#told via group texts and emails

[full---ofstarlight]

ive seen a LOT of hate recently for modern and college aus and text fics so i just wanna say:

i fucking love them and they r so fun and i think it's a delight to reimagine high stakes genre situations in lowstakes every day settings

[mariacallous]

Standing next to her hastily packed suitcase in Michigan’s Macomb County Wednesday night, Tyra Muldrow had a bad feeling in her gut.

“I have this eerie feeling that I need to get the hell up out of there,” says Muldrow, a 20-year-old Black woman from Florida. She was in Michigan as a door knocker, hired by a subcontractor for Elon Musk’s America PAC operation to turn out the vote for Donald Trump in the heavily contested working-class suburbs of Detroit.

Muldrow and the rest of her canvassing group of roughly a dozen people had just been fired en masse, after WIRED reported that they had been tricked and threatened as part of Musk’s get-out-the-vote effort. Speaking publicly for the first time about her ordeal, Muldrow says that the canvassers in her group were fired with little explanation beyond a complaint that someone had spoken with the press. Many, including her, were still owed money. Muldrow had to find her own way home; others are still stranded in Michigan.

A representative for Musk and America PAC did not return a request for comment.

On October 15, Muldrow’s cousin Ebony Jones recruited her for the job, offering upwards of $2,000 per week and a return flight, per emails reviewed by WIRED. Muldrow signed a nondisclosure agreement the same day, and was then flown to Michigan on October 18 as part of a campaign for Blitz Canvassing, a subcontractor which had received more than $9 million from America PAC for presidential campaign canvassing as of October 29. Only upon her arrival in Michigan did Muldrow realize what this job would really entail: canvassing for Trump.

No one in her group of contractors—referred to internally as a “cell”—had a driver’s license. They were initially transported via Ubers, and were then driven back and forth for nearly two weeks in a pair of seatless U-Haul vans between their targeted neighborhoods, staying in a series of motels and AirBnBs in the Detroit suburbs of Warren, Livonia, and Mount Clemens. The three suburbs are in Wayne and Macomb County, the latter of which was the only Detroit-area county Trump won in 2020. In Macomb, where Muldrow primarily spent her time canvassing, he got 53 percent of the vote—almost exactly the same level of support he earned in 2016, when he secured a margin of tens of thousands of votes in a state decided by a little more than 10,000 votes.

The cell was composed entirely of Black people, strangers from out of state who did not know each other but were usually forced to share rooms, according to Muldrow. According to a text message from Jones, Muldrow was promised $1.50 per door, and $2 per door if she knocked 1000 or more doors per week—an all but impossible number. Muldrow further says they were told they would have to pay for their lodging unless they met the unrealistic quotas. The contract the door knockers signed stated they were “expected to maintain a 17-22% engagement rate during the campaign,” a high target relative to the number of people who typically open their door for a stranger. Videos recorded by Muldrow show cramped living quarters and frequent bickering between members of the cell.

“Our subcontractors never should have driven their canvassers in a U-Haul van and those involved were immediately reprimanded,” Tim Pollard of Blitz Canvassing tells WIRED.

On Wednesday, October 30, Muldrow and her fellow door knockers were fired hours after the publication of the WIRED story.

At first, some people had trouble logging into Campaign Sidekick, the glitchy app used by America PAC for canvassing. There was confusion before they were finally told it was over: “Everyone is fired,” said Jones, who served as the door knockers’ manager, in a GroupMe chat, according to screenshots obtained by WIRED.

Jones did not reply to a request for comment.

Muldrow thought Jones might be joking about everyone getting fired, but some of the door knockers noticed they had been locked out of Campaign Sidekick, according to the group chat.

“I called my mom immediately,” Muldrow says. “My mom told me I was overreacting because, it's [my] cousin, so she was like, ‘Oh, maybe she's playing a joke on you guys. Don't take it literal.’ And my mom was like, ‘She sent you up there in the first place. You went with her. If anything, you would have your flight home through her. She's not going to let you be stranded.’”

Then, Muldrow says, Jones began asking the door knockers which one of them spoke to the press.

As arguments ensued, Muldrow started to fear for her safety. Muldrow packed up her belongings and called Connor Berdy, a 29-year-old political consultant based in Warren, Michigan and the founder of Vote For Change LLC, a consulting group in Southeast Michigan for his community organizing work.

Muldrow had met Berdy—who runs canvassing operations for school board, county commission, and judicial candidates—when, by chance, one of his employees struck up a chat with her while she was canvassing near their home on October 23. Berdy and Muldrow got lunch soon after, and Muldrow told him about how the door knockers in her group had been tricked, threatened, and driven around in U-Hauls to their door knocking locations.

Management had “clearly not prioritized the safety of the workers or the integrity of the operation,” says Berdy.

Berdy then arrived, and pretended to be an Uber driver to get Muldrow out of the situation. He had already bought Muldrow a flight back home to Florida, paying out of his own pocket.

“First I see Tyra on the side of the road with her suitcase and everything,” Berdy tells WIRED. “So I pull up, turn my hazards on, act like an Uber, and then right as she starts walking around, I hear someone say, ‘Where's Tyra?’ And, ‘Oh, that sneaky little bitch.’”

Muldrow made it to the airport and on to her flight home. At that point, she says, she had only been paid $69 for the canvassing job, for which she had been promised she could earn upwards of $2,000 a week. A Cash App payment she showed WIRED for that dollar amount was listed as “for Gotv”—the acronym for get out the vote. Muldrow says she texted Jones asking when she would get the rest of the money she was owed. All she got was a read receipt.

As of Saturday evening, at least three others from the canvassing group hadn’t received full payment for the work they’d done before being fired, according to screenshots from the GroupMe chat.

“Following the incident, some of the canvassers and contractors involved left the program, some decided to stay, all have been paid,” Pollard says. WIRED could not confirm that canvassers in Muldrow’s group had decided to stay, nor that they have all been paid.

The Trump campaign has largely outsourced its field operation in Michigan, a crucial swing state, to Musk—a move that has come under heavy criticism. Outside of Michigan, America PAC is a codefendant in a class action lawsuit in California over unpaid wages to canvassers and other alleged labor violations, a development first reported by WIRED. Blitz Canvassing has also reportedly had issues with the Campaign Sidekick app flagging door knocks as fake. In Nevada and Arizona, up to a quarter of the door interactions were flagged as potential fakes within the app, according to The Guardian. (“Sidekick was never expected to handle the auditing of America PAC’s door operation. The reason the PAC is confident in its numbers is because of the auditing procedures each canvassing firm puts in place and the auditing procedures of the PAC writ large,” a person familiar with the America PAC operation told The Guardian at the time.)

After she returned home, Muldrow didn’t think she was going to get paid what was owed to her any time soon.

However, on Saturday night, right after WIRED reached out to Jones for comment, Muldrow heard from her cousin for the first time since she’d been fired. “You did not get 1000 doors but to make this right and move forward we will pay you the $2000,” she wrote, according to text messages reviewed by WIRED. “The quickest solution I can think of is to send someone to pay you in cash.”

Later that night, shortly after WIRED reached out to America PAC for comment, Muldrow was pleasantly surprised. She’d just been paid $2,000 on Cash App. The caption?

“For Michigan Gotv 742 doors paid in full.”

A few minutes later, Muldrow got a follow up text from Jones. “Please let wired know that you’ve been paid asap.”

[traumacatholic]

This is a prayer request.

I turn 20 this month and it's stressing me out. Every year is just another reminder that I am a failure.

I have no job, no money, no hobbies, no romantic prospects. I had to drop out of high school because I was being harassed by a classmate and ex boyfriend that raped me multiple times over our 5 month relationship. I had a 4.3 GPA before that and I threw it all away at 16.

I developed agoraphobia that I am still in recovery from (done by myself) and I have severe dissociative symptoms from my PTSD. I also have OCD, which I've had for as long as I can remember.

I need a lot of help and support that I am not getting, even when I ask for it. My mom has gotten my brother and his friends jobs, but when I asked for help on getting one she shrugged me off and told me to figure it out myself. I have nothing to put on a resume and I have zero social skills.

I have asked my mom for help in finding a therapist, she just tells me to look online. I can't afford it and I know she will use her paying for this against me in the future.

She wants me to learn how to drive but she won't teach me or pay for lessons.

I can't sleep (and when I can, I have nightmares). I feel sick when I eat and when I don't. I should be in college right now, but instead I space out all day and my mom hates me because of it.

I had a health scare a few months ago. I thought I was dying. All I could think about when I was lying on the floor is how much easier it would be for my mother if I did die.

I don't see a future for myself. Everything is bleak and hopeless. Things would be so much better if I was never born. I add nothing to the lives of the people around me.

I'm so sorry to hear about all that you have been through and all that you are going through currently. I'm not sure what country you live in, or what the medical processes are like there. But you should be able to ask your doctor for advice with regards to accessing therapy. They may be able to let you know about local online resources (like online courses), group therapy, or even sometimes one-on-one support that is free or low cost.

I would also recommend reaching out to mental health charities in your country, and asking if they can offer some advice or suggestions. They may know about schemes that can pay for therapy, or provide other forms of support. While helplines aren't the same as therapy, they are a free resource that you can reach out to in order to vent if things ever feel too tough. For help finding different helplines (incl ones that offer support via text, email, or web chat) https://findahelpline.com/ should be useful for you.

Rape Crisis Shelters will often provide free or low cost therapy, and I would definitely recommend reaching out to them for support. You do not just have to talk about rape or other forms of sexual violence with them. You can bring up other topics, so don't feel like you can't use them. You absolutely can. It does not matter how long ago it was, or whether you want to press charges or not, they will support you.

When it comes to employment, I would try and suggest seeing what support the things I mentioned above can provide. If you have no work experience, I would look up templates for people in your country (for example I know the UK and the US resume layout can be pretty different) for those that do not have work experience. You can use that to apply for jobs. I would also suggest volunteering opportunities, as they are great for giving you work experience as well as opportunities for socialising. There are a lot of different kinds of work experience, some of it is customer facing, sometimes it's cleaning or working a desk job or social media.

If your country has any kind of employment support organisations or charities, they can also help you out. Some of them might possibly be able to refer you for occupational therapy or let you know of any employment support schemes. Occupational therapy is so called because it's essentially meant to stabilise someone's mental health enough that they're able to go back to work / into employment. This is not long term therapy, but if you can access it, it might be helpful as you try to find other longer term therapeutic support. If that isn't a thing where you are, try not to worry because there are other options when it comes to free or low cost therapy.

Some charities such as women's organisations, food banks, rape crisis shelters, any kind of support service really will sometimes offer either drop in sessions, workshops, or some other thing. Sometimes it's group therapeutic arts and crafts. If it's free and accessible to you, even if you don't know how much you're going to enjoy it (unless you know you really hate it) try and access it. Getting out the house to go do something can be therapeutic in itself, especially if you have opportunities to socialise with other people and there is some form of structure to it.

Try also looking into social groups in your area. Maybe a local library has a book club. Maybe some people organise a film club over Zoom. Maybe there's a chess club. I'm not sure what sites are popular in your area, but one that gets recommended here is https://www.meetup.com/ and there's often a list of in person and online social activities. You may find this is helpful just to have something positive to try out, an opportunity to socialise with others. There may even be things like neurodivergent clubs, or introvert clubs etc that aim to be as accessible as possible.

I'm not sure if you go to Church, whether you believe in God or the Saints. But you can consider reaching out to local Churches to see if there's any support they can give. They may have an opportunity to volunteer or work with them. They may have a club that you can go to. They may even know someone who's a trained driving instructor who would be willing to teach you to drive for free or at an affordable enough cost. Try a bunch of different Churches. They may also know of support organisations to recommend you access if they're unable to offer you support. There is also this prayer to Saint Jude for 'hopeless causes', that you might find comforting to pray each morning and night (or whenever you can). As part of the prayer, you also pray the Our Father and the Hail Mary. I'm linking them as well just in case you don't know them.

For anxiety before sleep or for before eating. Try placing a cold can or a cold compress on your vagus nerve. This can help reduce anxiety as well as help with digestion - https://psychcentral.com/anxiety/vagus-nerve-cooling-anxiety. It is not a cure for depression or anxiety, but it might help lower your anxiety enough so that eating doesn't make you feel sick. It might also help relax you enough for having some nights sleep without nightmares. Another thing for sleep anxiety you can get, is little microwaveable soft toys. They have lavender inside and the microwave heats them up to provide you with some warmth for a little while. It might help you to have something to cuddle into. Lavender is also meant to promote relaxation, I personally find that sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.

While you may not have a therapist, you can still work on building up your toolkit of coping mechanisms. I am going to link some examples, that you can try. An important thing my therapist suggests is to practice your grounding and coping techniques even when you feel fine. This makes them easier to remember to use when you are feeling worse. And by turning them into a habit whenever we have anxiety, or the first thing we do before bed and the first thing we do in the morning, we can also reduce the anxiety we experience throughout the day.

EFT Tapping

Grounding techniques

Window of tolerance

Progressive Muscle Relaxation

Now, these things aren't cures. But they can reduce your anxiety which can make things much more bearable. They can also help with feelings and symptoms of disassociation. They can prevent panic attacks. And so on. Create your own toolkit of the things that work for you. Some of them have different use cases - some of them you use while in crisis and others work best when used to prevent crisis. Find some things that fill out both kind of categories.

I know that things seem scary and hopeless now. And I know how unbelievable a better future might feel. But I promise you, the world is better with you in it. You make people's lives better by being in them. I hope and pray that some of these resources are able to offer you some support and guidance to make things feel a little more hopeful for you, and to hopefully ease some of the burden you have.

[dollsonmain]

:|

Every year the school district tries to get us to sign up for a new handful of services.

They used to use Live Grades then switched to Canvas. Canvas has messaging built into the platform. Students, Teachers, and Parents can all message each other.

The school district also has an app and keep trying to get us to sign up for the app both to monitor our students' assignments and for P2P messaging (both of which are available via Canvas, which they ARE still using this year), but I don't trust that it's actually secure AND have a really old phone which can't handle most recent apps. Not all students/parents have smart phones, either.

They're ALSO trying to push everyone to sign up for a Microsoft Rooms account, both on desktop and on the phone and I'm just like....

On top of that they automatically added everyone's phone numbers to a group texting service (Apptegy) without consent.

You have Canvas, my email address, and my phone number. I cannot and am not installing a bunch of apps, too. This is getting ridiculous. Pick A platform and stick to it.

Anyway I keep getting texted over and over on my too-old phone being told to claim my ROOMS account, finally told them to stop sending those texts and remove me from Apptegy, and they immediately emailed it. Again.

I do not want these accounts, thank you.

Already pissed off that so many of the places I've applied to work ALSO make me sign up for an account like........ I don't need an account if I'm not an employee.

ffs

[katsona-the-katsequel]

Human Heart, Aigis' Heart

Here comes Aigis' story!

___________________________________________

I am the humanoid tactical weapon Aigis. I am an Anti-Shadow Suppression Weapon developed in the Kirijo Group's lab. I am the cutting edge of modern military technology, and the culmination of many years of shadow research. Though my body is mechanical, I also possess a human-like mentality, and I am the world's most powerful Persona User. I am particularly renowned for my sturdiness, and just like the story of the Aegis Shield from Greek mythology that gave me my name, I am truly undefeatable, impenetrable, and invincible.

Yes. I was supposed to be invincible.

However, at Gekkoukan High School, where I was currently studying, I never had a chance to use this excellent weaponry in my student life.

To borrow the words of Yukari-san and other female classmates, I felt like a little blue or depressed.

"...Well, today is the 4th, so...um, Aigis-san. Please tell me how you would feel about it."

Oh, by the way, we were currently in class. Professor Toriumi was asking me to respond. I was just thinking about it, but as a cutting edge humanoid tactical weapon, my brain is capable of parallel processing, so I won't miss any questions. But...

"What's wrong? Is modern Japanese too difficult for returnees? There's no need to think about it so deeply."

The text we were currently reading was a novel called "Kokoro" written by a man named Natsume Soseki. I didn't seem to have a good enough understanding of this "Kokoro" yet. After about 32 seconds of silence, the teacher spoke to me in a manner that could be perceived as slightly over-the-top, perhaps trying to give me a clue as to the correct answer.

"He proposed to her over his best friend K, and she ended up committing suicide... I wonder what Aigis would think in that situation?"

"If it were me... I would think that my friend would have committed suicide."

"...It's not the same as it used to be. Give it a twist! Give it a twist!"

"Could it have been a murder disguised as a suicide?"

"Why?! This is Soseki! Don't turn a masterpiece of pure literature into an Edogawa Ranpo mystery!"

"In terms of motive, the young lady is the most suspicious... but we need to check the absence certificate..."

"Listen to me! Listen to what I'm saying!"

As usual, Toriumi-sensei exploded, and soon the bell rang to signal the end of school. If this were a plan for me to kidnap "Miss" from my best friend K, it would be easy... But even for someone with a mind that can summon Personas, understanding this "heart" was not as easy as it sounds.

"Well, you are human beings, but it's still hard to understand other people's feelings. Isn't it okay to worry so much about it?"

My precious friend nodded enthusiastically to Junpei's words. It was lunchtime now, and we were on the rooftop. I'd asked the two of them to come over to get their opinions on how to solve the problem I was currently facing.

"However... the reality is that 'humanness' is an essential skill for my school life. If communication with civilians is hindered for any reason, then my mission will also be hindered."

"But it seems like you're getting along well with the other kids in your class."

"No, I feel like I'm a total stranger in the so-called 'high school girls' community. I can't even fully understand how to communicate via cell phone email..."

"Huh? What do you mean?"

"For example", I said, taking out my cell phone and showing them the email I received from Yukari the other day. It said, "Tell Kirijo SP I'll be late (^_^)."

“This?”

"Normally, the term SP refers to a bodyguard who provides personal protection for important people. So I told the Kirijo Group's security department that Yukari would be coming home late that day."

"Well, that's..."

"For some reason, they gave me a strange look."

"I guess."

"That night, Yukari was very disappointed when I heard that SP was an abbreviation for Senpai. But that's not all. In another email, I saw the phrase "H/K" and it took me three days to realize that it was an abbreviation for 'By the way', if it was 'H&K,' I would know that it was an abbreviation for the German gun manufacturer Heckler & Koch."

"That's something the average person wouldn't understand..."

"What is the point of using gal characters? It is unreasonable to make 'juko' read as 'ta', or 'ju' read as 'sa', and to increase the amount of information that would take only one byte to two bytes. It's inefficient."

"Now now now. That's what being a high school girl is all about. Besides, you don't need to be bound by those norms, Ai-chan is human enough... Ah, that's right."

Suddenly, Junpei stood up as if he had just thought of something.

"What's the matter?"

"From now on, if you want to ask for advice like that, I think it's best to get advice from someone in the industry."

Saying this, Junpei smiled happily. This kind of human-like smile is essential to camouflage one's appearance as a human female, and yet it was something I lacked. I wondered if I could acquire a smile like that...?

"And so, I'm your special lecturer, Takeba."

"I-I'm your assistant, Yamagishi."

“Junpei, in the end, didn’t you just want to use Aigis’s troubles as an excuse to have some fun?”

The situation was incomprehensible.

Afterwards, we met up with Yukari and Fuuka, and for some reason we ended up inside Karaoke Mandragora in Paulownia Mall.

"Well, well, well, don't worry about the small details! Going to karaoke with friends after school is a typical thing for high school girls to do, right? I think it's important to start with the formality, you know."

"Is that so? Junior high school girls go to karaoke on their way home from school... I get it. But in that case, shouldn't we invite Mitsuru-san too?"

"I-I think Kirijo-senpai is a bit different from the average high school girl..."

The details were unknown, but it was profound.

"Okay then, let's start with Ai-chan. What will you sing? Anything is fine."

"Singing, huh? It's my first experience, but I'll do my best."

"Okay then, do your best!"

...

"It was an unexpected situation."

"Well, my head's still spinning..."

"I thought my eardrums would burst..."

"Well, well, I guess that can't be helped, huh?"

It was an unfortunate accident. The moment I turned on the microphone to sing, a terrible cacophony occurred. The electromagnetic waves emitted by my engine resonated with the speakers, causing a phenomenon known as howling. It was like a sonic bomb.

The force of the blast was devastating. All the drinking glasses were destroyed, and the karaoke equipment in the next room was also damaged.

"The electromagnetic seal at the core was perfect, but no one had thought about the drive motors at each joint..."

Was this a feeling of despondent feeling? Was it impossible for me, after all, to acquire the abilities of a normal female student? As if to cut me off from such thoughts, Junpei spoke as cheerfully as ever.

"Well then, let's pull ourselves together and move on to the second high school girl staple! Let's go take a purikura photo!"

".. Purikura?"

I was a little wary of the words I had no memory of, but since it was Junpei's plan, I replied with a firm yes.

"I'll give it a go... Yes!"

"All right! Let's go to to Game Vanick!"

"So...what is a purikura?" Junpei took a big tumble.

...

"So this is Purikura... Print Club? I see."

According to Junpei, it was a device for processing photos taken of several people with stickers. Apparently, taking photos with friends and sharing the stickers was the basis of high school girls. I didn't really understand the intention behind it, but if this action was necessary for the operation, I couldn't run away. Desertion in the face of the enemy was punishable by firing squad.

"Okay, let's go."

"Okay, let's have Yukari and Fuuka together. Um, the background is this... the frame is this... OK, let's start. I'll press the button."

"Come on, Aigis, strike a pose."

"A pose, is that it?"

"That's right, smile smile."

"Eh, a smile...?"

Before I could even process what was happening, a sound similar to the clicking of a camera was heard, and shortly afterwards the stickers were dispensed from the receiving slot below.

"Uh... Wait, my smile is a bit stiff, maybe?"

"She's not laughing."

As Yukari had said, the expression on my face on the photo was what you might call expressionless. As a weapon, I didn't have the ability to change my expression depending on my emotions.

"Let's try again, shall we?"

"I think that attempt would be futile. The fact that I cannot express a smiling or crying face is due to my specifications, so there is nothing I can do about it."¹

When I said that, everyone looked at each other and then burst out laughing.

"What's the matter?"

Without answering my question. No, as if they had no time to answer, everyone continued laughing. "What are you talking about... hehehe... Ah, Ai-chan, as expected of someone who has been maintained by Ikutsuki-san... Hehe."

"Ugh, that's painful... What kind of pun was that?"

"It can't be helped. Ahahaha."

"It's weird if Ikutsuki says it, but if Aigis says it its charming.”

I understood. Although it was not my intention, it seemed that what I said was a pun, a series of similar-sounding words used to create a sentence. I was a little confused, but I was also happy that all of them enjoyed it.

"Huh? You can smile."

"Eh?"

I was surprised by Junpei's sudden remark.

"Were you laughing?"

"Yeah, I saw it too."

Fuuka agreed with Junpei. I saw.

Was I laughing?

"That's right. She has a better smile than our unsociable field leader."

At Yukari's words, that person turned away as if it didn't matter. Now that I thought about it, this person didn't show his feelings on his face very often. Still, he was doing a great job as a leader and seemed to get along well with his friends. Suddenly, I thought of one thing and spoke up.

"Am I of any help?"

"Huh? What's wrong all of a sudden?"

"I can't behave like the so-called 'high school girls'. I'm not good at karaoke or photo booths. I can't understand the human heart. But even so, is it okay for me to be here as one of your friends, as a member of SEES?"

"Of course!" Junpei answered loudly.

"Was that what was bothering you, Aigis?"

Yukari also spoke in an exasperated tone, followed by Fuuka.

"Aigis, you were worried, weren't you?"

"Worried... Yes, maybe I was." What I must do was defeat shadows together with everyone else. And to protect that person. If I couldn't act like a female student, then perhaps I was not up to the task, perhaps I was not living up to everyone's expectations. It was these thoughts that were making my processing unstable, and now it seemed that even I had finally realized this.

On the way back from Paulownia Mall, Fuuka came up to me and said,

"You know, I think that if you get anxious because you don't know what the people around you think of you, doesn't that mean you have a great heart?"

“Is that so?”

If so, I was glad, for I, who was troubled by my inability to understand the mind, was relieved to learn, paradoxically, that it was the mind that troubled me by things it found difficult to understand.

"The human heart is a mysterious thing."

"We all feel the same way."

Everyone was together... that's something that made me happy. I suddenly took my cell phone out of my pocket and looked at the photo I had taken earlier.

"We have matching ones."

When I said that, Junpei and the person walking in front of me looked a little surprised.

This time I was aware of it too. It is at times like these that humans laugh.

I am Aigis, a humanoid tactical weapon. I sometimes worry because I can't understand the human heart, but I am a lucky Anti-Shadow Suppression Weapon because there are people who care for me.

___________________________________________

¹. They're not being jerks. Aigis accidentally made a pun.

I sometimes forget Minato is there 😭

Tag List: @kerto-p

[fuck-customers]

(5/25) 🐶 biggest fucking pet peeve and also a PSA: if you’re reaching out to customer service at a company and you want a phone call, CALL THE CUSTOMER SERVICE NUMBER. we have people scheduled in specific groups, and there are specialists who only handle email/text. i agreed to work in email only so i’d stop getting screamed at over the phone. when a customer asks for a phone call, we’re expected to call despite whatever group we’re scheduled for. CALL and you’ll be connected with someone who is scheduled to be on the phone, my company is really good about wait times and you’ll almost never be waiting to speak with someone. if someone requests a call via message and the agent isn’t able to take it, it can take even more time for another agent to call them which is frustrating for us and the customer. it’s infuriating because i love this job but i hate that there’s no support from the company for specialists. was told in my group meeting today that if there’s a big phone queue, we’re expected to hop in despite never being told that 2 months into this position.

Posted by admin Rodney.

[heartbeatbookclub]

I absolutely adore all of your analysis so far, they are so indepth and it feels like you’re able to explain stuff that I’m only able to vaguely think in an abstract sense when it comes to ddlc and dhdhdj so so good

I do wanna say that for you mc analysis, there’s one thing missing. I’m someone who got into ddlc cause of plus so I have hyperfixated on all the lore. While the employees imply that Monika made MC, I don’t think that’s actually true based on what we know about Monika. If she could make a whole character then why couldn’t she make herself a route? Heck in one of her act 3 convos, she can barely change the music before saying “well I just break everything anyway”.

So I believe based on other emails, that it was Ive Laster who made MC since they were the one who wanted to make ddlc a game. In the first meeting notes, we are told that Ive tends to ramble a lot. But in the next one when MC is mentioned in a meeting, they are silent. Another thing is that in one of the ddlc plus trailers, ive is the name of the MC.

It could be said that Ive based it on the stuff in the control group, but the control group was made AFTER the main vm (That’s not how a science experiment should work but ya know, I don’t think they are smart). So really the control group is based on main game first. Honestly so much of the issue of the plus lore is how it’s so convoluted to get, but reading it all on the wiki helped me alot.

Plus seemed to add a new sense of horror to the og, the horror of knowledge that one plagued Monika is now plaguing the player as we have all this information but can do nothing to help them. I think the idea of MC being made by someone else adds this new layer to him along with this new layer of horror. But that’s more just my own thoughts on it that I thought you may find interesting along with all the lore from above.

Anyway, I hope you have a good day! Your post are great and I’ll make sure to keep up with coil more!

aw, thanks anon! i often find it difficult to find the exact way to explain what i'm thinking when i do analysis like i have on this blog, so i'm glad i can at least help to put it into words for other people who have even more trouble with it than i do.

as for the rest of your statement...i think you make a compelling point. full disclaimer; a lot of my knowledge on what's presented in + outside of the full text of the side stories is secondhand, and when talking about the original game, i think it's important to keep in mind that my reference for most of this is my playthrough with my friends back in like...2017-18ish a little after the game came out...? aheh, i won't lie, though i am rather obsessive in the course of scouring information i remember via the wiki/elsewhere to verify i'm not just making it up, putting off my replay of the og game has not been helpful for me.

i think it's very much up in the air as to how much influence that Monika actually has over the game, which is something i talked about in my analysis of Natsuki in the Side Stories. in my opinion, what + demonstrates more than anything is that in whatever she DID do in the main game, she mostly worked with material that was already there to make things easier on her. one of the things i based that claim on was the reference of the Protagonist in the Side Stories, but it's not a necessary claim, and in fact, i think you do make a good point in how it's unlikely that she'd be able to do this (at the very least, by herself) based on what's been shown of her ability in the game.

i think, in regards to your comment on the reference to MC in the Side Stories, it's important to consider the wider conceit of DDLC--i have a deeper analysis i'm tinkering around with on terms of it as an exploration of fiction vs the concept within the "universe", but that's another story--namely, all of the girls aren't (or at least, are heavily implied not to be) just static fictional characters following a pre-written script, they're genuine artificial intelligence!

this is part of what i meant when i said that the Side Stories demonstrate the raw character of each of the girls independently of any 4th wall shenanigans--within the world of Doki Doki Literature Club, they're essentially just people living in the confines of a computer, and therefore have essential, largely immutable character traits which exist within some fundamental essence of what makes them who they are. i think there are a shitload of really, really terrifying things this opens the door to if you really think about its nature (independently of DDLC, i've personally had longform discussions with a friend about the morality and potential horrors which would exist within a similar universe concept, and it's somewhat ubiquitous in a lot of sci-fi universes), but like i said, that's a different discussion entirely!

what i'm trying to suggest here is that it's likely that Sayori's relationship to the Protagonist is something inherent to her character, so it doesn't necessarily have to be something gleaned entirely from the Side Stories.

of course, this is all post hoc reasoning with what we're given! occam's razor suggests that it's actually just likely that (given that DDLC was written and released a long while prior to the Side Stories) they didn't necessarily plan every part of this from the outset, so some things just naturally seem to fit together a little weirdly, with little details added here and there just for flavor! i think that given the nature of the entire thing (and how Dan Salvato has talked about DDLC and the statements he's given with about in universe details in the past), it's unlikely that every single element of this was planned out from the word go.

this might be a bit of a controversial opinion, but there's a lot about how + handles the lore of ddlc that i didn't really like, just because it adds a whole new layer of lore and context, which soured a lot of my impressions, because the original game really flourished in its simplicity. that said, with all that's been given in the Side Stories and the deeper layers to the actual horror which are now visible in the original game, i think it pretty well makes up for it!

awa, i didn't plan for this to become an entire essay in itself...but i do appreciate this kind of thing! i really like digging deep into what's explicitly provided in canon to get a deeper understanding of the characters and universe as it's actually been shown, so any encouragement and correspondence related to either my analysis or my opinions in general are welcome! honestly, i'm also welcome to read others' analysis like this, because i like to see when people read deep into it like i do! typically it ends up reshaping how i see the entire thing, and it sorta just makes my heart happy to get people thinking about this stuff!

i think, as a last thought, if MC is actually conscious in any way similar to the other girls (which I think is a definite possibility, given his ability to respond in contexts impacted by Monika's manipulation, even if barebones), it actually makes him a very interesting character in his simplicity. i know that Dan Salvato doesn't see him as one, but i think it'd make for an interesting study in a fanfic or something.

i hope you also have a good day anon (even though it's 2 am here as i'm writing this...) and you BETTER KEEP UP W/IT I PUT MY HEART N SOUUL INTO THAT BABY (/lh /hj i'm just glad other people are liking it, even if it's just silent kudos :))

[psychosomaticdeicide]

In storytelling, there are certain mediums for stories that logistically will not work as anything else. This isn't just about adapting a story that currently exists, but what has yet to exist in the first place. Or does exist but fits strangely in its current form.

Here's an anecdote:

The one time I managed to show up for a meeting of my local writing group, I had no idea how it worked. This was a perpetual “sign up for this slot and share for criticism!” and I could not have any thoughts on the stories that had been written and shared via email. I had to experience them as read by the writer while sitting around a table.

The man running the group that week—a small-time published author���had notes and corrections written into the document of one of the people sharing. He shared with me because I had no reference for the stories being told that week. This made it incredibly challenging for me to distinguish what I was meant to be reading (or what the original work even looked like) before the person began sharing.

This gentleman in his sixties had quite a few things technically incorrect in the writing itself, I learned as I tried to follow along with the published author's notes.

However, if I stopped reading and listened, there was nothing wrong with it. He was telling a story the way stories are told. The grammatical issues and strange turns of phrase were not present in a verbal telling of his story; they were punctuations of breaths and emphasis and just the way he spoke. He was fully in his element as he read, and I wondered briefly if that would make up for the issues of “craft” as the published author had later put it.

And to this author, who believed in craft over all else, that was not enough.

I found that the gentleman's storytelling style didn't match the medium that we were "meant" to be using. The group is specified in its name to be a “writers’ group” and not a “storytellers’ group.” This means that the medium is a large part of the evaluation of the work—all of it is meant to be read as text.

As we know, a novel is different from an interactive visual novel, which may have some differences compared to text-only interactive fiction, which is different from most types of video games and their various storytelling methods, which is different from the stories a grandmother tells her grandchildren about the country she came from.

And then, of course, there are stories with timelines moving in parallel and epistolary novels and countless structures within these mediums to choose from.

But given the choice to expand your horizons and create a story in another medium, what would make the most sense?

For half my life, I’ve focused solely on linear narratives to be read rather than told, edited to neurotic degrees of what I considered “perfection” (or oftentimes, "Good enough!” and posted blindly with my eyes half-covered) at whatever time I had decided the story was complete. Now, given the tools of Twine and RPG Maker, I have more options than just a standard narrative.

At the same time, I find myself apprehensive about taking a step forward in using either of these for a project. Theoretically, I know how these stories are told. I've gone through several stories (and demos) made with Twine. I've seen environmental storytelling built through settings, item descriptions, and in-universe texts in various RPG Maker games.

In the novel Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir, we get to explore Gideon's world because she's reminiscing in the final moments before her attempt to leave all she has ever known. And then, the plot kicks in.

In the interactive fiction piece Hornets by Kitty Horrorshow, we explore the remnants of an insect-based apocalypse in the shoes of the person who caused it. We are given comparisons of what this world was like before the destruction while bearing witness to all that came after.

In the RPG Maker game Symbiosis by Spicaze, you first read the description of a situation that feels familiar, and have it changed in such a way that a stock character from a fairytale becomes a compelling protagonist. She is a witch, she lives alone in the woods, but she has a child she cares deeply for and someone has broken into her home. The beginning of the game, however, has you in the shoes of another character. It sets up stakes very nicely while exposing the things this witch doesn't want outsiders to see.

[saratravel]

So let's talk about yesterday. It's a loooong story so sit tight.

The day before as I was resting up from finishing up Vilnius sightseeing, I started looking ahead to the next days. I was to pick up a car at 8 but my hotel breakfast started at 8 and I wasn't going to pass up a free meal so I accepted that I'll get to the car around 9.

Pick up car (was going to take public transit but decided it was easier to grab a Bolt), hit up an ATM, go see castles on the way to Kaunas, see an art collection/sightsee in Kaunas to kill time until 3pm check in. Since it's a Sunday, the place I'm renting from isn't in office, but I am told everything is set up for me. This was the part that was worrying me, plus figuring out what to do with me car. There's street parking, I'm told, but the American in me is iffy about public street parking.

I fret. I fret a lot. I sleep only two hours. But there's no way out than through it, so I start my day with my breakfast and head on out. At 8, I paid the remainder of my hotel charge with my card and pay for my Bolt to the car rental.

At the car rental, I pull out my card to pay. No big deal, I've used it twice before. The guy behind the counter looks at the receipt printed in Lithuanian:

"It says the payment is over the limit?"

I freeze "....what? I have not been told about a limit."

We try again, same thing. My phone starts buzzing, informing me of the blocked charges. Usually, either by text or email, I'm able to respond somehow to say no there are valid and try again. There is no such option this time.

The cashier suggests trying to break the sum in two. The first one goes through- great! The second is blocked "the payment is over limit." So we're thinking there may be a daily limit. A daily limit I have never been informed of.

"And it's the middle of the night in the US..." says the cashier.

"I was given a 24hr number, let me go yell at someone."

I call. Robo-call answer, please give your card number to look up.... Sorry, I can't find it, let me connect you to a representative.

I wait 5 minutes. A tired call center representative picks up. "Can you give me your number...." As robotic as the robo-call machine, he says every 30 seconds, "Please wait one moment....."

Until 5 minutes later, finally, "our systems have not been working. I can try to look up your account via social security number as well...."

I explain my situation. I'm in Europe, I'm trying to rent a car.... "I would be happy to help you, but our system is down. Please call again in 1-2 hours after we have re-set the system."

"But I'm stuck here."

"I would be happy to help you, but-"

I begrudgingly thank him and hang up. I ask the cashier if it's possible to pay for the other half with a card number. It's a little embarrassing calling up Mommy to help when you're a 30 year old woman, but I know she would be happy to do all she can. But, it's about 2am where my family is, and midnight where my husband is. No one answers their phones. At a loss, I contact my friend in Norway, where it is about 8 am, to at least have someone to talk through the situation.

At this point, the worst that would really happen is I sit in a car rental waiting area until the Visa servers work. I have about 10 euros cash on me, plenty for meals here. I had eaten a big breakfast, so I wasn't hungry anyway and still had a few back-up snacks. It's a safe area, and I'm right by the airport, so I could probably find a physical exchange booth for the rest of my US cash. It is an inconvenience, but nothing is risking personal harm. I remind myself of this as I continue to problem solve.

Then, my Norwegian friend sends a life raft. He offers to front the other half. I nearly begin to cry. We have been close friends for a decade and both of us have treated the other to airfare (I had gathered money from our friend group to come visit us in America in 2015 and he and another in that group surprised me with tickets to Reykjavik in 2018). I wish I could fully put into words how much I cherish him as a friend. He demands 400 hugs as payment when we meet in Helsinki. I think I can do that (and also pay him back the money, of course).

Once the car is paid, they hand me a key and. I am on my way. It's castle day, so let's drive to the castles and call my bank again. It also happens to be Father's Day in Lithuania so the castle and outer lake area is packed. I find street parking and sacrifice 2,50 euros for an hour of parking. I use some of the time to call Visa back, as it had been about two hours since the first call. The woman who answers explains again that the servers are down but they are definately working on it. Cards have been declined and no one can access accounts, I'm so sorry for the inconvenience.

I explain my situation again.

"Oh, that is not good."

"No.... no, it's not."

"Please call back in 1-2 hours."

".....Okay, thank you."

I get out of my car and start walking to the castle. The original plan was to go inside, maybe take a tour. There are two castles in the area- one on an island and one in a peninsula. I go to the island one and try to clear my mind to enjoy the view. There are boat rentals, souvenir shops, and some interesting peddlers selling knick-knacks such as wooden bird call whistles. It's much easier to walk past when you have no money, though, so I press forward.

Along with the father's day crowd, it's also just very crowded with tourist groups. I take some pictures of the outside and inside (before the ticket booth) and give a quick walk around the outside. Then, I have an idea. A bit of a crazy one, but it may just work.

My itinerary was to do castles and Kaunas sightseeing. The next day was the big driving trip to The Hill of Crosses, roughly 2hr from Kaunas and 2hr to my next accommodations in Kleipeda. It's way out there, but this is one sight I really did not want to miss. Since the car is paid for and has a full tank of gas, and the Hill of Crosses is free to see, I would likely not need to use my card for hours. It's a 2.5 hour drive from where I was.... that should give Visa plenty of time to sort their shit out.

And this is the nice thing about solo travel. I don't need to confirm this plan with anyone else. I don't need to worry about another person's needs. Don't need to do restroom stops or food runs for anyone but me. And I grew up running up and down I35 in Texas for hours, so I'm more than ready for a spontaneous trip. I can assess myself, balance my resources, and do what I need to do for no one else but me. I hop back in my car and set off....

That's all for this post, it all resolved in the end and I have cash and can use my card again! But I need to start my day so I'll post more about the drive and The Hill of Crosses later.

[ourceliumnetwork]

So.

So...

Either my dad finally really read the last thing I sent along, or he and mom are pissy because I'm only cutting off contact with the pair of them, and not my little sister. Regardless I finally have lost access to the old email address(es) as well as the family spotify subscription and I'm going to go ahead and assume the netflix access is gone as well. It only took him...2.5 weeks. Huh. Consistent.

Other than the consistent timing between when I state a boundary and when they test the boundary, the timing is....conspicuously suspicious.

You see, today is my little sister's birthday. And I sent her a happy birthday message. I have not sent any relevant messages to other family members yet this year, except for her and our cousin who shares the birthday, because i'm consistently bad at remembering birthdays except for like. a few. I'm doing steps to remember better but I'm just bad at it. I accidentally missed my aunt's birthday, but i deliberately skipped my mom's, and I wasn't going to do anything for dad's. I also hadn't done an iota for mother *or* father's day.

So maybe it was a little petty and strategic on my part to wish my sister Happy Birthday - but I sent it via normal text message. I had no reason to believe it would get back to my parents that I'd done it. And I doubt she realized that letting them know I was still in contact with *her* would piss them off enough to start the chain of removing me from the group family stuff. Like the email server.

The last time the two of them "checked" my boundary to make sure it was solid, I'd just unfriended them both on Facebook - not even blocking yet, just unfriending, and then all of the sudden messages from them very shortly thereafter. About 6 hours, actually.

Which is about how long it was between my sister acknowledging my message to her and when I started seeing my access getting removed from stuff.

Their patterns of behavior are unbelievably consistent, and frankly i'd be impressed if it wasn't always to my detriment.

Idk, I'm...hurt? I'm hurt. I mean I expected this to happen, which is why I spent a whole day going through all of my emails and accounts to double check what was assigned to which email address and changing it all as best I could. There were a couple things I couldn't figure out how to swap but like. At this point, there are other ways to get into contact with me, and frankly I just...can't care? not about that anyway.

It's more like...if this is what you were going to do, why didn't you do it right after I told you to fuck off? Why wait around? it's been posited that they likely thought they were holding some sort of power over me by being able to remove my access to those things but like...i already had alternatives? I already planned for this. I am 30 years old, and have access to all my own shit now (or access to other peoples' shit that they're willing to share with me), i don't actually like...need their help with those things?

Besides the fact that if I needed Help I would wait until the very last possible minute to ask for that help, because no one fucking helped me when i would ask before.

I don't know. I forgot I was doing this and stepped away and also started working on my resume so i can pay the like. 2 bills i have and get gas and maybe be able to buy myself nice things? idk.

i'm mad. i'm sad. i'm smad. i'm done. idk.

[chodhound]

India 2025 - Day 1 - Calcutta/Kolkata

We travelled from dreary, damp London to Calcutta via Delhi - a 10 hour flight from London to Delhi and then a 2 hour flight from Delhi to Calcutta. The BA flight was really pretty decent although I didn't sleep - I did enjoy watching The Holdovers with Paul Giamatti and reading. Delhi airport was an experience - very busy, very hot, very confusing - getting the Visa fingerprint machine to work was difficult and then it turns out I had printed out the wrong Visa form (the application PDF rather than the text email) - but we managed to get through. We had to collect our bags and leave the terminal in order to find our connecting flight - at this stage I think I had been awake for about 25 hours and so my patience and resilience were somewhat low. We went to the wrong check-in section and had to go to the other one for seemingly no good reason. We got through that and then had to check in to our internal flight - we had travelled Business and so had three pretty heavy hold bags and had been told that we would have to pay a small charge on our internal flights because the baggage allowance was less. We got charged around £400 extra for our bags - I think there must have been some kind of mix up with the scales - I tried to argue with the man at the checkout counter (not the same person as who actually weighed the luggage) but it was no good. The security check was really chaotic with no real concept of queuing - and of course we had tons of electrical items that needed taking out and separately scanning - my solid metal champagne stopper caused much amusement (again) - what is it a knuckle duster, some kind of tool, a grenade? - no it's a bottle stopper.. Then I had the bright idea of using my Revolut card to get into the wonderful sounding Calm lounge - it was anything but - an enormous queue with guys trying a thousand different cards to try and get in for free. Of course by this stage I had paid for my pass and wasn't going to let a queue or random bureaucracy stop me from getting my supper/breakfast/lunch - the pass didn't work but eventually they let us in and I got a masala dosa and a nice coffee and an earl grey tea for Laura - Phew.

Then we arrived in Calcutta/Kolkata - the locals insist that in English we should call it Calcutta so I will - nothing can quite prepare you for Calcutta - the intensity of the traffic is incredible, every vehicle is honking, cars, taxis, buses, mopeds all fighting one another - the official 3 lane highway ends up with 5 or 6 streams of traffic - our driver was brilliant and navigated with ease. The road are busy and chaotic and the sides of the roads are full of people. We arrived at our hotel - the Elgin Fairlawn and checked in. We dropped the bags and then joined the rest of the tour for an introductory talk about the tour and the history of Calcutta. I had a head start on this because I had read most of William Dalrymple's excellent book Anarchy. We enjoyed our cocktails sitting in the lounge and then it was time for us to walk to our dinner with Bomti - a local socialite who lived an amazing flat in an old building that used to be an upmarket department store. The walk to Bomti's was quite short but in the evening rush it was fantastically intense - his two men guided the group along the street and across the roads with skill and professionalism. I loved seeing the stalls and people up close I was intoxicated by the vibrancy and noise.

Bomti's was an oasis of calm and was full of wonderful art. He has an amazing bar with over 20 types of gin (local and less so) - I enjoyed a fantastic negroni and Laura had a lovely local gin and tonic. The buffet was incredible with amazing local dishes - my highlight was a fantastic river fish in mustard sauce - but everything was outstanding. His chef was on hand to talk about the dishes and explained some of the techniques and unusual ingredients - the special Bengali lime was a key element and was particularly good when squeezed over the river fish in mustard sauce.

After lots of chat with our old friends and new it was time to walk back to the hotel through the now much quieter streets.

[mariacallous]

The Education Department is moving to lay off half of its more than 4,000 employees Tuesday evening, according to four sources inside the agency who were told about the plans.

It's not yet clear what specific department positions were affected, though officials planned to tell affected employees this evening, sources told Inside Higher Ed. The department previously offered employees buyouts to cut down on the workforce. 

Earlier on Tuesday, the department told staff that DC offices would be closed Wednesday and reopen Thursday for “security reasons,” according to an email obtained by Inside Higher Ed. One staffer said they were told by department officials that the closure was due to the reduction in force. 

The email instructed department staff to take their laptops home with them on Tuesday in order to telework Wednesday, and that they would “not be permitted in any ED facility on Wednesday, March 12th, for any reason.”

Some department staff were notified of the impending layoffs during meetings with top department officials—including an acting deputy secretary—on Tuesday afternoon, according to sources inside the department who spoke with Inside Higher Ed on background.

The expected cuts are part of a government-wide strategy to reduce the federal workforce. All federal agency officials were told last month to start preparing for a “large scale reduction in force” and eliminate all “non-statutorily mandated functions.”

While the government layoffs are wide-reaching, President Trump has frequently targeted the Education Department for cuts, even vowing to shut down the agency. That would require Congressional action, but Trump and Education Secretary Linda McMahon can make deep cuts to the agency even if they don't abolish it all together.

Trump is reportedly planning to sign an executive order directing McMahon to “take all necessary steps” to return authority over education to the states and facilitate closure of the Department of Education “to the maximum extent appropriate and permitted by law,” according to draft text reviewed by Inside Higher Ed.

Higher education groups and advocates have warned that cutting staff and programs at the department would be catastrophic for institutions and students, though critics say the agency is in need of a serious overhaul. State higher education officials, university administrators, non profit advocacy groups and students depend on the Education Department to oversee federal student aid, manage the student loan portfolio, investigate civil rights complaints and allocate billions of dollars in institutional aid, among other operations. The department, which has an $80 billion discretionary budget, issues about $100 billion in student loans and more than $30 billion in Pell Grants.

The Education Department did not respond to a request for comment Tuesday afternoon.

The massive personnel cuts—the largest in the department’s history—will likely impact most agencies and offices in the department, including the Office of Federal Student Aid, sources say. Within FSA, the cuts will be most severe among teams that work directly on policy and higher education oversight, including the Ombudsman Office, which investigates student complaints into student loan practices and financial aid.

Staffers at the Education Department have been anticipating the reduction in force for the past week. Last Tuesday, department leaders called a meeting to discuss the impending layoffs but canceled at the last minute. Meanwhile, staff have been awaiting the executive order from Trump to close down the department since last Wednesday.

“Everyone’s ready,” one exhausted staffer told Inside Higher Ed.

Other federal agencies have started to lay off thousands of employees via a planned reduction in force, a process that should give them 60 days notice. At the Environmental Protection Agency, Trump expects 65 percent of the workforce to go, according to Government Executive, a trade publication tracking the layoffs. Last week, the Veterans Affairs Department said it was laying off 80,000 people.

[iamchangingwind]

They are only upset because they know it is the people in these organizations who got most of them elected. We are the boots on the ground - knocking on doors, taking time out of our days to write postcards, make phone calls, and do text banking.

If anyone has the right to be pissed it IS US. We expect them to be out front and center speaking in public on radio and legacy media, but also on podcasts that reach both sides, about exactly what is going on, in both Houses of Congress! We understand that they are the minority - they have told us that ad nauseum. We don't care.

Stand up. Speak out. Be Counted. Go to rallies, be seen at rallies, and speak at rallies. When you come home don't make your staff stand in for you. Speak to your constituents, face to face. Have town hall meetings in person with time for constituent questions.

You are our Members of Congress, act like it. Represent us. We hired you, and we can fire you. Remember that.

Feb 11, 2025 -Politics & Policy

Scoop: Dems "pissed" at liberal groups MoveOn, Indivisible

Justin Green,

Andrew Solender

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Photo: Tierney L. Cross/Bloomberg via Getty Images

A closed-door meeting for House Democrats this week included a gripe-fest directed at liberal grassroots organizations, sources tell Axios.

Why it matters: Members of the Steering and Policy Committee — with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) in the room — on Monday complained activist groups like MoveOn and Indivisible have facilitated thousands of phone calls to members' offices.

"People are pissed," a senior House Democrat who was at the meeting said of lawmakers' reaction to the calls.

The Democrat said Jeffries himself is "very frustrated" at the groups, who are trying to stir up a more confrontational opposition to Trump.

A Jeffries spokesperson disputed that characterization and noted to Axios that their office regularly engages with dozens of stakeholder groups, including MoveOn and Indivisible, including as recently as Monday

Zoom in: "There were a lot of people who were like, 'We've got to stop the groups from doing this.' ... People are concerned that they're saying we're not doing enough, but we're not in the majority," said one member.

Some Democrats see the callers as barking up the wrong tree given their limited power as the minority party in Congress: "It's been a constant theme of us saying, 'Please call the Republicans,'" said Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.).

"I reject and resent the implication that congressional Democrats are simply standing by passively," said Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.).

The other side: "People are angry, scared, and they want to see more from their lawmakers right now than floor speeches about Elon Musk," Indivisible co-founder Leah Greenberg told Axios.

"Indivisible is urging people who are scared to call their member of Congress, whether they have a Democrat or Republican, and make specific procedural asks," Greenberg said.

"Our supporters are asking Democrats to demand specific red lines are met before they offer their vote to House Republicans on the budget, when Republicans inevitably fail to pass a bill on their own."

MoveOn officials declined to comment.

[pissvortex]

A statement from the mother of the student arrested twice by CMPD:

(text: Watching narratives on the student protests on college campuses has been interesting.

Hearing that the campuses are run by outside agitators. Hearing that the protestors are being paid. Hearing that the protestors are somehow being led.

My son was arrested at UNC Charlotte on Tuesday, May 7th at 6:40am for protesting. He was the one person arrested. He was peaceful. He did not resist arrest and calmly went with the arresting officers.

UNC Charlotte repeatedly told the press in statements that it wasn’t clear if my son was a student since he did not give his name when he was arrested. This is an obvious lie on behalf of the university, as they suspended him and banned him from campus while he was in jail, via an email- so they definitely knew his name and status.

He was bailed out of jail by fellow protestors using a bail fund that the students had all contributed to. George Soros, unfortunately, did not provide any money for the bail fund, and it was a bunch of 18 year olds who managed it.

He returned to campus in order to go to his dorm room, his cell phone was dead and he did not have his laptop, so he had not seen the email from the university which suspended him and banned his access to campus. He was arrested for second degree trespassing at 6:40pm (same day,Tuesday, May 7th). Again, he was polite and did not resist arrest. Despite the narrative that campus police and the university have told to the press, he was no where near any protest when he was arrested for a second time.

He spent the night in jail, he was seen by the bail judge at around 11:30am the next morning, and his release took until nearly 4pm to process. During his bail hearing, the public defender pointed out that he was in jail for a crime that, if he received the maximum penalty, would only warrant a fine.

The protests were non-violent. Any argument that they are antisemitic, is heavily belied by the fact that Jewish Voice for Peace is one of the main organizing groups.

In the 1980s, university students protested apartheid South Africa and demanded that universities divest from South Africa. This is the SAME request that is being made today.

News articles are heavily weighted in favor of what the university says. How many students are the reporters speaking to? Yesterday, there were twenty students downtown in front of the Mecklenburg jail all day, waiting for my son to be released. No local reporter bothered to speak with them.

My son’s name is James Benjamen Farrell. I am proud of his moral strength in standing up for what he believes in. Both of his parents are navy veterans. His father, who is his namesake, died on active duty. We are patriots in my house, and we are also believers in the need to do good in this world.

My son spent his childhood hearing me quote the following passage to him when discussing how we must live in this world and how we must care for each other: Matthew 22:34-40 (NRSVUE) 34 When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, 35 and one of them, an expert in the law, asked him a question to test him. 36 “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” 37 He said to him, “ ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the greatest and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.”

Love God. Love your neighbor.

End the slaughter of the Palestinian people. Stop using US money to pay for Israeli bombs.

My son was arrested on a university campus, where he is a student, yesterday. Across this country, many students have been arrested for protesting the horrific destruction of Palestine and the senseless killing of tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians.

There are no universities left in Palestine. Israel has destroyed them all.

I am proud of my son. A part of me certainly wishes that he was less willing to be thrown to the lions, but I am very proud of his moral strength and insistence on using his position of privilege to be a voice for others.

I am incredibly proud of my son.

I am ashamed of UNC Charlotte, the Charlotte Mecklenburg Police, and every single reporter who uncritically simply quoted UNC Charlotte.

Feel free to share this post. It is public, and I believe that the best thing we can do is amplify youth voices and do our best to correct any incorrect narratives that we hear or see.)

UNC Charlotte Encampment crackdowns

Please check my twitter threads and the unccencampment instagram for updates as the University administration and local newspapers are completely ignoring the reporting from the campus news and spreading absurd lies in order to justify police crackdown

[theretirementstory]

27/10/2024. Greetings from Bar-sur-Aube, have you enjoyed your extra hour in bed? I took advantage of my hour by reading longer on Saturday night before I settled down to sleep.

It’s a lovely morning, currently 14c but we can expect 21c.

I was in Paris on Monday for the result of my PET scan, it wasn’t good news but you just have to take it on the chin. My treatment has been stopped but I am at home doing what I enjoy most. Fortunately we have had some lovely sunny days so I have been in the garden laying more cardboard and bark.

My journey to Troyes on Wednesday took me via Baroville (home to Barfontarc Champagne) then we picked up a couple of people in Urville (home to Drappier Champagne). I love all these champagne houses in little villages so close to my home.

STOP PRESS: This morning I have received a text from the hospital in Paris confirming an appointment for me with “Imagerie” on Tuesday. News to me, I have not received any phone call or “convocation” by post or email. That means that tomorrow I will need to book a taxi 😩, such short notice! I emailed the doctor at Troyes who has not been advised of this appointment but he suspects that it is for the biopsy with a gynaecologist.

This may not seem funny to you, but consider the fact that my French is somewhere between beginner and intermediate, that in France they don’t expect anyone to be gesticulating from an upstairs window and holding a conversation with someone so many metres away that the conversation is quite a few decibels above “talking”. Well that was me on Thursday! I was up, breakfasted then just catching up with bits and pieces before going to “do my ablutions” shock horror there was no water! I checked my letter box, no notice confirming cutting the water, it was like a ghost town on the estate no sign of any of my neighbours. Well I decided to dress 🤫 and as I opened the shutters I saw a guy across the road in the workshop yard, he was standing outside a van used by the water company. After he finished his phone call, I began gesticulating and shouting Monsieur. He eventually noticed me and when I said the water was cut off he said it was probably the workmen up or down the road (I had already surmised that much). Anyway, I nodded shouted “Merci beaucoup” and prepared to go to the shop. As I got further along my road a group of people were having a “chinwag” , I excused myself to ask if their water was off too, they said it was and pointed in the direction of the workmen. As I was walking up the road, the guy I had “hollered” to drove past me and stopped at the workman, he was having a chat with them and the next minute I saw a guy with what I would call “a key” it was on a long pole and he was scurrying down to another dug up area to ( and here I assumed) turn the water back into the estate. Sure enough when I got home about 30 minutes later, the water was restored. My question here is, had these French people just accepted that the water was off without questioning why we had not been advised? Did they really want to leave it to “the Englishwoman who can shout like a fish wife?”

I have seen Anie and Monique this week, both came bearing windfall apples and I guess I will have to get them sorted up and either frozen or cooked. As always Anie brought me some flowers from her garden, she knows I really appreciate these, it’s such a lovely thing to do.

Pauline has texted me, telling me she has been for interviews, she is keeping her fingers crossed that she is successful. She told me that the spots on her legs, she thought were bites, are actually scabies! 😱

I have had an estate agent here this week to give me an up to date valuation on my house. Not that I am considering moving home but because if anything happens to me it helps my executors. With that thought in mind to, I am considering selling my car, which I am unable to drive (while platelets are so low) it seems pointless it just sitting in the garage.

As you can see I am looking to get my affairs in order. There is no time like the present!

As well as laying more cardboard and bark, I have been working on my jigsaw, there is not much more to do and I was going to give myself up to it today, but maybe I have plenty of other things to do, preparing for Tuesday.

My grandchildren have been making pumpkin lanterns, my granddaughter has made one with a cats face and my grandson (I suspect with Mummy’s help) has made the usual ghoulish face.

The music part of the blog features a favourite singer of mine, it’s Gerry Rafferty with “Right Down The Line” from 1978. The second song is by Stevie Nicks, with Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers, it’s “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around” from 1981.

So, as we move towards the last days of October, I am hoping for more autumn sunshine (which we have at the moment), hopefully a less hectic schedule (I don’t like these 04:30 wake ups) and time to see friends. My American friend is coming back to her home in town so we are looking forward to catching up.

No updates on family this week, suffice it to say they are well, although both “The Solicitor” and “The Recovery Coordinator” have both had the lurgy. “The Photographer” has moved house once again, hopefully this will be a longer arrangement. Plus “The Jetsetter” hit the wilds of Co. Durham and had to endure an interrogation in a Farm Shop 😂😂.

The photos this week are from Fontaine, the little white dots are actually the paragliders. The second photo is of, what is stated as a boys school, in the 12th arrondissement in Paris.

Have a good week until next week 👋.