#Some Americans talk about other countries as if they’re just made up places

[openconceptpanicroom]

IMAGINE BEING AN: American student at JJK

2006!Geto x fem!reader

2006!Gojo x fem!reader

Summary: Your first few months as an American at Tokyo Jujutsu High. Shoko is the best.

Note: fluff, hints of pining, flirting, culture clash antics.

Coming in as the new girl is never easy. Especially not when you’re in a completely different country with different social norms and rules.

Sure, your Japanese was passable, but you weren’t conversational yet. And there were so many rules to follow when speaking to someone. It was enough to make you mute for the first two weeks of school. Sometimes guys would approach you and you would get excited, thinking they were flirting with you… only to find out they wanted you to tutor them in English. Other students were nice enough to only talk about you behind your back. American bullies are way more straightforward. It was sorta refreshing to just be politely shunned as opposed to being loudly excluded like you were used to.

The first person to be nice to you was Ieiri Shoko. She was laidback, knew a surprising amount of English, and could see you needed a friend. She taught you better phrases to use in conversation, “So you won’t sound like a freakin’ textbook,” she’d say. You started hanging out with her outside of class too. Shoko knew good places to eat and spots in Tokyo that weren’t terribly crowded. The only problem(s) were those two guys she had hanging around her all the time.

Gojo Satoru and Geto Suguru.

Those two were the superstars of the school. Two students who were guaranteed to be the strongest sorcerers alive once they graduated. Everyone adored them, except for a few sensible people. You would ask about them sometimes. Mainly things like: “Are they like, always like that?” or “How do you stay sane around them!?”

Geto was polite. You could say that much. Other than that, you found him very intimidating. This tall, lanky young sorcerer with piercing dark eyes and that mocking smirk. He had some, uh, interesting thoughts about America. Nothing you hadn’t heard before. Americans were lazy, arrogant, thought the world revolved around them. What irked you was when he said that American sorcerers “mix too much,” with ordinary folk. The day you caught him staring at you, you left class to “go to the bathroom,” and just didn’t come back. It took a long chat with Shoko to be convinced he wasn’t going to corner you in an alley and kill you. Geto would speak to you only in Japanese, and he would speak slowly. Like you were an idiot. The nicest thing he had said to you in those early days was a bit conceited. He’d complimented you by saying, “I’ve heard of your family. They’re a modest bloodline, I wouldn’t have assumed you came from them… they must be proud of you.”

Gojo was the most irritating. Surprisingly loud and cocky, totally unlike most of the boys you had met so far. And, unlike most boys, he would not stop pestering you about American pop-culture. He knew absolutely no English, except for dated quotes or catchphrases from movies. Sometimes he would shout your name just so he could say something corny like, “Stay golden, Ponyboy.” You were certain he was making fun of you. And, like Geto, you were very intimidated by the most powerful student in school.

He also had no concept of personal space and had made it his mission to get you to talk. Which meant a lot of him popping up out of nowhere and slinging an arm around you. There were a lot of jealous girls that assumed you were dating. All he wanted was to have bragging rights that he got you to talk. Needless to say, Gojo was devastated when he found out Shoko was talking to you outside of class. It had been a nice day, Shoko was going to meet up with you at a park to get sorbet and chat. Then Gojo found her.

“She talks to you? To you?!” Birds took off to the skies. An elderly woman shot him a dirty look, dropping her handful of birdseed before hobbling away.

Shoko took a drag of her cigarette, “Yup.”

Gojo flopped down onto the seat next her. She hoped he wouldn’t be too obnoxious, this was a public park “But I was supposed to be the one to break down her walls!”

“Maybe if you weren’t so pushy, she would talk to you,” she deadpanned.

They continued to bicker, with Gojo insisting he had been nothing but an excellent ambassador of good will and Shoko calling him an idiot. You had showed up to hang out with Shoko, only to freeze when you saw Gojo. Just as you tried to sneak off, you bumped into Geto. This casual hangout with Shoko had turned into a foursome and neither boy was letting you weasel out of it.

Thankfully, Shoko kept you calm enough to have a good time.

With how sheltered Gojo had been, there were aspects of his own culture that were novel to him. There were lots of movies and tv shows that were new to you both. Not to mention junk food. Gojo needed Shoko to help him translate certain things, but he was actually a fun guy. He kept you laughing most of the time. If only he would stop hugging you from behind like he was your boyfriend. Geto was quiet, trying to absorb the sound of your voice. Listening to how you pronounced words in English and Japanese. He would never say it out loud, but he found your interest in the temples and folklore to be cute. He did join Gojo in teasing you. Both boys tried to get you to call them by their first name. Insisting “No, no! It’s fine! No need to be formal. We’re all friends now, right?”

You took a swig of yuzu flavored cream soda and said in Japanese, “I know what first names mean here. We aren’t close enough for that, people at school would think we’re dating.” With a pout you added in English, “And no hot guy is worth getting torn to shreds by a jealous fan club.”

Geto only leaned down to you, smirking as he said, (in English) “Then you can call me Suguru… in private.”

You gagged on your drink. This was how you found out Geto Suguru knew five different languages fluently. Gojo begged Geto and Shoko to translate what was said. You just focused on calming down. What a lovely start to an awkward friendship.

#jjk imagines #jjk x reader #jjk #shoko ieiri #geto suguru #gojo satoru #geto x reader #gojo x reader #gojou satoru x reader #geto suguru x reader

[allwaswell16]

This is a fic rec of One Direction marking fics where a character is marked in some way by another character (drawing, tattoos, bites, etc) as requested in this ask. If you enjoy the fics, please leave kudos and comments for the writers! You can find my other fic recs here. Happy reading!

- Louis/Harry -

🖊️ got the sunshine on my shoulders by @hattalove

(E, 124k, drawing) five years ago, harry styles left his tiny home town to make it big as a recording artist. he didn't have much regard for what he left behind - a life, a family, and a husband, who woke up one morning to find him gone.

🖊️ 2012 'Verse (series) by @ashavahishta

(E, 102k, marking) Louis would be embarrassed by how his voice goes all low and husky, but it’s no secret between the two of them that he likes to leave marks.

🖊️ Until I Found You by dimpled_halo / @comebackassholes

(E, 45k, love bites) What happens when the opportunity that Louis has been waiting for finally comes, but at the price of having to share the stage with one Harry Styles?

🖊️ through walls of trees by @ineverateakiwi

(T, 41k, bond mark) Elesdon is a country divided into five kingdoms and had long been considered peaceful. After a coup in the heart of the country, Lady Sulia ascended to the throne and imprisoned the four courts, stripping them of their powers. With the exception of King Louis Tomlinson, who submitted to her favors.

🖊️ little wings on my shoes by @juliusschmidt

(M, 39k, love bites) The American High School AU in which no one is cool (except Niall) and Harry wears a rainbow bracelet.

🖊️ some things fade (some never do) by we_are_the_same / @so-why-let-your-voice-be-tamed

(T, 25k, magical tattoos) Three years after their break up, Harry calls.

🖊️ It's Been Ages by @2tiedships2

(NR, 13k, love bites) “We need to talk,” Niall said as he plopped down on Louis’ bed. “It’s you and Harry. You like him, he likes you, it’s a match made in heaven and you will one day be mates."

🖊️ where your lips land by BriaMaria / @briannamarguerite

(E, 12k, drawing & tattoos) the Tyler Knott Gregson-inspired AU where Louis is a poet who lives in Montana and Harry is a photographer passing through.

🖊️ Just a touch of your love by @thegirlontheblackhoodie

(E, 12k, love bites) Harry is a touch starved omega trying to get through it on his own. Louis happens to be the only alpha around to realize it and offers to help.

🖊️ See You When I Get Home by @fournipplesau

(E, 10k, love bites) "What are you thinking about?" He repeats Louis' question from earlier. "You." Louis' reply comes out in a moan. It shocks Harry, and his brain scrambles for the right thing to do, the right thing to say. He doesn't even know how to feel, or if he even heard Louis correctly. "Me?"

🖊️ Drawn to You by @lululawrence

(NR, 8k, soulmarks) Through the years, the random drawings had evolved and changed. There was a period in sixth form when his soulmate must have gotten shy or something, because the drawings only happened after school hours and in places that others wouldn’t be as likely to see.

🖊️ don't let nobody touch it (unless that somebody's me) by stylescantstop

(E, 8k, love bites) the one where harry dances with other men and a jealous louis reminds him he's the only one who can make him come completely apart.

🖊️ You can remain unaware (if you want) by harryanthus

(NR, 7k, soulmarks) the au where soul marks get coloured when they realise they’re in love with their soul mate and Harry has a coloured soul mark, Louis doesn’t.

🖊️ Sex Drunk Suckerpunch by thinlines / @thinlinez

(E, 7k, marking) Sugar Baby Louis did what any sugar baby should avoid doing but (clichely) end up doing anyways, that is, failing for his sugar mama.

🖊️ Hello Darling by zanni_scaramouche / @zanniscaramouche

(E, 5k, love bites) A city wide blizzard warning, a power outage, and a dismal lack of tea leaves him hours away from what he expects to be one of the more pathetic Christmas mornings of his life. That is, until the new bright eyed intern scares the living crap out of him.

🖊️ Now When I Think of Love it's Redefined by Moriartied / @adidasandangelwings

(E, 3k, marking) The love story of Harry and Louis. (From the XFactor up through their first big fight.) Part 4 of Group Dynamics

🖊️ can't stop lookin' at you by runaways

(E, 2k, love bites) Harry wears little red shorts. Louis is quite fond of them.

- Rare Pairs -

🖊️ Make Your Mark by LadyAJ_13 / @ladyaj-13

(T, 3k, Liam/Louis) When one of Liam's classmates isn't getting the hint that he's not interested, Louis suggests they make him look unavailable.

#ficrec #1dficvillage #marking #trackinghome #trackinghappily #hltracks #hlcreators #hljournal #larry fanfiction #lilo fanfiction

[beedlemania]

The boys all probably have their own collections of things. What do you think they collect and is there any reason why they collect those?

That’s a tough question!

I think both Micky and Davy collect shells. The only difference is Micky collects anything he likes and Davy only collects the ones that are perfect and not cracked. It makes sense since they’re beside the beach and every time they bring in a new haul, Mike puts some of their old ones back outside because it’s like an invasion and they don’t even notice anyhow.

I think the other obvious one is Peter collects records. He’ll save up as often as he can and make a big deal of finally buying one. He can spend hours searching for the perfect one and then he’ll play it over and over again until he can afford a new one. He built a little shelf next to the record player so he can display his favourite ones and he loves to talk about them to anyone who will listen.

Micky collects snowglobes. I feel like his family travelled a lot when he was a kid so he has one for every American state and maybe some other countries. When Davy goes back to England he makes him bring him back a snowglobe so Davy gets him one from all the major cities he can manage to get to on his visit. Micky collects these because it reminds him of all the places he’s been and all the memories attached to them and it helps him when he’s homesick.

Mike collects something a bit more random like stamps. He saves all the stamps off every letter they receive or if he sees a cool one in the post office. I’m not sure if Americans have special stamps for special occasions but if they do, he collects them all. He has a scrapbook dedicated to them which he hides on his bookshelf and he doesn’t admit it to anyone because he thinks it’ll make him look old or uncool. He can’t remember when he started collecting or why but he loves to keep them, especially if they’re from a special letter from home or a check for a gig.

Davy I think collects stuff from each date he’s on (a ticket, or receipt, or a written phone number) and he has a journal where he puts them and writes about each date/girl. He does this because it’s fun but he doesn’t show anyone in case they think it’s shallow. It’s hard for him to remember all the dates he’s been on but he loves to read back over his journal and remember how much fun he had and whatnot.

Peter loves trinkets in general. There’s always something new on display in the pad and peter never explains where he gets them from. He has a whole collection of ceramic animals that he keeps in his bedroom because he’s given them all names and likes to say goodnight to them all individually. He’ll see them in shops or sometimes in the trash and he’ll feel bad for them and take them home.

Davy collects playbills, even if he can’t afford to go to the show. Hes always at the ticket office collecting the posters or whatever he can get his hands on and he pins them all to the wall above his bed. If he gets one he hasn’t heard of or can’t go see, he’ll make up the plot/songs in his head (which is where his songs for the band come from eg My Share of the Sidewalk). For his birthday the guys all save up to take him to a musical he’s been wanting to see since forever and Davy puts the playbill for it right in the middle of his collection.

Mikes guilty pleasure is collecting toy cars. He gets all the different types of models he can get. He hides them in case the others think they’re silly toys but Micky finds them and they bond over their favourite cars and Micky starts adding to the collection. For his birthday one year, Micky makes mike a small model car either whittled from wood or made from scraps of other projects he works on.

Micky tries to start a collection of puppets/dummies at one point but it freaks Peter out so Mike makes him get rid of them. They keep Mr. Schneider though because there’s just something about him…

#feel free to add your own!! #id love to know what you guys think the guys collect #its a good way to character study i think #the monkees #davy jones #mike nesmith #peter tork #micky dolenz #monkees headcannons

[fymoonbyul]

[INTERVIEW] MAMAMOO Talks Excitement for Their First American Tour and Meeting Their U.S. Moomoo

MAMAMOO are some of the fastest-growing stars in K-pop, and in less than a week, the sensations are set to make their American debut on the U.S. leg of their first-ever World Tour, "MY CON."

The quartet recently returned from a sold-out Asia World Tour across Japan, China, Taiwan, Thailand, Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia and the Philippines, but the magic is only getting started. The nine-date U.S. tour kicks off on May 16 in New York City before wrapping up on the other side of the country in Los Angeles on June 4, and it seems the four are just as excited to come to the States and meet their U.S. Moomoo fandom as we are to see them. Ahead of the tour, we got the chance to chat with the icons about the tour and what it means to them to be coming to America. Read the full interview below.

Sweety High: What does the name "MY CON" mean to the group? Why did that feel like the perfect name for this tour?

MAMAMOO: "MY CON" is where Mamamoo and Moomoo become one, so it truly means it's everyone's concert. It allows us to cherish the precious moments when we get together with our dear Moomoo.

SH: How excited are you to tour in the U.S. for the very first time?

SOLAR: I'm very anxious but also excited. I recently heard that our pre-sale tickets were sold out. It made me feel apologetic to all the Moomoo who have waited for so long, and it also got me determined to put my all into this tour. I'm also curious about what the U.S. Moomoo will be like, how they will react and how they will enjoy our stage. I'm honestly looking forward to everything.

HWA SA: I'm so nervous wondering what the U.S. Moomoo will be like. In general, just thinking about the tour gives me butterflies.

SH: Are there any songs that you're most looking forward to performing for your American audience?

MOON BYUL: Honestly, I would love to show every stage possible. We haven't performed much for U.S. Moomoo so far, so we'd love to show them everything we have.

WHEE IN: I would love to show as much as we can. But if I had to choose, I would like to perform our title songs since they're fun songs we can all dance to.

SH: Is there a specific type of energy you're anticipating from American MooMoos that might be different from your fans elsewhere?

SOLAR: I'm really looking forward to how fun it'll be, bonding with U.S. Moomoo through our performances.

SH: Is there one American city you're most excited to visit? Is there anything big outside of your performances that you plan to do while you're in the U.S.?

WHEE IN: It's so difficult to choose, and truly, every city is a place I've been longing to visit. Besides performing, I'd love to enjoy the scenery and take some nice, quiet walks around the neighborhood!

HWA SA: I'm looking forward to L.A., and I'm curious about Las Vegas as well. But honestly, I would love to visit any city.

SH: Is there anything else you'd like to add?

SOLAR: Thank you for waiting! Hey Moomoo legggggggo❤

MOON BYUL: As we're finally keeping our promise—that we'll go wherever our Moomoo are—we are so happy and excited to go on this tour! Let's make lots of wonderful memories!

WHEE IN: It's been a long time since our last visit to the States. Thank you so much for waiting and for your sustained anticipation.

HWA SA: Since this is our first tour in the States, we were all very nervous and even slightly worried about Moomoo turnout. But now, we're just purely excited, and we'll be there super soon!

Check out the full "MY CON" tour schedule below:

May 16 – New York, New York

May 18 – Baltimore, Maryland

May 20 – Atlanta, Georgia

May 22 – Nashville, Tennessee

May 24 – Fort Worth, Texas

May 27 – Chicago, Illinois

May 31 – Glendale, Arizona

June 2 – Oakland, California

June 4 – Los Angeles, California

#mamamoo #moonbyul #solar #wheein #hwasa #ot4 #era:mic on #t:interview #230511

[archerygun]

Post-War London Dr. Who companion

They don’t even know what a banana is, nevermind the aliens. All they know is smog and cans of spam.

They have the exact same reaction to outer space/universes beyond our comprehension as they do to like… Brazil. They form a conspiracy theory that the Americans are descended from aliens and refuse to drop it because the notion of America as a country is just so strange to them they struggle to comprehend it. They ask all the aliens they meet if they know the Americans much to the doctor’s embarrassment.

They go to London in the modern day and they’re like “Okay… not much has changed.”

But they’re taken to a slightly different part of England in the same year, same everything and they’re like

“Wow, Doctor! What planet is this?!”

“………..this is Coventry.”

They will eat literally anything from any era or planet. I mean it beats rationing, amarite? And plus, people came up with some weird recipes during rationing. (Or just. Y’know. Use carrots for everything.)

They go back home for an episode and tell all these colourful stories to the people they know, their family, their football mates, and everyone thinks they’ve gone mad but they’re so intrigued! And it brings some light into the lives of people that really, really need it.

They’re bright and cheery and resilient in the face of danger because they grew up in the aftermath of ‘blitz spirit’ where people had to keep calm and carry on otherwise the stress of the situation would completely break them. Maybe sometimes they share little tidbits of their home life and the doctor is just stunned by how thrilled they are about such small things that seem so pathetic and trivial to a nigh-immortal alien.

They talk about playing football in the smog when you couldn’t even see the other side of the pitch and how it made playground games much more exciting as a kid (The doctor is very concerned for their health). They talk about how much fun they used to have playing on old bomb ruins with their friends. They talk about the pranks they pulled at school and how their education was completely useless but they had a jolly good time being educated, despite the beatings. They know how to find joy in difficult places and situations.

Maybe every once in a while they drop a short sad bit like “Oh, I never saw my parents’ wedding photos myself. Their best friends had them in their house during the war, you see, and I’m afraid the bombs took the photos with them.” or “My mother cried when I turned eighteen because I was old enough now to be sent away to war if things turned sour with Russia.” but they say it cheerily and almost seem not to realise the tone of the conversation has gone down because everyone has stories like that, don’t they?

They take home souvenirs from every adventure they go on with the doctor and in episodes where they go home they slowly build up a display for them in their family home.

#dr who #dr who companion #british tv #british history #post-war britain #history #historical fiction #20th century #the doctor #doctor who #y’all can guess how much of this comes from personal experience lmao #all i’ll say is my grandad is best known for his first encounter with a banana #english people #british #uk #historical companions

[mitchipedia]

American Gentry

Much of America is governed by a class of wealthy gentry—not billionaires but not middle class either. Their wealth is in the millions and tens of millions.

Patrick Wyman:

This kind of elite’s wealth derives not from their salary - this is what separates them from even extremely prosperous members of the professional-managerial class, like doctors and lawyers - but from their ownership of assets. Those assets vary depending on where in the country we’re talking about; they could be a bunch of McDonald’s franchises in Jackson, Mississippi, a beef-processing plant in Lubbock, Texas, a construction company in Billings, Montana, commercial properties in Portland, Maine, or a car dealership in western North Carolina. Even the less prosperous parts of the United States generate enough surplus to produce a class of wealthy people. Depending on the political culture and institutions of a locality or region, this elite class might wield more or less political power. In some places, they have an effective stranglehold over what gets done; in others, they’re important but not all-powerful.

Wherever they live, their wealth and connections make them influential forces within local society. In the aggregate, through their political donations and positions within their localities and regions, they wield a great deal of political influence. They’re the local gentry of the United States.

Gentry classes have been common throughout history: The Roman Empire, Han China, medieval France, and the planters of the antebellum South.

By definition, they’re local elites.

In the early Roman Empire, for example, local civic elites were essential to the functioning of the state. They collected taxes in their home cities, administered justice, and competed with each other for local political offices and seats on the city councils. Their competition was a driving force behind the provision of benefits to the common folk in the form of festivals, games, public buildings, and more basic support, a practice called civic euergetism.

These local elites of the Roman world served as the linkage between the central administrative apparatus of the earlier emperors like Augustus or Hadrian and the archipelago of cities that made up the Roman Empire. This was how the Roman Empire could function with a central administration of only a few hundred scribes, clerks, and functionaries gathered around the emperor: The central state essentially outsourced the day-to-day running of the empire to the city councillors of Marseilles, Tarragona, Antioch, Athens, Carthage, and a hundred other cities scattered from Britain to Arabia.

…

When we talk about inequality, we skew our perspective by looking at the most visible manifestations: penthouses in New York, mansions in Beverly Hills, the excesses of hedge fund billionaires or a misbehaving celebrity. But that’s not who most of the United States’ wealthy elite really are. They own $2 million houses on golf courses outside Orlando and a condo in the Bahamas, not an architecturally designed oceanfront villa in Miami. It’s not that those billionaires and excesses don’t exist; it’s that they’re not nearly as common as a less exalted kind of wealth that’s no less structurally formative to our economy and society.

There are an enormous number of organizations and institutions dedicated to advancing the interests of this gentry class: Chambers of Commerce, exclusive country clubs and housing developments, the American Society of Concrete Contractors, and fruit-growers’ associations, just to name a small cross-section. Through these organizations and their intimate ties to local and state politics, the gentry class can and usually does wield significant power to shape society to their liking.

It’s easy to focus on the massive political spending of a Sheldon Adelson or Michael Bloomberg; it’s harder, but no less important, to imagine what kind of deals about water rights or local zoning ordinances are being struck across the country on the eighth green of the local country club.

This class is largely hereditary.

Managers run their companies, lawyers look over their contracts, accountants manage their finances, but they’re the owners, whether or not they’ve done a single thing of their own volition to accumulate those assets.

…

Equating wealth, especially generational wealth, with virtue and ability is a deeply American pathology. This country loves to believe that people get what they deserve, despite the abundant evidence to the contrary. Nowhere is this more obviously untrue than with our gentry class. They stand at the apex of the social order throughout huge swathes of the country, and shape our economic and political world thanks to their resources and comparatively large numbers, yet they’re practically invisible in our popular understanding of these things.

Power resides in group photos of half-soused overweight men in ill-fitting polo shirts, in gated communities and local philanthropic boards. You’ll rarely, if ever, see these things on CNN or in the New York Times, but they’re no less essential to understanding how and why our society works the way it does.

#twt

[1117feverlessdreams]

Welcome to 1117feverlessdreams! A place where you can let free the wildest fantasies of your dreams!

*ੈ✩‧₊˚* ੈ✩‧₊˚* ੈ✩‧₊˚ * ੈ✩‧₊ *ੈ✩‧₊˚* ੈ✩‧₊˚* ੈ✩‧₊˚ *

I decided upon the name when I was thinking about the first song I listened by myself when my friend recommended me to Ateez, Star1117. 🗣️

Something had drawn me to it, the title sounded like it was gonna be beautiful and something I’d enjoy, and my instincts were right. 🧞‍♂️

As I listened to the song, I thought, who could they be talking about? They sound like they really love this person. (even though I didn’t know what the hell they were saying LMFAO) 🥶

But the melody and they way they sang so softly and belted out those notes, I knew it was a strong song with deep emotion, and the “forever you are my star” line made me think it was about someone they really cared for. 😭

I immediately searched the songs meaning and saw it was for their fans. I never got into K-pop fully but I always wanted to and had a few songs on my playlist. I decided Ateez was the first group I was gonna Stan based on that song alone. I wanted to be part of a fandom whose artist love their fans so dearly that they made a song dedicated to them. 💙

Fever came from another Ateez song, it just came to mind and I wanted to include it. 👨‍🎤 I had to add less because it emphasizes the wish of my stories to have a pleasant experience rather than a bizarre/ disturbing one.

Dreams comes from me just being delusional lol. I tend to wander off out no where in my mind coming up with all kinds of scenarios. So much to the point it’s just a coping mechanism for my insomnia. 🐳

It actually helped in some ways. I can sleep peacefully now, maybe too much because I don’t ever wanna wake up. What can I say, I guess I have an addiction. 🌀

Plus I don’t think it’s going away anytime soon so enjoy the ride 🚙

The theme for my page is a fantasy dream world where all your desires come true (i.e. requests or messages), the theme color being blue. The color blue represents calmness, imagination, and spirituality. 🚹

I want to make my page for my black!readers because we really don’t get a lot of representation 🥲🥲🥲

BUT sometimes I might write generally, so just to be clear I’m not discriminating and I want to include everyone!

BUT for my black!readers just know that this is a safe space 💙

PLEASE DO NOT COPY MY ORIGINAL WORKS, reblogs are appreciated and accepted. Stealing and modifying my work or publishing out on other platforms is not. 🖌️

Lastly I will also be attaching to music to each of my works to get y’all in the mood ( ͡❛ 👅 ͡❛) I love music, I literally can not live without it just like I can’t live without my “exciting imagination”. Also I thought it would be a fun addition, so I hope y’all don’t mind! 😰

* ੈ✩‧₊˚* ੈ✩‧₊˚* ੈ✩‧₊˚ * ੈ✩‧₊ * ੈ✩‧₊˚* ੈ✩‧₊˚* ੈ✩‧₊˚ *

All About Me!

Name: NYX (a picking of my choosing after the goddess of night)

Age: 18- yes I am an adult and therefore make content for other adults, MINORS DNI 🔞

Country: ‘Merica 🤠🔫🔫 🦅🦅🦅

Ethnicity: African-American Gyal 💁🏾‍♀️

Favs: Ateez (ult) Stray Kids, P1Harmony, Enhyphen, Nct127, NCT DREAM, Twice, TXT, NewJeans, Red Velvet, Leehi, Got7, Seventeen.

(Imma be completely honest, I listen to the other groups music and I know some of the members, but Ateez is the only group I know really well. I’m trying my best to get involved in other groups but I love my boys so much!!!)

Moots: They’re non- existent but that’s because they don’t know I exist yet! If you wanna be moots don’t be shy, I won’t bite 😭.

* ੈ✩‧₊˚* ੈ✩‧₊˚* ੈ✩‧₊˚ * ੈ✩‧₊ * ੈ✩‧₊˚* ੈ✩‧₊˚* ੈ✩‧₊˚ *

#ateez x black reader #ateez imagines #ateez x reader #ateez x you #1117feverdreams #delulu #ateez #ateez au

[writtenjewels]

What’s Love Got to do With It by Tina Turner

Eric glanced up and smiled as Dar settled on the couch next to him. The two of them had been hanging out a lot lately. At first they suffered a language barrier but after some lessons with Salim, they could carry on a conversation well enough. They were very different except for one thing: they were commanding officers who inadvertently led their squads into death that day at the shepherd's hut. That was a burden no one else could really understand, and it bonded them.

“Watching television,” Dar noted. “Typical American.”

“I know you're making fun of me, but this is a special occasion: it's the Olympics, and it's taking place in Greece for the first time since we revived it in 1896.” Dar stared at him with raised eyebrows. Eric let out a sigh, looking away. “Nevermind.”

“Go on,” Dar encouraged him. His hand touched Eric's, getting the other's attention. The touch was warm and strong. Eric could feel his heart beat a little faster in his chest. But it was silly to react like that: Iraqi men held hands as a sign of friendship. Eric cleared his throat and focused on what he was saying.

“The Olympic Games were first held back in the eighth century B. C. E. every four years like we do it now. Greece is the birthplace of the Games, so it's a big deal they're being brought back to Athens. Your country is in attendance,” he added with a nod toward the screen. “I'm not sure which events they're competing in.”

“Then I will watch with you and find out,” Dar decided. For some reason that made Eric's heart beat fast, too.

After that, Dar made a point of coming over whenever an event was televised. He was very enthusiastic about the boxing event, complaining in Arabic when the man from Iraq didn't advance. In between those viewings he showed Eric how to make Iraqi food and chatted about his day. He was especially proud of his mastery of a digital camera.

“I take it with me on hikes,” he explained. “I will bring it and show you.”

“I'd love to see it.” Honestly, Eric wouldn't mind any excuse for Dar to come by more often. He was good company. Eric was a little worried when Iraq no longer had competitors that Dar would stop coming over, but he didn't. Dar came for every televised Olympic event, usually bringing something either to eat or for the two of them to talk about.

Whenever they sat down to watch it together, Dar would inevitably reach for Eric's hand. Eric finally did this himself and got a smile from Dar in response. It's a gesture of friendship, he reminded his racing heart and flushed face. All right, so maybe there was some physical attraction he felt toward Dar. Eric liked the man's stocky build, strong limbs, softened jawline. Eric's reactions whenever they were close were just a product of that.

“What is your favorite?” Dar asked this about halfway through the games. He brought his camera to show Eric pictures he took on his latest hike. Eric didn't have any artistic eye to speak of but even he could appreciate the views Dar picked.

“My favorite sport? You'll laugh when I tell you.”

“I may,” Dar agreed. “You must tell me first.”

“It's gymnastics.” Dar surprised Eric by not laughing, though he looked intrigued. “A lot of the other sports are ones I can see myself doing,” Eric explained. “Granted, I probably couldn't do them well, but I can still picture it. Gymnasts have such flexibility and dexterity; I just can't imagine ever doing any of what they do.”

“You are not flexible?” Dar clarified.

“No.” Eric let out a hollow laugh. “Most people would say I'm not.”

“Neither am I,” Dar agreed. He reached for Eric's hand and Eric thoughtlessly linked their fingers together. “Perhaps,” Dar went on, “we only need the right occasion.” Is he coming on to me? The thought popped in Eric's head and knocked the air out of his lungs. It gave him a mess of emotions he couldn't sort through. Eric noticed how close they were sitting to each other and awkwardly pulled back.

What was he thinking? He loosened his grip on Dar's hand and turned to focus on the screen. Dar didn't try calling his attention back. Instead, Dar also focused on the Olympics, cheering or groaning depending on what was playing out on the screen. When he did finally speak again it was to offer Eric some snacks. Eric followed him to the door as always when Dar left for the night, and for a crazy moment thought the man was going to kiss him.

Eric tried to understand the sinking feeling in his gut when the kiss didn't happen. This wasn't happening again, not after everything with Rachel. Their divorce was officially finalized and Eric no longer had the ring but it was still painful. He didn't want to go through all that hurt again.

He had nothing to worry about, of course. What he was feeling toward Dar wasn't that. And if his heart raced thinking of Dar being back, of them sitting close together, of almost-kisses, Eric would logic it all away.

#eric king #dar basri #daric #house of ashes #song inspiration

[literarygoon]

So,

June is Filipino Heritage Month.

In Canada, where Filipinos have been among the most reliably numerous immigrants in the past few decades, the date was chosen to commemorate the country's Independence Day in 1898. That's when they freed themselves from hundreds of years of Spanish colonization. 

If I'm being honest, I knew very little about the Philippines before I married my wife Kristina. When I was a teenager I sponsored a young Filipino boy named Nestor through an international charity, and when I was in the Yukon I wrote an article for the Whitehorse Star about the positive impact Filipino immigrants were having on the local economy. I also read a great novel by Alex Garland called The Tesseract that was set in Manila, but other than that I've been woefully ignorant about my family's origins.

Last year my father-in-law introduced me to Jo Koy, a Filipino stand up comic known for his racy, hyper-sexualized content. One of the most interesting things I learned from him is that there is a close kinship between Mexico and the Philippines, both in religious sensibilities (Catholic) and in basic culture. They're rebellious, hot-headed and considered "crazy" by their more conservative neighbours. He claimed this was due to them both being conquered by the Spanish, then rejecting some elements of their culture while embracing others. It makes for an interesting hodge-podge.

I was interested to learn, from a quick Google search, that the Philippines didn't truly become independent in 1898 — they spent another half century under American rule, only finally becoming free following the Second World War. When I teach Kris and Celista about the Philippines, it will be important for them to understand the devastatingly negative impact of colonization and why it's important to recognize the Indigenous culture that was suppressed and nearly wiped out, just like in Canada. 

One of the most shocking elements of Filipino history was the introduction of "human zoos" which were open as recently as 1958 in places like New York City and London. It was there that racialized people from a variety of origins were kept in cages and gawked at by their western oppressors. In 1904, Americans displayed Filipino tribespeople in zoos like this during the Summer Olympics. Just another reminder that humans are sometimes disgusting to each other, and it really wasn't that long ago that deeply entrenched racism dictated the reality of many people's lives.

While my wife was growing up, she routinely experienced racism. Because she was half-Filipino and half-white, she didn't feel like she truly belonged in either category. A lot of attention was paid to her jet black hair, her sun-browned skin and ambiguous features. When people talk about white supremacy, this is what they mean: close attention to every difference, every physical detail of somebody's body, all scrutinized and held up against an Aryan ideal we haven't quite successfully shaken from our collective consciousness.

But there's also all the things I plan on teaching my kids about their heritage to give them pride in where they came from. They'll learn about the warrior Chief Lapu-Lapu, the Philippine Insurrection, and the villainous Rodrigo Duterte. They'll learn that the country is made up of seven thousand islands, with innumerable distinct cultures. And karaoke, I've learned, is extremely popular, just ask my mother-in-law! Also, once you start looking for them, there's plenty of Filipino celebrities who have achieved global success — including Vanessa Hudgens, Manny Pacquiao, Nicole Scherzinger and (my favourite) Bruno Mars.

 One day Kristina and I will successfully take a trip to the Philippines, and I'm already stoked for the southeastern Asian sunshine. One of her relatives is a mayor (who was nearly assassinated!) and we have family scattered all throughout the islands, some of them in places without phone or Internet to connect them to the outside world. I can't wait to dive into the ocean, to see the tropical foliage and see firsthand the derelict weaponry abandoned there during World War Two. 

I want the kids to walk those white sand beaches and know this country is part of their story, and always will be.

The Literary Goon

[rayroa]

Q&A: Nels Cline for Creative Loafing Tampa Bay

I just got done transcribing a Nels Cline interview I did on Friday, Feb. 24, 2023 ahead of Wilco’s April 20, 2023 stop in Clearwater, Florida. I hope to turn it into a 1,500-word featured before the printer comes calling, but wanted to get the Q&A down somewhere.

If you get sick of talking to me just let me know.

Ask me a question and watch an hour go by, so beware.

You need that space. Your whole thing is taking space and creating texture and all that stuff, so I'm not surprised that you can talk for an hour.

Right on. 

And I might bounce around a little bit, too. It was funny trying to come up with questions for this because they're all very guitar centric, and it's such a testament to the career you've built and identity that you've built. You know what I mean?

Sort of. I didn't think about the identity much. I'm not really aware of it, actually. But I know I feel respected. And that's nice.

Yeah, for sure. I think you're beyond respected, obviously. We'll just get right into it. Wilco is on a tour, right, and essentially, that's why we're talking—although I'm talking to Nels Cline.

Yeah, we're coming to Florida.

And we won't get too political here because I think you've already made your views on that clear, and I know you don't see Cruel Country as a political thing. But I wanted to ask you: You're coming up on your 20 year Wilco-versary. 

It'll be 19 next month.

Right. So 2024 marks two decades in this band. And I know when you joined, Jeff was going through what he was going through.

Yeah.

He got through it, and it's been a really productive few years. But I think, and correct me if I'm wrong, when you joined, you didn't necessarily want to bring your personality as a jazzer or soundscape kind of guy to the band. But that kind of happened. And there's this part about the Wilco songbook that kind of brought out that 14 year old fan of the Byrds and Buffalo Springfield, right?

Yep.

So thinking about that 14 year old that was brought out when you join the band, that 14 year old would be 33 or 34 now. I know Jeff has encouraged you to not be so reverent, maybe, to the songs that he brings to the table...

Yeah the one predictable thing about Wilco recording is that it's not going to be predictable.

Right. But when you look back on the last few decades of Wilco, look back to that 14 year old who was reawakened. Can you talk about how that person has grown over the last 20 years with just being in this band—that guitar player?

I was playing rock and roll settings prior to joining Wilco, along with the other improvised music and whatever else music that I've been doing. I guess that 14 year old is 33, you say now, he just still loves to rock. The feeling of the rock band, and at this point, the pageantry of it, like I don't really know about the show aspect of it, I'm comfortable with—but I don't see it really. I'm not seeing all these design things and all these changes that are happening that are supposed to be enhancing the product. So the 14 year old never cared about that so much and still doesn't, but the rocking is great.

OK. I think it’s Jeff that tells you, "Just shred, man."

That was what he said to me when I asked him what he wanted me to do at the end of "Art of Almost." He said, "just shred."

That's awesome. OK, cool. I love hearing your stories about all the rock you love—and I want to ask you a little bit about that—but I wanted to stay in Wilco world for a little bit, and kind of bring some reader questions that were presented to me. There's this jam on "Many Worlds" that feels like this high point in the Wilco canon as far as guitar and you're place in it and stuff like that. Obviously, fans are obsessed with some of the older stuff, and there's a solo on "Ashes Of American Flags," and obviously, the many think pieces on "Impossible Germany." But as far as solo on "Ashes," would you consider that the pinnacle of your fretwork achievements?

No, I mean, I don't even think about music that way. Whatever my pinnacle achievement is, I probably didn't notice it. But it was my idea to do that coda at the end of "Ashes" in my early days in the ensemble, and it turned into a big guitar solo thing, which I was probably encouraged to do. But I don't think about pinnacles. I do so much music, and a lot of it is Wilco, and I'm just trying my best.

OK. That's cool. I think what it is, is that a lot of people, guitar players specifically, they want to be you. You know?

Oh my god.

I know you don't want to hear that.

I'll say this. I'm a very fortunate human. It's OK to want to have a fortunate, nice, decent way of life. And I have that. You know, it's pretty cool. And I get to play and travel and do all the stuff that people do. I don't really care much for airplane stuff and airports, but that's part of the job.

This is kind of a watered down version of a follow up to that. Talking about the people that obsess over your work, is there a solo out there that you are still working to decode or one you hold in mythical, kind of air?

Oh my god. It might take me a minute to think of specific solos. But I mean, I could just think of hundreds, thousands of them.

What about one that you can't decode? Like one that bothers you.

By decode, you mean like, comprehend?

Or even, like, put your hands on your guitar and feel like you could kind of visit or touch it, you know?

Well, there's a lot of solos that have influenced me if that's relevant in terms of not just one thing. So I could feel very close to that soloist and possibly do some sort of emulation. But that's usually, for me, more in the rock or blues world because so much of the intricacies and nuances of so-called jazz elude me. I'm no jazz expert, but I do love the music, so I try to play it sometimes. But if I heard somebody I felt really close to do something that I felt a very  personal connection to, I might be able to, you know, pick up some of that stuff. But I don't think that answers your question. 

I mean it's all in context, right? You hit it right in the beginning—we're just trying to understand each other more.

Right.

Do you sit down to practice solos?

I don't practice solos. I don't think I ever learned anyone else's solo. There's certain solos that I can play by ear because they're so kind of memorable, or I can get close to them: Jimi Hendrix, or Dickey [Betts] or Duane [Allman]. I was never in cover bands, and bar bands, and things like that. So I'm not one of these guys that just says, "Hey, which Rush epic do you wanna do today?" or, "We know all of them!"

And you hate to sight read, right?

Well, it's not that I hate to do it. I'm terrible at it. I have a mental block about it. It's awful. If somebody wants to write a bunch of intricately-notated, dense music and put it in front of me, I can guarantee that they won't hear any of their music played by me. If I have a recording of it, then I can take the music home, and I'll do everything I can to learn a piece. That's how I do it.

OK. And this leads to my other question, because I think it's part of the core of who you are. I think we view you as an emotional player and sometimes an emotional composer. And emotion sometimes comes from melody, or for Western listeners there's harmonic information and modal elements, too. So this kind of piggybacks on what I asked you earlier, and you kind of mentioned it when you're talking about jazz. Are there still emotions, or modes or harmonies that you still hope to unlock from the guitar?

Absolutely. Yeah, I think sometimes the way I get around is when I'm just messing around, because I've actually been able to live, in the last year, someplace where I can—if I want to—I can play through an amplifier and not bother anybody. I didn't plug in and practice for I don't know how long—at least 30 years, hardly ever. Just to test the pedal or something, maybe. But it's been rather revealing about certain things. One of the things has to do with experimenting with different pedals, which I never allowed myself to do before except maybe on the gig. I just didn't sit around for hours working stuff out. I just got a little setup, and I just mess around.

One of the things I like to do is open tune the guitar and just start playing. That's a pleasing sound to me. It also means that I can use a lot of open strings, and everything's ringing. And it's kind of my own personal methodology that is from an extension of a trio that I had for a while in Los Angeles—three acoustic guitar players—that's how we started improvising. We would make up a tuning before every improvisation and then just start. It's fun, and it takes me sort of out of the patterns and habits and crutches—and it's pleasing to my ears. Does that even answer your question?

I think it does. And it might not have been a fair question because how can you know what emotion you're trying to unlock if you haven't felt it yet?

Well, I mean, OK, speaking to emotion. I do have a near consistent reaction to certain sonorities. And I guess what I was trying to get at by telling you about messing around with tunings, is something I do with a harmonizer pedal—a really shitty one—where I can just detune the guitar by hitting the pedal and play chord clusters. That's fun. But in terms of the emotion, sometimes that detuned sound for example, if as harsh and abrasive as possible, can be a very strong emotion. Just as a perfectly voiced major minor ninth chord, can just send me. I do experience emotion in a non-theoretical way, but unfortunately, I've also thought about the theoretical way, which sometimes can be, you know, a bit of a cage I guess.

I was gonna call it a jail cell, but "cage" works.

Here's something I can toss at you that has nothing to do with anything you're asking me but kind of covers almost everything. 

OK.

David Crosby. So David Crosby died, as we all know, The Byrds were extremely important to me, I even saw them with David Crosby as my first big rock concert in Central Park, 1967. When he died, I immediately wanted to listen to two songs: "Déjà Vu" from the album Déjà Vu, not some sort of live version. And "Guinnevere" from the Crosby, Stills & Nash record, which in my view is very Croz.

These made me realize upon listening to them that I wanted to go back to The Byrds songs that he had the most to do with—he actually had everything to with. When I did that, I listened to "Everybody's Been Burned " from Younger Than Yesterday. I'm assuming that "I See You" is the Croz, but I could be wrong. Anyway, I started listening to these pieces of music and realized that a huge part of my so-called jazz harmonic language that I'm drawn to, I may have first heard when I was listening to The Byrds when I was 10, 11 years old. And I've heard so much of my own happiness. There's so much harmonic interest and and it's so gorgeous to my ears. And then his voice is incredible. So I realized like, "Holy shit," I think that David Crosby may be very, very responsible for my earliest leanings, in terms of harmonic information, particularly, but also in the case of a song like “Déjà Vu,” it's episodic. It starts with his that super brisk and amazing vocal harmonic thing, the goes into the down, sort of Crazy Horse kind of tempo that we all love to play over for the rest of the song—it's amazing harmonies, it's just so great. And I really respond to that.

The same way I respond to hearing Tom Verlaine [Television], now the late Tom Verlaine, and all the things that I basically remember, so many of his solos. I can probably sing almost all of them along with records, maybe—after Flash Light I lost the thread a bit. So these languages, what I'm trying to say—they live. And at the same time, I'll just mention something that I first encountered when I was 10 that had a huge impact on me. My twin brother Alex's band was The Rolling Stones, so basically, it was Byrds and Stones until maybe '67, or late-'66 for us.

Definitely not the Beatles, because only girls like The Beatles, you know?

Exactly. That's why we didn't like them until we saw "Help!," and then we loved them.

You couldn't help it. I liked that you mentioned Croz because I had a question about Croz in the context of your love for The Byrds. I know you never wanted to be this amp-humping shaman, you know, but "Manic Depression" was kind of an inception point for you. Then Miss Godwin plays Ravi Shankar for you, and you get to drone. Then I started thinking about Croz, and Jimi, and Ravi and then also I started thinking about Tom and your wiggle, right. You kind of answered it a little bit, but I wondered how deaths of musicians affect you because when a musician dies, it's a little bit different than somebody else in our life since musicians have such this body of work that you can revisit. It sounds like when Croz died, it triggered all these memories for you.

It started with Jeff Beck. Jeff Beck was a big shock. I think to everyone, Jeff Beck just seemed like he was gonna live forever. He always had this a bit of a larger than life quality, and at the same time obviously really kind of a humble dude, because the musical path that he chose is just what he wanted to do and not rock and roll stardom. But his language that you've developed on a guitar had become so personal, and so at times, utterly profound, and always entertaining and expressive as fuck.

So it started with Beck, then David Crosby dies. And by this time most people are probably thinking like, "Oh, who's the third?" or, “Croz made it to 81, that's awesome.” And a lot of people thought he was a jerk. Then two, three days later, people started writing about David Crosby a bit, and talking about it, so I was very happy because I had gone into a David zone for a while there.

Tom Verlaine was the crushing blow, and also totally unexpected. I didn't know anything about what was going on with his health and stuff. Basically, as I tried to process this, I can tell you that as the senior in the band Wilco, the cold tap of death finger on the backline edges is not infrequent. So, I'm just going to try to stay positive, and and stay alive. It's sobering is what I'm saying. Maybe it's a little different than some musicians I don't know. I have an emotional reaction sometimes. And other times I just go, "Yeah, we're all gonna die."

This is what happens. We're looking at two generations of old people dying because that's what they do. They're very noticeable old people because their media figures, they're celebrities or notable in some way that we read about these other people. So that's what's happening. We're just watching them go, many of them in their 80s and 90s, but a lot in the 70s, and even in the 60s—my age. So it's sobering.

The Tom and the Croz thing definitely sent me into a bit of a nostalgia haze there for a while. I'm still not out of the Tom Verlaine one. It's an ongoing thing. His songs have been parading in my head for days and days and days, like two weeks. Then I just had to start reinvestigating. I hadn't heard Cover or Flash Light in a long time. Anyway, that's a whole other story. It's hard. It's really hard, but it's going to just keep happening. I could have said that in one sentence and saved you five minutes.

Dude, people don't want you to tell them something in one sentence. I think that's why they listen to your music, right? Like they want to sit down.

Oh god. All my records under my own name are pretty damn long.

Yeah, but that's why people come to them.

I hope so because I can't seem to self-edit to save my life. Whatever.

That's why you're in a band with Jeff. That's why you have strong band leaders like Jeff. They'll edit you in that realm.

Yeah, Jeff's a strong bandleader. He's a smart dude, too. He's just amazing.

I'm actually going to miss the show here because I'll be in Monterey with my wife who's running a marathon.

Whoa.

So I'm pretty bummed because I haven't seen Wilco since the Bob Dylan tour with My Morning Jacket. I've seen Jeff a couple of times since. This is probably too much information, but I know exactly when my son was conceived because it was after a solo show from Jeff. And I blame Jeff. 

Oh that is too much information.

My whole review that night was about this woman in front of me who was holding her son, and about Jeff's music and how warm and familial it can be sometimes. I was mad at people for hushing people. I was like, "Gosh, everything we have is in our arms," you know? Anyway that's too much information. So you mentioned Déjà Vu and going back to Croz and feeling these things that you felt when you were 10. I'm thinking of "Manic Depression" and that kind of innocence or nativite. It sounds like you get to tap into that 10 year old person and be innocent when you listen to music quite frequently.

I can kind of feel it almost anywhere except for maybe in a straight ahead jazz setting, which I don't do anyway. But if I'm just improvising in pure sound world, or playing some of my friends' music and we get into a thing—I particularly like improvising. We can, you know, honor—I don't even know how to say this, I'm sorry I lost the thread there, I immediately started thinking about something else...

It's OK. We're talking about how sometimes you're in a strange jazz setting which you don't really do and you're improvising and there's this pure sound and, or maybe you're playing with some friends...

Put it this way. Here's another example—a succinct example. I like soundchecks, like on tour with Wilco. As soon as sound starts and everybody starts playing, I'm in a very happy place. Especially when there's no bullshit and it's just functional—not coldly efficient, but still very efficient, very together. It makes the whole thing so cool that even soundcheck—which we don't always do—I like them, because we get to play more.

The point is really when sound starts and there's that sort of feeling of connectedness, or chemistry, or whatever you want to call it. Everyone's just kind of creating something together. I live for that—that's really it.

That's awesome. You're really good at this by the way. You're good at giving the pull quote but setting up the pull quote in a really good way that gives us great context.

Oh my god. It must be my over attention to... I try to examine to some extent the erudite among us, and my wife started to watch this documentary on Margaret Atwood, who she really likes. And I've never read Margaret Atwood, but I watched this documentary, I think twice because she watched it a couple of times at least, and it was incredibly inspiring and super interesting. But there's also a level of erudition involved in various statements, and quotes, and things like that. So without trying too hard, I do like to think that there's a phrase, like a kind of a cool phrase. It's just another improvising moment I guess. You know what I'm saying, it's fun. And also, my brother and I are the sons of two English teachers. I think being too language oriented can be actually a hindrance to certain ways of experiencing life, but I'm damaged. It's OK. I learned to live with it.

No, you're right. I mean, language is a barrier to emotion sometimes, and that's why, you know, we like German, you know, it's more precise...

It's funny because I actually was going to study German. I studied French in junior high and high school—that's what they called it back then, junior high. And then I thought because I was a philosophy major for a sec there, which by the way [Wilco multi-instrumentalist] Patrick Sansone, who has a degree—and I never got a degree—I was a philosophy major. I thought, "I'll take German and read the real dudes in our own language." Oh my god. If you've never been in college level German where it was going so fast. Oh my god, it's the only class I think, besides algebra, that I ever had to cram to pass. I feel so behind in German, and it's so hard, and yes, it is very precise.

Going back to Wilco world. Talking about loving the soundcheck. I'm curious about the title track on Cruel Country. Pat's playing this B string Fender, and some people think that’s you. While he's doing the twang, you're more like on the lap steel or neck dobro. How often do people mistake you for Pat, do you think?

Well, on this last record, I think almost consistently. In the past, I don't think Pat has recorded a lot of guitar solos, until Cruel Country, and then he and I are head-to-head a couple of times during the program, and then his B-Bender thing was absolutely delighting Jeff, and it just ended up all over it. It made Jeff smile from ear-to-ear, pretty much, and I was digging it. I think we got a lot of pleasure out of Pat's contribution on the B-Bender Tele. Now that we've been playing the songs out, playing them live, now he's crushing even more. And then mixing up, I don't know that anybody mixes us up other than that. Live, you know, Pat gets to wail on a couple of songs, but that's kind of like more digging into, almost inheriting a part and a solo, because they're older Wilco songs.

Right, right, right.

I can't get out of the sound of total rock guitar when I solo on songs. Sometimes I think, "Why don't I just take a completely weird approach one night?" But I'm just rocking out. I just kind of want it to be identified as full rocking. Because that's how the architecture of the show kind of is. Jeff likes to have an innocent rock out where it's just completely communal at the end of the night—I'm down. Rock and roll, the chiming guitars, it's a very good feeling for me. I think for all these other folks that decide to attend recitals.

No, I think people like to come to the recitals, and I like to hear you talk about your bandmates. They all have their own activities that they do on tour—hiking, coffee photography—but you are not a sightseer. You just sit there and you play guitar, but in Tampa there's a guitar maker James LeClair who makes some of your guitars. Do you have any plans to see James while you're here?

He's in Wyoming now.

Oh, I thought he was still here.

I thought it was a part-time thing. I can tell you that he's no longer in Tampa. And I can tell you that we met when we were down in—I think it might have been an Orlando show, I can't remember now, it might have been Tampa—and a friend of the band's, I believe his name is John Close, I don't really know him well, but I should have looked this up while I'm talking to you. Not that I can find it, but anyway, he introduced us all and Jim brought some guitars. He's my age about, I think, and we hit it off, and I bought one of his guitars—a weird kind of Tele-shaped guitar that's nothing like a Tele. He wasn't making guitars for a living. He still doesn't. He's, I think, a commercial photographer or something, but he's a lovely guy, and I have a bunch of his guitars now. And I can give myself credit for one thing: I'm the one that convinced him to put his name on his guitar headstocks. He's a lovely guy, and he likes to mess around with various guitar design ideas.

I know you like your Mike Watt Fender a lot, but how do the LeClairs hold up to your Fenders, specifically on tour and during the recording and composition process?

Honestly, I don't play a whole lot of Jim's guitars on one show, so they've never they've never taken he beating that my Jazzmaster's been taking all these years. But they're totally A-okay. The one I play the most is what I call the "Almosta-Tele." I hadn't played that on tour for a little while, but I played it with Phil Lesh. It turned out to be the right guitar for that kind of Grateful Dead language. And it's got a beautiful neck pickup that I never get to use because everybody wants me to play that guitar like a Tele, super-trebly with the bridge pickup.

This said I have a funny story, which I just remembered. I played the "Almosta-Tele" as the only guitar on a four-CD set by Anthony Braxton that I'm on, and it was a total accident. Because I played with Phil Lesh & Friends in Port Chester the night before. I was on my way to New Haven to to record with Anthony Braxton, and Phil's guitar tech—I mean, he literally had my stuff broken down within three seconds after the show and sitting waiting for me, it was insane—but he switched the gig bags, and I didn't check before I left. So I went to New Haven, and I opened my gig bag, and the LeClair "Almosta-Tele" was in the bag. And I was like, "Oh my god. No strings behind the bridge. No tremolo. It's not my Jazzmaster." So I made the entire thing, which is completely avant garde, improvised music with some structure dictated by graphic scores from Anthony Braxton, with Deerhoof drummer Greg Saunier,  and brass instrumentalists Taylor Ho Bynum, and Braxton—it's a quartet. So there's a four-CD set with Jim LeClair guitar, everything I play on this thing is that guitar. So everybody go buy that record, a four-CD set, I can't remember what it's called. I actually really like it, certainly not for everybody. But man actually when I heard it all finally—it came out at least two years after we recorded it—and I had some good strategies and kind of rebounded and got a lot out of the "Almosta-Tele."

And I have a Gibson-scale fake Tele, one of his earliest guitars, I think, that's out in the barn. Most of our stuff is in storage and has been since we left the city in March 2020.

Oh, by the way, that record I think is called Quartet (New Haven) 2014. I know we're getting to our mark, but I want to go back to Wilco. Jeff came into Cruel Country kind of on a tear. I think it was something like 50 songs in 52 days, or something, and he was still kind of really running hot. And when you got the Cruel Country songs, it kind of struck you as being classic—you know, classic country or folk with these big strong choruses and traditional song structures—but Wilco, I think, was also working on an art-pop kind of type record over the winter. How did that go?

That's what Jeff called it, I think. Art-pop. It's still going. It's going well, I think. It's a completely other vibe. I can't wait to hear it finished.

Did you stay in the loft for it?

I did. Yeah, I always do. Unless it's deemed that there'll be too much traffic, and I won't be able to rest, in which case we'll insist that I go elsewhere to some sort of hotel.

So it's still kind of like that live recording setup from Cruel Country.

Yeah. It's mere yards away from my bunk.

And I wanted to ask you about Yoko Ono. She just had a birthday. And she's 90 years old, the same age as Willie Nelson. And I wanted to ask you how Yoko has pushed your art artistry in a way that no one else really could.

Oh. Oh my god, how much time do you have?

I figured I better sneak this one in.

So my involvement with playing with Yoko is because of Yuka [Honda] and Sean Ono-Lennon. Sean specifically, kind of, music directs her, and Yuka is sort of like a lieutenant or something who takes care of all these musical details. And, and I came in to play on three, four songs in the course of an evening with the Plastic Ono Band with Yuka and Sean, and at that time this amazing drummer Yuko Araki from Japan who also plays with Cornelius, just a monster, and this guitarist named Hirotaka Shimizu also from Japan. Various people, Michael Leonard would play. Devin Haas played with us. We would get our shit together, and then Yoko would come in and soundcheck, and then just totally go for it. We did this big show at the Orpheum with all these guests. Iggy Pop, Lady Gaga, these are like people who cannot phone it in. The soundcheck was nuts, the rehearsal already, whatever, you know. But beyond that, it's hard for me to speak really, candidly or objectively because I do feel like Yoko and her family are kind of like all part of a family of some sort. And so I kind of don't want to go into any of that, it's too personal.

But the thing about Yoko that's amazing is pretty much everything. For example, when I saw the exhibit—I'm trying to remember where it was now, might've been Berlin, of because I played with her on her 80th birthday, I can't remember—anyway her early work during what people generally term her Fluxus movement was represented in this gallery of work from the early-'60s, like '62. I guess you would loosely call it multimedia work or something. It's just always with the same level of—I don't know how to describe it—it's poetic and so direct, and profound but so simple. She just has always had this amazing sensibility, and in terms of womanhood in Japanese of her generation, very revolutionary. So anyway, Yoko's amazing.

It's time for us, but you mentioned your dad being an English teacher.

My mom and dad, both of them were English teachers.

Both in Los Angeles, right?

Yep.

And your dad bought a guitar from a student once he realized that you needed to play—you know since your brother is out here banging on boxes, you're sitting around...

That's right, the Melody...

And you still have it. It's that one pickup half scale guitar, right? Do you still play it?

No, it's in storage. It hasn't had strings on it for a long time. I kind of messed it up because when I was working at Rhino Records, my sort of third official task was to be the indie and import rock buyer in the early-'80s, which was a very fun time to be an import rock byer. But anyway, I made a window display for Sonic Youth's album Evol. It was a good one actually, and might be my favorite I ever did. That and the Charlie Haden Liberation Music Orchestra window I suppose—those were pretty good ones. So I hung the guitar in the window, and I put a drum stick through the strings, and then I shot the whole thing with silly string. OK, I gotta go. Thanks so much for the call.

Talk to you later, Nels.

Bye bye.

#Nels Cline #Wilco #Yoko Ono #Jeff Beck #David Crosby #Tom Verlaine #Nels Cline interview #Creative Loafing Tampa Bay

[always-andromeda]

tumblr as eaten TWO of my asks now. this is gonna be a bit all over the place so bear w me hahah

to recap what i’ve sent you:

exactly!! i was so hyped when they figured it out & the rocket finally didn't explode.

re: the october sky festival: oh that's so cool! if you're close by enough, you should totally go to it! i would love to go to it as well but seeing as i’m canadian, tennessee is a bit out of reach for me lol

also! i love listening to other people ramble about the shit they're interested in, so ramble away, my friend!

i was watching lovely and amazing for the first time last night & scrolling my dash at the same time when i came across your post about wanting to watch it, so weird!! but jake in that movie?? you’re so right, he IS diet holden😭 definitely a watered down version, he’s not depressed enough. but he is a loser & i love that. & the hair!! i think he had it black for bubble boy but omg it adds so much to the loser factor for some reason. ik it sounds like i just agree w u on everything, but you have good (& correct👀) takes, so how could i not?? but yeah, the movie itself wasn’t great. however, i could watch a compilation of clips of him in that movie forever🫠 the way he’s staring at michelle when they’re at the bar & she’s talking about her art 😵‍💫😵‍💫😵‍💫

-🤹

I SWEAR, if tumblr keeps doing this, imma have to walk on down to Mr. Tumblr’s office and give him a piece of my mind. 😤😤😤

(But also lmao thank you for putting up with my rambling, much love and appreciation. 🫶🏻)

See, even though I’m American, I live literally across the country from Tennessee so it’s a bit of a long shot for me too bUT HEY. Maybe that’s a thing that’ll have to go on my bucket list lol.

AND OH MY GOSH, I am loving the random synchronicity we’re experiencing rn with Jake’s movies lol. You’re very right, it 100% isn’t a good movie like at all. bUT JAKE’S CHARACTER IS SO— 🥰 I adore him. Like the way that he is so enthusiastic and encouraging about Michelle’s goofy little art pieces?? And like listen…I adore Jake’s little emo era where his hair is just JET BLACK so seeing him get to be just like this weird little loserboy had me smiling so big. Holden is definitely a bit more unhinged and pessimistic than Jordan is. But like. If I had a nickel for every time Jake Gyllenhaal played a sad little emo guy who wanted to fuck his older coworker, I’d have two nickels. Which isn’t many bUT HEY, it’s weird that it’s happened twice!!

ALSO MORE ABOUT THE MOVIE IN GENERAL. I wasn’t a huge fan of Michelle pretty early on just because she had those entitled middle aged white woman vibes and that energy annoys me. But when she hooked up with Jordan (in front of his damn house too I think????) I was so— 😀 And when she got arrested for it?? And then was released?? And the movie plays it off like, “Lmao sometimes you have sex with a minor!! Lmao 🤪 mistakes were made!!!!” I was so. So flabbergasted. That was SUCH a strange choice to make in the story. 😀

Also, fun fact. Learned from the iMDB page that the working title for this movie was SAD BUT TRUE. And that makes me wheeze so hard. I wish they had kept it because HOLY FUCK that is one of the funniest titles I’ve ever heard for a movie. Like, lmao, that moment when you go to jail for statutory rape?? Sad…but true!! 🤘🏻🤪🤘🏻

#˚ʚ ask meda ɞ˚ #˚ʚ anonymous ask ɞ˚ #🤹 anon

[reasoningdaily]

ezra klein

One of my longtime obsessions as a policy reporter is the question of wealth. Most of American politics, most of American economic policy, I would say, is about the question of income — what wages look like, whether they’re rising or falling, for whom. When we talk about inequality, we’re typically talking about income.

But wealth is as important — I think maybe more important. We don’t measure it as well, but it says more about what a family, what a person can actually do under duress. It says more about how they can invest in their future. It says more — knowing their wealth can often tell you a lot more than their income can — about the long-term prospects of that family.

And wealth has this other quality, again, different than income, which is that it is where the past compounds into the present, where injustices of the past compound into the present, where the benefits of the past, the privileges of the past compound into the present. Wealth is where the long story of a family or a country makes a reality of the moment.

And for that reason, it’s uncomfortable. Wealth is uncomfortable because what does it mean to inherit? What does it mean to ask people to pay up for the sins of those who came before them? But on the other hand, much more so than income, if you don’t do anything about wealth, it just compounds, and the inequalities of a society go greater and become more present every single day.

So for all those reasons, I’ve long been interested in policies that would do something about the wealth gaps we have.

Often, what we do is we make policy to make wealth inequality worse. In the time, I’ve covered politics, we’ve made the estate tax a lot looser. We’ve made the thresholds beneath which it doesn’t apply much higher. You can pass down millions of dollars before you get taxed now.

We also have just a ton of tax policy meant to help people build wealth, which is great. We help people buy homes, and we help people go to college. And we help people do all these good things. The problem is you can only get that policy if you have some wealth to put into these advantaged accounts in the first place.

What we don’t have a lot of is policy that helps people who don’t have wealth build it. And so I’ve been very intrigued by this idea that the economist Darrick Hamilton and others have put forward called “baby bonds,” which would be this proposal to simply give people wealth — everybody. Now, not everybody would get the same amount. You get a lot more if you were poor than if you were rich, if you did not have wealth as a family than if you did. You would not be able to use it for anything. It’s circumscribed. It’s a wealth-building policy, not just a policy to help people spend.

But more so than anything else out there, it has this potential to all in one swoop really shift the wealth distribution of the country, really make sure that everybody has a chance to enjoy the benefits of wealth as opposed to that being something that is reserved for those who got it from generations before them but that those who did not have that luck simply are left without.

Darrick Hamilton is a professor of economics and urban policy at The New School. He served on the Biden Sanders Unity Task Force and was an adviser to Bernie Sanders. His ideas have been picked up into lots of pieces of federal legislation, and baby bonds, in particular, has been introduced by Cory Booker and Ayanna Pressley in Congress, not in its exact form of his but in a pretty close one.

So this is a policy actively under consideration. It’s something you could imagine passing at some point in the future if it were something Democrats prioritized, if it were something that they wanted to make the thing they did if they got power again. So should they? That’s what I wanted to talk to Hamilton about. As always, my email [email protected].

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Darrick Hamilton, welcome to the show.darrick hamilton

Thank you, Ezra. Pleasure to be on with you.ezra klein

We talk a lot in American politics about income, about wages, but something you write that sticks in my head is that, quote, “Wealth is the paramount indicator of economic prosperity and well-being.” Why?darrick hamilton

Think about what you can do with wealth that you can’t do with income. If you have a child that’s about to enter college, chances are your income is not going to be able to afford the choice to send that child to any school that they could actually get into. Some schools just simply might be too expensive.

If you’re faced with a legal challenge and you want to hire a high-priced attorney, the cost will be such that you will have to use some wealth, and income probably couldn’t afford you that attorney. We can think of other things as well.

So even aside from economic security, if you want to do things with your life, suppose I realize that my passion isn’t to be a professor. But I really have this innovative idea, and I want to bring it to market. Well, if I have capital, I’m better positioned to bring that idea to market. If I want to move and purchase a house somewhere, basically the point is that wealth affords you economic agency in ways that income does not.

Income is largely used to pay your expenses that happen on a periodic basis, whereas wealth gives you the ability to withstand shocks and the ability to make investments. Ultimately, wealth gives you choice in ways that income does not.ezra klein

There’s a line I’ve seen you use that that brought to mind, where you and co-authors talk about wealth as being a way to fully participate in the market. What do you mean by that?darrick hamilton

Think about income. If you are a worker, you can’t just simply decide that you want to leave your job and do something else. But if you have wealth, if you have a stock of assets, it gives you the freedom, the choice to, really, negotiate with whatever it is you bring to market, be it your labor, or your innovation, or some ideas. So wealth with that stock, that provides you, really, agency to make choices.ezra klein

So I think people, particularly who listen to this podcast, are probably somewhat familiar with looking at the American economy through the lens of income and inequality. What changes, either in the data or in the distribution, when you begin to look at it through the lens of wealth inequality?darrick hamilton

Wealth is so concentrated in the United States. Very few people own a great deal of the wealth, and of course, if we look at race, that becomes even more dramatic. So if we compare inequality and domains of income versus wealth, essentially there is no comparison. We can cite statistics, but the gist of it is very few people own most of the nation’s wealth.ezra klein

Well, let me cite some. You cite numbers from 2019 that suggests that the top 10 percent of households own about 70 percent of all wealth, 70 percent, and so that’s twice the net worth of the bottom 90 percent of households combined. This is one of those places where, I think if you marinate in it for long enough, you begin to really feel the unfairness in the economy.

For income, if you want more of it, you have to go out and work for it. You have to go lift a box or have a new idea or write marketing copy or something. But wealth isn’t like that. What you’ve got to do to get more money from wealth is just let your money go out there and make money on its own.

So the number here that, I think, is really striking is real household income, the money people work to get, it grew by about 30 percent between 1989 and 2018. The S&P 500 grew by about 400 percent. So if you’re working a job and getting raises, you can make more money over decades. But if you just had enough money that it could sit there in the S&P 500, it went up by multiples, and you didn’t really have to do anything new to get that at all.

So this gets to something that’s become very famous in policy circles in the last couple of years, which is Thomas Piketty’s famous R is bigger than G equation. So I was hoping, for folks who aren’t familiar with it, you could walk through it.darrick hamilton

R over G, all right, so —ezra klein

You sound excited already. [LAUGHS]darrick hamilton

The rate of return to capital has grown and continues to grow at a much faster rate than overall growth, and that is how society has been structured. And if you don’t have interventions from an entity like the government sector to allow for some redistribution, oftentimes due to tax code, then you end up in a perpetual cycle, where those that have the benefit of capital continue to grow their capital.

And then here’s the other point. That growth rate and capital certainly can transform political situations to benefit capital in the first place. So in other words, it’s not just economic growth that becomes compounded. The power associated with that increased wealth translate into ability to influence the political structure and system so as to have a feedback to grow your wealth even more.ezra klein

Yeah, I was going to get into this later, but maybe we should get into it now, which is that I think can be easy to hear this conversation about wealth and markets and think of this as an automatic process of capitalism. But even putting aside the way we structure markets, there is a huge amount of tax policy — I think the estimate I saw on one of your papers was over $700 billion a year — that is designed to wealth build. And on the one hand, that policy is facially neutral. It’s there for, in theory, anybody, but you need to have wealth to use it.

So do you want to talk a bit about what the tax code is doing here and the way we are manipulating, increasing, and advantaging wealth in the tax code?darrick hamilton

Yeah, the extent to which our tax code incentivizes wealth and capital growth, it centers on existing wealth and capital growth. Now, it need not be that way. We could use the tax code in a way to promote new wealth.

There’s the famous study called “Upside Down” that came out of Prosperity Now that shows that we spend about in excess of $700 billion in promoting asset development in the United States. And what are things associated with asset development? The different ways in which we tax capital gains versus wages, the different ways in which we treat homeowners versus renters — so you’re able to deduct the interest payments on your mortgage from your taxes whereas a renter doesn’t have that access.

So we may even think, as a society, that’s a good thing. Wealth is good for society. But the problem is to whom that tax code benefits. So the more accurate estimate of $700-plus billion: About a third of that will go to people earning over $1 million. The bottom 60 percent of earners will receive about 5 percent of that distribution.

So one could reimagine a tax code that spends similar amounts of money but does it in a more distributionally fair way. Because, as we’ve been talking, a lot of that is associated with having existing capital in the first place. So the government is strategically directing public resources in a way to promote even greater growth of those that have wealth to begin with.ezra klein

And I want to get at one of the dynamics in this, because a lot of this is very well meaning.

So there’s a great statistic in one of your papers about how fewer than 3 percent of Americans have what are called 529s, or Coverdell accounts, which are these tax-advantaged accounts to save for education.

And it’s great, right? Helping people put money away for kids’ college in a tax-free way, helping them build for the future, you don’t have to be running any kind of scheme to make America unequal to think that would be great.

But most people don’t have them because most people can’t save that much money in them. And so I think we’re used to thinking about tax policy as being unequal when it’s designed unequally. But you can have a policy or accounts that are totally neutral. Anybody can take advantage of them. But if you don’t have money to put into them, you can’t, and so in effect, they become a way that people are pretty wealthy can keep a lot of money tax free that, if you are not that wealthy, you don’t have access to anything like that.darrick hamilton

Fundamentally, wealth begets more wealth, and if we have a society that uses the tax code the privilege existing wealth, that only enhances that framework, that equation. But again, if we could reimagine the tax code, there’s nothing wrong with promoting wealth for the American people. The problem is how we do it and to whom it’s distributed.

So if we set up structures, incentives, and straight-up grants that allow people to get into an asset that can passively appreciate in a more egalitarian way, that would be better. That same amount of money could be used to facilitate a down payment for somebody to get into homeownership who otherwise wouldn’t get into homeownership. And it’s still growing the nation’s saving and wealth but doing it in, what I would say, a more fair, just, and even productive manner.ezra klein

I’m going to put a pin in that because I want to get to that policy, but I want to go through a couple more pieces of the wealth context first. And one thing here that I want to be careful about — we keep talking about wealth as if it’s one thing, and the examples I’ve used so far are things like stocks and homes. But the composition of wealth, what we measure as wealth, includes a lot of things. And the composition of what wealth people have changes as you go up and down the class ladder.

So could you talk a bit about the different types of wealth and how the wealth that people in the working class have, if they have it, tends to be pretty different than people in the richer segments of society?darrick hamilton

That’s right. If we get into issues of diversified portfolios, we know that it’s better to not have all your eggs in one basket. But one needs to realize that if you have a little egg to begin with, it’s hard to spread it amongst many baskets.

So in the American case, the asset that most people start out with — and again, it’s for those individuals that are able to get into substantive ways to generate wealth and assets — it’s often a home. As such, the composition of their wealth is often primarily in a home in a large percentage way. But as you grow your wealth, you’re able to use that additional wealth to diversify your financial portfolio. Then you start to get into things like stock ownership and potentially even business ownership.ezra klein

And that gets us something, I think, important here, which is, at the beginning, you gave the example of wanting to start a business, or sending a kid to an expensive school, or maybe needing to get a lawyer. If you’ve got a bunch of stocks sitting around and your wealth is in stocks and you need to sell some of them to do that, so be it.

If your wealth is in your home, it’s not that that isn’t real. You can sell your home. But there’s a lot that comes along with selling your home, from having to move to another home to it maybe being a very emotionally important part of your life and the place where your kids grew up. There is a difference, I think, between having your wealth tied up in the place you live and having it invested in a hedge fund.darrick hamilton

If we look at financial wealth as the sole category, these disparities that we started out describing in the beginning, they grow even wider, which is your point. We also think about the benefits of a home, you really need a residence, some place to actually live, and also the attachment that comes along with social ties.

But we offer various other amenities with your home as well, such as the school. The quality of your school is attached to the neighborhood that you live in. Those that can afford affluent neighborhoods in a home to match often are in better school districts so that their kids even end up with a better hand when they become an adult and begin the process of wealth building.

[MUSIC PLAYING]ezra klein

We’ve talked here a bit about wealth inequality and wealth composition. Tell me about the Black-white wealth gap.darrick hamilton

Now, that’s dramatic. The Black-white wealth gap is such that the typical Black household throughout American history has rarely had more than a dime for every dollar as the typical white household, not just wealth as an outcome but its functional role, what it can do for you. So we end up in locked-in inequality, and what makes it more pernicious is that locked-in inequality is often defined by the race that you’re born into.ezra klein

And so this is probably a point to ask. Are we talking here about means or medians? And how are those two measures different? And what does looking at one of them get you that looking at the other one misses and vice versa?darrick hamilton

If we were to look at mean — the differences we’re citing are even more dramatic. If we were to look at the mean wealth difference, Black people as a group own about 3 percent of the nation’s wealth. Black people make up well over 12 percent of the nation’s population but own about 3 percent of the wealth.

I think a fair number is to use the median if we’re thinking about differences across race because then you want to look at what’s typical about a Black experience versus a white experience. But if we look at the mean, the mean is more dramatic because America has a wealth inequality — period. So we have a problem with a concentration of wealth regardless of race. But it becomes more pernicious when we look at race.

We have a small few that own an enormous amount of our nation’s wealth, and that small few is overwhelmingly white. So we can have racial justice, where we would have a more fair distribution of wealth, and that would be great. But that still wouldn’t achieve economic justice. So in the dimensions of wealth, we need to be concerned with both economic and racial justice.ezra klein

Just imagine, as a thought experiment, we passed a policy that really solved or deeply narrowed — and we’ll talk about a policy like this — the median wealth gap. So the typical Black household, the typical white household, now they look pretty similar or much more similar, at least, from wealth but does nothing really on the mean wealth gap because your Bill Gates and your Elon Musks and so on, they’re unaffected by this policy.

And so on the one hand, you have really dramatically changed the wealth gap on one measure and barely changed it on another. What have we solved in that world? And what haven’t we solved?darrick hamilton

We haven’t solved economic justice. Now, we’ve redressed racial justice, which, again, would be no small feat. And if I were to flip your framing slightly, Ezra, and say we can close the mean racial wealth gap, hypothetically, by creating simply a class of Black billionaires, so that the mean distribution across race was equal. But that would still leave large racial disparities between the typical experience. In other words, a handful of Black billionaires would not solve our problem but could, at least in theory, close the racial wealth gap.

I’ll add one other thing to make the point crystal clear. The mean wealth of a white family in America is close to $1 million. We know that the typical experience of a white family is not a millionaire experience, but that’s because of that high concentration of wealth that drags the distribution in a skewed way towards $1 million. The more typical experience of a white household is in the hundreds of thousands range. I believe it’s closer to $200,000. So if we were to use the mean and not the median, we would not exactly be using the accurate pinpoint to understand the typical experience between a Black and white household.ezra klein

One of the reasons I think the Black-white wealth gap is unusually important to focus on is a question of racial justice is that it’s where the story of our past compounds into our present. And you’ve done a lot of work on both the shape of it now but the causes of it. So how do you understand how America ended up with a wealth gap like we have?darrick hamilton

Many of us are well familiar with our history, and we know that America has had a sordid history in its treatment of Black people, beginning with slavery. And it’s been characterized as the original sin of America, where you had people literally living in bondage and serving as capital assets for a white landowning plantation class.

We also know — and we led this conversation up — with how wealth is generated. It’s generated mostly passive. We know that it’s intergenerational, that households that have children are able to bequest to their children a capital foundation that allows them to not only have wealth but grow their wealth. So we understand how wealth is created, and we understand the history of America is such that Black people started out in bondage.

And then another pivotal point that should be made is that a white asset-based middle class didn’t simply emerge. It was public policy — policies like the Homestead Act, policies like the G.I. Bill, establishments like fair housing authorities that facilitated long-term mortgages at very low interest rates that provided the capital and the structure so that white families can get into things like a home and, in the case of a G.I. Bill, a college degree without the albatross of educational debt to get into a managerial or professional occupation.

Ira Katznelson has a phenomenal book called “When Affirmative Action Was White,” which really lays this out. What Ira Katznelson also describes in this book is the ways in which that policy was designed — or that set of policies — were designed, implemented, and managed that benefited white people and, to a large extent, excluded Black people.

So let’s give an example. Imagine a Jim Crow context for which one is trying to apply their G.I. Bill to purchase a home in an area. Well, the choice said that you have to purchase a home is much more limited if you’re Black. The access to go to a bank and receive a loan to provide a mortgage associated with that initial capital is very different if you’re Black.

I think the estimate that Ira Katznelson offers when we think simply about higher education and not even homeownership, that the G.I. Bill provided enough capital for Americans to rival that that we spent on the Marshall Plan that played a large part in rebuilding Europe.

So this surge of government resources enabled a population and also enabled institutions that benefited white people at the exclusion of Black people.

When Black people were able to accumulate assets, when they were able to overcome circumstances and actually accumulate wealth, it never received the political codification to be immune from malfeasance, terror, threats and outright theft, the ways that white people property ownership was afforded.

A big example would be Tulsa, Oklahoma when we had the Race Massacre in which a community that was at least working to middle class was decimated overnight.

And then, of course, this was not isolated. There were many examples, where physical destruction, even if it’s not leading to the actual physical terrorism that decimated Tulsa, Oklahoma for Black people, the threat of violence, the fear, the threat that, if you don’t engage in a certain way, if you don’t act a certain way, if you are not kept in your place, you literally could lose your life. That has impacts on a community and on a population’s ability to generate wealth.

So this is our sordid history. But what is important for this conversation that we’re having, Ezra, is that the paramount indicator of not just economic security but economic agency in one’s life has been structured in America through public policy such that we have this large gap of about one dime for every dollar, which is an implicit economic indicator of our historical past.ezra klein

One statistic I’ve seen you use that I find unbelievably striking here because I think the myth in America, the belief, oftentimes, is, look, you get a college education, get a job, you get ahead. And that’s available to anybody now, even if it always hasn’t been.

But something that you and co-authors have found is that households in America headed by white high-school dropouts have more wealth on average than households headed by Black college graduates. That’s pretty remarkable.darrick hamilton

And that’s the beauty of trying to describe that we have structural racism in America. You can simply point to descriptive indicators that we all associate as the keys to success and find out that not only do we have disparities across race at various indicators of whether you’re married, not married, highly educated, not highly educated, formerly incarcerated, never been incarcerated. But these disparities grow as we move up into higher status indicators.

So the disparities across wealth get larger at higher levels of education. The disparities across wealth don’t subside when people get married. They actually get larger. With the statistic you cited earlier, you can look at the highest status indicator for Black people, like a college degree, like being married or whatever the domain we want to look at, and look at the lower indicator for white individuals and see that, in something like wealth, the disparities are often such that the white person is better off in wealth than the Black person, even though the Black person has the highest status indicator. It dispels this myth, this notion that all you have to do is do these things and you’ll be fine.

Of course, within group, more education is associated with better outcomes, but across groups, the disparities remain and even get larger. And that’s not a coincidence. That’s a structure.ezra klein

One point you’ve made is that one thing you see in the data is that a reason it’s often hard for Black families to build wealth — and this gets to this whole broader context you’re describing — is that, as they do build wealth, there are more people who need their help in their communities and their families, and so there tends to be more — if you’re somebody, who you’re part of a middle-class or upper-middle-class family and you get some money, odds are that people around you don’t need it that much.

But if you’re somebody who’s the only person in your family who’s got into college, and it was a huge effort for the family to put you through college, and now you’re a doctor, let’s say, but a lot of people around you don’t have much and they need help with medical bills, or fall behind on rent, or whatever, and you need to help them, that puts a brake on wealth accumulation that somebody from a wealthier family just doesn’t have as much of.

I was curious if you could talk a bit about that dynamic and what you see of it.darrick hamilton

And of course, that’s personal. I’ve been able to acquire resources in ways that other people in my family have not, both immediate as well as extended family, and I well understand the demands to want to provide for others so that they can have a good economic experience and not be vulnerable. Altruism isn’t the problem. That’s a good thing. But it’s a problem that these structures of inequality extend well beyond the individual but have large spillover effects as well.ezra klein

So one thing I take from all this is that it’s just really hard to change wealth distribution, that you actually need real policy to do it. And this is something we were talking about earlier. We have put a lot of policy into place to do it. We have all these tax breaks. We’ve also cut the estate tax a lot over time, so we’re taxing wealth a lot less than we have at other points in American history. But you have a pretty big policy idea that has been taken up in Congress that would do quite a bit here called baby bonds, so tell me about the baby bonds concept.darrick hamilton

Baby bonds just recognizes the ways in which wealth is generated. Wealth begets more wealth. We know that the difference between low-wealth and high-wealth individuals began with capital.

So what baby bonds does is it provides a birthright to capital. It says, irrespective of the economic situation in which you’re born into, we will endow you with capital, such that, when you become a young adult, you can purchase an asset that provides that passive savings, that passive appreciation, where you get economic security. You get economic agency that comes along with wealth as a birthright.ezra klein

So how much capital are we talking about?darrick hamilton

Conceptually, enough so that the individual, when they become a young adult, can be able to get an education without debt, have a down payment to get into a home or some capital to be able to bridge with a business loan to start a business. That’s the idea.

The program is structured such that the average account would be about $25,000, but they could rise upwards to $50,000 for those that are born into the most wealth-poor family.

Now, that’s the policy described at the federal level. If we think about state-level policies, where they don’t have the purchasing power that the federal government has, they are constrained in an annual way based on their budgets. We’ve seen places like Connecticut be able to come up with an endowment of about $3,200 for all Medicaid-born babies.

So Connecticut, Washington D.C., and various other states, they’re not waiting on the federal legislation. They’re beginning to try to redress intergenerational poverty, given the constraints of their fiscal budgets, with as little as $3,200 at birth. And that $3,200 at birth, it will be managed similar to other state pension programs, where the treasurer of those states or those localities try to grow the accounts as large as possible. And there are estimates that, in the case of Connecticut, a child born into poverty, as measured by being a Medicaid birth, could have about $10,000 when they become a young adult to contribute towards some down payment, some nest egg, so that they can build wealth.ezra klein

Let’s hold on the bigger proposal, the federal proposal, for a minute, the one that could be up to $50,000 for somebody born into the most wealth-poor households. So as I understand it, there’s strictures on what you can use that money for. You can use it to go to college. You can use it to buy a house. You couldn’t use it, I guess, to invest in Bitcoin, or to fund your gaming habit or to buy gym membership or just to help out your family members. I don’t want to put this all as leisure spending. Why? Why not trust people to spend the money the way they need to spend it?darrick hamilton

And let’s be fair. This policy will not be — I’ll use this word again — the panacea to redress all of the economic insecurity that we have. There is the difference between income and wealth, and both are critical and important for individual, family, and community well-being. So the program is restricted not to be paternalistic but to ensure that it’s being promoted in a way to actually build wealth.

We gave the example of being born into families that are not so affluent, thereby might very well require needs on individuals that are able to attain social mobility.

If you would have offered me a baby bond when I was a young adult, when I was coming into the working age of my life, graduating from college, graduating from school, it’s likely I would have had a relative who could have used that money in order to avoid some really detrimental circumstance, like being evicted, like being able to pay a light bill, like being able to address some of their immediate income needs.

Now, those things are critical and important, and I would have been happy to be able to make those contributions if I had the money. However, it wouldn’t have grown my wealth.

So I think we need to restrict the accounts not because we don’t trust people to make astute decisions for themselves, because we need public policies that are really aimed at the attribute for which we want to address. That’s the whole purpose of why you might want to restrict it.

[MUSIC PLAYING]ezra klein

So in the first part of our conversation, we talked about the size of wealth inequality in America. We talked about the Black-white wealth gap in its mean and median forms. Some analyses have been run on this idea. What would this do for those? Which gaps would it close, and which gaps would it not?darrick hamilton

Naomi Zewde, she has this great simulation study that projects the impact of baby bonds on the Black-white wealth gap, and she calculates that, for recipients of the account, the young adults that would actually receive the account, it would cut the racial wealth gap in half, by 50 percent. And that’s one generation.

Imagine what it can do for subsequent generations. It can trend us towards closing the racial wealth gap. And we’ve been focusing on race, but there’s a lot of wealth-poor white individuals in this country as well. And they absolutely would benefit.

So to me, this would be a program that is an automatic stabilizer in the sense that not just for the immediate recipient generation but future generations as well and to the extent that capital grows and generates inequality in America. We have a policy that, in perpetuity, trends us towards a society that affords people regardless of the income that they’re born with, the race in which they’re born to have access to something as critical as capital so that they can actually have an opportunity to build wealth.ezra klein

So the numbers we’re talking about here for the poorest families are pretty big, $50,000, and I think it is reasonable for somebody to hear that and say, yeah, it would be nice. But there’s no way we can afford to functionally have I like to think of this as a universal basic wealth program. What would the cost of it be? And how could it be paid for?darrick hamilton

So I got two lines of critique. One is the universal basic wealth aspect. It’s universal in the sense that everybody would have access to wealth. It would not be basic in the sense that everybody wouldn’t get the same level of wealth as an endowment.

But the main question that you raised, and we should address it. The cost of the program would be $100 billion in total. $100 billion seems like a big number. $50,000 to the most wealth-poor person seems like a big number, but we need to put that number in context.

Let’s put that number into context of one of the ways in which we began this conversation. The Federal Government is already subsidizing the assets of American people to the tune of well over $700 billion a year, so we actually can afford to pay for this. We actually have already spending in effect that’s promoting asset development.

So with the existing pool of resources that we’re using in the tax code, we could take a portion of that and do something that’s dramatic as redress these problems that we started off talking about, this massive wealth inequality that we began with, this racial wealth gap that has been structured in an immoral way since the inception of our country.

So to me, there’s a lot of good news for $100 billion. We really can achieve an egalitarian society that affords everyone the benefits that come along with wealth.ezra klein

I think one worry here would be — so imagine we pass it tomorrow. You have this generation of kids, when they turn 18, they have $50,000 or $50,000 that’s been growing in the markets, more or less, depending on where they started out. And now, all of a sudden, you have this profusion of, say, higher-ed educations that there’s this whole generation that’s about to graduate with more money, particularly people who maybe wouldn’t have had access to places like them beforehand. Or that all these people have money burning in their pockets and they want to try to convert it to money they can use, so somehow maybe they could pull in a house, but they can’t spend it on many things.

You can imagine two things happening here. I think one is a lot of predation, and the other is inflation. And I think that’s a particular concern in higher education, where we’ve seen that before, where, if there’s a lot more money people can suddenly spend on higher education, the higher-ed organizations raise prices and figure out ways to part people with that money without necessarily giving them a lot more for the dollar. So when you’re talking about a big bang policy like this, how do you make sure it doesn’t just get eaten up by highly informed, clever, and not even always malicious, just self-interested actors?darrick hamilton

Ezra, I think you’re spot on with that question, and I think it’s a huge concern. We know history has taught us that two forms — one is, if we know there’s going to be a cash infusion into a population, a great deal of individuals, corporations, and other institutions are going to figure out ways in which they can usurp some of those resources in order to benefit themselves. And that potential biggest predator in this program very well could be universities and colleges that simply inflate their tuition to absorb the accounts in a way that it doesn’t have a real effect.

So to redress that, you will definitely need to include financial protections in the program. One of the benefits of, say, the investments going towards a home, it wouldn’t be enough resources to literally purchase a home. It will require some form of a mortgage, so through federal protections to define what are the criteria to receive that mortgage and the criteria by which banks and other financial institutions could issue that mortgage, that becomes another check by which government can regulate the program in a positive way.

Similarly, if you go get a business loan, you can’t get a loan for just any business. There’s some criteria. So that becomes another implicit check to redress some of the potential financial malfeasance, especially if government regulates the type of loans that can be coupled with the account.

Let me also say that it would be great if this program was coupled with other programs, like tuition-free public education. I think, in the 21st century, we need things well beyond baby bonds. We need a package of public goods aimed at ensuring that people have the essential resource without which they simply are vulnerable, and capital is clearly one.

And in the 21st century, not just a high school degree, but a college degree becomes another essential element. So if you had tuition-free public universities, that would be a constraint on tuition costs that could avoid some of that inflation that you’ve been describing.

And then one other feature of the program, I don’t think we should require people to use the accounts once they turn 18. Indeed, there should be provisions for an account that provides a normal rate of return and be accessible for when the child becomes an adult and also is ready to use the account.ezra klein

So another criticism is wealth inequality is bad. Wealth concentration is bad. But for everything we talked about earlier, there are distinctive dynamics to the Black-white wealth gap that reflect specific historical horrors visited upon Black Americans. And so a race-neutral policy simply isn’t the right way to approach that. How do you think about that?darrick hamilton

I’m an advocate for reparations. I think reparations and baby bonds address complementary things but not the same things. Reparations is a retrospective racially just program that does two things.

It requires atonement. It requires truth and reconciliation. It requires the federal government to take public account and atone for the state-complicit malfeasance that have taken place in the past and led to the conditions that exist today.

So that’s not empty. That’s valuable because a lot of the rhetoric by which we make policy today is grounded in narratives and norms, and it’s often grounded in narratives and norms that position Black people as deadbeats, as welfare queens, as predators themselves, as undeserving, undesirable, as a drain on public budgets. Now, of course, that doesn’t just affect Black people. That limits our ability to deal with white poverty as well.

So that reparations leads to a different framing and understanding of both poverty and inequality, that not only offers dignity to a population that has been stigmatized, that has been demonized throughout American history, but also creates new pathways and understanding in a more accurate and a more just way of thinking about poverty and inequality, not just for Black people but for all people going forward. Whether we’re ready for it today or ready for it tomorrow, we should commit to it and commit to it as a movement because it is the right thing to do.

That should be reason enough. But it will not be enough to really provide for the economic security and the access to wealth in a forward-looking way. It will redress the past, and it will put Black and white people on a far more even keel in both economic and political contexts.

But we know what capital does. Capital consolidates, iterates, and it excludes. In other words, wealth begets more wealth, and wealth builds upon itself.

So even if we redress the past, going forward, capital will concentrate amongst certain entities in American society, and we need a natural stabilizer. We need an automatic stabilizer. We need a public policy that, in perpetuity, ensures that everyone has access to a capital foundation, particularly in their formative years of being a young adult so as to build wealth. We need to go well beyond subsistence programs, which are critical and necessary but really will not build wealth.ezra klein

Let me ask you about one final example before we wrap up here, which you talk about in your paper, which is SEED OK, the SEED for Oklahoma Kids experiment. They were put in for — at least for a treatment group, a $1,000 into a 529 Savings account, the kind of account we talked about earlier for pretty poor kids, and then they tracked what happened to that treatment group and their parents against groups that didn’t get that $1,000. What did they find?darrick hamilton

There are great lessons from that SEED OK experiment that could inform us about baby bonds. In addition to the wealth building attributes associated with baby bonds, the SEED OK showed us that families knowing that their child is going to receive this endowment when they become a young adult invested more in that child, tried to promote that child to double down on their education.

Children had better grades, as a result, from that endowment than they otherwise would have without that endowment. Children had better outlooks on life. They had higher aspirations, knowing that they were going to receive that account when they became an adult.

The good thing about baby bonds is it has spillover effects well beyond promoting the wealth of an individual that receives the account.

It can literally change the horizon by which poor families and Black families engage with the state. These are groups that are often engaged in punitive ways with the state — where the state is imposing a fine, where the state is saying you can and can’t do this.

If the state were to offer an endowment, I think it will promote civic engagement.

I think that Black families, poor families, and other marginalized families will see the state in a different light, and it will lead to more civic engagement, which will benefit us all as a society.

It will also change the horizon of that child with regards to things like education. If you’re going to receive an endowment, you very well might be incentivized to invest in attributes like schooling such that you’ll benefit to a greater extent from that endowment when you become a young adult.

In addition to changing the horizon by which a family thinks of the state so as to promote civic engagement, it also can create more touch points in a positive way by which the state can engage with families in a productive way.

I suspect that prenatal care will become greater utilized amongst low-income families as a result of baby bonds. If an expectant mother understands that this account is being established, well, it creates an opportunity where we literally could send out literature promoting these are the types of steps that you should pursue in order to have a healthy child, which could promote more healthy children and greater lifestyles going forward.

But it need not end at prenatal care. Just like Social Security, where we get estimates of our Social Security accounts periodically, and it provides a point in which the state can send literature and information to households, we can use the point of baby bonds to have positive interface of the state and the population so as to promote more healthy living for the recipients and our society at large.ezra klein

I think that’s a great place to end, so I’ll ask our final question. What are three books you’d recommend to the audience?darrick hamilton

Three books, well, you heard me talk about “When Affirmative Action Was White” by Ira Katznelson. That is foundational for me. It’s foundational for me because it demonstrates what government can do in order to promote the human rights of all of us, to promote a great society for all of us. The lesson from “Affirmative Action Was White” was that, if we’re going to do it this time, we need to make sure that we design, implement and manage the policies not in an exclusive way but in an inclusive way.

The second book, which is foundational for me, is “Racial Conflict and Economic Development” by Arthur Lewis. Anybody trying to understand the intersections of politics, economics and identity group stratification or racial disparity, I highly recommend that you read that book.

And then finally a book that I’ve read more recently by Natalie Diaz, who is an Indigenous poet. The book is called “Postcolonial Love Poem.” Natalie has this incredible way of presenting social theory in prose in ways that link people to the environment. It has had huge impact in my understanding about society in general, and it did it with poetry in a way that words themselves matter in our understanding and are critical if we want to come up with social policies to move to a better society.ezra klein

Darrick Hamilton, thank you very much.darrick hamilton

Ezra, I appreciate you so much. Love your podcast. Thank you.

#Why This Economist Wants to Give Every Poor Child $50 #000 #american racial wealth gap

[melanywrites]

Chapter 1: “The American Dream no es para todos” (Part 1)

June 16, 2015.

Shortly after Trump's Presidential Announcement speech, New York City. We were in my tia’s dim-lit basement, some of my primos flew in from California to gather with the family. They arrived from Los Angeles with my tio and his new wife, Linda, a woman the same age as his eldest son. La casa smelled like tortillas on the comal and roasted jalapenos. There was a knock on the door and excitement filled the voices in the busy kitchen. “Antonio! A los tiempos!” “and look at you guys, all grown up” echoed in the adjacent room. Linda walked in with a tacky Chanel bag, oversized shades, and nails longer than a back scratcher. She analyzed mi tia’s comfy tight living room and scrunched her face, faked a smile, and then blew me a kiss when she caught my glance. Mis primos slowly made their way to the living room where I noticed my eldest primo with a ‘make America great again’ cap and my prima with a Trump t-shirt. I hadn’t seen them for over 5 years and despite the initial shock, I got up slowly to give them both a tight embrace. After an hour of catching up, the inevitable conversation arose after my primo mentioned his new position in his father’s law firm. Something about “if you know the law, then you know there are many ways around it” didn’t strike well with me:

Me: “Quien decide who gets to break the law or not? Don’t you think it’s wrong that the general public has no access to certain information? Why are you even wearing that hat?”

Him: “Why not? Isn’t that why we live here? Free speech. Everyone has access to information, ignorance is a choice. I agree with some of his views despite the things he says sometimes”

Me: “Don't you see how he talks about us? Y las mujeres? He doesn’t care about people like you and me”

Him: “What are people like you and me? Isn’t it funny how liberals always turn everything into a race thing? It all comes down to keeping our country safe, our families safe”

Me: “If it were really about safety then he wouldn't be speaking down about other people like that. Racism is real, the things that come out his mouth amp up the wrong kind of people, don’t you see he’s only catering to a specific audience?”

Her: “What about Latinos for Trump? Our vecinos support him too, mis amigas and their parents are also pro-Trump. They said Hillary will try to punish them for their life’s hard work.”

Me: “Sami that’s not true, you can’t just go along with what you hear your amigas say. I know they’re your high school friends but estas creciendo and have to question everything you see and hear. No one’s punishing anyone, la gente just want fairness.”

Him: “Maybe if they educated themselves on financial literacy then there would be fairness ”

Her: “Tiene razón, no one’s stopping them from educating themselves. Papa worked hard for our house and abuela didn’t need to help him. Look at tia’s house, she hasn't moved from this place since we were kids!”

Him: “Instead of saving her money and investing in proper assets, she bought liabilities. And who’s fault is that? Hers or Trump?”

Me: “That’s not fair to say, abuela had to leave her life behind to give her kids a better life. Your dad was the only one out of the 4 of them that went to college, he’s also the only male, tia had to skip out on school to help abuela with my mom and tia Ledi. Abuela’s “investment” was sending your dad to college, she passed away before encouraging sus hijas to do the same. Todo lo que tienes is because she crossed here illegally y abuela was NOT a criminal like tu idolo says we are”

Her: “Who’s we? You’re not even Mexican! We’re American. Not all of them are criminals but you can’t know for sure who is. Linda told me she found a bunch of them camping near our yacht and they tried to steal things off it. Pobresa makes you criminal out of desesperación”

Him: “Cmon, it’s not hard to understand: let's say there are 10 random people and one of them is a killer, would take the chance and let them all in? Wouldn’t you rather avoid the problem altogether? You don't know who’s coming into the country and as long as there's no proper measure in distinguishing who’s a criminal, you might as well not risk your own citizens, your own family” 

Me: “I know I’m American, but I’m not embarrassed to come from padres Hispanos. I would let all 10 people in because criminals are not assigned to race, bad people make criminals. We have criminals here too, what about them? Your neighbors could be too. I can’t get behind someone who values money over human life, no puedo. I can’t believe you guys are choosing to forget nuestro pasado”

#us politics #politics #opinión #testimony #government #voting #democracy #freedom #inequality #trump #donald trump #trump 2020 #obama #election #election day #american history #american #american culture #mexican #mexican writers #discrimination #justice

[arpov-blog-blog]

Michael Moore thinks that despite the polling and the right leaning mainstream media that seems to regurgitate GOP talking points, there will be a 'Blue Tsunami' election day. Here is more on his thinking..."This is today’s reason why we will win in Roevember: in spite of successful Republican attempts to make it harder to vote — especially for students, the poor, working moms, Black and Brown people — we still have more days and ways now to vote than we did before the pandemic. In fact, if you live in Ohio, you can go vote today! In Michigan, we’ve been voting since it was 90 degrees and sweltering in September! In fact, in Michigan and a few other states, you can register to vote right up until what we still call “Election Day!”

Republicans — aka, the anti-Democracy Party of Trump — hate this. Because of Covid, everyone agreed back in 2020 that we had to make it easy for people to vote safely without contracting the virus. Turns out, all kinds of people loved voting in these new ways. 

Despite a deadly pandemic, we not only had the highest voter turnout of the 21st century with 67% of Americans voting, we also shattered the record of nontraditional voting with 69% of those who voted doing so early — either in-person or by mail. And PEW found the country, for once, was in agreement — the majority of both Biden voters (82%) and Trump voters (62%) cast their ballots before election day. And this year, they didn’t want to go back to the old way. 

Yet for the past two years we’ve faced attempts by Republican-led state legislatures to get rid of all the new ways people like to vote. And now there are, in many red states, fewer early voting days, fewer polling places — and in some cities with large populations, there’s only one Dropbox. Ha! 

Why don’t they want to make it easy for the citizens to vote? Because they know and agree with me on what I’ve been telling you since Midterm Tsunami Truth #1 — that there are more, many more, of us than them! And that means they can’t win unless they try to prevent some of the majority — us! —from voting. Take this as a compliment. They are so scared of us and the power of our multi-million majority, they have literally lost their minds. Gone bonkers. Cuckoo for Cocco Puffs crazy!

I mean, in just the past decade, they’ve been forced to endure a Black President, the gays all getting married, and hysterical women now making up the majority of both our medical schools AND law schools! 

“How in sweet Jesus’ name did this happen?! Marijuana everywhere! The churches are empty, young people don’t want to kill deer or ducks, you can’t bum a cigarette anymore because so few people smoke now! Vegans roaming everywhere, pronouns, so many pronouns, you don’t know who is who or what is they! Madness! Quick — close the borders! They’re trying to replace us! Mommy! Mommy! I‘M SCARED!!!”

Phew. It’s exhausting. But just like those who swore they’d never get in a horseless carriage or allow dangerous electrical wires into the walls of their homes, they will sooner or later get used to gays and their wedding cakes, and their very own kids teaching them about race and anti-racism. They will, in the next decade, learn to accept the free universal health care and day care we’re going to give them. They’re going to get a guaranteed vacation by law and paid time off when they have a baby or their parents take ill. These will be bitter pills for them to swallow, but eventually they’ll see that we meant well and we did this for them even though they didn’t vote for our candidates or listen to hip-hop or believe in Beyoncé or Buddha. We’ve always loved Uncle Bob, even though he drives us crazy. 

And on November 8th, their efforts to suppress the majority will fail — but not only because we will rise up, but because in their race to remain in power, they outmaneuvered themselves, and forgot to check their blind spot."

[powertrust]

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Actually manipulating the game code be it with mods or actually rebuilding the source, is something completely different. What you are talking about is griefing or trolling, and I agree 100%, that's just part of life. None of your examples hold weight against a competitive multiplayer game that's play professionally in an e-sports type manner. I'm just not sure how they'll deal with it when it spills over into the real world and people actually kill each other over their in-game antics. I know that I'd do so if it were my game to control. That has some certain benefits to it and, from a pure outside view, it appears the owners actually appreciate, if not condone, that sort of practice. It's an evil, vile, game that brings out the worst in people. I've read what those fuckers do to each other - intentionally. I'm not saying that I'd agree with such a person, or their behavior, but I'd have a little sympathy.

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Someone, somewhere, is plotting how best to stitch another EVE player's skin into a body suit so that they can wear it while they kill the rest of the team. Hell, for all I know, it's already happened and I've just not read about that story yet. I'm just waiting for someone to die in real life. They know, they have to know, that they're going to die. It's like watching a wreck happen in slow motion where the people are cheering and wearing party hats.

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I like the long, exposé, types of stories that go into full details and actually describe what happened. No, I seriously do look for the stories and read them. Seriously, EVE is gonna result in someone waking up dead one day. A bunch of crazy Americans are going to hop on a boat, row to Iceland, and just start shooting the developers. Iceland has like a half dozen firearms, in the whole country. I've read stories about some of the greatest takeovers, robberies, and con jobs - and they all took place in EVE. Someone's gonna shoot someone over the antics in that game - by the players themselves. Even if they made a client for my system, I'd not play. I am not a gamer but I've read about EVE.

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They would always try to hide the fact they were cheating, so unless you got a rare software detection, discerning cheating from good or lucky play was hard (but not impossible) for an admin. When it became clear that they weren't cut out for it (you need both a hell of a lot of practice time and god's own natural reflexes to cut it in that world), they'd often resort to cheats. There were lots of players who frankly weren't good enough who thought they could make a fist of pro-gaming. "Pro-gaming" was in its infancy back then, but was already becoming "a thing" and there was sponsorship and prize money floating around. This was the only kind we tended to see in the competitive league. The third kind were the properly competitive gamers who felt they were struggling to keep up with the pack and thought that by making subtle use of cheats, they could give themselves an edge. It's even worse to play a guy who is open and proud about the fact he's cheating, in a world where it can take time (up to an hour, on the public servers) to summon an admin. After all, it's annoying to play a guy you think might be cheating. Some of them would try to hide their cheating, but a lot of them were pretty damned open about it. The largest group were the trolls the people who cheated not because it was fun in itself, but because they got off on pissing off other people and screwing up their leisure time. There probably weren't too many of these. The first was simple curiosity people who were bored of playing the game honestly and just wanted to see what the cheats were like. The guys running the "open" public servers sponsored by the same company were getting a similar number of detections in the average week.īy and large, I think there were three reasons why people cheated. In the 18 months or so I was running the league, we had maybe 10 cheat detections during competitive play. Cheating was a pretty big issue back then (not least because software anit-cheat was much less developed) and we spent a lot of time on the watch for it. Way back in the distant dawn of time (or at least, of competitive Counter-Strike play), I ran a major UK Counter-Strike league.

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