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#The social media they are on is american bases
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Christopher Mathias at HuffPost:
A coalition of 185 social justice and religious groups published an open letter Monday expressing support for the campus protest encampments sweeping the country in opposition to Israel’s siege of Gaza, and calling on university administrators to end the brutal crackdowns of the student-led demonstrations. “We commend the students who are exercising their right to protest peacefully despite an overwhelming atmosphere of pressure, intimidation and retaliation, to raise awareness about Israel’s assault on Gaza — with U.S. weapons and funding,” the letter states. “These students have come forth with clear demands that their universities divest from corporations profiting from Israeli occupation, and demanding safe environments for Palestinians across their campuses. ” Groups that signed the letter include Gen-Z for Change, Working Families Party, IfNotNow Movement, Young Democrats of America Black Caucus, Movement for Black Lives, Sunrise Movement, MPower Change, Jewish Voice for Peace, Palestine Legal, and the Unitarian Universalist Association.
Some 900 students have been arrested during anti-war encampments and demonstrations at American universities in the last 10 days, per a tally from Al Jazeera — a tumultuous period that mirrors volatile demonstrations against the Vietnam War in 1968, when police arrested at least 700 students. The open letter Monday represents one of the largest shows of support among progressive groups for the burgeoning student protests, and makes clear the divide between establishment Democratic figures and social justice groups when it comes to U.S. support for Israel. President Joe Biden has refused so far to condition the sale of weapons to Israel. “Our communities have been horrified to see the militarized and violent response to students protesting an ongoing genocide funded and supported by our government, and our coalition of organizations join millions of our members across the country in standing in solidarity with the students’ efforts in support of the people of Gaza,” Yasmine Taeb, one of the main organizers of the letter, told HuffPost. Taeb is a human rights lawyer and political director at MPower Change, a Muslim social justice group.
“Instead of attacking young people mobilizing for Palestinian human rights, President Biden needs to listen to the majority of Americans who have been calling on him to stop funding and supporting the atrocities committed against the people of Gaza,” Taeb said.
[...] Israel has killed over 33,000 Palestinians since Oct. 7, when the Gaza-based militant group Hamas launched an attack in which nearly 1,200 Israelis were killed. In January, the International Court of Justice ruled that Israel’s siege of Gaza — which has displaced 85% of the population and put the occupied territory on the cusp of famine — left Palestinians at risk of experiencing a genocide. Last week, health officials in Gaza said medics had discovered mass graves at hospitals raided by Israeli troops. “We join [the students] in calling for an immediate and lasting ceasefire and an end to the U.S. government’s and institutions’ role in the ongoing genocide of Palestinians in Gaza,” Monday’s letter states. “As we stand in solidarity with the students protesting in encampments across the country, we reaffirm our commitment to amplifying their voices, condemn the university administration officials’ violent response to their activism, and demand that universities remove the presence of police and other militarized forces from their campuses,” it continues.
[...] Meanwhile, Republican Party officials and right-wing media figures have accused the demonstrations of antisemitism, falsely equating criticism of Israel with bigotry towards Jews. Although there have been scattered reports of actual antisemitic incidents at or near the encampments, many were not perpetrated by students but by interlopers. Many of the student protesters across the country are Jewish. Far-right agitators, including Christian nationalist activists, have also targeted the encampments, with MAGA pastor Sean Feucht leading hundreds of Christian and Jewish Zionists on a march around the Columbia campus on Thursday. The rally ended with pro-Israel demonstrators yelling through the gate at pro-Palestinian Columbia students. “Go back to Gaza!” they screamed.
More than 185 groups, including IfNotNow, Jewish Voice For Peace, MPower Change, and Working Families Party, signed a letter in support of the campus protests against Israel Apartheid State's genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.
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I really need some best friends and friends who are activists like me.
The lack of interest of people in changing the world around them pains me.
If you are a teen activist/do care about the world we live in and want to change it even if it's a little bit please interact with this post ;-;
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FLF Characters and Social Media
Rosalind used to use Instagram but now only lurks and has no other social media. She has never posted, and her profile picture is blank. She had a Pinterest phase in middle school.
Orion has a very active annoying Instagram and probably posted thirst traps on TikTok in 2020 (rip). I can also see him having snapchat. He probably had public arguments with Oliver on Twitter. He had a Pinterest phase in middle school.
Silas has Instagram because Orion, Phoebe, and Alisa use it to send him stuff. He has snapchat and solely uses it to talk to Orion. He has Tiktok but doesn't use it much. He used to get into Twitter fights but has since deleted his account. He had a Pinterest and a Quora phase in middle school. He maybe uses reddit idk.
Phoebe has an active annoying Instagram and maybe an aestheticy Tumblr. She probably has TikTok and BeReal idk. She uses Pinterest an unhealthy amount.
Alisa lurks on Instagram and has an absolutely unhinged Tumblr account.
Oliver routinely got into Twitter fights until Celia made him stop or Elon Musk bought it. Maybe had an Instagram infographic phase. Definitely a reddit aita enjoyer. Has BeReal because of Phoebe.
Celia has an Instagram but doesn't post. Recovering Pinterest user. Maybe has BeReal
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ardentperfidy · 5 months
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#it's both kind of funny and genuinely shocking#how many self proclaimed leftists there are i see on here and social media more broadly#who nonetheless wholeheartedly buy in to this almost fukuyama-n sense of american power#this stated or implied sense that if american elites wanted something to happen in the world it would happen#and look to be clear i disagree wholeheartedly with biden's handling of the ongoing genocide in palestine right now#it's clear that the US does have plenty of leverage it could be using and isn't#but it's so silly to me that people can't also see the us isn't running this show#instead like. the us is a declining imperial power#that's already shown it can't reliably project sufficient power to secure its preferred policies in the middle east#and it now has an unruly fascist-trending semi-client state armed with nuclear weapons#with substantial cultural and financial influence on us domestic politics#and the aspiring fascist leader of which has made sure to maintain significant ties with other far-right/fascist leaders like putin#and when the us has given the SMALLEST amount of pushback israeli officials have just straight up refused and contradicted it#that's why you've got israeli ambassadors giving interviews just fully admitting there will be no two state solution#biden administration pushes for timelines and bibi goes on tv and says nah#i fear we rightfully critiqued the lack of ethics in realpolitik and then forgot to inject a sense of reality into a politics based on ethi#*ethics#anyway rant over will probably delete later
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Kim Headcanons
So I decided to make some headcanon posts for everyone in the squad because I can, and I’m doing Kim because she’s one of my favs and I love her. Some of them may be not as fun, but I felt the need to add them.
- As I implied in one of my other posts, Kim is “incapable of driving” (or is she?). She has her driver’s license, but no one knows how, because she is terrifying on the road. But here’s the thing that no one knows; she is a perfectly good driver, she just drives chaotically when her friends are in the car. This is due to the fact that she finds it funny. She can actually drive literally anything perfectly. But since none of her friends want to be in the car when she’s driving, she never has to be the driver, so she gets free rides all the time. Perfect planning. Willow will still go in anyways because she does not fear God nor death.
- Kim’s favorite ice cream flavor is mint chocolate and she and Will have argued over whether it’s good or not.
- After she and Kevin broke up, she filled her TikTok feed (she canonically has a TikTok account) with memes, and some people are slightly concerned. She’s coping in her own way.
- One of said memes was the “I need to cry but my foundation was 48 dollars” vine.
- Speaking of TikTok, she has 9,000 followers and mainly posts dance tiktoks, movie reviews, and random birds.
- As you can tell, she likes birds. Her favorite bird is the blue heron.
- She also likes movies, particularly mystery movies and psychological horror, but she will occasionally allow herself to enjoy a Marvel movie.
- Her favorite movie is either Knives Out or Murder on the Orient Express (it’s a good book, and a good movie!)
- Recently watched Turning Red and cried for about an hour because what a mood
- Cosplayed as Rei Ayanami for an anime convention Will dragged her to. Even though Kim doesn’t watch anime, she came because she wanted to support her friend. Legitimately likes the opening song and mecha designs though.
- Is Korean American
- Has three younger siblings: Ari (13, girl), Kija (10, boy), and Binna (5, girl)
- Low key rich???
- She really likes cooking with her mom, and they always make dinner together on the weekends
- Extremely extroverted and popular because of it
That’s all I can think of for now. Please give me suggestions for better tags. Also like/reblog this post.
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punkindness · 2 years
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i stg if i hear someone use the word “latinx” one more time i am going to LOSE IT
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hadourhandstied · 4 months
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I moved to Europe on purpose but God Europeans are so fucking annoying online
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shuunnico · 1 year
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For Americans:
Apparently the “Ban TikTok” bill has loads of stuff crammed into it that, effectively, gives the government free access to everything you do online. They have access to anything you have connected online, your cloud storage, your transactions, social media, your accounts. They’ll even have access to your Steam Marketplace and your Youtube and Twitch accounts.
The bill also gives the US government the ability to say you’re working with a foreign adversary based on transactions, data sharing, etc. This can apply retroactively.
This means that if the US government labels any nation an adversary, any data sharing or transactions into that country, past, present or future, can be under scrutiny and potentially be used as evidence of aiding a foreign power. The punishment for this can be up to 20 years in prison.
They’re using banning TikTok as a trojan horse to push through other legislation that will curb your freedom and privacy on the internet forever. 
It is being called “The Patriot Act” for the internet.
Edit: Source
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astonmartinii · 19 days
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ice, ice baby (literally) | max verstappen social media au
pairing: max verstappen x raikkonen!reader
the ice man may have never spoken, but his daughter never shuts the fuck up
based on the request from @blue-skyandstars
MASTERLIST | TIP JAR
yourusername
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liked by maxverstappen1, sebastianvettel and 783,409 others
yourusername: taking names and kicking asses (and getting all assignments in on time with an appropriate amount of ass licking)
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user1: i love how she is so clearly kimi's daughter
user2: the only two blondes that don't freak me out
user3: insert that paris hilton clip "can i have two more of these little blonde bitches?"
maxverstappen1: what's an appropriate amount of ass licking and can i demonstrate on you?
maxverstappen1: wait! who said that?
yourusername: in your dreams car boy
maxverstappen1: trust me i see you in my dreams all the time
yourusername: so that's why you're always in the shower when i call you in the morning....
user4: i'm new here, are they together?
yourusername: wouldn't you like to know weather boy
maxverstappen1: she's actually my sleep paralysis demon, sorry to say
user5: they're so unserious
kimiraikkonen: keep those studies up i'm paying the bills
yourusername: i promise to use my status as a nepo baby for good papa 🫡
kimiraikkonen: proud of you.
user6: we love a self aware girly
user7: the raikkonen household really is the best balance, a guy who acts like talking causes him physical pain and a girl who couldn't shut the fuck up if she tried
yourusername: no way i'd rather it be
charles_leclerc: how many versions of that shirt do you have?
yourusername: enough...
charles_leclerc: and i'm the one who is a threat to national security when i go shopping
yourusername: that trouser collection should get you on some sort of list
user8: all these f1 drivers in her likes and comments and she's not cuffed... why is she fumbling so bad
yourusername: am I fumbling or are THEY?
user9: expose the dms please
yourusername: that would not be pg13 soz!
maxverstappen1
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liked by kimiraikkonen, landonorris and 1,094,556 others
tagged: yourusername
maxverstappen1: oh look who decided to come back
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user10: max is so annoyed that she decided to go to school in the us that he makes all american fans lives hell by winning all the races
user11: so true of him
landonorris: matching books? you're such a simp
maxverstappen1: is a man forbidden to be in a book club? who backwards of you lando
yourusername: just because you can't read, don't take it out on us
landonorris: i can read!
yourusername: name the last book you read
yourusername: and that doesn't include searching your name on twitter
landonorris: can you go back already, you're so mean
yourusername: don't come for our two man book club if you can't handle the smoke
maxverstappen1: what she said
user12: i love how spring break starts and y/n doesn't even go to see her dad, straight to max
maxverstappen1: kimi is coming! i am NOT a bad friend who deprives y/n of her dad
user12: you're also scared of kimi
maxverstappen1: i'm also scared of kimi
danielricciardo: you're in my building and i don't get any baked goods... i see how it is
yourusername: as if max is allowed to eat them anyway they're for dad
danielricciardo: i promptly take back anything i've ever said
user13: max has got to be down bad to have that much baking equipment in his house when it's canon he can barely cook eggs
yourusername: if he wanted to he would
user14: is this confirmation?
yourusername: i hope those are paper straws you're grasping at
maxverstappen1: why wouldn't i make sure i have the equipment to get my worker bee to make me sweet treats (don't read that rupert)
user15: i'm on to you two ... there's something shady going on here
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sebastianvettel
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liked by kimiraikkonen, maxverstappen1 and 1,209,409 others
tagged: yourusername
sebastianvettel: she's too old, i miss when she was a nice and polite child
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user19: annual god father seb appearance
user20: y/n please work your magic to get him to a race this weekend
yourusername: i'm working on it! watch out for suzuka
user21: the people's princess truly
yourusername: rude! i am a very polite young woman 🙁
sebastianvettel: yes you are, but also when you were ten you didn't bother me with your love life
sebastianvettel: and you weren't so fussy with food
yourusername: I AM NOT FUSSY I JUST HAVE AN ACQUIRED TASTE
sebastianvettel: you asked me to uninvite lewis to our dinner plans because you "hate that quinoa shit, i'm hungry enough to kill a horse with my bare hands"
yourusername: and i'd say it again!
lewishamilton: first of all: rude. second of all: i knew there was a reason you and max get on so well - BLAND
maxverstappen1: just because my food doesn't turn my shit green or couldn't accidentally be sold in the rabbit section of the pet store doesn't make me BLAND
yourusername: i don't trust a man who makes non-alocholic tequila THE FACT IT GETS YOU DRUNK IS THE BEST PART OF THE TEQUILA ONLY WEIRDOS DRINK TEQUILA FOR THE TASTE
lewishamilton: gasp! you said you liked it!
yourusername: i try to be supportive okay :(
user22: well that was something
user23: max always coming to the rescue ... makes you think
charles_leclerc: i am sensing some blatant favouritism here
mickschumacher: i never get invited on baking weekends :(
yourusername: snooze you lose ladies
sebastianvettel: this is exactly what i mean y/n
yourusername: my bad! i'm sorry my god father loves me more than you :p get well soon
sebastianvettel: that's not-
charles_leclerc: consider yourself in beef
yourusername: it's on babe
user24: gosh i'm so confused WHO THE FUCK DO I WANT TO GET WITH HER
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yourusername
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liked by maxverstappen1, kimiraikkonen and 809,445 others
yourusername: boy, oh, boy am i ready to finish this semester
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user26: i see tulips i do deduce that they are from max verstappen 🤓👆
user27: i hate you invasive leeches (i believe this and it is now my personal headcanon)
maxverstappen1: SEAT BELT PLEASE
yourusername: i swear i did 😫
maxverstappen1: you need to protect the precious goods
landonorris: you never tell me that 🙁
maxverstappen1: you're not precious goods, hope this helps x
landonorris: i see how it is
yourusername: don't hate the player, hate the game lando
user28: they've either got the single most flirtatious friendship ever to exist or they're together
user29: if they are just friends and those flowers are from her actual gf - i am not being dramatic but i would take a long walk off a short plank
user30: i feel like they'd be the ultimate cockblocks for each other 😭
kimiraikkonen: proud of you bub
yourusername: i am losing hair from academic stress i hope you're happy papa
kimiraikkonen: i am 👍🏻
yourusername: i am losing hair - LOSING HAIR THIS IS A BIG DEAL YOU PAY FOR MY APPOINTMENTS
kimiraikkonen: you need a college education so you're not wasting all of my money - i also pay your sorority dues so be nice to me
yourusername: i'm tired let me be the low effort nepo baby i am meant to be
user31: can kimi raikkonen pay for my hair appointments too?
jensonbutton: is that MY CAR?
yourusername: you put me on the insurance?
jensonbutton: yeah for when your car was in the shop - i thought shelby was still in my garage?
yourusername: not to victim blame but having so many cars you don't notice one is gone, that's on you
jensonbutton: @KIMIRAIKKONEN YOUR KID STOLE MY CAR
yourusername: britt gave me the keys !!!!!!
kimiraikkonen: you got duped by a 21 year old, that's not my fault
user32: kimi when y/n jokes about dropping out 🤨 kimi when y/n steals one of jenson's cars 🥹
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maxverstappen1
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liked by kimiraikkonen, landonorris and 2,305,689 others
tagged: yourusername
maxverstappen1: ice, ice baby (except you're smoking hot)
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user35: WHOOP WHOOP LET'S FUCKING GO
user36: max already having the approval of kimi, that's my king
maxverstappen1: make no mistake i went to the raikkonen household with many offerings before i asked for his permission
user37: and if he had said no?
maxverstappen1: i would've asked y/n regardless 🫡
kimiraikkonen: 🤨
maxverstappen1: uh? i'm digging my own grave but i love your daughter so that's all the matters right? RIGHT?
kimiraikkonen: 🙄
maxverstappen1: WOULD IT KILL YOU TO USE THE KEYBOARD I'M HAVING A NERVOUS BREAKDOWN HERE
user38: the way max got given approval on live tv with more words than we've heard from kimi at any point in his career and he's still a shaking mess
user39: anxious girl representation
yourusername: you melted this icicle
maxverstappen1: eh i think you've always been a softy
charles_leclerc: like softserve ice cream? shop @lec now!
maxverstappen1: do you fucking mind?
yourusername: really? on the post of my boyfriend professing his love?
charles_leclerc: god forbid a guy chases the bag (also he called you smoking hot, that's hardly a profession of love)
maxverstappen1: you little rat
yourusername: lifetime supply of lec and a flavour named after us and consider yourself forgiven
charles_leclerc: i don't need your approval that much
yourusername: @kimiraikkonen @sebastianvettel you seeing this shit?
charles_leclerc: fine... weaponising your dad and god father is a low blow
yourusername: also! i love you baby - thank you for putting up with my constant yapping xx
maxverstappen1: i love you even more, i can't wait for you to finish college so i never have to share you ever again
kimiraikkonen: 🤨
maxverstappen1: AND YOUR LOVELY FAMILY
yourusername: they love you really maxy don't worry
yourusername
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liked by sebastianvettel, jensonbutton and 1.945,440 others
tagged: maxverstappen1
yourusername: i'm so talented, i brought three more championships to the family without even getting into the car
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user40: okay idk why yall were shipping anyone else, i've seen one picture of them being cute and am sold
user41: i'm so convinced this happened cause max saw people were convinced she was with other people on the grid and he had to mark his territory
maxverstappen1: yes i was jealous but can you blame me? prettiest girl in the world actually wanted me back. i will not fumble this
user42: i need my man to be this down bad for me
kimiraikkonen: cute.
yourusername: thank you papa xxx
maxverstappen1: THANK YOU KIMI, LOVE YOU KIMI
yourusername: i think he gets it babe...
maxverstappen1: first time i've got a non-emoji answer, i will savour it
user43: oh my i love them your honour
sebastianvettel: happy for you guys, see you guys soon
yourusername: love you seb!
maxverstappen1: thanks for the vote of confidence seb
sebastianvettel: you may be a literal nightmare child, but you're our nightmare child now
kimiraikkonen: what he said
maxverstappen1: AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH (i am ignoring that you called me a nightmare child, i was 17 give me a break)
yourusername: you guys he's crying hahahahahah
maxverstappen1: i just love you guys (y/n more)
yourusername: i love you too xx
user44: so liked now we've got the relationship reveal... when do we get both y/n and kimi in the red bull garage
user45: lets up the stakes and get max, kimi and seb in the 24 hours of le mans
yourusername: oh now you've started it - he's already on the phone to adrian
maxverstappen1: am i the first nepotism boyfriend?
kimiraikkonen: you might be the favourite of the in-laws if you get me a le mans win
maxverstappen1: y/n is an only child? i'm the only in law?
kimiraikkonen: yes?
maxverstappen1: I'M ON THE PHONE TO ADRIAN
yourusername: did i just lose my boyf to my dad?
fin.
note: babe the writer's block is back. but i'm fighting it. hope yall enjoyed this!
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sayruq · 5 months
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Hamas propaganda is so much more effective than Israeli propaganda despite not having the support of seemingly every western news organisation. It's simple, clear, cohesive, easy to understand, and therefore believable.
For example, Hamas will film themselves handing over healthy looking hostages to the Red Cross and then interact with them right before they leave to show how friendly the captors and captives have gotten. You watch the videos and you understand everything that is being conveyed immediately.
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And it worked. Even the people in my life, who aren't watching the conflict as closely as we have, have seen these images and have spoken in varying levels of surprise at how 'nice' and 'hospitable' Hamas was to the hostages. Keep in mind that these videos came out after weeks of billions of people witnessing the brutal and systemic murder of Palestinian people. The contrasting gentleness of the hostage exchange stood out greatly.
Israeli propaganda is chaotic, it conflicts itself, it's complicated. Look at this for example
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In order to explain why the hostages were so friendly with their captors, first, it was because the hostages had Stockholm Syndrom. Naturally, social media, their second greatest enemy, was awash with people refuting the existence of such a syndrome. So, it became that the hostages were actually being held at gun point. While, there were guns present during the hostage handovers, no one was pointing them at hostages in the videos that we all have available. No one was being hostile either. Now, we have the sedative explanation which again can be easily refuted by the videos we all have access to because the hostages didnt seem particularly drowsy. So, we have hostages with Stockholm Syndrome, who had guns pointed at them, and who were sedated. That's just too much. How can Stockholm Syndrome coexist with being held at gun point in front of the Red Cross? Why would they need to threaten the hostages if they're sedated? Which explanation can the average zionist go with? Which one can a neutral party accept?
The same goes for the war propaganda. On one hand you have American officials insisting that Israel would never harm Palestinian civilians on purpose but on the other hand, you have soldiers filming themselves shooting recklessly and with wild abandon into thin air with the implication being that they're battling off screen Hamas. You also have Israel insisting that hospitals, schools and refugee camps are secret Hamas bases but all we are seeing is civilians getting murdered in protected areas. When it comes to war reports, they can't decide if they've killed 1,000 or 5,000 Hamas fighters. No wonder even Israeli commentators have given up on the promise of the complete eradication of Hamas.
The Palestinian resistance have also released war propaganda. Simple, well edited videos showing their fighters actually battling Israeli soldiers and tanks, sometimes very up close. The videos are similar despite featuring different confrontations in the battlefield over a period of time. It's easy for anyone to spot an Al Qassam or Al Quds video. It's even easier to accept their daily war reports because we've seen them back up their claims. The numbers they give are consistent with their capabilities as well as various indicators such as Israel being forced to decommission their older tanks for the war in Gaza. Would they be doing that if they weren't losing their top line tanks fast?
Many zionists have spent the past 2 months confused as to why the whole world has seemingly turned against Israel. I'd point the finger at Israel if I were them, both due to its actions in Gaza and its inability to continue fooling the world.
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is Jewish Voice for Peace actually Jewish? I've heard a couple different things about that but no sources
@gryphistheantlerqueen also asked:
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Whooo boy. So this has been sitting in the inbox for a few months, I wrote up a draft, and then it just sat... until this past week, when some new JVP BS hit the fan and gave me the kick to finish it.
Sooooo...
Verdict: Not Actually Jewish
(updated verdict after finding out about the “self-managed conversion” and “teacup mikvah”) Jewish, technically, and that "technically" is doing a lot of heavy lifting, and is actively debatable without access to a detailed breakdown of JVP’s actual membership rolls. 
In general summation, JVP is a far-left radical antizionist group that is headed by a few visibly antizionist Jews and whose membership rolls are either a strong minority or outright majority of non-Jews, based on variable statistics that they've released. Although they claim that the “majority of their members and staff are Jewish”, this seems to be both statistically unlikely and actively suspicious due to their noted tendency to instruct even non-Jewish members to speak #AsAJew on social media, and their instructions to do “self-managed conversions”.  However, due to their title, they are very popular with people who want a Jewish Stamp Of Approval for demonizing Israelis and Zionist Jews as a result. In effect, they are Jewish in the same way that people like Candace Owens and Hershel Walker are Black—as self-tokenizing minorities who throw the rest of their ethnic group under the bus in exchange for power and political access.
And despite the claims that they are “inspired by Jewish values and traditions” (as put on their website) and “oppose anti-Jewish hatred,” JVP routinely engages in antisemitic rhetoric, up to and including blood libel and antisemitic conspiracy theories, and acts as a shield against non-Jews who also engage in antisemitic rhetoric so long as the non-Jews in question remember to shout "For Palestine!" first. This is not an exaggeration. 
The primary example of their in-house antisemitic rhetoric is their "Deadly Exchange" program, where they explicitly and conspiratorially blame Israel as being responsible for American police brutality and militarization. However, for all of their fearmongering and blame-casting on the subject—as if American cops needed outside help in brutalizing minorities or gaining military-grade handmedowns from the Pentagon, both of which are explicit claims of the "Deadly Exchange" program—they have a hard time actually identifying specific deaths associated with the international training seminars they're holding up as responsible.
One of the the closest they've come to a specific allegation is claiming that "former St. Louis County police chief Timothy Fitch trained with the Israeli military three years before Michael Brown’s killing and the Ferguson uprising." (Note: this was in a video that appears to have since been made private.) But Darren Wilson worked for the Ferguson PD, not the St. Louis PD, and Fitch retired months before the killing. So he was in a completely different police department, and this is the closest JVP comes to pointing to specific deaths or acts of brutality that they blame on Israel. Everything else is literal fearmongering--up to and including the classic conspiratorial tropes of "secretive Jewish governmental influence".
JVP has also happily supported the words of white supremacists like Richard Spencer, taking his “You could say that I’m a white Zionist in the sense that I care about my people," statement at face value, using it as the basis for entire articles where they compared Zionism to White Supremacy as a deliberate misrepresentation of the ideology that is common on the extreme political Left (you can compare that treatment again with how Candace Owens treats the word "Woke" on the Right). Even when the Charlottesville "Unite the Right" march happened, JVP wasted no time in comparing Zionism with the very ideology fueling the people chanting "Jews Will Not Replace Us," saying that Zionism is "Jewish racial supremacy" and calling for a universal condemnation of the ideology as a form of White Supremacy... which was the exact sort of message that many of those same White Supremacists would have happily agreed with.  So JVP is essentially siding with literal White Supremacists,  even as they claim that "Jews are not the primary victims of White Supremacy."
JVP also engages in Holocaust revisionism, such as with this lovely quote from Cecilie Surasky, the deputy director of JVP, “I believe it is critical to situate the genocide of Jews in a broader context, and not as an exceptional, metaphysically unique event. Some 6 million Jews died, but another 5 million people were also targeted for annihilation.”
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(another quote, from an article by Surasky, which compares Netanyahu to Hitler.)
This is just straight revisionism of the entire Holocaust and the unique fixation the Nazis had on the Jews. Literally, even when they were losing, they were diverting resources from the war just to kill more Jews. Quote Hitler himself, "Jews must be prevented from intruding themselves among all the other nations as elements of internal disruption, under the mask of honest world-citizens, and thus gaining power over these nations." The very basis of the Nazi ideology paints Jews as an existential threat to the human race's peace and security—a far cry from JVP's claim that the Jewish suffering in the Holocaust wasn't unique or exceptional.
Additionally, JVP ignores or re-envisions Mizrachi Jewish history. They call the very term Mizrachi “Zionist rhetoric,” and refer to Mizrachi “immigrants,” (“Deadly Exchange,” pg. 16-17), and claim “the Israeli government facilitated a mass immigration of Mizrahim” (“Our Approach to Zionism”) as though those weren’t the direct result of the mass expulsion of and violence against Jews in MENA countries. These weren’t immigrants, these were refugees. 
And as for the question of “Are they Jewish?”, well...
Statistically, they are not representative of the Jewish population as a whole, 90% of whom identify as some degree of Zionist in the sense of “Supporting Jewish self-determination.”  One does not need to be Jewish to join JVP, as they proudly state on their website. Their membership rolls are also extremely obfuscated, and the fact that they encourage their followers, whether Jewish or not, to post and speak “as Jews” on social media makes it even more difficult to figure out what percentage of their membership is actually Jewish.  Furthermore, they have instructions for their members to engage in “self-conversions” that are not acceptable to Jewish law or tradition, and misuse/appropriate other sacred Jewish traditions to the point that “blasphemy” is an accurate description, with their instructions on the mikvah (a sacred bath) being outright offensive.  
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(note that one has to be completely nude and bare of any adornment or makeup to use the mikvah, which is a pure pool of collected rainwater to be immersed in, for context on the above... misuse.  Trying to claim this as being “in line with sacred Jewish tradition” is like trying to claim to be Catholic while also saying that the Pope is the Antichrist and that using beer and a doughnut for the Eucharist is acceptable. For more information on mikveh, see: The Jewish Virtual Library, Aish, myjewishlearning, or Chabad.
There's also no altar.
The irony of asking people not to appropriate while doing this is astonishing.)
It’s also telling that they straight up say they are “claiming” the practice as their own.
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Furthermore, JVP has hosted panels on “antisemitism” in the past... headed by people who are not only not Jewish, but who have been credibly accused of antisemitism in the past.  
JVP has also endorsed The Mapping Project Boston, which was a Boycott, Divest, and Sanction (BDS) subsidiary, listing every “Zionist” organization in Boston, Mass. This included Jewish schools, elder homes, community centers, disability centers, and more; all of them painted with scary and misleading “links” to non-Jewish organizations to insinuate Jewish control of the state and city governments, invoking age-old antisemitic tropes of a conspiracy of Jews as they did so:
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(first image is the Mapping Project, the second is a 1938 Nazi political cartoon)
The Mapping Project also, and this is my personal favorite, accused Harvard University of doing “racist science” for engaging in archeological and genetic studies of Jews and Jewish history.  Tellingly, BDS actually disavowed The Mapping Project (albeit for bad optics, not for the rank antisemitism they were promoting)... but JVP has not, even though the Mapping Project’s entry for the ADL reads as follows:
Masquerading as a “civil rights” group, the ADL is a counterinsurgency and espionage organization whose mission is to protect the mutual interests of the US and Israeli governments, and to eliminate solidarity among oppressed peoples, especially concerning Palestine. The ADL spies on and criminalizes activists (using its connections to governments, police, schools, and corporations) while undermining their work by pushing its own state-sanctioned, pro-“Israel” agenda. And while the ADL claims to represent Jews and to fight “antisemitism” on their behalf, the organization has supported anti-Jewish state violence and sanitized Nazis. The ADL cannot be reformed: it must be dismantled and whatever resources it has should go towards repairing the many harms it has done. (Emphasis added.)
Of course, JVP has also engaged in similar conspiracy-toned antisemitic dogwhistles, such as this fun bit from their first Deadly Exchange video:
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So clearly (to me at least), they have no problems with The Mapping Project’s tone and presentation.  
And this isn’t even going into JVP’s routine promotion of blood libel, their egregious double standards, their approving of pogroms, their active support for Hamas terrorists and demonization of Hamas’ victims, their attempted revisionism of Jewish history, their abject rejection of Jewish culture, and their other actions that show not just bias, but outright hatred for 90% of the world’s Jews.  
As one commentator put it, JVP as an organization is very much like Autism Speaks is to Autistic people--a thinly disguised hate group that views the people they’re supposedly speaking for as the problem, and themselves as promoting the Solution.  To this moderator, they’re the equivalent of the Association of German National Jews, who were also known as the Jews for Hitler; they wanted to abandon Judaism and embrace Naziism... and they got sent to the gas chambers anyway.  
Mod Joseph
Sources:
www.adl.org/resources/backgrounder/jewish-voice-peace
www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Mikveh-Guide-for-Jewish-Voice-for-Peace-Outlined.pdf
(and also just... a general experience/exposure to them on social media, where even the most progressive actions taken by Israel, such as the recent ruling regarding queer Palestinians being able to claim sanctuary in Israel, being labeled as “pinkwashing”)
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adriennebarnes · 5 days
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Can You Be My Boyfriend?
Pairing: Charles Leclerc x Hispanic/Latina! Reader
Summary: Y/N is Ferrari’s social media manager and when one of the mechanics doesn’t take no for an answer, she pretends she’s dating a certain Ferrari driver.
Warning: grammatical and spelling errors cuz I don’t proofread
A/N: i just wanted to say thank you so much for the love y’all gave “Prince of Ferrari”, it means a lot to me as a new Charles Leclerc writer. I hope y’all like this one too, just like Olivia Rodrigo, I am so American,
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Y/N walked into Fred’s office.
“Mr. Vasseur, I had an idea for a new C2 challenge.” Y/N said.
“What did you have in mind, Y/N?” Fred asked.
“I was thinking we make dishes from each place we go to. Like Cuban food from Miami, Texas barbecue ribs, paella from Spain, and we have Charles and Carlos match the dishes to their flag. I personally think it would be fun, you know? Or we could do a video where the drivers tell us from which Grand Prix the photo was taken.” Y/N suggested.
“Those are very good ideas, Y/N, see if the boys are up to it, will you? Figure out when the best time is to film that.” Fred said.
“Yes, will do.” Y/N said and left his office. She walked to the living room (does the hospitality have a living room? I don’t know) to see Carlos and Charles chatting to away.
“There she is! Como has estado, hermosa?” Carlos asked Y/N, hugging her and kissing her on the cheek.
“Ha estado súper bien, un poquito cansada, pero nada que no se puede arreglar con un café.” Y/N said, her and Carlos laughed.
“I understand half of that.” Charles said.
“Now you know how I feel when you speak French.” Y/N said. “Anyway, as your social media manager, I had an idea for an upcoming challenge, we have to make the most of this season.” Y/N said.
“We hear you, mon ange, what’s the idea?” Charles asked.
“Can you guys guess what Grand Prix this is based off the picture?” Y/N asked, showing them a picture on her phone.
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“That’s when I won in Monza.” Charles answered.
“Good, this is your challenge, guessing Grand Prixs based off a photo.” Y/N said putting her phone away. “It’s not much, but it’s different from what you guys have done in the past. You could also match dishes to their countries.” Y/N said.
“Sounds like a fun challenge.” Carlos said.
“Good to hear. I’m gonna be with the photographer, he’s taking photos of the new livery and I need to approve them before I post them on Instagram. See ya later, okay?” Y/N said, stepping into the garage where she sees the photographer looking over the photos on his camera.
“Y/N! You’re here, tell me what you think, and be brutally honest. Do you think they came out to blurry?” The photographer, Daniel, asked. Y/N started looking them over.
“They look great, honestly, it matches Ferrari’s instagram feed, you did a good job. Can you upload them to the computer?” Y/N asked and Daniel said that he could. He left Y/N alone on the garage and that’s when one of the mechanics, Ruggero, approached her.
“Sei bellissima, a more mío.” Ruggero told her. Y/N rolled her eyes,
“Grazie, Rugge, what do you want?” Y/N asked.
“You are very hostile towards me, you know? I might be able to forgive you if you go out with me.” Ruggero said.
“Not gonna happen, Rugge, aren’t you tired of getting rejected?” Y/N asked.
“I bounce back. Come on, amore, why won’t you let me take you out? You think you’re too good for me?” Ruggero asked.
“What are you talking about? Oh my god, I don’t think I’m too good for you, where the hell did you get that from?” Y/N asked, so confused at the turn this conversation took.
“Well that’s the only thing I could think of, you come from the states, you clearly think you’re better than Europeans.” Ruggero said and Y/N had enough of this nonsense.
“I have a boyfriend! Que pesado eres, me cae.” Y/N said.
“Really, who’s the boyfriend?” Ruggero asked. Y/N saw Charles walking into the garage.
“Muñeco, there you are!” Y/N said loudly, walking up to Charles and kissed him. Charles widened his eyes in shock but kissed her back and they both pulled away, Y/N wrapped her arms around his waist, leaning her head against his chest and Charles rubbed her back.
“Congratulations, does Fred know?” Ruggero asked.
“It’s private right now, we’re just seeing how this goes.” Y/N replied and as soon as Ruggero left, Y/N pulled away from Charles. “I am so sorry! Ruggero wouldn’t leave me alone so I had to tell him I had a boyfriend and honestly whoever walked through that door was going to be the victim of my lie but I am glad it’s you and not Carlos, mainly because Ruggero knows Rebecca is dating him.” Y/N explained quickly but Charles was still distracted, thinking about the kiss Y/N gave him.
“I’m sorry, what?” Charles asked.
“Can you be my boyfriend?” Y/N asked.
“I Don’t think we could pull this off, Y/N. We work together.” Charles said.
“We would only have to pretend we’re dating around Ruggero, no one else has to know, I promise.” Y/N said.
“Okay fine.” Charles said, him and Y/N were walking back to the main area (I don’t know how this works) and Carlos was standing next to Fred and Ruggero with a smile.
“Congratulations, cabrón,” Carlos told charles, hugging him. “You two are adorable.” Charles turned to look at Y/N with a look that said ‘no one will know, yeah right’
“I didn’t know you two were dating.” Fred commented.
“It’s still new.” Charles replied, putting his arm around Y/N.
“As long as it doesn’t interfere with the social media posts, it should be fine.” Fred said before walking away. Ruggero smiled before going back to the garage.
“Now I know why you always called her ‘mon ange’, que coqueto saliste, eh charles.” Carlos said, leaving Y/N and Charles alone, Y/N pulled away to face Charles.
“Well so much for that plan, I really am sorry, Charles.” Y/N said.
“You know what? It’s alright, it’s okay, pretending around here should be easy enough, this can’t get worse, right?” Charles asked.
“I Don’t think it can. How about I buy you lunch for getting you into this situation? I swear I did not mean for this to happen.” Y/N said.
“Yeah, sure let’s get lunch, where do you want to go?” Charles asked.
“Well since this lunch is my treat, you choose where we should go.” Y/N said. Charles and Y/N walked to the parking lot together and Y/N was walking towards her car when Charles grabbed her wrist and pulled her towards his car. “Seriously?”
“Well what kind of boyfriend would I be if we went to lunch in different cars?” Charles asked.
“Yeah, makes sense, Ruggero is watching through the window too, let’s go.” Y/N said. Charles opened the passenger door and Y/N got in, he close the door behind her, ever there gentleman, and he got into the driver seat. He turned on the car, and gave Y/N his phone so she can choose the music.
They arrived at the restaurant and like always, there were fans recording Charles and Y/N in the car, leaving the car, eating at the restaurant, talking, laughing, within the hour, Charles and Y/N were trending on Instagram, Twitter (X), and TikTok. As they waited for the check, Y/N was scrolling on TikTok when she found a video of her and Charles in the car.
“Charles, i think our ‘relationship’ went public.” Y/N said, showing him her phone. Charles’s eyes widened.
“Cant say I’m not surprised, I just thought videos wouldn’t be posted until later, you know?” Charles said and Y/N put her phone away.
“We haven’t even been ‘dating’ two hours and now everyone knows. You have no idea how sorry I am, I feel so bad for dragging you into this.” Y/N said.
“None of this wouldn’t have happened if Ruggero understood the word ‘no’ so you are fine, I’m glad I was able to help. But what was that thing you called me? ‘Muñeco’? Why did you call me that?” Charles asked.
“So ‘muñeco’ means ‘doll’, you have a pretty face, everyone says you’re good looking, you know you’re good looking. So muñeco just suits you, okay, especially with those dimples.” Y/N said, Charles smirked a little.
“You think I have a pretty face?” Charles asked teasingly.
“Great, I boosted your ego, like your head wasn’t big enough already. You literally said in one of those C2 challenges when Carlos had your photo that if you were a woman, you would be in love with yourself.” Y/N said. The waiter came in with the check and Y/N was going to take it but Charles was faster. “Dude, I told you I was gonna pay.”
“It would look good if you paid, there are cameras everywhere apparently.” Charles said, placing his credit card with the check. The waiter took the check.
“Then I’ll Apple Pay you. You gonna train today?” Y/N asked.
“Yes actually, come with me? You could post it to my story.” Charles asked. The waiter came back with Charles’s card.
“Yeah, I can do that. But we gotta go to Scuderia Ferrari for my car.” Y/N said, getting up from the table, Charles getting up as well.
“I think it can stay there overnight.” Charles said.
“You want me to spend the entire day with you? You’re insane.” Y/N commented as they were leaving the restaurant.
“Maybe, but it is to keep up appearances.” Charles said.
“I guess, but how long do we say we’ve been dating?” Y/N asked, getting into Charles’s car, he does the same.
“4 months seems good, don’t you think?” Charles asked.
“I guess that’s plausible.” Y/N said, Charles starts the car and drives off.
“Do you miss New York?” Charles asked.
“What do you mean?” Y/N asked.
“You travel a lot with us and you moved to Monaco for work, but do you ever miss New York? Your family? I know I miss my family when I’m away for races.” Charles said.
“I miss the food in New York, I can’t get decent tacos al pastor in Monaco, I gotta wait til the Mexican Grand Prix for them.” Y/N stated. “But yeah, I do miss New York.”
“You should ask for vacation time so you could go.” Charles said.
“I Don’t think they’ll give it to me, but thanks.” Y/N said.
For a week, Y/N and Charles have been spotted together everywhere, at races obviously, with Joris, Andrea, Doni, and Victoria, even with Charles’s family. Right now Y/N was with Charles at a club in Monaco. Y/N was at a table with Charles was at the bar getting drinks. Y/N noticed a girl flirting with Charles, touching his hand, before he pulled away with two drinks for him and Y/N.
“Charles, can we talk for a second?” Y/N asked.
“Sure, what’s on your mind, mon ange?” Charles asked, the nickname still causing butterflies in Y/N’s stomach.
“If you wanted to hook up with that girl, you can. I don’t want to have you tied down for a fake relationship.” Y/N said.
“I wasn’t interested in her at all, you know.” Charles commented.
“Really? What happens when the next girl that hits on you is more your type? I don’t want to hold you back, we are friends after all.” Y/N said.
“I have a confession to make.” Charles said, Y/N nodded her head for Charles to continue. “I’ve liked you for a while. Before you kissed me, it was a little crush, I thought it would have went away, but being with you this past week made my crush grow stronger. You don’t have to feel the same way, I just wanted to get this off my chest.” Y/N was shocked. Charles usually went for Instagram models, but he actually likes her, this was her dream come true.
“I’ve liked you for a while too, I just never thought you would see me that way.” Y/N said.
“I’m going to kiss you right now, okay?” Charles whispered, getting closer to Y/N, looking at her lips then back into her eyes, Y/N nodded, leaning in until their lips touched. It was a soft, gentle kiss, until Charles gained more confidence to do more. They pulled away. “Will you be my girlfriend? For real, this time?” Charles asked.
“Yes I will.” Y/N responded, they kissed again.
The End
Was this good? I think it was good, the pacing is weird, but I had no idea where this was going, just saying. Was it just as good as “prince of Ferrari”? Probably not, but I hope y’all liked it, should I keep writing Charles Leclerc fanfics?
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Conservatives are fringe outliers - and leftists could learn from them
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The Republican Party, a coalition between Big Business farmers and turkeys who’ll vote for Christmas (Red Scare obsessed cowards, apocalyptic white nationalists, religious fanatics, etc) has fallen to its bizarre, violent, noisy radical wing, who are obsessed with policies that are completely irrelevant to the majority of Americans.
As Oliver Willis writes, the views of the radical right — which are also the policies of the GOP — are wildly out of step with the US political view:
https://www.oliverexplains.com/p/conservatives-arent-like-normal-americans
The press likes to frame American politics as “narrowly divided,” but the reality is that Republicans’ electoral victories are due to voter suppression and antimajoritarian institutions (the Senate and Electoral College, etc), not popularity. Democrats consistently outperform the GOP in national races. Dems won majorities in 1992/6, and beat the GOP in 2000, 2008, 2012, 2016 and 2020. The only presidential race the GOP won on popular votes since 1988 was 2004, when GW Bush eked out a plurality (not a majority).
But, as Willis says, Dems “act like it is 1984 and that they are outliers in a nation of Reagan voters,” echoing a stilted media narrative. The GOP’s platform just isn’t popular. Take the groomer panic: 71% of Americans approve of same-sex marriage. The people losing their shit about queer people are a strange, tiny minority.
Every one of the GOP’s tentpole issues is wildly unpopular: expanding access to assault rifles, banning immigration, lowering taxes on the rich, cutting social programs, forcing pregnant people to bear unwanted children, etc. This is true all the way up to the GOP’s coalescing support for Trump as their 2024 candidate. Trump has lost every popular vote he’s ever stood for, and owes his term in the Oval Office to the antimajoritarian Electoral College system, gerrymandering, and massive voter suppression.
Willis correctly points out that Dem leaders are basically “normal” center-right politicians, not radicals. And, unlike their GOP counterparts, politicians like Clinton, Obama and Biden don’t hide their disdain for the radical wing of their party. Even never-Trumper Republicans are afraid of their base. Romney declared himself “severely conservative” and McCain “put scare quotes around ‘health of the mother’ provisions for abortion rights.”
The GOP fringe imposes incredible discipline on their leaders. Take all the nonsense about “woke capitalism”: on the one hand, it’s absurd to call union-busting, tax-dodging, worker-screwing companies “woke” (even if they sell Pride flags for a couple of weeks every year).
But on the other hand? The GOP leadership have actually declared war on the biggest corporations in America, to the point that the WSJ says that “Republicans and Big Business broke up”:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/republicans-corporations-donations-pacs-9b5b202b
But America is a two-party system and there are plenty of people who’ll pull the lever for any Republican. This means that when the GOP comes under the control of its swivel-eyed loon wing, the swivel-eyed loons wield power far beyond the number of people who agree with them.
There’s an important lesson there for Dems, whose establishment is volubly proud of its independence from its voters. The Biden administration is a weirdly perfect illustration of this “independence.” The Biden admin is a kind of referee, doling out policies and appointments to its competing wings, without any coherence or consistency.
That’s how you get incredible appointments like Lina Khan at the FTC and Jonathan Kanter at the DoJ Antitrust Division and Rohit Chopra at the Consumer Finance Protection Bureat — the progressive wing of the party bargained for these key appointments and then played their cards very well, getting incredible, hard-charging, hyper-competent fighters in those roles.
Likewise, Jared Bernstein, finally confirmed as Council of Economic Advisers chair after an interminable wrangle:
https://prospect.org/blogs-and-newsletters/tap/2023-06-16-team-biden/
And Julie Su, acting labor secretary, who just delivered a six-year contract to west coast dockworkers with 8–10% raises in the first year, paid retroactively for the year they worked without a contract:
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2023/06/14/statement-from-president-biden-on-labor-agreement-at-west-coast-ports/
But the Biden admin’s unwillingness to side with one wing of the party also produces catastrophic failures, like the martyrdom of Gigi Sohn, who was subjected to years of vicious personal attacks while awaiting confirmation to the FCC, undefended by the Biden admin, left to twist in the wind until she gave it up as a bad job:
https://doctorow.medium.com/culture-war-bullshit-stole-your-broadband-4ce1ffb16dc5
It’s how we get key roles filled by do-nothing seatwarmers like Pete Buttigieg, who has the same sweeping powers that Lina Khan is wielding so deftly at the FTC, but who lacks either the will or the skill to wield those same powers at the Department of Transport:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/11/dinah-wont-you-blow/#ecp
By refusing to stand for anything except a fair division of powers among different Democratic Party blocs, the Biden admin ends up undercutting itself. Take right to repair, a centerpiece of the administration’s agenda, subject of a historic executive order and FTC regulation:
https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/18/administrative-competence/#i-know-stuff
Right to Repair fights have been carried out at the state level for years, with the biggest victory coming in Massachusetts, where an automotive R2R ballot initiative won overwhelming support in 2020:
https://pluralistic.net/2020/11/13/said-no-one-ever/#r2r
But despite the massive support for automotive right to repair in the Bay State, Big Car has managed to delay the implementation of the new law for years, tying up the state in expensive, time-consuming litigation:
https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/26/nixing-the-fix/#r2r
But eventually, even the most expensive delaying tactic fails. Car manufacturers were set to come under the state right to repair rule this month, but they got a last minute reprieve, from Biden’s own National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, who sent urgent letters to every major car manufacturer, telling them to ignore the Massachusetts repair law:
https://www.vice.com/en/article/m7bbkv/biden-administration-tells-car-companies-to-ignore-right-to-repair-law-people-overwhelmingly-voted-for
The NHTSA repeats the car lobby’s own scare stories about “cybersecurity” that they blitzed to Massachusetts voters in the runup to the ballot initiative:
https://pluralistic.net/2020/09/03/rip-david-graeber/#rolling-surveillance-platforms
The idea that cybersecurity is best maintained by letting powerful corporations gouge you on service and parts is belied by independent experts, like SecuRepairs, who do important work countering the FUD thrown off by the industry (and parroted by Biden’s NHTSA):
https://securepairs.org/
Independent security experts are clear that letting owners of high-tech devices decide who fixes them, what software they run, etc, makes us safer:
https://www.schneier.com/essays/archives/2022/01/letter-to-the-us-senate-judiciary-committee-on-app-stores.html
But here we are: the Biden admin is sabotaging the Biden admin, because the Biden admin isn’t an administration, it’s a system for ensuring proportional representation of different parts of the Democratic Party coalition.
This isn’t just bad for policy, it’s bad politics, too. It presumes that if some Democratic voters want pizza, and others want hamburgers, that you can please everyone by serving up pizzaburgers. No one wants a pizzaburger:
https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/23/narrative-warfare/#giridharadas
The failure to deliver a coherent, muscular vision for a climate-ready, anti-Gilded Age America has left the Democrats vulnerable. Because while the radical proposals of the GOP fringe may not enjoy much support, there are large majorities of Americans who have lost faith in the status quo and are totally uninterested in the Pizzaburger Party.
Nowhere is this better explained than in Naomi Klein’s superb long-form article on RFK Jr’s presidential bid in The Guardian:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jun/14/ignoring-robert-f-kennedy-jr-not-an-option
Don’t get me wrong, RFK Jr is a Very Bad Politician, for all the reasons that Klein lays out. He’s an anti-vaxxer, a conspiracist, and his support for ending American military aggression, defending human rights, and addressing the climate emergency is laughably thin.
But as Klein points out, RFK Jr is not peddling pizzaburgers. He is tapping into a legitimate rage:
a great many voters are hurting and rightfully angry: about powerful corporations controlling their democracy and profiting off disease and poverty. About endless wars draining national coffers and maiming their kids. About stagnating wages and soaring costs. This is the world — inflamed on every level — that the two-party duopoly has knowingly created.
RFK Jr is campaigning against “the corrupt merger between state and corporate power,” against drug monopolies setting our national health agenda, and polluters capturing environmental regulators.
As Klein says, despite RFK Jr’s willing to say the unsayable, and tap into the yearning among the majority of American voters for something different, he’s not running a campaign rooted in finally telling the American public “the truth.” Rather, “public discourse filled with unsayable and unspeakable subjects is fertile territory for all manner of hucksters positioning themselves as uniquely courageous truth tellers.”
We’ve been here before. Remember Trump campaigning against a “rigged system” and promising to “make America great again?” Remember Clinton’s rejoinder that “America was already great?” It’s hard to imagine a worse response to legitimate outrage — over corporate capture, declining wages and living conditions; and spiraling health, education and shelter costs.
Sure, it was obvious that Trump was a beneficiary of the rigged system, and that he would rig it further, but at least he admitted it was rigged, not “already great.”
The Democratic Party is not in thrall to labor unions, or racial equality activists, or people who care about gender justice or the climate emergency. Unlike the GOP, the Dem establishment has figured out how to keep a grip on power within their own party — at the expense of exercising power in America, even when they hold office.
But unlike culture war nonsense, shared prosperity, fairness, care, and sound environmental policies are very popular in America. Some people have been poisoned against politics altogether and sunk into nihilism, while others have been duped into thinking that America can’t afford to look after its people.
In this regard, winning the American electorate is a macrocosm for the way labor activists win union majorities in the workplaces they organize. In her memoir A Collective Bargain, Jane McAlevey describes how union organizers contend with everything that progressive politicians must overcome. A union drive takes place in the teeth of unfair laws, on a tilted playing field that allows bosses to gerrymander some workers’ votes and suppress others’ altogether. These bosses have far more resources than the workers, and they spend millions on disinformation campaigns, forcing workers to attend long propaganda sessions on pain of dismissal.
https://doctorow.medium.com/a-collective-bargain-a48925f944fe
But despite all this, labor organizers win union elections and strike votes, and they do so with stupendous majorities — 95% or higher. This is how the most important labor victories of our day were won: the 2019 LA teachers’ strike won everything. Not just higher wages, but consellors in schools, mandatory greenspace for every school in LA, an end to ICE shakedowns of immigrant parents at the school-gate, and immigration law help for students and their families. What’s more, the teachers used their unity, their connection to the community, and their numbers to get out the vote in the next election, winning the marginal seats that delivered 2020’s Democratic Congressional majority.
As I wrote in my review of MacAlevey’s book:
For McAlevey, saving America is just a scaled up version of the union organizer’s day-job. First, we fix the corrupt union, firing its sellout leaders and replacing them with fighters. Then, we organize supermajorities, person-to-person, in a methodical, organized fashion. Then we win votes, using those supermajorities to overpower the dirty tricks that rig the elections against us. Then we stay activated, because winning the vote is just the start of the fight.
It’s a far cry from the Democratic Party consultant’s “data-driven” microtargeting strategy based on eking out tiny, fragile majorities with Facebook ads. That’s a strategy that fails in the face of even a small and disorganized voter-suppression campaign — it it’s doomed in today’s all-out assault on fair elections.
What’s more, the consultants’ microtargeting strategy treats people as if the only thing they have to contribute is casting a ballot every couple years. A sleeping electorate will never win the fights that matter — the fight to save our planet, and to abolish billionaires.
If only the Democratic Party was as scared of its base as the Republicans are of their own.
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If you’d like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here’s a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/16/that-boy-aint-right/#dinos-rinos-and-dunnos
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[Image ID: The title page of Richard Hofstadter's 'Paranoid Style in American Politics' from the November, 1964 issue of Harper's Magazine. A John Birch Society pin reading 'This is REPUBLIC not a DEMOCRACY: let's keep it that way' sits atop the page, obscuring the introductory paragraph.]
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fuckyeahgoodomens · 2 months
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The Radio Times magazine from the 29 July-04 August 2023 :)
THE SECOND COMING
How did Terry Pratchett and Neil gaiman overcome the small matter of Pratchett's death to make another series of their acclaimed divine comedy?
For all the dead authors in the world,” legendary comedy producer John Lloyd once said, “Terry Pratchett is the most alive.” And he’s right. Sir Terry is having an extremely busy 2023… for someone who died in 2015.
This week sees the release of Good Omens 2, the second series of Amazon’s fantasy comedy drama based on the cult novel Pratchett co-wrote with Neil Gaiman in the late 1980s. This will be followed in the autumn by a new spin-off book from Pratchett’s Discworld series, Tiffany Aching’s Guide to Being a Witch, co-written by Pratchett’s daughter Rhianna and children’s author Gabrielle Kent. The same month, we’ll also get A Stroke of the Pen, a collection of “lost” short stories written by Sir Terry for local newspapers in the 70s and 80s and recently rediscovered. Clearly, while there are no more books coming from Pratchett – a hard drive containing all drafts and unpublished work was crushed by a vintage steamroller shortly after the author’s death, as per his specific wishes – people still want to visit his vivid and addictive worlds in new ways.
Good Omens 2 will be the first test of how this can work. The original book started life as a 5,000-word short story by Gaiman, titled William the Antichrist and envisioned as a bit of a mashup of Richmal Crompton’s Just William books and the 70s horror classic The Omen. What would happen, Gaiman had mused, if the spawn of Satan had been raised, not by a powerful American diplomat, but by an extremely normal couple in an idyllic English village, far from the influence of hellish forces? He’d sent the first draft to bestselling fantasy author Pratchett, a friend of many years, and then forgotten about it as he busied himself with continuing to write his massively popular comic books, including Violent Cases, Black Orchid and The Sandman, which became a Netflix series last year.
Pratchett loved the idea, offering to either buy the concept from Gaiman or co-write it. It was, as Gaiman later said, “like Michelangelo phoning and asking if you want to paint a ceiling” The pair worked on the book together from that point on, rewriting each other as they went and communicating via long phone calls and mailed floppy discs. “The actual mechanics worked like this: I would do a bit, then Neil would take it away and do a bit more and give it back to me,” Pratchett told Locus magazine in 1991. “We’d mess about with each other’s bits and pieces.”
Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch – to give it its full title –was published in 1990 to huge acclaim. It was one of, astonishingly, five Terry Pratchett novels to be published that year (he averaged two a year, including 41 Discworld novels and many other standalone works and collaborations).
It was also, clearly, extremely filmable, and studios came knocking — though getting it made took a while. rnvo decades on from its writing, four years after Pratchett's death from Alzheimer's disease aged 66, and after several doomed attempts to get a movie version off the ground, Good Omens finally made it to TV screens in 2019, scripted and show-run by Gaiman himself. "Terry was egging me on to make it into television. He knew he was dying, and he knew that I wouldn't start it without him," Gaiman revealed in a 2019 Radio Times interview. Amazon and the BBC co-produced with Pratchett's company Narrativia and Gaiman's Blank Corporation production studios, with Michael Sheen and David Tennant cast in the central roles of Aziraphale the angel and Crowley the demon. The show was a hit, not just with fans of its two creators, but with a whole new young audience, many of whom had no interest in Discworld or Sandman. Social media networks like Tumblr and TikTok were soon awash with cosplay, artwork and fan fiction. The original novel became, for the first time, a New York Times bestseller.
A follow up was, on one level, a no-brainer. The world Pratchett and Gaiman had created was vivid, funny and accessible, and Tennant and Sheen had found an intriguing romantic spark in their chemistry not present in the novel.
There was, however, a huge problem. There wasn't a second Good Omens book to base it on. But there was the ghost of an idea.
In 1989, after the book had been sold but before it had come out, the two authors had laid on fivin beds in a hotel room at a convention in Seattle and, jet-lagged and unable to sleep, plotted out, in some detail, what would happen in a sequel, provisionally titled 668, The II Neighbour of the Beast.
"It was a good one, too" Gaiman wrote in a 2021 blog. "We fully intended to write it, whenever we next had three or four months free. Only I went to live in America and Terry stayed in the UK, and after Good Omens was published, Sandman became SANDMAN and Discworld became DISCWORLD(TM) and there wasn't a good time."
Back in 1991, Pratchett elaborated, "We even know some of the main characters in it. But there's a huge difference between sitting there chatting away, saying, 'Hey, we could do this, we could do that,' and actually physically getting down and doing it all again." In 2019, Gaiman pillaged some of those ideas for Good Omens series one (for example, its final episode wasn't in the book at all), and had left enough threads dangling to give him an opening for a sequel. This is the well he's returned to for Good Omens 2, co-writing with comic John Finnemore - drafted in, presumably, to plug the gap left Pratchett's unparalleled comedic mind. No small task.
Projects like Good Omens 2 are an important proving ground for Pratchett's legacy: can the universes he conjured endure without their creator? And can they stay true to his spirit? Sir Terry was famously protective of his creations, and there have been remarkably few adaptations of his work considering how prolific he was. "What would be in it for me?" he asked in 2003. "Money? I've got money."
He wanted his work treated reverently and not butchered for the screen. It's why Good Omens and projects like Tiffany Aching's Guide to Being a Witch are made with trusted members of the inner circle like Neil Gaiman and Rhianna Pratchett at the helm. It's also why the author's estate, run by Pratchett's former assistant and business manager Rob Wilkins, keeps a tight rein on any licensed Pratchett material — it's a multi-million dollar media empire still run like a cottage industry.
And that's heartening. Anyone who saw BBC America's panned 2021 Pratchett adaptation The Watch will know how badly these things can go when a studio is allowed to run amok with the material without oversight. These stories deserve to be told, and these worlds deserve to be explored — properly. And there are, apparently, many plans afoot for more Pratchett on the screen. You can only hope that, somewhere, he'll be proud of the results.
After all, as he wrote himself, "No one is finally dead until the ripples they cause in the world die away, until the clock wound up winds down, until the wine she made has finished its ferment, until the crop they planted is harvested. The span of someone's life is only the core of their actual existence."
While those ripples continue to spread, Sir Terry Pratchett remains very much alive. MARC BURROWS
DIVINE DUO
An angel and a demon walk into a pub... Michael Sheen and David Tennant on family, friendship and Morecambe & Wise
Outside it's cold winter's day and we're in a Scottish studio, somewhere between Edinburgh and Glasgow. But inside it's lunchtime in The Dirty Donkey pub in the heart of London, with both Michael Sheen and David Tennant surveying the scene appreciatively. "This is a great pub," says Sheen eagerly, while Tennant calls it "the best Soho there can be. A slightly heightened, immaculate, perfect, dreamy Soho."
Here, a painting of the absent landlord — the late Terry Pratchett, co-creator, with Neil Gaiman, of the series' source novel — looms over punters. Around the corner is AZ Fell and Co Antiquarian and Unusual Books. It's the bookshop owned by Sheen's character, the angel Aziraphale, and the place to where Tennant's demon Crowley is inevitably drawn.
It's day 74 of an 80-day shoot for a series that no one, least of all the leading actors, ever thought would happen, due to the fact that Pratchett and Gaiman hadn't ever published any sequel to their 1990 fantasy satire. Tennant explains, "What we didn't know was that Neil and Terry had had plots and plans..."
Still, lots of good things are in Good Omens 2, which expands on the millennia-spanning multiverse of the first series. These include a surprisingly naked side of John Hamm, and roles for both Tennant's father-in-law (Peter Davison) and 21-year-old son Ty. At its heart, though, remains the brilliant banter between the two leading men — as Sheen puts it, "very Eric and Ernie !" — whose chemistry on the first series led to one of the more surprising saviours of lockdown telly.
Good Omens is back — but you've worked together a lot in the meantime. Was there a connective tissue between series one of Good Omens and Staged, your lockdown sitcom?
David: Only in as much as the first series went out, then a few months later, we were all locked in our houses. And because of the work we'd done on Good Omens, it occurred that we might do something else. I mean, Neil Gaiman takes full responsibility for Staged. Which, to some extent, he's probably right to do!
Michael: We've got to know each other through doing this. Our lives have gotten more entwined in all kinds of ways — we have children who've now become friends, and our families know each other.
There have been hints of a romantic storyline between the two characters. How much of an undercurrent is that in this series.
David: Nothing's explicit.
Michael: I felt from the very beginning that part of what would be interesting to explore is that Aziraphale is a character, a being, who just loves. How does that manifest itself in a very specific relationship with another being? Inevitably, as there is with everything in this story, there's a grey area. The fact that people see potentially a "romantic relationship", I thought that was interesting and something to explore.
There was a petition to have the first series banned because of its irreverent take on Christian tropes. Series two digs even more deeply into the Bible with the story of Job. How much of a badge of honour is it that the show riles the people who like to ban things?
David: It's not an irreligious show at all. It's actually very respectful of the structure of that sort of religious belief. The idea that it promotes Satanism [is nonsense]. None of the characters from hell are to be aspired to at all! They're a dreadful bunch of non-entities. People are very keen to be offended, aren't they? They're often looking for something to glom on to without possibly really examining what they think they're complaining about.
Michael, you're known as an activist, and you're in the middle of Making BBC drama The Way, which "taps into the social and political chaos of today's world". Is it important for you to use your plaform to discuss causes you believe in?
Michael: The Way is not a political tract, it's just set in the area that I come from. But it has to matter to you, doesn't it? More and more as I get older, [I find] it can be a real slog doing this stuff. You've got to enjoy it. And if it doesn't matter to you, then it's just going to be depressing.
David, Michael has declared himself a "not-for-profit" actor. Has he tried to persuade you to give up all your money too?
David: What an extraordinary question! One is always aware that one has a certain responsibility if one is fortunate and gets to do a job that often doesn't feel like a job. You want to do your bit whenever you can. But at the same time, I'm an actor. I'm not about to give that up to go into politics or anything. But I'll do what I can from where I live.
Well, your son and your father-in-law are also starring in this series. How about that, jobs for the boys!
David: I know! It was a delight to get to be on set with them. And certainly an unexpected one for me. Neil, on two occasions, got to bowl up to me and say, "Guess who we've cast?!"
How do you feel about your US peers going on strike?
David: It's happening because there are issues that need to be addressed. Nobody's doing this lightly. These are important issues, and they've got to be sorted out for the future of our industry. There's this idea that writers and actors are all living high on the hog. For huge swathes of our industry, that's just not the case. These people have got to be protected.
Michael: We have to be really careful that things don't slide back to the way they were pre the 1950s, when the stories that we told were all coming from one point of view and the stories of certain people, or communities within our society, weren't represented. There's a sense that now that's changed for ever and it'll never go back. But you worry when people can't afford to have the opportunities that other people have. We don't want the story that we tell about ourselves to be myopic. You want it to be as inclusive as possible
Staged series 3 recently broadcast. It felt like the show's last hurrah — or is there more mileage? Sheen and Tennant go on holiday?
David: That's the Christmas special! One Foot in the Algarve! On the Buses Go to Spain!
Michael: I don't think we were thinking beyond three, were we?
So is it time for a conscious uncoupling for you two — Eric and Ernie say goodbye?
David: Oh, never say never, will we?
Michael: And it's more Hinge and Bracket.
David: Maybe that's what we do next — The Hinge and Bracket Story. CRAIG McLEAN
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redbullgirly · 3 months
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hi hi can i request a max verstappen x footballer smau but she plays for real madrid femenino and we know max is an fcb supporter (also for the sake of the smau, real madrid femenino can be just as good as barcelona femeni) and everyone going crazy when she just takes him to an award ceremony as her plus-one. no soft launch no hard launch and everyone including the grid and christian horner and madristas and everyone is shocked
MADRIDISTAS [MV1/33]
Max Verstappen x footballer!RealMadridFemenino!reader
Masterlist
Summary: Y/N is one of the biggest rising stars in women's football, playing for Real Madrid Femenino. When she's nominated by Women's Football Awards for the Player of the Year, the last thing anybody would expect is her plus one to the ceremony being Formula One driver, Max Verstappen. Not only is he the World Champion himself, but most importantly, Max is a known FC Barcelona fan. Talk about making friends with the enemy...
Warnings: I have very limited knowledge of football, so everything in this story is based on my quick research. If you're a fan, please don't come for me! Though any advice would be much appreciated, because I have more football requests in my inbox XD.
Author's Note: Hi Anon, thanks for the request! I have to say it was quite challenging for me at the start, because I don't know many things about football, but at the end it turned out fun and good. Hope you like what I did with this social media au! :)
yourusername posted on instagram
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liked by fifawomensworldcup, alexiaputellas, maxverstappen1 and 239,022 others
tagged: realmadridfem
yourusername And it's a wrap!🥈⚽️ Thank you to the whole team for another amazing year, we fought hard and we will continue to fight for the Champions League title next year as 2023/24 runners-up. Hala Madrid!✨🇪🇸
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user1 Love the way you play!
realmadridfem Hala Madrid!💪🏆
liked by the author
yourusername 💯
user2 💥💥💥
user3 Vamosssss
user4 GO GIRLLL🤩🤩🤩🤩
user5 you really deserved to win the finale, the referee was totally biased agains you!!!
user6 Yeah, even as a FC Barcelona fan I didn't think it was fair🙈
martagarcialopez19 amazing Y/N! 🫶
yourusername Thank youuu!💖
user7 wait does y/n know some people from motosport???
user8 No I think it's just girls supporting girls in sports dominated by men tbh ☺️
liked by the author and martagarcialopez19
user7 oh yeah that makes sense
user9 Buen trabajo que equipo tan bueno con todas y en lo personal muy guapa [Good job, what a great team with everyone and personally very pretty.]
marisabel_rguez The dream team 🙌
liked by the author
yourusername Yessss
user10 HALA MADRID 🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍
user11 literally the prettiest soccer player I ever saw😻
user12 you mean FOOTBALL?!😂🧐
user11 sry i'm american so i'm used to saying soccer
user12 well that's WRONG girly😂
user13 Princess
messages between Y/N and Max
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yourusername posted on instagram
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liked by maxverstappen1, realmadridfem, charlottesiine and 189,436 others
yourusername Short stop back home in Monaco before flying to London for Women's Football Awards and my nomination for Player of the Year 🤞🌷
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user1 so pretty
maitetxuu_10 The nails Y/N 🤩
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yourusername Not better than yours though 😚
user2 i don't watch football but maybe i should start bc of you
user3 Wow you're such a cutie 😍❤️
charlottesiine great work out together!
yourusername Agreed! We should definetly hit the gym together more often 😂
user4 omg wait how do they know each other?? didn't expect y/n y/l/n to be friends with ex-wags??
user5 Idk but they both live in Monaco so it's easy to know basically everyone who's your age there xdd
yourusername True user5, they don't tell you how small the country actually is 😭
user6 SHE IS MY ROLE MODEL EVERYBODY
user7 👏👏👏👏🔥🔥
lucybrozne Seems like the Monaco sun suits you 😁☀️
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yourusername Oh thanks Lucy! 🫶
lucybrozne 🫶
user8 i love that despite fcb beating madrid they're still friends outside of the field🥺
user9 WOW you should be a model
user10 So sad your talents aren’t being fully appreciated in Madrid.
user11 oh c'mmon she probably wouldn't play for them if she felt unappreciated 🙄
user12 but tbh I think she should be the captain.... like she's literally the best player of them all BY FAR
user13 Nah I don't like her. Hope she'll never be a captain🤮
user12 then go away? lol
user13 damnn the 3rd picture did some unholy things to me 😩
user14 right?! I don't think I'm straight anymore🫣
user15 I have no idea who she is but let me tell you she's gorgeous
user16 ✨✨✨👑🎀🌹
twitter
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messages between Max and Christian Horner & Max and Carlos Sainz
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yourusername posted on instagram
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liked by gerihalliwellhorner, maxverstappen1, alexmorgan13 and 621,983 others
tagged: maxverstappen1
yourusername Turning him into Madridista duh.
viewl all 3,084 comments
maxverstappen1 Y/N I love you... but that's never happening ❤️
yourusername Liar! You complained for a week straight about how that referee in the finals wasn't fair and we should have won agains Barcelona! 😘
carlossainz55 hahaaa mate she got you😂
maxverstappen1 😒
user1 OMGGG we converted him on our side!!!
user2 A sad day to be a FC Barcelona supporter and F1 fan😓
user3 A happy day for Madridistas!😍
user4 damn I may have to start watching football
martagarcialopez19 you're glowing! also thanks god now I don't have to keep the secret anymore xd
yourusername Love ya! 🫶
user5 The IT WAG
user6 can we take a moment to appreciate how cute maxie looks here?🥹
realmadridfem You go girl! Convert new fans!🤩💪
liked by the author
user7 I'm still shocked by this whole thing 😹
user8 you're not the only one lol
user9 the second picture????
user10 Max is so lucky man🥵
marisabel_rquez ¡La pareja poderosa!😍 [The power couple!😍]
liked by the author
user11 this post murdered me and dragged me all over slaycity with how much it served 🤭
user12 exactly! her and max are so hot and pretty
user13 🤍😍💯🥳 Hala Madrid!!!
maxverstappen1 posted on instagram
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liked by yourusername, charles_leclerc, f1, realmadridfem and 1,109,332 others
tagged: yourusername
maxverstappen1 My girl ❤️⚽️
comments on this post have been disabled
THE END
Author's Note: Thank you for reading the whole thing! I'll appreciate likes, reblogs, follows and comments, or any other way of support. Let me know what you think about this pairing and please tell me if there are any football errors, because I have another request about footballer!reader waiting for me. Have a great day! :)
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fullhalalalchemist · 2 years
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it is 8/26/22 and all i can think about is the idea we might live to see the literal death of internet anonymity/privacy in the span of a few months because of AB2273 (California bill that might get passed into law by next week) and all be forced to upload our government ID's online since most social media companies are based out of Cali. lmao. and the fact that the bill wasn't even written by americans it was literally written by some random British royal and she paid the California legislative to sponsor the bill. what the fuck. oh and yes, they are playing this off as a "protecting the children" type BS. and yes, nearly every tech expert/internet/cybersecurity expert who's heard about this bill (and there's not many because it's a state law and not a federal law but it's an internet bill that will impact the entire web) is properly freaking the fuck out right now, as they should.
anyway, please call governor newsom (yes even if you dont live in Cali) and tell him to veto this horrible bill.
Phone: (916) 445-2841
call/email script posted under the cut
I am calling you today to urge you to vote NO on AB 2273, the California Age-Appropriate Design Code Act. Tech experts and internet safety experts are rightfully worried that this dangerous bill would end the free and open internet as we know it, as well as actively harm children.
It targets websites "accessed by kids", anyone under 18, which is every website on the internet. It's being sold as protecting privacy for kids, but it forces websites to verify everyone's ages, and the only way to do that is to submit your govt ID or scan your face to third-party sites. This will lead to warrantless surveillance of everyone. This is coming at a time where people are being charged with felonies for accessing abortion care online, and being fired for posting pro-LGBT content online. More surveillance will literally ruin people's lives and get people killed.
This will force websites to surveil everyone and kill encryption, and with increasing right-wing attacks on minorities, abortion, and LGBT, this could spell a death-sentence for people.
Professor Eric Goldman claims this law will destroy the entire internet, and he is right. We need privacy protection, but not like this. This destroys our privacy, our 1st amendment rights, and our human and civil rights. You can't block children from the internet, to protect them you need parental oversight, not governmental or private from companies.
VOTE NO on this bill if you care about privacy, the open internet, freedom, and stopping right-wing attacks on our democracy and human rights.
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