#up results 2020

[erufin-art]

Figured I should maybe post some of the droners stuff I've made

[curioscurio]

Got up early (for me), ate a light and healthy breakfast, applied to some jobs, took a long mental health walk with the dogs, gave one of them a bath, and even did some phone calls and messaging regarding my medication and pharmacy problems and managed to sort it out without breaking down!!! And! Showered!! Kicking ASS at mental health today

[kingofthewilderwest]

top 5 songs featuring a banjo

Oh. Oh. AUGH. What a prompt. What a PROMPT. Oh this is hard. I love this. This. This is good. But AUGH!

I will be sitting here in pained indecision forever unless I create my own restrictions.

I am taking the brash liberty of changing this to top 5 songs featuring Earl Eugene Scruggs on banjo. And rapidly writing some of the first songs I recall before I get into debates with myself over the top 300 songs I love.

Foggy Mountain Breakdown (1949)

Flint Hill Special (1952)

Brother, I'm Getting Ready to Go (1951)

Dear Old Dixie (1952)

Shuckin' the Corn (1957)

I'm a basic bitch but I regularly scream and collapse into a puddle of crying Haddock at these ones so I think that's a great list.

Also gotta shout out the iconicness of Molly and Tenbrooks, the sweet sweet juiciness of Earl Boi playing Sally Goodin unaccompanied, Roll in My Sweet Baby's Arms (HOW IS THIS NOT ON THE TOP FIVE AUGHHH????!?!?! IT SHOULD BE! FIVE IS A SMALL NUMBER! FIVE IS AN OFFENSIVE NUMBER! UGH THIS IS ONE OF THE BEST BL--- [voice fades into garbled cries of Haddock outcries]), Polka on a Banjo because it's just so happy, My Saro Jane though that's more about the energy of the song as a whole, and Nashville Blues for being the first song I tried learning on banjo (and did good for my newbness, for the record! yaaaaay~)

And now I'm going to be listening to Flatt and Scruggs all day at work THANKS A LOT ughhhh why does the banjo have to BE SO DELICIOUS I WANT TO CONSTRICT AND SWALLOW IT WHOLE LIKE A PYTHON AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

[chocosvt]

thinking of honey boy compared to her makes me laff 😭 i can't reread honey boy anymore bc at the time i had already proofread it enough to act it out on stage lmao, but sometimes i trace scenes back just to see if i can still enjoy it. which i do!!!

but in terms of my writing, honey boy is like a little toy block while her is this massive play structure 🥹 but i think that just comes from the differences in plot. honey boy is not rly supposed to be a super deep narrative, it's more romancey and fun and flirty and sometimes it gets a little messy but it's easy mess. so i think it's more digestable!

but her is not like that. it's just too nuanced. the characters are soo layered in comparison. and it's depressing 😭 you rly have to work to reach the payoff/catharsis and to me, that's what hits the nail on the head. like i absolutely need the suffering, the angst, the turmoil, the tension, the horrible fallout, the bitter acceptance, having to live with your choice, and the slow rekindling. and by that point you're so freaking desperate u could cry 😍 those b1tches touched hands! win.

IDK. is this a confession that i like being emotionally edged? 😭 ejriwuhfgeurghwg honey boy is my blog's magnum opus and i understand why :3 but it's like.. damn... her is not the same. i think if i were a reader/outsider to my work, honey boy is effortless to revisit. but i would have to be in a certain mood to engage with her just bc of the emotional baggage 🤔 or pushed to the edge of having a breakdown and this story is my safety cushion wuefhwiquf

[the-hilda-librarians-wife]

Happy New Year!!

*pops grape juice bottle* woooo we’ve made it, guys!

2023 was such a nice year in the fandom, in my opinion. There was s3 and that was a banger, but I feel like the stuff we were up to ourselves over here was amazing too. I got to talk more with some of my mutuals who I hadn’t been as close to before, and lovely people keep coming to this corner of the internet!! We had our first sketchbook event and are currently preparing for a general Hilda Appreciation Week, I feel like this is all amazing considering the size of this community.

Just wanted to thank everyone who’s been here for the ride as well! It’s certainly always more fun when you have people to be insane with you. I just. Get very touched thinking about the amount of support in this fandom and how we creatively fuel each other.

Anyway, just wanted to write this post as a thank you. I hope you’re having a lovely end of the year, and may 2024 be even better 💜

(I do have one small writing update to add, though! The first months of the year will probably be relatively devoid of new content from me. This for two reasons. One is that I churned out so many fics this year that I feel like even the people who like my writing are having a hard time catching up (I don’t know how this happened either-), and the other is that I’ll be using my free time to get ahead on preparing my content for the rest of the year! I won’t completely stop or anything (Hilda Appreciation Week will see to that), just wanted to leave this noted so no one things I’ve Vanished from the fic writing scene or anything. I’m just preparing my next attack. Anyways that was it happy new year!!)

[gh-0-stcup]

My thing is that I just do not trust a single person who was involved in the show. It just seems like a lot of PR to fix their image and foster sympathy/goodwill/interest.

[reginageourge]

How does it feel knowing that a discourse you started has goldstars and non-goldstars fighting to this day even though you're barely active these days?

well tbf I didn't start anything, my anons did and I happened to agree. I just had a large enough following at the time for it to actually get noticed™️ by radblr at large and turn into something that has very much escaped the confines of my blog.

[lottieurl]

i love when jiu's randomly swaying on camera lmao like yay we are in sync

[cuteniaarts]

@katkastrofa: *writes a single throwaway line in one chapter of Lost and Found that is never referenced again*

Me, completely randomly and with no prompting: Alright, bet–

[crossbackpoke-check]

about to be sooo nosy so. my apologies. but. morgan frost? girlfriend? do share (or don’t! again this is so nosy i’m sorry)

for legal purposes i can neither confirm nor deny anything about morgan and his girlfriend but afaik i think he’s single right now? at one point (within the past four years 😭) he did for sure have a girlfriend and that is the extent of my wag knowledge

[tomswifty-fr]

@everysinglepheell I have not shared it! As far as I know

my beautiful handsome furry daughter

[rockman-x]

yeah the highest score is the type i'm almost sure i am

[bsaka7]

screaming Peter cech is now a semi pro ice hockey goalkeeper??? WHAT a post career hobby?????

[etceterabd]

FREELANCING TIPS

[what-eats-owls]

So there's something I want to say re: intentionally withholding your vote, and I want to do it without coming across as condescending or dismissive.

I've worked as a field organizer in two campaigns, 2010 and 2012, and my job was to help turnout the vote for Democratic candidates up and down the ticket. Technology may have changed, but people are still knocking on doors for specific voters the way they were 12 years ago.

If you say you're not voting/voting 3rd party, the campaign volunteer is supposed to mark that and move on. Their job, in the final month of the election, is to make sure the campaign's supporters have all the information and resources they need to cast a vote.

They aren't collecting data on why you're withholding your vote. They aren't submitting opinion polling results to the campaign. Something like 155 million people voted in the 2020 election, and if you say you're not voting, the campaign is not going to waste a volunteer's time and morale begging you to vote when there are literally millions of other voters to turn out.

Let me repeat that: The campaign does not track why you're not voting. They simply note your vote is not a priority for turnout and move on.

I say this because I see a lot of promotion of non-voting like that's a boycott, when the function is not the same. A boycott is a coordinated mass refusal to engage with an institution—which sounds similar if you see a vote as a good or service to withhold. Unfortunately, it's not.

A vote is a choice you're making as part of a community hiring committee. Your abstention doesn't prevent someone from being hired. It just lowers the threshold for the worst candidate to succeed.

All this to say: In my direct experience as an organizer, abstaining from the vote sends a message. That message is not "You need to try harder to win my vote." It's "Don't waste time on me."

[embervoices]

A very useful thread on Bluesky:

(There is a lot more. Rather than give you all the images, I've copied the full text below.)

Meredith Rose‬ ‪@mrose.ink‬ November 8, 2024

This is not going to be a repeat of 2016-2020. It will be better, it will be worse, but most of all it will be different. Here are things I want every single person to keep in mind as we head into round 2 of a Trump admin.

My credentials: I’m a queer female public interest attorney working on tech policy in DC. I’ve been doing this for a decade--longer than some, not as long as others. I had to navigate three different administrations, as well as Congress, regulatory agencies, courts, and the advocacy world.

FIRST: don’t let despair override your media literacy.

The left has grifters, just like every other movement. If you’re able and compelled to donate, give to orgs with established track records. Avoid giving to individuals, especially anyone who emerges overnight with a one-weird-trick “plan.”

The left is not immune to misinformation, and everyone—EVERYONE—falls for it sometimes, present company included. There is no shame in it. When (not if) it happens to you, you should acknowledge it; delete or retract the post to reduce the spread; and move on.

If a source consistently shares half-truths or outright misinformation, it is not trustworthy, no matter how much “their heart is in the right place.” Unfollow and move on.

Prediction, analysis, and reporting are three fundamentally different things. Learn to identify them for what they are. Reject attempts by amateur “analysts” to predict the future. They know as much as you do.

Real subject matter experts know and acknowledge their limits. They’re also (usually) hesitant to try and predict the future. The best frame their predictions in terms of a range of possible outcomes. Subject matter experts may also disagree with one another! It happens!

SECOND: What we know for sure about how the Trump, how he operates, and how that will impact the next four years.

Trump is a narcissist who avoids reading and doesn’t care about details. He cannot be persuaded by argument or logic; he’s moved mostly by flattery, and will agree with the last person who flattered him. He can and will upend his own administration’s work without warning, often by tweet.

As a result, most policy experts—even those "on his side"—dread him taking an interest in their field. Ask any Republican staffer who worked in Congress during the last administration, and most of them will confirm that their greatest fear was Trump tweeting about anything related to their work.

As such, people who are serious about their work will do everything to make it as invisible and boring-seeming as possible. This is the policy equivalent of defensive camouflage. Lots of “normie” work will continue in silence. (The lion’s share of tech policy ends up in this bucket.)

If you have a niche issue that you care about, now is a great time to donate to orgs that work on it. Lots of money will be funneled to big legacy orgs working on headline issues: ACLU, climate change orgs, etc. Consider sending your donations where they matter most: local, niche, established.

Trump runs his cabinet like the Apprentice. He thrives on chaos and making people compete for his approval. Not only does he not reward collaboration between his subordinates, he actively undermines it.

Moreover, everyone who works with him knows that they’re vulnerable to being thrown under the bus at a moment’s notice, for any reason (or for no reason at all). His cabinet is going to be scorpions in a bottle. They will not be able to coordinate, for good or ill.

One scorpion can still do a lot of horrific damage. But large scale inter-agency coordination is unlikely, particularly after the first few months, by which point he will likely (prediction warning!) have gone through a handful of cabinet secretaries already.

FINALLY: The view from inside civil society heading into 2025.

In 2016, Trump was a largely unknown quantity. The left and establishment right alike wasted a lot of time trying to read tea leaves and make sense of this guy, because he was completely outside the realm of what anyone had dealt with. That’s not happening now.

He did us a favor by broadcasting his plans in advance (aka Project 2025). Civil society has spent the last 2.5 years strategizing around it. We’re not starting off flat-footed.

The Biden admin did a good amount to future-proof its own achievements. Folks can speak to their own areas of expertise, but clean energy and CHIPS and Science Act (investing in domestic semiconductor production) have benefitted from huge sunk investments. That money’s not getting clawed back.

OVERALL TAKE-AWAYS:

It's going to suck. But civil society and the political left have some advantages we didn't have last time. We know him, we know his angles, and we know who he's bringing in--none of which we had in 2016.

We'll get through this. It will be grim, but we'll get through it.

John Cutting‬ ‪@johncutting.bsky.social‬

Thanks Meredith. I really valued your analysis over the past few years, and I think this is a reasonable, actionable framework to think about the upcoming storm

Meredith Rose‬ ‪@mrose.ink‬

I really cannot overstate how much time was (necessarily) wasted in 2017 trying to figure out this guy and his influences. The fact that he's not only a known quantity, but ran the most over-studied administration in this nation's recent history, makes this a very different game.

John Cutting‬ ‪@johncutting.bsky.social‬

I bet we can weaponize his narcissism. Let's say some ghoul starts making progress with a mass deportation effort, if we start calling that ghoul that "shadow president" en masse, Trump would fire him in right away and appoint Hulk Hogan or something

‪Meredith Rose‬ ‪@mrose.ink‬

This is exactly why I don't think Musk will last very long. Trump is very clear that he's the only one in the room allowed to have an ego or any kind of brand name.