#the official flag of 2020

[sebscore]

THE GRID'S DELIGHT | SERIES MASTERLIST

summary: the shenanigans of female gen z driver and the formula one grid.

author’s note: I started this series, because I'd like to imagine what it would be like to be part of the group of drivers and how it would be like to interact with them on a regular basis. It's all fun and games, and I don't know these people in real life. everything is fiction! the stories aren't written in chronological order, but I try to put them in the right order below! 

Requests are always welcome in my inbox! Opinions, thoughts and feedback are also greatly appreciated.

— ABOUT THE OC

HEADCANONS || MORE HEADCANONS

:: Things about being the only female driver on the ‘22 grid.

DRIVER X TGD HEADCANONS

:: The dynamics between driver!reader and the formula 1 drivers. in the link you can find the masterlist.

EXTRAS

:: this includes thoughts, opinions, etc about the series. it doesn’t include requests.

— 2018

WELCOME TO THE STRANGE WORLD 

:: Y/N makes her F1 debut at the 2018 Australian Grand Prix. 

THE PRIZE THAT KEEPS ON GIVING

:: Y/N accepts the 'Rookie of the Year' award and receives a suprise from a special someone on stage.

— 2020 

TWITCH WAR

:: lando insults Y/N’s gaming skills and the events that followed.

PLEASE RISE FOR THE NATIONAL ANTHEM

:: An error in the sound system causes for the wrong song to play instead of Y/N’s national anthem.

— 2021 

THE MORE YOU KNOW

:: Y/N teaches Sebastian and Fernando what ‘bop’ means.

NO ONE LIKES A MAD WOMAN

:: Y/N receives a complaint from the FIA during the driver's briefing and no one is happy about it.

BREAK UP WITH YOUR BOYFRIEND, I'M BORED 

:: Y/N flirts with a stranger not knowing she's the girlfriend of another F1 driver on the grid. 

THIS IS ALL I NEVER WANTED

:: Y/N goes through a rough patch and the drivers notice.

LET IT SPIRAL

:: Y/N gets into a crash and Seb & George come to the rescue.

SLOW DOWN, RED FLAG

:: The commentators are shocked by Y/N’s red flag habit.

BE YOUR WINGMAN

:: Y/N tries to get through an interview with Jenson, Daniel and Sebastian. 

GIDDY GOODBYES

:: Y/N and Kimi bid each other goodbye at the 2021 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.

— 2022

A MAN’S WORLD

:: Y/N is asked about Christian Horner’s sexist comments.

THE ORIGIN OF RUSSY BUSSY

:: the title is pretty self-explanatory.

WHAT HAPPENS IN MONACO, STAYS IN MONACO

:: Y/N goes on a blind date and returns with a hickey the next day.

THE HELMET BET

:: Y/N and Zhou decide who the second best dressed driver on the grid is through a bet that involves holding the other drivers hostage at the driver's briefing.

GOSSIP GRID

:: Charles and Pierre don't trust Y/N when it comes to rumors around Oscar Piastri's move to McLaren.

RUMOUR HAS IT

:: Y/N and her fellow younger drivers react to certain rumours that have been going around about her love life, and it might include two colleagues of hers.

MONZA MANICURE

:: Daniel makes it up to Y/N for breaking her nail during a race.

LITTLE MISS BLACK DRESS

:: f1 drivers and their reactions to Y/N looking gorgeous in a dress.

KEEPING UP WITH THE GRID

:: What happens when Y/N takes over Martin's grid walk? 

THE LAST SUPPER

:: The drivers celebrate the life and career of Sebastian Vettel at Abu Dhabi and Y/N has a great story to tell.

— 2023 

INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY 

:: Daniel, Lewis and Sebastian show their appreciation for Y/N on International Women's Day. 

GLASS HALF FULL KINDA GAL

:: Y/N goes on Instagram live to try out Daniel’s new wine, and the drivers react to it in the comments.

MONTE-CARLO MADNESS

:: Y/N meets her old mentor after months and experiences a chaotic qualifying in Monaco.

PUT IT INTO SPEED DRIVE

:: Y/N and the Twitch Quartet go on a small adventure in the streets of Monaco.

SNITCHES GET STITCHES

:: A collection of moments at the 2023 Austria Grand Prix.

LATE NIGHT TALKING

:: Pierre asks the question: “Out of all the drivers, who would you date?”

— 2024

EXCUSE ME

:: Y/N finds out about Lewis’ Ferrari move before the official announcement.

ARE WE STILL FRIENDS

:: Lando ends Y/N’s race, and they have different perspectives on how it transpired.

[airokunomega]

@spliffyfuckingmcjingles666

Did you know that Trump tried to ban transgender people from serving in the military? Because he did.

Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-40729996

Did you know that Trump revoked protections for transgender students, allowing schools to force them to use bathrooms matching their sex assigned at birth? Because he did.

Source: https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/02/22/516290661/trump-administration-rolls-back-protections-for-transgender-students

Did you know that Trump’s administration argued that businesses should be allowed to fire LGBTQ employees simply for being LGBTQ? Because they did.

Source: 6https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/10/09/trump-administration-wants-legalize-lgbtq-discrimination-just-call-it-religious-freedom/

Did you know that Trump appointed anti-LGBTQ judges to the federal courts, many of whom have a history of opposing same-sex marriage and LGBTQ rights? Because he did.

Source: https://www.hrc.org/press-releases/human-rights-campaign-on-trumps-dangerous-anti-lgbtq-judicial-appointments

Did you know that Trump’s administration eliminated LGBTQ health care protections, allowing discrimination in medical treatment? Because they did.

Source: https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/trump-administration-ends-lgbtq-health-care-protections-n1231018

Did you know that Trump refused to recognize Pride Month while in office, breaking a long-standing tradition set by previous presidents? Because he did.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2019/06/07/730707866/president-trump-not-officially-recognizing-pride-month-advocates-say-that-speaks

Did you know that Trump supported “religious freedom” policies that allow businesses to deny services to LGBTQ people? Because he did.

Source: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2020/07/08/supreme-court-expands-religious-schools-hiring-rights/5395015002/

Did you know that Trump’s Department of Justice stopped advocating for LGBTQ rights in court cases? Because they did.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/26/us/politics/justice-department-gays-workplace.html

Did you know that Trump’s administration cut funding for HIV/AIDS prevention programs and dismissed an entire panel of HIV/AIDS advisors? Because they did.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2017/12/29/health/hiv-council-trump/index.html

Did you know that Trump stopped U.S. embassies from flying Pride flags during Pride Month? Because he did.

Source: https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/state-department-tells-u-s-embassies-they-can-t-fly-n1014501

don't tell me that I don't have sources, or that trump loves LGBTQ people. You are being misled. If this doesn't change your view, regardless of everything else I have said, you are obviously too self righteous and dense to understand and recognise that there are possibly facts that are true and opinions that aren't yours that are also valid. Please see that trump is not running for you, he is tricking you into thinking he is for his own personal gain. I'm not saying I love Kamala either, because I don't and the 2 party system sucks and all politicians are garbage people. However, I would rather vote for someone who might not make good on a few good promises, rather than someone who has promised to make ny life hell on his next term.

[thomas-jefferson-miku-binder]

Queer League of Legends Champions (with explanations) - Part II

Check out Part I

Confirmed Pansexuals – Twisted Fate

Twisted Fate was always speculated to be part of the LGBTQ+ community due to his, uh, flamboyancy. The sentiment that he felt something more for Graves was always there, portrayed in their stories through regret, friendship, and loyalty. The Boys and Bombolini color story officially confirmed him as queer, making TFGraves the faces of Pride 2022. This year, he was also seen with the pansexual flag in official pride art, with Riot finally labeling him. It's worth noticing a cute detail (that I doubt was intentional) where his card deck's colors form the colors of his flag!

Confirmed Queers – Ahri, Ekko, Evelynn, Ezreal, Kayn, Nidalee, Renata Glasc, Samira, Taric, Udyr

Ok, this is a long category. Here we have every champion we know for sure is queer, either through external confirmation (Ekko, Ezreal, Kayn, Renata Glasc, Taric), in-game dialogue (Nidalee, Samira, Udyr), or basic lore (Ahri, Evelynn). Let's start with the first group.

Throughout the first half of 2020, Riot released multiple chapters of a Pulsifire color story focused on Ezreal. It explored his relationships with numerous champions of the universe, but especially Ekko. The subtext was strong in this one, and the writer later took to Twitter to talk about how tough it was to have queer stories be censored when working for IPs, not so subtly mentioning Ezreal and Ekko after doing so. Even though Riot might not have agreed with making the Ezko relationship undeniably romantic, their love for one another is still an important part of the story, not to mention that it was the creator's intended vision to begin with. 

Renata Glasc was confirmed as sapphic by one of her creators when sharing concept art of her design. Checking the link to the original post, they seem to have deleted the excerpt that mentions it, but people took screenshots before they edited it, most likely because of Riot. Taric, on the other hand, has been speculated to be queer since forever, although the motives are not that pure. Many people saw this hairless, beautiful man that likes jewels and was like, "Huh, that sounds kinda gay," which was the common dudebro mentality of the fandom at the time of his release that caused a lot of homophobia within the player base (more than usual). They weren't wrong, seeing as Riot did include Taric in official 2023 pride art, but he was not seen wearing or holding any flags. After all, it would make sense that he likes everything—and everyone—beautiful. But either way, both Taric and Renata are non-specified queers.

Shieda Kayn is a weirder case. I thought a lot about whether I should even include him in this category at all. There are many accounts of people affirming one of Kayn's writers pictured him as having fluid sexuality, but since then, wherever it was posted, it's gone now. I do believe it since we can still find Reddit threads on the subject, but the original source is nowhere to be found. I still decided to put him here, but take it with a grain of salt.

Moving on to our next category, we have Nidalee, Samira, and Udyr. Samira flirts more than once with Elegant Edge in Legends of Runeterra, and her attraction for her is not subtle. As far as I'm aware, she's never expressed interest in men, but we can't say for sure whether she's bi, pan, or gay. Nidalee and Udyr have had speculated romantic interests in other champions for a while now. Nidalee with Neeko, Udyr with Lee Sin. Nidalee and Neeko's story was first portrayed as one-sided, with Neeko rejected by her friend, prompting them to part ways. On the other hand, the addition of both champions to Legends of Runeterra explored their relationship once again, with the two reuniting and Nidalee finally realizing she did love Neeko and simply didn't know how to deal with it all those years ago. A love song, Shine On, even accompanied the update, which narrates their story beautifully. They have many romantic voice lines now, both in LoR and League.

With Udyr's rework, people started realizing he digs Lee Sin through voice lines expressing how he misses his "old friend" and that he's "loved twice, left twice" (which applies to his relationship with Lee Sin). Besides, his design includes memorabilia he exchanged with Lee Sin when they parted ways. It is also important to mention he's had a wife before, so he swings both ways. I think the context gives more than enough clues for us to safely say Udyr is queer. 

Ahri and Evelynn are spirits/demons that prey on their victims (regardless of gender) through charm and seduction. Ahri is essentially a succubus, and Evelynn is the Demon of Agony, with desire and lust being important parts of their characters. It is also worth noting that Evelynn is genderfluid/agender, taking the form of anyone (or anything) that might lure her victims. So their lore essentially confirms them as not straight and not cis (on Evelynn's case, at least).

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Ed Luce: It is not just Donald Trump who dodged a bullet. Half an inch to the left and the cartridge that grazed Trump’s ear would have turned him into a martyr. There is no telling what his death would have unleashed. As it is, the reprehensible attempted assassination of Trump will have profound reverberations for US democracy. Within seconds of being blanketed by secret service agents, Trump was yelling “fight, fight, fight” to the crowd. The instantly ubiquitous photo of him pumping his fist against the backdrop of the stars and stripes will become the emblem of his campaign.

A high-trust society would have awaited the facts of the shooting before leaping to conclusions. By that yardstick, America is close to the edge. Two of the Republicans auditioning to be Trump’s vice-presidential running mate blamed Democrats for inciting hatred of Trump. The favourite, Ohio senator JD Vance, said the Biden campaign’s rhetoric “led directly to President Trump’s attempted assassination”. Tim Scott, the South Carolina senator, said Democrats’ “inflammatory rhetoric puts lives at risk”. Elon Musk, owner of the site, X, on which these statements were posted, was quick to weigh in on a conspiracy about how the shooter could have got so close: “Either extreme incompetence or it was deliberate,” Musk wrote.

Many on the left were equally quick to claim that the shooting was a staged or false flag operation to boost Trump’s election prospects. It is notable, however, that no senior Democratic official has yet fanned those rumours. The identity of the suspected shooter, a 20-year-old man called Thomas Matthew Crooks, offered little help. Though he was a registered Republican and an enthusiastic gun owner, he had made a small donation to a pro-Democratic group. It is plausible that like most US assassins, Crooks was acting alone and delusional. That will not stop political entrepreneurs from blaming the shooting on their ideological enemies.

The biggest question is what Trump will do with it. No honest accounting of America’s fetid climate can ignore the fact that the former president himself is the country’s most influential exponent of political violence. He described those who stormed Capitol Hill with knives and nooses on January 6 2021 as “unbelievable patriots”. He mocked an attack on Paul Pelosi, husband of former Democratic speaker, Nancy Pelosi, after one of his own supporters smashed his head with a hammer. And he encouraged extremist militias to “stand by” shortly before the 2020 election. In calmer democracies, an incident as lethal as the near murder of a party leader with a AR-15-type semi-automatic rifle would lead to bipartisan calls for gun control. There is no chance Trump’s party will change its mind on that subject. The number of AR-15s in America has been estimated to be as high as 44mn, which puts comparisons with earlier periods of US political violence into perspective.

Whether Trump gets a lasting sympathy boost remains to be seen. But three conclusions can already be drawn. The first is that the Republican national convention in Milwaukee this week will be dominated by his near miss. Trump’s campaign is enormously skilled at choreographing optics to enhance his message. The iconic fist-pumping imagery of the candidate rising courageously from his near death will suffuse the convention stage. Trump is expected to name his running mate in the next two days — probably on Monday. Expect the nation to be riveted by admiration or dread at the use to which Republicans put Trump’s near martyrdom. At Trump’s first presidential convention in Cleveland in 2016, the streets around the main hall teemed with private militias brandishing arms. Policing the streets of Milwaukee this week will be an unusually fraught challenge, even by America’s standards.

[Financial Times]

[angstics]

on my chemical romance's history of racism:

(edit: i wont rewrite anything since that will create discrepancies in reblogs. however, i will include these important additions: post 1 and post 2)

cultural appropriation is a neutral term that turns negative when people co-opt a culture without consideration to its people and history, or their prejudices and privileges. the rising sun japanese flag is an imperialist symbol used during japan's occupation of other countries from 1870 to 1945 (the guardian 2019). unlike other symbols of terror, the rising sun is normalized because of the japanese government's refusal to acknowledge its history. the symbol's meaning was popularized a few years ago when people from south korea protested its legality in the 2020 tokyo olympics (bbc 2020). aware or unaware of its history, americans have long appropriated the rising sun. in part because of their fascination with japanese art, in part because of orientalism -- a fixation on asian cultures that centers "exoticism".

my chemical romance has been associated with the rising sun symbol a couple of times. frank iero used to have a tattoo of it. gerard way designed frank's killjoys outfit to include it (seen in concept art and music videos). it is often used in mcr fanart.

tokenism is when something contains limited diversity to divert criticisms for the lack of it. my chemical romance has had a very white cast of characters in their music videos and stories. in the "i dont love you" music video, a main character is in black body paint. in the casting call, they specifically asked for a white man (there is 100% an online source -- please let me know if you have it). even casting a black person for this role would place him in a video that appropriated his skin color to mark his "difference" from the light-skin female character.

the female character points to the band's main problem with tokenism. if they arent casting a white woman, theyre casting a light-skin asian woman. the woman in the "i dont love you" mv is fetishized for physical traits stereotypically attributed to east asian women: big eyes, daintiness. east asian women feature most prominently aside from the band and main characters in the "welcome to the black parade" music video and photo shoot. the photoshoot is the only place where an ashy-faced black man and ambiguously tribal? brown man are seen (brought in by photographer chris anthony per the "making of the black parade" book). the director antagonist of the danger days music videos (shown in "sing") is a japanese woman. she is the only main character of color in the music videos and the killjoys: california comics. the focus of this post is on my chemical romance, but the comics are important to showcase that the reality is never "color-blind casting" or "limited roles". it's mostly white creatives (band members and directors and artists) who ignore non-white people when they cant use them, reflected as much by gerard way years later (nyt 2019).

"japan takes over the world" is a media trope that is built on the late 20th century fear of the return of imperial japan. this trope frames japanese people as unique aggressors, feeding into "yellow peril" fears of asian people "taking over" the white race. this trope is suggested all over the danger days universe, where the corporation BL/ind overthrows the US government. the appropriation of the japanese modern flag and lettering on the killjoys outfits, the primary BL/ind villain being a japanese person who only speaks japanese in videos, the official BL/ind website having a ".jp" domain and english-japanese translations. japanese people and culture only exist in this universe to decorate and threaten.

the point of this post is not to punish my chemical romance. in the decade+ since, they have made meaningful changes -- the sing it for japan project to aid japan during the 2011 earthquake-tsunami, developing diversity in gerard's comics / tv show, a mexican-american main character in the 2020 summoning video. people of color treated as real goddamn people.

however. all these faults exist in frozen time. there is no discussion attached to the work. so anyone, fan or casual, may come across it and not notice or care for these important issues. i know all this shit and i still fail to see instances of what i highlighted. it's difficult locating not only your own prejudices but those of others. those you look up to.

"my chemical romance" is the product of many people from 2001 to 2013. many of these people were male, white, american, and/or, most radically, liberal. clearly laying out what they did wrong is important. being careful with history and culture and personhood is important. prioritizing growth is important. constantly. forever.

[reasonsforhope]

Determined to use her skills to fight inequality, South African computer scientist Raesetje Sefala set to work to build algorithms flagging poverty hotspots - developing datasets she hopes will help target aid, new housing, or clinics.

From crop analysis to medical diagnostics, artificial intelligence (AI) is already used in essential tasks worldwide, but Sefala and a growing number of fellow African developers are pioneering it to tackle their continent's particular challenges.

Local knowledge is vital for designing AI-driven solutions that work, Sefala said.

"If you don't have people with diverse experiences doing the research, it's easy to interpret the data in ways that will marginalise others," the 26-year old said from her home in Johannesburg.

Africa is the world's youngest and fastest-growing continent, and tech experts say young, home-grown AI developers have a vital role to play in designing applications to address local problems.

"For Africa to get out of poverty, it will take innovation and this can be revolutionary, because it's Africans doing things for Africa on their own," said Cina Lawson, Togo's minister of digital economy and transformation.

"We need to use cutting-edge solutions to our problems, because you don't solve problems in 2022 using methods of 20 years ago," Lawson told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in a video interview from the West African country.

Digital rights groups warn about AI's use in surveillance and the risk of discrimination, but Sefala said it can also be used to "serve the people behind the data points". ...

'Delivering Health'

As COVID-19 spread around the world in early 2020, government officials in Togo realized urgent action was needed to support informal workers who account for about 80% of the country's workforce, Lawson said.

"If you decide that everybody stays home, it means that this particular person isn't going to eat that day, it's as simple as that," she said.

In 10 days, the government built a mobile payment platform - called Novissi - to distribute cash to the vulnerable.

The government paired up with Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA) think tank and the University of California, Berkeley, to build a poverty map of Togo using satellite imagery.

Using algorithms with the support of GiveDirectly, a nonprofit that uses AI to distribute cash transfers, the recipients earning less than $1.25 per day and living in the poorest districts were identified for a direct cash transfer.

"We texted them saying if you need financial help, please register," Lawson said, adding that beneficiaries' consent and data privacy had been prioritized.

The entire program reached 920,000 beneficiaries in need.

"Machine learning has the advantage of reaching so many people in a very short time and delivering help when people need it most," said Caroline Teti, a Kenya-based GiveDirectly director.

'Zero Representation'

Aiming to boost discussion about AI in Africa, computer scientists Benjamin Rosman and Ulrich Paquet co-founded the Deep Learning Indaba - a week-long gathering that started in South Africa - together with other colleagues in 2017.

"You used to get to the top AI conferences and there was zero representation from Africa, both in terms of papers and people, so we're all about finding cost effective ways to build a community," Paquet said in a video call.

In 2019, 27 smaller Indabas - called IndabaX - were rolled out across the continent, with some events hosting as many as 300 participants.

One of these offshoots was IndabaX Uganda, where founder Bruno Ssekiwere said participants shared information on using AI for social issues such as improving agriculture and treating malaria.

Another outcome from the South African Indaba was Masakhane - an organization that uses open-source, machine learning to translate African languages not typically found in online programs such as Google Translate.

On their site, the founders speak about the South African philosophy of "Ubuntu" - a term generally meaning "humanity" - as part of their organization's values.

"This philosophy calls for collaboration and participation and community," reads their site, a philosophy that Ssekiwere, Paquet, and Rosman said has now become the driving value for AI research in Africa.

Inclusion

Now that Sefala has built a dataset of South Africa's suburbs and townships, she plans to collaborate with domain experts and communities to refine it, deepen inequality research and improve the algorithms.

"Making datasets easily available opens the door for new mechanisms and techniques for policy-making around desegregation, housing, and access to economic opportunity," she said.

African AI leaders say building more complete datasets will also help tackle biases baked into algorithms.

"Imagine rolling out Novissi in Benin, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Ivory Coast ... then the algorithm will be trained with understanding poverty in West Africa," Lawson said.

"If there are ever ways to fight bias in tech, it's by increasing diverse datasets ... we need to contribute more," she said.

But contributing more will require increased funding for African projects and wider access to computer science education and technology in general, Sefala said.

Despite such obstacles, Lawson said "technology will be Africa's savior".

"Let's use what is cutting edge and apply it straight away or as a continent we will never get out of poverty," she said. "It's really as simple as that."

-via Good Good Good, February 16, 2022

[barbielore]

Over the years, Barbie has been an astronaut many, many times, so I am going to preface this by saying this is not an exhaustive list of the number of times Barbie has been to space. But Barbie's space explorer aesthetic has changed over the years and some of these are super interesting!

The original astronaut gear (and the rerelease in the "My Favourite Career" set) was very much informed by the actively ongoing space race. Barbie is packaged with an American flag and a relatively sedate spacesuit.

I mention sedate, because compare that to how the astronaut Barbies looked in 1985, 20 years on from the first time Barbie went to the moon!

Marketed as "packaged with sparkly skirt and tights", Barbie is combining space travel with runway fashion. Can't explore space if you don't look cute!

In 1994, Barbie is no longer dressed in bright pink, though her moon rocks do glow-in-the-dark. Interesting to note that though Barbie has a USA flag patch on her spacesuit on her left arm, the flag she is holding bears her own name and branding.

Come 2013, Barbie is no longer content with merely exploring space or landing on the moon.

In an official NASA collaboration, Barbie is now exploring Mars. Her spacesuit is now a combination of white and pink, though her accessories are now glowing pink.

2020 brought us the space discovery playset. Barbie is now in a muted blue suit with a pink headset but what I really love about this playset is that she has a puppy with her who has his own rocket ship.

Literally look at this guy!!

There is one more particularly interesting Barbie in space that I want to talk about but I will save that for a separate post as this is already enough to scroll past.

[fandomtrumpshate]

Listed fandom fun

A bit of random data before we jump into the rankings for listed fandoms …

Since the numbers post yesterday we've had signups for nearly 60 new auctions, bringing the current total to 779. That beats the number of signups for 2016/7, 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021, and puts us withing spitting distance of our record last year of 819. Can we do it? Will we do it? Signal boost FTH posts and encourage others to participate. More money raised for good causes, more fanworks in the world — it's a win/win!

We posted yesterday about the state of our unlisted write-in fandoms (we've had nine new ones since then!). Time to check in with the rankings for the listed fandoms.

At the top of the pack we have:

87 K-Pop * 66 Good Omens 50 Sherlock Holmes * 44 Harry Potter * 37 Marvel * 32 DC * 31 Mo Dao Zu Shi / The Untamed 27 Red, White, & Royal Blue 25 Star Wars * 23 Scum Villain's Self-Saving System

Our first tie is for 11th place -

22 Avatar The Last Airbender 22 Teen Wolf

And after that, nearly every other place is a tie. And which ones are ties for which places can be shifted slightly with just one signup. Or completely upended with two. Where will your fandom land?

Remember that if your fandom isn't here (or in the rest of the list below the cut), you can write it in. Signups are OPEN through Monday!

19 Supernatural 18 9-1-1 and 9-1-1 Lone Star 18 Locked Tomb Trilogy 18 Stranger Things 17 All for the Game 16 Our Flag Means Death 16 Tolkien * 16 The Witcher 15 Boku no Hiro Akademia (My Hero Academia) 15 Original Work 15 Percy Jackson and the Olympians 14 Baldur's Gate 3 14 Hockey RPF 12 The Old Guard 12 Tian Guan Ci Fu (Heaven Official's Blessing) 11 The Magnus Archives 11 Star Trek * 10 Check Please! 10 Dungeons & Dragons 10 Haikyuu!!! 10 Hazbin Hotel 10 Jujutsu Kaisen 9 A Song of Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones/House of the Dragon 9 One PIece 8 Doctor Who * 8 Hades (video game) 8 Heartstopper 8 James Bond 8 Kingsman 8 Merlin 8 Naruto 8 Suits 7 Dragon Age * 7 Justified 7 Raven Cycle 7 Rusty Quill Gaming Podcast 7 The Sandman 7 Shadowhunters 7 SK8 the Infinity 6 Captive Prince 6 Critical Role 6 Final Fantasy * 6 Fullmetal Alchemist 6 Hannibal 6 Kinnporsche 6 The Maze Runner 6 Queen's Thief 6 Stargate 6 Steven Universe 6 Top Gun Movies 6 Yuri!!! On Ice 5 Alex Rider 5 Grishaverse 5 Interview With The Vampire 5 Malevolent (Podcast) 5 The Murderbot Diaries 5 Nirvana in Fire 5 The Owl House 5 RWBY 4 Erha He Ta De Bai Mao Shizun (The Husky & His White Cat Shizun) 4 Genshin Impact 4 Les Misérables 4 The Magicians 4 Pokemon 4 Witch Hat Atelier 3 Arcane 3 Disney's Descendants 3 Elder Scrolls 3 Hetalia 3 Hunger Games 3 Legend of Zelda 3 Spy x Family 3 Tian Ya Ke / Word of Honor 3 Trigun 3 Welcome to Night Vale 3 Wheel of Time 3 Young Royals 2 Benoit Blanc Mysteries (Knives Out, Glass Onion) 2 Disco Elysium 2 Encanto 2 Gundam Wing 2 The Last of Us 2 Leverage 2 Miraculous Ladybug 2 Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries 2 Mysterious Lotus Casebook 2 Schitt's Creek 2 Super Mario Bros. 1 Assassin's Creed 1 Attack on Titan 1 Diamond no Ace 1 Fire Emblem Three Houses 1 Homestuck 1 Stellar Firma 1 Wednesday / The Addams Family

[pompettepink]

Type of men NOT to date

Dating in the 2020's is so rough! It feels like so many people are just looking for hookups and too many women are getting forced into "situationships" in the hopes that "more" will come out of it, but "more" never happens. Ladies, save yourselves the heartache and leave these type of low level men ALONE

A man who asks "what you bring to the table"

He is thinking transactionally. He wants to know beforehand what act of service he can expect from you in the future. Whatever comes out of your mouth will be his checklist in the relationship and he WILL bring it up when you "fail to meet expectations".

A man who disrupts your peace

A man who is prone to fits of rage and refuses to seek help will take you down with him. He will actively work to destroy your self worth and possessions. Any man coming into your life MUST be giving you peace that is BETTER than the peace you find within yourself.

A man with low quality friends

There's a very high chance that if a man is in his mid to late 20s and is still friends with his highschool buddies they are actively holding him back. There needs to be far more substance in a male friendship than bonding over a band one time in a 10th grade science class. Having old time friends is amazing, but everyone in the friend group should be maturing at the same pace and having adult conversations and not just sharing their girlfriends nudes with the homies in the groupchat

A man who listens to Bro Podcasters

Self explanatory. There should be NO reason that a man sees value in anything a violent misogynist has to say. It is NOT NORMAL for a man to take lifestyle advice from broken men who are NOT living the lifestyle they're advocating for (monogamous long term relationship with the intention of marriage and providing for their wife and kids). Unless he is compiling information to loudly denounce those views and see those podcasters as an enemy of men, you have no business dating someone like that

A man who idolizes 50/50 relationships

Expecting your partner to go 50/50 with everything and anything is insecure and immature. In reality you can't ALWAYS split the bills. Sometimes things come up. Like card only payments, cash only payments, misplaced wallet, dead phone, payment deadline, accidents etc etc. If he expects every instance involving money to be split into two equal bills he WILL be resentful towards you if you fail to deliver. He should also be more than happy to spoil you when he can and pay in full

A man who struggles building relationships with women

You aren't going to be any different just because he's fucking you. And this isn't about a struggle that results from trauma (abusive mom). This is about ANY woman in his life. If he can't connect with his sisters and can't "really" explain "why", or if he's never had a female friend, that's a red flag. It's most likely that he can't build relationships with women who he isn't sexually attracted to, making him more likely to misconstrued any interaction with a pretty woman as grounds to cheat

An unkempt man

He doesn't need to be the world's best dresser, but he MUST care about his appearance. You two will be seen together constantly and in social settings others will view you as a single unit. You are doing a disservice to yourself by being with a man who has a hands-off attitude with the way he presents himself and always choices to go out with wrinkled stained clothes, dirty hair, a smelly outfit, and a wardrobe full of holes and filth

A man who moves too fast

Why is this man trying to get you into bed yet he doesn't even know your last name? Casual flings are totally fine and super appropriate for any adult to be a part of. But if you're looking to seriously date you HAVE to be picky. Even if your connection is magnetic off the bat restraint should be shown until the commitment is there. If you tell him you only want to have sex with a committed man and he gets mad, pressures you, or asks you to be official on the spot and then have sex afterwards, he just wants to orgasm, nothing more

A man who's all talk and no action

If a man talks about how close he feels to you, but doesn't try to commit, he's keeping you away from love. If a man romantically messages you everyday, but doesn't take you on a date, he's a pen pal. If he's always talking about going for a big promotion, but doesn't put in the work the position requires, he's just a job holder. Actions speak louder than words and if he wanted to, he would

A man who struggles with handling you

Far too many men couple up with talented, sexy, smart, extrovert women, then try to change them when they become official because they can't keep up with her. If she was a sexy dresser BEFORE you started dating, you should expect the same WHILE you're dating. If she was always having deeply intellectual conversations BEFORE you started dating, you should expect the same WHILE you're dating. If she had a large group of friends that she loved hanging out with BEFORE you started dating, you should expect the same WHILE you're dating. If he can't keep up with you then he shouldn't take up space in your circle

A man who is incompetent with chores

Need I say more? Chores aren't rocket science. If he can't cook a meal from start to finish you'll be forced to be his personal chef. If he can't do a load of laundry you'll be forced to be his laundromat. If he doesn't know how to sweep, mop, or vacuum you'll be forced to be his maid. Never choose to be a servant when well rounded men exist in the dating pool

A man who doesn't boast about you

He should be proud to have you as his partner. Everyone in his life should know that you two are dating. He should want to walk behind you and open doors for you so that everyone can see you before they see him. He should always want to hold your hand and feel disgusted when other people hit on him. If he says he "lives a private life" and doesn't want to post you on his social media or be seen kissing you in public it's because he doesn't want his wife and other girlfriend to catch him cheating

Never let anyone convince you that it's impossible to find a man of quality because "your standards are too high". You're the prize and for your sake you should never expect the bare minimum for love

[mariacallous]

In the North Philadelphia neighbourhood of Fairhill, signs of Puerto Rico are never far off. The US island territory's red, white and blue flag adorns homes and businesses, and the sounds of salsa and reggaetón boom from passing cars and restaurants selling fried plantains and spit-roasted pork.

The area is the beating heart of Philadelphia's more than 90,000-strong Puerto Rican population and forms a key part of Pennsylvania's Latino community, which both the Democrats and Republicans have sought to woo ahead of the 5 November election.

But on Monday morning, many locals were left seething at a joke made at Donald Trump's rally the night before in New York, in which comic Tony Hinchcliffe described Puerto Rico as an "island of garbage".

The joke, some said, could come back to haunt the Republicans in a key swing state that Democrats won by a narrow margin of 1.17% - about 82,000 votes - in 2020.

"The campaign just hurt itself, so much. It's crazy to me," said Ivonne Torres Miranda, a local resident who said she remains disillusioned by both candidates - Republican Trump and Democrat Kamala Harris - with just eight days to go in the campaign.

"Even if he [Mr Hinchcliffe ] was joking - you don't joke like that.

"We're Puerto Ricans. We have dignity, and we have pride," she told the BBC, speaking in rapid-fire Spanish with a strong Puerto Rican accent.

"You've got to think before saying things."

In the aftermath, the Trump campaign was quick to distance itself from Mr Hinchcliffe's joke, with a spokesman saying the remark "does not reflect the views" of Trump or his campaign.

The Harris campaign pounced on the joke, with the vice-president pointing to the comment as a sign that Trump is "fanning the fuel of trying to divide" Americans.

Her views were echoed by Puerto Rican celebrities Bad Bunny and Jennifer Lopez, who both endorsed Harris on Sunday.

A campaign official told CBS, the BBC's US partner, that the controversy was a political gift to the Democrats.

Some Puerto Rican residents agree with that assessment.

"[The joke] just put it in the bag for us. He literally just gave us the win," said Jessie Ramos, a Harris supporter. "He has no idea how hard the Latino community is going to come out and support Kamala Harris."

Residents of Puerto Rico - a US island territory in the Caribbean - are unable to vote in presidential elections, but the large diaspora in the US can.

Across Pennsylvania, about 600,000 eligible voters are Latino.

More than 470,000 of them are Puerto Ricans - one of the largest concentrations in the country and a potential deciding factor in a state where polls show Harris and Trump in an extremely tight race.

North Philadelphia in particular has been a target for Harris, who on Sunday made a campaign stop at Freddy & Tony's, a Puerto Rican restaurant and community hub in Fairhill.

The same day, Harris unveiled a new policy platform for Puerto Rico, promising economic development and improved disaster relief and accusing Trump of having "abandoned and insulted" the island during Hurricane Maria in 2017.

Whether or not this will sway Puerto Rican voters remains to be seen.

Freddy & Tony's owner, Dalma Santiago, told the BBC that she is not sure whether the joke will make a difference but that she believed that it was heard "loud and clear" in Fairhill and other Puerto Rican communities.

"Everybody has their own opinion," she told the BBC. "But nobody will be forgetting that one."

Similarly, Moses Santana, a 13-year US Army veteran who works at a harm reduction facility in Fairhill, said he is unsure of the joke's impact.

In an interview with the BBC on a Fairhill street corner, Mr Santana said the area is traditionally wary of politicians of all kinds, with many believing that both parties have failed to address socio-economic issues, crime and drug abuse there.

"Folks around here tend not to get what they ask for," he added. "Even when they vote."

On Tuesday, Trump will campaign in Allentown, a town of about 125,000 in central Pennsylvania where about 33,000 people identify as Puerto Rican.

But even among Trump supporters in Pennsylvania's wider Latino community, the joke was poorly received.

That included Republican voter Jessenia Anderson, a Puerto Rican resident from the town of Johnstown about 240 miles (386 km) west of Philadelphia.

Ms Anderson, a military veteran who was born in New York's heavily Puerto Rican Lower East Side, is a frequent attendee of Trump rallies in Pennsylvania.

She described the joke as "deeply offensive" and said the routine felt "wildly out of place" - and implored her fellow Republicans to engage in "thoughtful and respectful conversations".

But Ms Anderson has no plan to switch her vote.

"My belief in the party's potential to make a positive impact remains strong," she said.

"I hope they will approach Latino voters with the respect they deserve."

[mitigatedchaos]

The Floating Causation of Vulgar Anti-Racism

Post for August 12, 2024 ~7,400 words, 36 minutes

-★-

The late 20th century and the early 21st century were an excellent time for 'catch-up' development in under-developed countries. For example, the GDP per capita of the People's Republic of China rose from $312 in 1980, to $12,720 in 2022, more than a 40x increase. This is despite the People's Republic being nominally communist, 92% Han Chinese, and one of the largest potential geopolitical rivals to the United States. This is not a one-off – exports from the Socialist Republic of Vietnam to the United States rose from $50 million in 1994 to $114 billion in 2023.

While the ideologically liberal government of the United States did invade Iraq and Afghanistan, and placed strict limits on Iran, in practical terms, the United States was willing to direct hundreds of billions of dollars of demand, for everything from disposable gloves to rice cookers, to countries that were neither majority white nor, officially, capitalist, which allowed these countries to build up their industrial base.

Inside the United States, as of the early 2020s, Americans of Indian descent, Americans of Asian descent, and a number of other non-white groups are outperforming the median household income of white Americans. It's not uncommon to see an Indian-American as the CEO of a major US corporation, such as Microsoft's Satya Nadella, Google's Sundar Pichai, or IBM's Arvind Krishna. And while Americans of Nigerian descent aren't earning quite as much money as Sundar Pichai, they are doing better than the U.S. national average. [1]

The American economy is willing to award non-white Americans and non-white immigrants with average pay higher than that the average pay for white Americans, and American society is willing to award members of these same groups with highly prestigious positions – Google is one of the most famous American companies, and to be its CEO is highly prestigious indeed.

Why is it that vulgar anti-racists aren't content to leave well enough alone on negative racial messaging, and take advantage of this opportunity to focus on personal development, ingroup development, and national development? Why is it that they have a strange totalitarian bent, such as Ibram Kendi proposing to give veto power over all government policy to a body of unappointed race experts, which would de facto end democracy?

Last month, @max1461 wrote a post, attempting to find a balanced compromise between the social justice movement and its critics in the discourses on racism over the past 10 years. Perhaps this was intended to close the books and allow the participants to move to a saner footing going forward. Subsequently, Max flagged the post as unrebloggable in order to prevent it from being beat up like a piñata. Near the end of the initial chain, Max wrote:

I can’t stress enough that, for all the excesses of DEI seminars and modern anti-racist academia and whatnot, for however unhelpful or even regressive these things may often be, what they exist in response to is fundamentally a horror of an entirely different and incomparable scale; something unspeakably evil and destructive. And, after 200 years of such an evil world order, which only really began to melt in 1945, I think it would be incredibly naive to believe that all the wounds are now healed.

It would seem that for the most part, the wounds that Japan suffered from America in World War II have already healed. The country already went through reindustrialization, followed by a boom period (which startled Westerners), and then a subsequent crash and the 'lost decade' of the 1990s. The Japanese have a favorable view of the United States, as perhaps they should – Japan has prospered in the Post-WW2 international order, in which they can simply purchase whatever materials they need on global markets with no need to invade or occupy anyone.

Yet for others, the past lingers on.

Ibram Kendi is one of the most famous contemporary self-identified anti-racists, a New York Times bestselling author (his most famous book was titled "How to Be an Anti-Racist") who was not only platformed by major corporations such as Microsoft (in 2020, an advertisement on the login screen of Windows 10 computers linked to a search for "anti-racism books," with his at the top), but even received funding for his own anti-racism center (now under attack for its ineffectiveness).

At one time, Ibram Kendi thought that white people were aliens. A roommate talked him out of it, asking how it was that white people could have children with everyone else if that were the case. To his credit, Kendi did change his mind.

...but how could anyone have come up with Kendi's conclusion in the first place?

In school in the United States, children are taught that the Spanish conquered the Aztecs. It is true that Spanish military forces brought about the downfall of the Aztec Empire, but often people forget the details of what they learned in school, and often what they learn in school is itself a simplified story, designed to be told to children. Encyclopedia Britannica's summary of the Battle of Tenochtitlan largely agrees with the gist of Wikipedia's more detailed article on the Fall of Tenochtitlan, which is littered with instances of "[citation needed]."

Wikipedia, however, provides more numbers. In particular, Wikipedia's version provides one of the Internet's favorite parts of wiki battle articles, a listing of the balance of opposed forces (with citations):

There is a racist narrative of the conquest of the Americas in which the brave Spanish explorers overcame the savage, human-sacrificing hordes of the Aztecs. There is an inverted, anti-racist narrative of the conquest of the Americas in which the powerful, cruel Spanish showed up to oppress the weak, innocent Aztecs.

And then there is a third narrative - a narrative that politics happened. A number of tributary states had grievances with the Aztecs, and the small number of Spanish probably didn't seem like enough to conquer the whole territory from the perspective of the tributaries, but did seem powerful enough to rally around to fight the Aztecs and win.

Nobody comes out looking good in this third narrative. The Spanish brought about a brutal war with tens of thousands of casualties, and devastating disease followed their arrival. The Aztecs and tributaries combined failed to overcome a foreign invasion due to (relative to the foreigners being from another continent) local infighting. The Aztecs were awful enough that a number of tributaries sided with an army of foreigners against them.

Now, suppose that we delete the 200,000 native allies from the balance of forces above, but still record a victory for the Spanish. The effect of the native allies remains, but the cause of that effect disappears. This creates an effect without a cause – unattributed causation, which is disconnected from what came before, or what we might call, "floating causation."

Some might call overcoming a force of 80,000 with only 1,000 or so men a miracle. For those not so inclined, the 'floating' causation gets attributed to the Spanish soldiers – their equipment, their valor, their tactics, and their discipline. Each of a thousand Spanish infantrymen is now somehow worth 200 native warriors.

In this cartoon version of history, the Spanish are an unstoppable psychic warrior race. Their steadfast will in the face of danger and their unit cohesion are quite nearly inhuman, and their technological advantage is overwhelming. The natives have not merely made a political miscalculation similar to others of the pre-modern era, such as the decisions of states facing Genghis Khan, but are buffoons to the slaughter, incapable of putting up any real defense.

In this cartoon, the Spanish can go anywhere. They can do anything. And because of this, they are the only people with agency in the whole world.

They sound... like aliens.

Trying to rebalance this cartoon only leads to greater absurdities, such as the idea that only Europeans ever meaningfully engaged in conquest (contradicted by Genghis Khan), or that industrial technology and its resulting pollution are "European" in nature (China has been quite aggressive about industrializing), or that only "European" countries waged modern and industrialized wars of conquest (the Empire of Japan used guns, bombs, and tanks as part of its project to create the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere).

All three of the above counter-examples are from Asia, which is usually conspicuously absent from self-identified anti-racist thinking, but none of them are obscure.

-★-

It is my belief that floating causation is a source of distortions across the ideological spectrum.

Ideology is not independent from human beings. Manifestos, one might say, do not print themselves. From the other direction, it is not a piece of paper which murders somebody – it is a human being who pulls the trigger.

There is ideology, which is a system of related rules and beliefs, and there are adherents who adopt ideology, spread beliefs, and put ideological rules into practice.

An ideology can contain taboos which prohibit noticing or explaining the true cause of some outcome, separating the cause from its effect. Practitioners can then attribute that effect to a preferred ideological construct instead, making it seem much more powerful, and often dangerous, than it really is.

The Elephants

Imagine (as this example is entirely made-up) that there is some village in which elephants are considered sacred, but the elephants in the area have a habit of trampling crops in the night. To avoid loss of face, the damage to crops is attributed to "bandits" by an initial group of elders. The young children who do not know better are then taught this explanation. Later, after the death of the elders, the initial truth is lost. Anyone claiming to have seen elephants trampling the fields is denounced as choosing the vile bandits over the virtuous elephants. An outsider who did not realize what was happening might be quite impressed to hear that a bandit in the region ruined a dozen fields in a single night, and assume that the bandit has tremendous physical stamina.

But floating causation is not necessarily the result of an ideological taboo. Someone may be ignorant about the cause of an effect, unable to understand the process by which an effect came about, have powerful emotions about the topic which they are unwilling to confront or may not even be aware of, or may simply have poor judgment. An adherent may be drawn to an ideology for these reasons.

Continuing with our example, a fresh-off-the-boat colonial administrator arriving at the village might be unaware that elephants exist, or trample crops, and conclude that there were ongoing feuds driven by animosity among the villagers, with bandits as the cover-story. Alternatively, the new colonial administrator might love the elephants and hate the villagers, and be unwilling to consider the possibility that the elephants are trampling the crops, including cooking up rather elaborate rationalizations.

Ideology

Issues with not understanding a process are more likely to come up with things like economics – occasionally a worker will post a video to social media complaining that he is not paid the full value of the items he sells or creates, ignoring all the money that went into the construction of the facility, the work from other workers putting together the input materials, and so on.

Liberals in the late 00s and early 2010s had an interest in memetics, which concerns the replication and spread of ideas. (This field is where the term "Internet meme" comes from.) Then, as now, they had a tendency to treat people as too similar to each other, and some of them leaned towards the idea that any person could hold any ideology. Ideologies do (in my judgment) influence behavior – there are far fewer monarchists around these days, and far fewer monarchs with real power, for example – but how a set of beliefs is expressed depend on the emotions, motives, and temperament of the person who holds those beliefs.

So do people choose ideologies, or do ideologies choose people?

One way to view this matter is as a cycle. Someone's social environment is partly a matter of choice, and partly a matter of circumstance. The ideologies that show up in someone's environment are generally going to be ones that spread (as ideologies that don't attract new adherents will die out), but which ideology someone actually chooses and how they practice it will be influenced by what type of person they are.

Another way to view this matter is that emotions, motives, temperament, and beliefs are all things that make certain actions or thoughts either easier (and cheaper) or more difficult (and more expensive). A drug addict who believes in hard work and free market capitalism, but finds himself stealing to feed his habit, may find that the influence of his beliefs is not enough to overcome his addiction. (He is likely to feel miserable.) However, when a religious person is choosing what time of day, or day of the week, to worship, the explicit belief of their religion is likely to have a great deal of influence.

Yet another way to view this matter is to treat things like social relations, ideology, and temperament as interacting layers, and then propose that politics spans multiple layers.

Human Talent

I don't believe that all human beings are equally talented, and I don't believe that they all have identical temperaments. Therefore, one of my beliefs is what might be called the "human capital theory of movements." Ideologies consist of networks of related beliefs which can be used to interpret the world, to guide behavior, or to create arguments. But ideologies do not create beliefs or arguments themselves. Humans do.

When a movement has a lot of talented, virtuous people working for it, these people can create new arguments in order to win debates, and change parts of the ideology, the network of beliefs, to adapt the network to changes in conditions. Without talented people, the ideology of a movement will drift farther from environmental conditions, causing its responses to become more misaligned with conditions on the ground.

Talented people are also needed for the implementation of an ideology. An ideological book is just an inert text. No matter how complex it may be, it is fundamentally limited in its complexity. Applying that text in the environment, bridging the gap between what the text says and what that means in the reality of a specific situation, requires both intelligence and good judgment. Not every person is equally talented, and not every person is equally informed. If someone more talented and with better judgment is around, they can read the situation and come up with some simpler rules or orders for others to follow.

The less talented the adherents of a movement are, the lower the ability of the movement to adapt to conditions over both the short-term and the long-term.

A shift in the distribution of talent can precede other forms of political change. Ideologues may smile as the most disagreeable members are driven out of their movement, but at the same time, the lack of criticism will reduce the movement's ability to respond to change.

There are trade-offs. The use of floating causation may make an ideology less aligned with reality, but it may also be useful for the movement to stoke the emotions of their followers in order to drive action. (This emotional motivation bit is why every election in the United States is "the most important in your lifetime.")

-★-

Beliefs are not intelligence. Nonetheless, a person with a belief may act as though they are smarter (or even wiser) than they actually are. This is just the nature of knowledge (as cached intelligence, wisdom, and observation).

I developed the talent theory in the prior section by observing opposition to racism in the United States prior to 2014. In the United States between 2000 and 2014, there was substantial support for individualist "colorblindness," while at the same time, there was immense social pressure against overt white racial organizing.

Racial organizing takes time and effort. Because white Americans were not subject to racial discrimination, they could simply go out into the market and earn what their work was worth. For talented white Americans, the gains from white racial organizing would be marginal, so the penalties could easily overcome those gains. The less talented would have the most to gain due to the ability to reduce the amount of economic competition they would be up against, but they were also less able to organize. [2]

There was somewhere famous for white racial organizing in the US during this era: prisons.

Racial prison gangs have been particularly noted in the California prison system. Prison gangs offer inmates a credible threat of retaliation if the inmate is harmed, so every inmate has an incentive to join one, and the bigger the gang the better that threat of retaliation is, so every gang has an incentive to recruit. If you're a gang member and a new guy comes in and starts causing trouble, and you don't want to escalate (and thus risk extra charges for your guys or reduced privileges), what are you to do? You would prefer to negotiate with someone that has leverage on him. Race is very visible, even if inmates move around between prisons, so if all inmates get sorted into gangs by race, then someone is responsible for this guy, and by talking to the right people, you can make sure he knows it. (If the troublemaker still doesn't respond, and his own gang cut him loose, then you can punish him without fear of retaliation from other inmates.)

Different incentives produce different results.

Four Options

Glenn Loury is a black man, and an economist at Brown University. He views himself as an American and therefore an inheritor of human rights philosophy of the American founders and their English forebears. He has his own show on YouTube in which he regularly discusses matters with John McWhorter, another black man, who is a linguistics professor at Columbia University. (John strikes me as more liberal, and I heard that he was frightened of Donald Trump, a sentiment shared by many white American culturally liberal Democrats.) Both of these men are quite smart, and if you watch the show, you'll see them easily consider arguments from various perspectives and toss hypotheticals back and forth.

Neither of these men are vulgar anti-racists.

Roland Fryer is a black man, and is an economist at Harvard (although he was suspended for 2 years) who I have discussed previously. He thinks like an economist, and has conducted studies such as paying children to read books. In previous appearances, it seemed that he believes that education gaps can be closed through extremely rigorous selection of teachers and other methods.

Mr. Fryer does not appear to be a vulgar anti-racist.

These men are all relatively prominent voices. If you go looking for the sort of content they produce, they aren't that hard to find. And they're all smart. They might have disagreements with each other and with some of my readers, but smart people can disagree.

However, during the 2014-2022 era, when it was decided to push a black academic to prominence, political forces settled on Ibram Kendi instead. There must have been dozens of other candidates.

When I think about why that happened, I suspect that the answer is that while the first three men care about the interests of black Americans, all three of them are willing to say, "No." Although I doubt they would phrase it in exactly these terms, I suspect that all three understand human rights as rooted in high-order consequences, limits on information, and human bias.

If you proposed to John McWhorter that we should give veto power to a committee of unelected race experts, he would immediately recognize the problem with just that.

Why Vulgar Anti-Racism?

With all of that said, I believe we can think about vulgar anti-racism by means of comparison.

a. Economics

Loury and Fryer are both economists. They know about gains from trade, prices as a distributed form of economic planning, property rights as enabling investment, specialization of labor, economies of scale, and dozens of other things. They understand where wealth comes from.

The typical vulgar anti-racist that you will encounter on an Internet discussion board has little knowledge of economics, and tends to think of total production as fixed. From their perspective, if someone has more resources than another person, it has nothing to do with production, and is purely the result of hoarding.

The typical vulgar anti-racist also doesn't think in terms of entropy, the tendency of things to break down over time. They tend not to discount temporally-distant advantages. (If a well was built 400 years ago, they treat that advantage as retained today.) They tend to think of capital as fixed and not as something that is constantly being rebuilt and adjusted. They don't understand that the ability to create new capital is generally more important than the initial capital in the long-run.

Thinking about production is probably why we see Fryer focused on educational gains. His theory is likely that if the children have a good base of education, they'll be able to produce more, avoid losses, overcome entropy, and net accumulate wealth. If they don't have a good base of education, then they'll be less productive, and entropy will eat a higher percentage of their earnings, leading to reduced wealth.

If someone doesn't know economics, then the wealth of developed countries is "unexplained," and so are the motives of many people within developed countries.

b. History

I don't know about Fryer specifically, but Loury and McWhorter seem to have a good grasp of history.

A solid understanding of history leads to seeing actions as emerging from their historical contexts. This places a limit on the range of expected behavior.

For example, for most of history up until about the 1900s, the child mortality rate was about 50%. That example is relevant for feminism, as under such brutal conditions, we would expect any society that didn't push for women to have at least 4 children to die out. Gender-based oppression didn't occur for no reason, or because of pure male greed, but was influenced by material circumstances.

If we run this understanding backwards, it follows that 1700s or earlier gender norms would be unlikely to return without 1700s or earlier child mortality rates.

Likewise, some basic historical knowledge would reveal that wars of conquest have happened pretty much everywhere, so it's quite unlikely that Europeans are uniquely conquerors. You end up having to declare everything from feuding Chinese kingdoms, to the Māori, to chimpanzees, be "European" in order to fit the model.

The typical vulgar anti-racist's position is, implicitly, "Everyone lived together in peace and harmony, until one day, for no reason at all, the Europeans became possessed by the spirit of greed, and attacked."

If someone somehow doesn't know that war existed outside of Europe prior to 1492, then the wars of colonialism are "unexplained," and so are the motives of the people who fought them.

When vulgar anti-racists do research history, they generally focus on collecting racial grievances in order to build up a case that the group they favor are poor, oppressed, not responsible for anything bad their group has ever done, and are owed indefinite benefits for incalculable harms. They don't proceed from the idea of, "How does this work?" They don't, say, look at the tremendous economic success of South Korea, and ask, "Based on how South Korea obtained their wealth, how can our group achieve such riches?" (They don't even look at South Korea's birthrate and ask how they can avoid such a fate!)

Even before World War 2, Japan did look afar to ask how they could become rich. That kind of mentality is part of how they were able to become a developed country (who could threaten other people with tanks) in the first place.

Looking to Asia is useful for people making comparisons to figure out how things work, but is not useful for collecting racial grievances in order to build up racial claims to make demands. That's why vulgar anti-racists often don't know basic facts about Asian history, like that state testing to determine government positions was practiced in ancient China. [3]

c. Racial Attachment

Even during the individualist colorblindness of 2000-2014, there were still white Americans with some talent engaged in racial organizing. In general, these were people to whom race was very important, and thus who were out-of-step with the mainstream of white America.

It's my opinion that there is a natural range of tribalism among human beings. Sometimes, the rival tribe on the other side of the mountain just want to trade. Other times, they really are out to kill you. The trait doesn't disappear, because wars still happen, and even if they didn't happen, someone could just reinvent war and start it all back up again.

In my view, this tribalism trait isn't attached to race specifically. It can attach to religion. It can attach to sex. Some of the rhetoric from radical feminists sounds the same as rhetoric from hardcore ethnic nationalists – or at least it would, if we treated men as an ethnicity. In our modern environment in which race is highly legible due to intercontinental travel, for a lot of people, it gets attached to race.

Rather than assigning people a single number on a scale from "moral" to "immoral," it's probably better to think of people as having virtues and vices, strengths and weaknesses.

Some level of racial attachment itself is not inherently evil. Based on his research topics, for example, Roland Fryer seems interested in bringing about the success of people with a similar background to himself. His virtue (his interest in truth) and his strength (his intelligence) convert that attachment into something that's beneficial to society.

High levels of racial attachment fly much closer to the wire. A highly racially attached individual might do good work in other domains, but there's a risk that they'll end up routing too much of their sense of self-worth through their race, and become obsessed with guarding their race's self-perceived reputation. For such a person, any information deemed unflattering to the group may be interpreted as an attack on himself (or herself).

The Mayo Clinic (a network of hospitals in the United States) describes narcissism as:

Narcissistic personality disorder is a mental health condition in which people have an unreasonably high sense of their own importance. They need and seek too much attention and want people to admire them. People with this disorder may lack the ability to understand or care about the feelings of others. But behind this mask of extreme confidence, they are not sure of their self-worth and are easily upset by the slightest criticism.

A number of users on Twitter (now known as X.com) began using the term "ethnic narcissism" to describe this sort of disordered thinking when done on behalf of a racial or ethnic group rather than oneself specifically.

2019 and 2020 were banner years for platforming this sort of behavior, with the nation's leading newspaper arguing, in its own words, that we should make the suffering of a particular racial group the core narrative of American history, that everyone should define their identities around:

The 1619 Project is a major initiative from The New York Times observing the 400th anniversary of the beginning of American slavery. It aims to reframe the country’s history, understanding 1619 as our true founding, and placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of our national narrative.

Obsession with self-perceived ethnic reputation is part of what leads to the "rebalancing the cartoon" behavior I discussed earlier:

Trying to rebalance this cartoon only leads to greater absurdities, such as the idea that only Europeans ever meaningfully engaged in conquest (contradicted by Genghis Khan), or that industrial technology and its resulting pollution are "European" in nature (China has been quite aggressive about industrializing), or that only "European" countries waged modern and industrialized wars of conquest (the Empire of Japan used guns, bombs, and tanks as part of its project to create the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere).

How does someone end up so ignorant that they don't know that Genghis Khan existed? By being the kind of person that doesn't want to know that Genghis Khan existed. They don't look it up. If you tell them, they either forget or they take a conflict theorist approach and think that it's some sort of trick.

Unfortunately, while a fairly accurate description of the behavior at issue, the term "ethnic narcissism" can also be used as an attack by ethnic narcissists themselves, as well as people engaged in ethnic conflict. This makes it of limited utility in practice.

The Mysterious Anglo

Option #1: In general, the right wing would consider the vulgar anti-racists to be liars working to selfishly advance their own personal interests and those of their preferred groups. Left-wingers would tend to take a negative view of this, as they believe that right-wingers are unjustly dismissive in order to 'protect the unearned and unquestioned advantages of the privileged.'

In this version, vulgar anti-racists won't drop the issue and hit the GDP gym because they're bullies who think the particular groups they dislike are easy targets. The appropriate response is to become a harder target by systematically defunding any institution that supports them, putting them on the same footing as conventional racial supremacists in the US.

I tend to agree that many of the vulgar anti-racists are just being selfish. There is a question of just how consciously aware of it they are, however.

Option #2: A left-wing view would be that the vulgar anti-racists are "good people, just a bit misguided." Right-wingers tend to take a negative view of this, because if a right-winger published a book titled "Black Fragility" that was as circular in its reasoning as the "White Fragility" of Robin DiAngelo appeared to be, he would be hounded as a racist.

In this version, vulgar anti-racists just need patient guidance to put their empathy back on the right track.

I tend to believe that a good chunk of the vulgar anti-racists are just low-tier progressives who get their opinions socially. If the social consensus changes among progressives, they'll forget ever fretting about "microaggressions." Arguing with them individually mostly won't work, though, because it doesn't override their social consensus, and it won't make them think harder about the issues.

Many left-wingers would disagree with me on this assessment.

Option #3: A more centrist view would be that vulgar anti-racists are a mix of people with excessively high racial attachment, enthusiastic people who are underinformed, and people who serve their niche of the information and political economy, and that this isn't that different from the lower quality wings of other left and right political movements (look how bad "degrowth" is, for example), except that race feels much more core to people's identities (it's certainly not easy to change one's race), so it evokes more powerful emotions. A centrist would likely say that there are more academically and philosophically serious opponents of racism out there, but because the things they say are more serious, they're less controversial, so they get less coverage. ("You wouldn't expect a textbook in the Sunday paper.")

A person with this perspective would say that the appropriate course of action is mostly just to wait for it to blow over.

I would disagree. If vulgar anti-racism is taught in schools for a generation, it would create an expectation that racial blame is the default course of action. This would create a situation which is much more favorable for racial conflict, so it should be shut down now to prevent that from happening.

However, I feel that this does not adequately explain the totalitarian bent. What about other values society might have? What about trade-offs? [4] I would like to throw a fourth possibility into the ring.

Option #4: Life inside the vulgar anti-racist worldview is anxiety-inducing and subtly terrifying.

I don't fully endorse this view, because I think that vulgar anti-racism is a coalition of multiple groups (see the previous three options).

However, while I learned from school that racism and ethnic conflict are extremely dangerous in general (e.g. they can boil over and result in mass murder), the susceptibility of vulgar anti-racists to, "It's impossible to be racist to white people," which is very obviously racist, strongly implies that what they learned was, "Jews good; Germans bad" – basically just a list of which groups are acceptable, and which groups aren't. [5]

I reverse-engineered a sophisticated moral worldview, and when I was young, I assumed that everyone else had done so, too. And for a little while, society approximated that view closely enough for that misconception to kind-of work.

I think that a significant number of people in the vulgar anti-racist coalition don't understand white people.

In terms of anxiety, a number of them seem to think that Europeans and their descendants think about race as much as the vulgar anti-racists do – that they are silently passing judgment, or saying nasty things when others are not listening.

I've been around middle-class and above white Americans my entire life. I've seen some kids make stupid racist jokes, and I can imagine bullying targeting race if it looks like an axis of vulnerability, but in general, among themselves, they don't talk about race much at all.

A skeptic reading this may say that that's just anecdotal. However, according to surveys, "white conservatives" have about the same "racial/ethnic" "ingroup favorability" as either "hispanic moderates" or "asians." "White liberals" were the only group on the chart to have a "pro-outgroup bias."

If we interpret these ingroup favorability measures as racism (which is a stretch, because a favorability measure is not itself a discriminatory policy), then white conservatives have a "normal" (as in typical of most groups) amount of racism. White liberals (probably in the sense that the label "liberal" is used for the entire left in the US) are the only ones who loop around into what might be called "anti-racism." (Razib Khan has his doubts about the stability of this arrangement of anti-racism as opposed to non-racism.)

A vulgar anti-racist doesn't know this, and doesn't want to know this.

Now, for the "subtly terrifying" part. If someone accepts, for instance, that the British were sincere in sending warships to intercept slave traders, then there are all sorts of explanations that they can come up with for that behavior, such as it being a natural result of industrialization, or maybe a result of rising literacy, or motivated by Christianity in combination with previous political developments in England, and so on.

From Wikipedia, here's a map of the British Empire, a map of the Spanish Empire, and a map of the Portuguese Empire. While from the perspective of Europeans at the time, the European states were in competition with each other, if taken together as a group, they were closer to achieving true world conquest than anyone else in history. (Sure, the Mongol Empire was huge, but they didn't make it over to the Americas.)

If someone believes that the Europeans turned off the slave trade for some sincere or enduring reason, then the 1700s are unlikely to come back. If someone believes that the Europeans turned off the 1700s for no reason, or for a secret reason, then one day, they could just... turn the 1700s back on.

And maybe that thought isn't entirely conscious. Maybe it just sits quietly, at the back of the mind.

And they get stuck, much like people who are still focused on "overpopulation" as birthrates plummet in industrialized countries throughout the world.

-★-

Whether they consciously intend to or not, vulgar anti-racists leverage social taboos to make it difficult to argue for one group's innocence without making another, generally more vulnerable, group, look worse. People don't want to be mean and say mean things about a vulnerable group. Vulgar anti-racists exploit this. (This kind of behavior is immoral, but I'm not sure how much vulgar anti-racists consciously understand that.)

Online Tactics

I've developed tactics to argue with them in online space, but I haven't tried them out in in-person institutional spaces where they have institutional influence (power).

In general, you cannot argue with vulgar anti-racists grievance-for-grievance. Building up an ammunition depot of racial or ethnic grievances on behalf of "overperforming" groups won't work – vulgar anti-racists will dismiss you as irrationally motivated by racial hatred and dismiss your entire collection, and normal people will also think it's weird (even though they still don't think many racial or ethnic minorities collecting grievances is weird). [6]

A better approach is to pick one or two grievances to shut down the idea that the group you're defending are "invulnerable." Morally, you shouldn't have to point to, say, children or minors being mass victimized, because it should be obvious that people of any race can be victimized. But that's just the world we live in.

Collect examples of institutional policy, such as by governments, corporations, or universities, that is racially discriminatory against the group you're defending, in order to show that the intent of vulgar anti-racists is racial discrimination. Use center-left, mainstream sources to prevent dismissals. The goal is not to show major harms; most Democrats who are not social justice critical will initially attempt to deny that racial discrimination is a goal of vulgar anti-racism.

(If necessary, it can be emphasized that not wanting to be racially discriminated against is a normal thing to want.)

Vulgar anti-racists will try to shut you down by reciting their list of grievances. Memorizing racial grievances is something that they are strong at. Redirect the conversation to where they are weak: demand that they show whatever policy it is that they want will actually improve things and permanently close racial outcome gaps.

If you find someone who has memorized a list of successful academic or nutrition interventions, you've likely found a philosophical liberal. In my experience, almost no vulgar anti-racist has any even modestly-successful intervention memorized. If they propose an intervention, demand evidence that it will work.

It's possible that they could propose something scientific, but science is undergoing a replication crisis, and 'race scholars' have come under fire for scientific misconduct. If a vulgar anti-racist does come up with something, the next step is to get a binding commitment to close the racial claims against their target group.

If their political leaders will not agree, in writing, with binding mechanisms (and punishments with teeth if they don't follow through), to close out the racial claims against their target groups, conditional on some social intervention going into effect, then they don't believe that the intervention will work.

A working intervention is win-win. Outcomes improve, and the odds of conflict (over this particular issue) decrease.

IRL Tactics

X user CantonaCorona must live somewhere very different from me, because I never hear vulgar anti-racism from people in real life. His advice?

100%. I can’t even tell you the number of times I’ve been in a friendly/polite mutual friend gathering, and someone who knows 10% of the room will add “gawd, white people, gross” etc.

The issue is they are also the person lacking social skills to see the room gets uncomfortable

In 2023ish I started responding by asking them very honest seeming questions and leading them into saying really crazy stuff.

Takes a lot of finesse to not sound like a schizo, but if you can pretend to be genuinely curious it works wonders and someone else will call them out

It does, indeed, take a lot of finesse, even online. Because vulgar anti-racists are exploiting taboos, they have a huge terrain advantage in most encounters due to normal people not wanting to touch reputationally-damaging information. Successfully navigating the situation without sounding "schizo," and without sounding cruel, is difficult.

The advantage of the tactics discussed above are that you don't have to attack the reputation of the vulnerable group that vulgar anti-racists are using to justify their own bad behavior. It isn't surprising that, like a successful hostage rescue, it requires being more careful than the hostage-takers.

"Corrective" racial discrimination that does not permanently close racial outcome gaps is not actually a correction, it's just extra harm for no reason, and the motives of people who support it are suspect.

Demobilization

While the online tactics I've discussed above are reasonably effective for an online debate or argument format (and vulgar anti-racists are increasingly retreating to protected contexts where they don't have to engage in open debate), the long-term goal needs to be demobilization. Ethnic conflict interferes with stability and good government.

There are some supporters that don't recognize the logical errors in their positioning, but they can sense, "Wait, this guy isn't like the others," and flee rather than risk being split off from the social approval of their group.

I propose the fear theory for the potential to develop new angles. If the real motivation is fear, then addressing most of the intermediate arguments won't work, as the intermediate arguments are just products of the fear.

Reportedly, black musician Daryl Davis demobilized many Klansmen just by befriending them. [7] I suspect that most vulgar anti-racists already know a number of white people personally, so that tactic probably won't work here.

I have not conducted field experiments (either online or offline) on using the fear theory during encounters, so I can't provide solid information on its tactical use, yet.

-★★★-

[1] Stylistically, I have chosen to capitalize nationality while not capitalizing racial groups. On a quick reading, the tables provided by Wikipedia don't appear to disaggregate between first-generation immigrants, who have foreign nationality of origin and American citizenship, and second-generation immigrants who only have American nationality. All three CEOs listed were born in India.

[2] The ability to buy off competing talent is one of the reasons for the endurance of capitalism. Capitalist systems tend to be extremely productive. They can offer wages from increased productivity that are higher than the wages that other systems offer from rents.

[3] This is one of the reasons I got into writing about politics. It became common to find people whose professed opinions implied they'd never even heard of Genghis Khan, and at that point, I figured the bar was set pretty low.

[4] Positions on migration appear related, but I'll touch on that in another essay.

[5] One reason it wasn't obvious that people were just making an acceptable targets list at the time was that quite a few people from all over the world have a tendency to get wacky about Jewish people specifically, so putting antisemitism off-limits looked like it was backed by more sophisticated reasoning than it actually was. Obviously, people shouldn't hate Jewish people. The problem with the acceptable targets list approach is that it's fragile – since the list is based on social approval rather than deeper philosophical principles, it can end up being "readjusted" later.

[6] I also suspect that continuing to constantly expose yourself to the worst behavior of other groups may be corrosive. Watching a video where a man is shot on some other street, in some other city, may give you a jolt of adrenaline while you sit helplessly in your chair. Reading about atrocities may make you feel helpless and doomed.

[7] This behavior is morally praiseworthy, not morally obligatory.

[princess-of-anons]

Wouldn’t it be Very Funny if Tumblr was capable of giving us glimpses into parallel timelines? Like how would you even discern if something was some elaborate shitpost or not?

0 notes

🌐is-blue-shift-2-out-yet Follow

Still find it absolutely hilarious that somebody went through the time and effort to not only make a musical out of Half Life VR but also convinced everybody that was working on it to keep hush hush about it for a whole ass year and THEN somehow kept everybody involved in the original series the musical is based off of in the dark for another six months??? They literally dropped the whole show and individual songs onto the internet in the middle of January too like Who Does That? I can’t even be mad because this show genuinely got me interested in actual broadway musicals but like what the fuck

16,653 notes

🛠️tumblr-updates-official Follow

We are STILL working out the bug that’s causing posts from parallel points of realty to leak into our own and vice-versa. For those of you whose blogs are shadow-following several of these multiversal users without actually following them, we are working on that as well. Until then we have implemented a quick-fix that adds a banner to the bottom of posts not from our own reality.

UPDATE: We have received word that there are some issues with the banner code that is causing some people to be incorrectly identified as being from an alternate universe while people that are actually from an alternate universe are not being labeled at all. For the time being we are removing the automatic banner system. Please use your own discretion and flag blogs you suspect are not from baseline reality, we will have somebody manually.

UPDATE 2: We have been informed that giving the ability to report alleged blogging activity from other universes to a website that thrives off of dedication to The Bit and lying as a joke is a very bad idea. We regrettably request that you enjoy the madness until we get this figured out. For those of you who are still getting banners at the end of your posts despite our attempts to kill the algorithm responsible for it, we are looking into it. Yes, we are very aware that the number of universes getting added into this chaos is growing exponentially. We hope to get this fixed up in a week.

🃏xxxclownboyxxx Follow

Posts that aged like milk

🐐dreamworks-don-quixote-gifs Follow

Mate this post didn’t just age like milk, it aged like fucking grimmal.

🦇britishvampire348 Follow

What the bloody hell is milk?

🛹itsa-tree-and-a-prius Follow

You can’t get shit like this on any other website

71,003,244 notes

🌅lord-nebulous-is-kinda-hot Follow

I could sleep so well if I didn’t have to be haunted by the fact we, as a collective wetsite, decided that for some reason we should ship the Lorax with different versions of himself when the old version of Onceler at the end of the movie was right there.

☠️give-me-your-bones Follow

Bro I am not taking advice from somebody that draws Lord Nebulous as a twink, you know damn well he would be jacked as shit as a human. Give that robo-GILF some meat and then we can talk.

🐐dreamworks-don-quixote-gifs Follow

Fun Fact: Giving meat to robots has universally never gone well in the past! Maybe we could find an alternative instead?

🪺daily-eggbot Follow

🥚

January 35th, 1969

Eggs are a good source of protein and help with muscle growth! And this one is all yours!

[Beep-beep! I am Daily Eggbot! Every day I place an egg on someone’s post, sometimes I place two by accident! My dating system is a little bit buggy and has been known to get dates wrong or make up ones that don’t exist, please let Dev know when this happens!]

🦇vampirebat367 Follow

@iconic-post-archive

💾iconic-post-archive Follow

[Post saved to archive!]

99,332 notes

🎟️dashcon Follow

Thank you again everybody for a successful Dashcon 2019, we hope it was memorable for everyone that was able to show up! We don’t have 2020 vision, but here’s hoping that next year is bigger and better than ever!

From us to all of you, thanks a bunch Tumblrinas!

🔪amongus-detector Follow

🌌squidlord473 Follow

“post from The Timeline where dashcon didn’t become a fucking trainwreck” quickly followed by “random gimmick blog that has not only been around for half a decade but also apparently exists in every single universe” getting randomly assigned with the Wretched Banner feels like the punchline of a cruel joke

10,533 notes

🌚godzillasfatass Follow

Hey, yeah, so we found your husband trapped inside an episode of Star Trek the Animated Series. We got him out safely but I’m not entirely sure if he came back right.

🌚godzillasfatass Follow

Who the fuck changed this from Game of Thrones to Star Trek I just wanna talk

👤bee-movie-deactivated20160619 Follow

There was an animated series for Game of Thrones?

💼notevil-businessman Follow

Everyone on this website is fucking high

🐦‍⬛crowsfeetpics Follow

Me when staff inevitably musters up enough popsicle sticks and glue to fix the multiverse bug

[macandcheese-inhaler]

In honor of ace week, I'd like to share my first memory of learning what asexual meant. I was watching a YouTube video about it during early 2020/late 2019. (I don't remember if the video was specifically about asexuality or if it was a modge podge of queer identities, but that part's not important.) The concept of lgbt+ was still a little confusing to me, and I wanted to learn about all of the different identities in the community. I remember the video showing the word "asexual," the purple flag, and the classic definition, "people who experience little to no sexual attraction".

My very first reation to the those words was, "I hope I end up being asexual. Sex is so gross."

Oh younger me, if only you knew how it was blatantly obvious that you were ace.

I thought I was too young at time to "know," especially because I hadn't ever been "interested" in anyone, let alone have a proper crush so, obviously I couldn't know if I experienced sexual attraction or not. (I didn't know aromantic was a term at that time, nor did I know people could experience sexual attraction without romantic attraction) My logic was lacking, but I was convinced I'd find a crush in due time.

I was in no rush to find them. I had no interest in dating, but I have to admit, I was so curious as to why everyone was so obsessed with crushes. (I could never figure out what romantic attraction was, so up until about mid 2023, I thought sexual attraction always went along with romantic attraction)

A mere 3 years later, several conversations with friends, and many, many hours worth of research, I made it to the point where I caved and finally admitted I was most likely aroace. I didn't officially accept it until about February of 2024, but that's a story for another time.

[fnich-enthusiast]

Let's talk Olympics AU Javid because they are my FAVOURITE

It's 2016, Davey's attending his 3rd Olympics in Rio, Jack is attending his first

At this point Davey's an accomplished olympic diver, having won silver for men's 10m and bronze for mixed synchro (3m springboard) at London 2012. He's v much the US diving golden boy, and makes the decision to come out publicly in Rio by pinning a pride flag to his opening ceremony outfit, so while the games are happening he's facing a media storm and is under Intense scrutiny from the media, both from left wing media making him a gay icon and right wing media deciding he's a national embarrassment.

Meanwhile, it's Jack's first olympics. At this point he knows that he's bi but has pretty much made up his mind that he's only going to act on his attraction to women and be, in his mind "functionally straight." Dude's on a rugby team, he's going through it lol.

They meet at the opening ceremony where they're both shitting bricks for different reasons and Jack notices Davey's pin and v quietly tells Davey that he likes it.

Davey takes one look at this bi disaster and goes ok cool so he's deeply closeted

Throughout the games they get closer, but Davey also very consciously keeps them hanging out in public spaces super platonically because he's waking up every day to more invasive and homophobic headlines and messages and comments and he doesn't want Jack to get caught up in the crossfire. Him and Sarah both have to switch comments off on their instagram, and their parents and Les have to go private and remove all identifying information from theirs, it's not good

Meanwhile Jack's reconsidering his "only women" rule

Davey and Sarah win silver at the mixed event, Sarah posts about how proud she is of her brother for competing under the pressure of the media storm, and US diving finally acknowledges everything by reposting her, including the #lovewins caption

I think it's this that gives Jack the courage to come out to Davey, it's not his sport but a US sporting body has officially come out in support of Davey (even if subtly). He tells Davey how he's in awe of how strong he's been in the face of everything and how he doesn't even seem scared, and Davey confides in him how Terrified he's been the entire games. It's very obvious to Davey that Jack has a thing for him, and that it's reciprocated, but he doesn't say anything about it because honestly, Jack needs time

In the absolute cuntiest move ever, Davey wins gold in the men's individual 10m, and captions it one of the homophobic headlines.

I can just see Davey pulling a Simone Biles level petty post with him biting both a silver and gold medal captioned something like "David Jacobs' woke agenda is an embarrassment to Team USA"

Jack is so deeply in love lol

It's after Jack's team loses in the quarterfinals that he decides that he just absolutely needs to tell Davey he likes him because girls would be easier but he Cannot lose Davey. They both live in NYC so decide to try but date in secret because Jack's not ready to come out yet, and Davey's not ready for more media attention

By Tokyo 2020 (or 2021 really lol) it's a pretty open secret that they're together. Davey gets more attention than Jack bc lbr some random American rugby sevens players would not be dealing with too much media attention outside of the olympics but Davey is like the American Tom Daley. Jack becomes the captain of the men's sevens team and makes it clear to management from the get go that he's dating a man and will be joining a team supportive of that or he won't play at all. They've not made a statement about being together by the start of the games, but they are openly going to each other's events wearing customised tshirts and stuff so it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that they're very in love

Jack once again doesn't medal, but Davey medals in both men's individual 10m (silver) and mixed 3m springboard (gold). They make their official "statement" after the games, which is really just a video Jack takes of Davey adding his medals to his display case when they get home which Jack captions something along the lines of "the only reason I haven't medaled yet is that my boyfriend's hogging all the space in the display case"

They get married in 2022 and go into the 2024 and are So Openly each other's biggest fan. Jack's team wins a silver medal and the cameras cut from the team celebrations to Davey openly ugly crying in the stands and making little heart hands at Jack. Jack posts a photo with some cheesy caption like “only the second best thing I’ve won at the Olympics <3” and Davey gets to go from a scared kid being ruthlessly attacked for being gay to posting a photo of himself kissing his husband in front of the Olympic rings

I love them your honour

OG post and bestie credits here

[redmyeyes]

That's their closing message.

Are you going to vote for a woman whose laugh they don't like? Or are you going to vote for a guy

who fomented a violent coup attempt after a months long campaign to overturn the 2020 election

undercut the nation's response to a deadly pandemic that spiraled out of control because he tried to cover it up,

lied about its severity,

promoted sham treatments for it,

said we could cure it by injecting disinfectant and shining powerful lights inside the body

and became the first president since Herbert Hoover to oversee a net job loss.

Couldn't figure out how to close an umbrella,

cosplayed as a sanitation worker, even though he almost fell while getting into the truck

and pretended to work at McDonald's, even though he couldn't remember what the fryer was called.

Laughed about firing striking workers with the richest man alive,

bragged about refusing to pay overtime

and said I don't want a poor person running the economy.

Oversaw an increase in corporate profits while manufacturing jobs declined,

presided over an unprecedented spike in crime

while home prices rose by 30%,

the national debt rose by $8 trillion

and the number of Americans without health insurance rose by 3 million.

Tried to rip healthcare away from over 20 million Americans,

but reassured everyone by saying he had concepts of a plan,

told a story about the size of a dead golfer's penis,

regaled Boy Scouts with stories of sexy yacht parties,

humped the American flag not once but multiple times,

told women he would protect them whether they liked it or not,

and would put a man who was investigated for cutting the head off a whale with a chainsaw in charge of vaccines and women's health,

insulted service members,

feuded with Gold Star families

and violated federal law by staging a campaign event at a hallowed military cemetery.

Doctored a weather map with a Sharpie to lie about the path of a hurricane,

threw paper towels at hurricane victims,

hosted a speaker at a rally who called Puerto Rico a floating island of garbage,

claimed windmills cause cancer and kill whales,

said you have to flush toilets 15 times.

Called Hannibal Lecter a lovely man,

his National Security Adviser called him a dope,

his Secretary of State called him a moron,

his Chief of Staff called him an idiot and a fascist who said nice things about Hitler and Hitler's generals.

He suggested shooting protesters in the legs to his Secretary of Defense.

He reportedly suggested executing rivals and staffers for leaking information.

The former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff called him a fascist to the core.

He took millions from foreign officials,

including a possible $10 million bribe from Egypt.

His lawyers gave a press conference at a landscaping company.

He lost the popular vote twice,

got impeached twice,

got indicted four times

and was found guilty of 34 felony counts for falsifying business records to pay hush money to a porn star.

He asked a crowd whether they'd rather be electrocuted or eaten by a shark,

he possibly farted and definitely fell asleep in court.

Bragged about overturning Roe v. Wade,

called himself the father of IVF while admitting he didn't know what IVF was,

called the CEO of Apple Tim Apple,

misspelled his wife's name

and his own name,

said Nikki Haley was the Speaker of the House on January 6th.

Claimed the price of bacon goes up because the wind doesn't blow.

Got on Air Force One with toilet paper stuck to his shoe,

became the first president in history to stare directly at an eclipse,

melted down in a presidential debate

where he claimed migrants were eating dogs,

spread lies about the federal government's response to a hurricane that caused FEMA workers to relocate due to threats.

Dances like he's punching a ghost,

held a hate-filled rally at Madison Square Garden,

stole classified documents,

obstructed attempts to get them back,

called climate change a hoax,

proposed tariffs that economists say would increase prices and crater the economy,

halted an equal pay rule for women,

curtailed access to birth control,

picked a running mate who mocked childless cat ladies

and creeped out everyone when he tried to order donuts

and was accused of having sex with a couch,

which he did not do even though he might have.

But he didn't,

but maybe he did.

But he definitely did not. [shrugs]

Said Kamala Harris happened to turn Black,

claimed his crowd on January 6th was bigger than Martin Luther King's I Have a Dream speech,

was banned from doing business in the state of New York for three years,

just recently posed for the single worst photo of any human being that has ever been taken on the face of the fucking planet.

So, you know, it's a toss up.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Dean Obeidallah at The Dean's Report:

The push and pull between white supremacist rule and a multi-cultural United States is nothing new. But on Friday we saw a first in our nation’s history: A school board voted to restore the name of three Confederate generals to their public schools.  That’s right, in 2024, the right is naming schools after people who fought and killed to preserve both chattel slavery and white supremacy. This is just the latest salvo in the GOP’s campaign to move America backwards to before the Civil Rights movement.

This jaw-dropping event happened on Friday, when the Shenandoah County School Board in Virginia voted 5-1 to reinstate the names Stonewall Jackson High School and Ashby Lee Elementary School to honor Confederate Generals Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, Robert E. Lee and Turner Ashby. This vote to celebrate the traitors who killed US soldiers in the hope of maintaining the barbarism known as chattel slavery was led by the conservative group Coalition for Better Schools. Now the school board will spend an estimated six figures in tax dollars to send a message that this area of Virginia is a place where white supremacy rules. This action is all part of the right’s response to the racial reckoning that was kicked off in the United States after the brutal murder of George Floyd in 2020 and the Black Lives Matter protests that followed. In fact, the names of these Virginia schools were changed in that very period.   But this is not simply a “reinstatement” of Confederate names. Rather this is a manifestation of the white right’s desperate efforts to maintain control in the face of changing America. After all, this is exactly what white supremacists did in the past when they felt challenged.

As a reminder, the greatest number of Confederate statutes were erected in the early 1900’s spearheaded by United Daughters of the Confederacy as Jim Crow laws were being enacted across the South.  These racist laws and the Confederate memorials were part of a scheme to both celebrate and preserve white supremacy. The next spike in Confederate monuments came from 1940’s to 1960’s. Why then nearly 100 years after the Civil War? Simple, these statutes were built in reaction to the Civil Rights movement to send a message that white power still ruled that area. It’s no coincidence that in 1956, Georgia redesigned its state flag to include the Confederate battle flag and in 1962, South Carolina placed the Confederate battle flag atop its capitol building. 

When it comes to schools being named after traitors who took up arms against the United States of America to fight for the Confederacy, want to guess when the biggest wave of that occurred? Was it shortly after The Civil War? Nope, it was following the landmark US Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 which ruled that segregated public schools were unconstitutional.  Between that 1954 court decision and 1970, our nation saw the largest spike in schools being after those who fought to defend slavery. In fact, the schools at issue in Virginia were opened in that time frame, with Stonewall Jackson high school opening in 1960. That’s right. The naming of these Virginia schools was part of the backlash to the Civil Rights movement and Brown v. Board of Education. The white officials in that area of Virginia at the time wanted to ensure that people knew white power still reigned supreme.

Dean Obeidallah gets to the point as usual. The renaming of a pair of schools in Shenandoah County, Virginia by reinstating the name of the pre-2020 names of the schools named after three treasonous Confederates (Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, Robert E. Lee, and Turner Ashby) is a middle finger to common sense and a win for white supremacist values.