#something something TED Talk...

[posttexasstressdisorder]

My Kitchen Table Caucus

I thought I'd make this a reference post of what I do in order to make the best decision I can, every single time I vote. If it helps explain the process better to someone who has never voted, or has never been an "in-depth voter", (ie: researching each candidate and proposition and making an INFORMED DECISION based on all information received or gathered), then I'll have done my self-appointed job here.

With the final pieces of information arriving today, I can finally do the actual marking of my ballot. I'll explain why I wait as we go along.

The largest booklet, on the upper left up there, is the Federal/State info, much of it redundant, of course. I will read each of the candidate statements and proposition texts.

The book that arrived today, smaller, but more relevant, is the County/City Level info. Again, much is general info and redundant with the other book, but these are also packed with info about each candidate and each proposition, including voting histories, party endorsements, party switches, etc...all that is included as well as what the candidates say about themselves and the issues.

Once I've looked at all the relevant info there and made notes, it's on to the next thing, the Pile Of Glossy Flyers that have been sent via the mail. There are more...these were just today's:

I have also made note of what signs are in what yards, etc., since this season began. These flyers will seldom be the deciding factor in who to vote for, but rather, who NOT to vote for.

One last source of info are the political emails and newsletters I've gotten since this all began. There are several here that are relevant to housing (Tenants Together), as well as several representative and senator newsletters, both state and national level.

Once I've worked my way through all that, weighed each bit of info and put it in its place in my own framework, in a way I can understand, I will make my decision and mark my ballot. There are some candidates and issues that I don't need to go through all that with, but almost all pertinent info I might need to make an INFORMED DECISION that will make my voice heard, and make my vote mean something, in my own life.

I know I've written here before about WHY I do all this. One one level, it's because my late darlin' and I always made "a day" out of doing our Civic Duty and voting on Election Day itself*, and yes, wearing our dumb little stickers all day while we were out. It's been twelve years and about ten stickers ago now, but I do my Civic Duty as well-informed as I can be, every election, and always will.

[Patriotic Music swells in the background and fade to black.]

*We used to go out to lunch after we voted, but since I can no longer afford to go out at all, I decided tonight would be good to make a batch of Carne Guisada (Tex-Mex Beef Stew) with the not-quite-a-pound-of-stew meat I got this last time at GroceOut.

With it pretty much done, I will have myself a bowl, have a bit of coffee and read. Armed with bifocals perched on nose I'll make my marks some time before I go to bed.

Just realized I forgot to show what is in the envelope when you open your ballot. Your ballot, of course, along with its OFFICIAL RETURN ENVELOPE, which you must sign and date when you return, and another giblet on how to get assistance in voting, and of course, your silly sticker.

[contagious-watermelon]

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

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

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

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

[spxcecreature]

so here for hannibal fucking will into silence…you know those fics where will is real responsive in bed? real mouthy and vocal? what if … what if i offer you the idea that sometimes, will gets so overwhelmed by the feeling of hannibal inside of him, so overwhelmed by their connection, and so overwhelmed by his love for hannibal that he literally just. goes blank as he cums. 404 error, will simply cannot compute. lights are not on, absolutely no one is home. he just goes completely limp in hannibal’s arms, eyes rolling, heart rabbitting away, mouth open, but no sounds or words come out because will is just gone.

[divineandmajesticinone]

4 MINUTES (2024) I 1.01 "I'm sorry. My dad wants me to go home now. For dinner."

[obisamya]

DANI ROJAS & JAN MAAS Ted Lasso (2020-2023)

[boygirlctommy]

i love the bit from oct 17 2020 when tommy and quackity trapped wilbur in a cobblestone box to keep him from pressing the button... wilbur punching through the blocks with his bare hand to try to get to the button... tommy frantically replacing the block in front of him yelling for quackity to do something... the moment when tommy stops, blocks the exit, and tells wilbur to do it. press the button. but then theyd die with him. quackitys like "wait, wait-" but tommy holds his ground and wilbur. ohh wilbur. "why'd you have to make it so hard?"

[quillthrillswriting]

no love story trope will ever hit quite as hard as "two traumatized teens (often) with unique abilities who are forced to save the world each help the other shoulder the burden of their respective destinies and slowly become each others safe places as they shift from friends to something more."

[grechsblog]

i think isafrin dynamic, especially postcanon, is so funny to me because (among other things) isabeau is the notorious Gets Scared When The Horrors Appear type of dude, but also happens to be madly into a guy who, for lack of better words, can be aptly described as The Horrors

[5ummit]

The Left-Handed Winter Soldier Myth

A theory has been circulating for years that the Winter Soldier is left-handed (or at least heavily favors his left hand and uses it at every opportunity) while Bucky is exclusively right-handed. I’ve tried to ignore it in the past, but it’s come back with a vengeance in the wake of the Thunderbolts trailer and I can no longer sit idly by and let this misinformation continue to spread unchallenged. Not when it's now being used as “evidence” that the Bucky we see in Thunderbolts is not actually Bucky but the Winter Soldier.

Luckily, this myth is easy to disprove.

Turns out there’s tons of examples of the Winter Soldier favoring his right hand (these are just a few I could grab that clearly showed his hands and weren't too blurry). I actually noticed while gathering these screenshots that the soldier rarely fires a gun and basically never uses a knife with his left hand, even when it might make more sense for him to do so as the metal arm is theoretically stronger and faster. Unsurprisingly, Bucky being right-handed means the Winter Soldier is too.

But just to be thorough, here are few counterexamples of Bucky using his metal arm when he’s definitely not the Winter Soldier. One of which even includes him killing people with a gun, something I've seen some Bucky fans also claim he never did in TFATWS and try to use as further proof that he’s the Winter Soldier in Thunderbolts, because their Buckybear is a sweet innocent baby who doesn't carry weapons and wouldn’t harm a fly.

I know I'm constantly beating this drum to the point that it's probably getting annoying, but it’s really easy to manipulate "data" to “prove” whatever you want. Just because something seems like it could be credible at first glance doesn’t mean it is. Please double-check other people's claims before you use them to inform your own opinions.

[red-hood-vigilante]

to yell about an argument done to death: even the language around sam in-show and amongst fans annoys me. sam didn't 'let lucifer out of the cage' which is a wording that implies he solely and singlehandedly opened the door - he unknowingly broke 1 of 66 locks on a door because he was being completely in the dark about lilith being a seal and what killing her would do.

dean unknowingly broke the first lock and started the entire thing but nobody in-show or amongst fans carry the same energy for dean as they do with sam even though neither knew what was happening or even that a seal was broken until it was too late. 'dean let lucifer out' never heard of her.

and then! dean's torture of people in hell is never brought up but sam gets this thrown in his face years and years and years later (by dean multiple times no less) and there's still the convenient ignorance of everything else surrounding this; angels let 64 seals break in the name of the heavenly plan, castiel sat on the truth about lilith of a year and opened the door to the panic room to push sam towards ruby and lilith, dean's voicemail was altered to send sam over the edge, dean was held captive by angels to prevent him getting to sam in time, the plan of heaven and hell was to isolate and crush sam mentally so he'd see lucifer as a grace and say yes, lilith dying by sam's psychic abilities was NEVER the requirement so dean stating he and bobby would kill lilith while sam was locked up in the panic room means she could've died a different way with the same result.

there are a lot of things about this that is so glossed over all the time. and it's just reduced to 'sam let lucifer out'. that exact phrasing. i hate it because it is truly not what happened. if anything he was the one that solved everything despite carrying the least amount of part in this. it was literally a collaborative effort manipulated by forces way beyond sam and dean, why is sam blamed for it by fans AND characters who had their own part in this.

[itsdefinitely]

this would happen to simon petrikov i think

[rainofthetwilight]

huh...the caps read "THIS VISION IS IMPORTANT, IT IS A LONG GAME"

????? doc??? what do you mean?????

[ynbabe]

Need someone to get in a 2000s style scandal real quick- oh shit some driver got caught smoking? Amazing, Max does coke before every race? Expected, hidden mistress (or mister) and kids? Perfect, another spygate? Absolutely, Fernandos being Fernando? We love to see it, a blonde driver finally broke and is committing war crimes with a queer aura that can only be found in nico rosberg and whatever the fuck is going between Sergio ramos and that blond twink from Croatia? Let me get my popcorn

#MakeF1MessyAgain

[sunnibits]

potentially hot take but this is a pet peeve of mine

[tianhai03]

oh hey look it's april 1st again. happy trans day of visibility 💙💗🤍

[marypsue]

In that vein (hah), I just have to take a moment to gush about the costuming in The Lost Boys because. Have you seen the costuming in The Lost Boys. Like each costume standing on its own without anyone in it still gives you a sense of a whole character, which is important because some of these characters don't get, uh, lines. We have to be able to distinguish them immediately by visuals, and the thing is, we can, because they're not just dressed to look attractive, they're dressed with the purpose of establishing character.

Like, consider Michael. They kept it very simple for him, on purpose, he's a regular everyman kind of guy thrown into a Situation. But also, he's trying too hard. The white t-shirt, jeans, and leather jacket call back to James Dean, Rebel Without A Cause, but the leather jacket's brand new without a scuff or a crack, not broken in, and it sits uncomfortably on his shoulders. The earring doesn't suit him - it belongs to somebody else, a funhouse mirror version of himself that he's tempted by, but also it literally belongs to somebody else. Who gave him that earring? Star's implied to have done the piercing, for him, which also tracks - the earring's a little piece of someone else, someone darker and wilder, that's been dug right down into his flesh by his association with Star. It's tasted his blood.

It's also a little piece of the boys' uniting aesthetic bleeding over onto him. There's a magpie sensibility to all of them, but then each of them are visually distinct as themselves within it.

Star's clothes have 80s cuts but form a 60s hippie silhouette, solidified in time. She's the most colourful of them all, her white tops signifying a flash of innocence, but at the same time as she climbs on David's bike, she pulls on a big black jacket that almost envelops her, a little piece of his shadow falling over her and devouring her light. Again, it doesn't quite fit her, like she's playing dressup as a darker, wilder self just like Michael is.

And speaking of David. That boy is chin to toe wrapped up in black. The coat references batwings, which is a great detail. And those gloves! He doesn't touch Star; he doesn't touch Michael; he doesn't touch the world, except through a layer of darkness. It's real Old West, white-hat-black-hat level symbolism. Except.

The real villain of the piece isn't the dangerous, sharp-edged boy in black - although of course you need to look out for him, they don't call him 'dangerous' for no reason. The real villain of the piece is the most perfectly conventional, middle-class, unassuming, don't-look-twice take-him-home-to-mother normal guy imaginable. Grey and beige. Business casual.

It's the perfect camouflage for a predator.

(And then also like. I can't wax as poetic about it right now because my brain cells are otherwise occupied. But please consider how much character is there in, like, the Frogs' army-surplus duds and Sam's terrible, incredible shirts.)