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outlanderfandomfollies · 10 months

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Some parts of SamCait Shipperville seem to be stuck in a 1950s fantasy

Has there been a time warp on Tumblr?

Is it the 1950s again in some corners of SamCait Shipperville?

It has to be because the preferred SamCait "narrative" for many extreme shippers (ES) is that between the years 2016 to 2021, S and C have had anywhere from 3 to 5 "boos."😳

In this day and age, women with high powered careers don't usually opt to have more than one or two children. Especially, if they are starting a family in their late 30s.

But this seems to be a fantasy of certain ES, who believed that anytime C's belly wasn't completely flat, she HAD to be pregnant. These same ES have also been busily finding reflections of "boos" in glass bottles and pictures of "boos" in fuzzy photos.🤦🏻‍♀️

Having a large family might be THEIR fantasy, but I doubt it is C's or S's fantasies.

What is fascinating to me is that these women are so caught up in their 50s fantasy, that they appear to have never bothered to consider how improbable it would be for S and C to actually live the fantasy in real life.

YOU CAN'T HIDE FIVE "BOOS"--OR EVEN THREE: Sometimes one picture is worth a thousand words. So I put together this manipulated photo, to show what it would look like if C had to deal with 5 young children--and how absurd it is that anyone thinks that S & C would be able to keep such a large family "secret."

As you can see from the above manip--it would be nearly impossible to hide this many children from the world.🤷🏻‍♀️

But even if there were only 3 or 4 "boos," it would still be very hard to hide them from the world.

First of all, S & C would have to try to convince very young children to never tell anyone that they are their parents.

Good luck with that.

Then imagine stopping the boos' playmates from revealing the secret. And asking their playmates' parents and siblings to also keep the secret.

Then imagine hushing up all of S & C's relatives, colleagues, and neighbors.

Finally, think of how difficult it would be to get all of the boos' teachers, babysitters, nannies, au pairs, etc. to agree not to tell anyone.

WOMEN WITH DEMANDING CAREERS DON'T START A LARGE FAMILY IN THEIR MID-TO-LATE THIRTIES: Many of the ES think that Cait had her first "boo" in July 2016. At the time C would have been 36 years-old (about 3 months shy of her 37th birthday).

It's not unusual for high powered career women to try to have their first child in their mid-to-late thirties, but those who do are aware that they are also at greater risk of infertility, miscarriage, and of having children with severe developmental problems.

But in the the minds of certain ES, C chose* to have anywhere from 3 to 5 "boos" between July 2016 and the summer of 2021, when C was between the ages of 36 - 41.

Seriously. Who does that in this day and age?

But wait, there's more! 😱

Following the logic of this particular SC "narrative," not only did C & S choose to have all of these children relatively late in life, but they chose to have this large family despite both of them often having to work 13 hour days, and having to fly all over the world for award shows, premieres and film shootings. Not to mention the fact that their work and travels often saw S on a different continent than C and the "boos."

Given all of the above, what I want to know is:

I don't care if ES assume that C & S have nannies or au pairs or other childcare arrangements. Nowadays, few couples with such demanding careers would opt to have a such a large brood of kids relatively late in life.

BOTTOM LINE: Certain shippers have a 1950s fantasy of what life is like in the imaginary "marriage" between S & C.

It is an impractical and an extremely improbable fantasy.

Anyone with any common sense would know that.

Unfortunately, extreme shippers have put their common sense on hold--sometimes for years--just to keep this particular fantasy alive.

[edited]

____________ *Even though C was raised Catholic, she supports women's reproductive rights. She avoided being pregnant for years despite having a couple of serious relationships. She wouldn't just start using the rhythm method once married. If C actually had a big family, it would have been a choice she made. IMAGE SOURCES: a) 1950s family illustration; b) manipulated photo sources: 01 + 02; c) gossiping kids photo; d)Three people can keep a secret gif; e) Wait, what? gif; Who's minding the Kids? photo. Note: All images/gifs were modified from their original sources.

#samcait debunk #outlander fandom #samcait extreme shippers #1950s fantasy #false narrative #my manips #my edited gifs #my edits

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news4dzhozhar · 4 months

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religion-is-a-mental-illness · 11 months

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By: Andrew Doyle

Published: Apr 20, 2023

I am at the home of a psychopath. Here on the easternmost point of the island of Capri, the ancient ruins of the Villa Jovis still cling to the summit of the mountain. This was the former residence of the Emperor Tiberius, who retired here for the last decade of his life in order to indulge in what Milton described as “his horrid lusts”. He conducted wild orgies for his nymphs and catamites. He forced children to swim between his thighs, calling them his “little fish”. He raped two brothers and broke their legs when they complained. He threw countless individuals to their deaths from a precipice looming high over the sea.

That these stories are unlikely to be true is beside the point; Tiberius’s reputation has done wonders for the tourist trade here on Capri. The historians Suetonius and Tacitus started the rumours and, with the help of successive generations of sensationalists, established a tradition that was to persist for almost two millennia.

All of which serves as a reminder that reputations can be constructed and sustained on the flimsiest of foundations. Suetonius and Tacitus were writing almost a century after the emperor’s death, and many of their lurid stories were doubtless echoes of those circulated by his most spiteful enemies. Or perhaps it’s simply a matter of prurience. Who can deny that the more lascivious and outlandish acts of the Roman emperors are by far the most memorable? One thinks immediately of Caligula having sex with his siblings and appointing his horse as consul. Or Nero murdering his own mother, and taking a castrated slave for his bride, naming him after the wife he had kicked to death. For all their horror, who doesn’t feel cheated when such tales turn out to be false?

Our reputations are changelings: protean shades of other people’s imaginations. More often than not, they are birthed from a combination of uninformed prejudice and wishful thinking. And we should be in no doubt that in our online age, when lies are disseminated at lightning speed and casual defamation has become the activist’s principal strategy, reputations are harder to heal once tarnished.

I am tempted to feel pity for future historians. Quite how they will be expected to wade through endless reams of emails, texts, and other digital materials — an infinitude of conflicting narratives and individual “truths” — really is beyond me. At least when there is a dearth of primary sources it is possible to piggyback onto a firm conclusion. “Suetonius said…” has a satisfactory and definitive air, but only because there are so few of his contemporary voices available to contradict him.

As the culture war rumbles on, and I have found myself ostracised by former friends who now interpret even minor political disagreements as evidence of malevolence, I have learned that reputation is invariably a form of fiction. One such friend used to complain endlessly about a certain conservative commentator, asserting that he was a mendacious hatemonger whose every action was motivated by contempt for marginalised communities. These ideas were so frequently repeated in conversation, and confirmed by others within our circle, that I had no doubt they must be true. Imagine my confusion, then, when I eventually became well acquainted with this man, and found him to be both generous and empathetic. It’s like meeting Beelzebub and finding that he has been secretly baking cupcakes for the poor.

The same sense of bewilderment has struck me whenever I have happened upon bad-faith critics attempting to summarise my views. I have been variously described as “far-Right”, “bigoted”, “racist”, “sexist” and even “homophobic”. Of course, I would not expect total strangers to know my mind, but given that my actual opinions are freely available to anyone with a search engine, it does feel odd to be so wildly mischaracterised.

I am not alone in this. That false narratives can be more powerful than reality is, of course, the reason why our opponents so readily resort to distortions and smears. A colleague recently alerted me to one of the more bizarre hit pieces that has been written about me in an online magazine. The strategy was at least novel: the writer had contacted former students from my time as a teacher in order to trawl for unflattering anecdotes. According to one account, I had sent a pupil out of the classroom because he dared to disagree with me about the use of metaphorical language in Of Mice and Men.

But perhaps funnier than the story itself is that the author of this article was gulled into repeating it as though it could possibly be authentic. It is a reminder that reputations are often cultivated by those who must first suspend their critical faculties. This kind of nonsense is harmless enough, of course. It falls far short of defamation and, as RuPaul so neatly put it: “what other people think of me is none of my business.”

For all that, more serious attacks on people’s reputations can be devastating. Three years ago, I lost a friend to cancer after he had been falsely accused of sexual assault. In his final days he told me that he had no doubt that the years of intense anxiety following the trial had exacerbated his illness. The source of his distress wasn’t even so much the initial accusation, which was easily disproved in court, but rather the gossip that continued to reverberate and the loved ones who no longer picked up the phone.

In the past, I have often made the mistake of assuming the worst of my detractors, simply because a scurrilous lie has seemed more appealing than a complicated truth. Few of us who have been dragged into the deranging ideological skirmishes of the past few years will have avoided making these mistakes, but these days I like to keep in mind Philip Roth’s remark in The Human Stain: “our understanding of people must always be at best slightly wrong.”

No doubt it is hopelessly optimistic to assume that this approach will become the default. Our brains are hardwired to take mental shortcuts — known as heuristics — and we are generally more willing to believe the worst of others than make the effort to consider that we may have been misinformed. Worse still, the inherent appeal of scandalous and titillating tales means they will be propagated at an accelerated rate, so that even outright lies can quickly become received wisdom. We tend to accept that there is “no smoke without fire”, when more often than not it’s just a few troublemakers with a dry ice machine.

So perhaps we ought to give Tiberius the benefit of the doubt. In that spirit, let us consider one of Suetonius’s more flattering accounts. While living on the island of Rhodes, Tiberius remarked that he ought to visit all the sick people in the town. His servants assumed that this was some kind of decree, and the local invalids were hastily summoned. Rather than turn them away, Tiberius took the time to speak to each one and apologise for the misunderstanding. This story may not satisfy our appetite for murder and depravity, but at least it might be true.

#Andrew Doyle #reputation #cancel culture #strawman #online mob #false narrative #religion is a mental illness

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nando161mando · 9 months

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‘Sound of Freedom’ Torched by Child-Trafficking Experts

#sound of freedom #child trafficking #experts #fyi #psa #false beliefs of the qanon movement #false narrative #false perception #ausgov #politas #auspol #tasgov #taspol #australia #neoliberal capitalism #fuck neoliberals #anthony albanese #albanese government

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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 1 year

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LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

March 6, 2023

Heather Cox Richardson

The Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) met in Washington, D.C., over the weekend, sparking speculation over the 2024 Republican presidential field. Hard-right figures like Donald Trump and his loyalists Mike Lindell, the MyPillow entrepreneur, and Kari Lake, who lost the 2022 race for Arizona governor, attended, along with House Judiciary Committee chair Jim Jordan (R-OH) and right-wing media figure Steve Bannon, but many of those testing the 2024 presidential waters gave it a miss. CPAC started in 1974, and since then it has been a telltale for the direction the Republican Party is going. This year was no exception. CPAC was smaller this year than in the past, and it showcased the Republican extremism that is far outside the mainstream of normal American politics. “Feels like MAGA country!” Donald Trump, Jr., told the crowd. The headliner was former president Trump, twice impeached, deeply involved in an attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election, and embroiled in a range of criminal investigations. In his speech, Trump embraced his leadership of those hardening around a violent mentality based in grievance that echoes that of fascist movements. “In 2016, I declared: I am your voice,” he said. “Today, I add: I am your warrior. I am your justice. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed: I am your retribution.” He claimed that he and his followers are “engaged in an epic struggle to rescue our country from the people who hate it and want to absolutely destroy it…. We are going to finish what we started. We started something that was a miracle. We’re going to complete the mission, we’re going to see this battle through to ultimate victory. We’re going to make America great again.” After listing all the “villains and scoundrels” he and his followers would “demolish,” “drive out,” “cast out,” “throw off,” “beat,” “rout,” and “evict,” he continued: “We have no choice. This is the final battle.” Other Republican hopefuls are waiting in the wings. Trump has, in fact, never won the popular vote, and his leadership has brought historic losses for the party, but his control over his voting base makes him the front-runner for the Republican nomination. Other candidates seem to be hoping that criminal indictments will knock Trump out of the race and open space for them without making them take a stand against Trump and thus alienate his followers. It seems likely that if such an indictment were forthcoming, they would blame Democrats for Trump’s downfall and hope to ride to office with his voting bloc behind them, without having to embrace that voting blocs’ ideology. That hope seems delusional, considering the increasing emphasis of the Trump Republicans and their imitators on violence. The Republicans are hitting on a constant refrain that crime is on the upswing in the U.S. Since crime does not, in fact, seem to be rising, it seems worth noting that an emphasis on crime justifies the use of state power to combat that crime and normalizes the idea of violence against “criminals,” a category the Republican Party is defining more and more broadly. This will be an extremely difficult genie to stuff back into a bottle, especially as leading Republican figures are increasingly talking in martial terms and referring to the U.S. Civil War. That emphasis on violence corresponds with something else on display at this year’s CPAC: how completely the Republican Party now depends on a false narrative constructed out of lies. CPAC fact checkers had their work cut out for them. Linda Qiu of the New York Times found Trump repeated a number of things previously identified as incorrect as well as adding some new ones. Politifact fact checked other speakers and found they, too, continued to develop the idea of a country run by those who hate it and are eager to undermine it. Various speakers said the Department of Justice is calling parents worried about their kids’ educations “terrorists” (false), fentanyl will kill you if any of it touches your skin, thus putting us all at deadly risk (false), cartels have “operational control” of the U.S.-Mexico border (false), and Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky has said he wants America’s “sons and daughters to go die in Ukraine” (again, false). Right-wing media amplifies this narrative. Depositions in the Dominion Voting Systems defamation lawsuit against the Fox News Corporation made it very clear that both Fox News executives and hosts work closely with Republican operatives to spread a Republican narrative, even when it is based on lies—in that case, in the lie that Trump won the election, which they privately agreed was ridiculous. So, when House speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) gave to FNC personality Tucker Carlson exclusive access to 44,000 hours of video from the footage from the Capitol on January 6, 2021, he indicated the Republicans will continue to try to garner support with a false narrative. Carlson’s coverage of the videos started tonight, with him depicting the rioters as “sightseers” and claiming that other media outlets have lied about the violence on January 6. In reality, Carlson simply didn’t show the many hours of violent footage: more than 1,000 people have been arrested on charges relating to their actions surrounding January 6, more than half have pleaded guilty, and around one third of those charged were charged with assaulting, resisting, or impeding police officers. McCarthy’s desperation to maintain the party’s narrative shows in his unilateral decision to give Carlson exclusive access to that video. A wide range of media outlets are clamoring for equal access to the footage while congressional Democrats are demanding to know on what authority McCarthy gave Carlson that access. The House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol had arranged to transfer the films to the National Archives, but when the Republicans rewrote the rules in January, they instead transferred the video to the House Administration Committee. McCarthy did not consult the committee when he gave access to the films to Carlson. Nor did he consult House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), who has noted that releasing the films without consultation with the Capitol Police is a security risk. Instead, McCarthy apparently coordinated with Representative Barry Loudermilk (R-GA), chair of the Subcommittee on Oversight. Loudermilk led a tour of the Capitol complex on January 5, 2021. Representative Norma J. Torres (D-CA), ranking member of the Oversight Subcommittee, told Justin Papp of Roll Call that McCarthy “totally went around, not just the subcommittee, but the entire committee…. I hope Ethics will have something to say about this. I think it needs to be investigated on all different levels.” In contrast, House Administration Committee chair Bryan Steil (R-WI) appeared unconcerned with the end run around the responsible committee, saying that “the key is that we’re balancing the transparency that’s needed for the American people with the security interests of the House.” Republicans are planning to take this disinformation campaign across the nation. Despite their insistence that they want to slash government spending, Republican leaders are in fact urging their colleagues to engage in “field hearings” that will take their “message” straight to voters at a time when they are not managing to accomplish much of anything at all in Washington. Jordan’s Judiciary Committee has requested a travel budget of $262,000, more than 30 times what it spent on travel last year and 3 times what it spent before the pandemic, and it is not just the Judiciary Committee that is hitting the road. As Annie Karni and Catie Edmondson of the New York Times noted today, this also means that they speak at the plants of Republican donors, thus giving them free advertising. Congressional Democrats say they received almost no notice of these trips.

[MORE]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

#Letters From an American #Heather Cox Richardson #CPAC #False Narrative #flood the zone #corrupt Gop #criminal GOP #The Big Lie

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