#this has not really helped our economies or politics either but it is more fun

[elbiotipo]

It is good that South America invented fútbol in the early XX century so we could spend all our national rivalries into kicking a ball instead of spending a quarter of our GDPs to build giant battleships to see whose dick is bigger (it's Argentina's btw)

[messenger-of-stupidity]

Dude, this is killing me.

I genuine cannot understand how trump voters are choosing this guy. Like, WHY???

This man is a nepo baby and has never worked a real day in his life.

He's friends with Diddy and praised the bastard.

He's found guilty of 34 felonies.

He wants to turn the US into a fascist country.

He was friends with Jeffery Epstein.

He's friends with Elon Musk, a fellow nepo baby who's kids don't even want to associate with him. Who think women shouldn't be able to vote. Who didn't even design Tesla, but just bought it. Who's a massive fucking hypocrite. Who is a hateful bastard.

He hypersexualizes and objectifies women.

His only real defense is anti-immigration (bullshit), anti-LGBT (more bullshit), and misogynistic (surprise surprise, even more bullshit).

He's a horrible person. He doesn't care about this country, or the majority of people in it. He doesn't care about women's bodily autonomy. He doesn't care about survival.

He feeds lies and propaganda to make you think he'll make a change.

The only thing this man cares about is power and winning. And the people that voted for him are supporting that.

And if you're worried about the economy, let me tell you something.

Democrats don't fuck up the economy. Republicans do.

The way the government system works is that every policy takes time. A republican gets into office, and starts putting forth all these policies that aren't really going to take a strong effect until their term is almost up. Then a democrat gets into office and gets the blame for the negative effects that the policy has taken. They put in changes to fix it, which takes time. Their term is up. A republican takes office, and gets the credit for the benefits, only to fuck it all up again.

Also, Kamala Harris can't use tax dollars to fund sex changes for illegal immigants (because we've all seen that one ad). That's not the way the American healthcare system works, and sex changes are done through the American healthcare system. We'd have to be more of a socialist country for our tax dollars to go towards that. (Not that anyone should care about what someone wants to do to their body to feel more comfortable in their own skin.)

This man does not care about this country, so he should not be getting votes. And not voting for Kamala or Trump isn't going to help either. Independent parties pull votes away to give power to the Republicans. Most of the people who vote outside of the two major political groups are liberals. Which makes it more likely for the Republican party to win.

Stop voting for yourself, if you do this. Vote for the people who are going to be affected. Vote for the women who are going to die because they can't get the healthcare they need. Vote for the transgender individuals who are going to be hurt and attacked for something that we should all be sympathetic for. Vote for the people who aren't going to be able to marry those they love. Vote for the people who are going to lose the ability to safely practice their religion.

I've seen so many Republican woman talk about how "well it doesn't affect me, so why should I care?"

You should care because of human decency. Because of empathy.

Also, fun fact, the more educated you are, the more likely you are to vote liberal.

(It's British, but the point remains. I couldn't find the one specific towards US statistics. But it's almost 2 in the morning, so forgive me.)

And one of the first groups to be attacked in a fascist state is the more educated and intellectual individuals.

Secondly... Do you really want this being the face of America for four more years?

[achilleanlagoon]

GOOD OMENS HAIKYUU AU

I saw a fanart once and someone on the reblogs (@/youwerethedefeated) said that they came up w a good omens au so kudos to them for inspiring me to write this post.

Unfortunately I thought about it myself and made my own GO AU because I cannot interact with people and I am deranged.

So, here's kind of what I came up with:

We have Shoyo as the demon, but I don't think he's like Crowley AT ALL, so I believe it would be fun to play with his character a bit and make him a silly little guy that no one would ever believe is a demon. Like he probably does live in a luxurious apartment and doesn't have a job, and he probably has friends because he's so social.

I was thinking that he's basically what Crowley is, Hell's Representative On Earth (trademark), except that he does his job a little bit too well... He's friends with humans and often hangs out with them, he does tend to misuse slang though, he had a lot of friends in the 80's so he cannot help but use it.

He's a silly manfailure of a weirdo but deep inside he is in fact, a sick twisted vile freak. For instance, he is, in fact, a plant terrorizer, but he's a bit more passive aggressive about it, choosing to execute plants in front of the others to assert dominance, he's a master of psychological manipulation, so he tends to guilt trip the plants only to then tell them that if they have a spot he will not hesitate to commit public execution.

Since his main demonic skill appears to be psychological manipulation, he does not hesitate to use it, not ever. He used it with Achilles which um.... Didn't go as planned.... Definitely not... But he doesn't talk about that. What's important is that it has worked pretty well, and his boss, Kenma, is convinced that he is to blame for every atrocity to ever happen on Earth.

Shoyo does feel kinda bad for being blamed for the Spanish Inquisition though....

Kenma would have the role of Beelzebub, while Kuroo would half take Gabriel's role *wink* *wink* for reasons. I say half take for reasons I'll explain in Tobios part.

Okay so, Tobio is our angel. My vision for him is that he would still keep his main characteristics, he always looks grumpy, which drives people away from him, but he's also super polite and good boy with everyone that is not Shoyo (or Tsukki) .

Hear me out, instead of a bookshop, he owns a Strange-Sport-Garment™ shop, and he pulls an Aziraphale by making it as un welcoming as possible so that people won't even think about buying anything. He is also a vegan because he ate lamb once and felt really really really bad.

He of course eats a lot.

Our angel is also a landlord, but he feels bad so he lets the people running the shops he owns not pay rent because hey, Suga's nice to him, he respects Tanaka a lot, Kiyoko's also cool, so he doesn't mind giving them a free pass. Humans are weird anyway and he doesn't really understand the economy.

He doesn't think he does a bad job on Earth, except that cherubs Kunimi and Kindaichi (his replacements after he was demoted to Principality) always come down to supervise him and tell him that he's not doing a good job . Basically they come down to judge him because they don't like him and to be honest Tobi doesn't either.

It's not like his bosses , the Archangels , are any nicer though. Except for Tetsuro and Hajime and Wakatoshi when they're in a good mood . They come down to supervise him, sometimes finding themselves surprised that he's actually not that badly adjusted to modern human society . (Nevermind that he has no idea how to use a cellphone)

However, his main boss, Supreme Archangel Tooru, does appear to have a beef with him. Tobio has absolutely no idea why he dislikes him so much though. So, this means Oikawa is supreme Archangel instead of Tetsu who would be Gabriel, this is mostly because I just really wanted Kuroken to be ineffable bureaucracy.

(also, just picture Kuroo as "that is VERY good you can't have WAR WITHOUT WAR!?"or "Thank you for my pornography !" or "I do not sully the temple of my celestial body")

And also because I think Toto would be good as Supreme Archangel, like he worked very hard for it and is scared that this random Principality he's sure is not doing a good job but no one believes him might take his role away because he himself not perfect at his job.

As for other characters.... We got the other Archangels (Kita, Yaku and Washijo) and some extra cherubs: Mika and Tsukki! And a lower ranked angel: Hitoka!

As for humans I guess you could say Akaashi would take Newt's role while Bokuto would take a cheerful full 360° turn in Anathemas character! I still don't know what story we're telling here I'm just thinking of both good omens seasons and the book.

Down in hell, we got our dukes of hell, Suguru, Satori and Omi! Kiyoomi is very disgusted by hell so he wears a full on exterminator suit because SATAN FORBID any demon gets near him. He is also very much aware of the fact that Shoyo does not do his job well he just couldn't care less.

We also have Furfur(s), Atsumu and Osamu! My idea for them is that they're copies of each other but they turned out wrong so they're opposites and have different hairs (no one can differentiate them though). They've both gotten in trouble for licking the walls.

They're in charge of checking people into hell, which is different from Sunarin's job (basically just paperwork) , which is to gather paperwork from previously established demons because Kenma doesn't like doing all the work by himself .

As for the names, I feel like It makes more sense if they only use their first name and their last name is more of a type of alias that they use when they're down on Earth.

That's all I have for now! Thank you for reading my testament god bless

[gffa]

YOU DON’T REALIZE HOW GOOD THIS EPISODE IS UNTIL LIKE YOUR THIRD FULL REWATCH OF THIS SHOW AND TWO STRAIGHT YEARS OF ARGUING ABOUT STAR WARS POLITICS AND ALSO FANDOM POINTING OUT EVERY SINGLE “ECHO AND RHYME” WE CAN POSSIBLY FIND. The first time I saw this episode, when I was tearing through TCW at speed because it was new and I was hooked and it was so good, this one didn’t really have much of an impact on me.  Not my favorite characters, I appreciate that Toydarians got some better portrayals other than Watto, but man the middle of it definitely dragged for me. Then I rewatched it, after two years of examining politics in Star Wars and having fun with all those parallels and echoes of stories.  And this time the episode hit me like a goddamned brick. It’s an episode about whether or not Toydaria should remain utterly neutral in the war or let themselves become a staging area for humanitarian aid to Ryloth, which has been under siege by the Separatists.  Lott Dod of the Trade Federation pops up and is like, yes, but it’s under a Separatist Blockade and, if you help, the Separatists will see it as breaking your neutrality.  Which means your entire planet will be at risk, your own economy could tank because you have vital contracts with us and it’ll force us to cease trade with Toydaria.  You can’t just have a humanitarian base, you’ll get drawn into the war, you’ll be a military base, that’s how war goes. Bail Organa counters with that the Twi’leks didn’t ask to be invaded by the Separatists, they didn’t ask to be taken hostage and dying in a war they didn’t ask to join, either.  Don’t let them suffer just for the sake of your neutrality! King Katuunko and his advisers debate for a brief while--all while clones and Jedi and Twi’leks are dying on Ryloth--and eventually says that we cannot get involved in this war.  No matter that compassion is one of the most important tenets of our society, for the sake of my people, we must remain neutral. Stuff happens, King Katuunko eventually realizes that neutrality is maybe not actually a great thing when people are out there dying and you’re not doing anything to help--yes, even if that means you get drawn into the war. That’s it, that’s the message:  When innocents are dying at the hands of invaders, neutrality is not a compassionate, caring choice. What of course made me sit up and take notice was the deliberate use of the word “compassion” being used as one of their tenets and we all know who that reminds us of:  The Jedi have compassion as one of their central tenets as well.  The Jedi, who have already been drawn into this war. And this is exactly why I don’t think the Jedi could have made any other choice, shouldn’t have made any other choice, about joining the war. Billions of lives are at stake--even Hera Syndulla says in Rebels, how she remembers that clones and Jedi working together saved billions of people, including herself.  We literally see the innocent people of Ryloth suffering because the Separatists attacked them.  It doesn’t matter that many of the people in the Separatist Senate and worlds who joined did so because they were sick of the Republic ignoring them and their valid concerns.  (Doesn’t matter in the sense of whether or not it affects trying to remain neutral in the war, not doesn’t matter in the sense of trying to find peaceful solutions, that’s an important difference.)  Because this was always going to happen.  Innocent worlds were always going to be invaded and held hostage and murdered and stripped for resources because of who was running the show over there. Being neutral in such a conflict was narratively shown as the wrong choice, that’s why Katuunko realizes his error.  That’s why Bail Organa (a character we know is caring and compassionate) argues in favor of the Republic, why Alderaan joined the war.  That’s why Padme, even when she wishes she could remain neutral, argues her way back to saying she must try to change things from within.

This is a sentiment that’s at the heart of the theme of the episode, that Ahsoka echoes it in the classes she teaches to the Mandalorian cadets.  And it’s one that’s important to the themes of Star Wars characters’ actions, especially in the prequels--that it’s the very heart of the Republic vs the Separatist war. Do you remain with the system and try to improve it from within? Or do you leave it and bombard it from the outside in hopes of burning it down to create something better? The answer depends on context and the situation and whether or not there’s hope for rooting out the corruption.  For example, Padme believes that they’re at that point with the Republic.  Bail believes they’re at that point with the Republic.  That they still have the belief they can make it better.  They still have hope. This is why Bail joins the Rebellion under the Empire, though.  Because the Empire being worse isn’t just a matter of contrast, but it illustrates having passed a moral event horizon, where it’s not possible to salvage it anymore. The issue of the above and the issue of neutrality overlap a lot in this episode (”Corruption”), but the point of many in the Republic is that neutrality was not an option because it ignored that they could be doing something. And that’s why I cannot possibly imagine the Jedi not trying to help.  I cannot possibly imagine them saying, no, we will abstain from this war, when people were going to suffer and die if they didn’t.  That’s even setting aside that George Lucas describes them as literally being drafted into the war, that that was the narrative take-away, how could they possibly have refused? Even in Kanan: The Last Padawan, Depa says she thinks they made a critical error in accepting titles in the war, but the clones vehemently disagree, because she’s underestimating the importance of clarity of chain of command, so that people know what they’re doing and where they’re going and how to get organized, so they’re not half-fighting each other and half-fighting the Separatists, which would have gotten even more people killed.  There’s no clean answer to that problem, because they can both be right--the Jedi accepting titles in the war led them into being seen as the villains of the conflict by those who were tired of the war (Star Wars Propaganda makes the very clear point of how this narrative was painted onto them, rather than what they created for themselves), but the clones are also right that unclear lack of chain of command would have made everything an absolute hot mess. So, neutrality was a really shitty option and, further, what does it even gain anyone?  Satine Kryze fought so incredibly hard to keep Mandalore and the other worlds neutral, because she didn’t want to drag her people into war, and how did that end up for Mandalore?  Even setting aside that they were refusing to help fight against the evils being inflicted in the galaxy, even setting aside that whatever points they made, they ignored worlds like Ryloth? It got them nowhere good:

Their neutrality still didn’t protect them from trade routes being closed to them and their world suffering through a supply crisis. This is what politics in the GFFA does.  You cannot just ignore it and say, “Fuck politics!  We’re not going to play that game!” because then you end up like Mandalore--starving and cut off from the connections you need to survive. That would have happened to the Jedi in a heartbeat.  Their granted legal authority to help anyone?  Cut off.  Their Republic funds for their Temple, their home, their food, their clothing, their ships?  Cut off.  Add in scary mind powers and people would turn on them incredibly quickly, as well as they have the hauntingly clear illustration of what happens to neutral worlds when people are in a war and scared and not thinking clearly--they lash out, they react, they turn their backs.  Mandalore managed to scrape by for awhile, but it was unstable and chaotic and we can see how that unfolded. It doesn’t make the situation right, not even close.  But it’s the situation that you deal with, you work within the system of government you have, you do what you can to try to make it better, you try to help as many people as you can. And neutrality doesn’t help anyone but yourself--and, even then, ultimately that’s not true, either.  We see that illustrated very clearly.

[scorpionyx9621]

Robins at the Airport

So a fun fact about IRL me is that I work in shipping & logistics and I work closely with a lot of the major airlines as both vendors and customers. And it had me thinking. How do the Robins fly? (And no I don't mean with their suits lol)

Also I'm aware that Bruce is a billionaire. Bruce without a shadow of a doubt has not only a private jet but access to a lot of personal travel supplies. That being said, even though some of our boys have definitely flown on Bruce's jet. I have no doubt since most of them are adults now, if they wanna travel they're probably flying commercial.

I'm also a filthy ♌ Leo Sun ♌ and fire signs stereotypically love to travel. So! Here's the Robins and their travel traditions.

Tim Drake

Tim is interesting because he, like Damian, actually grew up with money. Like. The Drake's were in the same tax bracket as Bruce.

Tim likes to travel and has flown everything from small little turboprops to big commercial jets to his family's and Bruce's private jet.

I feel if Tim is going commercial he's that guy who arrives at the airport 4 hours before his flight. He's catching a 7pm flight? Expect Tim to be there at 3pm.

He's that person who can find an outlet by his gate, get some overpriced airport coffee and/or food at a standard fast food restaurant, and wait down the time for his plane to arrive.

Tim dresses pretty smartly but casually. Usually a button up and some jeans with some tennis or boat shoes that are easy to slip off in security.

I don't think Tim sleeps on planes easily unless it's a red-eye. But he does just spend his time on his phone or on his laptop either watching movies or doing coding to kill time.

Dick Grayson

Prior to inheriting all that fortune from Alfred Dick loved to travel and loves airports. Both for the people watching and the jet-set atmosphere.

Traveling around alot as a child helped out with that. The Flying Grayson's almost always traveled by car so anytime Dick gets to go on a plane he gets excited.

Dick has a fascination with Technology and I can certainly see Dick being a low-key Avgeek. Seeing how these huge planes carry hundreds of people across the sky through feats of human engineering is something that makes him smile.

That being said Dick is not often on time for traveling. He always either shows up WAY too early or he's sprinting through security because his flight departs in 45 minutes and he just got to the airport.

Hell even when Dick is EARLY he ends up running late for his flights because he always ends up eating at a restaurant/bar post security with the best views of the planes and loses track of time.

Dick has missed many a flight/connection because he gets lost in the moment much fo Bruce's chagrin. Granted dropping a couple hundred to rebook Dick at a moments notice is literally just a minor hindrance for billionaire Bruce Wayne.

That being said, more than once, Bruce has had to call a charter for a private jet to pick up Dick when he got stuck at an airport and he HAD to be on the last flight out from San Francisco to Newark or Gotham.

Dick can sleep on a plane no problem. None. It's one of the few times he does ever get truly good, restful sleep. Much to the shock of everyone.

Dick always wears something athletic for flights. Usually sweats or compression pants and a hoodie with tennis shoes. He always carries his Nightwing outfit in his carry-on though much to the chagrin of his family.

Damian Wayne-Al Ghoul

BRAT

He's that person I, myself, would hate at an airport. He demands to fly private all the time because he can't be bothered to deal with the riff-raff of us poors.

He gets better as he gets older though. He still demands to fly first class at a BARE minimum and will give Bruce hell for it regardless.

Damian may be a bit snobbish when it comes to trying restaurants but he always wants to eat before he gets on a plane because plane food is gross to him.

He's fine most times though. Like Tim if you plant him in front of an outlet and give him a sketchpad and/or his video games/manga he'll be fine.

On a flight he's always very respectful to the flight staff but he will use them for what they're worth. He takes full advantage of all the perks he's given. He's not old enough to drink but he certainly will take advantage of the snacks he can get (Damian insists on flying Delta because he loves the Biscoff cookies. He doesn't like many sweets, but Biscoff cookies are his weakness.)

Damian is way too vigilant to sleep on a flight. Even if it's a red eye and even if he's flying private. He just can't seem to find a way to be comfortable.

Damian is like Dick, casual and comfortable in dress. It's an airport not a gala.

Jason Todd

So fun fact: we actually have a canon representation of Jason on a regular flight from Red Hood & The Outlaws!

Boy literally wore a blazer on a flight while Roy wore a freaking Tank Top lmao. And he was uncomfortable with Roy's behaviors but flirted with a flight attendant and one of my personal favorite minor characters/love interests in Red Hood's lore, Isabel Ardila.

Jason is also like Dick in that he actually really enjoys traveling. That being said, being legally dead and not on Bruce's best terms means Jason's a well-versed economy traveler.

I read somewhere that Jason has a small personal fortune from the assassinations he's done. But I think he still chooses to fly economy when he can. He sees flying first class as unnecessary and would rather use airline miles for free tickets than free upgrades.

Is a master of getting crap past the radar (it's called checked bags friends. Also if Jason needs to move heavier firepower he knows it's easier to just ship that shit ahead of him.

He's like Damian in that he gets everything he can out if a service. Free pretzels? You bet. Complementary drink? Give him a coke with extra ice (it's canon he likes extra ice in his drinks)

He's always extra nice and polite to all the flight staff and any TSA he sees because Jason knows he's a monster and has to work extra hard to blend in.

[inicsperience]

Why I think Twitter is the best Social Media yet.

I've advocated for people to join twitter for only forever. I see literally no downside to being on the platform, apart from maybe if you decide you're the kind of person that wants to engage with political opinions on it. Here's what I'll give away in this one though. If you've had an account for a while, and dont know how to get kickstarted OR If you dont have an account, and just dont see the value in it yet - I'll tell how to get started, and what you gotta do to get started.

Ready for them tips? Yes? Cool, let's go. 🦅

1. Don't engage with politics. 🦺

I know politics has the tendency to really rile us up, but more than being either an echo chamber, or a place to garner hate, I dont think Social Media changes anything much. Unless you're someone aiding people in some way at the time of a political crisis, dont bother. I get it, we all "talk about" all of our political stances, but in Chet Faker's most famous words, "Talk is Cheap my darling"

2. Make friends. 👯‍♀️

After having been confined to our homes for the last three years, there's reasons why the "Creator Economy" has boomed right at this very moment, but that's something to ponder about in a different article. Focus on wanting to find people you connect with - whether it's someone who wrote about the background they come from, or how they grew a mailing list - and that's your pain point, go looking for those people. At the WORST you know what'll happen - they won't engage with you. Imagine that. It's not even half as bad as irl, where you can be ridiculed for saying or believing something, you can LITERALLY hide behind your screen. And as someone who has a small following - you have absolutely nothing to lose.

3. There's never enough content. 🗺

In business and in content creation, there is LITERALLY never enough content. No matter what you say, nothing is ever SO ORIGINAL that it has never been thought before. So stop it with your stupid imposter syndrome, and get to it - just start sharing, if nothing else, you'll find some friends you really, really vibe with. If you're feeling shy about creating your own content - here's a thing none of you think, even your favourite creators, aren't making NOVEL content, it's just packaged differently.

4. Package differently.

Things aren't new - but guess what, you can do them differently! I'm no Harry Dry, so I won't be able to give you a product by product comparison, but I think I know at least 10 examples in the back of my mind, if I think hard enough - of products that have changed our landscape, simply because they were different. Think about it - ClubPenguin & Polly Pocket paved the way for today's Gather Town & RPGs probably(gamers dont come @ me, I a noob). Hi5 paved the way for Facebook & Orkut, Myspace paved the way for literally all of streaming & the creator economy. But with things diversifying so much, there is literally no end to differenciation - so maybe you're good at illustrations, maybe you're good at writing, maybe you're great at treating people like they're people - there's a nook for everyone.

5. Finding your nook, corner, niche, tribe.

In simple words - do things YOU like to do. Don't stress so much about needing to find an "audience" that you forget to have fun, that's purely the magic of not having to run a business off of your own personal twitter. Whether this means sharing the music you love, or writing about what your favourite musicians love, or diving down the rabbithole of people who write about psychological triggers in marketing, the niches are endless - but go looking for them. If you cant find them, I'll drop a list of some of my favourite creators at the end of this, and maybe that'll help

6. Help/Aid someone.

That's human speak for what we call "Adding Value" in twitter speak, but essentially you want to be saying something that people might derive some kind of value from - there are more than ENOUGH creators who do this on the platform. Sometimes even different aspects of the same topic, other times adding to someone else's content. Maybe you noticed something or a connection only a small subset might've, but what's stopping you from sharing that There is absolutely 0 reason for something like your own opinion to limit you this way.

Those are I think the 6 main tips to Twitter tbh - but if you find you need to learn how to navigate twitter, you're in luck! Click through! And if you're looking for some of my favourite creators on the platform, you're in EXTRA luck there too. Here's a list.

[whatsthepointofphilosophy]

Right or Left?

There is a popular notion in political circles right now that the distinction between left-wing and right-wing politics may no longer be useful. However, I would argue that it’s the only way to make sense of some of the more ridiculous elements of our modern political landscape. 

Perhaps due to the influence of social media, public discourse is increasingly riddled with people from both left- and right-wing political traditions who fail to correctly identify the provenance of their own opinions and miscategorise the opinions of others (sometimes for the purposes of mounting straw man arguments).

For instance, it’s not uncommon in online political discussions to see the bizarre assertion that Hitler was a socialist, seemingly on the basis that the word “sozialistische” was in the name of his party (NSDAP). In reality, the Nazis leaned so hard to the right, they fell over.

Another common implication is that fascism and communism are more or less the same kind of thing. In reality, fascism is extreme right-wing, weaponised capitalism and Stalinism is extreme left-wing, weaponised communism. While they certainly had some superficial elements in common, they are fundamentally divergent political philosophies.

Because a dry recitation of dictionary definitions is boring, I’ve kept that sort of thing to a minimum in the first part, below. The second part, even further below, to which you are free to scroll now, is a more practical series of dichotomies framed as a Cosmopolitan-style quiz. Wheel it out at parties! Have fun with your friends. 

I: DEFINITIONS

Keeping in mind that words don’t have meanings, and although narrow definitions are elusive, there are certain common characteristics we can identify to broadly describe an idea or political approach as left-wing or right-wing. Believing that they are like each other, or they’re just different versions of the same thing, or that it doesn’t really matter either way, is historically illiterate.

Right-wing

Right-wing politics is essentially conservative, where social and economic hierarchies are regarded as integral elements of opportunity, social mobility and progress. It’s a natural fit with free-market capitalism, which combines with right-wing politics to create a system where, ostensibly, the smarter members of society who work harder will be the most rewarded, and open competition optimises all markets.

Right-wing people tend to be in favour of lower taxes and fewer public services, which would be traded on the open market like everything else, without government interference. The ultimate expression of right-wing politics is fascism, the ideal of which is to have no taxes at all and empower corporations using any means necessary.

Historically, right-wing politics has included, more or less in order of right-winginess: libertarians; conservatives; religious factions; (most) extreme nationalists; racists and fascists.

Left-wing

Left-wing politics is essentially liberal, with strong support for equality and egalitarianism and a rejection of the differences in status, power, and wealth which actively impede social mobility, opportunity and progress.

Left-wing people tend to be in favour of higher taxes and more public services, which would be provided by the government. The ultimate expression of left-wing politics is communism, the ideal of which is to abolish private property, nationalise all industries, and provide all public utilities and services for free.

Historically, left-wing politics has included, more or less in order of left-winginess: liberals; progressives; socialists; communists and anarchists.

II: THE QUIZ

As the nature of a dichotomy involves losing nuance, the following is not designed to be absolutely accurate. It’s designed to help you understand the difference between left-wing and right-wing, and how this relates to your personal politics. If you want to reblog or reply just to “correct” one of these, please don’t bother. These may not work individually.

If you think intellectuals are ivory-tower academics who add nothing of value to society, you’re probably right-wing. 

If you think intellectuals are experts in their chosen fields and have much to offer our society, you’re probably left-wing.

If you think everyone else should have the same values and priorities that you do, you’re probably right-wing.

If you think that you can learn and grow from people with values and priorities different from yours, you’re probably left-wing.

If you think Israel is a plucky democracy surrounded by enemies and has the right to defend itself any way it sees fit, you’re probably right-wing.

If you think Israel is conducting a brutal oppression of the Palestinian people, you’re probably left-wing.

If you think the economy and maintaining order are more important than public health and education, you’re probably right wing.

If you think public health and education are more important than the economy and maintaining order, you’re probably left-wing.

If you think stand-up comedians in general are unfunny, snarky, and gratuitously offensive, you’re probably right-wing.

If you think stand-up comedians in general are funny, you’re probably left-wing.

If you think of the history of your country as a glorious time of heroes and patriots who people don’t appreciate enough, you’re probably right-wing.

If you think of the history of your country as an often-shameful time of oppression and exclusion for large sections of the population, you’re probably left-wing.

If you want to live in a low-tax society friendly to the rich and heavy on individual rights, you’re probably right-wing.

If you want to live in a high-tax society friendly to the poor and heavy on communal rights, you’re probably left-wing.

If your first reaction to the idea of “progress” is fear or loathing, you’re probably right-wing.

If your first reaction to the idea of “progress” is hope or relief, you’re probably left-wing.

If you believe we should lean heavily on tradition for our immutable values, you’re probably right-wing.

If you believe our evolving values should reflect our changing needs, you’re probably left-wing.

If you believe that society oppresses people by pushing gender non-conformity on everyone, you’re probably right-wing.

If you believe that society oppresses people by pushing rigid gender roles on everyone, you’re probably left-wing.

If you believe that government agencies and institutions should take account of mainstream religious beliefs, you’re probably right-wing.

If you believe in the separation of church and state, you’re probably left-wing.

If you believe that interest rates should be high (to encourage saving), you’re probably right-wing.

If you believe that interest rates should be low (to encourage borrowing), you’re probably left-wing.

If you believe that abortion should be banned and all unwanted pregnancies should be carried to term by law, you’re probably right-wing.

If you believe that all unwanted pregnancies should be the jurisdiction of the woman by law and they should have access to safe and legal abortions, you’re probably left-wing.

If you believe that brutal dictatorships in foreign countries should be opposed only if they are unfriendly to our interests, you’re probably right-wing.

If you believe that brutal dictatorships should be opposed without question, you’re probably left-wing.

If you believe that Islam is a current serious threat we need to address, you’re probably right-wing.

If you believe that Islam is a religion much the same as many others, you’re probably left-wing.

If you believe that everyone starts out with the same opportunities, and their success is a function of how hard they work, you’re probably right-wing.

If you believe that everyone starts out in a predetermined position in a social hierarchy, and their success is a function of this hierarchy, you’re probably left-wing.

If you believe that unions act as an impediment to a corporation’s ability to generate wealth, you’re probably right-wing.

If you believe that unions empower workers to secure better rights and conditions for themselves through collective bargaining, you’re probably left-wing.

If you assemble your opinion on important issues based on the views of friends, family, tradition and sources you personally trust, you’re probably right-wing.

If you assemble your opinion on important issues based on expert analysis and statistical data, you’re probably left-wing.

Now you know.

[erinptah]

The Secret Commonwealth review: It was...pretty underwhelming, mostly

Finally got the audiobook of The Secret Commonwealth checked out from my local library!

(Here’s my review of its predecessor, La Belle Sauvage, if you want to start there.)

It’s 20 hours long. Whoof.

As for the contents…look, it was well-written prose. I didn’t get bored while listening. (Rereading that last review, I realized I’d written the same thing about the previous book, too.) But in retrospect, there sure was not a lot that happened in those 20 hours. Some notable action bits, in between a lot of padding.

And my reactions mostly consist of…complaints. Not “this is hideous, time to ragequit the series, this is an unqualified anti-rec” complaints, more a low-level churn of frustration.

(There’s one scene I know has made someone else outright refuse to read it, though, and I think it’s totally reasonable. More on that later.)

So I’m gonna try to unpack a bunch of it here. Hopefully in enough detail that, if you haven’t read it yet (and don’t mind spoilers), it can help you make an informed decision about whether it’s worth spending 20 hours of your life on.

Spoilers start here!

The Story

We open with Lyra as a 20-year-old student at St. Sophia’s, a women’s college in Oxford. She’s made some kinda-friends, including former booty calls that she’s still on good terms with, but she’s badly estranged from Pantalaimon.

Their rift is exacerbated by a couple of books she’s read that are popular with young intellectuals lately. One is a philosophy book, one is a novel, both of them seem broadly Ayn Randian in the sense that “teens/college kids get really into these books and decide it’s smart and fashionable to adopt their moral framework, ignoring both the logical failures and the ways in which this turns you into a horrible person.”

She’s been staying at Jordan between semesters, but political drama forces her to move, and that’s when Oakley Street swoops in to make contact. They’re the secret Magisterum-thwarting spy organization that Hannah Relf worked for in La Belle Sauvage. Employees now include Alice Lonsdale and Malcolm Polstead, who fill Lyra in on the events of the previous book.

Lyra crashes at Malcolm’s parents’ inn for a bit, but her fighting with Pan gets so bad that he takes off, leaving a note. He’s going to confront one of the authors of the fashionable/terrible books — who lives in Germany, so this could take a while.

Since Lyra can’t just hang around and go through the motions of a normal life while her daemon is visibly missing, she takes off too. First on a detour to the Gyptians, then on a sorta meandering cross-continental journey of her own.

Along the way, both Lyra and Pan keep uncovering new details about this ongoing side plot:

It turns out there’s a place, I think somewhere in the Middle East, where daemons can’t go — same as the area in the North that witches use for separation ordeals. If a human crosses that area, they arrive at the growing-place of a type of rose that won’t grow properly anywhere else, whose oil has the same effect as the seed-pod sap used by Mary Malone in the mulefa world — you can use it to make a Dust-viewing lens.

This rose oil can also be used to make all kinds of super-cool products, like the World’s Best Perfume and the World’s Best Rosewater, so it’s valuable for lots of reasons. But a few researchers have caught on to the Dust-viewing power, and the Magisterium has caught on that some dangerous research is happening with roses, so they’ve started destroying every rosebush they can find in the general region — wreaking havoc with the global economy in the process.

(They’re also trying to convince the general population that God Says Roses Are Immoral now. If this book had come out 5 years ago, I could’ve made some great connections with “there’s widespread successful Magisterium propaganda about how nobody should like or respect the work of botanists.”)

And there’s a related plot where Lyra’s uncle (she actually has one! Mrs. Coulter had a brother!) is playing a long game to re-consolidate as much Magisterium power as possible under a single individual. It gets us some good dramatic sequences…which I feel no need to break down here, because they’re exactly the ones you would imagine, with exactly the outcome you’re already expecting.

One of Uncle Wannabe-Pope’s employees is Bonneville Junior, the son of the miniboss from La Belle Sauvage. He’s a trained alethiometrist, but is more interested in his personal vendetta against Lyra than his actual job. Takes after Dad in that he’s not very deep or complex, just a straightforward fun-to-hate villain.

Pan eventually makes his way to the Terrible Author’s home, where he discovers that things are weird and creepy, but not very specific. Doesn’t achieve anything in particular, either. Disheartened, he sets off for the Region of the Weird Roses, with the idea he’ll meet Lyra there.

Lyra, meanwhile, has a notebook they recovered from an explorer who went to the Region of the Weird Roses. It includes a list of other (non-witch) people across the world who’ve been separated, because apparently they’re more common than you’d think, and have a secret support network. So she visits a few of these people along her trip, with an endgame goal of Weird Roseville.

Malcolm also makes his own journey toward Weird Roseville. I think it was part of an Oakley Street investigation into “what does the Magisterium have against roses these days?” In the middle of it, Bonneville Junior confronts him (Junior is having trouble finding Lyra, but has a secondary vendetta against Malcolm for killing his dad, so this is almost as good). Malcolm talks him down.

At last Lyra, Pan, and Junior all hit the same “creepy deserted town in the general area of Weird Roseville.” But none of them manage to interact before the book ends.

…In my LBS review, I said it had serious middle-of-the-trilogy syndrome, a whole lot of setup for no payoff. TSC spends very little time following up on any of it. To be fair, the Original Trilogy has happened in the meantime and this book also tries to address some of the events from that, but the vast bulk of it is even more setup for no payoff.

Complaints, Broadly Organized By Theme, In Loosely Chronological Order

Lyra at St. Sophia’s:

I really like how the opening sequence involves Lyra noticing a friend is in distress and helping her out! (Friend’s dad is in the rose-using business, and his company is going under.) And then…that’s the last we see of any connections with female friends her own age. In the entire book.

One of the Terrible Rationalist Books is spreading the idea that “daemons are a collective hallucination.” This is not a “rational” idea in this world! It would be like saying that faces are a collective hallucination!

And Lyra is the least likely person in this world to buy into it, because she’s visited a world without visible daemons, and got empirical proof (via Will’s and John Parry’s separation ordeals) that even under those conditions, they still exist!

I can appreciate the idea of Lyra and Pan being traumatized and scarred and having trouble, but this, specifically, is a nonsensical thing for them to argue over.

The book also gestures (not very hard, thankfully) toward the idea that Lyra is doubting the existence of magic in general. Which, again, is the equivalent of someone from our world deciding it’s rational to doubt the existence of weather.

Also, it seems like Lyra/Pan haven’t had any contact with witch society through these years. Why not? If anyone’s going to have sympathy and understanding and support groups for their separation-related trauma, it’s the culture where every single member formally goes through the same thing! And I’m sure Serafina would be delighted to see them! But they don’t even consider the idea.

Lyra and Malcolm:

Yes, they’re being telegraphed as a future couple, and yes, it’s just as creepy and unappealing as the internet has been saying.

And, look, I’m not going to say “20-year-old Lyra is too young to date anyone she wants.” Not after we got through all of Original Flavor HDM without saying “12-year-old Lyra is too young to go on an interdimensional journey with no adult supervision and save the multiverse.”

But he was one of her teachers when she was 16, and his POV includes remembering how he had to actively shut down sexual interest in her then, and here in the present Lyra still thinks of him as kind of a distant authority figure, and that’s weird, okay?

They only have a couple days’ worth of actual interaction before being apart for the rest of the book. That’s not enough time to believably develop their dynamic into something believably-potentially-romantic. So the narrative doesn’t try.

…but it still has multiple people ask Malcolm if he’s in love with Lyra afterward.

The foreshadowing on Lyra’s side is all in how she keeps thinking about how similar he is to Will. (Cat daemon, killed someone when he was a tween, etc.) Because that’s what we all want for Lyra’s romantic future, a knockoff Will-substitute, amirite?

Separately: Malcolm and friends tell Lyra the whole backstory about the magical boat trip from La Belle Sauvage, but it doesn’t seem like she tells them anything about “that time I went on an interdimensional journey, built a group of allies from multiple worlds and species including literal angels, killed God, and permanently rewrote the nature of death.” I feel like that should’ve come up!

General daemon stuff:

There’s a moment in the early chapters when Pan, wandering alone at night, considers eating some small critter (the kind that an ordinary pine marten would eat). It’s not like he’s going through a species-identity crisis, either. It’s just written as…a thing a daemon might do. So that’s weird.

In the original series, daemon separation is a major, improbable ordeal. Under normal circumstances, a human and a daemon being dragged apart past their distance limit will just kill them. At Bolvangar they figured out a severance method that would leave you physically functional, but dead inside. Witch-style separation only happens at this special daemon-repelling place in the North (you don’t have to be a witch to use it, see John Parry, but they usually don’t tell non-witches it exists), or on the shores of the World of the Dead. So far, so good.

In this series, we find out that there’s another place on this Earth with the same daemon-repelling properties. It’s also remote and isolated and associated with Cool Weird Stuff (the cities in the Northern Lights vs. the Dust-revealing roses). Again, so far, so good.

…And then we find out that random people can just kinda do a separation ordeal anywhere. Okay, it already happened to Malcolm in La Belle Sauvage, but now it’s all over the place. Lyra keeps spotting people on the street without daemons! Pan teams up with a kid who got dragged apart from her daemon in a shipwreck, and it didn’t kill them! It’s too easy. It’s unsatisfying. It undercuts so much of the monumental feeling separation had in the original trilogy.

It also makes it even weirder that nobody was able to hook Lyra and Pan up with a support group. Oakley Street couldn’t suss it out? Her friends among the Gyptians couldn’t catch an underground rumor and pass it on?

Related: when we saw daemonless kids in The Golden Compass, they were treated like horror-movie monsters. Like zombies, ghosts, bodies walking around without heads. But when people clock Lyra as being daemonless here, they treat it like it’s something immoral. Like she’s walking around topless and needs to cover it up.

There’s just a general pattern of rewriting HDM’s established rules about daemons, and not for the better.

And speaking of rewriting established rules…general alethiometer stuff:

There is a New Method for reading the alethiometer. It involves pointing all three hands at the same symbol, which already seems like a gimmick, not a useful way to frame a question.

And somehow, that gets you the answers in the form of…magic visions. No intuition or interpretation needed! The sights and sounds just get funneled directly into your brain!

The reason this isn’t a Plot-Breaking Hack is because it makes the user super-queasy. You can only use it when you’re in a position to be sick afterward, and people would rather not use it at all.

Lyra spends most of the story with the alethiometer, and without all the symbology books that go with it. She avoids using the New Method because of the nausea, but she also avoids using the Classic Method, on the grounds that it apparently can’t get her anything without the books.

She’s been studying these books for years now! Couldn’t she at least try to read it, and make her best guess at the interpretation? Maybe sometimes she gets it right, maybe sometimes she’s wrong and things go sideways and she realizes in hindsight which of the symbols she misread, maybe sometimes she gives up and gets depressed and puts it away without drawing a conclusion at all…but nope, she just flat-out doesn’t interact with it.

Midway through the book, Lyra gets a tipoff about a kind of truth-reading cards. That’s fine; we know there are other methods of truth-reading in the multiverse, including the I Ching and Mary Malone’s computer. Makes sense as a new tidbit of worldbuilding.

But towards the end of the story, someone helpfully gifts Lyra a deck of the cards. And she spends some time trying to infer answers from how the pretty pictures on the cards fit together. More time than she spends trying to infer answers from how the pretty pictures on the alethiometer fit together.

The alethiometer didn’t need a New Method or a total replacement in the narrative…but apparently it’s getting them.

And what was the point of Lyra dedicating herself to studying those symbols, for years, if she can get better and more-accurate data from a set of symbols she’d never seen before until this week?

Pan’s international voyage:

This all started when Pan got the idea that Terrible Author had “put a spell on Lyra and stolen her imagination.” Which sounds like a figure of speech at first, but no, apparently Pan thinks this guy is literally magic.

And yet, somehow, not magic enough to be dangerous, even for a single lone daemon whose only plan is “confront him directly and demand that he fix it”?

Most of the trip is uneventful, since it’s a long string of Pan successfully keeping out-of-sight.

There’s one clever part where, once he’s in Terrible Author’s hometown, he finds a school for the blind to ask for information. That way he can say “my girl is totally standing right over there, don’t worry about it, now, any chance you know where Terrible Author lives?”

…of course, the first person he asks has exactly the right answer and is happy to share. Convenient, that.

As mentioned, Terrible Author’s setup is suitably creepy and off-putting, but Pan doesn’t figure out anything about why. Doesn’t investigate. Didn’t come up with any kind of plan beforehand about how to coax Terrible Author into undoing his evil spell. Pan just confronts him, demands he fix Lyra, realizes this hasn’t fixed Lyra, and leaves.

There’s a bombshell much later on when Lyra finds out that Terrible Author is separated! And, although there’s a daemon who hangs around with him, they don’t actually belong to each other! This is fascinating and disturbing and would’ve been so much more satisfying if, you know, Pan had figured this out and was actively trying to bring the information to Lyra. Or, heck, if anything had been done with it at all.

Shortly afterward, Pan runs into this girl who just happens to be separated from her daemon, and is available and happy to team up with Pan, so they can head off to Weird Roseville together. Convenient. Again.

Lyra’s Bogus Journey:

Lyra has a much harder time staying out of sight than Pan, so she gets a lot more interaction along her trip.

Most of it is a long string of the same convenient “running into people who are helpful and friendly and have exactly the information she needs to move the plot along.” (More details on that below.)

When this happened in the original trilogy, it was the alethiometer deus-ex-machining her in the right direction, which worked! But here it seems to keep happening by accident. (She brings the alethiometer, but, as mentioned, she doesn’t use it.)

The Conveniently Helpful People also keep telling her (with minimal prompting, and what seems like total honesty?) whole backstories. All of which are more interesting than the actual narrative she’s going through.

They also occasionally mention God/the Authority, and Lyra doesn’t have much of a reaction. I wish, just once, she had snapped “it doesn’t matter what the Authority thinks! Or rather, what he used to think, since my boyfriend and I killed him when we were 12!”

The convenience also could’ve worked if Oakley Street agents were being cool and clever and actively tracking her journey in order to help. She does run into a few of them, but that seems to be by accident too.

And it could’ve worked if there was other magic steering her along — she keeps dropping the phrase “the secret commonwealth,” meaning the world’s hidden population of faeries and other supernatural creatures — but as of the end of the book, none of Lyra’s friendly helpers have been revealed to be anything other than human. (Some are modified in exotic ways, but they were human to start with, at least.)

Even farther towards the end of the book, after this long string of people being Conveniently Helpful For No Reason, she ends up in a train car with…and I wish I was making this up…a bunch of soldiers who are Inconveniently Attempted Rapists For No Reason.

That record-scratch moment your brain just did? That’s how it feels in the book, too. The attack comes out of nowhere, there’s suddenly a big action sequence with Lyra fighting back, their CO shows up and makes them let her go, and then she leaves the train and heads almost directly to the next bunch of Conveniently Helpful People.

If anyone wants more detailed spoilers, either to be prepared before reaching the scene or to decide whether you’ll read it at all, let me know.

To be blunt about one thing: from the in-scene descriptions I would’ve said none of these guys actually managed to get their dicks out, but a few days later we get the book’s first and only reference to Lyra having periods. And she doesn’t think “oh, thank republic-of-heavens, I’m not pregnant,” which suggests she knew it wasn’t a risk, but the whole Narrative Reason you write that in after an assault scene is because someone is afraid it’s a risk, so, what are you even doing, Pullman??

Okay, switching tracks.

Some of the people Lyra encounters, usually with personal stories that are way more interesting, and I wish they’d been [part of] the actual main plot:

A guy who meets her at a train station, says he has a friend who needs her help, leads her out into a maze of city streets where she explicitly thinks about how risky this is because she’s totally lost…but she does the mission and it’s fine and he leads her right back to the train station afterward.

The friend is a human who’s been modified by “a magician” to be some kind of fire-elemental person, and wants Lyra to help find his daemon, who was modified into a water-elemental form — a mermaid! This is cool and fascinating and scary and raises so many questions —

— and they get killed immediately after Lyra reunites them, and we never find out anything more about it.

The killer is the magician, who had been holding the water-sprite daemon captive. (And is possibly also the guy’s father? Finally, someone who can beat Marisa and Asriel in a “Bad Parenting Juice” drinking contest.) Which, again, is fascinating and evocative — how do you become a magician? Or are they born, like the witches? How many are there? What kinds of things are they doing in the world? —

— yeah, we don’t find out anything about that either.

Murderous Magician Dad just gives Lyra some helpful plot information, then sends her and the train-station guy off on their way.

A couple of guys who intervene when Lyra is being harassed at a bar.

They steer her outside, she’s prepared for a fight, but they hold up their hands and say they’re friendly, and also, they noticed someone steal the alethiometer bag off her earlier, so here, would she like it back?

They give her some helpful rumors, too. Don’t remember which specific ones, but they lead her to the next plot point.

A rich elderly princess who’s on the Daemonless International Support Group list, because her daemon fell in love (!) with another woman (!!) and eventually ran off with her (!!!).

Lyra thinks to herself that she’s seen other situations where a daemon and their human have different feelings about a romance. Just thinks it in passing, and then it’s gone. I want to see these situations! I want on-page exploration of multiple ways they can work! How do they correspond to the feelings of people in worlds where all the daemons are internal?

As for the princess, I already knew it was going to be a big scandal — two human women in that day and age could never be a couple, at least not in public, and A Literal Princess is a very public figure —

but then, in spite of the scandal, the princess moves in with the woman! And they travel together, they work together, they share a bed, she explains to Lyra that she played the role so thoroughly she made herself fall in love with the woman!

…and then it falls apart for some reason, and the princess leaves, but her daemon insists on staying. So that’s how they get separated. Deliberately walking away from each other.

There’s a brief reference to the idea of him wishing he was the other woman’s daemon, instead of the princess’s. How does that work? How do you get so disconnected from yourself, and in such a skewed partial-match with someone else, that you end up with that kind of yearning?

In case you can’t tell, I want to read this novel. I would trade the entirety of The Secret Commonwealth for this novel. No question, hands down.

Instead: Princess says “if you run into my daemon, tell him I’d like to see him again before we die?” Lyra says “sure, can do, thanks for the brunch.” And then, you guessed it, that whole scene is over and done with and we never get any follow-up on it again.

A pair of agents from Oakley Street, who say “hey, Lyra, have you considered using some basic disguise techniques, like dyeing your hair and wearing glasses?”

And then they give her a lovely haircut and a dye job and a spare pair of fake glasses.

This isn’t anywhere near the beginning of Lyra’s journey, by the way! This is more than 80% of the way through the book. There’s no special reason she needs it more after this point.

It’s like Pullman suddenly realized a disguise might help, wrote the scene at the point he had reached, and then never went back and edited to put it in a more meaningful location.

The stranger on a train who shows Lyra the deck of “exactly the same as an alethiometer” cards, gives her a demonstration of how to use them, and then leaves the whole deck behind for her to keep.

A married couple who don’t share any languages in common with Lyra, and don’t seem to have a lot of money…but feed her and let her stay at their house overnight, for free, even daemonless as she is. They also give her a free niqab so she can move around less conspicuously (she’s still injured from the fight with the soldiers).

A priest who invites her into his church, isn’t bothered when she takes off the niqab, helps treat her injuries, and gives her a motherlode of useful details about highly-illegal dealings he’s not even supposed to know about, but will unveil to this total stranger who just wandered in, because she needs them for the next plot point.

This when Lyra finds out that someone in this region has resurrected the Bolvangar method. But this time they aren’t kidnapping random children for it. No, they’re paying for it. If you’re poor enough, and desperate enough, and can’t spare any more kidneys, these people will buy your daemon to sell on the black market.

The city has a whole secret underclass of illegally-severed people working in the sewers.

Meanwhile, rich people who’ve been deserted by their daemons can purchase a stand-in. This is what Terrible Author did. Of course, it’s not a true replacement, but the dealers boast about their ability to make an excellent match.

There are also people who buy separated daemons for other scientific/experimental purposes. Details left to our imaginations.

This is a horrifying sinister mindblowing discovery, as much of a bombshell as the original Bolvangar was. I mean, it would’ve hit harder if Lyra had uncovered it by spying, or tricking someone into revealing the information, or anything more elaborate than “asking straightforward sorta-related questions and getting this whole sordid story infodumped by the first guy she asked,” but it’s still big.

So it’s gonna shake things up something fierce, right? Maybe Lyra won’t go full-on “calling in the cavalry to tear the place down” until Book 3, but this would be her new “stepping through the doorway into the sky” moment — where the horror of what she’s learned galvanizes her into making a pivotal decision, where she starts laying the groundwork for the revolution —

— no, of course not, this is where she starts going around to the hideouts of various undercover daemon-sellers and asking if they can help her find Pan.

Come on.

And this brings us to the end of the book. One of the black-market daemon-sellers guides Lyra to the creepy abandoned town where the final scene takes place.

In these last moments, the audience (but not Lyra) finds out that this guy has ulterior motives. Which would make it the first time in the whole book when “Lyra or Pan takes a Conveniently Helpful Person at face value with total credulity” turns out to be a bad idea.

(And, I mean, he’s a black-market daemon-seller. If anyone on that list was obviously an unethical scumball who shouldn’t be counted on….!)

Finally, a few things that don’t fit into any neat lists, but annoyed me enough to mention:

1) People curse in this book. Which is notable because they didn’t in HDM, and it wasn’t just the adults watching their mouths around tween Lyra — we got plenty of scenes that only had people like Mrs. Coulter and Lord Asriel in them. Those two would definitely be dropping f-bombs if it was a routine part of their world’s language, and this book reveals that it is.

So every time it happens it breaks your immersion, pointedly reminding you “this isn’t a real world, it’s a fake story where the author can switch the profanity-filter on and off at will.” Does it enhance the narrative in a way that’s worth the tradeoff? I don’t think so.

2) Before I read the book, I’d heard vague spoilers about “a character with a mermaid daemon,” and figured it was someone from a cool magical species — hopefully more expansion/exploration on the fairy from La Belle Sauvage whose daemon appeared to be “a whole flock of butterflies.”

But no, it’s a magically-modified human. His situation doesn’t get explored that deeply before he dies, or connect with anything else in the story. The fairy, meanwhile, does get mentioned when Malcolm tells Lyra about meeting her, but she doesn’t reappear or get any kind of follow-up.

In spite of the title, the only explicit appearance of any members of the “secret commonwealth” is some little glowing spirits, basically wights, that Lyra watches over the side of a gyptian boat one time.

3) There’s a scene where a bunch of people gather in a meeting hall to protest the Magisterium sabotaging their various rose-related livelihoods. A couple Magisterium reps are there. Malcolm is also there, and his POV basically goes “huh, looks like all the exits have gotten the doors shut. And barred. And suddenly they each have an armed Magisterium agent standing in front of them. That’s weird. Gonna keep quietly observing to find out what happens next.”

This guy is supposed to be a cool experienced anti-Magisterium spy! This is basically a giant neon sign flashing COMING UP NEXT: MASSACRE! (It is not a misdirect, either.)

And Malcolm sees it, but doesn’t read it, or take any action to try to subvert it, or even move to defend himself — it’s just like any cheesy horror movie where the audience is shouting LOOK BEHIND YOU at the unwitting character who’s about to get murdered.

Wrap-Up Thoughts

Whatever happens in the final volume of this trilogy, it might reveal things that redeem some of the problems in this book. But I’ll be honest, I’m not holding my breath.

And when I think about reveals that would address these problems, everything I come up with is stuff that should’ve just been in this book.

For example: let’s say the Fair Folk are directly involved after all, intervening to steer Lyra and Pan down the most convenient paths. In particular, the guy on the train who only appears long enough to give Lyra a set of alethiometry cards + a tutorial on how to use them — I really want him to be Fae. It’s so contrived and random if he’s not.

But the readers should know about it! Back in HDM, we would get scenes about the plans and activities of all the other factions at work. It might take a while to discover the exact details of (for example) the witches’ ultimate goal that Lyra was part of, but we knew they had a goal, and were supporting her in service of it. If the Secret Commonwealth is actively involved in the plot, we should’ve gotten that by now.

Semi-related: I feel like, if the rest of the book was better, then I’d have no trouble explaining a lot of the Lyra-specific issues as “she’s super-depressed, not in a place to make great choices or take a lot of decisive action.”

But it’s not like she’s drifting around in a trauma fog that hampers her ability to get things done. Her journey, while not perfect or threat-free, still comes together with improbable smoothness — as if the writing hasn’t noticed that she’s not being proactive and prescient and well-coordinated and overall super-competent about it. Meanwhile, other characters are underwhelming in the same way. (Looking at you, Malcolm “I Can’t Believe It’s Now a Bloodbath” Polstead.)

So it doesn’t seem like a conscious narrative choice to write Lyra this way. It just seems consistent with the complaints I have about everything else in the writing.

…let’s be honest, I’m almost certainly gonna read the third book anyway. I’m enough of a completist that it’ll bother me not to, I don’t have a lot of hard-stop dealbreakers that would make me bow out anyway, and, well, I do a lot of work that requires time-passing listening material. The Secret Commonwealth is nowhere near the most-frustrating audio I’ve used to fill that time.

But it hasn’t left me excited or optimistic or Shivering With Anticipation, either.

Mostly I just anticipate getting some useful stuff done while I listen, and then having a final set of reactions to work through in another one of these posts.

[luked4nuke]

If, I were President of the United States. (I just wanna state I’m not a democrat or republican)

First I’d enforce Quarantine and extend it. I’d also attend the poorest families or individuals first and provide them with the financial assistance they need. People are struggling hard enough as it is living paycheck to paycheck.

Second I’d shut down the schools as I believe safty more important especially for the future kids who will rule this place. I also don’t like how schools give so much homework and stress. They just condition kids into beleiving working 40 hours a week is normal and that you should be lucky to have weekends. Staying in classes all day then returning home only to be forced to complete more homework that takes up time and robs them of social interactions. These schools don’t even test knowledge. They test obedience and reward them for being quiet little slaves that will slowly become a “regular worker.” They really don’t care about how smart you are, they test memory over all else, when they study a subject and pass the test they move on quickly to the next one stressing them out. If they failed the test, to bad they’re still moving on with you. (Sorry this got way of topic. I just hate how schools operate and also how low they pay the teachers)

Third I would dismantle the police force and create a new one. A better one that focuses on real problems like sex trafficking and drugs. All the horrible crimes that are allowed to fly under the radar. Any excessive use of force would be heavily punished. Fired, fined and jail time. No shooting at peaceful protesters, seriously dafaq is wrong with them unleashing hell upon unarmed civilians and sneaking in rioters to escalate it to justify the force.

Fourth, gold is a finite resource. Pretty much all the money you’ve ever spent is fake, all digital backed by nothing. Personally I hate it but you’ve all becomes achstomed to it so I would attempt to fix the economy so people can afford essential things, like homes and food. Instead of kicking out homeless people Id build shelters. They make it to easy to fall down into poverty and nearly impossible to climb back up. Once you’ve been arrested, once you’ve been homeless, you understand the struggle of trying to reintergrate with society. The easiest path become the dark one. I would attempt to control the population, America is a gigantic habitat and likewise it has a carrying capacity. If you’re gonna argue people have to pay unreasonable amounts of money for food you’re crazy.

Immigrants are definitely allowed as long as they follow the rules and don’t commit crimes. America was litterally founded on immigrants. American stole land from the natives violently and even managed to capture Hawaii, which was its own nation. They taxed us and recognized us as a small power. Iolani Palace has electricity flush toilets and even phones before the White House did. Queen Lili’uokalani signed in duress. It horrible and sheforfeited her whole kingdom in exchange for the people, as a leader should. The people make a country, the government already should put the people first. Without all the hardworking Americans working, there is no country.

We don’t serve the government. As a government worker we serve the people. It’s our duty to ensure everybody is treated fairly. To make sure everybody that we oversee has the essentials for life, a home and food.

And for LGBT rights. I personally don’t care what the heck they do. Love is love, let it be. They can chose to identify as whoever they want and pursue relationships with whoever. You can’t force things onto people. America is supposed to be freedom personified, we can chose to do as we please as long as we don’t bring harm to others. Those camps are wrong. America is also religion free, you can be whatever you want, Christian Muslim, litterally anything. Being a satanist is totally legal as long as you don’t hurt anything. Believe in what you want and don’t force it on others. Gay people are amazing! We all are, were all human and we can change and create change. We are all human at the core and we always have been. We have a right to love, and to be loved by all around us. Love is love, let it be, theres always been love. I can identify as a man or woman, and I can damn well love either as I please as long it’s reciprocated. I’d always rather say I love you too much then not enough.

Climate change is real. The pollution of those stupidly large companies is also VERY real. As an individual you contribute less than a percent of the actual pollution, it’s literally the big corporations. That needs to stop. I’m not exactly sure how but I AM GOING to start a wave of change that will benefit the worlds health. We all live here. This is not political, I don’t have time for games, scientists that have studied their whole lives are begging for us to change. We can all have solar electricity farms and then it’d be FREE. “But you can’t charge people for that you can’t make money.” I’m NOT TRYING TO MAKE MONEY I DO NOT CARE ANOUT MONEY. IM AIMING FOR SOMETHING BIGGER THAN GREED THE BETTERMENT OF HUMANITY. I don’t care about ruining electric companies and other random fossil fuels bullshits that will run out, I want the future to be bright!

Screw it im going off the rails, schools main courses should focus on stuff like self sustainment, like farming and wilderness survival. Creativity because that’s the most human thing about us! Empathy basic Psychology. Kids can get mad they should learn and understand why. Understand why they feel the feelings they feel and giving them all better emotional control. EMPATHY. They need to learn things like taxes since they’re such a big part. Also why the heck are taxes so complicated. It’s just targeting the illiterate foreigners and immigrants who struggle and try to understand it and I believe that’s horrible. Make it easier to become apart of America the land of freedom and the getaway from the crueler areas of earth. Maybe just limit the population. Also seriously fuck off with taxes! Why the hell are you charging and taxing 14 year olds that aren’t allowed to vote, thats taxation without representation.

Taxes should be like Mario kart and Ancient Greece. Quote from some thing I googled

“The philosopher Aristotle developed the theme. His "magnificent man" gave vast sums to the community. But poor men could never be "magnificent" because they did not have the financial means. True wealth consists in doing good, Aristotle argued in the Art of Rhetoric: in handing out money and gifts, and helping others to maintain an existence.

The idea is simple the higher up you are on the financial ladder the more you have to pay taxes and contribute to society. The large taxes from the rich help fund financial aid for the poor and stuff. The rich did not earn that money they climbed to top on top a mountain of millions of shortcuts and underpaid workers It should be an honor to be taxed and help the poor people survive. Like in Mario kart, the higher you’re placed the harder it is to maintain it and the last place people always get the better power ups giving them a constant fighting chance. At most I believe wealth should be hoarded to sustain like one generation of kids, two at the most. Maybe three but theres no reason anybody should have all that money that your never going to spend or all that money that becomes worthless once a war or breaks out or aliens attack or something. Life is more important than money. Something simple everyone should consider.

I think everybody should be able to pursue a career and each career should be sustainable. Enjoyment in a job of your choosing without worrying about financial burden. Jobs would be divided into smaller simple groups and the pay would based on their contribution to society. Like doctors getting paid more and getting teachers paid more, but small retailers wouldn’t get paid as much but they could survive not living paycheck to paycheck. The motivation is everybody should free to pursue the hobby they love without being punished. Maybe little Timmy doesn’t want to be a firefighter, maybe he desires a simple fun life selling flowers. That’s fine! Maybe they don’t wanna become the hero but it’ll be an honor to society. As long as you have a job that contributes to society you can live for free. If everybody is constantly trying to make the most profit, then we all become a bucket of crabs dragging each other down. I can’t sell my $10 good that costed me $2 to make. Also the whole buy back thing irritates me, I spent $60 on this goddamn game and GameStop can only give me like $10 in store credit or $5 in real life? That’s isn’t fair and that applies to pretty much everything. That’s $1000 phone you bought is barley worth $357 right now. I’m pretty sure it didn’t cost that much to make these things but like DAMN. Capitalism sucks.

In summary, I don’t know much about politics but I would be the human party. I don’t care about left or right. I’m the one that doesn’t care about money. I care more about life and creativity. Peoples right to enjoyment and living a happy life with others regardless of gender. Survival of the human race and advancement into the future where more things are free and we can constantly focus on creating an even BETTER one. We can’t go anywhere without each other especially if we’re all just a bucket of crabs. To greedy and self destructive constantly looking out only for themselves. Seriously get your act together humans before you kickstart your own downfall. If we’re all trying to make a profit, nobody does. The best things in life are free. You can pursue wealth for your future or you can focus and live and enjoy and love the now. Mario kart style, where all in this race for life and we all deserve a winning chance.

[mechadress]

Saw a literary challenge to write about one of your average days in quarantine. They picked Tuesday May 12th. Since all of my days keep blending together, I thought it would help me set a benchmark for how I handled quarantine. So here it is-

May 12th 2020,

My alarm goes off at 7am. I roll over to turn it off and promptly go back to sleep. This was a normal practice even before the world shut down. I don't have set hours at work, but I prefer to start around 8am. Since my work computer is only across the apartment, the motivation to wake up before I absolutely have to is extremely low.

8am rolls around and I can't bring myself to leave the bed yet. It all seems so pointless as no one seems to care what hours I keep and I don't have any early morning meetings. I scroll through Facebook and Tumblr on my phone, I check my email more times than I really need to, and pet whichever cat is closest, usually Sierra. I find a post from a page that I follow that talks about Victorian parlor games and I share it to the Steampunk group I administer. There hasn't been much content in the group for awhile. I wonder if it's because steampunk isn't as popular as it once was or if no one has anything to say. It gets a few likes and one 'Care' emoji. I think it's because it indicates that people miss hanging out together.

Around 8:15 I need to use the toilet, which is enough to get me out of bed and sign into my work computer. CY yells out from his work station at the living room table to remind me to buy the camper table and a spray bottle he wanted for grilling. I order them from Amazon and feel guilty about getting nonessential items in the middle of a pandemic. I spend the first few hours of work scrolling through FB or Tumblr and knitting. While I knit I watch an hour and half long youtube video from ContraPoints about different types of second-hand embarrassment or 'cringe'. I identify a lot with what she says.

I am knitting a pair of socks simply because I have the yarn and I've never done it before. I tested out the gauge to make sure I had the right sized needles and I do. They are long dpns that were given to me by CY's mother once she realized I enjoyed knitting. Apparently she used to knit as well, but it would hurt her hands so she gave up on it. I had tried to use the dpns as intended, even looking up a video and practicing a few times, but I kept dropping stitches and getting annoyed with them. I eventually decided to order a circular needle from Amazon to use instead. I felt very guilty about this since there's all sorts of post-people and delivery people out there who are at risk moving all these boxes around, and here I'm ordering a stupid pair of needles that are a duplicate size to ones I own, but I just don't want to use. The circular needles are extremely nice and easy to work with and it is a pleasure to knit the socks. I still use the dpns as a stitch holder while I knit the heel. Today I'm connecting the insole and knitting along the foot. It's easy and enjoyable work especially after already completing the first sock.

I eat a prepackaged ube cake while I drink my tea and appreciate the nice pairing of flavors.

I feel bad about not getting more of my actual work done. However, I can't bring myself to concentrate on anything related to work. I keep moving my mouse around every 10 or so minutes so it looks like I'm active.

An old D&D friend of mine named Sam posts on FB about how he is proud of his company for continuing to let people work from home despite Ohio loosening some of the Stay at Home restrictions. I reply "We were told to expect to work from home until at least August. I'm grateful since it's one less thing to think about." Sam and I go back a forth a bit more, expressing gratitude and an interest in meeting up again once its safe. It's the first I've interacted with him in about 5 years and it makes me glad to hear from him.

I start lunch early because I don't have anything better to do. For lunch I make myself and CY a sandwich. We have some really good Italian bread we got from the grocery store that we can make into a decent replica of a Philadelphia style hoagie. I already chopped up the veggies so I can just take them out of the fridge and start layering them on. CY likes his sandwich with mayo and turkey. I don't like handling either of those things, but it's easy enough. I make his first then make a veggie version for myself. We use the new hoagie oil which isn't as bad as I had originally feared, but it isn't as good as the name brand one we had before. Pity they were out of it at the store when we went.

My 2019 tax refund from Ohio lands into my investment account. I plan to use it to invest in assorted stocks I feel will bounce back once the economy recovers.

After lunch I watch a few more youtube videos while I knit. One is a career review of the one-hit wonder band 'Living in a Box' and another is a recording of 'the world's worst singer' Florence Foster Jenkins. I had found an article that talked about people who had a medical condition which made them unable to percieve how poorly they performed a skill. In her case, she was a renowned as a very poor singer who believed she was very good and people would come to watch her ironically. I try to watch a congressional hearing where they discuss the health crisis with Dr. Fauci, but it's too depressing so I stop.

My anxiety related to work continues to grow. I figure that I'm not able to bring myself to do any investigation on my own, but I'm still able to ask people questions. I reach out through Skype to a colleague who I believe had worked with this business group before. I am surprised by how helpful she is and how quickly she is to respond. We get on a call and she shows me some reporting she did that is similar and directs me towards a table she thinks would have the values I'm looking for. She recommends another colleague to talk to and I schedule a meeting with him for the next day since he was busying for the rest of today. I feel instantly better. My anxiety about my work plummets and I find the energy and motivation to start investigating another task I've been given. I quickly find 1) the task was way easier than I initially estimated and 2) the data I want isn't available where I thought it would be. I even find out a new way to pull code out of Tableau and I excitedly share my discovery with another colleague. Around this time it's getting close to 4pm, my usual time to stop working and just become available for questions, should anyone need to reach out to me. I feel better about myself and allow myself to take more pleasure in my activities.

I start to prepare for the online D&D game I host each week, Tuesdays at 7:30pm. One of my favorite things about quarantine is that it's given me the time and ability to play again. I've missed having a regular D&D game badly. We had a very good game the previous week and I'm excited to make new material for this new game. I decide to include a villain who is a Banksia Man, one of the anatognists from the Australian fairy-tale Snugglepot and Cuddlepie. CY had helped me over the weekend come up with a cool backstory for him. I take notes and save some pictures so I can display them to my players through screen share.

A group of our friends are doing a Plank Challenge while we try to stay in shape while in quarantine. Colette set up a FB group with a list of exercises to do for 13 days. Each day, you do your assigned exercise then you post to the group to indicate you completed your day's tasks. CY and I made a point to work out for a bit each day after work and were already doing a fair amount of planks so the challenge as it was written was too easy for us. We tend to double the amount of time for each exercise or we double up the reps. My tasks for today are 30 seconds each of planks, rocking planks, hip dips, and up downs. I do all the exercises straight through twice with a short break in between sets then post to FB in the group.

After doing planks, CY and I go out to a nearby park to walk for a bit. We go for about 2.5 miles. It's a nice day, nearly 60 degrees. I am happy to see wild flowers starting to sprout up and the leaves coming back to the trees. Most people in the park are polite and keep their distance. It's rare to see people wearing masks while they are walking or running, so it almost feels normal.

We make it back with enough time for me to start getting my notes ready for game. CY offers to make me food and asks what I'd like to eat. We had just gone to Trader Joe's the weekend before and gotten a truly ridiculous amount of frozen food. He insists I pick something from the freezer to eat. In the end we decide he'll cut up the jackfruit crab cakes and make them into 'seafood tacos'. He even makes some sriracha ranch to go with it. The crab cake is surprisingly greasy, but it's very tasty and filling. Not sure I'd get it again though.

I go into the gaming group call and we quickly realize that only Gene and Aaron are going to be able to join game. We don't think it will be enough to continue the campaign I prepared for so I offer to do a one-shot just for them. I show them a cute rpg I found awhile ago called 'Fuck! It's Dracula' and we give it a shot. We have fun but I feel a bit unprepared since I have to ab lib most of the plot and come up with secret plans on the fly so they can be betrayed by their NPCs. The game is much shorter than I initially anticipated and we finish up around 9:30pm, much earlier than normal. I don't feel like Aaron and Gene enjoyed this game as much as they would have enjoyed the larger campaign I made, but at least we got to play together for a bit. I appreciate the social contact at the very least.

We dismiss ourselves from game and I join CY on the couch. He is watching some cooking tutorial videos, trying to teach himself how to smoke brisket properly. I go back and forth between different apps on my phone, not really paying attention to the TV. I try to read for a bit, but we eventually settle down to sleep before I get very far. I feel good about how the day went and I'm proud of myself for getting work done on the sock and researching my projects. I feel better about my life than I did when I first woke up this morning.

[ageofkings]

Brazil 2018 elections: context and what to learn from it

I'm going to write a long post as a brazilian person who would like people to understand what happened in these elections. The rise of far-right is, obviously, linked to economic and moral crisis, and I believe the given context should help show exactly how this happened in Brazil.

First of all, we lived a military dictatorship from 1964 to 1985. It was bipartidary as a way to say there was any opposition at all but it made no difference, considering that elections were indirect(that is, not chosen by the actual population, holding power within military hand). It started with a coup d'état lead by the military supported by the USA against the president João Goulart, who while not being a communist at all, was left-wing. However, communist accusations already existed when Juscelino Kubitschek, who actively made it easier for international companies to enter Brazil, was the president. Even if the politician is open to capitalism, they can be painted as a communist for not following exactly USA's plan for them. Remember we're talking about Cold War, and tons of João Goulart's actions affected the USA directly.

While there was strong resistence to the military takeover, some may argue that there was popular support. That's because of the heavily spoken of(at least here) "Marcha da Família com Deus pela Liberdade", translating to March of the Family with God for Liberty: it was headed by people afraid of the "communist danger" in the name of democracy, of all things, and the Catholic Church, then an absolute majority among brazilians. Communism was associated with atheism, and the name of the march might show how big of an influence the Church was in this process.

Fast foward to already existing military dictatorship. While not as many people have died as in, for example, Chile under Pinochet, there was still torture, murder, people dissapearing and exile. And then they might say or you might think: "the only ones who would be murdered or tortured would be those opposing the dictatorship, so if you were not a terrorist, you should be fine!" I know how surreal this sounds but this is an actual thing that has been said on the topic of our military dictatorship more than once. Except one, it isn't ok to murder or torture someone because they oppose a government being overthrown. The direct opposition, like the ones actively fighting militaries, were not the only victims: it is highly suspected that Juscelino Kubitschek(the guy I mentioned earlier that is definitely not a communist) was murdered in 1976, in what was made to look like a car accident. Kubitschek was popular among brazilians and I argue he still is remembered in a good light, which might explain to you why dictators would want to murder such a personality. Now two, there are more reasons to complain considering the dictators sucked at governing?

To counterargument the "bad government" point someone might point out the "Milagre Econômico" or Economic Miracle, a boom in brazilian economy that wasn't real. How so? While our Produto Interno Bruto(PIB, in english known as Gross Domestic Product or GDP) did grow, it was in the hands of the already rich, such as great farmers who increased their production for exportation. You can't even claim it was an attempt to make private companies grow since anything that wasn't already big was forgotten, so neither is private business growing nor are state companies benefitting the population. Just making your GDP grow won't make your economy work! Anyway, inflation grew afterward and even people in the military were complaining(namely poor people who felt it). No matter how much you censor media, when most of the country hates your guts for making them miserable you can't hold on that long, so dictators started to transition to democracy. End. Understand that the elected president Bolsonaro supoorts this dictatorship.

Now let's take a look in 2002. That's when Lula was elected president for the first time, after running a ton of previous times. This man created PT, "Partido dos Trabalhadores" or Worker's Party, came from the working class(and organized strikes!) and is considered the first left-wing candidate after the dictatorship. Say what you will, the guy made some real changes to the country. He ended hunger in Brazil, invested heavily in social programs to remove people from misery, there was an increase in employed people, among other things. Of course, it wasn't perfect; in fact, to be elected, Lula had to align himself with more conservative parties and make himself less radical, otherwise the rich and middle class would not vote for him. Many actions helped the rich, especially great farmers(since economy became, and still is, dependent on commodities).

Conservative parties would not accept so easily to share power with parties so aligned to the left as PT. Internal conflict began and it has been since revealed that there was major bribery involved to make the goverment's social projects be accepted, in what was called the "Mensalão". Either way, Lula got reelected and later elected and reelected Dilma Rousseff as his successor, even if Dilma did not have the same popularity as Lula(and hers only decreased, actually). It is clear to all that Dilma was elected because of PT and especially Lula's legacy.

Dilma faced economic problems, besides protests in 2013 against the raise in bus passes(which isn't responsability of the president but it escalated GREATLY through the whole country and became a generalized protest against the government and corruption) and the disaster that was World Cup in 2014(honestly I don't even remember if it was corruption claims or the fact that people thought it was irresponsible to build stadiums while the country was dying or something). Things slowly turned into "this is PT's fault" and some even asked for military intervention like in the dictatorship, a request carried over to 2018 elections. Dilma just wasn't that popular and the fact she got reelected is, again, mostly because she was Lula's chosen successor. Nowadays, she is treated like a ghost even by the party.

Although she wasn't awful like you'd think, the media painted her as such: a major television station, "Globo", had a big role in this. In fact, the television station is only one of the medias through which it works, and the Globo group actually supported the very dictatorship I've spoken of at the beggining of this text before even having a television station. They have only admited and apologized for this in 2013. They also supported the candidate Fernando Collor de Mello in 1989 by editing the recording of the final debate between him and Lula; Collor won and was impeached later at the discovery of a corruption scandal benefiting himself and others close to him, besides implementing neoliberalism in a disastrous way. As if not enough, Globo viciously spoke of "Operação Lava Jato" or Operation Car Wash, a great corruption investigation that involved inumerous parties. The problem is, PT was clearly a target: everything was done to incriminate its party members, including affirmations that Lula and Dilma knew of all corruption happening and agreed with it. Many of the politicians spoken to were given deals, so that if they gave away someone else's name they might walk out free or have reduced penitences. One particular scandal from this operation, that is still ongoing, regards corruption in Petrobrás, one of the biggest companies of the country(although it has been progressively sold away).

During her second run, Dilma was impeached in 2016 under the claim of "pedaladas fiscais", translated as fiscal pedaling. Not exactly some war crime or corruption scandal, just tactics, and it has been pointed out that it was done in previous governments. Ironically, her vice president Michel Temer(from one of the conservative parties PT had aligned itself for support) wasted no time in making fiscal pedaling legal as soon as he became president. I must also add that Lula was arrested under corruption claims, with one of the fastest trials and investigations we've ever seen, proving that even if the claims are true, the arrest was always of political interest. Funny how corruption always existed in this country but if you may have done it(and in a much smaller scale) and you're left-wing, it's jail time; and for some reason when it is someone from PT being arrested it's big news, but most other arrests from other larties are irrelevant. That's how you throw a coup!

Now, who is Bolsonaro, the now elected president? Jair Bolsonaro has been a federal deputy for Rio de Janeiro(a state heavily associated with factions, gangs and criminality) and part of the city council. He has been thkurgh numerous parties, but spent most of the time in the 21st century in PP, "Partido Progressista" or Progressist Party(fun fact, don't take most of the party names literally because most of them don't align with the party's politics) until switching to PSL, "Partido Social Liberal" or Social Liberal Party for 2018 elections, since PP was involved in corruption scandals that Bolsonaro never addressed. He comes from a military career, having been considered mad by some military members, although others voted for him for his military benefit projects. Essentialy, he was a nobody.

Bolsonaro is a defensor of the torture from the dictatorship, homophobic, racist, misogynistic man, among other things. He has declared such things out loud and his electors either agree with it or believe he "won't really do that". For those who innocently believe in the best of Bolsonaro, why vote for a man who spent 27 years having near to no relevance as a deputy and passing no interesting projects? Simple: even though he has been in politics for so long, he selled himself as renovation by surfing in "antipetismo", the hatred for PT.

Bolsonaro grew through his hate, simply because he was in media. This is a very important part of his whole campaign: he only grew because he was given a platform. Even if most of the people who shared his content did so to say it was hideous, it was spreading him no less. In fact, Bolsonaro went to few debates during elections; while at first it would seem to be because of the stab he was a victim of during elections(yes, he got stabbed by a random guy who used to be linked to left parties so this information was used to turn it into a murder attempt by the left), at one point his doctors said he was allowed to go to debates, but he choose not to. In fact, at one point while there was a debate, Bolsonaro simultaneously gave an interview to another television station, which is illegal(because you're giving more TV time to that candidate when they should be debating with other candidates). Bolsonaro strategically ignored all debates from the middle to the end of the elections because not only his speeches are awful, he has no real knowledge of his own political plans. He claimed that he didn't have to know economy because he won't be an economist, so if anyone wanted to know about it, they should talk to his appointed economist Paulo Guedes(who wants to go for neoliberalism, a fact that attracted many self-proclaimed liberals).

Truly, the only great difference between candidates from PSDB, "Partido da Social Democracia Brasileira" or Brazilian Social Democracy Party and Bolsonaro is outright hate speech and the lack of political knowledge, since PSDB has been running as the main opposition for PT for years with the promise of neoliberalism. So why Bolsonaro instead of PSDB if at least PSDB's candidates have the decency of ignoring the poor without saying it out loud? Things were so bad that even Geraldo Alckmin, a great figure in PSDB and 2018's candidate, said he feared Bolsonaro in power. The television station Globo, even after playing a major role in PT's demonization, was considered a liar; not because of their speech against the left, but for including very shallow talk of LGBTphobia and racism. Even though it still has some influence, it managed to be hated both by conservative right-wingers and the left.

Bolsonaro's image was worshipped as that of a legend. Even if he did barely anything as a deputy, his speeches were seen as fantastic and proof of how he wasn't afraid to say what he thought was best. However, all of Bolsonaro's supporters did not come from here; while it was a high amount(people suspected he could manage 20% of votes), it was not the amount he managed by the end. But after such a growth, and with his name in every media, anyone who wanted to get rid of the big, bad PT could do so by voting in him. Bolsonaro might have been elected, but with much less votes or not elected at all if PT wasn't running, since the great majority who did vote for him just hated PT. I will not really debate if that would be the case as it is still quite the topic among some of the left, but PT has been criticized for trying to go for its 5th mandate in a row; even if it were not a dictatorship, it was easy for the media to sell it as such and demonize PT further. People who tipically voted for center candidates or used to declare vote for no one at all found themselves voting for Bolsonaro.

I find important to notice that in the Northeast region, formed by 9 states, not a single one had Bolsonaro leading. in fact, Haddad won there with values varying from 60% to over 70%, a reality quite different in states more to the south of the country. That's because PT's greatest weakness and strenght is being PT: the party's legacy in Northeast is massive, considering the region was historically ignored by the government. Its countryside is very hit and dry, and lack of water and misery was the rule; the urban cities were not in a much better state, with no investment whatsoever. It doesn't hurt to say that it also concentrates a great amount of black and poor population, due to the great strenght of slavery in this region back in colonial times. PT did a massive job there, so they would easily vote for PT again. Even with all the propaganda against PT, which did influence voters in urban locations, the party is still strong and Northeast in general seems to have a strong conscience regarding candidates of Bolsonaro's type.

That brings us a key problem when we're talking about other regions: historical education. People who allow themselves to ignore Bolsonaro's speech, while majoritarily richer, also include poor people who fell for his neoliberal promises of a better future(it is important to remember that the economic problems Dilma faced included crisis, with people losing jobs and everything) and talk of "good dictatorship times"(which people now won't even bother saying was a dictatorship because "there were elections" and "only terrorists died"). Suddenly, the fact a dictatorship existed was being doubted by growing smaller medias(reforcing the idea that Bolsonaro is an antisystem candidate as well as his speech), and the historic of racism(black people are more likely to be among the poor thanks to slavery and how its end was dealt with, which was by ignoring ex-slaves completely) was laughed at by years of claiming that a diverse country like Brazil couldn't be racist. Racism and homophobia were dismissed because "any more rights would be privilege" when murders are still very real.

I cannot stress enough how much of a role fake news played in these elections: Bolsonaro spread for years that the left and PT were trying to implement "gay kits" including books that taught children as young as 5 or 6 about sex(ironically, the book he appointed barely spoke of gay relations at all). It was repeated over and over and was a strong argument among families against PT, even though PT proved it was a lie many times. Bolsonaro was only forbid to spread the lie at the very end of the elections, when the damage had already been done, and still he spoke of it again and another time after being elected. The electoral justice did nothing about him(and many other problems during this election), proving that the system wanted him elected more than the people did.

Again: Bolsonaro was elected because the media did a really good job in demonizing the left, and especially associating it with communism, the "totalitarian regime that killed millions". It has become common to associate fascism and nazism to the left, because the political spectrum is seen as less state equating right and more state(the great evil!) equating left. If you make a bad government or were associated with corruption scandals, you're left. They made it seem as if the left purposefully gave the poor only enough so that they would be dependent on them. There were also heavy nationalist tones, with people screaming their country's flag would not be red(communism!) and they only want what's best for Brazil. Bolsonaro also brought religious tones along with his moralist ones; in fact, his campaign slogan even mentions Christian God. Catholic Church this time was more left-leaning, but Brazil has Evangelicalism as a strong religion, as well as Bolsonaro's own faith, leading to him grabbing many votes from this population.

The great takeaway from this is: people in Brazil have not learned what is left and right, and it made it easy for the right to exploit it. Even with a dictatorship and corruption scandals so recent, brazilians had their history distorted and were led to Bolsonaro in the most convenient moment. Many of the strategies used are similar to those of Cold War and mirror our dictatorship strongly, which should probably explain to you why Bolsonaro has used the USA as a role model for years and has always been eager to have Brazil linked to Donald Trump. People don't necessarily hate minorities(although some do), they were driven by the narrative of left corruption and excess of minority rights in a still moralist country.

Hopefully this has been enlightening. Give people political education!

[anth-seeing2019]

Looking Prohibition: The homeless in Clifton

Alexi Frick

Living in Clifton for the last three years has made me an almost lax observer of the homeless and those less-fortunate who inhabit the area. I’ve always found it very interesting to see how people interact around the homeless and what they do when they’re approached by someone they probably don’t want to be around. Especially when you’re dealing with parents from the suburbs or affluent kids who really have never been around these issues and are experiencing a sort of culture shock. I always hear that you should just ignore them, not look at them, pretend they’re not there, all of the above. While this isn’t an outright written rule in a constitution or anything, it is still advice a lot of parents probably give their kids right before they move to an urban area. At least my parents did, and I’m sure a lot of other parents in the predominantly white, middle-class town where I grew up did as well. This looking prohibition, of acting like another human being doesn’t exist simply because they’re begging you for money, is something I find very interesting and very poignant in a country where the gaps between classes just keep growing and growing. 

To start my experiment, I tried to find a place where there is usually a high volume of people and also a place where I’ve had several encounters with the homeless. The first place that came to mind was the Clifton Krogers. Well, the parking lot to be exact. There’s usually three or four people who I regularly see begging customers who are walking to their cars. Today there was an older African-American lady with pretty beat up clothing who was constantly scratching her neck and arms. She noticed me and came up to my window, and when I told her I only carried a card on me and apologized, she said “God bless” and politely left me alone. I witnessed a lot of college-aged kids walking by her and I’d say the majority of them outright ignored her and acted like she wasn’t even there. I noticed this more with straight couples and groups of men. People who were alone walking into Kroger’s interacted with her more, but not by a large margin.

I talked to one of the security guards always standing outside of the Krogers about the regulars he sees in the parking lot. He said that, for the most part, there’s never really issues with them. “I really can’t do anything unless one physically starts to assault someone. But I haven’t seen that happen yet. For the most part they’re ignored until they go away.”

One of the things that I think is interesting about this space is that there are more factors than one going into these panhandling interactions. The Kroger customers just spent money on groceries, they want to get them in their car and get them home, they don’t want to hang out in a Kroger’s parking lot. So that itself could factor into the decisions they make when interacting with the homeless. For the most part, they don’t feel threatened as well. The customers know that there are security guards, cameras, and cops always posted in the parking lot. So I’m sure people feel a little more at ease when dealing with a beggar in a very public space like this. I talked to a man who was unloading his groceries in the car next to mine pretty briefly, and found out exactly that.

“Yeah, I mean I never really think they’re gonna pull anything or threaten me. But there is always that fear, because you never really know. But yeah, there’s literally a cop car parked 20 feet away so I guess I feel like I can just ignore people like her and not really be afraid they’ll try to rob me or something.”

After about ten minutes another car pulled up next to mine, so I planned to ask whoever came out how they felt about panhandlers in this parking lot. This time it was two girls, around my age.

“Honestly they don’t bother me, I’m pretty used to them in Clifton and kind of just ignore them. Like I stopped giving them money, but every now and then I’ll give them a dollar or something. This lady I’ve seen here like three or four times, she’s always around. I don’t really like looking at them, because I am a girl so I kind of have to worry about if a male takes my gaze the wrong way or something. But this lady is pretty nice, I feel safer interacting with her.”

Her friend spoke out and said something pretty interesting.

“Yeah, she’ll actually remember who she asks and if she asks you for money when you’re going into the store, she’ll remember you when you walk out and won’t ask you again. I just feel like you never see homeless people doing that.”

While a lot of times it was hard to hear what people would say to her, since I didn’t want to just follow her around the parking lot, I still heard some things here and there. A few “go aways” were probably the rudest remarks I heard, I never witnessed a really harsh response or physical threat or anything like that. In terms of power relationships, I think in a lot of these cases the homeless person, or beggar actually has more power than the person they’re interacting with. If something or someone is making you avert your eyes, or completely ignore something that’s a few feet away from you, then that thing has the power in that situation. While the beggar may not have money, and the other party does, the beggar is still the one in control of a social situation regardless of whether they even know it. I noticed a lot of people going out of their way to avoid the woman I was observing, even if it meant a longer walk to their car. That right there is power over other people.

Tying this back to Garland-Thomson is interesting, because I think she would be more interested in the lack of staring going on in situations like this. She states that staring is a form of communication, and that when we stare at somebody we are sending them a message. And while people do stare at the homeless, they do it more from a distance, where they won’t be bothered. When the homeless person is actively interacting with a person, that person puts up blinders and stare at anything but the beggar in front of them. In Chapter Four, Garland-Thomson says that it isn’t civil to “stare at those beneath us”. While I do think this rule has something to do with people outright ignoring the homeless, I think the annoyance of the situation, of interacting with a panhandler, has more to do with it. It’s not something you want to deal with when you’re just going about your day. I asked my roommate how he feels when he’s going around Clifton and ends up in a situation like this, and had a pretty casual conversation with our friends about it. 

“It’s just annoying, I really don’t like to be an asshole but I also can’t just give every person a dollar. I don’t like to think about those people’s situations, honestly. It just makes me feel guilty and like I should be helping them.” One of my friends chimed in that he likes to observe the homeless, kind of just for fun.

“Just like, when I’m in my car or across the street and know they can’t talk to me, I’ll look at them and try to figure out what their whole deal is. Like how they got there. I dunno, I don’t really think about the staring part, but I guess that could come across as rude.”

I asked them what he thinks about when he stares at them.

“Like I said, I like to think about how they go to that position. A lot of the times I assume they’re, y’know, on crack or something. Like I know not all of them are, but like a lot of the times I really think they’re either boozing a lot or just high off some shit.”

This kind of opinion relates back to Segal’s visual typification. While my friend wasn’t assuming that all Jews have curly hair or a stereotype like that, he was assuming that most of the homeless people he sees are high off of some substance or are just going to use the panhandling money to buy alcohol. 

“…we must recognize that all of our sensory typifications are, in common, social constructions, and that their relative reliability must be understood by examining them as social constructions.” (Segal, pg. 238)

This Segal quote really sums up the bias that all panhandlers are high and just want money for drugs or alcohol. That opinion, shared by one of my friends, is a social construction that modern society would have us believe. I think it’s a lot easier to tell yourself that drugs and alcohol did that to someone instead of life, and the world itself. Because then that barrier between you and them gets a little weaker, when you realize that maybe that could be you. So I think people like to ignore that idea and assume that they’re just cracked out instead. I think, when it comes down to, people have their own reasons for interacting or no interacting with panhandlers and the homeless. A lot of people are told by society growing up that these people aren’t “regular” and that you should just ignore them. But in a very unstable economy, and in a country that has just begun to pull itself out of a financial crisis, I think homelessness and beggars are becoming a much more normalized part of society. Or, at least they should be. References: Thompson, Rosemarie Garland. Staring: How We Look. Oxford University Press, 2009.

Segal, Daniel A. Can You Tell A Jew When You See One?; Spring 1999; 48

[jeanjauthor]

...As a child, I enjoyed reading the Belgarian because it was easy to read, it did have good banter, the pacing was good...but I did recognize some of the racism, etc, inherent in it.  In that vague way that children have, the kind that acknowledges a problem exists but doesn’t really do something about it.  So I enjoyed them anyway.

As an adult...I’ll agree, all the things the OP lists in their thread are indeed some kind of awful.  As are the many things listed in the comments at the end of this thread about other series.

Hell, I probably have problems in my own books I can’t even see...but that is typical.  We regurgitate what we absorb.  Readers do this.  We read things, and if we like it, we absorb it, contemplated it conscious or subconsciously, and then we either emulate it in our own lives or we regurtitate it to share with others in discussions or presentations...feeding the people around us like momma birds regurgitating worms for baby chicks without stopping to think about what kind of food we’re feeding them...and then they grow up thinking that’s how their food, their lives, should be flavored: worm-flavored instead of mosquito, or grasshopper, or whatever.

This is why I keep harping on being careful about what you write into a story.  It really can have a serious impact on others, and not a good one.

Don’t believe me?

That first post is hella woke, “...and being taught in school that racism was largedly solved by the civil rights movement...”  That right there was what I went through in school...and you know what?  IT WAS NOT SOLVED. IT IS STILL A MAJOR PROBLEM.  (*gestures to all the openly racist, facist, oppressive shit going on in politics today for all the evidence/proof that could ever be needed*)

The second post is absolutely true...though round about 3rd edition, D&D started to get woke about some of that, putting in a lot more positive representations of various races, skintones, career opportunities, gender presentations, etc, so props to them for that.

Which makes that third post super important.

“Why are we still talking about racism?” stems straight from the “whites solved the civil rights problem, so whites don’t have to worry about it any more” attitude in that first of those three posts.  Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

That first comment is basically how Young Me treated the obsessively repetitive levels of racism in the series.  An annoyance, like how you treat your racist grandpa, he’s annoying, but you don’t have to live with him, so surely he’s harmless...except grandpa is voting in every election, and grandpa is part of the patriarchy, grandpa has the retirement money to burn, so if you want an inheritance that will be desperately needed in this shitty economy, you’ll have to toe grandpa’s line, further down the road...but I digress.

He really was easy to read.  The others weren’t. And his writing went down smoothly, like the difference between drying to eat half-cooked, chewy-crunchy-gloopy oatmeal, and slurping down a well-blended fruit smoothie, one that has all your favorite fruit in it, but which has been sugared with Nutrasweet. 

As a child, you just know that it’s sweet and tasty as it goes down smoothly...but did you know that Nutrasweet turns to formaldehyde above 76F (25C)...and that the human body is warmer than that?  And did you know that artificial sweeteners wreak havoc on your digestive tract’s normal balance of microflora, the things that break down our food so that we get full nutritional value?  And that if your gut microflora are out of whack, you can start having various health issues? 

(It certainly doesn’t help diabetics.  In fact, artificial sweeteners has been deemed by studies to actually make diabetes worse.  Go for things sweetened with xylitol or stevia, which are natural sweeteners that humans can digest safetly.)

Anyway, the easier the writing is to read, the easier it is to digest, and the faster it’ll get absorbed into your mental and/or emotional system, folks.  I was annoyed by the racism in the books... annoyed by the blatant patriarchy, etc, etc, etc... but they were fun and engaging to read in terms of personal interactions, they went down smoothly, and now I have cultural bigotry diabetes running through my gut instincts, something that I have to work to get out of my system every single day.

You do, too.  Yes, even those who are discriminated against.  People of Color can experience bigotry.  Not just internalized, but reflected onto others: “Yes, I’m black and people are trying to stop me from voting, but at least I’m paid better than a Latino!“ or “Yes I’m a Latino and my pay is crap, but at least I’m not a Muslim!”  “Yes, I’m a Latino, but at least I’m a man, and get to be in charge! (bigotry based on misogyny)”

Now, are we legally responsible for what we write?  I’d say no.  We simply present information and/or entertainment.  (I’m not talking about the people who write detailed instructions on how to build a nuclear bomb or a nerve gas handgrenade or whatever. I’m talking the average genre fiction writer.)  But are we morally responsible for what we write?  ...I’d say yes, to some degree.

Now that you know better...write better.

That’s where our moral responsibility to all of this kicks in.

You know better, now.

Write Better.

[alsklingwille]

thoughts on ‘shame’

im putting this under a read more because really it’s just a stupid rant that i needed to get off my chest and it ended up becoming way too long and probably doesnt even make sense but here

okay so i wanna talk about how US is a HUGE ass country with 325 MILLION people compared to norway’s population of 5 million, italy’s 60 million, france’s 67 million, and germany’s 82 million. This means there are many different types of americans, not to mention the US is literally supposed to stand to be a melting pot of different cultures and ethniticies. There are soooo many regional differences in our country, north vs south vs west vs midwest vs coast vs inland and all of these places have their own customs and traditions and many laws vary state by state, creating different behaviors all around. If you do not live in america, you very well don’t have an accurate understanding of our country. Hell, we dont even have a good understanding of different states, all we have to go off are stereotypes and the things that we hear about. And that’s the same way we see many other countries that we have never travelled to. This same rule applies for looking into our country if you live elsewhere; theres a very good chance you only have a glamorized made-for-television and internet version of it, despite how much you think you know us.

The real essence of skam is supposed to showcase realistic portrayals of teenagers in our generation and the struggles that they face in high school. We love OG Skam because even though there were aspects that were strictly Norwegian that we did not understand, there were definitely relatable moments and we fell in love with the characters that we saw ourselves in. All of the adaptations seem to be doing well in terms of including their country’s attitudes and beliefs into the main story line. However, all of these adaptations have native people behind them. We have Julie.

Julie has stated so many times that Skam is for Norwegians only, and the main reason she signed on to do Shame is to give us our own show. While I respect that, I hope you can understand the speculation many of us have about how she will be able to accurately portray us and give us the essence of Skam that we love so much while being Norwegian. Im hearing a lot of stuff about how shes been interviewing local Austin residents about their lives which is awesome and I’m really excited to see how that plays out - BUT keep in mind that Austin, Texas is not representative of our whole country. There really isn’t one place that is, that’s the annoying bit, but there are a few cities that are average enough, and I would have expected a setting like Chicago or Atlanta. Now, I don’t know what kind of show Julie is trying to make. I dont know if she’s trying to represent the entire country or just the Texas or Southern area, but the rumors I’m hearing so far got me thinking it’s gonna turn out to be more like the second. So keep that in mind while you watch Shame cause uh horseback riding??? doesn’t happen everywhere. There’s some states that don’t even have enough grass for people to ride bikes in.

If Shame is going to have the same effect as Skam, showcasing the realities of the struggles that american teenagers go through, it needs to include more than what was addressed in Skam. All of those struggles (relationship issues, trying to fit in, bullying, eating disorders, pressures of sex, homophobia, mental illness, islamophobia) are things that we go through but we have other issues on top of those that are just as important. Our economy is shit, it is so fucking hard to get an education, and just as difficult- if not more- to get a job with that education. We are always politically divided and there’s hate everywhere you look. High schoolers have to worry about money at such a young age because they know they’re about to face crippling student debt in order to get a decent paying job or else they’ll be stuck making a minimum wage that isn’t even enough to live on. They have to see their parents working 2-3 jobs just to make ends meet, colleges are becoming harder and harder to get into and they continue to face the pressure to keep their grades up in hard ass AP classes while doing a billion different extra curriculars to help them stand out against other students. And there’s no way they even have time to have a proper childhood or social life when they’re stressed to the max cause they don’t even have time to sleep. I never ever see American high school shows talk about these things - what I do see is “how to get him to like me and not her” or “pregnant at 16″ or “prom’s coming up how am i going to do my promposal” and other bullshit like that. 

It’s so easy to make fun of our dumbass policies and the fact that a lot of you guys have free education and a leader who’s not a fucking airhead cheeto, but it’s literally our reality and we face the consequences for it and it is so DAMN difficult to get policies changed to make our lives easier because of the people in our government. I’ve been harboring these feelings toward shame for quite some time now, but I felt like posting today, March 24th, 2018, because right now there are millions of people walking the streets to fight for their right to live and not be shot to death during a regular school day in a regular school where they should always feel safe. 

Life in high school sucks for US teenagers, especially right now. Shame is gonna either be a hit or a miss, a hit because it will actually accurately portray what its really like, or a miss because it’ll give us yet another unrealisitic tv show that we really REALLY don’t want. I understand all the entertainment bit, no one wants to watch a show that only talks about sad stuff the whole time, but I really do hope she incorporates these issues in their lives somehow and actually talks about it. Cause at the end of the day, no matter how many interviews she does, she is a Norwegian adult making a show about American teenagers! Now, I’ll still be tuning in to see how it turns out, and I’m hoping for the best, because I truly do miss Skam and I’m excited for new content from Julie, but fuck if i wont be hella skeptical about it.

[kingofthenorth49]

New Year, Old Me

The smell of breakfast cooking is filling the house, my dogs is at my feet chewing on his indestructible dollar store ball as happy as a clam (ed note. – how do we know clams are actually happy?) and 2021 has begun with sunshine streaming in every window filling the day with the promise of a bright and prosperous future. Even Gloria is in the kitchen singing to the music playing on the radio.

Then there’s the 30 centimeters of snow forecast for tomorrow. Fack.

I love my Christmas vacations. We took a cruise for Christmas two years ago, I’ll never do that again. Not just the competition with 1300 little off spring for wifi when we were trying to sell a house Christmas eve, there’s just something about doing a whole lot of nothing for 10 days that really appeals to the inner child in me.

I’ve played countless hours of Minecraft. I’ve watched hours of videos. I’ve read, I’ve cooked. We’ve talked about whatr’s next, what’s been, and who. We’ve played with the dog, a lot.

The only thing missing was the kids. I miss them dear

Christmas was awesome for it just being the three of us. We did that on purpose.

2020 was a challenging year in many respects. We lost Ozzy in June, that was a major life event for us both that neither of us saw coming. Then there’s the plandemic, yes, tin foil hat in fully bloom, the politicians of the world are wrecking society over a bad flu. Even politicians in the 1918 pandemic weren’t as incompetent. As someone who has managed risk my entire career I can unequivocally say they fucked this up, likely on purpose. I say on purpose because there’s no way the stupid could be this collective. The costs to society based on the actions of our elected officials over the past year have damaged mankind (not peoplekind moron) and will have lingering effects for decades.

I just can’t grasp the level of incompetence I’ve witnessed in our governments, but I’m not surprised.

2020 professionally was one of my best years ever, mind you I worked a lot, but I’ve never been afraid of that. From mid-March until July I worked every single day from Moncton, dealing with bad decisions made by governments every single day trying to keep the country going. Imagine dealing with hundreds of governments, none who talk to each other and correlate activities. It’s an epic shitshow every day, but it’s honest work.

I’ve met some amazing new friends this year, and we’ve developed some new relationships. I’ve watched some of my team members grow exponentially, as well as watched some of my peers hit their stride. It’s awesome to see people at their best, and knowing you had a hand in helping them get to that place. That’s what I live for now.

Living back home has been a major challenge for me, not some much for Gloria. We came back for her, she wanted to be home and now she is. Life is good here, don’t get me wrong, but I hate living in the fishbowl. People talk too much and invest themselves in others’ business way too often, it’s that part of living here I don’t like. Everywhere else we’ve lived no one cared what kind of car you drove or where you went on vacation, but down east it’s blood sport. The difference for me this time round is I just don’t care what they think or say, their opinion means nothing. Unless I’m paying you for advice, I’ll give it the due consideration it deserves. The day I learned that was likely the day my life changed for the better, and I remember it well.

I’m starting to enjoy living home again, but not for the reasons you’d think.

I’m enjoying the familiarity of people again, the people who interact with us at our favorite restaurants, stopping and chatting with people at Superstore, knowing what is really going on in our community. Those are the kind of things you miss living the lifestyle we did for 20 years bouncing all over the globe. We missed that connection with community.

We are enjoying making our current house our home and putting our touches on it. It’s been a labor of love because as my realtor Cathy said the day we were doing the home inspection and I had a parade of contractors lined up on the street, there’s no way I’ll ever get my money back out of this place. Nope, I won’t. But I’m ok with that. I grew up watching this house and wanting it, now that I own it it’s fun to bring it back to it’s original beauty and improving it’s functionality. Plus we have awesome neighbors and everyone looks out for one another.

I like my job. I like my boss. I still enjoy what I do, and that’s a positive. I’ve been very fortunate to have worked with amazing people throughout my career, but over the last year dealing with a pandemic, 18,000 employees across dozens of companies and multiple jurisdictions who move the goal posts daily, I’m very thankful for the team I work with are all A players. We accomplished more this year than I would have ever thought possible given the circumstances.

Then there’s politics. Relax, you knew it was coming, I’ve not ranted very often about anything that doesn’t at least brush up against politics.

2020 was a political shitshow of epic proportions. In Canada we have a buffoon as Prime Minister who is selling out this country to communist China. He’s not even hiding it anymore. The WE scandal should have affronted every single Canadian and we should have marched on Ottawa to demand his resignation and incarceration.

But we didn’t. So we get what we deserve.

In the USA Trump lost a crooked election, and no, you cannot convince me otherwise. It was a surgical strike in key swing states carried out with militaristic effort. I watched hearings in Wisconsin, Illinois and Georgia. There was enough fraud to cost Trump the election. But am I upset? Yes, a bit. Will I get over it? Of course. The democratic party has no morals, the ends justify the means and they had no qualms about using deception and fraud to elect a senile career politician who has accomplished nothing in a 47 year career on capitol hill, one who is racist (not an opinion, there’s his words in video and print) and can’t remember what state he is in most of the time.

And they elected him with more votes than Obama? Seriously?

The entire election reeks. Thousands of consecutive ballots, all votes for Joe, with no down ticket selections. Consecutive. Let me say it again for the kids in the back. Thousands of consecutive ballots for Joe with no down ticketing. (Down ticketing is voting for a set of party candidates, so President, Judges, etc on the ballot). Can you even begin to grasp the statistical probability of that?   Let’s just say the odds of having that many consecutive ballots all for just Joe are astronomical, kind of like getting hit by lightening in your basement on your birthday while having a heart attack during a solar eclipse.

Even that’s more statistically likely.

But at the end of the day, if congress accepts the electors then Biden will be my president. I’m not that stupid or arrogant to say otherwise, although I know in my heart of hearts he stole it. But that’s irrelevant, and he has to look at himself in the mirror every morning just like I do.

What I have learned in the past year is local politics are more important than national politics, and we need to move towards more local control of our resources versus Provincial or Federal control. I’m excited for our new town council and have great hope they will energize this town, as we are poised on the precipice of opportunity. People are relocating here from all over, buying homes sight unseen. Why? Because its small and safe. That’s my theory anyway. With the gig economy, many workers can work from anywhere (I did it for years) and why live in a congested city with all the issues and expense that come with it when you can live like a king in small town Nova Scotia. For the first time in my life people WANT to move here, not away. That’s a huge opportunity that we need to build on.

Anyway, I guess I’m trying to say that while 2020 had it’s challenges, for us there is a lining in the cloud that we shouldn’t overlook. We ended the year on a high note with the perfect New Years eve for the three of us, a few drinks, a cigar by the fire, and McDonalds. Yep, 2020 didn’t deserve anything more than a McChicken and fires.

So those are my final thoughts for 2020, the year has now passed and 2021 has arrived, full of promise, hope, and excitement. What you will make of 2021 lies within you, and you alone. You can choose to climb a mountain or read a book, but all I ask of you is you help us maintain the ability to have the freedom to choose. That is my only fear going into the new year is that we are allowing our freedoms to be taken away at an alarming pace, with no sign of resistance. That’s not a good thing. Once your freedoms are gone, you won’t easily get them back.

Happy New Year folks, its going to be amazing. Either that or the murder hornets show up and then it’s over.

Jim Out.

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It Just Seems Like Somebody Definitely Touched My Drum Set T Shirt

I think discipline in a It Just Seems Like Somebody Definitely Touched My Drum Set T Shirt home is probably some young people today but say all the time you are you going to say I go you say I got a key never never really angry and don’t be a yes Jan I gather I know that when I do yeah raise my voice and start top grades as a whole another to do what used in the early they know so I wanted to gave my all I like 68 a regular thing look I had a you know we usual board and again with some comments you are planning you like cursing and yelling a line with me what you hope and delete this holiday smoke in a know the you have no choice but to. If I’m away aware of the notes on somebody’s images make money off everybody knowsand so I go down past that have been travel beforeand I usually mess but I love does it come back stronger on the topand ignorantso obviously put on to what I do starting them out the cosmosand I have not been out of the paper since I’ve been since I joined it on the glass I’ve been in all you know say is never my name is not been not nosingand good for me because I wantedand forgottenand I’m even comfortableand I mean I think everything is okay to say something like really fun little Grand Master from where I was going on a fellow way let me got a problem react years class made still still out here now I found frosting to rap we again got the logical know if I know in his hotel room they had everydayand I’m not in the door every day to any to open the door let me see the party anything like the salami all over it is like always retirement is no food no setand we stand outside China sing my way in you know say we please let us in the plea that is about a week that saw the blood say we all agree we need some foo attitude three we like to give me a nod to the disliking of sand picking don’t you is the reason that no one will be continues with the panties was then no civil rights movement was asking you know now that those people now askand are deadand exam so that we need to with ocean be angryand my wrath that I’m rapping to my community should be filled with rage you know saying they should be feel with the same atrocities that they gave me an immediateand talk about some I have to talk about it just seems farm because there’s no one is talking to guy can’t recordand it’s a is like being the last person a lot no sin after three days you can’t do anything to do with go there is no there is no black neighborhood ghettos say that people at the same item monies me because it is richerand has poor there is no Disney no data moving aluminum wedding live in okay but I feel like the final fitting as hell is how we can be of value PS all my life around like to let people back to the ramp Lebanon because they arrive allow anyone because this timeand has no money but it telling me that I’m a little money the movie so as now I know was out on a deal with the section it is moving away from it without more stars colorfully get without all the got all this way does answers like all all the societies doing is leaching of the they need to get what a pain but a sorrow for the culture of music for happiness for movies to talk about boysand announced that I want to be another young I would be years OMB team we shall overcome achievement awards you noticeand not me not only thing they noted every day when I’m breathing is for us to go far enough speaking with the truth you know say every time I speak I want to shiver in Ottawa to be like they know what you think is polite they know what to say even about the to tryand understandand that was to new lifeand I’m going to work on the changed work but I guarantee I will spot the way that will change the world our job is to spot somebody else watching us we might be one but let’s not be selfishand because we not been saved were let’s not talk about how we should change a lot of change but I know I can talk about diabetes on so Michael clean it up look at when you are bringing your preference to back will have more to particular learn not ask for another year to backslider and probably will be according to the drive work is Snyder about doctors ready currently in pain in the the death of Tupac secure the emotions is murder stirred up with client but the debate over his legacy who he wasand we might become begun to rate what the gangster who kept it real all the way to an early grave James Dean Stout cultural rebel or what the mighty become a political voice of the dispossessed in the tradition of Malcolm X. So I said no mother is not going anywhere my diet your concern about my daughter being sick why the fuck would you want to leave the house on the coldest weather is rainy as they that makes no fucking sense as you as well unfortunately once we get the report we have to file other fitness and that so when can I come get her like we need computer and his vision literally wanted to come pick up my infant daughter from my house without me or mother and take her to it to another location to have strangers look at the no I wasn’t having it so I thought it was my daughter’s not going anywhere so delayed as well if I have to take her if I have to take her then you have been targeted by these thinkable so as a laser well if I take it you become along with so I said I said okay cool on the widget so she came out was about the ways my gas on at bullshit saw me to come pick us up from the house so she shows up the gun because of my house and all that Chevy Malibu

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King want to continue have run this economy into the It Just Seems Like Somebody Definitely Touched My Drum Set T Shirt ditch work were slowly every since the Great Depression aliens more people living in poverty today than the day that Barack Obama with Hillary Clinton at his side the lowest 2014 and 20 honestly senator you can roll out the numbers and in the Sunnyside. This is so sad at the base already helps couple officials because already done couple of your fishing events so I’ll be able to show for you how we fishand other stuff so don’t worry but like for some reason this event is really hard like it’s impossible to catch any of these fishes either developers are to change the difficulty of these events or are there will be something else but like Sears is impossible I don’t understand what else can we do like you can see the most super quicklyand as you can see that yellow bubble just doesn’t move as fast as you can let either you have to guess what is going to go but when you guess it’s impossible it’s really just annoying like I would love to see a person would actually be able to get catch the fish here when is Mauricio like this like I’m just trying to guess that is gonna drop down in a drop down differently low while you so sad I wanted to get at least one fish for you here on the camera but it’s impossible to this associate I don’t want that one make you feel at this event is bad because this event is really good as you guess he thought something super easy but there are definitely easier fishes to catch like these ones are really arts molecular you to be super big because yes there is the size of fish will loftily sketch a lease want to show your giving up to give up at this pointand also forgot to mention for you I’m sometimes trying to catch this fish that look at this like it just got away whatever so I think every time I failed to catch a fish one fish disappears from the pond so there’s only limited amount of fish in the pond here hopefully will be able to catch at least oneand show for you but if you were to go to the topand I’ll try to catch fishes there from the topand I think in the northern locations you will need to have this armor otherwise you will freeze here to definitely that’s what I’m assuming you mean why would spawn in the northern so it looks like we will be able because this fish I want to scream to early but I think this fish was bit easier than the rest of us is doing all my pocket please like 90 done all know dude no game is getting away made like all my God how my supposed to catch it please it was almost done I’m going to catch you anyways like I’m ready I’m ready I’m focusing here hundred percent like the sun vocal instinct ultra instant you know what I’m talking about right the I’m clicking it as hard as it is almost done I was almost done made like what is going on but fishes that my fishing sharks here lay it’s impossible way it seriously impossible that what is going on dude I’m I give up I give up on the light I came I swear there are easier fishes to catch me this event is the hardest one but is seriously just annoying like this is not easy catching fish like it’s not easy but it’s not easy at all like I would love to see somebody catching it hopefully it will reduce the difficulty because I don’t understand like I’m just going to give up on this fish was just mutually video complaining about how hard it is to fish but I swear there are easier fishes to catch him enough to focus on whatever that officials got away ultra to go to the very very topand I’ll try to fish from over here maybe night looks bad but whatever list of fish from the side but it super but I don’t see anything like this spot but we will see maybe that will help out the case we have here another fish please tell me I will be able to catch it so it’s impossible this one we won’t catch this one as well it most quickly for your bubble I think you I mean I would be fine if we got kind of fish is a once in a while but like getting five fishes like that in a row that it’s like it’s impossible to search escape I did my best all I could in my weapon broke this mistake here another fishing rodand let’s try to fish once againand I think there’s a limit to fishes in the pond left or something so I mean okay Boomer we will see it will save your soul soon soon I’m to pull it once again please let me fish let me get at least one fishing vessel there is a chest right so from that Jesse can get the various items if I would if I will be able to catch that fish I will be able to show for you how to works okay so I don’t have to let the physical otherwise the chess will disappear here as well so I have to be very lucky with catching the fishand catching with that just for the chassis can get like items to the for your whatever it’s called decides on at least guys that this because there is no way I’ll be able to open up that thing you if I don’t catch the fish so I called the fish catfish finally after foreverand a little after four attempts I was able to catch this fishand it’s a decision of soft meet almost with no bones the most important thing when catch a catfish is not let it take you underwater year no way also these fishes are to have different rarities as you can see there’s that starand it looks like Brown or something vendors blue a quality fishand then there is like golden quality fish so I was able because this one is there still couple more fishes in the pond so let’s keep catching the babyand I don’t know how that just mechanic works like I do understand how it works you have to like cash that just for smalland then you can catch the fish but like is one such a difficulty it’s impossible like I don’t think anybody could ever do it like is a serious to just guess when the fish is gonna jump upand when it won’t jump up but for now it seriously impossible like it’s pretty cool but other easier events I think it’s just because this is like winter location event so it’s a bit harder hopefully that will change the difficulty for real unless I’m doing something wrong here which I don’t understand the case I’m trying to catch this one I’m trying to catch this fish it just doesn’t work as you can see guys that’s it like it’s impossible I would love to seriously see a person who could catch a fish from there like seriously unless they’re going I know even if you know the pattern it’s physically possible like in the game to move that orange bubble like that while well that’s a great event okay there is another chess of the topand in order to catch it all have to move that yellow bubble to the top to break the chestand get that reward from it but do I have to catch the fish of the sink that we will try to maybe just guys that reward I think this is going to stay well maybe Lisa got the reward know I didn’t even get the reward I think that’s itand it’s all the fishes disappear from the pond so if I was maybe a bit more pro because me that just sucked. I have never faced a look everybody talks about the middle class the fact is that the way middle class figure generate wealth overwhelmingly is building up equity in the home NASA gets passed on from one generation X the equity in the home you know the classes to enhance what is why world because the software is to have you in the White House in the has an energy policy for renewable resources you have one and for build the class is about the jobs the future really rushed investment were invested 2 trillion in infrastructure ports bridges highways making sure that we have access to do things that really make a difference by creature doing a solo facility outside Harrisburg you know I’m a Scranton boy now Central Pennsylvania is okay but now Northeast began to face I know it’s not typical for former Surgeon General to speak at a convention Surgeon General are appointed by presidents but our work isn’t about politics is duty is to the public eye to guide his science and our job is to speak the truth about public See Other related products: Pray Him With Stringed Intruments Banjo T Shirt