamentally therapeutic discourse…conservatism never fails, it is only failed." That puts science and conservativism in a very awkward dance with one another.

Sometimes, science wins. Continuing in his history of the AIDS crisis, Perlstein talks about the transformation of Reagan's Surgeon General, C Everett Koop. Koop was an arch-conservative's arch-conservative. He was a hard-right evangelical who had "once suggested homosexuals were sedulously recruiting boys into their cult to help them take over America once they came of voting age." He'd also called abortion "the slide to Auschwitz" – which was weird, because he'd also opined that the "Jews had it coming for refusing to accept Jesus Christ."

You'd expect Koop to have continued the Reagan administration's de facto AIDS policy ("queers deserve to die"), but that's not what happened. After considering the evidence, Koop mailed a leaflet to every home in the USA advocating for condom use.

Koop was already getting started. His harm-reduction advocacy made him a national hero, so Reagan couldn't fire him. A Reagan advisor named Gary Bauer teamed up with Dinesh D'Souza on a mission to get Koop back on track. They got him a new assignment: investigate the supposed psychological harms of abortion, which should be a slam-dunk for old Doc Auschwitz. Instead, Koop published official findings – from the Reagan White House – that there was no evidence for these harms, and which advised women with an AIDS diagnosis to consider abortion.

So sometimes, science can triumph over conservativism. But it's far more common for conservativism to trump science. The most common form of this is "eisegesis," where someone looks at a "pile of data in order to find confirmation in it of what they already 'know' to be true." Think of those anti-mask weirdos who cling to three studies that "prove" masks don't work. Or the climate deniers who have 350 studies "proving" climate change isn't real. Eisegesis proves ivermectin works, that vaccinations are linked to autism, and that water fluoridation is a Communist plot. So long as you confine yourself to considering evidence that confirms your beliefs, you can prove anything.

Respecting norms is a good rule of thumb, but it's a lousy rule. The politicization of science starts with the right's intolerance for ambiguity – not Scientific American's Harris endorsement.

Tor Books as just published two new, free LITTLE BROTHER stories: VIGILANT, about creepy surveillance in distance education; and SPILL, about oil pipelines and indigenous landback.

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/2024/10/22/eisegesis/#norm-breaking