#the intelligent migrant man

[serpentface]

Come On Man.

(Extensive linguistic notes for this 'balls in my mouth' comic under the cut)

The extensive linguistic notes for this "balls in my mouth" comic:

Brakul's first language is the West Rivers dialect of the broader Highlands language, which is part of the Finnic language family. It first split from the Proto-Finnic spoken north of the Viper about a millennia ago with migrants traveling south overseas, and further split into what are now the two native Finnic language groups in Wardin (the Highlands and North Wardi tongues). The Highlands language is a dialect continuum- most neighboring dialects are mutually intelligible, but people from opposite ends of the language's home region would have troubles communicating clearly (though the continuum is not wide enough for any to be fully incomprehensible).

Brakul knew some very, very basic Wardi from occasional contact with Ephenni traders as a teenager, and would later become fluent in the South Wardi dialect as a second language. Wardi is from a wholly separate language family than the Finnic languages with EXTREMELY distant common ancestry, and very different in form and function. Wardi is in many ways less specified and direct, having a smaller variety of individual words to communicate emotional/sensory states and instead imparting many layers of meaning to the same words in different contexts, which Brakul sometimes finds difficult and irritating to navigate. This is one of a number of reasons he often expresses himself more fully in his mother tongue.

Janeys is a native Wardi speaker (South Wardi dialect), fluent in 'Seaway Burri' (which is a lingua franca of the Mouth sea powers, many people along the coastal cities know it as a second language), and semi-fluent in 'High Burri' (state language of the Burri Republic), and in the present day has a modest comprehension of the West Rivers Highlands dialect. This takes place 4.5 years after he and Brakul met, and he mostly just knows basic utilitarian conversational terms and parts of speech, and has a decent understanding of the grammar and how to conjugate verbs. After 13 years of exposure to Brakul talking at him and occasionally deigning to explain what he's saying, Janeys can Sort Of hold a conversation.

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NOTES ON THE POST ITSELF:

I = Sí

My= Sig

You= Mí (casual) Mís (formal)

---

Mí vírim is “I love you”.

The unconjugated form of the verb is vírir. The dead literal translation is “to need”, but "mí vírim" translates more accurately as "I love you" than "I need you". It DOES have connotations of need, it expresses love as a sense of wholeness and natural dependency- you say it to express affection towards someone to whom you owe your existence, to a line of ancestors, to your descendants, to the people you create or provide for your descendants with. It says "you are part of my sense of place in this world, you connect me to something greater than myself that sustains me". It will mostly be spoken between immediate kin (parents, children, siblings), husbands and wives, and in practice of venerating your ancestors. This is a gay as fuck thing to say to an unrelated man.

There's at least three other ways to directly say "I love ___" one of which is an affectionate expression of camaraderie, one of which communicates strong aesthetic appreciation, and one that is used in practice specifically to express affection/gratitude towards livestock (though can be used more broadly).

Janeys comprehends the phrase "Mí vírim" as “(I) [UNKNOWN VERB] you” and he's able to discern from Subtle Context Clues that it's something like 'I love you'.

He guesses the unconjugated verb inaccurately as (v)írer, as -Er and -Ur verb endings are more common than -Ir endings, and -Er/-Ir verbs share all the same conjugated forms.

Wardi languages have no ‘v’ sound to begin with, and the ‘v’ here is very soft, between a ‘vuh’ and ‘fuh’. This doesn’t come naturally to Janeys (or most Wardi speakers in general) and comes out as a 'wuh' on first impulse and a hard ‘fuh’ when he tries to replicate it.

This is something he never gets good at and Brakul is grateful that it’s his brother who was named ‘Vrailedh’ (Vrai-lehd-hh)) and not him so he doesn’t have to hear ‘Wrai-lehd’ or ‘Frai-lehd’ all the damn time by his Wardi compatriots. (Many of them don't even get his actual name right, but it's a lesser sin of not rolling the R and under-emphasizing the -ul)

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"Sí brūlmim fágh filshíbe" is “I am very gullible”. The use here is not particularly cruel and is more just that his first impulse upon realizing Janeys will repeat anything he says right now is to make a "someone wrote gullible on the ceiling" level joke at his expense.

Fágh is a word used to emphasize an adjective and some nouns, functionally close to 'very' but used specifically for non-physical/non-sensory qualities (emotion, personality, etc). You could use fágh in the sentence “I’m so sorry” "he's such an asshole".

Brūlmim is "I am" in present tense. The unconjugated form is brūlmur, meaning 'to be' in a permanent sense, as a matter of nature. Other verbs are used for ‘to be’ in a purely transitory sense (“I am tired”) or describing a prolonged but impermanent state, usually past tense (“I was a stupid teenager”).

Filshíbe straightforwardly means 'gullible'.

The 'h' at the end of fágh is vocalized as an exhale, sounds a little like 'fog-uh' with a VERY soft and breathy 'uh'. The '-e' at the end filshíbe is also exhaled, coming out as a quick, soft 'eh'. Neither of these sounds are natural to a Wardi speaker (especially the breathy 'eh', most -e ending words are pronounced with a strong '-ey').

Janeys is comprehending “I’m (very/so) [UNKNOWN WORD]” here, and his face is being touched so softly so [UNKNOWN WORD] is very compelling and he's learning new things and is kind of in the zone so might as well say it back.

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"Mísig uns drótes vísti sig bahrég, s'vaige do mi?" means "Your balls in my mouth, please?". What makes the sentence Particularly funny to Brakul here is that it's Excessively polite (using a formal and deferential 'your' and very gracious 'please') and jarringly accompanied with lowbrow slang for testicles. A more tonally accurate english translation would be "Sir, may I please perchance take your fat fucking sack in my mouth?"

Mísig means 'your', but specifically implies deference- it's a word you would use to address an elder or authority figure, or to use while being very, very polite. (Mís is the equivalent deferential 'you').

Uns drótes is one of several slang terms for testicles. This one uses the word 'boulders', and is thus Specifically implying 'big balls'. It's lowbrow and a very mild expletive (in the same degree 'ass' is in English).

Vísti means 'in' or 'inside', as a physical state of something being inside of another thing- you would use it for 'there's a bird in that cage' but not 'there's fear in my heart'.

Bahrég means 'mouth', which is almost always used in the purely anatomical sense. The other word for 'mouth' in the language more commonly refers to the mouths of animals (might be better translated as 'maw') and also gets applied to non-anatomical objects (ie 'the mouth of the cave').

S'vaige do mi means 'thank you' (dead literally 'my gratitude to you', the S in S'vaige is a contracted sig/'my') but is translated here as 'please' for clarity. There isn't actually a word that directly correlates to 'please' in the Highlands language, a polite request is accompanied with a 'thank you' instead (IE: "Could you pass the salt, thank you?"). This is one of two direct ways to say 'thank you' and this is the more intensely polite of the two.

Janeys will have understood this sentence as "(polite 'Your') [UNKNOWN WORD] (in? inside? within?) my [UNKNOWN WORD], please." This one throws him off, but he's pretty sure he's about to be kissed on the mouth for the first time in his life so he's willing to go with it.

[beauty-funny-trippy]

Reasons why we know there's something wrong with Grandpa:

• believes immigrants are eating their neighbors pets because he heard someone say it on TV (without any evidence) • thinks injecting disinfectant into our veins might be a good idea. (It's definitely not, don't try it.) • claims America's F35 fighter jet is completely invisible, even if you're right next to it (like Wonder Woman's plane)

• praises white supremacists and KKK members who were chanting antisemitic hate speech, calling them "very fine people" • focuses on imaginary issues like preventing children from changing gender while at school, but ignores real problems like school shootings • thought it was a good idea to give away our desperately needed Covid test machines to our adversary ("Grandpa, what have you done?" — he can't be left alone for a minute) • decided to believe Putin's lies, but dismiss findings from America's intelligence agencies • claims America had airplanes during the Revolutionary War

• believes in the Nazi ideology that immigrants are "poisoning the blood of our country," and says some migrants are actually subhuman "animals" • insisted that the U.S. would have fewer coronavirus cases if it conducted less testing (yes, a U.S. president in charge of controlling the crisis, actually said something this inept, repeatedly) • due to his incompetence and lies during the Covid crisis, the U.S. had one of the highest rates of Covid deaths in the world • thinks windmills cause cancer and kill whales • speaks endlessly about his concerns re: dying by electrocution from a boat battery or being eaten by a shark

• thinks he's above the law and, as president, should be able to commit as many crimes as he wants • is a billionaire who whines about how badly he's been treated, then he's chauffeured to his private jet • likes to discuss Arnold Palmer's penis • after NINE years of repeatedly promising to unveil his Healthcare Plan "very soon," he admits he still has no real plan —only "concepts of a plan" • has a bizarre attraction to the fictional cannibal and serial killer, Hannibal Lector (why? no one knows —and everyone's afraid to ask)

• advocates dangerous plots, like using the military against Americans who disagree with him, or using the DOJ to arrest them, or just telling people to "beat the crap out of them" and he'll pay their legal fees • thinks having a national day of violence is a good idea (we should never have let Grandpa watch "The Purge") • wants to be the "law and order president," yet this 34 time convicted felon incites people to riot and to commit criminal acts of violence • unable to take the loss of an election like a man, he had a temper tantrum like a toddler, that culminated in a treasonous insurrection

⠀This guy is so delusional, he claims he's a genius because he often speaks incoherently in something he calls "the Weave." Here are two examples: • "How disgusted were all when we see all of us are when we see three days ago when we viewed their parade." Asheboro, NC, 8/21/24 • When asked, "What specific legislation will you commit to, to make child care affordable?" He responded, “Well, I would do that, and we’re sitting down, you know; I was, somebody, we had Senator Marco Rubio and my daughter, Ivanka, who was so impactful on that issue. ...But I think when you talk about the kind of numbers that I’m talking about that because the childcare is childcare, couldn’t, you know, there’s something you have to have it, in this country you have to have it.” New York, NY, 9/5/24 ⠀If this was anybody else's Grandpa, the family would be having discussions about who's going to go with Grandpa to the doctor to find out what's wrong with him, and who's going to be in charge of finding him a nice convalescent home to live in. ⠀My suggestion is that it might be a good idea to elect a president who has no cognitive impairment and can tell the difference between reality and delusions. Personally, I think that's a rather important quality in a president.

[cleolinda]

Tuesday’s debate between Trump and his opponent Kamala Harris in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, had several eyebrow-raising moments but none moreso than when Trump, echoing his latest online-born conspiracy, baselessly accused thousands of legal migrants in Springfield, Ohio, of stealing, killing, and eating pet dogs off the street.

The conspiracy was fact-checked in real time by ABC’s David Muir, who noted that city officials had looked into the claim and found it to be baseless. But the damage was already done.

Nearly a week later, Vance found himself once again answering for his running mate’s actions after days of shocking fallout in Springfield, where residents have reported fliers dropped by the Ku Klux Klan as well as several threats of bombings or mass shootings — the latest of which, at Wittenberg University, occurred Saturday night just hours before Vance would go on the air.

[…] On CNN, he seemingly admitted that his claims were lies, then continued by saying that he would keep spreading such tales, even knowing them to be untrue, if they resulted in the media talking about issues he claimed were still just as real despite the deception.

“If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that's what I'm going to do,” said the senator.

This is DANGEROUS shit aimed at the Haitian immigrant community for political gain

that is going to get people hurt if not outright killed, and this motherfucker just admitted it’s not true. Which is maybe the most important thing you will read about the whole ordeal.

“But I saw pictures!!!”

Spoiler: the geese were roadkill.

The woman behind an early Facebook post spreading a harmful and baseless claim about Haitian immigrants eating local pets that helped thrust a small Ohio city into the national spotlight says she had no firsthand knowledge of any such incident and is now filled with regret and fear as a result of the ensuing fallout.

Backlash was swift, with replies ranging from, “I find it strange that a self-professed ‘hillbilly’ doesn’t know what whole chickens look like,” to, “HOW DO YOU NOT KNOW WHAT CHICKENS LOOK LIKE WITH THEIR LEGS ATTACHED YOU F****ING DIPSHIT.” Oliver Alexander, an open-source intelligence analyst, weighed in, sharing images of plucked chickens looking remarkably similar to whatever was being grilled in the video. “Clearly chicken you weirdo. Dude’s never seen chicken that wasn’t dino-nugget shaped,” he wrote.

[thenameswinter99]

I generally avoid to talk about politics in my blog, but I woke up choosing violence and I won’t keep myself any longer.

Message to the Americans from an European:

FUCK YOU ALL.

How could you ever, EVER think of voting a racist, homophobic, misogynist, megalomaniac and all the negative adjectives of the world man? I had little hope in Kamala, I had the feeling she would not win… BUT HOW COULD YOU, HOLY SHIT?

Do you think your “saviour”, the same who said that he should have trusted men around like Hitler with their generals? The same man who allowed one his constituents to call Kamala a “whore” and simulated a oral practice with his microphone IN FRONT OF THOUSANDS AND THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE (who have less brain than him, let’s be honest), the same who organized the assault of Capitol Hill because he could not accept defeat, the same man who had another scum called Elon Musk corrupting the people by donating millions for voting for Trump (a practice ILLEGAL, I L L E G A L), would really MaKe AmErIcAh gReAt AgAiN?

We will talk about this when you’ll cry about multiple civil war starting in your country, because this is what will happen. And I will not be impressed when I’ll read the news in the newspaper.

Don’t cry when you’ll lose your house due to the climate change, because your beloved new President doesn’t believe in climate change and will do everything to turn your back and keep polluting the world, affecting us as well (the Spain floods should be a living example)

Europeans (the intelligent ones, as there are the no brained ones who are celebrating Trump’s victory) are looking at you with extremely side eye because you ruined us. You LITERALLY ruined us, already fragile from two wars that are far from seeing the end. Don’t think that he will be the Messiah that will stop all the wars: it won’t happen. Don’t think the economical and commercial relationships will improve under him: it won’t happen.

For all the women voting for Trump: I hope you look in your mirror in the morning and be ashamed of yourself, because there were women behind you who FOUGHT AND DIED for your fucking rights, and you put your vote on a man that will erase your rights in a heartbeat. Don’t cry when you’ll be treated as a baby machine, because you’ll have to shut up when it will be too late to complain.

For all the Americans who voted for Kamala and tried to break the cycle and giving America a better future: I’m so sorry. I’m so fucking sorry. I know she wasn’t your best candidate, that she has lots of flaws, but the damage would have been less instead of the orange tycoon. We’re living in a simulation of the 1920’s, where violence and ignorance are reigning without being punished. These four years, barring unforeseen events or coups, will pass. And a better future will come.

Thank you for ruining our world, America. Hope you’re proud of yourself. 💜

P.S. Before you attack me after reading my useless wall of text: I’m from Italy, governed by a party of fascist people, with the first Prime Minister being a woman who hates women; who are annulling the women and the LGBTQ+ rights; with the worst press and television censorship; with the population clamouring for higher salaries and lower taxes, but they do nothing; with the highest tax burden but NOTHING is done to lower them; with a Ministry of Transport investigated for kidnapping for ILLEGALLY holding a boat of migrants. I know what will be your destiny, so don’t worry. 💜

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Steven Beschloss at America, America:

This is a strange, in-between moment, rippling with uncertainty stirred by a deeply vengeful man bent on destruction who will soon retake the ultimate levers of power. His hasty dumping of unqualified nominees—each one providing a different version of reckless endangerment to our nation’s safety and security—underscores the serious questions about how bad the coming months and years will be.

Will they mete out punishments to serve their boss’ whims, ending justice as we know it? Will we be able to rely on the safety of our food and water and drugs? Will diseases long abated by vaccines re-emerge as new and unnecessary dangers to our children and ourselves? Can we trust that our military will serve the American people rather than be transformed into a weapon against us? Will we face new attacks by foreign adversaries because our allies can no longer safely share intelligence with us? Will we suffer serious economic decline fueled by billionaires and reckless ideologues focused on expanding their own fortunes while demanding sacrifices from everyone else? Can we be sure that in 2026 there will be another election?

In turn, who will be the heroes of this time? Who will stand up and speak out, refusing to be cowed or ruled by fear? Who will take action to stop the demolition of our democracy? Who with power will demand that the practices and principles that have successfully driven the American system of government be recognized and followed? There are some early signs: Matt Gaetz was a road too far for Attorney General. The Senate chose South Dakota’s John Thune as its new majority leader, not Trump-backed lickspittle Rick Scott from Florida. Jerome Powell, chairman of the Federal Reserve, said categorically that he would not leave his post if Trump asked or tried to fire him. Alaska’s Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski announced she would oppose Trump’s nominees if they are not properly vetted by the FBI. “This isn’t about partisanship," she reportedly told close allies, "it’s about ensuring we don’t compromise the standards of public office." South Dakota’s other GOP senator, Mike Rounds, said this when asked about anti-vaxxer Robert F. Kennedy Jr.: “Look, I believe in vaccines. I think they’ve saved millions of lives.”

Will there be other GOP senators who find their spine in the coming months to confront Trump’s reckless decisions? Will we see Democrats oppose the coming onslaught with all the vigor and virulence they can muster? These would be leaders to notice and encourage. Let’s also pay attention to the critical role of state and local officials to protect their citizens and push back against the Trump-inspired federal efforts to deport millions of undocumented migrants and pursue myriad other actions that will cause damage to real people. Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker best summarized this commitment: “You come for my people, you come through me.”

In this period, we will need fearless truth-tellers to remind us of the differences between right and wrong, true and false. They will be critical in asserting factual reality as the anti-government propaganda intensifies to justify extreme attacks on the agencies, procedures and resources established to create safety and security, particularly for at-risk people. Trump lackey and election denier Pam Bondi, nominated for Attorney General, has already pledged to prosecute the prosecutors. Trump chose Russell Vought, a chief architect of Project 2025, to lead the Office of Management and Budget, even though Trump said he knew nothing about the project’s policy agenda. Vought has already pledged to help impound any funds approved by Congress if the next president disapproves of their intended purpose—demonstrating utter disregard for the legislative body’s power of the purse enshrined in the first article of the Constitution.

Steven Beschloss wrote in his America, America blog on who will be the heroes to save America.

[ausetkmt]

When Donald Trump talks about undocumented immigrants, he often brings up genetics.

Immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country,” he said at a rally last year.

“Many of them murdered far more than one person, and they’re now happily living in the United States,” he said earlier this month. “You know, now a murderer, I believe this, it’s in their genes. And we got a lot of bad genes in our country right now.” 

The former president’s language underscores a larger trend, experts tell STAT. The eugenics movement is once again taking center stage in the U.S. — both in the immigration policies and rhetoric promoted by Trump, and through a rise in race science in academic literature.

Eugenics — the pseudoscientific idea of fixing social problems through genetics and heredity via policies ranging from selective breeding to forced sterilization and genocide — was popular at the turn of the 20th century, before the devastation of the Holocaust quelled public support for it. The reasons for its resurgence include an increase in funding of race science from private donors, as well as proponents of scientific racism and white nationalists manipulating the push to make science more public. 

Even well-intentioned scientists have fed into this shift by promoting genetic determinism — the idea that genes are the primary driver of traits and behaviors — and by platforming problematic work in the name of academic freedom. 

“I wasn’t surprised that people are being demagogic about this stuff, but I am a little surprised that they’re so clearly not even hiding [it],” said Paul Lombardo, a professor of law at Georgia State University who has done extensive work on the legacy of eugenics. “This is not just saying the quiet part out loud. This is coming up with quotations in which, instead of using quotation marks, you’ve got swastikas at each end of the sentence.”

‘Bad genes’ and the birth of eugenics

Trump is frequently accused of racism, but the fact that he is embracing eugenic thinking has not drawn sufficient attention, according to Shannon O’Brien, a political scientist at the University of Texas, Austin, who has written a book on eugenics in American politics. 

While racists harbor hatred for others because of their ethnicity or the color of their skin, eugenicists take it a step further and “like to legislate people out of existence,” O’Brien said. “They are OK with sterilization. They’re okay with extermination, and they believe that certain groups are superior and it’s OK to enact things that make it difficult for other ones to exist. I find that far scarier than racism.” 

Asked about Trump’s rhetoric and the eugenics movement and his remarks about “bad genes,” Karoline Leavitt, the campaign’s press secretary, told STAT, “President Trump was clearly referring to murderers, not migrants.’’

The former president also has a history of statements suggesting that certain people are genetically superior. A 2016 documentary pointed out Trump’s father, Fred, introduced him to “racehorse theory” as a child — the idea that “that if you put together the genes of a superior woman and a superior man, you get superior offspring.” He’s used this idea to promote his own intelligence as well. “I had an uncle who went to MIT who is a top professor, Dr. John Trump. A genius. It’s in my blood. I’m smart,” he told CNN in 2020. 

This way of talking about genetics is rooted in a long history that begins with the English anthropologist Francis Galton, who took his cousin Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution and applied it to humans, first using the term eugenics in 1883. The nascent field of eugenics matured into a full-fledged field of study in the United States. Much later, in the 1990s, the sequencing of the human genome inadvertently created a new surge in eugenics — emboldened by the idea that scientists could isolate genes responsible for complex behaviors, like poverty, crime and intelligence. 

How companies like 23andMe bolstered genetic determinism  

Those affiliated with the Human Genome Project hoped sequencing the genome would end notions that genetics created significant differences in different groups — “that it would lead us to this post-racial world,” said Aaron Panofsky, the director of the Institute for Society and Genetics at the University of California, Los Angeles. 

“But it turns out that both scientists and the public spend all their interest in the 0.1% of genetic variation that makes us different, not the 99.9% that makes us the same.”

In promoting their research to the public and getting research funding from the government, geneticists often hyped up the role genes play in people’s lives. The Human Genome Project “was a huge public undertaking,” said Emily Merchant, a historian of science at the University of California, Davis. “It was almost $3 billion and took more than a decade to complete. So it needed a lot of popular support. The scientists who were trying to generate that popular support did it by promoting genetic determinism.”

This sentiment persisted in ensuing years because of popular genetic testing companies like 23andMe and Ancestry.com, which marketed its products with the premise that an understanding of genetics held the secret to good health and could quantify people’s sense of belonging to racial or ethnic groups. 

In the early 2010s, there was another shift in how mainstream academic circles discussed ideas that intelligence was genetic or that race had a biological basis. Richard Lynn, a psychologist who claimed that people from certain countries had lower IQs, promoted a biased dataset on IQ differences between countries that became increasingly widespread in academia. Another theory, called “differential K theory,” began to circulate around this time, stating that Black people have lower IQs and are more aggressive. 

“The national IQ database, differential K theory, they should have died the death bad science deserves to die. They have no scientific merit,” said Rebecca Sear, an evolutionary behavioral scientist at Brunel University who has documented the resurgence in eugenics in demography. “They’ve both been extensively critiqued. They are both currently thriving in the academic literature.”

While controversial among the scientific community, ideas like Lynn’s continued to spread in academia, in part because of the ethos of academic freedom — the idea that scholars should be able to research and debate any issues in their field, and that rejecting a paper based on problematic findings is tantamount to censorship.  

“That’s a very, very problematic argument, but I think it is quite widespread,” Sear said. “Academic freedom isn’t the freedom to say literally anything in an academic forum. It’s the freedom to say anything with a sound methodological basis.” 

While these ideas lacked scientific rigor, Sear explained, they were often not intended for other scientists. “Scientific racism really is not aimed at academia. It’s aimed at the outside world. And this, I think, is why it’s so often such bad science,” Sear said.

The appropriation of open science 

The open science movement around this time also proved to boost the spread of flawed research on race, ethnicity, and genetics. Academic journals increasingly were publishing papers without paywalls, so anyone could access them, and often requiring the data underpinning research to be available. 

Some scientists had also begun posting early drafts of their work, called “preprints,” on public forums. By doing science in the public square this way, people with explicit political agendas could access, manipulate, and reinterpret published research in a way that sometimes took academics by surprise.  

Online, white nationalists used popular genetic testing websites to prove how white they were, and reanalyzed scientific data with a bent to affirming biological differences between races. They also seized on uncertainty among biologists about how to discuss race in the academic literature. Discussion forums on the subject might lean on anti-science conspiracy theories, but users could sometimes make sophisticated arguments about statistical uncertainties or the distinction between correlation and causation.

“They read both against and with the scientific literature, and that’s the way in which it becomes a very complicated dance that they sometimes make,” said Panofsky, who has studied the ways that far-right movements weaponize genetics. 

The solution to the weaponization of genetics isn’t gatekeeping research, experts studying the issue agree. But, they say that academia hasn’t confronted the ways science can be used to embolden bigotry. 

“We have basically a metric for how much Nazis like your research,” said Jedidiah Carlson, a population geneticist at Macalester College who led an analysis of how preprints circulate among right-wing extremists online. But it’s not a feature many are interested in. He wants to see researchers more attuned to the long-term impact of their work. 

Incentive structures in research are also responsible for the continued popularity of research on topics like the links between genetics and intelligence or educational attainment, Carlson said. It’s “easy to get money for it, because you can say this has immediate policy implications for education and immigration policy … It’s just treated as this generic ‘apolitical’ research when it never has been.”

Challenging the idea that genes are ‘in the driver’s seat’

The failure to deeply engage with the dark history of eugenics and the way it’s informed a number of academic fields is linked to current political hostility directed toward immigrants, according to Marielena Hincapié, an immigration scholar and lawyer at Cornell University who hosted a symposium on the 100-year legacy of eugenics and the Immigration Act of 1924. 

She points to recent attacks on immigrant communities carried out by people that believe in the Great Replacement Theory, a conspiracy that posits there is a concerted effort to diminish the power and influence of white people in the United States. The gunman behind one such attack, in Buffalo, New York, directly cited genetics research in his thinking.

The incident sparked some soul searching within the genetics community, which has also pushed back on problematic use of its research. In one case, a genetics consortium challenged the use of its data by a private company to screen embryos. On another occasion, a now-defunct app claimed it could test users on whether they had genes associated with same-sex sexual orientation, drawing on a paper published in Science. That prompted a protest petition signed by more than 1,600 scientists. 

There’s also growing interest in the scientific community in how social determinants, such as economic policies, racism, and climate change, shape people’s health, and in the field of epigenetics, which studies how the environment affects gene expression. These paradigms open up an understanding that “genes are not necessarily in the driver’s seat, but they’re in an interactive relationship with a whole bunch of other factors,” said Panofsky. “They seem to open a door to a post-deterministic biology and genetics.” 

Even so, the field has yet to truly rethink its buy-in of the idea that genes play a central role in people’s abilities and behaviors, Panofsky said. That thinking can inadvertently support the kind of problematic rhetoric Trump has applied to immigrants. While much of the U.S. has moved on and forgotten about its eugenic past, the country hasn’t done the work to refute the ideas it made so popular. 

“We presume that we’ve done the work of rooting these matters out of our society,” said Michele Goodwin, a professor of constitutional law and global health at Georgetown Law. “But that presumption is proving to be quite thin and weak in these times.”

Just over 100 years ago, eugenicist Harry Laughlin testified before the U.S. House of Representatives that “The character of our civilization will be modified by the ‘blood’ or the natural hereditary qualities which the sexually fertile immigrant brings to our shores.” His argument wouldn’t be out of place today.

[mightyflamethrower]

President-Elect Donald Trump’s landslide victory will likely go down in the books as the greatest political comeback in American history.

With every win, there is a loser. The biggest loser of the presidential race was Vice President Kamala Harris. But her failed campaign, once propped up by Democrats and media allies, also left many others with egg on their faces

Below are five big losers after Trump’s massive victory.

Media Elites

The credibility of the establishment media appears to have hit rock bottom after it tried to smear Trump as fascist and a threat to democracy.

In the final weeks before the election, the media tried to push several hoaxes. It claimed Trump called for guns to be pointed at Liz Cheney. But far from speaking about executing Cheney, Trump’s remarks were about the establishment’s willingness to send Americans to die in foreign wars.

It also pushed a Harris campaign narrative that accused Trump of wanting to “control” women’s bodies “whether they like it or not.” Trump’s full statement shows Trump said he would “protect” women from migrant crime and from foreign adversaries. Trump’s statement was not in the context of abortion.

The media also ran with an Atlantic story that cited “attendees�� and “contemporaneous notes” of a meeting taken by “a participant,” that claimed Trump refused to pay for the funeral of U.S. Army soldier Vanessa Guillen in December 2020.

Americans already did not trust the media before the election. A Gallup poll in October found that Americans’ trust in the establishment media to report current events “fully, accurately and fairly” had plummeted to a record low.

Obamas

The Obamas’ massive effort to help the Harris campaign defeat Trump failed. The Obamas are the most esteemed members of the Democrat party after former President Barack Obama won in landslide victories in 2008 and 2012.

Barack Obama campaigned hard for Harris. He appeared to use every trick in the book to help Harris win, such as guilting black men for purportedly not wanting a woman president.

Former first lady Michelle Obama unexpectedly took to the campaign trail in the final weeks. During her rallies, she implied that people who don’t support Harris for president are sexist and racist. She also questioned if voters were “ready for this moment.”

Voters rejected the Obama’s scare tactics. Early voting data suggests Trump performed historically well with black and Hispanic voters.

Mark Cuban

Cuban, a never-Trumper, strongly backed Harris as a campaign surrogate. He appeared for weeks on high profile shows, trying to bridge the gap between business leaders and the Harris campaign. He claimed Harris was not an ideological politician and defended her refusal to answer policy questions.

In the last week of the campaign, Cuban delivered a large gaffe that galvanized Trump’s base. Cuban claimed on The View that Trump was never around “strong, intelligent women.” Conservative women immediately took to social media to condemn his remark. Trump slammed Cuban’s claim by stating “all strong women, and women in general, should be very angry about this weak man’s statement.”

Liz Cheney: Republican Benedict Arnold

Cheney, another Trump hater, made a Democrat alliance with the Harris campaign, and it backfired. Cheney campaigned heavily with Harris in suburbs of rust belt states. At each campaign stop, Cheney ripped Trump as a threat to democracy, a rhetoric that voters rejected on Election Day.

The failed alliance suggests Cheney might have actually helped Trump. The Democrat party is already asking questions about who is to blame for the failure.

“The thing that I’m really most curious about now is, where does the Democratic Party go?” Democrat Dan Turrentine, co-host of The Morning Meeting, said. “I think there’s going to be one side that’s going to say that the party did not, you know, Harris was howling around with Liz Cheney in the suburbs, talking to Haley Republicans and not talking to the progressive base, and the kind of RFK, Bernie Sanders, progressive part of the party, wound up in Trump’s camp.”

Joe Biden

Americans widely voted against four more years of President Joe Biden’s vice president. Under the Biden-Harris administration, costs increased by about 20 percent across the board, Russia invaded Ukraine, Hamas and Iran attacked Israel, illegal migrants invaded the southern border, and the nation suffered the deadly Afghan withdrawal.

Voters soundly rejected the Biden administration’s unprecedented tactic of waging lawfare against Trump. Never before had a nominee of an American political party been indicted by an administration’s Justice Department.

In addition to his shunned agenda, Biden, who Democrats have praised for stepping aside for Harris, will likely be viewed as a failed president because his chosen successor did not prevent Trump from completing the greatest political comeback in American history. Biden endorsed Harris, campaigned for Harris, and conveyed all his campaign money to Harris.

“It’s been a historic presidency,” Biden said Thursday. “Much of the work we’ve done is already being felt by the American people…”

[notvv0ltz]

Please talk about increasing islamophobia and anti migrant racism from the police and people in general after terrorist attack in Russia. Literally no one said anything on western media

It's so god damn awful man (source: )

Text:

In Russia, after the terrorist attack at Crocus City Hall, pressure on migrants and non-Russian Russians is increasing, and migrant-phobic sentiment is spreading. Security forces create special groups for inspections. Politicians are demanding restrictions on entry into the country, and in some regions attacks on migrants have become more frequent.

State Duma deputy from occupied Crimea Mikhail Sheremet stated the need to limit the entry of migrants into Russia during the war:

“Unfortunately, foreigners who cross the border are a threat, first of all, to themselves, as they automatically become an object of interest for Western intelligence services to create conditions for terrorist acts in Russia, as well as tools for destabilizing the situation,” Sheremet said.

[mariacallous]

Poland has announced that it is building massive fortifications along its borders with Russia and Belarus. Serious money is going into this: 10 billion zloty (about $2.55 billion) will go into building the fences and planting forests. Poland’s undertaking raises an important point: Border fortifications can slow down the enemy’s advance, free up troops, and indeed save troops’ lives. More NATO countries ought to follow Poland’s example.

Some countries are blessed by nature. God may have put Finland next to Russia, but at least he also graced the small country with forests along large swaths of its border. During the 1939-40 Winter War, when the Finns valiantly tried to save their country from the invading Red Army, the defenders used the trees to their advantage and dramatically slowed what the enormous Red Army had thought would be a cakewalk.

But the Finnish military has added to the defenses nature provided. “We have a long history in building fortifications, especially for coastal defense and to protect our air bases,” said retired Maj. Gen. Pekka Toveri, a former chief of Finnish military intelligence and now member of the Finnish Parliament. “They protect troops and equipment, and troops in fortified positions can also defend key terrain with fewer troops compared to when you’ve got your troops in the open.”

Poland, too, has several hundred miles of border with Russia (combined with Belarus), but it has less forest than Finland, though it does have a few swamps. Indeed, until Aleksandr Lukashenko’s regime decided to weaponize migration in 2021 and send thousands of migrants across Belarus’s border to Poland, Latvia, and Lithuania, the three countries had little border fortification of any kind. Since then, the Polish government has built a steel wall along its border with Belarus, and Latvia and Lithuania have erected fences.

A steel wall may keep migrants out, but it certainly won’t deter Russian or Belarusian soldiers. Now, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has announced East Shield, a plan to do exactly that. “We want our border to be safe during peace and be impassable during war,” Tusk said at a World War II commemoration ceremony last month, Bloomberg reported. The project will “include the construction of new fortifications, fences, changes in landforms and special forestation along 400 kilometers (249 miles) of land border,” Bloomberg noted. Construction has already started.

Poles support the plans. When asked, just before Tusk’s announcement, whether Poland should “build fortifications (barbed wire, bunkers, trenches) on the border with Russia and Belarus,” 64.3 percent of Poles responded yes, while only 16.5 percent opposed such a move. Indeed, with Poland now spending more than 4 percent of its GDP on defense, allocating less than 10 percent of this year’s budget to fortifications seems worth a try.

$2.55 billion is a hefty sum, even in a country whose 2024 defense budget amounts to about $29 billion. But if forests, fortifications, and fences can keep the enemy out or at least cause a delay, this is money well spent. Fortifications can take blows that would otherwise fall on troops.

“Generally, a fortified border should provide us with more time to respond to any sudden attack, the likelihood of which is minimal, as things currently stand,” noted Marek Swierczynski, the head of the security and international affairs desk at the Polish policy analysis firm Polityka Insight. “It may provide a more robust defense posture against both land and—if sufficiently equipped—a low, slow air attack. The lessons learned from the Ukraine war suggest that a well-prepared and sufficiently manned defensive position may slow down the enemy’s attack to the degree it would culminate and break down much sooner than otherwise.”

In Finland, the fortifications are indisputably a source of strength. “The Army trains the troops in fortification … but we don’t build long trench lines like the Ukrainians do,” Toveri said. “Our fighting positions normally have two, three soldiers with overhead protection, which creates a mutually supporting network of positions protected by minefields. That’s much more difficult to destroy than the trench lines.” The bottom line, Toveri noted, is that “since the threat is heavy Russian artillery and now also drones, fortification gives the troops much better protection.” Better yet, Finnish industry can quickly build concrete and wood elements for such fortification. Indeed, Finland is building new fortifications. (Yes, their locations are classified.)

Poland’s plans and Finland’s good experiences, in fact, suggest every country that borders an increasingly aggressive Russia ought to erect fortifications along their borders. Trees and bollards are indisputably less valuable than soldiers. During the Cold War, the intra-German border, then also the NATO-Warsaw Pact front line, was heavily fortified. The installations were removed in the early 1990s, but anyone wishing to see a few examples for themselves can do so—in a museum on the border between the formerly East German region of Thuringia and the formerly West German Bavaria. And now fortifications may experience a renaissance. Imagine the burden lifted from the shoulders of NATO’s front-line soldiers—and, in the long run, the money saved.

But retired Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, a career infantry officer who commanded U.S. Army Europe from 2014 to 2017, cautions that fortifications are only as effective as their human and air support. “Fortifications and obstacles such as minefields and tank ditches by themselves are only effective if they are covered with observed artillery or rocket fire,” he said. “Otherwise, the attacking force is able to take their time and conduct deliberate breaching.” And, he explained, “the fortifications have to be in-depth, and they must be properly integrated into NATO’s defense plans for that region. Otherwise, plans could be disrupted by obstacles and fortifications that are not complementary to the defense plans.”

Fortifications designed by an individual country could trip up soldiers from allied countries that come to its aid in a crisis—because defenders, too, have to operate near the border, especially as they try to push the invading forces out. Plus, Hodges added, fortifications consume considerable resources and are expensive.

That means Poland’s planned fortifications will only add benefit if NATO planners know all the details. It’s unclear how detailed Poland’s plans are, as the fortifications’ locations will most likely be kept classified. “We don’t have full clarity yet as to how deep, how wide, and how well armed that fortified line will be and what its aims will be,” Swierczynski said. “In terms of this being an opportunity to free up forces, I think it’s actually going to have a reverse impact. It will need to be manned, and this burden will fall on the armed forces.”

Such sentry duties are likely to be carried out by members of the Territorial Defense Forces, a branch of the armed forces that has particular responsibility for homeland defense and whose often part-time members are deployed in their home regions. “And it will require maintenance and supplies by army engineers and logisticians,” Swierczynski said.

As with all attempts at deterrence, though, what truly matters is whether the potential attacker is swayed. Signaling to Russia that Europe takes its threat seriously may be worth its weight in gold. If the plans merely cause a raised eyebrow in the Kremlin, they’re not worth pursuing. For now, most of us can only guess at the conversations inside the Kremlin—but if Russian media freaks out about the move, it may be one sign that it’s working.

[gayferrari]

People saying Max isn't articulate and funny in English I'm... 🤔

I think Max is extremely articulate and absolutely hilarious in English. Far more than many native speakers. Idk maybe it's because I'm a native English speaker who's not American or from the UK? I'm used to Dutch and South African migrants so maybe I 'get' him more (re the culture/bluntness/intonation stuff) but idk man. Max is funny and very intelligent. In English.

One person said he's funnier in Dutch. Nobody said he isn't articulate or intelligent. Thank you for playing

[i-spaced-sorry]

Burzek wedding One Chicago One Shot.

Hi y'all! Today at work it was slow and I saw this headline on my phone.

Obviously my first reaction was "The only logical way this would happen is if something happened to Kevin" I wrote some ideas on what it would look like in that scenario and then since it was slow at work I kept building on those ideas and it turned into a weird 2010 style fanfic. I feel like this might offend some people in this fandom if I didn't say it's suppose to be like a bad fanfic, so there's your warning.

This is my take on why Voight would officiate the wedding:

“Kev, what are you doing right now?” asked Voight when Kevin picked up the phone. 

“Uh, nothing really, just going over my officiate speech for the wedding tomorrow” replied Kev while moving his laptop aside and sliding towards the edge of the couch, ready to jump up the minute his boss told him so. 

“Alright, well, I need you to run to the 31st and pick up a packet that I need from them for our next case.” 

Kevin crinkled his eyebrows in confusion. “Sarge with all due respect, but why am I going and not you? Or better yet why are they not just dropping it off the next day we are at the district. It’s 11pm. And Burgess and Ruze are getting married tomorrow so we all aren’t in the office anyway.”

Kevin could hear his boss sigh and could envision him throwing a hand down his face. 

“I need you to go now, I’m stuck at the district doing last minute paperwork before we all take off tomorrow for as you said the Burgess’ wedding.”

Sighing, Kevin got up and replied, “Okay, I’m going now. But this packet better be worth the trip.”

“Thanks” and before he knew it  his boss was hanging up on him. 

As Kevin approached the 31st, he was reminded of Kim’s recent shift at the district and how there was a drive by. Praying that didn’t happen while he was inside, he got out of his car and walked towards the entrance past the migrants.

“Hi, I’m here to pick up a packet for the Intelligence unit out of the 21st” stated Kevin while walking up to the desk Sergeant. 

Confused, the desk Sergeant looked at Kevin and replied, “I wasn’t made aware of any packet, if you just wait here a minute I’ll go take a look.” 

“Uh yea sure” stated Kevin. 

While he waited he turned around and looked out the window at the migrants. That’s when he noticed something and sure enough heavy fire happened just like with Kim. But this time, all the migrants ran into the building and the doors got locked and barricaded before he could start a chase. Great, he was now stuck inside a different district the night before his friends were supposed to be married. 

“What do you mean he’s not here!” cried Kim into her phone. She was talking to Hailey about how she needed to go over something in her vows with Kevin before the ceremony. It was 9am, a little early for a traditional wedding. But this wasn’t just a traditional wedding, this was a miracle wedding between two people who had tried various times to get married. So to them a morning wedding was perfect. 

“He texted me saying he was stuck at the 31st. They had taken really bad fire late last night and the migrants came into the district and a guy who blended in with the migrants has now taken it upon himself to tie up every officer who was there and has taken over the district. Apparently the 1st shift officers got there around 7 this morning and are right now trying to negotiate with the man.” replied Hailey over the phone. She was on her way to the venue and wished she could drive faster to be there for her friend. 

“Ugh!” replied Kim before hanging up the phone and tossing it to the side and beginning to sob. 

“Darlin? Are you alright?”  called Adam. Kim looked up from her sobbing and turned her head towards the door. 

“No, you can’t come in here! It’s bad luck” sniffled Kim. 

“I know, but I wanted to let you know we will work this out.” soothed Adam from behind the door. 

“How? We only have the venue for 2hrs and Kevin’s not here! Who is going to officiate the wedding?”

Kim sobbed some more but could hear some rustling behind the door and then she heard, “Kim, I can officiate your wedding.”

“Voight, I don’t know, do you even have your license?” asked Kim hesitantly.

“Yes, I have my license. Let’s get the two of you married!”

“Are you okay with that darlin?” asked Adam, checking his soon to be wife was okay with it. 

“Yea, that’s okay.”

Hailey looked at the church room where her friends were about to get married and she smiled. It was an intimate enough space but also had exactly the vibes of her friends. It was perfect. As she walked down the aisle to her seat, she looked up and noticed her boss standing at the front with Adam. She was confused for a second but then realized that since Kevin was held up at the 31st, that he was filling in. ‘Even though my marriage fell apart, I at least knew not to get our boss involved in our wedding or marriage….Well at the beginning, he obviously snuck his way in later.” she thought to herself. 

Soon the wedding began and the bridal shower, which consisted of Adam’s cousin and Kim’s cousin and that was it, came down the aisle. Next was Mack in her flower dress. She threw the petals and smiled extra big at Hailey. And then finally, Kim herself came down the aisle in her beautiful wedding dress and redone makeup. 

On the other side of town, The negotiators were still at work trying to get the man inside to cooperate. “Come on man, just take the plea deal.” begged Kevin while checking his watch again. He was missing his best friends’ wedding for this shit. 

After 10 more minutes of back and forth the man finally agreed to the terms and opened the doors. Kevin ran out, hung onto a responding officer's arms and pleaded his reasoning to get his statement at a later date. The officer was sympathetic to the fellow officer in blue and allowed him to go. Kevin got in his car and sped off for the church. 

Back at the church, Adam had just finished his vows, when the chapel doors slammed open and Jay ran in, “No, I object to the wedding of these two!”

Kim and Adam stood there mouths agape. Hailey looked at her ex and exclaimed, “My guy! My brother from another mister, my ex husband who will forever be my best friend, what in God’s green Earth are you doing?” 

Jay shook his head and stated, “I don’t really, I’ve just always wanted to do that. Carry on.” and with that he walked to sit next to Hailey, who smacked him upside the head rightfully so. 

“Why is Voight officiating and not Kev?” stage whispered Jay to Hailey. 

“He got caught up at a district and is now in a lockdown, I don’t like Voight officiating either”

“He’s bad news.” stage whispered Jay again. 

Looking to her right, like in a sitcom, Hailey deadpanned, “You don’t say”

“Uh, guys?” coughed Adam from his spot at the front. 

Looking up, the two hummed. 

“Can we get back to getting married?”

“Sorry” replied the two while looking at their feet like lost puppies.

Whipping into a parking space, he shut the engine off, opened and slammed the door shut and ran up the church steps. Opening the door, he opened the second set of doors leading to the chapel and he heard the words, 

“....Burgess take Adam Ruzek to be your lawfully wedded husband?”

As he heard his best friend reply yes, he dropped to his knees and screamed “no, I missed my best friends getting married” and sobbed. 

Quickly when the small group turned his way, he got up and made his way into the pew behind Hailey and Jay.

The wedding finished up and the happy couple walked down the aisle. 

Later at the reception, after Kevin apologized to his friends, he walked up to his boss. 

“Sorry about what happened at the district” apologized Voight. 

Looking mad, Kevin stated, “Me too. Especially since after all that, the Desk Sergeant claimed you already picked up the packet early that day. 

Voight stared at his officer before responding, “hmm. I guess I did. Oh well, sorry for the trouble.” Then he shrugged and walked away leaving Kevin pissed.

[firecrackerhh]

Yknow maybe this is a hot take but I don’t think ‘illegal’ immigration on its own should be illegal, certainly not if the migrants aren’t actually fucking doing anything wrong and are actively contributing to the fucking economy in some way. If someone whose illegal does something bad then fine, whatever, send them back, but to just ASSUME that every immigrant is a fucking rapist or whatever is fucking retarded. Stopping ALL immigration and kicking out EVERY illegal is just gonna cause our economy to ROT.

Immigrants built this wretched fucking country and they get nothing out of it but dehumanization.

Maybe every immigrant SHOULD stay where they came from, clearly America doesn’t respect their sacrifices and as such we don’t fucking deserve them.

I can only speak for myself, but god, I would rather be fucking shot and die quickly by some drug lord than be forced to go through hell just to try and make a home in a country that looks at me like I’m nothing less than VERMIN.

Maybe America is the real vermin, maybe it’s fucking Trump supporters who are fucking vermin, maybe they should go back to fucking Europe if they refuse to stand for real American values.

History will not look fondly on any of us. And we deserve it. We deserve to feel nothing but guilt and shame for what Trump is gonna do, even if he can’t do everything, he’s still gonna have time to do plenty bad.

Of course, I guess my mother and everyone else whose so very apathetic to the world around them will only start to care when Trump’s bullshit affects them. So fucking selfish. So wretchedly fucking selfish.

Excuse me for having some empathy for my fellow fucking man, I’m so sorry that I don’t think cruelty fucking solves anything in the long run. I’m sorry that unlike some cunts I’m not a piece of fucking shit who looks at suffering and thinks “eh, whatever, I don’t care!” Fucking disgusting.

Maybe we’ll all be lucky and another fucking virus takes over and mercifully kills fucking all of us. I can’t take this shit man. This world is too disgustingly cruel to the point I wonder if being human fucking means anything, aren’t we SUPPOSED to be more intelligent than beasts? Trump supporters barely count as human to me anymore, how am I expected to respect someone’s humanity if they refuse to accept others? I’m sorry I don’t do that turn the other cheek shit. They frankly don’t deserve the gift of life if they’re to spend it so cruelly.

I know the rapture as a thing isn’t really in the Bible but fuck it, I honestly hope it’s real just so I don’t have to put up with these wretched bleeders anymore. I have to hear any more rancid takes from these wretched vermin I’m gonna lose my shit.

I think these people should burn in the deepest pits of hell for the rest of their wretchedly miserable fucking afterlives cuz I refuse to believe any allegedly all-loving deity would look at behavior like this and think it’s worthy of fucking heaven, you people aren’t even worth spitting on. You deserve eternal misery if you insist on spreading it.

[ramblingsandwhateverelse]

I have spent the past 24 hours ping ponging between varying extremes of emotion. I sat at my desk at work, and sometimes would spend 2 minutes holding back a blood-curling scream and crushing my water bottle in my fist. Sometimes my eyes would instantly water up and I would spend several minutes with my head tilted up, holding back tears and trying not to dry sob. I had to take frequent bathroom breaks as frequent waves of nasauea crept up on me without warning.

If you voted Democrat and are not just as scared or angry or miserable right now, it is for one of two reasons: you either do not fully understand the consequences of this election, or you do not truly care.

If you are in the second camp, there is no helping you. I hope you learn human empathy soon, but it won't be from me.

But to the first, this is not entirely an indictment of your character. American governance and politics are horribly messy, and our education system and media do a sub-par job at educating most Americans on either. What you need to immediately learn and understand is this: a presidential election is never solely about the singular president. If you do not believe that Donald Trump is truly evil or competent enough to cause the deterioration of human rights and living standards that others on the left expect, then that is fine. Honestly, you're probably right.

However, a president is never just one man- he is an entire Cabinet, hundreds of thousands of bureaucrats, multiple media machines, millions of active combatants and agents, thousands of judges. During his previous presidency, Donald Trump did not ban transgender people from the military; those he appointed to the Department of Defense did. Donald Trump did not remove healthcare protections for LGBT people; those he appointed to the Department of Health and Human Services did. Donald Trump did not overturn Roe v Wade; those he appointed to the Supreme Court did. Donald Trump did not personally deny thousands of visas and asylum applications to migrants; those he appointed to the Department of State did. When a US president is elected, it is not the simple, singular election of one man to the office of the president; it is the welcoming of an entire political party and administration into a million-person machine that wields immense federal, state, and local power.

Furthermore, do not be fooled by the supposition that Trump's administration could not possibly enact all of the campaign promises they made. It is true that, between 2016-2020, his administration was never able to erect a wall along the US-MX border. However, his administration did deport record numbers of undocumented migrants, essentially freeze legal entry of asylum seekers and refugees, separate families of undocumented migrants, and hire tens of thousands of undertrained ICE and border patrol agents. Campaign promises are never truly important because of the actual content of the promise; they are important because of the ideals they uphold and strive to implement legislation in favor of.

Project 2025 is rife with campaign promises moderates have deemed too impossible to achieve, but Project 2025 should not be treated as an instruction manual the Trump administration will stick to word for word; rather, it is more of a Bible, a religious text that will oftentimes not be interpreted literally, but whose core beliefs will be espoused and followed faithfully. The underlying ideals of gender essentialism, heteronormativity, Jingoism and American supremacy, authoritarianism, social conservatism, and fiscal conservatism are what the Trump administration will prioritize and focus on. These will be the foundations of their legislation and political efforts.

You cannot pretend that everything will be fine simply because you can or did not perceive the differences and shifts that occurred between 2016 and 2020. You cannot look at the buffoon who will soon be Commander in Chief and honestly or intelligently believe that he is the sole person everyone is worried about. The time for coddled ignorance, willful or unwillful, is over. If you are reading this post, you have the phone battery and internet bandwidth to go educate yourself, so you have no excuse whatsoever anymore.

[guadalupehesus]

"While there's life, there's hope." - Marcus Tullius Cicero.

Dear Harry,

I am writing to you with a warning. As I know, you often have or had inappropriate states due to mental or alcoholic intoxication. God forbid you to use drugs. Why did I bring up this personal problem of yours? I'm not judging you. A person of the 21st century is very vulnerable mentally to temptations. This is our life. Nowadays, even those who pray are afraid of disgracing themselves, if they have any intelligence, of course. Yesterday you were on a horse with a shield, today you are a laughingstock. And what will happen tomorrow is chaotic and unpredictable even for me. For example, Vladimir Putin unexpectedly gave us a kitten. You can say that the President of the Russian Federation gave me and my sister the whole world of tenderness and warmth that exudes from this furry baby. He did it secretly. However, I suspect it could have been a love spell, but I am deeply grateful to him for the only worthwhile act of a man on his part. The only thing that darkens my mood is that the Kyrgyz government used to cast a spell on me to take away the greatness of Russia and the Romanov Family for years. And now, this is being done by the respected Russian president at the behest of a migrant from sunny Uzbekistan - Alina Maratovna Kabaeva.

Don't make these mistakes, Harry. It often happens that a strong politician was ruined not by his professional qualities, but by his woman. You were a strong warrior in past lives. But Meghan Markle has always been a satanic temptation for you, Harry!

Harry, you got involved with a first-class, cunning escort-girl from the circle of the damned Epstein himself, according to the Western media. These are dangerous people who, through sex, subsequently dirty blackmail, achieve great material things. I wouldn't be surprised if they blackmailed some sheikhs, which often influences their big politics. For example, Arabs could at least verbally express their disagreement with the aggression towards the children of Palestine. I wish no harm to either Jews or Arabs. I just have a feeling that people like Epstein behave like spiders. And you, Harry, are naive by nature from your past lives. +You grew up in a palace where everyone respected you. You didn’t know what some people outside of your well-fed, successful circle of friends and sincere fan-girls who idolized you were capable of. And I was often humiliated by vile people and that’s why I tried to warn you from the very beginning.

Harry, if you are originally Elton John or Freddie Mercury, then everything is fine. But it’s another matter if, taking advantage of your intoxication, your wife pushes a homosexual adventure* up your ass for the purpose of blackmail in the near future. First of all, give up drugs and make an appointment with a psychologist. But remember that this psychologist can also work for the protector of your wife. Get a grip, Harry. For the sake of your children. What will they remember about their childhood? The first 6 years are the most important period in the formation of the human psyche. Then - adolescence.

I think, you must accept your mother's passing. This is your Achilles heel. Let Mom go, Harry. Her life was not so bad after all. Your mother lived a vibrant and noble life that one could only dream of. She left an unforgettable mark on the hearts of both whites and blacks. This (!) is important. Think about women in brothels in India, for example. They don’t even dare to dream about the Princess’s life. As for Diana's suspicious death, I will reveal to you the secret of the Higher Powers.

This is the meaning of your mother's suffering: Diana had to see the dark side of the black aristocracy. If she had been happy with Charles III and had not been helped to leave this world, then the hearts of her two sons would not have been pure and, perhaps, they would have been on the side of Satan. Think of it as saving the souls of Lady Di's sons. Apocalyptic times lie ahead of us. But there are few strong people with kind souls on Earth. We, the Light forces, need warriors.

However, I ask you not to immediately write a book 😉 about the fact that I am talking about the Apocalypse. People won't understand. They never understood...

Yours sincerely,

Asel

* I do not hate gays, but I would be dissapointed, if you did it with a man . Sorry, but this is not appropriate for men.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Radley Balko at The UnPopulist:

Donald Trump and his allies constantly complain that they are regularly targeted, singled out for abuse, and deliberately humiliated by the criminal justice system. They claim that there are “two tiers of justice”—a strict, unrelenting one for MAGA, and a loose, deferential one for the migrants, rapists, and killers that George Soros-funded prosecutors refuse to punish. But even before the conservative justices in a party-line ruling handed Trump virtual immunity from fomenting an insurrection, he had been getting the criminal justice system’s “platinum door” treatment. His cases are unusual in that he’s a former president. But his status and political position have helped him far more than they have hurt him. I want to compare and contrast some of Trump and his supporters’ complaints with how the criminal legal system operates in the real world.

Treating Trump With Kid Gloves

Trump has complained that his criminal trials have been a huge inconvenience for him—keeping him from using that time to campaign for president, potentially keeping him from attending his son Barron’s high school graduation. Typically, people facing criminal charges have to show up when court begins and then sit for hours until their case is called. They’re required to take off work, or find someone to watch their kids. And those are merely the people lucky enough to be released before trial. In many courts, they aren’t allowed to have cell phones. Over the last few years, I’ve watched dozens of people wait in a courtroom, staring at the wall for half a day or more, only to learn that their case has been continued, so they'll have to do it all again in a month. I don’t know if any of them had to cancel a political rally, but many have certainly been fired, missed doctor’s appointments, or lost other opportunities. I suppose it’s possible that a judge at some point let a defendant charged with 34 felonies delay a trial to attend a graduation ceremony, but I imagine if you asked a public defender if that’s a regular occurrence, you’d need to set aside some time for the laughter to die down. Incidentally, Trump was permitted to attend his son’s graduation.

Trump and his supporters have also complained about the tactics the FBI agents used when serving the search warrant on Mar-a-Lago. Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene described the raid as “the rogue behavior of communist countries,” and Steve Bannon insisted that the GOP will move to incarcerate officials who approved it. Trump himself accused FBI agents of not taking off their shoes while walking through his bedroom. As someone who has written about aggressive police raids for over 20 years, it’s hard to image a more pathetic complaint than that. The FBI gave Trump’s Secret Service detail a heads-up that they were coming. They deliberately conducted the search when Trump would be out of town, to save him embarrassment. When National Security Agency intelligence officer, William Binney, a whistleblower, tried to point out problems at the agency by going through internal channels, FBI agents raided his home unannounced, entered without authorization, and pointed their guns at him after finding him in the shower.

Far-right media personalities like Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham have also suggested that Robert Mueller’s office may have tipped off the media to maximize publicity around the raid. But of course tipping off the press about a pending arrest is a time-honored tradition among publicity-seeking prosecutors. The amusing thing about this complaint is that a carefully staged perp walk as a publicity stunt is a technique first popularized by … Trump’s personal attorney and bag man Rudy Giuliani, who used it to humiliate the International Monetary Fund’s chief. We now know that Mueller’s office did not tip off CNN. The network’s reporters had staked out Stone’s house after noticing unusual activity in court fillings from Mueller’s office. It was just good reporting.

MAGA world has also been critical of how search and arrest warrants were served on other Trump-adjacent personalities. FBI agents were accused of “manhandling” Paul Manafort and his wife during an early morning raid, which legal commentator Jonathan Turley called “excessive.” In response to the FBI’s raid on Roger Stone, Sheriff Joe Arpaio said: “I’ve been busting down doors for 50 years and I’ve never sent that many units to the baddest murderer.” (Arpaio once sent a small army of cops to raid a guy accused of cockfighting. That raid ended with actor Steven Seagal, cosplaying as a cop, driving an armored vehicle into the poor guy’s living room.) But of course the FBI and other federal agencies routinely conduct volatile, aggressive raids on people suspected of nonviolent or low-level crimes.

[...]

Jan. 6 Rioters More Equal than BLM Protesters

Then there’s January 6th! Increasingly over the past couple of years, Trump and his allies have complained that the Jan. 6 rioters have been singled out for abuse, especially when compared to those accused of rioting and looting during the George Floyd protests. The Jan. 6 rioters are frequently referred to as “political prisoners”—Trump himself calls them “hostages.” Let’s look at the facts.

About 70% of people arrested and charged with Jan. 6-related crimes were released on bond or under their own recognizance, including everyone charged with crimes that would qualify as “peaceful protest,” such as trespassing. Just 25% of federal criminal defendants are released pre-trial overall. If we factor in both state and federal courts, the number of people routinely detained while awaiting trial in this country is so large that there are actually more people behind bars who have yet to be convicted than people who have. But seven in 10 Jan. 6ers were released. It is true that the conditions in Washington, D.C. jails are terrible. They’re under-supervised, unsanitary, and hellish, and have astronomical rates of suicide. When Trump was booked at the jail in Fulton County, Georgia, he complained that the facility was “poor and disgraceful,” adding, “It’s worse than you could even imagine. It’s violent. The building is falling apart.” But Trump was quickly booked and released. He didn’t spend any time in an actual jail cell.

All of the Jan. 6 defendants who were not released prior to trial were charged with serious felonies. Federal public defenders have made clear that the federal courts have been far more likely to release Capitol rioters pre-trial than other defendants. And, in fact, the D.C. federal public defender’s office went all out to make sure that Jan. 6ers received a robust defense. They ramped up staffing and enlisted attorneys from other federal offices to help. We can contrast the extraordinary efforts to make sure the Jan. 6ers were well defended to the ongoing crisis in public defense I’ve been regularly documenting. There are parts of the country where people sit in jails for weeks or even months before ever seeing a lawyer. Some meet their attorney for the first time just minutes before they’re due in court. Many public defenders have no access to investigators. Most are severely overworked.

[...]

The System Has Gone Way Easy on Trump

Trump has been treated far better and received more preferential treatment than just about anyone ever ensnared in the criminal justice system. He’s the only person in U.S. history to have his criminal case appear before a judge he appointed—and one he could promote to a higher court should he retake the White House. He’s also the only person in U.S. history to have his criminal case appear before the U.S. Supreme Court after having appointed a third of that court’s justices. Consider how his classified documents case compares to similar cases against non-former presidents. The Justice Department became aware that Reality Winner had leaked a single classified document to a media outlet—a document she believed served an important public interest—in May 2017. She was arrested the following month. By August 2018, 16 months later, she had been sentenced to five years in prison. Trump was indicted for hoarding around 200 classified documents, lying about them, refusing to turn them over, and then obstructing the government’s attempts to recover them. Whatever his motivation was for all of this, it definitely wasn’t whistleblowing.

Trump illegally took the documents in January 2021. The first indication that the government became aware of them was in May of that year. The National Archives then gave Trump repeated warnings. Instead, he showed off and boasted about top secret documents to Mar-a-Lago visitors. The FBI didn’t open an investigation until March 2022. The search of Mar-a-Lago didn’t take place until the following August. Trump wasn’t indicted until June 2023. It has now been 37 months since the government became aware of Trump’s 200 documents, and it’s unlikely that his trial will happen any time soon.

[...]

Trump Monetizes Criminality When Others Lose Their Shirt

People with criminal convictions also typically struggle to pay court fines and fees, probation or parole fees, child support, and private debts accumulated while they were incarcerated. It can be difficult to find housing, and they’re far more likely to experience homelessness. Trump himself faces significant fines and fees. He owes $450 million to the state of New York for crimes committed by his company, and $90 million to E. Jean Carrol after a jury found him liable for defaming her after he sexually assaulted her. Trump also has a habit of not paying his creditors, though in his case it’s usually more a matter of not wanting to pay than the inability to do so. Still, unlike others with felony convictions, Trump will not end up homeless or destitute. It’s unlikely he’ll even need to alter his lavish lifestyle.

[...] Over the years, I’ve interviewed more people treated unfairly by the criminal justice system than I can count. They often say that the experience changed them. It made them more empathetic, less trustful of police and prosecutors, and more willing to entertain the notion that the system sometimes gets it wrong. Most understand that any system capable of the injustice inflicted on them has certainly done the same or worse to others. Powerful people who encounter the justice system can be particularly effective agents of change. But that isn’t going to happen here. That’s partly because Trump has experienced only the most glancing of consequences from his criminal convictions. But it’s also because MAGA revels in victimhood. Conceding that the system is fundamentally unfair would merely make Trump one victim among many. The false narrative that courts and prosecutors are hellbent on targeting him and his supporters—while showing outrageous leniency toward scary drug dealers, rapists, and killers—only amplifies the outrage and victimhood.

MAGA’s beef with the system isn’t that justice has been weaponized, it’s that it has been weaponized against them. Their answer isn’t to insulate the system from politics, it’s to ratchet up the politicization, then aim it at their enemies.

Radley Balko wrote in The UnPopulist expertly debunking the MAGA lie that the so-called "weaponization" of the criminal justice system is being used to rightly prosecute Donald Trump and his allies for their crimes.

In fact, the criminal justice system has gone soft on Donald Trump and his allies.

Balko said it best here: "MAGA’s beef with the system isn’t that justice has been weaponized, it’s that it has been weaponized against them. Their answer isn’t to insulate the system from politics, it’s to ratchet up the politicization, then aim it at their enemies."

[kierrasreads]

In Dubious Battle by John Steinbeck Review

Plot

A riveting novel of labor strife and apocalyptic violence that maps the frontier where the masses become a mob

At once a ruthlessly fast-paced, admirably observed novel of social unrest and the story of a young man's struggle for identity, In Dubious Battle is set in the California apple country, where a strike by migrant workers against rapacious landowners spirals out of control, as principled defiance metamorphoses into blind fanaticism. Caught up in this upheaval is Jim Nolan, a once aimless man who finds himself in the course of the strike, briefly becomes its leader, and is ultimately crushed in its service.

Discussion

This was a great read! Granted, it took me a while to get through it, but I'm glad I finished it. Jim is a tragic character- full of potential, the intelligence and reason to Mac's leadership, yet it's he who's killed in the end. Honestly, if Jim were to live, I think he would've made an excellent leader of the party.

I couldn't have read this book at a more fitting time, as the California Faculty Associaton and Teamsters union is going on strike in a couple of weeks- fighting for fair wages, so they can not only help students but support themselves. On that, I say they should go for it! I would join them if I could...

Rating

4/5