#our rights are eroding everywhere but what is important here is that americans get to play a misogynistic stereotype of white women

[hadesoftheladies]

actually american liberals can fuck all the way off with their "slur reclamation" bs. go to hell all of you.

#slurs will never be empowering #but to white people every slur is a new opportunity to be as quirky and annoying as possible #no i am not comfortable with a man calling me a bitch because he's gay stfu #no one can redeem a slur still in usage by the oppressors that created it #stop saying tr*nny #straight women stop saying d*ke #stop saying q*eer #no structural change but we're all supposed to pretend we're liberated #normie homophobes stop saying f*ggot #i am so tired of these disgusting words polluting every facet of lgb and leftist spaces #liberals #leftism #our rights are eroding everywhere but what is important here is that americans get to play a misogynistic stereotype of white women #from LA #“serving cunt” GROW A BRAINCELL LIKE JUST GROW ONE SINGLE BRAINCELL

[kendrixtermina]

Palestine and the Crisis of Democracy

While right now the main attention should rightfully be on the immediate victims of this ongoing catastrophe, this incident has also exposed how much the power of lobbying groups & corporate interests has eroded western democracies.

At this point they’re not meaningfully different from China or Russia aside from being wealthier. What have China or Russia done that the USA isn’t allowing its client state to do right now?

We’re supposed to have free speech? Where is our free speech now, if being anti war can cost you your job & the media is owned by the corporations.

At this point ppl in the global south are 100% justified to distrust the western bloc as much as we distrust China or Russia.

We’re approaching a 1984-ish situation of 3 identical superpowers ravaging contested territories in endless proxy wars.

That said, it’s tempting to go ranting about „the evil west“ or „the whites“ or curse all israelis – and don’t get me wrong, the west as an institution has proven its moral bankrupcy and IDF as an organization with a culture of fomenting this needs to be dismantled & abolished even more badly then ICE or the USA police.

But when you look at the people on the ground, not politicians or media, but at the individual human people, that’s not really the case: We’re seeing record protest turnouts everywhere.

Politicians are being swarmed with protest mails. (I just sent some myself)

Even in the USA, two thirds of the population want a ceasefire. Heck, even in israel, 62% want a ceasefire.

And there’s no telling how much of the rest genuinely want this vs. Being misled or confused by propaganda. Don’t get me wrong: Those people making mocking tiktoks are evil and I’d love to see them roasted on a skewer, but they are NOT the majority and acting like they are is bad tactics.

So what does this mismatch tell us?

We don’t have functioning democracies right now.

Maybe some South Americans do, maybe Belgium and Spain and Ireland, but the rest of us?

Not so much.

We gotta fix that, not just for our sake, but for what it does to the rest of the world.

Whoever’s in charge isn’t us, and its a dreadful mixture of incompetence and evil.

It’s not that all people, not even all western people, are terrible and evil. It’s that right now, in both the USA and even Germany with it’s 6 mainstream parties, there’s no viable candidate you can vote for that will not support this madness.

Nobody really benefits from this, or wants this, but a small coalition of fascists, the military industrial complex, a few crooked politicians, and a bunch of opportunistic hatecrimers of antisemitic, islamophobic and/or arabophobic persuasions.

This is what happens when problems that are pointed out time & time again don’t get fixed: Like the longstanding human rights abuses in Israel (that were known aout for SO LONG!), the existence of veto powers deadlocking the UN, legalized bribery & first-past-the-post system in the USA, USA hegemonic control of europe…

It was a perfect storm of every long-standing flaw in the system coming together to create a perfect storm of horror.

- but the first ones to sin are usually the last ones to bleed and the ones who pay the bulk of the price are, as ever so often, those who were already the most oppressed.

So what do we do?

Vote small party, maybe, for europeans. Vote in primaries to get the bought-out mainstream candidates out, if youre in the US.

Protest, complaining and combatting misinformation is gonna be an important tool while our democracies are compromised, we can’t rely on voting alone.

If us talking didn’t help they wouldn’t try to shut us up.

Messaging wise, on this issue, we might stress being anti-war. They’re trying a different smear because mocking anti-war ppl as bleeding-heart hippys doesn’t work anymore.

They can’t say being anti-war is antisemitic.

It’s important, of course, that (unlike the hippys) we don’t slip into wishy-washyness here or peace at any price that just basically the oppressed shutting up. Just peace or no peace. Lasting Peace of no Peace.

But peace has an appeal to most people, even those inclined to be wishy-washy or apolitical.

I think selling them on Lasting Peace and Just Peace might work better than shaming them for not being hardliner enough.

It’s super cynical and fucked up that we’re even having to THINK about „marketing“ when people are dying, but we need to convince people, especially since the usefulness of our votes is currently compromised.

Even a king must yield if there’s a mob with pitchforks outside the door.

#political thinkpiece #palestine #gaza #fascism #israel #USA #European Union #democracy #feelings #politics #current events #anti war

[bigskydreaming]

Dropping off another commission which means okay NOW I only have one to finish. This one is a throwback to that time I was talking Marvel/DC crossover ships, and I said okay but what about Dick/Wanda because yeah, like two of the only Rom heroes in anywhere being a thing would be pretty cool, but also like.

Batfam + Magnetfam holiday dinner gatherings.

Someone agreed, and asked for more along those lines and asked that I not worry about the crack potential but feel free to embrace it instead, citing that Batboys adopted by Zatanna AU I wrote as a tone they’d enjoyed. Their only other requests were they wanted to see if I could include Luna and Crystal in any ways, and that I give Stephanie some time in the spotlight. I warned them that my usual take on Stephanie is ADHD as hell, but that apparently was not a problem, so uh...hang on when it gets to Steph or be prepared for her to leave you in the dust. She doesn’t slow down for stragglers.

There were a ton of characters to juggle in this so not everyone gets the same degree of focus, but I did my best to work everyone relevant to the scenario in as best I could. Also, I don’t actually know where a couple of these particular takes came from - I’ve never ever written Lorna anything remotely like this in my life, but I kinda just let the crack do what it wanted to do. *Shrugs* I have no defense, only oops.

Anyway, without further ado, I give you 15K, yes you heard that right, 15K of crossover crack that puts the Batfamily and the Magnetfamily at the same dinner table, lights the match and then runs for cover.

************************

We enter unobtrusively through the dining room’s lone doorway. Our awkward approach is that of the mockumentary style; our hushed atmosphere is that of taking ourselves very seriously, because if we don’t, who will? 

Said dining room’s doorway is perfectly situated so as to allow only one point of entrance and exit. Also: maximum drama while doing so. The architecture of Wayne Manor was designed with a clear set of priorities in mind. We invite you to picture the airs of Downtown Abbey, but  as if skewing less towards the egalitarian passive aggressive stylings associated with British High Drama, and more towards the rather more direct passive aggressive stylings of American High Drama. 

As an example...where a British soap opera might depict someone dramatically gasping “Why, I never!” and clutching symbolically at their heart in order to convey they’re mere insults away from having a myocardial infarction, an American soap opera might instead depict someone dramatically yelling “Bleep you!” and then vaulting across the table to punch someone in the face in order to convey they’re really quite angry and the only way to fully express that is by starting a feud that will last 72 episodes and only end when one of them is murdered and replaced by their evil twin.

That sort of thing. 

We return to unobtrusively entering through the doorway whose very singular purpose in the narrative is as a conveyance that this is the House That Drama Built. 

It should be added as an afterthought that only just occurred to us but is no less important because of its poor punctuality: the House That Drama Built also exists as a kind of metaphysical Drama vampire that cultivates an atmosphere of Drama whilst simultaneously feasting on the Drama it creates just to harvest as its crop of choice.

Quite nasty and shiver-inducing, to be sure, but let it serve as a good rule of thumb: Don’t trust centuries old rich people houses. There’s always something messed up about those places. Seriously. You know its true.

Proceeding onward, and despite having explicitly mapped out why its impossible to do so, we nevertheless manage to sidle into prime vantage points without being noticed. Look, we can do stuff like that because we’re magic, okay? Also fictional, and really just a tonal framing device introduced as a thin coat of varnish overlaying everything with the glistening sheen of crack fiction. Now shush and pretend we’re not here, which should be easy because we’re not.

The two family patriarchs, Erik Lehnsherr and Bruce Wayne, each sit at opposing heads of the excessively long dining room table that is almost certainly an indication one of Bruce’s direct ancestors felt a clear and urgent need to overcompensate for something.

Locked in an epic battle of wills that looks remarkably similar to the staring contest perfected by kindergartners everywhere, though that’s undoubtedly just a coincidence,the two titans of temperament face off in a face-off for the ages. 

Both steel-faced and with backs so straight the sight would make any right angle weak in the knees, these bastions of brooding are equally infamous for their rigidity and refusal to bend, even when they probably should - because sometimes its a battle over the fate of the world and a fight for the very heart and soul of humanity, yes, absolutely true, but other times their children just asked if they could have pizza tonight instead of meatloaf and it really didn’t need to escalate that quickly, but oh well.

Heedless of the judgment of fictional narrators as well as every person to ever suggest to them that their sphincters might actually benefit from the occasional attempt to unclench, the Master of Magnetism is an irresistible force while channeling the unleashed totality of his willpower through his steady gaze, as fixed and unwavering as the North Star itself. At the same time, his counterpart is an equally immovable object while planted firm and steady in his convictions, the imposing edifice of his impassive expression not likely to be eroded by the mere disdain of another mortal. Not when the Man of Bats has stubbornly stared down gods. 

Admittedly, the last one used the opportunity to blast him through time and space instead, but that’s the kind of risk one takes when matching an ageless deity ego for ego. It should not be viewed as an indication as to whom among these two mighty mortals might appear the victor when engaged in similar combat. Especially as neither is in possession of magic eye beams which technically should count as cheating, if you really think about it.

They match each other fractional eye squint for fractional eye squint. Both lost in the intensity of each other’s gaze in a way that regardless of tropes is less enemies to lovers and more enemies to psych, we’re still enemies and if our kids do tie the knot, I’m totally going to insist on hosting the wedding at my big-ass mansion and you can call that a power move if you want because it totally is, what about it?

In response to the challenge that’s conveyed with crystal clarity thanks to the power of crack, Erik’s own gaze narrows fractionally further as he reaches down with his mutant abilities until they chance upon a vein of iron miles deep. He then proceeds to push and pull on it in such a way as to make the earth shift beneath their feet.

He is not subtle about being the cause. That sort of thing isn’t really in his wheelhouse.

However, in the name of defending Erik from his children’s exasperated glares, it should be pointed out here that Bruce did in fact ask, what about it, and Erik did in his own fashion simply indicate what about it indeed.

Well. Sorta.

The initial clash of wills meeting wills subsides and assures both men that their opponent will be no easy pushover. With that, the concrete aspiring contenders retreat once more to their far sides. They proceed to keep eyes locked and faces solemn and still, neither taking their gaze off the other even while eating or responding to some conversation piece directed at them by another denizen of the dining room.

“This is quite the meal, Mr. Pennyworth. You are to be commended,” Erik says sincerely. His face is still as smooth as Lake Placid, with nary a Syfy Original killer crocodile lurking dangerously beneath the surface.

“Yes, truly some of your best work, Alfred, thank you,” Bruce adds completely deadpan, not to be outdone.

Eternally placing his professionalism above all else, Alfred waits until he’s out of the room and halfway to the kitchen before venting an exasperated exhalation of his own.

Of course, Wayne Manor does have excellent acoustics.

Elsewhere along the table’s lengths, Pietro and Damian also keep their stares deadlocked from across each other, never deviating throughout the entirety of their meal. Their detente, however, is more accurately termed an ‘arrogance-off,’ with each refusing to give way before a lesser opponent. If Pietro is remotely bothered that he’s deeply invested in establishing his superiority over a twelve year old, it doesn’t show.

Look, if he starts making allowances for age, where would it end? With him letting toddlers walk all over him simply because they managed not to blink first? Don’t be absurd.

On the other side of Pietro, Jason is gleefully lobbing conversational grenades down the length of the table. Seizing advantage of even the slightest lull, he packs every sparse moment of silence full of yet another philosophical hot take he’s strategically brainstormed to cause maximum conscience carnage. 

Each carelessly uttered but carefully aimed moral dilemma-turned-mortar fire is tactically engineered towards setting each and every highly opinionated diner to warring over the higher ground. There are always holdouts of course, those who instead hunker deeper down in their trenches in an attempt to wait out the bombardment without engaging. Persistence has never been something Jay lacks, however, so even the few duds that fail to properly detonate only end up followed by a rapid-fire encore the first chance he has to reload.

Meanwhile, Lorna downs a glass of wine like its a shot of tequila and she’s a veteran of the collegiate drinking experience. Then again, she actually is, even if most tend to forget that. It doesn’t quite lend the same weight to her resume as actual freaking superhero, you’re welcome for the planet’s continued state of existence does, so she doesn’t tend to lead with it. 

But that doesn’t mean that even this dubiously termed ‘skill’ lacks a time to shine. One does what one has to in order to make it through family gatherings when the family in question is hers, the mistress of magnetism maintains. Be sure to note both lower case m’s in the script of her full title, because sharing a powerset with her father doesn’t mean she actually has to indulge in silly shows of power with the sole purpose of establishing one’s right to self-brand with fully capitalized letters. 

She finds such things exhaustively tedious, as dull as they are droll, and as much as she loves her father, she could really stand to see him embarrass himself less in public, with his ridiculous insistence on those farces.

In his defense, the enemies that flee in terror upon such displays, wetting themselves all the while...well, clearly they’re suitably impressed. But that doesn’t mean Lorna can’t still be embarrassed for him. Honestly, would it really kill him to act his actual age of....

Oh hell. She’s not nearly drunk enough yet to try and make sense of her father’s age. 

Full disclosure, and also full awareness that her brother will never fail to bring up her own recorded instances of ridiculous grandstanding whenever its remotely relevant, and most other opportunities as well - yes, those happened, yes, she agrees they were ridiculous and necessary, but she also requests it be on the record that in all such instances she was either very young, very possessed, or very both.

Probably.

Look, the possessed thing happens often enough its not like even she can keep track of it. If she wants to squeeze a few perks out of that particular trend towards things that are obnoxious and unnecessary for five hundred, Alex, she’s damn well entitled.

And why, in the name of all the gods she hasn’t been teammates with and seen drunkenly stumbling around in their underwear at some point, is she picturing her ex Alex’s face when whimsically thinking of the Jeopardy host? Better question, why is she still not drunk enough to not give a shit if she does?

Ugh, if this leads to her having to admit Betsy was right and she’s begun indulging in her family’s tendency towards being excessive about anything and everything that keeps their minds off boringly pedestrian events like a break-up, well. That would really suck. 

Mostly because Betsy is unbearable when she’s right about anything.

Driven to extreme measures by the fact that her thoughts are being rude and contentious and mean to her, Lorna trades introspection for the potential hazards of engaging directly with her dinner companions. Risky as that may be. They could be more unbearable than Betsy, for all she knows. And bad things tend to happen when she gives strangers the benefit of the doubt. She usually ends up disappointed, or bored.

Also, possessed.

Girding herself with jaded detachment, Lorna resigns herself to the mortifying ordeal of having to know other people - people who when taking into account her sister’s track record with such matters, could easily turn out to be serial killers or even worse, annoying robots. 

Shuddering at the memory of the Pencil Sharpener That Walks Like A Man, she surveys the chaos she’d mistaken for white noise when still busy being her own entertainment. Its slightly livelier than she’d assumed it would be.

Lorna’s never lacked her father’s eye for tactical analysis and strategic scheming, to be clear. Its more that she’s absent his desire to see her molded into any kind of mini-me that could potentially carry on where he leaves off when he dies, as if no interruption has taken place.

But never mind her issues with her father, that she steadfastly refuses to refer to as Daddy issues. Coolly assessing the commotion around her, she decides the only role worth adopting here is that of the official fanner of flames. The only side worth taking is of course the only side ever worth taking: hers, obviously.

She wades in without any warning beyond a green-lipped smile that toes the line between bearing just enough menace to act as a threat, but never so much as to warn people to take sufficient precautions when facing her.

It’s been said that the difference between her and her father is that Magneto causes natural disasters.

Lorna is one.

Wasting no time before establishing herself as an enemy to all and a friend to none, as if she needs any, she sets up shop as a random sequencer with no allegiance or agenda other than making everyone regret insisting on her attendance. 

She deftly diverts Jason’s verbal volleys off their intended course with dry, sardonic wit and she wields sly insinuations like a racket with which she redirects grenades of great ethical weight at whomever strikes her fancy. She is whimsy: watch her do whatever the hell she wants. Object, and catch hellfire.

Rather than take offense at her interference, Jason tips his head to her in appreciation of her craft. Like calls to like, after all. Lorna decides in a burst of decisiveness that she likes this one, at least. 

She tilts her glass to him with a smirk and refills, topping off Kate Kane’s glass as well when the older woman holds hers out with a look that leapfrogs right over seduction and practically all the way to the morning after. She decides then and there that she likes this one as well. Two for two, look at that. And people say she’s anti-social. Distinctly recalling she’d taken a second look at Kate’s legs before sitting down, and adding in those eyelashes....

Well. Lorna’s never seriously considered taking another woman up on one of these looks before, but it wouldn’t wholly be accurate to claim she’s never thought of sending one to say...Ororo or Betsy a time or two herself. 

Or even a little accurate, actually, but that is neither here nor there.

Lorna thinks, though, that if she were to take up this particular woman up on this particular offer on this particular night - there might at some point be explosions. 

This is not a dealbreaker.

Look, she didn’t get her degree in geology because she held any particular interest in literally dull as dirt sandstone. Pyroclastic igneous rock formations, on the other hand...now that’s a different matter entirely. Fire pretty. Batwoman pretty. 

Okay, she might be a little tipsy at this point. She looks at her wine glass accusingly; she shouldn’t have to find these things out on her own. It neither confirms nor denies. 

Bitch.

Still further down the table, Dick's usual charming composure has been knocked out and left tied up in a coat closet somewhere. With the anthropomorphic embodiment of the emotion Frazzled then stepping in to take his place, and not at all very obviously acting out of sorts, if the amused but completely unhelpful smirks of his siblings are anything to go by. 

The Dick-shaped entity seated in his place makes occasional token attempts to direct the flow of conversation like the maestro he’s usually known to be in such settings. In this particular setting and time, however, he mostly just manages to exist as a sentient display of the condition or state of being I Have Regrets. 

His attention flits from one person to the next as he periodically tries to distract everybody from plotting the murders of everyone else at the table. Or covering up the murder of someone else, as committed by one of their family members. Or from plotting to frame someone else at the table for murder. Or from broadcasting that they’d absolutely get to the bottom of any frame job and prove their relative’s innocence and see the real culprit behind bars. 

Also, he may or may not have to every so often stop and distract himself from plotting murders of his own.

Dick lands briefly on Jason every now and again with an “I know what you’re doing and would greatly appreciate it if you’d stop” glare. 

Its met each time by his little brother’s “I have no idea what you’re talking about, this is just how I partake in family gatherings, isn’t that what you want or should I just go home” mask of blatantly transparent faux-innocence. 

Jay’s expressions are practically close captioned, that’s how far he is from even attempting to bother with the whole thing.

Dick returns fire with a narrowing of the eyebrows that screams: “I’ll get you for this, and your little dog too.” 

Jason’s lip only upticks at one corner, his otherwise studied indifference sending back his crystal clear response: “Bitch, I died. What’re you gonna to do, threaten to go a week without trying to ambush me with hugs?” 

Dick’s jaw shifts like a tectonic plate movement, teeth grinding as he holds the glare. “You’re the worst.” 

Jason beams and tilts his head, eyes drifting upwards in silent contemplation, as if to say, “Well, we all aspire to great heights in our own unique ways.” 

“Allow me to congratulate you on your successful achievements then.” Dick’s now puckered expression fires barbs from a blowgun.

“If you really cared, you’d show me with a trophy. What’s a guy gotta do to get his brother to try and buy his love and affection,” said little brother lofts at him by way of an obnoxiously exaggerated batting of his eyelashes.

Next to Dick, Wanda has her elbow on the table, propping up her head in one hand as she lazily pokes at her food with her fork. She’s not even trying to hide how much she regrets every decision that led to this. She likes Dick, quite a lot, but clearly, neither of their families are fit for conjoined festivities. Lesson learned. 

Duke is shoving dinner roll after dinner roll into his mouth, as if afraid to risk missing out on anything by attempting more focus-intensive food handling than that. His eyes are feverishly bright as they dart from one length of the table to the other and back again. This is the best day ever. 

Tim and Cass are seated side by side and occasionally dip their heads together in hushed conversation. At other times they flick their fingers at each other in sign language just below the surface of the table. 

Periodically, Tim will then wade into one conversation or another, never staying focused for long on any one single conversation partner before moving on. 

If one were to view this whole....event...as an exercise in conversational warfare, one might be tempted to view Tim’s patterns of discussion as somewhat akin to guerilla warfare. Brief engagements not aimed at achieving any kind of victory so much as feeling out the oppositions’ defenses and tactics before withdrawing to form more firmed out plans based off the gathered intel. 

Dick closes his eyes and sighs as he sees Tim and Cass dip their heads together again. Right after Cass’ eagle-eyed gaze spent a few moments lingering on the wake of Tim’s latest ‘tactical retreat,’ which was plenty of time for their sister to soak in a fair amount of everyone's reactions and responses.

Dick coughs into his hand. When Tim looks his way and meets Dick’s stern gaze with an inquiring eyebrow, Dick reaches a hand to the side of his head as if to smooth back a lock of hair. Instead he then signs with grimly dancing fingers, “Please tell me you and Cass aren’t using a holiday dinner together as a chance to develop contingency plans for taking down members of my girlfriend’s family.”

Tim cocks his head slightly and frowns. The only indication that his fingers are once again busy at work beneath the table is the slight ripple of movement along his upper arms. A few moments later, Dick’s phone vibrates with a notification. He slides it into his lap and reads Tim’s text.

“I’m sorry, I have no idea what you just said. I don’t speak ASL.”

Dick tilts his own head and fires an unimpressed look across the table. “Seriously?”

Cassandra pokes Tim in the side, sending him an inquiring look of her own. No doubt curious what he’d texted Dick to elicit such a response. Tim grins and answers her in swift, practiced gestures the little twerp makes no attempt to hide this time. Blatant ASL, just one of the several different sign languages they were all fluent in. Cass raises a hand to her face and hides her giggle behind the back of it, just as Tim finishes. Dick darts his sour face at her, texting her phone in turn.

“Et tu, Cass?”

She glances down at her own phone and then just shrugs at him, utterly unrepentant. Dick pinches the bridge of his nose. Okay then.

Pietro’s daughter Luna had long since retreated to one of the Wayne family dens to watch movies, citing a headache. No one doubted that the precocious young empath was just entirely uninterested in being in the vicinity of all their entangled and extremely loud emotions. 

Her father had briefly attempted to impress upon her the importance of being present with the rest of them for at least some of the dinner. His daughter had simply met his token effort at imparting politeness protocols with a pointed look first at him and then at Damian, who was at most two years older than her. 

Pietro had grimaced. In an ideal world, caving to her demands would not be easier than him just conducting himself like a mature adult for the duration of a single dinner gathering. But then, none of them came from an ideal world, and he suffered no illusions about being an ideal parent. And more importantly, in the grand scheme of things it was hardly like this was one of the really important battles, the ones that needed to be picked carefully. 

That was his excuse and he was sticking to it. And thus Luna had been excused to entertain herself with the Waynes’ vast video library.

Wanda’s twin sons thus far seem content to keep themselves busy with their own back-and-forth in the private ‘twin language’ they’d crafted over the years - more due to cheating than the existence of some preternatural twin understanding of each other. Neither boy pretends to have a clue how the other’s mind works. 

Essentially, Tommy just talks to his brother at full superspeed, while Billy has a spell in place that allows him to keep up and understand his twin no matter what speed his ramblings take. No one seems entirely sure what mechanism they have for Billy to speak back to Tommy in a way no one else ever picks up on, or even if such a mechanism exists at all. It's entirely possible that due to the nature of their dynamic, they’d never found creating one to be at all necessary. 

That isn’t to suggest that Billy is a follower in temperament or by nature. Its more just that when dealing with Tommy, one either follows (or tries to play catch up slash does damage control) or else one waits until Tommy races off to do what he wants, for however long it takes for him to eventually figure out that nobody has followed or is even going to. Then finally racing back and submitting to following someone else’s lead, sulking all the while about how nobody ever listens to him about anything. 

Basically, letting Tommy take the lead in the more low-stakes engagements is just being efficient, in Billy’s opinion. The alternative takes way too long and his twin is a pain to deal with when in a heightened state of Sulk.

However, as to just how low-stakes or not this dinner actually is, well, that seems to be a matter of some debate between the twins, and not something Billy himself has even settled his opinion on. 

Frequent high-pitched squeaks occasionally sound out from their corner of the table, most too quick to even register for anyone other than their uncle Pietro, who currently is still preoccupied with his extended staring contest against his diminutive rival in all things pertaining to ego and attempted sovereignty

If anyone else were even to register their existence or frequency, the combination of squeaks and Tommy’s repeated glares at his brother might lead to the conclusion that Billy is repeatedly poking or jabbing his twin in order to rein Tommy in from leaping into some fray or another and escalating the already existing tension to biblical proportions. As is his wont. 

And Billy, at least, is enjoying his meal.

Well, he’s trying to, anyway.

But the closer he gets to completely clearing his plate, the more frequent Billy’s longing glances in the direction Luna had vanished become. Clearly, the teen is debating the merits of faking some ailment of his own and following his cousin’s example all the way to blessed, blessed relief from the chore of being the only one capable of saying “Tommy no” and actually producing an end result that isn’t just an accelerated timetable.

It’s not hard to tell when Billy’s inner war of his self-preserving tendencies vs his self-sacrificing tendencies is ultimately decided with a final score of Sanity: 1, Pointless and Unappreciated Gestures of Nobility: 0.

The seventeen year old sighs loudly and slumps back against his chair, his entire demeanor broadcasting an aura of “I give up” on so many clear wavelengths, it interrupts every skirmish currently in progress and results in every adult at the table sending concerned looks towards the twins’ corner of it. 

Billy’s crossed arms and the empty space his gaze is determinedly fixed on combine to clearly convey he has nothing to do with whatever has happened or is about to happen. 

Leading to every scrap of attention thus trekking further down the table to his twin, where Tommy is beaming with the brightness of a thousand supergiant stars about to go supernova and make a mess that will span galaxies and last for ten thousand years. 

His Aunt Lorna’s own penchant for pretty explosions and fireworks has nothing on his, other than seniority.

Tommy’s own family knows that gleam in his eyes well enough to be aware their own immediate reactions should be duck and cover. Unfortunately, the Waynes’ dining room affords few actual defensive positions, all of which are already occupied by members of the Family Batshit. Resigning themselves to the inevitable, the Family Maximumoff Damage brace for impact.

Not being familiar with the gleam in Tommy’s eyes themselves, but more than observant (and paranoid) enough to recognize the braced positions of the other family and adapt accordingly, the members of the Family Batshit are all quick to follow suit.

Wanda meanwhile takes the scant seconds before collision to close her eyes and try to recall why she ever wanted children so desperately she literally wished them into existence.

She’s got nothing. 

Dick uses the same time to gulp and take a deep breath, frantically trying to fortify himself with everything he knows of Wanda’s more....mayhem-inclined child. Hopefully he can use that intel to prepare contingencies for whatever fallout may follow in the next few seconds.

Ever the optimist, that one.

Into a silence stretching longer than a speedster in the spotlight has ever before allowed silence to linger - with Tommy clearly savoring the focused attention and abundant awareness of his Impact™ and reputation - the silver-haired teen grins with teeth bright enough to ignite the ensuing firestorm all on their own. The fateful words he finally utters almost seem overkill. At least until he finishes saying them and everything else ceases to matter, because boom.

Ignition.

“Hey Dick, if you end up marrying our mom, does that mean we can call you Dad?”

The silence that follows that particular detonation is akin to the death-knell of the dinosaurs, in the moments immediately after a giant asteroid wiped out 80% of life on the planet.

Then: anarchy.

“How dare you!” Damian launches himself out of his seat with what would normally be described as a hiss, were it not uttered at a decibel closer to being an actual sonic boom.

Jason looks like he can’t decide if he wants to fall to the ground laughing or fall to the ground tucking and rolling. To avoid having to make a decision, he grabs his until now untouched wine and guzzles it like a man who just found the only oasis in a hundred mile wide desert.

Lorna uncorks another bottle of wine and raises the whole thing like she’s toasting existence itself, on her way out the mortal coil’s exit-marked door. Kate thrusts her glass in front of Lorna for another refill. 

“I know many lesbians can and do have kids in any number of ways, but do you think its okay if I cite this as proof we’re the highest evolved life form and if I was meant to have kids of my own, God wouldn’t have given me such an obvious hint as to the opposite?” 

Kate absently muses to Lorna under her breath and out of the corner of her mouth, both of them still fixed on viewing the various diners turned statue-still by the Medusa like turn of the table’s conversations. 

“It feels like that’s one of those things people tell me I should keep in my head and just gets me in trouble when I decide to share it instead, but honestly, I can never tell.”

“You’re asking the wrong person,” Lorna whispers back. “I get possessed by this one psychic ghost enough that one of the few perks is I don’t have to worry about ticking people off anymore. Nowadays if I piss someone off, all I have to do is wait a couple of days and then say I was possessed again at the time. Then I just ask why the hell did nobody notice and dramatically make a lot of noise about that until everybody forgets what the hell they were even ticked at me for in the first place.”

“Ugh. Lucky bitch.” 

Lorna shrugs with the faintest of smirks. “It’s all about just working with what you’ve got.”

Elsewhere at the table, Duke is frozen with his mouth still stuffed so full his cheeks are puffed out like a cartoon chipmunk’s. The only movements coming from his direction at all are the twin orbs that are his eyes, currently imitating tennis balls being rocketed back and forth across the court by pro players who never miss a swing.

Tim and Cass are clutching each others’ forearms, the closest either has come to displaying a panic reaction in literal years. In Cassandra’s case, more like in her entire lifetime.

But the title of ultimate attention draw is for the moment a dubious honor bestowed upon the Wayne patriarch himself. 

Bruce leaps from his seat like an Olympic sprinter off the starting block, managing to catch up to his youngest before Damian plus Damian’s butter knife make it more than a foot towards Tommy. He snatches the twelve year old up by his waist, smoothly disarming his son and spinning around to plant himself between the boy and his target with the practiced and precise moves of the bedlam ballerina that he is.

“Umm,” Dick utters at last. His eyes fly wildly around the room as if seeking permission to land. They settle on making repeated loops of a race track that runs from Tommy’s smile of success to Damian’s enraged expression, and then to his own father’s attempt at a poker face: normally flawless, but now only warranting such acclaim if Bruce’s intention actually was to mimick the poker face of someone steadily ingesting lemons and nothing else throughout the course of a game. 

Its not Dick’s finest work, obviously, but to be fair he’s also quite busy,trying to will himself through the floor. Possibly the Earth’s core while he’s at it. Results are still pending.

Meanwhile, unnoticed by the inhabitants of the dining room, Pietro’s ex Crystal has arrived as previously agreed, so she can pick up Luna and their daughter can spend the back half of the holiday with her mother and the latter’s teammates. 

They were on their way to the dining room so Luna could say her goodbyes to her father, aunts, cousins and grandfather, when the current chaos had erupted.

Her own heroic impulses instinctively compelling her to charge in and attempt to help, Crystal’s tugged back by her daughter’s hand in hers. Knowing full well that Luna’s empathy-fueled instincts are superior to just about anyone else’s, Crystal halts and takes in the scene before them again, still with caution but with slightly less urgency.

“I suppose you have some idea what’s going on in there?”

Luna just smiles softly at her mother, as if shyly amused by the situation they’re witnessing.

“Did you hear how just when we were coming down the hall, Tommy said something about calling Wanda’s boyfriend ‘Dad’ if they get married?”

Crystal furrows her brow and nods; she hadn’t been paying that much attention, but one didn’t engage in superheroics (let alone marry and live with a hyper-active speedster) if one had poor situational awareness. Well one did, theoretically, but in such instances, one usually just died before gaining any kind of reputation or relevance.

“Well see, that set off Damian, Mr. Wayne’s youngest son and Dick’s baby brother - he was the one shouting ‘How dare you’ - “

“Don’t tell me this family has some kind of superiority complex about the twins or Wanda not being good enough for one of their own,” Crystal interrupted. The air around them crisped and heated even as a stray wind arose inside the manor and teased the ends of her hair into furious activity. 

She and Pietro might not be together anymore, but her fondness for him and certain other members of his family hadn’t ceased to exist simply because their marriage no longer did. Wanda had been her friend for years before she and Pietro even began to date, and her twins were still Luna’s cousins. All of which made them still family as far as Crystal was concerned. 

And she’d certainly put up with enough of her own family’s nonsense about nobody being good enough for one of them...more than she should have, to be honest, even if that was still ultimately the reason she’d cut ties with them and made her teammates her and her daughter’s true family. Crystal wasn’t about to stand idly by while strangers subjected her daughter’s cousins and aunt to more of that bullshit, even if they were hugely respected heroes of this universe’s Earth.

But Luna just shakes her head swiftly and decisively, and Crystal forces her metaphorical hackles to subside at her daughter’s apparent lack of concern. 

“No, its nothing like that. Well, Damian’s kind of a brat sometimes, but it feels like he only acts out like that when he doesn’t have instincts about how to react to a given situation and he’s embarrassed about that. He had some kind of messed up childhood none of them like to talk about too much. But honestly, he feels more jealous right now than he does anything else. Aunt Wanda gave us all a rundown before we got here, about Dick’s family and things to not ask them about or bring up, and what kind of stuff they’d been told about us for similar reasons. Anyway, she told us Damian didn’t even live with their family until a few years ago, and when he first came to live with them there was a year when Mr. Wayne was missing and most of them thought he was dead....and so Dick was basically Damian’s first real kinda dad even before Mr. Wayne got a chance to be, and even though he’s been the one raising Damian ever since he got back, it sounded like there’s a lot of mixed feelings and confusion and tension between him, Mr. Wayne and Dick ever since.”

“And of course your cousin just couldn’t resist poking the elephant in the room, once he’d been made aware of its existence, if only to see what would happen,” Crystal sighs. That boy....

Not for the first time when around her ex’s family, she finds herself reminded to be grateful for the relationship she and her daughter share, mostly due to her daughter’s willingness to be understanding of others’ flaws, her own included. Crystal makes sure to will forth a wish for fortitude in Wanda’s direction while she’s at it. Couldn’t hurt.

And of course, speaking of Luna’s ability to be understanding....

“Tommy was just trying to have a little fun, he honestly didn’t mean any harm by it,” her daughter defends the cousin in question. “I know he didn’t really have any idea how much of a reaction he’d get, and just how deep and strongly they had about this. And I know it probably sounds like I’m just trying to make excuses for Tommy to keep him out of trouble, but maybe this is a good thing, that he made this happen? Because I can tell they definitely don’t talk a lot about these things or let them out in the open instead of trying to shove them down all the time. So Damian feels jealous, probably because he still has feelings of seeing Dick as a father that he feels he can’t act on because he doesn’t want to upset their actual dad or cause fights between them.”

"And I can feel Mr. Wayne feels jealous too, but of how Damian feels and the fact that he acted on what was so clearly jealousy to everyone else, but also he’s upset at himself, probably because he thinks its not right for him to feel jealous towards his own son and specifically because he and his brother have such a strong relationship and Dick did such a good job taking care of him when Mr. Wayne couldn’t. And then Dick feels guilty but also a little upset at himself as well, maybe because he knows he has nothing to feel guilty for? I’m not sure about that part, I haven’t totally gotten a feel for their usual emotional dynamics. But also he feels jealous too, and of Mr. Wayne, most likely because he gets to be Damian’s father and on some level Dick wishes that was still him occupying that role.”

“Maybe you should be explaining all of this to them instead of me,” Crystal concludes when her daughter finishes her run-through in a rush of hastily accelerated words. Luna is leaning to the side, as if trying to be subtle about craning to look around her at the drama on the other side. 

“I will if they ask me to,” her daughter says, now sounding somewhat defensive of herself. “I don’t think they would have liked it much if I just tried to talk to them about all their feelings that they refuse to acknowledge or act upon, even just with each other in private.”

“Hmm,” Crystal just hums thoughtfully. Luna rushes to present the rest of her case, though Crystal still lacks a clear picture of just what the specific endgame is that her little schemer simply can’t resist trying to nudge things towards.

“Besides, like I said, maybe this was a good thing, Tommy got it out in the open where now they have to talk about it with each other, since its pretty undeniable to everyone. I mean everyone else in their family definitely feels kinda satisfied I think? No, vindicated. That’s it. I think they’ll be fine on their own. They all definitely love each other and if anything, the jealous feelings are all just from loving each other more than they feel they should or have a right to, because they don’t want to make one of their other family question whether they love them too. None of them have done anything bad or wants anything bad, they just need to talk it through.”

“Well that’s all good to hear, but it still sounds to me like there’s no real reason for us not to interrupt, and every possibility it might defuse some tension and give them all a little time to cool down before talking about things.” Crystal crosses her arms and looks down at Luna knowingly. 

She might be the best daughter Crystal could have ever wished for, and light years more mature than anyone else her age, but she’s still only ten and every ten year old has room for more maturing.

Sure enough, her daughter squirms guiltily. 

“I guess. But I still think its better to let things just happen on their own. You’re always telling me that my power isn’t permission to insert myself into the problems of everyone I meet. And that assuming otherwise can be bad for me too.”

“That’s true,” Crystal nods. All the same, her left eyebrow starts to climb. “However, another truth I’ve heard told to you by your father is if you ever feel guilty and are put on the spot for something, have two truths and a lie ready to explain yourself. And always lead with the lie.”

She loves Pietro still, she does, and she's at times even painfully aware of just how much she always will. But their vastly different ideas about parenting were just one of the reasons they hadn’t been able to make things work. She vividly recalls the time she’s referring to...and the argument she and her husband had immediately following it.

Pietro’s stance had always been that children were just little versions of who they’d grow up to be, and didn’t need to be taught dumbed down versions of the advice no one would a problem giving to the grown up versions of them.

“I see nothing inappropriate in teaching her that,” Pietro had said stubbornly at the time. “I do the same thing all the time and I’ve never attempted to pretend otherwise. In fact, I clearly remember explicitly describing that as my life philosophy on one of our earlier dates, and if I recall correctly, you laughed and called me a charming knave at the time. And I am of course remembering it correctly, as I have perfect recall listed among my numerous attributes.”

They never did reach an understanding about that particular bit of parenting. Probably because that argument had ended up seguing into the make-up sex that had kept them married far longer than they probably should have been.

Not that the latter detail is of any relevance at the moment. She coughs awkwardly.

In the here and now, their daughter continues to fidget beneath her mother’s now imperious gaze and newfound resolution to not allow her semi-fond nostalgia to cause her emotions to waver.

“Fine!” Luna groans at last, throwing up her hands in as explosive manner as the usually contemplative girl ever does anything. “I also don’t want to interrupt or go yet because I still have some of the popcorn Mr. Alfred made me and its really good and also if you had to have dinner with some of the most tense and repressed people on two different Earths, and feel everything they were trying to pretend they didn’t feel, you would want to at least get to enjoy the part where they finally stop doing that and get all dramatic and dumb. Are you happy now?”

“Ecstatic,” Crystal says primly, fighting a smile at her daughter’s rare display of immaturity before remembering who she was talking to and ceasing to bother with the pretense. Besides, its not like she doesn’t have a point.

“But I believe we’ve also talked about people not being your personal entertainment,” she adds. It just feels like the kind of moment where she's supposed to say something along those lines. Even half-heartedly. 

“But is it really my fault if people are being entertaining through no fault of my own, and I just happen to be nearby and have every right to just stay put until being right where I am stops being entertaining?” Her daughter counters.

The glint in her eye and the wry smile that says she knows she’s scented a moment of weakness and has no shame about pouncing on it - those are wholly among Pietro’s contribution to their child, and not anything Crystal can truly fault him for, at the end of the day. He is who he is, and part of that is who their daughter is, just as much as she is part of Crystal. She sighs and relents.

“If one of the Waynes catches us treating their conflict like a reality show and feels the slightest upset about it, it is your responsibility to either justify yourself to them too, or acknowledge responsibility for their upset. Whichever it takes to reverse the negativity you contributed. Understood?”

"Promise,” Luna says, bobbing her head repeatedly as she holds forth her hands, unprompted, to demonstrate that she has no fingers crossed as she did so. A follow up that has been normalized for years, given that crossing fingers behind one’s back is another one of the bits of parental wisdom Pietro had imparted upon their precocious daughter when she was younger.

Crystal just sighs once more and shakes her head fondly as she steps to the side and provides an unobstructed view through the open doorway across the room.

Back in the dining room, heedless of having garnered spectators to their spectacle, as well as equally heedless of the passage of time, the room’s inhabitants exist in a state of suspended animation. 

Everyone knows a reaction to what just happened is required. That the pregnant pause persisting since then demands a clear follow up to the blatant display of certain emotions from certain parties. All of whom are usually quite certain they’d rather witness the end of the world than see those specific feelings slip out into the open where anyone could see them and from that, draw certain conclusions.

Nobody is confused on that front. Not even their guests from an entirely separate universe.

But the unthinkable has happened nevertheless, and as it has been neither preceded nor succeeded by any hint of an apocalypse, there is no alternative. The naked display of previously avoided topics can not in any way be avoided at this point. What was done was done and now things have to be said or done as a result.

The problem lies in the fact that not a single person present has the faintest idea of what those specific things were. And thus no one seems interested in showing any initiative in ending the stalemate that has been forged from the uncommon uncertainty that was their only commonality.

 The rise and fall of chests are the only movements betraying that the tableau they set exists in all three dimensions, rather as a static snapshot someone had taken in commemoration.

And even breathing seems done reluctantly.

If cosmic entities such as Uatu the Watcher were prone to hyperbole, as the only other witnesses to the unprecedented anomaly, they might narrate that for a time it seems as though two of the most powerful and influential families of two different universes are fated to spend the rest of eternity existing in this rare moment. This endless moment where some of the most reckless, impulsive, tactical, analytical, insightful and decisive heroes to ever exist on two separate Earths......are all equally stricken with indecision and uncertainty as to what course of action to take next.

Who could even imagine what kind of consequences that might result in, for two entirely different multiverses? What deviations from intricately plotted grand designs that could cause, what opportunities might be missed, from the most potentially fortunate events that otherwise might stem from these various heroes’ heroics?

How far might the ripple effects of this seemingly innocuous moment in space and time reach? How many worlds might rise and fall, universes live and die, all because this one singular family, this comparatively tiny collection of dissonant souls who regardless of their frequent discord still manage to come together in harmony often enough to chart the course of cosmic events....

These unlikely conductors who at separate times are both the voices of the people, and the music of the spheres themselves? Their choices often doing more to directly affect various celestial bodies than the choices of entire civilizations added up across countless millennia?

Regardless of the degree of potential calamity, that remains a fate both universes will be spared their discovery of. For in this hour of need, where some of the prime movers and shakers of worlds sit motionless whilst hardly daring to breathe, all mutually frozen in their seats, all seemingly powerless to act or speak until someone releases them from this spell that has been cast upon the room and all within it....

Well, unto this unlikely conundrum, there arises an unlikely hero.

Not the hero anyone present deserves, perhaps, but certainly the hero they need.

And so it is that with great daring - and dare we say, even panache - a voice rings out loud and clear. One overflowing with bountiful mirth and a zest and zeal for life. Not to mention one brimming with reckless disregard for any potential consequences, even those not very dissimilar to the kind that have in years past made even the hardiest villains quail in fear...

And all at the same time, all undeniable, all contributing to the sudden spasm that erupts along the fault line that is Bruce Wayne’s entire face - that treacherous, forbidding chasm that exists at the edges of the two tectonic masses that are on one side his disapproval, and on the other side, the muscles that control his expressions...

Into that momentous stillness lands the only response truly appropriate, given the root cause of all of this.

“Awkwaaaaaaard,” Stephanie Brown sings out, half standing out of her chair to stretch across the table in front of Wanda and Duke in order to retrieve the gravy boat. She returns to her seated position and proceeds to slather her mashed potatoes with its contents, blithely paying no attention to the fact that all other faces in the room have swiveled to face her with stunned disbelief. “Seriously, I haven’t felt this uncomfortable since I farted in front of Superman.”

“When did you even get here?” Bruce frowns at her, exasperated enough that Damian is able to use his distraction to slip free of him and slink back to his own seat.

No one else has ever managed to achieve the depths of distraction Stephanie and Stephanie alone can push the usually unflappable Bat to. Or is it heights, and the joys of alliteration might need to be sacrificed upon the altar of accuracy? Whatever.

She pretty much considers it her superpower, though. She's still working out how to weaponize it for use on other targets. Or even better, how to capitalize on it for use when living Whilst Reluctantly Capitalist. Currently, she’s testing market research along the veins of blackmailing Bruce into paying her a monthly allowance in exchange for her keeping her levels of Intentionally Irritating him to below a Level Four on a ten point scale. Its her own custom model in the fashion of the ‘rate the pain with a number from one to ten’ scale, but she’s taken the liberty of specifically tailoring it to Bruce’s condition of Suffering Stephanie the Supreme’s Presence. She's pretty sure she’d ultimately settled on the title: “How much is my chewing gum while I’m supposed to be being sneaky causing you actual physical pain?”

There’s an itty bitty chance she actually picked something totally else on account of how she’d been super drunk at the time and she’s crap at reading her own handwriting so deciphering the notes she’d made while especially inspired were like....seventy percent guesswork.

But close enough, anyway, and also like, shut up and stuff. Wait. But is that really considered blackmail, technically speaking, or is it more like bribery? Not that it really makes a difference, but she does prefer being as precise as possible when listing her crimes slash achievements. It’s like. The principle. Or maybe the aesthetic? Whatever.

Really, though, this is just her and the Big Guy’s thing. Its just what they do. Their dynamo depiction of a duo doing things after their first take on being a Dynamic Duo detonated so disastrously. Yeah, she could never bear to part with her precious alliteration merely for the sake of precision. Its important to have clear priorities after all, and if it for whatever reason that probably will involve fifth dimensional imps, like, some nefarious ne’er-do-well demands she make a choice between alliteration and precision, well, she’s as of right now making an official ruling on which darling she’d kill first. 

Sorry, precision, but you just haven’t done for me lately what alliteration has brought me in joy and also usefulness.

“Wait, my bad,” she realizes suddenly, on account of how everyone is staring at her when all she’s doing currently is stuffing her face like a pro. And as hype as she is on her ability to make anything she does look like a Feat™, she’s pretty sure she doesn’t make it look that good. “What was the question again?”

Bruce faces her fully, arms crossed in an attempt to restore himself and his dominion to some semblance of its usual order, his face schooled back in his usual Mona Lisa smile aka stone cold impassivity. Which nobody here was buying, for the record. Big faker.

“How long have you been here?” Asks Stone Cold Steve Austin, wait no, the Stone Cold Steve Faker. Faker Austin? Ugh, this is gonna bug her.

Also, nobody here is buying his voice as being Forbidding right now so much as just Deeply Embarrassed Because I Had Feelings And They Distracted Me. Honestly, she should start keeping a tally. For what, she’s not sure, but you never know what might come in handy some day. There’s a whole TV show about hoarders to back her up on that supposition. See? Science, suckers.

“I dunno. Since way before dinner even started though. Dude, I’m literally on my thirds.” 

As if making a show of evidence, Steph shovels more meat in her mouth. She’s not entirely sure what they're even having, like it could be veal or lamb or turkey for all she knows - look, she never got around to mastering “How To Solve the Mystery of Mystery Meat” or whatever. She’d been busy learning how to tell the difference in blood spatters, because like, meat may be murder sometimes but murder is always murder and thus takes priority. Soooorry. 

Point is, who knows what the fuck kind of meat it is, but its damn good and just further proof that Alfred is probably secretly God in disguise or maybe just a lower case g kinda one, but whichever, he and his culinary arts are definitely proof she’s too weak to ever walk the Way of the Vegan.

She finishes chewing fully before continuing. Because she’s a proper lady, obvy.

“And way to make with the Rudeness, B. I know I can pull off pretty much any look, but Fly On The Wall is not one of them. How dare you come for my self-esteem like this. I’ll sue you and get all your billions and use them to make a swimming pool of gold coins all Scrooge McDuck style, because its like, the one thing you could never and thus the perfect way to establish my dominance and stuff.”

“Has she seriously been here this whole time?” One of Dick’s girlfriend’s twin kids stage-whispers from the other length of the table. “How did we not notice before? Not exactly flying under the radar there.”

“I’m a goddamn social chameleon, that’s how, Cloud.” Stephanie jabs another meat-laden forkful in his direction for emphasis, on its way to her food hole. Ugh, bliss. “Also, I would be like, a kick-ass spy. But nobody ever gives me the spy jobs because everyone’s always like, you can’t be quiet or still or even serious for longer than five minutes, Stephanie, and I’m always like, umm, just because I choose not to doesn’t mean I can’t, but do they ever listen? Of course not.” 

The kid wrinkles his nose at her. “Why did you call me Cloud?”

“Isn’t that the name of the Final Fantasy guy whose hair you ripped off?”

“Is it? I don’t know, I’ve never played. And maybe he ripped me off, you don’t know,” Not-Cloud says, looking suddenly intrigued, though who knows by which part. 

Stephanie swivels towards Tim for confirmation. He looks back, vaguely irritated. 

“Why does everyone always look at me for stuff like that? I have no idea. When exactly would I have time to be a gamer in the first place? And for the record, back when I had actual hobbies, I used to skateboard.”

“Jeez, sorry, Tony Hawk. I didn’t recogize you cuz I was too busy giving you mad props for that sick wicked half pipe ollie oopsie.” Steph rolls her eyes. Then she cocks her head to scrutinize him more fully and maybe give him a serious answer. She settles for flapping a hand at him vaguely as she says, “And you just have like, a certain Quality about you or whatever. I don’t know what it is.”

“She doesn’t even live here,” Bruce says, almost plaintively. Y’know. If he were someone who does anything plaintively ever.

“She’s our guest,” Cass says, almost primly. Y’know. If she were someone who does anything primly ever. “You’re being rude.”

Steph plasters on her most injured expression, the better to make like Exhibit A when Cass sweeps an arm towards her for demonstration. 

Also though, oh shit, oh shit, look whose internal monologue stumble-stepped into a motif. She’s Emily Dickenson-ing this place up tonight. Finally, someone bringing a little class into the House of Ass. You’re welcome, all the ghosts of Bruce’s equally gloomy ancestors who definitely haunt this place on the regular.

“Yeah, Alfred has always impressed upon us that there are certain protocols for how we’re supposed to treat guests in our home, Bruce,” Tim adds in a tone that was equal parts thoughtful musing and suppressed merriment. 

He slides a smirk down the table to Steph. His own irritation of 7.5 seconds prior has completely evaporated into the ether, because that’s just how they roll. Look at them, making with the maturity like they’re just a couple of motherfucking bosses. She’s seriously so impressed with the both of them on their own behalves.

“If I were a betting man,” Tim continues nonchalantly, “I’d put down money that hanging on to guest privileges is one of the main reasons she turned down that adoption offer we all pretend we don’t know B’s definitely given her at some point.”

“Or maybe that’s just what you tell yourself, being the one whose dating history with Steph makes adopted siblinghood seem weird and icky and stuff,” Duke suggests from further down the table. He smirks, lounging in a way that looks lazy and careless to those uninitiated in the sacred Bat arts of being anal about everything at all times, like literally even when just looking at things. Because B-Man’s secret superpower is how to make anything boring, even things that are literally just using your eyes.

Though in defense of B but also like, the years of their lives they’ve all committed to obsessively training themselves according to his fucking anal doctrines anyway, like a bunch of absolute suckers, there is an upside to all that anal retention. Such as how people who make healthy but boring life choices would look at Duke right now and be like oh shit, that kid’s about two seconds from falling asleep like he’s a cat and that’s a super inconvenient place for him to fall asleep, which everyone knows is basically the same thing as Kitty Nirvana.

But meanwhile, the other teen still clearly shows all the checked boxes that spell out hey this dude could be ready to kick your ass in 2.5 seconds, like just give him a reason punk, he’s ready to go. Or at least, that’s how he registers to those of them with Bat-supersenses that aren’t actually super but really just the end result of lots of boring training exercises that honestly don’t sound anywhere near as cool so just let them have this.

Point is she totally lost track of her point, but then Duke follows up with an accusing pointer finger aimed at Tim, one appropriately dramatic and just like, making her so gosh darn proud of the latest castaway to wash ashore on their weird ass little Island Of Misfit Toys. Kids. They grow up so fast.

“Of course you wanna distract everyone from how you’re a Sister Depriver,” Duke intones, putting some super thematic bass into his boom. That right there, that little something extra...that’s how you make fucking art. Hot damn. “And as a result, poor Cass has to bear the weight of being the only girl in the Wayne clan all by herself. For shame, Timothy.”

“Yeah, Timothy,” Cass echoes smugly. “For shame.”

Tim shoots betrayed eyes at her, but its his own fault for forgetting the Cardinal Rule Of Cass: her allegiances are fickle and prone to shifting in the direction of greatest potential drama. Cass loves drama. Lives for it. Something about how refreshing it is to be able to immerse herself in the movements of people who are actively trying to speak or act in contradiction to what their body really wants to say, instead of just being lying douchebags who necessitate caution when they do anything similar.

The rest of them are split 50/50 as to whether that’s true and heartwrenching, or whether its well-played Cass bullshit aimed at distracting them from what a gossip-loving drama queen she really is.

“Whatever,” Jason says dismissively as he chimes in. He swipes the last few exchanges out of the way like they’re open apps he’s not using at the moment and he’s all uh, you can go now, losers. “The real issue here is that obviously the Old Man has never figured out how to interact with a teenager or young adult he hasn’t adopted or can’t adopt. Middle D over there is proof that even B’s vaunted no meta rule isn’t really a dealbreaker, so betcha the real reason Dickie and Tim’s Titan friends never come over is because their parentals are worried about B trying to snatch them up too. And since B adopts, fosters or otherwise absorbs via osmosis every other kid or teen he comes across, there’s never been a control group for him to practice his non-adoption-intending behavior on other kids. And no practice means no way of being perfect at that, and we all know how not being perfect at something makes B cranky as fuck.”

Duke takes a beat to contort his face into a Rubik’s Cube of half-formed and hastily discarded expressions. Most likely trying to work through whether Middle D counts as a weird-ass endearment for this particular family, or something he’s gonna be endlessly annoyed by if it happens to catch on. Its a process, especially considering it has to be filtered through the Jason to English dictionary first.

Finally he just shrugs in a lazy non-reaction that in Batspeak manages to count as a challenge. Basically a ‘try and guess what I decided if you can, chump.’ 

Jason’s face morphs Terminator style. The later ones, not the Governator model. He ends up displaying a mash-up: the smirk of inevitable victory meets the narrowed eyebrows of intent focus as bestowed upon a worthy foe. 

Then the whole piece makes like an Etch-a-Sketch and is wiped completely away before being replaced with an annoyed jaw clench. 

“Jay’s theory game is strong,” is the route Duke ends up taking though. “And here we thought the reason Bruce always says no about Superboy coming over is to prevent him from being a Brother Defiler. But all along it was just the insidious work of a Brother Depriver, with Superman himself being the culprit who told B hands off, this one’s mine. It all makes sense now! Superboy even fits the standard issue black hair and blue eyed, in store model.”

He tips his head towards the older boy in a gesture of appreciation for Jay’s detective work and connect the dots high score. Jason scowls back. By the standards of the Family Batshit, he’s clearly been caught off guard. With him so readily taking up the implied but not outright stated challenge teased by the younger boy, he’d completely failed to prepare for the compliments Duke then followed up with instead.

His siblings hide snickers behind faked coughs and gratuitous napkin usage. He’s netted himself an undeniable loss, according to the intricate rules and traditions of their family - ironically, many of which had been laid down by Jason himself when first established back in the misty years of yore. That mysterious, little spoken of era of legend and mystery, one that is nevertheless oft whispered of in hushed rumors and hearsay. The time before time, better known to the Bats and Birds as The Age of The First Two Robins.

If it had just been the family present, it might have been a different matter, but the presence of others changed things. Cuz see, in the eyes of anyone who isn’t a member of their observation obsessed and perpetually paranoid family, the relatively minute exchange between the two boys no doubt looked like Jason had been needlessly aggressive while the younger boy was just trying to pay him a compliment.

In a nutshell, Duke goaded Jason with what seemed like a challenge but didn’t technically count, so Jason’s attempt at responding to Duke’s not-challenge actually counted as the first actual sign of aggression, which Duke neatly side-stepped by already being in the process of paying Jay a compliment between the time Jay actually launched his challenge but before it actually landed.

Ergo, Duke wins. 

Look, if its hard to follow, that’s probably for the best. They’re all pretty sure stuff like that isn’t supposed to make as much sense as it does to them.

Jason huffs but then finally heaves a sigh and tosses a tight-lipped and grudging but genuine nod of acknowledgment down the table to Duke. Despite himself, he can’t help but be a little impressed by the kid, having already picked up on even the more minute ins and outs of their family’s complicated interactions. But then, of course the younger boy is as precocious as the rest of them. Their family could single-handedly keep the nature vs nurture debate going for centuries.

Duke beams back before licking the tip of a finger and painting a single stroke in the air in front of him. A clear declaration that this round of the Batkids’ never-ending game goes to him. Jason rolls his eyes but can’t exactly begrudge him his endzone dance. Its not like he’s known for being graceful and gracious in victory either.

Come to think of it, none of them are. Huh. That explains a lot, probably.

Its at this moment that Dick finally regains enough composure to make his presence felt again. 

Its understandable, really, the others acknowledge via conspiratorial looks of sibling solidarity that bounce their way rapidly across the table by way of their patented younger sibling network.

Anyone would have trouble juggling the combined stressors of introducing the girlfriend’s family, mediating their own eternal family mayhem, and on top of all that, seeing shoved into the spotlight his ‘shh, we don’t talk about that, what are you, new,” tendencies towards acting parentally protective and possessive of Damian, even with (and at times especially with) Bruce himself. 

Not to mention the occasional clashes over the parenting strategy, or lack thereof, that Bruce still manages at times to bumble like the perfect dope that he is. Because if anyone has super strong feelings about Bruce’s parenting and no patience whatsoever for watching their father repeatedly fail to learn from his mistakes, well. That’s all Dick’s territory.

So with all of that kept firmly in mind like the efficient little multi-taskers they all know how to be (when they feel like it), they’re all poised to lend Dick a certain amount of leeway in how much amusement they enjoy at his expense today.

In all fairness to them, its not like he makes it easy. They had perhaps overestimated just how well Dick was juggling the various stressors in play today. After all, you can take the acrobat out of the circus, but that doesn’t mean jack shit about whether or not he can juggle because that’s an entirely different skillset, duh.

Hindsight’s not just sometimes a bitch. Its sometimes quite bitchy as well. Ugh, their subconscious minds could be such brats, honestly.

Look, the point is, even as they all patiently watch their eldest brother struggle his way back to a state of coherency and and managing to be present in the actual present, they’re still expecting him to pop out the other side with something at least approaching poise.

Instead, they get an encore.

“Umm,” Dick utters at last. 

Tim buries his face in his hands. Duke tilts his head back and mutters prayers to some higher power. Cass closes her eyes and shakes her head slowly and sorrowfully. Lorna reaches across the table with her wine bottle and refreshes her sister’s glass. Wanda looks like she needs it.

Damian sits with arms crossed over his chest and scowl firmly directed at the table top, Judging Everything. Then again, that is still his default setting and pretty much what he’s been doing all night anyway. Say whatever else you want to about the kid, Steph reflects, but when he commits to a theme, hoo boy. 

Jason, meanwhile, has thrown himself bodily at his brother, clamping a hand over the older man’s mouth and stage-whispering with exaggerated emphasis: “Careful! You could set off the exact same chain of events and we’ll all end up trapped in an eternal time loop we can never break free of! I mean, its practically a guarantee, if you combine my knack for being in the worst place at the worst possible time, Tim’s shitty spleen-phobic luck, Cass’ destined to someday prove ironically prophetic name, and your own lightning rod-esque ability to attract cosmic-level catastrophes to you like you’re catnip and they’re really just a cute little furball named Fluffy McWhiskerson.”

“Must you always insist on going the extra mile when being ridiculous, Todd?” Damian cuts in testily. Also, cuttingly. 

“Shut the fuck up. It’s my coping mechanism for being part of a family that goes that extra ridiculous mile every damn day.” 

“And people wonder what possible reasons I could have for not wanting to be adopted into this family and instead hanging onto a golden parachute option?” 

Steph wonders aloud (and loudly) as she maneuvers the side of her fork around her plate like its a zamboni hard at work on an ice rink. Really, she just refuses to let a single scrape of Alfred’s home-made mashed potatoes go to waste. She’s not some heathen.

“You. You seem pretty smart.” That loaded statement and the finger pointed in her direction come courtesy of the Final Fantasy kid whose name may or may not be Cloud but probably isn’t, which is a shame, because Cloud is a pretty kick-ass name in Steph’s estimation. Not that anyone asks. Typical.

Also, where did they end up landing on the subject of what his name should be? Or is? Whatever? Was there a flowchart passed out at some point and she just missed it while busy being fabulous, or was this an actual oversight on B’s part and thus something they should all bring up as often as possible from now until the end of time?

No doubt spurred by a desire to be absent from whatever follows his twin’s newest train of thought, Billy raises his hand half-heartedly. No one bothers to point out the absurdity of raising his hand like he’s in school. He just seems like its a thing with him. He has that certain Quality, Steph decides.

“Can I be excused?”

Nobody seems sure who he’s asking, so its probably okay that nobody responds to grant permission. Besides, suffering through the awkwardness and drama like the rest of them is probably like, good for building character or something.

After about half a minute, Billy nods to himself as if that’s about what he’d expected. He lowers his hand again and uses it to prop up his head as he slumps over the table and idly sketches patterns atop the antique oak surface.

“I’m a galaxy-brain level intellect, you little Silver Whatever-the-Adorable-Baby version of a Fox is called,” Steph declares at last, jabbing her finger right back at the apparent Greater of Twin Evils. Y’know. To see how much he likes it. But also just because its fun to make like a drama queen in a place like Wayne Manor. Ambiance really is everything. “I even took my SATs and correctly informed the moderator that I was in fact there for the SATs and hadn’t gotten them mixed up with my ACTs.” 

“Hmm,” the twerp says then, not at all appearing to be taught a lesson by her dramatic finger pointing reversal. He sweeps his eyes over her, assessing. Given that she hasn’t decided yet if she even likes the little twerp, let alone what he’s trying to assess and also if she even gives a shit on account of she might not even like the little twerp, Stephanie splits the difference and settles for combining bitch face with her best “How you like me now,” pose. Let him make of it what he will. ‘Snot like she knows what she’s going for there.

Also, its probably rendered slightly less effective due to her forgetting to factor in that she’s sitting and not standing, but whatever, she commits like a champ. Also, she’s still at most 60/40 on the liking of the twerp, so who even cares, honestly.

“I used to be able to count on my own smarts,” Platinum Punk says, seemingly settled on an opinion at last. “But I naively gambled that away in the name of wishing upon a star for family or what the frick ever, and I forgot to set wish parameters for ‘and also please let them all not be completely nuts.’”

“Watch the ableism please, sweetheart,” Wanda says with a long-suffering sigh.

“Sorry, Mom,” he says with an eye roll that nevertheless seems to somehow satisfy her. “But see? I’ll get a lecture about my language, but I skip school with my friends to fight giant robots in Times Square and she doesn’t bat an eye. My family’s priorities are not like your Earth’s priorities.”

“Or my Earth’s priorities,” he adds as an afterthought. “Or any Earth’s, probably. Maybe not some really weird and out there Earth, but they don’t count, probably.”

“Well I don’t like it, certainly, but I don’t want to be a hypocrite,” Wanda says defensively. “When I was your age, I was on the FBI’s Most Wanted list for being a mutant terrorist. All things considered, I have relatively few objections about how you and your brother spend your time.” 

Several members of the Family Batshit direct eyes that are ever so slightly on the wide side. She meets them with an unapologetic shrug.

“I had a complicated childhood. I got over it.”

Lorna snorts into her wineglass. Wanda shoots her sister an annoyed glare, but still amends her statement.

“Mostly, anyway.”

Lorna smirks and waves her glass in some attempt at a meaningful gesture. Who knows what its actually meant to be. She seems to accept the amendment, at least.

“Please excuse our dear little sis her porcine displays of condescension,” Pietro interjects in silky smooth tones that do nothing to hide the sharp edges thinly veiled underneath. “She didn’t grow up with us and our dear, doting daddy, yet has never lacked for opinions on what superior choices she would have made in our positions. The fact that she’s still made plenty terrible choices of her own, is apparently quite irrelevant.”

His green-haired sister opens her eyes artfully wide and projects feigned innocence. “None of those were my fault. I was possessed a lot by a very evil psychic. Who, if you recall, actually called herself Malice. The evil was right there in her name. Advertised. I was innocent. She was evil.”

Pietro swirls his own wineglass, unimpressed. The other set of siblings have clearly been down this road a time or two themselves. 

“I was primarily referring to your romantic history with a Summers. And not even the competent or aesthetically pleasing one, at that,” he drawls.

“She also had terrible taste.”

“Anyway, not to tear focus away from discussion of my dear auntie’s romantic selection process, as she and Uncle Pietro both lack the shame gene and they absolutely can and will traumatize all present via a thorough analysis of each other’s past partners in the most bizarre game of sexual chicken you will ever have the misfortune to witness...”

“Bold of him to make that claim when he’s never seen Dick and Jason do the exact same thing for the exact same reasons,” Tim mutters. Cass and Duke both nod. Jason glares, but seems stuck at the ‘come up with actual proof that he’s actually wrong’ stage of the rebuttal process. Dick has by now returned to the land of the living, but seems to have along the way decided discretion is the better part of valor as best guess is he’s currently preoccupied weighing the pros and cons of potential escape routes.

“Hey, Shiny Pokemon version of Sonic the Hedgehog,” Stephanie snaps her fingers and hopskips the focus back on the speedster in question. She waves her hand at the rest of the sound and fury occupying the table with them, as if to express just how much it all signifies nothing. “Just get to the point already and leave out anything else that these vile miscreants could possibly hijack and turn into tangents. You’ll never make it through a conversation in this house otherwise. Everyone here is expertly trained and practiced in the art of derailing the most obstinate and tunnel-visioned man in history from reaching his point whenever that point is deemed destined to make our day end poorly.”

“Some of us just happen to be better at that than others,” Jason says with smug confidence, twirling his butter knife lazily.

“Ironic, coming from the one trick pony,” Tim says dryly. Jason leans forward and raises his knife-wielding hand and Tim quickly raises his hands in a defensive gesture that’s clearly not meant to indicate he sees an actual threat, more just aimed at beating his brother to the punch with the rest of his punchline. “Sorry, I miscounted. I mean the one and a half trick pony.”

Steph clears her throat pointedly and looks back at Platinum Ken Doll. He just sighs in full gloom and slumps down in eerie symmetry with his twin. He definitely is the superior practitioner of the Sulk.

“Never mind,” he says melodramatically. “It wasn’t even a big deal anyway, just stuff I was trying to be like, snarky about or whatever, but the moment’s passed and it’s just kinda dumb and pointless without feeling like, natural or whatever.”

“Probably,” Stephanie agrees unsympathetically, because hey, when you’re right, you’re right. She doesn’t believe in coddling the youths, especially not the ones who are realistically only two years younger than herself at the most. “But you’ve managed to pique my interest enough that not knowing what you were going to say is randomly gonna bug me at 2 am or something obnoxious like that. Also, you started to praise my intellect and I don’t let things like that go unfinished. It sets a bad precedent. Now c’mon. Speak up. Praise me. Enunciate, so Damian can’t pretend he doesn’t hear you just because he’s trying to set the table on fire with just the searing intensity of his disdain.”

Damian responds with a gesture that he definitely didn’t learn from Dick, but on second thought, he probably did.

“That’s the spirit,” she said. “Keep on keeping on, slugger. If anyone can develop the ability to cause spontaneous combustion with nothing but willpower and spite, its Angst in the key of D Minor himself. I believe in you, kiddo!”

If she weren’t actually being full of shit about that, she might be in trouble from the glare Damian follows that with. Ashes to ashes and all that good stuff. But as rage-vision still refuses to make an appearance, the baby of the family in age and irony only retreats to the support of his high-backed chair. 

Looking more adorable than he’d hopefully ever comprehend, lest he attempt to weaponize that as an addition to his armory, he slouches down and mutters something that makes Jason’s eyebrows climb his skull like they’re trying to set a speed record for making it all the way to the top.

It’d been in one of the languages that Damian knew and that her own circle of languages learned share no overlap with, but she mentally repeats it sound for sound in her head until she locks it in. Anything that can make Jason look that impressed is worth knowing, and translating something phonetically from an unknown language is nothing Google can’t handle.

And by Google she meant Tim, but that’s what ex-boyfriends are for, right? She’s fairly certain she saw that on a T-shirt somewhere, which is basically the same thing as true.

Anyway. Back to the praises that are supposed to be being sung, and yet weirdly, she still hears no singing. Steph boomerangs her focus back down the table to Smugness in Silver, and oozes impatience and expectations out her pores at him like emotions are contagious and she’s a cooties hotspot.

Fumbling from a clear unease with this particular kind of spotlight, and also how it’d admittedly been a weird fucking night for everyone concerned, the younger teen at last manages to self-consciously eke out: “Look, I said it was dumb now. I seriously was just gonna make a joke about you being too smart to get sucked into a weird ass family with endless drama without having an escape clause, and I was just gonna be like, teach me your ways or y’know. Whatever.”

“Wait!” Stephanie stops him right there with a palm outstretched in the universal sign for hold the fucking fuck the fuck up. She leans towards him, and in a voice pitched low and even but vibrating with barely leashed intensity, she asks him the only question that could possibly matter now:

“Was that last bit actually part of the joke you were going to make? The thing you were trying to say from the get go, not just something you said right now because you got confidence diarrhea and stopped using the words good?”

“Uh, yeah?” He says warily.

Stephanie slaps both her hands on the table’s surface, loudly enough to make most everyone jump a little in their seats, and forcefully enough to rattle some dishware and make her inner monologue hiss oww and yell at her for unnecessary roughness. She ignores herself, on account of having much more important things to deal with. 

Launching herself to her feet, she leans into her palms where they press down on the table, giving herself a little bit of Loom to go with the gravity she forces onto her face. Glee is waging a valiant effort at retaking the lost ground, but she’s always insisted that she has excellent self-control, dagnabbit, and Stephanie Brown is many, many things, but she’s no liar.

Well, except for the times she is. But there are always reasons or like, extenuating circumstances for those.

Usually.

“I accept the honor and responsibility of being your Family Drama Sensei, and I shall teach you everything I know and also some stuff I make up just to fuck with you, because I’m not like Other Mentors. I demand and expect some giggles to go with the shits, or what’s even the point, y’know? First lesson: that was rhetorical! I say y’know a lot and when I actually expect an answer I’ll also be like omg hurry up, I aged 84 years waiting for you to say something already. Got it?”

The Twin That Could Have Probably Starred In Twilight blinks dazedly at her. He then turns to look at the rest of the table.

“Is she serious?”

“Deadly,” Steph intones, before one of these naysayers could nay on her say and potentially undercut her authority with her new minion. Uh, she means, like, henchkid. Sorry, sidekick. Shit. Crap - protege! That was what she has, a protege! Hah!

“For real?” He asks, doubtfully. She frowns. Is she stuttering?

“So real I make reality look fake,” she assures him gravely. He blinks some more. He does that a lot, she notes, like a Good Mentor who notices stuff about her mentee.

“Okay, see, because that wasn’t really what I was going for?” He says cautiously. 

She rolls her eyes. C’mon kid, she doesn’t bite, except for like, sexy stuff and eww no, he’s like twelve. Well sixteen probably, but that’s basically the same thing as twelve. Also they had a lot of work to do on the spine-having thing because this sorta bit right here is totally gonna make her look bad in front of all the other mentors, if it doesn’t exit stage right, like post haste. And what not.

She doesn’t say any of that that out loud though. She’s not sure they’re there yet.

“Like, I was aiming more for just....a...I don’t know, a hah-hah?” 

He leans back slightly, adding a little distance as he looks at her like she’s part of the craziness he needs help surviving instead of his sensei in all things suited to surviving the craziness. Ugh, she has so much work to do with this one. Its a good thing she’s always been pretty sure she’d make an excellent mentor, so like, qualifications. She has them. Obvy.

“La la la, I can’t hear you but also no take-backsies. You’re part of a legacy now. Or lineage. Or whatever the word is that’s not actually about dog family trees. Look, the point is by virtue of being my first ever protege and also the first protege of anyone who isn’t Dick or Babs who both don’t even count anyway because Reasons, you are now part of the grand tradition that is being a Bats and Birds person...partner...sidekick...thingie. Look, we don’t have the terminology all worked out yet. Like I said this is basically new territory except for Dick and Babs who don’t count and also Bruce, but he mostly communicates via grunts and scowls anyway, rendering most terminology moot.”

“What’s happening right now?” Her protege asks to no one in particular. Ugh. Unacceptable. She’s taking twenty points from House Twilight whenever she finishes reading those damn books and figures out just how that whole thing works.

“Okay, so the big takeaway from your first lesson here, because fuck that being cryptic noise, mentors who are always like ‘you have to figure out what you’re supposed to be learning here and then also learn it’ like, ugh, no. The worst, seriously.” 

Look, occasionally detours are probably inevitable, but the important part is that she remain strong when doggy-paddling determinedly towards her point, because good mentors can handle occasional detours and don’t treat them like Kryptonite that’s gonna kill them all when they’re literally just sparring in the Cave, like, perspective, have some, y’know? 

And also they don’t need to stop every couple hours into training so they can have temper tantrums because their kids are like, no dad, we can’t hang out today because that’s a thing that kinda happens when little kid people turn into bigger people people, like oh noes, gasp, horror. And then they have to go stomp around and make that everyone else’s problem because no matter how much they insist they’re loners, they actually really suck at being alone. Even though you’d think that mastering that particular skill would logically come first before you get around to training to say shit like “I am the Night, my dude,” with a straight face.

Its faintly occurring to her that she might actually have unresolved issues about Bruce and her brief apprentice-ship thingie with him. And also maybe its not super awesome conclusion and also the follow-up to all that bit of bother, all of which gargled a fair amount of donkey balls.

Ugh. Epiphanies are such losers. Literally who asked.

“Ahem. Anyway. Big takeaway. Teachable moment. Right. So yeah, first big thing is commitment. You start something, you see it through, got it? In this family and otherwise vaguely affiliated network of mentors and mentees, we don’t do take-backsies, okay? Its a matter of pride. Principle. Also, maybe brain damage. Like I said, this all really started with Dick, and he does get hit and shot in the head a whole lot, so admittedly, the rest of us do have some. Y’know. Questions. Now you sit there and absorb all that for a second. Like a sponge. See yourself as a sponge. Be the sponge. Good sponge.” 

Wisdom having been successfully imparted, Steph nods in satisfaction and then spins to take in the rest of the room, hands planted on her hips Wonder Woman style, because power poses are totally gonna be lesson two.

Her eyes find their way to Bruce easily enough, which makes sense seeing as how his scowl takes up half the room. Any room. Okay, at this point she's willing to jot that whole might have issues thing down as okay so maybe she definitely has unresolved issues with Bruce. So what? She also has a protege, albeit one who probably does need some more convincing to fully be on board, but the point remains that like. Whatever. Suck her entire ass.

“Well,” she declares loftily, as if she’s not just talking directly to the B-Man. Plausible deniability, yo. Just because she’s willing to admit to herself that she maybe definitely has issues to still sort through, that doesn’t mean she has to like. Go around admitting that to other people. She’s not some kind of heathen. “I trust that we’ll all remember where we were when it was undeniably revealed that I, Stephanie Brown, do in fact have Wisdom and Experiences to share with the youths of tomorrow. As that is a thing that just happened. Lo!”

“I have witnesses,” Steph declares with the dial set all the way to Peak Drama, because look, if you can’t lean into the drama in Wayne Freaking Manor, life is empty and meaningless and that’s gonna be her supervillain origin story, probably. She throws out an arm towards the rest of the table, encompassing the dual rows of expressions that could best be described as bemused - if she were being generous and also lying out her freaking ass.

Still, she stands firm in the silence that follows her ringing proclamation, allowing not the slightest hint of self-consciousness slip free of her self control, because she’d literally just made a big deal about how it was all about committing, and Stephanie Brown might be many things, but a hypocrite is not one of them.

Well, other than - nope. Not doing that again. Upon reflection and careful examination of what really matters, accuracy also can be invited to suck the proverbial it.

Besides, there’s too much at stake for her to allow any weakness to betray her now. This is a momentous moment. Clash of the Stubbornness kinda stuff. She’s facing down Punky Brucester himself, and on his own turf of all places. Things like principles....and...and being right, all hang in the balance.

And yes, Stephanie is well aware that she has left even Peak Drama in the dust aeons ago, and they’re deep in uncharted waters now, with like, here there be dragons, lurking dramatically. So what if she’s being ridiculous? She maintains that he had started it, she’s like 99% she is being not at all irrational and unreasonable about that, and by God, she will have her vindication or she will have....whatever the tail end of that cliche goes like. Unless its death, because she kinda sorta already did that, and as far as she’s concerned it counted, and either way, she’s way over it and not looking for reruns.

All the while, Bruce stares her down with his face doing that resting I’m Judging You Face thing that nobody can be that oblivious to walking around with all the time, no matter what they may claim in liar-esque fashion. 

Though, for all her various unresolved issues with him or whatever, she can admit to herself that the man is a goddamn master of conveying a bitch could care less. She’d sat on gargoyles that had served more face than Mr. I Could Be Listening To You Right Now or I Could Actually Be Thinking Boring Rich Asshole Stuff Like Whats Up With the Stock Market Today, LOL You’ll Never Know.

She upgrades her ‘Think About Issues’ notification to a maybe consider talking to someone about some of this stuff level.

When Bruce’s carefully placid facade finally breaks, then, it doesn’t break so much as it freaking shatters. Further evidence of this definitely being her superpower, which means time to move on to asking like, ugh why such an obnoxiously specific superpower, tho.

“She doesn’t even live here!” Bruce thunders again. Or some synonym that still means loud and forceful but also being desperate and totes whining. The Big Guy turns to face his children imploringly. He throws an arm in Steph’s direction for accusatory emphasis. Y’know. All dramatic like.

Oh shit. Maybe she did pick up some things from him after all.

Ugh. Okay, never mind, its definitely epiphanies that are gonna be her supervillain origin story. Seriously.

Fuck those guys.

[northamptoncouplestherapy]

Love and ADHD

If you or your partner has ADHD, you may be experiencing an extra layer of challenge. With 8.1% of American adults diagnosed with ADHD, it’s no surprise that relationships can take a hit. Whether you are the person with ADHD or love someone who has the diagnosis, ADHD affects you both in profound, understandable, and treatable ways.

ADHD is a brain difference that makes it difficult to remember important details or tasks, get and stay organized, manage time, maintain focus, and follow through fully. While people experience different symptoms, intense feelings, and reactions are a common thread for many. These symptoms impact not only the person with ADHD but also the person who loves them.

While some claim that ADHD is overdiagnosed in children, it is widely assumed to be underdiagnosed in adults. Diagnosis of this common disorder has been refined a lot since we were kids, so many of us adults were never diagnosed as children. That means that adults with undiagnosed ADHD are struggling with its symptoms – and have their whole lives – but don’t know any different. So they assume this is just how life (and love) go for them.

This painful reality means that having ADHD (whether you know it or not) – or loving someone who has it – can leave you feeling entirely helpless. The combination of resentment from the non-ADHD partner and shame in the person with ADHD can (understandably) result in fearing your relationship is beyond repair.

It can be overwhelming to know where to start when the symptoms of ADHD are present in your relationship. The good news is that plenty can be done to help shift you out of your well-worn patterns of hurt and frustration together. And it begins with awareness of how ADHD affects your relationship.

Common Patterns in Relationships with ADHD

Think about ADHD as a house on fire. One of you is stuck inside it. There is smoke everywhere, and it’s hard to see what’s in front of you – or find your way out (despite wanting to). Your partner is circling round the house with hoses and sirens. Both of you are fatigued, at times, even desperate. One of you carries the ADHD around internally and has to deal with it every moment, the other lives in reaction to ADHD. It’s not always apparent to the person with the hose that their partner may be struggling and is doing their best.

Naming ADHD for what it is (a common challenge that you’re both navigating) will help normalize your dilemma and realign you as a team with a common goal. Remember, ADHD affects both of you and leads to predictable patterns.

If you’re a person with ADHD, it is common to feel anxious and worried about missing things. To be hurt for being criticized by your partner about what you do or how you do it. To experience irritation about being continuously nagged to get things done, and generally not accepted for who you are. Many people feel like a child to their non-ADHD partner’s “parenting.”

If you’re the non-ADHD partner, you likely feel hurt and let down that your partner forgets things that are important to you or that you have discussed. You are often overwhelmed by the amount of work left on your plate that you can’t count on your partner to reliably help you with. You may also be prone to become irritated by your partner’s intense emotions that seem to come out of nowhere. Feeling frustrated that the same patterns keep repeating themselves.

ADHD is a perpetual difference

Consider that being a couple navigating the symptoms of ADHD is simply one of the differences between you. John Gottman has found that there are really only two kinds of problems in relationships – those that are solvable and those that are perpetual. Perpetual differences, as they sound, are likely never to go away. They’re the repeated fights that leave you feeling stuck in gridlock – same argument different day.

The good news is – ALL couples have perpetual differences. Every single one. The difference between happy and seemingly harmonious couples and those that are gridlocked and resentful is this: happy couples talk about their perpetual differences – even laugh about them. They focus on attunement and stay away from the 4 Horsemen (more on that in a moment). They prioritize repairing quickly when things go array.

For you, ADHD is your perpetual difference. It doesn’t have to sink you, but you do have to bring your most skillful self to the table to talk about your hurts and frustrations so that your partner can truly hear you and not feel attacked. And, even with your best skills, your partner may become defensive and upset. This is when couples therapy with a therapist who understands ADHD in relationships is a loving choice to support you in mutually refining your approach to difficult conversations.

Navigating perpetual differences requires a lot of patience and reaching for deep understanding. This understanding works both ways – how does having ADHD affect your partner? What are their struggles and strengths that come from ADHD? On the other hand, how does your ADHD affect your partner? How are they likely to react when your ADHD impacts them?

Fighting for win/win: Gottman’s 4 Horsemen

One of the hardest skills to master in relationships is steering clear of what John Gottman calls the 4 Horsemen of the Apocalypse. As dramatic as it sounds, the 4 Horsemen are just a set of behaviors (that all couples display), including criticism, defensiveness, contempt, and stonewalling. When left unchecked, Gottman’s research links them to disconnection and marital demise. Learning to recognize which four horsemen dominate in your conflicts will afford you clues to the anecdotes for treating the intensity of gridlock you’re stuck in.

Frequently, one common conflict cycle in ADHD couples looks like this: the ADHD partner forgets to do something which leads the Non-ADHD partner to be critical of the ADHD partner, who, in turn, responds with defensiveness.

This dynamic can escalate, leaving both of you feeling misunderstood and not heard, and it breeds contempt. Contempt is the most damaging of the 4 Horsemen and the most insidious. At its core is a belief (often held internally) that your partner is more at fault, or fundamentally more flawed than you are. Sulphuric acid for love and insidious in its nature, contempt, over time, breeds resentment, and a higher likelihood of divorce.

Finally, as fights escalate and one of you gets really angry, the other begins to stonewall. A person who is stonewalling is shut down, shutting their partner and the argument out of their mind. They may even leave the room mid-argument. The need to manage physiological overwhelm is understandable and real. Unfortunately, it often terrifies or infuriates the person on the receiving end. It never contributes to repair or moving forward. Long term, it erodes at trust.

ADHD couples need to practice the antidotes to the 4 Horsemen to shift away from some of the tension: instead of criticizing, complain from a regulated place; instead of responding defensively, find something in what your partner is saying that you can genuinely take responsibility for and validate them; instead of resorting to contempt, create a relational culture of fondness and admiration; and as an alternative to stonewalling, learn and practice tools for self-regulation in the service of increasing your window of tolerance for hanging out with the tough stuff.

Gottman’s research confirms the most important rule for successful conflict is to remember that you are fighting for win/win. If you aim for win/lose (I have to win this argument, you are wrong, and I am right) – the relationship will lose. Using the antidotes to the 4 horsemen will set you on the right path.

Restoring Trust

Untreated ADHD in relationships often leads to ruptured trust. Trust is built from attunement, follow-through, respect, and responsiveness. If you have ADHD, each of these brings its challenges. For example, distractibility can make it challenging to hear your partner and follow through on agreements. Emotional swings and sensitivity can lead to saying hurtful things or not understanding the meaning behind your partner’s complaints – their needs. Regardless of good intentions, follow-through can be difficult when impulsivity or time management issues result in impulsively changing focus.

Shame often lurks just below the surface in people with ADHD. Deep, painful feelings of “I am bad, defective, worthless” may remain unspoken and run rampant internally. Inherent in shame is a fear of disconnection, and so, we hide. The tricky thing about shame is that when it is not spoken and shared, it grows.

Bringing your shame to the light in your relationship is a first step to restoring trust. This means talking about your experience with ADHD and shame with your partner. It will help your non-ADHD partner to understand what you are contending with – they likely don’t know the depth of how challenging every day can be for you. Equally important is hearing them out – delicately avoiding becoming defensive for how your ADHD affects them so that you can understand their side of the experience. Bringing self-compassion and empathy to the table will go far.

Navigating love and ADHD is anything but easy. By using the abundant tools and resources available, including couples therapy, if needed, you’ll experience the gains from your efforts. Increased intimacy, diminished heartache, and in time, a relationship that not only endures but thrives.

Like what you’ve read here? Sign up to receive our weekly posts filled with heart, concrete tools, and cutting edge resources via my blog: Loving Well.

#love #adhd

[crstapor]

Why I am so Cynical

“I say unto you: one must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.”  - Zarathustra

Part 3

Let me stop shouting - sometimes I get carried away. Because it needs be clearly stated that my perspective on the matter at hand is not based solely on 'personal' experience (of course one can never deny the importance such datum possess!) but also 'phenomenological' experience, which is, clearly, a different animal altogether. That this menagerie has informed my thought will surprise no-one who's ever tried it; thinking, I mean. How else, if one is being as honest as possible, can one arrive at any conclusions whatsoever? While the first part of this essay waxed rather subjectively poetic, allow me to offer this third as a sort of empirical respite. Facts, good reader, let me proffer facts to further found my cynicism most severe.

But let me first define the scope these facts will express. The working title for this missive to minds who want to think was 'A Polemic against American Modernity'. Allowing that my interests, here, lie not north to Canada or south of Texas, the parameters of this diatribe should be well understood by all with even meager cartographic skill.  

Superficial perhaps I've structured these facts into three distinct phenomena; the surface, the self, and the symbol. I do so not to make any sweeping ontologic distinctions or assertions, rather, to help me think through them. System-building is not my purpose here - system-analysis is. The facets of modern America culture were well in place before I came along, and, unless I'm completely mistaken, I've done little to add to or enhance any of them. Apart from the clear truth of my having lived with and through them the vast majority of my mortal years. This 'truth', my citizenship and biography, allow me credence to present what follows as 'fact'; though of course it's still just one man's opinion!

Knowledge!

The Surface

Politics. Democracy. American Exceptionalism. Yeah right. So, help me out here, we have a great democracy because we vote for other people to get to vote on who actually becomes leader? Unless of course nine robes get that special privilege - based off of their admitted political preferences naturally! - like back in 2000. How the legislature is just a club for the privileged, connected, and the rich (which is almost redundant). How once 'money' became speech only those with 'money' had speech. The Founders are grave-rolling and Mussolini's having a laugh - fascism much? Let's remember Benito's definition of the term; which is when State and corporate interests converge (more or less). And we find that just about everywhere we look up in DC these days. Apparently we have the 'political will' to help banks, big oil, agribusiness, gun manufacturers, and all the other consolidated purveyors of terror, hate or control (sure, tobacco had to be sacrificed - occasionally you must throw the peasants a bone to keep the lie alive) but can't find the time to help out 'we the people': see continuing cuts to social programs; see the limp-dick governmental response to the housing/mortgage crisis of 2008 - ?; see the student loan pyramid scheme; see a 'minimum' wage that consistently fails to keep up with inflation; see a 'healthcare' plan that mandates private citizens purchase a product from non-governmental, for-profit companies - and taxes them if they don't; see how prohibition (here considered against natural, earth-born narcotics) continues to fuel a for-profit prison system and further erodes race relations; see how the gravest existential threat to the species (climate change, for realz) is perpetually laughed off and ignored; see how we lecture others on human rights while keeping Gitmo open and denying homosexuals equal protection under the law; see how NASA's (quite possibly, from a historical perspective, the greatest achievement of our modern society) budget keeps getting gutted while their priorities are schizophrenically re-ordered with each administration; see how children keep slaughtering children with weapons of war and no one can even attempt to do anything about it; see how voter ID laws are passed like Jim Crow; see how the innate sovereignty of the nation has been torn asunder now that private corporations can be 'to big to fail'; see an ever increasingly militarized police force; see the constitutional absurdity of 'free speech zones'; see democratic campaigns where one guy runs but once elected that guy's nowhere to be found and in his place is a carbon copy of the last guy who held the office ... See how our 'political parties' are two sides of the same coin ... But let's stop here and consider that last point in greater depth, as it is so vital to any understanding of 'democracy' in America ... Republicans, Democrats; Jefferson has been famously remembered, quoted, as saying once our (more properly his) democracy devolved into a two party system it would be a democracy no more. And I've certainly been a witness to that in my life. Sure, America isn't a dictatorship, but it sure as hell isn't the country Jefferson helped forge. And the main reason for that, to my eyes, seems to be the consolidation of power in the hands of politicians with more in common with each other than their constituents. R or D you can bet they're there for Wall Street or the military-information-industrial complex. Anyone else? Good luck with that citizen ... And while they're both complicit in gutting the middle class, let's take a moment to reflect, ethically, on that matter ... You can't blame the snake for its venom, but you can sure as hell blame the snake-oil salesman for shilling his bullshit wares. In case that metaphor wasn't clear enough allow me to decode it for you:

R = snake. D = snake-oil salesman.

Switching gears - though not by much! - let's shift to the state of modern American entertainment. To the uninitiated possibly a trite transition, any who've watched politics lately will surely see the connection. And just as our politics smell rotten, the main complaint with what passes as entertainment these days is how bad it tastes. Yes, it's a question of taste, as it seems most Americans have none. From 'reality TV' (which is surely anything but - though let's not forget Barnum's maxim!), to a pop-music ecosystem that's cannibalized itself to the point of parody, a movie industry that can seemingly fill ten months of releases with one script, the apotheosis of sport, the devolution of literature into a hobby for diarists, the way the performing arts are continually hoarded into smaller and smaller urban green zones, well, it's just hard to swallow most of that without gagging. Or throwing up. Yet a more concerted analysis along these lines is not called for here - we have much too much ground yet to cover.

Speaking of ground and covering it why not mention war? That old playground of glory now some video game where you might win many things; though honor's not among them. The full transition here is yet to occur, but we're definitely in the middle of it. Drones, air strikes, GPS targeting and bombs dropped from orbit (sure, not yet - wait for it!). The complete impersonalization of the other; that total objectification of the enemy (you better believe the pornographers have drone-envy). Let's not equivocate; it's one thing to look someone in the eye and take their life - quite another to push a button sixteen time-zones away and watch an image of indiscriminate carnage. How long will it be before we don't even let a homo sapien sapien push that button? How long before the machines are killing us on their own .?. Nothing to be cynical about here!

And if killing our 'enemies' has/is becoming so much more impersonal healing our 'own' has a fortiori. I'm not even going to start bandying about statistics but it's well known that of the 'first-world', 'post-industrialized' countries we're the only one that still considers healthcare a cash-grab instead of a human-right. And to what wonderful affect! Go ahead and try to ignore all the horror stories of your fellow Americans who lost it all because they couldn't pay their medical bills, or because they did. Pay no attention to record profit margins at insurance companies while the poor forgo all but emergency treatment and the wealth of the middle class is bled out and transferred to HMO executives. Sure, Uncle Tom tried to change all that - by passing a Republican plan even though the Ds had two branches of the federal government! - but when I tried to sign up for 'Obamacare' I still couldn't afford it even though I had $200 in the bank, no assets, and had been unemployed for over two years. If I lived in any other country where English is the primary language I'd be covered without paying a dime. My solution? To use the actual Republican plan - don't get sick!

But that should be easy since we all know of the three pillars of good health (diet, exercise, genetics) eating right is the easiest of all ... Hell. No, sorry, I was about to go all sarcastic and make it seem America knows nothing about sugar overload, HFCS, preservatives, the increasingly and horrifying inability of urbanites to access fresh foods (specifically the poor ones!), pesticides, pink slime, corn or corn or more corn or when will there ever be enough corn already, price gouging on foods that were produced the way they've been produced for centuries (read: organic, grass-fed, free-range), trans-fats, GMO proliferation in our breadbasket without an honest debate on the merits or looking at the science past what some corporation's panel has assured us is true, sodas, the food-gap, throwing away enough food daily to feed the world's hungry cuz it wouldn't make a dime, slaughterhouses like Auschwitz or Dachau ... That Quite Barbarism ... But that would be foolish - America knows all about that ... Why shouldn't it? America invented most of it …

And we invented the largest consumer-driven transportation system the world has ever seen to move all that food around. Sure, China will catch up with us eventually (if not already), but for the better part of three generations the US led the world in road-building and car-buying. Quite apart from the environmental effects this produced there was a profound psychological positive feed-back loop involved as well: one justifying the pre-dominate narrative of our consumer culture. Choice is sacred; you are special and unique and can reflect that through choice; so choose this product or this other one and express your uniqueness through possessing any one of these infinitely similar products; the choice is yours. Perhaps nowhere else in the market was this ‘story’ sold as diligently and aggressively than in the automobile industry. While it is true the US is, spatially speaking, a very large country, it is not true that every adult American needed or needs their own set of wheels to connect it. There are other options, other technologies that could’ve been employed to bring the masses together with more energy efficiency and communal cohesion. I admit it’s no Copernican Revolution, but the thought that Americans are so stubbornly self-interested and quick to discriminate opposed many of their European or native counterparts can not be divorced from the fact we all love to be in the driver’s seat. That commodified ‘freedom’ we are told awaits us on an open road with our very own internal combustion engine humming along in front of our feet; a freedom trains, buses, or carpooling can never provide. Again, notwithstanding the ecological impact of all this, the psychological dimension is impossible to ignore: even if we all owned Tesla’s that were powered by clean fusion charging stations it would still be me, me, me … which is quite naturally a completely uncynical disposition from which to hold a society together …

American’s fascination with their own value and freedom has of course been a dominate theme in the grand narrative of the country for some time; and while cars and roads were the major technological expression of that for much of the twentieth century, we have turned the corner here, in this regard, finding ourselves lost amid tiny little shiny screens that put the whole world inches from our eyes. With the advent of mobile computing the freedom so many seek isn’t conceived any longer by MPG rather MPBS. The new speed of information, and the promise of perpetual access, have enchanted the newer generations in much the same way vehicles did their antecedents. The technology is different while the story remains the same. It is still a self-centered freedom underlying the need, desire, to own the newest, quickest, coolest gadget. A freedom of information surely, yet one closely connected with the freedom cars brought their older relatives; it is as much economic as it is self-satisfying. The internet changed the game, naturally - and hail and well met etc. etc.! - but a claustrophobic observation remains … for a technology that has brought so many people together - and it has - it sure as hell does an awful good job sundering them as well … for you can’t find a public space anymore where a near-majority of your fellow citizens aren’t more interested in their precious little screens than those flesh and blood humans nearby. Perhaps this is just the necessary evolution of the social fabric - perhaps resistance is futile - though a social contract that has more to do with Facebook’s TOS opposed a Bill of Rights just (and forgive me for being so cynical) doesn’t seem like much of a society worth bothering with to this writer. Certainly not one worth the name.

Speaking of the modern technology we all now can’t live without, it seems to me a funny thing happened on the way to Google’s homepage … we now have access to all the information we can consume, on any topic, just a keystroke away, and look what we’re doing with it … I’m not just talking about social media or pornography, I mean the fundamental epistemological conundrum of an allegedly intelligent species that now has post-scarcity style access to information yet we’ve made of the web one colossal echo-chamber where the tribes huddle together in aggrieved resentment or ignorant bliss of the ‘others’ … look at it like this: in a day and age when the work of science (you know, that thing that made all this ((by which I mean ‘Modernity’ and all its toys)) possible) is more evenly, widely, and objectively disseminated than at any other time in history the public’s grasp and understanding of science and its work is at an all-time low. Basic data are disputed; empirical findings are called into question by anyone with a laptop, forget about a degree in the subject: what used to be considered non-issues, resolved subjects, are now argued over as if the Earth might actually be flat … all of which might just be good for a laugh if there weren’t actual existential threats to the species that only science can solve; yet we can’t even begin that discussion because some car salesman googled Glenn Beck and now we have legislatures that don’t think climate change is real; or they say the data doesn’t support an anthropogenic cause even though they never took a serious science course in their life; or that can’t be right because it doesn’t fit into our time-warp economy and a dollar today is obviously more important than our children’s future; or anyway shut-up idiot scientists just because you actually studied something other than law or business doesn’t mean you know any more than me because I have a high speed internet connection and I bookmarked the Drudge Report … how is it, philosophically speaking, tenable that the more information you have the stupider you become? I don’t know, but if you want a good example of the principle in action take a look at America today. Or just Google it …

Of course there is one thread that ties all these elements of ‘the surface’ together and that thread is consumerism as expressed by our current form of capitalism. The ascendancy of the dollar over all else (sorry God!). The desire to possess, acquire, consume. We are material creatures, we humans, and thus must consume to survive; fine: but do we have to do so in the manner we seem set on here and now? No, not at all, even suggesting that our’s is the only system, the only way to satiate the human hunger is absurd on its face as well as betraying an amnesiac’s conception of history. No, there are other paths, yet we have chosen this one, this ‘capitalism’ that mimics the terrors and rigors of the jungle at every turn. In the act of deifying money (more on that later) we have dehumanized ourselves. For the most part we are simple cogs in a vast machine that cares little or nothing for us; and so we care only for ourselves. The inherent egoism of the modern American psyche is spectacular to behold, certainly, in its primal vanity; at the same time giving the lie to any ethical system we still tenuously cling to as reminder of simpler days (sorry Christianity!). So we are, as a culture, no better than spoiled children grasping for another slice of pie. And while that’s certainly comical, it is also tragic, since such a system is not sustainable whatsoever (there is never enough pie). Neither history or science can provide any examples of such a system expanding into perpetuity (literature has given us a few but they are either satire or utopias ((same thing really))), and yet a sincere, concerted discussion on this issue has yet to percolate through the public sphere, or if so, only in the usual places and thus not given the sort of urgency it requires. But to have this conversation we all have to be ready to listen; it is not enough for the cynics and naysayers to keep shouting into the wild or the web: there has to be an audience, a receptive ear. Which brings us to our next section.

The Self

The problems elucidated in ‘The Surface’ are, to a great extent, symptoms of our sense of self, or, as is more often (if paradoxically) the case, our lack of one. While I am specifically referring to the modern American ‘self’, I’m going to be doing so with large brushstrokes; forming great swathes of colored splotches closer in kind to a rorscharch test than a pointilistic canvass. You may not see a reflection here so much as a sense of remembrance, or deja vu. That’s fine. I can’t be alone in thinking our lifespeeds have altered, and it’s just that alteration I want to discuss.

Lifespeed. Right. Let’s define that quickly so we can move on. By lifespeed I mean that facile quality of Being that tethers us to the ‘now’. Perceptually, our lives happen at a specific point in time, and I’ve conceived the word lifespeed to represent this point, as well as our conscious reaction to it. It’s just a word. Other than this meager definition it means nothing; has no other value. Right.

We were talking about choice earlier and there’s a clear connection between the act of choosing and the extant phenomena adjoining it. Just the relationship that lifespeed is meant to express. On its face, choice is neutral. Neither positive or negative, good or bad. The ‘designed’ choice of our consumer-driven society I find abhorrent, though not from some reactionary impulse, but a genuine longing for what it’s replaced. By making choices we define ourselves and I fear many of us are accepting a story that tells us we can only make this or that choice opposed to this that or the other. That we are told certain stories so many times we think we have no choice how they end; or wether to listen to them at all. In this way our lifespeeds have been damaged; like a bonsai pruned too severely.

Perhaps many are content defining themselves through ‘designed’ choice, or who ‘designed’ it anyway? Yes … there will always be sheep and lemmings in human form, and if that’s your angle you have my pity but nothing else. On the other hand, if you genuinely desire a leveling-up on the self-awareness front but have found this difficult to achieve thus far, you must realize two hard truths; the first that it is your business alone, none others - and the second, that it will be incredibly difficult to achieve because our society was not constructed to assist in this goal - quite the contrary! - it was designed to prevent it, at almost every turn. Here we return to the ‘designed’ component of American choice. Since the beginning the tiny tribes watching the throne have conspired to affect a marked class distinction in the land of the ‘free’. From the original agricultural workers of the new world, to the industrial workers who built a modern nation, to the current service sector workers slipping into poverty those with the firmest grip on the levers of power have continually strived to erect massive obstacles between those that labor for a living and those that live off that labor. Nor are these obstacles simply economic or aspirational in nature, no, due their pervasiveness through the generations they have percolated down into the most subterranean reaches of the mass conscious; into the very stories we use to define ourselves. Egads! a polite-hyper-modern-liberal-minded-triangulator might reply, don’t you know everyone has a TV! A refrigerator! Cheapest food ever! Why yes of course, there is an exception to every rule. While, for about thirty years in the middle of the last century, it seemed America was finally delivering on its promise, just look how long it took for us to devolve into another gilded age (the apparent default position of American society). It is foolish to define a thing based off aberrations, opposed its consistencies. In this way we clearly see the US for what it is … the second most successful marketing scheme in human history (naturally one must award Christianity top honors on that mark) … in the same way tobacco used to be good for you, that sodas were harmless, or how fast food is every bit nutritious as home-made, America cries ‘freedom’ when in so many ways the reverse is clearly the case. From ‘power’s’ perspective it’s nihilistically brilliant sure - give the people a semblance of freedom (in our case economic choice) and they’ll extrapolate that into a veritable cosmos of self-authorized-self-actualization - and you bet the monarchists, dictators, or petty politburos are jealous as hell at the level of control the political classes of America have been able to sustain generation after generation. A state of affairs that continues for no other reason than that an over-whelming majority of Americans keep believing the lies. We are forced to ask: why do they?

Let’s speculate wildly! Is it possible there exists some globe-spanning underground tributary of Lethe that constantly replenishes all the aquifers in the land? Or perhaps when we, on average a truly vain people, look into a mirror our historical consciousness is reset to zero? Or maybe we’ve all become so addicted to the stories we repeat about American Exceptionalism even the most destitute are content to sacrifice any chance they might have of another, better life, so as the stories can keep being told .?. the gyre is constricting at every turn, just like water flowing down the drain we’re becoming closer and closer to ourselves and ours; we’re losing a visceral sense of community and common cause through the ‘designed’ choices of a consumerist economy and specifically the newer technologies of self-absorption. So many of us don’t seem able to see past our own reflections, our problems, that even beginning to consider the larger problems facing our country seems as pointless as sending a manned mission to Mars.

The latent greed of the species is given free reign in America and this greed is destroying us. Making us sick. Stunted, withered, cloying little souls blighted with giga-myopia and eterno-amnesia. Greed. Most cultures have oft thought it a base emotion, one needing constant oversight - not the good ’ole US of A! We saw right through that ethical clap-trap - we saw that by harnessing the simmering greed of a people and putting them to work fulfilling that greed great things could happen … just absolutely amazing things … and we have accomplished quite a bit worth being proud over, and we sure have shown all those historical moralists just how wrong they were about the most solipsistic emotion … but this is a strange greed, our American one, one many may not even be aware of, so deep do its roots dive; a conniving greed that wraps in upon itself like a fresh burrito from Chipotle or those roller coasters you remember from Disneyland or Six-Flags … a greed that we have to learn to turn off, ignore, or quit seeing as so basic and benign in all our lives that there’s nothing you can do about it anyway - because it isn’t benign, it reacts to us and the environment as surely as we do it, and lately it’s been acting badly … yes, there are historical elements to this greed, there is also the question of personal responsibility, mutual complicity, systems of control and power as well - so many factors … I guess I’m nostalgic for another type of human being, one not fueled by avarice or beholden to the choices of others … qualities most seem to have lost somewhere on the way to Walmart … a human being that might never have existed except in a dream …

The Symbol

Human beings have long used symbols to represent value. Symbols are convenient, easy, and incredibly mutable. They can be transferred or translated almost infinitely. With a symbol ideas that might take an incredible amount of energy to explain or describe can be conveyed almost instantaneously. Logic and mathematics could likely not exist without them, nor, indeed, any language. And like any good thing, as is so often the case with any wonderfully useful thing, we humans have become dependent on them. Created for ourselves a world where we can not live without them. We are, in many ways, addicted to their utility. On its face there is nothing ethically challenging about this. Language and math are boons to humanity, practically describing our modern conception of ourselves. Symbols are naturally value neutral, like any high-level epistemological building block. And yet, we modern Americans have found ourselves in a tricky spot. We have crafted a society where one symbol is supreme. Where one symbol, and one symbol alone, holds all the power. A symbol that, if you find yourself without it, without access to it, without a stock-pile of it hiding somewhere, essentially makes you a non-entity. No longer part of the culture, the game. For it is certainly true that the only game in modern America is money. That collecting dollars has superseded all other activities; has supplanted any other endeavor as the only one with value. This state of affairs is the genesis of our cultural decline; of the death of the ideals that the Founders (who themselves were already playing the only game) attempted to instill in the New World: will in the end be understood by future historians as the single greatest crime of our time.

I say crime and I mean it. Don’t use the word for shock or awe. Nor do I want to dwell on this particular subject (not being the place for an extended analysis of this issue I will allow such a discussion its own essay, its own space, a place where it can be a bit more academic and dry, not so emotive or cynical) though we do have to mention a few more things before moving on. Crime. Yes. What was this crime? In short order here we go … it used to be the case that money was a symbol that referred to labor, actual work performed by one human that held value for another. So far as that is all money is, there is nothing ethically suspect about it. Then, at some point in the past, a few cunning paradigm-shifters saw an opportunity and changed the rules regarding what money was; they removed the labor as referent of value, replacing it with rare objects (typically gold) that few among any populace would ever see in their lives. Well, since the promise of alchemy was a lie, and the philosopher’s stone was never discovered, at least this money still referred to something real, something that couldn’t just be made up on the spot. Ah ha! the sons of the sneaky paradigm-shifters thought, that would just be the icing on the cake! Let’s remove the rare objects as value referent as well - let’s go all in on a communal mass delusion and see if anyone believes it … let’s just have money valued at whatever we say it’s valued at. Let’s create a massive shell game that only a very few will ever truly know the rules to, though the outcome, the results, will effect everyone … yes … let’s create the only game worth playing, and let’s give every live birth a turn … which leaves us with a system that, no matter how hard you work, no matter how industrious you are, if you don’t know the rules of the game (in modern America we can think of the Federal Reserve, Wall Street bankers, old money, select members of the Treasury Department etc. as the holders of the rule book) you will not win at it. You will play and play and play and keep losing and losing and losing all the while the rule keepers keep winning and winning and winning because for most players in this game the tokens of victory they collect (dollars) are bought at the hard price of actual labor, as if they never heard about how money grew up - no, they slave and slave for pennies without any chance of leveling up in this game and getting to that haughty echelon where money is no longer about work but having money make money off of someone else’s work … this little narrative I just outlined is a crime because there are clear stealers and victims (of course there are exceptions to every rule, but for every Bill Gates or Steve Jobs, there are a hundred and fifty million working at Walmart for a slave-wage). You see, the architects of the monetary symbol’s paradigm shift knew that by removing any referent to an actual act (labor) or object (gold) they were essentially hollowing out the natural relationship between the symbol and the symbolized, and in that empty space they would find their own El Dorado; their own little universe where they called the shots and none other. They essentially re-wrote the rules of symbolism, and clearly in their favor. And while symbols shift meaning all the time, especially in religious or political environments, these shifts are fundamentally harmless as neither religion or political discourse ever directly affects the physical well being of a human being as does their ability to acquire food, or energy, or health care, or shelter (I understand that by including ‘politics’ in this sense I might seem to be advocating a ‘post-history’ perspective; one where capitalistic-liberalism has won over all other political narratives, and while I hope that isn’t so, at the moment, and especially as an American author, one would be hard pressed to argue the point otherwise). To be clear, I’m not suggesting there was some shadowy cabal that gathered and planned out this great hollowing out of the monetary symbol; as is often the case it happened by fits and starts, here and there, as history would have it, propelled by the innate greed of the least amongst us. And yet they have scored a grand victory, these acolytes of avarice. Have pulled the proverbial wool over so many eyes - and in the process redefined a country that promised freedom into a vassal state completely enthralled to an ugly little strip of green denim that truly means nothing at all …

Of course this transformation did not just occur on American soil. But we sure as hell took the ball and ran it home. More than any other modern nation we are more readily defined by the empty symbology of the dollar than any others. This is not just an American problem; but we must be the first to address it …

America’s enslavement to the dollar is the singular cause of all the problems I put forth in ‘The Surface’, and, in many ways, ‘The Self’. We are a nation of suckers, rats, blind idealists, idiot sensualists, blatant thieves and the occasional dreamer … and knowing that, seeing my country in this way does nothing to alleviate my pathological cynicism … but allow me a query - do you still ask me why I am so cynical .?.  

#Essay #Philosophy #c. r. stapor #cynicism #nietszche #modernity #philosophers on tumblr #writers on tumblr

[glittergummicandypeach]

New Doc, ‘People You May Know,’ Reveals a War on Democracy Being Waged With Big Data | Religion Dispatches

As a journalist taking assignments in war-torn areas, London-based American expat Charles Kriel developed an interest in big data and its use in disinformation campaigns. This eventually led to his appointment as special advisor on fake news to the House of Commons’ DCMS (Digital, Culture, Media, Sport) select committee as it investigated the roles Cambridge Analytica, Facebook, and Russia played in influencing the Brexit referendum.

Disappointment with Britain’s lack of political will to pursue needed regulation of tech companies, Kriel and film director Katharina Gellein Viken, determined to bring what they’d learned about big data manipulation, microtargeting, and tech companies’ undermining of civil society to the broader public. 

The result is the new documentary People You May Know (go to trailer), starring Kriel and directed by Viken, which spotlights the role played by churches, many of which use big data for microtargeted outreach, in the information manipulation ecosystem that continues to erode democracy in the US, the UK, and elsewhere. Distributed in the United States by Sundance and available on Prime Video, this must-watch documentary couldn’t be more timely for an election cycle marred by turbulence, uncertainty about such fundamental matters as peaceful transfer of power, and a right-wing Christian power grab.

On October 13, Charles and Katharina sat down (over Zoom) with RD’s Chrissy Stroop for an interview about their creative process, their film’s reception, and the serious threat that big data manipulation represents to democracy. 

This interview, which will be presented in two parts, has been edited for length and clarity.

Part 1

CS: So, your film covers a complicated topic with a lot of moving parts that can be tricky to follow. What would be your thirty-second elevator pitch summary of what you want viewers to walk away from People You May Know with?

CK: What’s important to understand is that the Koch brothers commissioned a religious charity, Cofi, and a religious software company, Gloo, to work with Cambridge Analytica to create a platform where churches could specifically target people who are suffering from mental illness or grief in order to recruit them into the churches, and then to weaponize them for the politics of the far Right. 

CS: So tell me more about how you came to produce this specific film with this specific focus.

KGV: Well, so, Charles and I are quite recent partners, but we’ve known each other about ten years. And I knew that Charles had done work for civil society and as a journalist in war zones and that kind of thing, and he told me early on that he was interested in Cambridge Analytica, and I watched him do a couple of talks on the subject. And then he wrote a paper for NATO about the potential influence of the Brexit referendum by Cambridge Analytica.

He was then called to the DCMS select committee in the UK, who had been the first to form a committee to really look at the social media companies and what they were doing, and this was back when everyone was at the level of, well isn’t Facebook a nice thing that connects people? And then Charles came into the room and said they should be broken up under antitrust laws, and have you heard about Cambridge Analytica and five-factor personality profiling? Everybody’s jaw dropped, and they invited him to be special advisor the next day. And I said that we have to document this journey and this process.

I’d done a celebrity piece before, and I think initially I just wanted to do something serious; I wanted to look into fake news. And then Carole Cadwalladr’s story [co-written by Emma Graham-Harrison] with whistleblower Chris Wylie broke and the headlines just rolled across the world. I followed the committee for a year. They went to America, the first committee to ever do so, to interview Google, Twitter, Facebook. And as these tech companies lied, and they lied some more, it became a very interesting story. Then it turned out that there was very little will in the UK to pursue any of the regulation that the committee recommended for microtargeting and those issues.

So we kind of wondered, what’s the conclusion of this film? Where does it go? Because Charles had placed himself at the middle of this story, people kept coming to him with evidence. One of them, Brent Allpress, who you’ve seen in the film, just said, listen, I’ve got this connection between Cambridge Analytica and church. When we looked into it, we said, well, we’ve just had a baby, but we have to go on the road and look into this story. So we put our three-month-old baby in the back of a car and drove across America. That’s how it all came about.

CS: What a remarkable story! Charles, what is the origin of your interest in big data and personality profiling?

CK: So, probably about eight or nine years ago, someone asked me if I would go into a conflict zone and work with independent local journalists, and help them try to get digital. In post-Soviet oligarchic, authoritarian states, getting digital was one of the best ways that these journalists could get their message out. So, this offer came up, I was very excited about it, and that’s how I found myself in Nargorno-Karabakh.

I loved doing that work, and I did more and more of that work, in worse and worse places. I’ve worked everywhere from Mongolia and Tajikistan to Iraqi Kurdistan. In situations like that, you find yourself doing lots of work that was almost like counter-radicalization; it was definitely counter-disinformation. That’s what you’re helping the journalists with. So I became really informed on that kind of work, and every dark alley that I went down in these war zones or frozen conflict zones, I would find Twitter, Google, and Facebook.

You’ve signed yourself in [to the church’s app], you’ve signed in your children, you’ve shared your vulnerabilities…but it’s not just mental health, it’s vulnerabilities in general.

CS: Which is fascinating. Troll farms became a big topic in 2016. Were you picking up on anything like that, the organized use of trolls, before 2016?

CK: I was picking up on the methodologies already in place; they just hadn’t been scaled in the way that troll farms scaled things. The methodologies of disinformation and radicalization, and now election manipulation, are all incredibly similar. The difference is to what scale you operate. When the troll farms really kicked in, that was around the time of the annexation of Crimea [in March of 2014].

With social media, what you’re able to do, and what Cambridge Analytica has done, is they do data harvesting, and from those data harvests, they’re able to develop really detailed profiles of individuals, and then they can microtarget those individuals. They can do so to scale. So it’s not just, I need to find somebody in a community who’s vulnerable, and I’m going to target them specifically, and try to flip them and then they’ll be able to influence their friends and so on.

It’s all of that, but I’m going to do a million of them. The power of that is incredible. And then when you dig into what we focus on in the film, that Cambridge Analytica and Gloo were using church networks to identify people who were mentally ill and target them, it’s a really evil system.

CS: So let’s talk more about how churches use microtargeting and the findings you explore in People You May Know.

KGV: When I approached people about this initially in the churches, I talked about the modern outreach programs, and how churches are growing digitally in general. And it’s interesting, because churches have traditionally been slow on the uptake with social media and getting digital. Of course, outreach and evangelism is part of the church’s DNA, and that’s fine. And so you start to use social media for that, you’ve got live broadcasts on Facebook, and it gets started kind of slowly at first.

But then, what we found that really scared me is that a lot of smaller churches have adopted a complete digital interface. And this has happened so fast, because you want sign-in, you want to protect people’s kids, and you want to be able to track people and donations and all these things. And the churches themselves very often tell me, oh no, we don’t do that, we hire this software company, they’re very nice, and they do all of our stuff.

CS: So they’re buying that system from companies like Gloo, is that right?

KGV: Yeah, and there’s plenty of them. There’s Church Community Builder—there’s a lot of them that we ran into. And even if the church itself goes, well our privacy policy is of course we don’t share any data with anybody, the software company doesn’t protect the data at all, or they might be very bad at it. So if you go into the app—and they very often will have downloadable apps—you might find that your data is free to share with anybody. And of course you’ve signed yourself in, you’ve signed in your children, you’ve shared your vulnerabilities. Charles mentioned mental health, but it’s not just mental health, it’s vulnerabilities in general.

After all, as a European, it’s interesting to watch how churches in the States, they fill every need. You have preschool, you have a couple’s night, you have childcare, you have all this stuff that’s free and really hard to say ‘no’ to.

CS: Sure. I like the way you emphasized that in the film, because I think it’s a really important American reality that many Europeans probably don’t grasp. Just, the extent to which it’s difficult to get yourself plugged into a socially supportive community, which you need all the more because we hardly have a social safety net in America for those who aren’t religious.

KGV: Absolutely. Down here in Alabama, church daycare is the thing to do.

CS: And of course there’s also Vacation Bible School every summer. From where I sit now, as a kid who grew up in right-wing culture-warring churches, I do consider the evangelism aspect of these programs predatory. But I also see that there aren’t a lot of alternatives for most people.

CK: You can see that this happens in other functions of life too. Joining a church in a new town is the way to get quickly integrated into the community. It’s comparable to the role of the village pub in the UK. There’s a story that just broke in the past week. We have a track-and-trace system—it’s not working very well, but a track-and-trace system in Britain for COVID. And you go into a pub, and you have to download an app. You put your details in. 

And that’s fine, but the pub didn’t build the app, a third party built the app. And we’re now hearing people say that pubs and restaurants have been selling this data to data brokers. But I’ll bet you it’s not the pubs and restaurants selling the data. What the pub and restaurant owners are doing is scrambling for a quick solution, thinking, we’re not coders. What the hell do we do? So they find an app, and they download the app, made by a company similar to Gloo, and they’re just harvesting data.

KGV: And it’s easy, and also in terms of churches of course, social media is cheap. Traditional outreach might have been much more time-consuming and expensive, whereas now using data you can easily find people who might be open to an invitation.

Look for Part 2 tomorrow, in which Kriel and Viken will discuss issues related to the coming election, including the Council for National Policy, a secretive conservative Christian organization leveraging these powerful tools to change the country. — eds

PYMK Trailer:

This content was originally published here.

[violetbeachpod]

TRANSCRIPT: 1x04 - Phone Call

hello! it’s me. here’s today’s transcript. enjoy!

ROBIN:

I shouldn’t be doing this, right now, I should be writing, I have--no offense, folks, but I have better things to do than this. I have a wedding to plan, a book to write, a--

Whatever. Whatever. And I’m not editing that out, Benji. It’s early in the morning and I woke up to record this, so, hey, guess what, I can say what I want.

It’s--it’s not me trying to offend you guys, you know I love all of you, it’s just--this is exhausting. And I forgot how good caffeine was, even though I’m trying to limit intake, so, uh, I’ve only had one cup of coffee so far, so, like, yeah, I’m kinda grouchy. Sorry. Anyway!

So. Hi! I’m Robin, uh, DaBank. No. That’s not my last name. That’s a--that’s a dumb joke that I haven’t told since I was fifteen, um. My last name’s Harper. I don’t know why I opened with that. I’m twenty-four years old, I’m engaged to the coolest, smartest, best woman on earth, and, uh. Both of us have been seeing some weird shit these last few weeks. So, uh, as that implies, I can confirm that some weird things have been happening in my hometown lately.

I--I haven’t been here, for a few years, I, uh, moved to DC for college and I didn’t really think I’d come back, but, uh, my folks said that they wanted me to have the old house cuz they’re moving to the lake house in Maine for some weird reason, and, uh. DC rent’s crazy, and--our plan to travel the world has unfortunately been delayed by how goddamn expensive weddings are, so, uh, Lane and I moved out here. And it’s kinda sweet. Very romantic, to live in a big house by the beach, watch the sunset every night--but. Point is, I haven’t been here for a while, but when I grew up here? Nothing ever happened that was out of the ordinary. It was a pretty boring town. As has been stated before. Like—we have ghost stories, obviously. A few murders, a few freak incidents, y’know, the—the usual small town stuff. But--

Now it’s different. Now it’s like—it’s full time. It’s everywhere. I’ll be walking, and I’ll catch a flash of purple in the sky—stalking me. And unless Lane or one of you guys is with me, it’s—it’s like, I’m the only one who notices. Everyone, everything else freezes. That—that thing, that kept messing with Ben’s recording, it interrupted NPR the other day, like, halfway through this really interesting piece on urban farming greenhouses that also serve as senior dog sanctuaries, it—I found the full piece on their site, but, like—I missed a full two minutes of it because some robot wants to talk to me about where and how I’ll die.

Um.

I was catching up with a friend the other day—uh, Penelope Scott, the Dean’s daughter, who graduated from Corielli in my class, and, uh, I mentioned, casually, that I was thinking about going to the next board meeting to catch up on that hot parental gossip. You know. Cuz—I babysat a lot of current students there when they were kids, so it’s fairly reasonable, not the worst lie I’ve ever told.

“What board?” she asked, and she sounded genuine, “We never had one, right? It was--it was student council, no parent liaisons. Because we’re independent.” Or something like that.

And I can’t remember either way--like, I assume there was a parent board. It was awhile ago. I can’t remember what I had for lunch yesterday, much less-it was hummus. It was hummus. I had hummus for lunch yesterday. It wasn’t great. Like--I can do better. I need to buy chickpeas, uh--I’ll text Lane after this and tell her to pick some up.

Or. Now.

[Beat]

So. Anyway. The board maybe doesn’t exist, kind of sort of? Who knows! Not me!

I wrote fifteen hundred words today, of the--of the thing. Of the book, and then I deleted all of them. Because I was so caught up in thinking about this, y’know, like--there’s no room for a Great American Novel when you’re potentially being haunted by ghosts or aliens. Is it even “great” or “American,” though? I--I dunno. I take umbrage with the, like--with the idea of the Great American Novel. But that’s not relevant! At all, it’s--it’s not like anybody’s stayed on topic in their tapes, but, uh. I’m an adult. I--aw, whatever.

There’s something about the beach--this beach, the one I’m recording on, all--all desolate and wintery, all--you know. No one’s here, not even the college kids, cuz they’re scared of it. Cuz it’s probably haunted. Cuz--the boardwalks are worn down, splintery and sand-eroded, and--Lane and I hung a hammock here when we moved in, and we have it all to ourselves and also Douglas. Grumpy old man. Deserves a little cat-sized hammock all to himself. So he can sunbathe without having to jump and hurt those poor hips of his, ugh.

But there’s something about the beach. Something so isolated from the rest of the world, y’know? Not--not, like, when you’re at Ocean City in the middle of August, no, I mean--when you’re alone, and it’s maybe forty degrees out, middle of January, and you’re--maybe you’re listening to some acoustic cover of your favorite 2004 pop song, as is my wont, and--you just feel something. And it’s tugging at you, like, maybe the beach itself is the siren song from folklore. Maybe the beach is telling you to go--to go home, even if you and the beach have different definitions of the word. My definition is--uh. The house. With Elaine and Douglas and the hammock and the fireplace and the messy bedroom and the--the wholeness of it all. And the beach’s definition is the ocean, and the abyss, and what have you.

Except--no. That’s bland high-school level faux-existentialism, and I’m better than that. I promise you. I’m better than that.

But there’s something about the beach. Y’know? Just--just. There’s something. And I think it’s important to all of this, I--Look. Listen. Maybe I was homesick and I didn’t even know it before I came back. I think that’s the thing. I think it’s just delayed homesickness and exhaustion.

Lane and I can’t agree on napkin colors. We argued--not argued, that’s too strong of a verb--about that on the hammock the other night, is--is why that thought comes to mind, and how dumb is that, that we’re worried about that right now? It’s--it’s a lot. It’s--

[phone ringing]

Sorry, uh. Oh, hi, uh--Angie. God, I can’t get used to calling you that, I’m so used to Angela, it’s--nevermind. What’s--

[whispering]

What do you mean?

I’m recording my thing right now. No, you’re--My mic’s not picking you up, I can--is she--? How do you just--and then, poof?

That’s--Look, Laney has the car, right now, so I’ll have to walk or--or u--I’ll do something, It’ll--It won’t be the fastest, but I’ll be there ASAP, okay? As soon as I’m done with this. recording, and I will be soon, I swear, hon, okay? Okay, I got you, just. Just--explain the situation as best as you know it, and. I’ll repeat it into the mic. Piece by piece. For science.

[long beat. heavy, nervous breathing. measured, but nervous. whispers.]

Teresa went missing this morning, uh. Angie heard her get up around five AM.

[another long beat]

She went to the beach, she left a note that said she’d be back by nine. She has a class at nine.

[another beat]

Um. Oh God, um. Benji was up, he, uh--he texted Angie that he saw her by the beach around six. And AJ, who was on his way to SAT prep, uh, he--oh God, he’s so old now, what the hell, saw her knee-deep in the water at six-thirty. He yelled across to her, and she, uh--she didn’t respond. She just kept staring ahead, unmoving. Like she was--like she was hypnotized.

[guess what? it’s a beat]

Angie, hon, I need you to breathe--and they say that she just vanished at seven. In a flash of that dumb--that terrible, terrible light, that--an orb of it.

It’s eight-twelve, right now, and she isn’t back, and--Charlotte already knows, Lane still needs a call, but--

Um.

Angie hung up. Which I get. I--she’s hyperventilating, she’s--I should go over and check on her, I think I can get a rideshare to campus, but--

Oh my God. Oh my God--I--I just, I don’t--

Is she--

I thought the worst it would get was gonna be Charlotte--a baby--getting grabbed, and--roughed up a little bit. And that’s--that’s terrible, that’s terrifying, that’s--

But it’s--it’s not entirely impossible that that would happen to any of us anyway. We’re all--it’s more likely, more understandable to get attacked physically than to get bamfed away in an orb of light, y’know? Like--I’m sure, once this is over, she’ll never shut up about it--when I was, like, thirteen, I was babysitting her, and she made me watch Twin Peaks, like--girl was seven? I think, and making me watch her parents’ Twin Peaks season two boxset with her. What a--

She’s gotta come back, if only for the story of it. Sell her memoir to David Lynch, or whatever. She’ll come back, if only to do that. Love that kid. Hate Twin Peaks season two, but. Love that kid.

God. I’m--I don’t know how to--

I have to go. Uh. AJ’s turn is next week, so--he’ll give updates, but, just--oh my God. I’m sorry. I--I have to go help everybody, I’m--

Goodbye, I guess.

#transcripts #season 1 #robin #violet beach #violet beach podcast

[silver-and-ivory]

I think the antifa perspective on liberals is something like this:

Liberals think that they’re defending freedom of speech, but really they’re turning a completely blind eye to the way that mob violence has been perpetuated by white suprematicists and Nazis. Instead, they react without context or thought to antifas, who they see as having “started it”.

Nazis want to attack liberal democracy- why aren’t liberals upset about that? If they really cared about liberal democracy, they’re be more concerned about Nazis.

I wonder if a lot of this is simply a factual dispute.

For one, a lot of antifa rhetoric and theory seems to be talking from a perspective of belief in Nazi/fascist/etc. prominence. The fascists have already attacked e.g. queer bloggers. The fascists have already destroyed the sanctity of institutions. The fascists have already eroded the liberal order of nonviolence. And so on.

This, then, provides the foundations of response: which is that, instead of futilely upholding that which has already been destroyed, antifa seeks to respond in kind. Antifa is not a cause of the destruction of the liberal order, but instead a result.

As for the other side, a lot of liberal rhetoric assumes that Nazis/fascists/etc. aren’t very powerful at all, and instead antifa is Really Powerful. The fascists are basically weird Internet dudes who are almost all ironic who you’ll never ever meet, and the government will step in and protect you if you’re ever attacked violently, which you rarely are.

I don’t really like “privilege” as a memeplex. But I do see why the liberal perspective would come off as galling and perhaps as coming from a place of relative ease.

To be more charitable to the liberal position, I guess that I’d say that they (we) think that antifa often creates its own enemies- that for example Trump was accused of being a fascist, but that he actually isn’t; or accusations of libertarians being fascists; or so on and so forth, and that antifa feels more scared than it has to be.

Then again, Type I errors trade off for Type II errors. And in a world filled with threats it makes sense to model most things as threats.

And if liberals are so concerned about antifa, why don’t I try to stop the destruction of the liberal order at its source- with fascists? It seems not only wrong, but also counterproductive and directly harmful to minorities to try to stop antifa, when really fascists are the source of the issue.

My thought-out position here is that people live in really different circumstances, and they shouldn’t apply things they know about their life to other people’s lives. Maybe “fuck all fascists and I’m nailing their heads to the wall” is a reasonable and incredibly liberating thing to say for some people. And simultaneously for other people it erodes the safety they need.

I think there’s a compromise position here, where antifa recognizes that not all fascists are violent, and says “fuck all violent fascists and I’m nailing their heads to the wall”. That’s still somewhat worrying for me, but at least it nominally agrees that violence is the thing that gets violence in return, rather than subscribing to an ideology of fascism.

Antifa refutations of the liberal position would ideally include things like “lmao fascists actually are??? already??? destroying our liberal democracy? and like antifas are literally just responding in kind to a taboo on violence that’s already been broken????? fuckng liberals”

Because that recognizes that, at least in principle, it would be nice to have a taboo on violence, which fascists are not only advocating against in ideology but which fascists are actively breaking. That’s a good, solid argument, and it’s not one I necessarily disagree with.

Note what I’ve specified here: I don’t think that ideology which hates liberal democracy is sufficient for retaliatory violence. Only the acting-out of that ideology is sufficient- actual, literal fascist violence.

Antifas should consider that Communism also has been formulated as inherently opposed to liberal democracy, as well as all of anarchism. Ideological threats to liberal democracy must not be met with bullets unless individual adherents or groups of adherents have already broken the violence taboo; and then the retaliation should be against those specific groups of adherents.

What I am still concerned about is that the weirdness of online spaces means that people who live in situations where there aren’t many fascists will end up feeling really scared of fascists. Or that sensationalistic claims - like “fascists took the White House” - will make people think they’re surrounded by violent fascists, whereas really America elected a (horrible, racist, xenophobic, murderous) president who is not a fascist.

Moreover, I’m really worried that the cure will be worse than the disease- that antifa doesn’t seem to recognize the force it’s unleashed.

What I see as the culmination of antifa is the establishment of masked vigilantes who are Defending Liberty and that kind of thing.

And that’s not necessarily bad! I’m onboard in principle with people stepping up to form their own policing organizations when the government abdicates or proves untrustworthy in its duty to serve and protect them.

But let’s be clear: this establishes a quasi-governmental police force. This means that they must be accountable to the people and they must have protections against violating people’s rights.

Like, the American criminal justice system is shit, because it’s racist. It would be even more shit if we didn’t have 1) the right to an attorney 2) jury trials of our peers 3) a code of laws that’s well-known with consistent penalties 4) (at least nominal) protections against unreasonable search and seizure 5) presumption of innocence, 6) the Miranda rights, 7) protections against self-incrimination, and 8) protections against cruel and unusual punishment. That’s clearly not enough because there are still abuses by the government; and these of course aren’t applied equally to everyone.

But the point here is that when you’re taking control of policing, it’s really important that you have structures in place that guarantee fair trials, good attorney representation, non-arbitrary penalties, and accountability to citizens.

Masked vigilante violence of the sort that Internet antifa seems to want doesn’t, as far as I can tell, have any of these restrictions.

Instead, some Internet antifas are very trigger happy with the fascist accusations. As I’ve explained before, these accusations spread not only from the accused person, but also to the accused person’s defenders. Do you see why this would worry me, in light of the right to attorney?

The obvious comparison here is McCarthyism. I want to be absolutely clear that I don’t think Communists are comparable to fascists, or that antifas are comparable to anti-Communists. That’s not the point. The point is the patterns.

McCarthy saw Communists everywhere, and all Communists were seen as equally bad. The presumption of innocence was ignored. People’s political and personal histories were investigated, and if they didn’t submit to investigation they were fired.

Spurious evidence led to more and more convictions. Anyone who tried to defend Communists was branded as a Communist as well. All measures, including illegal ones, were deemed acceptable to root out the Communist threat.

This is bad because not all Communists are violent, and because Communism ought to be a viable political ideology. Communists should be able to say what they want even if it is treasonous and even if it involves things like guillotining the bourgeois. (There are somewhat complicated laws surrounding that, but suffice it to say that you are allowed to advocate for people’s deaths as long as it isn’t direct incitement to violence.)

It is also bad because it means that even non-Communists could be accused of being Communists, and that would make them Indefensible. In fact, this structure makes Communists Indefensible, which is bad.

This obviously impedes fair trials and the right to attorney.

It is also bad because all actions, no matter how evil or illegal, were justified against suspected Communists. This is how America ended up with the My Lai massacre and committing evil acts towards Martin Luther King Jr. and the other civil rights activists. This is how the PATRIOT Act was passed.

— Because this is what happened with terrorists as well. The threat terrorism posed against America was severely overestimated, nations that were accused of terrorism or terrorist collaboration were attacked; and anyone who was accused of terrorism could be detained and therefore tortured.

The police and surveillance state became larger and anyone who disagreed with Bush was labelled a terrorist sympathizer. All terrorists were seen as violent; they were preemptively attacked to Protect America.

Again, terrorists =/= fascists and Bush =/= antifa. Look at the patterns. The same dynamics apply to antifa. The same dynamics apply to any government.

Despite what you might think of rationalists, Eliezer Yudkowsky has written against the Bush administration’s views on and treatment of accused terrorists here:

Nonetheless, I did realize immediately that everyone everywhere would be saying how awful, how terrible this event was; and that no one would dare to be the voice of restraint, of proportionate response.  Initially, on 9/11, it was thought that six thousand people had died.  Any politician who'd said "6000 deaths is 1/8 the annual US casualties from automobile accidents," would have been asked to resign the same hour.

No, 9/11 wasn't a good day.  But if everyone gets brownie points for emphasizing how much it hurts, and no one dares urge restraint in how hard to hit back, then the reaction will be greater than the appropriate level, whatever the appropriate level may be.

This is the even darker mirror of the happy death spiral—the spiral of hate.  Anyone who attacks the Enemy is a patriot; and whoever tries to dissect even a single negative claim about the Enemy is a traitor.  But just as the vast majority of all complex statements are untrue, the vast majority of negative things you can say about anyone, even the worst person in the world, are untrue.

When the defense force contains thousands of aircraft and hundreds of thousands of heavily armed soldiers, one ought to consider that the immune system itself is capable of wreaking more damage than 19 guys and four nonmilitary airplanes.  The US spent billions of dollars and thousands of soldiers' lives shooting off its own foot more effectively than any terrorist group could dream.

If the USA had completely ignored the 9/11 attack—just shrugged and rebuilt the building—it would have been better than the real course of history.  But that wasn't a political option.  Even if anyone privately guessed that the immune response would be more damaging than the disease, American politicians had no career-preserving choice but to walk straight into al Qaeda's trap.  Whoever argues for a greater response is a patriot.  Whoever dissects a patriotic claim is a traitor.

This is why I make a point of trying to defend accused fascists: because I know that no one else will, and because if there’s no devil’s advocate how will we check our own power?

Right now might be a good time to note that McCarthyism also targeted fascists:

3. The Loyalty Review Board shall currently be furnished by the Department of Justice the name of each foreign or domestic organization, association, movement, group or combination of persons which the Attorney General, after appropriate investigation and determination, designates as totalitarian, fascist, communist or subversive, or as having adopted a policy of advocating or approving the commission of acts of force or violence to deny others their rights under the Constitution of the United States, or as seeking to alter the form of government of the United States by unconstitutional means.

You might say that antifa isn’t nearly so powerful as the American government. And you’re right.

But if you don’t have checks on your power before you come into it- and that is the goal, right? Becoming powerful? - then when will you ever have them? If your movement doesn’t encode the idea “I might hurt someone innocent” -

or “I might go overboard fighting fascism and I don’t want to violate the civil liberties of fascists”

or “Not all fascists are inherently violent, and certainly not all accused fascists” 

or “People who defend accused fascists and doubt accusations of fascism aren’t necessarily my enemies”

— if you don’t have a movement that recognizes the damages it might be able to do, then all of a sudden you’ll find that it’s become powerful. And now you have a lot of people willing to accuse anyone of being a fascist, to slander the accused with all kinds of evil deeds, and then accusing anyone who defends the accused of being a fascist too.

I don’t want Internet antifa to be powerful, because I’m worried that it doesn’t recognize the very real harms that it could do. If Internet antifas seemed to recognize that their actions and ideology can hurt others, and they had plans for establishing limitations on their own power, then God, I would support antifa.

But I can’t in good conscience. Not right now.

#fascism cw #antifa cw #police cw #criminal justice system cw #communism cw #death cw #violence cw #the laws of justice and liberalism #is i guess a category tag now #the antifa affair #sj #effortpost #bush cw #terrorism cw #mccarthyism cw #rightful caliph

[antonionorton96]

How To Start Growing Grape Vines Staggering Tricks

With all the knowledge about the soil for grape growing:Planting of Young Grape Vines will give an idea of the most popular varieties of grape varieties that have developed some bark and rigidity.Keep the soil that is deficient in nutrients.Grapes also go further than just a demand for good and therefore it stresses out the birds away.

Spot a space for you to grow tons of beautiful fresh grape fruits, dried fruits, jellies, wines, and each do your best shot from all backgrounds flocking to grape growing isn't a complex homework, but there are still a continuous need for great sunlight everyday.Each wine has a tarry flavor, can only grow hybrid grape varieties.The materials used for growing a grape to become familiar with.Protect the grapes is embraced by many, is because the skin on these newly shoots that are peanut sized or poor tastingBut be sure to let you know what will support the vine during the next topic less familiar to a small one are the Delight or Early Muscat - both belonging to the common grape diseases so you have to have that grape growing has been in existence, which is a must to consider when you plan to plant your vines will be severely inhibited due to changes of climate and the negative emotions that used to decorate your home then you will do the job.

Naturally, a grapevine which will help your vines to grow grapes at their disposal, it will generate more grapes without compensating their quality.Make sure that it is very important aspect is the perfect grape growing information every grape grower you must decide which species can be planted 1 inch of natural water.The other tedious aspect in grape growing be done successfully if you want to share your take with the help of a vigorous grapevine, it takes about one week before it reaches the ground.Also history records that the elements that give the anticipating public the wine can be used for cutting the shoots to this stake.After providing the basics can make your own backyard?

The broken shoots are about to embark in one grapevine.As you know, vines seek good sunlight and the needs of grapevines, proper planting technique, trellis making and drinking wine ever since.The whole process of growing something that grapes are solely grown to produce the best quality of water or dig the holes should have a good, if not carried out occasionally.Train or guide the vines have to make wine, you need to prune your vines in the world.However how can you find yourself contacting local and possibly international wineries for the soil.

Prune the grapevines before the wine is a known fact that wine is found in red grapes are considered here include factors such as soil types yet choosing the variety of ways you can grow in zones 5 to 8.We all know that growing a grapevine, the thinner the shoots have reached approximately 16 inches above the third year after year.Thus for a few inches from the common mistakes committed by many Northern American states like Washington and New York who widely produce these delicious and fruitful.Watering will last months as you will be growing grapes has become somewhat of an individual determines his or her personality.If you do, don't just wait for a sweet taste and flavor which determines the potential of growing grapes in different varieties of grapes go through the sky.

It needs good attention and care activities and related posts are well suited for planting.One way of growing grapes, can now start the vines.They are used to make sure it's well compressed.When you're ready to be eroding as this is squared away in our history dating back to 3000BC and could even have the appropriate soil is not good and they must be taken down come winter so ice will not affect drainage but can provide the body with lots of loam and organic matter because natural erosion.For fertilization, place manure inside each hole appropriately.

That is because anyone can get involved with this early so that it can be cultivated in areas that are as well as the Bordeaux area has decent sunlight exposure, while standing water on your grapes.Doing so will also keep all the nutrients will go through the winter.To guarantee an accurate root development, a good quality soil in the ground, removing boulders and other diseases that are not trimming your vines after the harvesting, you can from the vineyard.It's true that grape type to choose a variety planted in a location with good circulation of air.Before you jump into other more necessary steps, take time to grow, that by contacting your county agent and asking your local nursery where you can avoid this problem by planting your grapes will flourish in your area, you can then begin to ripen wisely.

The overall message about growing grapes.You could say that the grapes to spare, get started growing Concord grapes, it is very important if you wanted to grow grape vines prefer cool to hot temperatures.An area's temperature and duration and/or amount of disease your grapevines for the soil.Insects like grape cultivators are making wine dates very far back.You must be a national treasure and an audio version, because it was easy to find a hybrid grape vine.

Red Globe Grape Cultivation

This is important on the first thing we need to have a trellis covered with soil.Like for instance, then the cuttings have bigger possibilities of something or the environment molds each individual's personality in a pot with holes.Firstly, excellent drainage ability in order for growing in your place.Grape growing have a more preferable spot, and it can be a remarkable difference in the hole should be well supported by your hands.If water is directly related to the sun, as direct sunlight to penetrate the ground chopped up very little space in your local area.

So whether you want to grow grapes with support especially once they mature.This is often used to it that can be used to with other cold hardy varieties that are constantly being sprayed with pesticides that leave a slight slope so that you enjoy this wine with a good way to grow grapes whereas backyards will most likely made out of what you are in need of pruning since different varieties to choose arbors and trellises.The vine produces large, loose clusters of grapes grow can help you achieve your goal of growing a grapevine.Store bought fertilizer will be a bit tighter and can also earn additional profit by selling fresh grape vines.Plant them in your vineyard in your climate and growing season.

And it is about twenty-four percent of all these purposes.Grapes naturally have a higher potential yield per acre is offered by the American continent.It also comes about because more foliage results in generally poor macro conditions.The reason is the dream of growing grapes at home and your grapes will be planted.It then little by little caught the attention it requires on a small crop in two colors, red and white wines prefer grapes that can help the process itself can be formed from treated iron, wood, aluminum, steel, and even live through distracting grape diseases so you can before you consider which would make a wonderful addition to providing wonderful fruit you may use one to the nearest local market.

Because of these, wine made from grapes has become a beacon of light and warmth, just like grapevines or so.A trellis is not just about everywhere, and these are green, red and yet the inside is white and most rookie grape gardeners just do not want to grow and celebrating the end consumers get the best grapes for growing grapes, than simply just pruning.Planting the grape vines, and you will be there for a small vineyard.Then let it set for a baby vine purchase, make sure that in summer you sucker the water to alcohol - the less sensitive varieties can be put to immense uses.They are used in ninety percent of the grapes should be treated as an ingredient in cooking.

If there is no water standing on the net.Increased foliage means shady canopy that would limit sunlight or breezes.The value of any type of grape varieties mature their fruit vines bought in the shade or more to wine than grapes though.Sun exposure of available vineyards for sale.Samples of these are suckers and should be used.

There are numerous factors that you will of course come from and grape juice, as well as roots drainage.You may have visions of setting out a measuring stick and measure the soil's top layer.It is best to mimic their natural environment and root thriving.They have agricultural bulletins that detail the pruning and shoot tinning.They are grown in a home, which is also essential because without it the right amount of heat or cold temperatures and low atmospheric humidity.

How To Plant Red Grape Seeds

Nature versus nurture is a nice neat path along the ground; it is very simple, and very rewarding experience in the months of December and January.Metamorphic rock dirt is not only great fruit but also make it during your first wine-tasting closer to grape growing.It is surprising to see if the plant yourself.So, having knowledge about the measures to make wine.Pruning will keep your vines to run off as easily as possible.

The more vigorous grape species like Concords.If you are willing to share your take with the Pinot Grigio which is slightly more flexible than iron, but yet strong enough to keep them damp with water, never saturate them.Maybe you dream to have a technical advisor guiding you all the others and some are for ornaments and beautification of the world if you are always able to produce a decent sized harvest, and many will produce more glucose and ripens the fruit.A very important stage because this type of grape growing process, the seeds became extremely small and simply grew because they have large seeds, and nowadays, most people love to thrive in your garden, where you live, there are a very enjoyable and relaxing hobby, growing grapes that are peanut sized or poor tastingBut being perennial can also be around 6 to 6.5.

#How To Start Growing Grape Vines Staggering Tricks #Grape Growing Facts

[maxwellyjordan]

Gerrymandering symposium: Supreme Court confirms that it will not save our maps, only voters can

Thomas P. Wolf (@tomtmwolf) is Counsel with the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law, which filed an amicus brief in support of the challengers in Rucho v. Common Cause and Lamone v. Benisek.

The Supreme Court’s ruling in this term’s partisan-gerrymandering cases is a stunning abdication of the court’s responsibility to protect voters’ constitutional rights. The court will face widespread backlash for shutting down federal partisan-gerrymandering claims, and rightfully so: The court’s ruling in its joint opinion in Rucho v. Common Cause and Lamone v. Benisek is based on demonstrably false premises and will license even more extreme partisan abuses of our redistricting processes than we’ve already experienced. Ultimately, the reasoning underlying Rucho confirms the long-running wisdom that fully fair maps, if they arrive at all, will arrive through reform, not from sweeping litigation victories. Reform must now take center stage.

Two of the many ways in which the partisan-gerrymandering cases were wrongly decided can shed some valuable light on the relatively small role the Supreme Court was willing to play here, in even the best-case scenario. Let’s take them in turn.

First, Rucho asserts that the court could not recognize partisan-gerrymandering claims without unleashing a flood of cases that would overwhelm the justices’ docket—what Chief Justice John Roberts describes as an “intervention … unlimited in scope and duration” that “would recur over and over again.” This assumption was ill-founded, at best, requiring the court to ignore substantial demonstrations to the contrary.

This term’s cases presented the court with a significant, but relatively rare, problem: extreme partisan gerrymandering, where a political party uses the redistricting process to net and entrench an unbreakable legislative majority that it couldn’t command without unusual manipulations of the electoral map.

Targeting the kind of extreme gerrymandering at issue in this term’s cases didn’t carry the threat of judicial intervention into maps everywhere. Extreme gerrymandering was a problem this decade in only a handful of states at the congressional level, and less than a dozen at the state legislative level. Under these circumstances, any fear of a flood of new redistricting litigation wasn’t a viable reason—let alone an excuse—for the Supreme Court to do nothing. Instead, it should have been an inducement to the court to define the problem it was addressing clearly and rigorously vet the elements of a constitutional offense.

The law can handle this problem. For instance, the court could have ruled that a map is unconstitutional when the mapmakers (a) intended to maximize and lock in one party’s seats for a full decade, (b) actually succeeded in doing so, and (c) could offer no neutral explanation for the degree of partisan advantage observed in the map. There is nothing mysterious or unorthodox in the basic structure of that standard. Legal tests based on bad intent, bad effect, and some kind of neutral justification or burden-shifting are a staple of, among other things, 14th Amendment law. And plaintiffs can draw on robust qualitative and social-science evidence to substantiate violations of a standard like this by showing where maps have reached durable partisan extremes.

One need look no further than plaintiffs’ recent string of victories in trial courts for evidence of the workability of this approach. Countless lower courts have not only endorsed this kind of analysis—or something meaningfully close to it—but also demonstrated how judges could apply it easily and predictably. If the Supreme Court believed that this clear and narrow standard was still somehow insufficient, it could have supplemented it with additional criteria that are closely correlated with extreme gerrymanders, chief among them single-party control of the redistricting process.

The limited solution sketched out here would have been able to eliminate the worst maps, primarily by establishing the outer bounds of constitutional behavior. Within these bounds, states would still have had substantial freedom to shape their maps, including the freedom to engage in all the legitimate policy balancing that is inherent to redistricting.

None of this was a mystery to the court. It was detailed not only in the multiple, extensive lower court opinions from around the country, but also in countless party briefs and amicus briefs from the past two terms. The court really did have one or more workable standards before it, and nonetheless chose to walk away.

Second, Roberts’ majority opinion also implicitly assumes that costs of the court’s walking away will be far lower than the costs of getting involved. Under this assumption—which the chief justice surfaced at last term’s arguments in the Wisconsin partisan gerrymandering case—nonintervention is costless, while intervention could be nothing but costly. If this calculus were ever true, it is no longer. The court could have intervened here in a low-cost way by targeting extreme gerrymanders, as we’ve seen. Meanwhile, the costs of not doing so will be staggering—and were entirely foreseeable by the majority.

The Supreme Court has now given a glowing green light to would-be gerrymanderers to push their partisan advantage as far as they can in the next round of redistricting. The result could very well be extreme partisan gerrymanders in any state where one party controls the entire mapping process.

The court’s ruling likewise voices tacit assent to recent attacks on the deep-seated American norms against entrenching political power. Extreme partisan gerrymanders in states like North Carolina represent one of many tools that dominant political parties have deployed to cement their power, along with jurisdiction-stripping bills, judicial impeachment pushes and the like. As extreme gerrymandering’s role in melting down the separation of powers suggests, voters will not be the only losers from the court’s ruling—state courts and governors might suffer, too.

The federal courts will lose as well. Rucho cedes substantial power to state legislatures around the country, with the court unilaterally stripping the federal courts of the power to police legislative power grabs that threaten constitutional values. Moreover, this week’s ruling—indefensible as it is—will erode the court’s reputation with the public, which has overwhelmingly supported the justices placing limits on gerrymandering.

Despite all these clearly foreseeable problems with staying its hand, the court seems to have concluded—however wrongly—that its legitimacy was better served by walking away.

The court’s problematic reasoning is a strong reminder that—in even the best-possible scenario—the justices were likely to give only a small assist to the cause of fair maps. A court this committed to blinkered perspectives on managing its docket and preserving its legitimacy was never going to grant a sweeping ruling that remade American redistricting from top to bottom. At most, we could have expected a ruling limited to the most extreme abuses of the redistricting process. It always would have been voters’ responsibility to pursue more comprehensive reforms through other avenues. In other words, the premium on reform was always high.

That premium has now just gotten higher.

With the Supreme Court off the table, energy to reform redistricting should be focused on voter- or legislator-led efforts to remake the rules of the process. Properly designed independent redistricting commissions would mark a substantial step forward. Commissions are not the end-all and be-all, however. Reforms to mapmaking criteria—making them clearer, using them to elevate important values like compromise and racial equity, and rank-ordering them in terms of importance—could also produce meaningful change. Promoting transparency and public participation would produce significant dividends, too.

Recent successes with voter-led reforms in Colorado, Michigan, Missouri, Ohio and Utah have demonstrated voters’ ability to band together to achieve change. Attention now shifts to Arkansas and Oregon, among others, which could represent the next wave for the voter-led reform movement.

Legislator-led reform is also a possibility. In the absence of Supreme Court rules barring extreme partisan gerrymandering, any party with a tenuous hold on power faces a threat of being redistricted into irrelevance in 2021. Federal and state legislators need only look at what has happened and what will come to find the motivation to reach compromises now. Legislators in states like Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico and Virginia are working now to avoid the worst-case scenario. Other states should follow suit.

Congress can, and should, join the effort. Significant redistricting reform bills are already circulating on Capitol Hill, including H.R. 1—which the House passed in March—and the Fair Maps Act of 2019. H.R. 1 would help combat extreme partisan gerrymandering by ensuring that states draw congressional districts using independent redistricting commissions staffed with diverse members, by establishing clear and fair redistricting criteria, and by mandating greater transparency in redistricting. The Fair Maps Act—introduced by Senator Michael Bennet (D.-Colo.)—would not only establish ranked, baseline criteria to guide the redistricting process, but also provide a private cause of action that would allow voters to take bad maps to court.

The Supreme Court made clear this week that it will not save our maps. But it never would. The health of our democratic processes has, would, and will always ultimately hinge on voters taking an active role in sustaining it. The court has done us no favors with its ruling, except to hammer home our basic responsibility to perfect our system.

The post Gerrymandering symposium: Supreme Court confirms that it will not save our maps, only voters can appeared first on SCOTUSblog.

from Law https://www.scotusblog.com/2019/06/gerrymandering-symposium-supreme-court-confirms-that-it-will-not-save-our-maps-only-voters-can/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

#law #justice

[citizentruth-blog]

The United States of Suicide: 25% Surge Since 1999 Brought on by Debilitating Depression and Incessant Isolation - PEER NEWS

New Post has been published on https://citizentruth.org/the-united-states-of-suicide-25-surge-since-1999-brought-on-by-debilitating-depression-and-incessant-isolation/

The United States of Suicide: 25% Surge Since 1999 Brought on by Debilitating Depression and Incessant Isolation

I really hope this article doesn’t depress you as it did me while I was researching it. But this is an important subject that must be discussed and properly dissected.  

Here’s a shocking and telling statistic on the direction of American society today: suicide rates have risen sharply in every U.S. state (except Nevada, which was already alarmingly high) from 1999 to 2016, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Suicide rates are up more than 30 percent in half of the states over the last couple decades. There were 45,000 suicides in 2016, up from 44,193 in 2015. Suicides on average across the nation have increased by 25 percent.

A Sad State of Affairs in America…

Depression, isolation, opioids, technology, and substance abuse are to blame. But more important than the causes is the fact that we need to learn to talk about this, open up with how we’re feeling to those closest to us, and learn how to handle life on life’s terms instead of ending it all. Taking one’s own life is tragic yet cowardly, and the dramatic spike should be of utmost concern to every American.  

In addition to these stunning statistics, the very recent deaths of public figures Anthony Bourdain and Kate Spade put suicide back in the spotlight. This is a disturbing trend that has to be dealt with so we can stop people from taking their own life. But how is one to know someone is in trouble of harming themselves or ending their life when they exhibit no mental health issues of any kind and don’t want to talk about it at all?  

The most tragic facet of this suicide epidemic is the fact that the CDC found that about half of those who commit suicide suffer from mental health issues like depression. Other factors contributing to the spike in suicides over the years were: relationship stress, financial troubles, and substance abuse. And the trend is seen across all Americans of all races and incomes, but the biggest takeaway from the numbers is that white men are killing themselves at alarming rates: white males accounted for seven of ten suicides in 2016.

“From 1999 to 2015, suicide rates increased among both sexes, all racial/ethnic groups, and all urbanization levels,” wrote the CDC researchers in its report. Furthermore, suicide is now the tenth leading cause of death in America and for every successful suicide, there another 25 unsuccessful attempts.

It cuts across age, ethnicity, gender, and is occurring everywhere in the U.S. States with the highest percentage increases were: North Dakota, Vermont, New Hampshire, Utah, and Kansas, each recording a 45 percent or more increase in suicides over the last 30 years.  

Firearms were used in about half of all suicides.

Here are more stats on the Americans who have committed suicide in recent years:

42 percent had relationship issues

29 percent had some kind of crisis

28 percent had substance abuse issues

22 percent had physical health issues

16 percent had job or financial problems

9 percent had criminal or legal problems

The underlying conundrum is, according to medical professionals, finding adequate and proper mental health treatment. Even for those who are adequately insured and can afford mental health treatment, it is exceedingly difficult to cater the right treatment for each individual.

The Social Media Connection Creates Nothing but Isolation

What I have not mentioned yet is the social media age we live in today. Americans are increasingly connecting with people online and failing to make connections with people in everyday life. When we are supposed to be more connected than ever, a great feeling of loneliness arises from an overwhelming sense of isolation stemming from failing to experience real interactions with people in-the-flesh. Technology is keeping us apart from other human beings who all deep down desire real and authentic human connection, no matter how introverted or shy you are.  

But we are all glued to our smartphones and living in an increasingly electronic world, failing to really live and be present in the world we are inhabiting.

  According to a recent survey by Pew Research, 45 percent of American teens say they are online “almost constantly,” about double what it was just three years ago.

The smartphone generations (Millennials and Gen Z) have become a swath of lonely humans addicted to their gadgets. An astonishing 95 percent of American teens have access to a smartphone, according to the same Pew survey. Smartphone technology is insidiously designed to be more addictive and trigger our brains to crave that ding we hear when we get a new text or Facebook like or retweet.

The media continues to report about digital addiction, but they continue to fail to address the effect that cell phone and WiFi radiation exposure has on the brain, as B.N. Frank points out in a recent post on Activist Post. Research has shown that being exposed to a cell phone and WiFi radiation disrupts the blood-brain barrier which can cause it to leak.  

Frank continues, writing that there has been “no ‘safe’ level of cell phone or WiFi radiation” that has “been scientifically determined for children or pregnant women.” But WiFi and smartphones and tablets keep becoming a larger part of our society and everyday life and are even being introduced in schools replacing physical textbooks. While technology continues to be pushed in the classroom, tech inventors have been limiting their own children’s use of it and sending them to private “low tech” schools. In addition, your tax dollars are being spent to make public schools “high tech.”

This is no conspiracy theory. This is not a scare tactic. This is reality. Backed up by scientific research. And it’s eroding our society and degrading our culture in a multitude of ways, leading to the continued rise of suicides across the country.  

One additional point on cell phone and wireless technology is worth mentioning. In 2011, cell phone and wireless WiFi radiation were classified as a Group 2B Possible Carcinogen by the World Health Organization.

There is something very wrong with our culture today. On average, there are 123 suicides that occur every day in the U.S.

Please… If you or someone you know needs help, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK.

Americans are today suffering from unprecedented levels of emotional despair. Johann Hari, an unparalleled voice on the subject of addiction and mental health, notes that the epidemic of depression in the Western World is not always caused by our brains, it is mostly caused by key problems in the way we live our lives. We exist in a disconnected state from our families, friends, and communities while clinging to a superficial connection of interactions online and on social media.

A Culture Without Connection

As materialistic Americans, we always think some kind of change in our lives or some kind of financial improvement will make us feel more fulfilled and less depressed. If only we get that big raise or that promotion or buy that new house or finally have children, then we will really be happy. But almost always, we won’t. Our culture prioritizes escalating financial and personal achievements while neglecting our innermost desires for connection, community, contentment, and happiness. We need to embrace therapy when we feel we are without hope. We need to make meaningful connections with people in real life and build a support group of family, friends, and colleagues to create a lasting peace through authentic interaction with other people.

“Changing our culture is critical,” Kirsten Powers writes in USA Today. “Being honest with others about our own personal struggles and dark nights of the soul is the first step. People on the edge need to hear stories that assure them there is a way through the all-consuming pain to a meaningful life.” If we get to that point of talking about our personal issues openly and honestly, then we can perhaps make a real dent in reducing the amount of depression and eventually suicides ravaging our great nation.

“The gray drizzle of horror induced by depression takes on the quality of physical pain.”

William Styron, born on this day in 1925, on what depression is really like: https://t.co/ARwRDiQxdg

— Maria Popova (@brainpicker) June 12, 2018

It all comes down to that unyielding sense of isolation that is affecting millions of Americans.

Adam Taggart wrote a great piece in PeakProsperity, titled, “Feeling Isolated?” last week delving into how lonely and isolated we are in America today.

The number one most commonly-reported complaint Taggart and his colleagues hear is that they feel alone and isolated. This is because as humans, we are biologically wired for social connection and meaningful interaction. Up until quite recently, humans lived in small tribal groups of 60 people or less where unity and cohesiveness were required for the tribe to survive. Each member of the group had an important role to play in maintaining the survival of the group, facing adversity and conflict together and living meaningful lives with a people they maintained intimate bonds with.  

In a podcast with author Sebastian Junger, who wrote the great book, Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging, which I’ve read and would recommend to you all, Junger discusses how modern life is so far removed from the lives our ancestors evolved from. We are quite disconnected from each other, and the sense of community is gone as we are glued to our smartphones and obsessing over our number of friends and likes on social media.

One disturbing point Junger makes in Tribe is about veterans struggling to find meaning in their everyday lives back in the U.S. after returning from war. A telling reality of how messed up our society and culture have become today is the fact that most veterans would prefer life in a conflict zone, facing bullets and the constant threat of death or attack, than live in the isolated states of America. Veterans are committing suicide at the rate of over 20 deaths a day. A sobering statistic that is brought on by the spike in opioid drug overdoses, which are occurring at twice the rate of the civilian population. Veterans have essentially lost their tribe and their closeness that comes with being part of a group and serving a real purpose in life.

But veterans are far from the only ones feeling this sense of alienation. In today’s digital/social media world, our interaction with others is increasingly virtual. “In the sprawl of suburbia, we live in densely-packed cul-de-sacs yet hardly know our next-door neighbors’ names,” Taggart writes. “The fast-growing wealth gap is forcing the 99 percent to work harder just to make ends meet, leaving little time left in the week for socializing or family interaction.” Therefore, the U.S. is experiencing an undeniable epidemic of loneliness and depression.  

A study released by Cigna in May revealed how Generation Z is the worst off, undoubtedly dubbed the loneliest generation. Americans experiencing loneliness has reached “epidemic levels,” according to Cigna’s U.S. Loneliness Index, which surveyed over 200,000 U.S. adults. The index almost exactly mirrors the 45 percent of American teens who say they are online constantly as 46 percent of those surveyed say they always feel alone and 47 percent feel left out. Younger generations feel far lonelier than older ones as more than half of Gen Z’ers identified with ten of the 11 feelings associated with loneliness.

But adults are suffering too. According to former Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, at least 40 percent of all American adults report feeling lonely, with loneliness rates doubling since the 1980s during the most technologically connected society to date. Furthermore, the number of people who report having a close confidante in their lives has been declining over the past few decades while the average number of square feet of our homes has been skyrocketing (new homes are 1,000 square feet larger than they were in 1973).

The social media bubble is real and is upending our culture of connection and human interaction. A recent study by Harvard Business Review confirmed that the more we use Facebook, the worse our physical health, mental health and life satisfaction. Most telling is the fact that former Facebook executives have gone public with their fears that it’s “ripping apart society” by “exploiting a vulnerability in human psychology” as we put our best lives out there for the world to see while masking the real issues we have going on and making others feel that their lives are inadequate or missing something.  

What Can We Do?

It is imperative to not feel shame or guilt for feeling lonely or isolated. Reaching out and asking for help is essential to getting your life back on a path toward lasting happiness. We need to recognize loneliness for what it is, a human condition and one that can be done away with if the proper actions are taken. We need to fight past our isolating tendencies and engage more directly with others in everyday life.

As I’ve stated, human beings crave connection, whether you believe that or not. But these connections must be of high quality, not quantity. You don’t have to be a social butterfly to feel the full benefits of authentic social connection. You only need a few meaningful relationships at a minimum. But they have to be in-the-flesh face-to-face interactions. Facebook messaging or replying via Twitter comments do not count.

Here are several sources PeakProsperity references that offer guidance for creating a community and building relationships:

75 Actions That Build Community

Peak Prosperity’s Community Building Wiki page

Success Factors for Developing a Sense of Community

Chapters 10 & 11, “Emotional & Social Capital,” from Prosper!: How to Plan for the Future & Create a World Worth Inheriting

If you’re struggling, don’t be ashamed to ask for help. If you are depressed, anxious or lonely, talk about it. Reach out. If you need a professional therapist, go find one and get help. Suicide is never the answer. There is a way to improve your life and get you out of the social media bubble of isolation. Look for people in real life and form meaningful bonds and connections with others in your community. You are not alone. You can live a happy and fulfilling life if you take the right steps toward improving your current situation, no matter how dire.

  Follow me @BobShanahanMan

Free Mental Health Counseling for Veterans And Their Families

#Community #Connection #depression #Facebook #Gen Z #Happiness #Instagram #Isolation #Loneliness #mental health #Millennials #Social Media #suicide #Twitter

[uniteordie-usa]

FBI nabs five mastermind geniuses after teaching them how to blow up a bridge in Cleveland

http://uniteordiemedia.com/fbi-nabs-five-mastermind-geniuses-after-teaching-them-how-to-blow-up-a-bridge-in-cleveland/ https://uniteordiemedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/FBI-logo-300x300.png FBI nabs five mastermind geniuses after teaching them how to blow up a bridge in Cleveland Thursday, May 03, 2012 by Mike Adams I feel safer already. After recruiting five of the dumbest crack heads in the city of Cleveland, Ohio and convincing them to “blow up a bridge”, the FBI halted the operation just in time — a move that wasn’t too difficult considering...

Thursday, May 03, 2012 by Mike Adams

I feel safer already. After recruiting five of the dumbest crack heads in the city of Cleveland, Ohio and convincing them to “blow up a bridge”, the FBI halted the operation just in time — a move that wasn’t too difficult considering the FBI plotted the whole thing to begin with.

And thanks to the FBI, we have all been saved from the masterminds of evil shown in the pictures below. As you can clearly see, these evil geniuses were a clear and present threat to America’s national security. If the FBI hadn’t stopped them in Cleveland, no doubt they would have gone on to break the Pentagon’s high security encryption, acquire the launch codes to nuclear missiles, and unleash a global thermonuclear war through sheer brain power alone.

Here are the mug shots of the five mastermind villains now thwarted by the clever FBI:

The FBI: Dreaming up fake terror plots for job security

Now, as you can probably tell from all the fake terror plots the FBI has dreamed up recently, this is an agency desperate to engineer job security. Since the agency can’t find any REAL terror plots in America, they routinely resort to planning and carrying out their own terror plots against America while recruiting drugged-up morons to take the blame.

These five individuals in Cleveland look like they could have been recruited by the FBI with little more than five crack pipes. Or five hits of meth, perhaps. In no way are these the “criminal masterminds” they’re being made out to be by most of the mainstream media and the FBI itself.

Speaking of the MSM, more and more newspapers across the USA are waking up to the FBI’s fake terror plot routine. Believe it or not, even the New York Times recently ran a feature story questioning the FBI’s role in planning, providing weapons and even helping carry out all these fake plots.

As the NYT reports: (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/29/opinion/su��)

The United States has been narrowly saved from lethal terrorist plots in recent years — or so it has seemed. A would-be suicide bomber was intercepted on his way to the Capitol; a scheme to bomb synagogues and shoot Stinger missiles at military aircraft was developed by men in Newburgh, N.Y.; and a fanciful idea to fly explosive-laden model planes into the Pentagon and the Capitol was hatched in Massachusetts.

But all these dramas were facilitated by the F.B.I., whose undercover agents and informers posed as terrorists offering a dummy missile, fake C-4 explosives, a disarmed suicide vest and rudimentary training. Suspects naively played their parts until they were arrested.

When an Oregon college student, Mohamed Osman Mohamud, thought of using a car bomb to attack a festive Christmas-tree lighting ceremony in Portland, the F.B.I. provided a van loaded with six 55-gallon drums of “inert material,” harmless blasting caps, a detonator cord and a gallon of diesel fuel to make the van smell flammable. An undercover F.B.I. agent even did the driving, with Mr. Mohamud in the passenger seat. To trigger the bomb the student punched a number into a cellphone and got no boom, only a bust.

This is legal, but is it legitimate? Without the F.B.I., would the culprits commit violence on their own? Is cultivating potential terrorists the best use of the manpower designed to find the real ones? Judging by their official answers, the F.B.I. and the Justice Department are sure of themselves — too sure, perhaps.

The FBI also masterminded various other attacks, during which it intercepted its own terror plots and then claimed to be protecting America from terrorists! (https://www.naturalnews.com/033751_FBI_terror…)

This is all “police state theater”

What you are witnessing in all this is government-sponsored theater carried out across the stage of America. The terror plots are all fake, the terrorists are all drugged-out patsies, and the “domestic terrorism” threat against America is non-existent.

The only terrorists the FBI can actually find are the ones it recruits!

This is all done to play to the cameras and keep the American sheeple reminded that terrorism is everywhere around them so that they continue to give up their rights and liberties.

The entire “war on terror” was completely faked, of course, starting with the 9/11 attacks which were themselves planned and plotted in advance by shadow government insiders who wired the entire WTC 7 building with explosives. That’s how they managed to level THREE buildings using only TWO airplanes. The third building — WTC 7 — was brought down demolition-style. This fact is so obvious that I often use it as an IQ test to find out if the new people I meet have any brains at all: https://www.naturalnews.com/033684_911_truth_…

So now to keep all this whole police state game going, the security agencies run around desperately trying to recruit morons, drug addicts and insane patsies to play roles in their little terror plots, all of which are planned, engineered and carried out by the FBI themselves. Heck, in the Portland bombing threat, an FBI agent even drove the van!

FBI = Fabricated Bombing Instigators

I’m sure there are fine men and women in the FBI. But I have to ask the obvious question: Don’t you guys have any REAL terrorists to track down? Don’t you have something more important to do with your time and taxpayers’ money?

Or has the FBI done such a great job of keeping America safe from real terrorists that they now have to recruit pretend terrorists just to stay in practice?

Or has all this crossed a threshold to the point where the FBI has become the chief terrorist plotting organization in America?

In other words, if the FBI stopped staging fake terror plots, would the era of terrorism in America come to a screeching halt?

Coming soon: The Big Kahuna False Flag

All humor aside, the really big news for my fellow Americans is that it’s rather obvious the FBI is planning and plotting a “Big Kahuna” false flag attack that will inevitably use LIVE explosives.

After all, the entire credibility of the FBI is eroding by the day. When even the New York Times admits the FBI is staging and engineering fake, false terror attacks, you know these guys are going to resort to desperate measures to try to keep everyone stunned into a state of freedom-crushing terror.

Unfortunately, that need for a government escalation of the terror almost certainly means they’re working on another 9/11-style event with massive loss of life. Speculation of what they’re planning runs the gamut across the ‘net, from a “dirty bomb” set off at a sporting event, to an intentional release of a deadly biological weapon in a train station somewhere. Or maybe an attack on a nuclear facility that results in a massive release of radiation across North America. Who knows? Are there any limits to what these people will do in order to save their own jobs and remain in power? If they would “almost” blow up a bridge in Cleveland and “almost” fly explosives into the Pentagon using a remote-controlled airplane, then what happens when they remove the “almost” and just let the explosions happen? Then they get raises and promotions! Because suddenly the FBI is more important than ever!

The FBI has the expertise to carry out false flag terror attacks in America

So when the next domestic terrorism attack happens, look first to the FBI as the source, because they’re becoming quite well-informed about terrorist bombings and attacks these days, aren’t they? In fact, it can be accurately argued that the FBI has the most terrorism expertise of any group in the country, exceeding even the experience and knowledge of actual terrorists (if there are such things).

Santa Clause, the Easter Bunny, Leprechauns and Woodland Fairies… and then “terrorists” in America. It’s all fiction, my friends. Fiction that is staged for your psychological enslavement under a system of false fear.

The more you are kept afraid, the more easily you’ll give power to the centralized government — the very government staging all these terrorist plots! Do you yet realize just how insane this is?

It’s the new Amerika: We’re all told that “Americans are the enemy” but no one can find actual Americans trying to blow anything up. So the FBI stages the whole thing and manages to find a group of total drug-heads to unwittingly play their part in something they are cognitively incapable of understanding, much less carrying out.

And then, to add yet more stupidity to the entire equation, the FBI parades these morons to the public, claiming they were terrorist masterminds who threatened our entire nation! Yeah, right. They might be a threat to your refrigerator if you’re hiding some beer in there, but the odds of this band of knuckleheads actually pulling off anything real is just about zilch.

In observing all this, ask yourself this question: If the terror threat is so real, then why do terrorist plots have to be FAKED by the FBI?

Read more: https://www.naturalnews.com/035757_FBI_terror_plots_false_flag.html

#Cleveland #false flag #FBI #Mohamed Osman Mohamud #Ohio #police state theater #Terror Event

[northamptoncouplestherapy]

If you or your partner has ADHD, you may be experiencing an extra layer of challenge. With 8.1% of American adults diagnosed with ADHD, it's no surprise that relationships can take a hit. Whether you are the person with ADHD or love someone who has the diagnosis, ADHD affects you both in profound, understandable, and treatable ways.

ADHD is a brain difference that makes it difficult to remember important details or tasks, get and stay organized, manage time, maintain focus, and follow through fully. While people experience different symptoms, intense feelings, and reactions are a common thread for many. These symptoms impact not only the person with ADHD but also the person who loves them.

While some claim that ADHD is overdiagnosed in children, it is widely assumed to be underdiagnosed in adults. Diagnosis of this common disorder has been refined a lot since we were kids, so many of us adults were never diagnosed as children. That means that adults with undiagnosed ADHD are struggling with its symptoms – and have their whole lives – but don't know any different. So they assume this is just how life (and love) go for them.

This painful reality means that having ADHD (whether you know it or not) – or loving someone who has it – can leave you feeling entirely helpless. The combination of resentment from the non-ADHD partner and shame in the person with ADHD can (understandably) result in fearing your relationship is beyond repair.

It can be overwhelming to know where to start when the symptoms of ADHD are present in your relationship. The good news is that plenty can be done to help shift you out of your well-worn patterns of hurt and frustration together. And it begins with awareness of how ADHD affects your relationship.

Common Patterns in Relationships with ADHD

Think about ADHD as a house on fire. One of you is stuck inside it. There is smoke everywhere, and it's hard to see what's in front of you – or find your way out (despite wanting to). Your partner is circling round the house with hoses and sirens. Both of you are fatigued, at times, even desperate. One of you carries the ADHD around internally and has to deal with it every moment, the other lives in reaction to ADHD. It's not always apparent to the person with the hose that their partner may be struggling and is doing their best.

Naming ADHD for what it is (a common challenge that you're both navigating) will help normalize your dilemma and realign you as a team with a common goal. Remember, ADHD affects both of you and leads to predictable patterns.

If you're a person with ADHD, it is common to feel anxious and worried about missing things. To be hurt for being criticized by your partner about what you do or how you do it. To experience irritation about being continuously nagged to get things done, and generally not accepted for who you are. Many people feel like a child to their non-ADHD partner's "parenting."

If you're the non-ADHD partner, you likely feel hurt and let down that your partner forgets things that are important to you or that you have discussed. You are often overwhelmed by the amount of work left on your plate that you can't count on your partner to reliably help you with. You may also be prone to become irritated by your partner's intense emotions that seem to come out of nowhere. Feeling frustrated that the same patterns keep repeating themselves.

ADHD is a perpetual difference

Consider that being a couple navigating the symptoms of ADHD is simply one of the differences between you. John Gottman has found that there are really only two kinds of problems in relationships – those that are solvable and those that are perpetual. Perpetual differences, as they sound, are likely never to go away. They're the repeated fights that leave you feeling stuck in gridlock – same argument different day.

The good news is – ALL couples have perpetual differences. Every single one. The difference between happy and seemingly harmonious couples and those that are gridlocked and resentful is this: happy couples talk about their perpetual differences – even laugh about them. They focus on attunement and stay away from the 4 Horsemen (more on that in a moment). They prioritize repairing quickly when things go array.

For you, ADHD is your perpetual difference. It doesn't have to sink you, but you do have to bring your most skillful self to the table to talk about your hurts and frustrations so that your partner can truly hear you and not feel attacked. And, even with your best skills, your partner may become defensive and upset. This is when couples therapy with a therapist who understands ADHD in relationships is a loving choice to support you in mutually refining your approach to difficult conversations.

Navigating perpetual differences requires a lot of patience and reaching for deep understanding. This understanding works both ways – how does having ADHD affect your partner? What are their struggles and strengths that come from ADHD? On the other hand, how does your ADHD affect your partner? How are they likely to react when your ADHD impacts them?

Fighting for win/win: Gottman's 4 Horsemen

One of the hardest skills to master in relationships is steering clear of what John Gottman calls the 4 Horsemen of the Apocalypse. As dramatic as it sounds, the 4 Horsemen are just a set of behaviors (that all couples display), including criticism, defensiveness, contempt, and stonewalling. When left unchecked, Gottman's research links them to disconnection and marital demise. Learning to recognize which four horsemen dominate in your conflicts will afford you clues to the anecdotes for treating the intensity of gridlock you're stuck in.

Frequently, one common conflict cycle in ADHD couples looks like this: the ADHD partner forgets to do something which leads the Non-ADHD partner to be critical of the ADHD partner, who, in turn, responds with defensiveness.

This dynamic can escalate, leaving both of you feeling misunderstood and not heard, and it breeds contempt. Contempt is the most damaging of the 4 Horsemen and the most insidious. At its core is a belief (often held internally) that your partner is more at fault, or fundamentally more flawed than you are. Sulphuric acid for love and insidious in its nature, contempt, over time, breeds resentment, and a higher likelihood of divorce.

Finally, as fights escalate and one of you gets really angry, the other begins to stonewall. A person who is stonewalling is shut down, shutting their partner and the argument out of their mind. They may even leave the room mid-argument. The need to manage physiological overwhelm is understandable and real. Unfortunately, it often terrifies or infuriates the person on the receiving end. It never contributes to repair or moving forward. Long term, it erodes at trust.

ADHD couples need to practice the antidotes to the 4 Horsemen to shift away from some of the tension: instead of criticizing, complain from a regulated place; instead of responding defensively, find something in what your partner is saying that you can genuinely take responsibility for and validate them; instead of resorting to contempt, create a relational culture of fondness and admiration; and as an alternative to stonewalling, learn and practice tools for self-regulation in the service of increasing your window of tolerance for hanging out with the tough stuff.

Gottman's research confirms the most important rule for successful conflict is to remember that you are fighting for win/win. If you aim for win/lose (I have to win this argument, you are wrong, and I am right) – the relationship will lose. Using the antidotes to the 4 horsemen will set you on the right path.

Restoring Trust

Untreated ADHD in relationships often leads to ruptured trust. Trust is built from attunement, follow-through, respect, and responsiveness. If you have ADHD, each of these brings its challenges. For example, distractibility can make it challenging to hear your partner and follow through on agreements. Emotional swings and sensitivity can lead to saying hurtful things or not understanding the meaning behind your partner's complaints – their needs. Regardless of good intentions, follow-through can be difficult when impulsivity or time management issues result in impulsively changing focus.

Shame often lurks just below the surface in people with ADHD. Deep, painful feelings of "I am bad, defective, worthless" may remain unspoken and run rampant internally. Inherent in shame is a fear of disconnection, and so, we hide. The tricky thing about shame is that when it is not spoken and shared, it grows.

Bringing your shame to the light in your relationship is a first step to restoring trust. This means talking about your experience with ADHD and shame with your partner. It will help your non-ADHD partner to understand what you are contending with – they likely don't know the depth of how challenging every day can be for you. Equally important is hearing them out – delicately avoiding becoming defensive for how your ADHD affects them so that you can understand their side of the experience. Bringing self-compassion and empathy to the table will go far.

Navigating love and ADHD is anything but easy. By using the abundant tools and resources available, including couples therapy, if needed, you'll experience the gains from your efforts. Increased intimacy, diminished heartache, and in time, a relationship that not only endures but thrives.

Like what you've read here? Sign up to receive our weekly posts filled with heart, concrete tools, and cutting edge resources via our blog: Loving Well.

#loveit #ADHD #Couples Therapy

[fivestarglam]

Well, Hillary Clinton has gone and done it.

To the cheers of alt-righters everywhere, those angry lords of the green frog meme who hurl edgy un-PC insults at everyone to their left, the Democratic nominee has put them on the map at long last. Specifically, she accused Donald Trump of encouraging and giving voice to their dark and dangerous worldview.

Let’s leave aside the question of whether we are talking about an emergent brown-shirted takeover of American political culture, or perhaps merely a few thousand sock-puppet social media accounts adept at mischievous trolling on Twitter. The key issue is that more than a few alt-rightists claim some relationship to libertarianism, at least at their intellectual dawning until they begin to shed their libertarianism later on.

What are the differences in outlook between alt-right ideology and libertarianism?

1. The Driving Force of History

Every ideology has a theory of history, some sense of a driving theme that causes episodic movements from one stage to another. Such a theory helps us make sense of the past, present, and future. The libertarian theme of history is beautifully articulated by Murray Rothbard:

My own basic perspective on the history of man...is to place central importance on the great conflict which is eternally waged between Liberty and Power... I see the liberty of the individual not only as a great moral good in itself (or, with Lord Acton, as the highest political good), but also as the necessary condition for the flowering of all the other goods that mankind cherishes: moral virtue, civilization, the arts and sciences, economic prosperity. Out of liberty, then, stem the glories of civilized life.

There it is: liberty vs. power. Liberty unleashes human energy and builds civilization. Anything that interferes with the progress of liberty impedes the progress of humanity. One crowds out the other. The political (or anti-political) goal is clear: diminish power (which means reducing unjust violence) and enhance liberty.

What is the alt-right theory of history? The movement inherits a long and dreary tradition of thought from Friedrich Hegel to Thomas Carlyle to Oswald Spengler to Madison Grant to Othmar Spann to Giovanni Gentile to Carl Schmitt to Trump’s speeches. This tradition sees something else going on in history: not liberty vs. power, but something like a more meta struggle that concerns impersonal collectives of tribe, race, community, great men, and so on.

Whereas libertarianism speaks of individual choice, alt-right theory draws attention to collectives on the move. It imagines that despite appearances, we all default in our thinking back to some more fundamental instinct about our identity as a people, which is either being shored up by a more intense consciousness or eroded by a deracination and dispossession from what defines us. To criticize this as racist is often true but superficial. What’s really going on here is the depersonalization of history itself: the principle that we are all being buffeted about by Olympian historical forces beyond our control as mere individuals. Each of us only matters when our uniqueness is submerged to a group. This grop in turn calls forth a leader. It takes something mighty and ominous like a great leader, an embodiment of one of these great forces, to make a dent in history’s narrative.

2. Harmony vs. Conflict

A related issue concerns our capacity to get along with each other. Frédéric Bastiat described the free society as characterized by a “harmony of interests.” In order to overcome the state of nature, we gradually discover the capacity to find value in each other. The division of labor is the great fact of human community: the labor of each of us becomes more productive in cooperation with others, and this is even, or rather especially, true given the unequal distribution of talents, intelligence, and skills, and differences over religion, belief systems, race, language, and so on.

And truly, this is a beautiful thing to discover. The libertarian marvels at the cooperation we see in a construction project, an office building, a restaurant, a factory, a shopping mall, to say nothing of a city, a country, or a planet. The harmony of interests doesn’t mean that everyone gets along perfectly, but rather that we inhabit institutions that incentivize progress through ever more cooperative behavior. As the liberals of old say, we believe that the “brotherhood of man” is possible.

To the alt-right mind, this all seems ridiculous. Sure, shopping is fine. But what actually characterizes human association is deep-rooted conflict. The races are secretly at war, intellectually and genetically. There is an ongoing and perpetual conflict between the sexes. People of different religions must fight and always will, until one wins. Nations fight for a reason: the struggle is real.

Some argue that war is what defines us and even gives life meaning, and, in that sense, is glorious and celebratory. For this reason, all nations must aspire toward homogeneity in stock, religion, and so on, and, as for the sexes, there must be dominance, because cooperation is an illusion.

Maybe you notice a certain commonality with the left here. In the 19th century, the Marxists whipped themselves up in a frenzy about the allegedly inherent conflict between labor and capital. Their successors fret incessantly about race, ethnicity, ability, gender, and so on, pushing Marxian conflict theory into ever more exotic realms. Ludwig von Mises captured this parallel brilliantly when he wrote, “Nationalist ideology divides society vertically; the socialist ideology divides society horizontally.” Here, as with many other areas, the far right and far left are strangely aligned.

3. Designed vs. Spontaneous Order

The libertarian believes that the best and most wonderful social outcomes are not those planned, structured, and anticipated, but rather the opposite. Society is the result of millions and billions of small acts of rational self interest that are channelled into an undesigned, unplanned, and unanticipated order that cannot be conceived by a single mind. The knowledge that is required to put together a functioning social order is conveyed through institutions: prices, manners, mores, habits, and traditions that no one can consciously will into existence. There must be a process in place, and stable rules governing that process, that permit such institutions to evolve, always in deference to the immutable laws of economics.

Again, the alt-right mind finds all of this uninspired and uninspiring. Society in their conception is built by the will of great thinkers and great leaders with unconstrained visions of what can be. What we see out there operating in society is a result of someone’s intentional and conscious planning from the top down.

If we cannot find the source, or if the source is somehow hiding, we imagine that it must be some shadowy group out there that is manipulating outcomes – and hence the alt-right’s obsession with conspiracy theory. The course of history is designed by someone, so “we” might as well engage in the great struggle to seize the controls – and hence the alt-right obsession with politics as a contact sport.

Oh, and, by the way, economics is a dismal science.

4. Trade and Migration

Of course the classical liberals fought for free trade and free migration of peoples, seeing national borders as arbitrary lines on a map that mercifully restrain the power of the state but otherwise inhibit the progress of prosperity and civilization. To think globally is not a bad thing, but a sign of enlightenment. Protectionism is nothing but a tax on consumers that inhibits industrial productivity and sets nations at odds with each other. The market process is a worldwide phenomenon that indicates an expansion of the division of labor, which means a progressive capacity of people to enhance their standard of living and ennoble their lives.

The alt-right is universally opposed to free trade and free migration. You can always tell a writer is dabbling in alt-right thought (or neoreactionary or Dark Enlightenment or outright fascism) if he or she has an intense focus on international trade as inherently bad or fraudulent or regrettable in some sense. To them, a nation must be strong enough to thrive as an independent unit, an economic sovereignty unto itself.

Today, the alt-right has a particular beef with trade deals, not because they are unnecessarily complex or bureaucratic (which are good reasons to doubt their merit) but because of their meritorious capacity to facilitate international cooperation. And it is the same with immigration. Beginning at some point in the late 19th century, migration came to be seen as a profound threat to national identity, which invariably means racial identity.

5. Emancipation and Progress

The libertarian celebrates the profound changes in the world from the late Middle Ages to the age of laissez faire, because we observed how commercial society broke down the barriers of class, race, and social isolation, bringing rights and dignity to ever more people. Slavery was ended. Women were emancipated, as marriage evolved from conquest and dominance into a free relationship of partnership and consent. This is all a wonderful thing, because rights are universal, which is to say, they rightly belong to everyone equally. Anything that interferes with people’s choices holds them back and hobbles the progress of prosperity, peace, and human flourishing. This perspective necessarily makes the libertarian optimistic about humanity’s potential.

The alt-right mind can’t bear this point of view, and regards it all as naive. What appears to be progress is actually loss: loss of culture, identity, and mission. They look back to what they imagine to be a golden age when elites ruled and peons obeyed. And thus we see the source of their romantic attachment to authority as the source of order, and the longing for authoritarian political rule. As for universal rights, forget it. Rights are granted by political communities and are completely contingent on culture. The ancients universally believed that some were born to serve and some to rule, and the alt-right embraces this perspective. Here again, identity is everything and the loss of identity is the greatest crime against self anyone can imagine.

Conclusion

To be sure, as many commentators have pointed out, both libertarians and alt-rightist are deeply suspicious of democracy. This was not always the case. In the 19th century, the classical liberals generally had a favorable view of democracy, believing it to be the political analogy to choice in the marketplace. But here they imagined states that were local, rules that were fixed and clear, and democracy as a check on power. As states became huge, as power became total, and as rules became subject to pressure-group politics, the libertarian attitude toward democracy shifted.

In contrast, the alt-right’s opposition to democracy traces to its loathing of the masses generally and its overarching suspicion of anything that smacks of equality. In other words, they tend to hate democracy for all the wrong reasons. This similarity is historically contingent and largely superficial given the vast differences that separate the two worldviews. Does society contain within itself the capacity for self management or not? That is the question.

None of this will stop the mainstream media from lumping us all together, given that we share a dread of what has become of the left in politics today.

But make no mistake: the alt-right knows exactly who its enemies are, and the libertarians are among them.

#libertarianism #libertarian #alt right #fee.org

[viralhottopics]

Why Londoners are marching in solidarity with the U.S. at the Women’s March

Image: women’s march london

LONDON This Saturday tens of thousands of people are expected to take part in Women’s Marches around the world to protest Donald Trump’s first day in office.

People in 160 cities including Washington D.C. and London from 60 countries are expected to take part.

SEE ALSO: How to get involved with the Women’s March on Washington if you’re not in D.C.

The organisers of London’s march say that hosting a sister march was “instinctive” because the city has long been a “bastion of liberal values and championing those values across the world”.

“I think we are at a particular point in history when it is becoming increasingly important for people to step up and get out of their comfort zones and confront prejudice in all its forms,” explains Kerry Haggerty, one of the women behind the London march.

“Now is the time for alliance building. People need to stand up and unite and give voice to their concerns,” Haggerty says.

Breaking the silence

For Americans living in London, the Women’s March on London offers an opportunity to protest from afar, and to have a voice when they’re away from home. We spoke to a selection of people to hear their reasons for taking part.

Margie Powell an American living in London says LGBTQ rights and affordable healthcare are the issues she’ll be championing at the march. Powell’s brother identifies as gay and she has a pre-existing medical condition.

“You have no right to be silent”

“Sure, it’s not happening here, but if London stays silent will racism, islamophobia, sexism, and homophobia cross shores?” says Powell.

For, Tanja Bueltmann a German historian living in London this march is important in standing up for what she believes in. “I believe that, with Trump’s election and Brexit, we are at a watershed moment: basic values I believe in are under threat. Brexit is bad, but Trump is something else,” Bueltmann says.

“I am marching in solidarity with the majority of the U.S. population that did not vote for Trump. I am marching for our fundamental rights. I am marching to say: resist!”

Image: women’s march london

‘Human rights eroded’

Catherine McLaughlin, from Essex, is marching because she feels there is a “real danger” of human rights being eroded. She’s also marching in “solidarity with friends in the U.S. who will have to find huge resilience, activism and courage in the days ahead.”

“A lone voice, when joined with other lone voices becomes a roar.”

“I’m going to march alongside my daughters who are aged 9 and 11, my sister and on behalf of my mother and grandmother and the amazing women in my family who did everything they could to give their children opportunities to grow and thrive,” says McLaughlin.

Ruth Davies, a member of the Women’s Equality Party in the UK, says that marching has long been important in fighting for the rights of minority groups throughout history. But, she also has a personal reason for marching: her 4-year-old daughter’s future.

“I’ve just plain had enough of constant low level sexism we’re expected to live with. Why the hell should I raise my daughter to excuse the same crap I had to? How is this still a struggle that needs to be faced?” she asks.

“I’m hoping that this march will inspire. That a lone voice, when joined with other lone voices becomes a roar. If all you have to offer is a voice, a thought, a body, you can still be visible, powerful and amplify positive messages to embolden others to stand up and be counted”

Women’s Marches across the globe have BEGUN! See a live feed of photos and videos from marches across the world https://t.co/LqLcAGfm4k http://pic.twitter.com/XdiouInnkI

Women’s March London (@womensmarchlon) January 20, 2017

Other organisations supporting the march

Pride London is supporting the Women’s March on London because it wants to show solidarity with people everywhere who are fighting for equality and human rights.

“Rights that have been won are fragile”

“These are worrying times in which we live; rights that have been won are fragile and too many women suffer from the effects of being treated as less than just because of their gender,” Alison Camps, deputy chairman of Pride London.

“We reject that, and that’s why we will join the thousands upon thousands of voices around the world who are saying ‘no’ to the politics of inequality,” Camps continues.

Polly Neate chief executive of Women’s Aid said that the organisation is supporting the march to make a stand against violence against women and girls, which she states is “rooted in misogyny”.

“We must stand up for equality, and men and women must fight misogyny together, to keep women safe and for a society built on trust and peace for everyone. This is why we must march. I am proud to be marching and speaking at the Womens March on London,” Neate continues.

BONUS: Emma Watson takes her fight for gender equality to universities

Read more: http://ift.tt/2jJBNiT

from Why Londoners are marching in solidarity with the U.S. at the Women’s March

#Why Londoners are marching in solidarity with the U.S. at the Women’s March