#To save her life because the American health care system is bullshit

[the-audacity-of-this-btch-13]

if I had a nickel for every time I watched a Nicholas galitzine movie where they bring up an important issue in society and then just swiftly brush it under the rug I'd have two nickels, which isn't alot but it's weird that it happened twice

#the more I think about purple hearts the angrier I get #like she commits fraud #I support women's wrongs too clearly #To save her life because the American health care system is bullshit #And then they just never bring it up again #And she's so steadfast on her opinion of the military and then it just changes for no apparent reason #Also the sit moment at the beginning pissed me off #Like they made it seem like he tamed her #And the idea of you #Well #Their response to the hypocrisy #Of calling her a cougar #Was just I hate your husband who did the same thing #But you're OK because I love you #Instead of #OH MY GOD HE CHEATED ON YOU #OF COURSE HES THE ONE IN THE WRONG #also they're both consenting adults above the age of 21 #I'm looking at you John mayer #So who gives a fuck #The idea of you #Purple hearts #nicholas galitzine

[route22ny]

*Gaslighting, if you don’t know the word, is defined as manipulation into doubting your own sanity; as in, Carl made Mary think she was crazy, even though she clearly caught him cheating. He gaslit her.

Pretty soon, as the country begins to figure out how we “open back up” and move forward, very powerful forces will try to convince us all to get back to normal. (That never happened. What are you talking about?) Billions of dollars will be spent on advertising, messaging, and television and media content to make you feel comfortable again. It will come in the traditional forms — a billboard here, a hundred commercials there — and in new-media forms: a 2020–2021 generation of memes to remind you that what you want again is normalcy. In truth, you want the feeling of normalcy, and we all want it. We want desperately to feel good again, to get back to the routines of life, to not lie in bed at night wondering how we’re going to afford our rent and bills, to not wake to an endless scroll of human tragedy on our phones, to have a cup of perfectly brewed coffee, and simply leave the house for work. The need for comfort will be real, and it will be strong. And every brand in America will come to your rescue, dear consumer, to help take away that darkness and get life back to the way it was before the crisis. I urge you to be well aware of what is coming.

For the last hundred years, the multibillion-dollar advertising business has operated based on this cardinal principle: Find the consumer’s problem and fix it with your product. When the problem is practical and tactical, the solution is “as seen on TV” and available at Home Depot. Command strips will save me from having to repaint. So will Mr. Clean’s Magic Eraser. Elfa shelving will get rid of the mess in my closet. The Ring doorbell will let me see who’s on the porch if I can’t take my eyes off Netflix. But when the problem is emotional, the fix becomes a new staple in your life, and you become a lifelong loyalist. Coca-Cola makes you: happy. A Mercedes makes you: successful. Taking your kids to Disneyland makes you: proud. Smart marketers know how to highlight what brands can do for you to make your life easier. But brilliant marketers know how to rewire your heart. And, make no mistake, the heart is what has been most traumatized this last month. We are, as a society, now vulnerable in a whole new way.

What the trauma has shown us, though, cannot be unseen. A carless Los Angeles has clear blue skies as pollution has simply stopped. In a quiet New York, you can hear the birds chirp in the middle of Madison Avenue. Coyotes have been spotted on the Golden Gate Bridge. These are the postcard images of what the world might be like if we could find a way to have a less deadly daily effect on the planet. What’s not fit for a postcard are the other scenes we have witnessed: a health care system that cannot provide basic protective equipment for its frontline; small businesses — and very large ones — that do not have enough cash to pay their rent or workers, sending over 16 million people to seek unemployment benefits; a government that has so severely damaged the credibility of our media that 300 million people don’t know who to listen to for basic facts that can save their lives.

The cat is out of the bag. We, as a nation, have deeply disturbing problems. You’re right. That’s not news. They are problems we ignore every day, not because we’re terrible people or because we don’t care about fixing them, but because we don’t have time. Sorry, we have other shit to do. The plain truth is that no matter our ethnicity, religion, gender, political party (the list goes on), nor even our socioeconomic status, as Americans we share this: We are busy. We’re out and about hustling to make our own lives work. We have goals to meet and meetings to attend and mortgages to pay — all while the phone is ringing and the laptop is pinging. And when we get home, Crate and Barrel and Louis Vuitton and Andy Cohen make us feel just good enough to get up the next day and do it all over again. It is very easy to close your eyes to a problem when you barely have enough time to close them to sleep. The greatest misconception among us, which causes deep and painful social and political tension every day in this country, is that we somehow don’t care about each other. White people don’t care about the problems of black America. Men don’t care about women’s rights. Cops don’t care about the communities they serve. Humans don’t care about the environment. These couldn’t be further from the truth. We do care. We just don’t have the time to do anything about it. Maybe that’s just me. But maybe it’s you, too.

Well, the treadmill you’ve been on for decades just stopped. Bam! And that feeling you have right now is the same as if you’d been thrown off your Peloton bike and onto the ground: What in the holy fuck just happened? I hope you might consider this: What happened is inexplicably incredible. It’s the greatest gift ever unwrapped. Not the deaths, not the virus, but The Great Pause. It is, in a word, profound. Please don’t recoil from the bright light beaming through the window. I know it hurts your eyes. It hurts mine, too. But the curtain is wide open. What the crisis has given us is a once-in-a-lifetime chance to see ourselves and our country in the plainest of views. At no other time, ever in our lives, have we gotten the opportunity to see what would happen if the world simply stopped. Here it is. We’re in it. Stores are closed. Restaurants are empty. Streets and six-lane highways are barren. Even the planet itself is rattling less (true story). And because it is rarer than rare, it has brought to light all of the beautiful and painful truths of how we live. And that feels weird. Really weird. Because it has… never… happened… before. If we want to create a better country and a better world for our kids, and if we want to make sure we are even sustainable as a nation and as a democracy, we have to pay attention to how we feel right now. I cannot speak for you, but I imagine you feel like I do: devastated, depressed, and heartbroken.

And what a perfect time for Best Buy and J. Crew and Gwyneth Paltrow to help me feel normal again. If I could just have the new iPhone in my hand, if I could rest my feet on a pillow of new Nikes, if I could drink a venti blonde vanilla latte with two pumps of syrup, then this very dark feeling would go away. You think I’m kidding, that I’m being cute, that I’m denying the very obvious benefits of having a roaring economy. You’re right. Our way of life is not ruinous. The economy is not, at its core, evil. Brands and their products create millions of jobs. Like people — and most anything in life — there are brands that are responsible and ethical, and there are others that are not. They are all part of a system that keeps us living long and strong. We have lifted more humans out of poverty through the power of economics than any other civilization in history. Yes, without a doubt, Americanism is a force for good. It is not some villainous plot to wreak havoc and destroy the planet and all our souls along with it. I get it, and I agree. But its flaws have been laid bare for all to see. It doesn’t work for everyone. It’s responsible for great destruction. It is so unevenly distributed in its benefit that three men own more wealth than 150 million people. Its intentions have been perverted and the protection it offers has disappeared. In fact, it’s been brought to its knees by one pangolin.

And so the onslaught is coming. Get ready, my friends. What is about to be unleashed on American society will be the greatest campaign ever created to get you to feel normal again. It will come from brands, it will come from government, it will even come from each other, and it will come from the left and from the right. We will do anything, spend anything, believe anything, just so we can take away how horribly uncomfortable all of this feels. And on top of that, just to turn the screw that much more, will be the one effort that’s even greater: the all-out blitz to make you believe you never saw what you saw. The air wasn’t really cleaner; those images were fake. The hospitals weren’t really a war zone; those stories were hyperbole. The numbers were not that high; the press is lying. You didn’t see people in masks standing in the rain risking their lives to vote. Not in America. You didn’t see the leader of the free world push an unproven miracle drug like a late-night infomercial salesman. That was a crisis update. You didn’t see homeless people dead on the street. You didn’t see inequality. You didn’t see indifference. You didn’t see utter failure of leadership and systems.

But you did. You are not crazy, my friends. And so we are about to be gaslit in a truly unprecedented way. It starts with a check for $1,200 (Don’t say I never gave you anything) and then it will be so big that it will be bigly. And it will be a one-two punch from both big business and the big White House — inextricably intertwined now more than ever and being led by, as our luck would have it, a Marketer in Chief. Business and government are about to band together to knock us unconscious again. It will be funded like no other operation in our lifetimes. It will be fast. It will be furious. And it will be overwhelming. The Great American Return to Normal is coming.

From one citizen to another, I beg of you: Take a deep breath, ignore the deafening noise, and think deeply about what you want to put back into your life. This is our chance to define a new version of normal, a rare and truly sacred (yes, sacred) opportunity to get rid of the bullshit and to only bring back what works for us, what makes our lives richer, what makes our kids happier, what makes us truly proud. We get to Marie Kondo the shit out of it all. We care deeply about one another. That is clear. That can be seen in every supportive Facebook post, in every meal dropped off for a neighbor, in every Zoom birthday party. We are a good people. And as a good people, we want to define — on our own terms — what this country looks like in five, 10, 50 years. This is our chance to do that, the biggest one we have ever gotten. And the best one we’ll ever get.

We can do that on a personal scale in our homes, in how we choose to spend our family time on nights and weekends, what we watch, what we listen to, what we eat, and what we choose to spend our dollars on and where. We can do it locally in our communities, in what organizations we support, what truths we tell, and what events we attend. And we can do it nationally in our government, in which leaders we vote in and to whom we give power. If we want cleaner air, we can make it happen. If we want to protect our doctors and nurses from the next virus — and protect all Americans — we can make it happen. If we want our neighbors and friends to earn a dignified income, we can make that happen. If we want millions of kids to be able to eat if suddenly their school is closed, we can make that happen. And, yes, if we just want to live a simpler life, we can make that happen, too. But only if we resist the massive gaslighting that is about to come. It’s on its way. Look out.

https://forge.medium.com/prepare-for-the-ultimate-gaslighting-6a8ce3f0a0e0

#covid19 #return to normalcy #social manipulation #everything is broken #julio vincent gambuto

[mistyskeleton]

PRO LIFERS STOP SCROLLING

i’m well aware of how long this is, but bear with me, ok?

if you are, as you say: “pro-life”, then here’s the things you should be/campaigning for:

-vegetarianism and veganism 

-free universal healthcare

-free contraception and sex education reform

-abolishing ICE

-pro-vaccinations

-prison reform and removing the death penalty

-Black Lives Matter

-supporting MMIW causes

-gun control

-raising the minimum wage

-marriage equality

-foster-system reform and adoption equality

-religious freedom

-stopping climate change

vegetarianism and veganism actively save lives of animals, and you actually shouldn’t even be eating plants, fruits, or vegetables because they have life too, right?

free universal healthcare will save many lives of people who can’t afford live saving treatment like chemotherapy and surgery. it will also help close the financial gap between patients as you won’t need to pay out of pocket for insulin or other life saving medications. most of these people have no choice in their illnesses, and insulin prices were about $300 for about one-and-a-half to two months of necessary medical items. many people died or suffered even more health issues because they couldn’t afford it. also, pregnancy is quite expensive, if a mother who cannot even afford to feed herself everyday gets pregnant, she won’t have to pay upwards of $5,000 to have the baby. where were you pro-lifers when bernie sanders and alexandria ocasio cortez proposed free universal healthcare? 

free contraception and pregnancy prevention items such as birth control and condoms would drastically decrease the amount of unwanted pregnancies. same with reforming sex education. an abstinence only education actually causes more unwanted pregnancies than education that teaches how pregnancy occurs and how to prevent it. so why aren’t you campaigning for these?

abolishing ICE is actually pretty obvious. deporting undocumented immigrants for no reason other than for their own egos disrupts people’s lives, and sometimes it sends them into a deadly situation. not to mention the treatment of families at the border. putting kids in cages, separating families, not providing soap to these people. many people at the border have died because of diseases that could’ve been prevented had they were given soap. not to mention, many children who were at the border said that they were extremely mistreated. where were you?

vaccinations prevent completely preventable and potentially deadly diseases and viruses such as measles, small pox, chicken pox, and the flu. children have died from these illnesses, and just because some people think that vaccinations are ‘dangerous’ or will ‘cause autism’, which is all de-bunked by many reputable scientists. why are you not spreading that vaccinations should be mandatory (unless you’re allergic to the vaccine)?

prison dramatically affects the lives of many who are sent there. most for unnecessary crimes such as selling pot-brownies, resisting arrest, etc. many of the people that committed these ‘crimes’ will never be able to find a job and therefore, become poor and not be able to afford basic things like food, healthcare, and other necessities or could possibly become homeless. also, studies have shown that about half of the people on death row could potentially be innocent and killed for no reason. even killing criminals who are very much guilty goes against your ‘pro-life’ argument. 

the black lives matter movement is actively protesting against absolutely unnecessary killing of black people by white police officers. like freddie gray who was arrested for ‘possession of a knife’ (which is a bullshit reason to be arrested, but that goes with prison reform), while he was in police custody, in hand-cuffs mind you, he ‘mysteriously’ became beaten and fell into a coma. the officer walked free. where were you pro-lifers then and countless other times when things like this occur?

MMIW causes, or missing/murdered indigenous women causes, should be supported. indigenous women are more likely to be assaulted, murdered, or go missing than any other race, for no reason other than the fact that they are indigenous. where are you pro-lifers when these atrocities happen?

gun control will actively save the lives of many americans. shootings have killed thousands of americans, whether they were civilians, students, concert-goers, etc. if you say you are ‘pro-life’ then you should be fighting for universal background checks and gun licenses, because these show that gun deaths will drastically go down if these were to occur. 

raising the minimum wage will increase the quality of life among many people across the country. minimum wage currently is not a livable wage, especially with the average rent being at an all time high in our country. also, many mothers who have an abortion because they cannot afford to raise it (because let’s face it, kids are expensive) will have a better opportunity to not raise it in poverty. why are you not campaigning for this?

same goes for marriage equality. if you allow people to marry who they want, their quality of life increases. and studies have shown that ending homophobia and being accepting of their sexualities actually decreases the amount of LGBTQ+ suicides. if you’re pro life you should NOT  be homophobic. 

thousands of children are in the foster care system, and many of the foster families they can get sent to are abusive and absolutely horrible to them. if you’re pro-life and say that ‘adoption is an option’, then you should be trying to reform the system in which these children will be put into. also, you should support gay couples adopting children, because this will increase the number of children getting adopted and will give children a better chance at life. but you say you don’t want gay couples adopting children because it will ‘corrupt’ them? grow up. 

religious freedom will improve the lives of many americans of numerous different faiths. if you end islamophobia and anti-semitism, there will be less hate-crimes against people of these faiths. they won’t have to be afraid of practicing their faiths, they won’t have to be escorted by police to their temples or mosques. why are so many of you pro-lifers anti islam?

stopping climate change will save the lives of everyone on earth, because if climate change is not stopped, it is predicted to kill us by 2060. but why are so many pro-lifers actively against stopping climate change?

and one last thing that you should support if you really are ‘pro-life’:

abortion.

you know why? 

there was a young girl at the age of eleven, that’s right, ELEVEN, who was a victim of rape. she got pregnant because of this, and was forced to carry her baby to term. 

pregnancy is a dangerous and invasive thing, and people who will get their lives ruined because of it should not have to go through it. because then it directly interferes with your mantra of ‘all life should be given a chance’. 

oh? you don’t support all of these things? then guess what:

YOU’RE NOT PRO-LIFE, YOU ARE PRO-BIRTH. IF YOU DO NOT CARE WHAT HAPPENS TO THE CHILD AFTER IT IS BORN OR THE MOTHER AFTER SHE GIVES BIRTH THEN YOU C A N N O T CALL YOURSELF PRO-LIFE. 

rethink your choices. 

#pro life #pro choice #abortion #planned parenthood #psa #socialist

[quakerjoe]

You do realize that one of two people will be the President of the United States on January 20, 2021–yes? Either the incumbent or the Democratic nominee will hold the office, and that’s a legacy as old as Jefferson and Hamilton. If you can not stop trashing both aspirants to the office may I suggest that you pursue the acquisition of a passport as well as some means of leaving the country? Your laments are so doleful as to finally become comedy.

You know what’s really funny? Everything about YOU. I’ll tell you why, since you bothered to ask. I at least owe you that much since you didn’t ask anon.

I get this sort of banter every now and again so I thought I’d display it and answer the question at hand.

First off, this “#Murica, love it or leave it!” horseshit has two facets to it in response.

ONE: “Go fuck yourself. If you’re so willing to lie down and take it in the ass for one of the parties constantly screwing you, you’re pretty useless. Why don’t YOU leave since you’ve clearly given up the fight? “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness” comes at a price, sometimes a high one, and you have to FIGHT for it. If you’re willing to just bend over and take an elbow deep fist in your ass from the Democrats so it can jerk off the GOP while its dick is constantly forced down your throat, then perhaps YOU are the one who needs to pack up and fuck off to Saudi Arabia or North Korea. Maybe Russia or China are more your speed.

 TWO: Are YOU going to pay my way if I decide to give up on America and abandon my home and the nation that I love? I may not love your precious politicians, but I’m still proud to be an American. I served, am a vet, but THIS is not the nation I signed up to defend. This era of US history is the Big Sellout, and you, dumbass, are a part of that.

 You people had chances and opportunities to make this a better place than when you found it, but over the five decades I’ve been alive all I’ve seen is people fighting to get in line to buy the government snake oil like it’s a Cabbage Patch Kid or the new iPhone. It’s pathetic how much the US lacks vision or has any real pride or dignity worth talking about. We’re not #1 at fuck-all anything worth bragging about unless it’s how bad the education system has gotten or that we’re the TOP nation in the world for incarcerated citizens per capita and it’s mostly geared towards men who happen to have a dark complexion.

 The rich and powerful exist here because WE ALLOW it. People  like you, you defunct Fox “News” fan, are either a cheering fan for the status quo of yesteryear with Biden who wants to turn back the calendar to a time that BROUGHT US TRUMP in the first place OR you’re a trump fan who has NO IDEA… well, no ideas or thoughts about anything. Trump’s shown us who we really as a nation apparently- deluded, self-centered, selfish assholes, and the WORLD can see it. Not all of us, granted, but as a generalization, we truly suck. Such a waste of enormous potential, especially given all the resources we’ve had over the years.

 As a result, we’re being overwhelmed by a virus that’s killing us by the thousands and perhaps millions some day. But, since we no longer believe in or do science anymore, nothing much is coming to save us. If/When the time comes that its run its course and should we find a vaccine, there are still anti-vaxxers who’d rather die than take a cure. Then there are the religious zealots who think Jesus will protect them. You know; the ones who are dropping like flies these days? Those assholes; the hypocrites who think they’re part of ‘the faithful’ who, if you believe in that sort of thing, do Satan’s bidding more than Jesus’.

 If you’re not boiling mad at the GOP for literally doing everything they can to go out of their way to keep the US a hateful, racist, peddler of death nation bent on keeping its citizens poor and undereducated, you’re not a part of the solution. If your fucked-up solution is to have those not happy with the butt-hurt they peddle move to another country, it shows you’ve got no pride or respect for your country or yourself. You’re weak, ignorant, selfish and stupid all rolled into a big burrito of go fuck yourself.

If you’re not making a fist so tight that your nails are digging into your palms when you hear that the Democrats are literally forcing us to choose one racist sexual predator that can’t hold a thought or form sentences as the “champion” to replace the incumbent one, you’re DEFINITELY not a part of the solution. Also, you’re an idiot, an asshole, and totally a Biden Bro.

 What will it take for YOU to open your window and shout out “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore!” eh? You people rolling over for Biden are pathetic weaklings who sold out women and #MeToo and sold your souls to #MeTooExceptBiden, allowing the bar to be set to the same, low, cesspool standard that the GOP glorifies in. You sold out party, country, woman, minorities, and everything that was once even remotely good about the party that allegedly represented the working class so that the party leaders can keep their cash flow from Big Pharma, the Insurance lobby, Big Oil and the Military Industrial Complex. You’ve turned the Democratic party into yesterdays feckless, weak and worthless GOP while the current GOP drags the country even FURTHER to the fucking right. You’re aiding and abetting the foulest elements of the nation’s existence.

Your attitude has cost us our place on the world stage and most of our allies while we crawl under the covers with bedfellows we once considered enemies because they treat their people like shit. Now WE are one of those shithole countries you people used to rant about… AND YOU’RE PROUD OF IT and unwilling to stand up and fix it. Instead, you prefer those who are willing to do your job FOR you to just move elsewhere. Loser. Listen, if you’re too much of a wuss to stand up to the establishment that’s using your tax dollars to bail out the rich while pissing table scraps down upon you, that’s on you. You’re too stupid to know better. I get it. But until YOU get off YOUR ASS and hold your government accountable, you’ve got no room to criticize those who ARE doing it.

We’re in the middle of a pandemic and the ONE GUY who has been fighting for his decades-long career for UNIVERSAL health care was someone YOU opted out. American apparently hasn’t suffered enough to grow a pair of whatever motivates it to stand up to the wealth inequality. The US idolizes the rich and instead of fighting for a chance to live at least a DECENT life without having to worry about going tits-up and pear-shape because of hospital bills or job losses, they’d rather just piss away their fortunes and futures so that people with more money than they can spend in a lifetime of ten could possibly spend, all while THEY pay little to ZERO taxes, leaving YOU stuck with the bill. That’s on YOU if you’re willing to bend over and just take it in the ass and take it dry; no kiss, no lube, not so much as a feel-around. That’s YOU.

You, sir, are the problem. Clearly, with people like you, the US is simply BEGGING for 4 more years of trumplefuckery. Perhaps you even deserve it. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone, but who am I? I’m just one of the few willing to call anyone out on their bullshit, from the GOP overall to Pelosi’s feckless approach, to Schumer’s “kid who gets beaten on the schoolyard daily” approach to trying to appear useful. I’ll shit on Liz Warren for not backing a Progressive approach and getting behind Sanders EARLY; screwing her friend and ally AGAIN like in 2016. I’ll call out all the other “candidates” who say one thing while their track records show that they’re pretty full of shit. I’ll DEMAND that we have a party that’s transparent and willing to fight to drag us BACK to the Left instead of the “oh, let’s settle for plutocracy and oligarchy because it’s better than fascism” route. Fuck that, fuck them, and of course fuck you too. Thought I forgot about you? Oh, this is all about you, you spineless goon.

 So let me know if you and your ilk are willing to throw your precious few dollars into a GO FUND ME to finance my move to another country. This includes my family, all our belongings, and of course a home once we get there. Naturally, you’ll be finding us ALL gainful employment there and the costs for the passports, visas, and whatnot and you’ll of course be lining us ALL up with jobs. I’ve got a big family, so it’s going to be pretty goddamn expensive. Shit, just ME moving is going to cost more than you’d be willing to cough up.

 In the mean time, I’m going to remain here, giving the finger to the GOP, the Establishment/Corporate owned Democrats, and people like you. Seriously, you’re an idiot.

@ imall4frogs He’s talking about people like YOU.

#imall4frogs

[sshakespeare]

Cursed Child: Joey!Albus (feat. Lauren!Delphi)

I treated myself to CC this Wednesday to see Joey (and got Lauren!Delphi out of the deal too!) and I wanted to share some of my thoughts/observations below!

PART I

Joey sounds exactly like Daniel Radcliffe. It’s actually a little disconcerting.

Joey’s Albus has HUGE Harry Potter energy circa Books 5 & 6. His single minded determination to save Cedric reminded me a lot of Harry’s obsession with Draco in 6. He also just channels that same dry and edging-on-sassy delivery that Daniel had with Harry’s funnier lines

He carries himself with more confidence than Nick!Albus at the top of the show. He’s definitely nervous about being sorted into Slytherin and going to Hogwarts, but he asserts himself more when Rose is hitting him and he’s more defiant with the other students - Nick’s “I didn’t choose to be his son” is always like a plea. Joey’s reading has a lot more resentment for both the students and Harry

Speaking of - the bedroom scene made me really see the direct connection between Albus’s eavesdropping and the fight. A lot of what Albus throws at Harry about the wizarding world being grateful clearly comes right from Amos. I love Joey’s barely concealed fury in this scene. You can tell it’s been building up for so long and he feels he finally has a reason to let it out

Lauren!Delphi - such a different interpretation from Sara! Lauren’s Delphini Diggory persona kept reminding me of a Derry girl if that makes sense? She had small-town-working-class-up-for-mischief energy and you could see Joey!Albus’s attraction to her right away. She did a lot of voices (she did an American cowboy accent when she was pretending to rob Albus and a little old lady voice when talking about St. Oswald’s). She also pretended to disembowel herself when Amos kept calling for her. It was really dark and fit her Delphi perfectly. Not all her jokes landed with my audience but I appreciate how much she makes Delphi her own and I’m so excited more people get to see her now!

Scorpius suggestively growled at Rose after saying “Good bread! BREAD” and immediately clapped his hand over his mouth all the while Joey!Albus snickered in the background. Joey!Albus in general laughs more than Nick!Albus. He definitely has Harry’s sense of humor

Joey!Albus is tactile for sure. He swatted Scorpius when he said “Do we?!” And he kept putting his hands on Scorpius’s shoulders to steady him on top of the train and while they were watching Delphi transform into Hermione

Also during the train scene Albus kept saying “it’s just like the stairs at school” when trying to get Scorpius to climb up. Super noncomforting but super funny!

When Scorpius and Albus arrive at St Oswald’s, Delphi almost hugs Albus but stops when she sees Scorpius. That tiny moment made it click with me just how much Scorpius’s involvement ruins everything Delphi has so carefully planned over years and years. It really is friendship that saves Albus and the whole world in the end.

Matt!Ron kept rubbing his mouth after kissing Hermione during the polyjuice scene which I honestly don’t remember him doing before. He probably has and I haven’t noticed but I still love it

Scorpius’s “good to know” after Delphi tells him polyjuice is painful was very aggressive tonight.

When Scorpius makes his engorg-impressed joke, Albus made a “so-so” hand gesture, implying he’s rated Scorpius Jokes before and that’s adorable

I’m always intrigued by how Bubba delivers “pale and red at the same time” because sometimes he’s in on his own joke and knows why Albus is blushing and sometimes he’s just baffled by it. Tonight he was very much baffled

Ugh and Joey’s Albus bounces on his toes and holds his cheek and looks so damn happy Delphi kissed him. All I want is his Albus happy but not because of this

Bubba = flirtiest Scorpius. He blew Polly Chapman the most exaggerated kiss while hiding Delphi.

The fight is INTENSE because Joey is one angry Albus. At the start of the Scorpius monologue, Albus looks offended that Scorpius suggests he doesn’t care but you can see him coming to realize how selfish he’s been. When he’s telling Scorpius how kind he is, it is So Soft.

Sarita!Myrtle looks at Albus on the “and boys” line but Joey just made a little “hmm didn’t know that” face. Nick will sometimes look a little flustered so the implications are there

PART II

Not Joey!Albus related, but the Dark World Department of Magic Law Enforcement scene is the best scene in the play. This is a hill I will die on.

Scorpius falters forward right after Draco says “murky” almost like he wants his dad to give him a hug and it never comes. My heart ached for him because Scorpius is truly feeling the loneliness his father felt all throughout his childhood - love and loyalty that has to be kept obscured lest it be viewed as “sloppy” or a weakness

Joey’s Albus is spoiling for a fight when Harry meets him in the Slytherin dorms. His “green is a soothing color” and “not meaning to cast aspersions” delivery is brutal - it’s clearly meant to bait Harry. Nick plays his Albus as very defeated in this scene, as if he’s realized he can never win in the fight against his father’s shadow. Joey plays it like he’s still got one last fight in him and both he and James are near angry tears by the end.

When Bubba does his “Malfoy the Unanxious” he always puts his hands on his hips like some kind of brave knight in a bad musical and Joey!Albus mimics him when he says “I don’t think being fearless is going to be good for your health”

Back on my tactile Albus bullshit: Joey!Albus swats Scorpius again when he says “I had something to prove” (though I do miss how Bubba and Nick practically hold hands during that moment where they’re both on Albus’s bed)

Albus gives a thumbs up to Scorpius’s “it’s time time turning was a thing of the past” joke. Albus joke ranking system confirmed

Lauren!Delphi doesn’t have as clear of a delineation between her Delphini Diggory persona and her Delphi persona (Sara’s voice is always much higher when she’s pretending to be a Diggory), but she’s still terrifying. After she killed Craig and said “these are not childish games we are playing” I got chills. She clearly has no regard for human life

Joey’s Albus can’t watch Craig die. He completely shields his face from it when he realizes what’s about to happen. Bubba’s Scorpius watches the entire thing.

Albus screams when Scorpius is being tortured just like Harry does in Order of the Phoenix when Sirius dies. It’s agonizing

His Albus also screams Scorpius’s name and then whispers it a second time when Delphi uses Crucio for the final time on him.

I love when any Albus screams “HELP” just like Scorpius does. Nick doesn’t do it as much, but Joey went for it

James’s Harry was going through it tonight. He was crying so hard after his conversation with Dumbledore in Act IV that Draco had to ask “You okay?”

He was crying even harder during his scene with Ginny in Albus’s room. The progression of how James plays that scene since his early shows and now is amazing. We’re so lucky he’s sticking around for another year

I don’t even know how to describe the way Joey’s whole face lit up when he sees Ginny for the first time in Godric’s Hollow. It’s like he’s eleven years old again and he gives her the most crushing hug.

Joey’s Albus is the real rock for Harry as they all watch his parents die. Usually James’s Harry leans more on Ginny for support, but this time it was Albus.

Bubba and Joey’s last hug was...weird? When Scorpius hugged him, Joey was more playful with “Scorpius? What is this?” It almost had this undercurrent of “have I finally cracked you? Are you going to start hugging me now?” Nick usually plays it with more happy confusion. Then Joey said the “You better ask Rose...” line while Bubba was still hugging him. Bubba pulled away and lingered for a beat before snapping back to life (like he does with Nick). But while Nick will often look off wistfully as Scorpius leaves, Joey’s Albus has a more happy go lucky look, like he’s looking forward to a good day with his dad. I think Joey’s version is more in line with what the playwrights want, but I do miss all the intense subtext Bubba and Nick have managed to infuse into that hug

That being said, weirdly no Scorbus pair have looked closer to kissing than Bubba and Joey right before Bubba runs down the stairs. They were standing so damn close to each other.

Right before the lights went out, James and Joey hugged!! It’s all I ever needed and more.

I went into the Part I thinking Joey!Albus would be an interesting mix between Sam’s Albus and Nick’s Albus, but I really found he’s entirely an Albus of his own. This is the one Albus where I didn’t quite believe Harry’s “You’re actually more like your mum.” He certainly still had Ginny’s boldness and humor, but I felt like Joey’s Albus was the beginnings of the version of Harry who had been sorted into Slytherin, who hadn’t initially found adapting to Hogwarts so easy, and who had trouble not letting his loneliness overwhelm him. It hit home one of my favorite Draco lines: “People saying parenting is the hardest job in the world. They’re wrong. Growing up is. We all just forget how hard it was.” Harry’s forgotten and it prevents him from seeing how he could have taken the exact same road Albus started down.

To try and summarize all this: gigantic, enormous shout out to Joey and to all understudies who make such massive roles their own and shed completely new light on certain moments and scenes and characters!

#cursed child #ccsquad #albus potter #this is a Mess #much like my favorite scorpius lol

[coffeebased]

Would it be terrible if I kept doing this: popping onto WordPress once a year, for a week, just to chirp energetically about the things I’d done the previous year, before disappearing into the aether? Who would sanction me? Other than myself, of course, but I think that I have enough things to distract my conscience. My annually-updated reading blog hardly takes precedence over my other responsibilities and the reparations that have swallowed up my life.

  I know that I was due one more blog post in January 2019, about reading stats being compared across the years. How convenient it is that that is exactly what I shall be doing now, here in January 2020.

  My ideal posting schedule for 2020 will be as follows:

  2019 Books I have read and my 10 favourite ones (right now! Oh, happy day!)

2019 Reading Statistics (1/11)

Reading Statistics: 2013-2019 (1/18)

Goal-setting for 2020 (1/25)

  This was the system I tried to implement last year. Two out of three posts completed is still a failing mark. And goodness knows if I will manage to stick to that schedule this year, let alone what happens after those posts. That’s every Saturday for January settled. In previous years I used to do everything in one big post and that was great, like, very cathartic, but posts had gotten more and more unwieldy.

  This is such a heartening beginning to a blog post: complete abandonment to the four winds. No commitment! Just my own satisfaction. In 2020, forget overpromising, we are lackadaisically mentioning that we have some ideas that may or may not push through.

  I read 126 books in 2019! You can view the complete list: here. It’s the second least number of books I’ve read since I started documenting my reading habits in 2013. I’m not really surprised since I spent most of the year gathering data in the field or studying. More on that in succeeding blog posts.

  Previous year-end reading posts are here: 2013 | 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 a b|.

  My Ten Favourite Books from Those I Read in 2019

    The Sparrow and Children of God by Mary Doria Russell

  In 2019, humanity finally finds proof of extraterrestrial life when a listening post in Puerto Rico picks up exquisite singing from a planet that will come to be known as Rakhat. While United Nations diplomats endlessly debate a possible first contact mission, the Society of Jesus quietly organizes an eight-person scientific expedition of its own. What the Jesuits find is a world so beyond comprehension that it will lead them to question what it means to be “human”.

Kid Gloves: Nine Months of Careful Chaos by Lucy Knisley

  If you work hard enough, if you want it enough, if you’re smart and talented and “good enough,” you can do anything.Except get pregnant.Her whole life, Lucy Knisley wanted to be a mother. But when it was finally the perfect time, conceiving turned out to be harder than anything she’d ever attempted. Fertility problems were followed by miscarriages, and her eventual successful pregnancy plagued by health issues, up to a dramatic, near-death experience during labor and delivery.This moving, hilarious, and surprisingly informative memoir not only follows Lucy’s personal transition into motherhood but also illustrates the history and science of reproductive health from all angles, including curious facts and inspiring (and notorious) figures in medicine and midwifery. Whether you’ve got kids, want them, or want nothing to do with them, there’s something in this graphic memoir to open your mind and heart.

    The Raven Tower by Anne Leckie

  For centuries, the kingdom of Iraden has been protected by the god known as the Raven. He watches over his territory from atop a tower in the powerful port of Vastai. His will is enacted through the Raven’s Lease, a human ruler chosen by the god himself. His magic is sustained via the blood sacrifice that every Lease must offer. And under the Raven’s watch, the city flourishes.

But the power of the Raven is weakening. A usurper has claimed the throne. The kingdom borders are tested by invaders who long for the prosperity that Vastai boasts. And they have made their own alliances with other gods.

It is into this unrest that the warrior Eolo–aide to Mawat, the true Lease–arrives. And in seeking to help Mawat reclaim his city, Eolo discovers that the Raven’s Tower holds a secret. Its foundations conceal a dark history that has been waiting to reveal itself…and to set in motion a chain of events that could destroy Iraden forever.

    Lent by Jo Walton

  Young Girolamo’s life is a series of miracles.

It’s a miracle that he can see demons, plain as day, and that he can cast them out with the force of his will. It’s a miracle that he’s friends with Pico della Mirandola, the Count of Concordia. It’s a miracle that when Girolamo visits the deathbed of Lorenzo “the Magnificent,” the dying Medici is wreathed in celestial light, a surprise to everyone, Lorenzo included. It’s a miracle that when Charles VIII of France invades northern Italy, Girolamo meets him in the field, and convinces him to not only spare Florence but also protect it. It’s a miracle than whenever Girolamo preaches, crowds swoon. It’s a miracle that, despite the Pope’s determination to bring young Girolamo to heel, he’s still on the loose… and, now, running Florence in all but name.

That’s only the beginning. Because Girolamo Savanarola is not who—or what—he thinks he is. He will discover the truth about himself at the most startling possible time. And this will be only the beginning of his many lives.

    A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine

  Ambassador Mahit Dzmare arrives in the center of the multi-system Teixcalaanli Empire only to discover that her predecessor, the previous ambassador from their small but fiercely independent mining Station, has died. But no one will admit that his death wasn’t an accident—or that Mahit might be next to die, during a time of political instability in the highest echelons of the imperial court.

Now, Mahit must discover who is behind the murder, rescue herself, and save her Station from Teixcalaan’s unceasing expansion—all while navigating an alien culture that is all too seductive, engaging in intrigues of her own, and hiding a deadly technological secret—one that might spell the end of her Station and her way of life—or rescue it from annihilation.

    Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up with Me by Mariko Tamaki, Rosemary Valero O’Connell

  Laura Dean, the most popular girl in high school, was Frederica Riley’s dream girl: charming, confident, and SO cute. There’s just one problem: Laura Dean is maybe not the greatest girlfriend.

Reeling from her latest break up, Freddy’s best friend, Doodle, introduces her to the Seek-Her, a mysterious medium, who leaves Freddy some cryptic parting words: break up with her. But Laura Dean keeps coming back, and as their relationship spirals further out of her control, Freddy has to wonder if it’s really Laura Dean that’s the problem. Maybe it’s Freddy, who is rapidly losing her friends, including Doodle, who needs her now more than ever.

Fortunately for Freddy, there are new friends, and the insight of advice columnists like Anna Vice to help her through being a teenager in love.

    Tiempo Muerto by Caroline Hau

  Two women meet on the island where they shared a childhood. One is looking for her mother, the other her yaya. One is an Overseas Filipino Worker, the other an heiress. In an old bahay na bato haunted by scandal and tragedy, secrets and ghosts, the women find their lives entangled and face the challenge of refusing their predetermined fates and embracing their open futures.

    Gideon the Ninth, The Locked Tomb #1 by Tamsyn Muir

  The Emperor needs necromancers.

The Ninth Necromancer needs a swordswoman.

Gideon has a sword, some dirty magazines, and no more time for undead bullshit.

Tamsyn Muir’s Gideon the Ninth unveils a solar system of swordplay, cut-throat politics, and lesbian necromancers. Her characters leap off the page, as skillfully animated as necromantic skeletons. The result is a heart-pounding epic science fantasy.

Brought up by unfriendly, ossifying nuns, ancient retainers, and countless skeletons, Gideon is ready to abandon a life of servitude and an afterlife as a reanimated corpse. She packs up her sword, her shoes, and her dirty magazines, and prepares to launch her daring escape. But her childhood nemesis won’t set her free without a service.

Harrowhark Nonagesimus, Reverend Daughter of the Ninth House and bone witch extraordinaire, has been summoned into action. The Emperor has invited the heirs to each of his loyal Houses to a deadly trial of wits and skill. If Harrowhark succeeds she will become an immortal, all-powerful servant of the Resurrection, but no necromancer can ascend without their cavalier. Without Gideon’s sword, Harrow will fail, and the Ninth House will die.

Of course, some things are better left dead.

    Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City by K. J. Parker

  This is the story of Orhan, son of Siyyah Doctus Felix Praeclarissimus, and his history of the Great Siege, written down so that the deeds and sufferings of great men may never be forgotten.

A siege is approaching, and the city has little time to prepare. The people have no food and no weapons, and the enemy has sworn to slaughter them all.

To save the city will take a miracle, but what it has is Orhan. A colonel of engineers, Orhan has far more experience with bridge-building than battles, is a cheat and a liar, and has a serious problem with authority. He is, in other words, perfect for the job.

    Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion by Jia Tolentino

  Trick Mirror is an enlightening, unforgettable trip through the river of self-delusion that surges just beneath the surface of our lives. This is a book about the incentives that shape us, and about how hard it is to see ourselves clearly in a culture that revolves around the self. In each essay, Jia writes about the cultural prisms that have shaped her: the rise of the nightmare social internet; the American scammer as millennial hero; the literary heroine’s journey from brave to blank to bitter; the mandate that everything, including our bodies, should always be getting more efficient and beautiful until we die.

  Thanks for bearing with me. Keep a weather eye for the next post.

[Reading] My 10 favourite books from 2019 Would it be terrible if I kept doing this: popping onto Wordpress once a year, for a week, just to chirp energetically about the things I'd done the previous year, before disappearing into the aether?

[sanjuno]

from the tone of ur mcu/got fic it seemed like u really hate or at least disiked steve, how come?

Woo boy, okay. So first things first. Let’s clarify the statement. Steve Rogers, aka Captain America is a character that has been re-imaged several times dependant on the universe he’s in. Classic and Silver Age Steve is okay. I’m kind ‘meh’ about Steve in 616 and Ultimates.

MCU Steve is everything wrong about American superheroes distilled into one storyline. And it’s not just one thing, it’s many things that build up until I want to set him on fire for the good of the world and all the poor, impressionable fanboys in it.

My issues with Steve in the First Avenger are:

MCU Steve refuses to accept any dissenting opinions and his first resort is always violence instead of debate. He’s manipulative in that he verbally antagonizes people so that they “throw the first punch” so he can feel justified in “standing up to bullies”.

MCU Steve glorifies active military service to the point of outright refusing to support the army in a way he’s actually capable of succeeding at and instead commits treason (lying on the enlistment forms) rather that applying for a support role. To say nothing of the danger Steve’s fellow servicemen would be in covering his ass if he did actually manage to lie his way to the warfront. Plus he completely ignores the fact that Bucky was drafted, which means that Bucky did not willingly enlist.

MCU Steve took steroids that had the proven, recorded side effects of increased aggression, sociopathy, and psychosis in every known survival case.

MCU Steve never finished basic training, and thus never even made it to the rank of Private. He’s never been employed by the US Army. “Captain America” is a stage name, not a real rank. If anything, Steve was a consultant employed by the SSR to deal with Hydra and only Hydra.

My issues with Steve in The Avengers are:

MCU Steve is isolating himself and refuses to take care of his own mental health and stability. He expresses obsessive behaviours and rigid thought processes that make it easy for the Hydra agents embedded in SHIELD to gaslight him about people and the operation of modern society. In short, Steve is ignorant and uneducated in a way that he could easily change but refuses to despite have unrestricted access to the resources he needs, and so any failures or bad judgement calls on his part as a result of his ignorance are on his head. Self-education is the responsibility of every thinking person who wants to interact with the wider world.

MCU Steve doesn’t know how to accept specialist opinions, as proven by his distain for Tony and Bruce’s work in the lab so they can track down the cube. Again, distain for cerebral pursuits such as engineering or computer sciences because there’s no visible effort to show for it aside from the results that are produced once the actually work is over.

More attempts to provoke people into violence when MCU Steve is losing an argument because he doesn’t have the facts to back up his statement.

Takes off on a road trip, but when the hell did MCU Steve have the time to get a motorcycle certification or driver’s license? Does he even have a source of income? Second instance of lawbreaking confirmed.

My issues with Steve in The Winter Soldier are:

MCU Steve has no proof that Sam isn’t a Hydra plant when he goes for help, just a gut feeling. Sorry, but background checks are a thing you need to do before sharing classified information for a reason. Operational security is nothing but a dream at this point.

Doesn’t call Tony to get the Helicarriers shut down. Why? Tony has made multiple public statements that Stark tech in the hands of terrorists goes boom!

Yes, there were Hydra agents in SHIELD but dumping the database just meant that all the good, actually SHIELD agents are the ones who got burned. How many active or retired agents and their families got killed because of that info leak? That’s like burning down your house because you saw a spider.

MCU Steve fucks off and doesn’t go to the hearing, and he never actually gets debriefed about what went down. Once again Steve disrespects governing authority and the due process of laws put in place to protect the public. (Because Bucky, and I’m so sick of that mentality.)

My issues with Steve in Age of Ultron are:

MCU Steve hasn’t told Tony that his parents death was a murder but accuses Tony of lying to them. Tony never lies, he doesn’t have enough of a self preservation instinct to bother lying. But Steve is covering up a murder and still somehow thinks he’s a moral authority.

Blames Tony for Ultron when it’s obvious that (a) Bruce was helping and (b) alien magi-tech bullshit was at fault. Plus JARVIS is dead and Steve doesn’t care despite the fact that it’s obvious Tony is grieving.

Identifies with Wanda, known Hydra volunteer who only switched sides because she was going to get killed by Ultron otherwise. Trusts Wanda’s word over Tony’s, when Wanda’s goal has always been to messily murder Tony and she set an enraged Hulk on a city full of civilians with the intent to kill everyone there. 

Throws the shield when he gets to Tony’s lab while Vision is being born, so yet again violence is the chosen option instead of debate.

My issues with Steve in Civil War are:

MCU Steve is still so ignorant of modern politics that he thinks the UN is a government. Also refuses to respect the right of sovereign nations to say “no” to having the Avengers cross their borders. If Steve wants to operate against human organizations instead of just the random alien invasion then he needs to have oversight and a proper command structure. Otherwise he’s just another extremist pushing his personal agenda on the populace. And that’s the definition of terrorism.

MCU Steve fucks up Bucky Barnes’ chances of being acquitted of Hydra’s crimes when they escape custody by blowing through the anti-terrorist task force and collapse a transit tunnel on civilians during the midday commute. Until that point everything Bucky did was could be filed under Bucky being non copus menti as a result of the Winter Soldier programming and the deliberately, maliciously cultivated PTSD triggers implanted by Hydra. But that chance is gone now because Bucky Barnes was the one “in control” when they fucked up the airport and beat up Tony.

MCU Steve lies to Clint and Scott about the reason they’re fighting. Steve says they needs to stop the other Winter Soldiers from being set loose and that the Accords will stop them from acting, but in reality it all boils down to saving Bucky. Meanwhile everyone on Team Cap gets labelled an international criminal in the end and chances are they aren’t going to be able to go home for years even if they’re very, very lucky.

Bad laws are argued in court and amendments get made if a law infringes on the civil rights of the people it impacts. But MCU Steve doesn’t obey the laws, he has never obeyed the laws, and so he has no fucking goddamned clue about how to work inside the system to get what he wants peacefully. Cue more punching his problems.

LYING OR WITHHOLDING INFORMATION ABOUT A MURDER CASE IS OBSTRUCTION OF JUSTICE AND IT’S A CRIME, STEVE.

Breaking people out of prison when they have, in point of fact, broken the law, IS A CRIME, STEVE.

So in summary, MCU Steve is a violent, delusional bully who likes to be the centre of attention and has never believed that the laws apply to him. It’s especially grating because the script writers keep trying to make him a sympathetic character but all I can see is some jacked up white boy on steroids whining because it’s not fair that he needs to be a decent, law-abiding human being. Due Process, Workplace Health and Safety Regulations, Harassment Policies, things like that. Also, Steve and Wanda are actually close to the same age in life experience according to the MCU storylines but he marginalizes her and denies her agency by saying she’ “just a kid”, which is the most bullshit patronizing expression of a superiority complex I’ve even seen in media. And that’s why I don’t like MCU’s version of Steve Rogers.

#Sanjuno Answers #MCU meta #MCU Steve Rogers #Character Analysis #Let me tell you my issues with bad character reimaging with bullet points

[jcdamc]

Creating different support systems: healthier spaces and trusting other families (PART 1) EDITED

A couple days ago, my homegirl/ sista in the struggle Candy made me think about something that has troubled me for years, as an adult and as a man of color with a disability that on one hand, has had the support of an overprotective yet loving family; and on the other hand has had years of experience being independent and self- sufficient. Both scenarios have pros and cons, but the truth is they can both burn you out in different ways. As a proud man of color with a physical disability, I have often struggled when it comes to asking for help, especially when I really need it. With immediate family and chosen family or close friends the same issue comes up: Who, how and when do we ask for support if most of us have been socialized to believe that we only have one main support group (which is usually your blood family)?

Here are a few answers I have from experience, people around me and recent questions I`ve been asked....

My immediate family has done the best they can to raise me right, the best way they knew. I`ve let them know that and am eternally grateful, from my parents to my siblings to my cousins. My father always taught me that as I grew older I had to build an extended support network or family, because you never knew what could happen in life, personally or professionally. Throughout my school and even grad school years I had great associates and some good friends, no doubt. I even had a Hip Hop and BBoy crew that made me feel at home in college. We would help each other out, my boys would give me a ride home if it was late (or I had a lil too much fun lol) and my homegirls and their sense of humor would be the ones pushing me to study, focus and stay up to finish homework at the library many times.

In grad school, I had one true mentor that always kept it real with me and was genuinely supportive and made time for me in his busy schedule as a professor. My big brother figure, STOVE. He was the first brotha to show me how to navigate schools, balance life and how to deal with the workplace in the city in a healthier way. Till this day, STOVE still break it down in a way I can understand, where he doesn`t make me feel guilty for my choices and it`s easy for me to digest his advice. He don`t have to get all technical with me, he is clear, passionate and he listen to me whenever I`m going through something. STOVE and my cousins RodStarz- a community activist, organizer and hip hop artist raised on the north side of Chicago- Nano and Julito, were the big brothers I never had. At different points of my life, I could talk about anything and just chill, kick it with my cousins, no judgment. I guess what I`m trying to say is that depending on your circumstances, a support group could be one person or a group of folks closest to you.

My support system has revolved around my parents, women in my family and women close to me, in my social circles. I get along better with women, have way more female friends (which I have discussed before). In part, it`s natural because I was the only boy in my family. And the only one with a disability. On the other hand, aside from my male cousins, STOVE and my mentee Pharaoh, I have trust issues with most men in my generation. Getting along is one thing, but being friends and opening up is a whole notha ball game y`all.  

My folks and siblings moved around a lot before I was born. Once my folks settled in IL, in the Chicago area, I was a year and a half old. My dad wanted me to get consistent professional help since many Chicago hospitals and therapy centers was known to have real good service in the mid 80`s.  My family and friends of the family (aka adoptive/ chosen family) where real supportive, influential and caring as I grew during my childhood and even adulthood. My momma was involved in my school activities, back in the day when they used to cram every student that had a disability (or might have been misdiagnosed or labelled) in one special ed classroom. We had basic accommodations but no real community supports. This just was before the ADA was passed. Many of us adults with disabilities today are a product of that, consciously or unconsciously.

My family did their best like I said. I have a mixed cultural background, born in the Midwest, bilingual with South American and Caribbean roots, a city guy fighting to be proud, to stand out in a good way. I have lived in and learned from a few different places like Santiago, Chile during my teenage years, yet I always managed to come back to Chicago where my heart is.  I am blessed and thankful to be here, despite having racing thoughts sometimes. I`m much older, continue learning and need and want to find my swag again. It`s up to me. My folks can listen and support what I do. My father hugs me more often, he is wise and my momma always been there through thick n thin, mixing her affection and her tough love all together. They have, despite disagreements and misunderstandings. But I am crying out for help on this new journey, because I also feel like I`m on a big ass island by myself, even when it`s a party around me.

Fast forward... It wasn`t until 2011 that my life and thoughts shifted forever. It was hard to forgive and fully support myself on my own. I was more of a loner just going through the city till then. And I wanna thank everybody that was a part of that change in me. It was a REBIRTH that made see and understand Chicago much better. Yall made me a better and much more mature person, yall made me look in the mirror and accept compliments and my body and feel good about it. Too many folks to name, yall will always be with me in my heart. From 2011 till present day, I`ve built alternative support networks, helped facilitate large events, made great friends, organized and mobilized young people that needed and still seek just as much support and compassion as I do. Most importantly, I improved not only my professional skills, but my relationship building skills and had and still have strong friendships and associates within and outside the disability community. Yall were my angels in some way. Although the last few years have been pretty rough on me, I am finding my way. I will be working on a book of poems and lost poems. My poems are the real me, beyond the boxes, where I can be healthy and not be policed by nobody, where God loves disability, where God love people of color and God love who you all love. I am learning to love myself, yes I am. It`s hard as hell.... Without the support of my brothers and sisters and my cousins in and out the Chi, I wouldn`t BE Here, I wouldn`t be the ME I am TODAY. Y`all will forever be my family too.

It`s really important to find and keep your chosen families and support groups close.... remember that. If not, it might cost you later on... How can I heal when other people close to me are burnt out emotionally or financially? Or some don`t know how or when to have healthy conversations about mental illness and disability? Or when tough love or fussing or cussing each other out is all they have known most of their lives? What happens when you yourself have several things to deal with already, and you have to witness drama or arguments every day? What happens when you are an advocate, and you in the middle of all this, living it today? And YOU need HELP beyond this bullshit ass system?

A lotta things ain`t my business today or ever, only my story and my will to support myself and others in the struggle DOES matter. Passing judgment and blame like a hot potato ain`t neva helped nobody, it sure as hell ain`t helped me. Takes time to change that... 

Struggles look different person to person, the issue is when you don`t know somebody, when we don`t TRUST or bond with somebody through their STRUGGLE. Being raised right doesn`t always mean we are all raised the same way. Don`t judge a book by its cover. Read its story. 

Honest to God, we need to have a huge peace circle within AND outside the disability community... because not everybody that has a disability or mental illness has had proper support systems or knows how to deal with their reality in a positive way. I`m seeing that every day, and it`s real awkward and uncomfortable. The (original) support system that I have had is barely staying afloat on its own today regarding their health, in part because some people don`t know what to do to change things and due to a huge generational gap in the way some families of color treat each other when it comes to xyz disability, mental illness or any other health conditions. There is a lack of patience and compassion among the same generation at times. It`s a “culture of blame” because 50 years ago talking about your health and disabilities equaled shame or being “sick” all the time. And to some extent, that culture of blame or silence creates unhealthy relationships and psychological issues from head to toe, and many people are not aware of that. It`s done unconsciously in part because of the effects of ableism. Exposure or lack of exposure changes everything, because that`s the difference between knowing how to help and helping without knowing. Love was caring with a tough shell 50 years ago, especially in some families and cultures of color where holding feelings in was real common.    

I grew up around elders, with one foot in a ableist society and the other foot in the disability community, and I ain`t realize it till my late 20`s.... Gotta keep helping myself heal. One foot told me it`s something wrong with me, the other one taught me I`m beautiful just the way I am. I realize I cannot help everybody, not even my loved ones in general, if I am not supporting or hugging myself first.        

People are people, and nobody, regardless of disability or age or ethnicity, should be feeling like they are a constant burden or isolated, not even myself. As of right now, I can only support and save myself writing every single day, through the power of music and my prayers, for my own sanity. I have enough tryna shut my mind up so I can breathe and listen to God. I refuse to deal with or let other people`s headaches get to me. I am also doing what I can, thankful and humbled. We all need to express support and show up when help is WANTED, not just say it. Takes time.

The problem ain`t people that need help, the issue is people that need healthy supports but don`t WANT THE HELP because they proud, ignorant or just plain scared. It`s hard to ask for help when you might be so used to being the one helping others or the one that is independent to a fault or the giving one...

One of my siblings told me, “You might not have abc right now... but all you got is you. Do you and don`t be worrying about other people” She right. Sometimes, after hearing the same message in different ways and from different people that care, ish finally sink in G.   

My writing and my music are my babies. Lately, writing and my jams are more like a punching bag and I`m Ali. I`ve cussed, talked trash, been disappointed in the system and fussed enough. Yes, I like many more, desperately need to find or strengthen other/ different and kinder support groups within our complicated lives. Support networks where we value ourselves as individuals with disabilities and/or mental illnesses, where we become more patient with ourselves, and more importantly where we find healthier outlets. We might not understand everything, but we damn sure need to listen better and TREAT ourselves with much more love. 

You`d be surprised how many folks in our community need just one person to talk to, because they want attention, because they are severely depressed, have anxiety, are shut down or because they themselves feel like they live on a island too. Kindness and patience starts with ourselves, and it`s these things that an ableist society makes way too hard for people with disabilities and mental illness to see. Fight self- pity and self- hate or lashing out and realize that you do matter. That`s a start to support yourself and your brothers and sisters, and families. Disability pride is a important part of us individually and as a community. Breathe, be kind, be patient and pray. Too many of us have been conditioned by society to worry, to lynch ourselves, instead of having confidence and building on it. We all gotta get that swag back. It might not look pretty at times, but we gotta have faith AGAIN. 

Part 2 of this Support System blog series will introduce the idea of building a non profit organization for and by people with disabilities to maintain more supportive networks, be more self-aware, self- sufficient  and empowering in their lives and communities starting this year. Something along the lines of “Disability Arts and Education Collective” inspired by my peoples a while ago... in the works. I could always use more help, no doubt.

Over the past 2 to 3 weeks, I have been doing my part, tryna find my rhythm and I gotta do my own, eat my leftover food, maybe even breakdance again, and smile one smile at a time, even if it`s only on the outside at the moment. Hopefully more people will join me.     

Peace and Blessings,

JC Da MC.        

#new piece #2017 #community supports #saveyourself #chicity #heart #self advocacy #backgrounds

[amaintainedrisk]

Sunday night I went to the emergency room again. I now have four holes in the back of my head where spinal fluid is leaking out. I am at massive risk for infection, and it's already been confirmed that I already have a brain infection. they eventually think the four wounds will get bigger and bigger until it's just one big gaping wound. The ER doctor gave me a dose of anabiotic's there and gave me two prescriptions: one for anabiotics and one for pain meds because he could tell I was in pain because he could barely touch me and the area around the wound is inflamed and red. now let me tell you a little something about how Medicaid works, at least in Ohio. If you are on Medicaid and you have a prescription, and Medicaid won't pay for it, you either have to go without or get prior authorization. which can take weeks. and sometimes you don't get it even then, they deny you. You are not allowed to pay out-of-pocket for your meds if you are on Medicaid. it's literally against the law. They put it there because pharmacists we're letting people pay out-of-pocket for their meds, and then they double billed Medicaid anyway. So the pharmacist for getting paid for the medicine twice, and because of crooked pharmacists, You were no longer allowed to pay out of pocket for your meds. If you are on Medicaid, and the meds are not covered, too fucking bad. Even if you need the meds desperately, and you have the money, you are shit out of luck. so now I have these two prescriptions and I need them filled. We are well aware of the laws but I have a gaping wound in the back of my head and I need antibiotics for it, so what would you do? I went to a pharmacy, they wouldn't fill it. Went to two more pharmacies, They wouldn't fill it. Went to the fourth pharmacy, handed the prescriptions to them, crossed my fingers that they would be filled, and all hell broke loose. The pharmacist was furious at me and said I was on Medicaid and I should know better. I shouldn't be going from pharmacy to pharmacy trying to get these meds filled. He told me to wait for prior authorization. I told him I've been waiting three weeks for it on certain meds, And it got denied. so he said"There's your answer then, why are you here?" I ripped the bandage off my head and frustration, turned around, and parted my hair and showed him the gaping wounds in my head and told him I just came from the ER yesterday evening. That's why. he stammered and stuttered and told me there was nothing he could do, I can't pay out-of-pocket and by law he Hass to confiscate my prescriptions and he told me I'm going to be lucky if I don't get turned in and the cops show up at my door. I asked him, for what fucking reason would I be in trouble? And he said Medicaid fraud. Trying to buy medications when I am on Medicaid indicates fraud and is a red flag and could trigger an investigation, especially if pain medicine is involved. I just can't fucking believe this. I couldn't even get my prescriptions back to try somewhere else so now I have massive head wounds and no chance of anabiotics again. and now on top of it, I could be in trouble with the justice system? I could get arrested if they so choose? Are you kidding me? I could literally be arrested right now or at any time because I was committing Medicaid fraud by trying to get antibiotics and pain meds for my head wounds and brain infection. Fuck. You. America. I am ASHAMED to be an American. This country is bullshit and just treating our citizens like criminals and like dirt. And this started way before Trump. I am ashamed of this country and I hate it with everything I am. This country is willing to let its people die and suffer so we can make money and for a million different reasons. Democrats and Republicans alike and I'll burn in hell. You shut down the government but your paycheck doesn't stop, does it, you greedy fucking bastards. Obama care and Medicaid is in the toilet and people are dying and suffering, but you're fucking health care plan is perfect, ain't it? Go fuck yourselves. All of you. i'm in this mess because of what doctors have done to me. Have they been punished? Of course not. Just me. And now I could be in trouble with the law for trying to get a prescription filled and a bullshit government system. Does anybody else suffer? No. The people who make these laws don't suffer. They are all doing just fine, aren't they? AREN'T THEY? FUCK YOU. FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU. IT'S BECAUSE OF YOUR FUCKING LIES THAT WENT INTO EFFECT JANUARY 1, IT'S BECAUSE OF THOSE LAWS THAT I WAS KICKED OFF HOSPICE. BECAUSE I SUDDENLY DIDN'T MEET REGULATIONS BECAUSE GOD FOR BID I DID NOT DIE FAST ENOUGH FOR YOU PEOPLE. I AM SO FUCKING SORRY I MESSED UP YOUR SYSTEM BY NOT DYING QUICK ENOUGH FOR YOU. SO FUCKING SORRY I INCONVENIENCED YOU AND CAUSED YOU TO DO A FEW MORE PAGES OF PAPERWORK. SO SORRY. and now this? And fuck you too, Governor John Kacic. All the bullshit you have done in office. The way you altered abortion law so even if the mothers life depends on it, she is an allowed to have one. Ohio has the toughest abortion laws in the country because of you and I don't give a fuck how religious you are, if a woman's life depends on it, FUCKING SAVE HER. HAVE YOU NO FUCKING BRAINS? YOU DO REALIZE A FETUS CAN'T LIVE IN A MOTHERS UTERUS WHEN THE MOTHER IS DEAD. YOU DO THE SURGERY/TERMINATION AND AT LEAST YOU SAVE ONE LIFE. FORCE HER TO NOT GET AN ABORTION AND YOU KILL BOTH OF THEM YOU FUCKING MORON. BUT NO, YOU'RE RIGHT. FUCK WOMEN AND THEIR RIGHTS. BUT GOD FOR BID ANYONE COMES FOR YOUR RIGHTS TO YOUR GUN, RIGHT? TO A PIECE OF METAL THAT DOES NOTHING BUT KILL. THAT'S OK. BUT A WOMAN'S LIFE? WHO CARES. SHE GETS AN ABORTION TO SAVE HER OWN LIFE AND SHE'S A FUCKING MURDER AND YOU SAY THAT WHILE YOU'RE PUTTING YOUR MURDER WEAPON IN YOUR HOLSTER. YOU FUCKING HYPOCRITES this isn't even about religion. It's about common sense and not letting people suffer. If a woman is dying on the table and you can save her life, fucking save her life. Don't call her a murderer for wanting to live. You fucking assholes. everyone in Ohio fucking hates this man because of all he has done to his constituents in Ohio. We are all suffering while he isn't. Look what he's done to me with his laws, even the pharmacists I have talked to have said they despise him for all the rules he put in place that is doing nothing but hurting patients who need help. GOVERNOR JOHN KACIC: FUCK YOU AND EVERYTHING YOU STAND FOR, YOU INSIGNIFICANT LITTLE PRICK. I WOULDN'T WISH MY HELL EVEN ON YOU BUT YOU SURE AS HELL DON'T MIND IF I GO THROUGH IT, RIGHT? RIGHT. I wrote my dear old "governor and "a letter (feel free to do so yourselves if you wish) but I know he's not even going to read it. In order to read it, he would have to care and he does not. not to mention that my mother now has no insurance either and she needs brain surgery too. her insurance premiums went up to $666 a month. Pretty fitting number, right? The mark of the devil? Health insurance? Same fucking thing. This is Satans System so it should be marked by Satans number. everyone in the government says the system is bullshit but they don't do anything about it. All the doctor say the system is bullshit but they don't do anything about it. The nurses, the pharmacies, everybody says it's bullshit. But they don't do anything about it. So fuck all of them too. so now on top of the intense pain and worry, I have to worry about going to jail too? I've done nothing wrong but try to survive. And trying to survive has not wrong. I don't know if I've been turned in, if I'll be question, what the penalty is, or if anything will even happen at all. The pharmacist wasn't really clear on what he was going to do. Maybe he just like the whole thing go after I left because he pitied me. maybe he turned me in for fraud but it's not something the government is going to pursue, because maybe they see why I was doing that and that I was just trying to get my prescription filled because of my fucking brain infection. I just simply don't know. But for days now, every time I hear a siren I keep thinking it's the cops coming to raid my house or something. Coming to arrest me. I just can't fucking believe what is going on right now. I am so fed up and exhausted. I am so scared. fuck this entire country. I would give anything to live in a different country, in a country where they care about their citizens and don't let them suffer. Because it Country sure as hell is in America. America and its government does not end it isn't just what I am going through. Did you know there is a drug over in Europe that can cure people of their heroin addiction and eight hours? They are calling at the miracle drug, and drug overdoses have dropped to almost nonexistent numbers across the ocean. But American lawmakers and big Pharma don't bring it over here. Why? Because they can't make money off it. That's the only reason. And what's fucked up is that the government admits that's the only reason. We don't have the patent, someone in Europe does. So if we brought it over here, they would make the money, not us. so they will not bring that drug over here that will cure you of addiction. I am not fucking kidding. they sit there and complain about the opioid and heroin epidemic but then they won't bring the drug over here that can cure it's all simply because they can't make money off it. They would rather people like me and my beloved Monsie have to go through what we go through, and have to go without, instead. That's the worst part. It's all about money. We don't have to be suffering right now but our government is letting us just out of spite and money and fuck America for that. that's proof that lawmakers clearly don't care about the opioid epidemic and the heroine use because they could cure it almost overnight but they won't. Instead, people like me end up in prison for just trying to survive. I have never been more disgusted in my whole life. not only do I have to suffer because of the doctors mistakes, because of the heroin overdoses and the attics to do it, not only do I have to suffer because of my family and because of my government, but I could very well die very soon here when I don't have to because the government is making laws to make it harder on me just because they can't make money off the easy way, and the way that will save lives. America, go fuck yourself. You are a horrible country run by horrible people and I am ashamed to be an American. Shame on all of you. I don't deserve this.

[tortuga-aak]

Stop doing corporations' digital busywork for free

AP/Andre Penner

Consumer technologies involve logistical effort that means more administrative work at home.

Answering customer surveys, setting privacy rules, resetting a password, wading through licensing agreements, or updating firmware adds to that workload.

It's called "logistical labor" — and people should stop doing it.

Over the past year, I stopped responding to customer surveys, providing user feedback or, mostly, contributing product reviews. Sometimes I feel obligated — even eager — to provide this information. Who doesn't like being asked their opinion?

But, in researching media technologies as an anthropologist, I see these requests as part of a broader trend making home life bureaucratic.

Consumer technologies — whether user reviews and recommendations, social media or health care portals — involve logistical effort that means more administrative work at home. As economic anthropologist David Graeber observes, "All the software designed to save us from administrative responsibilities [has] turned us into part- or full-time administrators."

Companies may benefit when customers create content, provide feedback and do busywork once done by paid employees, but what about the customers themselves — all of us?

Many researchers recognize professional workplaces are becoming more bureaucratic, managing workers through documentation and quantification. But fewer acknowledge the expansion of this logic into private life.

It might not feel like a burden to update your Facebook profile, review a business or log in to a web portal to message your doctor. But when you lose time answering customer surveys, setting privacy rules, resetting a password, wading through licensing agreements or updating firmware, it becomes clear how digital technologies increase managerial work at home. In my forthcoming book, I explore this phenomenon, which I call logistical labor.

Digitizing daily life

Here's a typical example of how this happens at home. I recently received an email from my auto insurance requesting I call. Fair enough; I might not answer if the company called me. But instead of reaching a person familiar with the query, my call fed into an automated system where a synthesized voice asked what I was calling about.

"You told me to call!" I replied.

The automated system was confused: "Sorry, what was that again? You can say auto 'policy,' 'claims' or 'tell me my options.'"

Eventually I reached a human, who didn't know why I'd been asked to call either. "I don't know," I told her, "That's what I'm calling about…" Finally, we figured out what was going on and resolved the issue. Then she asked whether I would stay on the line for a customer service survey. I refused.

Rather than calling or emailing me with specific details, the company made me work through all that automated confusion. Requiring that I call in effectively gave me work previously done by paid employees. And then the insurance company asked for yet more of my time to reflect on how well — or not — my work solved the problem the company had. At what point should I expect to be paid for my work?

Managing work

Thomson ReutersBureaucracy — a term coined in the 18th century to mean "rule by writing desk" — refers to the organization of modern government, desk-bound and hierarchical. Max Weber, a founding theorist of social science, viewed bureaucratic organization as fundamental to modern society.

He decried its rigidity as an "iron cage" of rationalization in which social life is managed quantitatively. Since at least the 1970s, bureaucratic management has become common in corporate workplaces.

Sociologist Robert Jackall termed this shift the "bureaucratization of the economy," in which rigid hierarchy and constant documentation takes over business places, including "administrative hierarchies, standardized work procedures, regularized timetables, uniform policies, and centralized control."

More bureaucracy means relentlessly tracking metrics and performances in the name of productivity — and internalizing the idea that a person's value can be quantified.

Graeber, the anthropologist of bureaucracy, suggests bureaucratization is becoming more common as Western economies export manufacturing work to developing countries. The work that remains increasingly depends on the finance, insurance and real estate sectors, businesses that make their money from service fees and employ people to do pointless "bullshit" jobs. Graeber contends that — unlike teaching, manual work, health care or the arts — jobs in management, consulting, PR or other "knowledge" fields could vanish with little effect on society.

In the academic world, anthropologists like Marilyn Strathern have described the push to quantify and document university work as "audit culture." More broadly, this expansion of administrative work, aided by digital technologies, is transforming how American companies operate.

For many companies, shifting administrative labor to consumers and "gig-economy" contractors offers a newly "disruptive" business model. As tech companies replace live customer service with online support "topics," for example, users must spend additional time wading through these articles, or face endless phone trees when they do find a phone number.

Laboring for social media companies

New technologies can generate more pointless work, and not just in professional settings. The logic of tracking and monitoring, for example, threatens to take over American home life as well, from fitness and wearable tech to smart homes that assess when you need toilet paper or milk.

But spending time on new tech platforms doesn't always seem like work. Young Europeans I have studied, for example, enjoy spending time on social networking sites and describe them warmly. But Facebook, Yelp, Instagram and the rest profit from the posts, photos, reviews and links people create, because they incite the "engagement" that drives ad revenue.

As with consumer surveys or user feedback, these firms are harnessing user-generated content to convert people's leisure time into corporate profit.

As new social network sites are created and become popular, each person spends more time keeping profiles up to date, checking on connections' activities or chasing down forgotten passwords. Managing these accounts isn't just time-consuming; it can be mentally taxing.

Inspired by Chandra Mukerji's research on the logistical power of water in civil engineering projects, I consider this cognitive effort "logistical labor." Logistical labor is in this sense the work consumers do to manage tech platforms, often as companies outsource content creation and streamline their operations.

Thomson Reuters

A new digital divide

The scope of this uncompensated digital busywork — from which companies profit — goes well beyond social media maintenance and taking consumer surveys. Even setting up a home printer requires exploring settings and configurations and troubleshooting, which can be daunting without the right tech know-how. People who are unwilling or unable to do that miss out on some of technology's benefits.

In my research, for example, one young person in Berlin balked at purchasing a new mobile phone, overwhelmed by the task of sorting through service plans. Another shared wireless internet service with a friend across the street, resigning herself to spotty connections and limited online activity rather than wrestle with choosing, ordering and configuring her own service. Others were concerned about data privacy but were stymied by Facebook's privacy options.

The scale of these problems is not only about quality of life — but about life itself.

Handling health care

Expecting consumers to be deeply involved expert users is especially concerning when it comes to managing health care. The dysfunctional U.S. health care system is already a Byzantine system of preauthorizations, insurance codes and impersonal treatment. Digitization alone isn't to blame, but tech platforms like online portals increase administrative work for patients.

Patients, for example, often encounter multiple online portals in the process of paying bills or obtaining prescriptions. Although these systems save time in some ways, they require patients do more legwork like setting up user accounts. This problem is made worse as doctors leave private practice for hospital groups, which often use unwieldy online platforms and automated phone systems that make it difficult to reach a doctor directly.

Although the health care industry touts such portals as better for business — and in theory, for coordinating care — little attention has been paid to the additional work they create for patients, or the barriers to accessing their doctors.

Inequality at home

In all these examples, managing information on computer systems — for health care, insurance coverage or social media interaction — requires a new level of logistical effort, even with access to computers and the internet. This logistical labor adds to the mental work of managing a household.

In most homes, this additional effort, sometimes called "cognitive load," falls disproportionately to women, who keep track of their families' needs. For working women, the "second shift" isn't just about housework or child care, but the cumulative fatigue of planning, delegating and worrying.

It's not a coincidence that many "smart home" technologies effectively replace the care work of mothers. This invisible labor typically goes unpaid, further devaluing responsibilities traditionally associated with women.

Youtube Embed: http://www.youtube.com/embed/NDlQu1ow_0s Width: 440px Height: 260px

Similarly, the logistical labor of managing new technologies entails a cognitive load that can overtake daily life. Of course, I still follow social media, read consumer reviews and sign up for paperless billing. But I'm more aware of how easily my time and labor become new sources of profit, through an unseen exploitation that places the onus on individuals to manage complex systems in the guise of optimizing user "experience." This broader trend, however, makes individuals complicit in their own exploitation.

NOW WATCH: A running coach explains the 2 most important activities runners should do to avoid knee pain

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[djgblogger-blog]

Stop doing companies' digital busywork for free

http://bit.ly/2gVMWe8

How much time and energy do people spend rating, reviewing and answering surveys? Ditty_about_summer/Shutterstock.com

Over the past year, I stopped responding to customer surveys, providing user feedback or, mostly, contributing product reviews. Sometimes I feel obligated – even eager – to provide this information. Who doesn’t like being asked their opinion? But, in researching media technologies as an anthropologist, I see these requests as part of a broader trend making home life bureaucratic.

Consumer technologies – whether user reviews and recommendations, social media or health care portals – involve logistical effort that means more administrative work at home. As economic anthropologist David Graeber observes, “All the software designed to save us from administrative responsibilities [has] turned us into part- or full-time administrators.” Companies may benefit when customers create content, provide feedback and do busywork once done by paid employees, but what about the customers themselves – all of us?

Many researchers recognize professional workplaces are becoming more bureaucratic, managing workers through documentation and quantification. But fewer acknowledge the expansion of this logic into private life. It might not feel like a burden to update your Facebook profile, review a business or log in to a web portal to message your doctor. But when you lose time answering customer surveys, setting privacy rules, resetting a password, wading through licensing agreements or updating firmware, it becomes clear how digital technologies increase managerial work at home. In my forthcoming book, I explore this phenomenon, which I call logistical labor.

Digitizing daily life

Here’s a typical example of how this happens at home. I recently received an email from my auto insurance requesting I call. Fair enough; I might not answer if the company called me. But instead of reaching a person familiar with the query, my call fed into an automated system where a synthesized voice asked what I was calling about.

“You told me to call!” I replied.

The automated system was confused: “Sorry, what was that again? You can say auto ‘policy,’ ‘claims’ or ‘tell me my options.’”

Eventually I reached a human, who didn’t know why I’d been asked to call either. “I don’t know,” I told her, “That’s what I’m calling about…” Finally, we figured out what was going on and resolved the issue. Then she asked whether I would stay on the line for a customer service survey. I refused.

Rather than calling or emailing me with specific details, the company made me work through all that automated confusion. Requiring that I call in effectively gave me work previously done by paid employees. And then the insurance company asked for yet more of my time to reflect on how well – or not – my work solved the problem the company had. At what point should I expect to be paid for my work?

Are these call center workers happy because other people are doing their jobs? Redpixel.pl/Shutterstock.com

Managing work

Bureaucracy – a term coined in the 18th century to mean “rule by writing desk” – refers to the organization of modern government, desk-bound and hierarchical. Max Weber, a founding theorist of social science, viewed bureaucratic organization as fundamental to modern society. He decried its rigidity as an “iron cage” of rationalization in which social life is managed quantitatively. Since at least the 1970s, bureaucratic management has become common in corporate workplaces.

Sociologist Robert Jackall termed this shift the “bureaucratization of the economy,” in which rigid hierarchy and constant documentation takes over business places, including “administrative hierarchies, standardized work procedures, regularized timetables, uniform policies, and centralized control.” More bureaucracy means relentlessly tracking metrics and performances in the name of productivity – and internalizing the idea that a person’s value can be quantified.

Graeber, the anthropologist of bureaucracy, suggests bureaucratization is becoming more common as Western economies export manufacturing work to developing countries. The work that remains increasingly depends on the finance, insurance and real estate sectors, businesses that make their money from service fees and employ people to do pointless “bullshit” jobs. Graeber contends that – unlike teaching, manual work, health care or the arts – jobs in management, consulting, PR or other “knowledge” fields could vanish with little effect on society.

In the academic world, anthropologists like Marilyn Strathern have described the push to quantify and document university work as “audit culture.” More broadly, this expansion of administrative work, aided by digital technologies, is transforming how American companies operate. For many companies, shifting administrative labor to consumers and “gig-economy” contractors offers a newly “disruptive” business model. As tech companies replace live customer service with online support “topics,” for example, users must spend additional time wading through these articles, or face endless phone trees when they do find a phone number.

When is bureaucracy too much? Elnur/Shutterstock.com

Laboring for social media companies

New technologies can generate more pointless work, and not just in professional settings. The logic of tracking and monitoring, for example, threatens to take over American home life as well, from fitness and wearable tech to smart homes that assess when you need toilet paper or milk.

But spending time on new tech platforms doesn’t always seem like work. Young Europeans I have studied, for example, enjoy spending time on social networking sites and describe them warmly. But Facebook, Yelp, Instagram and the rest profit from the posts, photos, reviews and links people create, because they incite the “engagement” that drives ad revenue. As with consumer surveys or user feedback, these firms are harnessing user-generated content to convert people’s leisure time into corporate profit.

As new social network sites are created and become popular, each person spends more time keeping profiles up to date, checking on connections’ activities or chasing down forgotten passwords. Managing these accounts isn’t just time-consuming; it can be mentally taxing. Inspired by Chandra Mukerji’s research on the logistical power of water in civil engineering projects, I consider this cognitive effort “logistical labor.” Logistical labor is in this sense the work consumers do to manage tech platforms, often as companies outsource content creation and streamline their operations.

A new digital divide

The scope of this uncompensated digital busywork – from which companies profit – goes well beyond social media maintenance and taking consumer surveys. Even setting up a home printer requires exploring settings and configurations and troubleshooting, which can be daunting without the right tech know-how. People who are unwilling or unable to do that miss out on some of technology’s benefits.

In my research, for example, one young person in Berlin balked at purchasing a new mobile phone, overwhelmed by the task of sorting through service plans. Another shared wireless internet service with a friend across the street, resigning herself to spotty connections and limited online activity rather than wrestle with choosing, ordering and configuring her own service. Others were concerned about data privacy but were stymied by Facebook’s privacy options.

The scale of these problems is not only about quality of life – but about life itself.

Handling health care

Expecting consumers to be deeply involved expert users is especially concerning when it comes to managing health care. The dysfunctional U.S. health care system is already a Byzantine system of preauthorizations, insurance codes and impersonal treatment. Digitization alone isn’t to blame, but tech platforms like online portals increase administrative work for patients.

Patients, for example, often encounter multiple online portals in the process of paying bills or obtaining prescriptions. Although these systems save time in some ways, they require patients do more legwork like setting up user accounts. This problem is made worse as doctors leave private practice for hospital groups, which often use unwieldy online platforms and automated phone systems that make it difficult to reach a doctor directly.

Although the health care industry touts such portals as better for business – and in theory, for coordinating care – little attention has been paid to the additional work they create for patients, or the barriers to accessing their doctors.

Inequality at home

In all these examples, managing information on computer systems – for health care, insurance coverage or social media interaction – requires a new level of logistical effort, even with access to computers and the internet. This logistical labor adds to the mental work of managing a household.

In most homes, this additional effort, sometimes called “cognitive load,” falls disproportionately to women, who keep track of their families’ needs. For working women, the “second shift” isn’t just about housework or child care, but the cumulative fatigue of planning, delegating and worrying. It’s not a coincidence that many “smart home” technologies effectively replace the care work of mothers. This invisible labor typically goes unpaid, further devaluing responsibilities traditionally associated with women.

Do smart technologies tend to focus on gender-biased tasks?

Similarly, the logistical labor of managing new technologies entails a cognitive load that can overtake daily life. Of course, I still follow social media, read consumer reviews and sign up for paperless billing. But I’m more aware of how easily my time and labor become new sources of profit, through an unseen exploitation that places the onus on individuals to manage complex systems in the guise of optimizing user “experience.” This broader trend, however, makes individuals complicit in their own exploitation.

Jordan Kraemer received funding previously from Intel Labs.

[moisblogs]

Enough is Enough

Each day since the Inauguration of [President] Trump, things have been spiraling out of control. Ranging from protests to hypocritical name calling like "Snowflakes." However, my thoughts aren't about all the wrongs coming out as a result of something, it goes closer to the root of the problem: the Party System. I know that there are many Parties in US politics, Libertarian, Independent, Socialist Party of America, Nazi Party of America, Green Party, etc., but this blog post will go over the two dominant Parties: Republican and Democrat (I'll be referring to them as Conservative/Right-Wing and Liberal/Left-Wing respectively every now and then).To both of them, I say "Enough." I'll start with the Republican Party. Quick disclaimer: I am not saying this applies to everyone in the party, but I am addressing my observations with the Republicans currently in Congress aside from the President. A while ago, I was talking with a friend who highly suggested that I look at right-wing media as closely as I do left-wing media. If you're reading this, I can't bring myself to do that, and here's why: I'm very detail oriented. In music, I can tell when something is off at the lowest of volume, in graphic design I can tell when something is a pixel off in a 16:9 aspect ratio image, and in video, a frame going at 60 FPS. In media, I can tell the agenda of a source by how the source is written. For normal news, Fox is the same and NBC to me. For political news, so far every right-winged source I've read has the underlying message/rhetoric that I fear people buy into "hook, line, and sinker": Fear Everyone. "But I need to protect the people I love" yeah, I get that. I want to be able to protect my friends and family too, but expecting the worst out of anyone who looks, speaks, prays, and act different than you only brings you closer and closer to paranoia. I can't get myself to follow right-wing media because I can't get myself to fear people who are culturally different. Excuses aside, I am not going to allow conservative fear mongering to control who deserves to exist in America. This is not to say that Democrats have the right idea either. I have the same disclaimer with Democrats and I do Republicans. When people from the DNC say that Clinton worked hard to get the nomination, I call bullshit. My generation knows that Clinton had ties with people in the DNC so the nomination was gift wrapped to her. Most of the people I talk to say that they supported Bernie Sanders, and what happened to him? He got cheated. Recently I saw a video of a college student asking a Democratic Representative about how a lot of Millennials feel that Capitalism isn't working for them. The response, "that's just the way it is." Capitalism promotes hard work in order to be successful, but we've reached a point where to be successful you need to be born into success. Trump inherited everything about the Trump Franchise. In the '60s, it was possible to work your through college. We're in 2017. Things have changed. People are graduating college with thousands of dollars of debt. Yes, there are people that saved money and graduated debt-free, but those are what we call "rare case scenarios." The common case in the US is that students come out college with a degree and a whole lot of debt. It is possible to pay off that debt, but usually the job desired is not guaranteed. Before immigrants are blamed, the job issue is not because immigrants steal them; you can't claim theft if the thing being "stolen" was given to them. Regardless, Democrats are just as out of touch with society as Republicans are. However, through observations, I've reached the conclusion that both Parties have a lot in common, but for the time being, Republicans has an agenda that appears to simply say "F You" to Democrats. Don't believe me? Dem: we need to make sure people who should not have guns can't get them. Rep: F you! We'll loosen up the background check process. Dem: we need to make sure people won't be denied proper health care regardless of pre-existing conditions. Rep: F you! We'll force it to fail just so we can get rid of it after you realize that it doesn't work (Affordable Care Act). Dem: We need to lower the cost of public college and make it more affordable for young adults. Rep: F you! We won't let your communistic view points affect our American way of life. I can keep going, but I'm pretty sure this gets the point across, and like I said: this is through observation. As far as what they have in common: the elected leaders of both Parties refuse to change, what they consider, the status quo. The same leaders that have been in office for 30+ YEARS refuse to back down and make room for new leaders. Both Parties don't know what society really wants as a whole and don't care either. Republicans are pro business while Democrats are pro profit. Etc., etc., etc. There is one trend that I noticed: the opposition from both sides are based off of the affiliated Party. Meaning Republicans won't agree with Democrats simply because they're Democrats, and vice versa. With that comes stereotypes. Stop me if you heard these before: "They're just a bunch of Liberal Snowflakes." "They're White Supremacists." "They just take from those who actually work hard." "They pay less in taxes than the average citizen." "They don't know anything about politics." Get the picture? That last statement, by the way, applies for both parties. If simply being in a Party is causing these issues, then maybe we should get rid of the Party system entirely because NOTHING IS GETTING DONE. These past "laws" were put in effect because they are Executive Orders. They don't need to go through Congress, and Trump issued a lot of EOs in one month alone. Trump is looking more like a dictator than a President, and so far, Republicans want to keep it that way. Enough is enough!

#political #society

[makeitnotbetrue]

mourning becomes america or how i stopped worrying and learned to love the apocalypse?

happy fucking new year!

hey! is everyone still crying? it’s been almost two months now since the election. i meant to get this post up before the election, but you know how it is. life came along and altered my plans. funny how that happens all the time...

have you survived the most divisive election in american history? after that shit show, america needs a vacation! or serious psycho therapy. i’m exhausted, are you?

since chump [or rump if you prefer] was elected, i’m asked the same questions; “how did this happen?”, “what’s wrong with people?”, “do you believe he was actually elected?”, “is he going to get us into a war?”, “will the world end?”. answers: people are stupid, people are really ignorant, yes, yes and no!

before we continue, let’s get something straight. stupidity and ignorance are two different things. stupidity, your brain doesn’t work. for whatever reason, it’s not functioning properly. you’re not developmentally challenged, no one hit you on the head and damaged your brain. you just don’t know how to use your brain for making rational thoughts or decisions.

ignorance, on the other hand [and notice the root word], you choose to ignore the facts. all the information is there, but you either don’t want to know them or don’t care about them because they don’t fit your construct of reality. you are willfully oblivious!

we’ll address the other answers in a moment... the day after the election, nyc looked like a ghost town. the streets were empty. the sky was covered with angry dark smoke and ash gray colored clouds, blocking all light. i sensed an unspeakable foreboding, as if all the life and happiness had been drained out of the world. i kept waiting for the sky to open and a voice to say, “there is no love in this house!” what few people i did see walking around acted like they were zombified, as if they had been given a frontal lobotomy. it’s been almost two month and i still see mystified new yorkers walking around in a daze as if the shock treatment they recently had hasn’t worn off yet. their disbelief that chump is our president elect all a bad dream; and at any moment they will wake up and hillary will miraculously be president. you need another round of shock treatment!!! better yet, let’s perform another lobotomy on your brain so that you can remain in your pseudo-liberal fantasy!

on my food coop shifts, i hear people talk about how stunned they are that chump is president. when they start whining, well, let’s just say that they are lucky that there are gun laws in ny! if i had a gun, there’s no telling what i might do with it. they bitch about chump; what a crook he is, he’s a misogynist, a tax dodger, a draft dodger, he has no redeeming moral values, he’ll send your children to die in a war, blah, blah, blah... but guess what? it’s not going to effect them because they’re middle class and white! i’ll say it again! they’re not going to be effected by any of chump’s policies because they’re middle class and white!!! have you noticed that all the people bitching about chump becoming president are people who are actually going to benefit from he’s policies? so why are they bitching? because they are ignorant in a different way than chump’s supporters! they’re hillary supporters. you know, the social “liberal” elite that think they are too intelligent to support an attention grabbing buffoon like chump. they’re all for social justice as long as it doesn’t come to their neighborhood. help the homeless! but not in my neighborhood! help the junkies get off drugs! but don’t put a rehab center in my neighborhood! help the minorities and underprivileged kids get a better education! just keep them in their neighborhoods! separate but equal!!! and when we gentrify their neighborhood, bus them to a school in another neighborhood with other brown people like themselves. you know, just so they feel comfortable with their own kind...

hillary won new york [and she only won the state because of nyc and westchester, the most densely populated parts of the state - chump won most of the counties, but they had few electoral votes]  and most of new england [she and chump split maine - because people in maine are crazy! or are they? mmm... ]. the plain and simple truth is, as new yorkers, we live in a bubble. and it’s a hypocritical bubble at that! for all our so called “progressive” and “liberal” thinking, nyc is one of the most segregated cities in america! i shit you not!!! school system - number 1 in segregation! through gentrification, people of color are being priced out of neighborhoods they’ve lived in for decades. in some cases, over a century! or if they are “financially viable”, the realtors have some bullshit excuse for keeping them out of their own neighborhood; and/or a so called “up and coming” or “good” neighborhood. and it’s become very difficult to prove racial, ethnic and religious discrimination here now. over the last 10 years, we’ve had an increase in hate crimes. probably due to a backlash from obama becoming president than anything else. as soon as he became president, as i predicted, all the racists hiding in the closet came out. and they came out with a fury! but what’s funnier is that it took a biracial black man with a white mother and whose father is from kenya, so there’s no african american slave connection for him to bitch about, to become our first “black” president. in some aspects, our first “black” president is technically white because of his mother. it’s not just jewish law, it used to be the law of the land, you are the race of your mother, until the jim crow laws went into effect and wealthy whites in the south started disowning their daughters for falling in love with former slaves. this was a topic that was discussed it the media when obama was elected. should he really be considered black because his mother was white. white politicians were so pissed off that obama is miscegenated, that the 2010 census was changed to include biracial and multiracial categories for the first time just so that they didn’t have to admit that he is technically white!!! or to quote an archaic expression - he is an issued negro. don’t you love the racism in this country?! land of the free... and just a side note, and i'm not saying any of this is right one way or the other; but that recently freed black male former slave theoretically had more rights than a white female who had allegedly been free all her life. i’m just saying. it’s misogyny at its best! african americans had a problem with obama too! his father’s from kenya. his family didn’t experience american slavery, so they felt that obama couldn’t relate to them. no matter where he turned, he got it from both sides! but honestly, could you get any whiter than obama?! really?!!! if he says “folks” one more time! he’s like a 1950s white sitcom dad! is he channelling ward clever or jim anderson?! so don’t put on the pretense of shock and disbelief that a demagogue like chump is now our president. the only real ethnic diversity white americans want is in their take-out!

before i begin berating our candidates, i want to point out a few of obama’s finer points. the republics and many white americans say that obama is soft on illegal immigration. in fact, obama has deported more or has more illegals in detention centers than any other president. obama actually wanted to have universal health care, but the pussy democrats wouldn’t support him. wonder why? could it be that he beat all his white counter parts during the primary? were the clintons secretly sabotaging his presidency with backdoor deals? who knows?! what we got instead was this watered down bullshit that is the same plan that mitt romney introduced in massachusetts when he was governor. it’s not obama care, it’s romney care! with no support from his own party, obama kissed so much republican ass he became mitt romney. yeah, he got a few things done. he did something w. never did. he got osama! if anything, can you conservative ass wipes give him that?! but let’s point out some of the good things obama has done. he appointed the first latino to the supreme court; and it’s a woman! he’s expanded rights for the lgbt community!  same sex marriage! yay?... same sex divorce?... everybody’s got a right to be an asshole, right?..... when it came to commuting jail sentences and giving out presidential pardons, obama actually gave them to people who were really repentant for their crimes and who deserved a second chance, not some white collar hedge fund executive that lost someone’s life saving. obama lifted sanctions and normalized relations with cuba. yes, that’s a good thing! what are you haters holding on to?! chump getting elected killed castro! not your fucking bombs in his beard or your agents wearing poison lipstick. are you serious?! the attempts to kill him were like plots from a bad mike myers movie! and at least obama didn’t get us into any “new” wars. he tried to get us out of old ones, but alas, that didn’t last long because we destabilized those regions so much, we’ll never get out.

as for whether or not chump is going to get us into a war - hell yeah! we are already involved in several wars around the globe; whether we’re providing arms or troops, we’re there. the question is whether chump are going to escalate any war actions we are involved in. it pains me to say, because so many people are suffering in syria and the least we could do is provide them with relief by giving them sanctuary, but obama was right not to send troops into syria and get us deeper into another war that we can’t get out of. w bush and company took out saddam which completely destabilized the entire middle east. iraq and iran kept each other in check, which in turn kept the rest of the middle east in check because saddam was batshit crazy and no one knew what that crazy fucker was going to do! now look at the shit show that’s there! the truth is, no matter who became our president, we will probably going to have to send our forces somewhere. why? because of oil! i’ll say that again. because of oil! it was a matter of who wanted to do it willingly and who would do it reluctantly. hillary and chump would do it willingly for different reasons. hillary wants to prove she’s got a bigger dick and is just as tough as the boys; and there’s oil! chump wants to plaster his shitty hotels and casinos all over the middle east; and there’s oil! if bernie went in, it’s because he couldn’t stand the atrocities of the al-assad government, not so much the oil, but americans will force him to get the oil!

so here’s a novel idea! please follow along because there will be a quiz afterwards! let’s take some of that money we’re putting into the american war machine, oil exploration and gas fracking in our national parks, wild life preserves and off shore waters, and put it into developing affordable solar and other forms of natural energy. stop using your gas guzzling vehicles. stop heating your homes with crude and gas. basically get off the oil tit! then we wouldn’t need to send our troops into the middle east to steal the fucking oil from the arabs and the persians! our troops wouldn’t come back home fucked in the head because they shot a 6 year old they thought was carrying a bomb and then they wouldn’t need the mental health care that you refuse to provide them with through your bureaucratic bullshit and they wouldn’t commit suicide or shoot up supermarkets, mickey dees and shopping malls!!! got all that?!  oh, i forgot. none of that is going to happen because politicians like hillary and rich assholes that can buy their way into the presidency like chump have the oil companies’ cocks so deep down their throats, that oil spluge has bypassed their stomachs and is gushing out their asses. what?! i can’t hear your lies! you have a dick jammed in your filthy putrid jizz infested mouth! remember to swipe it before you kiss your children you unrepentant gangrenous demonic cuntmuscle! un-fucking-believable what these assholes are doing to vets!!!

people asked, before and after the election, is this the best we can do? is this the best america has to offer? yes!!! yes it is! why? because this country is and always will be a cesspool!

first, let us look at the major candidates. all the candidates, including bernie. contrary to popular belief, hillary, chump and bernie were not the only people running for president. there were over 100 people running for president. some of them had legitimate platforms like jill stein and gary johnson. while others wanted to mandate policies of seeking out extraterrestrials and expelling them from the planet [that’s taking xenophobia to the extreme] to insuring the rights of sasquatch to the guy who wants to ban animals as food. yes!!! someone wants to ban your rights to eat a juicy burger or steak or that delicious pulled pork sandwich! no more bacon and eggs?! heavens to murgatroyd!!!

let’s start with bernie... a lot of people think that hillary railroaded bernie. and there probably was some tempering and election fraud during the democratic party primaries. why? because the fucking clintons are bullies! they’ve become so powerful, if you’re a member of the democratic party and you want to do something, anything at all, you have to have backing by the clintons. remember that back in 2008 when hillary was running against obama in the primaries, the clintons tried to bribe the delegates to change their votes for obama to her during the democratic convention. the delegates wouldn’t and the most old bug eyes and bubba could get obama to agree to was a cabinet post for her. being a bully can only get you so far. and i’m not saying this is true, i don’t know what’s in her heart, but can you imagine what would have happened to obama if he had picked her as his vice president? would air force one be shot down by “terrorists”? maybe an “accidental” fall down a flight of stairs? 

honestly, she didn’t need to bully bernie because he wouldn’t have gotten elected anyway. and it’s not because he’s a so called “radical”. bernie’s not a radical, he’s an old hippy that bought a suit and tie. he’s not a socialist. he’s not a commie. at least not in the way the republicans, or even some of the democrats, would have you believe. socialist! communist! radical! these are words used to scare people because the powers that be are banking on the fact that most of you don’t even know what these words mean. look at the roots of these words! socialist/social - society! communist/commune - community! the republicans use words like democrat and liberal as if they were profane. democrat - democracy! isn’t that what we claim we want in this country?! democracy?! the right to choose who represents our interest in a fair and uncorrupted system of government! liberal - liberty! liberal means free thinking, open minded and liberty means freedom! is the ability to think for yourself a bad thing?! the republics and their rich crony friends would have you think so. do you want your freedom? or do you want to continue with the illusion of freedom that the current government allows you to have? right now, you have the freedom to keep voting for the same repulsive bullshit parties that aren’t going to do a fucking thing for you except screw you out of your hard earned dollars because rich people and corporations don’t pay their fair share of taxes. radical means change or extreme change from the root; synonymous with things like revolutionary, reform, provocative, liberal, progressive, different. and let me ask you this: pro means good, con means bad. they’re opposites. if progress means to move forward, what does congress mean?!

back to bernie... he’s an old school democrat; the kind that used to believe in things like social and civil rights for all citizens, quite unlike the do nothing, lobbyist and corporation ass-kissing pussy centrists that occupy washington now. what’s so radical about wanting to ensure decent and universal health care to all citizens? what’s so radical about wanting someone to earn a real living wage so that you can afford the fundamentals like food, clothing and shelter? what’s so radical about believing that all americans have a right to get a college education if they want one so that they know they aren’t being screwed over by the rich? what’s so radical about believing in real social justice and wanting to end the privatization of prisons? these are not radical ideas! it’s basic human decency!!!  wait! my bad! caring about the well being of your fellow human beings?! that is a radical idea!!! what the fuck is he thinking?! i guess he forgot that the 1960s are over and the lend a helping hand to a person in need spirit has died a long time ago. in fact rigor mortis has set in.

bernie is an independent that joined the democratic party because as an independent, he never would have gotten the exposure he needed running for president. however, he was never going to get elected if he had been the democratic candidate for several reasons. first of all, he truly is independent. too independent! he’s not in bed with anybody! but, isn’t that a good thing? yes! good for us, bad for the corporate money machine that really runs the country. bad for bernie because there was no way in hell they were going to let him take office. bernie does not suck dick and he will not bend over and take it up the ass! secondly, bernie is too nice. he’s angry, but he’s nice. he will call you out on your bullshit, but he does it diplomatically. do you see chump being diplomatic? he’s a fucking asshole! and he just makes shit up just to fuck with you!!! and he doesn’t care if you call him out on his bullshit! he just makes up new bullshit. do you think bernie can contend with that?! he let bug eyes and her monkey devils walk over him. third, bernie didn’t have the support he needed to secure the nomination let alone become president. yes, overwhelmingly bernie had the youth vote, but they make up a small portion of the electorate. some of his supporters weren’t even old enough to vote. and who were these youth supporters? a large portion, dare i say the majority, were under 30, well educated and white. yes, many of his supporters were over 30. many were black and latino. he might have even had some asians and native americans in there. there were some people in their 30s and 40s, but still the majority were well educated, under 30 and white. what does this mean in the greater scheme of things. since the majority of voters are in that 40 to 70 demographic and they overwhelmingly supported bug eyes, it means that bernie was fucked from the beginning! it means that this country is so fractured that we may never come out of the abyss.

the only people who seemed to be listening to what sanders was saying were people who he wasn’t particularly addressing. what he had to say about education and colleges was addressed to the youth vote in part because his ideas on the future of education in this country effected them; but it was really addressed more to their suffering parents who have to pay for that shit. all those angry young people screaming and having temper tantrums at rallies; and later when hillary got the nomination, you didn’t pay for shit! your parents did! what the fuck are you angry about?! you just got out of fucking grad school! what’s the matter?! you’re upset because you didn’t get that six figure job you thought you deserved with your bullshit degree in dead languages?! using your law degree for toilet paper because skadden arps is not hiring this year? boo woo!!! despite what your micro managing parents told you, you don’t get what you want just because you want it. you have to work for it! you have to earn it! bernie was not talking to you!!! you haven’t lived long enough to be disappointed or disenfranchised. if your parents are still paying your cell phone bill or you rent or even half your rent, you are not disenfranchised. you are spoiled and you need to grow the fuck up! bernie was talking to the real disenfranchised, not you. he was talking to people who went through social injustice. he was talking to the people that despite working 40 hours a week, they still can’t pay their bills, rent or feed their family. he was talking to the vets that got neglected by the government when they came back from fighting its unjust wars. unfortunately only a few of these people heard bernie cry out about the injustices in this country and how he wanted to change things. the rest were just too beaten down to listen or care. apathy is now the blue plate special along with avarice for dessert.

now i’m going to say something and take it to heart. because if you take away anything from what i’ve said so far, it is that you have a deeper understanding of how truly fucked up this country is and how divided we are as a nation. bernie would not have won the election because of one simple fact; he’s jewish. we have never had a jewish president or even a vice president. “but we never had a black president and then obama got elected!” yeah, right! and just look at how successful he was with congress shutting down anything he tried to do. we won’t have another black president for another 232 years! grow up!!! let’s face some truths; obama was elected because the american people thought the two white guys that he ran against were scarier! if mccain died, we’d have sarah palen. as for mitt, there wasn’t a self respecting  woman alive in american that was going to vote for mitt; and if there husband did, they’d lose their balls. we’ve only had one catholic president and his brains were splattered over the streets of dallas. 

there have only been 8 jewish supreme court justices, 3 of which are on the bench now. and not one of them has ever been chief justice! only one was consider for chief justice and so much dirt was dug up on him to keep him from getting the nomination that he had to resign to avoid impeachment. did you watch the senate confirmation hearings for kagan when obama nominated her? that redneck lindsey graham asked her what she did on christmas to call to the fact that she was jewish. why didn’t anyone call this prick out on his bullshit?! her response, “like any good jew, i was probably in a chinese restaurant.” then she asked him what was his point. he admitted he had none other than wanting to know what she did for christmas. why didn’t he just scream “she’s a jew” at the top of his lung because that was his point, right?! and this is what that other asshole redneck pat buchanan had to say about kagan: “If Kagan is confirmed, Jews, who represent less than 2 percent of the U.S. population, will have 33 percent of the Supreme Court seats. Is this the Democrats’ idea of diversity? But while leaders in the black community may be upset, the folks who look more like the real targets of liberal bias are white Protestants and Catholics, who still constitute well over half of the U.S. population.” this is an actual quote from a so called educated person! these two clowns are not in a minority! just travel around the country. get out of la, nyc, san fran, seattle austin and see what’s really out side the bubble. see exactly how “tolerate” the rest of the country actually is.

you’re probably asking, if this country is so anti semitic than why do we support israel? because we hate arabs more than we hate jews! why? because they have oil! enough said! our only interest in israel is to use it as a base camp for destabilizing the middle east to steal the oil from the arabs. we don’t really support israel. if the israelis suddenly found oil, we’d be trying to steal it from them too.

if bernie had gotten the nomination, chump would have used bernie’s faith against him. he throw shit up against hillary about her foundation and chump fucking gave her money for it! given the racial, ethnic and political climate in this country, do you think chump would be a gentleman and not use bernie’s faith against him?! he’d call attention to it every chance he got, even though his own daughter married someone jewish and converted. he’s divisive and doesn’t give a shit if it serves his purpose. chump would probably have you believe that bernie would let israel annex the u.s. and that we’d all have to convert to judaism. chump is a demagogue and he will use your most paranoid fears against you, against bernie, hillary, or anyone that gets in his way. he’ll plant that seed; try to equate bernie with everything the rest of the country hates about jews. jew! new york - jew! brooklyn, new york - jew! woody allen - jew! larry david - jew! whiny, kvetch - jew! chump’s been doing a lot of whining and kvetching himself, but it’s okay because his protestant. and white. and male. and rich. and privileged. and he has been able to screw you out of enough of your money and he wants more! so he has every right to complain! and think about this. bernie had relatives that died in the holocaust. i’m not saying this is fact, it’s only a possibility; chump, whose grandfather was an illegal alien and a pimp from germany [and chump still has relatives living in germany today], may have had relatives that put bernie’s relatives to death. again, not saying it’s true, just saying it’s a possibility. chump never talks about the german side of his family or what they did during the war. when it’s put into perspective, however, kind of sick and ironic, isn’t it?

oh, bug eyes! i have a special place in my heart for bug eyes. she does something to me. it’s called agita! when is somebody going to take that power hungry bitch down?! i don’t mean in an election. i mean when are people going to finally say enough is enough?! take a hint! the american people are tired of you and your sexual predator husband. she should have taken a hint when she ran against obama in 2008. people didn’t want you then; and they certainly don’t want you now. the clintons have too much baggage. sex scandals, money scandals, political improprieties. and for all this scandal, they are very, very, very boring! excruciatingly boring! how could you be involved in political, financial and sex scandals and be so fucking boring?! chump has the same thing going on, but he’s batshit crazy and that makes him entertaining!

this was hillary’s election to lose. and dammit, it was an embarrassing defeat. statically she had everything she needed to win; so how do you get your ass whipped by a batshit crazy megalomaniac with hair that looks like he just had eight rounds of electroshock?! can you explain that to me?! i’ll tell you how; by carrying around the excessive garbage that is the clintons! hillary’s biggest problem, besides the fact that she changed her position every time something became topical or someone challenged her, was that she couldn't prove why she was better than chump. if sanders had an idea, bug eyes said, “"great and here’s how i’m going to expand and make it better.” really?! i mean, really?!!!

bug eyes said chump was unfit to be president. she ought to know, she and bubba went to his wedding. the clintons were, and records show that they still are, members of chump’s country/golf club. in fact chump and bubba were regular golf buddies. chump gave money to the clintons’ foundation and vice versa. the debates were like an episode of divorce court flintstone style; with bug eyes as wilma and chump as fred. were they actually about anything other than middle school name calling?! maybe if we had some third party candidates there, there might have been a real discussion about the issues. what’s the problem chump? did bug eyes and bubba give you a blender in the wrong color for a wedding present? was it cuisinart instead of kitchenaid? what’s the matter bug eyes? did chump and his latest mail order bride not send you a thank you note for said blender? or did you catch bubba groping said mail order bride? if you think he’s so unfit, why the hell are you hanging out with him?! when i think my friends are unfit, not worthy of my company, i cut them off! see ya! don’t call me, i’ll call you when the apocalypse begins. i guess i’ll be making a lot of phone calls soon...

i’ve talk to a lot of people about bug eyes, about chump and so many of them were so turned off and repulsed by this election that they didn’t want to vote at all. they thought chump was a joke, completely unqualified to lead the nation, but they also said that they couldn’t tolerate another 4 years of the clintons. it would be another 4 years of gridlock as an all republic congress tried to shutdown a democratic president; and she’s a woman, so all the men in washington wouldn’t think she’s tough enough to make the”hard” decisions like starting another war in the middle east to get more oil. the scandals and what would bubba’s role be a first man or first husband? there were rumors circulating around that she was going to make him u.n. secretary. if the rumors were true; had she been elected, that would have made them the most powerful couple in the world - bigger than queen elizabeth and prince philip! which is more frightening? chump being president or the clintons being the most powerful couple in the world? because you’re not just electing old bug eyes; they’re a package deal, you’re electing bubba too. it’s a round about way of him getting a third term as president.

you say he wasn’t so bad last time. he was kind of nice. yeah! of course he’s nice. he’s a used car salesman! he has something to sell you that you don’t want. he told you flat out that he was full of shit and he didn’t care. “you vote for me, that’s on you.” and people still voted for him. hell, when he was governor of arkansas he nickname was slick willie! if you can’t figure that out, go back to school! i’ll give it to him, though. at least he has charisma. bug eyes... well, she’s like a frigid proctologist. she feels nothing and is ready to stick a cold, stiff probe up your ass. see, for most people, they knew one way or another they were going to get shafted. it was a question of how they were going to get shafted; by a bile talking limp dick with his innocuous concubine or were they going to get double teamed by an icy anal probe and pathological sex addict. the choice is yours! most people went for the limp dick because they thought it would hurt less when they’d have to bent over. not!!!

bug eyes thought she had the white pseudo intellectual and working class [union employees] vote sewn up; and that she only needed to court the minority vote. a gross miscalculation on her part. she had to do a lot of back paddling because bubba passed the crime bill when he was president and minorities weren’t going to let her forget that. he also passed the welfare reform bill which hurt a lot of single mother out there trying to raise their children. women weren’t going to let her forget that! then there’s her ridiculous slogan, “america’s already great.” how many test audiences did her analysts go through before they settled on that one. is that really the best they could do? how are you going to tell people america is already great when their income doesn’t keep up with the cost of living?! how is american great when 75% of your paycheck goes for rent or on your mortgage?! how is america great when someone would rather pay the penalty for not having healthcare because they can’t afford the so called affordable healthcare because they don’t earn enough, but they earn too much to get any kind of aid? how is american great when you’re forced to go to college just to get a minimum wage job and you go into debt doing so?

years ago, when slick was president, bug eyes had a great slogan. she said, “it takes a village to raise a child.” she even wrote a book about it. she actually “borrowed” it from an african proverb, but none the less it’s true! i would hope that buggers would believe that’s true, after all she supposedly wrote it. i can’t say what’s actually in her heart, but i’ve never seen anything, or heard about or read about her taking some kid from the south side of that village up to her estate in chappaqua. have you? so much for the village...

of the major candidates, hill was the only one that was for gun control. you can no better control the guns in this country than you can control what brand of toothpaste or deodorant people use. americans love their guns and they aren’t giving them up. gun legislation is a joke! take a gander at the brady bill. it doesn’t stop people from buying guns, not really. the bill applies to how guns are sold by licensed dealers. once that gun leaves the gun shop, it’s fair game. and it only applies to guns manufactured in a 50 year period; so let’s say there is a working luger from ww2 at a gun or antique shop, it’s over 50 years old and considered a curio. you don’t need to do a background check because it’s a collector’s piece. you can still shoot someone and blow his head off. or someone with a clean background can buy a gun, then turn around and sell the gun to someone or even give it away as a gift because he’s not a licensed gun dealer. there are too many loop holes in the law that can still get guns in the hands of people who shouldn’t have them. the brady bill was passed to give white americans the illusion of safety.

and why are white americans only mildly concerned about about guns when, say, an african american church or an lgbt night club is shot up? “oh, those poor people! it’s a tragedy!” they have no problem with guns and black on black crime. when someone mentions gun control, they have a convulsion because they need their guns to protect themselves from the brown people who are trying to move into their communities. the only time white americans are truly concerned about gun control is when one of their own goes into a school or one of their suburban shopping malls and shoots up the place. their fears about brown people and crime are preposterous! statically most crime is committed within a race. white on white, black on black, latino on latino, native on native, asian on asian. why? because people stupidly trust people in their own race or ethnic background more than they would a so called outsider. the brown people aren’t coming to get you! not yet anyway... gun control is not the issue. the american attitude is! this nation needs to be on lithium and have some serious psycho therapy about anger management. americans are so quick to solve every problem with violence. maybe it’s because this nation was founded by ex-cons and peasants; there seems to be an abusive streak embedded to the soul of this country. hillary you need to address the systemic problems that’s ailing this nation! you can’t put a bandaid on bleeding artery...

now, don’t get me wrong. bug eyes actually did have a platform. she had ideas that could have actually help people. if you had gone to her website, many her ideas and reforms [some of them “borrowed” from other candidates] were posted there. some of them may have actually worked had she been elected and congress cooperated. they would have help all americans; even those blind, close minded whites that so vehemently supported chump. the problem is that hillary didn’t make that clear to them, or all of us, because she thought that those people were a minority. she thought she had all the “intelligent” people in her pocket. she needed to speak out on the issues. she needed to address the problems of this country with all its citizens and make it clear that she was fighting for everyone. she needed to tell everyone that there are no special interests; that the only interest is the state of human dignity and what it is costing americans to have it. I CHALLENGE ANY POLITICIAN THAT IS AGAINST MINIMUM WAGE TO LIVE ON IT FOR ONE YEAR AND SEE IF THEY CAN SURVIVE WITHOUT SACRIFICING SOME PART OF THEIR DIGNITY! instead, hillary chose to make a disgraceful spectacle of herself by playing a malicious game of “yo’ mama” with the chumpster! come on!!! you’ve been in the political game long enough. saying i’m not chump isn’t going to get you anything, especially when you’re carrying around the baggage that you have. you’re chump in a lady’s pantsuit and less entertaining! how many men refer to their ex-wives as ellie mae? you can’t run on a platform of how ludicrous and incompetent your opponent is if you’re not going to outline how and why you are better than him. you can’t run a platform of “i’m not donald.” that doesn’t mean anything! you have to have solutions to real problems! you have to say what the fuck you’re going to do!!! and you didn’t! and that’s why you lost the election...

so now let’s take a look at our president elect. there were a myriad of reasons why chump was elected, foremost, that white americans thought that america or the idea of the “american dream” was no longer theirs. xenophobia has become a viral infection. what white americans forget, is that they are all descendants of immigrants themselves. this land was stolen from the native americans. the only thing that was paid for was parts of nyc and part of the hudson valley by the dutch, which the england stole from them. chump goes off about the mexicans and the anti immigration racist cheer and swoon at his rhetoric as if he were moses delivering the ten commandments. what white americans fail to realize, or maybe they don’t want to realize, is that at one time the majority of the country west of the mississippi river was in fact mexican/spanish territory! look at all the goddamn names! they’re all spanish! or native american in the northern midwest and the north west. people you need to get a clue besides a grip!!!

chump was primarily elected because of one thing; and that thing was the only thing this election was really about - the state of white privilege in america!!! who has it, who thinks they’re losing it and who wants it. nothing more. nothing less. chump is not the problem. he is just a symptom of a greater disease; and if this infection of hatred and bigotry, contempt of the lower classes and the misfortunate are not addressed, we won’t have to worry about invaders or terrorist because we will have another civil war. we will destroy ourselves! 

first of all, let me ask you this: would you let a person who’s declared bankruptcy four times be in charge of the finances of this country? in 1995 chump lost $916,000,000 in “investments”. some reports say it was $950,000,000. either way, because of the loss, he probably won’t have to pay taxes again until he croaks. again, would you let a person who loses that kind of money in one year be in charge of this country’s finances?! when i brought up these facts with chump supporters, they either ignored the facts by making excuses for him or they’d bring up some shit about bug eyes; or they say it was the nature of business, which is still ignoring the facts. he’s either a stupid business man to lose so much or he’s a crook. i’m choosing the latter because chump is too devious to be stupid. my question is, what is he going to swindle out of the american people? chump makes slick willie look like a boy scout. i was going to say priest, but given the church’s history with priests and children; then i thought mormon, but again, the mormons with their multiple wives... i went with boy scout. and here’s another fun little piece of trivia: hillary was originally a republic. she was a goldwater girl when she was in college. she switched parties, becoming a democrat in the late 60s, because she thought the republics weren’t doing enough to ease the flight of minorities and women. chump was originally a democrat, even voted for bubba - twice! he changed parties and became a republic for the 2008 presidential election because he thought there were too many democrats running and he’d get more exposure as a republican.

anyway, i don’t think chump believes half the bile that comes out of his mouth. he’s a demagogue, he’s divisive! he will use whatever is in his arsenal to get what he wants. demagogues use people’s fears and prejudices to turn them against one another; and in this country, that’s not very hard to do. 2008 was not the right time for chump. the events of 911 were fading as the country was collapsing financially from the s&l housing scandal and deregulation made the banks untouchable when they unscrupulously swindled the american people out of our money. all of that can be blamed on w. and the republicans and their failed policies. the american people were ready for change, or so they said. they elected a democrat for president [and he was a black man] so he could “fix” the country. however, they reelected the same old cronies that were palling around with bush. where’s the change?! the republicans shutdown congress and we had 8 years of gridlock and nothing was done. then everyone blamed obama for the effects we are still feeling from the bush administration. it takes less than a minute to make a catastrophic mistake that we may or may not recover from. it takes decades to repair that mistake if it can be repair at all. look at the middle east and north africa.

people used to say that reagan was the anti-christ. he had the 666 thing going on with his name. don’t know if it’s true, it can just be hear say, but i heard that’s really the reason hinkley shot him, the jodie foster thing came later because reagan’s handlers were trying to cover up the religious aspect of the shooting. again, just a rumor... i have seen the anti-christ and he has a mouth that’s shaped like an anus for spewing his bile and an atrocious combover and he’s not even bald! chump is the perfect representation of everything american. spoiled, selfish, egotistical, arrogant, ignorant, oblivious, divisive, misogynistic, greedy, and a sense of entitlement.

chump promised he’d bring back jobs to america. why doesn’t he start by having his clothing line manufactured in america! all those “let’s make america great again” hats were made in china and so is his clothing line. the hats should have states, “let’s make america white again” because that’s what his campaign was all about. all those monoliths around the world that he builds for his own self glory and bear his name were build with chinese steel, not american. chump says he’s going to reopen the coal mines in wv and put miners back to work. the mines were closed because everyone was dying from black lung disease, carbon monoxide poisoning, cave ins or explosions. the use of coal was making the air unfit to breathe. why should chump care if these people are dying from working in the mines. he’s not going to live in their area. he’s not putting a casino there. the coal industry was not regulated well and the owners found ways of skirting around those regulations. the workers were the ones that were screwed because they weren’t able to sue their bosses when something went wrong. do we really need to give that back to them? why don’t we invest in other forms of energy? why don’t we educate these people to do some kind of other labor. why do we just educate them period?! oh, because they might understand that they are being fucked over! i am not going to talk about standing rock because it hits too close to home and i may have to get a gun and go to a shopping mall!

look at the people chump is choosing for his cabinet. can we be any more fucked?! ceo of exxon as secretary of state?! how bad do we need oil?! steven mnuchin as secretary of the treasury? really?! the foreclosure king?! goldman sachs banking asshole! hollywood producer! a fast food restaurant executive as secretary of labor?! that’ll put a kick in minimum wage! and let’s not forget betsy devos of amway fame as secretary of education! i don’t know, maybe putting all these business may do something positive. maybe chump is really benign and is as innocuous as his trophy wife, but deep in my heart i think THIS COUNTRY IS TRULY FUCKED!!! so maybe when the infrastructure does collapse, and it will, it will spark the wake up call that america finally needs because it’s been complacent for far too long.

i have my dry goods. a supply of fabric for making clothes, yarn for knitting more clothes and blankets. batteries, flash lights and candles, portable griller for cooking. i’ve even learned the useful skill of canning and i’ve got some mini greenhouses for growing vegetables. i don’t need to eat meat. brushing up on my combat skills. i may have to get that antique luger... 

wake up people! this is not really tv! ARE YOU READY FOR THE APOCALYPSE?!!!