#but the fact that it was proven that so many of those were trumped up for show was. honestly a huge betrayal?

[starlit-mansion]

i still keep getting recommended posts about the james somerton debacle (unsurprising) and i swear to god, at this point i've spent more time trying to remember what my reaction was to watching his yoi video a while back while half-sleep deprived or smth than i a) spent watching the video and b) spent thinking about any other creator i watched one mid video from and ignored after

#at least i remember specifically deciding that blaire trianglehead was too slow paced and dull to keep listening to after about 3 vids #but also the subjects were really... ghoulish borderline true crime like the leggings scam vid that was 1/3 botched surgery talk #at least in my memory. and her dispassionately talking about it rather than sticking to the subject at hand and having little opinion #put me right off my lunch and i was done #somerton was allll up in my recs just before the bomb dropped and i was half keeping an eye out for a new vid about a subject i cared about #but it was literally all stuff i'm sick to death of. didn't want to hear about evil gays or vampires or if barbie is camp #it was all very... stuff i was already tired of seeing on tumblr and i didn't think i'd get anything new out of #but i was still keeping him in mind because i thought he was a type of person that had little presence in the video essay scene #lol in retrospect #but i do actually try to keep an eye out for creators with different backgrounds. esp black creators. and accept that i might disagree a bi #or find parts of their perspective a little uncomfortable or off-putting. so i probably would have forgiven some of the misogyny tbh #not that it's something that like. idk i should do to punish myself. it's not like there isn't a lot of microaggressions from women #but the fact that it was proven that so many of those were trumped up for show was. honestly a huge betrayal? #people are genuinely cruel to marginalized creators and pretending that it's worse than it is and flopping for sympathy is so galling #it's really easy to be like 'oh i would have never been taken in' just because there was already something keeping me at arms length #but i know that isn't true. i'm a freakin easy mark! you don't even want to know how many podcast/youtube sponsorships i've tried #and also sometimes i find something initially off-putting about a youtuber and later get into them more and find them charming #i genuinely don't think that i have unimpeachable first impressions and sometimes i test them later to see if they still hold

[news-of-the-day]

I'm going to attempt typing a bit and explain the Trump cases because I know they can be confusing. I'll start with one that's easy to understand: the classified documents. I went over it before last July, but I'll do it again in much greater detail.

After Trump left the White House in 2021, the National Archives realized he hadn't handed over all of the classified documents he's supposed to as required by law. After reaching out, he returned 15 boxes but the National Archives knew it wasn't everything. In May 2022 the DoJ issued a subpoena demanding the rest of the documents, and then later the FBI searched Mar-a-Lago and discovered many, many more. In June Trump and one of his staff Waltine Nauta were indicted for retaining classified information, obstructing justice, withholding statements, and other charges you get when you don't play ball with an investigation.

With the indictment, prosecutors presented a lot of their evidence and it's pretty copious due to the amount of witnesses, texts, emails, etc. If you want to read the 60 pages, it's here and it's pretty amazing. Please keep in mind everything I'm relating after this is an allegation from the DoJ and needs to be proven.

It seems after that May 2022 subpoena, Trump had a meeting with his lawyers, who promptly told him to just relinquish the documents. He resisted that idea and threw out some suggestions, like just not responding to the DoJ, replying there are no documents, or hinting that perhaps his lawyers could take the fall for this.

However at the end of the meeting, he agreed that the lawyers should go to Mar-a-Lago and review what was there. Before they could do this though, Trump ordered Nauta to remove and hide 64 boxes so the lawyers couldn't find them (although later he returned 30). Trump and Nauta are also accused of contacting the IT director at Mar-a-Lago to see if the security camera data of this venture could be deleted after the FBI asked for it. When the lawyers did find the remaining classified documents, Trump hinted that he wanted them to hide some of them in the lawyers' hotel rooms, but they didn't do it. Instead the lawyers returned what they thought were all the documents to the FBI and certified this was everything. This caused problems for Trump personally because now his lawyers are witnesses against him and will undoubtedly be required to break the attorney-client privilege, and (in my personal opinion) they may be angry because they unwittingly became accessories to a crime. When the Mar-a-Lago search warrant was issued, there was a lot of discussion about how these lawyers may be ejected from the bar for lying to the FBI, that's how serious this was.

You may ask why Trump is being treated differently than Pence and Biden, both of whom also held onto classified documents. Unlike Trump, they immediately worked with law enforcement to retrieve everything and cooperated, which kinda hints it was accidental on their part. Not great, and you can still be prosecuted for that nevertheless, but at least there didn't seem to be anything intentional. Trump is only being charged for documents he held onto after that initial 15 box return to the National Archives, and what he did keep was vital information about the US' military capabilities, CIA information about other countries, nuclear secrets... and this was left initially on a ballroom stage, then a bathroom shower, and finally in storage where anyone could go through it. In fact at one point Mar-a-Lago staff found papers lying all over the floor in the storage room.

So why did Trump do this? It seems purely for bragging rights; he liked to show off some of the documents to visitors. Unfortunately for him one of those meetings was recorded in which he admitted he knows it's classified. And in another meeting, a witness came forward stating Trump showed him a document but told him not to come too close because it's classified.

A lot of his 38 charges carry a $250K fine and up to 20 years in prison, but federal guidelines for sentencing probably means he'll only be imprisoned a year or two if he's found guilty. (Federal guidelines take into account whether it's a first offense and other factors. I would explain it, but I'm not a lawyer and got confused when I tried reading up on it.) The case is set to be heard for May 2024. Trump's trying to get it delayed until after the election, but it's been denied.

Reuters, CNN, AP

#news #trump #trump classified documents case

[gemsofgreece]

You remember the dreadful situation with the 12 year old girl from Kolono who was forced into pr*stitution? Okay a movie now reminded me of it and it's called "Sound of Freedom". It's a heavy but important movie about child trafficking but there's something strange going on...cinemas refuse to release it and sabotage it like turning off air conditioning, online shows sold out places when in fact they are empty, movie glitches so people in general leave the theatre.

It's almost as if people in power like Hollywood don't want us to see it and the problem is that this movie who brings awareness to this topic is viewed as "conspiracy theory" when it's not.

I don't know when society has come to this but nowadays they try to normalise it and a small country like Greece has many evidence of it...

I had to do a little bit of research about this. I believe there must be a conspiracy theory behind all the sabotage accusations, at least up to a degree. Here's why: the film was produced by a Latin American subdivision of 20th Century Fox. Disney bought Fox and - perhaps unsurprisingly - they shelved the movie. Clearly, Disney did not want to tackle any of this. However, the filmmakers gathered donations and they were able to buy the movie's release rights back from Disney. They then approached Angel Studios, a new production studio which operates with equity crowdfunding and Sound of Freedom is only its second theatrically released movie. They are a small and new company, which explains why the film was released in few cinemas and there was not much press about it.

As for the sabotage itself, I doubt it is true because in such cases, the powerful people have a way to operate much more quickly and effectively. Either Disney would not sell the movie at all or Hollywood would have somehow prevented the movie's release from the beginning. They would certainly not wait for viewers to see half the movie and then start filling the theatre halls with smoke or whatever else is claimed in those videos. Don't forget that one who has seen half the movie has ways of seeing the rest of it by buying, renting it, streaming it or even pirating it after all. My point is, nobody is effectively prevented from watching the movie this way. If they wanted it, they would simply not allow it to be released. The Head of Angel Studios said there is no truth in such claims and that on the contrary more theaters start playing the movie ever since its surprising initial commercial success.

And again, the truly powerful do not operate so stupidly. On the contrary, they can use this to their advantage. According to Wikipedia, guys like Mel Gibson, Elon Musk and Donald Trump have all endorsed the film. Trump will also host a special screening to which the filmakers and cast are invited.

This story is unrelated to Greece but Greece is in a dire situation as proven by this crime you mentioned. Anon refers to an uncovered crime of child trafficking, when a 12 year old girl was repeatedly forced into prostitution with the parts ignorance - parts tolerance of her family. Her pimp was a friend of the family, a seemingly lawful small market owner who somehow has too many connections to wealthy people and actors.............. makes you wonder. Her case moves slow as a snail and too little information is on the press lately. 25 men have been arrested but there are rumours that there are many more and those caught were the easier targets.

#sound of freedom #tw child trafficking #coals of greece #anon #mail #hide

[mightyflamethrower]

Joe Biden lied repeatedly when he claimed he knew nothing of his son Hunter’s influence-peddling businesses.

The President further prevaricated that he had no involvement in Hunter’s various shake down schemes.

Yet, the media continued to misinform by serially ignoring these facts.

Had journalists just been honest and independent, then candidate Joe Biden might have lost a presidential debate and even the 2020 election. The public would have learned that Hunter’s business associates and his laptop proved Joe was deeply involved in his son’s illicit businesses.

Later, as the evidence from IRS whistleblowers mounted, the White House stonewalled subpoenaed efforts and sought to craft an outrageous plea deal reduction in Hunter’s legal exposure.

Reporters ignored the Ukrainians who claimed Joe Biden himself talked to them about quid pro quo arrangements.

They again discounted Hunter’s laptop that explicitly demonstrated that Hunter was whining that he had handed over large percentages of his income to his father Joe—variously referred to as the Big Guy and a “ten percent” recipient on many deals.

They played dumb about Joe Biden’s use of pseudonyms and alias email accounts to hide thousands of his communications to Hunter and associates.

They attacked the former Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin, who now claims Biden was likely bribed by Ukrainians.

Yet the media can no longer hide the reality that the President of the United States likely took bribes to influence or alter U.S. policy to suit his payers. Those two crimes—bribery and treason—are specifically delineated in the Constitution as impeachable offenses.

In denial, the media has instead pivoted with hysterical glee over various weaponized prosecutions of Donald Trump.

But now, to use a progressive catchphrase, the proverbial “walls are closing in” on Joe Biden.

So will we at last expect the media finally to confront the truth?

Answer—only if Joe Biden’s cognitive and physical health continues to deteriorate geometrically to the point that he can no longer finish his term or run for reelection—and thus becomes expendable.

Such a cynical view of the media is justified given their record of both incompetence and unapologetic deceit.

From 2015 to 2019, we were suffocated 24/7 with lies like “Russian collusion,” “Putin’s puppet,” “election rigging” and the “Steele dossier.”

When all such “evidence” was proven to be a complete fraud cooked up through Hillary Clinton’s stealthy hiring of and collusion with a discredited ex-British spy, a Russian fabulist at the Brookings Institution and a Clinton toady in Moscow, did the media apologize for their untruth?

Was there any media confessional that perhaps Robert Mueller and his leftwing legal team (the giddy media-dubbed “all-stars,”  “dream team,” and “hunter killers”) proved a colossal waste of time?

Not at all.

Instead, the media went next right on to “the phone call” and “impeachment.”

The country then wasted another year.

The same biased reporters now claimed that the heroic Andrew Vindman had caught Donald Trump fabricating lies about the Bidens—given Joe Biden was a possible 2020 opponent—to force Ukraine to investigate them or lose American foreign aid.

On that accusation Trump was impeached.

Then the truth emerged that unlike Joe Biden, Trump never threatened to cancel aid, but merely to delay it.

Trump was right that the Bidens were knee deep in Ukrainian bribes and influence peddling.

And that the whistleblower had no first-hand knowledge of the Trump call but was spoon fed a script cooked up by the gadfly Vindman and Rep. Adam Schiff.

The result was journalistic glee that we impeached a president for crimes that he did not commit but exempted another president, Joe Biden, who had actually committed them.

Then came the next hoax of the Russian fabricated facsimile of Hunter’s laptop.

The 2020 Biden campaign along with an ex-CIA head rounded up “51 intelligence authorities” to mislead the country into believing that Russian gremlins in the Kremlin had fabricated a fake laptop.

Ponder that absurd fantasy: Moscow supposedly had created fake nude pictures, fake photos of Hunter’s drug use, and fake email and text messages from Hunter to the other Bidens.

The media preposterously convinced the country that the Russians and by extension Donald Trump had once again sandbagged the Biden campaign.

No apologies followed when the FBI later admitted it had kept the laptop under wraps for more than a year, knew it was authentic, and yet said nothing as the media and former spooks misled the country and warped an election.

Now we are enmeshed in at least four court trials on cooked-up charges that could as easily apply to a host of Democrats as to Trump.

For the last eight years, a discredited media has never expressed remorse for any of the damage they did to the country. And they will not again, when their latest mythological indictments are eventually exposed.

[kmp78]

“his lack of etiquette doesn't equate him not caring about his country…” You mean having good ethics, personal values and being free of prejudice and misogyny isn’t necessary to be a trustworthy and fair bipartisan leader and a role model for leaders of the rest of the world?. DT absolutely cares nothing about his country but what the country can do for his wallet and media ratings.

“I witnessed all the good he did….” What “good” did you see exactly? Please specify based on reality, not Trump sponsored news outlets.

…”the media lied about him cause there are dozens other things they accused him of that he didn't do.”AND DOZENS OF HORRENDOUS, ILLEGAL, FOUL or UNETHICAL THINGS HE DID DO!

“how he went against the deep state”WTF “deep state” are you referencing here ? He did nothing but make shit up and keep repeating it so ignorant fools, blatant gun-toting blowhard rednecks and the meek and unthinking followers would believe his baseless propaganda. His accusations have never been proven to be true and there was certainly no election conspiracy which has been proven over and over again. He has lied and stolen from his own country by devaluing his income and properties, cheating on and withholding his taxes. (proven fact for which he will face legal charges)

“and the big heads and exposed many many shady stuff. “ Like who would that be and specifically what “shady stuff “ did he uncover? The people he fired, and that was many, were people HE hired and surrounded himself with to do his bidding.

And of course, don’t even mention how many thousands of lives could have been saved if DT had acted swiftly and responsibly in the face of a world health crisis. Instead of causing the loss of thousands upon thousands of lives, “ Trump suppressed scientific data, delayed testing, (arrogantly) mocked and blocked mask-wearing, and convened mass (political) gatherings where social distancing was impossible. Despite the mounting threats of COVID-19 and global warming, he pulled the U.S. out of the World Health Organization and the Paris climate accord. He installed industry insiders in regulatory posts tasked with protecting Americans from environmental and occupational hazards; their regulatory rollbacks resulted in 22,000 excess deaths from such hazards in 2019 alone. He pushed through a $1.9 trillion tax cut for the wealthy, creating a budget hole that he then used to justify cutting food and housing assistance for the needy. He tried, but failed, to repeal the ACA, then bent every effort to undermine it, pushing up the number of uninsured Americans by 2.3 million.”- Source: Scientific American (An apolitical long-standing well known scientific journal based on facts not propaganda and political rhetoric).

And the man cannot put together a full sentence in his native language! Smfh; but he doesn’t even know to be embarrassed. Great “presidential” material.

So Trump loving Anon, if you really do aspire to be any sort of politician, learn to gather brilliant minds to fill in what you do not know and not yes you to death, not bumbling fools and assorted ill qualified relatives to cow tow to your manipulative strategies for personal gain. Vet your news sources and advisors throughly, check your facts, learn behavioral cues to spot liars and fakes, think before you speak and make sure you surround yourselves with those successfully experienced in leading and governing, not in failed business or reality TV.

Trump used the extremely strong retard gene among the Republicans and the rest is infamous history. 💯

The level of brainwashing was not far off from what went on in Germany 100 years ago - and as we saw during the Congress debacle, the end results might have easily led to a similar outcome. 👀

[cyruspavels]

Scientists & Neurosurgeons

Live and let others live the way they want to as well.

A control-freak looks at the person and wants that person to behave and act as they seem them.

That control-freak doesn't realize that those ideas on how people should behave were given to them by the people they were surrounded with growing up.

It's not much more complex than that.

It's safe to say— That those people they grew up around were probably not rocket scientists and neurosurgeons. In fact, it's safe to say many of them had low IQ's.

Live and let live because what you think you know about how people should be living their life is not an original idea you had on your own, anyway. On top of it not being an original thought, it's based off the ideas and brains of simple people with lower IQs than you.

The Scientific Method, or the best method in finding solutions, is laid out for you. Google it or check here to recall it from grade school. If you weren't paying attention in Grade School that's another story. If you didn't go to school here in America or even NYC, then that's another story, too. If you did go to grade school here in the mid to late 90's you were robbed of some education for sure. By then the city had diverted educational funds for proven programs like 3k (of which they since brought back) to the NYPD for Mayor Iron Hand Giuliani's heavy-handed reign.

Decades later they acknowledge the decline in the quality of education New York City school children were receiving in all grade levels during that era: 1994-2001. It didn't end then tho. By 2001, it had started spreading across most of America. Reports about the effects of these school years can be found all over the internet and on your favorite news publication.

So just: Live & Let Live.

Whether it's: Kanye West, Donald Trump, Joe BIden or Taylor Swift

CP'24

#Scientists & Neurosurgeons #poem #Biden #Taylor Swift #Kanye West #Trump #cp'24 #poetry

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Facebook's alternative facts

Facebook acquired a company called Crowdtangle in 2016; it makes a social media analytics tool that the press has used to monitor subject-matter trends on Facebook, especially in the runup to the 2020 elections.

Facebook just gutted Crowtangle.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/14/technology/facebook-data.html

Crowdtangle had operated as a semiautonomous unit within Facebook, primarily used by media companies to track the social media performance of their stories. A turning point came when the NY Times’s Kevin Roose figured out how to rank posts that included links to the real web.

Roose created a Twitter account called @FacebooksTop10 that served as a moment-to-moment leaderboard for the most popular web-links being “engaged with” on Facebook (Facebook separates “engagement” — liking and replying — from “reach” — how many people see a post).

Roose’s research revealed that far-right cranks like Ben Shapiro and Sean Hannity were dominating Facebook’s news ecosystem. These reports were most unwelcome within Facebook leadership, whose internal communications were leaked to Roose.

These leaks reveal the anxieties of top Facebook leaders — including Nick Clegg, the former UK Deputy PM who sold out his supporters, created the conditions for Brexit, and then landed a cushy, 4-million-per-year job as head of FB’s “global affairs.”

These leaders worried that objective data about Facebook users’ “engagement” would validate suspicions that the service was a far-right echo-chamber whose US users were trending to ageing conservatives, a group that advertisers are lukewarm on.

Facebook’s leaders debated what to do about this and ultimately decided to neuter Crowdtangle, replacing it with selective disclosures that put the service in a better light, choosing among several other metrics (like reach) to characterize the discourse on the platform.

Publicly, Facebook says it’s not killing Crowdtangle, but rather, integrating it into an “integrity team” — minus its leadership (on “vacation” with no defined role at the company) and key personnel (who are being scattered to other parts of the business).

Facebook’s attack on Crowdtangle is significant, especially in light of its sustained assault on independent accountability and transparency tools like Ad Observer, a project from NYU’s engineering school.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/11/20/sovkitsch/#adobserver

Ad Observer tracks paid political disinformation on the platform. Its users volunteer to install a free/open browser extension that captures the ads Facebook serves to them. These are flensed of any private information and uploaded to Ad Observatory, a public repository.

Accountability journalists and researchers use Ad Observatory to track whether Facebook is living up to its public promises to limit paid political disinformation. The project has documented many failures to uphold those promises.

In its smear campaign against Ad Observer, Facebook has insisted that the project is both dangerous (Facebook falsely claims it captures private information) and redundant, because Facebook maintains its own ad repository for researchers.

But Ad Observer has already caught multiple instances of paid political disinformation that was not included in Facebook’s repository.

Facebook has proven that it cannot be trusted to honestly reflect its own practices in its transparency efforts.

As Crowdtangle enters a decline — leadership sidelined, engineers scattered — we should interpret Facebook’s promises to replace it with its own “accountability” tools, run by the leadership faction that decried Roose’s top-10 list, in light of the Ad Observer fiasco.

After all, these leaders insisted that the problem with Roose’s list is that it measured “engagement” and not “reach” — but when the company produced its own internal “reach”-based leaderboards, they looked much the same as the “engagement” ones.

Roose agrees with FB leaders in that Facebook isn’t merely a far-right echo chamber (he says that it contains such a chamber, but that’s not the whole story). But there’s one way in which FB is firmly Trumpian: its insistence on “alternative facts.”

Trump is a bullshitter, raised in the “positive thinking” church of Norman Vincent Peale, whose gospel dictated that you could manifest new realities by insisting that they were already here — “fake it till you make it” (AKA “gaslighting”).

https://www.npr.org/2017/01/19/510628862/how-positive-thinking-helped-propel-trump-to-the-presidency

This ideology — call it gaslightism — is the fantasy that powerful people can warp reality simply by declaring it to be something else (think of the GWB official who sneered at the “reality-based community” and its skepticism over war in Iraq).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality-based_community

It’s a common trait among wealthy narcissists. Elon Musk insists that the laws of physics will bend to his satellite internet network and allow for multiple universes’ worth of electromagnetic signalling.

He’s sure that the laws of geometry will bend to his tunnels and somehow relieve traffic congestion by adding private vehicles; that he will make massive leaps in computer science and create safe autonomous vehicles.

Trump’s insistence the virus would “disappear…like a miracle” was just the latest installment in a long history of bullshitting (“positive thinking”), including things like pretending to be his own publicist, boasting to journos about his prowess.

https://www.dailywire.com/news/audio-listen-donald-trump-pretend-be-his-own-hank-berrien

Facebook’s desire to “control the narrative” is part of this intellectual tradition, and it’s hardly the first time the company has done it.

Early in the company’s history, Zuckerberg defended his “real names” policy by saying that anyone who objected was “two-faced.”

It’s hard to overstate how deranged this is: surely Zuckerberg presents a different facet of his identity to his spouse, his kids, his shareholders, his co-workers and the press. It’s not “two faced” to talk to your boss differently from how you talk to your lover.

However, by forcing billions of Facebook users to confine themselves to a single identity, Zuckerberg does make it easier to target them with ads. This “two-faced” business is just an attempt to will a radical, sociopathic norm into existence.

This attitude permeates Facebook’s corporate conduct: remember the “pivot to video?” Facebook wanted to compete with Youtube — the number two supplier of display advertising, after FB itself — so it declared that videos were very popular on Facebook.

Not that videos would be popular — they were already popular. The company told its media and ad partners that they were missing out on a gold-rush because FB users loved watching FB videos.

Media companies literally laid off their newsrooms in order to hire video production teams based on this intelligence. The entire media- and ad-ecosystem reoriented itself around Facebook’s market intelligence.

There was just one problem. Facebook was lying. FB users weren’t watching its videos, and Facebook knew it. The company was just betting that if it convinced media companies to spend billions making videos, its users would watch them.

https://www.wired.com/story/facebook-lawsuit-pivot-to-video-mistake/

This fraud devastated the media world, first by triggering waves of layoffs of experienced journalists to make way for young video producers, then by killing or hobbling their employers and triggering another wave of mass layoffs.

Zuckerberg knows it’s not “two-faced” to show different parts of yourself to different people. Facebook knew that no one was watching FB videos. They were just betting that they could fake it until they made it — the core tenet of gaslightism.

The Crowdtangle affair is more of the same. Facebook’s US market is dominated by furious, old conservatives. The company knows it — but they also know that if they admit it, people who don’t match that description will be less likely to stay on its platform.

They know that advertisers don’t pay much to reach that audience. They know that an aging user-base will dwindle over time unless there’s a cohort coming in behind it. They think that if they suppress the true nature of their business, the nature will change.

Gaslightism is what Exxon embraced half a century ago, when it suppressed its own scientists’ conclusions that its product would render our planet unfit for human habitation. They were betting that if they just kept the news quiet, something might come up that changed it. #ExxonKnew

The wealthy and powerful have always practiced gaslightism (hence folktales like “The Emperor’s New Clothes”).

To be clear, we’re all prone to kidding ourselves with wishful thinking, but wishful thinking is different when it’s combined with unchecked power.

That’s why Thomas Jefferson argued for an anti-monopoly clause in the Bill of Rights — not because he disbelieved in smart people with good ideas, but because he disbelieved in infallible people.

Mark Zuckerberg is not an evil supergenius. He’s not a supergenius, or any kind of genius. He’s just an everyday mediocrity like you or me, someone who talked himself into thinking that he should be the czar of 3 billion lives.

https://locusmag.com/2018/07/cory-doctorow-zucks-empire-of-oily-rags/

The problem of concentrated, unaccountable, autocratic power isn’t evil supergeniuses. The problem is people no better or worse than you or me, indulging their worst impulses with no one to call bullshit on them.

Nerfing Crowdtangle and attacking Ad Obverser are just ways for Facebook to preventing journalists from calling bullshit on it — a way to further secede from the reality-based community. It’s pure gaslightism.

Image: Japanexperterna.se (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/japanexperterna/15251188384/

Minette Lontsie (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Facebook_Headquarters.jpg

CC BY-SA: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/

Anthony Quintano (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/quintanomedia/41793468502

CC BY: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

#pluralistic

[blackswallowtailbutterfly]

Seriously, reading the OP of the post and then people talking about communism in practice, I thought the argument was going to be “what did I say about capitalism being global?” and then argue that so-called communist countries are pretty capitalist actually, which would have been an interesting argument (women need to wait till literally every man is taken care of is still a shit argument, though, no matter how you slice it). But oh no! No, that’s not the argument at all. Capitalism is global, even socialist countries are capitalism except for the most repressive regimes marketing themselves as communist. Those are the only not-capitalist countries, and everybody is/was actually happy there and everyone who isn’t/wasn’t is definitely just a bourgeoise who deserves to be persecuted and killed, never mind those who--AND BY THE WAY MORE PEOPLE HAVE DIED UNDER CAPITALISM SO THE KILLINGS DEFINITELY AREN’T A BIG DEAL EVEN IF THEY WEREN’T JUSTIFIED!

Fucking Christ.

Did communist regimes improve some things? They certainly did. Did they start sliding backwards when some men got too power-hungry? Yes indeed they did. Is there a lot of capitalist propaganda against communism? Sure is. Is there a lot of communist propaganda against capitalism? You betcha. So are some things we hear gross exaggerations either positive or negative? Absolutely. Does that mean the deaths of 94 million people were fabricated or somehow justifiable? No! What the fuck is wrong with you???

Are the theories of communism worth looking at? Of course they are. I even think it’s worth trying to implement them, but given the history, it would have to be done very carefully. Which means having mostly or all women doing it. 20-30% women in government, many of them the wives of male communist leaders, is not enough. Men have proven they can’t do communism effectively, just like everything else, except violence.

Communism or what’s called communism has been shit in practice. Capitalism is also shit. I’m not interested in a variation of shit. I’m not interested in somewhat better shit (and absolutely in some ways communist countries have been better). I want no shit. So if communists can’t even guarantee freedom of speech and no genocide, then I don’t want communism. We can come up with something else. The idea of communism was new once.

I respect any communist (and I’ve met several) who says unequivocally that the atrocities committed by the USSR and China, etc. were wrong, but that the political theory of communism still has merit and they have ideas of how to make it work. That so many pro-communism people are so insistent on justifying the unjustifiable is disturbing. Reminds me of how pro-Trumpers thought Trump could do no wrong, how TRAs think TIMs can do no wrong. I’m not about that shit. You need to think critically about the things you care about. You cannot deny or justify atrocities just because they’re inconvenient. You want me to support the implementation of communism, I need better than “well even MORE people were killed under this system!” In fact, I need you to not use that argument at all because that will get a flat-out no from me. As will stating that women’s liberation has to take a back seat.

[skypalacearchitect]

[Source only allows 1 free article per month, so I’m copying it all here]:

Date: May 27, 2020, 10:47 AM

On Nov. 25, 2019, while thousands of women took to the streets of Mexico City to mark the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, Abril Pérez was shot to death by a hitman. The 48-year-old executive of a Mexican online retail store and mother of three was on her way to the airport to return home to Monterrey after a custody hearing. She’d recently divorced Juan Carlos García, a former Amazon Mexico CEO and the father of her children, whom she had accused of attempted murder 11 months prior for allegedly creeping into her home in the middle of the night and beating her with a baseball bat. The gunman and his driver were arrested in March, but García, the suspected mastermind behind Pérez’s death, has reportedly fled to the United States.

What remains an open question is what role the United States played in the murder itself. As coronavirus-related lockdowns worsen the threat of domestic violence for women around the world, women in Mexico face an additional danger: the flood of American guns into the country. “The U.S. talks about how drugs and migrants cross the border from Mexico,” said Maura Roldán, a researcher on gun violence from Mexico City. “But it hasn’t recognized its role in the rise in violence in Mexico. It doesn’t mention the fact that it’s providing the guns.”

While it’s impossible to know the provenance of the murder weapon in Pérez’s case—Mexican homicide databases do not include this information—what is certain is that a steady stream, or torrent, of American firearms since the early 2000s has contributed to a spike in gun-related deaths in Mexico, in turn transforming and exacerbating gender violence. Seventy percent of guns recovered as part of a criminal investigation in Mexico are traced back to the United States, according to data from the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

That influx of guns has taken a toll on women’s safety. Ten women were killed each day in 2018, according to Mexico’s national statistics agency. Roldán and a handful of other researchers and activists, almost all women, point to another statistic: In 2018, six in 10 of those women were fatally shot.

“The proliferation of guns, the huge presence of guns, including in homes, is changing the nature of domestic violence,” said Ana Pecova, the director of the human rights organization Equis. “In the past, a fight would descend into punches. Now, a gun gets pulled out, and a woman ends up dead.”

Not only has gender violence become more lethal, but it has also spilled out of homes and into the streets. Since 2009, more women have been killed in public spaces than in domestic settings, according to a 2015 report by Data Civica. While fewer women than men die of gun violence, the rates at which women are dying from firearms are growing faster: Between 2007 and 2018, gun violence rates for women rose 357 percent (compared to 311 percent for men), and 500 percent in public spaces (347 percent for men), according to Estefanía Vela Barba, one of the authors of the Data Civica report who continues to research the link between gun violence and femicide. Gun-fueled gender violence in public spaces is multifaceted. It can be outsourced intimate partner violence, as is suspected in Pérez’s case. Or it can be cartel messaging.

The scale of violence in Mexico, which abets both forms of public gender violence, comes down to the country’s drug war and the militarization of public security, local experts and activists said. Then-President Felipe Calderón’s mission to uproot organized crime in Mexico has, since its start in 2006, spectacularly failed, fracturing and multiplying cartels, and leading to soaring levels of violence, the most prominent evidence of which is the disappearance of some 61,000 people. While the violence can be blind to gender—stray bullets are indiscriminate—it is often targeted. There are clues in the swirl of statistics: rape, mutilations such as cut off breasts, or shots to the genital region all point to violence against women specifically. But many bodies are hidden or destroyed, or mistabulated. While government registries counted 1,012 femicides last year, activists say the number is likely much higher.

The data in Mexico correlates neatly with a short history of increasingly relaxed gun control laws in the United States and the steady growth of both a legal and illegal firearm trade. The 2004 expiration of the assault weapon ban in the United States ramped up the production and sale of military-grade weapons. By the time Mexico declared its drug war two years later, American manufacturers were ready to pump these high-grade weapons into Mexican military arsenals. Organized crime responded by ratcheting up its own caches, buying more weapons through its own channels: third-party straw purchases; buying on the extensive black market, which lately consists of bringing gun parts in piecemeal fashion across the border and assembling them in Mexico; and even obtaining weapons directly from Mexican security forces. Some 20,000 firearms were reported lost or stolen from state and federal police between 2006 and 2017.

Citizens, caught in the middle of a bloody turf war, armed themselves too. Though Mexico boasts some of the world’s strictest gun control laws, 16.8 million firearms were estimated to be in civilian hands in 2017, according to the Small Arms Survey. Only a small fraction of these were registered. Due to the vast illegal trade, it’s impossible to know exactly how many American guns are sold into Mexico. But the numbers are large enough that Mexican authorities are concerned—and even more so recently.

A slump in domestic sales since 2017 has further turned U.S. gun manufacturers’ attention toward Mexico. In a bid to support the industry, the Trump administration recently moved firearm export oversight from the State Department to the Commerce Department, in what John Lindsay-Poland, the director of Stop U.S. Arms to Mexico, said is designed to loosen oversight and increase the number of firearm exports. “For the U.S., I contend that the assault weapons ban is a foreign-policy issue,” said Lindsay-Poland. “U.S.-sourced assault weapons are used in many more crimes in Mexico than in the U.S.”

In addition to reinstating the assault weapons ban, Eugenio Weigend Vargas, the associate director for gun violence prevention at the Center for American Progress think tank, said the United States should implement universal background checks and ensure stricter regulation of American gun stores. “The measures we advocate for won’t just reduce violence in the U.S., but will also reduce gun traffic to Mexico and Central America,” Vargas said. “The more guns there are, the more domestic violence.”

Meaghan Beatley is a journalist based in Barcelona. She has written for the Nation, the New Statesman, National Geographic and others.

#mexico #femicide #gun violence #GUN CONTROL IS A FEMINIST ISSUE #gun control #international #foreign policy #gang violence #domestic violence #misogyny #abuse culture #abuse #skypalacearchitect

[madamspeaker]

What really enrages me is that when Pelosi called McCarthy a moron last week (too kind, but accurate and proven correct once again) all the news services were covering it. But today, when McCarthy threatens to assault Pelosi with a gavel in the House of Representatives, there’s basically radio silence from the press. I’m fed up of violence against women, particularly women in the public sphere, being normalised by the press who should be condoning it. And imagine how young women feel when they see Pelosi being threatened in this way by a party leader?! That’s enough to put them off going into politics anyway of the week. (Sorry, I’m just very very angry and currently hoping McCarthy rots in hell for eternity)

I've been furious all day; about what he said, and the silence from most of the press. Last week we had a ridiculous tweet from Manu Raju after Nancy's "moron" comment about House relations being at an all time low - as far as I know there's not been a peep from him today. Maybe he agrees with McCarthy, after all Raju did take to Twitter to moan last year about her ignoring him. I mention that because he's never once complained about McCarthy doing the same, and he does.

This all goes back to how Republicans target and demonise Dem women. Sure they go after some of the men, but it's the women that that they zone in on, the women they paint as evil. If they could get away with using the words "bitch" and "cunt" in flyers and ads, the GOP would. We've seen it time and time again - Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, Maxine Waters, Kamala Harris, Alexandria Ocasio Cortez... it's a repeat pattern in which women become the main target of attack. It starts off verbal and written but words matter, words incite, and those who speak and write them know that, and what you then get is the base taking those words further. The base comes to believe that these women are Satan sent and must be literally destroyed. What we had last night was proof that it's no longer just the base engaging in notions of violence. McCarthy has released a statement through a spokesperson to say that it was "obviously a joke". Clearly it wasn't obvious. There has been no apology for the supposed joke, which you would think might be the first thing someone would do when they realise they have said something deeply offensive. No, the only obvious thing about what McCarthy said was the violent imagery it invoked of a man hitting a woman with a piece of wood - the same woman who had been the target of a violent attack mere months earlier, and countless other threats (including a man who threatened to pulp her face) thanks to Republican words, spoken and written. What McCarthy is at now is no better than the gaslighting that domestic abusers do to their victims. I would not be surprised if he tried to blame the backlash on Nancy Pelosi not having a sense of humour - he's blamed her for other awful things that he's done (Jan 6th, covid negligence), which incidentally is another trait in abusers. Honestly, who the fuck jokes about hitting a woman? Men who hit women. And the press need to start addressing this. They need to start asking why McCarthy thought that was okay to "joke" about? Why it is that the GOP regularly go after Dem women more than they do Dem men? And why it is that the GOP go after Dem women so much more aggressively and nastily than they do Dem men? There is something fundamentally wrong with the fact that Nancy Pelosi has become used to death threats against her. She shouldn't be getting any, and certainly not so many as to become used to them. And the press never mention this - they never mention the fact that the language on the Republican side is so toxic that women on the other side get threats, and worse, get so damn many that they've become used to them.

I know a lot of women ran for office in 2018, post Hillary, and I suspect most knew what they were getting into - they all saw how Hillary was treated - but last night feels like an chilling escalation in the GOP war on liberal women. McCarthy can say it was a "joke" all he likes, but we've now reached a terrifying moment in which a leader of a major party thought it was okay to make such a joke. At its most basic level McCarthy stood there and in his mind conjured the image of him hitting an 81 year old woman with a wooden hammer, and then decided to get a laugh from his fantasy from a crowd that probably had people in it who want her dead, and horrifyingly he will not be forced to resign. Pre-Trump, he may well have had to face consequences, but no longer. It's frightening.

[kob131]

So I saw MangaKamen's recent video on RWBY and two things spoke out to me personally; 1) Mangakamen is right about RWBY in the fact that they royally fucked over the situation in Atlas and 2) Robyn has no fucking right comparing her sembalance to Qrow's.

So we’re doing this again huh?

‘I am expressing my opinions and that may piss off someone of you- SO NO COMPLAINING!’

... Fun fact, in his video going after Cosmonaut Variety Hour’s video on Jojo, he directly criticizes him for apparently ‘trying to deflect criticism’ by labelling the video a rant. So know that when I saw that he’s just trying to deflect any backlash he gets here and he inevitably gets pissy about it.

Because this man cannot be consistent to save his life.

“I’m not unreasonable guys!”

No, you just consume and vomit up the points of people who are so deeply biased that they can’t be described as anything BUT unreasonable. 

And I know this, because I remember watching his Volume 7 video and noticing he made a comparison between Jacques and Trump. Now as I’ve stated and shown- this doesn’t make sense. Many of Jacques’ policies and actions in the plot are counter indicative of the common liberal consensus of Trump (for example, Jacques is shown to mostly do this for his business while Trump acting for his business is the ONE thing he was never accused of). This is also not like Kamen’s style at all- he rarely if ever addresses politics in media.

 .. And he didn’t. Because that point wasn’t his. I found out FMF said the exact same thing beforehand and Kamen is on record as watching his videos and following his Twitter. This combined with his blind acceptance of FloofArtist, someone who is even more biased than FMF due to personal feelings- I’m certain that a lot of what he says is just repeated from other people.

In all honesty, I have more respect for FMF. Because he at least isn’t as big a hypocrite nor is he copying other’s opinions even though it’s so far against his style it doesn’t make sense.

Okay so in his first section, he bitches about Cinder’s backstory.

First is that this should have happened in Volumes 4 and 5 because those had a focus on Cinder. Problem, Cinder has a focus in Volume 8 as well as Volume 7 and 6- She’s continually had focus ever since Volume 2. She wasn’t given any special treatment in Volumes 4 and 5, in fact she plays a similar role there as well. ... Except with Atlas, this place is were her abuse took place and her character arc here is learning from her mistakes, which are rooted in her abuse. It also shows how and why Salem got her to be loyal- by offering her a tiny bit of approval and support which she lacked. The same thing she did to Emerald, who is defecting in this Volume. It also gives the audience satisfaction when she does learn from her mistakes and succeeds. So for all he questions about why it is here- He doesn’t even consider a very blatant answer.

He also tries to say that we’ve had other villain backstories before Cinder’s so that...makes hers worse? ...Um, not only does this not pertain to the purpose of Cinder’s backstory, three of his four examples (Tyrian, Watts and Hazel?) are TOLD to us. Cinder, like Salem, is SHOWN to us. This is important since Kamen has bitched about RWBY not doing show don’t tell before so he should be praising this.

His third point is about how Cinder was treated like a slave and yet she feels nothing for the Fanaus, therefore her development from her backstory doesn’t make sense...which misunderstands how people operate so much I’m genuinely confused. Like...people don’t relate to others in similar situations all the time because their experiences scar them to the point of not empathizing with others in similar situations. Hell, that’s the basis of the cycle of abuse. Having similar experiences doesn’t mean Cinder would care, especially since she’s so focused on not repeating that life she ignores so much around her.

Next is-Oh fucking god, it’s the goddamn ‘RHODES AND ABUSE!’ point. Once again, look at the scenes were Cinder is abused. And I mean ‘unambiguous’ abuse. Her sisters tracking mud in, her mother having her work and glaring at her for breaking something is not abuse. I’m talking about the underfeeding and the shock collar. It’s all done AWAY from the public. AKA Away from RHODES. Fuck, take out every scene in which Cinder is abused and tell me if you could tell she was abused and not...I dunno...just a teen who doesn’t like her upbringing. Her collar looks like a normal collar for fuck’s sake!

‘But- Cinder could have mentioned it to him off-screen!’

And that would normally be a good point to make as it is logical given how close they are implied to be. ... But guess what Kamen says?

“If it’s not shown in the show, it doesn’t count.”

Issue is- that cuts both ways. Just as outside info can’t be used to justify the show, the lack of it can’t be interpreted against it. So Kamen fucked the only strong point he could have had.

Then we have him...bitching about show don’t tell with CInder’s song. ... While he completely ignores the showing of Cinder’s abuse being in private. Very blatantly in private.

... I said twelve times, I’ll say it a thirteenth: this is why things in RWBY are so blunt. If it isn’t just a step before the writers walking on screen and explaining the show- People go and misinterpret everything to a point well beyond my suspension of disbelief. This is especially true with Kamen since he bitched at Cvit for not considering what he called ‘basic’ details about Persona 5. So he above anyone else lacks an excuse.

This gets proven in the next part where he says that the purpose of the backstory is to show that Cinder isn’t in power...when in the same episode, we had a scene were Cinder’s Grimm thrashes about with cuts to her backstory where her collar shocked her as Salem gave her very blatant words of manipulative support. You cannot get anymore blatant and blunt than that aside from doing EXACTLY as I said and Kamen STILL misinterprets it. 

He bitches about Cinder retreading the same ground and she sucks...but then consider everything I’ve showcased so far. With all this wildly off shit that he’s criticized in others- can you honestly say you think it’s the show’s fault? Or s it his and he’s not owning up to it?

Considering how he doesn’t make the obvious connection of ‘Cinder lacked power in her developmental years’ to ‘Cinder has an unnatural obsession with that thing she lacked in her developmental years’-

I can safely say it’s the latter.

And that’s it for now. I’ll revisit this later considering how tired I am. But to wrap things up-

Look at the length of this post. Look at all the problems I pointed out. Look at the hypocrisy and inexcusable stupidity.

Then consider that this is only 9 minutes...into a 51 minute video.

...Do you really think Kamen’s points are that good? Or even acceptable?

[therappundit]

Top 10 Rappers of 2020

The finish line of this long, surreal year is finally upon us...which means that it’s time for me to throw down the gauntlet in the ‘Best of 2020’ frivolous list race!  🙌

*Just to be clear*: this is a list of MCs who I believe turned in the best overall performances in 2020. ***This is NOT a list of the my top 10 favorite MCs***, or even who I believe to be the best MCs in the world at the moment...these are simply dope artists that put forth the strongest, most consistently interesting and important (to the genre) high-quality work in the perilous year that was 2020. 

If you think your favorite MC was slighted....well, Michael Jordan is the greatest to ever play the game of basketball but even he didn’t win MVP every year, right? I encourage you to write your own list - it’s a cool way to dap artists that are too often overlooked by industry websites, and share the music you enjoy with others that may not have given the record a spin otherwise.

Even if 2020 didn’t bring you the “instant classic” you had been hoping for, I think it’s hard to deny that this year really had impressive depth when it came to showcasing some of the most diverse music that the genre has to offer.  I can’t speak for music in general - sadly I’m just The Rap Pundit, not The Music Pundit - but I can say that it has been an impossible task to keep a playlist less than 500 songs deep at a time, because for every truly great release in 2020 there seemed to be 30 very good releases. 👌

So how did I come about these 10 MCs (and Honorable Mentions)? Before you get huffy about who I snubbed (and that is pointed directly at my jury of older head peers that consider themselves tastemakers, but also haven’t opened their minds up to any new takes on rap styles since the year 2000)...here are the five chief pieces of criteria that I put into finalizing my list:

- quality (whatever lane you’re in, how often did you ‘own it’?)

- quantity (at least 10 very good-to-great songs released, and 3-4 verses that stand out as a ‘must-hear’ for any rap music fan)

- consistency (not just 4-5 great features and a few forgettable solo tracks, will I want to keep at least 7 or 8 of your own new songs released in 2020 in my rotation for 2021?)

- impact (are you so vital to the type of rap music you make that if you stopped rapping tomorrow, there’s no one else in the game that could fill that void?)

- “it” factor (are you carried by a co-sign or an elite production team, or did you bring a style/talent to the table that could carry a record in and of itself?)

Got it? Then here we go...

1. Conway the Machine

I hope 2020 was the type of year that Conway the Machine had been hoping for since he first began his journey with rap music. After years of scraping and hustling towards music industry recognition (and not just cult figure status), at year’s end we see Griselda’s top Lieutenant holding down a rare balancing act: champion of underground hip-hop, and most requested feature by any mainstream rap star looking to add some tough-talking muscle to their album.

While much of Conway’s content has always been driven by surviving an attempt on his life in 2012, much like 50 Cent, Conway’s way with words and perspective manage to elevate the quality of his material to a higher tier than most. And where - at least in his heyday - 50 Cent benefited from an indestructible super-villain persona, Conway’s success can be greatly attributed to a larger-than-life heart.  With every braggadocious act of gunplay, there are moments of gratefulness to still being alive to share success with his brethren, as well as a painful longing to be with close allies that are no longer with him (at least not in the physical form).

Above all else, in 2020 Conway the Machine did what he has always done throughout his career: delivered well written, passionate bars about coming up in an impossibly challenging environment and coping with loss...only now his craftsmanship and understanding of how to channel all of those feelings into a more polished final product have yielded the most well-rounded solo project of his career in From King to a God. Progress is a slow process, but the long and winding road has finally taken Conway a step closer to that G.O.A.T. status he will hopefully continue to reach for...

Best Evidence: FKTG, and a countless number of scene-stealing verses alongside rap acts ranging from deep underground to household names

2. Freddie Gibbs

I don't use the word "sauce" all too often (this may actually be the first time), but if there was any MC guaranteed to bring sauce to any rap record right now, it's Freddie Gibbs. 

Forever existing somewhere between gritty gangsta and syrupy old soul, the flavor that Freddie brings to every verse is malleable enough to work on virtually any type of record, which was certainly proven in 2020. Anyone foresee a Gibbs & Alchemist Grammy nomination heading into 2020? It’s a testament to how high quality work, through consistent reliability and dues paid, can elevate a project from underground niche following to critical acclaim. While his work with Alchemist may not reach the lofty levels of his heralded collaborations with Madlib, Alfredo represents the best that “quarantine music” can offer...two talented friends saying one day, “hey we should finally drop a full tape together, why not?” - and then BOOM, it happens.

Too many fail to remember that Gibbs already has a long accomplished body of work behind him...so the fact that he may just be entering his prime now, is scary.

Best Evidence: Alfredo, Machinedrum’s “Kane Train”

3. Boldy James

Comeback MC of the year, and no it is not close (but big shout-out to Grafh, another dope MC who had an amazing year).

I'm old enough to remember when folks like Roc Marciano and Ka were seen as sleepy, monotone rappers with little hope of reaching permanent rap icon status (flash-forward to today, and they are widely consider geniuses). For some, the quieter, less hook-dependent approach to making rap songs, was....well, not great rap music. They were wrong then and they’re wrong now, but similar to how the coolest, smartest cat in the room is rarely the loudest, it can take some time and patience before everyone learns what’s what. Time is what is required to appreciate Detroit’s Boldy James, a veteran that has been through it - both in terms of the ups and downs of the music business, as well as the streets through which he draws his stories and inspiration.

Boldy makes it seem all too easy, rapping his verses with the cool, casual tone of telling old stories to a close friend over drinks. Dropping multiple projects (with one still to come) in one year can often lead to over-saturation. Even the most dedicated fans/stans can begin to feel less enthusiastic about new releases when they have already received a healthy portion of more of the same...but most rap fans are not necessarily Boldy James fans. Boldy fans (much like Roc Marciano and Ka fans) are already aware that knowing what type of material to expect from your favorite MC can be a blessing if that MC takes pride in the execution of the final product, rather than the noise leading up to it. 

The beauty of his collaboration with The Alchemist (big year for that guy, huh?), The Price of Tea in China, is that it celebrates the more subtle nuances of boom-bap, proving that great MC and producer chemistry can trump the “shock & awe” of more uptempo rap music. The shock in Boldy James’ lyrics sits within the detailed descriptions of the cold world he grew up in...so monotone or not, how can any music could be more gripping than that?

Best Evidence: TPOTIC, Manger On McNichols, a long list of consistently perfect feature verses

4. 42 Dugg

I would say this is more of a longterm investment rather than the celebration of a rapper already within rap’s inner circle, but 42 Dugg didn’t just steal the show on every feature this year, he also displayed maturity in his ability to craft well-rounded, high quality rap singles. I’m talking joints that work just as well on the street tape level as they would at the radio level. That is especially rare to see from a rapper that is still relatively new to national conversations. 

So much more than just a co-sign of Lil Baby and Yo Gotti, the Detroit eastsider has already proven that he can craft a full solo album with the swagger of a far more seasoned MC. 42 Dugg combines a Boosie-esque, "oh you think you’re better than me??” chip on his shoulder with the unpredictable bombast of Lil Wayne. What he may lack in punchlines he makes up for in musicianship, his voice bringing one of the most nimble touches to trap music that I have heard in a long time. 42 Dugg music is hard and soulful, with the natural hunger of a rapper that knows me might be one smash away from superstardom. By this time next year, I’m betting he will be. 

Best Evidence: Young & Turnt 2 (Deluxe), features on high profile records like Lil Baby’s “Grace” and “We Paid”, and a growing stream of attention grabbing solo loosies

5. Rome Streetz

In 2020 it was almost impossible to be an underground MC with a great project unless you landed a Rome Streetz verse. 

Rome has been bubbling for a while now, but in 2020 he unleashed an onslaught on the game. At times he seemed like the hardest working MC in underground circles, busting his ass to not only make as many appearances as possible, but also to own any song he guested on. He raps like every verse might be “the one” that gets him a huge contract, and that’s a level of hunger and consistency that will likely land him more than one huge contract someday. In spite of that laundry list of strong features, the young Brooklyn MC still managed to release multiple dope solo projects, all flashing a rap style that feels at once a throwback and the fresh voice NYC rap needs. 

Rome is clearly from the same school as many of the New York City greats, because he has the capacity to deliver dark, potent bars with the sharp intellect of a Harvard lecture (think AZ before “Sugar Hill”). While he sounds most at home when he’s rhyming over instrumentals that run more coldblooded than a horror flick, it’s easy to picture him popping up in more places in 2021...if that’s even possible.

Best Evidence: Noise Kandy 4, Kontraband, The Residue, and at least 50 incredible features with a who’s-who of the underground’s finest

6. Stove God Cook$

No one saw this coming....well, maybe Roc Marciano, Lord Jamar, Busta Rhymes and a few more NYC heads in the know - but I guarantee you, no one else saw the Stove God coming!

Bar for bar, no MC owned more rewind-worthy rap quotables in 2020 than Stove God Cook$. Dropping a solo debut with VERY little fanfare and zero features (apart from the steady, reliable guidance of Roc Marciano - low key one of hip-hop’s most reliable producers), a slow bubbling word of mouth campaign on social media eventually got Stove God verses exposed to more and more high profile ears. Such a grass roots campaign is rarely seen...I mean, a rap album slowly becoming a critical darling simply off the strength of more and more random folks discovering the music and Tweeting about it, as opposed to the buzz being calculated before the product??? It feels almost too good to be true these days, as early reviews of Reasonable Drought typically lead with something along the lines of, “hey, have you heard of this album? I have no idea who this is, but it is 🔥🔥🔥”

It has often been said that Roc Marciano has a lot of “sons” in the game, implying that Roc Marci gave birth to a style that a whole generation of underground MCs run with today. So it’s ironic (or perhaps highly appropriate?) that the next level of progression for Roc might be to have a protege, a young Jedi to carry on the tradition on Roc’s own terms, and become the next new star to be embraced by the old heads. But Stove God isn’t a clone of Roc, or anyone else, he’s simply one of the most exciting artists to hit the NYC underground in a generation. Everything from his word choice, to his fresh references and sense of humor, to his delivery and the way he structures his verses, feels like a collection of “firsts”, there’s simply no one sounding like him. And if his work in 2020 is any indication, he will continue to be in a league of his own for years to come.

Best Evidence: Reasonable Drought, spotlight snatching features alongside Roc Marciano and Griselda’s finest

7. Lil Baby

Once viewed by some as just another “Lil”, Lil Baby had been rollin’ coming into 2020, but by the end of 2020 it’s clear that he has arrived at the forefront of rap music’s most reliable hitmakers right now. 

A must-have feature on any rap album reaching for max exposure, Lil Baby’s dexterous flow, charisma, and pen that is significantly sharper than early reports indicated, made him one of the few shining stars in 2020 to consistently deliver good rap music to what in any other year would have been considered smash hits in any club.

What makes Lil Baby’s music standout is that he could easily be a “cookie cutter” MC, phoning in verse after verse just to get another check, but instead he continues to bring it - trying to squeeze in an extra catchy lyric, maybe flow in a way that breaks up a verse to make it stand out from the pack a little more - and even when he is featured over cookie cutter beats that sound like every other trap inspired beats that came before it, Baby seems eager to prove something. I think that’s what I like about him - he’s on a short list of mainstream-bred Young Thug disciples that seem to really want to put the work in to becoming one of the greats. 

Best Evidence: I mean...did any rap star have more songs in circulation this year? Dude was everywhere, but “The Bigger Picture” got his name officially into the lyricist conversation (even though personally I don’t even think it’s one of his more impressive records - at least not stylistically)

8. Westside Gunn

No one denies that the Griselda Records team had a banner year, yet somehow the vocal leader of the group managed to drop a handful of dope projects without receiving credit for being a great MC in his own right. Great artist, great album curator, great business man - sure, but great MC?? That credit is rarely given to the FLYGOD. He might not even understand how natural he is as a solo MC, waxing unpredictable flows and half-bars that stick in your mind in place of catchy hooks or predictable song structure. He might call himself an artist first, but I still call him one of the most prolific rappers today (regardless of whether he retires after the ball drops).

I can’t believe I have to tell rap fans this in the year 2020...but......you all know that message and punchlines are just part of the art of rapping, right...and not the only thing that defines who is a dope MC and who isn’t?? Play any solo cut from Westside Gunn and filter out the “doot-doot-doots” and stream of conscious hooks and what you are left with is one of the most distinctive voices in rap music, attempting off-kilter flows and phrases over some of the most impressive production in rap music today, and to me that sounds like my kind of rap music. What the Buffalo floor general lacks in diversity of subject matter he makes up for with a relentless imagination.

That’s why it’s not all that surprising to me that Westside Gunn enjoyed more mainstream attention in 2020 than he ever has before. All he needed was a window of exposure and he certainly capitalized on it, pitching his sound and his vision in all the right places, without compromising his style or vacating his lane. So strictly as a MC, I would consider him the Young Thug of the east coast underground scene, and if 2020 does turn out to be his final year of recording solo projects, I am thankful that he already has a long list of quality projects with high replay value to revisit again and again. But don’t wait - give this man his flowers now.

Best Evidence: “Euro Step”, “Rebirth”, “327″, “Shawn vs. Flair”, “Michael Irvin”, and YES he even had a more than worthy verse on “$500 Ounces” alongside Freddie Gibbs and Roc Marciano

9. Benny the Butcher

Who else is more reliable to deliver a dope feature verse than Benny?

By now you must be muttering at least a few things about me, so let me just make two points: YES, I am a big fan of Griselda records, but NO I do not consider that an unreasonable bias because even on paper according to a large variety of sources, it’s clear that Conway, Boldy James, Westside Gunn and Benny are true specialists when it comes to the quality of the work they distribute. Its not a fluke or a trend, they’re just that good at what they do...I have been saying this for almost 5 years now, but in 2020 the rest of you sleepy heads finally just stopped hitting snooze.

Benny the Butcher already possesses the writing capacity, attention to detail, and skills of observation/personal reflection to put himself within special company as one of the nicest pens in the business today. But in 2020, he dialed things up even higher...or perhaps word of mouth just finally caught up with the rest of his peers? The tribute to the classic Roc-A-Fella era that was his Burden of Proof project with Hit-Boy helped expose Benny to a much larger audience, and it has been beautiful to see so many more folks quoting and sharing his lyrics on Twitter, because I recall when he had about the same amount of Followers that I do, because it wasn’t all that long ago (I just hope they go back to experience all of his prior work - I’m still partial to his incredible verses on “Shower Shoe Lords” and “Pissy Work”)! 

In my not so humble opinion, I do think some of the more dramatic pomp and circumstance on the BOP album was more suited to a Rick Ross or Meek Mill than Benny, so I’m actually more excited to hear what Benny has in store for 2021. He truly sounds at his best over more minimalistic production that lets his lyrics fill the spotlight...but still, tracks like “Timeless” and “Legend” do remind me of some of my favorite moments from old JAY-Z albums...blasphemous, maybe, but true.

A shot to the leg last month seems to have done nothing to slow his momentum, so if you didn’t board the bandwagon by now, you are inexcusably late.

Best Evidence: Burden of Proof, mercilessly slaughtering every verse on every Griselda projects, and a ton of show-stealing features

10. Drakeo the Ruler

What a journey it's been for the L.A. rising star. 

Flexing a penchant for placing local slang into his music and delivering dark verses with a clear sense of humor, it's easy to see the appeal of Drakeo's style. If Thank You For Using GTL was an inspiring attempt to do anything possible to keep his buzz going (in that case, recording his verses over a prison phone), the quick release of We Know The Truth shortly after he regained his freedom seems to have given him a 50 Cent-esque teflon aura at the moment. 

But this is about more than just Drakeo himself, it’s about what he represented before incarceration, and what he represents now. As one of the more visible forces in a new generation of west coast hip-hop, Drakeo was a few key features away from exploding onto the national scene. Now after surviving his ordeal, likely with a great deal more to write about, his ceiling has only been raised - and along with his growth potential, so rises the potential for the current rap scene out in L.A. right now. Mark my words: by this time next year Drakeo’s flow will be one of the most flagrantly jacked flows in rap music coast to coast.

A sincere welcome home from the rap world, Drakeo the Ruler. Hopefully the worst is now behind you. 🙏

Best Evidence: We Know The Truth, Free Drakeo, Thank You For Using GTL

*Honorable Mentions*:

Che Noir, Ka, Ransom, Billy Woods, Royce Da 5′9″, Jay Electronica, Fly Anakin, Curren$y, Lil Uzi Vert, Roc Marciano, Skyzoo, Black Thought, Tee Grizzley, Your Old Droog, Flee Lord, Lil Wayne

#Best MCs of 2020 #Best rappers #Conway #Griselda #Boldy James #Benny The Butcher #Westside Gunn #Lil Baby #Roc Marciano #Ransom #Stove God Cook$ #drakeo the ruler #Che Noir #Freddie Gibbs #42 Dugg #Rome Streetz #Your Old Droog #Curren$y #Grafh #Skyzoo #royce da 5'9" #Ka #Billy Woods #Quelle Chris #Mach-Hommy #lil uzi vert #Fly Anakin #Mutant Academy #Rigz #Lil Wayne

[cottoncandyreaper]

(A story that I've been working on for a month now! I present to you: Heisenberg's Child)

She couldn't be fucking serious; she couldn't be absolutely fucking serious!? Years of pain, fears and dealing with this bullshit family as I'm standing here staring her right in the eyes and she's telling me that she created another near perfect vessel...with my fucking dna!? Not some cadou filled corpse but personally, my blood, my semen...she stole from me and I never even fucking knew it. It could have been a plan from the very beginning for all I knew; no other explanation worked in my mind.

"The child is being transported here to Romania thanks to Umbrella themselves, they are to hand deliver her to us."

"Why would we trust those, dogs mother Miranda? When they have only proven to want to kill you."

Alcina's voice held annoyance of the topic being about something regarding myself but she hid it well. Almost.

"Humans are frail of mind child, if you promise them anything worth gold they will bend to any request."

Her words no matter how she put them held a secretive meaning behind them; she had more planned then what she was leading on about and that's what I hated the most about her was all the damn secerts.

"Now why would this giant monster of a company need this...kid as a trump card?"

"Because the child has gained your ability through genetics my son and it seems they are very good at using it. You, dear Heisenberg have a unique and strong gift that has sparked fear in the eyes of many. Although given to you, seeing that a child can be born from you possessing the same gift only bods destruction once they are here with us."

Experimentation gave me this 'gift' oh so graciously without my want for it; hearing that it seeped so low as to embedding itself into my genes pissed me the fuck off more then I thought anything else in the world could. And hearing that it passed down to the unwanted next generation was even more then I couldn't have hoped for.

"Within a few days she will be in our arms, so ready yourselves to greet our new member."

She was dismissing us so soon after gathering us without even going over the finer details of whatever needed to happen or any info on this brat. Was there some mother out there with a broken heart of having a child ripped away from them? A step father that took my place to help raise it? Or was the kid going to be just as mentally jacked like I was? I hated waiting to find out standing from the couch and left without a word. But that didn't mean I wouldn't be harassed.

"You should feel some joy Heisenberg; a illegitimate child will be joining our family and their connection with you will be a wonderful parental bonding moment for you both."

For once I was speechless to the mega bitch choosing to let my mind wonder to more important topics then listening to her irritating voice. The next few days would be the longest I've ever dealt with.

~

The next few days had been nothing but beauty and eventful sight seeing. Uncle Chris had explained to me that the new factory I would be working in was state of the art and fully up to date on all the information about myself. But that conversation was now long gone since the helicopter had been shot down sending us into a whirling spin with fire on the tail.

"TUVA!"

My hand just barely brushed against uncle Chris's until the helicopter hit the ground jolting me back as it broke almost perfectly down the middle. It jarred my body sending waves of pain through out my limbs as my eyes, hazy still, focused on the movement and sound coming from Uncle Chris as he tried to reassure me.

"Tuva, Tuva don't move..."

"I...can try to move the plane, I can move it up..."

"Don't...its too heavy...you'll send your half down."

"...down?"

Risking it I turned my head ever so slowly even scared to do that simple movement to see that with just the right amount of luck my half of the plane was starting to tip over the edge.

"C-chris..."

"Hold on I'll get you, just stay still."

Breathing was a labored task as seconds turned into hours watching him inch his way towards me when another solid hit smacked into the plane.

"There's lycans out here sir!"

"Hurry up and kill them!"

Lycans? Like...werewolves? Where the fuck were we!? Even though my mind was trying to piece something rational together that all slipped away seeing the final pieces holding the two halves together break. It was a last ditch effort trying to use my power to stay afloat but Chris was right, it was too much for me; the sun greeted my eyes shining down its light while the echos of Chris's last call of my name faded away, all I could manage was a metal cocoon that I hoped would save my life.

The landing was hard almost sending me into unconsciousness with how badly it rattled my bones and brain. I waited a few minutes to listen and just settle down as the fact that something destroyed the plane and successfully separated me from the crew whirled uncontrolled in my mind. I wasn't going to lie but I knew that there was at least some kind of weird cult here in the area that weren't big fans of Umbrella corporation. All that information was supposed to stay buried but I was more clever then they thought I was. But that's what scared me the most; why did they hate us? The question swimmed mildly through my restless mind as I released my hold on the metal letting it fall around me yet immediately regretted it. Those...lycans, they had me surrounded so fast even though I never heard a sound. But what they didn't know was that I had a arsenal on my side as the pieces of metal from the cocoon unraveled as well as some from the other half of the plane began floating around me.

"Back off freaks! I'm alot more of a threat then I look!"

Some of them were fazed by my words backing off but others, bigger ones, were not. Just as I was seconds away from throwing what I had it was like thousands of pounds were added to the scrap pieces breaking my hold on them embedding them into the ground below.

"Now now kid~ no need to be so hostile. These guys are like giant...angry puppies."

A strange man walked out from somewhere in the back; a cigar on his lips, a wide brimmed hat and glasses covering most of his features besides his graying beard. Adorned in a trench coat, old looking tan shirt, pants and boots...he had a major western vibe going on. But was he...the one that forced me to release the metal?

"Who are you!? Where are the others!?"

"My job was to separate and gather you up so that's all I got for ya for now, we'll make introductions later."

"Hell no! Stranger danger dude."

Grabbing ahold of the metal again I was able to throw it this time aiming straight for western man; I knew it would hit with how much practice I had done. Yet as it floated in mid air not moving a inch infront of him...I knew that it I wasn't controlling it anymore.

"What the fuck...?"

"Good throw there kiddo, but it doesn't work if the target can do the same thing."

Western man walked out from behind it waving his hand off to the side sending the metal away.

"Wouldn't it be much better to talk maybe somewhere not absolutely filled with creepy ass lycans?"

"Who are you!? Why can you that!? Why can you do what I do?"

He stood there thinking for a moment or two in pure silence until his hand shifted gripping the cigar between gloved fingers throwing it to the ground stomping out the embers.

"What can I say kid...its in the genes."

I could just see his eyes peak up at me from beneath his sunglasses before he lifted his head back up wearing a grin.

"You think you were lucky enough to be born like that without a little help from your good ol' dad?"

He was insane wasn't he!? Full of shit speaking crazy literally seconds after meeting me. My dad was dead from war, my mom died giving birth to me. That's what I knew for a fact and I was in no mood to argue those facts.

"Fuck...you."

#lord heisenberg #resident evil 8 #alcina dimitrescu #heisenberg #writerslife #female writers #writers on tumblr

[animebw]

Binge-Watching: Legend of the Galactic Heroes, Episodes 70-74

In which the end finally comes for the Alliance, Reinhard’s seductive goodness is not to be trifled with, and the fate of democracy itself now hangs in the balance.

Last Stand

The Alliance is dead.

Really, you could argue that it’s been dead well before this point. Maybe it died the day the Empire annexed it. Maybe it died the day it began to abandon its democratic ideals for totalitarian hypocrisy. Maybe it was dead from the start, doomed to never live up to Heinessen’s dream. But wherever you draw the line, there’s no getting around the fact that now, at last, the Alliance has met its end. The military has been defeated, the government has fallen, Reinhard’s Empire has become the sole governing power in the galaxy, and not a single shred of what used to be the Free Planets Alliance remains to challenge the new authoritarianism. We have, at long last, reached the end of the line. And kudos to Bewcock and his men for going down in a true blaze of glory. The final battle against Reinhard’s forces in the asteroid belt is truly something to behold, tense and brutal and epic in all the ways this show has proven itself capable of. Solar flares and asteroids providing yet another unique space environment to fight in. The Alliance fighting tooth and nail against a far more powerful force. Every desperate rout refusing to let the slim hope of victory die until the enemy’s overwhelming numbers finally lay them low. And god, Bewcock’s final speech to Reinhard, going down with his democratic ideals intact and a drink in his hand... that might well be the most emotional this show has ever gotten me. I was this damn close to crying when he raised his last glass to freedom.

Of course, because the universe is an utter troll, Reinhard once again doesn’t even get to enjoy his victory before Yang pulls the rug out from under him by recapturing Iserlohn. This fight is plenty thrilling in its own right, what with Yang playing 4D chess with two conflicting sets of fake orders to throw the garrison off their game and finally activating that “parting gift” they left in the fortress back when they last abandoned it. I actually completely forgot all about that detail, so seeing Yang pull out that trump card to retake Iserlohn was such a great moment. And then they hijack the fortress’s own superweapon from the inside out to seal the deal. It’s a hell of a victory, but as cool as it is, it can’t help but be tempered by the sight of the countless beaten-down Imperial soldiers abandoning the station once the battle’s over. They’re crushed, exhausted, bloody and bruised, not a faceless evil force but a group of real people who’ve been put through hell for a losing cause. They’re as human as the countless Alliance soldiers who perish in the final conflict, their ships darkening before being blown apart. As Reuenthal puts it, no matter how much honor and prestige you put on a battle, the end result is still countless swords smeared with innocent blood. Whether it’s the death of democracy or the preservation of its heart, not a single battle in this show forgets the impossible human cost of war.

Sieg Kaiser Reinhard

Regardless of the cost, though, this truly is a monumental day. Reinhard has finally achieved domination of the entire galaxy, uniting all of humanity under a single banner. And true to his nature, he’s still an utter G about it. He’s harsh to traitors and cowards, yes, but he doesn’t blame those traitors’ families for their sins like past Kaisers have done. What’s more, he shows mercy to the defeated Alliance soldiers, treating them fairly instead of executing them to make a statement. And he recognizes that the Alliance’s collapse stems not from its inherent lesser-ness, but from the stupidity and cruelty of its leaders, while many of the civil servants who still believe strongly in democracy are worthy of commendation and may have even saved the Alliance if they were in positions of power instead. Time and time again, Reinhard has proven that absolute power need not corrupt absolutely, and even now that literally nothing stands in his way, his moral compass refuses to waver. He even shows signs of tempering his ambition now that he’s reached the peak: ”The galaxy is enough for us.” This man’s had every chance to become a tyrant, but he’s remained just and fair from start to finish, even without Kirchies to set him straight. That’s... really something to be proud of.

Ironically, though, that praiseworthy benevolence is perhaps the biggest threat to democracy’s future success. For the past god-knows-how-long, the Alliance’s citizens have been forced to watch their supposedly “democratic” government abuse and misuse power, tangled in indecision, corruption, and petty authoritarianism. They have seen the evils this system of government is capable of firsthand. And now here comes Reinhard, swooping in almost like a savior to set the country back on track with fair governance and swift action. Suddenly, the citizens are treated fairly again, not despite being governed by a dictator, but because they’re governed by a dictator. Reinhard is the ultimate Great Man, taking every responsibility on his shoulders and handling them all extremely well. And compared to the messy, compromised failure of the Alliance’s democracy, the stability of a single just leader who almost always makes the right call is the single biggest argument in authoritarianism’s favor one could ask for. The Alliance may have only just now collapsed, but it lost the moral high ground long ago, and the ideals it spoke so highly of now seem meaningless in the face of Reinhard’s tangible, actual good governance. Who’s going to listen to anyone praising democracy anymore, after suffering through a democratic disaster for countless years only to be saved by a dictator’s strength? What chance does democracy have to survive this change in perspective? And perhaps most unnervingly of all: should it survive after its faults have been so thoroughly proven?

How Democracy Lives

Okay, that last one’s not really a question worth debating. Of course democracy should survive, for all the reasons we’ve talked about over the course of this show. Dictatorship is still way more prone to abuse, great men like Reinhard won’t always been in power, etc etc. But those kind of lofty philosophical arguments are gonna be much harder to convince people with when the practical reality has so thoroughly dragged democracy’s name through the mud. Even Yang’s forced to consider the fact that if he’d only disobeyed his superiors’ orders at the battle of Vermillion and acted on his own Great Man impulses, he could’ve finished off Reinhard and the Empire right then and there. It was, ironically, being so faithful to the democratic principal of equal cooperation that prevented him from protecting democracy from defeat. It’s hard goddamn work figuring out where to draw the line there. Honestly, I wonder if Yang might be a little too beholden to upholding ideals in the face of reality. He’s absolutely right about the importance of checks and balances in democratic government, especially in regards to the military (”Democracy is the strong enacting laws to restrain themselves “ is such a great line). But no system is perfect, and we have to learn how to make compromises if we want to preserve what really matters. I hope Yang figures out how to walk that line. Otherwise, those 273 years of a broken, hypocritical rebel alliance is going to remain democracy’s shameful face for quite some time to come.

Odds and Ends

-”For once, Poplin actually said something right.” pfft

-”So I told her to go meet him and demand fifteen years of allowance.” See? It’s moments like this that make Poplin so endearing.

-Where did you find a log to swing around

-sdkjfhdskjfh Knappstein you fucking dumbass

-”What does an outsider know?” Ah yes. You did have a friend as an equal, once upon a time.

-Christ. We’ve never seen Yang this distressed. Losing Bewcock really hurt him.

-Cazerne’s wife is great.

-”I believe people are capable of being far more cowardly than they think.” As always, Hilda’s right on the money.

-”Is that how you came onto my mother?” Ow. Schonkopf, you done goofed.

-”It wouldn’t do to put the sins of the father on her.” Man, why is Poplin so cool?

-”You’ve been calling me a middle-aged delinquent. I’m not middle-aged just yet!” dkjhsdkfjh Schonkopf you’re okay with me

-Okay, what the hell’s with this music? We’ve had nothing but classical string orchestra stuff, where’s this Yuki Kajiura-ass track coming from?

-So Fezzan and the church of Terra were politically symbiotic from the beginning. Yikes.

Goddamn, this was a great set of episodes. See you next time!

#anime #the anime binge-watcher #tabw #legend of the galactic heroes #lotgh #logh #ginga eiyuu densetsu

[theliterateape]

Bringing a Smartphone to a Gunfight

By Don Hall

As demonstrated by Dave Chappelle and J.K. Rowling, if you don't give a shit about the Tweetstorms and cultural hit pieces when you dare refute the orthodoxy of the shrieking micro-minority and their performative allies, you are effectively uncancellable.

The difficulty faced by those within that in-group of the Rage Profiteers is if there aren't enough of you to seriously foment change, change ain't happening. If everyone offended by Chappelle's statement that “gender is fact” and his admonition that a transgender woman is not a woman simply cancelled their Netflix subscription en masse, it still wouldn't be enough to move the dial much. That's ultimately why Netflix has deflected the complaints.

As businesses are waking up to the fact that the numbers do not match the noise, the corporate flagellation in the face of moral indignation is diminishing. One can only cry wolf so many times before the game is exposed. Too many cries of outrage and the online campaigns become easily ignored.

A lot of us centrist-types are not, as so many on the lunatic fringe want to charge, against the sorts of changes they so fervently advocate for.

Oxford Languages defines the adjective “liberal” as:

willing to respect or accept behavior or opinions different from one’s own; open to new ideas.

relating to or denoting a political and social philosophy that promotes individual rights, civil liberties, democracy, and free enterprise.

Arguments for reformed policing, protections for transgender individuals, reversing the course of man-made climate change, adjusting the system that allows for such extraordinary income inequality are right there in our wheelhouse. It's the hysteria over things that only matter to the fewest like shrill (and deeply unpopular) calls for white atonement, language changes that eradicate the male/female biology, censorship of art and political speech, and the belief in looting and property destruction as legitimate forms of protest that don't jibe.

This is not good for the things that actually matter. There are far more pernicious people out there who have proven themselves impervious to the relentless propaganda of the Twitter Warriors.

The most prolific of the Twitter Warriors comprise less than 3 percent of the population who, in turn, drive the most noise about issues.

As the Democrats are flailing in approval and the base of voters on the Left become more despondent at the lack of immediate progress under Biden, the so far uncancellable Donald J. Trump and his treasonous bunch of cohorts are preparing for another coup attempt. This time it will likely succeed.

Now, while a second Trump presidency might be a phenomenal boost to the finances of anti-right groups (because the money flows big time when there is a monster in charge), his next time will potentially be the last honest presidential election in our lifetimes. The stakes are pretty high, kids, and your amazing facility with your smartphones is no match.

When the GOP takes the House and Senate in 2022, the dinner table is set. Trump gets in legitimately (as in actually wins the election) and we're all toast. And the loudest micro-minority is only really good at protesting in the streets during a time of pandemic lockdown and taking selfies to prove they were there. Most of the time, they are charging in to cancel professors who show Othello and comedians who once tweeted something vaguely homophobic a decade ago.

There's plenty to say about the other micro-minority of raging dickweeds on the right side of things but you have to hand it to them—while the Woke trashed Portland, their mouthbreathing dopes did a smash-and-grab on the United States Capitol. They brought guns with them, too.

The first big test of whether or not Democrats can show even a modicum of initiative and spine is in the handling of Trump crony Steve Bannon, who could soon be held in contempt of Congress for his refusal to answer a subpoena pertaining to Trump's coup and the January 6 insurrection. In theory, this is a jailable offense and Bannon should be in danger of a dramatic perp walk. Bannon clearly believes Democrats don't have the guts to do it. Democrats, however, are insisting otherwise. 

"He will be prosecuted, that's our expectation," Rep. Adam Schiff of California told MSNBC. "He apparently feels he's above the law. But he's about to find out otherwise."

Big talk, but can they make good on it?

The process of actually doing so — described by CNN as "a series of steps needed to move forward," including holding meetings, writing a report, and referring it to the House for a vote, then referring it to the Justice Department — doesn't inspire confidence. Every step allows the notorious cowards in the party to get cold feet and telling themselves an idiotic story about how inaction somehow plays better with the voters than action. No wonder Bannon is so sure he'll get away with this. 

SOURCE

While our most ardent revolutionaries are busy digitally obsessing over Dave Chappelle and Joe Rogan, a fuckface like Steve Bannon is likely to skate past Congress.

What the Twitter Warriors do not comprehend is that most Americans don't see their outrage over micro-aggressions as righteous but as petulant. Only 22 percent of the 330 million Americans use Twitter; 80 percent of all tweets from American adults come from the top 10 percent. I don't call it a micro-minority out of pique but out of fact. The most prolific of the Twitter Warriors comprise less than 3 percent of the population who, in turn, drive the most noise about issues.

The fragility of that crowd, unable to have deep conversations with the rest of us about the changes they'd like to see, is crippling any persuasive potential. Get off your phones and start listening to those people you've decided you can't abide because they vote. That vote will only matter for a few more years if Trump lives past 2025 because if you think he’s going quietly, you aren’t paying attention.

#Dave Chappelle #JK Rowling #Twitter Rage #liberal definition #Trump 2024

[laufire]

i’ve seen people compare dean to buffy (and dean/sam to buffy/dawn), and i do not have the energy to articulate how deeply fundamentaly WRONG that is. NO. he’s elena. (i do however see agree that there are dean/angel parallels.)

Oof.

I could imagine there were such comparisons, but I’m very, very glad I’ve never had encountered them personally xD.

There’s a lot to unpack alone in the Dean-Buffy comparisons that I’d feel more comfortable doing when I’ve watched more of Dean’s journey, but it goes without saying I agree with you: Buffy and Dean aren’t similar people, at all. The comparison bugs me, ngl, but, and this goes beyond parallels. I’m going to take comfort in the fact that Buffy would be disgusted by Dean xDD (and god, can you imagine how shitty Dean would be to her. Putting aside what a misogynistic creep he can be -I’m not forgetting that scene with Jess any time soon-, I can just picture the kind of shit Dean “rape joke” Winchester would say to her about her relationships with Angel or Spike and it sickens me). Not that I actually think Dean and Elena would get along either, similarities or not xDD

But boy, the Buffy-Dawn vs. Dean-Sam comparison. That one is a kick to the stomach. Even worse than the one with Wynonna and Waverly -Wynonna Earp takes clear inspiration from SPN, but it really only works on the surface level; so, if that’s how you watch the show, I could potentially understand those comparisons, fine. But Buffy and Dawn?? Are you kidding me???

Buffy cherishes Dawn, she encourages her growth and her relationships and bonds with others. She doesn’t restore to violence when Dawn says something that makes her angry. She apologizes to her and strives to make amends and acknowledges when she’s wrong. She’s forgiving and understanding and compasionate of Dawn’s mistakes. When she finds out Dawn is not human (that she’s not even her sister at all), she embraces it and never shames her for it.

If you think any of the above applies to Dean, you have completely bought into his POV, disregarded Sam’s, and have a blind spot in the narrative the size of every state they’ve been in s1 alone combined.

Now, Elena sending Damon to erase Jeremy’s memories when he becomes to difficult to control? That sounds right up Dean’s alley and, according to s9 (I think? The one where he tricks Sam into getting possessed by an angel without his knowledge. Good times I’m sure) wikia summaries, maybe even a little tame for him xD. Jeremy had to lie to Elena about what he was planning to leave town and her clutches, and that was by the time Elena’s influence was minimal. At least he seems to have a life separated from her doing what he wants.

Also, I’m never, ever going to forget something Dean said to Sam back in s4 that froze me where I stood: that threatening “If I didn’t know you, I would want to hunt you”. Try to put that phrase in Buffy’s mouth, *especially* in relation to Dawn, and tell me how that sounds.

I do concede there are similarities between Dean and Angel lmfao. For one, Doylist-wise I see them fitting into the same pattern: SPN seems to have started with the idea of being about BOTH brothers, but Dean’s POV (partially for his character type, partially for Ackles presence and charisma) dominates and redirects the plot from practically the first second. Angel wasn’t initially supposed to have as much weight on BTVS, but try to stop Boreanaz xD (he has the IT factor. How I wish he was cast as Bruce Wayne in a show lmao). His scenes on the pilot awakened memories of both Angel and Chuck Bass lmfao, in terms of how disruptive and all-encompasing his presence was.

I can see some similarities beyond that, too. I’ll never deny that Angel could be a terrifying mean cold mofo, soul or no soul. Hell, some of my favourite moments in the Buffyverse are whenever Angel acts like a cold mofo (Forgiving, anybody???). And I could see very unflattering yet not entirely unfair comparisons been made, although I’d probably have a good argument for those! Like with Buffy, I see key differences that to *me* matter in terms of how I react to each character, although I’d probably could say a lot more after I finish SPN.

For now, I’ll say that one of them is that Angel has proven himself capable of relinquishing control and make amends (see s2 of ATS), something that at this point I doubt Dean has in him in any meaningful way. And also... this is more abstract but Dean is so full of this self-righteous, poisonous hate in him for anything other. It’s one of the things I find so utterly frightening about him. And I don’t see that in Angel, at all. Because Angel is the other and he never, ever forgets that (in that one way, actually, Sam is closer to him. Dean could’ve never done what Angel did with Faith, or with Darla in s2. Sam could, and has done close enough things for comparison).

I must also say that a good romance softens audience reaction to a cold mofo like nothing else lmfao, so Bangel definitely affects how I see Angel. It’s not exactly a mystery why his episode with Cassie is by far the most likeable I’ve found Dean lol (likeable as in likeable, as opposed “fascinating terrifying character” the way I’ve done in other episodes lol). Still count myself lucky she never made a reappearance, with this show’s track record xD

But anyway. Dean is his own thing. And one of the many things he can be is a meaner, scarier version of Elena Gilbert lmao -because he doesn’t have the constraints she has and can be terrifying in areas Elena couldn’t. I get the impression I’m going to have a reversed reaction to their arcs, however. In TVD, I started out loathing Elena (on Caroline’s, and later Bonnie’s, behalf. Even Jeremy’s, to a lesser extent) and only could properly appreciate what an interesting character she was after I’d let go~~ of my hate lol (in her case, because she was no longer as serious a threat to those characters I cared about).

With Dean, as of now I don’t hate him. I mean, I think he’s scary and hateful as a person, but I don’t feel the way I did for Caroline or even Bonnie about anyone around him getting hurt, by him and their vulnerability to him; for now, my interest on him as a character construct trumps that -we’ll talk again when I properly see his dynamic with Castiel lol. Even if it turns out there’s no reason to feel as protective there as with the characters in TVD, the spoilers I’ve read (and contrasted with the wikia, I always do that) about how I know he treated Jack are going to be enough to make me wish the worst for him. His treatment of full grown adults he has complicated relationships with can fit within my “fascinating and terrifying protagonist” description. Driving a kid that, looks or not, has the life experience of a toddler to a suicide attempt to them tell him “no, I’m gonna be the one who kills you” is only going to make me feel nausea, because it already does. At this point, the knowledge that Jack has the power to resurrect him but doesn’t care to only fills me with satisfaction xD

#replies #talking to the void #my thoughts #spn thoughts #supernatural #buffyverse #buffy the vampire slayer #angel the series #buffy summers #angel #dawn summers #as always with this kind of ambivalent negativity i'm unsure of how to tag things lmao #dean winchester #antideanwinchester for ts #sam winchester #abuse mention cw #bitter lau tag #that's my general negativity tag fyi #Anonymous #buffyverse thoughts